It's two days after Brynjar's arrest. The floors are stone and the corridors are cold, a heavy silence permeates the air and dust clings to the skin. There's a smell of dampness and dust and the echo of footsteps on stone.
Carmen, wrapped in a dark coat, holds a small notebook in one hand and a scarf around her neck. Her face is pale but determined. She walks to a cold window, protected by an iron gate. A sergeant, his mustache stiff, barely looks up.
"I'm Mrs. Øvstegård. I've come to see my husband, Captain Brynjar Øvstegård. He's been detained here for two days," she announced firmly.
No visits allowed for inmates under special instruction, he replies in a bored voice, his eyes emotionless.
I haven't received any papers, any letters. So you can't, as his wife, she asks calmly. 5 minutes.
It's classified High Crown. Order of the Emperor. Total isolation. No one from outside will be able to give you any news. If we want to see you—we will see you.
Carmen grits her teeth. Closes her eyes for a quarter of a second. Her lips tremble. She can't cry in front of him.
Is he... is he... is he hurt? she said, worried.
I don't have to answer that question, ma'am. He's tucked away in a corner. We're keeping an eye on him. You can write that down, in Ephraim. That's all I can say. he shrugged.
A silence. Carmen looks away. Lifts her head, without lowering her eyes. Stares at him. Stares at him, once again. With hard eyes.
Okay. Then just tell him that I love him and that I'm fighting. That I'm knocking on every door he thought was locked. One day he'll open it, too. she said, looking straight ahead.
She turns on her heel. She walks back up the street without another word. A freezing wind engulfs her on the February day. In her pocket, she drinks the mix she didn't have time to pass him. The mix she tells him to ask for every day, but he won't.
Brynjar Øvstegårds, alone in his coupon sled, faces the crystal and the cold, two days after spawning. For two days, he didn't want to escape alone. If he'd ever be alone again. He didn't know how to scythe. He didn't know if he'd ever find Carmen again. But he wins—perhaps the last... of the last fight.
Brynjar sits on a stone bench, his back against the wall, arms crossed. He has taken off his jacket. It's impossible to tell if it's day or night. Not a sound. He has only eaten a piece of bread and a little warm water. He stares at the ground, lost in thought. Two days.
And no one spoke to me. I didn't speak to anyone. The silence here is torture. It eats away at your very soul.
I remember Carmen's footsteps in this cell in the morning. The sound of the fences, the "pschitt" of the coffee. Here, every drop of water that falls is one step less towards the outside. Every hour... a question, he thought.
He gets up very slowly. The cell is tiny: a bucket, a wall for all furniture. He places his hand on one of the walls, inside, it is freezing cold. He no longer knows where to look for warmth... cold will see my passage again. Winter for only companions, a bench or an old gate, I will go there, I will go there to hold and sleep, To be precious at last, to be, to be, to be, To be... taken away in his head.
He sits back down. From his jacket pocket, he takes a tiny folded scrap of paper he's managed to keep, a corner of a letter from Carmen. A fragment. The words are half-erased, but he knows them by heart.
"What we are does not depend on what they say. It depends on what we keep deep inside us."
I'm still holding on. I just ask that I be allowed to do it in peace, now. Is that asking too much?
I am no longer a soldier.
I'm no longer captain.
But I'm still your husband. He closes his eyes, his head falls against the wall, a silent blade rolls across his cheek, but his features don't change.