Chapter Text
“You’ve taken a vow of silence, is it? You’re a Knight of Solitude from the Scadulands?” his companion asks the first night.
Vilhelm did not understand half of that inquiry. Nor does he care to.
(Roslein tugs his hair in reproach.)
Ignoring the question, he leans back against the nearest wagon’s huge wheel and lays his sword on his knees. He expects a quiet watch tonight. The golden grass of Altus ripples serenely in the breeze. Spectral banners bearing tree emblems stand unmoved by the wind. Heralds, monuments, or warnings? Vilhelm wonders.
Though he is looking away, he feels his companion’s attention on him. She, like Vilhelm, is no ordinary caravan guard. Her armor tells him that. Her golden chestpiece bears finely sculpted muscles, and her sandals are those of a gladiator, laced up to her knees. Her plumed helm is a mask of a woman’s face with a crack splitting its brow. She has yet to remove it. No doubt a story lies behind that. Vilhelm does not ask.
“It’s going to be a long road if you don’t talk,” she says.
So be it, Vilhelm thinks. He is not here to talk.
He is here because for the first time in his memory, he and his lady are not aligned. She has Arianova now, and gentle Arianova is no place for him. He can no longer be her shadow.
He is here because he has no stories of his own.
He is here because the only life he knew has fallen apart, and he needs to shape a new one.
He is here to do something apart from Lady Friede. For now, it doesn’t matter what. Just something he can build on.
If he can do all that, he can return to her as his own. Whole. Or mending, at least.
Then perhaps they can be new.
~~~
Many silences lie between Vilhelm and his lady.
Things unspoken: the burning of Ariandel.
Vilhelm still dreams about it. He dreamt about it the night before he left Arianova. When he clawed himself awake, he took up his usual place by the front window of the cottage they shared with Yorshka, head against the cool panes, glass of water in his hands. Trying to wash away the dream-born taste of his own blood.
He felt Lady Friede standing in the doorway, as always. Any other night, he would have composed himself and told her, as gently as he could, to go back to sleep. She would have lingered one moment more.
That night, however, she sat down beside him on the sill. He felt her wanting to take his hands.
“Canst thou not share it with me?” she asked. “I wish to carry it with thee, if only a little.”
Vilhelm flatly refused. He would sooner die than tell Lady Friede about the rot and the wet and the incessant, maddening buzzing, the maggots and the charnel reek, the iron in his throat, drowning red. She already bore enough guilt.
She said as much that night, told him he should rightly hate her for landing him in that hell.
Patiently, Vilhelm reminded her that she did not rot the painting alone. He abetted her willingly. She released him from her service before she went to Ariandel, tried to spare him, and he did not go.
“Was it in thy power to go?” Lady Friede asked. Arianova’s ever-dim twilight revealed lines of anxiety on her brow. “We were each other’s sole companions for a great many years. Thou hadst no life but that which I gave thee. I fear I shaped thee too well.”
“As I knew you would. I grant I was young when I came to you, my lady, but not naïve. I would not have so blithely bound myself to another master.”
(Not after escaping serfdom at such an unbearable cost.)
No, Vilhelm saw from the beginning that the Sable Church deliberately sought out people like him - wounded, angry, friendless - and shaped them into weapons. The mercenary band he joined after his peasant revolt was no different. They offered food and shelter only as long as he did what he was told without question or fail. And if he did fail, there were dozens more lost, angry boys waiting to replace him. No kindness was ever free. He knew that.
He also saw that the Sable Church’s purposes suited him. They intended to topple the gods, the flame, the whole wretched order that put his folk in bondage. Let them shape him to that end. He was well-pleased to be their blade.
Vilhelm told his lady so that night. She did not believe him.
“And yet didst thou forsake it all to follow me into ruin,” she said.
He was an exemplary disciple, she told him, cold of blood, steady of hand and faith. He bore his hollowing like he was made for it. He could have been so much more than a hangman, could have risen to the heights of the Sable Church. Had he stayed, he might have become a Darkwraith with all the secrets of drowned New Londo at his fingertips. He could have crept like a shadow upon those who once bound him and ripped the life from their chests.
He chose exile in Ariandel instead.
“For what didst thou wish more dearly than revenge?” Lady Friede asked.
Vilhelm’s hand twitched on his water glass.
“Surely you know,” he said before he could stop himself. Then he slammed his propriety back into place like a helmet visor. “You are troubled. Would you have me remain in Arianova a while longer?”
Lady Friede looked at him hard. “I would have thee to do thy will. Thou wishest to go out into the world, nay? I daresay ’twill do thee good. Learn who thou art, apart from me. And shouldst thou return, I would have thee call me Friede - only Friede.”
That was a clear invitation. She was ready to become something other than lady and knight.
She was always absolute about what she wanted. Vilhelm admired her for it. He does not share that gift.
~~~
Grain from plateau windmills, wine from alpine vineyards, medicinal perfumes from the capital. The trade caravan wagons carry many things. Vilhelm pays them little heed. His job is to keep bandits and wolves away, no more. That suits him just fine. It leaves his mind free for more difficult matters.
Or it would, if not for his companion. She is talkative. (She still has not removed her helmet.)
“That’s no ordinary sword. Are you a knight?” she asks one evening by the campfire.
Idly, Vilhelm thumbs the onyx blade lying on his knees. He gives no answer.
His companion volunteers her own. “I’m no common sellsword myself. I expect my armor gives me away. I would be riding with my lord still, had he not fallen in battle.”
At this point Vilhelm realizes that his companion is quite willing to talk to herself and won’t be deterred by his silence.
He yields in the hope of ending the conversation quickly. “And you pledged no fealty to another?”
Her voice brightens. “Ah, you can talk! Well, that’s better. I swore myself to Elden Lord Eira, first of her name, long may she reign.”
She rattles off the honorifics casually, with warmth - clearly she and the Elden Lord are on familiar terms. As for Eira herself, Vilhelm knows her. The girl with the lightning and the incurable optimism. Lady Friede likes to spar with her because she can be ferocious.
“She sent me out on the caravan trail to survey the realm and report any troubles,” his companion continues. “Have you lost your lord as well?”
The question strikes Vilhelm more deeply than it should. “…in a sense.”
“She died in battle?”
“No, my lady lives.”
But she did die, and not only in body. Lady Elfriede of Londor is no more, nor Sister Friede of Ariandel. Vilhelm hardly recognizes the woman who has taken her place. He has to get to know her all over again.
His companion pauses, confused. “You’ll have to forgive me, sir. I’ve no head for riddles.”
“I mean to say my lady is changed.”
~~~
He wants to accept Lady Friede’s invitation to a deeper familiarity with her. If he is honest, Vilhelm has wanted that - secretly, guiltily, fearfully - since his knighting. That was when it started. He began to sense something as he stood behind his lady, awareness welling up drop by drop. He had no name for it. It was new. Kin to contentment, but not so mundane. And more dangerous.
Lady Friede must have sensed it too, because she redoubled every boundary of propriety between them. Vilhelm followed suit, understanding the necessity. The Sable Church shunned softness in all forms, lest it weaken or distract them from their holy war. And Elfriede, the church’s founder, ordained to usurp the First Flame, had to be coldest of all.
They conducted themselves with exquisite restraint. They rarely spoke and never touched. They were the very model of a Londor lady and her knight.
Elfriede burned anyway.
(Things unspoken: afterward, Yuria glared at Vilhelm with a hatred that needed no words. He knew what she was thinking, where she lay the blame.)
That was that. Far from consuming their boundaries, the flame calcified them.
In Ariandel, Lady Friede let herself wither. She sought no comfort from Vilhelm. If she ever suspected that more than loyalty kept him standing outside her chapel, she did not say. Neither did he. There was no point, no future; his lady intended Ariandel to be her grave. Vilhelm pruned the dangerous thing still growing inside him and rarely entered the chapel. It seemed a fitting penance.
(And yet…
Things unspoken: on those few occasions when he came inside and stood behind her, her shoulders relaxed.)
So yes, he wants to be close to his lady. But he hasn’t forgotten the accusation in Yuria’s eyes.
~~~
Some days he is amazed at himself for leaving.
The first time he told Lady Friede that he didn’t want to stay in Arianova, he didn’t believe himself. He was so close to full hollowing, not in his right mind - surely he would not leave his lady. He would go where she led, even if it didn’t suit him. But then he restored his humanity, and his mind did not change. He still did not desire a gentle world.
And now he is here, in the red-gold light of Altus - and it’s all right. He hasn't disintegrated.
There’s a sense of openness out here on the road. He can breathe. It’s been so long since he breathed freely. Staying hollow and sane was an exercise in holding his breath.
He finds himself getting used to this life. When he isn’t fighting or watching, he finds small, useful things to do. Sometimes he sharpens blades or adjusts horseshoes as Andre taught him. At night the caravan merchants play throaty music on their stringed instruments, and he lies on top of the wagons to listen. It gets him away from his curious companion for a while.
Looking into the sky, he tries to call his lady by her name. Friede. Just Friede.
It still feels wrong.
~~~
Before he went on the caravan trail, Vilhelm intended to study with Andre. They met during his first visit to Irithyll, after the crisis at world’s end. Vilhelm only went to the forge because he was adrift and desperate for purpose, but he took a liking to it. Smithcraft had fascinated him as a boy, though he had no opportunity to learn it. Andre said he had a knack for it. Vilhelm agreed to return once he’d seen Lady Friede settled in Arianova.
He did return to Irithyll, but he didn’t last long.
Andre wasn’t the trouble. Vilhelm liked forgework, exhausting and tedious though it could be, and he learned swiftly. It was Irithyll itself he couldn’t bear. The city was too lively, too many people looking at him like a castaway or a ghost. It was then he realized that he did not know how to live among people. He was too steeped in Londor’s heavy silence and Ariandel’s isolation. He wasn’t ready or even willing to learn anything else.
You were hollow so long you’ve forgotten how to live, Roslein once told him.
Vilhelm had no intention of staying with the Darkmoon or that interfering Unkindled. Instead he made his camp in an unused side room of the Church of Yorshka - somehow I don’t think you’d mind, girl. The church held a cache of blankets for emergencies. He didn’t need much more than that. He’d never needed many comforts.
For a while, it was all right. The church was familiar in its plainness - it reminded him of Ariandel. He slept easily there. But then came bad weather, a precipitous drop in temperature fit to freeze the blood, and the tiny Darkmoon Knight called Amalie found Vilhelm in his hideaway. She was patrolling, she said, to ensure everyone had shelter before the cold arrived. She insisted he come to the Darkmoon barracks, where they had a proper hearth.
“You fought Midir with us,” the girl said. “I can’t let you stay here alone.”
How righteous are the young.
“I assure you my motives were entirely selfish,” he told her.
Amalie was unmoved. She refused to go unless Vilhelm left the church with her.
In the barracks, Vilhelm remembered too late that the Darkmoon order consisted almost entirely of overexcited children. He had never spent a more awkward night. The knights themselves were untroubled by his presence, talking and laughing with the assurance of youth, but he - he had nothing to say to them. He wouldn’t have known how to talk to them even if he'd wanted to.
That was when he knew he had to leave. He was unready for this sort of community and did not want it, maybe never would. He’d have to find another way back to the living.
It did not please him to leave Andre, though. Andre was blunt but never cruel, asked no prying questions, told Vilhelm what to do in terms that made sense. He could get along with a man like that.
The smith was keen-eyed, too. One night they happened upon each other after an ash-worm hunt, and Andre looked Vilhelm up and down and rumbled, “Your armor don’t fit you proper.”
“It isn’t mine. I took it from a wolfsblood follower in Ariandel. My own was…ruined.”
Andre’s bushy brows furrowed. “Aye, young Dunstan told me about that. Nasty business.”
“To put it lightly.”
“Well, we can’t let you go about like that. Once the trade slows up a bit, we’ll set you right.”
As they parted ways, Andre paused in the street. “Nasty business,” he repeated, “even if it was your own fault. Don’t know how you didn’t go hollow.”
~~~
Things unspoken: why Vilhelm remained hollow long after leaving Londor.
The old corvian settler surmised it was penance for the friends who died in Vilhelm’s peasant revolt. He was half right.
Not long after Vilhelm came to Londor, young and half feral, he decided to climb the Sable Church’s highest spire. There were eight of them: black bristling things with many hand- and footholds. If the Sable Sisters didn’t want anyone to climb them, they shouldn’t have made it so convenient.
Vilhelm was a good climber, but the stones were slick with cold sea spray. It took all his concentration to reach the top. That was all right: he didn’t want to think about anything else. When at last he wrapped his burning limbs around the spire’s peak, he could hardly breathe, and yet a weight of a different kind had lifted briefly from his chest.
Much later, he realized that a direct line ran between climbing the spire and staying hollow. They were essentially the same act, the same attempted escape.
For neither a hollow nor a boy up a spire can afford to grieve.
~~~
At Altus’s golden border, Vilhelm begins memorizing what he sees. He has an excellent memory for detail, and he wants to tell Lady Friede stories when he returns. His own stories.
The jagged, seething peaks of Gelmir, where they did not venture.
The Erdlight at night, turning all the shadows red.
The black riders who sometimes follow the wagons in the small hours, chill and silent as ghosts, but not, he thinks, malevolent.
The deep gorges cutting knife-straight through the earth, where a stone can fall for long seconds before clattering to the bottom.
The merchants strumming music like smoke from their instruments.
The Grand Lift of Dectus and its monumental mechanism, so vast it seems like a living creature. A giant tortoise rising from its slumber to bear them slowly, slowly down from the plateau.
The bold crows sitting right on the caravan wagons. Roslein sitting with them, croaking and clicking away. Gently mocking him, no doubt.
So much color, unlike Londor.
Life.
He wonders what his lady is doing. Has she gone on any hunts in Irithyll? Extricated Yorshka from some minor danger? Won a hard-fought bout against Eira?
He hopes she is at peace.
(Things unspoken: Lady Friede’s name. Only two letters separate “Elfriede” from “Friede”, but a chasm separates their meanings. “Elf-strength” versus “peace.” Vilhelm always assumed she changed her name so she could better play Priscilla’s part. Now he thinks it signified a buried longing she could not confess to herself.)
Vilhelm never imagined Lady Friede would choose the life she has chosen. It is not for him: he is not made for peace. But he cannot begrudge it to her.
~~~
After Irithyll, it was Eira who suggested Vilhelm serve as a caravan guard. He asked her counsel because he thought her the most likely person to give him a practical answer. Vilhelm could tell from her accent that she’d come from nothing, like him. Had he not been educated in Londor, he would still sound much like her.
She offered him work that would allow him to use his sword and find his feet. She also told him that if he harmed her people, it would be the last thing he ever did. Fair play. Vilhelm wouldn’t have respected anything softer.
Before he went on the road, he visited Lady Friede to tell her he would be traveling for a long while. He wore his newly adjusted Farron armor: scale and leather gleaming, stitches redone, fitted to him like an outer skin. (He’d dropped the ridiculous pointed helmet somewhere in Ariandel and did not regret it.) It was the last project he and Andre undertook together. Andre wanted to instruct him in making a whole new set, but that was out of the question. Vilhelm would go mad if he stayed in Irithyll long enough to master armoring. Maybe someday.
Still, Lady Friede noticed the changes, and she must have known they signaled Vilhelm’s departure. Her eyes grew solemn.
“Was this thy work?” she asked.
“In part.”
“’Tis familiar but made new.”
Vilhelm knew she wasn’t just referring to his armor.
From her skirt pocket Lady Friede withdrew a pendant on a chain and set it in his palm. “A gift from Lady Yorshka and myself,” she said, closing his fingers over it. “May it keep thee safe.”
She clasped his gloved hands once, tightly. It took all his will to return the grip. Then she left him on the shore of Arianova’s mirror lake, before her own armor could crack. Vilhelm did not know if she was proud or grieved to see him go.
Beneath his fingers: a silver crow with its feet curled around a torch.
~~~
Liurnia is interminable. It’s beautiful from the cliffs above, but down below, the clinging mists and endless damp quickly lose their charm.
The dragonflies here grow to alarming sizes. They are a menace, harassing horses and humans alike. Vilhelm is tempted to take up his torch and start breathing fire. Instead he climbs on top of one of the wagons, snaps blackflame into his palm, and tosses it down at the nearest insect. He strikes true. Below, his companion whistles her approval.
“Have you done this before?” she asks.
No, Vilhelm hasn’t done any of this before. He has never been anything but a shadow. He’s making it up as he goes along.
He hasn’t felt that way since he was a boy.
~~~
It’s only a matter of time before a wagon gets stuck in the mud. Vilhelm knows what is going to happen even before he and his companion throw their weight behind it. It happens anyway. One moment they are pushing; the next, the wagon comes free with a jolt and pitches them face-first into the mud.
His companion picks herself up with good humor, though she can’t possibly see out of her mud-clogged helmet. “It might be worse, eh? It isn’t scarlet rot.”
Vilhelm dares not ask what that is. He is glad Lady Friede can’t see him spitting out wet dirt.
He hears his companion’s helmet thud wetly against the ground. She tells him to tilt his head back and trickles water over his face until he can open his eyes. By then she has already turned away from him. Vilhelm never sees her face.
Liurnia has plenty of water to wash with, and he’s brought spare clothing. Still, he is tired and foul-tempered by the time he’s peeled off his wet things. The chill doesn’t leave him. For once he doesn’t argue when his companion offers to take the night’s first watch. He lays himself down in one of the wagons and sinks like a stone.
He does not dream. His companion never wakes him for his watch. He sleeps uninterrupted until dawn clears the mist from the lakes.
He finds her sitting by the campfire, chipping dried mud from her helmet. “You did not wake me last night,” he says.
By instinct she looks up at the sound of his voice. Then she realizes that she has bared her face to him, and she freezes in full view. She has a broad, solid sort of face, split by a livid scar from her brow to the bridge of her nose. It matches the crack in her helmet.
“What?” she demands. “What are you thinking?”
“Only that you were fortunate to survive such a wound. No less than a miracle, surely.”
She relaxes an inch. “It was. Lord Miquella drew out the rot with his own mouth. I’m not ashamed of this scar. But it’s…” She struggles for words. “…for no eyes but mine. I know what it means to me, and I’m the only one who needs to know.”
Vilhelm thinks of the scars at his throat, the nightmare and the miracle they signify.
“Understood.”
His companion passes him a mug of tea, and they say no more.
~~~
Until Liurnia, the journey was largely uneventful. Now the lake region reveals its monsters.
The giant crayfish come first. The first time a jet of water shoots past him, Vilhelm is sure they’ve come under siege. Thankfully, his companion is an able warrior. She fights like a beast and wields battle arts he has never seen before. She strikes a killing blow by somersaulting into the air, greatsword and all, and cracking the crayfish’s head. After that they have more prawn than anyone can eat.
Then comes the great skeletal bird. It swoops down on pale flames. Its head is a hollow-eyed skull, its wings studded with ghosts. Later Vilhelm learns that this creature is called a death rite bird. In that moment he does not care.
He rests his hand on the crow-and-torch pendant beneath his armor. His sword ignites.
For those minutes, he knows nothing but screeching and chilling flame and his own blazing sword and his companion’s battle cries. He needs this. This is when he knows who he is. He hardly sees his companion fall amidst a hail of glowing blue spears. He is cutting through fire and water, driving his blade into an empty eye socket: that is all he knows.
It’s over too soon. Vilhelm drops back into himself. He is cold and panting, and the world is once more uncertain.
His companion is doubled over nearby, shivering violently. She isn’t bleeding, but her right shoulder is turning white with cold.
At camp, she wraps herself in her woolen cloak and crawls into a wagon to rest. No one can do anything but try to keep her warm. Roslein roosts with her, croaking softly, “You all right, love?”
Vilhelm takes the rest of that night’s watch and listens to his companion shiver. Sometimes she mutters names he knows: Eira, Miquella. She sounds very small. It’s unsettling to hear a warrior reduced to a child.
~~~
Things unspoken: the only time Vilhelm held his lady.
She fled Londor as soon as she rose from her ashes. Yuria sent no one to look for her. She wanted nothing more to do with her disgraced sister. Vilhelm told her exactly what he thought of that, and then he left too.
He found his lady in a shallow cave on the roadside, crazed with phantom pain. She begged him not to let her burn again. He’d sooner have burned himself. He gave her a draught to help her sleep, for it was clear she hadn’t slept in days. She pressed tight against him like a child. He had never been more afraid.
(He wanted them to run, just run, no matter where; they both knew how to survive.)
So many of their closest moments were awful.
But then, a counterpoint: their first day in Arianova. They caught fish at the mirror lake, stood together in the twilight for a long time. Neither one of them was in pain. They were just alive and content in each other’s presence. It was so blessedly ordinary.
~~~
After the death rite bird, Vilhelm retracts his claws. Mostly.
His companion slowly recovers, shivering beneath her cloak. For a time she is too weak to fight, but that doesn’t stop her from talking.
“Fighting is all I’ve ever known,” she tells him one night. “I’ve no gift for anything else. I can scarce read. Now that the wars are done, I feel a bit su…su…”
“Superfluous.”
“That’s it. I suppose I went on the road to feel useful again. Are you looking for something too?”
“If you insist on prying, suffice to say that my lady and I met with a series of unfortunate events, and all I once knew is upside-down.”
“You came here to learn how to stand upside-down.”
He almost laughs. “Something like that.”
“And once you learn, you can go home.”
“For a time. But it will not be home, and my lady will not be my lady.”
“You know I’ve no head for riddles. What will she be?”
What indeed. Something new and heretofore impossible. Something better?
~~~
Everyone is relieved when they cross into the green hills and coasts of Limgrave. They’ve left the crayfish behind, and they’ve almost reached Stormveil Castle, the end of their route. The mood in camp that evening is merry.
The next day, they find a grassy field to rest the horses. A colosseum looms nearby, its thick curved walls throwing long shadows. Vilhelm is eyeing its heavy doors when a voice calls down to them: “Freyja! Redmane Freyja!”
Elden Lord Eira, first of her name, long may she reign, is sitting in a nearby tree.
Vilhelm’s companion - Freyja? He never did ask her name - laughs and lifts a hand in greeting. “What are you doing up there?”
“Watching for you!” Eira hops down from her perch and lands gracefully. “I knew you’d be coming this way and I hoped you’d be in time. I’ve just come from a council with Nepheli Loux - now that we’ve finished, she’s invited me to tonight’s tournament. You’d be welcome to enter if you’re not too tired.” Her gaze falls on Vilhelm’s onyx blade. “And you as well, sir. You can be our mystery entrant.”
Vilhelm is tired, but he has never turned down a challenge. “My lady takes great pleasure in sparring with you. She tells me you fight like a mad thing in single combat. Is it true?”
“Enter, and you might learn for yourself.”
~~~
In Londor, duels were silent rituals. Vilhelm has never fought in a colosseum packed with shouting people, and he expects to hate it. Instead it sets his blood on fire. He can barely wait for the tournament marshal to cast protective incantations on him. With his crow pendant wrapped around his sword-hilt, he comes alive. He wins bout after bout of melee until he gets to Eira, who is every bit a storm. They dance around each other, fierce and breathless, until they can’t see straight, and then Eira slams a lightning bolt into his chest and his vision goes black. He is too alive for shame.
By the end of the night, he and Freyja have shouted themselves hoarse. They can hardly speak the next day. It’s a small price to pay.
I wish you had been with me, my lady.
~~~
How strange it was to fight purely for himself, for his own enjoyment. And how good it was, too.
He lets the taste of it sit on his tongue and refuses to be ashamed.
~~~
“Give my regards to your lady,” Freyja tells him when they part ways at journey’s end. “May we fight together again.”
He wouldn’t mind that. It was all right, being on the road.
As a boy, he sometimes dreamed of being a wanderer.
~~~
It is late when Vilhelm returns to Arianova. He can tell because the eternal twilight is dimmer and the clearings are deserted. That’s all right. He could use some sleep and a chance to make himself presentable before he sees anyone.
Then a small, choked noise draws his attention to the lake near Yorshka’s cottage.
Lady Friede is standing in the water.
Anticipation gives way to cold anxiety. “My lady?” Vilhelm calls softly from the shore. He does not want to startle her.
She turns at the sound of his voice. Her face is white and tight. She smooths her hair, trying to compose herself - ineffective when she’s waist-deep in water.
“Oh, sir, I did not expect thee! Prithee pay me no heed. I had an ill dream, no more. The water…the water is safe.”
That tells him what she was dreaming about.
Without thought, Vilhelm drops his rucksack on the shore and walks out to meet her. She clutches at his arms, head inclined, almost touching his shoulder. She radiates need, and Vilhelm cannot help but respond. Every instinct compels him to protect her, even as years of restraint hold him back. His hands find her arms of their own accord.
“Thou’rt trembling,” Lady Friede says. “’Twas no more than a dream, truly. I will be well. What fearest thou so?”
It was not a dream. You burned. And I fear -
(Things unspoken: he held her ashes in his hand.)
I cannot say it, my lady. Do not ask me.
She must see it in his eyes. Furious sorrow passes over her face, and he knows the fury is not for him. “Enough,” she says, a fierce whisper amidst the ripples.
He draws a breath. Pulls an intangible hook from his flesh. “Enough.”
The word turns a key already waiting in its lock. Vilhelm draws Friede to him, and they stand there for a long time, holding each other’s arms, brow to brow, breath on skin, acquainting themselves with closeness. Friede scoops up a handful of water and trickles it over their heads, baptizing them new. It isn’t that easy, of course, but they both feel something shift.
They are shivering when they walk out of the lake, but neither of them minds much. Friede holds Vilhelm’s arm to keep from stumbling over her heavy skirt. When they are both dry, they sit down in front of Yorshka’s hearth and talk for hours. Friede wants to hear about Vilhelm’s journey, and he is eager to tell her. He has never seen her smile so often.
They speak of the past, too, more than they ever have before.
Things spoken:
The scandal that ensued when Friede knighted Vilhelm. Even in Londor, where lineage (ostensibly) meant nothing, conferring a title upon a lowborn hangman stirred up gossip. That didn’t stop Friede.
Vilhelm’s climb up the spire and Yuria’s utter exasperation.
The Londor prayer Friede spoke to him when she found him on her church floor, after the fly pit. Do not go gentle into thy last night. It was the only comfort she knew how to offer.
All the times she kept him from going fully hollow (many more times than she knew).
He calls her by name, very softly. Shakes his head. “It’s strange.”
“‘Tis lovely.”
They sleep by the fire, her head on his chest.
~~~
Yorshka finds them in the morning. She does not wake them. When she checks on them again at midday, only Vilhelm is awake.
“Welcome home, sir,” the girl whispers.
“This is not my home.”
Yorshka rolls her eyes. They’ve played this game before. “Anyone to whom thou return’st is thine home.”
“Do you get all your notions from fairy stories?”
“Of course.” With that, she pads away.
Did she say anyone? Not anywhere?
“Far too much sugar for me, girl,” Vilhelm mutters, without real rancor.
He looks down at Friede’s peaceful face. For now - perhaps for a while yet, until they learn more of who they have become and where they wish to go - that is all he will do. For now, he lets himself shape her name.
It’s a beginning.