Cherny was particularly suited to deal with the trial and tribulations of Myrken Wood. He knew pain, but he navigated skillfully around it, far too skillfully for his scant years. Avoidance, deflection, rationalization, whatever it took to survive and stay in one piece, so long as that piece still included his sense of self. He had been terrorized by elves and rogues, afflicted by dreams, maligned by those he cared about due to their unpredictable nature. He had seen bad things and even, perhaps without meaning to, caused others. Cherny knew pain. Cherny knew how to avoid it as best as anyone could in Myrken.
Ariane Emory, no longer a Lady but still very much a Marshall, was pain. She was hurt. She embraced it with iron and blood and a cold, biting, northern wryness, for deception, even self-deception, was not an option for her.
Cherny could hide things from his knight. Ariane could not hide herself. No fever would run so hot to make her seem like that she was not.
"You shoulder a burden," the words were simply put, strained. Each syllable was pronounced carefully, methodologically. "Cherny does too, more than anyone at his age should, maybe more than anyone at any age. You though? It's a river, okay? With Cherny, with you, my friend," he would offer his squire a nod, refusing to speak of him as if he wasn't there. "You can hear this. You live it, lad, you do. You walk," and with his free hand he wiped at his brown, for this was an effort. these words would have been an effort in the best of times. "You walk a dirt road, one that we all need. Everyone needs it to get where they're going. To be okay. It rains, though. The dirt turns to mud and threatens to flood. Every drop of rain brings the road closer to flooding. People you care about walk the road, but you, Cherny, you try to catch the rain as you walk, even though it makes you shiver, even though it might bring you sickness and make you uncomfortable. Because every drop matters. Because every drop matters."
It was the fever driving his words. He pictured it so clearly, that road, the boy with his buckets and cups and whatever he could find, doing whatever he could, hoping it would be enough, hoping that it would matter. Milky eyes turned to the Marshall. "You, though," he stared at her, through her, past her, and then directly into her eyes. "You and your burden. I don't understand, my Lady. I don't know..." His words fade. He could picture brave Cherny's task. He could not form a proper image of what he saw before him now. "I'll help you, my Lady Marshall. You needn't toil through life with so little grace and joy. We both know that it has always been within you. It was a true thing. You were a light that we all needed. I promise you I'll protect that light once more." She had regret for him. He had concern, sadness, determination for her, even through his current state, perhaps even more because of it.