|| The Knight's Ephemeris / Second ||

|| The Knight's Ephemeris / Second ||

|| Clausewitz // the Second ||


“Your highness,” Calia prompted, and immediately knelt to one knee. She wore plain travelling clothes, but like Caitlin, her inclined head, one hand on her lap and one on the ground, all carried a practiced polish of refinement. “And ladies, men of the Chairs.”

The assembled acknowledged the greeting with nods and mumbles. Three men and one woman sat on either side of the throne, high straight backed chairs winging a magnificent silver plated animal sitting on its behind, four feet stretched forward – which everyone except Vincent knew to be the Tyrioline Seat, the throne for the monarch of the Argent City.

At the satisfying snap of a distant door, Vincent lifted his head. It was not his intention; Calia had drilled into his head every chance she found him distracted, that he should shut up and never look anywhere but the ground. But his gazed was pulled, falling immediately on the person seated directly in front of him, and it stayed there. She was… magnificent. As beautiful as Lyrien – no, more – the slant of her eyes, the pallor of her hair was unmistakably more striking. It was not like Calia’s but like Calia’s, like Lyrien’s but not: a moderate shade between. Such an unreasonably charming hue, Vincent fell to an immediate disappointment with his own hair. Such an ugly, saturated, blocky color.

The Queen’s eyes marked him, but she did not comment. It was fleeting glance that when passed, Vincent was left searching that lovely face for more. And when it broke into a smile the boy shook into his senses: there was a naked wolfishness in it that reminded Vincent of what this woman was: the Queen of Zeal. He hastily bowed his head down again, embarrassed, abruptly frightened and hoping nobody to have noticed. But his eyes naturally wanted to drift back.

Fat chance. Some of the people seated next to the queen chuckled. His face burned. But at least he was wearing proper clothes. Good blue coat and trousers, if not a little suffocating at the waist. Calia had the foresight to see him properly fitted before flitting him away to the palace; he had barely time to be embarrassed as people flung him naked.

However, only after fumbling for concentration did he realize that there was a conversation going on, and that his brief moment was not even part of it.

“Yes, I have been very well, Calia of Lhareis, thanks to my exceptional staff.”

That ringing tone, Vincent defined it as authority. It seemed softly spoken but it was clearly carried; another uncomfortable prick of uneasiness. Zeal did not equal murderous intent, he minded himself, edging his knee an inch forward. The carpet was beginning to get itchy.

“I am to understand that the city has gone under considerable changes,” said Calia, who to Vincent’s surprise was now standing, and speaking in a way that pulled his eyebrows. Why the formality? “That trade is becoming more monopolized, and rumors that our treasury is fast moving between hands. . .”

The man directly right of the Queen scoffed and outstretched a hand.

“Your information is turned and twisted by beggars’ rabble,” the man laughed, but Calia took it stoically, “we are firm in our decision. All we are waiting for is for our allies.”

“Jeiol, for one.” said one, pointedly.

“Easy, Galhith. We do not want to provoke Calia to sew her mouth from anger.” Kristel turned to the man on her right, and Galhith, rebuked with a warning smile, shrugged and thinned his lips. The queen turned back to Calia.

“Yes, Jeiol,” Calia sighed, feeling that no amount of padding could soften the gravity of the tidings she was about to announce. She owed it this much to the Queen that she looked straight into her mistress’ eyes, and not slur her words with hesitation.

“Your majesty, Jeiol has fallen. Their entire royal line has been routed. The Kynith are roused.”

The reaction was immediate. Whatever Calia had just said, Vincent found that it must have been tremendously significant. It was a gallery – some took it with bared teeth and grimace, others with noisy outrage and finally, the Queen had a muted surprise on her face. But everyone was so cleft to their shock that they did not question Calia further for a few more moments. As for him, for Vincent, he was blissfully unaware of the implications of this news. Lyrien shuffled uneasily beside him; she must know the reason why these people were so radically changed by Calia’s words. His curiosity was welling up again.

“Jeiol. . . Eily. . . What of my cousin?” the Queen’s whisper heralded a hush. Her favorite cousin.

“The princess. . . She was the first victim. It was said that madness took the Cardinal Zaschitnik – and that the single man slew the entire palace in one night.”

Voices echoed each other: One man!

But the Queen’s silence licked with fire. She sat, head bowed, eyes imagining dangerous visions.

“The name. . . His name escapes me. Or has Jeiol’s Cardinal changed hands? Did you get a name, Calia of Lhareis?”

Perhaps her calm was most dangerous of all.

“Yes. . . Cerias of Arlieth. He was known to us. And to the princess.” said Calia. The latter sentence she bit her lower lip for; a piece of unnecessary gossip.

“As her illicit lover.” finished Kristel. The queen did not even sigh. That was what worried present company most: Kristel Lelnias, propriety thrown when amongst her circle, was guarding her actions. In fact, all the formality preceding Calia’s grave news was due to one presence, that of the boy, who was a puzzle to all, but yet the Queen’s regard to him was a greater puzzle: she would act, talk and receive audience as she would an honored guest. Decorum, to a boy looking to be expecting someone’s holding hand. And now, if she was conscious of him and channeling her behavior accordingly, she was mustering a level of self-control her staff would mark rare.

Finally, with all watching her, Kristel leaned forwards on her chair, hands clasped in front of her face, thumbs rubbing. Vincent recognized the wolfish look again, but this time with the absence of the smile – an even more dangerous expression.

“Our sister city has fallen. Issue the proper writs to our establishments and allies. This traitor will find nowhere sanctuary in Asphzein.”

In spite of himself Vincent watched the Queen leave her throne, and pace from the blue carpet to grey marble. Everyone else stood as Kristel left her seat, and unsure, he mimicked them.

“Cut the routes to Jeiol and any surrounding trade. In fact, restrict the quota any traders within sixteen hundred jurhnai of Jeiol can buy from us. We do not want an imperially supplied city getting any fatter… Warn our citizens to not give the merchants any violence. The edict will be those who harass them will be severely punished under Zelian law.”

The queen fell silent as her courtiers nodded, talking amongst themselves and brainstorming for the next courses of action. Vincent’s attention was still on Kristel, and the Queen seemed to be laying a hand on one of the stone columns. The boy’s eyes widened when he realized the disfigured curves of the column formed a human statue. A rather imperious one at that, gazing downward to Kristel, who was whispering to it, eyes closed. Her hand, despite whatever frailty her face was expressing, was stalwart. Her next words were no less controlled however, and were in rapid bursts:

“Strengthen the borders; double our patrols, double our numbers in patrols. Quicken the stockpiling. Arm the Iktians, Ceslihaites, Calains and Al’beihs. Divinals Gahlith, if you will argue with me now, I will fry your beloved tongue before my father’s grave.”

The man shut up before uttering three words in succession.

“Go to it! The entire kaistien is at your disposal.”

A huff and she was seated once more. Another huff and she was back on her feet, circling, pacing, sighing – in one second she was towering with anger, in another her lips were trembling, and finally, all emotion erased, she faced her Cardina.

“I want the royal engineers, architects, and any other capable civilian well educated in the art. I will hold audience for them on the Nineteenth hour.” The queen’s words were crisp, and Caitlin acted immediately. It almost looked like she fled the room.

As the door shut behind the Cardina, Kristel stood before Calia, Lyrien and Vincent. Now they were alone.

“What is your name?”

Vincent nearly jumped; he was looking directly into those eyes that were penetrating him. His reply was simple and short.

“Siean roal Clausewitz.”

Surprise met the outburst of Seihtal. Vincent’s eyes widened at his own introduction; it had not been a conscious effort, nor did he know why the language flew off his lips with such ease. It was a pleasant surprise, unexpected, and he felt like he had achieved something. Oddly enough.

But what the others were taken aback for was his accent. It was different from what they spoke, what they heard, and what they were used to – yet the more subtle differences, which only Kristel could distinguish, showed either he was a native speaker or very well educated. Both had implications of their own. Seihtal originated from the westernmost parts of Asphzein; to be educated by someone who had at least lived there, or wherever else to pick up the accent, this far away to Zelian indicated considerable wealth in the family. The services of the West were sparse at best. The fact that he spoke it at all for his age was the main surprise. The Eastern tongue was known for its difficulty in conversational levels.

“Zurheis lac an Aihsofel nikath, leitalen Clausewitz?” asked Kristel. Though not everybody understood, heads turned to Vincent. He found that he did not like the sudden spotlight. Uncomfortable, he began to fidget with the hem of his clothes, making a conscious effort to revert back to the tongue everyone understood.

“I don’t know, your. . . Majesty.” Just as Calia had told him to address a queen. “What exactly is a House?”

Kristel raised her eyebrows, closing in on him two steps at a time – he resisted the urge to shuffle backwards.

“Does not know, he says. What clueless child have you brought before me, Calia of Lhareis?” said Kristel, yet her eyes did not leave the redhead. Vincent found the rapt attention becoming more and more probing, and was growing to dislike those narrowly wrought eyebrows by the second. More so when the person drew herself to her full height and looked down on him, as if he had done some wrong by introducing himself as asked.

Vincent overrode Calia’s hesitancy with a reply.

“I don’t remember.”

And it was of course, true. It was also true that this was the major source of distress for him – despite the supposedly ‘new’ discoveries he had made after being woken up violently with two girls kneeling beside him, they simply tickled his mind with elusive snatches of words, voices, images. He knew he knew things before, but he just could not speak aloud what. It was in his brain but the appropriate words did not roll out of his mouth.

“You do not remember,” echoed Kristel. “Am I to laugh at this joke?”

The sudden outburst of Seihtal had alarmed her – accusation was simply a cautious tactic. Though perhaps laughable to be cautious against a mere boy, something in her body fervently reacted to his presence. The rich scarlet of his hair, his appearance ticked a vague memory. And her memory was impeccable. But his eyes-

No… Why? Why now?

The shiver sweeping over her was as quick as her heart concreting, and she acted immediately.

“Caitlin.”

The lowered tone was all that was needed. Everybody understood the meaning of the queen’s shadowed face.

Everybody except Vincent.

All eyes darted to the Queen, who was stepping away from Vincent with deep – anguish, was it? Or fear? No one was able to decide as the Cardina Aegis snapped her fingers – no one had actually noticed her return, her being so still as if a part of the wall – and the resulting blinding flash would be last thing Vincent would see until his incarceration.

Incarceration for high treason.

That was what the seal – the light – signified. Its activation meant one thing: when an enemy needed to be instantly incapacitated – when an enemy threatened the life of a royal subject. It was one of the few exceptions in exercising Gehlith, the Black Magic, officially. To be able to quell a living being’s five senses was only sanctioned to a select few. Caitlin was one of them.

The azure seal cast a transparent wall around the boy, and those present watched the dumbfounded boy as if through glass, frozen. As if on cue, several palace guards burst into the room, and stabbed the corners of the magical seal with their spears. Effortlessly, the seal – and Vincent’s prison – began to move at the guards’ whim.

Lyrien barely stopped herself from standing up and reaching out. Watching Vincent bound in the manner a criminal would have been, watching him being charged so arbitrarily of such a heinous crime, Lyrien felt at an utter loss. What had the Queen seen in the boy’s eyes she had not? If such a thing she did see, her violent reaction was unreasonable. A boy, an assassin?

However, knowing her place, herself, she forced her tongue behind her teeth, robbed of impulsive questioning by the grim atmosphere.

->-<-

Vincent screamed. Or did he? The audience was not the only one who had become deaf to his pleas. But he sure felt like screaming.

Blind, deaf, and mute, he could not even find any feeling in his hands or legs. Despite this his instinct was to struggle, and though he did not know it, no longer without any sense of touch, of pain, he was thrashing violently against the magical barrier. Up, down, left, right, on his own body, his hands were slapping, punching everywhere. His mind was racing; he could not comprehend the situation at all. The moment that woman’s fingers had snapped he was thrust into oblivion – indignity, panic, defiance, fear all clashed together, bleeding away what was rational thought.

Lyrien.

She could help. Would she? She had helped him to here – she must help him, why would she not?

Calia?

He knew she had different thoughts about him, but she had saved his life from those Kynith!

What was going on?

What had he done wrong?

He did not even feel himself gliding across the floor.

The door shut.

->-<-

“Just what. . . ?”

Calia broke the extended moment of tension. The boy had seemed harmless. She had a few questions herself – his identity and intentions was suspect but high treason? A spy or an assassin would deserve such a charge. Even as she scrolled through the possibilities of what the boy could have been, they became increasingly ridiculous. Caution was a constant watchword for a vaelin, but when one was a vaelin of a respected house, one met number upon number of people, and one knew when another’s situation was genuine. The boy’s story was definitely questionable, but his eyes were basically innocent of lies. There were always exceptions, but. . .

“A matter we will not discuss.” Kristel announced. As she exhaled a long held breath, everyone else could see that she expelled something else out of her lungs than just air.

“Now. . . Your report. I will hear it, Calia.”

Seated back on her throne, Kristel’s troubled expression was not completely erased, but none dared to mention it.

Four months Lyrien and Calia had spent, gathering intelligence of movements of the enemy. Though discussion ensued, Lyrien’s mind was not set to listen. How the Kynith broke their three decades of silence from venturing outside their lands, of their sudden blitz on surrounding areas; how Jeiol had managed crisis control of their massacre by staging a revolt.

No, she had guilt and curiosity to deal with; rendering her attention to the door Vincent had been carried out of. The former, telling she could have averted the abrupt cruel fate Vincent had been guided to by her hand, her decision that he was not to be separated from her, her decision that she would come to the palace with Calia. It had also been partly Calia’s; he was a curiosity after all, and considering possible nobility, could be queried about at the Spiral, the library of the Argent Palace.

And of course, she was asking how the boy had tempted the Queen to execute him right where he had stood. Had she known him? Personal or by word of mouth? Impossible. Was he wanted from crime, or by intention of doing crime? No real conclusions came, no real answers that weren’t dismissed as too ludicrous.

Everything had jumped out of her hands. All she could really do was to give him a visit, try to comfort the boy. Despite the fact that she had no authority to wield over the guards who would, insistently, prohibit entry. She was likely to be arrested if the guard squealed.

But the frantic movements the boy had made to escape, without even being able to hear his own voice, without being able to see nothing but black, without being able to feel even the pain he was inflicting himself with. . . brought tears to her eyes.

->-<-

The smell hit him hard. It came first, but so bewildered at the sudden regaining of his bearings, his brain did not register the dank, earthen smell of being underground with stone walls. It was a prolonged moment of panic until he realized he was just in darkness, and his vision not consumed by it. If there was any assurance, there was a solid, cold floor he was lying down on.

Then the pain washed over him.

It came startlingly fast, enough to throw him in a fit of flinches, then ebbed, yet the hurt was steady; simply not sharp, but pounding.

He fainted before his head hit the floor.

And he was awake again, again hit with a strong stench. His body was whole – aching, as if invisible feet were stepping on wherever he moved. But the stench that woke him was simply overpowering. The tangle of confusion and trivial thoughts was suppressed by the noxious, choking scent; in only seconds Vincent discerned it as human waste. The smell rammed into his nostrils, petrifying its path behind its wake, an unseen assault shoving a fist down his throat, suffocating him with an instant urge to break his own nose, such was the disgust.

It was not easy to keep himself from retching. He opened his mouth and quickly, shut it. When he would open his mouth, and naturally, intend to empty his disgust out onto the floor, a sense of unknowable forbidding would stop him.

Busy. Keep yourself busy. Find something to do.

Cautiously, he began to toe his way around this unknown place. Ever so cautiously, to not upset his precarious self-control, he inched his foot forward torturously slow. And not before too long, he stubbed his toe against something. He let out a yelp in pain – and whatever it was, the sharp sting jolted him out of his skin.

He felt his body relax and his breath come in short gasps; by his reaction, he deeply realized how scared he was feeling. As if some vigilant eye was watching over him, ready to punish him for some wrong he would do.

Fingers embraced each other, slowly venting his unease. He felt their wet. The sound of his deep breathing drowned in the silence. He blinked, hard and tight. His mind was still distraught. What else could be expected from a sudden, unexplained abduction? Unlike before, he could not make himself simply accept all this as a matter of course. He might have his head broken – as Calia had so graciously put it once – but there was a definite wrongness in his situation. He knew what it was to have a basic level of intelligence.

And he was digressing again, instead of concentrating on what he was supposed to be doing: finding some way out of this stinking hole. His stomach egged him to move.

Not keen to scare himself again, he picked away at another direction with his toe. Something soft. He pressed harder, and a quirky squish perplexed him. His hesitation was natural – the scare was still raw – but reached out anyway.

The moment he made contact, the room flashed and he could see again. The light was blinding – but he was not blinded, exactly. He saw as if nothing had ever stole his sight, as if a hand was removed from a playful joke.

Then he saw what he held.

Control tipped, tipped his stomach upside down, tipped it all onto the floor. A mass of green and yellow tarnished blue stone. A brief moment of distracted thought, and Vincent grasped that he had not eaten anything since Calia’s present of vegetables and fruits earlier on the day. He scraped the back of his hand against his lips, slick with saliva and spew. Then his eyes traced back to where what was still clenched in his fist.

A hand, much like his own. Or parts of what would make a hand. Decaying, mutilated, half eaten. He heaved again.

The hand twitched.

He jumped backwards, hurling it away, landing painfully on stone. . . ?

What?

He felt his hands bunch up some kind of cloth beneath him. In fact, his hand sunk into the cloth, smooth but somehow coarse. His head snapped around and down.

Velvet. There was a wad of bright blue fabric underneath him, now. He no longer felt cold stone, but as if cushions were under him, bobbing him up and down every time he breathed. Velvet. There was a dance of vague memory to that naming.

He fumbled, having lost firm ground beneath him, away from the hand. If he did not see it in the corner, writhing, he was sure he would have thought he was still holding onto the horrible thing. He dared not look at it. But he had to keep an eye where it was to scamper away. And kept under his eye, the – thing – was in mortal agony, flopping up and down, rolling sideways and every finger, partial or whole, strove to rip each other apart. When Vincent banged his head into a wall, in a split-second decision, he roared. An excuse to breath out all his fear and embarrassment in one chance. If he did not feel more embarrassed after it.

His cheeks burning, Vincent pushed against solid ground. Solid ground, and his back hit soft wall. A shiver ran through him, and the room was not cold. The velvet had attached itself to the wall. No, the wall was velvet.

He slapped himself twice with all the strength he could muster in his shaking arm. Fore and backhand stung him sharp, but his senses still told him that the hand was still moving, the wall still of cloth. Then laughter came, more of a wheeze, awkward and weak.

Why am I laughing? Like if I’m just waiting for something to happen.

His wait was not long. The hand, seemingly placated and having exhausted itself, fell dead to the floor. Vincent’s eyes still remained riveted on it, swiping the dampness of his hands on the velvet. He felt time pass, but was content to stay utterly still. He squinted. Something was happening to the thing, but he could not find it in himself to move an inch closer, no matter how bad curiosity pushed at him.

It was healing. Flesh, was being siphoned from out of air and being doctored into the hand. Pale slivers glued into holes of putrefied flesh, flecks of white constructing lost bone, leaving out a single stub of an index finger. In seconds a pool of blood was visibly growing, pumping outwards vigorously as if an intangible heart worked nearby. Occasionally there would be a cough of blood from the stub.

Vincent twitched every time there was a spurt of the ghastly red liquid. The color looked too similar to the locks dangling in front of his eyes. Cursed with his short memory of life, his lack of knowledge, he could not comprehend what this sight meant, or what words he had to put in his mouth. Was this kind of thing normal? Or was it something that he was not supposed to see? Instinct stabbed him as the latter. The pool was nearing his toes, now. Too similar.

But Vincent realized he did not feel so much horror with the hand anymore, now that it was a fairly good imitation of his own. His wary eye did not let up one second, however. But it was not enough to stifle his yelp when the hand darted straight from the ground to right between his eyes. The graze of fingernails as he ducked was quickly forgotten as the boy cringed at the repulsive squelch, and the resulting sounds it made as the thing plastered itself onto the wall. Again, the boy found himself scurrying away. He no longer cared if he drowned in that pool of blood.

But it was no longer there. No sloshing filled his ears, or pitter patter of wet cloth repeatedly touching stone.

Turn around.

The suggestion was strong. Very strong.

For all intents and purposes, his body swiveled.

It was more entertained with the wall than him, entertained with moving in strokes, swishes and scratches mysteriously memorable.

Seihtal.

He began reading.

The Master sits at province,
Yet void of true sleight, void of tools.
Of such import to be Fell by Night,
Of such path to be Shaped by Chaos,
Of such wrought to be Seen by Time.
Mansions and Palaces awake!
Ordinance is imminent,
We wait and wait.

He who is shadow that shall guide the Stairs
Stolid as tundra of the Kaehkilian Passes,
Clement as weather in the Syalori fjords,
Yet armed with curled hand,
Guiding hand one cannot but latch with ecstasy.
Here for since, for present and ever,
Victims of protean puppets will convene.
Mansions and Palaces awake!
Ordinance is imminent,
We wait and wait, twice more.

She who is favored above all, she who contrives the dream
Pushes it, pulls it and plugs and curtails
Was, is and will be called Equal.
For if there was a flaw in the Master’s office,
The Child of Phantasms will complement.
One to two, two for one,
As it was, as it is, as it will be.
Mansions and Palaces awake!
Ordinance is imminent,
We wait and wait, thrice more.

The Cross will pave the quest,
In the mortal lands where fantasy and balance advents
Reality is but our figment of imagination
Yet denial is to soft care and nourish,
Even for the Tyrant himself, yet think it not a lapse
But the manifest of greed pounding the anathema on.
Awake, ordinance is imminent.
We utter once, final more.

Perhaps the infinity will crawl faster than we dare to conceive events.
Before this ruptures, before this is restored,
Before all is null, before all is order.
Yet the Cyclian swirls unerring
Heedless of whims of its creators
But strings its own machinations.
It is the lock, some say the key.
Yet all know it plays only one.
And the other, advents on mortal lands.

Children, seek the retrieval of the Conqueror;
Repression and reform;
Mansions and Palaces awake!
Come the sundering, rending, wrenching
Divulging, dividing, renewing
For ordinance is imminent.
Let none brave to laugh at it.

For it all must happen,

For it to not, that will truly break the world.

Sieanas kihlain uonic, tauhyril erlilic sastien euziris Chyzielias.

After the first few seconds his head was tilting side to side. After a few more, his eyes were glazing, unfocused. Understanding fled from him, and so therefore so too, had attention. He could not make heads or tails of it – a warning? Somebody’s thoughts? But he was the only one there. Minus the hand.

But he committed it to memory. Something told him to do so. Something like that disembodied voice before – an unspoken command to read and reread this drivel even urged his hands to trace the writing. With one finger he snaked the gory inscription; the blood did not bother him, or he simply did not see it now as he was, in a daze. Five times he tailed the unique curves and divisions, and just as he had replaced himself to repeat once more, a click broke him out of his silent ritual.

At first, he ignored it. Maybe it was just the hand reacting again, as it had fallen limp after fulfilling its purpose.

Absorbed, Vincent did not realize there was no hand.

No velvet rubbed against his writing finger.

No blood.

“Vincent?!”

Lyrien’s voice cracked through the barrier of consuming interest. The boy stopped, utterly, senses inching back to him. He blinked, and the light was gone. Blinked again, the room was daylight. Blink. Darkness. Was it the brightness of Lyrien’s torch?

“Is that blood? Vincent, are you bleeding?”

Bringing light with her, Lyrien perched the torch down onto the cold floor, propping it down easily, as it was a three legged sort. The warmth keenly patted Vincent’s feet and proceeded upwards, and finally, to his bleeding finger. Passively Vincent watched a strip of cloth appear after a ripping sound in the girl’s hands. With the sleight of practice her fingers spread the cloth and circled it around the finger, sparingly, tightly; as the finishing touch, Lyrien plucked a candle out of nowhere and lit it alight. One silent moment later she rained a little column of molten wax where the makeshift bandage ended.

“Was it the guard? Who did this to you?” worried Lyrien, fussing about the blood on his clothes. She was muttering something about ‘disgusting sport’ and ‘a good tongue-lashing’. She was probably commenting on the various bruises as well. As she tried to herd to him away from the wall, however, he snapped to.

Immediately he noticed the velvet gone. The hand, which should have been right below him, between his feet, had vanished. The memory of it was clear enough, but memory did not place the real thing in front of his eyes, only the distant horror.

The worry never left Lyrien’s face, and she laid a concerned hand on Vincent’s head. She grimaced when she felt no warmth from the top of his head, indicating how cold he was, and frowned when he slapped her hand away. To him, it was a hindrance to his moment of bewilderedness. The boy focused on the wall again.

And read nothing but a hasty scribble of dripping illegibility.

The blood! The blood – he raised his finger.

The blood was his own.

“Talk to me. Please. What is it?”

His own. What in the world? Vincent began scratching at the hasty treatment Lyrien had given him, and as he was about to rip open the wax-enclosed cloth, Lyrien pried his hand away with a little more ferocity than she had intended. Vincent flinched at the pain her inadvertent action had given him, and Lyrien bit her lip, if not a little short of making it bleed herself.

“What are you doing?! You barely had any skin left on it as it is! Vincent, tell me what’s wrong!”

“Ly. . rien.”

For the first time since her coming, the boy met her eyes, and his hands started shaking in hers. Relieved to hear the boy finally acknowledge her, Lyrien gave his hands a firm squeeze. That frown was persisting on her face, but there was a tenderness touching her drooped eyebrows. She had seen what he was doing, but yet. . . Why had he done it?

“It’s okay now. . . It’s okay, Vincent.”

She had not answered his question, as if denying what had happened. But Vincent knew. He had seen it, smelt and heard. Though temporarily forgotten, the noxious choke of waste returned, and reminded him of what it was like to want to stop breathing. If Lyrien also suffered, she showed no signs of it. His finger throbbed. No skin?

“Exactly what was I doing?” pressed Vincent, serious. He needed the answer, because he did not know what. Lyrien would know, and Lyrien would answer. The girl shook her head and held onto him a little tighter – hands on his arms, now.

“You were scratching the wall. Scratching the wall. . . With your finger. . . And writing something.”

His acceptance was silent. Lyrien would not lie to him, he knew. He was sure. All she had shown him was kindness, why would she find it in her to lie? Before he could elaborate in reflection for his little… incident, Lyrien’s being there, holding him, led to a different thought. One more immediate, and suddenly overwhelming.

“I thought. . . That the Queen was going to kill me.”

He could not help it. In comparison, with his little confrontation with the Kynith, the Queen was strikingly similar to their undisguised hate for him when they had spoken. The words they had spoken to him – indirectly on both occasions – were filled with contempt but also with slight fear. But suffice to say both experiences had terrified him. The flash of cold intent in those eyes shouldered him with a yearning to forget it all. Emotion kept stirring inside him; overlapped with what seemed to be swelling pain from his hand. He found little pearls gathering at the corner of his eyes, and embarrassed, discreetly flicked them away. Upon seeing this, Lyrien dropped her cautious guard and pulled Vincent to herself.

Whoever he was, whatever he might be, Vincent was just a boy standing in front of him. A child who needed a caring hand, someone to give him a hug at a time of need. Not to be treated like a criminal for alien reasons obviously absurd.

Muffled by having his head tightened into Lyrien’s chest, Vincent let out a little sob. Soothingly Lyrien stroked his back, smoothing his clothes, trying to rub some warmth on him. The only warm thing about the poor boy was his tears watering her shirt. She felt so guilty of her warm coat that she patted him to stand, and took off every article of clothing that would come off without her becoming indecent to look at. A few moments later there was a pool of green and gold at the boy’s feet. The boy looked wonderingly at her, and she smiled weakly.

“Let’s get you warm. Come on, arms up,” said Lyrien, holding up her coat, and the boy pushed his arms through. It was much too big, his arms flapping about inside the sleeves, and the tails of the coat hanging down to his knees. But the first thing he noticed was the spread of this wave of numbing, enveloping heat. His lips parted and let out a gleeful moan, if not a small one, and Lyrien chuckled. “Hands please, and lift your foot too.”

Hands and toes wiggled in gloves and socks. He looked like a scarecrow, but he was warm. Very warm. He had forgotten everything at the bliss of the moment. Soon, everything came flooding back. Even the pain, belatedly. He winced, and the naked determination shown on his face not to cry again made Lyrien ruffle his hair.

“What will happen now? Am I…” the boy’s breath faltered on the last word, “Am I going to die?”

His composure was measured, but was on the verge of cracking again. Such determination, and on his face was a look that she could not reply to with a smile. But she had been thinking about this. As she had nervously pleaded with the guard, promised him a quick favor – thankfully it was someone she knew – the long trek down the dungeon stairs was not spent in idle walk. It was with every step that she wrought her mind out of describable shape with her thinking hammer. There was simply no easy answer.

He was just a boy. A scared one.

Lyrien grit her teeth but let her next words slip through the gaps. She could not look him in the eye.

“No.” said Lyrien.

Never in the eye.

“No, you’re going to live. I – we, will get you out of here. Calia and I, together, just as we found you.”

The hardest part was over, so she believed. Lyrien held the boy’s face in both her hands and forced herself to look at him. Tremendous effort locked her eyes to his. A natural smile. She needed a natural smile. She hugged him instead – it was not in her to look him in the eye and smile such a lie. She could not bear to witness and later on, remember the soft, innocent relief that danced across Vincent’s face. Buried into Lyrien, the boy wrapped his around the girl and pulled her closer. They held each other for quite a while.

One, reassured, while the other, already regretting her mistake.

When they finally broke apart, when she was least expecting it, guilt haunting her mind away from the present, Lyrien felt a little peck at her cheek. Mind suddenly cleared of thought, she blinked at Vincent. Her wide eyes fed Vincent the will to smile, albeit embarrassed.

“Thank you, Lyrien.”

->-<-

An ominous click, and the heavyset prison door shut. It was a soft sound that betrayed its appearance – the door was of solid, good steel that required two strong men to budge. And it would remain locked for another twenty four hours, upon when the Queen would decide the boy’s fate. That was the way with high criminals. She was breathing hard, but not from the manual labor of dragging her feet away from the boy, but from the burden she carried with every step.

In her mind she was trying to list of what the boy was, instead of what he was not. So young. Her hand rose and brushed her cheek – the boy’s lips had been icy to the touch, but the small gesture had left a burning impression on her. At least he was not going to die prematurely of the cold. When she stepped out of the dungeon, wearing less, holding less than she ought to be, the guards simply sighed but said nothing. She ignored the shaking of heads and went on her own way, and if she was cold, she was determined not to show it. No one was there to see her, but in a sense she felt Vincent was watching her, somewhere. If he had not died of cold already. It was freezing.

Tomorrow, she pledged to herself. Tomorrow, at the risk of becoming a criminal herself, she would question the Queen.

For now she had to face the notion of proposing the idea to Calia. Then, brood her argument. . .

The walls seemed to disapprove in their silence.