As I suspected it would, Other Stuff kept me busy yesterday and today, so Chapter 2 isn’t yet up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For your patience, here’s a snippet from it, some not-quite-connected paragraphs.<\/p>\n
Location: Duke’s Stronghold in the north<\/p>\n
Arcolin has been in Kieri’s office there many times of course, but he’s realized that Kieri will probably never return.\u00a0\u00a0 Almost certainly will never return.\u00a0\u00a0 It feels different…<\/em><\/p>\n Arcolin gathered up his wet things and carried them to the kitchen, to be dried by the cooking hearth.\u00a0 Back upstairs, he went into Kieri’s office and looked around.<\/p>\n Kieri had asked for nothing from this office, from the stronghold.\u00a0 Things he had bought in Aarenis or V\u00e9rella: the striped rug Tammarion had chosen, a carved box with a running fox on its lid, a favorite whetstone always placed on the left of the great desk, a candleholder of translucent pink stone that glowed with light when the candle was lit, the chest in which–as Arcolin knew–Kieri’s dead wife’s armor and the children’s daggers were wrapped in Tammarion’s troth-dress.\u00a0 Kieri had asked for none of these.<\/p>\n Arcolin does the chores he’s come for,\u00a0 preparing for the next day’s work, for the journey south and the necessary conference with the Council, then:<\/em> ………………………<\/p>\n For Kieri, of course, there was no time, that night of his departure, to think of his favorite things back “home” and ask Arcolin to send along his favorite whetstone or candlestick\u00a0 or any of the other things he had found, acquired, preserved over the years.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But Arcolin doesn’t quite understand yet how desperate that night was.\u00a0\u00a0 To him, the failure to ask for–or even mention–these things is a sign of Kieri’s determination to turn his back on his former domain, and those who had been his loyal followers.<\/p>\n The feudal oath went both ways…lord and vassal pledged to each other, the follower to obey and serve; the lord to protect.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, it didn’t work as well in practice as in theory much of the time, but that was the intent.\u00a0 So Arcolin’s feeling not just bereft at the loss of a friend and commander, as we might be, but also aggrieved at what he cannot but perceive as a breach of trust, even though reason tells him that once Kieri learned the truth of his heritage, he also had a duty to Lyonya.\u00a0\u00a0 Arcolin is not entirely ruled by reason; he takes oaths seriously, emotionally.\u00a0\u00a0 And although he does not entirely realize it, and although he pushes aside his sense of betrayal, he is even more determined to be ‘the good lord” to anyone he commands from now on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I suspected it would, Other Stuff kept me busy yesterday and today, so Chapter 2 isn’t yet up.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For your patience, here’s a snippet from it, some not-quite-connected paragraphs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[22,106,27],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","tag-characters","tag-contents","tag-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe room seemed emptier than it should, emptier than it ever had.
\n“I’m trying,” he muttered to himself, then shook his head and went to bed.<\/p>\n