10. The Deceivers
Sarg looked at his reflection in the surface of the water barrel.
The reflection wasn’t sharp — but sufficient to make out his face.
The man looking back at him wore the expression that belongs to people who are not living, exactly, but enduring — people ground down by exhaustion that accumulates with every second, every minute, every hour, waiting for the growing weight of years to finally crush them flat.
Endurance was profoundly tiring.
The weathered, hollow man had endured many things while he waited.
He waited for revenge.
He waited for an ending.
He waited for it to be over.
Four years of that, without exception.
The man who had been waiting so long reached back and gathered his hair in one hand. The rough strands caught between his fingers.
He drew a short blade and cut through it in one stroke. Silver-pale hair fell to the floor in silence.
Sarg touched his jaw and cheeks. The beard was rough from several weeks of neglect. He remembered, dimly, when the faintest trace of uncleanness had felt to him like a visible flaw — when he had shaved with an almost compulsive regularity. That felt like someone else’s life now.
Because it was, in fact, a life from quite some time ago.
He soaked his face with water and took out the razor. He watched his reflection in the stilled surface and began scraping the beard away. Without a proper mirror, the work was clumsy and uneven. He kept catching and stumbling.
It was the sort of thing people would laugh at if they knew — but Sarg sometimes missed the material ease of earlier years. And then he felt a deep, thorough disgust at himself for missing it.
The wealth that Gloriosa provided had never truly been his. He had never properly possessed it in the first place. To long for something he had never really owned was an absurdity.
A red drop struck the surface of the water. A bead of blood. The crimson bloomed and swirled and slowly dissolved into transparency.
“Oh. You’ve cut yourself.”
A voice from behind him. Sarg didn’t turn around. He continued shaving in silence.
Hyderlin was unbothered by being ignored.
“Shall I do it?”
“You’re a woman, as I understand it.”
“Let go of the notion that only men may shave someone. It doesn’t suit you.”
“…I don’t want to hear any more.”
“You have a remarkably suspicious mind. I did this for my brother — think nothing improper of it.”
Hyderlin let out a small, amused sound and went on talking without being asked.
“After an assassin disguised himself as a barber and nearly got close enough to finish the job, I was Chesa’s barber for several years running. I was responsible not only for the king’s personal safety, but for his dignity and cleanliness as well.”
Hyderlin laughed as though she found this delightful. Sarg did not respond.
The woman’s bright laughter stopped. Hyderlin retrieved a wooden crate, turned it upside down, and tilted her head toward it.
“Sit down.”
It was an order. Sarg regarded her with flat grey eyes.
“What are you after?”
“Nothing in particular. Call it goodwill.”
“You?”
“You trust me so little.”
“Who trusts a liar?”
“If it truly bothers you, then consider it an act of diplomacy — a gesture of goodwill toward an alliance. Sir Sarg. Please, sit.”
Hyderlin gave his shoulder a gentle push. Sarg sat down on the crate without much resistance. She plucked the razor from his hand with ease and tucked it into her own belt, then rolled her sleeves to the elbow.
“Is there hot water?”
“Just… do it as it is.”
“There is no ‘as it is’ for the king’s barber.”
“Countess Biche was a guard captain, not a barber.”
“A combined appointment.”
Hyderlin filled a small pot with water. Drawing on her memory of what Sarg had done before, she lit the fire in the hearth. As she moved to stand, she thought to issue a reminder.
“Stay seated.”
When the water was sufficiently warm, she pulled it from the fire. She soaked a linen cloth in the hot water and pressed it to his face to open the skin. She found soap on the shelf and worked up a lather, pressing it from his cheeks down to his neck.
Despite the thorough care she was taking, Sarg’s cheeks and shoulders were locked rigid, as if he were about to bolt from the room.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be slitting your throat while I’m at it. If you’re genuinely concerned, feel free to hold a knife.”
“Your thoughtfulness moves me to tears.”
“I do appreciate a man of feeling.”
“Your habit of talking nonsense hasn’t faded with age.”
“It’s my finest quality. Eternally girlish.”
Hyderlin took firm hold of his jaw and tilted it upward.
“No arguing. If you don’t want to be nicked, keep quiet.”
For all the roughness in her language, her hands were remarkably precise. The blade did not dig — it moved as if only grazing the surface, sliding softly along the contours of his face.
The cold edge of steel traveled gently along the dry plane of his cheek and down his jaw.
Sarg’s eyes were closed. With each pass of the blade, his silver lashes trembled like the wings of a moth.
The soft, rhythmic scraping near his ear was faintly ticklish — and faintly unsettling.
“A little higher.”
Sarg moved his head compliantly in whatever direction she required. Hyderlin bent her knees to lower herself. The blade passed slowly from the base of his throat to his chin, upward.
The tension reached her late. Something that had once been a daily routine suddenly felt unfamiliar — as if she were doing it for the first time.
Because it had been a long time.
Because this was not Chesa.
Because this was the man who had said foolish, unworthy things to her face and refused to take them back.
She let the thought pass through her and go.
She wiped the soap from the razor and tucked it away. Then she studied Sarg’s face in silence.
Without the beard, the face was still what it had always been — so precisely drawn it might have stepped out of a religious painting, beautiful in its severity. If one were to make a human form out of the concepts of discipline and restraint, it would surely look like this. The small traces of soap still clinging to his skin looked like flecks of paint on a sculpture.
She pressed her thumb against his cheek and wiped away the last of the lather. The skin yielded slightly under the pressure. And at that moment he opened his eyes.
Grey irises. Looking directly at her.
She threw the damp cloth at his face. Sarg’s hand came up and caught it.
“You’re done. Wipe it off with that.”
Sarg cleaned his face with the wet cloth and offered his honest assessment.
“The skill is fitting for the king’s barber.”
“Thank you.”
“The finish, however, was more in line with a common thug.”
That had been awkward, and she knew it. Hyderlin changed the subject.
“…I’ll trim your hair as well. Stay where you are.”
Sarg surrendered his hair with reasonable good grace. Hyderlin draped a dry cloth over his shoulders and back and set to work on the unevenly hacked silver hair with the razor.
He had apparently just washed — the damp strands still carried a faint scent of soap. Each strand of the pale silver hair was finely textured.
It would have been better a little longer.
She found that slightly disappointing — but what could be done.
As she trimmed his hair to her satisfaction, Hyderlin became aware that she was enjoying herself rather more than she had any right to.
“Your hair is quite damaged. Did you give up taking care of it when you left the order?”
Silence.
“So it really was holy water. That was the secret all along, wasn’t it. I should have charmed some out of the bishop years ago. Not that I need to tell you, but curly hair is a tremendous effort to maintain.”
Sarg’s silence continued unbroken, but Hyderlin kept talking and kept working.
When she shook the cloth free of cut hair from his shoulders and back, she stepped back to admire her work with considerable satisfaction.
“There. A trim does wonders. You look much more like yourself.”
Sarg ran a hand through his hair and felt the back of his bare neck. The characteristically quiet man finally spoke.
“…Does short hair suit me?”
It had not occurred to Hyderlin that she would ever hear him say something like that. She smiled before she could stop herself.
“Of course. Though it can’t quite compete with the long hair from your days as a sacred knight.”
“Then I’ll grow it out again.”
“The point isn’t the length. It’s the sacred knight.”
“Rejoining the Kroitze Order would be difficult, but I’ve been considering transferring to another order.”
Hyderlin let out a low whistle. Now that was something she’d actually been hoping to hear.
“Well, well. Sounds like you’re coming back to yourself.”
“If I’m to provide for a wife with expensive tastes, I’d better have a respectable profession.”
“That’s a joke.”
“Does it sound like one?”
The corner of Hyderlin’s mouth twitched. Sarg said it quite without expression.
“A cathedral wedding may be out of reach — but I’ll do everything I can to match the grandeur of one in every other respect.”
“What on earth are you saying.”
“I suppose I should have secured my share before leaving Gloriosa.”
“That’s not — “
“Even so, don’t worry too much. If I assert my claim, they may well hand over at least a portion. Given everything I contributed to that wretched family, they owe me in good conscience.”
The sacred knight she had assumed would always be untouchably above all earthly concerns was producing the most prosaic pronouncements she had ever heard from his mouth. Hyderlin entered a brief state of paralysis.
She raised her hand and brought it down in a diagonal arc through the air. Sarg, who had narrowly avoided being struck on the back of the head, muttered under his breath:
“My future as a beaten husband is already perfectly clear…”
“Sh — shut that mouth.”
Sarg glanced at her and closed his mouth with something resembling obedience. Hyderlin felt as though something was about to burst inside her.
“Did you drink again? No, that can’t be it — there’s no smell. Why are you talking nonsense?”
“You were the one calling me husband. Is this a divorce, then?”
Sarg glanced up at her glare and looked away again immediately. The attitude of a man committed to playing the role of a beaten husband made Hyderlin want to faint.
He studied his fingernails with composure and said, almost as an aside:
“The Order doesn’t permit divorce, you know.”
Hyderlin shouted:
“We were never married in the first place!”
…in the first place…in the first place…in the first place…
The acoustics of the room were very good. Her last word resonated and echoed.
Sarg remained on his upturned crate, still studying his fingernails.
“Marriage is something that can happen in the future.”
“Are you in your right mind? Why?”
Hyderlin was repeating herself, she knew. Sarg sighed.
“You clearly haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.”
“I have a habit of tuning out the ramblings of drunkards!”
“Then I’ll say it again. I am fond of you.”
There are people who deliver the most mundane pleasantries with more emotion than that. It was the tone of a man delivering a routine administrative report.
Hyderlin had the novel experience of nearly fainting at a declaration of love delivered with the inflection of a work briefing. She bared her teeth.
“Say something like that one more time and I’ll tear your mouth open.”
“Is that within your abilities?”
“What do you think I’m capable of?”
“Former Captain of the Royal Guard, Hyderlin Biche.”
“Then you should know I can do considerably worse than that.”
“I know you won’t.”
Sarg said this with a maddening lack of drama. Quite certain of his conclusion.
“I’m a reasonably eligible prospect. The name Gloriosa will offer you a degree of guaranteed standing. It won’t be equal to your days as a princess — but I intend to do everything in my power to provide something close. So — Hyderlin—”
Hyderlin cut him off, sharply:
“Don’t call me that.”
Silence.
“Don’t call me Hyderlin.”
