Chapter 5
Captain Yang
I don’t intend to rest. In fact, I have no intention of closing my eyes, but as the journey continues, the boredom starts to get to me.
I find my attention being drawn more and more toward Yin. Her head rests against Castor’s shoulder, rolling to the left and right with every bump of the cart’s wheels.
Her clothes have now dried, but her hair is still caked with mud, and there are streaks of dirt covering her cheeks, hands, and forehead.
“Stop watching her,” Castor suddenly warns, breaking a silence that has lasted almost five hours.
It surprises me, and I blink quickly, yanking my gaze off her as if I were some boy caught staring at a girl he admires.
“Who is she?” I suddenly ask.
“She is my apprentice in the study of herbs,” Castor replies plainly, but his tone is still tight with anger.
Though I try to hold his gaze, I find my eyes drifting back toward her every few seconds, as if I am waiting for her to wake. But the sleep spell I put on her will not be lifted until I choose to lift it. Yet, despite knowing that fact, I can’t shake the feeling she will suddenly snap to her feet and continue her fight without pause.
Like all sorcerers untrained by the Royal Army, she has a forceful personality. In the few words I exchanged with her, I realized that. She is no doubt the kind of person who prefers to burn through every obstacle in her path. Her willingness to fight an entire army unit to protect Castor evidences that fact.
I am her opposite. The Royal Army teaches a sorcerer to become cold and devoid of emotion.
A man dedicated to control can in turn control others.
Yet, by denying and purging my natural emotions, I’m left with nothing but an empty, cold void. On still nights, when my mind is exceptionally quiet, I can feel the frozen embrace of my training coiling through my veins, pushing itself out of the Arak device around my wrist, extinguishing whatever warmth still remains in my heart.
Recently, I’ve only been feeling all the colder. With the changes in the war effort and the new efforts at conscription, I’ve been controlling my emotions more than usual.
It’s taking its toll.
Without realizing it, I begin to pump the fingers of my right hand. Instantly Castor notices. He glances from my hand to my eyes, and a slow smile spreads his lips. “You’re just a boy,” he suddenly concludes.
“I’m the captain of this unit,” I point out calmly. Or at least I try to make my voice calm. I draw on my emotional control to keep my tone as even as it can be.
But it doesn’t quite work. There’s a single wavering note of indecision rippling through my voice, and the more I try to control it, the more it wavers.
Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, I shift back in my seat, aligning my shoulders with the wall behind me, and keeping my back as stiff and erect as I can. I need to remind Castor who’s in charge here. He may be almost two generations older than me, but I am no boy.
That small smile does not shift from his lips. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” he suddenly concludes.
“I’m following orders,” I say.
Castor slowly leans forward, hooking an arm around Yin’s back so she doesn’t fall from his shoulder. “Yes you are, and that’s why you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re blindly loyal, and will happily follow those orders just as long as you don’t have to think for yourself. Just as long as you don’t have to develop your own morality.”
I blink quickly, now pumping my hand more and more. “I am loyal to my Queen and kingdom,” I repeat quickly, holding onto that fact. After all, it’s the most important fact there is.
Castor shakes his head, laughing lightly. “I see you’ve been trained well. It seems the army still knows how to sap the emotion right out of their sorcerers. They teach you to practice magic by purging yourself of everything that makes you you,” he notes as he shifts back, once again repositioning Yin so she doesn’t fall.
“I have emotions,” I try to say calmly, “I am simply taught how to control them. I do not follow my frustration and anger,” I note as I uncontrollably glance at Yin, “I am trained to know better.”
“You’re trained to be empty,” Castor says as he shifts his head forward, dropping it slightly as he looks unblinkingly into my eyes. He has dark brown eyes, but right now they could easily be burning white as ferocity concentrates within them.
“I’m trained to serve my kingdom,” I say.
Then I pump my hand. Over and over again.
Sidestep your emotions, I tell myself. You are water flowing around obstacles, you do not flow into them.
“You’re trained to be nothing more than a tool, a cog in a machine. You sacrifice your life, and all you get in return is the myth of loyalty. Trust me, boy, I’ve lived that existence.”
“You have served your country,” I say automatically.
“I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve done. I know,” Castor’s voice rumbles deeply, and I swear it’s more alarming than thunder rumbling overhead.
Shifting back in my chair, I call on all my training to calm myself.
I can’t let this man undermine me; that’s what he’s trying to do.
“Tell me, what happens when you stop pumping your hand?” he suddenly asks as he points to my hand. “What happens when you run out of all those little tricks they teach you to control your emotions? Is that when you start to feel like a human? Like a man? Is that when the anger and passion return?”
“I serve my country. I do everything I can to be the best warrior I can be for my Queen and kingdom,” I default to saying, the words slipping off my tongue with practiced ease. These are statements I have made before and statements I will make again.
“You are a toy, a piece on a chessboard. Ultimately irrelevant,” Castor concludes with vicious ease.
“I know what you are doing, and I am impervious, I assure you,” I suddenly stutter.
Castor’s eyes grow a little wider, and his concentration intensifies. He doesn’t once blink, and he barely shifts the muscles in his cheeks and jaw as he opens his lips a crack, “I will tell you what happens when you run out of tricks, boy. You feel. All the emotion you once held at bay rushes back into you. A flood, a tidal wave, a monsoon. Every drop of feeling will eat back into the soul you’ve ignored for years, and drench it completely. I’ve seen it happen before, and I’ve done it myself. If you know how, you can break a sorcerer, and I assure you, boy, I know how.”
I stop speaking. Though I open my lips to reply that I am a loyal servant, the words freeze in my throat.
The intensity with which Castor stares at me is one I have never faced.
No, not never. My father used to burn with such powerful ferocity too. But unlike Castor, he was undisciplined, unfocused.
Castor Barr, on the other hand, is rightfully one of the greatest warriors ever to have lived.
As that fact repeats in my mind, I lose a little more of my emotional control.
Castor watches me keenly, his eyes darting around as he takes in my expression and body language. “If you do anything to her, I will come after you.”
Again I don’t speak.
Instead, I lock my gaze on the floor and concentrate as hard as I can on the scuffed wood.
“You won’t be able to flow around me, nor will you be able to manipulate me. If you try to manipulate her,” Castor begins.
“You’ll rip my throat out,” I conclude quickly.
“No, I will break you. I’ll find the one thing that can tear down your wall of emotional control, and I’ll use it,” he says quietly. In fact, his tone is barely above a whisper, and registers as nothing more than a slight hiss of breath.
I stop pumping my hands. In fact, I practically stop breathing too.
Yet somehow, I stand my ground. For all of Castor Barr’s threats, he can’t undermine my training with words alone.
“It makes sense for a man like you to be a captain
in the Royal Army,” Barr suddenly notes, “you’re heartless enough to do anything the command tells you.”
“I am not heartless,” I interject, unable to keep silent.
“Really, you have a heart? Have you ever used it?” Castor states as he leans forward slightly, once more staring into my eyes unblinkingly. His gaze is like a roaring gale, and staring back at it is like standing in a lightning storm.
But swallowing, I manage it.
Then I hold my tongue. I won’t let this man manipulate me.
It’s hard, though. As soon as silence descends for too long, I find my attention going back inexorably to Yin. The questions fill my mind again, but I’m not foolish enough to ask them. If I engage Castor in conversation, he’ll use it against me.
So I press my lips closed and keep my eyes wide open. Though I’ve convinced myself that if Castor intended to escape he would have done so by now, I still can’t afford to take my eyes off him.
In every way he is proving himself to be the legendary warrior of old.
But perhaps it’s not Castor I have to worry about.