The Grand Duke Gave the Hostage Prince the Only Key novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: What the Clause Says
After the servants whisper that he is the duke's plaything, Elior storms into the study and hears that nothing of him is in the treaty; the duke's sister announces a hunt at dawn.
Supper in the great hall of Hallgard Keep was a long table, a low fire and sixty northern lords staring at the hostage.
Elior sat at the high table with his back straight and ate everything on his plate, because pride was a kind of food too.
The soup was the same barley as the broth, with a little salt pork in it.
He noticed the duke ate exactly what the guards ate.
Teodric sat three seats down and said nothing to anyone.
"He doesn't talk," said the woman beside Elior.
She had a braid of straw-blonde hair as thick as a rope and a green cloak trimmed with fur.
Her grin took up half her face.
"I'm Sigrun, his sister.
"I talk for both of us.
"You are Elior, you are twenty, and you held the left wing at the Ford."
"You are the only Savennian who ever made my brother take a step back."
"Who told you that?"
"The scouts.
"They were very impressed and very angry.
"Do you play cards?"
"Badly."
"Wonderful.
"I cheat, so we are even."
Elior felt his mouth turn up, and he was irritated with it.
He liked her already, and that felt like a betrayal.
After supper he took the long way to the stairs.
On a landing, two guards stood in the shadows with their backs to him.
They were not whispering well.
"Third floor, east room.
"With a door straight through to the duke's own bed."
"Sensible, though.
"Grain for a pretty prince.
"By midwinter he will have him warm."
The other guard laughed.
Elior did not remember climbing the rest of the stairs.
He remembered the study door.
He did not knock.
The room was lit by the fire and one lamp.
Teodric sat at his desk with a ledger open and a pen in his hand, and he looked up with no surprise at all.
"Prince Elior."
"Your men think I am your whore."
The pen stopped.
"Which men?"
"The guards on the north landing.
"They think the grain buys me.
"They think the key is a joke, and by the solstice I will walk through that door on my own."
"I see."
Teodric put the pen down.
"Sit, if you like."
"I will stand."
"Then I will stand with you."
He rose, and the room became smaller.
He came around the desk and stopped three paces away, hands open at his sides, which Elior understood was meant as kindness.
"It is not in the treaty," said Teodric.
"I wrote the clause myself.
"The prince is held at Hallgard Keep as a pledge until the third wagon arrives.
"That is the whole of it."
"Words can be read twice."
"Not by me."
His voice was very even.
"Nothing of you is mine to take.
"Not by treaty.
"Not because you are in my house.
"Not out of gratitude, or fear, or because you think it is expected.
"If any man says otherwise in my hearing, he will be corrected."
Elior had come ready to shout, and the shouting went out of him.
He had planned for a leer and had been given a speech.
"A man in my place would say yes to anything," he said, and his voice came out thin.
"To survive."
"A man in your place might," Teodric said.
"So I will not ask."
Elior stared at him.
It would have been easier if the man had been ugly.
Up close, Teodric smelled like pine smoke and cold air, and the fire lit the scar in his eyebrow and the gold in his lashes.
His shirt was open at the throat, and Elior's eyes went there without permission.
"Then why do you look at me like that?"
It was out before he could stop it.
"Like what?"
"Like I am the only thing in the room."
Silence.
Teodric's hands closed, and Elior watched him do it.
He watched the big knuckles go white, and the long breath that came in through the nose and out through the mouth, slowly.
Then the duke looked him in the eye and did not lie.
"Because you are worth looking at," he said.
"And because I am not allowed to do anything about it."
Elior's heart hit his ribs.
"Go to bed, Prince Elior," Teodric said, very low.
"Please."
It was the please that undid him.
He should have been angry.
He was dizzy instead, and he turned and left before his face could say anything else.
Sigrun was in the corridor, leaning against the wall with her arms folded and the grin back.
"I wasn't listening," she said.
"Good."
"I heard every word.
"I've never seen him say please to a man in his life."
"Please go away."
"No.
"Tomorrow we're hunting.
"My brother will say you won't want to come.
"You will."
Elior opened his mouth.
"I'll wake you at dawn," said Sigrun, and she patted his cheek and went off down the passage whistling.
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