A Fool's Hope
---
Today's writer is Josh .Josh is a writer on the Chronicles of Tyria team, and you can read his story on our website: The Magic Inside
You can find out more about Josh on twitter: @JoshSquintz
This story was published for our Summer of Short Stories (2019) event.
---
Martin Simmis gazed into the mirror, letting his emerald eyes settle on their reflection for a moment before looking beyond to the dim light of dawn outside the window behind him. Emerald. That was Matilda’s word for the color. Try as he might, he still hadn't been able to go back to just calling them green.
With a sigh, he splashed his face with a handful of water, dried it in a towel, and half-heartedly swept his thin hair into order. They said it was healthy for a man to tend his appearance, so Martin did.
Sliding the towel back onto its hook, Martin turned to cross his small room. His bed, a wardrobe, one chair, and a table were his only noteworthy belongings. Over the seasons, he’d made peace with that. Opening the wardrobe wide, he slipped out each piece of his uniform, unfolding it and putting it on: trousers, tunic, and boots. They’d been low on manpower for most of the year, which meant that even a report day was likely to end in him joining the patrol before the sun had set. Preparing for it, he slid also into his chain shirt and tabard. He strapped a single, winged pauldron over his shield arm and tied down steel bracers and leg guards. Sword-belt on, Martin turned for the door.
Approaching it, he stopped and took a deep breath. Some days this was harder than others. He touched a small, framed sketch of Matilda and the children, the only object on his only shelf, and Martin whispered another prayer to Dwayna as he left the room.
------
“Good morning, Lieutenant.” The chainmail-clad woman at the desk smiled at Martin as he stepped through the towering doors of the Seraph Headquarters. “As punctual as ever.”
He nodded, approaching the desk on the way to the stairwell beyond it. “They say a routine keeps a man grounded.”
“Well, you do seem grounded, sir.” She returned his nod, her grin fading a little. “The Captain’s waiting for you in his study.”
Martin gave her a quizzical look. “He’s waiting for me?”
She shrugged. “That’s what he said, sir.”
“Are he and the other lieutenants already going over reports?”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe so, sir. I haven’t seen Lieutenants Finn or Gagne yet. You’re normally the first one in. If you’d like, I can ask him what the meeting is—”
Martin gently waved off her concern. “No. Thank you, Alvarez. I’ll just go see him for myself.” She nodded again, this time saluting as he made his way to the spiraling stairs at the back of the large hall.
Beyond the clinking rustle of his shifting chainmail and the footsteps of a passing guard, Martin noticed another sound, a whisper, coming from the stained-glass windows that looked out on the upper-city gardens. Glancing, he noticed two figures in the sharp and colorful morning light: an adult and a child, neither of whom dressed anything like a seraph or seemed to be interacting with anyone who was. Who knew what the dark-haired girl had said, if she’d said anything at all. It was the man who whispered something in the child’s ear while rubbing her back. She smiled back wanly, looking very much like she had no interest in being there.
Martin shook his head. These days there were half-a-hundred reasons a Reach inhabitant might visit the seraphs at this early hour, and most of them weren’t anything to envy. He began his way up the staircase.
Stepping into Captain Weston’s study a minute later, he worked to keep the clamor of his armor to a minimum, gently shutting the door behind him as he approached the man at his desk. Coyne Weston had been Captain of Divinity's Reach and Queensdale for twelve years, and Martin had worked under him for the last eight. In that time, the growing responsibilities of his post had visibly aged the man, but seldom had Martin seen such defined lines across his otherwise shiny forehead.
Martin raised a hand in salute, and for a moment there was silence, as the captain shifted some papers aside before addressing the new arrival. Weston nodded, releasing Simmis from the posture.
“At ease, Martin,” the man said. Martin lowered his hand and eased his posture as the captain drew out a thin scroll and waved it at him. “We need to talk about this.”
“Sir,” Martin began, “shouldn’t Gagne and Finn be here before we begin reviewing reports?”
The captain glared at him from beneath a furrowed brow. “Regular report debriefing can wait.”
Martin shifted slightly, tensing his shoulders as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Is there something the matter, sir?” he asked. Martin knew full well there was. He’d hoped it would be overlooked, but he also knew the captain well enough to know better the moment he’d submitted his recommendation two days prior.
“‘Is there something the matter?’” Weston mocked, shaking his head in frustration. “A platoon, Simmis? Really? You genuinely think the city guard can spare an entire platoon to the campaign at Lake Gendarr?”
Martin stiffened, standing even more at attention. “The troops at Gendarr are in need, sir. Captain Loras sent to us looking for aid, and we have the means to provide it.”
“Oh, drop it, Lieutenant. I’ve read all your reports and you know it.” The aging man waved the scroll at Martin. “For the last three seasons, you’ve had declining numbers: more casualties than recruitments. And don’t think I don’t know about the bandit rumors in town. Gods, I’ve had it up to here with those under-trained, over-organized pains in my tail. You’re the head of the city guard of Divinty’s Reach, man. What in Torment are you trying to prove? That you can single-handedly protect the whole gods-blessed city?”
Martin Simmis momentarily fell silent. A hundred calculations and twice as many faces flashed through his mind. Volunteers had always been far less likely to enlist for service behind the walls than they were to enlist for front-line duty; it lacked the glory that Krytan propaganda had ascribed to fighting back the centaurs and charr on distant, bloodied soil. Despite the public opinion of seraph city guards, though, the job was nearly as dangerous as their outposted counterparts’ and far less respected. Martin had lost six good patrolmen in only half as many days. All things considered, Martin needed every soldier he could get, and he knew it, but he also knew how quickly the tide could turn in the war with the centaurs if manpower fell through. It was the duty of every Krytan to protect their borders of the nation was going to stand.
“Well,” Weston repeated, watching his lieutenant intently, “are you going to patrol our streets by yourself? I already know how many additional shifts you’ve been putting in.”
Martin came back from his thoughts. “No, sir,” he said. “Patrolling alone is not my intent, but I have been adding shifts. It’s not like I don’t have the time.” Silently, he said a prayer for his wife, wherever she may have been. “But Captain Loras’ missive spoke of the king—”
The captain interrupted, shaking his head, “The king doesn’t want war on two fronts. I’m well aware.” He put the scroll down on the desk and gestured toward the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Sit down, Martin.”
Wincing quietly, Simmis did so, now keenly aware of the conversation they were about to have.
“You’re a good man. You put your duty to Kryta before everything, throwing yourself in danger’s way for crown and country. I’ve seen it time and again, and it’s what impresses me the most about you.” With a sigh, Coyne Weston paused.
“It’s also what scares me,” he continued. The lines in his brow were deeper now. “You don’t know when to stop, even now. Gods alive, it cost you your family. You didn’t need to volunteer for that Freeholds campaign, and even that was just the final straw for Matilda.”
Simmis closed his eyes, letting them slowly reopen. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. “You’re right,” Martin said. “I do all those things, and Dwayna help me, I’m trying to change.” That too was a prayer. Those words were never in vain.
“Your people are already stretched thin,” the captain said, settling back in his chair, “and you know what happens to overtired city guards, Martin. I know you do.”
Martin looked up at the splintered rafters. It appeared to have been some time since they were last oiled. “They make mistakes,” he replied, looking once more at the captain of Divinity’s Reach, his superior.
“They make mistakes,” the captain echoed, leaning forward on his elbows. “And for city guards, mistakes mean lives, either their own or some unlucky civilians’. We can’t have that. We can’t have more of that.”
Martin nodded. He didn’t like it, but Weston was right, and he needed to hear it. Again.
The captain was about to say something more when there was a knock at the door. Weston groaned. “Come in.”
A slender young man dressed in the silver and white linens of an office-bound seraph clerk stepped in tentatively, holding a tome in one hand. Martin had interacted with Corporal Herbert Jenkins only a handful of times, but he recognized him. The corporal addressed the two of them with a sensible level of nervousness. “Sirs.”
The captain shook his head. “Yes? What is it, Corporal?”
“We—” the man started, quickly pausing to consider his words. “Well, sir, there’s a situation downstairs—” he stammered. “It may need your attention.”
Having finished his address, Jenkins stood still, watching Weston as though his words were a satisfactory explanation for his intrusion. Martin could remember being so young.
Captain Weston waited a moment for further explanation, but his patience ran out. “What is it, Corporal? What is the situation? I'm not going to play dozen-questions with you.”
“We have a volunteer downstairs.”
Weston exchanged an exasperated look with Martin before composing himself once more with a deep breath. “Good. Then enter him in the recruitment book and enlist him with the next available squad. You know how this works.”
Whatever tome Jenkins was holding, he looked down at it with unsurety, then looked back up at the captain. “Yes, sir. Yes, generally I do, but this is a unique case.”
Captain Weston rolled his eyes subtly. “Spit it out, Corporal.”
“Sir,” the young man said, pausing for breath, “it seems the volunteer is a deserter.”
“Excuse me, son?” Weston shifted in his chair. “A deserter? From what?”
“The Seraph, sir.” Jenkins shrugged. It was strange how comfortable a man could become when others suddenly shared his confusion. “We checked our records,” Jenkins continued. “The story he gave us matches closely to the desertion note attached to a recruitment record for a man by the same name. It took us some time to find it, though, sir. If his story is true, the man deserted eleven years ago.”
“Eleven years ago?” Martin piped. He would have left the matter between the corporal and captain, but this was far too curious.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Jenkins popped, straightening again. He held out the tome. “It's right there in the papers, sir: abandoned a post at Stoneguard in 1292. Was given leave to check on his kin after a bad loss at Ascalon Settlement. Never came back. Now, eleven years later, he's sitting at my desk with a bag full of rusty armor. It’s old but certainly a seraph design, wings and all.”
Martin took the tome and opened it to the marked page, letting his eyes wander across the information as Jenkins pointed to it with one slender finger. He passed it across the table to Weston, who looked it over in much the same way.
Jenkins looked back and forth between the two superiors. “What should we do with him?”
“What's the law say we do with him, Corporal?” Weston asked plainly.
“Well, sir,” Jenkins hesitated. “Section nineteen says that a deserter found is to be tried by a ministry-elected tribunal and imprisoned for no less than the period deserted.”
Captain Weston nodded. “You have your answer, Corporal. Put that man in a cell and notify the ministry that they need to assemble a tribunal.”
Jenkins hesitated a moment again, the flicker of rebuttal growing in his eyes, but he decided against whatever question or comment he may have had. He nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, raising a hand to his forehead in salute and eyeing both men in turn. Weston saluted back, freeing the man to take his leave.
“Odd event,” Simmis murmured as Jenkins slipped out. “A deserter enlisting.”
“You've never worked in records,” Weston said with a smart smirk. “It happens, though not at all like this. It's generally a plea made after they're caught: a return to duty instead of taking the sentence. Once a coward, always a coward.”
Martin nodded, and Captain Weston shook his head, looking down at his desk and returning to his previous thoughts. “Look, Martin, you've made good progress in your command—and your life. I know your motives are good. Keep taking care of your people, keep growing your ranks, and we'll talk again about how you can help in situations like this in the future. For now, I'm denying your advisement. No one from the guard is going to Gendarr. Understand?”
“Yes, Captain,” Martin said. He gestured toward the door. “With your permission, I’ll carry on my duties.”
Weston nodded approval, and the two saluted. The captain reminded him that reports would still be reviewed at the usual time, but beyond that his day was his own to attend to his men and patrols. Martin stepped out the door, closing it quietly behind him, and started off toward his own desk. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned the day beginning.
The next day, Martin rose and began his day in the same way he always did, waking to the thoughts that rose in his mind before the sun could rise above the horizon. He slipped off his mattress (the one Matilda had insisted would improve their sleep), stepped across the room to his window, and looked out across the Ossan Quarter to say a quiet series of prayers for himself, his men, his city, and Kryta. He washed his face, donned his armor, and said a final prayer for his family before walking out the door and off to the Seraph Headquarters.
The previous day hadn’t been anything to speak of. A bar fight or two had to be broken up, and of course he’d taken on an added patrol that evening, to fill in for Farnald, still on leave to recover from the three broken ribs he’d sustained in an altercation.
Captain Weston had been right, of course. Martin had pressed to stretch his guardsmen and guardswomen too thin, or at least thinner than they already were. It was good Coyne had halted his request the previous day, but it still stung. He thought he was past that. He still had to learn to prioritize the individuals depending on him, for his men, for Weston—for Matilda and the kids.
Martin shook it all away as he passed through the imposing doors yet again. There was Alvarez, at her desk as always. The woman was easily as consistent as he was, probably more so. He was about to greet her, when a sound of shuffling drew his attention to the stained-glass windows.
He looked up to see the same girl he’d noticed there the previous morning. This time, though, there was no one with her. Alone and silent, she lay sleeping on the floor, clutching an orange knapsack and sliding her booted feet back and forth across the stonework as though dreaming.
Stepping toward the front desk, Martin greeted Alvarez, still keeping one eye on the girl. “What’s going on here?” he asked, nodding toward the child. “Wasn’t she here yesterday?”
Alvarez looked up from her papers and followed his gaze. “Oh, the girl. Yes sir, she was.” She shook her head, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Poor thing spent the night here. Her father was detained yesterday, and Corporal Jenkins is still trying to find someone to take her in.”
“Someone to take her in? Where’s the girl’s mother?”
Alvarez shook her head, her tight ponytail swinging gently behind her. “Couldn’t say, sir. No sign of kin either, as far as I know. Jenkins is making rounds of the city’s orphanages today.”
“Orphanages?” Martin asked. He was normally aware of arrests that had immediate familial implications. “How long is her father being detained, and for what?”
Sympathy still on her face, Alvarez shrugged. “Don’t know how long, sir. Could be some time, though. I thought Jenkins said something about desertion.”
“Desertion?” Martin asked. He turned fully from the girl to Alvarez. “That was the deserter yesterday? The man with the child?”
She nodded. “Afraid so, sir. Poor thing.”
Quieting, Martin thought for a moment. He remembered Jenkins saying the man had voluntarily come to re-enlist. Maybe he honestly didn’t know what had awaited him. Regardless, the girl deserved better than this, and Martin feared Jenkins, young as he was, didn’t fully appreciate that.
“Do you know which cell the man’s in?”
Alvarez shuffled through some papers on the corner of the desk, drawing one out and scanning it quickly. “Looks like cell seventeen, sir,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
Martin nodded toward the document Alvarez had referenced. “Can I borrow that?” The clerk nodded, passing him the sheet. “Thank you. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the stockade, cell seventeen.”
“Understood, sir.”
It was all too often that Lieutenant Martin Simmis found himself at the stockade cells on the lower levels of the Seraph Headquarters. It seemed that every few days some fool gave the Seraph adequate reason to drag him off the streets and toss him into a cell for at least a night, just to come to his senses. Passing cells fifteen and sixteen, he prepared himself to face yet another fool, one of a whole different caliber.
Stepping up to the bars, he peered through at a slender man hunched over in the corner. “Callan Arkayd?” Martin asked.
The man in the cell looked up, blinking curiously. He didn’t look like a fool, not entirely. His thick, dark hair was overgrown, but he’d clearly made an effort to clean and brush it. “Yes. Sir, I mean. Yes, sir,” he mumbled, standing to his feet and saluting. With a free hand, he wiped sleep from his eye.
Martin waved the man to lower his hand. “What are you doing here, Mr. Arkayd?”
“Sir. I was taken in for desertion, sir.”
Martin clasped his hands in front of him, settling in for what could be a long conversation. “Yes, I’m aware. Deserted from the Gendarran front over a decade ago. Disappeared, as far as we were concerned.” He paused, watching the man’s expression. Nothing shown clearly, until Martin asked his next question. “Was that your daughter upstairs?”
Callan froze for a second. “Yes, sir.” His shoulders slumped, but a small grin parted his lips. “That’s my Penelope. Best thing I have in life.”
Unshifting, Martin raised an eyebrow. “Best thing in your life, you say? Then, by Kormir, please explain to me why you brought her here to watch her father shackled and carted off to spend a decade in this cell. I’m not one to encourage dodging the law, but it may have made more sense in your case.”
The weight on the man’s shoulders seemed to increase. “Sir, I—“
“You can stop the ‘sirs’, Mr. Arkayd,” Martin interjected. “You are no longer Seraph. You haven’t been for some time.”
The man nodded, further shamed. “You see—” he started again. “See, I didn’t know what would happen by coming here. I thought I’d be in trouble, but not like this. I just... I hoped. For her sake, I had to hope I could make good on what I’d done.”
Martin stared at him a moment. This man was a fool.
“For her sake?” Martin pressed. “Dwayna’s light, man. She’s up there waiting to be put in an orphanage while you do time in a long-term cell somewhere on the outskirts of Kryta. How is that for her?” Images of his own girls flickered through Martin’s mind, but he shook them away. He couldn’t do that now.
For a moment Arkayd simply looked sheepish, unable to meet Martin’s eye, but he took a deep breath and made an effort to respond. “Penelope doesn’t have her mother,” he said somberly. “We lost her when Penelope was born. She was a good woman, my Nell: made me better every day. But Penelope, she never knew her, and she never will. All she’s ever had was me, and I— well, after I lost Nell, I wasn’t the best father. I wasn’t much of a person, really.” The man beyond the bars bowed his head. “I was a mess, sir. The girl didn’t have a mother or a father for years.”
“Well,” Martin said, maintaining an erect posture, “she’s not going to have one with you in here either.”
“No, I guess not,” Arkayd sighed. He took a few steps around his cell, rubbing his face. “I just wanted her to have an honorable father for once, someone to look up to. This seemed like the way. I thought maybe—“
“You thought maybe the Seraph would forget?”
“No.” Callan straightened, shaking his head. “I hoped maybe I could make it right. She’s dealt with so much, Penelope has. I just want her to have something that’s right.”
To that Martin found no reply. His mind wandered once more to Hildi, to Anna, to Boren, and finally to Matilda, and there he settled for longer than he would have liked. On opposite sides of the bars, the two men stood silently. Each was a fool, and each could think only of who their follies had cost.
The quiet between them lingered for some time before either finally moved, but still neither spoke. Whether that was from satisfaction or shame, even Martin couldn’t say, but he nodded his gratitude for the answers, stepped clear of the cell, and made his way back up and out of the stockade. He passed the clerk’s desk and briefly glanced in the direction of the black-haired girl now waking up on the floor. She looked cold: not outwardly, but inwardly.
Martin proceeded up the spiraled stairs toward the captain’s study.
------
“You’re certain you want to do this, Lieutenant?” Weston asked, seated upright behind his desk with a quill in hand. “It won’t be easy.”
It had taken nearly a season to come this far, and now the man was asking if he was committed? Martin had traded in his extra patrols for seemingly endless hours in the chambers of various ministers, requesting their support and scouring their libraries for any historic precedent for what he was proposing. He’d had meeting after meeting with the recording scribes of the Seraph themselves, both to review the laws of the organization and draft and submit the various documents necessary to the process of implementing something new. It was all on the way to this very morning, so yes, he was committed.
Martin looked over at the royal scribe standing beside the desk. Having worked together several times already, they exchanged a nod. Martin then looked back to the prisoner and his two guards positioned several feet away in the corner of the room. His mind wandered briefly again to his son and daughters, and he prayed to the gods that one day he too might get another chance. That hope hurt.
“Lieutenant?” Weston repeated. “You’re certain?”
Martin kept his face still. “You said it yourself, sir: we can’t continue guarding the city on diminishing numbers.”
“You’ll have to interview and assess these men individually, wherever they’re currently incarcerated,” he warned.
“I know, sir.”
“Per article four, it will be on you and your people to train and watch them on their daily duties. Two seasons at least.” The man scowled at Martin inspectingly, then he glanced at the man in shackles at the back of the room. “Many will fail you.”
“Yes, sir.” Martin agreed. “But some will succeed.”
“When anything goes wrong—”
Martin nodded. “Sir, I know. I did draft the charter.”
“So you did,” Weston acknowledged with a nod. “Well then, you have my approval.”
He bent forward over the desk and scribbled out his signature at the bottom of the page before him. Putting down the quill, he turned the tome to the scribe, who pressed the seal of the ministers into a tray of ink and stamped it onto the page alongside the captain’s signature. All parties exchanged looks quietly, drying their instruments and putting them back where they’d previously been housed.
“Gentlemen,” the captain said, addressing the guards in the corner. He gestured at the prisoner. “Please release the first candidate for Lieutenant Simmis’ new recruitment program.”
Callan Arkayd rubbed his wrists as a guard pulled the irons away. Gratitude filled his face, and he thanked everyone in the room, one by one.
Martin turned. “You know the stipulations, correct?”
Callan nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“You’ve been reinstated at the level of a private. You have no rights except those which this document,” Martin gestured at the thin tome on the captain’s desk, “and your commanding officer give you. Each year of your service as a city guardsman expunges one year of desertion, with the potential of increased reduction for exceptional performance. Fail to perform your duties as defined, and you forfeit your opportunity, your wage, and your freedom.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” Callan nodded again, emphatically. “I won’t fail you, sir. Not again.”
“Good,” Martin said, turning back toward the desk. “With your leave, Captain, we have another errand to attend to. An orphanage is no place for a girl who has a good father.”
“Granted.” Weston nodded to both men, releasing their salutes, and the two made their way for the door, until the Captain stopped them again. “Lieutenant,” he called.
Martin looked back at the man behind the desk.
“This is taking care of your people,” Weston said with a slight air of pride. He nodded at Private Arkayd. “This is Kryta.”
