34th of Arrestre

Tea in hand, I found a seat near the window of the mess tent that overlooked the road through camp, settling in to watch the goings on as I waited for NaVarre.

I didn't have to wait long for something to happen, and it started out well enough.

Arramy came out of the medical tent and started up the road toward the barracks.

He was coming toward the mess tent, and a jolt of warmth unfurled in my middle, my heartbeat doing a little tattoo of anticipation. Maybe, if NaVarre was late, Arramy and I could talk, finally —

NaVarre appeared, then, stepping out of the shade beside the command tent, coming out to meet Arramy in the middle of the road. There was a brief exchange that looked polite enough, but then NaVarre said something more, his expression intense as he continued talking.

At first Arramy frowned. Shook his head in response to whatever NaVarre was saying.

NaVarre moved with Arramy as though determined to cut him off, maintaining eye contact and staying nose to nose when Arramy shifted to the side and tried to step around him.

Clearly frustrated, Arramy faced off with NaVarre. Then something NaVarre said made him go still for several seconds. Frozen. Listening. After a moment Arramy's jaw tensed and he looked away. He remained like that as NaVarre kept talking, earnestly now. Pleading.

I squinted and sat forward, something about the whole exchange making my stomach sink as I watched Arramy nod reluctantly, lift a hand to the back of his neck and turn away from NaVarre – away from me. He didn't know I was there, didn't know I could see as he bowed his head and started moving. One step. Two. Then he was striding off in the direction of his tent.

NaVarre watched him go for a moment, then turned and came crutching toward the mess tent.

I raised an eyebrow as he pushed through the door and looked around, searching until he found me.

He lifted his head in greeting and hobbled down the main aisle between the long tables, slowing when he reached the seat across from me.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"Oh, you saw that?" NaVarre asked, the tiniest hint of foreboding glimmering in his eyes before he shook his head, his smile flashing. "Nothing important. What's lunch today?"

I flicked a dubious glance over his face. "Soup. Bread. It didn't look like nothing. What's going on?"

With a shrug, NaVarre wheeled around and got himself a tray at the rack near the food counter, then helped himself to some of the vegetable stew in the heated tureen and a roll from the breadbasket.

I waited until he was sitting in front of me. Then I leaned over the table. "What happened?" I demanded.

"Nothing," he said again, glancing out the window as if looking for something.

"Liar," I snapped.

He jerked back around to face me if I had just slapped him. "I'm not lying, I only... I wanted to talk to you alone. We have so much to discuss about the trip, and I —"

"What did Arramy say?"

He blinked. "When?"

I was about ready to reach across and give him a clobber upside the head. "Just now," I said, giving him a flat glare. "When you were talking to him. Why are you acting so strange?"

NaVarre smiled. "Who said it's an act— "

"Lexan."

He shrugged again, flippant, but I knew him too well not to hear the note of trepidation in his voice even though he kept his words indifferent. "Arramy said he's moving on."

My eyes widened. "What is that supposed to mean? " I managed, my voice tight. "Moving on... You mean he's leaving?"

NaVarre seemed to be very interested in his stew. "I believe so. He said he had a boat to catch."

"A boat..." I didn't wait for anything more. I shot up out of my seat, lunch forgotten. "This must be a mistake. He wouldn't just leave without — "

NaVarre took hold of my right arm as I moved past him, bringing me up short. "He said he didn't want to run into you before he left. He wanted a clean break —"

I tugged hard, trying to free myself, but NaVarre was turning me. Pulling me. Keeping me from running out of the mess tent. "Let me go, Lexan!"

NaVarre put his head down and hung on. "It's for the best, Bren, I'm sorry!"

I wrenched back around, straining my arm as NaVarre kept his grip on my wrist, but I was still able to see Arramy come out of his tent, a kit bag over his shoulder.

It was like watching a sylvo reel unfold in slow-motion. I yanked away from NaVarre and staggered for the door to the mess tent, pushed out into the air, but the mess tent was at one end of the clearing, and the parking yard was at the other, with the entire Illyrian camp between them. I was too far away, and my raspy, breathless, "Arramy! Arramy, wait," fell pathetically short. He never slowed, never turned back, that long stride eating up the ground, carrying him toward the parking yard.

I broke into a run, pelting down the mess tent pathway, forcing my aching bones to carry me after him, only to watch a two-man go roaring out of that far-away parking yard, kicking up a plume of dust as it left the clearing and tore off down the mountain road with Arramy in the driver's compartment.

For several seconds I kept running, pushing harder, harder, but it was hopeless. There was no catching him. Gasping, I came to a lurching halt there in the gravel of the pathway, my heart cracking to pieces as that cloud of dust dissipated and the sound of the horseless faded into the distance.

Disbelief boiled through me. That moment – those brief seconds when Arramy stopped to listen to NaVarre, the look on his face, the defeat in the way he stood – it kept running through my head in a vicious circle.

"I'm so sorry, Bren," NaVarre said quietly. He was standing next to me, leaning on his crutches. "I am. I really am. I know how important he was to you... But he was always going to leave, he said, as soon as everything was done. He said there's nothing more for him here."

I stared at the cleft in the trees where the road disappeared. NaVarre sounded so matter of fact, as if I would be a fool to believe anyone but him. Maybe that was true. But I had learned to trust my instincts, and they were screaming that something else was going on.

As I stood there in the middle of the pathway, it suddenly became brutally, glaringly obvious, bits and pieces snapping into place. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to think that of him, not after everything he had been through, but how had he put it? Arramy was his 'great, shining replacement?' And I had said I didn't want to go to Arritagne.

I shrugged away from NaVarre as he offered a hand, then I whipped around and headed for Arramy's tent. Anger was beginning to simmer in the pit of my stomach. This was all wrong. Arramy wouldn't just leave like that. I refused to accept it. Not unless I heard it from Arramy himself.

"Where are you going?" NaVarre asked, crutching along after me.

I didn't answer. If I acknowledged him, I was going to do something I would regret, so I kept marching, making him rush to keep up all the way to the little wooden front porch of Arramy's tent. I didn't even say anything to Farrin, the guard. I pushed right on in and went straight to Arramy's military chest.

He had emptied it. Panic slithered cold and clammy through my middle as I stared at the bare wooden bottom of the chest. Bare, save for a grey thick-press box with metal-tipped corners, the sort used when personal effects were returned to the family member of a dead soldier.

On top of the box was a fold of paper.

I picked up the paper, flipping it open with shaking fingers.

A few lines of neat, blocky Altyran handwriting:

Brenorra,
I liberated this from the High General's safe, and am returning it to you. It has always been yours. It will always be yours.
Rathe.

The word 'always' was underlined both times.

I glanced at what the paper had been sitting on, and my knees nearly buckled.

A strange, involuntary sound rose from my throat as I reached down, the familiar curve of metal pressing into my palm as my fingers closed around Arramy's pendant.

"I told him to say a proper goodbye, but... He just couldn't bring himself to do it," NaVarre said from the doorway. He was standing there, watching me. "He was never good enough for you, Bren. I think he knew it — Oh, now... Come on, Bren, what are you doing? This isn't —"

"I don't know what you said out there, but you had better hope I catch up with him," I hissed, not even bothering to look in NaVarre's direction as I began shoving my few belongings into a small dispatch bag I took from Arramy's desk. "Because if I don't, I'm never talking to you again."

"But...We need your testimony," NaVarre said, his brows lowering. "You have to go to Arritagne with me. We must see this through, Bren, see the Coventry finished for good."

"You finish it," I snapped, finally turning a glare on him. "Arramy wouldn't leave like this, and you know it. He would never leave Kenoa, even if I'm not..." enough to hold him. I couldn't make myself end that sentence and continued instead with: "So either you are lying about why he's leaving, or you're lying about him not coming back. Either way, you're lying to me, Lexan, and I swear, if you try to stop me again, you can forget about your precious testimony!"

He was staring at me, those pretty eyes round, looking like I was ripping him apart. "You can't mean that. You wouldn't do that," he whispered. His teeth flashed in a smile, but it wavered, and he nodded encouragingly, as if trying to convince me he was right. "You've fought so hard! You can't give up now, we've only just begun."

"You have never asked what I wanted, Lexan," I said bluntly. "Not once." He hadn't before, either... before he was taken by the Coventry and locked in a cell for two years. I took a breath, my anger fading almost as quickly as it had risen. "I appreciate what you've done for me, for all of us." I stared at this man, seeing both the hero who had fought when no one else would, and a friend struggling to understand how he fit into this new life of freedom. "You are not replaceable, Lexan. I am in awe of how strong you are. You never let them break you, no matter what they did to you. But... you can't just give a whistle and take over my life again. You don't get to decide where I go, or what I want, or what's best for me. And you certainly don't get to manipulate me into going to Arritagne by removing the competition."

I slipped the pendant on and tucked it beneath the neckline of my shirt, then gathered up the box of personal effects. The box had my name on the 'To' line, but I didn't feel like opening it with NaVarre standing there. On a last thought, I scooped all the nurse's various bottles and jars and tins of tinctures, liniments and salves into my bag, and then I was done. Once again, all my things fit inside a single satchel.

"So... you're leaving. You're going after... after Arramy, then," NaVarre said, his voice strained.

I slung the satchel from my shoulder and faced him. "Yes."

"And I really can't convince you to go with me instead," he whispered.

Well, certainly not anymore. Firming my chin, I shook my head. "No."

"Not even if I apologize and beg your forgiveness?" He cracked a lack-luster excuse for a smile that didn't reach his eyes at all.

I kept shaking my head and moved past him through the doorway.

I was only a few steps away when he came hurrying after me. "So... Could you give a written testimony, then? Provided I help you find Arramy."

"Maybe," I said slowly, glancing at him askance. "Oh, fine," I muttered, relenting under the force of that bright, cheeky grin on his face.

"Excellent," NaVarre crowed. "And I mean, really, he can't have gotten that far in only twenty minutes. I'm sure we'll catch up with him."

~~~

But apparently, twenty minutes was all the lead time Arramy needed.

NaVarre did prove helpful. He drove me to the Coventry docks – the same docks the Coventry had unloaded the newly arrived slaves on, fresh out of the cargo bins. In the daylight, it seemed smaller and dirtier than I remembered.

Arramy had been there. The horseless he had driven was in the parking yard. But he was already gone, hitching a ride on an Illyrian navy boat taking refugees down to Nim Koruguithu. It had been all ready to leave when he arrived. He simply walked on board and... that was it. That was how close I came to catching him. I could still see the boat, in fact, rounding the southern end of the bay.

There wasn't another boat due to depart that day, but NaVarre pulled several strings and got me to NimKoruguithu as fast as the Corralynne would take us.

That was where the trail went cold. It was as if Arramy truly had become a ghost. Every clue I found turned into a dead end. He stayed in an inn, but no one could tell me where he went after that. He seemed to have bought a ticket for a berth on a passenger ship to Edon, but never boarded. He may have gone to a pub, but the barkeeper didn't remember much more than a tall light-haired man at the end of the bar who paid his tab in Illyrian coin.

Weeks of searching turned into one month, then two. I spent so much time in the Inter-ocean Agency going through incoming and outgoing records that the director offered me a job. NaVarre may have had a hand in that, as well, but I didn't care. I stayed. I took the job, and I kept looking. I went to every inn. I showed Arramy's sylvograph to countless people. Three months in, I found a boy who had seen him at a job market, and that kept me going for nearly another month, running on the dwindling hope that at some point, he, or someone who had seen him, would come back to Town.

Meanwhile, as promised, I wrote my testimony for NaVarre, detailing everything from the very beginning.

The box Arramy had left for me held several letters he had written. Letters that tore me apart to read, but I included them anyway in the hopes that they would help exonerate him.

Three months in, Doc and Cress Starling came down to NimK to set up a reunification effort for the refugees, and I began working with them in a joint program with the Inter-Ocean Agency.

It was challenging work, and it became a welcome distraction from my constant failure to find the only person I wanted to find.  

~~~