The Tower

Wren led him through the passages.

They were narrow. Barely wide enough for a man to walk upright. The walls were raw stone on one side and plaster on the other and the plaster was old and crumbling and in places you could see the lath beneath it. The passages ran behind the walls of the palace like veins behind skin. They connected rooms that had no obvious connection. They went places that the formal corridors did not go.

Wren moved through them without hesitation. He knew every turn. Every junction. Every place where the floor was uneven or the ceiling was low. He moved the way Elara moved through the court. With complete knowledge of the terrain and complete confidence in his own invisibility.

Aldric followed. He had left his armor in a storage room off the kitchens. He wore his breeches and his shirt and his sword was belted at his waist and that was all. No plate. No mail. No protection. Just a man with a blade moving through the walls of a palace toward a woman in a tower.

The passage climbed. Stairs that spiraled tight and steep. The air grew colder. Damp. The smell of old stone and standing water. They were in the oldest part of the palace now. The part that had been built first. Before the wings. Before the formal halls. Before the court. This was the bones of the place.

"The tower is above us," Wren whispered. "The passage comes out behind a panel in the wall of the upper room. The panel is old. It was sealed with plaster but the plaster is weak. You can break through."

"The guards."

"Two at the door. Two at the base of the stairs. They will not hear you if you are quiet. The walls are thick. The door is iron. Sound does not carry."

"And when I am inside."

"When you are inside you are inside. I cannot get you out the same way. The panel is one way. Once you break through the plaster you cannot reseal it. If the guards come in and see the hole."

"I understand."

Wren looked at him. "I was Lord Thorne's man for twenty years. I served the old king. I have watched the princess grow up. She was a child when I first saw her. Running through these passages. She knew them better than I did. She used to hide in the walls and listen to the court and laugh at the things they said."

He paused. "She has not laughed in a long time."

"Take me to her."

They climbed. The passage narrowed further. Aldric had to turn sideways. His shoulders scraped the walls. His breath was loud in the confined space and he tried to slow it. Control it. The way she had taught him to control his sounds. Not by holding them. By placing them. Putting each breath where it belonged.

They reached the top. The passage ended at a wall of plaster. Wren pressed his hand against it and the plaster gave slightly. Weak. Old. Ready to break.

"Through here," Wren whispered. "The room is on the other side. I will wait here. If you are not back in one hour I will leave. I cannot be found here."

"Go."

Wren squeezed past him and disappeared down the passage. Aldric was alone. He stood in the dark with the plaster wall in front of him and the sword at his side and the scars on his body and the sound of his own breathing.

He pressed his hand against the plaster. It crumbled. Soft. Brittle. He pushed harder and his hand went through and cool air came through the gap and he could feel the space on the other side. A room. Larger than the passage. He pushed wider. Cleared a space big enough to step through. Plaster fell in chunks and dust filled the air and he held his breath and waited for the sound of running feet.

Nothing. The guards had not heard. Wren was right. The walls were thick.

He stepped through.

The room was small. Circular. Stone walls. One window that was barred with iron. A pallet on the floor with a thin blanket. A bucket in the corner. A candle stub on the floor that had burned down to nothing. The room was cold and it was dark and it smelled of stone and damp and something else. Something sour. The smell of a body that has been in a small space for too long.

She was there.

She sat against the wall beneath the window. Her knees were drawn up to her chest. Her arms were wrapped around them. She wore the shift she had been wearing when they took her. White linen. No longer white. Stained. Grey. Her hair was tangled and hung around her face and her face was hidden and she was looking at the floor and she did not look up when he entered.

She was thin. Thinner than he had ever seen her. The bones of her wrists were visible. Her collarbone was sharp. The shift hung on her as though it belonged to a larger woman. She had not been eating. Lady Thorne had said the food came back untouched and Aldric could see the truth of it in the hollows of her face and the sharpness of her shoulders.

He stood in the broken wall and he looked at her and he did not recognize her. Not at first. The woman in the tower was not the woman who had held the knife. She was not the woman who had stood by the fire in the dark dress with her hair down and her eyes hungry. She was not the woman who had pressed his hand against her heart and said feel that. That is what you do to me.

This woman was small. Broken. Empty.

He said her name.

"Elara."

She did not move. She did not look up. She did not respond. She sat against the wall with her knees drawn up and her face hidden and she was somewhere else. Somewhere he could not reach.

He crossed the room. He knelt in front of her. He reached out and touched her hair. Gently. The way you touch something that might shatter.

She flinched. Her whole body flinched. A violent spasm that pushed her back against the wall and her head came up and her eyes were wild and she looked at him and she did not see him. She saw something else. Something that was not there. Her eyes were wide and dark and empty and they searched his face and found nothing and she pressed herself against the wall and her mouth opened and a sound came out that was not a word. A breath. A gasp. The sound of an animal that has been cornered.

"Elara. It is me. It is Aldric."

Her eyes changed. The wildness receded. Something came through. Recognition. Slow. As though it had to travel a long distance to reach the surface.

"Aldric," she said. Her voice was ruined. Thin. Scratchy. The voice of a woman who had not spoken in days.

"I am here."

"You should not be here." The words came slowly. Each one placed with effort. "He will kill you."

"Not yet."

"You came from the front."

"Yes."

"You deserted."

"Yes."

"They will hang you."

"Not yet."

She looked at him and her eyes filled and the tears came and she did not hold them. For the first time since he had known her she did not hold them. They ran down her face and she did not wipe them and she did not look away and she let him see her cry and it was the most vulnerable thing he had ever witnessed.

He reached for her. She did not flinch this time. He put his hand on her shoulder and she leaned forward and her forehead came to rest against his chest. Against the scars. She pressed her face against them and she cried and her hands came up and gripped his shirt and she held onto him the way a person holds onto something in a flood.

He held her. He put his arms around her and he held her and she was shaking and she was thin and she was broken and she was crying against the scars she had put on his body and he held her and he did not speak because there were no words for this.

After a long time the shaking stopped. The crying stopped. She was still against his chest. Her breathing was slow. Uneven. Exhausted.

"What did he do to you," he said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she spoke. Slowly. In pieces.

"He questioned me. Every day. Sometimes twice. He asked about my network. About Thorne. About Renard. About you. He asked about the scars on your body. How long it had been happening. What I made you do. He sat in a chair across from me and he asked and he did not raise his voice and he did not touch me and he was calm and the calm was worse than shouting."

She pressed closer to him.

"When he found out about Renard he changed. He stopped questioning. He stopped coming. He moved me here. He left me alone. Four days. No one comes except the food. I do not eat. I cannot eat. The food smells wrong. Everything smells wrong."

"Did he hurt you."

"He did not touch me. He has not touched me. Not once." She paused. "He does not need to touch me. He knows that the silence is worse. He knows that taking everything away is worse than violence. He learned that from watching me."

She lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was drawn and her eyes were red and she was the woman from the hall and she was not the woman from the hall. She was something that had been taken apart and the pieces were on the floor and they had not been put back together.

"He used my own methods on me," she said. "Isolation. Control. The removal of choice. He learned it from me. From what I did to you. From what Colven told him. He took my tools and he used them on me and they worked because they always work and I should know because I built them."

She laughed. A sound that was not a laugh. A dry cracked thing that had no humor in it.

"I am my own punishment," she said. "He did not need to invent anything. He just held up a mirror."

Aldric looked at her and he felt something shift inside him. Not the devotion. That was still there. That would always be there. But something around it. Something that had been rigid was now flexible. Something that had been fixed was now moving. The shape of what he felt was changing and he did not know what it was becoming.

"We need to go," he said.

"I cannot go. The door is iron. The guards are outside. The passage you came through is the only way out and it is a hole in the wall that a child could find."

"Then we go back through the passage."

"And then what. We walk through the palace. Past the guards. Past the servants. Past the King. You have no armor. You have one sword. You are a deserter. I am a prisoner. We would not make it past the first corridor."

"We will make it."

"You are being foolish."

"I am being yours."

She looked at him and something crossed her face. Something that was not the love and not the hunger and not the calculation. Something older. Something that had been there before all of that. Before the knife. Before the room. Before Greyhollow. Something that was there when a seven year old boy was handed to a lord and learned to serve and never stopped.

"You came for me," she said. "You left your post. You deserted. You risked hanging. For me."

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because you are mine. And I am yours. And I will not let you die in this room."

She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes searched his face the way they had searched it the first day in the courtyard at Greyhollow. Measuring. Assessing. Deciding if he would do the job.

Then she stood. Slowly. Her legs were unsteady. She had not eaten in days and the weakness was real. He stood with her and she swayed and he caught her arm and she steadied and she looked at him and the tears were dry on her face and something was coming back. Something in her eyes. Not the hunger. Not the knife. Something harder than that. Something that had been forged in four days of silence and darkness and the discovery that her own weapons could be turned against her.

She looked at the hole in the wall. She looked at the room. She looked at him.

"I need a weapon," she said.

He gave her his knife. The small one. The one she had used on him in Greyhollow. He had carried it with him since that first night. He had kept it in his saddlebag and then in his belt and he had carried it the way you carry a relic. A piece of something sacred.

She took it. She held it. She looked at the blade and her fingers wrapped around the handle and something came back into her hand. Not the hunger exactly. But the familiarity. The recognition of a tool that belonged to her.

She looked at him. "If we are caught."

"We will not be caught."

"If we are. I will not go back in this room. I will not be taken alive. Do you understand."

"I understand."

"Say it."

"You will not be taken alive."

She tucked the knife into the waistband of her shift. She pulled the fabric tight to hide it. She straightened her spine. She lifted her chin. She was thin and weak and broken and she stood there and she assembled herself the way she assembled her mask every morning. Piece by piece. Layer by layer. Until the woman in the tower was covered by the woman who had survived everything else.

"Go," she said. "Through the passage. I will follow."

He went through the hole. She came after him. The passage was dark and narrow and she moved through it without hesitation. She knew these passages. Wren had said she had known them as a child. Her body remembered even when her mind had forgotten everything else.

They descended. Slowly. Carefully. The stairs were steep and her legs were weak and he held her arm and she let him. She let him hold her up. The woman who had never let him hold anything let him hold her up in the dark.

They reached the bottom. The passage opened into a service corridor that was empty at this hour. Aldric looked both ways. Clear. He motioned and she followed him and they moved through the corridor toward the servant entrance.

They were halfway there when the guard turned the corner.