Chapter Text
The first memory arrived during breakfast. The teacup slipped from Robin’s fingers and by the time Frederick returned with a rag, she was already crouched on the floor, picking up the shards of porcelain.
“Can it be saved, do you think?” she asked, tea seeping into her shoes.
“Perhaps. Be careful.”
“Ah.”
A wound smiled across her fingertip.
“We ought to tend to that properly,” Frederick chided as Robin put her finger to her mouth. He mopped up the spilt tea, thinking little of his wife’s silence at first. Then he noticed she was staring wide-eyed at the broken cup, her cut finger sitting on her lip.
“Robin?” He gripped her arm. “Robin.”
“Huh?”
She blinked at him. Her eyes were glassy, as if she’d just come out of sleep.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry.” She licked the blood smeared on her lower lip, then smiled. “I think…I think I just remembered my mother?”
--
The memories returned to Robin like flowers blooming in a desert after rain. The miracle of them overwhelmed her. She lay in bed all day, feverish with history, and Frederick worried that she might be ill or hexed. But the memories slowed by evening, and Robin was lucid and eager enough to share them with him.
“We lived in a village in the south called Halkonnis. I must have been very young when we fled Plegia, or maybe I just haven’t remembered that yet. That village is the only home I remember.
My mother’s face was a bit thinner than mine. Our eyes were the same color, but her hair was dark. She wore her hair short, just a little below her ears. When I was very young, I tried to cut my hair to look like hers. It was a disaster, of course.
My father was a farmer. Perhaps he took my mother in when she had nowhere to go. He was a man of few words and rather older than my mother, but I think they loved each other. I had no reason to think he wasn’t my father by blood. I remember he used to lift me onto his shoulders to pick apples. I’d hold onto his collar and steer him to the apple I wanted. It would have been faster if he’d picked them himself, but he let me think I was helping.”
“You were well loved.”
Robin smiled at him from across their pillow. She looked as if she couldn’t believe her luck.
“After learning about Validar, I didn’t think…But I’m glad that I did have a father, at least for a little while. I was still a girl when he passed. My mother never took another husband.
She couldn’t run the farm by herself, so she traded some of our land to our neighbors for livestock. We had a henhouse, goats, and two cows. She kept a vegetable garden, but most of our food came from other farmers. My mother had some skill as an herbalist and a working knowledge of magic, which was rare in a village that small. Our neighbors came to her with all sorts of problems, and they took care of us in return.
She taught me everything. Everything. Letters, tactics, swordplay, magic. She taught some of the other kids, too, but it was just play to them. She was much harder on me.”
Robin lay still for so long Frederick thought she had fallen asleep.
“Maybe it’s not fair to say she was ‘harder on me,’” she said abruptly. “She wasn’t cruel. She wanted me to learn, and I learned.”
Robin went quiet again. She was weighing how much to tell him, Frederick realized. The thought was unpleasant. But what was unpleasant about it? The fact that she had a past? That wasn’t fair. After all, he hadn’t told her everything about his past, either.
“She had me memorize spell inscriptions,” Robin said at last. “Even for spells I didn’t have the skill to cast yet. She wouldn’t just let me copy them from her tome. I’d have to write them out and she wouldn’t let me leave the table until I’d gotten it right. It would get late, and my hand would hurt, and I’d feel so stupid that I’d cry. I was maybe seven. My father sometimes had to intercede to let me go to bed.”
“That seems harsh. And counterproductive.”
“Well, I turned out fine, didn’t I?”
Robin was trying to be funny, which meant she didn’t want him to answer one way or the other.
“Still, I hope the other me didn’t train Morgan that way. I certainly won’t, if I get the chance. But I guess my mother was desperate. She knew what I was born to become. I think training me so hard was her way of justifying keeping me alive. You know, she had this crazy plan that one day I’d lead an army into Plegia and kill Validar.”
“Was your mother a prophet?!”
“I think she just had odd luck. Her life was filled with misfortune, but she still won in the end.”
“She must be proud of you.”
A shadow passed across Robin’s face. It was then that Frederick realized that she’d only spoken of her mother in the past tense. He didn’t know whether she was still alive.
“I wonder,” Robin said. “I think she’d be pleased with the result. But proud….That’s difficult to say. I wasn’t always sure how she felt about me.”
“She loved you, surely, to do what she did.”
“She left me.”
“What?”
“She left. It was shortly before I left for Ylisstol myself. I came home one day, and she was gone. No note. She took some of her clothes, a few books, and food. I never saw her again.”
Robin’s words were without bitterness. Frederick searched her face, but he found no bitterness there, either. If Robin held no hard feelings toward her mother, then it wasn’t his place to resent her. But he did. It seemed unfair that Robin’s memories of her should be disappointing after she’d waited so long for them. How could she just accept it?
“I’m sorry,” Frederick said, feeling the need to comfort her somehow.
“Thank you.” Robin squeezed his hand as if she were the one comforting him. “But I should have predicted it. I was angry at her then, but it all seems so obvious in hindsight. She’d left her entire life behind before.”
“But not you.”
“See, that’s exactly what I was angry about! I wanted her to take me with her, even though I was planning to leave myself. Maybe I was just annoyed that she beat me to the punch!”
Robin laughed, the sound was bright and sharp as a sneeze. Then she squeezed his hand again. Her fingers were trembling.
“I believe that she did love me,” she said. “As best as she knew how. I loved her the same.”
“That is all anyone can ask.”
“It’s enough?”
He kissed her forehead, and Robin smiled. He was happy to do that for her, even if he couldn’t answer her question.
“Thanks for hearing me out,” she said. “I didn’t mean to ramble on like that.”
“Not at all. I want to know you.”
She yawned, then tucked her face against his shoulder.
“That makes both of us.”
--
On the kingdom map, Halkonnis village was so small it was almost a footnote. It was far to the south, though not far enough to be coastal. Located in a moderately fertile region along a road of secondary importance, it was the sort of village that a tax collector could overlook without any noticeable effect. (A close review of the records would have revealed that this had, in fact, happened during the first year of Emmeryn’s reign. The villagers, of course, had not raised the issue.)
“It’s not particularly far from where we found you,” Frederick noted. “A few days by foot would be my guess.”
“Your guess is pretty accurate. I hadn’t gotten very far before I had the worst migraine of my life. Although I guess it worked out. I made it to Ylisstol, and with an escort at that.”
“An escort that dragged you into a few battles on the way.”
“Well, I felt very safe. You stuck to me like a burr. You were as prickly as one, too. ‘Someone pay this actress, she plays quite the fool!’ Remember?”
“…Perhaps that was a bit harsh.”
“A bit, yes. But I do like a challenge.”
Frederick cleared his throat and returned his gaze to the map. He was very happy. They’d come a long way from him mistrusting her, to her insisting that he’d been right, to being able to look back at it and laugh. He was glad she was had returned to him at last.
“Have you thought about going back?” he asked.
“To that field?”
“To your village.”
“Oh. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? See if the old house is still standing, let the neighbors know I’m still alive. I wonder if the place has changed at all. Probably not.”
Robin folded the map and tucked it back into her tome. Then she returned the tome to her trunk. It was the first time she’d retrieved it since the war.
“You’ll come with me, right?” she asked.
“Of course. If you want me to.”
“I do.” She grinned, her cheeks dimpling. “I’m going to show you off to everyone I know.”
--
“Actually, I think I’ll stay behind. I’m sure mother will understand.”
Perhaps Robin would. But Frederick didn’t.
“The choice is yours,” he said. “Although I would’ve thought you’d be interested in seeing where she grew up.”
“I am,” Morgan replied. “I—Wait, is this one?”
He held up a black mushroom with a wide, delicate cap. Frederick inspected it for a moment, then shook his head.
“That’s wyvern’s frill, not black sheep.”
“Huh? They look exactly the same.”
“Not so,” Frederick said, removing a black sheep mushroom from his basket. “The lip of a black sheep cap curls down slightly, and it’s not as shiny as a wyvern’s frill. Make sure you can spot the difference. Consuming a wyvern’s frill will cause violent stomach pains and vomiting, sometimes for days.”
“It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the risk.”
“Well, a black sheep mushroom is quite delicious. Have you ever had one?”
“Not that I remember.”
They walked for a bit in silence. It was early summer, and the woods were still cool in the mornings. Wildflowers sweetened the air. Soon they came upon a fallen tree, and they stopped to cut the plump oyster mushrooms from its trunk.
“I do want to see mother’s village,” Morgan said. “I remember a few stories she told about growing up there. But there’s…something else. There’s something there that I can almost remember, but can’t. I might remember if I go there, but I think it’s probably best if I don’t.”
“You don’t wish to regain your memories?”
Morgan shrugged. Was this the same boy who’d bashed his head against a post trying to remember him?
“There are some memories I’d like to get back,” Morgan said. “Memories of you, for instance. But, well, I’ve noticed how everyone from my world treats me. They’re kind, but careful. There are some things they just don’t say when I’m around. So I’ve been thinking lately that maybe it’s a good thing I don’t remember. I mean, I had the mark, too.”
Morgan smiled. Frederick knew that smile well. He really was his mother’s son.
“Anyhow, I’m happy the way things are,” he continued. “I’m learning a lot from Mother, I eat delicious food every day, and I get to pick mushrooms with you. It’s a good life!”
A good life, Frederick thought, brushing the dirt from his hands. That it was. Still, he could not help but wonder at Morgan’s choice. There were undoubtably painful memories in his past, but there must have been happy ones, too. It seemed a shame to give up on the latter.
“Hm, this one…is edible, right, Father?”
“Ah, witch’s lace. Incredibly toxic. False witch’s lace is good to eat, however, so long as you can tell the difference.”
--
Deciding to visit Robin’s village had been easy. Planning it was not. Frederick had not seen Robin so stressed since the Plegian campaign.
“Do you think we really need to bring two horses?” she asked him, not for the first time that week. She was tapping her pen on the inventory list she’d drawn up. She didn’t need a list—she wasn’t provisioning an army and they were mostly packed already—but having one seemed to make her feel better. Frederick folded another shirt and placed it in her trunk.
“Two horses would be prudent,” he said. They’d been over this before. It would be a taxing journey for one horse alone, considering the condition of the roads and the provisions and gifts Robin planned to bring. And, with two horses, they were less likely to be stranded due to an injury to either horse individually.
“Well…” Ink freckled the parchment. “It’s not really a two-horse kind of village?”
Frederick had grown up in a small village himself, so he understood what she meant. Still, he raised an eyebrow.
“You are the Exalt’s chief tactician and you’re bearing gifts worth more than Halkonnis exports annually. And your concern is the second horse?”
“Do you think we need to tell them about the tactician stuff?”
“That is for you to decide. Although I suppose there may be questions about where you have been.”
“No, you’re right. I’m being silly.” She put her pen down and folded her hands tightly. “Do we mention that you’re a knight?”
He could tell from her tone that she had already decided upon the answer to her question. Indignation flickered awake in his gut, which Frederick quickly tamped down. It was a reasonable concern. “Tactician” was a role villagers may not be familiar with, but they would know knights, for better or for worse. Probably for worse. The Ylissean countryside had absorbed the brunt of the damage during the last few wars, and many of its people had a strong distaste of soldiers. A stranger such as himself would be less than welcome if he came wearing a sword and boasting a coat of arms.
If he was to be a guest in the place Robin had once called home, he would have to put aside his pride as a knight. Couldn’t he do that for her? Just for a few weeks?
“What shall I be, if not a knight?” Frederick asked. “A steward?”
“A stable master would be more respectable, I think.”
“And it would justify the two horses.”
Robin smiled, her hands relaxing.
“You’re really something, you know that?”
“Well, I do think I’d be a capable stable master.”
Frederick removed a couple of books from Robin’s trunk over and above the five they’d agreed she’d take. He heard her rise from her chair, then felt her arms around his waist and her head against his back.
“That makes it rather difficult to pack,” he said.
“I’m sure it does.”
“I thought you wanted to finish this today.”
“We have tomorrow, don’t we?”
They did, though as Frederick turned to kiss her, he wondered if he was becoming too easy to persuade. He chided himself for his lack of discipline while enjoying it immensely.
“Wow, so strong!” Robin teased as he lifted her onto the dresser.
“‘Tis but the strength of a humble stable hand.”
“Stable master,” she corrected. “I didn’t think you’d be that into it.”
“Just getting into the role,” he said as he unbuckled her belt.
“That’s not the only thing you’re getting into. You—Ngh!”
Robin doubled over, clutching her head. Frederick held her as the memory swept through her. She whimpered, shivering hard. Sweat dampened her clothes. As often as this had happened, it was still bad to behold. It was worse knowing that he could do little to comfort her. Even in his arms, she was somewhere else.
“You’re alright,” he said when she finally began to come out of it. “I’m right here.”
Robin looked up, tears staining her face. Her eyes were unfocused, and he knew she did not see him.
“Elijah?” she asked.
“Who?”
Horror spread across her face, and it was like their entire bedroom had turned to ice. It was only a name, Frederick thought. Still, he felt dislocated.
“Ugh. Oh no. Shit.”
Grimacing, Robin dried her face on her sleeve.
“I just remembered my ex.”