Enemies of Peace: Chapter Seven

Kaschar, Kingdom of Taruschkan

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3rd Awaiting, 678th Year of the Common Reckoning

Saint Luris’ Cathedral had just finished ringing out ten bells as Rosele and Ayren dressed again in the flickering candlelight of the artist’s bedchamber. The night watchman who would escort them to Pedra’s home was sure to arrive any moment, as did any visitor or obligation when one was otherwise indisposed.

In the flood of warmth that had followed, Rosele was calm. Well, not precisely calm, but more than she had been since this the news came this morning. How could anyone be calm after that? She remembered Pedra’s words as clearly as if he had but only just spoken them: that they must not tell a soul of their preparations.

But those words had itched at her like some burrowing insect, threatening to pierce her very soul. The deeper they went, the sharper the pain that she should keep something so dangerous from Ayren, after all that they had shared. Would it be a betrayal of the council? Of Pedra, even? Yes, but to Rosele there seemed no greater betrayal than that of her own heart.

She looked to Ayren then, who pulled a shirt the size of a tent over broad shoulders etched with scars. Her chestnut hair hung loose just past her neck. A less steady hand than the surgeon’s own must have seen to those wounds, as even years later they looked ragged and purple despite having long since healed. Perhaps it was only the dull candle glow that made them out to be canyons, great gouges in the earth of her lover’s freckled and calloused flesh.

Rosele reached out to trace her artist’s fingers along the raised edges of one long, puckered scar only to hold herself back at a fingernail’s distance. There would be time later, she thought, then reconsidered. Or else none at all. She pressed her whole palm against Ayren’s back, lightly at first and then with enough force to announce that the touch was sincere. Necessary. Even with Pedra’s scouts now well on their way to finding the Reschanant army, there was no knowing how many moments such as this remained to them. Each one could only be cherished or lost.

“Oh, I thought you wanted to go,” Ayren said without turning. Rosele paused.

“I do, only…” The words were harder to speak aloud than they were to imagine. “I hoped we would have more time, is all.”

“That’s the trick, love,” the surgeon said. “There’s never enough. Best to take what you can with both hands.”

And Ayren did; before Rosele could react, two large hands took her under the arms and drew her close for a single kiss.

Never enough, she thought, tasting honey in those words mingled with bitterness.

She supposed it was simply Kaschar’s time. All the rest of the kingdom had long been made to suffer; why not here? Was God’s providence that much greater on the City of Bells? Was Fortune’s smile that much kinder on Kaschar the Maiden then on so many other cities and villages that had felt the war’s ruinous touch since the usurper Haren first strove for the crown?

Cruelty on cruelty that it should come in her time. In their time, after all Ayren and she had done to bring that time into being.

No matter. With or without the Heron Lord, Ayren was right. Take what you can. If anything remained when her hour came at last, had she truly lived?

“Now let us go,” Ayren interjected, and they did.

They finished dressing, each helping the other with unruly clasps and loose hair, then sat together in plaintive silence until a soft knock came at the door downstairs.

Two guardsmen awaited them outside in sharp doublets and wide feathered hats. One looked to be about forty and wore his red mustache curled with wax, while the other was a stocky lad whose black hair reached near his shoulders. Both bowed curtly at the sight of Rosele and Ayren.

“Mistress,” said the ginger one. “If you please.” His companion said nothing; he only rested his gloved hand on the gleaming pommel of his sword.

The four of them slipped off warily into the darkness of Kaschar. It was not a far walk ahead of them to Pedra’s home just across the Old City. Still, it was better to be sure.

Lights flickered in only a few windows at this hour. Their only companions on the streets were dogs and other guardsmen, who strode about with swords at their hips or else halberds resting on their shoulder. Here within the thick walls of the Old City, there would be little cause for all those arms. It was out beyond the gate, or even outside the city itself, where their trade would be most needed. Rosele thought for a moment on the irony that Kaschar’s protectors should stay here where it was safest for themselves rather than venturing forth where they were most needed. Even then, she was glad of their company, silent as it was. One could never be sure who they might encounter out of doors on a night like this.

They carried on until they reached a street that turned off sharply to the left from the road to the North Gate, then would toward high row of wooden houses older than Rosele’s own. Her own parents had come from noble stock a few generations back. None had been born soon enough to inherit much else but for her father, it was birth sufficient to become Master of the Engraver’s Guild in his own right with her mother alongside him. By perseverance they managed to scrape together the gold to apprentice Rosele to Master Horis Valene in spite of the many others who strove for that honor. Pedra’s family, on the other hand…

While the Arentils were not nearly of equal station to the exiled Duke Eglan, Rosele suspected that before Kaschar was, the Arentils were. The days of old Deresch I were not quite so distant for them, not when his own hand could be found at the bottom of the family’s ledgers attesting that some grandfather or another had already been a patrician when even the walls of Old City stood no higher than his knees. There was power and trust that one could not buy, no matter how much one took in from inns and ale. With a father four times elected mayor and a grandfather who had served on the city council so long that he was nearly buried in the chair itself, Pedra had seemed fated for the same. That he did achieve it spoke less of his fathers than their lesser replacements on the council wished.

But now was not the time for politics, neither was it time for the siege.

Anything but, Rosele thought, as the Arentil ancestral home came into view just down the street.

It was modest in a way that only old money could be, constrained in its growth by the city itself which had expanded alongside it but showing age that had survived only with great care and expense. Where most of Kaschar was constructed of wood, the Arentil home was made from the same stone as the walls of the Old City. While not overly tall or broad compared to manor houses in the countryside, it was fair to say that it loomed at the end of the street. Rosele felt a tinge of her father’s envy before pushing it back don again with her mother’s practicality.

Far too big, Mela Andamont would have said. Too much dust, too many servants.

As the guardsmen escorting them came to the iron-bound front door and knocked, one of those servants answered. She was thin, wearing a shawl to ward off the chill. The girl showed Ayren in first while Rosele fished for some coins to hand to her companions, who made off back into the night with a flourish of thick cloaks and wide hats.

Joining Ayren again, Rosele followed the servant farther into the house, past a wooden staircase and vibrant wall hangings that clothed the plastered stones inside in warmth and color. She smelled wood smoke and onions, then something sharp like horseradish or pepper.

“But mama,” came a little voice from the kitchen up ahead, “Miss Wosele!” She hurried her pace a bit at the sound.

When the servant rounded the corner into the dining room, Otto’s eyes lit up before the guests could be announced.

“Mistress Ro-” the girl started, only to be interrupted.

“Miss Wosele!” Otto yelled and ran from his mother’s skirts toward Rosele and Ayren on stubby legs. “Aunt Aywen!”

Rosele bent down to embrace the boy but Ayren had already caught and taken him up in arms as thick as mooring ropes.

“Otto, you little devil, you!” the surgeon said and the child shrieked with laughter as Ayren flung him above her head once, twice, then thrice, rising higher and higher each time. By the last, Lura Arentil had come into view, holding her youngest in her arms.

“Darling, how many times must we tell you?” she asked, her voice betraying barely restrained calm. “One does not rush at company so.”

Ayren only laughed.

“Come now, Lura, if he had not, then I would have to have hunted the rascal down!” By now, Otto was irrevocably trapped in Ayren’s embrace, though he could have been doing more to escape. Little Len yawned, showing now four new teeth that had not been here when last Rosele visited.

“It has been too long,” Rosele said and put an arm around Lura. “And Len, he is…”

“A year now, if you can believe it.”

“He must bite something awful now too.” She pointed at the baby’s open mouth, playing at his milk-wet lips with the tip of her finger.

“Hmph,” Lura replied. “Worse than Otto did at his age.”

“But not as bad as Pedra,” Ayren whispered, now standing between them with Otto straddling her broad shoulders.

Rosele blushed and snorted with laughter while Lura only showed a sly grin.

“Men, like dogs, only require proper training. Now come, the soup is still hot.”

She turned to lead them into the kitchen.

“And where is Pedra?” Rosele asked.

“Upstairs, attending to some experiment. You know, I try to understand what he gets up to sometimes but sometimes it is best to simply let him work. He gets so anxious otherwise, you would think he might start biting the furniture instead.”

Then it was Ayren’s time to laugh, a great guffaw that nearly echoed on the stone walls. Rosele had little knowledge of Pedra’s experiments either but wondered then if he had kept his word better than she had that even their loved ones could not know of the coming attack. She imagined him scribbling away furiously at some ledger or diagram when suddenly he called out from the staircase behind them.

“I thought I heard a stag dying,” he said, taking the creaky stairs two at a time. The smile on his face was mischievous. “Oh Ayren, what a pleasant surprise.”

Without removing Otto from his high perch, the surgeon took Pedra in an embrace that made him wheeze like a rusty bellows.

“Do be careful,” Rosele said, following Lura. “Scholars can be so delicate.” Her friend passed Len, who had now drifted off to sleep, to the serving girl.

“Otto, it is far past time you went off to bed,” Lura said. “Prysa,” she added, turning then to the servant. The girl nodded and approached Ayren.

“Come, Otto, time for bed,” Prysa said. The boy flapped his little arms in a huff.

“No, no, no!” protested Otto. “I want Aunt Aywen!”

Prysa fixed him with a firm look but the surgeon intervened.

“I’ve got him,” Ayren said. “Off to bed with you, rascal.” Otto squealed as the four of them made their way up the stairs, creaking with every step until they disappeared into the corridor beyond.

“It is not like this every night,” Pedra said apologetically. Rosele shrugged.

“Perhaps I should arrange for Ayren to visit more often,” she replied with a grin that she shared with Lura also.

“Ayren is the only reason he is still awake, you know,” Lura said as she ladled out a still-steaming bowl of eel soup. “We try to have him in bed by nightfall but someone told him to expect company.” Pedra coughed into his fist. “Oh, we should wait for her.”

Rosele waved her hand.

“No, she would only be upset if we waited,” she replied.

“Then let us not,” Pedra said.

The three of them sat and ate, the sharp earthiness of onions filling her nostrils as it melted on her tongue with cream and delicate river eel caught fresh from the Maraset.

They spoke little and ate much until Ayren returned from the bedchamber upstairs, then the opposite held true. They spoke of Lura’s poems and Pedra’s inventions, the trouble Otto had gotten into with a neighbor boy, the weather that had so recently turned chilly for the month of Awaiting, the masonry work that the council had been petitioned to approve for one of the towers of Saint Luris’ Cathedral.

With each conversation that passed and with each bite of soup and then fine white bread she took, Rosele could not but think of that which they refused to speak. If the day did come when such petty matters were something they could only long for, would they look back on tonight as a shameful indulgence? A forbidden memory? Or would they simply bless the night that had brought them together as older friends than Rosele thought possible?

It was no small thing to pass one’s girlhood in the company of such friends as Pedra and Lura and after so many hardships and travels, to meet them once again. That they should be together once more as their city faced what may be its greatest hardship yet was not lost on her. Their mere presence lent her strength. Ayren too was a blessing Rosele had never anticipated and she blessed the day they had first met as she did every one since.

But then why was she still afraid?

When twelve bells came and the pair of guardsmen from before returned to escort Ayren and her back to their homes, Rosele caught her hands shaking as she reached for the door and fumbled with her key.

“It is only the night air,” she said with a pleasant smile, handed the guardsman another coin, then slumped herself against the closed and locked door as soon as she was back inside.