“The gardens around the palace have a certain kind of vegetation that only blooms in fall,” Nyad said. “Pharesia is far enough south that winter’s touch is not that painful, but when they prepare the gardens for winter, it is an impressive sight … for the few days when it freezes, they make ice sculptures and fill the grounds with them. And at the smaller palace outside Termina, they used to-” Nyad’s broad face carried a smile that faded as she looked around and settled on Martaina, who stared evenly back at her. “Well, it was beautiful. Though I suppose that’s gone now,” she said with a touch of sadness.
“Longwell?” Cyrus asked, and the dragoon seemed to settle into deep thought.
“Vernadam sits so low in the land that summer lasts longer for us than it does for most of Arkaria,” he said. “Winter is a short affair, a few months only of lower temperatures, and a very quick autumn to bridge between the two.” He shrugged. “I spent time in my youth at Enrant Monge and in the northern parts of Galbadien and found them to be very different than life at Vernadam. Autumn in the north is like winter at home.”
“What about you?” Aisling spoke up, dragging Cyrus out of his quiet. “What do you miss most about autumn at home?”
Cyrus pondered that for a moment. “I don’t, I suppose. I mean, Sanctuary’s been home for the last couple years. Before that I was living in the slums of Reikonos, where every day is the same, even the ones where the snow goes to your knees. Before that …” he shrugged. “Still in Reikonos, all the way back to when I was at the Society of Arms.”
“So,” Nyad asked, “you don’t have any distinct memories of autumn? Nothing?”
After a moment’s thought, Cyrus shrugged. “We went on a training exercise to the Northlands once in the fall, the year after I joined the Society. It was almost as much a camping trip as anything, to get us familiar with staying out overnight, sleeping under the stars. But they took us away from the city for this one, on a long hike, aided by a wizard for transport. I remember seeing the leaves change. You don’t see much of that in Reikonos, because it’s not like Termina; there aren’t many trees in the city itself, it’s mostly houses and buildings. I remember that pretty well, the hues of the leaves, how different they were from the green ones I was used to seeing. Trees all down the road and beyond.” He hesitated. “I think that was the training exercise where I finally got the Able Axes to leave me the hell alone.”
“Able Axes?” Nyad said, her brow puckered with confusion.
“Blood Family,” Cyrus said. “The Society of Arms splits its trainees into two separate classes, the Able Axes and the Swift Swords.”
“Ah,” she said, with a subtle nod. “They were bullying you, then?”
Cyrus shrugged, felt the cool breeze. “They had their reasons. It’s all very competitive, very ‘us vs. them’ in the Society’s structure. They saw me as an easy target, so they took their turns trying to break me.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t work.”
“What did you do?” J’anda asked. Cyrus looked around; every eye was on him, even Martaina’s, which was decidedly knowing.
Cyrus waited before answering, sifted through his emotions to see if he could find it, a thread of regret for what had happened. It was strangely absent. “I killed their leader.”
Nyad choked on a spoonful of stew, and a little of it sluiced out of her upper lip, dribbling down her pale chin and along the cleft. “I’m sorry … you killed him?” She waited for the nod, then looked around, wide-eyed, to the others sitting around the fire before she came back to him. “How old were you?”
“Seven, I think,” Cyrus answered, racking his memory.
“My gods,” Nyad said, holding her bowl apart from her as though it contained something appalling. “How old was he?”
Cyrus gave it some thought. “He was about … oh, I don’t know, sixteen or so? Perhaps seventeen.”
Nyad stared at him, gaping. The look was not held by anyone else, though Longwell watched him sidelong, wary, and J’anda seemed disquieted, his teeth visible in a grimace. “Why did you kill him?” Nyad asked.
“Well,” Cyrus said, “in fairness, it was a training exercise, and it was Swift Swords versus Able Axes, and while we were supposed to keep it non-lethal and strictly to more of a ‘tag, you’re out’ system, he didn’t play fair. So I killed him.”
“Oh,” Nyad said with a distant sort of nod, “so it was an accident.”
“No,” Cyrus said, and took another sip of his stew, “I knew full well what I was doing. I bludgeoned him with a tree branch until his head split open.”
“But …” Nyad’s voice came again into the quiet. No one else was eating now. “… You did it for your team, then? To win the game? For the … Swift Swords?”
“I wasn’t on the Swift Swords team,” Cyrus said, and this time he did feel a pinch of emotion, but he took another sip of the stew anyway.
“So you killed your own teammate?” J’anda asked, watching him carefully.
“No,” Cyrus said and finally felt the burn of it. He looked to his left to see Aisling watching him, curiosity in her eyes. So she doesn’t know, either. He looked to Martaina. But she does. He slowly looked around the circle and saw only Scuddar In’shara nodding in agreement. “I was on my own, you see.”
There was a steely quiet that was finally broken by J’anda. “I admit my understanding of the Society of Arms is somewhat … flawed. But I was given to understand that every single child brought in was given a Blood Family-for kinship, for a familial structure and familiarity.” The enchanter spread his arms wide. “For support. So that even while learning the hardness of battle, you are not ever fully alone.”
“True,” Cyrus said, and put his patera aside, the stew now gone. “But occasionally an inductee is deemed unworthy of having a Blood Family and is separated out to survive on their own.” He felt a tightness in his jaw. “I was one of those.”
There was a silence. “But …” J’anda said, “they would have all been arrayed against you, yes?” He stared at Cyrus, and there was a horror behind the enchanter’s eyes. “They base everything in their training off of Blood Families?” Cyrus nodded. “Every exercise pits the Blood Families against each other?” J’anda kept on, and Cyrus nodded every time. “So if you are without a Blood Family, then you huddle with the others who are without one? Make your own sort of small circle?”
Cyrus smiled, but there was no warmth to it. “It’s a rare thing, being without a Blood Family. I was the first in five years. The one before me died two months into the training. Typically ‘outcasts,’ as they’re called, don’t survive six months.” He gave a slight nod. “And I do mean survive. They’re usually found dead in the morning hours, well past the time when a resurrection spell would be able to bring them back.”
“Murder,” Nyad said with a quiet whisper. “Nothing more than child murder.”
“Aye,” Longwell said, arms folded where he sat on a log. “That’s pretty savage, even for a guild that trains warriors.”
Cyrus shrugged. “If you know that’s how outcasts die going in-and they do tell you, by the way, probably as a suggestion to the Able Axes and Swift Swords, but I took it as a warning to me to be scarce during the nighttime hours-it makes it that much easier to avoid that sort of death.”
“Barbaric,” Nyad said, shuddering. “Absolutely barbaric.”
“I’m certain that back when Pharesia had a Society of Arms, they did it the same way,” Cyrus said lacksadaisically. “But it’s all rather irrelevant now.”
“How is this irrelevant?” J’anda said. “How did you survive? Most don’t make it six months? You were there for … twelve years?”
Cyrus shrugged. “I fended them off. I did what I did on that training exercise after the first year and gave the Able Axes a string of injuries that made them afraid of me. And I held the Swift Swords at bay until Cass Ward came of an age to keep them off me.”
“He was your friend, then?” Aisling spoke up at last. “Cass? He�
��s an officer of The Daring, right? But he was your friend?”
“No,” Cyrus said with a slight smile. “An outcast lives and dies alone in the Society of Arms. They’re not considered of the Society, you see, not part of the family. So you’re not allowed to talk to them. But he respected me because we fought together. We didn’t speak until after we graduated; but I did know him. Friends? Hardly. I didn’t have friend until …” Cyrus swallowed heavily. “Until Narstron. Or at least Imina, if you want to count her as that.”
There was a deadened silence after that, a quiet that settled on their party that no one seemed to want to break, so Cyrus did it himself. “Come on. This was all years ago. I don’t feel sorry for myself about it, so none of you should, either.”
“Sorry,” J’anda said, with a weak smile, “it’s just … uh … that is truly appalling. It might take a bit of adjustment to get over that. I’m no stranger to the cruelties that others may deal out, but that … is a special sort of disturbing, if I may say so.”
Cyrus felt a cool settle over him, like the waters deep in his soul became placid. “It was life. It made me who I am today.”
“The only one without a Blood Family to ever graduate the Society of Arms,” Martaina said from behind the stew pot; her gaze was not accusatory, but something else, her words tinged with slightest awe. “To survive being an outcast.”
Cyrus shrugged. “You do what you have to. It was just a day-to-day struggle, like everyone else experiences in life-” He held up a hand to stop Nyad’s protest, “a different level of struggle, perhaps, but a struggle. Everyone has adversities. I made it through, and we don’t really need to go sift it. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t faced what I faced then.”
“And they do teach you how to be fearless?” Longwell asked, perked up with interest. Cyrus saw the others, as well, easing up, paying attention, waiting for his answer.
“As close as they can get,” Cyrus said. “They expose you to it, over and over, things that scare you, and it just gradually fades away, like night turning to day. Snakes, bugs, battle, blood, everything, all the major things. They talk about fear all the time, how it can hurt you, how it can make you flinch. Fear is death on the battlefield, the surety of injury and failure because you’ll hesitate at the wrong moment and it’ll cost you.”
“Interesting,” J’anda said, as though he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “I believe … I have reached my end for the evening. With a nod to each of them, he spoke once more. “Good night, all.”
“I should probably turn in as well,” Cyrus said, and stood, grasping his patera.
“I’ll wash that for you if you want,” Martaina said from behind the cauldron. “I have to stay awake a little longer anyway, and I’m going to take care of the cauldron before I go to bed.”
“Sure,” Cyrus said and set it next to her. Aisling did the same a moment after him, and he walked behind a tree, about twenty feet from the campfire, where he had set his bedroll alongside Aisling’s.
“You never had a friend until after you left the Society?” She watched him closely as he took to a knee, preparing to brush himself off and remove his armor. Her hand rested on his shoulder, and he could only just feel her touch through the metal.
He pulled the snaps and freed his neck from the gorget, then slid his pauldrons off before unfastening his breastplate. “It’s true.”
Her hand was on his chainmail now, and he could feel the lightness of her touch as her slightly elongated fingernails rose to his neck and applied the gentlest of pressure. “No lovers either, then?”
He shook his head. “Not until Imina.” He unsnapped his greaves, then slid off the chainmail pants and shirt while she watched. He looked at her, gauged her expression. “You’re feeling sorry for me, aren’t you?”
“Not too bad,” she said with a whisper. “More sorry that you didn’t have much of a life for all those years. That you didn’t get to feel so many things …” Her fingernails danced down the cloth that still covered his chest, and she tugged it up over his head, then ran her fingers down his chest hair, gently pulling the strands. “Like making love in the autumn woods as the leaves fell down around you.”
“Oh?” He took a look around, and a breeze came rustling through, shaking a few leaves loose and causing one of them to land in her hair. “It would appear to be autumn now, and leaves are falling around us.”
“You caught that too, huh?” She didn’t bother to pull the leaf out of her hair, just left it there as she kissed him. Even through the activity that followed, it stayed there as though some sort of badge until the breeze kicked up the following morning and it was carried it off on the winds in a way that Cyrus’s past never could be.
Chapter 72
The towers of Vernadam were higher than Cyrus remembered, as the castle appeared on the horizon the day after they passed over the bridge at Harrow’s Crossing. The former battlefield had been quiet, the dead all cleared and few reminders to show that there had even been a clash there some eight months earlier. It was a clear day, with little of the chill that had been so prevalent farther north.
They rode through the town at the base of the hill that Vernadam was built upon, and it was quiet as well, as though everything had died down after the harvest. There were no soldiers, no women plying their wares outside the inn. The market was much less active than when last they had been through, and by the time they were climbing the switchback road that led up to the castle, Cyrus wondered if Galbadien’s army was even still stationed in the area.
At the castle gates they met no resistance. Guards saluted Longwell, who led the procession. “It would appear we are expected,” J’anda said.
“They watch the roads,” Longwell said. “No one gets this far unless they’re wanted. Apparently, my father is amenable to my visit.”
There was a stir at the far side of the courtyard as they rode in, and Cyrus saw Odau Genner’s bulk coming down the long stairs that led up to the keep. He was flanked on either side by guards with polearms.
“Hail, Odau Genner,” Longwell said as he handed the reins of his horse to a stableboy. “How fare thee?”
“I fare well enough, Lord Longwell,” Odau Genner said, “though I admit my surprise to see you.”
Longwell frowned at him. “Surely you were apprised of my journey here by your spies.”
“Oh, certainly,” Genner said, making a sweeping bow as he reached the bottom steps. “We knew of your crossing all the way up at Gundrun. That you came at the head of such a small force while your army remains engaged north of Enrant Monge was of some interest, however.”
“You know that they are engaged in battle, then?” Longwell asked. “Do you know what they battle?”
“Some form of creatures,” Genner said slowly, “or so the rumor goes.”
“The reports your spies give you about my passage through our land are treated as certainty,” Longwell said, his fingers hanging upon his prominent chin, still smooth from the shave he had given it that very morning, as Cyrus watched with some amusement. “Yet the words of your spies about a threat that will swallow our entire Kingdom whole are said to be rumors. Very interesting, your somewhat schismatic approach to gathering intelligence.”
“Well,” Odau Genner said, nervously, “we have had several descriptions, but of course His Majesty says-”
“You need not acquiant me with what ‘His Majesty’ has said about the whole endeavor,” Longwell said dryly, “for I suspect that it will be almost as nonsensical as an army of the living dead sweeping south out of the mountains, killing every living thing in sight. Of course,” he went on, “at least the latter has the actuality of truth on its side; whatever my father has said has only the grounding of a throne and crown that count for less and less as the days go by.”
“That … is a very … unkind thing to say about your father,” Odau Genner said.
“It’s also fairly accurate,” Longwell said. “I have need to speak with the King. Is
he about?”
“He remains in his throne room,” Odau Genner said. “I am told that there are quarters prepared for you, that you may wash the dust of your journey off, and that you may then be seen for dinner. If you would care to follow me,” Genner said with a sweep of his hand.
Cyrus gestured for Longwell to lead the way then followed up the long, wide stairs that took them into the foyer, the massive tile and marble entry to the castle. Stewards waited, taking each of them in turn. Cyrus followed his and felt Aisling shadowing just behind him. He turned and saw Martaina beyond, her sharp eyes looking in all directions at once, head swiveling around to keep watch on everything. He started to ask her if she expected an ambush but dismissed the idea; only a fool would not be paranoid here, especially given how we parted last from the King.
They wandered through the corridors, following the stewards. No guards were in sight, something Cyrus thought slightly odd, and it increased to his worry. They were led along the back side of the castle, to the hallway where Cyrus had stayed during his previous visit. He felt the bite of tension as the steward led him straight to the door of the suite where he had stayed when last he had been at Vernadam, and he turned to give Aisling a hopeful smile. She seemed unaffected, cool, still there at his left elbow, just behind him.
“Your room, sir,” the steward said. He was a teenager, but his voice was high like a eunuch’s, and Cyrus didn’t pause to ponder that possibility too deeply.
“Thank you,” Cyrus said, and gestured for Aisling to enter first. “I don’t need a tour.”
“Very well, sir,” came the high-pitched response. “I’ll be back for you in two hours, when dinner is about to be served.”
“Thank you,” Cyrus said, and shut the door.
Aisling was already slinking around, her shoes padding on the marble floors as she examined the tapestries near the window. “Very impressive,” she said. “Much better than my accomodations last time I was here.”
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