Chapter XIII
✦
The Road — Late Afternoon
They smelled Thornhold before they saw it.
Woodsmoke and roasting meat and something sweeter underneath — a city that had decided tonight was worth celebrating. The road grew louder as they walked, drums and strings threading through the trees, until they crested the final hill and the valley opened below them. Black stone walls lit orange from within. Torches at every parapet. Gates standing open, streaming with people.
Dren stopped at the top of the hill.
"Festival," Sylric said.
"Yeah." Dren watched the flow below — carts, merchants, families, a river moving toward the gates. "Half the kingdom will be inside those walls tonight." A pause. "That's useful."
"What's our cover? They won't let strangers through."
"We're grain merchants. Sold our load two days out, looking for lodging and a return contract." Dren started down the hill. He glanced at Dot when he said the next part. "Stay close. Don't do anything interesting."
Dot said nothing. He was looking at the city the way he looked at most things — steady, measuring, giving nothing back.
They went down.
Festival traffic had been running since midday. The gate guards had long since moved from thorough to functional — waving through anyone unremarkable, saving their attention for actual problems.
Dren had the weariness of the road down precisely. Hunched shoulders. Flat eyes. The guard asked about cargo. *Sold*, said Dren. Business? *Looking for a return contract. Heard there was work.* A sweep of professional disinterest over the group. Nothing worth stopping.
They were through before the next cart pulled up.
Dren found a bar, as usual — hood pulled low, moving fast. The others followed.
Inside it was nearly empty. Just the bartender behind the counter, polishing a cup with the patience of a man who had nowhere better to be.
"Seems quiet," Dot said.
The bartender chuckled. "Aye."
He asked where they'd come from.
Dren was already drinking. "The east. Just need a place to rest."
"You're in luck. Most folks are at the festival."
Yiva leaned forward. "What festival?"
The man raised a brow. "You must live very far from here."
"Yes," Yiva said.
Dren nudged the hilt of his sword against her back.
The bartender continued, unfazed. "A celebration of the last god's bloodline, they say." He settled into it the way men do when they've told a story enough times to love it. "The gods are dead. But before their end, something remained — King Harald's father first. Strength of a thousand men, they said. Then Harald himself surpassed him. A warrior who shattered a mountain troll's skull bare-handed."
Yiva's eyes lit up.
"But illness took them both. No mage, no healer could touch it. A final punishment, some say." He folded his arms. "Still — here in Thornhold, we honor them. We celebrate the sons of King Harald. Eirik…" A pause. "And his brother, Boldr the Great."
He glanced across at them. "Something to eat?"
"Yes—" Dot didn't hesitate.
Dren grabbed him by the collar and dropped a coin on the counter. "Where can we stay?"
The bartender pointed. They left.
The bartender watched the door close.
Then he reached quietly for something behind the counter.
The Inn — Night
Second floor. Narrow. A window facing the thoroughfare where the festival noise rose and fell in waves — drums, laughter, the city alive in a way that made their small room feel like the eye of something much larger.
Dren stood at the window, arms crossed.
"Boldr will be at the capital alone during the ceremony. He doesn't like crowds. That's when we move." He turned. "Tonight we stay low. We learn the layout. We find where he sleeps."
"You seem to know a lot about him," Dot said.
"I have my sources." A cold laugh.
"Staying low," Sylric said from the wall.
"That's correct."
A pause.
"Fine."
Dot sat on the edge of the bed, forearms on his knees, eyes on the floor. The thinker's look. Something running on a loop behind his eyes that he wasn't ready to share.
Dren noticed. Didn't push.
"Where's Yiva?" Dot asked.
"That's why it's been quiet," Dren said.
Everyone looked at the space where she'd been standing. The adjoining room door was open. The room beyond was empty.
She hadn't planned to leave.
She'd been in the doorway listening to Dren talk when something in the street below caught her eye — a figure moving through the festival crowd with a particular walk. A particular set of the shoulders. The way someone carries themselves when they think no one who matters is watching.
She had a feeling she knew them.
She was out the door before she'd made a decision.
The crowd swallowed her — bodies and noise and the smell of spiced wine and torch smoke. She kept her eyes on the figure ahead. He moved fast, threading through gaps without looking back. She followed. One street, left at a crossing, into a narrow lane behind a row of merchants' buildings.
The figure stopped.
Turned.
Yiva's breath caught.
A hand came from the wall beside her — fast, precise — and covered her mouth, pulling her into the shadow of a doorway. Her back hit stone. She grabbed the wrist and found it immovable.
"Quiet." Low. Serious. "Guards."
Footsteps on the cobblestones — unhurried, official. They passed the lane entrance without slowing.
The hand dropped.
She spun. The figure stood in front of her, hood back, face visible in the thin light from the street.
She looked at that face for a long moment.
She knew this person. She wasn't supposed to.
"We need to talk, Princess," the figure said quietly. "Not here. Come."
Dot came out of the empty room and looked at Dren.
"She's gone."
Dren's jaw tightened. He looked at the window — festival noise rising from below, ten thousand people moving through streets neither of them knew.
"Find her," he said. "Quietly."
Dot was already moving.
The festival had fully taken hold. Torches everywhere. Music coming from three directions at once. Dot moved with his head down, eyes scanning.
He turned down a side street. Checked two alleys. Doubled back.
A hand grabbed his arm.
He turned, ready — and found a girl. Sixteen, maybe. Bright-eyed, flushed, flowers woven into her hair, an expression of absolute determination on her face.
"Dance with me."
"I'm looking for someone—"
"Everyone's looking for someone." She was already pulling him toward the square. "Just one—"
"I really can't—"
The crowd closed around them before he finished the sentence. A wall of celebrating bodies, impossible to push through without causing a scene. The girl spun into the circle and pulled him with her.
He kept looking for Yiva over people's shoulders the entire time.
Inside the Inn — Same Time
Dren stood at the window. The street gave him nothing.
Sylric had been watching him from the wall with the expression he wore when he'd decided something and was simply choosing his moment.
"Hidenhiem," Sylric said.
Dren didn't turn. "Not now."
"Yes now." Sylric pushed off the wall. The chains coiled once around his forearm — slow, unconscious, his hands betraying what his face wouldn't. "We're in Thornhold. I don't think you actually plan to fight Boldr."
"What makes you say that."
"What happened in Hidenhiem. What Dot is. What you haven't said."
Dren was quiet for a moment. Then he turned.
"You want honesty." His voice had gone quieter, more deliberate. "Alright. I know about Councilman Verath. I know you went to his chambers six months ago and got close enough to put a blade to his throat before they pulled you off. I know the Allthing sentenced you to death and handed you this job as the alternative. Kill the boy — sentence disappears. Come back empty-handed—"
"They take my head," Sylric said. Flat.
"Yes."
A beat.
"So we're both carrying something."
"I'm not holding it over you. I'm telling you because you asked." Dren paused. "I believe Autuss Lock is alive. Going by the name Redman now. And I believe he wants the boy."
"Autuss Lock has been dead for years."
"There's little we know for certain. But he wants Dot as part of his plan." He held Sylric's gaze. "Dot isn't a target to be eliminated. He's a vessel. There's a difference."
Sylric stood very still.
Then he walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame. Didn't look back.
"I went after Verath," he said quietly, "because he signed the order to burn Saltmere." A pause, thin as a blade. "My village. Kael's village." Another pause. "My only regret is that he survived."
He opened the door. "I'll be back."
"Stick to the plan," Dren said.
He left.
Dren stood alone. Looked at the window. Didn't move.
Then the door came in.
Not knocked — *in*, off its hinges, hitting the floor before the sound of it registered. Two women through the gap before the dust settled. Dren had his sword half-drawn when the first hit him — low, fast, inside his guard before the blade cleared the scabbard. He pivoted wrong. Got his back to the wall.
The second was already there.
He registered it even as he fought: seamless coordination, each movement feeding the other's, nothing wasted. Boldr's wives. He'd heard they were trained. He hadn't heard *this.*
He was good. Thirty years good. But they'd planned for him and he hadn't planned for them, and the room was small, and he was tired from the road.
The blow from the third direction dropped him.
The floor came up.
The Main Square — Same Time
The drums stopped.
The festival crowd went quiet as the platform lit up — wide wooden stage, banners of Thornhold on either side, officials and guards arranged in the careful geometry of ceremony. A kingdom celebrating something that mattered to it.
Dot had finally freed himself from the dance and was moving along the square's edge, still scanning, when the silence fell and he stopped — nowhere to go without pushing through ten bodies.
A herald stepped forward. The accomplishments of the Thorn King. His brother Boldr. Enemies defeated, alliances secured. The crowd listened with the specific attention of people who had been afraid for a long time and were being told they didn't have to be anymore. The king's illness was noted; his heir was somewhere in the crowd, drinking with women, unbothered.
Then the herald's voice shifted. More formal. *A special guest*, he said. *A gesture of the kingdom's reach. Leverage in the ongoing negotiations with Greenwood.*
A hooded figure walked onto the stage from the left.
Behind him, wrists bound, on a rope —
Yiva.
She walked with her chin up and her jaw set, eyes moving steadily across the crowd. Even now. Even like this.
The figure reached up and pulled back the hood.
Mage Vespers.
The crowd murmured. Dot went very still.
Vespers looked out across the square for a moment. Then looked down at the rope in his hand.
She dropped it.
Yiva's hands were free — *had been* free. Dot saw it now: the binding already cut, held in place by her own grip. The performance of captivity, not the thing itself.
Vespers turned to the officials on stage and said something quiet.
Whatever it was, it wasn't what they'd expected. The nearest official's expression moved through ceremony, to confusion, to something sharper and less comfortable than either.
Dot started pushing through the crowd toward the stage.
Castle Hall — Same Time
Dren came back to consciousness being dragged.
Wrists bound. Sword gone. Head like a struck bell. He got his feet under him and managed something approaching walking between the two women holding his arms.
They brought him through a side entrance — older building, private, the kind that doesn't appear on the maps visitors see. Into a large room. High ceiling. Braziers. Long table loaded with food, wine, roasted meat.
At the head of the table: Boldr.
Large — genuinely large, built for it rather than cultivated toward it. Middle-aged, broad-faced, the look of a man who had seen enough to stop pretending any of it surprised him. He was eating with total focus and satisfaction. The way a man eats when he's won something.
He looked up.
His eyes moved over Dren's face. Something complicated crossed his expression — layered, the look of a man seeing something he'd thought about from a distance for a long time.
He smiled. Wide. Genuine.
"Long time no see." He tore another piece from the bone in his hand. "Sit him down. Carefully." A wave at the women. "He's a guest. Uncomfortable guest, but still."
They pushed Dren into a chair. He sat. Met Boldr's eyes across the table.
"You look older," Boldr said.
"You look stupid," Dren said.
Boldr laughed — a real laugh, as large as everything else about him. "Fair." He set the bone down and picked up his wine. "I heard you were coming. Heard what you planned to do." A tilt of the head. "Old King Forkbeard really thinks you can kill me."
"Someone does."
"Someone's wrong." No heat. Just fact. "But I don't want to kill you either, Dren. We've always been too useful to each other for that." He swirled his wine. "So. Here we are."
Dren had been scanning the room since he sat down. Exits. Guards. The women's positions. Distance to Boldr. And behind Boldr, slightly left — standing with a wine jug, eyes down, weight on her back foot —
Ysmay.
She hadn't looked at him yet.
Waiting.
Something shifted behind Dren's eyes. The calculation completing itself.
"How about," he said, "we make a deal."
Boldr raised an eyebrow. Amused. "I'm listening—"
The wine jug hit the table.
Ysmay's hand came around from behind Boldr in one smooth, unhurried motion — three weeks of waiting folding into a single second — and the blade settled against the side of Boldr's throat.
The girls scattered. The guards at the walls moved — and stopped. Ysmay's second blade answered the question before anyone could ask it.
Boldr sat very still. Looked down at the knife. Looked up at Dren.
A long pause.
Then he laughed — quieter this time. The laugh of a man who's just been outplayed and is deciding how he feels about it.
"A deal," he said. "Right. Yes." He set his wine down carefully. "Let's talk about a deal."
Dren leaned back in his chair, wrists still bound, and let the silence work.
✦
— To Be Continued —