Chapter XIII
The tongue must dance before the feet
Kilin abandoned his seat as Jaella approached the table. “I’m off to prepare.”
Kilin had received his own orders to the north that morning, and the coming departure had been the focus of their talk over lunch. But where Allen was assigned to lead a scout patrol, Kilin had been placed as the second-in-command of the 9th Legion’s fourth infantry cohort, beneath Senior Captain Selar. The two had joked over lunch about who would have a chance to win more glory in battle, but it was a draw between the prestige of a cavalry position and independence of a scout leader and the hand-to-hand glory of leading a full cohort into the melee.
As Kilin disappeared, Jaella joined Allen at the table. “Where’s he off to?” she asked as she sat down with her tray.
“Preparations for his orders to the north,” Allen told her, as he filled her in on the details. “We both received orders this morning to join the 9th. We have two weeks leave and then we’re gone.”
For the next few minutes he answered her questions. As it turned out, Jaella had not yet received orders of her own, and she was eager for information that might give her a hint about when she would.
“So you’re only in the capital for the rest of this week?” she asked.
“Until Yoneth, at least,” he said. “After that, I need to take the horses out for a long ride.” Looking at Jaella, he was reminded of how striking she had been in the evening dress at her family’s home, and his mind wandered toward the dance on Kaisa.
His thoughts turned to a more amorous course, and he wondered how she would answer if he asked her to the dance with him. Perhaps she had other plans? He wasn’t going to find out if he didn’t ask her.
He decided to just go for it, and turned the topic of the conversation away from warfare. “Before I leave, there was something I wanted to do.”
Her green eyes settled on his grey, seeking to guess his motivation. “What’s that?”
He held her gaze as he reached across the table to offer her his hand. “I would like to take you to the dance on Kaisa’s Day,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the capital without seeing you one last time out of these uniforms.”
Jaella smiled, as if she had been waiting for just that invitation. She placed her hand in his. “I would love to go to the dance with you.”
There was a distant cheering somewhere in his mind, but he focused on the girl at hand.
He closed his hand around hers and looked up from beneath his eyebrows as his lips brushed the back of her fingers.
“Then I am honored,” he said. “I very much look forward to spending an evening with you.”
He released her hand and stood. Casual conversation with a friend over lunch was one thing, but a date needed to have a certain mystery about it. It was time for him to go. “You’ll have to forgive me now; it’s time that I was going.”
She tilted her head back to look up at him, and it made him want to reach out and caress her cheek.
He felt like grinning, but he only allowed himself a smile. He had been thinking of Jaella since he’d first seen her a few days before, and then the attack in the alley had thrown them together. Perhaps the attack had been a stroke of fortune after all. No one had come to lasting harm, and he had met Jaella due to it. He wondered where this would lead. “I’ll see you at the dance.”
He inclined his head to her, and turned away.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 10:43 pm and is filed under A Northern Heart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am
There’s a lot of arching going on for such a short block of text. Also “almost in a question” is used twice in conjunction with arching.
I don’t think romance is out of character for Allen but the phrasing — which I can totally see as joking, facetious, etc — just pulled me straight out of the narrative. I can understand what attitude of the exchange is, I know it’s a joke, but I just don’t _feel_ it. Maybe I just need an obviously impossible aural or visual component to help me with these types of scenes.
Aside from all that, I’m glad we’ll get to see more of Jaella and I hope that she gets to stick around at least a little after the dance. I’m gonna come back when I’m not way past my bedtime and see if my reaction has changed any.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:46 am
Wow! I didn’t know he had it in him. He must have read a lot of Shakespeare or something as a kid. Whatever it was, it definitely showed a different side of Allen, one we really haven’t had a chance to see or guess at. I took what Allen said seriously, and hope he meant it that way. I like Jaella; I don’t want him to be toying with her. I don’t think he’d be the type to do that. Kilin might be more likely to do something like that, but I don’t think that’s very likely either.
I was half expecting Jaella to say, ‘I’d love to go to the dance with you … but, I already promised to go with someone else’. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot, and I’m glad that didn’t happen here.
Will Allen make a fool of himself at the dance? Will Kilin gain great glory in battle? Will Jaella ever get her assignment papers? Tune in next time… (when none of these questions will be answered!)
It may have been a short chapter, but it was a good chapter.
-A. mouse
August 1st, 2008 at 9:39 am
The chapter probably is too short for what I did with it; given the way I’ve written Allen to date this comes as a large shift in the narrative.
Perhaps I will revise this and find a happy medium between a high romantic and a quotidian tone.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:43 am
I’ve revised it a bit. It’s less florid now. I shouldn’t write late at night.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I think the revised, less florid version has a much more natural feel for Allen. He’s still romantic and a bit formal, but not so much as it’s out of character. I positively adore the line “There was a distant cheering somewhere in his mind”. It comes off, at least to my mind, as a bit British (or at least Bill Bryson-y), which I like.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
“You’ll have to forgive me now; it’s time that I was going. - end quote?
While I liked the flowery exchange and will miss it, I have to agree that this sound more in character than that did. Maybe Allen will be more romantic at the dance, that might fit better.
I had to look up ‘quotidian’, interesting word. Sadly, I doubt I’ll remember it.
-A. mouse
September 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am
am loving the story so far, chad! looking forward to the next chapter…
something i find odd: we haven’t yet had a firsthand account of the attack in the alley from either Kilin or Jaella. Surely, as Allen is a concerned friend, he would have asked the two of them what they remembered as soon as he saw them awake in the infirmary? We can deduce that it was a surprise attack as seen by Juslir’s letter: “…Lieutenants Kilin and Jaella have been unable to identify their attackers to date,…” but perhaps a paragraph added to the infirmary scene… or they did in fact see something but this information is later silenced…
and what was the connection between Kilin and Jaella that had them walking to the bar together? Perhaps a hint in the same exchange would tie it together a little more. Some things need to be spelled out to simple readers
one more oddity I can’t reconcile just yet: in a society driven by social and political intrigue and connections such as this one, would Juslir, who has not had any need to speak to Allen – a junior officer - before, reveal so much in a written letter and not even ask for that letter to be destroyed after reading? Or are the contents intended to be deceiving to a potential enemy who may lay eyes on it? In which case, Allen is being deliberately deceived too, even while still being the loyal arrow pointed in the right direction…
I guess time, and more reading, will reveal all in due course!
September 7th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Good points, NS. Perhaps I knew what was happening and forgot to clarify. I’ll take a look at it all when I’m revising next time. Allen did ask Kilin and Jaella about the attack in the alley, but it wasn’t any new information so I didn’t put it in as a scene: they saw some black shapes moving in towards them and were then struck in the head.
Kilin ran into Jaella earlier that evening–they were fairly well-acquainted already, having been born into roughly the same social circle and having taken commissions together–and she told him about the lieutenant at lunch, whom he recognized as Allen. They talked for a bit about Allen before he invited her along to the bar that evening to celebrate his promotion, and they were walking there together when they were attacked.
Juslir is an interesting fellow, as will be seen eventually. For the moment though, let’s just say that he’s not overly concerned with a private letter showing up in Allen’s hands, but rather more concerned with someone reading it along the way and preventing or altering the message before it gets there. Once the message was delivered, all was well. The information in it is not inherently dangerous if read by another, although it would make Allen a larger target for any enemies of the king.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
I really like the story so far. I just started and read up to here in 2 days.
I like the idea of gods and goddesess marking their chosen humans. It adds a cool idea to the story.
I wish you had more regular updates, but I understand why you don’t. Everyone has things to do. But more importantly all the chapters so far are like something that you would see in a book that was published and sold.
In other words your story is Amazing so far, but that just makes me even more impatient.
I can’t wait to learn more about Allens Goddess, like what she symbolizes (Harvest, Healing…..etc). The date will be interesting too.
I was also wondering about the same questions as NS, Glad you answer questions.
Hope the rest of the story stays as good as it is now.
I also hope this doesn’t show up twice. These comments hate me.
October 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Hi Severianz, I’m glad you like the story. My apologies for not updating more often; there are a lot of things I want to do in the story but I can’t justify the time right now. If I spent the amount of time it would take to do the story justice, it would ruin my academic career (I don’t get all the work done that I think I should as it is). Hopefully on the next break (about six weeks from now), I’ll be able to get some more chapters up. It takes me most of a day (about six hours of pure writing) to write one 2,000-3,000 word chapter, which doesn’t count thinking of all the events and interconnections (this part can occupy the whole of my attention whenever I’m not writing). I actually have most of the story in my head, waiting for me to add the details and flesh it out. What happens in each chapter is a bit of a surprise to me too.
If you’re interested in a really specific scene or a piece of history, I might be able to answer the question here without revealing too much.
I deleted the doubled comment for you.