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Dom grinned at Kel broadly while she read the top page of the stack of papers he’d just handed over without so much as a word of explanation. When he’d scheduled the meeting, he’d provided no details, leaving her to wonder what private business the captain of Third Company could possibly have that would require the Knight Commander staying in Corus until his return instead of riding out with the Second three days before. Now, staring at the words inked on the page in a nobleman’s finest script, things made even less sense than they did before. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, feeling a headache of massive proportions coming on, although the words themselves were fairly straightforward. I, Domitan of Masbolle, resign from my position as Captain of the Third Company of the King’s Own, effective on the first of the next month…
She stared up at him from her position behind the desk, straightening her spine to deal with the serious business that her captain had decided to put in front of her. Her chair creaked dangerously as she moved, and she reminded herself for the sixth time in as many weeks that it was time to find a replacement for the chair that Raoul had left behind when he’d vacated the offices of the Knight Commander nearly five years before. In front of her, Dom’s shoulders were shaking in a way that suggested he somehow found all of this funny. She wished he would share the joke because all she could see was months of nightmarish personnel changes ahead.
“Why?” she asked, her voice deceptively calm. An experienced commander, she knew better than to let her feelings show. A still lake, she reminded herself as she resisted rubbing her temples or leaving her chair to challenge him to a duel that would definitively wipe that smug, self-satisfied look from his face.
“Felt like it was time for a change.” For all she could usually read his face like a book, his thoughts behind the smile were a mystery.
“Are you going to tell me what that change is, Captain?” she asked, pushing back from her desk and striding over to her bookshelf. She was already running through lists of names for potential replacements, trying to consider skill sets and compatibilities and qualifications among a group of men she hadn’t even begun to evaluate for a position she had never anticipated coming open. With her chair vacated, he moved to sit at her desk with an impish glint in his eyes. He propped his feet carefully on the sole corner of the desk that wasn’t covered in reports and leaned the chair back gingerly. She saw his wince as it creaked and shifted beneath him before he settled it back onto four legs. Even with the chair firmly on the ground, his easy charm and relaxed posture made him look far more at ease behind her desk than she thought she ever had.
“I’ve received...an offer,” he began evasively.
“Spit it out,” she said. Her voice was short, and her attention was already elsewhere as she searched the boxes in front of her for the notes from last summer’s joint training exercises with the Riders.
“From Neal.”
That froze her in her tracks. “Neal?” she said, confusion breaking through her best efforts to maintain the persona of a capable commander.
“Yes, Sir Nealan of Queenscove, my cousin. I think you may have met him, at least once or twice—”
She cut him off with a raised hand. He stopped and waited in silence, prepared for her to speak. Her mind was working rapidly, taking up and discarding a series of possible explanations while he waited patiently in front of her.
“I didn’t think you were...qualified...for any jobs Neal might be offering,” she said carefully. Neal’s new job, as of last month, was so steeped in secrecy that it felt strange to mention, even in the privacy of her office. She was entirely sure that even she wasn’t supposed to know about it, although it had taken her all of five minutes, with two well-placed looks from Yuki, to put it together.
“The realm can always use people well-versed in the intricacies of supply and communication,” he replied, skirting around the issue in much the same way his cousin had only a few weeks ago.
“My understanding was that those jobs were filled by people with years of experience in some of the more specific skills required,” she retorted. Neal, for instance, had been learning such necessary skills since their days as squires nearly twenty years before.
Then, suddenly, in the midst of her shock, her racing mind presented her with an extremely disconcerting thought. “Unless…” she starts slowly, “unless you were already working for them.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew they were true, could tell by the grin twitching at the corners of his lips and the mischief sparking his eyes. “Have you been spying on me?”
“On you? That’s Neal’s job,” he laughs. “On everyone else? An agent never reveals his secrets.”
She shook her head, rueful. “I liked things better when we were all just bashing in enemies’ heads for the sake of Tortall. Things were much simpler.”
“You and I both know that things haven’t been simple for a single day where any of us are concerned—especially the Meathead.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Instead she just sighed in resignation. He got up from his position lounging on her desk chair like it was his own, and came to stand behind her, wrapping his well-muscled arms around her shoulders. She leaned into his warmth at her back. He peeked down at the notes in front of her, carefully extricated from a dusty box. “Princehold, from the First, would be a good promotion, if he’s willing to move companies. You could also consider ibn Sina, if you’d rather promote from within the Third. That may actually be better, since it lets you promote Reinhart, too, and you keep Princehold for when Yoav finally decides he’s had enough.”
He’s right, curse him, Kel thought bitterly. He’d stared at the personnel list that it would have taken her all afternoon to parse and found the solution in seconds. “You really want to leave?”
“I’m excited to finally get the mud all the way out of my teeth.”
She could feel him smiling, his chin resting on her shoulder. She turned to face him while his arms loosened so that he still held her at a distance. “So, you’re retiring.”
“Seems like it. We could never leave Neal alone with that much responsibility. George was practically begging me to take the job, just to avoid that.”
“What does that mean?” Her voice got quiet at the end, and she knew he could read the for us sitting on the tip of her tongue.
“I think, my dear Commander,” he replied, his tone pert and his eyes dancing, “that it means you’ll no longer be canoodling with one of your captains.” She knew him well after all these years, and she could read the rest of the implications in his expression. There would be weeks, months, years, to talk about whether they wanted marriage or a family and to confront the terrifying reality of telling their friends, but it was all already written for her in his face.
“So sad I didn’t know it was the last time when it happened,” she commented, her voice intentionally bland.
“I believe the policy is a month’s notice, so there’s plenty of time to savor,” he replied, already pulling her towards her bedroom door.