Solace Shattered

by Anna Steffl

  The governor wore a mask of confusion. “I thought...you were watching...”

  Watching? Him? Oh hell, he had been staring. Degarius shook his head.

  The governor awkwardly stood. “Forgive my mistake.”

  Degarius rose, too, and extended the flask. “A fine brandy, sir.”

  As the governor moved a few steps away, Degarius saw that the Solacian had been watching. She showed neither the anger nor shock of a betrayed woman; it was pure pity. She knew what the governor was. She was his friend, but certainly not his lover. Though it had all been so damnably awkward, Degarius smiled to himself, felt like getting up and moving about. He rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, skirted the bonfire and dancers, and went to the river’s edge. Boats from upstream jostled in the current. His was long gone. What had he pledged? Courage, honor, and perseverance. Hera Solace was courageous. She’d risked her life to try to save his sword. A measure of Degarius’s happiness left him as he remembered the night at Lady Martise’s. How had he rewarded her courage? With anger and suspicion. She once thought him good; what must she think of him now? What a blackguard he was.

  The music stopped. Miss Gallivere darted from the circle of dancers and linked her arm through his. Her breath was warm on his neck. “Change your mind about dancing?”

  He narrowed his eyes on her smirking lips. She was the one who had insinuated about the Solacian and the governor. “Not about dancing.”

  The exhausted dancers kicked through the sand back to their seats and eagerly partook of glasses of sparkling wine. Poor Keithan, Arvana thought as he sat back beside her as if nothing had happened. What a life to be always pretending. If only she could have warned and spared him.

  “We must play a game now. Truth or Torture,” Miss Gallivere said, drawing Arvana to the moment she both looked forward to and dreaded. The one person who would forestall her plan to test Captain Degarius with the relic was gone; the king had left to make appearances at other bonfires along the shore. She doubted he could consent to play her game, but his image, though it was one of his youth, was stamped on Acadian coin. The Scyon might recognize him and learn the location of the relic.

  Arvana raised her voice. “I have another game. One you haven’t played before.”

  “You have a game? It should be quite amusing,” said Miss Gallivere.

  “Perhaps we should hear what the game is,” the princess said. “We can play Truth or Torture next.”

  Arvana rose and prayed for the Maker to forgive the lie she was about to tell and all those that would follow. “It’s a Sylvanian game, a game about what you most deeply desire.” The women twittered with anticipation. “Not your profession or what you’ve been born to be, so gentlemen must remove their coats. Princess, you must take off your coronet. Put your things behind you.” Arvana lifted the headband from her temples and drew the head cloth from her hair. It was a breech of conduct, but necessary to hide her identity. The setting was innocuous enough. Feast of the Saviors bonfires were everywhere in the Easternland tonight, but Keithan’s Acadian reds, Captain Degarius’s black coat, the princess’s coronet, and her own head covering were clues Arvana didn’t want to give The Scyon.

  Captain Degarius, thanks be to the Maker, took off his coat.

  Arvana gave her veil and headband to Keithan, who stowed them with his coat. With an eye to him, she pulled the locket from under her habit and eased the chain over her head. Had Lerouge told him about it after the night in Summercrest’s garden? She doubted it, but wanted to be certain. Keithan paid no special attention to the locket. It was a secret bond between Lerouge and her as it had been between Paulus and Mariel, the Founder. “Here are the rules. Be silent while a turn is taken. During your turn, clear your mind, look into the stone, and see what your heart shows you. After I close the locket—and only after—tell what you’ve seen. At the end, we guess who had the courage to speak the truth. Who wishes to go first?”

  Several eager shouts went out, but Arvana deferred to the princess. She stooped before the girl, raised her hand for silence, and then pressed the locket’s latch. She watched the girl closely, just as the superior must have watched her, and every other novice, when they kissed the open Founder’s Relic to pledge to the Solacian order during the Engagement Ceremony.

  “Oh, how unusual,” the princess whispered but showed no sign of distress.

  Arvana held her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  After staring into the swirling light for a moment, the princess raised her large, luminous eyes and smiled. Arvana closed the locket. “My heart’s desire is to marry for love,” the princess said.

  “No one can doubt the truth of what you say,” said Miss Gallivere.

  Arvana moved to Prince Fassal who said he wanted half a dozen children. The princess laughed adoringly.

  Keithan. Arvana dreaded subjecting him to the game for two reasons. Whatever was in his heart, he surely couldn’t speak it. And, he might be able to use the relic. Would he buckle to Prince Lerouge’s command and use it against the Orlandians? Without a hint of emotion, Keithan looked into the stone, then into Arvana’s eyes. She closed the locket. “Hera, I want no more casualties in the Orlandian Occupation,” he said earnestly.

  No one laughed. They knew the length of the last casualty list Keithan had brought. Relief flooded Arvana that he couldn’t use the relic.

  She moved along to Sebastion. He was rubbing his knuckles over his pockmarked cheek and darting his gaze between her and the closed locket. It was unlike him to seem uneasy. She had watched him play cards. A master of deceit, no matter his hand, he had always looked smug and satisfied. Perhaps he, like Keithan, held a secret close to his heart. Whatever it was, she didn’t care to know. He was one of Chane’s friends.

  Sebastion shifted in his seat to get a better look into the relic as she lowered her hands before him.

  His features went as stiff as a corpse’s.

  Please Maker, let it not be him. Even if he could use it, she wouldn’t consider giving it to him.

  He broke his gaze from the relic, looked up at her, grimaced, and slouched deep into his slumped shoulders. “I believe I just saw my luck change for the worse.”

  It was pitiful seeing him crumple into himself. Life had been cruel to Lord Sebastion. It had gouged his face and family fortune. Was it his fault that he had been reduced to making his living by wagering with those who could afford to lose, to ingratiating himself by wit when his looks could not recommend him? Arvana regretted her dislike of him. It was uncharitable. “Lord Sebastion, you didn’t look with a hopeful heart.”

  He gave a cynical smile. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  She nodded and sidestepped to the next person, glad that Sebastion couldn’t use it but unhappy that her game had brought him pain.

  She tried several young ladies and gentlemen. No one saw anything except the blue swirl.

  At last, she stood before Captain Degarius. Her heart raced. With his coat off, she noted the hilt on his hip wasn’t Assaea. It would have been best if he could have gotten it back, but perhaps it wouldn’t matter if he could use the relic. Before opening the locket, she prayed it would be he. He was a brave and good man. At Ramblewood he’d offered his cloak for her to sit upon and then again to wear in the coach. Those were simple gestures, but a man’s honor resided in his smallest acts as well as in his largest.

  Miss Gallivere tilted her head toward the captain’s, as if she could share the captain’s vision if she looked in the stone with him.

  He fixed on the swirl. Was he seeing something? He was so strong maybe it didn’t affect him as it did her.

  Finally, he glanced away. Arvana shut the relic and closed her hand over it. Her pulse throbbed in her throat. What would he say?

  “Well?” asked Miss Gallivere.

  Staring at Arvana’s closed fist, he answered, “A ring.”

  A ring? Arvana in disbelief stayed rooted to the spot. “Nothing more? Are you certain?”

  He sh
ook his head.

  A glowing Miss Gallivere shot Arvana a conquering smile. “What’s in your heart now Hera Solace, or do you refuse to play your own game?”

  “I...I don’t—”

  “Doesn’t the Maker speak to your heart? Will you deny us a glimpse of the divine?”

  Arvana shuddered. The Blue Eye showed those things farthest from the divine. She didn’t want to use it here, now.

  “Come, we long to be inspired. I—”

  “Miss Gallivere,” Captain Degarius said in a sharp interruption.

  Arvana felt to melt. He’d come to her defense.

  Laying her hand on the captain’s leg, Miss Gallivere looked to him. “Don’t you long to know the sweet things wrought by such sacrifice as hers?”

  “Those are private matters.”

  “As are the things we all said.” Miss Gallivere laid a daring look on Arvana. “Truly, an inspiring word from you, and I would cast aside my worldly ambitions and don your humble dress.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Hera, would it be so much to take a turn?” the princess pleaded for Arvana to end the merciless badgering.

  Arvana opened her hand to the closed locket, but didn’t need to look into the stone to know that disappointment was in her heart. Captain Degarius couldn’t use the relic. It was over, yet she couldn’t give up.

  There was one last hope.

  Perhaps the captain could be made to wield the Blue Eye like Chane. Or would he become a Prophet, a man whose mind was cracked by the journey into Hell? There was only one way to find out. She had to pretend to play the game.

  She pressed the latch, and the locket’s swirl lit her palm. She stood fast despite the feeling her body was being pressed from all sides. The burned smell stung her nose, and then the swarm of dead spirits appeared. She had to ignore them, had to remember Lerouge’s translation of the book in order to read the captain’s life aura. She refocused on him. His life threads flowed around her living body, over her hands, over the relic. She fixed on the golden threads surging between her fingers. In the deepest part of her being, she asked the question, Myronan Degarius, would you be a Judge or a Prophet?

  The aura’s threads wove into a sepia-colored image that curled around to engulf Arvana. Color suddenly bloomed. She was in a handsome bedchamber with a large bed but the room stank of the stale stench of a sickness. The bed dwarfed a curled human form who laid with its back to her. Was it man or woman? Its bony shoulder jutted from the blanket. She looked closer. Cropped light hair matted to the being’s skull. The figure mumbled, twitched violently, and the cover sloughed off. His splendid frame was little more than a skeleton. She covered her mouth. It was the captain. He looked like her father in his last wretched days. Unbidden, her memory resurrected the fetid rank of a human past control of his body.

  He would be a Prophet, one broken by the relic. She couldn’t make him use it. Then it occurred to her that he was Lukis, if he got his sword back. Did that mean Chane must be Paulus?

  She closed the locket. A wave of warmth enveloped her, and she felt as if she couldn’t get a breath. The air was chokingly hot. No, don’t faint! Not here...

  Hera Solace’s eyes fluttered open and lolled in confusion. With a jerky, uncoordinated movement, she tried to get up. Degarius held her tighter in his lap. “Wait.”

  To his relief, the deep black of her eyes steadied. Then, as they searched his face, they brimmed with the purest happiness. Not with lust or need. Just simple joy. He ached with the pleasure of seeing it.

  “You’re well,” she said

  Degarius smiled at her strange, confused words. “I’m not the one who fainted.”

  Suddenly, her brow contracted. “What?”

  “You fainted,” said the governor who was standing nearby. “You were in the bonfire’s smoke. Luckily, the captain caught you.”

  As Hera Solace made sense of what had happened, she turned her face from Degarius and with a voice heavy with humiliation said, “I am so very sorry.”

  “It was nothing.”

  The governor took her hands and helped her to stand.

  “She must have looked into her heart and seen something quite unpleasant,” Miss Gallivere whispered into Degarius’s good ear, but he paid her no mind. All he could think of was the joy in her eyes, the sensation of her weight on his thighs, the softness of her body in his arms...and the void he felt with her gone.

  Damn it, Degarius, you know what she is.

  Honorable. Persevering. Courageous.

  Good.

  A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE

  Slaughterhouse Row, Shacra Paulus

  The pounding on the door of his lodgings in Slaughterhouse Row came in the middle of the night, as it had every night since Sebastion made the vile bargain for 2,000 crowns. He’d started to sleep in his breeches, for there was no avoiding answering. The pounding would go on and on until the landlord came to see what was the matter. It had crossed Sebastion’s mind to move, but there were thousands of longshoremen in Acadia and they all seemed to know one another, and rent was seldom cheaper than in the Butcher’s District, where the smell of feces and the blood in the gutters kept rents down. He needed every spare coin to keep decent clothes.

  Tonight, though, he wished he’d moved so at least he could have had one night, not for sleep, but to consider what he was going to do. He wished he hadn’t gone to the Feast of the Saviors tonight, wished she hadn’t held the locket under his very nose. What an odd locket it was; surely it was the one the longshoreman sought.

  “Open up,” shouted a voice loose with cheap liquor.

  “For Hell’s sake, I’m coming.” Why did it have to be the Solacian, the woman the prince loved? Surely there was some dark side to these men hunting for the locket.

  Sebastion rose and unbolted the door.

  The longshoreman ducked his head to enter and pushed in past Sebastion. “I trust you had a fine Feast of the Saviors with your fancy friends, my lord.”

  “I can get you 500 tomorrow.” Sebastion prayed his luck at the tables would change.

  “I’m not interested in your 500 crowns. Our deal was for a woman and a locket.” In the trickle of moonlight coming from the open door, Sebastion saw the glint off a wicked-long knife.

  “I’m trying. A locket isn’t the easiest thing to find. Many women wear them under their clothes.”

  “Then maybe you should start undressing more of them, though for you, that might be a problem, between keeping quarters on Slaughterhouse Row and your brush with the pox.”

  At the cruelty of the longshoreman, his implication that Sebastion was too ugly to get his hands near a woman, he reached to his face and without thinking, gouged one of the pits with his fingernail. Hearing the humiliation in his voice, and despising himself all the more for it, he said, “Then give me more time.”

  “I’m getting tired of waiting. You should have thought this all through when you made the deal.”

  “I’ll find her for you. I’m a man of my word, or else no one would game with me.”

  “And I’m a man of my word. Try my patience too long, and I’ll take your head instead of hers.”

  “Instead? You’re going to kill her? I didn’t know that was part of the deal.”

  “It’s a part of the deal that doesn’t concern you.”

  Sebastion swallowed, though he feared he’d choke on his own dread. If he didn’t reveal the Solacian, the longshoreman would kill him. If he did, and Chane somehow found out, his head would sit on a stake for the birds to devour. “I’ll find her.”

  VALOR IN SERVICE

  The Citadel Archive

  A heavy tread echoed off the archive’s floor. A Tierian monk usually came this time in the afternoon, but his was a soft, barefoot shuffle. Arvana, drafting a letter to her brother’s wife, lifted the stylus from the wax tablet.

  “If you’re busy, I’ll come another time,” said a deep voice with a rolling accent.

  Arvana dropped the stylus. It
was Captain Degarius. She wanted to dive under the table. She’d fainted into his arms last night. But she collected herself. Perhaps he had come to give her news of his sword. She turned and somehow rose to greet him properly. “I’m only finishing a letter.”

  He was out of uniform, dressed in an old-fashioned, yet gentlemanly way—a billowy-sleeved white shirt, green vest, buff breeches, and the buttery brown boots. She’d not have thought it possible for him to be more handsome than he was in his black captain’s garb. Yet the snug vest showed the exact width of his shoulders and chest. And the breeches...

  With a glance to his vest he said, “As you see, I have no official duties today.”

  Arvana’s face burned, and she cast her gaze to the floor. He had seen her inspecting him. “So this is not an official visit?”

  “I’m officially here, but not on Sarapost’s business. Are you recovered?”

  “Completely.” She turned to the table, absently closed the tablet, and waited for him to say something else, mention his sword, but he was silent. But he couldn’t have come to the archive just to loom there. The archive. How forgetful she was. She brushed her veil behind her ear and faced him. “You’ve come to read the generals’ journals I told you about. I would be happy to show you where they are.” The Archive was two floors, had dozens of nooks and hundreds of shelves.

  He looked puzzled, but then said, “I should make a study of the War of the Homelands.”

  “I’ve seen an excellent account of it with maps and diagrams. Would that interest you?”

  He nodded.

  “Please sit and let me get it.”

  After she’d turned the corner out of his sight, she leaned against a wall and dropped her head back to rest on the stone. She wanted to be a shacra. What shacra thought of a man’s breeches? With Chane, his insuppressible expression of his feelings led her perilously close to vanity and lust. The Maker knew she repented those failings with her whole heart. But Captain Degarius? Her sinking shoulders scratched against the rough stone. Oh, Ari, what foolishness to think of him that way. She peeled from the wall and smoothed the front of her dress. Get the man his book. He was waiting. She went straight to the third alcove, the second bookcase, bottom shelf.