The First Crown

Lilliana The bells of Lockwood Keep rang the dawn into the stones. Their sound climbed the tower steps and slid beneath my door, bright and cold as the morning air. I rose before Briallen knocked, already dressed in the soft grey gown my father preferred for early audiences. Grey for modesty. Grey for obedience. Grey because the Duke said color was for afternoons and victory. Briallen slipped inside with a nervous curtsy, her hands red from the cold, her braid a little crooked from haste. She was my maid, scarcely older than me, with quick eyes and a soft voice that always carried a note of worry. “My lady,” she said, breath fogging in the chill. “The fire’s being brought up, but the steward says the morning hall is already set. Your father’s asked for you after prayers.” Of course he had. My father liked me visible in the mornings. It made the household efficient, he said. Servants did not dawdle when the jewel of Lockwood moved through the halls; stewards did not forget their ledgers when the Duke’s eldest walked at his side. Since my mother’s death five years ago, he had kept me close parading me through his halls, setting me at his table, letting me stand in for the lady of the house. At twenty-two, with long fair hair and pale eyes that caught too much notice, I had learned long ago that being admired and being used could look very much the same. Briallen tugged my laces with quick, deft fingers. “You slept poorly,” she murmured. “How can you tell?” “You pressed your mouth into that thin line again.” She glanced up, apologetic for saying so. “And you’re cold. Your hands are like the river.” “I’m fine.” I pressed my palms together. “The prayers will warm me.” She didn’t argue, which I loved her for. She only fetched my shawl and pinned it with my mother’s brooch, a simple oval of moonstone that held a color the Grey could never tame. For an instant my thumb rested on the stone, remembering a woman’s laugh that felt like summer and fresh bread then the memory was gone, sealed away like all the others. We passed into the corridor. Tall, narrow windows threw pale light across the rushes; the stones kept the night and gave it back as cold. Down one flight, then another, my steps quiet beside Briallen’s, and the sounds of the keep wove themselves around us: the clatter of buckets, the low murmur of the kitchens, the grind of the portcullis chain as men opened the gate for the day’s work. On the landing above the chapel, we paused. The door stood open, and beyond it the household knelt in rows: stewards, scullions, needlewomen, boys with sleep still clinging to their hair. At the front, beneath the carved saints and the old painted wolf whose eyes had been scrubbed to a smudge, my father stood alone. The Duke of Lockwood was not a large man by legend’s standards, but he had a way of commanding air. Even in prayer, his back unbent. The sunlight that found him through the high window made a pale crown of the silver at his temples, though he would not thank anyone for noticing the years. He finished before the rest and turned as if the silence itself had obeyed. When he saw me in the doorway his mouth softened by the smallest measure. “Lilliana,” he said. “Come.” I went to him. People made room without looking directly at either of us. He offered his hand and I placed my fingers in his, and we walked together out of the chapel and down the lower corridor toward the morning hall. “You are punctual,” he said. This was praise. “I rose at the bell,” I said. “As you taught me.” A ghost of a smile. “Your sisters?” “Still dressing. Briallen will see to them.” “I have asked Serwyn for an accounting of the northern granaries. There is rot in the last two silos. We must inspect.” His voice shifted into the cadence of numbers and orders. “We will ride at midday.” “I will be ready,” I said. It was not a question I was permitted to consider. He liked me at his side when he audited stores or counted horses’ teeth. I was to be his second pair of eyes, and when those eyes were pretty it went easier on the men he reprimanded. We stepped into the morning hall. Sunlight fell across the long boards, making bright squares where the river’s reflection danced on the ceiling. The banners of Lockwood white hart on green hung motionless in the chill. Breakfast was spread: oatcakes and cured ham, soft cheese, a glossy pot of honey with a wooden spoon. My father did not look at the honey; he’d once said sweetness softened men. He took his seat at the head, and I sat at his right. No one ate before he did. He tore a piece of bread and dipped it in salt, then nodded for the room to move. The scrape of benches and low conversation resumed around us. I broke a small piece of oatcake and let it sit on my tongue. It tasted like the mill road in summer, gritty and familiar. “Your embroidery will be presented this evening,” my father said. “Baron Kelwyn’s sister is skilled. I want you to be better.” “Of course,” I said, and did not mention that Baron Kelwyn’s sister embroidered wolf traps in the corners of her napkins. There were superstitions that lived very comfortably on linen. We had grown up with them in Lenweil: do not leave milk on the threshold, wolves will come; fill your lamp to the brim, their eyes hate abundance; silver for safety, iron for truth. Our priest called them heathen foolishness. Our steward recorded purchases of silver and iron all the same. “Lord Merek arrives by week’s end,” my father added, as if they were the names of horses scheduled for inspection. “His son will be with him.” I forced myself to swallow the oatcake. “How lovely,” I said. “It will be good to see the household full.” “The household is always full,” he said mildly. “But yes. A strong alliance is a full table. You understand.” “I do,” I said. He laid his hand over mine, a light weight that could turn heavy in an instant. “I know you will not disappoint me.” I smiled for him. The jewel gleamed on command. Evelyne arrived by contrast, was a dark flame in the morning light. At seventeen she had already mastered the art of being noticed. Her hair black as raven feathers was coiled into elaborate braids that gleamed with pins stolen from my old jewelry box. She lounged against her chair with an elegance too deliberate, her grey eyes quick and restless, her mouth curved in perpetual mockery. Where I was pale and fine-boned, Evelyne carried our father’s sharper angles high cheekbones, a pointed chin, a smile that could cut. She kissed father’s cheek, then mine, and slid into her place with the grace that made other girls blame her for things she had not yet done. “You’re grey again,” she said to me under her breath, unrolling her napkin. “At least pin a ribbon for pity’s sake. You look like a nun.” “Father likes grey,” I said. “Father likes numbers and silence and the taste of power.” Evelyne smiled sweetly at him as he spoke with Serwyn down the table. “You’d be less perfect if our mother had lived.” The words hurt not for their bite but because they tripped over truth. I lifted my cup to hide my face and found Maren standing on the other side of the table, peering shyly at the honey. all soft edges and spring freckles. She was only thirteen, still caught between childhood and womanhood. Her hair was auburn like polished copper, always escaping its ribbons. She leaned forward eagerly, chin propped on her hands, as though life were a story waiting to unfold if she simply sat close enough to hear it. She tucked beside me like a bird in a nest. “A little honey,” I told her, “but eat bread with it. Briallen will have my head if you bounce through your stitching.” Maren grinned and obediently dipped the spoon. “Do we ride today?” “With Father, at midday,” I said. “Granaries.” She deflated. “Grain is dull.” “Grain is the difference between hungry and angry,” Evelyne said lightly. “Ask any man who’s faced a hungry village.” “Enough,” my father said without lifting his gaze from the steward’s ledger, which meant he’d heard everything. We fell into the comfortable quiet of people used to being watched. After breakfast he rose and I rose with him. We walked the keep together: the armoury, where men polished breastplates until our faces returned to us in bent iron; the yard, where boys swung blunted blades under the bark of Captain Ronan’s corrections; the stables, where the horses stamped and blew steam and swung their great heads toward my father with the kind of trust only animals give to steady hands. As we crossed the yard, the guards paused enough to bow. Their eyes flickered with the quick calculation of risk that all men learn under a strict commander: how low to bow without losing face, how much attention to give the Duke’s daughter without paying for it later. I kept my gaze level, my smile small. One man did not look at me at all. He stood apart from the line, testing the edge of his short sword with a leathered thumb, his hair a little too long, his jaw dark with the kind of stubble a razor refused to tame. He had shoulders that had been asked to carry more than armour. When Captain Ronan snapped, he responded with an ease that suggested he obeyed orders because it saved time, not because obedience pleased him. “New?” my father asked, noticing where my attention had strayed. “No, my lord,” Captain Ronan said. “Ashford. Two winters now.” “Ashford,” my father repeated, shaping the name like something he might break. “He cuts like a farmer.” “His cuts land,” Ronan said, which was praise from him. “He keeps to himself. Fights clean.” My father’s eyes narrowed. “I don't mind men who fight dirty, so long as they fight for me.” Ronan bowed. “We have those also, my lord.” We moved on. The man Ashford, swung the blade again. The sound of it catching the morning was sharp and sure, like flint finding tinder. Back in the granary court, Serwyn met us with a copper tally rod and a face like a fasting man’s. “The northern silos, my lord,” he began, clinging to the ledger as if it were a shield. “Last year’s rains left their mark. The bottom two bins are well, they’re not sound. The rot has—” “Show me,” my father said. We climbed the ladder into the first silo, our boots sounding hollow on the wood. The smell hit at once: sweet-sour, like apples gone sad. My father knelt and pressed fingers into the grain. When he pulled them back, what clung there was damp and dark. “This is waste,” he said. “We can sieve—” “This is waste,” he repeated, standing. His temper was not the kind that shouted. It tightened the work of a jaw muscle and turned a man’s hands polite before the blow landed. “Who inspected these bins after the harvest?” Serwyn’s mouth opened and closed. “Jory,” he stammered. “Jory of the North Gate.” “Jory of the North Gate will return his wages for the quarter,” my father said, “and he will lift and carry to pay back what cannot be returned with coin. The families who lose bread because of this will receive meat from my stores until new grain can be milled. The price of that meat will be Serwyn’s to account for.” “Yes, my lord,” Serwyn breathed. My father looked at me. “What do you see?” “Condensation,” I said. “The vents are narrowed. And the boards near the ground are soft. The carpenters should replace them before we load the next harvest, or we’ll lose more than we save.” He nodded once. Approval. “You will make a list,” he said. "I want eyes on the farms that supplied this grain. If their barns are failing, we may have more rot waiting.” “Yes, Father,” I said.