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Lorenz walks up the stone stairs, his footsteps loud amid the hushed crowd.
This is a speech he never wanted to give. It makes everything so final. It opens up a future, yawning wide, that Lorenz did not, does not want to look toward. It places a chapter behind him that he wished to stay in forever.
He fights back tears, breathes to open his throat, tucks his hair behind his ear, looks down to gather himself.
When he looks up again, clear, steady gazes—several of them watery—meet his own. Lorenz smiles a faint smile in acknowledgment of the support, lifts his chin, and begins.
“We are here today to honor a great man.”
The interpreter follows in his footsteps, quietly, in Almyran. Lorenz feels the sting of a rebuke no one’s given, that he’s not quite able to deliver this speech in the proper language.
“Khalid Farzad, King of Almyra and of Fodlan, Protector of the Flame and King of Unification.”
Lorenz pauses. “Known to some of us first as Claude von Riegan, heir to the Roundtable.” A certain fondness crosses his face at the memory of first meeting the man who went with the name.
“He was many things, to many people—that simple fact, in itself, being perhaps his greatest talent.” Lorenz’s eyes flick to the bier, until he remembers Claude cannot hear the gentle tease in Lorenz’s voice. He sobers, and returns to the speech.
“A diplomat without equal, to be sure, and multifaceted to the utmost.” Lorenz thinks about the last deal he’d brokered without knowing it’d be his last; the cocksure smiles, the double-edged quips, some of which only Lorenz had caught the humor of. His throat tightened. He pressed forward.
“He was a student. Some of us knew him first as a student, but anyone who knew him well observed that never changed once he left the monastery’s walls. The endless piles of books,” Lorenz smiled, with a sad resignation, “I can assure you, never left his surroundings."
“He was a soldier, and indeed a general of great renown. History books will recount the specificity of his doings far better than I can here, but I can say what scholarly work cannot. He led with thoughtfulness, with relentless hope, and with a ferociously loving heart. He truly cared for all those who fought with him.”
“He was a loving father and a steadfast partner.”
And a romantic, and a lover, and a seeker of moonlight and pleasure and laughter. Lorenz cannot, he cannot allow his thoughts to travel this path, or the severed pieces of himself that he’s gathered together for this solemn occasion will fly apart, irrevocably.
“This man we honor so solemnly today would have wished you cheer, and offered you comfort if he could. He was kind, and that kindness was expressed in great deeds and actions, to be true, but also those more private and personal.”
He looks up from his paper then, at their friends, and smiles, hollowly. “And, on occasion, in a great deal of cheek.”
He looks over to the bundle of heliotrope that he placed atop the coffin lid. He’d been crying too hard at the time to really appreciate it, but the delicate flowers are quite a statement. There’s an armload of them, symbolizing undying love and devotion, and there had been some hushed whispers to that effect when Lorenz had laid them down.
The flower is also poisonous, but also in very large quantities. It had been Lorenz’s final private little jest with Claude, a nod to the various concoctions he never really stopped experimenting with and brewing. Lorenz sighs, looking at the bright purple flowers. He wants to see Claude grin about it, hear his surprised laugh that Lorenz would do something so irreverent, even if subtle.
He supposes all of their jokes will have to be one-sided now, and he hates it.
There are faint smiles through sniffles from the crowd, as anticipated. Claude would be proud of the structure and rhythm of the speech, Lorenz thinks, as he grows serious once more.
“More than anything, he believed in you. In us. It was his great life’s work to bring our nations together.”
Lorenz does, now, switch to Almyran, and the interpreter deftly swaps to Fodlani.
“To honor the divide, but link hands across it.” It was the slogan Claude had devised as part of his great project, and, like most things he’d dreamed up, it was implausibly successful.
Lorenz’s memory rolls back to the first time he’d tested the words on his own tongue, mouth pursed up like the taste of them was sour. So different from his pride in saying them now. He’d changed so much. They all had. Because of him.
He looks over the crowd again, intermingled, some of the Fodlaners now borrowing dress customs from the Almyrans, and vice versa.
“Were he to see you all here today—” Ah. Apparently this is the phrase, the moment that will make him lose composure. It’s the thought that Claude should be here, and isn’t, and never will be again, that breaks him.
Lorenz forces the next few words out through his teeth before the sobs can well up from his chest.
“He would be very proud.”
“Thank you for being here.”
Lorenz turns away, the thin control he has had over his composure broken, shoulders shaking. He returns to his seat with brusque swiftness, avoiding the sad eyes of his friends. He knows that any one of them would offer him an arm, or a shoulder, and later he will take and grasp them gratefully, but he does not want them now.
What he wants is for a teasing voice to sneak over his shoulder, expressing mock surprise that Lorenz should care so much for such a scoundrel of a politician, such a rake of a king.
What he wants is the twinkle of an eye, the quick clasp of a hand, the bat of a lash, an old familiar wink, and he will never have them again.
Not today, not tomorrow, but soon, Lorenz will move forward alone. Despite waking up every morning and wishing the world were different, to the tune of one man’s presence, he will move forward.
He will carry with him the memories of the silliness, the greatness, the deep and abiding steadfastness that lay beneath all the myriad layers of caution.
He will carry with him the memory of being loved, of being respected and cherished, of being one-half of a team of equals.
Of being teased.
“And I will be a better man for it,” he whispers quietly, as the first pyreflame dances toward the sky.