Solace Arisen (14 page)

The housekeeper held the coat out and Arvana slipped into it. “It fits well. You’re much the same height as the mistress. She never wore it much. Her mind failed that last winter, and we had to keep her close.”

“Keep her close?” Arvana put the gloves in the coat pocket.

“She took to thinking my master, Lord Degarius, was her husband, Stellan. If we didn’t lock her in her room at night, she went banging on his door and crying that he didn’t love her. Why didn’t he kiss her? If he went out to ride, she thought him going away to war, and she’d run out into the snow in her stocking feet after him. We had to keep her close.”

Arvana felt even stranger wearing Lina’s things. What a raw reminder seeing her in them must be to Degarius, just as the memories were for her that the coat had triggered. She regretted her bitterness to him at dinner last night over her misunderstanding of his reaction to Lina’s dress.

“Anyway, I suppose they’ll be waiting for you, Miss.”

Degarius’s father was entering the foyer as Arvana descended the last step. He stopped where he was and gazed at her open coat, at the necklace, then explicitly at her hand. A melancholy expression creased the corners of his eyes.

Every bit of common sense had told Arvana not to wear Lina’s jewels. It pained her to wear them and him to see them on her. She began to wrench the ring off. “It must be your mother’s.”

“Lord Degarius told me to give them to her,” Mrs. Karlkin chimed. The good woman, who turned deep red from the impropriety of her interjection, curtsied to the chancellor.

The ring was almost off, but his father held up his hand. “They weren’t Lina’s. They were my wife’s, my engagement gift to her.”

“I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have dreamed of...please, take them.” Arvana held out the ring. Mortification burned her eyes.

He took the ring. “I gave these things to Myronan as keepsakes. They’re his to do with as he pleases.” He tilted the ring back and forth, making the jewels flash and a happy, yet nostalgic, expression waxed over him. He looked up, smiled kindly, and held it out to her.

“I can’t.”

“He gave them well.”

Arvana took the ring. She had no choice. But his father was wrong. Degarius hadn’t given them to her. They were a necessity. That’s why he sent them via Mrs. Karlkin, so there’d be no mistaking his intention. But if just a necessity, why hadn’t he given her something less dear?

“I’ll see you out,” his father said. “The coach is ready.”

Degarius was waiting at the coach door. He didn’t even glance to the necklace or ring. How could they mean so little to him? He went straight to shaking his father’s hand.

She put on the gloves.

“Have a good journey,” his father said.

“I will if it doesn’t snow. That’ll be my damned luck.”

That was all they said in parting. That it might be the last time they would see each other was impossible to admit. Arvana knew the feeling. She’d never allowed herself to say good-bye to her father. Even at his last breath, she thought there would be one more.

“Let’s go,” Degarius said and to her surprise, held out his gloved hand to assist her into the coach. Even through the leather of both their gloves, she felt his thumb find the ring. Why did her heart jump into her throat?

As they turned the circular drive, Degarius looked back at his father, home, and land. No overt emotion showed on his face, but if he was anything like her, she knew he was certainly saying things in his mind to his father that he hadn’t said aloud. She pulled off her gloves, glanced at the ring and guessed he hadn’t looked at it because it meant nothing; he hadn’t looked at it because it meant so much. Sometimes the things closest to the heart were the hardest to acknowledge. He had loved Lina, despite her faults. It was why he couldn’t speak of what had happened their last winter together. He loved his mother, too. These beautiful jewels were the remembrances he was taking with him. That was why he made sure she wore them.

What would she have liked to bring? The kithara? Her father’s coffee cup? Her mother’s coat? Her only mementos of the past were the Blue Eye and the man sitting across from her.

Gheria, later that day

Arvana turned the page of her book. They were both reading. Degarius had smartly stashed several volumes beneath the seats. It was difficult reading in the coach, but at least it was something to do. In Acadia, they had read almost every day. It was something they did to be together. Now, it was something they did to be apart.

The coach slowed and came to a stop. She put the book down. They couldn’t be there yet. Degarius said it would be a full day of travel, and it was only midafternoon. He, too, had put down his book and was looking out the window.

Regiment after regiment and their supply trains were on the march. The road, crawling with blue-coated men, looked like a brightly colored serpent slithering from one horizon to the other. The notion of impending war hadn’t seemed real until that point. They’d traveled all morning zigzagging country lanes, crossing into Gheria on a route so backwoods that it wasn’t guarded. Gheria seemed a peaceful place, empty place. Now she understood why. Every able man was being rallied to war.

“That’s the main road to the front from the east,” Degarius said. “They’re sending nearly all their troops there so we’ll mass ours to counter. It’ll make short work for the draeden.”

There were so many men. An endless number of men. Even if they did defeat The Scyon and the draeden, what was to stop the fighting? There would still be a war. The thought hadn’t occurred to her before. Killing The Scyon and the draeden averted one catastrophe, a far more widespread one. But not a war. “If we do stop
them
, will Sarapost hold?”

“Many of these men look like new recruits. But so are ours.” Degarius didn’t sound optimistic.

From the window, Arvana saw a Gherian riding up to the carriage. He began to dismount.

Degarius saw, too. He scowled and opened the coach door.

“The commander wishes to speak with you, sir,” the rider said, then added something that Arvana didn’t understand.

In Gherian, Degarius said to her, “Stay here,” and closed the coach door.

What could they want? Arvana edged to the door to watch. The soldier accompanied Degarius to a mounted weathered man, a veteran commander by the looks of his heavily decorated uniform. What if he recognized Degarius? Arvana removed her gloves and poised her thumb above the Blue Eye’s latch.

The general gave Degarius a suspicious once-over, and as he spoke, his face grew animated and angry. Degarius opened his coat and rested a hand on his hip, ready to draw his sword.

Suddenly the general looked to the coach—to her. Degarius shook his head. What was he telling the general
no
about her? The commander held up his hand and Degarius turned and began to walk toward the coach. Degarius waved to her. What did he mean by waving?

The commander dismounted while his escort kept a keen watch on Degarius.

Degarius opened the door, looked over his glasses at her, and said, “The general wants to ask my wife something.”

“Well, you better go find her,” Arvana whispered. Was he out of his mind? She didn’t know Gherian well enough to speak like a native. And to a general!

“Relax.” He took her hand from the Blue Eye and guided it to her thigh. He laid his own over it. “I told him you only speak a little Gherian.”

Arvana began to rise from her seat to get out when the general motioned her to stay inside. Degarius elbowed the coach door open wider to make space for the general, but kept his hand firmly over hers.

The general’s eyes were tired yet filled with earnestness as he spoke slowly and used simple words so Arvana would understand. She couldn’t catch everything, but the gist was, “Your husband says you are a good woman, a praying woman. You are going to the Solemnity. At the Worship Hall, pray for my son, Jan. He is ill, can’t fight.”

Pray for the enemy. Arvana gave what she hoped was a sympathetic-looking smile. In Gherian she said, “I’m happy to pray for Jan.”

The general nodded gratefully at hearing his son’s name.

Degarius gripped her hand and squeezed it. She’d spoken well enough, perhaps looked pious enough to satisfy the commander that her prayers were worth the trouble of requesting them.

“Pray in Gherian,” the general added. “The Eternal Master hears it better.”

“I will.” Had that been her problem all along, praying in Anglish?

The general gave Degarius an amiable slap to the back and said something about her. She caught
heathen
, what the Gherians called all non-clansmen, and the word
war
. Finally, the two exchanged salutes and Degarius climbed in and closed the door. The moment he saw the commander gallop away, he tore his hat off and flung it on the seat.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t we free to go? He didn’t recognize you, did he?”

“Recognize me? You know what he took me for? Without even a word from me, he took me for one of Sovereign Alenius’s cabinetmen going to the Forbidden Fortress for the meeting. They’re having a grand dinner. A damn courtier chasing after Alenius’s favors. I dared not disoblige him of that notion, so he ranted to me that Alenius is going to award every soldier a parcel of Sarapostan land and pressed me to promise to speak against it. Landowners, like the general, have first lent their tenants as foot soldiers and next will lose them if they get their own holdings in the south. Just the rumor of the reward has brought every man and boy out to fight. Whether or not it proves true makes no difference. They’re carrying their hoes to war, ready to break Sarapostan land. Their ranks are going to be twice as big as anyone in Sarapost imagined.”

That was terrible news.

“I was thinking, put that ring on the other hand,” Degarius said matter-of-factly.

Arvana glanced at her hands. She’d been unconsciously wringing them.

“I don’t want any entangling questions. No one would think you’re my sister. Your Gherian isn’t good enough. It’s just lucky the general assumed...”

Her fingers cold, the ring came off without trouble. He blatantly turned to look out the window when she eased it on the other finger. What, did he think she wanted it on
that
finger? She sank into the seat. As she centered the emerald to her finger, she asked, “What did the general say before he left? Did he call me a heathen?”

Still looking out the window, Degarius cracked a smile that Arvana saw in profile. “He congratulated me on bringing a heathen woman to the faith. He said if they were all good like you, we wouldn’t need to war. That’s rich on many levels.”

“That I’m good?”

His smile contracted. “I meant the notion that love trumps war and that anyone could think I brought you to faith.”

She wanted to say that whatever faith she’d had must have been of poor quality. It seemed something separate from her, like a coat she wore when she was cold, or the habit she’d left behind at Solace. And to think she once aspired to be a shacra. That would have been yet another costume. Not the real Ari.

The coach pitched forward as the driver sped through a gap in the troop line.

She put back on her gloves. They were on the road north. Tonight they’d stop at an inn, and tomorrow, for the Solemnity, arrive at the Forbidden Fortress. None of this would matter anymore. “Perhaps no one will notice us, and we won’t have to pretend anything or even sneak through the tunnels. We can go to the cabinetmen’s dinner.”

Gherian Inn, that evening

D
egarius stopped a serving girl carrying a bowl of steaming potatoes that smelled of dill into the dining room crowded with bald-headed cabinetmen and old couples probably bound for the Winter Solemnity. “Where’s the innkeeper?”

“Behind you, sir.”

“Let me take your coat, madam,” the indicated man said to Miss Nazar. Though frazzled, he had the look of an incurably jovial man. To Degarius he said, “It’s your lucky night. I have one room left.”

It was lucky. They’d tried two other inns already. The road to the Forbidden Fortress was teeming with travelers. Degarius couldn’t bear the thought of trying to sleep in the cramped coach. One room was enough. He’d sleep on the floor.

“I can squeeze your coachman in the bunkroom. Dinner,” the innkeeper wagged his head apologetically as he took Miss Nazar’s coat, “is mutton stew and dilled potatoes. It’s all the soldiers have left me. And no wine. Well...” He glanced to Miss Nazar, to the jewels around her neck. “Let me see what I can do.” He flagged the serving girl. “Show them to a table.”

The serving girl sat them at the end of a long, empty table and then returned with the stew and dilled potatoes. The innkeeper followed with two small pewter cups. He winked as he sat them down and motioned for her to try it.

The drink looked like strong tea, but from the potent smell, Degarius guessed it Gherian corn liquor. Miss Nazar took a sip. Her face bloomed with simple warmth, but not with giddiness. The night before a big battle, many men were merry, as if they were sticking their tongues out at fate. She wasn’t like that. She was like the quiet men who made a knot of fear, pulling the threads tighter and tighter, hoping they wouldn’t come undone. The danger was they’d pull too hard and snap the strings. She’d said she wasn’t afraid of death, that she’d seen it many times. Lerouge and Kieran had died in front of her. But she sure as hell was afraid of failing. She had a tender conscience. How had he ever doubted her when she said she’d never loved Lerouge? Even if she had loved the prince, it shouldn’t have mattered to him. She ultimately denied Lerouge whatever affections he might have gained, denied herself a position of amazing wealth and power, and stayed bound to Solace. What inconceivable trial had loving him, Nan, been to her that she had to forsake her profession because of it? Well, she was a Maker-be-damned fool for imagining him a good man worth whatever tears her conscience had shed.