Vol.6, Ch.4, P.5
With the threat quelled, Björn and I collected and concealed the Quire-corpses after unbinding the hostages. The Praetorian of the two was a familiar face, being the guard who’d guided our delegation up the steeple stairs.
“I’m very sorry, my Captain,” the young Praetorian said once we were gathered again in the shed. “They held my sister. I could not… I…”
“Ease yourself. I, too, have suffered failure,” Björn responded greyly. “But never mind that. Enemies are about. We had better move soon than sit about and mope.”
Beside the once-imprisoned Praetorian was the other hostage: a spring-yeared lass, sat and looking visibly shaken. Hers, too, was a familiar face from the lectitōrium: the princess’s lady-in-waiting, to be precise. I looked between the two, and true enough, they appeared as brother-and-sister as could be.
“Siblings in service?” I remarked.
“Her Highness is vast of heart,” quickly began Björn’s explanation. “She appoints no few plebeians to her Praetorian retinue. And should any of them hail from a household impoverished, then to their family, too, does she extend her gracious hand.”
This captain must’ve held Her Highness in glowing regard, indeed, to become this loquacious about her. But it was easy to see why. Historically, employment in the Praetorian Guard was the preserve of the aristocracy. But as Björn said, it seemed the princess was determined to buck that trend by shoring her shields with common capables. The same held true for this lady-in-waiting: being nary a noble daughter, doubtless would she be peddling flowers on the streets were her princess of any lesser compassion.
Serafina Demeter Londosius… Quite the rill running off from the river, as it were. Though her reign was accounted discreet and unambitious, here she was, reshaping the very policies and customs of her inner circles—as though wishing to resist someone or something.
“Ah, but Captain,” stammered the underling bodyguard. “Before we get on…” There he trailed off, and then sent my way a leery squint.
Björn’s moustache fretted. “Her Highness pleases to parley with him yet,” he groaned to his subordinate. “He is thus to remain alive—for the present.”
“…”
The word of a military superior was absolute. Still, the younger Praetorian frowned, unable to brook this “arrangement”, if only in his heart. His royal servant of a sister, too, was turned up my way. Only, her eyes shuddered more with trepidation than wariness. It was then that I saw her hands clasped together rather guardedly, or as if nursing something.
“Your finger,” I said to her.
“Eh?” she startled, prompting her brother to explode:
“Oy! Not a word to her, you!”
At once, he bent down and threw his arms around his sister, staring stingingly at me all the while. But heeding him not, I went on: “The little one on your left; it’s broken, isn’t it? We ought see to splinting it. Something here in the shed may help that.”
The lady-in-waiting flashed and flushed at the face. Quickly she covered her swollen finger. She’d wanted to keep it secret, I reckoned.
“That’s stern stuff you’re made of,” I said on to her. “Though it must hurt a mickle much.”
Cheerlessly, the sister hung her head. I imagined her Quire-captors had shown some rough manners, enough to have broken a finger, poor thing. But after witnessing her brother surrender just for her sake, she must’ve resolved not to trouble him again, and so had been hiding her hurting finger, even as chaos and uncertainty boiled all about. A sterling little sister, all told, I thought of her.
For his part, the brother lingered in amazement. But at length, he opened his mouth again and grumbled, “…A keen eye nary makes a saint of a man. Don’t get any ideas, sicarius!”
If I hadn’t known any better, I’d say he was berating me just as he was the blind brother in himself. But at any rate, I took his point: merely noticing another’s hurts hardly becomes kindness. Not that I was trying to improve my image here; no, it was simply that I knew a thing or three about injuries, I grudge to admit.
“What say you tend to your sister rather than blow steam at me?” I replied to him. “You wouldn’t want me to do the honours, now would you?”
“The devil, I would!” the brother spat back, and springing asudden, he went about rummaging the shed for materials. Before long, he returned with both a chip of wood and a long shred shorn from some rag. And kneeling beside her, he took up his sister’s hand and began to splint it. “I cannot thank you enough, Captain,” he said whilst working away. “My sister and I, we owe you our lives.”
Björn hesitated. “…I have done little,” he then answered with a great effort. “Indeed, my first mind was to forsake you both for the princess. The one to sway me elsewise… was this withersake.”
He glanced at me, dark with discomfort. To Björn, it seemed a sin to praise so pernicious a “withersake”, especially in the open. Though by the look on his face, it was perhaps more sinful again to receive misgiven gratitude.
Met with this revelation, his subordinate fell silent; hands once busied with bandaging were now halted. He looked at me sourly; but deep in his eyes, I saw the same shame as his captain’s—same, but perhaps more intense.
“Saving you but served my interests,” I said to assuage him. “You needn’t thank me.”
“…Wasn’t planning on it,” he mumbled, before breaking away and getting on with the bandaging. Like watching clouds heavy but only half-grey, it was difficult to discern what he felt at that moment. But what he felt for his sister was as clear as day; for the hands that nursed and coiled cloth about her finger were as ginger and gentle as a morning breeze.
And as I watched him, I sank into thought.
A brother’s love…
∵
At length, the splinting was set and done, and the siblings stood. The brother of them looked to his captain, anticipating new orders. Only, those very orders would prove hard to swallow.
“Now, the both of you,” Björn said, “get yourselves somewhither safe—and hide.”
The younger bodyguard nearly gaped. “B-but I—” he began to insist; but after a glance at his sister, his eyes drooped and he relented with a quiet “…Aye, Captain.”
This stallion of a lad seemed keen to join the fray, but it wouldn’t do aught to leave his sister all alone, now would it? The realisation, however, allayed little his inner moaning, earning from his sister a repentant look, as though thinking herself a burden to her dear brother.
To the down-spirited siblings I looked and asked, “The explosion; tell me how it all fell out for you, if you can.”
No answer came. The brother of them turned inquisitively to his captain.
“Speak,” Björn bade him. “He must hear it.”
The underling looked back to me. His face frowned immediately, but orders are orders, as they say. “We heard a terrible noise from above,” he finally began. “And not a moment later, a rain of ruin smote the roof and flooded the lectitōrium where we were. Panick seized us all. But between the dust, the smoke, and the debris, there was naught to be seen.”
I pictured their plight. “Panick” was right; screams and confused shouts must’ve been echoing through every dust-choked corner. To be sure, the envoys, servants, and bodyguards below us had been briefed to be vigilant, our council being a contentious occasion and all; yet naught could’ve prepared them for a bombing, I don’t doubt.
“But the doors, they burst open all of a sudden,” the Praetorian continued. “Some men’d forced their way in; men complicit in the blast, we swiftly guessed.”
“Though Björn here has informed me that Her Highness had fled that place in safety,” I noted.
“…That she’d done, yes,” the underling confirmed, though with increased discontent. It amused him little to hear me address his captain so plainly. Nevertheless, he went on: “Indeed, the steeple spire fell, and many stones and timbers along with it; yet the tower endured, and so did Her Highness. And withal the mareschal and the lord chancellor.”
That sorted square enough with Björn’s own account: amidst the confusion in the lectitōrium, the able-bodied knights and bodyguards had barred the Quire-invaders’ way and given battle, buying time for Emilie and all to extract the princess to safety.
“There you have it, sicarius,” said Björn, who was now looking at me with arms folded. It appeared he’d got some questions of his own. “The explosion, though severe, did not accomplish these zealots’ ends. I would hear why.”
The bombing had blasted away a good deal of the tower’s upper parts, wall and spire both. It was no mere fireworks, therefore, by any stretch. That these Quiremen, these conspirators, were bent on burying the princess and all the rest of us was most apparent. Yet, it hadn’t come to that. Just as Björn said, the blast was severe, yet did not suffice, and for good reason.
“It’s the legate Myrd himself who sparked that explosion,” I revealed, “—an explosion we’d mitigated to the best of our ability, given the circumstance.”
That was my answer. Despite being practically decapitated by Lise’s longdaggers, still had Myrd managed somehow to set off his charges. And I, suspecting it, had pulled the princess away from him, flipped the meeting table to provide a barrier for the others, and kicked Myrd’s fey body far to the wall.
That I spared such details was not lost to Björn. “‘Mitigated’, you say,” he mumbled with a scoff, pursuing the matter no further, nor enquiring as to who it was exactly that’d done the “mitigating”. Indeed, he merely eyed me sharply, as though having gleaned something. But minding him not, I pressed his subordinate further.
“What of my comrades? Did you see what became of them?”
“Nay,” he answered curtly. Well, so much for “more information”. But before all my hopes could be dashed, there came from the little lady-in-waiting a timid:
“Ah, um, I…”
She then looked up at Björn, deferring to him as her brother had done. The Praetorian captain nodded, and so she began:
“I… I believe I might’ve seen something.”
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