Solace Shattered

by Anna Steffl

  When one was uncertain of how to proceed, surprise was always a good tactic. Degarius positioned the medal on the tablet, then sat back and waited. Just a few more minutes and the duty would be finished.

  She returned with a hefty book cradled in her arms. She thumped it on the table and slid into her chair. “There are several other volumes —” She noticed the medal and took it in her fingertips. Her brow creased and mouth frowned as she glanced repeatedly between it and him.

  “Do me the honor of accepting it.”

  “Your medal?”

  “I wish to discharge my debt to you.”

  She shook her head and held it out for him to take. “You have no debt with me. I can’t accept this. I know what you did to earn it. It must mean a great deal to you.”

  “It does.” He kept his hands adamantly under the table.

  “Captain—”

  “Though I have lost my sword, I have my life.”

  Her frown deepened. “You haven’t gotten your sword back?”

  “No, but I have hope I still might. What I wish to say is you were right. The king would have stopped at nothing to have my blade. If you had told him the truth, I... You put yourself at risk for me. It took great courage.”

  “I’m far from courageous.”

  “I disagree.”

  “It was only the work of a moment, what I thought right.”

  “I know it’s not the type of thing a lady wears, but you’ll keep it and remember that I’m honorable.”

  She raised a gaze, full of gentle, honest protest. In it, Degarius saw she truly knew what the medal meant to him. It was why she hesitated. The strange thing was, he’d hardly realized what the medal meant to him until this moment. It wasn’t anything he could articulate, only a profound sense that it summed the noble things he strove to be, sacrificed to be. “It would please me, Hera,” he said.

  Finally, she nodded and pinned the medal to the inside of her sash.

  He’d repaid the debt. He was free to go. He should go. But something held him to the seat. Was it that the book she’d found for him lay unopened? Now that she had reminded him of the generals’ journals, he did wish to make a study of the winter campaigns, and there seemed nothing forbidden about being with her in the archive. She was friends with the governor, had come and gone with him last night at the Feast of the Saviors. “What were you saying about other volumes? I interrupted you.”

  “There are several more volumes for the Homeland Campaign. And, the generals’ official accounts are here, as is some of their correspondence.”

  Degarius opened the book to a map rich with terrain notes, campaign routes, battle sites, and numbers of divisional fatalities. “I’ll look into those and anything you have about winter campaigns. The Gherians are planning to start the war after their Winter Solemnity.”

  “This winter? So soon?”

  At the Saviors’ Gate toll of six, Arvana put her pen down. She mustn’t be late for evening prayers. She’d already stayed past her usual time. It shouldn’t have taken so long to write the simple letter, but all the while, she kept thinking of the one she needed to send the superior about the looming war between Sarapost and Gheria.

  The captain looked up from his book. “Have I kept you late?”

  “No. I was finishing a letter to my brother’s wife in Sylvania. She is expecting their third child soon. I wanted to send my prayers that all goes well.” The superior, not understanding the nature of the rift between Arvana and her brother, had ordered her to write him. For five years, her letters went unanswered. Finally, her brother’s wife wrote.

  The captain asked, “Are you ever, under any circumstance, allowed home?”

  “Never.” It was the last place Arvana wished to visit.

  “Someone who gets home less than I. I didn’t think it possible. “

  “Where is your home?”

  “I keep an apartment in Sarapost, but my home is Ferne Clyffe. It’s in the northwest of Sarapost, close to Gheria. It used to be Gherian land. It needs more attention than I can give it from a distance. One can only do so much through the steward. But in essentials, it’s a fine place. A great lawn stretches out before the good house my grandfather built. Orchards and excellent fields rise to the left. The river runs behind it. It would please you to see it.”

  “I’m pleased with the picture your words paint.” A strange regret piqued Arvana. She never missed not seeing more of the world, of choosing Solace’s confines. But the evident love with which he spoke of his home was touchingly at odds with his often-stern appearance. It would please her to see it, and she never would, for so many reasons. He might never see it again, either. Dear Maker, with the turn of a season, the unimaginable was going to begin. She’d known all along it was coming, but with a date upon it, it suddenly seemed real. She rose and gathered her things. “Forgive me, I must go or my fellow Solacian will start our evening recitation without me.” She reached for the kithara case.

  “Let me.” He jumped up and took the handle. “It’s the least I can do for intruding on your afternoon.”

  They took the route Arvana liked best, through the wood behind the Citadel. Though it was longer, it avoided the crowded market. Still, before Arvana knew it, they’d passed through the wood and the Mason’s Gate. The imposing façade of her patroness’s home was ahead. Her spirits sank to think she might never see Captain Degarius again, especially on such personal terms. “Lady Martise said the king signed your treaty. Are you at liberty to return to Sarapost?”

  “Not yet. We have several commercial contracts to fill and, of course, Fassal wants to stay until the princess’s Coming of Age Day. I hope I’m not to draft that contract.”

  “Do you disapprove?”

  “Not in the least. I’ve just had my fill of writing contracts. Training cavalry in Sarapost would be a better use of my time. My father should have come here instead.”

  “Why didn’t he?”

  The captain’s mouth twisted. “The cavalry isn’t mine to train yet. Because of petty politics, I still don’t have my generalship. I suppose my father wanted to spare me another summer patrol after the last one ended so...”

  Arvana remembered how the last one ended. Two of his men posthumously received the award she now wore hidden under her sash.

  Mounting the steps to Lady Martise’s, the captain said, “Tomorrow I might come and look further into the book.”

  “I don’t tutor tomorrow, so I promised to help Hera Musette in her herb garden—” Arvana caught herself. He wasn’t asking her to be there. “I forget. You will be admitted to the Citadel archive in any case.”

  “I forgot. I am busy, too.” Redness, so deeply red next to his white collar, was seeping up his neck. “An engagement escaped me. When is a time you could show me the generals’ accounts?”

  “The following day?”

  “The following day. Four bells?”

  Arvana opened the door and took the kithara from him. “Four bells, Captain.”

  Inside, Arvana peeked from the foyer window. Like a boy, Captain Degarius took the five steps from the porch in a single bound. His hair swished with his jaunty step.

  As she went upstairs to her room, it occurred to her that Sarapost House was in the opposite direction. It had doubled his walk to see her home and she recalled how he tended toward a limp after exertion. What a gentleman he was. He had blushed when he claimed he was busy tomorrow. It was clear he despised imposing on her.

  She went directly to her room, sat at her dressing table, and unpinned the captain’s medal from her sash. He’d given her something dear to him. She hoped he wouldn’t mention it to Miss Gallivere. What did the captain see in the miss? It was a mystery, perhaps known only to the Maker, why a man and woman’s hearts unfolded to each other. She put the medal on the dressing table and locked her hands to pray for their happiness, but no words came. Oh Ari, is your heart so hard? He has little peacetime left. Pray he finds happiness where he can.

 
Taking up the medal again, she held it to her chest where it had hung on his uniform. She hadn’t been able to tell him she couldn’t keep possessions. It probably didn’t matter to him. He wanted to acknowledge what she’d done in the only way he could, how the military did. Would it really be so terrible to wear it hidden in her sash? As he said, it wasn’t something a woman would wear out of vanity. It would be to remember. She pinned it inside her sash again. Soon enough, she’d return to Solace and relinquish it to the treasury. She pressed her hands together. “Maker please, after this is all over, let Captain Degarius go to the home he loves.”

  MANY GAMES ARE PLAYED AT ONCE

  Three weeks later, Citadel grounds

  Fassal owes me. Degarius blotted the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Though the count of days said it was fall, it was warm as ever in Acadia. Instead of spending a pleasant afternoon in the cool of the archive doing essential work, he was sweltering on the lawn so the prince, who despised widshins, could play with Princess Lerouge. Cradling his widshins ball in the crook of his arm, Degarius squinted through the glare on his glasses to the archive windows.

  Miss Gallivere, who seemed inseparable from the princess, had automatically made herself his partner. She nodded to a large group of gentlemen who had just entered the grounds and said under her breath, “We’ll be playing until dinner if all of them insist on being in a game. I’ll be sunk long before then. May I beg a handkerchief?”

  She patted her cheeks with the handkerchief Degarius supplied and then tucked it under her belt. Damn that. Now he’d have to wipe his glasses on his uniform sleeve. They’d never come clear.

  “Where is the man with the drinks?” Fassal peevishly asked for at least the third time.

  The princess fanned herself. “Gregory, are you set on playing? I’d be just as happy sitting under the canopy. “

  “I thought you wanted to play.”

  She was about to answer when one of the young noblemen approached, bowed, and said, “Don’t you remember me, Jesquin?”

  After a moment’s perplexed look, the princess clapped and cried, “Stevas!” She introduced him as Lord Ousterhall. Flushed, she fanned her face with one hand and took his with the other. “What are you doing here?”

  Looking to the king, who was on the far side of the field, Ousterhall said, “I’m hoping to honor my country by securing a position as aide-de-camp, or perhaps in a captaincy.”

  With a smart glance to Degarius, Miss Gallivere said, “We were just remarking how delightful it is to have you joining us.”

  “Regretfully, we are too many to play,” Ousterhall replied to Miss Gallivere, but his gaze never left the princess.

  “We have room for another pair at our circle. Gregory, go ask Auntie Martise to be your partner. Just for this game. She plays well.”

  Fassal scratched his neck. “It’s all the same to me,” he said in a tone Degarius knew meant the opposite.

  Lady Martise started the game with a run of luck, bowling down three ten-point pins. “Thirty,” she said and passed her ball to Miss Gallivere.

  Miss Gallivere, hand on her hip, walked the circle to study the remaining pins. With a graceful release, she expertly rolled the ball between a ten and two twenties, taking all three. “Thirty, Captain! Your turn, Prince Fassal.”

  Was there any game at which Miss Gallivere didn’t excel? Degarius removed his glasses and as he tried to wipe them on his sleeve, pins crashed, and then pain shot through his ankle. Fassal! What was that Zadoran whoreson doing hurling the ball like that? The object of the game was to keep the ball inside bounds. Degarius put back on his glasses, hobbled after the ball, and rolled it back. “Watch what you are about.”

  After scooping up the ball, Fassal joined Degarius and looked in the direction of the princess. His mouth twitched. She was standing close to Lord Ousterhall. “My mind is elsewhere, brother.”

  “Devote a portion of it to the game, I beg you,” Degarius said. “How lame do you wish to make me?”

  “What do you think of that man? Would you call him good-looking?” Fassal motioned to Ousterhall.

  That was a question worth averting. “It’s my turn.” Degarius spun the ball from his palm. He took two twenty pointers.

  Lady Martise would need an extraordinarily good throw after Fassal’s zero. She scored forty.

  “Miss Gallivere, can you get twenty?” Degarius asked.

  She took down two twenty-pointers, fairly clinching their victory. “Forty, Captain Degarius!”

  “Aim well, Fassal, or this is your last shot,” Degarius said.

  Fassal, like an irritated child, lobbed the ball out of bounds, again. The princess, her back to the circle, didn’t notice.

  Degarius only had to take a single pin. Nothing fancy, nothing risking an out of bounds shot. The ball left his hand, and as soon as it hit a twenty pointer, Miss Gallivere was leaping at him. He had to put his arms out to receive her.

  “We’re quite the team, aren’t we?” she said.

  Degarius removed her to arm’s length. She was strikingly beautiful, a clever card player, and a good shot with a widshins ball. This game, however, he’d been playing since she was born and he wasn’t about to be maneuvered into a corner by her.

  “I need a drink.” Fassal intruded on Degarius’s reflection.

  “Be so good as to get me something, Captain,” Miss Gallivere said. “You know what I like.”

  Degarius joined Fassal in heading to the servant with a tray of punch.

  Fassal downed a cup. “I’d like to challenge that Outhouse.”

  “Challenge him to what? And Ousterhall is his name, Fassal. If you wish to challenge a man, whose name you either cannot remember or pronounce, over a game of widshins, you are a greater blockhead than I thought.”

  Fassal’s malignant look cautioned Degarius he wasn’t going to be teased out of anxiety. Degarius adopted a mollifying tone. “You forget she’s young and accustomed to the attention due a princess. She’s a good girl. After the excitement of his admiration is past, she’ll think nothing of it.”

  “Do you really think she’s a good girl?” Fassal brightened upon hearing her praised.

  “Of course.”

  “But I don’t like this,” Fassal said grimly. “You there,” he called to one of the idle noblemen, “be a good man and finish my game.” To Degarius he said, “I am going to see the armory master’s son about that pup. What a slobbering great dog he will be. I wager you ten crowns Sarapost has never seen the likes of him. Make my excuses.”

  Degarius was about to argue that it had been Fassal’s idea to play when he glanced to the princess. She was smiling radiantly at Ousterhall. Perhaps it was best if Fassal left.

  “Are you coming to Summercrest?” Miss Gallivere asked Degarius when he returned to with her punch.

  “It’s the prince’s intent, but I don’t see the point. I have a great deal to finish here before returning to Sarapost.”

  “A great deal.” Miss Gallivere shielded her eyes from the sun. A coy smile showed beneath her hand’s shadow.

  The Saviors’ Gate bell tolled half past the hour. Degarius had hoped to be at the archive by now. Having to go home first to change to a clean shirt and wash his face, he might just make it before five so he’d be there to carry her kithara to Lady Martise’s for her. To Miss Gallivere he said, “Carry on without me.”

  “We’re nearly finished. What’s so pressing you must leave now?”

  “While in Acadia, I’m looking into their archive books to compile a manual of winter campaign strategies.”

  “You can’t spare one afternoon?”

  “I have a war to prepare for.”

  “I’ll come and turn pages or take dictation. Everyone praises my clear hand.”

  “That’s good of you,” Degarius said, but the prospect of sharing the one blessed hour of the day he spent in a manner of his own choosing was unthinkable. “I have all the assistance I need.”

  “Really? W
ho?”

  Degarius hailed Sebastion, who’d been lounging in the shady recess of a door through the Citadel’s immense outer wall that let to stairs to the beach below. “Would you play with Miss Gallivere?”

  “Why leave now?” Sebastion called back. “The game is almost over. If you win, I’ll get you a drink. Be a good sport.”

  “Another time.”

  As Degarius turned to leave, Miss Gallivere caught him by the sleeve. “Be careful which books you look into at the archive. The Lerouges are peculiar about their possessions.”

  “What?”

  She smoothed his sleeve. “Consider yourself warned.”

  Changed into a fresh white shirt, Degarius was just entering the shortcut through the Citadel woods that he and Hera Solace always took to and from the archive when the bell sounded five. Damn it, he was late. But surely she would wait, or at least he’d catch her on the path.

  He rounded a statue of the current King Lerouge, donated by the Weaver’s Union. With the king looking rather tired and paunchy under the puffs and ruffles of his coat and collar, it was no wonder it had been hidden in this small clearing.

  A muffled woman’s cry came from ahead on the path. There was a note of terror in it. He broke into a run. Through the trees, he caught sight of movement. He drew his sword and pushing aside branches, plunged into the wood.

  Where could they have vanished to? The wood wasn’t that big. Degarius burst into a clear-cut path around the wall. To his right, a man was climbing a ladder up the wall. Atop the wall, was a giant of a man with a limp-bodied woman in a gray dress slung over his shoulder. Hera Solace. Degarius, the blood coursing through veins in his neck, sprinted to the ladder. The man climbing it, nearing the top, heard him and looked. He scrambled the rest of the way up. From the wall, he began to draw up the ladder. The moment Degarius reached the wall, he dropped his sword and leaped into the air. His fingers grazed the bottom rung, but couldn’t catch it.