Shape Of Things

She sent for him at dawn. A boy came to his door and said only "The lady wants you" and then left. Aldric dressed and went downstairs and found her in the main hall standing by the window with a cup in her hand. The light from outside was grey and thin and it made her face look like carved stone.

"Walk with me," she said.

They walked the perimeter of the wall together. She moved at a pace that was neither fast nor slow and she said nothing for a long time. He walked half a step behind her on her left side because that was where a sworn knight walked and she did not correct him.

"I need to send a message to Lord Caswell at Thornwick," she said. "You will carry it. It is a day's ride north. You will deliver it to him directly and wait for his reply and return. You will not read the message. You will not discuss me or Greyhollow with anyone at Thornwick beyond what is necessary for courtesy. You will return within three days."

"I understand."

She stopped walking and turned to face him. They were on the north wall and below them the land sloped away toward the river. She was close enough that he could smell her. Not perfume. Something simpler. Soap and woodsmoke and something underneath that was just her.

"Ser Aldric. I want to be clear about something. You have been sent to me and I accept that. But I need to know what you are. Not what you can do with a sword. I know that already or you would not be here. I need to know what you are inside."

He looked at her. "I am a knight my lady."

"That is what you are called. I am asking what you are."

He did not answer immediately. The wind moved through the trees below and he could hear the river faintly. He thought about the twenty three men. He thought about the bad nights. He thought about the fact that he had never once refused an order and that Maren had said it like a warning.

"I am what I am told to be," he said.

She held his gaze and the seconds stretched. Then something happened on her face. That small movement again around her mouth. Not a smile. Not close. But something shifted and she looked at him the way she had looked at him in the courtyard when he first arrived. Like a tool being measured.

"That is a useful answer," she said. "I hope it is an honest one."

"It is."

"We will see."

She turned and continued walking and he followed.

That afternoon he rode north with the sealed message in his saddlebag. The road was narrow and cut through farmland that was neat and tended. He passed farmers who looked at him and looked away and he passed a cart loaded with firewood that had stopped in the middle of the road and he helped the driver fix the wheel before continuing. It was ordinary work for an ordinary errand and he was grateful for it because it gave him time to think.

He thought about what she had asked him. What are you inside. He had answered truthfully. He was what he was told to be. He had been that way since he was a boy handed to a lord at the age of seven because his family could not afford to keep him. He had been trained to serve and he had been good at it and the training had sunk so deep that it was not training anymore. It was just what he was. He did not resent it. He did not glory in it. He simply existed inside the shape that had been made for him and he did not try to step outside it because there was nothing outside it that he knew how to be.

But something about the way Elara had asked the question made him feel like she was not just asking. She was looking for something. She had a shape in mind and she was checking to see if he would fit inside it. And the shape was not the shape of a knight who guards a wall and carries messages and manages men at arms. It was something else. Something she had not shown him yet.

Thornwick was larger than Greyhollow. A proper keep with four towers and a banner flying from each one. Lord Caswell was a heavy man with a red face and a voice that filled rooms. He took the message from Aldric and read it in the hall with Aldric standing nearby and his expression did not change. He wrote a reply and sealed it and handed it back.

"Tell Lady Elara I will consider her proposal," he said. "You may rest here tonight if you wish."

"I will return to Greyhollow tonight my lord. Thank you."

Caswell looked at him the way men look at a dog that has been well trained. "Loyal. Good. She likes them loyal."

Aldric did not ask what that meant. He took the reply and rode south.

It was full dark by the time he reached Greyhollow. The gate was closed and he called out and the guards opened it. The courtyard was empty except for the boy who took his horse. He went inside and found the hall lit by candlelight. Elara sat at the table with papers spread in front of her. She looked up when he entered.

"Lord Caswell sends his regards and his reply," he said. He placed the sealed message on the table.

"What did he say when he read my message?"

"He said he would consider your proposal."

"Nothing else?"

"He said you like them loyal."

Elara's hand stopped on the sealed message. She did not look up. The silence lasted three heartbeats. Then she broke the seal and read the reply and folded it and placed it beneath the other papers on the table.

"Did he say anything else?"

"No my lady."

"Did he offer you anything?"

"A night's rest. I declined."

"Why?"

"You asked me to return within three days. I could return tonight so I did."

She looked at him then. Full on. Those dark eyes in the candlelight. And he saw it again. That thing behind her gaze that was not warmth and was not cold. It was hunger but not the kind he understood. It was the hunger of a person who has found something they have been looking for and is deciding whether to take it or to wait. To savor.

"Go and eat and sleep," she said. "I will send for you in the morning."

He bowed and left and as he climbed the stairs he heard her push back from the table and stand and he heard her footsteps follow his path for a few steps before they stopped. He did not look back. He went to his room and closed the door and locked it and sat on the bed in the dark.

He thought about the sound of her footsteps following him. He thought about the way she had looked at him when he said he had returned because she had asked him to. He thought about the word loyal and the way Caswell had said it like it was a joke that Aldric was not in on.

He sat in the dark for a long time and he did not sleep and outside the wind moved through the Ashwood and the keep was quiet and somewhere below him Lady Elara of Greyhollow was planning something he could not yet see.