RENWICK
If they didn’t, they’re long dead by now.
The disdain in her voice coaxed his head to tilt, silver eyes reflect a note of curiosity before the pieces slid into place. Ah, they were the first to fall then. It made sense, the ones who pulled the chains the hardest, who profited from them the most were the first to find blades pointed at their throats. "I see." Is his only response, caught somewhere in the long stretch between amusement and acknowledgement of a move well played. Denocte had always painted their Solterran counterparts as heavy upon their own greed. The mental image of their swollen frames slipping and sliding off of their chaise's and piles of gold, their blood splattered on glinting surfaces, had permeated the high and low circles — when news had finally reached them of Zolin's demise. "Cannot really fault those who felt the whip the most, for seizing the whip and making them pay ten fold." Renwick murmured after a beat of silence.
And what if it is given by stealing something else?
Renwick doesn't know this Viceroy, not intimately at least. He's a ghost, a target. Someone who inevitably died, and while he cannot say he opposes his fate. He wished it had come sooner. It does not take a Sage to understand that this stallion is the cause of much grief, and for a moment he pondered why he did not know more about him. Though, the War had been critically acclaimed as Zolin's War. Not his advisors, not his shadowy generals and their schemes. Zolin's. Renwick had been a soldier, told to charge into the thick of battle and hinder the Solterran advance. Harass them, cripple their routes, send them back where they came from dead or alive. Names had been for those who rubbed shoulders with the Night Sovereign.
Brows pulled together as he mulled over his answer. But when he spoke, there is no hesitation, or careful words placed within it. It is as strong as sure as the spear he wielded, the bow and arrow often strapped at his side. "Then you must forge it into something that is yours. Reforge it, thrice fold if you have to. It is an unfair trade, but you can forge what was given into something that is worth more than what was taken. Make this Viceroy rue the day he gave you the name Seraphina. Make him regret ever giving you the tools to be great, burn him from the history books in the magnificence that is you and you alone."
He could go on and on about the commanders, each and every one, if he was allowed. Renwick tried to at least spare her that, his mouth could run and run and run as the wolves did. The Knight could of described their crypts beneath the stonehold of Direstone, their likeness carved into the stone, silent sentinels to all those who called it home. One would think they would spring out of the stone at a moments notice, if their carved ears so much heard a ghosting of a threat. He didn't expect the soft sorry from her, but the sadness in his eyes shifted to one of warmth, appreciation. "He was a good man, I may miss him terribly, but I honor his sacrifice. I only hope I live up to the expectations he set forward, and the legacy he left behind." And he prayed, that he would not live to see a rekindled War. A true War, where banners were called. They had all seen enough of it, they had all paid for it.
There's no time to linger on that, not that he wanted to. Seraphina regaled him with the history of the Realm of Sun and Sand and Renwick happily, eagerly settled into attentive silence. Her words weave an image in his mind of rolling desert dunes and equines scattered across them, each tribe dressed in different colors beneath Solis' gaze. Even if his mind painted him a vision of the dawn of the Day Court, his moon colored eyes drank in the vision of the Queen as words guided the images in his head to play out each and every scene. It's not every day one received a history lesson from the Sovereign of the Sun, and he wagered it was not every day they got to see her like this.
Could there ever have been a more lovelier sight?
He doesn't want to interrupt her, so the questions which bubbled and burned in the back of his throat were swallowed down. In turn they were answered in the next breath, Solterra hadn't been such separated community. Once upon a time, the highest interacted with the low, there were no mountains of gold lifted up on the backs of slaves, greed hadn't turned their gaze green and their minds hungry. A shame, is the singular thought which permeated that part of the story, that they had fallen so far. It's hard to keep the frown and the twist of his maw, down and down until it's like that of a wolfs. Somewhere caught between a snarl and a sneer.
It was downright barbaric, what happened. How alienated the common people must of felt. How many were born with the feeling of resentment and shame in their breast? All for the sake of the Highest Echelons to feel superior. How many sold their children just to make ends meet? How many perfectly capable equines felt like their home was not their home? simply for the caste they were born to?
"I know, in Denocte's own terms. About Zolin's ascension, and his father." Renwick admitted, though he was reluctant to interrupt her. Suddenly he's aware how close he had leaned as the Sovereign had spoken, and he drew back with a feigned casual note. The spell is still not completely broken however, her words have left an impression in him. A hoof print that will not so easily be washed away by the tide or the passage of time. "Though I imagine what we were told doesn't hold a candle to the reality of what happened. I cannot blame them for them striking off their chains and taking their payment in blood." Renwick had never gazed at Solterra's Capitol. But he imagined it to be a grand place made of old stone and the sweat of those who had once loved it. To imagine it smoking and soot stained, it's streets littered with those whose chains clattered against the cobbled stones and lay tossed across walls. He imagined, in it's waking days it was much more beautiful, if a city built by the fierce and determined could be called beautiful.
Once more, he allowed silence to come easily to him as she detailed the modern day standings of the Day Court. After Zolin and his treacherous Court. Maxence, he had heard of here and there, but the Brotherhood had been too far removed from the Day and Night situations, better focused on aiding the people who lived outside of the walls of the Night Court's capitol.
Nevertheless, we are a hardy people – we survive in a desert full of teryrs and sandwyrms, and struggle each and ever day just to find food and water. We can do far better than what we allowed ourselves to become.
"With you as their Queen, I can believe that. You are everything that the people need, and the very thing the Nobles fear." The Knight smiled then, sincere and easily. "The Nobles do not want to consider a future without slaves and chains, where gold speaks. It would make them obsolete, make them wrong. It would mean that equines would not have to learn to love their chains, and the ones who pulled them. It would make them equals, and they have no place in that world, where equines can think and speak for themselves. The Solterra you want to build does not sound like such a bad place." Renwick stated. The history books would not paint her as a lavish thing, with her gilded crown woven in the shape of leaves, and slaves at her feet. Instead, he can imagine them painting her in all her raw glory, the collar upon her neck a symbol of something different. An ownership of oneself, not the slavery she was thrust into, not the games of cruelty envisioned by another. The flames of the sun were not Solis' but her own, with the trust and loyalty of the people. No slaves. No Nobles. No venomous advisors depicted as serpents around her throat.
The silver queen, painted in the shades of mountain fog and sea mist. The precious veins of the earth kissed upon her skin.
Truly, again, Could there ever have been a more lovelier sight? The God's were playing their games again, a gilded arrow aimed at a Wolf.
"The Capital may be in ashes now, but I do not think it will stay that way for long. Solterra won't know what hit them, with you as their Sovereign. The ground will even out beneath your hooves, in time, change is a drastic thing even for those who have benefited from it the most. The nobles will either change, or perish. After all...what does not bend..." He trailed off with a grin.
TAG; @
NOTES; <3
