Ooh, pretty image. "Weeping fire". (I think you can kill the tears of blood that follow, though. Too much figurative language in close proximity can get a bit annoying, and aside from reusing the crying imagery there's no way "tears of blood" can top "weeping fire".
)
"...and that justice would rain down like fire..." Again, you're just recycling an earlier metaphor here.
"His grey eyes could barely keep themselves open." Passive voice, and it's a bit odd for him to be describing his own eye colour anyway.
The Riel/Katrina flashback: are they supposed to be kids during this flashback? Because if they are, I ain't buying it. They don't talk like children.
Incidentally, and I could be misremembering, but I thought that an earlier chapter had mentioned that Katrina actually
wasRiel's sister. Here it says she's a cousin.
"His Lord Commander had no idea of the risks...He had blindly followed his friend and king..." Why doesn't he? People don't usually get appointed to high military positions because of their tendency to blindly follow others around. For that matter, Riel seems like a fairly honest guy; if he has deliberately neglected to inform Tyrell of some of the risks, fine, but you may at some point want to tell us what and why, so it doesn't seem inconsistent.
"Riel lifted himself from the pyre" makes it sound like he was IN the pyre. Especially considering his talk just now of killing himself. I don't really know what he was talking about, incidentally, in terms of sacrificing himself for their souls. Whether he's talking about something specific or just generally angsting, the meaning is a bit lost on me.
JadeEyes says, "The small farming village of Alule was ravaged by a small force while their Soul Taker was distracting us here at the castle!" Um, unless this village is rather close by, you wouldn't exactly need a distraction to go after a small farming village, and it seems to me people would find about it after the fact whether they'd been "distracted" or not.
I'm confused whether or not this boy is actually in the room or not. At first it seems he's some sort of apparition in the flames, but then you say that the boy has entered the room, and have someone walk up to him.
"Yessir, the soldiers, they…they raped and killed my mother, and
left me to die in the mud beside her." That doesn't sound very much like a boy talking, especially one suffering from a very recent and vivid trauma. Also, seems odd to me that these people might be willing to accept the word of this boy--young and recently traumatized--as any sort of proof that Rogont's men in particular were involved (which ambassador Revess's approach seems to imply that they might).
What are people's reactions as Riel walks from the room? Given their opposition I can't think they're pleased... but whatever they think I imagine there will be some hubbub behind Riel as he leaves. What's going on behind him?
This development is a good one, it's starting to give us a hint what the major conflict might be--the war with Rogont. In terms of Riel's character, anyway. I still have no idea whatsoever what Kale has to do with any of this, and we're far enough along by now that I think we should have some indication of it. We don't need to know everything, but we do need to know that the two stories are connected. Even a few hints would do it--preferably hints that point to things we don't already know from Riel's chapters, but are still clear enough that we can see the shape that the story is starting to take.
