41. The Worm and the Hook
The Worm and the Hook
The food was worth the trip. I’d give them that much.
I moved along the tables with a plate that kept getting heavier, piling on roasted birds and honeyed pastries and cheeses I couldn’t name.
The Red Gale’s company had survived on dried meat and grain porridge for weeks at a stretch.
This spread would have fed all of them for a month, and here it was background decoration for people who’d never gone hungry.
I grabbed another honey cake and let syrup drip onto my sleeve. Betta would kill me later, but right now I didn’t care. The pastry was worth dying for.
Around me, nobles talked, laughed, and schemed. I caught fragments of conversation about trade routes, marriage prospects, old grudges dressed up as new concerns. Boring as hell, all of it. The kind of talking that went nowhere and meant nothing until someone decided to settle things with steel.
That was what they were all circling. Eventually, one of them would get tired of words and reach for a sword. They always did.
A group of boys my age huddled near a pillar, whispering and shooting looks my way. Sizing up the bastard. I ignored them. If any of them wanted to say something, they could come say it to my face.
Across the hall, Baldir was deep in conversation with the Duke, nodding at whatever political horseshit was being discussed.
Armand had found the southern champions and was laughing too loud at their jokes, playing the friendly second son.
Both of them working angles I didn’t understand and didn’t want to .
My job was simpler. Eat the food, look harmless, and keep my eyes open for trouble.
The trouble part came naturally. Couldn’t help noticing the guard positions, the exits, which servants moved like fighters and which ones were actually servants.
The Red Gale had spent decades surviving ambushes.
That kind of awareness didn’t switch off just because you were standing in a banquet hall with a plate of pastries.
I spotted Ygritte with the Sword-Kin near the entrance. Our eyes met briefly. No acknowledgment. We weren’t friends here, just people who happened to train together.
Fine by me. I had pastries to eat.
◇ ◆ ◇
“Better than barracks stew?”
I turned to find a girl about my age standing at my elbow. Blue dress, expensive jewelry, the kind of confident posture that came from never being told no.
“Much better,” I said, grabbing another honey cake. “You tried the ones with the red filling? They’ve got some kind of berry I can’t figure out.”
She laughed, a practiced sound that belonged in this hall the way the crystal chandeliers did.
“You’re Henrik de Blaise’s boy, aren’t you?”
“Danarre.” I offered my hand, realized it was sticky with honey, and wiped it on my trousers first. “Sorry. The food’s too good.”
“Lanessa of House LaVaen.” She shook my hand without hesitating at the mess. “My father’s the Duke’s cousin.”
“Nice to meet you.” I grabbed a sugared plum from a nearby platter .
“You competing tomorrow?” She stole a grape from my plate without asking.
“Spear and sword. You?”
“In the junior brackets, yes.” She took another grape, casual about it. “I heard there was quite a show during your trials. A Brand manifesting?”
That got my attention. Politics bored me. Brands were worth talking about.
“The Knight of Swords,” I said. “Still figuring out what it does, mostly. It just sits there between my shoulder blades and burns when it feels like it.”
“I manifested too.” She reached for a pastry this time, casual as breathing. “The Tower.”
I stopped mid-bite.
The Tower. I knew that Brand. A knight had used it against our supply lines during the siege of Thornwall, back when I was still alive the first time.
Turned good steel into brittle rust overnight.
Armor that should have protected men became death traps.
Weapons shattered in their hands when they needed them most.
“That’s a serious one,” I said. “Entropy and decay, right? Breaking things down?”
She looked surprised that I knew. “Most people just hear ‘Tower’ and think it’s about building things.”
“Most people haven’t seen what it does.” I finished the honey cake, thinking about rusted swords and men dying because their armor betrayed them. “You can rot steel with that Brand. Collapse structures. Make wounds that won’t heal right.”
“You know a lot about it. ”
“I pay attention to things that can kill me.” I shrugged. “Seems smart.”
For a moment, her practiced composure cracked and I saw genuine interest underneath. Surprise, maybe, that someone her age actually understood what she could do.
“Rust, rot, structural failure,” she said, her voice quieter now. “Time does most of the work. I just help it along.”
“That’s terrifying,” I said honestly. “In a good way. The Knight just makes me want to hit things. Yours is subtle.”
“Subtle isn’t always better.” She grabbed another pastry from my plate. “Sometimes I wish I could just hit things too.”
We talked for a while longer about Brands and training, which masters were decent and which ones were assholes. She was good company, sharp enough to keep up and bold enough to steal my food. Then she shifted the conversation somewhere more dangerous.
“They say your father thinks highly of you. Enough to send the bastard along with his heirs.”
I snorted. “Henrik doesn’t think highly of anyone. He thinks in terms of useful and not useful. I’m apparently useful enough to be worth the investment.”
“That makes you interesting.”
“Does it?”
“Everyone here is predictable.” She gestured at the hall full of nobles. “Heirs act like heirs. Second sons scheme like second sons. Champions posture like champions. You’re none of those.”
“I’m a bastard who’d rather be in the training yard,” I said. “Not much mystery to it. ”
“Your father sent you without coming himself.” She tilted her head, studying me the way Cromwell studied a poorly tied cravat. “No patriarch watching over your shoulder. Either he trusts you completely, or you’re bait.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“Probably both,” I admitted. “Henrik’s good at getting multiple uses out of his investments.”
“So you know you might be the worm on the hook?”
“Sure.” I grabbed another honey cake. “But the worm doesn’t pick the hook or the water or the fish. All the worm can do is be ready when something bites.”
She blinked at me. “That’s a dark way to look at it.”
“I’m a dark person.” I bit into the cake. “You should see me before breakfast.”
For a moment, she looked like she didn’t know what to do with me. I got that a lot.
◇ ◆ ◇
Movement near the entrance caught my eye.
Not guards changing shifts. A man in white robes trimmed with silver, moving through the crowd with urgency that didn’t belong at a party. He was heading for Duke Hemmrich, and the set of his shoulders said this wasn’t a social call.
The White Cardinal. The Duke’s spiritual advisor, the highest Temple authority in the region.
The Hierophant.
The silver thread in my chest went taut, cold enough to ache. Between my shoulder blades, the Knight Brand flared with sudden heat, and I had to force my breathing steady to keep the warmth from spreading down my arms where someone might notice.
I hadn’t seen his face before tonight. Henrik had described the man in broad strokes: wolf-fur trim on his vestments, a signet ring of twined towers, and the particular authority of someone who’d spent decades consolidating power over anyone who manifested abilities outside the Temple’s monopoly.
The same man who’d murdered Hel’s daughter.
The same man who’d sent poison to my mother’s cup.
He was shorter than I’d expected. Soft-looking, the way a sheathed blade looks soft until someone draws it.
Easy. Stay easy. You can’t take him here. Not yet.
I watched him reach the Duke, watched them speak in voices too low to hear. Watched Hemmrich’s face go from polite to concerned to grim in the space of a few sentences.
“Your Grace,” the White Cardinal said, loud enough now for me to catch, “the message from the capital requires my immediate attention. I must depart tonight.”
Tonight. The middle of a gathering, the night before a tournament, and he had to leave right now.
“The White Cardinal never leaves early,” Lanessa said, following my gaze. “He’s usually the last one out the door.”
I didn’t answer. I was watching the guards fall in around him, watching the way they moved toward the exit with coordinated purpose that said they’d been ready for this departure before the message arrived.
The thread in my chest pulsed once. Cold, and then colder.
He’s running. The question is from what .
“What is it?” Lanessa asked.
“Don’t know.” I kept my eyes on the white robes disappearing through the door. “But when holy men run in the middle of the night, it usually means they know bad weather’s coming.”
He was gone. My target, the man I’d been reborn to kill, walking out of reach while I stood here with honey on my fingers and a plate of stolen grapes.
The thread hummed between my ribs like a plucked wire, urging me to follow, to chase, to close the distance and finish what Hel had sent me back to do.
I didn’t move. Thirteen years old, alone in a room full of strangers, with no weapon and no plan. The Red Gale would have waited too.
But my hands were shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold.
◇ ◆ ◇
The rest of the evening felt different. Same food, same wine, same endless conversations about nothing that mattered. But I couldn’t stop watching the exits, couldn’t stop cataloguing which guards were soldiers and which ones were just filling a uniform.
The White Cardinal had run. Whatever had spooked him was still here. And I was standing in the middle of it with pastry crumbs on my shirt and a goddess’s contract burning against my spine.
Lanessa drifted off eventually, pulled away by a relative who wanted to introduce her to someone important.
I waved her off and went back to the food tables, but I wasn’t eating anymore.
My jaw ached from keeping my expression neutral.
The thread had settled into a low, persistent thrum that wouldn’t let me forget what I’d just seen.
When Baldir finally came to collect me, the tension in his face told me I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the White Cardinal’s departure. His formal smile looked strained at the edges, and his hand on my shoulder carried warning beneath its apparent warmth.
“Time to go,” he said. “Early training tomorrow.”
“Right.” I set down my plate. “Looking forward to it.”
We walked out of the Amber Hall together, Armand falling in beside us without a word. None of us spoke until we were well clear of the gathering, our footsteps filling corridors that seemed longer than they had hours ago.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: Duke Hemmrich’s Estate, Guest Quarters
「Knight of Swords」 — Burning
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the Hierophant. End what was begun.
The vessel saw the prey tonight. Stood close enough to spit on the man who killed Hel’s daughter and kept his hands at his sides. The thread screamed and the boy held still.Hel will decide when the time comes. The prey runs.