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Despite her reasonable attire, Addilyn would have preferred to be warmer still. She'd wrapped her scarf around her nose and mouth in a vain effort to block the shrieking wind, the bulk of her coat obscuring her Lion's uniform underneath. The rest of her, at least, was snugly fur-lined and insulated from the cold, and she stomped the snow from her boots after she crossed the yard sprawling around the aerie. She had barely set a hand to the great door when a lone word startled her as it cut through the air —
"Theron!" Lemuel shouted, loud enough to be heard above the wintry bluster. "The hells are you doing out in this? Your patrol was due back an hour ago."
Shit. Addilyn's stiff shoulders stiffened further when she recognized the voice of her captain. "Sir," she replied automatically, yanking the scarf from her mouth to unmuffle the word. She wasn't so newly assigned to his command that she had no leeway at all, but she knew she was no favorite of his, nor the rest of the Lions. Had mere tardiness knocked her so far down in his estimation, or had she made some other error? He'd been so lenient of late.
"Well?" asked Lemuel as he caught up to her, and she realized he was still waiting for an answer, or maybe just for her to open the door. He did not sound quite so cross then as she expected.
There was still time for that to change. With a sigh, she pulled it open, ducked inside, and detailed her delay to him. Fixing a Soud merchant's shabby hound-cart and escorting him the last leg of his journey through the crowded city had taken more time than she thought. She'd patrolled with another unit today for the sake of bolstering their short number, and there'd been not a man nor a moment to spare for an errant, spur-of-the-moment job, on account of some urgent unrest brewing in the lower streets. So Addilyn had volunteered.
A couple of her compatriots had whispered behind her back, but she hadn't defied orders, not exactly. She'd merely made a suggestion and her then-commander had taken her up on it. He'd even silenced the men who'd muttered she only did so to avoid the real fights in the streets, never mind her efhghersit upbringing where she had often not had the ability to do so — though she suspected only for the sake of time, and not out of any real fondness for her.
No, it wasn't a little scrap she was afraid of. Even without more pressing matters to attend, she knew those same others would have scoffed and turned away from a hardworking Soud and his hard luck.
But to Lemuel she offered no justification for her delay other than not wanting to run her hound ragged on the return trip. She'd only just left the kennels, and anyway the weather hadn't been so bad till she'd nearly returned to the grounds.
"That so?" replied Lemuel when she had finished recounting the pertinent details. "Good on you, then. I trust he found his way?" His tone was almost casual, and it maddened her that she could not place it still. It didn't drip with disdain as she was so accustomed to hearing.
"Of course, sir," Addilyn said. "We didn't run into much trouble besides a little paperwork." She was just lucky she'd had the gear on hand and the skills to finish the needed repairs. She liked to be prepared, and for once it'd paid off.
For a moment, no sound passed between them but the echo of their footsteps on the stone floor. The entrance hallway seemed to stretch on longer than the silence.
"Good," he said. "That's good. When you didn't show, I thought perhaps you'd run afoul of some street gang."
Addilyn scowled as she considered the likely reasons for that. "The others didn't inform you where I'd been?"
"They did. But I wanted to hear it from you."
That was relief in his voice, she realized with a start. He was relieved she'd come back in one piece.
Just as quickly, she denied the thought. Dismissed it. It wasn't possible. This was Captain Lemuel Adelier, who'd been saddled with some Semon iyanol and told to make do, who'd treated her accordingly and spent those early months trying to rid himself of her the way a miserable hound scratched at a sore on its flank. Her placement under his command had been a thinly veiled insult to them both.
He turned — to disappear down the hall past her, to study the new banners strung along the wall, to eye the gray skies out the windows or the torchlike glow of the pymaric lamps, she didn't know; she said again, her mouth working before her mind could stop her, "Sir."
Then the word hung in the air between them and she couldn't take it back. Addilyn hesitated, as if stalled on the edge of a precipice where Lemuel's eyes nailed her in place, more the color of honey than gold where he stood in the shadows between torches. What more could she say that wouldn't further damn her? Another time, perhaps, she would marvel that she had the power to arrest him this way, that he actually stopped to afford her his attention. Most any other man of his station would have gruffly dismissed her without breaking stride.
"Something to say?" he asked.
"Were you waiting on me?" The words leaped from her tongue so thoughtlessly she was surprised she didn't stumble on them. She hated them the moment she said them, afraid he'd read as deeply into them as she herself did an instant later.
But she could swear it was no trick of the torchlight when the corner of his mouth turned up. He turned to walk again, too, but motioned her to follow and there was a warmth in his voice when he said, "You did the right thing today. You're a good soldier, Theron — I'm only sorry I didn't see it sooner."