[ The Rotting Hound ] [ Preview ] Chapter II
II.
The winter and spring that followed your rebirth were busier than the year you spent at your temple, learning what you did not yet know you already knew.
We joined the Order of Night for their yearly festivals. Each winter, craftsmen from all over Valtir gathered in the capital, where the Emissary of Mars might praise their work and bless their tools. Many travelled from beyond our borders, lured by whispers of nails that never bent and wood that refused to splinter.
At the end of winter, it was customary for the king to march a dozen prisoners before the Emissary of Mars, that they might offer them an appropriate mercy: freedom from behind bars, gold sent to the families that struggled without their presence, or the blissful release of death.
Come spring, we aided the Order of Dawn in their duties. Half a dozen Hounds joined the Swifts as they travelled along our borders, ensuring our boundaries were strong and that the River Tethys was given the respect it deserves.
Almost all of the river, from mountain to ocean, belongs to Valtir. There is a single stretch, a dozen miles long, that the Atils call their own. It is a prized piece of land atop a hill tucked into a riverbend. We have lost many decisive battles because of the advantage that part of the Tethys offers Atil, and they often sink ships and riddle sailors with arrows out of sheer boredom.
It has made the river difficult to traverse in recent years.
It was an honour to aid the Order of Dawn in any small way. Many of the knights had known the Emissary of Venus, had loved her well and mourned her still. I was grateful that as First Hound, I would never be forced to endure a world without you.
You grew into your role. Though spoken with hesitance, the orders you gave were always strong. You worked alongside the other Orders, treating their knights with the respect you did you own, but never demanded anything of them. By the time summer came, I thought you certain of your own being, your celestially divined right to speak for the ringed planet.
Yet on the hottest night of the first summer since your rebirth, you awoke screaming. The Second Hound knew better than to hesitate and did not wait for an invitation that would never come. Iapetus intruded on your chambers, blade in hand, but found no threat present in the waking world. They spoke to you through the bedroom door and you cried out for me.
Iapetus shook me awake. I fumbled my way into my helmet and latched it at the wrong angle, momentarily blinding myself.
I had let you down. You had awoken in agony, terrified of what moved in your dreams, yet my sleep had not been disturbed thus. There was no hint of a nightmare. I had not shared in that dream, had not known to wake until mortal hands grasped me.
“Vaşak?” you asked as I filled the doorway of your bedchamber.
I had let you down, but still you wished to know it was me behind the mask.
“Yes, my Lady. I am here,” I said.
The room was warm, stifling within my armour, and the open windows let in not a hint of a breeze. Beyond them, the skies were clear, both moons bright. Time thickened, slow and heavy. I saw how your chest rose and fell, breath ragged in your throat, how you clutched the covers to your clavicle. I wore not my plate armour but leathers I had hurried in to, gloves too, as wholly covered as you were bare in your thin cotton shift.
Only duty kept me where I stood.
“Vaşak,” you repeated. “Won’t you come in? Please?”
There was sweat on your skin. Your hair was tangled.
“Is that an order, Lady?”
“Yes. Yes, it is an order,” you whispered, no strength left in your voice.
I entered your bedchamber, closing the door behind me. Allowing myself to understand what you had asked of me, rather than the mere words themselves, I sat on the edge of your bed. It bowed beneath my weight, even without metal armour.
“Was it a nightmare?” I asked.
You let the covers fall into your lap, choosing to believe my mask and the darkness made me faceless and blind. You had no shame or hesitance around me and I was touched by it; you understood that I was your knight, that my own desires would never override your comfort, for I was there only to be useful to you.
“No, it wasn’t. Well, perhaps,” you said. You bowed your head, finding a loose thread to distract yourself with. “I’m not certain it was even a dream. It was not something visited upon me, so much as it was—taken from me?”
You frowned at your lap. I waited, patient, mask white with the light of the moons.
“May I confess something, Vaşak? A fear an Emissary should not hold?”
You called me Vaşak not because you wished to confide in a person, in something other than the First Hound, but because you understood there was no difference between the two. Vaşak had not existed before her knighthood; Vaşak did not exist for any purpose but to be the First Hound.
“Whatever you say, whatever you fear or feel, is the truth of the Emissary of Saturn. Nothing you do, say, or think is wrong, because it is done by you,” I said. “It is the rightful property of your station.”
The words soothed you. Heat prickled the back of my neck. A gentle pulse of pain rushed through the rings branded onto my arms, reminding me to hold back my gratitude, to give you the time you needed to speak.
“After the omen, everything happened so quickly. I was so busy all that year before my rebirth that I hardly had time to think. All I knew was that I must do what they asked of me, must pretend I believed all they claimed was true, and I—unflinching god forgive me, but I thought it… hyperbole, a metaphor. This idea of rebirth. But every day, I find it harder and harder to remember who I was before that ritual. Before you knelt at my feet. I find myself waking from sleep with whole years of my life taken from me—from her?”
The fury I felt found no voice. The gentle pulse of pain was gone. The mottled skin around my arms, dormant for decades, burnt. They had treated you as the Emissary of Saturn because they must, because tradition demanded it of them; how many of those who had lectured you, who had taught you the secrets you taught them centuries ago, thought it all a farce?
They had let you believe you were taking the role for the sake of its being filled. Even the king let you believe that you owed him gratitude for removing you from that old life.
But I was no better than them. Three seasons had elapsed and I had done nothing in that time to reassure you of who and what you were. I had assumed that the faith I had in you echoed in your own chest. I was sick with repentance, desperate to be branded, to be polluted once more, but found the gentle words you deserved.
“My Lady,” I said softly. “You are the Emissary of Saturn, the foundation of our Order. I did not choose to serve you, for there never was a choice for me; all else in this world is ash and ruin. My being with you was ordained. My flesh bears the rings of Saturn and we are both of us changed beyond our mortal comprehension. You must forgive those who are ignorant, who do not understand your power. You were truly reborn, my Lady, and that old life is not something you need force yourself to miss. Rely on your knights, Lady, and your fellow Orders and Emissaries for understanding.”
“My power?” You laughed. It was a light, easy sound. “Do you truly believe I have real power, Vaşak?”
Only one who truly was the power they wielded could be blind to how deeply they had altered the tapestry of time around them. It was so innate to you that you mistook that ease for an absence.
“Yes, Lady. Do you not feel it?”
“I fear I am not—” You began, swallowing hard. “I worry the omen—”
“There was no mistake. Nothing was misread,” I promised you. “But you are still very young. You have not yet been reborn for a year. Give yourself time, Lady. It is your dominion, after all.”
You smiled. The moons illuminated your face as though borrowing Saturn’s light.
You trusted in my words because you saw your power woven into my being, whether you realised it or not.
I smiled behind my mask.
“I am ever at your disposal, Lady. The Order of Dusk is yours to command as you see fit. We were honoured to serve the kingdom before your rebirth, but now we follow only your orders. Whatever you ask of us – of me – shall be done, no matter the cost.”
You did not quite understand the weight of my words or the implications behind them.
Neither did I.
“Thank you, but I need nothing right now. Nothing but your company. Won’t you stay, Vaşak? I know it is Iapetus’ duty to keep watch of a night, but they only stand outside my chamber door. It is you I wish to have close.”
“I will not leave, Lady.”
I remained on the edge of your bed, watching as you slept, night giving itself over to the early summer dawn. You slept deep and dreamless, and when you awoke, nothing had been carved from you; you had only rid yourself of one more burden, of something not beholden to your being.
♄
Your season returned to the world. Time reined in the endless summer days, the stifling stillness of the relentless heat, and brought motion back to the world. The days shortened. The leaves honoured you with displays of orange-gold and the crisp air was a joy to inhale once more.
Harvest came, bringing endless festivals and ceremonies with it. As we had aided them, so too did the Orders of Night and Dawn stand alongside us. You came alive, relishing in your new role, and performed the rites as though you had done so a thousand times throughout a hundred different lifetimes.
You navigated court not with ease, but clarity of purpose. The harvest had been stronger than the last, though still lean, and each courtier wanted you to know they had expected better of you. You did not need me to tell you they would have summoned the same complaints had Valtir drowned in grain. You understood the games they played and were not above indulging in them for your own entertainment.
“Emissary!” called a lord with no farmland of his own to concern himself with. “I trust you know that you’ve my full support. I only hope you are not too disappointed by this year’s harvest.”
You tilted your head, staring at him.
“Disappointed?” you asked. “This harvest was a considerable improvement from the last.”
“Oh, yes, indeed!” The man bowed his head, letting a small crowd gather. “But still lean, still terribly lean. Far less than many of us had expected under your influence, Emissary. Especially after the loss of the granary and all stored within it two harvests ago.”
“I am sorry to hear that you suffer so,” you said. “I have seen to it that much was donated to the poor of the capital. Should my knights extend that charity to you, Lord?”
The man spluttered out his refusal, desperate to let all gathered know he had enough to last him until the next harvest and had never relied on any charity all his life. All smiles, you assured him the offer stood, should he wish to speak with you in private.
Countess Syltras had the pleasure of overhearing.
She watched the lord scamper off and said, “I do hope things continue to improve in this fashion, Emissary. Those whose families have long-held their place in court know that an Emissary’s work is not done in a season, or even a year.”
You did not know how to answer. You did not know if she offered you a suggestion of support or the slow trickle of a threat.
As winter drew close, I sought atonement. It is something I must do each year to remain under the unflinching god’s protection. Priests escorted me to the River Tethys, where I was stripped of my armour and all I wore beneath it. I waded chest-deep into the freezing water, feet bare, toes curling in the mud.
Prayers were said in my name, forgiveness was implored for me, and when I was at last permitted to climb onto the bank, warmth spread from the rings about my arms. I sat naked, not allowed to shake off the drops of the Tethys that clung to me, and looked for your planet in the sky.
The priests were gone by the time my skin and hair were dry enough for me to step back into my clothing. My underlayers clung to my frame and the cold bit through my armour. I made the miserable trek back to the capital, shivering all the while, and dismissed the Second Hound from your chamber doors.
I said nothing of where I had been. You assumed I had taken my usual tenth day to myself, not thinking it strange that I did not desire the day in full.
Inside, it was blessedly warm. A fire burnt in the hearth, kindling cracking pleasantly, and you sat in your favourite armchair, legs rested on a footstool. You wrote, journal propped on the arm of the chair, and did not look up at me while your thoughts consumed you.
I was torn between sitting before the fire and sitting at your feet. The latter had become part of my expected routine, an unspoken duty, and I knew you would desire that I tend to you before I thought of my own comfort.
I sat cross-legged, careful to never touch you.
Your gaze skidded off the page, murmuring, “…twenty-seven…” as it occurred to you I was there.
“Vaşak. Good. Good, I haven’t been able to concentrate,” you said.
I sat straighter, knowing I had made the right decision.
“What are you working on, Lady?”
I ensured my teeth did not chatter, depriving you of the attention you deserved.
“Mm. I don’t know. I don’t rightly know,” you said, closing the book around your thumb. After a beat, you opened it once more. “But I think I can focus now you’re here, Vaşak.”
Metal and ink scraped across parchment. Each scratch upon the page shot down my spine.
“Wonderful!” you said.
Your voice snapped me back to the present. After losing myself in those long minutes you spent writing, I had not realised the glow of the fire had reached me. Heat filled the space between metal and skin and my breath warmed my mask.
“Yes, this is much better,” you declared, holding the open book at arm’s length to admire it. “It really is so much easier to think when you’re here. Would you like to see?”
Your confidence wavered with the question. You had misspoken: it did not matter if I wished to see your work or not, only that you wanted to show me. Incapable of denying you anything, I reached for the book.
The page you had been working on, ink that moment dry, was covered in an array of numbers. Your writing was beautiful, ink used so delicately and sparingly it was as though your only supply was your own blood. I pressed my gloved fingers to the lines you had written.
“Six thirty-nine fifty-three,” I said, sounding the last line out loud.
“The time a moment ago,” you hurried to explain. “I think I could reduce it further, include the fragments of each second, but I have to stop at some point. This one here, this is when you stepped into the room. What do you think?”
Three journals rested on a shelf, journals I had not pried into as you had filled them those last months. I glanced their way before answering you.
“I think it is wonderful. Thank you for sharing this with me, my Lady.”
Encourage by my words, you leant forward to turn the pages over my shoulder. You were close, close enough for your hair to fall from behind one ear and brush my spaulders. It was a worthy challenge for a First Hound. I fought to focus on the numbers you pointed to, not the timbre of your voice, words threading through the metal of my mask.
“This one here, that’s the time it was at this time yesterday,” you said, a little giddy. “And this one was at ten-seventeen three mornings ago. I don’t date them, I don’t think there’s a need to, because I remember exactly when they were. I like to look back at them. It’s relaxing. Reassuring. Do you think it strange, Vaşak?”
I turned from the page, moving only my eyes. My head and helm remained where they were, but I saw you as clearly as I ever could through the mesh of my mask; your face in profile, mossy-brown eyes bright with your own elation, teeth worrying your lower lip. Your cheeks were aglow with the phantom of shame, doused by your trust and confidence in me.
“No, my Lady. Why should you not wish to look upon your domain?” I said softly, not wanting my voice to startle you. “May I read your other journals?”
You were on your feet the moment the question left my lips. You skipped across the room, taking the journals from the shelf, and held them close to your chest. You reclaimed your seat, sitting above me, and handed me one journal after another all that evening. I pored through the times you thought worthy of record, savouring each page, and did my utmost to memorise every ink stoke.
♄
Partway through winter, two men arrived from the outskirts of the city and asked for an audience with you. With the season given over to slumber and the Emissary of Mars’ observance of mercy five weeks away, you found no reason to refuse them. They were commoners, bringing neither petition nor offering with them, but you paid that no heed.
You had always been that way. You cared only for rank so far as the act the palace expected of you, and saw no inherent worth in the circumstances of one’s birth. Many of your knights were but polluted peasants. I often wondered if this was because of the person that had lived before your rebirth, or because of an innate well of grace that springs eternally within you.
“Is there anything in particular I can do for you, gentlemen?” you asked your guests, helping abate their nerves when they could do little more than shuffle on the spot.
“No, no,” one of them rushed to say. “We only wished to meet with you, Emissary. We only want a moment of your time.”
“This winter is particularly tedious,” you told them. “And I get so restless once autumn comes to an end. Come. It would lift my spirits to give you a tour of the palace and its grounds.”
The men were all gratitude. You led them into the palace they would never be permitted to step into under any other circumstances and took them around the snow-encrusted gardens. You told the history of each statue they pointed at, named every person you saw, be they noble or servant, and answered their endless questions about your life as Emissary. All the while, your eyes searched their faces, desperate to anchor the recognition adrift within you.
It was not until one of the men said, “To think, all of this happening to our very own dau—” that your face paled beyond the snow beneath you. The other man made a frantic cutting motion across his throat, but the father who’d made that terrible mistake bit his own tongue seconds too late.
You pretended not to have heard. You spoke at length about the first thing you set your eyes on. You told them of your knight, of the First Hound of Dusk, and how I had helped you navigate a world you did not understand.
The tips of your ears burnt.
The men excused themselves soon after. They thanked you over and over for your time and hospitality, and you had composure enough to tell them it was no trouble, it really wasn’t, and they were welcome to stay for tea. You stared at the locked gates long after they were out of sight, swept away by the city crowds.
You could not bring yourself to return to the palace, building becoming as much of a stranger as the men had been. Cold though it was, you sat on a bench and pinned your hands between your knees.
“Vaşak,” you began at length. “What are your parents like?”
It was not the question I had expected.
“My parents, Lady?” I asked.
“Mm. Who are they? Do you see them often? How do they fill their days?”
Snow began to fall. It was so light it would’ve been invisible against the stark white backdrop, had it not landed on my mask, obscuring my limited view further.
“My father died when I was eighteen. That was—”
“Twenty-one years ago,” you said.
You did not mean to interject, but were compelled by what you were to mark the passing of years you had never before counted.
I paused for a moment. I was not surprised you knew this, though you had never asked my age, and only let the silence drag out in the hope the falling snow might ease some of the redness from your face.
“That is correct, my Lady. It was more than half my lifetime ago and it was not a life I wish to recognise. My father did not know me as a knight, as a Hound,” I said. “My mother is the Countess of Syltras. I believe she was one of the first people to welcome you to court.”
You rose to your feet, pointed at me, and abruptly sat back down.
“But that cannot be.” You shook your head, frowning. “I have met with the countess time and time again this past year and never has she so much as looked at you. And your house is Vaşak, not Syltras, is it not? Unless you are Vaşak Syltras, and I—oh, I am so glad I have never spoken poorly of the countess to you.”
I will not say I delighted in seeing you flustered so, or that I relished in it being at my expense. I would never wish any manner of discomfort upon you, but your bewilderment and dawning realisation was enough to bring you back to yourself, wearing away much of the day’s oddities.
“My mother does not look my way because she claims no connection to the First Hound of Dusk. She has no ties to Sir Vaşak of the Gloaming. When she looks at your knight, she sees a suit of armour moving as if on strings, not her only daughter making a mockery of her bloodline,” I explained. “You are within your rights to say whatever you please of whoever you meet, countesses notwithstanding. Did you know, Lady, that I am the sole member of House Vaşak? I chose the name for myself, so as to stand apart from House Syltras and the sacrilege it considers knighthood.”
“Oh, but Vaşak, then you are—you are the daughter of nobles! The heir of a countess!”
Why did the thought of me becoming a landed noble, of taking my mother’s title, leave you so off-kilter? Your role as Emissary makes you equal to any in the kingdom, yet I would never disgrace you so by proclaiming the same station as you.
“No, Lady. I gave that all up in accepting my knighthood. I have as much chance of becoming a countess as any peasant in the city slums.”
Now your brow furrowed. I could not tell if you were more embarrassed than confused, more surprised by what I have given up than what I had been. I dared sit by your side. The bench was wide; we would not touch.
I brushed the fresh snowfall from my visor and turned your way.
“You mean to say that you lost all of that—your family, your inheritance, your status. Your freedom in the world. And for what? For knighthood?” you asked.
You understood the desire to climb ranks. You understood how a servant might cling to omens to elevate themselves above their station and still thought yourself a fraud, a false prophet. You had watched courtiers scheme and bribe their ways into marriages that would see their standing improve and had seen the sombre glee with which second-born children took their deceased siblings’ places. How could I, born into that world with everything anyone could ever need, set to inherit more, give that up?
“No. It was all for you, my Lady,” I said.
You laughed so hard the white cloud of your breath obscured my vision.
“You look at me from behind that mask and say it so plainly, Vaşak, with such devotion in your voice. How can that be? You could not have known there would be an Emissary of Saturn in your lifetime, much less that you would be the First Hound when they appeared,” you challenged.
I tilted my head. It was as much as I could show of my face, of my open bewilderment. Did you not want the devotion you spoke of, my love in its branded abundance? Did you think yourself unworthy of it?
I have always understood my role, my purpose. I tended to my pollution as a blessing, treating the blight ringed around my arms with tender care and aching joy. Year after year, I have waded into the frozen waters for you. I needed no omen but my own being to know I would one day be yours.
“You are good friends with the First Fox of Night, are you not? She named herself Phobos after one of Mars’ moons,” I said. “Like her, I named myself Vaşak.”
How many times had you called me by that name, the name I had chosen for you, thinking it all coincidental? Turning my head, I watched you chew your lower lip, slumped in your seat.
“The ring closest to Saturn,” you said.
Anger flushed within me. The snow steadily gathering on my visor melted. That anger was my own, aimed entirely at myself. We had spent more than a year together, yet I had not proven myself to you. I was not enough. I had not been firm in my love, had not convinced you of all I would do for you, all I would one day become. My devotion had not escaped my armour.
“It is as I just said, my Lady. When my mother looks at me, she does not see her daughter. She sees something hollow and empty, a suit of armour she need not concern herself with. She need not pretend it is not me; she does not believe I am myself. I am not all she was promised. I am not the daughter who will continue her bloodline, the future countess who will see her accumulated wealth grow and her name resound through the palace halls. I am less than nothing to her. My duty, the very core of what I am, is so easily dismissed,” I said. “When I visit her on my tenth day, she pretends I am the woman she wished me to be. Our time together is a farce. She asks nothing of my life, thinking it unworthy of speaking of, and convinces herself that I have been travelling abroad, as the princess has.
“Yet when your fathers look at you, Lady, they see how great you have become. They see what you were always destined to be. They admire the power you wield and rejoice for the luxury you live in. It comforts them. It brings them pride. They speak of you often, needing nothing in return; who could ask for anything greater for their child?”
You bit your thumb, wanting to refute me. Wanting to claim that you were not their daughter and had taken her from them more literally than I had deprived my own mother of her daughter Syltras. I knew well your fears and would vanquish any you laid before me.
“Still,” you muttered. “I did not recognise them. My own fathers! Her fathers? I am not sure I know what name they would call me, Vaşak. I have forgotten it.”
“The black of space devoured that name, Lady. That is not for you to trouble yourself with.”
You nodded, brushing the gathered snow from your lap. Still, you did not move. We sat there together as the sky dimmed, till my armour and your hair were a pure, frozen white, and I knew what I must do for you.