20. Caspian
Caspian
The Conclave met in formal session each morning, but the real negotiations happened between sessions.
By the fourth day, I had learned the intervals better than the proceedings.
That morning I had repeated, “Corrected, and returned to the line,” with my father one pace to my left and his cuffs bright beneath my sleeves.
The clerk entered the words without looking at either of us.
When the bell released the floor, I moved among the seats as the Ashford heir. The name still opened conversations no one would have offered Caspian alone.
Lisle of the river seats reached me first and held my hand half a count too long.
“Summoned under seal,” he said after the pleasantries, “then charged for the escort that fetched me. My grandfather received an honorarium for attending. I am billed in advance for being compelled.” He wanted the Ashford grievance beside his own but would commit to nothing. I offered sympathy and no promise.
The dowager from the witness benches wanted less and knew more.
She drew me beyond a rite-guard’s hearing on the pretext of the cordial tray.
“You’ll have marked the new guards. Silver cord, left wrist. My husband sat that bench forty years, and every guard in this building swore to the rolls.
These swear to her.” She gave me a glass I had not requested.
“What are the rolls for, young Ashford, once the oath goes to a person?” Then she raised her voice to praise the session’s brevity and left me holding the cordial. Her hands never shook.
Fenwick found me by the basin aisle and spoke as if discussing grain. “The Verita girl went to the First Chair and came down on her own feet. No charge entered.” He watched me from the corner of his eye. I gave him nothing. “That office collects eventually, Ashford.” I believed him.
For two bells, I worked the crescent of seats.
Some men held my hand too long because they wanted Ashford support.
Others released it early because they had already chosen a side.
Two refused to shake at all; at least I knew where they stood.
Beneath the separate complaints, one question kept returning.
The Court had called in every lineage and begun charging new fees, but no one knew what it intended to buy.
Walkin entered between bells. The doors announced nothing.
They wore a gray coat without colors and carried one plain folio.
No party followed. Walkin crossed to the clerks’ end of the rail, opened the folio, and began reading.
Conversations resumed half a beat late. A cup remained untouched beside one lord.
Three others found reasons to move toward the far rail.
Walkin surveyed the chamber once. Their attention passed over our party without pausing on a wrist, a face, or Astra standing behind the Ashford seat with the household books. Then they returned to the folio. The restraint felt deliberate, a sheathed blade left where everyone could see it.
The decree had sent riders, readers, and checkpoint rotations after us. Those threats could be tracked. Walkin had come inside the Court and taken a place at its rail. They no longer needed to pursue us. They could wait for the building to close around us.
My father appeared beside me with two glasses and handed me one. “You saw.”
“So did everyone. That was why Walkin came.”
“Then the sessions will get shorter,” he said, and drank, “and the intervals worse.”
The household quarters ran along the water-side wall.
By the time I came down, the commons was dark behind its barred door.
Hale and Kieran spoke quietly on the other side of the wall; Delphine’s footsteps had already stopped.
I sat on the cot with the day’s clothes and cuffs still on.
I tried to begin the drill I used to quiet my mind before sleep, but I could still hear my father’s voice.
The bands had warmed against my skin hours ago, and I had stopped noticing their weight.
Astra entered with a step I would have known through a wall and lowered the latch behind her. She waited in the dark, then said, “You’re still wearing him.”
“I never found a moment to take the cuffs off.”
“I know.” She crossed the room and stopped between my knees. “I want the cuffs to stay on tonight.”
I waited.
“Keep his posture and his voice until I tell you to let them go. But everything under my hands is yours. Not his.” She rested two fingers against the right band. “If that feels wrong at any point, we stop and take them off. Do you want this?”
“Six words or fewer, under his rules?”
“Spend them.”
“Leave them on. Take the rest.”
“Good.” She undressed us quickly, leaving our clothes on the stool. “Hands flat on your knees. Stay quiet.” Then she stood between my knees and used the instructor’s voice from our barn drills.
“Name.”
“Ashford.”
She hooked her fingers beneath the right band and lifted my hand between her thighs. “Function.”
“Heir.” She was already wet against my fingers. I found her clit with two fingers and kept my touch steady. “Corrected.”
“Term of service.” Her breath had shortened, but her voice had not.
“Fourteen years.” I slid two fingers inside her and let the heel of my hand press where she moved against it. I kept my answers level while her breathing changed. She had taken the control he taught me and given it a use he would have hated.
“Whose household trained you?” The required answer was a house, never a person. Her hips had taken over the rhythm.
“Ashford’s.” She came with one hand gripping my shoulder, her body tightening around my fingers. I kept the pressure steady until the last contraction passed. When she caught her breath, she laughed once, low.
“Correct answer.”
She put one knee on either side of me, settled onto my lap, and guided my cock into her. She lowered herself slowly until she had taken all of me. Neither of us moved for one long breath.
She lifted my wrists to her waist and covered the bands with her palms. Her hands rested above the metal and my pulse beat beneath it. The cuffs grew warmer between us.
“Now hold him,” she said, and began to move.
She kept the pace slow. I set my chin, lowered my shoulders, and held my breathing to parade measure.
She watched the composure while she rode me.
“There’s the Conclave face,” she said. “The whole floor believed it. I can feel your heartbeat through the cuffs.” Her thumbs rested on the hasps.
Whenever my breathing broke, she slowed until I recovered, then moved again.
She pressed her mouth to mine. “Now let him go. I want to feel it.”
My next breath broke. I gripped her waist beneath her hands and drove up into the rhythm she had set. She came with me, her body clenching around me as she said my name against my ear. Her palms stayed over the bands.
“Good,” she said. With the cuffs still fastened, the word struck differently. It belonged to her, and it was meant for me. The sound I made had no words in it.
“Finish,” she said. “Like this.”
I came inside her with my voice past saving. She held me through it, her palms still covering the cuffs.
Sound returned slowly: water beneath the wall, a warden passing the barred commons door, Kieran laughing once before Hale quieted him.
Astra stayed on my lap until our breathing settled, then drew us down onto the narrow cot with her back against my chest and my wrists held against her ribs.
Cold marble and burnt sugar lingered on her skin beneath the Court’s gray soap. She made no move toward the basin.
When her breathing slowed, she sat up and found my wrists in the dark. I loosened the left hasp. She moved my hand away from the right. “Let me.” She opened it, stacked both cuffs on the stone beside the cot, and lay down again.
At the inn in spring, taking off the cuffs had been the point: his last claim removed piece by piece. Tonight they came off like any other hardware. This time, I felt no part of myself leave with them.
“Just hardware tonight,” she said, already drowsy. “Remember that.”
I lay awake with her weight against me and the cuffs cooling on the stone. Walkin waited upstairs for the Court to do its work. Here, Astra slept against my chest, and for the first time all day nothing of my father remained between us.