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  He slept that night with the dagger still inside his shirt, waking to feel the welts its scabbard had raised on his skin. In a moment alone, behind the locked door of a storeroom, he tried to wipe the blood from the blade, but the glyph would not be cleansed by water or wine. The etching of the dagger’s war-mark was like nothing he’d ever seen before, the steel revealing a patina of what felt like fine sand that his fingers could not rub away. The dagger holding tight to the red-black legacy of the murder it wrought.

  As if he’d dreamed it, Chriani remembered the frozen tone of Lauresa’s voice as she slipped away the previous day. He remembered her gaze straying from the dagger to him, but he had no clear idea what she’d heard, what she’d picked up from the secrets twisting through his frantic thoughts.

  At breakfast in the gatehouse barracks, Chriani glanced up from where he ate at a table alone. From the doorway, the hulking figure of Ashlund beckoned, motioned him to follow as he turned and stomped out. Chriani felt the eyes on him as he followed, not caring. In the pale light of the courtyard, Ashlund waited with an impatient air.

  “By my order, you are to report to the training grounds at daymark. In light of recent events, the Princess Lauresa has requested practice at arms, and I have no men to spare.”

  He put a particular emphasis on men.

  “Yes, my lord,” Chriani said, but the lieutenant was already turning away.

  Chriani took his time eating, then spent the space of two bells half-heartedly helping restock the gate’s second-floor storerooms before informing the on-duty sergeant that he was leaving. Orders from the Bastion that would keep him for the day, he said, but the sergeant didn’t seem to care.

  He was there on the training grounds as the bell for daymark rang out six times from the tower above, the winter sun at its height but just now beginning to warm. There was no sign of Lauresa, so he slipped into the armory, selected what he thought they’d need. The princess had worked only with the shortsword the last time she’d trained at his side, but he took a pair of longswords from the racks as well, plus dagger and rapier, shortbow and two quivers. He had trouble filling the latter, the stock of ammunition almost gone from when he’d been there two days before.

  In the archery yard, the guards of the off-duty garrison were at practice, Chriani setting up on the small-arms field. A handful of the guard nodded to him in what he knew must have been respect for Barien’s memory. Most ignored him. From a few of the older sergeants, he caught the open looks of contempt that he remembered from the days when Lauresa had trained at his side, whatever they might have felt for Barien now not masking their feelings on an unranked apprentice given training ground rights then.

  Behind the Bastion garrison, the city guards were within the keep this day, practicing with pikes at long rows of wooden target poles. Preparation for combat that suggested a larger mobilization than just the prince’s guard riding out two nights before. Something happening, Chriani thought. The feeling of expectation hanging, heavy like the mist that wreathed the fields beyond the city at first light.

  He had racked and checked the weapons twice by the time Lauresa finally appeared, Ashlund and a young tyro Chriani didn’t recognize both the customary five steps away. She had on the same cloak of dark wool she’d worn in the throne room the night Barien died, but the robes were gone in favor of the well-scored leather of a training ground half-doublet, worn over a simple tunic and leggings like the princess hadn’t worn in three years. Her hair was tied back in twin braids, so that it took Chriani a moment to recognize her at first. When he did, he found himself staring, but judging from the dark look that Ashlund directed to the garrison across the yard, he wasn’t the only one.

  When she saw Chriani, Lauresa slowed. She gave him an uncertain look, glanced back to Ashlund where he nodded to her.

  “Are we awaiting the trainer, lieutenant?”

  “You have my apologies, highness,” Ashlund said, though Chriani thought he looked singularly unapologetic. “Your father’s ride and the short notice of your request has left me unable to spare a trained warrior.”

  Lauresa stepped up to Chriani with the same look she’d departed with in the hall of records.

  “Very well,” she said.

  Chriani felt the anger rise, didn’t try to hide it. The princess selected a short sword from the rack, tested its weight carefully. Chriani slipped in as she stepped away, not looking at her. But there on the rack, beside the other short sword, she’d placed the plain steel band. He palmed it beneath Ashlund’s gaze, slipped it to the finger of his left hand even as he spun the sword in his right as a distraction.

  In his mind, he thought he felt Lauresa smile. Not exactly laughter because it wasn’t like he was really hearing her voice. But in the feel of her, in the presence inside him, there was a tone of gentle reproach, no sign of the coldness her face still displayed.

  A true soldier should not be so sensitive that a harsh word from a spoiled noble can change his mood.

  Yes, highness. Shall we begin?

  Aloud, please.

  “Shall we begin, highness?” he said.

  “Yes,” Lauresa said. “You may approach.”

  Chriani nodded, crossed the five paces to stand before her.

  “We will practice wards and guards if it please your highness.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Thank you, highness. Follow my mark.”

  Ashlund left his own tyro behind but slunk away himself as Chriani took the princess through the careful training exercises that Barien had taught him long ago. The same exercises Chriani had taught her once before, Lauresa matching his movements with an ease that suggested she remembered at least some of the lessons of those four years.

  You follow well, he said for lack of any other thought. He was conscious of the silence in his mind like he normally wasn’t, more conscious of the stray thoughts that wanted to intrude on that silence, many of which he had no intention of allowing the princess to hear.

  You taught me well, she said.

  Chriani missed the last form of the set, covered it quickly by turning to face her, nodding.

  “Parry and riposte if it please your highness.”

  From the corner of his eye, as they paced themselves through fast attacks and faster blocks, he saw two sergeants of the Rheran guard watching them, sensed the gaze of the Bastion troops behind him without even needing to turn around. He felt awkward suddenly, caught up in an unfamiliar chill that her last words had set loose in him. He chose his response carefully.

  I don’t recall our training when we were younger ever inspiring this much attention from anyone other than your father.

  When we were younger, our being here was simply a distraction, Lauresa said.

  Chriani didn’t ask what it was now, burying the thought within the focus on his blade where it blocked hers, darted around to strike again and again.

  Now, the princess said, they watch me because that is what they do. They watch you because they suspect you of having some connection to Barien’s death that has yet to be explained.

  I am surprised that Konaugo allowed it, then.

  Konaugo planned it, Lauresa said, from the moment I made my request. He thought to humiliate you at the same time he would keep you under the eye of his servants.

  Chriani had lashed the bloodblade to an extra belt that he’d cinched beneath his tunic that morning, and while it rode easily there, he felt the heat suddenly where the leather bound him. He stopped, adjusted the fitting under cover of demonstrating the form he showed her.

  “You are losing strength in the movement of your wrist, highness. In pulling the blade back, you fight against yourself. Let your hand direct it, but let the blade then guide your hand through. Observe me and adjust.”

  And as he leaned in to show her the subtle shift in the placement of her fingers, he watched his hand wrap hers. Feeling her fingers beneath his as he adjusted their position on the hilt, sensation flooding him at a level below words
.

  Thank you for spending this time with me, Lauresa said in his mind.

  “We might engage if it please your highness.”

  “Proceed.”

  Through the long day, Chriani and Lauresa faced off in the chill wind that whipped the dust of the grounds, a silence across the connection the rings made that told him she was as focused as he. They broke only when the hot lunch the princess had ordered was sent out along with the three other royal heirs. Chriani sat alone at a discrete distance while the princess ate and laughed with her step-siblings.

  There was Prince Phelan, tearing up the field with a wooden dagger, and getting as close to the weapons of the practice rack as his rather ominous nanny would allow. Where they sat and watched him with practiced impatience, the Princesses Peran and Miani were both in matching blue cloaks over shifts of white, decorated with the unmistakable beauty of their mother’s own needlecraft.

  All three of the younger children had their mother’s fairness, and the blonde hair of both Chanist and Gwannyn in their youth. Lauresa had Chanist’s golden curls as well, but there was a darkness in her look that had always seemed as sharp a contrast to the younger heirs as were in the clothes that she and Peran wore today.

  As he watched them, Chriani couldn’t remember ever seeing Lauresa in a dress at Peran’s age, when they’d been already a year into their training together. From his eleventh year to his fifteenth, he’d spent almost as much time at Lauresa’s side as he did at Barien’s. On the training grounds where she soon came to hold her own against him in shortsword and dagger work, and on the range where Chriani’s singular skill was a mark she would try to attain but never touch, and on the long rides that she loved to take, sometimes with her father, sometimes not. Barien was always with her, of course, and a clutch of garrison guards behind him. But on the days she went out without Chanist, it was Chriani alone who had been permitted to ride at her side.

  As he watched her grab up Phelan in mid-run and pull him into a laughing embrace, Chriani remembered the look in Lauresa’s eyes when he’d burst into the war room that night. No recognition in her then, or that recognition hidden with a degree of skill that told him equally as well that the closeness he remembered was long-gone.

  You taught me well, she’d said.

  They moved to the longswords after lunch, Chriani walking the princess through the differences in handling to the shorter blade, though Lauresa’s first attempts at the forms told him this wasn’t the first time she’d held one. Her technique was sketchy, but she had a strength in her arms that belied her slenderness, and by the third bell, they were working with rapier and dagger and Chriani was aching from neck to foot, not sure how she could still be going strong.

  I would like to walk in the city this evening. Her voice in his mind after the long silence of the day distracted Chriani from the careful assessment of her darting strikes, but his dagger still caught each in turn. I would like you to accompany me. Meet me at evenmark.

  Highness?

  He followed a quick parry with a quicker thrust, the princess darting in close with her dagger where her rapier’s tip danced Chriani’s blade away.

  Five Hog’s House in the market court, she said. I would have you accompany me.

  Princess, the keep is in lockdown.

  Your powers of observation do you credit. He tried to ignore the emotion that seemed to flow through the link of shared thought, but it slipped through him anyway. The smile he’d felt before, not quite laughter.

  With respect, princess, would Barien have accompanied you to Five Hog’s House against your father’s express orders for your safety?

  No, she said. Barien preferred the Iron Lion in the merchant’s district when he went walking with me. Fewer of the garrison likely to be drinking there.

  She spun in low, hoping to take advantage of the difference in their height. Chriani had to slash down on the backhand, backpedaling at the same time as he twisted away.

  I wish to hear what word has spread regarding the attempt on my father’s life.

  Why listen to rumor?

  Because with enough time spent in court, you learn that there is often more truth in what goes unspoken than in what is said. I wish to hear the things of which my father and the guard will not speak.

  This is folly, princess.

  Where she bore down suddenly, Lauresa tore into him with a savage double strike that he wouldn’t have thought her capable of making. Dust rose between them where Chriani skidded back.

  I will go alone, then. I am sure no harm will come to me.

  In his own reaction, it wasn’t anger Chriani felt, but something milder. A kind of petty annoyance that surprised him, more accustomed as he was to his emotions running ice cold or molten hot, with no middle ground between them and most often no warning when they were about to change.

  Three years before, Lauresa had turned sixteen and the years of lessons on the training grounds and of long rides through the Rheran countryside had stopped. Some kind of changeover in her handling, it had seemed to Chriani in retrospect. The Prince High Chanist’s young rowdy in leather and oversized tunics had given way at some point to the Princess High Gwannyn’s courtier in ribbons and white robes.

  Before that night in the war room, he couldn’t remember when she’d last spoken to him. When he finally realized it was over, he’d tried to recall it, tried to remember the last session, the last ride. But by then, all the memories of the time they’d spent together had seemed to wither and scatter like dead leaves in his mind.

  Barien was gone. His job was to look after her, he reminded himself.

  I would be pleased to accompany you, highness.

  She spun in low again, the same move that nearly caught him before, but Chriani was watching for it this time. A quick parry and cross-strike made where he sidestepped, her blade caught by the guard of his dagger and twisted, spinning from her hands. Lauresa stumbled back as it arced through the air, dropping behind her.

  “Thank you, highness.” Chriani had to fight to slow his breathing. “Be wary of repeating the same form too often in single combat. A wary opponent will recognize and prepare against it.”

  “Indeed. Thank you, tyro.”

  She stooped to pick up the fallen rapier, turned back as if she was ready to continue again. Chriani felt a twinge spike in his back to remind him he’d twisted too far for the sake of the last move. But from behind Lauresa, he saw Ashlund approach, an unfamiliar relief felt at the lieutenant’s entrance. He whispered a few words in the ear of the tyro that Chriani had forgotten about long before. Following Chriani’s gaze, Lauresa glanced back.

  “I think that is enough for this day,” the princess said. She held blade and dagger to Chriani, who took them as he nodded, stepping back. And all at once, he felt the familiar distance slipping between them. Replacing the dying warmth of the day that had seemed much longer than he knew it was.

  Evenmark. At the orchard wall.

  For too long, Chriani had carried the memory of too many days like this one. Before two days ago, he would have said they were gone. Easier that way.

  “Highness.” Chriani nodded again.

  The princess pulled her cloak from the weapons rack as she passed Ashlund, he and the tyro turning from Chriani without a word. As she paced toward the courtyard track, though, he saw the stiffness in Lauresa’s movements that she finally let show. The ache at his chest was flaring now, the black dagger shifting below it to dig into his side, but he waited until he’d stowed the weapons back in the armory again before he adjusted it.

  Almost as an afterthought, he slipped the steel ring from his finger, slid it carefully into the sleeve pocket where his picks were hidden. He wasn’t sure if Lauresa had intended that she be able to contact him, but he was determined that he didn’t want to contact her without meaning to. Too many thoughts in him that he didn’t want shared.

  It wasn’t until he returned to the gatehouse that Chriani discovered he was expected to do a ful
l shift in the storerooms in addition to his being loaned to Ashlund for the day, and by the time evenmark finally tolled out, he’d only barely finished.

  In the bunkroom, he splashed water to his face, cleared the dust of the training grounds from his eyes. Outside, he kept his cloak slung casually under one arm until the gate was lost to sight behind him, slipping it on as he climbed the courtyard track the long way around the Bastion. It would be closer to cross the training grounds, the orchard walls rising just beyond, but even from the gate, he could see the garrison practicing on horseback now, firelight and evenlamps burning brightly in the early dark.

  Lauresa was waiting at the wall, lingering in shadow near the bars of the orchard door. She was changed from the day but still looking as little like herself as she had before, in leggings and tunic again, a weather-stained travel cloak tied loose at her throat.

  “I was afraid you were not coming.”

  “My apologies, highness.” Chriani had carefully scanned the wall and the grounds as he approached. Though he was sure they were alone, it seemed strange somehow to be speaking aloud.

  “Which way shall we go, then?”

  Chriani stared. From the orchard, he heard the wind over the outside walls whistle through the topmost branches, dark fingers clutching the sky. Lauresa was watching him expectantly.

  “I’m to find our way out of the keep? After gatefall, under lockdown?”

  “Barien always did.”

  Chriani remembered Barien’s late nights. He tried not to let his surprise show.

  “With respect, highness, what route did you take with him?”

  “Out through the main gate, generally. With a promise to the guards there to bring a flagon of the Lion’s own ale back.”

  “The guards don’t know me.”

  “I expected so.”

  Her face was impassive, and Chriani thought for a moment about slipping the ring on in order to feel whether she was laughing again. He felt the annoyance flare inside him, wondered how long it would be before it became something much darker.