Prologue #2
I must have caught him on a bad day, though.
Back twenty cycles ago, that kind of thing was much more frequent.
His brow used to stay scrunched up like it was now a good deal of the time, and little worry lines creased the skin around his pretty mouth, and he had sad eyes.
He was easily startled too and jumped at loud noises.
But that was mostly before Larz, aka Bastion, rescued us both and made our lives so different and so much better.
“I think you asked me what an ultimatum was?” Janos said as I turned and made it to the door again, with that disconcerting way he had of plucking one thing I’d said out of a big word soup and deciding he wanted to talk about that and leave out all of the rest of it.
I turned away from my almost-escape and nodded.
“An ultimatum is a kind of final, non-negotiable demand,” Janos said.
“A set of conditions, in a way, usually with a deadline.
If you fail to comply with those conditions, then there is usually some negative consequence.
It's pretty much a ‘take it or leave it’ kind of thing. It can be pretty serious, depending on who gave it. Do you know who exactly gave Larz this ‘ultimatum?’”
“Oh yeah, that was Prince Mikos.”
He frowned. “Oh. In that case, it’s bound to be serious. Also mean, spiteful and hateful. Just like Prince Mikos is.”
“Uh huh. Well, uh…” I could see already that I’d stepped squarely in the middle of Janos and Larz’s ongoing feud with Larz’s family.
Mikos was the Heir Apparent and designated Crown Prince to the Tygerian throne, and he was also Larz’s eldest brother.
Tygeria had ruled Laltana for the past twenty cycles or so now, and it all had to do with Larz—who was Mikos’s brother and a prince.
He had been kidnapped by King Janos’s horrible brother years ago and brought to Laltana, where they made the young man a soldier/slave, which sounds a lot worse than it actually was.
I mean, it wasn’t great, of course, but Larz had said parts of it were the best times in his life, once he got to Herkon and became a soldier, because he loved being a soldier.
He made the name Bastion up for himself to conceal his true identity, like I said.
Nobody was mean to the soldier/slaves, as there were a lot of them in the army, including Lucas Dimitri, and nobody in the government, other than the king, had enough power to really enforce any kind of bad treatment. And King Janos would never do that.
Anyway, the Tygerians finally tracked Larz down after a few years, and came for him, but it had taken four or five long years, and Larz had grown to full manhood by then.
And did I mention that he had fallen in love?
There was a huge fight about why the Laltanans hadn’t told the Tygerians who Larz was when they found out his real name, because though King Janos hadn’t been involved in the kidnapping and murder of those young boys, he knew about some of it since shortly after the prince arrived—he even admitted it.
But like I said, he had his reasons for hating Tygeria and doing them no favors, though I’m not saying they were good ones, or not good enough, anyway.
It had been cruel not to tell his grieving family that he was still alive.
I guess Larz and Janos had worked that out between them, though, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of any of that.
Anyway, by the time the Tygerians discovered what was going on, it turned out that Larz was overjoyed to be reunited with his family, but he had “bonded,” he told them, with Janos and wouldn’t leave him, even to go back home.
The bonding thing meant a lot to Tygerians, as it turned out, but Janos had long ago declared he’d never set foot on Tygeria again.
That was a problem. As for me, I would have loved to see the famous Tygeria and meet Larz’s other relatives.
I would have loved to get to know the humans in the family too. But maybe someday.
Anyway, Prince Mikos, not exactly known for his even temper, took Janos on board his ship for “interrogation” and wound up beating him half to death over the slave thing. That caused a huge fight with Larz, and what with one thing and another, they hadn’t been exactly friendly since.
I still remember vividly the day they arrived in their hovercraft over our capitol city.
Mikos, the bloody prince had charged off the ramp, huge and muscular and scary and far too important to interact with the likes of the adopted Laltanan son of his brother, namely me.
He had swept past me with barely a second glance.
His human consort Ryan had been nice to me though.
I met him that day when I tried to get to Larz to help him, and Ryan had given me a piece of candy and told me to stay away from the brothers while they were arguing.
He whispered to me that Tygerians had really bad tempers.
I’d already figured that one out for myself.
Mikos, who I had to admit was handsome and fierce, like Larz, had arrived on our planet, thinking that he was there to rescue his little brother Larz, only to find out that the brother was as large and strong and tall as he was, and that in the three or four cycles since he’d seen him, he had managed to grow up and rescue himself quite nicely.
There had been “bad blood” between him and Larz ever since.
Prince Mikos was furious at King Janos, for not sending Larz home again to his family.
Larz was upset about it too, but he said it was between him and his mate and nobody else’s business.
That didn’t go over well at all with the royal family, who had been grieving for him and worrying about him for a really long time.
It had all finally been straightened out a bit—enough for the Tygerians to reluctantly leave and go back home anyway, when none of their pleas for Larz to return home ever worked.
Larz’s omak, who seemed to have great authority and influence over the whole bunch of them had put his foot down and they all fell in line.
Including King Davos. I never got the impression that either King Davos or Prince Mikos were particularly pleased about it, though.
In the end, King Davos had finally agreed to leave his son on Laltana.
So, did everyone live happily ever after? Not by a long shot.
Larz had never forgiven Prince Mikos for his treatment of his “nobyo,” as he called Janos.
He and his brother were not quite enemies, but not anything close to being friendly either.
But make no mistake. Even though the brothers fought a lot and argued constantly, it was not a good idea to get in the middle of that particular argument.
It was a no-win situation; it was a matter of, “I can say that about him, but you can’t, damn you, and I’ll thank you to keep your damn mouth shut about my family. ”
Not that Larz would ever talk that way to Janos. He babied and petted him far too much to talk mean to him. But anybody else would do well not to get involved. Including me. In fact, I decided I probably needed to be elsewhere right now since we’d started talking about all this.
“Okay, well, good talk,” I said briskly.
“I think I better go try to find my boots, like I said. I thought I might have left them here, but I guess not. I’ll let myself out and let you get back to your book.
” I turned back toward the door, and I had almost made my escape when Janos gave it one final shot.
“Taran, wait. Surely you know that Larz will always do the right thing and will always be on your side, no matter what. So will I. I hope you know that. And I don’t know exactly what Larz thinks, but he doesn’t think like a Tygerian anymore—or not exactly anyway—and he doesn’t like Tygerian interference.
So, Taran, come back over here and finish asking me what you needed to know.
You’re just like Larz, starting a discussion and then leaving before we finish talking about it. ”
He settled himself more comfortably on the lounge and patted the seat beside him. “Now you were telling me about this ultimatum Mikos made to Larz. My mate hasn’t told me about it yet. I wonder why that is.”
“I’m sure he means to,” I said, still hovering by the door. “He probably just hasn’t got around to it yet.”
“Hmm. Personally, I want to keep the Royal Guard just as it is,” Janos said. “If anyone is interested in my opinion at all.”
“Ah, Larz and I are always interested in your opinion, Majesty,” I said, giving in and going back over to hug him.
The man formerly known as king was a little thing compared Larz.
He was only about 5’4” and built on a delicate frame, like most Herkon people.
And he really had suffered terrible torture and abuse during the war at the hands of a few Tygerian guards at an infamous prison camp called Beatik.
Larz and I felt we had to look after him, especially considering his mental state.
He could fall into a dark depression easily, even after all this time.
“This is still our planet, after all,” Janos continued, “and our own people should have a role in defending it. I love having you here at the palace instead of some Tygerian people I could mention, whom I don’t know, and I could never trust. I feel safer when you’re near, and I want you as my guard. ”
I was currently an officer in the Laltanan Royal Guard, which had first been established back when Janos had arrived home after the Axis war and took the throne as king.
I was only a child at the time, but I’d been involved with the Royal Guard now since Larz and I came to live in the palace here with Janos.
We had kept the name, which might have been a mistake, looking back on it.
At the time, we figured the Herkon people would like it, and even though the Tygerians had deposed Janos and he was no longer a king, Prince Larz was about as royal as you could get too.