The Grand Duke Gave the Hostage Prince the Only Key novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bridge at Halren Ford
Elior lays down his sword but will not kneel, slips on the ice and is caught by the Grand Duke's bare hand; at Hallgard Keep the duke puts the only key to the door between their rooms in Elior's hand.
Elior laid his sword on the bridge, and he did not kneel after it.
The bridge at Halren Ford was old grey stone, and the first snow had frozen on it overnight into a hard glaze.
Three months ago, Elior had held the left wing of the Savennian cavalry on the far bank of this river.
Today he walked out to the middle of the span with twenty lancers behind him and nothing in his hands.
On the north end stood the men who had beaten him.
They wore black wool and grey fur, and none of them looked pleased.
Their duke stood in front.
Teodric Hallgard was the tallest man on the bridge, and broad as a door.
His ash-blond hair was cropped close, and a pale scar ran through his left eyebrow.
He wore no gloves.
His breath smoked in the cold, and he watched Elior come.
"Prince Elior," he said.
His voice was low and level, with no triumph in it.
"Grand Duke."
Elior unbuckled the sword belt and set the sword down on the stone between them.
It was what the treaty said.
The treaty did not say anything about bowing his head, so he kept it up.
Behind him, a lancer drew a breath.
Teodric looked at the sword, then at Elior's face.
He bent, picked the sword up by the flat of the blade, and held it out hilt first.
"The treaty says you lay it down," he said.
"It does not say that I keep it."
Elior stared at him.
He took the sword, because refusing would have looked like a child's temper, and he hated that he was grateful.
"There is one more thing," said a soft voice at his shoulder.
Lord Aubrecht Dreyne had come up beside him, wrapped in a plum velvet coat, a ring on every one of his pale fingers.
The Lord Treasurer of Savenne smiled.
"His Majesty's farewell, Highness."
He held out a folded letter.
Elior took it.
The seal was a gold lion in red wax, pressed badly.
Elior frowned at it, because the lion's tail was whole.
His father's lion had a chipped tail.
The letter was written in a clerk's neat hand, and it said that the king was proud of him and expected obedience.
"Where is my father?" Elior asked quietly.
"Resting."
"His hand still pains him from the Ford, so I wrote for him."
"The prince Marius is also recovering."
Dreyne patted his arm.
"Be sensible, Highness."
"Three wagons of grain, and you will be home by midsummer."
Elior had known Dreyne since he was nine, and he had never once liked him.
He folded the letter into his coat.
The duke held out his bare right forearm, as the oath of the Ford required, for the pledge to grip it before witnesses.
Elior looked at the arm.
He looked at the river, at the lancers who would turn around without him, at the grey road north.
"No," he said.
"I will walk to your keep and sit in your keep."
"I will not shake your arm."
Teodric's expression did not change.
"Then we will manage without it," he said.
Elior turned to say goodbye to his men, and his boot found a patch of black ice.
The world tilted.
The river wheeled below him, and a hand closed around his forearm hard enough to stop the fall.
It was a huge hand.
It was bare and very warm, and it held him up as easily as a coat on a peg.
Heat went through his sleeve and up the inside of his arm, and Elior was furious to feel it.
"Let go of me."
"When you can stand," Teodric said.
Elior got his feet under him.
The hand stayed one breath longer, and then it opened.
"Don't touch me," Elior said.
"Then don't fall."
Dreyne gave a dry little laugh behind them.
"Well, that is the oath sworn, then."
"Forearm to forearm, before witnesses."
"Congratulations, Highness."
Elior wanted to put the Treasurer in the river.
He did not say goodbye after all.
His lancers saluted, and then they were walking away south.
He was sitting in a closed sleigh with a northern captain who would not meet his eyes.
The road to Hallgard Keep ran through pine forest and then through a town of black stone houses.
People stood along the road in the snow and did not cheer or jeer.
They were thin, all of them, with hollow cheeks and coats too big for them.
A boy of about eight watched the sleigh pass with the flat eyes of someone who had stopped expecting things.
Elior looked at his own gloved hands and did not look out again.
The keep was black stone against a white sky, and his room was on the third floor.
It had a great bed, a hearth already burning, and a window over the frozen river.
It also had a second door in the east wall, heavy oak with an iron lock.
"That opens on my chamber," Teodric said.
He had followed Elior up the stairs and stood in the doorway, filling it.
Elior turned and held himself very straight.
So that was it.
He had wondered, on the road, how long it would take for the price to be named.
The duke took an iron key off the chain at his belt.
He held it out on his flat palm.
"It is the only key," he said.
"Lock the door, or don't."
"It is yours."
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