Polemidas's Arc

Chapter 15 of 7

Morning came, and Polemidas had nothing to do with it. The war was over. The court needed no hero today. He stood in the courtyard with his hands empty and did not know where to put them. He had killed for twenty years. He had never learned anything else. When he tried to picture a day without a spear, he saw only blank hours. The doubt gnawed worse than any wound. He walked to the village square to escape it. A stone fountain rose there, three tiered basins spilling water over carved lions. Coins rested on the bottom, tossed by people who wished for things. Polemidas had no wish he could name. He sat on the rim and watched the water fall. A small sound came from beneath the bloomcart's shadow. A stray kitten, brown and grey with a white throat, pawed at a fallen crust. It was too small to reach it. Polemidas watched it strain and fail. His hands moved before he thought. He picked up the crust and held it out flat, the way Heliodorus had once taught him with the pups. He did not grab. He waited. The kitten crept close. It sniffed his scarred fingers, then ate from his palm. Its whole body trembled against his skin. Polemidas held still and felt something he had no word for. He had not planned this. No one had ordered it. He was not protecting a king or winning a field. He was only feeding a hungry thing because it was hungry. He carried the kitten home inside his cloak. Valour and Fury met him at the gate, tails high, noses working. Polemidas knelt and set the kitten down between them. Fury lowered her white-spotted ear and sniffed. The kitten hissed, then did not run. Valour lay down flat so she was no taller than it. Polemidas watched the three of them decide to trust each other. He had built this small peace with his hands. It had cost no blood. Heliodorus found him there, kneeling in the dirt, the pups and the kitten tangled at his knees. "You have brought home another life," the prince said, smiling. He crouched beside them. "You spent all morning searching for what to do with yourself. And your hands answered before your mind could." Polemidas looked at his palms. "I did not choose it. It just happened." "That is the truest kind of choosing," Heliodorus said. "A soldier acts on orders. You acted on nothing but a small hunger you saw. That is a man tending, not a weapon waiting." Polemidas scratched the kitten's ear. It leaned into his rough finger. The empty hours did not frighten him now. He knew one thing he could do with them. He could care for what needed caring. It was not everything. But it was his, and no one had handed it to him.