Chapter 49 – Funerals
“-And each of these men served the empire with great honor and distinction, in their own distinct ways,” the preacher standing at the far end of the grass field proclaimed solemnly, his voice carrying through the cold, crisp air with an eerie clearness. “Let us take a moment to remember them, one and all, for their noble sacrifices…”
As the preacher’s voice droned on and on, Zull’s thoughts began to drift, lost in the mire of the muddled memories of the recent past. Though he scarcely believed it, a full week had already passed since the final confrontation in the Winter Palace against Prince Blyth and his followers. Those first days afterwards had been a blur of frenetic activity, as the last of Prince Blyth’s surviving agents were rounded up and the full extent of the damage he had done slowly came to light. More crucially for the twins, the Empress had made sure that the royal physicians themselves tended to Zaphyr after the battle, providing her with the finest medical care, both traditional, herbal, and hemomantic, which could be found throughout the whole of the empire.
Though she had teetered dangerously on the edge of death for over a day, she had pulled through, and Zull had been reassured she would indeed live. Some of the wounds she had taken were irreversible; by the time the physicians had seen her, the loss of her leg was already too far gone for any hope of being reattached. However, her ribcage as well as her jaw, with proper bandaging and rest, would heal gradually on their own. Vyle too would heal, though the scars of his interrogation at Blyth’s hands would never fully fade. Zull doubted any of them would ever be able to truly recover from what they had experienced, physically or otherwise. He supposed he should consider himself lucky for escaping with the least injuries, but he couldn’t find it within himself to celebrate.
As far as the citizens of Melkis and the greater empire were aware, there had been an uprising of some sort in the capital against the Empress, led by Captain Erevex of the royal guard, which had been quickly and effectively suppressed thanks to the intervention of the army. Prince Blyth’s role in the entire affair had been quietly hushed up on the Empress’ orders. “Such a blatant sign of treachery within the royal family would only breed worry, chaos, and yet more treason,” she had argued. Zull, Zaphyr, and Vyle had tried to convince her otherwise, but she had ignored their protests.
Prince Blyth’s own funeral had been a quiet, secretive affair, his body buried in a small courtyard within the Winter Palace quickly and without fanfare. No one was present, save for the Empress herself. That had been the very first day after the failed coup. Now, the Empress was hosting, in a desolate, near-abandoned graveyard at the edge of the capital, a much more formal funeral, for all those who had given their lives in the services of the Empire, fighting against the “Master” and his men: General Steroth, his soldiers, and most notably, Sir Kyr. At first, the Empress had wanted to simply dispose of the knight’s body by burning it, but both Zull and Zaphyr had insisted that he be given a proper burial, along with all the rest of the Empress’ men. To their mild surprise, she had at least agreed to that specific request with little complaint.
A lonely wind howled throughout the graveyard, drowning out the preacher’s words as he continued the funerary rites. The graveyard sat between a pair of hills, nestled just out of sight of Melkis itself. A cobblestone road ran exactly through the middle, surrounded by clumps of ancient gravestones weathered by time and the elements, the letters on them now almost unreadable. At the far end, furthest from the city, between a pair of leafless oak trees, were over a dozen open graves, besides which sat the caskets of the last of Prince Blyth’s victims. The coffins were already shut, to hide the unsightly mutilations Prince Blyth had inflicted in his fury. Zull would have preferred they be open; hiding the horrors only increased the risk of forgetting them. In addition to the twins, Prince Grevel and Vyle stood nearby, watching the finishing flourishes on the funeral ceremony. The Empress, flanked by a pair of guardsmen and a handful of other mourners, stood off at a short distance. She wore a plain black dress, which matched her somber, composed demeanor.
“I know I have stated this countless times in the past week, but I must say it again; thank you,” Prince Grevel said as he turned to face the twins. He wore a new, mauve uniform, and carried a gilded cane which doubled as a crutch when he needed it. Even though Zull had completely severed the bindings which had allowed Prince Blyth to drain Prince Grevel’s vitality, the experience had still been extremely harrowing for the young man’s body, leaving him wracked by periodic fainting fits and spells of dizziness. The hemomancers which the Empress had called in grimly predicted that the prince would never fully recover from the torment he had undergone.
Though his face seemed unnaturally flushed, as if with a fever, he smiled amicably at the twins and nodded once towards them. “I will be leaving in a moment. My physician tells me that I shouldn’t be out in weather this cold for long anyway.” After a moment to catch his breath, the prince added, “I cannot express enough my gratitude to either of you. If you ever have need for anything, I shall see to it, no matter what. You have my word.”
“We did what we thought was right, Your Majesty. Nothing more, nothing less,” Zull said. Zaphyr, standing slightly behind them, mumbled something muffled by the bandages wrapped around her jaw. Unlike Prince Grevel’s ostentatious walking stick, she carried a simple wooden staff which she leaned on for balance. “But thank you for your kind words. We will remember your promise, Your Majesty.”
Prince Grevel chuckled, shaking his head slightly as he did so. Without another word, he turned and slowly began limping off along the cobblestone path, each loud footstep crunching leaves underneath, like the snapping of old bones. Vyle, who had been leaning against a nearby tree trunk, gave a soft laugh as he watched Prince Grevel depart, though it clearly pained him to do so.
“I heard the flippancy in your voice, Lad. Don’t take his promise lightly,” Vyle said, his eyes following the path of the departing Prince. “The Vay family are a great many things, but oath breakers cannot be included on that list. Barring a…notable exception, of course. If Prince Grevel says that he will help you, then he will do so.”
“It’s not whether or not he will help us that I am concerned about,” Zull told the bandit. “Rather, Zaphyr and I are debating whether or not we even want his help. Ever.”
“Hah,” Vyle said. “Spitting in the Prince’s face, turning down perfectly good assistance. I knew there was a reason I liked you both.”
“It’s not that. I amm tired of this city. We are tired of this city,” Zull said, pointing to Zaphyr, who nodded emphatically. “Tired of politics. Tired of petty scheming. Tired most of all of violence, and slaughter. We want to leave it all behind.”
“Aye,” Vyle said sadly, looking to the ground as he chewed absently on his lower lip. “No one your age should be forced to undergo such horrors.”
“We never had the choice,” Zull said, smiling bitterly. “From the moment Gerok’s home, our home, burned down, our path was set.”
By this point, the ceremony had finished, and they stopped talking to watch as the caskets were slowly lowered into the waiting graves as dirt was shoveled atop them. Once the graves were filled in the preacher and the grave diggers quickly left, as if afraid to spend a minute longer amid the graves than they had to. Then, the Empress and her guards moved towards where the twins stood. She stopped in front of Vyle, who inclined his head ever so slightly, the barest acknowledgement of her existence.
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“Argus Vyle,” the Empress said, her voice cold and aloof. Her guards standing on either side glared at the bandit with undisguised disgust.
“Yelezna Vay,” Vyle said, his voice equally stiff. They glared at each other for another few moments, neither moving, before he continued, “I’m surprised you haven’t had your men arrest me yet, considering our history.”
“Our history?” she echoed, her expression at once icily amused and full of contempt. “I think you mean your history – a history of violence, deception, and warmongering, followed by a long and sordid career of thievery and thuggery. I lost many good men in this whole sorry affair, Alexis Steroth chief among them – frankly, I wish you had died and he had lived.”
Vyle smiled crookedly. “I didn’t know you still cared so much.”
The Empress scoffed, crossing her arms and turning slightly away from the bandit, expression darkening. After a moment, she turned to look back at him. “I will not delude myself; you did play a crucial part in saving both my life and in protecting the empire you have worked so hard for so long to dismantle.” She frowned angrily. “And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why you would do this, when it went so blatantly against your interests.”
“And not knowing just drives you mad, doesn’t it?” Vyle said, taking a step towards the Empress before one of her guards pointed his spear tip at the bandit’s chest, forcing him to retreat slightly. He glanced over at Zull and Zaphyr, who stood a short distance away, listening to their conversation with mild interest. “There were a…number of reasons why I chose to try and save your pathetic little empire, Yelezna. The first was my sense of honor which, despite your protests to the contrary, does still exist, and which the twins over there were successfully able to appeal to. They played a much greater part in your survival than I ever did. As did the second reason I acted; my good friend, Sir Kyr.”
“The wolf?” the Empress asked.
“That,” Vyle said, his expression one of forlornness. “And so much more. A better and braver knight you won’t find in your entire army, ‘Empress.’” Vyle stopped speaking for a moment, mouth twitching slightly. Then, he said, “He asked me to help him on his grand, pointless, foolish quest to save the land and all its innocent people from the clutches of a mad tyrant. He saw us all as heroes, and I believed in his vision. Now look where that got us.” He turned to look at the freshly buried graves. “All the heroes end up dead.”
“There’s something more,” the Empress insisted. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“Do you really want to know, Yelezna? Because I don’t think you do,” Vyle said, narrowing his eyes. When she didn’t reply, he said, with an almost impish air of mischievousness, “Fine. I’ll tell you why I did it. I did it because you would hate me for it. I did it because you would know, deep down, on some level even you wouldn’t want to admit, that your precious empire that you sacrificed so many people for, including me, would not exist if it weren’t for my help. You owe me, Yelezna.”
The Empress had begun massaging her temples as she muttered, “What do you want, Vyle?”
“I want you to say you’re sorry.”
Baffled, she blinked twice as she stared at him, hoping somehow that if she waited long enough, his statements would magically make sense. “You…what? You want what?”
“I’ve had years to think about this, Yelezna,” Vyle said quietly. “At first, after you betrayed me, I wanted revenge. I wanted to watch your precious empire torn down around your head, and you buried in the rubble. But now, after all these years, all I want is for you to admit that you were wrong. I would have been more than willing to help build your empire with you. But you cast me aside like a broken tool the moment you got the opportunity.”
He stopped to wipe a tear running down his weathered, aged cheek. “I’m an old man, Yelezna. I’m too tired to fight you anymore. Tell me you were wrong, that you regret what you did, and I will go back to my little backwater forest with my men. We’ll leave anyone and everyone who comes through alone – there’s more than enough wild game in those woods to keep us all well-fed. All the banditry was purely to annoy you.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Well, a promise to let me walk free and not have your guards imprison me here and now would be greatly appreciated. Other than that, I ask nothing.”
“I would be lying if I did not say that I sometime regretted the decisions I made in my youth,” the Empress said, rubbing her fingers together slowly as she stared down at her hands, gloved in black satin. “But I would also be untrue if I said that I wished to change the choices I had made. The mistakes and remorse of our younger years are the foundations upon which we build wisdom. Still, I hurt you, Vyle, and a great many other people as well. I…am sorry. I do wish things could have gone differently between us. I am grateful for what you did to save me, my nephew, and my kingdom.” She turned away from the bandit.
Vyle gave a curt nod. “Thank you,” he said simply. Without another word, the Empress walked away, her guards giving a last pair of surly glares in Vyle’s direction before following her. As the desolate, lonely wind howling through the graveyard grew louder and colder, Vyle stepped over to stand beside the twins. With the last of the mourners having left, the three of them were the only ones remaining.
“I suppose this is goodbye,” Vyle said, shuffling awkwardly as he placed his hands on the twins’ shoulders. “You two did so much for all of us that none of us, least of all me, will ever be able to repay you for.”
He laughed hollowly. “It’s funny…of all of us, you sacrificed the most, save perhaps those who died.” Vyle looked back over his shoulder for a final time at the graves. “And yet, your reward is obscurity. Heh. It’s better this way, you know; you’ll be able to live out the rest of your lives, unknown and undisturbed. Peacefully.” He walked away, the dry leaves littering the graveyard crunching loudly underfoot as he left the twins alone. After a few steps, he paused and looked back. “Stop by the Ar Goll Woods in a season or two and say hello, why don’t you?” he said. “I won’t be here much longer, I feel, and you’re the closest things I have left in the world to friends. It would be nice to see you both again, before I pass on. Farewell, Zull and Zaphyr Tyrell.” Without waiting for either of them to reply, he continued on his way, never glancing back.
Zull watched Vyle’s steady retreat for a minute, before walking over to the fresh graves, Zaphyr following slowly behind him. He stopped before the one furthest to the right, the small, unornamented headstone of which simply said “Sir Kyr” without another other information or dates. It didn’t even have a first name listed; it occurred to Zull then he never had asked his guardian what his full name had been, and now, he would never know. The graves besides it were equally plain, displaying the names of those buried there without further comment or mention of their valiant deeds.
“Vard, Kyr, Steroth,” Zull said, letting each name hang in the air like the echoing note of a lonely bell. “They all died in our quest to defeat Prince Blyth. And here we are, at the end. The ones who survived. Hollow. I…I don’t know what to do anymore, Zaphyr. I thought it would be easier with Prince Blyth gone. Instead, I feel like I’m falling. We’re forced to live with all the things we did the save the Empress’ throne, and we have not a thing to show for it.” He kicked a rock underfoot, which struck Sir Kyr’s headstone, bouncing away with a clatter. “Would things have been better if Prince Blyth had won? No. But, I wish it had been somebody else’s job to stop him. Not ours.”
He started to walk away, but to his surprise, Zaphyr reached out and grabbed him by the arm, halting him. He stared at her in amazement, his eyes widening as she reached up and pulled the bandages away from her face, showing that the skin around her lower jaw was still purple, bruised, and swollen. It would have made Zull nauseous to look at if he wasn’t used to such sights by now. That thought, ironically, nauseated him in turn.
“Zaphyr, you shouldn’t be talking,” Zull told her. “Your jaw is still healing, and-”
Cutting him off, Zaphyr spoke, her voice sore and raspy from disuse, and somewhat mangled by the injuries she had received. “We did get something from it, Zull,” she said, speaking haltingly. “Peace.”
“I-
”Let’s go home, Zull,” she implored him. “Let’s go back to Varin, back to Gerok’s shop. We can rebuild it, restart his business. Varin needs healers. Let’s go back to the way things were.”
Zull was torn, unsure if he wanted to cry or laugh hysterically. “Can we, Zaphyr?”
“I don’t know,” Zaphyr responded, smiling encouragingly at him. “But we can try.”
Zull nodded once and, taking his sister by the hand, they walked together out of the graveyard, leaving all the dark and bitter memories it held behind them.