The next house bore no residents. It was charred ruins fallen flat onto the ground. Scraps of belongings could still be seen through the blackened wood. These were the saddest buildings, to Oliver – those without living men to see them tidied, before the builders were brought in to erect them once more.
Nila kneeled to pick up a charred bit of cloth from among the wood. She pulled, and with it, there came a cloth doll, attached by a blackened thread.
"A little girl…" she said to herself.
She went no further than that. Oliver could see what she was thinking. He attempted words of comfort, even knowing that he was never any good at them.
"There is no guarantee that she perished," Oliver said. "She might have found shelter with other family members, and not thought to check the ruins for what she had lost."
"Perhaps," Nila said, allowing the doll to slip down from her fingers. She made it seem as if she didn't care. But Oliver wondered if it was not just that his attempts at comfort made her all the more uneasy.
"How long do you suppose it will be before this is all back to normal, Ser Patrick?" She asked, as they walked to inspect the next property. She made a marking in her wooden notebook, indicating the damages of each one.
'There it is again,' Oliver thought. 'She insists on calling me Ser Patrick, even when we are alone.'
"Another month, perhaps," Oliver said.
"And where do you suppose you shall be in another month, Ser Patrick?" Nila asked. Oliver wasn't sure if he imagined the malice behind the question.
"Here, I would imagine, Lady Felder," Oliver said. The more polite she became, the more pressed he felt to be polite in return.
"You do not have any plans for future battles, Ser?" Nila asked. "Do you not have any orders that you need to carry out?"
"Not that I am aware of, my Lady," Oliver said.
"You must rue that fact," Nila said. "What will you do with yourself, Ser, without a battlefield to aim towards? Is that not your intent – to see your blade improved?"
"I wonder," Oliver replied. "I thought I might try my hand at governing properly, my Lady. I would ask for your support in that, and that of Greeves. There is much that you two have been taking on in my place, whilst I have been at the Academy. I would learn all that I have missed out on learning before.
Perhaps it will offer you the freedoms you desire, so that you can spend more time focusing on that which you truly love."
"Do you think me to be restricted in freedoms, Ser?" Nila said. Oliver didn't understand why her tone had turned so suddenly icy. S~eaʀᴄh the NovelZone.fun* website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.
"Are you not, my Lady?"
"Do you not think these responsibilities were freely accepted, no matter how weighty they might have grown to be?" Nila said. "Do you think I am so foolish as to say yes, merely because the moment forces it on me?"
"When I charged you with the defence of Solgrim, I must admit that I was forceful, Lady Felder," Oliver said. "I regret that."
Nila narrowed her eyes at him. Oliver was sure then that he'd made a mistake. Somehow he'd blundered twice in quick succession, and the Battle board was getting away from him.
"Do you think that I can not withstand a degree of forcefulness, Ser?" Nila said. "Perhaps you thought that I did not know you well enough, to know that your heart was in the right place when you asked it of me?"
"I do not know what you can withstand, my Lady," Oliver said, feeling his frustration rising. "Apparently not my conversation."
"Conversation, Ser? Is that what you call it?" Nila said, turning to face him, equally as fierce. "Is it conversation when you do not say what you are truly thinking?"
"Nor do you, Lady Felder," Oliver said, standing his ground as he snarled back.
Nila gave an angry snort in reply, and turned away from him. They visited the next wreckage in silence, and Nila made another mark on her paper, angrier and deeper than the last.
The silence was worse, for the silence gave Oliver time to brood, and imagine what might be wrong with her. She'd agreed to this whole thing, hadn't she? Surely it had no right to be going so poorly…
Oliver wondered if this was not what happened when one breached the laws of progress. He had been too forceful in his approach, and now he might have crushed the last of the closeness that they held between them. He had been away on campaign for three, nearly four months.
It wasn't nearly as long as he thought it would be, but it wasn't as if he'd carefully built up their relationship to a courting point bit by bit.
He'd felt bold then, and it had felt right, and he'd even declared that morning that he did not regret it – but this wasn't even close to how it ought to have been, even at its worst. No, the worst should have been outright rejection. Oliver had not wanted to let her away. She had protected what was most important to him, and she had kept herself safe in the process.
Why didn't see the importance of her own achievement? She was a shield he could rely on, and one that he wouldn't ever wish to let away.
"But perhaps that is not what love is," Claudia said gently. "Perhaps love is not something that is simply useful."
"Ah, but that little fox is indeed useful," Ingolsol purred. It was the Dark God's motivations, Oliver thought, that had likely propelled him towards the course of action in the first place. He knew a degree more of Ingolsol now. The God of Power was his true name. What he wanted, he took… But perhaps Nila wasn't something that could be taken.