Several days after the incident, the weather turned bright and cheery as though to redress death and all things morbid of that night's experience. Although whispers still circulated the town of dreadful murder and dark things in the night, the pleasant and restful mood post-harvest could almost be touched.

On a beautiful day as such, Cordelia went out for a deliberate walk. Not aimlessly as before, but towards the keep of Argenton she was headed, her mind singularly bent a-purpose. In one hand she carried a basket of flowers, and in another a sealed letter.

She was thinking about the letter’s content.

The hand was beautiful, the words carefully selected, the arguments infallible, and yet the sum was lesser than its part. It would not do, she thought, her purpose too great for possible accomplishments of pretty words. To think their fate would ride upon this short letter of Esme’s and hers! It had been her idea for a backup plan, yet now she doubted it. With great pain she had effected it to existence, though this was not quite what she had expected. Even now as she stood at the foot of the mighty keep, there was a wondering if it would not be easier to storm the sturdy gate and tall towers by force. Which Esme would not do.

The Maiden was not to blame, having so recently lost her only family. Nor could one blame Cordelia, if she did find the destined savior of mankind a sort of childish, moody teenager. For that was the truth, a death in the family notwithstanding. And her utter failure to persuade this moody youth had put Cordelia in an almost equally bad mood. If she could not talk an obtuse girl into action, what hope had she to avail as a temptress?

It was the third night after the death of Sir Derrick, together in their shared room after dinner, when Cordelia had brought up the topic.

“What will you do?” she had asked without preamble.

“What will I do!” Esme echoed mockingly. At her side of the bed there was a wooden figure, that of a knight upon his horse upon a round base. A memento, possibly. But Esme was not an orphaned child clinging to her doll as if perceiving therein the lost mother; she did not pamper it. But occasionally in those days after her brother’s death she would take it from her bag, then study it as if it had been a book of written pasts or a diary of the happier days - only to then put it aside - toss to some corner on the bed or the window sill quite carelessly, as though having emptied the thing of its value, her interest had also been lost quickly like a spoiled child’s temper. “What will you do?” Esme countered, the mockingness in her tone rising.

Almost inaudibly, Cordelia clicked her tongue, misliking her game. She stared at the blonde on the bed, studied her. “I shall look for work,” she said vaguely. They had been living on the meager coins Sir Derrick had left behind, which would be, at this rate, soon spent. But at the moment, monetary problems were the last thing on her mind.

“What will you do, Esme?” she pressed. She knew the girl had heard it the first time, and was not the absent kind who would be too distracted to notice a question put to her. But hers was the kind to ignore unpleasant questions, scoffing at disagreeable issues. She must not be allowed the use of silent treatment. “What will you do, Esme?”

“I do not know, Cordelia! Stop asking!” she cried.

“Then think!”

And after a while teeming with violent displeasure, the blonde gave the answer exactly like that of a child. “I want to go home.”

Cordelia went over, sat on the bed a safe distance from the blonde, trying to contain herself. She should be kind, should be understanding to someone in mourning. Only there was not time. There were feys in town, and stranger things besides, all bent on their destruction. And the girl was not mourning as much as throwing a tantrum at the world haphazardly.

“So,” Cordelia said, as gently as could, “what would you do when you were home and safe in solitude? Would you live as a wild woman forever?”

Esme’s answer to this was concise and simple: she snatched a pillow from her bedmate’s side and covered her ear with it.

This was the last straw. Cordelia pounced on the girl, both hands seized the pillow, yanked with a snarl or low yelp. But the girl warrior’s grip was solid as steel. And the pillow did not budge. After some seconds of futile grunting, Cordelia gave up, and shifted her tactic to assailing with her fists. Puny hands pounding at the covered head, striking savagely at the girl’s side, all she could do, she did, to force a reaction and lure the troops from the obstinate ramparts. She succeeded, her prize being violence in equal measure.

The blonde started up, flung the pillow away, physically hurt and mentally annoyed, face lined with malice. She caught Cordelia’s both hands in the middle of raising for yet another assault. And easily she wrestled her foe, who was all anger and no real strength, on her back. Now she climbed over the struggling body, locked the writhing lean arms in iron grips down the bed.

“Leave. Me. Alone!” she screamed like a snarling animal at Cordelia’s glare. Her lungs heaved heavily, but not quite done yet. For soon she drew another sharp breath for the next bellow. “See you not I’m grieving? Am I sport to you? Get you some work if you lack it so damn much! I do not want! I do not care!”

Cordelia stared silently. When at last she spoke, it was with a timbre at once subtle and perilous as an adder’s bite. “Last someone restrained me so, I ran a blade through his chest and was glad I did.”

Esme’s face paled and widened in dawning understanding. At once she peeled herself away, staggered back as though struck by a heavy blow. Cordelia, of course, had already told her the truth of her earlier disappearance.

When the Tempress was up with dignity again, she saw the girl had retreated to a corner of the bed, sullen with her eyes averted, struggling to act apologetic while anger still boiled in her chest. They allowed each other time.

A small and awkward eternity elapsed.

“I’m sorry,” Esme began, still turning her back to who she was apologizing to. “I did not mean to--“

“You know,” Cordelia overrode her, “You are alone in this world. And so am I. You do not hate me, I am almost sure. And I trust you more than I could say of anyone else in this damned world. Can we not try to endure through this together? Think I unkind, if you will. But I say that it is not right to sulk forever when you still have something to live for.”

“How do you know?” the girl said bitterly, “I have lived all my life in the forest. What’s so wrong with returning to that life and reclaiming what’s left of the things I love?”

“How do I know? I don’t. Only you know. Ask yourself.”

“I hate you.”

“Do you?”

“I do not. I lied. I’m only hating you right now.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Stop hating me soon then, for we have a future to discuss.”

“Confound the future!” Esme suddenly flared up. But this time, her temper died down just as quickly.

“Fine,” the blonde sighed, “Let’s talk.”

“On it.”

“Well.” The huffing blonde threw herself on the bed, no more turning her back to the other, but fixed her gaze at the ceiling. “I shall be knight.”

Had she ever expected otherwise?

Cordelia nodded. “What is to do?”

“For a start, a referral,” Esme listed automatically, “a letter, if you will, or words of mouth, for that is how great deed best travel. A sovereign's summon. Royal decree of a king, had we one. But since we have not, the archbishop or a cardinal shall do just as well. Then there shall be a test of prowess. Jostling, athleticism, swordsmanship, horsemanship, falconry, spirituality, spellbinding... for the gist of it. Yet strength alone does not a knight make! ‘Tis required of the candidate a gallant character, an understanding of chivalry, command of the language, poeticism, courtship-“

“Courtship? Poetry? What? How is romance required to fight fiends?”

“Obviously!” the girl drew suddenly to an excited pitch. “See you not ‘tis a fighting profession? The thing which necessitates not only the what, the how, but also the why! How are you to sigh a lover’s name before a grave battle without ever a one! Even you should find this a silly question!”

“Esme,” she said slowly, still nonplussed by how swiftly Esme’s mood had shifted upon the introduction of this topic. “How much of all this you know for a fact, and how much you learned from some novel?”

“Anyway!” the blonde swept the question aside magnificently, “I was speaking: all the necessary formal education. Then, obviously, the ordeal, for what is a knight without an ordeal to their name for a deed? And only when all that is done, and is done well, shall one be knighted by the sponsoring monarch, then come the crest, the shield, the plumes, the steed, the...”

At any rate, Cordelia tuned out, it was plain the girl had given it some thought. Perhaps too much thought, even.

“Well then,” Cordelia interrupted the speech that was still going on. “Stray not too far from the present. What are we to do with the referral letter?”

“We?” Esme echoed, visibly displeased for being cut off.

“We, indeed. I don’t suppose your brother had prepared for the event?”

“Not for my lack of trying.”

“He probably did not want you to run off at your first convenience.”

“Not that I knew why he insisted I should not begin my education early. He had connections in some regions, which I was ‘too young, too green to learn.’ or something, even to know in passing.”

“You are awful at imitation. Have you no other relatives or lords in debt to your brother.”

“Not that I know of.”

Cordelia clicked her tongue. The man was either a terrible knight or an overly secrecy one. “Well. There’s nothing to it. We need only to follow the most obvious path, then.”

“I thought that too.”

For some reason, Cordelia did not think they were on the same page at all. She eyed the animated blonde warily. “I am glad,” she said slowly for the words to sink in her brain, “you are thinking as I do: that we must enter Sir Kamaric’s service.”

The blonde began to explode. “Oh, surely you-”

“What else are you going to do?” Cordelia cut her off. “And pray, say not you are to roam the country in search of great deeds!”

“Well...” Esme flushed.

“For all sake’s sake, Esme! I am a stranger in this country, and I do not know it as well as you do. Yet I doubt there’s just... some place lying about where fiends and monsters gather where you could go and order a deed like a chop at the butcher house!”

And should there be one, it would not be so conveniently situated next door as though all this was a game’s tutorial stage. On the contrary, roaming the country aimlessly so would be as serving their lives on a platter for the armies of fiends hungered for their hearts. Rejected.

Unfortunately, the girls were on as different pages as could.

“There’s a romance in it, don’t you think?” Esme said, beginning to float upwards to her own world, “the two of us together roaming the woods, living off the land and helping those in need. The crossroads shall be our beds, the stars our rug, the songs to remind of a home and a lover...”

Cordelia bit her lip. This had gone beyond unreasonable and approaching delusional. She saw now why Sir Derrick had been so adamant about keeping his sister from her destiny.

“Look, Esme,” she changed her approach. “Suppose that worked, suppose we went on an adventure so, and found indeed things to do that weren’t just misery and self-inflicted ordeals - how long do you think that would take? Like as not years and some. ‘Tis a game of chances. You may meet a dragon in the next country over and slay it, or chase one for the next ten years or so without so much as scoring a scratch upon its mail! Now, do you care to delay so long your knighting?”

“Well,” she hesitated, “no. That would be too long by far a wait.”

“And not an unreasonable estimate, I would think. But do we go the proper way, and enlist you in Sir Kamaric’s band, and proceed to gain some glory and deeds the sensible way, for surely a knight of his caliber and who is master of a whole county should be expected to face large crises very often. Your getting knighted would then be a warranted thing, so long as you could prove your mettle and earn a recommendation. That’s done, you can put the errant after the knight all you want. For the ‘errant’ is the easy part, and so could be attached to a peddler as well as a king. You must be knighted first.”

“But must he be a lord!” cried she, “Can I, you know, not find a knight unattached and squire for him?”

“Well, try and find you a willing knight-errant then, if you can,” Cordelia said cruelly. “See how long that will take you.”

Withstanding the girl’s resentful glare, she went on, “Why do you dislike it so much anyway? Are landowner knights oft villains in your novels or what.”

“Oh just shut up already! I shall pen him a letter, if that will please you.”

“Letter?” Cordelia’s eyes clouded. “What are you talking about?”

“How else am I to get to him?” Esme said impatiently, “You want me to enlist in his service, do you not? You mess with my head so.”

“Aye, but a letter? He would simply throw it out of hand. How many people do you think beg to enter a feudal lord’s service every day?”

“Say what you mean. You are not making sense. What course else? Am I to storm his keep and thrust my request at his face?”

“Aye.”

“What?” Esme whipped her head around.

“Aye. And why not? Your family and mine were slain in his domain. ‘Tis his responsibility to take care of us. You said the same thing before, did you not? And for this, and to raise his sense of duty and pity, we must get through to the man in person.”

“Never. No. Never,” she said coldly. “No.”

There was the wall, looming suddenly out of the mist, closed and better defended than aught before it. If Cordelia thought the first line of defense manned by unchecked emotions was terrible, now she staggered as though slapped in the face by the unexpected difficulty yet to be surmounted. She stared, uncomprehending.

“Be reasonable, Esme. You can’t possibly hate someone you haven’t met so much.”

“Nay, not that,” she shook her head, adamant. “If I am to be knighted, and be it by a deed or promotion, it shall be by my own merit, not the pity of my better.”

“Why? ‘Tis silly,” she cried, “What’s the difference, anyway? Were we to do this quaint thing and send the man a letter, ‘twould be begging still, for the circumstance and needs remain... wait, you cannot possibly mean...”

“Aye,” Esme said nonchalantly, “I shan’t beg. Or anything. But this is how we shall write: Esme, kin to Sir Derrick no Gareth, knight of the realm, implore to enter into thy service, and swear upon duty, honor, faith in God, and sundries... Something like so. And that’s that. Am I beggar, to make a case out of my plights where only skills and blood are needed to be known?”

“Nay. You are no beggar. You are my bane.” She dropped on the bed.

The argument went on, to no conclusive end but that Cordelia was utterly defeated.

Now before the tall, indifferent ramparts, she felt like tearing the stiff, formal and utterly dispassionate letter apart. But with a long sigh, she went on with her business.