Squire Derel Page 6

  “Well, Lidek’s doing a first-rate job with them,” Alduran ventured in a moment. “I’m sure they’re ready for this.”

  Keating and Blake nodded their agreement. Apparently, these quarters were too close to allow them to miss everything that was said. Though their posture, with arms wrapped around each other, leaning into one another, indicated that they were trying anyway. “I concur,” he said.

  She added, “Good experience for them, too.”

  “Right,” Westergaard nodded, brushing at the stray locks of her light hair that were sticking to her forehead. “It’s part of why they’re here, right?”

  I smiled to myself, considering how much more reasonable a little sweat and dirt made my capital friends. “I’m sure Lidek will be gratified to know you have so much faith in his mentoring.”

  Alduran ignored the comment. “Anyway, those squires will be out of hospital tomorrow. We need to interview them.”

  Eager assent rose all around me, and, having amused myself a little at their expense, I let the point go. We were all was soon regaled with Ki’s new theories – and before long I found myself snoozing.

  I woke when the skimmer pulled to a stop outside my estate, and I took my leave of the team. “We’ll send the car for you tomorrow,” Westergaard promised.

  “Don’t bother. I’ll walk.”

  Alduran’s left eyebrow crept up his forehead, but he said only, “Well, suit yourself, of course, Callaghan. But we will be starting at oh-six-hundred.”

  I nodded, doing my level best to keep the sarcasm out of my tone as I answered, “I look forward to it.” Then, I turned to the familiar stone of my ancient home. I heard the skimmer take off down the road with a measure of satisfaction. It had been a long day, and I was thoroughly peopled-out. The quietude of the empty halls and vacant rooms washed over me, and I felt relief.

  Claxton would be downstairs, probably finishing dinner if it wasn’t already done. She’d wait until I ate, and then head home herself. The groundskeeper and gardener would have already left for the day, and the gamekeeper would be retired to his cottage on the other side of the property.

  I headed first to my room, to wash away the grime of the day. Soon, the house would be entirely mine. As tranquil as it was, and as happy as I was to be away from the team, some part of me saddened at that prospect. Not that I resented Claxton going home to her family, of course.

  It was just that there was a point of too much tranquility, when it was so still it could be hard to remember which side of the grave you were on. What was more tranquil, after all, than a sepulcher?

  Some days, I wasn’t entirely sure if the Callaghan estate was much more than a sepulcher. Well maintained to be sure; ancient and full of memory, of course.

  But when its attendants departed, there wasn’t much life left behind the cold stone. Not since…

  Well, not since she’d been here.

  It seemed like an eternity ago now. It wasn’t really. A decade ago wasn’t that long. And yet…

  I couldn’t remember her face anymore. I could describe it, sure. Golden hair, emerald eyes, rosy cheeks…

  But those were just words. I couldn’t see her in my mind’s eye anymore.

  I couldn’t hear her voice.

  I couldn’t remember the feel of her skin under my fingers, or the taste of her lips against mine.

  A decade wasn’t that long, but it might as well have been an eternity. Helena. Gods, it had been a long time since I’d let that name into my thoughts.

  I wasn’t sure where it had come from. Maybe it was the talks with Lidek. Maybe it was what I’d almost told Derel. Maybe it was just finding Ilyen dead, and the prospect of war.

  Whatever it was, though, I’d been thinking about Helena a lot these last few days. She was my KP. She’d been a hell of a hardass in the beginning. She was newly knighted, and overcompensating. I was young and dumb and cocky as hell.

  For a while, I might have hated her. I’m pretty sure she hated me too. But somewhere along the way, I grew up and she eased up. And before I knew it, I was head-over-heels, butterflies-in-my-stomach, puppy-dog-eyes, crazy in love with her.

  She was brilliant, and gorgeous, and so ferocious in a fight it hurt to see. She made me weak in the knees, and she somehow figured out how to get through my stubborn streak. I was in love with her.

  It wasn’t until I was knighted myself, though, that I worked up the courage to tell her how I felt. And she felt the same. That was probably the happiest day of my life, when she told me she loved me – she’d loved me for two years, and never breathed a word of it.

  We were a pair of fools, who had spent so long torturing ourselves out of fear that we’d overstep or make the other uncomfortable. But, in that moment, it seemed it had all worked out. We had the rest of our lives together.

  We were going to get married. We’d move back to the shire eventually and live there. We’d start a family some day and raise our children together. She had ideas about redrafting the armies of Callaghan, and fortifying our borders, like in my ancestors’ day. I thought of bringing her back here to stay, my lady of the shire.

  And then she’d gone out on patrol – just a routine patrol, along a quiet stretch of the eastern highway. Only there’d been brigands out that day – a whole party of them, raiding.

  A single knight was no match for a dozen men. She killed two of them and wounded another two; and they killed her.

  And that was that. I returned to House Callaghan – not with my bride at my side, but alone. Not to re-open the keep, and restore her glory days, but to rot in this stone sepulcher that might have been our paradise.

  To die my own kind of death, a day at a time, month after month. Year after long year. To die among the living, until they finally laid me to rest with the dead.

  I put on a fresh change of clothes, and sighed. Hell. Maybe, all things considered, the taskforce wasn’t the worst thing for me. And maybe – though I’d never give him the satisfaction of hearing me say so – the commander was onto something.

  Maybe it was time for me to turn the page on that chapter of my life, while I still had one to live.

  Chapter Nine – Callaghan

  I arrived at Cragspoint at quarter to the hour and found myself the only member of the task force in the vicinity. “They’re breakfasting,” a page informed me. So I headed to the briefing room.

  The two squires were waiting, and after exchanging brief hellos, the three of us sat for a space in uncomfortable silence. We were all twiddling our thumbs – figuratively and, in Aaronsen’s case, literally as the minutes wore on. I understood their discomfort. They were about to be called to give an account of their actions. It wasn’t an adversarial process exactly, but by its nature it was definitely a kind of trial. Every choice, every split-second decision made in the heat of the moment would now be parsed, dissected and re-evaluated in the cold, clear light of a new day by people – like me – who weren’t there.

  That would put anyone’s teeth on edge. Never mind a pair of green squires.

  I was only one cup of coffee into my morning, and not feeling particularly conversational. Still, the longer we waited, the more awkward the silence became. “Your, uh, burns look to be mostly healed, Aaronsen,” I said at length.

  It was true. He’d been a mass of raw, red tissue and bandages last time I saw him. Now, the bandages were gone, and though his skin looked very pink and a little rough, I could see no other visible sign of his injuries.

  He glanced up. “Oh, um, yes. The priests – they patched me up.”

  I nodded. Priestly healing blended alchemy and science, magic and medicine, in a way that few alive understood. I certainly did not, though I knew, like the wyvern steel that hung at my side, it was rooted in elven magic and human skill. But the arts were forbidden to the common man, or woman. Even among priests, only an elect few could learn those ancient secrets.

  But whatever went into making it happen, the results were undeniable. Healer priests
could regrow damaged tissue, soothe burns, heal infections – all in a matter of days.

  Young squire Phillip’s miraculous recovery was but one of the many testaments to their skill I’d seen over the years.

  This established, silence settled on us again. This time, it was Derel who broke it. “The KP’s funeral is tomorrow. Will the task force be there, ma’am?”

  “I assume so, yes.”

  “His family will be here. They’ll be glad to see a delegation from the capital.”

  “Of course.” I hadn’t given it much thought. The truth was, I sometimes forgot that not everyone was like me and Lidek. Some people had family. Some people had lives outside the uniform. “We will be there to pay our respects, Derel.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How about you two? Have you heard anything about reassignment?”

  “No ma’am. But I hope I can stay here.”

  I studied her curiously. “You do? Your family is based near the capital, isn’t it?” I didn’t know much about the Derels – less, obviously, than I’d initially thought, seeing as how I’d thought she was one of the Derel sons. But I seemed to remember that they hailed from the central region.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I’d anticipated more by way of response, but when I realized she did not intend to elaborate further, I nodded. That was, I supposed, a kind of answer in its own right. “Oh.”

  “I’d like to stay too,” Aaronsen put in, either missing or ignoring the significance of Derel’s recalcitrance. “My folks are just north of here, in Potterswode. They’re close enough that I can spend my leave there.” He glanced up at her. “I suppose it’s too far for you to go home, though, Ana.”

  Well, the boy’s not good at picking up on social cues, I guess.

  Derel demurred that it was, and he nodded. “Too bad.”

  “Well, I still see them on the long holiday.”

  “Oh.” His expression brightened. “That’s not so long, then.” His enthusiasm for the coming new year and its attendant revelry contrasted sharply with her grimace, but again he seemed oblivious. “I suppose we’ll have our new assignments by then.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, most knights already picked their squires after the academy tryouts, in spring.”

  He frowned, now. “That’s true. You think they’ll split us up, then?”

  “Maybe.”

  He stared with crestfallen eyes at a point opposite them. “Oh.”

  She noticed and nudged him. “Hey, it’s nothing to be sad about, Phillip. The only reason we’re together now is because Ilyen was recommending me at the end of the year. You were his new recruit. You’d stay here. And I would have moved on.”

  She flashed him a smile that seemed forced, and the boy considered. “I guess. Still…”

  Her smile waned. “I know.”

  “I’m sure they’ll find you someone,” I put in. “Considering the circumstances. They won’t just send you back to the Academy.”

  It was accurately put, but a poor word choice all the same. The pair of them cringed in unison. “The academy? You mean, they’d send us back?” Phillip grimaced.

  “Where else?” Derel asked with a sigh. “If there’s no one with an opening – two openings – we’ll have to go back.”

  “The Commander will figure something out,” I hastened to reassure them. “You were Ilyen’s squires, Ilyen was one of his knights. You’re basically family, as far as Lidek sees it.”

  Phillip considered the words, but Derel seemed to consider me. “Do you know the commander well, KP?”

  “Uh, well enough. He was a friend of my father’s.” I paused, frowning in memory. “Probably my grandfather’s first, actually.”

  The boy laughed. “He’s old enough, he probably knew the elves that lived in these parts.” Derel’s face went pale, and I frowned at him. These were cues he did not miss, and his cheeks flushed. “That is…I mean…”

  “Commander Lidek may be seasoned,” I said, with a touch more aggravation than I felt, “but he’s one of the best knights in the kingdom, Squire. You’d do well to remember it.”

  “Yes ma’am. Sorry ma’am.”

  I let an uncomfortable silence settle on our tiny group. I wasn’t actually mad at the red-cheeked squire. Hell, I’d made the same joke, or nearly, once or twice when I’d come back here. And I’d not been smart enough to do it behind his back. I’d said it straight to his face. And Lidek had raised a bushy eyebrow, shaken his head, and sighed. “I hope you don’t flatter yourself that you’re the first one to come up with that, Callaghan. I’ve heard it said before, and more prettily. You may have your father’s skill with a blade, but the family wit seems to have skipped a generation.”

  Still, if he got the impression that I held him in grave disapprobation, well, all the better. Never too early to learn a little discretion.

  The rest of the taskforce began to matriculate in now. Ki was first and noted the strained atmosphere with a curiosity he did little to suppress. “Well, good morning Callaghan. Everything…alright?”

  “Right as rain, Alduran. I trust your breakfast was pleasant?” I glanced pointedly at my watch. I was pretty sure he knew he was arriving ten minutes past the starting time he’d selected. But I didn’t want him to miss the fact that I knew it too.

  “Oh, yes. Nothing like these rustic installments, for a throwback to simpler days, eh?”

  Phyllis and Darren were next, and they were too interested in each other to notice much of anything else. Which was also true of Tofte and Westergaard, albeit for different reasons. “I told you we’d be late.”

  “I wasn’t the one who needed a new plate of kippers.”

  “Those were inedible. I wouldn’t feed them to a dog I liked.”

  “I had no problem eating them.”

  “Oh Adrian: I said a dog I liked.”

  Finally, the commander arrived. This was a closed-door interview, with no civilians permitted in the chamber. The sheriff and mayor would be apprised of any pertinent details after the fact, but the purpose of the day was as much to evaluate our officers’ actions as anything else.

  Lidek called the meeting to order at oh-six-hundred and twenty-five. Almost half an hour after I was told to be here. I might have been a little more annoyed if I’d been sleeping better. As it was, it’d had been a rough night, and so the early start wasn’t much worse than a late start would have been. Still, the principle of the thing rankled.

  The squires were called on to give an account of the morning prior to the event. Their telling’s matched in all the particulars, albeit from different perspectives. They’d risen early and eaten. They’d roasted a wild goat the night before and had leftovers for breakfast. Phillip was assigned the job of tacking the horses, and Derel taking down camp. Ilyen was planning their route.

  He heard it first, the beat of heavy wings high overhead. He told them, “Take cover. Now.”

  It wasn’t soon enough. A blast of scorching heat and deadly fire rained down on the camp. Derel had just ducked out of one of the tents when it hit. Aaronsen dodged a second before the unlucky horses were incinerated.

  The beast landed, and the rest we more or less knew. There was one detail, though, that the boy added that I had not yet heard. To judge from the team’s expressions, neither had they, with perhaps the exception of Lidek.

  “When the wyvern attacked the KP, I…I turned back. To help.”

  Ki raised an eyebrow. “Did KP Ilyen request your assistance?”

  “No sir.”

  “I see. Did your senior squire give you the order?”

  “No sir. She…she told me to follow Ilyen’s orders.”

  “So this was your decision?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm. And how did you plan to assist, Squire?”

  “I…didn’t have a plan,” he admitted.

  A few members of the team scratched notes on pads in front of them, and t
he matter dropped. Until we reached Derel, anyway: then it found new life. “Squire Aaronsen’s report of turning back to face the dragon is inconsistent with your written account.”

  “Is it, sir?”

  “I think you know it is. You make no mention of the fact that the squire in your charge disobeyed a direct order, from you – his ranking officer – and your knight.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, although she neither looked nor sounded particularly sorry. “I was focused on the fight itself. I guess I must have overlooked it.”

  “Unfortunate oversight, Squire: it calls into question the validity of the entire report.” He added in a pointed way, “And the credibility of the reporter.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she repeated.

  “It was Derel’s first combat report,” Lidek put in, mildly.

  “And it was inaccurate,” Ki persisted.

  Here, the young woman bristled. “Respectfully, sir, I was asked to detail our fight with the dragon. I did. I gave you every relevant detail about it.”

  “We decide what’s relevant, Squire. When a junior squire disobeys two direct orders, and his knight dies – perhaps as a direct result of his actions – you do not neglect to mention it.”

  “It sounds to me like you both disobeyed Ilyen’s orders,” Westergaard said. “Aaronsen first, but you didn’t leave either, Derel. You remained and engaged the wyvern. Against orders.”

  “It was going to kill us,” she protested. “Ilyen –”

  “KP Ilyen,” Tofte put in.

  “KP Ilyen,” she corrected herself, “told us to run to avoid the wyvern.”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “What?”

  “Was that the phrasing of his order? ‘Run to escape the wyvern.’”

  “No.” She frowned. “Of course not. That is, sir.”

  “Then that’s your interpretation of his motives?”

  “He told us to get out of there. To get back to Cragspoint. Those were his exact words, or as close as I can remember them.”