Chapter Twelve Out of Banelyn #3
And then the Prince was crying. Tears ran down his face, and silent sobs wracked his body. His forehead was buried in the big man’s enormous chest and hands bigger than the Prince’s head were patting him gently on the back, ruffling his hair with calm affection.
“I t-tried so hard,” he choked out, the words coming through a throat almost closed up with the emotion he had tried so hard to contain. “I d-did what th-they expected of me, at l-least I t-tried, but t-they st-st-still didn’t w-want me—”
He could say no more, and he broke down into sobs that shook his entire body. He clung to Tomaz as he had never been allowed to cling to another human being in his life. As he had never let himself cling to another human being.
“I know,” was all Tomaz said, over and over again. “I know. I know.”
He didn’t know how long they stood there, at the edge of the fire, but eventually he became aware of the quiet in the air around them, punctured only by the pattering sound of falling rain.
Suddenly he felt suffocated by the big man’s nearness and pushed away from him.
He walked around the fire, trying to put something between the two of them, but he felt the giant watching him, and so once he had gained the safety of space, he turned back.
Tomaz was watching him with a strange look, as if something he hadn’t anticipated had just taken place, something that had re-kindled a fire in his small black eyes.
“Why don’t you take a name?” he rumbled.
The Prince immediately felt himself close back up again, tensing, shutting down.
He looked away with a sharp twist of his head, and when he looked back Tomaz was staring into the fire, as if it had only been a friendly question.
He seemed just as interested in following the shifting, changing flames as he did the Prince’s answer.
As the silence lengthened, Tomaz looked back up politely.
Chips of dark black stone—not eyes. But there was a light in them.
A light that was greater than the reflection of the fire.
“I have no name,” the Prince said finally. He was surprised to find that the pride was gone from the statement; there was no defiance in it now. He supposed Tomaz would have seen through it in any case.
“You sound sad,” the big man replied bluntly.
“I have no name,” the Prince repeated wryly. It felt strange to talk about this. Why had Tomaz brought it up? Was he trying to convince the Prince of something?
“Neither did I,” said Tomaz, “when I left the Fortress.”
It took the Prince a few seconds to realize what he’d just heard.
“What?”
Tomaz, still staring calmly into the fire, reached up and slowly undid his cloak, removed his shirt, and then the ties holding on his breastplate.
He laid them gently to the side, and then he removed his leather jerkin, and finally a close-fit woven tunic to leave himself bare-chested.
He rose, his enormous muscles rippling in the firelight, and turned his back on the Prince.
Involuntarily, the Prince recoiled and drew in a sharp breath. Spreading across Tomaz’s shoulders and back was an enormous seven-pointed star, tattooed in blue and white ink with sparkling diamond flecks that shimmered in the reflected light of the fire.
It was the sign of a Blade Master, the most elite force of Fortress Guardians.
Guardians were never seen outside of the Fortress unless they were in the presence of the Children, and Blade Masters were rarely ever seen outside of the company of the Empress herself unless it was for a mission of utmost importance that could be entrusted to no one else.
“How… how?” the Prince managed to get out. It was the last thing that he had expected: to find the most glorious and feared symbol of the Empire’s power here among the trees and wilderness, so far from the Fortress. It left his mind reeling.
“I left the Fortress nearly twenty years ago now, give or take a few,” the Exile said.
He began to pull his tunic back over his head, calmly and with his customary assurance of movement.
The same flowing movement the Prince had seen all of his life among the Guardians of the Fortress.
How had he so easily dismissed that before?
“I had been a member of the Guard for five years before I was given a Summons to enter the presence of the Empress herself.”
Five years? thought the Prince in amazement. It was unheard of for a Guardian to be summoned that soon. There were precious few who were summoned before they had served ten years, maybe even fifteen.
“When I came into the throne room, my superiors were there, and every Blade Master then living. I was invited forward, told to kneel before the Empress by her Hand, and then she laid a single finger on my forehead.”
He seated himself again by the fire, once more fully dressed.
“I was told later that what she did was called delving, that she was examining me for the qualities of a Blade Master. All I remember was her nodding, and then I was given over to the Blade Masters, who took me and tested me themselves. Seven days of testing.”
The big man paused, and a grimace passed over his face. The Prince couldn’t imagine what had been terrible enough of a test to make him cringe like that at the memory, but he had heard rumors and knew that some did not survive it.
“I passed, though I felt at the time that I would rather have failed. It would have been less painful. My first assignment came soon after. I was the star pupil of the elder Masters, and they gave the assignment to me so that I could prove myself in the eyes of the Empress.”
He paused for a moment, and his face darkened.
“The assignment was an assassination, of a man living in Lucien not too far outside the Fortress.”
Assassination? Why would they give that to a Guardian? Assassinations were carried out by the Death Watchmen, and as far as the Prince knew, by them alone.
“As you’d guess, I was surprised, but as I was then I did not question it.
If the Empress and my fellow Blade Masters believed the assignment important, then it was important.
I was told that it was a matter of security for the Fortress, that this man had uncovered secrets that were dangerous to the Empire, and that the man himself was too dangerous for even the Death Watch to deal with.
I did my job too well. I killed the man before he even knew I was there.
Perhaps if I had let him speak, I would have realized my error sooner and prevented a tragedy.
“For weeks, something did not sit right with me. I was short-tempered, I became angry at the servants, I felt uneasy about my actions. So, using my newly acquired rank as Blade Master, I went and discovered the truth of the man’s crime.”
Pain and harshness entered his voice.
“It was no crime, not at all. Not to me at least.”
He gazed out over the fire into the memory of that day, reliving it there by the fireside. Deep lines of sorrow and regret settled over his face, and the Prince saw then the Blade Master that Tomaz had been, saw it in his empty stare, and his loss of laughter.
“I had sworn to protect the safety of the Empress, and through her the Empire and the stability of the Diamond Throne. I was perfectly suited to the role of a Guardian. And what was more, unlike many I was convinced of the rightness of the cause. The justice.”
He turned his head to look at the Prince.
“I was wrong. It was not justice that I performed, but injustice. The things I have seen, the things I have had explained to me that the Empress and the Children have done, that the Empire allows to happen…”
Words seemed to fail him, and the pain turned to anger. He took a breath and began again a different way.
“When I left the Fortress, I was detected and followed. I killed the men following me, and soon I was pursued by those who had once been my sworn brothers. For weeks, I fought my way across the Empire, running and hiding, only fighting when I needed to. In the end, I was found nearly dead by the Exiled Kindred. They took me in, hid me from the Empire. I didn’t join them at first; I was too blinded by my old prejudices.
But soon I saw that what the Empire had claimed to be, the Kindred actually were.
They kept me safe from the Order, which to this day maintains that I am dead.
That I must be, for they failed to find me in the end.
“My name was taken from me during the flight. The Empress renounced me, and it was then that I almost gave up and lost hope. I still cannot remember myself as that person, for, as you know, once a name is taken, no one can remember it much less say it. But in the end, once enough time had passed, I took a new name, one that I chose for myself. I chose a new name, and I chose a new path, not one that I was selected for, but one I selected for myself.”
His gaze turned to the Prince.
“You are freed from the Children and the Empress. It is your choice what to do now. Your choice, and yours alone.”
It was a long time before the Prince spoke.
“You speak as if I am no longer one of the Children.”
“I do,” was the response. Simple as it was, it spoke volumes.
“They are my family,” he whispered.
“Your family,” Tomaz responded, “in name and blood alone. They have severed their ties with you, regardless of your wishes. And now you are free to choose your own life, to choose your own family. To choose who and what you wish to be.”
The Prince remained silent for a long moment, and then seated himself by the fireside next to Leah’s sleeping form. Her words came back to him.
“Not with this curse around my neck,” he said quietly, fingering the black marks over his shoulders through the cotton of his shirt.
“It is only a curse if you believe it to be,” the big man rumbled. He rose to his feet, circled the fire, and draped one of the extra blankets over the Prince’s shoulders. The ex-Blade Master’s rough hands were surprisingly gentle.
“Now sleep,” he said. “We have a long day ahead of us. I will wake you when we need to leave.”
“I thought you said I was free to make my own choices,” the Prince said.
Tomaz smiled wryly. “Only when I say you can.”
The Prince sat staring into the fire for a time, his mind turning over the conversation and the Exile’s story, as Tomaz settled himself once more.
“Free,” he whispered to himself.
His mind returned to his daydreams in the Fortress, where he had imagined what it would be like to go to the places where the sun shone and the wind blew. Where things were green and water flowed in rivers.
“Free,” he said again, tasting the word as he said it, trying to understand how it felt in his mouth, how it felt to say it. The implications…
The Prince looked over at Tomaz.
“I have no chosen path, no way forward. It’s terrifying.”
“Freedom always is.”