Chapter Fifty-Four
Tiyung
Idle Prison, Yusan
The army marching north can only mean that war is coming. Ailor seems to reach the same conclusion, if the tightening in his jaw is any indication. Good gods. Yusan is about to declare war on Khitan…again.
Yusan and Khitan battle each other at least once a century. Thousands of people die, homes and lives are destroyed, children get orphaned, and atrocities are committed—all for the border to shift slightly or sometimes not at all. A truce or an everlasting peace is brokered and then soon forgotten because the rulers lose nothing.
Ever since Hana told us about the soldiers, I’ve been pondering the war. It cannot be a coincidence that King Joon sent Sora and the others to Khitan at the same time he is mobilizing an army. Hana said that the king wanted them to steal the Golden Ring of the Dragon Lord, but perhaps they were merely a decoy, a distraction for Queen Quilimar. But why? I am convinced that this is tied to the laoli in Oosant, but I’m missing a key piece of information. And it’s driving me mad.
“You seem to wish you were with them,” Ailor says.
I must’ve been staring off into space again. “I mean, not that I don’t enjoy your company, but yes. I’d rather be with her.”
Ailor laughs, and then he coughs. He’s been coughing more and more since he’s been in here. The damp cold and lack of sun will do that. I’ve only stayed healthy because I almost never get sick and Hana has been feeding us.
Finally, Ailor stops coughing, and then he spits. A glob of red lands on the floor.
Blood.
He just coughed up blood. I stare at the spot on the ground, and he does as well.
“Is that…new?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It comes and goes.”
I’m no healer, but that can’t be good.
I’d ask Hana to bring him a healer, but I doubt they have any here. Also, Ailor hasn’t told her much. I don’t know if he doesn’t trust her or if he really doesn’t know what Mikail is up to. He was surprised by our plan to kill the king—or at least that I was a part of it. He thought I should’ve gone free, since I am the son of a count, but I knew the risk. I wanted to help Sora get her freedom no matter what the cost.
“You love this girl, huh?” he asks.
I nod. He’s heard a lot about Sora during our time together. I’ve told him everything from my family’s sordid dealings to me punching a king’s guard to try to save her in the arena. My hand only recently feels better.
“I grew to love them all, really,” I say. “Mikail included. But yes, Sora is the one I’m thinking about.”
He smiles. “It’s a beautiful thing to be in love—dulls the atrocities.”
My eyebrows rise at the last word. “Which atrocities?”
Ailor shakes his head, as he’s done whenever he’s mentioned bad things. I understand not wanting to talk about it, but we’re coming to the end of our time together. I doubt I’ll live long enough to spill his secrets. So I might as well share mine.
“I’ve killed a man,” I say. And then I remember the second man in the warehouse. “More than one. I know you must see me as a soft nobleman, but I don’t think you can shock me.”
The corner of his mouth turns up just like Mikail. “Believe me, son, it’s different when your victims weren’t all grown men.”
He means either boys or women, or maybe both.
Ailor takes a wet-sounding breath. “I killed a family. The little girls, and then the mother, so they wouldn’t have to watch their parents die first. The father went last, and their bodies were thrown into the sea. Not even burned and released.”
I grimace, looking to the side. I don’t mean to judge him, but I also can’t stop myself.
“Awful, isn’t it?” he says. “I was following orders—even received a medal of valor for it. But the funny thing is, the acts that haunt me aren’t even what I did, but what I permitted. What I didn’t stop.”
He leans his head against the wall. He coughs again, but quietly.
The truth of his statement shocks me. Isn’t that the feeling I have about my father? I didn’t stop him from putting a sword to the throat of Sora’s father. Yes, I was a child, but so was she. And she was hiding Daysum behind her to do what was right. I didn’t stop him from poisoning her or nineteen other girls. I didn’t stop him from selling their siblings. I didn’t stop my uncle from running the worst pleasure houses in Gain, invested in by my father and therefore by me. I didn’t refuse to have anything to do with my family once I knew what they did, where the money came from. I let him do it all to expand my inheritance. I thought it was because I loved him, because I was loyal to my family. But now, I don’t know. General cowardice and complacency seem to be the more accurate reasons. I permitted it all.
“You’d be surprised at how much I can relate to that,” I say.
He eyes me.
“You know, kid, I believe you.”
We’re silent for a minute. It’s the comfortable quiet of two men who are different but have come to understand each other.
“Do you believe in redemption?” I ask.
He strokes his beard. “In the eyes of the gods, or in your own reflection?”
I swallow hard. What a question. “Both, I suppose.”
He smiles. “I hope the gods who made us judge our faults and our kindnesses as products of themselves. Do I believe in redemption for myself, though? No. There is nothing I can do in the future that can atone for my past actions or inactions.”
Ailor states it so plainly—not sugar-coated or couched. I’m having trouble believing someone with a silver tongue like Mikail came from Ailor. He must be like his mother.
“How do you live with that?” I ask.
“Well, son, I’m in a prison cell right now, and I’m not too upset about it.” He looks around and shrugs. “I figure I deserve what’s coming to me. I work hard to not deserve more.”
I shift against the wall, my shoulders feeling tight. “I haven’t made the same kind of peace with it.”
I haven’t at all. There are far worse men—my father being one, Bay Chin being another, King Joon being chief among the kind who have done terrible things en masse and who are not facing death and torture. Who are free to commit more atrocities.
“But you have the rest of your life to atone,” Ailor says. “I don’t have much time.” He gestures to the spit on the floor.
I shake my head. “My death is ordered. I have less time than you.”
“We’ll see,” he says. “The important thing is that you want redemption. That alone makes you better than most.”
He folds his arms the way he does when he’s about to rest, so I turn out the lantern and also lean my head against the wall. There was something oddly comforting about how he said we’ll see . I suppose he is right—with war coming, anything can happen. And it does matter that I want to do better, be better.
The thought allows me to rest well for the first time in a while.
But sleeping soundly in prison is always a mistake. It takes me entirely too long to wake up. And that could cost me my life.