Oathbreaker: The Knight's Tale Read Online Free PDF

largesse helps support the Imperial Bank, and who suck dry the lesser craftsmen and merchants.
    The Lesser Houses like ours are still nobility to one degree or another, but our collective pedigree is not nearly as impressive. Perhaps these Houses were late converts to the growing empire, like the Micolli. They might have fallen from grace through the years, like the Torvalds who lost the East for a century. They simply lack the requisite ferocity to prove themselves and thus watch their holdings seep away to their competitors—like the House of Glasyin, regrettably, who became vassals to the Stoyan. They might have been rewarded for later services, as were the Huldens, who helped the Deng establish the banking system in these last three hundred years.
    We might still provide certain services to the Church or the Council of Magi, and our children fill the ranks of the knighthood, but we simply cannot break the stranglehold the High Houses have on the court. I do not say this to belittle you or your potential accomplishments, but to tell you what the situation looks like from Terona. We must realize that the High Houses see us as pawns in their games, useful tools or fading glories but ultimately no more than occasional breeding stock when they don't need to secure alliances with their competitors.
    Most of the nobles with whom I met were useless militarily and served mainly as a way to distinguish themselves before they moved on to fill the court with their plots and gossip. I dismissed them as foppish dandies then, though I realized the necessity of keeping them, if not friendly, at least tolerant toward me and my designs.
    I am, in hindsight, aware of the irony of judging them for their plots while I engaged in mine. In my defense, allow me to argue that I worked for the good of the country as I saw it, struggling to prevent its inevitable downfall, to slow the slide into anarchy. Their plots were for personal aggrandizement. Mine was to serve something that was worthy of my service. That is what I told myself then. Perhaps the lies we tell ourselves become truer the more strongly we believe them.
    I had just begun to earn the friendship of Prince Fannon, nephew of the king, when word came that Fannon III had passed, succumbing at last to the inevitable stroke of age. Though it was expected that he would die, no one was prepared for it so soon. No sooner had we heard of his death than the hyenas were upon the corpse and ambition began to tear the army apart. The death of the king brought us to the Birdsnest Wars, in which the High Houses sought to position themselves to take advantage of the chaos. They took themselves to the Birdsnest, King Martyn’s old summer mansion on the hills outside of Terona, and pressed their claims to the throne, describing the deeds they had done for the Empire and the blessings they had secured for the many. They outlined their lineage, and described why their lines were closer to the bloodline of Martyn. They presented their presumptive heirs. The highest officers of the forces turned away from their sworn service to defend the country and brought their strength to bear for their chosen House. Whole divisions went to fight for the Westkitts and the Dengs and the Bhumari, and companies and battalions split for the Lesser Houses.
    A few remained standing with Prince Fannon. Fannon III had died childless, and though his decree should have rendered his nephew the legitimate heir, questions of legality and the prince’s legitimacy made what should have been an orderly succession a time of blood. I supported the prince, as did a number of the nobles who were unconvinced that their Houses deserved the throne. We had the Vukovi, whose judges and heralds outlined Fannon's right, but who listens to the niceties of the law when such power is at stake? We believed that Fannon had shown the qualities necessary to lead us, and this was more than belief in his lineage. Men and women alike believed that the