Chapter 6 The Lady of the Castle
The Lady of the Castle
She at least had to tell Sir Corin. The Queen’s general, injured though he was, would know whether the men charging towards Blackfell could be trusted. She hitched her skirts and ran down the corridor towards the staircase.
It was a good run to the other end of the castle, and she forced herself to keep a swift pace. She didn’t pass any servants on the way. Ayla stopped breathlessly in the doorway of the infirmary, skirts swirling around her legs as she grabbed the door frame and gasped for breath.
The small room was entirely empty. A banked fire lay in the hearth. Dust motes danced in the cold light coming through the window. No patient lay in either of the two beds. No healer arranged the remedies on the shelves or crafted potions at the worktable.
Hadn’t the knight gone to the infirmary?
She turned and ran back down the empty corridor towards the great hall, feet slowing with each step. She wasn’t made for running.
Rounding the corner at a jog, she nearly slammed headlong into Tedore, one of Ditmar’s manservants. He quickly sidestepped with a bow.
“I saw soldiers,” she told him. “They were almost here—”
“Calm down, my lady. It was only the general’s men,” he reassured her, his brown eyes warm. “He’s let them in already.”
“Oh. But I thought…” she trailed off, gasping for air from her brief run.
“He asked Megh to fetch you to the hall,” Tedore informed her. “I’m off to get the stableboys, if it please my lady.” He bowed again and kept walking, more inclined to listen to a general’s orders than stay and speak with her. Ayla stood alone in the hall for a moment, chest heaving.
What did Sir Corin need with the stableboys?
And the knight had said his men were injured. Why had dozens of them come pouring out of the woods after Ditmar had left? Well, one had been on a stretcher.
She thought of, and quickly dismissed, a string of doubts. Was the knight really Sir Corin? Yes, Ditmar went to court sometimes; he’d have recognized the man.
In Ditmar’s absence, she was the head of the castle, and if Sir Corin wanted her, she ought not to stand there like an anxious fool. She pushed down the small voice in her head screaming that something was off, and went to do her duty.
Hiding her hands in her skirts, Ayla made her way back into the great hall. Her steps slowed as she entered, eyes scanning the large room and trying to make sense of what she saw.
A handful of servants huddled in a corner of the hall without doorways, looking confused but not speaking.
Men with spears and swords stood in a loose ring around them.
The weapons weren’t pointed at her people, but the image brought immediately to mind a flock of sheep surrounded by wolves.
The soldiers looked weary and cold, their faces thin and exhausted.
They couldn’t have been in the castle for more than a few minutes.
They stared at her but made no move to approach.
Perhaps the soldiers were just standing guard, protecting her people in case the traitors emerged from the mountains and attacked the castle.
Or—perhaps the knight was gathering everyone so he could make an announcement.
To tell them he’d be commandeering castle Blackfell until he and his injured men were ready to leave.
Although if that were the case, why her people were pinned against the wall. ..
Her eyes left the servants and found the knight.
His dark gaze stared at her from the seat he’d claimed: her husband’s throne on the small dais.
He’d wiped the blood from his face, but he was still fully armored.
A drawn sword rested in one of his hands, the flat of the blade balanced on his knee.
His stern mouth slowly spread in a crooked, close-lipped smile, triumph in his eyes.
“Lady Blackfell, I presume,” the knight said. His voice sounded so deep it pierced her to her core. One of the soldiers stepped towards her and pushed Ayla forward by her back. Her skin crawled at the contact. Gulping, she stumbled towards the man on the throne. She heard laughter behind her.
Wrong. This was wrong. There was no more pushing down that voice in her head.
“I am,” she admitted. Her voice came out as little more than a whisper. But he nodded, once, seeming to hear her just fine.
“Very good.” He stood from the throne in a lithe movement, unpained. She watched him take another step towards her, and realized he had never been injured. The blood, whoever it belonged to, hadn’t been his.
He’d lied, and gotten Ditmar out of the castle. He was a villain, not a hero.
“I name this castle under my control,” the knight announced.
Ayla drew a trembling breath through her nose and willed herself to be calm. To be as expressionless as she ever was in front of Ditmar. But this wasn’t her husband, this was a knight with traitorous motives and four dozen-odd soldiers, within the walls of Blackfell.
At the worst of times, it was tradition that held Ditmar back, kept him from injuring his wife too badly.
He did not want visitors to see him as a brute, or to know what punishment he doled out behind closed doors.
But the traitors would not care about that.
If they were willing to break faith with the Queen, what would stop them from murdering, pillaging, ravaging?
They were lawless men. Like rabid dogs.
The knight’s eyes fixed on Ayla’s.
“Surrender the keys to me,” he commanded.
“I do not have them,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Then my man will escort you to get them.” His dark eyes were fixed too sharply on hers, like a predator watching its prey.
He wasn’t talking about the regular keys the steward kept, which opened the more ordinary doors, but the castle keys, the ones Ditmar hid in his study. They opened the treasury, the dungeon, and the armory.
Ayla gripped her skirts. She was the lady of the castle. She owed a duty to her servants and to her country. No matter how terrified she felt.
“I do not know where they are kept,” she fumbled. “When my husband returns, surely he will give you...”
Another round of laughter from the soldiers behind her cut her off. The knight’s smirk slowly spread into a smile.
He swaggered towards her, the naked sword still in his hand. Ayla’s eyes went to it; the wicked gleam of the blade. Would he kill her?
Mercy. He might. She was a noblewoman of Enar. And they were at war.
“Slow one, isn’t she?” she heard a stranger behind her laugh.
“Woman,” the knight said slowly. “Your husband can pound on the gates all he likes, but he isn’t stepping foot back in this castle. He can keep the town and the woods, for all I care. Blackfell is mine.”
She honestly wouldn’t mind if he killed Ditmar. She knew she ought to care, a little, but she didn’t. The servants, though… could she bargain with him for mercy? Most of them lived in the town and only spent their days in the castle for work. He couldn’t keep them prisoner here.
“Sir Corin,” she began.
“That is my brother,” the knight interrupted. “Regrettably, we look much alike, though he’s the uglier. My name is Lord Niel of Mount Eyron. You will not speak his name again in my presence.”
The man before her was the Duke of Eyron’s younger son, the one who had sided with his treasonous father and declared war against the Queen.
She bowed her head, unwilling to meet his eyes. Ayla’s breaths were shallow, frantic.
“Tie her up?” a man asked.
A moment of silence. She couldn’t stop them, if they wanted to bind her.
She needed a way to fight back that didn’t rely on strength of arms. Ayla stared at the flagstones beneath her feet.
The knight sighed sharply, then snapped his fingers.
She lifted her head to see him reach a large hand towards her.
Shivering, Ayla forced her legs to carry her closer to where he stood. He glared at her from beneath a heavy brow, seemingly annoyed by her slowness. So she walked even slower.
Up close, the knight seemed massive. She was not a short woman, but he towered over her, his broad shoulders made wider by heavy plated armor and a thick fur-trimmed cloak.
He looked like he could crush her in one fist, sword not needed.
She offered him her cold hand slowly, as if he might bite it off.
She could smell blood on him, and the leather he wore.
No more than a foot separated their bodies.
Up so close she could see the way winter and wind had roughened his skin.
He grabbed her hand and ran a warm, calloused thumb roughly over her palm, sending a shiver through her icy body. His thumb pad traced down the length of her fingers as Ayla’s breath caught. Then he dropped her hand abruptly and stepped back.
“Soft hands. She has nothing of a warrior about her,” Lord Niel announced dismissively. “Sit, Lady Blackfell.” It was a command, not an offer. With his sword, he pointed her to her own chair, two steps below Ditmar’s throne.
What was she supposed to do, against an entire band of warriors? Head bowed, shame weaving in among her terror, Ayla approached her chair and sank into it. The knight stayed standing where he was. There had to be something she could do. If she could only get her mind to stop spinning, and to focus.
“Back already?” the knight asked as a blonde man strode into the hall.
Ayla recognized him for one of the men who’d entered the castle initially—the one who’d led Ditmar away.
He held a folded bundle of what looked like shimmering white leather hide with the hair left on.
No mortal creature that Ayla knew had skin so iridescent.
It reminded her of the unicorn’s hide. The fragile hope she’d felt that morning now seemed shattered and dead. She shivered.
“All too easy, my lord,” the man said. He offered the bundle of leather to Lord Niel, who took it and tossed it onto the throne behind and above Ayla’s chair.
“You got away cleanly?” the knight demanded.