TMWDS Chapter 22

She reached the knights' building without incident.

Coming through the stable entrance, Ionna slid the bolt across and exhaled with something like relief. She had bought herself a moment to breathe.

That thought turned out to be premature.

Someone was already waiting inside.

"Dame Ionna?"

She had her back to the room, but the voice was identification enough.

Sir Erich Richter.

Second son of the Richter earldom, and a colleague she had known for a considerable number of years. He was even a fellow member of the 1st Division—and he had been there, holding the Emperor's retreat line, on the day she died.

Encountering a comrade's face in an unexpected place left her with a peculiar feeling. Even if they had never exactly been close.

'Serves you right, Dame Ionna. So this is what all that devoted loyalty gets you in the end—used up, then boiled for the pot once you're no more use.'

The look he had turned on her the moment the Emperor's order reached them—to hold the line while he escaped—had been fierce enough that she carried the memory of it still. If only she hadn't died immediately after, it might have become one of the more memorable incidents of her career.

'Had Erich made it out?'

The probability was low. Especially if he had been as deep in the fighting as she had—escape would not have been a simple matter.

She was still trying to work out where Erich would have been standing when the man before her took one look at her face and set his jaw.

"Beaten up somewhere again, I see."

At this distance he had identified the bruising immediately. The sharp eye of a competent soldier.

"Nils recently—that one's accounted for. So today—that would be Lady Florence, who came to the palace this morning?"

"Oh……"

Ionna let out an involuntary sound of admiration. His ability to name the culprit was uncanny.

Her reaction seemed to irritate him further. Erich's expression hardened.

"Because of your willingness to stand there and take it—to prove your devotion to the Crown Prince—the rest of us come out looking worse for it. His close aide volunteering herself as a punching bag. That's what they'll say."

So saying, Erich moved slowly toward her.

He looked down at her with eyes like a sheet of ice.

"Though I suppose it wouldn't have wounded your pride. A woman who decided to marry a man she'd never laid eyes on because her liege told her to—a few slaps would hardly register."

"……"

"I find you remarkable. Truly. I don't think I could manage that level of abasement."

The familiar contempt. Ionna felt the corner of her mouth threatening to move, and barely stopped it—but the small, strange shift in her expression apparently reached him anyway.

Erich went very still. Then, in a low voice:

"You're no knight. Just some mutt that barks whenever its master snaps its fingers."

She had just come from proving she was not the Crown Prince's dog, and here she was being called one anyway.

Even with Ionna's long acquaintance with every variety of insult, this particular accusation struck her as worth answering.

She answered him directly.

"Wrong."

"……What?"

"Not a mutt. I said."

"……"

"Incidentally—your manners are poor, Erich. I outrank you."

Having noted this, Ionna shouldered past him with some force and walked on. It would have stung. But Erich stood exactly where he was and watched her go with blank eyes.

Because she had always treated his contempt as beneath notice—never pushed back, never responded with anything but silence. Today was the first time.

From somewhere along the far corridor came the voices of Saschia and Theobald.

"What?! Ionna expelled Florence from the palace? That's extraordinary—come on, let's go!"

"Commander! Please—your voice!"

Boot-falls in a corridor at speed.

Ionna held herself still and waited for them to pass.

Saschia had apparently just been informed by Lizzy. Good—it meant she had made it to the stables first.

With the situation feeling considerably more manageable, Ionna was settling her foot into the stirrup when Erich, from his position some distance away, muttered something she couldn't quite hear—and then his head came up sharply.

He moved toward the entrance. Put his head out through the stable door.

"Commander! A moment—"

Ionna moved on instinct and clamped her hand over his mouth.

She managed to drag him back inside, but he was no weakling—the two of them went over backward together.

They hit the floor, and the struggle continued.

Ionna got her arm around his neck and held on.

She put her lips to his ear and whispered.

"Quiet down and I'll let you go."

Whatever she had done, it seemed to have genuinely annoyed him—his ear had gone a vivid scarlet.

After a long pause, Erich nodded, very slowly.

Ionna watched him for a moment with measured suspicion. Then she lifted her hand from his mouth.

Maybe it was because her arm was still locked around his neck, but he behaved more meekly than she'd expected.

"Why were you trying to call her?" Ionna asked, with a thin layer of irritation underneath.

"……To confirm what happened."

"You could have asked me."

A long silence followed.

She was curious what expression he was wearing, but given that they were sitting back-to-back on a stable floor with her arm still around his neck, checking his face was not an option.

She was about to press him when Erich said, in a voice that suggested he was struggling with what he was hearing:

"You actually expelled Lady Florence."

"Yes."

"On what grounds."

"Assaulting an Imperial Knight in active service is a serious offence."

"Ha. So you did know that."

He said it to himself, half-under-his-breath, and then let his head drop forward. He seemed to have lost the appetite for further argument, because he stayed on the floor without moving.

For a man of that size, he looked almost young, sitting still.

Ionna kept her eyes on his broad back and thought for a moment about what she might want to say.

Not to reproach him for the misunderstanding. He had been treating her with contempt for years—this was nothing new.

She had assumed it was personal dislike, and it was, at least in part—but it had always been something else underneath.

'Don't you dare go and die uselessly somewhere like this.'

If that counted as concern, then concern was what it was.

Whatever else he thought of her, he had not actively wished for her death.

And that put him in marked contrast to a liege who had claimed to cherish her, and then made the decision to let go anyway.

When the Emperor's order came down and the life went out of Ionna's face, Erich had been the one to object—for her, and not just himself.

'Are you kidding me right now? The enemy's got numbers on us and you're telling us not to fall back? What's the difference between staying here and dying like a dog?'

'K—kgh. E—Erich. Insubordination is… tr—treason!'

At the time, Ionna had stopped him from grabbing the messenger by the collar. She had believed then that her liege's orders were worth more than her life.

But had that been right? Her own death she didn't regret. She had died holding to her principles, clearly and completely.

But if the choice to obey had sent the soldiers under her command to their deaths—then she, their superior, bore some share of that.

Which was why she couldn't find much anger for a subordinate who blamed her blind devotion.

She had made people follow her into a death trap. The least she could do was take the occasional piece of abuse.

Ionna let her voice soften slightly.

"Erich Richter. Thanks for worrying. If one of my own juniors came back having been slapped around on duty, I'd have been angry too."

At that, Erich turned around to look at her. His face had gone red. He said:

"Who said anything about being worried about you—ha! And don't make me laugh. Of course I'd be angry—but that doesn't mean I'd have done anything about it, does it?"

It was partly true, which was why Ionna only shrugged.

She was angry enough on behalf of her subordinates now, but resigning with the door practically in sight—making that particular argument would have been a little embarrassing.

When Ionna stood and began brushing herself off without comment, Erich's eyes went sharp again.

"Where are you going?"