Page 113 of Zenith Court

My hands shook. Hale did not take them or tell me to stop. He only watched.

“It steadies when it’s watched,” he said.

So I watched them until it was true. I hated him warmly the whole while.

“Four all,” he said.

“Four all,” I agreed. For once, I didn’t argue.

We counted the cost while the horses cooled. Corven’s cover was gone. By evening the checkpoint would dry his papers, discover the lie, and close the flour road. The network needed warning by dawn. We could no longer enter the valley as millers, which left Caspian’s Ashford retinue as our only way through the gate.

Then we traded what we had learned. Hale had counted six soldiers, fresh orders, and patrol routes redrawn to punish anyone relying on the network’s old reports. I had Marrow: alive, below the waterline, sessions recorded. They were not merely holding him. They still wanted what he knew. A year ago, I would not have cared what that cost him. I cared now.

We still needed the view from the ridge.

The ridge came out of the pines onto bald rock just as the sun dropped. The valley opened below us, straight channels carrying the last light away from its center. The Court stood at the hub: not one tower but long pale ranges and slate roofs laid across the valley floor, with water dividing them.

The main road entered through a gatehouse at the valley mouth. Smaller tracks followed the channels toward the outer buildings.

“The channels force everyone onto a road,” I said.

“Or a bridge. Six visible.”

“And the gate?”

“Light.”

Most of the gray coats moved between the roads and fords. Walkin had put his strength where travelers chose their route, not where titled retinues expected ceremony.

“Caspian’s retinue,” I said.

Hale nodded. “Only way through.”

We compared what we had noticed until the light left the channels. Then we turned our backs on the Court.

We dropped from the ridge into blue dark and turned north. Six hours to the safehouse, if the horses held.

Behind us, beneath all that outgoing water, Marrow was alive. We carried that home.

14

Caspian

The last safehouse before the Court’s valley was a wool barn backed against the ridge. For three days, I turned its plank floor into a rehearsal room for my father’s household. Its rules were the only system I knew well enough to trust with five lives.

I chalked the Conclave floor onto the boards from memory: the crescent of seats, the rail, the basin aisle, the keepers’ stations. Where my memory failed, the administrator supplied the current dimensions from nine years of Tower circulars. Then I drilled the people I loved until they could find their marks without looking down.

Kieran and Hale returned from the ridge with Walkin’s new patrol pattern, a basin-reader at the valley checkpoint, and news that Marrow was alive below the Court’s waterline. The reader stopped common travelers. A lord answering a summons entered under his own surety. Our way through was my father’s name.

“A keeper of the rolls is ‘keeper,’” I told them as I walked the chalk. “A seated lord is ‘my lord of’ the house from staff, the bare name from me. A councillor is ‘Councillor.’ A steward is not addressed unless the steward speaks first. The First Chair is the First Chair. If the First Chair speaks to any of you, answer in six words or fewer and start looking for the nearest exit.”

I set their marks. “The party stands behind the seat, off the sworn floor, in the order recorded by the rolls. Never stand between the seat and the basin aisle. Keep your eyes at rail height. Servants watch the work in front of them.”

Hale asked where the party stood when the seat rose, then paced from his mark to every exit until he could do it without looking. I let him. If the room changed, his body would know before mine did.

“The rolls ask a party three things,” I said. “Name, function, term of service. Short, true where we can afford truth, and above all boring.”

The administrator played keeper, since she had sat where such questions get drafted. She asked Kieran his function.