Chapter 9: The White Cavalry

They came up the avenue in the first grey light of a cold April morning, forty riders in a double column, and every servant in Vareth Hall found a reason to be at a window.

Stephen was in the stable yard, hauling hay, when he heard the horses. He knew the sound before he saw it: not the ragged clatter of a hunting party or the heavy tread of a merchant’s dray, but something precise, rhythmic, almost musical, forty sets of hooves striking gravel in perfect time. He set down the bale. He walked to the gate.

The riders were dressed entirely in white.

It was not the dull white of linen or the yellowed white of old lace. It was a hard, bright, expensive white, the colour of the inside of a shell, cut close and trimmed with silver at the cuff and collar. White coats. White breeches. White plumes in the caps. Even the horses had been chosen to match, tall pale animals with white blazes and white socks, their coats brushed until they gleamed. They rode in silence, eyes front, backs straight, and the morning seemed to draw itself in around them.

The White Battalion, thought Stephen. The Emperor’s own.

He had seen them once before, on the Imperial road, riding through a village that had refused its tithe. He had been eleven. He had watched from a hayloft as the white coats went from door to door, politely, and when they left the village was half empty and the well had been fouled with something he had never been able to bring himself to name.

At the head of the column rode a man on a white stallion.

He was young, perhaps six or seven and twenty, tall and long-limbed, with brown hair swept back from a fair, clean-cut face, and eyes of a pale, cold blue that took in the courtyard, the servants, the house, the horses, the gate, with a single unhurried glance. His coat was white. His gloves were grey. A sword hung at his hip in a plain white scabbard, and he carried himself with the unconscious ease of a man who had never in his life doubted that he would be obeyed.

“Commander Windemere,” announced the gatekeeper, in a voice that cracked.

The stable boys scrambled. The head groom ran. And Stephen, who had never been told what a coachman does when a stallion worth a duchy walks into his yard, did the only thing he knew: he stepped forward, took hold of the bridle, and looked the horse in the eye.

The stallion tossed his great head and blew.

“Easy,” said Stephen, very low. “Easy, now. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

The horse steadied.

From the saddle, Denovan Windemere looked down.

“He doesn’t like strangers,” he observed. His voice was pleasant, even, educated, with just a touch of the capital’s clipped vowels. “My grooms have been bitten.”

“He’s tired, sir. And he’s been bitted too hard.”

There was a pause.

“Has he?”

“There’s a rub just here.” Stephen touched his own jaw, below the ear. “He’s been pulling against it all the way from the capital.”

The commander dismounted. He did it neatly, fluidly, and handed his reins to a white-coated aide without looking at him, and then he stepped around the stallion’s head and looked, with cool attention, at the place on the animal’s jaw where the leather had worn a raw red patch.

His mouth thinned.

“Captain Thorne.”

A lean, weathered officer in a captain’s braid came forward at once. He had a plain, honest face and a nose that had been broken at least once. “Sir.”

“My bridle has been galling him since Marrow Hill. Why was I not told?”

“The farrier checked it at the last halt, Commander. He found nothing.”

“Then the farrier is a fool, and I am a fool for trusting him.” Denovan turned back, and his eyes met Stephen’s, and something passed across his face, a flicker of appraisal, the look of a man who was accustomed to finding other men’s weaknesses and was not often surprised. “What is your name?”

“Stephen Albrecht, sir.”

“A groom?”

“A coachman, sir.”

“A coachman with an eye for horses.” He reached into a pocket and drew out a silver coin. He held it up between two grey-gloved fingers, so that it caught the light. It was a crown. It was more than Stephen earned in a month. “For the horse.”

Stephen did not take it.

He had not decided to refuse. It was only that his hands had gone still at his sides, and that some stubborn, nameless thing in his chest recoiled from the sight of that little gleaming disc, offered the way one offers a bone to a dog that has performed a trick.

“Thank you, Commander,” he said. “The horse needs no payment. He did no work for it.”

The blue eyes narrowed, very slightly.

Then, to Stephen’s surprise, Denovan Windemere smiled. It was a handsome smile, even and white and entirely lacking in warmth.

“How very proud,” he said. “You will forgive me if I find that more dangerous than greed.” He closed his fingers over the coin and slid it back into his pocket. “Men who cannot be bought have the unfortunate habit of being expensive.”

He turned and strode toward the house, white coat swinging, a dozen officers falling into step behind him.

Captain Thorne lingered half a moment. He glanced at the stallion, at the raw patch on its jaw, at Stephen’s hand resting on the bridle. “That was a risk,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“He’ll remember you.”

“I’d assumed so.”

Thorne gave a short grunt that might have been approval. “Loosen the throatlatch when you rub him down. And use the soft cloth, not the rough.” He moved off.

Stephen stood a moment in the emptying yard, with the white stallion’s warm breath on his shoulder. Above him, in the high window of the east wing, a curtain stirred. A flash of green, a bright coil of auburn. It was gone before he could be sure.

He led the stallion into the stable and took the bridle off with great care, and the horse put its heavy head against his chest and sighed.

Men who cannot be bought, Denovan had said, have the unfortunate habit of being expensive.

It had sounded like a warning. It had sounded, a little, like a promise.