35. A Secret Kept
V iola headed back to the barracks. She was on duty in the evening, patrolling the city streets. Viola disliked duties like these. Lysandra after dark was hardly rowdy. She knew she ought not to long for action, and there was pleasure to be had in escorting the vulnerable home after dark, but she did occasionally find herself longing for something to happen. A direwolf dispatched before any injury occurred. A small troll trampling someone’s garden. Maybe a hedgewitch causing minor mayhem out of boredom. Anything more than simply marching up and down the streets, making her presence known to deter any would-be criminals.
She supposed it beat guard duty, where you simply had to stand for hours. She was never much good at sitting still. Surprising, then, that she enjoyed visiting the Farm, where nothing ever seemed to happen, but perhaps it just reminded her of home.
It was almost dawn by the time she finished her patrol. She returned exhausted to the barracks, too tired to even flick through her notebook and see if Nico had messaged her.
Nico.
Strange how her heart shifted at the mere whisper of his name. A silent thud, a sliver of candlelight. Nicodemus. Nico. She wasn’t used to this, this feeling of displacement, of a bed feeling arctic without someone beside her. She wasn’t used to feeling absence like a stone in her shoe, a weight in her chest.
She didn’t understand it. She liked her space, she liked being alone .
And yet she thought she’d give up solitude forever to have his arms around her just for tonight.
Strange. Ridiculous. Almost certainly false.
And yet a lie that felt like truth pulsing inside her veins.
For once, it was not grief that kept her up, nor exhaustion that sang her to sleep. You’ll see him tomorrow, she told herself.
The words echoed round her bedchamber like a lullaby.
It was past midday when a knock at her door awoke her.
“It’s me,” came Heindrich’s voice. “Captain wants to see you.”
Viola shot up. She knows, came her first thought. Somehow, the Captain knew that she’d been meeting with Nicodemus. Someone had seen them together. Freya had remembered something. The Captain was giving her a chance to come clean…
No, that didn’t make sense. If she knew—if she truly knew—Viola would be hauled out of her bed in irons and thrown in front of the Queen and King. It was treason. She knew it was.
Which was why it was stupid to have become so attached to him, but such thoughts had been lost to her last night.
It was something else. Rumours, perhaps, but no proof.
“Viola?” Heindrich rapped again. “Did you hear? Are you up?”
“Yes,” she hurried. “I’m awake. Give me a moment.”
She quickly pulled on her clothes, ramming her feet into her boots and pulling on her favourite deep green doublet jacket in an attempt to look presentable. She ran her fingers through her slight curls, which probably had the opposite effect than the one she desired.
She tried not to think about Nicodemus running his fingers through her hair the night before, twirling her curls, playing with the ends. She really shouldn’t be thinking about him right now. She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all.
Heindrich escorted her to the Captain’s study, walking briskly beside her.
“How’s Freya?” Viola asked, mostly for something to say.
“Confused,” Heindrich admitted. “As any one of us would be. ”
“Will there be an investigation, do you think?” Viola asked, hoping she didn’t sound too inquisitive.
“I don’t think so. Most efforts are going to be focused on recovering the treasure and logging all of it. Don’t question a miracle, as they say.”
Viola imagined that this probably wouldn’t be enough for Freya, but she didn’t pry.
They arrived at the Captain’s door and knocked.
“Come in,” came the Captain’s reply.
Viola duly entered, Heindrich hovering behind like a loyal hound banned from the room. Viola slid in, saluting as she was bid.
“At ease,” the Captain instructed. “I’ll skip to the chase: we’re due a shift change at the Farm. I know you weren’t due out for another couple of months, but we’re down ten knights. Eleven, if you count Flameborn.”
Viola froze. The Farm. She could hardly have forgotten the promise she made to Nicodemus, but when it was made, it had seemed a distant thing, something she wouldn’t have to think about for months, that she had time to wriggle out of.
He wouldn’t ask you to do anything dangerous, she reminded herself. He cares about you. That hasn’t sprung up over the last few days. He wouldn’t do anything that might hurt you—
But what might hurt her, and what might hurt the Crown, were two entirely different things. And Viola still wasn’t sure where her loyalties lay. She couldn’t betray her country, not even for him, not without cause. At the same time, she’d made him a promise, and she didn’t think she could break that, either.
“How is Flameborn?” she asked, partly for something to say, for a sentence to delay her acceptance.
The Captain sighed. “He has a long road ahead of him, but he seemed in good spirits when I spoke to him. He’s eager to rejoin our ranks if he takes to his prosthetic.”
Viola nodded. She supposed that was as well as could be expected.
“Well?” the Captain prompted. “Will you do it?”
Viola scrambled for a reason to refuse. “With the Shadowmancer—”
The Captain shook her head. “He’s been quiet for a while, and the King wants us to ease up on the search for him. It’s entirely possible he’s just forcing you to take a break. You… you could use a break, Viola. A real one. Now that we have Ser Whiterain back with us, perhaps a trip to the Farm is exactly what you need.”
And Viola, who had run out of excuses, promptly agreed.
For all that Nicodemus wasn’t a particular fan of the outdoors or physical activity in general, there was something about being stuck in bed that made everyone long for the simple pleasure of a walk beneath the boughs. The fine weather didn’t help. A fine blanket of sunlight drifted in through the tall windows, bathing his bed in tempting warmth. He had the strongest desire to fling back the covers, leap out of the window, and soar through the trees on a shield of shadow.
A terrible, foolish notion. A bad idea for a number of reasons, notwithstanding his injuries. There was a cat on him, for a start.
It wasn’t just the outside he longed for, either. It was the person he might be out in the sunlight with. It was the feeling of control, the ability to move himself a little closer to her presence.
A presence he doubted she would want to bestow on him when he told her the truth.
She’d been gone well over a day, and he’d not had a word from her since. The notebook was propped beside his bed, just in case she wrote him a message. He wondered if perhaps he’d misread the situation between them, or looked too far into it. She’d said that she cared about him, and her kisses betrayed other thoughts she hadn’t voiced, but what if that was merely his own desperate want, bouncing back at him? It was easy to care about someone helpless and wounded. It was easy, he imagined, for those feelings to fade when distance was placed between you.
He didn’t imagine he’d feel like that, if the situation was reversed. If Viola was hurt and he was unable to be beside her, he thought he might go a little insane trying to get to her.
But he didn’t want to think about her being injured. He’d rather take on another dragon.
She was probably just busy.
Mid-afternoon, Cordelia declared he was allowed to leave the bed, and suggested he come out into the courtyard for a bit of fresh air. It was no longer the cluttered, deserted place he remembered. Raised beds had been erected, stuffed with newly planted herbs. The debris had been cleared away, the bushes pruned and trimmed. It would take a while to bloom, but already it resembled far more what he’d hoped to accomplish when he’d built the damn thing, before realising he was a hopeless gardener .
“Did you steal someone’s green thumb and weld it onto your own?” Nicodemus remarked, settling into the chair she’d brought out for him.
Cordelia glanced down at her hands, frowning. “That’s a metaphor, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m wondering where your sudden inclination to garden came from.”
“Viola taught me.”
His heart hammered at the sound of her name. No wonder she smelt of earth half the time. “She did a good job.”
“She did.”
His gaze drew towards a corner of the courtyard, where two of Cordelia’s skeleton creations were erecting a shelter of wood and bone. They were both roughly human in shape, although the bones themselves were a mish-mash of various creatures. The skull of one was a deer, antlers in tow. The other was a wolf’s. He had no inclination of which animals the rest of the bones belonged to.
“What are they making?” Nicodemus asked Cordelia.
“Oh, I’m trying to design a stable for Blackberry. You know, for when Viola comes back. I thought it would be nice for him to have a proper place to stay.”
Nicodemus smiled, at the same time frightened that Viola wouldn’t be back at all, or, if she was, that it would be the final time she came. Cordelia’s efforts could be wasted.
So could his own.
“She hasn’t written,” he told her.
“It’s been a day.”
“I know, I just…”
I would have written to her. I would have written to her a thousand times, if I thought she wanted it.
He sighed, a sigh so deep that even Cordelia noticed something in it.
“You really, really like her, don’t you?”
Nicodemus swallowed.
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
“Must make this next part harder.”
Nico bit his lip. “You have no idea.”
The airship sailing to the Farm was due to depart at first light. It didn’t leave Viola long to speak to Nico, which she knew she was honour-bound to do. She was half tempted to leave without a word, to return in a month telling him that she was added to the crew at the last minute, that she’d had no time, that there was no way of seeing him before then. She’d do it next time.
It would buy her a few months. It might even buy her a year, depending on how the Captain organised things. Perhaps Flameborn would be up on his feet—meat and metal—by then and would take her place.
But perhaps not.
Go to him, a voice warned her. Make him explain.
She knew she would, but before she did, she decided to visit Flameborn. It was a trip long overdue.
He was still in the healing quarters, recovering from the loss of his leg and the rest of his burns. A tray had been erected under his blankets, protecting the residual limb. A few other scars and burns littered his exposed arms and neck, though mostly healed through the might of the healer’s magic. He looked up as Viola stepped into his room, face breaking into a smile.
“Windbright! Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes…”
“It’s good to see you, Flameborn. You look well.”
Flameborn lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I am on a cocktail of potions right now. I’m as high as pegasus! I do recommend it. Might help dispel that dark cloud of yours.”
Viola glared at him.
“Hmm. Apparently not.”
He gestured to the seat beside him. Viola sat down dutifully, handing him the gift she’d brought and trying not to stare at the tray set at the end of his bed, thinking of what was—or wasn’t—beneath it.
Flameborn peeled back the paper. “Fresh strawberries, wonderful,” he declared.
“It was either that, or a pair of socks, which I thought might be a little on the nose.”
“Rainwood got there before you.”
“I would hate to be thought unoriginal.”
They lapsed into uneasy silence.
“What kind of prosthetic are you hoping to get?” she asked him. “Anima? Some kind of runed metal?” Her memory was failing her on the types of metals that were best to enchant, but she knew there were plenty of possibilities.
Flameborn grinned. “Dragon bone,” he said. “I hear we have quite the supply right now.”
Viola smiled right back, enjoying the irony. The rarity of dragon bone made it an unusual choice for a prosthetic, but magic clung easily to it. It was a fine choice.
“I’m sure they could spare a finger bone or two for you. It was quite the beast… or so I hear.”
If Flameborn had registered her hesitation, he made no indication of it. “You seem happy,” he remarked. “I know I was joking about your storm cloud, but you’re brighter than usual. Relieved about Whiterain?”
“Of course.”
Flameborn muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Viola was relieved, of course, but it wasn’t what was making her happy, if indeed that was the emotion Flameborn could sense. The source of that happiness could never be revealed to anyone.
What was she doing? She was surprised Flameborn could sense anything from her other than nerves and guilt and confusion.
“I’m heading off to the Farm,” she told him.
“Ah, filling in my spot, are you?”
“I’ve been given my orders.”
“And we know you always follow those.”
“I do! Mostly. When they’re important. Which they usually are.”
Flameborn fixed her with an incredulous eyebrow raise.
“Usually,” she echoed.
“Oh well,” he said. “Bring me back a bushel of apples, or something.”
“I shall do my best, although you know food from the Farm is never as good as the local stuff.”
“So you and Heindrich keep saying.”
Viola squeezed his arm, got up, and departed, thinking of Flameborn’s comments about her following the rules. When she broke them, they tended to be for a good cause, and she tended to be the only person hurt because of them.
But this time, she had no idea of what would happen, and she was terrified of finding out.