Chapter 16 – The Knight Who Believed

The meadow was an hour behind us when the horses stopped on their own.

Hannah had the reins. Hannah did not slow them. The horses just stopped. Both of them. At the same time. The way horses stop when something in the road has already been decided for them.

I sat up straight on the bench.

The knife sat in its new sheath at my hip. The pinky ring sat warm on my finger, the way it had since the meadow. The candle under my sternum hummed, soft, steady.

Then the ring went cold.

“Hannah.”

“I see it.”

“You see what?”

“The body.”

I leaned forward.

About thirty paces up the road, half in the dust and half in the long grass, a man lay on his side. Armor. Not full plate. Half plate. The light that a real traveler uses. His helmet was off. His sword was, weirdly, still on his belt. A red stain ran from somewhere under his armpit and ended in the dirt.

He was breathing.

Slow. Wet. Like a man who had been breathing slow and wet for a while.

“Hannah.”

“Stay.”

“Hannah.”

“Stay, young master.”

She swung off the wagon.

She did not draw the sword. Her storm grey eyes did one slow sweep of the trees. Then the road behind us. Then the trees again. The blue glow under her sleeve lit, low, the way a stove lights when you crack the door.

She walked up to him.

She crouched.

She pressed two fingers to his throat.

She nodded once at me.

I climbed down.

My boots hit the dirt softer than they had a week ago. Tiny win. The gallery did not even bother sighing this time. The gallery was tired.

I knelt on his other side.

The man’s eyes were brown. Tired brown. A scar ran from his left ear to his jaw, old, healed, white, maybe thirty, maybe younger. His mouth moved before his eyes focused.

“Water.”

Hannah passed me the skin.

I held it to his lips. He drank. Three swallows. Slow. He coughed once. The cough sounded like something had moved sideways in his lungs that should not have moved sideways in his lungs.

“Easy.”

“You are. Real.”

“Pretty real.”

“I thought.”

“Yes.”

“I was dreaming.”

“You are dreaming a little.”

“Mm.”

He let his head fall back.

He looked up at me. The brown eyes focused, slowly, the way a clock face focuses when you lean in. The ring on my pinky stayed cold. The candle under my sternum hummed a little louder.

“Lord.”

“I am not a lord. I am a guy.”

“Lord.”

“Okay.”

“My name. Ser Caide. Ardent Watch. Eastern circuit.”

“Caide. Hi.”

“Hello, lord.”

Hannah ran her hand along his side.

She did not undress him. She read the armor the way another woman might read a recipe. Two fingers under a strap. A small push at a buckle. A long, careful press low on the ribs.

He did not flinch.

He should have flinched.

“Hannah.”

“Mm.”

“What?”

“He should be screaming.”

“Mhm.”

“He is not.”

“I know.”

She looked at me.

The wolf was not in her face. Something else was. A flatter thing. A thinking thing. The kind of thing a hunter’s face does when the tracks in the snow do not match the size of the animal.

“Ser Caide.”

“Yes, lord.”

“What happened?”

He smiled.

It was a small, tired smile. The smile of a man at the bottom of a long day, recounting it to a friend. There was no fear in it. There was no confusion. There was none of the things you expect from a man who has been bleeding into a road for an hour.

“Bandits, lord.”

“Bandits.”

“Five. Maybe six. Off the eastern track. They had a net.”

“A net.”

“For the horse, lord. Took my horse. Then the saddlebags.”

“Then they stabbed you.”

“Yes, lord.”

“And left you.”

“Yes, lord.”

“With your sword.”

He paused.

It was a small pause. The kind of pause a man makes between two sentences he has already said in his head. The smile did not move. The brown eyes did not move. The pause was, somehow, the wrongest thing about him.

“Yes, lord.”

Hannah and I looked at each other.

I did not need to ask. She did not need to answer. Bandits did not leave a sword. Bandits did not leave a sword the way a cat does not leave a fish. The sword was the whole point of jumping a knight.

I let the silence sit.

The candle under my sternum stayed lit.

The pinky ring stayed cold.

“Ser Caide.”

“Yes, lord.”

“I am going to ask you a question.”

“Yes, lord.”

“And I would like you to answer it honestly.”

“Of course, lord.”

I dropped my voice.

Just a little. The way I had it in my bedroom with Lira. The way I had it with the demon. I did not push. I picked the smallest possible thread. The smallest possible pull.

The candle did not flicker.

The candle, very strangely, leaned.

“Caide. Tell me what really happened.”

He smiled.

The same small, tired smile. He drew in a long, slow breath. He let it out. He told me, in the same warm, steady voice, the same story. Five bandits. Maybe six. A net. The horse. The saddlebags. The sword they did not take. Word for word—comma for comma. The pauses, somehow, are even in the same places.

I went still.

“Caide.”

“Yes, lord.”

“Did anyone speak to you before the bandits?”

“No, lord.”

“On the road. Yesterday. The day before.”

“No, lord.”

“A traveler. A merchant. A woman.”

For one half second, his eyes did a thing.

They did not move. They did not focus. They did, behind the brown, the way a window does behind closed curtains when a candle behind it gutters once. A flicker. A nothing. There and gone.

“No, lord.”

“Caide.”

“Yes, lord.”

“You are sure.”

“I am sure, lord.”

The candle under my sternum dipped.

Not because he was close. Not because Hannah was close. Because something else was, something is not in the road. Something not in the trees. Something that lived inside the line he had just spoken and had been there before I ever pulled on the thread.

I sat back on my heels.

I did not push again.

I knew, the way a kid knows a stove is on without touching it, that pushing again would crack something I did not have the hands to put back.

“Hannah.”

“Young master.”

“His story is clean.”

“I heard it.”

“Twice.”

“I heard it twice.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes.”

“It is too clean.”

She did not answer.

She did not need to. She rolled up the gauze in her hands. She tied the knot in the bandage. She pressed two fingers to his throat again. She nodded, once, slowly. Whatever she had been checking, the math still added up in a way she did not like.

“Ser Caide.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Can you ride?”

“In a way, miss.”

“You will ride in the cart.”

“Yes, miss.”

“There is a farm at the bend. Two hours behind us. They will take you to the village.”

“Yes, miss.”

“They are kind people.”

“Yes, miss.”

She lifted him.

She lifted him alone. She did not ask. She did not strain. People said she once moved the Duke across a training hall on a bet. For Hannah, helping a wounded man on a country road was just a polite errand.

She set him in the back of the cart.

She made a pillow from the spare cloak. She made a leather strap we did not need. She tied his wrist to the rail, gently, so a bad rut would not roll him out. She did not look at me while she worked. She did everything the same way: once, right, done.

I stood in the road.

The ring on my pinky finally went a degree warmer.

I did not love what that told me.

“Hannah.”

“Young master.”

“He believes the story.”

“Yes.”

“He believes it because somebody told him to.”

“Yes.”

“That is not a thing hypnosis is supposed to do.”

She glanced at me.

The blue glow under her sleeve guttered once. Her storm grey eyes did the math they had been doing since the village. Her mouth did not move. The wolf did not arrive. The wolf was, today, off duty.

“It is a thing a stronger hypnosis does.”

“How much stronger.”

“Stronger.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes.”

“That is not a number.”

“I do not have a number for you, young master.”

The road went quiet.

The horses shifted in the dust. The wind moved through the long grass once, like a hand passing across a table. Ser Caide, in the cart, hummed a small, tuneless thing. He did it the way a man does it when he does not know he is doing it.

I climbed back up onto the bench.

Hannah climbed up beside me.

She did not take the reins from me.

She let me keep them.

We turned the wagon around. We rode the two hours back to the farm at the bend. The farmer met us in the yard. He did not ask questions. Hannah, somehow, knew him. Hannah, somehow, knew everyone. He carried Ser Caide as a brother carries a brother. He waved off the coin Hannah did not offer.

We turned around again.

We rode east, the way we had been riding, back past the place we had found him.

The blood in the dust was already drying.

The road kept going.

“Hannah.”

“Young master.”

“I tried to pull on his memory.”

“Yes.”

“It did not pull.”

“I saw.”

“It leaned.”

“Yes.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes.”

“What does it mean when a memory leans?”

She was quiet for a long time.

The horses kept their slow, even rhythm. The forest sat on the eastern horizon, closer now and a whole shade darker than it had been at dawn. The pinky ring on my hand felt halfway between warm and cold, like someone caught between two bad answers.

“It means somebody put a hand inside it.”

“And left it there.”

“And left it there.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes.”

“I am not strong enough to take it out.”

“No.”

“Are you.”

“No.”

The road kept going.

I held the reins the way she had taught me. Three fingers. Loose wrist. Elbows in. The candle under my sternum did not flicker. The pinky ring sat patiently. Somewhere far ahead, where the trees got dark, a small wind moved through the top branches and did not move through the bottom ones at all.

I did not say it out loud.

Hannah did not say it out loud.

But we both, very quietly, started counting the days the red-haired girl had on us.

A week, the old woman had said.

It felt like more.