Moonlight danced across the purple petals of desert roses, the plants’ twisted stalks like thick cords of braided hair, water drops sliding down their sides. Kaeto watched as the gerin tended to the gardens, watering the succulents and sedums, their work-worn hands moving with a careful grace the boy couldn’t help but admire.
A hand fell on his shoulder, and Kaeto turned his head up to stare into his mother’s dark eyes, long red hair framing her face like the reflection of a sunrise in a cup of dark coffee. She smiled down at him and said, “Come, we will have time later to spend in the gardens if you so wish.” He nodded his small head, his bearing already regal despite his meager five years of age. They walked further across the king’s private promenade, the nearby water lapping softly against the sandstone quays beneath them. Half a dozen jah annan flanked the boy and his mother, black cloaks concealing all but the sword staves they held, their blades gleaming pennants in the cool night air.
The queen guided Kaeto into a large stone pavilion, one side fenced off, giving a broad view of the harbor beyond, the grand port nothing more than an ancient relic. It was rarely used now save the fishermen who still braved the evils of the sea and a few token galleys which watched for wicked creatures from the deep. In the center of the pavilion, two liveried soldiers stood at attention behind a woman drowning in bright silks and elaborate jewelry piercing her ears, nose, brow, and lip. A girl stood before her, the woman’s hands on the girl’s shoulders. The girl watched the royal party’s approach, narrowing her eyes in what the prince thought to be apprehension. Kaeto smiled, doing his best to make her feel comfortable, just as his mother had taught him was proper.
As they approached the group, all four figures bowed low, hands in fists, the curled flat of their thumbs to their lips. “It is a pleasure, lady Tsegaye,” the woman said. “This is my daughter, the one we spoke of before.”
Kaeto glanced up at his mother and found a warm smile on her face as she gestured for the four to rise from their bows. Kaeto was surprised by the younger girl’s graceful movements, her bow seeming almost to be more practiced than her mother’s. “Thank you, lady Juhnawhynn, she looks to be healthy, but the rest is to be seen. Tell me again, for my son’s benefit, what training has the girl received?” Kaeto’s mother had a soft voice, like the whispered babbling of a stream or the hushed rustling of silk, but the command in her voice was undeniable.
Lady Juhnawhynn smiled slightly and bowed her head a touch. “We’ve spared her nothing, my lady. As you instructed, she has been well taught the art of scribing, I trained her myself in that. Her father taught her the subtle arts of herbs for poisons and tinctures, as well as the little he knows of swordplay. Her arms are still too small for the bow or the powder, but she should take well to them if you choose to have her taught. I assure you, my lady, the prince will want for nothing with her by his side.”
Nodding, Kaeto’s mother gently pushed Kaeto forward, taking a step towards the girl herself, likely to inspect her, he thought. He couldn’t stop looking at the girl’s hands. The skin of her palms and fingers was calloused and rough, stained slightly from either the mixing of inks or of tinctures and poisons, he was sure. The girl held a pleasant air about her, not like himself, not regal, but pleasant in a soothing sort of way. He held out his hand to the girl. She looked from it to her mother, then slowly returned her gaze to him, meeting Kaeto’s gaze.
With an unmistakable air of hesitation, she reached out and took his hand in hers. He smiled. “So, you are to be my, ah, gurant?” He said, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. His mother had tried to explain it to him earlier, but it was a lot of words, and he was too tired to listen.
“Guerrant,” his mother corrected, and Kaeto flushed slightly. Right, that word. What did it matter anyway? He had the jah annan to protect and serve him. Why would he need anyone else? His mother had explained that there was more to being the prince of stars, but it didn’t make sense to him.
“Yes,” he said, the faint flush in his cheeks deepening slightly. “Guerrant.”
The girl smiled a bit awkwardly. “I’m, um, Adarelle, my lord prince. I would, um, serve you if you, um, would have me. “Her words were slow, hesitant, with practiced air behind them. Her palm was getting a bit sweaty, so Kaeto let go. Wait, was that his hand that was sweating? No, it couldn’t be. He was a prince, and princes didn’t sweat.
A loud bang echoed from somewhere behind the prince, and Kaeto whirled around towards the sound, groping at his ornate belt knife. He couldn’t find it for some reason. Glancing down in panic, he saw the stumps of his hands rubbing uselessly at the knife’s hilt. He screamed, falling backward, and the dream faded away.
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Kaeto jerked upright, the acrid smell of ashy decay blowing through the open window of the small house the rebels were using as his prison. His heart raced with panic as he glanced about the room. Adarelle lay on the bed, still unconscious after several days of pain and frustration. Keros sat in the corner of the small room, curled up on a pile of straw that smelled of rot. Keato sat, half slumped against the side of Adarelles bed, forehead sore where he’d rested it on his knee. His other leg was spread out lazily in front of him, and, finally, he stared down at the stumps of his arms.
“Food,” a low feminine voice said, and Kaeto glanced up to see a haetnellian soldier standing in the open door, a tray of cold porridge in her hands, another guard behind her, one hand gripping his blade. The woman strode inside and set the tray down with unnecessary roughness on a small table in one corner of the room before retreating back out, giving Kaeto a wide, self-satisfied smirk as she left. The door closed behind her with a loud click, and the clatter of locking latches followed from the other side.
Kaeto sighed, slowly rising off the hard dirt floor, using the edge of the bed to steady himself. He lumbered towards the food, his stomach twisting in a mix of hunger pains and apprehension. His legs moved with stiff agility, and he nearly fell into the table, scraping his arms on the wall to catch himself. He breathed heavily, leaning against the wall as he tried to grab one of the bowls between his stumps, pressing the clay dish painfully into his skin. He managed to lift one up and slid down the wall, settling on the ground before lifting the food to his mouth.
He drank the cold, somewhat musty porridge with as much alacrity as he could manage. When he couldn’t palate anymore of the fowl stuff, he set the bowl aside and looked towards where the northerner still laid curled up in the corner. “Keros,” Kaeto said, voice rough with dehydration and weariness. “Keros, get up.”
The man didn’t move, and Kaeto sighed. He pushed himself up again, finding it easier the second time, and moved to sit beside Keros. He nudged the man with one stump to be sure he was still alive. He was, of course. “Keros, I can’t feed Addarelle on my own,” Kaeto said, and Keros breathed out a sigh, his whole body seeming to deflate with the rush of air. The northerner pushed himself up slowly, his features sallow, eyes pitted, and his thin frame shook with the effort of movement.
Wordlessly, he moved to grab a bowl, fed himself, then took the bowl of water and a spoon and sat on the stool beside the bed. Kaeto stood and moved to his side, helping the man adjust Addarelle into a sitting position, and she stirred near to consciousness. Her body burned like desert sand at midday, her skin flushed, lips cracked and bleeding. Keros gently coaxed spoonfuls of water into her mouth, and she sipped it up with care. Sometimes she gagged, and the northerner would tip her onto her side to let it spill out, but he managed to get a good few spoonfuls into her before she stilled again.
They moved her back onto the bed, making sure to keep her on her side, and when it was done, Kaeto slumped to the floor, sweat clinging to his whole body. He breathed heavily as Keros drank from the bowl, then handed it down to him. Kaeto took a moment before accepting and drinking some for himself. He made sure to leave enough to give more to Addarelle later. They still had the third bowl of porridge, after all.
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Keros took the water back and returned it to the table, then came and sat beside Kaeto on the ground. The man seemed less drained than the Kaeto, but he also had hands, so it was probably easier for him. The prince stared at the useless stumps, frustration and anger building into a painful knot in his chest. “I’m sorry,” Keros said, and Kaeto sighed heavily, letting his head sag, chin resting against his chest.
“It’s not your fault,” Kaeto said weekly, but Keros snorted.
“Stars damn me, boy. Of course, it’s my fault. Neither of you should be in this mess. Things weren’t supposed to happen like that,” Keros said.
Kaeto frowned at the man. He hadn’t pressed for details from the northerner, mostly because he’d been too tired to ask. Keros had likely been too tired to answer anyway. “Then how was it supposed to happen,” Kaeto asked, letting a heavy note of frustration and rage boil up into his tone. Keros sighed again, seeming to shrink in on himself.
“So many things went wrong. I warned Jotaranell, I told him he should have asked for more support, but he refused to listen. The Haetnellian’s ignored his orders for the citadel to be left alone. The shield was killed before the rite was even started, and…” he trailed off and sighed once more. “And you weren’t meant to be bound to the girl. I never should have let that man talk me into that.”
“Why are you telling me these things,” Kaeto asked, frowning at the man. Keros let out a single self-pitying laugh.
“Because I’ll be dead soon anyway. They won’t let me just walk away from it, not that I’m actually able to walk away.”
“Whoever it is can’t get to you here,” Kaeto pointed out. “There are too many guards, and the rebels are actively besieging the plateau. Nobody in their right mind would try to do anything to you here unless they’re haetnellian.”
Keros shook his head. “You do not understand, boy. Mora and her morantai are many in number and form and great in their power. Getting to me here would pose little threat once they made it past the shattered sea, though, I suppose that one changeling could come back, bring more morantai assassins with it. It has this place in its mind now. All it has to do is open the door.”
Kaeto was silent at that, continuing to look at his stumps. They seemed so… Strange in the moonlight as if they belonged to somebody else. He struggled to believe that he really didn’t have hands anymore. “Why did you do it?” Kaeto asked. “Why did Jotaranell do it?”
“I don’t know why the astrologian did any of it,” Keros said with a shrug. “But I was commanded to, and one does not refuse Mora anything.”
“You talk about the shattered star as if it were still whole as if it were a living thing,” Kaeto said with a frown.
Keros’ gaze seemed distant, his sunken features darkening as something seemed to cross his mind. “It is nothing, just a way of phrase within the cult of Mora. Pay it no mind.”
Kaeto nodded slightly. “So, you’re a cultist then. Why am I not surprised? I take it you’re not Katori then.”
Keros smiled slightly. “No, that was all an act, something I am well skilled at. However, I am related to the current emyred of the arden katori.” At Kaeto’s raised brow, the northerner chuckled. “There are more of us who follow Mora than you might expect, my prince.”
“Apparently,” Kaeto said dryly. After a moment of pause, he asked, “Why did you help me?”
Keros shrugged again. “It was an impulse more than anything, I think. My head was spinning, the world below was exploding, everything we’d worked for that last few years was wasted… I don’t know… I just did what I felt I should, I suppose.”
“And, would you do it again with a clearer state of mind?” Kaeto asked quietly. If he’d had hands, they’d have been clenched at that moment.
Keros didn’t answer for a long moment, staring at the far wall as he pondered the question. “I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps. I don’t like hurting people, even when it’s necessary, neither, I suspect, would Mora or most in her circle.”
Looking down at his hands, then up at Addarelle, Kaeto’s mind began working again for what seemed like the first time in days. “Do you remember the oath you gave me in the corridor just before the rite?” Kaeto asked.
“I do,” Keros said slowly.
Kaeto nodded. “How does your order deal with oaths then, master cultist,” he said with a slight smirk and a wry tone.
“As most others would, I suspect,” Keros said, eyes slightly squinted with confusion. “But our oaths to Mora are first and final. No other oath can compel us to betray those oaths.”
Kaeto nodded again. “Good. I need you to advise me,” he said succinctly.
Keros blinked. “Um. Advise you? Here? Now? What advice of worth could I possibly give you? That you shouldn’t try to feed the girl solid food? That you should sleep with the hay for more restful dreams? That you should only piss in the pot and not the corner?”
Kaeto smiled at the man. “The rebels will come to interrogate us eventually. They’re letting the hunger and pain soften us up before they torture us for information. I doubt they’ll kill any of us, or at least I doubt they’d kill my attendants or me. The prince of stars is too important a political figure to just execute. Tell me, how do we resist torture. It wasn’t something I was ever taught.”
“You don’t,” Keros said bluntly, stealing some of the wind from Kaeto’s sails. “You will break eventually. Nobody is strong enough to resist torture. You can focus on one thing to tell them, and that can help you last for a while, but eventually, everyone breaks.”
Kaeto’s smile had vanished by the time Keros finished speaking. He stared down at his hands and just sighed, the rumble of his stomach punctuating the emotions rolling through his mind. “I don’t think they’ll torture you unless they become desperate for information, if that helps,” Keros said, breaking the sudden silence.
Kaeto barked out a laugh. “Then what are they likely to do, in your opinion?” Kaeto said, words edged with a bitter sharpness. Keros didn’t react to the tone.
“They’ll humiliate you,” the northerner said simply. “They’ll likely strip you naked and parade you around the city, all the while mocking and harassing you.”
The prince frowned and looked up. “That doesn’t sound too bad. I think I could manage if it’s only that.”
Shaking his head, Keros said, “it’s easy to think that, but you will likely break before they are done with their little show. You would be surprised by the power of humiliation. I’ve seen many a mighty warrior crumble to the mocking of crowds.”
Kaeto thought about it for a moment. “What sort of things are they going to want to know?” He asked. Perhaps if he knew what the rebels wanted, but no. It probably didn’t matter.
“Can’t ever be certain, but they’ll likely try and wring you for details on the citadel, how to circumnavigate its defenses, things like that. If they’re smart, they’ll probably try and force you to defect.”
Kaeto snorted. “As if I’d ever do something as stupid as that. I am the prince of stars. I’ll never betray my kingdom or my people.”
“Doesn’t mean they won’t try,” Keros said, his tone matter of fact.
With another weary sigh, Kaeto rested the back of his head on the side of the bed, his long tangled mess of red hair pressing against his shoulders and back. He looked to Adarelle, laying on her side in the bed, face tight with pain and exhaustion. He wished she would wake, that whatever malady gripped her would flee. He needed her counsel and guidance. More than anything, he needed her presence. She’d been by his side for nearly as long as Kaeto could remember, the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend. It hurt to see her like that, twisting with pain and sickness.
Suddenly the door to their room opened with a soft bang, and three haetnellian soldiers in their standard blue tabards stepped into the room. Kaeto recognized them from when the captain had captured them. The center soldier smiled, his eyes flashing with a twisted excitement as he stared into Kaeto’s eyes. The prince held the man’s stare, refusing to back down, but that only seemed to embolden the other man.
“Good night, lord prince. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I trust my people have been treating you well?” The man stepped forward, stooping to inspect Kaeto and Keros where they sat. He locked eyes with Kaeto, grinning almost manically. “Well, it’s no matter. Come, My king wishes to see his nephew. I hear it’s been a long twenty years, and, my, how you’ve changed.”