Locked, Barred, Guarded: A Story of Eries - Chapter 2
Author's Note: Because i thought this needed some more exposition, i've inserted this chapter after "Prelude...", so now "Gavotte" is Chapter 3.
"Courante"
A week later, the Princess Marlene and the knight were still being sighted together on more occasions than were strictly necessary, and not just by Eries and Sian. So as soon as her best friend arrived that day Eries pulled her aside and said, "For Marlene's own good, let's go hunting."
The two of them headed for the library, where Eries found the latest copy of the Asturian Social Register. They opened it to the page with the entry for "Schezar". Sian read from it: "Sizable ancestral estate located outside of Palas...only son of the adventurer Leon Schezar and his wife Encia, deceased...middle name Crusade...a younger sister, Serena--around Princess Millerna's age..."
Eries had scooted her chair closer to Sian's and taken hold of one side of the open book. "You know...I actually saw her once. She and Allen-san and Lady Encia were guests at one of Millerna's birthday parties. Serena was this sweet little towheaded creature who smiled easily and charmed everyone, and their mother had perfectly lovely manners. And they were both even more beautiful than Allen-san, if you can believe that." She bumped Sian's shoulder with her own.
Sian would've howled with mirth if they weren't in the library. So she settled for a chortle. "Hey, Darien was going on at dinner about swordfights again, and he said our latest and greatest knight was trained by the Fanelian Lord Balgus Ganesha, who's _the_ god of anyone who's ever wielded a sword, to hear him tell it." Darien was Sian's older brother.
Footsteps at the library's entrance made them look up just in time to see Princess Marlene walk by, followed momentarily by the cause of their information-gathering. He turned his head slightly to glance at them with a curious expression. They quickly ducked behind the book. Heads collided.
"Eep." Sian rubbed the small bump forming on her forehead.
"Ya, speak of the devil!" said Eries, one hand on _her_ head. "D'you think he heard us talking?"
"From way over there? Don't worry about it--he's a lot of things, but "person with superhearing" isn't one of them."
"I just wish I knew why he looked at us like that."
"Prolly just a lil concerned cause we saw him hanging around Marlene. _Again_."
The two started looking in the book again, but did not get more of anything useful on the knight, until the next day when Eries was coming out of her suite of rooms on her way to her archery lesson. Darva, a rather gabby and credulous woman who did Marlene's hair, stopped her in the hall to ask her if she had seen Princess Marlene. She was idly considering making the suggestion that they look for Allen-san instead because quite possibly Marlene would be there also, but apparently Darva was thinking much the same thing because then she said, "Oh dear, I do so hope she isn't with that Schezar boy again."
"What's wrong with them being...friends?" Eries asked, quickly assuming a slightly confused, "innocent-bystander" expression. Or at least she hoped it was.
"Milady, hadn't you heard? In the Year of Crystal Northeast his father left the family to go adventuring in the Dark Continent. But some say he left because of a girl! A foreigner, mind you."
"Oh?" Eries prayed her elfin ears weren't perking up at this bit of gossip. It was ignoble of her, and would put paid to her "I'm-just-an-innocent-bystander" act.
"Who knows if a boy with such a scandalous father can be trusted? And that's not all, his sister vanished under mysterious circumstances when she was just five years old and he was the last one who saw her!"
_Huh?_ Surely Darva wasn't insinuating that an eleven-year old Allen-san had a hand in her disappearance? That was just plain woolly-headed, not to mention pretty damn low, even for Palas's Informal League for the Propagation of Rumour, Innuendo and Character Defamation.
"So of course Lady Encia died of grief soon after." Darva paused in her recitation of these tragic events to let out a theatrical sigh.
Eries seized this opportunity to escape her. "I'm going to be late for archery," she fibbed; it was a good twenty minutes before the lesson started, but she enjoyed it greatly and always arrived early. "I expect you'll find Marlene somewhere around," she said as she hurried away, smirking because the older woman tut-tutted at the mention of archery.
She'd been thinking about ways to unobtrusively pump the in-court gossip society for information about the knight, but hadn't imagined someone like Darva would just come right out and tell her things about him without her even having to pry a bit!
By the time archery practice was over, it was early evening and Eries was still mulling over what she'd heard and simultaneously concentrating on her handling of the longbow, when she walked right into someone. "Pardon me," she said automatically and would've brushed past, but the other person spoke and she just about had a heart attack.
"Are you alright, Eries-hime?"
She looked up at him in shock, and before she knew it, words were pouring out of her mouth: "Oh, I'm so sorry! About your sister being missing and all!"
Allen-san stared at her.
As so often happens when one has blurted out something one shouldn't have, Eries kept talking. "I saw her once, at the party on Millerna's sixth birthday, you know? You were there with your mother and I remember Serena being such a sweet child she prolly outshone the birthday girl and it must've been only a few weeks before she went missing so it was sad to hear about her being gone because I didn't know..." she broke off, guilt-ridden, seeing that Allen looked pained.
When he didn't say anything, she looked down and started drawing crazy patterns with her shoe[1]. "I really am sorry for your loss, Allen-san," she finished lamely.
[1. i must acknowledge that bit is from "Drawing Crazy Patterns" by Texas, off of _White on Blond_.]
His voice was so soft she thought she'd merely imagined hearing it: "Thanks."
She looked up, and there was a tiny wistful smile on his face and a glimmer of something in his blue eyes. She smiled back uncertainly. Then she tossed off a polite inanity about having to get ready for dinner, did a snappy little about-face and beat a hasty retreat to her room before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
That night Eries had what would be the first in a protracted succession of dreams about Allen-san. The two of them were sitting facing each other, talking. He was confiding in her about his family. Details she could not possibly know were discussed, but it all just seemed to make sense, with the strange clarity of dream logic.
And if in waking moments she always properly referred to the Knight Caeli as Allen-san, in dreams she had no such compunction; he was just Allen. And Eries-hime was just Eries.
The way you're bathed in light / Reminds me of that night / God led me down into your rose garden of trust / And I was swept away / With nothing left to say / Some helpless fool yeah I was lost / In a swoon of peace / You're all I need to find / So when the time is right / Come to me sweetly, come to me / Come to me
--"The Dolphin's Cry," Live, _The Distance to Here_
~next chapter: "Gavotte"~
Author's Note: Because i thought this needed some more exposition, i've inserted this chapter after "Prelude...", so now "Gavotte" is Chapter 3.
"Courante"
A week later, the Princess Marlene and the knight were still being sighted together on more occasions than were strictly necessary, and not just by Eries and Sian. So as soon as her best friend arrived that day Eries pulled her aside and said, "For Marlene's own good, let's go hunting."
The two of them headed for the library, where Eries found the latest copy of the Asturian Social Register. They opened it to the page with the entry for "Schezar". Sian read from it: "Sizable ancestral estate located outside of Palas...only son of the adventurer Leon Schezar and his wife Encia, deceased...middle name Crusade...a younger sister, Serena--around Princess Millerna's age..."
Eries had scooted her chair closer to Sian's and taken hold of one side of the open book. "You know...I actually saw her once. She and Allen-san and Lady Encia were guests at one of Millerna's birthday parties. Serena was this sweet little towheaded creature who smiled easily and charmed everyone, and their mother had perfectly lovely manners. And they were both even more beautiful than Allen-san, if you can believe that." She bumped Sian's shoulder with her own.
Sian would've howled with mirth if they weren't in the library. So she settled for a chortle. "Hey, Darien was going on at dinner about swordfights again, and he said our latest and greatest knight was trained by the Fanelian Lord Balgus Ganesha, who's _the_ god of anyone who's ever wielded a sword, to hear him tell it." Darien was Sian's older brother.
Footsteps at the library's entrance made them look up just in time to see Princess Marlene walk by, followed momentarily by the cause of their information-gathering. He turned his head slightly to glance at them with a curious expression. They quickly ducked behind the book. Heads collided.
"Eep." Sian rubbed the small bump forming on her forehead.
"Ya, speak of the devil!" said Eries, one hand on _her_ head. "D'you think he heard us talking?"
"From way over there? Don't worry about it--he's a lot of things, but "person with superhearing" isn't one of them."
"I just wish I knew why he looked at us like that."
"Prolly just a lil concerned cause we saw him hanging around Marlene. _Again_."
The two started looking in the book again, but did not get more of anything useful on the knight, until the next day when Eries was coming out of her suite of rooms on her way to her archery lesson. Darva, a rather gabby and credulous woman who did Marlene's hair, stopped her in the hall to ask her if she had seen Princess Marlene. She was idly considering making the suggestion that they look for Allen-san instead because quite possibly Marlene would be there also, but apparently Darva was thinking much the same thing because then she said, "Oh dear, I do so hope she isn't with that Schezar boy again."
"What's wrong with them being...friends?" Eries asked, quickly assuming a slightly confused, "innocent-bystander" expression. Or at least she hoped it was.
"Milady, hadn't you heard? In the Year of Crystal Northeast his father left the family to go adventuring in the Dark Continent. But some say he left because of a girl! A foreigner, mind you."
"Oh?" Eries prayed her elfin ears weren't perking up at this bit of gossip. It was ignoble of her, and would put paid to her "I'm-just-an-innocent-bystander" act.
"Who knows if a boy with such a scandalous father can be trusted? And that's not all, his sister vanished under mysterious circumstances when she was just five years old and he was the last one who saw her!"
_Huh?_ Surely Darva wasn't insinuating that an eleven-year old Allen-san had a hand in her disappearance? That was just plain woolly-headed, not to mention pretty damn low, even for Palas's Informal League for the Propagation of Rumour, Innuendo and Character Defamation.
"So of course Lady Encia died of grief soon after." Darva paused in her recitation of these tragic events to let out a theatrical sigh.
Eries seized this opportunity to escape her. "I'm going to be late for archery," she fibbed; it was a good twenty minutes before the lesson started, but she enjoyed it greatly and always arrived early. "I expect you'll find Marlene somewhere around," she said as she hurried away, smirking because the older woman tut-tutted at the mention of archery.
She'd been thinking about ways to unobtrusively pump the in-court gossip society for information about the knight, but hadn't imagined someone like Darva would just come right out and tell her things about him without her even having to pry a bit!
By the time archery practice was over, it was early evening and Eries was still mulling over what she'd heard and simultaneously concentrating on her handling of the longbow, when she walked right into someone. "Pardon me," she said automatically and would've brushed past, but the other person spoke and she just about had a heart attack.
"Are you alright, Eries-hime?"
She looked up at him in shock, and before she knew it, words were pouring out of her mouth: "Oh, I'm so sorry! About your sister being missing and all!"
Allen-san stared at her.
As so often happens when one has blurted out something one shouldn't have, Eries kept talking. "I saw her once, at the party on Millerna's sixth birthday, you know? You were there with your mother and I remember Serena being such a sweet child she prolly outshone the birthday girl and it must've been only a few weeks before she went missing so it was sad to hear about her being gone because I didn't know..." she broke off, guilt-ridden, seeing that Allen looked pained.
When he didn't say anything, she looked down and started drawing crazy patterns with her shoe[1]. "I really am sorry for your loss, Allen-san," she finished lamely.
[1. i must acknowledge that bit is from "Drawing Crazy Patterns" by Texas, off of _White on Blond_.]
His voice was so soft she thought she'd merely imagined hearing it: "Thanks."
She looked up, and there was a tiny wistful smile on his face and a glimmer of something in his blue eyes. She smiled back uncertainly. Then she tossed off a polite inanity about having to get ready for dinner, did a snappy little about-face and beat a hasty retreat to her room before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
That night Eries had what would be the first in a protracted succession of dreams about Allen-san. The two of them were sitting facing each other, talking. He was confiding in her about his family. Details she could not possibly know were discussed, but it all just seemed to make sense, with the strange clarity of dream logic.
And if in waking moments she always properly referred to the Knight Caeli as Allen-san, in dreams she had no such compunction; he was just Allen. And Eries-hime was just Eries.
The way you're bathed in light / Reminds me of that night / God led me down into your rose garden of trust / And I was swept away / With nothing left to say / Some helpless fool yeah I was lost / In a swoon of peace / You're all I need to find / So when the time is right / Come to me sweetly, come to me / Come to me
--"The Dolphin's Cry," Live, _The Distance to Here_
~next chapter: "Gavotte"~