Year 212. Amphe, Capital of Dioúksis Polydius Audax - Khirn
“And I saw the end of the first path, cut in two. And I chose the one closest to my heart. And I saw that my heart was foul, for I brought only destruction to the world.” - Acominatus, The Aureate Code Pg. 203, Par. 1.
JIRA ne’JIRAL
They were in Jira’s manse when the horns blasted to announce the nearing of the ride to Lydoros. The sun was cresting over the tops of the city’s tallest buildings, radiant and yellow through the thin white clouds of the endless blue sky. Nara-ward leaned over the balcony railing, bright-eyed in wonder, and whistled as the full might of the Belanorian Legions filed into view through the labyrinthian streets. “How many Belanorians came to join the war?” he asked, gazing to see his master join him on the balcony.
She adjusted the vambrace, couter, and rerebrace around her right arm and stood beside him, ensuring they were secure. “Four, maybe five hundred thousand? More outside the city also chose not to impede Amphe’s capacity more than the Prime’s selections already have.”
“That’s almost mythic,” Nara-ward gawked. “I’ve only heard legends of armies that size from the times of the Golden Lords like Acominatus and Lecapenas. I think Acominatus’ father-in-law, Ooryphas, had an army larger than them! It was said to be in the millions, full of beasts with seven horns that breathed fire and giants wearing gold swinging axes made of rubies and diamonds. But that’s impossible, right?”
Jira shrugged and gave a last look over her arm and then gazed into the mirror on the balcony. A vanity decision, but it allowed her to see the full breadth of her silver plate armor. Normally, she would dress upon location, but the nature of this conflict was not one to be caught unaware in. Her helm was a distinct armet bearing a unique sharp golden nasal adornment that ran from bridge to crown, the visor covering her face with her sight granted by two angled holes over her eyes and extra ventilation provided by a line of three breaths on either side of the cheeks. The comb of the helmet featured long white plumes that extended to the sky at an angle. The bevor was unadorned by decoration, namely due to it being hidden by the folded layers of the top of her white cloak, which was clasped to the contrastingly adorned pauldrons by simple golden sunbursts. These pauldrons were layered in increasingly small pieces of silver, each one featuring curved engraved lines of darker silver. The breastplate was master crafted in particular to the rest of the set, and bore the greatest number of decorations, being dark silver highlights, a fauld and twin rondels of pure sapphire, and a tasset bearing two amethysts on either side. The cuisse, poleyn, greaves, fan-plates, and sabatons were undecorated, for the entirety of her lower body was hidden in a long white robe clasped to the underside of the fauld by rings of silver. In Aqella, this would be seen as a gaudy piece of ceremonial armor. In Khirn, it was a gift and expected to be worn in battle. The equipment bore the stamped eagle sigil of her Dioúksis-given house—the records of it having been built over a lifetime of falsified and legitimate deeds. Would this war be a legitimate deed? A foolish one, to be sure. But would it be legitimate?
“I don’t know, Nara,” she answered at the sound of another horn—six hours to the ride. “Khirn and Aqella are massive continents. They are larger than they have any right or logic to be, but that right or logic never stays the same or excuses itself, and it seems like so few care to talk about it or even notice it. One year, it can take months to travel from city to town, the whole year from city to city, and longer from nation to nation. The next year, it can take exponentially shorter. But no one notices or talks about it. We go with it. That said, Amphe is lucky that the Belanorians got here as quickly as they did. Or maybe the Most Noble had something to do with their hasty arrival. Khirn and Aqella are older than we have records for. Maybe mystharin has something to do with it.”
“What do you mean?” Nara-ward asked, chuckling buffoonishly at the distant sight of the Belanorian High Calvary mounted on their gleaming armored steeds.
Jira smiled, small and thin, at his innocence. “We’re still finding ruins throughout our homes, some of them not belonging to humanity. Do you remember when I told you last year’s Eighteenth Tahririan Archeological Dig had discovered a vast necropolis in their north? Untouched for millennia, epochs beyond our comprehension and holding the skeletal remains of corpses so outside of humanity that it drove those who initially saw them mad with religious fear. The Prophets spoke of it during the annual Chapter of Lore between the realms’ scholars, but no one but the Veorisians believed them. They didn’t want to; it damaged their beliefs of humanity and our legacy from the Golden Lords. It almost caused a fight. It did cause a fight, though that fight was somehow Aslofidor fighting the Druyans again. So the Prophets returned to it and resumed digging, though I believe they have a much stronger faith in the Most Noble than they did before. Now they’re on the righteous path of uncovering the truth of His Creations, or something like that. And that’s just in Khirn. Who knows what’s in the land of the inhumans?”
Nara-ward turned to Jira. “I remember this. I wanted to ask you something about that. I thought we came here to escape the inhumans by the Highest's will. How could there be inhuman remains here? Were they here first all along?”
Another shrug. “Who knows? Older-”
“-Than we have records for,” Nara-ward completed the sentence with an understanding nod. A third blast of the horns sounded, drawing a defeated sigh from the pair. “I think it’s past time we get you to the Dioúksis, Lady ne’Jiral. His courier was very insistent this morning, and the Belanorians have sounded their horns thrice now.”
“You’re beginning to sound like the Eldest Augur when he’s deep in study,” Jira grumbled as she ushered the boy away from the balcony. “I think you ought to stop learning your vernaculars from Crius.”
“You told me to learn as much as I can from all viable sources, Lady ne’Jiral, and assigned some of them yourself!” the young boy squawked, quickstepping down the central stairs of Jira’s austere manse—austere by the standards of the overall refined design of the city and even in comparison to the Dioúksis’s manor. He stampeded into the woman’s first-floor armory just behind the stairs, bounding through the twin halls with speed akin to a halfling on Sun Dust. He appeared holding the sheathed longsword she had forced herself to become accustomed to using as opposed to the curved blades of her people, along with her dagger to be kept on the opposite hip of her primary blade. “Lord Crius is one of the finest minds in Khirn, and he has taught me well. Amphe is lucky that he is visiting its Church,” Nara-ward finished.
Jira scoffed lightheartedly and took the blades from the blade, strapping them each to her waist. “Just mind the rhetoric depending on who you are talking to, Nara. Some will expect it from you, and others will despise it. Crius has the defense of being the Eldest Augur, but you will be alone for some time once your squireship is complete.”
“Who would despise it?” Nara-ward inquired as he struggled to keep pace with the woman who silently ordered her few servants to lock up the manse after her departure.
“Many people, to be entirely honest,” Jira answered as they stepped onto the small rolling hill of her manse’s grounds. Grass as green as Gnomish forests and Orcin elixirs spread in a square acre around her home, with two fifteen-foot-tall trees standing sentinel at the wooden gate protecting her property. “Has Crius not taught you the art of diplomacy to match?”
“No,” Nara-ward answered.
Jira curled her lip in thought. “I should see if Zetus will take you on as a ward for training. It is beyond the time you should have learned its finer workings. It will help you in the future. I will start, at least, with some apt descriptions. Druyans are straightforward people for the most part and are big on repayments. Blood debts, in other terms. They might not like your speech, see it as a way to deride them, or keep yourself from paying what they think you owe. Some of their leaders tend to talk like Aslofidorians, but that’s only because of how long this war has gone on and how many diplomatic meetings have occurred for half-decades of peace. That isn’t to say they are simple people; they aren’t, they’re just to the point and have been cut deeply so many times by minced words that it’s become an almost generational distrust of that type of talking. Long-winded and fancy. Belanorians, well, you saw them. It’s best not to mince words with them, either. Veorisians are described as savage barbarians, but they are more akin to mystics of the mountains and are the only realm of Khirn that does not follow the faith of the Highest and Most Noble. I call them such derogatory things in conversation with others in this city, but they are spiritual people open to complex conversations, primarily in their language. They are deeply connected to hearth and kin, spirits rather than high beings. Some of our more open-minded Augurs who have traveled the Path to their land have said that they are not practicing heresy, as most of the traditionalists would have you think, but rather the last surviving faith of the first generations after the fall of the Golden Lords. Pre-dating the Most Noble and the like. Bintěian, or Trust of the Old.”
“Why do you call them savage barbarians, then, if they are so complex and different?” Nara-ward asked.
“Traces of Aslofidorian opinion that have carried over into my daily mindset, unfortunately,” Jira admitted. “And, well, they are far from savages but can be savage if you cross them. Probably more than the Druyans or Belanorians. They are slow to anger but slower to peace if angered. Does that make sense?”
“I think so?”
“Good,” Jira smiled, motioning for her squire to follow as she descended the cobbled path to the wooden gate. She stopped to admire the trees, wondering how free they must have felt to flow in the breeze of the wind. Jealousy for their existence filled her heart before she opened the gate and stepped out into the winding streets of Amphe. There was no point in placing a number on how many people filled the city’s streets that day, for no number could logically fit. The roads below their feet were nothing more than shuffling boots, ends of gowns, and the momentarily spotted pieces of cobbled stone.
“What about Tahririans?” her squire continued, having to shout above the hum of voices for Jira to hear him.
“Perhaps the most diplomatic and verbose of the five nations in Khirn,” she responded, pulling her squire out of the path of a horse tromping through the crowd. “All of Khirn has a non-combat alliance with them for religious purposes, sharing knowledge and pilgrimage sites. Hence the annual Chapter of Lore.”
“Do Tahririans not fight?”
“They have an army to defend their borders, but only in name. They are extreme pacifists, fanatical peace lovers, and practitioners of meditation found in their version of The Codices. They’ll defend their home with politics and use trade and diplomatic means to gain territory, but they won’t invade. Hell below, they won’t even use their army to defend their home if invaded. They’ve historically allowed themselves to lose territory to Aslofidor in days past to avoid bloodshed, merely evacuating their people to their tread cities before those cities became their primary settlements.”
The pair turned a corner, regaining a foothold on their path to leave the city and find their way to the Dioúksis’s wagon house outside the walls. It would be a long journey. “Tread cities?” the squire asked.
“Leftover mystharin -technology from the first generations,” Jira explained. “Retrofitted by modern-day scholars and craftsmen and blessed by their Prophets. Partially subterranean, partially terranean. Carving through the sand with these...shovels on their bows. Roaming on these long wheels that they call treads, for they ‘tread the path of the faithful nomad.’ I’ve seen them during a pilgrimage of mine. Wonderful things, though they are quite loud. You’d think that using these ‘heretical devices’ would cause an outrage, but the truth is that they are the very reason that, even if the rest of Khirn did not have a peace pact with them, no one could invade Tahrir. Consider them to be mobile Amphes. Utterly impregnable and multiple.”
“A prophet queen rules Tahrir, right?” The squire asked this after the pair passed a member of one of Amphe’s incalculable churches standing on a merchant-flooded street corner. From her lips came a litany of prophecies and omens, telling how Belanore and ‘the mountains’ would bring peace to the people of Aslofidor and ruin to the whole of Khirn. Her eyes were the color of glass, and her face was sagging off the bone, though her voice should have belonged to a woman no older than her thirties.
“That is correct, Nara,” Jira said, momentarily stopping to hoist the boy atop a short dividing wall to remove him from an ever-increasing swarm of people as they entered another street. He balanced himself with careful steps and the practiced dexterity Jira had taught him in their lessons. “By her visions and the interpretations of the Portent—the Church of Prophets—Tahrir is guided to its future. Hence, they have the largest number of ruins discovered from the days of Old Khirn. Only the Belanorians can match them in the field of lore on Old Khirn, and only the Belanorians can match them in overall dedication to The Codices. However, their interpretations are wildly different.”
The pair stopped as they reached a choke in the crowd, a line to pass through a checkpoint guarded by Amphe’s city watch. The dividing wall ended abruptly, and Nara-ward lowered himself to the ground. He stuck close to his master, visibly pondering everything she had told him. She watched with vested interest to see what conclusions he would draw. “So with the Tharirians, I should focus on diplomatic and religious languages for cohesion with our dialogue. And avoid talks of war-”
She held up a finger. “-You don’t necessarily avoid talking about war. Just don’t expect them to be willing to join you in a fight in the ways of the blade. Find ways to work around war.”
He nodded. “Okay. With the Belanorians, I can do much of the same but should focus more on the heart of the matter, especially if it involves war.”
“Correct.”
“Veorisians should not be underestimated and are deeply spiritual, but I should be careful not to imply crossing them lest I draw out their savagery?”
She pouted her lip and shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Aslofidorians, well, I can see how they work. Self-interested beyond a doubt.” He gave a small chuckle.
Jira reciprocated. “Yes.”
The line moved forward only a few feet. “And Druyans will be dependent on who is sitting in the chair across from me.”
“Very much so,” Jira agreed, momentarily turning to a brief uproar from a neighboring crowd.
The city watch was quick to break up whatever scuffle had nearly erupted. The source was a pale man, as pale as a Belanorian, with long black hair braided in some parts and decorated with tribal baubles. He was a particularly defined specimen as well, muscles visible even in the dark traveling garb of strange leathers and fabrics, and his eyes spoke of a particular golden vibrance. Not a Belanorian. Veorisian? He was far different from any mortal creature Jira had seen in Khirn save for Erik Apa.”
She frowned and turned back to Nara-ward. “If it’s one of the Houses of the Machkim or Tupri, you’ll have to make do with what you can gather on them yourself or with whatever information gatherers you have at your disposal. Depending on how you approach them with your dialects, they can work with you or against you. Now, the Rune family—House of the Mitsi, the Apas—is more difficult than the others, to say the least.”
“Why’s that?” Nara-ward asked, craning his head to see the party of Drayheller through the mass of humanity before him.
“The Runearch, Ezel Apa, is more open to diplomacy than most of her kin. Not only creating a ceasefire between the Vasileús and Druya but also entering a military alliance with her nation and his loyalists. She forged an impossible union and has thus far held it together although her nation wished it was not so.” Jira shuddered as she recalled the name and face of the Runearch’s heir. “Her son, the Runemaster, is a different story. Implacable, blood lustful, sinful. Erik Apa is a devil, and I have had the misfortune of seeing him on the battlefield more times than I care to admit.”
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“How many times?”
“Once,” Jira spat. “And once was all I needed to never want to see him again.”
Nara-ward was aghast. “But-but you’re the greatest knight I’ve ever seen. How bad could he be?”
“Do you remember the Battle of Bassis? The town that used to border Aslofidor and Druya in the northwest, just a bit ways south of the Veorisian border?”
Nara-ward shook his head.
Jira breathed hard, cursing herself for remembering this day but knowing that Nara-ward needed to understand the dangers of the Runemaster. “He was there. As was I. It was an erosion of morality and sensibility. Every man and woman who fought there that day became little more than a beast, and Erik Apa was the master of us all. He slaughtered hundreds of Aslofidorians like they were cattle and then turned himself on the town. He slaughtered everyone that could not fight back when we were too weak to protect them. I saw him burn families to the bone and kick their skulls like rocks down a river bed.”
“Most Noble Protect Them,” Nara-ward prayed under his breath. “Was he not convicted for this? Was he not removed from power?”
“It is not enough that he is the son and heir of Druyan’s leader, but no one wanted to admit what happened that day.” Jira collected herself as she saw the line moving again and several glances coming her way as she recounted her tale. “Everyone forgot, which led to one of the half-decades of peace. Then, the vile obscenities between our nations kept erupting, provoking war again until the Runearch and the Vasileús reached their agreement.”
“How dreadful,” Nara-ward grimaced.
“Indeed.”
“Will the Runemaster be at Lydoros?” Nara-ward’s voice lost all interest in history and vocabulary. He was fully immersed in the horror of what this Erik Apa represented. Jira was terrified for him. She knew that the man would be there, and if he were, the chances of whatever practical arrangement could be reached between the Vasileús and the Dioúksis would be impossible to attain.
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Year 212. Royal Alliance Caravan - Khirn
ERIK APA
The camp made by the joint force of Druya and Vasileús Hippon Aslofidor defied legend. Only an army of Aqella itself could match the sheer might of what the two nations had produced to put down this errant Dioúksis who had so brazenly seceded from the crown in his effort to gain power. From Druya alone came hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers, along with thousands of archers, tens of thousands of light calvary, thousands of knights and heavy calvary, an untold number of serfs and healers, and vagabond merchants leeching off the army’s wandering of the countryside. From the Vasileús came a smaller force, though he could not deny that they were almost as impressive. Led personally by Hippon the Ninth, the Vasileús had produced an army nearly three-fourths the size of Druyan’s own. Fires and tents the color of dull rainbows spread as far as he could see without his armor, which was still impressively far. The smells were the worst and best of it. Sizzling bacon, dripping fat, and bubbling stews filled the air like a delicious vapor.
Erik Apa, dressed in fine clothes fit for a traveling huntsman rather than the warrior he preferred to be seen as, wandered the corridors of this camp with curious eyes. He was eager to see how the unholy union of his blessed people with these Aslofidorian dogs would turn out. To his begrudging surprise, there were fewer conflicts between the armies than he would have expected and fewer deaths on either side. Surely not enough to put an end to this farce of an alliance. His own attempts in this failed to draw anything but minor uproars quickly put down by his mother’s implanted peacekeepers, the only people he could safely say outranked him beside the Runearch.
He found himself bored with time and returning to the comforts of his cohort in the center of the Druyan’s portion of the camp. There, he met his commanders. Goka Tur and Akma Yal were two of the best warriors he had fought with. Of course, there was also Adil Ere, Ulek Aks, Yola Tal, Isme Erd, and Zeyn Gol, each a fine combatant in their own right, though increasingly humorless and stern as the list went on. However, his joy at seeing them was nearly ruined at the sight of Iren Ney, the worst of his cohort, who was only allowed to stay in his position due to his mother being a Machkima of Karagog. He swayed with his movements and clung to Goka Tur like dung on a farmer’s boot, refusing to vacate the area even when it appeared that the latter was ordering him to. Erik quirked a brow at the sight but dropped the issue when his friends greeted him.
“Tohyi!” Goka Tur and Akma Yal cheered in unison, embracing Erik Apa as a brother.
“Where the hell have you been all day?” Akma Yal asked.
“Scouting the perimeter, checking on the dogs, making sure the peace was maintained,” Erik Apa replied.
“Oh, keeping the peace, eh?” Akma Yal laughed. “Judging by those bruises on your hand, I bet the peace was well maintained.”
Erik Apa looked down at his right fist, finally noting the bruising on his knuckles. His stoicism turned into a short laugh. “One of the dogs lunged at me. Had to teach him a lesson.”
“Well then, you truly deserve this, tohyi,” Goka Tur said, his forked beard jingling with assorted bells as he bounced in place out of sheer excitement. Beside him, Iren’s hands were behind his back, and his eyes were slightly dilated. Per the Druyan’s Codices, Goka had painted his face down to his goatee in oranges and yellows and outlined his lips and eyes in black. Erik Apa thought he looked foolish for it, but if it made him fight better than he already did, he could not complain.
“That rihka needed a lesson, as does this one,” Iren Ney chortled as Goka Tur gently pulled an orchid robed woman into view from the gathered crowds of the Runemaster’s cohort. Erik’s heart had raced at the sight of her. She was shorter than most women he had encountered, voluptuous, with dark olive skin and dark blonde hair braided—hanging forward over her left shoulder—and an air of unnaturalness to her movements that kept him focused on her for the entirety of her approach.
“Manna, Maprapeyni,” she said in a low whisper that slithered into Erik Apa’s ears as deftly as an assassin’s dagger. “I hope I am pleasing to your eyes.”
“Who is this?” he asked.
"Some puho for you, tohyi." Iren stumbled over his words, each attempt at sounding coherent drawing a deeper look of ire and concern from Goka Tur, who attempted to usher the man away, only to meet a flailing hand to create distance.
“If my mother hears of this, she will have our heads,” Erik Apa said nervously. “She has banned such things.”
“Yes, when we march in enemy territory, but are we enemy territory anymore, tohyi?” Goka Tur asked with a quirked brow and a dog’s smile.
“You are fools with semantics,” Erik Apa said, pointing at his commanders. He locked his gaze on the woman for over a few seconds before passing by her. “No loss of focus. No granting of advantage to these foreign mongrels. We must operate at our peak efficiency when we march into our enemy’s lands. I would have none of you fail me because your minds are too bewildered by wine or bedding. Is that clear?”
Akma nodded, softly urging the woman to step forward. “As far as I can tell, we’re in allied territory, so there is no risk of anything.”
“Goka’s right, tohyi,” Iren Ney said, producing a small canteen from behind his back. “No risk, yeah?”
“Iren, I think you should leave,” Goka Tur suggested.
“Why? No risk,” Iren countered. He took a swig from his canteen, and the stench from the liquid told Erik of its contents.
“You’re drinking howler, Iren?” Erik Apa asked.
“Technically, patsnin,” Iren corrected.
“What is the matter with you?” Erik turned his gaze to Goka Tur. “You knew he was drinking this?”
Goka Tur shrunk under the glare of the Runemaster. “Apologies, tohyi. I tried to stop him, but you know Iren. He-”
Erik Apa made a noise that silenced the entire vicinity. “You’re my commander, Goka. You can lead an army in the thousands against these dogs, but you can’t stop one boy from confounding himself? You bring a mistress to this camp and let him drink fucking howler?”
“Does my presence offend you, Maprapeyni?” the woman asked, her voice slithering into Erik’s mind like a dagger.
“The disregard for the laws of their Runearch offends me,” he stated.
Iren groaned and offered the canteen to Akma, who rejected it. “Tohyi, we are in an allied country, as Akma said. The laws do not apply here. Your mother specifically said enemy territory. That rotting Vasileús gave us leave to use his land, so Devil Below, I say we use it.”
“Not to drink howler and not to be distracted by mistresses,” Erik corrected, marching forward to snatch the canteen out of the young man’s hands. Against his shouting protests, Erik Apa dumped the remaining contents onto the ground. “Highest Above, how badly do you need to cope with your shit placement in the cohort?”
The Runemaster’s gaze wandered again to the woman near Akma. Surprise lifted his spirits internally at the smirk inching across her face. Goka’s face scrunched in discomfort at his comrade’s dismissal while Akma struggled to avoid breaking into a peal of gut-wrenching laughter. “Mihka, tohyia. You didn’t have to say that,” Iren mumbled. “We are just trying to have a good time before the bloodshed.”
“And you’ve had enough,” Erik Apa declared. He turned once more to Goka. “Drown him in water until he comes to his senses, and then give him some damned food to work against the drink.”
Goka Tur nodded and quickly dragged the protesting Iren away, leaving Erik Apa with Akma Yal and the thinly-robed woman. Around them, the rest of the cohort returned to their business, the hum of their conversations returning to pitch volume and washing away the Runemaster’s ire. “Are you okay, tohyi?” Akma Yal asked.
Erik Apa looked at the woman next to Akma. She lifted her head to meet his eyes, and he could see brilliant hazel. “I will be fine, so long as Iren is kept on a short leash,” he said to Akma. “Goka should have kept him clean.”
“I should have noticed it as well,” Akma Yal lamented.
“Iren wasn’t clinging to your side like he was Goka’s,” Erik Apa said sternly, keeping his gaze locked on the woman whose hidden smirk had slowly morphed into something seductive. “If you see him on that drink again, beat him. If I see him on it again, he's gone. Iren, I mean, not Goka."
Akma Yal’s eyes widened. “Tohyi, are you sure that is wise? His mother-”
“Has two other sons who are far more qualified for Iren Ney’s position than he is. It is a miracle for the boy that he's even allowed here in the first place.”
“As you say, tohyi.” Akma Yal surrendered his potential protests. “Shall I have the mistress taken back to Druyan?”
Erik Apa shamed himself in his heart when he told Akma Yal to have the woman stay, arguing that to have her leave in the dead of night in this foreign land of mongrels would put her at an unnecessary risk—a risk he would be sure to punish those who knew of the woman’s presence for. With a bow, Akma Yal departed to find Goka Tur and Iren Ney, leaving the woman with Erik Apa, who led her back to his tent.
“My apologies for the peril to your life,” he said to the woman as she sat on the edge of his cot. “Had I known you were even nearing the borders of Druyan, I would have sent for you to turn back immediately.”
“I would have ignored such an order,” the woman said with full volume for the first time since he had met her. Her voice was of Druyan’s Ogaar Isles, refined and seaworthy like Tupria Erya Hale of the same land. “The chance to meet the Maprapeyni himself was too great to ignore.”
“Is that right? I suppose I failed to realize my reputation spread as far as the Ogaar Isles,” he said. With a quick formation of circular shapes in the air and a snap of his fingers, the Runemaster lit the candles in the tent to a comfortable brightness.
She returned the grin. “Your reputation spreads all over Khirn, Maprapeyni. Some of it is good, and some of it is not. Surprisingly, your practice of the mystharinic arts is not among your most talked-about aspects. Is it the fear of it and the risk of bringing down an unending war that keeps such things hidden from voice?”
He did not answer. “And which parts were you interested in?” he asked, instead.
“All of it,” she answered. No, her voice was something else. Something new. “Would I see the Beast of Druyan? Tiyneka? The one everyone sees. Or would I see the man no one else sees for long? The one simply defending his homeland. Hoping for a bright future where worship of the Most Noble and practice of mystharin are one and the same again.”
The accent was identifiable, but the stress pattern—the localization of Druyan heritage—was wrong. It was everything—first, second, last, and last. Erik Apa looked at her as her voice clung to his brain as Iren had clung to Goka. He moved throughout the tent as he removed his clothing, from gloves, bracers, and boots to his surcoat, leaving only his shirt and trousers as he stood on the furred carpet of his temporary home.
“Did I say something to offend?” she asked.
“No, you did not,” he said immediately, lifting the chair near his tent’s flaps and setting it down in front of the woman sitting on his bed. He sat down with a huff and leaned forward, intrigued. “Your voice is...unique. That is all.”
“How do you mean?” She cocked her head to the side, her braided hair falling off her shoulder and behind her back.
He ignored her question and asked his own. “Have you seen either yet?”
“You have not killed yet,” she said bluntly.
“You would not see me kill. Those like you are not permitted in the camp, let alone the battlefield.”
Her smile after this was enough to melt the permafrost of Belanore’s ice caves. “I would see what you had done in your eyes when you returned to me after. I would know if I was looking at the Protector of Druya or the Killer of Bassis.”
His heart went cold at the mention of that town, a gruesome slaughter that he had attempted—in vain—to remove from memory. “Were you so certain I would have you stay with me that long? Undetected?”
“Not undetected, no. But you are Maprapeyni. What is there that you cannot do?”
He snorted. “Defy my mother. And her peacekeepers.”
“Temporary things,” the woman said. “If I am permitted to speak freely...”
“Speak freely.”
The woman nodded in gratitude. “Your mother is in her elder years, Maprapeyni. Soon, she will be forced to retire from the field, and, eventually, you will take over as her heir. It is time that you start to remember the power you wield, not just on the battlefield. You were denied a seat during the talks of peace and alliance with the Vasileús and his family and now are forced to lead your cohort into war alongside your greatest enemy, Vasileú Hippon. This should not be.”
Erik Apa scoffed and leaned back in his chair. “So what is this, woman? A ploy to gain position and power with the next ruler of Druyan?”
She laughed, and it was a genuine laugh. “Not at all. I am a ghatmi. There is no place for position or power for me beyond this.”
“Unless I took you as a wife,” he verbally theorized. “Which you could be trying to convince me to do.”
“If I were, I would be far more open about it.”
“Then what is your place in this, woman? Why seek me out? Why tell me these things?”
“Because you are greater than what you are now, Maprapeyni,” she answered, her expression suddenly turning serious. “You can be much more than this lapdog for your mother and an alliance you have no use for.”
Her voice slithered into his mind like an orchestra’s crescendo. A fiend’s grin crossed his lips. “You are no mere ghatmi, woman. You speak as an oracle. Or is that how they train you in Ogaar?”
The woman stifled a giggle, and her hazel eyes flashed in the candlelight. “I am learned, is all. Let me stay with you during this war, and you will see I am right.”
“That you are learned?”
“That you are greater than what you are now.”