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“Cold?”
The shivering knight flinched when Lewyn draped a section of his scarf around his shoulders. Poor Finn. Silesse’s climate was a far cry from the temperate fields of Leonster.
“I’m quite all right—” Finn protested, but before he could wriggle out of the scarf, Lewyn looped another length of it around his neck.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he chided. “I could hear your teeth chattering from across the castle.”
In reality, he had spotted the young knight from a distant window, wondered what had possessed him to stand outside on a third-story balcony in the middle of winter without a cloak, and gone to investigate, but Finn’s teeth were practically rattling out of his skull.
Lewyn shed his scarf until the entirety of it was piled around Finn’s narrow shoulders. Finn seemed about to protest, until a gust of wind swept across the balcony and he finally relented, shivering and pulling the scarf closer.
“How are you not frozen?” he demanded of Lewyn, glancing over his airy garments.
Lewyn shrugged. “I’m used to it. The wind has never much bothered me.” He smiled slightly, catching Finn’s eye. “That, and we Silessians have, over the years, innovated a number of ingenious strategies to ward off the cold of our winters.”
“Such as…?” Finn couldn’t quite conceal the genuine curiosity in his tone. Lewyn’s smirk widened.
“The first such innovation we call buildings,” he said, and grinned when Finn’s expression instantly soured. “We’ll get a smile out of you yet, Sir Finn,” he threatened genially, as Finn’s eyes flickered back to the snowcapped peaks in the distance. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
“Keeping watch.”
Lewyn raised an eyebrow. “We do have guards for that, you know.”
Finn didn’t meet his eyes. “Well…”
Resting his elbows on the balustrade, Lewyn scanned the slope below the castle wall, but he saw nothing of note. He cast a sideways glance at Finn and realized that that knight’s gaze had shifted from the distant horizon to a closer target—the dark windows overlooking the castle balcony.
“Ah, yes,” Lewyn said, realization dawning, “The Lady Lachesis’s room is just along this balcony, isn’t it…and you’re doing this on Lord Quan’s orders?”
Finn had stiffened as soon as Lewyn mentioned the Nordion princess.
“She…isn’t well,” Finn replied evasively. “She keeps opening the windows, and in her state, I fear…”
“Very noble of you, Sir Finn,” Lewyn observed, “but the lady is sleeping soundly.”
“How do you—”
“I heard her snoring when I walked by,”
Finn’s brow crunched into a scowl. “You did not—”
“Please, Sir Finn, you should know that even nobility snore,” he said, smiling when Finn’s forehead only wrinkled further. Lewyn straightened up and tugged on the end of his scarf, unbalancing Finn enough to prompt him to take a half-step towards the open door. “Now come inside. It’s about to start snowing.”
Finn looked as though he was about to question Lewyn’s forecast, but after another tug at the scarf, he allowed himself to be shepherded inside. He fought his way out of the scarf as soon as the door closed behind him, and Lewyn scooped it up before the entire thing could unwind onto the cold stone floor. Finn was trying to look unfazed by the change in temperature, but despite his efforts, he gave a sudden, residual shiver, then let out three loud sneezes in quick succession.
“Forseti’s blessings,” Lewyn said automatically. “Handkerchief?”
“I’m fine,” Finn sniffed, and pulled out one of his own instead. He wiped his nose, then glanced back towards the balcony, an anxious crease on his brow. After a moment, he followed Lewyn down the hallway, but his eyes stuck to the doors of Lachesis’s room as they passed. Lewyn watched him and spoke up once a turn of the hallway interrupted Finn’s gaze.
“If you wanted to keep an eye on the window, there are other places to watch from,” he said. “Warmer, and less conspicuous should the lady wake up and find you lurking on her balcony.”
Finn looked as though he wanted to protest, but his curiosity won out. “Where do you mean?”
Lewyn stopped short and ducked around a corner, leaving Finn do a quick about-face and follow the tails of his scarf as he disappeared. “Come along, this way.”
~ ~ ~
“How did you know about the snow?”
In one of Sailane’s turrets, Finn stood by the narrow window, watching fat snowflakes drift from the low-hanging clouds.
“I could feel it in the air,” Lewyn said simply. He reclined on a pile of furs and blankets while watching the young knight with an amused eye—as soon as they had reached the top of this tower (which was hardly more than an attic, these days) he had beelined for the window overlooking the proper section of castle.
Finn’s nose scrunched a little at his answer, but apparently he was not interested enough to question further. Instead, he frowned out the window. “This is useless as a lookout.”
“Why is that?”
“It took us five minutes to get here. What am I supposed to do if anything happens?”
“You worry too much, Finn,” Lewyn told him. “And besides, surely you realized as much before we got all the way up here. If you were going to complain, you should have spoken up sooner.”
Finn stepped closer to the window, and shivered at the chill coming through the glass. An architectural quirk kept this room relatively warm, but winter would always find a way. “I don’t make a habit of refusing royalty.”
“Royalty? I’m but a humble bard.”
“There’s no such thing as a humble bard,” Finn retorted. Lewyn raised his eyebrows, and a moment later the knight seemed to remember who he was talking to, and his face reddened. “I mean—”
Lewyn laughed out loud. “You have a sense of humor after all! Come away from the windows, Finn. You’ll be no use to Lord Quan if you catch cold.”
Finn was quiet a moment as he cast around for a rebuttal, his clasped hands tightening behind his back, but this time, Lewyn’s logic apparently proved unassailable. He settled gingerly among the textiles and pelts, frowning as he sunk into the pile.
“A strange place for storage,” he remarked, obviously remembering the stairs they had climbed to get here.
“It isn’t storage, not exactly. I brought this here when I was younger. No one bothered me up here.”
He had been only a little older than Finn was now when he slipped out of the castle in disguise and caught a ride with a caravan heading towards Agustria. Before then, he had sought escape in other ways—Sailane itself was something of a refuge, a small castle on the border away from his uncles’ disappointed sneers and his mother’s expectations, and whenever the opportunity to catch a ride here had arisen, he had taken it. From the castle’s tallest tower, he could see nearly across the channel if the wind swept the clouds from the horizon.
Lewyn wasn’t sure what had prompted him to show the young knight this place. The two of them could hardly be more different—Lewyn, swerving from his duty at every turn, while Finn’s self-effacing loyalty prompted him to keep watch over well-guarded skies at the expense of his extremities. Did he ever question what he fought for? Or were knights spared being haunted by the citizens they protected, those anxieties reserved solely for uncertain royals?
“Prince Lewyn.” The unwelcome title came muffled from under a thick woolen blanket.
“Hm?”
“Doesn’t the rest of the army need these?”
So very responsible.
Lewyn sighed. “Yes, I imagine they do. We’ll bring some back when we return.”
This seemed agreeable to Finn, who for the moment was burrowing further into the furs until almost nothing of him was visible save his azure hair.
Something about Finn's conscientiousness reminded him of Erinys. At times, it seemed to Lewyn that he could hardly walk two paces in any direction without colliding with some loyal knight or righteous warrior, each pursuing some lofty goal that would inevitably beget innumerable casualties, even if victory was achieved. And despite his efforts—such as they were—it seemed Silesse was teetering on the edge of conflict as well. His protests to Erinys had fallen on deaf ears—all he ever seemed to get from her were lectures. No one seemed to get it—a just cause was all well and good, but was any cause just enough to balance the weight of suffering born by those who had no say in the matter to begin with?
He would never call Erinys cold, nor did Finn seem the type of callous knight to enjoy battle for the sake of it. But they still took up their lances without a second thought under the command of those they served.
“I suppose it’s a promotion you’re hoping for,” Lewyn mused. Finn stirred slightly, and Lewyn wondered if he had been nodding off—just how long had he been watching that window? “Or land, perhaps. The way you follow Quan around…there must be something you want.”
Finn was quiet for so long that Lewyn thought he really must have fallen asleep. It was just as well if he had—what could the young knight say that Erinys, his mother, or Sigurd hadn’t already? He was just about to turn and check when Finn lifted his head, turning to Lewyn with a perplexed wrinkle on his forehead.
“Are you asking me why I fight?”
“If you are going to march into foreign lands, lance at the ready, I should hope you have a reason,” Lewyn returned. “So what is it?”
“If Lord Quan saw fit to award me with a promotion, I would accept the responsibility,” Finn replied. “What are you trying to get me to say?”
Lewyn ground his teeth. Perhaps it was a bad habit of his, testing people like this. Finn was quick to catch on.
“So that’s all it is for you, too, then. Responsibility. Duty.” The same tired excuses for thoughtlessness. “So if an entire kingdom was your birthright, I suppose you would accept that, too?”
Lewyn didn’t turn, but he felt Finn’s eyes on him, intent.
“I wouldn’t presume to advise a prince—”
“Presume to advise a minstrel, then,” Lewyn interrupted with a huff. “Humor me, if nothing else.”
Finn hummed, settling thoughtfully into the blankets.
“I’m not royalty, and I don’t have a crusader’s blood,” he said at last. “I can’t imagine the weight you and some of our other allies carry. But the land, and the promotion…that isn’t why I fight.” Lewyn watched him from the corner of his eye as he pulled a blanket more tightly around his shoulders. “I love them,” Finn continued, his tone frank. “Lord Quan and Lady Ethlyn are like my family. I cannot imagine not doing everything in my power to aid them.”
A part of Lewyn was tempted to argue—to point out that one’s family did not always make the best choices, and he had two uncles he could offer as examples—but the light in Finn’s eyes was striking.
“Alright, alright,” he sighed, with a resigned laugh. “I can’t fault your sincerity, I suppose.”
He thought that would be the end of it, but when he glanced up, Finn had turned those unreadable blue eyes on him.
“You love your people, don’t you, Prince Lewyn?”
Lewyn blinked. “Of course.” Wouldn’t this be easier if I didn’t?
He expected another pointed question, but Finn had fallen silent again. Apparently, he had said all he felt he needed to. He shifted in the blankets and started to stand.
“We should bring these down to the army,” he said decisively.
“Yes, yes, very well.” Lewyn hefted a haphazard armful of furs, while Finn carefully folded a stack of blankets and tucked them under his arms.
They made their way down the steep stairs slowly, Lewyn wondering all the while if loving his people was enough to justify subjecting them to his rule, and looking at Finn’s neatly folded blankets and thinking he would probably be more suited to it, holy blood or not.
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
“You’ll be no use to Lord Leif if you catch cold, you know.”
There was a breeze shifting the grasses that stretched out for acres below Leonster castle. Finn was standing on a balcony, watching the evidence of the day’s battle fade into inscrutable twilight. There was just a touch of a northern chill in the air—Finn’s hands were clasped behind his back, but he tensed slightly as the wind touched the face of the castle and ruffled his hair. It was positively balmy compared to Silesse, but a little cool for the peninsula. Lewyn charitably unwound a loop of his scarf and draped it around Finn’s shoulders.
Lewyn wondered if Finn even understood his reference to events long past. That was the problem with his old memories—some of them were fogged, indistinct like the sand-worn ruins scattered throughout the Yied Desert, while others he could flip through like the pages of a book to reference in exact detail. He wouldn’t be surprised if Finn didn’t even remember their brief conversation at Sailane all those years ago, but to Lewyn that particular encounter might as well have happened yesterday.
Sometimes, Lewyn wondered if this reunion at Leonster was what had drawn him to the young knight all those years in the past—the wind, urging him to ensure that this one, at least, would be willing to tolerate him if it just so happened that they were the sole survivors of some hypothetical cataclysm.
“It isn’t very cold,” Finn said, although he didn’t attempt to worm his way out of the folds of the scarf. He fingered the yarn, instead. “Why do you still wear this, if you don’t seem to need it? Especially here.”
Lewyn shrugged. “Habit,” he said simply. Identity, he added to himself. It helped the illusion. Look, of course I’m Lewyn. Is this not his scarf?
Not that it was precisely a trick. He was Lewyn. And then some.
Over the years, he had given up trying to determine where the line lay. In the aftermath of the massacre at Belhalla, he had resurrected a body, but he could never quite be certain if he had also resurrected an accompanying soul. Memories of a childhood in snow-covered Silesse and travels across Agustria had settled alongside memories of twelve rebels praying desperately in a desert fortress, and both were equally his.
Besides, the distinction was pointless. If there had once been two separate beings, a Lewyn and a Forseti, that was no longer the case.
“You surprise me, King Lewyn.”
Finn’s voice drew Lewyn from his contemplations. He cringed at the title, but Finn wasn’t finished.
“…acting as tactician of the liberation army seems an awful lot of responsibility for one who I long assumed might be allergic.”
Lewyn frowned. Perhaps he had been hasty to assume Finn would tolerate him thanks to one past kindness.
“I accepted my birthright in the end,” he argued.
“And gave it up again nearly as quickly,” Finn replied. “You once said you loved your people. Yet your people don’t even know where you are.”
The implied accusation hurt, but distantly. It hurt the Lewyn of the past. The Lewyn of the present had no need for the tome his lineage made available to him, and he was also firmly of the opinion that dragons should not rule kingdoms of men—he was willing to bend Naga’s rules, but not that severely. But he could not explain as much to Loyal Sir Finn.
“There were things more important than Silesse,” he replied at last. Cosmically important. Light’s army would not assemble itself, and Heim’s heir needed protecting.
Somehow, this seemed to be the right answer. He was starting to feel as though Finn was perhaps the one testing him.
“And things more important than a united Thracian peninsula,” Finn sighed. “And yet here you are.”
Lewyn wasn’t sure Finn was correct. The peninsula was practically teeming with wielders of holy weapons.
“Don’t you worry, Sir Finn. This detour is not for charity,” he said. Finn’s brow creased at that, but he apparently decided not to press the point. Out of unspoken gratitude, Lewyn diverted the next breeze away from the balcony, although Finn still shivered as he watched the trees shake below.
“You know,” he said slowly, “after all these years, all I’ve been through…I still can’t stand the cold.”
Lewyn couldn’t help but smile. “Perhaps you should keep that, then.”
Finn looked down at the scarf. “I don’t really think it suits me.”
“Nonsense. It brings out your eyes.”
Finn cast him a doubtful look and started to unwind the scarf.
“I’m not sure I would recognize King Lewyn without it.”
His tone seemed especially grave. He met Lewyn’s eyes for a moment, then his gaze dropped lower, and it was a beat before Lewyn realized what the knight was looking at. His breath caught.
“Dark magic leaves such distinctive scars,” Finn said, his eyes tracing one such mark, puckered and charcoal gray, which ran from the juncture of Lewyn’s neck and shoulder and down his chest, where it disappeared under the fabric of his shirt. From there, Lewyn could still feel how it branched across his torso like the roots of a twisted, poisonous tree. The scar had been stubborn enough to persist even through resurrection, and no matter what magic Lewyn employed, it always seemed to claw to the surface of his skin despite his efforts—it had become easier just to conceal it with a cleverly-arranged scarf.
Even from what Finn could see now, it was an unmistakable fatal wound. Finn slowly raised his eyes, pinning Lewyn in place. “That would have killed anyone. Who resurrected you, if not Father Claud…?”
Lewyn stared at him. There were lies he could tell—the dear departed Father took a moment to pray over my corpse as meteors rained around us—but he couldn’t bring himself to speak them. But the truth…
Finn’s eyes had drifted from the scar, back to the darkening fields of Leonster, but they had gone somewhat unfocused. His sigh was almost lost to another gust of wind.
“Never mind,” he said. “I just need to know that I can trust you.”
“Did you trust Lewyn?”
Finn didn’t even flinch at the use of the third person. “He had a good heart.”
“Yes,” Lewyn agreed. A good heart, and a strong will. A worthy crusader’s descendant, and a suitable vessel for a god’s well-intentioned meddling. “I hope to do it justice.”
With a pang, he thought about Erinys, about Fee and Ced, and wondered dubiously if he was succeeding so far.
Finn was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable as he watched the last of the daylight fade. It was strange, Lewyn thought, how his powers made the ebb and flow of the breeze and the ancient paths of the stars evident to him, how he could envision the movement of armies and precisely track the flight of an arrow, but the feelings that shifted in Finn’s blue eyes remained known to Finn alone.
But miraculously, Lewyn had apparently offered an acceptable answer yet again. Finn let out a breath, then shrugged the last of Lewyn’s scarf from his neck and draped the end over Lewyn’s shoulder. The rings sewn into the hem chimed delicately with the movement.
“Keep the scarf,” Finn said at last. “It looks like you need it after all.”