The Dragon's Path

mount and moved forward.
    “Small honor,” Dawson said bitterly and under his breath, the words white as fog.
    As they rode back to the holding, the snowfall turned from deep, feathery flakes to mere specks, and the mountains to the east reappeared as the low clouds thinned andbroke. The scent of smoke touched the air, and the spiraling towers of Osterling Fells stood in the south. The stone—granite and dragon’s jade—glowed with sunlight, and the garlands that hung from the battlements left the impression that the buildings themselves had come to welcome the moment’s brightness.
    As host, Dawson was to oversee the preparation of the hart. It meant little more than standing in the kitchens for half an hour looking jolly, and still his soul rebelled. He couldn’t bring himself to descend into the chaos of servants and dogs. He stalked to the wide stone stairs beside the ovens and stood on the landing that overlooked the preparation tables. Along the wall, pies and loaves of bread cooled, and an ancient woman pressed peacock feathers into a pork loaf that had been sculpted to resemble the bird and candied until it shone like glass. The smell of baked raisins and chicken filled the hot air. The huntsmen arrived with the carcass, and four young men fell to preparing the meat, rubbing salt, mint leaves, and butter into the flesh, carving out the glands and veins that the unmaking had left in. Dawson scowled and watched. The beast had been noble once, and watching it now—
    “Husband?”
    Clara, behind him, wore the pleasant expression she adopted in the early stages of exhaustion. Her eyes glittered, and the dimples that framed her mouth dug just a fraction deeper than usual. No one would know who hadn’t spent a lifetime looking at her. He resented the court for putting that look in her eyes.
    “Wife,” he said.
    “If we might?” she said, taking half a step toward the back hall. Annoyance tightened his mouth. Not with her, but with whatever domestic catastrophe required him now.He nodded curtly and followed her back toward the shadows and relative privacy. Before he left the landing a new voice stopped him.
    “Sir! You’ve dropped this, my lord.”
    One of the huntsmen stood at the stair. A young man, wide-chinned and open-faced, wearing Kalliam livery. He held out the bit of broken, blood-darkened horn. A servant, calling Baron Kalliam back like a child for a lost bauble.
    Dawson felt his face darken, his hands clench.
    “What is your name,” he said, and the huntsman went pale at the sound of his voice
    “Vincen, sir. Vincen Coe.”
    “You are no man of mine, Vincen Coe. Get your things and leave my house by nightfall.”
    “M-my lord?”
    “Do you want to be whipped in the bargain, boy?” Dawson shouted. The kitchen below them went silent, all eyes turning to them, and then quickly away.
    “No, my lord,” the huntsman said.
    Dawson turned and stalked into the gloom of the corridor, Clara at his side. She didn’t rebuke him. In the shadows of the stair, she leaned in speaking quietly and almost into his ear.
    “Simeon asked for a warm bath when he came in, and instead of kicking everyone else out of the blue rooms, I had the janitor prepare Andr’s house. The one by the eastern wing? It’s a more pleasant space anyway, and it has those clever little pipes to keep the water hot.”
    “That’s fine,” Dawson said.
    “I’ve left orders that no one else be let in except you, of course. Because I knew that you wanted a moment with him.”
    “I can’t intrude on the king’s bath,” Dawson said.
    “Of course you can, dear. Only tell him I didn’t remember to warn you. I was very careful to mention that it was the place you’ve always preferred after a hunt, so it won’t be at all implausible. Unless, of course, he asks the servants and they say you actually use the blue rooms. But prying like that would be rude, and Simeon’s never struck me that way, has he you?”
    Dawson felt a weight he’d only been half aware of lift from him.
    “What did I do to deserve a wife as perfect as you?”
    “It was luck,” she said, a faint smile penetrating her polite façade. “Now go before he finishes his bath. I’ll tend to that poor puppy of a huntsman you just kicked. They really should know better than to approach you when you’re in a temper.”
    A ndr’s house sat within the walls of the holding proper, tucked beside the chapel hall and otherwise apart from the main buildings.