#priarch stuff

“You look like something is troubling you.” he said turning away from the small table and the tall mirror.

Thibault set the jacket carefully on the coverlet and folded his arms. “We’ve got problems.” He said. “Below stairs.”

Achille drew himself up to his full height and took a deep breath. “Tell me.”

“The maids say it’s a bad place, this house.” Thibault said, his grim face making him look more like a thug than ever. “And the footmen and such don’t like it much either. They’ve been talking about it ever since we got here last week. The maids say the place gives them the chills and the men say there’s something happening down in the low levels when they’ve been down there. The wine cellar and such. They hate being down there.”

“And of course my mother’s had them down doing a full inventory of that and looking for the lost Fleursanglante gold or something.”

Thibault nodded, and the light of the candles made deep shadows in the vicious scars around one of his golden eyes. “She has.” He said. “And I don’t mind telling you they’ve hated it. There’s been rumblings. But now it’s worse.”

Achille swallowed. “How much worse?” 

“We’ve lost one of the footmen.”

“What do you mean you have lost him? Did he give notice?”

Thibault shook his head. “No. I mean he’s gone. If he’d given notice his being gone wouldn’t hardly be surprising now would it, my Lord?”

“What do you mean he’s gone?! Where can he have gone? This bloody place is in the middle of nowhere. It took ages to get here and it was cold and that was when the weather was clear. It’s been blizzards for days. No one would try to make their way down that hideous mountain road and back to Ishgard in this.” Achille glanced at the window as he spoke. But the weather had not mysteriously seen fit to clear and he could see nothing outside it save a hideous bounty of snow swirling down and a chunk of nearby wall so nearly obscured by it that he wasn’t certain where the top was.

“I mean that he is gone.” Thibault said. “As near as anybody remembers he went down for something or another yesterday and no one has seen him since. He missed supper and he also didn’t turn up for breakfast this morning.”

Achille took this in for a moment in silence, then ran a hand viciously through his hair and swore in a way he wouldn’t have if there had been anyone but Thibault to see him. “Halone’s frigid fucking knees!”

“Aye, my lord.” Thibault agreed. “It’s a right fucking mess.”

“You sincerely mean to tell me that someone went down into the basement of this bloody place and got lost?”

“As far as anybody can tell, aye.”

“I suppose… they’ve looked for him?” “Aye. And not a damn trace. His lantern is missing too. P’raps he stole it and went to hock it for the money to start a new life in Ul’dah as a merchant prince.” Thibault said.

“She did not actually suggest that…” Achille said, a horrible sinking feeling in his chest.

“If the maid who overheard it is to be believed she said something of the like, yes.”

“I see.” Achille wondered yet again how his mother could be so very good at making people of their own class like her and so horrible with everyone else. “So how bad is it? How many are looking to give notice as soon as we can get out of the storm.”

“At least half.” Thibault said. “They really don’t like this house. It’s nothing but eerie stories of a night. They say the place is haunted or cursed or both.”

Achille frowned. “And what do you think?”

Thibault lifted a hand to his chin, running his thumb thoughtfully over a small scar there. It was a big hand, calloused and scarred, for Thibault had been a soldier before ever he was a valet. Achille sometimes thought one of his parents must have been a giant. “I think there’s something wrong with this place.” Thibault said at last in his calm matter of fact way.

Ice settled into the pit of Achille’s stomach. He had not thought anything could really unsettle Thibault, but the look in the valet’s eyes as they met his own was decidedly uneasy. “What do you mean?” He whispered.

“I mean I think there is something wrong here.” Thibault said. “I don’t know as I believe in ghosts or spirits or curses, but I do know when I’ve come into a place where something wants to kill me. And this place feels like it is hungry. Way down in the low levels there’s something that shivers in your bones… and I don’t mind telling you my nights are bad. Bad like in the war. I keep hearing dragonsong in my dreams, like when they were massing for battle.”

“I haven’t noticed anything like that.” Achille said, and then at the look in Thibault’s eyes hastily added. “Which doesn’t mean I don’t believe you. A footman doesn’t just vanish into nothing, and no one would steal a damned lantern and flee out into that.” He gestured toward the window. 

“No. They wouldn’t.” Thibault agreed. 

Achille glanced at the snuffbox, frowning just a little. “Perhaps we can learn something about the place.” He said. “The storm should blow over soon. I’ll send a letter then. The last lord that held this place is gone with all his family. But the one before that… There’s one person left who lived here from the family before that. I’ll write a letter to him, see if he’ll speak to me about it. And I’ll go talk to them downstairs myself and have a look… if you think that would help.”

“I do think it would help.” Thibault said. “People like being taken seriously when they’re afraid.”

“Well before I go down you can let them know I am taking it seriously.” He said. “I suppose you’d better get me into that coat for dinner. And then I’ll write a letter.”

Thibault raised an eyebrow. 

           Silvaineaux shoved himself to his feet, making a silent assessment and a count of those he could see as he did. The room would have been a gracious enough once. The carpet was still fine, the furnishings old and valuable. Yet it was bitter cold. Colder than the embers in the hearth should have left it, colder than four sturdy walls that shut out the blizzard outside should have been. And he felt something else. In the dream-fogged haze of his mind he had a strange sickening feeling that he remembered this place, and that something horrible was going to happen.

           He could not place that feeling, could not put it down to anything save weariness and the remnants of whatever he had been dreaming before the knight woke him. Yet it lingered there, a sick low dread in his heart. He had never seen this room before, and he could never have been in such a place as this before, yet that sense lingered. This was familiar, it said. And dangerous.

           The scream that came a moment later only confirmed his wariness. He went to answer it, leaving behind the knight whose presence felt both soothing and steady as an anchor, and startlingly, sharply wrong. There was danger in that house, death even beyond the fate that had found one of his men as they all slept. He caught glimpses of it in passing, a lady who was no living being. He wondered if she meant to warn them. Yet a blizzard battered the walls outside and there was death in that too.

           The house was deadlier. His awareness of that sharpened with each passing moment, as he tried to gather his men, to move them. He had been here before. It had been bad. The blizzard was preferable. But even as the house itself seemed to come to life and attack them he could not place that lurking sense, could not give that awareness a name. He only knew it with all the force of a premonition and yet with a horror that felt as strong as memory.

           Even when he realized the ghostly lady was the danger not the warning he did not understand it. It was not until the pain came and the iron scent of his own blood surrounded him that he truly understood it. His eyes sought out the knight again then, his lips shaped the name that came first to his thoughts. “Sui.” Even as he spoke it he wondered if it was the right name. It should not be. Silvaineaux had been here, but Sui had not.  But the knight turned, whether at his call or at the sound of his faltering Silvaineaux didn’t know. Sui shouldn’t be here. He wasn’t here. And when the knight who was Sui called out to him in turn it was not the right name at all.

           He fell, and dreams caught him, one and then another, and at the end of each, when awareness returned and with it that horrible disorienting knowledge that this was dream and not reality, he looked for the knight who was and wasn’t Sui, or the priest who was, and did not find him again.

           Both temper and horrible bone deep fear grew with each successive realization. And then after battle he woke in truth. He roused to muscles stiff and heavy from having dozed on rough ground in full armor, to aches and the pull of old scars and a clarity that told him this was finally reality. And Sui was there, dozing across his breastplate. Yet when the rest of them woke the priest’s eyes didn’t open. He did not stir or answer no matter how Silvaineaux whispered his name or shook him.

***

           Sui had not woken in the hours since. Silvaineaux stared down at that familiar, beloved face on the pillow and desperately willed him to open his eyes. But more long moments passed, and Sui’s face remained reposeful, his lashes making soft shadows on his cheeks. His breaths were slow and steady with sleep.

           Silvaineaux felt as if he couldn’t draw a proper breath.

He rose from his perch on the bedside abruptly, paced from one end of the room to the other in long strides, quiet at first until with a soft choked sound that might equally have been a laugh or a sob it occurred to him that the last thing he even wanted was to keep from waking Sui.

He’d found someone hours ago willing to listen to his instructions and open enough buckles he could wrestle himself out of the remainder of his armor. It had been a noisy process and he had been careless in his haste with it. With every piece of metal that fell he had wondered and hoped that Sui might wake, but that had not stirred him either.

He strode to the fireplace then back again to peer down at Sui. He lingered for a moment before unease and taut nerves carried him back to the fireplace. He poured himself a glass of whiskey and did not trouble to try to control the way his fingers trembled. There was no one to see. The bottle clanked against the glass and he looked back.

The candlelight pooled softly over Sui’s face, making gentle flickering shadows, but he had been watching long enough that he no longer mistook them for stirring. What was he going to do? He gulped down the drink but there was no soothing in the burn of it down his throat, only a raw and unbearable sharpness that made him want to shout.

His fingers tightened on the glass with that urge, but he suppressed it, tightened his lips against the sound that wanted to escape. Then he hurled the glass into the fireplace. There was a brief, vicious satisfaction in the sound of smashing glass, the little flare as the dregs of whiskey ignited, then only silence and crushing, helpless grief.

“Go over it again.” He told himself and tried to ignore that his voice sounded rough and alien even in his own ears.

Once more he walked his memories back through each moment of the dragon and the dreams to the end. Sui had been there and then he had not and now he wouldn’t wake. It meant something. It had to mean something, but no matter how many times he went over it Silvaineaux couldn’t see what it was. He saw plenty of other things, but not the answer he sought.

A low sound reached his ears, a keening like a wounded beast and he looked reflexively back at Sui before he realized it had come from his own throat. “Why was I even there?!” He asked, taking up another glass. He did not even trouble to fill this one before hurling it with every ounce of force he could muster at the flames. “What use was I? I didn’t fight anything, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even protect anyone!”

Smash. A third glass followed the first two, hard enough that shards of glass rebounded off the brick to glimmer like tears on the rug. He crushed the largest one immediately with a stomp of his boot heel and then knelt to try to gather the tiny glimmering shards in his hands. He had done nothing. He had served nothing. He had been caught over and over in dreams like a fly in a spider’s web or a leaf in the wind and when the time had come to fight he had not really been needed.

His sword could not accomplish what magic could, and he had not noticed the one real danger in time to lift his shield for others. He had been useless, pointless, and people had bled and suffered. And Sui had been there in a darkness he should never have had to see and now he wouldn’t wake.

His sword could not fight whatever this was either. He could no more help this than he could capture every small shard of glass from the fur of the rug. His fingers were bleeding, he noticed, from tiny cuts he had scarcely even felt. He stared dispassionately down at his hands for a moment, the little flecks of shining glass and the tiny trickles of crimson that colored it like rubies. Then he calmly dusted the glass into the fire and swiped his hands clean on his thighs.  

It did nothing to calm him. His thoughts were a whirlwind. Sui would not wake, and there was no one he could ask for help with this one further thing that was beyond him.

Perhaps not quite no one. He closed his eyes, ignoring the shameful burn of the tears that escaped them. “O Halone.” He whispered. “I know I did not serve you well today. But if I ever have, then please help me. Help me understand what to do.”