originally posted february 2011
spoilers for the end of the manga
It was close to four in the morning. Nobody had slept. Cernozura filled a bucket with the water she boiled what felt like a very long time ago and another with cleaning supplies and took them down to the bowels of the castle. By the time she got there it had gone cold anyway. The castle wasn't right anymore, and everybody knew it.
Ruwalk, soporific and hollow-eyed, had had to be prised away with the strongest sedative they had, the Dragon Fighter mostly carrying him up the stairs when the drug started to take effect. It was very quiet and empty now. Nobody except her and the heavy arches of stone. Tetheus had taken the body away himself when he could get Ruwalk to let go of—-him.
Cernozura cracked the ice to dip her cloth into the water. She scrubbed at the wall until she couldn't feel her hands anymore and the red was all gone.
It was so quiet. There was nobody to hear her cry.
The sound of fighting was deafening, even from the kitchens. Of course they knew that the invaders weren't interested in china or fine spices, but all the maids were still on edge, sneaking glances over their shoulders as if they could see through stone walls to the ramparts. Cernozura knew more than one of them had a lover out there.
They made up packets of food to be distributed among the soldiers, assuming they got a moment to eat something. It seemed useless, but there was little else they could do. They would only get in the way up there, and everyone was too full of nervous energy to stay still. Since Raseleane continued to remain in her room, Cernozura made a tray up for her.
Ruwalk came to pick up the food for the soldiers. He seemed to have taken all the young Dragon Fighters under his wing. He looked pinched and harried; somebody should have been making sure he was taking care of himself instead of everyone else. A Head Maid was to be experienced in many arenas including psychology, and Cernozura could spot compensating when she saw it.
"You're bleeding," she pointed out when he kept touching his head like something was buzzing around it.
"Oh," he said, brushing his hair over the spot with a casual swipe, and slung the pack over his shoulder.
"You should get that seen to," she reprimanded, touching his forehead. The dried blood made it look worse than it was, but the cut was fairly deep and it must have stung.
"It's okay, it doesn't matter. The nurses are flat-out and there are people hurt worse than I am," Ruwalk said with a self-depreciating shrug.
It was true so she couldn't upbraid him for that. "Even I can take care of this much," she said, pointing to a chair. For a while it looked like he wouldn't obey, but he put the bag back on the counter and sat down with his eyes closed and let her clean the wound. He didn't flinch once, and that made her think that perhaps he was spending too much time with Tetheus. She remembered tending him once before, and he had laughed and smiled and winced.
"All better," she said, wishing it were true. Ruwalk gave her a smile that wasn't a smile at all and walked away. From the back she could see his coat had a tear in it, and wondered how she could get it away from him to mend it.
Someone had to take care of him, after all.
Cernozura organized a funeral and somehow found some time in the midst of everything to hold it. It should have been a grand affair with nobles from all over the country attending, but both Lykouleon and Tetheus had warned that the armistice was only temporary, and nobody wanted to come to Draqueen at the moment anyway. Maybe it was better this way. Kai-stern had hated bureaucracy and Alfeegi ostentation.
Alfeegi had left very specific instructions for his funeral and for disposing of his possessions. Kai-stern had left nothing. In the end she combined the two the best she could, but whether it would have pleased either of them she'd never know.
She stayed behind after everyone had dispersed to lay flowers at Alfeegi's grave. Her little bouquet was quickly lost in the mass of blossoms—for someone who had deliberately made himself as unpopular as he possibly could, an unprecedented amount of people had come to pay their respects. He would have hated the flowers, though, she thought—too overdone.
When she came back Ruwalk was sitting alone in the last row of knocked-up wooden benches, gazing moodily off into the horizon where Lykouleon had let Kai-stern's ashes go. She sat next to him and gently placed her hand over his—he wasn't wearing gloves and they were like ice.
They sat in silence like that for a while. The wind whipped up and Cernozura's hair blew everywhere, but Ruwalk showed no signs of moving.
"Would you help me dismantle the benches?" she asked finally, just to get him to do something. "I can't do it by myself."
"Oh, sure," he answered, still looking off into the distance.
Discharging the wills was technically Tetheus' job as Minister of Laws, but he was too busy with repairing both the castle and the army, and so it fell to her to undertake Alfeegi's last will and testament. She taped everything up in a little box, marvelling that three hundred years could be folded down into such a small space, and knocked with no little apprehension on Ruwalk's door. He had stopped coming out much anymore, except to talk to Lykouleon. Cernozura half expected him not to answer, so she was caught off guard when the door actually did open and she had no words prepared.
"Cernozura. Good evening." Ruwalk said with obvious surprise. "What can I do for you?"
"I have something for you," she said. "May I bring it inside?"
"For me?" Ruwalk says. "Sure, come in. Sorry, it's a bit of a mess."
It didn't look like he had tidied in years. Papers and dirty clothes were stacked up everywhere in haphazard piles threatening to collapse any second, stubs of candles spotted the desktop in tandem with inkstains, although there was no way he could possibly have been working in such an environment, and the entire room smelled musty, the curtains pulled so tight not even the slightest crack of sunlight could get in. The urge to straighten a few things up made her fingers twitch.
He noticed her gaze and smiled a little, ruffling his hair in a self-depreciating manner he had always excelled at. "I don't get to clean much anymore, as you can tell."
"I noticed," she said faintly, her eyes falling on this morning's breakfast dishes threatening to fall off the corner of the table, their contents only half-eaten.
"So what did you have to talk to me about, Cernozura?" he said, following her gaze. He sat in one of the chairs, which forced her to take the one with the back to the living area. She couldn't see the plates anymore, but she could through tell the crack in the door that his bed hadn't been made that morning.
"Ah, yes," she said, trying to think of a way to stall, or at least a nicer way to phrase herself. "I have some things to give you." She put the box down on the table next to a tattered deck of cards, the coffee-stained jack of hearts staring rakishly back up at her. Some late nights playing solitaire, it seemed. Ruwalk looked sheepish, and quickly drew her attention back to the box.
"A present for me? Really, Cernozura, you shouldn't have," he said, flipping out his belt knife to cut the ribbon, a little more like his old self.
"Well, it's not exactly a present," she said. "That's what I need to talk to you about."
"What, did it fall off the back of a wagon or something?" he said, back to his old flippancy, and Cernozura resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. No wonder he had nearly driven Alfeegi insane; it was impossible to get him to talk about anything serious for five seconds.
It was an improvement on catatonic, for certain, but she was sure that the underlying issues were unchanging as ever.
"Ruwalk..." she said, and knew it was too late when his expression clouded over. His smile wavered for only a moment, and he was closing the flaps and schooling his face to practiced blankness.
"Thanks for dropping by, Cernozura," he said, dry and mechanical. "I'm sorry I can't return your hospitality." He took the box and shut himself in his sleeping quarters. It was the closest to uncivil Cernozura had ever seen him in nearly five hundred years.
Frustrated at her inability to handle the situation with more grace, Cernozura collected all the dishes, including seven coffee cups that had accumulated in the bottom drawer of his desk, and washed them all herself. She took out his laundry, which seemed to have been piling up for a while and left a stack of clean sheets for him folded neatly on a chair next to the door with a sprig of lavender.
She also took his jacket with the ruined shoulder, discarded and half-hidden under the sofa, away with her to mend.
"Thanks for mending my coat, Cernozura," Ruwalk said the next time they passed in the corridor. More than passed by, she was running to the upper wing with emergency medical supplies and brandy, and he was heading outside to where the fighting was hottest, Thatz hard on his heels. He was wearing the coat, and Cernozura suppressed a nagging worry that it would only get torn again.
"You're very welcome," she said before they both went their separate ways, the burning in her legs as she took the spiralling stairs two at a time almost enough to distract her from the thought.
So he had noticed, after all.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."
When even Tetheus wept openly, surely she could be forgiven for a moment of weakness. Raseleane gripped her hand, her composure beatific, and Cernozura choked back the animal grief that threatened to escape her throat, fist clenching in her black skirts.
They had all spoken in turn, even Tetheus who had become more taciturn of late; Ruwalk from a fancily-folded sheet of paper and even then unable to keep back the tears, and now Tetheus, Ruwalk, Rath and Thatz lowered Lykouleon's coffin into the yawning hole in the ground. They all gathered to throw their flowers and dissipated, for Tetheus had asked for the last task himself.
Cernozura should have cried then. Lykouleon had given her everything she had ever known but instead she felt strangely numb. Raseleane at her side reassured her, but as terrible was it was to even think, so many had died already, that this felt only empty; like a patient who survives a long battle with illness only to die from a fall down the stairs. Ruwalk came up beside her and gripped her other hand in silence, the warmth of the two of them her sole comfort on such a grey afternoon.
The greatest unfairness was compounded by smaller but by no means lesser. She had helped Raseleane select the coffin, the flower arrangements, and now she helped to pack the trunks Raseleane would take into her exile. She had served Raseleane as long as she had served Lykouleon; that she should be parted from them both in such short succession was only the twist of the knife in her gut. Raseleane would not hear of Cernozura following her.
"You still belong here," she said gently. "My time is done. Cesia needs you more than I do. Although I will miss you desperately, dear Cernozura." They embraced, and Cernozura clung to her queen's firm back, always so much stronger than her, as if she could hold down this one small piece of her world at least. "I know you'll take care of everyone for me." Tears finally clouded Raseleane's voice, and Cernozura felt hot pinpricks at her eyes in response.
Raseleane had stood so proud the entire time, every inch the sovereign her subjects needed to see. As Raseleane's next in charge she was beheld to respond in kind. Cernozura wiped her eyes surreptitiously and showed Raseleane her smile.
"I'll come visit you sometime," she said with hope even though she knew the end was here. Raseleane turned to pick up her bags, and Cernozura bustled to take them for her down to the gate where the darnas waited, this last thing she could do for Raseleane. Footmen jumped about loading the various boxes and trunks of everything Raseleane would need for the rest of her long, lonely life in the foothills of the highest mountains, and Cernozura could only watch, watch until the last mote of dust had faded back into the earth, and there was no longer any sign in the echoing queen's chambers that Raseleane had ever been there at all.
Raseleane had left her a few things in a velvet bag to remember her by: a hand mirror with a tapestry back, a collection of romances they had read together as girls, silver hairpins, things Cernozura vaguely remembered complimenting her on at one time or another. Cernozura had a drawer she kept such mementos in and she unlocked it, laying each piece out in reverence. The tattered little book slotted into place next to the sole item she had been left in Alfeegi's will, his meticulously-kept ledger, written through in his prescription handwriting. She fingered the cover and wondered again if he had wanted her to have it because she was the only one in the castle who could possibly appreciate it, and the thought was so unbearably lonely that she almost closed the drawer on her fingers trying to get it closed, but not before she took the hand mirror out and put it under her pillow when she went to sleep that night.
She woke up in a panic later that night fumbling for a candlestick because there was somebody in her room, in her bed, the mattress creaking under their weight. The metallic sound of the lantern being placed on the lowboy turned her head towards the source of the light.
"I couldn't sleep," Ruwalk said, apologetic.
Cernozura should have pointed out how inappropriate it was for him to come into her quarters unannounced so late at night like this. Her heart was still racing. But Ruwalk's misery was so absolute, so etched into every line of his face, the eyes that showed he hadn't been sleeping, that she couldn't find the words to turn him away.
"You'll catch a cold," she said instead, and turned down the blankets on the other side of the bed. Ruwalk turned down the lantern, and darkness enveloped them both. They didn't touch, but it had been so long since someone had last shared her bed that her heart was relieved Ruwalk was fully-clothed. He should have changed into pajamas at least; was he so far gone that he was forgetting to get changed at night? The weather had been cold, the frosty bite of winter starting to nibble. Cernozura got up to get another blanket, used to navigating her rooms in the half-light, and by the time she spread the blanket over him and settled herself on the divan, Ruwalk was already asleep, his sleeping face childlike in the last embers of the light.
"I'm sorry about last night," Ruwalk said, catching her in a quiet moment after the lunch-time cleanup. "I shouldn't have imposed—it was very kind of you."
He was better-rested this morning, the lines around his eyes no longer so deep and some colour back into his cheeks. Cernozura fixed them both spiced tea, and studied him over the lip of her cup. That one night's rest could invigorate him so much made her question that he had been sleeping at all. The impulse to scold was strong, but it wouldn't work on him, she knew, and the only reason her own rest had been relatively undisturbed was because she made herself so busy during the day.
"Is there something wrong with your rooms?" she said, knowing that wasn't it but hoping his denial would offer new information.
"No, nothing," he said, scratching at his head. Alfeegi had been the best of them all at reading people and Ruwalk most of all; he would have known what Ruwalk was hiding. Cernozura slid more toast onto his plate, and watched until he ate it. He was far too thin.
"Alfeegi and I... we—once." Ruwalk said, buttering his toast. "We were both very drunk. It never happened again. We never talked about it."
Unbalanced by Ruwalk's sudden confession, Cernozura poured more tea to give herself a moment.
"Don't misunderstand me. I'm not pining away because the love of my life is dead or anything like that. For some reason I just can't stop thinking about it now, that's all."
Cernozura looked at the little wrinkles folded in the corners of Ruwalk's eyes, remembering a girlish kiss, and thought she understood what he meant.
Ruwalk had not come to her bed again since that night, so when she heard her door creaking open close to midnight she tensed until her eyes could make out Ruwalk's shape in the darkness. He climbed into her bed and their bodies pressed together; she in only her thin nightgown and he no more.
"I keep waiting for it to get better, but it doesn't," he whispered against her neck. His hands came to hold her around her hips. "Cernozura—" and the faint taste of cinnamon and ash on his mouth.
They sat together at the wedding, their hands unlinked but close enough to touch. Cernozura watched with pride as Cesia said her vows clearly, the white dress Cernozura had helped sew fluttering in the spring breeze. Enough time had been needed to prepare, to wait until hearts were settled sufficiently.
Thatz, marshalled into best man duty, pulled uncomfortably at his tie until Rune elbowed him. Tetheus stood sentry at back row, sharp and lean as always, but the smallest smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and Cernozura knew he, like her, like Ruwalk, were seeing the last royal wedding they had attended, when they had held the flowers, when they had thrown the rice, laughing as it caught in Raseleane's long curls.
Rath and Cesia kissed, awkward in front of so many people, and then again, more naturally, to whistling and catcalls. Ruwalk clapped, and everyone thronged around to wish them well. Cernozura held back, somehow unable to give herself fully to the merriment, and hid herself behind the marquee for a moment to breathe.
"We are neither of us so young anymore, are we?" Ruwalk said, announcing his presence with a clink of glasses. He sat down on the grass next to her and poured. "Only the best for Rath and Cesia's wedding, I do assure you."
"I'm happy for them, but..." After so long, the bittersweet tears finally came, and Ruwalk handed her his handkerchief.
"I know," Ruwalk said. "It's just not the same." He covered his hand with hers, tentatively at first, and then with more confidence as she squeezed back. The incongruity of their situation struck her—Ruwalk complaining of feeling old, yet here they were sneaking off to share wine together and holding hands, Cernozura's skirts spread on the grass with her heels beside her—and she couldn't hold back the giggle that escaped her. Ruwalk looked at her askance, but she couldn't stop, no more than she could hold back the tears in the corner of her eyes and Ruwalk joined her as if infected, and the way his eyes crinkled up as he laughed, a sight she hadn't seen in so long made her stop as something in her chest that had been tense so long eased suddenly.
"Maybe it's not so bad though," Ruwalk said, and his hand was warm against hers.
fin