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The wall was hot to the touch. The wine-pink copper foil wallpaper was starting to bubble, soft under Isaac’s fingertips.
He gripped the crossbow tighter in his hands. Lilian had only permitted him a miniature one - a mocking imitation of those noble ladies’ decorative weapons - but he was a decent shot, and a steel bolt to the heart would do its job regardless of the size.
Lilian. The name brought with it a brief violent flash: his body, lying broken on the floor in the next room; his fine auburn hair, reduced to ashes; the heavy smell of burnt keratin and electricity.
Isaac had fantasised about him ending up like this many times - had thought of doing it himself, even. So why did he feel like throwing up now that he’d seen Lilian dead?..
“Drop the weapon,” said a voice from behind his back.
Isaac flipped his crossbow and fired it blind, dropping to his knees. But there was no answering thud or cry of pain. When he gingerly shuffled around, he saw his enemy quite unharmed - a stocky woman in a blue jumpsuit, shorter than him, with a thick black braid wrapped tightly around her skull. A large conical metal structure was affixed to the centre of her chest; in his dazedness, it took him a moment to recognise it. A kuhiksõlg - a traditional Maarahvas brooch, no doubt doubling as a breastplate.
She looked down at him and made a face. “Next time I advise you to look before shooting.”
“I’m Lilian Lutz’s husband,” Isaac said, hating the tremble in his own voice. “I’m no good to you dead.”
Something not unlike sympathy flickered in her expression, but was instantly gone. “I know all about who you are. C’mon.”
Strong hands hauled him to his feet, gripping his forearms hard enough to bruise. His crossbow clattered to the floor, useless.
The howling of the fire outside the room was getting stronger. The skeleton of the Fern’s tower groaned under their feet, brittle and superheated. His captor took a moment to assess their surroundings. Then she held Isaac close and climbed onto the open window. The silver radiance of the moonflower meadows far below them made his head spin. Over two hundred floors above the ground, the air was clean and almost unnaturally cold, a strong western wind whipping his face and tearing at his curls.
Isaac let out an undignified squeak. Then, they were plunging towards the ground so fast he forgot how to breathe. The world spun around him; up was down and down was up.
"Stop yelling," the Maarahvi said gruffly.
He had, indeed, been yelling. In his panic he had also neglected to notice that they were no longer in a freefall. Blue tongues of fire leapt from his captor’s back and pushed against the air currents, keeping them in a steady glide. Isaac could feel the low murmur of the flame-wings in his bones where he was pressed against the Maarahvi’s torso.
The strangest thought passed through his scrambled mind: that it was not unpleasant to be held like that. It had been so long since anyone had touched him without wanting pleasure in return that this tight but thoroughly disinterested grip felt soothing.
Lpn Maris Suurkivi, read a small black patch on the woman's collarbone.
"Maris," he tried.
"That's Ensign Suurkivi to you," came a dry response. Lpn was lipnik - Maa tongue for ensign. Not that big of a deal, but clearly senior enough that she expected deference from someone like Isaac.
"What are you going to do with me, Ensign?"
He could feel her shrug. "Whatever General Ettergard says."
The Ettergard group and the Fern had once been two halves of the City of Kuresaar militia. The war split them apart - the Fern had political ambitions, while the Ettergards remained the closest the city had to law enforcement. But Isaac was under no illusion regarding how much due process he was likely to receive if captured.
Vihm Ettergard was a man even Lilian had spoken of with grudging respect. Vihm was Maa for rain; an iron rain of blades, a bronze storm of arrows. His people had certainly proven themselves worthy of that name today, descending upon Lilian’s soldiers like the wrath of the skies themselves.
What could Isaac hope for from such a person?
For a moment he considered whether a good kick to the stomach might make Ensign Suurkivi release him, letting him fall to his death. Once they reached their destination, suicide could potentially prove difficult. He knew all too well how many measures and restraints could be put in place to stop that - alchemical and magical, medical and mechanical; all no object to someone of Ettergard's means.
But something stopped him. Cowardice, perhaps; or perhaps some perverse sense of hope. One didn’t survive years as Lilian Lutz’s husband without hoping for the impossible.
When Suurkivi landed, it was on a narrow ledge of another tower. She held Isaac’s arm with one hand while using the other to rummage through her breast pocket. Isaac felt perilously unsupported, and his stomach flipped when one of his feet slipped off the edge, sending obsidian crumbles tumbling into the abyss below. But even one-handed, Suurkivi’s grip was sure, and she nudged him back onto the ledge with a slight grunt of irritation.
She produced a small triangular crystal and vaguely waved it in front of them. Somewhere within the depths of the tower’s lava-glass wall, a white light flickered to life; and with a smooth hiss, a section of the wall slid open, letting Suurkivi in.
The air inside was shockingly warm. Isaac shook his head like a disoriented cat, trying to adjust to the sudden shift in temperature.
The smell hit him next. It was the half-forgotten aroma of tropical hothouses, something from childhood, something from before the war. A mix of wet soil, tomato vines, and warm stagnant water.
“Suurkivi is back!” someone cheered. Isaac turned around wildly, just in time to see Suurkivi flash a grin at a gangly person in a blindingly sequined cape.
“You better not have eaten all my moose jerky, Elis,” she said, giving Glittery Cape a friendly shove. “Oh, and I’ve brought someone with.”
Elis looked at him curiously. So did a half-dozen others - and, standing slightly apart from the rest, a tall man in a set of light armour and a pair of goggles seemingly made out of the same black glass as the tower walls.
“How did it go, Maris?” he asked, tilting his head a little. Isaac could feel Suurkivi straighten her back in response.
“The intel paid off, General,” she said curtly. “The place is burnt to the ground. Lutz is dead.”
So that was Ettergard. The man’s face suddenly came sharply into focus for Isaac, blood pounding in his ears. Analysing his mannerisms, seeing what pleased and displeased him could be key to Isaac’s survival, just as it had been with Lilian.
The upper half of Ettergard’s face was obscured by the oddly shaped bone frame of his goggles. The lower half looked angular, with a bony chin and a thin smiling mouth. His skin was an even walnut colour, with deep creases around his lips. His hair was cut short, but even so, a rebellious black curl streaked with grey hung over his left ear.
He looked radiantly charming, in that sure, fatherly way middle-aged military men do. That set off Isaac’s alarms more than any show of cruelty could’ve done. A wolf den was one thing; a nest of snakes quite another. He was only too used to the honeyed poison of Lilian’s smiles.
Ettergard looked straight at Isaac. “And who’s this?” he asked. He had a low, resonant voice, every bit as effortlessly pleasant as the rest of him.
“That’s Lutz’s man,” Suurkivi said, throwing Isaac a sideways glance. “He got trapped in the fire after my men killed Lutz. He seemed scared out of his wits, mostly. Granted, he did take a shot at me.”
Under other circumstances Isaac would’ve taken offence at the description of him as “scared out of his wits”. Fear made him smarter and more resourceful, not less. He’d been scared into his wits, thank you very much.
But now he didn’t have the time to feel insulted. All of his attention was on Ettergard.
“That’s Lutz’s man?” Ettergard suddenly seemed unsure of himself, somehow. He lifted one of his hands and touched it to the side of the goggles, as if to take them off; but his fingers faltered at the last moment. “But he’s just a kid.”
A touch too young for your tastes? Isaac thought, scornfully.
Suurkivi shrugged a little. Many kids being exploited out there, she seemed about to say. “He’s of age,” she stated instead, diplomatically. “The Fern’s vellumwork has him down as born in 5764.”
They stood still for a moment. Even through the black glass, Isaac seemed to feel Ettergard’s eyes on his skin.
“You’re dressed… peculiarly,” Ettergard said finally. “You want a sweater?”
Possessive, then. Lilian liked - had liked - to show Isaac off. He’d put him in cropped leather jackets that exposed his flanks, decorated his curls with the thinnest silver chains and the most miniature garnet stones. He’d made Isaac look like a slice of cake in the window of a bakery. Ettergard was clearly the kind of man who preferred to have his baked goods all to himself instead.
“Not that I mean to judge,” Ettergard continued. A note of honest-to-gods awkwardness rang dissonant in his tone. “It’s just that - you must’ve gotten cold while Maris was lugging you around. Sorry about that, by the way.”
Isaac had long gotten used to the cold on his bare flesh. Besides, right now his heart was rabbiting in his chest so hard he felt like he was burning up. “Sure, I’ll take a sweater,” he said, nevertheless.
There was an instance of darkness; something was thrust over his head from behind, and he had a moment of panic thinking it must be a bag. But no one was dragging him away or tying his hands behind his back, and after a moment he realised it was the promised sweater. He thrust his hands through the sleeves and shook his head. Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Suurkivi, her face stony as ever, looking for all the world like it hadn’t been her who put the sweater on him.
The thing was a shaggy wool monstrosity, that fashionable “sunrise blue” shade Isaac had seen often in weapons shops but never on clothes. It was also at once oversized and undersized - its too-short sleeves hung loose around his decidedly insufficiently muscular arms. Suurkivi’s own, he surmised.
“He’s probably tired, General,” Glittery Cape suggested.
“Of course,” Ettergard said, sounding, if anything, even more apologetic. “Come, I’ll show you somewhere you can rest.”
Isaac followed him obediently as Ettergard exited the atrium and walked down a winding glass corridor.
“Your name, I think, is Isaac?”
“Isaac Lutz, General.”
Ettergard waved this off with one large long-fingered hand. “You’re a civ. You can call me Vihm.”
He likes familiarity. “All right, Vihm,” Isaac said, his tone as nonchalant as he could make it.
The place really was a hothouse. Here and there he could see unfamiliar plants; something fragrant and gorgeously red flowered all along the right edge of the ceiling, and a ripe marzipan pear nearly hit him on the forehead.
On both sides of the corridor were rows of bedrolls. Every now and then they’d be interrupted by a room door - accommodations for the higher-ranking members of the militia, if Isaac had to guess.
People stood and sat here and there, some in groups and some alone. They were a motley crowd, unlike Lilian’s uniformly dressed combat crew. Here a gangly woman in a traditional Seto scarf sat under a fig palm next to a tortoiseshell-coloured hound; there, three men in turbans led an animated conversation, sharing what smelled like mushroom stew. In the shade of a young eucalyptus, someone tall in an undyed sea silk robe leaned down to whisper in their friend’s ear.
The whisperers started when they noticed Isaac and Ettergard. Isaac was wise to that kind of backstage scheming - their abrupt silence certainly wasn’t fooling him. Ettergard, however, seemed unruffled. Self-assured. Isaac couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad. Lilian would’ve certainly had the whisperers’ heads on a platter.
Sea Silk looked directly at Isaac as they passed. Their gaze was cold and certain. It said: I know you know. And: don’t do anything you might regret.
At the end of the corridor, Ettergard muttered a password to let them into a room. The arcane lock disengaged with a hiss and a wisp of sulphurous smoke. It was a clean, brightly lit, but somewhat disorganised space. A fluffy bush of meadowsweet spread its ethereal flower clusters over a small desk piled high with memory shards. There were a few sets of bedding on the floor - leather mats covered with cream-white sheets, plaid blankets strewn haphazardly across. A half-finished mug of rhubarb tea completed the picture.
It was the room of a bachelor if Isaac had ever seen one - or bachelors, plural.
“Sorry about the mess,” said Ettergard. He walked over to the desk, sat down, and took his goggles off. Isaac did a double-take. He’d expected Ettergard’s eyes to look ruthless; instead, there was just the one eye - taupe-grey, clever and tired-looking. Where the other eye should’ve been, there was only skin and a smattering of long dark eyelashes.
Ettergard caught him staring. “Congenital abnormality,” he explained, with a dry smile, and tapped the frame of the goggles with his nail. “Enchanted. Helps me have some depth perception so I don’t run into furniture.”
Isaac wasn’t sure what he’d thought the headset was for - telepathic communication with Ettergard’s underlings, perhaps. Something nefarious. He suddenly felt like a jerk, which was simultaneously novel and thoroughly uncomfortable.
This is all just a mask, he reminded himself. Honeyed poison, remember?
Ettergard gestured at one of the mats. “Please, sit. You can sleep if you like, although if you’re hungry, Maris should be along with some game soon. I have,” he cast a glance at his desk, searching the spaces between the heaps of crystal shards, “some dried blackberries?”
The blackberries came in a canary yellow leather pouch, which Ettergard held up for Isaac to see like a hunter showing off a good kill. Despite himself, Isaac laughed a little.
He hadn’t given much thought to whether he was hungry. Tired, certainly. Very tired. He realised that his eyes still stung from the smoke and soot of the burned tower, and that the thought of washing his face and sinking into cool bed sheets felt like heaven.
“I’d rather rest, I think,” he said, hoping that his tone struck the right balance between familiar and deferential.
Ettergard shrugged. “Be my guest. I’ll stay up for a while yet. We have much to discuss in the morning.” He was silent for a moment; his one eye was fixed on Isaac, a sudden seriousness in his expression. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry Lutz had to die. I have not given much thought to the hurt it would cause. Coming face to face with a loved one is… sobering.”
A loved one. Was that what he’d been to Lilian? Isaac hesitated for a few moments. “I’m not too heartbroken about it, to be frank,” he said, finally. Ettergard raised an eyebrow at this, but otherwise remained impassive.
“Good, then,” he said after a pause. And then, suddenly, “I suppose I understand how that feels.”
Isaac waited for him to elaborate - to spin some twisted story? To confide a dirty secret? But after a few moments he realised that no explanation was forthcoming. Ettergard simply turned his attention to the memory shards and started sorting through them, muttering something under his breath. Every now and then, a jolt of dim light would pass between his fingers, arcing from the pinky to the thumb of his left hand.
Isaac schlepped to the washroom, where he scraped himself clean as best he could with some lukewarm water from a bucket, and then back. He crawled under one of the plaid blankets without bothering to take his clothes off. The floor was bracingly hard under him, his bony hips separated from the tower’s obsidian carcass only by a thin layer of treated leather. But the oil lamps in the room had been considerately blown out, with only the occasional purple flicker of Ettergard’s magic above him, and Isaac’s thoughts began to drift.
Something didn’t add up. It was not even that Ettergard seemed kind, understanding, warm, but that he was so matter-of-fact about that kindness. Lilian had been kind, too. He’d bought Isaac the most expensive foods - tender moose meat, silvered chocolates, virgin marzipan wine - and swaddled him in the finest fabrics. Certainly nothing as pedestrian as some crumpled bed sheets on a piece of dead cow. But with Lilian, it had always been in exchange for-
“I’ll be up for a while yet,” came Ettergard’s voice - whether addressing Isaac or someone else, he wasn’t sure. “But don’t wait for me.”
Hands, fingers, lips. Whispers through the hot sticky darkness. Isaac doubted he would ever forget them. With time, the individual words might be lost to memory; but that deep disembodied voice, the death knell to everything good and gentle within him, would never leave his head.
There is always a price.
Isaac’s confused mind latched onto that certainty. However genuine his captor might’ve seemed, there could never be kindness without cruelty, give without take.
Perhaps it was that Ettergard preferred to play the victim. Lilian had had no patience for such games, but many others Isaac had known to take special pleasure in that perverse pretence at innocence.
That, of course, came with its own rules - and its own set of punishments.
Isaac waited until the flickering of the spells ceased, until the brief smell of food - something spicy and honey-flavoured - came and went, until everything around him was quiet. Then, very carefully, he shimmied out from under the blanket and surveyed his surroundings.
The room was submerged in deep inky twilight. To his left and to his right were two motionless forms lying on their bedrolls. Isaac recognised Ettergard’s - large and angular, specks of grey in his hair just visible in the darkness.
He crawled over to Ettergard on all fours, reached out, and slowly slid the bedsheet off the man’s shoulder.
Lilian would’ve been wide awake and holding him at knifepoint by now. But Ettergard slept soundly - too soundly for a war leader.
Isaac settled silently onto the mat behind him. Unconscious and relaxed, Ettergard had a peculiar sense of innocence about his person. There was a small vulnerable hollow between the muscles of his cleanly shaven neck that Isaac could just imagine sinking his teeth into. His broad flanks, covered only by a thin white shirt that could’ve done with a wash, rose and fell in slow, even breaths. There was a faint scent of ash soap on exposed patches of his skin.
He knew his role. It was to kiss, to touch, to excite - to rouse his captor with the lustful fantasy he’d been brought here for. But only now did he realise how devastatingly simpler it would be, instead, to ensure that Ettergard could never wake again.
The temptation was almost too much to bear.
“You sleep like an innocent man, General,” Isaac said quietly, and then Ettergard was awake at last. He rolled around, his hair falling over his face. Finally - belatedly - he reached for the needle-thin baselard next to his pillow.
Yet, still, he did not attack Isaac. “Why are you in my bed?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep. There was such genuine bewilderment in his tone that something in Isaac cracked, fragile and irreparable like a bird’s egg in a cruel hand.
It could not be that Ettergard genuinely didn’t want this. It could not be that what had been shown to him was real kindness. This was against the natural order of things.
Ettergard frowned, misinterpreting his expression. “What is this, an assassination attempt?” The line of his mouth twisted a little. “I thought you weren’t terribly fond of Lutz.”
Isaac could say nothing, explain nothing. He was trembling. If he had been holding a weapon, he would’ve dropped it. His body, always so pliant and ready to do whatever circumstances forced it to, refused to obey him now.
Ettergard must’ve seen that Isaac was no threat in his present state, because his hand on the dagger relaxed and his features settled into an expression of surprised concern.
“Are you all right?” His other hand came up to touch Isaac’s face, and Isaac recoiled from it like a feral animal. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
“Why did you let me live?” Isaac demanded, his voice harsh and strained. “What use am I to you, if it’s not for sex?”
It was Ettergard’s turn to look insulted. “I’m not some monster,” he said, half-sitting up in bed. “I don’t kill civilians. And- wait, what did you say?”
Isaac stared up at him, and Ettergard stared back, blinking. Even in that half-darkness, Isaac could see a distinct touch of red creep up Ettergard’s neck. “Is that,” and he actually stuttered, which Isaac would’ve thought adorably prudish under other circumstances, “is that what you thought I’d brought you here for? You thought that I- that you- that I wanted to rape you?”
Isaac flinched at that. No one had ever used this word to describe what happened to him before. Certainly not Lilian - especially not Lilian. It had always been a good time. Love-making. Debauchery. Seduction. Like Isaac had wanted it, too, even if only somewhere deep down.
“Listen, kid,” Ettergard said hoarsely, sitting up and snapping his fingers to produce a pale purple flame. He looked at Isaac for a long moment, motionless, outlined in sharp lilac. “Stars know I’m not a good man. But I would never - never - never. You hear me?”
“Yes,” Isaac whispered. His whole chest was nothing but numbness, like something freezing and full of paralytic venom got lodged in it - a vague, soul-sucking ache. His cheeks were wet. He made a valiant effort to sit up, as well, and hugged his knees to his chest. He probably did look like a kid now, a shivering ball of human misery. So much for playing his role well. “I could’ve killed you. I thought about it. You slept so soundly -”
A part of him thought of it, still. Of how close Ettergard’s dagger was to his hand. Of Ettergard plunging through the thin layer of obsidian on the other side of his desk and falling forever into the dark.
But another part of him, sudden, fierce, said, no. A kindness for a kindness. I will not suffer this man to die.
Ettergard rose to his feet and shrugged artlessly with one shoulder. “Perhaps. Although Maris has had her crossbow trained on you for the last fifteen minutes.” He looked into the darkness behind Isaac’s back, a touch of a smile curving his lips. “Stand down, Ensign.”
Isaac whirled around, mortified. Suurkivi lay there, propped up on her elbow, the stirrup of her crossbow gleaming bright in the light of Ettergard’s cantrip. She looked mostly unperturbed, save for a minute angling of her eyebrows towards the bridge of her nose.
She could’ve slept through an attempt on Ettergard’s life, if she’d wanted to. Could’ve joined in if she’d thought it advantageous. But Isaac knew loyalty when he saw it.
He was beginning to understand, now, that the General was the kind of leader to inspire loyalty. Lilian’s crew had abandoned him, in the end. But Vihm Ettergard was a man people thought it an honour to die for. That is why they’d fought the way they did - not for fear, but for love.
Ettergard walked off for a moment, then returned to his side and lowered himself on one knee. “Maris brought food earlier,” he told Isaac, shoving a bowl of something fragrant and darkly glistening into his hands. “Eat.”
Isaac swallowed a spoonful. The mystery substance turned out to be cold venison stew with rhubarb and chanterelles. An odd combination, but then the Maarahvas weren’t known for their love of sophisticated dishes, and their historical cuisine had mostly consisted of whatever was on hand at any given moment. The war had done little to change that.
But it wasn’t - bad. Just unusual. He found that he rather enjoyed it, actually.
He was shaking, but a little less now. Tears still trickled down his face despite his best efforts, however. A couple fell off his chin and landed in the stew. They smelled salty and bitter, like seawater.
Ettergard sat back down on his bedroll. “Stars, kid,” he repeated, slowly shaking his head. He seemed about to say something else but thought better of it, settling for watching Isaac silently.
“Why’d you capture me, then?” Isaac asked, at length, in a hoarse voice. “If not for - that?”
“Capture you?” Ettergard seemed to have exhausted his capacity for indignation. “I concede Maris’ bedside manner leaves something to be desired, but would you rather have burned to death?”
Isaac ducked his head and stared into his bowl. For a while, neither of them spoke.
"Lutz," Ettergard said, at last. He seemed to be trying to modulate his deep voice to sound gentler, the way one might turn a sabre over to use its blunt edge for a more merciful blow. "What was he to you, exactly?"
"He-" Isaac began, and choked. His voice would not obey him - his tongue would not turn to say anything less than loving about Lilian. His body remembered all too well what had come of such confessions before. "I can't say," he blurted, somewhat incoherently.
But Ettergard seemed to finally understand. He looked a shade paler, and the muscles around his empty left socket seemed taut, as if trying to open the non-existent eye in an expression of shock. Isaac laughed a little, unsteady even to his own ears.
“Well, look,” Ettergard said at last, firmly. “There will be none of that here. And when you want to leave, you can. Just be sure you know what you’re doing. It’s - hard to make it out there alone.”
Isaac hardly needed to be told. That was how he’d ended up under Lilian’s wing, once upon a time - little more than an urchin, he’d been snatched off the streets and whisked away to become the diamond in Lilian’s crown. The memory of who he was before Lilian seemed so distant now, like a far-away shore obscured by the blue sea haze. Another life.
“Thank you,” Isaac said quietly. “I will stay the night, at least, if you’re amenable.”
He made his way back to his own bedroll, set the empty bowl next to his pillow, and lay down. After a moment of silence, he heard Ettergard’s steps; he, too, seemed to have returned to bed.
Isaac glanced briefly over his shoulder. His captor - no, his host - lay with his back towards Isaac once more, like Isaac hadn’t just told him in so many words that he’d contemplated assassinating him.
General Vihm Ettergard truly was a confounding man.
Everything was quiet now. He stretched out under his blanket and stared at the sparkling expanse of the sky visible through the tower’s glass wall. He felt as though he was floating, slowly and smoothly, through the dark.
His mind spun feverishly, re-assessing memory after memory, gesture after gesture. He’s just a kid, Ettergard had said; but there had been shock in those words, not disappointment. The offer of a sweater had been out of genuine concern, albeit perhaps with a touch of prudery. The request to be called Vihm had been sincere. And Ettergard’s - Vihm’s - reaction to the whisperer in the sea-silk robe was not a sign of self-assuredness; it was- it was-
Naivety. With a jolt of something not unlike horror, Isaac realised that Ettergard must’ve simply not understood what he’d seen. This man, so full of warmth and easy charm, beloved on the battlefield and off it, who now slept with his back towards his would-be assassin, did not know enough to be afraid.
Lilian had controlled his crew through fear and suspicion. He’d had spies and snitches everywhere, double- and triple-crossing their friends and companions, creating an atmosphere in which you could trust no one. But Vihm Ettergard went through life relying on trust. The camaraderie between him and Suurkivi, between Suurkivi and Elis, between the other people he’d seen laughing and enjoying each other’s company in the tower, was the militia’s strength - and it was its weakness.
In a rain of blades and arrows, it only took one being pointed the wrong way.
Isaac slept poorly that night. He dreamt of howling, hungry fire, and of Lilian. Do you think you can escape me, little Isaac? dream Lilian whispered to him. In his voice was the crackling of the flames, the snapping of the burning wood. I will come to you every night. I will watch you lose everything. Vihm Ettergard will be backstabbed by his cronies and forgotten like the pathetic weakling he is, but even in death, I am forever.
He awoke with the sun, a knot of anxiety in his gut, his mind still hazy with sleep and his eyes aching. When he regained his bearings, he discovered a cup of barley tea before his face, the steam rising from it illuminated by the gentle azure light of the sunrise outside.
“Thought you could do with a pick-me-up,” Suurkivi’s voice told him, not unkindly.
“Thanks,” he said, nasally, and sat up. Suurkivi stood to his right, busy fastening her kuhiksõlg to her chest. “Where’s Etterg- Vihm?”
“Morning,” came the familiar rumbling voice. Isaac turned and saw Ettergard at his desk, smiling at them over the rim of another cup of barley tea. “Feeling better?”
Relief washed over him. He didn’t understand when the wellbeing of this virtual stranger had come to matter to him so much. Something to do with the memory of Ettergard’s hand coming up to touch his face but drawing back in uncertainty as Isaac flinched away. With the shocked expression on the man’s face when Isaac had asked, why did you let me live?
“I am,” Isaac said, and rose up. “But I have - something to tell you.”
Ettergard listened attentively to Isaac’s rambling, frowning every now and then. He looked concerned, and for a moment Isaac was sure that he’d been taken seriously.
“The people you’re describing,” Ettergard said, at last. “That’s Keit and Uku Oja, siblings. While there has been some friction between us in the past, I doubt they wish me ill. I understand that things have been difficult for you at Lutz’s-” he winced and cut himself off. Belatedly, Isaac realised that Ettergard’s concern was for his state of mind, not for Ettergard’s own person.
“I’m not delusional,” Isaac snapped, feeling at once angry and moved.
Ettergard winced again, raising one hand in a pacific gesture. “I didn’t mean to imply that."
“Maybe we should take this seriously, General,” Suurkivi interjected. She was certainly not the vote of confidence Isaac had expected.
“What evidence do we have?” Ettergard asked her, a little irritably. This fight over his safety had clearly been a long-standing tug of war between them. “There are no regulations against whispering while on duty. What do you want me to do, Maris, interrogate them over it?”
Suurkivi’s face clearly said that she wouldn’t be opposed to such a decision, but she wisely refrained from saying so. Isaac decided to follow her lead.
After all, why should he stick his neck out for this man’s sake, if he wouldn’t listen?
“I knew we could come to an understanding,” said Ettergard, satisfied, and sipped his tea.
“I’ll go for a smoke,” Isaac told Ettergard and Suurkivi. Ettergard nodded at him distractedly and clicked his fingers in the direction of the door, releasing the lock with a muttered cantrip. He really meant it about me being free to go, Isaac thought, and something in him twitched wildly, anxious, like a bird caught in a net. He might’ve told himself he would not care, but that did not make it true.
He made his way outside and blinked at the flood of light coming from the nearby balcony. When Isaac walked onto it and closed the door behind him, the air sent a bracing wave of cold through his body. He did appreciate Suurkivi’s sweater now, ugly as it was.
Lilian had forbidden him from smoking. Now Isaac took a good deal of petty pleasure in opening the little pouch of dried marshmallow leaves hidden against his heart, rolling them up into a quirly, and lighting the tip with a miniature fire spell. Sweet, cooling smoke filled his lungs, tickling his nostrils pleasurably.
“How are you settling in, kid?”
Isaac started. To his left stood Sea Silk - Keit Oja, now that he knew the name. Next to them was Uku, a short, lean man with piercing light eyes and a short beard.
“Well enough,” Isaac responded politely, and took another pull of burnt marshmallow.
Uku shot his sibling an imploring gaze. “Please, Keit, leave him alone. He’s not even from around here. What does he care?”
“Couldn’t pay me to care,” Isaac agreed amicably, squinting in the bright periwinkle sunlight.
“Ettergard killed his husband, too, didn’t he? Hardly a good start to a relationship.” Uku looked at Isaac meaningfully.
Lilian’s bones, burning to calcified ash among the molten rock remnants of the tower, somewhere out there in the moonflower fields. He didn’t have to fake a twitch of bitterness. It was not bitterness at Ettergard, but they didn’t need to know that.
Lilian had taught him many lessons. If he could use even one of them to do this one thing, to snatch a bit of goodness out of the jaws of death, then it might mean something.
Keit looked him in the eye, and the chill Isaac felt had nothing to do with the morning air. “My brother is right,” they said. “You’re not from around here. You have no reason to care about the militia’s politics. But let me give you a piece of advice. Ettergard is a man whose grip is slipping. When the moment comes, you’ll do well to remember to stand on the winning side. His bodyguard has a lick of sense, but if she’s otherwise occupied-”
Isaac raised an eyebrow, his expression carefully indifferent. “What makes you think I won’t just tell him?”
“Because Lilian Lutz is dead.” Keit didn’t quite smile, but there was an icy spark in their eyes, and one corner of their mouth curved up a notch. “And because he would never believe you.”
“Vihm Ettergard is a fool,” Uku said, scornfully.
While Isaac did not generally agree with that assessment, he was forced to admit that when it came to Ettergard’s personal safety, Keit and Uku were not far off the mark. They couldn’t have known that he’d already tried to warn Vihm and Maris; but even without knowing it, they’d drawn the correct conclusion.
Was trusting Isaac foolishness? Letting him be in the same room, letting him live even when he’d been that close to smothering Ettergard in his sleep? Was it foolishness to console Isaac, to tell him that he would come to no harm in this place?
Perhaps. It was the kind of heartfelt goodness Lilian had burned out of him years ago; the kind of generous, radiant, all-encompassing goodwill that, by some miracle, had not been burned out of Vihm.
Maybe it was stupidity. Maybe Isaac was ready to die for that kind of stupidity.
“So noted,” he told Keit, and returned that smile-without-a-smile. “I will be careful.”
After the Oja siblings left, he finished smoking and sent the nub of smouldering leaves flying into the clouds below. It disappeared without a sound, leaving only a faint scent of plant matter on his fingers.
Isaac returned to the room at the end of the corridor. Ettergard was wearing his goggles, the thorns of bone curling over the tips of his ears, and - thank the gods for small mercies - his armour. In the daylight Isaac could appreciate the make: solid, the links of the chainmail gleaming a smooth bronze.
“Isaac,” Ettergard greeted him. “Come with us. We’ll think about what we can do for you. Now that Lutz is no longer in power, that part of the city might be safe to go back to.”
Isaac nodded, walked over to his bedroll, and took a swig of the now-cold tea from the mug still sitting next to his pillow.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Least I can do.” Ettergard shrugged and flashed him a smile. Then his expression grew serious. “Isaac - what is your family name?”
Isaac stared at him in incomprehension. “Lutz. Isaac Lutz, General, as I said-”
Ettergard shook his head impatiently. “Your family name, kid. We can hardly keep going around introducing you as härra Lutz. Maris tells me that might be politically inopportune.” Even with his eye out of view, the lower half of his face suddenly acquired a self-conscious expression. “And - I thought you might like to be called something else. In view of the circumstances.”
“Ah.” A tendril of discomfort coiled at the bottom of Isaac’s stomach. “Finkelmeyer. I was Isaac Finkelmeyer, once.”
The name had an odd shape in his mouth. Lilian had not liked him saying it. Everything he had been before the Fern was taboo. Lilian had been strangely almost jealous of it - like Isaac’s past was another lover that might seduce him away from his new husband.
Ettergard shifted his weight uncomfortably. For such a large man he was remarkably awkward with his body, as if unsure where his limbs belonged. “I would, of course, never force you to-”
“Finkelmeyer is good,” Isaac told Ettergard firmly.
Ettergard smiled at him again, and Isaac fancied he could just see the crinkles in the corners of his eye through the left goggle lens. “Deal.”
Ettergard’s baselard still lay on the floor next to his pillow. Isaac crouched to return the teacup to its place on the floor and, as he did so, took the baselard and slipped it into his own sleeve in a smooth gesture. The blade rested reassuringly against the tendons of his wrist. Not even Suurkivi seemed to notice.
The door opened once again, letting them through. Suurkivi walked on Vihm’s right; Isaac took a strategic position on the left and just behind them.
Suurkivi stepped out into the corridor first, her compact silhouette dark against the sunlight and the vivid greenery. The baselard slid into Isaac’s hand like it had always been there. The handle, comfortably weaved over with a length of rough rope, provided effortless grip. Under other circumstances, Isaac might’ve taken his time to get used to the weapon’s weight - do a few experimental swings, perhaps. But now he rather thought he’d have to do without.
Vihm made a step after Suurkivi; and, just as he did so, there was a smooth swishing noise. Isaac lunged forward, dagger in both hands.
Steel met steel. The cleanly gleaming blade of a longsword came to a stop against the baselard. Isaac felt the impact in his wrists and forearms - a deep, shuddering vibration in his very bones.
He found a moment to be impressed by the fact that the dagger’s blade, though deeply dented, held. Then he glanced at his opponent and met Keit Oja’s eyes, narrowed in fury. The longsword they’d just swung was suspended inches from Vihm Ettergard’s neck, with only Isaac there to stop it.
“You traitorous whelp,” Keit howled, which Isaac thought was rather unfair - if nothing else, then because it was unclear how he could possibly betray someone he’d promised no loyalty to.
“I’ll be godsdamned,” Vihm grunted. Without bothering with a weapon, he swung at Keit with his fist in a sharp, efficient left hook. Isaac felt the movement of air over the crown of his head where Vihm’s blow connected with Keit’s temple. There was an unpleasant crunching sound and then Keit collapsed to the ground in a silent heap.
Isaac glanced wildly to his right. There, Maris Suurkivi was in a corps a corps with Uku Oja, her own ridiculously oversized claymore pressed against the blade of Uku’s rapier. If she’s otherwise occupied…
They really could have pulled this off, if it hadn’t been for Isaac.
Maybe what Lilian had inflicted on him wasn’t all for nothing. If it had taught him to be vigilant, aware - maybe it wasn’t for nothing.
Vihm took a heavy crossbow off his back, cocked it in one forceful, fluid motion, and put a bolt between Uku’s eyes. Then he swore again. He was saying something to Suurkivi - Isaac heard bits that sounded like “I will be thrice godsdamned”, “the kid was right, Maris”, "things were simpler before the war", and “my favourite baselard”.
Blood was pounding in Isaac’s ears, and it was difficult to make out much more. Isaac gave Keit a thorough once-over to make sure they were no longer a danger; then, finally, he turned back to Suurkivi and Ettergard.
Ettergard’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. This time, Isaac didn’t flinch away. Ettergard’s face swam into focus. Where after his arrival Isaac had felt apprehension, now there was only relief. Alive. He’s alive.
A bit of goodness, snatched out of the jaws of death.
“Isaac,” Ettergard said. His voice took on that gentle, modulated quality again. But there was something else in it, too. Bewilderment. Warmth. “I owe you.”
“Damn right you do,” Isaac said, and smiled so wide his face hurt. His eyes felt wet again. Ettergard’s right hand twitched a little, as if in an aborted gesture of comfort.
“He does,” Suurkivi chimed in, looking daggers at Ettergard. Then she shifted her gaze to Isaac and, impossibly, her expression softened. “Good work there, kid. You’ve got potential. Sure you don’t want to stay with us?”
There were other people around them, now - Elis, of the sequined cape, made their way through the crowd, their eyes searching Suurkivi and Ettergard’s faces with concern. “What in the stars-damned hell is going on here? Did Lutz’s man attack someone?”
Ettergard shifted his grip on Isaac’s shoulders and drew him closer, nudging him protectively backwards.
“He did nothing wrong. And his name,” Ettergard said, “is Isaac Finkelmeyer.”
Staying didn't sound like a bad idea, after all.