by Anna Steffl
Though Degarius might find fault here and there, the speedy methods of Acadian manufacture were impressive. He hadn’t believed Teodor’s promise to deliver three thousand shields, but that was before he saw this shop and the hundred men working it. In Sarapost, a shield shop undertook nearly all stages of the work, making it a slow process. Acadian guilds were highly organized: one tanning and cutting leather to specification, one hammering the bosses, another supplying the wood. Everything came together for assembly at Master Teodor’s.
Teodor ushered them into his office. “Sit, sirs.” Carpets and tapestries dulled the noises of the shop floor. Most curiously, three kitharas embellished with ivory, jet and rosewood inlays, rested in stands. “Seeing as how the governor general came back on a plank, everyone expects Lerouge to be hard-fisted.” Teodor cracked his knuckles. “I honestly cannot promise you more than what I have already completed.”
“What would that number be?” Fassal asked.
“A thousand.”
Degarius emitted a low whistle. “Our contract calls for three thousand.”
“What incentive is there for me to fill your order?” Teodor raised his bushy brows. “I’ll certainly be called upon to arm my fellow men.”
“You signed a contract—” Degarius began.
“Contract? No magistrate in Acadia would bat an eye if I disregarded it for the time being, given the circumstances. I might owe you a percentage fine.”
While Fassal uncrossed his legs and leaned on the desk toward Teodor, Degarius had the sinking realization that the death of a single man, Governor Keithan, and the resulting cries for vengeance threatened not only to unravel moons of their work, but Sarapost’s security. He understood the Acadian outrage. Killing the king’s representative was something near slaying the king himself. A whore’s pox on Orlandia. “What percentage compensation do you propose to offer for breaking your contract,” Degarius asked.
Before Teodor had the chance to haggle a stivner, Fassal said, “We’ll have time to discuss that next week after we return from Summercrest.” In an obsequious tone, he added the question, “Do you play kithara?”
“As a hobby. Now, I offer five percent—”
“Who made these kitharas?” Fassal asked.
Teodor glowered and pounded his fist. “Five and a half is as high as I’ll go. Not a fraction more.”
Fassal rose and took the ivory-decked kithara from its stand. He held it to Teodor. “Would you give us the pleasure?”
Teodor looked at him suspiciously, but loosened his fist and took the instrument. “It’s just a hobby.”
“It’s a beautiful instrument. I’d like to hear it played, but I have no talent and Degarius has even less.”
“Well.” After minutes of pinging, tightening and loosening pegs, followed by more pinging, Teodor played a country air.
Fassal burst into applause. “Fine, very fine indeed. Do you know Lady Martise? She’s my aunt. She sponsors a Solacian who is an expert kitharist. I’d wager you are her equal.”
Degarius crossed his arms. What in all hell was Fassal about with this blatant flattery? War was imminent. They had a contract to fill, or at least secure remuneration for its breach.
“Our Ladyship Martise is your aunt?” asked Teodor with evident interest.
“Captain Degarius and I have taken enough of your time, Master Teodor. We’ll talk again after we return from Summercrest. Perhaps circumstances may change in that time. Will you be so good as to play another Acadian air for me?”
This time, Teodor obliged without being asked twice.
Upon leaving the shop, Fassal shook his arms, as if shaking off dirt. “Every now and then, Degarius, you show some of your father’s tact. Today was not one of those times. You nearly spoiled it with Teodor, piddling over compensation.”
“What? Nearly spoiled? I absolve myself from the charge. The whole thing struck me as spoiled before we walked in the door.”
“Only because you have no finesse.”
“If you recall, I didn’t ask to be your counsel here. I’m not my father. My time would better be spent in Sarapost preparing.”
Fassal seemed not to hear. “The fellow may be worked upon by offering what his money can’t buy him. Perhaps you didn’t note the expense of his rugs and tapestries or see his face when I mentioned our jaunt to Summercrest and my aunt? No, I think we might reach a deal at nearly no expense except for a dinner and a slight breach in propriety. Now, what say you to stopping into the club for a glass of wine before dinner?”
Degarius shook his head.
“No? Why? Are your dusty books waiting?”
“They are. But I think I might draw for an hour.” At last, it was a fine cool autumn day with a light breeze out of the north.
“Brother, you can draw me at the club while we drink our wine.”
“Another time, Fassal.” After not finding her in the archive the day the governor’s body came back, then her attending the funeral services, he hoped she would be back to her usual routine. During the procession, he’d not had the chance to make his condolences and wished to make amend. Too, it was a fine day to draw. If he didn’t take advantage now, he’d soon not have an hour to spare.
Good, she’d returned to their usual routine in the archive. Hera Solace always sat in the chair by the pillar. Degarius placed his leather satchel on his side of the table. He knew he should begin with something sympathetic, but what? He’d done this more times than he wished to recount, but she wasn’t a fellow officer’s widow. Still, the same words as he always used must suffice. “The other night, during the procession from the docks, I wanted to tell you Governor Keithan was a fine man and of great service to Acadia.”
She looked up. Though her eyes glistened, her expression kept its dignity.
As a captain, he always began these visits by presenting the dead officer’s regimental flag. This time he’d had to devise his own token. He unbuckled his bag, opened it, and took out the red Tierian prayer scroll. “I can’t imagine the monk’s prayers are any better than yours, but will you write something for the governor?”
She took the scroll solemnly in both hands. “This cost you a fortune.”
Degarius shrugged. It had cost a fortune.
“The Tierian high priest himself will offer and burn it,” she said. “He’s a holy man. I’m honored to send my humble request through him.”
“If you write it now, we can give it to the monk who usually comes today.”
She nodded, unrolled the scroll, and then inked a pen.
While she wrote, Degarius wondered if she’d consent to his plan for the afternoon. If not, he could stay in the archive, but it wouldn’t be half so pleasant, and she looked like she sorely needed an hour of pleasantness. Every line she wrote seemed to wilt her a bit more. Had illness kept her from the archive the day the governor’s body arrived? He was about to inquire when she turned the scroll to him. Did she want him to read it? He wasn’t one for prayers, but at the imploring look in her eyes, he took it up.
The first lines were what he took to be a Solacian prayer for the dead. Then, there was a line about how both sorrow and joy must exist at once in creation’s vast scope. He read his own name. Maker, bless Captain Degarius and Miss Gallivere’s engagement. May this time of happiness be only a prelude to greater joy. “What?” he cried and dropped the scroll. “Is this a joke?”
Her eyes were luminous, wide, and her gaze was fixed on the scroll. Damn it, he’d raised his voice. She muttered, “I only wished...I wanted to offer you my congratulations.”
It wasn’t a joke. Degarius exhaled and more calmly asked, “Who told you this?”
“The lady.”
“That we’re engaged?”
“Perhaps she didn’t say it exactly, but I’m sure she implied it.” She repeated the gist of the conversation.
Degarius adamantly shook his head. “A long time ago I decided against that life. I’ve written too many letters making wives into widows t
o ask it of any woman. Surely, you understand. It’s incompatible with my profession.”
“I would think that if your sentiments lay with her, you would respect her decision to accept the risk. However, I cannot presume to know your heart.”
“It’s not with her. We were thrown together because of the princess.”
“But the ring...”
“Ring?”
“At the Feast of the Saviors. “
“What?”
“You looked into my pendant and said you saw a ring. I thought...she thought.”
Degarius rested his hand over his glasses. Now he remembered. Damn it. “I don’t play games. I was just looking at your hand, at your ring.”
“My novitiate’s ring?”
“I must set the girl right—” He peered through his fingers. Hera Solace’s shoulders were shaking and she had cupped her hand over her mouth. Damn, it, was she crying? No, there were no tears. “What’s so amusing?”
“I...forgive me these last days have been...”
He dropped his hand to the table. “Are you laughing at me?”
“I was thinking I might give you joy...on avoiding an engagement.”
“You disapproved?”
“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove.”
The Tierian monk, padding barefooted, raised a hand to them in greeting. She suddenly sat straight and solemn. She took the pen again and drew through a line of writing. “There. You’ve given me a gift. You must let me return the gesture in the only way I can.”
Maker bless Captain Degarius and Miss Gallivere’s engagement. May this time of happiness be only a prelude to greater joy.
This time of happiness? What was there to be happy about in Acadia? He’d lost his sword. He should be in Sarapost overseeing the cavalry train. The greater joy was certainly in being a general. “You would pray for my generalship?”
“I already do.”
Degarius didn’t want anyone praying for him, but the thought of her, on her knees at night, having him in her thoughts, brought a lump to this throat. Damn it. He drove the thought from his head and while she presented the scroll to the monk, he carved a white line into his portfolio with his thumbnail and reassured himself that there was nothing improper in what he was going to propose—it was a simple case of being there instead of here. When she returned to their table, he swallowed the fullness in his throat and said, “For a change, I thought to draw for an hour at the beach below the Citadel’s wall.” It was heavily guarded and just a short walk across the Citadel lawn. During the widshins game, he’d spotted the door and stairwell leading down to it. It wasn’t the most picturesque beach, but it seemed like an extension of the Citadel, of the archive.
“The beach sounds lovely,” she said, but he caught her dejected glance to her usual chair by the pillar.
Had she refused or misunderstood his intention? He stood and slung his bag over his shoulder. “If you care to go, you’d be back in plenty of time before dinner. Your instrument will be fine here. We’ll come back for it.”
“Oh.”
Sand slipped under Arvana’s shoes as she followed the captain over a dune to the beach. After so many days of grief, was it wrong to leave the archive for an hour in the fresh air and sunshine, to think how good it would feel to walk through the surf? Though she’d been in Acadia all summer, she’d not once put her toes in the sea.
Off-watch Household Guards mechanically cast their lines from the end of the long stone jetty. The captain sat on the low beach end of the jetty. After rolling up his sleeves, he took a tin of crayons, a board, and paper from his bag. He affixed the paper to the board and positioned it on one knee, holding it vertical with his left hand.
She stood behind him to watch. His hair was even more striking in the sunlight. In the crisp-scented sea breeze, the black ribbon tying it fluttered against his white shirt. Funny, when she first came to Acadia, she thought the sea smelled of dead things. Now, it only smelled fresh. She lifted her face to the sun’s warmth. Sorrow brought one close to the Maker, but so did beauty. She never felt closer to being a shacra than when she lost herself in the unending blue of the sky. As a girl, she would lie in the grass, stare into the sky, and imagine the Maker lifting her into the beautiful blue.
“Would you sit there?” The captain’s voice dashed the perfect blue from her mind.
“Pardon me?”
He pointed to a place just down from him on the jetty
“If it bothers you that I watch, I’ll stand away,” she said.
“I didn’t come here to draw the landscape. Wait.” He put down the board, pulled a sketchbook from his bag, and flipped to a drawing of the Tierian monk at the archive. “He sat for me the day you didn’t come. It’s my hobby.”
“This is more than a hobby.” The captain had perfectly captured how the monk’s inward peace shone through slit-like eyes. It dawned on Arvana that the captain meant to draw her. The monk had no compunction at having his image made. “We have icons of our shacras and superiors, but I’m neither...and I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“You’ve never been drawn? Your family had no keepsake made before you left?”
“No.”
“Sit as I say.”
She sat to the side, her hands in her lap, her head slightly turned, and her gaze trained along his right arm to his chin. He worked with his drawing arm held nearly straight. A long, white scar ran beneath the soft covering of hair on his forearm. Most of the time he was serious, concentrating on his work. Occasionally, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, and she guessed some bit of his effort was to his satisfaction.
“Look up just a bit, Hera.”
Her eyes met his. They were the blue of the sky’s oblivion, the blue that opened her soul. Maker, could that intense, unwavering scrutiny see all the way inside her, how her heart crashed unbearably against her chest? She fidgeted and looked away. “Forgive me. I’m not used to being looked at. People stare at me all the time, because of my dress, but not at me.”
“I’m working, not staring.”
“Ah.” She took a deep breath. She’d been foolish and vile. He was working. She’d never think on it again and not look at him, whatever his request. She would enjoy the day simply as she should. Perhaps meditate. She turned her eyes to the sky – but the color! Could she ever look into the sky again without her memory seeing his eyes, without the terrible disquiet in her chest? Instead, she fell to watching the fishermen cast and recast their lines with patient gracefulness until a silvery fish snapped at the bait. Then there were the gulls picking at sticks, seaweed, and the refuse of the sea. They were a study in incongruity. On land, they were silly, waddling comics dressed in the most somber gray, black, and white uniforms. When they took to the air, what different beings they were—artful creatures gliding on the wind with easy precision.
He laid the drawing board flat on his thighs. “Do you want to see?”
She hesitated. Would it be forbidden, like looking in a mirror? Or would it be encouraged, like looking at an icon? One thing was certain. It would wound him it she didn’t look. She resolved to look on it like any other picture and have no thought of vanity.
She touched the paper. It was of fine quality, like the papers the monks made on the other side of the Solacian valley. He hadn’t drawn her in the notebook. “Your drawing is elegant, fluid.”
“You don’t like it.”
“How can you think that?”
“People seldom like their pictures. They look in the mirror and only see their good or bad features and not the complete image a drawing forces them to see.”
“That may be, though I’m not in the habit of looking in mirrors.” The woman in the picture looked wistful, not at all serene like the icons of the shacras. She flushed to remember what her thoughts had been while sitting before him. “This isn’t Hera Solace.”
“I’m not an iconographer.” Gruffly, he sat the board aside and packed his crayon in the tin.
> “Captain, I’m not a fit subject for an icon. The picture is of Ari.”
“Ari and hera aren’t the same?”
“Certainly, I’m hera as you are captain. But in Shacra Paulus, I am Hera Solace. It’s a formal, honorary name, but a name of no one in particular. It’s as if we’re all one and the same woman to them because we wear a gray dress. Here, only to Musette am I Arvana...and in this picture I’m Ari.”
He looked perplexed.
“It would be as if because of your black coat, the Acadians thought they already knew everything to know about you. They’d never see the Myronan who drew this picture—forgive me for using your childname.”
“I’m not averse to hearing it, but I’m more accustomed to Nan.”
Perhaps it would be wrong to tell him, but it was so lonely always being Hera Solace. “I’m Ari. My family...inside my head, I’m Ari...if you wish.”
He carefully sandwiched the picture between two clean pages in his notebook and began to pack the satchel. Though he said nothing, she knew he was happy. His neck and cheeks were rosy. She felt unaccountably restless and remembered her desire to walk in the surf. The guards started gathering their tackle. If she didn’t act quickly, she too would be bound for a return to usual duties.
She removed her shoes. Though the day wasn’t hot, the powdery white sand was. She gathered the hem of her habit and delicately walked to the fine, compact sand on the water’s edge. A tingling cold wave frothed over her feet, then retreated. She laughed. Another swept in. How delightful. She dug her toes in and the next wave buried her entire foot in the sand. Bits of shells danced in the retreating water. She looked back to shore. With crossed arms, the captain was watching. Her delight washed from her like an outgoing wave. After she’d posed for an hour so he could practice drawing, couldn’t he oblige her with five minutes? She turned to the sea. Dear Maker, she shouldn’t care if he didn’t see the small things that mattered to her. Wave after wave crashed.
