House Rules

You wake up at six with your phone still in your good hand and the screen gone dark on the last thing he sent.

The conversation sits there in your memory like a song you didn't mean to learn. You don't scroll back through it. You get up, shower with your bandaged hand held out of the water like an idiot, put on a suit, and stand outside his door at 7:15 the way you will every morning for the next twenty-seven days.

Whatever got said at midnight, this is the job.

The door opens. Caspian is dressed for once, navy suit, no tie, hair still damp. He looks at you, then at your hand, then away, like he's walked in on something.

"Morning, Officer."

"Morning, Your Highness. Before we start." You hand him a folded sheet of paper.

He unfolds it. Reads. One eyebrow climbs. "'Rules of Engagement'?"

"Three of them."

"There are four bullet points."

"The fourth is a footnote."

He reads aloud, in a voice like a newsreader. "'One. If you leave the building, I know. You don't have to tell me where. You do have to tell me that.' Two. 'No more fake schedules. They waste fuel and my patience.' Three. 'I don't come into your rooms unless invited or unless something is on fire. You don't come into mine.'" He looks up. "That one's aimed at me."

"It's aimed at both of us."

His mouth does something complicated. He looks back down. "'Footnote. The bet stands.'"

"It stands."

"Good, Ethan," he says softly, and folds the paper very carefully into his inside pocket, over his heart, where you will think about it later more than you should. Then the lamp comes back on in his face. "Come on, Ethan. My mother wants to look at you."

The Queen's study is green. Green silk walls, green velvet chairs, tall windows full of white sky and the black lake far below. A fire crackles. A small white dog snores on a cushion.

Queen Henrika of Aldoria stands at the window with her back to you. When she turns, you see where Caspian got his bones. She's sixty, silver hair swept up, a long gray dress, a face like a winter morning: clear, cold, beautiful in a way that makes you stand up straighter without being told.

You bow. Correctly. Your mother made you practice in the kitchen when you were six, giggling, with a tea towel for a sash.

"Mr. Varlow." Her English is perfect, her voice dry. "Commander Rennick tells me you tackled a waiter."

"He wasn't a waiter, ma'am."

"So I'm told." She studies you. "You're bleeding through that bandage."

You glance down. You are, a little. "Apologies, ma'am."

"Don't apologize for bleeding on my son's behalf. It's in very poor taste." She looks at Caspian, who is leaning against a bookshelf with his hands in his pockets, perfectly casual, perfectly not. "Day four?"

"Day four," he agrees.

"The eleventh made it to nineteen."

"So everyone keeps telling me," you say.

There's a pause. The Queen's mouth moves, the smallest amount. You think it might be a smile. Behind her, the white dog farts in its sleep, and Caspian makes a noise into his fist.

"You'll do," the Queen says. "Possibly. Go away now, both of you. Ebba is in the long gallery. She wants to stab someone."

Princess Ebba is in the long gallery in fencing whites, mask under one arm, saber in her hand, practicing lunges against a portrait of a disapproving great-great-grandfather. She's twenty-five, dark-haired where her brother is gold, with the same sharp bones and a fierce grin that hits like a slap.

"There he is," she says, pointing the saber at you. "The one who found Cas in Glasshouse in twenty minutes. Annika told me. She said you looked at his shirt like it had committed a crime."

"It had."

Ebba laughs, loud and delighted, and Caspian groans. "Don't encourage her."

"Do you fence, Varlow?"

"Badly, Your Highness."

"Excellent. Come Thursday. I want to beat someone large." She tilts her head at her brother, suddenly serious. "Mother looked at him?"

"Mother looked at him," Caspian says.

"And?"

"She said he'll do. Possibly."

Ebba's eyes go wide. She turns back to you with new respect. "She said that about our father. Possibly. They were married thirty years."

"Ebba," Caspian says.

"I'm only saying." She snaps her mask down over her face. "Thursday, Varlow. Bring a cup."

Fenmoor finds you at four, on the terrace, while Caspian is inside on a call with a minister.

He doesn't come out into the cold. He opens the glass door and stands in the doorway, letting the heat leak out around him. "Mr. Varlow. A word."

You walk over. He doesn't step back to let you in.

"I hear you're adjusting well," he says.

"I'm doing my job."

"Yes. Your job." He smiles. It doesn't move anything above his nose. "His Royal Highness keeps late hours. He has... friends. Habits. In four months he will be King, and this palace needs to know what it is crowning. I'd like you to bring me a summary of his nights. Where he goes, whom he sees. Personally, not through the Annex. Discretion is everything here."

The wind off the lake bites at your neck.

"My reports go to Commander Rennick, sir."

"And from Rennick they come to me eventually. I'm simply saving everyone time."

"Then you'll get them eventually."

Something in his face goes very still and very pleasant. "You've been in Aldoria four days, Mr. Varlow. You don't yet understand how things work here."

"Probably not, sir. That's why I'll stick to the chain of command."

He looks at you for a long moment. Then he nods, as if you've confirmed something he expected, and closes the door. Through the glass you watch him walk away down the corridor, unhurried, his reflection sliding across the portraits.

Rennick's office at nine p.m. smells like burned coffee and gun oil. You tell him, word for word.

He doesn't look surprised. He looks tired.

"He asked the others too," he says.

"Did they say yes?"

"Some of them." He rubs his eyes. "The ones who said yes didn't last long either. His Royal Highness has a nose for it. He knew. He made their lives hell until they ran."

"And the ones who said no?"

Rennick is quiet for a long moment. Outside his window, Vardenhof glows on its hill, every window gold.

"Number eleven said no," he says. "Officer Dreyer. Good man. Steady. The prince liked him, I think. Dreyer lasted nineteen days."

"I thought he quit. Cried in the car."

"He cried in the car because he didn't quit, Varlow." Rennick looks up at you. "Sir Alaric filed a conduct report claiming Dreyer was selling the prince's schedule to the press. No proof. Didn't need any. Dreyer was dismissed the next morning. He's driving a taxi in Brussels now."

You stand very still.

"I'd watch your back," Rennick says, "as well as his."