Chapter Text
“The Steward contracted Capital herbalists as poison-mongers.”
Miquella’s splinter didn’t so much as brush against his consciousness.
“Lord Morgott has commissioned the creation of poisons with Capital funds.”
“Indeed.”
Oleg flinched. When he heard the Steward’s voice, he felt as though he’d been stabbed from behind. And with his back to his liege, Oleg could perfectly picture the bristling form of Margit.
He turned and beheld instead the shape of the golden Demigod.
“Thou’rt testing it,” he observed. His eye was a gilt dagger in a bruised setting. Sleepless and severe. “Should it be thy desire to reveal to the Council mine intent with the Perfumer’s Guild, rest assured that they are already aware.”
Of course, Oleg was mortified. “That isn’t my aim,” he insisted, low and sincere. “But the spell is curious. I want to know its limitations-”
Morgott crossed the room in three brisk strides. Oleg choked on his excuses as the Steward caught his knight’s jaw in an unrelenting grip. Yet there was only exhaustion in his bearing. Wary rather than furious.
“For thee I would remedy thy curiosity should the temptation prove too much. Thy tongue is a privilege, Knight. Thou dost not require it to wield thy swords.”
Oleg considered how fragile he was in a Demigod’s hands. He was practically half the Steward’s size. The care with which he was restrained belied a well-practiced gentleness. Morgott knew he could break him and was taking great pains not to. It was just as well. The deep rumble of his growled warning could have melted all the ice from the Mountaintops. It required all of the knight’s focus not to let his knees go to jelly.
“Apologies, my Lord,” he managed.
This was the closest Morgott had ever been to him since their carriage ride through the city. The dull blonde of his hair was streaked with silver. It flashed in his beard- which was now coarse and trimmed short. His hair was shorn at the shoulders- unusual for one of noble blood. And without a braid to keep it tied back, it framed his stately, permanent scowl. His eye blazed in dark sclera. It was Grace undiluted, Oleg thought, because he had never seen another person with such an intensely gilt iris. There were filaments of ember and xanthous sparks. It was the Omen’s eye set into a face too mundane to suit it.
“Neither the splinter nor I are to be tried,” Morgott hissed.
Oleg was released, and he thawed from the shock of the Lord’s proximity. His cheek tingled where his fingers had dug in. He resisted the searing urge to touch the spot. Like a trembling, stricken child or an overcome maiden.
It could only be natural to find a Demigod beautiful. Wouldn’t it be stranger to think the Queen’s son ugly?
“Consider myself thoroughly chastised,” he blurted. “It will not happen again.”
The Lord of Leyndell did not care for that answer, but it did not anger him nearly as much as it should have. Oleg was grateful he didn’t earn another threat for the infraction. He could only fathom that most people Morgott snarled at shivered out of their own skins. Yet here he stood, too stupid to be properly intimidated. He felt his blush worsen, and that, of all things, quelled Morgott.
“Break thy fast and don thine armor, Knight. Then join me in the library.”
—————————————————————
“Hail, Banished Knight!”
Oleg recognized not the voice, but he heeded it regardless. Morgott was the only being who was owed obeisance, but in a city of holy splendor, Oleg was a man of abysmal social standing. To ingratiate himself with Leyndell’s court, he needed to occupy his appropriate strata.
He had been waylaid in a terraced garden in the higher levels of the palace. In the late summer morning, the air was fragrant and abuzz with pollinating insects. A large marble fountain gurgled amidst the flowerbeds and topiaries. A stone lion roared into the muzzle of his inert adversary: a rearing Ancient Dragon. A stylized gold-wrought rendition of the Bolt of Gransax was speared between the two foes into a basin of water. Gransax itself sagged lifelessly only a few dozen meters away. Beneath the fountain dragon’s wings, there was a bench upon which a figure sat. Dressed in robes that boasted immense wealth by their vibrant colors and embellishments.
“Come hither,” the man ordered. Imperious and urgent.
Oleg did as he was told, became an armored automaton. He offered a shallow salute once he crossed into the dragon’s shadow. The man snarled.
“I am no mere noble, Fool! A knight ought to kneel before a Lord.”
Queen Marika was eternal. Thus, her children were never meant to be heirs to anything. The Goddess begat the centerpieces to legends innumerable. The Golden Lineage, The Carian Ascendants, and the Prodigal Twins. All necessary- each a vital organ of the Greater Will’s empire.
But then Godwyn had fallen in love and made a farce of the bloodline. He made his mother a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great great grandmother- each generation less resplendent than the last.
Oleg had grown up with the stories. The tales of Godwyn the Golden’s children had always been colored with dull rose. They had been planted into his consciousness with morals of love and abundance. But two generations later, the wonder had been sapped from the act of divine procreation. Trees were long lived. The Golden Lineage was whispered to be diluted. It was just as well, then, that more than half of those windswept, twisted branches had had the decency to vanish. To Farum Azula, it was said. A notion that had always fascinated Oleg, considering many banished knights ended up at those crumbling fringes themselves. As it stood, a handful of descendants littered the Lands Between. There were two in the Weeping Peninsula currently lunging for one another’s throat. Perhaps a frail daughter with a decent estate in Caelid. A more stalwart son carving out a home in the barren Mountaintops. Oleg was most familiar with Godefroy, ruler of Stormveil, and his decrepit son. Godrick. Ward of Leyndell.
Indeed, the tapering whimper of Godwyn’s line was all the more tragic by a particular consideration. Did those remaining wish they could follow their kin into timeless obscurity? The question bubbled in Oleg’s mind as he beheld the youngest of Marika’s line. He had pale spiders for hands- which clutched the handle of a walking stick with the will and temerity of a swordsman- and lank, straw hair already shot through with gray. At one hundred and fifty years old, he looked rather like an ancestor of Godfrey’s rather than the last of his descendants. Seated, he was shorter than Oleg by half a head. Yet he glared up at the knight with milky eyes abundant in Grace. He remained incorrigibly hardened when he bent to cough into a handkerchief. After his narrow shoulders ceased quaking with his lungs, he smiled wryly. His teeth were stained pink.
He was ethereally handsome, as all Demigods should be. Delicate as Altus blooms. Oleg regretted instantly believing Godrick decrepit. Anyone that would think this man wretched had never seen him in the flesh.
“Aye, Ser. A Demigod doth address thee. Hath my father grown so lax with ye discipline? Kneel!”
Oleg sank to the obligatory knee.
“Thou hailest from Stormveil, aye?”
“Aye, Lord.”
It was the fib that Lord Morgott had been spreading: that he had gone to Stormveil to select a guard on Lord Godrick’s recommendation. Of course, Morgott hadn’t left the Plateau during his journey. He hadn’t taken an escort. He had instead orchestrated the murder of the Head Perfumer.
The frailty of the alibi was acutely felt in Oleg’s clenched fist. The silver helm could only obscure so much as Godrick stared down his hooked nose at him.
“How fares the castle’s Lord?”
Stormveil was awash with banished knights. Soldiers clad in green and orange were not lacking in the south’s famed castle. But the reclusive Demigod enlisted scores of the Oathless Order. The land there, it was said, inhabited the storm and made it free. The castle, it was said, nurtured dark myths. If Godwyn was lionized in the lore of Oleg’s youth, then Lord Godefroy was made into a shrouded villain.
He was a savvy craven that made a plaything of his meager divinity. Godefroy kept monsters in the cavernous chasms beneath Stormveil’s foundations. Godefroy preferred banished knights because they could be discarded deviously without fuss. Oleg had heard preposterous rumors from his old friends. That horns had somehow been attached to a lion’s crown. That knights vanished all the time, their screams never ringing long in the night. Fanciful ghost stories, Oleg believed. Godefroy was easy to pick on because he was a recluse- easy to resent because he lacked in comparison to his grandsire.
Still, Lord Godrick’s expectant, honeyed gaze made frigid Oleg’s spine. His mind was numbed by its chill, and he found weaving a suitable lie to be a gargantuan task. He had no honesty to offer, so he had to consider what Lord Godrick desired to hear.
“I fear I did not know him well.” Oleg began with as wholesome a truth as he could muster. “He is well-occupied but hale. A more industrious Lord-”
Godrick held up his hand. Rings braced twiggy fingers. Blue veins webbed like cracks in porcelain down his palm and wrist.
“I do not beg for empty praise, Knight,” he scoffed. Oleg sweat in his armor. “I receive little correspondence that hath not been read and reshaped firstly by the fair Council. Though they grit their teeth and name me amongst their number, they scrounge more use from mine ignorance than my wisdom. I am allowed only whispers of what transpires southward. So, I ask thee twice: how fares the Lord of Stormveil?”
“I-” Oleg gathered himself. “All is well in Limgrave.”
Lord Godrick leaned back. The slackening of his scrutiny was a tangible weight off of Oleg’s back. Despite the glovewort sheen to his hair and complexion, there was a clinging shade of youth in Godrick’s profile.
“I blame thee not for accepting Lord Morgott’s offer to abandon Stormveil. I left Godefroy to make Leyndell my home. ‘Twas an honor to grow in the halls of my forebears. ‘Twas an honor to have known Godwyn before…”
His defensive pride was eroded by a passing breeze. The golden tassels that hung from the hem of his shawl stirred as banners. Melancholy touched him gently at the shoulders.
“I am… sorry, My Lord,” Oleg offered throatily. Godwyn’s demise always sparked in him a thrill of dread. Like a black storm gathering on the sea when the shore was far behind him. It was as though he’d woken up one day to find a hole punched out of the sky where the moon had once been. The death of a Demigod had not directly affected Oleg’s life- not really. It was a calamity that dwelled in his subconscious and reminded him that the world was not quite right- that it was wounded. But to the people of Leyndell, to the wizened man before him shining with a faint divinity, Godwyn had been family.
“Ah, Godwyn. Ancestor mine, thy loss was all of ours,” Godrick sighed. “My home hath become a cage. The people murmur that my back should have borne the black knives.” Despite everything, he did not sound entirely resentful. “How fortunate for the Capital, that Lord Morgott was called from Godfrey’s side. He was tarnished and he was gilt again. Bah, trinkets we both be for the true Lord. Vessels for his precious Runes.”
He croaked his disdain. But if Oleg was meant to reply, he was not allowed the chance. Godrick marched forth, plowing over his last musing as if to conceal it in churning soil.
“I thank thee, Knight, for thine indulgence. I am heartened to see a piece of that place after so long apart from it.”
Kneeling still, Oleg was at a loss. The servant's heart in him demanded he find a way to comfort the Lord. But he was utterly unequipped to soothe the aches of godly seedlings. Somehow, with somber and startling sincerity, he said, “I regret I could not give you more.”
“‘Tis more than mine uncle granted me, Knight. Days he festered in Stormveil and will speak to me naught about it,” Godrick growled, then flicked his wrist. “As thou wert, Knight.”
Oleg stood at the dismissal. He bowed, stepping expertly through the motions of courtesy while his mind reeled. In scant minutes he had met a Demigod, lied to him, and grieved with him. Before he retreated, Godrick ensnared Oleg’s stare.
“Beware, Knight. Mine Uncle is a hard Lord. Tempered in exile, he was, as thou wert. He will indulge thee none. Serve him well, Banished Knight. Thou’rt pledged to Great Godfrey’s son.”
—————————————————————
Oleg was not scolded for his tardiness. In fact, he was barely acknowledged. Morgott’s fingers rose from the table to gesture inscrutably, but his eye was fixated upon the page before him. Ancient instincts steered Oleg to stand at the adjacent wall. So that he guarded the entrance nearest his Lord. He imagined Morgott meant to finish a passage before speaking to him. However, minutes passed. Pages turned dryly, rasping like locust wings. The parchment-scented air swallowed up sounds and amplified them: the creak of Oleg’s armor and Morgott’s breath and the distant steps of the hall’s other slipper-footed patrons. Eventually Oleg stopped waiting for conversation to begin.
He supposed he deserved it for upsetting his liege not an hour before. For making a game of curiosity out of a Demigod’s machinations. But then he supposed it was equally fair for him to be irritated. He was made furniture again. Mindless and silent- empty armor with an unnecessary pulse. His discipline flagged and his mind wandered.
He watched Lord Morgott. Because otherwise all that moved in the library were dust motes floating in sunbeams and the winking glow of a singular, flameless lantern upon Morgott’s desk. He watched the tenderness of the man’s hands. The way his hair brushed his shoulders or was loosed from behind his ear when he tilted his head just so. The flash of pale lashes when he blinked. The sharpness of his jaw and the line of his throat. A medallion of green amber sat upon his sternum.
Lower, Oleg’s eyes trailed. They escaped down Morgott’s sleeves and fell upon the objects of his undivided interest. Thick tomes with cracked spines were stacked beside his elbow. The paper bound to the discolored leather was marred with age. They were histories, Oleg gathered, by the lengthy and dry titles that were embossed across each cover.
The Establishment of the First Church of Marika in the Domain of the Fell
The Conquests of Godfrey, First Elden Lord, in the Age of Order
More books were piled, bearing symbols and script Oleg had never encountered before in all his life. From these delicate tomes Morgott read. He treated the books as though they were particularly precious.
However, his expression steadily contorted into that of a scowl. He mouthed unheard syllables- the part of his lips so slight as to hold words against his teeth without masticating them.
The pages flipped less, and Morgott’s eye flicked more fervently. His gloved hand hovered. Tapped upon the wood a mirthless rhythm. Oleg wondered idly if the gloves he wore were also illusory. If they were, why would he bother with the pantomime of care? Did the residue of the books’ age coat ashen fingertips?
“Art thou literate?”
Morgott had spent the last ten minutes staring at the drawn velvet curtains of the opposite window. The Lord’s hands were clasped together- not devotionally prayerful but frustrated. Oleg hadn’t entirely expected such a question.
“Aye,” he replied. On the heels of that answer trod a memory, melancholic for its goodness. Oleg, yet willowy with youth, hand-in-hand with a dark-haired boy. His muscles sore from the day of training and his eyelids drooping. His companion read to him as he laid his head upon satin pillows. Sugar from pilfered pastries dusted his lips. He drowsily watched the other boy’s mouth. Crystalline honey-sugars sparkled upon his lips, too. Oleg stumbled out of the past as deftly as he’d entered it. “I was taught as a squire.”
“Wert thou tutored with texts as ancient as Queen Marika’s reign?”
“I cannot say that I was.”
Morgott plucked the tome from the table. It sagged, geriatric, across his palms and seemed to groan in relief as he placed it before the empty seat opposite him. Then, with gloved hand, he motioned for Oleg to sit.
“Lord,” Oleg said. Polite but pointed. A rapier’s tip held delicately against the sternum. “By my oath, my blades are yours to command. But if your command is for me to play the jester, then I must refuse.”
The Lord stiffened upon Oleg’s rebuff. But the agitation was brittle. The steel of the man alloyed with the unsuitable elements of shame. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “No, Ser. The… deficiency… is mine.”
Oleg absorbed Morgott’s muttered admittance. Disbelief was his first instinct. Marika’s son, illiterate? No, he’d been watching the man read for an hour, now.
Still, Oleg possessed enough wisdom to bind his tongue. The Grace Given Lord- the Demigod Prodigal, the Omen fiend- had presented to the knight a vein swollen and rich. He wouldn’t betray him by plunging a clumsy dagger of inquiry into the raw flesh.
Oleg removed his helm so that his sight would be unobstructed. He set it upon the table and lowered himself into the available seat.
“I require another set of eyes,” Morgott rumbled.
Oleg grinned. “Aren't you glad you didn’t cut out my tongue, then?”
“Perhaps I regret it all the more.”
Morgott rubbed at his puffy eye. Silken-gloved fingers smeared the reddened lid to bare wetness. As if attempting to grind out dusty grit.
Oleg then painstakingly grazed over the field sewn from history’s recounting. Queen Marika’s speech was documented in golden ink. In his halting voice, Oleg trawled over a lengthy description of a battle between Lord Godfrey’s forces, trolls, and giants. But Morgott only absorbed the information with placid indifference until Oleg reached the narration of the battle’s end.
“The Fell’s Flame made a taunt of its eternity. No dousing- be it water or of magical means- extinguished its cinders. The heat of that palatial sin sent men swooning to their deaths. But the Queen blazed with her own fury. A curse she placed upon Fell God’s faithful. To guard the sin of unending flame with their life enslaved.”
“Hmm.”
“My Lord?”
Morgott’s chest swelled with a thoughtful breath. “Searchest thou the name ‘Rold’.”
Rold, he knew, to be the designation of the second the Lands Between’s grand lifts. The Lift of Rold was the gate between Leyndell and the Mountaintops. After much fumbling- with Morgott turning the pages for his gauntlet-wearing reader- Oleg found the word nestled into war’s spoils.
The frigid land was gifted to Lord Godfrey’s allies. It was theirs to settle. If they did not mind the cold and the corpses. Those peoples were granted access eternal to the Rold Lift.
“Read the passage entire,” Morgott bid.
Oleg did, though his attention was inevitably split. The text was as dense and dry as brick, and he did stumble inelegantly over patches. He would anticipate a sneer or some other sign of disregard. But Morgott was never looking in his direction.
The sliver of gold in black sclera was hazy. Morgott’s mind was elsewhere. Perhaps drifting within the portraits of history the books painted. Stalking the blood-drenched sites of Lord Godfrey’s and Queen Marika’s conquests with a near-wistfulness. However refined and sanitized the visage of Leyndell’s Steward, he was the child of true warriors.
Lord Morgott had grown up beside his banished father in the Badlands. He had been made Tarnished with the Elden Lord. He had come back- been granted his Grace again- when Godwyn was killed. Or so the legend declared. Oleg had been raised on the story. It only just occurred to him that the tale was likely false.
After the Shattering a horde of the monsters crawled up from the city’s bowels.
Oleg meandered to the memory of the newborn. The one gray and fat and riddled with horns cradled in the bloodied arm of the Perfumer.
It will die in the kindness of the Erdtree’s light.
“Oleg…?”
His name was a soft prompt.
“Oh, er… forgive me,” his knight coughed. “I lost my place-"
But Morgott hushed him with a gesture just as suddenly. That discerning glare rolled off of him- a stone was lifted from Oleg’s breastplate. Morgott titled his ear towards the door. “Rise and be silent.”
Oleg donned the silver helm. Seconds after Morgott’s abrupt order, Oleg heard the approaching footsteps. Heavy for their agitation. He hardly had time to adopt a knightly post before the doorway was filled with General Helian’s bulk.
“Thou thinkest thyself clever.” Helian seethed even as he bowed.
The first thing Oleg had noticed about the Councilor was his shining, bald head. As if he had- resenting the chaotic nature of hair- shaved it all. His clothing was just as trim. Fashion in court favored robes of floor-sweeping length and large sleeves. The General’s clothing was crisp, spotlessly clean, and form-fitted with doublet and trousers to show off a well-tuned frame. At a glance Oleg sensed he was old but strong. The kind of fellow that may not start a tavern brawl but could very well finish it.
The proof of his Grace manifested in an uncommon heterochromia- where the one eye was stained with a puddly blotch of gold while the other was plain and black in the iris.
“My wit I owe to my dutiful Council. Ye tutelage hath served me well.”
Oleg thought he saw a vein pop in the bald man’s forehead. He might have believed Morgott’s comment playful, if he hadn’t delivered it so sardonically- if the General didn’t seem ready to explode.
“First, thou mockest Imopea by bringing a-" The General’s eyes flitted to Oleg, and he reddened. “-a banished knight to the palace! Then-"
“The Perfumers, aye,” Morgott interjected.
“The Guild is not thine to command!”
“I am the Steward. I had every right.”
“Poisons!” the General blurted at last. The spear of the word pierced through Morgott’s stony evasion.
Helian was taller than Oleg. But even seated, Lord Morgott looked down his nose at the Councilor. Imperious but declawed, he replied, “Arteya was a gifted healer. A pox upon any who would deny it. But her knowledge was gathered practically. In understanding harm, she perfected her art.”
Helian denied nothing. His sunken cheeks puffed with his indignant breaths.
“Arteya was no stranger to me. She would not have wished for ye to abandon her work,” Morgott pressed.
“Ah, so sentiment guides thee.”
He sneered, “Did sentiment guide the Perfumer?’
“Thou dost intend to see such weapons used!”
“Aye. Against any that would see Leyndell destroyed.”
Arguments bulged behind Helian’s eyes and thinned his lips. He did not rehash them. Likely, Oleg was certain, due to his presence. Morgott was not blind to Helian’s voiceless protests, either.
“If preparation is so offensive to thee, might we dismantle Leyndell’s walls and cast their ballistae into the sea? If thou hast seen the folly in thy logic, I would discuss other matters with thee. General, thou’rt a scholar of war.” Morgott boldly sidestepped Helian’s rage. He did not allow the other man a moment to cut in. He was polite in his condescension. Not too far a cry from the quiet viciousness of Margit, Oleg thought. It was a very gentlemanly evisceration. “Surely thou canst recall the histories of Lord Godfrey’s conquests.”
“No, my Lord. I refuse. The Lands Between are not the Badlands. Thy Father’s conquering spirit must leave thee, as it did him.”
Morgott bristled, “Conquest is not my desire, General. Now, I would speak with thee about the Lift of Rold-”
“No, Morgott!” Helian jabbed a furious finger at the floor.
Like a kennel master scolding a cur.
Oleg could feel the stormfront of Morgott’s rising anger- truer than the snide aggravation he’d displayed thus far. Helian sensed it too. He flushed pale. “No more talk of war, I beg thee. I’ve lost two dear friends in too short a time. I cannot bear thy bloodlust.”
Morgott sniffed. Audibly swallowed. He drummed at the table with idle fingers. “I have been reading-”
“Oh?”
It was a little noise. Scornfully barked. It was accompanied by a heedless smirk in Oleg’s direction. Knowing and brimming with a silent jest. Too brief to be a proper smirk, but Oleg snagged on its barbs all the same.
In one hideous sound, the argument was won. The point granted to General Helian. Morgott leaned back in his chair, steely and unreadable.
He said, “Then begone, Councilor, and waste not my morning.”
Victory in hand, the General turned on his heel and left.
Oleg imagined thrusting a blade through his throat with immense satisfaction.
