The Road South

They rode south at dawn. The sky was grey and low and the Ashwood behind them disappeared into the mist within the first hour. Aldric did not look back. He had been told not to look back by no one in particular and he obeyed the instruction as though it had been given.

They were four. Elara rode ahead on a bay mare. Aldric rode behind her on his warhorse. Behind him two packhorses carried their supplies. She had not wanted a larger escort. A larger escort draws attention. A lady traveling with a single knight and two packhorses is nothing. A princess traveling with a retinue is an announcement.

She wore a riding dress of dark brown with a cloak over it and her hair was braided and tucked under a simple cap. She looked like what she was supposed to be. A minor lady returning from her country holding to attend court. Nothing about her suggested royalty. Nothing about her suggested anything at all. She had made herself invisible and the skill of it frightened Aldric more than anything she had done to him in the hall.

They did not speak during the first day's ride. The road was wide and well traveled and they passed merchants and farmers and once a group of soldiers in colors Aldric did not recognize. Elara nodded to them as they passed and the soldiers nodded back and no one looked twice.

That evening they stopped at an inn in a village called Reedmere. It was small and clean and the innkeeper was a woman with tired eyes who showed them to two rooms on the second floor. The rooms shared a wall.

Elara stood in the doorway of her room and looked at Aldric. "You will sleep lightly. You will keep your sword within reach. You will not drink."

"Yes my lady."

"If anyone comes to the inn after we are settled you will wake me."

"Yes my lady."

She looked at him for a moment longer. Something moved behind her eyes. A flicker of the thing that lived in the hall. Then it was gone and she was the lady again and she closed her door.

He lay on the narrow bed in his room and listened to her move on the other side of the wall. He heard her remove her boots. He heard the creak of her bed. He heard her breathing slow. He pressed his hand against the wall and felt the stone and on the other side of the stone she was there and he could not reach her and that was the design. That was the plan. The wall was the world they were entering. Everything between them from now on would be stone and silence and the memory of what had happened in a hall that no longer existed.

He slept lightly. He dreamed of the knife.

On the second day the road climbed through hill country. The trees thinned and the land opened up and he could see for miles. Green and brown and grey. Farmland and forest and the occasional tower of a minor hold. The weather was cold but clear and the sky was a pale flat white that carried no warmth.

At midday they stopped by a stream to water the horses. Elara dismounted and walked to the water and stood looking at it. Aldric checked the road in both directions and then joined her.

"How far to the capital," he asked.

"Four more days if the weather holds. Five if it turns."

"And when we arrive."

"We will be met. I have arranged lodging with Lord and Lady Thorne. They are loyal to my father's memory. They will house me as a favor. To the court I will be a distant cousin of the Thorne family visiting for the season."

"And me."

"You will be my household knight. You will wear my colors. You will stand where I tell you to stand and you will speak only when spoken to and you will keep your hands visible at all times. The court watches hands. A hand that disappears is a hand that holds a blade."

He nodded. She was still looking at the stream. The water moved over stones and the sound was steady and clean.

"Things will be different," she said. Not looking at him. Speaking to the water. "What happened in Greyhollow. What we did. That cannot happen here. Not in the same way. The walls have ears and the ears belong to my brother."

"I understand."

"Do you." She looked at him now. "Because what I did to you in that hall was not just for me. It was for you. It was to build something I could use. And I have used it and it is built and now we are here and the tools must change. Do you understand the difference."

"You mean you will not need the hall."

"I mean I will not need the knife. I have other tools now. And you will feel them and they will be worse than steel because steel is honest. It cuts and it hurts and it is done. What I will do to you in the capital will not be done. It will go on and on and you will carry it every day and there will be no salve and no bandage and no quiet room where I kneel in front of you and tell you that you are mine."

He felt the cuts on his body throb beneath his clothes. The scars that had become a map. She was telling him the map was about to be redrawn.

"I will do what you need me to do."

"I know you will. That is not what concerns me."

"What concerns you."

She looked away. Back at the stream. "That you will hate me for it. And that the hatred will sit next to the devotion and you will not be able to tell them apart."

She turned and walked back to her horse and mounted and they rode on.

The third night they stayed at a larger inn in a town called Valdon. It was a market town and the inn was full and noisy and Elara wore her invisibility like armor. She was polite to the innkeeper. She was forgettable to the other guests. She ate in the common room with Aldric sitting beside her and no one looked at them twice.

In the room that night she stood by the window and looked out at the town. The room was small. Smaller than the one at Reedmere. One bed. One window. One door.

"There is only one room," she said. It was a statement of fact but it carried something else.

"I will sleep in the common room," he said.

"No. You will sleep here. By the door. On the floor. I need you close."

He took his cloak and folded it on the floor by the door and lay down on it. The floor was wood and it was cold and he could feel every board through the fabric. She lay on the bed above him and he listened to her breathe.

"Ser Aldric."

"My lady."

"The scars. Do they still hurt."

"Some of them."

"Which ones."

"All of them."

She was quiet for a moment. "Good."

He heard her shift on the bed. Heard the blankets move. Heard her breathing change.

"When we reach the capital you will see me become someone else," she said. Her voice was low. Meant for him and no one else. "I will smile at people I despise. I will laugh at jokes that are not funny. I will let men look at me and I will not flinch. And you will watch all of it and you will know that none of it is real. The real thing is in this room. On this floor. In the scars on your body. Everything else is a costume."

"I understand."

"Make sure you remember it. Because there will be nights when I am not the woman in this room. Nights when I am the woman in the court. And you will look at me and you will not recognize me and that will be the hardest thing you have ever done. Harder than the knife. Harder than the rope. Because those things happened to your body. This will happen to your mind."

He lay on the floor in the dark and listened to her breathe and he thought about what she had said. About costumes and the woman in the room and the woman in the court. He pressed his fingers to the scar on his neck and it was there. Solid. Real. Permanent. She had put it there and it would not change no matter what she wore or how she smiled or who she let touch her in the halls of the capital.

He held onto it. The way a man in a river holds onto a rope. Not because the rope is comfortable. Because letting go means drowning.