![]() ![]() The former Archbishop of Lorica had hated cats, and ordered them exterminated, so there were suddenly rats in the grain supply. Grand Prior John Wishart left the queen to a palace full of spiders and roaches and mice. There was a fashion growing for women to carry black linen handkerchiefs, to hide signs of the plague men and women were wearing hoods, and some wore linen over their faces, too. A spring and summer of civil unrest and war had decimated the city’s nobles and left its mark on merchant and guildsmen alike.Īnd where the Knights of Saint Thomas had reopened their hospital, there was a line of anxious women, all with silent children. The center of the city, the “palace” as it was known, rich stone houses packed close in around the Episcopal Palace, was a gutted ruin. ![]() ![]() The city seemed empty of children, and too quiet. Harndon looked like a woman beaten by a drunken spouse signs hung awry, there were burns and smoke damage everywhere, and no one smiled, or sang. The queen had come home to her capital, flushed with victory and new motherhood, cradling her son, Constantine, in her arms, to the thin cheers of her hungry and plague-infected people. T he same sky, still unstained by the line of new volcanoes belching ash in the north, hung over Harndon. ![]()
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