Chapter Text
“Falcon Gabe? Goddess, tell me he’s not here. My cousin told me stories about him, and I wouldn’t feel safe with a man like that in the area. I have three children! What am I supposed to tell them?”
“An outlaw? Here? Well, I don’t think any scoundrel’s fool enough to just come into a Goddess-fearing town and declare himself a criminal, but if you ask me, Fraldarius is rather unfriendly. Called me a bastard just for making friendly conversation with his sister. I sure wouldn’t mind someone arresting him.”
“Oh, well, I’ve just been so frightened of Falcon Gabe that I’ve just gotten all faint and woozy all the time, and my knees start shaking, and—I’m just terribly dainty, you know, and maybe a strong man like yourself could help lead me back to my bedroom. I might remember more after I lay down for a bit…”
Sylvain’s smile tightened on his face, and he declined the woman as sweetly as he could before making his exit. It was only the latest in what had been a string of hit-or-miss interviews.
The woman had been rather pretty, and Sylvain was the furthest thing possible from a prude, but the offer annoyed him more than anything. There was a criminal somewhere around Arianrhod, and while Sylvain was making better progress now, something impatient inside of him still itched for an immediate and dramatic resolution.
This tiny corner of the town was unkempt, and due to the roads being too narrow for any carriage to cross, their boots crunched rhythmically against the gravel on the ground. A hand clamped onto his shoulder, and Sylvain turned to see Ingrid. It was early in the afternoon, just past lunch time, and Sylvain stepped to the other side of Ingrid so that the woman could walk in what minimal shade there was.
She didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, Ingrid looked as if she were trying very hard not to laugh at him.
“I did warn you she wouldn’t be much help,” Ingrid teased. Despite the fact this was her sixth or so day of accompanying him around town, Sylvain still found himself unused to her presence. He rarely had a partner on any previous assignments, and certainly never one like Ingrid. Her clothing was functional rather than fashionable: a cotton dress and a straw sunhat rather than a woman’s bonnet, but Ingrid still looked every bit as authoritative as Sylvain did in his uniform.
“You did tell me that. To be fair, Miss Ingrid, she was willing to help,” Sylvain said dryly, slowing his stride so that she could catch up to him. “Just not with anything I actually wanted her help with.”
“Stars above—and here I was thinking you were some shameless Romeo,” Ingrid said.
“Well, I’d hate to let you down. Is there any way I can make it up to you?” Sylvain asked, but his grin was more goofy than seductive.
Aside from a sigh, Ingrid gave his words no acknowledgement. “Do you feel any closer to getting your man?”
Sylvain deliberated his answer. Truth be told, even though all the information he had had on hand pointed to the possibility of Falcon Gabe in Arianrhod, Sylvain knew that he was growing impatient.
The town as a whole seemed frightened of the outlaw, but the fear seemed to originate from widespread rumors rather than any firsthand experiences. Sylvain had kept Falcon Gabe’s grittier crimes to himself; the last thing he needed was mass hysteria.
It was easier to talk to townspeople with Ingrid at his side—Ashe had been right about that. They trusted her, what with Ingrid having spent her whole life in this town, and strangers seemed to take her presence next to Sylvain as a mark of approval. It would have been heartwarming, but Sylvain still felt as if he had yet to find a solid lead.
His frustration was mounting. Sylvain had taken to waking up while the sky was still misty, riding Darling out to the empty plains and then back to town before most of its people had awoken. He didn’t think much during these morning rides. It was unlikely he’d ever happen to run into Falcon Gabe out in the wild by chance, but the change in scenery made Sylvain feel as if he was making progress. Sylvain had wondered, more than once, whether he should cut his losses in Arianrhod and move to the next town.
But Sylvain would finish his ride and return to Galatea’s stable to catch sight of the light coming from Ingrid’s home, burnt orange through the lace of her curtains, and he kept deciding that he would put off leaving until the next day.
With a start, Sylvain realized that he hadn’t actually answered Ingrid. He stopped walking and pulled his hat off, sweeping a hand through his already messy hair and blinking in the sudden sunlight.
“Marginally closer, but I get the feeling that I’m still not doing enough,” he finally said.
Sylvain hadn’t realized the extent of his own stress until he spoke aloud and heard the obvious tension in his own voice. Tellingly, Ingrid’s expression shifted from one of curiosity to concern. Thus far, she had only ever talked to the easy-going, palatable side of him.
Uncomfortable, Sylvain quickly changed the subject.
“Hey, but that’s why you and I are partnered together, right? Two heads are better than one, and all that?” Sylvain said, giving Ingrid the widest smile he could manage.
Ingrid didn’t look very convinced, but she blessedly dropped the topic and gave him a small smile in return. “Right.”
“It’s kind of Dedue to mind the saloon while you’re here with me.”
“It is. I’m mighty grateful Dedue agreed to it, especially since he’s so good at it. It’s peaceful since we haven’t gotten many visitors, but it’s also a little sad,” Ingrid said, sounding wistful. “I suppose people might not be very willing to travel nowadays, with all the news of robberies, and all.”
Sylvain paused to take a drink from his canteen, and then passed it to Ingrid, considering her. “Has it always been like this?”
“Has what?”
“Arianrhod. When I rode into town, the sign outside said the population was over a thousand people, but it doesn’t seem nearly that big now.”
“Oh. No, this used to be a mining town, years ago. Once the copper ran out, most people left for other jobs, but some people stayed. I reckon this was around...twenty years ago, or something like that. It’s been pretty quiet ever since.”
Ingrid took a slow sip from the canteen and wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes fixating on something past Sylvain. He looked in his periphery, but there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable beside him.
“You don’t hear of many boomtowns lasting that long,” he said. “This must be a pretty special place, huh?”
“Yes,” Ingrid said, voice unusually soft, and she stared down at the canteen. “I like to think so.”
The town’s history with mining was new information to him. Privately, Sylvain couldn’t help but ponder how Arianhrod was able to sustain its school and general store with less than five hundred residents and no real industry. Sylvain wanted to ask her more about her connection with the town. He wondered which of her relatives had been the one to open Galatea’s, and where the rest of her family was.
But Sylvain wasn’t crass or dumb enough to ask such invasive questions out of nowhere. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t—Ingrid suddenly perked up and walked down the street past him.
“Annette!” Ingrid said, and she waved Sylvain over without looking at him. “Marshal Gautier, come meet Annette.”
Annette was one of the townspeople Sylvain now recognized by sight, but had never properly met. She was a head shorter than Ingrid and orange-haired, clad in a ribboned bonnet and a cream colored bustle dress so voluminous it looked as if she were wearing a cloud. Her eyes lit up as she spied the approaching pair, and she unlatched her gate so that Ingrid and Sylvain could step onto her porch.
“Good afternoon, Ingrid! What luck! Lessons just ended for the day, and I was just thinking about going to find you two,” Annette said. “You’ve been quite the talk of the town ever since you arrived, Marshal. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous to talk to you—I haven’t spoken to anyone so important since I left finishing school, but now that Ingrid’s with you—cheese and crackers, and now I’m just blathering more! I'm Annette Dominic. It’s so nice to meet you.”
Annette gave him a quick curtsy—the first one he’d gotten since leaving Fhirdiad. Despite the fact that this dusty town seemed like the last place appropriate for any genteel etiquette, Sylvain, amused, bowed back.
“Nice to meet you as well, Miss Annette,” Sylvain said.
“Annette’s the schoolteacher here in Arianrhod,” Ingrid explained. “I asked her if she’d ever seen anything like the rifle you showed me, since her pa was a sheriff and they used to work with guns.”
Sylvain leaned an arm against the whitewashed fence and grinned widely at Ingrid. “That’s quite resourceful. Intuitive, even. Keep up the good work and I might actually deputize you.”
Ingrid rolled her eyes, but seemed nonetheless pleased with the comment, the tips of her ears reddening at his words. “I just did what any decent citizen would have done. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and make this sound more impressive than it is.”
“On the contrary, Miss Ingrid. I think it’s very impressive.”
Annette watched them with unabashed amusement.
“You’d mentioned how handsome and charming he was, Ingrid, but I didn’t think that’d meant you’d been admiring him,” Annette said, leaning over to Ingrid and speaking with the absolute least subtle whisper Sylvain had ever heard in his life.
Ingrid abruptly shoved Sylvain’s canteen back into his hands and whirled away from them, muttering something about wanting to check out Annette’s vegetable garden. Annette giggled.
“Sorry, sorry. Not very mature of me, I know. But we don’t get much excitement here, and like I said, everyone’s been buzzing about you and Falcon,” Annette said, and her expression turned more solemn at the mention of the outlaw. “I did actually want to talk to you about that. The rifle, I mean.”
Sylvain straightened up. “I’m all ears.”
“Ingrid showed me the illustrated picture of Falcon Gabe’s rifle, and it took me a while, but I did recognize the make. It’s a Charon Model 1185, and it’s an extremely old model—it’s no wonder you didn’t recognize it! They’re the kind my father used when he was just starting out,” Annette said.
“Are they rare, then?” Sylvain asked, pulling an illustration of the rifle out of his pocket. It was identical to the one he had initially given Ingrid, except that this paper didn’t have a sketch of the outlaw himself.
“Oh, yes. Very. Actually, I’m surprised that there’s one that’s still functionable, since I think they’re more of a collector’s item than anything else,” Annette said, peering over to the paper as well. “Especially with that unique color, and the monogram. This one’s probably one of a kind.”
Sylvain’s thoughts were sent into overdrive, theories and questions buzzing in his head as he sorted through the first real lead he’d gotten since setting out on the case. “So then, hypothetically, if I were to find the rifle, I’d find its owner as well?”
Annette bit her lip. “I suppose you could try, but it’d be like trying to find a black cat at midnight. A bigger town would have some sort of gunsmith who could let you know if he’d found anyone trying to sell a Charon, but I’ve never actually seen one in person. I’m sorry if it hasn’t been much help.”
“Don’t worry about that a bit, Miss Annette. You’ve helped me plenty,” Sylvain said.
He motioned towards the gate with his head, letting Ingrid (who had been doing a rather poor job of staring at a row of onions and pretending not to care about their discussion) know that he was ready to leave.
Afterall, they had quite a bit of information to parse through back at the saloon.
…
That night, Sylvain sent out another telegram, hurriedly scribbling down his message onto a slip of paper and handing the delivery boy an extra gold dollar coin to expedite the process.
ATTENTION -(STOP)- FG CARRYING UNIQUE CHARON 1185 -(STOP)- BLACK WITH GOLD ENGRAVING -(STOP)- ALERT ME IF FOUND THROUGH TRADERS OR BLACK MARKET -(STOP)-
S J GAUTIER
…
In Arianrhod, Sylvain was starting to become less and less remarkable with every passing day.
This was actually good and bad news—good, because it meant that he had hung around long enough to be seen as just another member of the community rather than an outsider, and bad, because it meant that Sylvain had been here for three weeks with no solid progress on the outlaw. He found that he didn’t particularly mind; the people seemed safe in this isolated town, and he was enjoying the sense of community, as ephemeral as it was.
He had been traveling around the country for the greater part of the past decade, just him, his revolver, and Darling. Sylvian used to rent a home in Fhirdiad, but he rarely stayed there even when he was in the city, always finding company or an assignment to keep him busy. He didn’t really mind the wandering aspect of his job, but he did miss knowing people.
Sylvain knew people now. In the morning, he greeted Ashe and Dedue and helped them when he had the time to, joining them in the kitchen or carrying in firewood. Sylvain had even stepped in to tutor Ashe’s younger brother in cursive one night, even though he had never seen himself as much of a teacher.
“How’s Jude doing?” Sylvain asked as he passed by Ashe in the morning, the other man’s arms full with laundry.
“Better! Much better, although he’s still struggling with the capital Q,” Ashe laughed. From behind him Dedue’s eyes glimmered with amusement.
“He’ll be fine,” Dedue said lowly, “as long as he doesn’t acquaint himself with any Quincys or Quintuses.”
Ingrid stayed by Sylvain’s side as walked around town, but her presence was less of a necessity now that people were growing accustomed to him. He told her as much as he helped her down the stairs of Galatea’s one morning.
“You know, you can return to working. You don’t have to keep such a close eye on me, dear heart. Someone might get the wrong idea,” Sylvain said.
Ingrid rolled her eyes. “Pray tell.”
“Well, if some poor soul looked upon us and let their imagination run a bit wild about what an attractive pair such as ourselves were up to, I wouldn’t blame them.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Ingrid said. “I would blame you.”
Sylvain laughed and offered her his arm; to his surprise, Ingrid took it, wrapping her hand around his arm with a look that clearly stated she thought he was being a nuisance. Her hair was freshly washed, and it shone pale-gold in the sunlight. Sylvain didn’t press her about work any further.
People greeted him as he made the familiar rounds. Annette waved to him from the schoolhouse window, and Sylvain waved back; she really was an impressive woman, being able to instruct the many children in Arianrhod all by herself. Most towns out in the wilderness were mostly single men (or men who acted as if they were single) chasing work, but there seemed to be a decent amount of women and children here.
Perhaps it was because of the mining crash, miners packing up and leaving their family behind. Annette had said as much about her own father once, when they had shared a quiet dinner with Dedue.
“He stayed around for a while after work dried up, but he sent me and my mama to live with my uncle in Fhirdiad when I was fourteen. And after I finished school, I came back, and my father had just…vanished,” Annette had said, and Sylvain could tell from Dedue’s expression that this wasn’t the first time he had heard the story. Dedue hadn’t grown up in Arianrhod, and neither had Ashe.
“This wealthy traveling merchant—Lonato Gaspard—he took me and my siblings on the road with him for a few years,” Ashe had explained when Sylvain had asked, both men arm deep in a pile of clean laundry. “We had made a stop in Arianrhod when he heard his son Christopher died. So he handed me fifty dollars in an envelope and told me I was on my own from that point on.”
“How old were you?” Sylvain asked.
Ashe had to ponder the question for a minute. “Nearly sixteen, I reckon. Could have been worse.”
“It could have also been better,” Sylvain had said, and Ashe had grinned bittersweetly at that.
In the present, Sylvain felt Ingrid’s curious eyes on him as he bought a cord of twine and some wax paper from the ratty old general store.
“Mrs. Dominic was talking about wanting to dry some flowers last time we talked,” Sylvain explained, tucking his purchases into the deep pockets of his coat. “I wasn’t certain if she meant bouquets or pressed petals, so I just got both.”
The corners of Ingrid’s mouth quirked up, and she said, dryly: “I’m worried for poor Annette, knowing that you’re making your move on her mother.”
“Mercy, is that a common courting gift here in the west? Twine and paper? You know, in the northeast, folk tend to prefer diamonds or boxes of hard candies as presents, but perhaps we’re the odd ones,” Sylvain said.
“Honestly, Marshal, that’s very sweet of you to run errands like that,” Ingrid said. “My mother used to press flowers as well, although she mostly liked using them for perfumed oils.”
That was the first time Sylvain had heard Ingrid mention her family, and he wondered, again, where the rest of the Galateas were.
When he had asked Dedue, the other man had just shaken his head. “I’m not sure myself, honestly. I only moved here just two years ago myself.”
“What for?” Sylvain asked.
Dedue paused. “Work.”
Sylvain supposed that it really wasn’t in his business to pry into the town’s history, let alone Ingrid’s. After all, he’d be out of Arianrhod within a couple of weeks at the most, here only because he was after Falcon Gabe. There was little Sylvain could do with the knowledge of a town two hundred miles from any place populated enough to be printed onto a map.
But Sylvain was the kind of man who avoided thinking too deeply about indulging his vices; he always craved distraction in one form or another, and frankly, learning about the mundane histories of other people was by far one of his quainter indulgences. And people knew him—or at least, what he wanted them to know about him, which in actuality wasn’t much, but Sylvain had never claimed to be free of hypocrisy.
They stepped out of the general store and back onto the street. He wanted to deliver his purchases to Mrs. Dominic, and he’d have to fetch Darling from the stables after that. Some of the younger children had become very fond of her, since she was such a friendly and uniquely-colored horse. Sylvain recounted this to Ingrid, who laughed.
“We’re really keeping you busy, aren’t we?” Ingrid said. “Soon it’s going to feel like there wasn’t ever a day where you weren’t here in town.”
“That ain’t such a bad thing, pardner,” Sylvain said, mimicking her drawl. Ingrid punched his arm.
“I don’t sound like that, and I don’t say ‘ain’t’,” Ingrid said, but she didn’t seem to be properly offended.
A man and a woman were standing together by the town’s courthouse (if he could still call it a courthouse, as it looked as if it hadn’t been used in years), and although they were speaking closely, the intimacy between them seemed more familial than romantic. The man was familiar—the town’s lawyer—but the woman beside him was not.
The lawyer glanced in Sylvain’s direction, sneered, and swiftly led the woman away by the arm and into the courthouse.
Ingrid noticed this as well and simply sighed. “Don’t mind Felix. He’s like that with everybody, and he doesn’t like it when people stare at Mercedes.”
“Mercedes?”
“His sister.”
Sylvain looked at the now-closed courthouse door. “They don’t look alike,” he said, which was a rather obvious statement to make. He had only seen them together for the briefest of minutes, but it was plain that Mercedes Fraldarius’ features had little in common with Felix, with her pale blonde hair and round jaw. Sylvain wouldn’t have guessed they were related.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Ingrid said lightly, and it was hard to tell whether or not she was yanking Sylvain’s chain. “Now, come on, we shouldn’t stand here all day.”
Sylvain complied and followed after her to their next task, but even as he did so, Sylvain couldn’t help but wonder about the siblings and the noxious expression of fear and anger that had been on both of their faces at the sight of him.
…
He didn’t sleep well that night; it was the warmest night he could recall it being since he’d arrived, and even though he’d thrown open the bedroom windows, the thin curtains in his room did not stir. Sylvain lay strewn in bed miserable, his nightshirt fully unbuttoned to no relief. The poor blanket had already been kicked to the floor.
But it wasn’t just the heat that was keeping him awake, nor was it the insects that sang a choir outside his window. Sylvain swore he could hear thudding sounds that seemed to start and stop at random, but they were so faint and so random that he couldn’t tell if they were real, or if the temperature was simply getting to his head. Every time he stilled his breathing and consciously tried to listen for the sound, the noises stopped.
It was maddening. It felt as if he were dreaming while wide awake. His exhausted eyes were begging for a reprieve, but he didn’t dare close them, too on edge to relax.
With a soft groan, Sylvain pushed himself out of bed and threw his duster on over his shoulders, only pausing to palm his revolver. For a man of his height, Sylvain could move with a fair amount of delicacy, and the wooden floorboards remained quiet as he walked down the hallway. The lights in Dedue’s room were off, as they were at the Ubert’s end of the hallway. Everything was quiet.
Sylvain swept through the empty bedrooms for anything out of the ordinary, but found nothing. It was unsettling to see absolute lack of life in the rooms, how the bedsheets were neatly tucked in for lodgers that didn’t exist. It was clear that they hadn’t been used for a while; a thin layer of dust coated the furniture, and the windows had all been tightly shut.
Then the sound must have originated from downstairs. Sylvain clutched his revolver in his left hand, gripping the handrail with his right as he walked downstairs, less for the lack of vision and more to brace himself should anything happen. He took step after tentative step down to the saloon, his breath catching in his throat as he reached the floor—
And found nothing. From the wicker chairs, to the darragotypes, to the stubs of candle wax left on the tables, everything was in its proper place. It was completely quiet.
Sylvain stood there, bedraggled and exhausted at the foot of the stairs, for another minute before coming to his senses and yawning back up to his room.
…
He managed to sleep a few hours after that, but not much. Fortunately, Sylvain (despite his taste for fine clothing and world-class entertainment) was used to getting by with very little. The sun had not yet begun to rise when he awoke again, but he decided to take his usual morning ride anyway and hoped that Darling wouldn’t begrudge him the earlier hour.
The evening’s heat had given way to a pleasant sort of chilliness in the morning, one that seeped through the thin linen of his shirt. He didn't bother to reach for his vest, tie, or jacket, electing instead to simply throw on a pair of trousers and his boots before walking out to the stables. Sylvain would, as he always did, simply dress properly after he returned and had a bath.
The buildings of the town were silhouetted black against the sky, which was shifting from rich hues of indigo to pale shades that reminded Sylvain of the grey-blue stones he would find in the lake where his family used to summer. There was a slight breeze now, and he could hear the gentle huff of sleeping animals. The gravel underneath his boots gave way to soft, sweet-smelling bluestem grass.
Sylvain exhaled slowly.
It really was beautiful out here.
Before he reached the stables, however, he saw that he wasn’t the only person up. For some odd reason it didn’t surprise him to see that the other early riser was Ingrid, leaning against the railing of her porch, a candle burning at her feet. She didn’t seem surprised to see him either; once they were close enough to recognize each other, Ingrid smiled.
“Good morning,” she said, and her voice was soft, as if she were worried about waking the others in town just from speaking too loudly.
“Good morning,” Sylvain replied. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
Ingrid let out a tired sort of laugh. “Just a long night. I hoped some fresh air would help me clear my head. Are you going on another one of your rides, Marshal?”
“I am. I didn’t think anyone noticed the habit,” Sylvain said, bemused.
“I notice a lot of things.”
Sylvain hummed. “You do, Miss Ingrid.”
Ingrid regarded him, her expression appraising. “Do you always go out for your early morning excursions in such a state of undress, Marshal Gautier?” she asked. For all the reprimand and fluster in her tone, she didn’t look away from his partially unbuttoned shirt.
“‘Morning excursions’—you’re making them sound far filthier than they really are. You’re quite cruel to me, dear heart,” Sylvain said. The endearment was meant to sound flippant, the kind of pet name added with a wink and a wide grin, but for some reason he couldn't do anything but smile vaguely at her.
Ingrid gave a lukewarm smile back, weak like watered down tea, and it quickly fell from her face. She played idly with the sleeve of her dress; it wasn’t a nightgown, but a pale muslin dress that ended higher above her ankles than was usually considered appropriate for a young woman. Perhaps Ingrid didn’t mind the impropriety, or perhaps she figured the height of her riding boots covered enough of her bare legs.
“Marshal Gautier,” she said finally. “You are a very strange man.”
The remark threw Sylvain off-balance. He wasn’t quite sure where it came from, or what in his recent actions had led her to admit such a thing now, when the early morning light and the empty sky above lent her words an earnestness that made Sylvain’s neck prickle.
He chuckled, and his discomfort didn’t show. “I’m disappointingly simple, Miss Ingrid. There’s not much to uncover.”
“You say that awful easily, but I think nothing could be further from the truth. Not many people from out East stay so long here in Arianrhod, or any town like it. Before you, I think the longest an outsider stayed in the area was…oh, maybe a night? Not long enough to count the buttons on his coat,” Ingrid said. “And you’re vainer than any person has a right to be, but you’ve been here for more than two weeks and haven’t said an unkind thing about our little town.”
“There’s nothing unkind to say,” Sylvain said. He was surprised to know that he meant it. He leaned against the railing as well, feeling the worn wood and chipping against his ungloved hands, and angled himself so that he was facing Ingrid.
“You’re going to get your hands all dirty,” she chided.
“You said I was vain. How else am I supposed to disprove that?” Sylvain asked, amused by her concern. “And besides, I don’t mind getting a little dirty now and then.”
Ingrid met his gaze then, and where he was hoping for laughter or amusement, he saw only contemplation. Sylvain was suddenly and unexplainably uncomfortable with the intimate distance between them; her lashes, long and pale, seemed almost translucent in the half-light of the rising sun.
At the same time, she seemed too far away.
“You don’t talk much about yourself,” Ingrid said, voice quiet, as if it were some great accusation she couldn’t bring herself to admit.
“Neither do you,” Sylvain said. His tone was light, but his searching gaze was more intense now, careful and guarded. He was unsure where this conversation was going, and he disliked being on uneven footing, but Sylvain supposed he had no one but himself to blame for his surprise. He had known Ingrid was sharp from the very beginning.
Ingrid braced her hands against the fence as well, her fingers brushing his, and straightened herself up. She was obviously not quite Sylvain’s height, but she was a tall woman, and it was easy for their eyes to meet.
“Why are you here?”
“To apprehend the criminal outlaw known as Falcon Gabe on behalf of the federal government,” Sylvain replied, words coming out in a practiced rush, but Ingrid only sighed.
“I know that. What I meant was, why are you here? You’ve never needed to say so, but it’s clear from—well, everything about you—that you’re from some big city. You seem educated, and you obviously have money. I don’t begrudge you your love for my town, Marshal Gautier, but I’m certain you’re giving up quite a few creature comforts by being here, rather than whatever city back east you hail from. Why torture yourself chasing a murderer you know nothing about for a man you don’t care for?”
Ingrid had an uncanny ability to knock Sylvain off-balance without even being conscious of what she was doing. Sylvain clasped his hands together as if he were in prayer, his forearms resting against the railing, the rough scrape of wood pressed against his skin.
“Why does anyone come west?”
They were both quiet for a minute; when Ingrid next spoke, her tone was softer and almost apologetic. It was an olive branch through everything but words.
“Marshal Gautier, are you running from something?”
Sylvain laughed, quietly and without joy. “Is there anyone out here who isn’t, Miss Ingrid?”
To his surprise, Ingrid didn’t respond with heightened suspicion or anger. Instead, the woman’s shoulders relaxed and she curled towards him—or at least, as towards him as she could with the fence still between them—and set her right hand over his left.
“No, I reckon you’re right. Most people just pass on through, but the people who stay—they stay because they have to,” Ingrid said. “Because we have to.”
Sylvain let out a rattling sigh. Perhaps Ingrid was right, perhaps he was vain, because one of the many thoughts that crossed his mind was how disheveled he probably looked; his exhaustion was surely showing on his face by now, his usual veneer of charm slipping away to reveal something more somber and honest. The candle at Ingrid’s feet had sputtered out, but neither of them moved to relight it. The sky was slowly brightening, and Sylvain wondered whether or not the morning sun would shine favorably upon him.
“My father is André Gautier,” Sylvain said. “You wouldn’t know his name, but you’d probably know the men he associates with—other men from new money: industrialists and politicians, and so on. He wanted my brother and I to have every advantage possible, and I’m still not certain whether that was for our sake, or for his.
“The pressure turned me into a fool. It turned my brother into a monster. Miklan was a jealous man, constantly angry about something or the other, and he was always seeing how far he could push my father’s influence, or his money, or his patience. One day, when I was just about twenty, Miklan pushed too far. He killed a woman—a young woman, barely older than I was at the time, and he ran to my father before her body was even cold.”
Ingrid's grip on Sylvain’s hand was tight now, her eyes blazing with a cold, precise anger, and a twin fury burned within Sylvain.
“My parents begged me not to testify. They threatened to disown me. I think the case was such that they knew that if I spoke, Miklan would be sentenced, and they were fine with a murderer for a son as long as it didn’t say so in the newspapers where all of high society could read it,” Sylvain said. “But I went to court. And Miklan was executed.”
“And they disowned you?” Ingrid asked.
Sylvain squared his jaw. “I didn’t give them the chance to. I took as much of my mother’s jewelry as I could carry and rode my horse to Fhirdiad. I haven’t been back to Itha since.”
Sylvain raised his eyes, and was surprised to feel the telltale wetness of tears begin to water in them, and he did his best to blink them away. Something in his chest ached powerfully, almost enough for him to double over, if it weren’t for the railing and Ingrid’s steady presence. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d trusted anyone with the story. He couldn’t recall if he ever had.
The shock of his own vulnerability left Sylvain suddenly and acutely aware of himself and how foreign he was in this town, and he panicked. His hands tensed, and he moved to pull away from Ingrid, and perhaps he would have if she hadn’t started speaking first.
“With a family like that, you must have given up a lot—money and power and stability—I can’t imagine making a choice like that,” Ingrid said. Sylvain, who usually preened under any praise and more so when it came from a beautiful woman, found himself uncomfortable with the attention.
“No, Miss Ingrid, you’re far too kind to me. I’d hardly consider myself noble,” Sylvain said. “I stole my mother’s earrings and diamonds and ran away.”
Ingrid shook her head. “Sometimes, what’s lawful isn’t the same thing as what’s right. You gave the young woman and her family justice, and you had to save yourself.”
The conviction and certainty in her voice made the back of Sylvain’s neck tingle, and he was eager to change the subject away from himself. “What about you?”
“I suppose a story for a story’s only fair. Life was hard here after the mine dried up and most people moved out, but my family were so good to me that I didn’t notice,” Ingrid said. “My brothers and I were always loved, and I don’t ever remember being hungry when my folks were alive. But then they got real sick—my ma and pa—and nothing anyone in town did could help them. All I can remember from the year after they passed is…a lot of grey. And hunger.”
Unlike Sylvain, Ingrid spoke with a steady voice as she recalled her past, but her eyes shone with unshed tears in the light of the rising sun.
“We all did our best, me and my brothers—Julian, Rowan, and Gabriel—but we were still just children. We had the boarding house from our parents, and when Julian was old enough, he went eastward to find a job. After a few months, I suppose Rowan followed him.”
“You suppose?” Sylvain asked.
Ingrid inhaled deeply. “We never heard from Rowan again after that. Not us at home, and not Julian. And even if Rowan did show up in the city eventually, Julian wasn’t there to tell me. His landlord wrote to tell me he’d suddenly died in his sleep one night. I don’t know what from, exactly. I reckon it was something to do with his heart,” Ingrid said. “Then it was just me and my youngest brother, and that was alright for a while, but he was never really happy, and he…”
Ingrid’s voice trailed off, and Sylvain didn’t push her to finish her sentence, not when he could guess how the story ended. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the rest of the town readying for the day: curtains being drawn open, fires started, and doors unlocked, but the activity seemed distant and irrelevant.
“Listen, I don’t know if this is beyond my right to say, but…I’m sure your family would be very proud of you. You kept yourself afloat and supported those around you,” Sylvain said. His words were earnest, both in message and in intent, but Ingrid grabbed his other hand with such suddenty he worried he’d still somehow managed to offend her.
But when she spoke again, Ingrid was smiling. “Thank you, Marshal. That truly means a lot to me.”
They both fell quiet after that. It was a comfortable, if bittersweet silence; the wind was picking up, rustling through the tall grass behind Ingrid’s house and moving through Sylvain’s hair. The sun had claimed its place in the sky now, the morning mist dissipating, and Sylvain felt, almost despite himself, at peace.
Gently, he raised Ingrid’s hand and pressed a kiss to the cloth bandage on her knuckles. It was an echo to their first meeting, but this gesture wasn’t out of formality or courtesy. It was brought on by the sheer magnitude of emotion that Sylvain felt, gratitude and wonder, something that extended past simple affection.
Ingrid’s expression was soft. “Marshal Gautier—”
“Sylvain, please, if you don’t mind.”
“Sylvain,” Ingrid said, and the sound of his name from her mouth was like an electric jolt to his system, foreign and dangerous and exciting. She took a step back from the railing between them, but kept their hands interlocked. “I figure people might be wondering where we’ve gone soon. Let’s go inside, and I can make you some coffee.”
“I’d love that, Ingrid,” Sylvain said.
And as he let her lead him back to the boarding house, the weight on his shoulders was suddenly lighter.