Chapter 6 #2
“You’d think being a prince would mean I wouldn’t have to wait to be served,” Lucien muttered as he pushed flagons across the table to their recipients.
“With great privilege…” Thiete murmured.
“Comes great benefit,” Lucien finished off with a small laugh.
“We must get our kicks where we can,” Jarryn agreed amicably, the previous debate forgotten as he took a swig of his mead.
“So we’ve heard,” Thiete said without thinking. “Ow!” he exclaimed as Lucien kicked him under the table.
Still mid-swallow, Jarryn choked on his mead. Once the coughing had abated, his icy stare fell accusingly on Leander, whose cheeks flushed in guilty embarrassment. Leander ducked his head in shame for revealing something Jarryn no doubt wanted kept quiet.
The conversation halted once again. Leander wanted to squirm in discomfort but he forced himself to remain still. He debated returning the topic back to the moral integrity of Vyrica. At least then Jarryn would focus his distaste on the others.
A well-trained diplomat, Lucien was the one to restart the conversation. “My mother’s birthday is in a few months. Weeks, really, come to think of it. There is to be a big banquet, I hope you will all be attending.”
“I doubt my father would let me miss it,” Leander grimaced.
“Nor mine,” Thiete agreed. His father was Vyrica’s highest ranking military general. “And Vivienne. My betrothed is a force to be reckoned with and make no mistake.”
All around the table laughed with the exception of Jarryn. “I will be there, to honour the queen and not because someone demands my presence.”
“Then you are the son my mother always wanted,” Lucien joked lightly.
“Mine too,” Leander agreed.
The minstrels’ melody became more sombre, heard over the hushed conversations held throughout the large room.
Jarryn still didn’t smile. “Turns out my mother was just as ready to believe in my patricide as my brother was, so maybe we should trade,” he said, his expression deadpan.
“I wonder if this is a problem reserved only for nobility, or if sons of whores have the same strife in their lives,” Lucien wondered aloud as his finger traced the rim of his flagon.
“Maybe Jarryn could find out for us,” Thiete interjected with a giggle, followed by a much louder exclamation of pain as Lucien kicked his leg again, this time significantly harder.
This time Jarryn was prepared, and he didn’t even blink. “It would be a shame to ruin a good time asking them about their mothers,” he returned. “In any case, I’m sure you could ask any of the gents in here.”
“Most people in here are nobility, which doesn’t answer my ponderous question.”
“You three haven’t spent much time around the common folk, have you?” Leander asked, then continued as they all opened their mouths to claim otherwise. “No, I don’t just mean ministering to your subjects. I mean really getting to know them. Drinking in an inn besides the Wandering Dragon.”
The nobles looked between themselves.
Leander rested his elbows on the table and leaned in, feeling quite smug. “No, I don’t suppose you have. The people you rule over are no different from you. They have dreams and aspirations, secrets and conflicts much the same as you all do. ”
“And you know them so well, do you?” Jarryn asked softly. “The God of Lies, whose battlefield is littered with secrets.”
“No better than the ruling caste. It matters little to me from whom the secrets come. A little princeling’s secrets and lies have their place in the world, just as much as that of a farm boy.”
“What do you know of my secrets?”
“Only that you have them,” Leander shrugged.
Jarryn’s eyes narrowed in distaste and distrust. “Would that you still had your divine gifts. It must make life challenging without them.”
“I’ll manage. But thank you for your concern.”
There was no mistaking it: Jarryn had no love for Leander.
He had been raised pious, to worship the Nine, just like every child in Cariun.
But Leander had never before experienced such animosity radiating from another, except maybe his father.
But this was different still. He could not understand why.
“Have I done something to offend you in some way, Your Highness?” he asked quietly.
“You are younger than me, yet claim some ethereal experience which makes you, by your own admission, superior to me. To us.”
Leander blinked. “You act as though your title grants you immunity from criticism. It doesn’t.”
The prince of Desanne ground out his response. “Always quick to remind us that we are beneath you.”
“At least I embrace what I am.”
“No you don’t! I can feel it spiralling away from you like a vicious tornado intent on razing a village to the ground. You resent this life, this world. And you have nothing but contempt for everyone in this room, and all those beyond it.”
Damn the arcane art of Aesthesia. Leander needed more time to practice his mental shield, lest every noble in Saeren cottoned on to his aversion to… well not really their very existence, but his own presence within this realm.
“As a mortal,” Jarryn continued, his silky voice causing Leander even more irritation than the actual content of his words.
“You belong to the dust of history, forgotten and irrelevant. I don’t even need Aesthesia to know this about you.
Your fears are written all over your face, laced in every word you utter. ”
Lucien and Thiete said nothing, eyes flitting between their two new drinking companions with weary expressions. Leander thought that he would not be invited back again.
But Jarryn was not finished with his examination of the demigod.
“Your deeds are as empty as your soul. Legends fade to ashes and even gods fall from grace, just as you are proof. Your arrogance blinds you to the truth: in the end, it is not blood that defines greatness, but strength of one’s character.
Your immortality was but an ineffectual illusion and you have been abandoned by your own mother.
Now you desperately grasp for relevance in a world that will move on without you. ”
Leander wanted to argue back. Jarryn’s words cut him deeply.
Because they were true. They were the reason why he sought frivolous affairs in the mortal realm with drinks, girls or boys.
“You will never understand what it is to rule over the hearts of so many,” he finally managed to say.
“You, the exiled would-be king with no subjects to rule. You, who no longer has a place to call home, let alone rule. Your own legend will fade into obscurity, a cautionary tale told by your ancestors of hubris and folly.”
“Gents—” Lucien tried, but Jarryn raised a hand to silence the other prince.
“Perhaps. And yet, for all your power, you sit here, wasting your breath trading insults with me. Remember this, Myracle?—”
“Don’t call me Myracle.”
“You’re right, Myracle is too good for you. In the end, it’s not the immortality and power of gods that shapes the world, but the resilience of men.”
Jarryn looked around, then stood up, gulping down the rest of his mead before placing the flagon back on the table. “My companion has arrived, thank you for such an… illuminating diversion, Your Highness, my lords.”
He left the three men in stunned silence, and they stared as he stalked off towards the bar before they returned to their own drinks and made a valiant attempt to save the evening from complete ruin. It was the demigod’s round for drinks anyway.
“He’s certainly something,” Leander muttered when he returned with another round of drinks for himself and his two companions.
“Desanne is a religious kingdom, no?” Thiete asked quietly as he thanked Leander for the drink. “Do they not worship the Nine?”
Leander thought of the nation of Desanne and its capital, Eslirie, where King Nevari now ruled on the throne. Eslirie did not have loyalty to one single god in the same way Saeren had a patron. But they were a pious city in a pious nation. Jarryn himself had been raised in the light of the Nine.
So why did he have such disdain for Leander?
“They are, yes,” Leander agreed as he stared at the back of Jarryn’s head across the room.
“He took his father’s passing hard,” Lucien said softly, expression almost guilty for sharing something so personal.
“He told me… he told me about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if his faith has been shaken.
” It was clear that Lucien wanted to say more, but would not break the trust of his friend.
“Either way, I wouldn’t take it personally, Leander.
Not everyone will like or admire you, and that’s okay. ”
“Sage words from Vyrica’s future king. You’ll have to get used to making enemies, I suppose,” Leander returned.
Lucien smiled knowingly and took another large gulp of his mead. “Anyone with power and responsibility must accept the fact that being not-friends with someone is very different from being enemies. You can’t please everyone.”