Chapter 17

Founders Day, The White Tower

The morning broke flat and colourless, the kind of low, oppressive light that made it impossible to tell if it was nine or noon without a clock. Outside, the Thames was a sluggish strip of dull steel; inside, the White Tower smelled of coal smoke, wet wool, and last night’s boiled barley.

The command room was warm only if you stood within arm’s reach of the hearth. Beyond that, the stone leached heat through boots and coats. The long oak table had been cleared of the clutter it usually carried — no stray tins or bread heels, no cups left half-drunk — but the maps lay spread and pinned under knives and battered mugs, the paper edges curling slightly from damp.

Dale stood at the head, braced forward on his palms. He had dressed for function, not show — dark shirt under a leather jerkin, sleeves rolled, forearms marked faintly from the training yard. Allegra sat to his right, one leg crossed neatly over the other, her chair angled so she could see both the table and the door. Her cloak had been shrugged off onto the back of her chair; steam from the mug between her hands curled up past her face, briefly softening her expression before it was gone again.

Polina leaned over the table, tracing a route on the Regent’s Park map with the point of a pencil. “Stepney is stable. Regent’s Park is fully under our control — mosque cleared, last stragglers gone. The university grounds are secure enough to anchor the northwest.”

Dale nodded once. “Good. That spine will hold. Makes a straight run between Stepney and the north-west, both ends with water.”

Sigrid flipped a page in her leather-bound report. “Stepney’s borehole is secure for the winter. The second at Regent’s Park is pumping. Solar array is working — small, but consistent.”

“Water isn’t charity,” Allegra said, looking down the table at no one in particular. “It’s leverage. We open taps where loyalty is proven. Where it isn’t, they stay dry.”

Tom’s mouth tilted. “Thirst talks louder than speeches.”

Joe sat back in his chair, boot hooked across his knee, arms folded. “And we decide who does the talking.” He let his eyes rest on Dale just long enough to make the statement feel pointed, though whether it was deference or ambition was harder to tell.

Nicole stood just inside the door, beside Natalie, pretending to scan a small clipboard but really watching the currents in the room. She’d learned the map of people as well as streets — the way Joe’s casual slouch was calculated to look like he belonged at the top end of the table, the way Tom’s lean-in read as focus, Oscar’s stillness as discipline. Natalie, beside her, was taking in the same details, but with a calmer, longer view — who would make trouble, who could be leaned on, who would follow quietly.

At the far wall, Carly stood beside the cupboard that held the ledgers, a thick folio hugged to her chest. She’d been moving since before dawn: delivering notes, fetching maps before anyone asked, checking the cloaks and gorgets in the anteroom, making sure the inkpot for the ledger hadn’t frozen in the night. Every task had been chosen for visibility. When Allegra’s eyes passed over her, Carly returned a small, efficient nod, the picture of readiness. Inside, her stomach twisted. She’d built this usefulness like armour — if they needed her, they wouldn’t dig for the past she’d buried under it.

Dale tapped a finger against the map, once, sharp. “The runner system’s stretched. Too many people, too much ground. We’re making promises we can’t check in time. That ends now.”

Allegra set her mug down, the sound of ceramic on oak cutting through the low murmur of the hearth. “From tonight, we formalise authority. No more favours. No more ad-hoc deals. Sector leaders appointed by us, answerable only to us.”

“We’ll rotate them,” Dale said. “One season per post. No little kingdoms. No one roots in one place.”

Joe arched a brow. “And if a sector falls?”

Allegra’s answer was clean, without pause. “Then so does its Thane.”

The scribe — a thin man with ink-stained fingers — stepped forward with the Tower’s heavy ledger. Allegra ran her fingertips over the blank ruled page. “Names will be recorded in public, with witnesses. Fail, and your removal will be witnessed too.”

Carly underlined rotation twice in her small notebook, so hard the pencil tore the paper. Rotation meant movement. Movement meant no one sitting long enough to start unpicking threads best left alone.

Dale looked down the table. “This afternoon we crown the leadership, name the Thanes, and make the city’s chain of command visible.” His eyes swept across the room, catching on each face in turn. “Be ready. This isn’t for us — it’s for them to see who holds the ground they live on.”

A short silence followed. Then chairs scraped back, the sound echoing off the stone. Carly was already moving for the door, her mind three steps ahead — where the regalia would be stacked, which cloaks would need brushing, how the crate of gorgets would be carried without marring the oil finish.

Nicole and Natalie followed, their heads close enough to speak if they’d wanted to, but both silent. Outside, the winter light in the courtyard was pale and merciless. In six hours, it would be torches and spectacle.

By the time the winter light began to dull, the courtyard was already a theatre.
The outer gates stood open just enough to admit the controlled stream of people; guards in full kit stood at intervals, halberds at the ready. Torches blazed in iron sconces along the inner walls, their flames tall and steady in the still air. The cold was knife-sharp, the kind that bit fingers through gloves and seeped into boots no matter how thick the socks.

The crowd had arranged itself without orders — fighters toward the front, lieutenants in small clusters to one side, civilians filtering in behind. The murmur of voices was low, broken by the occasional barked instruction from a guard repositioning someone who had drifted too far forward.

Nicole stood near the base of the White Tower steps, Natalie at her shoulder. Both wore dark-red gowns under thick cloaks, the fabric heavy enough to resist the wind. The colour wasn’t about beauty; it was about recognition. They were the First Consorts — seen but not mistaken for anyone else. Nicole felt the weight of eyes on her, curious and calculating. Natalie’s gaze was steady on the steps, as if already watching the moment they would walk up them.

Carly moved like a shadow at the edges — not part of the spectacle, but inside its machinery. She checked that the regalia crate was in position on the dais, that the scribe’s table had a clean sheet and the ink was warm enough to flow. Every time she adjusted something, she made sure it was visible — a reminder to anyone looking that she belonged in the places other people were kept out of.

When the bell in the Byward Tower struck the hour, the doors of the White Tower opened. Dale stepped out first, the burnished black armour catching firelight in clean, hard lines. The heavy black cloak lined with silver-grey fur fell perfectly from his shoulders. He didn’t look at the crowd at first — he looked down the steps, then up at the pale sky, then straight ahead, as if measuring the space he was about to fill.

Allegra followed, the deep crimson of her gown striking against the stone. Her hair was straight and neat, the silver circlet she would soon wear still cradled in Polina’s hands. Her face was composed, almost serene, but her eyes moved constantly, measuring reactions, catching glances, filing them away.