Cherny is a squire. He is a squire, even if he'd at first thought to pretend, if it had been a way to watch, to learn, to spy on the Lady and her Foundation. He has has served well, has studied attentively, has played his part as diligently as any actor that ever breathed a line of dialogue. And somehow, at some point, he'd started to believe it himself, to see him not as Cherny pretending to be a squire, but Cherny the squire.
He'd escaped the Rememdium's quiet halls as the dawn's light crept in - not abandoning his knight, no, only attending to his chores, his duties. His knight's horse, fed and watered, stall mucked out for all that his back and shoulder pained him where they'd caught Ser Catch's fists. A trip into the Broken Dagger, to Sir Elliot's room to fetch clean clothes to his knight's bedside in the Rememdium, the previous night's finery smudged with dust and blood. He'd done as he'd been trained, fulfilled his duties as best he could - the knight still slept, insensible, his features a swollen mess of livid bruises.
Now the squire stands on the lawn in front of the tavern, head bowed as he regards a patch of sun-scorched grass stained red-black; here, where she fell, where he-- ;nearby a scuff of grass, a trail of bloody spatters where she'd been dragged, then carried; over here, torn-up turf where Ser Catch had raged with his fists and heels.
He picks over the battlefield, head jerking from one side to the other as his gaze is arrested by this detail or that. Here he stoops to retrieve his dropped falchion, the blade now smeared and sticky with dry blood, dust and dead grass marring the steel. Over here the witch's spear, discarded in the fight's final throes, picked up tentatively at first, as if fearful it will bite. There on the porch railing, a squire's doublet and mailshirt and belt, now draped awkwardly over his shoulder. On the porch itself, a pail of Ser Catch's shorn memories, pinned down beneath iron shears and wooden comb. Back along the path, a puddle of stiff patch-cloth picked up carefully, wadded up to keep the worst of the stains on the inside of the bundle.
He cleans the falchion blade with a damp rag and then oilcloth, scrubbing at it until his own dark-eyed reflection looks back at him from the steel.
He hides the bucket of hair clippings in his corner of the hayloft, telling himself that this task is incomplete, had been interrupted, will be resumed.
He trudges down to the lakeshore to bathe, letting the cold water drain his limbs of feeling, until a numbness seeps into his bones.
He pounds patch-cloth skirts upon a flat lakeside rock until the water stains pink and his knuckles are split and bloodied.
He dries off and dons his training clothes - linen shirt, black britches, black doublet, black shoes; mailshirt, belt, the falchion a weight of iron at his hip. He carries the witch's spear with him, though at times he seems loath to touch it.
He returns to the Rememdium the very image of well-groomed diligence, perching on a stool at his knight's bedside to wait; the Storyteller's skirts, still damp, spread out over his lap as he works quietly with bone needle and dark thread to mend the rents and tears and split seams. To fix what he can, to put it back together.
His hand still echoes with sense-memory of Niall's deathblow, a shiver of sharp iron cleaving through meat and sinew and bone. His fingers tremble, and the bone needle finds the flesh of his fingertips again and again, leaving blurry little spots of red upon the brightly-coloured cloth.