Arc 5: Chapter 23: Brittle Armor

Arc 5: Chapter 23: Brittle Armor

I dismissed Penric to see to his errand, and had the others retire for rest and recovery. Some beds had been moved into the tower while I’d been away, the result of requests I’d made before I’d gone to the Backroad, making the place a functional if poorly provisioned barracks. The cleric, Emil, had no proper healing Art but could work his aura well enough to purify wounds and speed their mending.

I had him tend to Emma as well. She’d scowled about it, but I could tell she’d been putting on a brave face all day. Her limp had gotten noticeably worse.

I’d gone up to my office — I hated calling it that, but had no better word — when a knock came at the door. I’d just sat down to take a breath for the first time since the meeting with Count Laertes, and had to quash the impulse to ignore it. The chair I’d had brought up wasn’t particularly rich or comfortable, but it had arms and I’d slept on worse.

I knew I needed rest. I hadn’t even gotten out of my armor and cloak, too worn and distracted to worry much about comfort.

I could hear the surly growl in my voice when I told the knocker to enter. I heard the clink of metal, then a tall, powerfully built woman with ash-colored hair and sea green armor stepped into the room.

I stared, taken aback. “Ser Kaia. What are you—”

I almost choked when the royal champion stepped aside and a second figure glided in after her.

“Your Grace.” I stood immediately, thoughtlessly, stepping around to the front of the desk before sinking down to one knee. Propping a fist against the cold stone of the tower floor, I bowed my head before my face could betray any emotion.

Rosanna stopped in the middle of the room. She wore a very pale blue dress accented with darker greens and threaded with silver designs, its long skirts trailing along the floor to meld with a silk cape. A veil, encircled by her spiked silver crown, concealed her black hair. The maker of that ancient crown had worked aura into it, so it seemed to shimmer with strange lights and patterns. I had once seen it shining like a frozen star, the day she’d been declared Queen of the Karledale.

She looked every inch the Empress. Her pale, pretty face peered down at me like a cold moon beneath that gleaming silver crown.

“Could you leave us a while, Ser Kaia?” Her voice sounded calm, collected. I could detect no emotion in it.

Unlike a previous time we’d had such an encounter, the adventurer-turned-knight didn’t hesitate or argue. She left, closing the door behind her. I knew she’d still be outside, keeping watch and making sure we weren’t disturbed.

When the bodyguard had gone, Rosanna let out a quiet breath I barely heard. “You don’t have to do that. It’s just me and you here.”

I remained quiet long enough to listen as a wave struck the rocks below the tower. “You know that I do, Your Grace.”

Things could not be like they were. I was the Headsman, and she was the Empress. Better for us both if it remained that simple.

I heard silk rustle as she approached, which made me tense. She didn’t say anything at first, and I got the sense she waited for something.

“Must I order you to stand?” She asked.

We remained like that a while, a strange battle of wills. Long enough my knee started to ache.

I’m not really sure who won, but Rosanna broke the silence first in a voice cold as brittle ice. “Very well. Rise, Ser Headsman.”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

I did, standing to my full height. The Empress poised just barely out of arm’s reach. She had to tilt her chin up to look at my face.

“How may I serve you, Your Grace?” I kept my expression and voice carefully blank, remaining as neutral as I could. Solid iron to her smooth ice.

I could tell I’d stung her, by the way her green eyes glinted with anger. “Firstly, by talking to me. I did not enjoy hearing about Lias from my husband instead of you.”

I felt my own anger creep up, all my exhaustion, frustration, stress, and worry cracking the frost of my calm. “And what was I to do? It took a literal divine miracle to get me out of that mess last month, and the whole city still sees me as some sort of dangerous renegade. Distancing myself was the wiser action.”

Smiling coldly I added, “I know you agree, since you had me barred from your embassy.”

Rosanna’s eyes flashed. “You had just murdered an archclericon while I had been sheltering you. What did you expect me to do?”

“Nothing.” I let my eyes slide from her face. “I didn’t expect anything. We both did what we had to.”

Rosanna hadn’t budged an inch, keeping her ring-laden fingers folded in front of her round belly like a shield. The elaborate gown didn’t quite hide her growing pregnancy, more starkly obvious now than when I’d been reunited with her nearly three months past. Her eyes didn’t move either, remaining fixed on my face.

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“I should have heard about Lias from you, Alken. I want to hear it from you. I am owed that much.”

I walked to the slim window near the desk, almost as though that sliver of daylight offered some escape from this conversation. I breathed in warm sea air.

Owed that much. I owed her everything, and didn’t need the reminder.

“There’s nothing to say about it,” I finally said. “He betrayed us. First you, then your husband, then me. He used all of us for his schemes, and now he’s tied himself to something terrible. I don’t know where he is, or what he’s doing, or what he plans. I don’t expect to see him again.”

I didn’t want to see him again. I doubted that would be a peaceful meeting.

Turning to Rosanna I said, “He tried to kill me.”

I had not told Markham that part.

All the color bled from my queen’s face. I had seen her angry, cold, bitter, cruel. Never before had I seen horror on her regal features.

I couldn’t look at it, so I turned back to the bay. “He’s gone now. I don’t know where.”

We listened to the waves crash against the tower’s base. Several minutes passed before Rosanna broke her silence.

“Did you know?” She asked in a quiet voice.

“Know what?” I asked tiredly.

I heard her take a steadying breath. “When you came to the city, did you have orders to kill the Grand Prior? Did you know even while I sheltered you, through all the times we spoke?”

Her cold voice held a brittle edge. I felt I could shatter her then, with just one lie. Perhaps the aureflame would smite me down for it, but not before I put it to words.

It would be the wise thing to do. I could cut all our bonds right there, sever the cord. It would be safer for her if we never spoke like this again.

It would free me.

“I told you that first night.” I turned to face her, looking directly into her emerald eyes. “If you order it, I will tell you everything. But only if you order it, as my queen.”

She remembered that conversation as well as I did. I had offered to tell her about my penance of blood, what it meant and what I’d done the past six years. Rosanna had decided to not hear any of it, so she could remain distant from the repercussions.

That had been before angels and kings had chosen to sanction me.

Rosanna drew herself up, mastered her emotions, and spoke with all the calm authority of her birth and station. “Then I will have this one answer from you, Ser Alken, and I expect truth.”

Her eyes were steady now, showing none of the vulnerability I had glimpsed before. “Did you use me to gain this post? Did you plan this from the beginning?”

I stared at her in dumb shock, but her face remained clear of doubt. Like she already knew the answer, or thought she did.

I opened my mouth to speak, but whatever I might have said crammed in my throat. Had I planned this? How could she believe it, of me of all people?

I wanted to yell at her, shout and snarl, laugh in her face. Instead I just found myself slowly shaking my head, unable to settle on a single emotion. She waited, calm as marble, not offering me anything to grasp onto.

With an effort of will, I managed to bury the most immediate and hostile emotions stewing in me. It gave me a clear enough head to think. Part of me had suspected this, even if facing it was another beast entirely.

It would have looked like I’d schemed and abused her trust. I’d kept things from her — by her own compliance, true, but she couldn’t have expected things to go the way they did. I had pledged my loyalty to her, offered my services to her own children,

then thrown myself at her husband’s feet and spent this past month in his confidence instead. I had slain her political rival, directing suspicion and risk on her authority while I’d seemed to rise in influence with the Emperor himself.

From the outside, my actions would have looked brazen, even calculated.

No wonder Malcolm was so angry with me earlier, I thought grimly. He must have seen how much more isolated his mother became after my debut.

She hadn’t been attending other business or occupied with the summit these past weeks. Rosanna had been avoiding the public eye in order to let the dust settle from my actions.

And why wouldn’t she believe it of me? We had been strangers for well over a decade, distant ever since she’d shipped me off to Elfhome as her ambassador. In my youth, I’d been an impetuous, brash warrior given to her so a country lord could secure a debt. I’d been loyal to her, but mostly because I was attracted to her and wanted the glory life in her service offered.

My respect for her, and my love, had grown slowly and quietly, something I kept inside. I couldn’t recall ever speaking of it aloud, not to her at least.

When I’d finally returned from a long exile, I had been full of secrets and silence, practically a stranger. Lias had betrayed her twice. I doubted Rosanna had much faith left in people, and she’d never had much to begin with. Her relatives had butchered her parents in their own castle.

It all made sense. And none of it did. How had our lives gotten so twisted?

My voice sounded hoarse to my own ears. “I came to this city because Lias said you both needed help. I swear it’s true, my queen.”

Even needing to say it aloud, I felt a crack form in my heart. I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, seeing the distrust in Rose’s face. She looked at me like I was a stranger.

And I knew that was why I hadn’t just covered myself in glamour and stolen into her bastion in the middle of the night to have this talk. Not for anything noble or self sacrificing or practical, but because I had feared this moment.

Rosanna studied me a while, then took a step closer. Without looking away from my face she said, “You swear it? On your knighthood and your oaths? On the vows you swore to me?”

“That is cruel,” I said. She knew how much all of that meant to me.

“Do you swear it?” She repeated, her eyes wide and devoid of mercy.

I bowed my head, feeling hollow. “I swear it. I never meant to betray you. I came here for you, Rose. For both of you.”

Again, she inhaled through her nose. The breath had a slight tremor in it. “Did he really betray us?” She asked with a sudden softness. “Is Li gone?”

A tightness formed in my throat. “He’s gone,” I croaked.

“He really tried to kill you?” Her mouth had formed a thin line.

I nodded. “Yes.”

I thought I had shed all the tears I would over Lias Hexer. But when I watched the ice in Rosanna’s eyes shatter, and tears well up in its place, my vision blurred. We had known one another twenty years, and I had never seen my queen cry.

She had never seen me cry, either. It must have shocked her as much as me, because she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. I held her, and we stood there together a long while, grieving for the man who’d been like a brother to us both.