The rider came under a parley flag two mornings after Rhaeya's visit, alone, unhurried, drawing rein at a careful, deliberate distance from the barrier's own shimmering edge, and it was Aulus who spotted the second figure waiting further back along the ridge, mounted, unmistakable even at that distance by the sheer, comfortable weight he carried in the saddle.
"That's Corvath himself," Aulus said, low, already moving toward the settlement's own gate.
"He's not sent a herald in his place.
He's come to look you in the eye."
"Then we go meet him," Remus said, and felt Andrea fall in at his shoulder without needing to be asked, Pompey close behind, the old dwarf's face already arranged into the particular, careful neutrality he wore whenever he expected a conversation to matter considerably more than its opening pleasantries would suggest.
Duke Corvath dismounted at the barrier's own edge with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once in his life needed to hurry anywhere, heavier than Remus remembered, though the year had put grey through his beard that hadn't been there at their first meeting, and something in the careful, tailored plainness of his traveling clothes told Remus he'd dressed, deliberately, to look like a man too busy governing to bother with a crown's usual theater.
"You're standing considerably straighter than the last time I saw you," Corvath said, by way of greeting, studying Remus across the barrier's pale, humming light the way a merchant studies a rival's inventory.
"I confess I expected the last year to have worn you down further than it appears to have.
My spies tell me you were dead for most of it.
They were, evidently, mistaken about the details."
"You didn't ride out here to compliment my posture," Remus said.
"No," Corvath agreed, and something in the easy, patient way he said it told Remus he'd rehearsed this exact opening more than once on the ride over.
"I came to see the thing my writ apparently frightened everyone in this swamp badly enough to send a Northlands girl walking through the mud to warn you about it.
I'll admit, I'm curious what you intend to do about it, since burning my new territory again clearly isn't an option you have left."
"We're drafting our own charter," Remus said, flat.
"Documented, witnessed, registered with every duchy your writ was sent to.
You'll get your test case, Corvath.
You just won't get it uncontested."
Something shifted behind Corvath's eyes at that, a small, genuine recalculation, and Remus understood, watching it happen, that he'd landed the one answer the man hadn't fully prepared for.
"Annabelle's work, I imagine," Corvath said, after a moment, and there was no insult in the way he said it, only the flat, professional respect of a man recognizing a worthy opponent in a field he'd assumed, wrongly, that nobody standing in this swamp had the patience to compete in.
"I underestimated your sister once already, back when I thought a boycott through two guilds and a Queen-Mother's patience would be enough to starve your workshop quietly.
I won't make that particular mistake twice.
Tell her I said so, if you're of a mind to pass along a compliment from an enemy."
"I'd rather talk about the King," Remus said.
"Of course you would."
Corvath's expression didn't change at all, which was, Remus thought, somehow worse than if it had.
"He's comfortable.
Fed, warm, unharmed, and considerably better company than the rumors probably credit him for. I have no interest in cruelty for its own sake. I have an interest in leverage, and a living boy-king in my own household is worth a great deal more of it than a dead one would be.
If you'd like him back, I have terms. They're not complicated.
Renounce your charter before it's registered, hand over the design for whatever Construct held my army off your wall for three weeks, and I'll return him to you inside a season, unharmed, with my own seal on the guarantee."
"No," Remus said, without needing to consult anyone standing beside him.
"I assumed you'd say that," Corvath said, entirely unbothered, "but a man in my position learns to always make the offer plainly, so that whatever happens to the boy afterward, nobody can say I didn't try the easy road first."
He mounted his own horse again with the same unhurried ease he'd dismounted with, and paused, one boot already in the stirrup, as though something had only just occurred to him, though Remus didn't believe for a single second that it had.
"One more thing, before I ride back.
That advisor of yours."
His eyes moved, deliberately, past Remus to where Andrea stood at his shoulder, and something in the careful, unhurried weight of the glance made Remus's own pulse spike in a way he fought hard not to let show on his face.
"The one who speaks for you at every negotiation I've had the misfortune of losing to your family.
I've had reports, over the years, of a woman matching her description turning up in places a common servant has no earthly reason to have ever been standing. I don't know yet what she is. I intend to find out.
You'd do well to ask yourself the same question before someone considerably less patient than me does it for you."
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned his horse and rode back up the ridge at an unhurried walk, exactly the pace of a man who knew precisely how much damage a single unanswered sentence could do left to sit and fester on its own, and Remus stood at the barrier's humming edge for a long moment after he'd gone, watching the shape of him shrink against the grey morning sky.
"He's fishing," Andrea said, quietly, before Remus could ask.
"He doesn't know.
He suspects, and he's decided a suspicion said out loud costs him nothing and might cost me a great deal, and he's not wrong about that particular calculation."
"Is he wrong about the rest of it," Remus asked, watching her rather than the ridge.
Andrea didn't answer right away, and the silence told him considerably more than whatever she eventually said in its place ever could.
"Let's get back inside the barrier," she said instead.
"I'd rather have this conversation somewhere he can't watch either of our faces while we have it."
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