With his heart in his throat, he stepped forward.
“I am Rikard Drozhny, the Governor’s son,” he announced. Heads turned in his direction. The captain of the Prince-Protectorate’s troops stared at him. “You have killed your man, sir,” Rikard said. “His body, I think, belongs to St. Sithonia.”
No one spoke. Feeling a hundred and more eyes upon him, he walked past the captain, past the Vralkaani soldiers, past Chrétien onto the shore.
On the barren stone, Rikard knelt and gathered the body of the cobbler’s son into his arms. Slack and lifeless, it weighed heavy. The face was calm and unmarked despite the body’s terrible wounds. Rikard stood. The youth’s head and legs dangled. The body was heavy, heavy as stone, but he could carry it all the way to Vralstag if he had to, to the foot of Vral’s Throne itself. He looked around him at the staring faces full of hunger and need.
“To the Church of St. Sithonia,” he said, and began to walk, carrying the body of the cobbler’s son. One by one, the people of Sithonia stood. They cleared an aisle for Rikard Drozhny and the burden he cradled. They reached out as he passed, touching the body of the cobbler’s son, murmuring, weeping. They fell in beside him, forming a procession.
And behind them, Chrétien L’Envers guarded their passage.
One by one, the remaining soldiers of the Prince-Protectorate lay down their weapons and fell in with the procession. Left behind on the shore with the bright D’Angeline apparition, the captain dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
Chrétien L’Envers, the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange, sat alone at the writing desk in his guest room in the ancestral home of the House of Drozhny, reading the words of the letter he had just composed.
“Dear Father,” the letter stated, “Fondest greetings from your eldest son, the errant traveler. May I hope that it gladdens your heart to read that I am well, and expect to be home in some six weeks’ time with full many a tale to tell. The darkless nights of a Vralian summer are a wonder to behold, though in truth I would not trade them for the moon and stars of Terre d’Ange, and there are no nightingales to be found in the whole of Vralia nation.”
He read these words and no more, staring beyond the page into the flame of his single candle. The other words did not matter. Encrypted into this brief paragraph was message his father awaited.
Civil war imminent. Cease all trade negotiations immediately.
With steady hands, Chrétien folded the letter and inserted it into an envelope. He held a taper of sealing wax in the candle-flame and allowed one precise drop to fall upon the envelope, then stamped it with the impress of his signet ring.
Within a few days’ time, he estimated, it would no longer be safe for him in Vralia. His role in what had transpired at Lake Khirzak remained a mystery to the populace, but there were Vralian nobles who knew that the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange was visiting his fast friend Rikard Drozhny, the Governor’s son. Word of this was bound to reach Janos Vralkaan. The Prince-Protectorate had already proved himself amply capable of adding two and two in the literal sense; doubtless he was capable in the figurative sense as well.
The Dauphin of Terre d’Ange would make, among other things, an admirable hostage.
Rikard wanted him to stay, of course, but Rikard understood. They had spoken some, though not much, of the cobbler’s son and the events at the shrine.
It had changed things between them.
“Why did you do it?” Rikard had asked, anguish and bewilderment in his voice. “I thought you were only here to…Why, Angelicus? Armed with a sword, against muskets! You might have been killed, you know. You might well have been killed.”
“Ah well,” Chrétien had murmured, gazing at Rikard across the vast rift that separated them. “And you wonder why we cultivate beauty? It too is a weapon, my friend, and one that cuts both ways.”
Rikard was a hero among the common Vralian people. His father reviled him publicly and grieved with him privately. When the war came, they would be on opposite sides, Vralings by blood the both of them. Whichever side won, the House of Drozhny would be there to serve Vralia.
Vralia and God, Chrétien thought, picking up the gold medallion that Rikard had given him; a talisman of St. Sithonia, of course. The gold gleamed coldly in the candlelight.
“You can’t tell me you’ve no need of a souvenir now,” Rikard had said with a nonchalance that fooled no one, averting his gaze to hide the emotion it held.
The talisman was embossed on one side with the Wheel of Vral and on the other with a full-blown rose. Chrétien closed his hand on the medallion and clenched his fist until the gold edges bit into his flesh, a pain he welcomed. His pale, shining hair fell forward to curtain his face.
Alone in his room, the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange wept.