My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. Proverbs 1:8-9
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"Ah, milady!" he cries, forcing lament and leather-clad palms alike into the open space between them. "Sometimes, I fear you are more the tower than the princess."
"Excuse me?" Chris only half-hears him, and does not bother turning her head.
"C'mon, don't pretend you don't know the story. The princess held captive in an enchanted castle, waiting only for a knight to come and whisk her away?" Nash pauses to consider himself, heels clicking together, fingers on chin. "Once upon a time," he adds, remembering the crisp blue and white of his youth, "I was a knight too."
"No." Sometimes her voice is bourdon, bell-toned, and sometimes it carries like a cadence. Now it is sharply slanted and more than a little annoyed. "I don't believe you."
For a week they have been traveling the Grasslands, two souls adrift, drowning in an endless wheat-colored sea. Chris is always five steps ahead, oblivious to the pale of the roots underfoot and the morning's sting of new-day frost. She's only rarely aware of him, which leaves Nash to notice things for the two of them. Of course, Nash notices everything: the lines of grass, the tilt of the breeze, how men shudder and fold into deep and deeper angles. But the corners of his mind are still colored with half-flickering dreams. He is not old yet.
"It doesn't matter what you believe," Nash tells her. "It's the truth."
"And I suppose the ridiculous pick-up lines are part of your chivalric oaths."
"Hey, I can't help it," he replies, "I'm married."
Running through the meadow is a shallow stream, a slip of water and mud marring the monotony of wildflowers and weeds. Chris darts across on stones and logs, her sword-hand never leaving its hilt.
"You're nothing but a horrible liar, Nash."
"Correction: I'm an excellent liar."
"Still not a knight." She hopes that from across the creek he cannot see her expression falter. "Remember, I've seen you fight."
"I know, I know, all tricks up the sleeve, no shining armor in sight." Balancing, his arms are like wings at his side, posture crooked as his expression. Nash is halfway across the creek, now. Keeping his eyes on her is taking all of his piety and half of his vice. "But in my defense, not all knights fight with swords."
"It's not about the sword— it never has been."
Nash smiles, and his teeth are bright as daggers in the mid-morning sun. "So milady is familiar with the saying— the tongue reacheth where the sword cannot?" He accents his syllables in the worst way he can.
It isn't until after Nash hits the water that he realizes she pushed him. Above him, crowned in a halo of silver and superiority, Chris is laughing. "I assume, sir, that you are familiar with the saying? Actions speak louder than words."
Through the grime, her smile reminds him uncomfortably of his wife.
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Night does little to obscure the vast foreign flatness of the Grasslands. Chris misses the rough stone enclosures of Brass Castle, though she won't break her pride to say so. Nash has been trying to leave the Crystal Valley for fifteen years, but he never seems to manage. They are both cold.
She is staring into what is left of the fire, the white bones of the rabbit they ate for dinner scattered among the twigs at her feet. The darkness is holding fast, and Chris has never been one for small talk. "Where is your father, Nash?"
The answer is almost immediate. "Dead. Murdered. I was about your age when it happened."
"That's horrible." Her voice is warm with regret. "I am sorry I asked."
"Don't be. That stuff's old hat by now." He doesn't say how their murderer died.
Long ago, he had left that wide river behind, buried deep in the mud of someone else's grave. But he knows that he lost something in the crossing, something he can still hear rustling, like leaves that have already fallen from the tree. It whispers, snake-like, hissing below crowded memories of weight and war. Sometimes he can still taste the magic, rising like bile at the back of his throat; there is a reason he no longer fights with a sword.
"I don't know if this is a saying or not," he says, barely an outline in the darkness. "But after every fairy tale, my mother would tell me that even the wicked get worse than they deserve."
Neither says anything until after the fire dies and dawn rides rosy-fingered across the horizon.
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Even beneath the wrinkles Nash can tell she is as beautiful as the histories say. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Sana is telling them about her beloved, the so-called Flame Champion. Nash doesn't pay much attention to her words; he knows the campaign as well as anyone can. His Grace lent him all the official documents, and underneath the Circle's blessings and in Hikusaak's names, it is only misery and death, laid out in military shorthand, bare as blood.
So Nash finds himself listening to Sana's pauses, watching the way the lines on her face rearrange as she speaks. His own skin is stretched with too many squints, too many smiles; soon he will be old for real. He wonders if Sana had the same problems, if her husband ever shuddered that the hand he held was now strung with blue spidering veins. If eventually he could only love her in the dark.
When they finish hearing Sana's story, Chris and Nash sit on one of Cisha's many dull-weathered porches, the wood and stone converging in a flat, uncomfortable harmony. Chris has maybe listened better than him, and her face is open wide to the hills in the west. "I wonder what it's like to love someone like that," she says.
"Hnnnnn." Nash is not feeling very eloquent.
"And here I was thinking you were married."
"Oh, I'm married, alright. Thirteen years this winter."
"Well then? What's it like?" Even though Chris is in one of her softer moods, her hair is a very familiar shade of pale.
"Scary," he replies. "In more ways than one."
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he asks Sierra the hard questions-- high-pitched, flippant. She answers in kind, waving him off with a groan before returning to her Rune-cursed dreams. After that, he can never get back to sleep. He always finds himself staring up at the ceiling he cannot see, numbering the seconds as they pass back into their native infinity. Nash can go for about an hour before he loses count.
"I'm still not convinced that anyone would marry you."
"That makes two of us." His voice sounds hollower than he meant it to, so he quirks an eyebrow before turning his thoughts eastward. Nash has a way out if he needs it, in her Rune and in her veins. Blood is a familiar enough taste in his mouth; the Howling Voices saw to that.
Chris, ever the uncertain daughter, still muses. "But even if you never age, can you really love someone forever?"
Years ago, when he still gave her roses, Nash swore up and down that he'd give up his humanity for love. They could spend an eternal twilight hand in hand, nothing but cold bones and crimson eyes, like something in a morbid poem. But here he is at thirty-seven, unable to outrun his past and doing his best to convince a pretty Zexen girl of her future.
"You know, they say that love never dies." He manages to turn his mouth smileward, to put some of his age in his voice.
"Yes," Chris replies. "They do say that."
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"Huff, huff, puff." Nash is doubled over, his hands clutching his chest. His face is apologetic, kindly. "Guess I can't run the way I used to."
When he is home, Nash runs three times around the temple square every morning. He can do it in less than forty-five minutes, once he even managed to do it in thirty.
"So, what did you learn about the Harmonian camp?" says the lazy-eyed strategist sitting in the corner. Caesar has taken command of their operation, and he is not impressed with Nash.
"Well, there aren't too many of them, which means that they're relying on reinforcements."
"From Le Buque?" Caesar's voice is almost nasal, reminiscent of Albert's.
Nash nods. "I bet we'll see the skies darkening soon."
Two nights ago, Dominguez Jr. arrived at his window to the sound of talons on glass. Strapped around the bird's left leg were battle plans from His Grace: the number of regiments, how they were outfitted, when and where they planned to strike. Nash read them by candlelight, a terrible strain on his eyes, and committed the figures to memory. The next morning, he threw the papers into the cooking-fire when the kitchen maids weren't looking. Chris hadn't asked him to scout out the Harmonian encampment; he had volunteered. Treason makes his hands tingle, like coming in from the frost.
The Silverberg boy is plotting in the corner, occasionally consulting Apple and Chris, while the wide-eyed knight and his squire ran back and forth, fetching twigs and tinder. Every so often Caesar makes a kind of grunting noise and starts scribbling furiously in his notebook, his pen moving in an angry syncopation.
"What do you know about their general?" Chris asks, growing impatient.
"The Bishop Sasarai," Caesar replies, "is the bearer of the True Earth Rune."
"Yes," Nash interjects, "but he doesn't like to use it offensively."
"What do you know about Sasarai?" Somehow, when Caesar raises his eyebrows, he only looks more exhausted.
"Not much." Nash knows more about His Grace than anyone alive, maybe, down to his favorite type of tea. "But there's no legend of an Earth Champion who destroyed all his opponents by covering them with mud."
Ceasar squints and frowns in Nash's direction. "Who are you supposed to be, again?"
"The grandson of the legendary Leon Silverberg-- you really should let me have a seat at the table." He wags his finger a bit, laughs, to show that he is joking.
"No, Nash, I'm curious." Chris is speaking now, her tone somewhere between the hero and the girl. "Who are you?"
He smiles then, because there are so many answers moving through him, all of them true, all of them lies. A dreamer, a danger, a too-young kid with hair in his eyes, tired, old, son, brother, husband, lover, soldier, spy. Heir to the lost house of Latkje, apprentice baker from New Caleria, Harmonian citizen first-class. I am Nash Clovis; I am not Nash Clovis. I am, I am, I am, like a mantra, whispered low and sacred, so as to be remembered.
"Me?" Nash answers quickly, without spaces or gaps. "I'm just an idle traveler."
"You know what they say about travelers, don't you?"
Nash knows what they say about travelers in four different languages, from the New Armes to the Holy City of Rupanda. Proverbs are his favorite ghosts, their happy contradictions and bright black meanings a comfort to his ever-changing heart. But lately Nash finds himself slipping between the gaps in conventional wisdom, moving without grace or chains down nameless, uncertain roads. He takes a step in towards Chis, laughing his surrender.
"Honestly," he says, pure and without guile, "I have no idea."