“What are you doing here all alone?”
The voice came from somewhere above and behind her. Familiar enough to be unmistakable. Hyderlin turned and felt an immediate, involuntary rush of relief.
“Sarg!”
He looked down at her and said, without preamble:
“You weren’t in the queen’s chambers. I looked for you half the morning. Let’s go back. The training ground isn’t a safe place for you to linger.”
He was right, on one level — she had grown up among these knights, and the more time she spent near them, the more likely it was that someone would recognize what they were looking at. Skalts had already been testing her.
But the reason Sarg had given was something else entirely.
“Knights are mostly men, aren’t they. I won’t stand around watching someone leer at my wife.”
She stared at him.
“I hope you’re not serious.”
“This is the particular burden of every married man with a beautiful wife.”
Hyderlin experienced something she hadn’t felt in quite some time — a complete and utter loss for words.
“Have you been drinking since morning?”
Sarg filed away what this told him about her current perception of him.
“Sir Gloriosa. We meet again.”
Skalts had stepped outside. He offered Sarg a courteous acknowledgment. Sarg gave a minimal nod in return.
The Knight Commander watched Sarg with the same barely-concealed contempt he had been carrying since their first meeting.
“If you’re willing — shall we spar? It has long been a wish of mine to cross blades with the celebrated Knight of Glory.”
“That glory is all in the past. It’s been three years since I last sparred with anyone. I doubt I could hold my own against a Knight Commander these days —”
Hyderlin elbowed him in the ribs.
“Show me how fine a swordsman my husband is.”
It was the sort of desire that came naturally — in the same way one wanted to hear a famous singer perform, or to watch two exceptional swordsmen meet each other. Hyderlin was genuinely curious about how both Sarg and Skalts had changed in four years.
Sarg looked back at her with an expression devoid of warmth, then extended his hand.
“Your handkerchief.”
An antiquated tradition. A lady gave her handkerchief to a knight before a duel or joust; the knight accepted it and pledged to win it back in her honor.
Hyderlin had always been the one receiving the handkerchiefs, not giving them.
She frowned.
“It’s just a sparring match. Why would I need to give you a handkerchief?”
“I intend to treat it as a duel. Your handkerchief.”
“I don’t carry one.”
Sarg turned back to Skalts with perfect composure.
“I’m afraid a spar will have to wait.”
Hyderlin stared at him with unconcealed disbelief.
Skalts looked at Sarg with something close to disdain. The Knight Commander turned to Hyderlin and inclined his head.
“My lady — if you cannot provide a handkerchief, would you consider pledging a kiss to your knight instead? In lieu of the tradition.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Hyderlin turned on him with a look of such concentrated menace that Skalts took an involuntary half-step back.
Hyderlin exhaled through her nose, then crocked a finger at Sarg.
“Bend down.”
Sarg raised an eyebrow fractionally but obeyed without argument. Rather than press her lips to his cheek as the custom demanded, Hyderlin reached inside his jacket and felt around. She had suspected he might be carrying one.
She pulled out the handkerchief, pressed it into his hand, and leaned close to his ear.
“Win.”
“I’ll win beautifully if you kiss me.”
“You won’t get a kiss.”
“Then I’ll lose beautifully instead.”
“Beautifully, and completely.”
She smiled.
“Go ahead and lose.”
Sarg studied her face for a long moment, then looked away. He walked over and quietly requested the use of a practice sword.
Up to this point, Hyderlin had been completely, almost insultingly, unconcerned. Warriors were competitive creatures by nature. Sarg would want to win, and so he would fight to win.
But Sarg was an extraordinarily literal man when he chose to be.
He lost. Completely. Devastatingly.
The knights who had gathered around the sparring ground in anticipation of watching two legends test each other came away looking half-amused, half-appalled.
Sarg had fought with the skill of a man who had never held a sword before in his life. He had, in the end, actually dropped the practice blade.
Hyderlin turned and walked away without a word.
The watching knights exchanged looks and directed their pity at the man still standing in the practice circle. Skalts shared it.
“Are you making a mockery of this?”
He lowered the practice sword to his side, no longer interested in continuing.
“I told you. I’m not what I was.”
Sarg smoothed his jacket, pushed his colorless silver hair back from his face, and bent to retrieve the fallen sword. He handed it to the nearest available knight without looking at him.
“Thank you for lending it.”
He walked in the direction Hyderlin had gone. The knights watched after him for a moment, then dispersed and returned to their own training.
“Sir Gloriosa.”
Skalts stopped him.
Sarg glanced back. Skalts spoke.
“No matter how skillfully an adult might try to imitate a child’s drawing, it will never look exactly like one. In the same way, noble blood cannot entirely conceal its own nature.”
Sarg was quiet.
“Did you really think that bumbling act would fool me?”
“Perhaps not. But it fooled the others.”
Sarg replied with absolute evenness. He was, when occasion called for it, a genuinely skilled deceiver.
Skalts sighed.
“I don’t understand why you would go to the effort of inviting ridicule. Most people exhaust themselves trying to avoid exactly that.”
No answer.
“I don’t respect you as a man. But as a knight, I did. I hope that the next time we meet, it will be for a real bout.”
Sarg shook his head.
“I’m afraid there won’t be a next time, Knight Commander.”
Nadirotsa Castle had remained almost exactly as she remembered it. The same decorations. The same servants. All of it nearly as it had been preserved in her memory.
The only thing that had changed was Hyderlin.
She wore a dark green robe that might have belonged to any lady of the court, in place of her knight’s surcoat. A thin belt of braided rubies rested at her waist rather than the gilded sword-belt she had carried for most of her life.
She walked the castle under the name Hys Gloriosa, a visitor and a guest, rather than Hyderlin Biche — no longer owed fear, no longer owed reverence. Only a kind of morbid curiosity, and the occasional stunned stare.
This sudden, imposed new identity had given her something that moved through her in turns: anger, irritation, and a melancholy she did not quite know where to put.
She spoke respectfully to everyone. She swallowed her words when the gossip reached her. She had left the practice blade untouched when everything in her had wanted to take it and show them all.
She had been the most feared person in these halls, and now she was bowing where she once had commanded.
She missed the power of the Count of Biche with a ferocity that surprised even her.
And so she found Sarg contemptible.
He could have reclaimed it — or some portion of it. Not everything, but something. That sparring bout had been his chance to put Skalts Petaora on the ground, to announce I am still here, I am still what I was. Knights understood force; it was their first and deepest language. He had been handed an ideal moment to earn the respect of every man on that training ground, and he had thrown it away.
“You have no pride at all, do you? A first-year trainee would have outperformed you.”
“I only did what I said I would.”
Sarg fell into step beside her on the path back. Hyderlin drew a slow, tired breath.
“Every bout you enter is tied to your honor and your standing. Have you forgotten that?”
“I’m aware. My honor and standing are already —”
“At the bottom of a well. Which is exactly why I’m telling you to climb back out.”
“I suppose a husband with a ruined reputation would make things harder for his wife.”
Hyderlin’s brow twitched. She stopped engaging and quickened her pace. Sarg shrugged and trailed after her at a leisurely shuffle.
They had been walking for some time when Hyderlin stopped at the back entrance to the old keep.
The front plaza had served as an execution ground. She had no particular desire to walk there.
The old keep dated from the era of the Twelve Kingdoms. It had once been the whole of Lotsa’s castle — a small fortress unto itself — before generations of renovation and construction had wrapped it in a sprawling complex of stone buildings enclosed behind walls. A small city, in effect.
The curtain walls of the old keep were largely untouched by maintenance and had given themselves over to ivy. Moss had crept up the shadowed stone beside the back entrance, pale and blue-green in the diffuse light. Of the four towers that once stood at each corner, three had crumbled. Only one remained whole.
Hyderlin pointed to it and lowered her voice.
“I followed Chesa last night. He went to the tallest tower in the old keep. He had something hidden there.”
She looked around. The area surrounding the old keep was deserted — no guards, no one passing through. Hyderlin pulled Sarg after her and slipped inside.
She traced her memory. Up through four floors of corridor to the far end — and there would be the door leading to the tower.
The iron door was locked. Hyderlin pulled at it a few times and frowned.
“Should I just break it? I could.”
Sarg examined the lock and pressed his mouth into a thin line.
“Wire. A hairpin. Do you have anything like that?”
“Nothing.”
The old keep was littered with collapsed rubble. Sarg found a large stone, picked it up, and swung it against the lock several times.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The lock buckled and fell.
Hyderlin let out a quiet whistle.
“Your swordplay may be hopeless, but you’re quite strong.”
“If you’d kiss me, my swordplay would improve dramatically.”
She walked right past that.
She moved toward the dark staircase and spoke over her shoulder.
“Stay here and keep watch. There are traps in this staircase — take the wrong step and you’ll die. If someone comes up from below, whistle. Can you manage that?”
“Understood. Be careful.”
She climbed the steep spiral staircase, keeping to the wall.
There was a specific rule for these stairs. Either disable the traps first, or avoid every step that fell on a multiple of five. Step on one of those and the wall would launch a spear, or an arrow, or an iron plate studded with nails would fall from above. Crude, old-fashioned — and completely effective.
She avoided the fifth steps without difficulty and emerged at the top into a narrow landing. A second iron door led further in.
This door was heavier than the last. She turned the handle — it rotated loosely, going nowhere. Locked.
Hyderlin knocked on the door.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She listened.
Nothing.
“Is there someone inside?”
Still nothing. She pressed her forehead against the iron and exhaled.
Wrong floor, perhaps.
Chesa had come to this tower often, even when she was Knight Commander. She had always sensed he was keeping something from her and had never pried — never tracked him here. And so she had come here now, following the same instinct.
Perhaps she had misjudged his direction.
She kicked the door in frustration.
Clang.
“…is that?”
A faint voice from the other side. Hyderlin’s eyes snapped open. She pressed herself against the door.
“Is someone there? Is there a person on the other side?”
“…below.”
The iron muffled everything. She couldn’t make it out.
“What?”
“The bottom of the door!”
She did as she was told and looked down. Near the base of the iron door was a narrow sliding panel — a meal slot.
She dropped to one knee and slid it open. The voice came through clearly.
“It has been a long time since anyone but the king came here.”
It was the voice of an old person.
Strangely, it was impossible to say with confidence whether it belonged to a man or a woman. It seemed to be neither, and at the same time to be both.
“What brings the dead to walk these corridors?”
Her heart lurched straight down into her stomach.
