#write2025

            “What’s this one?”

            Silvaineaux started a little in his seat, jerking his eyes up from the pile of papers he’d been leafing through. He hadn’t heard Honore come in and he blinked, tugging his thoughts out of the muddle of mission logistics and priorities. “What’s… which one?” He asked, looking around at the piles of papers he’s spread over the big table in the library. 

            Honore was not looking at any of his loosely organized piles. “This one.” He said, tapping the cover of the book with one forefinger.

            Silvaineaux reached for his cup of tea, then sighed when his fingertips found it cold. His eyes settled on the book and he couldn’t help frowning. He had shoved it into the corner of the table when he’d come in and continued studiously ignoring it as he had been for moons. “It’s a book.”

            Honore’s look was eloquent as he slowly raised his eyebrows.

            “It’s an Enchiridion.” Silvaineaux clarified.

            “I can see that too.” Honore said, reaching idly to open the cover.

            Silvaineaux was hardly aware he had intended to move before his palm slapped down over the gold and gemstone adornments on the cover, hard enough to sting and fast enough to keep that cover closed. “It’s old.” He said.

            Honore drew his hand back. “I can tell.” He said. “It’s the only thing that saves it from being grotesquely ostentatious. But where did it come from?”

            “An old Manor House out in the Western Highlands. I cannot tell you a great deal more than that just yet.” He was aware even as he said it that one of the reasons it was true was that he had been avoiding the thing. He drew his hand back. “I have been meaning to find out if there’s someone here it should be returned to.”

            “That seems kind. But why do you have it?” Silvaineaux eased his hand from the cover, straightening until the tense muscles in his spine eased. He glanced at the darkening windows. “That’s a long story.” He said. “And one very ill-suited to a dark evening with the wind howling outside. And it will be dinnertime in a moment.” 

            Honore nodded stiffly, a look of ill-concealed hurt in his eyes. 

            Silvaineaux stood up, walking around the table to set a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I mean just that.” He said. “It’s a spooky unsettling kind of tale and it has no proper ending. It’s not a story for an evening like this. But I promise, if you remind me I’ll tell you all I know of it some sunny afternoon.”

            “I will hold you to that.” Honore said.

Silvaineaux knew had never been any sort of artist. His occasional rare attempts at poetry accomplished nothing more than meandering thoughts, an unusable phrase or two, and more often than not, fuel for the study fireplace. His musical talents were limited to a single song he had carefully memorized for the harp and the ability not to utterly disgrace himself when Felicienne and Honore asked him to sing. He had not attempted to draw anything that wasn’t the vague outline of terrain for a battle plan since he was a little boy at his lessons.

He didn’t have the first idea how to begin now.  He had the paper spread out before him, he had a few pencils and charcoals rummaged from one of the cabinets in the library, some of them quite possibly older than he was.  Silvaineaux frowned down at the blank paper and the charcoal that felt so clumsy in his hand and wondered what he had been thinking.

He glanced at the window, where the heavy darkness sat outside. And then at the clock which had not managed to move appreciably. It was hours yet until dawn. “I can burn it when I am done.” Silvaineaux told himself and set the charcoal to the paper, beginning to draw the vague looming shape of a house.

He was no more an artist when he’d finished than he was when he began. He had filled the paper with a collage of dark shapes from his dreams and his hands were smudged halfway to the elbows. The effect was ugly, rough and dark. The outlines of an exterior wall ran into a dark corridor. Another image of a room settled off to one side, the lines dark and erratic. The shapes of dragon’s wings echoed again and again over it all. No one but him would have the faintest idea what they were looking at in that collection of ragged lines. It was unsettling to look at only because of the memories it woke. But when he glanced at the clock, dawn had drawn more than a bell nearer and his eyes were beginning to blur with weariness. So perhaps it had accomplished its aim after all.

He was supposed to be in bed. And he had been. But Honore had gone to sleep and the full moon shone in the window and made the room strange and foreign seeming, a place he didn’t know. The shadows were dark and enormous and the moonlight picked out strange shapes in silver.

Silvaineaux lay carefully still, willing himself to close his eyes and go to sleep. But instead he wondered if the shadows were dark in the crypt where his mother was and if she noticed. Only she surely wasn’t there. He reminded himself. She had died bravely in combat with a dragon. She would be feasting with Halone and she wouldn’t know that the crypt was dark. Or that the world felt impossibly big and empty. 

He looked across the room at Honore’s bed again. But Honore was still, his breaths quiet and steady. Silvaineaux sighed and slid out of his bed. He crept out of the room on tiptoe and closed the door slowly. It was even darker in the hallway but he could see a light seeping up the stairs. He followed that glow the length of the hall and down.

There were still fires glowing downstairs and lights. And finally in front of the big hearth in the sitting room he found his father. He tiptoed a little closer noting the way he sat. There were books on the table beside his chair but they were unopened. A glass sat at his elbow but it was still full. 

He had been sitting thus when he told them goodnight and sent them off to bed and he sat there still, eyes fixed on the fire. He looked like a statue. But at least he was not alone. One of the dogs was curled up against his boots and as Silvaineaux watched the other eased closer. The wolfhound settled his great head on his father’s knee and finally Silvaineaux saw him move, lifting one hand to absently smooth its ears.

He tiptoed forward impulsively past the arm of his father’s chair and settled himself on the floor beside his other knee. Silvaineaux tipped his own head to rest against that knee and swallowed hard when the other hand lifted to settle on -his- head stroking gently over the long strands of his hair. He closed his eyes waiting for his father to tell him to go back to bed. 

But for a moment he said nothing. Instead his hand continued that gentle caress, then he sighed. “Are you missing your mother very much, Silvaineaux?” He asked quietly.

Silvaineaux nodded, squeezing his eyes tight and swallowing against the ache in his throat because he was ten summers old and far too big to cry.

The man in the mirror looked a little like his father. He could find traces of his elder brother too. He had inherited the same thick, straight fall of jet black hair, and the same pronounced hawk’s beak of a nose. He had something very near his father’s height and breadth of shoulder and the same long ears that were far less awkward now the rest of him had grown into them.

He did not see his mother when he looked in the mirror, though he was aware there were traces of her there too. His skin was fairer than his father’s had been, tawny instead of dark and that was her legacy. His eyes were the chief thing that set him apart from all his nearest family. His father’s had both been golden, his sister’s too. His mother’s and Seraphin’s had both been blue. He bore one of each, though he thought their shape more akin to his father’s. Yet those mixed colors too had come from his mother’s family and with them the legacy of a Sight that showed him the person standing behind him in the mirror.

That sudden presence in a room he’d thought empty made Silvaineaux’s hand jerk, just a little. Just enough that he watched a droplet of blood well at the corner of his jaw. “Damn it.” He whispered to himself and continued the pass of the razor a bit more carefully, following the line of his jaw. He watched the blade rather than the presence behind him, but now he had noticed it he could not ignore that pallid shape standing somewhere behind his shoulder.

Silvaineaux finished his shaving carefully as blood ran down his jaw and onto his neck, then wiped the blade and put it away. He straightened and wiped blood and shaving soap alike away onto the towel. Pressing a clean corner tightly against the small wound on his jaw he slowly turned to study the intruder. He did not recognize the man, though there was no reason he should expect to recognize a spirit encountered in an inn room where he had not stayed before and would likely never stay again.

The ghost did not study him in return. It only stood there in the middle of the room, looking rather lost. Someone had stabbed him, the wound showed clearly the blood oddly brilliantly crimson against the faint pallor the rest of the image held. Perhaps he too had been a long way from home, Silvaineaux thought with pity, and did not know how to find the place he should have been. Or perhaps the stabbing had happened here, that blood too cleared away as neatly as his own would be.

“I don’t know who you are.” He told the ghost quietly. “Or how to help you. I am sorry.”

It didn’t look at him or respond. They so rarely did. It only continued standing there, looking around the room with a look of such desolated confusion that Silvaineaux’s heart ached with helpless pity. 

After a moment he tugged the towel away, turned back to the mirror to see the bleeding had stopped. Then he moved about the room dressing himself and bundling all his things back into his saddlebags. His strange roommate did not respond to that either. He only stood there, lingering so that when Silvaineaux paused at the door to look back over the room, he saw them with their positions reversed, his own living face reflected over a ghostly shoulder. 

“I need to leave.”

Seraphin did not answer him immediately. He stood behind their father’s desk. His own desk now, and he looked down at the papers spread over its top though Silvaineaux knew he was not seeing them. “Why? You only just came home. The war is over. You can stay.”

“And do what?!” Silvaineaux asked only just short of shouting. “The war is over. No one needs me to fight it. You have been running the House without me for years. You don’t need me either. I will not be useless. I cannot fill my days with nothing. I need…” He paused to draw a deep breath and to consider his words. “I need to find some place I can be useful. I need to have a purpose. And we both know I am only good at one thing.”

Seraphin looked up at him then. “You think I can’t find some purpose for you? You think I couldn’t use your help with anything?”

“I think.” Silvaineaux said, standing up to pace letting the fierce movement do something to soothe him so that he could once again match the measured tones of his older brother. “That you would find me plenty of things to do, things that you or someone else could manage just as easily and likely far better. I think you would find me tasks. I think you would try very hard to make me feel useful. But I think we both know you don’t need me.”

“That isn’t true. I…”

“And I think we both know also.” Silvaineaux interrupted. “That finding a use for a man you don’t need would be one more task on that already full desk. I think you forget that I do know something of managing men now.”

Seraphin’s eyes narrowed and for the first time since they had begun their discussion temper shone in their blue depths. “You are my brother.” He snapped out each word like he was their father laying down an edict. “You are not something for me to manage.”

“Then stop trying to manage me and let me go!” Silvaineaux strode forward to face him across the desk, slamming his own palms down on the sturdy wood.

Seraphin slammed his own palms down in turn, so that they faced each other again across that expanse of desk. “And what…” He said coldly despite that display of temper. “Will you do if I say no?”

Silvaineaux straightened abruptly, reining in the worst of his temper even if he could no longer conquer that fierce restlessness that had been dogging him in the moons since he’d come home. “Then I will go without your blessing.” He said. “Though I would much rather go with it.”

“Give me a sevenday.” Seraphin said. “I will find something to keep you or…I’ll let you go.”

“So be it.” Silvaineaux said and stormed out of the room.

***

It was four days of scarcely speaking later when Seraphin failed to come home from whatever had taken him out to Coerthas.

At first Silvaineaux was only exasperated, but as evening wore down to night and no sign came of the Baron’s return a horrible foreboding settled over him. He kept his vigil in the chapel praying with desperate fervor. By dawn his eyes burned, but not as furiously and desperately as that ache in his chest.

He had known with a sick and sinking feeling what they would find long before they came on the first traces of churned and blood-stained snow. It was Honore who leapt from his own bird first, and crossed the space to where their older brother lay amid the signs of whatever battle had killed him. It was Honore who wept, desperately and shamelessly.

Amity

Insofar as Silvaineaux could tell the crow was on the mend. It ate readily from his fingers now and its feathers and eyes alike were glossy and bright. It seemed cruel to keep the creature confined to a cage when it had begun to take an interest in everything around it. Malheur was not skittish as some birds were. It was that boldness that had earned him that broken wing in the first place.

Malheur seemed not to have learned any lesson from the injury, Silvaineaux thought. Or else he had simply managed to make the bird trust him. It  sat contentedly on his shoulder as he sat down to tea. 

Honore stared for a moment. “Are you going to keep him after all?”

Silvaineaux looked up from the dainty sandwich he had picked up, briefly baffled. “Oh Malheur? No. Of course not.” He extracted a small chunk of the roast from between the bread. “He’s a wild bird.” He said, offering up the meat.

Malheur accepted it daintily, and Silvaineaux heard him gulp it down. He hardly needed the look his brother gave him to understand what Honore was so pointedly not saying.

“So then, your grandfather said, ‘Perhaps if you’d get properly wed your wife might teach you how to play chess.’” Judicaël said, laughing. “That evening was one of the only times I ever managed to beat him at a game and it was out of pure bloody-minded stubbornness, because that suggestion rankled me so.”

Silvaineaux chuckled. He did not often visit his great-uncle. But it had been a clear cold evening when a rather pointed note arrived suggesting he was overdue for a visit and a game of chess. He had no other particular obligations and certainly no objection, so now he found himself in Judicaël’s cozy sitting room, facing the old knight across the board, while his cousin Gaheriet sharpened his sword and offered occasional commentary from his place by the fire. It was surprisingly cozy.

“And neither of you has ever had a wife so who knows if anyone will ever win this game.” Gaheriet said.

“I don’t see you volunteering to do any better.” Judicaël retorted. “And you…” He added the cold steel of his left forefinger tapping gently at Silvaineaux’s brow. “Are distracted this evening. Glass of whiskey for your thoughts?”

“I wouldn’t mind another.” Silvaineaux agreed. “And I am not so distracted as all that. Check.”

Judicaël’s good hand moved immediately to the board, his knight neatly sweeping the offending bishop from the board. “As I said, distracted.” He said, reaching for the decanter.

Silvaineaux couldn’t argue this time. He scowled at the board, wondering how he’d missed seeing the knight. But he was well aware that the problem lay in his own occupied mind. 

Judicaël topped up his glass. “And now, your thoughts?”

“Why -did- you never marry?” He asked. He knew the basic things said about his great-uncle’s odd situation but he had never heard the man’s own version of it.

Judicaël studied him for a moment idly picking up that captured bishop to play between the fingers of his right hand. “Because I could not wed the one I wanted.” He said finally. “And nothing and no one else would suffice. Simple as that.”

Silvaineaux nodded, finally reaching to make a much more prudent move of a pawn before he sipped his whiskey. “Do you regret it?”

“At my age?” Judicaël chuckled. “I’m far too old to have time left for regrets. But no. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I had enough, even if it had no formal name.” 

“Then how did you know it was enough?”

Judicaël’s eyes, still brilliant and keenly golden in their nest of wrinkles lifted from the board to his. He didn’t speak immediately, only studied him in a way that made Silvaineaux want to lower his own eyes. Finally he said, “I suppose you lost your parents before you were ready to ask them about matters of the heart, didn’t you?”

“I suppose.” Silvaineaux agreed. “But I am not asking for advice.”

“Just the ramblings of an old man?”

“And that sounds rather like time for me to go back up to my own place.” Gaheriet said, pushing himself to his feet. He sheathed his sword and paused by the chess board to offer each of them a squeeze to the shoulder before slipping out the door.

Judicaël slowly nodded, turning his attention back to the board. He castled his king in a deft one-handed movement before he spoke. “It’s like that in a way, I think.” He tipped his head toward the board. “A person you love can be a refuge. You know when you find that.”

Silvaineaux slowly nodded, reaching out to absently move another piece. “A refuge.” he repeated.

“Shelter from life’s storms and whatnot.” Judicaël said. “There’s a reason this house is called Heart’s Respite.”

Silvaineaux raised his eyebrows, forgetting the board for a moment.

“It was a gift to me. But we named it together, he and I.”

“A refuge.” Silvaineaux said. “That makes sense.”

Silvaineaux never slept late unless he was sick or injured. He rarely dozed off before midnight or outside his bed. But his sleep had been exceptionally poor the last few nights and the words on the page he was reading had begun to swim before his eyes. He closed it on his finger and settled it on his lap for a moment. 

The library was peaceful and empty and the fading sun through the windows dyed everything gently golden. The room was quiet save the soft crackle of the nearby fire. He was well aware he ought to get up and pace around the room, perhaps even take a brief turn about the courtyard in his shirt sleeves to let the cold well and truly wake him up.