Ch4. The Wanderer’s Stay

The wind outside the city gate showed no sign of letting up.

Jeffery leaned against the rough stone wall, his right shoulder resting against a seam between the bricks. His posture looked almost lazy, but there was nothing truly relaxed about him. His amber eyes remained fixed on the heavy wooden gate. They looked like coals that had been burning for a long time—quiet on the surface, with heat still smoldering underneath.

His right hand had unconsciously settled over the hidden pocket at his chest. Even through the fabric, he could clearly feel the thin outline of the letter opener.

And beside it, the small stone.

Resting there quietly. He had been standing here far too long. Long enough for the morning mist to disappear from the grass. Long enough for the boy sweeping near the gate to cast three puzzled glances in his direction.

Long enough for even his horse to begin pawing impatiently at the ground.

He should have left. The thought had crossed his mind at least ten times.

It was not as though he had forgotten the rules of a wanderer. Never stay. Never get involved. Never look back.

He had spent seven years traveling across the continent and had never once waited outside a city this long.

But today, those rules he knew by heart had been quietly torn open by a single name. Anna.

When she had left the letter opener with him, her fingers had not trembled. That detail remained in him like a thorn driven into some place in his chest he had thought long since hardened over. She had protected him. That girl who was so much smaller than he was. Whose back was wounded. Who only hours before had stood at the edge of a ruined tower with a blade in her hand.

Yet when she turned to face the guards, she had been composed in a way he had never seen before. So composed that it hurt to look at. And, for reasons he could not explain, frightened him a little. Jeffery lifted his head and looked toward the towering walls of the palace. They cut the sky into a narrow strip. He did not know where she was now. Did not know whether she had gone to face the king. Did not know what kind of expression that king would wear if she had.

But the instinct that had followed Jeffery through seven years of wandering—the instinct that had rarely sent him in the wrong direction—told him she did not need him to charge inside and protect her.

At least, not yet.

He lowered his eyes to the hidden pocket at his chest again. The stone was something he had picked up himself the night before.

The letter opener was something she had left with him. One was a mark he had chosen to keep. The other was something she had placed in his hands. Now they lay side by side in the same pocket, like two things that had begun in entirely different places and somehow ended up resting against one another.

Then he remembered the dream. The dream that had followed him for seven years. The figure in it had never shown him her face. Only a blurred outline standing somewhere he had never been before, her back turned to him as the wind lifted her hair. For seven years, he had chased her. For seven years, he had awakened from the dream. And every time he opened his eyes, all that remained was emptiness in his hands.

But last night, crouched beside Anna at the top of the tower with the first gray light of dawn touching her profile, he had seen something in her eyes that he could not name.

Not a plea for help. Not fear. Something deeper than either of those things. Older. The exhaustion of someone who had spent too long holding herself upright in the dark and had, for the first time, allowed herself to lean against something.

His heart gave one clear beat.

Not hard.

But unmistakable. The horse pawed the ground again. At last, Jeffery moved. He wound the reins once around his fingers, but still did not mount.

Instead, he walked back toward the base of the wall and slowly sat down. His back rested against the stone. His long legs stretched out in front of him. He tipped his head back and looked up at the narrow strip of sky cut between the walls. And waited. The sun climbed over the top of the wall.

The shadows shortened. Then, slowly, lengthened again. Jeffery sat with his eyes closed, leaning against the stone. He was not asleep. When he truly slept, his breathing became steadier and his shoulders actually dropped.

Now, his shoulders remained tense. Like a bow with its string properly drawn.

No matter how relaxed the rest of him appeared, that tension remained. He was conserving his strength. Like a great cat waiting at the edge of open grassland, hiding all its awareness beneath an idle posture. Wind slipped through the seams of the gate.

It carried the smell of food cooking inside the city. Horse dung. And something damp and green that reminded him of moss.

That scent brought the ruined tower back to mind.

His brow shifted faintly. Then smoothed again.

By afternoon, the stone road had been bleached pale beneath the sun. Several merchants passed him on their way into the city, murmuring to one another in the local accent and throwing curious glances his way. When they noticed the sword at his side but saw no sign that he intended to rob anyone, they lost interest and moved on. Jeffery never opened his eyes.

From their footsteps alone, he counted their number and distance. Marked them in his mind. Then erased them. People who had nothing to do with him.

Things that had nothing to do with him.

His fingers moved unconsciously along the edge of the hidden pocket at his chest. The shape beneath them was the letter opener.

Thin. Narrow. One part of the handle had been worn smooth from repeated use. He had not examined it closely when he put it away on the tower last night. And yet now, he realized he remembered exactly where that worn place was. Too clearly. How long had she held it?

How many nights had that blade spent in her palm before her warmth had worn itself into the handle? Jeffery cut the thought off. Just as he was almost beginning to let his eyes truly close, the narrow side door beside the city gate opened.

Not the main gate.

A small passage barely wide enough for one person to slip through sideways.

The sort of door usually used by errand boys carrying letters or servants sent out to buy supplies. Jeffery’s lashes moved. He did not raise his head. He only shifted his gaze beneath half-lowered lids toward the opening. A boy of eleven or twelve came through. He wore the coarse clothing of a palace servant and carried a stack of prescriptions meant for one of the apothecaries in the city.

He was hurrying so much that he nearly tripped over the threshold. Jeffery did not move. The boy caught himself, looked up— and met those half-lidded amber eyes. Jeffery watched him freeze for a moment. Something turned quietly through his mind.

He had not deliberately hidden his presence. He simply possessed a talent for becoming forgettable. Sitting there against the wall, he could look like nothing more than a piece of weathered wood. Something a person’s eyes passed over once and forgot the next moment. Unless Jeffery wanted to be noticed. He lifted his chin slightly and tapped the stone wall with his fingers. Not loudly.

Just enough for the boy to hear.

“Hey, kid.” His voice was low, without threat. Smooth as a stone rounded by years of water.

“Anything unusual happening in the palace today?” The boy hesitated. Jeffery did not stand. Did not move closer. He merely drew a silver coin from his belt and rolled it once over his knuckles. It flashed white in the afternoon sun. Not a threat. Not even quite a bribe. Simply a calm suggestion. We can make a trade. Jeffery waited. Deep in his amber eyes, the banked coals stirred a little higher.

The boy’s eyes lit up at the sight of the silver. After a brief hesitation, he stepped closer, snatched the coin from Jeffery’s hand, breathed on it, then bit down to test whether it was genuine.

“Nothing much today. But last night Prince Geelong formally proposed. The banquet was huge. Half the servants were complaining about sore backs this morning.” Jeffery watched the coin disappear into the boy’s hand.

The corner of his eye curved faintly. He made no attempt to stop him. In his mind, he quietly marked the boy as sharp. Not the kind of cleverness that came from fear.

The boy had some nerve. The way he breathed on the silver and tested it with his teeth was too practiced to be a first attempt. “Proposed?”

Jeffery repeated the word as though confirming something of no particular importance. His voice did not change. But one finger flicked once against the edge of his sleeve. A single, quick motion. Like the release after plucking a taut string.

Then it stilled. He did not turn his face toward the boy. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the narrow seam of the heavy city gate.

Dark brown lashes cast a faint shadow across his cheek. “Prince Geelong.” He repeated the name quietly, like the name of a place written on an old map. “Did the king accept?” The most important word came last. There was no urgency in the question. No obvious anxiety.

But when his eyes left the gate and settled on the boy again, something had changed.

A faint edge of focus that had not been there before. His instincts stirred inside his chest. A proposal was one thing. Acceptance was another.

Sometimes the distance between them was no wider than the crack beneath a door. Sometimes it was the entire fate of a person. He remembered Anna’s back as she walked down from the tower. Straight enough that someone might have believed she was unhurt.

But Jeffery knew. He knew what lay beneath that thin dress.

Something tightened briefly inside his chest. Not hard. But clearly. He leaned back against the stone wall again, returning to the careless posture of a wandering man with nothing better to do. Only his right thumb moved slowly once over the outside of the hidden pocket at his chest.

Then stopped. “One more thing,” he said, his voice returning to something almost casual. “I’ll give you another.” A second silver coin slid lazily between the fingers of his other hand. He held it between his middle and ring finger. It caught the sunlight.

He did not offer it yet. Only let it remain there.

“Did anyone go to the king’s study this morning?” The boy greedily took the second coin as well. “No one went to see the king this morning. But before the banquet last night, one of the princesses went to see him. The one Prince Geelong is so obsessed with.” He lowered his voice.

“I heard she’d been resisting the marriage like she’d rather die, but after she came out of the king’s study yesterday, she still went to the proposal banquet.” He paused. “But…” The boy left the word hanging. Clearly, he felt the reward had not been enough for the rest.

Jeffery watched the second coin disappear neatly into the boy’s hand.

He said nothing.

Only noticed the expression that clearly meant there was more to the story and laughed silently to himself. This kid. His gaze lowered.

He turned the hesitation over in his head. Before the banquet, the princess had gone into the king’s study. Then she came out. And afterward, she attended the banquet. Jeffery’s jaw tightened by the smallest degree. So little that only someone watching very closely would have noticed the brief shift in the muscle there.

He said nothing.

His silence was like deep water.

Still on the surface. Impossible to know what moved beneath it. She went. He did not know what she had traded for what. Did not know what that king had heard. What he had agreed to. Or what he had refused. But she had gone. She had stood before the man who had left her back torn open.

She had entered a room with the man Jeffery could barely think about without feeling something turn unpleasantly in his stomach.

Geelong. And she had gone to that banquet. She had walked in on her own feet. Jeffery raised his eyes and looked at the boy again. His amber eyes were calm. Almost unnaturally calm.

Like a lake holding something down beneath the surface. The corner of his mouth lifted by the faintest amount. Not quite a smile. More like someone placing a weight onto the opposite side of a scale. “Smart.” His voice was low and even, carrying just enough approval to make it impossible to tell whether he meant it sincerely.

Like praising a clever young horse. He waited two seconds. His index and middle fingers tapped lightly against his knee. Twice. Unhurried. Like a patient man keeping time for himself. Then he reached into his coat.

What came out was not one coin. It was two. He did not hand them over immediately. He simply opened his palm and let the two silver coins shine there beneath the sunlight.

Like two small, motionless stars. “Finish the story,” he said calmly, as though negotiating a perfectly fair price. “You get both.” His gaze never left the boy’s face. There was something quiet in those amber eyes.

Something intensely focused beneath the calm.

Like a nail already driven halfway into wood without making a sound.

Jeffery waited. He was good at waiting. A man who had waited seven years could wait another moment.

Only the slow movement of his thumb around the edges of those two coins betrayed him at all.

The boy hesitated, staring openly at the two silver coins. “It’s nothing that important. The princess stayed far away from Prince Geelong all night.” He lowered his voice even further. “But Prince Geelong kept looking at her like prey. His eyes were on her the entire time…” Then he continued. “I heard the princess made a condition. Prince Geelong can’t come to take her away until after her mother’s death anniversary. So at least three months from now.”

The boy frowned, genuinely puzzled.

“I’ve never heard of a princess asking for something like that. Aren’t princesses usually in a hurry to get married off?”

Jeffery did not move. For three full seconds— nothing. The two silver coins remained in his open palm, catching the sunlight in two sharp points of white. His expression did not change. No visible relief. No frown. Nothing anyone could easily name. But when the words three months landed, something flashed very faintly and very quickly beneath the surface of his amber eyes. Like the point of a needle touching the edge of a hot coal. Not enough to ignite.

But no longer cold.

Three months.

She had won herself three months. He remembered her profile on the tower. The exhaustion deeper than fear. Older than fatigue. The hands that had not trembled around the blade.

At the time, he had believed she wanted only to die. Now he understood. She was not merely trying to survive. She was thinking. Finding a way. A girl with wounds across her back, who had barely slept all night, had walked into that study and carved three months of space into her own fate.

Something heavy dropped inside Jeffery’s chest. Then slowly rose again. He could not name it. He extended the two silver coins. The movement was steady.

His fingers did not hesitate. “Take them.” His voice was softer than before.

Almost as though part of the sentence had become a private thought. The boy accepted the coins and started to say something else, eager to please him further.

But Jeffery had already looked away. He tipped his head back toward the narrow strip of sky above the wall. The boy understood. Clutching the prescriptions, he ran off. His footsteps faded over the stones. Jeffery remained seated beneath the rough wall, long legs stretched out before him.

His right hand rested over the hidden pocket at his chest. Through the fabric, he could feel the outline of the letter opener. Its thin, quiet weight.

Geelong had watched her all night.

The thought settled somewhere inside him like a piece of red-hot iron. Silently. Without smoke. Burning a mark he could not see but could clearly feel. He did not grit his teeth. Did not clench his fist.

From the outside, he still looked like the same idle wanderer sitting in the sun against a wall. But anyone standing close enough would have noticed that his jaw was held too straight for a man who was truly relaxed. Three months. Jeffery closed his eyes.

Turned the number over once in his mind.

Then turned it back. A wanderer had no reason to stay anywhere.

The longest he had ever remained in one place was eighteen days. And even then, only because a wound in his leg had not healed. For seven years, he had crossed more than half the continent. He had never allowed his roots to sink into any place. Because he knew that once roots took hold, pulling them free meant tearing earth away with them.

And yet now— he was sitting outside a city gate. His leg was uninjured. The road was open. His horse was sound.

And he… Jeffery slowly exhaled. Opened his eyes.

He still did not leave.

He turned his head toward the narrow alley beside the gate, one no one seemed to pay much attention to. His gaze moved casually across several places. Where could he see toward the palace? Which streets had the clearest lines of sight? Where could he stay without attracting notice? Something in his amber eyes had begun to calculate.

Quietly. Piece by piece. Three months was a long time.

And a very short one.

But it was more than enough time for a wandering knight to find somewhere to stay in a city.