Solace Shattered (17 page)

He adjusted his glasses and held the paper close, though the writing was not small. She began it with his child name, but the opening was as formal as a bill of sale. It would be her honor to aid Sarapost. He came to the closing. “I have three days to practice. Do not imagine that I number them or am in any rush for them to pass. What notes shall my fingers miss?” He broke a broad smile. She hadn’t been offended. It was a game of wit. She would miss notes. Miss letters. The black ink twelve inches from his face dissolved into nothingness as Degarius fell into an acute absorption, thinking less of the letter, more of the writer, forgetting where he was, and whom he was with until recalled by Fassal.

“What news is both terrible and happy, Degarius?”

Degarius hastily folded the letter and put it in his vest pocket. “It’s nothing.”

Lerouge hefted his boots upon a footstool. “Has an old aunt died and left you a vast sum, or is it a letter from another kind of woman? Your wife or someone else?”

Fassal piped, “He has no aunt or wife.”

“Or anyone else,” Sebastion interjected smugly from across the room.

“It’s business,” said Degarius.

The prince turned on his elbow. “I don’t believe you.”

Degarius pursed his lips lightly as if to say
I don’t care
.

“Ah, then it’s your loss,” Lerouge cried. “At your age and station, a man may just as well go on without a sum from an aunt. But I must offer my pity at neither wife nor lover.”

“Really?” Degarius countered in a bemused, offhanded way. “Most men my age and station would be congratulating me for avoiding those traps rather than offering their condolences.”

Several of the men laughed.

Lerouge smiled and stroked his beard, but then said, “Tell me, can you not love a woman? Or do you prefer boys? You wouldn’t be the first soldier.”

Fassal’s hand was on Degarius’s sleeve. Coolly, Degarius moved his arm out from under it. He gauged Lerouge a cocky bastard from the start; this confirmed the impression.

The prince grinned. “I was only trying to make out your character, Sarapostan.”

“Captain Degarius is rather private,” Fassal said.

“A private captain, eh?” A general guffaw broke out at Lerouge’s joke. “What a luxury to be afforded privacy.” The prince eased back in his chair. “Everyone thinks he knows something of me. My failures and triumphs are open to every sort of faulty speculation. Take for instance my wife. Men fell over themselves to touch her beautiful hand. They envied me, but I would have let them have her if I could. Even you, ’Tion.” The prince took the pipe and inhaled. His pink-rimmed irises, as he passed the pipe, gazed on Degarius. “Then, this spring I loved another woman, called her Willow. You should have seen her ride. What a glorious thing. But then I made a mistake I will soon put right. Sarapostan, I’ve decided.”

Degarius exhaled and was suddenly sober.

“I accept the prizes you named for Brevard, with one condition.” Lerouge waved his hand through the altartish smoke. “Add the letter in your pocket to what you offer.”

“It’s a trifle, Prince. Nothing worthy of a prize.”

“It would certainly be a trifle to me, but it isn’t to you. I want to fight a man who is fighting for
everything
. Only then do I know his true worth.”

“By the Maker, what did you do to incite the prince’s royal dislike? Moreover, what is this about Brevard? Lerouge is to be our ally, not our enemy,” Fassal said peevishly as they headed to their rooms to change from their fishing clothes. “Why didn’t you tell me Lerouge challenged you?”

“It seemed I risked more by declining the match than accepting it. Plus, I’m glad of the opportunity to get back my sword.”

“Perhaps it’s true it would have been worse to disappoint the prince’s desire, but your taking him down will do wonders for our cause...if he gives you the chance. Wasn’t it you who told me of the family’s duplicity with the Citrian Heart?”

Degarius stopped at his door. “In this case, I believe it’s a true personal trial, a test of his skill, which is considerable.”

“Nothing is personal in front of thirty thousand people, brother.” Fassal, too, paused at the door and adopted a stern, authoritative stance, at which he was getting quite adept. “You should have told me about Lerouge’s proposal, brother.” He tapped Degarius’s vest where he’d stashed the letter. “I suppose you weren’t planning on telling me about that, either.”

“Everything is set for Teodor’s dinner. You have your kitharist.” Degarius twisted the doorknob.

“Wait. That letter. I don’t propose that you’ll lose or that the lady wrote anything improper, but would she wish to have it in Lerouge’s hands? She serves them, you know.”

The letter. “The letter is simply an acceptance of our invitation. And, Fassal, it doesn’t matter. I won’t lose.”

~From Madra Cassandra’s Journal

Sarapost House, Shacra Paulus

F
rom Lady Martise’s coach, Arvana saw Sarapost House. Evenly spaced torches lined the circular drive and every window on the first floor beckoned with a golden glow. She drew her fingers down the edges of her veil, touching the soft waves of her hair as she went.

“It’s on straight, dear. You’ve checked it three times now,” Lady Martise said. “Don’t be nervous. I know it seems like a great deal depends on you, but keep in mind Teodor is only a tradesman, and you’ve played for far greater men.”

A great deal did depend on her. If the lady only knew. Arvana sighed and reprimanded herself. She hadn’t been thinking about playing, her duty with the Blue Eye, or even if Nan got his sword back. She was wondering if he ever lay in bed at night conjuring her image on the flat of the ceiling as she did his. There was something inexplicably touching in the hope that she lived within his consciousness outside their hours in the archive. And, there was everything wrong with it. Since she first saw him at the provincial meeting, it was as if a light had been lit within her, and she’d tried her hardest to keep the curtains drawn around it. But with his letter he had parted them, if only a hand-width, and she couldn’t stop looking inside. It was like coming, in the thick of night, upon a glowing sliver of light coming from a window. Curiosity compelled one to peer inside, into the intimate, unguarded moments of another life. What she saw inside was golden with hearth light, but the she was too far away to make out the furnishings distinctly. She wanted to go closer but hesitated. What if what she saw was beautiful, homey, making her long to live there? It was impossible. She’d already chosen Solace. Finding it an ugly place with stained carpets, dirty walls, and broken furniture would be even worse. Was that her heart? It only looked a good place from a distance? Still, as the coach rattled closer to Sarapost House, she felt herself being drawn inevitably closer to the window. How would he be, and how was she to be? More constrained? Less?

The carriage stopped before the torchlit facade of Sarapost House. Sarapost Prince Fassal opened the carriage door and grinned. “Teodor is here, punctual to the strike of eight as I said he’d be.”

“And I’m punctual to half past,” Lady Martise said as her nephew handed her out.

The prince took Arvana’s hand. “I’m certain Degarius would wish to do this honor, but someone must ply Teodor with wine.”

She smiled awkwardly at the thought Fassal knew of their acquaintance. It both pleased and mortified her. Mercifully, he extended an elbow to Lady Martise and escorted them inside without further notice of her.

Nan and the guildsman rose from a couch. Nan was wearing his fine dress uniform with all his medals except the one she wore inside her sash. There was something boyishly cheerful about him. She flushed. It couldn’t be as before.

Without noting how and when they all crossed the room to meet, the guildsman was suddenly before her making such a deep, sweeping bow that she had to take notice of him. His protruding stomach met his knee when he bowed, and perspiration made a moist sheen over his bald spot. Dressed in an elaborate velvet suit, the poor man was suffering, though it wasn’t warm. The windows were full open to a dry breeze.

At his introduction, Master Teodor said, “I fear tonight’s pleasure will be all mine, Hera,” with blustery courtliness and then swabbed his face with a handkerchief.

“You are too kind, sir,” she replied. His exaggerated gallantry amused her until he took her hand and clamped it in his moist palms.

Nan smoothed his tied back hair. “His wife sends her regrets at not being able to hear you play. She is close to the birth of their fourth child.”

Teodor released her from his grasp, and she discreetly blotted her hands on the back of her skirt.

Nan added, “You will offer our wishes for her health.”

Our
wishes?

Prince Fassal joined them. “Dinner waits.” He planted a hand on Master Teodor’s velvet back. “Would you do the honor of taking Lady Martise in? Hera, might you tolerate Captain Degarius? It’s only for an hour or two.” Did he wink at her?

“If only for an hour or two.”

She was seated next to Nan. He leaned to her ear. “Fassal ordered every dish known and unknown to man. Take care what you try.”

She smiled at how free he was with her, even before the others. Was this what it was like to be a wife, finding joy in the simplest of words and sentiments?

A servant reached for her wineglass. How fine a glass of wine would be, but she must play tonight. “Nothing for me.”

Nan detained the servant. “I assure you it’s good. I ordered it myself.”

“Don’t tempt me with what I can’t have,” she said of the wine, but as soon as the words left her mouth, they looped her conscience with a noose of guilt. They sounded flirtatious, public. What was between them must be like a breath of air—essential, expansive, yet invisible. She held that breath, waiting for his response and to see if anyone had overheard.

“Understandable.” He motioned the servant to fill his glass. “I practice the same forbearance before a battle or match.”

He had spoken in simple earnestness. No one glanced surreptitiously at them. She exhaled and drew her shoulders in to make herself smaller so the server could place a plate before her.

Dinner, as promised, was an endless succession of dishes that stretched past eleven bells before Prince Fassal threw his napkin on the table and called for music. Between watching Lady Martise gracefully bear Teodor’s inflated chivalry and listening to Nan and Prince Fassal’s good-natured barbs, the meal seemed over just as it had begun.

A chair and low footstool were in the center of the main room for Arvana.

Master Teodor moved a seat immediately before hers. “I wish to observe your fingerings.”

Prince Fassal and Lady Martise shared the settee. Nan was in a chair, far to the back.

She hadn’t thought she’d be nervous to play, but she was. They were all looking at her. Perhaps the others were looking at Hera Solace, but Nan... She wanted this evening to go well for him, for Sarapost. Teodor’s shields might be some use against the draeden and The Scyon, even if they only gave men the illusion of protection needed to free their wills to fight. She flexed her fingers, placed them to the instrument, and silently made a prayer offering her skill to the Maker.

She played a trio of Acadian tunes Teodor was certain to know. His head swayed with the capricious variations of the first. During the second, his foot tapped along with the steady rhythm. His eyes dazzled over the steady tremolo and moving low notes of the final. How she’d misjudged the man. Though he’d seemed ridiculous and false trying to please Lady Martise, music made him sincere. He enjoyed the music more than Lady Martise and Prince Fassal, who’d been whispering to each other.

After the last measure ended with a resounding strum and Arvana took the kithara from her knee, Teodor, said, “Please, you can’t be finished. One more. Your favorite.”

As he asked, a servant was bent to Nan to receive a whispered order.

Her favorite? Arvana cradled the kithara close. Many years had passed since she’d played the music dearest to her—a song her father had taught her. The last she’d played it was when she entered Solace and thought she’d never touch a kithara again. Would she remember it? She touched the strings. Her heart flooded, not with the grief she’d felt the last time she played the song, but with a thousand good memories and sensations of home, of who she was in another place and time. She was young and full of hope for happiness. Nothing had been decided in her life, so everything was still possible and imagining the future was endlessly enticing. The only constant was the feeling that her heart and love were immense and giving them would be her joy. Full of eager anticipation, she lighted her fingers from note to shimmering note.