The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting
doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on.
It is late; the night is quiet. And I am drunk.
I lingered, perhaps, too long at the party. I lingered so long the other patrons left, and I became a shadow of the Ieshan estate. My mind remains a whirlwind of those interactions; whether that be with Adonai, Pilate, or Elena. Each name holds a different flavor and, tired and alone, I no longer wish to dwell upon each one. Solterra is no longer gold; even with the flickering torches that line the street, and the silent sentinels at the walls, everything has been bled of colour by the moon. My breath fogs the air with winter's chill. The same chill assaults me.
Perhaps it is the late-night silence, or my drunkenness, or any other number of factors that creates within me a certain, painful nostalgia. As much as I invest myself in Novus, it is not home. I expect to round a corner and come face-to-face with the same bakery I had known my entire life, or the blacksmith just down the block. I expect to see the same faces I had known forever, whose complicated secrets were ingrained within my own. I cannot help but think of Adonai's feather-touch, the lightness of it, the smell of sandstone and something sickly sweet, like rotting fruit. His sickness, I know.
Right now, that does not seem to matter. Right now, I cannot discern whether I am happy or sad, elated or dejected. The street is long, and empty, and I am swaying. It was foolish of me not to make sleeping arrangements, but I think if I can make it out of the Solterran city I could summon Damascus to take me elsewhere, to take me to--
Safety? The word seems obscure; as unrealistic as a dream.
I continue to walk and am surprised to discover I do not know where I am going. My mind is blurring, and my body is burning. More than anything, I would like to lay down and sleep. But--I must leave the city. I must find lodging, or, or--
I have never been lost in my life. But all around me, nothing is recognizable. I clear my throat at nothing but darkness, and crane my head to look up at the sky. If nothing else, I think, at least the stars are beautiful here.
wo things can be true: I understand why Adonai wants him, and I don’t find him attractive.
For one, he is far too tall. For desert horses, we, as a family, are built quite small, and I feel degraded even by the thought of kissing someone twice my size. I think it would be humiliating. (I have promised myself I will never let a man look down on me.)
Secondly, he is far too flashy. I couldn’t stand it, having to compete with a partner like that. Perhaps it is cruel, but next to him I think my brother would simply fall out of notice, like he was not carefully crafted of noble, magic sand, but made to blend in to the wallpaper. Now that would be an embarrassment. Our own first prince, cast out of the limelight simply because he was desperate to fuck some kitschy out-of-towner.
Tonight, Adonai has found yet another means of disappointing me.
I am looking right at it. I have been watching him all night.
It is late now, far later than I would be up on any regular day. The usually golden-light of everything Solterran has been bleached out by the black of the night, then dyed over by the sterile silver glow of the moon; every building, every cobblestone, is lined in the colors of ash and metal. It is cold. Quiet. Still. And around me, the estate is empty, empty, empty. All the life has gone out of the desert; all its inhabitants are sleeping soundly in their beds.
There are no guests remaining, though their perfumes still hang heavy in the chilly air, and their hoofsteps are still pressed into the wet grass. Even the servants have finished their cleaning and gone home.
It is just me and him.
I am standing in the courtyard, under the fig tree whose fruits Corradh devoured all those weeks ago. Its leaves cast mottled shadows on the stone at my feet. A bitter wind blows through, howling against the bushes, rattling the locks on the windows; but otherwise the world is silent.
The linen of my cloak flaps loudly in the breeze, and I wind it more tightly around my shoulders. It is not made for winter, not even Solterran winter, but it is something.
It is my something. It makes me feel powerful.
I am standing in the courtyard, under my family's decades-old fig tree, and I watch him draw to a stop in the middle of the street. He looks like a little soldier doll under the towering buildings of my city. He does not look dangerous in this spot. He looks... lonely. He tilts his head back, as if he is searching for something in the stars or the blue velvet of the darkened sky.
And I understand, for the first time, and with only mild disappointment, that he is, in fact, beautiful.
From behind him, I ask softly: "Do you need a place to sleep, Vercingtorix?"
§
“it does no harm to pretend you love him. provided you sell him the idea.”
The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting
doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on.
Do you need a place to sleep, Vercingtorix?
Those are the words that inform me, quite nonchalantly, that I am no longer in my prime. Although soft and entirely unthreatening, they mark a transition I have observed far too many times: I had not been prepared. In another life, the enemy at my back would have killed me; in this one, he only moves a pawn forward and prepares the onslaught of his queen.
I do not turn to face him. I still, as I had already been still; and with leisure that suggests the meeting had been my idea, I at last crane my head to glance over my shoulder. He does not, I think, strike an imposing figure. But why would he need to? I suppose a prince’s world of wars rests upon a man’s ability to wage battle not with swords and spears, but deft and pointed words.
Perhaps this is why I give the answer I know he is not expecting.
“Yes, actually. I would appreciate that.”
I turn, then, to regard him more fully. I am drunk, but not to the point of complete inebriation. Just so that I do not feel the cold; or the hard shard of resentment lodged somewhere between my heart and lung. I hear, now, what I should have heard before: the sharp crack of his cloak as the breeze catches it, and draws it taunt.
I notice, with quiet contemplation, that Pilate is dark where Adonai is light; the contrast surprises me more than it had across the Ieshan halls, with the glamour of bright chandeliers and flickering lamplight. Here, the darkness softens him; it becomes him. The hard panes of his face do not seem so acute and the serpents that nest along the arc of his neck take on, instead, the appearance of twisting locks of hair.
Perhaps I am drunker than I thought, in that I do not take care to disguise the roving of my eyes, the devouring of every inch of his frame. I am made for conquest and that will never change: there is something unrefined surging at the forefront of my mind and being, a wild edge that had remained dormant most of the night.
He is striking, is he not? Adonai had said, with a vulnerability disguised as detached observation.
I ought to say more aloud, but I don’t. I turn my body to face him fully and wonder to myself how long he had been watching.
It is there, in that darkness, that I think he and I are more alike than I might ever admit, or want to understand. And while I wish to feel edged, furious, on guard--I only feel a bone-deep sort of exhaustion. Yes, I think. I need a place to sleep. But I cannot remember the last time I had found a place to truly rest.
(I know it was long ago, across the sea, where the ocean sang like breaking glass against the cliffs. It must have been beneath lamplight, or bleeding of the sun through stained glass. Brotherhood; and red, wind-swept hair). There is nothing else in this moment; no clever, barbed comment, or analytic observation. I simply stare across the courtyard at the desert prince wondering if, in some way, I now serve a penance.
efore he responds—before he turns to me, even, or notices my presence—I am running through all the options, his responses and mine, playing them like a board game.
No, I do not. Well, then, I might say—my judgement is not as sharp as it once was, for it looks like you are too drunk to know when something is chasing you; finding somewhere to stay in that state would be difficult, at the very least dangerous. Or: apologies, Vercingtorix. I thought you would say so, but courtesy dictates I offer. A little tinge of something sharp in the satin of my words. A dare nestled in the corner of my smiling mouth. The implication being: courtesy dictates this thing that I would not do myself.
Yes, I do. I don’t think this will be his answer. He is a proud man—I know this without even talking to him because Adonai has always had a type—and to admit his lack of power here would be untenable, a sidestep in a dance that only requires forward movement. If I were him, this is not what I would say. Yes, I do implies that I am right. Yes, I do, implies that I have caught him in a moment less than strong, less than perfect; and if I were him, a warrior of his stature, I cannot imagine that this is the position I would want to be in.
But, to my surprise, that is what he says. He expands on it, even. Yes, actually. I would appreciate that.
I do not bother hiding the fleeting change in my expression, in which one brow quirks up, and my smile loosens slightly in its fixture. The wind between us blows harder; it smells faintly of smoke, I think from some bonfire in the city center. But snowflakes still linger on that gust. A strange dichotomy.
I wonder what game he is trying to play. I wonder why he thinks he will win, when all evidence points to the contrary, and I fight the urge to gloat in advance. The way I live—not just my family, not just politics, but the way I am as an individual—dictates thinking three steps ahead at all times. And I know celebrating ahead of time will only narrow the scope of my view into the future.
So, instead, I dip my head to him in a cordial nod. My eyes are soft and dark, and I know they glitter out of the blackness of my face like gemstones. I know the night becomes me. (Everything becomes me, but the night especially.) Looking at Vercingtorix, I know in my bones this is not his place, his time, his setup. He belongs somewhere on a battle-field, midday, so that the sun makes him shine bright against all the blood. How handsome he would be. Like the soldiers painted on our terracotta pots. Like the ones that live under all the tombstones in our backyard.
But ah, I think: I could not love a real villain.
"Of course," I respond. If my voice is chipper at all (I feel chipper), then its vibrancy is likely lost, my glee hidden underneath the stonily pleasant expression on my face. "Come, I'll walk you back. I wonder—" I pause and tilt my head, as if the question has only just come to me. "I wonder why Adonai did not offer you a room himself."
I turn back toward the estate, knowing he will follow. And offer over my shoulder, "You will have to forgive him, though. My brother is absent-minded these days."
Overhead there is just a sliver of moon left. I fall into step at Vercingtorix's side; I look at him from the corner of my eye. The once-lustrous gold of his coat has been bleached to bone by the hungry stars and the darkness.
§
“it does no harm to pretend you love him. provided you sell him the idea.”
The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Lasting
doesn’t contain him. Being is his ascent: he moves on.
It occurs to me I am not as drunk as he may think I am. I do not drink to the point of drunkenness; only to the edge of sobriety, to soften me, to file away my edges. I regard him quietly in the dark; the brief change of his expression, the way one brow arches and the smile changes as briefly as a cloud over the sun. This is what I had hoped for; a moment of uncertainty, a moment of surprise. This is no battlefield, but it may as well be.
Of course. Come, I’ll walk you back. I wonder—I wonder why Adonai did not offer you a room himself.
It is the venom I am expecting, hidden behind cordiality. My expression remains politely impassive; there is no smile, no humor, nothing aside from a blank expression of stoicism. “How little you think of your brother, Prince Pilate. He extended me all the politenesses required of an Ieshan” Now, a smile. Brief and inconsequential; nearly condescending. Pilate is a small man. He is small because he is a coward who deals in politics versus actualities. I wonder, Pilate—do you know what it feels like to truly break a man? It is a strange thing to walk beside him. I have heard the rumors of his creation; I find the magic makes my skin crawl.
Words are a weapon in and of themselves. I have practiced them. But I no longer have the patience. “I simply did not want to inconvenience him, as I am wiling to inconvenience you.” Another smile; and then, perfectly timed, I laugh. It gives the aura of humor; as if I do not turn to regard him with a wolf’s hungry eyes, or a soldier’s.
The good lie, the lie of the ages, is that warriors do not lust for killing. To do so would be ignoble. But violence begets violence and—and my blood is boiling, imperceptibly, beneath the surface.
“Tell me, Pilate.” And this I softly demand. It is a time for soft demands, beneath moonlight, beneath starlight, with my voice made sweet and heady by whiskey. “Is it true your mother made you of desert sand?”
I cannot help but think if my mother had the magic to make me instead of birth me, she would have made me out of spite.
I despise him. Not the way I hate my brother (and that is not “hate” as much as a violent tendency to pretend I hate him), based in real knowledge and years of hurt feelings. Not the way I hate Andras, rooted in the panic he instills in me and the way I can’t see a bird without thinking of him. These are real, turbulent, and permanent feelings, or as permanent as feelings can be. They have roots in my heart, and in my head, and in my memories. They are credible.
I hate him purely because of his attitude. His horrible, cocky smile. The aggravating smoothness of his voice, totally convinced of his eliteness. I hate him because I know I should. Because, in my own way, I can see the future, and I know with black-hole certainty there is not a timeline in this universe where we would ever become friends.
I hate him, and I smile. I know he finds it pathetic; I don’t care. The only reason he thinks me small is because he has not lived my life, slept in my bed, argued my cases in court. He thinks me small because he is the kind of hulking, savage man who was bred and raised to think war is both the question and the answer; who thinks strength is only ever found at the point of a spear or the slicing edge of the sword.
But he is wrong, wrong, wrong. Idiot. One day he’ll learn. I hope I get to be the one to teach him.
His laugh makes my skin crawl. While I’ve learned to keep the impulse quiet, there has always been a part of me with too-sharp teeth that craves during arguments, rather than remaining well-mannered, to rend limb from limb. Now is one of those times. His laugh makes my skin crawl, and my throat grow raspy, and my gums fill with the taste of salt. And I laugh back, clear and bright as a bell, with the amount of easiness I think will best aggravate him; but in my head I ponder, my body cloyed by desire, how he would look as a pelt on my library floor.
The stars are bright overhead, little pinpricks opening the velvet-carpet sky. Towering at my shoulder, he asks, is it true your mother made you of desert sand?
My pace does not falter, nor slow. I turn to look at him; my ears flicker; around my now-curved neck, the nest of snakes undoes itself from the braids of the party and presses itself down against my flesh, so that for a moment, in the darkness, I look almost like a normal boy with thick and glossy hair.
“No, ajnabi,” I laugh dryly. My voice, when I hear it, is dizzyingly sincere. “If any one of us were made from sand, it would be Delilah. Not me.”
§
“it does no harm to pretend you love him.
provided you sell him the idea.”
