Work Text:
Detrich had not often had cause to be uneasy in another’s presence. Indeed, even now he hesitated to define the feeling as unease. He had certainly seen worse – had done worse, himself, and without regret.
And yet the emotion inspired in him by the sight of the man who’d entered the room at Mia’s wordless invitation was distinctly unpleasant.
He was very pale – remarkably so for these parts – and tall and bony. His body seemed more an architectural structure than an anatomical one. A coarse dark cape of nettle-dyed linen hung around his shoulders the way a cover of five-finger ivy might hang around the village bell tower.
While far from regular, his features were not unpleasant. Detrich could appreciate such beauty even if his personal tastes lay elsewhere.
But beneath this, where he would normally expect to seize upon a spark of another Guardian’s flame – another land’s soul-power – was only darkness. Something bitter and terrible lurked within the man, rose from his skin like smoke, burned under his feet as he walked. An absence so absolute that even Hyem herself rejected his presence.
Not an exile. But not not an exile, either.
“Land’s Own,” the stranger said quietly, and bowed low with his right hand at his belt.
Many men had bowed to Detrich before – had knelt before him, even, out of misguided reverence or in a plea for mercy. This was neither. There was a kind of cold servility about the gesture, a formally respectful attitude calculated to please him.
Unease – perhaps. But the main emotion the man evoked in him, decided Detrich, was dislike.
***
There was no denying the twinge of dislike Saul felt when he spotted the polished bone hilt of the heavy hunting knife strapped to the stranger’s belt.
The man was older than him, yet not by much; there was a boyishness about his features that was not disguised even by his questionable attempt at side-whiskers. Under his many freckles, his skin was white to the point of translucency. Even his fingers and wrists were peppered richly with small tawny spots, reminding Saul vaguely of overripe Samaran apricots.
He was not a fighter. Ineptitude was written in his body as surely as weariness was written on his face. If it came to combat, he would not be a worthy opponent for Saul – in fact, Saul struggled to think of someone he might be a worthy opponent for.
And it was hard not to resent the fact that he possessed this excellent blade while Saul himself was not allowed even a kitchen knife.
Yet stronger than this petty flash of resentment was curiosity. The man and his charge – a small dark-eyed girl – were an odd sight. Huddled in the corner of the hallway, they were silent but for an occasional word muttered in a trilling, clipped language Saul did not entirely recognize. They didn’t look like peasants – those bony, thin-skinned hands were hardly accustomed to manual labour – but neither were they well-off. The man’s grey woollen shawl, pinned together at the throat, was barely more than a rag. The girl’s high-waisted dress was uneven in colour, off-white in some places and a dull yellow in others, scrubbed one too many times with soapwort root.
What did they want with the Land’s Own of Hyem?
***
“Land’s Own,” the stranger repeated, his closely shaven head still bowed down. “My name is Arno Rhoden. I have come to ask you for a... kindness.”
It was an odd word to use. Detrich was silent for a while, trying to tease out what it was that worried him about this singular visitor. Finally, having progressed no further than his initial unfavourable impression, he offered a slight shrug. “Speak then, Fro Rhoden.”
“The young man and the girl downstairs,” Rhoden began, standing up a little straighter, “are Alexander and Esther Steinberg. They’re my companions; and we have need of safe passage through Hyem.”
“First things first,” Detrich said. “Who are you?”
Something wavered in Rhoden’s expression, as though someone disturbed the surface of a quiet pond. “We’re fugitives from Venäjä, Land’s Own.”
Detrich cast a brief glance northward, where, across some thousand miles of Hyemi fir-forests and bridewort-meadows, lay the cold grey sea that separated Hyem from her volatile ally.
He felt her presence, and the presence of her new Guardian, as one feels a distant thunderstorm: so very far and yet never far enough. Venäjä was a flash of carmine on the horizon, a breath of rosehip flowers in the northern wind.
“Your name is Hyemi,” he said, half-questioning. And yet your soul isn’t mine to touch.
“It is my father’s name.” Rhoden’s light grey eyes were on him. “But I’m Estlish. Was Estlish.”
That explained the dark and bitter thing within him. This man was not severed from his homeland’s soul-flame; instead, it was his homeland that had been torn out of him, conquered and subsumed.
It explained also the subservient, overly formal attitude that had so irritated Detrich. He should’ve recognized it before; he knew it well, after all. Rather than being the brown-nosing political schemer Detrich had suspected in him at first, Rhoden was someone altogether too used to begging.
An image flitted, unbidden, before his mind’s eye. A young peasant kneeling in the freezing mud before the lord of the manor, a plea on his lips and hatred in his heart; his right hand at his belt, closing convulsively around a fistful of empty air the way it might close around the handle of a knife.
***
“The boy wants to see Arno’s knife, Sasha,” the girl said in slow, painstakingly articulated Hyemi. “Shall I show him?”
Saul knew, somehow, that the reason she’d switched to Hyemi was the notion that it was impolite to talk about another in a language he could not understand. This was knowledge from another world; from a life he’d never had. It had been imparted to him an immeasurably long time ago, together with the burning gold of Ilyigan calligraphy ink and the words of the sacred hymns.
“You shouldn’t bother Fro Samaren, Esther,” her companion admonished quietly. The tips of his ears were red with embarrassment. “I am sure he has better things to do.”
“I don’t mind,” Saul said, somewhat to his own surprise.
He wanted to know about them. And the knife was a fine weapon.
The man sighed a little and began to undo the buckle that fastened the knife to his belt. “Very well, then. Just be careful.” And, addressing Saul: “I am Alexander Steinberg, and this is my sister, Esther.”
Saul noticed that he volunteered no further information. Prudently reticent – especially if, as he was beginning to think, their friend’s business with Detrich was not entirely above board.
The girl, Esther, walked over to Saul and held the sheathed knife out to him. She was about half of his height; she couldn’t have been older than ten. Someone had carefully arranged her black, curly hair into a row of braids. The little red bows holding the braids together were like embers in a hearth. Saul was briefly reminded of Detrich and the red leather ribbon he’d sometimes weave into his hair. A soldier’s talisman.
***
Rhoden was not a soldier. He was a civilian of a small nation all but destroyed by the Venlish revolution, an affair altogether bloodier than what had happened in Hyem.
Bloodier, yes. But more radical, too, more honest, less compromising. Venäjä achieved what we could not.
He was an unfortunate casualty. Detrich did not enjoy seeing this living proof of the fact that change could not be enacted with clean hands.
But neither did this sight stir any doubt or regret in him. Yes, this man suffered a great deal; yet the Venlish revolution itself had been the backlash against the intolerable suffering of many such as he. It was the brutal arithmetics of Guardianship. One man, a spark; thousands, a fire.
“There’s more to this,” Detrich said. “The invasion of Yoldia happened decades ago. Something else drove you out of the country.”
This observation didn’t seem to have wrongfooted Rhoden. “I’m a traitor,” he responded coolly. “A traitor to the land and to the Guardian of the United Venäjä herself.
“I’m responsible for covertly publishing an analysis of the mortal remains of some counter-revolutionaries she would rather had never been found.”
Detrich raised an eyebrow. “An analysis?”
“I’m a skeletal specialist, Fro Detrich. I do –” Rhoden snapped his fingers a couple of times, searching for the right Hyemi word, “Knochenlehre. Osteology. The Venlish Land’s Own did not like what I had to say about the deaths of these people.”
And could Detrich blame her? He imagined someone thus analysing the remains of Willie Arnbau; someone publishing a report on the subject dedicated entirely to his death.
No, worse. Arnbau was his own soldier; these had evidently been enemy civilians. And how much civilian blood had it taken to quench the thirst of Venäjä’s arid soil?
It could not be a light burden to bear.
***
Saul ran a light finger over the leatherwork. It was worn but still lovely: many years ago, someone’s confident hand cut a flight of miniature swallows into the sheath. Their eyes had once been made out of viridian glass beads, but at this point only a couple remained.
“You can hold it if you like,” Esther piped up.
He itched to do just that. The hilt looked like it’d fit into his palm perfectly, smooth and warm as only bone can be.
“Better not,” Saul said, raising his hands – partly in a gesture of refusal, partly to remove the temptation. You’re permitted no weapon. “You show me.”
Esther looked unperturbed by his odd behaviour. She gripped the knife and slid it halfway out of the sheath, showing off a narrow strip of dully gleaming metal.
Saul took it in. The surface of the blade swirled with pale blue lines like oil on water. Bulat steel – originally an Avestan invention, now found only in a few countries to the east and north of Hyem. He had seen weapons like this during the war, mostly in the hands of Eastern mercenaries.
It was brilliantly clean and had been sharpened to a point by someone who knew his craft. The knife was clearly well looked after.
Esther sighed. “Arno says I’m too young for it,” she said – half-complaint, half-resignation.
Saul gave her an assessing look. She was malnourished and her muscles were not yet well-developed, but that would be easy enough to remedy. Her left forearm had been broken and then inexpertly set, resulting in an oddly shaped protrusion; but as far as he could tell, this caused her little discomfort. The knife was a little heavy for her, perhaps, but she gripped it confidently, her stance relaxed. There was potential here.
He shrugged. “I think you’re just about the right age.”
“Truly?” She perked up a bit, but then deflated. “Arno would never agree. He thinks Sasha is barely old enough, never mind me.”
***
“Never mind granting your request,” Detrich said, “I could have you turned over to the Venlish right now.”
That would have been the diplomatically prudent thing to do, of course. And did he not owe it to his people to cultivate Hyem’s relationship with a power as major and influential as Venäjä, especially in these times?
A visible tremor passed through the gloved fingers of Rhoden’s left hand. His right hand twitched, as if in an aborted impulse to seize the left and stop it from shaking. Detrich observed this intra-corporeal conflict with some bemusement.
“You could,” Rhoden conceded at length. “I would not resist. I am not asking for myself, Fro Detrich. Promise me the Steinbergs will be safe, and I shall go willingly.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“But,” Rhoden continued slowly, carefully, “my preference would certainly be to stay with them. If you’re amenable to the idea of not turning me over, I could be... of use.”
The dark absurdity of it all finally got a little much for Detrich. He barked a short incredulous laugh. “Are you offering me a bribe?”
Rhoden shook his head once, and crossed his arms on his chest. It did not escape Detrich’s notice that in doing so he removed his left hand from view.
“Not a bribe. An alternative.”
“Suppose I were willing to listen,” Detrich allowed sceptically.
“Instead of giving me to the Venlish, you could conscript me. Make use of my skills for the good of Hyem. I’m certain you’ve enough deaths you could stand to know more about; and I am capable of more than simple anatomical investigation.”
***
Even a cursory investigation of a weapon’s properties could reveal much about its owners. The Steinbergs didn’t know this, of course; they would have never shown him the blade otherwise.
“Your friend,” Saul said. “Is he Soomi?”
“He is not,” Alexander responded instantly, his tone sharp. But close enough, Saul understood from the hastiness of his response and the guarded look in his eyes.
The Soomi and the Venlish were among the northern nations where bulat steel was commonplace. The bone-hilt suggested Soome. But perhaps he had been wrong.
“Venlish, then?”
“Estlish,” Esther corrected, waving off her brother’s warning frown. “He’ll guess anyway, Sasha. That, or Fro Detrich will tell him.
“Arno was born in Yoldia, Fro Samaren. But Sasha and I, we did come to Hyem from Venäjä.”
He had only heard of Yoldia vaguely, before. Unlike Venäjä and Soome, it was not a major military power. Indeed, it was barely a military power at all. Saul was aware of the shores of the Yoldia sea only as a theatre of other nations’ wars with each other – something for soldiers to pillage and for politicians to squabble over in peace talks. It was a Soomi mercenary who’d told him this, many years ago. It’s one giant bog, lad, he’d said. Everyone’s a fisherman and the food is terrible. Sun knows why people fight over it.
“We’re fugitives,” Alexander supplied, clearly deciding that trying to conceal this from Saul was a pointless effort. “Wanted by the Land’s Own of the United Venäjä.”
Curiosity burned at the tip of Saul’s tongue. “What for?” he asked, before he could think better of it.
Alexander shrugged with one scrawny shoulder. “High treason.”
***
“High treason,” Detrich said. “And you want me to overlook this in exchange for a coroner’s services?”
“I am good at what I do,” Rhoden said. “But it’s more than that. I can see their thoughts, their feelings, their memories. Sometimes, I can talk to what remains of them. They’re no longer people, of course, but... something not unlike the people they used to be.”
An unpleasant chill crept up Detrich’s spine. “I’m not a believer in mediums, Fro Rhoden.”
“There’s nothing metaphysical about it,” Rhoden replied, a hint of impatience in his tone even despite the circumstances. Detrich’s must’ve been a common doubt. “Nothing more metaphysical than your own skills, Land’s Own.
“What I see is merely the remnants of their souls. Like blood, soul-fire seeps into their bones and stains them even in death.
“I do not possess your power nor your influence, but in a way, people like me are Guardians of the dead. Like you, I feel their anger, their joy, their sorrow. Like you, I protect them.”
Like you, I suffer when they’re harmed, Detrich understood.
A Guardian? Perhaps he could use one.
“This soul-fire – can you harness it? Give it back to Hyem? Use it to heal and rebuild, or else to weaken our enemies?”
This surprised a laugh out of Rhoden. “Sun’s blood, no. It’s not like that. I did say I do not possess your power.
“And I most certainly cannot hurt people with it.” His left shoulder jerked upwards a little, and his thin mouth stretched in a crooked half-smile. “Only myself, sometimes. But I am sure that if you wanted me hurt, you wouldn’t require my cooperation, Land’s Own.
“Believe me – my betters have tried and failed to do what you ask.” He raised his palm. “Information. That is all I can offer.”
***
Saul wondered if the Steinbergs regretted offering him to see the knife. He also wondered – and couldn’t ask – whether they too were exiles.
High treason. He’d boggled a little, despite himself, at Alexander’s nonchalant tone. Maybe he’d underestimated this man. He had little physical prowess, true, but Saul had spent too long in Detrich’s company to believe that that was all there was to strength.
“You’re wondering if we’re exiles,” Alexander guessed, watching Saul closely with his pale gooseberry-green eyes. “No. It’s not like that – except in the sense that we don’t have a land to call ours.”
Saul wasn’t entirely certain of the difference. Surely being unable to call anywhere home was the only sense in which one could be an exile. That was what it had meant for him: not a physical removal but an inner injury, a bleeding cut through something so fundamental to his whole being that it had hurt and hurt and hurt and would never stop.
Nevertheless, he nodded like he understood. He felt that revealing his confusion would undo the advantage he’d gained earlier.
“If you weren’t exiled, why did you not stay and fight?” he asked. I wish I’d had that choice.
He knew the question was an insulting one, but did not much care. An odd mixture of emotion burned under his ribs: something like kinship and something like resentment.
“The Venlish don’t kill their enemies,” Alexander said, giving no sign of annoyance at the provocation. He’d pulled Esther closer and was worrying at one of her braids, adjusting the bow and smoothing the frizzy curls that had gotten loose. “Not anymore. They used to. But eventually, they realized that fighting us head on doesn’t pay. Better to lock us away, wear us down – better to make us wish we had never opposed them in the first place.
“That is why I didn’t stay.”
***
It would stay with him, that stab of realization when he’d understood exactly what Rhoden was offering him. Information was no small thing. And this kind of information –
An entirely ludicrous fantasy occurred to Detrich. This power – the idea that he could see the memories of the dead, could speak to someone he had perhaps never had the chance to explain himself to – awoke something sick and desperate in him. He wanted to uproot the flowers on that grave, to break the stone, to haul those long forgotten bones out of the earth. He wanted to see himself through the eyes of Willie Arnbau.
He did not regret it.
I’m sorry. I didn’t want this. Forgive me.
He’d said he could not tolerate treason, and he’d meant it.
Have mercy on me, as you did on them.
He would not have taken it back.
I would do anything to take it back.
Rhoden observed him silently, his face politely expressionless. Detrich resurfaced from that suffocating mental spiral and found it in himself to scowl back. Did the bastard know? Had this been deliberate?
It was a paranoid and irrational thought. He knew that, and yet for a moment he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it.
“Does it not matter that they’re Hyemi?” he forced himself to ask, schooling his own features into something that less resembled an agonized grimace.
Selfish. Selfish of him to think of his own pain. This could benefit his people, and that’s what he had to focus on.
“No,” Rhoden said. “Past a certain point, human beings belong to nothing but death.”
***
There were obstacles that were harder to overcome than fear of death. Saul nodded his understanding at Alexander. He could respect this; he knew the frustration of confronting problems that could not be made to go away. It was one thing to cut a man’s throat – another to be at a loss as to whose throat to cut.
“This Arno –” he began.
“Fro Rhoden,” Alexander corrected, in a tone that brooked no disagreement.
Saul raised a conciliatory hand. “Fro Rhoden. What business has he with the Land’s Own?”
“I don’t rightly know.” This was clearly a source of chagrin to him: he bit his lower lip, and spots of high colour appeared on his freckled cheeks. “He hasn’t told us. I can’t imagine he was eager to come here. He’s not exactly a big fan of Guardians.”
“Not a big fan of...”
It made about as much sense as not being fond of breathing or the Sun. In Saul’s eyes, Detrich was not a political condition or a product of his time; he simply was.
“It seems unwise,” Saul remarked, “to follow him here when you don’t know why he’s come.”
That wasn’t a source of frustration. Alexander’s features relaxed in an instant, something softer shining through. His fingers found the hilt of the knife and felt it carefully, the way a man might feel a grounding amulet. “I know why I follow. That is enough.”
A queer spark of momentary recognition passed through Saul. It was like looking at his own reflection – not in a mirror, but perhaps in a deep dark stream, its peaty waters cold and quiet: the colours changed and subdued, the lines distorted by a passing current.
***
That the man before him ended up in Hyem was explained easily enough through the patterns of the Yoldia sea’s icy currents. Every year they carried dozens of merchant ships brimming with grain, smoked cheese, and mandel-flour confectionaries all the way from the Bay of Hyl. It was a few hundred miles of open sea between there and Yoldia as the crow flies; two days of travel, perhaps, if that.
Why he ended up in the house of the Land’s Own of Hyem was less clear to Detrich.
“You could’ve approached anyone in the Kaiser’s court. Probably any of them would be more sympathetic to your plight than I. It would be a chance to slight the Revolutionary Venäjä – to slight me. Why didn’t you?”
Rhoden shifted his weight, the leather of his heavy black boots creaking slightly. He was clearly choosing his words. “To the Kaiser and his ilk, I would be a political tool to be used against their foes,” he said at last. “Against you. I would be put to work on the remains of the people you killed, no doubt. That might last for a while; but in the end, I would still be discarded – perhaps given back to Venäjä after all, having served my purpose...
“Worse, although I would buy the Steinbergs some time, they too would not be safe.
“To you, Fro Detrich,” Rhoden said, looking him in the eye, “I am nothing but a rounding error. A hundred thousand of my fellow countrymen have been severed from their land by the Venlish; what is one man in the face of such destruction?”
A hundred thousand. Could things have really been that bad in Venäjä? Surely there was a limit even to her wrath.
Detrich reached out and touched the cold, churning darkness within Rhoden. The hollow man speaks the truth, the darkness whispered to him.
“But that’s not war,” Detrich murmured, in spite of himself. “That is... senseless.”
Rhoden looked at him sharply. A dark amusement fluttered in the corners of his mouth. “Don’t tell me you would baulk at this, Land’s Own.”
Would he?
Wouldn’t he?
“As I have said,” Rhoden continued, “a rounding error. And yet –”
He glanced briefly around Detrich’s study. It had been recently cleaned, every nook and corner meticulously dusted off. Mia liked to take her time here, gently straightening up his books and arranging assemblages of fresh meadow-flowers in the corners even as he grumbled at her and told her to leave the place well enough alone.
On his desk was a plateful of rye bread with cheese and honey that she’d brought for him. He’d forgotten to eat it, of course, as he often did.
Next to the bookshelf lay a pair of fencing blades: Detrich had left them there after his last sparring session with Saul.
“I’ve heard of your man, Samaren,” Rhoden said. “Your people say he’s cruel, without mercy. That only you keep him in check. A born killer, someone told me.
“But no one is born a killer. What is he, sixteen? He’s only a child. You don’t keep him around for his skill with a blade. He and Frowe Weber – they’re more than just servants to you.”
The hollow man’s heart burns blue with love, the darkness breathed. As does your own.
Detrich’s throat worked once. He held Rhoden’s gaze. “The Steinbergs,” he said. “You said you’d give yourself up for them.”
“Anything,” Rhoden said. “I would do anything.”
“You know who I am.” The butcher of the Revolution. A killer of traitors. A Guardian. “You cannot hope that I’ll have sympathy for a man who committed high treason – who is even now offering to betray his principles and serve someone he can feel nothing but hatred for.”
“Not sympathy.” Rhoden slowly undid the copper pin on his collar, cheap but sturdy, with a shard of blue glass in the middle by way of decoration. His cape slid undone, baring his throat. Strike me if you wish. “I would not ask you to sympathize with me.
“But – understanding. You know why I’ve come to you.”
Hang him, something burning and wrathful hissed in Detrich’s ear. Buy their lives with his blood as you bought the landsgrafin’s life by hanging Arnbau.
It was not you he betrayed, said the soft apricot glow of Hyem’s setting sun. What are Venäjä’s internal squabbles to us? He can help you.
But stronger than these voices was the song of the soul-fire within him – his own, and that of the web.
Somewhere to the north-east, an elderly berry-picker leaned down to greet his granddaughter. She brought him water in a cup she’d fashioned herself out of birch bark, and he gulped it down before carefully placing the cup back into her tiny hands.
To the west, two sisters walked through the city market. One held a shiny silver krone in her hand, pressed firmly between her dirt-encrusted fingers. It was Austron’s Grace, the Day of Last Blossoms, and she’d saved her wages for a week to buy the other a gift.
Downstairs, his own household. Mia, weary and caring beyond her years, sitting in the kitchen with her customary evening cup of tea. Saul, all rage and pain, engaging in an unexpected conversation with their strange visitors. Detrich’s heart contracted, once. In that moment he suddenly longed only to keep them safe, to hold them, to wring all the pain out of their very bones, to pour golden warmth into their souls.
Let him go, his pulse beat painfully. Let him go!
“What you’ve offered me is tempting,” Detrich said, himself disbelieving what he was about to say. “Your skills could certainly be of use to me. But I have no intention of conscripting you, as you put it. If you wish provide your services to Hyem, do so of your own will.
“It will not be too difficult to stall the Scarlet Skein here. They will abandon their pursuit of you soon enough.”
Rhoden looked at him for a few long moments, clearly incomprehending. This was evidently against his every expectation.
Before Rhoden could glimpse more from Detrich’s demeanour than he wished to reveal, Detrich turned away from him and busied himself with rearranging Mia’s rye bread.
“Go freely, traitor,” he said flatly. “Do not give me cause to change my mind.”
***
Saul watched the Steinbergs as they reunited with their guardian, who looked to be deep in thought. There was fierce joy in Alexander’s features as he observed Rhoden – making sure he was unharmed, was Saul’s intuition.
“I will only say goodbye to Fro Samaren,” Esther told Rhoden, and he gave her a slightly bemused nod.
The girl had taken an inexplicable liking to Saul. He supposed he didn’t dislike her, either. He thought with approval of her hands on the hilt of the knife.
“I wish you a long life,” she said to him. A blessing, he thought – one clumsily translated from another language. “May you be well and healthy, Fro Samaren.”
To be well – there was some value in that. As to having a long life... Saul struggled to imagine what that might be like. It was a blessing from the same forgotten world he had once inhabited, before the beginning of time.
He watched as they walked through the front door and descended the steps, their figures blurring in the golden summer twilight of the capitol.
“Lad,” a familiar voice said behind him. A firm hand on his shoulder, warm even through the fabric of his shirt. Detrich, too, was watching their departure, immersed in his own secret thoughts.
A long life. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad prospect after all.