Frame

in Suikoden

built expressly for K'Arthur, with holiday wishes

by Mithrigil Galtirglin

"Get out, would you?"

"Leon, honestly—"

"He's bothering the midwife."

"No no no, it's all right, Master Silverberg," the plump woman clucked, emerging from the bedroom in a bustling flurry and exchanging some soiled linen with one of the maids. "He's curious is all."

"He can be curious without actually interfering, goodwife," the young lord of the manor spat, drumming his fingertips anxiously on the spine of the book he was pretending to read.

Mathiu looked up at his uncle Leon from under the sloshing washbasin he carried. The bowl was wider than his scrawny torso and the boy clutched it protectively, trying too hard to prevent the sullied water inside from trickling onto the rich burgundy carpet. He pouted seriously and tried not to actually glare, but felt his forehead wrinkling anyway.

"He's not interfering," Mathiu's father said, jauntily elbowing Leon in the ribs and incurring a pained scoff from his brother. "Honestly," he repeated, "if the boy wants to be a doctor, I say bully for him."

"I'd rather not think of Colette needing a doctor right now, and certainly not a would-be doctor." Leon brushed his brother's consoling gesture aside and drilled his elbows into the arm of the couch he leant on, fingers still rapping the spine. He directed a barbed question at the midwife, who was drying her hands on a cloth turning slightly brown. "You'll bar me from helping, but not an eight-year-old boy?"

"Boys take orders," the midwife said, and turned back into the room with the most perfunctory nod of her head. Mathiu turned to look at her, then hustled toward the kitchen as carefully as he could, the dirty water sloshing against his cheek.

--

484

"Did you…get to see him again?"

Shu made a muffled, vaguely questioning noise against her bare shoulder.

"Did you get to see him again?" Apple repeated. "Between the fight and…"

Shu shook his head, his greying hair soft and cool against her skin. "The last thing he did was strike me."

"I'm sorry," Apple whispered.

"Why?"

She glanced over and down for him; he was looking up, his placid, infuriatingly smug face just inches from hers. She smirked wryly, but did not answer.

"Why?" Shu repeated. "Had he changed his mind before the end?"

"I…don't know," Apple admitted, absently stroking Shu's side, trying to distract them both. "But he certainly changed."

--

448

"Get out, would you?"

"Uncle, honestly—"

Leon coolly thumbed to the next page in his book, lifting a tepid cup of tea in his free hand and pointedly avoiding Mathiu's eyes. "I'll have no more discussion of this. If you want to get self-righteous with me, first deny that you actually went along with my orders and then you'll be fit to criticize them."

"I wouldn't be angry with you if I hadn't gone along with your goddamn orders!"

"Good. Then we're in agreement. Get out."

Mathiu shoved himself up and away from the table, the library chair teetering on its back legs in his wake. "You had no cause to make the men do that!"

"Whether or not I had cause is no concern of yours," Leon deadpanned, squinting for a word on the page that seemed to have evaded him. "You followed the orders; you're angry with yourself, not with me; and if you're looking for any more validation than that you're not about to get it here." Even now, he did not turn his eyes on his nephew, and the sound as he turned the next page was like a whetting knife.

"You make it so that I can't say no to you! Ever!"

"That is where you are wrong." Even as his tone snapped Leon's voice did not raise, and the shadowed wrinkles on his forehead stayed thin and terse. "Desire need only surmount obstacle. You didn't want to disregard my orders enough to actually do it."

Odessa curled her knees to her chest, clutched the jamb of the door, and waited for it to be over.

--

457

"I can't believe you're outliving me," Mathiu coughed, turning his ear to the pillow so that the words could escape his ashen throat at all.

"I can," Leon replied.

--

451

"Out. Leave."

"Mathiu—"

"You want to incur my respect, don't refer to me as an equal," Mathiu shot back, his head whipping around and frazzled hair poking the corner of his eye. "I was hoping to be dead before that particular fact found its way to you."

"Then you should have killed yourself." Shu tucked a lock of blue-black hair behind his ear, almost in reaction to his teacher's fury. "Or you shouldn't have taught me so well. Or—"

"Or better still, I shouldn't have done it in the first place?" Mathiu sneered and it was something ugly, the stress lining his face contorting and betraying years of barely-restrained rage. "Is that what you were going to say?"

Shu shrugged. "What concern is it to me that you saw fit to do so? It probably seemed like a good idea at the time."

It was the worst thing Shu could possibly have said, and the only time Mathiu ever replied to something with his fist.

Apple stood astride the open door, and gently set down her schoolbooks against its frame.

--

454

"Did you get to see him again?"

Odessa made a muffled, vaguely questioning noise against his bare shoulder.

"Did you get to see him again?" Flik repeated. "After he left?"

"Not yet," Odessa said, shaking her head. "It'll be the first time in years, once we get to Seika. Years…don't even know how many."

"I'm sorry," Flik whispered.

"Why?"

Flik raised a confused brow and brushed back a strand of Odessa's hair, which had gotten in the way of her glaring, pouting, somewhere in between, at Flik.

"Why?" Odessa repeated. "Why be sorry?"

"He's your brother," Flik answered simply.

"Exactly," Odessa said with a gentle shrug. "Why be sorry?"

--

435

"Get out, would you?"

"Marie—"

"You're a disgrace, Lord Silverberg, an insult. How dare you bring her here! When your niece and nephew are coming!"

"You would have her give birth to my child in a stable? In the streets?"

"So you actually intend to claim the child as yours?"

"That is none of your concern, goodwife. You're here to ensure that she lives through the birth and ask no questions."

"With George here. With Odessa and Mathiu on the way. With Mathiu on the way! They're all going to wonder who the woman is, where the baby's got to. And Mathiu's not just going to wonder, he's going to ask!"

"I will not have Rachel giving birth to my child under any roof but this, and if Mathiu questions it so much the better. He'll never speak of it if he understands. What is it you're so fond of saying, Marie? Boys take orders?"

Mathiu quietly set his suitcase down against the doorjamb and straightened his back slowly, like an uncoiling snake. Odessa, asleep, was being carried behind him by the coachman, twined around her security blanket and far too at ease.

"Of course, Uncle Leon," he said, in the complacent treble he'd learned to use whenever his uncle was in the room. "I understand." The boy glanced sullenly back at Odessa in the servant's arms, but turned back toward Leon with a smile he was unable to conceal. "But where is Aunt Colette?"