40. The Duke’s Hall
The Duke’s Hall
Master Cromwell entered without waiting for acknowledgment, four servants trailing in his wake like ducklings behind a particularly well-dressed duck.
His travel-stained clothes had been replaced with court dress, every fold crisp, every thread in place. The man who’d spent five days cramped in a carriage looked like he’d just stepped out of a tailor’s shop.
“Lord Baldir. Lord Armand. Young Danarre.” His bow held exactly the correct degree for each of our ranks, neither too deep nor too shallow.
“Duke Hemmrich’s hospitality extends to proper presentation. You won’t embarrass House de Blaise tonight.”
The servants moved in without waiting for permission. Two flanked Baldir, one approached Armand, and the oldest, a woman with weathered hands and the look of someone who’d seen everything at least twice, stepped toward me.
“Time is short,” Cromwell continued. “The Duke appreciates punctuality above most virtues. You have one hour to transform from road-worn soldiers into presentable young lords.”
The old servant was already working at my training jacket, fingers finding buttons with the speed of long habit. “Arms up,” she commanded, leaving no room for argument.
The fabric peeled away stiff with dried sweat and road dust. Five days of hard travel had left its mark, and she made a sound of disgust that suggested I’d personally offended her professional standards .
“This won’t do,” she announced. “Not even close. We’ll need a full scrub. These basins aren’t fit for Duke Hemmrich’s standards.”
Cromwell’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “The attached bathing chamber. Quickly.”
Without further discussion, the servant swept toward a door I’d assumed led to storage. Instead, it opened onto polished stone steps descending into torchlight and rising steam.
“Come along, then. We’ve wasted enough time already.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The bathing chamber was carved from living rock, a natural cave that someone had shaped into luxury over generations of patient work.
Steam rose from a sunken pool fed by channels cut into the walls.
Hot springs, natural from the mineral smell, flowing beneath the Duke’s estate.
The water was so clear I could count the stones at the bottom, worn smooth by a few centuries of bathers.
“In,” the old servant commanded, producing soap that smelled of pine and something medicinal. “We’ve got forty minutes to make you presentable. Strip.”
I did as ordered, entering water hot enough to turn skin pink on contact.
The heat seeped into muscles I hadn’t realized were tight, loosening knots from days of tension and travel.
She attacked the accumulated grime without gentleness.
Efficiency was her only concern, and my comfort wasn’t part of the equation.
“Hold still,” she muttered when I tried to help with my own hair. “You’re not the first bastard I’ve prepared for noble company. Won’t be the last, either.”
The words carried an odd comfort. She wasn’t pretending I was more than what I was .
“What’s your name?” I asked as she worked soap through tangles that had been forming since we left home.
“Betta.” Her fingers found every knot with brutal efficiency. “Served Duke Hemmrich’s household twenty-eight years. Dressed lords and ladies for every occasion you can imagine. Weddings, funerals, coronations, tournaments. You name it, I’ve buttoned it.”
The water turned murky as layers of road dust dissolved. She worked in concentrated silence for a moment, then spoke quietly, voice pitched for my ears alone.
“Your mother had grace, she did. Lady Clarissa.”
Her hands stilled briefly on my scalp.
“Duke Hemmrich knew her. Before she went to House de Blaise.”
I kept my expression neutral but let curiosity show. Natural for a boy hearing about his dead mother.
“What was my mother doing here? At Duke Hemmrich’s estate?”
“She wasn’t here for the Duke, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Betta’s tone carried mild reproach. “Lady Clarissa came to study with the Archmagus Severin. The Duke’s court mage, back when he kept one. Before the church convinced him such advisors were unnecessary.”
I held myself very still. I’d known my mother could heal.
Henrik had told me that much, and the silver thread in my chest hummed whenever her name came up in connection with the Temple’s grudge.
But formally trained under a court Archmagus was a different order of talent entirely.
That wasn’t a woman with a gift she’d stumbled into.
That was a woman someone had invested years in developing .
“She had talent,” Betta continued, resuming her work on my hair.
“Real talent. The kind that comes once in a generation. Healing without divine blessing, they said. Could make light move between her fingers like it was alive. Severin called her the most promising student he’d trained in forty years. ”
Healing without divine blessing. There it was. The same crime the Temple would have killed her for. The same threat to their monopoly that had put a target on her back before I was ever born.
“How did you know she was my mother?”
Betta’s weathered face softened slightly. “Child, you’ve got enough of her face. Pure Clarissa around the eyes and chin. Plus,” she lowered her voice further, “servants talk. We knew Lord Henrik had taken her to his house.”
I touched the silver hawk pendant at my throat, Clarissa’s keepsake. I hadn’t taken it off since learning what it was.
“She gave me this.”
Betta’s eyes found the pendant, and recognition moved through her expression like an old wound remembering how to ache. Grief. Memory. The particular weight of watching someone young walk toward a fate you couldn’t prevent.
“She wore that every day she was here. Never took it off, not even to sleep. Said it was all she had left of her mother.” Her voice went rough. “She must have wanted you to have it. To carry a piece of her.”
From across the chamber, Baldir’s voice carried over the splash of water. “Father never mentioned she was a mage. ”
I turned to see him standing in his own bath, servants working soap through his hair with considerably more deference than Betta showed me. His expression was thoughtful rather than dismissive.
“Father mentions very little about anything that matters,” Armand added from his pool.
He waved away his servant’s attempt to scrub his back, handling it himself.
“But a mage talented enough to study under Archmagus Severin? That explains his interest in her. And why he was so furious when she died.”
“Lord Henrik values useful things,” Baldir said carefully.
“A gifted mage would be an investment,” I finished. “One that paid dividends for as long as she lived and worked magic for his house.”
“More than that,” Armand said. “If she had that level of talent, she could have served any house in the kingdom. She could have stayed here with Severin and become a court mage herself. She chose ours instead.”
Or was chosen by it. But I kept that thought to myself.
“The Archmagus was furious when she left,” Betta added, dunking my head underwater to rinse the soap. I came up sputtering. “Said she was throwing away a future that could have changed the kingdom. Said she had a duty to develop her gifts, not waste them on some lord’s bedroom.”
“What happened to the Archmagus?”
“Died two winters after she left. Some say of disappointment.” She shrugged, pulling me from the water with surprising strength. “More likely old age, but people like their stories dramatic. He was eighty-four, after all.”
So Clarissa hadn’t been just another pretty girl who’d caught Henrik’s eye.
She’d been a mage with enough potential to study under a court Archmagus, enough talent to make an eighty-year-old wizard believe the kingdom’s future depended on her development.
And the Temple had killed her for it, because a healer who didn’t need their blessing was a threat to everything they’d built their power on.
The anger came quiet and cold, the way it always did when the pieces of my mother’s murder fit together a little tighter. I filed it away with the rest.
“Did she ever say why she left?” I asked as Betta began the brutal process of drying my hair with a towel that felt more like sandpaper.
“Love.” Betta’s voice carried old sorrow. “Lord Henrik came through on business when she was seventeen. Stayed a few weeks. By the time he left, she’d chosen him over all of it. Where she went after, I couldn’t tell you. But she went.”
She paused, hands still on the towel.
“Severin tried to talk her out of it. Spent two days arguing, pleading, threatening to curse her if she walked away from her training. But she wouldn’t budge. Said she’d found what mattered more than magic.”
“Love isn’t more important than magic,” Baldir said from his bath. Betta turned to look at him with eyes that had seen more of the world than any of us ever would.
“You say that now, young lord. Wait until you feel it. Then tell me what’s more important.”
◇ ◆ ◇
Rough towels scraped away the last traces of travel while Betta muttered about schedules and standards and young nobles who didn’t understand the importance of proper presentation. Then the clothes came in layers .
Underclothes first, soft cotton that felt strange against skin accustomed to training leathers.
Then trousers cut tight enough to show leg shape but loose enough to move in.
Then a shirt of white silk that probably cost more than most families earned in a month.
Then a doublet in de Blaise blue with silver thread at the cuffs and collar.
Each piece fit perfectly. Someone had taken our measurements in advance, prepared these garments knowing exactly who would wear them and when.
Once the servants finished their work and stepped back, Cromwell dismissed them with a nod. The door closed behind them, and the man’s posture shifted. Less instructor, more intelligence officer.