The Drone Who Claimed the Marshal novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Keep

Roark Keep, the terms of the marriage, Wystan, and a midnight in the hall where Ambrose asks Linus not to look.

Roark Keep was built of black stone, and it stood alone on a cliff over the city with no lights on its outer walls.

Inside, the staff waited in two lines along the hall, and every one of them stared at Linus's wrist.

The Marshal did not stop walking. "My husband," he said to the room. "Linus. He's to be given anything he asks for."

Nobody in the hall breathed.

"The Empress sends for us at dawn," he added. "Be ready to be looked at."

Linus felt the words land in his stomach. In seven years she had never once asked to see a drone, and now she wanted this one.

A thin man in a grey uniform stepped out of the line, pushing wire-rimmed glasses up his nose.

"Wystan Moore, adjutant," he said. "I watched the claim on the feed. Forty-one times, so far. I would like to say congratulations, but first I would like to know whether either of you has eaten."

"No," Linus said. It was the first honest answer anyone had asked him for all day.

"Soup, then," Wystan said, and went off down the hall at a brisk walk.

The Marshal's study was at the top of the keep.

It held a desk, a wall of dark windows and one chair, and nothing in it belonged to a second person.

Marshal Roark stood by the window with his back to the glass.

"I'll tell you the terms," he said. "Then you can tell me yours."

"All right."

"The claim stands one year. After that you may leave, with a house of your own and a pension no one can touch. Until then you have your own rooms and your own door. I ask nothing of you."

His voice was level.

His bare right hand was shut tight at his side.

"Nothing?" Linus said.

"Nothing. You calmed the fever twice today. That is more than I had any right to ask. I won't make it a debt."

Linus considered him.

Zane would have taken the offer and been grateful. Linus, who had just been sold for twelve thousand crowns, found that he was not.

"I have one term," Linus said. "Don't lie to me."

The Marshal's eyebrows rose a little.

"About anything. If something is bad, say so. If you don't want me near, say that, too. I can take a hard answer. I can't take being handled."

"Done," Marshal Roark said.

He said it at once.

"Now I have a question." Linus stepped closer. "Seven years the Hall read out lots like me. You never came to the last day. Why this one?"

The Marshal looked at the window.

"The Empress ordered it this year," he said. "And this morning my glove began to burn before I left the keep."

"That's not an answer to why you never came."

"No," the Marshal said. "It isn't."

He did not say anything more, and Linus found he could not push him, because the man looked suddenly ill.

"Later," the Marshal said. "I'll answer it. I promise that."

He had said he wouldn't lie.

So Linus nodded and let it stand.

Wystan came in with a tray, set it on the desk and withdrew without a word.

The soup was hot, and thick with barley, and tasted of salt and herbs. Linus ate all of it standing up.

The Marshal watched him do it, and when the bowl was empty, he took it and put it back on the tray himself.

"Your room is on the east side," he said. "It has a lock on the inside. I had the key made while we were in the car."

That detail stuck. A man who had been told his whole life he was only a drone had just been handed a key to his own door.

"Thank you," Linus said, and his voice came out rougher than he meant.

The room on the east side was bigger than anywhere he remembered sleeping, in either life.

He stood at the window for a long time.

His body's memories came easily until he was about seventeen: Perrin's kitchen, the steel band, a school bench. After that the memory went thin and blurred.

Seven years of fog.

He thought of the white-gold fire in his hands. He thought of the way his fingertips had tingled when the Marshal passed.

He lay down, and slept hard.

He woke in the dark with a dry mouth and no idea what hour it was.

The keep was silent.

He padded barefoot into the hall for water, and stopped.

Marshal Roark was sitting on the floor against the far wall, in his shirtsleeves, with his knees drawn up.

The plates had taken the whole left side of his face, black and glossy from his temple to his jaw.

His black glove was still on, and it spilled gold light across the stone floor.

He looked up, and one pale eye found Linus in the dark.

"Don't look," he said.

Linus did not look away.

He crossed the stone floor, sat down against the wall at the Marshal's side, and took his bare hand.

The Marshal's breath shook, and the plates on his cheek began to slide.

"Every night?" Linus asked.

"Every night," Marshal Roark said. "For seven years."

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