Keeptown – Consequence
Cerasus has been occupied completely with the assistance of the esteemed Captain Haidarum and his ever-ruthless Badgers who stormed the site in devastating fashion and held it without incident until the arrival of the sanitation teams from Hystrix Battalion.
It must be acknowledged that the Captain, ever-indulgent in his own machinations, devised a strategy that placed his forces squarely in control of the area a conservative sixteen hours ahead of the planned operation, thereby surprising not only the still sleeping occupants of Cerasus, but the planners in Keeptown as well. Necessarily, there will be consequences upon his return to the Capital for contract renewal but we must not understate the advantage we have once more secured due to the efforts of Haidarum in breaking the back of the opposition.
Indeed, the attached accounts reveal much of interest including the moment the rebel leader Anticlea was captured alive during the morning raid and her subsequent interrogation by the captain and his staff. It is recommended that you review them at length prior to the return of Company Mellivora to Avium.
The arrival of Hystrix, as scheduled, has led to the complete scouring of the settlement and cemented Dorylus’ founding of Ft. Cera along its northern edge. Warehouses, mills, and other production that was damaged in the raid have been fully restored by the engineers and defenses developed within the foothills.
Sanitation operations following the departure of Mellivora and the arrival of the consignment from Oxycarpa have met with similar success and it is expected that the township of Cera will be open to forward settlement from Primula by the Spring.
-Battle Report
Scribe Atratus, Forward Observers Corp., Primula Township
The great airship lumbered over Keeptown, its shadow drifting over the hive of activity typical of a morning in the great Unitarian compound; it was attempting to dock with the tall tower near the northern gate and rolled as gusts of warm wind lifted over Avium from the Grey Sea to buffet the vast balloon of the craft. Sily glanced at it warily, sure that an impact with the rock face of the structure would surely bring both objects thundering to earth atop the soldiers in the training yard below.
Pellia rolled across the frozen, packed earth of the square, more falling than intentionally diving as she attempted to take advantage of the taller woman’s stolen attention. She scampered crablike, feeling new boots slip under her and scrabbling upright before the fearsome woman as her dulled training blade slid harmlessly a foot away from its intended target.
Sily sneered, taking a casual step back and sizing up the younger, less experienced woman briefly. She hit out again, striking Pellia like a scorpion and dropping her with a destabilizing kick to the soft part of the thigh followed by a jab to the solar plexus before she could even get her own weapon up. The northerner collapsed in a breathless heap.
‘Try harder, Pell. Up you get.’
She did as instructed, standing shakily as she tried forcing her breathing to a calmer state behind a show of dusting herself off. She glared at the Populan woman bitterly, preparing to fling herself against the much stronger soldier once more. It worried her just how easily Sily seemed able to crush her defenses and cast her aside, overpowering her with superior brawn, reach, and experience in a series of repeated rebuffs. It was impossible to focus. They had been at this for the better part of the morning and Pellia was beginning to wonder if she had passed the point of learning anything productive at this point. Her opposition, the looming blonde woman from the far east of the Grove, flashed her a dazzling smile and a teasing wink, further pushing Pellia to wonder if she was the only one tiring as well.
Sily offered no opportunity for the northerner to make another move of her own; her perception sharper and faster than Pellia’s, she was charging across the tight space before the other had even gotten a sword up in defense. Her well-aimed boot connected as it has a hundred times before, landing with the control it always did and spinning the small woman away like a top as it stung her squarely on the hip.
‘I think I’m done, Sily.’ Pellia conceded. She lay flat in dirt and wasn’t trying to get up this time. Instead, she squinted up at the sun overhead as the dust floated freely between them. ‘I can’t do anymore today.’
Sily became a looming silhouette framed against the sun and Pellia worried that, once again, her bronzed hand would reach down to yank her back to her feet by the collar of her breastplate; the smaller woman tensed reflexively but her fears were unrealized as her sparring partner sat with a thud on the hard ground beside her.
‘Me too, Pell.’ She released a deep-held sigh to stretch beneath the sun as well, ignoring the looks from others who were fighting nearby and clearly didn’t appreciate the space they were claiming to sunbathe. ‘You alright?’
‘Tired,’ Pellia answered quickly, anticipating the question and unhesitant, ‘always making mistakes.’
Sily nodded to that and said nothing, allowing the younger woman to ruminate in the way that big sisters do for a wayward sibling with whom they are having a disagreement. She had been hard on Pellia today, and over the last weeks in general, as her upcoming examination rapidly became a reality for the Squad. Sily loosened the leather straps that bound her breastplate to better expose her neck and chest to the warming rays before speaking.
‘Mistakes happen, Pell. Some of them we just have to deal with.’ She paused. ‘And sometimes we have to face them alone.’
Pellia sighed, once again reminded of how many in the Squad disagreed with her decision to force her admission into the Company. And while most were primarily scared for her welfare, across the unit many were even angry at the idea of a foreign-born not even having to endure the trials of Pyrus before submitting herself for selection. She closed her eyes, enjoying the warm orange of the sun illuminated behind her eyelids.
‘So, it was a mistake? You think I should have just gone to Pyrus and hope to make it back in three years? Spending the whole time not knowing if you are alive or going to be here when I do?’
‘No, I don’t think it is a mistake in that way. What I believe is that you have uncovered a tension within the Company that has been growing since we found you, if not before, and that in thinking of what you want first, you have destabilized the very thing which makes your hopes possible.
‘What I think, is that you don’t appreciate the politics of Keeptown and that in your rush to find a legal path to what you want, you have ignored the context of the rules themselves.’
Pellia sat up, looking over at the bronzed warrior appearing a sleeping statue beside her. The words were true, as she had recently come to realize, but it wasn’t until now that she saw fully how her Squad must see her.
‘You think that in following the rules on paper, I have instead broken them in spirit.’ She stated the question as a fact, and Sily nodded.
‘In a way, yes. And not me, nor any others in Fourth as far as I know, but in the officer-class and those they control.’ She swiped lazily at a wayward fly that had somehow survived the first frost a few days prior. ‘You saw how the boys in First Platoon acted when you petitioned for examination, and some of Carpitalpa’s didn’t look too happy either.’ She didn’t open her eyes and as such didn’t betray anything to Pellia as she continued in a quiet, neutral tone. ‘What you’ve done, is dig up an ancient rule by which many of us have been unknowingly abiding for our entire careers; a rule that some seem to believe wasn’t possible at all for foreign-born applicants and which they now maintain should be removed from the Charter entirely.’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘I know you don’t, Pell, of course you don’t. How could you after little more than a year in the Company and a lifetime outside the Grove? It is why we don’t blame you for what will surely come next.’
The words were ominous, and the younger woman hesitated as she considered which branch of the conversation was safest.
‘What… what will come next?’
‘Trouble in the ranks; a power-struggle among the Lieutenants and eventually, within the platoons.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, as if she herself was unconcerned and she was just relaying some information about an event a continent away. ‘Whether you succeed or fail to gain a contract with Mellivora, you have begun something that won’t stop there.’
‘That doesn’t make sense!’
Sily sighed and felt her frustration surge. She had thought it tamed after a couple hours throwing the young woman around the yard but found herself reddening from more than the sunlight.
‘Listen, Pellia, some don’t believe that foreigners should be allowed to do as you’ve done. That the right to enlistment by examination is a thing reserved for those of the Grove who have been conscripted to fight threats from within.’ She stopped again, sitting up to turn her blue gaze to the woman beside her, ‘Northerners do not fit that description.’
Pellia was stunned. She had long ago noticed the looks some of the soldiers in Mellivora gave her over her tenure with them but had always thought that more a symptom of her novelty and youth relative to even the youngest members of the unit. A belief that someone not old enough to have graduated battle school, and who never attended the place at all, could be anything other than a burden on the Company was a clear concern for more than a few.
Now, Sily’s words told her something else; she wasn’t an outsider from just the culture, but from the land as well. They didn’t fear that she would get them killed, nor were they simply upset that she had been allowed even a temporary stay with the Company. No, according to the Populan woman it was something more basic.
‘They hate me. They hate me because I’m from the north.’
Sily nodded but added nothing.
‘But why?’
‘The Protectorate is an old place,’ Sily began obliquely, ‘but the Unitary Armies are older. And without the help of old armies like Mellivora, Hystrix, Dorylus, or Vladi, the Grove likely wouldn’t exist at all.
‘Because of that, there are times in which the values and beliefs of the Charter don’t necessarily align with those of the Protector or the empire at-large. You have uncovered one of those mis-alignments, cracking it open for all in Mellivora to see. If you succeed in your attempt to force your way into the Company, you will expose it to the entirety of the Unitary. Now, that is a real fear for some of the more… traditional-minded soldiers.’
Pellia still didn’t understand. In fact, she was convinced she had less of a grasp on the politics of Keeptown than when they began. She didn’t understand the bureaucracy either, the shapeless behemoth which may have offered her hope but which also appeared ready to smother her within itself. The last thing on her mind had been unitarian in-fighting, now she wondered if it should have been the first.
‘Why didn’t you warn me?’
Sily was incensed, the foundations of her frustration with the woman surging, ‘why didn’t you warn me?’ Her tone drew a variety of reactions from the people around, a few staring curiously at the pair sitting on the hard dirt of the yard while some rolled their eyes and decided to pack it in for the day.
‘Why didn’t you say anything, Pell?’ she repeated quieter, ‘I could have told you this at any time if you had only come to me to ask.’
For the first time in the ordeal, Pellia felt herself flush in what she considered true shame as she felt herself rebuked. In her rush and secrecy, she had excluded the people who she had hoped would be most pleased. Now she realized that in so doing, she had prevented them from guiding her in an unfamiliar environment. She thought she had known what she was doing, that she was clever in her late-night stealing of Simen’s disused charter book, but it was suddenly clear that she had ignored, was ignorant of, much of what happened outside the cocoon that Fourth had constructed around her.
‘So, I should withdraw the petition?’ She was meek and already knew the answer.
‘If you were smart enough to look deep enough in the book for the Rights of Enlistment, you know damned well the answer to that.’
Silence fell over the pair as they voicelessly agreed that there was little value to continuing the fraught talk with little in the way of obvious solutions to offer either way.
Glaring at a pair of Sinea lads who were taking an opportunity to stare at her form sans-breastplate, Sily stood with the smoothness of one whose muscles never grew sore and strapped the armor closed with a quick yank. She spit before rolling her eyes to Pellia and pulling the smaller woman up with a firm hand.
‘Being a northerner isn’t the only struggle you will find here, Little Dove. Take a moment to watch more of how things work here, know that what you knew when you were safe with the likes of Pica and Simen and us in Fourth, the realities of ‘home’ are much different from those when we are on campaign abroad. We can’t protect and insulate you here like we can there, and the standards of Tacca aren’t shared across all members of the Unitary, or even Mellivora.’
She eyed the green-and-gold troopers again pointedly. They were flexing and squaring up against one another dramatically, displaying the admittedly impressive heavy-plate in a way sure to appeal to the women. Sensing an opportunity to exercise her young partner in the martial advantages of the much lighter brigandine worn by the Badgers, Sily winked at them provocatively and leaned in a way that exaggerated her backside as she offered Pellia her training sword.
‘Let’s go see what you’ve learned. And,’ she pulled the smaller woman close to straighten her shoulders, leaning in to speak softer and only to her, ‘try to pay more attention to how those around you speak and act when they think you don’t notice.’
‘C’mon!’ Simen was huffing as he hurried down the thin street, ‘we have to hurry!’
‘Where are we going?’ Pica was close behind, his longer stride keeping him easily apace with his rushing friend. ‘Simen!’
But the man didn’t answer. He pushed past a cluster of arguing merchants, leaving Pica to issue muttered excuses and apologies in his wake as he ran through the opening created. They entered a larger main street of the gatekeep, briefly finding themselves blinded by the brightness as they left the shaded, housing-overhung pathways they had taken from the barracks.
Pica, hoping to answer his own question by establishing where they were now, looked about frantically in the brief moment they sprinted down the cobbles before peeling off into another alleyway. He had heard the bleating of lambs or goats and smelled the iron-rich air that told him they were near the butchery. He had almost pieced it together as they came to a skidding halt near the latrines that lined up behind the only official tavern in Keeptown.
‘The Merchant?’ Pica looked at his friend, dumbfounded and unable to quite comprehend the stupidity of the man. ‘Did you seriously make me abandon my post for a drink? In the tavern of Keeptown?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’
Pica was unassured by his flailing hand of appeasement.
‘Much more important than just a drink.’ He winked a big brown eye and walked into the only of the toilets whose door wasn’t hanging on by a single screw and leaving Pica staring slack jawed as the rickety piece of wood clattered shut. He emerged just as Pica cursed and began walking away, shoving an armful of what appeared at first glance to be rags into the taller man’s arms.
‘Whatever this is,’ Pica began backing away, ‘nope.’ He tried to drop the bundle of cloth but Simen grabbed him firmly.
‘No, Pica, wait,’ Simen’s voice was hushed, but urgent, ‘just listen. It’s about the paper thing.’
Pica froze and despite his progress doing otherwise, he felt his hand attempt to reach the pocket in which the small object was still hidden. He thought he felt it there though he doubted that possible, pressing against his ribs where it sat under his breastplate. His hand clenched the fabric hard and he glared at his best friend.
‘What?’ he hissed at him, stepping closer to the man once more.
‘The paper you idiot,’ Simen hissed back, ‘the one you found in Cerasus with the gold and the flower and the text you can’t read.’
‘No shit. How- ‘
‘You think that after some twenty years, I don’t know when you’re hiding something? When you’re trying to hide something, I should say. You are terrible at deception no matter what.’
‘You didn’t say anything…’
‘Neither did you,’ Simen retorted sharply, ‘but that’s fine. You would have been forced to tell me at some point.’ He jerked at a portion of the rags in Pica’s arms before he could say anything else. ‘Put them on, we’re already late.’
They entered through the back door and Simen immediately began talking loudly, ostensibly to Pica but gaining the attention of others nearby, in the flavorless, unaccented tone of an Avium merchant.
‘Six clips a flat? For stripling little grey backs not even darkened by their first summer? Outrageous!’
Pica said nothing, assuming the role of cowed servant as his garb clearly marked him flawlessly as he once again reflected on Simen’s unsettling ability to camouflage himself through the maximum amount of attention.
‘What in the Lady’s Light told you that was an acceptable bargain by any metric?
‘Yes, barman-’ he changed tone deftly midsentence, turning away from his friend to engage the barkeep, ‘-a glass of Pyrean brandy and a bucket of swill for the dullard.’ He cuffed Pica for emphasis, selling the charade and sending the tender off to fulfill the order in a single smooth motion. The drinks were quickly delivered alongside a pitying glance toward the taller man before the barman found himself otherwise distracted by a shout across the tavern’s long main room.
‘Look at that,’ Simen’s voice was low and had returned to normal, ‘didn’t even take payment.’ He clicked his glass against the wooden tankard Pica held dully and drank with a laugh at his own theatrics. Looking sadly at the grey liquid he had, Pica grimaced and followed suit.
A figure slid in close to stand on Pica’s other side at the tall bar; he shifted away reflexively and bumped against Simen’s chest gently.
‘Pica. Simen.’ The voice was low, hidden behind an ample hood that was kept precisely aimed at the wooden surface before them. The accent, full of clipped words and wrongfully positioned letters, removed any question of identity for Pica.
‘Carissa?’ he choked on hastily swallowed swill.
Simen looked past him to smile at their old friend from Dorylus who, like them, had stripped away her uniform in favor of something decidedly less descript. When he spoke, it was with a voice warmed by both good liquor and fondly remembered comradery.
‘Good to see you, girl. Made it home from Cerasus safe then?’
She nodded, waving away the barman as he approached to close for comfort but accepting Simen’s glass as he slid it discretely to her.
‘Aye, somehow. And it’s Cera now, innit? What with the fort and all?’
Pica grimaced. ‘Cera? They renamed it?’
‘Well, it ain’t the same town it were, that’s for certain.’ She replied matter-of-factly. ‘Plus, the entire settlement is more-or-less a tiny Sister after all the work we have been doing on the fortifications. Been calling it Sister Cera since sanitization wrapped up in the area.’
‘Was it bad?’ Simen leaned forward in anticipation.
‘Nah, easy as piss. You all did most of the work before we even got there, what was the worst was the trip back.’ She pointed to the sky indicatively.
‘Turns out that bastard General Testudo thought us perfect candidates to try out that new devilry they sent from Oxycarpa, loaded a couple platoons of us onto one of those blasted ‘airships’ and sent us on our way back to Keeptown.’
‘Not good?’
‘Nae good, an absolute f’ckin tragedy, you ask me.’ She slammed the brandy and refilled it stealthily from a flask up her sleeve. ‘’bout killed us. The thing just floats, floats, floats, all day you think you’re gonna go higher until they turn it upside down and you’re eating your own sick as you head back to the ground.’
‘We saw it leave, carrying the Imperials inland. It dived like that to leave the city.’ Pica remembered for her with a sour stomach at the memory, ‘named the Perodontus or something like that.’
‘Parotodus,’ Simen corrected.
‘I don’t know the thing’s name, but she screams, the ship, piece uh shite barks as it falls. Don’t tell you that do they? Terrifying.
‘chuh-chunk chuh-chunk chuh-chunk!’ She mimed, waving her hands in the air like the great wings of the ship.
Simen and Pica exchanged looks.
‘It barks-’ the latter was confused, his partner otherwise concerned. He leaned past Pica, cutting his question off cleanly with one of his own.
‘Did you find anything?’
‘Oh, we found plenty,’ her voice lifted a bit, angry, ‘and some of it is going to require some right explaining from you and your lot.’ She looked at them piercingly before lowering her head to their shocked and dismayed looks. ‘But about what you asked me in Cera, not much.’
‘Damn-’
‘However,’ she continued without pausing, ‘something happened while we were still stationed there that I think may be related. The Imps captured a boy trying to escape into the woods with some looted treasure.’
‘A boy?’ Pica wondered if Simen knew about that part of the day in Cerasus as well, he endeavored to sound skeptical. ‘What treasure?’
She rounded on him, catching his tone immediately. ‘Listen here Pica, you want to keep secrets from your boyfriend that’s fine, but Simen asked me for a favor and I am going to tell him what I found in that regard.’
Pica leaned away, adequately subdued by the woman’s characteristically impatient attitude and her pointed words. He wondered what Simen had asked her to do while the engineers had been fortifying the town of Cerasus and the surrounding countryside over the last weeks. Did Sily tell him of the boy and the bodies? Had Pellia? He suddenly had the vivid feeling of the entire world talking about him behind his back, all knowing more about him than he did himself.
Simen laughed at the blanch that crawled across his partner’s face and slid the once-again-refilled glass back to himself, sighing as the sweetness of the apricot brandy Carissa preferred touched his tongue.
‘We’re all ears’ he assured her with a smile, offering her a roll of smoke that he had been creating while they spoke, ‘tell us about the boy.’
She grunted approvingly and took the offering gratefully, lighting it from a nearby candle in a deep-troughed holder and inhaling deeply before beginning her tale.
‘My platoon was working on upgrades to the abandoned mill sites just north of town when we saw a whole flock o’ imps come charging up the hill at us. They were shouting, blowing horns and all that, we thought they was looking for a fight, so we get ready for a good roll around and then we see the little lad, a tiny little thing, shooting right up the road at us ahead of them.
‘So, we starts to laugh at the lot, a whole army chasing a rabbit of a boy and him somehow out-sprinting the lot of ‘em. But soon enough they ran him right into our camp and he all but shat himself when he found himself facing a wall of violet-and-cream.
‘They tackled him good at that point, the imps, but we got a good look at him and the stuff he was trying to hide too.’ She looked conspiratorially at the two men beside her. ‘Then the seers came.’
‘Seers?’ Pica was shocked at the woman’s words and looked around reflexively, ‘you’re sure?’
Carissa raised an eyebrow at him but had been calmed substantially by Simen’s offering to her.
‘You think I’m a blathering idiot, Pica? That I wouldn’t know a seer when I saw one?’
‘Not saying that, no,’ he amended with hands raised appealingly, ‘just almost forget they exist with how little you hear of them is all.’
She nodded to that. ‘Well, it is my displeasure to inform you both that three of the red-marked bastards touched down in Fort Cera to collect that one little lad.’
‘Three…’ Simen repeated with a whisper.
‘Aye, and only one came back to Avium as far as I saw. They loaded the boy, the seer, and some cargo before cramming us in behind them.’
‘When was this?’ Pica’s mind raced and tumbled, ‘when did you all land?’
‘We ‘landed,’ if you’d call it that, last night, just before the third-watch bell. I left the message for Simen first thing this morning.’
Pica wondered what message had been sent and how it had been delivered within the walls of Mellivora Barracks. He had been with Simen all day and certainly hadn’t noticed anything odd before they had been careening through the streets and alleys of Keeptown. Their old friend turned to them, suddenly earnest.
‘Now, it would please me greatly if you might allay some fears I have had regarding you Badgers since last we spoke.’ She looked between them, risking the exposure of her face to the increasingly suspicious bartender and looking into both of their eyes.
‘Did you kill kids in that town, boys? Did you slaughter wee’uns in the street as if they were dogs?’
Pica recoiled from the accusation, his stomach twisting painfully and a flash of gold coursing through his vision. Simen’s face went grey. ‘No.’ they stated together.
‘Absolutely not, not Strozzi’s platoon.’ Simen was emphatic, the thought unbelievable that he and his friends would be so accused.
‘And you’re not lying to me? I’ll find out if you are, and you f’ckin know well I’m telling you right.’
‘It isn’t true,’ Simen placed a hand on hers gently, ‘I swear to you.’
She looked at them a moment more, peering into their hearts through their eyes before leaning back and smiling.
‘Good! Exactly as I hoped to hear.’ Her voice was lighter now, suddenly absent of something which Pica had not noticed before and which he couldn’t quite recall now that it was gone.
‘Now, onto other business,’ she declared, ‘do you trust that ‘Scribe’ of yours?’
Simen looked taken aback, ‘not necessarily. Why?’
‘Because what I have for you here,’ a small roll of tightly bound paper flashed beneath her cupped hand, ‘has been written in a way that will be of little use to you otherwise.’
Pica and Simen looked at one another solemnly, the former well aware of the reservations the latter held regarding the silent man who saw all and conveyed almost nothing at all. He nodded to her question, the slip of paper appearing in Simen’s hand inconspicuously.
‘I don’t think this is what you’re looking for,’ she warned, ‘but maybe it leads you in the right direction.’
Pica hoped his friend would unroll it, but he didn’t, instead slipping it skillfully up his sleeve without a glance. A gold clip slid across in return and disappeared under Carissa’s downturned palm. The man was astounded at the cost of the slip of paper and went ignored by them both as he sought any explanation whatsoever. He was just about to demand someone tell him something when the barman reintroduced himself insistently, ignoring the hooded woman’s attempts to assure him refills weren’t necessary.
‘Look,’ the old man’s voice was hushed as he leaned in, ‘I know you lads are all just having a bit of fun and normally I would turn a blind eye to the odd soldier with a dry tongue, but-’ he indicated a group of Sinea guards pushing through the door behind them with a look, ‘-I’m gonna need you three to sneak back to wherever the hell you came from or are supposed to be.’ He tapped the countertop pointedly and took the small clipping of copper that Simen slid over discretely. ‘Good, now fuck off before you get us both hung.’
Sily and Pellia were deep in the recesses of the Mellivora private library when Simen and Pica found them at the direction of Tacca. They had overtaken their own table entirely with books and scrolls and Pellia was steadily adding to another as Sily scoured references of increasingly older tomes which she then asked her small study partner to find in turn.
‘Uh-’ Simen began. He was interrupted by a finger held aloft by the Populan woman as she leaned down, translated a rather faded entry, and shouted it into the stacks where Pellia was already foraging for another such request.
‘We’re researching history on situations similar to hers.’ She informed them without prompting and gesturing at the pale northerner whose face told Pica that they had been at it for hours already and had little to show for it.
Pica recognized the stress that poured from Sily, the fervency of her devotion to save Pellia from her own bullheadedness, and he quietly suggested Simen retrieve them something to dine on before he sat down to assist the women in their efforts.
By the time Simen returned with the refreshments, they had begun delving into the founding of the individual Armies themselves. Pica relinquished a tome on Sinea Battalion gratefully, happy to trade the likes of Maester Sophiorni for blackberry tea and some small lemon cakes Simen had found while rifling the unguarded pantry.
Sily closed her own record carefully and stacked it on top of Pica’s with a meaningful thud as he reached for one of the crumbly cakes. He smiled ruefully and began moving the books, scrolls, and dense stacks of paper to the safety of the table behind while Sily cleared room for Simen to place his admittedly substantial burden. Pellia, ever perceptive, arrived with a kettle of steaming water she had placed on a nearby brazier as the man had left.
‘We skipping dinner?’ she piped, arraying cups and swiftly measuring spoonfuls of loose tea from the clayware pot on the tray.
Simen turned to Sily, ‘are we?’
She looked with trepidation into the depths of the dense stacks and back, shrugging.
‘Well, I’ve brought a feast whether we decide to head into the keep for supper or not,’ Simen declared with pride, ‘here.’
He handed Sily a half-loaf of the morning’s sourdough and a knife, she took them and deftly quartered the bread to place on the slim edge of the brazier to slowly toast.
Pica helped himself to two of the cakes greedily, aligning them before him and setting to picking the thin icing off in small flakes which he popped into his mouth delightedly. Pellia smiled warmly at his picking and slid a steaming mug of the tea to steep before him, taking care to place it with the handle to the left and spaced exactly right relative to the delicate, yellow sponge cakes.
‘Incredible,’ Sily breathed softly, breaking her own rules to pull a scroll closer and leaning forward as she chewed a bit of cured meat.
‘What’d you find? Something helpful?’ Pellia positioned her own cup in front of her and helped herself to cake of her own. She sounded hopeful and chewed disappointedly when the woman shook her head.
‘Unfortunately, no. Just reading on Sinea Battalion’s founding charter and something caught my eye. Did you know that they aren’t an original member of the Unitary?’
Simen paused in his generous apportioning of golden butter onto a well-toasted sourdough heel to begin adding paper-thin slivers of roseate corned beef. With a nod from Sily he added a drizzle of crushed fig sauce to it and handed it to her.
‘How can that be?’ Pellia was genuinely confused. ‘How can any of the Armies not be of the original survivors?’
Simen rolled his eyes at the founding lore they had drilled into his head during battle school. He didn’t remember anything about Sinea being from after the First Committee. He said so to his friends.
‘Yeah, I know. But this chart here has them listed as being founded in year-zero…’ she accepted their general nonreaction and sighed. ‘They were established the same year as the Protectorate itself!’
‘What’s the importance of that?’ Pica spoke past a full mouth and covered his mouth apologetically with a hand as Sily glared at the faux pas.
‘None probably. Like I said, just interesting.’
‘Makes sense I guess; they are primarily a guard battalion and they do literally garrison on the Protectorate estates.’ Simen rolled his eyes, failing to see the irony in his distaste for the elite class as he generously apportioned fig jam onto a flaky scone sprinkled with orange sugar crystals.
‘Maybe there is something there, though.’ Pellia sounded hopeful. ‘How could an entire Army be formed and integrated into the Unitarian within a year?’
Pica hummed to himself thoughtfully as he pondered her words. He had never heard that Sinea wasn’t one of the founding organizations, but he had never truly spent that much time focusing on events of the Unitarian from some four centuries prior. Even in battle school they had barely touched on things beyond talking of the First Committee; the purpose of that place, after all, was not to teach students to be war scholars or political negotiators though, and the finer details of such things likely served a grunt little in the field. Finally, he spoke.
‘Pell, you have to understand that none of us went to academy before battle school. Simen and I never had the chance and those that did chose other pursuits.’ He looked at Sily who didn’t seem to care what he thought of her rather more privileged upbringing. ‘This stuff is deep history that they probably only teach in the Veloci Academy in Oxycarpa, if they teach it at all, and I am skeptical of that. I don’t see much value for the average Unitarian in digging at the origins of the individual armies after all this time.’
At the naming of the school for military leadership, Sily had taken on a strange look. She had pulled the scroll closer once more, squinting at the fine, intricate text before estimating the time with a glance out the window and leaving without more than an assurance of her quick return. The remaining three exchanged looks and grabbed the scroll in a vain attempt to discern what Sily had found but finding the writing entirely too archaic and illegible, they quickly returned to their tea party.
She returned shortly with Scribe in tow, pulling him along by a sleeve while his eyes dully took in their surroundings. Had Pica not known better, he may have thought the man bored with Sily’s eccentricities and demands, but it was impossible to deny the eagerness in Scribe’s steps as he followed close behind her, seating himself immediately at the table as she pulled the scroll close.
‘Here,’ she jabbed a finger at the scroll and he leaned over it keenly to see what she indicated. His eyes alit as he registered her desires, smiling in a way that was meant for her and which was unlikely to have been considered cheerful by anyone else’s measure.
In moments, the silent man had flipped to a page in his book and was comparing it to whatever it was that he and Sily seemed to see in the archaic scroll.
‘Can you read that?’ Pica sounded incredulous and Sily shook her head.
‘Barely, and not in a way that I trust to be accurate to any finer details. But my darling Scribe, he can read it fully.’ She smiled admiratively at the man working feverishly before her, leaning forward as he indicated something with the end of his pen.
‘I see,’ she breathed. ‘Pellia, find the Sophiorni text for us please, the ‘Four Sons War: A something about something’ one.’ The northern woman nodded and found the sage-leather book with ease, extracting the tome from one of her careful piles immediately and bringing it to them for Sily to flip through.
The two fell largely silent then beyond the odd one-way whisper and Pica, Simen, and Pellia watched as time stretched unendingly in their sequestered corner away from much of the rest of the villa. Without further instruction, they soon found themselves bored and knowing little of what they assumed was deep imperial history and the politics of ancient wars, instead found other ways to occupy their attentions.
Simen began to prepare himself something to smoke but stopped midway as he caught the disapproving look Sily sent his way; finding the limits of her ability to ignore him meeting his willingness to go without, he sulked to the large hearth at the back of the wing to imbibe free of judgmental glances.
Pellia and Pica enjoyed another cup of tea and snacked contentedly in the warm space. The dusty smell of antique paper mingled with years of fireplace smoke that had been sneaking past a poorly maintained flue, clinging in a pulsating layer to rafters long-stained black and endeavoring to likewise dye the yellow-paged books of the highest shelves.
‘Reminds me of the lodges back home.’ Pellia spoke quietly and to no one, only Pica catching her sighed reminiscence.
‘Where is home for you Pell? After all these long months, you still haven’t told us where you came from.’ His voice was soft and inviting, safe.
‘I…’ she began unsurely, ‘it’s hard to be sure.’
‘I know your memory has never fully recovered from the cold you suffered in that water. Maybe we can talk to the Doc again now that we are in Keeptown and have the hospital proper.’
‘It isn’t that I don’t remember, not exactly,’ she tried to explain, ‘more that I can’t think of anywhere that was…’ she lost the words and looked at him balefully, gesturing widely at their surroundings.
‘What? Like a town or village?’
‘No.’ the woman’s mouth was a pale line across her face. ‘Like a home, a place that was for me.’
Her words dismayed Pica; Sily frowned at the words as well, sending a pitying look to the young woman across the book she held open with two splayed fingers.
‘How could you not have had a home growing up? Where were you that you didn’t even have that?’
Sily’s words struck Pica as he was reminded that despite the years they had spent together, she was still blind to the very real privileges she and her brothers had enjoyed growing up in Tremula. What he and Simen had experienced in the grandest city of the empire was as foreign as the life of the northerner in her eyes, a thing intangible and impossible in the Grove she knew. He wondered how, seeing the conditions of the people in the lower districts so many times, she still failed to fully understand the deprivations faced by the poorest they met in the cities.
‘Not everyone has a place to call home,’ he reminded gently, ‘Simen and I had to enlist ourselves to finally find one for ourselves and we grew up just a few miles south of here.’
‘That isn’t what I meant,’ she defended, ‘and how you two grew up isn’t exactly normal for the Protectorate anyway.’ She pivoted her attention back to Pellia. ‘He is right though; everything here is yours when you pass assessment.’
Pica grimaced at her choice of words and ability to disregard things as outside the norm. He remained quiet as Pellia spoke softly into the laden air of the room.
‘I know… and now that I’ve seen it, been welcomed into it, I am sure I will lose it as well because of my own stupidity.’ She looked around exasperatedly at the scattered documents and records, ‘what can help me here?’
‘We’ll find something,’ Pica reassured her, ‘especially with Scribe now on the case-’
‘Scribe!’ Simen emerged from the rear of the room in a rush. In his hand, having been just remembered, he waved the small roll of paper retrieved from Carissa that afternoon.
‘Can you read this?’ he inquired as he slid to a halt against the table, thrusting his hand under the green-eyed man’s nose and releasing the slip into a slowly opening palm.
Sily and Pellia exchanged glances and looked from the two men to Pica who, having been distracted by other aspects of that unforeseen meeting before, had forgotten entirely about the slip of paper. He shrugged unhelpfully.
‘We…uh, ran into Carissa in the-’
‘I snuck him out to steal a drink at The Merchant and meet Carissa,’ Simen explained over him with marked impatience, ‘she said we needed Scribe to translate this.’
At this, an eagerness struck the predictably silent man, his ears all but perking as he gave the diminutive offering his full attention. He inspected the roll carefully, memorizing its every detail before producing a paper-thin blade to slice the dot of wax sealing it. He read it once quickly, then a second time more slowly, a lipless frown spreading across his thin face. He began to write on a loose slip of paper beside him, the message no more apparent in his hand’s tight calligraphy than the code on the parchment he held inches before his nose.
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