SOMETHING ADDED TO THE AIR
Written on March 13, 2023 (♓︎︎)
Author's Notes: Allusions to Very Bad Things happening in wartime occur as do allusions to Not So Great childbirth outcomes, but neither described in lurid detail. Expect to read a little about reproductive trauma and/or violent atrocities occurring in relation to women and children, however. Title taken from The Silver Jews' "Smith and Jones Forever."
Summer died suddenly in Bervenia that year. When freeze hit, Cid was only a few days removed from standing amidst the balmy southwinds that saw Balbanes Beoulve headed back home to meet both his newly born and newly motherless sons. He wondered if some Ordallian augur had not divined it: if Varoi had committed to another ceasefire anticipating the whole of Zeltennia was destined to be slush and ice the week after.
The other Nanten grumbled a bit to have news of the extended truce cut short by the storm. Their celebration in the nights to come was colored by all of them being snowed into the continent's little Mullonde: more churches than taverns and every other maid some species of nun. Still, they made merry as they could, and Cid–little merry as he felt–drank whatever a man filled his glass with. Even in what should have been the hot-blooded throes of youth, he was never changed much by spirits. The track of his reserve wore itself deeper with each glass, until he passed into a silence that would not break until next he was sober. The rest of the Southern Sky never tried to break him of it otherwise.
They carried on like that a while, toasting to the present good health of the king, to the future gallantry of the crown prince, to all the departed beneath the long road to Viura and to hopes that next summer would see them marching back over their sleeping bones. Cid did not know what he hoped for in a year's time. He drank, and he rested. He paid for prayers and had his armor mended. He finally made the acquaintance of Zeltennia's Dukeal heir, whose father had ordered him at long last to quit the capital and try himself on the field.
Druksmald Goltanna, at six and twenty, had all of the polish of an academy fighter and not half the pragmatism of the men under his command. When Cid trounced him thrice on the sparring field–the same parry, flick, and very blunt lunge–the man still fell back to the same Ordallian turns and plays, red-faced and fuming as each elegant dance ended in a topple. Cid thought for half a day afterward he'd find himself paying some penalty for the youth's wounded pride. He was surprised when he was met with something like a courtship: a new braided sword and an invitation to transfer commands.
He declined that time, even if he was grudgingly made to accept the weapon. The young Goltanna eventually understood the point of honor not to poach Captain Beoulve's fellow while the man was out West reckoning the loss of his lady. Cid told him nonetheless that he hoped they should become friends.
As the month wore on and the snow kept falling, however, they did not grow close for it. Druksmald did not press past Cid's aloofness. No word came from Lesalia or from Igros. When Cid finally considered sending a letter–some awkward mix of condolences and congratulations–he wondered that the loss of one man should leave him so alone. He wondered if he resented the Southern Sky for their reckless merriment or else for their respectful distance–if he finally hated that others should fall to mirth and leave him to melancholy.
It was when a troop finally pushed through the frozen Finath and into the city that he was broken of his brooding. The letter was half-written once men arrived who might carry it, and it was clear that the motley of Northerners would not spare a messenger. Cidolfas Orlandu, who had never met with the Eastern Sky, soon learned how little he had appreciated the deference his own men had granted him.
He discovered the champion of the arriving order–a man as like to Balbanes Beoulve as a cockatrice to a pigeon–deferred to nobody at all.
Goffard Gaffgarion, riding homeward from the latest eastern slaughter, wasted no time in making himself a swaggering nuisance–caring little for protocol, for manners, or for any of the other social laws that might have barred him from rolling upon the Nanten like an over familiar cousin. Less than two hours after he rode into the city–a scarecrow of jack-of-plate and furs–his men were half-moved into Southern Sky lodgings and pouring Zelmonian ale down their countrymen's gullets. The Touten aimed to stoke everyone's spirits back into the raucous disorder that accompanied the truce's first announcement, and they made up in enthusiasm whatever they lacked in success. Cid–set distant from his peers by so many years of heroism–was fast accosted by a man who refused any distance between them.
"You lot are the one sky with whom we never seem to collide! Who knows what thunder we'll bring to Bervenia!"
Cid, understanding the quip touched on him, did not quite voice his hopes that it should be none. This was a mistake. Gaffgarion was keen to interpret even the coldest courtesy as some manner of invitation, and Cid–like it or not–soon found himself with a new shadow. Where Goltanna had been thwarted by polite refusals, Gaffgarion persisted. Where Goltanna had attempted flattery, Gaffgarion self-aggrandized. Where Goltanna had met him on the sparring field, puffed with Gariland bravado soon deflated, Gaffgarion met him on the same ground with unsportsmanly ferocity.
He managed a clean shot to Cid's groin during an initial grapple, and the man looked like he was about to bite something before he was thrown off.
The match ended in a draw by the most strained of mutual agreements.
It was a shocking lesson in vulnerability. It was not just that Viscount Orlandu's son had ended the bout doubled over and near to vomiting, his assailant laughing as he offered to pay for any physick needed to mend the crack to the stones. It was that Cid realized, for the first time in his quarter-century of living, how very little he had ever met with flagrant disrespect and how less he knew how to handle it.
"Gads, but I thought a man of your renown would have the sense to wear an armored cod," Gaffgarion said as he tried to help him up. "I'll wrangle one of those too for you if you need it."
Cid had very much wanted to strike him, but hadn't the head for it. He imagined Balbanes would have better been able to part with chivalry in unchivalrous straits.
"I think," he managed to say as they staggered back towards the mass of shrines and pilgrim's hostels where they were quartered. "I might see less of you in the future."
"Of course, of course–we've spent half a war missing one another, and it can't be too much longer before a thaw."
"I meant–"
"I mean we must make merry with this convergence while we can. I'll throw in a night’s drinking with the rest of my debts if you like–toasts to that future parting."
Cid declined the codpiece, even if he was grudgingly made to accept the healer's bill. He was not able–for reasons quite beyond him–to escape the drinking either. Several glasses in, he realized that he was always drinking anyway.
“You’re quite what I ought to have expected out of a hero, you know?” The flickering hearth fire illuminated a pale scar on Gaffgarion’s cheek as he spoke. “Stoic and pious. Sober even in your cups. All that rot I thought only true of knights in romances.”
Cid nodded, suppressing the urge to say something condescending about all the knights Gaffgarion must not know.
"You could have cuffed me at least once over it, you know?" Gaffgarion said after a moment. "I know you wanted to."
"My thoughts were on other matters."
"Zounds, but I would've cuffed you–thoughts or no." Gaffgarion leaned over their low table to refill Cid's glass. "Here. I'll wager you still have thoughts beyond what you ought."
He emptied his own glass, and moved finally to take off the ridiculous helmet that seemed always affixed to his head. He was a very different figure without it: a mess of cowlicked blond hair that made him seem younger than he must be.
"What do you care for my thoughts?" Cid took another sip.
"Nothing. I'm opposed to thinking in times of peace." He refilled his own cup and raised it, grinning. "Here's to a little oblivion."
Cid mirrored the toast, put the glass to his lips, and did not drink.
Here's to oblivion, then.
The reply only sounded in his brain.
It was the foreign wine that must have set him to dreaming. That or all the stories of the northeastern front that Gaffgarion had told him before they slipped from memory. Cid was a man who generally dreamt little and remembered little of what dreams he had.
That night, however, he saw clearly the thick forested hills of Zeltennia again, framed and distorted by the lead glass as he stood in the chapel outside the city. The air was thick with incense, and the light from the great glass wheel above the altar spun from red to blue to gold. It had been a wedding or else a funeral. He understood either way that the ceremony was his.
Even though the thronging crowd around him blurred into a faceless mass, he could feel the tension of one set of eyes upon him–of a single figure standing apart, its pale hair floating above it like a wispy halo made of tow. He heard many things dissonant with the moment: the clash of steel and the sobbing of babes. He did not know what to do when the door opened, when the bells tolled, when the man beside him–neither his friend of many years nor his companion in last night’s drinking–fell to braying laughter.
When he awoke, he had little time to wonder as to the meaning of any of it. He was being shaken out of sleep by a blowsy, panicked lieutenant, who was attempting to convey to him that the Duke of Zeltennia's son had called Goffard Gaffgarion to account for insult and abuse and that there was something like a duel about to happen in the city's western plaza. Cid, who finally felt for once the aches of hangover and regret, ran his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth and groaned. He knew, even before the man asked, that there was an expectation he should be able to reason with either or both of them.
"Do you recant the slander?"
"No–but I'll recant the truth if you like. Seems a small enough sin in these times?"
The flagstones of the plaza were gilded over with slush, and Cid thought he felt the cool damp of water finally winning out against his boot leathers. The only other audience to whatever was happening was a gaggle of white-clad novices, who had abandoned their march to Matins prayers in the interests of gawking. As Cid came upon the scene, it took him a moment to register which of the two dark and backlit figures was who.
"There's no truth to your words as to my fathers' men." Cid could see the flash of the young Goltanna's sword before he saw his face. "I don't know how the Eastern Sky conducts itself, but you're liars if you insist..."
"As I said–your future grace–I'll be a liar if you say I am, but my eyes must still reckon whatever my tongue might decry."
Cid could already see the overextended lunge Goltanna would undertake; he could envision the parry, the sweep, the probable low blow. It was, perhaps, the stupor of early rising and the headache that led him to stagger between the two men, ready to preempt anything too rash from either side.
"Less than a month out, friends," he said in as firm a voice as he could muster. "How will we prepare for a real peace at this rate?"
The sharp clack of Gaffgarion tapping his blade along the ground then rang in Cid's head, setting a painful rhythm to the youth's descent into laughter.
"He slandered Zeltennia's soldiers, Orlandu," Goltanna barked. "He accused us of butchery–of things too black to..."
"I told a story of what I saw." The clatter of the sword paused. "If I haven't the rank here to do so, I shan't mention it again."
"Will you recant then?"
There was the whoosh of the blade arcing upwards as Gaffgarion let out a long breath. He seemed on the cusp of speaking before he lapsed back into silence.
"Will you recant!?"
"Druksmald," Cid said finally and firmly. "I think we can let the insult drop. There's no slander further if he commits to silence."
Goltanna looked at him very intently for a moment, but as with his opponent words seemed to fall away from him. When he sheathed his blade and turned, he offered no farewell.
Cid wondered for a moment if he hadn't been abysmally foolish. It was not his place, he considered, to bully his liege lord's son away from striking apart whatever chimera Goffard Gaffgarion might be.
When he felt the clap of a hand over his shoulder, he flinched.
"I thank you for the knightly intervention," Gaffgarion said coolly.
Cid closed his eyes, thinking for an instant as to how very little he liked the weight of the man's arm against him–as to how it spoke to the absence of other men absent.
"I suppose I owe you another night's drinking."
Cid groaned. "I think we've drunk together enough, Goffard."
"First Druksmald and now Goffard." Gaffgarion's tone was suddenly merrier as he tightened his grip. "You're learning to hit below the belt too, friend."
He loosed his hold on him as he began to walk away.
"I'll drink for both of us tonight if you're still indisposed.”
Cid was not–as it turned out–indisposed. That day, he set aside another half-written letter; he rejected invitations from men better bred and better mannered. He forewent vesper prayers, hid his eyes beneath the edge of a cloak hood, and walked once more to the place where the Touten carried on their endless carousing.
Gaffgarion, already blushed and over-confident with wine, spotted him immediately. By the time Cid recognized he would not flee, there was already a cup being raised to him–already one being poured for him. As they drew near, he thought through all the ways he might bluntly tell Gaffgarion with some finality that there should be no friendship between them.
As the man passed before a rushlight, however, as his shape blurred and blent into a thing without a face–straw hair and shadow–Cid lost his voice. He sat and drank, sinking into the wine taste on his lips and the drone of merry talk and laughter. He drank, and thought of how good it might be to find himself finally drunk out of distraction again.
"I'm baffled every day as to how little I know of heroes, you know?" Gaffgarion said. "I think it would have been better had I not missed Captain Beoulve. We might have made a comparison."
Cid leaned farther along the table than he normally would. He grew more careless in his movements.
"Aren't you the hero of the North?" he asked. "Don't you have yourself to compare?"
Gaffgarion's expression became unreadable.
"Or is it really the East? I can never tell," Cid continued. "Ivalice set all her skies backwards when the orders were founded."
"It is the North, Ser Orlandu," Gaffgarion said with uncharacteristic sobriety, "and the North has no heroes."
It was Cid who clapped his hand awkwardly against Gaffgarion's back this time.
"Well surely we could make one of you, still." He tried to smile. "Even if the war dies, I’ve heard there’s still deeds and heroics knights undertake in peacetime.”
Gaffgarion smiled back, and it was not a good smile.
"I’m sure there is," he said, "but I am sorry to say that I will never be a hero regardless."
Whatever strange mood passed over the man did not last. It was drowned in the next sip of liquor and in the shout for some manner of vulgar tune to accompany it. Cid only half followed the words as the room roared into singing: something vaguely blasphemous concerning all the good abbesses who beget more little monks to populate Mullonde.
He scanned the room for any men he knew before he tried to sing along, still just a bit self-conscious. There were no Nanten among them. He was wholly in the midst of the Eastern Sky as he let their wine soften away the last remnants of last night's headache–as he let himself forget that Balbanes Beoulve was a thousand leagues away.
There was another story he did not follow. There was another arm around his back, leaning against him for balance or else propping him up. The was a familiar halo of tow and light around Gaffgarion's head, and when Cid was finally be ushered out of the drinking hall and towards some place to sleep, all his prior objections as regarded manner and rank had quite escaped him
"We're in no shape to stumble back to wherever we're supposed to be–but I have coin for it."
"I'm a Viscount's son. You can't keep paying."
"Zelmonia's paid me better than I deserve. Besides–" He pushed him into the inn bed's thin mattress before flopping alongside him. "Money's one of the only edges men like me have over heroes."
Cid's limbs felt heavy, his fingertips numb. He was suddenly aware of the proximity of their bodies and suddenly full of suspicions unfounded and unspoken. Gaffgarion turned away to look at the rafters above them.
"What was it you said to Goltanna this morning, anyway?" Cid whispered into the darkness.
"Slander! You heard that well enough." Gaffgarion laughed.
"I didn't mean to pry, but–"
"You'll be in the company of better fellows soon enough. I can carry it back north with me."
"You're a strange man, Goff..." He stopped himself. "Gaffgar–"
"Keep it at Gaff if you like.
Cid waited for something to happen as the youth turned his gaze on him, the moonlight shimmering off the whites of his eyes.
"I can afford another room too if you like, you know? Thrift is one of the virtues I'm still working to shed."
"It's fine enough with me."
There was the stir of breath between them, thick with the scent of the wine. There was the warmth of their heated humors dissipating into the air around them.
“If I were to be your friend for this little season, Cidolfus Orlandu,” Gaffgarion said haltingly, “what would you have of me?”
“You can call me Cid, you know.”
"Are we truly grown so close after so little?" He laughed once more. "I’m no Captain Beoulve."
His features seemed to recede again–to fall away into the daubed walls and the cold stars casting their light upon them.
"If I were though, what would you have of me?"
Cid, were he not drunk beyond all measure, would never have done as he did then–would never have let so many layers of well arrayed reserve fall at once. It was the gravest folly and sin that flooded his brain then–sure as the liquor had. He would try in the many days that followed to find some way in which it was Gaffgarion who had been the instigator, and in each recollection he failed.
If one fact remained with him in absolute clarity, it was that it was he who had buried his ungloved hand in the boy's moonlit hair–that it was he who had pushed their lips together.
When Gaffgarion returned the embrace with all eagerness, he did not know if it was to his relief or his dread.
The innkeeper did not start needling them to vacate or buy another night’s lodging until late afternoon. This was very good, as Cid spent the whole of the morning emptying his guts into the bedpan when he wasn’t lying in a half-death, his bones about to break apart under the weight of the sun and the buzz of human speech outside. The ringing of terce bells was near enough to fling him down to hell. It took a bottle and a half of some alchemical atrocity before he was content to keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes. While Gaffgarion, sunken eyed and pale, partook of the same brew, he did not seem any less jovial for the sickness.
It was only around noon that Cid managed to pry himself up to sitting–to watch his companion of the night before take a razor to his face and whistle along to the nonsense songs of the piper in the square. He was handed a half loaf of bread and told he should see if he could keep it down.
No mention was made of their actions the night before.
Cid made no mention of it either. For as lightly as many holy knights truly took religion and as slow as the church was to condemn the sins of nobles, he was not about to confess their crime on Bervenian soil–not even to a co-conspirator.
He little noticed it when Gaff paid for another night. He barely perceived the taste of apple flesh and cold stew when they were handed him. It was only when he was left alone, caught amidst the stillness of the chamber and the afternoon sun on all the empty bottles about the floor that he felt the whole weight of his body again. His reserve found him once more.
When Cidolfus Orlandu emerged back into the world of soldiers and snow, it was not with great regret as to whose company he had kept that night.
What haunted him far more deeply was the figure absent: the features he had tried to make out in the shadow of Gaffgarion's face.
Goltanna proved understandably aloof in the days to come, Gaffgarion understandably familiar. Having finally found what measure of liquor could drive him to folly, Cid pre-empted many more mornings of sickness by embracing foolishness. He understood by degrees that there was some whispering that he should frequent the haunts of the Eastern Sky so readily–that he should keep company with a mongrel braggart of northerner once parted from some of the bluest blood in Gallione. He decided not to listen. Gaffgarion, in few things constant, kept consistent in his offers of oblivion. More snow turned all to slush and thereafter turned to ice, and Cid–in moments of weakness–found himself looking forward to the relief of heated humours and warm beds.
The weeks wore on. Few words ever were exchanged in acknowledgement of their indiscretions. Gaffgarion treated the whole thing with the nonchalance of a man helping a fellow to a drink or disorderly house: just another dimension of his queer sort of friendship. Cid, who was learning what little experience with sin he had, carried the weight of the affair differently.
The closest they came to speaking seriously on it was in relation to the still absent Captain Beoulve, who it was reported had finished all his prayers over the departed Lady Beoulve and had seen the infant that killed her into its fifth month. Gaff asked one lazy morning, in between a repast of full pasties and pipes, whether Cid knew his best friend's family well.
"I met them only once, I confess," he said, "–although Balbanes sees little enough of them himself. He was married the same month he was first set to marching–an odd piece of luck he should home home to an heir."
"Some fields bear their best harvest new-ploughed," Gaffgarion mused, taking a long drag of tobacco. "Good for him, I suppose. Issue's half a nobleman's duty, I reckon."
Cid frowned a little. Gaffgarion laughed as he offered him the pipe. He must have known by then it would be refused.
"Not to cast shame upon merry bachelors like ourselves, of course," he said teasingly, winking. “We have means to carry on unburdened.”
Cid's voice turned somber as he replied. "No shame indeed. My father has never asked me to marry."
"If he ever does, it shouldn't trouble you much. With your reputation, you could find your way to a wench and a son before the armistice is off."
"You believe it will be called off, then?"
Gaffgarion raised an eyebrow. There was a moment of silence as he tapped a gloved hand along the windowsill of their room.
"I am headed back towards Zelmonia in a week or so." He looked to the street below. "The peace will not last."
Cid nodded.
"You must give your regards to your better half upon his return. It's a shame we should miss one another."
Cid nodded again, unsure as to how to react as Gaffgarion flopped suddenly back to the bed when Cid sat. He knew the man was not drunk that day.
"Please." He reached up to pat him on the back. "Feel quite at liberty to forget me after."
Cid let his shoulders slump a little, bewildered at his companion's turn.
"You make yourself a difficult man to forget, Gaff." He tried to smile.
"Most men who haven't the ill luck to be heroes end up forgotten."
Cid looked down at him, trying to fathom whether the youth's expression was one of mania or melancholy. He thought, for a moment, that he ought to have let him and Goltanna slash each other apart the month prior. When he smoothed a cowlick of hair back into place, he could feel him tense–watch as his eyes go dark and shining as one of the martens that must have died to collar his hood.
"You'll do me a service in not remembering, you know."
Cid did not see him for most of the week that apparently remained them. Perhaps some of his initial repulsion found him again. Perhaps some newfound shame did. When he finally approached Goltanna and offered him an apology for his prior distance, the warmth with which his friendship was accepted smarted. As the child to some five centuries of Orlandus, all sworn throughout the term of their lives to Zeltennia's lord, it appeared to him now a gross betrayal to spend the first month of an early winter spurning the Duke's son for some rogue with neither manners nor title.
When enough of a new thaw brought fresh supplies and letters, he discovered that Balbanes had written where he had not, and that they should be rejoined not to long after the mid-month holidays. He wrote that it seemed he should have a second son in a decade that might live into childhood, and that his eldest bore his griefs with something already like a soldier's reserve. He sent also his warmest regards and a promise to find some cause to be merry before the year was out.
The Touten, in the meantime, readied their birds out of boarding and began to pack away what wine was still left them.
It could have been–Cid later thought–that that might have been the end to this strange interlude in his life–that he might well have taken Gaffgarion's advice and forgotten the man before his departure. He could have, he supposed, taken his indiscretions to one of the city's hundred confessors and secured the type of quick penitence a hero would be assigned in lieu of any public humiliation. He could have fully re-embraced piety and reserve then without further lapse settled into all the accidents of respectable nobility.
If he had shut a door or uttered a harsh word when Goffard Gaffgarion found his way into the thick of the Nanten's company, the entirety of the lapse might have vanished from him like the fast melting snow. As the youth pushed his way into his quarters, however, puffed up with his usual mix of drink and bravado, Cid did nothing to stop him.
They both remained silent well past the point it became oppressive. When Cid finally asked if Gaff had come to say a farewell, he was met with a sharp laugh.
"Ajora's blood, you take me for a sentimentalist!"
"What did you come for then?"
The youth laughed once more, and Cid flinched as he endured an embrace that fell against him like a blow.
"Gaff..."
"I guess it must be a farewell all the same."
Cid went rigid, eyes glancing towards the curtain that cut him off from where the rest of the Nanten mingled. They were packed together like bricks here–close-quartered in a hostel meant for devouts and penitents. It was not the sort of place they'd ever met before–not like this in any event.
"I came to bestow a few gifts–an offer to take on the applesack that will only weigh down my bird when we ride east, a reminder that I’ll still pay for–”
“I think you’ve given me more than enough, Gaff.”
“And I can give you more of that too.” He winked and gave him a quick squeeze before the embrace broke.
Cid remained as still as a statue.
“Readied for your nobleman’s duty, then, Cid. Say I’m forgotten and I go. No regrets. No ill will. No slander.” He gave an awkward half-salute as he leaned against a wall. “You can have a hero’s company once more–get started on that brood of heirs before the New Year brings us more bloodshed.”
“It’s strange to me that you of all people would hit upon that again,” Cid’s voice was very cool but it was not unkind. “I told you my father has made no demands.”
Gaffgarion looked at him again, eyes full of the same animal darkness Cid had seen in them when last they parted.
"Who said he did? It just seems the way of things in peace." Gaff blinked hard a moment. "Your friend... I imagine he already reckons re-peopling the earth is the same bloody business as our daily push to depopulate it."
"Gaff–"
"I see no nobility in either, of course." He looked for a moment as if he might sink into the stone's behind him. "I'm never to be a hero though."
He put a hand out to steady himself. It suddenly dawned on Cid that the youth was drunker than he'd first reckoned–drunk as he himself had been a few weeks prior.
"Same bloody business...." Gaff repeated.
"Perhaps I should get you back to the Touten."
"We get it mixed up from time to time, you know?" He laughed again. "Out past Zelmonia–North of the North–there are places where you can compound christening and funeral in an hour–man, woman and babe all ready for paradise–villages transformed to untouched wilderness within a year."
Cid went still as Gaffgarion staggered, his breath suspended.
"If I say that and nothing else, it's no slander." He leaned once more against Cid, warm. "If one sees little mothers bedded, delivered, and buried by the same blade, who needs to know the bridegroom's colors?"
There was the hot scent of alcohol between them. Cid felt the hairs of his arms turn gooseflesh. Gaffgarion kept laughing as he clung to him, muttering out bits of some story not quite complete, describing in half sentences how long a sword-born child can wail before the snow covers it.
There was, before they parted, both a kiss and a blow–the former oddly passionate despite the circumstances surrounding it, the latter long overdo for all the recipient took in a grinning stride.
Gaffgarion, true to his word, was spurring back to whatever lay in those northern wastes within the week. There were no further farewells beyond that abrupt encounter–if questions or apologies might have been made, Cid squandered the chance. When the anticipated thaw did come, it was still very far removed from the warm days proceeding, and the celebratory mood had waned as the last of the Hokuten finally arrived and Lesalia once again buzzed with hawkish rumors.
The Touten could well have been a thousand leagues away when Balbanes Beoulve rode back into the city, his demeanor warm even in the midst of his black-dyed coat and grey surroundings. Cid embraced him with all the weight of regard unshaken, asking after his sons and offering a very sincere torrent sympathies. When the young captain met him in arms and thanked him for all his concern, Cid told himself that it was a great comfort–that six weeks of delinquency had done naught to alter the current between them–that if anything it was a purgation of baser feelings and a goad to better times.
"You should come back to Igros if the peace lasts," Balbanes said as he handed his bird off to a groomsman. "The clime would suit us all better, and I'm still at a loss for a godfather."
"I thought you lost your chance for one after the sacrament?"
"Maybe? I'm not a priest," he shrugged as his boots stuck against the mud-covered streets. "S'blood, It would be good for my boys to have somebody more pious than me about at any rate.
Cid nodded, trying to still any thought of how he had just spent that first stretch of winter or who he had spent it with.
"We'll see how fortune favors us in the meantime, though. We could be packed off back east tomorrow for all I know." He smiled a little, but did not quite laugh. "Or you could well fall out of piety or out of bachelorhood like I did."
Cid stopped for a moment, and Balbanes did not notice him tarry. Without saying anything, without even letting his sentiments rise to the level of thought, he watched as a single fleck of snow dropped to the ground and melted there.
He hurried after his friend shortly after, ready to speak of Goltanna or of the king or of nothing more than the sack and beer he had vowed to only enjoy in the most austere moderation. When Balbanes remarked that it seemed he'd just gotten in before another flurry, Cid brushed off the sentiment.
He told himself that the little gasp of warmth would last, for all he long dwelt on what a nice picture it might be to have all trace of their footsteps covered over once again until the winter effaced them.
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