Rogue at the gate

Esme

The first scream splits the afternoon and runs through stone as a second answers it from the west yard. Horns follow, short blasts that shove everyone into motion.

“West gate!” Someone shouts past the kitchen door.

The room breaks as trays slam down, ladles clatter, water buckets thump against knees. Marek’s voice cuts through the noise with orders for bread, broth, and buckets, but the corridor drowns him as soldiers pound past. A stack of bowls slips from a shelf and shatters and steam rolls over the threshold meeting cold air that’s rushing in.

Marla locks in place beside the scullery, eyes wide. Kai catches her by the waist and drags her under the nearest table. “Down,” he says, firm and quick. “Stay until I pull you out.”

I don’t wait to be told anything. My legs are already moving as I run for the door and into the corridor where the air smells of smoke and churned mud. Servants bolt for the inner hall and a guard barrels past with a spear and a breathless curse. Another shouts for the north stair to be cleared.

A child sprints into view from the west passage, hair unbound, dress torn at the hem. She stumbles near the corner and catches herself with both hands, skin scraping over stone. A rogue surges behind her, a man in partial shift with eyes gone wild and fingers curled on the edge of change. His footwork is clumsy from the turn, but his reach is long.

I don’t think as the world tightens to distance and angle.

I cut across the corridor and slide on a patch of spilled broth, letting the momentum take me into a low sweep that knocks the rogue’s knee off its line. He pitches forward and his shoulder hits the wall. I hook an arm around the child’s ribs and yank her into the recess under the stair, where she folds against me, breath coming fast and shallow.

The rogue snarls and comes up swinging. I grip the stair post and kick out, heel planted hard at the point where his thigh meets his hip. He falters again, and a guard’s spear flashes past my shoulder and takes him in the side. Another guard slams him into the floor and pins him there with the haft. The man’s eyes roll, then fix on me with a kind of empty hunger that means there’s nothing left to reach. The pinning guard doesn’t wait for orders. He finishes it.

The corridor jerks around us as more rogues hit the west yard. The horn calls again, longer now, and the line of defenders shifts to answer. Smoke threads through the passage from the outer courtyard. Someone shouts for sand and buckets thunder past toward the door.

“Are you hurt?” I ask the child. Her head is tucked under my chin, small body trembling. She nods, then shakes her head, confusing even herself. I run my hands down her arms and legs. Scrapes, no breaks. “What’s your name?”

“Lina,” she manages. Her voice catches and falls away.

“Lina, we’re going to the kitchens.” I set her in front of me and keep my body between her and the yard. “Hold my apron and don’t let go.”

She grabs the cloth with both fists as we move. A second rogue crashes into the far end of the passage and is met by three guards who block the turn and drive him into a narrow space where his shoulders can’t open. A kitchen boy slides on his knees to fetch a fallen pan and scuttles back inside with it clutched to his chest. The door to the herb yard bangs and the cat streaks by my ankles and disappears under a bench.

We reach the kitchen threshold where heat smothers the smoke in my lungs. Marek looks up long enough to take us in and points to the back corner. “There, water and cloth. Keep her until her people are found.”

I pull Lina to the bench by the water tub and lift her onto it. Her fingers are still locked in my apron. I pry them loose one by one, rinse a cloth, and clean the blood from her palms. The sight of the red makes her shake harder. “It’s a scrape,” I tell her, steady and calm. “It stings but that means it’s clean.”

Kai drops a cup of water into my free hand without speaking and moves on with a tray piled high with bread for the yard. Marla crawls out from under the table and kneels at Lina’s knees with a half-smile that pretends none of this is as bad as it sounds. “You’re safe,” she says. “We’ve got you.”

Lina drinks. The first mouthful shakes out of the cup and down her chin but I just wipe it away and make a quiet sound that is close to approval. Her shoulders loosen by a finger’s width. The trembling shifts to hiccups that leave her exhausted.

“Whose child?” Marek asks without raising his voice. A footman leans in to answer, House Merren, visiting the council, the nurse got lost in the rush and was last seen near the west gallery. Marek nods and sends him to the gallery with a runner.

The horn falls to silence and the shouts ease into commands given at a lower pitch. The rush in the corridor settles into ordered motion, while kitchen hands return to their stations in pieces, still glancing toward the door as if it might open to something worse. Hara feeds more wood to the stove and lifts the lid on the soup with a face that says the fire can be made to mind her, whether the city minds itself or not.

Lina’s hiccups space out as tears leave clean tracks over the dirt on her face. When she’s steady enough to sit without falling forward, I stand and turn to fetch more water.

That’s when I feel it.

Not heat, and not smoke. Attention, focused and direct.

I look up and meet golden eyes across the threshold. Something stirs again inside me, the hum of the thread between me and the King sharpens at the short distance. I swallow and keep my gaze low. What is going on?

King Ardon stands just inside the corridor, not so close that he crowds the staff moving through, not so far that his presence is a rumor. A light smear of soot marks the back of one hand and the line of guards behind him holds where it should. He’s at ease in a way that isn’t relaxed and isn’t forced and his gaze is fixed on me.

There’s no question in it, no courtesy either. He takes in the child on the bench, the blood on her palms, my hands still wet from the basin and the space I kept clear in the passage when the rogue came on with bad balance and worse intent. His attention doesn’t slide away.

Something in my chest tightens by the way his eyes turned possessive and dark for a second. The pull from the hall grips harder than before and every thought scatters and tries to return to the one moment where he looked at me and did not look away until I did.

Marek steps between us with the speed of a man who understands currents and refuses to let his room be swept. He doesn’t bow, but he inclines his head and keeps his voice even. “Majesty. The child is whole, we’re just holding her until House Merren sends for her.”

King Ardon’s gaze shifts to Marek, then returns to me and the girl. “Good,” he says. The word lands and stays. He looks at Lina. “Name?”

“Lina,” she whispers, eyes wide again.

“You’re safe, Lina.” His tone doesn’t change and it doesn’t need to. He tips his chin to the door. “Varick wants the west yard counted, have him wait. The captain will give me a full list when the line is set.”

A runner peels off to carry the message before anyone else can speak. The men in the corridor accept the order and fold it into motion.

King Ardon holds my gaze one more second. It isn’t approval, and it isn’t suspicion. It's an assessment that hasn’t chosen its shape yet, and our encounter in the darkness of the hallway presses into my mind.

Then he turns away.

Lina’s fingers find my apron again and twist into the cloth. I press a clean cloth into her hands and keep my palm at her back until her shoulders stop jerking.

Behind me, Marla lets out a slow, controlled exhale and whispers, “You’ve got to teach me how to move like that.”

I don’t answer as my legs begin to shake now that I’m still. I lock my knees to stop it.

King Ardon’s footsteps fade down the corridor. The kitchen returns to its work, louder than before, but steadier. I rinse blood from the cloth and watch the pink swirl away.

He watched me in the hall and chose to break the gaze. He watched me now and didn’t break first.

If he looks a third time, I won’t be able to pretend I didn’t feel it.