by Anna Steffl
“You remind me of a soldier in my last regiment. He had a philosophical bent. Perhaps our professions—” Suddenly, he brushed past her, his black cape catching in his wake. Ahead, the trail split in two around a table-like stone slab. He peered down each path. “I can’t tell which way they went.”
Arvana dropped the leaf she’d absently rubbed raw. It wasn’t hard to chaperone one girl, yet she’d failed. Why had the superior trusted her to choose the relic bearer?
His back turned to her, still looking down one of the paths, he said, “This is my fault.”
“I should have paid closer attention. I’ll take one path.”
“No. You don’t know the grounds. I’ll not have everyone lost.”
“We should call for them.”
He shook his head. “The guards will come. That won’t end well for anyone. We’ll wait here. You have my word that the prince is honorable. They’ll be back soon.”
She sighed. “The princess is young and impulsive.”
“She is full young; I have thought so myself.”
Arvana wondered at his comment. Miss Gallivere was only recently of age and the captain could pass for her father as readily as her suitor. It was hypocritical of him not to see her as full young.
Jesquin thrust out her hand. What a pretty hand it was. It would be even prettier when it wore his ring, Fassal thought.
“I win, Gregory. I told you we could escape. Where’s my coin?”
Fassal shook a coin from his purse. She pinched it from his palm and held it temptingly before his nose.
“Would you like to try and win it back?” she asked.
“Or lose another?”
“I bet you can’t answer my history question. I’m an authority on the subject.”
“An authority? What period of history?”
“Ancient history. Upon penalty of death, answer true, Gregory. Have you ever loved a woman? No names, of course.”
By choosing his definition of love as one beyond the physical and with the potential of ending in a legal bond, Fassal could answer honestly. “Even without the penalty of death hovering at my throat, I will answer true—not until I reached Acadia.”
“Well answered.” She put the coin back in his hand. “Now, you must let me try to win it back with another question. Did you know I have never kissed a man? Really kissed.” Her eyes sparkled with expectation.
“Then add this moment to your history.” Fassal grasped her hands and pulled her close. Her lips parted eagerly, inviting him to them. As he kissed her, deep and hard, he counted himself the luckiest man in the world. She’d enticed him to the woods for a kiss. He pulled away and looked down on how her breasts raised with each breath. He lifted a brow. “Was it what you imagined?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you must kiss me elsewhere, too, before you give me back my coin.”
He eyed the delicate earlobe hung with a swaying gold earring, the tempting curve of her neck, and the supremely enticing heaving breasts. Please let it be the breasts, he prayed, then grazed his forefinger over the plush flesh peeking from the top of her dress. “Here?”
“There.”
Blessed Maker. The coin slipped from his fingers and he cupped her breasts in his hands and pushed them upward so that they nearly spilled from her bodice. Body and mind throbbing with desire, he bent and nuzzled his face into the warmth, pushed his tongue into the soft valley.
She giggled. “Your whiskers tickle.”
Pausing for a breath, he looked up at her smiling face.
“I didn’t say stop,” she said and, lacing her fingers into his hair at the nape of his neck, gently guided him back to her chest.
If time stopped and he was left for an eternity to lie upon the pillow of her flesh, so be it.
“Oh, that is lovely,” she cooed, and then her hands lighted on his shoulders and began to press downward. He resisted, unwilling to let his lips part from their pleasure, until she added, “Elsewhere, too.”
“Elsewhere? Where on the map is elsewhere?”
“The very center of the map, silly. I have heard splendid things happen when one is kissed there.” A hand drifted from his shoulder to pull up the hem of her skirt.
Before his wits departed him completely, he listened for anyone approaching.
Silence.
He owed Degarius mightily. As he went to his knees, the yellow of her dress completely filled his vision. “By the Maker, I love you,” he said.
Like opening a curtain to admit the beauty of dawn, she raised her dress. “I love you, too, Gregory.”
Degarius’s feet had not bothered him until they stopped walking. In truth, he hadn’t noticed them at all. Now, his heels ached. They might as well sit while they waited. He unclasped his cloak, folded it so that the medals were to the top and side, draped it over the rock’s edge, and then sat beside it. The Solacian remained standing. Did she not understand his intention or had he violated some bizarre Solacian rule that men and women might walk, but not sit, together? He extended his hand toward the cloak. “I thought we might sit.”
She hesitated, looking from her dress to the cloak. His cloak was a much finer fabric than her dress, and she probably didn’t want to spoil it. Damn, this was all so awkward. Why in the hell had he engaged in that bizarre conversation about professions? How had it even started? He should have stuck to weather. Fassal owed him mightily. He gestured again to his cloak.
“You’re too kind.” She sat.
First she thought him a good man, and now kind. She was deluded, naive.
Through the gap in the canopy, the sky showed clear blue. “It will be cooler tonight. No cloud cover. Light breeze.”
“For Valor in Service.” She was reading aloud the inscription on his medal. “This is what you received for killing the creature?”
“I can’t say for certain I killed it.”
Her fingers hovered over, but didn’t touch, the stag’s head with a mother-of-pearl full moon in its open silverwork antlers. Her wrist was fine, seemed so delicate in contrast to the coarse gray weave of her sleeve. How could a simple dress make one want to stare? He didn’t look any farther. It might not be their rule in public to avoid a man’s eye, but it didn’t make it any easier for them to accept it. He’d made that mistake at the Provincial Meeting when she was studying his sword and then again when she commented about him looking like a Solacian. It had obviously embarrassed her. Though these Maker’s women might move in public, they didn’t want notice. Living in society had to be especially hard for her. She was handsome. He didn’t need a second, or rather, a third look to confirm that.
“What was it like,” she asked, “fighting it? How did you find the courage?”
Before he realized it was happening, he found himself looking into her earnest, questioning eyes. They were a muted green, a familiar color, the color of a river, of the deep pool in which he swam at Fern Clyffe to relax after a long day of work in the fields. “Pardon?”
“How did you find the courage to fight the creature?”
“Courage? You do what you must.”
“Would you do it again?” she asked.
His artist’s eye took in how the gauzy, gray veil fluttered over her soft cheeks. “I would do it differently.”
Her full lips made a perfect circle as she asked, “Why?”
“Two of my men received the same medal posthumously.”
“The philosopher soldier?”
The strange daze of the last few moments dispersed. “How did you know?”
“You spoke of him in past tense.”
“It was his first patrol, and I meant to make it his last, for him to go on parade duty in Sarapost. But he had a way with the horses so I took to him Sandela. The other was my longtime lieutenant. He rowed the boat onto the lake for me.”
“I’m sorry for your losses.”
He shrugged. “It’s part of the profession. You can’t take it personally.”
“So it is at Solace. Friend
ships are discouraged as attachments to the world. We aren’t to mourn when a hera passes.”
Perhaps she was right; they weren’t so different. Into his mind came a picture of her sitting on the rock but not on his cape. She was wearing it and for some reason, it pleased him. It had to be all the talk about professions.
Her voice drifted into his imagination. “The script on your sword was unusual and spectacular. I have never seen a like example. Might I see it again?”
“See my sword?” A touch to the cold hilt of his new sword dispelled the vision and moment of happiness. “You’ll have to ask King Lerouge for it.”
“The king?”
“As a goodwill gesture to start our negotiations, he required it—to give to his son.”
“The prince?”
From behind Degarius came a girl’s chipper voice. “We have been looking for you this past age. Why did you stop here?” When the princess came before them, she flew to the Solacian, who looked as ashen gray as her dress. “Oh, Hera! You didn’t need to worry about us. The prince was a Frontiersman, and we were only in Ramblewood forest, not the dangerous Borderlands. I promise we’ll not get so far ahead again.”
Flakes of damp leaf meal stuck to the knees of Fassal’s breeches, and he wore a brainless, giddy smile. What in all hell had they been up to? It was damnably obvious something had happened. At least the girl’s dress wasn’t soiled, or at least not the front of it. He wanted to wrap his fist in Fassal’s shirt and shake the stupidity out of him. He’d sacrificed his sword so that Fassal had a chance at marrying the girl. If she gossiped and her father got wind of this tryst, it was all for naught. He couldn’t imagine the disgrace that would befall the Solacian. Degarius picked up his cloak and draped it over his arm. “We should return.”
They resumed their walk. Fassal and the princess were notably more leisurely in their pace and cheerfully oblivious to what their transgression might cost others and themselves. The Solacian, dwelling on her failure as a chaperone, was quiet. He should have stayed on the porch. They wouldn’t have left her alone in the woods. Any discussion seemed preferable to her silence. Weather was an exhausted topic. He came back to her profession. “How can every Solacian be known as Hera Solace? It’d be confusing.”
“Acadians address the ranking Solacian here as Hera Solace. I am Arvana.”
“That’s your family name?”
“Ah...no,” she stammered at the awkwardness of misunderstanding that his question was not personal. “Nazar is my ancestral name. In Solace, we use our child names, as family would.”
“What does your child name mean? It’s unusual.”
“My father’s family immigrated from across the sea. My name is from an old foreign tongue. Aris means ‘blue’ and vanadre ‘a gift.’ When I was born, the cord was about my neck so I was blue. My father said he remembered the color blue by the sky and that...he lost his sight when I was a small child. Anyway, my family calls me Ari.”
The princess spun around. “You never told me your name or that story.”
“Now I have, Princess,” the Solacian replied with a shrug.
The princess pouted at him. “Pity Miss Gallivere isn’t here. Her name is Esmay. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? What shall we tell her your name is? Or are you only Captain Degarius?”
“Beg pardon?” Degarius couldn’t help but look over his glasses. Divulging one’s child name was a mark of familiarity. It had been years since he offered it to a woman.
The princess’s eyes widened and her mouth hung open like a fish’s on a hook.
“He never hears half of what I say to him,” Fassal said and laughed uneasily.
Degarius counted himself no great hand at understanding women, but he could tell it surprised Princess Lerouge that not everyone cared to indulge her every whim. He was in no mood to soothe her feelings after the little escapade she and Fassal pulled.
The princess turned around and said in a voice purposely loud enough so that Degarius would hear, “Well, Hera Solace gave her name.”
Hera Solace gave it to him. If he owed his name to anyone, it was to her. Since she imagined him a perfect monk and that the Maker had a special grace for him, she might enjoy his name. “Myronan,” he said to her. “My name is Myronan.”
Her frown crept into a smile. “It means holy place.”
“Gherians don’t have surnames as southerners do, so on immigrating to Sarapost, my grandfather Stellan took the name Degarius. My father should have known Gheria and holy place are two names that don’t go together.”
“I’ve met your father. He’s a wise man.”
“Even wise men have their foibles.”
Miss Gallivere came away refreshed from her headache. She confessed it was strange, but that it was often the case with her ailment. As they gathered around the coach to depart, she said to Arvana, “Hera Solace, sit on our side of the coach this time. I haven’t talked to you in ages.”
The age would continue. Though she sat next to Arvana, she said nothing to her. Miss Gallivere had merely shrewdly observed Jesquin’s trick from this morning—a third person on the seat made for closer quarters.
Arvana welcomed the respite from speaking. She’d said enough today. No one needed to know her child name. But it was the least of her worries. She kept her face resolutely to the window. As the horizon turned to a dark silhouette, she tried to untangle the business of the captain’s sword, but the knot became more convoluted as she pried at it. If she had told the truth in the first instance, the king would have certainly gotten his sword by wile or malice. But he’d gotten it anyway and Chane, when he saw it, would know what it was. Chane. Would he be good to his word and turn the sword back over to the captain if he could use the Blue Eye? And if she had told the captain this afternoon what his sword was, and he was foolish enough to try to reclaim it, not only was his head in jeopardy, but hers as well if he disclosed her duplicity. Chane might forgive her lie—the king would not. But wasn’t it the captain’s right to know the full glory of what he’d done? That he’d killed the draeden.
Thanks to Lady Martise, she would have one more chance to tell him face-to-face. As the lady left to attend her ill friend, she announced her intention to open her home for the first time since her husband died. She would host a ball in honor of her nephew Gregory. But beneath everything was a wretched truth: the potential champion to take the Blue Eye no longer had the necessary sword. How could he not be the champion? He’d killed a draeden, and even his name was a sign.
Miss Gallivere’s jostling drew Arvana from her thoughts.
“A chill is settling in.” Miss Gallivere was reaching under the seats. “Ah, here are the throws.” One she gave to the princess; the other she draped over herself and half of Captain Degarius. She wished to hold hands with him in private, Arvana guessed, as it wasn’t remotely cold. Jesquin and the prince would be holding hands beneath their blanket, too. Would Lady Martise reprimand them? No. A marriage between her nephew and niece was the lady’s fondest desire. Arvana settled into her corner and noted the evening star was out when Miss Gallivere again stirred.
“What are you doing?” Miss Gallivere cried at the captain who was leaning forward, half standing, in the cramped coach.
He was removing his cloak. He extended it past Miss Gallivere. “Hera, the sky is clear. It’ll be cool soon.”
His fine cloak? She knew she should refuse it, but it seemed impossible. He held it with a military manner—he hadn't offered it; he’d ordered. She gathered its collar in her hands and tucked it under her chin. How different it smelled. Not like the heady perfumes everyone in Acadia wore. She wanted to bury her face in it, breathe so deeply that the scent itself would whisper the words that described it so that when the exact memory of the smell had faded, she’d have words to summon it partially back. Eyes closed, she raised the collar to her face and inhaled. Still, no words came. It was simply his scent.
She exhaled, dropped the collar to her throat and opened her ey
es to a hatred she’d twice before seen directed at her. Miss Gallivere’s glare burned with the same fierce passion as Chane, as her brother Allasan’s.
PUNCH
Lady Martise’s house
“Go to the music room,” Lady Martise told Fassal. “We’ll have a charming little entertainment before the dancing begins.” To Degarius she said, “I hope you are prepared to enjoy yourself this evening, Captain.”
“I am, lady,” Degarius said honestly and wondered at how little aversion he’d felt toward this ball.
Following Fassal, Degarius threaded through the guests in the music room.
“By the Maker, old man,” Fassal stopped and elbowed Degarius’s ribs, “over at the punch bowl. There’s Miss Gallivere. She’s stunning tonight. It would do a man good to run his fingers through that hair.”
“It would, but I haven’t decided if the pleasure is worth the price.”
“You think too much on sums, brother.”
“That wasn’t your opinion this afternoon over the contract for supply carts.”
At the punch bowl, Miss Gallivere, handing Degarius a cup, smirked at the full completment of medals on his dress uniform. “Why Captain, you fairly jingle when you walk.”
Something in her voice made the remark sound closer to ridicule than good-natured teasing. Before he could decide her intention, the door on the far side of the music room opened and the princess and the Solacian, carrying a kithara, entered. Degarius knew Hera Solace lived with Lady Martise, but he’d debated if she’d attend a ball. She sat and cradled the kithara in her lap. Damn, the room was close. Restlessness twinged in his forearms and hands. Just as he raised the punch to his lips, her gaze lifted from the kithara and met his with a gentle glint of acknowledgment; her eyes were dark and glossy in the candlelit room. His exhale swirled from the cup back out at him, warming his face.
“My mother is here,” Miss Gallivere whispered. “You must meet her.”
The punch Degarius was swallowing went down the wrong way. He coughed violently into his sleeve.
