By the time they reached Durnstain, the snow had turned to rain and the rain had turned to a fine needling ice that found every seam in wool, leather, and pride.
The castle stood above the river on a tooth of black rock, its walls climbing out of the cliff as though men had not built it but quarried prisoners from the mountain and stacked them there. A narrow road twisted upward through pines bent white at the tips. Bells rang from somewhere within the curtain wall, not for welcome, not for alarm, but because the hour had come and stone houses loved obedience.
Alianor Aldren rode with her hands bound in front of her. Sivelle sat a mule beside her, straight-backed beneath a borrowed cloak whose hem had frozen into little teeth. Behind them, Nasir al-Jamil rode with Khalaf ibn Nadir, who held his satchel under both arms. Rafiq walked near Zeid’s horse until an Ostervener sergeant ordered him away from the prince’s stirrup. Rafiq obeyed after Zeid glanced at him once.
At the first gate, a horn sounded. Men in iron caps looked down from the murder-holes. Their breath smoked in white bursts. The portcullis lifted with a wooden groan, and the party passed beneath a painted saint whose face had been darkened by candle soot and weather until mercy and suspicion had become the same expression.
“Durnstain,” Lord Baudren de Virenne said from ahead of Alianor. “A name like a door closing.”
King Rydric turned in the saddle. His wrists were not bound, but four armed men rode close to him. That, too, was called mercy.
He looked at the walls, the wet flags, the narrow upper windows, the good murder-angle above the second gate. His face had lost nothing to cold. Blood from Wenen had been washed from him, but the absence of it only made him look more carved.
“Badly held,” he said.
Alianor’s head lifted despite herself.
The captain riding near Rydric glanced over. He was a broad Ostervener with a clipped yellow beard, a scar through one brow, and a cloak fastened by a plain iron pin. He had given his name below the hill as Captain Ortwin von Rabenau.
“Badly held?” Ortwin repeated.
“The outer turn is too narrow for carts but wide enough for fire,” Rydric said. “Your second gate has murder-holes, yes, but the left gallery sits lower than the right. A man with nerve and a ladder could make your archers quarrel with their own angles. Your south wall has old repair under new lime. Your men looked at my sword arm before they looked at my eyes, which means they have been told I am dangerous but not why.”
Ortwin studied him for a moment.
Then he said, “Your Grace is welcome to submit recommendations in writing.”
Baudren gave a cough that might once have been laughter.
Rydric smiled.
It was the first smile Alianor had seen on him since Wenen, and it frightened her more than his rage. Her father smiled at walls, at wounds, at storms that had not yet understood they were meant to impress him. He had smiled before Solymer, too, while horses died and men boiled belts for soup.
They entered the inner court.
Durnstain smelled of wet hay, old smoke, iron keys, and boiled cabbage. The court was crowded with soldiers, grooms, servants, two clerks under a patched awning, three dogs, a priest holding his cloak above the mud, and a boy trying desperately to keep an ink-horn from freezing against his palm. A cart of firewood stood by the well. Beside it lay two wrapped bodies under coarse cloth, not theirs, perhaps castle dead, perhaps poor men awaiting a prayer when someone of rank stopped occupying the chaplain’s time.
At the far stair, a woman waited.
She wore dark green wool lined with squirrel, a white veil pinned under her chin, and a girdle heavy enough to declare that her keys were not decoration. She was past youth but not softened by it. Her eyes moved first to Rydric, then to Alianor, then to Sivelle, and only afterward to Zeid.
Captain Ortwin dismounted and bowed with professional depth. “Dame Hedwig of Falkenried. The ladies of the Aldren house.”
Dame Hedwig inclined her head. “Highness.”
Alianor remained mounted.
A groom came for her bridle. She let him take it. Another man reached to help her down. Sivelle shifted in her saddle, almost imperceptibly.
Alianor looked at the man’s hand until he removed it.
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She dismounted alone, landing in mud that swallowed the edge of her boot. Her bound hands made the movement awkward. No one laughed. That was wise of them.
Dame Hedwig noticed the rope.
“Captain.”
Ortwin followed her gaze. “Road precaution.”
“For a princess?”
“For a person under protective custody.”
Dame Hedwig’s mouth tightened at the phrase, not from pity but from irritation at untidy categories. “In my chamber she is not called that.”
“In my yard she is.”
“Then let us remove her from your yard.”
Ortwin drew a knife and cut the rope himself. He did not apologize. Alianor flexed her fingers once. Blood returned in little sparks of pain.
Dame Hedwig turned to Sivelle. “And you are?”
“Sivelle of Tarsen, lady attendant to Her Highness.”
“High-born?”
“Low enough to carry linen, high enough to know when it is counted.”
One corner of Dame Hedwig’s mouth moved.
“Good,” she said. “You will keep your lady from saying more than is useful.”
“I have made it my vocation,” Sivelle replied.
Alianor glanced at her. Sivelle looked ahead.
A clerk stepped forward with a board, reed pen, and a strip of parchment already ruled into columns. His cheeks were raw with cold. His fingers were inked at the nails.
Dame Hedwig had seen enough. “Highness,” she said to Alianor, “come out of the weather.”
“Where is my father taken?”
“To the royal chamber in the west tower.”
“Royal?”
“It has a chair with arms.”
Rydric turned. “Does it have wine?”
Dame Hedwig looked at him properly for the first time. “It has wine appropriate to your circumstances.”
“Then I am badly imprisoned already.”
Baudren muttered, “He measures kingdoms by the cellar.”
“And friends by how they complain of it,” Rydric said.
Alianor stepped toward him, but Ortwin’s men closed without quite touching her.
Rydric saw. The humor went from him.
“Alianor.”
She stopped.
His eyes moved over her: wet cloak, freed hands, bloodless face, the sword she no longer had. He wanted to say something fatherly, and because he was Rydric Aldren, who had stormed walls more easily than rooms, he found command first.
“Do not quarrel for sport.”
“I never quarrel for sport.”
Baudren closed his eyes briefly.
Rydric’s mouth bent. “Do not quarrel for exercise, then.”
Dame Hedwig touched Alianor’s sleeve with two fingers, more signal than guidance. “Highness.”
Alianor went.
The women’s chamber lay above the inner hall, reached by a stair that turned sharply enough to make flight difficult in skirts. Sivelle followed one pace behind Alianor, close enough to speak if needed, far enough to satisfy anyone measuring propriety.
The chamber had a bed curtained in faded blue, a second pallet near the hearth, a chest, a kneeling desk, two stools, a shuttered window, and a wall hanging of Saint Albaric driving devils from a vineyard. The devils looked more cheerful than the saint.
A brazier glowed. On a table stood bread, watered wine, cheese, dried pears, and a covered bowl from which rose the smell of onions boiled beyond hope.
“Your honourable lodging,” Dame Hedwig said.
“A cage with a better noun.”
Dame Hedwig removed her gloves finger by finger. “Words matter, Highness. If this were a cage, men might enter as gaolers. Because it is honourable lodging, they must ask me first.”
That silenced Alianor for the length of one breath.
“You will have chapel under watch,” Dame Hedwig continued. “Letters may be written and will be read. Food is taken in this chamber unless summoned. You may request thread, linen, devotional books, and warmed water within reason. You may not approach the outer stair. You may not speak with soldiers except through me or my steward. Your maid may attend you.”
“I am not her maid,” Sivelle said.
Dame Hedwig regarded her.
Sivelle lowered her eyes by exactly the amount courtesy required. “I am her attendant.”
“Then attend well. In this castle, carelessness becomes testimony.”
Alianor turned toward the window. Through a crack in the shutter she could see the yard below: Zeid being helped from his horse despite refusing help; Rafiq being held back by a man with a spear haft across his path; Khalaf still writing; Nasir speaking softly to Ortwin; her father walking toward the west tower as if captivity were a hall in which he disliked the decoration.
A servant came in with a basin. Another brought blankets. Neither met Alianor’s eyes.
“Will the eastern prince have a fire?” Alianor asked.
Dame Hedwig paused at the door.
“That is outside my chamber.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the first answer one gives in a castle.”
“And the second?”
“The second depends on who is asking, who is listening, and who pays for wood.”
Sivelle said, “We will need more wood.”
Alianor looked at her.
Sivelle said blandly, “Her Highness prays better when unfrozen.”
Dame Hedwig gave the smallest nod. “I will send what is reasonable.”
When the door closed, the lock turned, well kept and almost gentle.
Alianor stood very still.
Sivelle crossed to the table, lifted the bread, turned it over, inspected the bottom, then broke it in two.
“What are you doing?” Alianor asked.
“Seeing whether noble captivity improves baking.”
“And?”
“It does not. But there are no weevils, which is a theological advancement.”
Alianor did not laugh.
Sivelle put the bread down. Her face changed, the public attendant falling away by one veil’s thickness. “Your hands.”
“They are only scraped.”
“Then let me see how only.”
“No.”
“Highness.”
“No.”
Sivelle waited.
Outside, somewhere below, a man shouted. A horse answered with a kick against boards. The castle bells rang again, smaller this time, from the chapel turret. Alianor looked at the shutter, at the saint and his painted devils, at the door behind which Dame Hedwig’s courtesy had become iron.
At last she held out her hands.
Sivelle took them carefully.
The rope had left red bands around both wrists. The skin was broken where wet hemp had shifted during the climb. Sivelle poured water from the ewer. It was lukewarm and smelled faintly of metal. She cleaned the scrapes with the corner of a cloth, neither gentle nor rough.
“You should eat,” Sivelle said.
“You should stop telling me what to do.”
“I began too long ago. Habit is a lesser law, but a stubborn one.”
That did make Alianor look at her.
Sivelle’s fingers moved over Alianor’s wrist, and memory opened into a warmer, darker room smelling of beeswax, crushed lavender, and grief no one had dared name aloud.