Heart's Key
THREE

Leander did not wander around the castle like a newb. He went directly to the dining hall because he had a set of nostrils on his face and he knew how to use them. Meaning, he knew the difference between the smells. He didn’t need to poke his head into any of the rooms to know that he passed a wood workshop, a tannery, an armory, and the barracks… for lack of a better word. All the men slept in that room. He only opened one door, the one to the dining hall.

There, he was greeted by a sight that was most familiar to him: a bunch of men breaking bread and dipping it in meaty beef gravy. Someone good was cooking for them.

He got in line.

“Hey, who are you?” the man in front of him asked. He was a tall man with wood shavings dusting his clothes and skin, making his brown eyes look even browner.

Leander pushed his sun-bleached hair out of his face to show his bronze-colored eyes. “I’m Leander and I’m starving. Are there bowls up at the front of this line?”

“Yes. I’m Stocking and this is Barnibo,” he said, pointing to a shorter man in line ahead of them. “If you’ll take advice, here’s some—don’t even think about talking to the maiden tonight, since it’s your first night. It will piss everyone off.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Leander lied.

“The woman in the red dress. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I was brought here on a balloon from the edge of the forest. Isn’t that the usual way?”

Stocking shifted his gaze playfully. “Sometimes guys come in like that. I took the labyrinth path through the shrapnel when I was twelve.”

Leander had seen no such path when he surveyed the moat. Looking at the man’s age, Leander imagined he had taken the route seven or eight years before. More metal had obviously been added.

“Well,” Leander said positively, “that’s incredible. I’ll shake your hand, sir.”

They shook hands.

“Why were you so desperate to come here?” Leander asked, thinking that he would only have taken such a route if he had been commanded to by his King.

Stocking pointed and Leander saw her all over again, but since it was only from across the room instead of across a great distance, it felt like he saw her for the first time.

She was radiant, all curves, all softness, all beauty, all choking at his heart in a way he couldn’t explain. What did he want from a woman like that? Gold hair, blue eyes, her bare throat, and the slight curve of her breast before her neckline hid all her best secrets. She was a vision before him. Did he want to worship her like she was his queen? Did he want to swear love to her as other knights were wont to swear to ladies? The feeling didn’t quite fit the bill. Did he want to bounce her on his knee like a barmaid or grab her and kiss her as a last act before heading off to war? He was instantly confused because his usual range of emotions didn’t describe what was happening inside him.

The Maiden was surrounded by admirers, so many that the only reason he could see her was because her dining table was set up in the middle of the room on a slightly higher platform. She ate alone, though one man was passing her his handkerchief to use as a napkin. Another was jumping up to refill her water glass. Others tried to talk to her and others still just gazed up at her like that was all they wanted.

What was Leander feeling?

He was baffled. His feeling made no sense. Was he attracted to her or not?

One thing was for certain, he hated all the men that surrounded her, pandering to her. That was disgusting. But why? He’d had plenty of times when he returned from war where the press of people paused his warhorse. Many of those people were young women. That had been normal for him, to be surrounded by admirers. Seeing it flipped was… clawing something inside him.

“What’s her name?” Leander asked Stocking.

“Oh, they never tell us their names. You only get to know her name if she chooses you.” Stocking picked up his plate and bowl and went through the line for gravy and bread.

Leander copied the other man. “What does that mean, if she chooses you?”

The men took their seats, quite far from where the Maiden was propped up for all to see. Leander guessed Stocking didn’t want to take the chance that she could overhear what he said. “This is where unwanted people come to get a life.”

“A life,” Leander said reflectively. “What does that mean?”

“Well, I was an orphan,” Stocking explained. “I wasn’t raised in an orphanage though. My family was killed on the road by brigands. I was twelve and I was far from my village. I was the only one left alive. I didn’t know how to get home. I didn’t know how to get anywhere. I started walking through the woods by the road and hoped I’d get to a town. One didn’t come. Days passed and I was desperate, I had nothing. Then, when I thought all hope was lost, I saw someone up the road. It was a woman in a red dress. I ran after her, but no matter how hard I ran she was always up the road a little further.”

Leander guessed the woman he saw was not the Maiden, but the Ghost Mistress, guiding the boy to the castle.

“Finally I came to the edge of the woods and found this castle,” Stocking continued. “She went through the labyrinth. I followed her path and came to the gatehouse. They welcomed me in and told me that I’d work here until I was skilled enough at my craft that I could secure a living somewhere else, but that I’d also be given a prize.”

“What kind of prize?” Leander wondered.

Stocking looked at Leander like he was dumber than a boneless crab. “The Maiden of course.”

Leander turned to look at the woman in the red dress. “You’re going to marry her?” he asked incredulously. “Seems like you have a lot of competition.”

“That one,” he said, pointing at her with his bread crust, “is very popular. She’s going to cause a riot if she doesn’t choose soon. I already said my piece to her and she already told me she wants to talk to everyone before she makes her decision. The problem is that she’s already talked to everyone about three times and she still can’t make up her mind. There are other maidens in red dresses. They just only bring them out one at a time.”

“Well, if she doesn’t like any of the guys here, maybe she’ll like me best of all,” Leander teased.

Stocking nearly choked on what he was chewing. “You? Well, if you want to take a whack at that fussy one, be my guest. However, I said she was popular. You’ll have a fight on your hands if you try to get fresh with her. There are at least half a dozen men here who think she’ll choose them tonight. But they’ve been thinking that for weeks.”

“Nah, she’s not going to choose me tonight,” Leander said, catching hold of what the Mistress meant when she gave him her instructions. He was brought to the castle in the first place to kidnap that girl and take her off because she was ruining the program for the young men like Stocking who wanted to get married and get gone and the young women waiting for their chance to be the Maiden and choose a husband. “She’s going to choose me tomorrow night,” Leander said boldly.

Stocking let a blob of his chewed food sit in his open mouth before he pushed it out with his tongue and it landed back on his plate with a plop.

Barnibo chuckled so hard, he almost snorted gravy up his nose.

“Good luck with that,” Stocking said, not even turning to look at his laughing friend.

“No, no,” he said, putting up a finger. “I’d make a bet with you that I’ll have her all to myself by tomorrow night and gone by the next morning with her, but you wouldn’t be able to collect anything because I’ll be gone.”

Stocking laughed. “All the same, I’ll take that action. What shall we wager? I bet you came here as naked as the day you were born.”

“Nah. I had some pretty awesome ginch on.”

“Which they took away,” Stocking snickered.

“They did. Because they were a holy mess.”

“Meaning it had a lot of holes in it?”

“Yeah,” Leander laughed back. “Way more than the mandatory four.”

“If you are still here the day after tomorrow,” Stocking said, getting a great idea. “You have to replace that old ginch of yours, show it to everyone and wear it. Only it, all by its lonesome, for the rest of the day.”

“Fine, fine.” Leander agreed. “And if I win?”

Stocking snorted. “If you win you’re going to be using that beautiful bust as your pillow. Even if she is a snooty cow, I wouldn’t say no to that.”

They shook hands again and Stocking took him to the sleeping quarters, but it wasn’t like Leander couldn’t have found it himself. Like every other keep he’d visited, this castle had a lot of smells.