Queen's Shadow || Kingdom at the End of the World - Book II

[11] Queen and Hearth

Victor Fair made his way down a beaten path he had come to know by heart. The Korral barn was a stark shadow against the horizon, the sky above it steel gray.

The world grew darker as winter advanced. Victor thought of the supplies they would need if they were to last through three months of snow in a place as remote as Elsendorf, and felt ice in his gut. Sofia and Malik were children. They depended on Victor in a way no soul ever had, despite their inner strength and hard-earned maturity. Victor could not fail them.

He could not dig any more graves.

Victor shook his morose musings away. He sped his steps, mind firmly on the present and its needs. The barn had to be stocked with firewood. Food and other perishable necessities would be stored in the house proper, where they would be protected against passing wildlife and the elements. Victor had to readjust his estimate of what constituted appropriate in terms of supplies several times. Civilians were not soldiers. Children, as Victor learned from conversations with village parents that left the latter wide-eyed with outrage at the soldier's ignorance, required an even greater allowances of food, sleep, and other basic comforts.

Victor rolled his shoulders back. The muscles there protested, sore from hours of labor. The village was preparing for the approaching season: Roofs were being patched, walls reinforced, doors and windows insulated against the gales of frost-bitten wind that swept over the land. Victor traded his strength for supplies he could not otherwise secure, not being a farmer or a merchant or, indeed, anyone at all where Elsendorf was concerned.

The villagers called him Sam. They did not question Victor's presence or his custody of Sofia and Malik. Sometimes, they did not even seem to see him. Victor would call out a greeting and watch eyes refocus and bodies realign to include him in their orbit of surveillance. If he said nothing, people looked past him as if through so much air. The soldier suspected this to be a parting gift from Elsendorf's late Guardian. He was glad of the protection against curious eyes and busy mouths. Yet, a part of him – the part that was still waiting for the Captain and Lightning to return – felt hollow.

Something flickered into being at Victor's periphery. Victor did not react outwardly. Elsendorf sprawled to his right. On his left lay barren fields. A shadow smudged in and out of view within them, sometimes close, sometimes far away. The flock of crows roaming among hard clumps of dirt in search of stray seeds scattered, shrieking madly.

Victor kept walking. He had hardly known Henry when the sprite had played at being human. Victor had no intention of approaching the boy in his current state.

The front door parted open. Gold eyes glistened within the dark foyer of the Korral household, narrowed in suspicion. Victor raised the basket he was holding. Malik's nostrils flared briefly.

"Meat," Victor confirmed.

The door opened wide. Malik thrust his arms out, ostensibly for the basket. Victor handed it over with exaggerated care.

"There are eggs inside," the soldier warned.

Malik grunted in affirmation. He grabbed the basket and dashed back inside, feet pounding against the floor. Victor heard the door to the kitchen open and close. Malik rarely strayed far from Sofia's side, and as a result had not set a foot outside their door since they had taken residence in the old Korral home. More troubling, the boy appeared in constant state of alert. His eyes remained half-lidded even in sleep, body ready to lunge into wakefulness at any moment. Victor had seen soldiers affected by paranoid watchfulness in the wake of particularly bloody missions. It was not a healthy coping mechanism, or one that could be maintained in the long run. Malik would run his body into the ground with stress and lack of proper rest long before he worked through his trauma.