The workshop occupied the base of one of the old-fashioned towers that nobody bothered to build anymore. The door that led up into the tower was seldom open. Most of the time it was blocked by a chest Theron had lugged there from someplace, although now the chest stood in the middle of the room and the doorway was clear. They’d tried once to climb the narrow stone staircase that spiraled up into the cobweb-draped dimness; at least, Gavin, Judah and Theron had. Elly, terrified by the height of the thing, wanted nothing to do with it. They teased her for refusing to climb trees but in the case of the tower they’d had to concede her point, because before they’d climbed two full loops around, they came to a place where the stairs had mostly fallen in. Usually, the towers held nothing but old furniture, anyway, so they’d given up. But Theron had been taken with the wide shelves and workbenches built into the curving walls of the tower’s lowest level, and had claimed it as his own. The single greasy, smeared window opened onto an empty space, open to the air but walled off on all sides; Theron called it a light well, but the light that passed through it was thin and almost useless. It was probably just an architectural oversight. There were lots of those in the House, places where old and new met and hadn’t joined seamlessly: corridors that dead-ended, rooms with uneasy corners and awkward ceilings. The bottom of the light well was thick with brambles. They’d never found a way in, but they hadn’t tried very hard.
The view, or lack thereof, didn’t matter to Theron. He rarely looked out the window. Many of the locks opened with codes, so he’d dedicated one side of the room to code breaking, and piled the benches there high with books he’d stolen from the library and messy stacks of ink-spotted paper he’d scavenged from wherever he could. On the other side, where he was working now, he kept his tools, most of which he’d built or stolen or also scavenged. Older than old, some of them, and rough with corrosion for all that he’d purloined vials of acid to eat away at the crud.
Eventually, he put down the needle tool he was using. “All right. Did you want something?”
“A few things. To make sure you survived dinner last night, for one thing.”
“I seem to have.”
“Also, Gavin says you have to start showing up for training.”
“Gavin doesn’t get to tell me what to do.” Theron returned to his table, surly. “Not yet, anyway.”
Judah lifted her hands, palms out. “I’m only the messenger. He seemed pretty determined about it, though. Might be easier to go and get him off your back.”
“Easier. To go down to the training fields and present myself as a target for the murderous lunatics Elban calls his guards? No thanks.”
“Not all of them are Elban’s.” Elban’s personal guard wore scarlet badges on their chests. The House Guard wore white. The army was made up of a mix of the two. In theory their loyalties were separated—they pledged different oaths—but the distinction was trivial. “Listen, I don’t blame you. But at some point, you’re going to have to deal with them.” Judah couldn’t think of anyone more poorly suited to command a fighting force than Theron. He didn’t like crowds or loud noises and when he was frightened or nervous, he stuttered. “You know Gavin won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Oh, good. My brother is watching out for me. I’m so relieved.” Theron picked up the needle tool again and bent back over his device, but his movements had gone aimless. “Who was that courtier you left with last night?”
Judah blew out a disgusted huff of air. “If this is what happens when I leave a room five minutes before a complete stranger, I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Well, Gavin certainly spends enough time with them. And you two being as thick as you are—and, really, I mean that in all possible senses—it’s not unreasonable to think you’ll start, too.”
“I loathe the courtiers.”
“Gavin used to say the same.”
“He has to play nice.”
“Does he.” Theron’s tone was dry.
She experienced a moment of dislocation: in her head, Theron would be forever fourteen and gangly. But the Theron before her, with his wary expression and patchy unshaven beard, seemed much older than the twenty he was, even. “Don’t be oblique. You’re bad at it. If you have something to say, say it.”
“He has one courtier friend in particular. I don’t know her name.” With distaste he added, “She’s very pretty.”
“Better the courtiers than the staff.” This distinction had been the subject of many an argument between Gavin and Judah, particularly since she’d become friendly with Darid and learned more about staff life. Lady courtiers had family, position and power to protect them; the staff girls had nobody. She was relieved, if a bit surprised, to hear that any of what she’d said had sunk in.
But Theron’s disgust was clear. “He’s marrying Elly. He shouldn’t be spending time with other women.”
“Maybe not, but—Theron, nobody expects that. Not even Elly. Gavin is who he is. The courtiers are who they are. They’re horrible. He’s not. It’ll all work itself out eventually.” She resisted the urge to ruffle his hair. “Gavin can be a little oblivious sometimes, but he’s not a bad person. And he really will keep an eye out for you on the training field. You know that.”
“Give up. I’m not going down there unless he drags me.”
“He might.”
Theron only shrugged. “In the meantime, maybe you’ll let me get back to work.”
So that was what she did.
* * *
The previous spring, she’d walked past the House stables during weaning. The cavalry stables, on the other side of the House, were all shouting and drills and massive stomping warhorses; those, she avoided. But there were foals at the House stables. She’d been unobtrusively watching them for months: their first wobbly explorations of the paddock, their games of tag and chase, the way their mothers bent soft noses down to theirs. But that day, weaning day, was different. The foals she’d grown to recognize paced nervously, squealing and bolting and tossing their heads in distress. Every time one approached the gate, the stablemen drove it away with cries and waving arms. The mothers were nowhere in sight.
All Judah had known was that the foals were upset, that they wanted to leave the paddock and couldn’t. She’d glared at the stablemen perched on the split-rail fence, who shifted uncomfortably. A few of them did something with their hands, a sort of slashing motion. Much later, Darid told her that cityfolk used that sign to protect against the evil eye—not that they would admit to believing in it, but just to be on the safe side. He’d been the one who’d finally approached to ask what she wanted. She hadn’t known he was Darid then; he was just the head stableman, as blond-haired and blue-eyed as everyone else, dressed in dull staff brown, with massive arms that spoke of a lifetime of labor. Unsmiling but reasonably friendly, he’d explained about weaning and why it had to be done. The foals would calm down, he said, and suggested she come back in a few days to see for herself.