Chapter 10

Adrian’s POV

I had laid the two wooden blades side by side on the rack before the grey frost began to melt. I had put them there myself.

The one on the left still had the strip of old linen wound round its grip. The linen had darkened, and I had not bothered to scrub it clean.

I took the other one down and went through the first form more slowly than usual, while the sky behind the eastern wall turned from grey to a pale, cold yellow.

The gate hinges made a distinctive sound when someone came through. Twice I heard it, and both times it was only a guard with a bucket and a bad shoulder.

The yard filled the way it always did, in twos and threes, the men blowing on their hands and taking their places without being told.

Owen came by with his own blade across his shoulders.

"The captain's out early," he said. "Twice in two days."

"Run the drill."

"She's not coming, then." He said it lightly. "Word gets about. A man wonders what she did to earn a morning of your time."

"She's not mine to mind," I said, "and she's not yours to discuss."

He laughed, short, and went off to his place.

The words bothered me more once I had said them, because they were true.

The drill ran long. I kept them at it past the point where they needed it.

The sun came up over the wall and took the last of the frost off the pounded dirt, and one by one the men finished and drifted away, until the yard was mine.

The wind swept the loose sand into long, shallow lines.

I walked the twenty-step pattern she had struggled with the day before, putting my heel down first and letting my weight settle onto it. Near the post, I found where the ground sloped and my weight shifted forward too soon.

There was nobody to show it to, so I did it again, twice, and then I stopped.

I propped both blades against the wall and headed for the gate.

At the gate I turned round and came back and took one of them.

The guard in the corridor got to his feet when he saw me and answered before I asked. "She wanted water in the night. Twice. Hasn't come out since."

Tessa opened the door with a basin in her hands and her sleeves pushed above her elbows.

"Rhea's had a fever since before dawn," she said flatly. "It came on in the night, and it hasn't broken. Water twice, and she brought it back up once, and she won't have the window open, and she won't lie flat because she says it makes it worse. She's hot to the touch, and she swears she's cold."

Then she stepped back and let me past, and went round to the far side of the room to wring the cloth out over the basin.

Rhea was half sitting against the wall, her hair loose and her face flushed red across the cheekbones.

The moment she heard my boots on the boards, she came up straight and put her shoulders back. "I hadn't changed my mind," she said. "I couldn't get up. That's all it is."

I stopped one pace inside the door and stayed there.

The jug on the stool was half empty. A ring had dried inside the cup beside it, and the sheet clung to her damp lower back. Even from where I stood, I could feel the heat coming off her.

All morning I'd been turning over what I wanted to say to her about not coming, but now the words stuck in my throat.

I looked down at the floor by the bed, where her boots stood side by side with the toes pointing into the room.

I remembered saying, once, in passing, on the way up from the well, that a man's boots could tell you his plans for the day before he had made up his mind.

She had put them there like that the night before, or perhaps she had always done it that way before I ever said a word about it.

I touched the toe of the near one with a finger and nudged it straight, then drew my hand back and hooked it behind my belt.

She had drawn her feet up under the blanket by then and had both arms wrapped round herself, holding still.

"Get the fever down first. Tomorrow afternoon."

"I'll be up by afternoon." She said it quickly, but when she drew breath to continue, she started coughing. She pressed her fist to her mouth, her face paling and then flushing again. "I'll walk down there myself."

I looked at Tessa, who had not moved and had not taken her eyes off the basin.

"Go and find out what the herb woman keeps for this," I said. "Bring it up yourself, and don't let anyone hand it to you at the door."

She looked at Rhea first, and only went when Rhea tipped her chin at her, and the door did not quite shut behind her.

"Then come tomorrow afternoon on your own two feet," I said, "and I'll pretend you never stood me up."

She looked at me, and then she looked at the blanket over her knees instead.

I said I would send word about the hour.

I got as far as the kitchen door before I stopped. Porridge, I told them, thin and not too hot. Then I added, "And bread from town. The kind with seeds on it."

I went out through the yard and up to the study by the longer route, and somewhere on the stairs I slowed.

The deputy found me before the lamps were lit.

The advance party from the court was already outside the wall, he said, two hours ahead of what the road should have allowed them.

A supervisor was riding with them who had come to inspect the recovered arms himself and put his own seal on the ledger.

I asked when the main body would arrive, how many men the supervisor had brought, whether they had come with remounts, which side of the house they would be put on.

Then I asked whether the Frostfang heir had come with them.

The deputy said yes, that Kieran Voss rode with the court's party as a guest, under watch.

I said, "He came alone?"

"He has four men and a groom, Captain."

"That's all."

He went out.

The map had been open on the table since morning, weighed down at the corners, the forest roads drawn long before my time and the newer marks over them in darker ink: the mill road, the ford, and the hill track behind the houses that no survey had ever drawn.

I had tried a hundred times to picture how the arms had been moved down the mill road. I went over it again now, but was no closer to an answer.

Somewhere past the ford the road ran on north, beyond the area shown on the survey.

I tapped that stretch of road with my finger, once, then again.

Below the window, a horse came into the yard, and somebody shouted for a boy to take the bridle.

Another voice answered from the door that the east rooms were full and the north wing had been opened.

The lamps were going up along the corridor by then.