Fic: The Particulars of Friendship, Part One (Friends)
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Part One: Friends (1 of 3)



Friends

*

The fair metropolis of the realm states is the only real home I had ever known, being a child who’d grown up in a kingdom divided, one section into tyranny, the other into the vain hope of democracy, and at war with itself. Whatever land known to me before, the connection to it was severed, and could not be reformed; not even when, while still in my twenties, I travelled there and set my eyes upon it once again, certain that it was lost to me. The city was my dwelling, and its rhythm and force that drove me towards the understanding of my connection to the earth and people that my spirit desired.

In the strange elapse of ten days, days that passed over me—around me, I should clarify—when I was but a lad, that, as circumstances should so prescribe, I happened to witness firsthand the end of strife and the infant days of the new queen’s reign, and the return of the High Assembly, all in a fantastic whirlwind of moments beguiling and catastrophes plenty. Calamity waned, and tranquillity came upon the land, and I found worthwhile means to linger within the beautiful walls, pale and moss-covered, of Central City. And there, in a small flat on a winding road of Garber Knob have I resided decades immeasurable. Thirty, at least, as I quickly estimate, though it is difficult to tell, at times, as it has seen a great many changes since my earliest reckonings, but it is the history of this place that I often recollect. The history of its residents particularly was of interest to me, influenced by my position at the Academy as a professor of history, and prepared to answer multiple questions from my students on the previous condition of the city.

It was by my acquisition of the Head of Historical Studies at the Academy of Realm Sciences that I was prevailed upon, by an acquaintance of many annuals, to help him organise his thoughts for what, as he declared, would be his last novel.

‘Not a novel at all,’ he continued, quite legitimate, he felt, in his need to defend the idea, so that I might understand the achievement he wished to reach. ‘It is half a biography and half an autobiography. I have tried many times to pen myself into a biographical standpoint, and it is always to my detriment. You know perfectly well that I could not paint myself into a fair light. I am not a hero. It seems more dire that I construct those around me as heroes.’

We agreed to meet at an establishment of his choice, The Chester Inn, a pub in Garber Knob that fancied itself an eatery when it was no better than an ale house. But I arrived at the appropriate time, divesting coat and hat, delivering both to the host when I spotted my companion already seated.

‘You are here to see Mr Wallace,’ the host enquired, displaying eager gratitude that such a celebrity as the famed author T.D. Wallace should dine at his fine establishment, and to be joined by one whose features were as recognisable and yet still unable to be entirely placed. Supposing I, too, must be a celebrity of some status, the host showed me to the table, a heavy thing of thick wood, chairs to match made comfortable by portable cushions, but, in all, the finest table, for it was near the hearth, and the last of the chilly spring weather was upon us. Receiving gracious replies following his suggestion to bring about steins of house brew, our cheerful host flitted off into garrulous patrons and hazy shadows.

‘I seem to have discovered, much to my amusement, the comprehension of what, exactly, is wrong with my novel,’ started T.D. Wallace, in that manner of his, a sentence of greeting that indicated that our conversation had already commenced, or we were merely continuing one that had ended with our former meeting. But that was the way of Timaeus Wallace, formerly of the royal militia, and, when the moment of integration came, served as a Longcoat. And it was his novels of bitter war, and the epic romance behind them, that had so ensnared the minds of many, and had won him legions of devoted readers. He was a prolific author, an even more prolific poet, and quite dedicated to his craft. I had known him the majority of my life, and he was part father and part mentor to me, and he was first and foremost my friend.

‘Really, and what is that?’

‘I shouldn't be writing about myself at all. Can you think of a greater waste of paper and ink than a story of my life? I cannot but imagine. Thank you, Sleuth,’ murmured Tim to the landlord and host as the brew settled at its designated spot. After Sleuth gave a slight bow, and again wandered off, Tim let his eyes lift from the loose notes scattering the tabletop, to greet me with a grin that I had learned, quite a long time ago, preceded my friend’s incorrigible habit of perpetual ingenuity. ‘It occurred to me, moments before you stepped into this place, that I should not attempt, in any shape or form, to bring myself into the forefront of a novel about my own life.’

‘But it is about your own life,’ I concluded, already eyeing him bemusedly. ‘Why should you not want to write yourself into your own biography?’

‘As I’ve said, it has been attempted, only to find that I am not half as interesting as everyone has led me to believe all these annuals. And you may laugh, for it is funny, that I should find humility and humbleness at this age. Should you not like to know the reason why?’

‘I wish to hear it, if only to find a way to convince you otherwise.’

‘That shall not be done, as you’ll see. I have attempted it,’ and Tim angled pages towards me, some done by hand, others incorporating the typewriter, and all were heavily marked by a generous editing pen. ‘As you see, it never contains the proper flow; there is no fluidity here. I do not know where to begin, for one thing, as my childhood is nothing spectacular—’ But he suddenly caught himself stalling, then waved a hand to re-establish his motive. ‘The point is—the damnable point of the whole damnable thing is that I know about whom the story should be written. It is what wants to be written.’

I let my arm fall, the papers fluttering, and my commiseration soaring. In the golden light, surrounding us from all sides, pointless and directionless, discerning within Tim’s eyes the lift of tears, of old emotions he had thought were put to rest, rose anew, and fuelled the flame of this continual frustration.

‘If I have learned anything,’ sighed Tim, ‘it is this: Trying to write a story that does not want to be written is impossible; and trying not to write a story that wants to be written is imprudent.’

Supporting the decision of allowing creativity to reign as it wished was all I could provide. Though, to put to rest some specious trouble loitering in my conscience, I permitted him to take or leave the audible monition my professorial side could not help but utter. ‘This will not be an easy undertaking. It is one thing to write of your own life, seen by yourself as you were, but this is another thing entirely. You have hardly spoken to me of your annuals as a Longcoat—’

‘And I can hardly say anything about my friends without becoming,’ here he gestured to his face, ‘all weepy and teary-eyed.’

‘It was traumatic for you, I’m sure.’

His disconcerting glare melted my will, and I knew he would not be the sole author of such a tale. During this moment of realisation, my throat cleared, and I brought from my canvas satchel a composition book and a fountain pen.

‘What are you doing?’ Tim found my movements puzzling, and could not hope that he had so easily achieved his aim.

‘I admit some curiosity,’ I started, only to find I’d laughed at the end of the statement. ‘I admit an enormous curiosity, to say it plainly, about your tenure as a Longcoat. You have never said a word about it to anyone, as far as I know, and your novels continue to be, at best, fictionalised accounts of what you saw, but never what you experienced in your heart.’

‘My heart will not be the one I write about.’

‘They are a part of you, just as much now as they were then, and you cannot deny them that. Tell me how you saw them, your friends.’

But Tim shook his head, grieved and anxious and sorry to have brought it up at all. The tale was too important, and too far moulded in his mind to break from it now. He had lived it, he had seen it, and, as I said, he contradicted all by having not experienced it.

‘I remember Mal and Zero—as they were, before it all… I remember when we met. That is not good enough,’ Tim said, halting me as I began to take the first of what would be, as the months went by, notes taking a dozen composition books to complete.

I stopped, rested, and let the silence between us be as serene as it was willing, and in the silence I knew what would be done. ‘Tell me how they met, if that’s what needs to be written, if it is about Mal and Zero.’

‘It’s Zero,’ Tim repeated the phrase while rubbing a palm across an eye, ‘it’s Zero. The master of us all, but quiet, as a fire burns in the background, never noticed until it burns itself out. It’s Zero, and the love he had for all of us—for the men of the Southern Gale, for me, for Mal. His friendships mattered to him. He did not know what else to love.’

These findings were ruminated accordingly, and, finding nothing in that turn of his thought to manipulate into less applicable words, I set the pen upon the page, and leaned into the chair. ‘Tim?’

‘H’mm?’

‘What do you suppose was in Zero’s heart, then, the day he knew Malcolm Erdmyss was to be his captain?’

‘Anguish,’ immediately said Tim. ‘Anguish—and hope. Zero was always his own form of anguish, and Mal was always his hope.’


1.

Two weeks of furlough had, at first, crept by, in the shadows of mourning that Zero had had to reacquaint himself with, a guise he had not donned with such severity since the death of his mother, an occurrence that, carrying to that day a remonstrative ache in his chest, had been removed from his life for the better portion of three annuals. Emerging from this new daze of grief and into the caring hands of his sister, whose house he was forced to vacate almost immediately upon his alighting to it, he was able to return, in the assured fashion of his cautious frame of mind, into the world he had left. From the comfortable domicile along the pluvial marshes of the Jiensail River, and across the plains of the water’s eponymous state, and into the foothills surrounding the eastern regions that brushed gently at the doorstep of Central City, Zero became less and less the Zero Dertien that had lost, to the mayhem of war and its swift, unpredictable hand of chaos, a companion of four annuals, and left the cloak of this persona to drift into dormancy, as he passed the shade of the city on the hill, and felt again united with the rank of his military status. Once reaching the Tower, the domain of his sovereign and the general of his regiment, he was wholly acquainted with Captain Zero, and found it less foreign in his ears as the guard, met inside the formidable stone fortress, uttered the name in greeting.

‘Captain Zero,’ it was one of his own sergeants, Destry Moraine, and there, in a moment returned to themselves, they clasped hands, ‘welcome back. The general wishes to see you.’

Better the general, Zero believed, than the Sorceress. Undoubtedly, Sorceress Azkadellia was aware of his return, and, in the state of hatred his feeling easily slipped into, she would observe his misery and cherish it.

However, as the preclusions faded, Zero found himself in the company of the general. Sergeant Moraine made his departure immediate, but in spite of his hurriedness, he shut the door of the mid-storey conference room in absolute silence. The stillness was interrupted by low hissing; the wind wrapped itself tightly and tediously around obtruding tower stones. Like the squeal of the endless breezes, Zero knew the room as well, for all the annuals he had spent in it, attending weekly meetings, as his lieutenant’s administrative sergeant, and afterwards as a captain fit to receive his own orders. He awaited a new task, a new appointment, something that would level him while the earth's erosion carried on. Death continued to mesmerise him, and pull him into its murk, and pinion him with ties of tar and harnesses of misfortune. He had been saved in one act alone: It was not the general who had brandished upon Captain Zero the wares of the fallen Lieutenant Angell, and said those wounding words followed so closely by shallow placations. He had Azkadellia’s face, and her cool, lithe tone to addle a memory he did not want, that continued to rend him when it was not called upon to do so.

‘It is good that you have returned to us, Captain,’ said the general, at last putting aside pen and notes, the recording of orders and happenings within his regiment. He rose and took Zero’s hand in his, leaving a pat at the elbow, its touch both sympathetic and prideful. General Lonot was not a man most would find threatening, for he was a man of average height, his width inclined towards excessive; his hair had fallen out while he was still in his youth, and he took to shaving what sprigs remained; but his eyes were wrinkled at the corners from marching in the suns for over a quarter of a century, and left him with a kindly, paternal appearance. The men lucky enough to be under his command showered him with respect and adoration; many of them had started taking a razor to their pates in order to imitate his likeness, a practical joke for the popular general’s birthday, and one that was commandeered by additional regiments, beginning, unbeknownst to them, a fashionable style among the knights of her Majesty. The flattered general showed gratitude towards his men whenever permitted, if the leash should grant him liberties of that sort. Lonot had a fondness for Zero, as he did for all the Dertiens he’d fought alongside. For Zero, however, Lonot transformed his admiration into affection. Zero, even at his age, was still seen by Lonot as something of a boy, with room to mature and, adjoining that, room to err.

Zero stood in an empty space before the table, his hands behind him, his feet moved to the width of his shoulders. ‘It is nice to be home again, sir.’

Lonot snickered affably. ‘Unless I am mistaken, you have lately been at your real home, Zero, not this pitiful excuse for one.’ His teasing was rewarded in the captain’s small smile, mildly animated and yet subtle in its revelation. ‘And so you have come back to us, doubtless eager for instruction. I assume you know already that, in Lieutenant Angell’s passing, it has been suggested and unanimously agreed upon that you will fill the vacancy of his rank.’

Before his death, as though affixed to it at a psychic moment, Angell had alluded to the possibility of securing for Zero the promotion from captain to lieutenant colonel. ‘I have put in a good word or two on your behalf,’ Eddie had said, ‘and do not be surprised if they come to you with papers to sign, a new salary, and a shiny new lapel pin.’ But that was Angell’s way, aloof and comedic and not altogether serious, drowned too deeply in the recipes of madness to see the solemn angles of living and dying, fit to hover inextricably between the two.

‘It has been mentioned, sir,’ responded Zero.

Lonot couldn’t detect in Zero a hint of anxiety. This ability to perish from sight ineffectual emotions was the sign of a true soldier, and he had no doubt that, far below the surface, Zero was in bitter turmoil. He let his eyes bend downward, momentarily at a loss for words. It was easier when the boys of his employ lost a comrade: then all of them suffered equally in the black strobes of death. But, in the case of Lieutenant Angell, there would be no instance of equal suffering, for Angell had not been well-liked save by a few, and he had only been loved by Zero. To lose a lieutenant, a soldier could get over that, but friends were irreplaceable.

‘We’ll have you sign the papers in a moment, and I’ll make certain, as I plan to do it personally, that they are filed in time for the Southern Gale’s patrol Monday evening,’ informed Lonot, once again gliding around the far side of the table, and halting at the windows. He espied a dangerous rim of grey closing in around the northern range, and one of the suns in the west gleaming white, sure signs of a dreary weekend.

‘Yes, sir.’

Lonot caught the weakness in Zero’s words, and supposed the new lieutenant was bone-weary from the day’s journey, and worn from the cumbrance of grief. Angling about, Lonot chose to keep his words strong, concise, and vowed not to detain Zero longer than necessary. ‘You would probably like to see your uncle, so we’ll quit our meeting as soon as business has been sufficiently discussed.’

‘Is Lieutenant Dertien in town?’

‘The Eastern Blue Skies were on western patrol until yesterday. I believe he returned last evening. No doubt you will find him portly and content in his rooms, with his feet by the fire.’

Zero was able to smile at the image, only because Lonot had facilitated the decorous humour. ‘Socks in dire need of darning, no doubt. I will find him, sir, shortly. But I do ask that you tell me who has been appointed to my rank?’

‘You want to know who your new second captain is.’

‘If you have the name prepared, I would like to know it. Lieutenant Angell had his theories.’

The kindling of joviality once again rose, as Lonot knew it was like Angell to have made his own choices. ‘He wanted to be sure you were looked after. In his absence, he would have to find someone he trusted, an exemplary soldier, and someone that you would either respect immediately—or someone who would have to earn it.’

‘I’d say the former, sir,’ Zero said, ‘not the latter. I’m not inclined to grant deference without probability.’ At the halt Lonot committed, at the head of the table where his papers were gathered, Zero shifted the weight between his feet, and drew in a breath before uttering his conclusions. ‘From the way you’ve talked, General, I suppose you have given the promotion to Sergeant Erdmyss.’ When immediate contradiction did not arise, Zero hung his head, momentarily losing composure. ‘Just as well it be Erdmyss rather than someone I have never met before, someone that Angell didn’t know.’

‘Angell chose him, and I am acting according to his wishes.’ Lonot spoke the sentence quickly, anxious to dismiss the topic. Though, all the same, he could not go without establishing his own viewpoint. ‘If it had been my decision, as it ultimately was, I suppose, it would not have altered in the slightest from that of Lieutenant Angell. He was right to have chosen Sergeant Erdmyss. I realise that you do not know him particularly well…’

‘He was in Captain Brun’s company,’ Zero added. ‘And I can honestly say that, aside from a few ordeals that took place far from battlefields, and more likely developed from Angell’s ornery ways, Sergeant Erdmyss and I have never worked together before, not with any degree of success.’

‘You have complaints against his abilities?’

‘His abilities? No. He is, as you said, a soldier of exemplary talent.’

‘But? Be honest, Captain, as you will be delivering orders upon him, and you know better his will to follow them than I. This is your chance to deny the request made by your former lieutenant, and request your own captain. If you should have a reason not to trust Sergeant Erdmyss, you had best speak now. I will not have my lieutenant colonel distrusting his second captain.’

Zero paused, unable to communicate any of the miniscule misgivings that ran tediously through his conscience, and instead inhaled deeply, hoping to extinguish his findings. It was not, after all, Sergeant Erdmyss, his character or his talents, that developed within Zero pale, shapeless qualms. But it was the fear of change, that he would fail as a lieutenant, fail to lead men who may or may not listen to him, or that Eddie Angell’s belief in him, even in Sergeant Erdmyss, would collapse, and in that fall, shame would commence, command, and rule. At last, the delay ended, and Zero let out the breath he’d been holding, allowing it to carry his words towards General Lonot.

‘I have no complaints about the abilities or character of Sergeant Erdmyss.’

‘Good,’ Lonot said sharply. ‘You will see him when he returns.’

‘Returns?’

‘He was sent to Ambly with a company from the Winterborn Standard, in order to receive necessary training to fulfil his promotion.’

Zero expressed an odd disappointment, as though his opinion on the matter hadn’t counted. Lonot smirked, aware of what he witnessed.

‘It was a precaution, nothing more. If you chose not to secure the captainship of Malcolm Erdmyss, I was going to send him into the Winterborn Standard permanently, to take over a division we are forming from one of the larger platoons.’

‘Either way, he was going to receive a promotion.’

‘Yes.’

‘You think very highly of him.’ It was not formed as a query, but as a remark of General Lonot’s observance.

‘He is a good man, and a good soldier. If you do not know this already, Captain, you will.’ Lonot, fingertips pressed against a simple document, angled the page around, and with it, out of his other hand, sprouted a pen. ‘Your signature is required to transform your status from captain to lieutenant.’

Zero signed his name, the first one long and regal and beautifully etched in many loops, followed by the strong ‘D’ of Dertien, the last line of the ‘n’ finalising all with a slight upturning arch. But he was not to let the pen fall just yet, for there was an additional paper. Zero scanned its heading while Lonot summarised.

‘You are his superior officer, and now his lieutenant,’ said Lonot of Sergeant Erdmyss. ‘His promotion requires your mark, and only then will it be approved, and made official.’

And so Zero brought forth, with his own power, and his own will, the new captain of the Southern Gale, his first act as lieutenant colonel, undoubtedly and inarguably the most important act he ever committed for the Longcoats, and for himself.

*

To celebrate Zero’s advancement, regardless of its expectedness, Lieutenant Piperel Dertien, giving many pats upon the shoulder and encouraging breaths of Zero’s magnificent attributes as an officer, betook his nephew, who was never in a principally boisterous social mood, to a diner in the Central City neighbourhood of Downhill. The establishment was one of Pip Dertien’s favourite eateries, and many of the regular patrons therein knew him. Many outside the diner knew him as well, for he was a recognisable man of some established fame, having been the hero of the Enscommon Siege annuals back. His frowzy golden hair stood out inches from his scalp and would never, in all his fifty-seven annuals upon the planet, lie flat, and often gave him the appearance that he had spent too many hours flittering about in an electrical storm. To accompany this feature, he wore mutton chops, the brown of them now patterned by brushstrokes of grey, and only extended his comeliness, when so often this feature devalued. He was a little round in the middle, as to be expected from a lieutenant of his annuals, who enjoyed cuisine as much as he enjoyed evenings before the fire; and a lieutenant of the Eastern Blue Skies, the regiment least likely to see fits of excessive action, couldn’t be expected to have much in the way of calisthenics. But that he was broader and taller than Zero never went unnoticed, and neither could Zero claim any fittings of jealousy upon this observation as it struck him, or when others would walk by and ignore him in favour of his uncle, for Uncle Pip was, in Zero’s eyes, unchanged from this boyhood fixation, the most heroic knight to serve the Sorceress. Lieutenant Angell had once said so, adding on ‘I am the handsomest of knights, and none may argue that and anticipate victory, but Uncle Pip is the most heroic: when people think of Longcoats, it is his likeness, or very near it, that is conjured in a reverie.’

Uncle Pip possessed the characteristic that made it trying for him to sit still for long periods of time, or to carry on the same vein of conversation for more than fifty words exchanged in total. But that he was manufactured of equal parts the bombastic, the curious, and the mercurial, it made him agreeable in spite of his fickleness. It also made him repetitive in his sayings. ‘I am proud of you, nephew of mine, exceedingly proud,’ had already been said, throughout repast, a handful of times. And if an acquaintance of theirs—or, more appropriately, of Uncle Pip’s—should happen along the way beside their table, he or she would be grabbed and told of Zero’s promotion. Lieutenant Dertien was as proud as any father, or prouder than, having known the ordeals that Zero had endured to achieve his newfound rank. There were, of course, others who shared in Uncle Pip’s enthusiasm, those that knew Zero well enough to feel they had known him just as long, had seen him grow from small sprout to cloaked captain, and would see him soon enough, come any day after Sunday, donned in the epaulettes of a lieutenant. One such visitor was a Miss Adreanna Meadow, a woman of profession that served Uncle Pip from time to time, but Zero devised, in his cunningness to see into characters that concealed nothing of their desires and hatreds, that Uncle Pip and Miss Meadow had formed a relationship of deep commitment. That she joined them for the meal, not altogether an accident as Uncle Pip had claimed, did not surprise Zero in the least. Her domicile, where she took clients and ruled and reigned as supreme guildmaster of professional cyprians and courtesans, was but four blocks from the favoured brasserie, a leisure stroll if she had beforehand permitted herself the liberty. While Zero did not have quite the parental comfort with her as established with his uncle, particularly following the death of his father and his registration with the army, nonetheless he was fond of her, and yet could not bring himself to address her less formally. She teased him on this account, as she teased him about many things, as was the wont of those stationed in the branch of the family tree as aunt. Towards the end of her meal, Miss Meadow confessed her own pride for Zero’s achievement.

‘You will do a fine job, I’m sure,’ declared she, giving no one, not even Zero, should he find it in himself to be humble, a tone fit for argument. ‘You will do such a fine job that you will eventually outshine your uncle—and will perhaps gain your own siege someday, to make your name famous throughout the leisure classes of the thirteen realms who happen to be passing parley in their sitting parlours. If, that is to say, you have not already achieved this.’

Before Zero could reform her mode of thought, Miss Meadow, her dark eyes twinkling, turned the conversation to less insightful ventures. She knew Zero well by then, as it has been said, for the better part of four annuals, nearly five, for as long as she had been attached to Piperel Dertien, and knew when he could no longer permit others to speak of his greatness, as though it would be jinxed.

‘So, tell us what you haven’t told us yet,’ invited Miss Meadow, diving the fork tines into the centre of a custard pie slice. ‘Tell us the name of your new captain. That is what I would like to know, and the only reason I came to dine with the two of you.’ Pip chuckled at her humour, and squeezed her a bit at the waist, and she was glad to feed him a bite of the pie. ‘Come on, Zero, who is it? Don’t tell me you haven’t the faintest idea yet. I may not know so much about the army, but I know enough to realise they would not hoist your epaulette without first knowing who would fill your vacated rank.’

‘Oh, that is a good question, my dear,’ Uncle Pip unanimously decided that Zero should let them know the identity of this mystery captain. ‘Considering that you, my moody and sullen nephew,’ he did not see the repugnant face that Zero passed, as it was tilted forward to catch all manner of gloominess, ‘have never been particularly close to the likes of Captain Johannes Brun, your first captain.’

‘I trust Captain Brun with my life,’ Zero said, stabbing his pie with the fork, ‘and that is all we require of one another. I am not in the army to acquire friends, Uncle.’

‘Especially now,’ added Adreanna Meadow, look lilting, and analysing him again, now that Edric Angell had been entombed. Zero would not want to attach himself to anyone else so soon, or be latched to one by the golden clasp of friendship, or the tin hasp of something fleeting and unstable. ‘If I knew the men of the Southern Gale better, I would establish a guess. But I only know a few of their names. And if it’s Sergeant Erdmyss, I will eat Uncle Pip’s hat.’

‘It is Erdmyss,’ Zero said at once, wondering how she had completed the puzzle so quickly. ‘He one of your clients?’

‘Erdmyss?’ Adreanna laughed softly. ‘Zero, you’re delightful, but now I’m afraid I must pity you—by example if not by reason, for I see that you don’t know him very well.’

‘You’re not of his interest?’

‘No one is of his interest,’ she established quickly, the hint of a smile upturning the corner of a mouth that commonly deferred to happiness and humour. ‘You will learn that about him soon enough. I hear they sing songs about his prudish ways.’

‘That is not true,’ countered Piperel Dertien, flamboyantly willing to see Zero’s new second captain as a caricature, not someone hovering in the outer rims of his acquaintance. ‘I knew him a little, did I not, Zero? We were once all in the same regiment together. I remember him when he came as an aspirant. Tall, gangly lad that put one in mind of some sort of sea creature, as he was certainly all arms and legs at the time. I suppose he has grown into them, at least a little, from my recollection of last seeing him. A decent lad, a good soldier, and does very fine in the way of equine care. He was always more than willing to look after my horse. Poor ole Jollicoss never had such pampering! He was loyal, almost to a fault, I’d say. The lad, not the horse, should clarification be required.’

‘Erdmyss would’ve done anything Eddie asked him to do,’ Zero responded, finding it fitting that he should add his own memories of Erdmyss, stale and greyed as they had become. ‘He was one of the few people that liked Angell, and Angell liked him.’ Again, Zero, armed with the fork, let his anger show in the way he cut a bite of pie. ‘I don’t know what he was thinking… Erdmyss… Good with horses and little else. What use would he be as a captain?’

‘Nephew, you’re gibbering nonsense again,’ warned Pip. ‘Take care that others do not hear you. And don’t judge Sergeant Erdmyss yet.’

‘You owe him that, at least,’ said Adreanna. Zero was quick to determine that, by the shine in her eye, the gloss of wisdom in the back of them, that she meant Angell—that he owed it to Angell rather than Erdmyss. An inarguable point, one that calmed him, and brought forth the offering to do just as she suggested.

‘He is in Ambly with the Winterborn Standard,’ Zero told them, discerning that their next question, of course, would be to ask after the date of the new captain’s establishment, and when, if applicable, there would be time to meet him. ‘Placed temporarily with the cavalry unit of the Standard in order to receive further training, and he will return tomorrow night, late, and I will meet with him Monday, at an hour to be determined. General Lonot was going to promote him, whether or not I wanted him, and that is just as well. Many other regiments are in need of decent captains.’

The server came round to clear away the empty pie dish in front of Adreanna and Uncle Pip, but Adreanna, sly in her manoeuvres, took away Zero’s plate, upon which remained a decent amount of pie. Zero was left staring at the empty tabletop, and with a fork in his hand, yet lifted towards Miss Meadow an expression of exasperation. She caught it and was unafraid of him, able to see him as the boy Pip had told stories about, back when Zero was carefree and ‘of the earth’ and used to roam about the plains of Jiensail barefoot, and citizens used to call him ‘an oddity’ behind his back, in harsh whispers.

‘You are not eating so much as having an outlet for your frustration,’ Adreanna said. ‘No pie deserves such treatment, and you deserve better treatment for yourself. You know perfectly well that Sergeant Erdmyss, the great caretaker of horses, the creature of the sea, or whatever he truly is, has talents that fit him with a whole cavalry unit—one, I don’t know,’ she taunted him now, ‘one like the Southern Gale, perhaps?’ Adreanna knew her point had been sufficiently declared, and tailored appropriately to assuage the worries Zero possessed. However, as hard as she tried, and as much as she and Pip, in later hours, tried to determine his reasons for it, she could not understand his apprehension.

‘He makes me uncomfortable,’ Zero finally told them. ‘He always makes everyone uncomfortable.’

‘Perhaps it’s because he’s so tall,’ Pip hurriedly said. ‘That is the reason he makes me uncomfortable.’

‘He’s better off tending horses than leading men.’

‘He’s better off with you,’ Adreanna provoked, curious about how far the argument went within Zero, and if she could instil him with optimism rather than this obtuse predilection sitting so cumbrously upon his shoulders. ‘Death and rank changes, and the changes within the army itself, those can alter a man. What made you uncomfortable about him before may not be so now. Meet him Monday,’ she brightened the shroud covering his hopes with her assuring smile, ‘and tell me then that he has not changed, or find that you haven’t changed either.’

*

They saw Adreanna Meadow returned to her establishment by the time twilight nestled upon the eastern hillsides, making those in the west far more distant and covered in a downy mist. Zero’s inability to withstand another moment of Miss Meadow’s compulsory discernments, though they had fallen into a discourse of obedient congruence after her last remark about the new captain’s arrival, obligated him to stand at a distance from her as those four blocks dwindled to none, and to continue his distance while Uncle Pip and she gave brief farewells outside her door.

‘Good luck, Zero. You’ll be in my thoughts.’

He graciously nodded at this, saying nothing more, content to watch the door close against its latch, and the curtains glow as the light within ignited.

After some time of walking, until they had reached the infamous squawking automobiles, clopping horses, and pedestrians along the twisting, turning Bond Street, the busy avenue that ran through nearly every neighbourhood of Central City, Pip patted, with a hand of satisfaction, the slight rise of his girth.

‘I am quite packed. Couldn’t eat another thing. Think that is a sign that I might forego the poker game I’m sure is waiting on me in the common room, and retire early. If you do not take offence to this, Zero.’

‘Should I? You have spent hours with me, listening to my woes and personal conundrums, and I can’t imagine a better reason for wanting to dispense of my company in favour of continuous quiet.’ Zero, in the reliance and fortitude established in his uncle’s inability to contradict the interpretation, went on in a harangue that took flight beneath the wings of grief, the colourless scapular he had not yet shed. ‘I have not been in a fair frame of mind today, and for that, I apologise.’

‘Your apology is not accepted, nephew.’

‘But it was sincere, and was not presented in facetiousness.’

‘That you give me remorse when you yourself are experiencing it firsthand, it is not something I accept. You have, as far as I can tell, sufficient reason to be in desultory spirits as of late, and spurious to the detriment of yourself and others. Let it happen. Let it exist. All that I ask is that you not embrace it, for it will continue to subsist in you, whether or not it is exorcised or, by the power of the gods you have spent eleven days with, extracted from the outer portion of your soul. I know not, care not, and would not ask you to change your ways for anything. Be grumpy,’ he said, adding to the exoneration of his nephew’s moodiness with a wave of a gloved hand, ‘and revel in your grumpiness. Grief touches us all,’ Pip suddenly stopped to say the words, sure that Zero would understand. ‘The death of your brother, your parents—such pains have never really left you, just as those loved ones have never really left you. But the death of a best friend, of a spouse,’ Pip left a tight grip at Zero’s shoulder, then at his cheek, ‘that is not something that is left behind without any sort of inner debris.’

‘I have had my revenge, Uncle,’ Zero reminded him, as they began their steps again.

‘The thing with the Cains,’ muttered Pip, trying to sound less displeased than he was. Like all Dertiens, staunch royalists from the day of birth till the moment of death, Piperel Dertien had no respect for the family responsible, in the minds of many, for the growth and popularity of the Resistance. ‘Yes, and I’m sure Mr Wyatt Cain was very stoic and accepting of his condemnation, was he not?’

‘He was, but the boy and—and Cain’s wife were less so.’

Uncle Pip snorted. ‘Your cousin is a strong woman, and it will not be the last we hear of her. She will find injustice in what you have done.’

Zero had no wish to talk of this. They had spoken, at length, about those responsible for Lieutenant Angell’s death, and how long it had taken Zero to find the single Cain responsible for it. Pip became less interested and far more concerned when Zero informed him that the murderer happened to be the spouse of Adora Clay, daughter of Regina Clay, the cousin of Zero’s mother. That he and Adora, a well-known recruiter for the Resistance, and famous for her speeches and articles of socialist democracy, and Zero, a royalist who could not fathom the depth of Adora’s inanity, should thus be intertwined as second cousins, never failed to amuse Uncle Pip, to whom he reported the tales to Adreanna, and from Adreanna the story was rooted well in urban apocrypha. The week following Angell’s death remained a blear of insignificant pictures, and far more significant ones that Zero would rather forget.

‘Erdmyss was there that day,’ Zero found himself musing this aloud. The presence of Sergeant Erdmyss at such an occasion was not without foundation. ‘He was a friend of Eddie’s, and he sought revenge against his death nearly as much as I.’

‘And so he went with you to the homestead of Wyatt Cain.’

‘He did,’ Zero sighed. ‘He watched the horses while the rest of us established our motives and employed our brutishness. Erdmyss is not a militant man. He only wanted to be there, and witness it with his own eyes, the way we dealt with who had been the cause behind Angell’s death. Whether Wyatt Cain actually pulled the trigger that killed him, of that—of that I do not know. Adora insists that he’s innocent, but it does not excuse him of crimes against the realm states. Erdmyss was—not particularly pleased with the outcome. He punched me, later that night,’ and Zero had to laugh at the remembrance. ‘He lobbed me with a fist in the stomach, one thing about him that I did not see coming. Not a militant man, I grant you, but he is not above it if his desire is understood perfectly.’

Uncle Pip, hearing many stories of the like falling from the delicate and slow oration of his nephew, knew well that, if asked, Zero would not provide details into the cause behind the sergeant’s physical rebelliousness. ‘Did you punish him for this action?’

‘No,’ Zero shook his head, touching on the mournfulness within. Erdmyss had been in the right, expressing his disagreement in the only way he’d known how. ‘Revenge is not his province, it seems, loyal as he might be. I left the next day for Jiensail, to sit the Passage, and it felt improper placing judgment upon Erdmyss, when his was so accurately placed upon me.’

‘That is a funny thing to say,’ Pip said. ‘But you know your men best, I suppose.’

‘And that is what I find funny, Uncle. I know Erdmyss only by his looks, his talents, that he is known for carrying as sword as much as he is known for being a Carazdran farmhand who was once employed by a circle of questionable individuals. In effect, Uncle, I don’t know Sergeant Erdmyss at all save for superficialities, and I am beginning to suspect that very few know him acutely.’

As the boscage enveloping them faded away to mere underbrush, and the underbrush grew in shortness to the height of tall grass, Zero and Pip established their goodbyes, for one was bound to the western barracks, and the other to the eastern. Thither they went, each burdened by his own thoughts, his own ruminations upon the news and tales and information delivered throughout the day.

Passing through the common room, as a means of checking the status of any troops who happened to be there, Zero heard many congratulations from those familiar faces of men in his regiment that he had not yet seen. The power of gossip was a rampant, uncontrollable entity among Longcoats, particularly in barracks, camps, and forts, as many of them were already aware of Sergeant Erdmyss becoming Captain Erdmyss. There was not a range of opinions on this, not those who thought it was fantastic to those who thought it an idea that would reflect terribly upon the royal militia: there existed only those who found it predictable, whose minds were serene with the idea, and null were the complaints.

Zero tried to find reassurance in this, as Sunday came and went in the bland gloss of unimportance, until evening arrived, and the moment that he stood at the window of his room and watched that especial company of the Winterborn Standard alight into the Queen’s Valley. The clouds had been thick from the close of Saturday and all through Sunday, and only then, during the quietest hour of night, did the rain begin its shift from the heavens to dampen the earth. By a dim glow of outer lamps was Erdmyss recognisable, taller than the men who’d arrived with him. He was coaxed, no doubt by a joke or two of his commitment to the creatures, out of caring for his own horse in favour of someone else, likely a lowly aspirant whose unspoken contract had assigned him to such a subservient position. As soon as the returned members entered the common room, Zero heard a rush of hoots and hollers, followed by long minutes of rambunctious laughter. The voices, in decrescendo, left the opportunity for Zero to hear his name mentioned, by others first, and secondly by Erdmyss, that timbre recognisable, already, thanks to the commands Erdmyss had given his platoon when he’d been a second aspirant, and with its readiness to obey orders while Captain Brun’s secretarial sergeant.

Behind the closed door, with his palms flattened against it, Zero pressed his ear. He heard footfalls, first of two men, then of three, and then one as the others drifted into the distance. Supposing it was Erdmyss, Zero put his hand on the doorknob, prepared to open it, to give a greeting, but then found that he was not quite ready to face his new captain. His apprehension rose to a calamitous degree when her heard Erdmyss hinder such speedy steps just on the other side of the door, as if he, too, had thought to stop, to lay upon the wood a rap which might lead to a greeting between new lieutenant and new captain. Zero grimaced, and around the brass knob fingers tightened to an increased degree, but slackened exponentially with his resolve.

The figure in the corridor moved on, until silence prevailed, only to be interrupted by rain smacking against the roof, and gurgling in the gutters as vociferously as it pattered against the soil. Zero fell upon the bed and buried his head beneath the pillow, rather glad to have a whole twelve hours to go before he would be a lieutenant, before he had to meet his new captain, before he was the undeclared leader of an entire regiment.

His eyes flickered open at the first shot of lightning across the wilds slipped through the curtains and dappled the interior, but it was comforting, consoling, and mitigated otherwise inappeasable worry. He appealed to the gods, and asked for their strength, and that, if he should be a disappointment to the twenty-eight men of the Southern Gale, that he possess the acumen to realise it, and the peace of mind to listen when given advice on how to mend his errors, whether that advice came from the familiar Captain Johannes Brun—or from the youthful and nearly unknown Captain Erdmyss.





Part One: Friends (2 of 3)