The Grand Duke Gave the Hostage Prince the Only Key novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Book of the Dead
Elior tries to leave at dawn and finds the duke waiting at the gate; he is shown the line of hungry people and the book of every man who died at the Ford, and learns the granary will be empty in forty days.
Elior locked the door at midnight, and he lay awake until the hearth burned down.
He told himself the key was a trick.
A man who handed over a key meant to take something else.
At dawn he pulled on his boots, put the key inside his shirt, and went down the servants' stair in the dark.
He had a plan, and it was a bad one.
The kitchen yard was empty except for a cook's boy asleep against a sack of turnips.
There was a postern gate in the far wall, and beyond it a stable lane and the pine forest.
He had his sword and his coat, and the stable lane smelled of horses.
Elior crossed the yard on the balls of his feet and put his hand on the postern latch.
It lifted without a sound.
The gate swung open on a man in a black coat, holding a lantern.
"The pass is closed with snow," said Teodric Hallgard.
"A man alone dies in it in one night."
Elior's hand dropped to his sword, and then it stopped, because he had no idea what to do after that.
Teodric looked at the hand.
He did not reach for his own weapon.
"If you want to leave, I will not bar the road," he said.
"But walk with me first.
"It is a short way."
"Walk with you where?"
"Where you ought to see before you go."
It was not an order, and that made it harder to refuse.
Elior followed him because he was too angry to do anything else.
They went through a stone arch and down a ramp to a second gate on the north side of the keep.
It was still dark, and there was already a line.
It ran out through the gate and along the wall.
Old women, mothers with babies, a man with one arm.
Children stood with wooden bowls in both hands.
At the gate, three servants ladled grey broth from an iron pot into the bowls, one ladle each.
Nobody spoke above a whisper.
"Barley and water," Teodric said.
"It is served at dawn and dusk from my own table's stores.
"It has been served since the second week of autumn."
"I did not ask."
"No."
Elior followed him back up the ramp, hating himself for it.
The study was a long room with a map table, a desk and a fire.
Teodric took a book from the desk and set it in front of Elior.
It was thick, bound in black leather, and the corners were worn from handling.
"Open it," he said.
Elior opened it.
The pages were covered edge to edge in small neat handwriting.
Names.
Hundreds of names in columns, each with an age and a place of birth.
The left page was headed Norvald.
The right page was headed Savenne.
"Every man who died at the Ford," Teodric said.
"I asked the prisoners, and I asked your priests.
"The ones I could not name, I left blank."
"Thirty-one men from a barge went down in the rout, and the river never gave them back."
"Their lines are empty."
His finger came down on a line.
Elior read it.
The standard-bearer, nineteen, Aurelle, left wing.
His throat closed.
The boy had borrowed a clean shirt from Elior the night before the battle, and never given it back.
"He held the bridge-end standard after his captain fell," Teodric said.
"He would not leave it.
"Three of my riders fell trying to get it from him.
"I wrote it as it was told to me."
Elior shut the book hard.
"You killed him."
"Yes."
"You killed a boy of nineteen with a borrowed shirt, and you keep a little book and you think that makes you a decent man."
"No," Teodric said.
"I think it makes me a man who knows what he did."
Elior's hands were shaking.
He grabbed the front of the duke's coat in both fists.
Under the wool and fur was hard muscle, and he pulled with all his strength.
Teodric did not move.
He looked down at Elior's white knuckles, and then at his face, and he waited.
His eyes were very pale.
They were not cruel, and that was the worst of it.
Elior let go.
He stepped back and wiped his face with his sleeve, furious that it was wet.
"Savenne's royal granaries were full when I left," he said.
"There is no reason for your people to be eating barley water."
"I know," Teodric said.
"Your father's Treasurer says the grain will come."
"My father writes to me himself," said Elior.
"Every letter I have ever had from him was in his own hand, big and untidy and with the ink everywhere.
"He would not send a clerk's copy to his son."
He heard what he had said, and stopped.
Teodric watched him, still and thoughtful.
"He was hurt at the Ford," Teodric said gently.
"Hands heal slowly."
"Yes," said Elior.
"That must be it."
The door opened, and a grey-haired steward came in with a tally board and did not look surprised to find the hostage there.
"Your Grace.
"The count is finished.
"The granary holds forty days of grain at the broth rate."
Teodric's face did not change.
"And the first wagon is due at midwinter," he said.
"That is twenty-three days."
The steward nodded.
Elior stood very still.
He had come down the stair to run.
Now he looked at the line of bowls through the study window, and his legs would not carry him to the gate.
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