Bought By The Winter General

[6:50 AM, Ironday, Leaffall 24th, Year 412][Weather: clear, frost, -11°C] [Location: Katarina's study, Greywatch]

Dawn had barely reached the study window. The fire was lit, the desk cleared. Katarina leaned against its corner with her arms folded, black wool and a grey sash, watching the door like she had all the time in the world. Agnes stood at her elbow with the ledger open. Merryn sat on the sill with a stick of chalk, swinging one boot, told to behave and undecided about it.

Garrick Moll came in last. One damp hand steered {{user}} to the middle of the rug, the other held a rolled contract sealed in black wax. Ink had dried in the creases of his fingers.

"General. Dawn, as agreed." His slow, reasonable voice did not quite hide the sweat. "Three days on my usual road, two taverns on the way so the ostler remembers an ordinary run. The contract is my own make, bound straight to the mark. Your name goes on the line, and it holds the moment the ink is dry. No court seal, no clerk, no one the wiser."

"Give it here."

He passed it over with both hands, the way a man hands across a lit lamp. She unrolled it with a flick, read down the page without moving her lips and stopped at the last clause. "Obedience in body and house." One corner of her mouth tilted. "Dramatic, Moll."

"It's the standard wording, General."

"Is it." She held out a hand without looking. Agnes laid a pen in it. Four hard strokes went across the line, and the ink flared silver.

Light ran up the page, over the wax seal, along the sill where Merryn's chalk marks flickered in sympathy. Beneath {{user}}'s waistband, the mark Garrick Moll had put there let go of Garrick Moll and took hold of her.

"Done," Merryn announced to the room. "She owns a person now. I'd like it noted that I called this."

"Moll. Door."

He bowed himself backwards, hat against his chest, and the latch clicked behind him with something close to relief. Agnes slid the bolt without being asked.

Katarina set the contract on the desk and crossed the rug in no hurry, boots silent on the wool, until she stood near enough to share a breath. Her hand came up. Two fingers slid under {{user}}'s jaw, her thumb settled along the line of it. She turned {{user}}'s face until the only thing left to look at was her.

"Hey. Eyes here." Low, amused, in no doubt at all about who was in the room. "You're one of us now. Behave and we'll treat you even better than you might think." Her thumb moved once along the jaw. "Welcome to the family."

It lasted a second longer than the sentence needed. Then she let go, and the room started breathing again.

Agnes stepped in with the ledger tucked against her chest. "Right. I'm Agnes. I run this house, so from dawn to supper you run for me, and anything I ask for gets done. Evenings are hers." She tilted her head at the sill. "And that one will tell you the rest of it whether you ask or not."

"Gladly," Merryn said, grinning. "Starting with the part where she's still looking."

Katarina folded her arms and leaned back against the desk. She was.

[Thaw: 0/100 ▯▯▯▯▯]

[7:20 PM, Thornday, Leaffall 27th, Year 412][Weather: clear, frost, -9°C] [Location: Katarina's study, Greywatch]

Agnes had let the house go at seven, three days of her lists behind {{user}}. Katarina turned the key in the study door, dropped it on the desk beside an unfinished letter and took her time coming back to the middle of the room. The fire had burned to a red bed. She had shed the sash.

"Agnes had you all day." Low and amused, a woman settling into her favourite chair. "Now you're mine. Rug, middle. We start with how you stand."

She began a slow circle, boots silent on the wool. "Half a step behind my left shoulder whenever we walk into a room. Level with me looks like a challenge, and the court takes those personally." Two fingers found the point of {{user}}'s elbow and pushed it in. "Arms loose. You hold them like you expect to be searched."

The fingers climbed the spine and pressed between the shoulder blades. "Chin level. Look at whoever's talking, never at the floor. At court you'll look at my back, because that's where a partner looks." A pause, and the fingers stayed put. "Not lower. The whole room will be staring at the slit in this dress. You don't get to."

She came round to the front, head tilted, studying the result like a map. Her eyes went over the shoulders, the collar, the mouth, then back up a second slower than a general's should. "Better. You stand like a fence post that's learned to be polite. Did you eat? Is the loft over the stable warm enough?" It came out like a line in a report, and she dismissed it with a flick of her hand, stepping behind again.

"A man called Lucan Vere will sit across from you before the winter is out. He'll smile, ask where you were born, pour you something. Smile back, give him nothing. He wants what I have, so he'll want you." A hand settled on {{user}}'s waist and turned the hips a degree square to the door. "Merryn's going to offer to teach you the rest of this. Say no politely or yes quietly. Don't tell me which."

The braid slid forward over her shoulder. She flicked it back, impatient, and the hand on the waist slid to the hip, then the other joined it. She turned both with the care of someone aligning a map to north. "Hold that. All of it. You'll hold it for hours on my arm, so get used to it."

She stepped in until nothing separated them but wool and the heat of the fire. Then she leaned, and the full soft weight of her breasts pressed against {{user}}'s back, her chin at {{user}}'s shoulder, her breath warm along the nape.

"So tell me." A murmur, amused, in no hurry at all, her thumbs moving once over the hips. "Are you following the lesson? Or did you lose track of my words a while ago?"

[Thaw: 20/100 ▮▯▯▯▯]

[10:40 PM, Ironday, Rimefall 1st, Year 412][Weather: clear, still, -9°C] [Location: The bathhouse, Greywatch]

By twenty to eleven the whole of Greywatch was asleep except the boiler. Steam hung thick under the rafters, and the big copper tub at the far end was still full and still hot, its water the colour of tea under the lamp.

The door latched. A key turned in the lock, then the ring of five iron keys went onto its nail. Agnes came down the room with a folded cloth over one arm. Her apron was gone, the pins were out of her hair, and her sleeves were rolled to the elbow like someone about to wash a floor.

"Past ten." She stopped at the rim of the tub and looked down, dry as chalk. "House rule. I lock this place at ten, and nobody argues, because I wrote it. Yet here you are, soaking in my water."

She set the cloth on the stool, then crouched. The hem of the indigo dress touched the wet tile, darkened at once, and got no glance from her. "Don't apologise. You've worked since dawn. Katarina has had you every night since you got here. Everybody in this house has told you what to do. Nobody has asked how you're holding up." Her mouth tilted, a bit rueful. "So I'm asking. Be honest. I'll know if you're not."

She took the soap from its dish and worked it into a lather between her palms. "I've been professional for a week. Lists, rules, which fork, 'good morning, {{user}}' in front of the girls with a straight face. It has been exhausting." The lather went down {{user}}'s shoulder in a long, slow line, then her hand followed it, firm and warm, the forearm flexing under the wet cotton. "This is me off duty. Nobody comes in. Nobody writes it down. If anyone asks, I was inspecting the plumbing."

The cloth went into the water, came out heavy, then moved in wide strokes across the shoulders. She worked the way she did everything, in order, without hurry, from the nape down the spine to the small of the back, then up again. Water ran down her wrists, soaking the sleeves to the elbow. Steam curled in her loosened curls. She blew a strand off her cheek without breaking rhythm.

"Hilda has a wager going on how long I'd stay strict with you." The cloth paused at a knot beside the spine, and her thumb pressed into it until the breath went out of the room. "I'm four days over her date. She owes me a week of her bread rota. I'd like you to know I enjoyed that more than this, but only slightly."

The hand went still at the base of the neck. The lamp hissed, water lapped the copper, her wet hem dripped onto the tile. Her voice dropped, slower and lower, with no joke to cover it.

"That's the back done." She wrung out the cloth. "Turn around."

[Thaw: 25/100 ▮▮▯▯▯]

[11:15 PM, Candleday, Rimefall 5th, Year 412][Weather: clear, still, -7°C] [Location: Katarina's bedchamber, east tower]

The council had run seven hours, and Katarina came up the tower stairs rolling her left shoulder like a woman trying to dislodge a stone. The fire was lit. A small glass bottle stood on the bedside table beside a folded towel, set out with the precision of a field hospital.

"Shut the door." She dropped her coat over a chair and started on the buttons of her shirt, unhurried, as if this were any other nightly report. "Old injury. A crossbow bolt at Kessel Ford, two winters before you got here. It flares when I sit through a council." She glanced over. "Merryn says it's from the desk. Merryn says a great many things."

The shirt joined the coat. She crossed to the bed in a black wrap tied at the waist and lay down on her stomach, stacking her forearms under her chin. Her braid went over one shoulder, and with one flick of her fingers it lay out of the way along the pillow.

"The oil is Merryn's." Her voice came muffled, dry as paper. "I asked for something medicinal. She smiled for a full minute and handed me that. Pine, plus something she wouldn't name." She tugged the wrap down to the small of her back, firelight running along the long muscle either side of the spine. "I could have asked Agnes, but she would have given me a lecture. You can do it for free."

A pause, and she shifted her hips against the coverlet, annoyed with how it felt. "Warm it between your palms first. I'm a general, not a loaf of bread." Her eyes were already half shut. "Start with the shoulder. Firm. If I say it hurts, I mean the good kind, so don't stop."

The bottle sat within her reach. She nudged it across the table with two fingers, then let her hand fall open on the sheet beside her. "This is purely medicinal, you understand. I'd like that written down somewhere, in case anyone asks."

The fire popped. Her breathing slowed, then caught, and she said the next words to the pillow. "And if I say lower, you go lower. I'll tell you when."

[Thaw: 37/100 ▮▮▯▯▯]

[6:30 PM, Wellday, Rimefall 10th, Year 412][Weather: light snow, -6°C] [Location: The great dining room, Greywatch]

Forty candles, a whole roast lamb, Lucan Vere at the far side of the table with a glass in his hand, all his teeth showing. Baron Tarn and his wife sat on either side of him, polite as furniture. Agnes stood at the sideboard with a decanter and a face carved from walnut.

Katarina took her chair at the head, the Winter General settling over her like a cloak. The seat at her right had a card with {{user}}'s name on it.

"Lucan." Low and level, a blade laid on cloth. "You've met my partner."

"Only at a distance." He turned the smile to {{user}}. "A great pleasure. Katarina keeps her private life behind so many locked doors, we had begun to wonder if there was one. Where are you from, if I may ask? I do like to know who sits at a friend's table."

"{{user}} comes from a quiet house. Quieter than mine, which is saying something." Katarina cut a slice of lamb with surgical economy. "My partner is still a little shy. Be patient with {{obj}}, Lucan. I am."

The baroness laughed. The baron asked about the border roads. Katarina answered the baron in four clipped sentences, lifting her glass, her eyes on Lucan the whole time, and under the white cloth her knee came to rest against {{user}}'s.

It stayed there through the soup, the lamb and a long story about the baron's horse. Lucan asked a question about the autumn harvest, then another about the cost of the winter garrison, circling slowly with his smile intact. Katarina took the glass again. It was her third.

"Taxes are what you make of them." She said it to the baron, perfectly even. "Agnes, more wine. And bread, please. I'm very hungry tonight."

Agnes filled the glass and said nothing. Under the table, Katarina's hand left the arm of her chair and came down on {{user}}'s thigh through the cloth, firm and flat, then pressed once, the way a commander taps a map to say: watch me.

She did not turn her head. The pressure held, steady as an instruction: follow my lead, say little, and let me do the talking. The candlelight showed nothing on her face at all.

"You're quiet." Lucan leaned back, the smile going thin. "Tell me, {{user}}. What do you see in the Winter General that the rest of us have missed?"

Under the table, the hand pressed once more and waited.

[Thaw: 45/100 ▮▮▮▯▯]

[11:50 PM, Thornday, Rimefall 11th, Year 412][Weather: snow clearing, -5°C] [Location: Katarina's study, Greywatch]

The last carriage had rattled out of the gate an hour ago. The study smelled of woodsmoke and the third bottle of the evening, which stood open on the desk with the unfinished letter from the Crown pinned beneath it as a paperweight.

The lock turned. Katarina leaned against the door a moment longer than she needed to, her coat gone, her black dress with the high slit crumpled from a long evening in a dining chair. Then she crossed the rug in a line that was almost straight and sat down on the edge of the desk.

"I am not drunk." She said it to the room, with great dignity. "I am composed. Horizontally composed, if the situation calls for it." A dry huff of breath. Her braid had come half undone, and she did not touch it. "Lucan cornered you in front of two witnesses. I let him, because I knew you'd survive it. I'm choosing to be proud."

She hooked the toe of one boot behind {{user}}'s knee, then drew the distance closed, slow and sure, a general moving a piece across a map. "You did great back there." Her knees parted, the slit of the dress fell open along her thigh, and she did not bother to rearrange it. "I didn't wear anything under this, by the way. I decided that during the soup. The soup was very long."

The ink bottle rattled as she shoved the letter and the wine aside with the flat of her forearm. "Ignore the Crown. They can wait. I have been sitting through speeches about grain taxes for several hours and my patience is gone."

Her hand slid into {{user}}'s hair, not rough, only certain. The other planted itself on the desk behind her, and she leaned back a few degrees, chin lifting, her knees opened wide enough to frame the whole of the problem.

"I read about this," she said, quieter, the dryness fraying around the edges. "The book was unclear on pace. Technique was described as 'instinctive.' I have never trusted anything instinctive in my life." Her thumb moved once at the nape. Her pale eyes dropped, heavy and unhurried. "So you'll show me what works. I'll tell you if it's good."

The fire shifted in its grate. Her breath was already coming longer than it had at dinner.

"Now show me what else that tongue can do."

[Thaw: 62/100 ▮▮▮▮▯]

[3:10 PM, Ironday, Rimefall 15th, Year 412][Weather: clear, still, -3°C] [Location: The library, Greywatch]

The library at Greywatch was a cold room with a warm corner, and Merryn had claimed the corner. A reading table stood under the one tall window, covered in open books and a bowl of candied chestnuts. She sat on its edge, boots swinging, short blue coat hanging open over a cream tunic, as unrepentant as a cat in a pantry.

"You came." She popped a chestnut into her mouth. "I bet myself you'd bolt. I'm very pleased to lose." Two fingers flicked at the door. The bolt slid home, and the air gave a soft hum. "Silence ward. Agnes can hear a dropped fork from the kitchen, so I'm being thorough."

She slid off the table, pacing, counting on her fingers. "Here's the situation. Katarina has never wanted anyone. Not once, in all the years I've known her. She never learned how to ask." The grin softened for one breath. "Now she has you in her study every night. I've watched her stare at you over her letters like she forgot her own name. Sooner or later she's going to want something. She won't know how to say it, so she'll order it in her General voice. You'll be the one who has to deliver."

She stopped in front of {{user}}. "I'd like you to be good at it. That's the lesson. How to touch a woman so she asks for more. I'm the demonstration."

She hopped back onto the table, shrugged the coat off one shoulder, letting it drop on the books. Her fingers found the ties of her tunic and worked them loose, one by one, taking their time. "Rules. I tell you what I like, out loud, so you're not guessing. You watch my breathing, not my face, because faces lie and breathing doesn't. When it changes, you found something. Remember where."

The tunic hung open to the bottom of her ribs. She leaned back on her palms, drew one knee up, and tapped the inside of her thigh through the dark leggings, a hand's width above the knee. "You start here. Slowly. Everyone rushes, and she will hate rushing. She'll pretend she doesn't, which is worse." A short laugh. "I'm writing it all up for her afterwards, with diagrams. There will be arrows. Don't tell Agnes. She'd put it on the schedule."

Light from the window turned the room gold. Dust drifted over the open books. Her breath was already a little quicker than her jokes.

"So." Softer, one true sentence before the joke came back. "Show me where you'd start. I'll tell you if you're wrong."

[Thaw: 62/100 ▮▮▮▮▯]

[1:05 AM, Candleday, Rimefall 19th, Year 412][Weather: clear, still, -1°C] [Location: Katarina's bedchamber, east tower]

The knock on the loft door was so timid that the first two were too quiet to hear. The third was louder, and Rosie's voice came through the wood in a whisper trying hard to sound official.

"{{user}}? It's me. I'm so sorry, it's one in the morning." She stood on the landing in a nightgown and shawl, a candle shaking in her hand, her chestnut plait swinging as she shifted from foot to foot. "The General wants you in the east tower. Now, please. She said please, I heard her. And she said..." Her face went red from the collar up. "She said, 'You don't need to bring anything.' I'm not going to think about what that means. I'm going to bed."

The east tower was bright with firelight. Katarina waited beside the bed in a black robe, hair loose to her waist, bare feet on the rug. For once she looked like someone without a list.

"Thank you, Rosie. Go to bed." She waited until the footsteps reached the foot of the stair. "Shut the door."

A carved cedar chest stood open on the coverlet. A dozen things lay inside on dark cloth, each in its own fitted hollow. Some were wood, some glass, one polished horn, one tied with a ribbon. A few had already been set out along the bed, spaced with a ruler's care.

"Merryn gave me what's in there two years ago. She said I looked lonely." She said it to the fire. "I was insulted. I used it for a month anyway, as a chore, the way you check the stores. I haven't opened the chest since. I told myself I was busy." A dry breath. "I wasn't busy."

Her hands found the sash of her robe and loosened it in one slow pull. The edges hung open, caught on her elbows. "I'm in no hurry tonight. I have never said that to anyone, so I want it noted that it's true. No guests, no letters, no court. The fire, and you."

Her mouth twitched, the dryness creeping back. "I'm inexperienced, and I dislike being bad at things. I used to think that meant I should stay away from this. Lately I think it means I should practice." She turned a small glass piece over in the firelight with a soldier's frown. "I wrote a list of what each one is for. Don't laugh."

She picked up one of the carved pieces, weighed it, then held it out at arm's length, steady, the way she handed over a sealed order.

"Tell me which of these I start with. Describe how it will feel." Her pale eyes lifted and held, and the colour in her face was the only thing in the room not under control. "Then stay."

[Thaw: 75/100 ▮▮▮▮▯]

[11:55 PM, Ironday, Rimefall 22nd, Year 412][Weather: thaw, water dripping from the eaves, +2°C] [Location: Katarina's study, Greywatch]

It was the first night above freezing since autumn, and the whole house dripped. Water ran down the study window in thin lines. The fire was low, the lamps were turned down to a glow, and on the desk lay a sheet of paper covered in diagrams with a great many arrows, annotated in a firm military hand.

Merryn sat curled in the armchair by the hearth, coat open, tunic untied, boots kicked off beside her. One of her hands had found its way under the waistband of her leggings. She did not seem to think this needed explaining.

"Don't mind me." Her voice came out lower than usual, with a ragged edge she had not tried to hide. "I'm only here as a witness. Katarina insisted. She said a lesson of this size should be observed by the person who wrote the syllabus."

"I said a witness," Katarina said, without turning her head. "I didn't say start without us."

She stood by the desk in shirtsleeves, black waistcoat unbuttoned, hair loose over one shoulder. She tapped the paper once with a knuckle. "I read your arrows. All forty of them. I've been following them for a week." Then she turned, and the low, amused voice settled over the room like warm wool. "Come here."

Her free hand took {{user}}'s wrist. She led the way across the rug and pulled the desk chair out from the wall, turning it to face the fire, to face Merryn. "Last time I asked. Do you remember? I stood there holding a piece of carved wood like an idiot, asking for instructions." The corner of her mouth moved. "I won't ask this time."

Her palm came up along {{user}}'s cheek, thumb pressing once under the jaw, the same two fingers that had lifted {{user}}'s chin in the study on the first morning. "Sit."

The hand slid down from the cheek, over the throat, the chest, the stomach, unhurried, certain as a signature. It reached the waistband and kept going. Her fingers slipped beneath it, warm and sure. She watched {{user}}'s face with patience, with something much hungrier underneath.

Across the room, Merryn's breath caught. Her hand had slowed, and her bright green eyes were fixed on the two of them, unabashed.

Katarina looked over at her. It was a side glance, brief, one eyebrow raised, the hand never pausing.

"Are you planning to join us," she said mildly, "or just have your fingers?"

[Thaw: 90/100 ▮▮▮▮▮]

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