The Freest One

"This matter must be buried. Dig any deeper, and unrest will spread through the knightly order."

"...The culprit is already dead. Tracing it any further won't be easy."

When Ilya hesitated, so unlike himself, Naz asked carefully.

"Is it the lady who weighs on you?"

Ilya gave no answer.

What rose in him was the memory of Evelynn sitting blankly with the child clutched in her arms. She had meant to die in the boy's place. If you die now... no. You mustn't.

That hard, masculine face looked, somehow, like a child who had lost his mother.

For days Ilya was relentlessly busy. Today, too, after a morning crushed beneath work, he was granted a brief rest. Sprawled carelessly across the sofa in his office, he spoke.

"Evelynn?"

"They say she won't take her eyes off the young master for so much as a moment. She isn't sleeping, and she barely eats."

The chamberlain answered with a troubled look. Ilya, who had been staring blankly into empty air, rose all at once.

"Your Grace, you have a meeting with your retainers this afternoon."

"Postpone it."

Ilya drove his horse without pause toward the Annex.

"We greet Your Grace."

Startled by the archduke's sudden appearance, the servants bowed in a rush. When he glanced about, quick-witted Sophie stepped forward.

"My lady is in the garden."

Sophie led him beneath the oak in the garden. Under that great, barren tree, Evelynn sat with her son in her arms, and on a branch above them an eagle kept watch, its eyes burning bright.

"What are you doing here?"

A broad shadow fell over her, and Evelynn looked up. Why are you here, now? Her eyes went round.

"Why are you outside? It's still cold."

"I was waiting for spring to come."

"...Here?"

Evelynn nodded.

"While you were in Tatar, Liber and I came here often."

The small smile on her face looked ready to crumble. Ilya's heart began to beat unsteadily. He bent and gathered the child up as if taking him, and the hold was so awkward that anyone could have seen it was the first time he had ever held a child.

"Your... Grace?"

Stranger's arms, an uncomfortable grip, and yet Liber stayed strangely docile. Ilya looked down at him once, then passed him straight to Sophie. Catching Evelynn by the wrist, he strode off.

He stopped before a massive black horse, took the reins, and asked.

"You any good on a horse?"

Evelynn shook her head.

"Then ride with me."

"What? Where are we going right now...?"

He swept her up and set her in the saddle, then mounted behind her and took the reins.

Caged between his arms, Evelynn curled tightly in on herself.

"I'm scared."

The horse, the first she had ever ridden, frightened her, and so did the husband who had come upon her so suddenly. A soft huff of laughter sounded at her back, and a firm arm closed around her waist.

"Straighten up. Lean back against me."

Solid warmth against her spine, and the sound of a heartbeat. Her own heart pounded so hard she could scarcely breathe. When she kept shrinking away, he tightened the arm about her waist.

"I won't let you fall, so stop shaking."

The horse broke into a powerful run. Wind hummed past them, and the landscape blurred and changed. For a little while the tightness in her chest seemed to open wide.

They had not ridden long before the horse stopped. Ilya dismounted first, lifted her down as if she weighed nothing, and set her on the ground. She felt as though she had been turned back into a child, and a faint heat rose in her cheeks.

"Where... is this?"

The long, needle-sharp tower cowed her. It rose high enough to pierce the sky, and merely looking at it was enough to exhaust a person.

"The Tower of Repentance."

His voice was lower than usual today, and it frightened her.

"Are you going to lock me in here?"

"What?"

He was so dumbfounded he let out a hollow laugh.

"Why would I lock you in here?"

"Because... it's called the Tower of Repentance."

"What have you done wrong? Did you take a lover while I was gone?"

Wronged, she pressed her lips shut. He dropped the sarcasm and spoke to the knights who had followed.

"Wait outside."

He held out a hand. Awkwardly, she laid hers over it.

Hand in hand, they went into the tower. When they stepped into the small, boxlike chamber at the entrance, the box began to move of its own accord. A moment later the door opened onto a wide, lavish room.

"Let's rest here a moment, then go on."

Ilya led her straight ahead without hesitation, as easily as a man who had once lived there.

"It's nothing like the outside. It's so narrow and sharp, I thought the inside would be the same."

Evelynn glanced around as she spoke, and he explained.

"Everyone who stayed here was of the Azantis blood. The interior is decent enough."

"Why did they live apart, in a place like this?"

"Well... for one reason or another."

"The last person who lived here must have been a woman."

The canopied bed looked made for a noblewoman. In a corner stood a wardrobe of the kind women used, and there was a tea table, a sofa, and a small wooden chair meant for a child.

Then something moved swiftly behind the wardrobe's curtain. Black hair flickered through the thin cloth. Thinking she had seen a phantom, Evelynn rubbed her eyes hard.

A moment later a small head slid out between the folds. A young boy, the very image of Liber. When his eyes met hers, those blue-gray irises smiled, awkward and shy.

As if spellbound, Evelynn approached the wardrobe. The instant she reached for the child's fading face, her hand met nothing at all. What is this? A ghost?

"What's wrong? Is there something there?"

At her husband's voice she turned. The boy's blue-gray eyes laid themselves exactly over the deep blue ones watching her.

Ilya... you...

"Ah—!"

Something hot seemed to surge up from her heart all at once.

Thud. Thud. Her heartbeat quickened. The sensation was one she had known before, and her mind went faint with it.

"Evelynn, what's wrong all of a sudden?"

At his urgent voice, the heat scorching her heart and the wild pounding vanished in an instant. What was that just now? There's something here. For the moment, she decided they should climb to the top of the tower.

"Let's go. You said we had to reach the top before sunset."

"All right. Come on."

They stood before the stairs that led to the tower's peak. Evelynn stared at the endless spiral with a look of pure dread.

"We're climbing this on foot?"

"Yes. Magic only works this far."

The stairs rising above them looked too narrow even for the two of them to stand side by side.

"I'll go up first."

One behind the other, they climbed. At first she still had the breath to glance around. Later she was so spent she could only gasp. Cramps threatened every muscle, but she clenched her teeth and kept going.

"Here."

Just when another step felt as if it would kill her, they reached the top floor. Three tall, narrow windows faced them, and to the right a door opened onto an outer balcony. Sunset poured through the glass, blindingly bright.

Evelynn sank to the floor and fought for breath. Ilya, by contrast, was not even winded. He offered his hand.

"Can you stand?"

She took it and barely managed to rise. When he opened the door, the smell of wind rushed in.

"Careful."

She stepped outside one careful foot at a time, taking the fierce wind full against her body as she walked toward the railing. When she reached it at last, a cry of wonder broke from her.

"There's still snow piled on that mountaintop!"

Far off, a steep slope sheathed in cliff-rock filled her view at a glance, and at the spectacle spread before her she shouted like an excited child.

"Snow mountains? You saw more than enough of those from Suzdal Castle. They still amaze you?"

Ilya frowned as if the very mention of snow turned his stomach.

"The first time I saw snow after coming north, it truly amazed me. So white, so bright, so beautiful that..."

Evelynn gazed quietly at her husband's profile. Cold, and beautiful. Like you. She swallowed the rest, the words she could not bring herself to say.

Suzdal Castle was the fortress granted to Ilya when he received his knighthood. As a second son he had never been likely to inherit a title, and so once he came of age he remained there. After their marriage Evelynn stayed in her husband's castle as well. When he left for the battlefield she waited for him in that place, and there she bore their child alone.

"It may not have been the same for you... but I truly loved it there."

Eyes full of old feeling, she looked toward the far distance. She could almost see it: a vast fortress shaped like an eagle, snow mountains rising at its back.

"I was happy."

A place without her father's violence. There she had met the man she loved, carried his child within her, and waited for him day after day with that child, and those days flickered past her now.

"Your face looks strange."

"It's just... cold."

Ilya, standing beside her, draped his robe over her shoulders and drew her in against him. At the scent of a winter forest rising from his body, Evelynn shrank inward.

He watched her profile for a long while, and a question suddenly took hold of him. It might already be too late, and yet he felt he had to ask it now.

"What does Liber... mean?"

For a long moment she looked up at him with complicated eyes. Then she spoke.

She called her son's name as if she were singing. Just then a hard gust caught the yellow dress she wore and set its skirts flying. She looked so like the beat of a butterfly's wing that Ilya's eyes narrowed, sharp and fierce. Without realizing it, he tightened the hand on her shoulder.

"Let's go back."

They galloped back the way they had come and returned to the Annex. The sun had already set, and darkness had settled in. Into the ears of Evelynn, nodding off on the horse, came a noisy clamor.

"There is something Lord Odin asked us to deliver to the young lady."