Chapter 13 – Behemoth #3
Why? What did the actions of the men who charged the Gresein have to do with him?
It was a thing so far removed from his safe, tame life that it might as well have happened in another world.
Why did it matter what they did? What difference did it make to him?
At night, he tossed and turned, trying not to think about it, and for the first time in his life, he was up before dawn, alone in the practice yard with his sword in hand as if he meant to do something with it.
Stars and ancestors, did he?
This was the only thing he was good at. Well, the only thing he excelled at. Sometimes Leonin wondered if that wasn’t half his trouble, that he had never had to work hard at anything in his life.
The next day, he told his father he was going to join Remin Grimjaw’s army.
It was an almighty uproar. His mother and sisters cried.
But Leonin was twenty years old now, a fifth son, and very much superfluous.
This was the first thing he had ever cared about, and he couldn’t even explain it.
He didn’t care whether the Andelin Valley belonged to the Empire or Valleth.
He had no loyalty to Sir Remin. Even after the victory on the Brede, it was still an impossible war and anyone who fought in it would almost certainly die.
And he had to go.
Seven years and a war later, he still didn’t know why.
* * *
“Her Grace will not be coming down,” said Lady Verr, eying Davi and Leonin with interest. She was too much a creature of the capital to ask directly what happened, but Leonin could tell from the lift of her perfectly shaped eyebrows that she was putting pieces together.
There was nothing in the world like a Rose of Segoile.
“I’ll fetch supper for her,” said Davi, glancing up at the second-floor windows with naked unhappiness, and swung back atop his horse.
“He ought to do something about that eyepatch,” Lady Verr said once he was safely out of earshot. “It gives him a rather thuggish air, at present.”
“I will tell him to acquire something appropriate to the dignity of a war veteran,” Leonin replied, the rebuke as polite as if they were discussing the weather.
And while he did make a mental note to tell Davi that he needed something better than a rag tied around his head—the Duchess of Andelin’s guards could not look like Waterside street brutes—it only served to remind him that he was a guard. Not a hallow.
Where had that come from? In his wildest dreams, Leonin had never imagined that Duchess Andelin might reject the idea of hallows altogether.
He hadn’t even known that option was on the table.
Surely His Grace wouldn’t allow it. They had already come so far, and Leonin had been sure, now that the cleric had arrived, that it was only a matter of time until they made their oaths.
This was his dream. The fleeting, illusory purpose he had searched for all his life.
It was all he could do to hold his tongue when the duchess finally emerged at noon the next day, looking pale and fragile, with swollen eyes. But she had not come to speak to the men who wished to swear their souls to her, oh, no. The common-born page boy was here for his poetry lesson.
Leonin took his usual position several yards away, his face expressionless.
She was a duchess. In Segoile, it would never have occurred to him to expect an explanation.
He would have never dreamed of going up to the Duchess of Tries to question her notoriously eccentric behavior.
Frankly, he would have been more likely to question one of her purebred hounds.
It wasn’t done. It would have been mannerless, uncouth, and inexcusable.
“My lady,” said Davi, the instant the lesson was ended. “Could we talk about what happened yesterday? We didn’t mean to upset you. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, though she wouldn’t look at either of them. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t fair to both of you. I should have spoken sooner. I know you must be disappointed.”
“I would like to talk to you about it, my lady,” Leonin replied quickly. Inwardly, he was appalled; even if Duchess Andelin wasn’t good at hiding her emotions, Davi could at least be polite enough to ignore them. But it had bought them this opportunity. “If you will allow us?”
She nodded, and the two knights took their usual places on either side of her, seated on the high roots of the oak tree with a view of the valley and a carpet of crunching leaves around them.
It was the place they had often gone to discuss such things, and he hoped it would incline her to be open-minded.
“There are reasons why Sir Justenin and His Grace thought you ought to have hallows,” Leonin began in his most reasonable tone.
“You must know how dangerous it is, even though you are of celestial lineage. Few people in the Empire would dare harm you, but they might abduct you. Someone without reverence for the stars might do worse.”
“I know what people might do.” Her fingers knotted together in her lap, a habit that Leonin’s mother would have broken from his sisters in childhood. “I don’t see why that means I must have hallows.”
“You might be separated from guards, my lady,” he answered promptly. “As you cannot be from your hallows. At the word of the Emperor, or at the behest of the Temple, perhaps. Or even if you just go somewhere that men are forbidden. If we take oaths as hallows, we will no longer be considered men.”
“What?” She looked up then, shocked. “W-why? Where did you hear that? Why would you ever want to?”
“It was in one of Sir Justenin’s books.” And now he was sorry he had brought it up. “The thought does not trouble me, my lady, I assure you.”
“Well, it troubles me,” she said, looking sick. “I don’t want that to happen to you because of me. You should be safe and happy with families of your own. I don’t want anyone to do that for me.”
“M’lady, way I see it, you’d be my family,” Davi said gently.
“I would be pleased to share your name and get adopted into House Andelin. I never thought it was right, what happened to His Grace. I admire what you’re both trying to do here.
I don’t like anyone trying to stop it, especially with such dirty tricks.
My own family’s safe, and there’s plenty of them to carry on my blood.
You’d be the family I’d choose. When you think it’s right. ”
“I know.” She offered the older knight a weak smile. “I guess that wouldn’t be so bad, if you meant the oath that way. I just don’t want…”
She trailed off, her eyes flitting to Leonin, clear and transparent as glass, and he understood what she wasn’t saying. She didn’t want to accept the oath from him.
“Why?” The question burst out before he could stop it, gray fingers of fear and dread clawing him inside. It was a struggle to maintain his polite, bland expression. There was nothing more unseemly than a man who put his emotions on display. “My lady.”
“Because you want to swear to the Duchess of Andelin,” she said flatly. “But after we die, I’ll just be me. And you’ll be stuck following me forever.”
This made no sense to him at all. Of course, he was swearing to a duchess. That was who needed to be protected, and he wasn’t much concerned about what happened after he was dead. Only a lifetime of careful circumspection kept him from saying as much.
“You told me you wanted to do it because it’d be hard,” Davi prompted. “That’s why you picked me, ain’t it?”
“Isn’t it.” Leonin’s lips tightened. Yes, he had been the one to approach Davi, even though the other man was the commonest sort of peasant, one-eyed and disreputable, and still the best swordsman in the barracks.
He had done it because Remin Grimjaw wanted two hallows for his wife, and Leonin would do anything to be one of them.
“If we must speak of this, my lady, I would prefer to do so privately.”
“Davi,” she said after a moment. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, my lady.” Rising with an unfolding of long limbs, Davi shot Leonin a warning look and went to stand at a polite distance.
“I don’t understand why you won’t say it in front of him,” Duchess Andelin said, wrapping her arms around her knees. “If you’re my hallows, we’ll be together every day for the rest of our lives. We won’t have any secrets. You’ll know everything about me.”
“I will keep your secrets,” he assured her quickly. “That is part of the oath, to guard your dignity. I have thought of that. If you ever go to Segoile, I would be able to help you. You are a princess as well as a duchess. There would be many expectations of you.”
She was silent for so long, Leonin worried that he had already lost the argument.
“It’s not about that,” she said finally.
“All this time, I was only thinking about the oath itself. The words. But everyone has their own way of keeping it, even if they swore the exact same oath. And everyone has their own reasons for swearing it, too. I…I won’t do it just because I’m the Emperor’s daughter, or Remin’s wife.
And I don’t think you should swear it to me because of that, either. ”
Sometimes he forgot how smart she was.
“I said I wanted to do something difficult,” he forced himself to say. It was as if he was dragging the words out one at a time, dredging them from the bedrock of his soul. He had gone to war, searching for them. “I want…I want to do something that matters, Your Grace.”
It was nothing less than the deepest and most desperate wish of his heart, and she did not look impressed.