On the same morning that Erenora searched its streets for Valerie Ulkhander and prepared a block for her father, Prince Eugert dreamed of the family the crown had taken from him.
In the dream, the palace garden had never learned winter.
Sunlight lay warm across the white paths. Pear trees bent beneath fruit. The fountains ran with clear water instead of the red dye his uncle's soldiers had poured into them after the coup. No guards watched the walls. No bells counted the hours until someone died.
Eugert was eleven again.
His sister ran ahead of him through the lavender beds, holding her skirts above her ankles and accusing him of cheating.
"It is not cheating if you are slow," he called.
"You started before I agreed to race."
"That is called ruling initiative."
"That is called being afraid to lose to a girl."
She threw a pear at him. Eugert ducked, slipped on the path, and landed in a bed of purple flowers. His sister laughed with the complete cruelty available only to people who loved one another without caution.
Their mother sat beneath the western arbor.
She wore the blue summer dress Eugert remembered from his ninth naming feast. In waking memory, one sleeve had torn during the flight through the palace. In the dream it was whole. Her hair was pinned with the small silver comb Aldric had given her before becoming king, when gifts between them still required thought.
An infant slept in her arms.
Eugert slowed.
There had been no infant in the garden. Not then. Not ever.
His mother looked down at the child and smiled.
"Come meet your brother," she said.
The words carried no surprise. In dreams, impossible things expected to be recognised.
Eugert approached the arbor. His sister came beside him, suddenly no longer laughing. The infant's hand emerged from the blanket, fingers opening toward the sunlight.
"What is his name?" Eugert asked.
"Your father wanted to wait for you."
"Why?"
"Because one day he would have followed you. A person should know the name of the future he asks to follow."
Eugert touched one small palm.
The baby closed its hand around his finger.
Warm. Alive. Trusting.
Then blood ran from beneath its eyelids.
One thin line down each cheek.
Eugert tried to pull his hand away. The infant held tighter.
His mother looked up. Red filled the whites of her eyes and spilled across her face. His sister said his name, but blood entered her mouth and changed it into a wet breath.
The pear trees blackened.
Fruit struck the ground around them with the soft weight of severed heads. The fountains darkened. Every window of the palace filled with the faces of servants, cousins, councillors, tutors, and guards Eugert had known. Blood streamed from all their eyes at once.
His father stood on the western balcony.
Aldric wore the crimson state robes in which Stornia remembered its worst king. The cloth had been cut open from throat to waist. Beneath it there was no wound, no heart, no body at all. Only a hollow darkness holding the shape of a man.
"Choose," Aldric said.
Eugert looked at his mother, his sister, and the brother who had never reached his first breath.
"Choose what?"
The infant opened its eyes.
They were Eugert's eyes.
"Which of us," his father asked, "was worth saving?"
Eugert woke with his own hand clamped over his mouth.
The room at Hillbeard returned by pieces: timber ceiling, grey stone, green curtains, the narrow writing desk beneath the eastern window. Dawn pressed pale gold around the shutters. Rain tapped the roof with the careful rhythm of someone asking to be let in.
He sat upright.
Tears had reached his chin.
For several breaths he remained perfectly still, listening for footsteps outside his door. No one came. House Beldor did not crowd grief. That was one of the first differences Eugert had noticed after the palace, where even sorrow acquired witnesses and witnesses produced reports.
He wiped his face with the sheet.
His mother had been pregnant during the coup. Six months. Perhaps seven. Adults had argued over the count whenever they believed Eugert asleep. No body was recovered after fire took the queen's chambers. No priest entered an infant in the family death ledger because an unborn child had no naming seal.
But Eugert had seen his mother place his hand against the curve beneath her dress.
Your brother or sister, she had whispered. Try not to teach this one lying before it learns walking.
The dream had chosen a brother.
It had chosen someone who could ask why Eugert lived.
He left the bed before the question found an answer.
Clothing had been folded across the chair: brown trousers, a cream shirt, a dark green doublet with the Beldor split-tree stitched inside the collar where no visitor would see it. Ethren had given him the clothes on his second night at Hillbeard after discovering that the prince owned one bloodstained court tunic, a servant's cloak, and nothing suitable for winter.
The sleeves remained slightly short.
Ethren had grown offended when Eugert pointed this out.
That is because you possess the arms of a bridge spider.
Eugert had asked whether bridge spiders commonly wore noble tailoring.
Ethren had refused to discuss it further.
The memory steadied him. He dressed, washed his face in water cold enough to punish sleep, and opened the shutters.
Hillbeard rose across three green ridges at the eastern edge of Stornia. The town below House Beldor followed the land instead of correcting it. Slate roofs stepped down the hills. Orchard walls curved around old trees. Nine watch keeps stood along the distant heights, their signal flags hanging in the rainless morning air.
Erenora lay many days west, beyond the hills and the roads Hamrick controlled.
From here, the capital looked like weather: dangerous, distant, and impossible to argue with.
Wood struck wood in the lower garden.
Once. Twice. A pause.
Then six rapid blows answered by one.
Eugert knew the rhythm.
Ethren was losing an argument with a sword style.
Ethren Beldor trained as if laziness were a rumour spread by rival houses.
He stood in the lower garden wearing a linen practice shirt despite the cold. Fifteen years old, third child of Lord Denedrick Beldor, he had the red hair and yellow-brown eyes common in the eastern line of his family and none of their reputation for patience. A wooden sword moved between his hands. Seven practice posts surrounded him, each painted with the colours of a different Stornian house.
He struck the blue Falgor post with three low cuts, turned, and met the white Esnor post in a high guard. His feet shifted into the narrow forward stance used by the royal household school.
The posture was almost correct.
Almost annoyed Ethren more than failure.
He reset and began again.
At the garden's northern wall, two younger Beldor children sat beneath an awning with Master Hedd, the household tutor. A map of Stornia had been pinned to a board beside them. The younger child was reciting the three governing houses and forgetting House Esnor with such consistency that it had become political.
"House Beldor governs the eastern hill region," she said. "House Falgor governs Riveros and the southern grain road. House—"
Master Hedd waited.
"House Difficult governs the west."
"Esnor," her brother whispered.
"I knew that."
Ethren stopped mid-form. "House Difficult is more accurate."
Master Hedd closed his eyes.
Eugert selected a wooden sword from the rack.
"Your rear foot is wrong," he said.
Ethren did not turn. "Good morning to you as well, bridge spider."
"The fifth royal form keeps the heel inward."
"The fifth royal form was designed by a man who died because he stood with his heel inward."
"He died at eighty-three."
"Proof of a slow weakness."
Eugert came onto the practice square. "Would you like instruction?"
"From the last student in Stornia to lose a sparring match to a pear tree?"
Eugert stopped.
Ethren looked at him then. The humour remained, but his attention sharpened.
"Bad one?" he asked.
Eugert could have lied. He had been trained by palace tutors capable of turning denial into etiquette. Ethren had known him too long to be impressed.
"The garden," Eugert said.
Nothing more was required.
Ethren rotated the wooden sword once and tossed it to his left hand. "Then I should warn you that I have finally mastered the royal fifth."
"Your foot remains wrong."
"Come correct it."
They saluted.
Ethren attacked during Eugert's salute.
"Dishonourable," Eugert said, catching the blow.
"Beldor initiative."
"That is not a phrase."
"It will be when we win."
Ethren pressed with the first Beldor form, a sequence built around descending cuts and sudden changes of level. Hill soldiers used it on slopes where a lower fighter needed to turn height into an advantage. Eugert gave ground, let the third cut pass, and struck Ethren's shoulder.
"Dead," he said.
"Bruised."
"Your sword arm is gone."
Ethren changed hands and hit him across the ribs.
"So is your liver."
They separated.
The younger children abandoned history immediately and came to the edge of the square. Master Hedd made no effort to stop them. He had tutored Beldors for thirty years and understood when education had changed subjects.
Eugert advanced in the royal fourth. Ethren recognised it, shifted into Esnor's hooked defence, and caught Eugert's blade near the hilt.
"You have been studying theft," Eugert said.
"Styles belong to whoever survives learning them."
"That is what your brother Zyn says about horses."
"Zyn has been banned from two breeding estates."
"three," one of the children called.
Ethren looked toward her. "When did it become three?"
Eugert struck his leg.
Ethren fell with a sound that contained personal betrayal. Eugert lowered the wooden point to his chest.
"Dead," Eugert said.
Ethren swept his ankle.
Eugert hit the grass. Ethren rolled over him. They abandoned technique and fought for the remaining sword while the children offered contradictory advice.
For perhaps a minute, Eugert was not a surviving prince. He was sixteen, wet with garden grass, trying to keep his closest friend from putting mud in his hair.
Laughter left him before he remembered it could.
Lord Denedrick Beldor applauded from the terrace.
Everyone on the square froze except Ethren, who used the distraction to secure the sword.
"A commanding display," Lord Beldor said. "House Beldor's enemies will be troubled to learn we can defeat unarmed guests while sitting on them."
Ethren rose and attempted dignity. Mud covered one side of his face.
"He began it."
"History is written by the child whose tutor believes him. Master Hedd?"
"I saw nothing after House Difficult was founded, my lord."
Lord Beldor descended from the terrace.
He was fifty-one and looked older only when seated. Standing, he carried the hard economy of a campaign officer: tall without stooping, shoulders still strong beneath a plain wool coat, greying red hair cut close at the neck. A pale scar crossed the back of his right hand. He wore the Beldor seal on a cord beneath his shirt rather than on a ring where petitioners could watch him touch it.
Eugert had once asked why.
Authority should not require checking whether it remains on your finger, Denedrick had answered.
Lord Beldor took the wooden sword from Ethren and examined the mud on it.
"Falgor opening," he said. "Esnor defence. Royal fifth. Then whatever disgrace occurred on the ground."
"Adaptation," Ethren said.
"Obsession. You collect family styles as if expecting every house in Stornia to attack before breakfast."
"Not every house."
"Which have you excluded?"
Ethren considered. "Ours."
"Comforting."
Denedrick handed the sword to Eugert. "Walk with me. Both of you."