Ghosts of the Borderland Outtake: Part 3

[guardiansverse]

As soon as they were out of earshot, Ranna asked the question: “Just what happened with you two?”

It was not a question without weight. Amika startled from within her fog of exhaustion. It took her a moment to place the other woman’s intention. “With Captain Samaren?”

“I knew that he obeyed you, and I thought I understood why. But I didn’t know he was...” Ranna faltered, and Amika found she couldn’t fill in any better word herself.

“He was ill, up in the pass,” she muttered as they walked, trying to piece it together – remembering a day, and a night. “Much worse than you see now. Dangerously. And he would not stop and rest until I ordered it. He did not like the order...”

Ranna snorted. “I can’t imagine he did.”

“But I ordered it, and he obeyed.”

“He wouldn’t have obeyed it from me.” Her sister-Guardian’s voice dropped, ghosts shadowing Ranna’s dark eyes. Samaren had fought for her side during Schervo’s war of independence, had been her greatest asset, had killed Festus Detrich at her command. But he was never her man. Amika couldn’t say why she thought she saw relief somewhere within those shadows.

She was too tired to stop herself glancing back, to the mess hall where they had left the careworn Rogue Guardian; pictured him sitting there, leaning back in his chair, at ragged rest. She’d have liked to call what she felt worry, but it did not have that weight. And it was warmer, somehow. Somewhere in her, there was warmth.

The rest of her was still brutally cold, even with her bellyful of soup. She shuddered once, hissing and full-bodied, and Ranna widened her steps, ushering her quicker through the camp. Whatever concerns she had of her and Samaren, clearly they pressed less than her concern for keeping her fellow Land’s Own Guardian from falling off her feet.

And then: a real roof over her head. Not a cave, not a hut, not some desperate scrape in the snow, a good house where good people lived. The warmth of a steady fire putting blood back into her brittle skin. The sound of water sloshing in a bath – at that last one she could have cried.

Amika still moved in something like a dream as they entered the house of Ranna’s hosts, who at the first moment looked almost as overwhelmed as by her presence as she was by their hospitality. The mother of the homestead was murmuring to her children about the honour of having not one but two Land’s Own Guardians under their roof. But after only a little time, she looked at the flagging, frozen Amika and seemed to see that she was not much older than her own daughters. Thus she made a little clucking sound in her throat, and took her by the hand.

Neither Land’s Own stood on propriety. Ranna followed behind as the mother led Amika to a bedroom, where the full tub had been placed. The daughters crowded in the doorway, one carrying an armful handful of firewood, the other with brushes and a jar of soap that smelled of pine oil and honey. This was a house of only moderate wealth, and the bath was only a wooden tub, and it was the most glorious thing Amika had seen in her comfortable, noble-born life.

In the back of her mind, she knew that the woman – Lillen, she introduced herself, and her two daughters Stefie and Sylvie – would be unnerved by too profuse, too emotional thanks. But she found it impossibly hard to keep her airs about her. Ranna came to her rescue, with the explanation to Lillen that outside of her own country, Frowe Stattenholme felt less need to stand on rank and protocol. Amika took the excuse for all its blatant untruth, and set to taking off her grimy soldier’s dress right there and then.

“It doesn’t suit you, sister,” Ranna said, watching her struggle to unfasten her coat with numb fingers. Stefie giggled and Sylvie hid her face. They came forward while their mother stoked the fireplace, went to work at the buttons and stiff, heavy cloth. Patient, they peeled back the collar, the coat, loosened Amika’s hair and hummed in dismay at the state of the heavy dark tresses. Ranna knelt at her feet and undid her boots, pulled them off one after another while joking at how she had never thought to kneel to a Hyemi Land’s Own again. Amika stood, trying not to sway as they worked, not too obviously. Relishing the feel of weight falling off her body, frosted sweat unsticking from her skin, ‘til she stood in only a flimsy shift, then bare. Clear for all to see now, the muck and mud showing on her pallor, the purpling bruises and angry scrapes from her climb up the signal tower, her skin rough all over with painful goose-bumps. Her arms felt too sluggish to move and attempt to cover herself. Her head dropped on her chest. Her flesh looked so utterly human to her own eyes.

Lillen and her daughters moved with untroubled purpose. Sylvie gathered, tied, and pinned up her hair, Stefie soaked clean rags in the bathwater to pass them to her mother. And the mother of the homestead wiped warm, tender fabric over Amika’s skin, slow and careful brushes, cradling every bruise and stinging cut. At the first touch Amika fought not to flinch; at the next, and the next, she fought not to whimper with relief. The dried blood and sweat washed off and left her, the skin under blooming pink with the heat, the colour of healing. Lillen made a soft hushing sound when a sigh escaped her, and at her shoulder, she heard Ranna chuckle.

“You’re a delicate rose, Frowe Stattenholme.”

“Hush,” Lillen said calmly, now to her own Land’s Own Guardian. “She crossed the Eisenhorn.”

Ranna made a thoughtful sound; then came closer. She slipped a warm hand from Amika’s shoulder down along her arm.


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