She stirred the spoon slowly in the cauldron, a small one, only slightly larger than Cyrus’s helm. “He taught me how to fire an arrow as quickly as you can pluck it, how to follow tracks, and skin a beast fast, get it over the fire and roast it on spit.” She blinked. “It was all we did, all day long, and the sooner we finished those chores the sooner we could get to the idle fun of the things we wanted to do.” She smiled. “So we got very good at it.”
“I take it he’s passed on now?” Nyad asked quietly. “If he was one of the Iliarad’ouran woodsmen, I know the last of their number was-”
“Yes,” Martaina said simply, cutting her off. “About a milennia ago. He was the last. I chose not to follow in his footsteps to carry it on.”
Nyad nodded without saying much else; it occurred to Cyrus after a space of seconds that the tension was heavy, which was probably due to the fact that Nyad’s father was the monarchy that Martaina’s father resented. “So,” he said, trying to break the silence, “what do you think they’re doing back home right now?” He felt a peculiar twinge at the words, especially the thought of Sanctuary as home. It’s been nearing a year since we’ve been away …
“It’s fall now,” Calene Raverle spoke up. “Apples would be coming into season in the Northlands.” Her voice was soft but strained, as though it had been poured through a sifter and all that was left was smoothness. It could barely be heard it over the sound of the crickets though everyone listened intently. “Have you ever walked through an orchard on a fall day and picked apples as you went?” Her eyes were far off now, thinking about it. “Felt the cool grass beneath your feet, like a thousand tickling kisses?” She let a small smile crop up on her petite face. “You take the first bite of one, hear the crunch, feel it crackle in your mouth, the tartness of the yellow ones.” She took a breath. “They make cider with some of the excess, you know, and if you can get some cinnamon for it …” She breathed again and a sadness crept over her. “I don’t suppose they have much in the way of apple orchards around Sanctuary though, do they?”
“I believe there is one across the river Perda, to the south,” J’anda said. “I miss fall nights at Sanctuary, when the barest chill cancels out the warm sun. You know that two-week period after summer ends and we get our first chill, but then the warm weather comes back before it turns a little blustery? I like that. It’s like the last kiss of summer before it leaves. Not that it gets desperately wintery in the Plains of Perdamun, like it does outside Saekaj, anyway, but I like that last … that last goodbye. A fond farewell, if you will.”
“The gardens around the palace have a certain kind of vegetation that only blooms in fall,” Nyad said. “Pharesia is far enough south that winter’s touch is not that painful, but when they prepare the gardens for winter, it is an impressive sight … for the few days when it freezes, they make ice sculptures and fill the grounds with them. And at the smaller palace outside Termina, they used to-” Nyad’s broad face carried a smile that faded as she looked around and settled on Martaina, who stared evenly back at her. “Well, it was beautiful. Though I suppose that’s gone now,” she said with a touch of sadness.
“Longwell?” Cyrus asked, and the dragoon seemed to settle into deep thought.
“Vernadam sits so low in the land that summer lasts longer for us than it does for most of Arkaria,” he said. “Winter is a short affair, a few months only of lower temperatures, and a very quick autumn to bridge between the two.” He shrugged. “I spent time in my youth at Enrant Monge and in the northern parts of Galbadien and found them to be very different than life at Vernadam. Autumn in the north is like winter at home.”
“What about you?” Aisling spoke up, dragging Cyrus out of his quiet. “What do you miss most about autumn at home?”
Cyrus pondered that for a moment. “I don’t, I suppose. I mean, Sanctuary’s been home for the last couple years. Before that I was living in the slums of Reikonos, where every day is the same, even the ones where the snow goes to your knees. Before that …” he shrugged. “Still in Reikonos, all the way back to when I was at the Society of Arms.”
“So,” Nyad asked, “you don’t have any distinct memories of autumn? Nothing?”
After a moment’s thought, Cyrus shrugged. “We went on a training exercise to the Northlands once in the fall, the year after I joined the Society. It was almost as much a camping trip as anything, to get us familiar with staying out overnight, sleeping under the stars. But they took us away from the city for this one, on a long hike, aided by a wizard for transport. I remember seeing the leaves change. You don’t see much of that in Reikonos, because it’s not like Termina; there aren’t many trees in the city itself, it’s mostly houses and buildings. I remember that pretty well, the hues of the leaves, how different they were from the green ones I was used to seeing. Trees all down the road and beyond.” He hesitated. “I think that was the training exercise where I finally got the Able Axes to leave me the hell alone.”
“Able Axes?” Nyad said, her brow puckered with confusion.
“Blood Family,” Cyrus said. “The Society of Arms splits its trainees into two separate classes, the Able Axes and the Swift Swords.”
“Ah,” she said, with a subtle nod. “They were bullying you, then?”
Cyrus shrugged, felt the cool breeze. “They had their reasons. It’s all very competitive, very ‘us vs. them’ in the Society’s structure. They saw me as an easy target, so they took their turns trying to break me.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t work.”
“What did you do?” J’anda asked. Cyrus looked around; every eye was on him, even Martaina’s, which was decidedly knowing.
Cyrus waited before answering, sifted through his emotions to see if he could find it, a thread of regret for what had happened. It was strangely absent. “I killed their leader.”
Nyad choked on a spoonful of stew, and a little of it sluiced out of her upper lip, dribbling down her pale chin and along the cleft. “I’m sorry … you killed him?” She waited for the nod, then looked around, wide-eyed, to the others sitting around the fire before she came back to him. “How old were you?”
“Seven, I think,” Cyrus answered, racking his memory.
“My gods,” Nyad said, holding her bowl apart from her as though it contained something appalling. “How old was he?”
Cyrus gave it some thought. “He was about … oh, I don’t know, sixteen or so? Perhaps seventeen.”
Nyad stared at him, gaping. The look was not held by anyone else, though Longwell watched him sidelong, wary, and J’anda seemed disquieted, his teeth visible in a grimace. “Why did you kill him?” Nyad asked.
“Well,” Cyrus said, “in fairness, it was a training exercise, and it was Swift Swords versus Able Axes, and while we were supposed to keep it non-lethal and strictly to more of a ‘tag, you’re out’ system, he didn’t play fair. So I killed him.”
“Oh,” Nyad said with a distant sort of nod, “so it was an accident.”
“No,” Cyrus said, and took another sip of his stew, “I knew full well what I was doing. I bludgeoned him with a tree branch until his head split open.”
“But …” Nyad’s voice came again into the quiet. No one else was eating now. “… You did it for your team, then? To win the game? For the … Swift Swords?”
“I wasn’t on the Swift Swords team,” Cyrus said, and this time he did feel a pinch of emotion, but he took another sip of the stew anyway.
“So you killed your own teammate?” J’anda asked, watching him carefully.
“No,” Cyrus said and finally felt the burn of it. He looked to his left to see Aisling watching him, curiosity in her eyes. So she doesn’t know, either. He looked to Martaina. But she does. He slowly looked around the circle and saw only Scuddar In’shara nodding in agreement. “I was on my own, you see.”