Hajin kept both hands in his pockets while the corridor ran on ahead of them, and the doors at the far end got no less unpleasant for being a hundred paces closer.
Polished floor, portraits in gilded frames, the smell of wax: the palace kept itself the way the Flint estate had kept itself, for the benefit of whoever happened to be visiting.
'Every surface in here is evidence waiting for somebody to use it,' he thought, counting doors so he would not have to count paintings.
Juna walked at his shoulder without being told to, her arm bumping his sleeve every fourth step.
"This place smells like soap and old men," she said with her nose working the air, "and not one of them has eaten since morning."
"They ate," Hajin said, watching a footman flatten himself against the wall as the princess went by, "they just do it where nobody can see them chew."
Elina trailed three paces back, her eyes travelling from Didi to Hajin with no attempt to hide the trip, which was the sort of look that turned into a story about the princess.
'That question will be in the kitchens by supper,' he thought, because gossip was the only currency a palace never ran short of.
He put the last day together instead.
Kenny had bragged about a Gate to clear when they crossed paths outside the forest, though his cousin had never located anything harder to find than a wine cellar.
Now the maid had placed the head of the Flint family inside the throne room for a summons about a new Gate assignment.
'Somebody handed that Gate to them,' he thought, watching the doors get closer, 'so I would like to know who, before I walk into a room with the man in it.'
"Your Highness," he said, keeping his voice down under the height of the ceiling.
Didi did not slow, though she tilted her head a degree to show the words had landed.
"Elina mentioned a Gate assignment," he continued, looking at the side of her face rather than the doors, "so do you know why the Flint patriarch was called here today?"
She was quiet for a moment, her feet clicking a steady line down the corridor.
"A new Gate manifested a few miles outside the capital walls about a week ago," she replied, the warmth going out of her voice with the change of subject, "and the council has done nothing since except argue about it."
"Some of them wanted my father's own forces to crush it that night," Didi continued, her chin coming up, "the rest refused to spend core knights on an anomaly nobody has measured."
'Nobody wanted to bury their own soldiers,' he thought, which was most of noble strategy in a single line.
"I offered to go," she said, and then the ice came off her all at once.
"The council would not even let me finish," she said, taking hold of his sleeve, "they told me I lacked experience, and my own father called me unready."
"They treat me like something that chips," Didi continued, towing him a step closer while her grip closed tighter.
Juna's claws pressed four small marks into her palm, and she did not take her eyes off the hand on his sleeve.
Hajin came off his line by half a step as the princess hauled him out of reach, so his eyebrows went up on their own.
'Is she whining at me?' he thought, looking down at the fist in his sleeve.
Elina had stopped walking altogether, her mouth open at a princess complaining like a child to a boy in dirty clothes.
Juna was not shocked at all, her ears flat to her skull while a low sound started somewhere in her throat.
"Let go of him," Juna said, the growl still sitting under the words, "you have arms of your own."
The fingers did not move, though Didi's eyes came up at last.
"He is walking me to my father," she said with the sleeve still bunched in her fist, "so he stays on this side."
'Well, considering how close that monster came to killing you, the council was not wrong,' he thought, prying the sleeve loose before Juna settled the matter herself.
"Right, so what did they decide instead?" Hajin asked, putting himself back between the two of them.
She crossed her arms as the composure came back down over her face, as though the last ten seconds had happened to a different woman.
"One of the ministers suggested outsourcing the problem," she said, ignoring the maid staring holes through the back of her head.
"The Great Families have the strength, and they want the glory of a Gate this close to the capital," Didi continued, "so my father offered the Flint family the clearing rights."
'So that is why Kenny was heading out there,' he thought as the last piece dropped into place.
'My father put a detachment on that road before the rights were even offered, then came here to collect them.'
The family that had thrown him away was collecting a royal favour a few miles from this corridor, while the son they had erased walked it to be thanked by the same king.
"Does your father know you are from the Flint family?" she asked, turning to study whatever his face did next.
Hajin gave her a look with nothing in it.
'Does the man who signed my exile know I am his son?' he thought, taking a moment to be certain she had meant the question.
'Only a patriarch can strip a blood relative, and she knows noble law better than I ever did.'
He kept the insult to himself instead.
"Yes, he knows who I am," he said with no weight on it at all, "he threw me out, since a talentless son is a stain on the name."
He stopped walking and put a hand on the back of his neck.
"I do not need a royal reward," he added, in one last attempt at the door behind him, "I wanted you home safe, so let me go and tell the king whatever you like."
Didi reached out, took the sleeve again, and pulled him forward.
"It is far too late to back out," she said, the whine gone out of her voice as the doors came up in front of them, "my father intends to meet the person who saved my life."
"And if you run," Didi added, without turning her head, "he will send guards, so you will meet him anyway with an escort holding your arms."
His feet dragged against the floor for a pace before they gave up on the protest, which was roughly how every argument with this woman had gone so far.
"Forgive me," Elina said from behind them, her voice pitched for him alone, "you bow at the second step, then you stay bowed until His Majesty speaks first."
"What about her?" Hajin asked, tipping his head toward Juna.
"She should wait in the hall," the maid said, her hands twisting in front of her apron, "beastkin are not usually presented to His Majesty."
"Then neither am I," he said, stopping again.
"I am going where he goes," Juna said, her ears coming back up off her skull, "you can explain me to the guards."
"She comes with us," Didi said without slowing at all, "Elina will manage the door, since managing doors is what Elina is for."
The guards at the end of the corridor took hold of the handles as the party cleared the last of the portraits, four men in plate leaning into the weight without any visible interest in who was arriving.
Beyond that timber were the man who had erased his name and the king who intended to reward him, with no version of the next hour that avoided either.
Court manners would have him bow, speak carefully and treat the patriarch as one more noble in a room full of them.
Three years of a very specific anger would have to sit still under a commoner's borrowed politeness for as long as the king wanted to talk.
His heart went hard at his ribs while the handles turned, so every courtesy he had been drilled in as a child suddenly seemed thin.
'Fuck,' he thought, his fists closing inside his pockets as the doors began to swing, 'there is really no other choice, huh.'
The doors came apart on warm air and a room already full of people, then a herald somewhere ahead of them began announcing the princess.
Juna hooked two fingers through the back of his belt without looking at him, and Hajin walked in.