Litany of Winter

When Severin woke again, he thought someone had moved the bed. A voice came from his left, close enough to belong beside him. He turned his eye toward it and found an empty wall.

”Other way,” the surgeon said.

Severin turned his head farther and found the man standing on the right side of the cot with a basin tucked against one hip. For a few seconds he only stared.

The surgeon set the basin down. ”You’ll get used to it.”

Severin lifted a hand toward the bandage over his left eye. The cloth was stiff at the edges. Dried blood had pulled one corner tight against his cheek.

”Don’t touch it.”

”Was just trying to check if it’s still there.”

”It is. Leave it alone.”

”I will, I will. Not like it’s doing me much good.”

The surgeon did not smile. He pulled a stool closer and began unwinding the bandage.

Severin kept still while damp cloth touched his brow, then the skin beneath his eye. The work was careful and irritatingly ordinary, all damp linen and the faint scrape of a metal tray. The surgeon asked him to look forward, then right, then down.

Nothing came from the left. The eye itself did not hurt as badly as it had on the stone. It felt swollen and deep, as though something behind it had been bruised. When the surgeon held two fingers near the left side of Severin’s face, there was no shadow or movement. Nothing registered there at all.

”How’s the pain?” the surgeon asked.

”Manageable, I guess.”

”Good.”

Severin frowned. ”What do you mean, good?”

The surgeon glanced at him. ”Good that it’s manageable.”

”Damn. You medical people have horrible manners.”

”We’re here to keep you alive, not be nice to you.”

Fresh padding covered the marked eye. The surgeon wound clean cloth around Severin’s head and tied it firmly enough that Severin could feel the knot when he swallowed.

Across the room, Rafael sat propped against the wall with a blanket over his legs. His right eye was covered. His marked hand rested palm-down on the blanket, the fingers flexing once every few breaths.

Madeleine occupied the cot beyond him with a dressing over her right eye. Her left remained open, fixed on the ceiling.

Three cots were occupied. The rest had already been cleared.

Severin sat up too quickly and the room tilted. He caught the edge of the cot and waited for it to settle. Rafael watched him.

He looked back at Rafael. ”Don’t say it.”

”I wasn’t going to.”

”You were thinking it.”

One corner of Rafael’s mouth twitched.

Madeleine turned her head toward them. ”Both of you are just as awful as before the pact.”

”That’s good,” Severin said. ”Would’ve been a shame if it changed us.”

Madeleine laughed under her breath.

❈ ❈ ❈

They left Gravewatch under a low white sky.

Severin remembered almost none of the road back. Rafael slept with his head against the panel while Madeleine held Anna’s flask between both hands. The carriage pitched beneath them for what felt like hours.

By the time they reached the Order grounds, he was already tired of relearning where half the world had gone.

The Initiate corridor looked wrong before Severin understood why. Every door stood open.

Paul’s room had been stripped first, with the gray blanket and his spare clothes already gone. A wooden box sat on the floor with WEBER written across a paper tag tied through the handle.

Johann’s watch rested inside another box farther down. The chain had been coiled beside it rather than stuffed beneath the folded shirt. His sealed envelope lay on top.

Anna’s bed was bare. Her box held the addressed letter from her packet and the few personal things she had listed as hers. The flask was not among them.

Severin looked back. Madeleine stood several paces behind him with the flask tucked through her belt.

Andreas’s room was already almost empty, and Thomas’s things had been arranged with the same care. Martin’s room took Severin longest.

Two gray shirts lay folded in the box, one darker than the other. Martin’s issued coat was gone with the rest of the Order clothing.

Severin stood in the doorway and remembered the cuff beneath his hand at Gravewatch, how many times he had straightened it while Martin was below. There was nothing left to straighten now. He left without touching the box.

The Order did not leave the corridor to become a shrine. Clerks moved through it with lists. Issued items were separated from personal effects, while names were checked against the packets they had filled out before Gravewatch. Sealed letters stayed closed as recipient instructions were copied into a ledger. One box was carried away, then another.

What they had written down before Gravewatch was being carried out. Severin knew why it had to be done. The corridor still felt... empty.

A clerk waiting near the stair looked down at his paper.

”Pilgrim Hale?”

Severin stopped. He had not expected the word to sound different when it meant him.

”Yes.”

”You’ve been called to the armory.”

Three sets of black clothing waited on separate counters.

Nobody waited beside the counters to make a speech, and the Order seemed to consider surviving Gravewatch sufficient.

A quartermaster checked Severin’s name and measurements before pushing the first stack toward him. On the counter, a black shirt and trousers lay beneath a dark coat.

The black felt unfamiliar after months in gray. Severin ran his thumb along the coat sleeve once before catching himself doing it.

”Is something wrong?” the quartermaster asked.

”No.”

”Then try it on, please.”

Severin changed. Buttoning the coat with one eye took no special skill. Finding the last button when he glanced down did. His hand went to the wrong place before he found the button and fastened it. The coat fit.

He looked at himself in the narrow mirror fixed to the wall. The bandage around his left eye ruined any possibility of looking impressive. The black helped. Severin smiled anyway.

The quartermaster returned with two belts and laid them on the counter. Then came the steel.

By every standard Severin knew, the sword was plain. Its dark grip and simple guard matched the serviceable scabbard. There was nothing on it that might persuade a fool to mistake ornament for quality.

He picked it up and tested the weight. It was a long way from the folding knife he had carried through Blackhaven and tried to stick Hans with.

”Draw it first,” the quartermaster said. ”See how it feels in your hand.” ℴℴ𝘮

Severin drew several inches of steel and tested the balance before sliding it home.

A dagger followed, shorter and heavier through the grip than the kitchen knives he had grown up using. Its sheath sat opposite the sword when he fastened the belts.

He shifted his hips once and felt both weapons move with him. For months, somebody had told him where to stand, how to fight, when to sleep, and why he still wasn’t ready for real work.

Now there was a real sword at his side, and he liked that. He did not try to make himself ashamed of it.

”I’ll need you to sign here, please.”

The quartermaster turned the ledger toward him. Severin signed beside his name and handed it back for the man to check.

”Thank you, Pilgrim Hale. You’re all set.”

There it was again: Pilgrim. Severin left the armory in black.

Rafael emerged a few minutes later in black, his right hand gloved over the mark. Madeleine followed in black. Anna’s flask was tucked through her belt, and her right eye remained covered.

For a moment, the three of them stood in the corridor where nine gray Initiates had once complained about lessons and stolen time from sleep. Nobody suggested what came next. Eventually, they went looking for food.

The refectory was between meals and nearly empty. They took the same long table they had used before Gravewatch without discussing it.

Severin sat in his old place while Rafael and Madeleine took theirs. Only then did he see what they had done.

Martin’s chair remained on Severin’s left, between him and Rafael. To see it properly, Severin had to turn his whole head.

Thomas’s chair stood empty on his right before Madeleine. Across the table, four more places remained empty, and nobody moved any of the chairs.

A kitchen worker brought them bowls of broth with bread and cold meat, then walked away.

Madeleine set Anna’s flask beside her bowl.

Rafael tore bread in half. He started to pass one piece toward Martin, then stopped with his hand above the table. He placed it beside his own bowl instead.

Severin looked down at the broth, and they ate.

The silence was not complete. Spoons touched bowls while boots crossed the far end of the room. Somewhere beyond the kitchen door, somebody dropped a pan and swore.

Around them, the Order continued while Madeleine pushed the bread toward Severin across Thomas’s empty place.

He took it. ”Thanks.”

She nodded. That was all.

By the time Severin finished eating, his left eye had become a dull pressure beneath the bandage. The sword at his hip kept touching the bench whenever he shifted.

Severin misjudged the distance to his cup once before correcting his reach. Rafael noticed and, to his credit, kept eating.

He pointed the bread at him anyway. Madeleine smiled into her bowl, and he almost laughed.

Then he saw Martin’s empty chair again and finished the bread.

Neumann found them as the bowls were being cleared. His gaze moved over the three black coats, the fresh bandages, Rafael’s gloved hand, Anna’s flask, and finally Severin.

”Good to see you’re upright.”

”Mostly,” Severin said.

”I need the three of you in the training hall tomorrow at first bell.”

Rafael straightened slightly as Neumann continued.

”Before we’re finished with your training, we need to find out what your gifts actually do.”