A.N. This week was finals week, so I didn't have time to write or edit the chapter for next week, so there may be some delays.
Chapter 12: a new life.
Talia smiled as she walked down the hall at a brisk pace. She nodded to the two guards stationed outside the door to Selenay's office. Walking past them, she pulled open the door and entered the room. The room was plain, wood paneled, and furnished with comfortable chairs and an old scarred desk. Selenay sat quietly behind her desk, massaging the bridge of her nose, as she went over a rather long document in front of her. The Queen acknowledged Talia's presence with a brief nod of her head.
Talia took a few steps forward to put herself at the distance custom and tradition demanded, before dropping to her knees. "Majesty, I have come to petition the right of a Trainee to enter the Collegium." She said quietly.
That got Selenay's attention, "Which Companion has Chosen, and what is the name and rank of the Trainee in question?" the Queen asked, looking up from her paperwork.
Talia smiled, "The Companion Vanyel has Chosen, and the Trainee in question is Lord Conrart Weller of Shin Makoku."
For one long moment Selenay seemed genuinely startled, and then she laughed, "Permission granted." She couldn't help being amused; somehow the fact that Vanyel had managed to Choose a noble from another world did not surprise her all that much.
The fact that Talia had come to petition his right to enter the Collegium told her the boy was also the only heir to his rank, title, or name and as such could not renounce them.
~~~***~~~
Yozak groaned as he made his way back to the House of Healing. Since Conrart had awakened earlier that morning, Heralds Talia, Elspeth, and Herald-Dean Teren had convinced him to start his own Heraldic training. Of course, Jissa had been instrumental in convincing him to leave his friend's side before Conrart was fully recovered. In some ways it was rather amusing; he'd never been nearly this overprotective of his friend in their own world.
Maybe the separation from everything he'd ever known had caused him to latch on to the only thing familiar. Or maybe seeing Conrart having a nervous breakdown before getting extremely ill and almost dying had scared him more then he truly wanted to admit.
He'd found himself in Teren's office shortly after Conrart had fallen back asleep, running a gambit of ridiculous written tests. From there he'd found himself promptly demoted to schoolboy. Teren had enrolled him in several classes: History, Geography, basic law, a hard riding class (to get him used to riding a Companion rather than a horse), Weapons, and something called Gifts on the advice of his own Companion. The Dean had told him that his classes would be moved and rearranged depending on his skill levels throughout the next two weeks, and had also informed him that his classes would be a mixed bag as far as ages were concerned.
He'd also assigned him a tutor to help him with his penmanship. The Dyheli may have been able to give him the language and the knowledge of how to read and write it, but be that as it may, they couldn't give his muscles the memory of how the letters were formed and frankly a monkey had better penmanship in Valdemaran then he did! Much to his embarrassment, he understood it but it was still somewhat humiliating.
He'd been mostly amused by the weapons class. He was proud to say he was one of very few people who could go up against Conrart in an honest to goodness sword fight and live to fight another day. He was under no illusions; his ego would be seriously dented, but he would most likely live. After all he wasn't above playing dirty. Then he'd met the supposedly retired Armsmaster Alberich! He was fairly certain that Conrart would win in a fight between the two. As for himself, he'd held his own, but Alberich, like Conrart, had defeated him.
His ego smarted a bit after that.
He pulled open the door to Conrart's room, expecting to find his friend about ready to climb the walls, since the healer had ordered the man to stay in bed for the rest of the day.
Conrart didn't disappoint.
He found his friend, determinedly pacing the length of the little room. Yozak snorted and leaned against the wall, watching the younger man pace. Vanyel stood looking in the window, and from the looks of it was trying vainly to persuade his Chosen back into his bed.
"Aren't you suppose to be in bed, Captain?" he asked impertinently in their native language. "Healer's orders, remember?"
Conrart paused briefly in his imitation of a caged lion and retorted mildly. "You should know; I never listen to healers."
"Well, that explains the irate young Healer I passed in the hallway." He said flippantly. "I've known you for almost 12 decades, and somehow I keep forgetting that you're as stubborn as a century old mule and just as set in your ways. You look after everybody's health and happiness, but your own. Don't you think it's time you looked after yourself, Captain?" he watched his friend closely as he turned down the covers.
Conrart sighed and climbed back into bed, eyeing him critically. "Are you –quite-alright?" he asked after a moment, catching hold of his wrist.
Yozak suppressed the urge to groan.
That was Conrart speak for 'Why are you limping?', and the tone of his voice informed him that he wasn't going to drop the subject. The young prince was like a terrier sometimes, tenacious and refusing to let go once he'd sunk his teeth into something. He might as well just tell him- it was easier for all involved that way.
In the back of his mind he could hear Jissa snigger.
"I got my ass handed to me by an old man with a practice blade." He said finally, pulling the covers up around his friend.
Conrart leaned back against the pillows, ignoring the fact that he was fussing. "Let me guess, you left your outside low-line open . . . again!" he said, with a knowing look in his eyes.
Yozak sighed, "The bout lasted about an hour before I got sloppy. I hate to admit it but that man is good. Makes my old weapons master look like a novice, in fact; the only person ever to give me that good of a workout with a sword is you. I don't think he's as good as you are with a blade, but he's as good as I am with a knife, and the man wouldn't leave me be until I'd demonstrated my proficiency with every single weapon I said I could wield, from the darts to my knives to the sword. Though he didn't – quite—know what to make of my Garrote."
Conrart sighed, "As I recall neither did you when I first gave it to you."
"It's not that I didn't know how to use it," Yozak replied firmly. "I was just surprised that you -my oh-so proper prince - even knew what one was. That and I was kind of surprised that you of all people would be devious enough to sharpen the inside of a metal wire so that the thing could not only be used to choke but to cut as well."
Conrad snorted, "Whoever accused me of being too proper to think like a warrior was sadly mistaken." He replied mildly.
Yozak couldn't help it; he laughed aloud at that, remembering how a much younger Conrart had practically cornered him and asked him to teach him how to use a knife after his teachers had refused to teach him to wield one. They simply stated that he –as a prince- didn't need to know how to use one; ironically those same teachers had seen no reason to deny Gwendal the same training when he'd asked for it. Conrart's words had been phrased as a request, but there had been no denying the command in his voice.
He'd done his best to teach his friend how to use a knife, however at the time he'd only just been learning to use one as well. Yozak turned out to be a natural with a knife. In fact he was as gifted with a knife as Conrart was with a sword. Sadly, he'd been unable to teach the subtle art he'd only just begun to learn to his friend. Conrart's skills with a knife extended far enough that he didn't kill himself while wielding one, and in a pinch could hold his own against a relatively unskilled opponent, but beyond that he was utterly hopeless!
Alberich seemed to be quite gifted with a knife; maybe he could successfully unteach Conrart some of the things Yozak had unwittingly taught him.
Conrart shifted quietly in his bed, looking distinctly uncomfortable, before turning almost pleading brown eyes on him. "I-", he stopped unable to finish, his cheeks burning.
He didn't have to finish; Yozak knew exactly what he wanted. Without a word, he pulled his gray tunic over his head and tossed it onto the chair he'd previously occupied. His boots soon followed. Then with the delicate grace earned from nearly 30 years as a spy, he settled himself into bed between Conrart and the wall. He shifted slightly, getting comfortable before drawing his friend down to rest against his chest. Conrart sighed, and - for lack of a better term – cuddled up against him.
He chuckled lightly, and began carding his fingers through Conrart's mahogany locks, watching in mild amusement as the tension fled his friend's body. Conrart was a kind and gentle man, but he was also very proud, in addition to being a lion on the battlefield. He did not, and in fact never had, handled being ill very well.
The man was utterly incapable of being treated like an invalid with any amount of grace.
Normally when Conrart was ill he raided the palace library and read anything he could get his hands on. Consequently he'd read more of the library's books then even Gunter had. The term bookworm was without a doubt one of the most accurate terms he could think of in regards to his friend. Fortunately, Conrart didn't take ill often; barring injury in the line of duty, the last time Conrart had been ill had been three years ago. He'd caught a mild case of the cold that had been running through the barracks, and promptly turned it into a bad case of pneumonia when he failed to acknowledge it, and continued to work, taking Princess Greta to visit Hube, Nicola, and baby El under Yuri's orders.
The Young Maoh had wanted his daughter safe on the journey, and at the time Conrart had been showing no signs of a cold, save a mild headache. Then Belar had somehow managed to grab Yuri out from under the eyes of Wolfram and two other guards. The megalomaniac had made his demands clear after his guards had trounced an infuriated Wolfram, with the clever application of a Houseki. Belar had wanted a trade, Yuri's life in exchange for Conrart, delivered to him, alone, unarmed, and bound in chains. He'd given them less than a fortnight to comply with his order or else they would find their monarch delivered to the palace door in a burial shroud.
He shuddered at the memory of finding his emaciated friend.
He'd been the agent Gwendal sent to retrieve Conrart, and he'd never forget his fear at returning from a mission to discover that Conrart had willingly made himself helpless, and allowed himself to fall into the hands of a psychopath. He'd been sent not because he was one of their best operatives (though that played a large part of it) but because as Gwendal put it "One way or another he could be trusted to bring Conrart home."
Neither of them truly expected him to be alive.
When he first found Conrart, he thought his friend was dead. He picked up what he assumed was Conrart's body and made his way free of the palace, determined to take his friend home. On his way out, he took his revenge on everything flammable he came across. Eventually, he ran into Belar. He relieved the maniac of his right eye, and burned the right half of his face and his left shoulder (among other places) with the torch he'd been holding. He'd have gone for his sword but that would have meant putting Conrart down, and that he hadn't been willing to do, so he used the torch as a weapon. It wasn't until he escaped the castle and vanished into the surrounding city's slums when he realized something.
Dead things did not bleed!
Conrart, limp over his shoulder, with a faint but highly unflattering blue tinge to his lips, was bleeding.
Sluggishly.
But bleeding none the less!
He'd taken his friend to the nearest inn and gotten him cleaned up. After that, he made his way to the coast with a comatose Conrart in his arms, under the cover of darkness. He met up with Gisela in Caloria, and nearly had a heart attack when the Healer had informed him that Conrart was not likely to survive the night.
Conrart had survived the night and awoken a week later, but his mild cold had turned into a full blown case of pneumonia.
Conrart was too stubborn to die then and had been too stubborn to die earlier in the week. Now, just like then, the problem was keeping Conrart in bed long enough for him to heal. That meant keeping Conrart from getting bored.
Easier said than done
The last time Conrart had been ill, he'd been trapped in bed with pneumonia, broken ribs and an ankle Gisela had been forced to re-break since it had already begun to heal wrong. The man had proceeded to read his way through the R section of the palace library. Gwendal had taken to stopping by his little brother's room every evening and playing strategy games with Conrart, before even that failed to hold his interest. Finally Yuri had found something that held Conrart's attention for the remaining three weeks of his incarceration. The young king had kidnapped his brother's old university textbooks, a copy of something called Gray's Anatomy, and several complete book series. According to Conrart, one of them was the Clan of the Cave Bear.
Obviously this time he didn't have all of that available to him, but thankfully Conrart was not going to be bedridden with torture induced injuries for more than 2 months. Yozak had already begun his classes, but he could always go and get the books. He could read one while Conrad read another. It was a good idea—he just had to make sure he got his book back before class the next day!
~~~***~~~
A.N. Houseki - a stone used by human magic users to control and focus their magic (not the same as a focus stone, humans need them to work the magic. The power can only be accessed with the stone) (these stones are painful for demons to be around)
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A.N. This week was finals week, so I didn't have time to write or edit the chapter for next week, so there may be some delays.
