*
He found himself in the old residential quarters of the fort.
It was quieter here. The sounds of the Akielon occupation were muted. The thick stone hushed all the noises, and there was only the building itself, the bones of Marlas, its tapestries and trellises torn down, exposed before him.
It was a beautiful fort. He saw that, the ghost of its Veretian grace; of what it had been; of what it could be again, perhaps. For his part, this was farewell. He wouldn’t return here, or if he did, as a visiting King, it would be different, restored as it should be to Veretian hands. Marlas, so hard-won, he would simply give back.
That was strange to think. Once a symbol of Akielon victory, it seemed now a symbol of all that had changed in him, the way that when he looked now, he saw with new eyes.
He came to an old door, and stopped. There was a soldier at the door, a formality. Damen waved him aside.
It was a comfortable, well-lit set of rooms with a fire burning in the hearth, and a series of furnishings including Akielon reclining seats, a wooden chest with cushions, and a low table in front of the fire, with a game and game pieces set up on it.
The girl from the village sat, squat and pale, opposite an older lady in grey skirts, bright coins used in a child’s game strewn out on the table between them. At Damen’s entry the girl scrambled up, the coins knocked to the floor with a chink.
The older lady also stood. The last time Damen had seen her she had been warding him away from a bed with the broken end of a spear.
‘What happened to your village . . . I swore that I would find out who was responsible, and make them pay for it. I meant it,’ said Damen in Veretian. ‘You both have a place here if you want it, among friends. Marlas will belong to Vere again. That is my promise to you both.’
The woman said, ‘They told us who you were.’
‘Then you know I have the power to keep my promises.’
‘You think if you give us—’ The woman stopped.
She stood beside the girl, the two of them a wall of white-faced resistance. He felt the incongruity of his presence.
‘You should go,’ said the girl into the silence. ‘You’re scaring Genevot.’
Damen looked back at Genevot. Genevot was trembling. She wasn’t scared. She was furious. She was furious at him, at his presence here.
‘It wasn’t fair what happened to your village,’ Damen said to her. ‘No fight is fair. Someone’s always stronger. But I’ll give you justice. That I swear.’
‘I wish Akielons had never come to Delfeur,’ said the girl. ‘I wish someone had been stronger than you.’
She turned her back on him after she said it. It was an act of bravery, a girl in front of a king. Then she went and picked up a coin from the floor.
‘It’s all right, Genevot,’ said the girl. ‘Look, I’ll teach you a trick. Watch my hand.’
Damen’s skin prickled as he recognised it, the echo of another presence, the achingly familiar self-possession that the girl mimicked as she closed her hand over the coin, holding her fist out in front of her.
He knew who had been here before him, who had sat with her, taught her. He had seen this trick before. And though her eight-year-old sleight of hand was a little clumsy, she managed to push the coin into her sleeve, so that when she opened her hand again, it was empty.