Rules of the Court

The first week in the capital was a lesson in geometry. Aldric learned the shape of the court the way he had once learned the shape of a battlefield. By walking it. By memorizing the angles. By understanding where the blind spots were and where the killing grounds were and where a man could stand without being seen.

The palace was a maze. Halls and corridors and antechambers and galleries. Some rooms led nowhere. Some corridors doubled back on themselves. There were doors that opened onto walls and stairs that went down to rooms that had no other exit. The architecture was old and layered. New wings built on old foundations. Secret passages that were not secret if you knew where to look. Aldric walked every corridor in the first three days and drew a map in his head and by the end of the week he knew the palace better than most of the people who lived in it.

The court operated on rules that were never spoken but were understood by everyone. Rank determined where you stood. Influence determined where you sat. Favor determined who spoke to whom and for how long. Aldric was a knight in a minor house's colors and he occupied the lowest meaningful tier. He could stand in rooms. He could wait in corridors. He could not speak unless addressed by someone of higher rank and since no one of higher rank had any reason to address him he existed in a silence that was total.

Elara moved in a different world. She was a princess returned from exile and the court treated her with the careful fascination reserved for things that might be dangerous or might be fragile. People watched her. People approached her. People tested her with small talk and compliments and loaded questions wrapped in polite language. She handled all of it with the same mask she had worn at the feast. Warm. Gracious. Slightly vague. A woman who had been ill and was recovering and was grateful to be home.

Aldric watched her work and he understood for the first time that what she had done in Greyhollow had not been practice. It had been rest. In Greyhollow she had been herself. Hard and sharp and real. Here she was something else entirely and the effort of maintaining it showed in ways only he could see. A tightness in her jaw at the end of the day. A slight tremor in her fingers when she thought no one was looking. The way she pressed her thumb against her own wrist when a courtier said something that required her to smile.

Lord Thorne continued to provide intelligence. He met with Elara each morning in his study and Aldric stood outside the door and listened for footsteps. Thorne's network was small but reliable. Servants who had been loyal to the old king. A clerk in the royal household who passed information through coded messages. A guard captain who owed Thorne a debt from twenty years ago.

What they learned in the first week was this. Aldous had not moved against Elara immediately because he was not yet certain of her intentions. He had expected her to stay hidden. Her voluntary return had confused his calculations. He did not know whether she was surrendering or positioning. The court saw a touching reunion. Aldous saw a chess piece that had moved itself onto the board and he was trying to determine if it was a pawn or a queen.

"He will test you," Thorne told Elara on the third morning. "He will put you in situations where your loyalty becomes visible. He will watch how you react to provocation. He will send people to you."

"Renard," Elara said.

Thorne paused. "Renard has been close to Aldous for two years. He was not close to him before you left. That is recent."

"I know. I have accounted for it."

"How."

"Renard is fond of me. He was fond of me before I left. That has not changed. Aldous uses him because Aldous believes Renard's fondness makes him useful as a spy. And it does. But fondness cuts both ways. Renard reports to Aldous what I say and do. But Renard also tells me what Aldous wants to know. Because he cannot help it. Because he wants me to know that he is protecting me even while he is betraying me."

"That is a dangerous game."

"Everything is a dangerous game Uncle."

Aldric listened from the hallway and filed the information away. Renard was a spy. Elara knew he was a spy. She was using the fact that he was a spy to feed information back to herself. It was a structure within a structure within a structure. The kind of thinking that made his head ache if he tried to follow all the layers.

He did not need to follow all the layers. He needed to keep her alive. That was simple. That was the one simple thing in a world that had become infinitely complex.

On the fifth day Renard visited the Thorne townhouse. Aldric answered the door because the servant was busy and Renard stood on the step and looked at him with the sharp face and the dark eyes and he smiled.

"You must be Ser Aldric. The knight from Greyhollow."

"My lord."

"She has spoken of you."

"She is generous."

"She is selective. There is a difference." Renard stepped past him into the house without being invited. He moved with the confidence of a man who believed every door was open to him. Aldric closed the door and followed him to the sitting room where Elara was waiting.

She was standing by the window. She wore a dress of dark green. Her hair was down. When Renard entered she turned and her face did the thing it had done at the feast. The softening. The recognition. The history.

"Renard."

"Elara."

They stood three feet apart. The air between them was dense. Aldric could feel it from his position by the door. Something old and unfinished. Something that had not been resolved by three years of separation.

Renard took her hand and kissed it. Not a formal kiss. His lips lingered on her knuckles and his eyes stayed on her face and Elara let him. She let him the way she had let Harren. With calculation. With purpose. But also with something else. Something that had not been there with Harren. Something that looked from the outside like it might be real.

"You look well," Renard said. "The country agreed with you."

"The country was lonely."

"No more. You are home now."

Home. The word sat in the room. Aldric watched Elara's face when Renard said it and he saw the flicker. The dark thing behind the mask. Home was a trap. Home was a palace with a brother who wanted her dead. Home was a court full of eyes and a knight who could not touch her standing by the door.

"Sit," Elara said. "We should talk."

They sat. Aldric stood by the door. They talked about the court. About Aldous. About the factions and the alliances and the people who mattered and the people who did not. Renard was forthcoming in a way that confirmed what Elara had said. He told her things. Useful things. Things that could only come from proximity to the king. And he told them with an ease that said he was not afraid of being overheard. Or that he wanted to be overheard. Or that he did not care.

Aldric watched. He watched Renard's eyes when they moved over Elara. He watched the way Renard leaned forward when she spoke. He watched the way Renard's hand rested on the arm of his chair angled toward her as though reaching.

When Renard left he paused at the door and looked at Aldric. Up close the man was older than he had appeared at the feast. Late thirties. Lines around the eyes. A grey hair at the temple. But the sharpness was still there. The intelligence. The confidence.

"Ser Aldric," Renard said. "How do you find the capital."

"Large my lord."

"And the court."

"Complicated."

Renard smiled. "You will adapt. The court eats simplicity alive. Best to develop complexity quickly or it will develop it for you."

He left. Aldric closed the door and stood in the hallway and thought about what Renard had said. The court eats simplicity alive. He was simple. He knew he was simple. His world had been simple. Oath and sword and lady. Follow orders. Stand your post. Do not question. That simplicity had been his strength in Greyhollow. Here it might be his grave.

Elara called him into the sitting room. She was still by the window. Her back was to him. Her shoulders were tight.

"Close the door."

He closed it.

"You watched him."

"I watch everyone my lady."

"You watch him differently."

He said nothing. She turned.

"Do not lie to me Aldric. Not about this. You watched him the way you watched Harren. With that look. That heat. Do not pretend you do not know what I mean."

"I know what you mean."

"Then tell me."

"I watched him touch your hand. I watched him look at you. I watched the way you responded. And I did not like it."

She crossed the room and stood in front of him. Close. The closest she had been since Greyhollow. He could smell her. Not soap and woodsmoke anymore. Something else. Perfume. The capital had already changed her.

"You did not like it," she repeated. "And what do you intend to do about not liking it."

"Nothing."

"Nothing."

"You have told me what the situation requires. I will do what is required."

"And the feeling."

"I will carry it."

She looked at him and the mask slipped. Just for a moment. He saw the woman from the hall. The one who had held the knife. The one who had tasted his blood. She was looking at him and she was not calculating. She was feeling. And what she was feeling was something she did not want to feel because feeling it was a thread and threads get pulled.

"Go," she said. Her voice was thick. "Go to your room. Do not come to me tonight. Do not knock on my door. Do not stand in the hallway. Stay in your room and stay away from me."

"My lady."

"Go."

He went. He closed the door behind him and went downstairs to his room and sat on the bed and did not move. He did not know what had just happened. She had felt something and it had frightened her and she had sent him away because of it. Not because of what he had done. Because of what she had felt.

He sat in the dark and he did not go to her and the distance between them was the width of a floor and a set of stairs and it was the largest distance in the world.