Chapter Eighteen Decision
The Prince turned back and stared blankly at the fire.
His brother was coming. Somehow, Ramael was coming straight toward him.
He opened his mouth to say something to Tomaz, to warn him so that he could warn the other Kindred and they could ready a defense… but no words came out. And after a moment or two of sitting there, jaw hanging loose, he closed his mouth and stayed silent.
He went through the rest of the night in a strange kind of mental twilight, not giving any particular thought to what he was doing or saying.
He remembered vaguely Tomaz telling him more about Rangers, who scouted the mountain border and made their way up and down the Empire lending help to anyone who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Through it all he nodded, smiled politely at the right times, and kept silent.
Soon after the stew was finished, they both turned in to sleep. Tomaz went to his corner room and the enormous bed contained therein, while the Prince made do with the couch and the large animal-skin blankets there.
He did not sleep that night. He didn’t even doze. He lay there, feeling the glow of life, twenty, thirty times what a single man should give off, coming from his brother, far off but drawing closer, even in the night. And as the light grew, so did his anger and his resentment.
Anger at who? He didn’t know. The boiling, sickly feeling that had formed in the pit of his stomach like a seed slowly sprouting was directionless.
His resentment, though, was reserved for the Kindred.
Why should he warn them? He held no loyalty to them.
They had successfully defended themselves from over a thousand years of attacks, safe here behind their enchantments.
If they were so great, then let them defend themselves.
And truly, he knew that Davydd would give him up.
He knew that Leah and Tomaz, no matter their talk about choices, would too, in the end.
He was too valuable to let go. The Kindred needed the information he had about the Empire, the Empress, the Fortress itself, in order to continue and possibly turn the tide of their ongoing war.
And they would get it, no matter the cost. He knew they would.
People who would risk the starvation of common citizens in order to prevent the growth of an army would care little about his single, unimportant life.
And so he felt no guilt about letting them face this threat alone.
As for his brother, let him come. If he tried to take the Prince back to Lucien, back to the capital city and to his Mother, then maybe he would go.
Having delivered her the Seventh Principality by infiltrating it as no other member of the Empire had been able to do since the beginning of the war…
perhaps that would earn him his freedom and his life.
That was certainly something she couldn’t ignore.
But he didn’t want that either, he realized.
Not truly. It would be, perhaps, the easiest option.
He could solidify it by seeking out the Elders and killing them.
It would take very little effort, considering he had the Raven Talisman to help him.
As Leah had said, now that he was here, now that he knew where to go, he could destroy everything.
And if he did, he had no doubt that he would be welcomed back into the arms of the Empress, the brave, conquering Prince of Ravens.
Whatever crime he had committed would be washed away by such a deed.
Such a deed that had not, in a thousand years, been achieved by a single man, woman, or Child.
As the night wore on, his mind continued down this path. And what he saw there was red and blood-soaked.
Dawn came, and he had come to no conclusion.
He didn’t know to where or what he was attached, or to who he owed his loyalty.
If he owed loyalty to anyone. Tomaz and Leah had needed a night to think over what they’d felt about whether or not to force him before the Council of Elders and reveal himself. Even they put their cause above him.
He felt alone, so glaringly obviously alone, even as he knew the fate of two nations hung upon what he did in the next few hours.
But his anger and his resentment had begun to deepen into hatred; hatred of what or who he could not say, perhaps of the world, hatred at the world for making him choose, for constantly demanding that he choose what he wanted and who he wanted to be, right here, right now.
And that hatred fed his anger, and his anger turned around and fed the hatred, until in the end he was lost in a spiral of hopeless, unending pain.
Let it happen, he thought savagely. I have no duty to anyone anymore. There is no one here I care about, no one in the world who truly cares about me. I am the Prince of Ravens. I feed off of death. Let death come, even if it comes for me.
So when Tomaz awoke and set the leftover stew over the fire, he asked if the big man would like to spar.
“Certainly,” Tomaz said, looking surprised but also excited. “I didn’t know you liked to get beaten so often. Would wound my pride if it happened to me.”
The Prince smiled at the big man’s joke, feeling a true touch of affection for him. It would be good to spar with Tomaz one last time. So, after breakfast, Tomaz led him down the mountainside, and into the city of Vale itself.
The city, as the Prince had seen when they’d entered the valley, was a huge, sprawling thing; and as he walked through it, the chimneys of the bakeries slowly taking their first smoky breaths and the shop windows rubbing sleep from their eyes and opening themselves to customers, he knew that if there was a good place to spend his last day, it was here.
Children ran in the streets, herded along by various haggard-looking mothers, and the Prince wondered vaguely where they were going.
It was a surprise to him, as it had been in Banelyn, that they were allowed out in public, especially before they’d reached puberty, but this was Vale, and the Kindred were certainly strange people.
The Prince felt numb to surprise now in any case—he was just existing.
He would make no choices; he would feel nothing.
Let the choice be someone else’s this time; let the world decide without him.
The sparring arena was on the east side of the city, and as they made their way down the broad main street that cut through the center of it all, they passed large buildings that slowly grew in size until they resembled the houses of the Most High, though here they were simply out in the open for anyone to see and approach.
The largest of them, at the end of a long artificial pond, was made of white stone painted with green and gold highlights and framed by columns and sculptures.
The large domed roof had a single spear-like flagpole at its top, though no flag was raised there today.
When they finally reached the sparring arena, the Prince saw that it was located amidst a large barracks and training ground.
The arena itself was a large stone building, capped by a dome that was painted with various murals of Kindred fighters.
One of them was a huge bull of a man that looked vaguely like his brother Ramael, but with pure white hair.
The Prince of Ravens reached out again and felt the still-growing point of light in the back of his head.
Somehow Ramael had found a way around the enchantments that had held him at bay for so long.
The Prince wondered idly how, but then let the thought go.
It didn’t matter. He would take no sides and see what happened.
They entered the arena and found that it was separated into five large sections, one main, central area, which was a platform with raised stone seats immediately surrounding it, and four smaller areas situated outside that perimeter.
“Practice arenas,” Tomaz said, nodding to the four smaller areas. “Each is for a different art. Back corner is archery, back left is axes, hammers, and larger weapons, the one on our right is the unarmed ring, and the one on our left is the sword and dagger arena.”
“Sword and dagger?” the Prince suggested.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” the big man said with a grin.
Together they moved forward. The Prince felt oddly at peace.
Tomaz pulled out his greatsword, which he’d brought from the cabin, and then selected and attached a thick leather edge-guard that would prevent the blade from slicing.
Even guarded, though, the weapon was still a formidable thing, and the Prince realized this would be a much better example of actual combat between the two of them.
The Prince approached the rack of spare practice swords on the side of the sparring platform and looked through them.
He’d always fought best with a single-sided long blade, but most of these looked like typical double-edged broadswords.
There were one or two falchions, a handful of long hand-and-a-half swords, a slew of thin rapiers, a row of daggers of all shapes and sizes, and at the end… .
The Prince reached out and grasped the copper-wire-bound hilt of a long, slightly curved, single-sided sword made of creamy white metal.
It was thinner than a broadsword, and slightly longer.
The blade was oddly bright, almost shining as it took in the smallest hint of light, amplified it, and threw it back.
From different angles it looked alternately like a ceramic antique and a razor-sharp surgical implement.
It was an elegant weapon, that much was certain, and it carried with it a haughty, proud air, as if the sword itself knew its value.
“Valerium?” the Prince asked, turning to Tomaz. He held the sword out for the big man to see, and as he did he felt the extra weight of which Leah had spoken—the sword was a good few pounds heavier than a typical broadsword.
“I thought this was rather valuable?”