Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After breakfast, Dorian and I walked to Sylvanwild’s training grounds.
In some ways, my old life and my new life weren’t so different. Except now there was blackberry jam, butter, coffee, and endless forest.
We passed out of the dining room, down the hallway, and into the citadel’s throne room. Two servants were at work, a man and a woman, one of whom was pruning the vines growing on the throne itself. I stared as we passed through the double doors and into the morning light.
“You’ll grow used to it,” Dorian said.
“I’ll never grow used to it,” I said. “Not when I’ve spent my life on the other side of it.”
He glanced at me as we walked the garden path. “A life without butter could hardly be considered living.”
For once, I wasn’t entirely in disagreement. “Where do you even get butter?”
“The Highmark Court. We trade for it.”
“And who are they?”
His gaze slid over my hair. “They are the sun-touched court. Bright and vain.” He touched my shoulder, urging me to the left down a side path through the gardens I hadn’t seen before.
We came around the citadel, the moat following us in our turn.
“Training will be in two parts. In the mornings we’ll focus on physicality, and in the afternoons on intellect. ”
I nearly stopped. Physical training I had expected, but… “Intellect?”
He didn’t break stride. “Surely you’re not satisfied with that dull wit?”
Somewhere in my head, I heard Theo’s carrying laugh. It made Dorian’s words less a sting and more a familiar jibe. “Is wit on trial?”
“Perhaps. Some say the great Queen Carys could never have ruled the four courts without it.”
Carys. That was a name from our kingdom.
My mind spun on a greater fact: a ruler of all four courts. I had seen those four courts depicted on the tapestry in my room; I’d already spent hours studying it. “And when did she rule?”
“Some four hundred years ago.”
“Your people value intellect, then.”
He tapped his temple. “You may swing a sword or shoot an arrow, but neither matters if you can’t tell your ally from your enemy in the thick of things.”
“But that’s not intellect. That’s…” Well, I didn’t know how to define intellect. I’d only learned to read and write from Elisabet. “That’s strategy.”
“Strategy is beneath intellect.” Dorian pressed out a sharp breath. “Think of it as a single root in a tree. Useful. Necessary. But intellect is the tree. Intellect gives it form, purpose, reach.”
I kept my face forward, neck heating. I felt the largeness of Dorian’s knowledge, and the lack of my own. I also felt my own longing, my desire to understand, to grow.
We came through a thicket of trees and emerged into a clearing where the grass had been tamped or eaten down to nothing and a wooden fence had been erected around a low building with a wide-open side.
From within, a loud snort sounded. Something banged hard against the wood, and I flinched.
Dorian cast a sharp glance at me. “It’s a horse. They’re four-legged—”
“I know horses.” My voice came out quick, irritable. “I just didn’t expect that.”
He approached the fence line. “But have you ridden one?”
“Of course I haven’t. Horses are for—”
He raised a finger. “Royalty?”
“And the patrol,” I said. When he only stared, I said, “They’re the guard who ride outside the walls. They kill monsters like you.”
“Ah. Now I understand.” Dorian crossed to a gate in the fence and unlatched it. He gestured for me to walk ahead. “And you weren’t part of this patrol?”
“They wouldn’t take a woman.” My eyes darted everywhere, taking in sights and the new scents. Another bang sounded from the depths of the open-sided building, but I didn’t jump this time.
“Their loss,” Dorian said—another jibe. “And would you have liked to kill us monsters?”
I flashed him a hard, unbroken stare. “Now more than ever.”
He gave a nod, his face impassive. “Perhaps you’ll have a chance in the trials.”
A beat passed before I broke my gaze away. Only monsters could be so comfortable with the thought of killing.
I stopped at the open side of the building. Inside, a long aisle was laced with straw. Half-doors had been fitted in rows at either side, four to a side. “You keep the horses captive here.”
“And your kingdom doesn’t?”
“We do. But I thought…”
Dorian’s shadow eclipsed mine as he came to stand beside me. “You thought?”
“I should have known better. You’re keeping me captive.”
“Ah, but you desire to serve the queen, remember?” He stepped forward into the stables. “Here you stand, ready to train.”
“Survival makes good actors of us all,” I said, stepping deeper into the aisleway. “Which of these is mine to ride?”
I sensed Dorian’s scrutinizing gaze on me as he stepped up beside me. Then, after a few seconds, he said, “I’m not certain any of the horses would be small enough for you.”
My lips pressed together. “Can you not go ten seconds without a rib?”
“It wasn’t a rib.” He swept an arm out. “See for yourself. You’d be hard-pressed to mount any of these without a block.”
Together, we walked the aisle. As we did, a roan horse’s head appeared over the side. Black, liquid eyes observed me.
“Here’s the one you heard kicking his door,” Dorian said. “He’s seventeen hands.”
I stopped in front of the horse. He was huge. “Why does he kick?”
Dorian stroked down his face and under his chin. “Boredom. They’re not meant for captivity.”
“So why are they captive?”
“For the court to ride as they will, of course. And we can’t very well have them roaming the forest.”
I took a hesitant step toward the horse. “Why not?”
“Horses are native to Highmark. They would wander back, given the chance.” Dorian scratched at the roan’s chin, and it leaned in to his touch. “They can go no further than the paddocks attached to the stables.”
It seemed everything in this court came from somewhere else.
“Ah.” Dorian led me to a half-door set caddy-corner to the roan’s stall. “Here’s a filly of fourteen hands.” He leaned on the door and clicked three times with his tongue.
I came to his side just as a small sandy head appeared, her mane bouncing and her face adorned with a white blaze over the forehead. She gave a whinny and hung her head over the door; she was barely tall enough to do so.
“This,” Dorian said, “is a horse we’d train children on. She’s not even two.”
I approached, and the horse’s black eyes shifted to me, fringed with impossibly long lashes.
“Put your hand out,” Dorian said. “Palm up.”
I did so, and from somewhere he dropped a carrot into my palm. The act was so casual, but this single carrot would have been a treasure for child-me. I stared at it, knowing what it was meant for and unwilling to extend my hand any further.
Strange, how convincing a story could be that I should still covet this carrot, even though I had just been served a more extravagant breakfast than King Halvar might eat.
“Now extend your palm toward her,” Dorian said. “Keep it flat.”
I hesitated, and then I forced my hand forward. There will be more food, Eury.
The sandy-haired filly’s head bobbed and then jerked out over the door, and she turned her head at an angle to get at the carrot on my palm. Her lips were velvet on my skin, and she was gentle. She chewed twice and the carrot was gone.
“Her name’s Pettifey,” he said. “Let her smell you.”
That word again. Words like that you felt low in your stomach, like pits.
It made me like the horse even more, just as I’d always preferred what was small and misunderstood.
I kept my palm out, and the horse’s large nostrils widened once, twice. She bobbed her head again, which seemed a nervous tic. No wonder—if she was small enough for me to ride, she was beyond prey.
“Hello, Pettifey,” I said, low, and stroked under her chin as Dorian had done with the roan. Her chin wobbled, and she went still.
“Good.” Dorian pulled a piece of long, thin leather off a hook beside the half-door. He attached it to the horse’s small head, clipping at either side. In one motion, he unlatched the door and led the horse out into the aisle.
She stepped forward as soon as the door was open, tamping the straw beneath her hooves. Her tail was long and flirty, and she flicked it as Dorian took hold of a long lead that extended from the leather attachment he’d put on her face.
He led her out of the stables the opposite direction we’d come in, and I followed at a distance. We came into a much larger paddock, this one three times the size of the other.
Dorian led Pettifey into the center of the paddock and turned her around. He said to me, still six feet away, “Riding is an advantage. If one of the trials allows for it, then we’ll ride.”
“Why? You said horses are prey.”
“Not with us,” he said. “With us, they’re weapons.”
My chest tightened with anticipation. The more weapons, the better.
“Even one this small.” He set a hand on Pettifey’s long neck. “She’s faster than us, and she can run forever. She’s agile. And we have the intelligence to keep her from danger. Or at least uncalculated danger.”
“Have horses been used to win trials?”
“Many times. It aligns with one of Sylvanwild’s values.”
“Which?”
He stroked Pettifey. “Guess.”
I stepped closer, observing her. Dorian had said she was fast, agile, and she could run for ages. What would these people in this court value in riding a creature like this? The answer came to me as soon as I’d thought the question.
“Harnessing nature.”
Dorian’s hand paused on the horse’s mane. His lips seemed to quirk against his will.
“So I’m wrong,” I said, “and you deride me for it?”
“No, no. I just… had not thought you would get it so quickly.”
Oh. I came to her other side and set my hand on her mane. The hair was bristly and thick. “So we’ll begin with riding.”
He gave a single nod. “Yes. Every morning for an hour, until the day the trial begins.”
Just an hour? “I could go longer.”
“Not yet,” he said. “You’d ache so badly you’d want to die, and I’m already full to brimming with your complaints.”