"My father won't stand for this," Loman said from the ground beneath the dais. "The whole of the march will rise up against you if you try to tear one of his baronies away from him, and even the king may send soldiers against you," he warned, his voice acting like a bucket of cold water thrown on the dreaming people in the audience, waking them violently from their dreams.
"You aren't leading your people into a brighter future," he said defiantly. "You're ushering in the beginnings of an even more terrible war!"
"Yer father hardly matters," Sybyll said coldly from atop the dais. "That is, if yer brother hasn'a killed him yet," she said, shocking the young Lothian Lord. "Don'a act so surprised. Ye must know yer father hasn't been well," Sybyll said, ushering in a new hush among the people as she revealed a secret known to very few outside the nobility and virtually no one in the great hall.
