A woman stood a few feet away from him.
That itself wouldn’t have been a surprise or a problem—a relief, though he wouldn’t have wished it, to find another who couldn’t sleep—but Olvir hadn’t heard her approach. Coming on top of his dream, it was more than he could reason through calmly. Before his brain caught up with his body, he’d hissed in a wary breath and reached for his sword.
“It’s a shade early for a duel,” she said.
As usual, Olvir recognized her voice before her face. He knew the tone in particular: soothing amusement. The words beneath the words werewe can laugh about this, we’re laughing already, we wouldn’t be joking if it was any great matter.
He’d used that manner of speaking before, when the minutes before battle bit into the throat like wire, but he’d heard it most often from the woman in front of him: Vivian Bathari, commander of the Sentinels who held the border.
As was usual with the Sentinels, her clothes—dark, plain wool beneath a mail shirt—gave no indication of her rank. The gold-worked hilt of a greatsword over her shoulder, and the eye-sized sapphire set in it, made a striking contrast to that austerity.
The sword marked Vivian as a Sentinel. Its stone housed Ulamir, a spirit hundreds of years old.
Vivian’s face showed the other signs that she belonged to the Order of the Dawn: a half-circle of bloodred tears beneath each gray eye, glowing against her light-brown skin. The gods had reforged her, like they did all of her order, turning them into weapons. None who’d been through that process ever looked fully human again.
None, in truth, were.
Many feared the Sentinels, even as they relied on them, believing them too close to the monsters they killed. Olvir hadn’t been nervous around the Order’s members in more than a decade. He’d known Vivian for nearly half that time and depended too much on her to feel the slightest alarm once he recognized her.
Embarrassment was a different story.
* * *
How easily he startles, said Ulamir.
“Everyone’s jumpy right now,” Vivian replied, “and no wonder.”
She spoke in the murmur that she’d spent eighteen years using with her soulsword. Most people couldn’t hear it unless they were trying to listen.
Olvir nodded, then contrived to appear even more awkward than he had before. He carried it well, as always. Being tall and square-chinned with big hazel eyes helped. “Not talking to me, were you? Though you’re right. Or Ulamir is.”
“I forget I have to be careful around the knights,” she said, with unspoken acceptance of his equally unspoken apology. “I’m still too used to people with normal hearing.”
Should your memory slip around any of them, he’s the safest,Ulamir put in.What could you say to him that you didn’t say in the Myrian lands, when that undead sank its teeth into your leg?
“If you have any dark secrets left where I’m concerned,” Olvir echoed, “you didn’t give them away just then.”
“Oh, good. I’m sorry for sneaking up on you, by the way. And for keeping you from getting dressed.”
She wasn’t entirely sorry for the latter. Vivian had seen Olvir with his shirt off on a few occasions. The sight had always been pleasant, particularly when he wasn’t bleeding. Tinival’s knights trained well, and Olvir’s appearance in particular suggested that he’d spent his mornings lifting small cows over his head.
Still, it wasn’t polite to say she’d be glad to keep him shirtless. The morning was a little cold too.
Vivian started to turn away.
“You weren’t seeking help when you came across me, were you?” Olvir asked, making her turn. The tunic slid down over his broad back and narrow waist, concealing his head for a moment before his close-cut chestnut hair emerged. “If you’d be able to use an extra hand with any task, I’m more than willing.”
“No, but I do thank you for offering. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I hoped a tour of the camp would help.”
“You too? Not that it’s so unusual, given the circumstances.”
“I’m surprised there’s not a crowd of us. Ample hard work or rotgut must be effective for the others.”
Olvir turned toward her. His belt was fastened, and his sword on it—“girt to his side,” as the old stories had said. He mostly fit the picture of an upstanding knight, but far more worried than they generally appeared in tapestries. “Forgive the question, but you haven’t been having dreams, have you?”
“I have,” Vivian answered him slowly, “but only what you’d expect. And you sound like you mean another sort.”
“I’m afraid I’m not sure what I mean. I’ve never been a prophet, so I doubt it’s that, and yet they repeat more often than any dream I’ve ever had.”
