Henri
“Are we heading into battle?” I asked you as I donned my weapons. I seldom left our rooms without them, especially now.
“I don’t know,” you said, distracted, and glanced past me with a pensive look. “Maybe.”
Maybe…
“I like to be prepared, Vincent.” I fitted my knives into my wrist guards. It was the warrior in me. Know your terrain, ready your weapons, understand the enemy’s capabilities as well as your own…
“Then be prepared for anything.” You met my gaze with renewed focus. “We need to get Lucian.”
Getting Lucian involved walking some hundred meters along the corridor to where his suite of rooms mirrored our own. There was a murmuring behind closed doors that went silent when I knocked. Lucian greeted us wearing a monogrammed amethyst robe, loosely tied at the waist, his hair only a little unkempt. Behind him Stefan lay naked in bed with a large book open before him.
“Stefan wears glasses?” you asked, which wasn’t the most alarming detail of this scene, but it did strike me as incongruent as well.
“Only for reading,” Lucian said, “and other… detail work.”
That was a strange hesitation.
“I need you to come with us,” you said to Lucian, “Bring your weapons.”
“My weapons? Will this take very long?”
“It might. We’re going to the catacombs.”
Lucian stalled at that and his good mood dimmed. Even as young adventurers, seeking to explore every nook and cranny of our ancestral lands, the catacombs were not a place we visited voluntarily.
Lucian glanced back longingly at Stefan. The youth’s legs were kicked up behind him, swinging back and forth in a childlike gesture while he studied the page in front of him.
“No reading ahead,” Lucian said, then turned back to you. “Are you sure this can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.”
Lucian closed the door and retreated to his rooms where he and Stefan argued in what sounded like French. He reappeared a few minutes later dressed in attire similar to my own. Only he looked much more majestic in his leather breastplate and purple tunic, like the before-battle renditions of war heroes, as if the ugliness and dirt of battle could never truly stain him.
“Sois sage, mon amour,” Lucian said as Stefan slammed the door with a force that would be considered rude by even the mildest judge. A moment later, we heard the turn of the deadbolt and the padding of Stefan’s soft step back to the bed.
“Stefan knows French?” you asked.
Lucian shrugged. “I taught him. He’s very good with languages.”
“Why French?” I asked.
“How else could he read me French poetry?” Lucian said as if it was obvious. “I bet he’s going to read ahead just to spite me.”
“We should be quiet about this,” you said as we exited Lucian’s manor, passing by our beastborn guards with the brief instruction that they protect the manor’s inhabitants with their lives. You didn’t like leaving your father unattended for very long, and Lucian had the same hesitancy with Stefan. We crossed the veranda and cut through the manicured gardens to the open fields where the warborn had set up camp. It was past midnight already, and from what I’d observed of the twins’ behavior, they seemed to be early risers.
We reached the entrance to their sleeping tent where you asked the guards on duty for a meeting with their masters. Seeing their hesitation, you added, “It’s important enough to wake them.”
I surveyed our surroundings, worried about who might be watching. Soon after, we were ushered inside where the tent was split into two rooms with a common area between them. Aretha emerged from behind one of the curtained doors with her hair down, and Hyas came from the opposite side, drowsy-eyed and scowling.
“What’s going on?” Hyas asked in a low rumble, already tensing in anticipation.
“I have information,” you began. “About something suspicious going on in the catacombs.”
“Suspicious, how?” Aretha asked.
“I’m not sure exactly.”
