Chapter 74: The Crown Prince

He found it at dawn, in the hollow under the rock, when he pulled up his shirt to check the scar.

The ink lines ran along it in their neat column, as always: the small ones from the forest and the moor, the thick dark one from the Furnace, and Kaela’s, long and fresh, from the night of the bath.

And below them, there was a new one.

It was wider than all the others. It ran from the bottom of his ribs almost to his hip, black and heavy and very straight, like a line drawn under a long sum.

[Entry: the essence of the Deep Pool.]

He sat in the grey light and stared at it silently.

Everything the deep pool had held, every beast the Imperial hunters had dragged down from the snows for three months, was written on his side in a careful hand.

What has been written down can be taken out again. Once.

’So I’m carrying a whole pool around under my shirt.’

He knew perfectly well what it meant, but he wouldn’t let himself think about it yet, not while the pool he had killed was still cooling on the other side of the wall.

"Well." Roderick hadn’t been asleep either, on the other side of the hollow. "You look like a man who’s done something stupid and made a profit."

"Both."

"Is she alive?"

"What do you take me for?"

"Honestly? I’ve stopped guessing."

By the time he reached the camp, every cook fire on the Aldermere side had heard.

"The deep pool." The corporal held out his cup, looking almost happy. "The whole thing. Dead overnight. Steam stopped, blood went flat. They say it’s like porridge now. You could stand a spoon in it."

"The thief?"

"Who else? Came back for the rest of it." The corporal drank. "Three months, my cousin says. Three months of hunting bears up in the snows, gone in a night. Half their garrison was going to finish tempering before the Summit. Not anymore."

"And the Voss woman?"

"Was down there when it happened. Alone." He lowered his voice. "Nobody knows what she was doing. She came out and gave orders like nothing was wrong. But my cousin says the Imperial officers aren’t looking at her the same way this morning."

Aren filled the cup, moved on, and kept his face carefully empty.

’That’s on me too.’

The Crown Prince arrived at noon.

Aren heard the horns from the bottom of the slope. They weren’t the Aldermere trumpets. These were much deeper and slower, three long notes that rolled across the valley from the north. Every head in the camp turned. On the iron half of the wall, the Imperial soldiers came smartly to attention in one long line and stayed there.

He took his buckets up to the central yard, because a water boy went where the work was, and today the work was there.

The Imperial column came through the iron gate an hour later. Two hundred riders in black, with no banners, only a single black flag at the front bearing the Emperor’s iron crown. They rode in perfect silence, in perfectly straight lines, like something made rather than born.

The Crown Prince rode at the center.

He was older than Aren had expected, thirty perhaps. Tall and narrow, with the same straight lines in his face as his sister, but none of her heat. He looked coolly at the yard like a clerk looking at a page of figures he’s already checked. He didn’t smile or frown, and he never once glanced at the Aldermere side of the wall.

[Prince Aurelian Voss-Kharos. Rank B.]

Rank B. The window said nothing else, and it didn’t need to.

’Rank B. And I’ve got a bucket. Fair fight!’

Captain Voss was waiting for him in the middle of the yard, alone, in her black armor, her lance upright in her hand. Her face showed nothing. She had washed the blood out of her hair. The chain was still at her neck.

The Prince stopped his horse in front of her, and he didn’t dismount.

"Captain."

"Your Highness."

"I’m told the deep pool has died." His voice was quiet and very clear, and it carried easily across the whole yard without him raising it at all. "Last night. On your watch. In your presence."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"I’m told this is the second time in a week the thief has entered the Pools. That you were present both times. Alone." He paused. "And that he wasn’t taken either time."

Kaela said nothing at all.

"The deep pool was meant to finish the tempering of forty of my soldiers before the Summit. Now I’ll sign a treaty in five days with the garrison of Kharn weaker than when I left the capital." He looked down at her calmly, with nothing in his face. "You’ll explain this to me. Tonight."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"And Captain." His eyes moved, very slightly, to the collar of her armor. To the chain. "Bring that as well."

Kaela’s hand stayed exactly where it was, and her expression didn’t change. But Aren, standing at the edge of the yard with his buckets, saw the back of her neck go white.

The Prince rode on toward the great hall, and his two hundred riders followed in silence. Kaela stood in the middle of the yard until the last of them had passed, lance upright, looking at no one.

Then, just before she turned away, her eyes crossed the yard.

It went to the water boys, and to him.

She held his gaze for perhaps one breath. He simply couldn’t tell what she was thinking, because her face gave nothing away.

Then she turned and walked briskly back toward the iron gate.

’What was that? A threat? A thank-you? With her, it could be both.’

He would have gone back to work. He would have picked up his buckets, walked away, and thought about it later behind the woodpile, as he thought about everything.

But the end of the Imperial column was still coming through the gate. They weren’t soldiers now but the Prince’s household: servants, clerks, a cook, a physician. And at the very back, on foot beside the last wagon, a small group of men in plain grey robes with their hoods up.

Priests. The Iron Throne had its own chapel, the soldiers said, and its own priests, who prayed for the Emperor’s children.

There were four of them.

The last one carried a box, small and square, wrapped in grey cloth, held against his chest in both hands, like something he didn’t trust anyone else to hold.

As he passed the cistern, a gust of wind came down off the mountain and lifted his hood. It was only for a moment, but just long enough.

Grey eyes. A narrow, ordinary face. The face of a clerk in white and gold, holding a silver box beside an altar in the High Cathedral, a world away, months ago.

Brother Ansel put his hood back up calmly, without hurrying, and walked into the fortress with the Crown Prince of the Iron Empire.

Aren stood frozen in the middle of the yard.

’You. Of all people! Here.’

The cold in his side, sleeping and full, opened one eye.