abience (n.) the strong urge to avoid someone or something

Here was the file – paper within paper, weathered despite its new nature, sheaves of parchment upon which had been scrawled in a cramped hand: Eunbyeol Seo, Mønt. Beneath that, the details garnered from her Selection application: she had not opted to change her name; she had not opted to change her age; she had listed her family as dead and her occupation as lung. He scanned the details quickly, encoding what he considered necessary, and quickly rearranged the papers, setting the file back into the pile exactly as it had been prior. He did not even need to think about how everything had been positioned; that knowledge seemed to flow through him, as though this was his office and he was merely setting things as he ordinarily would. By now, there was no uncertainty in his hands, as there might have been six months prior. He could trust his curse. Sometimes he thought it was one of the few things he could trust.

He had completed his rearrangements just in time, for the door was swinging open and he was straightening and putting his hand on the knife at his belt as one of his superiors stepped through over the threshold and squinting at him suspiciously. "Do I even want to ask, Schovajsa?"

Reiko Morozova was several inches smaller than him, but her pale eyes cut through him as surely as a whetted knife. She was lean, with dark hair cropped short and boyish; her long coat was a steel grey, cuffed with silver detailing which displayed her rank and position. Morozova was no ordinary guard, of course, as was apparent by the sheer intricacy of the stitching on her sleeves – but then, her had only put a single foot over the palace threshold when he had realised that she was also not remotely as powerful as she would have liked to be. That made for a mixed blessing: there was a kind of bitterness perpetually brewing beneath the surface that reminded him of Khalore, but also enough competence to justify the soldier's resentment at her relatively low position. To be selected as the Schreaves family's personal guard was no small honour, but it didn't allow for very much upward mobility – particularly when the royals seemed to prefer the company of an older retinue of protectors, grizzled men missing limbs and eyes and tongues.

So – when Reiko asked him that question, he rather sensed that things could go very wrong for him if he didn't play his cards right. She wasn't in a good mood, but was she ever? So he put a smile on his face. Repent. Atone. Salvation. "Lieutenant." He put a smile on his face, and he offered her the typical Illéan salute – hand clasped and placed gently, and briefly, against his lips, his head bowed. It always struck him as a secretive gesture, a promise not to tell. He couldn't tell when or where he had picked it up; it had seemed such a natural gesture the first time he had performed it, without remembering having ever spotted it before. And it helpfully covered his mouth, so that he had an excuse to allow the silence to stretch out into an uncomfortable length until she was forced to ask – whether she wanted to or not.

Morozova eyed him suspiciously. She was an androgynous person, addressed as they as often as she and clearly fine with either – her build lean and narrow. Built like a blade, Commandant might have said. "Wolfram Singer has gone home for the evening. Is there an urgent security issue in his writing desk of which I ought to be appraised?"

"There was a light left lit, sir," he replied, straddling a delicate line between blithe and respectful. He indicated the offending candle in question – burned down to its holder, the wax splayed over its edges and staining the lovely honey-brown mahogany of the desk in question. A fire hazard, if ever he had seen one. "I was on patrol in the area."

"Well, then." There was a vein jumping in Morozova's jaw – was that simply because she couldn't find an excuse to discipline him? She was in a foul mood today, her usual cold facade fractured into a glimpse of the resentment below. Hijikata must have attended the palace earlier in the day – or maybe Morozova had seen her sister at headquarters during the security briefing on the Selection. Either one might be enough to flip the switch. Or maybe this was simply all stress around the Selection; he couldn't imagine that the incipient arrival of two-dozen strangers made for a peaceful day at work when your life was dedicated to protecting the prince's life. "Now that the imminent threat has been neutralised, it would be in your best interests to return to your patrol… don't you think?"

He inclined his head. "Of course, sir."

She raised the lamp in her hand, looking rather as though she was scanning the corners of the room for some sign of another interloper. "Leave the door unlocked behind you."

"Yes," he said, but Morozova was already gone. There was the unmistakeable air that she might have slammed the door if she thought she could get away with it; instead, he could hear her boots as she moved down the office hallway, clearly looking for someone more conducive to a thorough chewing-out.

He did as he had been told, closing the door quietly behind him and walking away from the office at the pace of a man with nothing to hide – and that was true, wasn't it? Nothing to hide. He was just a palace guard. He was just one of hundreds. A grey man among many grey men. An Illéan.

No. His skin almost shuddered from his bones at the mere thought. Repent. Atone. Salvation. That was not his voice – it was Frida's voice, Preacher's voice, and Frida's voice again. So he came to the narrow stairs that occupied the western part of the building, and was about to descend them when the door nearest him cracked open, a tiny bit, just wide enough that the person within could murmur a psst under their breath.

He glanced over, and put a smile on his face. "Miss Txori. You surprised me."

She hadn't. A childhood in the training corps had rather rendered him immune to such jumps... particularly when he had shared dormitory space with Myghal and Uriasz. He was just glad it had been a maid, rather than an enemy – although, when he was in the palace of the Schreaves, wasn't that the same thing?

Thinking their names was a sudden moment of vertigo. He hadn't thought about them in so long – the Warriors they had left behind, the Warriors that had not been. Myghal. Ragnar. Uriasz. Nerezza. Belle….

"Schovajsa," she said. It was almost strange to hear someone say his name. It always made his skin crawl a little bit; it sounded like a word in a language he was forbidden to speak. "Chocolate?"

"I'm barely fitting into my coat as it is."

"A small piece, then."

He shook his head, and forced a wry chuckle. "Incorrigible."

"I'm sure I have no idea what that means." She smiled. This wasn't personal; he knew it wasn't. She was always this friendly with everyone. It was part of what made her such an effect set of eyes and ears within the palace; no one could ever bring themselves to dislike Akanksha Txori. "Take it. I can't finish it all on my own."

She slipped it into his hand. The characteristic dark chocolate of Txori District reminded him of the kind of chocolate they had been given on Fall Day in the orphanage, if they had behaved themselves: it crumbled under the touch, black and chalky, more bitter than sweet. But hard-won, then and now; it was a calculatedly sweet gesture, he suspected. "Thank you."

"I have news," she said. "You said your neighbour was looking for work?"

Had he? Sometimes he lost track of the lies he had told – sometimes, but very rarely. "Yes."

"They're hiring maids for the Selection. Let me know if you want me to put a word in…?"

"I would really appreciate that, Miss Txori. Thank you – I'll write her tonight and let her know"

"It's no problem." She smiled and gestured to the half-tidied room behind her; she usually worked in the main body of the palace, he knew. Someone must have called out sick for her to be in the bureaucratic buildings. "I should get back to it. Mind how you go, Schovajsa."

"And you."

He waited for her to close the door behind her, and then descended the stairs. That might work, he thought, if Belle was uncooperative, if she wasn't to be trusted, if they needed more Warriors inside the building. Azula, maybe, or Khalore… maybe they wouldn't take a maid with one arm. Ina, then? The bakery was only so helpful, when you really thought about it…

He crossed the courtyard. It was a broad paved square, with a narrow square of cultivated grass in the centre, offering some small amount of greenery in what was otherwise quite a grey space. Ganzir was a much bigger place than the others realised; the bureaucratic buildings, the offices of the courtiers and the military headquarters hugged Wall Schreave tightly at the very edge of the district, like little concrete bubbles along the perimeter of the fortification. The palace lay at the centre, with the servant quarters extending out from the opulence of the main body of the castle like the legs of a spider. He had worked as a palace guard for six months, and for those six months he had not glimpsed any more than the edge of a coat and the dark hair of some Schreave.

He had thought about that for a very long time afterwards. In fact, he found himself thinking about the royals more often now - and the druj, quite rarely. Maybe that was because the people around him were preoccupied with one and not the other.

Even then, what little of that Schreave he had glimpsed had been at a distance, as they were escorted through the rose gardens that took up the western quarter of Ganzir.

He recalled that moment now, eyeing the faraway windows of the main palace, as he ducked around a dark corner and whispered into the darkness: "Ghjuvan."

There was a cough behind him. "I was," the other Kur man said irritatedly. Ghjuvan had a straight razor in his hand and water on his face; he was only in his white shirt and spare black breeches, a man caught off-duty. "In the middle of shaving."

He just crouched on the cobbles and scrawled out the addresses – two of them, one in Aizsaule District and one in Vanth. "Belle's address – her workplace."

At least… according to her form. She could have lied. She probably had lied. Why wouldn't she have lied?

Ghjuvan took them hesitantly, eyeing the cramped script cautiously. "You want me to go now?"

"Where's Kaasik?"

"She took off after dinner."

A frown slowly grew across his face. "Did she say where?"

"Does she ever?" Ghjuvan shrugged. "She's probably at Kivi."

"Fine." He tapped the page. "Drop by this one tomorrow – work hours, if you can manage it. I'll take Kaasik to the house. It'll be my day off. Tell her to meet me on Divdesmitais Street."

"Got it."

"Be careful."

"Of course." Ghjuvan paused. "Any reason in particular?"

His voice sounded hoarse, even to himself. "Her Selection form… wasn't in her handwriting."

Some darker expression falling over his face, Ghjuvan nodded, folding the paper in half and tucking it into his jacket. He would probably burn it when he arrived back at the training corps; there wasn't exactly much information to be digested, after all. "Is everything okay with you?"

Repent. Atone. Salvation.

He shook his head – dismissing the question rather than disagreeing. "Do you have someone to recall you?"

"Don't worry about that. Kinga and I have been practising."

"Fine. Let's regroup tomorrow night."

"Ilja?"

The name stopped him in his tracks. How long since he had been called by name? Not so long, it couldn't be – Kinga or Zoran had probably called him that only the night before. But it galled, itched, like sand in a wound. It wasn't right. It felt too far away. It felt like something that might have been familiar once but was now filtered through murky water, its contours unfixed and ever-changing.

"...are you doing okay, man?"

He shook his head again, and rose. "I'm still on patrol. If I arrive back late..."

Ghjuvan's eyes were soft with concern, but he just nodded and set a firm hand on his old comrade's shoulder. "Don't wear yourself out, okay? I'll see you tomorrow."

He just nodded, mutely, and then Ghjuvan was gone, gone in a moment, gone like he had never been there at all – like he had only ever been a trick of the low light.

And Ilja Schovajsa, so-called, was left in a dark corner of the courtyard, alone.