Chapter Text
“You have to put it back. He’s going to know you took it.”
“So? He can come and take it if he cares so much. It looks better on me anyway.”
The herb garden was black and white in winter, just soil and frost and dark woody stems. Every scrap of green had been harvested before the winter cold could kill it, and the servants’ quarters and corridors were hung with bunches of drying leaves that perfumed the air. It was more secret than the larger vegetable gardens and scrubby orchards, small and walled in to keep as much of the cold out as possible, and useless all through the winter, so nobody would stray in to see. Of all the Fraldarius castle grounds, this was the place Glenn was least likely to find them, at least before Felix had had the chance to enjoy his stolen - let’s say borrowed - goods.
“You can’t even get it on right,” said Sylvain, and reached out for the helmet. “Here, if you really have to do this, let me-”
“I can do it!” Felix dodged out of reach, slippery as an ermine.
“Look, even Glenn has a squire to help him with this stuff.”
“I don’t need a squire!” Felix tried again in vain to fit the helmet on his head. “And you’d be a terrible squire anyway.”
“It would be an honour to have me for a squire,” said Sylvain, lunging forward. “Squiring for you, however… Come on, this is painful to watch, give it here!”
“No!”
“Give it!”
“What is going on in here?”
Both Felix and Sylvain froze guiltily, but it was just Ingrid, alone by the stone walls spidered with their winter ivy, her hair bright against the grey and green. Felix could tell that she was folding her arms under all her furs, which meant she was deadly serious.
“Is that Glenn’s helmet?” she demanded, at the same time as Sylvain said, “I have nothing to do with this.”
“Liar,” muttered Felix.
“Did you steal that? He needs it! Give it back!”
“I just want to try it on. Then I’ll put it back where I found it, I promise.”
She glared at him, green eyes fierce as an ice burn, and sighed. “You’d better. Hurry up and try it on, then.”
Felix tugged at it again, and again it wouldn’t go.
Sylvain was sniggering behind his hand. When Felix became a knight like Glenn, his first duel to the death would be with Sylvain.
Ingrid sighed. “You are hopeless.”
Before Felix could even retort, she was behind him and pulling his hair. He whipped around, cheeks burning, and then the tie slipped undone, his hair fell loose and the helmet clanged down on his shoulders.
It was heavy and dark and hot in there, and though everything was muffled he could hear Sylvain barking with laughter.
“How do I look?” he asked bravely.
“Stupid,” said Ingrid.
“At least I don’t have hay in my hair!” His voice echoed too sharply inside the helmet, but if Glenn could wear this and like it, then Felix could too.
“I do not!” She hit him hard on the shoulder and he lashed out back, but she was already gone and he almost tipped himself over swiping at the empty air.
Sylvain held him up. “Here, this way.”
Felix felt himself turned around by the shoulders.
“Ready?”
“Sylvain!” screeched Ingrid.
Felix nodded clumsily, wobbling the helmet.
Sylvain let go and Felix charged right into the wall with a clang, bouncing off and blinking in the pitch black.
“Sylvain, what is wrong with you?” snapped Ingrid, but Sylvain was roaring in hysterics. “Felix, why are you such an idiot? It has a visor!”
“Hey.”
Ingrid broke off.
“You’d better not have dented that.”
Glenn wasn’t supposed to find them here. Felix was supposed to have sneaked back to the armoury and replaced it ready for Glenn to set off with the other Fraldarius knights tomorrow to join the royal procession on the road.
He rummaged frantically for excuses and found none. He could run, then, and Glenn wouldn’t know who it was under the helmet as long as Sylvain and Ingrid kept their mouths shut, and then later he could say he’d caught the culprit and brought the helmet back, but by then Glenn had lifted the helmet right off his head.
“I didn’t dent it, I promise!”
Glenn looked angry - Father-angry - for a couple of seconds, and then burst out laughing. “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Battle axes can’t split this thing, I doubt you could even scratch it.”
“I’m sorry about all of this, Glenn,” said Ingrid, as if any of it had been her idea.
Glenn just smiled and gently pulled a wisp of hay from her hair, almost the same pale gold. Ingrid blushed prettily, because of course she didn’t mind when he did it.
“Felix, you should be training,” said Glenn.
“Why?”
“Father said so. And if you want one of these for yourself one day-” he flicked the helmet and made it ring, “-you’ll listen to him.”
Felix went, though he was half worn-out already from running around in that helmet. If his father had asked, then that meant more than likely his father was waiting for him personally in the yard, and that meant training with the lance, which wasn’t his favourite so he’d have to try harder than usual. Glenn was already joking with Sylvain and talking with Ingrid, and Felix tried to tell himself he didn’t mind.
He wondered sometimes what it would be like to be in Glenn’s place, the heir to the house. He could be; he had a major Crest and Glenn didn’t, and some houses worked that way. Sylvain’s did, which was why he was the Gautier heir instead of his older brother. Sylvain never liked to talk about it, so Felix tried Glenn’s life on for size only in the privacy of his own mind. To be as good as Glenn, to be a knight, to know that one day he would own the castle and have to run it, meet all the other lords in the council chamber with Father and learn how it was all done. And Ingrid too, he thought of her, but it was strange enough that one day she would be his sister, so he never thought of her for long. Castles and fighting and duties to the crown were fine, he understood those and could imagine himself engaging with them. Words like ‘wife’ and ‘marriage’ were far outside the realm of his experience. They meant nothing to him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted them to mean anything. More than once Ingrid had promised that when she was a lady of Fraldarius she’d find him a good wife, and it had always sounded like a threat.
There was no sound coming from the yard, but if Father had sent for him then he’d be in there. Felix found himself walking slower, his own footsteps quieter, watching for a trap. Nothing moved.
The sound wasn’t quite a grunt, barely a hitch of breath, but Felix heard it and spun, in time to bat away the dummy throwing knife with his forearm.
A moment later he felt it, pain so sharp it brought tears to his eyes and bent him over. He held his breath and hissed through his teeth to keep from yelling, because if he yelled then he’d get something else thrown at him. He was already bruising. He could feel it, right on the bone. What a stupid thing to do, to knock a knife out of the air with his bare arm. That was what his father would say. And it didn’t even matter that it was only wood, because-
“If that had been a real knife, you’d only have one arm now,” said his father from the shadows by the wall. “A lesson learned. Next time you’ll come to train already in armour. Or learn to dodge. Won’t you?”
Felix nodded, biting the inside of his cheek to stifle his whimpering and blinking the tears from his eyes still.
“But good reflexes,” said his father, and Felix was so pleased that he almost forgot the pain.
*
The night was as clear as ice, the stars like frost. The castle was asleep: servants, Father, Ingrid in the guest bedroom. Only the men on the night watch were awake, posted at their gates far below, and Felix and Glenn, high up on the roof where the tiles were worn smooth and faded from years of climbing out of bedroom windows and watching the stars. They’d come out here as long as Felix could remember, to whisper things that could only be said up here where nobody came, things that could only exist in this night-time place. They’d carved their names in the tiles long ago, and scratched them out sometimes when they fought, but always at some point they’d be friends again and the names would be carved anew.
“I thought Ingrid would have gone home today,” said Felix, stretched out on the tiles with their perfectly comfortable slope.
“She’ll leave tomorrow,” said Glenn. “After I go.”
“Why?”
“She has to see me off first.”
Felix wrinkled his nose. “You aren’t even married yet.”
“We will be soon.”
“Not that soon.”
“Sooner than you think. Then I’ll kick you out of the castle and you’ll have to work for Sylvain.”
“You can’t kick me out,” said Felix. “Father said I had good form today. He said I could beat you if I kept working hard.”
“You gonna keep working hard?”
“Obviously.”
“Good,” said Glenn. “You’ve got plenty of time. Let’s see if you can beat me when I get back.”
Plenty of time? “How long are you going to be gone for?” asked Felix.
“Depends on the roads and the weather,” said Glenn. “If the snows hold off, maybe a month? Depends on how the talks go too, once we get there.”
“I didn’t know Duscur was so far away.”
“Everything’s slower when you travel with royalty,” said Glenn, so casually that Felix was jealous.
He glared up at the stars, burrowed in the bedding he’d dragged out of his room and over the roof.
“Hey.”
Felix burrowed deeper.
“Hey. Are you okay? You’re not going to miss me, are you?”
“Why would I miss you?” He looked over at Glenn, just a pair of eyes over his fur blankets.
Glenn didn’t even look at him.
“Aren’t you cold?” Felix asked at last. Glenn hadn’t brought out any bedding at all. He was sitting right on the freezing tiles.
“Cold? This isn’t cold. Sreng is cold. I heard it’s so cold you can’t even wear plate there.”
“Why?”
“The metal gets so cold that when you touch it you stick, and when you pull away…” He made a ripping noise. “You leave skin behind.”
“That’s horrible.”
“But true.”
“No it isn’t.”
“I’ve seen the scars,” said Glenn.
“No you haven’t.”
“Fine, don’t believe me,” said Glenn. “It’s still true.”
"Sylvain never said it was that cold, and Gautier borders Sreng."
"That's just the south of Sreng. I'm talking about the far north where Sylvain's never been."
That was the problem with Glenn these days. He was always right. He'd seen everything there was to see, and knew too much that Felix didn't. "Prove it," he said.
Glenn laughed. "How can I prove it?"
"We'll go to Sreng," said Felix. "And take plate armour with us."
"You can be the one to touch it then, because I like my fingers the way they are."
"If you're scared…"
"I'm smart, it's different. Not that you'd understand."
"Promise we'll go?"
"Promise. Once I'm back."
"And when you see Dimitri tomorrow, tell him about the sword we saw at the market, the one that merchant had with him, with the dragons carved on the blade."
"I'll tell him," said Glenn. "You know, you have to start calling him 'Your Highness'."
"No I don't." Felix yawned and shivered as the wind picked up. "He said I didn't have to."
"It's not up to him. Father calls the king 'Your Majesty', even though they're friends."
"Maybe the king likes it." Felix closed his eyes, a red crescent moon shadow floating inside his eyelids. "Anyway, if Dimitri's so powerful-"
"Felix, he's the crown prince."
"-then why can't he even decide what he wants to be called?"
"You're such an idiot, Felix."
"You just don't have an answer because I'm right." He rolled over in his blankets.
"Hey," said Glenn, "don't sleep out here. Come on."
Felix dimly heard the tiles creak under him, and Glenn's feet scrape across them, and then he was being nudged hard in the back, over and over until he relented and got up. It was freezing out here. He hadn't noticed under all the blankets.
"Time to turn in," said Glenn. "We're leaving early tomorrow, and I don't want to sleep through the march."
"Well, if you're tired." Felix bit back a yawn. It was so cold now. The moon was haloed with it, and even the stars seemed to be shivering. He wrapped himself up in as many layers as he could.
"Be careful," said Glenn. "Don't fall off and break your neck."
"How stupid do you think I am?" retorted Felix, and made his way back to his own room before Glenn could tell him.