I'm the hero of this story I don't need to be saved
As Aghavni had said it would be, the palace is empty of everyone, and echoes only with ghosts and his own footfalls.
It is beautiful, with its delicate archways and elegant columns and the sunlight washing everything golden. August has always had an eye for lovely things, and it does not pain him to admit it of Solterra. Yet all he thinks of as he passes from shadow to sun to shadow again are all the savageries the halls have seen.
He had only been in the city for a few days, and has not strayed far from the Emissary since he found her at the docks. But today she departed early for some duty (he did not ask and she did not offer to say), and August told himself he would discover a secret about the palace. Something nobody had told him, something to tuck into his heart, something to change his mind about this vicious, ancient place.
So far he has found that despite the obvious lack of water in the desert, the palace is abundant with fountains and pools. Of course, he thinks, pausing in an ornate archway to consider yet another tiny reflecting pond as still as a mirror, the crown always wished to display its wealth, and wealth is whatever is rare. He has found that after a few wide staircases, there is a walkway with a view of the sea (he does not consider its glittering expanse for long). And August has found that he cannot hate it, not when it is so empty and so clearly unused to emptiness. Instead it makes him sad.
By the time he finds the garden he has no idea where in the palace he is. But it doesn’t matter, not when a little breath of wonder slips from him and he steps out into the green. It is open here, a wide circle of sky overhead and sunlight pouring in, and birds trill sweetly in songs he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t know many of the plants, either - palms and ferns succulents, huge flowers that bloom vital red and tiny white ones like lace. He follows the narrow flagstone path that curls to the center, where an olive tree spreads its arms and its gnarled, twisting roots. The tree has a presence, as the tree on the island (The Island, as his mind always denotes) had, but one entirely different - wise, regal. Maybe sad, too.
This thought makes him laugh, and shake his head at himself. How mawkish, to assign emotions to a tree. And yet he can’t stop drinking it in the way it drinks in the sunlight.
They are made of large, yellow marble slabs; carved and polished. Some are lost to the overgrown foliage; others peak above or around garden plants, heads or eyes half-obscured, a haunch visible through the bursting bougainvillea or mandevilla vines; mesquite and sagebrush; agaves and desert marigolds. They guard the gates, they adorn the parapets. They are mere ornaments, carved years ago and reinstated after rediscovery in some half-forgotten basement. Many are life-sized or bigger, remnants of a dynasty in which their living brethren reigned like feral kings, Solis’s wild priests. They stare on with lifeless marble eyes at the golden trespasser; apathetic. Does he not seem as if he belongs, burnished as if by Solis himself?
Yet one pair of eyes open at the telltale clip-clop of hooves upon the flagstone path. Luminescent and sun-bright they flick after the stallion as he passes by. First, Ariel assumes it is Orestes; until he almost immediately discerns the sheer impossibility of his bonded catching him unawares. Feather-soft, the Sun Lion rises from his garden alcove to stalk through the foliage after the stranger; his paws knead at the gravel and rich soil, freezing utterly with each backward flick of the stallion’s ear. Ariel does not recognise him and his unsettles the lion; more than that, it enrages him. There should be no one he does not recognise within the castle.
Orestes, Ariel calls softly through their bond. There is a stranger in the garden.
A stranger in the garden.
The Sun Lion pads further, further; he loops around the olive tree where the palomino pauses, admiring the ancient center-piece. The stranger laughs aloud, almost mockingly, shakes his head, and then proceeds to continue staring. Ariel does not know how long he remains hidden in the darkness beyond the tree, a pair of eyes peering through heaps of Mexican feather grass, jade trees, and bursting Texas sage. Just his eyes; just the almost-white teardrops that streak alongside the nose to his chin; just the shapeless shape of a predator in the long stalks of his desert home.
Eventually, Ariel rises from his hidden place; eventually, Ariel rises like the feral king he is and steps beyond the thorns and brilliant colours of the foliage; it snags at his mane, pricks at his side, but the lion remains undeterred. At last the half-mythic beast speaks. “Have you learned something?” Ariel’s voice is thunder, or bass, or the crash of the sea, the desert whipping in a storm.
He has only risen because Orestes is here now. He has only risen because the Sovereign strides down the same flagstone path his doppelgänger (albeit with virgin skin) had, a steady clip-clop. When he reaches the center of the garden, unhurried and with beautifully, ornately braided hair, he only arches his brows. “You are awfully deep within the citadel of Solterra to be lost.”
Yet Orestes’s tone is noncommittal, unreadable. He speaks like a scholar observing a fact of his book. After a moment, with his head lifted toward the cutting blue sky above, Orestes lowers his gaze to the gnarled, ancient tree and says, “It captivates me as well.”
Ariel slinks to rest at its base; a living lion in a garden of stone. He radiates light, a light too bright to stare at, simply out of spite.
I'm the hero of this story I don't need to be saved
He’d wondered, as he’d wandered, whether he was being watched.
It would not have surprised August at all to know he was - not when his home was the Scarab, which had eyes of one sort or another everywhere, and the halls were as thick with secrets as shadows but all of them found their way to him eventually. At first it was a game - every time he passed a mirror, or a portrait with an especially cold expression, or even the reflecting pools, he wondered if someone somewhere was observing him. But when nobody came for him, and none of the guards he passed did anything beyond watch him with the same intensity as the subjects of paintings, he let it go.
By the time he reached the garden and its marble pride he was too caught up in the other game, the game of discovery, to question whether anything saw him out of all those blank staring eyes. And between the birdsong, and the way the sunlight fell through all the myriad leaves like it was a living thing too, and the olive tree, he isn’t paying attention to the unnerving (and rather ostentatious) collection of lions at all.
Until one steps out from the foliage just beyond the tree, so that there is only a tangle and jut of roots between them.
Now it is August’s turn to freeze utterly, down to his breath. The lion is awful in the old-Testament sense of the word, beautiful and terrifying, and the first thought that comes to mind is So this is how I die. But the palomino is already pushing aside that cold ball of fear, because the setting is too beautiful, and he vaguely remembers Aghavni telling him Orestes had a lion companion, and the lion is asking him a question.
And if this lion is Solis or some other god, August remembers too well staring into the gaping, godless maw of a serpent-bear made of sand in an underworld dripping sap-or-blood to be afraid of any deity asking if he’s learned something.
“Yes,” he says, and lifts a brow even as he dips his chin, staring at the creature, hiding the way his heart still marvels at the wonder of him. “Not to drink before breakfast.” The lion’s eyes slide past him to something just beyond, and August turns to see it too, and so gets his first look at Orestes.
His first instinct is to swallow a laugh. Silver hair (carefully braided), gleaming golden skin with hints of silver dapples - they could be brothers, maybe twins. August has been jealous of Orestes since Aghavni left to join his regime; now, looking at him, he isn’t sure whether his envy is greater or less. Even their brows curve in mirror images.
“And yet here I am.” August is the first to smile, though he resents the way it feels like raising a sword to parry. When the king’s gaze falls to the tree, the palomino’s begins to follow, but the lion is too bright and August wrinkles his nose and goes back to studying Orestes.
He is surprised, a little, by what the sovereign says next. He could have asked about it then, or made some comment as to its beauty and that of the garden around it, the way it’s started to soften his heart to the Court. But the lion’s voice, all waves and wind and thunder, is still echoing like a widening ripple in his mind, and here is this man who looks so much like him, of a height, of an age, and yet (surely) in want of nothing. He feels the way he had when he came to far from the chaos and magic of the island, knowing he was not worthy of the Relic, whatever the Relic actually was.
So instead he only says, smiling affably, “It’s nice to know there are such venerable survivors of Solterra’s kings.”
Yes, the trespasser answers. Not to drink before breakfast.
Ariel’s response is immediate and unimpressed chuff. The effect might be amusing, at least if it were to have come from a house cat. Ariel is no such thing and turns a dismissive shoulder.
Orestes has yet to decide what he thinks of the quick-witted stranger. And yet, here I am. Perhaps it is Orestes’s age showing, that makes him less inclined to answer with a smile. But one eventually emerges in response, past the point where it is polite. It might have unnerved him to discover August within the heart of the citadel, but—well, there are still many things Orestes is learning about his own kingdom.
Then:
It is nice to know there are such venerable survivors of Solterra’s kings.
Orestes studies him. The comment is affable, but barbed.
I think the term you are looking for, Ariel whispers slyly in his mind.Is ‘catty.’
Orestes nearly snorts aloud.
Or, as I find that insulting to my own kind, ‘cheeky.’
“Don’t worry. The inhabitants of Solterra will far outlive her kings.” Orestes glances at the tree. Ariel’s glow abates and, for a moment, he returns to being a mundane—the word is a stretch—lion, lounging on the lowest branch of the olive tree. ”But I can’t think of the last time a stranger worried themselves with such affairs.” Orestes smiles now, a soft and ambient sort of expression made heavy by the age in his eyes.
He begins to trail around the tree, following the carving paths that seem to always lead to the centrepiece of the garden. Glancing at the olive tree, Orestes imagines it has seen as much suffering as he himself has, if not more. What is the purpose of something so old, if not to bear witness?
“And what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Orestes asks conversationally.
Ariel’s tail flicks.
The Sovereign glances over his shoulder at his lookalike and manages a short, rueful smirk. The scene is strange enough to belong in a dream. After another pause, Orestes adds: "I am Orestes, by the way."
I'm the hero of this story I don't need to be saved
The lion is not impressed with him. August is not dismayed; it is a cat, after all, and he has known his fair share of those. Still, it’s hard not to think of the canines behind the whiskers, and the claws yet unseen.
He wonders more how similar the king is to his companion.
August does not shy away from the man’s gaze, though maybe he should; maybe it would be wiser to choose this moment to examine the gnarled, ancient roots of the olive tree, or avert his gaze to the lotus in the still pools or the jasmine climbing up the walls. Instead it’s the stallion’s eyes he meets, tumultuous ocean-colored eyes, the color of Denocte’s harbor on a sunny day. There is nothing of the desert about them, and it’s a ridiculous thing to assign any kind of judgement to, but August likes him more, for the color of his eyes.
And at his answer, the palomino feels a tiny flick of shame. It’s not the answer he’d expected from the king of Solterra; humility is not a word he associates with the people of the desert. It might have softened him enough to be friendly, but when Orestes continues August tosses his head with a snort. “Novus has not often had the luxury of ignoring Solterra’s affairs. They’ve had a nasty habit of spilling over.” And this time (he tells himself) its not his own pride talking; there is Raum, after all (never mind, never mind that he was born of the Night Court, moon-kissed and alley-raised), but Zolin before him, whose reign left August an orphan, who cut off countless roots and branches of families.
Grudgingly, curious and wishing he wasn’t, he begins to follow Orestes down the path. Shadows bar the garden, the air is dense with scent; he’d never realized there were so many shades of green. August ignores the lion lounging along the low branch of the tree.
“I’m an old friend of Aghavni’s, who has graciously permitted me to stay with her for a while.” He manages to keep the edge out of his voice, though his ears tilt backward for a moment; there is too much unsatisfactory, incomplete about the answer. But he doesn’t know what she’s told her new king.
He meets the smirk with a smile. “And I’m August. I like your garden, Orestes. And your tattoos.”
Novus has not often had the luxury of ignoring Solterra’s affairs. They’ve had a nasty habit of spilling over.
The nerve of the reply astounds him so much Orestes laughs aloud. Ariel is not far behind; an unimpressed guffaw that is more or less a loud yawn. If August had wondered about the Sun Lion’s teeth, the curiosity could be sated.
Yet Orestes’s smile is not unkind—no, not quite, although the edge of it is as hard as the polished edge of a diamond—when he says, “I do not take offense to much, but the ignorance of that comment is something I have trouble swallowing. I don’t know how long you’ve been in Novus—perhaps longer than me—but everything I’ve garnered of it’s history suggests an aggressive apathy toward the affairs of Solterra. If you speak of Raum, he never belonged to Solterra. He was a mad king from another god who took his fury to our desert and made us bleed. Those that came to defeat him were cleaning up a mess that should have ended in their Court, before his madness ever had a chance to reach the city of the sun.” Orestes no longer finds it strange he speaks of Solterra as if he belongs there; as if he was there. In many ways, the hardness of his voice is derived from the simple fact he has been cleaning up the aftermath since arriving on the shores of Novus. “And, aside from that, I cannot remember ever hearing a story of any Court intervening when Zolin took the throne, made slaves of children, concubines of citizens, and starved the city with his gluttonous appetites. No. I am quite certain the continent was satisfied to let us rot. Perhaps the disparities between our city’s gods aren’t so lost in the past after all, eh? If our tragedies have spilled over, it has quite a bit to do with the apathy of others. Once, were each of us not brother and sister? And how does the saying go—I am my sister’s keeper? My brother’s guardian? These things are forgotten in this land.”
Orestes does not often speak this much; but he will not stand to hear of how Solterra’s affairs spilled over to impact others; evil only grows through tolerance, or the weakness both of the state and of those around it.
Ariel presses forward; he drops from the boughs of the trees and nears August with a languid stride. The Sun Lion stops to measure the stallion and then steps out beyond, to rest at Orestes’s hooves. There is nothing subservient about it; in fact the entire gesture seems measured, a political ploy to remind the king that one man is not responsible for all of Novus’s sins, despite a flippant tongue.
Orestes sighs heavily. “But I am sure you are not here to discuss politics or history. It is a pleasure to meet you, August. Forgive my less than polite welcome, and—my, well, my passion on the subject of my country.” The other palomino’s smile has softened him. “Thank you for the compliments. If you would like, Ariel and I would be more than happy to give you a tour.” It seems impolite to inform the visitor that his tattoos are actually magical scars binding his Soul, and so Orestes refrains. He attempts to remind himself that there are no "off" days, or moments to be less than a Sovereign--to be only a man. No.
Like that, the Sun King has transformed from confrontational to gracious. He gestures from the tree, toward an intricate brickwork meandering further into the garden.
I'm the hero of this story I don't need to be saved
It is that laughter that makes August decide that he will never love Solterra. Or maybe it is the smile that follows it; everything starts to blur together then, when the king begins to speak and August’s incredulity grows wider and longer by the moment.
It’s true that he’d been intent on needling Orestes since he saw him, with that little bit of jealousy, that misguided malcontent that has been with August since disembarking the merchant ship. But now the feeling flares into true anger - and he listens, inwardly seething, from the moment the other man says perhaps longer than me.
Yes; much longer than the man who’d arrived barely more than a year ago, after all the dust and dying had settled down.
Holding his tongue is difficult, and August is not well-practiced at it, but he manages, barely. Not until the king finishes his speech, not until the lion drops from the tree and saunters over (a presence August can hardly ignore, a threat or a promise of teeth) does he loosen his clenched jaws to respond.
“I don’t know who has taught you this place’s history, but I would fire them.” For many years, August has been an expert at the lying game, at playing politics among the affluent patrons of the Scarab. This practice allows him to keep his body loose when it wants to stand rigid as a fist; it keeps his voice easy, conversational, when he wants to shout or hiss. Even the silver of his eyes is as calm as a mirror, though his gaze doesn’t stray from the king’s.
“It’s a pity my mother and the others didn’t know that when they were killed by a Solterran raiding party in the Arma Mountains. Maybe they’d still be alive and I wouldn’t have had to watch as their throats were cut. Do you know why they must have had such vehemence against the Night Court? Could it have been because they were against Zolin’s reign, and doing battle with it as best they could, considering it was a fellow sovereign nation with a madman at the helm?” He pauses for a breath and finds that his heart is racing; as he draws the sweet garden air in a slow inhale, August glances toward the trees, the delicate patterns of vines and ferns, the cool shadows they all cast. Idly, still looking away, he continues, “I was very nearly a slave here, you know. Maybe then I would have learned its history better, eh?”
There is nothing pleasant in his smile when he turns it back to Orestes. When the oversized lion pauses beside him, what he can only take as a passive threat, August ignores him. Now, at last, there is an edge to his voice. “It was not the rest of Novus that allowed Zolin to rule. And why do you think Raum chose here to run to? I think it’s because there was no other court so fractured, so apathetic, as you say. As king, you should be aware - the actions of your country are not up to the other courts.”
Somehow, the conversation moves on. Somehow, both men take a breath. But August’s blood is still rushing, and his memories are still in that mountain pass, being shouldered into a cage as the body of his mother lays behind, still bleeding.
He is not in the mood to play nice. Not even with a king, in a king’s secret garden, with a king’s lethal companion.
“That is decidedly not why I’m here. Maybe it is your country - I’d wondered how it would be, Solterra being led by a foreigner, but you seem to fit in pretty well.” For the last time he summons a smile, ducks his head in a nod almost as gracious as Orestes’ gesture. “I’ll pass, thanks. Enjoy the morning.”
It is a difficult thing, to turn away and have them both at his back; it would be a lie if August wasn’t braced for the feeling of claws in his hide, or jaws around his leg or throat. It is an easier thing, to not look back as he walks away.
I don’t know who has taught you this place’s history, but I would fire them.
Orestes does not need to say, I have taught myself. The libraries he has scoured, the journals he has read; Orestes's understanding of Novus has extended far beyond a foreigner's. No, he has stayed awake for days at a time pouring over the history of Solterra; enough time to know it was never meant to be a monarch. No, Solterra was a hundred tribal identities forced to coincide. Forced to reconcile. But how does one explain that to someone who has not lived it? Orestes’s smile is cool, now; a Sovereign’s smile. Although it counts as an expression, it is truly expressionless, just as light is when it glints off a sword. He might have taken stock of what August said, if his response did not simply reveal him as another enraged and hurt orphan. Orestes had seen plenty of them, and plenty of them native to Solterra.
“Perhaps your mother and others should have been prepared for the dangers of a war-torn country. Denocte was at war with Solterra. Where were you going, August, to be put in the line of that raiding party? That is the argument you are making, is it not? That Solterrans should have had the strength to wrench themselves from an impossible situation and dethrone their past monarch as he starved them, stole their children, and sent them to a war they did not believe in? That we should never have allowed ourselves to become victims. That’s a duel-sided mentality, my friend. That war was helmed by Zolin's madness, child soldiers and slaves, not the warriors of honour in Solterra's history.” Orestes, once, would have let his heart bleed for this tragedy. He would have offered pieces of himself to right the wrong belonging to generation’s past. What is more than that: he would have sympathised. But his deprecation for weakness stems from himself; it stems from the one mistake he made that he will never make again, when he stood upon a cliffside and asked a warring nation for peace. It is the same thing he had told Boudika: It is in your nature. He knows when he delivers the comment, as deftly as one would place a blade between the ribs, Solterra has changed him.
But there are lions, and there are lambs.
Orestes has decided what he will never be again; or allow his country to become. What he does not say is that of course the responsibility belonged to other monarchs, if they cared anything for their countries and they watched Solterra descend into a madness Sovereign-by-Sovereign. Where had their armies been when the people of Solterra were first enslaved, before those of any other nation? Where had their armies been when Zolin preyed upon the weak of his own nation—a nation that relied on their monarch to defend them… and more importantly, what had made them believe they could rest behind their city walls at peace, while Solterra declined? The madness always spreads.
I was very nearly a slave here. Orestes’s eyes gleam as the sea does in sun; brightly, almost glinting. Yes, he wants to say. Perhaps you would then understand it, rather than venting this survivor’s guilt upon city and culture you don’t even understand. After all, Orestes had been slave. Orestes had born witness to exactly what powerful men will do to those who are weaker, even if it had not been in Solterra. The sun at his brow aches, and aches, and aches and he nearly bursts out, what would you say if I told you this is not a sigil of Solis, but the sigil of my own slavery? The marker where they bled the Soul from my body? Orestes had been a slave.
And now?
Well, Solterra was not Raum. Solterra was not Zolin.
Solterra was the desert sun on the crest of the Mors; the way it baked the dirt of Elatus canyon; the coastal sea rutting against the desert dunes. Solterra was Ariel’s fury and a teryr’s scream and it was never, ever meant to be helmed by tyrants. If you go to a circus to watch a tiger perform, are you not just as guilty as it’s captors? When you watch idly from a distance, when you allow the excuses of your country—it isn’t us, oh, we don’t deserve this war—to expand upon the justice owed to humanity, are your hands not red with the same blood of tyrants? Orestes says instead, “Raum only existed because Denocte allowed him to. And I do not excuse Raum, or Zolin, but they are not my country. And they never were. Megalomaniacs, narcissists, tyrants—they don’t care whether it is Solterra, Terrastella, Denocte, or Delumine. They will burn whatever they touch and the rest of the country burns with them. It could have easily been you.”
Denocte.
Delumine.
Terrastella.
Were they not the lucky ones? Spared the pain of slavery, of monarchy, of all that Solterra bore witness to?
The greater evil, Orestes thinks, is not weakness. It is indifference. As far as he is concerned, the death of August’s family is the responsibility of a government that watched Solterra fall and did nothing to prevent it, to intervene. A just war is better than one where men die for no reason.
That is decidedly not why I’m here.
There is much more Orestes might have said—and things more unforgivable than what already was. When August says, I wondered how it would be, Solterra being led by a foreigner, but you seem to fit in pretty well.
What should be a compliment settles with Orestes almost as an insult. But somehow he manages to smile back, even in the face of August’s rejection. There is a simmering rage within him, unexpected and arcane. “You as well. Hopefully you enjoy your stay, and Aghavni is a far better host than I."
It would be a lie if Orestes’s mind did not jump to the vulnerability of his companion’s back; the piquing of Ariel’s interest, an animal evolved to hunt from an ambush.
The conversation has left him flustered and full of an unaccustomed anger, one Orestes has rarely experienced in his life. He returns his eyes to the tree; admiring it and the growth it represents. What a simple thing, Orestes thinks, to be a tree. The only growth they concern themselves with is upward and outward. But men? Well, that is a different story entirely. There is a stale taste on Orestes’s tongue, like metal, and when he turns from the garden it is to walk down one of the citadel’s long corridors, adorned with sigils of the sun.
