Midnight's Knight: A Fae War Chronicles Novel (The Fae War Chronicles Book 0)

by Jocelyn Fox

  “Maybe it’ll…clip that tongue of yours,” the squire said between gasps.

  “Not a chance,” replied Ramel drily. “And I’m glad to see that your sense of humor survived the gauntlet intact.”

  “Stop…making me laugh,” ordered Finnead as he chuckled again.

  “I can’t help that you find my serious statements comical,” deadpanned Ramel.

  “I think I’m…so exhausted…that everything is funny,” gasped the squire.

  Murtagh opened the door to Finnead’s barracks room. Ramel carefully lowered Finnead into one of the chairs and the two pages got to work. In short order, they divested the bloodstained, muddy squire of his boots and after a quick discussion decided to cut away his shirt. Ramel carefully worked on cutting away the fabric from his shoulder while Murtagh ran to fetch water.

  “How long…past dawn is it,” asked Finnead, his eyes closed and his head swaying.

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you. No windows in here,” answered Ramel, though he knew why Finnead asked. If another hour passed without Squire Kieran returning to the barracks room…Ramel firmly pushed the thought away and focused on the task at hand. He spilled his healing supplies across the table, picking through them until he found a little glass vial filled with blue liquid. Finnead grimaced when he saw it.

  “That’s going to hurt,” he said tiredly.

  “Yes,” replied Ramel. As if on cue, Murtagh returned with two buckets of water from the well in the courtyard. Ramel dipped out a bowl and soaked a clean length of cloth. He pressed the wet cloth against Finnead’s wounded shoulder, trying to loosen the shirt clotted to the wound. After a few moments of diligent, silent work, he peeled away the tattered cloth, wincing at the ugly lips of the sword-wound.

  “Do you want something more for the pain?” Murtagh asked softly, steadying Finnead with a hand on his good shoulder. The squire shook his head, so Ramel went to work cleaning the wound. He didn’t particularly enjoy healing – it was messy and dirty, and the sound of another in pain made his stomach turn. But it had to be done, and if he was going to be Finnead’s squire, he couldn’t let anyone else do it.

  After he finished with Finnead’s shoulder, he silently held a little vial of pale green liquid to the squire’s lips. Finnead looked at him for a long moment, sweat standing out on his pale face; then he sighed and drank it, downing the concoction in one swallow.

  “What was that?” asked Murtagh quietly.

  “One of the apprentice healers gave it to me. Dragon’s foot and lady’s veil, he said, with a bit of arrow root.” Ramel turned his attention to the bruises on Finnead’s ribs, running his hands gently over the squire’s sides to ensure that none of the bones were out of place. “He said it’ll just take the edge off. Kind of make him relaxed, and the pain fade away.”

  Murtagh glanced at Finnead’s glassy eyes. “Can he still hear us?”

  “I’d assume so,” replied Ramel. He quickly cleaned and bandaged the long, shallow cut on Finnead’s arm. They washed him as best they could without completely invading his privacy. Murtagh even heated the water in the second bucket with a quick rune. They made a bit of a mess, dripping water onto the floor until a small lake enveloped the legs of the chair, but they’d clean it up later. Finnead’s breathing evened out into long, deep inhalations, as though he were asleep, but when they dropped their cloths into the now-black water of the bucket and dried him with a clean cloth, he reached out with his good hand and clasped Ramel by the shoulder. The page stopped and waited uncertainly as Finnead swallowed thickly. Finally, Finnead looked at Ramel and spoke.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly. “If the Queen gives me my sword, and I am able, I will take you as my squire this Solstice.”

  Ramel’s heart leapt even as Finnead frowned and glanced about in confusion.

  “Where did you put my sword?” the squire asked slowly, blinking.

  “It’s safe, right here,” Ramel said quickly, guiding Finnead’s seeking hand to the hilt of the sword, where he’d leaned it against the table. Finnead gripped the hilt for a moment, then nodded. He stood shakily, swaying as though he were drunk, but he waved away Ramel’s offered arm.

  “Thank you,” he said to Murtagh. He raised an eyebrow. “First time an apprentice Walker has helped, I think.”

  Murtagh looked at Ramel with a surprised smile, though the other page was more focused on ensuring that Finnead didn’t tear all his stitches by falling on his face as he stepped unsteadily across the room toward his bunk. The squire stopped, standing by his bed.

  “I should really…wait for Kieran,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “I’ll wake you when he returns, sir,” promised Ramel.

  Finnead nodded and lowered himself with a quiet groan onto the bed. He rolled onto his back and with a sigh fell instantly asleep, limbs akimbo and without a blanket. Ramel smiled as he tugged a blanket free and tucked it around the sleeping squire.

  “You make a fantastic nursemaid,” commented Murtagh with a grin.

  Ramel rolled his eyes and walked over to the small lake they’d created near the table. “Make yourself useful and help me clean this up.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Murtagh with exaggerated zeal. Ramel grinned and shook his head as they straightened the room. Every few minutes, he glanced back at Finnead, watching the steady rise and fall of the sleeping squire’s chest.

  “Stop staring at him,” admonished Murtagh with a grin. “He’ll be fine. You fixed him up well.”

  “That won’t stop him from getting a fever if I missed something in his shoulder or somewhere else,” countered Ramel darkly.

  “For someone with such a sense of humor, you give in to your pessimism too often.” Murtagh finished drying the floor and picked up the buckets with the dirty water. “I’m going to go dump these in the courtyard.” He paused. “I’ll check for news of Squire Kieran.”

  Ramel nodded. He busied himself by lighting a fire in the small hearth and readying leaves for tea, once Murtagh returned with more water. He reorganized his rudimentary healing supplies, made note of what he’d used, and then picked up one of the chairs and set it by the foot of Finnead’s bed – close enough to watch him, but not so close that it would be strange if the squire awoke. The knot of anxiety in his chest tightened again as he tried to estimate how much time had passed since Finnead had emerged from the forest. He ran through the different possibilities in his head. Perhaps the pages helping Kieran had taken him to a different room by mistake. Perhaps Kieran had been so badly wounded that they’d kept him there at the base of the hill – he’d heard of that happening before, but he’d never seen it in his years as a page. And then there was the possibility lurking in the darkest part of his mind, the outcome that he didn’t want to consider but was becoming more probable with every passing minute.

  When Murtagh opened the door, carrying two full water buckets and looking wearier than Ramel had ever seen his friend, he knew. A keen sorrow pierced his chest as he imagined what it would be like to lose the friend that had trained with him for years, straining toward the same goal. He hadn’t known Squire Kieran well, but he already ached for Finnead. Then he realized that someone had to tell him…and that someone would be him. He swallowed hard.

  Murtagh set the buckets on the floor by the table. He filled the small copper teakettle and hung it on its hook over the fire.

  “Did anyone know how it happened?” Ramel asked quietly.

  Murtagh shook his head. “The Knights and Guards wouldn’t say. But Knight Lochlan, Squire Kieran’s master…he looked…terrible.”

  “It must be…a shock.” The words seemed inadequate and small against the enormity of the loss. Squire Kieran, one of the best and brightest, dead in the gauntlet. “Any others?”

  Murtagh nodded slowly. “Out of the twenty-four, fourteen made it through. Eight were injured badly and didn’t complete the gauntlet but survived, and two were killed. Kieran and Daelyn.”

  A movement from the bed c
aught Ramel’s attention. With a sinking feeling, he realized that Finnead stared up at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. He stepped closer to the bed, putting a hand on the footboard as though that would somehow help. He felt helpless and awkward.

  “How much did you hear?” he asked Finnead quietly. The squire took a shuddering breath.

  “All of it,” Finnead said, so softly that Ramel almost didn’t hear him. He stared up at the ceiling for a few more moments, and then he closed his eyes again. Ramel scrubbed his hand over his face and swore under his breath.

  “He probably suspected already,” said Murtagh in a quiet voice as he stirred the embers of the fire with a copper-tipped poker.

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” Ramel replied, glancing back at Finnead. The squire actually appeared to be sleeping now – or perhaps he was just feigning it to avoid the sympathy of the pages.

  “Nothing will make it better,” Murtagh said grimly.

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Ramel sighed and walked back to the table, sitting heavily in one of the chairs.

  “I’ll go to meet…the other page,” said Murtagh. “If you’d like to stay here and keep watch.”

  Ramel shrugged. “I think it doesn’t make much difference.”

  “It does,” said Murtagh in a gently reproving voice. “One of us wants to be Finnead’s squire, and one of us is only an apprentice Walker. So it does make a difference.”

  “Fine, then.” Ramel turned his attention to his healing supplies. Murtagh placed another log on the fire and then put the tealeaves into the kettle as steam poured from its little copper snout. Ramel tried to remember the exact proportions of the antiseptic poultice that one of the apprentice healers had taught him a few weeks earlier. He lined up the ingredients and scowled fiercely at them, as though he could divine the recipe from the winking glass bottles and soft threadbare pouches of dried leaves. Spreading a clean cloth on the table, he measured out the herbs slowly and methodically, repeating the name of each plant under his breath.

  “If that’s for his shoulder, I think half that amount of maiden’s-tears, and you’ve got it right,” said Murtagh.

  Ramel shifted his scowl from the herbs to his friend. “Why must you be so insufferably smart?”

  Murtagh shrugged and smiled a little. “It’s a gift and a curse.” He retrieved the teakettle from over the fire and poured a steaming cup for Ramel. “Just wintergreen and some starcloak, for now.”

  Ramel glanced over at Finnead again. He pulled a small, delicate pouch out of his supplies and tapped it with two fingers. “In case I’m not here, and you think it’s necessary…I managed to get ahold of some white shroud.”

  “Isn’t that inventoried by the master healers?” Murtagh looked at the little pouch like it contained some sort of venomous insect.

  “I didn’t ask questions.” Ramel tucked the white shroud back into its hiding place. “And don’t look at it like that. It’s a useful tool.”

  “Until you can’t sleep without it and don’t feel yourself unless you have it,” countered Murtagh.

  “Even good tools can be misused.” Ramel yawned and sipped his tea. He cradled the warm cup in his hands and stared into the distance. Though he reminded himself that he should be mourning the loss of Squire Kieran along with Finnead, he allowed himself one small moment of glowing joy. Finnead had said he would take him as his squire. He let the remembered words expand warmly in his chest, and then he carefully shepherded his excitement and triumph into the far corner of his mind, to be revisited in less somber times.

  Chapter 14

  The building ache in Finnead’s shoulder roused him from sleep several times, but he refused to open his eyes. Perhaps if he slept long enough, the terrible reality awaiting him would somehow transform into something less heartrending. He knew that Ramel could probably give him something to ease the pain digging its claws into his body, but he didn’t want to fully emerge into the new world: a world without his best friend, a world without the training partner who’d become the brother he’d never had. He refused to open his eyes, even when he heard the pages discussing whether to wake him in low voices. One of them – probably Ramel – checked him for fever, laying a gentle hand on his brow. But he didn’t let himself stir.

  Just sleep, he told himself. Just keep your eyes closed and perhaps you’ll awaken to find it all a bad dream.

  And so he drifted, in and out of actual slumber, unwilling to awaken to accept anything else to numb his shoulder and actually make his sleep restful. A strange, detached part of him whispered that perhaps it was best that he suffer in silence, that he felt all the pain that Kieran could no longer feel, cold in the ground. He drifted into an uneasy sleep, plagued with hazy dreams of searching for his lost friend in the clinging white fog of the gauntlet.

  When he next surfaced close enough to wakefulness to hear voices, he realized that the two pages were arguing over something. Or someone.

  “We said we’d meet her after the evening meal, not that we’d bring her into the barracks.” That was Ramel, trying to keep his voice down and mostly succeeding, though it sounded as though the page hadn’t gotten much rest either. The edges of his words were a bit ragged, frayed with exhaustion.

  “She demanded to see him, and then she followed me,” protested the other page…no, apprentice Walker now.

  She? Finnead let himself drift a little bit closer to actual wakefulness. His shoulder throbbed with a deep, relentless pain, but he pushed it aside, focusing instead on the voices. Firelight flickered against the dimness of his eyelids. He felt the faint heat of the hearth against the left side of his body, and as he reached out with his other senses, he heard the whisper of cloth on cloth that told him someone had moved slightly, perhaps shifting their stance or crossing their arms.

  “I’m standing right here,” said a familiar voice that sent a little shiver down his spine. Even without opening his eyes, he knew it was the princess.

  “I know,” said Ramel with a bit of condescension in his voice. “But I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Murtagh.”

  “Well, you should talk to me,” snapped Andraste haughtily.

  “If you tell me I should talk to you because you’re the princess, then I’m going to very firmly escort you out of the barracks,” Ramel replied. “Here, you aren’t the princess. Here, you’re a pageboy who’s acting big for his breeches.”

  Finnead wanted to chuckle at the page’s brazenness, but he remembered his damaged ribs along with the fact that he was supposed to be sleeping and suppressed his amusement. Instead, he listened for the rest of the conversation.

  “I’m in disguise,” said Andraste in an offended tone. “I am not a pageboy too big for my breeches, and I am indeed…”

  “I swear by all I hold dear that if you say what I just told you not to say, I’m going to call Balaron myself,” interrupted Ramel resolutely.

  “You wouldn’t,” said Andraste, but Finn heard the doubt in her voice.

  “He’s not awake, anyway,” interjected Murtagh. “Just like I told you.”

  “What, you didn’t believe Murtagh?” asked Ramel.

  “It’s not that I didn’t believe him,” Andraste said defensively. She paused, and then her voice softened. “I just…I wanted to see him myself.”

  At that, Finn caught his breath. Had he really heard the change in her voice? Why would the Princess be so interested in him?

  For the same reason as a handful of other ladies are eagerly awaiting the Queen to give you your Knight’s sword, said a wicked voice in the corner of his mind that sounded very much like Kieran. I’m sure that a few of those ladies would have gladly broken your vow of celibacy.

  Through the haze of pain and exhaustion that blanketed his body, Finn still felt a little shock of surprise. Yes, he’d admired the white curve of the Princess’s throat as she dined with the Queen at the high dais; and true, he’d felt his body heat strangely when she stepped close in the passageway outside the Qu
een’s Courtyard. He’d admired her pluck and skill with a staff in the training yard, even as the Vaelanseld had thunderously advanced on her. Some part of him had known that he was attracted to her...but he’d locked that part away. It was a dangerous and futile game to vie for the romantic favors of one so much higher in the Court than him. Now…to think that she might also find herself drawn to him…that seemed as impossible as Kieran’s death. With his eyes closed, Finn thought that perhaps he should have felt some earth-shattering exhilaration at the notion…but he was still left with the aching emptiness of grief.

  “Well, now you’ve seen him,” Ramel said, his voice, too, a bit gentler.

  Finn heard the whisper of cloth again, followed by the sound of light footsteps. A cool, soft hand touched his brow, as though checking for fever, but Andraste let her touch linger for a long moment.

  “Apparently she didn’t just want to see him,” Ramel said under his breath to Murtagh.

  “He hasn’t awakened at all?” Andraste was so close that he felt the minute breeze created by her movement as she turned back to face Ramel.

  “No,” replied Ramel.

  “Is that…normal?” She sounded concerned. He knew he should be flattered, but he just felt that cold gray despair, coupled with a rising discomfort at his own physical state of weakness.

  “He took some wounds, and then he also found out that Squire Kieran died in the gauntlet,” said Ramel, sounding weary. “I don’t rightly know if it’s normal, but he doesn’t have a fever and the wound isn’t festering. If something goes truly wrong, we can fetch a healer, and they’ll come to the barracks.”

  Finn heard Andraste sigh softly when Ramel mentioned Kieran. A strange spark of anger kindled in his chest: what did the Princess know of such loss? He didn’t want her pity any more than he wanted that of the pages.

  “May I come again tomorrow?” asked Andraste, moving away from Finn’s bedside.