Asleep in the Chapel

"Offer me congratulations with a face like that, and I can't say it pleases me."

"And what, exactly, is wrong with my face?"

"You're grinding your teeth. As if you'd lost by some tragic hair's breadth."

Fillion had not lasted more than a few seconds after the match began. Ilesin had resorted to nothing underhanded, and the gulf between them was so vast that blaming luck would have been embarrassing. He could have named ten men better than Fillion as he was now. Had they all entered, Fillion would not have placed among the first ten. He could not even be certain of winning if he stood against Glen.

"Ilesin, I don't understand why you entered the swordsmanship tournament. You already have fame. You already have rank! Why would a man with nothing left to gain compete at all?"

"Fillion."

Ilesin said it in a tired voice.

"You lost, you little bastard."

Fillion startled. Bastard-born or not, people had plainly treated him as something precious. He had never truly taken his own measure, never set himself beside another man, never once stood in the living heat of someone else's anger.

"You lost."

Spare a man's life, and this was the thanks. No—it was generous even to call it sparing. Ilesin had not saved him. He had simply declined to kill him.

"What do you know!"

Fillion roared, furious.

"..."

"What do you know! You snatched what was already set on someone else's plate, and you dare—what do you know!"

"No one is champion until the victory is won. It was never promised to you in the first place!"

That was when it happened.

"Fillion!"

It was Artila.

To Ilesin's surprise, Fillion flinched and shrank.

She spoke to Ilesin first.

"Thank you for seeing me back, Lord Ilesin. And I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for. You are only that man's fiancée, not his parent or his tutor."

The word fiancée tasted absurd the moment he said it. How had she come to be bound by a betrothal to a wretch like that? She would have done better alone.

"You're only here because of me... You shouldn't have had to endure this today. I'm sorry. It ought to have been a day for congratulations."

"It was my choice. I'm all right."

Ilesin laid a hand over his heart in farewell, then said,

"I'll take my leave."

He had not properly drawn away before Fillion spoke, ugly and sharp.

"You're going back with Elin, aren't you?"

Ilesin swore under his breath and looked at the ceiling. Could the man not at least have waited until he was gone?

"Yes. I'm going to Moravik. Her Grace summoned me. Fillion, you should—"

"I'm not going to Arandia, and I'm not going to Moravik."

"Then where will you go?"

"To Anhar. To my home! Whatever Grand Duchess Nivella has to say about it, I'm going to Anhar. I'll live there!"

She answered, worn thin.

"All right. Then go."

"You're coming with me."

Ilesin stopped.

"Fillion, I have to go with Lady Elin."

"You're the woman who will be my wife. We're meant to marry! So you have to come with me!"

Infuriating little wretch.

The moment the man who had meant to cast her aside found himself about to be cast aside instead, he turned his temper on someone who had done nothing wrong. Before the tournament he had spent his time sorting through women, this one and that. Now that he was no longer in a position to do so, this was what he became.

"Why that look? You don't want to marry me?"

"That's not it."

"Damn it all, fine. I'm not even third in your life. First is Elin, then Marca, then Nivella! I'm nothing! There isn't even a place for me!"

"..."

"If you have any intention of becoming my wife, then come to Anhar with me."

For a moment everything went quiet. It was a silence packed with rage. Ilesin thought he could feel the thorns of it against his skin.

She said,

"I have a condition."

A slow, smoldering anger heated Ilesin's heart and the nape of his neck. My lady. This is when you lose your temper and tell him not to dream of it. Indulge a badly raised man, and he only grows more insolent.

"Marry me tonight."

Her voice was savage, as if she were handing down a sentence: very well, you are to die.

"What?"

"I know now, past any doubt, how cheap a promise our engagement was. People paired you with every woman they could think of and argued over it. Who would suit Lord Fillion? This lady's dowry is splendid, so she'll make him rich. That lady will bring him a title. Another comes of a noble house, so she'll lend him honor. They didn't care whether I stood in front of them or behind! No—they mocked me on purpose. They laughed at my face, laughed at my body, laughed at my station. They slandered my mother by calling her a bastard, and slandered my father by calling his birth low!"

"..."

"And you—not once, not truly once—ever said that our engagement was firm. You behaved as if it were a cloud that would vanish in a breeze! Thanks to that, I was insulted even more openly!"

"That—"

Fillion's breathing had gone rough.

"Fillion, I have never been ashamed that my mother was a bastard. It was not a choice she made, nor even one my grandmother made. She is my mother, precious to me, and I respect her. My father as well! So many people here insult them and insult me, and not once did you comfort me, or protect me. Not my parents. Not me!"

"I told you."

"Told me what?"

"That I'm not even third in your life!"

"Then."

She said it coldly.

"Then what number am I in yours?"

"..."

"You've never even put me in an order. I'm the fiancée who was suddenly handed to you one day. Someone you needn't consider, needn't treasure. A burden you don't even particularly like!"

"I—"

When Fillion could not manage an answer, she struck harder still.

"There is no second in your life, and no third. The only person in your world is you. You, and you alone!"

Fillion stammered.

"I—I. Listen—"

"Even so, I'll yield this once. If you marry me, I will be your wife, and I will put you first."

"This is too sudden. Give me time to think..."

"Our engagement has lasted not months, and not days, but years. You've already had time enough. If you still need more, fine. I'll give you two hours. I'll wait in the chapel. Come."

"..."

"If you don't come, we are finished. The moment I see Her Grace in Moravik, I will ask her to break the betrothal."

"And do you really think the Grand Duchess will grant it?"

"The negotiation will be mine. It's none of your concern. I promise you this: the moment I reach Moravik, I can end our engagement."

Fillion seethed.

"You're always like this."

"Like what?"

"Damn it, you always corner me. You drive me into a corner, and the moment I hesitate you call my devotion lacking and coldly cast me off. You corner me on purpose so you can throw me away."

"No. You hesitate far too much. Marry me today. If you don't, it's over forever!"

He could not have said why, but that night Ilesin went to the chapel.

She was in a chair in the temple chapel, still in the clothes she had worn to the banquet. Midnight was long past, and the hour a bridegroom ought to have come had already gone. Drawing near, Ilesin had to bow his head to keep from laughing. She had looked as if she were praying. In truth she was fast asleep, slumped against the back of the chair in front of her, shivering with cold and sleeping with desperate determination all the same.

"I underestimated you."

She was not a woman who would weep while she waited for a man who never came. She was a woman who, when she was tired, simply slept.

Ilesin laid her back in the chair, then took off his cloak and covered her. She sneezed, rolled herself up in the cloak, and burrowed inside until only the crown of her head showed. She did sleep remarkably well. He envied it. By morning her strength would have returned like a flask filled to the brim.

Fillion never came, and now the sky was growing light. She drew her head out from the cloak and blinked, bewildered, as if she could not remember why she was sleeping there.

"Ah!"

She sat up—and startled badly at the sight of Ilesin beside her.

"Lord Ilesin?"

"Yes. It's me."

"Why are you here?"

"I came to pray, and here you were."

"But you're of the Galt. Your faith isn't even the same."

Unlike the south, which worshipped a single god, Ilesin's people, the Galt, believed in gods of this place and that. They were called the Seven Gods, though Ilesin could remember only three of them.

"Tell me honestly. Why did you come?"

"I would be grateful if you let it pass without further questions."

Understanding struck her. She let her head fall back against the chair and went limp.

"You heard."

"Fillion blurted it out before I had even left. I heard all of it."

"Staying to listen was still wrong."

"Yes. That was wrong of me. I'm sorry."

Ilesin admitted it readily and apologized. She pressed her anger no further.

"...I ended up showing you a humiliating sight."

"I'll keep it secret."

"Yes. It's just..."

She was still for a moment. Then her shoulders began to shake, and she laughed.

"...?"

"Th-this... I was jilted, wasn't I?"

"Given the hour, and the circumstances, it does appear you were."

She burst out laughing. When at last she had laughed herself nearly calm, she said,

"If I'd been alone, I would have died of how wretched it was. But you're here, so it's only embarrassing. Well—embarrassing is better than wretched. I was jilted! Jilted!"

She cried it out, then suddenly looked at her fingers. They were bare now, though something seemed once to have been there. She curled her hand shut and said,

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It is entertaining, though."

"I couldn't stop you if you spread it around. Something this amusing—you could hardly be expected to keep it to yourself."

She sighed.

"You were right. All you did was win. Fillion is the one who lost."

"..."

No. I took a man who ought to have lost and died, and made him into a man who had merely lost.

Because of you.

She smiled bitterly.

"Fillion... he thought of nothing but the championship. It never even occurred to him that someone better might exist. He must have believed he could beat you as well—that he was stronger than some Maze Conqueror."

"A rather harsh estimation of your fiancé."

"He isn't my man anymore. I ought to curse him to my heart's content. I've been swallowing it, so there's a great deal to curse. I could insult him in your ear until next year."

"No need to go that far."

"Then I'll only do a little."

"That much is fine. Please, go ahead."

A pale rose light touched her cheek. She squinted into the dazzling morning sun and said,

"Everything Fillion wanted, and could not have, was hanging on this victory."

"And what couldn't he have?"

"An official title. Status. Land... Everything he would have possessed as a duke's son, had he not been born a bastard."

"There are more people without those things than with them."