Elohl proffered one climb-weathered hand. “Keep yourself well, Ihbram.”
Ihbram den’Sennia grasped his arm solemnly. “Keep yourself alive, Elohl. I won’t be around to do it anymore.”
Elohl choked at that, emotions almost loosed at that brutal truth. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
They shared a long moment of silent understanding, of climbs weathered, battles waged, nights huddling close for warmth, death always a thin breath away. But at last, it was time. Elohl turned, striding down the long, rain-slicked pier, leaving his truest friend behind in the mud.
Mounting the chipped gangplank just before it was taken up, Elohl settled his pack at the railing for one last view of the storm-shrouded peaks of the Eleskis. There was no belowdecks for soldiers on the vessels that sailed the Elsee, but Elohl was used to weather in the Kingsmountains. The two coarse-bearded faces from the High Brigade saluted their First-Lieutenant as they settled their packs. Two veterans with scars as ancient as Elohl's and the same empty-hard visage. Nodding, Elohl turned his face away. He wasn't their First-Lieutenant anymore. He wasn't Brigadier-Captain Arlus den’Pell's steadiest ice-ax anymore.
He wasn't anything anymore.
Elohl wrapped his oilcloak tighter, snugged the hood and hunkered upon his pack, not letting himself think any further into the future than getting to Lintesh. It was death in the mountains to think too far ahead. Weather could change, allegiances could shift, glaciers could melt. Emotions could surface and get you killed. Draping his cloak around himself, he arranged it to keep everything dry. The rain deepened as the marine crew lofted the sails and swung them about, wind driving the wet against Elohl’s beard-roughened cheeks.
If anyone had been looking, they might have thought some of those raindrops were tears. But no one was looking at a man with hard grey eyes who was no longer young, whose hands were roughened like the stone and ice they had climbed for ten years, whose weather-chiseled face could have been menacing, or placid, or sorrowful. No one was looking at a man who had drunk himself nearly to death time and time again, but whose hands were always steady when he climbed, or when he killed.
No one was looking at a Kingsman who bore the star-and-mountain Inkings, but who had never really been one.
No, Kingsman wasn’t a trade. Not anymore.
CHAPTER 2 – OLEA
Olea den'Alrahel took a single, deep breath. With eyes closed, she embraced the peace of dawn in the Roushenn Palace practice yards. One expansive moment to taste the new day upon her tongue, to hear it in her ears. A sliver of morning sunshine, just above the mountains now, streamed down through the cedars to warm her skin. Gravel crunched at the far edge of the yard as someone passed. Scents of lavender came upon the early breeze, from bushes that ringed the grounds. Mellow tones of lemon-balm, a damp smell of peat beneath the cedars. Camphor breathed out from the infirmary adjacent to the practice-yard and the trainees' hall. A fat bumblebee rumbled like an oxcart past her ear.
No voices disturbed the yards this early, none of her Guardsmen risen yet. No one to bother their Captain-General before her rounds began and Roushenn Palace needed her to be on point for yet another day.
But today wasn't just another day. Today was the day he was supposed to be discharged from service. High Brigade, a deadly assignment. A post men didn't come home from. A post where men froze to death or starved to death or fell to their death upon a climb or simply got skewered by Valenghians in battle. And it had been ten years to the day since they had last seen each other. Ten years to the day, eight of those without letters, not knowing if he lived or had perished.
Elohl.
Olea erupted into motion, banishing all thoughts. Longknives flowing in her fighting forms as if they had been born in her hands, she moved like the breeze over fields. Strong and yielding, her slices and pivots were made to cut wheat from chaff, to separate limb from joint. But for all that, they were elegant. Dancing in the morning sunlight between the cedars, Olea never needed to open her eyes. Life was in the roll, the pivot, the lunge. Death was in the cut, the jab, the parry with her unseen foe. All of it done to a slow rhythm of breath, learned so long ago that it was innate.
A sound alerted her.
The softest sound; a boot scraping dirt, but it was all she needed. She honed in upon her oh-so-quiet opponent, eyes closed, knowing where he was without needing to see. Olea never needed to see. Her ears and sense of smell were all she needed to fight with. Fenton den'Kharel had stepped into the ring with her this morning. Her First-Lieutenant always smelled of peat and honey, a light musk that spoke of decades of living rough, fighting hard, and eating clean off the land when there was nothing else, the life of a soldier in the highpasses of Alrou-Mendera.
The slide of a careful boot over dirt would have been missed by anyone else, but Olea could hear it. Sometimes Fenton didn't bother being quiet when he approached, but sometimes he did, testing her, seeing how well she could track him with hearing alone. He stepped into her striking distance, the barest crunch of dirt like cornstarch smudged by a single finger. His breath was smooth, like air moving through deep caverns. He drew his longknives as slow as he was able, leaving only the lightest whisper of steel over leather to attune her to his readiness.
Fenton closed the distance, only a creak of his leather boots betraying him. A soft dance they engaged of ripple and flow, Olea with eyes still closed. Though he wasn't one, Fenton had learned the softest killing arts, the true movements of the Kingsmen, sometime during his long years as a soldier. They fought with dual longknives, but their dance had no aggression to it. No hit, no clash, no punch, no muscle. They flowed around and through each other like water forms eddies, moving around any obstacle and tearing each other down with subtle grace.
Olea moved without a contest of strength, sliding away, curling her body around Fenton's blades as they sought to enter her flesh, rolling off his body and around for her strikes as fast as a whirlpool. And Fenton den'Kharel was just as deft, ever-causing their blades to slide past one another and for hers to never find a home in his flesh.
At last, Olea heard him step back. The crunch of his boots in the dirt was obvious on purpose, as he signaled a halt with a soft chuckle. His breath was easy and unruffled, though they had dueled for nearly an hour. Olea could see the change in the slanting light behind her closed lids, could hear the way the forest next to the wall of the practice grounds erupted more raucously into birdsong, the buzzing of a whole cadre of bumblebees in the lavender now. And the new recruits in the trainees' hall, waking to a host of young men's noise and early jeering.
She opened her eyes at last.
“Good morning, Captain-General.” Fenton had gathered both longknife hilts into one hand and was wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow with his bare forearm. His gold-brown eyes had a placid quality as he smiled at her, as if they had seen the future and the past and neither was anything to fear. Bared to the waist, his whip-lean stature was average, sword-honed sinew without any meat to spare. The morning sun picked out golden highlights in his brown hair, kept military short.
And though he seemed unnotable, the fighter in Fenton was unquestioned. The serenity of spirit that Olea's First-Lieutenant possessed was not to be mistaken, nor ever taken for granted.
“I thought you'd be up on the ramparts already.” Fenton’s gaze glimmered with subtle mischief. “Don't you have First Survey today up on the Tiers? Aren’t you late?”
Olea gathered her longknives in one hand. “Going to report me tardy, Lieutenant?”
Fenton laughed. It was a good laugh, the laugh of a calm man who kept a level head and lived for the best things in life. He lifted his eyebrows in invitation and cocked his head, and Olea nodded. They strode from the dirt ring towards the clothing pegs and the wash-trough by the palace wall near the infirmary double-doors. Olea wet a clean cloth from the pile under the eaves in the brisk water of the trough, then did one for Fenton. He nodded his thanks and they both set about sluicing off sweat.
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The day was already balmy with the height of summer, and the cool wash-water was refreshing as it sluiced down Olea's face and the back of her neck. The long rectangular quadrangle was just beginning to fill out with new recruits from the Guardsmen trainees' hall. Shadows still lengthened over much of the practice yards from the line of cedars beyond the wall on the eastern side, but those were rapidly diminishing as trainees sauntered out from their gabled stone dormitory at the far west end. Shucking white shirts and cobalt jerkins by the washbasins in the sunshine, they took to the field as young men do, pushing each other and jesting.
Olea wasn't supervising training today, but a number of them recognized their Captain-General as she washed in the sunshine. And became flustered at seeing her for the first time in short muslin training breeches that bared her from the thigh down, and a halter that left little to the imagination.
They saluted. They goggled. They flushed and said a hasty, “Captain!”
And every pair of eyes lighted on the center of her chest above the rim of her halter, at the Kingsmount and Stars inked in black. As many times as these recruits had seen it, always bared as it was above her shirt when she supervised them these past two weeks, they still stared. And even now, eight years into her tenure as Captain-General of the Palace Guard, men of her Guard who had known her from the first still stared.
Olea, not yet on duty, gave a curt, “As you were, gentlemen,” while donning her regular gear, ignoring the stares. None of her trainees were going to start trouble because of her Inking. They knew better. They had been warned what it meant to her, and what it meant in general.
That she would have their asses on the ground before they could blink if they challenged her about it.
Fenton was mostly dressed already, ahead of Olea, a half-smile of amusement upon his face. The man's demeanor might have been placid, but Olea was almost certain he'd never dawdled in his life. His calloused swordsman’s hands were just finishing his last buckle and combing water back through his dark auburn hair. He wore the Guardsmen blue, his cobalt jerkin's cross-over flap of buckles done up to the shoulder so the high collar was tight, a standard-issue white shirt beneath. His black breeches were spotless, just like his knee-high black leather boots, his sword and longknives hanging from his baldric just as they should.
Fenton glanced over as Olea finished dressing, his gaze flicking casually to Olea's unbuckled jerkin. She was supposed to keep her cobalt jerkin done up in proper military fashion so that the collar cinched closed like Fenton’s. But Olea preferred to leave it open so she could breathe. Buckles gaping to mid-chest along with her shirt, Olea displayed a decent swath of cleavage in the already-hot summer morning. But her silver pin of office as Captain-General of the Palace Guard was upon her collar on the left.
That part, she never let slide.
“Don’t they have any standards for Guardsmen these days?” Fenton jostled her shoulder as he leaned in, murmuring in her ear so the trainees wouldn't hear. It was his way of teasing. Light, subtle. Something in it reminded her of Elohl, the way he teased her so long ago, never mean, never to wound.
Olea smiled, unwinding her long blue-black curls from their messy braid and giving said curls a generous tousle, currying water through them. “I have standards for them, Fenton. If I don’t shine my boots, they just look the other way.”
“I think your boots attract the least attention, really.” The edges of Fenton's lips lifted in an amusement as his eyes flicked purposefully to Olea's cleavage, then to the recruits.
Olea looked up from sliding her longknives home in their twin sheaths on her baldric. A number of men looked away fast, blushes coloring more than a few cheeks, boots scuffing dust. They all looked so young, Olea thought suddenly, her throat gripping. Just children. Just like she and Elohl had been when they had been caught and pressed into military service ten years ago.
But these lads were here because they wanted to be. Every face smiling, every face eager to begin a new adventure in one of the most respectable and lauded positions the nation of Alrou-Mendera could offer.
There was a difference between how they began in the Guard and how Olea had begun.
A vast difference.
“All right you lot!!” Tow-haired, chisel-cheeked Second-Lieutenant Aldris den'Farahan was striding out from the infirmary towards the yard, wrapping his hands in cloth as he came, already bare-chested. “Staves! Quit staring at your Captain-General like guilty puppies that just pissed on her boots!! You think chivalry works on her? You think you're the first to throw yourself upon your sword for her love? Think again! Get moving! Hup!!”
Aldris gave Olea a wink as he whisked a quarterstaff from the rack and strode to the nearest lime-marked sand ring.
Fenton laughed at Olea's side. A good laugh, a low chuckle that was serene and true to his nature. “You're going to set a bad example for the new men, leaving your buckles undone. They'll think your mother only taught you how to be a hot mess.”
Olea shot him a sobering look, unusually moody today. “I'm always a hot mess. My mother had better things to teach me than primping, like about fighting and loyalty. And using what you have to your advantage. Observe. Fight well today, gentlemen!”
Olea roared it suddenly, a snarl of combat in her voice, the gravel of a commander. Her raised voice arrested every ear in the yard, and heads turned. A measure of satisfaction filled her, that they were all looking at her, at a Kingswoman who still commanded true for the royal house. “Fight well, and the best man at his task, as judged by your Second-Lieutenant, gets the honor of having a drink with their Captain-General in the Deephouse tonight! My treat!”
Laughs went up in the yard. A few whistles, and a few more catcalls. Olea winked at Fenton, mimicking her normally passionate and far more lighthearted mood.
“Well, you heard her, gentlemen!” Aldris den'Farahan threw Olea a salute from the center of the sand ring. And then whipped out keshar-fast at the closest recruit, dropping the man to his ass with the end of the quarterstaff behind his knees. “Get your weapons! And quit thinking about fucking our Captain!”
“I get plenty of fucking, boys!” Olea called from the sidelines. “But not by you! Get moving!”
She turned as more laughs went up, feeling the surge of loyalty from her new recruits rise along with their humor. Men needed thoughts of sex and drinking to keep them motivated while they got bludgeoned all day. As they turned to walk inside, Fenton’s sidled close.
“Kingsmen.” He murmured by Olea's ear. “Trouble, aren’t you?”
Olea smiled, wistful, as they moved into the high-gabled gloom of the infirmary. It was a joke between them, though a sobering one. Trouble was something they shared, something that had brought them together as friends ten years ago when Olea had first come to the Roushenn Palace Guard. On the surface Fenton was easy as a spring breeze and calm as a draft horse. But he was troubled, down deep somewhere, just like Olea. She could feel it sometimes. But Fenton den’Kharel didn’t talk about his past, and Olea never pried.
And he never pried into hers.
Olea turned suddenly, putting a hand to Fenton's jerkin, needing something to banish this mood she was in, her brooding about Elohl. “Tell you what, Fenton. Play Ghenje with me tonight, after my rounds.”
Fenton’s gold-brown eyes lit with a sudden fire, positively twinkling with dark mischief. It made his plain handsomeness utterly delightful. His lips were made for smiling, and they curled up just a little at the corners, teasing. “You know you’ll lose.”
“I know.” Olea raked her fingers through her long tirade of loose blue-black curls. She grinned at her First-Lieutenant, displaying a show of lightheartedness. “But somebody’s got to cheer you up.”
“I'm not the one who showed up at dawn on the practice grounds to work off steam.”
“Best two out of three.”
Fenton narrowed his eyes, piercing. Fenton den’Kharel was terribly shrewd in his quiet composure. It was one of the rea
sons Olea had promoted him. And now he saw through the sham levity and bravado she promoted, down deep to the bitter dungeon that her thoughts paced today.
“You only lose at Ghenje with me when you need some serious distraction, Olea, and you rarely come out to the practice grounds at dawn. Only when something's wrong. I know because I'm here every morning. Out with it. What’s up?”
Olea sighed. Her mood dropped like a stone, unable to be propped up anymore despite the bliss of fighting, the blithe day and banter. She pulled one longknife from its sheath on her baldric, running it over and over in her hands. Leaning against a stone column in the quiet infirmary, out of sight of the high windows that looked out onto the practice grounds, Olea resisted the urge to rub her chest.
“Elohl’s supposed to have been discharged today.”
“Your brother? Your twin?” Fenton straightened with interest, watchful. Stepping over, he came to lean beside her at the wide column.
Olea nodded, testing her knife's edge with the back of her thumbnail, curling off a small shaving. Her appearance might have been shit, but her weapons were always impeccably cared-for, just like her mother had shown her. Olea could fight naked in the rain if she had to. But she couldn't do it with dull or rusted weapons.
“I haven’t seen Elohl in ten years, Fenton. He stopped writing eight years ago. I don’t really even know if he’s alive.”
Fenton was silent a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle. “High Brigade's a tough company. If he made it two years, he made it ten. I should know. That was my company before I came here, you recall.”
Olea looked up, strangely comforted by those frank words. “Thanks, Fenton. I just… I don’t even know if he’ll come looking for me.”
Fenton paused. In a rare breach of decorum, he slid one hand out, gripping Olea’s fingers in the early quiet of the infirmary. He stood silent, gazing at their twined hands, their breach of military propriety something to be sacrificed in lieu of long friendship. “He’ll come. From what I’ve heard, Kingsmen don’t break their promises.”
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