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Chancellor Aioru says, “The funeral is in nine days.”
Ludvic’s view of the room shifts minutely. His head is nodding, he realizes belatedly; for a moment there he wondered if he was about to faint.
Or wake up. Oh, please let him wake up.
“Saya Kalikiri has sent letters to those princes who are not already in Solaara,” the Chancellor goes on. “They’ll have plenty of time to get here in time, and will forward invitations to such dignitaries and courtiers as they deem wise to include.” His voice is calm, precise, not brisk but… efficient. If Ludvic had not seen his young face crumble when he first heard the news, he would perhaps think their new Lord Chancellor unemotional to the point of callousness.
(No, perhaps not. He has seen his people work through their despair and sorrow in the Levels, in Csiven, in the other cities where the destruction of Woodlark has driven them, homeless and lost. His people do not name the dead, but they do mourn, each in their own way. This is how the Chancellor grieves.)
The room shifts again, Ludvic’s eyes settling on Chancellor Aioru’s face. He’s the Commander of the Imperial Guard, the Commander-General of the remnants of the great Astandalan armies. He must set a standard, show that the world need not shake and crumble anew for the loss of the one who rebuilt it from the previous cataclysm.
“Only courtiers?” he manages, his own voice distant in his own ears. He says it in lieu of anything more useful, his brain utterly empty of what needs to be done and clutching at the certainty that Clio— that his friend would be outraged by the idea that the state funeral for the Viceroy of Zunidh would only be open to the upper echelons of society.
The Chancellor smiles, a bare, brief lifting at the corners of his lips. “Lord Mdang has left an extensive list of everyone he wishes to be notified and invited to his funeral in the event of his death. It was included in the appendices of Protocol two.”
Of course he has. He would have reviewed and updated the protocol for the unexpected death of the head of state only a while ago, just before his Radiancy left on his quest, to include the temporary head of state as well.
Ludvic's mind skitters away from the thought of his Radiancy, and Chancellor Aioru provides him with distraction by informing him that Kiri Kalikiri’s team is working on letters to everyone else specified in the list.
Gaudenius, it seems, has insisted on writing to their family and closest friends. Perhaps this is how he grieves.
Perhaps he wishes to make sure that they do not get the chance to misunderstand the court-polished subtlety and delicate wording of an official letter. They have in the past.
Three of them never will again.
It is absurd and grotesque, suddenly, that six people are dead, and yet here they sit, discussing a state funeral, attended by princes and earls and courtiers and echoed all around the world in city squares and town halls, for just one.
Even one so important, so dear to Ludvic. To the world. To his—
But then, “Gaudy has also agreed to write to Saya Poyë and Sayo Nevan’s children and Sayo Kindraa’s son,” the Chancellor says softly. “I asked Parno if he wanted to write to his brother himself, but he wished for Gaudy to do it. I took the liberty of giving Parno leave so he can attend his father's funeral in the Vangavaye-ve, and assuring him that he'll get time off for,” he checks his notes for what appears to be a new word for him, “the sagali, later. You'll need to officially approve of that, of course.” He studies Ludvic, perhaps seeing something flicker across his face. “I hope I haven't overstepped.”
“No,” Ludvic says quietly, “of course I'll approve. Thank you.” But suddenly he wishes they were still talking of only one funeral, because he has made it this far without realizing that he has letters to write too.
It has been a long, long time since Ludvic last had to write a young man's parents to tell them that their son, placed under his command and care, was dead.
Mercifully, the Chancellor makes no comment. Mercilessly, he then suggests:
“I think you should be the one to write to Lord Conju.”
Conju.
They are alone in the room; the guards the new Chancellor has accepted as part and parcel of being the Lord Chancellor with barely a shrug stand outside for their commander. Ludvic thinks Chancellor Aioru would not think ill of him if he buried his face in his hands and wept.
He does not. He must hold himself steady, for—
For those he can no longer name.
The Chancellor finds pre-written letters in the Viceroy’s study, clearly labeled and discovered exactly where the new appendix to Protocol two said they would be. Personal letters, he says, already sealed and addressed to their recipients. He looks disquieted as he tells Ludvic that he suspects that these letters have been prepared for a long time, periodically rewritten and sealed again.
“It’s almost as if Lord Mdang was waiting for something like this to happen,” he murmurs, one long evening after several hours spent going over the security of a state funeral.
Ludvic looks at the letters, spread across the desk before him, and does not mention the handful of envelopes in a magically sealed drawer in his own office. Does not think of how he will have to burn two of them, now, their secrets tucked forever in the hollows of the banyan tree of his heart.
“He liked to be prepared,” he says, his fingertips tracing the names inked in a precise hand on the envelopes. Four of them cannot now be delivered to their intended recipients.
“I think,” Chancellor Aioru muses, “that I will ask Saya Mdang if those addressed to Saya Poyë, Sayo Nevan, and Sayo Kindraa should be burned unopened or given to their family to do with as they judge best.”
Ludvic nods mutely. Eidora Mdang is on a sky ship right now to attend the funeral of her son half a world away. Eidora Mdang, whom the Chancellor will have to stand face to face with as he hands over her letter. Ludvic is pathetically grateful that he’s not expected to do that.
The fourth letter that cannot be delivered the Chancellor has left for Ludvic’s judgment. Apparently his second-in-command had, at some point while updating his paperwork, named his commander his next-of-kin. Ludvic wishes he had known that.
There is a letter on the desk for him, too. Another for Conju.
And a letter with ink that seems to sear Ludvic’s fingertips as he traces over the name, blasphemously abbreviated as if its writer had been determined to slip his lord one last treason even from beyond the veil.
Tor, it says, and nothing else.
It is with deepest regret that I must inform you that your son has been killed in the performance of his duties.
The words, written in a hand that was never as neat or practiced as Ludvic would have wished, look ridiculous. They're so insufficient, so bland, so impersonal as to be insulting.
Is this really how the Imperial Guard honors the families of their dead?
(He wishes, heart aching, that he had not been too nervous to ask for writing exercises in exchange for exercises for upper-body strength. Oh, there are any number of people still in the Palace who are more than able to give him those, he knows. But the only one he trusted not to laugh, not to make fun of him, not to file the information away to be used as ammunition later, is gone.
The only one he should have trusted, when he had the chance.)
The Voribu are the managers and protectors and maintainers of the Imperial Necropolis, stonemasons and custodians. What are the funeral rites like for those who care for the dead? Is there a smaller necropolis of stone and rolling hills, tucked somewhere near the great imperial one, where they would lay to rest the one son who had wished to care for the living?
Ludvic doesn’t know. There is a line in the form one must fill upon entering the Imperial Guard where the applicant is asked to specify if their custom has any particular demands in the event of their death in line of duty. Pi— the form on Ludvic’s desk, right next to his unfinished letter, requests only that the guard’s body be returned to his family.
Ludvic thinks he understands. His own people stand guard over their dead. The witch’s son was not often welcome, but he remembers many a night spent by the banyan tree where his mother tucked the unwanted little secrets of the village. That their lives had never begun did not mean that they deserved anything less in death than the living, his mother had said.
There’s a sense of closure, of giving back, in that quiet vigil, in the proof of witnessing the stillness of eternal sleep that he has always found consoling, calming. He knows how it feels to not have that, in the aftermath of the burning of his island. He wishes…
He wishes he could grant the young guard’s simple, impossible request.
Time has gone strange again; perhaps it did run to the will of the Hands of the Emperor. Ludvic feels as he remembers feeling in the wake of the Fall, in the cinders of Woodlark, except that with the Sun-on-Earth on his quest and the Viceroy gone, he finds himself bound to the wheel that turns in the midst of it all.
Time falls like ash from the sky, brittle and slow, and then he blinks and finds himself standing before a page, about to send for his second-in-command, or at the door to the apartments of the Lord of Zunidh, or in the barracks training grounds with a vague sense that he’s just been searching for something.
(After Woodlark – after the long night of the burning, after the days his lord bid everyone to wait before stepping on the island – the ground had been soft with a thick layer of ash dusting the cracked, blackened earth. It had been difficult to walk in, like wading in snow or water, two steps forward and one step back. The unexpected slide and crumbling of time underneath his feet and the slow, hard work to push through his grief to maintain the world built by the hands of his friends remind him of that.)
He spends long hours listening to the reports of park rangers and first-response wizards and guards detailing the futile search of the Liaau. Around the room, the faces of the princes and the Ouranatha and the new Lord Chancellor are impassive, solemn, as they listen to the account. Like the time flowing over Ludvic, they too are ashen, some of them literally. Elaborate streaks of ash adorn the faces of the Grand Duchess and Princess Anastasiya, exemplary in their dutiful sorrow, and the masks of the Elders of the Ouranatha. Ash runs along the tattoos on the face of the Mother of the Mountains, who speaks briefly and quietly as she assures the council that the Glorious One has guarded the world too well for it to fall again, even in the absence of its heart.
He dreams of his friends and his friend’s friends, lost in the reserve, wounded and left to die by the search being called off too soon. He dreams of them dead, their broken bodies carried back and laid out in the throne room, four guards to a bier and no bells to ring them awake. He dreams of them returning on shambling feet, eyes hungry and hollow, and dreams of his own voice commanding the guard to cut them down, of his lord raising his arms to bring down the fire.
He cannot wake, and does not wish to dream. It is fortunate, in a grim sort of way, that there is little time to rest.
“Pikabe was going to retire from the Guard.”
Ludvic freezes, the pointed tip of his practice stick stopping a hair’s breadth from the straw mannequin’s chest. The first light of dawn is beginning to spread across the training grounds, casting a soft glow over the red soil still damp with the night's rain. It is still too early even for the first rota to begin their daily practice, he knows. Ludvic has been out training for— probably too long considering the day ahead of him, but his nightmares can't seem to find him as easily when he keeps his body in motion.
He lowers his weapon, wipes the exhaustion from his face and turns his body to face Zerafin. It is only when Ludvic notices the young man’s hunched shoulders that the words register in his mind.
Ludvic had paired the two of them together at first, he remembers, back when Zerafin had entered the Imperial guard. Zerafin had been the only recruit from Jilkano that year, and it had seemed like a sensible thing to do, pairing him with someone from Eastern Dair who would know the area well and could help the new recruit fit in, so far from his home.
“He was going to wait until after the Jubilee because he wanted to be there until his Radiancy and—” Zerafin's quiet composure fractures a little, but he goes on with only a faint tremor to his words. “He wanted to stay by his Radiancy’s and Lord Mdang’s side until their retirement, and then he was going to leave the Guard.”
Ludvic nods, snuffing the mental image that had been building in the back of his mind over the years, of tangles of vines cascading over a quaint house, golden sunsets reflecting over the Bay of the Waters, and a home filled with laughter and poetry. That future is nothing but a beautiful daydream, now, so he drags his thoughts back to the bleak present. He clears his throat. “A lot of members of the Imperial Service were going to do the same.”
“Yes, but it was different for Pikabe,” Zerafin says. “He liked to write stories, but it was never something he took seriously until our holiday in the Vangavaye-ve, when his Radiancy gave you his gift and we learned that it was something you did too.” A pause. “After we got back, Pikabe started to talk about getting his works published, and it was all because you had shown us that it was a path even a member of the Imperial Guard could take.”
Ludvic stares at him in disbelief. The young guard's hair and uniform look as damp as his own, with water droplets that could almost be mistaken for tears clinging to his cheeks and chin. He must have been standing there for longer than Ludvic realised. Swallowing his shame, he whispers, “I regret that he passed before he could achieve this dream.”
Zerafin frowns and shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant, Sir. He didn't get a chance to tell you himself, but I thought you should know that you inspired him. You inspire all of us.”
Ludvic looks away, flinching from the earnestness written across Zerafin's face.
“Thank you,” he manages, and turns his back on the door, hopefully before the guard can notice his mask slipping entirely. Through the burning behind his eyes, he walks over to the rack and selects a different weapon, a simple spear with a crude piece of iron embedded at its tip.
“Sir?”
“Your shift doesn’t start until the second bell,” Ludvic says, his tone carefully blank as he turns the weapon in his hands to gauge its balance. “You should get back to your bunk and get some rest while you still can.”
He launches into a series of basic drills, the kind he could do in his sleep but that still achieve their purpose: everything fades from his awareness but the sound of his spear slashing through the air in sharp, jabbing thrusts and, after a few minutes, of the door closing quietly behind Zerafin.
Conju arrives on a dark, rainy night on the sky ship carrying Prince Rufus’s family and those Amboloyan courtiers as he has deemed best to invite to the funeral. The sky above is black with clouds and the night is very dark, only the steady pouring rain awash with the bright star of the Light set atop the Spire.
The air is warm and humid, rain rattling on the roof sheltering the landing, and Ludvic has lost track of how long he has been waiting when, between one blink and next, the magelight at the prow of the ship at last emerges from the murky darkness and downpour.
Prince Rufus and Lady Felicia disembark first, pausing before Ludvic outside the office, where he has been waiting for the ship’s slow approach. Prince Rufus’s eyes slide over him with barely a nod, his expression stony and scowling, and Ludvic thinks that perhaps after the funeral the prince will recognize his anger for the grief it is.
The lady, however, studies Ludvic in silence. The magelights on the landing cast her serious, grave expression in stark pale light, the ash on her forehead and down her cheeks bone-white under its glare. Ludvic blinks slowly at her ghostly visage and hopes that his own face is sufficiently shadowed to hide what he fears must be naked grief from her gray eyes.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Commander,” she says in a low voice. Ludvic manages a small nod, his throat closing up, and she inclines her head, gathers her skirts, and floats away into the night, her husband and children in tow. She is followed by a procession of solemn, ashen-faced courtiers and their attendants, some of whom cast glances at him as they pass. They file past him into the stairs leading down to the Palace without a word, eager to get out of the rain.
(It has been raining continuously since—)
In their wake, he feels detached and unmoored, afloat in the susurrus of the rain and the inky night sky. Much like the sky ship, he thinks idly, looking up at the great shape of it set against the clouds, carved out of the night by the sharp edge of the Light and swaying gently in the air.
Except that the ship is tethered to the Palace by rope and magic and bridge, and Ludvic only by his heavy heart.
His head feels too light, the song of the rain a deceptively sweet lullaby, but up here, there’s enough of a breeze to keep the whispering of his dreams at bay.
“Ludvic,” Conju says flatly, and Ludvic startles at the touch of fingertips on his arm.
He finds that he has moved to stand by the railing to gaze up at the ship. Conju is standing on the landing beside him, under the enchanted awning extended to shelter travelers in the rainy season, as impeccably dressed as ever and with graceful swirls of ash applied to his skin beside his tattoos. He’s holding a bag in one hand, the other stretched out to touch Ludvic’s arm to get his attention.
Or to stop him swaying so close to the railing, Ludvic amends his thought as he looks at Conju and sees him visibly decide against asking why he didn’t send someone else to wait for the ship instead.
He sees, too, the moment Conju takes in everything Ludvic has failed to hide behind his customary stoicism and lets go of whatever faint hope he’s been nurturing all the way from Amboloyo that this might be a mistake, a terrible misunderstanding. It’s brief and silent, a quiet shattering rippling across his face, and then a serenity not unlike his Radiancy’s closes over it. Face calm and perfectly still, Conju nods once, almost decisively, only his throat working as he swallows.
“What fools,” he murmurs, so softly that the rain nearly hides the broken edges of the words. “What utter fools.”
There are discussions with the Imperial Guard, the Ouranatha, the city guard, the park rangers, the Viceregal household, the bureaucratic service, the guards and commanders of each of the principal households, the princes. They go over the details of the accident, the search and rescue operation, the preparations made before the Viceroy’s party left for their fatal trek. Servants and weather wizards and rangers are interrogated, stones turned, boxes ticked.
Ludvic manages and coordinates it all together with a team of theoretically impartial auditors from one of the new departments implemented by the Lord Chancellor before his retirement, but feels strangely detached from the process. It would please his friend, he thinks, to know that those he left behind are doing their due diligence investigating his death, trying to ascertain that it was an accident as well as figure out how to prevent such accidents in the future. It would not please him, however, to see this desperate hunt for a culprit.
Ludvic understands the need for this to not have been an arbitrary loss but a planned cruelty. Something to avenge.
This, too, is a way to grieve, Ludvic knows. Some people need someone to blame when the worst happens. He almost wishes he could offer up himself, again, but alas, two of those three who saw him promise his Radiancy that he would keep his Viceroy safe are no longer available to give testimony against him.
Then there are long discussions about the security surrounding the funeral. Ludvic is under no illusions there; he does not need Chancellor Aioru to estimate that thousands, even tens of thousands will make their way to Solaara to bid farewell to their beloved Viceroy. The Palace will be swarming with courtiers and their households and guards and other assorted guests as it has not since before the Fall, and those who have not merited an actual invitation will flock to the city and the surrounding areas nevertheless.
And with such masses, such grief, such a sudden power vacuum in the middle of their prosperity, Ludvic pulls out the protocols for attempts to influence or destabilize the Zuni government, the breaking of the Littleridge Treaty and outright war between principalities, and the unexpected death of the entire world government by accident or assassination. The young Chancellor looks at them for a long moment before finally taking a slow, deep breath, and agreeing that it is prudent to go over them, just in case.
There is so much to do.
The guard commanders and spymasters of the Princes require his time to go over their security concerns. Both the city and the Palace proper need additional resources and planning for the duration of the ceremonies. New Palace staff, hired for the great machinery of a state funeral, needs to be vetted. Whispers need to be heard and filtered, patterns recognized.
Ludvic no longer has a second-in-command.
It is slow, awkward work, trying to intercept the Deputy Commander's little birds and guide them to him instead. He suspects he'll never find them all, and that some of them flee from him, uncomfortable with the Commander of the Imperial Guard in a way they hadn't been with Rho—
He feels large and clumsy just talking with those bright little birds, his brain too tired and sluggish to keep up with their cascading songs.
And then, horribly, one of them – a waitress in one of the Palace refectories – hesitates over the tray of food she came to clear from his office, and asks, “Sir, what about Ser Rhodin's funeral?”
Ludvic clenches his hands around the tray he's holding out to her, drops his eyes to the nearly untouched bowl of soup on it. The three or four spoonfuls he managed to force down seem to congeal in his stomach.
“After,” he chokes out, for of course he is supposed to organize it, and he hasn't even realized, “after the Viceroy’s.”
The Deputy Commander of the Imperial guard had no living family, no current sweetheart, no close friends but for those who already mourn him or perished with him. No one to read Ludvic’s inadequate, clumsy words of regret in his inadequate, clumsy handwriting.
Save for one.
Ludvic stands in the middle of his second-in-command’s office when Conju comes in. The Groom of the Chamber is impeccably attired and made up, nearly severely so. It makes Ludvic think of his days in the old Astandalan guard, of wounded soldiers just barely supported by their armor.
“You know, I don’t think I have ever been here,” Conju observes. His voice is light and dry, but a touch more nasal than usual, as if he’s cried recently. His eyes are perfectly dry now, if a little red-rimmed.
Ludvic nods mutely. His head feels strangely light and heavy at once, and Conju's voice sounds distant in his ears. Giya turned him out of her – his – bar last night, when he had walked down to stare at the wall of his booth instead of the ceiling of his room.
(“You're not a drinking your sorrows kind of man,” she had told him flatly, giving an unimpressed look at the single glass of rós he had been nursing for the past hours when, near dawn, she had pointed him to the door.
For the first time in decades, centuries, Ludvic wishes he were.)
Conju walks in, deliberate catlike steps, and leans his hip against the desk, arms crossing over his chest. He should look incongruous in the barracks in all his intricate court silks, but he doesn't. The former Deputy Commander is – was – a nobleman as well, not merely a soldier.
Silence pools around them, and Ludvic’s faintly buzzing mind begins to cloud over with the pressure of other concerns glamoring for attention, when Conju speaks again.
“Féonie tells me that the younger guards are concerned for you.”
Ludvic looks around slowly. The office remains as enigmatic as ever: apparently full of files and personal items and clues, and all of them fake, false trails left by a dead man with the secrets of the world to protect. Almost, he thinks he can catch the faint echo of familiar laughter.
“This office is a red herring,” he murmurs. “Anything real that absolutely had to be written down is… somewhere else.” And there would be precious little of it, for someone who dealt with things better left unwritten, unless he planned to use it for evidence.
Conju shifts. “What do you mean?”
Ludvic turns to look at him. He knows some of the despair is leaking through, but there's something in his chest that feels pulled taut to breaking point, and just now he does not have the capacity to care that he's probably scandalizing his friend with his uncouth show of emotion.
“I can't send the letter,” he says as clearly as he can. “I can't even find her name, let alone where to send it. I can't—”
He chokes. Conju steps closer, small hands surprisingly firm as they take him by the forearms and guide him to a chair. Ludvic sits, and then begins to crumble, big gulps of breath rasping in and out his throat as he fights for composure.
How is he even supposed to begin that letter? To the penpal of Rhodin an Gaiange, his dear friend, the impostor Sardeet Avramapul, greetings and condolences! We regret to inform you—
Oh, he can't, he can't.
He doesn't even know her real name.
He says nothing when Chancellor Aioru suggests that they should publish his friend's essay about Fitzroy Angursell.
“I found it in his desk drawer,” the young man says, gesturing to a small array of papers laid out before him.
As both Commander of the Imperial Guard and the senior-most government official, Ludvic is sitting to the Chancellor's right. They have spent most of the morning going over the logistics and security of the Viceregal funeral again, but by now the only people left in the room are those who knew his friend best. Conju, Saya Kalikiri, Chancellor Aioru, Gaudenius, and Ludvic.
The Chancellor gathers the papers into a neat pile, which he places on the silver tray in front of him. This is the reason why they decided to use this room, the one that usually serves for the Council of Princes. The golden tray lays untouched in front of the empty throne, but his Radiancy tweaked the enchantment before he left so that it would still work without his intervention.
“It is an essay about Fitzroy Angursell's works,” the Chancellor explains as four exact copies materialize around the table, “and why Lord Mdang thought that he should be made Poet Laureate of Zunidh.”
Ludvic breathes hard and looks down at his own copy, running his thumb over his friend’s characteristically neat handwriting.
“His Radiancy did pardon the members of the Red Company before he left, including Fitzroy Angursell,” Saya Kalikiri ventures through the startled silence.
The Chancellor nods. Then, with a now rare hint of levity stealing into his tired voice, he adds, “And no one who has ever spent time with him can be unaware of Lord Mdang's appreciation for the personage.”
Soft laughter echoes in the empty chamber, and a noise close to a snort comes from Conju’s direction. Even young Gaudenius, who has been very quiet since the meeting started – since the news of the landslide – gives a watery chuckle. Ludvic can't bring himself to smile, not even at the memory of his friend's dumbfounded expression when Ludvic told him about the humming. He looks down at the essay again, and tries to picture Fitzroy Angursell reading these words.
“The Private Office has been receiving reports about the Red Company. They are rumored to be reforming,” Gaudenius says in a small voice, and blushes when everyone's attention turns to him. “Perhaps,” he continues, “if— if Fitzroy Angursell reads these words, and learns about everything he’s done, he will want to make a song about Uncle Kip.”
Bile rises in Ludvic's throat, and he briefly squeezes his eyes shut. He says nothing, but he knows that once Fitzroy Angursell hears the news, he will not sing again.
It seems an unbelievable oversight, in retrospect, that he let his lord leave without giving them any means to contact him.
Oh, he knows why he did it, why he was very careful to set everything up so that should his Radiancy truly wish to disappear, to run from his prison at this first true chance of freedom, he could. He had cursed his soft heart bitterly and angrily during those frantic, desperate days when they had still been searching, for if he had only been able to reach his lord in time, then surely—
But for all he knows, it was already too late then. He hopes that it was, that they all went suddenly and quickly, that none of them lingered in pain, wishing for a rescue that never came.
Now the lack of means to reach his lord is a relief, the single blessing in this nightmare. Ludvic tells himself that it is his duty to shield his lord from evil, that the relief stems from his perceived ability to protect his Radiancy from the shattering blow of his tragedy – that he can take comfort in feeling as if this way, he can let his lord enjoy his freedom to the fullest for a little longer – but beneath that relief, he knows himself for a despicable coward.
“Keep as good a guard over Cliopher for me, that I may rest easy knowing he is safe.”
Ludvic’s fingers trace over the ink of the final letter, left in his care until such a time as he can find a way to deliver it to his lord. Tor, his fingertip writes and rewrites on the thick paper, over and over.
He doesn’t know if he would find the courage to send this letter or the one that would have to accompany it, even if he could.
It is not, he thinks, cowardice for his own sake, although under other circumstances he suspects that his lord’s fury over that broken promise might be truly terrifying. The trouble is that he loves his lord, loves the man beneath the radiance, and he fears that if – when, inevitably – he hands over this letter, gives his lord (his friend, his uncle) the news, both that radiance and the light of the star shining underneath will flicker out forever.
All because Ludvic made promises he could not keep.
“Sir?”
Ludvic looks up from his hands. Ato is looking at him from the door, his expression nearly honor guard-perfect but not yet blank enough to hide the fact that he’s had to say that several times. Not blank enough to hide his grief and concern.
He has lost his friend and partner, lost his closest commander. Lost his charge; Ludvic thinks every one of his Radiancy’s honor guards feels the blow of losing the man they were bid to guard in their lord’s stead. He wonders, again, if he should have insisted on having more guards accompany them to Liaau.
“Sir,” Ato prompts again, and Ludvic realizes that he has studied his young, sad face in silence for too long.
He has stepped up admirably, in his quiet, thoughtful way, taken more responsibility with the Palace guard and arranged for someone to continue with the new recruits in the… absence… of a Deputy Commander, and Ludvic hasn’t had the heart to deny him. Would be proud of him, in fact, were his own heart not creaking under the weight of his loss.
Like a flash of light on silver scales beneath the cool black surface of a mountain stream, a memory emerges, similar yet different to this moment. Ludvic, sitting in the dark just as he’s doing now. His hands, resting on his thighs, palms up, golden smudges muted but still gleaming in the gloom, branding him with an honor beyond his worth. Light spilling into the room from the corridor, and a man, kind and concerned, standing silhouetted against the glow, calling him back to the world.
“The—” Ato pauses, swallowing, the forges on, “there’s a card game being set up in the common room, sir. Zerafin and Oginu and— the others. I came to ask if you would like to join us, sir. Not… not everyone needs to play, but there’ll be food. And company.”
He pauses again, and Ludvic hears the echo of a voice explaining that it will be too quiet, that his company would be appreciated, just as transparent an excuse as this one.
He stares at Ato, his throat tight, and thinks of the gentle request to come live with his friend when he so sorely needed a reason to cling to life. He thinks of waking up to a friendly shadow sitting by his bedside in the Viceregal apartments, of his second-in-command’s off-handed admission that the Lord Chancellor had been furious at him for not noticing how unwell Ludvic was, followed by a promise to watch over him while he rests.
He thinks of the swirl of scarlet mantle as his lord turned on the spot at the door, his face to the sun and the laughing instructions to have fun easing his first, hesitant, eager steps outside his cage.
He thinks of a hand grasping his, dragging him to disturb the Sun-on-Earth in the middle of the night to save his life, and thinks of the barbed cluster of secrets stuck in his own throat afterwards, just barely allowing the words “My village was on Woodlark” past his lips.
He imagines, briefly, that he had let it all out, then: the bar, his father, his mother. Fitzroy Angursell and what he means to them both. How he holds the thought of a house in Gorjo City close to his heart like something precious and fragile, a miracle he’s not sure he ever deserved and has now lost forever.
He thinks of the offer of a home, not only here in the Palace but also in the Vangavaye-ve, in the ever after.
And suddenly he realizes that although the Sun-on-Earth and the Viceroy are both gone, there is one person in the Palace who can and should judge him for his failure.
He finds Eidora Mdang in the Viceregal apartments, sitting on the couch that her son loved, surrounded by her grieving family, her hand clasped gently between both of Conju’s. She looks up as he enters and is announced by the Viceroy’s guards, and musters a strained smile for him, a matriarch and a leader even through her sorrow.
Conju looks up as well, his eyes sharp on Ludvic for a moment before they slide past him to confer silently with Ato, who insisted on coming with him. Concern twists his lips, but Ludvic only has eyes for Eidora, holding court on the battered couch as surely as the Lord of Rising Stars ever has on the golden throne in the Palace of Stars.
Her eyes widen and Conju’s narrow when he steps up to her and sinks to his knees, bowing his head.
For a moment, the room is silent, Vinyë Mdang shifting beside her mother as if itching to help Ludvic up, Conju disapprovingly still and serene. By the wall, one of the uncles or cousins moves restlessly. Eidora Mdang sits still, quietly studying Ludvic, plainly aware that this is no empty courtliness; they had not become close during the weeks Ludvic lived in these apartments with them, but she knows him well enough, knows him for a commoner and for a simple man, a friend of her son.
Finally, she speaks, her voice gentle and melodious. Ludvic remembers hearing that voice raised in a triumphant song of homecoming, and the elaborately tiled floor swims in his vision.
“What troubles you, Ludvic?” she asks, half-stern and half-gentle, as if he were a young cousin, sulking in a corner or sniffling over a scraped knee. He doesn’t think she’s ever used his first name before – ever had reason to, before – but she says it like it’s familiar. Like he’s family.
Ludvic breathes through his nose. His lips are trembling. The tiles are hard and cool under his bare knees. “I— I wonder if it has occurred to anyone to inform you,” he whispers, and has to take another deep breath before the plunge, “that the Glorious One charged me with your son’s safety before he left.”
The court of Mdangs studies him, silent in the aftershock of that revelation. Conju straightens, and the movement draws Ludvic’s eyes to him: sitting ramrod straight, chin up, mouth firm, eyes brittle and fractured.
“Ludvic,” he murmurs, and Ludvic sees that it’s not disapproval after all, nor a genteel desire to avoid a scene. His voice is dark with pain, his eyes anxious and flitting to meet Ato’s behind his back. Ludvic’s heart twists; even in his own grief, Conju is looking after him and Eidora first. His fingers rest gracefully on Eidora’s wrinkled ones, squeezing her hand a little, but Eidora continues to study Ludvic.
Her eyes are the same color as her son’s, like sunlight filtered through dark tea, not yet faded with age.
Then she huffs, closing her eyes, her lips twisting up at the corners in a humorless smile. “Believe me, Ludvic Omo,” she says, tired and worn, “I know well that the will and desire to protect my son and shield him from all harm does not necessarily translate to success.”
She holds out her free hand, and in a daze, Ludvic takes it in his, his large hand swallowing her smaller one. Her skin is soft with all her years under his calloused fingers, but her grip is fierce.
“It gives me comfort,” she whispers, and Ludvic hears the ache and bitterness of having outlived her husband and two of her children in her voice, “to know that he loved you, and that you loved him. Both of you.” By her side, Conju lets out a soft, pained sound. “That at least he was loved here.”
In Ludvic's heart there is a banyan tree. One day, the aerial roots of his grief will touch ground and grow until they form a part of his trunk, supporting him and not weighing him down.
He knows this, because the roots of his sorrow for his island envelope him to this day. Decades or centuries they may have taken to find soil, run deep and grow rich and thick with his love and longing, but they did. At long last, they did.
And so he must trust that the tender shoots of his sorrow now will one day grow strong as well. Trust that one day he will no longer flinch at wind and fight the urge to clutch his grief close, lest his memories be blown away, scattered to the four winds and forever lost, terribly aware that there are no new memories to come. Trust that one day, their weight will no longer feel so crushing, their twining length no longer strangling.
In the hollow spaces behind those cascading, twisting roots he will hold the shape of those he has lost, hold them close and let his heart grow around them.