"By decree of the Crown," he proclaid, voice ringing off marble plinths, "and in gratitude of the realm, I na Count Lyan Arcanium Evocatore Guardian of the Eastern Crest: Grafen, Norhallow, Dunbridge, Valre, and all unified lands therein!"
Thunderous applause shook leaves from the elms. Trumpets blared, drums rolled. Sowhere a vendor popped a cork; the spray misted in the warm air like brief sumr rain.
Lyan blinked. He had anticipated the title; he had not expected Erich to list every border territory now considered his responsibility. Grafen alone was vast farmland and deep rivers; Norhallow boasted forests full of restless timber-spirits; Dunbridge was a maze of trade bridges and smuggling tunnels; Valre claid the salt flats. Four battalions, three distinct trade taxes, old disputes over fishing rights—he felt them stack like stones in his chest.
Erich leaned in, wearing a grin too wide for protocol. "You’re basically a whole province now."
"I was hoping for a vacation," Lyan muttered, only half-joking. The line carried on the breeze between them like a tossed coin—one side fatigue, the other dry humor. Erich’s answering laugh rang bright, a deliberate note for the listening crowd, and the prince clapped a friendly palm-swat to Lyan’s pauldron that sent petals puffing off the tal like startled moths.
The gesture did its work: cheers thickened, rippling outward in satisfied waves—see, our heroes jest like brothers; what danger could linger now?
A herald in sapphire livery hurried forward, silk shoes skidding on the dais, and offered a narrow pedestal quill for the formal signing. Lyan’s gauntlet creaked as he removed it, fingers tingling at the sudden kiss of cool air. He flexed each joint: sore from three sleepless nights of quill work already, mapping river tariffs and ergency grain routes—duties he had accepted before ceremony because parchnt, unlike arrows, could not wait.
He dipped the quill, and for an instant the ink’s mirror surface caught his reflection—smudged cheek, shadowed eyes, a faint plu of dust that still clung to the edge of his collar. A lord in na, but the ink showed a soldier.
Steel rembers the burn, the priest’s words echoed. So did skin, and sinew, and soul.
He signed nonetheless, stroke steady, sealing an oath that would outlive the roses now drifting underfoot.
The herald turned the parchnt to the crowd, and sunlight flashed on the wet script. A hush fell—brief, fragile—broken by a child’s shrill whistle of awe. Then applause surged again, louder, as if parchnt itself were a conquered fortress.
He handed the quill back, slipped the gauntlet on, and followed Erich to the balustrade overlooking the garden’s lower terraces. From this height the petals swirling around the fountain resembled a slow-turning galaxy—white, pink, gold—its center marked by Wilhelmina’s new banner snapping like fresh thunder.
Far below, market hawkers had already pivoted: stalls now sold lightning-shaped sweetbread glazed in royal blue; ribbon-makers touted "Guardian’s lace" in grey-and-silver loops; a puppeteer maneuvered a crude wooden Lyan—glaive twice its size—lunging across a table stage while a cardboard serpent toppled with exaggerated squeaks. Half the audience was adults pretending they watched for the children’s sake; the other half were children saucer-eyed, absorbing myth at face value.
(They carved your hair blonde,) Cynthia noted wryly.
(And gave him a chin like a brick,) Lilith giggled.
(It is unsettlingly square,) Azelia added, ever the tactful child.
(At least the puppet is taller,) Griselda crackled.
Lyan’s mouth twitched. The laugh didn’t quite surface; it drifted sideways into a sigh he disguised by clearing his throat.
Beneath the elm canopy, veteran soldiers leaned on crutches draped with flowers. One had lost an arm beneath the elbow; bright cloth braided at the stump fluttered in a light breeze. He raised that stump high and whooped as Lyan’s gaze passed over him—an exultant signal that absence did not preclude pride. Next to him a nurse steadied a thin teenager whose uniform sleeves were still too long, face overwrought with wonder that the war’s living legend was no taller than an ordinary smith.
Lyan felt the weight of their expectation settle like another layer of mail. He searched the crowd for emptier spaces—the silent patches where mourners held ashes in glass and did not cheer. There: a middle-aged woman in travel black, globe clutched to her breast, eyes like spent coal. There: an old man kneeling on a cane, head bowed so far the sunlight could not find his gaze. He saluted them with a slight nod only they would notice.
Erich nudged him. "Speech, Guardian."
Lyan swallowed and stepped forward. The wooden planks of the dais were sanded smooth, but he still felt the old battlefield vibrations echoing in his soles—cavalry charges, catapult thuds, the tremor of earth when the Serpent Throne’s relic exploded below the palace vault. He tapped that mory, let it anchor him.
Thousands of faces. The hush tasted of garden mint and sawdust. Words... he had none carved in marble, but the garden deserved truth, not polish.
"Guardianship is a promise," he began, voice steady though his heartbeat drumd like a distant war kettledrum. "And promises live in footsteps, not thrones. I’ll keep this one by walking—village to village, riverbank to ridge—seeing with my own eyes what needs nding." He scanned the terraces. "If you see ride past and wonder where protocol went, rember I am your neighbor before I’m your lord."
A murmur rolled—part agreent, part surprise at the absence of heroic flourish.
He drew breath. The fragrance of crushed petals mingled with resin from torches lit too early against the coming dusk. Say it, he urged himself. But he dropped the next line—the one about longing for rest—because the crowd wasn’t ready to hear weariness; they needed reassurance the wall would hold.
Instead he closed simply: "Eastward is wide country. We’ll keep it safe together." He lifted the glass orb. Sunlight refracted through ash, flaring silver-white. "For those who walked before us."
Silence, one heartbeat. Then cheers, tidal and imnse, crashed over the dais. The bards struck a triumphant chord; drums pounded. A flight of ssenger doves—released by so court page on cue—spiraled above, wings flashing pearl as they caught the sun. Children shrieked with delight, scattering petals anew.
Wilhelmina, still kneeling by her banner, allowed herself a single, respectful tap of closed fist to heart. Josephine, lurking behind a clump of generals, flashed a grin and tipped her flask—quiet defiance of decorum. Sigrid plucked a garland thrown by an admirer and looped it around her sword hilt before hoisting it overhead; the gesture earned a roar from every soldier in sight.
Even Prince Erich looked moved; his grin softened into sothing almost reverent. He muttered, "Better than half the preachers in Astellia," then louder, for the onlookers, "The East could not wish for a stronger hand."
Lyan blinked against a sudden grit of dust—or perhaps emotion. But the mont broke when a fruit seller’s boy, perched on his father’s shoulders, hurled a slice of sugared apple toward the platform. The piece arced—a flash of gold—heading straight for Lyan’s face. Reflex took over: his hand shot up, snatching it neatly from the air. A ripple of delighted laughter swept the garden. He lifted the slice in salute, took an exaggerated bite—crisp, sweet—and chewed with a playful show of solemnity.
The child cheered. More petals launched. Bards improvised a new line about "apple swift as arrow, caught by Guardian’s grace." Lyan rolled his eyes, but the grin escaped anyway.
(Well caught,) Arturia conceded, pride and embarrassnt tangled.
(Bet the puppet can’t do that,) Lilith purred.
(Perhaps they’ll add a hinge on the next version,) Cynthia mused, voice smiling.
Ash-filled globes glittered like low stars as citizens hoisted them aloft in unison, a testant of light to fra the man they now called Protector. And amid that shimring galaxy of mourning and celebration, Lyan felt both the chain and the key: duty’s heft in the scroll under his arm, and choice’s quiet jingle in each step he vowed to take.
The crowd roared again.
_____
A day after the ceremony, Lyan left the glittering avenues of the palace quarter behind and let the city swallow him. He traded polished greaves for scuffed travel boots, hid his new signet ring beneath a worn glove, and pulled an old cloak—moth-nipped at the hem—over mail muted with road dust. No dals. No guards. Just a man whose face the heralds hadn’t put on coins yet, loose among the winding arteries of Astellia.
Morning sunlight slanted between slate roofs, catching motes of flour wafting from bakeries, smoke from tanner chimneys, and the faint, cloying perfu a florist pitched toward passers-by in hopeful handfuls. The city, freed from war’s rationing, breathed again—wide, greedy breaths that slled of yeast and wet stone and promise. Lyan drifted with the current of foot traffic until grand avenues dwindled to crooked lanes paved in uneven river cobble.
He paused at a narrow courtyard where laundry lines criss-crossed overhead. A widow in mourning gray stood atop a rickety stool, threading bits of battered helm plate onto a length of copper wire. The jagged tal shone dully, every surface hamred flat and rounded. When she finished a row she tested the chi; the makeshift bells rang a sound both lodic and raw, like laughter and grief entangled. She closed her eyes, breathed, and rang it again. The tone changed—small, determined hope warming at the edges.
Lyan touched two fingers to the brow of his hood in silent salute. She opened her eyes the next mont and glimpsed him, just a stranger lingering, and offered a faint nod before tying another strip of plate to the line.
Two streets farther, the clang of iron carried through the crisp air. A blacksmith—arms like tree roots, face soot-streaked—fed broken Varzadian sabres into a brick kiln glowing inferno orange. When steel softened white-hot he drew it out and hamred the blades into U-shaped curves, sparks coughing across the anvil like golden birds. Horseshoes, sturdy and plain. The rhythmic blows asured the city’s heartbeat: strike, echo, hiss in the quench. Lyan felt every vibration in his ribs—those swords had bitten Astellian shields weeks ago. Now they would cradle the hooves of plow beasts turning spring soil. The thought set a knot of sothing complicated in his chest—satisfaction, perhaps, tangled with tired sorrow.
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