Chapter Fifteen: Aftermath
The Prince woke to sunshine, warm and buttery like freshly churned cream, playing across his face. His body was swaying slightly, which he felt a little strange about. He was relatively sure that one didn’t sway when one was lying down, but then again he supposed one could never be entirely sure. He chuckled to himself, smiling. He sounded like Geofred. Who was that again? Who was … oh well there it was, of course, Geofred was his pet eagle.
Pet eagle?
The Prince twitched slightly as he heard a voice talking to him in the back of his head. He told it to leave him alone; he could have a pet eagle if he wanted to. But the voice just laughed.
Wake up, you.
His eyes opened and reality resolved into being around him once more. A face was peering down at him, black hair with green eyes. A few freckles across the nose. A strong mouth, curved in a stifled grin.
“Leah,” the Prince said. He sat up and realized he was in a litter slung between two horses, Leah walking behind and looking at him over the edge of the wooden frame. Tomaz was leading the horses down a narrow but surprisingly well laid woodland trail. A third horse was tied behind the litter and was loaded down with most of the packs and supplies.
“Thanks for joining us,” Leah said with a smile.
“And I sincerely hope you don’t think your brother Geofred is an actual eagle,” rumbled Tomaz from up ahead.
The Prince rubbed his head, which was still feeling a little fuzzy.
“I said that aloud?” he asked sheepishly.
“You’re a pretty big sleep-talker, princeling,” Leah said, ruffling his hair and giving his head a playful push.
“We certainly learned a bit more about your feelings for a young lady by the name of … Monsunne was it Eshendai?”
Leah let out a laugh like the peal of a bell, bright and golden like the day. The Prince felt his cheeks burn and he lay back down on the litter.
“I’m going back to bed,” he said, mortified.
“I think not!” roared Tomaz, “I want to know more about this Lady’s heaving bosom!”
“I did not say that!” the Prince protested, sitting bolt upright and pointing at Tomaz with a severely outstretched finger. The big man just smiled and shrugged. The Prince caught Leah stifling a laugh out of the corner of his eye.
“Don’t encourage him,” the Prince said. He looked around and realized he had no idea where they were and said as much.
“A few days past Lake Chartain,” responded Tomaz.
“Past Lake Chartain?”
“Indeed,” Tomaz rumbled. “We’ve hauled your skinny butt nearly a hundred miles. But it’s fine, we know Princes need their beauty sleep.”
“And what,” the Prince paused and cleared his throat before continuing. “Happened after … after …”
He broke off and left the sentence unfinished.
“You mean after you saved this girl’s thankless hide?” Tomaz asked bluntly. Leah stooped, picked up a heavy chuck of stone and threw it at him. It glanced harmlessly off his massive shoulder.
“Just say that again, Ashandel,” she taunted, “I can take you.”
Tomaz pretended to cower in fear. Leah laughed.
“Why are you in such a good mood?” the Prince asked, bewildered.
“What do you mean why are we in a good mood?” the girl asked. “You might defy death and certain torture everyday back in the great big capital city of Lucien, but I think being spared that is cause for celebration.”
“But – aren’t we still being followed?” he asked.
“Not so far as we know,” Tomaz said. “We did some serious scouting, and found that those Defenders were the only ones who knew where we were, and you,” the big man looked back over his shoulder at the Prince, “you certainly dealt with them.”
“Yes,” the Prince said, his mood darkening as vague shapes and images came back to him, his own memories of the memories that he had absorbed from the men he had killed. Suddenly he felt immensely tired and ravenously hungry and said as much. Leah seemed to have anticipated this – she passed him a small hunk of bread and cheese and a waterskin. Without even thanking her, he tore into the food, and drank heavily from the skin. He wondered how long it had been since he had eaten, and how many days he had lain unconscious after … after he’d killed the Defenders.
Suddenly the food turned to ash in his mouth, and his appetite left him. He saw Tomaz and Leah exchange a significant glance.
“You never told us the exact details of what you could do,” Tomaz said. “Would have been nice to know. Come in handy in a fight.”
“Yes … well, that’s why I don’t kill unless I have to,” the Prince said quietly. Both of the Exiles were looking at him intently now, and reluctantly, feeling every word pulled from him like a splinter from under his fingernails, he continued on.
“The Raven Talisman, it connects me to the life of everything around me. But human life – human life is somehow more than everything else. Brighter, more intense. When a person dies, well, when I kill someone, their life … I absorb their life. Geofred always said he was more inclined to think it was their soul, since I don’t just absorb their physical qualities, but also what makes them them. Memories, fears, anger, happiness. One time I even absorbed a rash. Damned inconvenient.”
He was studying the grassy ground of the forest to his right, not wanting to look at the two Exiles. For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, he felt ashamed talking about this with them. As if he was talking about something dark and unclean, something that would never enter polite conversation.
“And after a certain time,” Leah said gently, “the memories fade?”
“Yes,” the Prince said slowly, not knowing why he continued to speak, but feeling compelled to do so. “Impressions of them remain, though. Memories of those memories. The first time it was bad … the first state execution I was required to take part in … the man had … taken a woman by force.”
The Prince felt more than saw the girl tense, and he couldn’t bring himself to look up at Tomaz, to see how the big man was reacting.
“I relived every action for an hour. I lived in his skin … I was too young to know anything about right or wrong really, but I knew what was happening was monstrous, and still I couldn’t let it go. I still remember the hour it took for the memory to fade … the experience was … unpleasant.”
The Prince almost said more, but then simply closed his mouth and let it pass. He couldn’t continue. They had stopped moving, sometime along the way, the Prince couldn’t remember when, and for a long moment the three of them stood there, the Prince looking intently at the hunting trail beneath his litter, and the two Exiles looking intently at him.
Tomaz was the first to move. He crossed the distance to the Prince and placed two enormous hands on his shoulders, nearly engulfing his head.
“I had no idea,” he said simply. “For what it counts, to survive that as the man you are, you’re stronger than I will ever be.”
As the big man said this, the Prince felt the corner of his eyes prickle, and a lump formed in his throat. He sat there for a moment, holding himself in check. And then he looked up, cleared his throat gruffly and nodded to Tomaz. The big man, his stony black eyes watching him closely, nodded as well, and dropped his hands.
“There’s a stream this way – I’ll fill up the waterskins. We’ll camp here for the night unless anyone has any objections.”
“All right,” the Prince said quickly, anxious to change the subject. He slid off of the litter, and let out a small groan as a hundred aches and pains suddenly came crashing down on him.
“Oh shadows and light, that hurts.”
“Are you all right?” Leah asked, looking concerned.
The Prince straightened up, his back letting out several loud cracks, and stretched. He took a deep breath, and in spite of all that had happened in the last few weeks, he realized he actually did feel rather good.
&
nbsp; “Yes,” he said, surprise coloring his voice. “Yes, I think I do feel all right.”
“In that case, help with the food,” she said, motioning to the packs on the horse. She was untying the strings holding the litter to the other horses.
“How did we get back to Tomaz?” the Prince asked, opening a pack at random and looking into it, searching for the food.
“Other pack,” Leah said, “and you and I got back to Tomaz on these horses. Both Trudger and Malial were put down by the Defenders … Tomaz was pretty torn up about losing Malial, they’ve been together for years now. But, in the end there were plenty of good Tibour stock running around after you fainted, so I picked three and rode them back.”
“Fainted?” the Prince asked, pulling open the other pack.
“Yes. Fainted.”
“I didn’t faint.”
Leah paused and looked at him with an amused expression over the backs of the horses.
“Oh you didn’t?”
“No,” the Prince said, deadpan, “I fell unconscious due to the strain of saving you. See, it sounds more manly that way. Much more like something a Prince would do.”
Leah rolled her eyes and the Prince smiled.
“You fainted, princeling.”
“Fine – but I still rescued you. That was pretty manly right?”
She laughed and shook her head. She undid the final strap holding the litter in place and it fell to the ground in a clatter of wood.
“Whatever you say, sleeping beauty – you’ve been riding in this for almost a week now, sleeping like a little baby. Besides the occasional muttering about Lady Monsunne of course.”
She smirked at him and bent to pull the wood they had used as a frame out from the tangle of blankets.
“You know what’s funny?” the Prince asked.
“I never should have said that to you, you use that expression too much now.”
“Yeah it’s kind of funny isn’t it?”
The girl sighed, but let it go. The Prince managed to locate the last of the dried venison and also found three large rolls of bread and a wheel of cheese. They must have been scavenged off the Defenders.
“All right,” she said, “what’s funny?”
The Prince was sure she was hiding a smile and so he continued on boldly.
“Her name was Leah too. But you two couldn’t be more different.”
The girl froze, and then slowly turned to him, her face blank.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“Well,” the Prince continued on, “she was one of the daughters of the Most High so she was trained in all of the courtly manners of Lucien. I don’t think she’d ever seen a dagger in her entire life much less held one. And she was always wearing the most fashionable dress of the season. I don’t think I could see you in a dress – and certainly not the ones she wore. I don’t know how she got into those things; someone must have had to pour her into them. But you, I mean you’re much more – ”
He cut off as he caught a glimpse of her face, which looked as though she was ready to torture a small woodland creature.
“Are – are you all right?” the Prince asked, taking a step back.
“Fine,” she said stonily, “I’ll leave you alone so you can get back to reminiscing about your Lady Monsunne and the dresses she needed to be poured into.”
And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked off across the clearing, brushing past Tomaz who had just returned from the stream. He looked from the girl back to the Prince, and shook his head.
“You couldn’t keep a memory of how to talk to a woman?” he rumbled.
The Prince had no response to this, and so he refrained from speaking and simply helped Tomaz with the fire, still trying to find where he had gone wrong. He’d only been trying to compliment the girl. Why had she taken offense?
Leah came back sometime later, her arms full of rather large white mushrooms.
“Surprise!” she called to them, and the Prince was glad to see that whatever anger she had been holding against him had passed. “I found these down by the stream. We can cook them tonight and store them to eat as we travel.”
“Mmm,” Tomaz said, licking his lips, “Daishains. My favorite!”
They made and ate diner quickly that night, talking happily amongst themselves. Afterward, the Prince and Tomaz sparred as Leah watched on. When they were done, the Prince was covered in sweat, and was sore beyond belief. A sudden idea occurred to him.
“Wait,” he said to other two, “did you say there was a stream nearby?”
Tomaz nodded.
“I think I’d like to go,” the Prince said. “It’s been a long time since … well, I would like to clean myself … that is to say, I -”
“Yeah yeah, you wish to bathe, we understand,” Leah said. “It’s that way - though why you want to go when it’s getting so cold is beyond me.”
“I like it cold,” the Prince said, and then excused himself, gathering up the grooming materials Leah had loaned him and making his way through the trees in the direction the girl had pointed.
She’d been right - the water was close to freezing. But as the Prince stripped off and ran it over his bruised and battered body, he felt that the cold was worth the cleansing. He hadn’t had the opportunity to thoroughly wash himself since he’d left the Fortress - he, who had taken sometimes two baths a day. He chuckled, scraping himself with Leah’s comb and some of Tomaz’s soap, thinking about what he would have said then if he could see himself now.
Once he’d finished, he made his way back to the fire, wrapped in every piece of clothing he owned to protect against the cold. As he approached the camp, he heard the Exiles conversing softly. His comb slipped from his hand, and he pulled up short and bent down to pick it up. As he did, he overheard Tomaz speaking.
“… and then through the Pass and onto Vale.”
The Prince froze in surprise. They must be consulting the girl’s map - something they never did when he was nearby. He straightened up, comb in hand, and watched them through the trees.
The girl and the big man exchanged glances and then both broke into smiles.
“Home,” Leah said.
“Home,” the big man agreed. They held the gaze for a long moment, sharing a joy and elation that made the Prince giddy just watching it. He began to come forward, but stopped as Leah spoke again.
“What about the Prince?” she asked.
Tomaz, who had begun to busy himself with his bedroll, turned slowly back around to look at her.
“What about him?” was the soft rumbling reply. The girl stood up, rolling up the map and tucking it under her arm.
“He’s a product of the Empire,” she said. She was facing away from the Prince and he couldn’t see her face, but her voice sounded resigned and … sad.
“He’s a product of a society whose teachings are that rebellion is the worst sin anyone can commit. You saw the power he has – how can we take him to Vale? How can we take him to our home, now that we know what he is capable of, and knowing that he has been taught since infancy to hate us and everything we stand for?”
Tomaz studied her face for a long moment.
“He’s changed,” he said finally. “You can see it in his eyes. He sees us as his family now, not as members of the Exiled Kindred.”
“I know that, Tomaz,” she said quietly, and the Prince could hear, to his surprise, true affection in her voice. “But how will he see the rest of us?”
“We shouldn’t be having this conversation, Eshendai, you and I both know that he has changed. He saved your life, and from what you described, doing so almost cost him his. He has great power, but he sees it as a curse, and if nothing else that gives me hope.”
“Hope for what, Tomaz? Hope that he won’t butcher us all when we sleep when he has a fond daydream about home? What if we take him to Vale and we find out that we were wrong about him?”
“Enough,” Tomaz said. The Prince was surprised to hea
r disgust in his voice as he confronted the girl.
“You were chosen Eshendai to teach me, and I was chosen Ashandel to teach you. This is something you have never understood, that people change. The Kindred took me in, one of the elite members of the Society of Guardians, and I have become as loyal and proud a citizen of Vale as any man or woman that was born there. I remember them also taking in a scared young girl who didn’t know where to turn when she –”
“Stop,” she said harshly. “I know. But he is the Prince of Ravens, Tomaz. The Empress isn’t some distant master or religious icon to him. She is his Mother. And if you want to talk about who knows how difficult it is to abandon one’s family, then I think we can agree that I know more than you.”
“We owe him a chance,” Tomaz said emphatically. “If nothing else, we owe him the chance.”
The girl paused. Finally, she looked down and nodded.
“All right. All right, we’ll take him to Vale,” she said. “But ... if it were up to me alone he’d come as our prisoner or not at all. He’s the Prince of Ravens, and nothing will change that, no matter how many times we save him or he saves us. We’re the exception to his rule that all Exiles are bad. He just happened to find two good ones, that’s all he thinks. You can see it in his eyes - that’s the change you’re talking about. But if you, speaking to me as Ashandel, tell me that this is something I need to accept, then I will heed your word.”
Tomaz looked at her for a long time, and what the Prince saw in the big man’s face broke his heart: doubt. The giant didn’t speak, but instead turned away from the girl, and they both began to get ready for bed.
For a long time, the Prince stood in the shadows, not knowing what to think. He remembered the looks of happiness they had exchanged, the happiness of going home that he had wanted to share with them. But now he realized how foolish that desire had been. They wouldn’t want him to share in it - the Exiled Kindred would treat him just as Leah did, with suspicion and fear. And if he couldn’t go with them and he couldn’t go back, then … where would he go? He turned around and walked away from the clearing once more, out of earshot of the two Exiles.
It was a strange thing, not having a home. He had been cast out of the place he had grown up in, cast out of the very society he’d been born into and existed in all of his life. And now … he was going to join a band of rebels.
Was he? When had he made that decision?
He was an outcast, it was true. But he wasn’t an Exile. He wasn’t, and just as Leah had said, some last shred of pride in the Empire clung to him and made him reject those that had rejected it. True, there was injustice; there were things to be improved. But that was the responsibility of the Princes of the Realm, endowed with the power of the Talismans in order to make a difference for good in the Empire of Lucia. It was his responsibility, and he couldn’t run from that.
After all of this … the girl was right. How had she known?
The Prince couldn’t turn his back on his duty. He knew it, now more than ever. He was not, nor could he ever be, anything less than the Prince of Ravens, and it was his duty to remain with the Empire, even when it had turned its back on him. True, things were bad, he knew that now. But not so bad that the Empire was beyond redemption. If he was certain of anything, he was certain that if the situation were presented to the Empress herself, perhaps to the right members of the Most High, then things would improve. That was the way the Empire worked.
Wasn’t it?
He shook his head, dislodging the thought. Open rebellion was not the answer. The Prince turned and looked back through the trees toward where the two Exiles were, reminiscing about their home. A home that had betrayed the Empire. They were traitors, and they were criminals.
But these two are good people, a voice said in the back of his mind. Good people who care about you, who have saved your life. People you cared about enough to use the Talisman to help them, to keep them from your own brother’s men and the justice of the Empire.
“Shadows and light,” the Prince muttered under his breath. “They’re Exiles. They’re committed to overthrowing the Empire – even the good that the Empire has in it.”
He stood there for a long time, as night truly fell, the twilight fading to complete black. Eventually, he made his way back to the fire. When he came into the clearing he saw that Leah was curled up in a ball under a blanket by the fire, one hand on a dagger, ready for a fight even in sleep. Tomaz looked up from where he sat.
“I was about to come looking for you, princeling,” the big man rumbled with a smile that made the Prince’s stomach clench. The Prince forced his mouth into a grimace that he hoped passed for a smile and made an excuse about wanting a walk to stretch his cramped legs. He picked up the spare blanket and curled up under it in the crook of a nearby tree. As he did so, he saw that it had been purposely cleared of rocks and roots by a deft hand. He looked up and saw Tomaz wink at him.
“We know you like to sleep under trees. It was her idea.”
He motioned his head toward the sleeping girl.
“Thanks,” the Prince said, “but I’m not very tired at the moment. I can take the first watch if you’d like. After all, I have slept quite a lot recently. I’ll wake you when the fire dies down.”
Tomaz’s eyes widened in surprise, but he smiled appreciatively.
“Sounds good to me,” he said, and pulled his own blanket over himself and lay back, his head pillowed on his crossed arms.
The Prince sat staring into the fire for a long time, wondering what he was going to do when morning came.