Cassius did not get back on his horse. He turned away from Darragh and looked at me.
Cassius: I would hear the rest of it. Take me where the work is done.
Darragh: Whatever she has to say, she can say it in my hall.
Cassius: No. She will say it where she is not outnumbered by your family.
Darragh's mouth shut. He had used up his voice in his own yard.
We crossed the frozen yard to the east glasshouse, and Ilona came after us in her thin silk.
Ilona: Mind your coat, my king. The vault is cold dirt and turnips, and she has been down in it three years.
Cassius walked on and did not look at her once. I heard her heels stop behind us.
Rona had the lamps lit before we reached the bottom step. She nearly dropped one.
Rona: My king. I can bring a chair down.
Cassius: No chair. Fiona, show me the seed book.
I set the book on the counting crate and opened it. Three years of my own hand, every sack in and out.
He read a page the way Rurik read, one finger moving and his lips still.
Cassius: You write a clean page. How many people ate out of this room last winter?
Fiona: Three thousand and forty. I counted every one of them.
Cassius: Three thousand people, and your husband calls it a place for the help.
He closed the book and set both hands flat on the crate.
Cassius: Come to the Sun Court. Not as a petitioner. I have a place at my table for someone who can count.
My heart hit my ribs so hard that I was sure he heard it.
Fiona: And what would I be there, my king? A pet with a seal round its neck?
Cassius: Keeper of the crown's seed stores. Every old family brings me its grain and its quarrels, and I have no one who can read a ledger.
Fiona: I want it. I want you to hear that first.
Fiona: But I will not come to your court empty handed and leave my debts behind me.
Fiona: The glasshouses are leased in my name. There is grain already eaten that was never paid for.
Fiona: If I walk out now, Darragh will say I ran.
Cassius: Then stay and settle them. A woman who pays her accounts before she goes is harder to call a thief.
He said it like it was simple, as if I were not standing in the wreck of three years.
Cassius: I will come back at Midsummer. Have it finished by then.
The vault door opened before I could answer, and boots came down the steps.
Ilona: My king, you should not be down here in the dark with her. She has a way of making men feel sorry for her.
Ilona: Ask Darragh. Three years and she never gave him a pup. There is something wrong inside her.
Darragh: Damn you, Fiona. Two hundred people watched a king hand you his ear today.
Darragh: You were never sealed. No bite on your neck, no pup in your belly. Half a wife is what you are.
Darragh: You think he wants you? He wants the seal. When he has it, he will drop you, and I will still be your husband.
Cassius stepped between us. He did not raise his voice, and the vault went colder anyway.
Cassius: Alpha, I gave you one order in your own yard, and you have broken it twice.
Cassius: Speak to her like that again and the crown takes the vault out of Greywater's hands. Then we will see how your pack eats in January.
Darragh: My king.
Cassius: Not another word. Go up.
They went. Ilona did not look so sure of her silk on those steps.
Cassius: Midsummer. I will bring a notary and an escort, and the crown will read every page you send me.
Cassius: Do not let them make you small before then.
His fingers closed over mine on the seal and did not leave at once, and I did not pull back either.
I stood in the yard and watched him ride up the north road with his banners and his frost.
When the horn stopped, Darragh was still at my shoulder. For the first time, his voice was not the loudest thing in my world.
I went back down to the vault and lit the lamps I had lit a thousand times.
A king had asked what I wanted and then waited for the answer. Nobody in Greywater had ever done that.
Midsummer was four months off. Time to settle every account in my name, and time to learn whether his interest in me was only politics.