Chapter Twenty-Two Elician
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Elician
General Leferge approaches the gates of Endura with a mélange of both high-ranking officers and rank-in-files.
Partho’s Blue Guard forms a tight group around their sworn liege.
Cat has not said much since discovering the totality of Endura.
Words alone cannot account for the well of suffering the city must have faced…
all at no fault of their own. Elician tries to imagine what it must have been like to see the goddess walking through the streets, then realizing why she had come.
From the crushed bodies of the terrorized who tried to flee and the piles of corpses of those who had jumped in an effort to chance relief, he imagines it to have been awful.
Cat’s hand lifts unconsciously towards the blue stone around his neck, fidgeting with the medallion before he forces his closed fist back down.
Then, he straightens his back and dares to approach the highest-ranking battlefield commander of the entire Alelunen army.
The Blue Guard move in tandem with him, firmly at his back and prepared to defend.
Partho has trained them well. And as they all walk to where Leferge has situated herself beyond the quarantine zone of Endura, Elician thinks: He’s more brave than I am.
Elician does not know the general well. On holidays, or during whale sightings, she and his uncle Anslian would meet to discuss terms of the temporary truces.
Elician would attend, but his presence was unremarked upon for the most part.
She had no interest in negotiating with him, and it was not his place to speak in those meetings.
Cold, humourless and disinterested in engaging in conversation that drifts from her terms, Leferge is nothing if not deeply committed to her responsibilities to Alelune’s crown and her army.
A short woman with dark brown hair and fair skin, her most distinguishing feature is an ugly scar that crosses from the bottom corner of her jaw on the left side of her face to spiderweb along her cheek and nose, which lies crooked as a result.
Apparently, someone bashed her face in with their shield at some point, and she nearly drowned in her own blood on the battlefield as a result.
But she refused to die, and Death let her live long enough to recover.
She meets Elician’s eyes as he walks at Cat’s side, lips twisting down in displeased recognition.
He manages to dip his head in polite greeting but offers her no more.
It is still not his place to speak or comment.
Now, it is Cat’s turn to prove himself to his people.
Elician cannot get involved. He will not.
Leferge holds her ground as they approach, her own soldiers not moving or fidgeting despite the theatrics of the presentation. She looks at Cat, squinting at him with the same look of disdain she had always seemed to reserve for Anslian.
‘General Leferge,’ Partho begins. ‘May I present our Stello Alest?’
The correct response would be a bow, low and formal.
Alelunen mannerisms differ from Soleben custom, but if Elician remembers correctly, Leferge would be expected to step back with her left leg and lean as low on her right knee as she can manage, her right arm swinging outwards in response.
She does nothing. She continues peering down her nose at Cat, judging him before the army he needs if he intends to keep and hold his throne.
‘Any boy can put on a charm and call himself our stello,’ she says eventually. ‘You were presumed dead. Then they called you a Reaper. How am I to accept you are who you say you are?’
‘I vouch for him,’ Partho says.
‘You are a biased and compromised fool.’ Leferge’s inflection does not change in the least. Her eyes remain fixed on Cat and Cat alone. ‘I require proof, not sentiments. Prove to me you are indeed Stello Alest.’
There must be a memory, Elician thinks. A moment or a piece of information that only he would know. Though he doubts Leferge spent much time around Cat when he was a child, she would not be asking if there was not some way to convince her.
‘No,’ Cat says. Startled murmurs break out amongst the normally tightly controlled troops.
Leferge does not shift her stance, but her eyes narrow and her lips purse.
The scar on her cheek twitches as a nerve spasms along the badly healed muscle and sinew.
‘There is nothing I can say that will prove that to you,’ he goes on.
‘I could have been coached; I could get lucky. You will not believe me if you are determined not to do so.’
‘Why should anyone believe you?’ Leferge asks. ‘It is something out of a fairy tale. A lost prince appearing at a time of political unrest to solve all the problems of the world.’
‘I don’t intend to do that either.’
‘Then what do you intend? Why are you here and not back in Soleb where he belongs?’ At this she thrusts one vicious finger in Elician’s direction.
It takes everything in Elician’s body to not reach for his sword, to keep his hands at his side and stay perfectly still, even as he becomes hyperaware of every single person in both Partho’s and Leferge’s corps.
He breathes in through his nose, slowly and steadily, desperately trying to keep his pulse steady and breathing even.
His skin recalls too easily the vicious bite and burn of too-tight ropes around his wrists.
His tongue remembers the call of desperate thirst as Nured dragged him and Lio to Alerae.
Not again, he swears. I will not be taken hostage again. Lio is not here this time to be held over his head. Lio is safe, back in Altas, and if anyone dares to touch Cat the way they did Lio – they will not live long.
‘I’m here because of the plague,’ Cat says. ‘I wouldn’t have come like this otherwise. But we can help…and so we’re here to help.’
Leferge is unmoved. She peers down at Cat as if he were a stray dog begging for scraps, a desperate cur who knows only how to be meek and small, who is easily frightened away and easily managed. She sneers. ‘You wear a sword. Do you know how to use it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Prince Marias was an exceptional swordsman before his uncle ruined that too.’ She jabs out her finger again.
She had not even lowered it from the last accusation and now needs only to flex her elbow to jerk it once more in Elician’s direction.
Sweat beads along his palms. His fingers tap in a jerking, jittering rhythm against his legs.
‘Fight me then, Stello. Should you win, I will march this army behind you.’
As far as Elician knows, aside from a few half-remembered lessons as a child, Cat has only been practising the sword for a little more than a year.
It is a fool’s bet, and Cat must know it.
He takes his time replying. His eyes slip from Leferge to Partho, even to Elician.
Elician has no advice to offer him. He knows that such a challenge, if given in Soleb, could not be left unanswered.
It does not matter if Cat is almost certain to lose; the point of the altercation is to shame and humiliate him.
But to deny such a thing…that would only bring more shame, for there is nothing worse than being a coward.
Marina has been training Cat hard. Perhaps, with the gods’ grace, he might just barely stand a chance.
But Cat meets Leferge’s eyes once more and he shakes his head. ‘There’s no point.’
‘You will not offer proof of who you are, and now you will not even fight for the chance to earn the throne you insist you deserve?’
‘General, if I fight you and it is merely to first contact, I have no doubt you will win. Perhaps if I am lucky, I will manage, but I do not rate my chances that highly. You will win, and I will lose. I concede without question or need of contemplation. But if it is to the death, then there is no need to fight there either, for you cannot kill me. You will strike fatal blows upon me, and I will get up each time until you are so fatigued from an endless battle that even someone as poor at the blade as I will manage to kill you. I do not wish to see you dead; you have served this army and our people well. But those are the only two outcomes to our fight. And so…there is no point.’ He pauses, licking his lips, clearing his throat.
‘If you would deign to teach me, I would be your willing student. I will spar and learn from you. But I will not fight you in a contest such as this. If that is your condition for your support, then I will not ask for it. I will ensure your men are healed, and then I will continue on my way.’
‘And if I deign to stop you?’
‘You won’t be able to,’ he replies, calm and steady. ‘I won’t kill any of you. I won’t kill my own people. But I will do what I came to do: stop the plague, and meet with my brother. And if it is your duty to interfere, then you will have to follow me all the way to Alerae.’
Leferge lowers her arm. ‘And what will you do when you meet your brother?’
‘I will ask Death to decide, between my brother and I, who is the most worthy ruler.’
Partho flinches. Leferge’s eyes widen. Something is wrong, Elician realizes at once, looking between the two. There’s a tension threading through both groups, the Guard and the army – shocked out of their perfect discipline.
‘Every single person who has dared to challenge the sitting ruler of Alelune by requesting Death’s interference has died,’ Leferge says slowly.
No. It feels like a hand has reached through flesh and bone and wrapped cruel fingers tight around Elician’s heart, yanking it from his chest and squeezing it until there is nothing more.
He tries in vain to hold it back; he reaches one hand out towards Cat only to somehow manage to stop his arm’s progression just in time.
He cannot touch Cat here. Not before his people.
Not when his culture frowns on any display of public intimacy or engagement.