“Alice!” Aurie ran into her arms the moment she saw her in the port. The hesitation of Alice’s embrace only made her pull tighter. She felt Alice’s stifled breath on her neck as she leaned into it with a wetness that only tears would make. “I missed you. Where have you been? We were so worried about you. You have no idea how important you are to us.” Aurie leaned back only enough to see her face.
Alice’s eyes were in a haze, distant, looking through her while looking into hers. The lines of her neck, the only part of the woman who was at least ten years her senior that revealed her age, were filled with dirt and grime, crisscrossed with long bruises that were beginning to swell. The shoulders of her unusually ordinary dress were ripped nearly to tatters to reveal more scrapes and bruises that followed to her arms. And her face—Aurie felt her breath sticking in her throat at the sight—was sickly pale beneath layers of bruises, scratches, and oily grime. Her matted graying brown hair clung to her crinkling brow as she stared back at Aurie in unmistakable, gaping confusion.
Enya went around them as the sounds of the bombardment striking the Hall’s walls echoed like thunder around them. The lake water splashed over the docks and across her boots as she made her way towards the small row boats rocking against each other on their tethers between the pillars along the wall to the gate. On the boats nearest the gate, the Cleric and a group of knights were wrestling with the heavy chain to get it over the hook they had just fixed in place of the one that had been knocked from the beam above the gate.
“Don’t you know,” Aurie shook her head at Alice. “You’re family.”
Alice blinked glistening eyes at her. They were still in a haze, but she lifted her chin slightly, trembling as she said, “I was doing my duties, still. I never abandoned my House.”
Aurie shook her head, “Duties? I thought something might have happened to you. I thought you left us. If not for Valmond still being around, I would have thought you completely abandoned us. Abandoned me.”
Enya stopped at the edge of the dock and called to the Cleric, “Cleric Brandon?”
“Ho,” he answered while balancing on the boat that rocked with the waves of another tidal quaking from a splashing bombardment.
“I need to speak with you,” Enya called to him.
“I serve my House,” Alice bowed her head at Aurie.
Aurie lifted her face with both hands, “Family, Alice. Plow your properness, you’re not my servant. Don’t disappear on me again.” She grappled her into another tight embrace, tucking her cheek into Alice’s shoulder, “You’re part of this family, not a servant, not to me. You hear me? Family.”
Alice nodded. There was no hesitation this time. She held on just as tightly. Aurie could hear the smile in the choking laugh through her crying. “I’m so scared, Aurie. I’ve never felt so scared. Maud scared me. This is all scaring me. I’m trying to keep everything together. I’m trying to keep it all running for you, but it is overwhelming me.”
“Me too,” Aurie gripped her. “Me too. And don’t worry about Maud. She did what needed to be done and did well. She kept everything together exactly how it needed to be. You should be proud of her. Don’t be afraid of her. You should never be afraid of us, Alice. We would never do anything to hurt you. You’re one of us. You’re one of ours.”
Alice shook her head, “I don’t…I can’t,” she pulled from her and looked at her squarely. “I can’t believe that, my Lady. I…won’t. I’m not. No matter what you say, I am not a Clevlan or a Luminis. I am a Dessinateur, a servant to the House Luminis and House Clevlan, loyal to my last breath, but nothing more.”
Aurie couldn’t hold it in anymore. Her face twisted between a scowl and weeping. “Then I free you of your servitude. You are free of your position.”
Even Enya turned on her with wide eyes. She could almost hear the gasping scoff over the sounds of the slaps of waves and booms of the raging siege beyond the walled port and workers within rushing to clean bloody linens and bowls.
“That’s not—”
“Now, you are free to be my friend,” Aurie clenched her teeth, fighting in vain to keep her shaking lips from dropping completely open. “To be my sister, if you choose. I’ll give you…I don’t know…whatever I have. It’s yours. If I make it out of this, you can have my home, my love, my everything. Just, don’t ever go again! I’ll make Draka turn you into my equal if I must. He’ll find himself without Maud’s stew for a year if I have to, I swear it!”
A smile crept across Alice’s face. “You really mean it?”
Cleric Brandon finally stumbled from rocking boat to boat onto the dock beside Enya. “I always liked Paladin Dietrich. He tends to gather the best sort around him. If she’s one of the nobles of this land, I’m glad to call it home.”
“She is,” Enya had her brows cocked as Aurie and Alice leapt into each other’s arms. She blinked it away to focus on him. “How difficult do you think it would be to hang barrels of fish oil across those beams and rig them to be opened if swimmers are seen coming this way? And, keep them warm enough to stay liquid?”
Cleric Brandon shrugged, “We keep it fairly warm in here, but that water is ice. A matter of minutes and anyone will die of hypothermia in it, I don’t care who you are. Of course, the Olgas do have the advantage on that, though.” He eyed the beams. “Send me some rods to fix to the beams—ten should do, I think—for the braziers, three ladders, and I’ll get the ropes ready. What’s the plan? Drop oil on them and light it? It’ll burn the port, too, you know?”
“No,” Enya winked, and waved him to follow her to where Aurie and Alice were standing. She held her arms out at the stacks of netting and crates against the foundations of the island beneath the castle, “We’re going to place barrels aimed at them, here, filled with sodium extracted from my nitrate. It reacts to the fish oil. I’ll get my artificer team to rig it while you get the barrels set.”
“Sounds like a one-shot trap,” Cleric Brandon winced, “What happens when it goes off?”
Aurie and Alice broke from their embrace, both wiping at their smiling faces to listen.
“It’ll raise the temperature of the oil quickly,” Enya pulled a folded paper from a pocket inside her breast plate. She turned to Aurie, “Count your paces from end to end, heel to toe.”
Aurie nodded, shrugging at Alice’s confused glance at her. She went to the end of the dock and began stepping the way Enya said, counting in her head as she went. Enya eyed the dock, then looked over the ropes that they were tethered to it. There were ropes sectioning off the waters, two that went from the docks straight to the gates with barely any slack.
“How long are those ropes?” Enya asked Cleric Brandon.
“Twelve meters.”
“Twenty-two,” Aurie called from the opposite end of the dock.
“Watch this,” Enya flicked her brows at Cleric Brandon. To Aurie as she came to her side while marking on her paper with a short black pencil, “What is that in meters?”
“I don’t know,” Aurie shook her head. “How would I know that?”
“Your foot is likely about thirty-seven centimeters. It’s Twenty-two thirty-seven centimeter steps.”
Aurie drew in a breath, pinching her mouth sideways. Thirty twice is sixty, seven twice is fourteen, which makes thirty-seven twenty times seven hundred forty, adding seventy-four for additional two of twenty-two and it makes… “Eight hundred and fourteen?”
“Wait…wait,” Enya was marking and drawing lines on her paper. Cleric Brandon was looking over her shoulder. Finally, she looked up from the paper, beaming proudly as she held it for him to see, “You got it. So, eight hundred and fourteen centimeters is eight-point-fourteen meters. This dock is the standard, right?”
“Six meters wide, yes,” Cleric Brandon nodded.
“So, eighteen meters total from the edge to the gate,” Enya pointed. “Eighteen by eight. Aurie?” Enya was already writing her equation. “What is eighteen, eight times?”
“Eighteen, eight times?” Aurie shrugged, “That’s easy…” In her head, she saw eighty and sixty four come together in a flash, “Hundred and forty-four.”
“And twelve, eight times?”
“Ninety-six.”
“Now break it by three-point-fourteen?”
Aurie raised a brow. “What does that mean, ‘point-fourteen’?”
Enya looked up from her paper, “If you break down one into a hundred, then you get point-fourteen from counting fourteen of those. So, what would it be if you divide it up into three-point-fourteen pieces?”
Aurie crinkled her brow. Ninety-three broken into three pieces would be thirty-one, but then, fourteen doesn’t break three times. Twelve does. So, thirty and four with two remaining, but then that would be broken up, too. Aurie tipped her head. This was harder. If she broke the fourteen the way she would a recipe, it could be one forty instead and that would make it so that she had the two numbers instead of one, giving her forty-six or seven… “Thirty-point-forty-six or seven?”
“She’s close,” Cleric Brandon looked like he was ready to begin clapping when he looked up from Enya’s finished equation.
“In her head, no less,” Enya shook her head, blinking. “Thirty-point-fifty-seven. Amazing. I think you might be a genius.”
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Alice stared at her, awestruck. “I’ve never been able to do that. I am thoroughly impressed, Aurie. Where did you learn arithmetic? I thought you were never educated.”
Aurie dismissively waved her off, “Money. Why did you need to know all that?”
“Well, we’re not done yet,” Enya looked up. “That’s the force modifier for the sodium ignition. We need thirty-point-fifty-seven kilograms of force from a blower, which means we need a heavy blower from the forge that can be pressed with full force all at once in a concentrated fashion. Now, for the area calculation for how many barrels is the easiest part. Each barrel holds how many liters?”
“Three hundred,” Aurie answered quickly.
“So, if we estimate that one hundred liters will cover exactly one square meter of water, we would need,” Enya was already writing.
Aurie let out a long breath, “Thirty-one barrels. And they’d need to be pressed tight together.”
Enya had barely written the first line of numbers. She and Cleric Brandon blinked at each other and turned to her, wide eyed.
“I guess that answers that,” He shrugged. “Do we have that many?”
“Find out,” Enya said once she was able to blink away her astonishment. “Seriously, you need to be an artificer. Once you learn to read and write, you’ll be unstoppable.”
“Engineering in general would welcome her with open arms,” Cleric Brandon looked her over the way a man looking for a wife might, “I know our cohort would welcome you as our command.”
“You’ll be wondrous as the Lady of an estate,” Alice was flush. “I wish I had seen it earlier. I knew you were talented in managing the finances and keeping stocks, but this is far beyond that. You could manage projections, investments, procurements…”
“All well and good,” Enya stood between the others and Aurie with her hands on her hips, “But if I can interest you in the science of it all. Think cooking but making things go boom instead of eating it afterwards.”
Aurie took a step back from the maniacally encouraging smile on Enya’s face. The rumbling of yet another thunderous pounding on the walls that quaked the boards under their feet and lake water splashing across their boots didn’t help. She crinkled her brow with a hesitation bred from the wildness she saw in Enya’s eyes.
“Are there other things that I could do other than hurt people with this?” Aurie winced.
The Cleric leaned around Enya. He was shorter than Aurie, she noticed in that moment.
His smile was broad, “Engineering! Ours is also done with formulas and mathematics. Structures are all designed—excuse me, Paladin Commander—” he slid around a sunken and pouty Zulu-Mongolian behemoth of a warrior clad in armor who looked like her most precious doll had just been torn from her, “by calculating angles and areas, supplies are designated prior to the work site. We construct the bridges, the fortifications, defensive structures, supply lines, and siege equipment. We do man the trebuchets along with the artificers, sure, but ours is mainly the assembly and defenses. And, if you truly are good with it, you might be able to understand things like centrifugal force, wind-shear estimations, maybe even design new structures or redesign those we use already.”
“Not much room for managing an estate, I see,” Alice sank from them. “You’re a soldier now, I forget. You and…” She gulped it down, though Aurie couldn’t help but turn her eyes to her.
“I will do both,” She put a reassuring hand on Alice’s arm. “Plus, I’ll have my two sisters helping me. One to keep my subjects remembering that we’re common folk,” she rolled her eyes at the fact that Leta would certainly be incapable of being anything but Leta. Alice will eventually figure that out. “And one who will always know what is best for our family.” That, she said with her warmest grin. If she ever has another child—especially if she has one with Draka—she will make Alice it’s guardian if something were to happen to her.
She had heard of such things in Alcer. The ones who held the newborns in the churches when water was crossed on their foreheads were never their parents, they were always someone close and trusted by the mother and father who would be like a mother or father to them as well. That was what she would want for Alice. More than anything. She knew there was a title for that person and when she finds out what it is, she’ll make sure Alice receives it the moment she’s capable. If she makes it out of all this alive, she will move the world and beg God to the ends of her life to bear Draka’s heir and spare.
“All well and good, but that is also part of what we do, you know!” Enya piped in, pushing him aside. “We have to do all the same things as him. Figure out the structures, but also learn their base weight and mass, understand the physics of the gravity center and know not only the centrifugal force, but also the exact calculation of the kilograms of pressure per centimeter based on precision of—mind you, by sight alone—” She gave Cleric Brandon a narrow eyed challenge, “—mass and velocity. Not to mention, the mixtures we have to remember on the fly while all literal hell is raging around us. You’re the Rose in Frost, a natural in combat and can solve complex base equations in your head. You were made to be in the front lines, Aurie, with us. With your King, covering him with fire and brimstone.”
“Or mapping out supply trains, defensive structures, assembling and innovating our heavy machinery and literally everything else you can come up with,” Cleric Brandon shrugged. “We even are the ones who make sure that our lot have places to sit when they relieve themselves, you know. It was a Paladinate engineer who found the bidet in the Parisia ruins and was able to figure out how to apply it without the utility power of the old world. It was also the Paladinate engineers who have been slowly rebuilding the aqueducts to bring water to the cities. They’ve gotten it almost completely to Parisia, by the way. Won’t be long before they’ll be knocking on Nancy’s gates to build it up there. We do more than just war, unlike the…” He cleared his throat at Enya, who scoffed at him, “Artificers.”
“We mine in peacetime and help with construction of…stuff,” She scrunched her nose at him.
“They’re fighting over you,” Alice was lost in wonder.
Aurie only let out a long, beleaguered sigh, “Yeah. I’m thinking that logistics might be more what I want to do, if I have to choose from what they’ve told me, but I don’t know yet. I’m still not even really trained yet. Either way, I think I’m going to go.” She grabbed Alice’s hand with a firm squeeze, “Don’t ever disappear on me again. Find me when you get the chance. I’m going to see if I can find Draka before I…” Her eyes drifted, she didn’t know what to say without saying too much, especially with Enya there. “…Get too caught up in other things.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s more interested in being a positive mark on society,” Cleric Brandon was too short to be nose to nose with Enya, so he was taking a more humored stance against her. “She doesn’t seem like the type who thinks that watching things go poof is entertainment.”
“Once she does it without it being something trying to make her go poof, maybe she will,” Enya was shaking her head at him. “You don’t know. You’re confusing the woman. She’s new to the idea of being a soldier in general. But she’s my trainee and she’s got a knack for exactly what an artificer needs. Recipe memorization and math? What more could you ask for as a base talent? She’d be our prodigy! Maybe become the Patron Saint of Artificers along with Saint Barbara.”
Aurie didn’t hear the reply. She merely told Alice in a whisper, “I’m going to see if I can get Draka away from everyone. Tell them I was summoned or something?”
“Of course,” Alice grinned with a glisten. “And thank you.”
“Find me when you have time later,” Aurie said before rushing up the steps.
She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that Draka was standing in the bailey. She stumbled to a halt. He was frozen, staring blankly at the goats crammed in Vigora’s stall so tightly that they couldn’t lay down.
Aurie’s shoulders sank at the sight. The bailey was moving around him as if he were a fixture, an armored scarecrow in a windy field of soldiers and workers. She wondered if the pile of ashes on his shoulders and on his head, spilling from inside the helmet held in his slumped hand, were because he had been standing there that long.
“Draka,” She touched his hand gripping the helmet, the only part of him that wasn’t covered by steel other than his soot smothered face.
He turned to her, his eyes filled with sorrow beneath a brow furrowed with anger. With pain. He looked her over with a quick glance as if checking that she still didn’t have any injuries. She warmed to that and curled her fingers to his palm with a brush of the knuckles gripping that cold helm by its visor.
“I miss her, too,” Aurie caressed him with her thumb, grinning up at him.
Thinking about it, she did miss that little beast stealing her vegetables from the garden and all the mischief she would get into, how happy she made him. She really didn’t understand how important she was to him, not until she saw the way he narrowed his eyes at her through his sorrow. It was the way she would at anyone who mentioned her loss when their husbands were standing next to them. Disbelief, suspicion, and grief, bound together in the yearning for it all to be dispelled and torn away by someone, anyone.
Aurie winced with a blinking nod, “I know. I…don’t understand how you feel. Not really. But I do understand,” she took a step closer to him, “that she was important to you and that her loss is painful for you. So, I’m here. She was a really good horse. She was the best horse I’ve ever met. I wish mine was like her. In that way, I miss her, too. She took care of Maud, she took care of you, the two most important people in my life. That makes her a horse I’ll never forget.”
He grinned slightly at her.
“Can I talk to you for a moment? In private?” Aurie was glad for his nonchalant shrug.
She motioned for him to follow her toward the narrow space between the infirmary and the stacks of barrels that had replaced the ones she destroyed two days ago. Secluded but not to the point that they are hidden or ‘risking impropriety,’ as Alice would put it. She leaned against the freshly nailed boards of the wall with an exasperated sigh at her boots.
He pinched his mouth to one side at her, crinkling his brow.
“I don’t like not knowing, Draka,” Aurie shook her head at her feet. “She’s our daughter, right?” She drew in a breath before raising her eyes to him. She made sure to fill them with conviction. “They don’t know her like we do. They don’t love her like we do. We should be there with her.”
He winced at her.
“No, hear me first before you say no,” Aurie straightened from her lean with a finger aimed at the ground between them. “I want us to go into her dreams together. I think I can do it. I think I can draw her into a memory—a good memory—of us. Maybe a dream of something that would remind her of what we’re fighting for, what we’re doing here, what all of this is for. Talk to her in a way that won’t be like a trial or whatever they’re doing to her. Maybe…” Aurie sank back into the boards, “Maybe one with…” she shook her head and let out a long breath to keep her eyes from watering. She bit her lip. “One with Balor and Alden. Vigora, too. A memory where she can see who we will see again if we stay on the path that God laid before us. Because if she strays…” Her eyes poured, “Draka, if she strays and something happens, I won’t…I won’t…she won’t…” She buried her head in her hands.
Draka softly rocked her shoulder as tears dripped between her fingers.
She let her hands fall from her face and wiped her nose with a stiff jaw. “She won’t see them again. So, I want us to go together. I want to try. Tonight. Will you allow me to? Are you with me for this?”
Draka seemed thoughtful for a moment, his hand resting on her shoulder, his thumb barely touching the skin of her neck. Aurie held her breath, waiting for his answer.
His face hardened.
She trembled against wanting to collapse right then and there. She needed him to say yes. She wanted him to say yes.
And then Draka nodded.
