Free The Knight: A Tale from the High Kingdom by Pierre Pevel Page A

deserve Dalroth, it must have been something terrible …’
    Ill at ease, Lorn rubbed the back of his left hand through the thin leather band that wrapped it. Alan guessed how he was feeling and immediately blamed himself for his lack of foresight.
    ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m getting bored … Let’s go and have a glass of wine somewhere else. The governor has imported an Algueran wine at great cost. It’s no match for our Langrian vintages, but it’s not too bad …’
    Lorn followed Alan towards the buffet tables set up on the terrace. The prince purloined a bottle and two glasses, and they took a few steps out into the gardens. All those whose paths they crossed watched as they walked as far as a balustrade where they could look out over a harmonious perspective of flowerbeds and paths. There Alan filled the two glasses with a slightly unsteady hand. Lorn deduced that his friend had been drinking, but kept silent.
    ‘I … I’m sorry,’ said the prince, staring at a spot on the ground.
    ‘Sorry?’
    The prince tried to choose his words carefully.
    ‘Yes, I … I realise that I’ve been tactless …’
    Alan was standing with one shoulder hunched, as he always did when he was sincerely, deeply embarrassed. It did not happen often and one needed to know Alan as well as Lorn did to interpret this gesture. Prince Alderan had a calm, sunny personality, full of self-confidence, for whom dealings with others always seemed easy.
    ‘I don’t know how to go about this the right way,’ the prince was saying. ‘Yet I would like to help you, Lorn. I would truly like to help you.’
    Lorn kept silent.
    Alan had realised that he wanted the old Lorn back, as he was before. The prince had expected to find Lorn exhausted, to be sure. And bruised. Perhaps even diminished. He knew his friend had emerged from a terrible ordeal at Dalroth; but he wanted him to still be Lorn. Even though the road might be long and recovery difficult, he wished for Lorn to remain the person that he, Alan, had always known and cherished. The person he missed. And the one he wanted with all his might to find again. He’d been motivated by a sincere solicitude and affection, but also – he understood now – by a streak of selfishness and perhaps even capriciousness.
    ‘I still want to be your friend, Lorn. And to succeed at that, I know I must comprehend and help the man you have become. But … But it is as though you are out of my reach,’ Alan concluded, turning towards Lorn.
    Their gazes met.
    For the first time since they had been reunited, Lorn felt something of their old friendship stirring within him.
    Restrained by an idiotic reserve, the two men merely touched glasses. Alan drank a mouthful of wine, contemplating the gardens for a moment, and then leaned back against the balustrade. Lorn did likewise. They raised their eyes towards the terrace and, beyond it, the governor’s palace illuminated by the Great Nebula.
    And because they had no need to speak, they fell silent – together – for a long moment.

    Alan kept Lorn company for as long as he could.
    Then, called away by his political and social duties, he excused himself, promising to return. It was a little before midnight. Lorn waited for him a moment and then thought about leaving the party. But he knew he would have trouble sleeping. And even if he managed to, he also knew what awaited him: every night, nightmares took him back to Dalroth.
    Lorn resolved to enjoy the gardens on his own.
    They were quiet and fragrant, lit by paper lanterns, and he only needed to take one path or another and wait in a shadowy nook to avoid other strollers. As for lovebirds and couples of a single night, they had no desire to meet anyone else either.
    Lorn found an isolated bench near an ornamental pond. Lost in his thoughts, he was rubbing his leather-wrapped hand as he looked up at the milky coils of the Great Nebula when …
    ‘Good evening.’
    He recognised the young