POV: Seraphina
She was awake at first light. The camp was already moving. She heard a boot in the grass at her tent's east face, then a second boot, then iron shifting at someone's hip. Yona was up. The horses were being walked. Somewhere a man asked another man for water.
She sat up. The blanket slid to her waist. She put her good hand to her arm above the bandage and tested the muscle. The muscle held. The wound under the linen was where it had been: closed, sore, holding. Three days. She had agreed.
The cold under her breastbone was where it had been the night before. She left it.
She dressed left-handed, careful with the right. Yona was outside with the bedroll rolled and the chest stowed against a supply wagon. She handed Seraphina a tin cup of water she had kept warm in both hands. Seraphina drank and gave it back.
The camp came apart around them in the order Thalion had set down. She watched the third wagon take Corwin's medical case in among the rope and hide. The labeling was in Corwin's hand. She knew without asking.
She heard Thalion's voice at the head of the line. The rhythm of it more than the words. She looked once. He was in his work kit and his work face, the crown prince of the empire at the head of his column, giving orders to Brennan. He looked nothing like the man who had come to her at her fire the night before and closed his hand around hers with the cub asleep between them. She knew he was both. She looked away.
Liora had the horse ready and gave her the small nod that meant the night had been quiet. Seraphina mounted. The arm pulled. The column shaped itself behind her. Eighteen paladins of Xanna-Aulle with Gavrel at the head. The command line behind them. Her place after that. Supply wagons leading.
The first wagon rolled. The column began to move.
Liora rode at her left flank. The horse went at a walk. The road north climbed.
POV: Thalion
He had slept thin and he knew it. He rode through it. He had ridden through worse.
The column was two hundred yards behind him in a strung line. One look told him: clean. Paladins two-by-two. Brennan to his left. Garrtio six lengths back. He could find any of his men by the angle of a shoulder.
He had decided last night to read every face in the column before this march was done. Brennan would catch him at it and let him watch without asking why.
Her hand closing around his last night was still with him. The cub had been between them. For two breaths the three of them had looked like a family. He had ridden out with the picture intact. The bigger truth was in his chest. He would carry it.
He thought, briefly, about the archivist. His rider had carried a short order yesterday: come fast, three days at most. Lucien would come tonight or tomorrow.
Corwin came up at the second hour of the march and fell in at Thalion's right. He held his voice. Thalion knew the silence. Corwin used it when he was waiting for the right place to set a hard thing down.
The bandage at the arm. The cold under her breastbone. The three days.
Thalion had expected a medical update. He had decided on the road to set down what he was carrying first.
"Ride with me," he said.
He turned his horse a length off the road. Corwin read the turn and matched it without a word. They rode at a walk on the verge, far enough out that their voices would not carry back to the line.
He kept his eyes on the road. Corwin was at his right.
"I am a rival now."
Corwin was quiet a long count.
"It is about time," Corwin said.
Corwin's voice carried something Thalion had not heard from him before. Thalion waited.
"Thalion," Corwin said, "there is a thing I have been waiting to tell you."
Thalion turned to look at him. Corwin was looking back. Same face Thalion had known since they were boys. Clean lines at the eyes. Steady mouth. Grey at the temple. Same face. A different man behind it.
"Go on," Thalion said.
"I have served the Empress for six years." Corwin's voice was level. He had been waiting a long time to say it.
"As her physician," Thalion said. He kept the sentence flat, half question and half statement.
"Among other things."
His hand on the reins had closed. The horse felt it and gave him a half-step out of pace. He brought the horse back to the rhythm.
"Among other things."
"I am in this column because you asked me to come, Thalion. You know that. But your mother knew you would ask me. She told me, before you ever rode out, to do something for her while I was here. I have been doing it since I came."
"What."
"You."
Thalion held the word between them. The column kept moving at their backs. A wheel struck something hard down the line. The wood went quiet again. For the next two breaths only the road made sound.
Thalion held the reins steady and kept his face still. His mother had raised him in a court for hours exactly like this one. The training did its work.
"Tell me the plan," he said.
"She thought you would not admit what you felt for her on your own," Corwin said. "Your idea of what a Flamebearer is would not let you. And even past that, you would honor the Warden General longer than he would have asked you to. A year would turn into another year. She did not want that. She told me to push you. She told me to make you choose."
"How."
"By pretending to court her in front of you. I let my hand stay on her wrist a count longer than a physician's hand needed to. I leaned closer to her at the third estate than her bandage required. I rode at her elbow back from the engagement with her blood on my sleeve. I brought her water at the medical tent and stayed beside her cot when there were three other men who could have stayed. I sat too close at the cookfire on nights you could see me sit there.
"To anyone watching, those were a man courting a woman. To her they were the column physician doing column work. She reads me as a friend, Thalion. She has from the first day. If I had ever meant any of it, she would have read me the same way and I would have lost. I knew that going in.
"Your mother said push you to your limits and make you react. I did. The treatment of her body has been honest. The three days are my call. The hands are mine. But the appearance was the part your mother told me to play. She used the room you had already put me in."
Thalion rode three lengths in silence.
He was not angry. He had been watching Corwin near her for months and had taken every hand and every closeness as the work of a column physician. Now he saw what it had been. Recognition came first. Anger could come later or not at all.
His body settled the way it always settled once an order was clear.
"Has the lady been told."
"No. The lady does not know. The lady will not know from me. That is your decision."
"Did you ever mean any of it. The hand at her wrist. The closeness."
"No. Not for an hour. She is not for me. She has never been for me. The play was for you. What is between her and me was set the day you sent for me and I came to her fever. It has not moved since."
"And my mother."
"Empress Eleanor will be glad of what comes next. She has waited a long time."
Thalion let one breath go.
He had decided to step toward Seraphina before he came to her fire last night. Every hour since had confirmed it. What his mother had done did not undo any of those hours.
His choice held.
But Seraphina had still been used as the pressure point. He did not like that. He would not pretend he did.
His mother had set the stage. He had been moving toward her on his own. He would have walked to her either way.
He turned in the saddle and looked at Corwin. Corwin rode even, hands easy.
"Thank you for telling me," Thalion said.
Corwin inclined his head.
"You will not speak of this to her."
"I will not."
"And the medical work continues as it has."
"As it has."
Thalion held the reins a count. Then he stopped the horse on the verge and dismounted in one motion. Corwin followed him down. They stood between the horses and the road. They looked at each other a count.
Then Thalion crossed the space and put both hands on Corwin's shoulders. He gripped him hard, pulled him in close, gave him a hard tap at the back, and stepped back with his hands still on his shoulders. He laughed before he had decided to.
"You old bastard," he said.
Corwin smiled slowly. He had been holding the smile back all morning. The older weight in his face went away. Thalion saw his friend again.
"Bastard at your service for six years, Thalion," Corwin said. "It is in the contract."
Thalion gripped his shoulders once more.
"There have been women," he said. "Only one has held my eye."
"No. Only her." Corwin met his eye. "The court has put women in your path since you were sixteen and you have moved past them politely. You danced when the dance was required. You looked through them otherwise. You never noticed they were trying to be looked at."
"And her."
"You have been seeing her since the day she walked into your mother's chambers. You saw her then with the Warden General at her side and you saw her again when she was asking the court to free her from Alaric. The lady is the only woman whose face you have ever actually held."
Thalion let one breath go. He could feel the laugh still in him.
"Tell me what you think," he said. "As you. Not as my mother's hand. As the man who has been beside me since we were boys."
Corwin's voice was steady.
"I am for you, Thalion. Since we were boys. I am also for her. I am for the two of you together. Your mother was wrong about one thing. You would have come to this on your own in a year or two. But she was right you would have waited too long. I have watched the two of you in the same rooms since she first walked into your mother's chambers. You stop measuring the exits when she is near. She pushes back and you do not punish her for it. I have not seen that anywhere else. If I had the right to wish anything for you, this would be it."
"You have the right."
"Then I wish it, Thalion."
Thalion squeezed his shoulders once more and let go. He stepped back. He was still warm from the laugh.
"Thank you for telling me," he said. "For the six years. And the hands."
"Thalion."
They mounted. Thalion turned his horse back toward the column. Corwin followed him in.
He kept his eyes on the road. He kept his hands on the reins. He knew where she was without looking.
His mother would be glad. He kept the line.
POV: Seraphina
The road bent at the fourth hour and the bend climbed.
She felt the climb in her arm first and her thighs second. The angle pulled the bandage tight against the bruise. The bruise hurt but she rode through it. The horse kept its pace. Liora at her left watched the high ground above them.
At the top of the rise the road opened to a height.
The land fell away to the north and west. The slope dropped slowly at first, then ran down toward a valley maybe half a mile below. There had been an estate down there once. Four buildings still stood, and a low manor with a pale tile roof half caved in at the southwest corner. The fields around the buildings were the wrong color. They were a dim yellow that had nothing to do with grain. One thin grey line of smoke rose from a single hearth and bent sideways at no wind she could feel on her own cheek. A few figures moved between the buildings. They moved slow. They had decided to stay.
She knew what she was looking at. She had seen it before at the third estate and at the fifth. The ley line under that ground was failing. The gold of the estate and the blood of the estate had run apart too long. The land could not feed them. It could barely hold them.
She watched the valley until she was sure.
Thalion came up to the rim on her other side. He stopped his horse a length away. He had been at the head of the line all morning.
"The fields are wrong," he said. His voice was the command voice.
"They will be worse by tomorrow," she said. "The smoke is bending without wind. The well below the manor will be next."
"How long."
"Two days. Maybe three."
"We will hold here," he said. "We will hold on this height until Lucien comes. He should be here tonight or tomorrow."
She gave him a small nod.
He looked at her one count longer than the work required. The look had something of last night in it, even with the work voice on him. She let him have the count. He turned his horse and the order went down the line.
Make camp on the height.
The column folded itself off the road and onto the level ground at the rim. Camp went up around her in the order it always went up.
She dismounted. The arm pulled hard and she let it through her. She walked her horse to the picket line. Yona took the bridle. Seraphina rubbed the horse's neck once and turned for her tent.
She would look down at the valley tomorrow.
POV: Thalion
The camp went up clean. Gavrel had the perimeter. Brennan had the inner ring. Seraphina's tent stood at the center where Liora had chosen the ground.
Brennan came to him at dusk. The light over the valley had gone from blue to grey to the grey before full dark.
"My lord."
"Tell me."
"Eighteen faces walked. None of them new. None of them off. Two I want to walk again at first watch."
"Walk them."
"My lord."
Brennan went.
Thalion stood at the rim of the camp and watched the light go out of the sky over the valley. The wrong-colored fields went grey first and then black. The valley went quiet.
What Corwin had told him that morning was still in his chest. He had worked through the move and the camp without letting himself look at it directly. The hour's work was done now.
He looked for the anger he expected to find. None came. Something in him might have been relief. He put it down.
A perimeter rider came up the slope from the lower watch and gave Brennan a fast word. Brennan came to him at the rim.
"My lord. Rider says the archivist is an hour out. He has imperial colors at his guard."
"How many guard."
"Twenty-five. The captain at the lower watch named them Queen's Guard."
Thalion turned. His mother's guard. He had been expecting six out of imperial caution. Twenty-five came out of his mother's hand. The hand was visible now in the road dust below the height. He kept his face the way the camp needed it.
"Bring him to the command tent when he comes in. Receive the guard at the inner ring. Twenty will stay with the column at the back of the camp. Five will escort him back to the capital when his work here is done."
"My lord."
Brennan went down the slope.
Thalion stood at the rim a count longer than the order required. The valley was black below him now. He thought of Seraphina at the small fire with the cub at her hip.
Seraphina did not know what Lucien was bringing. Thalion did.
He turned from the rim and went down into the camp.