Drefan
Winter of 3390
We usually had tea in the city’s Ellearn district. But the cold of the coming winter was a deterrent for Lord Riq’ua so we stayed at Illander Castle. Although we discussed nothing that personal, the Ellearn Lord still insisted on privacy, and I was grateful for it. With the way most Camarians acted around or toward me, I preferred not to add to the rumor mills.
Seated in one of the sitting rooms, I told Riq’ua the old stories. The Royalian myths and legends that I had been told in my youth. The founding of the Royalian Empire by Emperor Hozan. The conquering of the nearby kingdoms. Riq’ua kept surprising me, murmuring that he had been alive at that time, which was at least three thousand years ago.
“But as an Ellearn Lord on the High Council, we paid little attention to the outside world and the human powers that existed then. Although I am no longer a constant member of the High Council, I have seen that they still pay little attention to human politics and the empires outside their borders.”
“I don’t wish to assume its arrogance on the side of the Ellearns…”
A sharp laugh, “Oh your assumptions would be correct, your highness. The belief that we outlive everything has caused my people to become self-important and withdrawn from the world.”
“But you made the choice not to do that? Is that why you’re in Camar’a?”
“I am the Ellearn advisor to the High King and Queen who both have the blood of my kinsmen flowing through their veins. I still serve my people by assisting this Empire.”
“I wonder if your people see it that way.”
“Some do. But it has been many years since I last cared about what others thought of my actions. I do what I consider to be right and honorable. In that we are similar, adhering to a code of honor.”
This intrigued me, how different were these codes of honor?
“Who is your honor dedicated to?”
“Queen Sila Vor, Lady of the Ellearn, Love, Stars, and Loyalty. I imagine the two codes are quite different from each other based on yours being dedicated to Lord Nanqa.”
“Yes, ours is said to be severe, but it is what I have known since birth so it is normal to me. But Camarians see ours as scornful.”
“It is what they do not understand that they scorn. Most times it is a reaction born out of fear. But those fears are what have caused wars between the two empires. Camar’a cannot afford to give in to those fear responses any longer.”
“All I want for Royale is peaceful times. Few generations have seen such a thing in my homeland.”
“An admirable occupation, peace. It always seems just outside of our reach but so far in King Peter’s lifetime, there has been a cessation of fighting. I remember when you first came to the Camarian court, an adolescent, wanting a continued truce between the empires. Very bold of both you and your Father to send you here.”
My Father cared little for my safety, prince of the second blood. As long as my father had Thom to be heir, what happened to me was of little consequence.
“Well it worked out in the end, and here we are with a tentative alliance between the empires.”
“Which I heard you also had a hand in?”
“Ah, yes. King Peter and Queen Elaina were far more willing to listen to a child than an adult and I brought up the idea of marriage between the princes. We brokered an agreement and the alliance was born. But it has several stipulations so although things may look rosy, there is still some fear and misunderstanding.”
“Still what you did was quite remarkable and has allowed millions of people to live quiet and calm lives. It's admirable.”
Not used to praise outside of perhaps Mother and Thom I just knew I was blushing. It felt nice to have someone speak so highly of me and the work I had done. It allowed my constantly battered pride to pick itself up off the ground, if momentarily.
“Thank you, Milord.”
“You're welcome. Would you like to have dinner later this week? At your discretion of course.”
“You are constantly paying for meals and tea. I will go with you, but this time I will pay for the meal!”
Laughing Riq’ua bows his head,” Alright, and you may choose the eatery then.”
Smiling at the Ellearn’s laughter, “There is a meadery in the city, The Waiting Stars Tavern, it has a very good lamb dish.”
“Then we will meet there.”
In agreement on where our next meeting would take place, I bowed to Lord Riq’ua. Then I took my leave and headed for the library.
I had plans to find a tavern in the Camarian capital and order myself some mead. Dressed in a woolen cloak and mitts, I was heading for the main exit of the Illander castle when I saw him. A face I remembered and never wanted to see again, I sped up my walk, leaving the royal library with the book in hand for Duagovantril. But I could not move fast enough to escape him and I found myself cornered.
It’s as if I am used to being cornered. Used to listening to filth pour off other's tongues and simply keeping my silence.
“Where have you been?” Travian says as if we were once friends.
I cough the laugh away. But that builds up further coughing.
Moving me like a doll, I am ashamed I am letting him lead me out of the corner, draping his arm over my tense shoulders.
“That new diplomat was no fun, not in comparison to you, Deadlover.”
I can see his friends waiting and like every other time, I know I will be the brunt of jokes for the evening unless I can find an excuse at some point to leave. I am frantically wracking my mind but I do not have an excuse and I feel myself grow dead inside. Here we go again.
Craving the companionship, in the past I went with his circle to the pubs and the city festivals. I did not understand what he gained from any of it. I could see his barely veiled disgust of me. As if I was some kind of lesser being on display for him and his to watch with curiosity and revulsion.
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There were various names for my people that I never heard straight from someone’s lips. They were always spoken from within a group so you could never nail down who exactly said it.
This time it came from within the crowded pub as Travian told the tavern owner that they needed a dark drink for their Royalian friend.
“It’s a Corpse Scum.”
I had to keep my silence even as everyone laughed at those words, ridiculing me as we all sat at a table together. Burying the anger deep down, I would smile. My arms itched, and I pressed short nails into my palms as hard as I could for any sense of relief.
My ethnic identity was now out in the open, making the barmaid stand on the other side of the table, asking me last what I wanted. She purposefully avoided me, even stretching from the opposite side of the table to deliver me my drink. I did not order food, who knew what would be done to it? Regardless I thanked her and sipped at my mead, appearing half-bored with what was going on around me.
Travian laughs again at how she had been so leery of me, and unwilling to accidentally touch me, speaking of how “you're like some kind of disease.”
Was it too soon to wish them all dead?
The disease comment seems to bolster one of the others, a friend of his, “You look like Death’s Head Upon a Mop-Stick. What did you do to yourself Royalian?”
As if all of them did not know! I grit my teeth not willing to admit that I fell into an addiction that they had started me upon. The opium was their idea and it had been so good for long enough that it pulled me under.
He fishes out his small bag filled with opium. It feels like everything is in slow motion as I watch him sprinkle the opium into his flagon. I itch for it.
The dust is stirred into the flagon full of mead disappearing as if it was not there. But I knew it was there. I ached for it. The bag is then waved in my direction, a smile coming to the bastard’s face.
“Come on, taste some.”
My brother’s face flits across my mind, and my hands are gripping my thighs so tightly it’s as if my life depended on me cutting off circulation. I jerked upright and spoke my pardons as I fought against the want for opium on the way to the privy. I had little in the way of food in me, only tea and a few pastries from my meeting with Lord Riq’ua. But that all came up as I hung my head over the hole. I wanted the dust bad enough that I was shaking from the need. To have it right in front of me like that after the detox I had dealt with was excruciating, tortuous even. To be numb again...
No.
I stayed there, kneeling over the privy, losing what was left of my guts. When I finally could stand, I wavered and leaned against the wall. Huffing for a moment I contemplated trying to escape through one of the back doors that this hallway connected with. Opening the door, I was not expecting one of Travain’s men standing there, waiting for me. The nameless goon laughed about my inability to hold my liquor, slapping me on the back while I begrudgingly walked with him back into the main room of the tavern.
Travian’s insistence reminds me of the beginning, sitting beside him during council meetings. He used to rub his leg against mine with that inane grin on his face. It reminded me of when he pushed me with the opium, crushed and cupped in his hand under the table. How I wish I could go back and just say no.
My presence in the bar must have been still going around as city guards entered and took a seat at the bar. They must have liked my being there even less than the rest of the people, as I heard one speak to the other guard beside him, “A baby murderer is in here.”
The murder of infants was an old slur against my people that Camarians threw at us because of a single tradition they did not understand. They acted as though we sacrificed every newborn. It was only the royal family who gave their first child back to the darkness, returning the soul to the Amartharine River below. In the case of my generation, it had been my elder brother Artegal. Born and returned to the grave in less than a half-hour. It broke my mother, and so her obsession with the dead began. The Watcher, the archangel in the hedges, held a baby boy in her arms. So there my mother sought solace and mourned the infant that she had never gotten the chance to hold.
The other guard shook his head with a shudder, “Monsters.”
That damn word.
Monster... Monstrous.
It had become a constant companion, as people who knew little to nothing condemned us with it. In the three years that I have been a diplomat in Camar’a that word had become like a bloody shadow. I could not escape it, whispers of it in the halls, more overt usage of it in the city streets. But even if routine use of it had made me carve those letters into my skin; I would not let them see me lose control of myself and become like the monster they swore I was.
I shouldered the words and kept going. What else could I do? Go to the Camarian High King and Queen? It was my word versus that of their courtiers, and the common people. Even if they believed me, which was highly unlikely due to them having to take my word over one of their people… What could they do?
If my Father caught wind of what was happening he would call me a weakling for allowing the words of our enemies to get at me. Call me on my whining. No, it was my duty to be a diplomat and that meant putting up with the slurs, the taunts, and the lies.
I had to remind myself of what was important.
Whatever it took for peace. Whatever it took for peace. Whatever it took. For peace. Riq’ua reminded me, that day, of how much work had gone into the alliance between our empires. I was not going to jeopardize it over the words of some worthless strangers. I was a prince, a Royalian prince. I had my honor to uphold and I would not lower myself to the level of these sheep who touted the words of priests who did not understand our God or his people.
But I knew it was going to be a long evening now.
-
Tomorrow I will deliver Daugoventril’s book. For now, I require respite and one of my other addictions besides the poppy. Blood seeped down my right arm from the deep carving. She found me like that in my downstairs room in the cabin. I had forgotten that Nilec stays here over the winter months. She watched me from the open doorway as I staunched the flow of the cut that I had made too deep on my right arm. It was difficult to gauge just how deep I was pressing with the jagged piece of glass. I used this piece of glass because of a promise I had given, a promise I circumvented. Thom had found me in much the same position years ago and had made me promise to stop cutting. I promised I would no longer cut, handing him the knife. I indeed no longer cut, with a knife.
Was there appreciation in those dark green eyes? Desire? I did not know for sure, but I knew there was darkness to her. A darkness that had drawn us together in the first place. My hand finally comes away from the wound, setting aside the blood-soaked rag. I watched her, watching me.
She came into the room slowly, like a frightened animal. I let her take her time, using another rag to clean the piece of glass and disappear it into one of my pockets. I was on that task and therefore not watching her when Nilec reached out and touched me. I looked at her immediately, but her long brown hair covered her eyes from my view.
Nilec’s fingers traced the alphabetical scars with languid curiosity for a time before she dug her nails into the old wounds on my left arm. For a second it stung, and I watched her, reaching out to move the veil of her hair. I was fascinated by the intense emotions on display as she pressed her nails deep. But just as quickly she withdrew completely, stepping away from my side. Curling into the malnourished frame and reclusive persona that encased her. Brown hair once again covered her face from view.
My lips opened, about to ask what the hell had just happened when Nilec spoke.
“I’m leaving soon.”
That had always stood between us, that one day she would leave for the north. From the hints she had allowed me over the last few years, I knew that she would be beyond my grasp then. That whatever she had to do up north would change her. A part of her destiny.
We had grown closer based on a mutual understanding of past trauma and our different manners of dealing with that trauma. We said nothing to the other about habits that were killing us, her anorexia, and my past opium addiction. Both of us needed someone who would listen, perhaps offer advice, but never judge. But we also knew that this arrangement was temporary.
Another time, another place, perhaps something more could have existed between us. But here, in this present time, in this present place, our accord was coming to an end.
“When?”
“After Nathanael’s birthday.”
I would lose an ally, and of those, I had few already.
Nilec settles beside me on the bed, pulling her feet up to her side. The blood begins to seep again from the wound and I push another rag to the skin. Using pressure to slow and eventually make the bleeding stop. I had not eaten since throwing up and with the blood loss, I was somewhat lightheaded. Looking to my left, I watched Nilec watching me once again. Taking the rag away and putting it on the bedside table. She leans her head upon my shoulder and in shock, I go still. Nilec did not suffer the touch of men and hardly initiated touch at all with anyone, even family. Her hugs with Nathanael were often awkward and loose. Did this mean she trusted me?
I take a chance, in the act of taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. Seeing the smile on her features I could not help but smile too. Her smiles were rare, and my non-bitter ones were just as much so. But there we stayed, on my bed, in companionable silence. Only moving once we both grew sleepy. Yet as I fell asleep I remembered that in weeks I would lose her to a gods be damned destiny. So my dreams that night were bittersweet.