Chapter 147: The Outer Court

The outer court of the Glass Wing was a square of white gravel with a broken fountain in the middle, and Coin paid twelve men to walk round it.

Nil walked it with a man called Kesh. Kesh had a bronze band on his shoulder, a dent in his helm he was proud of, and a class that kept him awake.

"Four years without sleep," he said on their first lap. "Not one night. The Bureau calls it Wakeful. My mother calls it a curse, because I used to visit her at three in the morning." He kicked a stone into the dry basin. "So I talk. You’ll get used to it. Or you’ll ask for another partner. Nobody gets another partner. Coin doesn’t care."

Nil nodded.

"That’s good. A man who nods. My last partner argued with everything." Kesh lowered his voice. "He’s in the Undervault now."

’Coin’s roster has a bottom, and Kesh wants me to know where it is.’

The inner door stood at the far end of the court, white stone under a glass arch. Two Lamp Guard knights held it, in white over their mail, with silver bands and brass lanterns on chains at their belts. They did not walk. They did not look at the gravel. The gravel belonged to Coin.

"Knights get the door and the bride," Kesh said. "We get the pigeons. And the princes, when they come to look at her." He grinned. "That’s the fun part."

On the third lap the inner door opened, and Vivienne Ashgrave came out into the court.

She wore a grey riding coat with a bronze band sewn on the left shoulder, and her silver hair was tied back with a plain black ribbon, the kind a girl uses when she has stopped caring who looks at her hair. Luna padded at her heel, white and huge, and the pigeons left the fountain all at once.

She walked to the broken basin and sat on its rim with a book, and she did not open it. Her grey eyes went round the court once, over the knights, over the gate, over twelve grey and bronze swords who were all pretending to look at gravel.

"She comes out every morning," Kesh whispered. "Never turns a page. Counts us, I think."

There was a thin chain at her collar, running down under the coat.

’The key. Ten paces away, on her neck. And everything that hunts it will come to her first.’

Aren’s hands closed inside his gauntlets.

’Take the helm off. Say your name.’ He kept walking. ’And she hears my voice in this court, in front of two Church knights. Hell no.’

Luna lifted her nose as they passed. She looked at Kesh, and sneezed. She did not look at Nil at all.

"She does that to me every day," Kesh said, hurt.

The gate bell rang before the next lap.

The man at the gate did not wait for the clerk. He came across the gravel in riding boots, a head taller than anyone in the court, with black hair tied back and a white scar down his jaw. The gold band on his left shoulder caught the sun. Two Oros men in brown coats walked behind him and stopped at the gate, where they could see everything.

[Unknown. Rank A. Hostility: 0%.]

Every hired sword in the court found something interesting on the ground.

"Varek," Kesh breathed. "Oros. Don’t look at the scar."

Varek stopped three paces from the fountain and looked down at her.

"Rank D," he said. "I looked it up again, in case the Treasurer had made a mistake. He hadn’t."

"Good morning, Your Highness," Vivienne said. "You came by the gate."

Kesh made a small noise beside Nil. "That’s about the balcony," he whispered. "He walked into her rooms through it, the night she arrived. Forty feet up. The knights still talk about it."

’He climbed forty feet to see if a girl was weak. Some men buy flowers.’

"I came to see what I’m buying," Varek said. "My grandfather was promised an S-class bride. They sent one at Rank D. If I put my name on a D, I want to know she can stand up when I lean on her."

Vivienne closed the book on her knee and stood.

"Then don’t lean. Test me. Here, on the gravel. First touch on the band. You touch my bronze, or I touch your gold."

The court went quiet. Even Kesh stopped talking.

Varek’s mouth moved at one corner. "And when I touch it?"

"Then you have touched it first."

"Not enough." He tapped his gold band. "If I win, you wear my colors to the Treasurer’s reading. The whole court sees whose you are before spring."

She did not blink. "And if I win, you use the door. Like other people. You knock, and you wait, and my maid tells you whether I’m in."

One of the Oros men at the gate laughed, and stopped when Varek looked round.

"Done," Varek said. "Pick your spot, little D."

’She set the terms before he could set them for her.’ Aren kept his helm turned to the gate, where hired swords were supposed to look, and his eyes on her. ’And he took them because he can’t lose. Rank A against Rank D, with no blade drawn. Everybody in this court can do that sum.’

He did a different sum.

’If she touches gold, she grows. My Primary grows, my wheel turns.’

’If she loses, she walks into the Treasurer’s hall in Oros brown, and the balcony never gets a lock.’

’Nobody in this court will help her. So I will.’

Vivienne stepped back onto open gravel, away from the fountain. Luna lay down by the basin without being told.

Varek did not draw. He rolled his shoulders and came forward at a walk, open-handed, his weight easy. He was holding back, and he was not hiding it. He still meant to win.

She opened her right hand, and a crescent of white light rose off her palm, no longer than a sickle.

’Small,’ Aren noticed. ’But small is fast, if she can hold it.’

She threw the first one wide, at his right side. He leaned and let it go past. She threw the second low, at his knee, and he stepped over it without looking down.

"That’s two," Varek said. "Are you counting, or am I?"

She did not answer. She moved left, and he moved with her, and Aren saw what she was doing. Each crescent had made him step, and each step had gone where she wanted. Now the broken fountain was at his back, and the open gravel was in front of her.

’She’s walking him. A Rank A, and she’s walking him like a horse on a lead.’

Varek saw it too. He laughed, short and pleased, and stopped holding back quite so much.

He came in fast. His right foot hit the gravel and his hand went out for her shoulder, and Aren could only see the whole move after it finished: the lead foot planting, the weight going onto it, the long arm reaching past her crescent. She was too slow.

’Two Church knights at the door, and the Church’s sand in my Deep Purse since dawn, because no lock in Aurem is safer. But Reduce to Zero leaves nothing on the stones for a lantern to find. One second.’

’Now.’

’Reduce to Zero.’

[Reduce to Zero: the grip of the gravel under Varek’s lead foot. Uses today: 1/2.]

Varek’s boot slid a hand’s width.

It was nothing. A big man on loose stones, a step that went a little long. His hand closed on air a finger short of her band, and in that one second Vivienne turned inside his reach, and her small crescent touched the gold on his left shoulder with a clear, thin sound.

[Cost: the Host’s grip on the ground. 1 second.]

Nil had stopped mid-lap to watch, his weight on one heel. His feet left the gravel.

The dry white stones went out from under his boots, and the next thing Aren knew he was sitting on the ground in full plate, with a noise like a dropped cupboard.

Kesh looked down at him. Then he laughed until he had to hold his own knees.

"Standing still!" he wheezed. "He fell over standing still! Four years I’ve been awake, and I’ve never seen that."

[Investment recorded.]

[Type: Hidden aid. Anchor unaware.]

[Anchor progressed: Vivienne Ashgrave (Primary). Rank D: Blood. Progress: 52% → 61%.]

’Nine points in one breath. She pushed her stage to make that turn, with a prince’s hand coming at her.’

[Mirror Return triggered.]

The little wheel spun behind his eyes, slowed, and stopped in the wide band of x10.

[Result: x10.]

[Return: the Anchor’s progress, x10.]

[Agility: 1,880 → 1,960.]

It went into his legs. He sat on the gravel and enjoyed it, because there was nothing else to do with a dignity that was already on the ground.

In the middle of the court, Varek looked at the spot on his shoulder where the crescent had touched. Then he looked at his boot.

"Gallant," someone murmured by the inner door. "He let her have it."

"Unlucky," said one of the Oros men at the gate, more quietly.

Varek threw his head back and laughed, loud enough to send the pigeons up again. Then he bowed to her, deep and slow, the full court bow, with one hand on his heart.

"The door, then," he said. "I’ll knock." He straightened, and smiled at her with all his teeth. "Enjoy it, little D. Doors don’t last."

He walked back across the gravel, and his two men fell in behind him, and the gate closed on all three of them.

Vivienne stood where she was until the gate was shut. Her right hand was shaking, and she put it in her coat pocket so that nobody would see it.

Then she looked down at the gravel where his boot had slid.

It was dry. Every stone in the court was dry.

Her eyes came up and went slowly along the line of hired swords. Kesh, still laughing, with the dent in his helm. A grey suit of plate with no face, getting up off the ground one plate at a time.

She looked at it for one breath. Then she picked up her book from the rim of the fountain, called Luna with two fingers, and went back in through the inner door. She said nothing to anyone.

Kesh had finally stopped laughing. He wiped his eyes and slapped Nil on the back plate.

"Don’t worry about it, friend. Gravel’s tricky." He started walking again. "I’ll tell everyone it was a pigeon."