SN Chapter 17

No criteria announced itself clearly. Before some she lingered for minutes; before others she passed without a second glance. She worked through all fifteen that way before returning to Raymond's side.

"Do I have to take all five?"

"No—five is the maximum. Your call."

"You. You. I look forward to working with you."

"The man is Eberhardt, the woman is Rhaetisia."

"Eberhardt, Rhaetisia. I look forward to working with you."

The first selected had been the navy-haired young man who'd received the longest stretch of her gaze; the second, an auburn-haired woman who stood taller than Rosaline. Both named. They looked at each other and nearly leapt out of their armor with joy.

"Thank you, Dame Rosaline. I am Rhaetisia of Frosthorn—third-year trainee knight. I will serve you with everything I have. I look forward to it!"

"Eberhardt of Roote. Four years as a trainee knight. I will do my utmost so you have no cause to regret this. I look forward to it!"

They had both tried to compose themselves. The grins kept climbing anyway. Rosaline's blank face offered something in return—the faintest suggestion of a smile.

Trainee knights were said to be little different from a senior knight's hands and feet. Some senior knights chose their trainees from written applications alone, but Rosaline had wanted to look at them directly. Paper told her nothing. Not what moved behind their eyes. Not the feelings they carried toward her beneath the surface.

That was why she had examined all fifteen so carefully.

'That one's eyes were thoroughly rotten. That one was looking down at her. That one kept staring at Raymond—she had no idea why they'd applied to her at all. That one had no drive whatsoever, the look of someone who had applied because everyone else had.' A comprehensive disaster, and only two had cleared it. Those two were also full of ambition—but an ambition born of wanting to find a good senior knight and improve. And though it was a little much to receive directly, the eyes they turned on her carried something that looked, strangely, like respect.

Her sixth sense was sharp. Animals in the deep mountains shared no common language—each species, numerous as the creatures themselves, possessed its own tongue and habits. What conversation they had was all but impossible. What was cultivated in the absence of language was instinct. Reading another creature meant reading its movements, its atmosphere, the state of the situation around it—all of it at once, or nothing. She had lived a long time. She had lived as many kinds of creature. She had the eyes for it. The polished words people dressed themselves in were transparent to her. Against that sight, these two were reasonably good. Even with the others mixed back in, she would have chosen them again.

The trainee knights who hadn't been called looked quite offended. Rhaetisia was from a powerless, fallen noble house with no connection to the capital. And she was also taking Eberhardt of Roote—"Roote" being the shared family name used by those of common birth with no title to their name. A commoner and a fallen noble? Only those two? Senior knights were supposed to be consolidating influence to climb higher, and Rosaline of Redwheel apparently didn't know it. They swallowed their displeasure, with some effort.

Raymond's signal scattered the rest. Only Eberhardt and Rhaetisia remained. Both their faces were flushed. Rosaline found the fervor in their eyes a little much to receive directly.

"Eberhardt, Rhaetisia."

"Yes!"

"Yes."

"You will be relocated from the trainee dormitory to quarters near Dame Rosaline's lodgings. You will serve her without obstructing her life or her duties, and this will continue until you are formally invested as lower knights and may pledge your loyalty to the Second Prince. As you respect and follow Dame Rosaline, she will in turn teach and guide you. Any objections?"

"None!"

"None."

Eberhardt wasn't hiding it anymore—he was beaming openly. Trainee knights were knights in name only, not yet formally invested. No salary. No instruction beyond the basics. Dozens of them crammed into a dilapidated old building, paying for their own keep.

For them, a senior knight was teacher and lord and the guarantee of stable life, all in one. They were leaving the cramped quarters behind. They would be housed near a senior knight's dormitory now.

Not quite as lavish as Rosaline's room, but compared to where they had been—no comparison was possible. They weren't yet formally invested as lower knights, but the accumulated weight of years felt like it was loosening. Rhaetisia's eyes went pink at the edges. She pressed down what was rising in her throat, steadied herself, and smiled—wide open.

"I look forward to it!"

"I am Rosaline of Redwheel, senior knight ordered as of today to escort His Imperial Highness the Second Prince. I will give my life to this charge."

Several days had passed since then. With all formalities and handover complete, Rosaline had at last assumed Rikardis's escort. He was at the unvarnished wooden desk, turning over papers. Whether someone was saluting or offering greetings directly in front of him, he appeared to have little interest in acknowledging it.

Rosaline exhaled quietly beneath her expressionless face. The investiture ceremony had stayed with her. She still remembered the heartbeat that had felt ready to burst the first time she encountered Rikardis—it was still vivid. His handsome face was unchanged. Fortunately, the heart was making no trouble this time; it was running along placidly enough.

He wrote and read with his quill, eyes never lifting from the documents, and spoke.

A voice that ran lazy and low and carried an edge.

"I believe I told you your life wasn't needed. Dame Rose."

Rosaline moved her gaze downward to the gleaming silver of his hair. Kallix had explained that conversation was not something one conducted alone—it required exchange with another person. Rikardis looked like someone who had never been informed of this. His gaze did not leave the desk and the papers arranged around it. He had focused so entirely on his work that one might not have thought he was speaking to her at all.

Rose. Edelweiss, who was Rosaline's mother had called her Rose. She had asked Kallix, and he had said it was a diminutive: a shortened form of "Rosaline." More precisely, a nickname the original Rosaline had despised. She had been firmly convinced she and flowers had nothing to do with each other, Kallix had reported, and had taken some damage every time the word was used.

Did the man in front of her know this when he chose to use it?

"Are you listening, Dame Rose?"

He appeared to. He had arranged his expressionless face into a smile that outshone clear sunlight. A man beautiful enough to seem sacred sat there directing the word "Rose" at the modest black-haired woman knight before him.

The investiture ceremony, and now this. Two meetings only, but the signals were clear enough that she could not miss them. What lay in the occasional word or gaze directed her way was not particularly warm. Which meant "Rose," too, was not operating from any foundation of affection.

She had perhaps not been in a good relationship with this man. Even standing at the edge of death she had wanted to protect him. But that appeared to be no guarantee that anything intimate had formed between them.

Rikardis pressed her with eyes that did not smile. Rosaline tilted her head slightly and spoke.

"I am listening, Your Highness."

"In any case—surviving a trap of poison and hidden blades. More capable than I'd expected."

"Thank you."

"Something of a malfunction in your memory, I understand. Stas told me."

A notably offhand voice for something of such weight in a person's life. But Rosaline was not the sort to be wounded by offhandedness. She answered with the same even tone.

"That is correct."

"What do you know, and what don't you?"

The question was not easy to answer. What she knew and what she didn't—the range of either was not something she had any means of measuring from the start. Kallix had given her words for situations like this. I know nothing. I remember nothing. Magic words, he'd called them—they silenced other people's mouths.

She opened her mouth for the line Kallix had prepared. "Nothing—"

Rikardis got there first. "—you know?"

"Yes. That is correct."

He propped his chin at an angle in his hand. With the movement, his pale silver hair slid loose in one unresisted sweep. Rikardis studied her steadily.

Her face was unchanged, yet she seemed a different person. Perhaps it was her clipped, short-answer register; perhaps the absence of that restless, twitchy hover—the way she used to loom, searching his eyes as if desperate to speak, yet couldn't. This wasn't the gaze of a woman who would draw her sword and end herself at a simple 'understood, Your Highness' without a flicker of resistance. For that, she grated on him far less than before.

"I look forward to your work, Dame Rose."

"Yes."

Her eyebrow twitched. The nickname had visibly unsettled something. Rikardis laughed to himself, on the inside. Yes. Yes. Understood, Your Highness. Your order, Your Highness. An entirely different woman from the one he remembered.

Rosaline finished the salute and took her position directly beside his desk. The arrangement when Rikardis was in his office: two knights at the door, two inside the study, three more stationed outside near the window. Rosaline had been assigned the role of guarding him from within the study itself. In practice, ordinary threats were filtered at the door; it was rare for anything to reach the inside. She had demolished Nestor—but that had not yet been enough to earn the senior knights' full trust. Therefore: the study. Low risk.