De Soto is my character.
New position, new uniform. Siegfried found wearing the much bulkier scarlet attire of an officer rather hard to become accustomed to as he sat at his desk. A heavy shower not been enough to cleanse him of the sheer amount of stink that he had picked up from the swamp battle; it had to be repeated thrice over, and still he felt as if the foulness remained upon him. Thankfully, that had dissipated over the week. Even so, however, it did not change the fact that this new uniform had been bought in blood.
Back to what was "normal," his jungle adventure completed. The rumor mill continued to churn. For a time, the notion of him being the bastard of the Grand Master was quashed for a more venomous one. Siegfried wasn't a fool; he knew his action of hiding in the swamp had soured many opinions toward him. In truth, he was surprised that he had not been thrown from the Order for his lack of courage; that was to say nothing of the result itself, which only threw more fuel on the fire.
His helmet stared emptily back at him from where it sat near the low-burning candles, the wax dripping slowly onto the basin set below. It was late, but he found little motivation in sleeping. Dipping his quill into the bottle of ink set near it, he scrawled further notes as to the progress of the Iron Flame upon the paper. He sometimes missed Geralt's visitations from when he still held his guard post, although the witcher did not always have the greatest sense of timing. Why the white-haired warrior thought it was a good idea to wake him at three in the morning to present him with ten tongues of the drowned dead, he would never know. Cloistered within the Order as he was, however, that possibility was removed.
He wished that Geralt would reconsider his offer, but though he could lead a horse to water, he certainly could not make it drink. The knights of his unit were nice fellows, but only the surface had been scratched with them, the novelty of the unit still maintaining personal walls, especially those that remained between grunt and officer. Siegfried was not one to wax poetic over loneliness, having ventured underground with no companion but a torch on several occasions, but he did crave the days when he was of lower rank. It was not simply for the social aspect, either, rather it was a removal; replace the old armor, and turn back the clock to erase the massacre of the swamp.
He came into his own behind coffins, that fact remained. The Scoia'tael corpses, those of which could be salvaged from the mud, were either set ablaze, or hurled further into the swamps for the wyverns to consume. Those of the Order that were saved, a piteously small number at that, were placed in tow boats back to the dike of Vizima, their exhumed bodies borne to the parcel of the Viziman cemetery set aside for the Flaming Rose. The thuribles swung over the coffins as the names of those who had passed, present or missing, were read slowly out. Starting forward from the crowd, his wounds heavily bandaged, and wearing a clean version of his older model of armor out of respect for the battle, Siegfried knelt to the ground before the caskets, lined up in a row.
Pressing his palms to the ground to keep himself from shaking, he lowered his head in respect. The earth did not buckle below him this time, no attempt to swallow him made. Siegfried of Denesle did not stand among the names on the list. Standing slowly, he turned to face those gathered before him in a small lake of red and silver that glistened in the late afternoon sunlight. The banners of the Flaming Rose stood above them, borne by some, or staked in the ground. The air lay thick with anticipation, the procession staring at him Siegfried wondered how many of the men gathered before him had been forced through this ceremony before, bidding their farewells, and having such farewells weighed in opposition to the quality of others.
It was for that reason Siegfried resolved to say nothing, turning his back on the crowd to start toward the bearer of the scroll of names, a senior officer by the surname of de Soto. He did not recall any personal interactions with the man in question, but he did well remember the fact that he was rather decorated, a medal from the Grand Master being the most principal of his accolades. De Soto furled the scroll at his approach, his imposing form, bulked out by his heavy armor, driving Siegfried to perform a half-bow to him. "What is it, brother?" The senior officer asked in a quiet tone, his voice heavily muffled by his helmet.
Rising from his bent pose, Siegfried took a breath, his shoulders rising and falling. "I believe we should continue the ceremony."
"Do you not wish to say anything?" De Soto's tone remained neutral, and a knot formed in the younger knight's gut at his inability to read the man's voice or face.
"No," he replied softly, "Whatever words I say will not pay enough tribute for them. I refuse to make this affair about me when I owe my life to these men."
A moment's pause came, and Siegfried continued to stare into the empty helmet. In the silence, he found he did not care what de Soto had to say to him; rank and accolades aside, the knight's judgment did not matter. He returned to the carcass of the cow, sheltering himself within it from the blow that was sure to come, the brow-beating for his lack of propriety. Instead, however, de Soto replied, "Very well." Turning on his heel, he signaled for the procession to begin.
Buried under the paperwork for the Iron Flame, Siegfried found little time to further research the background on de Soto, not that he cared much to do so. Had it not been for the funeral, the interaction would have not occurred. Perhaps he had once found the prospect of learning of the exploits of other knights to be interesting, but that was when he had still been in the nursery, listening to fairy tales. He was proud of his devotion to the Order of the Flaming Rose, no one could take that from him, but it did place a different emphasis when the knights were his colleagues, rather than the heroes he aspired to be.
Reaching over, he grasped the bottle of white wine on the opposing side of the desk from the candles to pour into his empty glass. However, he hesitated before picking it up to take a drink. Siegfried never considered a risk of alcoholism, his spotless pedigree providing him the protective armor against it. Still, he did not want to make a habit out of this, staying up late and nursing his wine from night to night. Not to mention the fact that he did not wish to deplete the stock of wine the Order had (although he understood that he would not make a sizeable footprint of it even in the worst of circumstances).
Placing the glass to his lips, he took a sip. He'd started this ritual after the funeral for his brothers, hoping to eventually drop it, and move on toward dreamland. However, the funeral for Raymond had set the ritual in stone. Siegfried tried on more than one occasion to console himself with the idea that the detective was at peace, reunited with his wife by a grave at her side, but he knew in his heart that it wasn't the truth. Raymond's son, or rather, what little remained of him, unfortunately could not be exhumed, his body left to rot in the carrion pile in which it had been found despite his father's petition otherwise. Raymond's dog had been another matter, taken by a butcher long ago.
Raymond never dwelled too heavily upon the matter, at least from what Siegfried could tell, but then again, that was the guise of the detective. The matter of the son was rarely if ever brought up, and the knight was thankful for that. The incident was well-recorded in the archives of the Order, despite the fact that the city watch had been the discoverers of the body, as the fact that it was a monster made the case that of a crossover.
Siegfried had conducted his own investigation on the matter, picking through the stack of papers that had alluded to it in a file. Unfortunately, his findings were meager, with only the recorded testimonies of Vincent Meis and any on-hand witness accounts, Raymond included. The sketch of the little boy prior to his transformation had caused the knight to leave the main room, file under his arm. The boy himself was not remarkable by any accounts, save for his shoes, but even then, he was an innocent child, most likely clinging to his mother before being ripped from her hands. He couldn't bear the thought of the young one being forced to see his mother impaled in such a grisly manner as she had been, much less the sheer amount of torture he must have undergone when the mage had transformed him.
"Don't think I have little knowledge of what you are doing down there," Raymond once curtly remarked to him.
Caught off-guard by the sharpness of the statement, Siegfried asked innocently, "I'm sorry?"
The reflection in the detective's monocle flared in the changing of the light as he adjusted it with one hand, hiding it from his friend's vision. The other hand was stuck half in the cage of his pet parrot, offering a wafer. Inching forward on the perch, the parrot stuck out its foot to take the treat before holding it aloft to take small bites. "I see you enter that sewer every other day to protect Vizima from the monsters that dwell within it. While I condone what you do, I'd recommend you remain on that path only."
Siegfried continued in his act, pushing aside the half-eaten pear on his plate. "I assure you that it is the only function I serve. I do have my duty to uphold, after all. If it disturbs you that I use such an entrance, I can gladly find an alternative route."
Raymond turned his attention back to his pet, and with a sigh, the knight acknowledged that he had been caught. "Siegfried, while I'm grateful that you want to help bring the men who are responsible for the murder of my family to justice, I must also ask you to stop."
"But a mage is involved!" He exclaimed, latching onto what straw remained, "It concerns me then!"
"A mage was involved in a cold case," the detective replied, surprising Siegfried at his objective divulgence of fact, "while each day another person disappears off the streets of Vizima, whether due to bandits, plague, or monsters. Though the causes of each disappearance are different, and remain in a state of flux, you are attacking one aspect of the problem that needs addressed. That is what is important right now."
Rising from his seat, Siegfried attempted to further defend his position, but was pre-emptively silenced. "I'm not talking down on you when I say that, mind you, but you need to understand that some matters must be left alone." The parrot, having finished its snack, climbed onto the finger Raymond offered. Stepping backward, he lifted the bird out of the cage. Crawling up his owner's arm to settle himself upon his shoulder, the bird began to preen his feathers. "You are one of the few friends I have in this city, Siegfried. I intend to not lose you, as well, if I can help it."
Standing defiantly, he replied, "I understand that, but you are neglecting the fact that I have my own moral obligation that must be fulfilled in this."
"Then put yourself at ease, there is no moral obligation." Folding his arms, the detective tilted his head to the side as his parrot fanned his wings. "As a knight of the Order of the Flaming Rose, you would have been obligated to effectively put down my son, had you encountered him after his abduction. That is your code, and you are bound by it. I cannot hold it against you, let alone force you to redeem yourself for an act you did not even commit."
"But what then?" Siegfried demanded, waving his hand emphatically, "Am I simply to tell you 'there, there,' and do nothing? Trained in the way of the sword as I am, I cannot submit to apathy; it would simply not be right! Had it not been for those scoundrels, your family would be alive today! I as a friend cannot do you a disservice by allowing this to simply pass."
"Had I not been your friend, these deaths would not have been as fresh in your mind as they are," Raymond replied quietly. Lost for words, the knight turned his head away. "You are not a fool, Siegfried. You've seen the beggars in the streets, and you've likely heard and experienced the misery of the people that hangs over this city like a shade. While I admire your virtue for becoming a knight, you must learn that you cannot save everyone."
"But I must try!" He cried, his voice cracking with his intensity.
"All right, you've made your point. Calm down," Raymond soothed, tapping the side of his arm. His pet obeyed his signal, climbing back down to his hand. Crossing the room slowly, he held out the parrot to Siegfried, who presented his arm to the bird. After a slight hesitation, the parrot stuck out a foot, and climbed onto his arm. With a slight smile, he began to stroke the bird's brightly-colored feathers.
Raymond's chuckle made him look up. "Sometimes I want to ask you what it's like to be a hero. Children try to act like they're knights, people flock to see the knights on parade, and I've overheard quite a few women commenting on how handsome they find Siegfried of Denesle to be." The younger man blushed at that, and immediately looked away. "Detectives, well it's a different story. The work, though whether it is more or less gritty than yours is in debate, tends to be rather thankless."
"You do get paid, though," Siegfried interjected, stroking the bird under his beak.
Raymond snorted. "Do I look like a rich man to you?"
"Er, no comment."
"That is to say nothing of the lack of attention, but that is also immaterial; if any of us went on parade, we'd all be shot dead."
Siegfried refrained from reacting to Raymond's sour humor, instead focusing his attention on the bird, who was rolling his eyes in pleasure at the visitor's touch. After a long pause that followed, he glanced up, realizing that Raymond was waiting for him to say something. "Yes?"
Holding out his arm, the detective whistled. With a flap of wings, the parrot returned to his master. "That is the sort of world you would be entering into, should you continue to pursue this case. I cannot stop you, Siegfried, but I can warn you that you are not properly trained to handle an operation of this sort, and I do not want to see what would happen to you if I did so."
"Curious," the knight inquired, "What did your son wish to become in his life? Would he have taken up the craft of his father, do you think?"
"No," he replied flatly, "for multiple reasons, the most principal one I remember being him latching onto my leg, and begging me not to go. He didn't want the 'bad people' to put me in chains and take me away."
Siegfried's eyes widened. "Knowledge of slavers at that age?"
"My wife and I tried to protect him from it, but it seems that unless you are of noble blood, that pursuit is an unfulfilled one." The knight rubbed the back of his neck at that, and Raymond added in a gentler tone of voice, "You're a good kid, Siegfried. Just remember to keep to what you know best; I wouldn't want any of these guys to get their hands on you."
Tipping back his head, Siegfried took a long drink of his wine. Raymond's sentiment had been kind, but he neglected to recall the fact that part of the duty of the knight was to fight the Scoia'tael, who were arguably as brutal as the Salamandra low-lives who had murdered his family. Case in point was the band that had taken the hostages in the cemetery. While he was thankful for Geralt's act of rescuing the people trapped in the crypt, he was also disgusted that the opposing faction would sink so low. The hunt was still on for the perpetrators, and it was one of the few problems that was responsible for keeping him awake. He mused as to whether Raymond dealt with similar issues involving his cases, and guessed that it probably was the same.
Shani's tired eyes appeared in his mind again, and he wondered once more after her welfare, any thoughts of her having not made their appearance since the ill-fated battle. He wondered if she was all right, and swallowed the lump that formed in his throat at the notion of whether she could already be dead, having contracted the plague from the patients she nursed. He silenced such paranoia with pure fact: Shani was a professional, and therefore, would not have allowed such a thing to occur. They had promised one another a meeting, after all, but the prospect was shaky, at best, either party being preoccupied with their own concerns at the moment. He doubted he would be much of a singer for her now. While his voice was undamaged, the trauma he had suffered on the battlefield had taken a toll on his zeal for doing so. His work as trainer had taken away any free time he had once had for the choir, anyway.
His moroseness was confirmed one night when he had been returning to his room, studying a set of dossiers of his unit. The baritone voices of the choir, offset by the tenors, drifted over to him from down the hall. Leaning against the side wall, Siegfried listened, the familiar words becoming clearer to him as he continued to listen. When he opened his mouth to join in, however, he found himself loathe to do so, the purity of the sound contrasting too heavily with recent events. Shani's songbird had flown away, but as to whether he would return, only time would tell.
Dropping the quill, he rubbed his temples. Shani's songbird? Either the sleep deprivation or the alcohol intake had gotten to him, or both at once. He was not someone's pet, much less a performer at beck and call. The complaints he had overheard about women from the city dwellers ranged from the petty to the notorious, and at times, he had considered himself lucky to have taken his vow of celibacy. At the same token, he knew that others broke what oaths they had taken. De Wett, the twit that he was, provided a shining example of such.
He thought of her tirelessly walking the battlefield, her garments, face, legs, arms, and hands splattered with blood, bending down before each mangled corpse. The two days he had taken in the swamp had given him a mere taste of the brutality of Brenna. Siegfried dropped his hand at the thought. Talk of the battle had not been a possibility for him, as to conform to a policy of stiff upper lip was imperative, especially in the rather precarious situation he found himself in. He doubted little that there were a few men in that gathered crowd who had thought he should have been in the ground, as well, but the fact remained that he had lived. Shani would be someone to talk to regarding that, if only there was a chance.
Siegfried tapped his index finger on the words "Greater Brother" penned by his own hand with a question mark following. At the moment, however, there were other issues to think on, most notably why he was not allowed access to this particular topic. He found it odd that De Wett, who was of equal ranking as him, clearly seemed to know something, but he was left in the dark. Could it have been because of his rank not being held long? Perhaps. He chided himself; the project would not be occurring without the approval of the Grand Master, therefore it was right. Opting to take Raymond's advice, he held the paper out the candle's flame, and watched it sear the words off. With a yawn, he folded his arms on the desk's surface, and lay his head down upon them. A little rest wouldn't hurt.