When she returns to the headquarters of the Kesrockian Knights, Cathra is surprised to see the boy knight still standing guard outside the southern wing.

“Why haven’t you gone home?” she asks him.

“My post hasn’t ended yet, Captain,” the boy says with a salute so proper it makes Cathra question if she’s been doing it right. “I also sent those documents over to the West Gate captain,” the boy continues, glancing at Cathra somewhat sheepishly. “No one stopped me.”

“Good,” Cathra says with a light laugh. Taking the clipboard from the shelf next to the boy, she flips through the list of names, holding them up to the lantern on the wall.

“Bernarld, the blacksmith… Mikale and Michale from the tavern…” She makes a mental note of each one, matching names to faces. Three new names have been scrawled across the bottom of the parchment, and these Cathra doesn’t know. Adventurers, she guesses, or residents from the other three gates, coming to her because of their own captain's incompetencies and bad attitudes.

Cathra sighs, puts the clipboard back, and then remembers the boy knight is still there. “You know," she turns to tell him, "no one will report you if you just left a little bit early."

The young knight looks away. “I know, Captain Stelias, but that’s probably not the wisest decision to make right now.” He rubs the back of his neck and tilts his head towards Cathra’s office. “Considering who your guest is.”

Cathra follows his gaze, and realization finally catches up with her. “Ah, shoot.”

She’s forgotten about the Lord Commander.

When Cathra creeks open the door to her office, she’s greeted at first by a wave of chilliness that strikes her to the bone, and she almost closes the door again. But retreat is not an option for Cathra. She braces herself, and steps into the dark room.

“Lord Commander?”

The smell hits her then, of dried blood, and battle, clawing from the darkness like an invisible enemy.

“Uncle?” Cathra feels for the lantern next to her door, her fingers brushing against shadows.

A deep voice booms through the silence. “Kas.” And a candle on Cathra’s desk explodes to life, illuminating the massive figure of the Lord Commander.

Cathra lets out the breath she's holding. “Always with the theatrics, uncle.”

The Lord Commander’s body takes up half the room, his armor shining bright cobalt in the candle flame. His icy silver eyes follow Cathra as she makes her way over to him, sitting across the table in the chair reserved usually for her own audiences. The role reversal is jarring, but not as much as the sight of the Lord Commander’s herculean form squeezed behind such a tiny desk.

“You’ve kept me waiting, Cathra.”

The Lord Commander’s tone is chilling, and the temperature in the room seems to drop with every word he says. “I specifically gave you instructions not to.”

Cathra can’t help but shiver, though she tells herself it is from the cold, and not fear. She gives her uncle a helpless grimace as she looks up into his eyes. From here, she can see the specks of gold sliced across the white, and she recalls the latest rumor about how the Lord Commander got his eyes to be like that.

According to one of the older knights in the north wing, it was by staring down a torrent of dragon-fire, without blinking.

“I went out to actually do my job,” Cathra says, crossing her arms across her chest to try and retain some body heat, “unlike the other captains who sit all day around their dainty little teacups, twirling their stupid little mustaches.”

The Lord Commander does not rise to the bait. “Is cutting off another man’s arm considered a part of your job?”

Cathra averts her gaze, and starts to fidget with a loose thread on the hem of her doublet. “I, uh, thought you waited in here all this time?”

The Lord Commander stares down Cathra for a long moment, his hands placed flat on the table, nearly covering the entire surface. “You don’t seem happy with your place,” he observes finally.

“I’m not,” Cathra admits, shrugging her shoulders. “I miss the outdoors. I miss actually making a difference.”

The sounds of rustling make her look up. The Lord Commander has an envelope in his armored hands. He places it on the table, seal up, facing Cathra.

The Lord Commander’s official seal.

“This should be good for you, then.”

“What is it?” Cathra asks, taking the envelope. It looks so much smaller when her uncle is holding it. She rips it open, her eyes scanning the contents of the single piece of parchment paper. “You don’t have to be so formal all the time…”

She drops the paper as if it stung her. She looks back up at the Lord Commander, eyes wide. “What is the meaning of this, uncle?”

“Your deployment orders,” says the Lord Commander, his voice flat, his eyes spearing through Cathra, “to the north.”

For a long moment, Cathra and her uncle are silent. Neither one of them wants to give in, it seems, and the silence takes on an intelligence. The candle on Cathra’s desk flickers, its flame sputtering atop the wax made by its own collapsing body.

Cathra stares at the Lord Commander’s helm, placed evenly on the desk so the eye holes seem to be staring back at her. It’s shaped like a wolf's head, complete with open jaws and teeth, along with a long tassel of red rope hanging from the top. Cathra’s fingers twitch as she imagines grabbing the helm by its stupid red rope and kicking it down the hallway.

“Why?” She hears her own voice echoing inside her ears, weak and pathetic.

“I need you at the battlefront.”

“As a lawbreaker?”

“Or a captain.” The Lord Commander leans in, his shadow looming across the walls. “You told me yourself that you missed the wilds. Do not let your past taint your decisions, Cathra. This is an opportunity.”

Cathra slams a fist against the desk, making the Lord Commander’s helm jump an inch towards the edge.

“Is this a joke?” She leaps to her feet, toppling the chair behind her. “Why don’t I just fight you now? You can send me there tonight! In chains!”

The Lord Commander does not move, but a muscle in his jaw tightens just enough for Cathra to see, and it is enough for her to bite back whatever else she plans to say.

“You can go armored and horsed,” says the Lord Commander evenly, “or walk naked behind one. The decision is yours, Cathra.”

The fire snuffs out of Cathra in an instant. Those few words, spoken so simply, hold the authority of the most powerful man in all of Kesrock. A man who built the Kesrockian Knights with his own two hands.

Cathra drops her head to glower at the order. It's just a piece of paper, with the Lord Commander’s seal in melted wax stamped across on the bottom, and yet it is enough to bring her to her knees. She touches the seal, feeling the bumps along its edge. “At least tell me the real reason,” she whispers.

The Lord Commander rises from the table, his armored body expanding like an awakening beast, absorbing all the light in the room. He takes the wolf-shaped helm, and slides it over his bald head. His deep voice booms from within the helm’s steel jaws as he speaks.

“I will allow you the rest of the week to make up your mind.”

He leaves, then, taking the cold with him.

Cathra watches the candle die, sizzling as it drowns in its own waste. The Lord Commander's footsteps have long since faded away, and yet she cannot move. The order, and its seal, seem to imprison her there, even as the candle finally withers, and darkness takes a hold of the room.

In the gloom and silence, Cathra's thoughts run wild.

The North.

Or, more specifically, Maria's Battlefront. The place where people go to die, shredded apart by the yaojin, or the cold of the mountains. It started with soldiers at first, drafted from villages and cities. When those ran out, it was criminals and crooks, given the choice to die fighting, or die rotting in the dungeons.

And now, so many years later, the skirmishes still show no signs of abating. So even knights are not spared from the frost of the Dragonspine Mountains, it seems.

But Cathra is different. Her uncle is not sending her there for something she did, but rather he wants her to go on her free will. “But why?” she whispers to the darkness. “Why does he want me to go back?”

From out of the dark comes a single word, whispered back to her:

Home.

Cathra is shivering, though not from the cold. No, not from the fear. Or is it the fear?

“Damn it!” Cathra swipes an arm across the desk, sending her deployment letter, along with everything, crashing to the floor. She pulls her sword from its scabbard, commanding its steel edge to burn. A trail of fire lights through the air as Cathra swings her sword, jabbing it straight down into the parchment paper, into the Lord Commander’s wax seal.

She watches as the paper burns under the glowing blade, embers floating up from its twisting, blackening form.

Then, without another sound, Cathra goes over to the windows, draws open the curtains to let in the last shreds of the setting sun, and gets on her knees to collect all the paperwork scattered across the floor.

The chair is cold when she sits down, but it just makes Cathra more determined to warm it up by herself.

If the Lord Commander is going to send me north no matter what, she thinks grimly, reaching into a drawer for a new pot of ink, and another quill. I might as well make it difficult for him.

She settles down for what will undoubtedly be a long night, and tries to concentrate on her work.