asterion,
I will find him, she says, and there is nothing so easy as to believe her. It’s as certain as the slate in her gaze, the strength in her shoulders, all those muscles knotted with tension. Asterion nods, once, careful. And the look that passes between them then promises that he will help her, if she needs him - if she needs the bay drained, the tide pulled back, the sea to spit out the criminal like a rotten tooth.
“I’m always ready to learn,” he says, and at the sight of her grin (new teeth, white and sharp, but all Marisol, no less belonging to her than the spear leaning against the wall) the king smiles, too, bold and dark as the cliffside the waves dash themselves against.
And then, as she turns away (to reach for another ancient volume, as though they might trade books) he lets his breath out in a long rush, and closes his eyes tight for half a heartbeat, and reaches at last for the tea.
As he pours it into two cups, as the comforting smell of cinnamon and anise fills the air and Marisol pushes the tome between them, it is Isorath he thinks of.
Isorath, that errant regent, who had taught the bay to read (or at least begun his lessons). It had been there, in his comfortable and gleaming-clean quarters, that Asterion had first had tea, had first sat (awkwardly) on a cushion, had first looked at the swarm of black marks on a page like twigs and branches and thought they might mean something. How strangely turned the tides of time; no part of the king would have guessed at the way things had unfolded, each turn and shock, each day bright and dim, leading him here.
He wonders, as he looks from the Commander’s face down to the weathered page, where time and choice will lead them next. But that, he thinks, is the game - there is no knowing.
There upon the page is a set of armor. The king’s brow furrows, crinkling the edges of the star beneath his black and tousled forelock. He can see nothing special about it, beyond its clear age and intricacy; even he, more dove than hawk and no child of civilization besides, can appreciate the workmanship of it, the strength in each hammered plate. And oh, it is beautiful, as much art as weapon. The site of it, even lifeless on a yellowed page, sparks a thousand questions in him; when Asterion looks up, meeting her eyes (older now, wiser in ways he’ll never know, ways that cost blood and breath) he begins with only one.
“What does it mean for us once found?”
king of dusk.
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