Guy slumped onto a desk. The desk. His desk.
Bollocks.
Smooth wood, though. Lacquered. Not quite cool, because he had been leaning elbows on it in various postures of despair and fatigue for what felt like hours.
Turned out, he had a desk. And a room. A set of rooms. A suite.
It was in the Academy. In the Tower. For Officers. Cole had scratched his initials under the back, bottom bedpost, where they joined the marks of almost four-hundred years' worth of other Executive Generals. Guy had checked as soon as he had some idea where he was. Yep. Guy had a four-hundred year old bed frame. And a really, really nice, mahogany desk.
He also had a guard. His life had never been this important to anyone but himself. They were as confused and uncertain as he when, as they were being escorted to his rooms, the brusque, uniformed Officer of the Tower (a division of the Academy Quartermaster's long list of warrant, sub-warrant, and honorary officer positions) silently exuded the irrefutable suggestion that they take their brand new positions as if it were a sort of ordinary procedure for them, old hat before it had a chance to be brand new. The response to such exuding had been drilled into each and every one them like the instinct to keep their limbs out of a roaring fire. Heary and Lo had peeled off, giving him panicked looks as they took up dutiful position at the foot of the stairs that led to his door.
Anyway, the Officer of the Tower walked by, indicating with a flat hand their positions – which they took – before leading Guy up the stairs to his rooms – which Guy entered – before he departed with a salute so sharp it could've been cut out of glass. Exceptionally proud glass.
That's when Guy had noticed the bed, and by consequence, the rest of the room, and realized, more or less, where he was.
Shit. ('Shit-ass-death-balls-piss,' was actually closer to what Guy meant).
Despite the undeniably comfortable bed, fine furnishing, and promise of instantaneous and lavish service, Guy was not pleased.
He had passed General Galen off into the dungeons like nothing. Hadn't even come up with something to say. His confidence in Cole and in himself and in everything seemed bitter and mocking and too slick with shame for him to hold on to.
Shit.
Unmitigated failure. Couldn’t even muster a ‘thanks, bye.’ Just walked him right up the Gate, handed him over. How could he have just let that happen? Cole was going to kill him. He was going to kill himself. He was going to wait, to make sure General Galen made it back out, and then he was going to kill himself.
Despair took up the first half-hour easily. Then Guy remembered himself. He wasn't a useless bit of cow-droppings, even if he felt like one.
Sticking his head out of the door, he had called for his papers. When Lo and Heary asked 'which', he said 'all'. As this constituted a small library, he forgave them for audible cursing. He reminded them, as he had reminded himself, that they were – apparently – his personal guard, and could very well tell the Tower officers to go get it for them, as they were busy guarding him. There was met with a certain amount of undignified rejoicing, and much praise of rank.
Receiving, re-cataloguing and finding the relevant pieces took the next hour, easily. They were briefly interrupted by the issue of an invitation from the Lord Chamberlain for Guy's presence at a ball that evening. He stuck it under a pillow so he wouldn't lose it, and got back to business.
Laying all the evidence before him, he took up his old notes with the eye of a stranger. What did this naive young man think he had known?
Galen graduated, and disappeared. Cole, fastened to Durante's side, was almost immediately put in the grinder, being left in charge of organizing the exponential growth of the newly-active Ainjir army. The Rebellion's first offensive action took place within two months, with a letter of secession arriving at the Capitol.
Nailed to a newsboard, the letter purports to be the first issue of a new broadsheet, the voice of the Comid Republic (though nobody knows what that is, yet). The broadsheets introduce three main ‘speakers’ – under obvious pseudonyms – that the Army soon designates the Comid Hierarchy: Gaius, representing the voice of the common man; Libertas, elaborating the abstract ideas for which the Republic stands; and Aequitas, outlining the social offenses against which the Republic stands. It isn’t taken seriously until news arrives that the garrison in Gualbaile, meant to protect the river trade hub at Bran, had been overrun, and seized. Gualbaile had been reinforced two months earlier by Durante.
Abruptly, the entirety of the southern coal region was overrun by the ‘Comid Army’. The Ainjir Army was not prepared for conflict in that region, and must reorganize, all the while watching townlets and riverports fall.
A month after graduation, Yorik received dispensation for a major's salary, which continues for four months. Guy, in his Tower room – in the present – demands (and receives) a set of papers, to clear up a fine point or two.
Relay logs. Relay post riders make daily logs, as they trade mostly in credit so as not to carry tempting sums on their persons into the hinterlands of Ainjir. Yorik, too, was traveling on credit, since the salary he carried notes for was not his, and therefore not spendable by him. When Yorik died, managing his debts-garnered-in-the-line-of-duty fell to the clerks at the Academy, and between Yorik’s receipts (a dead man’s debts are all public knowledge) and the Relay logs, Guy can more or less track where Yorik believed Galen was going.
Yorik’s path vaguely northwest indicated three potential destinations. Geron, which was deeply unlikely, for though Galen’s father came from Geron, he left because Geron expelled and exterminated its Midraeic population. Wulsh, with its enormous, labor-hungry fleets was a tempting target, but for the same reasons, a perhaps too-obvious destination. Also, for all its social fluidity, the Wulsh have a mercantile eye for strangers, and a shopkeeper’s attitude towards poor ones.
Which left Adineh. The danger of Adineh would be the same danger Galen faced in staying – were his identity discovered, Adineh would snatch him up like a gold coin dropped at their feet. For them, he would be a diplomatic bargaining chip – with either side – as the situation between the Comids and Ainjir worsened. By far the most stable of the Six Nations, Adineh never failed to secure its advantage or add to its strength. It wouldn’t matter if nothing came of keeping Galen; having was better than not having.
But perhaps Yorik was mistaken – except it was hard to see how he could be. South took him towards the conflict – better to go east, then south, to get around it. West was extremely chancy, at best – months of trekking through forest and jungle, then over not particularly friendly mountains, only to end up in Teorainn. Outer bulwark of the Six Nations, Teorainn was little more than a loose association of fortifications filled with bloodthirsty hounds that were constantly harassed by bandits and barbarians. The only potential good in heading that direction was that Galen could establish himself as a warlord in one of the country's many forbidding castles – if he lived to make it out there in the first place.
At this point, in the present, Guy briefly entertained himself with thoughts of Warlord Galen.
Next: Burren Falls, three months after graduation, two months into the real war and one month into Yorik’s journey. An unremarkable battle, but for its eerie identicalness to Galen’s Academy battle plan. A lone flag planted early in the timeline.
Over the next six months, the war becomes a war, as the Comid Army loses, but does not break. This is inconvenient, but not cause for alarm. Militarily, the Comids are weak, though long generations of refugees and fighters among their ranks make their average soldier for the first part of the war a well-trained one. What is cause for alarm is that the Comids have an almost preternatural ability to conquer without an army.
That is, the face, the voice, the actual army of the Rebellion is Midraeic, but territories fall because the Ainjir in them... let them fall. They cooperate. Surrender. Outright defect. Too much happens too fast for there not to be something deeper in the number of places which become Comid territory with very little to no resistance. And the Comids make sure this is well-known.
Of course, they are more reticent about the places which do resist. The Ainjir broadsheets attempt to combat the Midraeic rhetoric by labeling Gaius ‘the smiling peasant’ who grins as he sells dry cows, lame horses, and rotted crops hidden beneath fresh ones – but it backfires. Gaius accepts the moniker, and the smiling peasant conquers quietly what he hadn’t force to take, which means that when force is necessary, all his strength is at his disposal.
When the territory matters, strategically, the Comids don’t rely on chance or favor. When they need a place, they take it, and they leave nothing – no one – that might put their control in doubt. When they can’t take a place by force alone, they try almost everything else – blackmail, murder, kidnapping, poison, fires, starvation, sickness – all that in a well-managed war (a Six Nations war, fought by the Conventions) might be called the tools of extremity are deployed instead according to what will win fastest. The Ainjir Army is not so naïve as to think such things wouldn’t happen, but they make the Comid goal obscure, which makes their actions difficult to anticipate.
Atrocities don’t win hearts over to rebellion. The trial of Captain Briar is seared into Guy’s mind, with the sound of creaking rope, of skin scraping against stone walls, because little bodies sway more easily in the wind.
Now several hours in, Guy stuck his head out of the door and asked for cocoa. He was only somewhat surprised that he got it, and spent a moment palavering with Heary and Lo. Going back upstairs, he sipped his cocoa and stared at a forlorn waste of papers and thousand-year-old furniture. Setting his cocoa down on a clerk's painstakingly-kept accounts, Guy started to pick everything up.
It alarms Guy how little alarm is raised over, what, it is increasingly obvious to him, is widespread disaffection within Ainjir. Then again, the rhetoric of the Comids, the enclaves of defecting Ainjir, and the governance of actual Comid-controlled territories differ so vastly, it would be easy to put it down to chaos, as many of the officers do. And there is, indeed, much chaos – just, Guy suspects, not as much as it seems. But this belongs in a pocketful of other facts gathered during his investigation, to be saved for later.
Six months in, Yorik returns to regular duty, only to die, far away from anywhere an officer in Durante's keeping should be, on the Guise Floodplain. Sinister mysteries are everywhere – Gaius smiles, and Ainjir trembles but everyone knows that once Durante's army moves there is no way that the Republic will stand. Ainjir is used to such back and forth squabbles over territory and ideals, and her Military does nothing better than pull such resistance out by the root, and scour its every trace from the ground. One bright young cadet already worries that he will see no command action before the war is over.
And somewhere in the east, someone is utterly changing the course of the war.
Guy knows what happened next. He figured it out sometime the night before arriving in the Capitol (last night? That seems too near to be true) – while dreaming.
Cavalry.
Cole adored cavalry charges, Galen used them like surgical tools, and Guy had a vague idea he would not like to be on the receiving end of one led by either of them. The Comids were fond of cavalry, because for Midraeics, horses and horsemanship have always been a sign of nobility and wealth – an exceedingly honorable form of combat, that only the general poverty of Midraeics kept out of reach.
The key was, though, that IF Yorik was right about Galen’s path, and IF the Comids were in active pursuit of Galen as well AND they wanted his participation to remain secret (which they did, as evidenced by how long they kept it secret), THEN they had to get him back from halfway across Ainjir through hostile territory relatively quickly and quietly.
So – cavalry.
Early on in the war, there was a minor scandal over the disappearance of a unit of Capitol Cavalry in East Namera. They were a reconnaissance/support group, meant to protect the evacuation of a set of wounded soldiers from the back of the front through an area known for raids by both sides.
But they never arrived to make the escort.
It was some time before the bodies were found. The broadsheets took hold of the story and included it in the growing list of outrages meant to counteract the success of the smiling peasant. Thanks to the escalation of the conflict and the lack of survivors to evocatively speak of it, it was soon forgotten. It was the Comid silence, however, that was very unusual.
East Namera, on the Pass, would come out at Bradan, rather than Longmarch, where the Comid forces were believed to be centered at the time. Bradan, though, had a river – the Guise – most of which had fallen firmly into Comid, or Comid-sympathetic territories, and which dumped into the Verun at the Comid doorstep. The part of Namera where the Capitol Cavalry had disappeared was a bottleneck, just before reaching the Pass itself. If anyone would meet on the Namera fields, it would be there, especially those who, taking the quickest route from the North East, would be funneled there by the rocky hills and thick forests on either side. It was precisely where Yorik ended up, after coming back unsuccessful from his mission.
Guy had looked it up just to be sure, but his memory seldom failed him in these regards. East Namera, before the pass, cavalry action, no survivors, Capitol unit, Comid silence on the victory, eight months into the war.
The force was curiously large, but perhaps because the mission was particularly important. This force could be gathered from the raiding parties out in the fields of Namera easily, without coming through the Pass itself – even if Ainjir's own raiders had seen them, it would just be another sighting of the Comid raiders they already knew were out there. Given more or less time for delay, or perhaps searching, their turning back for home fit easily into the time frame.
The Comids had wanted Galen quickly, and they wanted him quietly: he was their secret weapon. But why make the effort to eliminate every member of a Capitol unit – some of the hardest fighters available to the Ainjir military – only to remain quiet on the triumph?
Capitol troops were used in Academy exercises – it was an unfortunate coincidence they would run into the one kind of troop that could identify Galen among the Comids. The Comids wanted Galen's participation to be secret. So they were killed, to a man, and the Comid voice that crowed at victory, this time stayed silent.
Guy had no other solid proof of Galen's involvement in Comid movements until nearly a year later, when the question was easily beginning to resolve itself. Though Guy had no proof, he easily accepted that Cole, by a year, year-and-a-half, into the war, already knew it was Galen, whether he had admitted it to himself or not. So that was it.
Guy had a mess of papers, an empty cocoa cup, and a full timeline for Galen's wartime activities. Holding a sheaf of papers in one hand, he stared at what remained on the floor, and felt for weaknesses in his thinking. There was no doubt in his mind that Galen hadn't been physically present until the event at East Namera, and with added travel time and a margin of error, that easily put him with the Comid Hierarchy only after a year's worth of the war.
Other than that, Guy didn't have much. Galen had been right, after all: figuring out a full timeline hadn't really helped. It was a story that made no sense – or, rather, contributed nothing towards his defense, except that he had been doing his best to get away before the war started. Sure – because he was who he was, Guy would find some way it would be useful, but for now, he simply had more facts than any reasonable person should have, and a friend locked in the dungeons.
Oh, and the satisfaction of knowing his friend shouldn't be there.
The door opened. Guy turned to find Cole already half-way to the bed, shoulders set like a brick wall, face the sort of thing one didn't show to children. Without pausing to speak, or shut the door, Cole threw himself on the bed, crushing and scattering some of Guy's papers as he rolled to his back, putting a thumbnail firmly between his set teeth. A gesture he had never affected before.
Guy nodded reassuringly at the frightened face of Heary as he pulled the door shut. Setting his sheaf of papers on the desk, he waited.
“Nice rooms, aren't they?” Cole said, voice genial and in absolute opposition to his expression.
Guy nodded.
“And these aren't inherited. I never had the chance to bring Nika up here. Have you felt the bed yet?”
Guy sat down. He knew what was coming. He had done this once or twice – had this sort of talk. When someone's partner had yet to be found amongst the dead after battle, but hadn't appeared alive yet, either. When a letter arrived by Relay with yellow ribbon fixed under its Academy seal, and suddenly the images of all a man's siblings filled his head, as if by tallying them on his fingers, he could be sure they all lived still.
Guy stayed silent. It was the only proper response.
Cole sat quietly as well. Chewing on his thumb.
Eventually, Cole's anger – or worry, or frustration, or whatever it was – gave way and he sealed it off, under the deep, thick, stone of his eyes. He took his thumb away from his mouth and blinked, as if clearing foggy vision. Guy was used to the stone, used to the obfuscation of Cole's expressions, but he wasn't at all used to seeing fire burning through it like plates of rock barely afloat over volcanic flow. Seams of bright anger burned through the cold blue. Cole, with so much more at stake, recovered in five minutes what had taken Guy thirty minutes of moping.
“Did you get to see –?” Cole nodded before Guy could finish his question.
“How did it go, the presentation?” Cole asked, clearing some of the paper to lie back more comfortably on the bed, the very picture of ease.
Guy related the story, with much residual flailing of limbs indulged in where at the time he had been forced to desist. At the part where Guy put off Hammerlyn, Cole actually laughed. It wasn’t exactly a good laugh, though.
“Be careful, General Guy – Hammerlyn is an implacable enemy.” Some of the anger returned to his features. “We're only beginning to learn how implacable.”
“Well, the Council will handle him,” Guy said.
“Yes,” said Cole, an edge to his pronunciation. He leaned back, shutting his eyes. “He will be handled.”
The rest of the story didn't change much. Cole didn't even quirk a brow at the Prince's Midraeic – or Guy's poor remembrance and pronunciation thereof. Guy added this to the list of facts that Cole was not sharing.
“And then the walk,” Guy finished.
Cole nodded. He hadn't yet opened his eyes. Finally, after a long moment, he moved, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
“How did your end go?” Guy asked.
Cole rubbed his face. “I don't know. I left. Looked a bit bad when I left, though.” He seemed to consider for a moment – the city going up in flames, perhaps, or full-scale revolt, or a prisoner riot... Cole shrugged. “I left an old friend in charge. He can handle it.”
He said 'handle it', but Guy couldn't help hearing a little bit of that competitive edge to Cole's voice that made it sound like 'deserves it'. He pointedly failed to pursue the issue any further.
“There's a ball tonight,” Guy said, “I received an invitation.”
“Of course you did,” Cole said, “you're Executive General.” He paused, watching Guy's hopes flag. “Oh, stop being dramatic. You'll do fine. These balls and things are just Officers' Mess to a greater degree of discomfort.”
“So you've been to a Royal Ball?” Guy asked.
“Yes. There was one for graduation.”
“What did the Prince say to you then?”
Cole frowned at him. Guy watched him steadily, face innocent of the smudges of blame as new snow of dirt.
“Well,” Cole said, passing over the moment entirely. Guy stood up as Cole bounded to his feet off the edge of the bed.
“If it's a ball, we've got to do all those tedious things one does to prepare for balls,” Cole said, stretching as if for battle.
Guy frowned, this time. Both because Cole not sharing important bits of his plans was starting to get him, and because a Royal Ball sounded more terrifying than tedious. “And those are?”
Cole went to the door and called down the stairs, “Tell them that Brigadier Cole is preparing for a function – and remind them I like it chilled.” Leaving the door open, he walked back to the center of the room, taking his coat off, indicating Guy should do the same. Reflexively, Guy began gathering the rest of his papers.
“I spent four years in the cold halls of the Academy, suffering from duty, privation, and constraint.” Cole smiled. “Now I have them chill my wine for me.”
“Fuck's sake, Reynard–” Cole took the needle from Reynard's hand, shoving the stitch hook between his teeth, “you handle a needle like you handle your other dainty prick. Have some grace with your thrusting – the whores and your tailoring will both be better off for it.”
Apparently used to this sort of banter, Reynard rolled his eyes and quite happily let the tailor-general fuss while he not-so-surreptitiously drank Cole's wine.
“I don't want you thrusting anywhere near me,” Guy said, looking nervously down his shoulder, where Cole was now affixing the stripes taken from his uniform to Guy's new one. There hadn’t been time to make any for the purpose.
“Ha – afraid you'll like it?” Cole grinned around the hook.
“No,” Guy said, “afraid that, like with certain deadly spider bites, I won't notice such a tiny sting until it's too late.”
Cole laughed, then turned to Reynard and spat the stitch hook into his hands. “Wine,” he commanded, holding carefully to his work while another uniformed Academy servant helped him drink.
“You know,” Cole said, refocusing on his work, “I taught Nika to sew.”
“I saw his handiwork,” Guy said, considerably more on edge than his tone indicated. They had whiled away the afternoon into evening without speaking of Galen. “I hope he is better at being stitched.”
Cole chuckled. “You have no idea...” Looking to his glass, Cole went on. “In exchange for sewing, he introduced me to the glories of the Academy's wine cellars, stocked by a few hundred years' worth of snobbish Generals.”
“Wasn't that Second Year?” Both their heads shot up to look at the door. A bedraggled looking man, in the robes of a lawyer, brown hair sopped with sweat and streaked with silver, fanned himself with his cap at the door. He stepped over the morass of discarded clothing, bones from the pheasant they had had for supper, and sundry other trays and glasses and bottles and apple cores and peelings that had come to the floor over the long afternoon. “The Great Academy Kitchen Raid was Second Year, but I'd bet my ass you didn't make it down the wine cellars that evening.”
“No – but you know Nika. I wouldn't put it past him for the Kitchen Raid to have been merely reconnaissance for a raid on the cellars many years later.”
At the Lawyer being addressed as a friend, the servants pushed through the detritus to take his coat and hat – a thoughtful Reynard provided him with a towel to wipe his face. Guy shifted nervously, watching him walk over to sit on the bed.
“Virtue's Tits!” He bounced once or twice on the soft mattress. “I should've stayed in just for the beds.”
“It's an awful long bivouac to earn a feather bed,” Cole said, finishing his stitching. He moved away, looking at his handiwork. “And that, Reynard, is how you hide a stitch. Do the others just like, or I'll be forced into sobriety to finish up.”
Nabbing his wineglass from Reynard before he could steal the last of it, Cole emptied it himself before he made introductions. “General Guy, this is Faer– er, I mean, Fearghal Ewoud Archambalt”
“Just 'Faer' is fine, General Guy.” The Lawyer nodded, by way of a bow. “Academy nicknames are hard to let go of. Excellent presentation speech, by the way. I had a copy thrust into my hand in the street before I'd even made it back across town – even the Midraeic broadsheets carried it. The people already are on their way to loving you.”
Guy, flustered and blushing, was spared a response by the moving of the servants to continue his dressing. Cole gestured for a glass to be made up for Faer, which Faer took with a grateful look.
“I'm surprised there are still Midraeic papers in the Capitol,” Cole said, raising his glass in miniature toast.
“Well, Servan is still here, and as long as there's Servan there's at least one Midraeic wanting news. Probably writing it, too.”
“Oh,” Cole took a deep breath, smiling, “let’s hope there’s time to stop in.”
“He delivers now,” Faer said, toasting back, drained his glass and made a face.
“I can't see how you like your wine chilled,” Faer shrugged, holding his glass out for a refill. “Then again, I'm not a fan of white, and chances are you just like it that way to be difficult.” He glanced at Reynard in commiseration; Reynard's confirmatory raised brows were medal-worthy. Faer went on. “At any rate, the affair at the Execution Square is taken care of – or as taken care of as it'll be until the Council arrives.”
“Did they–” Guy blurted, his shifting to look stopped by the many hands of the servants.
Smiling, Faer shook his head. “Nope. All prisoners were re-routed to the camp outside the gates once evening began to fall, and there was nothing to see anyway. It disappointed some of the populace, but the nobility were putting on enough shows in town that nobody was terribly disappointed. A count caught his lover with a woman and made a scene, but it turned out the woman was his lover's wife; she consoled herself by visiting the Families' fine hedonic houses and it was free drinks and prostitutes everywhere courtesy the lands of Sealgaire for a while. Really my job was a matter of delaying everything long enough, and using enough jargon to confound everyone.”
“You always were good at running your mouth,” Cole said, before Guy could ask any more questions.
Faer laughed, taking Cole’s barb in good humor. “I may have denounced you some – sorry, Guy. I think I called you an upstart. Then again, I called Cole incompetent and Galen a villain, so I think it'll even out. I got to let go at good old ollamh Hammerlyn, too, when he showed up, which was nice.”
Guy and Cole exchanged a glance. Pausing to drink a little more wine, Faer sighed. “I've never seen him so mad – well, at anyone except Galen, that is. Promised to 'take me in hand' as he had when I was cadet.” Faer shook his head again, with a bright laugh. “Honor and Glory, but it felt good to let him know what I thought about that.”
“Not that you've ever been terribly shy with your thoughts,” Cole said.
“Not that you've ever been one to listen, even when deserving critique,” Faer shot back.
Guy paled, marking the weapons in the room with his eyes, but after a moment's hostility, Cole smiled. The expression looked tired on his face, pulling out lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn't been there even a day ago. Faer, though – Faer smiled back with a face full of lines, most of them joyful and tired in the same amount; the reward of showing emotions boldly, Guy thought.
“Speaking of undeserving,” Faer gestured for his coat, and having it brought, rifled in the pocket. He pulled out a square of thick paper, of the sort Guy had seen before. “The Lord Chamberlain has been commanded by His Highness the Prince of the Realm to invite Brigadier Esras Cole to tonight's festivities. Specifically.”
Cole walked over, taking the invitation from Faer's hand. His brow crunched momentarily with worry, before becoming smooth once more.
“Not that I see a lot of invitations from the Lord Chamberlain, but I've never seen 'specifically' written down on an invite like that,” Faer mused in an idle tone. He swirled his wine, watching it climb back down the sides of the glass. “Gives one the impression they mean it.”
“I'll handle it,” Cole said. He gestured to Reynard, who departed with two of his associates – which still somehow left plenty of servants to bustle and scowl at Guy in the little room.
“Cole,” Faer said, “now is not the time to go Galen on us. If the Prince has a specific interest in this, you need to let us know.”
Cole shook his head. With surprising dispatch, Reynard and his associates returned, bearing a full toilette and a snappy Brigadier's uniform, which Guy could only assume had been held in wait – just in case Cole should ever need it again. Still sweating into his own new uniform, Guy was forced to admire Cole's foresight. He would have to keep a hold of his Lieutenant's uniform for the sweet, sweet day he would be demoted out of this mess. Looking about he could see it – patches and all – there on the floor, near the pheasant bones. One of the servants, noticing his glance, shyly started to pick it up, but Guy glared him back down. He wanted his future hope where he could see it.
“Cole, “ Faer sighed, “don’t start being mysterious now–”
“I'm not being mysterious,” Cole said, undressing. He gave himself a sniff and frowned, gesturing for a washcloth. “Bollocks, I hope I still fit into this thing... I'm just not making assumptions. Frankly, the Prince I met at graduation and the Prince-about-to-be-King seem to be two entirely different people. The Prince I knew wouldn't have asked for me, in the first place. Someone like that doesn’t easily get over the wounding of his pride.”
Cole spared a knowing glance to Faer, who took this statement in with all of its import. Now all three frowned. The servants finished sewing the various insignia and decorations on Guy's uniform, and he stepped off the tailoring stool with a grateful sigh.
“All right, is it done?”
“Looks good,” said Cole.
“Lady-killing, even,” said Faer.
“Icing on the cake,” said Cole.
“Handsome to a fault,” said Faer.
“...no telling about the cake itself, looks a bit lumpy, but you know, the icing is fine.”
“...the fault being your face. I'll get a sack or you'll really kill the ladies.”
“Ah, Faer,” Cole mock-frowned, “go easy on him. He's not Academy trained.”
“He is now,” Faer winked at Guy. “Gratuitous insults pretty much are Academy training, aren’t they?”
“Right,” Guy nodded, patting down his uniform. It did look nice. “Right. Okay – all of you... folks,” he said to the servants, who had the decency to look confused rather than offended at his address. He cleared his throat, reassuring himself that, though they weren't soldiers, Cole had been able to ask them to do things, and so there was no reason Guy couldn't ask them to do things. “I'll need all of the records even peripherally associated with the battle of Kinsael – clerks' accounts, muster sheets, everything – and the whole battle, right through Col-Raith. Also as many of General Galen's Academy records as you can track down. And copies of the logs for taking out records.”
The servants, and Cole and Faer, all held still. Faer shrugged when one looked to him for assistance. Guy waved his hands, which didn't quite seem to help the confusion. “Right. Go... and delegate.”
They left, en masse.
Guy rubbed his hands together. “We can't do anything until we know what the Prince wants with Cole, which we won't know until the Ball. The Council should arrive within the next few days, and once they arrive there’s no reason to delay. Starting tomorrow, we're on a three-day time-limit before Galen will go to trial, where, as it now stands, he will be found guilty and executed. There are two things we can start work on right now.
“The first is Kinsael – Faer, if we can prove that Galen took deliberate action to avoid pitched battle, or even to lose battles, will it affect his conviction?”
Faer shrugged. “Theoretically. Other officers have avoided being executed for treason on that sort of a premise. Not that it saves them from any lesser punishments.”
“Well, it’s what we have – Kinsael is where we'll find that evidence, if it's anywhere.”
Cole shook his head, shadows showing beneath his eyes. “Guy – it’s a thin chance. You were there. It was a Fate-cursed mess. It could take years just to figure out where everyone was, nevermind adding in trying to deconstruct one of Nika's plans.”
“Tonight would be ideal – it there’s any night they might put off torture, it’s the night of triumphal parade – but other than that, we have three days,” Guy looked at him, then at Faer. Faer and Cole looked at each other.
“Alright,” said Faer, “you said two things. What's the other thing?”
Guy picked up the sheaf of papers he had left on his desk, constituting his notes on Galen's wartime activities. He tossed them to the bed. “We should probably find the spy that was passing Galen's Academy records to the Comids for the first year of the war.”