Chapter Text
The Lord's only offspring stirred awake.
Eyes of hazel narrowed peevishly in the deepnight gloom. She had come to accept that her dreams were never worth remembering, though this did not make it any less insulting that they should be prematurely concluded by frenetic footfall near her private quarters at an hour such as this. Stilling her breath, she detected voices just beyond her door, hushed but not trying hard enough for her liking. Her practised ear knew they belonged to the youngest and most exasperating of her maids, Bessie and Tamara.
The girls were irked — which she could forgive; they weren't usually still on duty at this hour — but their escalating exchange of complaints concerning whatever they had been tasked with would frequently degenerate into fits of giggles, which was also to be expected of the pair. Ditzy or not, didn't they know what time it was? Had they all forgotten that she was to sit in on Father's trade meeting later this morning?
(They couldn't possibly have — this was how Father had excused her demeanour all week. The two weeks before now, it had been chalked up to the symptoms of her natural cycle, and the week before that... oh, who could remember.)
She was not so flattened by the tedium of the previous day that she was content to simply roll over and take it. It was Mason who doused her fire and turned her toward a more cautious approach. The Captain of her Father's Guard was rarely known to let his voice be rocked by fear, or any emotion for that matter.
"I thank All Sixteen that we were able to keep our good Lord safe!"
She opened her door an indiscernible fraction to help her eavesdropping and was stunned to see a flurry of activity in the hallways of her family's castle. Servants were barrelling in all directions, many still donned in their nightwear. It seemed that all of her staff had been called to action and not merely the lowliest of them.
"And where is he now, Mason?"
She withdrew into her room at that vinegary enunciation. Not just the staff, she cheerlessly noted.
"In that old barn by the well, my Lady."
"In there? But you said he wasn't—"
"While the women clean him. Trust me when I say you do not want him in the castle in his… current state."
"I'm not sure I want he — it — in the castle at all." Aunt Ainsley sighed wintrily. "But it'll be my word against my brother's, and we all know how that'll pan out. Are you sure you encountered cave-folk? I find it highly questionable. They have never descended from the mountains before."
"I have not one doubt. Though we lacked the light," Captain Mason grievously uttered, "their malodor is unmistakable."
"And it was with them?"
"It would appear so. We found him in a briar patch by the Bridge — Lord Muchty thinks he was in cahoots with the monsters, but our Lord suspects he must have managed to escape from where the beasts were holding him, and was hiding. Yet..."
"Yet?"
"This still wouldn't explain why he—"
Their voices mixed indistinguishably with the castle's clamor as more staff were roused and recruited from their quarters. The eavesdropper scorned herself for being deterred by her aunt's presence. Now she would have to wait until the morn to know the whole story, and what if it was all over by then?
A blessing assumed the unlikeliest of forms. A diminutive figure hobbled toward her room with a stack of fresh towels — he was so short, he could not see above the peak of the pile. She threw out her hand, grasping the page boy by the front of his uniform and thrusting him inward.
"Good Gods–!"
"Eustace, tell me what's going on," she demanded.
The servant had scattered his stack onto the floor, which he ignored in favor of clutching his jackhammering heart. "M-My Lady, on any other night I could tolerate this kind of handling, but not after events such as these—"
"Such as what? Speak, Eustace!"
The mousy fellow laboriously regained his stolen breath. Now there was the matter of trying to formulate words into coherent sentences. "Eh, d-don't you have a m-meeting with your Father tomorrow? Or that'll be today, now. You really ought to be resting—"
"Tell me, Eustace!" She bellowed. The page recoiled as if struck. "Why is everyone running around like headless poultry at this hour? And why are you back so late? We were expecting the carriages to return by supper."
He knew he was needed in the courtyard. Every hand was required to clean the carriage, and especially those that could afford to be dirtied; there were few whose hands were more dispensable than his. But Lady Rose had a titanium grip on that part of his arm which was supposed to flaunt bulging muscle. Instead, it was limp and scrawny, much like the rest of him.
Eustace's chin sunk in resignation.
"As you wish, my Lady. We were making excellent time on our return from visiting the Lord and Lady Tober, with the Lord and Lady Muchtys riding along beside us on their way back from the Twin Temples," he explained. "We had every intention of taking the Golden Trail, but there had been a landslide at the Blue Path, so we were forced to reroute through Thorny Gulch."
"At the base of the mountains," Rose voiced thoughtfully. Even the bottom percentile of the land knew what lived out there.
"Which took us to the Garten Bridge—"
"Yes, yes, I've heard this part," she said, flicking her wrist as if swatting a gnat. She was trying to sound encouraging, but she was snippy as a default, and this did not inspire confidence in Eustace, who was already chronically deficient.
"Mason halted us so some of the men could make water. I was supposed to stay with your Father, but he insisted I leave to stretch my legs; him being so kind and generous of heart..."
"Get on with it, Eustace."
"I was helping with the horses when Mason sounded the alarm."
"Was it really trolls?" Rose spoke with unguarded wonder. In the pause that followed her question, Eustace's freckled and embryonic face darkened forbiddingly.
"W-Well, I never saw any myself, but that's what the others said," he clarified.
"What did you bring back?"
"I... well, I chose to stay with your Father, to see that he was protected." His voice deflated to a mumble. "I could never have forgiven myself had I left him unattended during the ambush. Of course, there were others who were more physically equipped than I, but I still couldn't have left him, for what it's worth."
Rose scoffed harshly. She knew Eustace wasn't trained for combat. Everyone knew that.
"That's not what I asked you," she said. "What did you bring back, Eustace? What's out there in the old barn?"
"It's hard to say, my Lady. If I were certain of it, I would tell you, but I'm not — no one is! Lord Muchty wanted to kill it then and there. He said it was an affront to civilized people. But your Father took pity on it. On him. He's offered him respite in his Court."
Rose thought the broken sleep was hazing her focus. She requested that he repeat himself.
"Your Father has decided to keep him here."
She did not respond, nor even breathe, she was sure, for several clockticks.
"... my Lady?"
"We are hosting a troll in my Court?"
"No, not a troll!" Eustace's laughter was hysterical and hollow, petering out with a gulp as his mouth rapidly parched. "Well, er, not exactly..."
Rose grabbed her overcoat. "Take me to him, Eustace."
"But m-my Lady—"
"That's an order, page boy!"
"No!"
You did not say 'no' to Lady Rose lightly. Eustace trembled beneath that withering glare.
"M-My Lady, you do not want to see him tonight, believe me! We suspect he might be suffering from illness. It could be likely to spread, although I'll pray to the Gods that it won't," he winced. "It took me moons to get over last year's flu, and what came out of him in that carriage was…"
His trembling waxed into one exaggerated, nauseated shudder.
"Profuse," he whispered, haunted.
"Eugh. Really, Eustace?"
"I am sorry, my Lady, but I am needed there now." He kneeled to reclaim his towels. "We'll be cleaning all night, in preparation for you and your Father's trade meeting. There'll be no trace of his filth left, I assure you."
Knowing there was no sense in arguing no matter how much she wished to, Rose nodded stiffly. "I won't stop you. That'll be all, Eustace. And thank you."
He bowed to her and backed out of the room. She was unready for the complete absence of noise in the halls when he reached her door. Everyone had been assigned their role in tackling this crisis, and those who were not on the frontlines, but in the know — like her — would be left to toss and turn and puzzle it over until the sun swallowed the stars again. She could visit her aunt and try to pry some more information from her cold, cracked lips, but spending any time in her reptilian company shaved years off of her life; Rose was convinced of it.
So she locked her door. More to keep herself in than anyone out.
There hadn't been a chill in the air when she had retired to bed. Now Rose crept toward her window with the intention of doing no more than closing it; it had been wedged open all summer, but even she lacked the authority to slow the seasons. She found herself lingering there, watching the bustling courtyard. It was strange to see it so busy at this time of night.
Despite being the offspring of the region's reigning Royal, she was still the youngest of her three cousins. Her kin selected quarters with balconies that faced the ocean, or their fields of barley and wheat maintained by the villagers. For once, Rose was grateful she had been left with an unspoiled view of that old, dilapidated barn. The Gods only knew why Father had insisted on leaving it standing all these years. Such a sentimental old fool, he was. She loved him infinitely.
Flickering candlelight cast shadows that played on the barn's rotting walls. The crunch and groan of the spare carriage parts and rolling barrels of oil and tallow being evacuated to make space drifted up toward her, as well as her staff's nervous and excited chatter. There had to have been twenty servants convened in there. It was impossible to make out what was going on, but she needn't yearn, for whatever it was would be the talk of the Court for days to come.
She did not observe for too long, knowing there was no use in expecting to lay eyes on whatever her Father had adopted. Not if it had anything to do with the mountains. It wouldn't be able to so much as skip in any direction without a ring of armored men closing in on it. Not in a Royal Court, no matter how mellow Father was.
When Rose finally climbed back into her opulent bed, she slipped effortlessly into a deep and fitful sleep; for the first time in many moons, her late mother never made an appearance.
On this night, she dreamed of beasts.