47. Amber Hall
Amber Hall
Betta stopped at a section of wall that looked the same as every other panel we’d passed.
The servants’ passages had twisted through the keep’s guts for what felt like half an hour, narrow stairs doubling back on themselves, corridors running behind rooms I’d walked through hours ago without knowing any of this existed.
“Here.” She pressed her palm flat against the wood. “The Amber Hall is through this door. There’s a viewing alcove above the main floor.”
Steel rang on the other side. Shouts. The wet, particular sounds of men trying to kill each other in an enclosed space.
“How many?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Betta’s face had gone white. “The Duke’s Own were pushing the heirs toward this hall when everything started. Called it protection.”
Protection. The kind that locks you in a room full of armed men who answer to the man trying to kill you.
“Grit, Ygritte, with me.” I checked my spear, felt the shaft’s balance, confirmed the edge. “Maise, Perrin, hold this passage. Anyone comes through that isn’t us, put them down.”
Perrin’s face was gray with pain, but he nodded. His good hand held a knife steady enough. Maise planted herself beside him, sword across her body, eyes already reading the dark corridor behind us.
Betta pressed the hidden latch. The panel swung inward.
◇ ◆ ◇
The viewing alcove overlooked the Amber Hall from a gallery designed for servants to observe feasts without being seen. Tonight, it gave us a perfect view of slaughter.
The massive amber crystals that had lit the room so beautifully hours ago now cast everything in harsh orange, turning blood black and faces into masks.
Tables had been overturned to form barricades.
Bodies lay scattered across the polished floor, some in the Duke’s colors, some in the fine clothes of noble guests who’d dressed for a tournament and died for a duke’s ambition.
A defensive line held near the far wall.
Maybe twenty people, most of them young, clutching weapons they’d grabbed from wall displays or stripped from the dead.
A handful of guards in colors I recognized from other houses stood with them, doing their best to hold formation against soldiers who did this for a living.
And at the center of that line, Baldir.
My brother fought like he’d trained his whole life for exactly this moment.
His sword moved in clean arcs, solid technique that worked better than it should have because he refused to break.
Armand flanked him, dual blades weaving a barrier that kept the attackers from rolling their position. But they were losing ground.
The Duke’s Own pushed forward in disciplined formation, shields locked, blades probing for gaps. Killers doing what killers did. For every one that fell, others pressed forward to fill the hole.
“There.” Grit pointed to a cluster of Duke’s Own near the main entrance. “That’s their command. Take him out, the rest lose coordination.”
I saw the man he meant. Older, scarred, barking orders that the others followed without hesitation. A sergeant or captain, the kind of soldier who’d broken formations before and knew how to keep one together.
“Ygritte. Can your Brand reach him from here?”
She studied the distance, the angle, the fighting between us and the target. “Maybe. The chains need something to anchor to. If he moves—”
“He won’t move. He’s directing traffic.” I shifted my grip on the spear. “When I throw, you anchor him. Grit follows up. Fast and brutal.”
“And you?”
“I’m going down there.”
Grit’s eyes narrowed. “That’s suicide.”
“No.” The Knight Brand burned between my shoulder blades, eager and hungry, feeding on the violence below like a fire fed on kindling. “That’s what I do.”
The spear left my hand. Thirty feet, downward angle, a target giving orders instead of watching the gallery. The kind of throw that shouldn’t land. The Red Gale had made worse throws a thousand times, and the body remembered what mattered.
The spear took the sergeant through the throat.
He staggered, hands reaching for the shaft jutting from his neck, and Ygritte’s Brand erupted beneath him. Black tethers punched through the floor, wrapped his ankles and wrists, and dragged him to his knees as blood sprayed across the men around him.
The Duke’s Own formation cracked. Not shattered completely, they were too well trained for that, but the coordinated advance stuttered into confusion as men turned to see their commander choking on his own blood .
I dropped from the gallery.
Fifteen feet. I hit the floor in a roll, came up with the armory sword already in hand, and started killing.
The first one died before he registered the threat. Blade through the spine, angled up. He dropped and I was already past him, flowing toward the next target.
「The Knight feeds.」
The Brand burned bright between my shoulders, flooding my limbs with strength this body shouldn’t have held. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t slow. I was what I’d been in my last life: a weapon with a single purpose and no interest in mercy.
A Duke’s Own turned to face me, shield raised, stance solid. I didn’t try to go through the shield. Went under it. Dropped low, blade finding the gap at his knee. He screamed and fell. I finished him with a thrust to the throat before he hit the ground.
Grit appeared on my left, his sword opening a man’s belly before the man even saw him. No warning. No sound. Just Grit being Grit.
Ygritte’s tethers dragged another soldier down, and she followed with a blade through his eye.
The Duke’s Own were good. We were better.
◇ ◆ ◇
“Danarre!”
Baldir’s voice cut through the noise. I looked up to see my brother staring at me across the wreckage, sword still raised, face painted with blood that wasn’t his.
“Keep fighting!” I shouted back. “We’re not done!”
He didn’t argue. Turned and drove his blade into a man who’d been trying to flank him, training meeting necessity in a way that would’ve made Danzing nod once and say nothing, which was as close to praise as Danzing ever got.
The Duke’s Own were breaking. Without their sergeant, without coordination, they were individual fighters facing a force that had momentum and fury working together.
I cut down two more before I reached Baldir’s line.
The last one tried to run. Grit’s thrown knife caught him between the shoulder blades.
The fighting stopped.
People still breathed hard, still moaned from wounds, still wept from what they’d seen. But the steel had gone quiet, and in the orange glow of the amber crystals, the living stood among the dead and tried to remember how their legs worked.
“You’re alive.” Baldir grabbed my shoulder, grip hard enough to bruise. “Gods below, you’re alive.”
“So are you.” I scanned the survivors. Maybe fifteen young nobles still standing, plus a handful of guards and servants who’d been in the wrong hall at the wrong hour. “Where’s Armand?”
“Here.” My other brother came around an overturned table, wiping his blades on a dead man’s cloak. “Took you long enough.”
“You’re welcome.”
A look passed between us. Recognition, maybe. The kind of understanding that only came from fighting beside someone and discovering they didn’t fold. Then Armand ruined it with a grin.
“You look like a butcher’s apprentice after a bad day.”
I looked down at myself. Blood from chest to boots, most of it borrowed. He wasn’t wrong.
“Should see the other guys,” I said.
◇ ◆ ◇
Maise and Perrin came through the servants’ passage with Betta, securing our way out. The survivors had clustered into small groups, some crying quietly, some just standing over the bodies on the floor with the blank stare of people whose world had come apart in the space of an evening.
A girl in a torn green dress caught my eye across the room. Lanessa. Alive, though the dress was ruined with blood and soot and whatever else the night had thrown at her. She watched me the way you watch someone you’ve been measuring wrong.
“I knew you were more than you pretended,” she said quietly.
“Not now.” I turned to Baldir. “We need to move. The gates are open, but they won’t hold forever. Danzing and the Sword-Kin are buying us time.”
“How many made it?” He adjusted his grip on his sword, knuckles white.
“Don’t know. Enough to crack the gates, at least.”
Baldir’s jaw tightened. He looked around the Amber Hall at the bodies of heirs who’d come for a tournament and found a massacre instead.
“We can’t save them all,” he said.
“No. But we can save these.” I gestured at the survivors. “So let’s move.”
He nodded once. The mask of the heir settled back over his face, hiding whatever bled underneath, and when he spoke, his voice carried the authority Cromwell had spent months hammering into him.
“Everyone who can walk, on your feet. We’re leaving. Now. ”
They moved. Some needed help. Some could barely stand. But they moved, because staying meant dying, and even the ones too stunned to think could understand that much. I took point, spear recovered and in hand, the Knight Brand still burning steady between my shoulder blades.
We had a long way to go.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: Duke Hemmrich’s Estate, Amber Hall
「Knight of Swords」 — Raging
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the Hierophant. End what was begun.
The vessel dropped from a gallery into a room full of killers and made them regret looking up. Took the sergeant first. Good instincts. The Knight gorged itself on the carnage and the boy let it. Blood does what politics can’t.