Chapter Thirteen The Most Loyal Friend #3
“So does shame, and guilt, and self-pity,” she said, taking a step toward him, speaking slowly and emphatically. “So, use your anger to conquer those, and once you do, then you can worry about conquering the anger.”
The Prince was skeptical. He didn’t know if he believed such a thing could really help. He didn’t want to fight, though, and so didn’t respond. As the silence stretched, the girl looked him up and down, seemed to decide that that was the best she could do, and walked away.
The three of them began to move again, all of them on foot to save the horses’ strength for when it was needed. The girl pulled farther ahead, taking point, and the Prince found himself walking beside Tomaz, each of them leading one of the horses.
“What did you do, Tomaz?” the Prince asked after a time. “After you made it to the Kindred and you knew that, for a time at least, you were safe.”
“I drank. Heavily.”
The Prince looked at the big man in surprise. That was quite possibly the last thing he would have expected from the man he had come to know. Tomaz saw him looking and nodded.
“Morning, noon, and night, the Kindred knew where to find me. I made a makeshift lean-to out in the woods and spent my days drunk as a daisy.”
“No matter how many times you say it, that doesn’t make sense,” Leah called lightly from up ahead. “Daisies don’t drink!”
Tomaz smiled slightly but didn’t engage her.
“It wasn’t until General Goldwyn found me and told me the same thing I told Leah, the same thing she just told you, that I was able to find myself again.
You can only blame yourself for so much, only take so much on your shoulders, before you start taking on the problems of the whole world.
General Goldwyn and I didn’t agree at first.”
Here Tomaz paused briefly and smiled to himself in a decidedly dark and unpleasant fashion.
“I remember quite distinctly trying to club him to death for telling me what to do with my life. But he stuck with it and took time each day to come and speak with me. Me, nothing more than an ex-Guardian. An Exile. It didn’t occur to me until later that anyone is only ever an Exile by their own choice.
The title is just something given to you, a name that you learn to let go of. ”
The Prince didn’t know how he felt about this, and his face must have shown his thoughts, because Tomaz held up his hands in mock defense.
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to turn you,” the big man rumbled, smiling. “You asked what helped me get through it, and I’m simply telling you.”
The Prince nodded but said nothing.
They lapsed into silence for the next few days, barely speaking more than a word to each other, each lost in their own thoughts.
Every morning when the Prince woke, he reached through the Talisman and felt the surrounding forest for signs of pursuit, but no matter how far he reached, he felt nothing but the muted background of forest life.
One day when he opened his eyes and let go of the Talisman, he found the girl watching him. For a moment she just looked at him, and then she spoke:
“Anyone following us?”
The Prince hesitated before responding, trying to see if she was going to mock him, or in some way degrade him for using the Talisman. But she looked simply curious.
“No,” he responded. “There hasn’t been anyone since we left Banelyn.”
“I’m not surprised,” she responded casually.
“This is the kind of area only very dedicated hunters or foresters come to. We’re lucky, in spring and early summer this forest is downright homey.
But during winter and autumn, it’s miserable.
Either covered entirely in snow, or else pouring buckets and buckets of rain down on your head.
We caught it right on the cusp, and if we’re lucky we’ll be around Lake Chartain before the rains really arrive. ”
It dawned on the Prince that she was trying to have a genuine conversation with him. He had heard of such things: talking about the weather was a way the Commons apparently passed the time.
“Oh—you—yes. Yes, the weather is good. I hope it holds.”
A brief smile crossed her face, but she made no comment on his awkwardness, only continued the conversation.
“Indeed. By the time we get to Lake Chartain we should run into a few more people. That area is more accessible, and there’re a few dirt roads that lead up to the lake itself.
I know that there are a few of the more adventurous High Blood who live around the lake, up in the mountains, for hunting.
We’ll have to keep a look out for them. Though, chances are we’ll have to go around the east side of the lake, since there’ll be no one there.
Maybe a hermit or two, but no one else is crazy enough to live in that miserable stretch of bogs and swamps. ”
The Prince, realizing that this might be the longest non-threatening exchange of words he’d ever had with her, listened with rapt attention.
And then something occurred to him—how was it that her teeth were so white? And her hair always looked combed and, if not washed, at least clean.
“How do you do that?” he asked suddenly. “Your teeth and your hair. They look good. How do you keep them clean?”
At first, she seemed taken aback, but then she smiled at him. It was the first real smile he’d seen from her, and it was dazzling. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about how often lately he seemed to be unsure of his feelings around her.
“Here,” she said, and reached into her pack, “take this.”
She tossed him a few things, and he snagged them from the air in surprise. There were two whittled things, one that had many teeth and one that had a flat bit at the end. The other items included a small pouch, half full of some sort of liquid, and a bag with some sort of white powder in it.
“You’re lucky I have extras. The one with the teeth is a comb. You know what a comb is, right?”
He nodded as if such a thing were obvious, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember how the groomers in the Fortress had styled his hair.
He’d never paid much attention to it. He supposed he’d go off on his own at some point and figure it out, or perhaps try to watch her use it and learn by imitation.
“The flat piece is for your teeth. You squeeze some of the cream from the pouch onto it, then shake out some of the powder. It’ll feel strange at first, but you’ll get used to it.
And then scrape your teeth with the wood piece.
There’s a small pointy bit at the other end you can use to get in-between your teeth.
Careful not to go too hard though, or you might start bleeding and then I’ll have to hold you down while Tomaz sews you back together, and really the whole thing will be no fun for anyone. ”
She smiled at him again.
“Just because your chest is black from that Talisman, doesn’t mean your teeth need to be.”
“Right,” the Prince. “At least I can do something about my teeth, though. The Talisman… it’s right that it’s black.
There’s nothing good about it. It’s a curse, that’s all it is.
” He touched the deeply etched lines on his upper chest through his shirt.
They had never felt more like bonds then they did now, holding him to a life he could no longer have and making him a target for the Empire.
“Nothing is inherently cursed, princeling,” Leah said.
The Prince was struck again by how strangely talkative she was and realized that she had seemed generally happier as time went by, as if this solitude suited her, and the more time she spent traveling through the forest the more energy she absorbed from the silence.
“This is,” he replied, trying to smile but failing halfway through.
“Then choose to do something about it,” she said, slightly exasperated, but still trying to be reasonable.
She looked out into the forest, picking her words carefully as she continued.
“Look, I don’t understand how the Talisman works.
I don’t understand what it feels like to use it.
But if you’re convinced there’s no good use that you can be put to, just stop using it.
Just remember this, it’s something my father told me when he was teaching me how to fight: a sword isn’t bad because it’s pointy, and a shield isn’t good because it’s blunt.
Both can be used for offense, and both can be used for defense.
What matters is always, always the person who wields it.
You were born into this, I know, and you’ve been made a weapon of the Empire, one that they’ve decided is no longer of any use to them, but now you’re your own weapon.
You have a choice now. You have power, you have a sword, a sword unlike anything anyone else has. What matters is what you use it for.”
She looked back at him, and the Prince found himself drawn in by her eyes. Green like the sun through the forest canopy.
“What matters is who you are,” she said.
The Prince, thinking this over and trying to find a flaw in her logic, trying to see how she was deceiving him like the Children and the Empress always said the Exiled did, didn’t respond, and that was the last they spoke for the rest of the day.
But as he went to sleep that night, wrapped in his deerskin, warm and well-fed on the meat and roots the Exiles had gathered, next to a cunningly built fire that was both strong and somehow nearly smokeless, the Prince could only admit that what she said made sense.
And as he admitted this to himself, he felt guilt and shame begin to boil up to the surface of his mind.
If any of the other Children could see him now, here, taking the charity of the Exiled and agreeing with them…
this was a slippery slope. Soon he would be planning the destruction of the lives of everyone in the Empire.
He’d be trying to wreak havoc on the lives of the Commons, who were only protected by the grace of the Empress.