Kahldar stabled Ipsen and paused at the top of the inner bailey stairs. Wyvernsvow's slate walls closed around him like a perfectly fit cuirass. He drew strength from its stillness. He could not let his body's impious fascination with Lady Selida persist. Long experience had taught him there was only one way to project the order his men and masters required of him: to become it, bone, blood, and sinew. Thoughts, too. Thoughts most of all.

Knight Commander Aegison stood outside the guardhouse door, frowning down at the chaos in the outer courtyard.

"Fifteen more refugees," Kahldar reported. "A combination of fishermen and farmers from a nearby town. I found them on the road about three hours away. Bandits trailed them. Nothing serious."

Ser Aegison was a Dawnlander like himself, but of an older, harder generation. He stood with the leashed aggression of the mountains. Silver streaked his black hair. He had come to the Tidelands in the late Lord Lydris Magnus's retinue, and helped him win this swath of coast two decades ago. When Lord Magnus met his sudden end, leaving behind his bride and whippet heir, King Harald had awarded the keep's stewardship to Ser Aegison in a letter signed by his own hand.

Young Lord Lydris Magnus was now seven, energetic and opinionated. He had discovered the treasure under the keep all by himself, in the early summer. Kahldar, who trained the boy daily, did not envy Ser Aegison the remaining ten years to the boy's majority.

"And of these fifteen additional refugees, how many do you suppose are the Fox's secret sympathizers?"

Kahldar said nothing.

Ser Aegison sighed. "Since you've found them, we will find room for them." The Knight Commander did not look up. Kahldar followed his gaze down to the figure in blue and teal robes swirling amidst the refugees. "Lady Selida Coralglass is early. Did she turn up with the bandits?"

Her name sizzled in his ears but was long practiced at holding his expression blank. "She helped us subdue them. She also healed their wounds and sent them on their way."

"You had her heal their wounds."

"We are here to cultivate the Tidelands. Those men may yet redeem themselves."

Ser Aegison snorted. "Likely as not, they will run to the Fox, and we will have to cut them down again when they turn on this castle."

"Can the Fox turn a peasant into a fighting man in a matter of weeks? Even if the peasantry's tall tales prove true and he is a phantasm, whoever he recruits he must still feed."

Ser Aegison's shoulders almost relaxed before Selida's cheerful voice, echoing up from the courtyard, folded the Knight Commander's face back into a grimace.

"I find it suspicious that Aluna's cleric is here three weeks early. Those snake-worshipping lunatics would be just as happy to hand the treasure over to the lords of the coast as they are to dance in the tide at moonrise."

This stirred a memory from the autumn past: Kahldar stood on the battlements as Lady Selida led the devotees of Aluna in the old elven dances. The harvest moon turned the sand to liquid gold. Her robes flattered her figure as they clung to her, translucent in the spray.

"She says her duty is the same as ours: to protect the people."

"Does she, now." Ser Aegison frowned. "You had to haul her away from last year's flogging."

He had. She had fought him all the way to the stables. It was how he had learned, to his perpetual chagrin, that under her robes, she was sleek with muscle and generous in her femininity.

"Showy, public punishments handed down from on high are not the Tidelander way." He thought of how today's villagers had turned immediately on their bandits. "They prefer brief, participatory justice that ends as soon as the perpetrator surrenders."

"Adherence to—or defense of—the old ways of justice is punishable by ten stripes."

Kahldar kept his face wooden. "If you strike their cleric before their eyes, they will riot."

Ser Aegison swore under his breath. "Well, we'll have them all sorted out in a decade or two. For now, Lady Magnus clings to her pagan faith, or I would send Lady Coralglass on her way again."

"On what grounds?"

"At the very least, she's an agent of that medusa in the Grand Temple. Moreover, she's blood of that knave, Coralglass. Ten years and more in his grave, and his dishonorable tactics still wake me in the middle of the night."

In the courtyard below, a pack of squires coalesced around Selida where she tended her horse. Kahldar recognized them: the cohort that had come down from the Dawnlands this spring. Selida returned their raucous greetings with unperturbed grace.

Kahldar forcibly returned his attention to Ser Aegison, who was still speaking: "—Lady Magnus claims Lord Coralglass disowned the cleric before he died but only Exoeras knows the truth of it. Assume she is up to no good."

Kahldar tensed as one of the squires in the courtyard sidled up to Selida. His peers egged him into a lewd proposition. When she coolly deflected and turned aside, he reached for the floating hem of her stole. She snapped it away with a smile. Another young man reached for her backside. The refugees milling around the stable area went silent, watching.

Kahldar turned for the stairs, but Ser Aegison's hand descended on his shoulder, stopping him.

He drew breath to object, but in that moment Selida flowed left of the young man, pivoted on her heel, and used the force of her entire body to slam him face first into the stable wall. Kahldar heard the crack of his nose breaking from across the courtyard.

The pack of young men froze. The refugees in her vicinity settled back, content. Selida's smile did not waver. "Gentlemen. Aluna may smile on passion, but a serpent will still scar the hand that grabs its tail."

"She does not need your help," Ser Aegison said, releasing Kahldar's shoulder. "Quite the opposite. These chthonic medusae are all teeth. If you wish to advance to my station some day, you must watch her, my friend — and watch yourself as well."

"Your pardon," Kahldar said. "Some of our squires seem to have forgotten their vows. I must remind them, and then see to the Young Lord's training."

***

"Is this all the flour you were able to gather this harvest?" Selida finished her prayer and scowled at the larder shelves. Most years, the caves under the keep overflowed with sacks of grain and barrels of fermenting vegetables. Gourds and hardy imported fruit burst from shelves. Dried fish and kelp usually hung so thick from the ceiling that she would have to bend double to pass.

This year, Selida could already see the walls and ceilings peeking out between the meager stores.

Aluna damn the conscription, and double damn the short harvest.

Her prayers had rounded out the bags a little, but nowhere near enough. With the extra burden of the farmers and fishermen sheltering behind Wyvernsvow's walls—she did the arithmetic in her head, and tried to ignore the sick feeling that slithered into her stomach.

"I'm afraid so, Lady Cleric." Dame Pottage, Wyvernsvow's head cook, lowered her voice so her words would be drowned out by the raucous cheers from the keep's bailey. "We're going through 'bout a stone a day." She narrowed her eyes. "I don't suppose you might have some holy insight as to when the siege might start? Or maybe even... break?"

Selida did not flinch. The only way to keep a secret is to forget it even exists. "When these two sides see reason."

Dame Pottage drooped. "So we'll be in for a thin winter, then."

Selida waited for the sounds from the courtyard to abate. Moments after she'd broken the young squire's nose, Ser Kahldar materialized in the stable. Looking past her as if ignoring her would erase her existence, he dragooned all the squires into an impromptu, grueling, public training session.

"It's been at least an hour of this ruckus," Selida said. She resisted the urge to rub her forehead. "Is this display... common?"

Dame Pottage selected a round of cheese to haul back to the kitchen. "Aye, Lady Cleric, and thank Aluna for Sir Kahldar's watchful eye. Misunderstandings happen every year when the young squires first witness our rituals, but having everyone dense packed makes it worse. He's been keeping the freshest miscreants at bay." She paused as another cheer burst from the crowd outside. "If you ask the girls, maybe a little too zealously. They can't seem to get in at him as they'd like." She sighed, and tilted her head. "Based on how it's going, whatever caused this last bout offended his sensibilities something terrible."

Selida could watch Kahdar's spare, graceful style indefinitely, but she had not seen Lady Emmeline Magnus or her son in the courtyard. Usually, the chatelaine was the first to greet her people. Selida had stopped in the warm, herb-hung kitchen for some clue to this mystery and found Dame Pottage fretting as she summed up mouths and the long months ahead of them.

"So you've seen 'em all now, and done the counting yourself," Dame Pottage said over her shoulder as she carried the cheese back into the kitchen. "Do you see why I've been so worried?"

Selida spotted a crack between the mortared kitchen wall and the cave surface. Mouse droppings dotted the floor beside it. Can't have that. She reached into a belt pouch and pinched the bit of clay she kept there. Murmuring under her breath, she teased the impression of a garter snake out of the living rock. It slithered towards the little black hole, coiled in upon itself, and fused back into stone. Then she followed the spare woman back into the keep proper. The air, moistened with stew and bread engulfed her. "I echo your concern. I'm afraid—"

"Lady Selida, Lady Selida, welcome to Wyvernsvow!"

Ah. There they are. Selida turned from the busy hearth towards the high, clear voice. A bright eyed boy—already so tall!—with his mother's golden hair and his father's acorn eyes stood at the top of the kitchen stairs. He reminded Selida of a seal pup, though she would never say so to his face. A porcelain skinned lady drifted in his wake.

"My Lord Lydris, My Lady Magnus." Selida curtseyed. "But one moment." She turned back to Dame Pottage. "I agree that there is not enough in the larders to support this population through the winter. I've extended the stores, but even Aluna's blessings can only amplify the supplies so much. You must enforce three quarters rations, or we will run short of bread by Yulemas."

Dame Pottage threw a glance at Lady Magnus. "Ser Aegison won't like that, milady. How can his men function hungry?"

"I will speak with him," Lady Magnus said.

Dame Pottage curtseyed. "As you say, Milady. And Lady Cleric. Thank ye kindly for your aid."

Selida turned back to Young Lord Lydris, who was dancing from one foot to the other. "Yes my lord?"

The boy seized her hands in his chubby paws. Swordsmanship calluses had just begun to cross his soft skin. In fact, instead of his usual teal tabard, he wore a still-too-large padded gambeson. A practice sword stabbed through his belt. "Ser Kahldar says you routed the bandits by turning all their weapons into snakes. Do you still have them? May I see?"

"I heard you found a treasure under the castle," Selida countered. "Do you still have it? May I see?"

He scowled guilelessly up at her. "Nobody is to see it anymore, not even me. It belongs to the King."

"And I'm afraid those serpents belong to Aluna, and have returned to her already."

His face fell.

She tapped one knuckle on the wooden table. "Serpents sleep inside all things, Lord Lydris, and they show themselves before in our times of need. Perhaps another day."

"Lydris," his mother said, "I must show Lady Selida to her quarters. You must attend your practice. Ser Kahldar will see you out to the bailey and help you wash up afterwards. You may see Lady Selida again in the great hall."

Selida glanced up. The cheers had abated, and Ser Kahldar now stood beyond the doorway, eyes fixed to some middle distance past her shoulder. Stripped of his plate, complexion vivid and mud-spattered, he filled the hallway: somehow even more substantial than he had been on the road two hours before.

"I don't need the help," Lydris groused.

Kahldar's voice, even and unruffled: "All pages clean up between practice and dinner. If you need no help, we will walk together to their barracks, and you may join them in their ablutions."

Lydris turned back to Selida. "Then you must sit at the high table with Mother and myself," he said, managing a charming impression of his father's imperiousness. "We are anxious to hear news of the wider world."

Selida's eyes widened helplessly as she met Lady Emmeline Magnus's black-veiled gaze.

Time to go, my love" Emmeline said. Her voice was tired but Selida could hear the pride in it, propping up the words like an animating force. The lady turned her son towards the door, but hesitated a long second before releasing him.

"He's grown terrifyingly fast," Selida said as footsteps, one set measured, and the other hectic, disappeared down the corridor.

"And I hardly know whether to push him forward or hold him back," Emmeline mused. She shook her head. "But enough of that." She turned, and her famously beautiful face folded into a gracious smile, familiar as a five-summer saddle. All the same, Selida could see that under the black veil, Wyvernsvow's mistress was as wan as her son glowed golden, as if her grief had calcified during her year of mourning, settling into her bones instead of dissolving under tide and time.

Emmeline shook her head to forestall the unspoken questions she read on Selida's face. "Come. I have a surprise for you."

Selida, taken aback, let her friend loop an arm around her elbow and point them both towards the door.