Page 7 of Fought it Through the Teeth

"It bought us the front door and not a sword, your highness," he says. "You can be insulted or you can go home with your tail between your legs. Pick one."

Morgan's mouth snaps closed and he glares at Bohdi wholeheartedly.

"That's the spirit," Bohdi says with a smirk.

Ivan's voice echoes from ahead, calling something to a servant, and Morgan follows and says nothing else.

They are shown to separate quarters.

Morgan's room is on the third floor of the Keep — a corner chamber with narrow windows that overlook the courtyard on one side and the rear of the stronghold on the other. The furnishings are plain but adequate: a bed frame with a straw mattress and heavy wool blankets, a table and chair, a washbasin and jug, a chest at the foot of the bed for his belongings. A fire has been laid in the small stone hearth but not lit.

It is fine. It is more than fine, by campaign standards. It is also unmistakably a room designed to contain rather than welcome — one door, no interior lock, windows too narrow for a man to climb through. Morgan notes each of these with a clerk's automatic attention and makes no comment.

He sets his saddlebag on the chest and stands in the middle of the room and looks at the four walls.

He is alone, and the fact settles on him slowly.

Bohdi is quartered somewhere else entirely. Morgan watched a servant lead him away down a different corridor, around a corner, out of sight. The separation is deliberate — Morgan doesn't need to be told that, doesn't need to see the layout drawn on a map to understand that the warchief has placed his bride and his bride's bodyguard as far apart as the building allows. Whether that is standard practice or a pointed choice, the effect is the same.

Morgan is alone in a strange room in enemy territory. His jaw aches from being clenched. His thighs still burn from the ride. And the man whose job it is to keep him alive is several turns and a stair away, quartered in a corridor Morgan has not been shown and cannot find without asking.

He crosses to the narrow window and looks down at the courtyard.

Warriors move below, going about the business of the stronghold. Horses are being stabled. A group of men crosses the yard carrying something heavy and their voices drift up in snatches of dialect Morgan could follow if he concentrated but can't parse at this distance. The forge is still ringing somewhere.

He presses his forehead to the cold stone of the window frame and closes his eyes.

He knew some version of it was coming, some flavor of the same dismissal. He knew, from the moment the council presented the plan, that his role in this mission was to be underestimated, to be looked at and found wanting. He was to be the pretty, useless prince who can't ride and can't fight and can't do anything more threatening than read a contract, while Bohdi does the real work behind the curtain.

None of that knowledge, and none of his understanding that it was strategy, touches the part of him that stood in that courtyard and heard the man he —

He stops the thought, pinching it off at the root as he has been doing for years, and sets it aside.

He is here. He has a role to play. And if that role requires him to be soft and useless and less than these men, then he will play it, and he will play it well. He is very good at playing roles and the alternative is letting his feelings get in the way of the mission, and Morgan has never once in his life allowed that to happen.

He opens his eyes. The courtyard is still there. The warriors are still moving. The forge is still ringing.

He straightens, pulls his shoulders back, runs his fingers through his hair to smooth the tangles from the road, and begins to unpack.

Chapter 4

Bohdi

Ivan takes them on a tour of the Keep first thing in the morning, without giving one thought to whether the prince might be tired from the journey.

Bohdi expected this. Ivan measures others by watching how they handle discomfort, and the fastest way to take the measure of a new acquisition is to run it before it has rested. Horses, dogs, brides: the principle is the same, and the fact that Ivan applies it without distinction tells Bohdi everything he needs to know about the category the chieftain has placed Morgan in.

Morgan, to his credit, gives nothing away. He was up before dawn — Bohdi knows this because he was up before dawn himself, standing outside Morgan's door by the time the first gray light crept through the corridor windows. Morgan had opened it fully dressed and composed and only slightly hollow around the eyes. They ate a quick breakfast together of bread, hard cheese, and something smoked that Bohdi consumed without examining and Morgan picked at with careful suspicion, not yet having decided whether his hosts were trying to feed him or poison him. Then Ivan appeared in the doorway with two guards behind him.

"On your feet, prince. I'll show you my stronghold."

So they walk.

Ivan leads. Morgan walks beside him. Bohdi walks two steps behind.

The tour is thorough, well-rehearsed, and designed to impress. Ivan shows them the great hall where the clan gathers for feasts and councils, the armory with its racks of swords and spears and heavy wooden shields painted with the wolf sigil, the kitchens that feed three hundred people twice a day. He shows them the forge, where a smith is drawing out a blade on an anvil that rings with each stroke. He shows them the granaries and the storehouses and the stables, and at each stop he pauses and lets the scale of it register, watching Morgan's face for the moment the resistance gives way to admiration.

And at each stop, he uses the tour as a whetstone.