That last line had surprised Oliver more than the others. Lombard was not a man to show any sort of affection. To hear him say something that sounded suspiciously like goodwill, rather than an order, it was rather shocking.
"Ah, and this as well. A letter from Solgrim. My man tells me a merchant sent it," Lombard said.
Oliver had taken the scraggly-looking bit of parchment from Lombard's fingers, and doubtfully unfold it, as he climbed into the carriage beside the maid.
Slowly, he'd begun to read it, only to find that the letters – letters that he already had some difficulty grasping, for his reading was somewhat lacking – were nearly impossible to make out.
Seeing him struggle and frown, Marianne had offered to read it for him. She'd be sent, in Lombard's place, to ensure that Oliver arrived safely in the Capital.
With that letter, Oliver was finally allowed tidings of the village that had escaped him during his time away.
It had only taken Marianne five or so minutes to read out the contents of the letter, but Oliver had found him replaying them in his head over and over again, through the duration of the six-hour journey to Garsh – a city to the South East of Ernest, where Lord Blackwell and Lombard recided.
Perhaps it was that letter that allowed Oliver to smile somewhat most honestly now.
Then, I'll come and find you to show off. You better not come back to Solgrim before then, okay?"
Hearing that, it had made Oliver's jaw tight. If Marianne thought there to be anything odd about a noble's relationship with a peasant girl, she did not show it. She didn't even try to glimpse the emotions written on Oliver's face as he looked out his window to hide the tears that threatened to come.
She'd hidden it well with her words, as though suspecting that someone else would have been reading them – but she knew. She hadn't been fooled by the pretence of his sudden ascension to nobility. Whether she had figured it out herself, or whether Greeves had, it did not matter to him. All that mattered was that she knew he had not lied to them.
Within her words, there had been something more important though. A hard shove in the back. Telling him to go forward. It surprised him to realize how much he had needed that. He craved strength, that was true, but with his situation changing so suddenly, and with his surroundings suddenly so strange and foreign, it was taking all he had to remain calm, despite the wounds to his soul.
Her words helped put a salve on that. She had been the first friend that he'd made in many years, since his time as a child, before his family had been slain. It was good to have her, even if she was not there in person. It tied him to something, so that he was not quite the drifting float in a sea of nothingness.
With Dominus gone, that was important.
And then he had read Greeves' section. It began with the telling of Loriel's funeral, and the funeral of the others as well. Again, Oliver found himself looking out the window at the mention of Loriel. He wasn't sure if he could call her a friend. She'd been something else to him, during the time that he had spent alone. She was more like a sudo-mother, at times, or an older sister.
Her loss stung. It would have been a tragedy if it was her alone, and he would not have been able to control the tears.
As it was, hers became a piece of the painful puzzle, of all who had died that day. His master and Loriel stood firmly at the centre, cemented by the deaths of all those villagers, all those soldiers, and those children that had died in the basement. All that Beam had failed to protect. A weight on his shoulders, a sore throbbing wound.