The Silent Palace

Chapter 1. The Name That Came Home

Before the third arrow flew, Aaron was beside the archer.

Two more footprints marked the snow. The first beyond the fallen log, the next on earth where a thin skin of ice had broken away. The archer who had fired at his lingering shoulder light turned his bow.

Too late.

Aaron’s left hand pressed the center of the bow. The back of the sword in his right went inside the drawing arm. As the elbow folded, the arrow fell. The archer released his weapon and landed on his backside in the snow.

A man charged from the opposite side.

Mana rose through his body. A swordsman who knew Flow. The light held on his blade with respectable stability. Instead of aiming for Aaron’s chest, he lowered the weapon toward his knees. On the narrow embankment, he meant to take Aaron’s footing first.

Aaron met the sword once.

Once was enough.

He left force along the line of contact and turned. The man’s blade followed into the space he vacated, then caught against the lingering line. As the wrist opened outward, Aaron’s foot occupied the place the man had intended to step.

Their shoulders collided.

The man stumbled backward twice, then sat hard below the embankment.

A blade stood before his throat.

“That’s far enough,” Aaron said.

Rurik’s soldiers, waiting below, surrounded the remaining two. One dropped his sword. The other ran, then heard Mira’s warning. An arrow struck the bark of the tree before him.

He raised his hands too.

The cart had not overturned.

Relief on his face, Toma eased the reins.

“It seemed strange from the moment we left this morning,” he said.

Aaron withdrew his blade.

“The weather?”

“You saying you had to inspect the road first. Even on a day this important.”

Late-winter Vale held both melting snow and snow that had yet to thaw.

Water ran down the sunlit embankment; ice remained in the shaded ditch. Mud clinging to a boot hardened a few steps later. As the captured man’s arms were bound, Aaron looked down the road.

A cart arriving behind them stopped before the log.

Penn climbed down beside its wheel. He clicked his tongue at the cut end of the fallen tree. Snow had not brought it down. Axe marks clustered on one side.

“They meant to stop the carts and strip them.”

He was not speaking to Aaron. He was explaining to one of Rurik’s soldiers how to preserve the scene.

The four captives carried service tokens from a northern unit. The archer, first to speak, said they had fled south. That alone did not establish everything they had done. Blocking carts and firing arrows on this road were verified separately.

Rurik wrote the list for handing them to the village guard.

Aaron looked at the archer’s face. The man seemed about his age, but winter cracks ran deep around his lips. With both hands bound, he stared at the flour on the cart.

Aaron told Toma to give them water.

He did not return their blades.

“I heard the war was over,” the archer said, accepting the bottle.

“It is.”

“Then we can go home—”

“We’ll check your identities and investigate what you did on this road first. It would have been quicker if you hadn’t shot at a cart.”

The archer looked down at the bottle.

Without waiting for an answer, Aaron went to the embankment. Meltwater pooled where the log blocked it. An engineer dug a little channel with a shovel. Toma was removing ice caught in a horse’s hoof.

Carriages carrying witnesses would use this road that afternoon.

That was why Aaron had come on patrol himself. On a day with something important ahead, it was easy to assume the small things would take care of themselves. Back in Vale, he had found that warehouse doors stuck even under celebratory flags, and good news did not keep horses from hurting their hooves.

He took the shovel and cleared snow beside the log.

Penn divided the trunk into lengths they could load. Aaron carried the cut pieces to the cart, braced each round section with a chock so it would not roll, then accepted the next.

When the road was open, the manor bell rang.

Lunch.

Toma looked at him.

“Now you really do have to go.”

Mara waited at the entrance.

Her gaze traveled from Aaron’s face to his boots. Seeing the muddy toes, she pointed to the broom beside her.

“Don’t leave that on the steps today.”

“Understood.”

“You said that last time too.”

Aaron had no defense.

On the day he came home, people had crowded to see him alive. The ground had been such a mess that no one could tell who had stayed in the yard and who had gone straight up the steps. The next day, Mara assigned everyone a share of the cleaning without exception. Aaron got half the entrance.

She had been making good use of the story ever since.

When he brushed his boots and went inside, warmth wrapped his face. The window frames sealed over winter were doing their work. Woodsmoke scented the air, and guests’ wet coats hung along one side of the corridor.

The house he had left so long was running at its own pace.

Aaron changed. One button inside his black coat refused to fit. Trying to fasten it in haste, he stopped his hand. Hands that had not trembled on the palace steps slipped twice today before fabric and a little metal.

He opened his palm, then closed it.

Tried the button again.

Edmund’s cane sounded outside the door.

Aaron opened it first.

“Have I kept you waiting?”

“The legal officer is having more lunch,” Edmund said.

He glanced at Aaron’s coat front and reached out to straighten the crooked collar. His fingers touched near Aaron’s neck, then fell away.

“That will do.”

Aaron nodded.

They walked down the corridor together.

It was Edmund who had first proposed transferring the title during his lifetime.

About ten days after Aaron returned. That evening, Aaron was still reading receipts, while Edmund sat opposite with his leg raised on a chair.

His father said he meant to hand over the estate.

Aaron looked up from the paper.

His first thought was that Edmund must be close to death. Seeing his expression, Edmund frowned.

“It doesn’t mean I’m concealing an illness.”

“Then why?”

“The arrangement in which I apply the final seal to work you’re already doing cannot last forever.”

“There’s still so much I don’t know.”

“I stamped it for years without knowing either.”

No smile followed the words.

Aaron could not immediately accept. He was still unused to being praised under this body’s name. He did not know what would change when he fully received the lands attached to it too.

Edmund did not rush a conclusion.

First, he asked the legal officer what could and could not be transferred. A hereditary title did not pass with a single family letter. They notified the superior Arden office, then checked the heir’s knighthood, grounds for disqualification, lands and debts, and tax arrears.

Much of the winter had gone into those checks.

Today, they would receive the approval and make the final declaration.

Three bundles lay on the long dining table.

Authority over title and land.

Existing debts and spending obligations.

Records of compensation not yet settled.

Aaron looked at the last bundle first.

After adding part of his personal war award, they had verified recipients and made payments over winter. Dates marked those entries. Unsettled agreements remained blank. A claimant’s failure to appear did not erase the harm.

Toma’s old unpaid wages and compensation were in the earlier records.

Reading them did not entitle Aaron to ask for forgiveness again. Toma was outside the dining room, checking a new feed delivery. Doing the work entrusted to him.

Hassel, the legal officer, opened the final succession document.

“You also assume the debts attached to the barony’s property. Matters remaining under separate personal responsibility are set out below.”

Aaron listened to the entire sentence.

The principal stood at forty-six gold. The next payment date had not arrived. Making the first autumn payment had not reduced the principal further over winter.

Authority over the estate’s three villages, its warehouses, and its roads passed to him.

So did the obligation to repair those roads.

The legal officer asked Edmund for final confirmation of his intent.

Edmund sat with both hands on his cane. For a moment, he looked outside. Snow swept from the yard stood in low walls.

“It is my wish,” he answered.

“The decision is not made under coercion or with judgment impaired by illness?”

“It is not.”

Hassel confirmed the same with the witnesses.

Mara looked at the document rather than Edmund as she answered. Bran stood motionless beside Aaron.

Aaron accepted the pen.

Writing the name took little time.

Aaron Vale.

Letters he had practiced so often that his hand no longer paused. At the end of the last stroke, he could not immediately set down the pen.

Edmund removed his ring.

The baronial seal. A pale mark remained where he had worn it for years. He did not try to put it on Aaron’s hand. He laid it on the table.

Aaron’s turn to receive it.

He reached out.

Cold metal touched his palm. Long use had worn the edges. The family emblem was still clear, but the rim around it had softened against fingers.

The legal officer dated the document in Imperial Year 743.

“The succession of authority to Baron Aaron Vale is hereby confirmed.”

A horse neighed outside.

Plates clinked in the kitchen. A young clerk by the door drew a small breath. At the moment Aaron had expected the world to stop, the house went on moving.

He held the ring.

He felt he should thank Edmund.

Different words came first.

“Keep checking things with me.”

His father looked at him.

“If I miss something.”

Edmund rubbed the bare place on his finger.

“And you intend to listen if I speak?”

“I also intend to tell you when you’re wrong.”

Only then did Edmund smile a little.

“You’re already quite good at that.”

Aaron smiled too.

His first seal did not go on a congratulatory letter.

It went on confirmation of rent paid for the warehouse the company had used over winter. The Dawn Company could not use a villager’s empty warehouse for free merely because it belonged to the lord’s organization. The amount owed and the treatment of repair costs had been agreed beforehand.

Aaron reread the date and recipient.

Pressed the seal.

Wax pushed out a little at the side.

The first impression was thicker on one edge. Hassel did not make him repeat it. He checked that the lettering and emblem were identifiable, then handed over the next document.

Bran spoke beside him.

“You can use less force than when you hold a sword.”

“I’m trying.”

“Then you owe the sword more of an apology.”

Aaron wiped wax from his hand with a cloth.

The warehouse owner waited by the door. As he received the confirmation, Toma came in from the yard. They met before Aaron.

“My lord,” the owner said in greeting.

Hearing the title, Toma looked at Aaron.

He paused, then used it too.

“My lord. We’ve handed over the people captured this morning.”

Aaron received the words.

More authority had been added to a name that had once frightened Toma.

Even after accepting the greeting, he kept the doorway clear. Toma approached at his own pace and offered the receipt.

“Thank you. Have you eaten since you came back?”

“Not yet.”

“Neither have I.”

Toma looked at the empty plates on the table.

“Two late ones today, then.”

They went toward the kitchen.

That evening, Aaron checked what he would take to the capital.

The imperial summons had rested in its box all winter. Once the road ice broke, he had to leave for Solenne. Grain contracts and soldiers’ pay would not take care of themselves along the way.

He opened Liora’s letter again.

She would settle matters in Arden before going to the capital. She had written a meeting place and temporary address. At the bottom, a sentence had been added in another ink.

This time, if you’re late, I’ll dance the first song without you.

Aaron smiled at that line.

Through the winter apart, they had sent work reports and personal letters separately. Beside her waterworks records, she had once enclosed a short complaint about a new fruit she had tried: too sour for the price. On the evening he read it, Aaron had chewed his sour pear longer than usual.

Waiting for replies took time.

When a letter arrived, he could not bear even to discard the envelope.

In this reply, he wrote that he would not be late. He asked where she would like to meet after he reached the capital. Instead of refining and deleting what he wanted to say until it sounded impressive, he left it as it first came.

I miss you.

While the ink dried, he looked outside.

Across the yard, Rurik was finishing the last shift at the training ground. Signs of eighty people having endured winter lay everywhere: a new roof, a repaired fence, the cooking shed with its fire still lit.

Aaron turned the ring on his finger once.

The same people would come into this yard tomorrow morning.

While he was in the capital too.

He had to make that possible before leaving.

On one side of the desk lay a letter with no destination yet. It ended in another name. Aaron packed that too.

Baron Aaron Vale was going to the capital.

Han Seojin, inside that name, went with him.

Chapter 2. The Capital’s Offered Hand

The capital appeared on paper before its walls came into view.

A leaflet on the posting inn’s table showed a man with a sword. His hair was far too long, and a cloak Aaron had never owned hung from his shoulders. He stood with one foot on a crown and held lightning in his other hand.

A name appeared below.

Aaron Vale, the Dancing Knight Who Brought Roska to Its Knees.

Mira held the leaflet beside Aaron’s face.

“The sword’s similar.”

“Even the sword is different.”

“Then the name is right.”

Across the table, Toma swallowed a laugh. Aaron took the leaflet and turned it over. The back gave a date for a victory celebration at a theater in the capital.

It also said he would appear.

Aaron spread the paper again.

“That’s an engagement I know nothing about.”