It was a quiet ride back to the palace in Veridia. Idris kept the curtains of the carriage firmly shut. There was too much to think about to fill his head with conversation or the scenery passing outside. He had meetings and work, reading and research, training and practice. There were not enough daylight hours for him to complete all he had to do.

  When the carriage paused before the courtyard gate, Idris heard the guards call, “Court Necromancer’s carriage!” The cry went all down the line and the gate clunked open.

  He sighed and steeled himself for the onslaught.

  Lila opened the carriage door, put down the steps. She checked that he was awake – often, he fell asleep on journeys like this – and stood back to let him descend. The courtyard was filled with stable hands feeding horses and dignitaries being met and escorted to the various palace offices they needed to visit, but Idris’s eyes were turned immediately to Judge Kurellan, standing like a huge magpie some steps from the carriage, in his full armour.

  “Your Honour,” said Idris, his stomach sinking. Kurellan bowed his head.

  “Sir Idris. A productive trip, I hope.”

  “Unfortunately not. Thank you, Lila,” Idris added, as Lila passed over his cane.

  “How was the old raven?” said Kurellan. Idris sucked his cheeks.

  “Himself. He did not accept the Queen’s grace.”

  “Pity.” Kurellan’s coal-grey eyes took Idris in. “You look dead on your feet, if you excuse the expression.”

  “I feel fine.” Idris knew Kurellan did not believe him, but the lie had become easier than the truth. “Can we walk and talk? I have to meet with Her Majesty.”

  “Of course.”

  “Lila?” said Idris, turning. She bowed. “Excellent work today. I will see you back at my rooms before I turn in.”

  “Sir,” she said, and to Kurellan, “Your Honour.”

  “Dismissed, soldier,” said Kurellan, and she hurried off. “She makes an exemplary squire. I am intrigued to know if she’ll take knighthood eventually.”

  “I think she might. She enjoys this life more than doing my laundry and making my bed, that’s for certain,” Idris said with a sigh.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Idris explained his short meeting with his father as he and Kurellan entered the palace proper, then ventured out under the verandas of coral marble. In the autumn light, the sweet pink swirled into the stone turned orange-red, like dragonfire. The last blooms of autumn were withering on the bushes and shrubs in the gardens, and the groundskeepers were busy pruning and replanting for the winter. Idris wished he could sit in the orchard until the light faded, but he had business – always business.

  Kurellan listened silently. Eventually, he tutted.

  “Stupid old man,” he said.

  “Stubborn,” said Idris. “Far from stupid. A little mad, perhaps. Whatever it is, he will not accept that I need to take the breastplate. He sees it as an attack on his freedom, on his family.”

  “He realises he is declaring war?” said Kurellan, his thick eyebrows knotted.

  “I think he knew that the second he put his hands around my throat,” said Idris quietly.

  “Your health?” Kurellan said next.

  “I am well.”

  “Your hands?”

  “Healing.” Idris clenched his gloved fist. “I should be strong enough to do my duties.”

  The old judge nodded. “Willard says that you’re working in the small hours. He claims he can see lights in your window from sundown until sunup.”

  “Willard should mind his own business,” said Idris curtly.

  “Your friends are concerned,” said Kurellan.

  “Concern is not fixing anything that needs to be fixed.”

  Kurellan sighed and tutted. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when you’re sick.”

  “Sickness is temporary. This cannot be undone once it is ruined.”

  Kurellan stopped, bowed.

  “I’ll leave you to go the rest of the way, Sir Idris,” he said. Idris inclined his head.

  “I thank you for your company, Your Honour. I will give the Queen your well-wishes.”

  “Thank you.”

  The remaining walk to the Royal Residences was eastward, with the setting sun at Idris’s back. He watched his shadow grow long and dark before him, like Raven’s Roost had looked against the orange sky, and he thought of the icy expression on Layton’s face and how it had pierced him.

  It would be easier to hate Layton than whatever Idris felt instead. Some pity, some understanding, some longing. Fear. Panic. Had isolation been all it took for Layton to believe he was the world’s enemy?

  The gardens became wider, less functional, more decorative. Statues of sea serpents dove up and down along the path; Idris put out his hand, as he used to as a young boy, and felt the carved scales beneath his glove. Beyond them, the geometric sea of icy-leaved shore shrubs promised an ocean for the serpents to play in, if they ever got bored of being statues. Ahead, the gold-orange of the lapis draconis that lined the blue-tiled dome of Cressida’s private residence blazed in the evening sun.

  Idris used to spend much of his time, there. When he was a child, he and Cressida would run through the ocean gardens – or rather, she would run, and he would hop behind her on his crutches – and pretend at being sea creatures, and after, her maid would call them in for fresh pear juice and sweet jellies from foreign lands. They spent their afternoons in the royal library, drawing and reading together, until Uncle Haylan came to bring Idris back to their rooms in the courtiers’ quarter. By that time, he was normally so sleepy that the serpent statues looked realer than real.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  All of that was gone. All they did now was talk about taxes and farmlands and war. Always war. Idris had no idea how his life had got so violent, so suddenly.

  The doormen knew him by sight. They bowed to him, pushed through the great gates into Cressida’s welcoming conservatory, and Idris found himself in her world again. The conservatory was lit by a combination of resin bowls the size of horses and weaver magic; the lilac and gold combined made the carefully cultivated topiaries and hothouse flowers look like fae-made clouds. The giant’s tulips here would not wither like the ones in the gardens outside. Butterflies flitted to and fro between the foxgloves and lilies. The artificial waterfall in the back supplied the whole enterprise with enough water to keep the plants satiated; Cressida liked to read there in the summer.

  Idris skirted the conservatory, to the right-hand side where Cressida’s parlour was, and he knocked before he entered.

  The parlour was as brightly lit as the conservatory, but mostly by heavy chandeliers and resin lamps. The queen, Cressida, sat in a chaize longue, perusing a map of the kingdom. She was dressed, as was her custom in her own home, in her training clothes – loose breeches and a sparring vest – with her black waves in a bun on the top of her head. Besides Magus Arundale and the servants, Idris was likely the only person allowed to see her dressed in such a way.

  “Rissy,” she said, looking up suddenly. “Back so soon?”

  He placed the packet which contained the treaty on the side table. Cressida’s eyes followed his movement forlornly.

  “I see,” she said quietly.

  “He was where he said he would be,” Idris said, coming to sit in the armchair opposite the Queen. “Twenty miles north. He must have lodgings close by, because he transported furniture. I am confident that if we sent some of Kurellan’s scouts north, we might find where he is hiding.”

  “Did we not already scout north?” said Cressida, turning the map so he could mark it with chalk. He placed an ‘L’ on the spot where he and his father had met.

  “If he is using a death curtain, again, we may have to comb the area more thoroughly.”

  “I understand.” Cressida sighed. “Did he even look at the deal?”

  “Refused it outright.”

  “What a nuisance.”

  “I suppose he thinks his demands are clear and simple enough.”

  “Oh, forcing your bastard son to love you is clear and simple all right,” she said bitterly, and then fell quiet, because she knew how much Idris hated the truth of the matter. “I am sorry, Idris. I am sorry this all ended up on your shoulders, it isn’t fair.”

  The Spirit Glass was bad enough. Thanks to a trick by the Fairy Queen, Idris had inadvertently roped himself into destroying all five pieces of the cursed Dead Walker armour – two remained. The fact that his own father was the owner of the set made matters worse.

  “Did my mother write?” Idris asked, like he did every day. Cressida shook her head. “No matter. Perhaps she is ashamed.”

  “She owes you more than her silence,” said Cressida. For a moment, she fiddled with the bracelet Idris had bought for her birthday, a circlet of silver serpents chasing black clematis around her wrist. “Willard came looking for you.”

  “Joa visited, then.”

  “I assume so. I am going to call court, tomorrow.”

  Idris nodded. It was about the right time.

  “Rissy, will you do me a special favour?” said the Queen quietly.

  “Anything, Cress.”

  “Will you sleep tonight?”

  Idris sighed. “There are three chapters of the text on necrotic artefacts to finish before we meet for court tomorrow, and I have not yet done my sword practice. Riette will have my head if I have not swung the blade when I said I would. That, and my Half-Moons are rusty. Once those things are done, and I have bathed and had my meal, then yes, I will retire. But not before.”

  “I know there is a lot to do,” she said, patting his hand fondly. “But you are shrinking, and there is not a lot of you to lose.”

  “That is a joke in poor taste, Cress -”

  “I do not mean it that way. You are skin and bone. There are indelible marks under your eyes. Your poor leg must ache with everything you are forcing upon it. We need you sharp and alert, not asleep while you stand. Please?”

  There were other matters, too, that Idris had marked out to complete, but Cressida was likely right. He needed sleep.

  “I will try,” he said. She smiled.

  “Good. Have you dined? We can eat together, if you like?”

  “No, I should... I should go back. Lila will have sent word to the kitchens that I am on my way, so...”

  The Queen nodded, wrung his hand. “I miss my best friend,” she whispered.

  “I know. I am sorry. Once this is done.” He squeezed her fingers back. “I swear it.”

  “Knights of the Four Kingdoms and a pot of tea, before the year is out,” she said.

  Idris forced himself to smile and nod.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  He kissed her ring, stood, and left the parlour.

  He was sure he was going to be dead by then.

  Death did not concern him. As a necromancer, he understood it better than most. What worried him was what would happen once he was gone. Layton would move in. Perhaps he would take the palace by force; perhaps he would bargain to be made the next Court Necromancer. What would happen to his friends, then?

  As he walked home, he trailed his fingers on the sea serpent’s scales. What he was give, just once, to be a child again.

  Back in the courtiers’ residences, Idris climbed the stairs to his rooms. His right leg and hip ached; he had walked too far, again, today. Inside was his small reading room and parlour, not set out for visitors. Instead, he had used red chalk to draw on the tiles and was using the space as a practice room for his stances, measuring angles and circles carefully to boost his muscle memory. On the table was his dinner, covered by a cloche, which he would likely forget to eat.

  Now that Lila did not stay with him on a full-time basis, Idris found that he craved the solitude. He needed it for his studies. People were simply distractions. There was a danger to this, in that he neglected himself when he was alone. He knew that Lila would come up to check on him before it got too late, so he did all of his paperwork first, so it looked like he would be winding down.

  The pile of books from Raven’s Roost’s looted library had taught Idris much. He selected the last tome he had been working on, a treatise on the dispelling of necrotic energy from necromancers’ bones and artefacts, and made notes in earnest. When Lila crept in with a lantern, it looked to her that Idris was done with his work for the evening.

  “My, it does keep piling up,” she said, checking the mountains of parchment on and around Idris’s desk.

  “There is much to learn, and reading is slow,” said Idris wearily.

  “Did you eat, sir?”

  “I will do it now.”

  “It will be cold, now.”

  “I like my dinner cold.”

  “If you say so, sir.” She put down the lantern with a waft of barracks smell – sweat and leather and steel. “Time for bed. You can eat while I tend to your leg.”

  Idris obediently settled on the edge of his bed, with his plate on his lap, and held out his right leg so that Lila could administer the poultices and bandages that Willard prescribed. She removed the prosthetic with a click, and a soft squishy pop as it slid from the sock, and she hissed through her teeth.

  “The swelling is worse,” she said. “And it is warm.”

  “I walked a lot, today.”

  “And the day before that. And the day before that.”

  Idris did not comment. Of course, Lila knew. She sighed and wrapped his stump in its medicated bandages.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “Tomorrow, I have to stand in court.”

  “Then tonight, you rest,” she said.

  Idris ate his meal, waited until Lila had tied the calico bag around his stump, and he smiled and thanked her and said he would retire. She nodded, took up her lantern.

  “I will return with the list,” she said.

  “Thank you, Lila.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night.”

  As soon as she was gone, Idris grabbed his crutches and took himself out into the reading room, where he set his knees onto the red chalk marks, took a deep breath, and worked through all of his stances. Before he knew it, the scent of the fae jasmine was fading, and the night was through.