Chapter 2 The Leash

Ysolde woke to the sound of water and, for one merciful breath, believed she was home. Hollowmere had stood above a river, and every morning of her life had begun with its distant rush. Then she opened her eyes on a ceiling of black stone, and the night came down on her like a blade. She sat up slowly. The tower room was round and bare, with a narrow bed, a washstand, and a small hearth where someone had lit a fire while she slept. Her mother's silver gown was gone. A plain gray dress lay folded on the chair. The window was a tall slit with no glass, and beyond it the world dropped away into a gorge, a waterfall, and a river the color of pewter. She tried the door. Locked from the outside. She pressed her forehead against the cold wood and let herself shake for exactly ten breaths. Her father's face. The smell of her mother's perfume burning. Tomas's spear-bruised shoulders. Ten breaths, and then she stood straight and washed her face, because grief was a luxury and she was spending it carefully. Two hundred and six, she told herself. Keep them breathing. The knock came at dawn. The woman who entered was thin as a reed, with a ring of keys at her belt and eyes that missed nothing. "I'm Hesper, the housekeeper. You'll come with me." "Where?" "The king's table. Don't speak unless spoken to. It's easier on everyone." "Easier for whom?" Hesper's mouth thinned. "For you," she said, a shade less sharply than before. The dining hall was empty of courtiers. Rhydian Voss sat alone at the head of a long table with a map spread beside his plate and a cup of coffee going cold in his hand. In the pale morning his scar looked like a thread of frost along his jaw. He didn't look up. Ysolde stood where Hesper left her and counted forty heartbeats. "Sit," he said at last, still reading. "There." The chair he meant was at the table's far end, six seats from his. She sat, because her legs ached, and because she would not give him the satisfaction of watching her fall. "You have two hundred and six people in the lower courtyard," Rhydian said. "They're sleeping on straw and eating soldier's rations, and they're wondering whether they'll be sold, executed, or sent to the mines. I haven't decided." Her hands went still in her lap. "I could be generous. Homes, trades, their children kept. Or I could be cruel. I'm told I'm good at it." He said it flatly, without pride. "Which future they get depends on you. You obey, and they live well. You defy me, and they pay for it." She understood then. He hadn't chained her. He'd done something cleverer, tied the chain to everyone she loved and handed her the end. "That's a coward's leash," she said. "It's an effective one." "It's what a man uses on a woman he's afraid of." Something moved behind his eyes, too quick to name. He smiled, slow and cool. "Afraid of a girl in a borrowed dress?" "You wouldn't need the leash otherwise." Every instinct she had told her to look down. She held his gaze instead. A deep sound rolled through the hall, a vibration she felt in her breastbone before she heard it. At the table's head, Rhydian went rigid. The door at the end of the hall swung open, and the enormous black wolf from last night padded in, amber eyes fixed on her. Servants flattened themselves against the walls. Cinder, she thought. She didn't know how she knew his name. Her own wolf, Wynne, rose in her chest, but not to fight. She was curious. Cinder stopped at her chair. He lowered his massive head and breathed in the scent of her wrist, and something in her chest cracked open, because it was the first gentle thing anyone had done since the walls fell. His warm breath stirred her hair. Slowly, deliberately, he lay down across her feet. Silence. Hesper, in the doorway, looked as if she'd seen a ghost. "He doesn't do that," Rhydian said, in an odd, careful voice. "Cinder doesn't lie down for anyone." "Perhaps he's tired." "Perhaps." His jaw worked. For a second he looked less like a king than a man who had found a crack in a wall he'd thought was solid. Then the mask came back. "Eat. You have a long day." It was long. She stood behind his chair through two hours of council, silent as furniture, and she watched. She'd been raised to read a room, and the Blackthorn court was a poor one at hiding things. The captains feared him. The Elders watched him like crows watching a field. And Chancellor Maren Cael, silver-haired and gentle-eyed, finished the king's sentences so smoothly that the room settled each time he spoke. When a scribe spilled ink and a captain raised a hand to strike him, Ysolde said quietly, "He's a boy." Every head turned. Rhydian's eyes met hers for a long, unreadable moment. "Let it go," he said. No one thanked her. She hadn't wanted them to. The summons came after dark. Two guards walked her down a stairwell she hadn't seen, through a cold corridor that smelled of smoke, and out into the ruined gatehouse of Blackthorn's western wall. Rhydian stood alone beside a workbench lit by one lantern, with Cinder at his heel. "Where are we?" "Where your pack's gate was brought," he said. "After the siege, I had the lock taken out." He lifted a cloth. On the bench lay a heavy iron mechanism, scored with fire. "Hollowmere's gates were sealed with a three-key lock. Alpha, heir, and war-chief. I was told that no force on earth could break it." He looked at her. "Nothing broke it, Lady Ysolde. It was opened. With a key." Cold ran through her, because only three keys had ever existed. Her father's was buried with him. The war-chief's belonged to her uncle Corvin. The third... "Mine is around my neck," she said, and her hand flew to her collar. The chain was gone. She remembered the guards stripping her, last night, and the cold place on her throat. Rhydian's expression did not change. He set a small iron key on the bench and turned it so the lantern caught the seal. A silver moon, worn smooth by a girl's thumb. "This was in the lock," he said quietly. "Someone used your key to open your own gate." The room tilted. "I didn't." "I know." He said it so fast it startled her. "If you'd done it, you wouldn't have stood in that hall and asked me who. But the Elders will not know that. When they hear a key bearing the Alpha heir's seal opened the gate, they will say you betrayed your own people, and the law gives them the right to execute you for it." His amber eyes held hers. "Unless I find who stole it first." "You." She laughed, short and shaky. "You want my help." "I want the truth. You want your people alive." He stepped closer, and the lantern threw his shadow across her. "Someone inside Blackthorn handed that key to a man who used it. Someone who wants Hollowmere gone and wants you blamed. We both want that person found, and we both have a great deal to lose if I'm wrong." Cinder pressed against her hip, warm and steady. Ysolde looked down at the small silver moon, and then she looked up at the king who had burned her home. "If I do this," she said, "my people eat at your table. Not straw. Not rations." "Done." "And the women from the cellars. I want my mother found." Something flickered across his face, too quick to read. "Ysolde..." "Found," she repeated. "Or I don't lift a finger." A long breath. "Your mother was not among the women we took." His voice was careful. "I'm sorry. I don't know where she is." The words hit like a fist. Her mother, last seen in the cellars with the other women, hadn't been among them, and the room went very quiet while Ysolde stood perfectly still and refused, refused, to let it show. "Then find that too," she whispered. He studied her for a long moment. When he spoke, it was almost gentle. "I will." He reached down and took the key from the bench. For a heartbeat she thought he would give it back. Instead he slipped it into his coat. "Keep this between us," Rhydian said. "Trust no one in this keep. Not the captains. Not the Elders. Not even the people who seem kindest." Ysolde thought of silver hair and a fatherly voice, and a room that settled every time it spoke. "Especially them," she said slowly. His eyes sharpened. She had just told the king she suspected his closest advisor, and for the first time since the walls fell, Rhydian Voss looked at her not as spoils, but as an equal.