“Whatever nonsense you two are getting yourselves into this morning will have to wait.”

Standing just inside the main entryway to the arena, the general of the empire’s Kilraut Army made a daunting figure of himself. A head taller than the three guards who accompanied him, he rivaled the prince in height, but where Akseli’s expression generally conveyed one of jovial amusement in most circumstances, Pasi Virtan couldn’t seem to keep annoyance from perpetually weighing down the corners of his mouth. Not that Fia found him to be held in the grip of constant irritation. It was more that the man often felt he had better things to do with his time, and more often than not, he was quite correct in that assessment. He took two steps forward and stopped, back rigid with arms interlocked behind him, at the top edge of the arena’s wall. 

It offered Fia a wonderful view of his boots. Recently polished, it appeared, and, with a further glance up, both his uniform pants and jacket freshly pressed. The red piping along the seams, a vivid contrast to the black material fashioning the rest of the uniform, glimmered slickly under the sun’s morning gaze. Almost as vibrant in hue as the blue claimed by the empire’s Leukuden Legion.

Of the two, it was Virtan’s forces that brought a true sense of fear to the opposition. The Kilraut Army. Known by the people as the Iron Shield of the Empire, it was led by a general both clever and remorseless on the grounds of battle and carried a reputation not for devastating the enemy in a fight but rather for starving them out, whether that be in aid, supplies, retreat, or some wicked combination of all three. Sighting the black and red of the army on the horizon might as well have been that first resounding crack of an impending avalanche to its enemies. It swallowed the places least expected to host a military engagement, shunning more often than not the enticement of felling larger cities, but when the general’s grand war scheme finally showed its hand, proved to be locations as vital to the war’s success as one’s own heart beating in their chest.

The Iron Shield Army firmly entrenched itself as the empire’s best line of defense and had played so critical a role in the final victories of the last war that General Virtan had found himself elevated to the coveted role of one of the emperor’s advisors before the last battle had even seen its inevitable conclusion. 

Fia suspected it was in that capacity that the man had shown up here today. 

He and Akseli had shared only a handful of parries before the general had arrived. And with none of the usual flurry of announcements and expected etiquette often displayed around one of his rank, no warning had proceeded his arrival. He appeared as he so often did on the battlefield — as a quick and unexpected omen.

Sliding a step back from the prince, Fia lowered his weapon. Which of them stood for the summoning remained to be seen, as either of them could have been considered fair game in that respect. The prince held his sword out to the side and was immediately divested of it by the ever-attentive Esko, who carefully sheathed it as though it were the prized weapon of a master craftsman and not a simple training sword supplied to any who entered the arena.

“No more of that, Fiarac.” General Virtan gave only the barest of nods of his head toward the weapon in Fia’s hand. No sooner had he done so did one of the soldiers standing guard against the wall rush forward to confiscate it. Fia let it go without a fight. The general exhaled heavily through his nose. “The emperor has called for you.”

“What for?”

From the corner of his eye, Fia caught Akseli arching an eyebrow at him. Amusement lingered in his expression like a guest reluctant to leave a party gone sour, waiting for whatever drama to unfold in its fullness. But beyond that, silent in the shadows of his gaze, stood relief. Akseli moved back toward the benches, having been cast out of the spotlight, and folded his arms across his chest, all too happy to observe. 

General Virtan was decidedly less entertained by Fia's question. He took a moment to answer, using the time to sweep his gaze critically over Fia’s form. Should they ever come to blows, Fia had no doubt he could take the older man cleanly in a fight. Only, he knew there was never anything clean about the way the general went about his fighting in the first place, which made him a considerably more difficult opponent to gauge. Clever was how the Aurinon faithful put it. From there, his reputation twisted to suit those speaking of him. To some, resourceful. To others, sly. And for those left at his army’s heels, underhanded.

Fia had known him as Haisonach. A nickname birthed in the decade before he was born, when the empire had been nothing more than a nation of mountains and endless forests, with a king who saw himself as a savior for a continent of people who hadn’t known they had needed the saving. Once translated to their native tongues, the nickname had apparently taken like fire to summer brush. It had raced through enemy encampments across the land as fledging attempts at empire were made and was now so deeply entrenched it was used more often than Virtan’s real name.

But for all the variations of language, the meaning remained the same. Pasi Virtan was the Black Fox of Death to all those who had the misfortune of standing against him. 

“You cannot so much as scratch the prince in one of your spars without experiencing the wrath of your contract, so I would highly recommend you stop looking at me as though you could achieve more at half the cost to yourself.”

A concise albeit brutally truthful comment. 

Fia lifted his left arm and ran his hand through his hair. “I have thought nothing of the sort, General.”

“And the alchemists think they can shit gold,” Virtan said. “Don’t bother washing up. You are to meet with the emperor immediately.”

“Has something gone wrong, Pasi?” the prince called out. He stood as before, perfectly content to watch this newest act play out across the stage, mouth forming a neatly curved smile beset by an immaculately measured amount of concern.

Around the arena, the soldiers did their best to look disinterested, eyes focused before them, seeing nothing, not even an exhale heard to betray their curiosity. The tension, however, Fia thought you could sink your teeth into and make bleed.

Virtan paused halfway through a spin toward the entryway. He turned back around without a word, the movement tightly controlled and surprisingly graceful for a man of his build like a pirouette slowed down for the benefit of those being taught. His face as placid as a frozen lake, he set his impenetrable gaze on the crown prince. “Nothing that your father felt you should be bothered with, Your Highness. He only needs to speak with our resident Blood Knight about some minor matters of security, seeing as we are expecting company soon.”

“I thought security detail for the upcoming fête was your realm of rule,” the prince replied. The concern had fled his smile, leaving behind only amusement.

“Why do you think I am the one retrieving him?” Virtan turned then with a single solid nod of his head toward the prince, effectively ending the line of questioning. “Fiarac, if you would be so kind as to join me.”

Akseli cast a glance in Fia’s direction, but rather than entertain whatever reaction the prince sought to inspire, Fia simply forged ahead across the arena toward the entrance. 

He kept himself to a measured walk. Much, Fia surmised, to the continued amusement of the prince and the irritation of General Virtan. Neither sat as a concern in his own head, which some might have called foolish, considering his overall status in the imperial court, but it gave him the time he needed to collect his thoughts. 

If the emperor had asked for him, then it was no small matter of security. The prince knew this as well as Fia did. Even with the late summer festivities set to take place on the palace grounds, as much a celebration of the harvest as it was for the empire’s recent conquests in the west, Fia could not imagine what might threaten such an occasion that Virtan himself hadn’t already anticipated. His information network carried almost as deadly a reputation as his army, though few were aware of its existence. 

Fia had stumbled upon it purely out of luck when he had taken captive an injured rider on the outskirts of his own army’s camp six years ago. Even with his wounds, the man had nearly taken Fia’s hand off in an attempt to help him from his horse. He had initially thought the rider no more than a common wartime thief or perhaps a weary messenger for the empire, lured into employment from one of the surrounding villages with the promises of safety and gold, only to have met with the bad luck of running into his soldiers. The man had, in fact, turned out to be a messenger, but one far more valuable and far more trouble than Fia could have guessed. That he even knew of Virtan’s second army remained a secret Fia carried with him to this day. 

When he reached the arena's edge, Fia set his hands on the top of the wall and hoisted himself up to the landing. He dusted off his hands on his thighs before straightening himself up.

Virtan and his entourage waited for him on the other side of the entryway, which was nothing more than a large white marble arch as nondescript as the rest of the training arena itself. The arena being nothing more than a sand pit three hundred feet in length with a scattering of benches along its five-foot-high walls, it offered very little in the way of shade or shelter and gave the arching entryway an almost comically misplaced sense of importance. Grandeur for the sake of itself, when the reality was that soldiers came here to train under the elements, whatever they may be, to prove themselves worthy of being part of the army’s most elite guard units. It was one of the few places Fia felt at home when it came to the palace grounds. 

“Do you need a moment to say goodbye?” 

Virtan’s tone contained the hint of a potential sense of humor. 

Fia let loose a huff, not quite a laugh. “Such a funny question to ask.”

The corner of Virtan’s mouth twitched, and Fia swore he saw, for the briefest of moments, a smile. 

“Then off we go. The emperor does not wait, Fiarac.”