Pine Needle Tea

The marital protocol of the northern marches dictated that lord and lady share the morning board at least thrice weekly, beneath the watchful scrutiny of the garrison officers and senior household.

The winter parlor was a cramped chamber, warmed only by a hearth where green larch logs hissed with far more bitter smoke than flame.

Severin occupied the high chair, elbows propped upon the walnut rests and an untouched tankard of sour small beer resting before him. He wore the sullen cast of men who would far sooner dig siege trenches than share bread with an unwanted bride.

I seated myself at his right. Before me sat a cast-iron kettle bubbling over hot coals and an earthenware bowl of dried pine needles mixed with birch shavings.

"The cook in this keep must believe human stomachs are fashioned from the same hide as draft oxen," I remarked, tipping the needles into the steaming water with deliberate ease.

Severin did not raise his gaze from the grain of the trestle.

"The cook was a master-gunner in the border campaigns. In his eyes, any victuals that do not bring on immediate camp dysentery qualify as imperial banqueting."

I let out a soft laugh as I stirred the brew with a pewter spoon.

"Well, your valiant gunner has managed to make this draught smell precisely like the pitch cobblers use to glue boot soles."

Sometimes a shared grievance binds tighter than an altar vow.

Severin turned his head slowly, looking at me through thick dark lashes. For the space of a heartbeat, the frost mask over his face cracked: the left corner of his mouth twitched upward in a dry, faint, almost imperceptible smirk, yet unmistakably human.

"You have a perilous tongue for one raised in a ruined manor of the south, Astrid."

"Hunger sharpens the wits, my lord duke. And a lack of coin teaches one very quickly to tell foul broth from real hemlock."

The duke reached his arm across and, with his black deerskin gauntlet shielding his fingers, shoved his pewter cup toward the kettle.

"Pour it then. If I survive resin tea, I may consider shortening the housekeeper's leash during your walks along the ramparts."

The post-rider from the south made the keep on a mule blown with exhaustion, its leather packs caked in frozen mud after five days of forced riding over the high pass.

Among the official dispatches from the regency council came a small envelope of rough paper, sealed with a wafer of scarlet wax that I recognized before the boy even set down the tray.

The seal of the Torralba merchant bank of Zaragoza.

I climbed to my bedchamber with hurried steps, threw the iron bolt, and broke the wax with fingers that refused to stay steady.

The notary's hand was sharp, merciless, stripped of all courtly pleasantries: "To the right noble lady duchess consort of Frost Keep: We hereby give formal notice that the third bill of exchange drawn by your noble mother has matured without funds at the Medina fair. Under the terms of the marriage indenture, should you fail within thirty days to provide witnessed, notarized testimony of cohabitation and lawful consummation of the match, the pledged deeds shall be forfeit at once across your ancestral domain."

Lawful consummation.

A chill having nothing to do with the draft from the arrow slits crept down my neck.

How could anyone certify cohabitation with a man whose barest brush turned linen, shifts, and living flesh to cinder? The contract I had signed was a marriage of convenience, twelve months of courtly theater to cleanse Severin's name in exchange for discharging my mother's debts. My creditors did not seek honor: they demanded blood or coin.

Shame is a debt that silver coin can never discharge.

I slipped the letter into the loosened binding of my prayer book, wedging the vellum deep with the blade of my shears until not a fold showed.

Two sharp raps against the oak made me start.

The latch lifted without awaiting leave. Severin stood upon the landing, dressed in his short riding cloak and arming sword.

"The blizzard has broken over the valley," he said with his characteristic clipped brevity. "I must inspect the ramparts of the northern bastion before dusk falls. Walk with me, Astrid. It is high time the garrison grew accustomed to seeing you at my side."

The parapet of the northern tower was a narrow ledge of flagstones chewed by frost, suspended forty fathoms above the gorge of the Lost Souls.

Far below, in the canyon depths, black pines looked like the bristles of a brush buried under drifts. The wind roared up the sheer face of stone, driving needles of frost that stung the cheeks like silver pins.

I walked two paces behind Severin, clutching the folds of my heavy cloak with both hands to keep the wind from throwing me off balance. The duke marched with steady stride, checking the arrow loops and winch drums of the ballistas with the grim precision of a frontier captain.

Ten paces off, the sentry on watch—a young lad muffled to the eyes in greasy wool—brought his pike to attention as we drew near.

It happened at the blind turn where the masonry angled toward the barbican.

A downdraft, a savage lash of glacial wind that came tearing from the peaks with the force of an avalanche, slammed into my ribs without warning.

My right boot slipped upon a patch of glare ice. My body pitched sideways with a violence that tore the air from my lungs. The stone breastwork at that corner had crumbled during the previous winter's frost; the abyss opened beneath my boots like a black throat waiting for the fall.

"Astrid!" roared a voice that forgot all courtly distance.

The instinct to save another reveals what terror strives to conceal.

Severin gave no thought to his gloves. In the exact fraction of a second he saw me slide, he tore the deerskin from his right hand with his teeth and lunged forward with the full momentum of his body.

His bare fingers, searing hot as tongs fresh from the forge, clamped with iron force around my right wrist.

The contact was instantaneous. The wool of my gown's cuff flared with sparks and dissolved into a puff of black smoke and hot ash. The air tasted of charred cloth and sharp ozone.

He wrenched me back from the void with a single powerful heave, sending me tumbling across his chest onto the stone flags of the walk.

We lay gasping in the snow, tangled in our cloaks. Both of us looked down at the exact same instant.

The fabric of my sleeve was entirely gone to the elbow, incinerated into air. Yet beneath the soot, my bare arm remained intact: pale, living, unblemished skin, upon which Severin's bare fingers were still clamped in desperate terror.

Five paces away, the sentry stared at us with eyes round with unadulterated horror, the pike trembling uncontrollably between his gloved fists.