The headmistress had told everyone who saw the battle to keep quiet about what I'd done in it.
Everyone did. In front of the mistresses.
The rest of the time, I was all anyone talked about.
I found that out on my first morning back. The Academy had opened its gates again two days before, with the paths swept and the bells ringing for lessons as though nothing had happened. Naomi had let me go back to the residence on one condition: that I stop proving I could climb stairs by climbing every staircase I saw.
I could stand up now. I'd been reminding myself of that, on and off, for days.
There was a cabbage waiting outside my door when I got there. Of course there was.
The girls went very quiet as I crossed the grounds that morning. Quiet the way a henhouse goes quiet when something walks past it: every one of them watching, none of them making a sound. Then I'd pass, and behind me it would start up again, low and fast.
"—kept going, Tess saw it, his nose was—"
"—past empty, and he just kept—"
"—and the princess said yes, in front of—"
That last one was the loudest. Beside me, Liesel looked straight ahead, very hard.
Then Lady Severine came around the corner of the dining hall, and the whole path fell silent at once.
"Good morning, Lord Fabian," said every girl on it, together.
"Good morning," I said.
Lady Severine bowed to me, exactly as deep as always, and walked on. Not hurrying. She never hurries.
The moment she was past, it started up again behind us.
"They're being very quiet, Fabian," said Liesel.
Not Lord Fabian. Just Fabian, out loud, on a path full of girls. Behind us, the whispering doubled.
"Very," I said.
We came to the middle of the grounds, where all the paths meet. Nobody walked across the garden anymore. They went around it, the long way, the way Wren had before any of us knew why. The lawn was gray ash, raked into a neat square by someone patient, and the four pear trees stood bare at its corners with their branches black against the sky. Someone had left a handful of flowers on the stone bench nobody sits on.
Up on the hill, in the window at the top of the oldest tower, the candles were still burning.
I didn't count them. I already knew.
My pitcher, at least, was full again.
I'd counted it the night before, for the first time since the battle. When I woke up in the gray house there'd been nothing in it at all, not one splash, which seemed fair after ten below. It had filled the way it always does, slowly, over a day. And sometime while I wasn't paying attention, it had grown.
Twenty-two.
I counted twice, because I count everything twice when it matters. Twenty-two. More than twice what Father ever cast in a day.
Then I drained all of it into myself, in my bedroom with the door shut, the way I have every night since Greymark, and waited at the bottom for the headache.
It always comes when the pitcher runs dry. Not a bad one. A dull ache behind the eyes, and the room tilting a little, keeping me company until I fall asleep.
Last night it knocked once, very politely, and went away.
「Mercy of Elysia」. What giving takes from you, she will take back more gently.
I lay there in the dark for a while after that, feeling oddly cheated. Then grateful. Then asleep, which was the best part.
Lady Severine taught general studies now. Nobody had said for how long, and nobody asked.
Lady Amara's desk was still at the front of the classroom, set perfectly straight. Lady Severine didn't sit at it. She taught standing.
Ambrose was already at his desk when I came in, with On the Proper Management of Ditches open in front of him. Again. He looked up, looked at me for exactly one breath, and said:
"Upright."
"Upright," I agreed.
He went back to his book. It was the warmest welcome I'd had all morning, and I'm counting the cabbage.
Lady Severine was halfway through the trade roads when the knock came. She taught them as a list: every road, every distance, every toll. I found I missed the stories.
A palace runner in crimson handed her a folded note at the door. Lady Severine read it once, folded it into exact thirds, and pushed her spectacles up with one finger.
"Lord Fabian. Lord Ambrose." Every head in the room turned. "Her Majesty requests your presence at the palace this afternoon. Together with Lord Benedict Tegan, Lord Cassian Ardane, and House Valcrest."
"This afternoon?" I said. "What about the battle class?"
"Dame Valeria has been informed."
"What did she say?"
"Hm," said Lady Severine.
I felt a candle stir in my chest before I'd even closed my book.
(Fabian.) Naomi. (We've had one too. Wear the good doublet.)
(WE'RE GOING TO THE PALACE AGAIN,) said Marika. (I'm not excited. I'm just saying it loudly.)
(Eat something first,) said Hana. (Palaces never feed anyone.)
The palace entrance hall still had a floor like still water, and I still didn't like walking on it.
One broad staircase goes up from it. Thirty-one steps. I climbed all of them without stopping, and Hana watched every one.
(I'm fine,) I told her.
(I know,) said Hana. (I'm watching anyway.)
Ninety-four, I thought, would be harder. I hadn't tried yet. I knew exactly whose stairs those were, and I was saving them.
The throne hall hadn't changed either: the crimson banners with the gold lioness, the white stone throne at the far end, the court along the walls in silk and steel. The Queen sat in crimson and gold under her slim crown, perfectly upright. Cordelia stood at her right hand in silver half-plate.
We lined up in front of the dais, four young lords with our escorts at our backs: Benedict, big and quiet; Ambrose, with his coat buttoned one hole off; Cassian in black velvet, with Ilse behind him; and me. My sisters stood to one side in navy and silver. Naomi's cape had been mended where the thorns had torn it half away. You could hardly see the seam.
Liesel stood beside me.
"Elisabeth," said the Queen.
"Your Majesty."
"Your place is up here."
Liesel didn't move. "I'm his escort, Your Majesty."
"You're my daughter."
"I'm both." Her chin came up. "I'm standing where I said I'd stand."
A whisper ran along the walls. Behind me, Hana made a small sound.
The Queen looked at her younger daughter for a long moment.
"So I'm told," she said. "Rather loudly."
Liesel went red to the collar. She didn't move.
"Then stay there," said the Queen, and turned to the rest of us. "The Crown has been told what happened at the Royal Academy. By Lady Severine, by Dame Valeria, and by the headmistress, in that order. The Crown does not thank with words alone. Each of you may ask."
She began with Benedict.
"Lord Benedict Tegan. You raised a wall around the wounded, and a cage around a demon. What does House Tegan ask of the Crown?"
Benedict thought about it. You could watch him do it, slowly and all the way through, like a man checking every stone in a wall.
"Nothing, Your Majesty." A pause. "Wall held."
"So I'm told," said the Queen. "The Crown will remember that it did."
Benedict bowed and stepped back. As far as I could tell, it was the longest conversation he'd had all year.
"Lord Ambrose Penhallow. You carried a healing thirty paces through a wall of light. What do you ask?"
"Books," said Ambrose.
"Which books?"
Ambrose looked faintly surprised by the question. "Yours."
The court went very still. Then one corner of the Queen's mouth moved, very slightly.
"The palace library is open to you, Lord Ambrose. All of it."
Ambrose bowed. "Extraordinarily," he said, which I'm fairly sure meant thank you.
Somewhere in that library, I realized, were the Crown's own Records of the Saints of Elysia. I glanced at Ambrose. He was staring at nothing, very hard, the way he looks at a page he's about to turn.
He'd thought of it first. He always does.
"Lord Cassian Ardane."
Cassian stepped forward looking bored, which is how he looks when he's feeling anything at all. Ilse stood behind him, freckled and still.
"You burned the roots under every path in that garden," said the Queen. "I'm told it would have grown back without you. The headmistress's sentences are the headmistress's. But if you asked, I could ask her to consider the rest of your term served."
"No," said Cassian.
The hall went still, the way rooms do when somebody says no to a Queen. Cassian let it sit for exactly long enough to be rude.
"...Your Majesty," he added.
"No?"
"I'll finish raking."
The Queen studied him. "Why?"
For a moment he looked like he wasn't going to answer. Then he shrugged, one shoulder, the velvet catching the light.
"Someone should know where the ground's soft."
"...As you wish," said the Queen.
Ilse's face didn't move. Her shoulders did, a little, as though she'd set something down.
"Marchioness Valcrest."
Naomi stepped forward.
"Your house has been given a great deal this year," said the Queen. "And yet you and your sisters walked into that garden when no one had asked you to."
"Our brother was in it," said Naomi.
"That isn't a request."
"No, Your Majesty."
Marika stepped up beside her. "Your Majesty. If I may—"
"No," said Naomi.
"There's a goat—"
"No."
The Queen looked from one of them to the other. "...A goat?"
"General, Your Majesty," said Marika, with enormous dignity. "General is a principle."
Every noble along the walls turned to look at Naomi. Naomi looked at the Queen.
"That," said the Queen gravely, "seems a matter for the head of your house."
"It is," said Naomi.
Marika's ears went pink to the tips. On the dais, Cordelia had found something extremely interesting on the ceiling.
"Lady Hana."
Hana came forward with a single page held in both hands, the way she carries hot bread. She'd torn it out of her notebook. I had never once seen her tear a page out of a notebook in her life.
"Their names, Your Majesty," she said. Her voice wobbled, and she didn't let it stop her. "The ones who didn't come out of the garden. I wrote them down. I thought someone should. And I thought their families should know that someone did."
The Queen looked at the page in Hana's hands.
Then she did something I'd never seen her do. She stood, came down the steps from the white throne, and took it herself.
"The Crown will write to every one of them," she said. "Today. In my own hand."
Hana curtsied, and cried, and didn't make a sound.
The Queen climbed back to her throne and sat. "Lord Fabian."
I stepped forward. I'd been thinking about this since the runner came. I'd counted it out on the way here, between the floor like water and the thirty-one steps.
"Your Majesty. Can I ask for someone else's?"
"Go on."
"Everyone you've thanked today is a lord," I said. "Or a Valcrest. But most of the people who held that garden weren't." I could feel the whole court listening. I kept going. "The battle class held the line because Dame Valeria told them to. Lady Severine turned the whole Academy around with one sentence. The infirmary mistress sorted the wounded beside my sister for an hour and never stopped. Lord Benedict's escorts carried people behind his wall. Lord Ambrose's carried the water. Wren held me up when I couldn't stand. Ilse got pulled down by a vine, and got up again."
Nobody was whispering now.
"Nobody's going to thank them," I said, "because nobody ever does. Women fight. That's just what happens. Nobody writes it down." I took a breath. "I'd like them thanked. By name."
The Queen was quiet for a moment.
"By name," she said.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Do you know their names, Lord Fabian?"
"Not all of them," I admitted. "But I know how many."
On the dais, Cordelia made a sound that might have been a laugh.
"Of course you do," said the Queen. A clerk at the side of the hall was already writing. "Lady Severine will send the Crown a list. Every name. I expect she'll enjoy it." Then she looked past me. "Wren."
Wren went so straight I heard her armor creak. "Your Majesty."
"The Crown thanks you."
Wren opened her mouth. Closed it. Then, in front of the Queen, the First Princess and half the court of Octavia, she said:
"...It was a scratch, Your Majesty."
One corner of the Queen's mouth moved again. "Ilse of House Ardane."
Ilse's freckled face didn't move at all. Her eyes did. They went very bright, and she stared straight ahead, hard, the way you do when you learned a long time ago that moving doesn't help.
"The Crown thanks you."
"...Your Majesty."
Beside me, so quietly that I don't think anyone but Liesel and I heard it, Wren hummed. Four notes.
When it was over and the court had broken up into the murmur courts make, the Queen said, without raising her voice, "Lord Fabian. Walk with me."
Liesel moved. Cordelia's hand landed on her shoulder.
"Stay."
"I'm his escort."
"Wren's his escort." Cordelia glanced at Wren, who had already fallen in behind me. "You're his—" She stopped. "...Stay."
Liesel shut her mouth, and stayed.
The Queen led me through a side door, down a corridor and across the gold ballroom, empty and enormous in the afternoon light, to the tall glass doors at the far end. Wren stopped at the doors. The Queen and I went out onto the balcony.
It was the same balcony, I worked out later, where she'd asked Naomi for my hand.
For a while she didn't say anything. She rested her hands on the balustrade and looked out over Sanctara, white ring below white ring, all the way down to the markets.
"Lady Severine's report on the battle was eleven pages long," she said. "Very exact. Every vine, every wound, every girl carried out, and the hour it happened. It's exact about everything but one thing."
I didn't say anything.
"Dame Valeria's report was one line. He kept going." She turned her head. "And the headmistress sent me a sheet of paper with her initials on it, and nothing else."
"...That sounds like her, Your Majesty."
"It does." Emerald eyes, very steady. "When three women who have never agreed with each other about anything leave out the same thing, Lord Fabian, I notice. How many?"
There it was.
I'd had the whole walk from the throne hall to think about it. So I told her the truth. Just not all of it.
"Everything I had, Your Majesty," I said. "And ten I didn't."
The Queen was quiet.
"That's not a number," she said.
"It's the one that mattered."
She looked at me for a long time, the way Cordelia looks at things, and I let her. I've gotten good at not lying since Greymark. It's a lot like healing: you find the one place where the truth goes in clean, and you put it there, and nowhere else.
"Fifteen, at the match," said the Queen at last. "I counted."
"I know, Your Majesty. I saw you."
"One day I'll count again." She turned back to the city. "Not today."
I breathed out, slowly, so it wouldn't show.
"At the ceremony," said the Queen, "I asked you to think about something."
I'd been waiting for this one since I could stand up.
"One of your daughters," I said.
"I told you that you didn't need to answer."
"I thought about it." I looked back through the glass. I couldn't see Liesel from here. I didn't need to. Her candle was right there in my chest, on the far side of the ballroom, flickering like a candle carried outside on a windy night. Her heart was going fast enough to make it flicker harder than usual. I suspected she was trying to listen through two doors and a ballroom. "I've been thinking about it since the night you said it. I counted. It took me a long time to work out what I was counting."
"And?"
"Yes," I said.
The Queen didn't move.
"And I'm going to ask," I said. "Properly. Myself." Then, because I wanted the Queen of Octavia to hear it in the right order: "Her first."
For a moment, the Queen of Octavia just looked at me.
Then she laughed. Not the measured sound from the throne hall. A short, surprised laugh, as though it had got out before she could stop it.
"Her first," she said.
"Then you, Your Majesty. Then Big Sis, probably. Or she'll make me run laps."
"Do you know, Lord Fabian, I have had daughters for twenty-four years, and not once in all that time has a man asked either of them anything." She shook her head slowly. "Their mother asks. Houses ask. The Crown asks. I've never once had to wonder what my daughter would say."
"She's very good at true, Your Majesty."
"She is." Something moved in the Queen's face. "The Crown will wait, Lord Fabian. As it said."
She straightened from the balustrade. When she spoke again it was quieter, as though she'd set the crown down somewhere.
"That was the Queen. This is her mother." She looked at me. "Don't take long."
I've noticed that everyone in my life over a certain age says that to me eventually.
"No, Your Majesty."
I bowed and turned for the doors. I had my hand on the glass when she said:
"One more thing."
I turned back. She'd drawn a letter from her sleeve. Its seal was broken, and it wasn't ours.
"Bellonia has written," said the Queen.
Growing up in Greymark, you learn two things about the dark tree line past the last fields. Monsters come out of it. And somewhere behind it is Bellonia.
Nobody had ever told me a third thing.
"Their Queen is unwell, I'm told," said the Queen. "Her sister writes for the throne now. She asks that we take her nephew into the Royal Academy as a student. A gesture, she says, of friendship between our kingdoms." She turned the letter over in her fingers. "Bellonia has not made a gesture of friendship in my lifetime."
"Will you say no?"
"I said yes this morning." She tucked the letter back into her sleeve. "It would be rude to refuse a gift, Lord Fabian. Especially one we haven't unwrapped yet."
"He's a young lord?"
"Their Queen's son. He'll live in the young lords' residence." One corner of her mouth moved. "You'll be neighbors."
The last time someone told me that, it was Lady Severine, the neighbor was Lord Cassian, and he'd been of a different temperament.
"What's he like?"
"I have no idea," said the Queen. "His name is Felix."
Liesel was waiting on the far side of the ballroom doors, with Cordelia's hand still on her shoulder and an expression of enormous innocence.
"Well?" she said. "What did she say?"
"Mother things."
Her eyes narrowed. "That's not an answer."
"No," I agreed.
She looked at me, then through the glass at her mother, then at me again. Her heart did something I felt in my own chest. I'm keeping that one to myself.
I didn't say the next part out loud. Not in the palace.
(Big Sis.)
(Here.)
(Bellonia's sending a student to the Academy. A young lord. Their Queen's son.)
For a moment, nobody on the bond said anything at all. Not even Marika.
I'd never met anyone from Bellonia. I'd never really thought about it, any more than you think about the far side of a wall you've spent your whole life on the near side of. But standing there in the gold ballroom, with Liesel's shoulder against mine, I found that I wanted to know. What was on the other side of the Gloamwood. What a young lord from a kingdom that had never once been our friend would be like.
Whether he'd be the kind of man you have to be careful of.
Or the other kind.
(...Noted,) said Naomi.
It sounded like a sword being drawn.
Fabian: "Thank you for reading! If you'd like to keep following us, please add the novel to your library."
Naomi: "Add it. Now."
Fabian: "Big Sis, you can't order the readers."
Naomi: "...Add it. Please."
Marika: "And Power Stones! N-not because I want them! It's tactics. More stones, more chapters."
Hana: "Only if you have one to spare, of course. Thank you for staying with us."
Liesel: "I'm very good at true, so here's a true thing: the author checks the stone count every morning."
Fabian: "I'll count them. Every one."
(Wren hums. Four notes.)