The Broken Lock

Ailis

The silver thread had knotted. I stared at it. It remained knotted. 

This was unreasonable of it.

Mistress Seryn had measured the thread herself before setting the skein beside my frame, which meant I could not cut away the knot unless I wished to explain why a human embroiderer required more silver than the pattern demanded.

I did not.

So I bent closer and worked the point of my needle beneath the smallest loop.

The table jumped.

My needle went into my finger.

I pulled my hand back and checked the cloth before I checked myself. A bright bead of blood had risen beside my nail.

Not on the wool.

Good.

Only then did I look toward the shutters.

No one else in the workroom was sewing anymore.

I had noticed this some time ago and continued because the thread would not become less knotted merely because men were killing one another beyond the walls. Also, I preferred the thread.

Another distant blow shivered through the stronghold.

“What was that?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Closer?”

“I don’t know that either.”

Five years among the Vaelir¹ had taught me many useful things. I knew which Veyrathi dyes stained the fingers for days, how to make poor linen lie flatter than it deserved, and exactly how much silver thread Mistress Seryn would notice missing.

Siegecraft had not been included.

The loop loosened.

There.

A bell began ringing above us.

Mistress Seryn came through the door before I could finish the next stitch.

“Frames down. All of you.”

Nobody argued.

That frightened me more than the bell. Mistress Seryn liked arguing.

She collected our needles first.

Of course she did.

Somewhere outside, Aedrath’s army had spent three days trying to break this stronghold, and Mistress Seryn still wished to know where every needle was.

Then she took the silver thread from my frame.

That frightened me more.

“Where are we going?” Tessa asked.

“Below.”

“For safety?”

Mistress Seryn did not answer.

Humans appeared from other parts of the household as we were hurried downstairs—kitchen servants, laundresses, stable hands, men from the lower stores. A woman I recognized from the kitchens still had flour caught in the lines of her knuckles.

The stairs narrowed beneath the kitchens.

I had lived in this stronghold for years. I had never been brought this far down.

At the bottom stood an iron-bound door.

I stopped wondering why.

We were put inside.

The guards shut the door.

The lock turned.

Tessa looked at me. “For safety.”

“Yes.”

We sat against the wall.

The room filled until knees touched knees and there was nowhere comfortable to put a foot. Every impact from above came through the stone differently. Some were dull. Some sharp. Once dust fell from the ceiling.

Tessa took my wrist.

“Sorry.”

“You can keep it.”

“My wrist?”

“Mine.”

“Oh.”

Her fingers were cold.

I thought about my shawl hanging over the back of my stool upstairs. Blue wool, made in Eilin, with a hem I had meant to repair properly when I could find matching thread.

The stronghold might be falling.

My shawl remained upstairs.

Both things could be true.

Voices hurried past the door.

Veyrathi. I caught pieces.

Eastern wall.

Men needed above.

General --

Then a name.

“Aodren,” I said.

Tessa’s grip tightened.

For three days I had heard that name attached to stories that refused to agree with one another. General Aodren had lost hundreds of men. General Aodren had lost none. He had torn a gate from its hinges himself. Someone in the kitchens claimed he was too beautiful to need to.

I still did not understand how beauty assisted with gates.

Then the lamps outside began going out.

After that, time became difficult.

We waited through footsteps, shouting, silence, another distant crash. Hunger arrived eventually, which seemed rude but unsurprising. I was wondering whether bread might still be in the kitchens when boots entered the passage.

Several men.

Walking, not running.

A voice spoke in a language I did not know.

Then, in badly pronounced Veyrathi, “Locked.”

Something struck the door.

Everyone moved at once.

I stood and pulled Tessa with me. The second blow cracked wood near the lock.

The third broke it.

Light entered first.

Then a soldier.

Not Vaelir.

His sword was drawn until he saw us.

Thirty-four humans staring back at him.

The blade lowered.

“How many?” another soldier asked in Veyrathi.

No one answered.

“Thirty-four,” I said.

His eyes found me. “Wounded?”

“Three need a healer. Perhaps four.”

He called something into the passage.

I looked at the broken lock.

“Aedrath?”

“Yes.”

“Who holds the stronghold?”

“We do.”

My mouth went dry.

“What happens to us?”

The soldier frowned. “You are prisoners?”

“Yes.”

“Veyrath’s?”

“Yes.”

“Then you come out.”

I did not move.

“And after?”

He glanced at the man beside him before looking back at me.

“You are free.”

The words were too small.

I had expected freedom, if it ever came, to feel larger than one tired soldier standing beside a broken door.

“You are free,” he repeated.

“I heard you.”

Apparently hearing and understanding were different things.

The soldiers took the wounded first. I waited until most of the others had gone before Tessa tugged me into the passage.

Nobody stopped us.

Upstairs, the kitchens were half overturned. Beyond the outer door was daylight.

I stopped.

I had seen daylight that morning. There had been windows in the workroom.

This was different.

Outside were soldiers, smoke, winged averrens², wagons, healers, shouted orders, and an Aedrathi standard hanging where Veyrath’s colors had been.

Beyond all of it was sky.

Then the men near the gate shifted.

The man walking through them was Draevyr.³

Smoke-silver scales marked his temples and disappeared into impossibly long smoke-gray hair, braided down his back. Mud stained the hem of his black coat. His face was too fine for the stories I had heard about broken gates, though perhaps that was what the kitchen servant had meant.

He turned as an officer approached him.

Amber eyes.

A faint, easy smile.

The officer said something. I understood only the name.

“Aodren.”

My attention sharpened.

Nearby, a soldier switched into Veyrathi for one of the household clerks.

“The general wants the lower rooms searched again. Every room.”

“Again?”

“Every room.”

I looked back at the doorway behind me.

At the stairs somewhere beyond it.

At the broken lock I could no longer see.

Then at General Aodren.

For three days he had been a collection of impossible stories.

Now he was a man standing beneath a conquered gate.

His army had broken Veyrath’s lock.

And he was still looking for whoever else Veyrath had hidden.