Chapter Text
It was fall when Palla fell in love— and there was something stupidly poetic about the fact that she fell in love in the season where the air turned cold, where leaves fell and died and collected in brown masses on the ground, shriveling up in puddles into sad masses of soggy grossness. Usually people fall in love in the spring, but for Palla it was the fall, and Palla supposed there was nothing much she could do about that.
It'd been a long, tumultuous summer— but only in terms of the weather. Between the sisters, nothing changed. Est grew taller, got sunburn on her shoulders and her nose, pink as her hair. She and Catria freckled in the sunshine and grumbled when they had to stay inside and wait for the storms to pass. When Palla couldn’t sleep she fixed shutters that broke in strong wind and hail and nailed shingles back on the roof (Palla was no carpenter but she’d taught herself enough to be passable) or weeded the garden or just stayed up listening to the sounds of the summer night while her sisters slept, sprawled on palettes to try and beat the heat, in the attic, where the thinner walls and two windows, one on each side, meant the coolest place to sleep. She would listen to the crickets and summertime wind through the trees as she sat downstairs, leaving her knighthood at the door to merely be Palla Skylark, eldest of the three sisters, and the guardian that they needed. She liked to think that’s why she became a member of the Macedon Guard— to protect not only her home, but her sisters.
So it was fall when it started and Palla knew it was fall because the nights cooled and harvest season came around in full swing, and she flew over fields and orchards in shades of orange and yellow and gold on her way to work. It was getting cool enough Est would have to start wearing her boots again even though they were too small for her (though Catria’s old ones should be the right size now), and cool enough that Palla wore a sweater and scarf under her armor, keeping away the bite of the wind on her way to work.
Palla woke at three. She always did— her shift with the Macedon Guard began at six, and three gave her the time to saddle up Bluebell, put up her hair, clean her musket, and button on her uniform. It was always dark when she woke after three hours of dreamless sleep, season be damned, but it wasn’t as cold as it would be in the winter, not yet. The sun wouldn’t rise until she’d knocked back the bitter coffee they serve in mess and gotten up on the wall, up for another day of guarding the city.
Est and Catria were sleeping when she woke— good, they needed rest. Est was half-off the pallet in the attic, arms splayed out and one leg over Catria. Catria, likewise, was curled into a ball under the light quilt with her nose poking out through a hole. Palla crouched and tugged the coverlet further over Est, brushing a strand of hair off her face. Est’s head followed Palla’s touch out of reflex. If she were Catria, she’d wake— but Est has always been a heavy sleeper. Palla kissed her head and then Catria’s and left, going back down the ladder from the attic and quietly shutting the front door behind her.
The sky was dark and grass crunched under Palla’s boots. The only light came from the dim orange lantern hanging on a post at their front gate— right behind the old sign with peeling paint that read SKYLARK in blue lettering, above a rendition of the family crest: two spread wings over crossed spears. Palla spared the crest a glance as she vaulted over the fence to the paddock with the pegasi. May the winds call our children home, she thought to herself— the house motto, back when Skylark was a house. They were a hundred strong, once, with a stable full of the finest pegasi in Aldros, so they said. Palla had been young, but she remembered vast fields of corn and oats that farmhands tilled, a barn full of sweet-smelling straw that she liked to hide in, waking up to clucking from the flock of chickens out the back door, playing with the farmhands' dogs and chasing after the skittish barn cats, and picking the wildflowers in pastures where pegasi of every shape and size and color and pattern grazed. She remembered her upstairs bedroom with creaky old furniture and quilts so heavy she could barely lift them, features that’d been there long before she had, and other bedrooms, empty bedrooms that she remembered being told had belonged to her father’s sisters, before they’d left the valley. But that had all changed, as all things do, and what remained were the dilapidated shells of the houses where the farmhands and their families had lived, the barn that'd started to peel and crumple with disuse, and acres of soil left to grow wild grasses where the crops had been. For her sisters it was just where they lived, where they'd always lived, but Palla felt emptiness seeped into the weathered brick of the house.
In the barn, two pegasi slept. One woke— a lovely mare they called Josephine with a pedigree longer than Ram River, dappled gray, a little tubby, and the sweetest old lady Palla has ever known. Josephine was wonderfully patient, but she wasn’t the one Palla rode to work. Although Palla loved Josephine, she just wasn’t fast enough to get Palla to work on time. No, that was Bluebell… Bluebell was an asshole.
But asshole or otherwise, Palla needed to go to work, and Bluebell, a retired racing mount, could fly circles around little Josephine. Bluebell snorted grumpily when Palla roused her, though she didn’t keep complaining for long when Palla gave her a carrot to munch on. Palla led her out into the paddock to let her eat and stretch her wings while Palla buttoned up her uniform in the low lantern light, watching the buttons glisten. At this point, suiting up at three in the morning was just routine— that way she could get right to work when she got there.
As she leaned against the fence, starting to get her pieces in order, the door opened with the telltale squeak of hinges that needed oiling. Palla looked up. Catria padded down the front steps holding a candle, skirt of her summer nightgown fluttering in the light breeze. Palla felt a twinge of guilt.
Catria stopped when she stepped into the lantern light, looking at Palla all decked out in red and bronze, hair braided and pinned at the back of her head, musket on her back and looking like what every member of the Macedon Guard aspires to be— except for her sallow skin and the bags under her glassy eyes. Palla blinked a few times, her tired eyes pulling Catria’s image into focus.
“You’re going?” she asked. It didn’t sound like the simple question it was asking.
“I have to work, Catria,” Palla replied.
“You know what day it is,” Catria scowled. Palla cursed. Of course— the first of the fall. The day their father didn’t come home. (That winter had been the loneliest that Palla could recall. The next spring, the very day she’d turned fourteen and was old enough to lie about her age, she’d enlisted in the Macedon Guard.)
Palla licked her chapped lips. “Of course,” she said. She should be gone by now. She mentally calculated the time it’d take for her to get Catria and Est ready, walk them to the cemetery, and visit the gravestones— at least an hour. An hour of wages she doesn’t get. Wait, no. She can’t walk them down to the cemetery until Est wakes, and Est is a growing girl that needs her sleep, so that won’t be until eight at least. And then she’ll need to wait for Catria to make breakfast and for them both to eat, and then there’s the actual time at the cemetery, and walking them back and making sure they were all right, then the two-hour flight to the city… half a day’s wages gone, at least. Or Commander Vaughn could mark her absent for the day, meaning she wouldn’t get paid… her head spun. Not a feverish kind of spin like it’d been for the past few days, but spun with effort that her sleep-deprived mind couldn’t handle.
She breathed. “You go back to bed, Catria,” she said. “I’m already up, so I’ll get some work done… maybe patch up the hole in the stable roof, or weed the garden, we’ve been letting it go to seed…”
Catria sighed. “Okay, sis,” she said. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Goodnight,” Palla murmured.
Catria climbed back into the attic. Est still slept, snoring a little bit, her head on a rolled-up quilt. From the attic window, Catria watched her older sister take her trunk back to where she stored it in the house, then toss her coat over the porch railing, roll up the sleeves of her shirt, and start working on the hole in the stable. It was times like this Catria was glad she’d gotten the laundry done sooner rather than later, because Palla would’ve tried to do it and end up hurting herself trying to heat up the water.
Catria sighed. She hadn’t seen Palla in days— and it seemed every time Catria caught a glimpse of her, she looked worse. The worst part was that she pretended nothing was wrong, even if she could see it if she bothered to look in a mirror.
Est shifted, scrunching up her face. “Catria?” she whispered, voice hoarse from sleep. “Whas’ wrong?”
“Nothing,” Catria whispered back. “Go back to sleep, Est.”
Est didn’t need to be told twice. She put her head back down, asleep again in seconds. Catria watched Palla tend the garden, the same garden she’s kept up for as long as Catria can remember, for another minute, then lay her head down on the pallets once more. It felt wrong— wrong that their parents died, yes, but wronger still that her own sister felt like a ghost living in their house— like part of Palla had remained stuck in the memories of better times for the Skylark farm. Sometimes, while Est was out, she imagined that it was a time when her parents were alive (her father, at least— Catria had been so young when their mother died that she didn’t remember her) and Palla was herself and she and Est played on the rug in front of the fireplace, and although for a minute the memories made her happy, it felt worse when she thought about Palla coming back home like she did every night, her steps shuffling her way to the house and checking on them in the attic like she’s trying to make up for never being there during the day. Catria knew that Palla loved them, but it was hard to feel like it when her sister was a dead woman walking— and she was old enough then to feel the twinge of resentment for why Palla became what she was.
(It was immature, Catria knew, but she asked herself— why did father have to die? Why did Palla, the closest thing Catria and Est have ever known to a mother, have to work herself to the bone? Who was the one deciding these things, and why did they have it out for the Skylarks in particular?)
When Catria woke again, Palla was standing over the trough to the water pump, washing her face and getting the grime and dirt out of her hair. The sun was up, then, and Palla had her shirt tied around her waist despite the biting chill of the autumn morning, ever-present brass locket resting between her breasts. The pegasi grazed in the paddock. Palla had weeded the garden, spread compost over the roots to help them grow, split another day’s worth of firewood for the woodpile, and cleaned the ash from the oven. Catria tied her apron over her day clothes, tucking her short hair behind her ears. She stood on the porch and watched for a minute— interrupting Palla in this state never went well.
Palla looked even worse in the sunlight, in her faded work trousers and her wrap. Her skin was grayish, lips and nail beds blue like her body thought it was far colder than it actually was. It seemed to hang off her bones, sunken between ribs Catria could count individually if she got closer. Palla squeezed the water from her stringy hair and folded it into a plait, tied off with a bit of twine and frankly, Catria was impressed she still had the coordination to knot it.
“I’m starting breakfast,” Catria said. Palla looked up, blinking at Catria. She looked like she’d rubbed ash into her cheeks, like something had hit her and knocked her eyes back into her skull, and replaced them with glass while they were at it. She looked like someone had pulled a three-days-dead corpse from the ground and shoved half a soul back in. How could she even hold a lance in this state? How had nobody noticed and insisted she take fewer hours? Had Catria enough of a desire, she’d march herself down to Macedon and demand to know who was making her sister work an ungodly and illegal amount. But that may get Palla in trouble, and given how much Palla valued her job, it didn’t seem likely Catria would do that.
Palla didn’t respond, merely stared. Catria shifted. “Thanks for cleaning the oven,” she said. “I’ll make bread. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
Palla nodded. She went back to splashing water on her face. Catria supposed that that’s what she got for trying.
While Catria prepared breakfast for the three of them, Palla polished her bayonet and Est squirmed in her sleep, trying to stave off waking up. The persistent sun in her eyes through the attic window didn’t want her to, and eventually she caved to it. She stretched her shoulders, floorboards creaking as she moved. She bonked her head on one of the rafters while trying to wiggle out of her nightgown, which is what alerted Catria to her presence.
Catria wiped her hands on her flour-smudged apron. “Est,” she called. “Est, hurry and get dressed, will you? We’re visiting the cemetery today.”
Est clutched the bump on her head. “I’m coming,” she called down the ladder. She dressed quickly and took the rungs of the ladder two at a time, jumping down the last one. Her bare feet landed on the floorboards with a thump— and Est was quite proud to say she’d stuck that landing.
She straightened her shirt as she walked into the kitchen and stole a piece of the soft goat cheese Catria was serving for breakfast. Catria scowled and smacked her hand with a wooden spoon. Est pulled her hand back.
“Smells great,” she commented, breathing in the scent of baking bread and frying eggs.
Catria rolled her eyes. “You say that every day,” she said.
“It’s true every day,” Est insisted, rocking back and fourth on the balls of her feet as she leaned near Catria’s workspace. “You’re a real great cook.”
“Yes, well, someone has to be,” Catria brushed it off like it was nothing and went back to cooking. She checked the bread again and carefully pulled it out of the oven, setting the oven-hot loaf on the countertop. Est wanted to rip off a hunk of it and stuff it in her mouth, but it was far too hot for that and Catria would scold her for it anyway.
The door opened and Palla walked in with a basket full of the season’s last ripe tomatoes. “Just put them in the cellar,” Catria told her. “Est and I will can them later.”
Est groaned. “Catria, not more canning,” she complained.
Palla grunted acknowledgement, opening the door to the cellar and climbing down the steep stairs. Est watched her go. She leaned on her elbows on the counter.
“Palla looks sick,” she commented.
Catria didn’t look away from her cooking. “She’s tired,” she said. “Works too much.”
“How come?” Est asked. “It’s against the king’s law to make your people work more than ten hours a day, and Palla works way more than that.”
Catria sighed. “Est, we’ve had this conversation. You’re not a little girl anymore. You know why Palla works so much.”
Est frowned, her finger idly tracing the grain of the countertop. “Still,” she mumbled. Palla has always been a hard worker, so Est supposed it wasn’t out of character for her to work so much— still, Est didn’t like seeing her so drawn. She was grey, for pity’s sake.
“Maybe I could join the King’s Army,” Est proposed. “I’m turning fourteen next summer. They’ll send me to do some job they need done, and I can start sending money home so Palla won’t have to work so much.”
Catria’s hands clutched her spoon and the frying pan. “Yes, you could,” she said tightly. “They’d train you on how to be a good little soldier of Aldros, how to march and salute and wear a uniform and load a musket. And then the second they could, they’d send you off to fight and die in some war, and when you died as cannon fodder, they’d send your gun home in a box with a copy-written letter saying how sorry they are for my loss and how good a soldier you were. So I suppose you could be a soldier— if you’re prepared to die at twenty.”
Est went quiet. Catria didn’t snap in the way most people did— but Est could tell when she was being snapped at, and this was one of those times.
“Or not,” she mumbled. “Sorry for bringing it up.”
Palla returned from the cellar then, and Est was glad for the change of subject. “Hey, sis,” she said, a little awkwardly. Palla stopped and looked at Est with those glassy eyes of hers that looked a hundred miles away, but she smiled emptily and mussed Est’s hair anyway. Not what Est was hoping for, but it’s Palla— she’ll take what she can get.
By the time breakfast was ready, Palla had brought in the summer squash, the peppers, the strawberries, the cucumbers, and a rather impressive watermelon. Catria washed and cut some of the strawberries for them to have with breakfast— alongside the bread she’d made, the soft goat’s cheese, the oatmeal, and the eggs. Est started wolfing down her food until Catria smacked her in the shoulder and reminded her to mind her manners. She rolled her eyes, but swallowed it all before speaking.
“Hey, Palla,” she ventured. Palla’s fork paused halfway to numbly lifting her strawberry to her mouth. “Your strawberries are really good this year. Me and Catria can make really good jam from it.”
“Catria and I,” Catria reminded her.
Est ignored her. “Won’t that be something, right, Palla? Fresh strawberry jam?”
Palla processed the question, then nodded.
Well, so much for starting a conversation. Est tried again. “I got the goat cheese today,” she said. “From Mrs. Shepherd, down the road. You know, the lady that always commented on how big our garden was getting?”
“Mother’s garden,” Palla corrected. “It’s mother’s garden.”
Est felt cold. “Oh,” she managed. It wasn’t quite what she expected when Palla opened her mouth. She looked at Catria for help, but the way Catria purposefully avoided looking at her, chewing her eggs pointedly (only Catria could chew eggs pointedly) told Est you got yourself into this, you get yourself out.
Est squirmed in her seat. “Well, I’m certainly proud of it,” she said. “And you do such a good job of keeping it in order, even though you work so much. I bet the autumn harvest will be really great this year, too.”
Palla nodded. She took another bite of her oatmeal. Est hadn’t known it was mother’s garden, specifically— only that Palla insisted on being the one to care for it. Catria had enough work around the house to do and Est didn’t really know or care to know about gardening anyway, so they’d let Palla use up valuable hours of rest to garden. It wasn’t as if they could stop her, anyway.
“I bet you could be a really good gardener,” Est ventured. “If, you know, being a guard doesn’t work out.”
“I suppose,” Palla admitted.
“Or maybe I could be a guard, like you,” Est suggested. “It’s not the army, really, so it wouldn’t be that dangerous. And I could start sending my wages home, so maybe you could work less, Palla.”
Palla paused. “No,” she said. “No, Est.”
Est pouted, despite knowing it was childish. “Why not?”
“You’re too young,” Palla replied.
“So were you when you started,” Est countered. “You were fourteen but you said you were sixteen. I’ll be fourteen in the summer. I can do the same thing and sign up with the guard.”
“No, Est,” Palla repeated. “I can’t stop you from trying to work, but I don’t want you putting yourself in danger.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?” Est demanded. “There’s nothing anyone can do out here ‘cept be a farmer or a rancher or a shepherd, and nobody needs an apprentice because they apprentice boys first in everything but sewing and I’m awful at sewing, and the only thing I am good at is hunting but there are already way better hunters in town!”
“Est!” Catria scolded.
“Sorry,” Est mumbled. She took a breath. “Only thing I can do to help is go to the city to get a job, and they probably always need more people for the guard, right?”
Palla sighed. “Est, I can’t let you become a guard,” she said. “Or enlist in the military, and that’s final.”
Est wanted to slump back in her seat and groan, but didn’t because that was rude. “You don’t want me to do anything,” she complained. “I’m tired of doing nothing while you and Catria do everything! Can’t I help, too?”
“You can help by keeping yourself out of trouble,” Palla told her.
Est grumbled, poking at her eggs. “You always say that. Why can’t I help?”
Answers floated through Palla’s mind. You’re too young to sell your life away. You could get hurt. You could get killed. You could get sent somewhere and come back in a box, like mother. You could get sent somewhere and never come back, like father. You could work hard and do well and earn money but trade away your health, like me.
The last possibility hurt her most— of course, she could say none of these because Est wouldn’t listen. “I don’t want you getting hurt,” she said.
“Don’t want me turning into you, I bet,” Est mumbled.
“Est!” Catria gasped.
“It’s the truth!” Est retorted, fork hitting the table with a smack that shook the rest of the dishes. “And it’s not fair, either! You work your life away and keep telling yourself it’s for us, but you’re never home and all it does is hurt!”
Palla fell silent. Her dead-eyed stare said it all to Est.
“Est, you’re being a brat,” Catria said. “Quit throwing a tantrum.”
I am not throwing a tantrum, Est wanted to protest. But she couldn’t, because that would definitely not help her case, so she picked up her fork and glared at her eggs. She wasn’t hungry, but they didn’t want to waste any food, so she ate anyway.
The rest of breakfast passed in silence. Palla said nothing to defend herself from Est’s accusation, Est had nothing else to say to her that Catria wouldn’t scold her for, and Catria wasn’t about to try and revive a conversation that was likely doomed from the start. Or perhaps Palla had forgotten— which was entirely possible. Still, if she wasn’t going to respond, then nor was Est.
Palla locked the garden gate before they left for the cemetery. She did every morning, just to make sure, and even if it didn’t matter because anyone could jump the fence or animals could wiggle or burrow beneath it, it made Palla feel better.
Est sat on the fence by the sign. “Hey, Catria,” she said. The sun was up by now, and it shone on Est’s sunburned shoulders that she kept bare as long as she could until Catria insisted she wear a sweater going out.
Catria hummed acknowledgement. “What is it, Est?”
“Why does Palla keep calling the garden mother’s garden?” she asked. “I mean— presumably because it is, but I kind of thought it was everyone’s.”
“Mother planted it,” Palla said, coming up the path towards the road. “She taught me how to care for it. So I do.”
That made sense. As they walked down the road towards the cemetery, Est hummed. She was old enough to understand that the garden was important to Palla, and old enough not to be a brat about it. But Est couldn’t say she had the same connection— she’d been only two when their mother died, and barely remembered anything but the ghost of a face.
“Did mother like gardening?” she asked.
“I suppose she must have,” Palla shrugged. “I don’t really remember.”
Est supposed that was the closest thing to an answer she’d get. As with breakfast (and so many other things, it seemed, when Palla was present) the rest of the walk passed in silence.
(There was a painting in some chest in their home, one that an artist made when he was in Annsbury for the town fair. Their father took them there when Palla was young, and the painter had asked if he could paint them. And so he had— Palla, ten years old, in the center, with Catria at seven on her left and Est at four on her right, holding her hands. This was how they walked to the cemetery— habit formed after five years, based on the fact that Palla is around so little she’s forgotten the layout of her hometown.)
The cemetery was on top of a hill, the same hill where the chapel and the local priory sat. Palla, through the ringing of her ears, heard singing— The Hereditors of Arcadia, if she recalled correctly. That’s right, it was the beginning of a new week, which would explain why she hadn’t seen many people out in town. Either they were in service or they were resting in preparation for the work week. But guards, at least the cannon fodder guards that stood at doorways, patrolled street corners, and walked the walls, didn’t have rest days. Palla didn’t mind. No rest days meant more of her wages to send home.
At least the awkwardness from the meal had seemed to fade. Est swung their hands as she and Catria led Palla through town, chattering about her latest successful hunt— she brought a whole deer home last time, and two rabbits and she tried to take out a boar but it was too big so she left it alone. Catria made rabbit stew with some of Palla’s carrots and some potatoes and summer squash, and it was really too bad that Palla didn’t get to eat any of it. Palla, who was used to guard’s fare (dry and tasteless food, meant to be consumed quickly and give energy for the whole day) admitted she missed Catria’s cooking, and that made Catria go red in the ears with pride. Then Palla asked if Est was going to school, and Est chewed the corner of her lip instead of answering. (Est didn’t like school— she hated sitting still and listening to people talk, and having to deal with other students her age who didn’t know how to talk to her because she liked pegasi more than people.)
They came to the graves— two of them, dug when their mother died, with a tombstone made for two. Catria brushed the dead leaves off the tombstone and Est set the flowers at the base of it. Palla read the faded names: Dianna and Alder Skylark— beloved parents, may they rest in the Divines’ court. Palla’s never given much thought to what happens after death. She’s fairly certain there’s nothing, and there’s nobody looking down on what she’s doing, either with pride or disappointment. But nobody asked Palla, so she’s never said as much.
Palla sat in the center, Catria at her left and Est on her right. Est rested her head on her knees, fiddling with the grass in the cemetery. Beneath her shirt, Palla’s locket felt heavy. She’d show her sisters the picture inside it someday, she’d decided. That day was not today.
Palla breathed. She didn’t often allow herself the luxury of reminiscing— losing focus on the job could get her killed, and then who’d take care of Catria and Est?— but today was special. On that day, five years ago, Alder Skylark had not come home.
Palla didn’t know the exact day her mother had died. She’d been only eight— a little girl with big dreams that still looked for pixies when she weeded the garden. The soldiers of Hyram Valley had been called away to fight for Aldros, lending what aid they could to the King. Her mother and father had gone together in matching uniforms, scarves tucked tight around their necks, into the cold morning, leaving Palla and her sisters with their neighbors and longtime friends, the Fairchesters. Three months later Alder had returned alone, and hung up their mother's musket above the hearth, and said Mother won’t be coming home.
That, Palla thought, was the reason they don’t let soldiers marry each other.
“Hey,” Est ventured, head on her knees. “Is the reason you guys don’t want me to become a soldier is ‘cause you don’t want me to end up like Mother and Dad?”
“I thought that’d be obvious,” Catria replied. “Mother and Dad are dead, Est. You’re too young to die.”
“Kids my age die all the time,” Est retorted.
“Don’t say things like that,” Catria scolded. “Palla, tell her.”
“It’s true,” Est insisted. “You know it is.”
“So do you want us to just lie down and accept that?” Catria demanded. “That you’re in such a hurry to die that you’ll lie about your age to do it?”
“That’s not—“ Est growled in frustration. “I just want to help!”
“You dying won’t help anybody,” Catria sighed. “Est, we’ve been over this—“
“Both of you,” Palla interrupted, shutting them up. Catria folded her arms, glaring at the tombstone, and Est fiddled with the grass. The wind blew cold over the cemetery. None of the three really believed their parents were watching from the afterlife, or in any afterlife, but in the moment it was tempting to believe.
After silence, Palla spoke again. As the eldest, it’s her job to diffuse things like this when they happen— if they happen when she’s around. “Est, I don’t want you becoming a soldier either.”
Est sighed. “Yeah, I know,” she admitted.
“I know lots of kids your age lie about how old they are,” Palla continued. “I’ve met several. I was one of them. It’s wrong, but Macedon allows it. I haven’t the power to question why.”
“So what’s so bad about me doing it, then?” Est asked. “If nobody’s gonna get in trouble, don’t the positives outweigh the negatives?”
“It’s not about positives and negatives, Est,” Palla replied. “You deserve better than dying as one of a thousand. You’re worth more than that.”
That, at least, seems to get through to her. Est stared hard at the ground, at the cracks in her parents’ tombstone. Est didn’t remember her mother— barely remembered her father, either, at this point, and she wasn’t even sure if he’d ever really connected with her enough for her to remember. The only caretakers she’d ever really known were Palla and Catria— and at this point, she wasn’t even sure if she knew Palla anymore. It felt like her whole family was dropping off the world one at a time, and eventually there’d be nobody but her.
“I want to do something,” Est mumbled. “You and Catria work so hard, Palla. I can’t keep sitting at home and hunting for pocket change.”
Palla sighed. She reached around and pushed some of Est’s hair from her eyes— it was getting a bit long. “How about,” she suggested. “In three years, when you’re sixteen, I’ll put in a good word for you with Commander Vaughn. Then we’ll see about making you a guard, if you’re still so set on wanting to help.”
It was the best Est was going to get. “Alright,” she admitted. “Thanks, Palla.”
Catria breathed. The air smelled like petrichor and apples, wind blowing over the orchards. The apples fermented quickly in the early autumn heat, and those that weren’t harvested were left to rot and decay back into the soil. Mosquitoes drunk off their asses from the rotting apples buzzed around lazily, easy to smack if they happened to alight on one’s arm. The weather would cool soon and the mosquitoes would all die or hibernate or whatever it was mosquitoes did when the seasons changed from autumn to winter. Catria, for one, would not miss the bugs.
“I miss dad,” Catria murmured.
Palla hummed agreement, eyes turned towards the words on the stone, unmoving likely because her muscles were simply too tired to move anywhere else. “Me, too.”
“Was he a very good dad?” Est asked. “I thought he was, but I don’t really remember.”
Palla shrugged. “He didn’t really know how to be one after mother died,” she admitted. “Then he left for a battle and didn’t come back.”
Catria let that sink in. It was easy to forget how personally Palla took being a soldier. It was what took her parents away— her parents, when she was old enough to remember their faces and voices and what they were like— and what made her into the person she was.
The bells in the tower rang the hour— ten o’clock and all is well. Palla’s neck jerked towards the tower, mind racing. Ten o’clock meant two hours to the end of her shift, an hour’s lunch before starting her second shift.
Catria sighed. “Time to go?” she asked.
“I should,” Palla apologized. “If I can get there by noon then I can catch lunch and sign up for overtime in the afternoon and evening, they’ll have something for me to do even if I didn’t get my daily wages for the morning shift…” She got to her feet as she talked, running through her mental checklist. She’d eaten, dressed, saddled Bluebell, cleaned her musket, done some chores… was she still forgetting something?
Est’s face fell. “I was hoping we could have lunch together,” she said. Palla felt her heart sink.
“Can’t be helped, I suppose,” Catria admitted, standing and dusting the grass off her skirt. “Come on, Est. I’ll make us a good lunch.”
Est frowned, but it was the best she was going to get— disappointing, but ultimately unsurprising. So they brought Palla back to the house and Palla buttoned up her coat again, straightening it in the mirror and tying her hair into place. She was gone, flying towards the city on Bluebell’s back, before Catria could hurry out and say goodbye.