Chapter Twenty-Six

 

 

For Katherine, the recent days had passed in a numb daze. She went about her tasks mechanically, taking stock of the city’s supplies in preparation of the coming siege like some unfeeling puppet. But then, that wasn’t exactly right. The problem wasn’t that she didn’t feel. The problem was that she felt too much.

Despite the many tasks before her, the many distractions, her mind continually drifted back to the look of horror on Alesh’s face when he’d seen her on the battlements, to the stony, cold expression he’d had when gazing out at the prisoners as they fell under the hail of arrows. Some part of her thought that what he had done was no more than necessary. After all, the people who had been killed were servants of the Darkness, committed to seeing the world fall for their own gain. But another part was appalled by it, shocked that Alesh, the man she had thought she’d known so well—the man she had thought she loved—had ordered the massacre of over a hundred people.

It seemed impossible to reconcile a man who would do such a thing with the man she had believed him to be. Perhaps that was unfair. Likely it was, for what else could he have done? Yet, knowing that it was unfair did nothing to change the troubled, betrayed feeling that had consumed her for the last several days.

She needed to speak to Alesh, yet she was terrified to, terrified of what he might say. Terrified, even more, of what she might say. But she had not yet managed to get up the courage to speak with him, and from what she’d heard it wouldn’t have mattered even if she had. According to Captain Nordin, Alesh had sequestered himself in his rooms since the incident, speaking to no one, not even letting the servants in to clean. The only indication he was still alive was that the plates of food and stacks of reports left at his door were always taken.

Yet no one saw him retrieve either, except perhaps the guards stationed to his rooms. And if they knew anything of Alesh’s disposition, they weren’t speaking of it, not even to Captain Nordin who was, by all rights, their superior, apparently having decided that their loyalty, first and foremost, was to Alesh himself, something of which Katherine would have once been glad. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. The only things she was sure about were that the army was coming, and that it would be here in the next few days. Two simple facts, two simple certainties, but enough to drive her near madness. The army was coming. And they were not ready.

She could not even speak to Darl about her troubles, for he had not accompanied her during the last several days as he usually did, choosing instead to camp outside of Alesh’s rooms, sitting with his legs crossed, a calm expression on his face, his eyes closed more often than not as if he were deep in meditation.

“Lady Katherine?”

Katherine blinked, looking up at Merelda, an old woman and member of the castle staff whom Nordin had recommended as someone that might be able to help in the inventorying of the castle stores. So far, his recommendation had proved sound, as the woman was clever and possessed a mind for numbers that beggared the imagination, able to keep track of each item and its quantity as if she were a walking, talking ledger.

“Forgive me, Merelda,” Katherine said, realizing that, in her distraction, she had been sitting for several minutes at least, looking at but not actually seeing the latest report Merelda had handed her. “My…mind was somewhere else.”

The gray-haired woman nodded, something about the gesture seeming to indicate she understood exactly what Katherine had been thinking. “Lot’s of places a mind can be just now. Hope I’m not intruding by asking, miss,” she said in a tone of voice that made it clear she was going to ask either way, “but how’s that man of yours doing?”

“Man of mine?” Katherine asked, so distracted by her worries that at first she had no idea who the woman meant.

“Why, Chosen Alesh, of course,” the older woman said, grinning. “I’ll tell ya, there’s more than a few of the serving women in the castle’d love to get their hands on him. Never been much for the dark, brooding type myself, but even I can admit he’s fine to look at.”

Surprised by the woman’s candor, Katherine laughed despite herself—though in another moment, she quickly sobered. She didn’t know if Alesh was her man at all, didn’t know if he ever had been. “I…don’t know,” she said honestly, thinking that maybe she should be offended by the older woman’s words, but she wasn’t. “He…is troubled, I think.” We both are.

Merelda grunted. “Not about those Dark friends, I hope.”

Katherine glanced at her. “Dark friends?”

The older woman waved a hand as if to dismiss it. “You know, the ones everyone’s talking about, those as were at the gate, the ones the archers seen to.”

The ones the archers seen to. Said so plainly as if it didn’t bother the woman to speak of it at all, and perhaps it did not. Certainly, she didn’t look bothered. “I…believe it is.” Katherine managed.

The woman made a tsking sound. “A shame, that. Not something to worry on, not when he’s got so many other matters on his mind.”

There was something about the way she said it that made Katherine think it wasn’t just Alesh that the woman was talking about. “I suppose,” she said, more abruptly than she’d intended as some small bit of the emotional hurricane raging inside her found its way into her voice, “that you would have just killed them all and been done with it?” That seemed to be the prevailing opinion among the city, and few had expressed anything but pleasure at the massacre of well over a hundred people.

Instead of agreeing, though, the old woman merely shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think. Doesn’t even matter what you or the Chosen himself thinks, come to that.”

Katherine frowned. “What do you mean?”

Merelda shrugged again. “When a body turns a light on in the darkness, what happens to the shadows?”

“They’re…driven away,” Katherine said, unsure of what she was getting at.

“Maybe,” the woman allowed. “Some folks—priests mainly—say they’re killed. Say the shadows the Light eats are gone forever and that we only don’t notice because more shadows rise in their stead when the torches go out. Me, though, I’m a simple woman, and I’m content to leave such musings to the priests in their fine robes and long, stately beards.”

“So,” Katherine asked, “what do you think?” She was surprised to find that, suddenly, it seemed very important to know what this woman—this near-stranger—thought of it all.

“Well,” Merelda said, “I don’t mean to impose. I’m just a foolish old serving woman, that’s all. Don’t reckon my opinion matters much.”

Katherine thought maybe the woman was trying to impose, but she didn’t mind. Thought, too, that whatever she was, Merelda was more than just a foolish old serving woman. “And if I pressed you for your opinion?”

“Well,” the other woman said, giving her a wink, “if pressed, I suppose I’d say the priests got the wrong of it. Your strapping lad, too, if he thinks there’s something wrong—or right—about what he done.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“You said, a moment ago,” the woman went on, “that the light of a torch or a lantern, it drives back the shadows. Reckon maybe I’d say conquers the shadows.” Katherine was just about to ask what difference that made when the other women went on, smiling as if she knew exactly what Katherine was thinking. “You think that lantern, that torch, does what it does out of malice?”

“No…” Katherine said slowly. “But what—”

“Does it for its own gain, then? To show the shadows how tough it is, maybe? Or just because it likes doin’ it? How you reckon the torch feels about it all?”

“I…don’t think it feels anything about it,” Katherine said after a moment. “It’s just a torch or a lantern, not a person.”

“Right you are,” the old woman said, “it’s just a torch. Just a lantern, just doin’ what it does, that’s all. People, we’re the ones always insist on overcomplicating things. You see, my lady, the torch doesn’t conquer the shadows because it wants to, it does it because that’s simply what it does. What it was made to do. Like your Chosen there. Don’t make no difference how he feels about it, just as it don’t make no difference how the torch feels, if it felt anything at all. It’ll still keep right on doing what it does. It’s just its nature, that’s all.”

Just its nature. What it was made to do. The words, said simply enough, struck Katherine with an invisible force and quelled that storm of emotion inside of her. “Because it’s what it does,” she said softly, repeating the woman’s words.

“Just so,” the old woman said, smiling. Then she shrugged. “Or at least, that’s what an old lady who doesn’t know nothin’ about nothin’ thinks on the matter, anyhow.”

Katherine stood, letting the report she’d been holding fall to the desk where it landed among a dozen others like it. “You’re wrong, Merelda,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I think you know quite a lot. I’ll be back. There’s…there’s something I have to do.”