Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Scott Hunter/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Eric Bennett, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Carter Vaughn, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Rare Pairings, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, War, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Power Imbalance, Unreliable Narrator, Hurt/Comfort, Age Difference, Hostage Situations, HEA, Worldbuilding

Language:

English

Series:

Part 5 of Set in Heated Rivalry-verse

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-22 Updated: 2026-10-25 Words: 118,286 Chapters: 26/29

Greywater Peace

Summary

The right thing to do with an unjust war is to lose it. The right thing to do in a battle is to win it. Ilya Rozanov has won every battle and lost the war, which ought, by some reckoning, to leave him twice in the right.

He is sent across the sea as the hostage instead, handed over to the very kingdom he spent eighteen months burning in his father’s name. If the heavens keep accounts, they keep them badly.

Notes

Inspired by 'The Bruiseberry Crown' by the estimable Vee (Vera_DragonMuse).

A bit darker, however. Hers is -- beautiful and folkloric and at worst bittersweet. And she rules the small (but growing!) Scott/Ilya part of the fandom justly and with grace. (Huntanov? Scotya?)
The Hottest Cold War is--It's everything.

Mine is more--Yeah. Nuts, I guess.

---

 

Okayyyy guys so--I know! I know it's bad form, i know i have WIPs. But!

I need a purely Scott/Ilya story okay? I'm losing the plot of my longform WIP, i've been writing it for long and it had gotten so long, that i am forgetting what my character motivations are!

in any case, this one is finished. I should be posting every day or every second day, depending on my workload and when i have time to do a brief spell check and such.

It was super fun to write!

Also, it's a bit messed up. Uh. HR levels of untreated trauma and complex PTSD and all that. I wouldn't say there is disordered eating, btu that could come down to matter of opinion. Yeah.

In terms of magic, we're at about ASOIAF level - there is magic, but it's not common.

• Inspired by The Bruiseberry Crown by Vee (Vera_DragonMuse)

Chapter 1: Glossary

Chapter Summary

Maps, worldbuilding, stuff like that. While I'm updating this story, the glossary will remain teh last ch. If someone has a better idea, by all means

 

Or maybe the first? Idk, it’s a bit confusing to update the story, then people go to the last chapter and it’s the map, idk.

(For a higher res, open the image in a new tab) 

Map Glossary of the Reach

The Greywater Sea

The great inland sea at the heart of the Reach: trade road, war road, graveyard, and border all at once. Whoever controls its harbours controls grain, ships, hostages, treaties, and the speed at which news becomes war.

Kingdom of Aderra

Capital: Adermere
Ruling house: House Hunter

A green, river-fed mainland kingdom of orchards, roads, harbours, hedges, and repaired towns. Aderra looks gentle from a distance, but its strength is discipline, logistics, law, and the stubborn refusal to fall apart after war.

Kingdom of Veyr

Capital: Starogard
Ruling house: House Rozanov

A cold island crown of basalt cliffs, black pine, iron, storm harbours, naval yards, old noble houses, and older grudges. Outsiders call it the Bear Isles, after the white bear of the Rozanov kings. Veyrans call it Veyr, or simply the Stones, and consider the mainland name both inaccurate and faintly stupid.

The chief Stones are:

Sevren — throne-isle of House Rozanov, at Starogard. Royal house, white bear on black; rulers of Veyr by iron, war, and the old Gathering.

Sevren — also home to House Voronin, at Voronovo. Raven house, old court blood, near-kings in the League, and patient enemies of the Rozanov crown.

Belomor — merchant isle of House Vetrov, at Belovodsk. Shipping, grain, amber, letters, rumour; Svetlana’s house.

Belomor — also home to House Saltykov, at Saltykovo. Banking, amber, war-debt, and the useful fury of creditors.

Kargor — war-isle of House Volkov, at Kargorsk. Iron, officers, barracks, discipline, and the army’s old loyalty.

Lugra — horse-isle of House Konev, at Lugovo. Stone-ponies, scouts, cavalry, remounts, and weathered contempt for court games.

Sunmere — warm harbour-isle of House Yarin, at Yarinsk. Grain-gates, shipyards, southern glass, physicians, learning, and tolerated foreignness.

Koldoy — Closed Stone of House Orlov, at Karskaya. Alchemy, poisoners, old rites, the one house even the crown prefers not to touch.

Skarn — Closed Stone of House Mora, at Morskoe. Salt-dark rites, sea-marriage, old faith, and a strong local habit of not returning strangers.

Solovets — prison-monastery of the Brethren of the Watch, at Solovets. Rites of the dead, Hollow Days, royal prisoners, inconvenient relatives, and holy ground no one likes to name.

Vrang — far frontier Stone of House Vrang, at Vrangsk. Whaling, sealing, smuggling, captain-clans, sea-watch, and obedience only when unavoidable.

Keelstone — sacred crown-rock, held by no house. The old holy islet where Veyran kings are crowned and buried, when the kingdom can be troubled to carry them there.

Kingdom of Rydal

Capital: Southbury
Ruling house: House Hollander

Austere northern kingdom of cold lakes, dark forests, long winters, timber roads, solemn courts, and quiet people who consider display a kind of weakness. Rydal is separated from Aderra by a broad stretch of marsh country, informally called the Hollander Marshes: wet, pale, difficult to cross, and full of old border law.

Kingdom of Torren

Capital: Ondron
Ruling house: House Sondaigne

A mountain crown of passes, high roads, mines, monasteries, and stubborn provincial lords. Torren controls the northern heights and survives by making every army pay for every mile. House Asten rules by bargain as much as blood, because in Torren even kings have to negotiate with the road.

House Sondaigne

Sondaigne /sɔ̃ˈdɛɲ/ — the ruling house.

Their sigil is the red leaf — la lan ioque /la lɑ̃ ˈjɔk/, built from the roots lan (leaf) and ioque (red). The maple leaf, in other words. The house colours follow from it: red and white.

The King and Queen

King Mathis Sondaigne /maˈtis sɔ̃ˈdɛɲ/
The reigning head of the house.

Queen Aurène Sondaigne /oˈʁɛn sɔ̃ˈdɛɲ/
His consort and Austène's mother.

The Heir

Austène Sondaigne# /osˈtɛn sɔ̃ˈdɛɲ/
Son of Mathis and Aurène, and heir to the house.

The Broken Betrothal

Austène was long betrothed to Lord Miche Marnière — the two names spoken in one breath for years, Austène e Miche, the heir and his lord. It was meant to bind the houses. But Miche broke the promise, departed, and married far away, taking a foreign spouse in a distant court. The accepted rumor is that it was maliciously broken by courtiers who wanted a more appropriate match for their young prince

Kingdom of Calligo

Capital: Ramsfen
Ruling house: House Towen

A misty western realm of marshes, canals, peat fires, black watchtowers, masked courts, large swathes of flat steppes – and overall, a loose coalition of very different tribes and cultures who hate each other just a bit less than they hate everyone else. Calligo is rich in secrets and almost never as neutral as it claims. House Towen has ruled it long enough to make silence look hereditary.

Kingdom of Jaschar

Capital: Jashara
Ruling house: the Great Council of Jaschar

The oldest surviving kingdom of the Reach, built on red stone, salt roads, desert forts, shrine-cities, caravan law, and patient memory. Paradoxically, it now has the youngest leadership on the continent: a deliberate break after the last dynasty failed so badly that age, lineage, and tradition became insults rather than qualifications.

Kingdom of Redmark

Capital: Redmark
Ruling house: House Lark

A hard southern kingdom of red peaks, storm harbours, fortified towns, salt farms, shipbreakers, and privateers with documents. Redmark calls itself a maritime crown; its neighbours call it piracy with better handwriting. House Lark survives by making every raid look like policy and every policy look like a debt repaid.

Valenne

Capital: Valenne
Ruling house: House Valeska

A small, rich southern crown of marble courts, river ports, archives, universities, physicians, vineyards, and counting houses. Valenne is elegant, legalistic, mercantile, and old enough to make almost anything sound like contract law

Chapter 2: Glossary

20 Mistmonth, eleventh month, 1147

By dark, the field is theirs. It is also a charnel. Ilya stopped telling the two apart years ago and does not expect to learn the trick again. He is fighting, as usual. First one in, last one out. There is little honour left in him after eighteen months of an unjust war, and less chivalry, but this he can still do.

The enemy general—Bennet, he thinks; Eric Bennet—is capable and brave. It is his bad luck to have been sent to this field on this day. He fights as most of his men have fought: with discipline, with courage, with the exhausted decency of a man who knows the day has gone against him and means to stand anyway.

Ilya will not spare him. Better that Bennet dies here, on his feet, sword in hand, fire in the blood, than be hanged like a horse thief later. The outcome of the engagement has been clear for a while; the same is true of their match. Ilya stands undefeated in both regards, and the proud son of House Bennet will not be the one to break it.

His king might. Rumour has Hunter-king undefeated still: a battering ram of a man, ten feet tall, ice in his blood and ice in his heart. Ilya does not correct them, does not say that King Hunter is only a man, and better than most. Besides, he can hardly be certain. For all he knows, the man has indeed sprouted wings and claws in the years since Ilya saw him last. They would suit him. With luck, they would meet on the field soon, and the whole miserable amble into hell would be over, one way or the other.

Bennet is flagging. Shield arm wrong, feet slow, breath pulling short beneath the ribs. Ilya could have ended it a while back. His torso is badly guarded, a plate missing at his shoulder; Ilya had struck it off himself. One decisive thrust and it would be finished. He does not take it. The day is won, and he can afford to give his opponent a swift death. By the look of him, Bennet knows this as well as Ilya does, if not better. Ilya had seen the expression he is wearing on a hundred men, in a hundred clashes: fear held steady by loyalty, resignation held steady by pride. He is making his peace with things.

Ilya backs off another pace. Does not quite pretend to stumble, but something near it. Let the man catch his breath. Let him have a moment's peace.

Minutes pass; their clash becomes farcical. Ilya is planning how to end it cleanly, when a stir runs through the men at the sound of a horn. A familiar call. Message from the capital.

What now?

There are only so many shapes a command from his father can take at the end of a battle, and most of them are vile. Keep the prisoners alive, but cut the hands off the officers. Burn the villages after all. Hang the boys old enough to carry water. Grigori has grown poetic in the last year. His poetry has always been hard on other people's children. His own, too, for that matter. In the distribution of brutality, the king remains scrupulously fair.

Ilya considers ignoring the messenger—but, no. His body seems to have decided otherwise. He is retreating, backing away. Alright then; might as well. Worst comes to worst, he can deal with matters either way. Swift poison in their water. A disobedient horse. His men have done worse things on his command.

The rider reaches him and does not look at the dead. The new leather of his gloves and the animal fear on his face say what kind of man that makes him.

The war is over, he says.

Ilya sighs, closes his eyes, lets his head fall back, face turned to the skies. Well, well. The war is over, not won. So—lost. Interesting.

"The king orders a retreat. Prince Rozanov needs to present himself to the court immediately."

Ilya sends Bennet another contemplative look.

"Well, Bennet," he says. The first words between them. "It seems the rumours about your king were not exaggerated."

Bennet looks at him, panting, without a shred of understanding. Preoccupied, perhaps, with the treacherous ray of hope that he might yet live to see morning.

"My father would not have sent that messenger unless he was forced to."

Why he is making conversation with this man is beyond him. Wistfulness, maybe. What a world it would be if his king thought to pull him from battle as soon as it was feasible. What a world it would be if his survival were not a thing his father had spent years arranging against.

"Congratulations are in order, I wager."

He turns away and flags down Seb.

"See to his arm and his ribs. He survived the day against all odds; it would be poor manners to make him die from infection."

Bennet is still staring at him as though Ilya has done something far stranger than kill him. He has, probably.

Cliff Marleau comes up the line and puts a skin of something hot into Ilya's hands without asking. He has done that after every engagement and battle, and has not once been wrong to. The men watch Ilya drink. Nobody cheers. A day like this deserves no revelry. They know what comes next will be, at best, a just reckoning. While it is true that the best thing you can do with an unjust war is lose it, the men who do the losing are not long for this world.

"We live," Ilya says, and raises the skin. For now.

It is not a cheer that answers him. It is a deep, hoarse shout. Affirmation, not triumph. It will serve.

They would die for him. A fair number have. He would spend the rest of them tomorrow if morning asked it, and they follow him anyway. It is as it is. All of them are too far down this road to turn delicate now.

His father receives him in the cold hall, inside the single rank of chairs, the long fire reaches. He does not rise.

The look aimed his way is almost comforting, with how consistent it is. Grigori looks at him the way a man looks at a tool grown too large for its drawer: dull irritation at the inconvenience, and beneath it, calculation. He has been afraid of Ilya for three years, and deservedly so. While Ilya hasn't once moved against him, he would be well positioned to do so. The lion's share of the army loves him, as do the common folk. Men and women whose love Grigori cannot buy, force or steal.

"We have peace," Grigori says.

Ilya inclines his head, body following in a shallow bow.

"The Greywater Peace is signed. Hunter has proved less stupid than his blood would suggest."

Dull. Whatever else may be said of Hunter's blood, few people have seen much of it. Other people's blood, by contrast, he has displayed to the world in rivers.

"The peace wants a surety," Grigori says.

The room understands before Ilya does. A shift among the ministers. Aleksei by the far pillar going still. One old Vorontsov snake lowering his eyes too late. Lord Korsakov looks pleased.

"A royal hostage. One of the blood, to sit at the victor's court and answer with his life the first time we give them cause to doubt us."

We. Funny.

"I am told Aderra still honours the old forms," Grigori continues. "They take good care of their hostages; very civilised people."

Someone laughs softly. If Ilya had any true presence of mind, he would consider joining in.

Hostages are usually women of noble blood and negligible political value. Sometimes scholarly men. Cripples. Artists. Men who have not seen battle, have not sat in councils, have not burned granaries or ridden down retreating lines. A general makes a poor hostage unless one intends the symbolism to do more work than the law. A direct combatant is not held; he is displayed. He is stripped of his myth one limb at a time, so the grieving can tell themselves there is some justice in the world.

Everyone in the room knows this. Aleksei takes one step forward. Ilya cuts an unseen hand through the air. Don't.

Grigori does not look at his stricken firstborn. "Of course, if the office is beneath a man of your reputation, by all means say so. We are fortunate to have an alternative solution. Anastasia is six, old enough for the crossing."

Aleksei stops. Improbably, the air in the room grows another layer of tension. Ilya stands steady.

It's a neat stratagem. Not one Grigori devised himself; the raving old lunatic hardly has the intellectual capacity. If Ilya refuses, Nastya will go in his place, and the honourable war hero becomes a man who sent a six-year-old girl to the enemy to save his own skin. If he doesn't, he goes across the Greywater to whatever Aderra has planned for him. Either way, he is harmless.

Ilya is too tired to admire the clever simplicity of it.

"I'll go," he says, before the old man can spend the rest of the pleasure he has saved.

It is the one cold satisfaction left on the table: the scene coming apart in his father's hands. It is satisfying; nobody expected it. The court his father built consists of creatures he finds useful: craven, spineless, worthless. They never would have expected him to walk into this trap for a child not his own. For little Nastya with her solemn eyes and endless, tangled lectures about seabirds.

His father recovers first.

"Take your men, then," he says. "Your loyal dogs. A man should have his comforts where he is going."

Let it never be said that Grigori is ever without another cruelty kept in waiting, just in case an opportunity presents itself. Bring men who love you to a court that will hurt you in front of them, where they will move to stop it and be killed for their trouble.

"No," Ilya says. "They stay."

Night of 20 Mistmonth, eleventh month, 1147

Cliff finds him within the hour.

"You run tonight," Cliff says.

No greeting. No question. Voice low and fast and almost unrecognisable with fear. Cliff Marlowe came to Veyr on a stolen horse, four pieces of silver, and no intention of staying through winter. Six years later, he stands in Ilya's rooms looking as if the world has finally produced something worse than war.

"There's a boat at the north stair," Cliff says. "Gold enough. A dozen men who will ride out the gate with you and not one who will ask where you're bound. East, over the mountains. South, if you want warmth. You will be a free man by spring."

A free man. What a wretched joke.

Ilya sits on the edge of the bed and begins working off his boots, because his hands still believe in small, ordinary tasks when nothing else in him does.

"Ilya," Cliff says. Fear, again, only worse. Personal. "You know what they will do to you. It will not be quick. It will not be clean. It will be done where men can watch, because of what you are to them. Because you killed their sons and broke their captains and humiliated them for eighteen months. You will be a year dying."

Certainly.

"I know what I'm owed," Ilya says.

"Then run."

"And Nastya goes within the fortnight."

Cliff's mouth shuts.

"I'm going," Ilya says. "You're staying."

"Like hell."

"You're staying."

"No."

Ilya looks up, gathers what focus he has. He hasn't many loose threads—his life is, by and large, exceptionally straightforward. This is the one last affair he needs to set in order.

"You will stay," he says. "You will guard Svetlana. You will do nothing brave or stupid until there is something brave or stupid worth doing. That is your duty. Take it."

Cliff's jaw works.

Whatever stands between him and Svetlana is a thing Ilya has known and encouraged since before it started. Svetlana told him first; Cliff told him later, drunk and wrecked with guilt, as though Ilya would be shocked. As if he had not seen it coming. A hedge knight and a lady. A lady the whole of Veyr thought would marry the second prince before Grigori decided it would be better for everyone if the second prince were discovered dead in a ditch.

Cliff looks furious now, jaw set, mouth pressed thin.

"You'll come back," Cliff says.

It's not a question; Ilya does not answer it. The door opens while they are both staring at each other, stuck.

Svetlana comes through in black velvet and travel boots, her hair braided back, her face so composed the fury beneath it is almost invisible.

"That's quite enough of that," she says.

Cliff turns. "Svetlana—"

"Quiet."

She crosses the room and takes Ilya's face in both hands. Her fingers are cold; they always are. She is a cold-blooded creature in spirit and in practice. Fierce sister of the heart. No Rozanov blood in her and more kin to him than anyone who has it. She decided in childhood that he was her problem to solve and has refused all evidence to the contrary.

"If you run, Grigori has you hunted down inside the week. Hunter's court is harder ground for his rats and, beyond that, he hardly needs to bother. Letting things play out will get him to the same place."

Ilya doesn't mean to let silence stretch, but he is a bit stunned. That is a lot, even for her.

"So you will go," she says. "And you will not die of it."

Cliff makes a sound. Svetlana ignores him.

"You will be dull. You will be patient. You will stay alive, however little you care to, long enough for us to find a way to bring you home. Do you hear me?"

Yes, well—only, Ilya stopped wanting to survive some while ago and goes on now from habit and duty, the way a horse goes on pulling. A hostile court, public pain, and a death with meaning look almost gentle beside waking each day with no shape left in him except obedience to men he hates and the love of men he keeps losing.

"I hear you," he says.

Her eyes narrow. It is not the same as an agreement. She knows that. She lets it stand because it is all she is going to get. Then she kisses his forehead, hard enough that he feels the press of her teeth more than the softness of her lips, and lets go.

Cliff turns away. Ilya finishes removing his boots.

21 Mistmonth, eleventh month, 1147

Stargard is never beautiful on leaving. A grey shoulder of rock in greyer weather. Black pines bent by sea wind. Fortress lights guttering low above the harbour. Gulls screaming like old women denied justice. The capital sits behind its walls, smoke pressed flat by cold.

Ilya told Cliff not to come down to the quay, and he has not. He did not need to tell Svetlana anything. She is anything but sentimental about these things and is likely already scheming. She will try; he does not doubt it. What he doubts is that there will be anything worth keeping alive by the time she succeeds.

Aleksei is the surprise. Ilya had not expected anyone. He certainly had not expected him.

His brother stands at the edge of the quay in a black coat too fine for salt air, face pale and closed, Nastya's hand gripped in his. She has been wrapped in so many layers, she looks like a round parcel of fur with eyes.

Ilya stops before them.

"Ilya," Aleksei says.

Ilya inclines his head. "Brother."

Nastya tugs free of Aleksei and steps forward. "Are you going on the boat?"

"Yes."

"Is it far?"

"Yes."

"Will there be frogs?"

Aleksei's face breaks for half a second.

Ilya crouches. "I expect so. I will investigate."

She nods. "If there are, you can be king of them."

"That is a great honour."

"You were good at it before."

"So I recall."

She leans in and puts her arms around his neck. The quay disappears for one long second, as his eyes slip shut and his arms wrap around her, carefully, awkwardly. She is somehow smaller than he remembers, and she was four the last time he saw her. One beat. Two. Three. Then he opens his eyes and looks at Aleksei over her shoulder. His brother's eyes are wet. Ilya hates him for it, briefly. Then does not have the strength.

Nastya steps back.

Aleksei says, "I tried."

A stupid thing to say. Also, unfortunately, in all likelihood true. What little presence of mind Grigori has not burned out of Aleksei has always gone first to Nastya and, when possible, to Ilya.

"I know," Ilya says.

Aleksei's breath hitches, body curving inwards. He is taller than Ilya by a hand at least, but he never looks it, never acts it. Time was, Ilya worked hard to teach him how to stand straight, guard his space, his pride. Those days are long gone.

He should have been cruel—that would be the merciful thing here. He should have come up with something, some hardness that would structure the pointless wretchedness of this. Some price Aleksei could pay to be free of it. Unfortunately, they've no time to be kind through cruelty.

"Your only duty is to her," Ilya says. "Will you keep it?"

Aleksei inhales, deep and troubled. His hand rests on Nastya's shoulder. "Yes."

"Then there is nothing else to say."

Ilya boards the ship and does not look back until the harbour has already begun to loosen behind them. When he does look, Nastya is waving. He lifts one hand. The islands go grey, then smaller, then less than land and more than memory.

21 Mistmonth–17 Frostmonth, eleventh to twelfth month, 1147

The escort is Grigori's: a dozen riders under one Captain Zaltsev—a cadet branch, from the way he is making sure everyone is aware of his claim to nobility—who looks enormously pleased with the task he has been handed. It may well be some sort of reward. More to the point, they plainly expect him to run. They are looking forward to it.

He sees it at once—not in any one thing the men do, but in the journey itself. Adermere lies a day's ride from the coast and sits on the Wend besides; any sane commander bent on speed would sail south to the mouth of the Wend and barge his charge up to the capital from there. As it happens, no Aderran admiral is going to let a Veyran ship sail down the length of the coast it spent eighteen months burning, so the ship docks at Harrowick instead, in the far north, just short of five hundred miles up the wrong end of the kingdom. Fair enough—only Zaltsev doesn't then take the king's road, which would see them in Adermere inside ten days. No. They take the Longshore.

There is nothing else to say about it: it's a procession. He spent nine-tenths of the war on this coast, and this coast is precisely what they walk him down now, slow and methodical, town by town. The most obvious culprit is Grigori's—this spectacle is precisely to his taste. That said, perhaps Ilya is being too generous to his father's malice and too stingy with the Hunter-king's pragmatism: a man who finds himself holding the Butcher of Redmere may as well wring every drop of use from him. Why not parade him the length of the shore he gutted? The least he can do is give the people something back.

Likeliest of all, it is both. Grigori would want nothing so much as to goad him into bolting, into being ridden down in a ditch by Zaltsev and his thugs. Hunter-king would want it shown to his people that the villain has been—or shortly will be—put down. They want him to break, or run, or both.

Which means, naturally, that he will do neither. He will give them nothing at all. He says nothing when the whole of Harrowick turns out to watch them land. He says nothing when they take to the Longshore. He mounts when he is told and halts when he is told, eats what is put before him, and rides in the middle of them with his wrists bound in front of him for no reason under the sun. There is a low, private, entirely real pleasure in it—the only pleasure left on the road—in being the dull, dutiful thing not one of them believes he is.

Zaltsev needles him at first. Predictable things: humility, honour, manhood and the lack of it. His well-known taste for men and women both, and how such appetites might be put to good use on the long road to Hunter Keep. Ilya lets it pass over him without effort. His pride, such as it is, lives well past anywhere a man like Zaltsev can reach. This only infuriates the captain further, and there is little he can do about it: on the road, bound by the treaty, Ilya is not Zaltsev's to abuse. That honour was sold elsewhere.

It is a strange and bitter satisfaction, but it is his, and he will keep it.

When it is plain there will be no chase, the captain takes the disappointment out in the ways available to him. The worst horse. The short end of the rations. Ill-fitting furs and the spot farthest from the fire to sleep on. Ilya takes all of it the way he takes everything now—without heat, without haste, and without once giving the man the flinch he is fishing for.

He will not fight them. Fighting them is how they win, and Ilya did not come this far by losing to a jumped-up illiterate thug who is, ironically, only following his king's orders.

He knows this coast. He spent eighteen months marching the length of it—knows the useful coves, the sources of fresh water, the caves where twenty men can wait out rain, every inlet where a galley can lie out of the wind. He does not know it like this. He would have said a few weeks of peace could not change a country. He would have been wrong.

The coast is healing over. New timber stands pale and raw against the black of burned sills—a barn half-raised here, there a roof going back over a house. Snow has come down over the rest of it and made it decent: over the salted fields, over ground scarred down to the bedrock through three long, wretched seasons, over all of it. Snow is good like that; it lies the same on a grave as on a garden. And the people are out in it, mending—no wailing, no moans of pain, only the flat and patient industry of those who have buried what they had to bury and gone back to the work.

A good man would be undone by this—stricken at the proof of everything he did his level best to destroy, putting itself quietly back together. Granted, a good man would not be in this position to begin with, but that's neither here nor there. The small part of Ilya that still thinks, that still keeps to the present, is mildly surprised to find he is not undone at all. Shouldn't he be ashamed? Shouldn't he lie awake at night, hurting, tossing and turning, regretting every choice that led him here?

He is not, and he cannot make himself be. The truth runs quite the opposite; it eases him to see them healing. It means that they are not incapable of it, that eighteen months of his best efforts have come down to freshly cut timber and clean snow and a country already moving past him.

His mother used to say goodness was as irrepressible as the sun: a man could dig himself down into the dark if he chose, but the light went on, indifferent, because nothing a man did could touch God's design. She meant it kindly; she meant everything kindly, and while her sweet, philosophical southern God had little in common with Ilya's understanding of such matters, evidence is rather hard to argue against.

The world is healing, moving, growing. Aderra is closing over her burned towns, her raided fields, her nameless graves. It will, likewise, close over him all too soon, relegate him to a handful of lines in the history books. There is no hurt that the design can't afford, can't reclaim, himself least of all. That's not nothing.

His part, therefore, is clear. If the country mends despite him and not because of him, then he can ride down its coast with his back straight and his face clear and let them look their fill. He will ride into Redmere the same way. It is the last courtesy he has, and it costs him nothing he has not already spent.

Near the end of one village, a man says his name once, low, the way you name an illness. Ilya meets his eye and inclines his head. The man steps back as though struck.

There is no help for it.

There is no help for any of it.

By the time the capital stands up out of the river-plain, he has the shape of what waits for him laid out and digested. He is not afraid in any way that he can isolate. He is a thing being delivered: a body to be spent, a price to be paid. The sooner the debt is paid, the sooner the people can close over him, the idea of him. He has made his peace with as much of it as a man can. The long road was good for that, at least.

There is a kind of rest in having nothing left to decide.

18 Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1147

The hall they bring him to is not a throne room, which is the first wrong note.

Not a mercy, necessarily. Men have done very ugly things in equally ordinary rooms. Still, Ilya had tried to be realistic. He had pictured the road ending in a long hall: himself at one end, the victor at the other, robed and ringed and raised in a high seat above the kneeling enemy. A clean image. Cheap, effective, understood by idiots and poets alike. The first lesson, where such lessons usually begin: who stands over whom.

King Hunter is not sitting on a throne or standing on a raised dais. He's not even dressed with any sort of flair for the occasion. No, he's dressed in plain black, the fabric coarse and barely adorned at all. His sleeves are shoved up his forearms, as though someone has pulled him out of work and told him the Bear prince has arrived at last, come see what the tide dragged in.

Which is not to say that he's displeasing to the eye. He is as striking as Ilya remembers.

Not handsome, granted; there's too much bone for that. The face is set wrong for beauty, stern even at rest, blunt and difficult and marked by years that have not been gentle. He is older than Ilya expected, or perhaps it's Ilya's childhood recollections of the scandalous Aderran king that can't be trusted. Hunter was a little more dressed up, then. Ilya has a vivid memory of rings, thick bands of gold set with colourful jewels on every long finger.

He's not wearing them anymore. A stupid thing to notice. Ilya notices everything else, too. The width of Hunter's shoulders, the strength settled into his body. The reach. He has spent his life killing men and knows how to pick out the dangerous ones. He would have taken this one out at distance, before the reach and the weight could come into it; one-to-one, on open ground, with time to prepare, he thinks he might even have won. But men like Hunter are never met one-to-one. The danger was never going to be in the man's arms. It is the kingdom's worth of people who would die before they let him be touched, and the plain unbothered ease of a man who has never once had to count on it.

Funny, in the end, what fate has made of the two of them. Ilya Rozanov, the bright jewel of the alliance between Veyr and Valenne, brought as low as a man can be brought. Scott Hunter, nameless but for his erstwhile trade, who hauled a ruined country up out of the mud and built it into the thing that broke the Stones. And now the one holds the other's life in forfeit, and they are to settle it in front of a hall.

They will want him to kneel. They have earned it, probably, the myth of the enemy general walking the long floor to bend his neck to the man who beat his people. The first demonstration, and the cheapest, and he had known since the boat that he would give it to them.

He had thought it would be easy. It is not.

Ridiculous. You should have prepared. You should have foreseen this. Ilya hadn't knelt to a man since he was sixteen years old. Now his body, which has done every other thing a hundred fields ever asked of it, baulks at this one plain task, so that he has to take himself down into it by force, fold himself onto the cold stone with his jaw set and the cost of it legible on him for anyone who troubles to read. That's a fair compromise, all things considered. He will not struggle, but he will not pretend it is nothing—because it is not nothing, and the part of him his father never managed to break demands they see precisely what it takes. He gets down, inhales a long breath as discreetly as he can, and looks up.

King Scott Hunter looks, for all the world, as though he would sooner the stone opened and swallowed him first.

Ilya cannot make the look come right. He had braced for contempt, or for fury, but not this, whatever this is. It is not pity—he would know pity and despise it accurately. It is not softness; there is nothing soft in the face, mouth set hard, eyes cold, jaw locked around some decision the man plainly dislikes. It is—discomfort, plain and simple. A man made to participate in something he wants no part of.

Hunter's eyes go over him once, catch, and stay.

"You do not have to do that," Hunter says.

Ilya stays where he is.

Hunter turns a hand over, short and impatient. Up.

"You rode a long way." He says it to the most hated man in his kingdom in a voice low and flat and formed to carry. "Sit. Eat first. We will talk after."

Ilya looks at him a moment longer. Then he stands, and he thinks, absurdly, of Bennet—Bennet in the mud with his life handed back to him, wearing the face of a man who has never once seen such a thing and does not know what to call it. He had wondered, at the time, what that expression was.

He knows now. He's wearing it.

Chapter 3

18 Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1147—evening

They do not give him a cell, and they do not give him the foot of the servants’ table either. They give him a place three seats down from the king, on the king's own side, which is worse than either. Ridiculous—but refusing would be a performance, and he is finished with performances.

The food is different. The delicacies that, in Veyr, are reserved for kings and the blood closest to them are common here: winter pears, fresh greens, fish laid on a bed of lemon. Dishes come broad and shared, passed hand to hand down the boards.

Serving himself is fraught. He does not fear punishment as such; in a situation such as his, punishment is inevitable. Still, he need not invite it. So—what, then? Moderation? What does Ilya Rozanov know of moderation?

He might as well try. What looks safe? Meat dishes are out of the question; beef and pork are almost certainly valuable. Not cheese—There. This should be safe. He reaches first for a large dish near the middle, full enough to be common and dull enough to be safe. Stewed roots, some pale sauce, too much rosemary. It tastes like nothing, though that is likely not the dish's fault; Ilya has to work not to find food a chore, and lately he could be served the nectar of the gods and watch it turn to ash in his mouth.

The hall hates him, that much is as clear as it is comforting. He can feel it banked along the boards like heat off a forge: three hundred people watching their king break bread with the islander savage. A woman down the table has not touched her food. A young lord across from him holds his knife the way a man holds a knife he is thinking of using. Ilya marks them both, and every other man and woman displaying improbable levels of hostility, and the doors. When none of that helps, and he finds himself tracking the distance and movements of every blade in his vicinity that he is too far away from to catch, he knows things have gone to hell.

He lets his eyes close briefly and takes a breath. Remember where you are, Rozanov. Remember what you are for. This is not a hostile court you are meant to survive, but you can influence things, make things more or less terrible for yourself. With that in mind, do you think it’s wise for you to have access to bladed weapons—or anything else you might use to savage Hunter's guests?

No, no, it’s not. You do not have the discipline to be armed and let these people hurt you. At best, you could hope to cause enough mayhem that one of the soldiers cuts you down as soon as possible—which, yes, would be preferable to whatever else is going to happen, but that’s not the point either. The peace will not last, but every day of it is a gift given to his people. The women and children of the Stones, saddled with the unenviable task of inventing ways to feed a nation with half its men dead for nothing, and of paying whatever reparations Hunter has surely carved out of them. That is what you are here for. So, keep to spoons, keep yourself still, don’t cause problems.

The young lord breaks first. He is drunk, or near it, and grief has the better of his sense. Somewhere between one course and the next, he is on his feet, his chair gone over behind him, saying something about his brothers that Ilya does not trouble to hear in full. He likely has the truth of it in any case.

Ilya does not move. He keeps his hands flat on the table where they can be seen, and waits.

"Sit down," Hunter says, without raising his voice or turning his head all the way round.

The lord does not sit. "Sire, that animal—"

"Is under my peace until I say he is not, and my peace is not yours to spend." The king says it the way a man reads off a weight. "Your quarrel is with me, if you have found one. Have you?"

The lord has not. He sits. A servant rights his chair. The meal closes over the moment like water over a dropped stone, and Ilya files it away with the rest of what he cannot yet account for.

It was well done. Firm, clean, fast, and free of dramatics. No pride in it, no anger, no righteousness. Hunter might have been stopping a man from kicking a horse at the market before he sold it. Somehow, that is worse than if he had let the boy have his pound of flesh.

Ilya spends most of the meal looking down. He makes the mistake, once, of letting his eyes linger on the king—the severe cut of the brow, the unhappy set of the mouth, the way the room keeps arranging itself around his silence. When his attention slides off at last, it lands on a man he had not expected to see alive.

Eric Bennet sits at the king's right hand, watching him over a cup.

He is in handsome reds and browns, paler than he was on the field and leaner with it. His right arm is strapped close across his chest beneath the coat, and he moves with the care of a man whose ribs have not forgiven him. But he is alive, eating one-handed with more competence than grace, in the seat where the king's dearest sit.

Generals do not sit at high tables after losing battles. Generals who lose to smaller, worse-armed forces are stripped, shamed, given small rooms with guarded doors if their blood is worth keeping, and cells underground if it is not. Yet here Bennet sits, watching Ilya over the rim of his cup with no hatred in his face.

When the plates are drawn, he leans in by one careful degree and says, low, in the flat register of one professional to another, "You could have cut me down that morning, easily. I've turned it over for a month, and I still don't know why you didn't."

Ilya considers the bound arm, the steady eyes. "The day was already mine. I did not need to make it ugly."

"No," Bennet agrees. "There wasn't."

He sits back. He does not say thank you, for which Ilya is obscurely grateful. A debt named aloud is a debt that wants paying, and Ilya wants nothing from these people but to be left to serve his sentence in what peace they can stomach.

Then the king rises, and the hall rises with him.

"Walk," he says to Ilya, and does not wait to see it obeyed.

Ilya follows him out of the hall and down a long gallery hung with the banners of houses he has bled. He is aware the whole way of the unguarded back ahead of him, of how little it would take, and of the plain fact that the king knows exactly how little it would take and does not appear to care. A show of power, then. Go ahead and try. You will fail, and I will let you learn the price of it.

Well—no. That is too much. It is hard to imagine Hunter taking pleasure in much of anything.

The king stops at a window giving onto the dark city and the Wend below it. He does not turn round.

"How many of mine did you put in the ground?" he says. Quietly. Not quite a question but not a statement either. 

A spark of temper lights in Ilya's chest and pushes the grey back a little way. The surprise of it is sharp; he has not let himself be needled in a long while. Then again, few people try it this outrageously.

How many did Ilya kill? However many stood against him. How about yourself, your majesty?

"Is it the custom to keep count of such things here, Hunter-king?" His voice comes out even, which is something. "A peculiar habit. In the absence of records, I can offer you my best estimate."

Hunter turns his head slowly. The look on his face is flat and unamused. Oh, Ilya thinks. You do not like the tone? How very unfortunate.

"A great many," he goes on. "Hundreds by my hand. Thousands by my order. Thousands more in the winters that came after."

Whatever he expected, Hunter does not give it. No blow. No curse. No satisfaction at the truth of it, no disgust that Ilya will not adequately perform shame for his sins. The king only looks back out over his city and exhales a long breath through his nose.

"Did you think it was just?" he asks. "Your war?"

A just war. How quaint.

"No."

"But you fought it."

"I did."

"Why?"

Ilya almost laughs and, in the same breath, almost lunges to find out whether a man's throat will in fact come open under teeth and nails; both impulses arrive together and with equal weight. So much for his composure. "Because I am a prince of Veyr. Because the whys of a war concern me not at all. Because my duty is to bring as many of my men off the field upright as I can arrange."

Hunter turns full from the window. The light is poor here, all iron lamps and dark glass, but Ilya catches the expression well enough. Contempt, or close to it.

"Spare me. More men would live if you did not throw them into battles with neither meaning nor honour. Battles you knew were unjust, and fought regardless."

Fair enough. No one is saying otherwise; Ilya, least of all.

"My actions speak for themselves, and I stand to answer for them. If you are waiting for your judgement to move me, I expect you will wait a while."

The king is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, the words come out cold and tired in equal measure, a blend so near to Ilya's own that it unsettles him worse than fury would have.

"No. I was not waiting for that. I have heard every excuse a man makes for a thing like this. I had not yet heard the one where he hands me the rope himself." He looks at Ilya straight. "So here is where we stand. You are a problem I did not ask for. The most dangerous man on the continent is under my roof, with every reason to want me dead and the means to make a fair attempt at it. That is not a thing a sane man keeps for the pleasure of the company."

"Then why keep me?"

"I am getting there."

Mild, dry, bored. Ilya closes his mouth.

"Your father offered a hostage," Hunter says. "I took what was offered, because only a fool turns down a free advantage in a treaty, and I am not a fool when I can help it. But understand me. I did not send for you. I did not ask to be made part of whatever filthy little game he is playing with your life. I did not want you then. I do not want you now."

Ilya feels his face go still. Too still, perhaps.

Hunter's eyes flick down. Not to his face—his neck, and then lower, to his wrists.

Right; he had forgotten the bruises. The marks are mostly under his clothing, but not all. The captain on the road had enjoyed making small examples once it was clear Ilya would not run. Nothing serious. Nothing that mattered. A hand twisted past its turn, rope where no rope was needed, petty childish things meant to provoke rather than injure.

Hunter looks away from the marks first. Interesting. Disgust, or delight. If only the border between the two wasn’t as permeable as Ilya knows it to be; what a nice world that would be. In Ilya's experience, the men who proclaim their disgust for a thing the loudest are the first to seek it out and see it done hardest.

"I would sooner he had sent the girl," Hunter says.

Ilya blinks and fights down the urge to rear back, to let the shock onto his face. His mind goes briefly empty.

Hunter goes on, cold and practical, as though it were an ordinary thing to say. "A child of six, I could have set in a summer keep with a tutor, a fat pony, and guards enough to keep every ambitious idiot in two kingdoms from looking at her twice. I could have forgotten her name by harvest and slept easy. Your father sent me you instead."

Ilya feels the words settle in his chest, each one bright and sizzling. A child of six. Guards enough. Forgotten by harvest.

There are many ways to make a child disappear; as many ways as there are uses for them. Some of those uses benefit from far-flung keeps and guards to keep prying eyes away.

"And instead," Hunter says, "here the two of us are, making what we can of the situation."

Ilya says nothing. Keeping his mouth shut is harder and more important than it had been previously. Before, he was weighing up the price of his pride against the well-being of his people. Now Hunter is talking about Nastya.

"The gates are not locked," the king says. "They will not be. There are three purses left between this hall and the river quay, in places you will find if you have eyes. Run, if you have the sense the songs credit you with. I will send no man after you. I would take it, frankly, as a courtesy."

"And when my father breaks the peace—"

"He breaks it whether you are here, or in a ditch, or in my dungeons. You are worth very little to me as a hostage, because there is no holding your father. I am told you are clever; a clever man would have made his peace with that before now."

Ilya is struck, oddly, by the urge to laugh. Holding his father. There are a great many reasons Ilya is here, and none of them have anything to do with the treaty. He is here because his father saw a clean way to be rid of him without dirtying his own hands. He is here so Hunter might soothe his people's grief with blood. He is here so that Nastya need not be.

He is here to die.

Why, then, the tale of decency? What does the man gain by chasing him down a road and hauling him back? Can he be so unsatisfied that his forfeit has not made a spectacle of himself? Even if so, Hunter can make his own spectacle readily enough. He can turn him loose in the streets with a pack of dogs behind him. His father did.

Whatever he wants, Ilya will not give it to him.

"And if I do not run," he says.

"Then do not rot in a tower plotting my death."

Again with this. Where does the man come by the idea? When has Ilya breathed a word about wanting Hunter dead—and what would he gain by it?

Hunter turns from the window and walks on, which leaves Ilya to follow or stand there like a fool. They go deeper into the gallery, away from the glass, past the banners going dim in the bad light. The lamps here are fewer. The shadow under the king's eyes deepens with every one they leave behind.

"You have choices," Hunter says.

Choices; there's a word.

"I can put you in a distant keep with a small household. Comfortable enough, dull enough. It may suit you. Or I can leave you here, in the east rooms. You will be watched—do not insult me by pretending you do not expect it. You will not be caged. You will not be permitted to murder my court for sport."

Ilya's fingers twitch once at his side. Somewhere in the long catalogue of indignities, it is the notion that he should require Hunter's permission that catches and sticks. He is here because he chose to be. Had he not, they could not have hoped to take him, much less hold him.

"Past that," Hunter says, "if you are so inclined, you can make yourself useful."

Ilya says nothing. He may well still be looking at the king's throat, working out where the skin runs thinnest, where the blood lies nearest.

"You are the finest soldier ever put within my reach. I keep a council of grey heads, clever merchants, brave fools, and men who could not take a fenced paddock with twice the numbers and God's own writ of leave. I am not so rich in useful men that I can throw one away easily."

"You would have me advise you?"

"If you choose."

"Against Veyr?"

"No." The king's face gives back nothing in the poor light. "I said I am not a fool when I can help it. I will not ask you to make war on your own people. If war comes again, that line may grow harder to hold. Today it is clear enough."

Difficult, that is, inasmuch as it would be hard to draw battle-counsel from a dead man. Unless the line is itself the threat. I will not kill you when war breaks out. I will keep you, and extract what is useful out of you by vein and tendon.

Good luck to him.

"What would I advise you on, then?"

"The north. The west. The south. Roads, forts, supply. Every kingdom in the Reach can smell weakness after a war, and mine has bled enough to look appetising from a distance."

"You would trust me with your maps?"

"No."

Plainly given, again. The man does not seem to keep a softer word about him.

"I would let you see the maps I mean you to see. I would listen when you are worth listening to and ignore you when you are not. I would pay for useful work, because useful work should be paid. That is the offer. I will not dress it warmer than it is."

"No," Ilya says. "You do not seem given to warmth."

Hunter stops. Tips his head a degree and goes on. "I will not try to make you into anything, either."

Heavens wept.

"Pardon?"

"I have neither the skill nor the time for it," Hunter says. "Made men break wrong, on the day you need them to hold. Your father favours such men. I do not."

Insult for insult, then—a decent attempt, if only Hunter knew enough of Ilya, or Grigori, or the pit that was their household, to so much as try to hurt him.

"Charming."

Hunter's eyes move over him again.

"You took prisoners back to your father to be savaged. You burned and pillaged on his order, week upon week. You have blood enough on you to drown better men. The reverse is also true. You killed clean when you could, and dealt mercy when an opportunity arose. You let Eric live for no other reason than that you could. A man who keeps that much of himself through a war like that is not one I break on a wheel to please the lords who stayed home."

Ilya's throat does something.

He says, "How generous."

"It is not generosity."

Must he always state the obvious?

"No?"

"No." The king's face is set, distant, cut down to a truth he does not seem to enjoy. "It is the limit of what your conduct earns you. It does not earn forgiveness."

"I am beside myself, Your Majesty. That you think so poorly of me will cause me no end of heartache."

Hunter does not rise to it. "You have made that point. Twice, now." He says it the way a man notes the hour.

Indeed. Dull as he is, Hunter is correct; this farce has gone on for far too long.

"Is that the whole of the terms?" Ilya asks.

"That is all of them." The king is already turning. "Eric will see you back. Sleep, if it will come. Decide in your own time. The gate keeps the same hours whichever way you choose."

Bennet sees him back, one-armed and unhurried. They go a long way in the kind of silence two soldiers keep without effort. At the turn to the stair, he says, not looking at him, "You're looking for the hidden knife, lad?"

How very discerning.

"There isn't one," Bennet says. "He will not cosset you, and he will not lie to you. Spend the next year waiting for him to turn into your father, and you'll waste a year you may not have to spare."

He stops at the door, where a guard inclines his head to Ilya like a man greeting a guest.

"Or don't. Run. He meant the purses." His lips curve in a dry, quiet smile. "He always means the purses."

Then Ilya is alone in his good rooms that are not a cell: a bed a man could be content in, a window onto a clean drop, his own belt and knife and clothes left to him. He stands a long while. Then he closes his eyes and works his breath down to a rhythm, the way he would if he were hiding from pursuit and his life turned on staying still.

Whatever this is, he lacks the information or the cleverness to read it. That is no great matter. Walk a thing back to the bone, and it grows simple enough. He does not need the particulars of Hunter's trap to spring it. He has spent his whole life learning the shape of a thing by where it pushes back.

A trap shows itself the moment you set your weight against it. So he will set it. The gate will give him his answers.

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

27 Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1147

He goes out in daylight.

A man who meant to run would go in the grey before dawn, over the seaward wall, on quiet feet. Ilya goes at midday across the main court with the sun full on him and his head up, because he is not running. He is testing. He has given the trap nine days—sat quiet in his rooms, done everything expected of him, never once disturbed the bustle of the keep.

Nine is the correct number. A week is what an impatient watcher will allow before the wait becomes too much and they are tempted to speed things along; ten days is the next mark. He goes on the ninth, in the seam between, where no watcher will have braced for him.

The plan is too simple to be called a plan. King Hunter's open gate is a lie of some kind, and a lie shows itself fastest when you drag it into the light. He has been lied to his whole life. He has experience with these things.

He can picture it clearly. The two men at the inner arch will stiffen; one will peel off at a run; a captain will come out of the guardroom with ten behind him and the careful face of a man carrying orders. Not bloodlust—not here, not in the keep of a king who works so hard at pretending to be above such base methods. No, they will not delight in hamstringing the butcher of their people. They will do so, efficiently and without hesitation, but they will be professionally regretful all the way through. Crucially, the portcullis will already be down, down since dawn, and the whole incomprehensible lie of the unbarred gate will collapse into the truth: into iron and a cell with no window. And then they will all learn what the morning was really for.

The two men at the inner arch do not stiffen. One of them inclines his head, the way you greet a disfigured swamp creature you have been told is a guest. Ilya keeps walking. Letting your prey take the first step is the oldest trick there is. Hunter is a liar, but he is not weak, and he is not soft; what he lacks in imagination he makes up in effort.

The outer gate stands open; the portcullis is up. Through it, he can see the road, and the river, and the grey shine of the harbour in the distance. No captain comes, no horn sounds, the men on the wall do not even watch him with any particular attention, having, it seems, better things to mind.

There is a satchel on the mounting-block by the gate, neither hidden nor displayed. It sits where a man sets a thing he means another man to find without either of them having to speak of it.

It takes some effort, but Ilya doesn’t ignore it, doesn’t drop it into the nearest well. No, he takes a moment, gathers his patience, and takes it with calm hands. Inside: road coin, the discreet kind that draws no eye; a ferry token stamped for the southern crossings; a square of waxed cloth that proves to be a map—roads marked and nothing else, no maker's stamp, none of the little flourishes a scribe leaves on the ready-made maps he sells to travellers unwise enough to need one. No note. Under that, a knife, plain-hilted, better balanced than the one already on his belt. At the bottom, a cloak of undyed wool, plain and sturdy.

It is everything a man needs to vanish off the face of the earth and nothing a man could be sentimental over. More importantly, it has been thought about. Somewhere, a person sat and reasoned out exactly what it would take to make Ilya Rozanov disappear cleanly and forever, and left it on a stone for him to find.

He takes the map, the coin, the token, and the knife, because he is not a fool. He leaves the cloak. He does not need a cloak to vanish. Then he walks out through the open gate into the city proper, and nothing happens at all.

The city hates him as it should. It is also going about its business. A man arguing the price of fish. A girl driving a hoop along the gutter. As he passes and is noticed, the idyllic bustle shifts, grows brittle. Hands go still on the stalls, then start moving again, because the fish will rot whether the Bear prince is dead by supper or not. A woman in black draws a child against her skirts without once taking her eyes off him. Windows shut one by one above the street. A baker sees his face, goes white around the mouth, and hands bread across with shaking hands. A child is pulled so hard by the wrist that she cries out—not because she knows him, but because her mother does.

There are white bands on sleeves. White ribbons plaited through hair. A house with its lintel painted white for the dead, another with the door scrubbed raw around an old dark stain the rain has failed to lift.

He makes himself breathe. Then he turns to practical things, which have never once betrayed him: distance, streets, turns, gates, the position of the sun, the reach to the knife under his cloak. He thinks of the map, loathsome as it is. Whoever made it—and try as he might, he cannot picture anyone but Hunter, may he rot in hell—marked the roads cleanly, with a soldier's eye for logistics. Road marks, ferry crossings, markets, shrines, a clean line to the harbour.

And then the next concern: how wise it can possibly be to follow Hunter's road on Hunter's map at Hunter's invitation? Not very.

He turns down a narrow lane, doubles back through a yard hung with washing, comes out a street over from where the map would have taken him. If anyone is following, they are very good. He spends half an hour taking turns that lead nowhere and ends where he began, at the mouth of a dead-end alley, waiting. This is just about where Grigori's men would appear, furious and out of patience. Nobody comes. A woman across the lane catches him watching and goes inside so fast she leaves a basket of onions on the step.

Ilya waits longer. No one. He might be a malevolent spirit, for all that anyone will admit he exists, let alone touch him.

The city gate is open, too. Four guards: an officer, a soldier, and two boys young enough to be in training. The officer is an older man with a livid scar down the lower half of his face, across both lips. He says nothing until Ilya is nearly level with him.

"Road's clear, my lord."

Is it? How encouraging. He attempts a bland smile; it is only partly successful, if the way the officer's fingers tighten once on the leather of his belt is any indication.

"How far does it stay clear?" Ilya asks.

"As far as you care to walk."

"And if I care to walk to the harbour?"

"Then you'll find ships there."

"And if I care to board one?"

"Then I expect you'll get wet eventually."

The smile that wants to come is a sharper thing, and Ilya kills it in the cradle. The officer does not deserve the satisfaction of seeing him amused. None of them do.

He steps through the city gate. On the last bollard before the road, there is a second purse.

This one is no more hidden than the first. It sits on top of the post in full sun, where a blind man would find it, where every carter and farmwife in and out of the capital all morning has had to see it and leave it lying. Nobody has taken it. In a city, in the open, an unmarked purse of coin out since dawn, and not one hand has closed on it—which means every hand that passed it knew what it was and whose it was and that it was not to be touched.

How long has this been in planning? When did Hunter send the word out, so that it trickled down through the whole ordered machine of this kingdom, to the men on the wall and the farmwives at the gate and the children with their hoops? How many days ahead did Hunter tell his people he had plans for the Bear prince, and they were not to interfere? The patience of it, the sheer cold labour of it, stops Ilya in the road, heart going.

Inside the purse are more coin, a packet of salt, strips of dried meat wrapped in cloth, a second ferry mark, and a folded paper with inn names. Why those inns? Who wrote it? It was not written by the same hand that drew the map. Why the second ferry mark? Why any of it?

Alright. Alright. He needs to think again. He is fighting at a disadvantage, and he needs to act like it. Ilya is good at exactly one craft, and it is not this one. He can read a field at a glance and tell you at what hour and over which dead man the battle will turn. He cannot scheme his way out of a sack. He never could. That is not the only reason he is in the position he is in, but it sits high on the list. When faced with a scheme too large and too quiet to see the shape of, his instinct is to hack at it with a sword until it breaks or he does.

He walks.

The road runs up between hedges into the snow-covered hills, and he takes it for half an hour, fast. Nobody comes. No rider on the road behind. No horn off the wall. Nothing. He could keep walking. He could be at the southern crossings by dark with another man's good knife on his belt, and a sword for hire by spring, exactly as Cliff begged him.

He stops in the middle of the empty road and stands there breathing.

Think, Rozanov, for once in your miserable life. Why would a man do this? How would Svetlana approach this?

Methodically, that's how. She would walk it back to first principles, lay out the branches, take them one at a time. So. Not here, though.

Finding a place to think takes some doing. For all that he knows their coastline by heart, he has never strayed into the mainland. But this is the king's road, and a king's road is built to shelter travellers; it takes him an hour to find a campsite and another to coax a fire out of the cold.

One. Hunter wants him gone—wants it enough to have spent hours on the method and set his own people turning to carry it out. Whatever the reason, it is not small.

Two. He does not want him dead. Not as a neutral preference: it matters to him that Ilya lives. Killing a hostage is the cheapest thing a king can do—cheaper in time, which is the one thing a king cannot buy; cheaper in gold; cheaper in the goodwill of nobles, who will forgive a dead enemy long before they forgive a freed one. Hunter chose the costly road instead and paid for it. Will be paying for it for some time to come. A man does that only when the cheap road costs him something the ledger does not show.

Three follows from one and two: Hunter has built a long quiet machine whose only visible output is Ilya—elsewhere, alive, and, presumably, in his debt.

Is that the angle, then? A debt? Say he grants the ludicrous premise that Ilya has anything a king could want. Even then: why the rest of it? Why the month down the coast, the escort set to provoke him, the long public humiliation of the crossing? A softening, perhaps? He turns it over. Hunter might have meant the contrast—misery, then warmth; petty brutality, then the open gate—to teach the prince gratitude, to make him pliable.

No, that’s ridiculous. A man patient enough to build this will see that it’s failing and adapt his methods. Whatever he expected, what he got was a prince who hadn’t arrived broken or grateful or tormented by his guilty conscience. Hunter would have seen that inside the first hour and adjusted.

What thread is left but Nastya? Is there any reason for the whole of this except the one he keeps walking around?

Hunter said it himself, at the window: I’d have preferred the girl. It need not even be sinister—not the way Grigori would mean it. A child is a clean hold. A child raised in your court grows up yours; she comes with no statecraft, no infamy, no soldiers who would die at her word. A child can be kept twenty years and deployed at leisure, where a general can only be held in both hands and never quite sheathed.

So, he wants the girl, and the surest road to her requires being rid of her uncle. He wants the girl, so he flings the gates wide and lays silver on the road and all but boots him out of the country himself.

Which runs him straight back into the same wall: if Hunter wanted him gone, Ilya would be gone. Hunter need not lift a hand to have Ilya dead, he only needs to stop preventing it. Why would he take the long way around, spend resources, time and effort?

Does Hunter imagine Grigori would baulk at sending the girl if it was clear that Hunter was not above openly executing inconvenient Veyr aristocracy? He can’t. Every court on two coasts knows what Ilya is worth to his father. Grigori would put Nastya on a boat the next morning, if only to watch Aleksei's face while he did it.

Ilya exhales and clenches his eyes shut against the pulsing migraine, jaw tight enough to hurt. *Alright, so Svetlana’s approach is not working. What would Sasha think? What would Sasha do?*

Well. Sasha would execute the whole of Adermere, and then himself, in some deranged act of political theatre. But if he wanted to solve it—how would Sasha’s unorthodox mind approach the problem?

He would look more broadly. Hunter wants Nastya as a harmless, biddable hostage, and he wants Ilya alive. Not necessarily sane or warmed by gratitude, but alive. Since he cannot expect Ilya to do anything to help him, it must be about something Ilya is, not anything he has or anything he might do.

Could this be about his mother's blood? Does Hunter fear killing a half-Valenni prince would sour his southern negotiations?

Hardly. His mother's kin made their position public and final years ago. When Irina died, they sent letters, beautiful ones, heavy with seals and grief so delicate, it drew no blood from anyone who mattered. Then, within the fortnight, they withdrew their envoys, closed their ports, recalled their physicians, and left him there, left Aleksei there, in a keep where every gentle thing had her shape and had to be punished for it. His uncle came once, when Ilya was fifteen and stupid with rage: Lucien Valeska, gold hair gone silver at the temples, hands soft and elegant. He had called Irina’s death a tragedy of distance. He had called Ilya blood of Valenne. He had said there were matters of state that children could not understand. Naturally, that Lucien Valeska made it back to his golden city alive, if not as lovely as he arrived, remains one of the more generous things Ilya has ever done for the sake of diplomacy.

Hunter knows all of it; everyone does. No one expects Valenne to send anything over Ilya's grave but a sophisticated poem, delivered late but written on beautiful paper.

So, perhaps—

He is on his feet without deciding to be, heart going, teeth itching. Enough. He does not know. He cannot know. Alright. Does he need to? He does not. Whatever Hunter wants badly enough to lie this beautifully for, to spend this much cold patience on, Ilya will see it fail. Whatever it is, it has a six-year-old girl in it, a child with no rights and no protectors, and no plan built around a child like that has ever come to anything but evil.

He turns onto the empty road and walks back toward the city—into the trap, on purpose. Something in his chest unknots; he has, at last, a thing to do.

The gate lets him back in. The men on the wall watch him come, and there is no relief in it. One of them sets his jaw. A younger one glances toward the keep as if wondering whether someone ought to be told.

*Good.* They did not want him to come back, and they are not pleased. He doesn’t need more encouragement than that.

"My lord," the officer says.

"Road's clear," Ilya says helpfully.

The officer's jaw tightens. "Yes, my lord."

"Both ways, apparently."

A pause.

"Yes, my lord."

Ilya steps past him into the city.

Bennet is in the lower court when Ilya comes through it, one arm still strapped, doing nothing in particular near the well—which is to say doing the particular task of being there when Ilya comes back.

"You went the wrong way for the harbour," Bennet says, mild, to the middle distance.

"Did I?"

Bennet's mouth does something that would count as a smile if it were less sad. After a brief pause, he lets up, goes back to doing nothing by the well and lets Ilya pass.

No one stops him from going up to his rooms. No one asks for the purses. No one asks where he went or why he returned. The first thing he does is lay the contents of both out on the table.

Coin. Ferry marks. Salt. Meat. Inn names. Map. Knife.

No letter. No sign. No hidden compartment in the purse seams. No poison on the knife that he can find, though he checks twice and then a third time just in case. The map is only a map. The inn names are in three different hands: recommendations, perhaps, or witnesses, or paid men, or nothing at all.

The third purse, if it exists, is still out there somewhere between the city and the harbour.

He stares at the little collection until the shapes blur.

There is a price; there is always a price.

When Grigori gave a man a horse, the saddle was sabotaged, or the road was watched, or the man's son had already been moved to the capital for education. When Valenne sent silks after Irina died, the letters came folded around demands. When Svetlana was kind, it was often only because she had already decided who would bleed for the offence that made the kindness necessary. Even Cliff, who is as close to sweet as a man gets, came at the price of grief and loyalty and all the terrible little debts required to keep a man like that alive.

Hunter's hook exists. Ilya simply has not found it yet.

That is fine. He will.

27 Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1147—evening

He washes. Changes. Binds his hair. Puts the better knife at his belt in plain sight, because they can all go hang. Then he goes down to dinner.

The high table is set as it was the night before. Hunter sits at the head, dark-clothed and broad-backed, speaking to Lord Murdock on his left. Bennet is at his right, pale with pain and pretending not to be. Carter Vaughan, if Ilya has the names right, stands behind a chair with a cup in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.

Three seats down from the king, on the king's side, there is an empty place.

Ilya looks at it and walks past.

The hall notices; naturally, it does. The hall is a living beast with three hundred eyes and no courage to use its teeth. It watches him take a small table in the shadow of a pillar near the west wall, where the servants sit.

A servant appears, distressed into politeness. "My lord, your place is—"

"Here."

"My lord, His Majesty—"

"Can find me if he misses my company."

The servant's mouth closes.

At some point in the meal, the king's eyes pass over the hall and find him in his corner. They stop for the length of a breath. His face does not warm and does not ease; if anything, it goes a degree flatter, the look of a man meeting a problem he thought he had solved.

Bennet, perplexingly, looks amused. Ilya ignores him.

He makes it through the meal without disruption, without anyone rising to call him an animal, which is a disappointment. It would have been clarifying. The hall mutters, but softly. The young lord from the night before is absent, or hidden, or sober enough to understand that grief had been indulged once already, and that kings have limits.

Hunter leaves before the last course. Men rise. Women incline their heads. The hall breathes out around the empty space he leaves behind. Ilya sits where he is and does not watch him go, except in the polished side of a cup, which hardly counts.

No summons comes.

The letter comes that night, carried by a boy who will not look at him and leaves before he has it open.

It is short, in a plain hard hand with no flourish to it, and it does not ask after his health or his comfort or the state of his soul.

Have you decided how you mean to spend your stay in my kingdom?

Ilya reads it three times, standing in the middle of his good rooms, and the fury comes up in him clean and almost glad.

Of course. More of it. The man cannot leave a thing alone, cannot let it lie, must turn even this into another quiet move in the long game. Your first plan failed, so regroup. Get the next step in writing. Get the hostage to choose, on paper, to stay, so that whatever comes after can be hung on his own word.

Who would have thought it? Who would have looked at that blunt soldier with his pushed-up sleeves and his honest face and seen King Scott Hunter for the snake he is?

He finds paper and writes in the stripped court hand his tutors beat into him, with no flourish of his own either, because he will not be outdone in plainness by a peasant.

I will stay in the keep.

He sends it back with the boy and stands a long while at the window after, where the city goes down to the river in the dark, and the open road runs out of it into the hills. He turns the whole of the day over once more. He parcels it out, cuts it down into segments, and lays them out as cleanly as he can. It is of no use; the game is impenetrable.

He does not sleep.

Chapter End Notes

Ilya, crazy eyed, muttering to himself: Nine days, yes, that’s perfect. Not a week, no, and not two weeks! Eleven days! No, no, that’s amateur work. Nine days, yes, yes precious—

Guards at his door: :O

—

Ilya, gets given a bag with a handful of silver and a cloak: How terrifying, look at all these things designed to make me, specifically, disappear like I never existed, how horrific—

--

Ilya, in the woods, pacing around a tiny campfire, covered in snow, lips blue: If I leave, he wins, but if I stay and he kills me, he wins, but if I stay and he doesn’t kill me, he wins—

—

Chapter 5

He stays in the palace, as promised, and sets about reconnaissance. If you cannot see the scheme, learn the terrain; a simple enough concept. Ilya has survived many a fancy trap by the grace of knowing where the mudslides are and where a column of men can crawl through the underbrush and out of a ravine.

So Ilya walks the keep—all of it, every gallery and stair and servants’ passage and store-room, on the silent feet his father’s wars taught him. Within a fortnight, he can cross it blind from the sea-gate to the chapel without being heard. Within a month, he has the schedule of it by heart: when the watch changes, when the kitchens bank their fires, when the council sits.
 
Hunter is the centre. Ilya watches him closest.

He watches the king cross the lower court in the mornings with his cloak half-fastened and Carter Vaughan already at his elbow with papers. He watches him return from rides with mud up his boots and a horse blowing steam behind him. He learns the king’s hands, broad and scarred; the way he rubs at the bridge of his nose when Lord Harrow speaks too long; the way his temper seldom raises his voice, which is not the same thing as patience. He learns the king’s door, the route between it and the council chamber. The patch of floor outside it, where the western wall cuts the draft, and a man can stand for an hour at the grey edge of morning without his fingers quite going numb. Ilya has won short engagements—and does, in fact, prefer them—but he has won long ones too. He has lain sieges and survived them. He can do things slowly.

It is good work, only he does it inside the month, and there is nothing on earth to do with it. This does not stop him doing it.

He walks the same routes long after he knows them blind, because to stop walking is to stand still in a warm, well-kept castle, in a country he does not know, with a leash around his neck whose length and make he cannot see. So he keeps moving. He finds all the hidden doors and then improvises his own, pries open loose boards in far-flung rooms where walls are built wide enough to crawl through. He maps the rafters, the windows, the roofs. He counts the guards on each watch, and counts them again the next night to see whether the number holds. It holds. He counts it again.

The Aderrans let him do it, and they watch him throughout. Ilya can track their logic and is grimly amused by it. A hostage given the run of a keep is a hostage whose running is accounted for. Somewhere, someone is keeping the count of where the Bear prince goes, who he watches, which door he stands at in the dark. Ilya knows this the way he knows his own pulse, has assumed as much since the first night, and finds in it a cold sort of comfort. Surveillance, he understands. Surveillance, he can work with.

He pictures the apparatus of it: the watch-captains’ reports, the clerks’ tallies, the marginalia. The prince walked the east roofs at the third hour. He spent hours climbing onto the rafters in the far south-east wing. He spent an inexplicable three hours locked in a cupboard. Their mistake, such as it is, is that they think he does not spot it. Most of his skulking is noted, yes, but not all. He discovered a dozen passages they never found and never saw him use. He created a dozen more. Let them think they have him where they want him. Let them write their reports and fool themselves into thinking they are complete. It is better to have no report at all and improvise on the spot than to trust a report your quarry knows you are writing, and has taken steps to shape.

The household does not care for him, and across the short black days of deep winter, it learns to fear him a little, which suits him all the better. He hears the maids before he is meant to: the Bear prince walks through walls, the Bear prince does not sleep, the Bear prince stood in the long gallery at the grey hour and watched the king’s door for an hour and never blinked. The half of it that is invented, he does not care to correct. The half that is true, he does not care to stop.

Hunter knows about the stories; of course he does. There is no version of a keep this ordered in which the king is not informed when his hostage starts haunting the back rooms and frightening laundresses. Ilya sees the proof one late afternoon from the musicians’ gallery above the small hall: Carter Vaughan with a folded report in hand, Hunter taking it, reading the first line, glancing up to the gallery where Ilya has made no sound at all.

Vaughan follows the glance. His mouth goes thin.

Hunter folds the report once and tucks it away.

“Leave it,” he says.

Softly. Not for Ilya. Ilya hears him anyway.

By the turn of the year, he has reportedly been seen in two places at once, and casts a shadow that falls the wrong way, and does not show at all in the bright armour of the east hall. One of the maids takes to leaving a sprig of something bitter on the lintels he frequents. Ilya, who has killed more men than that girl has met, cannot work up the energy to be insulted by being mistaken for an evil spirit. On balance, he can see her point. He is not certain, some nights, that she is wrong.

He does not eat. He takes what keeps him standing and not one mouthful more, and even that grudgingly, because to sit to a meal in this place is to make a claim he has no right to—and because the part of him that used to pay attention to such prosaic things as food and sleep has gone quiet, and he has not gone looking for it.

The kitchens, who have their orders, fight back with the only weapons available to them. When he stops showing up for meals, the tray outside his door grows, and grows again, and begins arriving warm at all hours, set a little nearer the threshold each day, the way you coax a wary animal in from the cold. He leaves the trays untouched in a long cooling row down the corridor until even the rats give up on them, and continues to survive on what he steals from the kitchens himself.

The nights are the long part. He has cultivated, since he was a boy, the ability to sit inside himself when the world became too much, and come back out when necessary. That winter, he finds he cannot always come back. He loses the thread of the hours. He stands at the window over the harbour, and the next he knows the candle has burned down a finger’s width with no account of where the time went. The missing time frightens him worse than anything else had thus far, because a soldier who has lost the count of his own watch is worse than a dead man walking. He is a liability, a danger that should be put down.

He says it to no one. There is no one to say it to, and Hunter-king has demonstrated that he very much wants Ilya alive.

The year turns, and the keep, perversely, fills with light. The five nameless days come—the Hollow Days, that belong to no month and are kept for the dead—and where in Veyr they are kept in silence and the dark, as is proper, here the fires are built high and the hall runs loud, the king’s people drinking and singing and warming their hands at the memory of their own dead with an ease Ilya watches from a doorway and cannot make sense of at all.

Hunter stands among them, not above them. He moves through the hall with a cup in one hand and ash on his sleeve where some old woman has gripped him too hard. A boy of perhaps seven stands on a bench to put a strip of white cloth around the king’s wrist, and Hunter bends his head to let him do it. Later, an old soldier says something in his ear that makes him close his eyes for a moment.

Ilya does not hear the words. He watches the closing of the eyes. He watches as Hunter moves on, as he talks to another man, another woman.

At one undetermined point, Hunter stops, looks up, and finds him directly. Not at once. Not dramatically. Simply as if he had known, all evening, where Ilya would be.

Ilya waits.

Hunter does not call him in. Does not send him away. Does not express his thoughts about the killer of his people observing a rite this sacred. Does not send a guard to ask whether the dead of Veyr want naming too. He only lifts his cup, not quite in greeting and not quite in warning, and turns back to his people.

Ilya stands at the edge of other men’s festival, a dead thing at a feast for the dead, and feels the year tip over beneath him.

Late Wolfmonth, second month, 1148

Things come to a head, as these things do, stupidly.

Before light, in the worst of the cold, Ilya goes down to a corner of the lower yard where no one drills even by day. The ground is uneven, the shape of the yard awkward, and the wind comes off the sea like a flat blade. No one has cleared the snow; he does not need it cleared. A strip under the eave is trodden, more or less, and that is ground enough. He runs the forms—the old ones, the ones the body knows without him—because he cannot sleep, and the forms are a way to be inside his body without having to be inside his head.

The body, which he has spent two months starving on principle, simply stops.

One moment he is moving, and the next the yard goes sideways, and the stone comes up to meet him. He is down on his hands and knees in the frost with his sight gone to grey grit and his arms shaking too hard to lift him. He stays down a long while in the dark with his breath sawing, until he can barely feel his limbs, until the sun is beginning to rise. For one clean bottomless moment, he thinks: it would be the easiest thing in the world to lie down on the good cold stone. To let the thing he was sent here for arrive at last. To stop.

He gets up.

He does not know why. Nothing has changed; no one is watching; it would cost him nothing to stay down. But some demand at the very base of him gets his arms braced and his knees under him, because getting up is the only verb he has left. He stands there swaying in the empty yard and hates it. Hates that he got up. Hates the animal, brute thing in him that will not stop getting up. He spits blood from a bitten cheek onto the frost and goes back inside.

On the stair, he passes Hunter.

The king is in a heavy coat, hair damp from the weather, with two guards behind him and a foreigner at his side carrying a satchel fat with papers. He takes in the frost on Ilya’s knees. The blood at his mouth. The shaking in his hands, which Ilya cannot quite get under control before they betray him.

Ilya waits for the question. Hunter does not ask one. His expression does not change. His eyes, though, stay a fraction too long. Not on the knife at Ilya’s belt, or the stolen practice sword he shouldn’t have. Not on his hands. On his face. He looks, for a moment, like he's about to speak, and then the newcomer—to the keep, possibly; Ilya'd never seen him before, and he has a good head for faces—says something pointed about river barges, and Hunter looks away.

Thawing, third month, 1148

He eats, after that. Not much, but the trays never stopped appearing, and he does not think he imagines that the first time he makes a dent in one, the cooks start switching things up, slipping in more of the things they have decided he likes. As far as generous gestures go, this one is high up. Pointless—he eats more or less at random and pays no attention one way or the other—but it is the thought that counts.

It helps, in an odd way. Not the food, which he still cannot bring himself to care about, but the strange sort of correspondence with the kitchens. He never thought himself a companionable man, but he was raised by the army more than by his family, and is used to twenty men around him at all hours. It is strange, is all, to be the house ghost haunting Hunter-king’s keep. It makes him feel invisible in odd ways, never mind that he is actively working to keep out of sight.

The correspondence develops further, bizarrely. One morning, a girl with a round face and no apparent sense of self-preservation knocks once, opens the door with her hip, and comes in carrying breakfast while Ilya is standing bare-armed by the washstand with a knife in one hand.

She freezes. So does he. She looks at the knife. Looks at him. Looks at the tray. Makes a decision that does not speak well of her survival instincts.

“Where would you like it, my lord?”

The tray has porridge, bread, sour cream, stewed apples, and a little dish of salt fish. Not local fare, but things loved in the Stones. He finds, against all odds, that he is hungry enough and that the fish looks appetising enough, that he is likely to lose this fight.

“The table,” he says, frozen still.

She puts it on the table. Nothing happens. This is the problem with not killing people. It encourages them.

The next day, she comes in again. Her name is Mara, or Maria, or some Aderran softness he refuses to remember on principle. By the second week, he knows it is Mara. By the third, she has developed the habit of clicking her tongue at the untouched vegetables on his plate like an old nurse with too much authority and too little fear.

“If you want to keep all your fingers,” he tells her, “do not do that.”

She looks at his hands. “I expect you need them more than I do.”

“Do you?”

“Who is going to feed you?”

He stares at her. She goes pink, but she does not take it back.

“In any case, you need your strength for all that lurking and skulking about the castle,” she says, and removes his untouched greens with a pointed sniff. “Greens are good for you. You will grow up big and strong.”

Grow up—

“I am nineteen years old, a general, and a prince of the blood—”

“Yes, yes. Very fearsome. Very grown up.”

The kitchens aside, through the whole dead length of that winter, the one fixed point is Bennet.

Not for anything. He is simply, increasingly, wherever Ilya has gone to be alone—leaning in the armoury door, sitting on the well-edge, one arm still slow to lift—saying things that do not require an answer. Rain coming. That sword’s hung wrong. They’ve pickled the onions wrong; I’d take it as a personal favour if you said something, you’re the only one here the cooks might actually listen to.

Ilya gives him nothing, week after week, all the short black winter long.

Then one day, with the first water dripping off the eaves and the ice gone soft on the harbour, Bennet says, they’ve oversalted the pork, third time this month, and Ilya hears himself answer.

“The pork is fine, bite your forked tongue.”

Bennet laughs, short and surprised, and Ilya is so appalled at himself that he turns on his heel and flees.

He thinks about it for two days. He cannot find the angle in it. A man does not befriend the prisoner he is guarding unless he is softening him toward something. Ilya turns the matter over and over and comes up empty. After a while, the emptiness is starting to feel less like a hidden depth and more like there is simply nowhere else to go.

Something that inconsequential should not matter—and does not. Bennet is, for all that he is of noble birth and Hunter-king’s close companion, not a particularly powerful man. He does not meddle in politics, as far as Ilya can see, and leads an exceptionally wholesome, if dull, life. A wife, separated and living with a widower. Two children. All of them came to the keep to visit, including the wife’s new lover. Which is to say that Bennet being incongruously kind to an enemy is not out of character, and should not inform Ilya’s behaviour in any way.

It does inform it, because soon after that, Ilya starts going to the city.

How the two are connected is beyond him. He simply feels they are, somehow. In any case, he can, so he does. Not going has begun to feel like obedience.

The first time, the market quiets around him. The second time, it quiets less efficiently. By the fourth, people have begun to build practical habits around hating him, which is the sort of thing civilians are good at. Hatred, stretched over commerce, becomes procedure.

He does not do much there—he has silver to spend, perplexingly, but he needs little and wants less—except to stand at the edge of the fish-market and watch a woman gut herring with a speed that is, frankly, military. A child falls off a barrel and gets up and falls off it again on purpose, and an old man sells the same three eels to four people by sleight of hand. Ilya will stand there an hour or two, wanting nothing, marking nothing, and walk back up to the keep without having learned one useful fact.

On the fifth visit, a boy throws a stone at him. It misses by a heroic distance.

The boy’s mother catches him by the collar, gone white with horror. The whole market stills around them. Ilya looks at the stone, then at the boy, then at the mother’s hand shaking white-knuckled in the child’s coat.

He says, “Work on your aim.”

The boy bursts into tears. This seems excessive, but Aderran children are evidently not receptive to useful advice.

When he comes back to the keep, Hunter is in the lower court with two grooms and a horse that does not wish to be brought under anybody’s command, royal or otherwise. He sees Ilya at the arch. Sees the market mud on his hem, the line of people beyond the gate pretending not to watch the king watch the Bear prince return from town. His expression does not change, but he stares for several beats too long.

The horse bites him.

Hunter swears, low and vicious, and Ilya can barely contain himself long enough to scurry up to his rooms before he bursts into laughter. It goes on too long, scrapes his throat raw on its way out, and leaves him sitting on the floor beside his bed with both hands over his mouth, shaking like a fool.

Chapter 6

Greening, fourth month, 1148

He watches the king train.

Hunter has not done so before—a gap in discipline that Ilya cannot believe is possible. Somehow, by all accounts—And Ilya’s reconnaissance is thorough and trustworthy— Hunter spent three of the twelve months without training. At most, he kept up strength training in the privacy of his bedroom. 

If this is Hunter diminished, however, then he cannot imagine what he is like at his peak.

His men can’t touch him, even the few who have an honest try.  Every morning, like clockwork, Hunter would run his men through the forms in the cold: stripped to shirtsleeves, unhurried, correcting a grip here and a foot there, taking a turn against three of his own guard at once and putting all three in the mud without temper and helping them up after.

He fights like nothing Ilya has seen and exactly like what Ilya expected: no flourish, no waste except a truly unusual amount of force, a brutal economy that ends things. Here, he uses a sword, but Ilya would wager both his legs that it is not his weapon. An axe, the stories say; Ilya would honestly suggest a hammer. With that back and those legs, the man would be—what could you even do against something like that? One glancing blow to the torso and your ribs would collapse like an accordion.

Ilya is there every morning before they start, and lingers for some time after they leave. After a while, he can no longer say, if pressed, what he is studying. Once or twice, the king glances up at the gallery mid-bout—finds him, holds it a beat, and goes back to his men. He does not send anyone up. He does not have the perch cleared. He lets the dead Veyran prince stand over his yard every morning and watch him sweat, and Ilya, turning it over, decides it does not matter. What matters is that Ilya is left alone, and nobody drags him out of his gallery by the hair.

Then Bennet drags him out by the hair, more or less.

“It was fun to watch you loom up in the rafters like a gargoyle, but enough is enough,” he says one morning, having climbed to the gallery with two practice swords. “The men are laying wagers on whether you can actually fight or if you slay your enemies with the force of your glare. Come down and settle it. I’m bored.”

Ilya is certain it is a trap. Arming a prisoner in the king’s own yard, among the king’s own guard—no version of this ends well for him. Alright. Let’s see how it plays out. He takes the offered sword. He waits for the circle to close.

The circle does not close. The king, across the yard, glances over at the infamous Bear butcher standing armed among his men, takes in the whole of it in one flat, unhurried look, and goes back to his own bout.

Ilya stands there holding a sword he could put through any of six people, entirely unremarked, and has no idea what to do with himself. So he trains. Alone, viciously, badly, his body gone to ruin and not answering right. No one stops him. By the end of it, his hands are bleeding, he feels human, and he is almost blind with hatred.

A week later, one of the men—Vaughan, one of the king’s advisors, not a soldier but warrior-trained—asks him for a bout. Just ask, the way you would ask anyone. Ilya, who cannot remember the last time a man addressed him as a man and not a prince or a weapon or a corpse-in-waiting, is so thrown that he agrees.

Ilya wins—fast, because he always wins, even when he is weak as a newborn colt—and steps back already braced for what comes when a hostage puts a king’s man in the dirt in front of the king’s men.

Vaughan picks himself up, works his shoulder, and says, “That is a clever little move, that thing with the off-hand. Show me?”

Ilya shows him the move. They go again. He is, dimly, aware of being looked at.

He starts going to the council.

It happens the way the rest of it happens: by degrees and then all at once. He found the council chamber in his first week. It is months before he goes in.

Not by the door—the door would imply permission he neither wants nor needs. He takes the servants’ stairs, then banks left, squeezes between two stone panels, then climbs down and exits into a hidden passage. This one is not secret, technically, but two of the four official entry points are caved in, the third is underground near the wine cellars and such, and the fourth right underneath the chapel. Compared to some of his other self-made hidden paths, this one is downright comfortable; that doesn’t mean it is without its challenges. Dust and vermin chief among them. Ilya can climb and squeeze with the best of them, but having skeletons of dead rats stuck in his hair and boots is going to raise some questions he can’t be bothered to answer So. Slow and steady wins the race, etcetera. 

After some time–forty minutes give or take– he finally gets to where he’s going, behind the tapestry of Saint Arlen being martyred by men who, judging by their expressions, their countless dead, and the deep puddles of blood, appear to have had excellent reasons. Behind the tapestry is a carved screen above the western wall, where a man may stand unseen and watch a room full of clever people lose a war by inches.

They are losing the Northroad.

Below him, the king stands at the central table with both hands braced on a map of the northern marches; Carter Vaughan is talking numbers; old Murdock listens; Bennet, restored to two working arms, sits on a window ledge. Across the table, Lord Harrow—a middle-aged man who might have been handsome if not for the pinched mouth and weaselly scowl, who looks at his king in the halls as though willing the dead Calder kings to rise clean out of the earth and spare him the indignity of a lowborn master—is explaining, with great confidence, that the fort at Greycross will hold the winter, because it held under Calder, and walls hold forts.

This is not Ilya’s problem. He tells himself so, clearly, twice. He has worked out by now that the demons of hell do not punish the dead with fire or ice but with other men’s council meetings. Since Ilya is not addled or eager to cause himself pain, he is going to leave them to it. He is here to serve his sentence with what dignity remains to him.

Vaughan keeps trying to drag the room back to sense and logic—the stores were laid for two hundred men across five months, and Greycross is holding four hundred and seventy because Lord Emmett panicked and pulled three villages in behind the walls—and Harrow keeps answering arithmetic with sentiment. The king, infuriatingly, says nothing, only taps the map once when the noise climbs too high.

Then Murdock says, “If Vannor closes the pass, Greycross starves by thaw.”

And Harrow says, “If Vannor closes the pass, that is a declaration of war.”

And Ilya hears his own voice come down out of the gallery before he has agreed to lend it.

“No. It is not.”

The silence is immediate and total. He has, he registers a breath too late, just informed a foreign war council from behind a painting that it cannot read a map. He comes down the stairs anyway, because shouting strategy through a carved screen is ridiculous, and these lunatics are mad enough to let him. No one stops him. He sets a finger on the pass.

“Vannor will not close this with soldiers. That buys them a war they do not want. They will close it with nature. A few hundred men in poor colours; a rockfall here, a mudslide there, a road that is simply, regrettably, shut—and your own scouts ride home reporting snowdrift. Greycross waits all winter and starves by thaw, and Vannor sends its condolences in very cold ink. No siege. No declaration. You will have lost four hundred men and a fort and never once been at war.”

“Then how would you hold it?” Vaughan asks.

“I wouldn’t. I would empty it.” He flattens his hand over the fort. “Greycross is a symbol, and symbols are dear to feed and no use at all besides. Move the men and Emmett’s villagers to lower ground before the first snow. Leave the fires lit and a handful of loud fools on the wall, and let Vannor spend the season besieging an empty shell. Come the thaw, when they come down to collect what they think they have won, you burn their supply train—here.” He moves the finger. “Not here, where they will be braced for you.”

Vaughan stares at the map. Murdock looks at the king. The king looks at the map.

“And now we take our strategy from the Butcher of Redmere,” Harrow says, to the room at large.

Ilya smiles at him. “You have not once beaten me in the field, my lord. By all means, follow your gut. I will enjoy observing the results.”

Bennet makes a sound into his fist. The king does not, but his mouth does a small, brief thing, and then he says, “Go on.”

That is all. Hunter has weighed the counsel against the impropriety and found the impropriety beneath his notice. Something hot and savage opens under Ilya’s ribs. He ignores it and goes on.

It is later, when Harrow ventures one more pithy line, and Ilya turns on him with his teeth bared, that the king says, “Enough.”

Flat. Quiet.

Every man in the room freezes still, and Ilya finds, to his cold fury, that his own body has gone still at the word, like a hound called to heel. He holds himself rigid, not trusting it to move, thinking with perfect clarity, who are you to call me off, you upjumped peasant—and does not move, because the humiliating fact of it is that he stopped the instant the man told him to.

The king has already moved on. “Carter, run it again on true numbers. Murdock, write to Greycross for real stores, not Emmett’s fairy tale. Bennet, find me a man who knows whether that lower road is mud by second frost.”

“I know,” Ilya says. “It is.”

The king looks at him. “Then sit down.”

The room stills a third time, because this is not a thing one says to enemy princes who climb out of the walls to insult the council. The chair is three down from the king’s right hand—near enough the same distance they sat him at that first cold supper—and the symmetry is so vulgar that he very nearly laughs.

He sits.

Council, it turns out, happens constantly; men who complain about war spend an astonishing portion of their lives preparing to do it badly. Carter Vaughan takes to finding him in corridors and putting questions to him without preamble. Lord Murdock sends notes in a beautiful old hand, all courtesy folded around requests for his read on roads and forts and the temper of men he has never met. Bennet begins saying things like “you’re wanted in the map room,” which is plainly untrue and increasingly difficult to refuse.

He goes to all of them but one. On the days the table turns to the Bear Isles, he stands and leaves. The clerks learn to leave the chair empty and mark nothing in the margin, and they do not ask it of him, and nobody asks him to explain, possibly figuring that, if asked, he would answer with relish and at length.

The rest he attends—not to help, but because if these people insist on being wrong within his hearing, they may as well be wrong where he can correct them, and because the king in council is not the king in court and not the king in the yard. The king in council is more short-tempered than the stories allow and a good deal less gentle than his people like to pretend. He cuts nonsense the way an axe cuts rope. He does not raise his voice; he does not have to; when men waste his time, he only makes them regret it.

When Lord Harrow works yet another northern problem around to the restoration of some pale, distant cousin of the old Calder line, the king lets him run a full ten minutes and then says, mild, “You may write to Lord Calder, if you like. Ask whether he would care to take on Greycross, the coastal debt, and my correspondence with Vannor. If he says yes, send him my crown with the next packet.”

Harrow colours. “Your Majesty knows I meant no disloyalty.”

“I know you mean it constantly and call it nostalgia. There is a difference. It is not large enough to matter.”

A week later, a delegation of the river houses petitions for grain preference and a lighter levy against vague future generosity toward the crown’s shipping—which is, once Ilya forces himself to read between the lines, a request that poor men be made to pay for rich men’s boats. The king hears them out in full, his appetite for punishment being widely underrated, and then says, “No,” and nothing further, until the lead merchant ventures, “Perhaps if Your Majesty understood—”

“I understood the first time.”

“The proposal is mutually advantageous.”

“To whom?”

“To the crown, naturally.”

“I am the crown,” the king says, “and I am not advantaged.”

Behind him, Carter Vaughan turns his eyes briefly to the ceiling, asking God, plainly, why the diplomacy of a kingdom has been entrusted to a man with the conversational grace of an earthquake.

The merchant tries once more. “The river houses—”

“—will pay their levy, sell their grain at the winter cap, and stop wasting my time.”

Ilya does not enjoy it. He is interested, perhaps, to see this side of him, the side that does not lie, that does not pretend to be soft and patient and chivalrous. The side that will accept a hostage, make it clear that he would have preferred the six-year-old niece, and then tell him he is welcome to leave. The side that will get his hostage to agree to his cage in writing.

## Late Greening, fourth month, 1148

The king sees him in the yard three days later, because the king sees everything eventually, always from the least convenient angle.

Ilya has just put an Aderran with an unfortunate nose face-down in the dirt when the yard shifts—not stops, nothing so dramatic, but men straighten, their voices drop, someone says Majesty, and there is the king at the edge of the ring with Vaughan at his shoulder. He looks Ilya over once.

“You need to eat more,” the king says.

The yard goes quiet. The king, catastrophically, appears to mean it.

“You cannot possibly think,” Ilya says, with great care, “that is your business.”

“If you fall over in my yard, it becomes paperwork, and Carter is insufferable enough.” He is already half-turning away. “Eat more, or train less.”

And that—for reasons Ilya cannot name, and therefore distrusts—is intolerable. Not the order, not just the order, but the casual, finished quality of it, a man tossing scraps to the ghost in his house and going back to his morning.

“Do you train?” he hears himself ask, like a madman. As if everyone here does not know that Ilya knows about every step Hunter takes. Like the king is not, in fact, dressed for practice.

The king stops. Around the ring, men arrange their faces into the careful blankness of soldiers who have just watched a candle roll toward spilt oil.

The king turns back. “Yes.”

“With others?”

“When they are foolish enough.”

“Excellent. Let’s have a go.”

Bennet says, very quietly, “Oh, good.”

The king looks at Ilya for several beats too long—long enough that the want in it, if it is want, has time to be something Ilya could examine, if he let himself, which he does not.

“No,” he says.

Ilya bares his teeth in a smile, precisely as pleasant as is deserved by all present. “No?”

“You are tired.”

“I am not.”

“You are underfed, overtired, and angry.”

“I was under the impression you liked men angry. It saves time in your courts.”

Carter Vaughan closes his eyes.

The king’s face does not change. This is unfortunate. Ilya had wanted, if not anger, then at least irritation. Something. Anything but that flat, dead patience.

“Another day,” the king says.

“No.”

Bennet says, “Rozanov—” and the king lifts one hand without looking. Bennet stops short.

Interesting.

Hunter steps into the ring. He tests the offered sword, makes a dissatisfied sound, trades it for another. Ilya, saluting, his blood already loud in his ears, wants to hurt him; wants to beat him; wants to break his skin, spill his blood, put him into the dirt; wants Hunter to stop being distant and plain and impossible and become, for five blessed minutes, a body in reach.

Hunter disarms him in twenty seconds. He takes Ilya’s measure in three exchanges, crowds him in the fourth, binds the blade in the fifth, and sends his sword spinning into the dirt with a twist so clean Ilya cannot bring himself to be angry about it.

“There,” Hunter says, as if something has been answered.

Ilya picks the sword up. “Again.”

“You asked for a bout. You got one.”

“I asked to train.”

“You asked to prove something, and failed.”

That lands harder than the disarm. Ilya raises the sword in salute, and Hunter looks at him a moment—men like Hunter do not step back from such ridiculous displays, displays that Ilya is himself already embarrassed by—and then raises his own.

The second bout lasts longer. Not long, but enough that Ilya starts learning the rhythm of him in practice, not theory. Long enough that he begins to adjust. He does not do much. Gets one good parry in. Forces Hunter to shift his stance to compensate, to back up by half a foot in the next exchange, and then the king closes, and turns, and Ilya is flat on his back with the breath gone out of him and a sword-point two inches from his throat and the sky over Aderra very blue above the broad dark shape of the man blotting out the sun.

“You fight like you’re never more than a moment from death,” the king says. “It makes you fast. It also makes you spend strength you don’t have.”

He lifts the point away and holds down a hand—scarred, unadorned, offered without theatre and without the least concern for whether Ilya takes it, refuses it, or bites it like a feral dog.

Ilya takes it. The king hauls him up with appalling ease.

“You’re half-starved,” the king says, because he has evidently decided to push his luck. “Eat. Sleep. Train properly. Then ask me again.”

“We are not done.”

“We are.”

“I said again.”

“And I said no.” He hands his sword to the nearest guard. “A king’s word has some small weight in this country, as you may be aware.”

He goes, and the yard does not breathe until he is through the gate. Ilya stands there with dirt down his back and blood where he bit his tongue and a hatred so clean it is nearly joy—and underneath the hatred, unappreciated and unwanted, a single clear want: to be a body that can stand in front of that man and not fall.

Then ask me again.

He turns and walks, fast, to the one door in the keep he has never once gone through.

Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

Blossom, fifth month, 1148

The healer's name is Mistress Vale, a wide-set, steely-eyed battle-axe of a woman. She looks up from grinding something green and foul-smelling when he enters, takes him in once from boots to hair, and says, "Finally."

He stops in the doorway.

"Pardon?"

"Shirt off."

Excuse you?

"No."

"Then die skinny and dramatic in the yard. His Majesty can have you stuffed and set in a corner to frighten visiting children."

The apprentice fumbles with a jar, breath escaping her pressed mouth with a hiss. Ilya catches the container before it can smash into the stone tiles, without looking away from Mistress Vale. She is far from impressed.

There is a point, very early in an engagement, when a man understands whether the day can be won as is, or if it's time for a tactical retreat. Ilya has a similar instinct for women over fifty with rolled sleeves and no respect for princes. He removes his shirt.

The brief silence is unpleasant. Ilya is hardly body-shy, by nature or habit, but Aderrans aren't a militant people; they are unused to the realities of a body shaped for and by war. Perhaps predictably, the healer makes a noise that is not quite anger and not quite grief. He does not like it.

"Right." To her credit, the dismay is wiped away barely a moment later and replaced with impersonal blankness. "Obviously, you need to eat more. Turn—No, stand there, don't move." She walks around him, assessing. Her touch is brief but firm, familiar in competence. She might be more used to peacetime injuries, but a healer is a healer, when all is said and done. Being sliced by a scythe while cutting wheat probably doesn't look much different from being cut by a sword. "I do not like how some of these breaks were set. It is certainly impacting your freedom of movement. First, we see if we can improve things now. If we can't, then we start planning how we could reset them. Sleep?"

"Enough."

"Liar."

"Careful."

"Or what? You'll loom at me? I have sons."

"My condolences."

Her mouth twitches. "Appetite?"

"I eat."

"Is that what I asked?"

He considers leaving.

She rolls her eyes, harrumphs, puts one hand on her hip and points to a stool with the other. "Sit, before you fall down and prove the king right."

He sits. Might as well, honestly. Getting this done as quickly and efficiently as possible seems like the only path ahead.

Mistress Vale begins making notes. "You want to train?"

"Yes."

"To what end?"

"To beat him."

There is a small silence. The mousy apprentice, whom Ilya very much doubts will survive in her chosen profession, stares at the floor with heroic intensity.

Mistress Vale says, "That will take some doing."

Well. Ilya relaxes a little, reluctantly charmed by the allowance. Hunter is a beast. Beating him one-on-one is going to take more than some doing. Granted, taking that man one-on-one is a mistake Ilya very much would not make. If they were on the field, he'd run him down on horseback, try his luck with arrows, throwing knives, spears, or, all else failing, a big, handy rock.

"Then tell me what to do," he says.

She gives him a schedule. It is draconian.

Food at hours no sane man is hungry. Broth. Eggs. Oats. Meat. Rest days. Stretching, which is apparently a thing Aderrans do instead of accepting pain as proof of existence and moving on as God intended. No sparring every day. No roof climbing for two weeks. No skipping breakfast. No wine instead of supper. No training through fever. No pretending dizziness is a philosophical position.

"I do not get fevers," he says.

"Men who say that always get the stupidest fevers."

"I have no time for this."

"You are a twenty-year-old prince held hostage in a foreign palace with no duties. You have time."

He stands.

She pushes a cup of something pale and vile into his hand. "Drink."

"What is it?"

"Useful."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only answer you are getting."

He drinks it. It tastes like herbs, chalk, and betrayal.

Mistress Vale nods, satisfied. "Good. Come back tomorrow to start learning the stretches."

"I did not agree to dawn."

"You want to beat him?"

Ilya thinks of the yard. The twist of Hunter's wrist. The hand offered down. The calm, infuriating certainty of we are done.

"Yes," he says.

"Then come back at dawn."

Highsun, sixth month, 1148

He has been arguing with the king's whole government twice a week for two months now, and he is, the grey lords have privately concluded, the single most disagreeable creature ever to draw breath in Aderra, and he is—though no one would dare put it to him in these words—getting better.

The change is in things he does not track. He eats at the table now. Not the nobles' table—they would have to order him there, and he would spend every meal sabotaging as much of the food as he could, on principle—but the lower ones, among the serving folk. They don't mind, and Ilya has a good nose for these things; they are not humouring some lordling slumming for sport. Perhaps it is his generally disreputable nature, or the fact that he spends his days skulking through their part of the keep—the backrooms, the storerooms, the cellars and the like—or a good word from Mara, but he is folded in among them without much fuss.

The food is better there, too. Not that Hunter keeps a markedly better table for himself and his lords—Aderrans set little store by that sort of thing—but a king is a king nevertheless, and kings do not get the overcrisped potatoes or the burnt bit of meat gone almost sweet with char and smoke. Ilya, who grew up among the soldier class and knows what's what, runs a brisk trade for the best treats now that they let him sit among their ranks. He can't do much that's useful, but he can fetch and carry, haul barrels, put up a fallen shelf or skin and butcher almost any animal they haul in. He is not very good at it, but he can learn when properly motivated. Besides, the work is harder than the strengthening drills Vale set him, and a great deal more interesting.

He is relaxing, somehow. He does not notice he is doing it. He does not notice that he has stopped, somewhere back across the winter, asking himself what Hunter wants from him. The question simply went quiet, the way a sound you have lived under for years goes quiet, without your marking the hour it stopped, and he goes about his days in its silence and does not yet know it is gone.

Highsun, sixth month, 1148

The king sends for him, near the end of Highsun. Ilya, who has nothing else to do and is, quietly, dying of curiosity about what could be important enough that Hunter would set men to finding him, does not make him wait.

"You've done good work on the border," Hunter says, not looking up from the papers he is signing—which is its own discourtesy, and somehow a comfort, the discourtesy of a busy man rather than the courtesy of a careful one. "I told you I pay. So. Is there something you want?"

Ilya stands in the doorway and turns over the dozen things a wiser man would ask for and wants none of them.

"No," he says.

"No."

The king sets down his pen and looks at him.

Ilya scowls, suspicious. How tiresome.

"If this is some Aderran birthday custom, by all means, I invite you to choke on it."

For one moment, Hunter goes still.

"Birthday custom?"

Ah. Well. This is embarrassing. He waves an unconcerned hand. "Irrelevant. I don't celebrate it. It's not—meaningful."

Hunter closes his eyes; it would almost be a blink if it did not go on a beat too long. "Humour me. How old are you now?"

Ilya rolls his eyes, considers being difficult. Hunter could find out easily enough—the birth of a royal prince is announced far and wide, and if Hunter does not know, his archivist could certainly turn up the letters sent to every king in the Reach. Though that could be its own kind of awkward; Hunter's straightforward handling of his predecessor is still spoken of in some circles.

"Turned twenty on the fifteenth of this month."

"Right," Hunter says, blank. "That would be eleven days ago?"

"His Majesty has a most formidable grip on reality."

"Right." Hunter exhales, sits back in his chair, and then visibly decides against pursuing it. Interesting. It is the biggest reaction Ilya has got out of him outside the council hall in a long time. "That aside—I am not speaking of presents, but of wages owed."

Isn't that an uncomfortable sentence?

"The issue of what I am owed is not, perhaps, a topic you want to open now, Your Majesty."

"All right," Hunter says, and lets the matter drop, plainly done with it. "I will think of something." He goes back to the papers.

Ilya leaves before he says something that will get him put on the wheel after all, telling himself, the whole length of the corridor, that he would have struck the man if he'd stayed.

Goldmonth, seventh month, 1148

What the king thinks of when he says I'll think of something, Ilya learns three weeks later, when Cliff Marlowe walks into the lower court with one good horse and a face like a man who cannot decide whether to weep or laugh.

Ilya is across the yard before he knows he has moved. "What are you doing here?" he says, and it comes out wrong, comes out frightened, "I told you to stay, I told you—is she—is Svetlana—"

"Breathe, you mad creature." Cliff catches him by the shoulders, holds him at arm's length, looks him over the way you look over a man back from a place men don't come back from. "She's well. She's with Sasha, at the Karskaya, safe as anything. And I'm staying as long as she's there." His thumb presses once, hard, into Ilya's shoulder, the closest he has ever come to saying the rest of it. "Your king wrote to me. Said you'd done him good service and there wasn't a thing in his treasury you'd take, and could I think of anything you might?"

The yard, which has been pretending not to listen, fails in a unified national effort. Ilya stares.

Cliff looks past him at the keep. "Nice place. Very, uh. Very clean."

"My king," Ilya says.

"Figure of speech."

"No, it was not."

"No," Cliff agrees cheerfully. "It really wasn't."

He's joking. The maniac is trying to be funny. Ilya experiences, all at once, a fury so layered it almost becomes architecture. Hunter sent for Cliff.

"What did he promise you?"

"Passage. Protection under his peace. Coin I refused and a horse I accepted and won't be parted with, come what may."

"It is a leash."

"He's more than welcome to try and tug it; I look forward to the attempt."

Ilya turns away.

"Also, a message from Svetlana."

Good grief.

"Yes?"

Cliff shrugs, eyes glittering, a little shiny depending on the angle. "She loves you. She misses you. There was more to it, probably, but you know how my memory goes when I've been away from either of you for more than a fortnight."

Ilya looks away. Cliff is here. He is here—

The yard is full of people who have work to do and are not doing it. Stable boys. Guards. Even Mara has somehow materialised, lurking near the main entrance. Bennet, of course; Ilya had been talking with him when Cliff waltzed into the keep, calm as you please.

God in Heaven—Cliff is here. Cliff Marlowe is in Aderra, in Adermere, precisely where he shouldn't be, precisely where Ilya can't keep him safe—

"You can't stay," he says. Cliff's hand settles at the back of his neck, expression growing solemn. Ilya's face must be doing something terrible. "I have nothing here. I am nothing here, less than nothing; I live on the sufferance of others. I can't keep you—I can't even house you—"

"Recall that the king invited me to join your household in Adermere."

Ilya's head spins, sharp and violent. He inhales a long breath, stomach clenching. How dare he? How could he— "I have no household, you imbecile. I am a hostage. I don't even own the clothes on my back—"

"I am staying," Cliff says quietly, just for his ears. "I couldn't before, not without endangering your position. But now? Now that I have a king's writ of invitation? I am staying as long as I possibly can, as long as Svetlana can give me. They would have to kill me to keep me away."

Yes. That is precisely the worry.

Ilya looks toward the upper keep. So. This is where they are. Cliff is here, and he is not leaving, and he is invited, and three-quarters of the keep is likely aware of it already, considering Ilya went and made it a spectacle. So—what should he do?

He should rebalance the situation and reposition the pieces. He is off balance now, but that is all right. If you cannot win with the board as it stands, sabotage the board.

Hunter wasn't in court earlier, he wasn't in the training grounds, so—meetings, perhaps, except he tends to take those in public places of late. So, unless Ilya is very much mistaken, he is going to come out—

Hunter comes out of the lower arcade with Vaughan and two clerks at his shoulder, mid-sentence and unhurried, because he is never anything else. He sees Cliff first. Then Ilya. Then the hand Cliff still has at the back of Ilya's neck.

The unhurriedness catches, for less than a breath, like a man who has missed a stair he has climbed a thousand times.

"Your man arrived safely," he says. Pleasant. Distant. As though they are discussing timber or grain.

Ilya does not answer at once. He takes a long breath and reads the yard instead, the way he reads any ground he might have to fight on. Vaughan, a half-step back, the paper lowered in his hand. The two clerks who discovered urgent business elsewhere. Six of the king's guards, and the distance to each. Cliff at his shoulder, alive, in reach. Mara, by the main door with her basket and her too-sharp eyes. Bennet, close and silent.

He stops three paces from the king.

"You sent for him. You reached into Veyr and sent for my man."

"Yes," Hunter says.

"After I ordered him to stay."

"I did not order him to come."

"He is not yours to order." Ilya keeps his voice level; that is the part the yard will remember. "You wrote with a king's seal and paid his road and handed a loyal soldier a clean way to disobey me. Do not dress that as his choosing."

Hunter's jaw shifts, once.

"He made his choice."

"Of course he did. That is why you wrote to him, and not to me."

The yard has gone quiet in pieces — Cliff first, then the soldiers who know him, then, last, the guards.

"You had no right," Ilya says.

"Right?" Hunter's head tilts a fraction. "I did not need the right. I had the means."

It is the truest thing the man has said all year, and he says it the way other men say good morning. Ilya smiles. There is nothing in it that a sane man would want aimed at him.

"You arrogant prick."

It's cold, is the thing. Rage gets this way sometimes, when it burns straight past anything his mind can comprehend and ends up back at calm.

"I am here because I chose to be. I am a prince of Veyr; I do my duty, the whole of it, to the letter. Cliff was never part of that bargain."

"Ilya—" Cliff says.

He does not look at him.

"He is mine. My man, my friend. I ordered him to stay across the water because he deserves better than to be one more blade you and your court can reach for when the time comes to make the Bear prince bleed."

"It was well meant," Hunter says.

Ilya laughs, short and ugly. Cliff flinches at the sound of it.

"Then hear what it means." He steps in. The guards shift; Hunter lifts one hand without looking, and they still. "You have placed him here on a whim, because you could. He has no purpose here, no allies, no kin. You hold me by law and by right, Hunter-king. Reach outside it for him, and you and I are no longer doing this by law."

"He is a grown man," Hunter says. "Not a child for you to be responsible for."

What a strange thing to say.

"I said what I said," Ilya says. "If he dies, so will you."

"Ilya," Cliff says, softer.

"Be quiet."

He walks.

"I should have asked you."

That stops him. Kings do not apologise; it is among the first things a man learns about them. Ilya keeps his back to him, but stops.

"If you want him gone, say so, and I will arrange it. But you are wrong that he has nothing here. No purpose. No people."

Ilya turns. Hunter stands where he was left, both hands empty at his sides, Vaughan a silent fixture at his shoulder, the guards behind him working hard at being invisible. His gaze goes once to Cliff, and back.

"You are here."

Off to the side, Bennet is watching the king as though this is a thing he had wanted to see and never thought he would.

"And, now, so is he," Ilya says.

Hunter inclines his head.

If anyone is surprised that Ilya hauls Cliff off to his rooms straight from the yard, no one is fool enough to show it.

The door is barely shut before Cliff rounds on him. They have stopped in the middle of the room, a stride apart, and neither will be the one to sit.

"What in God's name was that?" It is not a question. "Are you insane? Are you trying to die?"

"You will be quiet." Ilya's voice comes out wrong—too level, the levelness he keeps for men he is about to hurt. He does not want to use it on Cliff. "I am beyond words, Marly. How dare you come here? How dare you put me in this position?"

"How dare I?" Cliff takes a step. "You walked to your death because of some fool notion of duty, and you dare to lecture me? You let your father sign your life away, you ask us to stand on the quay and watch you go to your death? And you dare speak to me about safety?"

“It was, in fact, my duty,” he snaps. “Would you expect me to run and let Nastya—”

"Then you could have run with her!"

It lands like a fist. Cliff does not shout—shouting was never his style; he goes quiet and dreadful instead, the words pressed tight and thick with pain. His hands have come up between them, open, doing nothing, which is worse than if they swung.

"Did it even occur to you? Did it even enter your mind that you could have played along and bought time for us to smuggle Nastya and Aleksei away? Did it cross your mind once that there was a road that did not end with you dead?"

It had not, and for a moment, the wind goes out of him. There was nothing to plan around. A man does not get to be a prince and a general and keep only the half that suits him—the rank and not the reckoning, the command and not the cost. Ilya fought a war, and he lost it, and he is here to pay for it. None of that is a thing that went wrong; it is the arrangement holding. It is, if he is honest—and he is, about this, always about this—only just.

"I do not run from duty," he says. "And duty has me here."

Something in Cliff caves—not relief; nearer to grief. He pulls in a breath, chest working like a bellows, and lets it go.

"Right. So. No, I am not leaving." Lower now, almost level. "Svetlana and Sasha are past the part where I'm any use—it's all cellars and cypher now. Your king put a writ in my hand and a clear road to your side, and I am taking it, because it is the first thing in a season that anyone has let me do for you."

"He is not my—"

"Don't."

Cliff closes the last of the space. His hands come down on Ilya's shoulders, gripping, far from gentle, and Ilya's own hands answer at his sides without his leave—the fingers drawing in, the itch that climbs the arms every time he is made to sit with a thing he cannot fix. They are close enough now to feel the heat of it. One of them is going to move first, to swing first.

"You threatened a king's life," Cliff says, low and even, "in front of his council and his lords and his soldiers, and he let you walk out of the yard. He apologised." A short shake, the grip biting in. "Ilya. There is no other man alive who would have done it, king or not. And I am not talking about your father—pull that on some soft-spoken Hollander lord, and you'd spend the next six winters down a salt mine with your tongue out, for the look of the thing."

Yes? And? They are both alive on one man's forbearance. So? Forbearance is not a wall. You cannot trust it or predict it. You cannot stand a friend behind it and call him safe. It is there until it is not, and Ilya is one thing, but he will not trust Marly to the ephemeral whims of Hunter's mercy.

"I can't do much to keep you out of their games, except clarify the consequences," he says. "And if he kills me for it, then so be it."

"Alright," Cliff says—reading it off him, because he has been reading him for seven years. "Fighting it is."

And headbutts him, none too gently.

Chapter End Notes

Ilya: It doesn't matter if I'm here to die, that's what I'm for! But I won't have them thinking that about YOU--

Marly: You hideous little rat—

Guards at the door: :O

Scott, who just wanted to enrich Ilyas enclosure: Jesus Christ In Heaven--

Chapter 8

Goldmonth, seventh month, 1148

By the week’s end, everyone loves Cliff.

This is not an exaggeration. After the initial wariness passed—caused by the fact he and Cliff emerged from his rooms with matching black eyes and supplemental bruising—Cliff starts doing what he does best, and goes a’charming. Mara loves him because he is handsome and humble and praises everything she makes. The stable boys love him because he can swear in four languages and never travels without a flask of Veyran spirits. Mistress Vale loves him because he is healthy as a horse and so pathetically obedient that even she cannot work up the will to resent him. Bennet loves him because Bennet loves everyone.

The keep recalculates Ilya, too, though no one says so. Not into warmth, or quite into respect, but the wariness takes on a different flavour. Before, the nobles had stepped around a mad dog who was a danger to himself first and to them second. Now they have watched that dog threaten the life of the king in the open yard, in the king's own country, with the king's own guards at his back, and walk away from it unscathed. They have seen him draw a line and make even Hunter stop short of it. It changes the calculation in some way, for all that nobody has quite figured out how.

Cliff, naturally, notices none of this in any useful way. He talks to everyone. He learns names. He laughs in the wrong places and the right ones. He thanks Hunter for the room he is given, while knowing he hadn’t stepped inside it once.

Hunter, meanwhile, gives the keep nothing to recalculate by. He does not freeze Cliff out and does not take him up. He does not question his presence in the dining hall, or on the training grounds. He looks neither pleased nor displeased in any way a man could identify. The strange days pass, and the keep settles around the new shape of itself, because the king has declined to tell it how to feel, and a household takes the weather from the throne.

Goldmonth, seventh month, 1148 

The council meets under a hard summer rain, the shutters thrown open to it, the room smelling of wet dog and ink and men pretending to be anything but bored near to tears.

In the privacy of his own thoughts, Ilya could admit that he hadn’t quite known how to approach this, and then, when no answers presented themselves after a week, decided that the brazen approach would suffice. So, he comes in through the door with Cliff at his back and pretends that all is well. It’s not the boldest thing he could have done, but it’s up there. Never mind the uncertainty between Ilya and Hunter, Cliff has no place here: a foreign captain of uncertain origin, sworn to no Aderran lord, with no title and no allegiance anyone present can safely measure. He should stand at the wall and stay quiet until spoken to. Instead, Vaughan sets a stool for him by the lower map, and when the king doesn't object, that appears to be that.

Hunter sits at the head of the table. He has slept badly; it shows in the line between his brows and nowhere else. He looks the room over once—his gaze resting on Cliff for less than a breath, then on Ilya, then moving on. Before the yard, Ilya would have known how to take that. He kept a whole shelf of the king's looks, sorted and labelled and ready to reference; this one he turns over and cannot place, which is new, and not in a way he cares for.

The matter before the council is a string of caravan attacks on the western road. Three caravans struck in twelve days, all along the stretch between the Kinnard road and the old rise, where the land stops being sure whether it belongs to Aderra, to Rydal, to Calligo or any other monarch brave enough to tax it. In terms of value lost, the matter is trivial: wool, salt pork, lamp oil, nails, a couple of chests of moderately valuable artwork. If not for the fact that the drivers and guards were all found dead at the scene, it likely wouldn’t have made it to the capital. Well, if not for the deaths and a conspicuous Rydal belt buckle, found in the mud.

Harrow has taken the buckle as proof; Harrow is fond of proof when it is large enough to trip over.

"Rydal tests us," he says, both hands flat on the table. "They watched us bleed against Veyr and reckon the western marches are vulnerable. Answer slowly, and every border lord from Jaschar to Torren will read it as weakness."

Harrow’s idiocy aside, the case is, against all expectations, interesting. Most of what the council turns over, Ilya could sleep through on his feet; this he cannot. The missing horses are wrong. Nine caravan horses taken—not killed, not hamstrung, not turned loose across the scrub to slow the chase. Taken. Rydal men would not bother. Northern Rydal breeds its own, ferocious barrel-chested winter beasts that kick through full plate; they’ve no use for soft Aderran stock; a disciplined raiding party would take one or two to sell onward, and kill the rest rather than risk being slowed down. Nine, taken whole, points somewhere that is not Rydal at all, to say nothing of the ridiculous buckle.

He could say it in four sentences and watch Harrow's face do something worth watching. He says nothing. This is the part he has not worked out.

In the yard, he drew a line, and he meant it, and it is as true now as it was then and will be tomorrow. But a line drawn is a line with two sides, and he finds he does not know, exactly, where it runs—not from Hunter's side, and worse, not from his own. He set the terms himself: reach past here, and there is nothing left between them but blood. He had meant the king's reach. It had not occurred to him, until after, that terms cut both ways, and that Ilya has, himself, never encountered a line he hasn't crossed, deliberately or otherwise.

So: if he speaks now, unasked, out of turn—is that counsel, or him drifting toward the line? He cannot tell. He’s never been able to tell. So, he folds his arms and keeps the four sentences behind his teeth and does not let himself decide whether that is wisdom, or caution, or the third, worse thing.

Beside him, Cliff makes a small sound. Not a laugh. Worse—a scoff. The room turns. Cliff looks up with the open, easy face that has half the keep convinced he is harmless.

"Sorry," he says, not sorry at all.

Good grief. If Ilya is bad at reading lines, there is nothing at all to be said for Cliff, who does not believe lines exist, and who ambles straight out across the ground Ilya has spent the last quarter-hour at the edge of. Ilya could, still, kill him.

Hunter looks at him. "Marlowe."

"Your Majesty."

"If you have something useful, say it."

There is nothing warm in it. No favour, no attempt to make Cliff safe by making him beloved—the same command Hunter would give Bennet, or Vaughan, or a stablemaster reporting lame horses. The pleasantness goes out of Cliff's face by one careful inch, and under it is the man Ilya first met seven years ago: dusty, handsome, too casual with danger, and alive, which means there is a brain behind the pretty brown eyes.

"That is not Rydal work," Cliff says. Harrow stares at him; several men shift in their chairs, because everyone enjoys a charming foreigner until he develops opinions. Cliff leans over the map and sets two fingers south of the ford. "Rydal men don't come down this way in Goldmonth unless they've lost a war, their minds, or a bet. The north approach looks short on a map. On the ground, it is bog, thorn, and two miles of horse-killing, soul-crushing mud before the rise. If they came from Rydal, they'd cut along the old stone line and cross above the ford—faster, drier, better cover."

Harrow colours. "You speak very confidently for a man no one has asked to command."

Ilya snorts. He does not mean to. Everyone looks at him; he casts a glance Hunter's way, and when no rebuke comes, shrugs. Very well.

"Marlowe was born west of your west," he says. "He forgot more about the border by twelve than most of you will know before death. A low bar, granted, but a useful one. Doubt him at your own expense."

Cliff beams at him. Ilya points at him. "You are not forgiven, do not smile at me."

Cliff looks back at the map, still smiling.

"It bears a Rydal stamp," Harrow says.

Heavens wept. Ilya is almost embarrassed for him.

"Rydal smelts the best iron on the continent," Cliff says, managing to sound engaged rather than as though he is laughing inside, which he is. "Show that buckle to anyone with Hollander blood, and they'll laugh at you or spit in your eye, depending on their breeding."

"Suddenly, the hedge knight is an expert in Rydal steel—"

"Enough." Hunter does not raise his voice. "Marlowe. Your guess."

Cliff hums and straightens a little. He looks no less like a man slumming it in some roadside inn, but the attempt is made. "Faction politics."

That quiets the room properly.

"Inside Rydal?" Vaughan asks.

Heavens wept. Ilya, for a moment, tries to imagine what would happen if a fraction in Rydal were unwise enough to pull this nonsense on the Hollander Queen. Rivers would run red, the skies would be choked with ash.

"Calligo, looks like.”

Harrow’s brows draw together. “You just said it was not Calligo.”

“I said it was not the throne, and I meant it. It stinks of someone trying to cause trouble for the Hawk court.” At Harrow’s scoff, Cliff widens his eyes, beams, throws in a nod, the wretched fool. “But certainly, you could always accuse whichever Towen psychopath sits on the throne right now. Jorvan, is it? That should go beautifully for everyone. He was unsettling when he was six.”

Several eyebrows rise. Ilya looks down at the map, keeps his mouth still. He had met Jorvan Towen when the older boy had just ascended to his throne, and always felt blessed he hadn't had to, since. Calligo generally keeps its violence turned inward, thank God. The world is not ready for that much frothing madness hammering out a foreign policy.

Hunter says, “Your guess, Marlowe. Not your opinion of the throne.”

“They are related.”

“Succinctly.”

Cliff considers the map. “Someone wants Aderra looking west and angry. Not angry enough for war; this is all small potatoes still. Just angry enough to send a rude letter, which the throne will answer with insult, because the Hawk court answers most things with insult. Then someone near it can say: see, Aderra was never a friend, trade makes us weak, whatever song they're singing this season."

"A faction," Vaughan says.

"Or a lordling with friends in the horse markets and too many ideas." Cliff flicks his fingers. "The first trail is for you—Rydal buckle in the mud, obvious bait. The second points west: horses no steppe rider would kill, goods that break up and sell quiet through the markets, just enough stink to make a man proud of finding it."

"A false trail behind a false trail," Murdock says.

“As I said, this is small potatoes for Calligo scheming, so I’m guessing someone just wanted to ruin the King’s month.”

Harrow says, "This is nothing but speculation."

"Yes." For a moment, Cliff lets the affable-idiot performance tighten—only a moment, because it is mostly true; he is affable and an idiot to the marrow, it is simply not all he is. He spreads his hands. "Who do you think I am? I'm not a magistrate, or a landed lord, or a witness to the events. I am not even especially sober. I was asked for a guess. If you require proof, send riders. If you want certainty, wait until the men who did this do it again, better."

In the shocked silence—it won’t keep; it never does—Hunter's gaze comes to Ilya. "Do you agree?"

And there is the answer to the thing he could not read. Not a look to be decoded after all—a question, put plainly, in front of all of them, as though the yard had happened and changed nothing it was not meant to change. The king is still asking him what he thinks.

Ilya means to make him wait.

"Yes," he says, at once.

Hunter nods and turns back to the map.

The plan takes shape quickly after that: a visible patrol north, quiet riders south-west, dogs along the pine line. A message to the lower ford, phrased blandly enough that any leak will carry the wrong confidence. Market watchers at Ormster and the west grain sheds, a careful inquiry toward Calligo through trade channels rather than court ones. No accusation against Rydal, none against the Hawk throne—none at all, until there is something better than a theatrical buckle and nine missing horses.

When the council ends, chairs scrape back, and men gather papers. Harrow leaves first, which shows excellent instinct for a man otherwise committed to wrongness. Murdock pauses near Cliff to ask about the old Calligo roads, because old men are a plague. Vaughan collects three maps and somehow acquires Cliff's opinion on fodder prices before he reaches the door.

Hunter does not hold Ilya back. Ilya looks at him once across the table, and Hunter looks back, and Ilya turns away first. A tactical error; not fatal.

In the corridor, Cliff falls in on his left, and Bennet, by some unfortunate coincidence, on his right. It is not an escort. It is not anything. The corridor is narrow, the rain loud in the gutters, and from the kitchens comes the smell of onions and broth and bread and some Aderran herb Ilya has started to tolerate under duress. Cliff bumps his shoulder once. Ilya sighs and returns the favour by digging the sharpest point of his elbow into his ribs.

Highsun, seventh month, 1148

By the seventh month, Ilya is sleeping.

Not well. Not always. But enough that he strings together several hours, sometimes, and stops sleeping with a knife under his pillow entirely. It’s wholly unnecessary, with Cliff there, in his bed, snoring away, the weight of him both familiar and relaxing. There aren’t many things in the castle that two of them couldn’t fight off, at least for a little while.

It caused some scandal, but Aderrani are even more lax about such things than Ilya’s people are. What scandal there is doesn’t stem from the fact they’re both men–or that anyone was brave enough to bed the feral Bear prince—but, amusingly, that the Bear prince entertained the attentions of a foreign, lowborn soldier. A foreign lowborn soldier who was sworn to him, no less.

Hilarious stuff, honestly. Cliff certainly thought so. Back home, the only thing that saved them was precisely the fact that Cliff was a soldier under his command and therefore the narrative could be spun around bonds of brotherhood and battle passions and such nonsense. It’s delightful to see it reversed here, for all that no actual sex is happening and that Cliff sleeps in his bed for the simple reason that Ilya gets neurotic when he’s stressed, and that one of the only reliable ways of getting him to sleep is to lie bodily on top of him until he stops squirming.

Mara, for one, has long since become accustomed to the sight of them in bed, Ilya most of the way buried under Cliff’s bulk. If anything, the fact that this meant that Ilya was still abed when she came in with breakfast, and not fully dressed, wide-eyed and twitchy, was the only shocking thing in her mind.

“Good morning,” she says now, bustling in with an unusually large, straw basket—between the two of them, they eat for five, especially now that Ilya is getting proper workouts in on the regular. “And what a morning it is, my lords—the sun is out, clouds have left—a true marvel. To that end, I have taken the liberty of packing your meal in wax paper. Captain Marlowe, you will be pleased to know that Aby made the pork buns you like—”

She continues chattering on as she bustles through the room, leaving the hamper on the table and doing some absent tidying while she’s at it.

“You don’t have to do that,” Ilya grumbles, digging an elbow into Cliff’s side so the lump will let him up. Cliff whines, but rolls away, still stubbornly refusing to wake. “We can look after our clothes.”

“It is no matter, my lord,” she says, quick hands somehow not coming across as hurried, and yet already their shirts are shaken out and hung across the wooden stands the Aderrani use to hang their clothes on. “What is, however, important is the state of your wardrobe. I know for a fact that Garrick has been hounding you to try the coats he has made for you—”

Highsun, seventh month, 1148

Cliff's arrival changes, among other things, how Ilya trains. Among Hunter's men—Carter too, and Bennet when he can spare an hour—Ilya has taken on their cleaner habits, their tidy forms. Cliff undoes all of it inside a week. He fights dirty and laughs when Ilya scowls and complains about his methods, and bemoans how the Aderrans have ruined him in a handful of months. Inevitably, their bouts run long, and the long bouts turn into scuffles, and the scuffles turn into Ilya doing his even best to strangle him. 

Wrestling in the mud has, unfortunately, always been common for them.

This particular time, Cliff stuffs a mouse down the back of his shirt while his back is turned—where he found the creature is best left unexamined—and Ilya shrieks, claws at his own collar, almost strangles himself with how fast he’s trying to take the shirt off. Unfortunately, the rodent, as desperate to escape as Ilya is to get it off of him, burrows and burrows fast. His inner shirt follows the outer, and Ilya is halfway to stripping off his trousers right there in the yard before the harried critter finally wiggles down the leg of his pants, up his boot and bolts. By then, Cliff is flat on the ground, weeping with laughter. Ilya gets dressed enough to be decent and lunges.

Ordinarily, he can pin Cliff only when he allows it. The fool is taller, heavier, and better trained in the kind of fighting that keeps no rules—and what Ilya knows of weaponless combat, he learned from him to begin with. But Cliff is bent double and wheezing, no use to himself, and Ilya takes him down into the mud before he can find his feet. He does not find them after, either. Ilya gets him on his back, one forearm across his throat, and he’s still laughing.

"Mercy," Cliff wheezes.

"No."

"Diplomatic incident."

"Good."

"Your king will be cross."

"He is not my king."

Cliff's grin is a flash of white in the mud. "Sure."

Ilya pushes his face into the dirt.

The yard is laughing—whistles, jeers, a sound so familiar it barely lands. He has spent most of his life in yards like this one, with men like these, whenever there was no field to be on. On a field, there is no laughing, only the mud.

Cliff rolls them without much trouble and, instead of pinning him, works one cold, wet hand up under his tunic. Ilya hisses and bucks—he will be feeling ghostly impression of the mouse’s frantic claws for months yet, he can already tell—and rolls them again, scoops a fistful of mud, swings —

Needless to say, the onlookers remain entertained, and Ilya loses track of where he is. In the end, he remembers the laughter only because it stops.

Hunter stands at the edge of the yard.

Ilya has not seen him arrive. He is in council black, papers under one arm, Carter at his shoulder. His gaze goes to Cliff, sprawled and cackling, then to Ilya—soaked, on top of him—then to Bennet, red-faced and wheezing. Then back.

Right–Should he get up? Greet him? How could he—

He stops and frowns, mind blank. Why would he greet him? He doesn’t greet the king. He has never greeted the king. Why would he start now, barely dressed, caked in mud, sitting on top of another man?

Hunter lifts a brow. Ilya gets off Cliff and stands, too fast; he barely manages to prevent tripping, feet unsteady in boots as filled with mud as the rest of him.

"When you've finished murdering your household," Hunter says, "I have a use for you in the council chamber."

"Yes, Majesty," Cliff says, from the ground.

Ilya says nothing. If he opens his mouth, something regrettable will come out.

Hunter looks at him a moment longer than he needs to, then turns and goes inside.

Ilya watches the doorway for a while after he is gone.

Cliff props himself on an elbow. "Subtle."

"I will kill you."

"You wish."

Ilya kicks mud over him and follows the king inside.

Harvestide, eighth month, 1148

The second time Ilya asks Hunter to spar, he does it properly.

The day has been good to him. He slept well and woke rested. Mara's sister came by the night before with a charm from the markets at Redmere—the kind hung over a child's bed at home, cheap wire and glass beads strung to clatter and scatter bad dreams. It is nothing, but a Veyran made it, and when he stirs in the night, the faint clicking of it is exactly the sound it should be. Things only get better from there.

The yard is full. Late summer, cool air, hard light. Men drilling in pairs. Carter and Bennet arguing over whether you can call it dishonourable to set a spear formation where you know the enemy won't see it coming. Cliff sits on the fence eating a fruit pastry straight from the tin he stole from the kitchens, loudly denying the theft to anyone who brings it up.

Hunter trains with two guards and puts both down without ceremony. It’s, frankly, embarrassing for everyone involved. Ilya waits until he is finished, then steps into the ring.

Hunter turns.

"Again?" Ilya says.

Hunter looks him over the way he did months ago—weight, balance, breath, the whole of him measured and filed away. It is entirely impersonal. Ilya should not be buzzing from it.

"Well?"

Hunter holds out a hand. Carter tosses him a practice sword: steel this time, not wood, blunted along the edge. Match for Ilya’s. Ilya's blood goes bright. They salute.

This time, Hunter does not take him apart in twenty seconds. This time, Ilya knows his weight. He knows Hunter invites attack and punishes the man stupid enough to take it; knows the reach, the wall of the shoulders, the way he turns defence into pressure until his opponent finds he has been backing up far longer than he realised, and that there is nothing left behind him. He knows the small favouring of the left knee after a long sequence, the old trouble in the wrist, that Hunter loses patience when a man keeps refusing the obvious bait.

It helps. Not enough, but he takes what he can get.

The bout lasts long enough that the yard goes from amused to quiet to intent. Long enough that something in Hunter turns all the way toward him. Ilya feels it arrive—the king's attention, the whole of it, settling on him and no one else. It is not the cool measuring from before. Ilya knows better than to look at it head-on; he keeps his eyes on the sword.

Hunter presses; Ilya yields, carefully. Hunter's blade comes down. Ilya turns it, steps in, almost gets under his guard—

Almost. Hunter hooks his ankle and puts him in the dirt again—

No. Focus. Who cares? Not Ilya—because this time he keeps the sword, and nothing is over while the blade is in your hand. He lands hard enough to jar his teeth, rolls, comes up on one knee with the point raised. The crowd groans, loud and shameless.

Ilya grins. It is probably a terrible thing to see. He feels it across his whole face, unfamiliar and sharp and not at all civilised.

Hunter looks at him, makes a low sound in his throat, and raises his sword again. It is not a second bout—Ilya did not really lose the first—but there is enough of a break between them that it might count for one. That suits Ilya just fine, because then he can wheedle a third out of best-of-three.

The plan dies because he is pleased, and pride ruins footwork. Hunter disarms him inside a minute and gives him a look so dry that Ilya wants to hunch away from it and grin at it in the same breath.

"Again?" Ilya says, from the dirt. Worth a try.

"No."

"I am not tired."

"I am."

It is plainly untrue. Hunter turns away regardless.

Then, three steps off, without looking back: "Tomorrow."

Ilya stays where he is for a moment.

Cliff says, "Oh, that was fantastic."

Ilya's breath hitches—and then he is lunging, scrabbling to get the fool in a headlock before he can make peace with losing the pastry tin.

Mistmonth, eleventh month, 1148 

Cliff leaves seven weeks later, having had word that Svetlana and Sasha are moving. Not that surprising. Svetlana has three seats of power, and all three have turned dangerous at once. There is the capital, no place to be now that Ilya is away. There is her family keep, fraught because her father and Grigori were inseparable in their youth. Finally, there is Sasha's keep, dangerous in its own way: the Orlovs are a nest of mad vipers, only part of the union on a technicality. Sasha's mother pays no tithes to Grigori, and no one has raised it in Ilya's lifetime. The Orlovs may have simply forgotten they are subjects at all. Svetlana could survive any one of the three, but is far too clever to sit still in any one for too long.

“If I don’t hear from you once per month, I will come right back here,” Cliff says. “And this time I’ll bring the two terrors with me.”

Wow. Ilya tries not to imagine what Svetlana and Sasha would do to Hunter’s more or less peaceful, idyllic little kingdom. Something terrible, no doubt.

“I will send letters to the meeting place.” Meaning the old chapel on Karskaya; they’ll probably get it to them somehow. “Stay out of trouble.”

Cliff, true to form, just about dies laughing, then swings him up and into a circle like Ilya is some blushing bride about to be carried across the porch.

“To live long enough to be lectured on safety by Ilya Rozanov. What a time to be alive.” He puts him down eventually, encouraged to do so by Ilya’s knee digging into his ribs. “Be well. Give Hunter as much grief as you can; it’s probably good for him. His people are far too lenient.”

“Now that, I can do.”

Mistmonth, eleventh month, 1148 

The room is very quiet without Cliff in it.

This is absurd. Cliff has been gone a day, not nearly long enough for the room to forget him. His blankets are still bunched at the foot of Ilya's bed, kicked off in the night because he runs hot, before he steals Ilya's instead. There are boot marks by the hearth. The apple he stole yesterday and never finished sits on the table, one bite gone, browning.

Ilya stands in the doorway and considers setting fire to all of it. Then he takes his sword and goes down to the lower yard.

It is emptying for the evening. A few guards stay by the wall, speaking low. Someone has left training staves in a rack. The air smells of dust and horse and old rain baked out of the stone. Ilya takes a practice blade and runs the first form so sharply his shoulder protests by the third turn.

Good.

By the seventh repetition, his breath has gone thin and bright. By the ninth, his fingers are numb. By the eleventh, the people remaining in the yard have stopped pretending not to watch him.

"Enough," Hunter says.

Ilya turns.

The king stands under the arch, coat unfastened, crownless, ink on the side of his thumb. He looks as if he has come from work and will go back to it shortly—as if he has taken the time out of his day to settle the maniac in his yard. Ilya hates that too.

"I am training," he says.

"You're not."

Ilya turns back and lifts the practice blade.

"Prince Rozanov."

"No."

A silence follows. The guards by the wall discover, all at once, that the far side of the yard urgently requires inspection.

Hunter crosses the yard. He does not hurry—he never hurries, which is one of his worst traits. A man in a hurry can be disrupted; Hunter simply arrives, and that is harder to forgive.

"I said enough," he says.

Ilya has several excellent replies about what Hunter can do with his commands. But his grip on the sword has been too tight too long, and now it slides, and the callus tears straight down. A hiss escapes him—for no reason at all. He has been whipped and laughed through it. And now this.

Hunter's hand closes on his wrist.

"Show me."

"No."

"Then give me the sword."

"No."

"Those are your two options."

Ilya looks at him. Hunter looks back.

There is no kindness in it. That is what decides it, probably. Kindness can be refused; pity can be cut down. Hunter offers a narrow road and waits, certain Ilya will take it because every other way has been removed.

Ilya lets the wooden sword drop, turns his palm over, lets it open. Hunter's grip changes—firm enough to keep, not hard enough to bruise—and turns the palm toward the light. Blood has welled bright along the callus. It is a stupid little injury. Nothing. Less than nothing.

Hunter looks at it as if it matters

"Vale will be tiresome about this," he says.

His thumb shifts once beside the torn skin. Not over it. Beside it. The touch is brief enough to deny and too precise to mistake. Ilya stops breathing.

Hunter releases him.

"Tomorrow morning," Hunter says, "you are in council."

"I am always in council."

"You are in council beside me."

Ilya blinks.

"You have ministers."

"I have you."

Ilya looks down at his own hand. Blood has gathered in the lines of his palm, neat and red and accusatory.

"You think I cannot bear an empty room."

"I think you can bear nearly anything," Hunter says.

Ilya's throat does something strange. The yard is very quiet now; even the horses seem to have reconsidered making noise.

Hunter steps back. "Vale first. Then food. Then sleep."

"Commands?"

"Yes."

"You are enjoying yourself."

"Not especially."

"Liar."

At that, Hunter almost smiles. Then he turns toward the arch. "Come."

Ilya stays where he is long enough to signal that he is not, suddenly, awash with obedience, then follows. It is not surrender if one has decided, tactically, that the road is useful.

Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1148

By the start of Frostmonth, the keep has made an error. It has grown used to him.

This is foolish. He remains dangerous. He could still kill a dozen men before anyone stopped him if he chose the room well. He knows which stair Carter takes when he is late, which window Bennet’s bed is visible from, that Lord Harrow’s guard changes at dusk. He knows every step the king makes, every shade of his expressions, every food he enjoys, every drink he does not.

He also knows Mara’s brother is courting the butcher’s daughter in the lower city and making a poor job of it. He knows Carter drinks too much tea and sleeps too little. He knows Lord Murdock’s knee aches before storms. He knows Bennet likes apples only if they’re fried into oblivion and baked into a pastry. He knows Hunter has a small scar below the line of his jaw that disappears when he turns his head and appears again in lamplight, like a secret badly kept.

The keep has grown used to him, and he to the keep. This is tactically unfortunate. It means there are too many people whose deaths would now inconvenience him—and vice versa.

He is in the map room, working out what on earth Towen-king was thinking when he suggested they alter the trade routes between Adermere and Ramsfen, when a bell rings from the lower gate.

He jerks. Not the noon bell, not the meal bell, not fire.

Hunter looks up.

So does Bennet, Murdock and every man in the room who has lived through war and hears it coming.

A second bell, then boots in the corridor. Fast. Ilya is on his feet before he decides to stand.

Across the table, Hunter’s eyes meet his. For one second, nothing in the room moves. Then the door opens, and a courier comes in, white-faced, mud to the waist, sea salt still dried on one side of his cloak.

“Majesty,” he says.

Ilya looks at the courier’s face and knows, before he speaks, that his father has found the edge of the peace at last.

He is not surprised. The most shocking thing about the peace is that it lasted as long as it did.

“Eastmere Fort is taken.”

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

Frostmonth, twelfth month, 1148

A sound moves through the room. Not loud. Worse.

Hunter says, “Taken by whom?”

The courier shakes his head. “No banners, sire.”

Carter’s mouth tightens.

“No banners,” Hunter repeats.

“No, sire. But ships out of the north-east shoals. Black hulls. Iron prows. They came in before the dawn fog lifted. Hit Eastmere first, then down the coast. Grain ships burned in the lower harbour. Three villages fired. Harth, Little Henning, and Saint Orlan’s.”

Murdock makes a small noise through his teeth.

Bennet looks down.

Ilya is still looking at the map, for some reason. He doesn’t need it; he could sleepwalk to those villages. A year is nowhere near enough to forget—And, somehow, he is not there anymore, not in that horrible council chamber that he’s stupidly got used to. He’s—It’s just over a year, isn’t it? A year since he’s been marched down the coastline, since he’s watched nature heal and been reassured by it. Was comforted by the worst being behind these good people. By them moving on, living with God’s grace, living happy lives. And now—

The only reason anyone would hit Eastmere, let alone her scattered villages, was to cause pain. Eastmere has little strategic value, no military garrisons to speak of, no noble sons or daughters whom you could take captive. Harth is a fishing village; Little Henning holds salt stores. Saint Orlan’s is nothing. A shrine, twelve houses, one road inland. It’s nothing—

“How many dead?” Hunter asks.

The courier swallows. “Fort garrison, most of it. Harth unknown. Little Henning, thirty counted when I rode. Saint Orlan’s—”

He stops. Hunter lifts his head.

The courier looks very young suddenly. “No survivors, sire. They—The chapel burned with them inside.”

Someone says, “God.”

No one says anything after that. What is there to say? Ilya wonders, briefly—who did they get to do it? It wouldn’t have been easy. Every man who served under him would riot if he suggested it. Seb would tie his hands behind his back, an anchor to his waist, and make him jump into the sea. It would have to be someone else.

Volkov, probably. He’s got the pedigree; he’s got the sway. Ilya can just about imagine the bloodthirsty wretch jumping at the chance to be the commander of the forces, now that Ilya—And without Svetlana in the capital to keep House Volkov under control—

Never mind that. It doesn’t matter—well, not to you. Not now. Not anymore. He looks around, gathers himself, meets the blank, shocked eyes of every lord present. Everyone but Hunter; he can give himself this, he can give himself a couple of seconds of peace before—Before he learns the truth. Before he learns just what Hunter thinks of this barbarism. Would he be—upset? By the war, obviously; a man like Hunter would be enraged by this pointless misery. But—Surely, he would be at least a little dismayed that Ilya’s stay has come to an end? Irritated? Maybe he will—Would he say something? He’s not one for words, but maybe they could part in something like friendship—

Ilya finds, suddenly, that he is, entirely, wholly, bodily exhausted. How embarrassing. Shouldn't he be—angry? Afraid, at least? He's going to die very soon. Shouldn't he feel something other than this grey press, this great tidewater calm? How pathetic. He can't summon so much as a scramble under the ribs. Instead, there is only the weight, vast and almost tender in its familiarity. There you are, it says. Did you think I'd forgotten you?

Hunter says, “What about Eastmere? Survivors?”

“Some. They’re moving inland. Captain Barrows is dead. His lieutenant sent me. They think the raiders will turn north before full tide.”

“They think?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Did they loot?”

“Not much, I understand. They burned more.”

Carter says, “Our ships?”

“Three grain ships lost in harbour. Two missing. One damaged but afloat.”

“Prisoners?” Bennet asks.

The courier looks at him, then at Hunter. “A couple of men were taken from Eastmere. And—” He pauses, closes his eyes, opens them. “Children were taken from Harth.”

Not Volkov, then. Volkov doesn’t take prisoners, not even for Grigori. It’s why the command ended up in Ilya’s hands to begin with. Volkov does only the one thing with people, which is to butcher them. Someone—more biddable. The Obolensky heir—Ivan, was it?—has been chomping at the bit for some more power. Ilya knew him as a pretty decent sort, if a little spineless, a little desperate for validation. But maybe—

Lord Harrow, true to form, is the first one to speak the obvious thing out loud. Ilya is, for one strange moment, entirely grateful. Someone had to say it, and it’s some type of mercy that it didn’t have to be Ilya.

“This is a breach,” Harrow says.

Vaughan gives him a look. “Thank you for this stunning martial analysis, my lord.”

Harrow ignores him. His eyes stay on Ilya. "A breach of the Greywater Peace."

Ilya meets his eyes straight; it's not him who is looking away. And Harrow does look away, in the end—though not before Ilya sees the thing sitting under the grief, badly hidden, almost shy. Vindication. Satisfaction. He would be the type; there are always some who will find genuine pleasure in being proven right, even if the proof was delivered via charred corpses.

“Carter,” Hunter says. Ilya keeps steady. “Riders to the eastern road. Grain from the western stores moved before sunset. Murdock, letters to the coast lords. I want levies accounted for, not promised. Bennet, find me ships that can catch a shoal-raider and captains who understand that glory makes poor ballast.”

Bennet is already moving. “Yes, sire.”

“Harrow.” Lord Harrow straightens, as if expecting a command and arranging himself around its importance. Hunter looks at him at last. “Be quiet until you can be useful.”

Right. You’ve had your mercy, Rozanov. Now be a man. He inhales a long breath and looks up. Hunter—isn’t looking at him. He is staring down Harrow, in fact, face gone still and impenetrable.

Harrow goes red. “Majesty—”

“Quiet.”

Harrow shuts his mouth. Ilya should enjoy this; he does not. There is, quite frankly, very little to enjoy.

Hunter still hasn’t looked his way.

“Eat, then sleep,” he says to the courier. “Carter will take your report in order.”

The courier bows badly. He is shaking now that he has stopped being a message and has to be himself again. Has to be a man who witnessed god knows what and knows, like every man here knows, that the horrors have just begun. Someone takes him by the arm and leads him out.

Only then does Hunter look at Ilya.

The look is brief.

Not cold or kind. Not even angry. It passes over him the way a hand passes over a blade, acknowledging. Then it is gone. Ilya feels, suddenly, like he might throw up. It’s buried all too soon under the grey haze, luckily.

“Council in the great hall at the second bell,” Hunter says. “Everyone. Every useful man who can walk, I want them there. If they can’t, carry them.”

The room breaks open into motion. Ilya stands still for a long moment, disoriented but—But maybe nothing needs to be said? Maybe everything that needed to be said has been said already, then put to paper, signed and sealed. Maybe all that’s left is—The execution. Hah.

Ilya turns and walks out.

He dresses in Veyran black.

The coat is one of the few things from home he had kept. Black wool, high collar, gold hooks gone dull with sea air. Prince’s cut, military severity. Someone—Mara, it had to have been Mara—had it expertly cleaned and repaired. It’s neat, now, downright presentable. No jewels or sash or anything like that, thank God, but appropriate for a general.

He combs his hair and ties it back. Washes his hands, though there is no blood on them. Takes the knife from his belt and lays it on the table. The second knife, one that Hunter left for him all those months ago. The little blade hidden in the boot. Then the pin from his sleeve. Then, after a moment, the long, sharp needle Mistress Vale had sewn into the hem of his spare cloak without asking and without mentioning it, because every woman over fifty in Aderra appears to be made of treason and nagging.

The collection on the table looks—His first instinct is to say pathetic, but that’s not true. It’s a magpie collection of trinkets, of courtesies paid where no courtesy was needed. It’s beautiful.

Mara is in the corridor with a basket of linen and an expression that says she has been standing there for some time, inventing reasons not to leave. Her eyes are wet.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

“No,” Ilya says.

She clamps her mouth shut.

“Good. Better.”

She does not move.

He looks at the basket. “Did you grab the first thing you could carry?”

Her chin lifts. “Mistress Vale said to make sure you ate.”

She certainly hadn’t said anything of the sort, because he knows for a fact Mistress Vale isn’t in the keep; she’s bullying people at her niece’s wedding.

“Did she?”

“She said to tell you dead men are tricky to treat.”

He should not smile. Mara’s face crumples for half a second and then repairs itself with visible effort. “My lord.”

“Do not call me that if you are going to cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she says, and then, horrifyingly, shoves a wrapped piece of bread and cheese at him. “Take it.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“I am not bringing a snack to my execution.”

That was too much. He looks away, tries to focus. Mara, to her credit, keeps it together, just inhales a sharp breath, strangled and hoarse.

“Please.”

He takes the bread. The sooner she leaves, the better it will be for them both. It’s dangerous to cry over a symbol of treachery. Best nobody sees her like this. Best she leaves, finds a quiet corner to compose herself.

“There,” he says. “Now leave. Go—Go to your brother. You don’t need to be here for this.”

She nods once. Bites her lip, hesitates, but steps back.

He walks past her.

The corridor is not empty. Of course it is not. The keep is a living thing; it knows what’s happening. Guards, servants, pages, old women with keys, men with messages no one is reading: they have all found reasons to occupy doorways and stair landings and stretches of wall.

They look at him. He doesn’t have it in him to look back; whatever is there won’t help.

Bennet is at the foot of the main stair. He’s standing ramrod straight, except for his right arm, which healed a little crooked. With how relaxed the man typically is, you don’t notice it. It’s visible now.

“Move.”

Bennet exhales. Then he does. “I’ll be there,” he says.

“I did not ask.” He wouldn’t.

“No,” Bennet says. “You didn’t.”

Vaughan is in the lower hall and neither approaches nor looks away; he stands grim and still and lets Ilya see that the friendship is real and that it is not, this morning, the thing that matters, which is the most honest courtesy anyone has paid him all year. Old Murdock looks at Ilya the way you look at a hurricane coming for a house you love. When he passes, they come with, walking in front of him with an almost ceremonial air. And the others—the old-blood lords, the ones who have wanted their soldier-king gone since the day he put on a crown that was not his—the others are already moving, already low-voiced in the corners, and Ilya can read the shape of what they are saying without hearing a word of it, because it is the only sensible thing to say: the oath is clear, the surety is forfeit, the people are owed, and the king who spared the Bear prince has just watched that mercy come home in smoke. They are not wrong. By every law, they are simply, flatly correct.

The great hall is full. That’s good. This is not a spectacle, but it does require witnesses, men to see the debt paid and know it to be a debt paid and not some dull act of revenge.

Hunter stands where he would usually sit, in dark wool, sword at his hip, Vaughan on one side and Murdock on the other. The old banners hang still in the rafters. House flags. War flags. Aderran blue and red. The recovered banner from Eastmere Fort is not present; appropriate. There is little sense in indulging in morbidity.

The court turns as Ilya enters. Hunter sees Ilya and goes very still.

It is the black coat, perhaps. Or the empty belt. Or simply that Hunter is not stupid and knows that an unpleasant task must be done.

Ilya walks the length of the hall and stops at the proper distance. Not too close. Not far enough to make anyone work to hear. He does not kneel. A man does not kneel to pay a debt. A man stands and lets the blade find him.

Ilya inclines his head. “The peace is broken.”

“Yes,” Hunter says.

“I am here.”

A ripple moves through the hall.

Hunter’s eyes narrow. “For what?”

Ilya looks at him, comfortably steady in the grey. Does he want it said for the court? Fair enough. Kings like things being said properly, in the correct order.

“The surety answers.”

Lord Harrow says, too quickly, “Yes.”

Hunter’s head turns.

Ilya resists the urge to close his eyes and sigh. Harrow should have more sense. Why is he delaying things? Can’t he do this one thing right?

“The Greywater Peace was sworn in blood and stone,” Harrow says, having evidently mistaken the brief silence for friendly ground. “The surety clause is clear. Veyr’s betrayal requires answer.”

Hunter’s expression does not change. Ilya feels, distantly, a little sorry for Harrow. He has no sense, not a lick. Appropriate or not, Ilya has made—acquaintances with some people here. He will pay his dues, yes, but it’s tasteless to relish it. It’s only serving to show you as unstable, bloodthirsty. Vaughan, for one, doesn’t appreciate it. He’s looking at Harrow as if he’s already drafting his obituary.

Hunter says, “I did not ask you.”

Harrow colours. “Majesty, the law is clear and demands—”

“I am the law.” Hunter looks back at Ilya. “Say what you came to say,” he says.

That’s one way of going about things.

He says, “I am forfeit.”

Hunter’s jaw works once. For once, he’s easy to read—but anger is easy to spot in any man, and Hunter is, for once, furious. Ilya, who hadn’t ever seen him more than distantly irritated, stares, drinks it in. It’s not the red, self-indulgent rage Grigori lived in. Hunter’s anger is colder and far less decorative. It comes into the room like winter coming at an old wall and begins looking for the weak places.

“You think,” Hunter says slowly, “that I am going to kill you.”

Is he supposed to reply? He inclines his head, just in case.

Hunter steps forward. “You think,” Hunter says, each word spoken with the type of precision that speaks of great care, “that I will repair what your father destroyed by cutting the throat of a man who has been eating at my table for a year?”

Now, Ilya loses the battle and feels his eyebrows arching. It’s probably a disrespectful expression, inappropriate for such a bleak occasion, but he can’t stop it. Repair? When has any of this been about repair?

“The surety answers,” Ilya says again.

Hunter has a strange gift, a strange ability to appear bigger or smaller by design. Well—he says smaller, he never looks small, but—But the bulk of him this morning is different from the threat of it right now. He looks—folkloric.

“The surety answers, yes. The surety answers to me.”

“Yes.”

“To me,” Hunter says, and now the anger has an edge on it. “Not to Lord Harrow. Not to the court. Not to the council. Not to your father. Not even to yourself, however determined you are to drag yourself to the block.”

Hunter comes another step closer.

“You are not bound to die,” he says. “You are bound to me.”

Ilya stands, head empty. It’s—Whatever is happening, he can’t place it. To me, Hunter-king says. You are bound to me. Isn’t—Shouldn’t this enrage him? Isn’t this precisely the moment where he spits something back, gives back poison for poison? Is—Is there something wrong with him, that he can’t find a trace of humiliation? That he can’t find a trace of fear? Well, probably; probably he should be ashamed of that, and everything else. He should be near blind with the shame of it all.

It’s true, though. That’s what’s tripping him up. How can he be ashamed of the truth? Ilya is Hunter’s. Whatever they had negotiated, whatever words they had written down and signed and stamped—None of that matters. Ilya is Hunter’s; he knew it a year ago, and he knows it now.

This is probably madness. Fairly earned, if so. It’s been a strange year.

Hunter does not soften. If anything, his face grows harder.

“The treaty gave me authority over your person,” Hunter says, voice carrying to every corner of the hall. “That was the price Veyr paid when it sent you here. Your custody is mine. Your punishment is mine. Your release is mine. Your road, your rooms, your guard, your bread, your blood. Mine.”

Ilya’s breath is even, somehow. His heart isn’t racing. Well, it’s Hunter’s heart now, reportedly. Heavens wept.

“I can lock you in the south tower until your hair goes white. I can send you to the coast under guard. I can put you on the council. I can send you through the gate with enough coin to make a new name. I can chain you in my dungeons, I can have you whipped, I can hang you in my courtyard for all to see, if it pleases me.”

Silence.

“It does not.”

Lord Harrow says, “Majesty—”

Hunter turns on him so fast the old man actually steps back.

“You will keep your tongue behind your teeth, Lord Harrow, or you will lose it.”

He turns around, pretending he’s speaking to the room; that he’s not, in fact, speaking to Ilya and Ilya alone.

“I will have blood for Harth,” Hunter says. “I will have blood for Little Henning. I will have every child taken from that coast returned or accounted for. I will hang every man who burned Saint Orlan. But I will not kill my man because grief has made the rest of you stupid.”

Hunter looks back at him. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. Lies. He doesn’t, in fact, understand a single thing that’s happening.

Hunter’s mouth flattens.

“No,” he says. “You don’t. If you understood, you would not have tried to spend something that was not yours.”

Ilya’s frazzled mind stumbles again. He blinks. It’s not even pride that rankles, or basic self-respect. Even to himself, he sounds like he just wants clarification.

“My life is not mine?”

“No.”

A small, violent silence. Ilya’s head spins harder.

Hunter steps closer. The hall disappears a little.

“No,” Hunter says again, quieter now and worse for it. “Not under the treaty. Not under the law you keep throwing at my feet like a cat with a dead bird. You were handed to me, which makes you mine.”

Well—that’s certainly true. Ilya looks at Hunter and feels, with distant curiosity, something inside himself laugh.

Ilya says, “Then what will you do with me?”

It comes out softer than intended.

Something flickers in Hunter’s face that is not anger. Not pity, or sympathy. He has learned, apparently, not to waste that on Ilya where Ilya can see it. This is something rougher.

“What I have been doing,” Hunter says. “Letting you decide what use you mean to be.”

A laugh moves through Ilya before he can stop it. Short. Ugly. The hall does not like it. That is fair; he does not like it much either.

“Decide,” he says. “With your authority over my movements, blood and life.”

“Yes.”

“You do hear yourself?”

“Perfectly,” Hunter says.

Ilya closes his eyes, focuses on keeping still. Right.

Hunter turns then, not away from Ilya but enough to include the room again. “This matter is closed. The prince is not to be touched, threatened, challenged, trapped in a corridor, prayed over against his will, or otherwise made the stage on which any fool here performs his grief. If you have rage to spend, spend it on ships, stores, levies, or letters to men who can still bleed usefully. If you cannot manage that, go home and be useless in private.”

Lord Murdock says, “Majesty.”

Not objection. A note. There is still a kingdom to run.

Hunter nods once. “Council remains. Everyone else, out.”

The hall hesitates. Hunter looks up. The hall begins emptying with impressive speed.

Ilya stays where he is because his legs, which carried him very well to what he thought was his execution, are being peculiar about the return journey. Besides—he wasn’t told to go.

Within minutes, the hall has reduced itself to council, commanders, and the kind of people whose absence from bad news would become its own bad news. Carter Vaughan moves to the long table being set near the dais. Maps arrive. Ink. Dispatches. The recovered day puts its hands back around the throat of business and squeezes.

Hunter turns to Ilya.

“You can go,” he says.

Ilya looks at him.

Hunter’s mouth tightens again. “That was not a dismissal from life. It was a dismissal from the room.”

“I understood.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you want me gone?” He pauses, breathes through the pulsing behind his eyes. “Not just from the room.”

Hunter’s face stills.

It is good, maybe, that the hall is not full anymore. The men remaining have the sense to become suddenly fascinated by maps and boots and the invisible affairs of God. Carter Vaughan, who has no sense but a great deal of discretion, turns around and begins giving orders to a captain three feet away in a voice meant to fill ten feet of space.

Hunter says, “No.”

Ilya should leave it there. Naturally, he does not. “You did. You all but threw me out of the gates yourself.”

“Yes.”

“You were angry.”

Hunter exhales once through his nose. “I was disappointed that a half-starved, blood-soaked prince didn’t leave and make my life infinitely easier.”

Ilya says nothing. Yes, by taking Nastya. You mentioned that. I don't want you. Ilya remembers that vividly. 

The council table is nearly assembled. Men wait. The coast burns. Children are gone. Grigori, somewhere across the Greywater, is alive and pleased with himself.

Hunter says, “I will not ask you to fight Veyr.”

Ilya looks back.

“But you know the coast. You know his captains. You know what a man does when he wants outrage more than victory.”

Please. “I know a lot more than his captains,” he says. Snaps, really. “I know the coasts, the roads, the terrain. I know every keep, every cave, every nook and cranny.” And I won’t give you any of it. But— “I know where he will take the children.”

Hunter leans back, then takes a step back, then another. He wanders to the table where the maps are strewn.

“Do you,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

Will you. Ilya hates him. It is becoming an extraordinary hate. Ornate.

“If I tell you,” Ilya says, “men of Veyr die.”

“If you don’t, Aderran children do.”

Hunter does not soften the thing. Bless him for it, the insufferable prick.

“I will not lead men against my own,” Ilya says.

“No.”

“I will not plan an invasion of Veyr.”

“No.”

“I will not tell you how to starve the isles.”

Hunter’s eyes go flat. “I would not ask.”

Ilya flicks an impatient hand. “Don’t lie to me. You would, and you wouldn’t hesitate.”

A silence.

Hunter says, “Yes.”

Ilya breathes in. The air tastes like ash no one has yet smelled, but all of them imagine.

“What I can tell you,” he says, “is how to recover the prisoners.”

Hunter says nothing for one long second.

Then: “Sit down.”

Ilya sits. Men move around him. Vaughan brings a fresh map. Bennet comes to stand opposite him, face grim and grateful and smart enough not to say either. Lord Murdock lowers himself into a seat with care and watches Ilya as if he is no longer sure what story he is in.

Hunter stands across the table. The map is spread between them. Ilya puts one finger on the coast north of Eastmere.

“He will not take them to Sevren first,” he says. His own voice sounds normal. How irritating. “Too many eyes. They aren’t noble children, and House Voronin would love nothing more than to learn about it and spread the word of his shame. He will need time to establish a cover, a narrative. A way to make this into anything but what it is. He will hide them until he has that foundation.”

Hunter says, “Where?”

“The Outer Stones. Not all. Here.” He taps a black speck of land in the Greywater. “He wouldn’t dare come anywhere near Koldoy because the Orlovs don’t need much more than an excuse to set the capital on fire. Vragh is too public. Dym Rock has no fresh water. Lysh is too close to Svetlana. So. Moryn.”

Carter bends over the map. “There’s a fort?”

“There is a monastery.”

Carter looks up.

Ilya smiles without humour. “Yes. He likes his little jokes.”

“Defences?” Bennet asks.

“Monks of Moryn wouldn’t have cooperated; he likely had them removed. Presume it’s manned by soldiers.”

“How many?” Hunter asks.

“Fifty. Maybe eighty. Once he has his pieces in place, there will be more.”

"That makes no sense," Harrow says.

Ilya had not realised Harrow was still in the room. A pity.

"Don't be dull," Ilya says. "Grigori knows how little you know of the Stones—the outer Stones above all. There is precisely one Veyran who could have laid any of this out for you, and my father is quite certain you'd have had his head long since, or at least made very sure he'd no reason to open his mouth." A pause. "I expect he was enjoying that part."

Hunter looks at him.

Ilya looks back.

“Send no banners,” Ilya says. “No royal ships. No vengeance fleet. Send fishermen, smugglers, men who know how to sail, unlike the disgrace you call a navy. Approach at the second tide from the south-west. The rocks look worse on maps than they are. Your men go in quietly, take the children, take any prisoners alive if they can, and burn nothing unless they must.”

“Why burn nothing?” Vaughan asks.

“Because smoke will be seen from the next island. They will learn about the reclaiming soon enough, but by then, God willing, your men and the children will be long gone. Trust that you need as much of a head start as you can get; you do not want to play keep-away against our captains, with children as the prize.”

Bennet’s face is very still.

Hunter says, “You have done this before.”

“Yes.”

No one asks which side of it. They work. After all that, they still have to work. Men ask questions. Some answers come easy. Some he refuses without blinking. Carter writes everything down. Murdock asks better questions than most old men. Bennet gets very quiet when Ilya names the kind of captain Grigori will have chosen for child-prisoners, because Bennet is not stupid and not nearly hard enough for the world he lives in.

Hunter listens.

Eventually, the orders are clear.

Three ships. No banners. Bennet, of course. Carter protests the arm and is ignored. The hall empties again. This time, truly. At the end of it, Ilya is still seated at the table, looking at the little black mark of Moryn on the map. Hunter stands beside him. Too close, technically. Ilya absently, habitually lets his hand rest at the hilt of the knife and remembers, too late, that he has none. He left them all on the table upstairs. Hunter notices.

“You came unarmed,” he says.

Ilya waits for a moment, gives himself some time—maybe it will make sense? Maybe if he really tries this time—

“Why would I bring a knife to my execution?”

Hunter closes his eyes and inhales a deep breath.

“You—” Hunter opens his eyes. Most of the earlier rage is gone. What’s left is—Ilya can’t name it. He would dearly like to. “I have never once made you do anything, and I am not going to start now. Things like you live free or they die choking on the chain, and I’d sooner have you free and gone than caged and mine.” He turns half away, halfway to the window, to his kingdom, halfway to Ilya. Both, always both. “That’s all I’ve been doing this whole year. You’re just the only man who couldn’t tell as much.”

There is a correct answer to this.

Several, probably. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do this. Do not make this tender. Do not make it worse by meaning it when it's not true, and you've just said as much. Do not say your life is not your own, and things like you live free or die choking and mean both. Do not be exactly this size. Do not be good. Do not be terrible. Choose one, for Heaven'’s sake, and let me know where to put my feet.

What Ilya says is nothing. Inside him, something very old and very tired lifts its head. Recognition, perhaps. Decision.

Oh, Ilya thinks. Oh. I understand now.

He stands, wondering at the clarity of it, at the weightlessness. Good, that’s sorted. Finally. Now what?

It's tempting. He doubts he'll be refused—Ilya tends to get his way, and Hunter is not a selfless man; he will let himself have what he wants. And there would be joy in it, immediate, unrestrained. He would be a wild thing taught to come to heel, or not, as it pleased. Owned, of course—and an owned man owns nothing; he takes what is bestowed and is grateful for it. It would work, probably. For a while. And then it wouldn't, but by then they'd both be too dead to care.

But Ilya is a greedy creature. He wants it all, and there is only the one way to get it. Alright. There’s nothing else for it, then.

“I know what I want to do,” Ilya says, breaking the odd, choked silence between them.

Hunter waits, lets the questions ask themselves with the waiting. What? Where? With whom? Why do you look like that? Why do you look at me like that? Should I stop you? Can I?

Ilya stays silent. Ask, if you dare. But you won’t. That’s not the game you’re playing. You took as much as you wanted; if you wanted more, you would have justified taking it already. No, you won’t ask.

Finally, Hunter says, “Is it something stupid?”

“Yes.”

“Will it help?”

“I think so.”

“Will it get you killed?”

“Possibly.”

Hunter closes his eyes.

It is such a small thing. A single second. A man at the edge of patience, grief, anger, whatever else lives under the stone of him and only shows when pressed very hard. Then his eyes open, and he is the king again.

“I could order you to stay,” he says.

No, Ilya thinks. You could have, but that ship has sailed, not a minute ago.

Hunter says, “If you are running, run. If you are riding to your death, try not to do it cheaply. If you are going to make my life worse, which seems likely, do it where I can see the shape of it before it lands on me.”

Ilya says, “You are very demanding.”

“I am a monarch.”

“So I hear.”

“And if this is about Veyr—”

“It is not about Veyr.”

Hunter makes a sound that might, in a better-lit world, have become a laugh. Here, it’s just bitterness. Fair enough. Doubt whatever you want, but Ilya spoke the truth. It’s not about Veyr. For better or for worse, it will never be about Veyr again. Not really.

Ilya turns to go.

“Ilya.”

He stops dead. Past Cliff, his name hasn’t been spoken in these halls. He looks back.

Hunter says, “Do not make me regret opening the gate.”

There is a universe of things inside that. Do not betray me. Do not make me mourn you. Do not make me into a man who should have known better.

Ilya says, “No.”

What does it mean? No—what? No, I won't make you regret it. No, I won't promise you that. No, you had your chance to set your hand on me and command and expect to be obeyed? No, I will never again carry the responsibility for what you choose to do.

He doesn’t know. Possibly all, and possibly none of them.

Hunter nods once.

“Then Godspeed,” he says.

Mara is by the kitchen stair. She has a bag.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ilya says.

“Shut up,” Mara says, and shoves it at his chest. “Bread. Cheese. Apples. Dried meat. Mistress Vale’s tonic.”

“I hardly need her poisons.”

“Get over yourself.”

He takes the bag because time is short and because Mara’s chin is trembling with the effort of not making a scene.

“Thank you,” he says. It costs less than expected.

Mara’s eyes fill. This was probably predictable.

“Stop,” Ilya says.

“Yes, my lord.”

“And stop calling me that.”

“No, my lord.”

“Terrible girl.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He leaves before she can do anything worse.

Bennet waits in the outer yard with three horses. One for Ilya. One saddled with supplies. One extra because Bennet, unlike most men, has the occasional burst of good sense.

“I will only ask whether you know what you’re doing.”

Ilya considers this.

“In a way.”

Bennet nods. “Refreshing.”

“Your mission?”

“We sail before dawn.”

“South-west approach. No banners.”

“I listened.”

A pause.

“Take care, then.”

“I make no promises.”

“Note how I didn’t ask for any.”

They stand there, two men who should have killed each other in mud and did not, now failing to say several things neither would enjoy hearing.

Then Bennet says, “He’ll be livid. He’s probably already livid.”

Ilya looks toward the keep.

Hunter is not in the yard. Of course he is not. He has a council, a raid, missing children, ships to send, lords to silence, a coast to stop from burning further. He is not a man who stands in yards making farewells.

“He let me go,” Ilya says. “He cannot be angry.”

Bennet’s expression suggests Ilya has said something impossibly stupid.

“He can be both,” Bennet says. “He usually is.”

That’s not what he meant. Hunter will be angry, but he can’t be. He’ll figure it out.

Ilya mounts. At the gate, the captain with the scarred lip waits. Same man. Same road. Same arch.

“Road’s clear?” Ilya asks.

The captain looks at him for a long second.

Then he says, “As far as you care to ride.”

He goes out into the cold bright morning with the smoke still on the southern sky, and the guards let him by, and he does not look back.

He has never in his life had so much to do.

Chapter End Notes

Okay, guys, there will be a couple dyas between this and the last two chapters, cause I'm travelling. My nephew's birthday is tomorrow, and I'm aunting; it's a sacred dudy, one i take very seriosly indeed.

No cliffhanger tho! not really!

Ideally, we're talking Friday.

<3Ll

Chapter 10

Chapter Notes

Don't even talk to me about chapter count.

Also, this one and the next one were insanely hard to write. I think I wrote thirty versions, all up, mixed them left and right and up and down and just lost my fucking mind.

From here to the end, it's Scott's POV.

29 Frostmonth, twelfth month

Four days after Ilya leaves, Scott goes to the yellow window and drinks his beer.

The window is in the passage between the council chamber and the west stair. For most of the keep's history, neither the route nor the corridor itself has been of much use to anyone; there are shorter ways to the hall and more private places to drink.

In that unremarkable corridor sits an unremarkable window. For most of its existence, it had no name at all; calling it the yellow window is a recent development and a misleading one. The plain wooden frame is unpainted and unornamented. It is yellow only in the sense that birch wood at noon looks more yellow than brown, a trait so common it hardly bears mention. Much like the corridor it belongs to, the window—neither big nor small, neither derelict nor beautiful—has little else to recommend it. It boasts no handsome balcony or discreet ledge, no thick set of bars that might prove useful in a siege. Unlike most of the newer windows, it has no elegant stained glass or clever locks and hinges. It hardly opens at all, and its panes are thick and cut in the old fashion, breaking the light in odd, unpredictable ways.

At a particular time and from a particular angle, however—half a pace to the right of the second mullion, standing sideways—Scott can see the whole of the lower yard and remain unseen except as a blurred shadow. He discovered this eight months ago. By the end of the week, someone had put a small table beneath the window. By the end of the month, beer began appearing there shortly before the midday bell. No one asked why. A good household does not embarrass its king by requiring him to issue orders for habits everyone has already observed.

At this hour, the boy used to work at the pell. He never struck it idly. Some men trained to keep their bodies warm or their hands familiar with a weapon. Ilya attacked the post as though it had betrayed his mother to the barbarian hordes. He would go at it until his hair came loose and the back of his shirt went dark, then stop at once, never spending an extra blow after he had finished whatever private row he was conducting.

The old glass distorted colour and shape, not movement. Scott learned to read Ilya's state in the force of his movements: what fatigue did to the line of his back, how impatience made him shove his hair into a knot, how frustration rounded his shoulders and sent him pacing like a collared beast.

Scott watched for the length of one small beer. Eleven minutes, give or take a handful of seconds. Long enough to see the boy settle into the work, not long enough to make more of a spectacle of himself than he already had. He did not sit when the servants tried to leave him a chair. He did not eat the little pies that appeared twice and vanished after he ignored them twice. One beer. Then the hall, the meal, the afternoon.

The yard is empty today. Frost whitens the pell's shoulders and gathers in the cuts Ilya left in the wood. It will be empty tomorrow. It will be empty four days from now and forty. Neither is in question nor worth dwelling on beyond the obvious. Scott opened the gate. The boy left. There is nothing more to contemplate. He drinks.

The beer is darker than usual. Aby has used the winter malt, which is sensible; the light stores will need to last until Thawing, and there is no reason to waste summer beer on a man standing alone in a corridor. It tastes of smoke and bitter peel. Scott dislikes it immensely.

Missing Ilya is not complicated. Scott has lived thirty-nine years. He misses his mother, half the men who put him on the throne and nearly every road as it was before someone improved it, even when he was the one who ordered and paid for the improvement. Missing is one of the ordinary vices of remaining alive.

The difficulty is that he has no standing.

A friend may mourn a friend. A father may mourn a son. A lover may mourn what he has lost. What is Scott entitled to? The frustration of a thwarted gaoler? The impotence of an obsolete gaoler? He held the boy's life in his hand for a year, the way one holds a bird one has decided not to crush. Now the bird has flown, as birds do, home to its own kind, and the hand is empty, and the hand wants.

Foolishness. Scott takes another measured sip of beer and considers it. He has about two-thirds left. Eight minutes; perhaps seven.

He has no standing; he has checked. He grieves anyway, outside the reckoning, at the window for the length of a cup of beer, and then he goes down to be the king. The grief keeps hold of him the way the sea holds a strong swimmer: entirely, invisibly, enough to drown the man eventually, but not the thing he swims with, the thing that lives in the sea, the thing that tempted the man to go swimming.

He had known what opening the gate meant. He does not suffer from the particular vanity that makes a man mistake a hard consequence for an unforeseen one. Ilya left and will not be returning; he has no reason to. Scott certainly has not given him cause. Ilya would be his only as long as Scott kept him. The matter is plain. Wanting him back is also plain. It is simply not useful.

The bell sounds. Scott finishes the beer, sets down the cup and leaves the frost to the yard.

A king knows what to do with empty hands. He puts work into them.

The Hollow Days, turn of 1148 into 1149

At dusk, every fire in Hunter Keep is put out. Not banked, not covered. Put out entirely, down to the last lamp in the last stairwell, so that the keep goes black in one long shudder and remains black until the king brings the household fire in from the yard.

Scott waits bareheaded in the cold with a taper in one hand. Beside him, old Osgood guards the brazier and complains to a kitchen boy about the quality of the charcoal. This is his office on the Hollow Days. He has performed it for forty-three years, through three kings, one civil war and a winter when the household was reduced to two men, a handful of women and broken furniture for fuel.

"It's poor," Osgood tells Scott, aggrieved.

"It is burning."

"Poorly."

"Then it matches the atmosphere."

Osgood looks at him. "You're morose tonight, my lord."

"So I'm told."

"Fair enough. It's the season for it."

It is not the season, though the season has provided cover. All through the keep, people have been kind to Scott in ways too small and generous to refuse. His beer appears without being ordered. The council finishes on time. Carter has stopped finding reasons to leave work in his rooms after midnight and has begun leaving cakes there instead. At the same time, another part of the keep—the lords, ladies and assorted aristocracy—has been looking at him strangely, with an awareness that the peaceful years have allowed them to forget. The fact is, their reserved, impartial, chivalrous king has shown himself to be something else entirely. The sheepdog guarding the barn, upon closer inspection, has mighty long teeth, does he not? His eyes seem to glint rather more yellow than one expects in a working animal, and, oh, what big paws he has—

Ilya's ghost is everywhere. This time last year, Scott wanted to think about anything but the crazed maniac in his house, and the boy did not let him. He made certain Scott could not look anywhere without seeing him lurking in some corner, mad-eyed and terrible. Scott almost managed to hate him then, a little. Managed to summon some proper wrath about it all: about being forced to acknowledge the butcher of his people, about looking across the faces of orphans and widows and seeing the man who had made them such. Now that he is gone, Scott can think of nothing else. Even the mundane places draw his eye, made significant only by his absence.

All else aside, it is ghoulish to think about the boy during the days reserved for the dead: to dwell on someone who left to die for his homeland and will remain both dead and not until concrete news reaches Scott, whenever that may be.

The brazier has burned down to a hard red bed. Osgood makes him wait another minute, possibly just because. Then he nods. Scott bends and lights the taper.

The keep is built like every proper Aderran house: one straight path from its principal door to the great window at its heart, so that the head of the household can carry the flame from the threshold to the hearth without once turning back. In a cottage, the journey is three steps. In Hunter Keep, it is five hundred feet of stone, banners and waiting dark.

Scott walks it alone at first. He lights the two lamps beside the door. Men and women come behind him and take flame from them, peeling away into the side passages. He lights the lamps on the stair, the lamps between the pillars, the lamps before the household shrine. The fire divides and divides again. It runs into kitchens and armouries, offices and storerooms, bedchambers, cupboards and guard posts. Every door stands open tonight so that no visitor, great or small, is turned away from the house where all are welcome.

Halfway down the hall, Scott looks toward the narrow doorway by the west passage. Last year, Ilya stood there all five nights. He had chosen the farthest point from the main table that still allowed him to see every entrance. White shirt, dark trousers, knife hidden somewhere despite the guards' conviction that they had found all of them. He had been so thin by then that the shadows did most of the work of concealing him.

Had anyone explained the rite to him? Scott doubts it. Did he understand any of it? Did he wonder why every table in every room was laid with bread, baked flat and round, with milk and white cheese, with dishes of salt and honey set out for whoever came, not to be cleared until the sixth day? Did he find it perverse to be surrounded by all this food, a starving man who would not eat it? Or did he eat, then? Did he make an exception on this day and partake of the food left especially for the dead? That sounds like something he would do. Or perhaps he had stolen a white shirt, slipped into the yard with the household and understood more than any of them credited him with. Both are possible. Ilya had a fine grasp of custom when it could be used to trespass and a poor one when it might have comforted him.

The great window waits black at the end of the hall. Every Aderran home keeps one broad pane for the Hollow Days; Hunter Keep has a wall of coloured glass three storeys high. Its centre has been remade for the year with a flowering apple tree, hundreds of pieces held in silver veins. Scott lights the lamp behind it. Red, blue, and gold wake all at once, and the household comes forward to light the rest until the colour reaches far across the yard.

"The fire is lit," Scott says. "The door is open. Come in and be warm."

"Come home," the hall answers.

Someone's grandmother near the doors answers half a beat late and twice as loudly. A few people laugh. That is proper. The dead are not invited home to sit through a funeral. They are given fire, food, gossip and the annual report on how poorly their descendants are managing without them.

Osgood places the list in Scott's hand. He reads the keep's own dead first. Hew Tanner. Alis Bell. Robin Cole. Six soldiers from the northern road. Two children who died in the spring fever, their names one beneath the other in Carter's careful hand. Then he reads the dead of the kingdom, or as many as their families have sent to be named by the king.

Scott reads slowly. A name hurried is a name half-given. When the last is called, the hall says, "Come home," again, softly this time.

The cup goes round for the older dead. When it reaches him, Scott gives his mother—a man ought to spread the honour about and not keep favourites even among his dead, but he always names his mother; he has no other blood kin he would welcome anywhere, much less beneath his own roof—and drinks, and sends the cup on. Songs rise before the cup reaches the second table. Someone starts "The Ferryman" too high. Three guards join in the lower and make it worse. Food comes out: flat white bread, milk, soft cheese, salt, honey. A place is laid at every table, and no living person sits in it.

Mara puts a bowl in front of Scott and stands there.

"I ate at midday," he says.

"A bright point of recent memory, sire."

Is this the tone the girl used to get Ilya to eat? He can see how it would be effective. Scott's spoon is in his hand before he knows what he is doing.

At the guards' table, a young man says the Bear would have got "The Ferryman" right. His neighbour drives an elbow into his ribs. The table goes briefly still, several faces turning toward Scott before finding urgent interest in bread. Scott lifts his cup in their direction and drinks. The guard who spoke flushes and raises his own.

They liked Ilya in the end. They liked him after they stopped fearing him, and most had managed both at once. The kitchen fed him. The yard learned his tricks. The pages lost money to him at dice and maintained, with impressive loyalty, that he had never once played, that he disliked card games, that he barely left his rooms after council meetings. The keep had absorbed him into its routes in the ordinary way a house absorbs a difficult relation: by complaint, repetition and the gradual discovery that the only thing more unpleasant than his presence is his absence.

The west doorway stands empty. Scott looks away from it and sees the place before the main table where Ilya stood a little more than a week ago in Veyran black and offered the Crown his death. Scott had known for a year what he would say if the peace broke. He had built the answer carefully. It had worked exactly as intended and sounded, when spoken aloud, considerably worse.
The surety answers to me.

You are not bound to die. You are bound to me.

The hall had understood him. No one in Aderra had legally owned another person for more than a century. Scott had led a revolt against the last king, who made a serious attempt, dragged him out of his keep before the year was out, and hanged him like a horse thief. Then, a handful of years later, he stood before his own court and described Ilya's road, rooms, guard, bread and blood as his possessions.

He could have made a hundred different, interlocking protections for the boy if he had wanted to; he had the time. He had the means. He could have done almost anything else. He did not because he did not want to. He especially did not want to when the boy offered up his throat to be cut, when he expected to be killed—expected Scott to kill him—for something as worthless as his barren homeland. Everyone in Veyr could drown tomorrow, their wretched, inbred islands could sink back into the sea where they belonged, and it would not be worth a hair on his golden head. And he dared—

Scott said it and meant it. He said it the way he meant it. He said it because he meant it. There had been prettier ways to do it. Carter could have found six pages of precedent and built a mercy so polite no one would need to acknowledge what held it upright. Scott had not wanted to be pretty. He wanted every man in the room to understand that harming the boy would be taken as a trespass against the king, answered personally and without proportion.

It worked; the boy lived. Scott takes another spoonful of soup. It has gone lukewarm. The law has been a wall around the boy from the beginning. Scott had built it thick enough to stop the court, his enemies and Ilya himself. A wall, if made well, keeps things out and keeps things in. Scott does not bother making anything unless he intends to make it well.

Murdock had raised that difficulty with him in this same hall the year before, though not during the feast. The old man possessed standards. It had been late Hearthmonth. Ilya had been in the keep a little over a month and looked worse each time Scott saw him: sleepless, hollow, moving through rooms with the brittle alertness of a man whose body had begun consuming everything it could spare.

Murdock had waited until the council ended, then remained in his chair while everyone else left. "What are his terms?" he asked.

Scott looked up from the dispatch he was reading. "Whose?"

"If you require time to work it out, I can send Carter back."

Scott set the paper down. "Rozanov's terms were explained the night he arrived."

"His choices were explained. In considerable detail, I recall. His terms were not."

"You will have to tell me the distinction you have invented."

Murdock folded his hands over the head of his stick. "Is he a prisoner awaiting sentence?"

"No."

"A guest?"

"No."

"A hostage held against the king of Veyr's good conduct?"

"Yes."

"Then where are his rights under the peace recorded? What punishment answers a breach? Who may command him? Who may search him? What protection does he have from the court?"

That is simple enough, and most of it boils down to, "Mine."

Murdock's expression did not change. He had served two Calder kings, buried the better of them and ordered the worse to be thrown into the river. Very little about a third could surprise him. "That was not the question," he said.

"It is the answer."

"No man is an adequate body of law, sire. Particularly when the man is king."

"He is in no danger from me."

"Then it should not trouble you to put that down in writing, in front of witnesses."

Scott felt the first movement of anger and let it pass without use. "I have given him three roads out of this keep. I have put gold along all of them. His door is not locked. The guards know he may pass."

"And if he takes one?"

"They let him."

"And when his father sends the little girl in his place?"

Scott said nothing.

"Does he know what you will do then?" Murdock asked. "Do you?"

"Grigori Rozanov's conduct is not mine to promise."

"Your own is."

That was the point at which Scott's patience, never something to write home about, snapped, and the conversation ceased being useful. Nevertheless, by the next morning, Scott had written orders governing the guards, the kitchens and every lord who had lost sons in the war. Carter had drawn up a statement of Ilya's freedom of movement and sent copies to the city gates and the harbour—everything short of a direct promise to the boy.

The old man was correct about the institutional matter. If one of Scott's commanders had kept a prisoner outside all stated law, relying upon his own goodwill, Scott would have arrested him. He would not, however, have handed the prisoner empty promises of safety he could not enforce. There is no higher authority in this matter than Scott. Drawing comfort from promises that have no enforcement mechanism is for children and the feebleminded.

At the far end of the hall, "The Ferryman" finally reaches the correct key. Someone pounds the table in approval. Scott finishes the soup. The west doorway remains empty. Every door in the keep is open tonight, and the hall keeps calling its dead home.

Chapter 11

The third Hollow Day, at the turn of 1148 into 1149

The Hollow Days do not suspend war. They merely require war to proceed without collecting interest from merchants, since every counting-house in Adermere is shut. The Table of the Realm has been sitting for two hours and has spent most of them establishing facts every man present knew when he arrived.

"They flew no banners," Scott says for the third time. "A captain who flies no banners is a pirate. If you want me to hang Grigori Rozanov for piracy, find him on a deck. I will oblige you."

"He ordered the attack," Harrow says.

How insightful. "Yes."

Harrow pauses. He is accustomed to resistance and therefore eternally baffled by agreement. "Then Aderra must answer it."

Good grief. Scott exchanges a dull look with Nolan. For such a bloodthirsty man, Harrow stubbornly remains illiterate in matters of tactics and strategy. Granted, he belongs to the old guard who maintain that the superior way to conduct warfare is to pile all your men on one side of the field, wait until the enemy has done the same, then call a charge and meet in the middle. Needless to say, Harrow hasn't won many of his engagements and owes his life to the second old-school tenet of leading from the back.

"Aderra is answering it."

"With letters."

"Some of the letters contain orders."

"Eastmere burned, Harth's children were taken, Saint Orlan's was put to the torch, and Your Majesty proposes to correct the offence with correspondence."

Lord Sarne sits two places down from Harrow, black-clad for the Hollow Days and for his eldest son. His face has not moved once. Harrow is careful not to look at him while spending his grief.

Scott says, "Bring me a target."

"The Stones."

"There are forty inhabited islands, Lord Harrow. Choose one."

"The capital."

"Excellent. Show Carter the harbour you mean to land in, the fleet you mean to use, the ground you mean to hold and the route by which you plan to supply the army afterward. When you have done that, we will discuss how many men you require."

Harrow's mouth tightens. He knows there is no answer. That has never prevented him from entering the question into the minutes. The war, at least, has the decency to be impossible for everyone.

Veyr can cross the Greywater, burn ports and be gone before Aderran levies have saddled. It cannot hold a mile of mainland without feeding an army through hostile water. Conversely, Aderra can break any Veyran force that stays long enough to meet it. It cannot invade the Stones. The sea eats fleets, the islands eat garrisons, and there is nothing at the far end of the taking that Aderra wants badly enough to keep.

One does not win a war like this on a field. One wins it with grain and gold. The boy had won every engagement he ever led, at sea and on land, and was the first to point out that it had made no difference whatsoever. He used to explain it to them at this table, loudly and at length, whenever Harrow—or Sarne, when he grew ambitious about some other cross-sea war—said something sufficiently stupid to earn it: an outraged barrage of fact that could flatten harder men than either. He was never bitter about it. He appeared to find it interesting. His vanity remains, to this day, perplexing and unknowable.

Regardless, the straightforward stratagem that won Scott the war the first time isn't likely to work twice. If Grigori isn't completely mindless—and mindless rulers don't boast a long lifespan on the Stones—he will have made sure that his granaries are full, his ships ready and his men prepared.

Scott's ships, by contrast, are not ready. They are hardly in existence. After he became king, he built roads, fields, walls, schools, churches and houses of healing. He secured the passes past anyone's power to criticise, clawed back what Rydal had helped itself to in the confusion, and made the border cities as close to impregnable as stone and money allow. He did not build a navy. There was no reason to build a navy. The river clans were delighted to keep the trade hulls afloat in exchange for a tax rate Scott still regards as the finest bargain of his reign, and Aderra and Veyr had not fought at sea in three centuries—the last time, if memory serves, over a jilted princess and a scorned husband, somehow simultaneously.

It was, at the time, an entirely sound decision. That is the difficulty with sound decisions. They remain sound right up until the morning they are not, and then they are simply a coastline with nothing in front of it. Keel for keel, the Stones outbuild, outsail and outnumber them, and everyone at this table knows it.

Rennick clears his throat. He wears white gauze over mourning grey and has brought candied almonds into a war council during the rites of the dead. This is irreligious, vain and spectacular; Scott takes his habitual moment to admire his style. If only he weren't so ubiquitously untrustworthy, he would have made a magnificent master of coin. He has the mind of a hard-bitten mathematician and chiefly applies it to multiplying his gold and arranging his household to include as many beautiful men and women as possible.

"If military correction is presently impractical," Rennick says, "the Crown might turn to the protection of trade. Whatever name the Veyran ambassador gives these captains, the insurers call them ruin. Convoys would reassure honest commerce."

"Honest commerce," Scott says. "You've grown fond of the phrase since I taught it to you."

"I count being a quick student among my many virtues, sire."

"Your counting-houses will finance six escorts."

Rennick's smile pauses. "I beg your pardon?"

"The carriers will pay a convoy fee. Your insurers will lend against it. The Crown will guarantee the first loss, not the interest. Carter has the figures."

Carter slides a paper across the table. Rennick reads it once quickly and then again with the attention of a man inspecting a sanctioned robbery.

"Four escorts," he says.

"Six."

"Five, with the Crown guaranteeing the first two losses."

"Five. The first loss."

Rennick considers. There is only one answer he can give. "For the relief of honest trade."

"Naturally."

The paper disappears into Rennick's sleeve. There is no need for this. He could have handed it to his assistant—a stunning, willowy young man with cat-green eyes, generous lips and the thousand-yard stare of a stone-cold professional. He could have put it in a satchel. He could have given it to any of Scott's thirty clerks roaming around the chamber and had it delivered to his house. But no. Rennick takes pains to emphasise his dock-rat roots at every opportunity. It is, as he is so fond of saying, one of his many virtues.

Ardsley begins before Scott can call him. "Every ship south leaves the Hollander marsh road more vulnerable. Rydal has moved men to three crossing towns, and the Torreni match may yet put Sondaigne coin behind them."

God preserve him, the betrothal again. Shane Hollander had been eligible for perhaps ten minutes, which at court is time enough to match a man by rumour to every unattached heir in the Reach. Ardsley is not wrong about the money, which is the tiresome part. Never mind that the ink is hardly dry on the instrument dissolving Austène Sondaigne's betrothal to Lord Marnière; dynastic planning has never been much troubled by the people involved.

"The north will keep its levies," Scott says.

"The coast will ask for it."

"The coast may ask."

"And when the next village burns?"

"Then we recover the living, bury the dead and, crucially, do not commit to losing two, if not three, wars at once."

Ardsley sits back. He is not finished. Scott knows this string of arguments by heart. He is merely looking for a more irritating place to continue setting out his grievances. Scott places both hands on the map.

"Every ship in Aderran water that flies no colours is a lawful prize. Any captain may take her; I do not care whether he sails under the flag of Aderra, Redmark, Rydal or Calligo, or whether he holds a letter from me. Hull and cargo to the man who brings her in. The Crown takes no fifth."

The master of coin's head comes up. "No fifth, sire?"

"No fifth. Double the standing prize for a Veyran pilot delivered alive and able to talk. Buy every harbourmaster between here and Redmark; I want sailing times, cargo, repairs and crew lists. Four keels laid at Adermere before Thawing."

"Four?"

"Did I speak unclearly?"

"No, sire. I had hoped to have misheard."

"Borrow the timber."

"From whom?"

Rennick sighs. "Apparently, from honest trade."

Scott almost smiles.

"The prizes, sire." The master of coin has the doggedness of a man who expects to be blamed later. "Every hull we do not tax. Every bounty we pay out. It is a great deal of money."

"It is."

"Sire, it is a very great deal of money."

"Bring me the alternative cost and I will weigh it against this one."

Nobody brings it.

Rennick has stopped eating his almonds. "Forgive me. If any captain in the Reach may take an unmarked hull in our water, and no one stops to read his letter—"

"Then our water becomes extremely dangerous."

"For everyone."

"For everyone."

Rennick's hand moves toward his sleeve and stops. "Five escorts," he says again, slower this time. "Five. You will want more by Blossom. Come to me then and we will discuss the rate."

Scott waits until Rennick has finished arriving at the rest of it. "We cannot catch every ship. We do not need to. We make the water dear, and every greedy man from here to the Calligan coast becomes a hazard Grigori has to price. He must either send his fleet under his own colours to escort his own pirates—in which case every crown in the Reach sees who broke the peace—or go on losing hulls he officially does not command."

Something at the table settles. Not hope; relief at having some direction. Lord Sarne lifts his head. Until now he has endured the meeting in the manner of a man enduring a burial badly conducted by other people. "How long before he feels it?"

"The bounty runs as fast as the word does. Two weeks, and every captain with a hull and no scruples will be hunting unmarked ships in our water. The coast should be quieter by Thawing."

"And the grain?"

"Nothing reaches the Stones that does not come by sea. His granaries are full and I cannot empty them. I can make sure nothing replaces what he spends." Scott sets one finger on Adermere. "That is what the keels are for. They will not float before next winter."

Sarne considers this. Harrow had offered him vengeance: a glorious landing, a field full of dead men, perhaps a song afterward if any Aderran survived to commission one. Scott offers a timetable and the prospect of somebody else's eldest son living through the spring. Sarne gives one slow nod.

Harrow says, "All this assumes the Bear King cares what his lords think."

"Every king cares what his lords think, because lords who aren't fed with grain will get fed with royal blood."

The answer comes more sharply than Scott intends. Carter looks at him. Across the Greywater, Grigori's obedience is fed by fear, grain and the belief that strength sits in the Iron Keep. Make the grain late. Make the captains expensive. Make every lord wonder why the king who started the trouble cannot finish it. It is not victory. It is pressure, applied where a structure already bears weight.

Scott looks down at the Veyran coastline and thinks, tiredly, that Ilya would have understood him before he finished the opening sentence, then been offended that Scott thought the rest necessary. He would have had ten better strategies by now and refused to give Scott a single one, since all of them would amount, by one road or another, to taking up arms against his own people.

Ardsley chooses that moment to say, "We might not stand so exposed if Your Majesty had accepted Torren's request when it was made."

The room goes quiet in a different fashion. Scott lifts his head, pulled from his morose thoughts into weary amusement. "Which request? Lord Sondaigne has made several. Most concern money he owes us."

"The prince. Rozanov. Torren offered a defensive compact in exchange for his person."

Interesting. They have skipped several of the usual arguments; they really must be looking to irritate him. "I have already expressed my thoughts on the matter, surely?"

He had expressed them, as a point of fact: he had laughed until he had to sit down. The offer had been beautifully dressed—a defensive compact against Rydal in exchange for the person of the prince, whom Torren would of course undertake to house honourably and in a manner befitting his rank—specifically, in the heir's household, as his closest companion. The language had been so thick with innuendo that Scott had kept the letter for the unlikely day when he and Ilya might be on good enough terms to read it together without bloodshed.

Imagine. Of all the pretexts available, they had picked that one. Even now, Scott cannot quite believe it. Of every use to which a man might conceivably put Ilya Rozanov, Lord Sondaigne had settled upon the one most likely to get his son killed within half an hour of taking possession.

Austène is a handsome lad of twenty-five; the last time Scott saw him, he was inordinately proud of the moustache he had finally managed to grow. Reportedly, he wanted a companion, and who would be better than the Butcher of Redmere: a man who has commanded fleets, who has never lost an engagement he led, and who at nineteen stood unarmed in a crowded yard and threatened Scott's life with every appearance of meaning it.

They would not have got the cloak off him. The lad would have been dead on his own bedroom floor before he contrived to touch Ilya's hand, never mind get him into bed. Hell, Scott doubts he would have fared better himself, not without guards in the room. And a man who needs men in the room to—

Anyway. It never would have happened, not only because Scott would not have let them come within a hundred feet of Ilya, but because it was nothing but a polite fiction—or an impolite fiction, as it were. Torren is already housing the Calderi girl whom Harrow and his friends intend to put on the throne the moment Scott is conveniently dead. They had Marnière and let him go—and even Scott can't be sure the wretched court hadn't run the lordling off precisely so they could get the Hollander boy in his stead. Adding the Valenni-Veyran outcast to the collection is entirely in character.

Rennick studies his almonds. Sarne's mouth curves into a smile for the first time that morning.

Harrow says, "Whatever the young heir's intimate motivations, the compact would have checked Rydal."

"Until the prince cut his throat."

"Then we would have had the compact, one fewer Torreni heir and one fewer Veyran problem."

Scott's hand closes once on the edge of the table. Well, all right, if they are dispensing with euphemisms, Scott can oblige. "The prince was never the Table's to trade," he says.

"He was Aderra's."

"He was mine."

Harrow inclines his head. He has made his record. "And now he is no one's."

He is his own, in fact. Perhaps he always was. "The matter is closed."

"Is it?"

Scott looks at him. Harrow has survived two reigns by approaching every line without putting his foot across it. He looks away first.

"The objection is entered," Scott says. "When you have a new one, I will entertain it. Bring this one up again at your own peril. Carter. Have the orders issued by sunset."

The Table begins to rise. Carter remains. He gathers the loose papers into exact piles, sands two wet signatures, caps the ink and waits until the last lord is outside before he says, "That's true; he was never ours."

"No."

"Interesting that you're saying it as if it were a good thing."

Scott watches him tie the red cord around the convoy orders. God, are they going to fight about this again? He hopes not. "Am I?"

They had argued about Ilya through most of that year, for all that Carter never once called it an argument. He brought it as a scheduling matter, a question about the guard rotation or a line in the household accounts, and somewhere around the third sentence Scott would discover they were not discussing the household accounts at all. I feed him. I arm him. I leave his door unlocked. I put gold in his pockets. I stand between him and every man in this kingdom with a dead son and a long memory. Actions. A man is his actions.

Carter never disputed a word of it. He would grant the whole list, in order, and then give some version of the reply he always gave: And all the while, the whip hangs where he can see it. The last time, Scott's patience had run out.

"There is no whip. I have never whipped a man in my life. A whip has never once hung on a wall in this keep."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hide behind the literal." Carter capped the ink. "You are better than that. Nevertheless, if that's what it takes, let us be literal. I will meet you there."

Scott held on to his patience with momentous effort. "Please."

"Let us talk of whips, then. You could have one on that wall by supper. You could have a hundred. You could have one made for every day of the year, use each of them once, burn it and order another, and there is no man in Aderra who could or would stop you."

It wasn't only the words, though they were memorable enough. It was the way he said them: bland, even and precise, as if he were reading out figures.

"That is the literal position. Shall I go on?"

"Carter—"

"His bread comes out of your kitchen. He keeps his knives because you have not sent anyone to take them. His door is unlocked because you have not locked it. The coin in his pocket has your face on it. He is alive in a kingdom full of men with dead sons because you stood up in your own hall and said he was yours, and they believed you. Name me a single thing in that boy's life that does not come through your hand. Something you would even be questioned about taking away. One thing, Scott."

Scott did not have one.

"That is the whip," Carter said. "It is not hanging on a wall; it is the wall, and the room, and the keep beyond it."

"I have given him no reason to fear me."

"You are king. He is your hostage. You require another reason?"

"A fear I did not create is not a debt that can be billed to me."

Carter had smiled at that: small, tired, entirely without amusement. "I do so hope, for your sake, you never have to learn otherwise, Scotty."

Scott had gritted his teeth against several emotionally satisfying replies. They would not have done any good; Carter had made his position clear, thoroughly and early on. He has not brought up his solution now—getting the boy into a quiet estate at the far end of the kingdom, far away from anyone who would wish to harm him, Scott first and foremost—only because he knows it would be rejected flat out.

Besides, it is not lost on Scott that he is the only man of his acquaintance who finds his arguments about Ilya as sound as he does. This may say something about him. It may say something about his acquaintances.

Chapter 12

Chapter Notes

The fourth Hollow Day, turn of 1148 into 1149

No new village has burned, which is not the same thing as peace. Three Aderran trading vessels have failed to arrive, but no wreckage has been found and no ransom demanded. Scott has spent the morning looking at the spaces between these facts and finding them obstinately empty.

"Any movement since last night?"

"None we can confirm." Carter stands at the window, one hand against the stone, looking down over the harbour. "The coast is quiet. The missing ships were all carrying grain or iron, but they sailed from different ports and kept different routes."

Scott knows this. He has read the reports twice and signed the orders produced by them. Still, for one humiliating instant, the information feels new. "What am I not seeing?" he asks. His voice comes out colder than he intends. "What are they doing, where are they doing it, and why?"

No one answers. Around the table, men arrange their faces into the sober expression by which councillors indicate that they share a king's difficulty while accepting no responsibility for it.

"A distraction," Carter says at last. "It may be that the Bear King wants us watching the coast while he's doing something actually reasonable with the other hand."

"Distraction from what?" Scott lays one finger on the nearest report and keeps it there. "What am I going to guard? Where am I supposed to look?"

Murdock turns his stick once between his hands. “We might step back farther still. This may not be House Rozanov’s deception at all.”

Scott looks at him. The possibility had occured to him, and he disregarded it as paranoia. Perhaps he was too hasty. Old Murdock has a nose about these things.

"The raids have brought Grigori no obvious gain," Murdock continues. "He has lost ships, men and what remained of his reputation abroad. If someone wished to weaken his house, they could have devised few better methods than persuading him to begin a war he cannot finish or profit from."

"Internally or externally," Carter says. "The Rozanov king cannot be popular. Not after disposing of an heir as loved as Ilya was."

"Is," Scott says.

Carter glances at him. "Yes. Is."

That was not wise or necessary; the correction remains in the room after the word itself is gone. Scott draws the Veyran chart toward him. It is not a chart in any military sense. It records no roads, rivers or useful elevations. It is a genealogy of grudges: marriages in blue, alliances in green, disputed blood in red. Three Aderran clerks have made three different decisions about how to represent a single broken betrothal and the blood feuds and alliances that sprang from it. Extinct houses are marked by a small black circle, neat as a period.

Scott can read armies. He can read grain. Given a decent set of accounts, he can find the exact season in which a lord began stealing from his tenants or playing games with his taxes. The Veyran chart refuses these ordinary courtesies. Every line on it means both loyalty and the most patient possible form of murder. Not treason, however; Veyrans are very particular about that.

"Outside provocation would be difficult," Carter says. He has come around the table and is examining the chart over Scott's shoulder. "We're their closest neighbours and we can barely get an agent onto the Stones. Those people do not trust foreigners enough to give them directions, much less let them into their courts."

"A foreign agent need not go anywhere near the court." Scott follows a red line from Rozanov to Orlov and loses it beneath two marriages and a drowning. "A competent spymaster needs one Veyran noble with a grudge and a drinking problem. A beaten wife. A grieving mother. A man who believes history has underpaid him."

"You think another crown is behind it?"

"No." Scott sits back. "But I certainly can't rule it out."

House Rozanov is popular, so far as the word has meaning in Veyr. It is commonly judged the best of the bad lot, which may be praise or a honest appraisal of the bleak alternatives. Scott cannot imagine Redmark, Rydal or Torren spending years to remove Grigori only to then have to work with some maniacal Orlov king or, God preserve them, a Mora one. Foreign meddling remains possible, if not terribly likely.

They work another half-hour. Carter makes three new lists. Scott rejects two theories and watches the third collapse under its own dates. The clerks begin moving more quietly, as though silence might improve the quality of the information. Murdock endures until endurance ceases to be a virtue, then leaves with the air of a man granting the problem permission to remain unsolved until morning. Scott stays where he is, elbows on the table, one hand covering his eyes.

"It is hopeless," Carter says. Exhaustion has thickened his voice. "The names are not the difficulty. We need someone who knows the people concealed behind them, and neither Ilya nor Marlowe is available."

Scott holds his face and voice where they are. "Marlowe is Calligan."

"Marlowe spent years listening to Ilya tell him which men were cowards, which were liars and which could be trusted." Carter looks again at the chart. "He is Ilya's. In this matter, that may be close enough."

The sentence irritates Scott in several directions at once. He takes a long breath, leans back in his chair and lets his eyes fall shut. Carter is not wrong, unfortunately. Then again, if Marlowe were here, Ilya would be here and the matter would be moot.

"Do you—"

What? How was Scott going to finish that question? Did Carter think Scott had done the right thing? Does he have any ideas about where he is? What he's doing?

Carter sends him an exhausted look. "Sorry, I was distracted. Did you say something, Scotty?"

Scott smiles as sincerely as he can. "Nothing. We should leave it for now. Sleep on it. Maybe things will make more sense in the morning."

Carter barks a laugh. "If only we were that fortunate. Still, I can barely see straight anymore; we should get some rest."

Rest does not come. Scott gives it a reasonable opportunity. He lies still through the changing of the guard and the bell that follows it, eyes shut, hands loose at his sides. He has slept in armour, in rain, once beneath a wagon while two men replaced its axle above his head. Ordinarily, darkness and a horizontal surface are all he requires.

Tonight the bed is too warm. The pillow has developed lumps. Every fold in the sheet finds an old injury and settles there. He turns onto his side, then onto his back. The keep shifts around him. Timber contracts in the cold. A log gives way in the grate. Wind presses once against the shutters and moves on. Somewhere below, a guard coughs; somewhere farther off, a door opens and closes.

Tomorrow there are convoy orders to sign. Ardsley will object to the placement of the northern levy. Rennick will try to recover his losses through the interest and pretend surprise when Carter catches him. Four ships need timber Aderra does not presently possess. Scott follows the problems through their solutions. They behave properly. Each becomes smaller when examined.

When he reaches the end, he is still awake.

He gets up. The last of the fire gives him enough light to cross the room. His signet lies in the shallow dish beside the bed. He leaves it there and goes to the desk in his shirt and bare feet.

The fire should be fed. It would be blasphemous to suggest otherwise. On the Hollow Days, one does not let a household flame die through inattention.

It is a rite for the dead. Ilya is not dead.

Scott leaves the fire alone.

The convoy orders are where he left them. Five escorts, the first loss guaranteed by the Crown. Four keels before Thawing. A list of harbourmasters to be bought, frightened or appealed to in order of probable expense. Carter has marked three sums for review. Scott reads the first page. At the bottom, he discovers that he has retained none of it.

He begins again.

Footsteps sound in the passage.

Scott lifts his head. For one quick, disgraceful moment, every part of him moves toward the sound. Then the steps continue past his door and diminish toward the stair. Too heavy. Too loud. Ilya never made noise when he could help it, quite at odds with his quarrelsome nature. He went silent on wood, carpet and polished stone, and arrived in rooms like a conclusion. Unless he wished to be heard; then he came down a corridor heel-first, obnoxious and delightful.

The door across the room is shut. No one is coming.

Scott looks at it.

A year ago, Eric came through that door without knocking and shut it behind him with his heel.

His right arm was still bound beneath his coat. He had no business crossing the keep at that hour with his face grey from pain, but he crossed Scott’s rooms without waiting to be asked and stopped at the desk.

“The trays sent up to Rozanov have come back untouched for four days.”

“Five,” Scott said.

Eric stared at him. “That is not better.”

“He is eating. Yesterday, before first bell, he took bread and cold beef from the lower kitchen. Tonight he took cheese and two apples.”

For a moment Eric said nothing.

“He slept after dawn yesterday,” Scott added. “A little under two hours.”

“How do you know that?”

“The night guard reports to me.”

“The night guard reports what a hostage eats?”

“The night guard reports when a foreign prince walks the private passages before dawn. The kitchens account for what goes missing.”

“Two apples?”

“Among other things.”

“You had him followed.”

“I had him watched.”

Eric gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Thank God we have cleared up the distinction.”

There was no sane construction in which ignorance would have been kinder. Ilya had tested three outer doors, the old chapel stair and the wall above the sea-gate. He carried a knife despite the terms of the peace and moved through sleeping corridors as though he expected to have to kill his way out of them. Scott would have been a fool not to know where he went.

“I came here thinking you hadn’t noticed,” Eric said.

“I noticed.”

“Yes.” Eric looked at him as he might have looked at an unfamiliar weapon found among his own stores. “I can see that.”

Scott put down his pen. “What do you want?”

“I want to know what in God’s name you are doing.”

“Keeping account of a dangerous man under my roof.”

“And after you’ve counted his apples?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“He has not been confined. There is no guard on his door. He has rooms, food, coin and the use of the keep. If he wants a horse, he may have one. If he wants the road, the gate is open. I have not touched him.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Scott’s hand went still beside the pen. “Take that back.”

“Go ahead and make me. Better yet, prove me wrong, and I’ll take it back.”

“The gate is open.”

“To what? The moment he rides through it, his father puts his niece on a ship in his place. Don’t call that freedom to me.”

“I did not make his father’s threat.”

“No. You’ve merely found it useful.”

Scott stood.

“What would you have me do? Send him back to the man who offered her? Take the child instead?”

“Speak to him.”

“About what?”

“Heavens wept, Scott. Tell him he is not waiting to be killed. Tell him what happens tomorrow and the day after that. Tell him whether those rooms will still be his next month. Ask him what he needs.”

“Every word from me is a threat to him. If I summon him, he comes expecting sentence. If I tell him he is safe, he spends the night looking for the trap in it. If I offer him anything, he wants to know the price.”

“Then don’t summon him. Go to him.”

“Walk into his rooms unasked? That will soothe him?”

“Go in daylight, you stubborn bastard. Stand in the passage if he won’t let you through the door. Let him be rude to you. You’re unlikely to die of it.”

“He is not your son, Eric. He is not another lame hound for you to carry in from the rain. He is a grown man, and a dangerous one. He commanded armies at seventeen. He is the Butcher of Redmere. If he fears punishment for what he did, the fear is not wholly unreasonable.”

“Then punish him.”

Scott had an answer ready. It went nowhere.

“If Redmere warrants his life, take it,” Eric said. “Bring him into the hall. Name what he did. Pass sentence where your people can hear you, with your crown on your head and your own honour behind it. Hang him, if you can bear to call that justice.”

“I will not.”

“No,” Eric said. “You won’t. You will watch every crust he steals, every hour he sleeps, every door he tries. You will leave him enough chain to choke himself on and stand there calling him free.”

“Do you think I want this?”

Eric’s mouth closed.

“Answer me. Do you think I take pleasure in seeing him like this? Do you think I sit here waiting to hear that he has missed another meal?”

“I don’t know what you want.”

Eric had followed him into a war before Scott dared name it one. Through every ill-considered scheme that followed, he hadn't questioned the means and trusted the purpose. He had never before looked Scott in the face and said he did not know what Scott wanted.

“That,” Eric said, quieter, “is the problem.”

“Say what you mean.”

“I have seen you look at men you meant to kill. I’ve seen how you look at men you meant to bed. I knew what that was. I do not know what this is.”

“You think I would hurt him?”

“I think you are hurting him.”

“I have never laid a hand on him.”

“Not with your hands. You sit across the keep and know every bite he swallows. You know where he is at every hour. I love you more than any man alive, Scott, but I will not call that benign because you ask me to. What happens when watching is no longer enough for you?”

Eric’s good hand had closed around the edge of the desk. He was no longer leaning into the fight. He was braced.

“Get out.”

“No.”

“Eric.”

“Call the guard if you want me moved.”

They stood looking at one another. Scott could have called. Eric knew he would not; the certainty was there in his face, infuriating and absolute.

“What do you want of me? Assurances he will hear as threats? An empty promise he will despise me for offering?”

“Yes. Three assurances. Then three more tomorrow. Sit outside the damned door and say them to the wood if you have to.”

“He is not one of my men.”

Eric’s face went bloodless. He looked as he had on a breached wall when the men behind Scott could not yet see what was coming.

“He is dying,” Eric said.

“He is not.”

“He will. If this goes on, he will.”

“Then he will die.”

Scott could have taken it back. Eric gave him time. Scott said nothing.

Eric stopped arguing. He looked at Scott as though the boy were dead already.

“If that boy dies in your house while you stand on the other side of his door counting what he steals,” he said, “you will never have peace again.”

Eric left without waiting for an answer and barely spoke to him until Goldmonth, when Scott sent for Marlowe. After that, Eric stood down. He mistook the things Scott did not want for things Scott had denied himself, and Scott let him keep the error.

Now Eric is across the Greywater bringing home the children Ilya saved. Ilya is gone. Scott is awake in the room where his friend told him he would never have peace again.

The fire settles behind him.

How dare he? How dare Ilya go back to the man who had whittled him down to almost nothing? How dare he carry his life back to those barren rocks, as though Scott had not kept it a year with his own hands? How dare he take Scott’s one act of restraint and turn it into this—a silent keep, an empty yard, a door shut on a night no door in Aderra stands shut?

How dare you choose death when I was here?

The accusation circles the room and comes back to him. Ilya had come unarmed because he expected to be killed. Expected Scott to kill him. He had said he knew what he meant to do. He had said it was not about Veyr, with that strange clarity in his face, like a man who had finally arrived where he was going.

Scott had said, I could order you to stay. He had not said, Stay.

At the door he had said, Do not make me regret opening the gate. Ilya had said, No.

That was the treaty they made at the door: Scott asked for nothing, and Ilya promised it. Nothing for nothing. No king in the Reach ever struck a fairer bargain. Scott has been paid in full every hour since.

He should have asked him to stay.

He should have made him.

Scott drags the Veyran chart across the desk, scattering the convoy orders. Blue marriages, green alliances, disputed blood in red. No roads. No harbours worth the name. No mark for Ilya travelling without banners through a country that had taught him how to disappear.

He follows the coast from Sevren north, then west. Forty inhabited islands and twice as many rocks where a ship might land. He could put riders on every road between Hunter Keep and the Narrows. He could send Nolan south before dawn, buy every ship in Adermere, close the coast from Redmark to the Hollander marshes.

And send them where?

“Come back,” Scott says.

It comes out like an order.

“Sire?” the guard calls from the passage.

Scott looks at the closed door. Beyond it, a man waits to be told whom to wake, which horse to saddle, which ship to launch.

“Go.”

The footsteps withdraw.

Scott could have Ilya brought through the lower gate furious and bound, slung across a horse if he refused to ride. Let him threaten. Let him spit in Scott’s face. Let him try every knife in the keep.

The south tower is warm and dry. It has one door, narrow windows and six guards to a rotation. Scott puts Ilya there in his mind: white with rage, pacing, refusing food, turning all that terrible attention into hatred. The trays come back untouched. He tests the window, the hinges, each of the six men at the door. He throws himself against every boundary Scott puts around him.

For the first time all night, Scott draws a full breath.

The door stays shut.

A year ago Scott had known which stair Ilya took, what he carried away and how long he slept afterward.

Tonight he does not know whether Ilya has eaten. He does not know whether he is warm. He does not know whether he is alive.

Scott wants him back.

The gate opens in his mind.

Ilya comes through on his own feet, furious and exhausted, salt dried white on his coat, his hair half out of its tie. He is already complaining about the guards, the road, Scott’s men and Scott himself. He looks ill-used, murderous and alive.

Scott reaches him before the keep door and gets both hands on him—shoulders, arms, the back of his neck, whatever he can reach and hold until his hands believe it. Ilya objects. God willing, he objects at length.

Be angry, then. Be impossible. Only come back.

The vision goes out. Scott’s hands are empty.

The fire has gone down to a red seam. He had decided to let it die. It is a fire for the dead, and Ilya is not dead. Ilya is not dead. Ilya is not dead.

The ember shifts under its ash, and its light goes with it. Scott is across the room before he has decided anything. He goes down on one knee on the cold stone and rakes the ash back. The ember lies under it like something almost done being alive; a dark red cut in a grey field.

He takes the kindling too hard. A splinter goes into the heel of his hand and does not feel like much of anything; a curiosity. He lays the thin wood over the red piece by piece, roof-wise, the way his mother built it, the way he built it as a boy in the gamekeeper’s cottage. Then he bends down and gives the ember his breath. Once. The red brightens and dims. Again. Smoke catches in his throat, and a small flame stands up on one splinter, sways, and dims back down.

Scott bends closer, close enough that the heat presses against his mouth, and breathes again—long and slow, quiet; the way you say a name in the dark.

The flame stands. It takes one edge, then the next, and then it is not one flame but several, and then it is a fire, feeding, and the light climbs his hands and the hearthstone and the near leg of the desk.

He stays on his knees while it strengthens. He gives it a log, and another, and more after that—too much for the hours left before dawn; wood enough to warm a man coming in off the winter sea. His blood is on the kindling, he sees now, dark marks going bright as the flame finds them. His hands are black with ash. The splinter has its own small heartbeat.

Behind him, the door is shut.

“Come home,” Scott says.

Chapter End Notes

And so we finish with the Hollow Days, three Christmas ghosts pastiche, PHEW

Writing masculine men is exhausting. This whole fic was, in part, a challenge in writing firmly masculine men. No androgyny, no deliberate, performative blurring of gender norms. Nope, just dark, freak4freak military idiots. And trying to force some goddamn interiority into Scotty's dumb gloomy hands was a fucking nightmare.

Chapter 13

The fourth Hollow Day, turn of 1148 into 1149

Eric brings the children home on the ninth day, and for one hour of one morning something in the world is cleanly right.

There are eleven of them. They come up from the hold one by one, wrapped in sailors' coats and old blankets, blinking at the pale sun. The youngest is carried. The eldest insists on walking, makes it three steps along the quay and sits down hard enough to alarm everyone but himself.

"I'm fine," the boy says.

"Naturally," Eric says, lowering himself with care. "That's why you've chosen the ground. Best seat in the harbour."

The child considers this and nods.

Eric looks up at Scott. He is missing a piece from the left shoulder of his coat. The shirt beneath it is black with old blood, the bandage newer than either. He has acquired a cut across his forehead, two split knuckles and the pleased look of a man returning from an excellent day's work.

Eric's grin widens, improbably. "All went according to plan."

Scott looks past him at the ship. One mast, grey sail, no colours. The hull belongs to no vessel recorded in the royal register and will, likely, be unrecognisable in a week. Two of the smugglers who brought it in have already vanished into the harbour crowd despite the written pardon in Carter's hand. The third was already in dispute with a customs officer over whether the King's pardon extended to unpaid berthage.

"The rock was where the boy said," Eric continues. "The south-west passage was where he said. The watch changed when he said it would, the second tide took us through the lee to the hour, and the monastery had between fifty and eighty men. Sixty-three, as it happened. I've never run a cleaner operation."

"You were wounded."

"There were sixty-three of them."

Scott almost laughs. The sound reaches his chest and stops there.

Ilya should be here to see this. Not to be thanked, lord but he would hate that, and Scott has no desire to spoil a good morning by making him grit his teeth through basic manners only to make his irritation everyone else’s problem thirty minutes later. He should be here to look over the rescued children, find faults in Eric's approach and explain to the assembled harbour why Aderran sailors would drown in a basin if someone painted it blue.

The unplanned portion of Eric's passengers begin coming off the ship.

They are large, fur-clad and silent. Scott counts thirty-one. Some have the shaved crowns of Veyran religious sects . Some have beards to their waists and axes that the harbour guard are wisely pretending not to notice. One is an old woman with a white plait, three missing teeth and the shoulders of a blacksmith. She pauses before Scott, examines him from boots to crown and says something in Veyrski.

Scott looks at Eric.

"I believe she approves," Eric says.

The woman spits into the water.

"Do you understand her?"

"No."

"Then your belief remains untroubled by evidence."

"That's the basis of most belief, as I understand it."

Behind them come three Veyran soldiers, bound at wrist and ankle. They are young. One has a broken nose, one a swollen eye, and all three wear the rigid look of men who expect the next piece of information to be their manner of death.

"By and large, the guard preferred to go down fighting," Eric says. "These were unconscious when the matter was decided."

Scott turns back to the thirty-one.

"They helped you?"

"Once we made it clear why we had come." Eric's expression changes, pleased still but puzzled underneath. "I said Prince Rozanov had sent word that the children were on Moryn and asked for their help getting them out. After that, they were ours. Or we were theirs; it was difficult to tell."

"Ilya did not send you."

"Well, not technically."

The old woman speaks again. This time one of the younger monks answers her, then addresses Scott in careful Common.

"Prince sent you to us," he says. "Prince have debt to you. We honour his debt."

Of course Ilya is known on Moryn, and known well enough that its monks have left their rock on the strength of his name. Little is known in Aderra about the sects scattered across the Veyran islands, except that their reputation for holiness tends to rise with the cold, hunger and uselessness of the places they choose to inhabit. By that measure Moryn, a barren speck whose devotees almost never leave it, should produce the holiest men in Veyr. It certainly produces some of the strangest.

Scott has known generals beloved by their soldiers; armies are notoriously sentimental about commanders who keep them alive. Zealots on a far-flung rock are another constituency, and how Ilya won that one is a question Scott does not expect will be answered in any useful form.

"You are under my peace," Scott tells them. "You will be housed and fed. No one will compel you to speak. If you want passage elsewhere, give the harbourmaster a destination."

The young monk translates. The group listens without mild interest.

"Guest quarters," Scott tells Carter.

The old woman says something. The young monk shakes his head. "No beds."

"The lesser guest quarters, then."

Another exchange. "No."

"The barracks."

"No soldiers."

Scott looks at the sky for assistance. It offers little in the way of godly wisdom.

"Find them a room they will accept," he tells Carter.

"A broad commission."

"You excell at those."

Then Scott goes to the prisoners.

They draw together as far as the ropes permit. The one with the swollen eye cannot be more than seventeen. He is trying not to shake and failing at the hands.

"You will not be returned to Grigori Rozanov."

Something changes. All three look at him with great focus.

"You will be held under the law of prisoners. You will be fed, treated and questioned. The dead at Moryn will be accounted for. What you did there will be judged in daylight. No man touches you without an order, and no order will be given in secret."

The youngest soldier closes his eyes. The man beside him lets out a breath. Their ropes remain, the guard remains and they look less frightened than they did minutes ago, when the option of being sent back was still on the table.

Veyr is a cursed country.

"Take them to the lower ward," Scott says. "Separately. Vale sees them after ours."

Eric turns his head. "Ours."

"You are bleeding on my quay. More specifically, my boot."

Eric looks down. "Ah."

Scott takes him by the sound shoulder and gives him to Vale's assistants.

For the rest of the morning the quay belongs to the children.

Lord Sarne comes from Harth with his two remaining sons, one daughter-in-law and enough coastal people to retake Moryn if provided a favourable tide. They arrive before the children have been brought through the sea-gate. The eldest boy who chose the ground gets to his feet at the sight of them and does not sit down again.

Scott has seen men find children alive after battles. The body has few dignified responses to such information. Sarne makes none of them. He gets both arms around two of the children, goes to his knees on the wet stone and remains there while his sons speak to the others.

His eldest son died at Eastmere. His grandsons, evidently, did not.

For five minutes Sarne thanks Scott with the whole harbour listening. He thanks him as king, commander, father of the realm and instrument of whatever mercy governs seas. Scott bears it until Sarne attempts to kneel a second time.

"Eric brought them out," he says.

"At your command."

"On Prince Rozanov's intelligence."

Sarne stops.

He looks toward the grey ship, then beyond it. "The Bear prince."

"Yes."

Sarne's face does something Scott cannot use. "Then I owe two men."

"You owe your grandchildren breakfast. Take them home."

Sarne bows and obeys.

By evening, everyone on the Harth coast will know whose directions brought the children back. By the next council, Harrow will discover that the grief he has been setting against the Crown has been made more complicated.

Scott watches the families go until they pass through the sea-gate, then returns to work.

Housing the Moryn folk consumes the rest of the afternoon. Having already refused both sets of guest rooms and the barracks, they reject the old infirmary and an empty warehouse against the east wall before accepting the former orangery.

The name is an inherited courtesy. The building has produced no fruit in thirty years and spends its summers sheltering dairy cows from the flies. The roof is sound, the floor drains and the windows face the sea; beyond that, it offers little that could be mistaken for comfort. The old woman circles it once, declares it suitable, and orders three cots and thirty blankets brought in and every Aderran sent out.

Carter watches the cots carried across the lower yard.

"I am beginning to see how Veyr arrived at its present condition," he says.

"Through strong opinions about basic amenities?"

"It cannot have helped."

Carter comes to Scott's office after midnight and begins searching his desk.

He does this sometimes. He never takes anything; Scott has concluded that the intrusion is a self soothing mechanism.

"The convoy figures are on the left," Scott says.

"I'm not looking for convoy figures."

"Then you are badly placed."

“No letter through Redmark,” Carter says. “Nothing to Valenne. You haven’t asked after Marlowe.”

Scott looks up. “If I meant to use Marlowe to draw Ilya out, I would know better than to leave the order in my desk.”

“I know. That isn’t what I asked.”

“You haven’t asked anything.”

Carter shuts the drawer. “Are you going after him?”

“No.”

“You could find him.”

Scott has considered every route Carter named. Redmark could carry a letter. Marlowe and the Vetrova girl could be watched; if watching failed, they could be taken. Men could be bought, roads closed, ships delayed. Sooner or later, such a search would become a net whether Scott called it one or not.

“Perhaps,” he says. “Finding him is not the same as bringing him back.”

“I didn’t say seize him.”

“What, then?”

“Find him. Ask him to come back.”

“He knows the gate is open.”

“That isn’t the same as being asked.”

Scott sets down the report. “He said he knew what he wanted to do.”

Carter watches him. “Do you think he will return?”

“No.”

“Does that trouble you?”

“You came to learn whether I would drag him back. I won’t.”

“That was not all I asked.”

“It is what you have learned.”

Carter looks equal parts disappointed and relieved by the answer, which is an irritating combination to receive on an otherwise pleasing day.

"Very well," he says.

He comes round, pulls a chair beside Scott and takes up the convoy figures.

"Your loss estimates are wrong."

"They are Rennick's."

"Then they're dishonest as well."

They work until the lamps gutter.

Hearthmonth, first month, 1149

Hearthmonth begins with the sea talking nonsense.

A fish-buyer out of Redmere swears the Bear prince was seen on Kargor with two hundred riders and a black banner. A Torreni merchant places him at Vrangsk on the same day, alone, buying passage under a false name and wearing a scar no other witness mentions. He is dead in a ditch on Sevren. He is leading mutineers through the streets of Starogard. Three women gathering shellfish off Solovets watch him walk out of the water armed and dry, followed by pale dead women with black eyes whom they identify as the Drowned Queens come back to lead their favourite son to victory.

The last account becomes a song.

Scott first hears the song from a clerk humming as he tallies shipping losses. Two days later it has reached the east market. By the week’s end they are singing it in Harth, with an additional verse in which Ilya drowns an army by looking at it. The speed suggests either extraordinary enthusiasm or organisation, and Scott has learned not to assume the cheaper explanation.

He has one of the singers brought to court.

The guard produces a cooper from Maltby, a sober man with a good voice and the expression of someone who has spent the journey to the palace trying to remember whether singing can be treason.

“All of it,” Scott says.

The cooper sings. His voice shakes through the first verse and steadies by the third. Scott listens as he would to an account of enemy sailings, noting which details have survived the journey and which have improved. By the end, Ilya has walked dry from the sea, enlisted the Drowned Queens and destroyed an army without drawing a weapon.

“Who taught it to you?”

“A woman in the east market, sire.”

“What does she sell?”

“Lamp oil.”

“Her name?”

“I never asked.”

“Was she Veyran?”

“I don’t think so, sire.”

“Anything remarkable about her?”

“No, sire.”

“Black eyes?”

The cooper blinks. “Brown.”

“Then we will proceed on the assumption that she was mortal. Carter, pay him.”

The cooper leaves with a silver crown and the considerably more valuable news that the king has heard the song in person. The inquiry identifies no author. By the following morning, Scott’s interest is being offered in the east market as proof that every word is true.

Scott does not dismiss the reports because they are stupid. Stupid reports move men as efficiently as true ones and are often placed deliberately, by clever hands. He marks dates, harbours, names and distances. The sightings contradict one another too precisely. Ilya is everywhere a frightened kingdom might look for him and nowhere a ship can reach in time.

More importantly, the prince was multiplying. Whether the living man has anything to do with the multiplication cannot be established.

While the lull lasts, Scott reads every account. Rumour is one of Veyr’s few forms of public speech; set enough lies beside one another and the truth sometimes appears in the gaps. Besides, each absurdity leaves open the possibility that Ilya is alive beneath it. He does not read for a road home. None points west.

The lull is brief. The half-war develops an appetite.

By the ninth of Hearthmonth, the first convoys are sailing. Rennick's counting-houses finance them, the carriers complain about the fee and every captain who reaches harbour intact praises the policy as though he invented it. One unmarked raider is taken south of Linmouth and declared lawful prize. Its hull is sound. Scott puts it back into service before the previous owner's blood is entirely out of the seams.

By the twelfth, beacon watches run from Eastmere to Redmere. Every coastal village has an inland assembly point and two carts kept loaded with water, flour and blankets. Lord Sarne drills the Harth levies himself.

By the fifteenth, Torreni merchants are carrying Aderran grain and salt by land at twice the ordinary price. They express regret over the necessity with such sincerity that Scott adds a third to the road tax and feels better.

The four new keels show their first ribs on the Adermere slips. They will not touch water in time to matter. Scott has them laid anyway. Kingdoms are built by men doing late work for the next disaster.

The north remains thin. Rydal moves men to two Hollander crossings, then explains that winter has made the southern barracks more comfortable. Ardsley sends the letter to Scott with the relevant sentence underlined and no other comment. Scott leaves the northern levy in place, reinforces the Coulway and declines, for the fourth time, to lose two wars at once.

His best sea-captain asks permission to run the eastern strait under fishing colours and put eyes on Starogard harbour.

The man is competent, loyal and has three daughters. Scott hears himself say no.

"I can do it," the captain says.

He can’t.

"I know."

"Then why—"

Because Scott won’t lose a single thing more to Veyr; not so much as a copper coin.

"Because you are useful where I can still give you orders."

The captain dislikes this and obeys.

The intelligence reports fill one folder, then two. He reads them at meals, in council, after midnight. Reading them is like drinking saltwater: the body insists because it recognises water, and each mouthful worsens the need.

He makes the moves that exist. Convoys. Beacons. Piracy writs. Bought harbourmasters. Coastal drills. Northern riders. Four ships growing uselessly and stubbornly on the slips.

The sea keeps talking about Ilya. Then the raids begin to go wrong.

The first warning reaches a fishing village north of Redmere at dusk. Three men in grey come up from the shore. Their Common is poor and full of the Stones. They tell whoever will listen that the village must be empty before midnight. They give no names and no explanation. Before anyone decides to ask why, they are gone. The raiders arrive with the morning tide. They find cold hearths and doors standing open to the wind. They burn half the mill for spite and leave with six sacks of flour already spoiled by damp.

Four days later the warning comes to Linmouth wearing a fisher’s coat. The woman speaks Common as though she learned each sentence for this purpose and will have no use for it afterward. The harbour is empty by dawn. Two raiding boats follow the markers into the inner channel and run aground together. Someone shifted the stakes during the night.

After that, ill luck begins to acquire a method. At Harth, brine runs from the raiders’ torches when they lift them. At Little Henning, a captain discovers too late that his pilots were given orders for the following day. A black-hulled ship drifts into Eastmere with no one aboard and both steering chains cut. Then the sea gives back a Veyran captain below Harrowick. There is an army knife between his ribs.

Scott reads the report four times.

The knife is of the pattern carried by the army Ilya commanded. Grigori would not knowingly put those men aboard his raiding ships. The blade offers two possibilities and proves neither: someone wants Scott to believe the old loyalties survived, or they have.

Any clerk can draw the conclusion; Scott does not enter it as fact. He writes coordinated interference, origin unconfirmed beneath Carter's summary and signs his name. The evidence shows that someone with Veyran soldiers, good coastal intelligence and an interest in Aderran lives is dismantling the raids from within. It does not show Ilya giving the order. It does not show Ilya alive.

Scott will not make a wish into a legal finding merely because the wish has acquired a knife.

The warnings continue.

Villages begin moving before the beacons are lit. Fishermen leave bread and salt on the beach for the grey men. One parish priest adds Prince Rozanov's name to the prayer for travellers and is reprimanded by three superiors, which ensures the prayer reaches every parish between Harth and Adermere by the following Sunday.

The coast begins to turn Ilya into one of its own stories. In the telling, the grey strangers are his men, the shifted channel stakes his work, the empty black ship his answer. By the time the stories reach Harth, he no longer needs a ship; he walks beneath the Greywater, and the Drowned Queens carry his orders.

Whatever moves beneath the stories asks nothing of Scott. No terms arrive, no promise of another warning, no name to which he can send thanks or orders. He sees only the result: cold hearths instead of bodies, grounded boats instead of burned villages. Someone is taking care with Aderran lives. Scott cannot put Ilya’s name to that care without asking desire to do the work of evidence.

For a year, Ilya had been required to live by the same kind of inference. An unguarded door was meant as freedom. A summons not sent was meant as restraint. A sentence withheld was meant as safety.

Now Scott waits on a kindness he cannot claim, question or know will continue. This, then, is what he had called freedom.

24 Hearthmonth, first month, 1149

The council requires a reason. The coast has gone nearly ten days without a successful raid. Ships still vanish and trade remains wounded, but the villages are standing. The children are home. One captured Veyran hull now escorts Aderran grain beneath an Aderran flag.

These facts must be given an intention. Luck cannot be insured, defended or offered to men rebuilding their roofs for the second time in a winter.

Rennick wants a statement that will steady credit. Sarne wants to tell his people whom they have to thank for the comparative absence of tragedy. Harrow wants nothing said that cannot be relied upon to continue. The three requests are incompatible, so naturally they have been entered under the same item.

Murdock begins. He knows enough of the truth to recognise what is being done to it. He also hasn’t gotten his teenaged gameskeeper on the throne of Aderra by not pressing every advantage available. 

“Whatever remains uncertain,” he says, “the release of Prince Rozanov has served Aderra. His intelligence returned the children. Men formerly under his command are obstructing the raids. We cannot yet say whether they act by his order, but neither can we pretend his return to Veyr had no part in it.”

“Service is not intention,” Harrow says.

“No,” Murdock agrees. “Intention is generally established once the result is known.”

Rennick leans forward. “Let us not waste time by talking around the obvious, my lords. A prince of Veyr was kept a year in Aderra, restored to health and released into his father’s disorder at the precise moment that disorder became our concern.”

Lord Sarne has been silent until now. “The king could have held him. This council advised him to do so. He refused, and my grandsons are alive.”

That settles more than it should.

Murdock gives the facts direction. Sarne gives them moral weight. Rennick calculates what they will fetch. The clerks supply sequence, which councils often mistake for cause. Even Harrow’s opposition helps by making agreement feel loyal.

The version taking shape is brutally simple. Scott took in Grigori’s discarded heir, restored him, taught him what his father’s war cost Aderra and sent him home at the moment he could do the greatest damage. Moryn, the warnings and the knives are but the first returns on a year’s investment.

The story is false only in the matter of intention, which is the easiest part to bend to an appropriate shape.

“A long wager,” Rennick says. “The Mason builds slowly, but the wall stands.”

Scott can already hear the phrase passing from the minutes into the counting-houses and from there into history, each repetition removing another trace of what happened. Hunter the Mason, building slow but building true. What nonsense.

He could correct them. He could say there was no wager. He opened the gate because he would not keep Ilya by a force he had renounced. Ilya promised nothing; Scott asked for nothing. Whatever now moves through Veyr does so without Scott’s knowledge or permission. Where Ilya Rozanov is concerned, Scott has not once put Aderra first.

The truth would hand Harrow the argument over the coast, unsettle the lords, weaken every order Scott must issue and accomplish nothing for Scott or Ilya.

There is also the less defensible fact that Scott wants the story. It makes Ilya’s actions an answer rather than an absence. It gives him, for the duration of one council meeting, the illusion that something still passes between them.

Rennick turns to him. “May the Table be told whether these developments accord with an understanding reached before Prince Rozanov’s departure?”

An understanding is a generous name for what passed at the gate. Scott had said, I could order you to stay. Ilya left.

“You may understand that I knew what manner of man I was releasing,” Scott says. “Beyond that, I will not discuss what passed between us or what he may be doing now. Anything said in this room will eventually cross the Greywater. I will not clarify his position for his enemies.”

The room receives the refusal as confirmation. Scott knew it would. Secrecy has this convenience: men assume that whatever is concealed must possess a shape and will supply the shape themselves easily and, often, predictably.

The clerk raises his pen. “How shall I enter that, sire?”

“Exactly as I said it.”

By the time the clerk finishes, the children have become the first return on an agreement, the warnings evidence of a network and the knife in the Veyran captain proof that Scott’s hand still reaches across the water. Scott has claimed none of it. The room gives it to him, and he accepts.

The story gives purpose to the open gate. It makes absence resemble command.

If Grigori falls, the account will improve further. Scott will not only have cultivated the discarded prince, he will have restored him to strength and instilled in him a deep sense of loyalty and regard for Aderra. Lords who called mercy weakness will call it statecraft. Every private failure will become public foresight; everything Scott could not keep will become a sacrifice he chose.

Ilya will remain across the water, because men who win kingdoms do not return to live in another man’s keep. Aderra will give Scott every consequence of Ilya except Ilya himself and praise him for the loss as though he offered it willingly.

And so they arrived to this. His grief attends council dressed as strategy, sits straight and is admired.

Harrow waits until the general council has been dismissed, then asks the clerk to remain. Three lords are still gathering their papers. Carter stands beside the door. Harrow prefers witnesses; in private, an objection can be mistaken for advice.

“You permitted the Table to infer that Prince Rozanov acts under the authority of the Crown.”

“I permitted the Table to hear what I said.”

“You know what they heard.”

“Yes.”

Harrow studies him.

“You cannot have both, sire. He cannot be free enough that the danger is his and yours enough that the victories are yours. By tomorrow Rennick will be pricing ships on that fiction. Sarne will move men on it. Sooner or later, someone will leave a wall undermanned because he believes Prince Rozanov is guarding the sea.”

“No order will be issued on that assumption.”

“Orders are not the only things men obey.”

“The villages are standing.”

“They are. That does not place the man who saved them under your command.”

Harrow comes closer to the table.

“Tell me plainly. Is Prince Rozanov yours?”

“He is at his own disposal.”

“Then no.”

The answer enters more deeply than Scott permits his face to show.

“You cannot instruct him,” Harrow continues. “You cannot recall him. You cannot know whether these men act for him, around him or against him. You do not know where he is or what he wants. Yet by morning half this kingdom will believe your hand is on his shoulder.”

Harrow glances at the clerk.

“I have watched Aderra mistake fortune for masonry before. Men lean their weight upon it. Stones fall on those beneath. I ask that my objection be recorded.”

“Record it in full,” Scott says. “If the wall falls, posterity should know which of us stood clear.”

The laughter is brief and relieved. Scott has turned Harrow’s warning into an act of self-preservation, which the room knows how to dismiss. He has not answered Harrow; he has merely made agreement with him embarrassing.

Harrow closes his mouth. The clerk finishes the line.

The others leave. Carter gathers the minutes and does not congratulate Scott.

Scott remains at the table with Harrow’s question among the maps.

Once, mine had possessed legal meaning. The law has, since, released Ilya, but the word did not release Scott. Now Ilya’s choices cross the Greywater without passing through Scott’s hand, and the court returns them to him as tribute. Aderra is willing to call Ilya his while his means children restored, villages spared and a knife at Grigori’s back. No one in the room means the word as Scott does. Except, perhaps, Harrow.

Eric finds him after midnight.

The shoulder has been stitched. He wears the sling only when Vale is close enough to enforce it and has removed it now, though the stiffness gives him away.

"You're grieving him," he says.

Scott keeps his eyes on the map. "You've mentioned."

"I said you'd have no peace. I didn't say you should make a hobby of it."

"And yet you are always nagging me about needing better hobbies.”

Eric comes to the table. "He's alive."

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you. But I know him. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it the way he did everything here. Wholly, deliberately and with no regard for the nerves of anyone who might prefer advance notice."

Scott moves a marker from Redmere to Linmouth. "A compelling intelligence assessment."

"He is winning something."

That is possible. The warnings are organised. The rumours are designed to make Grigori look weak, unable to put a hand on one returned prince. The army knife is a message aimed east as much as west. If Ilya is alive beneath the noise, then he is not merely surviving it. He is using it.

Pride rises in Scott before he can prevent it, fierce and useless. Eric sees it and does him the courtesy of not addressing it directly.

“And if he wins,” Eric says, “he won’t come back.”

Scott looks up.

“You know what comes after. His brother on a throne he cannot hold alone. A country to put back together. Houses to bargain with, soldiers to settle, bodies to bury. They will marry Ilya wherever the last breach needs closing and call it peace. There will be no road from that life back to this gate.”

Scott has spent half his life considering what follows a change of crown. Out of all the things he needs right now, a lesson on basic politics is not on the list.

“He doesn’t need to win.”

Eric waits.

Scott looks back at the map. “None of that is necessary. He left before he had any of it.”

The fire works through a log. Below, the watch changes, the call passing from wall to wall.

“Please tell me you didn’t come here to tell me he won’t return.”

“I came to tell you that letting him leave was still right. Whatever else existed between you, you gave him back the choice of his own life. Let that be enough.”

“You think things ended at the gate.”

“Didn’t it?”

Scott considers how much truth the night can bear.

“For him, perhaps.”

Eric closes his eyes. “I was afraid you would say that.”

“Then why ask?”

“Because I hoped you had let him go.”

“I let him leave.”

“That is not the same thing.”

Eric puts his good hand flat on the table.

“You haven’t sent men after him. I know that. But today you let the council turn his choices into your design.”

“They needed a reason to trust the coast.”

“Was the coast the only one that needed reassuring?”

Scott says nothing. Eric’s anger gives way to pity. Scott would rather he had kept the other.

“You are wrong about him,” Scott says.

“Then correct me.”

Scott could tell him: I did not love him because I held him. I held him because I could not bear loving a man I could not keep. The distinction is real. It is also no defence. Spoken aloud, it would become one.

“Go to bed,” Scott says.

“Vale said the same.”

“Then obey the better commander for once.”

Eric leaves.

Scott remains over the map. Beyond the glass, winter has covered the harbour in a thin white skin. Beneath it, the sea stays black and moving.

For another two weeks, it talks.

3 Wolfmonth, second month, 1149

At the start of Wolfmonth, the sea falls silent.

Scott can’t determine the precise moment it happened. One day contains three reports from the Narrows, each improbable and specific. The next contains one, six days old. After that, nothing.

The bought men in Veyran harbours stop sending letters. Then they begin returning Scott's gold through the same channels, accompanied by notes of unusual brevity.

Do not write again.

No cargo.

No names.

Finished.

Ships cease leaving the western Stones. Fishing boats hug their own harbours. Smugglers refuse three times their usual price and, when offered four, leave the room. A Torreni merchant house whose trade in lamp oil has never justified the quality of its maps sends two fast vessels into Veyran water. Neither returns.

The last thing that can be called intelligence comes from a fishing crew in the Narrows. They swear that every watch-fire on the western Stones went out over the course of one night. North to south, island by island, each light vanished as they watched, as though a hand were closing over the archipelago.

After that, the Greywater goes flat.

Chapter 14

Chapter Notes

4 Wolfmonth, second month, 1149

After a season of the sea talking of nothing but the Bear prince, silence is harder to bear. Rumour had particulars, even when every one of them was false. Silence leaves men to supply their own.

The council table is empty.

Not literally. It holds three maps, two ledgers, a bowl of fruit, Harrow's gloves and the remains of an apple Rennick has been cutting into ever thinner slices while he waits for someone to produce a fact. The clerks have sharpened six pen tips. Carter has brought every report received since dawn and arranged them in order of arrival.

There are four. One is from Redmere and concerns a cracked beacon lens. One is from Linmouth and concerns berthage. Two are from the north. None contains Veyr.

For the first time since the raids began, there is nothing to put on the table. The sea has gone quiet, and the quiet has reached inland as far as this room.

Scott sits at its head and looks at men who believe the silence belongs to him.

The story has adapted with admirable speed. In it, nothing has happened by accident. The Butcher of Redmere was never a hostage but a weapon kept close, mended and released; therefore the blackout cannot be blindness. The blackout is merely the next stage of Scott’s plan, too secret for the council to see.

It is an excellent story. Scott has four reports about a lens and a berth and no more notion than Rennick’s apple of what is happening across the water.

"The southern dispositions remain unchanged," he says.

No one moves.

"The convoy schedule continues. Redmere and Linmouth keep double watches. The coast villages retain carts and inland quarters. No captain enters Veyran water without Crown warrant. Ardsley keeps his northern levy."

Rennick puts down the knife. "Until when, sire?"

"Until the facts alter."

"Which facts?"

"Any of them would be welcome."

Murdock looks down quickly. Sarne fails to.

Harrow says, "You are instructing the kingdom to wait."

"I am."

"If the Veyrans are preparing another raid—"

"Then the watches will see it."

"If they have turned on one another?"

"Then I prefer they finish before an Aderran ship presents them with a common enemy."

"And if nothing is happening?"

Scott does not look at the clean patch where a report ought to lie. He need not. Everyone else has.

"Then nothing is the present danger, and we will defend against that."

This satisfies no one. It is not meant to. Satisfaction is an expensive requirement for policy and generally unrelated to its feasibility.

They spend an hour deciding how to continue what they were already doing. Sarne gets two more fast cutters and no permission to use them beyond the Narrows. Rennick gets a Crown guarantee covering one loss in three for ships carrying a bizarre list of necessities, then loses half the increase he wanted for private insurers. Murdock keeps the coastal companies under arms. Harrow keeps the right to be displeased, which Scott has not yet found a way to take from him.

At the end, the first clerk reads back the decisions.

The council has not waited. It has maintained a defensive posture while permitting the anticipated Veyran operation to mature beyond the range of hostile observation.

The boy has a gift. Somewhere on the coast a cooper is setting the same idea to music, and by summer the two accounts will stand roughly equal as history; this one merely has the advantage of a court seal.

Scott looks at its author. He is young and genuinely beautiful: dark skin, large, warm eyes, a narrow mouth, coarse black hair with a pronounced wave. Scott’s tastes have lately narrowed to one bloodthirsty killer who can rip him limb from limb, so the beauty is wasted on him. The sentence, however, is excellent.

"Permit it to mature," Harrow repeats.

"That is what I have, my lord."

"Cabbage matures."

"Then the language is appropriately Aderran," Scott says.

The clerk gives a small, strangled cough and looks up at Scott. He really is beautiful. Alas.

“Strike anticipated.”

The clerk hesitates. “Sire?”

“We anticipated nothing presently occurring. Strike operation as well.”

Rennick says, “That leaves rather little sentence.”

“Then it will resemble our intelligence.”

The clerk bends over the page. After some negotiation, the council has maintained a defensive posture while conditions east of the Narrows remain beyond reliable observation.

It is less elegant. It is also true. Scott signs.

A king is, among other things, the man who signs the minutes. Confidence may be governed; ignorance cannot be made fact merely because the kingdom finds it reassuring.

Scott’s own account is no more impartial. It is also private. Beneath a court seal, a story acquires credit, ships and men prepared to die for it.

14 Wolfmonth, second month, 1149

By the second week, silence has acquired a price. Like most prices, it appears first at the harbour.

Thirty-seven ships wait in Adermere. Scott counts them from the quay because Rennick's ledgers have started becoming outright hysterical, and because the quay faces south, and a man may stand at the rail and call it stocktaking.

The grain ships sit deepest. Their holds were filled before the blackout, when a captain could still cross the lower Greywater, sell in Torren or the southern ports and be home before the next month's wages fell due. Now the sacks stay under tarred hatches while rats grow sleek in the warehouses and three thousand dockworkers divide what work remains. The port has gone still. Interest has not.

Aderra will not starve. Wheat stands in every inland barn. The difficulty is that its abundance has stopped moving while everything the kingdom does not grow arrives by the longest road at twice the price. Iron, lamp oil, pitch and southern medicine come through Torren. House Sondaigne has found danger in every mile and entered each discovery neatly upon its invoices.

"They have charged us for armed escort from their border," Rennick says, following him along the quay. "We supplied the escort."

"I am agog."

"They have also charged river risk on wagons."

Scott stops. "Dispute the river."

"And the rest?"

"Pay half. Offer the balance against their next delivery. They will object, then rediscover their commitment to trade."

Beyond them, labourers turn the sacks and check for damp. The work goes slowly; there is no advantage in finishing early when no ship can leave. At the end of the quay Sarne parcels out the few convoy places to medicine, oil and iron while a queue of captains explain why their own holds are matters of national survival. One captain abandons Sarne’s queue and appeals directly to Scott. Scott sends him back. He has no word that will make the passage safe and no wish to invent one on a public quay.

Before he leaves, Sarne brings word that three boundary posts have moved south along the Rydali line in the night. Scott orders Ardsley to set them back, doubles the causeway patrol and sends three engineers north. The levy stays where it is.

Rydal and Torren need not conspire with Veyr. They need only notice that Aderra's hands are occupied.

Across the water the four new keels stand ribbed against the sky, men working over them with hammer and chisel, the slipway gone yellow with sawdust. Every day alters their shape. Every day makes it plainer that none will touch water before summer. Scott has them built anyway. A ship does not become useful merely because the need for it is urgent.

Behind him, thirty-seven hulls ride the slack water. Scott can give the order that sends them out. He cannot make the passage safe. He counts them once more, gets the same answer and goes back up the hill.

26 Wolfmonth, second month, 1149

The request for Ilya's rooms comes from House Sondaigne.

Their factors have been sleeping above a chandlery near the east gate and object that the neighbourhood smells of rendered fat. This is true. They also object that no merchant charged with securing the kingdom's principal land route should be quartered with chandlers. This is merely Torreni.

Carter reads the request after supper.

"The south guest rooms are full," he says. "Lady Sarne's people have taken the river apartments while their village is evacuated."

"Put the Sondaignes in the old nursery."

"The roof leaks."

"Torren has billed us for rain before."

Carter lowers the paper. "There are the west rooms."

Scott knows which rooms he means.

There are seven of them, though Ilya used only four: bedchamber, dressing room, small receiving room and the study where he learned Aderran law quickly enough to begin identifying its hypocrisies. The outer rooms housed his guard. They are well placed for visitors because they sit between the guest stair and the inner court. They are warm. The roof does not leak. A man can reach the king's council chamber in less than two minutes.

They were selected for all those reasons when Scott’s hostage arrived. Leaving them untouched would not make them Ilya’s. It would only preserve the arrangements of his captivity.

"Give them to Sondaigne," he says.

Carter waits.

"The maps go back to the council room. The practice blades to the armoury. Clothes to household stores unless there is anything personal among them. Vale can decide what medicines remain useful."

"And the books?"

"The library owns the books. Ilya merely improved them."

Ilya had filled the margins with Veyrski objections, corrections and, primarily and overwhelmingly, insults directed at authors. Scott has found them useful.

"I will have the rooms cleared tomorrow," Carter says.

"Today. Sondaigne has made discomfort a matter of state."

"Will you look through—"

"No."

The answer arrives too quickly; Carter has the decency not to observe it. Scott signs the housing order.

The next day, men carry chests out of the west rooms. Scott knows because the household inventory is placed before him at noon. He does not go upstairs. He does not need to supervise a chair becoming available.

At midday, his beer appears beneath the yellow window.

The yardmaster has removed the old pell. Frost entered the deepest cuts and split it nearly through. A new post stands in its place, raw and square, untouched by any hand.

"What was done with the old one?" Scott asks.

The servant beside the table looks alarmed. "The yardmaster said kindling, sire. I can find—"

"No."

He finishes the beer.

The new pell is used that afternoon by six boys from Murdock's household. They strike too high, crowd one another and spend more time laughing than training. It is a better use of the yard than emptiness.

On the following day Scott takes the east stair to dinner. It is shorter by twenty-three paces.

The beer appears beneath the yellow window for three more days. On the fourth, the table is gone.

A good household learns.

8 Thawing, third month, 1149

Valenne enters the war without fighting a battle anyone can prove.

The first report comes from a Sondaigne merchant at the southern border. Six deep-keeled ships passed east beyond Torren’s headland under House Valeska colours. The second comes from an Aderran wool captain who saw three of them north of the Sable Shoals. The third is not a report at all. It is a Veyran loyalist galley brought into a Torreni port by a Valenni prize crew, its captain and officers absent.

Scott receives the three accounts over nine days. On the tenth, he lays them before council.

“Valenne has not sent a royal ship into Veyran water since Prince Rozanov’s mother’s death,” Murdock says.

“It has now sent at least six,” Sarne replies. “Possibly twelve.”

“Whose side?” Rennick asks.

No one answers.

The Valenni ships have taken no harbour. They have landed no visible army. They sit at the mouths of passages Scott cannot see and make movement fail. A company expected from the southern Stones never reaches Starogard. Two grain ships hired by Grigori turn north, vanish and appear six days later in Valenne under arrest. A Veyran lord with three chests of silver leaves Sevren for Torren and does not arrive.

No wreckage is found. No ransom is demanded.

Battles produce witnesses. A blockade produces absences.

“The side that wants the sea closed,” Scott says.

Harrow has been reading the Sondaigne report. “Did you anticipate this?”

The room stills.

There are several useful answers. Valenne’s interest could be described as an extension of Aderran pressure. Scott could speak of private channels, long designs or necessary discretion. He could let the court count Valenne as another proof of his foresight.

“No,” he says.

Rennick looks up. Murdock’s expression does not change, which means he is surprised.

Harrow says, “No.”

“You heard me the first time.”

“I wished to enjoy the second.”

“Do so quietly.”

Scott rises and crosses to the larger map.

“Whatever agreement put Valeska ships there, its present effect is plain. Grigori cannot move grain, gold or men by sea. Neither can anyone fleeing him. We continue to hold our water. Any Valenni ship entering an Aderran harbour receives pilotage and provisions at market price. No captain challenges them outside our limits. Sarne, put both cutters at the southern approach. I want flags, headings and nothing heroic.”

“If they pursue a Veyran ship into our water?” Sarne asks.

“Then both ships stop, or both discover how many shore engines we repaired this winter.”

Rennick taps the report. “House Sondaigne offers to carry a message to the Valenni admiral.”

“For how much?”

“Enough to imply they have already read it.”

“Ask only whether Valenne recognises the Greywater Peace. No questions about Veyr’s government. No offer of alliance.”

Harrow says, “You do not want to know whom they support?”

“I want to know. Asking would not make the answer trustworthy.”

The council turns to distances, stores and the legal difference between shelter and harbouring. Scott answers what can be answered.

Valenne is Ilya’s mother’s country. It withdrew its ambassadors after her death and left Grigori to treat the severance as an inconvenience rather than an accusation. The silence lasted nearly twenty years. Now Valenni warships hold the exits from Veyr while someone extinguishes Grigori’s kingdom from within.
There are other explanations besides the most obvious one; the timing complicates all of them.

Scott puts the dates beside one another. Ilya left Aderra in the last days of Frostmonth. The sea went silent at the beginning of Wolfmonth. These Valenni ships are the first instrument he has seen capable of enforcing such silence. If they were already holding the passages then, Valenne had committed before the blackout fell.

The work within Veyr is older. The warnings to the villages, the spoiled raids and the sudden silence of every paid correspondent in Veyr required people already in place. Ilya could not have built that machinery in five weeks. He had made it move. A network can be laid without a leader. It cannot break cover everywhere at once without a name men will risk being seen to follow.

Valenne remains the gap. Ilya may have gone there during the missing weeks. Someone may have prepared the way before he left Aderra. Most likely both. Scott cannot prove any of it; the dates offer no cleaner account.

If Ilya is the hand that set it moving, he has obtained for himself the one ally that had seemed truly out of reach. The work is excellent. Scott spends ten minutes looking for waste in it and finds none.

He dislikes it anyway. Mostly, he dislikes the thought of Valenne looking at the man kept as a hostage for a year and deciding, at last, that he is kin.

The feeling has no bearing on the ships. He puts it nowhere in the orders.

22 Thawing, third month, 1149

The coast has been quiet for thirty-four days.

At first the villages keep sleeping inland. Then one family moves back, then four. Carts stay packed beside doors. Fishing crews go out only in pairs. Children sent upriver to cousins come home in clothes that no longer fit, full of things they have learned about the ghosts that live in the marsh.

No Veyran hull crosses the Greywater. What crosses instead are stories.

They come through Torren, a few each week, and they do not agree. Grigori has not been seen in Starogard since the first week of Thawing; Grigori is dead; Grigori is alive and in custody. The Bear’s Teeth have surrendered their island barracks, or been drowned to a man, depending on who tells it. Aleksei wears the oath-crown at Keelstone. A priest travelling west swears he saw Aleksei with blood on his sleeve and could not say whose.

And through all of it walks the other brother.

Ilya Rozanov stands at Aleksei’s shoulder at the crowning and is, on the same day, at sea off Vragh aboard a ship flying Valenni colours. He takes the granaries on Sevren in person and is seen a hundred miles north the following morning, unhurried and alone. He is in Starogard the night Grigori goes quiet; he is on three islands in the week that follows. The Aderran coast, unwilling to be outdone by foreigners, has him walking dry out of the Greywater again with the Drowned Queens two paces behind—which at least has the merit of being impossible in a way everyone can agree upon.

No account fixes a date. Two name the wrong island. One puts trees on Keelstone, which has none. Scott pays good men to sift ignorance from invention, and they return most of his gold and all of the uncertainty.

The uncertainty, however, has been arranged.

Ordinary rumour clusters. These reports do not. No two place Ilya within a day’s sail of one another. A loyalist with a knife or an admiral choosing a target would have nowhere to aim. Their contradictions do not conceal what he has done. They conceal where he can be found.

Someone in Veyr has made a bodyguard for him out of rumour. Scott recognises the workmanship.

At the smaller council, he gives them only what the reports support: the sightings are coordinated, and their probable purpose is concealment.

Harrow listens, then unfolds a list of everything that conclusion does not answer.

“Is Grigori alive?”

“I do not know.”

“Is Aleksei king?”

“Not because a travelling priest said so.”

“When may the merchant fleet sail without convoy?”

“When Veyr has a government able to answer for Veyran ships.”

“And when will that be?”

“I do not know.”

Harrow lays down the list. “Then the design has reached an obscure stage.”

“I command Aderra,” Scott says. “We have kept our coast, brought our grain ships home, prevented another raid and held the northern line. What happens in Veyr is not mine to claim.”

“You permitted others to believe it was.”

“I permitted confidence while it kept ships crewed and credit open. I will not permit it to decide when our captains sail.”

That is as much certainty as the council obtains. The inland quarters may stand down at the beginning of Greening if the coast stays quiet. The beacons remain manned.

Afterward Carter stays behind with the fragments.

“If Aleksei holds the crown,” he says, “Prince Rozanov may be needed there for some time.”

“Yes.”

Carter waits for more. Scott has none to give him.

If Aleksei holds the crown and Ilya lives, Ilya has his brother’s reign to secure, an army to settle, islands to feed and his mother’s country newly willing to claim him. If he helped put Aleksei there, he has the authority to do all of it.

This is good. Scott knows it without having to persuade himself. Ilya may be free. He may be powerful. He may belong to Veyr and Valenne and have no need of Aderra at all.

Scott wants him safe. He wants him strong. He wants him beyond Grigori’s hand and every law by which Scott once held him.

He wants him.

The wants do not agree. They remain true anyway.

Chapter End Notes

Like pulling teeth swear to god. Just when you want to get to some actual plot you realize that you have to actually have some character work in it too, and your character is Eyore the Gloomy Warlord

Chapter 15

Chapter Notes

29 Thawing, third month, 1149

The first clean dispatch in fifty-six days arrives in a tube of black iron.

It comes overland through Torren, carried by a Veyran officer with six men, two exhausted horses and a white flag that has been washed recently enough to suggest someone noticed the colour mattered. The officer gives the tube to the east-gate captain, refuses food until a receipt is signed and sleeps sitting against the guardroom wall while the message is carried to Scott.

The seal is new.

It shows the oath-crown above Keelstone and the name Aleksei Irineyevich Rozanov in letters cut too deeply for elegance. The wax is dark red. The cord bears no trace of having been opened.

Scott breaks it in council.

The letter is in Veyrski and Aderran, written on facing pages. The Aderran hand is excellent. After two months of rumours, guesses, dying men and messages sewn into coats, its clarity feels almost indecent.

Scott reads it once to himself. Then he gives it to Carter. Carter stands.

"Aleksei Irineyevich Rozanov, crowned by oath at Keelstone and acclaimed by the lawful houses of Veyr, to Scott Hunter, first of his line, the Unbowed, King of Aderra, keeper of the Greywater Peace."

The back of Harrow's pen clacks onto the table. "Irineyevich.”

"So it is written."

His pen moves again, then stops.

"The Unbowed."

Scott looks at him and tries to convey do not start without spending words on it.

"The new king is generous with his praise," Harrow says.

So much for economy. "Don't. Carter, continue."

Carter does.

"Grigori Yovanovich Rozanov, the late king, died in custody before judgment could be taken. His unlawful orders against the Aderran coast are repudiated. All Veyran commanders are recalled from foreign waters. The taking of Aderran persons and goods has ceased and shall be answered under treaty."
Rennick exhales through his nose.

"The Crown of Veyr affirms the Greywater Peace and requests its renewal between lawful equals. An embassy bearing full authority will sail after the first safe tide of Greening to agree restitution of persons and goods, reparations for losses sustained, exchange of prisoners, limits upon armed passage, common action against raiding and the restoration of grain trade. Until those articles are sealed, no Veyran warship shall cross west of the Narrows."

Carter reaches the signatures. Aleksei's is first. Beneath it are six great houses, three army commands and the mark of the Moryn order. The last seal belongs to House Valeska.

Valenne recognises Aleksei's crown.

For a moment the room is so quiet Scott can hear the faint birdsong from the far windows. This once, the silence is entirely earned.

Scott has won a civil war. He knows what that means — what it looks like, before, during and after. A capital may fall in three days and the country spend ten years denying that the falling is finished. After victory come rival seals, unpaid garrisons, judges waiting to learn which laws survived, and commanders who kneel in public while privately counting their men. Scott's own crown had begun amid burned granaries, contradictory orders and enough private vengeance to keep the gallows occupied through winter. Half the men who acclaimed him had expected him to die before they were called upon to mean it. Most of the men who meant it died proving it.

Grigori is dead. That is the most reasonable line in the letter. Even in Aderra, a king who loses a civil war dies as swiftly as it can be arranged; he is not kept alive to be tried and argued over and left a drain on the nation. Scott had hanged his the moment it could be managed.

The madness is the rest of it. Six great houses have accepted the new crown. Three army commands obey it. Moryn has set holy authority behind it. Valenne, which withdrew its ships, credit and recognition when the Queen-mother died and had kept the door shut ever since, has opened it again.

And then, more improbably still — the raids have ceased. The warships have been recalled. Prisoners, restitution, armed passage and grain have already been divided into matters capable of negotiation. An officer has crossed two kingdoms under a new seal, insisted upon a receipt and delivered a letter whose translation would shame half Scott's foreign clerks.

This is not a victorious faction asking to be treated as a government. It is a government.

Ilya left Adermere alone, with the clothes on his back, the contents of his saddlebags and no recognised authority in the kingdom he intended to overturn. He had been absent from Veyr for more than a year. His father had discarded him publicly. Whatever friends remained to him had survived by becoming invisible. A little over three months later, his brother sits upon Keelstone and writes as though the crown has been there for a generation.

No man could have done all of it alone. That is another mark in Ilya’s favour.

Somewhere behind the letter stand soldiers, priests, conspirators, shipmasters, clerks and, impossibly, someone who persuaded Valenne to reconsider years of cultivated contempt. Ilya had found them. More difficult still, he had understood what each required, which promises could coexist and which ambitions must be made to arrive at the same conclusion.

A lesser general might have taken the crown himself and called the taking victory. Ilya has given it to the lawful heir, bound the houses beneath him and made his own name unnecessary to the document.

Scott had known Ilya could win a field. He had badly underestimated what Ilya could do with a kingdom.

It is magnificent work.

The silence holds for several minutes. Then everyone speaks.

Murdock wants confirmation from the coast. Sarne wants to know whether the armed-passage clause includes Valenne and whether the Narrows are being named as a boundary or quietly claimed as one. Rennick wants the grain price in Starogard and is offended that a newly installed king has omitted it. Two lesser lords begin congratulating Scott upon a victory he did not fight and are silenced when Harrow asks whether either intends to collect the reparations personally.

Harrow does not join the rest of the noise. He has taken the Veyrski page from Sarne and is reading the signatures again.

Good luck to him, Scott thinks, and for once means it without malice. Harrow is wrong about a great many things and will die wrong about most of them, but he is not a fool, and he has no reason on earth to flatter Scott of all people. If there is a knife in this, his cold suspicious mind will find the handle before anyone else at the table.

At last Harrow lays the page flat.

“No Aderran army crossed the Greywater,” he says.

Scott waits.

“No claimant received our gold. No Veyran house was promised our protection. We supplied neither ships nor grain. We have occupied no harbour and assumed no obligation to keep Aleksei upon his throne. Nevertheless Grigori is dead, his fleet has been recalled, a lawful successor sits at Keelstone, Valenne has returned to Veyr and the new government offers restitution before we have named a figure.”

“I have read the letter.”

“I am attempting to identify the price.”

“Eastmere,” Sarne says.

“Eastmere burned before Rozanov left Aderra. It was a loss, not a payment.”

“Moryn may have been compelled,” one of the lesser lords says.

“By whom?” Harrow asks. “The three generals whose seals are beneath Aleksei’s? The six houses? Valenne?”

The man wisely declines to choose.

Sarne draws the Veyrski page toward himself. “Valenne could be the knife. Aleksei may hold the crown because Valeska holds Aleksei.”

“If Valenne held Aleksei,” Murdock says, “Valeska’s seal would guarantee the letter, not close it. Their admiral would command the recall. Their factors would offer grain.”

“A puppet may still require bread,” Sarne says.

“A Valenni puppet would require Valenni bread,” Rennick replies. “Preferably at interest.”

He turns the letter over as though the missing explanation might be written upon the back.

“There are returns upon investment,” he says. “Then there is this.”

“There was no investment.”

“That is the troubling portion.”

Harrow has gone back to the top of the page. He sets one finger under the first line and does not lift it.

"He has unnamed his father," he says.

The table quiets.

“A new king does not discard a royal patronymic lightly. It costs him with every house that ever treated Grigori’s marriage as a foreign mistake—which were all of them.” Harrow lifts the finger at last, but only to tap it thoughtfully on the paper. "That is not the act of a man buying anything. A man buying something conceals the cost. This one has had it engraved."

"Then what does it tell you," Scott says.

"That the price was paid before the letter left Keelstone. In what currency, I cannot say. Only that whatever this settlement cost, it did not cost us, and the man who paid it wanted the whole Reach to see his purchase."

For a moment no one improves on that.

"There will be a price to us," Harrow says finally, quieter. "There is always a later one."

Scott nods, almost grateful for the return of common sense.

"Can you name it?"

Harrow's mouth tightens.

"No."

“Then until it presents itself,” Scott says, “we will proceed upon the disconcerting possibility that the offer means what it says.”

Harrow is still studying him.

“What?”

“Nothing, sire.”

“You have never in your life looked at me in that manner and meant nothing.”

“I was considering whether your refusal to press an advantage might, under sufficiently unusual conditions, constitute a foreign policy.”

“It cannot.”

“All available evidence suggests otherwise.”

“You are mistaking consequence for intention.”

“I am attempting to determine whether the distinction matters.”

Scott looks around the table. No one appears eager to assist him.

Harrow folds his hands over the letter.

“Whatever happened in Veyr required capabilities Aderra neither possessed nor supplied. The new crown appears lawful. The opposition appears contained. The army is answering one command, the houses one seal and the priests one king. If this is a deception, it is a remarkably expensive one.”

“Then we agree.”

“We agree that the result is excellent,” Harrow says. “I reserve judgment upon everything else.”

“Your restraint moves me.”

“I thought it might.”

Scott points to the letter.

“Carter, draft recognition of Aleksei’s crown contingent upon confirmation of the seals. Affirm the existing Peace until new articles are concluded. Sarne, maintain convoy rules through Greening. Murdock, stand down the inland quarters but keep beacon watches until the first Veyran ship arrives under truce. Rennick, prepare the grain contracts. No cargo moves before the price and protection terms are sealed.”

“They are starving,” Rennick says.

“Then they had best sign quickly.”

“And if we delay too long, they will remember they outsail every navy in the Reach combined.”

“Which is why you will set a price they can pay.”

Rennick looks personally wounded.

“You have one,” Scott says. “I have seen it.”

“Rarely.”

“This is the occasion.”

They work until dark. When the others leave, Carter remains with the first arrangements for the embassy.

“The river apartments will hold twelve,” he says. “The east guest wing can take another twenty if Lady Sarne returns home. We will need separate quarters for the Valenni party.”

“The garden apartments.”

“They have not housed a foreign embassy in nine years.”

“Then nine years is long enough. Steel your heart and evict the spiders.”

Carter makes a note. “A separate receiving party?”

“Yes. Valenne is witnessing the Veyran settlement, not negotiating the Peace. That distinction will matter to them.”

“And to us.”

Scott looks at the last seal again.

Valenne has never been Aderra’s enemy, nor has it been a friend worth naming. Its banks finance voyages Aderran merchants cannot afford, its ports sit across the richest southern routes and its warships have a habit of appearing wherever commerce requires principles to become flexible. Valenne wanted Veyr because Veyr possesses hulls, sailors and northern reach. Veyr wanted Valenne because even the finest fleet becomes decorative when no one will insure its cargo.
If both crowns now intend to arrive in Adermere together, there may be more upon the table than peace.

“Tell Rennick to prepare terms for harbour credit and shared marine insurance,” Scott says. “Nothing formal until we know whether the Valenni came to observe or to bargain.”

“They placed their seal upon Aleksei’s letter. They came to bargain.”

“Advise Rennick not to look openly predatory. It encourages them.”

“I will advise the sun not to rise as well.”

Carter closes the lodging book.

“We will need the formal roster before final precedence is set.”

“Linmouth can send it when they make harbour.”

There is no urgency. Aleksei will send a senior lord from one of the signatory houses, an admiral for the naval articles and a jurist capable of making every sentence take three days. Valenne will send someone beautifully dressed, ruinously expensive and able to make extortion sound like mutual confidence.

Ilya will remain in Veyr. No new reign releases the man who made it before the throne is warm. There will be commanders to settle, promises to pay, punishments to limit, graves to count and a thousand men who supported Aleksei upon the assumption that victory would mean precisely the future each had privately imagined. Someone must persuade them that the future belongs to the king rather than to each man’s private reward.

Besides, Ilya has been absent from Veyr since before the Peace, and from anything resembling home since he was seventeen. He has a brother newly restored to him, a niece whose life no longer hangs upon Grigori’s pleasure, old companions emerging from concealment and an army that has spent more than a year unsure whether it would ever see him again.

Perhaps the embassy will carry a private letter from Aleksei. That would not be strange. Ilya might seize the last inch of the page for himself: three lines correcting Scott’s understanding of the coup, complaining about Aderran intelligence or—if victory has made him completely intolerable—boasting.

Scott would answer. Formally at first: congratulations to Aleksei, acknowledgement of the settlement, every courtesy one crown owes another. Then something for Ilya. Praise, as much as he can include without shaming them both. The brat has earned every word.

Scott signs the final order for the garden apartments and goes back to work.

7 Greening, fourth month, 1149

Spring reaches Adermere by mud.

The river loosens first. Brown water climbs the lower quay, carries away two storage sheds and leaves half a willow lodged beneath the bridge. The roads soften. Every roof in the keep starts dripping in a different place.

The Veyran embassy has not yet arrived. No one calls the delay ominous; weather is permitted to exist again now that the court has a treaty to discuss.

At the third afternoon bell, the Table is arguing over whether the reparations should be accepted at declared weight or assayed again when the ships land. Carter enters without waiting to be announced. His boots are muddy. In one hand he carries a dispatch case stamped with the Linmouth harbour seal.

Scott puts down his pen.

“The embassy?”

“Sighted beyond the lower shoals at dawn. They made Linmouth before noon. Twenty-three vessels, including five Valenni warships. The harbourmaster sent the herald’s papers by the Wend Road.”

The room stills.

Twenty-three vessels are too many for an embassy and too few for war. The excess is the message.

“Flags?” Scott asks.

“Veyran Crown, House Valeska, six Veyran houses and the Moryn order. No Bear’s Teeth.”

As far as shows of power go, this is a clever one. Whatever temporary alignment produced Aleksei’s crown has survived long enough for six houses to trust their envoys to the same sea. Moryn sails beneath the new oath-crown. Five Valenni warships hold the outer line, not as conquerors and not quite as escorts, but as acknowledged partners.

Harrow leans back in his chair.

“Well,” he says.

It is the most wholehearted expression of astonishment Scott has heard from him in twenty years.

Carter sets down the case. The seal is Aleksei’s. Beneath it lies a narrow packet: the embassy’s formal roster, written in both languages.

Scott opens it.

There are forty-seven names.

He does not read beyond the first.

His Highness Prince Ilya Rozanov, brother to the Crown, principal envoy and bearer of the King’s full authority.

The hand is formal. The ink is dry. After one hundred and seven days, Ilya is no longer a rumour.

Scott is on his feet before he has decided to stand. He gives the roster to Carter.

“Read it.”

Carter’s eyes move once across the first line.

“His Highness Prince Ilya Rozanov, brother to the Crown, principal envoy and bearer of the King’s full authority.”

A chair creaks; Carter continues.

Admiral Aurel Valeska of Valenne stands second. The Volkov commander, third. After them the envoys of six houses, the priests of Moryn, the jurists and factors and shipmasters, the principal officers of both households. Servants, guards and clerks close the list. Ilya opens it.

“Full authority,” Harrow says.

“That is the wording,” Carter replies.

A bearer of the Crown’s full authority may conclude treaty, remit claims, pledge ships and bind the king by his word. There is no greater power Aleksei could delegate without placing the oath-crown upon Ilya’s head.

Ilya does not accompany the embassy as the decorative brother of a new king or the famous general brought out to impress a foreign court. He stands above admirals, commanders, priests and six great houses. Veyr intends to speak through him.

Veyr has sent back the man whose life once guaranteed the Peace, now empowered to write the next one.

Murdock takes off his spectacles, polishes them on his sleeve and sets them back. The roster does not alter.

“Aleksei has held the crown less than a month,” he says. “And has sent us the man who put it on his head.”

“He has sent his most trusted representative to conclude the Peace,” Scott says.

Harrow lifts his eyes from the roster. “Those statements are not in conflict.”

“His settlement must be steadier than we judged,” Sarne says. “He can spare him.”

“No king spares the man who made him,” Murdock says. “Not before the throne is warm.”

“Then the embassy matters more than we judged,” Harrow says.

“The Peace matters,” Scott says. “Veyr requires grain, recognition and reopened trade. Ilya is the only envoy whose authority every party will accept.”

No one disputes this.

Rennick draws the harbour papers toward himself.

“When did they sail?”

“The first safe tide out of Starogard,” Carter says. “The harbourmaster dates his copy the fourth of Greening. They lost a day to fog off Linmouth.”

“The fourth,” Murdock says.

Carter nods.

Rennick sets the papers down carefully.

“The ice is scarcely off the northern reaches on the fourth. They did not wait for a favourable crossing. They waited for one that would not kill them.”

He looks again at the roster with the grave patience he ordinarily reserves for a column which has been added twice, come right twice and is nevertheless wrong.

“I had no hand in choosing the embassy,” Scott says.

“No one has said you did,” Murdock replies.

“You are all looking at me.”

“We have received surprising information,” Harrow says. “It is customary to examine the relevant parties.”

“I am not a relevant party. I knew nothing of Aleksei’s arrangements. Nothing of Valenne, the houses or whatever was promised to place those seals upon one page. I gave Ilya no instructions before he left.”

“Yes, sire,” Rennick says. “We know.”

The gentleness of it is irritating. Scott waits for the catch.

“The encouraging part,” Rennick continues, “is that whatever Your Majesty contributed appears to have required neither planning nor management.”

“I contributed nothing.”

“All the better. A policy which costs the treasury nothing and returns a lawful Veyr, a recalled fleet and the most favourable opening terms in the history of the Greywater is not one this council will trouble you to revise.”

Scott lets the mockery pass. The council has decided his handling of the prisoner produced more than he intended, and has begun revising the year accordingly. He does not correct them. This same Table once advised him to kill Ilya, and failing that, to trade him to Torren; had he obliged, the man now sailing up the Wend under a peace would be sailing under something considerably worse. He said so at the time. No one had been eager to admire the argument then, and he sees no reason to offer it again now. 

Rennick is still reading the dates.

“I owe the lower kitchens six silver marks,” he says.

Murdock closes his eyes.

Scott looks at him. “Why?”

“A wager.”

“You wagered with the kitchens upon the composition of a foreign embassy?”

“Against the kitchens. I considered the distinction important until this afternoon.”

“What, precisely, did they predict?”

“That Prince Rozanov would return before the river cleared.”

Scott glances toward the windows. Rain has left thin tracks through the grime; beyond them the river runs swollen and brown.

“On what intelligence?”

“None I would submit to this Table.”

“Then you lost six marks to chance.”

“That remains my official position.”

Harrow makes a quiet sound.

Scott looks at him. “Do you also conduct foreign intelligence through the scullery now?”

“No. But I may have dismissed the servants’ conclusions too readily.”

“The servants have spent a year making stories about Ilya.”

“Yes,” Harrow says.

He offers nothing further.

Scott’s patience gives way.

“I did not compel him to come.”

The amusement leaves the room.

“No,” Carter says. “You did not.”

That, at least, they understand.

Ilya returns as the brother of a sovereign king, beneath his own colours, attended by his own guards and carrying authority Scott cannot revoke. There can be no confusion tomorrow about the nature of his presence in Aderra.

Scott looks down at the roster.

His Highness Prince Ilya Rozanov, brother to the Crown, principal envoy and bearer of the King’s full authority.

“How long?”

“They take the river tide at dawn,” Carter says. “If the fog lifts, they will reach the lower quay before noon.”

Tomorrow.

The word enters slowly.

By noon tomorrow Ilya will stand upon the quay.

Alive. Free. Near enough to speak to.

Scott had allowed for a letter. He had considered what he might write in reply. He has given no thought at all to what he will say when Ilya is standing in front of him.

“Then we have a great deal to arrange,” he says.

He reaches for the receiving order. The paper is reassuringly specific.

Scott folds the roster once along its existing crease.

“Full harbour honours. Sarne meets the Valenni ships below the river gate. Murdock receives the representatives of Moryn at the water stair. The Veyran houses enter beneath their own banners.”

“And the principal envoy?” Harrow asks.

“I will receive him.”

Kings do not ordinarily wait upon foreign ambassadors at the quay. No one at the table mentions this.

“Of course,” Harrow says.

Scott looks at him narrowly. “Was that agreement?”

“Do not be greedy, sire.”

The table laughs and turns to the arrangements.

The river apartments have already been prepared for the principal Veyran party. The garden wing is ready for Valenne. Kitchens, stables, receiving halls, interpreters and guards are assigned. Rennick insists that forty-seven names cannot possibly account for the occupants of twenty-three vessels and is reminded that warships contain sailors even when they belong to foreigners.

Scott answers questions. He approves precedence. He adjusts the receiving line twice and rejects a proposal to place Harrow beside the Valenni admiral on the grounds that Aderra has not waited this long for a southern alliance merely to begin it with a duel.

When the others leave, Carter remains with the lodging book.

“The river apartments will hold the Veyran ministers,” he says. “The Valenni admiral has requested permission to remain aboard his ship, but House Valeska’s representatives will use the garden wing. The principal envoy’s household numbers nine.”

The west rooms are no longer Ilya’s. Four Torreni sleep there beneath their own ledgers. More importantly, they were the rooms of a hostage: close enough to watch, convenient to guard. Returning Ilya there would be an insult.

“Leave the Torreni where they are,” Scott says. “Prepare the east royal apartments.”

Carter blinks once.

The east royal apartments are reserved for sovereign kin, disputed heirs and guests important enough that placing guards outside their doors would be an insult rather than a precaution. Their private stair opens onto the gallery outside Scott’s rooms.

“For the principal envoy,” Scott adds.

“His Highness Prince Ilya Rozanov.”

“Yes.”

“Naturally.”

“And Carter? No inner guard. The embassy keeps its own household. Our men hold the outer stair and nothing nearer.”

Carter’s eyes move briefly toward the wall behind which the private stair rises. “And the gallery entrance?”

“No guard. It belongs to the apartments.”

“I understand.”

Scott suspects he does.

An ambassador may stay six days, sign three instruments and sail home. A free prince may leave whenever his king recalls him or his own wishes turn. The east apartments promise nothing. They merely make the correct fact material before Ilya arrives: the man who sleeps there is not in Scott’s custody.

If Scott wishes to enter, he will have to knock. Desire has had worse uses than choosing a room honestly.

8 Greening, fourth month, 1149

By midnight Scott is on his knees inside the east bedchamber with a brace between his boots, an iron bolt on the carpet and one new hole in the king's door.

The apartments were built for people important enough to be trusted near the royal family and dangerous enough to make the trust conspicuous. The bedchamber opens into a receiving room on one side and onto the private stair on the other. The stair climbs directly to the gallery outside Scott's rooms.

The door locks. Every door in the royal wing locks.

The difficulty is that the household possesses keys.

Scott discovered this during the third inspection. One key would go to the principal envoy and another to the head of his household. The chamberlain, the night captain and the Crown would retain the others. This is customary.

It is also intolerable.

An interior bolt requires no key and answers to no one on the far side of the door. Once thrown, it cannot be drawn from the gallery — not by the chamberlain, not by the night captain, not by the king who is fitting it.

Scott sets the iron keeper against the frame and discovers that the hole he has bored sits half a finger too low. He stares at it. He has built palisades in rain, repaired cartwheels under fire and once replaced the hinges of a gamekeeper's shed with three nails and a quantity of justified profanity. The present work should not exceed him.

He moves the keeper.

"You've split the oak."

Scott does not turn. "Go away."

Eric comes through the receiving-room door and closes it behind him. He is barefoot inside his boots and has pulled a coat over his nightshirt. His hair stands badly on one side. This would be satisfying under other circumstances.

"Tommen came to my room," he says.

Tommen. Yes. The guard at the outer stair had been Tommen. Scott remembers some young soldier speaking to him. Scott may have answered more forcefully than the question required.

"He abandoned his post?"

"He found a replacement. He believed the matter required a general."

"The matter requires a smaller bit."

"He was very clear that he lacks the authority to wrestle a brace from the king or drag him to bed, even when the king is acting like a lunatic."

"He does."

"Thankfully, I possess less respect for the Crown."

Eric crosses the room and crouches beside him. His eyes travel from the misplaced hole to the bolt across Scott's knee.

"The door already locks."

"The household has keys."

"You are the household."

"Precisely."

Eric looks from the bolt to Scott. "Very well," he says. "I see that it must be done. Ilya is alive. He is victorious. He is coming back. What is wrong with you now?"

"He is coming as an envoy."

"He is still coming."

"An envoy does not come home. An envoy comes from home, conducts his king's business and returns to it."

Scott reaches for the brace. Eric takes it first.

"That must be why the guards are organising an intervention."

"They are excitable."

"Tommen held a bridge alone against seven men. He was perfectly calm then."

"He has matured poorly."

"Scott."

The humour has left Eric's voice.

Scott looks at the bolt.

“I want him.”

Eric’s expression does not change. “Yes.”

Scott turns his head. “Do not say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“As though it were obvious.”

“You are on your knees in his bedchamber at midnight, fitting a lock the Crown cannot open.”

“That establishes nothing.”

“No?”

Scott holds out his hand for the brace.

Eric stands instead, takes him by the shoulders and moves him bodily away from the door. Scott is a large man. Eric is larger, and one of very few people alive who would attempt this without first checking whether the king was armed and whether his affairs were settled. He marches Scott backwards until the chaise catches him behind the knees.

There is sawdust on Scott's breeches. The blue upholstery has been cleaned for the embassy. He opens his mouth to object, but thinks better of it. Eric will strike him, Scott will retaliate, and they are both too old to brawl at midnight without arranging lighter duties for the following day.

The room is ready around them. Fresh linen. Water in the ewer. Veyran ink and clean sand upon the writing table. A fire laid but not lit. The bed bears the blue cover used for sovereign kin. Nothing here belonged to Ilya before. Nothing should remind him of the rooms in which he waited to discover when and how Scott intended to kill him. Scott has made very certain of that.

Eric puts the brace on the low table and sits opposite.

“What is the difficulty?” he asks.

Scott looks at him.

“The immediate difficulty. Not the next twenty years.”

Scott has retained the iron keeper and three screws. He arranges the screws in a neat row upon his palm.

“I do not know how to begin.”

“A welcome generally serves.”

“I know how to receive an ambassador.”

“Then you are equipped for the first hour.”

“And after that?”

“Ask how he is.”

“And after that?”

“Listen to the answer.”

Scott gives him a flat look.

Eric lifts one shoulder. “You have asked me how to begin. I am describing the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“That appears to be your question.”

Scott looks down at the screws.

He knows when Ilya has not slept, and when he has. He knows what he looks like when he thinks he is talking to an idiot, and how he looks when he is speaking to someone he respects. He knows the path a drop of sweat takes down his neck and into the shadow of his collarbone. He knows what he looks like when he believes he is about to die.

He does not know whether he likes music. He does not know what books he chooses when no one has assigned them, what he finds beautiful when beauty is not a tactical weakness, or what he imagines an ordinary life might contain.

“This is absurd,” Scott says. “How did I arrive here? I do not even know how he takes his tea.”

Eric considers this. “You might ask.”

Scott closes his eyes, lets his head fall back, works at relaxing his shoulders.

Scott had come to love Kip by ordinary accumulation. Meals. Arguments. Long evenings in which neither man had anything urgent to prove. He had known what made Kip laugh before he knew what absence would do to him.

With Ilya, he has somehow begun at the other end. A year of watching. A winter of fear. Every feeling drawn taut by war, captivity, danger and the peculiar violence of wanting someone so far out of bounds that Scott hid it even from himself.

“He knows almost nothing about me,” he says.

“He has met you.”

“He has met the king.”

“I have never found the division as clean as you do.”

"He knows what I do when I hold authority over him. He knows I fed him, used his counsel and refused to kill him. He knows I wanted to keep him." Scott looks at the empty bed. "That is not the same as knowing I wanted him."

Eric does not retreat. "No," he says. "It is not."

"He may believe I treated him decently. By the standards applied to the Butcher of Redmere, not murdering him amounted to remarkable generosity. He may think he owes me peace, or gratitude, or the trouble of appearing here in person. He may settle every debt between our countries and leave with a clear conscience."

"He may."

Scott looks up.

"I thought you had come to be helpful."

"I came because Tommen thought you might leap out of the window and to your death." Eric sits with that a moment. "I will not tell you he wants what you want. I do not know it, and you would not believe me. But a man does not cross a winter sea to balance an account. There are cheaper ways to say thank you."

Scott looks back at the screws.

“I don’t know what he wants.”

“No. Neither do I. That is usually something people discover at the beginning.”

“We are well past the beginning,” Scott says. “We have simply neglected to have it.”

Scott spoils the row of screws with his thumb.

Perhaps love requires ordinary knowledge. If so, he has small claim to the word. He has intensity, proximity, danger, a year of watching and four months of absence. It may be appetite. Obsession. Perversion. None of the lesser names changes what he wants.

"If this is not love," Scott says, "the distinction has ceased to be useful."

Eric looks down at the screws rather than at Scott. This is one of the reasons Scott has kept him around for so long. After a moment, he says, “All right.”

“All right?”

“You love him.”

Scott dislikes how ordinary the words sound when spoken aloud. “Apparently.”

“And you mean to court him.”

“Yes.”

At least he had the decency not to make it a question. Scott will court Ilya. Whether he will do it well is another matter.

“I have no idea how,” he says.

“That is not true. You have no idea how the whole of it will go.”

“There is a difference?”

“A considerable one. Tomorrow you welcome him. You congratulate him upon his absurd victory. You ask after his brother. You ask how he is and listen when he answers.”

“And afterward?”

"You speak to him again. About something you do not already know."

"There is a great deal I do not know."

"Then you will not run short."

Scott closes his fist around the screws.

"And if he leaves when the treaty is concluded?"

"Then you write to him."

"What would I write?"

"Something true. Short. There is no need to enrage him in the first letter."

“And if—”

“Scott.” Eric’s voice is neither stern nor gentle. Merely tired. “He has not reached the quay. You are attempting to survive the rejection of a courtship you have not begun by a man who is presently sailing toward you.”

Put that way, it sounds unreasonable. It is unreasonable; Scott is not so far gone that he cannot hear it. Tonight he is fifteen again, watching the miller’s handsome apprentice step out with the mayor’s daughter and discovering that no amount of private anguish constitutes a claim.

Scott opens his hand. The screw heads have left three small circles in his palm.

“I asked him to come home,” he says.

Eric’s hand stops on its way to the brace.

“When?”

“During the Hollow Days. After he had gone.” Scott turns a screw over. "I wanted him alive, but I would have taken whatever answered.”

Eric leans back.

“Heavens wept, Scotty.”

Scott lets that stand. It is well deserved.

“Well,” Eric says at last, “thank the heavens he lived, and we shall never have to discover what it is like to share a keep with the ghost of Ilya Rozanov. He would be intolerable.”

“This is your comfort?”

“It is this or I dunk your head in the river. Take what grace you are given.” He sighs. “The boy is alive. He is free. He is coming here when no one in Aderra has ordered it. Let him reach the quay before you begin mourning his departure."

Scott is not easily comforted by conversation. This has been a notably poor attempt.

Eric's expression suggests consolation was never the purpose.

He pushes himself out of the chair. His knees make an audible complaint.

"Come on," he says. "Let us see what can be salvaged of the door."

He takes the lamp and the brace from the low table. Scott remains seated a moment longer. He did not send for Eric; he would not have. Tommen knew whom to fetch. He gets up and follows him to the door.

At the private-stair door, Eric holds the lamp while Scott sets the keeper against the frame. Eric adjusts it a fraction higher.

"There."

"I had reached much the same conclusion."

"After two holes."

"One."

Eric points to the split in the oak. Scott does not argue, just marks the placement and holds the keeper steady while Eric drills. The screws bite cleanly this time. When the last is seated, Scott slides the bolt across. Iron enters iron with a small, final sound. It works.

Scott draws it back and leaves it open.

Eric collects the joiner's box. At the receiving-room door, he pauses.

"Ask him something you do not know."

Then he leaves.

Before noon, the harbour bell sounds twice. Scott has been dressed since first light.

Chapter End Notes

Curse this faux medieval language I wrote myself into, curse it to hell

Chapter 16

Chapter Notes

8 Greening, fourth month, 1149

At the second bell, the river gate swings wide.

Scott stands under a narrow blue canopy on the stone platform above the ceremonial berth, right where Carter, Murdock, and Prentice, the crown-steward, have positioned him. Precedence was hammered out at midnight, then changed again at dawn, and Prentice hasn’t sat down since. The whole event carries Scott along, as unstoppable as the river. Just a year ago, no Aderran admiral would have believed a Veyran ship could be here. Now, eighteen are moored and the last five, of course, wait below the gate.

Their masts rise above the river wall, creating a shadowy forest against a sky that has threatened rain all morning but held back. From the lower quay, Scott can only see the upper yards and the Valenni colours snapping in the wind. That glimpse is enough; Valenni ships are famous for their lavish beauty, ornate to the point of mockery, floating palaces in everything but name. But today, they have sent warships—vessels built for violence and for spectacle, leaving no doubt of their purpose.

Since dawn, the riverside has been cleaned up. Merchant cranes are still, their hooks raised. New boards cover the worst mud, and grey gravel fills the gaps. Harbour guilds have hung their colours from galleries that usually show drying nets, sailcloth, and the faces of defaulters. Every warehouse door has a chalked berth number. Carts wait in neat rows behind the sea-gate, each with its driver, its destination, and a clerk ready to complain if any chest goes missing.

Already, the clerks have found much to protest. In Adermere, peace has survived less than ten minutes.

To his right, Carter emits a quiet sound of irritation over a handsome leather binder. Three weeks ago, its contents sprawled across twenty times the space: histories, allegiances, old grudges, and a handful of imagined futures. Now, after heroic pruning, only thirty pages remain, written in a shorthand no one else alive can decipher.

Down the lane, Guildmaster Weller’s neck-piece is catching what little light the morning offers and is making the most of it.

"Whose idea was the collar?"

"His," says Murdock.

The Table of the Realm stands behind them, arranged by a precedence hammered out at midnight, revised at dawn, and nearly undone at the first bell when it was discovered the harbour guildmaster owns a ceremonial collar. The thing is gold, green, and hideous—too large for its worth and far too gaudy for the sober black beneath. Weller wears it now, looking like a man who has lost a particularly humiliating bet.

Beyond the cleared lane, Adermere has forsaken honest work. People crowd every roof facing the Wend. Apprentices perch on crane arms. Children have been hoisted onto walls, shoulders, and even a warehouse hoist the harbourmaster will surely deny approving. Six men squeeze into the cupola of the chandlers’ hall, built for two bells and no men at all. Windows gape open despite the chill. Boats cluster along the far bank wherever guards have failed to scatter them, and every garden wall between the river gate and the keep now hosts its own gathering.

The city has been warned: don’t block the processional road, don’t crowd the foreign sailors, don’t throw anything, don’t climb anything unsafe, and above all, don’t fall into the river. So far, only the last rule has been obeyed.

A horn sounds from the gate tower.

The first vessel comes through under shortened sail, square-built and broad in the beam, with an Aderran pilot beside the Veyran master and three men already waiting at the bow with lines coiled at their feet. It is not a ship built for splendour. Its hull has been scraped pale along one side, one yard is woolded at the middle, and the foremost patch in its mainsail is two shades darker than the rest. Salt lies white in the standing rigging. Men along the rail have the raw, fixed attention of sailors who have spent three days keeping an expensive object above water and have not yet been informed the work is done.

The gate tower shows a blue pennant. The ship answers with two short lifts of a white flag, lets its remaining canvas fall and turns toward berth nine.

It shouldn’t be able to make the turn. The flood current grabs the stern, and for a moment the whole ship moves sideways toward the quay. The Aderran pilot raises an arm. A tender waiting inside the gate pulls hard across the bow; a Veyran line flies, is caught on the second try, and goes tight. Twenty men pull, and the bow responds. The ship slides into the berth with half a yard to spare, touching neither stone nor the next hull, and is tied up before the crowd even realises there was any danger.

The cheering starts then. It begins on the bridge, ragged and unsure, then races down both banks faster than the ship itself. The Veyran crew turn toward the noise. One man lifts a hand before recalling he should be solemn. Half the bridge answers him anyway.

Scott spots Sarne’s people in the uproar, river merchants, and those who have paid convoy prices for lamp oil these past three months. But he also hears the silences: a row of men beneath the Redmere guild banner stand mute, and an old woman at the front of the fishmarket gallery clings to the rail with both hands. Around them, children shout at the flags.

Two wet clerks descend from the first ship and immediately stop a baggage cart.

The roster lists forty-seven names, as if only envoys travelled on these ships. In reality, the men and women who brought the embassy are everywhere: up in the rigging furling sails, working capstans, bent over ropes, lowering boats, carrying ledgers, counting chests, pumping out water, and arguing in three languages about whose rope is under whose cartwheel, what to do about it, and who will lose teeth if it isn’t fixed.

The next horn sounds before the first ship has finished making fast; the second division enters in pairs.

These are smaller, sleeker hulls with high bows, built to make speed and war. They are the backbone of Veyran naval power and have given Scott more than a few sleepless nights. Each flies a house banner beneath the Crown’s safe-conduct. The raven of House Voronin leads, black on grey, followed at the proper interval by House Vetrov’s pale sail and gull. No captain pushes ahead. Neither lets the gap widen.

At the house berths, armed retainers come ashore two by two as each gangplank is secured. Their swords stay at their sides, tied for peace so clearly that everyone can see it. At every gangplank, an Aderran clerk counts people against the landing warrant while a Veyran clerk watches. Both sign. Each pair then lines up under its own house banner, just as they did at Linmouth.

Scott looks at Carter.

“They rehearsed.”

“At least once,” Carter says. “The Linmouth harbourmaster reports that the Veyrans assembled in full order before first light.”

Of course they had; what was he thinking?

The first house party is conducted up the cleared lane. Carter bends his head a fraction. “Varvara Voronina. Senior diplomat; has the authority to act and make decisions for the government. Anton Voronin behind her, junior representative. The woman at her left is Yelena Arsenyeva, respected jurist.”

Scott has enough time to place the names upon the approaching faces.

Varvara Voronina is a tall woman near fifty, dressed in ash-grey with no colour upon her except the narrow red cord of Aleksei’s warrant at her throat. Her hair is braided close and knotted severely at the nape; even bound, there is enough of it to reach her knees.

She stops at the correct distance.

“Your Majesty.”

Scott returns the acknowledgement. “Lady Voronina. Aderra receives you under the Greywater Peace.”

“House Voronin is honoured to enter beneath it.”

The exchange has been translated, reviewed and approved by people who distrust improvisation. It does its work. She moves to the appointed place below the royal standard. Her party follows, then the next is already before Scott.

“Pavel Vetrov,” Carter murmurs. “Maritime envoy. Polina Vetrova, shipping clerk.”

Saltykov follows Vetrov: a black key on green, and Marina Saltykova, who carries no visible account book but has the expression of someone keeping several privately.

“Banking, debt and reparations,” Carter says.

“Lady Saltykova.”

“Your Majesty.” Her eyes pass once over Rennick. “We have brought the preliminary accounts.”

Behind Scott, Rennick makes a quietly delighted sound. He began with nothing and has since acquired expensive appetites; respectable opponents mistake both for weaknesses, usually once. Saltykova seems respectable enough to try, and Scott might enjoy seeing it.

“Lord Rennick will be relieved,” Scott says.

“I have never found relief improved an accountant.”

“Then you will work well together.”

Something approaching a smile appears at the corner of her mouth. She takes her place beside Voronina.

More ships enter.

The harbour moves around the ceremony, never bowing to it. While Scott greets one delegation, a house vessel turns in the channel, a transport lowers its boat, two hundred yards of wet rope pass from hand to hand, and a line of baggage carts creeps forward by one berth. As soon as a party clears the landing, labourers lift the boards, scrape away the mud, and lay them again for the next.

At the third berth, a boom swings out over a transport and lifts a sealed chest big enough to bury a clerk. Four men guide it while two others argue over the seals, never taking their eyes off the load. The chest lands on the right cart. Another follows. Then come casks, iron-bound cases, bundles in tarred cloth, and narrow boxes carried flat by pairs of sailors. None are opened. Each is checked against a manifest by one Veyran and one Aderran before going through the sea-gate.

Rennick watches the cargo move with such complete concentration that he nearly fails to bow when Ekaterina Volkova reaches the royal place.

“High-ranking diplomat for House Volkov,” Carter says. “Commander Mikhail Volkov remains with the principal party.”

Principal party, heavens wept. Scott manages to keep his focus. The broken blade of Volkov hangs behind her. Scott has seen it on battlefield reports, prisoner rolls and the shields of men who preferred death to retreat and regarded capture as something worse than either. Now, the flag enters his harbour peace-bound.

Ekaterina Volkova is younger than Scott expected and bears none of the visible evidence of her House’s insanity. Other than a scar that runs down her temple and curves away at the corner of her mouth, her face is clear and unblemished. The two officers behind her bear enough for everyone.

“Your Majesty,” she says.

“Lady Volkova.”

Her gaze is level and unsmiling. “Kargor remembers its dead.”

So does Aderra. The sentence sits between them without spoiling the welcome.

“Then we have a useful place to begin,” Scott says.

She bows once more and goes to stand with the other houses.

By now, the crowd has caught the rhythm. They cheer every ship through the gate, loudest for familiar banners and even louder for the mysterious ones. Someone near the bridge has unearthed a drum. Its beat ignores the harbour signals and is tolerated only because hunting down the culprit would take hours.

The bells begin beyond the river ward.

They were not included in the receiving order. The first rings from the east-market chapel, then another answers uphill, then three together from the craft wards. Sound moves across Adermere in broad, uneven waves. Men on the ships look up at the city. Men in the city look down upon the ships.

Scott and the receiving court remain motionless, while Murdock and Lord Sarne make their way to the river gate. Harrow stands three places behind Scott, gloves folded in one hand, his face composed for an event of routine diplomatic interest. At the fourth house banner, his thumb begins to rub once across the seam of his upper glove. The lesser nobles have trained themselves into composure. Since childhood, they have learned that to show astonishment is to yield ground, and that foreign power is never more foreign than when one admits to seeing it. Adermere sees peace; the nobility sees everything that has come with it.

The six banners gather below the royal standard: Voronin’s old claim, Vetrov’s ships and messages, Saltykov’s money, Volkov’s army, Konev’s engineers, Yarin’s grain-gates and southern trade. Claim, message, money, sword, stone and grain have crossed the Greywater together under one Crown warrant. Whatever holds Aleksei upon Keelstone is not merely the love of a younger brother and six signatures pressed into wax. It has accounts, officers, ships and men prepared to be seen obeying it.

No Orlov moth flies among them. No device of the Bear’s Teeth appears. Veyr has sent what it wishes Aderra to recognise and kept the rest behind its own water.

The Moryn vessel enters without a house ship beside it. It is narrow, grey and severe; the hull has not been painted for the occasion. No music greets it from aboard, no guard lines its rail, and no polished metal catches the light. It passes between the bright guild colours like a blade laid among ribbons.

The noise along the quay changes, but does not cease. A city of this size cannot become silent at command, and no command has been given. But the cheers thin, the bells seem farther away, and men remove hats without consulting one another.

The Moryn master answers the signal from the keep and turns away from the lower berths. His vessel passes beneath the river wall toward the old water stair, where Murdock waits with the representatives of the order already in Aderra.

Scott recognises Elder Agafya two steps below him. She is the oldest of those Eric brought from Moryn and the most ill-tempered person Scott has ever met, in life or text. Scott offered her rooms when the nights grew colder. She refused. The matter ended there. When the gangplank settles, she goes down the last step before Murdock can offer his hand.

The arriving elder comes ashore in the same undyed wool, with sea water dark upon the hem. They look at one another for a long moment. Then the new woman touches her brow to Agafya’s.

The crowd sees two old priests greeting on a wet stair. By the time Elder Raisa reaches the royal place, Murdock walks beside her rather than before.

“Elder Raisa of Moryn,” Carter says. “Brother Kirill behind her. The vessel-master remains at the stair.”

Raisa’s face is browned and lined by weather off water and ice. She carries no staff.

“Scott Hunter,” she says in careful Common.

Several courtiers experience the name without title more severely than Scott does.

He inclines his head. “Elder.”

“Moryn celebrates the eleven children carried out alive.”

“Aderra celebrates those who kept them so.”

Her eyes rest upon him, dark and unhurried. Whatever conclusion she reaches, it does not require public correction. She moves to stand near Murdock.

The next transport takes its berth.

It carries either restitution cargo or embassy supplies; the paperwork allows for both, and Rennick is waiting to see which will get a better tax rate. Its decks are crowded with sailors, servants, armourers, cooks, stable hands, and guards who won’t appear in any receiving line. A boy with a bandaged hand sleeps against the forward mast while men work around him. Two women in Veyran army coats lower water barrels onto the quay. A Valenni shipwright leans over the rail, shouting advice no one asked for.

And still the harbour order holds. Each ship arrives on its signal. The slower transports haven’t fallen behind the warships, and the smaller tenders haven’t rushed ahead to be first. Every delegation waits at the foot of the lane when Scott finishes with the last. No proud house takes another’s turn. No captain suddenly decides on a different order.

The fleet couldn’t have crossed the open Greywater in such a neat line. No sensible commander would ask a deep Valenni warship and a shallow Veyran galley to stay together through a Greening sea. They came in groups, matched by speed and weight; gathered where and when they should, no matter the fog, wind, or storm; reached Linmouth on the same tide; took on foreign pilots and reassembled at dawn into the order now passing through the gate.

Scott holds out his hand. Carter gives him the Linmouth sailing order.

It is thirty-two pages in Common, tied at the corner, with signal flags drawn along the margins and three harbour amendments pinned to the back. The ships are numbered within their divisions. Rally points, tow order, precedence, pilots, landing parties, berth depth, permitted arms and substitute commands are set out in a hand so legible it approaches accusation.

There are instructions for fog, grounding, a parted tow, a broken mast, a missing pilot and the death of any one of the three principal officers. There are separate instructions for the death of two.

Scott turns a page.

“Was the harbourmaster allowed an opinion?”

“Three,” Carter says. “They are attached.”

“Were they accepted?”

“Two.”

“Generous.”

The rejected amendment would have moved the Crown ship ahead of the Valenni party to reduce the time the principal envoy remained on the water. In the margin, the Veyran reply states that the proposed alteration would compromise the receiving order and is unnecessary provided Linmouth performs the duties already assigned to it.

No signature appears beneath the note. None is required. Scott would recognise that blocky, impertinent scrawl in the dead of night with no candle. Scott gives the papers back.

He must have been unbearable. The instructions alone are unbearable. That every captain followed them is the compliment.

The spectacle has taken its toll; Scott can see it on every ship. Canvas is patched. A tender has lost the top third of one mast and replaced it with a mismatched spar. Salt has left pale lines on black hulls. One house vessel has a new boat where the old one should be; another has rope so new it stands out yellow against the old rigging. Men move carefully on some decks. A captain above berth four takes off his hat only after his ship is tied and stands for a long moment, as if relief is the only thing holding him up.

A signal passes down from the outer tower. Not a horn this time: three white flags, lifted one after another. The Valenni ships have reached their holding ground.

What was previously suggested by masts becomes visible when Scott steps half a pace nearer the river edge. Beyond the opened gate, the Wend broadens before turning south. Five warships lie across that reach under bare poles and furled canvas, their bows held against the current by paired anchors. They have stopped at exactly the line agreed. Not one bow crosses it.

They are not alike enough to have been built as a set, but they have been kept as one. Their dark sides rise higher than the Aderran cutters stationed near them. Deck engines remain bound beneath pale oilcloth. Marines line the rails in polished breastplates, six paces between each figure, weapons grounded and unmoving.

The four new Aderran keels stand unfinished across the upper water, ribs yellow with fresh-cut timber.

The comparison is stark, a touch humiliating, and impossible to ignore.

Behind Scott, someone draws breath and remembers not to make a sound. Harrow’s eyes go once to the unfinished keels. Rennick’s remain upon the Valenni rigging.

Those five ships controlled routes Scott couldn’t reach even if he had five years to build his navy. Five ships stopped Grigori’s grain and silver, kept his loyalists from joining up, and ended a reign. They didn’t need to win a battle; they just made sure the other side couldn’t get there in time to fight. And now they’ve sailed into view of Scott’s walls under Ilya’s orders and stopped exactly where he told them to.

The first Valenni launch comes through the gate; two more follow. The authorised marines occupy the outer benches, twelve in all, swords peace-bound but otherwise armed. Between them sit jurists, factors, secretaries and servants dressed in the darker southern colours of House Valeska. Their baggage follows separately under joint seal. Nothing about the movement is hurried. Nothing is left to decide at the quay.

Sarne comes ashore first because he is receiving them. Admiral Aurel Valeska follows.

Carter does not need to supply the name. The admiral stands second upon the roster, and there is only one man in the launch who could have commanded those ships. He is in his late fifties, silver beginning at both temples, and his sea coat has the expensive plainness of clothing designed to display wealth through fabric rather than ornament. He steps onto the boards without looking down.

“Admiral Aurel Valeska,” the usher calls. “Commander of the Valenni escort and plenipotentiary of House Valeska.”

Admiral Valeska stops before Scott.

“Your Majesty.”

“Admiral Valeska. Welcome to Aderra.”

“Your pilots have done us honour.”

It’s the right compliment. A lesser captain would praise speed or show. An admiral praises the fact that twenty-three foreign ships are still in one piece.

“They had precise instructions,” Scott says.

Valeska’s expression doesn’t waver, but Scott thinks he spots some amusement. “We all did.”

He gives nothing else away. He takes his appointed place and turns toward the river.

The rest of the Valenni party follows.

“Celeste Valeska, diplomat,” Carter murmurs. “Sabine Radova beside her, jurist. Etienne Vorel, maritime law. Clemence Markova, credit and grain.”

They pass beneath Scott’s standard and join the assembly.

The bells continue. The crowd presses against every permitted boundary. The harbour below the gate is full of Veyran and Valenni hulls; the harbour above it is full of their flags. Foreign soldiers stand in peace-bound pairs beneath the banners of six houses. Moryn’s unbroken grey ring stands beside the old water stair. Sealed cargo waits beneath guard. Five southern warships hold the river below Scott’s walls.

Every piece of it has a legitimate purpose. The whole does not.

A peace embassy could have come in six ships. Eight would have been extravagant. Twelve might have been justified by the cargo and the Valenni delegation, if you let Rennick handle the paperwork for an afternoon. Twenty-three is an outrage only Ilya Rozanov could dream up. Scott glances downriver beyond the gate. The insolent brat is already preening from half a mile away.

The realisation is so amusing that Scott almost turns to share it with Carter. He doesn’t. Carter is looking down at the receiving order with the careful blankness of someone who has just noticed something private on the king’s face and would love to comment, if only he could.

The last horn sounds; beyond the gate, a square of black appears around the bend. Scott does not need Carter’s whispered identification. The Crown ship comes upriver alone.

It is not the largest vessel in the fleet. Any two of the Valenni warships could take its crew and cargo without troubling their waterline, and two of the restitution transports sit deeper. It is a northern working ship, dark-hulled and storm-built, with a high bow, a broad waist and canvas faded by harder seasons than this one. One lower sail bears a long new seam. Salt has dried white where spray reached the forward rail.

At the masthead flies the white bear of House Rozanov upon black. Beneath it, a narrow dark-red streamer bears the oath-crown above Keelstone, its dye still too rich to have seen a full season.

The new flag lifts, falls and lifts again.

The ship has been placed last so that nothing can diminish it. By the time it enters, the harbour already contains the proof of the authority carried aboard. Every banner through the gate, every chest under seal, every soldier waiting in the receiving court and every Valenni mast beyond the wall has prepared this approach.

The arrangement speaks for itself. If the warships came first, their size would make the reception feel like a threat. If the houses went ahead, they would be waiting under Aleksei’s warrant. Moryn has to enter alone; Admiral Valeska must be ashore before the Crown ship arrives. Then comes the empty ceremonial berth, the final pause, and the single black ship moving through water already made ready for it.

An Aderran pilot stands at the stern beside the Veyran master. The crew work without shouted correction. At the gate marker, the upper canvas comes in. At the second, the forecourse drops. The ship keeps enough way to answer the helm and no more.

There is a space at the forward rail where no one stands.

The Crown soldiers are formed behind it in two dark ranks, not armoured for battle, their weapons bound. Household guards hold farther back. Mikhail Volkov stands with the principal officers beneath the quarterdeck. No man occupies the clear length of deck before the mast.

Scott sees Ilya first as an absence everyone else has arranged themselves around. Then he steps into it.

Four moFour months can’t be measured from a quay. Scott can’t tell if there are new scars under the fur, wool, and leather, how much sleep the coup allowed him, or what it cost to put Aleksei on the throne. He sees the hand on the rail, the way Ilya leans forward, and the slight turn of his head as he stands apart and looks for what’s wrong.

The ship passes between the towers.

Ilya’s gaze moves over the quay: the soldiers, the house colours, the receiving court, the royal standard. It stops.

Scott remains where the ceremony placed him. The whole river lies between one breath and the next: bells above the roofs, current against stone, the creak of yards, hundreds of men holding ropes and orders and their own positions.

The Crown ship takes the final turn.

The pilot raises his hand; the Veyran master answers. Canvas falls in one dark rush. A bow line crosses the gap and strikes the quay; an Aderran line-handler catches it, takes one turn around the bollard and throws his weight back. The stern line follows. Men haul. The ship comes against the fenders with a long complaint of timber and rope. No Aderran boards it. The Veyran crew lower the gangplank from their own deck. Aderran line-handlers guide its quay end into the iron shoes and bind it without setting foot aboard. The ship’s herald comes to the rail.

In clear Aderran, she calls:

“His Highness Ilya Grigorievich Rozanov, Prince of Veyr, brother to the Crown, principal envoy and bearer of His Majesty’s full authority.”

The title passes across the harbour and returns from the walls in pieces.

Ilya waits until the harbourmaster signals that the plank is secure.

No guard goes before him. No officer offers a hand. Ilya Rozanov comes down the gangplank alone. He puts one boot on Aderran stone and looks directly at Scott.

Chapter End Notes

Jesus Christ. One chapter got split into four. I dont even know? I really dont? It's shameful, i am ashamed. This project had such a nice outline, it was so clever you guys. I had beats and chapter arcs and everything. And then what happens?! Misery and weakness.

With that said - twenty three ships arrived you guys. Thats a crazy number of ships. Ilya has a lot to answer for.

Chapter 17

Chapter Notes

Kay guys. This is basically pt2 of the same chapter.

Well, tbh the name of the file was 16A.3.A and 16.A.3.B. and now im writing 16B.1.A and 16.B.1.B.

Torment persists.

8 Greening, fourth month, 1149

Ilya crosses the quay with even, confident strides. He favours neither leg; his back is straight, head held high. Both shoulders move freely beneath the fur, his sword hangs at its usual angle, and nothing in the set of his body protects a rib or conceals a binding. He breathes to the bottom of his lungs. He is leaner through the face than when he left, but not hollow; whatever the winter took, he has put enough back to carry it well.

His clothes have not braved the Greywater. Whatever else he may be, Ilya is enough of a sailor to respect salt, rigging and drowning, and no man who did would go to sea in that volume of fur. The mantle he wears is black, deep and heavy enough for a particularly biting Frostmonth, caught at one shoulder with a gold clasp and left open over a tailored coat of finer black. These must have come out of a chest at Linmouth, along with the chains at his throat, the broad cuffs at his wrists, and the rings that catch the light when his hand nears his sword.

He wears more gold than Scott has ever seen on a living man, gleaming like a king dressed for his own tomb.

The coat beneath plunges low across the chest, in a style foreign to Aderra and one Scott would protest—if there were any grounds left for protest. It bares the base of Ilya’s throat, the hollows under his collarbones, and a long sweep of skin over the left side of his chest.

There are new marks there.

The old ink on Ilya has faded to a familiar blue-grey, but the new work is black enough to catch the pale daylight: a sprawling burn transformed into a long-bodied beast, its back tracing the scarred skin. Bear when he faces Scott, perhaps; wolf when he turns. The artist has found the creature in the wound, as sailors find constellations in scattered stars. The burn is not hidden, but exalted. Beyond that, a sharp black line crosses the base of Ilya’s right thumb, vanishing beneath a ring. That scar, too, has been claimed: three black strokes, like feather vanes or the teeth of a sea-comb.

Scott’s insight into Veyran ways is limited, but he knows the basics; Veyrans are meant to wait until a wound has settled before making a deed of it. The skin around the beast still holds the faint tight shine of healing. It cannot have been quiet when Ilya put himself beneath the needle.

Vain, impatient little brute.

Ilya, as ever, catches him staring. His shoulders ease, chin lifting with a beguiling absence of shame. One deep breath raises the chains and lets the fur slip another inch from his chest.

The fleet was preening; the might of it was preening. This, now, is merely the part done in fur and gold. Who could possibly begrudge him? What accusation of vanity could matter when it is so deserved? Old harbour tales told of sea-princes trading half their kingdom for human legs, and coming ashore draped in the rest. The figure approaching Scott seems perfectly content with the bargain.

At the foot of the royal place, Ilya stops, and the receiving order gives way to formality.

For one moment they look at one another across the correct ceremonial distance.

“Your Majesty.”

The bow is exact: deeper than the house envoys offered, shallower than a subject’s, one free prince acknowledging the sovereign who receives him. Scott returns it.

“Your Highness. Aderra receives you in peace and recognises the authority you bear. Welcome to Adermere.”

“His Majesty thanks you for the honour shown to his embassy.”

The voice is the same; Scott had not expected otherwise. Men do not generally acquire new voices while overthrowing their fathers. Still, the sound of it enters him in a place for which the receiving order has made no provision.

“Your brother has Aderra’s congratulations upon his accession.”

“I will give them to him.”

“I trust the king is well.”

The corner of Ilya’s mouth lifts, bold and arresting.

“He is well. He sends his regard.”

Scott inclines his head.

The master of ceremonies indicates the principal envoy’s mark beyond the edge of the canopy. Ilya goes to it, and the ship’s herald calls the next name.

“Commander Mikhail Volkov, of the Crown Army.”

The grey-haired man Scott saw beneath the quarterdeck, and would not have needed naming in this life or the next, comes down with Captain Vera Sorn at one side and a dark, spare woman carrying a leather case at the other.

“Commander Volkov, lord of the House,” Carter says quietly. “Third upon the warrant. Sorn commands the principal envoy’s guard. Natalya Korina, first secretary to the embassy.”

Beyond the cordon, the Redmere gallery has not moved. They stood through the cheering and stand through this.

Beyond the cordon, the Redmere gallery remains unmoved. They stood through the cheers; they stand through this. Forty men beneath the guild banner, the old woman gripping the fishmarket rail, none of them breaking their gaze from the principal envoy’s mark since his name was called. There is no threat, no need for a guard. No one shouts or spits. They watch the man in black fur with the focus of men watching a storm roll in, and they will not look away until he is gone. Scott feels their silence as keenly as their eyes.

Scott does not tell them to stop. He would not be obeyed, and he has no right to ask.

Twenty-two hundred, at Redmere. The number sits in three ledgers in the keep and in every one of those forty men.

Ilya sees them. Scott watches him take them in. He does not flinch, does not feign remorse, does not shrink himself; he bears the weight as he does all things he claims as his own, without protest or apology. He does not look away either. In this light, the gold is not a diplomatic gesture. It is a man facing those he has widowed, adorned in the sum of himself.

Scott continues receiving the Veyrans.

Volkov has a healed break across the bridge of his nose and the stillness of a man who has spent his life allowing other people to discover how much violence it contains. He gives Scott the inclination due a foreign sovereign, then glances once toward Ilya.

Ilya moves two fingers against the gold at his wrist. Volkov takes his place half a pace farther back than the usher assigned him.

Captain Sorn is broad-shouldered and near forty, her dark hair cropped close at the temples. When the usher instructs her to hand over the guard warrant to an Aderran clerk, her chin lifts just so: I heard you. I disagree. I will obey no farther than I must. She hands it over without delay. The movement catches at Scott. Ilya’s version of this defiance has always come with a far more elaborate commentary.

The clerk’s eyes go past her to the principal envoy’s sword. It has not been bound. Every retainer on the quay came ashore with the peace-cord visible at forty paces; the principal envoy’s blade hangs at his hip in the plain leather Scott remembers, ungoverned by anything but the man wearing it.

The clerk looks at his warrant. The warrant, drawn by Veyran jurists and countersigned at Linmouth, exempts the bearer of the Crown’s full authority from the binding of arms, for the sufficient reason that a man carrying a king’s word cannot be disarmed without disarming the king. It is entirely lawful. It is also a sentence in a language Scott can read: I have come into your house armed, and your own clerks have signed for it.

Sorn watches the clerk find the clause. When he finds it, she permits herself nothing at all, which is its own kind of comment.

Next, Natalya Korina bows, names her office and looks directly at Scott while he answers. Then she looks at Ilya, nods with visible satisfaction and files behind. The movement is frank enough to be rude by Aderran standards. No Veyran face changes.

The rest of the principal party comes ashore behind them: two officers, three Crown jurists, Ilya’s physician, the head of his household and the guards authorised in the Linmouth papers. Carter gives Scott every name before it is required. Scott returns the proper title, the proper degree of acknowledgement and the proper sentence of welcome. No one waits. No one is slighted.

Between names, he looks at Ilya.

The six house parties have begun to change shape around him. Nothing so crude as a step is taken. Varvara Voronina remains beneath her raven, Ekaterina Volkova beneath the broken blade, and every representative keeps the place assigned. Yet their attention has settled in one direction. The assembly which appeared formidable before Ilya’s ship entered now emphasises its centre.

He fits among them.

The fur and gold mark him out, but not apart. Something in the carriage of his head belongs to Volkov; something in the stored quiet before movement belongs to Sorn. Varvara Voronina has the same refusal to hurry into obedience. Even Marina Saltykova, who has spent the morning looking as if she intends to audit and bill the whole of Adermere, receives an instruction from one of her own clerks with an inclination so familiar that Scott’s chest tightens.

The resemblance does not diminish him. If anything, it makes the excess more exact. Forty Veyrans know how to stand as if stillness is a resource to be spent. Only one has clad himself in half a treasury to ensure Scott’s eyes remain fixed on him.

The Veyrans watch as well. They look at Ilya with the contentment of well-fed carnivores: their prince is alive, triumphant, and gloriously overdressed; every foreign gaze on the quay is exactly where he meant it to be. Nothing in their faces suggests that any other outcome was seriously considered.

Then, one by one, they look at Scott.

Volkov does it openly. Sorn is more discreet by perhaps half an inch. Natalya does not trouble to be discreet at all. Across the receiving place, Admiral Valeska subjects Scott to a smoother version of the same inspection while Sabine Radova watches Ilya watch him.

Fair enough; they are measuring him. It is what he would do. A king receiving a prince under another crown’s warrant should expect to be looked at, and the looking is more courteous than he has had from men who called themselves allies.

The usher reaches the end of the Crown household. Carter folds the roster to the next marked place. A clerk clears his throat beneath the canopy and presents Scott with the formal address approved by the Table, the Crown jurists, the harbour office and, for reasons no one has satisfactorily explained, the guild of chandlers.

Scott does not need the paper. He looks over the assembled embassy: six Veyran houses beneath their own colours, Moryn’s elders, the officers of Aleksei’s army, the representatives of House Valeska, the sailors and guards still massed behind them. At the principal envoy’s mark, Ilya stands in black fur and fresh ink, one hand resting near the gold at his belt.

“Envoys of His Majesty Aleksei Rozanov, representatives of House Valeska, elders of Moryn: Aderra receives you under the Greywater Peace and honours the authority under which you come.”

The first drop of rain strikes the river hard enough for Scott to see it. Then another darkens the boards—a third catches and glitters upon the black fur at Ilya’s shoulder.

Scott continues.

“Within these walls, you and your households will hold the Crown’s protection while the work of peace is—”

The rain arrives in large cold drops, sudden and widely spaced at first. One strikes the gold at Ilya’s throat. Another finds the bare skin above the new black beast and runs down through it.

Scott turns one hand toward the dry stone beside him.

“Here.”

Ilya looks at the place, then at Scott. His face changes.

It is not the court smile he gave before, nor the private satisfaction with which he caught Scott staring. His eyes go bright; his mouth curves with quick, unguarded pleasure. He comes at once; the exact speed of it would look like obedience in another man.

Ilya steps beneath the royal canopy and takes the place Scott made beside him. The canopy was designed to dignify one king, not shelter two large men from spring rain. The fur bunches between their sleeves when he presses into the narrow space. Up close, he smells of salt, cold air and the resinous oil worked into the new leather of his sword belt.

Carter’s finger loses its place on the address.

Foolish man. It is spring rain and a guest in three bears’ worth of fur. He will get waterlogged in three minutes and drown in four, if left standing in it.

Across the wet boards, one corner of Volkov’s held stillness cracks. Aurel Valeska glances toward Sabine Radova, who closes one hand over her document case as though a disputed article has just been settled.

Scott has not lost the sentence.

“—concluded. The injuries between our crowns will be answered under law, the peace restored in fact as well as word, and every matter brought beneath these banners heard in its proper order.”

His voice remains level. Rain beats against the canopy above them and begins to settle into the black fur. It can’t be a bear, but he can’t imagine there are any black cats that size. Ilya stands close enough that Scott can see where the new ink remains faintly raised around the scar.

“Aderra welcomes you.”

The embassy bows as one body. Ilya does not. He has already been received, and now stands inside the royal place looking pleased with himself. Plain speech has always improved his temper—inasmuch as anything can.

The master of ceremonies signals the procession before the rain can become an argument. Standards lift. The Aderran honour guard turns toward the sea-gate; clerks gather papers beneath their coats; servants move forward with cloaks for those important enough to be kept dry and too slow to have secured a king’s canopy.

Scott steps out. Ilya comes with him.

The receiving order places the principal envoy one pace behind the Crown once the procession begins. The usher looks at the distance between them, looks at Scott, and decides that one morning need not contain every possible act of courage. Behind Ilya, the Veyrans fall into place.

The bells are still ringing when they pass through the sea-gate.

The processional road winds up from the harbour in a long curve, first between warehouses, then houses, every inch crowded. The city has obeyed the order about the road and nothing else. People cluster on steps, in doorways, atop the flat roofs of salt-stores; a boy has climbed onto a crane arm and is being shouted at by a woman stranded below. The noise rolls in waves as the standards pass each new stretch.

Ilya walks beside him.

The usher’s decision holds for perhaps thirty paces, which is longer than Scott expected. Then Prentice appears at the edge of the column with the expression of a man carrying out an instruction he has already lost, murmurs something about the receiving order to the principal envoy’s secretary, and receives from Natalya Korina a look of such serene incomprehension that he retires.

“Your steward would have me stay a pace behind,” Ilya says.

“He wants everyone a pace behind. He has a diagram.”

“I have seen it.”

Of course he has. “And?”

“It is a good diagram.” A drop runs off the fur at his shoulder. “It was drawn without consulting me; I would have explained the error in their thinking.”

The road turns. Below and behind them the harbour has come fully into view—the masts, the banners, the carts moving up from the berths in their ordered rows, the whole absurd argument of it laid out and still unfolding, and beyond the wall the five southern warships holding their line in the rain.

Ilya does not look back at it.

He has spent four months, a treasury, and the patience of three kingdoms assembling that spectacle, and now he walks away from it without a backward glance, because its purpose is fulfilled. Scott understands this, in a general sense: once a thing is arranged, it need not be watched. He files it with the rest of what he does not understand about Veyrans in general and this Veyran in particular.

Behind them the houses come up the road under their own colours, six banners and the grey of Moryn and the dark southern blue of Valeska, and the Veyrans walk through the noise of a foreign city as though it has been laid on for them, which, this morning, it has.

At the top of the rise, the keep gate stands open. Murdock is somewhere back with Raisa. Carter has his binder under his coat against the rain and is being spoken to by two clerks at once. The rain comes steadily now, unhurried, settling in for the afternoon.

“You will want to get out of that fur,” Scott says.

“It is very fine fur.”

“It is very wet fur.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees, and does not shed the fur. He enters the gate of Adermere at the king’s side, water streaming from him, every inch the man who has arrived precisely where and when and how he meant to.

Chapter End Notes

A wizard is never late, Scott Hunter, nor is he early—

Chapter 18

Chapter Notes

8 Greening, fourth month, 1149

The bells follow them uphill. So does the rain.

By the time the procession reaches the upper court, house banners hang limp and drenched, water running from every peace-bound sword. More than one dignitary now knows precisely which servant forgot the second cloak. The Great Hall doors gape open, pouring out warmth and the mingled scents of soaked rushes, lamp oil, and the tantalising promise of a meal being summoned somewhere just out of view.

At the doors, the procession comes apart. Ushers take the six house parties toward their appointed standards. Murdock leads the elders of Moryn to the west fire. Servants move through all of them with towels and hot drink and the serene faces of people who have been told that no foreign prince, admiral, priest or plenipotentiary is to discover that the household has run out of dry cloaks.

Then the warrants are set upon the centre table, and the clerks begin. For the better part of an hour, three kingdoms’ worth of diplomats, clerks, generals and aristocrats establish with signatures and witnesses and more attention than most murders receive, that tomorrow’s arguments will be lawful.

Nothing has been agreed. Nothing has even been opened. They have merely proven that everyone present is who they say they are and, broadly, that they will talk about the things they will talk about.

Ilya stands at Scott’s side throughout, so near that, for a long, strange moment, Scott is certain he can hear his heartbeat. Neither utters a word. There is nothing to say before forty clerks. Scott clasps his hands behind his back, steady and still, gaze fixed on the table. Ilya matches him, and the air between them feels drawn tight, like cloth strained to the point of ripping.

The master of ceremonies reaches the lodging order.

River apartments for the Veyran ministers. The garden wing for House Valeska’s civil party. The eastern guest rooms for the house representatives, with their own servants and as many guards as the landing order permits.

“General Bennet will conduct His Highness to the east royal apartments. The chamberlain will attend his household.”

At the east royal, Ilya looks at him. Scott does not look back.

The chamberlain presents the keys to the head of Ilya’s household. “Captain Sorn may inspect the rooms before His Highness enters. Your guard will hold the inner stair. His Majesty’s men remain below.”

“And the gallery door?”

“It’s part of the apartments,” Ilya says. “It opens onto the upper walk, which has no door at the north end, just the stairs down to the armoury. There is always a guard at the armoury door. You don’t need a post there. You should put one at the top of the stairs instead. It’s a bad corner, and you can’t see it from the gallery.”

Sorn looks at the chamberlain. The chamberlain, who has served in this keep for eleven years, opens his mouth and stops. 

“As His Highness says.”

“The rooms are cold in the morning,” Ilya adds. “The east flue draws badly. Have it lit early or I shall complain, the chamberlain will answer me, and then everyone will be put out.”

Sorn nods once, satisfied and unsurprised, and sends two of her guards up with the chamberlain to object to anything they find. Then Eric steps forward and protocol ends.

“Your Highness,” he says, correctly.

“Bennet.”

Eric catches him by both shoulders and hauls him in against his chest, one broad hand closing over the back of his head. Ilya makes a sound of pure outrage, at odds with how both his fists shut hard in Eric’s coat and stay there.

Eric holds him off at arm’s length to look at him properly.

“You have come to sign a peace treaty dressed as a corpse.”

“I have come to sign a peace treaty dressed as a prince,” Ilya says. “I’m not surprised you don’t know the difference. You wore that same coat a year ago.”

“It is a good coat.” Eric turns him half a step toward the light and looks at the black beast worked over the burn, and his face does something Scott cannot see from where he stands. “Your physician allowed this?”

“My physician was overruled.”

“Your physician was overruled,” Eric repeats. “By whom, I wonder. Heavens wept, to think five minutes ago I was fishing you out of crumbling rooftops and from underneath the floorboards and now look at you—” He puts his hand back on Ilya’s shoulder, tucks him close to his side. “—Never mind the physician, how did you persuade a tailor to this? You could winter in Rydal in a coat like this, if not for the shirt cut to the navel.”

“I am very fashionably dressed.”

“You are very fashionably undressed.”

“It is the same thing, at a certain expense.” Ilya is enjoying himself enormously. “And I will have you know I killed the wolves myself, as is proper.”

“You—” Eric stops walking. “When?”

“Between things.”

“Between what things? You were on the run, orchestrating a coup.”

“During winter. A man cannot spend the whole of it indoors.”

“A man had a civil war—”

Scott watches, chest tight and head light, as the two drift away, Ilya pressed close to Eric’s side. Have they always been this close? When did that happen? Scott could have sworn he tracked their every move. Yet the truth is plain: they are nearly halfway up the stairs, still talking, when Ilya halts, elbows Eric to a stop, and twists to look back—his whole body angling toward Scott, who stands rooted at the foot of the stairs, staring after them, foolish and unmoving.

“When does the conference begin?”

“Tomorrow,” Scott says.

“At what hour?”

“After you have slept.”

“You realise that this doesn’t narrow things down much? I very much enjoy sleeping well into noon, on occasion.”

“The hour is among the matters still to be agreed,” Carter says, before either of them can convert sleep into a question of sovereignty.

“I approve the earliest one.”

“Naturally. The order remains to be written.”

Ilya nods, satisfied. “Very well. And the rest? I assume there is to be a dinner? At the fifth bell?”

“Indeed,” Carter says. “The hall is being turned over now.”

“Good. There’s enough time to unpack, have a quick wash, and catch up.”

Catch up? Catch up with whom? Scott knows not to hope it would be him, but—

“I will see you at the feast, then, your majesty”

Black fur and gold move away through the thinning crowd, Eric beside them, the chamberlain’s keys already in Veyran hands.

Scott watches until he passes out of sight.

“Sire,” Carter says.

Forty-seven envoys, six houses, an order of priests, and twenty-three ships still require beds, berths, food, and the paperwork to prove their existence. More pressingly, too many eyes are fixed on him as he stares at the space Ilya once occupied.

Scott turns back to work.

The question of whom Ilya plans to catch up with is not, on the face of it, a difficult one. The keep contains perhaps four hundred people. Roughly nine of them have any official reason to matter to a foreign prince. Ilya catches up with everyone else.

He appears in the pantries. He turns up in the stables, then the practice yard, then, for reasons no one ever uncovers, the wine cellar. He is glimpsed in the attic over the west range, spotted in the sentry tower, seen in two servants’ corridors and in the small back room where the maids gather when they are not being sought. Everywhere he goes, he finds someone he knows, and is greeted as one of their own rather than a foreign prince gleaming with gold.

Between these appearances, he somehow settles his household, has two chests whisked away before the servants have even set them down, visits the record yard to watch the restitution cargo tallied, and returns Carter’s copy of the conference order, the margins bristling with notes in a hard black hand.

And at least once in every hour, wherever Scott happens to be, Ilya passes. Not into the room. Along the gallery beyond it, or through the far end of the yard, or up the outer stair while Scott is coming down the inner one. Long enough to be seen. Long enough to be acknowledged and then gone again, upon some errand in the opposite direction from the last.

By the fourth appearance, Scott has begun attempting to reconstruct Ilya’s route and cannot make sense of it. The pantries are not on the way to the record yard. Nothing is on the way to the attic.

He resists his curiosity for almost another hour. At the end of it, he has read the same page three times and twice lowered his pen upon discovering that he does not know what he is about to sign.

A short walk will do no harm. There is time enough before supper to finish the conference papers. Finding out what Ilya is doing—and, more particularly, with whom—may even prove useful

Scott takes an aimless turn through the rear corridors. It happens to include every passage through which Ilya has been seen during the past hour.

It does not take long. Scott was a gamekeeper before he was a king. He has trailed wounded deer over bare stone, caught poachers in woods they knew better than their own names, and once tracked three stolen hounds through a night of relentless rain. The keep is gentler terrain. Servants wear pointedly innocent faces, Veyran guards stand where none stood an hour ago, and, soon enough, laughter spills down a side passage—bright, unruly, and overlapping.

A gamekeeper learns to track what has escaped him. Apparently the habit survives elevation.

Scott stops outside the open door.

Supper is still several hours away, so the kitchen is busy at work. The long worktable is crowded with bowls, knives, half-stripped herbs and a pale joint of lamb waiting for the spit. Steam has clouded the high windows. The kitchen girls are red-faced from the ovens; two embassy servants stand among them in black wool, looking as though they have survived a difficult military engagement and expect another shortly.

Ilya sits at the scrubbed end of the table with his sleeves rolled past his elbows.

The formal coat is gone. So are the chain at his shoulder and the black sash with the little gold oath-crowns worked into its edge. His rings lie beside him in a bright, careless heap between a bowl of onions and a dusting of flour. Four hours ago, men bowed to those rings upon the quay. Now a chipped plate sits perilously near them, and Ilya appears to be guarding it against Mara.

“—be a pest, Ilya. They are burnt.”

“They are crisp,” Ilya says. “As they should be.”

“They are black. I will get you another tray; there are heaps.”

“I want this one. It was given to me, and it’s mine. Keep your soft, bland potatoes, and let me be.”

Mara laughs. She’s a cheerful girl, always has been, but the winter was hard for everyone, and Ilya leaving took her badly. She reaches for Ilya’s plate. He catches it with one hand and draws it out of range.

Mistress Hoshe, who only took over the lower kitchens three years ago and already seems to have retroactively reshaped history to give the impression of having built them with her hands when the keep was first built, makes an impatient noise.

“Enough. If the boy wants to eat pig feed, let him. As long as he eats.” Her words are somewhat undercut by her setting a plate of steaming lamb in wine sauce. “Don’t even try to argue. That’s the price. You’re not as thin as I was afraid of, but you’re not far off either.”

Ilya looks at the plate. “You know, in Veyr, princes are treated with a degree of—”

“Eat.”

He eats.

The younger crowd watches with barely hidden delight and commiserating smiles. The kingmaker of Veyr sits among apprentices and maids, perfectly at home. His rings glint on the table, his coat draped over a chair. When Mara leans across for the salt, he shifts without looking.

One of the Veyrans looks up. Captain Sorn. Vera? Vera Sorn, yes. Her eyes meet Scott’s. She sets down the bread and starts to rise. Scott shakes his head, prepares to back up—

Ilya looks up and straight at him. For a moment nothing changes. Then the smile leaves his mouth—not entirely, but enough for Scott to understand that it had been unguarded before.

“Your Majesty,” he says.

The room discovers its limbs all at once. Benches scrape. A spoon clatters into a bowl.

“Stay where you are,” Scott says. “At ease, please. I am not here to interrupt. ”

Most of them obey. Mistress Hoshe does not move because she had not begun to.

“I did not mean to interrupt,” Scott repeats, trying not to appear outwardly as put upon as he feels.

“You have not.” Ilya glances at Mara. “I was being bullied.”

“You stole half a pan of potatoes.”

“You were going to throw them away.”

“That makes it worse, you understand? Stealing trash through the scullery window is not what sane people do.”

“That window was unsecured. You should be grateful I discovered it.”

“I’ll brick you into it next time.”

Ilya turns back to Scott. “You see what became of the place in my absence?”

There is room on the bench beside him. Not much. Ilya gathers his rings into one hand, shifts along the seat and drops them onto the table again with a bright little clatter. Then he looks at Scott.

Scott crosses the threshold. The kitchen receives this predictably. One girl nearly puts a bowl of chopped parsley into the oven. An embassy clerk retreats until his back meets a shelf and then remains there, apparently hoping the stone will take him.

The bench is made for kitchen boys, not grown men. His knees strike the underside of the table. Ilya’s coat brushes his arm where it hangs from the chair behind them.

Mistress Hoshe puts a plate of lamb before him.

“I have eaten,” Scott says.

She adds two potatoes.

“I do not discriminate. If the boy must eat, so must you, Your Majesty. ”

Across the table, Sorn lowers her eyes to conceal what may be amusement.

Ilya points with his knife. “The brown mustard.”

Mara reaches for the sweet.

“The other one,” Ilya says. “He hates the sweet kind.”

Scott looks at him. “I do not.”

“You do.”

“I eat it.”

“You move it around the plate until it becomes someone else’s problem.”

Mara produces the brown mustard and sets it by Scott’s hand.

“I never told you that,” Scott says.

Ilya rolls his eyes and stuffs a ridiculous volume of lamb into his mouth. The temporary muteness doesn’t hinder him any; he communicates how unimpressed he is by Scott’s reasonable argument perfectly well.

The kitchen resumes its work around them, though not convincingly. Every knife moves with exaggerated care. Mara ferries the onion bowl to the far side of the table, remembers nothing needs onions there, and brings it back.

Scott samples the potatoes. They are perfect—golden, buttery, neither under nor overcooked. After weighing his chances and deciding they are as good as they will get, he boldly spears one of Ilya’s.

They are burnt, he notes, but—

“I can see your point,” he says and even means it, mostly. “The char gives it an interesting crunch. And they’re about the same past that.”

“They’re interesting, and heaven knows there is little you can do to make a potato interesting. This attempt deserves to be remembered. Recreated.”

Well. “I would not go that far.” He reaches for another potato and is promptly rebuffed by Ilya’s fork clashing against his. Scott pauses. Did he just—

“Get your own,” Ilya says, eyes alight. “You are the king here, or so I hear. They will burn you a pan of potatoes if you ask. These are mine. I won them fair and square.”

Scott blinks. Opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Nobody refused him food at his own table for—who knows how long? Possibly never?

“How about a trade,” he hears himself say. “One potato for two honey cakes.”

Ilya’s smile broadens, and he leans back, looks him up and down with theatrical flair. “An intriguing offer, but Your Majesty seems to have arrived without a single honey cake. Why would I trade potatoes I have for cakes that may or may not exist?”

“Somehow I am not surprised that the concept of delayed gratification has entirely passed you by.” Scott looks away from laughing blue eyes with some effort and addresses Mistress Hoshe. “Madam, I apologise for interrupting your work, but might you help us settle this matter amicably?”

“Provided you finish your food.”

Ilya swallows a laugh as a plate of two beautiful cakes appears, the pastries nearly drowning in honey syrup, just as he prefers.

“One potato,” he says, inclining his head. “Well played, your majesty.”

Scott bites into his hard-won vegetable. It is somehow raw in the middle. He cannot recall the last time he enjoyed a bite so much.

Mara clears her throat.

“No,” Ilya says.

Scott looks between them. “What is it?”

Mara says, “His Highness has asked me to take charge of the east table.”

Scott puts down his knife.

Ilya closes his eyes briefly. “I asked whether she would consider overseeing meals for my household while we are here.”

“You have a steward.”

“I have Natalya. She can move two hundred men across barren countryside without losing a bootlace. She doesn’t concern herself with food.”

One of the embassy servants mutters something in Veyrski. Ilya answers without looking at him.

“What did he say?” Scott asks.

“That Natalya’s ideal meal includes the flesh of her enemies.”

Right. What was he thinking? “Who does concern themselves with food in your household?”

A pause.

“We have not yet established that to anyone’s satisfaction.”

Mistress Hoshe drives a skewer through the lamb with unnecessary force. “They brought salted fish, six sacks of black meal and a boy who says he assisted a pastry cook for one summer.”

“I have asked that boy several questions,” Ilya says. “His account does not withstand scrutiny.”

Scott looks at Mara. “And you agreed?”

“If Mistress Hoshe can spare me. The east rooms have their own maids, but they don’t know what he’ll eat.”

“I eat most things.”

“It’s unbecoming to lie, my lord. It ages you, and you already have lines on your forehead.”

“I do not.”

Scott refuses to be distracted. “You have been in the keep for less than a day, and you’ve already begun rearranging my household.”

“I asked one woman whether she wanted temporary work.”

“She is already employed.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “By the household. She is not owned by it.”

Oof. Scott’s not fool enough to touch that one. He turns to Mara.

“Do you want the position?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Why?”

She blinks.

It is not a question kings usually ask servants after they have received the correct answer. Scott waits.

Mara glances at Ilya. “The east household will need someone who knows the keep. And someone has to stop them feeding him boiled fish for breakfast.” Mara looks back at Scott. “I want to do it.”

“Mistress Hoshe?”

“I can spare her, if he gives her back before autumn.”

Scott looks at him. “How did you mean to pay her?”

Ilya’s eyebrows arch. Some of the deliberate looseness disappears. “As shocking as it may be, with me being a prince of Veyr, I’ve my own income. I will reimburse through the declared household account, at her existing rate. I am not attempting to buy your kitchen before negotiations begin.”

“You see why it might appear so.”

“I do. That is why I have spent the last quarter-hour not offering Mistress Hoshe six new ovens.”

Mistress Hoshe’s head comes up. “What is wrong with my ovens?”

“Nothing,” Ilya says at once.

Scott looks at him. Ilya has the decency to look back without blinking.

“Have you purchased ovens?”

“No.”

“Have you arranged for anyone else to purchase ovens?”

“No.”

“Have you discussed ovens with any person empowered to purchase them?”

“That depends upon how broadly you define empowered.”

“Ilya.”

“No ovens will enter Aderra without appropriate notice and approval from the crown.”

The kitchen waits. Scott could refuse. The east apartments have their own staff, chosen and assigned before the embassy arrived. They would do well enough. Nothing in the arrangement requires Mara—except that Ilya knows her, trusts her, and has asked.

Scott can pretend all day, but he would never deny Ilya this, not for something as petty as proving the room is his. For better or worse, they both know it is.

“She may take the position,” he says.

Mara smiles and gathers the onion bowl again. “Good. I’ll speak to the east steward.”

“You will do nothing until after supper,” Mistress Hoshe says. “Those herbs won’t chop themselves because Prince Rozanov has come home.”

The word drifts through the room, causing, all things considered, remarkably little damage. Mara takes up her knife. One of the Veyrans makes space for her at the board. Work resumes with the abrupt diligence of people who believe they have escaped notice.

They remain at the table until Carter comes down to find them. By then the lamb has gone onto the spit, Mara has acquired three Veyran assistants and Ilya’s rings have migrated across the scrubbed boards until the little pile rests beside Scott’s hand.

Scott has been waiting four months for Ilya to return. It has not occurred to him until now that he will have to let him.

By supper the Great Hall has changed clothes. The warrant tables are gone. Linen and silver cover the long boards, lamps burn beneath the galleries, and the foreign standards hang dry above their parties. Scott sits at the centre of the high table with Ilya at his right and Admiral Valeska at his left.

Ilya has surrendered the fur. He has not surrendered the gold. They sit through three courses side by side, exchanging perhaps two hundred words. Scott feels every inch of space between their arms as if it has been charted and measured.

When the musicians begin, and the required conversation loosens around them, he turns.

“How does your brother find the crown?”

“Heavy.”

“I meant the work.”

“So did I.”

Scott looks at him. Ilya turns his cup once between ringed fingers, then relents.

“He is doing well,” he says. “Better than anyone expected, except for myself. Svetlana and Sasha are there, which helps.” He pauses. “We found a seal pup for Nastya. It is not a customary pet, but she loves the stupid creature. So. It is good.”

“Yes,” Scott says.

There is nothing useful to add. Ilya appears not to require it. He takes a piece of bread, tears it and asks whether the Aderran musicians have always played the third measure incorrectly.

They speak for several minutes about music, river fog and whether the master of the Crown ship will ever forgive the harbourmaster at Linmouth. Everyone within hearing develops a disciplined interest in his own plate. They are not alone. They settle nothing.

In the kitchen, disorder created a kind of privacy. Here, every pause has witnesses, and each idle question threatens to become a matter of state. Scott feels the tension in his shoulders and would not trade a minute of it. He collects every trivial detail Ilya offers and, where facts slip away, listens for the feeling beneath. The odd, violent affection for his older brother. The simpler, purer love for his niece. Pride in Lady Vetrova. Delight in a mysterious Sasha whom Scott cannot quite place but suspects, to his horror, might be the Orlov heir.

It feels almost indecent to have this. To ask for nothing of consequence and be answered as if curiosity alone were reason enough.

Scott has never listened so intently.

9 Greening, fourth month, 1149

The old council chamber has belonged entirely to Aderra for longer than Scott has been alive. This morning it belongs to three powers and breakfast.

Breakfast proceeds without order because the record is not yet open.

Admiral Valeska asks Sarne whether the river gate is always so narrow or whether Aderra has reduced it specially for Valenni ships. Sarne answers that the gate has kept its width for eighty years and that Valenne has merely built its admirals too large. Celeste laughs. At the lower end, the joint clerk looks briefly alarmed, then remembers that he is not yet required to record anything.

Ilya speaks to Volkov in Veyrski while Lady Korina pours his tea. He takes the cup, adds nothing to it and continues talking. A slice of pear lies upon his plate. Nothing else does.

Scott waits.

Ilya drinks; the pear remains untroubled.

Scott reaches across the treaty copies, takes the nearer dish of bread and sets it before him.

Ilya glances down. “Thank you.” He does not take any.

Before Scott can move the eggs as well, the eastern door opens.

Mara enters carrying a covered dish, followed by two Veyran servants with plates and warmed cups. Yesterday she would have come through the western door with the Crown household. This morning she comes from Ilya’s side of the room.

She stops beside his chair.

“Move that.”

Ilya moves the pear, the plate and the glass. He looks intrigued.

“Here, my lord,” Mara says, fondly. “Jam and honey, butter and bacon and smoked lard—”

Ilya leans away from her, mouth pressing into a tight, white line. He is such a picture of wounded betrayal; he really might look into developing his underused but flourishing thespian gifts.

“No? Then I’m afraid all I have is—”

She whips the cover from the dish with appalling theatricalism. Beneath it is a stack of—cakes? They appear to be, indeed, small blackmeal cakes, dark and crisp around the edges.

“Mrachki,” Ilya says. His eyes widen. “You made them?”

“It’s hardly a state secret,” Mara says, adding a sniff for good measure. “I asked around. You’re out of luck on the cheese, because what your people do to goat’s milk appears to offend both nature and the kitchen accounts, but—”

She continues for some time. If Mara is troubled by the fact that three governments are waiting for her to finish bemoaning the difficulties in recreating Veyran goat cheese, she does not show it. Then again, Scott would defend his household with his own life. Ilya would defend it with other people’s, as many as proved necessary. Between them, Mara’s confidence in her safety in this or any other room in the Reach is entirely justified.

More remarkable is the expression upon the Veyrans’ faces. They watch her with startled affection, as though she has offered them something considerably greater than a plate of cakes.

It is hardly an orthodox approach to diplomacy, Scott thinks, but the results speak for themselves.

Scott looks at Ilya’s plain tea and the dark cake in his hand. He knows one thing more than he did yesterday.

The eastern clock sounds the quarter. Carter lays one hand upon the position book.

Servants enter from both doors. The principal dishes are lifted, cups refilled and crumbs gathered into folded cloths. Cold bread, fruit, water and wine remain upon the sideboard. The hot food leaves. In its place come the document cases.

Carter waits until the doors close and calls the conference under the warrants witnessed the previous afternoon. The joint clerk dips his first pen. The room becomes official.

Names, styles and authorities are read. Scott may bind Aderra in peace, trade, restitution and armed passage. Ilya may bind the Veyran Crown and every command sworn beneath the oath-crown; he may bind the six houses only where their seals appear upon the attached schedules. Admiral Valeska may bind Valenne in credit, guarantee, convoy and maritime jurisdiction.

Aderra formally recognises Aleksei Rozanov as King of Veyr: crowned by oath at Keelstone, acclaimed by the lawful houses and obeyed by the sealed commands. Valenne attests the recognition.

The interim stand-down is confirmed, followed by the agreed heads of business: grain and credit; ports, ships, and armed passage; captives, property, and reparation; evidence, enforcement, and finality.

The words rest modestly on the table. Between them, they hold burned villages, drowned sailors, empty granaries, sunk ships, hundreds if not thousands of disputed corpses, and a staggering amount of gold. Nevertheless, by the time Carter reaches the end, no one has objected.

“If there is no objection, the preliminary articles stand accepted.”

Lord Halden Emmett rises from the witness chairs. Carter pauses.

Emmett is a decent man. This has saved him from very little in life and nothing at court. He inherited a small estate south of the Wend, four hundred tenants, a harbour too shallow for useful ships and a belief that sincerity excuses poor timing.

“Your Majesty,” he says. “With the principals’ leave.”

Scott looks first to Ilya, then to Admiral Valeska—neither objects. Damn. They might have spared him whatever this ill-thought-out detour will be.

“You may speak.”

Emmett bows. “Before the opening witnesses withdraw, I would ask that something be said of what has brought us here.”

Harrow goes still; Scott has learned to recognise this as a warning.

Emmett turns enough to address all three parties while still speaking chiefly to Scott.

“There are many in Aderra who could not see the wisdom of Your Majesty’s course when the old Peace failed. Some opposed your restraint. Others mistook it for reluctance. It seems, now that King Aleksei sits lawfully on the throne and his brother has returned beneath a peaceful flag, that the record should acknowledge the successful conclusion of Your Majesty’s long design.”

The compliment settles into the chamber. It is gracious. It is loyal. It also recasts Aleksei’s crown as the fruit of Aderran foresight and Veyr’s winter as a campaign orchestrated from this very table.

Ilya does not look angry. That is what prevents anyone else from appearing alarmed.

“Lord Emmett.” He does not rise but leans forward, expression easy, friendly. “We have not met, but I know your son. Alaric commanded the northern companies during the withdrawal from Coelgate.”

“He did.”

“I was here when he made his report to His Majesty. He gave the dead first, then the stores, then his own decisions. He did not begin with the weather or another man’s orders.”

Emmett’s hand loosens upon the back of his chair.

“He believed he had failed,” he says.

“He brought the villagers out.”

“At cost.”

“Yes. He did not conceal it.”

Emmett considers him.

“I thought the report honourably made,” Ilya says. “I would have given it no differently. You raised him well.”

A reluctant smile touches Emmett’s mouth. “His mother did most of that.”

“Mothers often do.”

The smile remains.

Ilya gestures once towards the clerk’s open book.

“If you would permit me to speak as a man, not a clerk: let us put the plain account there, since we are to spend a fortnight disagreeing over everything else.”

He sets one hand flat upon the table.

“His Majesty gave me no instruction, no ships, no men and no gold. He did not choose my brother, and he did not buy the houses. Aleksei has the throne by Veyran law, Veyran right and Veyran blood.”

The chamber has gone very quiet. The clerk’s pen travels steadily across the page.

“His Majesty opened a gate. That is the whole of it, and it is not nothing. His Majesty, Scott Hunter, the Unbowed, took me, kept me, and released me. His involvement begins and ends with me. He has no claim on Aleksei.”

Scott waits until he is certain of his voice.

“Prince Rozanov states the matter correctly. I had no knowledge of the design and no hand in its execution. King Aleksei holds Veyr by its own law and its own allegiance, and no man at this table should say otherwise.”

Emmett bows his head. “Then I ask pardon for the error.”

“There is no offence,” Ilya says. “It is a better story than the true one. His Majesty is mad enough to have ordered it, and I am vain enough to have obeyed. We simply did not.”

Admiral Valeska laughs. Emmett joins him, briefly and with visible relief.

Carter looks towards the clerk. “Shall Lord Emmett’s original observation be omitted from the minute?”

“No,” Lady Korina says.

It is her first interruption.

“The account will be made elsewhere,” she says. “It is better that the correction travel with it.”

Ilya glances at her and nods. “Put down both.”

Scott looks to the clerk. “Enter both.”

The clerk does.

Emmett returns to his chair, colour restored to his face. Ilya has not won the room, but he has corrected one man without making an enemy.

The opening witnesses withdraw. Their chairs are carried out behind them. Scott watches Ilya while the clerks gather the completed pages.

His involvement begins and ends with me.

The words are true in more ways than Ilya can know, and more generous than Scott dared hope. Ilya has chosen to return. He makes space. He asks and answers questions. He allows the possibility of closeness, letting Scott begin a hundred paces down a road he would have been grateful to set foot on at all.

None of it is permission for anything beyond itself. None of it is nothing. Gratitude, curiosity, even the urge to prove Scott wrong will suffice, if he is patient. Only indifference offers no foothold, and Ilya has never been indifferent to him for one hour of his life.

The last breakfast dishes leave through the eastern door. Mara carries the covered plate of blackmeal cakes herself. In their place come the comparison copies, price schedules and marked texts.

Carter opens the first disputed passage and sets it before them. Across the table, Ilya looks down at the language. He rests both forearms upon the table and smiles.

Breakfast is over.

Chapter End Notes

This one went from 10k to 8k to 6k to *under 6k*

i am beyond impressed

Also the ovens exchange should be read in pippins HAVE YOU WORN WIGS register. For the record.

Chapter 19

Chapter Notes

Chapter End Notes

these muppets stg

Chapter 20

Chapter Notes

The passage chart still crease where Scott forced the marker east, a stubborn fold left behind as the clerks carry it off.

The room transforms before its occupants do. Rennick departs with the insurers and most of the factors; merchants clutch their ledgers, calculations, and bruised expectations as they are ushered toward the lesser hall. Route markers disappear into their boxes. The bright Valenni schedules are rolled and bound.

Other books replace them.

Captive registers. Lists of the missing, copied once by port and again by the vessel last seen carrying them. Claims for burned houses, stripped store-rooms, fishing boats taken and never recovered. The dead are entered with less uncertainty than the living. Beside some names the clerks have written confirmed. Beside others there is only a space where the manner of death ought to be.

No one has to restore order between Scott and Ilya. The work does it for them.

The framework is agreed within the hour, since most of it was never in dispute. The living return home without ransom. Anything that can be restored goes back to its rightful owner. Confirmed losses are paid at their value, disputed claims go to the mixed commission, and the Crown’s debt stays separate from any individual’s crime, so a village can be paid before a captain is tried. No one acts generous about it. Everything is recorded as plainly as tide tables.

Then Carter reaches Eastmere.

The Veyran captain’s warrant authorised the seizure of the fort and its winter stores. It did not, according to the copy supplied by Veyr, authorise the burning of the lower settlement. Forty-one houses were lost with the east granary, the net lofts and the chapel store. The captain claims the fire began during resistance on the quay. The surviving Aderran witnesses say his men carried flame downhill after the fort had yielded.

The Veyran naval representative rests his hand on his copy.

“Until the warrant is judged—”

“The Crown accepts the claim,” Ilya says.

The representative stops. Across the table, a house witness flips back three pages to check the valuation. The Veyran clerk has lowered her pen but hasn’t let it touch the paper yet.

“The captain’s liability remains disputed,” she says carefully.

“Yes.”

“And if he acted outside his warrant—”

“That will determine what is done to him.” Ilya does not look towards his delegation. “It does not determine whether Eastmere was burned by a commissioned Veyran ship.”

The naval representative keeps his hand on the schedule. “Highness, the distinction has value.”

“It matters for the charge against the captain, not for the people waiting to rebuild their homes.” Ilya looks at the clerk. “Enter Crown liability. Eastmere will not wait for our proceedings.”

The pen touches down.

Scott watches as the entry is made in both languages. Ilya does not ask for anything in return. He does not lower the amount, hold back part of the claim, or look for wording that would let Aleksei’s government avoid it later. Behind him, the Veyran representatives settle into a quiet acceptance, knowing a possible defence has been given up for good.

This is not generosity. Generosity can be praised, repaid, or regretted. Ilya is setting out what the new Crown will take responsibility for, and he does it before anyone can misunderstand the standard.

By the next hour, most losses have a place: return, valuation, commission, or charge. The last problem is in the captive registers. Three houses report men as dead, but Aderran witnesses saw them alive after those dates. Two children are missing from all Veyran records.

Scott draws the next draft towards him.

The addendum makes its circuit before Scott addresses it.

Responsible delegates of the implicated houses, resident at Adermere under Crown protection until the registers reconcile.

His own draft, each word chosen precisely because it is not the word beneath it. He watches the page travel down the Veyran side of the table. Voronin reads it. Lady Saltyakova reads it and turns it over for the house witnesses. Ilya reaches the second paragraph and stops.

Still, Scott lays out his case.

Fines travel across the sea as quickly as a letter. A proud house can pay a fine, dispute it, or lose one ship and decide it still has three more. A man kept in a cellar on an island beyond Aderran reach does not have a season to wait while notices pass between Crowns. A representative kept at Adermere focuses the attention of everyone who wants him back.

Scott does not say, hostage. He has built the addendum so that no one else can, either. The word lingers, instead, until he is done.

“No,” Ilya says.

Not to Carter. Not to the jurists. To Scott.

“Officers only,” Scott says. “No heirs. No children. Men empowered to answer for the raids.”

“If an officer is responsible, charge him.”

“And if his house gave the order?”

“Charge whoever gave it.”

“Across the Greywater?”

“Aleksei will arrest him.”

“If he finds him.”

“Yes.”

“If he proves it.”

“Yes.”

“And while you find and prove, my people are missing even longer.”

Ilya’s expression does not change, not so much as a flicker. “Then move quickly.”

Scott feels the first clean edge of anger.

“Three months,” he says. “Full diplomatic standing. Their own households. Free movement through Adermere and the surrounding country.”

“Free to sail?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

“They would not be confined.”

“They could not leave.”

“The distinction matters.”

“Until the distinction equals to an open gate, no, it doesn’t.”

Scott leans back. The chair makes a small sound against the floor.

“A comfortable house is not a cell.”

“No,” Ilya says. “I agree. A house cannot be a cell, and a cell cannot be a house. ”

A subtle shift runs down Scott’s side of the table. Carter looks down at the Aderran copy. Eric’s face goes still. Scott knows the feeling; his own muscles tense, blood rushing through his veins.

“Veyr will not leverage living bodies to ensure other people’s obedience,” Ilya says. “The previous administration has made such bargains. Aleksei Irineyevich will not.”

Rot in hell, you miserable little—

“And if it works? If it brings my people back?”

“I have no doubt that it would.”

That stops Scott more than any refusal could. Ilya does not pretend the proposal is foolish. He gives Scott no comfort, no illusion that it would fail. A frightened father, a loyal brother, a lord who values their officer—there are any number of men who would either produce Scott's people, the men holding them or, at the very least, information about their whereabouts. The scheme would work, just as Scott intended.

“You understand the danger of delay?” Scott says.

“Yes.”

“You understand that someone may die because coin or threat of punishment was not immediate enough?”

“Yes.”

“And still no?”

“It’s out of the question.”

The refusal is smooth and unreachable. Ilya does not brace behind it. He leaves it between them as a fact Scott will have to move around.

Scott’s palms tingle with the urge to reach for him, to grip his shoulders, behind his neck, around his neck. He keeps both hands flat against the table.

“Then what do you offer the missing?” he asks.

Ilya draws the captive schedule closer.

“A house concealing a living adult is excluded from treaty trade until the captive is produced or the commission accepts proof of death. Every participating harbour refuses its ships. Its cargoes lose protection under the common fund. Any ship entering under a false name is seized.”

Lady Saltyakova begins writing.

“No Crown harbour in Veyr receives the house,” Ilya continues. “Aleksei undertakes enforcement against the lord responsible. If the house resists, the Crown acts against it.”

“With what?”

Ilya looks at him. “Whatever is required.”

Scott believes him.

One of the house witnesses speaks from farther down the table. “Temporary exclusion.”

“For an adult,” Ilya says and the page. Two of the missing have no agreed ages. One Aderran record calls them children. The Veyran list gives no year of birth. “A house knowingly concealing a child after the execution of this Peace loses Crown harbour permanently.”

The witness’s chair moves.

“Highness. An island house without Crown harbour would be ruined.”

“Then it ought not conceal kidnapped children.”

No one replies. There is nothing left to say. Ilya does not deal in mercy. This is not a softer tool disguised as principle. He will strip ships, credit, protection, food, and iron. He will send soldiers  after the lords who helped crown his brother and break their houses, and will put it in writing.

“A man answers for his own act,” Ilya says. “A house answers for their people. A Crown answers with its authority. They are not interchangeable.”

He does not speak of the old Peace. He does not have to.

The room is too quiet.

Scott’s anger and desire have drawn so close he cannot separate them without risking both. Ilya has denied him before three Crowns, doing so without insolence, apology, or even the smallest hint of discomfort.

He does not need to know whether Scott is pleased. He does not appear to need Scott pleased at all.

“Moreover, you will give me back the Veyrans you took,” Ilya says.

Scott’s attention narrows.

“Prisoners taken during the raids?”

“Yes.”

“They broke the Peace.”

“Then charge them.”

“Some may know where the missing were taken.”

“Do not tell me you haven’t questioned them already. Do not lie to me. Charge those against whom you have evidence. Return the rest.”

Scott says nothing.

Ilya touches the register with one finger.

“I understand that you paid twice the ordinary bounty for a Veyran officer brought in alive.” His eyes remain on Scott’s. “Ask what you need. Then prove an offence or give them back to me.”

“They are prisoners of war.”

“The war is ending.”

“Lawful detention does not end the moment the seals touch paper.”

“No. It ends according to the terms we write.” Ilya pushes the register across the space between them. “Hold men for what they did, that is your right and your duty. But you will not turn them into the hostages that I will not let you have.”

The blow is clean enough that nobody knows how to acknowledge it.

Scott looks down at the names.

Three from the monastery operation. Eight from later captures. Men who crossed armed, who may have burned, carried orders, guarded captives or merely rowed where they were told. He already charged and executed those he had evidence against. The ones who still live do so because they are valuable and because Scott could exchange them for his missing people. It would work.

Ilya’s demand is right.

Both facts remain true, and Scott hates the second for failing to erase the first.

He takes the addendum back.

“Strike it.”

Carter reaches for his pen.

“No.” Scott holds out his hand.

Carter gives him the pen. Scott draws one line through the resident delegates. The nib catches halfway across protection and leaves a dark tooth of ink.

He enters the replacement himself. Exclusion from treaty trade upon a finding of deliberate concealment. Refusal of harbour. Loss of fund protection. Seizure where a vessel enters falsely. Enforcement undertaken by Aleksei’s Crown. Permanent loss of Crown harbour for the knowing concealment of a child.

He closes two gaps in the Veyran wording. He changes may seize to shall. He adds liability for a house trading under a lesser banner. He makes the instrument sharper because it is now his too, and he will not write a bad law just because he resents the person who gave it to him.

Then the prisoners.

A full register within ten days. Condition and place of detention—charges entered within thirty. Return where no personal offence is alleged.

His hand remains steady. Ilya watches him write. He offers no lesser representative. No gracious acknowledgement. No private softening disguised as a correction to the text. He allows Scott to finish angry.

Scott sets down the pen.

“Bring the naval schedule.”

Ilya turns the page. Scott’s anger turns with him.

The next schedule is about ships. Scott’s mind lingers on bodies—on one body, seated before him, impertinent and infuriating.

The Veyran clerk lays the offer before him in two columns: three escorts of the western patrol class, delivered across the year, armed and provisioned, replacement spars included, with six months of repair support after the final handover. The hulls are not new, but neither are they ships Veyr has used up and found a dignified means of abandoning. Every refit is entered. Every year of service is accounted for. Lady Saltyakova has the valuation open before Scott asks for it, and the naval men have marked the differences between the vessels as though expecting the afternoon to be consumed by an argument over rot, iron and the remaining worth of old sailcloth.

It is a considerable offer. Everyone at the table knows it and waits for Scott to react.

“Where will they be built?”

Stargard and Karskaya, and the answer is honest. Scott picks it apart in front of everyone, like a man taking apart a gift while the giver is still holding it out. What happens when one is lost? And the second? Where does Aderra get the next, at what price, in which season, with which council deciding if they approve of Scott’s government or how the ship will be used? Ilya answers plainly, never choosing a softer word. Scott listens as he describes a leash but calls it three ships. It is three ships, and that is the problem—more than Grigori’s Veyr would have given a defeated Aderra in a hundred years. It is a real concession from a man who has already given too much today and seems determined to stop.

Scott intends to take more.

“Then you offer three ships and retain the standing right to be asked for the next.”

“I offer three ships.”

“For as long as they remain afloat.”

“That is generally the condition of owning ships.”

On another day, Scott might have enjoyed the answer. Today it presses against the place where Ilya’s last refusal entered him and did not leave.

“One completed in Veyr,” Scott says. “Two laid at Linmouth. Your builders remain until they are finished. Aderra receives the plans and methods required to construct, maintain and repair the class, and the Crown may lay another keel when it requires one.”

“No.”

Scott knew where the question would lead. He asked it to get to the refusal. He feels the word before he thinks it, his chest tightening as if Ilya has pressed a hand there.

“Four completed vessels,” Ilya says.

“No.”

“Five. Parts at cost for fifteen years. Repair support for two.”

The room moves.

Lady Saltyakova raises her eyes from the account. One of the house witnesses turns towards the naval delegation. Aurel, who has spent most of the day wearing the expression of a man watching other kingdoms discover the price of things Valenne learned long ago, sits straighter.

Five escorts would strip a Veyran patrol line and burden yards already repairing the winter losses. It is more than Carter placed in their most ambitious private estimate. Eric could put them along the coast before the next storm season. Linmouth could open one, study it, ruin two attempts and begin to learn from the third.

Five ships would be enough. Scott knows it while Ilya is still speaking. The stranger thing is that Ilya offers them so quickly. He is not bargaining toward a number. He is trying to end the question.

“And after fifteen years?” Scott asks.

“You may have learned enough not to require us.”

“Then give me what lets us learn now.”

“No.”

“Five ships can be replaced.”

“At a cost you appear determined not to understand.”

“The knowledge cannot be replaced because it is not lost.”

“No,” Ilya says. “It is taken.”

He will not soften the distinction. Scott feels a fleeting, almost fond hatred for him.

“Then we agree on its value.”

“We agree that you are asking for more than the ships you lost.”

“I am asking not to remain dependent upon the kingdom that destroyed them.”

“You were dependent before the war.”

“I did not know it.”

“And now?”

“Now I know you.”

Scott speaks before he can choose words that fit the room. He means Veyr: its yards, its sea roads, the reach of a kingdom no Aderran army can touch. He means the discovery that every force under his command ends at the shore and that the sea, once entered, belongs to men trained from childhood to think of it as road, wall and weapon. He does not mean only that.

Ilya’s hand closes once on the paper and then opens. The room is still full of witnesses, guards, and officials who must remember every word. For a moment, Scott cannot feel any of it.

Ilya says, “Five ships. The support already named. Priority over all foreign orders.”

“No.”

“What number satisfies you?”

“No number.”

Ilya looks at him for a long time, and Scott watches the calculation occur without knowing its terms, sees anger pass through the dark of his eyes and be brought under control before it reaches his mouth.

Scott, in all honesty, between him and God, doesn't know when the idea occurred, when he let his impulses guide him so thoroughly. Whatever the case may be, he's speaking before he makes a conscious decision to do so.

“Lady Saltyakova, what would replacing five ships require of Veyr’s crown?”

She sits straighter, doesn’t answer, looks at Ilya instead.

Scott could withdraw the question. Ilya might even permit him to do it without naming the retreat. He does not, and while Marina Saltyakova waits he understands with complete and unpleasant clarity what he has chosen to use. It is not a weakness in Ilya, not ignorance, vanity or some error in preparation. It is the best thing in him: that he will not let an officer lie in his name; that he would rather expose his own position than secure it with an account he knows to be false; that he understands authority not as protection from truth but as the obligation to endure it publicly, before the houses whose money is being counted and the officers whose failures will later be entered beside his own decisions.

Scott has found the vulnerable part between the armour plates, snuck his hands around the soft bones at his nape, and put his hand around it.

The pleasure is physical. It begins beneath the breastbone, warm and exact, the satisfaction of finding the place where pressure will work. He has called the old arrangement wrong in every language available to him except the one that would require him to regret wanting it. Now he is doing something near enough to recognise, before three governments and beneath no name a clerk can record, and the man across from him can refuse, has refused him already, and is still in the chair.

It makes the pleasure better; it does not make it good.

Ilya’s jaw shifts once.

“Answer him.”

Lady Saltyakova lowers her eyes to the figures.

“The Crown yards are committed through Frostmonth. Two require repair. Five replacements would divert seasoned timber from the harbour works, iron from the eastern fortifications and senior labour from three yards. Merchant construction would be delayed again.”

“And the cost?”

She names it. The sum is not just the value of five ships. It means military pay arrives late, port walls stay open another winter, merchant ships are not built, and grain costs more because credit is used elsewhere. Five finished hulls in an Aderran harbor would leave five empty spots in Veyr, and Aleksei would have to fill them before he could repair what Grigori broke.

Nobody writes for several seconds after she finishes. Ilya has not looked at her. Scott watches the pulse move once in his throat above the closed collar. He could have stopped the answer after the first sentence. He could have let evasion protect him, could have spoken of uncertainty in the timber account or asked that the figures be reserved for a smaller commission.

Scott turns towards Ilya’s shipwright.

“If Aderra receives completed vessels and no technical transfer, can Linmouth eventually reproduce the class?”

The man looks to Ilya.

“Answer.”

“Eventually.”

“From completed ships?”

“Yes.”

“Would the first be equal?”

“No.”

“What would shorten the learning?”

“Experienced builders. The sequence of the work. Treatment before the hull is closed. Corrections made during construction.”

“Can Veyr prevent us learning it forever?”

A pause.

“No.”

The case is complete.

Five ships would cost Aleksei more right away and only keep the knowledge for a while. A controlled transfer would lose fewer ships and let Veyr choose the design, the people, and the limits. Scott has not made the concession easy. He has made the other option wasteful, and he has done it through Veyran voices, after making Ilya order them to speak.

The skin around Ilya’s mouth has gone pale.

“Veyr requests a recess,” he says.

Scott inclines his head. “Granted.”

Ilya gathers the schedules. Marina Saltyakova closes the account. The shipwright collects his notes without meeting Scott’s eyes. Voronin rises with the houses and reaches Ilya before the delegation leaves the hall.

Ilya does not look back. The doors close.

Chapter End Notes

Goddamn it Scott

Chapter 21

Chapter Notes

Chapter End Notes

I would just like to point out that this and the last three chapters were supposed to be *one* chapter.

and that's why i can't stick to an outline. i really should split this into half too cause who the fuck has an 8k chapter, but honestly, god, i would rather jump in a well

---

also the whole end part is just this tumbr meme

bethanydelleman: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy being like, "I am 100% committed to respecting your 'no', but I heard you wouldn't promise my aunt not to marry me so I had to come and check just one (1) more time."

magpiesarefluffy: hes so funny, his aunt comes over to bitch at him about that Fucking Bennet Girl and how COMMON and RUDE SHE IS, and how she refused to promise to not marry Darcy, and Darcy hearing that Lizzy wouldn't hesitate to say "sure whatever i hate him anyways aha" if she had no intentions started packing his bags and yelling "SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE—"

— bethanydelleman, with a reblog addition from magpiesarefluffy

because every fic i write is in a v substantial way, a pride and prejudice fanfic at base

Chapter 22

Chapter Notes

Chapter End Notes

oh my god this is the horniest thing ive ever written and ive written some horny stuff in my time, these two idiots--

at least we're talking, hey? granted, we're talking cross purposes about everything except how much ilya wants to get fucked, but that's something, that's progress. considerign this is the first time theyre in a room alone together, id say its fairly quick progress.

Chapter 23

Chapter Notes

Scott stands still for a long moment, twenty feet away, his palms pressed on the working table. The petition sits under one hand, surrounded by three days’ worth of scattered papers.

The little world Scott built around Ilya earlier is beginning to look lived in. The fur has fallen open around his arms. His empty cup stands beside the remains of the food on the low table at his left; the candles there have burned down unevenly, one considerably shorter than the others. His coat is still draped over the back of the second chair nearby, gold embroidery catching whenever the fire shifts.

Ilya looks entirely at home in the middle of it. Scott cannot decide whether he finds that reassuring or infuriating.

“You want me to recite your articles back to you?”

“Not particularly.” Ilya smiles. His forearms lie easily along the chair’s carved arms, but the sharpness that came into him a minute ago has not gone anywhere. “But since you refuse to answer me, it seemed a place to start.”

As if the answer could ever be in doubt. Anyone who has endured Scott’s company this past year knows he would take Ilya Rozanov in every form offered. Still, Ilya is right—Scott has not said it.

“I know my answer.”

Ilya’s attention narrows.

“Then what are you deciding?”

So many things, and not one of them simple to explain. Scott has had most of a winter to think about this and discovers, now that the man himself is sitting across the hall waiting for an answer, that a great deal of the sensible language belonged to Murdock and Carter.

“There are men in this country who married their enemies’ sons within living memory,” he says. “There is a word for what most of them got. It is not husband. I will not have that. Not the shape of it, and not one clause some clerk can read that way fifty years after we are dead.”

Ilya considers him. His eyes are narrowed by a fraction the way they do when something moves on a board somewhere he had not been watching. Then he settles farther into the chair, drawing one ankle over the opposite knee.

“Fine,” he says. “Tell me about it.”

Scott had expected considerably more resistance. He has, in fact, prepared for it.

He pushes himself off the working table. The Aderran chairs stand where the delegation left them, pushed back at the angle of men leaving quickly. Scott takes one by the back, lifts rather than drags it over the stone, and carries it to the hearth.

It is a council chair: square arms, a seat worn to a shine. Beside Ilya’s it is plainly the lesser thing.

Ilya watches the whole operation without comment. Scott sits forward in it, forearms on his thighs. He has no packet prepared, no neat collection of articles drafted by a team of jurists. What he has is a winter spent making bargains with an absent man: terms offered to an unsympathetic ceiling in the middle of the night, objections answered to a dying fire, whole marriages built and torn apart before dawn.

Now that Ilya is actually here, the offer comes out cleanly enough.

Marriage will make Ilya neither an officer of the court nor a dependant of it. He will have considerable legal standing, appropriate to the precedence which will be at the very top. His household will have standing of its own; his people will remain his people and his revenue will be administered and tended by Adermere’s finest banking institution. An allowance is out of the question; Ilya will have land settled in his name outright, which will generate enough steady income to maintain a princely household without having to ask anyone’s leave. Granted, Ilya already has his own income, but that’s neither here nor there; he should have money here.

Through his admittedly somewhat hectic presentation, Ilya is mostly quiet, asking short, intelligent, probing questions that Scott answers without having to stop for breath. Apparently he has been considering the domestic arrangements of a marriage he has not yet agreed to with an even more peculiar particularity.

Midway through justifying estates over privy purse income, Scott realises he is standing. He rose without meaning to, one hand gripping the chair. Ilya must tilt his chin to meet his gaze. Scott thinks of sitting, but there is no sense pretending his pulse has slowed.

“And at court?” Ilya asks.

“The standing appropriate to a prince.”

“A prince.” His affable, impersonal expression softens a little. It’s not quite the impish mischief he radiates when he’s pleased, but it’s the closest he has come since they sat down for a second round of this.

Well—Ilya sat down. Scott is still looming like an animal.

Focus. “Since you are a prince, you will be treated as such.”

“Twice over, in fact. Funny how life turns out.” Ilya makes an interested, quiet hum in the back of his throat, and reaches for the last slice of apple. “Continue, please.”

Scott tries to cover up the beat of hesitation, launches into whatever he had planned to cover next, with most of his mind still struggling to get back into the swing of things. He expected—a dark joke, if anything. He has half of a defence and half of a placating gesture ready, and they both now hang in the back of his mind, cluttering it even further.

Lands, revenues, rights, articles, estates, taxes. Scott doesn’t go into detail about any of it, but he tries to present the offer both fairly and in the best light. In some ways, it’s a sales pitch; he shouldn’t lie or deceive, since that would backfire sooner rather than later, but he sees no reason not to highlight the best options.

Scott is halfway through explaining how the household accounts might be separated when Ilya says, “How tidy.”

Scott cannot make that sound like praise from any angle. He leaves it alone.

“And if I want another residence?”

The answer escapes before Scott can improve it. “Why?”

Ilya’s mouth curves around the slice of apple. The dramatic dip of his cupid’s bow comes into starker effect.

“That was not the answer,” Scott says before he can say something terrible. “You may have another house.”

“Mine?”

“Yes.”

“Entirely?”

“Ilya.”

“I was checking.”

Scott lets go of the chair. Three steps to the fire. He takes them and finds nothing waiting for him there.

“And so you have. Your house, in your name, filed in the registry.” Nevertheless—a house is hardly an appropriate residence for a royal spouse and a prince of Veyr. “Land would be cleaner. An estate settled on you outright, with a proper residence.”

The Vane property above the river comes to mind immediately. Private yard. Good stables. Enough rooms for the sort of household Ilya is likely to consider modest. A gate of its own. Ten minutes from the Keep in bad weather, considerably less in good. Scott will ask Carter who holds the mortgage.

“In Adermere?” Ilya asks.

“Yes.” Slow down.  “If you want it here.”

“If I do not?”

“Then elsewhere.”

Ilya takes a bite of apple and lets the answer sit.

“And if I go to Veyr?”

“You go.”

“Without your leave?”

“Yes.”

“Without Eric’s?”

“Yes.”

“Without telling you?”

Scott looks at him.

Ilya waits.

The fire makes a small collapse behind him, one blackened piece of wood settling into another.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“So I require no permission provided I remember to ask permission.”

“You require nothing.” The burst of irritation comes and goes easily enough; Scott is handling this. “I expect to know before my husband embarks on any perilous journey across the Greywater.”

The noun lands with extraordinary sweetness.

Husband.

Scott has not thought of the word as belonging to himself for years.

After Kip there had been lovers, occasionally. Captains passing through. Officers. Once a merchant Scott saw every spring for three years and liked enough to miss when the man finally married a woman in Calligo. He sent the happy couple thoughtful gifts, if memory serves. Nobody who intended to remain. Nobody Scott seriously imagined keeping.

My husband. Scott turns the words over once, twice. They sound good. Appropriate.

“Very well,” Ilya says.

Scott blinks and comes back to the room. Right.

“There will also be occasions when I expect you beside me.”

“Of course.”

“Embassies. State dinners. Certain Crown rites.”

Ilya’s brows rise.

“How far we have travelled from nothing being required of me.”

Scott could point out that Ilya will also be required to eat, breathe and refrain from setting important rooms on fire.

Instead he says, with what he hopes is patience, “Being my husband will, in fact, require being my husband.”

Ilya studies him. “Thank you,” he says. “That is clear.”

His manners have become impeccable. Scott knows enough by now to distrust excellent manners from Ilya Rozanov. When his voice smooths, his face becomes composed and please and thank you begin appearing, some act of lunacy is generally gathering itself just out of sight.

Scott glances at the apple core still in Ilya’s fingers. Ilya places it neatly on the plate.

“Your guard,” Scott says. “That is the one thing I want altered.”

Ilya’s eyes come up.

“By all means, please. Let us discuss it.”

Scott ignores the tone.

“Forty-three foreign soldiers quartered through the east apartments is not becoming permanent.”

“Only thirty-four are mine.”

“Nine belonging to somebody else does not improve matters.”

“They do not belong to somebody else. They’re Sasha’s.”

“So I am told.”

Scott has no intention of investigating Alexander Sasha Orlov tonight. The precise nature of his place in Ilya’s life, why he can apparently dispatch nine armed men who look like hired assassins into another king’s keep, and why those men answer neither to Ilya nor to the Veyran captain can all wait until Scott possesses the mental equipment to handle the answers.

“The problem is the corridor,” he says. “Your men hold one end, and fourteen of mine hold the other. Two armed watches, two chains of command, and no agreement about whose challenge outranks whose. The first time yours refuses someone mine has admitted, we have a standoff.”

Ilya doesn’t overreact right away, which is a small but important victory. He focuses instead. Scott has seen this look before: over tide tables, over harbour charts, over the approaches to an engagement he wants to win, never before over a corridor in Scott’s own keep.

Scott continues. “I would rather settle it before somebody draws steel.”

“How many would you accept?”

“Ten.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twelve.”

Ilya considers that. His cup remains untouched beside him. His thumb presses once against the carved end of the chair arm.

“My captain remains mine. I choose him, I remove him, and he answers to me.”

“Yes.”

“Not Eric.”

“No.”

“Not you.”

“No.”

“Twelve, then.”

Scott waits. Ilya reaches for the bread. Apparently that is the end of it.

Scott had expected an hour. Privately, he had allowed for the rest of the night. He had worked out which concessions he would make and in what order, had decided that thirteen was ugly but survivable, fourteen irritating, and fifteen possible if Ilya drove him to extremity. He would rather have been hanged than volunteer any of that.

Instead Scott wants ten, Ilya wants fifteen, and within minutes they have twelve, Ilya’s own captain and a clear chain of command. The ease of it gives Scott a ridiculous rush of pleasure. A disagreement, a bargain, a result neither man particularly loves and both can plainly live with.

He could get used to this.

“The outer corridor remains under my household captain,” Scott says. “The stairs and the hall below.”

“Yours.”

“Ours, if you live here.”

Ilya looks at him.

Scott holds the look for a moment, then turns to the fire. It has burned down while they talked. He takes the iron poker from its stand, shifts the blackening wood until a pocket of orange opens underneath, then lays another split log across it. Sparks climb briefly into the chimney.

Behind him, Ilya says nothing.

Scott sets the poker back.

Twelve men. Six at the east rooms, two at the inner stair, four relieving them by turns. Scott’s guard can keep the outer passage without doubling the posts. No overlapping commands at the same door. No need to invent a protocol for two captains attempting to overrule one another at swordpoint in the middle of the night.

The new log catches along one edge.

Much cleaner.

When Scott sits again, Ilya is still watching him.

The new log has caught. It throws more light into the circle around the hearth: Ilya in the great chair, the low table at his left with what little food remains, his coat over the back of the empty chair a pace beyond, gold catching whenever the fire shifts.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That has never once been true.”

“Then stop asking questions when you dislike the answers.”

Scott lets it slide. There are greater dangers ahead. One part of this, he has not managed to put into an article, by and large because he is not certain it belongs in one.

“I don’t expect us to live like this forever.”

“How wonderfully uninformative.” Ilya looks mildly interested and nothing else. “Like what?”

“Like two embassies sharing a corridor.”

That takes some of the amusement out of him.

Scott gestures toward the working table at the edge of the light, where the petition and the ink and the seal are still spread out, and the treaty chairs stand beyond it in the three abandoned groups their delegations left behind.

“All that makes sense now.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

He has spent the better part of an hour handing out land, revenue, jurisdiction and pieces of royal authority with both hands, and there is a great deal left. Aderra will not notice the loss of one estate or six. Carter will survive Veyran jurists at his table. If Harrow dies of being made to address Ilya correctly, the kingdom may count itself fortunate.

A marriage ought to become a household eventually. That is simply obvious. A household can hold separate purses, separate rooms, separate offices and any quantity of argument. It does not ordinarily require every meal, journey and locked door to declare an allegiance.

“I am not saying everything becomes mine.”

“How fortunate.”

“I am saying I would rather not have to ask whose men I am looking at before I decide whether they need feeding.”

“They would be mine.”

“They would be under my roof.”

“How comfortable that will be for everyone.”

Ilya’s fingers turn the cup once. Scott notices, belatedly, that it is empty. He reaches across the space between the chairs, takes it out of his hand and fills it from the pitcher.

Ilya lets him. He does not thank him.

“If one of your ships comes into the harbour ten years from now,” Scott says, “I would like my first thought to be that you have come home. Not which article is being enforced by the weapons on her deck.”

He has built this house before, at three in the morning, and it stands up better than most things built at that hour. Ilya’s horses in the lower stable, because there is no sense keeping two sets of grooms when both men ride out of the same yard. His clerks taking over half the east range. His captain arguing gate rosters with Eric until one of them dies of it. Letters and accounts migrating between rooms until nobody can remember which table they began on.

If he takes the Vane house as well, it can hold the overflow when Veyrans arrive in numbers, and spare Scott the pleasure of discovering another nine armed men belonging to Sasha in his corridors.

“I would like to earn the privilege of looking after my own husband,” Scott says.

Ilya’s gaze comes back to him. “What does that mean?”

“It means I ought to know when you are hurt before one of your captains thinks to write me a letter. If you are ill, I ought not find out afterwards that Valenne paid a physician because nobody thought to trouble me with it. I ought to be able to put food in front of you without a clerk deciding whose household account bought it.”

Ilya says nothing.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Again, unconvincing.”

“You are doing very well without my assistance.”

Scott could stop there. There is a version of this evening in which he stops there, and it is probably the sensible one.

There is nothing strange about any of this. A husband ought to be useful to his husband. Scott has no intention of entering a marriage in which every practical need has been met by a fleet, a foreign treasury, a captain or a banker before he is permitted to notice it exists.

“I am saying I would like some of it eventually to be my job.”

Ilya looks down at his cup.

“That is very pretty,” he says.

Yes, all right. He is a little sentimental, and he intends to be more so. A marriage is a marriage, and Scott sees no reason his should go without sentiment merely because everything surrounding it is absurd. If it goes well, he intends to be as sentimental and as horrendous about it as he can manage.

Ilya takes a drink and sets the cup back on the low table himself this time, rather than leaving it to be collected.

“Which is why I don’t want to marry you tomorrow.”

Ilya’s head comes up.

“I am not reconsidering.”

“How comforting.”

“Ilya.”

A small movement of one hand gives him leave to continue.

“I want six weeks.”

“Why six?”

“Because Carter will need most of it for the articles. And because I would like to court you before I marry you.”

That, finally, surprises him.

“Court me.”

“Do try to bear it.”

“I am attempting to picture you doing it.”

“I am told flowers are traditional. I can probably obtain some.”

“Devastating.”

He has already inquired, in fact. The answer was lengthy and involved a treatise on seasonal blooms, courtships and customs.

“The time serves another purpose as well. We live under the same roof. We disagree, which ought not require much arranging. And you discover that the rights we have settled continue to exist on days when I find you intolerable.”

“A demonstration.”

There is not a trace of mockery in his voice, which somehow makes it worse.

The fire cracks behind him. Ilya has stopped lounging quite so thoroughly. Both boots are on the carpet now, though he is still well back in the chair with the fur loose over his arms.

“Do you object to the word?” Ilya asks.

Scott considers it. It would be a demonstration. Evidence that he means what he says; a chance for them both to see the shape of the marriage before they are inside it.

“Not particularly.” He shrugs. “It sounds more military than what I had in mind. But it is serviceable.”

“And what did you have in mind?”

Ah, well.

Scott leans back for the first time in a quarter of an hour and rubs his thumb along a split in the leather at the end of the chair arm.

“I have no fixed itinerary. The proposal caught me somewhat unprepared, as I think you know.” He casts about for something solid; Ilya has always preferred the literal. “I would like to go places with you. Away from Adermere, away from court and dinners and functions. The Averlin coast, perhaps.”

Scott can already picture Ilya arguing with the rocks. The coast is beautiful year-round, indecently pleasant in late spring, and Ilya, with that absurd porcelain skin, would be flushed pink within the hour. Perhaps Scott could coax him into a broad-brimmed hat tied under the chin.

“The Prale lakes, in the northwest.”

God, he would be insufferable about the humidity. His hair would frizz like nothing else. Everyone in the northwest with so much as a kink in their hair complains of it. Ilya would puff up like a sheep.

“And the great inland forests, where I grew up.”

Those, he will hate most of all. Veyr is an archipelago; Ilya is a creature of water and rock. The forests are ancient and vast, the canopy thick enough in places to turn noon to dusk, and there is never silence in them—birds, insects, and larger things moving through the undergrowth with varying degrees of interest depending on their dietary preferences. Scott would very much like to see what he makes of it.

“There are festivals, too. Fairs. Time away from court.” His thumb has stopped moving on the leather. “I suppose I want us to have some time simply to be together.”

Ilya’s face does not change. The hall is quiet and stays that way. Behind him the log has burned bright enough to show the gilt worked into the braids at his temples, and past the edge of the carpet the treaty table stands a pale shape in the dark.

“You have been mine one way,” Scott says. “I would like the chance to show you what another looks like.”

Ilya is quiet for a long moment.

“Six weeks. Betrothed.”

“Yes.”

“And during this courtship, am I expected to sleep alone?”

“No.”

The answer comes with indecent speed. Ilya’s brows rise. His gaze drops, briefly, to the respectable several feet of carpet still separating their chairs, then comes back to Scott and stays there.

Go ahead and mock. Scott is nearly forty years old and king of a reasonably prosperous country. He refuses to blush in his own hall.

“Well,” Ilya says. “That improves things.”

After that the questions turn practical.

Where the betrothal is declared? Who witnesses it? Must Aleksei send a representative? What is Ilya expected to swear? Will the words be put in front of him beforehand, or will he translate in a cathedral while half of Aderra watches?

Scott answers. He answers improperly, with hardly a conditional anywhere in it. When you come back from Veyr, the rooms will be ready. By spring we will settle the second estate. Once your household is established, Carter will register the final version of the gate orders. He considers correcting himself and decides against it. Careful speech has its uses, but a man who puts if in front of everything he means to do eventually becomes indistinguishable from a coward.

The posture in the great chair has changed again, without Scott catching when. The sprawl is gone. Ilya sits upright now, one forearm along the carved arm, the other hand occasionally reaching out for the cup or the last of the bread.

The fire has settled into a steady burn. The candles have not: one has gone down almost to its brass cup, another leans in a pool of its own wax. Somewhere beyond the doors a man crosses the passage and is gone.

Then Ilya stops asking questions.

He sets the cup down and pushes it away with two fingers.

The fur has slipped farther open, and he does not pull it closed. He leans forward instead, forearms on his knees, both boots planted, smiling—a gentle thing, almost sweet.

Scott waits with an answer already forming for whatever comes next. Nothing comes.

Ilya rolls his shoulders slowly, taps a quick, flighty beat into the arm of his chair. “Do you know,” he says, “the sensible thing would be to agree with you.”

“Good.”

“Which is irritating.” He drops back against the chair and lets out a long breath at the ceiling. “We would be upstairs in thirty minutes and naked in thirty-five.” He rolls his head to look at Scott. “And now, instead of fucking my betrothed until dawn, I will be arguing with him.”

Scott’s satisfaction lasts half a heartbeat—just long enough for him to calculate the real time it would take to reach the stairs. Thirty minutes is generous. Twenty, if no one interrupts.

“Why?”

It comes out lower than he meant it to.

The change in Ilya is not dramatic. His shoulders stay loose, his eyes hooded, his mouth curved in that sweet smile. If anything, he seems more animated, and moody with it. Scott has seen the look on him before, when his kitchen maids bullied him into a job he will not enjoy and has accepted he is going to do.

“Why is it irritating?” Ilya lets a breath out through his nose. “Because it would have worked. Keep my mouth shut and nod at the right times. Take the ridiculous heaps of treasure and privilege you keep throwing at my feet. I could keep it up for a month. Three, conceivably. Six, if I were allowed to work off some of my frustrations in bed.”

Something in Scott’s chest lets go. He had not realised how much Ilya’s pleasant demeanour was putting him on edge until he dropped it and turned back into the man Scott knows: abrasive, inappropriate, deliberately making the conversation worse. Gearing for a fight.

“Keep what up?” Scott asks. His back straightens a little; he can feel his body settle into it. “Not good manners, surely. The skies would fall.”

Ilya sits back. There’s nothing lazy about the movement this time; he puts his shoulders against the carved wood and lets his knees fall wider, taking up the chair with a deliberate arrogance that somehow makes  Scott aware it is his chair Ilya is sitting in. His lip curls, showing the sharp point of an eyetooth.

“You’d be surprised. I could play the pretty, concussed lordling you seem to be planning to marry. I could even grin through the courtship, if I really applied myself. It would be worth it. I’ve done more for less. ”

Scott’s nostrils flare, heat climbing up the back of his neck. More for less? Have you? And you bring it up here, in my own house, eating my food, sitting in my chair, at my hearth?

“I am sure you have. You will forgive me for not being flattered by comparison to whoever else has had the benefit.”

Ilya raises both eyebrows. Scott sets his jaw, meets him head-on.

“Charming,” Ilya says. “And so dies my grace period. Shame; it was fun while it lasted. Even the paternalistic nonsense went down easier if I imagined you naked while you were saying it. Condescension is a good look on you.” His fingers close once around the carved end of the chair arm, slow, but not as relaxed as they pretend to be. “Still. It’s for the best.”

“Ilya.”

“What? You would have done the same, and you know it. There you sat, handing me half your kingdom and asking nothing for it. So I take it. All of it, and whatever else you push at me. In a year I am in your court and your accounts and your household, and if you want me out, the price is that I take your life apart first. That is where it starts.”

Scott says nothing for a moment.

Ilya is still sitting there in Scott’s fur, beside Scott’s fire, faintly irritated by the necessity of confessing how easily he could have lied his way into Scott’s government. He could have had all of it. Instead he’s picking a fight—and getting one.

The heat lingers, as does the dread. Beneath both, amusement begins to creep in.

“Let me see if I understand you,” he says slowly. “We are still discussing marriage, yes? You are not confessing to a planned occupation of my kingdom?”

“No. Nothing like that.” Ilya rubs a hand over his mouth. “I came here to marry you. Ships, spectacle, a dowry, as the Lord commands.” A short breath. “If I had known you had lost your mind in the meantime, I would have brought something else.”

Scott’s hands twitch. He flattens them on his thighs.

“You’ve been talking for an hour. I understood you half an hour ago.” He hasn’t moved in that chair since he started. “I kept waiting for the turn. I thought—he is walking me somewhere, and I am too slow to see the room.”

There is something peculiarly insulting in the way he says it. Not apology. Not even embarrassment at having misjudged him.

Scott leans back. “And it never occurred to you that I might simply mean what I said.”

“I know who you are. Forgive me for looking twice when you open your hand.”

The anger under his ribs twists, heavy and familiar. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why you’re telling me this.”

“One: you would have found out.” Ilya bends forward at the waist, impatient now, forearms braced across his thighs. The fur gives up at last and pools at his hips. He leaves it. “A year in, two, you would realise you had not got what you thought you were buying, and you would have felt betrayed.” His mouth twists into a thin smile. “Two: I think you will marry me anyway. We may as well spare ourselves the drama.”

“Find out about what?”

“That you will have built the whole marriage around a lie.”

Ilya stays bent over his knees, elbows planted on his thighs. His hands hang loose between them now, finally still. The deep neck of the black linen has fallen open almost to his breastbone.

“That the man you appear to intend to marry doesn’t exist. That the life you’re negotiating for us could never happen.”

Some of the humour leaves his face.

“Whether you are actively willing the fairy-tale idyll into existence, or have somehow managed to believe the fantasy yourself, makes very little difference. I don’t believe for a moment that you can keep being this man.” His eyes narrow. “More importantly, I am neither capable of nor interested in becoming the man you seem to expect me to be.”

The force building in Scott’s chest all evening finds its form and direction. “You proposed marriage, Ilya. I don’t know whether the wolves that raised you ever sat you down and explained what that means in practice, or whether the idea of a civilised marriage escaped Veyr altogether, but this is what marriage looks like between two sane adults. If you don’t want it, why are you here?”

Something goes across Ilya’s face that has a good deal of tooth in it. The fingers hanging between his knees close once. Whatever Scott has earned for civilised can wait.

“I am here because I want you. Not because Veyr needed an alliance. Not because I found some peculiar love for Aderra. Not to take part in whatever strange vision of marriage you have constructed for yourself. I came here for you, Scott Hunter.”

Ilya’s full attention isn’t heavy, doesn’t suffocate or crowd. It drills, sharp and exact, until whatever is under it is skewered and helpless.

“Marriage is how I mean to get you. It is the instrument, not the objective. You are the objective.”

The urge to shut him up comes hot and immediate: slap him across the mouth, catch him by the hair, gag him with the nearest loose cloth until Scott can hear himself think again.

“Yes. You want me. You have been admirably clear about that since roughly the moment you arrived.” His jaw is tight; it makes his words come out strangely. “It is when you move past the appetite that you dissolve into nonsense. You came back to my city, proposed marriage, and are now telling me that marriage is impossible, while apparently remaining quite determined to have me for a husband.”

“The marriage you are proposing is impossible,” Ilya says. “I mean to marry you, and it is looking increasingly likely that I shall manage it. I like my chances. You, on the other hand, have no hope of getting whatever it is that you have imagined. This whole scheme in which you cast yourself as some principled man of law and me as a tractable little prince content to be cherished? Not a chance.”

He is up before Scott sees him decide to be. The fur slides off his lap, and he leaves it on the carpet. He crosses out of the firelight to the working table and turns around there, with half the room behind him.

Scott does not get up. He is not going to cross a room because a man walked to the other end of it. Two bright needles of pain are starting up behind his eyes.

“So that is the offence?” he says. “I told you I would not hurt you? Is it really so difficult to believe I want you safe in my house?”

“I am sure you do. That sounds exactly like you.” Ilya does not move at all. “You treat your pets very generously once you have secured them to your satisfaction. But you are still missing the point: I will marry you regardless. These delusions chiefly inconvenience you, and when viewed from the right angle they may even be admirable.”

“Pets.” Scott gets angry so quickly his head swims. Keeping it out of his voice takes more effort than it should. “Then go and be somebody else’s. There is a queue. Torren priced you to the copper last spring, and I did not take it, and I did not trouble you with the figure either. Perhaps that was an error. Shall I write and tell them you are available? Or should I send for the figure so you can decide presently?”

“Did you refuse because I was not for sale, or because you were not selling at the time?” Ilya sounds calm enough, but Scott sees violence flash across his face and knows it for what it is because he felt the same not a moment earlier. “The ambiguity is why I will not wager much on this reformed Scott Hunter you keep offering me to marry.”

For a moment, Scott has no answer that does not make the point for him. That alone is enough to make him angrier.

“But perhaps you manage it,” Ilya says, from the dark at the end of the room. “Maybe you do change. That is your business. It changes nothing I am telling you. You keep talking as though your decision to behave yourself settles something between us. It settles you, and for as long as the urge lasts. I have made no such promise.”

At last, something he can answer. Scott puts his hands on the arms of the chair and gets up.

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, I will not agree that it changes nothing. You came here to marry me. You do not get to stand in my hall, call the terms I am offering a lie and a delusion, and then tell me the matter is none of your concern.”

He stands there a moment with nowhere to put himself.

Then he goes to the fire and crouches. One of the logs has burned through the middle and fallen in. He rakes the coals together, lays a fresh split across them, and sets the poker back in its stand. He turns it before he lets go, crook toward the flame, the way his mother always did. 

He gets up and puts a forearm on the mantel. Behind him, boots leave stone for carpet. A shadow comes onto the wall beside the hearth, long and thin, in no hurry at all.

“First,” Ilya says. “I expressly said you might manage it. Not two minutes ago. Spare me the tragedy. Second—it is not my concern. It is yours. Whether I believe in it should hardly signify for your—” A hand turns over at the edge of Scott’s sight. “—course of honour and principle, or however you are styling it. You want to be honourable? Be honourable. Bind yourself with every law you can devise. Give me things. I will take them.”

Scott says nothing.

“It will be my pleasure.” Nearer. “Give me your estates. Give me Aderran offices, precedence, rights, influence. Give me everything you think a good husband ought to give freely and ask nothing back. I will smile. I will thank you. I will let you kiss me and stroke my hair while I take every advantage you hand me.”

The shadow stops growing.

“And I will keep taking. Until everything you have given away belongs to me. Until you are living on my goodwill—”

Scott pushes off the mantel and turns.

“—until I possess you as thoroughly as you once possessed me.”

The ringing in his ears has gone down some, the tightness in his chest receded, and absurdly, he is being talked down to by a boy prince who inherited half his advantages. He is letting him do it. Letting him stand at his hearth and threaten to take everything Scott built out of the mud with his own hands—

Only that is not it. Scott is not being underestimated on that front at all. It is not his martial ability Ilya doubts, or his wits, or his hold on his own kingdom. It is his character. It is his capacity to be a decent husband and a good man that Ilya will not credit. And where does that leave them?

Here. It leaves them here—Ilya six feet away, back straight, weight balanced, shoulders loose, the fire catching on the bits of metal in his braids. Six feet, after a year of forty and a hundred and never once nearer.

Scott lets his eyes get their fill. He has known this face in peace and in war, in rain and snow, from a window, in a hall full of men. The thing about beautiful people who are also dangerous is that everyone assumes the two facts are unrelated. They are not. The face is not a distraction from the man. It is how he gets close enough.

And he has got close. He crossed the sea, then a hall, then six feet of carpet, and he has not once let the subject change while he did it. The same manoeuvre three times, and Scott has watched every one. There is no reason at all to think he will stop there. That he has stopped at all. 

This is still, however unhinged, a conversation about marriage. This is what a conversation about marriage is with Ilya Rozanov. If anyone has wandered off the subject tonight it is Scott, with his property and his legal standing and the exact rights of a foreign prince in the Aderran Crown. Ilya has been hauling them back all evening, because for him this is the thing itself.

Six feet, and not an inch since stopping. Scott could close it in a step. The other thing about beautiful people who are also dangerous is that everyone worries in the wrong direction. They ask what he will do to you, not what you will do to let him come that near.

“Entering into a romance with the express intention of possessing the other person is precisely what I am trying not to do.”

“All right,” Ilya says. “Let us go that way. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why aren’t you? What is stopping you? I am not.”

Because it is cheap. Because any fool can take and destroy and end up a desolate, lonely wreck ruling over a dominion of ash and bones.

“What do you think would happen if our positions were reversed? If, when we met, I were a beloved king and you were a beautiful, penniless huntsman?”

Ye gods. “You cannot seriously expect me to engage with this.”

“I have engaged with worse tonight. You spent ten minutes explaining Aderran precedence to me as though Ilya Rozanov, Prince of Veyr, Butcher of Redmere, your runaway slave and consort, is ever going to fit into your society.”

The words are offered almost as a joke. Scott does not find them funny. His objections rise and stack, each worse than the last. Slave. Runaway slave. Scott’s runaway slave. Scott’s runaway slave and consort. There is barely a word in the phrase that does not offend law, propriety, and common sense. The correction that comes hottest has nothing to do with any of those. You did not run away. I let you leave.

The needles behind his eyes go in a little further.

“Fine. What would you have done?”

“Taken you home.”

“Ilya.”

“You think I am joking. I am not. I would have taken you out of your cabin and installed you in my castle inside the day. You would have been safe. Comfortable. Adored. I would have found you something worth doing and kept your days short and your nights long.”

This hypothetical Scott appears to have got the considerably nicer deal.

“And?”

“And I would never have let you go.”

He comes forward. Not quickly. Six feet is one step and a heartbeat if he wants it to be. He takes three heartbeats to cross it and stops inside arm’s reach.

“I would have stopped you if you tried to leave, and caught you if you managed it. I would have kept you however I had to.”

“There are words for that.”

“Yes. I imagine you had time to learn most of them this past year. Possession is one.” Close enough now that Scott can feel him speaking. “That is my point. I would take what I wanted. You will not. Fine. Why?”

“Because I am not you.”

It comes out fast and rough. Scott means it fiercely for two heartbeats. On the third, he turns and walks away, past his own chair, past the side table, three paces to nowhere at all, because there is nowhere in this hall to go.

“That is not what I meant,” he says, over his shoulder.

“Which part?” Ilya is coming after him, unhurried. “That you are better than me because you would never do such an uncivilised thing—although you already have. Or that you are better than me because you decided afterwards that it was wrong, and I have not.”

Scott stops walking.

“It does not matter.” Nearer. “I do not need you to become somebody else for me. Take what you want or do not. Use your power or do not. Waste it, if that pleases you. Tell yourself whatever story you require to make the position cohere.” Ilya stops. “Only do not sell me the rules you have chosen for yourself as the terms of my marriage.”

Scott turns to face him. He is close enough that Scott would have to step back to see all of him at once. Scott does not step back.

“I am telling you the truth now because I love you. I will not make it easier because you prefer the lie, and I will not give it to you again for free.”

Chapter End Notes

i would just like you to know that the folder for this chapter alone has 138,817 words, and i havent precisely written all of them but this doc is titled 23.13 for a reason.

ugh.

this may be the hardest ive ever worked to a) keep things condensed (i say in chapter 22 of a 6 chapter fic) b) keep things in voice and c) not succumb to the urge to just swerve into the much easier and unearned lane of not solving anything and lettign them fuck it out
with that said, i would kindly ask you to look up and at the chapter count and remark how its not changed. i am for the first time, on track. granted im doing it by blatantly posting 7k chapters but my victory remains nonetheless.

now, it has to be said that while 24 is on track too, how i plan to keep 25 one chapter i have no idea, and im not thinking about it. i'm on track now. who knows what the future will bring.

also: pretty sure this is the meanest thign ive ever written, oh my god, i had to step back from a few lines and like not cut them on principle. jesus. But like if the man you fell in love with in freaky ways and freaky circumstances also falls in love with you in those freaky circumstances you dont get to act suprised if the man is a freak and loves you as one.

also: the 'the thing about beautiful people who are dangerous' passage took me a whole day and i love it unreasonably. its all been worth it for that passage alone.

Chapter 24

"Ilya, for pity's sake, you have to give me some space here."

Ilya does not. If anything, he settles more comfortably into the space he has taken, as though Scott has asked him to wait rather than move. "You keep walking away," he says. "I keep following. If you would stand still, we would not have this difficulty."

A hand's width of air separates them, and it is the wrong temperature. Scott can feel the heat of him without touching him. He could put a palm to Ilya's chest and move him back. It would take nothing at all, which is reason enough not to. All right. Think. Of everything Ilya has said tonight, for free at least has a shape Scott can get hold of. The rest has become increasingly difficult to keep straight. That Scott hurt him? Certainly. That Scott is capable of hurting him? Neither of them required an evening's discussion to establish that. That deciding not to is somehow another species of dishonesty? That Ilya has crossed the Greywater to marry him and now finds Scott's judgement an inconvenient defect in the man?

"For free," Scott says. "You will not give it to me again for free."

"No."

Very informative. Scott draws a slow breath through his nose and keeps it there for a moment before letting it go. Strip away the threats—or whatever this peculiar campaign of intimidation is meant to be—and the insolent way Ilya insists on phrasing every concern as a personal challenge, and the concerns themselves cannot be entirely incomprehensible. Surely. If Scott had wanted a polite consort, he might have had better luck among Adermere's ox-drivers. He did not. He wants this one, apparently, so they'll have to make sense to one another somehow.

"What, precisely, have you given me for free?"

"The truth."

Scott looks at him. Truth. Whose? Which? When?

"How generous."

"It was, actually." Ilya is still too close. Earlier that had been the point. Now Scott would give quite a lot to see all of him at once. "I could have kept my mouth shut and had you exactly where I wanted you inside a year. Instead you have had it straight from me all evening, and you have not thanked me once."

Exactly where I wanted you. Scott's unhelpful mind supplies the pleasant interpretation first. It doesn't survive the rest of the sentence.
 "You think honesty is a gift. From a man asking me to marry him."

"I don't owe you anything, Scott." Ilya's chin comes up. "Loyalty. Trust. Deference. What story do you tell yourself about the two of us that makes you think I owe you a single thing beyond what I choose to give?"

For a moment Scott hears only nothing. It isn't what Ilya said, and Scott knows it. Owe. Choose. Deference can go to hell; Scott has spent half the evening trying to establish that he does not want it. Loyalty and trust are harder to dispose of. Could Ilya really mean to marry him without even that much? He has said so plainly, which ought to settle the question. With Ilya, naturally, it does not. Who the hell would even want such a marriage?

Ilya might. He has always struck Scott as loyal almost to the point of lunacy, righteous in his own savage Veyran fashion, but tonight they have spent considerably more time discussing the power Ilya brought with him, the power he intends to keep, and the various inventive uses to which he proposes to put Scott's. Perhaps trust really is no part of the arrangement. Something tightens beneath Scott's breastbone.

No. Ridiculous. Ilya came back with ships and money and armed men because he had the sense God gave him. A foreign prince requires his own household, his own security, his own means; Scott has argued half of that case himself tonight. Calm down. Think. This would be easier if Ilya were not standing there watching him with the settled attention of a man waiting to see what catches fire. Heat is already climbing Scott's neck. His palms prickle; his fingers begin to cool. He has known the order since he was fourteen. Once the cold gets properly into his hands, he stops trusting what they will do before the rest of him catches up.
 Ilya looks entirely unworried.

Naturally. Scott takes a step back, and another, and keeps going until the working table is behind him. The treaty lies where they left it, one corner weighted with the cup. He puts both hands flat on the wood.

"That explains a great deal." His voice carries farther than he intended. Too late now. "You have no loyalty to me. You do not trust me with your safety. You do not trust me to want you whole. You do not trust me with your correspondence, Ilya. What sort of love is that?"

Ilya does not follow. Of course he does not. Scott has spent the last five minutes trying to get the man out of his face, and now the sight of him standing placidly in the middle of the carpet twenty feet away is maddening in an entirely different direction. He watches Scott for a moment, head slightly inclined, not offended so far as Scott can tell. Merely considering him.

"Trust you," Ilya says at last, as though testing the phrase. "What do you imagine that means? You want me to hand you my sword and trust you to give it back when I ask. Or you want me never to need it at all. We are fond of the scorpion and the frog in Veyr, Scott. I know which evidence to weigh."

Evidence? The conceited, arrogant little princeling is talking to him about weighing evidence? Scott's hand finds the cup while the rest of him is still working on an answer. He drains what is left. The water hurts his teeth and gives his mouth something harmless to do; beyond that it is useless. He has never acquired the habit of quieting himself with spirits; poor planning, apparently. Insolence is one thing. Ilya has been insolent since the day they met. This is something else: standing in Scott's own hall and weighing a year of his conduct as though the verdict were obvious.

"Get over yourself."

Ilya blinks. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me, Your Highness," Scott says it mostly to the table. His shoulders are up; his jaw aches from keeping his teeth apart. "Get over yourself. You had princely rooms, a maid of your own, the run of my keep, my gold, my tailor, my kitchens. I sent across the Greywater for your lover, Ilya. When neither of you could extend the court—or me—even the courtesy of a polite fiction about what a prince of Veyr was doing in bed with a common soldier under his own command, I said nothing. Not a word."

Somewhere in the middle of it he leaves the table. Evidence. Ilya had come through those doors expecting to hang before sundown. A year later Scott had sent him home alive, whole, and furious with him. Apparently that weighed for nothing.

"Tell me what you think the going rate is for a war hostage, since apparently I have misunderstood it badly."

Ilya looks at him for a moment. "Are you lecturing me on the use of power?" His gaze stays on Scott. "You. Now."

Scott turns so fast he gets a step toward Ilya before he stops himself. His hands are cold to the second knuckle.

"I never touched you."

His sight has gone uselessly exact. Wax ridged down the shorter candle. The pale half-moon of scar disappearing into Ilya's hairline. One of the little stone charms braided among the silver, no bigger than a fingernail, stamped with a mark Scott cannot read.

"Nobody touched you. Not one man or woman in this country put a hand on you or took anything out on you, not once in a year. After eighteen months of a war that you led." He led that war and led it well. Scott has read the accounts of what came out of Merrow with the women's names in them, to say nothing of Redmere. "And you stand in my hall and talk to me about weighing evidence."

"Ah." Ilya's voice goes quiet. "I understand. You want thanks."

The floor does not move. Scott's balance goes anyway.

"That is not—"

"No. Let me." Ilya draws himself up, chin high, all courtly gravity now. "Thank you, Majesty, for not whipping me in your yard. Thank you for not putting me in the stocks. Thank you for not chaining me to your bed or otherwise using me like an animal, which you could have done and apparently deserve credit for declining. I am grateful. I have been grateful every day of my life since. Would you like it in writing?"

The fire has burned low enough that half the hall has disappeared. What remains is Ilya, the carpet between them, the fur abandoned beside the hearth. Scott can no longer feel the ends of his fingers. He ought to answer the accusation. He ought to find some way back to sense. He ought—

"I would appreciate it in writing, yes." His mouth feels stiff around the words. "And while you're at it, send me whatever Marlowe drew up for you. I imagine there must be something. It would be instructive to compare."

Ilya's chin comes down a fraction, and everything above it goes still.

"Careful."

"Of what?" Scott's smile feels wrong on his face. "Your own sworn man. Your second. A Calligan who washed ashore in Veyr with the clothes on his back and a stolen horse, or so I'm told. Did you take him straight to a jurist? Settle an estate on him? Give him his own guard in case Prince Ilya Rozanov became unreasonable?" He locks his hands behind his back. "Or did you do none of that? Did you fuck him, keep him under your roof and your command, and expect him to rely on you? Trust you? Be loyal to you?"

Ilya moves. Only two steps, but Scott feels both of them.

"I would not have thought you comfortable widening the field beyond us," he says. "But I will oblige you. Only be very sure, Scott Hunter, before you decide that the people we love are pieces to be played. I will hold you to the position if you claim it."

"I decided that?" Scott laughs once, without finding anything funny in it. He needs room again and hates himself a little for needing it; three paces puts the hearth at his shoulder, the abandoned fur underfoot. "I widened the field? Which part of my life, my person, or my government have you not threatened in the past hour?" His fingers are already counting before he notices. Harbour. Corridors. Council. Soldiers. It looks ridiculous. Stop it. "My harbour. My corridors. My council. My soldiers. You say marriage and every last thing out of your mouth is a siege."

"I see." Ilya hasn't raised his voice once, which is starting to seem deliberate. "I should have come with nothing. Won a war, handed your country the most generous peace it has seen in its brief existence, then presented myself here alone and penniless and trusted you to keep me." His mouth shifts, barely. "Yes. I should have thought of that."

Scott turns away. He has already established that distance does not help; apparently this has no bearing on his willingness to try it again. "I did not ask you to come. I did not ask for any of it." Stop it. Stop talking. "If you do not want to marry me, then do not."

Heavens wept, what is even happening? Scott stays where he is because moving in either direction has become unsafe. Toward Ilya would be a mistake. Away from him, Scott suspects, might turn into walking straight out of the room and not stopping until there is a locked door and several miles between them.

Ilya goes quiet. Not the quiet of a man with nothing left to say; Scott is never that lucky. "I think I finally understand you," he says. "When you say I don't want to marry you, what you mean is I don't want it in the particular shape you want. A shape you still refuse to describe."

Scott turns his head. "What?"

"You keep telling me what you won't do, what you won't take. What sort of man you intend to become." Ilya steps off the carpet. "So perhaps you're ashamed of the rest. Yes, shame or cowardice, either or both."

Scott turns fully. "What did you just say to me?"

“Which part?” Ilya keeps coming. “That you're ashamed to say what you want, or that you're afraid I'll refuse and you won't be able to take it anyway?”

Scott stares at him. There it is again. Not you don't take what I refuse you. Not even you shouldn't. Only you might not be able to, as though that were the great improvement. As though the difference between last year and marriage were that this time Ilya had brought enough men to make his no stick.

“Is that it, then?” Scott says. “A husband is a hostage who can say no.”

"Now you are getting somewhere."

That cannot be right. Scott has misunderstood him. He must have. Ilya—this proud, impossible creature who would sooner break his own teeth than wear another man's bit—cannot be asking to take the bit willingly simply because this time he thinks he can spit it out. The idea is obscene. More importantly, it makes no sense.

"Then let us take it all the way." Very well. If the position is that a husband is a hostage who can say no, let Ilya look at what no is worth in a house where Scott holds everything else. “I want you at my table, and you decline. What then? Do I send men for you?”

"You could try."

Scott has to take a breath before the next question. "You want to sail, and I want you here. Do I close my own harbour? Put your captain in irons and let you watch me do it?"

Four men are standing on the other side of the doors. Not one has moved. An hour ago the thought of any of them carrying a word of this out of the room would have turned Scott's stomach over. He goes looking for that and finds nothing where it used to be.

"Is this the whole of your imagination?" Ilya sounds bored. "Every road you take arrives at the dungeon. Chains, irons, men at the door. You are running short of imagery, I have to say."

Running short—Scott has imagery. He has more of it than is wise, sane, or decent. He has simply spent a year keeping it behind his teeth, and now the beneficiary of that restraint is mistaking it for a lack of imagination.

"Suppose I want you and you tell me no." He has been circling this for an hour under the impression that saying it aloud would be the end of them. Fine. Let it be the end of them. "Do I lock the door? Do I put your hands behind your back and a gag in your mouth and get on with it, and trust that if you truly mind it you'll find some way to stop me?"

"Go ahead."

Scott stares at him. "Go ahead."

"That is what I have been saying since I sat down." Whatever Ilya is feeling, he has put it somewhere Scott cannot reach. "If you would like to, then try. Let us find out how it goes."

There is something Scott's right hand wants. It is not vague. It wants a fistful of hair at the back of that head and the nearest hard surface, and he can feel exactly where his fingers would sit, how much hair he would need to move him as he pleased. His hand has closed on the idea before the rest of him has been consulted. His jaw aches; he has held it shut long enough for the muscle to complain.

"So that is what this is." It comes out flat and mean, and he lets it. "You want to be taken. Hurt a little, or a lot, depending on the day. Only you want a blade near enough to reach, so you can tell yourself afterwards that you were never helpless." He tips his head. "Shall I take the sword off you first? Or should I let you keep it, since that seems to be the part that makes it a romance?"

Ilya looks at him for a long second and does not answer. Then he crosses the room.

There is no hurry in it. Scott knows the soldier's part of the walk: smooth, balanced, quiet, nothing spent where nothing is needed. The rest is older, the effortless arrogance of a man whose family had been princes before Aderra had a name. Scott has never possessed a grain of it and has never particularly wanted to. On Ilya, just now, it is infuriating.

Ilya steps inside his reach and stops. He is a shade under Scott's height and has to lift his chin. Scott lets himself have that.

Two fingers settle against Scott's chest and push. Not hard. Barely enough to move the cloth against his skin.

"There."

It's nothing; he can barely feel it. Two fingers through a shirt. Scott's body notices every part of it anyway: the pressure, the heat, the slight drag of cloth over his chest.

Ilya pushes him again. "Nothing."

He can barely recognise his voice when he speaks. "Get your hand off me."

Instead, the fingers close in Scott's shirt. Not pulling, only taking hold.

Scott swallows and looks down. He knows that hand. Long fingers, callused and scarred as any swordsman's; he has watched them close around a sword-hilt, a pen, a cup, the arms of chairs. He had that same hand hooked under his belt less than half an hour ago. Apparently none of this has prepared him for the simple fact of being held by it. It costs him something to look up.

"A year under your hand and you never once put it on me. Not once." Ilya's voice has gone low and easy. "Do you know what I decided in the end? I decided there was something wrong with you."

Scott can hear his own pulse. There is the fist in his shirt, the face above it, and beneath the rage the clear knowledge that all of this is deliberate.

"Step back."

Ilya comes closer instead, until the fist between them has nowhere left to go. Scott could take the wrist. The elbow. He could have him on the floor before the next breath. For one blessed instant the certainty of that leaves room for nothing else.

Ilya reaches up with his other hand and pats Scott twice on the cheek. Lightly. Almost kindly. The way a man gentles a horse that has stood too long in the cold. The candle flame on the low table is perfectly straight. Scott watches it and understands that he is the only thing in the room moving.

"Poor thing."

Scott has broken up barracks fights that started over less. He understands, at last, why the men never listened when he told them afterwards that they were idiots.

"Step back."

Ilya does not. "Make me."

Then a gap opens where the next moment should be.

The world goes simple.

Collar, arm, turn.

Ilya hits the table across the shoulders. The sound is flat and heavy, too large for the room. Papers slide out from under him. One sheet goes over the edge. The impact empties his lungs; Scott hears the air leave him.

He is already between Ilya’s knees, and they come up around his waist and lock there. Scott gets his left hand around Ilya’s throat and forces him flat. His right catches Ilya’s right wrist on the way up and drives it into the wood beside his ear. Bone strikes oak; Scott doesn't let it move again. He puts his weight into him, shoulder, hand and hips all driving forward.

It costs him almost nothing. He has shifted heavier men on worse footing. There are ways to hold a man that leave you room to move afterwards; Scott has not chosen one of them. Both his hands are occupied, Ilya’s legs are locked around his waist, and he is holding still.

Under his palm, Ilya’s throat works. He tries to swallow; Scott feels the movement against his fingers. His ribs pull once and struggle to fill, then pull again. There is heat everywhere they touch: Ilya’s throat in his hand, his chest under Scott’s, his thighs around Scott’s hips. The edge of the table presses hard into Scott’s legs. Their faces are less than a hand’s width apart, and every breath Ilya manages reaches Scott’s mouth, warm and increasingly thin.

Scott wants to put his mouth on him. The desire is immediate, physical and grotesquely well timed. Ilya’s mouth is open because Scott is deciding how much air he gets, and Scott wants to kiss him anyway—to bite at his lips while he holds his life in one hand, to feel each hoarse inhale break against his own mouth, to ration even that. He wants the next breath Ilya gets to come from Scott, to make even the air between them something Scott gives and Ilya takes. He wants it with the same part of himself that wants to press harder.
 Then something cold touches him under the ribs.

On the right, through his shirt, already against the skin and angled upward. A knife.

Everything stops. The point rests beneath Scott's ribs with no more pressure than a fingertip. Neither man moves. Neither has anywhere useful to go.

Scott’s fingers have passed the soft give of Ilya’s throat and found the harder structures beneath. He cannot properly feel them anymore; his hands went numb an hour ago, and he kept using them anyway. But he knows the pressure by the set of his wrist and forearm, the way he would know it in the dark. From here, closing his hand is simple. How hard, how long—he learned that before he was twenty, and the knowledge has outlasted almost everything else. If he closes it, the knife goes up under his ribs. They could kill each other exactly as they are.

Ilya has not fought him. Not at the wrist, not at the throat, not with his legs. Scott put himself here. Ilya crossed his ankles at the small of his back and let him; now Scott is the one being held in place.

Colour is rising unevenly through Ilya’s skin, along the throat and high in his cheeks. His eyes are watering at the corners. His lips have darkened. He does not look at the door or at the knife or anywhere else in the room except Scott’s face. Whatever he wanted from tonight, it is somewhere in here.

“All right.” The words come roughly around Scott’s hand. “Now what?”

Scott's pulse is loud enough that he struggles to hear, much less understand. He stares down, instead.

"Go on." Ilya takes what air Scott allows him, carefully and without any sign of panic. If anything, he's already adjusting to his circumstances. "You've got me on my back on your treaty. I've got six inches of steel at your liver. Now what?"

The wrist under Scott's hand turns once, lazily. It is not an attempt to get free, not even close.

"Come on, Scott. Think. Are you going to hold me here all night like a boy who has caught something and cannot work out what it is for, or are you going to do something?"

Scott's hand does not loosen. Nothing in him does. His tongue has stuck to the roof of his mouth, and when he gets it free, what comes out is not anything he might have chosen if he had been given another moment.

"Is this what you wanted? Is this how you think a husband should treat you? Like a beast to be broken to heel?"

Ilya lifts both eyebrows. Under Scott's hand, with a knife against Scott's liver, he lifts both eyebrows.

"Seas and storms, Scott, must you be so provincial about this?"

The sting under Scott's ribs arrives late. Small, almost delicate. The knife has gone through the shirt and opened the skin beneath it. The little bastard keeps his blades sharp.

"You want me to stop?" The words come slow, the airflow being what it is. "You want the knife gone? Then say so. Tell me: drop the knife, and I will fuck you exactly the way you like it." Another pull. Thinner. Scott's grip has tightened, entirely without his input; he loosens it slightly. "Or take it further. Drop it, or I do not touch you tonight at all."

He draws another thin breath.

"Dearer still. Behave, or I won't marry you unless you send every ship back to Veyr." His mouth curves. Between the dark red of his lips and the skin of his throat gone pale around Scott's fingers, the smile is a beautiful monstrosity. "Or go as far as you like. Behave, or the first condition of the marriage is that you bring me the head of every man, woman and child who carries the name Calder."

Scott's hand opens. He steps back.

For a moment his body does not understand that the fight is over. His hands remain half-curled. The cut under his ribs has begun to burn, and every place Ilya touched him seems separately awake. Rage is still there, lust enveloping it, and beneath both the uncomplicated satisfaction of having used his strength and found Ilya strong enough to answer it. They refuse to separate into cleaner things simply because Scott would prefer them to.

He knows this state. He has known it on walls and in breached gates, and once in his own hall with three delegations watching while the word mine came out of his mouth before prudence could get near it. He is forty years old. Whatever this is in him, age has done nothing useful to it.

Ilya pushes himself onto his elbows amid the ruined articles. His legs hang over the edge of the table. His chest is working hard now that it is permitted to, and four dark marks are already coming up on his throat.

He looks like a sacked city. He looks delighted.

"You didn't have to beat me." His voice is wrecked and entirely unhurried. "You didn't have to touch me at all. If you wanted the knife gone, there were twenty ways to make it worth my while." One shoulder shifts against the table. "You have more leverage over me than any man alive. I crossed the Greywater to marry you, and you still haven't said yes."

He turns his head against the wood until he has Scott properly in view. "That is power. And you asked what evidence I weigh—there is not a moment of tonight I am not going to keep."

"Not the Calders." The answer comes out level. Of everything Ilya has just said, that is apparently what Scott's mind has chosen to catch. His gaze drops to Ilya's throat instead. The marks are darkening as he watches. "The girl is nine. She has nothing to do with this."

Ilya considers that with no more ceremony than he gave the knife.

"As you like. What her life buys me of your favour is all I care about in her." The shrug moves through him from the elbows up, unhurried, and it costs him a breath he does not have. "Knowing what a thing is worth when you do not want it yourself—most of Aderra, in my case—that is also power."

Scott walks away before Ilya can continue. By the time he reaches the sideboard, the heat has gone out of him so quickly that the damp cloth between his shoulder blades feels cold. He puts one hand on the wood while he reaches for the ewer with the other. The room is steady enough, but his balance has become something he has to think about. Irritating.

He pours water into the basin. The ewer knocks once against the rim. His fingers are not shaking; they are less obedient than they used to be. Behind him, Ilya draws a long breath, then another, rougher at the end. Scott listens without turning around.

The water is cold. He washes his hands although there is nothing on them to wash off. The cut beneath his ribs has begun to stick his shirt to his skin, a red patch no larger than a coin. It can wait.

When he turns, Ilya is still propped on his elbows among the ruined articles. The knife lies on the table beside him, flat across the paper. Scott looks at it, then at Ilya, then away again. He throws a cloth over his shoulder, picks up the basin and carries it to the side table by the hearth. The fire is nearly out, but enough is left that the log he throws over it catches easily. He feeds it two more, pokes around a little to give them space, and clears out some of the ash. The work is mundane; his arms handle it without his input. By the time the fire is roaring, the tightness in his chest has let up some. Behind him, Ilya coughs and clears his throat.

Scott puts the poker down and goes back to him.

"Come on."

He does not wait. One arm goes under Ilya's knees, the other behind his back, and he lifts him clear of the table.

"Oh, for heaven's sake."

Objection aside, he doesn’t struggle, even a little. One arm settles around Scott's shoulders, and by the second step his head finds Scott's shoulder and stays there. Scott carries him across the room and lowers him into the chair by the hearth with considerable care.

He has just had his hand round this man's throat and is now worried about the arm of a chair. Fine. Nobody has to say anything about it.

Chapter 25

Scott lowers Ilya into the chair and doesn’t let go right away. For a moment his arm remains beneath Ilya’s knees and Ilya’s hand loose at his collar, the carrying finished before either of them quite acknowledges it.

His own chair stands a pace away, turned toward the one he left hours ago. He ignores it. Ilya has already slid low in the leather, one heel hooked on the lower stretcher, his head tipped back. What little he bothered to lace of his shirt has come undone in the scuffle, leaving him bare across the ribs. Scott waits for him to notice. Apparently it does not qualify as a problem. He looks thoroughly at ease, as though the evening has gone more or less according to plan. Possibly it has.

The basin and cloth sit where he left them. Scott kneels by the chair and takes them up. His hands are cold, but they remember the work.

“You’re acting strangely again,” Ilya says.

Scott takes his chin between his fingers and thumb and tips his head towards the light. Ilya lets him. The marks are coming up plainly now, along the front and side of his throat and beneath the jaw where the heel of Scott’s hand bore down. Scott wrings out the cloth and lays it over them, then checks with his fingers because looking is not enough. Nothing he touches seems swollen. Ilya swallows when Scott asks him to and curses him when he asks again. His voice is rough. Scott listens to every word of the complaint.

“I swear to the good Lord, Scott, if this causes some sort of crisis before you have even fucked me once, I will burn this keep to the ground.”

Scott can find no damage beyond what is already visible. He would like that to be a more useful assurance than it is; what does Scott know of such things? He turns Ilya’s face a little farther towards the fire, checking his eyes, and earns a look of such concentrated displeasure that, under other circumstances, he would enjoy prolonging it.

“Give me that.” Ilya grabs the cloth. “I can hold a cloth, Scott.”

Ilya presses the cloth to his throat with two fingers. Scott’s hands, empty now, grip the chair arms. The fire climbs higher. The candles by the cold supper burn down, one guttering out.

He tries to count what’s been won. Ilya wanted proof and got it. Scott wanted him to give in, and he did, for a breath, with a knife pressed under Scott’s ribs. Neither of them learned what Scott hoped. Ilya doesn’t count the hand on his throat as a price. Scott, kneeling here, finds he doesn’t either. Not really.

“Why would you let me—”

“Let you.” Ilya lowers his eyes to him. At this distance, he doesn’t need to roll them. “Scott. Men have put their hands on me when I did not want them there. They are dead. I trust you can tell the difference.”

Scott’s fingers tighten on the chair arms.

“More importantly, I would dearly love it if you stopped speaking as though your fists were the only means you possess of getting your way. I am looking forward to those, certainly, but you have others. Persuade me. Tempt me. Seduce me. Use rhetoric, flattery, gentleness. Bargain. Command, if you have something worth putting behind the command.” His voice catches; he clears it and continues, impatient with the interruption. “Or use the greatest advantage any man has ever had over me.”

Scott looks up at him.

“Use love,” Ilya says. “I love you. You must be able to think of something to do with that.”

Scott folds forward. His hands leave the chair arms and catch at the edge of the seat beside Ilya’s hips. His forehead comes down against bare skin, high on the sternum where the shirt has fallen open, and stays there.

How dare he say that. Tonight, in that voice, with Scott’s fingerprints rising on his throat. How dare he put that into Scott’s hands as well.

For a while, all he knows is what’s under his hands: warm skin, a heart thudding, ribs rising and falling. Old blue-grey ink, close enough to taste. New black lines over the rough ground of a burn. When Scott turns his head, the scar drags against his cheek. There are smaller scars, pale and broken, ones he’s seen from a distance and never counted. He is twenty years old.

Scott keeps his face where it is.

“What did I say now?” Ilya asks above him. “How can that possibly be a surprise to you, you absolute maniac?”

Scott says nothing. The cloth drops into the basin. A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, lightly enough that he barely feels it. The other touches the back of his neck and withdraws when he shudders.

He catches Ilya’s wrist before it can retreat and puts the hand back.

“Oh,” Ilya says.

For a man who puts his hands wherever he pleases, who taunts and dares as easily as breathing, he seems to find this a matter requiring considerable thought. His palm rests stiffly against Scott’s nape. After a while, his thumb moves once, experimentally, and stops.

“Do you doubt that I mean it?” he asks. “Look at what I have already done. I overthrew Grigori. Just because the war was swift does not mean it was bloodless. I made peace with my uncle, Scott, which was even more difficult.”

“I never asked you to do any of it.” The words sound strange when spoken against his skin, more vibration than voice. “You did all of that on your own.”

“Naturally I did it on my own. I do everything of my own will. It is only that most of my will is taken up with getting you and keeping you.”

Scott shuts his eyes.

“And I will do more. Give me something to do. Send me on a quest to prove myself worthy. Reject me and send me away, if you like, and then deal with whatever I decide to do about that. You have plenty of moves. Stop behaving as though I have left you helpless.”

Scott settles more comfortably onto his heels. His cheek slips lower against Ilya’s ribs, and an arm comes to rest across his thigh. Ilya adjusts beneath him, hesitantly at first, then draws his hooked foot off the stretcher and sets it on the floor. The change gives Scott somewhere to put his weight. He takes rather more advantage of it than he intends.

“Are you encouraging me to be selfish by demonstrating your selfishness,” Scott asks, “after encouraging me to savage you by being savage first?”

“I wasn’t trying to. But that does sound like something I would do.” A pause. “I don’t know what I am doing, if I am honest. I lost control of this situation about sixteen months ago and have mostly been along for the ride since.”

This is a remarkable account of his recent activities. Scott is too tired to dispute it.

“Cliff used to do that,” Ilya adds. “When he especially wanted me to understand. Go back to whatever we still agreed on and work forward from there. It generally took him some time.”

“Fascinating.”

His knees have gone from aching to the sort of numbness he will pay for tomorrow, and every argument for moving is theoretical. Somewhere beyond the doors, a man coughs. Scott has issued no instructions to anyone in hours. Presumably the kingdom continues.

Ilya makes another attempt at extending a comforting gesture. His fingers move cautiously into the short hair, catch, retreat. Scott lets out a breath, and the hand stops again.

“I’m confused,” Ilya says. “What is wrong with you now? Do you need something? Shall I call somebody? A servant? A physician?” He pauses, apparently exhausting the sensible possibilities. “A priest?”

“I will tear you into pieces if you move a muscle,” Scott says against his stomach. “I will grind your bones to bake my bread, you heinous brat. Stay where you are and let me catch my breath.”

Ilya goes very still. Scott has to reach up and move the hand at his neck before he resumes. For once, he has chosen an inconvenient moment to obey precisely.

“Today has been long,” Scott says eventually. “My world has changed seven thousand times since those doors shut. And I have never put my hands on a lover in anger. Not once, in twenty-two years of having lovers.”

“Mm.”

“I could tell you why I have done every other thing I have done in my life. Every one.” He hears his voice going flat. He could, too, given time to arrange the explanation. “I crossed the room. I told you to move. Then I had you on the table with my hand around your throat.”

Ilya’s fingers spread against his nape. Scott waits for the interruption, the reminder that a knife was involved, the argument he will have to answer. Instead, the other hand moves from his shoulder and comes to rest between his shoulder blades. He can feel the care with which Ilya lays it there, and the effort it costs him to say nothing.

“And if I look up at the bruises I put there—” Scott turns his cheek more fully against him. There is a thrill in feeling the life he held a moment ago going on warm and stubborn under his hands. Different from the pleasure of holding it, but not unrelated. He has been waiting for revulsion to settle the matter. It has had ample opportunity. “I don’t know that I will hate it. I don’t think I will.”

For a while there is only the fire and Ilya’s hand moving across his back. The first pass is awkward, too brisk. The second is slower. Scott’s shoulders give a little beneath it, and Ilya repeats the movement.

“I bruise like a peach,” he says eventually. “You know this. Don’t pretend. I know precisely how long you spent at that window staring at me like a madman.”

Scott makes a sound that is neither agreement nor denial. He shifts lower, his cheek against Ilya’s belly, and settles there. His own breath comes back warm from the skin beneath his mouth. His hand finds the point of a hip. At some point Ilya begins working his fingers through the hair at Scott’s nape without stopping after every movement to find out whether he has made things worse.

Scott is shaking below the elbows and has been for a while. It isn’t the cold. Right now, he wants nothing from the world but Ilya warm under his hands, Ilya’s fingers in his hair, and absolutely no requirement that he stand up.

“If I had done the same to you, you would scarcely have marked,” Ilya says. “You have hurt me worse in the training yard.”

He leans forward, and the touch disappears altogether. Scott lifts his head in protest and discovers Ilya reaching for the basin. His other hand catches the front of Scott’s shirt, where the blood has dried it to his skin, and peels it loose without ceremony. This, apparently, he knows how to do. The cloth arrives cold, and stays pressed over a cut a thumb’s length long, already dry at the edges.

“If anything, this is more serious than any harm you have ever caused me.” A pause. “Directly.”

“What a thing to hear from one’s betrothed.”

“You are not my betrothed. You have not said yes.” The cloth drops into the basin, putting a faint pink cloud through the water. “You will note that I have been very patient about it.”

“Ilya, you have been a nightmare about it.”

“You have led a gentler life than I had assumed, beloved, if you do not associate nightmares with patience.”

Such a mouth on him, always so fucking quick. He would also like to lie down, and for Ilya to stop saying things he will remember at unfortunate moments for the rest of his life.

“I should banish you from my sight.” He lets his head rest fully; Ilya’s hand returns to his nape without instruction this time.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You would do terrible things to keep me. If you mean to threaten me, threaten me with something believable.”

Fair enough.

“Say I did,” Scott says. Beyond the firelight, the long dark room, the ruined articles, the whole complicated world waits to begin again. Here there is Ilya’s skin beneath his cheek, and nothing immediately required of him. He would not move if the carpet caught fire. “Say I refused your courtship. What would you do?”

“I’d leave.”

Scott waits. There is more. There is always more.

“And?”

“You are going to get upset again.”

“I won’t.”

“You will, and then we will argue about it, and you rise with the sun like you are suffering from some horrible Aderran generational curse doubtlessly connected to wheat and corn.” Ilya sighs, long enough for Scott to feel the breath go through him. “You understand that even if we went upstairs this instant, there would barely be time for sex?”

Scott thinks that the most he could reasonably offer in a bedroom at present is his unconscious company. Then again, Ilya has a remarkable talent for making sex seem feasible when consciousness itself feels ambitious.

“I will not get upset. And I will not refuse you.”

“Mm. All right. I would leave, and then I would try something else.”

“Something else.”

“Marriage was my favourite plan. It has you pleased with me, and generous, and inclined to praise and reward; all things I am owed, naturally, and look forward to receiving. If it fails, there are alternatives.”

“To getting me.”

“Of course to getting you. I have said—one way or another.” Ilya shrugs beneath him. “Ideally with you happy about it. But I can compromise.”

Scott is aware that a better man would sit up now. He does not seriously consider it.

“Go on, then. I imagine you have a list.”

“Not an exhaustive one. The first option is the cleanest. If the courtship were refused, I would have Aleksei appoint me ambassador to Aderra. That covers the case where you were having some fit of conscience about my age, and I needed nothing but time and continued access. It is a good option. I keep my standing, I keep my rooms, and you would have had to look at me and not fuck me, twice a week, for years.”

It’s a good plan. Scott resents it, then thinks about how little fight he would have put up. Ilya is half his age. His conscience should balk at that. Instead, it just aches. So young, and already this dangerous. Scott wants years of him, and finds himself jealous of every one that wasn’t his.

“If the obstacle were political and not personal, I would move through Valenne. Buy out or destroy whichever part of your coalition stood in the way.” A dismissive breath. “I am not pleased with that solution. It is slow, and it assumes you would let politics stand between you and a thing you considered yours, which you would not. So I would have had to solve the real obstacle separately and go years without proper access. Weak.”

He really has thought about it. Scott asked half in jest, expecting the sort of list a man improvises to be provocative, but instead the man has a ranking.

“Go on.”

“I would have gone to Harrow.”

Scott huffs, surprised despite himself. He has drawn up campaigns nobody fought and contingencies against rebellions he has spent much of his reign preventing. Nothing is strange about preparing seriously for an outcome one hopes never to see. It is not the existence of Ilya’s plan that gives him pause. It is Harrow.

“Harrow would betray you within the month.”

“Even sooner, I should think. That was rather the use of him. He would hate doing what I wanted, and hate you more. A single-use tool, but not worthless.”

Scott thinks it over. It’s Ilya’s kind of logic: if you must use a traitor, pick the worst one, the one you’ll never need again, and make sure you betray him first. It’s naive, but if you’re Ilya Rozanov and hard to kill, it might even work.

“I would have worked with your opposition to take the throne off you,” Ilya continues. “Installed the Calder girl, and brought you back to my castle in Veyr as a political hostage.”

The fingers at the back of Scott’s neck do not stop.

“Failing that, I would have made war on Aderra. Rydal comes in with us. Torren can be bought with the right settlement over Jaschar. Calligo is unreliable, which is not the same as useless. Each takes a portion, and Veyr settles for the coast and the Wend as far up as Adermere.”

“You would bleed for every mile of the Wend.”

“Certainly.”

“And I would still be alive.”

“That is rather the point.”

Scott cannot bring himself to be shocked. He can find objections enough to keep them here until morning, beginning with Ilya’s confidence that he could divide Aderra among three allies and prevent any of them from killing its king. But if matters between them ever decayed so thoroughly, Scott would hardly meet the effort with wounded dignity. He would already be going after Ilya’s ships, his alliances, every useful friend who had made himself part of the quarrel and every road by which he meant to get home.

He can picture it easily; his thumb traces Ilya’s hip while he does so.

“I like to think I would have stopped you.”

“Mm.”

“But I don’t imagine I shall have to find out. There being, I take it, a good many steps from tempt and seduce to coerce and conquer.”

“The only thing missing from the list is give up,” Ilya says quietly. “It is a long list. And I find that tempt and seduce are working out rather well for me.”

Scott hums. He has been told what he wanted to hear in approximately the worst way anyone could have devised. It makes no difference to the pleasure of hearing it. That, too, he will have to live with.

For a while neither of them speaks. Ilya’s hand goes on moving; the fire ticks. Scott has spent months imagining this man under his roof again, and in none of those imaginings did he end up on the floor listening to plans for his own deposition. He is reluctant to end the evening.

“So,” Ilya says at last. “You have still not answered me. I have answered everything you asked. I have spoken more in three days than in the three years before them. You know what I want and what I am doing.”

His hand rests against Scott’s neck.

“What do you want?”

Right. This question.

Scott peels himself away in stages. A hand on the chair arm, then his knees, then the rest of him, and it takes long enough that Ilya watches the whole operation without comment. His hand slips from Scott’s neck only when it can no longer comfortably remain there.

The fur is on the carpet. Scott picks it up and puts it round Ilya’s shoulders, taking his time. He has had his face against this skin for most of half an hour and still finds himself reluctant to cover it. Ilya watches him with an expression that suggests the reluctance is apparent.

Scott drags his own chair round and sits knee to knee with him. He is not doing the rest of this from the floor.

“I want to marry you.”

It comes out simply. He wants to have him, every inch of him, every minute of the day he can get. He wants the household, the ordinary privilege of finding him at breakfast and asking what has already annoyed him. He still wants the journeys he offered, the time away, the chance to be generous without keeping account. None of that has become less desirable because Ilya has been a bloodthirsty, mercenary fiend about it.

But he had expected something in return. In six weeks, six months, a year, they would learn to stop making every desire a contest. He would become a man who could be trusted with Ilya’s happiness, and Ilya would let him. He has scarcely considered the possibility that Ilya understands the offer and does not want to live that way. Or doesn’t trust that a life like that is even possible.

Fair enough. Scott did more with less. If Ilya already made plans to conquer imaginary obstacles over months and years and battlefields, Scott can do the same with a handful of real ones. He will have a lifetime to do it.

“But not by the articles we discussed.”

Ilya leans forward, elbows on his widely spread knees. The fur falls open again. “Go on.”

“Every offer I made was to a reasonable, well-behaved prince who could be trusted with my peaceful little kingdom. Since no such man appears to be available, I will have to make other arrangements.”

“Well. It took some doing, but since I have finally made myself understood, I won’t give you a hard time about it.” No god strikes him dead for the outrage. Scott finds that a little insulting. “It is useful to know how quickly you learn when properly provoked.”

“Yes, very useful. Tomorrow I bring different terms. I imagine you will hate them. Too bad. If you wanted better terms, you should not have told me otherwise, at length, with a knife.”

Ilya’s smile changes. Scott feels its answering pull low in his stomach and goes on.

“Everything beyond what we settle tomorrow, you can win over years, at whatever table we happen to be sitting at. I will fight you for every inch of it. And if you take a thing off me fairly—” He shrugs. “Who knows. I may even let you keep it.”

He has chosen the words deliberately. Ilya leans a little closer, his fingers pressing into his thighs as though he has found it necessary to keep them occupied. There is nothing particularly coy about where his thoughts had gone.

“You should have opened with this. We could have saved ourselves hours.”

“I did not have it to offer you this morning.”

“We might even have skipped the knife.”

“That, I don’t trust for a moment.” Scott glances towards the doors. They have been in here long enough for the watch to change. By now, some account of the evening will be making its way through the keep; he dreads to learn what they say. “I haven’t worked out the shape of it yet. But one term does not wait until tomorrow.”

“Please.” Ilya settles back, attentive. “Be as detailed as you like.”

“When it goes wrong between us—and it will—you come for me. Not through Eric or Carter, or even Harrow and the Calder girl. Whatever you do to me, you do it to me.”

Ilya’s expression grows serious. “Specify.”

“Ilya, on my honour, I will throw you out of the window—”

“I am serious. Am I not to hurt them to punish you? Conspire with them? Persuade them that you have betrayed them?”

Scott stops. Alright, so he did mean it as a legitimate question. Heavens wept.

“Hurt them, primarily. And no, you may not manufacture a betrayal to set them against me. That certainly falls under harm.” He considers the men he has just named, and what they could be induced to believe about him. “Worse harm. Don’t do it.”

“It’s only worse harm if they lose the fight and don’t get the kingdom after they depose you and hand you over to me. But all right, I understand your point. What about the rest? Are conspiracies allowed?”

Scott rubs a hand over his eyes. His first inclination is to forbid it. His second, arriving only slightly behind, is to consider what Ilya would charge him for obedience, and how little the prohibition would be worth if it meant abandoning Aleksei the first time the two crowns disagreed.

“Are you distinguishing between harming them and conspiring with them?”

“Yes. Categorically. Forbidding me to cooperate with everyone whose interests fail to align with yours would cost you a great deal.”

The pleasure in his voice is unmistakable. Scott is, apparently, finally acting in a way he understands and appreciates.

“Then willing cooperation is your business,” Scott says. “With the understanding that I will act against you if I have to.”

“Naturally.” Ilya thinks for a moment. “No harming your people to punish you, coerce you, or otherwise alter your behaviour towards me. We can begin there.”

Scott looks at him: alert, considering, apparently refreshed by the prospect of an argument with a definite object. At twenty, Scott could scarcely remember a time when he had not been tired. A road always needed clearing, a mill always needed putting back into use, and somebody always had an excellent reason it could not be done. He had wanted to live long enough to finish one thing before the next collapsed. He would have found Ilya intolerable. He would have found him intolerable and contrived to keep him as close as he could manage without outright consuming his flesh, which is approximately what he intends to do now.

“And what do you want in return?”

“Don’t touch Nastya.”

Scott waits for the rest of the sentence. None arrives.

“Touch her? Ilya, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb. You were doing so well.” There is no accusation in it; if anything, he sounds encouraging. “My other people are either sharks or have sharks to protect them. Nastya is already too involved in my games. Leave her alone.”

Scott has never even seen the child. The impulse to point out that only one of them has spent the evening threatening other people’s families is strong. He has a sharp answer ready before he notices that Ilya is waiting quite patiently for him to understand.

Nastya. Grigori offered her during the first peace negotiations. Scott accepted her as an alternative to Ilya, and had meant to provide her with a household, tutors, everything a little girl could reasonably need. Is that what this is about?

“I would never have hurt her.”

“I doubt you would have had her beaten or killed, if that is what you mean. You would still have taken her. You told me so.”

“I did not—”

He did—something about a pony?

“I had just been delivered to your keep,” Ilya says. “The rope marks were still bleeding at my wrists, and you told me you would sooner have had the girl. I suppose we can quibble about the nature of implicit and explicit threats, but that is what you did.”

Scott remembers it now. He remembers the irritation with which he said it, the difficult young man across from him, all injured pride and suspicious silence. He had been explaining how much easier his life could have been.

“She would have been treated with respect.”

“You would have taken her from her family to a country whose language she does not speak, to live and die at your discretion. I am sure you would have called it respect.” Ilya frowns. “Why are we discussing this? We are not at war. The men who revived that charming method of keeping the peace are dead. I mean in the future. You are not to harm her to punish me.”

Scott looks at him. It is an ordinary request, by Ilya’s accounting. A child he wants left alone, in exchange for the people Scott wants left alone. Granting it is easy. He wishes there had been no occasion to ask.

“Done,” he says. “Not Nastya. Not ever, not as a feint, not as a word in a corridor.”

“Excellent.” Ilya’s face clears. “Then I won’t harm your people to get at you. Granted, we will have to discuss who qualifies, because I can scarcely imagine how you claim Harrow as yours, but that can wait.” He pauses. “While the marriage holds.”

Of course he adds that. Ilya Rozanov always finds the worst thing to say and says it. Now that he’s asking for things Scott would have given a stranger, let alone a husband, it’s easier to take. Sad as hell, but not maddening.

“I can’t see myself letting you leave the marriage alive,” he says. He means it, especially when Ilya talks of leaving. Mostly, he says it because he’s learned what his deranged lover will find pleasing.

Ilya brightens. There is even a little colour in his face. Scott watches it spread and finds he is enjoying himself.

“Are you sure you don’t want to add your brother? Lady Vetrova, Lord Orlov, Marlowe?”

“Sasha and Svetlana don’t need me to protect them, and they will keep Aleksei and Cliff safe.” Ilya hesitates. For the first time since Scott sat down, he looks uncertain of the ground. “It is understood that I will defend them with my life, yes? Whatever they need, whenever they need it?”

Scott’s hands itch to take hold of him again. He can be so exact about the conditions under which he would destroy a kingdom, and then look at Scott like this over a thing Scott has known since long before he admitted to wanting him.

“Believe it or not, I managed to pick that up. From context.”

Ilya studies him a moment longer, then nods.

“Are we agreed?” Scott asks.

Ilya puts out his hand. They shake on it like merchants. His grip is warm and firm; Scott holds it a moment longer than the bargain requires.

Two promises, plain enough that neither can pretend not to understand. No witnesses, no seal, no court to run to. Scott has signed treaties with more fuss and less faith. He rubs his thumb once over Ilya’s knuckles and lets him go.

“Ask me again.”

Ilya looks at him for a long moment. The fire has burned low; the light moves over the marks on his throat. His mouth parts, then closes. Scott waits. He has kept him waiting long enough to allow him this.

“Marry me, Scott Hunter.”

“I will.”

Ilya breathes in. He leans forward, then lets the tension go. For a moment, he just looks at Scott. No corrections, no clever words. Scott feels the rare pleasure of having said precisely enough.

“Terms at midday tomorrow,” he adds. “Bring your jurists. Bring Orlov’s assassins, for all I care. You will get very little, and you will have to fight me for the rest afterwards. I am not giving you a single advantage you haven’t brought with you.”

The smile returns slowly, and then there is too much of it to mistake. A young man in love, pleased that his suit has been accepted. Scott has spent the day contending with an envoy, a commander, a prince with enough money and reach to make the whole continent nervous. He could spend a decade looking at this and count himself blessed.

“You must stop talking to me like that unless you have found enough mercy to fuck me on that very table,” Ilya says. “I am only a man.”

Scott doubts it. He intends to keep him regardless.

“East apartments,” he says, and gets up before he is obliged to reconsider.

“What?”

Scott banks the fire, collects the lamp and opens the doors. Two of his guards straighten beside them. Across the passage, two Veyrans rise from a bench. The older one takes in Ilya’s open shirt, the marks on his throat, the fur Scott has put round his shoulders. Then he looks at the blood on Scott’s shirt and nods with visible approval. The younger man is looking at Ilya. A smile gets away from him before he can quite prevent it, and Ilya answers with one of such unconcealed pleasure that Scott feels absurdly proud of himself.

His own guards are making a much less satisfactory recovery. One keeps looking at the blood. The other has fixed his eyes on a place just above Scott’s head and seems determined to remain there until relieved.

“Wait here,” he tells his own men.

Ilya says something to the Veyrans. The older man answers gravely; the younger one’s smile deepens. Whatever instructions are being given, Scott suspects they have acquired a considerable amount of personal commentary. Then Ilya turns towards the royal stair with the confidence of a man who has heard an instruction and found it wanting.

“Your rooms are in the east wing.”

“You said I was not expected to sleep alone.”

“During the courtship. The terms aren’t even signed.”

Ilya turns. The look he gives Scott would expose the argument as the fraud it is, even if Scott hadn’t already heard himself make it.

“I asked you to marry me. You said you would. Unless you are going to some properly shocking Aderran customs on the matter, I don’t think there would be much for Carter to add.”

“A date, for one.”

“Then let him find us a date. I am trying to find us a bed.”

Scott looks at him. Ilya waits, wrapped in Scott’s fur, wearing an expression of reasonable expectation. He has been promised something and would like to begin enjoying it.

“And if the articles take six months?”

“Then we shall have six months of arguing about them.”

“A year?”

“Scott, if I have you in the morning and in bed after supper, with a possible quick encounter in an appropriate pantry, your council may entertain me for the next twenty years. I will attend every meeting with pleasure.”

“And spend each of those years asking for better clauses.”

“Of course. You might give me something. That doesn’t matter for the rest. I came here for you. You said yes. My victory is complete.”

Scott nods, chest tight with fondness. One would think accepting a proposal would lead to the actual marriage.  Instead, it’s made the wedding almost beside the point. Ilya has what he came for. The rest—vows, witnesses, the public claim—Scott will have to bargain for.

“I want you married to me.” Best start at the beginning; establish the battlefield.

“I know.”

“Before witnesses. By law. I want the words said and the seals on them, and every man who addresses you to know whose husband he is speaking to.”

Ilya’s attention sharpens with each addition. By the end, he is looking at Scott’s mouth.

“Yes,” he says. “I had gathered you would enjoy that.”

“Then you can help me accomplish it.”

“I can.” Ilya draws the fur more comfortably round himself. “What are you offering?”

Scott nearly laughs. He’s spent the night learning what Ilya would do to win him. Now he must discover what will induce him to be moderately useful to Carter.

There is one obvious answer, and Ilya follows his glance towards the royal stair with immediate interest.

“You won’t last until the wedding,” he says. “Try again.”

Scott would like to dispute that. Unfortunately, he has just considered how long Carter might need to draft the articles and found himself willing to dispense with several centuries of legal practice.

“No,” he says. “But I can last until tomorrow.”

“How wasteful.”

“Tonight, you will sleep in your excellent rooms with your excellent captain nearby. Tomorrow we can discuss what your cooperation is worth.”

Ilya smiles at him, pleased and entirely unhurried. Scott has seen that expression across a treaty table. He likes it considerably more now that he knows what it will cost to take it away.

He puts the lamp on the window ledge.

“In the meantime,” he says, and takes hold of the fur at Ilya’s collar and walks him back against the wall.

Ilya lets himself be moved. His chin lifts, his mouth opens a little, and his hands come up to Scott’s shirt with none of their earlier uncertainty. Scott takes his jaw, careful of the throat, and kisses him.

It goes through him like the knife did—late, sharper than expected, and nothing he minds. Ilya makes a low sound against his mouth and pulls him closer. His teeth catch Scott’s lower lip, and Scott tastes blood. It ought to be discouraging. He finds himself fitting a hand to Ilya’s waist instead, drawing him away from the wall and against him, very close to forgetting what he meant to accomplish.

He has an audience. He has work to do. He has a man in his arms whom he would like to keep occupied for considerably longer than his knees or his remaining wits will allow tonight. These are all excellent reasons to stop, and he has to consider each of them twice before he manages it.

He steps back. Ilya stays put, flushed and glaring, hands still knotted in Scott’s shirt.

“East,” Scott says. “Good night, Ilya.”

“That was punishment.”

“It was persuasion. I’m told I’ve been provincial about such things.” He loosens Ilya’s hands, one at a time, with an effort at dignity that neither of them is likely to find convincing. “I intend to work on that.”

He retrieves the lamp from the ledge where he put it. By the doors, one of his guards is studying the opposite wall. The other failed to look away in time and seems to regret it. The Veyrans have made no such effort. The older one inclines his head to Scott again, with a warmth that would be easier to bear if Scott were not still trying to get his breath back.

Scott gives the lamp to the nearer of his own men.

“His Highness’s rooms.”

“Majesty.”

Ilya pulls the fur straight, giving Scott a look that makes several promises, and goes east. His men fall in behind him. Scott stays until they have passed the turning, then returns to the room.

The fire is banked. The basin needs emptying. Someone will have to clear the cold supper and the candle stubs. Scott looks at the ruined marriage papers. Carter will write new ones. The knife sits on top of them, small and clean.

It is a good knife. He takes it and tucks it into his belt.

Chapter 26

Chapter Notes

MY COUNTRY VOTED DOWN THE RIGHT WING LOSER SCUM SNAKE FUCK FUCK YEAAAAH

Scott wakes before the bell, with his hand closed on an empty fold of sheet and the pleasant conviction that there is something he ought to be doing, immediately, right this very second.

But what? There is light at the shutters. His shoulder aches from sleeping on it, his mouth is dry, and the kingdom has presumably continued to exist overnight. Then he turns, and his hand clenches on the sheet. That’s right: he ought to be acquiring himself a bedmate. He remembers Ilya, standing in the passage with his coat half off, and lies back against the pillow, smiling at the ceiling like a fool. Right, right. That needs doing.

By the time Carter arrives, Scott has washed, dressed, sent instructions on how and where to organise breakfast, and rejected the first room proposed for the meeting because it contains a throne.

“The smaller council chamber,” he tells the departing servant. “The long table. And find out whether the prince has eaten. There ought to be something hot.”

Carter closes the door behind him. “Good God, Scott.”

Scott grins at him. It is, he will readily allow, at least a little unhinged. “I am going to marry him.”

“You don’t say.” Carter removes a folded paper from inside his coat. “I am aghast, my lord. I am positively astonished.”

“I take it the Keep has kept you informed.”

“There are competing accounts. I have not yet established which of the guards has the better view of the west passage.”

Last night comes back to him in pieces, the good ones first, chiefly that insolent mouth, occupied. Should he be embarrassed about it? About the night, and the month before it, and the year before that? Possibly. He isn’t, however. What he is, is soon to be married.

“I hope,” Carter continues, “that at least some of what I have heard is untrue.”

“Such as?”

“I would rather not burden you with particulars until I know whether they are possible.”

Scott laughs. It comes out easily, loose and warm. They had better get used to it. Exhaustion was the principal restraint on his conduct last night. Now that obstacle is gone, the only guarantee of good behaviour is Ilya, and Ilya would happily invite the whole kingdom to watch. He’d have Scott in the city square, if he thought for a moment Scott would let him.

He might very well let him. He intends to marry a man nineteen years younger than himself, who has recently fought wars and rearranged governments to demand him in front of everyone. If he is to have a lecher’s reputation, he may as well have a lecher’s pleasures.

“Luckily, I have little doubt that a reliable account will be available well before the wedding.”

“That should improve matters.”

“Sit down. Have some pastry.”

Carter sits, but leaves the pastry alone. “When?”

“As soon as we can arrange it.”

“What have you agreed?”

“To marry.”

“Beyond that.”

“Not much.” Scott cannot keep the smile off his face. “He more or less openly said he is here to marry me, and that this is all he can be trusted with. He will remain a prince of Veyr, and keep independent finances, household and duties.”

Carter’s hand comes to rest beside his paper.

“I see.”

“He wants to be my husband.”

Ilya wants to be his husband. Ilya wants to be his husband. Ilya wants to be his husband—

“Yes. I understood that part.”

“I am not certain you did.” Scott draws out the other chair and sits opposite him. “But you will. He will make that very, very clear. Never mind that. The important thing right now is to set the form of the thing. The meeting today”—and, in all likelihood, several meetings after that—“is about accommodating the marriage, not making it palatable. The marriage is happening one way or another.”

Carter nods once. His expression is hard to interpret, and Scott doesn’t, in truth, try very hard to.

“All right. I take it he— Have you pointed out to your intended that he cannot legally stay in Aderra without swearing an oath of loyalty?”

Legally, please. Scott is tempted, briefly, to walk Carter through at least an approximation of all the terrible violence Ilya has readily threatened to get Scott where he wanted him. He resists the temptation, but it takes him a few moments. There’s time later—and, moreover, maybe it will be even better to let them discover on their own that their new— Hmm. What would Ilya be? Consort? Prince? Catamite? Something for the jurists to ponder.

“He will swear plenty to me. Not to Aderra.” Scott takes a bite of the pastry and finds that he is hungry enough to finish it. “And if you do get an oath out of him, I suggest you read it very carefully before deciding what you have acquired.”

“Would he consider residing in Veyr and conducting the marriage by correspondence?”

“No.”

“Would you?”

Scott looks at him.

“I thought I should establish the extent of our difficulties.”

“You may put that one down as insurmountable.”

Carter sits in silence for a long minute. Scott lets him. He is, in every way that counts, already wed. Or near enough.

“All right,” Carter says finally. “All right. To recap. You want to marry that boy, the boy you held hostage, a prince of two nations, and marry him in a way that has as little legal meaning and as much disrespect to all three kingdoms involved as you can.”

Scott considers this. “Well put.”

“I thought so. Dare I hope he will have more useful answers than you have been giving me?”

“Doubtful, but he will enjoy the objections.”

“Will he enjoy answering them?”

“At length, I imagine. He’s very creative when he puts his mind to it.” He fails to keep the besotted sigh in his chest. “Whoever taught him polemic should be drowned in boiling oil.”

Carter huffs something that is nearly a laugh. “God save us all. Who will be at this wretched meeting, then—”

They work through the people needed. The Table will sit with the foreign principals and their jurists; the other house envoys have concluded their business with the Peace. Voronina can state the extent of Ilya’s obligations to his brother. Volkov can answer for the military establishment. Admiral Valeska will wish to attend whether asked or not, and Scott would rather have the Valenni position spoken in the room than sent across the sea afterwards in an injured letter.

“Prentice?” Carter asks.

“For the arrangements in the Keep, among other things.”

“He will want to know what to call the prince.”

“The prince.”

“I shall let you explain that. And how long— Which is to say that you do understand that you cannot draft legal precedent in one afternoon?”

Scott smiles. “I can, in fact, draft legal precedent in an hour. I can do it in a minute. I need only have the priest dragged in, have my intended brought into the main hall, and fuck him on the steps of the throne. That said, one assumes you would dislike the precedent. Hence: the jurists.”

Carter clears his throat, eyebrows arched.

“Which is to say that I do not expect to draft legislation today,” Scott says. “The meeting needs to settle terms. The jurists can put them into language afterwards.”

Carter makes a note. “And the date? For the wedding?”

“As soon as we determine what actually needs doing, I will let you know. Actual, concrete things, Carter. I am not in the mood for a season of reflection.”

“Excellent, that is precisely what I like to hear. Very well. Who do you want to send to tell the prince?”

Scott looks up.

“About the meeting,” Carter says, with an expression of offensive innocence.

“I will collect him.”

“I had thought you might.”

Ilya collects him, in fact.

Scott steps out of his rooms, Carter trailing, and finds the prince by the window, shoulder pressed to the stone, draped in a yellow pelt marked with black, as though it alone could make up for the lack of anything else above the waist. A dark garment lies beneath it. It has sleeves. Scott can establish those facts with certainty; the front fastening appears to have been abandoned as an unworthy project.

Gold lies against the exposed skin. A chain, two longer strands of worked metal, something dark and polished at the centre of his chest. His deed marks show between them, and above them, near the open collar, the dark fingerprints Scott left him with. No effort has been made to cover them. Scott suspects some effort went into choosing precisely how they will be best displayed.

Scott doesn’t call a greeting. That can wait. He swallows the space between them in three long steps, gets his hands under Ilya’s thighs, and lifts him up against the wall.

It is a ridiculous thing to attempt. Ilya stands barely two fingers short of him and carries a soldier’s weight, none of it for ornament. He goes up anyway, laughing into Scott’s mouth, hands braced on his shoulders, legs locking around his hips with an eagerness that settles any question of whether he likes being handled. There were never many questions about that. Scott will have to spend his middle age getting back into condition.

The kiss is softer than last night’s. Kinder. The gold between them is warm from his skin.

“Good morning,” Scott says, then kisses him again. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

Ilya’s hands find their way into his hair and, lazily, yank his head back so he can drag his mouth up his neck. Scott’s hold on him wobbles; his knees threaten to buckle.

“You dislike it?”

“I have not decided how to describe my feelings. That aside, you will not lie to my face and tell me that the fur you are wearing comes from a real animal.”

Ilya laughs. “It does, as it happens. A big cat from the south.”

“It has spots, Ilya.”

“So it does. It’s wonderfully thick. I suggest you take it off me, throw it on the floor and see for yourself; I’ll do the rest, you can just lie there—”

Carter clears his throat. “Let us not do any of that. Ever.”

“I hadn’t meant to include you, in fact,” Ilya says over Scott’s shoulder. “Not for a while yet, in any case. I don’t dare make definitive statements about the future, but for now I hope to have my hands full with what I earned and won.”

“Hush,” Scott says, and bites his mouth silent. “He’s not wrong. People are waiting for us.”

Ilya looks back at Scott. The hand in his hair has loosened, but its owner makes no attempt to put his feet on the floor.

“You summoned them.”

“I did.”

“A terrible error.”

“They are going to help us get married.”

Ilya considers this, then lets his legs drop.

Scott lowers him until his boots find the flagstones. It is perfectly manageable. Taking his hands away afterwards proves more difficult. He frees the hair caught beneath the fur, smooths it over Ilya’s shoulder, and finds himself with his palm against the side of his neck instead. Ilya turns his face and kisses the heel of his hand.

“There is work to be done,” Scott says.

“Work which does not require chastity.”

“Some attention, however.”

“You have mine.”

“Attention or chastity?”

Ilya meets his eyes, tilts his head slightly, and takes two of Scott’s fingers into his mouth.

Scott closes his eyes. Draws a breath. The corridor is cold. People are waiting, and a perfectly serviceable bed is not twenty paces and one door behind him, an unhelpful thing to remember and one he must put aside immediately.

Ilya releases his fingers. Scott keeps his eyes shut a moment longer.

“Duly noted,” he says. His voice requires some work. “Now. I say this with the utmost respect and affection.” He opens his eyes. “You will behave, you horrible little brat.”

Ilya’s mouth curves.

“We will get through this day. We will conduct a productive meeting. Nobody will be fucking anyone in a draughty corridor like an animal. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly.”

Scott waits.

“That aside,” Ilya continues, “I sense a measure of censure in your voice which injures me.”

“Does it.”

“Deeply. You were the one asking about my chastity.”

“You introduced the subject.”

“And you pursued it. I can hardly be blamed for answering.”

Scott looks at him. Ilya looks back, his head tipped slightly to one side, fur slipping from the shoulder Scott has just put in order. He could fix it again. He could close his mouth on the bare stretch of skin, feel the life of him pulse under his teeth, feel the vibration of his moans— He keeps his hands where they are.

“My chastity is beyond reproach, by the by,” Ilya adds. “My people can draw up a document to that effect, should you require one.”

“Your virtue is already as well established as anyone could hope for.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

Scott draws another breath and finds, to his considerable irritation, that he is smiling. Ilya notices. Of course he notices; his own smile spreads, slow and insufferably pleased, and Scott puts a hand at his nape before he can say anything else.

“The stairs.”

For one brief, shameless moment, Ilya lets his head fall back into the hold. Scott’s fingers close. Ilya glances sideways at him, and Scott looks ahead, keeping them both moving.

The chamber is already occupied when they arrive. Papers have been laid out at the far end for the clerks, ink placed well away from the drinking vessels, and a second fire lit against the draught from the windows. Carter’s arrangements have made the room useful. The people in it will require more effort.

Ilya comes through the door tucked against Scott’s side, a considerable achievement for a man his size. His shoulder moves beneath Scott’s hand as he looks around the room. Scott can feel the heat of him through the thin shirt.

Eric sees them first. His eyes go to Ilya’s mouth, then to Scott’s hand, and he exhales a long breath through his nose. Beside him, Murdock sets down his pen.

Lord Colworth has taken the chair beyond them. Further down, Ardsley has laid his gloves squarely before his place, as though he expects to be summoned north at any moment to something more sensible. Vench has kept his sword. Those two will want assurances Scott cannot give them, and Murdock will want ones he can give but would rather not. His own supporters will be much more trouble this morning than Harrow, who has arrived looking every bit the man prepared to let the king damage himself without assistance.

Sarne rises with the others, black-clad and quiet. Across from him, Rennick closes the little silver box beside his papers. He looks from Scott to the prince and back again, then smiles as though the morning has already justified his attendance.

On the opposite side, Voronina rises with Volkov. Her greeting is exact; the old commander’s eyes crease when Ilya addresses him. Then Volkov turns to Scott and bows, without any of the careful reluctance with which a man might acknowledge an unfortunate choice.

Scott returns the inclination. Volkov’s broken nose and heavy shoulders give even this civil exchange the suggestion that he might afterwards go out and strangle a bear in glorious celebration. Still, the army’s approval is worth having. So is Voronina’s presence: House Voronin has stood near enough to the Veyran throne, and for long enough, to know precisely what it means to acknowledge a Rozanov’s choice.

Natalya Korina has spread the prince’s papers between herself and Yelena Arsenyeva, whose open case occupies most of an empty chair. Korina gives Scott an approving nod, the sort a man might give a dog that has finally understood what to do with the stick. He is tempted to bare his teeth at her. Unfortunately, he suspects it would come out as a smile—and even if he managed it, it would be more or less what she wanted.

At the Valenni end, Admiral Aurel Valeska breaks off his conversation with Celeste. Their jurist, Radova, looks up with an anticipation Scott recognises from men about to acquire difficult horses.

“Thank you for coming,” Scott says.

He takes Ilya’s fur from his shoulders; Ilya turns to let him. Underneath, the shirt proves to be no more substantial than suspected. A chain shifts; the dark pendant catches against the cloth. Scott frees it with a finger and lays it back against his chest. Beneath his fingers, Ilya draws a slower breath.

Scott could move his hand. He takes a moment to straighten the chain instead, arranging it so it doesn’t hide too much of the deed marks. When he looks up, Ilya is watching him. The corner of his mouth lifts. Scott’s own answers before he can do anything about it.

He lays the fur over the chair to his right, draws it out, and puts Ilya into it, his hand at his nape.

“Comfortable?”

Ilya tips his head back to look up at him. “Very.”

“Excellent.”

Eric looks at Carter. Carter, already warned, sits down.

Scott takes his own chair. These men have governed with him through bad harvests, border alarms, and war. They are entitled to some surprise. He has generally tried not to inflict his happiness on them. That has not been a demanding discipline until now.

“I intend to marry Prince Ilya,” he says. “He has agreed. We are here to determine the settlement, identify what requires an exceptional provision, and give our jurists something they can put into proper form.”

Carter opens his book. The scribes lean forward, ready to write.

“The Greywater Peace is concluded. It does not depend upon this marriage, and nothing we settle here will alter its terms. Nothing we fail to settle will suspend them.”

Scott looks along the table. Vench’s attention has moved from Ilya’s clothes to his face. Harrow sits with his hands folded. Murdock picks up his pen again, though he has yet to write anything.

“Understood, Your Majesty,” Ardsley says. “However, there are consequences which cannot be separated merely by stating that the instruments are separate.”

“Yes. That is why you are here.”

Ardsley settles back a little. He sets one hand beside his gloves; Scott recognises the preparation for a list and continues before he can start.

“Aderra will have to receive my spouse. She can do it well or poorly. I would prefer well, and I have asked you here to help arrange it.”

Beside him, Ilya shifts. His knee comes against Scott’s beneath the table and stays there. Scott rests his forearm on the arm of his chair, close enough that the loose edge of Ilya’s sleeve brushes his knuckles.

“If there is a consequence I have failed to consider, I expect to hear it. But you should understand what I am asking of you.” He meets Ardsley’s eyes, then Vench’s, then Murdock’s. “I am not proposing this marriage for Aderra. I am proposing it because I want it. I intend to make its terms as workable for Aderra as I can.”

Murdock’s expression gives him nothing.

Scott does not need the old man’s approval. He has his loyalty, and that will do. As for his judgement in husbands, Murdock has proposed enough eminently suitable men over the years to establish that it bears no relation whatever to Scott’s own. Approval from that quarter might reasonably be taken as a warning.

He finds he is still looking at him. He turns to the rest of the table.

“I do not require you to approve of my tastes. If there is a difficulty we must provide for, we will provide for it. But do not presume that the number of difficulties will alter my choice.”

The sleeve stops moving against his hand. Then Ilya reaches up and puts his palm against the back of Scott’s neck.

Scott turns. Ilya’s expression has quietened; amusement still lingers at the corners of his mouth, but he looks straight at him, his thumb resting beneath Scott’s ear. The touch is light. In front of the Table, the foreign principals, the jurists and the waiting clerks, Scott lets his head turn a little further into it. He keeps his own hands flat on the table, where everyone can see them. He hopes they appreciate what that costs him.

“Lord Vench,” he says. “The prince’s military position. Let us begin there.”