The whispers spread quickly, but there is no need for whispers when his companion is so heavily tuned into the court. He follows her to the citadel, and his gleaming eyes catches sight of two twin beasts -- and he knows before Raum ever speaks a word, knows that a silver mad-man has taken the throne, because he has watched dictators rise and fall as they grasped for golden crowns. He knows it in the angle of Raum’s body and the way blood coats his fur, because he had once been the boy reaching for a crown he never could have kept -- and his smile is chillingly sane when he moves up beside Teiran’s hip. He does not bow. Instead, he laughs -- coldly fierce, the laughter of a man who has spotted something extraordinarily funny, with a smile that does not reach his eyes. “The tide will drown your ass in sand, and it will barely have noticed your existence,” he calls out cheerfully, for he has seen this, time and time again -- and never once has the silver man won, never once has the dictator remained. In Solterra, there is already a fable about this very thing, a tale of a man and a spear and how the people would rise up against those they found lacking. Raum would be found wanting. |
