V2Ch53-Retirement
Kistana was sitting with her back against the Twinleaf hut, counting the stars, when Lord Tybalt emerged.
“I told you that you could go back to the hut with Mariella, Kistana,” the necromancer said immediately upon seeing the catgirl still there waiting.
“And I told you that it is my primary duty to protect you, my lord, and I will not allow you to suffer any harm under my watch,” the catgirl replied simply. “I must be close to your side at all times. It’s not only a matter of your wishes. Think of the effects on the people who have asked you to raise orphaned children and raise up a new priesthood. Any injury that keeps you from fulfilling your duties is a problem.”
He sighed. “As you wish. Use your best judgment.”
“Also, you have a little, um, something on your chin, my lord,” Kistana added, pointing at her own jaw. Tybalt had a sort of residue that looked slightly shiny there. Maybe it was saliva. Kistana wouldn’t know.
“Oh. Uh, thank you.” He reddened slightly, but it was barely perceptible under the moonlight. Wordlessly, he walked the long path to the stream and then washed his face off in the water. This was the second time that evening that Kistana had followed him to cleanse himself, although he seemed to be skittish about removing his pants in front of her. The human taboo around nudity appeared to be just as strong as it was for the beastfolk, despite the fact that he was freely mating with women whom he was not formally coupled with.
She shook her head.
Of course it’s not my place to judge… and Lady Vidalia sounded very pleased with his affections. To Kistana’s hearing, both Vidalia and Mariella’s respective… sounds… were as clear as a bell even when heard from a distance. Somewhere between difficult and impossible to ignore.
The catgirl followed Tybalt back to the hut the undead had constructed - just a larger version of the usual huts built for everyone else on the mountainside, but with additional rooms - and she entered her own room. It was more space than she was used to, as the catfolk slept in shallow, narrow caves much like the ones they entombed the dead in, until and unless they were paired up with a mate by the Elders. It was considered decadent to take up more space than was required for one’s needs.
Having a room and a blanket to curl up in felt like an indulgent luxury, especially since her status was essentially that of a mere servant in this household.
Kistana lay down and slept, though even then, her body was not fully at ease. It followed its long maintained practice of keeping part of itself awake in case of trouble approaching in her sleep.
Fortunately, the night passed peacefully.
In the morning, Kistana followed Tybalt and Lady Mariella back to the Twinleaf hut, where Tybalt spoke to the family members as normal, as if he hadn’t been there with Vidalia the previous night.
“Thank you for, um, offering to give me the day off, Tybalt,” Lady Victoria said. “If you don’t mind my asking, how exactly were you planning to do that? You didn’t explain before, and it’s left me curious. Are you… going to do my day’s farming for me?” She chuckled a little at the idea, but Tybalt just smiled.
“It’s something like that,” he said. “But I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Remember that I need an hour or two of you working in your plot before I can relieve you of your labor.”
She nodded. “That would certainly be worth it. Maybe you came up with a way to make me work more efficiently?”
“Something like that,” Tybalt repeated, refusing to give her any further information.
After they had all eaten breakfast, the entire family, Mariella, Kistana, and Tybalt walked out to the Twinleafs’ little plot of land. A pair of undead fell in step behind them, Kistana noticed, and when she looked at the necromancer, he simply nodded to her in acknowledgement.
They are meant to be here. Well, of course they are. They serve Lord Tybalt. Actually, I suppose we are all slightly safer now. She relaxed a little, though she knew the zombies were only a very thin defensive barrier for any would-be attacker.
When they arrived at the little plot, Kistana walked the area surrounding it, familiarizing herself with that part of the mountainside while Victoria, Hayden, and Edmund worked the land as usual. It was the first time Kistana had ever been over here, and the catgirl wanted to recognize what it normally looked like for future reference, to be ready for any future security issue.
She hadn’t been a bodyguard for long, but she hoped her skills as a huntress were translating well.
After she had done a walk around the area, Kistana repeated the exercise. The Twinleaf family were no threat to her lord, after all. Even if they had wanted to be, it was simply impossible.
It was on her tenth such circulation that Kistana heard Victoria gasp. The catgirl rushed back in, anticipating there might be a threat she had somehow overlooked.
What she saw was far more benign.
A zombie was on its knees in the dirt, hoeing. Doing the same work, Kistana recalled, that Victoria had just been doing.
Another zombie a few feet away was weeding.
“This is incredible!” Victoria exclaimed. “I know we saw that skeleton stirring soup, but I didn’t think… I hadn’t thought your creatures could do- ”
“Your work?” Tybalt asked, smiling.
She nodded.
“Well, this is my plan. Hopefully, this can allow you and Hayden to retire from farming. Maybe after Uncle Edmund finishes teaching all the basics to these creatures, he’ll be fully retired too. For now, I think he can mostly just supervise, and the zombies will do all the work for you. Consider them a gift.”
“I- ” The look on Victoria’s face changed, grew more complicated. She bit her lip, looked at the zombies, her smiling sister, her little cousin who was eagerly staring at her waiting for her to accept, and then her uncle who was gazing at her stoically. “I’m not sure… Give me a minute, all right?”
“Sure.”
She walked over to her uncle and whispered in his ear, “Can I accept this? Is it wrong? I mean, we’re not engaged, we’re courting, and what does it say if I take a gift this significant?”
“Vicky, I agreed to let you and Vida court him,” he said in a low voice. “Of everyone in our household, you’ve always been the levelheaded one. You’ve… always kept your sister’s feet on the ground. I trust you to decide what is right in your own courting.”
Kistana could hear everything that they were saying, despite their lowered voices, because her senses were preternaturally sharp, even for a member of the cat tribe.
Victoria nodded and looked back at Tybalt a little nervously.
Then she closed the distance to him, lowering her eyes as if still slightly troubled by her decision.
“This is favoritism towards me and my family,” she said quietly, once she was close enough that only she, Tybalt, and Kistana could hear. “Right?”
“You could choose to see it that way,” Tybalt said. “I can’t deny I’m biased in favor of women I want to marry, and I also appreciate your uncle and your cousin for letting me stay in their home all this time. But I don’t expect anything in return, and you don’t have to give them back in the event that our courtship doesn’t work out. I’ve given the zombies orders to the effect that they belong to you in perpetuity.”
“That’s not what I - not what I was worried about,” Victoria said, breathing heavily. “Just - do you know what a life-changing gift this is? I know… I don’t deserve to have these creatures doing my work for me instead of some other hard-working member of our tribe. I don’t know if I can accept- ”
“I’ll eventually make more, enough to labor for everyone,” Tybalt said. “But I choose to engage in this ‘favoritism,’ as you call it. You can accept it as a gesture of my affection toward you, or not. But if you don’t accept it, that doesn’t mean some other lucky farmer gets two zombies instead. I’m not operating a charity.”
She dipped her chin in a small nod. “All right. I accept your generous gift. Thank you.” The foxgirl wrapped her arms around Tybalt and pulled him into a hug, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you very much.” Her voice quivered as if she was trying not to cry.
Kistana thought she understood the complex thoughts and emotions that must be running through Victoria’s head. Even in her tribe- devoted to corpse preservation and martial pursuits- most of their members still had to spend some time performing agricultural work. Otherwise they wouldn’t have enough food.
The catgirl had been spared that, since she could hunt and kill, better than anyone else in the tribe, and her talents were obviously better invested in those violent pursuits. She had seen the differences between people who were full time alchemists and those who were full time farmers.
The farmers looked like they were older. They had rough skin, more wrinkles, and stooped backs.
It wasn’t a healthy occupation, and Kistana had been grateful to avoid it.
So she could see the long term implications of this.
In the long term, Tybalt’s future for the beastfolk would mean no beastfolk working, at least not this sort of harsh, back-breaking labor.
This is the world that necromancy can create. No… the world that Lord Tybalt is actively working to build. One where the tribes neither fear the Kingdom nor perform menial labor. What will people even do? I suppose… I suppose that will be for them to decide. He’s given her this gift today, specifically, so that Lady Victoria could go and court his rival, even though it went against his own interests. If he was a member of my tribe who wanted something from someone, he might dangle something like this over their head, not just give it freely. What a strange man.
Despite calling him strange in her head, Kistana quietly, without truly noticing it, felt a growing warmth toward the necromancer. He was doing the kind of thing that she might have hoped she would do, if she had the power.
“Let’s move on with the day,” Vidalia said, smiling brightly.
Victoria jerked back instantly, suddenly seeming to become aware that she had buried her face in Tybalt’s shoulder and had been clutching him tightly for just a little too long.
“Right,” she said, her cheeks slightly red. “Let’s go!”
Tybalt led the group down the mountainside, everyone except for Uncle Edmund, and they moved to the designated site where the necromancer had promised to train all comers in mana control. It was a patch of desert at the foot of the mountain, and Kistana focused her attention on identifying where security threats might come from.
She decided to position herself further out in the desert than the assembled mass of people, since there would be many eyes on the desert, and the desert itself was mostly flat plain. There was good visibility, and hundreds of pairs of eyes would be on it. She would watch for beasts and enemies coming down the mountains and through the valleys.
Hundreds had gathered, because nearly every able-bodied adult of the fox tribe was there, along with some harpies and ibex beastfolk.
The entire cat tribe would have appeared, Kistana thought, if my lord had simply told them he was offering his teachings. I will bring it up with him later, as a suggestion for future trainings.
Though the catfolk all learned basic mana manipulation from a young age, Kistana knew there was always more to learn.
Despite that general outlook, she quickly stopped listening to the lecture as Tybalt and Mariella began explaining mana manipulation to the gathered masses of fox beastfolk. It was just repetitive of things she had heard since she was five years old - finding your mana core within your heart, harnessing its power, moving mana through your body, concentrating it, enhancing yourself. She would try to pay attention once again if they covered any new ground.
Instead, for the moment, she scanned the surroundings, looking for signs of danger. All she saw for some time was late arrivals streaming in along with Andric, Victoria, and Vidalia making an early exit to go on their outing.
Kistana realized, after scanning the closest cliff faces for the fifth time, that she was actually a little nervous. She looked within herself and realized why.
Today had just brought home, once again, how important Tybalt was.
That elf could have killed him last night, and how would that have changed our people’s fate? The Kingdom would slaughter us like lambs. The undead would probably turn feral. Our close connection with Lord Mudo would be broken.
Complete disaster.
She suppressed a tremor in her hand as she had the thought.
Not now…
The symptoms of her mysterious illness continued to get worse, but Kistana could still manage them with good mana control and regular exercise. The fatigue, headaches, muscle aches - they had all been getting worse. Prayer surprisingly hadn’t helped. Cold baths in the stream hadn’t helped either.
But it was still manageable. For now.
I should tell Lord Tybalt that I am no longer fit for service. Her mind wanted to reject this idea for a number of reasons - she would feel like a failure, he would have been right that her sickness had the better of her, the Elders would have been right that she was defective…
She’d also have to leave the necromancer’s side, an idea that wouldn’t have bothered her a few days before. But now, for reasons she didn’t understand, she felt a strange sense of loss at the idea of being separated from him and the others.
Plus, I don’t know if the monks I was going to recommend to replace me could have actually stopped Dero from killing Tybalt last night. I think my presence was an important part of keeping him alive. I think… or maybe I just want to believe that. Maybe I’m just a burden like the Elders used to say. Maybe -
Kistana’s eyes stuck on something funny that stopped her train of thought. Something that looked strange in the cliff face. A place where the mountain looked too much… like itself.
It was hard to explain, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end at the sight.
Without allowing herself any hesitation, Kistana loosed an arrow just above the suspicious spot on the mountainside.
A moment later, the cliffside flickered just below where her arrow had struck.