Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knot,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty.
—Sonnet 26, Shakespeare

—

"I said I was sorry."

"There is nothing to forgive, Your Highness."

"Liar. You're furious with me." She tried to spear a pea moodily, flicked it instead from her golden plate to the little bowl of spiced soup, and fished it out again. "I don't know how to make it up to you."

"You ought to have been honest from the start," said the young woman seated across from them. The princess Bethany's voice was severe, but her face was prone to sweetness, and her black hair so like her sister's fell in soft, loose waves to her shoulders. She wore a gown of blue and copper, and she moved with the grace Fenris had expected from all this city's royalty. "Would it have been so hard to say, 'oh, yes, it seems I'm the one you're looking for, how convenient, let me take you up directly?'"

"But he didn't know me! I wanted—" Hawke began, then visibly killed the rest. She turned instead to Fenris, her eyes grave. Clean, he could see the nobility in her; she moved with purpose, spoke with an easy command and was used to being obeyed. Her clothing had likewise improved; now she wore a red brocade gown with a black overskirt, her hair bound and plaited in a gold net, the stained, muddied boots exchanged for red slippers. Her left ankle was bound in stiff undyed linen, and every now and then when she moved he caught the scent of valerian. Druvond had dressed him carefully to match, his black coat pinned with gold frogs and a red armeria. She wore Prince Sebastian's ring on her left hand, dark hammered pewter with a red stone set flat in the band. "It was selfish of me," she said at last. "I should have told you. I'm sorry."

Fenris set down his fork. The kitchens had prepared a feast for their arrival, asparagus in white sauce, boar cooked pink and tender, chestnut soup with leeks and spices, yams and puddings arrayed invitingly on embroidered linen. He did not know how to tell her that it was ash in his mouth when the woman to whom Sebastian had bound himself played games with his captain and ran from bulls. "Your Highness," he said, and faltered. His eyes fell to her ring.

"You're thinking of your prince," she said softly, and across the table Bethany turned politely away to the lady Merrill and her discussion of Kirkwall's horseshoes. "You worry for him."

It was more insight than he expected from her, and Fenris lifted his eyes to her face. "Prince Sebastian is a good man," he said at last, and the words came rough. "I have known him many years, and he gave me shelter when few others would have. I…consider him a friend."

"And I have treated his emissary carelessly and thus, him." She folded her hands and the red stone flashed in the firelight. "I will not do so again."

He doubted and she saw it, smiling. The great hall brimmed with torchlight, with mirth and wine and conversation; even here at the head table the king laughed raucously at something his son said, four places down from Fenris, and his wife the queen lifted her wine delicately to her lips. The goblets were beaten bronze, worn and well used but solidly made; they caught the light and reflected it, turned it scarlet with the rich wine they held. Even the tapestries and rugs were warm, made of thick hooked wool in red, orange, brown, and black; swords and shields of renown hung on the walls in stripes of fire.

He wanted to believe her. For Sebastian's sake if nothing else, he wished for her to be what she promised. But his life had made him used to disappointment and oaths made with no meaning, and he could not bear to saddle the prince with a weight which would drag down the rest of the kingdom with him.

The musicians struck a chord, signaling the feasters, and Hawke gestured at the floor. "The dancing begins," she said, as their neighbors rose from the table and began to reach for each other. "I will make a poor partner tonight, but you should dance with my sister Bethany."

"Consider it done," he said stonily. "Your Highness."

She looked pained. "You don't want to."

Bethany stood next to him in a whisper of silk, and Merrill on her other side stretched out her hand. "He dances well," Lady Merrill said with traitorous wide-eyed innocence, "but he hates it. He only said yes because he thinks he must, for you. Truly, he never dances at home unless Prince Sebastian asks specifically. I'll dance with you instead, princess, if you like."

"All right," Bethany said, her laugh softer than her sister's, and they went down together to the floor where servants had rolled the rugs away and standing lamps had been brought to brighten the room.

Fenris watched in silence long enough for the pipers to begin "The Red Banner Runs." Line dances, old as the castle and some older still, with much hand-clasping and squared turns. He knew many of them, most even before being trapped in the small east ballroom with Sebastian's dance instructor. The musicians were strong, too, in excellent key and as practiced as any in Starkhaven, though the instruments themselves bore fewer pearls and tassels in the trimmings.

"You dislike dancing, then," Hawke said, and Fenris dragged his attention back to her.

"I dislike being stared at, Your Highness."

"Then you've landed in a difficult position indeed." She smiled sympathetically. "Tell me something about Prince Sebastian while we wait. Does he enjoy dancing?"

"Yes," he said, and barely restrained the scowl. Certain remonstrances from Sebastian's dancing tutor flashed through his mind, his swordsman's steps compared unfavorably to the prince's polished grace while said prince laughed from the side of the ballroom. With awkward effort, he added, "I understand him to be excellent."

"As he is in so many things, I hear. My sister has been writing him for years, but he and I have only recently begun our correspondence. His letters have little dancing in them, however, and much more bowmanship."

"Yes," said Fenris, and this smile came more easily, with frank affection. "He is a master of archery and loves the hunt. There are few in Starkhaven to equal his skill with the bow. I believe he has some hope of riding out with you for foxes when we arrive."

"My cousin is a better archer than I," Hawke said, nodding towards a violinist on the stage with brown hair and a long face not dissimilar to Hawke's. "I am better with staves and polearms, if forced, but I ride well enough to keep up with the prince. I will look forward to it. Who is that man dancing with my sister?"

Fenris turned in his chair. "His name is Druvond. A lieutenant in my company, and one of the guardsmen chosen at the council's request." Druvond laughed at something the princess said, his burnished head thrown back, and took her more closely in his arms than needed for the next turn. "Liberties," Fenris said, frowning, and began to stand.

"It's all right. My sister can take care of herself."

Fenris hesitated, then sank back into his chair. "Your Highness."

Her mouth tightened, but her eyes lifted before she spoke and a slim shadow fell across the table. The queen of Kirkwall sat in Bethany's empty chair. She checked Fenris's rise with a hand to his arm; her fingers were cool and slender and bore many gold rings, but they were strong, and Fenris let himself be stopped. "Your Majesty," he said.

The queen smiled. Age had not dimmed her beauty; a gentle temperament had worn kind lines at the corners of her eyes, her mouth, and her silver hair had been woven into a proud crown of braids. Her gown was purple, wide sleeves tapering to snug bands at her wrists, and she wore on her brow an iron coronet, straight and black and without jewel. "Captain Fenris," she said, and her voice was sweet and light, "you will have to forgive me my directness. Prince Sebastian—I must ask you."

"Of course, Your Majesty."

"Do you think he could love my daughter?"

"Mother," Hawke said sharply.

Fenris glanced between them. There was a similarity of color, of expression in the mouth, but Hawke's strong features much favored her father instead, and she carried little of Leandra's light elegance. Her voice was low; her nose was long; she was careless with her jokes, and apologized when she had done harm.

She loved her people. He was certain of that, at least.

"Perhaps," Fenris said, and Hawke looked up, startled. "The prince loves easily—too easily, sometimes—and is ready to believe the best of anyone he meets. He keeps your letters," he added to Hawke directly, and she colored. "He reads them when the world is difficult. I know that much."

"Well, they weren't meant to make him weep," she retorted, though her throat was scarlet, and she touched the pewter ring. "I'd write him again if we wouldn't be there before the letter."

"It will be me you write to soon," said her mother, her eyes shining. "Darling, you must write every day."

"You'd be sick of me within a week. Mother Carver instead. Look, he's dancing with Lady Merrill and he's red as a beet. Go embarrass him and leave me be."

Leandra Amell's voice changed, abruptly somber. "Your leaving brings him little joy either. Let him have one more night."

Hawke's face grew still. Fenris did not know what had changed, but something had slipped between her and her mother, sudden and smooth as a silver fish darting through a clear stream. He said nothing as the crown princess turned her head and watched her brother dance, blushing, smiling, the torchlight glinting off the Amell crest chained at his heart.

—

The ministers of both countries had long agreed two weeks would suffice before Fenris stole Hawke from her mountains and delivered her to the plains. Several members of the Starkhaven council had arrived months before Fenris; they would remain here until the wedding in Starkhaven called them home. He paid his respects and then left them in their halls without qualm, squabbling endlessly over what the marriage between Kirkwall and Starkhaven would buy for each country, these jewels for this grain, this many pounds of silver for this much meat, and when it would come, and where it would be taken.

His company had been given rooms in the castle near the barracks. In the mornings they ran brief drills, often to an audience of onlooking Kirkwaller guardsmen leaning on their spears, but Linnea's quick smile and Murena's showmanship with the bow won them over soon enough, and frequently the drills evolved into friendly sparring.

He saw the king and queen only at dinner in the great hall. Leandra held the throne's authority and was needed often for it, especially by the cabal of clamoring ministers, and Fenris occasionally heard her voice in their arguments, velvet over a thread of iron. He knew her path to power had been circuitous. The details were muddy with time and distance, few interested in the mountain kingdom save what jewels could be pried from its closed fists, but he knew she had fought with her king father, that she had married Malcolm against the king's will, that for some time her gutless brother Gamlen stood to inherit the throne and the mines with it. Then all at once the king and queen had grown deathly ill, Leandra had come home with three children in her wake and a will like steel, and Gamlen had abruptly retired to a stony farmhold at the base of the mountain with—so they said—no small relief.

Of the king Malcolm Fenris knew less. He knew he was a lowlander—some said Ferelden, that country razed to rock by plague some decades back—and that some said he was a wise man, touched by power. He was known to be merry, preceded often into rooms by his own laughter; he knew when to be merciful and when to deliver his wife's justice. He had less of a head for politics than his wife and rarely joined the ministers; more often he came home at supper with the wind from the fields still in his hair, the dust and mud from farmlands on his boots. An honest profession for his daughter, then, unshrinking in the face of Fenris's scorn.

And it was the princess Hawke who commanded his days in the city. Fenris was not insensible to the peculiarities of his position. No simple captain, even that of the prince's personal guard, could speak candidly with royalty and eat at the king's table; no common soldier received the princess's undivided attention as she curried his favor and by proxy, his prince's. But Sebastian had created his title not for function but for form, a decorative office to keep a friend as near the throne as he could. Fenris had been repulsed at first—uselessness suited him as ill as the palace itself—and Sebastian had been forced to find purpose for him instead. He had thrown himself into the work, relieved at the occupation, and over the years which followed he had gathered some odd standing in-between, neither a soldier nor a courtier, neither ruled nor ruling, a man who held the prince's ear and gladly became his sword.

For this and no other reason had Fenris accepted his prince's charge to bring his betrothed from Kirkwall. Make welcome the future queen of Starkhaven in Sebastian's stead until the prince could claim the place for his own; and for his own part, make a private assessment of the princess here, in her home, where she might show her truest self. He knew the princess was aware of this, knew that his prince had sent letters explaining Fenris's irregular office as both emissary and escort. She had—in word, at least—not objected to his presence, even if the Kirkwall ministers had chafed and sighed at a landless guardsman taking on such royal duties. Sebastian had vouchsafed his character, however, and his judgement, and in the end Kirkwall had agreed to his arrival with only polite reluctance.

He had not taken the duty lightly. His opinion of the princess would carry great weight—to her, to Sebastian, to the Starkhaven court—and her opinion of him would carry in turn, when she at last ascended the steps to the Starkhaven throne and claimed her right as queen.

They rode out together each morning, the winds cold for spring. Often Merrill accompanied them, marveling at all Kirkwall offered with wide-eyed birdlike wonder; or the city's guard-captain Aveline, who was great friends with the princess and traveled often with her. Hawke's brother the prince Carver came too, sometimes, when he found himself unwanted elsewhere, but the king's younger daughter worked in the city's healing houses and could not often be spared, as she had a talent for restoration beyond all others.

Still, sometimes in the endless tours Hawke would bring him to the white stone buildings with their black banners at the door and they would greet the princess Bethany, her sleeves rolled to her elbows and her hair ruthlessly pinned atop her head. Their visits were never long, however. The man who ran the houses, a lanky fellow named Anders with a hooked nose and his blonde hair tied back in a tail, often grew annoyed at even these brief interruptions and would call the princess back to work. She was patient with him where Fenris would not have been, and only rolled her eyes and walked away, smiling.

All in all, Fenris understood Carver: the reluctant crown prince, moody and impatient, or bright and teasing in turns; he understood Bethany's unwavering commitment to her duty above all other distractions. Of Hawke, however, Fenris found himself increasingly unsure.

He had expected her to take him to the great places of the city, to the celebrated docks and their mechanical workings, to the great forges at the heart of the mountain said to be as tall as thirty men, to the houses of nobles where Starkhaven could be appropriately impressed by Kirkwall's manners and wealth and breeding. Instead she took him to Evelina's orphanage, where he met the children—with some gracelessness on his part—and heard Evelina thank the crown for its constant support. She took him to the largest gardens in the city where mountain roses grew on black trellises, where larkspur ran riot and harebells warred with buttercups over the sunniest places.

She showed him a bench set on a rocky outcropping, framed by thick iron fences, where the city dropped away beneath them and the farmlands spread out in rich green patchwork over the valley. She took him to the mountain's peak, high above the castle, showed him the squat stone altar there and the spindly mountain trees where ravens roosted against the unceasing, bone-breaking wind.

The second week she brought him to a small smithy near the base of the mountain, a black belching building with every speck of paint peeled back to bare wood by decades of heat. The blades inside were beautiful, however, polished to brilliant mirrors and honed to an edge so sharp it might cut a sigh. Fenris might have spent the day there as the smith showed him looping silver hilts and greatswords balanced upon the tip of a nail. But Merrill had perched herself on the neighbor's roof to watch the street and its townspeople, and the housemaid raised such a fuss with her broom that somehow no explanations of eccentric nobility could be made before they were chased away.

She did take him to the docks, when their final afternoon came and he asked at last. They and the prince Carver rode a series of small platforms down the side of the mountain, made of gears and pulleys and wooden gates Fenris seriously doubted to be sufficient for their purpose. The smell of brine rose with their descent, a clean wind carrying the call of gulls and white eagles, and the waves crashed against the mountain stone in comforting rhythm. The sun was warm with early summer, but the water was cold, and the spray from waves and wash alike refreshed him, even with the salt.

Dockworkers called welcome as they disembarked at the level of the sea. Prince Carver greeted them casually, clasping forearms with a few, and after a few minutes he led Fenris and the princess onto a small pleasure sailboat with triangular red sails and a white pennant. The captain met them gladly and took them at the prince's asking to the middle of the bay, and when he wheeled the boat into a smoother stretch of water the whole of the mountain spread out for Fenris at once.

It looked dangerous, he thought, and beautiful. The entire side of the mountain had been draped in rope and wood, flags of red and black and blue and white at every level signifying meaning he did not know. Platforms raised and lowered miners and sailors to their duties, stopping a dozen times between the highest and lowest places; narrow walkways of wood and steel stretched between cave openings like gleaming ribbons. In very few places had the stone been broken to force a path; rather the bridges met the mountain where it was, wrapped around its crags and peaks like a lover.

"If you look there," said the prince, and Fenris followed his finger to a bustling place in the docks, "you'll see the gears."

And he did, watching as a stretch of dock as wide as their blasted carriage and as long as the castle's great hall break up into a dozen sections. The section nearest the mountain lifted the highest, balanced atop lengthening, twisting braces of steel and iron, rising perhaps sixty or seventy feet to draw level with a cavern's mouth. The famous gears creaked and spun at a thousand levels within the exposed bracing, lengthening here, balancing here, fixing themselves at various times into final position. A handful of workers stood in the cavern with crates in arms, all their amazement vanished with repetition, and the moment the platform was high enough they stepped comfortably onto it, and then down onto the next platform just come to meet them, and again and again, until they reached the sea and its waiting cargo ship in a matter of minutes.

"There are stairs, too," said Carver at his shoulder, "but these can carry more at once and are safer for the miners. And they move easily," he added, and pointed to another place where two men engaged wooden wheels under the direction of a third to move the platform to a new place on the docks. Gulls circled their work, surveying it for soundness and perhaps dropped crusts of bread, and spun out to sea again at the end, calling angrily.

"My brother helped design them," Hawke said, and Carver flushed.

"They have been here longer than I was alive. I was here when the engineers were discussing how to repair some worn places, and they liked one of my ideas. That's all."

"It is an impressive display," Fenris said, and meant it. "You spend much time here?"

"If he had his way, Carver would eat, sleep, and die as a soldier, or as a sailor on our ships. Alas for him, he is also a talented swordsman, worthy of only the highest posting, and so my mother keeps him close to her court, where he must play royal guardsman instead and sail much less than he'd like." Her voice changed; the mirth fell away, and she turned to grip the boat's rail overlooking the sea. A glass-green wave lapped hollowly at the hull and the boat rocked with it. "Or at least, for a few days more."

The prince stepped beside his sister. He was much taller than her, almost as broad in the shoulder as his father, and his arms were hewn strong with many years of swordwork. But their hair was a matched shining black in the sunlight, even as short as the prince kept his, and their eyes were the same clear blue as he looked down at his sister with more fondness than Fenris had expected. He gripped his sister's shoulder, and her hand came up to cover his with a white, tight hold, as the captain brought the snapping sails to bear and guided them back towards the mountain.