Chapter 21 The Old Ways
The Old Ways
Ayla knocked to announce her arrival, and reached for the door to Ditmar’s chambers.
But today it swung instantly open of its own accord.
Lord Niel stood there, his broad chest as armored as ever, his horrible sword hanging in its sheath.
For a moment he stared down at her. She found herself craning her head back to meet his eyes, as her body flushed.
“Lady Blackfell,” he said, and broke his gaze away by stepping back to let her enter. Cautiously, she dipped a quick curtsy and walked into Ditmar’s sitting room.
The food had already arrived, wine gleaming red in the silver cups.
When the knight pulled out one of the chairs and gestured for her to sit, Ayla pressed her lips tight and obeyed.
He was acting more courteous than normal.
Perhaps he was trying to make her forget how he’d raged at her before, apologizing with kindness as Ditmar used to do in the early days.
“I need to speak to you,” she said, as the knight took his seat. “Isalde…”
“Eat first. Then say your piece,” the knight instructed.
The smoked goat’s meat was dressed with preserved quince that she knew had lain in shattered jars on the floor not hours before, served on a bed of grain that tasted faintly of pickle water.
The food at risk of spoiling had to be used first, no matter how odd.
It was a miracle of Nyven and Sarella’s skill that it did not taste disgusting, only a little…
odd. The knight didn’t seem to care. The moment he judged she’d had enough to prove its safety, he bent over the table and began to feast.
“She was in a windowless room. Without any light,” Ayla said, carefully picking out a small fragment of ceramic that Sarella had missed. “Surely that is unnecessarily cruel.”
“Captain Kerr assures me the situation has been remedied. He told me about your visit.”
“You must show her mercy.”
“Must I?” His voice was cold as he stabbed a piece of meat.
“You spoke against hurting innocent people.”
The knight snorted.
“Innocent is not the word I'd choose,” Niel said. “She tried to smuggle warriors in to kill me and my men. Even the knight we captured admitted as much.”
“There’s an Enarian knight?” Ayla’s eyes widened. She hadn’t noticed men guarding any of the other doors, though she had not walked a full round of the castle.
“I expect next you’ll be telling me to thank whoever tried to poison me.”
His eyes were sharp on hers, nearly accusing. He must think I wanted Isalde to bring in the men, still. Even after the fight we had, he still thinks it.
“I know what she did,” Ayla said, trying to make her voice that soothing caress that sometimes worked on Ditmar, when he was only annoyed and not furious. “She should not have led them inside, when it’s your castle now. But she is young. Are you the same man now as you were at fourteen?”
His whole body tensed, hands gripping his utensils so tight the stem of the fork bent. Her breathing turned shallow as a storm passed over the knight’s face, then vanished.
“No,” he said, the word practically a growl. “And nor do I expect her to have any allegiance to me. But you cannot think I will simply let her walk freely through the castle, when she has proven the strength of her loyalty to the other side.”
“Is she to spend the whole siege in the linen closet, then?”
“Unless you know where the castle keys are.” He bent over his plate and sawed at the goat, tension still filling his broad shoulders.
Luck and Mercy, he wasn’t going to kill Isalde. She felt her shoulders soften as the strain ebbed from her.
“Let her go, then.” She whispered the plea, her hands tight on her lap.
“To wander the castle? No.”
“Outside,” Ayla said. “Let her go, outside the walls. She can’t possibly make a difference to them if she’s outside the castle. She’s not a valuable hostage. She isn’t going to help run the kitchens from a closet. And it’s one less mouth to feed.”
“She could give them information. How many of us there are, for one.”
“Would that matter?”
“Drink,” the knight commanded, and she realized she hadn’t tasted the wine yet.
With a sigh Ayla reached forward for her goblet, and let the wine burn down her throat.
His eyes were on her as he lifted his own and drank.
He set the cup down firmly. “You want me to risk opening the gates on behalf of a girl who tried to get my men and me killed. Who wanted to see you returned to him.”
“I know you don’t trust me…”
“Why? Should I?” He leaned forward across the table towards her. “I’m nothing but a traitor to you. You’d as soon as see me dead, wouldn’t you, lady?”
Well. That wasn’t true, not anymore. But the events of the morning loomed in her mind; the knight covered in blood and bellowing accusations with rage in every line of his body.
It didn’t matter if he had reasons to war against the crown. It didn’t matter if he’d sworn her an oath; he’d break it, just like the oaths he’d broken to the Queen. He wasn’t to be trusted.
“I will not pretend to hate my country,” Ayla told him quietly.
“But I do not want this siege to end. I should be perfectly happy for it to drag on for years.” Even if she already missed the freedom of the mountains.
Missed the feeling of the wind on her face as she and Gemshorn raced through the hills of Blackfell.
“We do not have years. They tell me we lost a month or more of time today, because of what that girl did.”
“The spoiled food.”
“Yes, the spoiled food. The siege won’t hold forever, Lady Blackfell. We count our time in months, not years.”
Her chest tightened.
“Then send them all out. The servants,” Ayla suggested quietly.
If Niel expelled all the servants at once, alongside Isalde, it might look as though the servants remained loyal to Ditmar and Enar. That they were all as much a threat as the girl had been.
The thought of losing Sarella and Megh, of being trapped alone in the castle, was intolerable. But with fewer mouths, the siege would last longer. She wouldn’t be forced back under Ditmar’s thumb.
And they had families of their own. They never should have stayed behind for her. Ayla did not want to lose their company, but if the timing would make them look loyal in Ditmar’s eyes, then the only other reasons she could think to keep them were selfish ones.
“You would part with them.” Niel raised his eyebrows.
“If it means lasting longer. Fewer mouths. Surely we can manage the castle work without them,” Ayla told him briskly, with a confidence she didn’t feel. Niel sighed.
“If you’re afraid of being handed back to him, don’t be. So long as you do not kill me first, I’ll be the end of him.”
“As if I could do that,” she told Niel uneasily. The last thing she needed was him suspecting who had put the stilder berries into his food.
Niel shook his head.
“Very well. Then tomorrow, you will lose your servants, and the girl. I would say enjoy your last meal made by real cooks, but… well.”
“Yes, this one does leave something to be desired,” Ayla murmured, and nonetheless forced herself to take another bite.
“Was there anything else you needed to discuss?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I had a bird of my own to pluck. Is your mattress too soft for your liking?” He asked abruptly, just as she placed a tough bite of meat into her mouth.
Ayla stared at him openly, her eyes wide. The brawny knight was still bent over the table, his elbows planted firmly on either side of his plate, but his eyes were hard on hers.
Was he trying to invite her into his bed? Mercy save her, if he thought losing the servants meant he could cross that boundary. She chewed as quickly as she could and choked down the mouthful.
“I am perfectly comfortable,” she told him stiffly. The man was undoubtedly handsome, knee-weakenly so, but it was unthinkable. She didn’t trust him. And she was still married, technically, no matter how gruesomely miserable she found it.
Besides. Is your mattress comfortable was the type of opening flirtation she’d have expected from the miller’s boy back home, not a full blooded knight who’d come fresh from killing a dozen men earlier that day.
“Hm,” he said, and looked back down to his plate for a moment to spear a piece of quince on his fork. “Odd.”
“What is?” Ayla asked, keeping her tone as disinterested as she could, lest he think she was open to being propositioned.
“The books under your mattress. I wondered if they served a purpose, considering you said you do not know your letters.” His voice was calm. He might as well have been discussing that day’s snowfall.
She blinked rapidly, biting her lower lip. He set his fork down, picked up his goblet, and leaned back in his chair. His narrowed eyes stayed on her.
“You searched my bed?”
“Not personally. I told my men to search the whole castle, in case any others had gotten in through the tunnel and lay in wait.”
“I…” Ayla gaped at him, her meal entirely forgotten. “It isn’t as though soldiers could have hidden between my mattress and the frame.”
“Why lie about knowing your letters? What aim could that possibly achieve?”
She shook her head quickly, still reeling, and shrugged.
“I did not want to write to Ditmar. And he wouldn’t like it if I did. He keeps to the old ways.”
“The old ways,” the knight said sarcastically.
“He wanted me to be better bred,” she admitted. “But I am merchant's blood, through and through. I should not have kept my books. But I could not endure without them, so I hid them.”
The knight was staring at her so hard now that she wondered if he thought she was the insane one. And perhaps she was, clinging on to books she’d read so many times she could have recited them from memory.
“That’s not true,” he said.
“I’m not lying.” She frowned at him.
“No. About books having anything to do with ‘breeding,’ as you call it.”
“Well… it isn’t particularly ladylike, to be academic…”
“Have you been to court, Lady Blackfell?” he interrupted firmly.
“No,” she admitted. She’d been married at Blackfell, and had not left the boundaries of Ditmar’s land once since then.
“I do not enjoy it there,” Niel said conversationally. “Too many people scheme behind their pretty smiles and prettier words. But would you agree the Queen’s ladies must be of high breeding?”
“Well, I… should expect so,” she muttered. “But I would not know.”
“A Rogess lady serves as one of the Queen’s political advisors.
One of the Emelzen daughters works for the minister of trade.
My brother’s—” his voice hardened unaccountably for a moment— “own woman is from Isen, and she works in the infirmary. No doubt they are all ‘well bred’ by your husband’s account. ”
“Just because they do not keep to the old ways…”
“What old ways? I have no doubt women read and thought two hundred years ago, just as they do now, and just as they’ll do in two hundred more.”
What could she say to that?
She knew he was right. That was the thing. She’d known it when she married Ditmar, when he first took her books away, except for the two he’d missed.
But if you heard a lie enough times. Over enough years.
Some things became easier to believe than to fight.
She dropped her head, not wanting him to see the pain in her eyes.
Ayla bit the inside of her bottom lip, trying not to feel too deeply.
If she opened that well, she would never contain it. The anger ran dangerously deep.
“I expect he just wanted to control you,” Lord Niel added. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “It was something to take away. And if he stripped you of it, well, it gave him all the more power. Especially if you loved to read, which… hiding books under your mattress would rather imply.”
“What does it matter to you?” she asked quietly. If she raised her voice at all it would become ragged, sharp, like an edge of broken glass.
“You keep asking that. My answer hasn’t changed.”
What was it he’d said? That he knew what it was like.
That he’d been a child once living under the control of a violent man.
Still, Ditmar hitting her was one thing.
Confiscating her books was another entirely.
For a man who’d taken over Blackfell and ended a dozen lives earlier that day, he was acting oddly concerned with her well being.
“You are not at all what I expected a traitor to be.”
Niel laughed softly.
“Oh? What did you expect, the old blood of Eyron pounding through my veins and Arevon fire at my fingertips?”
“Brutal selfishness, I should think.”
“That’s my father,” Niel told her dryly. “I just want justice. To which point, when you return to your rooms tonight, you will do so carrying a stack of books.”
Her eyes slid to Ditmar’s bookshelf, where his family dagger stood on display between rows of leather spines in various shades of dye, some embossed with titles, others plain. The real library was in his study, but the shelf in the sitting-room held two dozen volumes. Her fingers itched.
“What, of those?”
“Whichever you like.”
“I can’t take Ditmar’s books. He…”
“Perhaps you have forgotten whose castle this is,” Niel told her, his voice low and his dark eyes glittering in the flickering firelight.
“I conquered Blackfell, my lady, and its possessions are mine—utterly. Those are my books, now, not his; and this is my order. When you have finished eating, you will select a stack of books, and you will carry them all the way back to your room. I do not care if you read them. That is for you to decide.”
She fiddled with her knife, her heart racing.
“And I can take any of them?” she asked quietly. “Not… not only books on certain subjects, or…”
A smile briefly quirked the edge of the knight’s mouth.
“Any,” he agreed. “I name them yours. Now eat. We cannot afford to let any meal go to waste. Not even this one.”