The morning of departure did not begin with drums, not with a proclamation, and not with people standing in the courtyard to watch a princess go. That would have given the judgment too much shape. Instead it began with cold in the stones, with thin light above the walls, and with the sound of wheels being moved too early. The rain of the night had stopped, but the courtyard was still wet. Dark lines stood in the cracks between the stones, and earth clung to the wagon wheels. Alina stood at the window of her room and looked down. Beside her the trunk still lay open, although nothing more was meant to go into it. Mara had asked the previous evening whether she could help pack, and Alina had refused, not because she wanted to be alone, but because she did not know how one accepted help while sorting through a life. What did one take when one did not know whether one would return? A warm dress, a simple dress, a knife officially meant only for cutting bread, a pouch of dried apples, a small inkwell, two pens, a bundle of blank parchment. Everything reasonable fit into one trunk. Everything important did not. She had held an old songbook in her hands, opened it, read two lines, and put it back. She had found a small wooden figure a carpenter from the town had given her as a child and had almost put it in the trunk before she understood that she did not know whether it would become comfort or punishment. In the end she took only the things that could be useful. Perhaps that was Seraphina’s influence already. Perhaps it was simply the way one survived when sentiment took up too much space. She had hardly slept that night. Not because she had wept without stopping. That might have been easier. Sleep simply had not come, and the few times her body briefly gave way, she startled awake again because for one moment she had forgotten that morning was already waiting for her. In the dark she had looked at the outlines of her furniture, at the wardrobe, the table, the trunk at the foot of the bed, and every object had suddenly gained its own weight. Not because she loved it. Because it remained. Things were allowed to remain. People had to go. The thought was so childish she could have been ashamed of it, had there still been room for shame. A small wagon had been prepared, not splendid, but orderly. Two horses, a driver, one trunk, a bundle of travel blankets, two guards who officially accompanied her for her protection and in truth would also make sure that the form of exile remained intact. Not imprisonment. Not free travel. Something between, clean enough for the council and bitter enough for anyone who understood. Behind her, her room lay still. It did not look empty. That was exactly what made it hard. A truly empty room would have been more honest. On the table still stood a cup, a bowl of water, a piece of wax left over from a candle. The bed was made. The dress from the previous day hung over the back of a chair, too neatly, as though someone had tried to avoid letting her departure leave traces. Alina had packed only a little. Not because she owned little, but because most of what she owned was not meant to travel with her. Court dresses belonged in a court. Jewelry belonged in chests others administered. Books were too heavy. Memories could not be stopped anyway. In her pocket lay Matthis‘ sealed letter. She had not looked at it again. She knew it was there. That was enough, and not enough. Beside the letter lay her father’s small signet ring, wrapped in cloth so it would not strike the wax. Alina had placed both beside each other and stared at them for a while. One was a tool. The other an unopened farewell. Both came with her. Both were too heavy for the small pocket in which they lay. She picked up a plain ribbon from the table, one she had once worn in her hair without thinking about it. Then she laid it down again. Not everything had to come. Not every memory became stronger by being held. Before she went down, she did not take the direct way to the stairs. She stopped once more in the middle of the room and let her gaze move over the walls. Here she had learned as a child that a castle makes different sounds at night than by day. Here she had first understood that Seraphina was not simply the strange woman at her father’s side. Here she had hidden letters she later destroyed again because her own thoughts seemed too untidy to her. Here, after the war, she had looked at her clean hands and wished they were not clean. None of this could be seen in the room. Rooms reveal little when no one remains to explain their meaning. Then she went out. First she went to the west tower. No one stopped her. Perhaps Seraphina had seen to that. Perhaps no one dared tell her that morning which paths still belonged to an exile. The tower smelled of cold stone and old wind. The stairs were familiar to her, but today she did not count them. At the top she stepped to the narrow window. From here she had looked out over the fields when the first green stalks came after the hunger years. Back then she had believed that perhaps a land could survive if only something finally grew again. She had been younger, perhaps not in years, but in the way she had still considered hope a direction. Later she had stood here while men marched away. Later still, when the first lists came. And at some point this tower had ceased to be only a lookout. It had become the place from which she learned that one never sees a land whole, even from high enough above it. One sees fields, roofs, roads, smoke. One does not see the decisions in houses, the fear in beds, the calculations in heads, and the voices that only become loud when it is too late. From here she had believed hope might be something that grew from soil if one only waited long enough. Now the southern fields lay beneath pale light. The gate of the south pasture was visible, small and insignificant to anyone who did not know why it mattered. Matthis had had it mentioned in his letter, back when he marched and tried, between duty and fear, to think of a gate. Alina laid her hand on the stone. She did not say goodbye aloud. She did not know whether places needed that. Perhaps people needed it only because otherwise they believed something had gone without trace. She stayed longer than she had planned. Below, the courtyard began to move. A man led one of the travel horses in a circle to warm it. A maid carried a basket, stopped, looked up toward the tower, and then walked faster. Perhaps she had seen Alina. Perhaps not. Alina briefly pressed her forehead against the cold stone. She had believed exile would begin with the wagon. Now she understood that it began with every place one entered for the last time as though it were natural. When she turned away, Seraphina stood below on the stair landing. Not in a gown of splendor. Not as queen of the hall. She wore a dark travel dress and held a small leather bag in her hand. „I thought you would be here,“ she said. Alina descended the last steps. „You think too much.“ „It has saved us occasionally.“ „And occasionally brought us here.“ Seraphina accepted the sentence. „Both are true.“ She handed Alina the bag. „Money. Not from the court treasury, so no one can trace the sum who should not. Two rings you can sell if you must. A letter to Hella of Graufurt. She is stubborn, old, and less reverent than she ought to be. That is exactly why I trust her. A second letter to a carter named Oren, in case you have to avoid the northern road. He owes me a favor and believes I have forgotten it.“ Alina took the bag but did not open it. Its weight was smaller than what it meant. Seraphina had not spent the night lamenting. She had searched for routes, collected names, set money aside, drawn old favors out of the dark, and built from all of it a form of care no one at court would ever sing about in poems. Perhaps that was precisely why Alina suddenly loved her so heavily. Not childishly, not simply, not without old injuries. But truly. „Love as preparation.“ Seraphina looked at her. „I can give you little else today.“ „That is not little.“ „No.“ For a moment they stood in the shadow of the tower, and all the things that had grown between them had no room in one sentence. Alina had once seen this woman as a stepmother, as a foreign queen, as a cool figure beside her father. She had mistaken Seraphina’s caution for coldness and her calm for distance. Perhaps both had sometimes been true. But now she understood that Seraphina had survived in a court that liked to make roles out of women and was then surprised when they hid knives inside those roles. Seraphina did not weep. Perhaps later. Perhaps never in a way anyone saw. But she had given Alina a route, and in that route lay more affection than many an embrace could carry. Now she stood before Alina and gave her money, names, roads, and possibilities of flight, because affection sometimes needs no tears, but a map. „Graufurt is not safe,“ Seraphina said. „No place is safe.“ „That is not the same. In Graufurt you will have real work. Take it seriously. The people there are not scenery for your exile.“ „I know.“ „Good. If you help them, you help yourself. Not as virtue. As protection.“ Alina nodded. „And Matthis?“ Seraphina’s face barely changed. „He stays.“ „Will they leave him alone?“ „No.“ „Seraphina.“ „I will do what I can. Berit has already loudly declared that anyone who wants to see Matthis replaced in the stables must first explain why he would entrust the best horse in the yard to a worse man. Sanna will watch what is written. Mara hears what others do not want to hear. Your father will not hand him over.“ „That is not safety.“ „No. It is a net. We have no more at the moment.“ Alina closed her fingers around the leather bag. „Thank you.“ Seraphina stepped closer. For a moment she looked as though she wanted to touch Alina and was not sure whether she was allowed. Then she did it. She laid her hand against Alina’s cheek, briefly, awkwardly, and exactly because of that truly. „Do not stay small only because they send you away.“ Alina felt the warmth of that hand more strongly than she had expected. „That almost sounds like a blessing.“ „Then do not listen too closely.“ Seraphina released her. Then she held Alina back once more, not with her hand, but with a look. „There is something I cannot put in your bag.“ Alina waited. „If they receive you kindly in Graufurt, examine why. If they reject you, examine that as well. Some will see you as princess, some as punishment, some as opportunity, and some will not know what to do with you at all. Do not try to prove immediately to all of them who you are.“ „What should I do, then?“ „Be useful before you wish to be meaningful.“ Alina looked at her. „That sounds hard.“ „It is meant kindly.“ „With you that is often the same thing.“ Seraphina took the remark with a faint movement at the corner of her mouth. „Do not write only to us. Write lists. Write names. Write supplies. Write down who in Graufurt buys from Kronwacht, who signs debt notes, who suddenly becomes rich and who suddenly falls silent. If Donald stretches his hands toward the upper villages, he will not do it first with banners.“ Alina nodded slowly. This was no longer a farewell. It was preparation for a struggle not yet allowed to have that name. „You think Graufurt is more than exile.“ „Yes,“ Seraphina said. „And if we are clever, Donald will one day regret sending you from the court to a place where you learn to see what the court never sees.“ The sentence remained between them, sober and dangerous. Seraphina let her go. „Your father is waiting in the writing room.“ „Not in the hall?“ „No.“ „Good.“ Before Alina went to the writing room, she paused in the corridor before it. The door was closed. Behind it lay a room in which, during these last weeks, she had held more people than her arms could have carried. There she had written names that otherwise would have been lost. There she had read voices returning from the east. There she had seen Matthis‘ letter without opening it, and later understood that some unopened things speak louder than words. The writing room had shown her that power did not always lie in swords, crowns, or orders. Sometimes it lay in the decision not to write a name wrongly. She laid her hand on the door, breathed once, and entered. The writing room was empty except for Arvid. He stood at the table where she had written so many letters, holding a sheet he was not reading. The room smelled of ink, dust, and old wax. On the rear shelf lay orderly stacks, as though Sanna had deliberately left the place in such a way that Alina would not have to leave it as chaos. Arvid turned toward her. For one moment Alina did not see the king, not the man who had spoken the judgment, but the father who had once shown her as a child how to press a seal into warm wax without burning her hand. She suddenly remembered his fingers around hers, large, patient, ink on his thumb. She had laughed then because her first seal had come out crooked. He had said a crooked seal was still a sign as long as one knew what it stood for. The memory came without warning and hurt because it did not fit the man who now sent her away, and yet he was exactly the same man. He looked older than before the war. Not only because of the wounds. Decisions age faster than years when they cost too much. „I did not want to say goodbye in the hall,“ he said. „Thank you.“ „That is a strange word today.“ „It fits anyway.“ He laid the sheet on the table. It was not a decree. Only blank parchment. Perhaps he had wanted to write. Perhaps he had not been able to. Alina looked at the empty page and understood more at once than he said. Her father, who had signed treaties, orders, rations, death notices, and royal decrees, had found no form for this farewell. Nothing would have been enough. No apology, because it would not have sufficed. No explanation, because she knew it already. No blessing, because it would have sounded like permission to go. Perhaps he had left the sheet blank because of that. Perhaps this silence was more honest than anything he could have written. „I tried to phrase something,“ he said. „I see.“ „That is cruel of you.“ „Yes.“ For one moment he looked almost grateful. Not because she was soft, but because she did not pretend this morning could become soft. „I tried to hold the land,“ he said. Alina closed her eyes briefly. There it was, the sentence. No apology. No justification. No plea for forgiveness. Only the truth that remained in him, even if it healed nothing. „I know.“ Arvid breathed in as though that understanding itself hurt. „That makes it worse.“ „Yes.“ „If you could hate me, it would be easier.“ „For whom?“ „Perhaps for both of us.“ Alina looked at him. She searched for hatred inside herself, because it truly would have been useful. Hatred would have drawn a clear line. It would have carried her out of this room, perhaps straighter, harder, less vulnerable. But what she found was more complicated and harder to use. Love. Anger. Disappointment. Understanding. The wish to hurt him so that he would finally fully understand what he was doing. The equally strong wish to spare him that pain because he already carried it. „I do not hate you.“ He nodded slowly. „Another strange gift.“ „I do not forgive you either.“ „I know.“ „Perhaps someday.“ „Perhaps.“ Between them lay the table, but more than the table. Hunger years, treaties, war, Kronwacht, Donald’s letter, Graufurt, Matthis‘ name, which did not lie in this room and yet was absent nowhere. Arvid placed both hands on the edge of the table. „Graufurt is a real commission.“ „I know.“ „I tried to make it real.“ „I know that too.“ „It is exile all the same.“ Alina held his gaze. „Yes.“ He lowered his head. Not deeply. Not like someone submitting. More like someone acknowledging the weight of a word he could no longer take from the room. „Then take power with you at least,“ he said. „Not only pain.“ He went to the shelf where several maps lay rolled and drew out a narrow roll. His movements were slow, but this time Alina let him go without offering help. He would have refused it. Arvid untied the ribbon and spread the map on the table. The upper Arden was drawn on it only with thin lines, the villages small and inconspicuous, Graufurt scarcely more than a name at a bend in the river. „This is the road the council expects,“ he said, pointing to the wide road. „It is the easiest to control. Traders from Kronwacht use it often. If you go that way, they will know when you have arrived before your own report is here.“ Alina bent over the map. „And the other road?“ Arvid pointed to a narrower line north of the river. „Worse, slower, unpleasant after rain. But it passes two farms Kronwacht dislikes because they never accepted its debt notes. If you get into trouble, go to old Jorin’s farm. She was a friend of your mother.“ Alina raised her gaze. „My mother?“ Arvid was silent for a moment. „Yes.“ Her mother’s name had grown rare in this room, not because it was forbidden, but because grief sometimes does not grow smaller with years, only quieter. „Why did you never tell me about her?“ „Because some memories are easier to guard when one does not share them.“ „That is not a good answer.“ „No.“ He looked at the map. „But today is not the day for good answers. Today is the day for useful ones.“ Alina took that sentence, though it hurt. Perhaps later she would be angry about it. Now she placed it with everything else she carried. „What power?“ „You speak in my name, even if you do not sit in council. The villages on the upper Arden are to obey your instructions regarding harvest distribution. The guards who accompany you answer to you for the commission. Not to the steward. Not to Veyren. To you.“ Alina looked at him in surprise. „The council will not like that.“ „No.“ „Donald either.“ „Probably not.“ For the first time that morning something lay in Arvid’s face that might almost have become a smile and was too tired for it. „I did not say I gladly send you away. Only that I do.“ The sentence cut, but at the same time it gave her something back. Not enough. Never enough. But something. „Then I will use this power.“ „I hope so.“ He reached into the pocket of his cloak and drew out a small seal. Not the great royal seal, but a smaller ring with Ardenthal’s sign. „For letters from Graufurt. Only for the commission. But if someone claims you are there only for reflection, show him this.“ Alina took the ring. It was heavier than it looked. „You give a seal to an exile.“ „I give my daughter a tool.“ „And the king?“ „The king hopes it is not too late to distinguish tools from chains.“ Alina closed her hand around the ring. She wanted to say something larger than thank you. Nothing came. Arvid stepped around the table. Slowly. Every step showed that his body had not yet returned to him. Then he stopped before her. „May I?“ he asked. She knew what he meant. That made it harder. She nodded. Arvid took her in his arms. Not firmly enough to hold her. Firmly enough to show that he wanted to. For one moment she was small enough again that his arms should have been able to order the world. Of course they could not. Perhaps they never had. But her body remembered a time when she had believed it, and that memory broke something open in her that she had kept closed with anger for days. Alina stood stiff for one instant, then something in her gave way. She laid her forehead against his shoulder, as she might have done as a child before she learned that kings were rarely shoulders. He smelled of herbs, leather, and exhaustion. „Come back,“ he said softly. „If you let me.“ His breath caught. „If I can.“ „No,“ she said. „If you have the courage.“ He did not release her at once. „You have become cruel.“ „Perhaps I learned it from politics.“ „Then learn when to survive as well.“ She stepped back. „I am trying.“ When she left the writing room, she paused once more by the table where no letter for her lay. She ran her fingers over a notch in the wood she had never noticed before. Perhaps it had always been there. Perhaps it was new. It was ridiculous to hold on to a notch. She did it anyway for one breath. Then she went. Sanna stood in the corridor. Of course she did. In her hands lay a small bundle of parchment tied with ribbon. „Copies,“ she said. „Of Donald’s proposal, your refusal, the judgment, and the commission for Graufurt. One version remains here. One goes with you. One I hide.“ Alina took the bundle. „You hide one?“ „I trust paper, but not people who administer cabinets.“ „That sounds healthy.“ Sanna looked at her. „Write.“ „To you?“ „To whom else? To the upper Arden, to the villages, to no one if you must. But write. Whoever is not in the room has to find other ways to remain present.“ Alina felt how heavy this farewell became precisely because Sanna wrapped it in work. „I will write.“ „Good.“ „And you?“ „I remain annoying.“ „I hope so.“ Sanna stepped forward and embraced her briefly. Very briefly. For Sanna that was almost a collapse of social order. Alina did not return the embrace immediately because she was surprised, and when she did, the moment was almost over. Sanna stepped back as though she had completed a formality. Her eyes betrayed her. „Do not go to the stables now,“ she said. Alina looked at her. „Why?“ „Because you would not get away from there.“ It was too true to argue with. „Where is he?“ „At the south pasture.“ „Sanna.“ „I said do not go to the stables. I did not say do not go to the gate.“ Alina exhaled, and for the first time that morning she almost laughed. „You are impossible.“ „Useful. The word you are looking for is useful.“ The way to the south pasture did not lead far out of the courtyard, but far enough that the noise of the castle grew quieter. Every step there had something forbidden in it, although no one stopped her. Perhaps because she knew this was the farewell no one had officially provided for. Not in the order, not in the decree, not in the courtly forms. It was a farewell that could happen only if everyone who knew about it decided for a moment not to look closely. Sanna had given her this path. Mara kept her distance. Seraphina would know. Perhaps Arvid as well. An entire net of silence stretched around this short walk, and Alina knew she had to be grateful for it. The ground was soft from rain. The grass stood dark and wet, and small drops of water lay on the gate. Matthis stood there, one hand on the upper rail. He had repaired the gate. Not only provisionally. The wood had been smoothed, the latch reset, the crooked place corrected. It was a small work, and exactly because of that it struck Alina so deeply. While kings sent letters and councils smoothed words, Matthis had repaired a gate that had once, in a letter, been a sign that home still existed. Perhaps he had done it for the horses. Perhaps for himself. Perhaps for her. Probably for all at once. Not today. Perhaps in the last few days. Perhaps at some point when she had been too occupied with Kronwacht to notice that he had brought a sentence from his letter back into reality. When he heard her coming, he turned. Nothing in his face was prepared enough. That did good and hurt. „Morning,“ he said. „Morning,“ she answered. Then they stood before each other, and all the words they had found at night, by the river, in stables and behind doors were not enough for this open morning. Alina had thought the hardest farewell was the one in which one weeps. Now she knew it could be harder when one was not allowed to weep, because even out here tears had a form of publicity. Matthis looked as though he too had not slept all night. His hair was slightly darker from the damp morning, and on his right hand she saw a fresh scrape. She wanted to ask about it. It was absurd. She wanted to speak of a scrape while she was being sent away. Perhaps that was exactly love. The wish not to lose the small thing while the great thing was already burning. „You are going to Graufurt,“ he said. „Yes.“ „With a commission.“ „Yes.“ „And with guards.“ „That too.“ He nodded. „Then it is not a journey.“ „No.“ „But not a dungeon either.“ „No.“ „That makes it harder to be angry.“ „I am angry anyway.“ „Good.“ His voice almost broke on the little word, but caught itself again. Alina stepped closer. They were not in the courtyard, but not hidden either. Too much nearness would have been visible. Too little would have lied. „You have to stay,“ she said. Matthis looked at her. „I know.“ He did not say it in surrender. He said it like someone lifting a burden without pretending it was light. „I shouted at the stable boy this morning,“ he added. Alina blinked. „Why?“ „Because he took the wrong strap.“ „Was it bad?“ „The strap? No. Me? Yes.“ A small, painful smile crossed his face. „Afterward he brought me a piece of bread. Not as an apology. More like a bribe so I would stop talking.“ „Did it work?“ „A little.“ „Then he is wise.“ „Too wise. It makes him difficult.“ Again that small remainder of everyday life, and again it hurt. Matthis looked toward the castle, then back to the gate. „I imagined I would say something great today.“ „And?“ „Everything great sounds false.“ „Then say nothing great.“ He nodded, as if he had been waiting exactly for her to permit that. „I will keep taking the horses out in the morning. I will keep shouting at the stable boy, probably less often if I try. I will keep out of Berit’s way when she has a hammer in her hand. I will listen when people talk below. I will tell Sanna what she needs to know, even when she pretends she knows it already. And every day I will try not to run.“ Alina looked at him, and suddenly the greater promise of love was not that he wanted to find her. It was this. That he would stay and not run, although everything in him screamed for it. „That is great enough,“ she said. Matthis looked at the gate, then back at her, and something in his gaze became more serious, not larger, not more heroic, only clearer. „If someone tells you I took an open door after all, do not believe it too quickly.“ Alina felt how cold that sentence lay beneath the warmth of his voice. „Do not say that.“ „I say it so they cannot steal my decision too, if later they try to rewrite it.“ The sentence stood between them, uncomfortable and necessary, and Alina hated that both of them knew at once why it had to be said. „Not only because of me,“ she said. „No.“ „Ardenthal needs people who do not leave everything to Donald. The horses. The stables. The men who are back. The boys still learning. Seraphina needs eyes in the courtyard. Sanna needs someone who hears what is said below.“ „And you?“ She could have said that she needed him most. It would have been true and not helpful. „I need you not to disappear.“ Matthis closed his eyes briefly. „That is harder.“ „I know.“ „I will find you.“ She shook her head. „Do not promise that.“ „Alina.“ „No. Do not promise it if you do not know whether you can keep it. Promises that break against walls only make the walls larger.“ He looked at her for a long time. „Then I will say it differently. I will look for paths.“ „You may say that.“ „And you?“ „I will not disappear.“ „You cannot decide that alone.“ „No. But I can try.“ The wind moved across the southern fields. Behind them stood the gate, repaired and still old, a piece of wood against a world larger than both of them. Matthis did not reach for her. Perhaps because he knew she would want to stay if he did. Perhaps because he knew he would want to go if he did. His hands hung at his sides, and Alina saw how heavy that self-control made him. Once he had told her horses did not ask whether one had been brave. Today she would have liked to tell him people should not ask either. Courage sometimes only looked like a man who did not lift his hand. Instead Alina took his hand. Only briefly. No embrace, no kiss, nothing that might have looked like a confession from a distance. But her fingers lay in his, and everything they could not do pressed into that small touch. „The letter,“ she said. „Is with you?“ „Yes.“ „Keep it closed as long as you can.“ „Why?“ He looked at their hands. „Because then there is still something not determined by the court, not by Kronwacht, and not by this farewell.“ „And if I must read it?“ „Then you read it.“ „What is inside?“ Matthis breathed out slowly. „A man who believed he was going to die.“ „And the man who lives?“ „Stands here and does not know how to let you go.“ Their fingers closed more tightly. „Then do not let me go. Let me ride.“ He understood the difference. It was small. It was everything. „Then ride,“ he said. „And come back if you can.“ His voice held. Alina did not know how. Perhaps somewhere inside himself he had found a place allowed to break only later. „If I have the courage.“ „You do.“ „You do not know that.“ „Yes, I do.“ She had to let go. Not because she wanted to. Because footsteps sounded on the path. Mara came at some distance, not urging, but visible. Time. Always time. Alina loosened her hand from his. Matthis let her go. It was his last protection for her, and perhaps the cruelest. „Matthis.“ „Yes?“ „Stay angry.“ For one moment he looked surprised. Then he nodded. „You too.“ She turned before her face showed something she could not take back. The way to the courtyard was short. Too short. By the wagon stood Seraphina, Arvid, Sanna, Mara, Elda, Rena, Berit, and several others. No great farewell. No procession. Just enough people to show she was not vanishing in secret. Arvid did not stand long. One could see he stood anyway. Seraphina held nothing in her hand. She had already given everything. Sanna stood beside Mara and pretended to check the copies. Rena held a cloth she probably wanted to give Alina and did not know whether she dared. Berit simply stepped forward, took the cloth from her, and pressed it into Alina’s hand. „From her,“ she said. Rena blushed. Alina took it. „Thank you.“ Rena only nodded. Elda gave her a small pouch of herbs. „For sleep, if you find any.“ „And if not?“ „Then at least for tea.“ Berit crossed her arms. „Graufurt has bad horseshoes. Tell them not to save money when sending horses over wet roads.“ Alina looked at her. „Is that your farewell?“ „Yes.“ „It fits.“ Berit nodded, satisfied. The driver waited. The guards looked straight ahead. No one spoke of exile. No one spoke of Kronwacht. The word lay on the courtyard anyway. Arvid stepped to her. „Alina.“ „Father.“ It was the first time in days that she called him that. He heard it. Perhaps everyone heard it. „Write.“ „Everyone says that today.“ „Then obey at least once.“ She looked at him, and this time both of them almost managed a smile. Almost. Seraphina did not step forward, but remained where she was. „Remember Hella.“ „The stubborn old woman?“ „She hates being called that, although it is true. You will understand each other.“ Alina climbed into the wagon. Not because she was ready. Because morning did not wait. Before she sat down, she looked once more across the faces. Seraphina stood very straight. Arvid held himself on his staff, but he stood. Sanna had her arms crossed as if she could hold the world together by sheer disapproval. Rena met her gaze openly this time, red-eyed, but not hidden. Berit looked as if she would rather take the wagon apart just to delay the departure. Elda murmured something that might have been a prayer or a threat against bad weather. Mara stood somewhat aside and looked not at Alina, but at the guards, as though memorizing their faces. It touched Alina more than she had expected. Each of them gave her something different. Caution. Anger. Memory. Eyes. Herbs. A cloth. A look saying she would not disappear alone, even if she had to ride alone. The trunk stood beside her. Seraphina’s leather bag lay under the bench. Arvid’s signet ring was in her pocket. Sanna’s copies were in the bundle. Rena’s cloth lay on her lap. Elda had pushed the herbs into the corner. Matthis‘ letter lay against her body, sealed and heavier than everything else. The wagon began to move. First slowly, then more steadily. The first sound of the wheels on the wet stone went through her body. Alina had always believed departures were clear movements. One climbs in, the wagon moves, the place remains behind. In truth, the place stayed with her for a while. The well. The door to the north wing. The arcades. The place where Veyren had stood. The stables. The path to the south pasture, which she could not see from here and yet saw with painful accuracy. She did not see Matthis. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps she would not have endured it if he had stood in the courtyard and both of them had to pretend a glance was enough. Perhaps he stood at the gate. Perhaps he had already returned to the horses, because staying had to begin with work. At the edge of the stables she noticed a foreign wagon she had not seen before, plain, without arms, with a gray cloth over the load bed. It could have belonged to a trader, to a messenger, to any man who happened to be too early in the courtyard that morning. Precisely for that reason it stayed in her gaze for one moment before the movement of her own wagon took it away. Alina had believed the worst moment would be the first jolt of the wheels. But worse was that the courtyard did not vanish at once. It remained. It moved away from her slowly, as if to show her that loss is not always a cut. Sometimes it is a distance happening meter by meter while one still recognizes everything. The wheels grated over the wet stone. No one called out. That was good. A call would have torn something. At the gate Alina did not look back yet. She kept her eyes forward because she knew the courtyard would otherwise take from her the face she still needed. Only after they had left the courtyard and the road sank toward the valley did she turn. Ardenthal lay behind her, smaller than it felt. The walls, the west tower, the roofs, the stables, the southern fields. Everything was there. She saw the place where the writing room had to be, even though the windows could hardly be distinguished from here. She saw the stables and wondered whether Matthis had already gone back or still stood at the gate of the south pasture. She saw the west tower, and for one moment the thought came to her that places do not know whom they lose. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps it was unbearable. Nothing belonged to her in that moment the way it should still have belonged yesterday. On the rise by the old ash tree, the wagon stopped briefly because one of the guards had to check the strap of a piece of baggage. Alina used the moment and climbed down before anyone could prevent it. The driver looked to the guards, the guards looked at each other, and for one moment everyone waited for someone to call her back. No one did. Perhaps because she was still a princess. Perhaps because she had enough of exile already that no one knew exactly which orders were polite. Alina walked a few steps to the edge of the hill. The ground was soft. Her shoes sank in slightly, and that small resistance of the earth made everything more real than the words of the council. From there she saw the Arden River. It drew itself silver through the valley, calm and indifferent, the same river by which she had kissed Matthis, the same that nourished the fields, the same that ran north as though it had always known borders were only delays for water. Alina thought of all the letters that had been carried along this river, messages from the east, answers from villages, names that had survived in ink because someone had written them down. Perhaps from now on she too would arrive at court only like that, as letter, as seal, as report from Graufurt. The thought hurt, but it also gave her a form. If she could not be in the room, she would write. If she could not sit beside Arvid, she would make decisions that still reached his council. If Matthis could not be with her, she would carry the letter until the right moment came to open it or until she never had to open it. Then a sound came from the valley that at first did not fit this morning. No scream that tore the sky, no horn, no bell. Only a sharp confusion of hooves, one brief human cry, and unrest spreading through the courtyard faster than an ordinary incident deserved. Alina turned. From the height Ardenthal looked small, and therefore too far away. People moved in the courtyard, but not in the order a farewell leaves behind. At the stables shapes pressed together. A horse reared, dark against the lighter wall, and someone ran from the north wing. Alina did not look for Matthis. Her gaze did so before she could form the thought. „What is that?“ she asked. One of the guards stepped closer, as though his task were to guard not only her path, but also her gaze. „Probably a horse, Your Highness.“ „Probably is not a word that satisfies me today.“ Below, a narrow wagon pulled away from the edge of the courtyard. The gray cloth over its load bed fluttered although there was hardly any wind. It did not drive fast enough to shout flight, but too purposefully to seem accidental. It took the lower road that passed the apple slope toward the western road, not the way through the main gate. Alina saw only one man on the driver’s seat, back straight, head beneath a plain cap. No arms. No sign. Nothing that could be held later. That was exactly what made him visible. „We are going back,“ Alina said. The driver did not move. The guards looked at one another. „Your Highness,“ said the older one, „the commission leads to Graufurt.“ „I have my father’s seal.“ „For the commission in Graufurt.“ His voice was respectful. That was the cruelty of it. No one held her by force. No one seized her arm. No one stood before her with a drawn sword. They only placed the order between her and the road back, smooth enough to look like duty. Alina still took a step toward the wagon. „I was not exiled from Ardenthal to watch from a hill while something happens there.“ „We do not know what is happening.“ „Then we go back and find out.“ Hoofbeats came from behind. Not from Ardenthal, but from the side path that led between the wet hedges to the old ash. The guards reached for their swords, then let their hands drop again when they recognized Mara. She sat on a small brown horse, saddled in haste, the hem of her dress gathered up, her hair loose from its order. Mara did not look like a court lady. She looked like someone who had come too late and had still wanted to be faster. Alina went to meet her. „What happened?“ Mara jumped down before the horse had fully stopped. Her hand trembled when she pressed the reins into one guard’s hands. She did not speak at once, and in that brief delay Alina already knew the answer was not one she could endure. „Matthis,“ Mara said. She could bring out no more. Alina felt the hill vanish beneath her although she was still standing. „Is he alive?“ Mara looked at her. Her eyes were red, but dry. Perhaps she had had no time to weep on the way. Perhaps she had forbidden herself to. „No.“ The word was small enough to seem ridiculous. It should have been larger. It should have stopped the river, forced the guards to the ground, shattered the wagon and darkened the sky. Instead it stood between two breaths on a wet hill while Ardenthal continued to exist below. Alina heard nothing anymore. Or she heard everything too clearly. The snorting of Mara’s horse, the creak of a leather strap, the wind in the old ash tree, her own breath, which did not know whether it was allowed to continue. „No,“ she said, but it was not an answer. It was only the body trying to push the world back. Mara stepped closer. „It happened by the stables. A horse from the foreign wagon bolted. The stable boy stood in the way. Matthis pushed him aside.“ „A horse,“ Alina said. „They will say it was a horse.“ Mara nodded, and that nod was worse than contradiction. „They are saying it already. An accident, because the courtyard was restless, because an animal shied, because no one can see everything in such a moment.“ „And you?“ „I saw him fall before the horse struck him.“ Alina looked at her. Mara swallowed. „Irma was with him. Berit too. The wound was beneath the ribs. Narrow. Clean. No hoof. No kick. Perhaps a short bolt, or a blade used in the crowd. Berit later found a small piece of metal in the straw, small enough to be missed, without a mark, but not from her forge.“ „Kronwacht.“ The name did not come as a question. Mara answered carefully all the same, because caution in Ardenthal was now needed even around murder. „The foreign wagon had come from the west. Its papers named a trader no one in the courtyard knew. The man on the driver’s seat is gone. Veyren will say he knows nothing. Pares was in the guest wing, with witnesses. Kronwacht’s riders stood by the well. They all have places where they were seen.“ „Of course.“ Alina’s voice was not her own. „Of course they have places.“ „Seraphina said I should give you this.“ Mara drew a folded sheet from her sleeve. No great letter, no seal, only Sanna’s quick writing on a narrow strip of parchment, and beneath it a short addition in Seraphina’s hand. Alina took it without knowing how her fingers worked. Sanna’s words were brief. Matthis is dead. They call it an accident. I am writing everything down. Trust no version that is finished too quickly. Beneath that stood Seraphina’s sentence, harder and more loving than comfort. Do not come back. Not yet. If you turn back now, they will give his death your name and Donald proof. Live long enough to answer properly. Alina read the sentence once. Then again. The letters did not blur. That would have been merciful. They stayed clear. Matthis is dead. They call it an accident. Live long enough. Answer properly. She did not fold the sheet again. She held it as if paper could cut her if she gripped too tightly. „I am going back,“ she said. Mara shook her head. „No.“ „Mara.“ „No.“ For the first time Mara did not sound like a court lady carefully touching a boundary. She sounded like someone willing to be hated for this. „He is dead, Alina. If you go back, you do not save him. You only give them the rest.“ Alina stepped back as if Mara had struck her. „The rest?“ „Your no. Your exile. His death. Everything becomes a story they can tell. Princess returns because of stablehand. Princess ignores the commission. Princess proves Donald right. Sanna said it. Seraphina too. I am saying it now because they are not here.“ The anger finally came. Not hot, not freeing, but so cold that Alina feared it might break her from inside. „They killed him so I would stay where they want me.“ „Yes.“ Mara did not say the yes lightly. „Or so you would run back and they could take you where your self-control ends.“ „There is no difference.“ „There is,“ Mara said. „For them perhaps. Not for you.“ Alina looked down toward Ardenthal. The movement by the stables had grown smaller. People no longer stood in one circle, but in groups, and that was worse, because it meant the first moment was over. The body had probably already been carried away. Perhaps to the north wing. Perhaps into the stables. Perhaps Berit had wanted to lift him and someone had told her to make room. Perhaps Sanna was already with him, not because she could help, but because someone had to hold his name correctly. Perhaps Arvid stood somewhere and understood that Donald had not only cut the daughter out of his council, but the man out of her life. Alina wanted to scream. Her body did not. It held, cruelly reliable, as if it had decided collapse was a luxury this morning would not give her. She reached into her pocket and drew out Matthis‘ sealed letter. The wax was unbroken. To be opened only in the event of his death. The sentence that had never stood aloud on the letter and yet clung to it now became reality. Her fingers rested on the seal. One pressure would have been enough. One small break in the wax, and Matthis‘ voice, dictated out of another death, would come to her. She could not. Not here. Not on a road others had chosen for her. Not in the moment Kronwacht had thrown after her like a second exile. „I will not read it now,“ she said. No one had asked. Mara nodded anyway. „Good.“ „Not because I am afraid.“ „I know.“ „Because they do not get this moment too.“ Mara looked at her, and this time one tear ran down her face. She did not wipe it away. Alina placed the letter back against her body. There it was something else now. No longer an unopened farewell that perhaps would never be needed. No remnant of an earlier fear. It was the last closed piece of Matthis that Kronwacht had not touched. The guards stood still. The older no longer looked completely straight ahead. Perhaps he was ashamed. Perhaps he only understood that his commission had just taken another form. Alina turned to him. „You will take me to Graufurt.“ He inclined his head. „Yes, Your Highness.“ „On the way you will allow no one to change the route unless I command it.“ „Yes.“ „And if a man without arms, without clear origin, or with western papers crosses our path, you will not consider him harmless only because he speaks politely.“ Now he looked at her. „Yes, Your Highness.“ Mara stepped back. „I have to return.“ Alina wanted to tell her to stay. She did not. Mara belonged at that moment in Ardenthal, with Sanna, with Seraphina, with everything that now had to be held down before Veyren shaped it into something cleaner. „Tell Sanna to write every word.“ „She will.“ „Tell Seraphina I understood.“ Mara nodded. „And Arvid?“ Alina looked down at the castle. Her father was somewhere there, king and father at once, and again both had not been enough. „Tell him he is to live.“ Mara understood. Perhaps not everything. But enough. She mounted the brown horse, turned it, and rode back along the path, not as fast as before, but fast enough for Alina to see how much she too wanted to leave and had to return. Alina remained for one more moment beneath the old ash tree. The cut did not come with clarity. Clarity would come later, perhaps. In the first moment there was only a room inside her from which all sound had been removed. In it lay Matthis‘ hand at the gate of the south pasture, his voice when he had said he would stay, his mouth on her fingers in the old storeroom, his attempt not to run, his wish not to be turned into a story others told for them. And now they had tried to do exactly that. People would speak of an accident. Of a horse that shied. Of an unfortunate morning when everything had been tense anyway. They would say no one could prove Kronwacht had anything to do with it. Perhaps Veyren would even show regret. Perhaps Donald would later write how tragic it was when personal closeness in unsettled times led to further unrest. Alina looked toward the lower road where the foreign wagon had long since vanished. No proof. Only a direction. No confession. Only a pattern. No blade with arms on it. Only a dead man who happened to be struck exactly where her heart still had a place. She climbed back into the wagon. This time no one helped her. Perhaps no one dared, perhaps she would have refused every hand. When the wagon started, the world moved on, and that was the greatest insolence of all. The Arden flowed. The fields lay in the morning light. The wheels found their track in the wet earth. Alina sat very straight because her body apparently sought a form in which pain did not become visible at once. She was not calm and not composed, but she did not fall apart. Not because she was strong. Because someone would have to pay for the falling apart later, and she did not want to give Donald even that price. The road north led through pale morning light rising over the wet fields, making everything strange without making it entirely hostile. On the first stretches there were still farms she knew. Then the houses became fewer, the roads narrower, and the valley began to open, not wide and free, but uncertain. Alina did not know what waited in Graufurt. She did not know how one fulfilled a commission when the person one had wanted to return to no longer waited. She did not know whether Arvid would find the courage to call her back, or whether Donald’s shadow would lie over Ardenthal longer than anyone wanted to admit. But she knew she was not going away empty. They had taken from her the council, the court, nearness to Matthis, the place beside her father, and now also the man who had promised her not to vanish willingly. They had taken from her, too, the self-evidence with which she had believed Ardenthal must be the place where her life was decided and understood. That was a loss with no clean end. Perhaps someday it would be an opening as well. It did not feel like that yet. It felt like a thread not cut, but drawn out of flesh. They had tried to make distance into a solution and murder into an accident. But what truly made her who she was did not fit into Donald’s letter, not into Veyren’s smooth voice, and not into the formulas of the council. It traveled with her. In her anger. In her love. In the names she knew. In the letters she would write. In the small seal in her pocket and in the sealed farewell she could not read yet because it had now become true. After a while she drew the bundle of copies out and laid it on her lap. Rena’s cloth went over it. Her hand over that. Then she placed Sanna’s message beside it and did not smooth it flat. The creases were to remain. They were part of the truth. She took a pen from the bundle but did not immediately dip it in ink. The wagon swayed, the road was bad, and writing while traveling was unreasonable. She did not care. Whoever was not in the room had to find other ways to remain present. Sanna had been right. Alina opened the little inkwell, held the parchment against the board of the trunk, and did not begin with Graufurt, not with supplies, not with the commission they had given her. She began with the name others were already trying to turn into a rumor, an accident, a private attachment, or a footnote. She did not write accident. She wrote Matthis.