Fabian — Greymark
There are very few dignified ways to walk out and greet a princess.
Leaning on your sister like a sack of wet laundry is not one of them.
"Slower," Hana said.
"I'm barely moving."
"Then barely move slower."
Naomi's "Bed. Three days." had lasted exactly as long as it took Sigrid to say sealed letters. After that it became "You'll stand. You won't walk," which became "You'll walk. Hana holds you up," which was how I ended up crossing the front yard with my arm over Hana's shoulders and her arm around my waist, like the world's slowest three-legged race.
I wobbled. A lot.
Hana didn't let go once.
Naomi walked ahead of us in her navy tabard, straight-backed, sword at her hip. Marika walked beside me, close enough to catch me and far enough to pretend she wasn't trying to.
"I can feel you wobbling," she muttered.
"Then stop feeling it."
"I can't! That's the whole problem!"
We reached the estate gate just as the riders came up the hill road.
Three of them, under crimson and gold. Two royal guards in plate. And in front of them, a girl in polished silver half-plate and a crimson cape, a spear slung across her shoulders, and no helmet at all.
Behind them came the town.
Not all of it. Just most of it. Bakers in aprons, farmers with mud to their knees, the woman who sold ribbons, a pack of children, and at least one dog. They'd fallen in behind the royal riders somewhere around the town gate and simply kept walking, the way people do when something interesting is happening and nobody has told them to stop.
Nobody told them to stop. Naomi just looked at them once, and they halted at a polite distance and craned their necks instead.
The girl in front swung down from her saddle.
From the right side, I noticed. Which was the wrong side. Tilly would have had opinions.
Then she turned, and I saw her face properly.
Golden hair, cut short at the jaw and sticking up like she'd ridden through a windstorm on purpose. Green eyes. Emerald green.
I'd seen that exact combination once before, on a woman who'd asked me to remind her never to give me an order.
Royal.
She was shorter than Cordelia, and younger. Her armor was the same kind, but it fit her like it had been argued into shape. She walked toward us with her chin up and her shoulders very straight, like someone who'd been told to walk properly and was concentrating hard on it.
She stopped in front of Naomi.
"Countess Valcrest."
"Your Highness." Naomi bowed. Marika and Hana bowed.
I started to bow too, and my knees immediately filed a complaint.
"Please, Lord Fabian." The princess's hand came up, fast. "There's no need. Truly."
"It's polite."
"It's also downhill," she said, "and you're leaning on your sister."
Fair.
She straightened, and her voice went formal, like she'd buckled on a second set of armor.
"I am Liesel, Second Princess of Octavia. I come on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Theodora, with letters for House Valcrest." She drew a leather pouch from her belt. "Her Majesty asked that they be read aloud."
Behind her, the whole town leaned in.
The princess broke the first seal.
"To Dame Naomi Valcrest, Countess of Greymark." She read it the way people read things they've practiced in a mirror. "For ten years of holding the border of this kingdom, and for the defense of Greymark against the tide, the Crown raises the County of Greymark to a march, and its Countess to Marchioness."
For a moment, nobody made a sound.
Then the baker's wife whooped, and the whole hillside went up like a bonfire.
"Marchioness!"
"Long live the Marchioness!"
"Dame Naomi!"
I looked at my eldest sister.
Naomi was standing perfectly straight, perfectly still, with her face slowly turning the color of a ripe tomato.
"Big Sis," I whispered. "You're red."
"Seventy laps."
"I'm injured."
"Later."
The princess, I noticed, was biting the inside of her cheek very hard.
She broke the second seal.
"To Lady Marika Valcrest. For holding the east road and the field through the night of the tide, the Crown grants the title of Baroness."
The cheering started again. Someone shouted "Baroness Marika!" and someone else shouted "Vanguard!" and Marika's ears went from pink to a color I'd never seen on a human being.
"I just—" Marika said. "The road was there. It was in the way. I didn't—"
"Congratulations, Sis Marika."
"Shut up."
Third seal.
"To Lady Hana Valcrest. For the healing post at the town gate, where no one in her care was lost, the Crown grants the title of Baroness."
Hana's arm tightened around my waist. Then she started to cry, very quietly, the good kind, into my shoulder while the whole town cheered for her. I held on to her as hard as I could. It was the closest I could get to holding her up.
"The titles will be granted before the court in Sanctara," the princess added, "at a ceremony to be announced."
Sanctara. My sisters, in Sanctara. I held on to that.
Then she broke the last seal, and looked at me.
"To Lord Fabian Valcrest, Saint of Elysia." She paused. "Her Majesty invites you to study at the Royal Academy in Sanctara. The new term begins in one month."
The hillside went quiet.
Not all at once. It spread backward through the crowd like a ripple across a pond, until even the dog stopped barking.
"The Academy?" someone said. "In the capital?"
"They're taking the Young Master?"
"Inviting," said the princess.
She said it a little too carefully. Like someone who'd had that word used on her before and knew exactly how much it weighed.
I looked at Naomi.
Naomi's face had gone from tomato back to stone. She didn't look at me. She looked at the princess, then at the crowd, then east, where the Gloamwood sat dark at the edge of the fields.
Then she looked at me.
One nod.
I bought us time. Not forever.
"House Valcrest accepts," Naomi said. "With thanks."
I cleared my throat. "And please tell Her Majesty—" My voice cracked, which was embarrassing. "Tell her thank you. For my sisters."
The princess's face did something complicated. Then it was formal again.
"I'll tell her, Lord Fabian."
She turned to her guards. "Ride back. Tell Her Majesty the house accepts."
"Your Highness," said the older guard. "And you?"
"I'm staying."
The guards exchanged the look of two people who had bet on exactly this and both lost.
"Staying," Naomi said.
"Her Majesty's law requires two escorts for Lord Fabian." The princess lifted her chin. "I'm one of them."
There was a short silence.
Marika was looking at the spear across the princess's shoulders. Just looking. A little too long.
"...Are you," Naomi said.
"Then you'll need a room," Hana said, sniffling, before anyone else could speak. "And dinner. Have you eaten? You haven't eaten. You rode all the way from— you need dinner."
The princess blinked at her. "I— yes. Thank you, Lady Hana."
"Baroness," Marika muttered.
"Don't," said Hana.
Then the baker's wife cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted the thing the whole town had apparently been holding in for three weeks.
"Feast tonight, my lady?"
Naomi closed her eyes.
"...The courtyard," she said.
The hillside exploded.
Tilly hurried out to take the princess's horse. Halfway through gathering the reins, she stopped and squinted up at her.
"Have we met, Your Highness?"
"I don't think so," the princess said. "I have one of those faces."
"Only princesses have that face."
"Then you've probably met my sister."
Tilly considered this, nodded, and led the horse away.
I didn't think anything of it. I was very busy trying not to fall over.
By sunset, the courtyard of House Valcrest looked like the whole of Greymark had moved in.
Which, to be fair, it had.
Long tables made of doors laid across sawhorses. Lanterns strung between the trees. Every bench in the house, plus a dozen from the shrine, which Odile had sent over with a note: Return them. —Odile.
And eggs.
So many eggs.
Three weeks of the town's gratitude had turned into omelets, egg pies, egg bread, boiled eggs, pickled eggs, and something Agnes called "egg surprise," which nobody was brave enough to ask about.
General the goat wandered between the tables eating everything that wasn't nailed down, with Marika trailing after him and pretending she wasn't.
I sat at the high table in a chair with three cushions on it, because Hana had decided two weren't enough.
"Growing boy," she said, and put another omelet on my plate.
"I'm not growing. I'm recovering."
"Recovering boy."
The town kept coming up to the high table. To thank Naomi. To clap Marika on the shoulder. To make Hana cry again, which wasn't hard.
And to look at me.
They always looked at me. But tonight was different. Tonight they looked like they were trying to memorize me.
One month.
A farmer's little girl came up and held out a scraped knee, very hopefully.
I reached for the pitcher. A few splashes sloshed in the bottom now. A day awake had done that much.
"Tomorrow," Naomi said, without looking up from her plate.
"It's one splash."
"Tomorrow."
Hana was already kneeling in front of the girl with her tin of salve. "There. My salve is very good."
"It isn't that good," I said.
The girl's knee looked exactly the same afterward. She went away delighted anyway.
At some point, Sigrid climbed onto a bench and raised her cup.
"To the Marchioness!"
"The Marchioness!"
Naomi rose. Every eye in the courtyard turned to her. She was red again.
"Captain Sigrid," she said.
"My lady?"
"Seventy laps."
"Worth it, my lady."
The whole courtyard roared.
Dame Hildegard danced. On two legs. With the blacksmith, then the baker, then the blacksmith again. Every time she spun past the high table, she pointed at me.
"Two legs, Young Master!"
"I see them!"
The youngest guard came by with a plate she clearly hadn't eaten from. She was humming three notes under her breath, the same three as always.
I knew those notes. I'd heard them at the edge of the Gloamwood, with a wolf's claw marks on her arm. And again on the burning field, in the dark, with her light gone red.
"You," I said. "The boar."
She stopped humming. "Young Master."
"How's the wound?"
"It's a scratch."
"It was a tusk."
"It's a scratch now."
I laughed. "You know, for me that was yesterday. I went to sleep on that field and woke up this morning."
"For me it was three weeks of everyone telling me to sit down." She glanced toward Hana. "Mostly Lady Hana." Then, with a grin: "Baroness Hana."
"I've healed you twice," I said. "And I've never once asked your name. That's terrible."
"You were busy, Young Master."
"I'm not busy now."
She hesitated. Then she straightened up like she was reporting for duty.
"Wren."
"Wren," I repeated. "Thank you for not dying, Wren."
"You too, Young Master," she said, and wandered off humming.
The princess sat at the far end of the high table, in the place of honor.
She looked miserable.
Not sad. Miserable the way a horse looks miserable in a stall when there's an open field right outside. Every time someone from the town bowed to her, she smiled and nodded, and her knee bounced faster under the table.
By the time I worked my way down to her end of the table, slowly, with Hana's hand hovering behind my back the entire way, she'd folded her napkin into the shape of a horse.
"That's a good horse," I said.
She jumped. Then her back went straight again.
"Lord Fabian. You should be sitting."
"I am sitting. I just moved where I'm sitting." I lowered myself into the chair beside her, which took longer than I'd have liked. "You look like you'd rather be anywhere else."
"Is it that obvious?"
"The napkin horse gave you away."
She looked down at it. Then she laughed.
It was a short, surprised laugh, like it had escaped before she could catch it.
And I'd heard it before.
I was sure of it. Somewhere loud. Somewhere with smoke.
Probably all princesses laugh like that, I told myself. I'd only met one other. She hadn't laughed at all.
"Your sisters," the princess said after a moment, "are very..."
"Loud?"
"Close." She was watching them. Naomi at the head of the table. Marika chasing a goat. Hana pressing food on the blacksmith. "When you bumped your elbow on the table earlier, all three of them looked over. At the same moment. From three different places."
I froze. Just slightly.
"They do that," I said.
"Mm," said the princess, and looked at her napkin horse like it had just told her something.
Then she stood. "I should check on my horse."
"Tilly's got him. Tilly's very good."
"I like to check." She bowed to me, properly, the way you're supposed to bow to a lord, and walked off toward the stables. Fast.
I watched her go.
Then I felt Naomi's candle move.
It left the head of the table and went the same way. Not fast. Naomi's candle never went fast. Just steady, one sure step at a time, toward the stables.
Huh.
Thoughts didn't travel through the bond. I'd checked.
So I just sat there, holding a napkin horse, with a very bad feeling.
Naomi — Greymark
The princess dismounted from the wrong side.
So did Beth.
I watch things. Ten years on a border teaches you to. Tracks at the tree line. Which horse favors a leg. How many times my brother says "I'm fine" in a week, and how many of those he means.
Today I watched the princess.
A hand shorter than her sister. Beth was a hand shorter than her sister, too.
A light spear. New. The same length as the one Beth carried until it cracked.
Boots scuffed at the toes. The same scuffs.
She called my brother "Lord Fabian" four times today. Each time carefully, like a word she'd practiced on the road.
Beth called him Saint.
And the night before the tide, someone in light armor stood outside my reading room door. Her helmet hit the wood. Then she ran.
Light armor. Fast.
I left the feast.
Nobody stopped me. One advantage of the new title, apparently: no one stops a marchioness from walking out of her own party.
The stables were warm and dim, with one lantern hung by the door. Tilly had gone to the feast. The horses dozed. General the goat stood in an empty stall, chewing something that had probably been someone's glove.
The princess stood at her horse's stall with her forehead pressed against his neck. Her shoulders were down. For the first time all day, she didn't look like she was concentrating on standing properly.
She heard me. She straightened.
"Countess— Marchioness." She winced. "Sorry. That's going to take practice."
"For both of us."
I didn't come closer. I stood in the doorway, between her and the yard.
I hadn't planned to stand there. I noticed that I had.
"Your Highness," I said. "You dismount from the wrong side."
Her hand went still on the horse's neck.
"Lots of people—"
"So did a rider in your sister's escort. Beth." I kept my voice level. "She guarded my brother on the night of the tide. She followed him past the gate, and she held one of the Broodmother's legs on her spear while your sister fought. I never saw her face."
The lantern hissed.
"The night before the tide," I said, "someone in light armor stood outside my reading room door. Long enough to hear things. Then her helmet hit the wood, and she ran."
I let that sit.
"Fast," I said. "Like you."
The princess didn't say anything.
Outside, the town was singing something off-key about a goat. Somewhere in that noise sat my brother with three candles in his chest, and one empty place that this girl had heard about through a door.
In a month, he'd ride to Sanctara with her at his side.
"I won't ask if it was you," I said. "I'll ask what you heard."
My hand found the pommel of my sword. Not drawing it. Just resting there, the way it always does.
"And who you've told."
The princess looked at me for a long moment.
She didn't run this time.