Child of Flame

“So be it,” agreed Heribert, lowering the staff. “I know what it is to be unable to forgive. But it is well to understand the road you walk on, and what brought you to it.”

“Hush.” Sanglant lifted a hand, hearing his name spoken in the camp. “Come.” Heribert hastened to follow him as he strode toward the ruins. He had gotten about halfway when the youth Matto came jogging toward them.

“You see there, Heribert, a lesson to you. I need counselors who are not blinded by their admiration for my many fine qualities.”

Heribert laughed. “You mean by your ability to fight. Forgive him, my lord, for he is young.”

“I fear that if he persists in following me, he will not get much older.”

“Do not say so, may God forgive you!” scolded Heribert. “We cannot know the future.”

Sanglant did not reply because the youth ran up then. His broken arm still hung in a sling, but it didn’t pain him much anymore. His cheeks were flushed now with excitement, and he still seemed likely to cast himself on the ground at Sanglant’s feet, hoping for a chance to kiss his boots. Luckily, he had learned from the example of Fulk and his soldiers. Drawing himself up smartly, he announced his message as proudly as if he were a royal Eagle.

“Your Highness! Captain Fulk begs you to come at once. A frater’s come into camp seeking you.”

Entering camp, Sanglant sought out Blessing first; she was safely asleep in a sling tied between an old stone pillar and a fresh wooden post, rocking gently in a breeze made by Jerna. As the baby took more and more solid food and less of the daimone’s milk, Jerna’s substance had thinned as well. He could barely make out her womanly shape as a watery shimmer where the late afternoon sun splashed light over the pillar. Just as well. Those womanly curves increasingly bothered him in his dreams, or when he woke at night, or when he had any reason to pause and let his mind wander. Better that he not be able to see her at all than be tempted in this unseemly way.

It was a relief to have distraction. He turned his attention to the stranger. It took him a moment to recognize the ragged man dressed in robes that had once, perhaps, been those of a frater. The man came attended by a fractious goat which was at this moment trying to crowd the other goat out of a particularly lush patch of thistles. A dozen of Fulk’s men, as well as Fulk himself, watched over him, not standing too close.

“You’re the man who traveled with my mother,” said Sanglant, looking the man up and down. He was an unprepossessing sight, dirty, with an infected eye. He stank impressively. “She said you were dead.”

“Perhaps she thought I was,” said the man.

“Address Prince Sanglant properly,” said Captain Fulk sharply. “Your Highness, he is to you. He’s a prince of the realm, son of King Henry.”

“Your Highness,” said the ragged frater ironically. “I am called Brother Zacharias.” He glanced at the prince’s entourage, the soldiers now come to stand around and watch since there was nothing of greater interest this fine evening to attract their attention. What he thought of this makeshift retinue he did not say, nor could Sanglant make sense of his expression. Finally, the man met his gaze again. He had a stubborn stare, tempered with weariness. “I followed you, Your Highness.”

“Which is more than my mother did,” said Sanglant in an undertone, glancing at Heribert before gesturing to the frater. “So you did, Brother. Is there something you want of me?”

Zacharias drew a smudged roll of parchment out of a battered cook pot that dangled from his belt, held there by a well-worn string of leather. He unrolled the battered parchment tenderly, with the greatest solicitude, to reveal a torn scrap marked with numbers and ciphers and diagrams, eccentricities, epicycles, and equant points, and pinpricks representing stars.

Sanglant recognized that impatient scrawl at once. He took the paper from the frater without asking permission, nor did the man protest with more than a mild blurt of surprise, quickly cut off as he eyed the soldiers surrounding him.

“Liath.” Sanglant pressed the scrap to his cheek as if some essence of her might reside in those hastily scrawled numbers and circles, a lingering tincture of her soul and heart that he could absorb through his skin.

“Know you who wrote these calculations, Your Highness?” asked the frater, with rising excitement. His cheeks flushed, and he blinked his infected eye so rapidly that tears oozed along the swollen lids.

After a long silence, Sanglant lowered the parchment. They were only markings, after all. He knew the names she had called them, but he didn’t really know what they meant. “My wife.”