Chapter 2: The Court's Reckoning
The palace gates closed behind them with a final, resonant thud that seemed to seal Sammy in a tomb of her own making. The courtyard, usually bustling with stable hands and messengers, fell into a stunned silence broken only by the patter of residual rain from the gutters. Every eye was glued to her—to the queen smeared in bog filth and dried blood, her hair a nest of tangles, her gown a ruined rag.
And to the woman behind her.
Mia moved like a blade’s shadow, two precise paces back and to Sammy’s left. Her posture was relaxed, but her storm-grey eyes never stopped moving, cataloguing faces, hands, weapon hilts. The blood on her collar had darkened to a rust-brown in the lantern light.
A steward in velvet livery scurried forward, his face a mask of horrified propriety. “Your Grace! We had no word—the guards said your carriage was delayed, we thought—”
“You thought wrong,” Sammy cut him off. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was colder, flatter, the way stone is cold. “Assemble the Privy Council. In the throne room. Now.”
“At this hour, Your Grace? It’s nearly full dark, some of the lords have retired—”
“Drag them from their beds if you have to.” She didn’t break stride, heading for the grand southern doors. “In thirty minutes. Anyone not present will answer directly to me.”
The steward bowed, scrambling backward before hurrying away. The whispers began then, a hissing undercurrent that followed them through the vaulted corridors. Bandits… attacked on the road… look at her… who is that with her?
Sammy heard none of it. She was fixed on the doors ahead, on the choreography of power. She could feel Mia’s presence like a low-grade current against her skin.
The throne room was a cavern of half-healed scars. The crystal chandeliers, dimmed for evening, cast fractured light over marble floors still etched with scrape marks from dragging siege engines. The tapestries on the walls were new, rich depictions of Eldarov’s history, but they couldn’t hide the darker, irregular patches of stone where the old ones had been torn down—ones stained beyond saving by the violence that had taken her parents. The air smelled of beeswax, stone dust, and a faint, lingering trace of old smoke.
Her muddy boots left perfect, damning prints on the polished floor as she walked to the dais. She didn’t sit on the high throne. She stopped before it, turned, and faced the empty room.
Mia took up a position at the base of the dais, off to the side, near a pillar. She leaned against it, her arms crossed. She might have been waiting for a bus.
“You shouldn’t have called the council,” Mia said, her voice barely carrying across the space.
“I need to see their faces when they hear what happened.”
“You’ll see their performances. That’s all.”
“It’s a start.”
Servants entered, lighting more sconces, their glances furtive and wide-eyed. Soon, the lords and ladies of the Privy Council began to filter in, their robes hastily donned over nightclothes, expressions ranging from concern to poorly veiled irritation.
Lord Aldric, head of the council and her father’s oldest friend, was the last to enter. His silver hair was impeccately in place, his dark green robe buttoned to the throat. His face, usually a map of benign wisdom, was tight. His eyes went first to Sammy’s disheveled state, then flickered to Mia, lingering on the bloodstain. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
When the heavy doors boomed shut, Sammy spoke. Her report was clinical. A bandit ambush on the north road. Her guards fought valiantly and died. She escaped into the woods. She found aid in the form of a wandering warden, Mia, who escorted her home. She concluded with, “The bandits have been dealt with. Their bodies are being collected.”
It was a masterpiece of omission. It felt brittle as glass in her mouth.
“A traumatic ordeal, Your Grace,” Lord Aldric said, his voice a soothing rumble. “We are deeply thankful for your safety. The borders have grown restless since… well. We shall increase patrols at once.” He stepped forward, his hands clasped. “And this… warden. We are, of course, grateful for her service. A suitable reward from the treasury can be arranged, and she may be on her way.”
Mia didn’t move. She didn’t even seem to breathe.
“Mia isn’t going anywhere,” Sammy said. “She has accepted a permanent position as my royal guardian. Effective immediately.”
A murmur rippled through the council. A broad-faced lord named Kaelig, who oversaw the treasury, sputtered. “Your Grace, with respect, the protocols for palace security are exhaustive! Vetting takes weeks. Backgrounds, allegiances… we know nothing of this woman!”
“I know she saved my life,” Sammy said, her tone leaving no room. “That is the only allegiance I require tonight. The protocols will be backdated.”
“It is highly irregular—” Kaelig pressed.
“So is a queen almost dying in a ditch,” Sammy snapped. The silence that followed was absolute. She held Kaelig’s gaze until he looked away.
It was then that the side door to the throne room burst open.
A guardsman, his leathers streaked with forest debris and something darker, staggered in. He was panting, his face the colour of old milk. He ignored protocol, his eyes wild as he scanned the room and found Lord Aldric. “My Lord! Captain Polden sent me. From the royal hunt precinct.”
Aldric frowned. “This is not the time, guardsman.”
“You don’t understand, my Lord.” The man’s voice cracked. “The hunt… they went scouting for boar in the Whisperwood. They found… they found…”
“Spit it out, man,” Aldric demanded, irritation sharpening his words.
The guardsman swallowed, a loud click in the quiet room. “Bodies, my Lord. Seventeen of them. All men. All in a… a pattern. Spread out in a wide circle, like a fan, about a day’s hard ride from the palace.” He took a shuddering breath. “They’re not from around here. Foreign gear. Professional kits. And they’re all… they didn’t die in a fight.”
Sammy’s blood turned to ice. She didn’t look at Mia. She couldn’t.
“What do you mean?” Aldric asked, his voice now dangerously quiet.
“Traps, my Lord. Sophisticated ones. Deadfalls. Snare wires that took limbs. Poisoned stakes camouflaged in the brush. One was… gods, one was pinned to a tree by spikes of ice that hadn’t even melted yet.” The guardsman’s eyes were huge with trauma. “It’s a killing field. A perimeter. It’s like someone was guarding an approach. Hunting the hunters. Captain Polden says it’s the work of a… a tactician. Or a demon.”
Every head in the room turned, slowly, inexorably, toward the pale woman leaning against the pillar.
Mia uncrossed her arms. She straightened up. The faint, almost imperceptible curl of her lips wasn’t a smile. It was the barest acknowledgment of a satisfactory result. She said nothing.
Lord Aldric’s face underwent a terrifying transformation. The tight concern drained away, leaving behind a grey, papery pallor. He looked from the shaking guardsman, to Sammy’s frozen expression, and finally to Mia’s silent, knowing face. He didn’t see a wandering warden. He saw the architect of a seventeen-body problem. He saw the perimeter.
He understood.
The blood had drained from his face so completely he looked like a carving of himself. His eyes met Sammy’s, and in them was a shock so deep it veered into recognition. Not of Mia, but of the scale. Of the game being played.
“A… a shocking discovery,” Aldric managed, his voice thin. “The woods are unsafe. The captain is right to be alarmed.” He waved a dismissive hand at the guardsman, the gesture weak. “You are dismissed. Tell Captain Polden to secure the area. We will discuss this tomorrow.”
The guardsman stumbled out, the door closing softly behind him.
The throne room was a vacuum. No one moved. The seventeen dead men hung in the air between them all, a ghostly, invisible audience.
Sammy found her voice. It was a dry rustle. “This meeting is adjourned. Lord Aldric. A word in my solar. Now. The rest of you, get out.”
No one argued. The council filed out in a hurried, silent shuffle, their robes whispering against the stone. Kaelig cast one last, terrified look at Mia before vanishing.
When the room was empty but for the two of them and Aldric, Sammy descended the dais. She walked past Mia, toward the private door behind the throne. “With me,” she said, to both of them.
Her solar was a smaller, more lived-in room, lined with books and maps. A fire was already burning low in the grate. Sammy went straight to a carafe of wine and poured a full goblet, her hands steady. She didn’t offer any to the others.
Lord Aldric stood just inside the closed door, his grey face now tinged with a sheen of sweat. Mia leaned against the mantelpiece, watching the flames.
“Seventeen,” Sammy said, finally looking at Mia.
Mia shrugged one shoulder. “I told you I felt watched. After the first three at the carriage. The pressure. They were scouts. Advance elements. A full infiltration team moving in stages. I backtracked on our route the first night we made camp, after you fell asleep. I located their forward camp. It was more efficient to deal with the problem at its root than to let them keep reporting.”
“You slaughtered seventeen men in the woods.” Aldric’s voice was a strangled whisper. “By yourself.”
Mia turned her storm-grey eyes on him. “I dissuaded seventeen hostile incursors from completing their mission to isolate and eliminate the queen. The methodology is irrelevant.”
“The methodology is monstrous!”
“The intended outcome was monstrous,” Mia replied, her tone unchanging. “I simply reached it first.”
Aldric swayed. He looked at Sammy, pleading. “Your Grace, you cannot harbor this… this creature. You see what she is! This will bring war, or worse, down upon us!”
“They were already here, Aldric!” Sammy slammed the goblet down on the table. The wine sloshed over the rim like blood. “They were in my kingdom! They killed my guards! They had poison and orders and a code name! ‘Cinder.’ Does that code name mean anything to you?”
For a fraction of a second, before the mask of confusion slid neatly back into place, Aldric’s eyes flickered. It was minute. A barely-there widening, a shift in focus. He looked at the fire. “No. No, of course not. A generic tag for hired knives.”
Mia pushed off the mantel. She took three silent steps toward Aldric, stopping just inside his personal space. He recoiled as if from a venomous snake.
“You’re lying,” she said, not accusingly, just stating a fact observed. “Your pulse jumped in your neck. Your pupils dilated. You know the name. Or you know of it. You’re frightened of it.”
“I am frightened of you!”
“Good. You should be.” Mia didn’t blink. “But you’re more frightened of Cinder. Because I am a wolf at the door. Cinder is the termite in the walls. You can see me. You don’t know who they are.”
Aldric’s composure shattered. A small, broken sound escaped him. He slumped into a high-backed chair, his face in his hands. “You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
“Then explain it,” Sammy said, all pretense of royal command gone. She sounded like a tired, scared young woman. “Please, Aldric. You were my father’s brother in all but blood. Explain it to me.”
He lowered his hands. He looked decades older. “Your parents… their death. It was not an accident during the siege.”
The fire popped. The world narrowed to the crackling of the logs.
“We suspected… foul play. But there was no evidence. Only whispers. Of a faction that wanted a… a more malleable rule. A cleaner transition. The word ‘Cinder’ was heard once, in a report from a spy who turned up drowned the next day. It was considered unreliable.” He looked at Mia with pure dread. “If they have hired the Weeping Blade to finish the job they started… then they are not just a faction. They are a machine. And you have brought a sledgehammer into the workshop. It will break everything.”
Mia listened, her head tilted. “A machine has gears,” she said after a moment. “Gears have names. Places. Meetings. The old mill on the north road. The drop point for their payments. That’s a gear.”
Aldric stared at her, a new horror dawning. “You extracted that from one of them.”
“Yes.”
“They will know it’s compromised.”
“Probably. Which is why we go tonight. Now.” Mia looked at Sammy. “Unless you’d prefer to wait for their next move. It will be quieter. A toxin in your wine. A fall from a balcony. Something that looks like grief or madness.”
Sammy looked from Aldric’s shattered visage to Mia’s implacable calm. The cold iron in her gut was the only thing holding her upright. She had wanted the truth. Here were its jagged, ugly pieces.
“Aldric,” she said. “You will cover for my absence until dawn. You will tell the court I am prostrate with shock from my ordeal. You will allow no one into my chambers.”
“Your Grace, you cannot go with her! It’s suicide!”
“Staying here is suicide. Just slower.” Sammy walked to a cabinet, opened it, and pulled out a pair of worn leather trousers, a dark tunic, and practical boots—clothes she hadn’t worn since she was a girl running through the stables. “I am going to look a termite in the eye. And then,” she said, glancing at Mia, “I am going to introduce it to the sledgehammer.”
She began to change, turning her back to them, her movements decisive. The muddy, torn gown of the victim pooled on the floor.
Aldric watched, his protest dying in his throat. He saw the girl he helped raise vanish, and in her place, a harder, sharper sovereign being forged in real time.
Mia watched too, her expression unreadable. Then she moved to the window, peered out at the moonlit courtyard, and nodded once.
“The guards shift in twenty minutes. We’ll use the postern gate by the old kennels.” She glanced back at Sammy, now lacing her boots. “Bring a knife you know how to use. Leave the crown.”
Sammy tucked her father’s ruby-hilted dagger into her belt. The weight of it was a promise.
She didn’t look back at her father’s friend, or at the ghost of the girl she had been. She followed the flash of white hair out of the solar, into the dark hall, leaving the warmth of the fire and the weight of the throne behind.
The palace slept around them, dreaming polite dreams. They moved through its stone veins like a virus, heading for the sick heart of the truth.