Chapter 341: Your Majesties. Welcome to Ashford

There was the market square, with its pump and its cobbles. There was the inn, with its squat roof and its crooked sign, and the baker’s, with its bright red door. And beyond them, at the very edge of the village, where the lane ran out into a goat track, there was a small low cottage with a thatched roof and a thin thread of smoke rising from its chimney.

Her mother’s.

"Oh," she whispered.

Her eyes were burning. She could not seem to stop. The tears ran down her face without a sound, and she did not wipe them. She sat there on the black horse, in the last of the light, with her mother’s letter against her heart and her mother’s smoke rising in the evening air, and she looked.

"It’s so small," she said.

"It is lovely," said Draeven.

"I’d forgotten."

"You were only gone two months."

"It feels like years."

"I know."

She wiped her face at last, with the back of her wrist.

"It’s too quiet," said Kaelen.

She turned.

He was sitting very still in the saddle, with his head lifted, like a hound scenting the wind. The cap had slipped from his hair. His eyes were narrowed. All the playfulness had gone out of his face, and in its place was a hard, sharp, silent attention.

"What do you mean?"

"Listen."

She listened.

There was no sound.

It took her a moment to understand. It was not silence, exactly. The wind stirred in the trees. A single bird was calling, far off. But the village below was utterly still. There was no smoke from the other chimneys. There were no lights in the windows. There were no children running in the lane, no dogs barking, no voices calling in the dusk.

It was a village holding its breath.

"It’s dinner time," she whispered. "There should be.....there are always...."

"I know."

"Where is everyone?"

"Indoors," said Draeven. His voice was very quiet. "Behind their shutters. Waiting."

"For what?"

He did not answer.

He did not need to. She saw it, a moment later, with a slow, cold drop of her stomach. A single figure, down in the lane, between the church and the inn. Small as a pin. Very still.

A man.

He wore a long dark coat, with a high collar. His hands were folded in front of him. He stood in the exact center of the lane, on the packed brown earth, with his face turned up toward the ridge, as though he had been standing there for hours.

As though he had known precisely where they would appear.

"Draeven," said Morgana.

"I see him."

"Who is that?"

"I do not know."

"He’s looking at us."

"Yes."

"How does he know?"

"I do not know that, either."

The man in the lane did not move.

He stood perfectly still, with his hands folded, and his face lifted. Even at that distance, she could feel his gaze, like a cold finger drawn slowly down her spine. She felt Shadowmere tremble under her. She felt the dragons in her chest, all three of them, stir and rise and turn their great heads toward the valley, and growl.

And then, very slowly, the man in the lane lifted one hand.

He did not wave. It was a small, precise, unhurried gesture. He raised two fingers to the brim of his hat, and he bowed.

It was a courtesy.

It was the courtesy of a host welcoming a guest.

"Well," said Kaelen softly. "That’s rude."

The air around him had gone arctic. Frost spread across his saddle, and across his horse’s mane, and up the leather of his reins in a hard bright rime. His eyes burned white. His lip curled back from his teeth.

"Kaelen," said Draeven.

"I know."

"Not yet."

"I know."

"We go in carefully."

"Yes."

"We go in together."

"Obviously."

"And we do not touch the man in the lane until I say."

"Fine."

Draeven turned.

He looked at her, in the last of the light. His face was calm. It was the calm she had seen in the council hall, and in the study, and in the cavern. His eyes were bright gold, and level, and utterly without fear.

"Morgana," he said. "Are you ready?"

She drew a long breath.

"No," she said.

"No?"

"But I’m going anyway."

He smiled.

It was brief, and fierce, and entirely without humor. It lit his whole face like a blade drawn from its sheath.

"Then so am I," said Draeven.

They rode down into the valley, three abreast, with the last light fading behind them and the dark rising, slow and blue, from the fields.

***

The lane was exactly as she remembered it, and that was the worst part.

The ruts were the same. The crooked fence by the church, with its one broken rail. The elder bush at the corner that had never once given fruit. Her feet knew every stone of it. Her heart knew every shadow. She rode down between the dark little houses with her back straight and her hands tight on the reins, and every shuttered window was a closed eye.

Nobody came out.

Nobody called a greeting. No dog barked. No child ran to the gate to stare at the three strangers on horseback. The only sound was the clip of their hooves on the packed earth, loud as drumbeats in the dusk, and the faint cold creak of Kaelen’s saddle leather as he turned his head, slowly, from side to side.

"They’re watching," he murmured.

"I know."

"Every house. I can feel them. Faces at the cracks."

"They’re afraid," said Morgana.

"Of us?"

"Of whoever’s waiting."

The man in the dark coat did not move as they came on.

He stood in the center of the lane, between the church and the inn, with his hat held against his chest in both hands. He was not young and not old. His face was long, and smooth, and entirely forgettable. His coat was good, and plain, and dark as a rook’s wing. He might have been a clerk. He might have been an undertaker. When they reined in, ten paces from him, he bowed from the waist, with a precision so exact it was almost an insult.

"Lady Morgana," he said. "Your Majesties. Welcome to Ashford."