HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Eighteen: The Truce at the Water's Edge

Aurelia had ridden hard on purpose.

Lord Cressin had objected from the first morning. He had a delicate constitution, he said, and a lady of rank did not gallop across half a continent like a courier. But she had wanted to reach Lanternreach before he could write ahead, before anyone could arrange her arrival the way her father arranged everything. She wanted, just once, to walk into a room she hadn't been prepared for.

So she arrived two days early, dust-grey and saddle-sore, with thirty lancers and one deeply offended courtier. The causeway rolled out ahead of her across the lake, a long white road under a lowering sky, and at the far end of it the Mirror City burned with a thousand unlit lanterns waiting for dusk.

Captain Renn let out a low whistle. "I was here once, in the war. It looked different then."

"Different how?"

"Smaller. Quieter. Less like a jewelry box." She shifted in her saddle. "Highness, I'd keep a hand near your dagger. That's a city full of people whose business is knowing things."

"I'm counting on it."

Matriarch Ysolde Vane met them at the gate herself.

She stood alone beneath the arch, in a plain grey gown, without guards or attendants. Behind her the street was packed with silent Foxes, hundreds of them, watching. When Aurelia dismounted, the Matriarch inclined her head, precisely as far as courtesy required.

"Princess Aurelia. You honor my city, and you are early. I confess it pleases me. People who are early are usually people with something on their minds."

"I have a great deal on mine, Matriarch."

"Then we shall find you somewhere quiet to put it down." A small smile. "By the oldest law of the Four Clans, which my people have never broken, you are under truce in Lanternreach. No blade will be drawn against you under this roof. No word spoken in your presence will be repeated outside it without your leave." She raised her right hand, palm out. "I swear it by my seal, my name, and my son's name."

Something moved at the edge of Aurelia's attention, a flicker among the watching Foxes. Somebody had flinched at the last words. She did not turn her head to look.

"I accept it," she said. "And I swear the same in return, for myself and my escort. No blade, and no treachery, so long as I am your guest."

Behind her, Cressin made a small choking noise.

"Highness," he murmured. "Might I suggest that formal oaths are best discussed with the Emperor's counsel..."

"Lord Cressin, I'd like you to meet our host." Aurelia did not take her eyes off Ysolde. "She has just promised that nobody in this city will hurt me. I find it very comforting. I hope you do too."

Ysolde's smile widened, just a fraction.

"What a remarkable young woman," she said to no one in particular. "Come inside, Highness. There is food, and a bath, and a room that I think you will find interesting."

The room was made entirely of glass.

Black glass, polished to a perfect sheen, floor to ceiling. The bed, the washstand, the writing desk, the narrow windows that looked out over the lake, all of it reflected back at her in endless dark panels, so that she stood in a hall of a hundred Aurelias, each one looking as tired and wary as she felt.

She did not like it. She suspected she was not meant to.

Renn checked every corner. She tapped the glass, sniffed the water, inspected the door. At last she grunted. "No tricks, Highness. As far as I can find."

"The trick is the room."

"Aye. It means you're meant to see yourself." Renn's mouth twitched. "Not a bad idea, after the last month."

Aurelia laughed, and was surprised to find that it helped.

They fed her, and she bathed, and she sat on the edge of the glass bed in a borrowed grey nightgown trying to read the dates on her scrap of parchment by lamplight. After an hour she gave up. Her mind would not stay on the page. It kept drifting to the ford, the arrow, the two pickets who had vanished, and a letter in a music box.

If you find the boy, do not trust him.

She did not know what she would say if she found him. She did not even know what he looked like. Hask had described a village boy of seventeen with a mark on his wrist. That was all.

Somewhere past midnight, she gave up trying to sleep.

The palace at night was a labyrinth of reflected lamplight, and she walked it barefoot, with a shawl over her nightgown and Renn's strict advice ringing in her ears. Don't go anywhere alone. But the Captain was snoring in the antechamber, and Cressin had been ushered away to a distant wing with an excess of hospitality, and Aurelia could not breathe in the glass room.

She followed the sound of water.

It led her down a long stair and out through a low arch onto a terrace she had not seen from the road, a narrow stone landing at the island's western edge, below the last of the lanterns. The air was cold and smelled of wet stone. A skin of silver cloud covered the moon. Beyond the landing the lake spread away, black and still, to a horizon she could not see.

A young man stood at the very edge of the stones with his back to her.

He was thin and rather shabby in a Fox servant's grey tunic, with dark untidy hair, and he stood very still with his head bowed and his arms loose at his sides. She could hear him breathing. In, slow. Out, slower. He seemed to be counting.

She should have turned around. She knew that. A man alone at midnight, in a strange city, in the middle of a truce. But something about the way he stood made her stop. It was a posture she had seen before, in her own mirror on the worst nights, the stillness of someone holding on to something that wanted very much to be let go.

She took one step forward, and a flagstone scraped under her foot.

He turned.

He was younger than she had expected, and more tired. His face was all angles in the half-light, his eyes dark and watchful. A cut on his lip had almost healed. He stared at her without moving, and she saw one hand close slowly at his side.

And in that hand, around his wrist, she saw a faint silver thread of light.

It pulsed, once, like a held breath, and went out.

Neither of them spoke.

The water lapped at the stones. High above, a lantern creaked on its chain. Aurelia felt her heart go very quiet and very loud at the same time, and it came to her with perfect clarity that she was standing four paces from the person every soldier in her father's empire was hunting, and that she had not brought a weapon.

"You're him," she said.

"I don't know who you mean."

"You do." Her voice shook, and she steadied it. "You've got a crescent on your left wrist. Hask saw it in a village square, and he rode two days to tell my father. I've been picturing your face for a month."

His eyes did not leave hers. "Then you're her. The Emperor's daughter."

"Yes."

"I thought you'd be taller."

It was so absurd that she almost laughed. "Everyone says that."

"Do they?"

"Only my brother." She swallowed. "I won't call the guards."

"I don't believe you."

"I know." She held up both hands, palms out, the way the Matriarch had at the gate. "I'm unarmed. I'm barefoot. I'm wearing a borrowed nightgown, and I'd guess you could break me in half." A breath. "I'm under a truce sworn by the Matriarch herself. If I shouted, I'd be breaking it. I don't intend to."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to ask you something."

He said nothing. He had not moved, but something in his face had shifted, the way a deer's does when it decides, for a moment, not to bolt.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Kael."

"I'm Aurelia."

"I know."

"Of course you do." She tried a smile. It came out crooked. "Kael. Did your guardian die?"

The question hit him like a slap. His whole body went rigid, and for a heartbeat she thought she had made a terrible mistake.

"I don't know," he said, very low. "They burned the house. I couldn't see."

"My father's soldiers burned it."

"Yes."

"I read the order." Her throat was tight. "It said, spare nothing that serves the hunt. I had it in my hands. I didn't understand how bad it was until I saw what spare nothing means in a village." She took a breath. "I'm not asking you to forgive it. I'm telling you I know."

"You know." He gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "You know a piece of paper."

"I know a gallows I made them take down. I know eleven people at Thornfield who are alive because of it. I know a prisoner called Harl, who told me about the parley, the white banner, the arrow in the mist." She stepped one pace closer. His hand twitched. "I know a woman who was my mother, who wrote a letter that said her husband was lying, and then died. I know all of those things, and I don't know how to carry them. I came here hoping somebody would tell me I was wrong."

For a long time, Kael only looked at her.

The wind moved over the water. Somewhere far below the terraces, a bell rang the hour, thin and faint.

"I'd like to tell you you're wrong," he said at last. "I'd like that very much. It would be easier."

"Yes."

"But my guardian lied to me for seventeen years to keep me alive. And a Bear chieftain took ten punches at my face to prove I wouldn't kill him. And a Fox..." He stopped. "Everyone I've met since the fire has been carrying something heavy. I'm starting to think the whole continent is."

She looked at the silver mark on his wrist. It had not glowed again. But he held his hand a little away from his body, as though it were still warm.

"It reacted when I came," she said.

"I noticed."

"Does it do that for everyone?"

"No." He hesitated, and she had the odd impression of a boy deciding whether to tell the truth. "It never has. Only for rage, and fear. Never for a person."

"Am I frightening you?"

"A little." His mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Mostly I'm trying to decide whether to be afraid of you or of myself."

"I wouldn't blame you for either."

"I'm not sure I'd blame you."

They stood in silence. It should have been awkward. Instead it was strangely, terribly easy, as though they were two people who had been shouting at each other across a very wide river for a long time, and had only now discovered how narrow it was.

"My father told me not to trust you," she said.

"Mine told me I'd be dead by now."

"I think our fathers were wrong."

"About what?"

"I don't know yet." She smiled, a little unsteadily. "But I'd like to find out."

He looked at her, and she saw him decide. It was a very small movement, a slight loosening of the shoulders, the first time he had let his guard drop even an inch. "The Matriarch said you were coming in two days," he said. "I think she wanted us to meet in a room. With cups of tea."

"She'll be disappointed."

"She'll be delighted. I think this is exactly what she planned."

"Then she's cleverer than both our fathers combined." Aurelia drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "Kael. Tomorrow there will be soldiers and servants and a man in a plum coat who's been told to watch me. We won't be able to speak like this again. So let me say one thing now, and you can believe it or not."

"Say it."

"I don't want to hunt you." She said it plainly. "I don't want you hunted. If I can stop it, I will. If I can't, I'll tell you first."

He was silent for so long that she thought he would not answer.

"That's a dangerous promise," he said finally.

"I know."

"Your father would call it treason."

"My father calls a great many things treason." She tilted her head. "I've decided I'm not going to let him decide any more."

Kael looked at her for a long moment. Then he took one step back, toward the shadow of the arch, and she understood that the meeting was over.

"Goodnight, Princess," he said.

"Goodnight, Wolf."

He turned. He had gone five paces up the stair when he stopped, without looking back.

"The glow," he said. "In case you're wondering. It faded when you said you wouldn't call the guards."

Then he was gone, swallowed by the arch and the dark, and Aurelia stood alone on the wet stones with the lake whispering at her feet and her heart still pounding.

She did not notice, until she reached the top of the terrace stairs, that she was not alone.

A figure stood motionless in the shadows of the upper gallery, wrapped in a plum-colored cloak. He had been there for some time. His face was pale in the lantern light, his eyes intent, and in one hand he held a small notebook, open, with a pencil poised above the page.

Lord Cressin did not move.

"Highness," he said pleasantly. "I'm so glad to find you well. I wondered where you had wandered off to."

"I couldn't sleep."

"No. I can see that." His gaze slid past her, down the empty stair, toward the lake. "The air is very fresh by the water. I find it conducive to thought."

She said nothing. Her stomach had turned to ice.

"I shall tell His Majesty that you walk a great deal at night," Cressin went on, writing something small and neat. "He will be so reassured to hear that you are keeping your strength up."

He closed the notebook, bowed, and walked away along the gallery, whistling softly through his teeth.

Aurelia stood where she was until the sound had faded. Then she went back up to the glass room, where a hundred reflections of her own white face stared at her from every wall, and sat down on the edge of the bed and put her hands over her mouth.

I'll tell you first.

She had made her promise less than an hour ago. And the first person she would have to break it to, if she failed, was already writing it down.