warm blue light that presaged the coming dawn, the massive drums started up. The Lord’s Guard assembled in the courtyard, helmets and spear-points hovering ghostly above their armor; the House Guard lined up in ranks to see them off, the Seneschal at their head. The Lord’s Guard wore scarlet badges; the House Guard wore white. The cavalry horses stomped and champed but no human spoke. The drumbeats filled the courtyard like mist. Even the raucous dawn chorus drifting into the courtyard from the gardens was buried under the throb.
The rest of the House was sleeping, except for those who hadn’t slept at all. The sleepers included the courtiers, half of the kitchen staff, and most of the outdoor staff: shepherds and kennelmen, orchardkeepers and gardeners. The still-awake included the other half of the kitchen staff—busy with breakfast before the shift changed at lunch—the stablemen, and the new pages, who already scurried through the halls cleaning shoes and creeping through unlocked doors to silently lay fires, empty night pots, and brush discarded finery. Also awake were the entertainers from outside. Most of them had already loaded their supplies back into whatever conveyance they’d arrived in, and stood yawning and waiting for the campaign forces to march so they could leave.
Not far from the entertainers, Judah waited, too. She was one of the ones who hadn’t slept. She still wore her gown from the night before, although the green silk was dulled by a thin sheen of dust and littered with bits of straw. The silver-and-diamond headdress had been first removed and laid carefully aside with gentle fingers, and then carried into the parlor in a damp palm and dumped into an unceremonious heap on the table. It lay there still, tangled beyond recovery for all Judah cared. She had taken the time to jam her dirty feet into boots and put her coat on. Catching a glimpse of the unruly mess of her hair in the mirror, she had picked up a hairbrush; then decided that she liked the unruliness, and put the brush down.
Now she stood in a corner where she wouldn’t be noticed. Her mind felt thick with exhaustion and her eyes were hot with it, but for the first time in weeks, she was at peace. Gavin and Elly were officially and publicly betrothed, and nobody could hurt them. Theron, too, was safe. Across the courtyard a stableman appeared, holding the rein of a giant black warhorse with silver metalwork on its black leather tack. The stableman had broad shoulders and curly hair, and she felt no tension when she looked at him, either; only a memory of ease and warmth.
Darid didn’t normally deal with the warhorses once they were transferred to the cavalry stable. But when the Lord’s Guard marched, all the stablemen worked. The horse he held was Elban’s. It would not be long now. And, yes: the doors were opening, the honor guard forming a neat gauntlet, banners aloft. There he was, white hair flowing loose over his black armor and the pommel of his sword rising over his shoulder like a second head, gnarled and silver and deadly.
Elban was the last thing she feared. He was leaving in minutes but she would belong to him eventually. The steady beat of the drums—their skins the size of tables, the mallet heads larger than her own—drove deep into her, jangled her nerves, throbbed in her eardrums. They were so loud she couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Surely nobody was sleeping now. Surely that was the point. Everyone in the House, and probably beyond, was being pulled roughly from sleep. They could yank blankets over their heads, muffle the pounding with pillows, sip from the bottles or vials they’d gone to bed with; but when they woke, they would know. Elban’s army had marched. His embarkation would not be ignored.
Gavin and Elly, Judah knew, waited on the balcony above the Lord’s Square, so they could raise their hands in farewell as Elban rode out of the city. She had not seen them led to the Safe Passage but she could imagine their progress through the locked doors and switchbacks that twisted through the Wall, the fumes from the oiled rushes on the floor and the metallic smell of the guards themselves. The closer Elly came to the spiral staircase and the tiny chamber at its top—the closer she came to the narrow balcony so high above the Square—the more her feet would drag, the more her hands