Kay set his palms on the rough table and tried not to drum his fingers.

  They’d taken over Hamish’s narrow hall again, but this time they hadn’t bothered with chairs for everyone. The air tasted of smoke and boiled barley. A single candle guttered by the map, wax running in uneven lines.

  Sire George stood by the hearth, shoulders filling most of the light. Sire Gordon had claimed the far corner of the table, boot braced on a bench, hands folded over his middle. Sire Klod stood opposite Kay, arms crossed over the yellow boar on his chest as if daring anyone to try and peel it off.

  Sid sat at Kay’s right, as he had the night before, elbows on the table, white brows drawn together in a patient frown.

  “We’re agreed then,” Sire Gordon was saying. “We hold here while the scouts do their work. My riders are already on the move. They’ll skim Sire Hudson’s border and swing down toward the marsh. Another day, maybe two, and we’ll have more than rumor.”

  Sire George nodded. “Mine will check the river bends. If the elves are shifting, we’ll see broken deer paths, odd spoor, something. They don’t pass without leaving a mark, not if you know how to read it.” He glanced at Kay. “Better to spend time now than men later.”

  Kay inclined his head. “Highmarsh scouts will range along the south bog and keep to cover. Graves has his bowmen watching the ridges. If there’s smoke, we’ll see it.” He tried to keep his voice steady, not to sound as if he needed their agreement, even if he did. “We wait for what they bring back. Then we march where the threat is real.”

  Sire Klod let out an exaggerated breath. “Wonderful. More waiting. Perhaps the elves will be polite enough to send invitations while we sit here counting how many times the scouts sneeze.”

  Sire Gordon’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t rise to it. “I’d rather a sneezing scout than a blind charge,” he said.

  Sire Klod’s eyes cut to Kay. “Easy for you both to say.” His mouth quirked. “And we have the great decision-maker: the boy who turned us around at the first sign of confusion.”

  Sid shifted, but Kay spoke before he could. “We turned back because the report didn’t match what we found,” he said. “Shoving four fiefs into Amberwood’s belly on a rumor would have handed Sire Hudson a story to tell the crown. I won’t give him that.”

  “So you say,” Sire Klod shot back. “But what I’ve heard so far is this: your man says elves, Amberwood says nothing, and all of us dance to Highmarsh’s whistle while you decide what the tune is.” He took a step closer to the table. “Tell me again why a boy sits at the head of this council?”

  Boy. The word still had enough teeth. Kay felt it catch under his ribs. He made himself breathe.

  “Because he’s the one who got the King’s writ,” Sire George said shortly, pushing off the wall. “Deny that, and you’re denying the king. It’s the same as the rest of us.”

  “Well, I’m here to fight elves,” Sire Klod said. “Not to trail after Sire Ray’s whelp while he learns which direction to march.”

  Sid’s chair scraped a finger’s width as he half-rose. Kay lifted a hand, not quite looking at him. “Let him speak, Ser Sid.”

  “I am speaking,” Sire Klod said. “Everyone else is working very hard not to.” His gaze flicked between Sire George and Sire Gordon. “You can dress it however you like. The fact is, we march to Amberwood, we turn back from Amberwood, and now we sit in a village while the child who dragged us here decides what to do with us.”

  Sire Gordon’s eyes cooled. “You forget yourself.”

  Sire Klod gave a humorless smile. “Do I? Or is everyone else too polite to say it aloud?”

  Kay’s fingers tightened on the table’s edge until the wood bit into his skin. “Say it properly then,” he said. “You think I’ve wasted your time. You think I’m hiding my true aim. Fine. But don’t mistake caution for cowardice. Highmarsh didn’t earn its place on the line by running.”

  Sire Klod’s lip curled. “Highmarsh earned its place because your father and forefathers bled for it. You’ve yet to prove you’re more than the shadow that came after.”

  Fire popped in the hearth. Outside, a shout from the yard rose and fell again.

  Sid pushed himself fully to his feet now. “You watch your tongue,” he said, voice low and rough. “The King named Sire Kay to hold this march. You’re all bound to that.”

  Sire Klod snorted. “And here comes the grandpa, barking for his pup.”

  Sid’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s acting like the pup, Sire Klod? The lad holding his temper and his ground, or the man stamping and snapping because the world didn’t follow his notion of how today ought to go?”

  “Only a child needs his grandfather to answer for him,” Sire Klod shot back. “If Sire Kay wants to lead men, let him open his own mouth without hiding behind old scars.”

  Kay looked briefly to George and Gordon. Gordon’s expression was guarded; George’s was unreadable as stone. Neither moved to cut in.

  All right, then.

  He straightened slowly. His heart thumped in his throat, but his voice, when it came, was level.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Ser Sid doesn’t speak because I can’t,” he said. “He speaks because he’s earned the right to have his say in any room he walks into. And because he cares whether this turns into lords snapping at each other while the real enemy listens and laughs.”

  Kay set his hand down, flat on the map, fingers covering the inked swathe of marsh. “But since you’d rather hear it from my own mouth: you’re bound by the writ, Sire Klod. As long as we act in defense of the south, my commands on this march carry the King’s weight. You break with that, you’re not just turning your back on me. You’re breaking faith with the crown itself.”

  Sire Klod stiffened. “Threats now?”

  “Reminder,” Kay said. “You swore, as did I. None of us have to like each other, but we all have to live with the words we put our names to.”

  Sire Klod’s gaze burned. “So you sit there, waving royal ink and crying ‘South, South,’ whenever anyone questions you. No better than Sire Hudson writing his little letters to the King every time he stubs his toe.”

  Sire Hudson. Kay breathed out slow and controlled, and tried his best to act the same.

  The name out of Sire Klod’s mouth hit like a slap. The man who’d sent gloating terms wrapped in insult. The man whose lies had colored his father a butcher. To be likened to him, even in jest, sent anger up through Kay so fast his vision pinpricked. For half a heartbeat, he imagined crossing the table, imagined a dagger in that bright yellow boar, driving Sire Klod back against the wall until the words bled dry from his teeth.

  A heavy hand settled on his shoulder—Sid’s.

  Kay dragged in a breath through his nose. The anger didn’t go away, but it went somewhere he could reach later.

  “I won’t be put in the same breath as Sire Hudson,” he said quietly. “Not by you, not by anyone.” He met Sire Klod’s eyes and held them there. “He used the crown to fatten himself and grind his neighbors. I’m using the writ exactly as it was meant—to keep the south from burning. You can call me young. You can doubt my sense. But don’t mistake what side I’m standing on.”

  For the first time, Sire Klod looked away first. A glance at the map, then at George, then Gordon, but was it enough?

  “You’re quick to hide behind King and parchment,” he muttered. “Like as not you’ll both end up with your boots under the same table. Sire Hudson, Sire Kay—different names, same hunger.”

  The heat flared again. Sid’s grip on his shoulder tightened hard enough to hurt. Kay swallowed it down.

  He let his hand leave the map and curl at his side, nails biting his palm. When he spoke again, he forced the words toward the thing that mattered.

  “This isn’t about Sire Hudson,” he said. “It’s not about Highmarsh, or Yellowhill, or who sits where at a table. We’re only here for the elves. To stop raids we’ve all seen in our own lands. To stop the farms burning in Sire Gordon’s south fields. To find the scouts from my marches who never came back. That’s the enemy. Not each other.”

  Sire Gordon nodded once, firmly. “Aye. My people don’t care which of us leads the orders. They care whether their roofs are still standing come winter.”

  Sire George pushed away from the wall. “Timberlake’s prospered using Highmarsh as an unyielding wall against the elves. I don’t intend to argue ourselves into giving the elves a chance to break it.” He looked between Kay and Sire Klod. “The King’s writ demands our honor, our fealty. We hold to it. We gave our word to our people long before that. We hold to that too.”

  Sire Klod exhaled sharply through his nose. The color had gone out of his face, leaving it sallow and tired.

  “You make a habit of ganging up three to one?” he asked.

  Sid gave a small snort. “Three lords versus one lord has nothing on what waits down in the marsh.”

  Kay stepped in quickly before another argument could start again. “Enough,” he said. “We’re not going to solve tempers tonight. What we can solve is what happens next.” He looked to Sire George. “Your scouts are due when?”

  “Tomorrow if their horses hold,” Sire George said. “The next day if they find more than we’d like.”

  “And yours?” Kay asked Sire Gordon.

  “Two days at most,” Sire Gordon said. “Lawrence will have sent more by now as well, if he’s half as clever as you say.”

  “He is,” Kay said, without thinking. A small corner of him relaxed at the thought of Lawrence’s patient script moving over parchment, turning scraps into sense.

  He drew a breath and made his voice carry through the room.

  “We give the scouts two days,” he said. “In that time, no one moves on Amberwood. No one pushes their luck along Sire Hudson’s line. We keep the men drilled and ready. We keep watches tight. If reports come of elves massing—anywhere—we march. Fast and together. If no reports come…” He hesitated, hating the thought even as he spoke it. “Then we go back to Highmarsh and prepare to settle in while we scout the marches to take the fight to their door.”

  Sire George nodded. “I’d rather attack than react.”

  “That makes two of us,” Kay said. “But I won’t be bait on someone else’s hook.”

  Sire Klod stared at the map a long moment. When he answered, his tone had lost some of its bite. “Two days,” he said. “If your scouts still bring tales of mist and nothing, I’ll be the first to say we’re chasing ghosts. Until then…” He lifted one shoulder. “I’ll hold my tongue.”

  Sid’s hand squeezed Kay’s shoulder once, then let go. “I’ll mark that on the calendar,” he said dryly.

  Sire Gordon huffed a tired laugh. “We’ll all sleep better when we’re swinging steel at the right foe.”

  Kay let his gaze drop briefly to the inked swirls that marked the deep marsh—the place where Toby and the others would be now, somewhere under the same sky, pushing through reeds and shadow. Hunting the truth with eyes and steel both.

  “Then we make sure we know who that foe is,” he said. “Next council will be when the first scouts return. Until then—we remember why we’re here.”

  Sire George murmured, “Elves.”

  Sire Gordon echoed, “Not each other.”

  Even Sire Klod, after a heartbeat, gave a grudging, “For the south,” under his breath.

  Sid sat back down with a soft grunt. “Good,” he said. “Now that the shouting’s done, perhaps someone will see about getting this place another candle. Hard to plan a war when you can’t see the ink.”

  Kay let the corner of his mouth twitch. His anger was still there. The insult still stung. But for now, they had a goal. He would use that anger once they resurfaced again.

  Elves, he reminded himself, as he gathered the map. And wondered if he’d ever hate them as much as Toby.

  They weren’t here for Hudson; they were here for the people and pride. He meant to keep it that way. For now.