Part III — Ashes of the Teacher
Summary:
Lord Rorik Veyne's final days. A house that once rang with measured voices falls to hush. Saviik learns what kind of silence cannot be mastered.
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Rain began three nights before Rorik Veyne's fever broke into the open.
It was not the quick summer rain that rinses dust from marble; it was a slow, patient fall that seemed to draw the warmth out of the stone. Every drip from the eaves sounded like a word being crossed out.
Servants moved more softly than usual. Ylva kept to her study, dictating letters she never sent. Even the house cats—creatures who had never respected ceremony—walked like mourners.
Saviik waited outside the sickroom each evening, a book closed on his knees, unread. The corridor lamp burned low, a tiny moon imprisoned in glass. He would watch its flame and remember the first lesson Rorik had ever given him: "A sword held too tightly forgets it is metal."
Now, Rorik's breath rasped on the other side of the door—slow, stubborn, the sound of someone who still believed he could order his lungs to obey.
When Ylva emerged, she looked as though part of her had already joined him.
"He's asking for you," she said.
No other instruction, no title, just that.
Saviik went in.
---
The room smelled of juniper smoke and wet wool. Shutters half-closed kept the wind from turning the candle flames sideways. Rorik lay beneath furs too heavy for the weather, his hair damp against the pillow, eyes clear but dimmed around the edges.
"You came," he said. It was not a question.
"I was here," Saviik answered. His voice felt wrong in the air, too young, too steady.
Rorik smiled faintly. "You always are." He shifted one hand toward the edge of the blanket, palm up. Saviik took it. The skin was hot, but the fingers trembled like paper.
"For all the books they've made you read," Rorik said, "remember one thing: every empire ends with a list of names no one can pronounce. Don't be one of them."
Saviik nodded, not trusting his voice.
"Good lad. You'll need to be better than me."
"I couldn't," Saviik said.
"You already are. That's what frightens them."
The candles wavered as wind slid through the shutters. Outside, the rain thickened to a whispering curtain. Rorik closed his eyes, then opened them again with effort.
"Power," he said slowly, "is not the fire. It's the hand that decides whether to feed it. Promise me you'll remember that."
"I promise."
Rorik's grip tightened once, hard enough to leave a mark, then eased. "That's the oath I wanted. No grand words. Just memory."
His eyes found the ceiling beams. "Ylva will polish the world till it shines. You— you'll need to learn how to see through the glare."
He smiled again, not at the boy but at some picture behind him. "Tell her the garden needs trimming."
Then he let the breath go.
---
The house did not cry. It simply stopped speaking.
For three days, the rain continued. Ylva walked the corridors as though patrolling a border. Xala sat in the atrium, plucking at a lute she never tuned, her notes hollow as shells. The servants dressed in gray without being told.
Saviik stayed near the window of his study, watching water crawl down the glass in uneven lines. He did not feel grief at first—only the absence of instruction. Every hour had belonged to Rorik's voice; now time wandered without command.
On the morning of the pyre, he went to the courtyard before anyone else. The air was heavy with woodsmoke and the metallic scent of the rain-soaked logs. He touched the torch to the kindling, and flame took like breath, rising steady and straight despite the damp. He kept it still by will alone, the way Rorik had taught him: no excess, no spectacle, a fire that understood obedience.
Ylva stood a few paces behind, her veil unmoving. When she spoke, it was to the air. "He would have liked that. A fire that listens."
Saviik didn't answer. He watched until the wood sank into itself, until color left the ash. When he finally stepped back, the rain had begun again, small drops hissing as they found the embers.
---
That evening, the house tried to remember normalcy. Lamps were relit, servants moved with purpose, but the echo of footsteps in the corridors returned wrong, as if the stone were missing a note.
Xala found him by the lake where the garden path ended. She said nothing at first. He held a small piece of charcoal between his fingers—the last unburned fragment from the pyre.
"I kept this," he said.
"For what?"
"So I don't forget how silence sounds."
She stepped closer. "You don't have to hold it for that."
He looked at her; the reflection of the lake moved across her face, shifting between silver and shadow. "I can keep the fire still," he said quietly. "I just can't keep it warm."
She laid her hand over his. "Then let me."
They stood like that until the moon rose, turning the water to glass. When they finally went back toward the house, the air smelled of smoke and wet leaves, and the silence that followed them was no longer empty—it was simply full of what they carried.