Now his clothing smelled of moldy straw and sour sweat. His muscles clenched uselessly, his chin shoved against his chest. She got a rag and some water, began to clean him. He cried out in pain as she rubbed his ankle. She studied it, found both legs horribly scarred. The skin around his ankles was red, hair rubbed away.

Raj Ahten had kept her father in chains these past six years. Such treatment for Dedicates was unheard of. After years of such abuse, she felt amazed that he even remained alive. Here in the North, Dedicates were pampered, honored, treated with affection. It was rumored that Raj Ahten had begun taking slaves to feed his need for Dedicates.

While Chemoise waited for the cooks to bring broth from the kitchens, she merely held his hand, kissing it over and over. He stared up at her with haunted eyes, unable to blink.

Chemoise heard a scream from the King’s Keep, someone giving endowments. To take her mind from the noise, she began whispering. “Oh, Father, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve waited so long for this.”

His eyes crinkled in a sad smile, and he breathed heavily.

She didn’t know how to tell him she was carrying a child. She wanted him to be happy, to believe that all was well in her life. She did not want to admit how she’d dishonored the princess. She hoped her father would never need to know the truth, that grand illusions might give him some peace.

“Father, I’m married now,” she whispered, “to Sergeant Dreys, of the palace guard. He was only a boy when you left. Do you remember him?”

Her father twisted his head to the side, half of a shake. “He’s a good man, very kind. The King has granted him lands here near town.” Chemoise wondered if she was spreading it on too heavily. Sergeants seldom got landed. “We live there with his mother and sisters. We’re going to have a child, he and I. It’s growing inside me.”

She could not tell him the truth, tell how the father had died at the hands of Raj Ahten, tell how she’d gone to call his ghost to the place where she’d made love to him so many nights, bringing dishonor to her family and to her princess. She dared not tell how Dreys’ wight had come to her that evening, a cold shade that now lodged within her.

Yet that night, when she had felt the first fluttering movements of the babe within her, it had seemed a miracle.

Chemoise took her father’s hand, which seemed clenched in a permanent fist, and smoothed out his fingers, opened it, after years of its having lain useless. Her father squeezed her hand, a sign of affection and thanksgiving, but he squeezed so hard. With several endowments of strength, he had a grip like a vise.