Haldis hooked the Demon King's ankle, and this time I was close enough to keep him down.
His sword went skidding under the long table. He landed against the window seat with his wounded leg folded beneath him, one hand flat on the stone. I put my point under his jaw. For several breaths the loudest thing in the hall was Haldis trying to draw air through her nose.
“Both feet,” she managed. “Watch his feet.”
“I have him.”
We had seen what he could do in the lower courtyard, when he laid down his sword and vanished from between us. A moment later he was standing on the balcony above, retrieving a second sword from its bracket. He needed a place he could see, both hands free of weapons, and his weight settled on his feet. He could take one person with him if they stayed in contact. The scout who had sold us those particulars had been right about everything except how easy that made him to kill. Haldis had spent the rest of the fight attacking his footing. My cut above his knee had finally given her something to work with.
Beyond the broken window lay the valley and its opposite ridge, still yellow with evening. Kolvran kept turning his head toward it.
“Stay where you are,” I said.
He eased his leg out from under him. I let him. His skin had gone gray around the mouth, and one of his small backward horns had struck the sill hard enough to leave a white scrape in the stone. He looked less like the figure on the king's war banners than a man who might be sick on my boots.
Haldis nudged his fallen crown away with her heel. Then she grinned at me, a startled, breathless grin. We had done it. Nineteen days of cold saddles and wrong tracks, and we had done it.
A door opened behind her.
Princess Ismeret came out carrying a rolled cloak, her hair fastened in a single thick braid. She wore a brown riding dress and boots laced all the way to the knee. I remembered searching a stable for those boots when she was seventeen and determined to leave for a hunt before breakfast. Ten years later she still tied the ends in the same double knot.
“We brought your mare,” I told her.
She stopped beside the table. Her eyes went from the blood on my sleeve to Kolvran's leg.
“Is that yours?” she asked me.
“Most of it isn't. You're safe.”
Haldis shifted aside to give her a way to the stairs. I held out my left hand, palm down, as I used to when she was small enough to need help from a saddle. Two fingers for her to catch, no fuss made about the height. She looked at my hand without taking it.
“Where's my maid?”
“At the palace, I expect.”
“Did you see her before you left?”
“Ismeret, we should get you downstairs.”
“Did you?”
Behind her, the little room was furnished with a bed and a chair heaped with books. A half-peeled apple lay on the windowsill. I had expected chains, though I would not have admitted it to her.
“No,” I said. “But your father will have settled that business. He promised a hearing.”
She put her rolled cloak on the table.
Haldis's grin had gone. “What business?”
“A household matter,” I said, and heard how I sounded only when Ismeret laughed. It was a small ugly sound that she cut short herself.
“She brought a letter to the west gate. She asked you to let her through.”
“I remember.”
I remembered everything about it. The girl had come during the changing of the watch, wearing a man's coat over her apron. She had said her mother was dying. The steward arrived before I opened the wicket and took a letter from her pocket. Ismeret's seal was still soft enough to bear the weave of the apron.
“You told me she'd be questioned,” Ismeret said. “Then Father would hear her.”
“That was what I was told.”
Kolvran shifted his good foot. My point dragged across his collar as I turned my head.
“Watch your sword,” he said.
Haldis stepped nearer him, axe held low. “Sit still.”
Ismeret had noticed the movement too. She came around the table, but stopped beyond the reach of my free hand.
“The letter was to my sister. I asked to live with her. That was all. I told her I'd bring nothing Father had given me.”
“Then we can send another letter.”
“From where?”
“Once we're home.”
She looked toward the stair door. For the first time I understood that she was measuring the way past Haldis rather than waiting for us to lead her to it.
“Your father rode out to the orchard himself when he heard you'd been taken,” I said. “The northern companies are on the road. He couldn't sit through his supper the night we left.”
“He sat at supper while they beat her.”
Haldis glanced at me. I wanted to answer before Ismeret could say anything more, although I had no answer ready.
“In the little dining room,” she continued. “The one with the painted birds. He made me sit beside him. The steward had her just outside the open doors, where I could see. Father said that if I spoke to her, he'd tell the steward to begin again.”
She rubbed the heel of one hand against the other. “I asked for the physician when they stopped. He asked me whether I'd finished my broth.”
I knew that room. Its doors stood open to the antechamber, and even the chink of a cup carried down the corridor. The king ate there when he wanted an evening without petitions. I had waited outside it often enough, thinking how rarely we allowed him any peace.
“I didn't know,” I said.
“She was still in the east tower when I left. With the steward's men. If you go back, don't ask him whether she's well.”
“I'll go to her myself.”
Ismeret pressed her palms together harder. “Will you let her out?”
I had meant a visit. A word to the physician. There was a pause in which everyone in the room could hear what I had meant.
“The girl isn't our prisoner,” Haldis said. “We can do nothing for her from here. Come down with us, Princess.”
“I won't go back.”
“Then we'll find you somewhere else. He stays.” Haldis tipped the axe toward Kolvran.
He looked up at Ismeret, and something passed between them that I did not know how to read. She had looked at me like that once, waiting beside a horse she was frightened to mount, wanting me to stop everyone watching. But she was twenty-seven now.
“Did he hurt you?” I asked.
“No.”
“You can tell us.”
“I just did.”
Kolvran shut his eyes. His hand had begun to tremble against the window seat. Without taking her eyes from my sword, Ismeret picked up a linen napkin from the table and twisted it into a band.
“Please move the point,” she said. “I need to bind his leg.”
Haldis said, “You'll keep away from him.”
Ismeret crouched anyway. I lifted the blade enough for her to pass beneath it, then set the point at Kolvran's breast. He watched this adjustment with an interest that made me tighten my grip.
“She came here willingly,” he said.
I did not answer him. She had got the linen under his leg. He drew a sharp breath as she pulled it up. Her fingers knew where to go, and he let her work without watching them.
“Tell me what happened,” I said to her.
“I sent him a letter.”
“How?”
“Not through your gate.” She pulled the knot tight. “He offered me a room until I could decide where to go. I met him in the orchard below the south wall. We walked up to the bare ground together so he could see the next ridge. He brought me north in stages.”
The trampled grass in the orchard, the gardener who had seen two figures disappear, the torn piece of her sleeve caught on the wall: we had begun with those, and every tale of someone vanishing had drawn us farther north. I remembered the king holding that little scrap of cloth against his lips.
“You could have come to me.”
“I did. When he locked me in my rooms. You told me to apologize.”
“I thought if you could speak to each other calmly—”
“I know what you thought.”
Kolvran laid his hand on her forearm. She turned toward him at once. He said something too low for me to hear, and she nodded, but stayed kneeling by his leg.
“What did he say?” Haldis asked.
“That he's getting faint.”
“Good.”
Ismeret looked up at her.
“We didn't come nineteen days to sit with him while he rests,” Haldis said. “Move away.”
“He gave me shelter.”
“He burned my husband's house with my husband in it.”
Kolvran took his hand from Ismeret's arm.
All along the road Haldis had carried one of her husband's boots, the left, tucked into the flap of her saddlebag. It was a good boot. He had been wearing its mate when the raiders came. She had never spoken of burying what they found, but she had told me how long he took to break in new leather, how he would limp around their kitchen and refuse to admit that his feet had grown. I knew more about him than I did about some men I had served beside for years.
“The first frost, two autumns ago,” she said to Kolvran. “The houses by the wool sheds. You sent the riders with the red cords.”
“Yes.”
“The soldiers were gone. You knew they were gone.”
“They had gone to reinforce the pass. I meant to make them come back.”
Haldis nodded once, as though she had been waiting a long time for exactly that answer.
Ismeret's hands were still resting on the knot. “You told me it was a garrison.”
“It was. There were houses beside it.”
“My husband mended the soldiers' harness,” Haldis said. “He couldn't ride. He was in bed when you came.”
Kolvran watched her. “I didn't choose your husband.”
“You sent them.”
He did not dispute it. Ismeret stood, slowly, leaving the tied linen on his leg.
“What else?” she asked him.
His breathing had quickened. “Not now.”
“You had four weeks to tell me.”
“Later. If we get out of this.” He drew a breath. “You may ask me anything.”
She drew back from him at that. I saw it and seized on it, grateful for something I understood.
“Come here,” I said. “You needn't stay with him. We'll take you to your sister. Haldis and I will see you there.”
Haldis did not agree to that journey. She was watching Kolvran's hands.
“Father will send for me,” Ismeret said.
“Your sister can refuse him.”
“Her husband holds half his land from Father.” She bent for her cloak. “You'd be standing at another gate when the order came.”
I had an answer to that, a promise, and could not get it out. Haldis moved in beside me. Kolvran braced his palm against the seat, trying to ease himself higher; I pressed him back with the sword. He stopped, and I felt through the hilt how close he had come to putting his weight against the point.
Ismeret fastened the rolled cloak over one shoulder. She had not put it on when she thought we might let her treat him. Now she tightened the strap until the bundle sat high against her back.
“Move her,” Haldis said to me.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
I looked from her to Ismeret, stupidly hoping one of them would tell me.
Haldis lowered her voice. “You told me I'd have this. In the inn, when you asked me to show you the northern tracks.”
I had promised her Kolvran. I had promised the king his daughter. For nineteen days neither promise had troubled the other.
“I know.”
“Then help me.”
She came another half step forward. Ismeret slipped between us and Kolvran, so close to my blade that I lifted it away from her dress. Haldis checked her axe before raising it.
“Ismeret,” I said. “Easy. Come away.”
I put my left hand on her upper arm. She went rigid beneath it. That was familiar too: a rider who had taken fright, who would stiffen and fight the horse until someone steadied her. I held a little more firmly.
She looked down at my hand. I could remember every time I had lifted her, caught her, carried her sleeping from a saddle.
“Let go,” she said.
Haldis had both hands on the axe. She was waiting for me to pull the princess clear.
I released Ismeret and lowered my sword. Haldis started forward; I caught the axe haft below her hands and held it against my chest. The edge hung a handspan from my shoulder.
“Don't,” I said.
She looked at my hand on her weapon. Then at me. She could have pulled hard enough to put me on the floor. We both knew it. For a moment she did nothing at all.
Behind Ismeret, Kolvran tried to rise. His bad leg buckled and he caught the sill, making a sound I had never heard from a king.
She went to him. His arm came across her shoulders, and she planted her boots wide, taking his weight as he straightened the injured knee. Haldis and I stared. I had thought she might stand between him and the axe. I had not understood, until his body leaned into hers, that she meant to carry him out of our victory.
“You know what he did,” Haldis said.
Ismeret pulled his hand farther over her shoulder. The effort had loosened hair from her braid; it stuck to the side of her face. She looked at Haldis and said, “Yes.”
Kolvran's good foot settled beside hers. His eyes were on the opposite ridge. I still had time to put the sword into him. I knew where the gap was, beneath the raised arm.
Ismeret was close enough that her bundle brushed my wrist. Haldis stood against my other shoulder, her hands still locked on the haft. The princess turned her face toward us both. Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Tell the king it’s amazing how he protects the kingdom when threatened by an outside evil. But ignores the evil occurring in front of him.”
Kolvran lifted his arm from her shoulders. For an instant she held him by the elbow while he found his balance. Then she offered him her hand.
He took it, and they vanished.
No smoke, no crash of air. Across the valley, two small figures appeared on the yellow grass, one bent toward the other. They made their way below the crest, and the ridge was bare again.
Haldis wrenched the axe out of my grip.
I let my sword fall. It struck the floor, and she flinched at the sound. She backed away until the long table stood between us. Then she picked up Kolvran's crown by one of its broken points.
“Haldis.”
She went downstairs.
I followed after I had retrieved my sword. At the bottom, the door we had broken from its hinges lay across the passage. We had helped each other over it on the way in. I stepped over alone and came out into the courtyard where the horses were tied.
Haldis was fastening the crown behind her saddle. She had taken off her gloves; one of her nails had split. I reached for the loose end of the strap before thinking, and she pulled it out of my reach.
“Are you going after them?” I asked.
“Not tonight.” She tugged the knot tight. “First I'll tell your king what happened.”
“I have to tell him too.”
“I suppose you'll tell him she asked you to let them go.”
“She didn't ask me.”
Haldis looked up. There was no anger in her face for a moment, only a tired, appalled attention.
“Then make sure he knows that.”
She mounted. I had tied the princess's mare beside my gelding, brushing its mane that morning so Ismeret would see something clean when she came out. It lifted its head as Haldis rode past, then went back to nosing the bare ground.
“Wait,” I said.
Haldis drew rein. She had always waited when I asked before, no matter what was behind us.
I wanted her to tell me where we would sleep. I wanted the next stretch of road, with her riding ahead and turning sometimes to make sure I was still there. But I had seen her husband's boot in the saddlebag when she put away her gloves, and there was nothing I could ask her that would not cost her something more.
“I'll tell him what I did,” I said.
She turned her horse toward the gate.
By the time I untied the other two horses, she had reached the outer track. My gelding shied from the mare, and I lost my stirrup, catching myself painfully on the saddle. Haldis glanced back at the noise. Then she rode on.