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After the war had ended and after Ephraim had returned from Grado, Eirika — with Seth at her side — journeyed in her turn to the ruined empire to lend Renais’ support to its rebuilding. She traveled with General Duessel, helping where she could.
Already, Ephraim and Eirika had taken pains to spread the story that Grado’s former leaders had been possessed, in hopes that the people’s anger could be turned toward the Demon King rather than their neighbors, and those efforts seemed to have borne fruit.
Indeed, as winter came on and she passed through the farms and towns along her way home, Eirika was struck by how strangely ordinary the world beyond the concerns of royalty seemed. Yes, there were great prayer ceremonies for the many dead, and people were busy with timber and stone, but they also sat around fires, laughed over food and drink and swore over dice games. Already, homemakers helped each other stack firewood and sweep the first dusting of snow from the paths.
Already, bundled-up children were playing out their own version of the war in the streets with colorful bated sticks. Eirika saw one small boy dub himself “Ephraim,” while his taller, red-headed fellow complained that “You make me be ‘Caellach’ all the time.” Another of the boys declared that he was “Innes” and therefore his sister must be “Tana,” but the girl insisted on being “Natasha” — a good role model, Eirika thought. It unsettled her a bit that the horror and bloodshed could become a game so quickly, but she chose to be reassured that the children were playing and dealing with all that had happened in their own way.
She was thankful, though, that she didn’t see a child play at being “Lyon,” and so she was spared knowing how that role would fit into the game.
Even in the courtyard of Castle Renais, the knights were practicing as they had before, only now they laughed over proud tales of what they’d done in the war.
When it had begun, it had seemed like a nightmare, and now it seemed perhaps like a passing dream. Eirika wasn’t sure whether to believe that the terror could fade so quickly, that everyone could leave it behind so easily....
And then, the day after their return, Seth took her aside and asked with grave concern that she speak to Ephraim.
*****
“May I come in?”
“Of course! My sister is welcome anytime.” Ephraim ushered Eirika into his private chambers.
She glanced around the room as she followed him. Something about the walls seemed different, but she couldn’t place what it was.
“This is the first time we’ve had a moment alone since you left,” Ephraim said. He drew up a chair for her at a small oaken table.
“I heard you were away from the castle as well,” Eirika said, taking her seat. “I’m glad your journey was a safe one.”
“You don’t think I would die in a little skirmish like that, do you?” her brother questioned as he crossed to the fireplace; he sounded so much like he always had. “Honestly, I’m trying to do everything I can for the refugees from Grado, but if some of them turn to banditry along our border, that I can’t allow.”
“Of course not,” Eirika agreed. “We have to protect the innocent citizens — of both countries.”
Ephraim brought a jug from the hob and poured two cups of warm mulled wine before taking his own seat. “I didn’t want to tell you this in front of everyone,” he said, “but when I was quelling the bandits in Serafew, I heard a remarkable tale from the days of the war, about a masked princess and her companions, who defeated the Grado oppressors. No sooner was that done than they descended on the Arena like a crew of reapers, forced all the local bravos to submit, and gave the money to the beleaguered citizens...?”
“Not so much of it,” Eirika admitted, blushing hot behind the shield of her cup. “I first had to ensure that my own party was well-supplied.”
“So it was you!”
She nodded, once.
“Wearing a mask?”
“Seth had reminded me not to reveal my identity or draw attention—”
Ephraim laughed, and indeed her disguise had been a laughable failure. “I’m afraid the people were all quite convinced of who the lady was,” he said. “But I could hardly believe that you had done something so...”
“Uncivilized?” Eirika offered.
“No, I only mean.... There isn’t a word for what I mean. I didn’t think you cared for fighting or gambling.”
“Well, I was saying then that if only we had more training, and more funds for weapons and supplies, and Joshua happened to overhear me....”
Her brother’s eyebrow quirked. He’d fought shoulder to shoulder with the prodigal prince of Jehanna many times but had never quite warmed to him. Still, his smile remained. “It was well done in the end,” he said. “Just, to imagine my sister fighting in those games....”
“I didn’t think of it as a game,” she said — but she hadn’t thought of it as real battle, either.
It was close enough to what she’d come to speak about.
“It’s true that I don’t like fighting,” Eirika said. “Now more than ever, I don’t like it. But now more than ever, I know that I was right, that it’s important I know how to fight, to protect myself and those I love and am responsible for.
“Brother,” — she looked into his eyes. “Will you teach me more and practice with me?”
Ephraim’s smile fell. His bright face went cold in an instant, not with any unkindness, but clearly Seth’s concern had been well-founded.
Something was wrong.
“Brother?”
His mouth moved vaguely as he considered an answer. “I can teach you,” he said.
“But you don’t want to.”
“You always had to talk me into it; don’t you remember?”
“But this is different,” Eirika observed. It was no use concealing her motives. “Seth asked me to speak to you. The knights have noticed: you always loved sparring with them, and now you never do. At first they thought you were putting your safety first for the sake of the country, now that you’re king, but after how you fought with the bandits, they knew that couldn’t be it.”
Ephraim closed his eyes and rubbed at his face.
“No one is spreading rumors; Seth and Kyle are making certain of that,” Eirika assured him. “They’re only concerned about you.”
“I am keeping up my training. You must know that, surely.”
“That’s not what we’re concerned about,” Eirika pursued.
Ephraim cast her a glance that seemed to say, you’ve made up your mind, haven’t you? His shoulders loosened with resignation, but his sister felt that he wasn’t so unhappy to relent.
He took a deep breath and a deep draught of his wine. “You know that fighting is in my blood. It’s trained into my spirit. I feel the call to test my skill and push myself further, to cross blades with an opponent and to win, and, ‘uncivilized’ as it may be, I’ve always found joy in it.”
“I know you, Brother,” Eirika said, taking his hand gently to show that she didn’t judge him.
“Even in the war I found joy in it,” he said. “Again and again I followed that to victory, but now.... In the war, again and again, victory was not complete until...”
“Yes,” Eirika confirmed, to spare him the need to say it.
In war, victory was seldom complete until the killing blow.
Again he breathed in deeply, released it. “Now, whenever I cross blades with someone, no matter who it is... I feel that calling to me.”
“Brother....”
“I’m not going to lose control of myself,” Ephraim hastened to add. “It only disturbs me. I don’t want our people to see my unease.”
But, like Eirika’s mask in Serafew, concealment had only drawn attention to the thing he wished to hide.
And such a scar he was hiding. Eirika had always assumed that the fighting would leave a deeper wound for herself, who found it a horror and a misery. She still woke sometimes from nightmares of steel and blood, but they were fading. She had always thought that Ephraim’s enthusiasm for battle would protect him from such a wound, but instead his wound was the deeper one. She could hardly imagine how it must wrench the soul to feel such an impulse, as if one could kill a friend with pleasure, and the war had taught them both that facing a loved and trusted friend was not such protection as one wished. For Ephraim, the war had taken one more thing he loved, tainted it and stolen it — and hidden it away, for now Eirika realized what was different about the room; for the first time she could remember, Ephraim displayed no weapons on his walls.
She didn’t blame him. Indeed, Eirika saw nothing to blame if her brother sought not only to hide that feeling but to avoid suffering it at all, but if Ephraim ever shied away from anything for his own comfort, he could never admit it.
She clasped his hand harder now, with both of her own. “Brother, let us not keep such things from each other,” she said. “In some ways, it’s strange how suddenly it’s all over, but in other ways, we’re all still fighting, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he agreed, gently and gravely.
“But we aren’t all marching together as we were then,” she realized. “Now we have to be careful not to fight alone.”
Ephraim raised his other hand, returned her hold. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. You always were the wiser one.”
“You haven’t always thought so, the way you teased me.”
As she’d hoped, that brought a smile back to his face. “Oh, I always did think so; that’s why I teased you.”
“What? How does that—? That only makes sense to men, I suppose.”
“Maybe.”
*****
Together they explained the trouble to their most trusted knights, who understood and pledged silence on the matter.
It was perhaps enough, but Eirika couldn’t help feeling that it was sad to leave it at that and simply give up on something that brought her brother such pleasure. What more she could do about it, though, she could not guess.
And in other ways, Ephraim was managing quite well. When the twins made the traditional royal appearance at the castle’s midwinter festival, Ephraim made a fine figure of a king in his richly-dyed furs. The festival’s royal gift of food for the people’s larders was not as abundant as usual — they had been unable to manage that without creating hardship elsewhere — but with help from Frelia and Rausten it was more than they’d expected to muster after the year of madness that had passed. Hopefully it would fulfill its purpose of seeing everyone through the winter.
As she and her brother waved down from the battlements, Eirika’s eye was drawn to a group of boys and girls on the edge of the crowd, gathered around one of the great mounds of snow that had been cleared from the festival field. These were not the same children she had noticed before, but as Eirika watched, she realized that they, too, were playing “War of the Stones” and that they had solved the problem of who must be the villain. They shaped their hillock of snow into a crude horned figure, then all joined together in knocking the “Demon King” to pieces.
She heard a hearty laugh at her shoulder. Ephraim had followed her gaze and was alight with mirth at the sight of the children’s toy weapons stabbing and slashing the white snow.
*****
A few days later, in the lazy wake of the midwinter feast, Eirika sent a message to her brother.
“Please come to my chambers in the morning,” she wrote. “Perhaps we can practice together. If you don’t wish to when you come, I promise to let the matter go and not raise it again.”
And of course, Ephraim wouldn’t refuse Eirika anything. Therein lay the danger of the enterprise, but it did ensure his arrival.
“Thank you for coming, Brother,” Eirika greeted. Snow-white morning sun was streaming into her chambers from windows to walls.
“Of course I came,” Ephraim replied. “Really, Sister, you mustn’t worry yourself about—”
His words stopped short as his gaze fell upon Eirika’s table and the arsenal she had asked Seth to quietly procure.
Arrayed there were shafts of soft sapling wood, some the length of spears, others the length of swords. Their tips and sides had been padded round with waste wool and dried grasses, then all sewn up in a layer of cloth woven with gaily colored patterns. With ill will or ill luck, even such things as these could cause injury, but they were clearly not made for killing. Clearly, they were made for children to play games.
Ephraim lifted one of the “spears” quizzically, tested its heft....
Eirika looked away; perhaps the whole idea had been foolish, but.... “I thought perhaps with these, it wouldn’t be...,” she fumbled to explain.
Deep down, battle for Ephraim had always been a game in which victory could be pursued for sheer pleasure. The war had changed that, but with such weapons as these, perhaps, it could be a game again.
“It would pain me if you were to push yourself for my sake, over such a silly thing as this,” she added hastily. “But I thought, if it might—”
She stopped short with a jolt as a cushioned blow landed on the crown of her head.
Eirika whipped around, half affronted, and found her brother regarding her with a grin clear as the morning’s sunlight, in which nothing dark was hidden.
“You’re the silly thing,” Ephraim taunted. “You’ll lose points at this game if you don’t stay on your guard.”
With a rush of relief and joy — and a bit of playful vengefulness — Eirika seized one of the “swords” from the table and took her stance. “Don’t think I won’t repay you for that!”
*****
As Seth stood guard outside Eirika’s chambers, Forde came down the hallway, with a stretch and a yawn.
“Good morning,” Seth greeted.
“I just finished night duty,” Forde explained unprompted. “There’s nothing to do in the barracks but sleep or eat leftover fruitcake, so I thought I’d see what it was that was going on—”
Just then, another thump and more peals of laughter resounded behind the door.
Forde snapped a questioning look at the door, then turned to Seth, who maintained his guard impassively.
And then Forde — never one for protocol — bent down, put his eye to the keyhole....
Seth cleared his throat.
Forde straightened, but not so quickly as to deny himself his peek. “It’s not as if they’re doing anything bad,” he argued under his breath. “You should have a look, too; it would do your heart good.”
“I don’t have to look,” Seth said, and he showed a rare, soft smile.
Fin