32. Lesser Home
Lesser Home
Sleep wouldn’t come.
The bed was too soft, the room too quiet, the ceiling too far away and lost in shadows that the dying fire couldn’t reach. I lay there for an hour, maybe two, listening to the silence of the main house and missing the sounds of my team breathing in the dark.
I missed Maise’s occasional muttering, Perrin shifting in his sleep, Grit’s preternatural stillness that somehow felt more alive than this empty room.
Here, there was only the creak of old wood settling and the distant murmur of servants moving through corridors that didn’t concern themselves with bastards.
A knock at the door brought me upright, knife in hand before I’d finished waking. The Red Gale had never slept without steel within reach, and neither would Danarre.
“Young master?” The voice came through the wood, male and older, carrying the particular uncertainty of a servant who wasn’t sure if he’d wake a lord or a knife. “I’ve brought your schedule for tomorrow.”
I crossed to the door and opened it.
The servant on the other side was thin but not starved, older than most house staff, with calloused hands that suggested work beyond domestic service before age or injury moved him indoors. He carried a small tray with a sealed note and a cup of something steaming.
“Forgive the late hour,” he said, eyes flicking to the knife in my hand before returning to my face. “Master Danzing will collect you at fifth bell for private instruction. Master Cromwell expects you at midday for protocol training.”
I tucked the knife away. “They couldn’t have told me this in the morning?”
“Standing orders for all elevated bastards, young master. The schedule must be confirmed the night before.” He hesitated, then added, “The tea helps with sleep. Chamomile and valerian. Lady Clarissa used to request it when the house felt too quiet.”
The mention of my mother stopped me cold.
“You knew her?”
The servant’s eyes widened slightly, realizing his overreach. He didn’t retreat, though, and that told me more about the woman who’d birthed me than any portrait could.
“I helped serve at her table sometimes. She had a way about her, your mother. Kind to us servants, she was.”
I studied him more closely. The way he held himself said soldier once, maybe, before age or injury moved him to household work. Two decades in a great house taught a man to see everything and say nothing, unless he chose otherwise.
“For how long?” I asked.
“For a time. A few months before the end.” His face tightened at the memory. “She used to say this house was too quiet at night. Said it needed more laughter and less whispering.”
“Did she say anything else? About the house, about Henrik, about anything?”
His eyes went careful. The question was dangerous, and we both knew it. Servants who talked about their betters didn’t stay servants for long.
“She said you would be born strong,” he finally offered. “Said she could feel it. Said you kicked like you were already fighting your way out.”
He set the tray on the desk near the door. “Forgive the liberty, young master. I’ll see about your things in the morning.”
The door closed behind him, leaving me alone with the ghost of a woman I’d never known except through the spaces she’d left behind.
The tea sat untouched. I didn’t trust anything I hadn’t watched being made, a habit that had kept me alive through four decades of war and one I wasn’t about to abandon for chamomile.
Instead, I went to the window.
The Stone Yard stretched below, torches marking the paths between buildings. My team was down there somewhere, probably wondering why I hadn’t returned from dinner. Probably thinking I’d already started becoming someone else .
I tried the latch. Locked, but the mechanism was simple, the kind Perrin had taught me months ago. Two thin pieces of metal at the right angle, and the lock clicked open.
The drop was maybe fifteen feet to a slanted roof, then another ten to the ground. Nothing for someone who’d scaled siege walls with arrows whistling past his ears. My hands knew what to do even if this body was still learning the language of its own limbs.
I grabbed the sealed envelope Henrik had given me, authority for equipment from the quartermaster, and tucked it inside my shirt. Then I went out the window.
◇ ◆ ◇
The descent took seconds. My feet hit packed earth just as the evening bell rang.
I kept to shadows, moving through paths I’d learned during midnight wanderings.
The guards barely glanced at me in the fine coat from dinner.
Clothing alone could determine where a man walked unchallenged, and the Red Gale had learned that lesson decades ago, slipping past checkpoints in stolen officer’s cloaks.
I found them in our room on the second floor of the barracks.
Maise was working her whetstone against her blade in a rhythm that said she was grinding through anger more than she was grinding an edge.
Perrin had his knives spread across his bed, organizing them by some system only he understood.
Grit sat in his corner, still as stone but aware of everything.
“Took you long enough,” Maise said without looking up.
“Had to sneak out. They gave me quarters in the main house.”
She did look up then, and her green eyes were sharp with anger and something that sat closer to hurt. “Of course they did. ”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
She set the whetstone down, deliberately. “You didn’t refuse it either.”
“Could I have?” I sat on what used to be my bed, the straw pallet feeling more honest than the feather mattress I’d left behind. “Henrik makes a decision, we follow it. That’s how this works.”
“We?” Perrin asked quietly, turning a knife between his fingers. “Or you?”
The question sat between us like something with weight. I pulled out the envelope and set it on the wooden chest we shared.
“This is quartermaster authorization. Equipment for all of us. Armor, weapons, whatever we need for the tournament.” I met their eyes in turn. “Henrik’s investing in the team, not just me.”
“Because we’re your accessories now,” Maise said, and the bitterness in her voice had teeth.
“Because you’re my people.” The words came out harder than I intended. “And because Henrik made an offer.”
I told them everything. The Sword-Kin dinner, the lessons wrapped in war stories, the formal acknowledgment if we won.
Them becoming my sworn swords, bound and protected.
The political game being played around us while we ate roasted boar and pretended we belonged at the table.
By the time I finished, the room had gone quiet except for the sound of Maise tapping her whetstone against the edge of her bed frame.
“So we win and become your servants,” she said finally. “Or we lose and stay nobody’s bastards.”
“You become my sworn swords.” I held her stare. “There’s a difference. ”
“Is there?” Her voice had lost some of its edge, though, and I could see her working through the math of it. Grit spoke from his corner.
“Protected. That’s what matters.” He didn’t move from his position, but his voice carried the weight of someone who’d lived the alternative. “Sworn swords can’t be culled. Can’t be thrown away when they’re inconvenient.”
“Exactly.” I leaned forward. “Win this tournament, and we’re set. No more trials, no more proving ourselves every dawn. We become permanent.”
“If we win,” Perrin said, but he was already calculating. I could see it in the way his fingers had stopped moving over the knives. “The Duke’s tournament won’t be like the Palisade. These will be trained fighters, not beasts.”
“Then we train harder.” I stood and moved to the window that overlooked the practice yards. “Every evening, we meet at the old training ground behind the armory. The one nobody uses anymore.”
“You’ll have obligations,” Maise pointed out, picking up the whetstone again. “Lord’s son duties.”
“I’ll handle them. Danzing’s giving me private instruction at dawn, Cromwell’s protocol lessons at midday.” I turned from the window. “Evenings are ours.”
Perrin’s eyebrows rose. “Private instruction from Danzing? That’s significant.”
“It means they’re serious about winning,” Grit said, shifting his weight just enough to acknowledge the conversation. “You don’t get Danzing’s personal attention unless someone high up demands it.”
Maise tapped her blade against the whetstone. “What about us? While you’re getting the special treatment? ”
“You’ll be in advanced combat drills. Same teachers, same training, just without me there.
” I hated how it sounded, and I could tell by the set of Maise’s shoulders that she hated hearing it.
“But every evening, we work together. I’ll teach you what Danzing shows me, you teach me what you learn. We stay sharp together.”
“Pretty words,” she said, but she’d stopped sharpening. “What happens when they notice?”
“Let them. We’re not breaking any rules.” I turned back to them. “Look, I know this changes things. The separate quarters, the formal dinners, all of it. But it doesn’t change what we are.”
“And what’s that?” Maise asked.
“Survivors,” Grit said before I could answer.
“More than that.” I looked at each of them. “We’re a team. My elevation means nothing if you’re not there with me.”
Perrin laughed, short and sharp. “You really believe that?”
“I jumped out a window to come tell you, didn’t I?”
That got a smile from Maise. “Idiot. You could have used the door tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow would have been too late. You’d have spent all night thinking I’d abandoned you.”
“We would have,” she admitted quietly, and the admission sat heavier than the anger had. “When you didn’t come back, we thought you’d already moved on. That we were just stepping stones.”
“Never.” I moved to the door. “I should get back before they notice I’m gone. But tomorrow evening, after all the formal shit, behind the armory.”
“We’ll be there,” Perrin said .
I paused at the door. “The Sword-Kin taught me something tonight. They said the only fight that matters is the one you lose. We’re not losing this one.”
“Arrogant shit,” Maise said, but she was smiling now.
◇ ◆ ◇
The climb back up to my window took longer than the descent.
My shoulders burned by the time I pulled myself through, and my fingers ached from gripping stone that hadn’t been designed for climbing.
The tea had gone cold on the desk, and the old servant’s words sat warm in my head where the drink wouldn’t.
She said you would be born strong. Said she could feel it.
I touched Clarissa’s pendant through my shirt. The cool metal pressed back against my fingers, a weight that carried more than silver.
I lay back on the too-soft bed and let exhaustion take me. Tomorrow, the real work began.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Main House
「Knight of Swords」 — Burning
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: The trail leads to the Temple’s highest seat.
He climbed back to her. Hel remembers what that costs a man who’s already fallen once.