A somber silence surrounded Olive on their ride back to the Keep and she made no attempt to engage Erwin. She rode several paces behind him, watching him with a strange mix of emotions, though they were all secondary to the exhaustion that still wracked her body. It was a strange mix of anger, appreciation, and fear. She couldn’t forget the ease and the haste with which he’d moved to attack Silas. The easy assumption that anyone who looked downcast, who didn’t fit into society’s prescribed norms was not only assumed to be an enemy, but disposable enough that a nobleman could afford to draw his blade first and ask questions later. But once he’d understood the situation, he had not thwarted them, as he so easily could have. Couldn’t he have? More than that, he had helped and when he returned from retrieving his sword, he hadn’t berated her. He’d helped her; his skeepskin coat still warm around her shoulders. But for all that… what would he think of her now? Now that he’d seen some of what she could do? Seen her with, in her mind, her own people. She’d seen the fear in his eyes. Would she prove as disposable as Erwin had first flagged Silas to be? And what would she do, if Erwin decided it was safer to turn her out, or turn her over, than to keep her? Somehow she didn’t think that he would, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. She didn’t flatter herself that he needed her that much. But some gut feeling told her he wouldn’t. Then again, her own father had signed her over to the camps. So she took nothing for granted. But she didn’t say anything; she was too tired, and too sad. She only rode dutifully behind Erwin and looked, every so often, over her shoulder into the night.
When they arrived at the Keep, Olive slid off her horse without a word and was handing his reigns over to one of the newer stable hands when she saw Bairn rush forward. ”Miss Olive! Er, I mean, Lady Constance, what – I’ve been waiting, since you left so late – what…. Are you okay?” The obvious, almost fatherly concern on Bairn’s face made Olive’s stomach churn with guilt. How could she keep track of everyone who might be affected by her actions? And of course, Bairn’s concern was more knowing than that, which was underscored when he said in a lower, worried tone, ”You look likeyou’ve been through the trenches. You’ve blood all over your sleeve, Miss- m’lady.”
”We came across an injured hind,” Olive lied unconvincingly. ”We put her out of her misery, but she was too sickly to warrant bringing back, and it would have taken too long, at any rate. But I am sorry to come back so late and to cause you worry, Bairn.”
Olive did her best to muster a small, reassuring smile for the old stable hand, but she felt her reserves quickly failing and thought she might soon collapse where she stood if she stayed much longer. So, without another word, she handed Searchlight’s reins over to Bairn. Turning to Erwin still without making eye contact with him, Olive shrug off his coat, handing it up to him with a quiet, ”Thank you,” then hurried still a little shakily back to the main Keep.
Bairn frowned deeply as he watched her go, glancing uncertainly at Erwin. ”Lady Constance always brings her horse in herself,” he said plainly, clearly dismayed as he stroked the horses’s velvety nose. ”Poor soul. Putting that hind out of her misery must have shook her. I’m sure you did the right thing, though, m’lord.”
Inside, Olive found herself standing in front of the closed door to her quarters. Somehow, even though she was bone tired, she couldn’t bring herself to go in. The juxtaposition between scrambling in the mud with the refugees – knowing that they were in this very moment likely huddled together in the cold, struggling to sleep in the cold night, wary of danger – and the safe, cozy bedroom of her childhood was too much for her to take. She took a few steps backwards, then decided to simply collapse in some unused guest room. But as she wandered down the hall, her mind was racing with too many half-materialized thoughts to fall silently to sleep. Changing direction, her feet carried her to the now dark library.
Olive picked up an oil lamp positioned near the door and lit it, lowering the flame to just enough to see by. She let the large, heavy doors swing closed behind her, not noticing that one remained slightly ajar. She wound her way silently along the shelves until she saw the spine of something familiar. With some effort, Olive pulled out the green, leatherbound, and worn copy of The Epic of Herion, an Old Connlaothian, pre-Angsarian national epic. It was now forgotten in many circles, but one Olive had read as a teenager and even written a series of essays about at university in Uthlyn. This copy was a large, heavy vellum tome and Olive had to lug it over to a plush nook of a window seat beneath a tall, narrow stained glass window. Still in her stained and muddy riding clothes, Olive curled up in the nook. She didn’t even open to the first page, or a particular page. She just opened the book at random.
Herion was trapped in the snares of the Red Witch, whose aim was to seduce him and waylay him from achieving his ultimate goal of reunifying his father’s fractured kingdom. She had succeeded in luring him back to her lair having disguised herself as a frightened and helpless, but young and beautiful, widow in need of his aid to oust the lecherous and violent barbarians who’d invaded her home. When he arrived, though, Herion found that he was the one in trouble and the hapless widow was infinitely more powerful than he thought. Stripped of the magical hide armor that made him invulnerable to any man’s weapon and bound hand and foot by hissing, venomous serpents conjured by the Red Witch, Herion could only imagine what dark and nefarious purposes the dangerous woman might have….
But what they were, or what Herion did next, was lost on Olive. She only made it through a page and a half before sleep took her, curled up in the window nook with the tome open in her lap, the oil lamp still flickering on the colorful windowsill above her.
