Terms of Service

The days settled into a rhythm. Aldric rose before dawn and inspected the walls and the men. He drilled them in the courtyard for two hours each morning and they resented it at first and then they did not because they could feel themselves getting better. Briwer watched from the wall and said nothing but his face carried something that might have been approval.

Elara sent for him each morning after drill. They would walk the grounds or sit in the hall and she would give him tasks. Messages to carry. Repairs to oversee. Disputes to settle among the tenants. She gave him authority over the household guard and the running of the keep's defense but she kept everything else in her own hands. The finances. The correspondence. The decisions about crops and tenants and trade. He was her sword and her voice but never her mind.

He noticed things as the weeks passed. Small things that added up.

She did not receive visitors. No lords or ladies came to call. No messengers arrived from neighboring holds except the ones she sent for. For a lady of a house to be this isolated was unusual. Minor houses survived through connection and alliance and Greyhollow had neither. When he mentioned this to her she looked at him with that flat measuring gaze and said "I do not need neighbors. I need walls and men and coin and I have all three."

"You have coin," he said. It was not a question.

"I have enough."

The keep had been repaired and improved. The men were paid regularly and paid well. The stores were full. None of this matched what he knew of Greyhollow's resources. A holding this size with land this limited should have been struggling. It was not. It was comfortable and quiet and well maintained and the money was coming from somewhere he could not see.

He did not ask. He had learned that asking got him nothing with her. She gave information when she decided to and not before.

One evening she called him to the hall after the men had eaten. The servants had cleared the tables and the candles were low and she sat in the chair on the platform with a cup of wine in her hand. She had changed from her day clothes into something darker. A simple black dress with no ornamentation. Her hair was down. He had never seen it down. It fell past her shoulders and it changed her face somehow. Made her look younger. Made her look like someone he might have met under different circumstances.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it. They were alone. The hall felt larger without the servants and the men. The fire crackled and the shadows moved on the walls.

"Sit," she said. She did not gesture to a seat. He chose a bench near the fire and sat.

"Lord Caswell has agreed to my proposal," she said. "It involves a trade arrangement. Grain for timber. The details do not concern you. What concerns you is that in three weeks Lord Caswell will come to Greyhollow to sign the agreement and he will bring men. Possibly twenty. Possibly more. They will stay two nights. You will ensure the keep is prepared."

"I will."

"He will bring a knight. Ser Harren. I have met him before. He is not a subtle man. He will test your men and he will test you. Do not let him provoke you."

"I will not."

She drank her wine and watched him over the rim of the cup. "You have been here five weeks Ser Aldric. You have not asked me a single personal question. You have not spoken to the servants about me. You have not gone through my papers or my chambers. You have not tried to learn what I am hiding."

"I do not believe you are hiding anything my lady."

"Liar," she said. But she said it without anger. She said it the way you would say the name of a bird you had identified by its call. A statement of fact. A classification.

"You are correct that I have noticed things. But noticing is not the same as prying. You asked me not to enter your chambers and I have not. You asked me not to discuss you and I have not. If you want to tell me something you will tell me. If you do not then it is not mine to know."

She set the cup down and leaned forward in her chair. The firelight caught her face and her eyes were very dark and very still.

"And if I never tell you. If I keep you in the dark for years. If I use you for every task I need and give you nothing in return except orders. Would that be enough for you."

He thought about it honestly. He thought about the years he had spent on the border. The years of standing in cold rain and killing men whose faces he forgot and sleeping in barracks that smelled of sweat and iron. He thought about the shape that had been made for him when he was seven years old.

"Yes," he said.

She stood and came down from the platform and walked toward him. She stopped close. Closer than she had ever been. He could feel the warmth of her. He could smell that soap and woodsmoke again. She looked down at him where he sat and her expression was something he had never seen on her face before. It was not calculation. It was not the measuring look. It was something rawer. Something that flickered behind her eyes like a candle in a draft.

"Stand up," she said.

He stood. They were close. She was shorter than him by a head and she tilted her face up to look at him and her mouth was right there and her eyes held his and the room was silent except for the fire.

"Lift your hand," she said.

He lifted his right hand. She took it. She held his gauntleted fingers in her bare hand and looked at them. She turned his hand over and examined it the way you would examine an object you were considering purchasing. Then she pressed his hand against her own chest. Above her heart. He could feel the beat of it through the leather and steel of his gauntlet. It was fast. Faster than he expected.

"Feel that," she said. "That is what you do not get to have."

She released his hand and stepped back and the moment closed like a door.

"Prepare for Caswell's visit. That is all."

He left the hall and went to his room and locked the door and stood in the dark with his hand still raised where she had placed it. The warmth of her body still in the metal. He stood there until the warmth faded and then he stood there longer.