Cendre felt his face harden at the request.
"A thousand pardons, Your Grace," he said evenly. "But you ask a stranger, someone you barely know, to solve a problem that involves, possibly, a conspiracy meant to take down your family."
His breath lingered pale between them. The frozen tree stood silent witness, its encased branches unmoving above.
She did not recoil at his bluntness.
"It is precisely because you are a stranger," she replied, "that I ask this of you."
Her tone remained composed, though her eyes sharpened faintly.
"Out of curiosity," she continued, "I inquired about you quietly. I wrote to St. Alfons. To certain Masters who remember their students with inconvenient clarity."
A slight pause.
"They spoke of you not as the loudest, nor the most ambitious, but as the most precise. An eye for detail. A disposition suited for tasks that required observation rather than noise. They said that when something needed to be understood rather than merely confronted, you were… effective."
The faintest suggestion of amusement touched her lips again, restrained, cool.
"You were apparently the best when it came to work that required patience and skill."
He exhaled through his nose, irritation creeping beneath restraint. He hated that she had done her research. Hated more that it aligned too closely with truth. During his Academy years, he had taken on assignments out of curiosity, quiet matters others found dull or beneath their station. Adventures, he had not thought would echo this far north.
"Yet it still does not make sense," he replied. "Frankly, I earn nothing, benefit nothing, and want nothing from this."
For the first time, she frowned.
It was not dramatic. Merely a faint tightening between her brows. Then one brow lifted slightly, studying him anew.
"It is rare," she said slowly, "to find a man who would refuse this."
There was no mockery in her voice, only observation. As though she were examining an unusual specimen.
"Most would leap at the opportunity to earn favor and influence."
"It is tempting," Cendre admitted, his voice steady. "Gods above, it is. But take it from my perspective. There are too many questions. Doing this would mean that I would be watched. I am nothing more than a knight, a free one that would fight for his family if need be. Yet you are asking me to undertake a task that would place me in danger, to search a land I am a stranger to. I would stand out like a sore thumb."
The ice beneath their feet creaked faintly as the wind shifted.
She regarded him in silence for a moment, then spoke again.
"You would not wander blindly."
Her tone cooled into something more practical.
"I would ensure you remain within the castle's walls. You would be provided with quarters. Access. Records. Servants, if required. You would move under my authority."
Her gaze did not waver.
"As long as your actions do not sully the name of House Blanc, you would have what you need."
It was no small offer.
Protection within the fortress. Access to private corridors. Implied authority under her name. It was the kind of patronage that could elevate a lesser house or entangle it beyond recovery.
And that was precisely what unsettled him.
She was offering too much.
It made him wonder why she would extend such terms to a southern knight whose only obligation was ceremonial presence. The temptation was there, yes, but not enough to silence suspicion.
She seemed to sense his hesitation.
"I require an inquisitor," she said. "Not a brute. Not a loyal hound who will bark at the mountains and blame the wind."
Her eyes flicked briefly toward the frozen tree, then back to him.
"I require someone who can learn something from what others overlook."
Her voice lowered slightly.
"Tonight, those Snowy Lords feast and celebrate. They proclaim loyalty loudly. Yet loyalty spoken is not loyalty proven."
She stepped closer, the moonlight catching the silver strands of her hair.
"At this moment," she said, "the only man in that hall who does not care for my favor, who does not angle for position, who cares more for roasted meat than for proximity to my throne… is you."
The corner of his mouth twitched faintly despite himself.
"That does not tell me anything," he replied, "other than that you may trust too easily."
"Perhaps," she conceded. "I am taking a gamble."
Her gaze hardened once more, not with anger, but resolve.
"I cannot cleanse the rats within my palace yet. Not without proof. Not without destabilizing what remains of unity. If I am to tighten the leashes of the Snowy Lords, I must first know which of them strains against it."
Her voice regained its formal cadence.
"If you refuse. There are… other means by which I could compel your cooperation."
She did not elaborate. She did not need to.
"But I prefer," she continued, "to maintain good relations with those I deem skilled."
There it was again… that strange balance. Cold calculation delivered with measured courtesy. Not warmth. Not a threat. Simply clarity.
Cendre considered her carefully.
Other means.
He sifted through possibilities within his mind's palace.. Leverage. Obligation. Political pressure. And then at the corner of his mind, it came to him.
The Dalens owed debts to the North. Old trade protections. Military assurances granted generations ago when winter had crept too far south. Favors not yet fully repaid.
She could call upon those.
She had not yet done so.
He weighed it in silence.
To accept would mean entanglement in Northern intrigue, in a murder that had already claimed a Duke and heir. To refuse might sour relations or provoke subtler consequences later.
The frozen branches above them caught the moonlight like shattered glass.
She waited without pressing further, as though confident that silence itself would do the work.
Cendre felt the weight of choice settle heavily upon him.
Whether he should accept this… or not.
He took a breath.
"Have you planned this?" Cendre asked at last.
She shook her head once.
"No," she said. "I had already begun searching for suitable candidates to investigate the ambush that claimed my father and brother."
Her gaze shifted briefly toward the dark outline of the castle walls beyond the Frozen Tree.
"But every name presented to me carried ties. Blood, marriage, sworn fealty, shared campaigns. Connections to the Snow Lords of the North." Her lips thinned slightly. "And I cannot ask a man to hunt a wolf if he shares its den."
The wind stirred, brushing silver strands across her shoulder.
"Originally," she continued, "I intended to appoint a Central knight. Ser Byron of Highcrest. He was competent. Detached from Northern loyalties. Ambitious enough to accept, yet not foolish."
A faint pause.
"But he is missing."
The words fell without ornament.
"Disappeared shortly after my discreet inquiries reached him. I assume there was… conflict. From individuals who preferred Ser Byron dead rather than curious."
The implication settled heavily between them.
"And so," she said, her crimson gaze returning to him, "I was forced to look elsewhere. To men like you."
She stepped lightly upon the frozen ground, boots crunching against thin snow.
"I did not think of you at first. Not until reports reached me that a southern knight, fluent enough in our tongue was asking questions about the walls."
There was the faintest arch to her brow.
"Suspicious behavior," she added. "Even if the questions concerned only their origin."
He frowned slightly. "It was merely out of curiosity."
He remembered the scholar's wary stare, the way questions had been weighed like potential threats.
She inclined her head.
"Perhaps to you. But others do not think that way."
Her voice cooled, not in accusation but in explanation.
"Many misunderstand the Northern folk as merely duty-bound. Loyal. Predictable." She let out a faint breath that might have been humor without mirth. "They forget that in the founding eras, this was a savage land. Honor was not inherent here. It was made."
Her eyes lifted toward the ice-bound branches above them.
"There was a time when strength alone dictated survival. Alliances shifted like snowdrifts. Betrayal was not scandalous, it was practical."
She looked back at him.
"One could argue that the North learned honor only after the Snow Lords, in their collective shame, decided they required it during the Founding Eras. They needed a code to restrain themselves after their tiring slaughter."
The faintest smirk touched her lips, fleeting.
"And such codes can still be shed when convenient."
He studied her carefully. "And you believe I possess the means? That I am suitable?" His tone sharpened slightly. "You could have used this against me instead. That I was probing the defenses."
The suggestion was deliberate. He was offering her the truth she had implied earlier.
She did not deny it.
"Before tonight," she said, "I had my people inquire who you were. What you accomplished at the Academy. The tasks you accepted."
She spoke as though reciting a ledger.
"There is a pattern in you."
Her gaze did not waver.
"You involve yourself in matters that compel injustice to be corrected quietly. You intervene where power is misused, where smaller factions are pressed unfairly. You do not boast of it. You do not leverage it for political gain."
A faint pause.
"Your 'adventures,' as some Masters described them, frequently ended with disputes resolved and reputations salvaged without spectacle."
Her expression remained composed, though something like restrained respect flickered briefly in her eyes.
"If there is one thing I know about you, Ser Dalens, it is that you take on tasks when you believe justice ought to be done."
She did not smile fully. Only the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth betrayed that she found the consistency almost predictable.
"And so," she finished, "I decided to seek your assistance."
He let the silence stretch before answering.
"You have many means at your disposal," he said carefully. "And I am aware of them. So I agree to your request and will expect to be rewarded fully.."
She inclined her head slightly.
"Then House Blanc thanks you."
Formal with no excessive gratitude. Yet her shoulders eased by the smallest margin, as though a piece had settled into place.
But Cendre knew the truth of his agreement.
He was not doing this solely because she had appealed to his sense of justice. Nor because she had flattered his competence. Nor even because the mystery stirred that old curiosity he had tried to bury since the Academy.
He accepted because he had not truly been given the space to refuse.
Beneath her composed tone, beneath the careful courtesy, there had been something else. A quiet line that should not be crossed. A warning wrapped in silk.
She did not wish to be disappointed by him.
He could endure personal failure. He had done so before. But he could not afford to entangle House Dalens in the consequences of refusal. Not when debts to the North still lingered in old agreements and trade protections. Not when the Blanc coffers, through their northern banks, had once extended credit during lean harvests.
If she chose to press that debt, she could. Parcels of land might be contested. Agreements reinterpreted. A few coins placed in certain hands, and suddenly the law would lean conveniently in one direction.
He understood too well how the highborn operated.
The Empire favored its great houses. It granted them many conveniences over trade, over judgment, over what they could take and what they could claim was owed. And if the North demanded repayment, those who stood in debt would be expected to answer.
He met her gaze once more beneath the frozen branches.
"I will begin quietly," he said. "And I will require access to the records surrounding the ambush. Patrol routes. Correspondence. Anyone who last saw the Duke and his heir alive."
"You shall have them," she replied without hesitation.
The wind shifted again, rattling the ice encasing the tree.
The matter, it seemed, was settled.