The Terms

He doesn't take the bramble from you. He lets you hold it.

"Sit down before you fall down," Rhien says. "Your shoulder's bleeding through my shirt, and I liked that shirt."

You sit, mostly because your knees decide for you. The bramble lies across your lap. The little white flower trembles.

"Here are the terms," he says. "I'll say them plainly, because you're going to want to argue with each one, and I'd rather you argued with the real thing than with a story your grandmother told you."

"I didn't have a grandmother."

He pauses. "Then with a story the Ward told you." He holds up one finger. "When one of us saves a mortal life, unasked, a debt is made. Not by me. By the world. I couldn't stop it if I tried, and believe me, at the moon-pool I was busy."

A second finger.

"While it stands, you can't harm me. Not with a blade, not with poison, not by pushing me off a cliff or telling the wrong person where I'll be. The intent turns before it lands. You just saw what happens to steel."

You look down at the flower. It's very pretty. You hate it.

"Third. It's repaid in kind. A life for a life. Save mine, and the mark fades, and you owe me nothing. That's the only way you can pay it." He lowers his hand. "And fourth, which matters most, so listen. I can unmake it. Three words, any time you ask. I don't need a reason and you don't need to give one."

"And then I could kill you."

"And then you could try," he agrees pleasantly.

You stare at him. The coals tick.

"What does it make me do?" you ask. Your voice is rough. "The stories say a fae debt makes you a servant. That you go where you're told. That you..." You stop, because the stories say worse than that, and you're not going to say them out loud to his face.

He understands anyway. You watch it land. His jaw sets.

"Nothing," he says. "It compels nothing. Not obedience. Not where you sleep or whether you stay. Not one hour of your time." He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the firelight carves his face into sharp, serious lines. "And not your body, and not your heart. Whatever the songs say. Anything like that, I'd want given. Not owed. I would never take a thing from you because a mark on your wrist says I could. I'm telling you that now so you never have to wonder."

You believe him. That's the worst part. He can't lie, and you believe him anyway, which is somehow different.

"So unmake it," you say.

"Is that you asking?"

You open your mouth.

You think of the chapel, and the king's hand on your shoulder, and Sorrelby who wouldn't look at you. You think about walking back through the Thornwall with a bramble instead of a dagger and kneeling on that cold floor to say: he saved my life and then he let me go, so I came home.

You think about owing a man your life and leaving the bill on the table.

"No," you hear yourself say.

His eyebrows go up.

"A knight of the Ward pays his debts," you say. "I don't take what I haven't earned. If I owe you a life, I'll pay you a life. Then we're even. Then I'll decide what I do."

He looks at you for a long, long moment. Then he laughs, low and delighted, and puts his face in one hand.

"Oh, you're going to be trouble, Ethan," he says through his fingers. "Fine. Have it your way, Sir Assassin. But the offer stands. Every day. You only have to ask."

Sablemere comes out of the trees at what the Gloaming calls morning, which is the same violet dusk with a little more gold in it.

You've been riding behind him on a stag the size of a warhorse, white, with antlers like a frozen river, your good arm around his waist because the other one is useless. You've been trying not to notice his waist. You've been failing.

The city is built of glass.

Not windows. The whole city. Towers of pale green glass, bridges of spun white glass thin as lace, halls whose walls are clear enough to see the people moving inside like fish in a pond. Light runs through all of it, soft and shifting, so the whole city seems to breathe. Black thorn vines climb the towers like ivy, and where they flower, the flowers are silver.

"Close your mouth," Rhien says over his shoulder. "You'll catch a sprite."

"Is that a real thing?"

"No. But your face was very funny."

People turn as you ride through. Tall people, beautiful people, people with antlers and people with skin like birch bark, and every one of them looks at Rhien first and lights up, and then looks at you, and stops smiling. A woman pulls a child behind her skirts. Someone whispers iron. Someone else whispers Vael.

Rhien raises his voice, just slightly, without looking at any of them. "My guest," he says. "Under my roof."

The whispering stops like a door closing.

At the palace, which is the tallest and clearest and most impossible thing in a city of impossible things, a hob is waiting on the steps: shoulder-high, broad as a barrel, with a beard of actual green moss and an expression like a locked chest.

"You went alone," the hob says to Rhien.

"I did."

"And came back with a human."

"I did."

"Bleeding."

"He's a very good bleeder, Pellwin. Be kind." Rhien swings down and turns to help you off. You don't take his hand. You almost fall on your face. He catches you anyway, his grip warm around your good arm, and for one second you're very close to him in the cold.

"Give him the Linden Room," Rhien says, still holding on. "Feed him. Let him sleep. Don't lock the door. Ever."

Pellwin's mossy eyebrows climb. "Ever?"

"He's a guest. He can leave any time he likes." Rhien's eyes are on yours as he says it. "Any time, Ethan. Day or night. The stag knows the way to the wall."

The Linden Room is glass on three sides. You can see the whole violet sky and the city below and, across a courtyard, a tower with a light burning at the top.

You know without asking whose it is.

Pellwin brings stew and bread and a jug of something that tastes like cold pears, and fresh bandages, and a look that says he'd like to put you in the stew. Then, at the door, he digs in his apron and holds out his broad hand.

"From him," he grunts.

It's a sliver of mirror, the size of your palm, edged in silver. Your own face looks back at you from it, pale and bruised and suspicious.

"What's it for?"

"Talking. Hold it and think of him, he'll know." Pellwin's face does something complicated. "He's never given one of those away. Not once in twenty-nine years."

He leaves. He doesn't lock the door.

You sit on the edge of a bed made of silk and moonlight and look at the shard for a long time. You tell yourself you're not going to touch it. You're a knight of the Ward. You came here to kill him. You owe him your life.

Across the courtyard, the light in the tower burns.

The shard warms in your hand. You hadn't even noticed you were holding it.

Silver words begin to write themselves across the glass, one elegant letter at a time.