by Beth Brower
“Because on May first eve, we will attack the encampment of the Imirillian army,” Crispin replied coolly.
Basaal started, half scowling as he looked from the map to Crispin. He stood, twisted the map beneath his fingers, and stared at it. It could be brilliant. “Do you all have a suicide wish?” he asked. “Three thousand against thirteen thousand?”
“It was going to be three against seven, until your father decided to join the party,” Crispin said as he held up his hand. “Hear us out before you decide if it’s impossible. This is what we aim to do.”
As Crispin spoke, about their new powder weapons and how they were to be used, Basaal began to see the nature of the Aemogen attack, and his heart began to beat double quick. Keeping his face impassive, he began to carry out the attack in his head, noting what it would mean for the Imirillian camp. His father’s tent was set higher up the hill and would likely be left unscathed. But the men, both his and his father’s, would be in danger of the powder weapons. And that meant many who were close to Basaal. That meant Annan.
***
Later that day, Thayne walked into Basaal’s dungeon room.
“May I come in?” Thayne asked.
Basaal, who had been reading at the table, looked up at his cousin. “Is barging into private spaces a family tradition?”
“Yes.” Thayne entered the room and eyed its thrown-together contents. He invited himself to sit on the stone bench in the wall, pushing aside a neglected pile of clothing and scrolls. “Telford mentioned the two of you bathed together. I assume that is what you are referring to.”
Basaal rolled his eyes. “Have you come to invite me for a dip in the river?”
“No.” The older man settled his blue Marion eyes on his cousin. “I’ve come to propose we leave Ainsley Rise for a few days.”
After turning a page in his book, Basaal shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“I think you should.”
“To what purpose?” Basaal asked as he closed his book and tossed it onto the table with a thud. “Where would we go?”
“Common Field.”
Basaal’s face paled, but he laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. “In that case,” he said, “certainly not. They would hang me within a minute of my arrival.”
“I do not think so,” Thayne prodded. “I thought you should leave your self-imposed prison and work for a couple days.”
“Work in the fields?” Basaal asked incredulously.
“All the fens have more labor than manpower this spring, and no fen needs more assistance than Common Field,” Thayne said. “You could make yourself useful.”
Basaal laughed again, but it carried an uncertain sound.
“I heard you’ve not been out to train,” Thayne said, apropos of nothing.
“Who would spar with the enemy without wanting to run him through?” Basaal asked.
“The melodrama must come from your father’s side,” Thayne answered.
For the first time, Basaal’s laughter was sincere. He smiled in acknowledgment. “You are quite right, my lord.” Basaal looked at Thayne with a new consideration in his eyes. “Why do I get the feeling,” Basaal asked, folding his arms behind his head and looking upward, “that you mean to get me on the road so that we can chat?”
Thayne stood. “Because intelligence runs in your mother’s family,” he answered. “Meet me at the stables in an hour.” Then the fen lord excused himself without another word.
***
The casualties list was delivered to Eleanor’s desk before the end of the day. She set her face and opened the missive. There had been an aggressive move by the Imirillians. They had gained more ground, and nineteen Aemogen soldiers were dead.
The dead now numbered over three hundred. She read the names, their family names, and their fens. One was a cousin.
A knock came at the door, and Hastian sent in a messenger boy. The boy bowed, handed Eleanor a small folded slip of paper, and withdrew. Eleanor moved her finger over the note as she again read the names of the dead. Then she opened the paper with her finger and thumb.
She recognized the writing as Basaal’s.
Lord Thayne has taken it upon himself to reform my moral compass. We are to be several days in Common Field. As far as your preparations to attack the encampment, I have thought the plan over, per Crispin’s request, and have found it to be as good a chance as any you have.
Eleanor already knew what Thayne had in mind. He’d asked her what she thought of his idea, and she’d informed him she had no time to think of much else than of preparing for war and that he should do as he saw fit. Now, as she looked at Basaal’s words again, Eleanor felt a sense of relief and a wash of regret.
***
Their first night on the road, as Thayne and Basaal lay upon their bedrolls, taking in the stars, Thayne opened their conversation with something Basaal felt was none of Thayne’s business.
“So,” Thayne said. “You and Eleanor are having a difficult time seeing eye to eye? What exactly did she demand from you that is so arduous? She did, after all, spare your life.”
“I’ve no desire to discuss my prison terms with you,” Basaal replied.
Thayne laughed. “Life in Aemogen is not a prison. And neither is marriage to one you love.”
Basaal stared at the night sky above him. “Do you not understand that I live my life through covenants and obligations, many of which are to the Imirillian Empire in which I was born? And, yes,” Basaal admitted, “to be perfectly honest with the world, the thought that I might someday have to leave Imirillia behind to keep my fidelity to the Illuminating God had come time and again. But, if I actually would was still a mystery. And now, I am as you see me, forced away from my covenants and my kin, in an imposed exile.”
“I see before my eyes a young man trying to live by the honor he has held himself to. By my measure, that is not honor lost,” Thayne assured Basaal. “But, tell me this: does your Illuminating God demand your life be lived in Zarbadast? Is that a tenet of your religion?”
“No,” Basaal said impatiently. “Of course not.”
“Edith, your mother, once wrote me a letter, saying that she thought her journey to Zarbadast had been predetermined—fate or blessing, whatever you subscribe to.” Thayne paused.
Basaal shook his head in the darkness. “So?”
“So, if your mother felt her path lay in Zarbadast, why is it so impossible for you to ask if your Illuminating God desired to place you in Aemogen?”
Basaal scowled, considering Thayne to be a mad man.
“Do not look at me like that,” Thayne said. “I can feel your accusatory glare in the dark.” His voice was full of amusement. “I can see you have never even considered the idea that your fate might be here.”
“Impossible,” Basaal stated.
“But why?” Thayne asked. “I ask again, is there anything in your covenants that requires you to live in Zarbadast? Or in Imirillia, for that matter?”
“Yes,” Basaal said hastily and then corrected himself. “Well, not in those exact terms. But, I am covenanted to my ancestors and my posterity: to honor the place I have been given and to serve along with my brothers for the benefit of Imirillia.”
“You are caught on a problem I do not see,” Thayne said. “For honoring Imirillia could come in many forms.” Thayne sighed. “Remember this, the same stars grace every land.”
The words cut into Basaal, and he sat up straight. “Why do you speak those words?” he asked. “What did Eleanor tell you?”
“Eleanor has told me nothing.” Thayne pushed himself up on his elbow. “Your mother was very dear to me, young man. I have loved her better than I have loved almost any soul of this world.” Thayne’s voice bore the truth of the statement. “We wrote often, especially in the early days after her departure. That line was a bit of a letter I sent when she was content but regretting her distance from home and kinsman.”
Basaal moved his fingers across the gold and
diamond Safeeraah his mother had given him. “What is the point of this conversation, again?” he said tartly.
“That perhaps you can choose!” Thayne said, his voice rising with impatience. “Is stubbornness your inheritance, boy? There are choices you can make without dishonoring the covenants you have made to your god and, perhaps, even to Imirillia. Quit damning yourself, and spend some time deciding if this is a path you may want to take. It is set before you. Be willing to ask the question. Did you not say that your father had ceased to consider the true welfare of the empire in his new bloodletting crusade?”
“I thought you said my coming here was fate?” Basaal replied, ignoring Thayne’s question. “And now, you say that I have a choice in the matter?”
“Fate and choice.” Thayne sighed. “It’s time you learned, Basaal, that just because a pathway has opened up to you, that even if it is the exact course your life is meant to take, you still have to choose it. As the sun follows the course of his day, you must choose the way you will follow—be it ordained by a God or otherwise.”
“And, has your experience been identical to mine, cousin?” Basaal asked, emphasizing this last word.
“No,” Thayne said. “It has not.”
“Then let me decide what my own course requires,” Basaal said. “I’ll thank you if we can get some sleep now.”
“Had you time to consider Aemogen’s plan to attack the Imirillian encampment?” Thayne asked, ignoring Basaal’s irritated request.
Basaal stared at the stars above him and rolled his head to the side. “Yes.”
He had considered Aemogen’s plan.
“And?”
“It’s terrifying.”
***
Danth, now the youngest fen lord in Aemogen, showed no real emotion when he asked Basaal for help planting the final field before dark.
“It won’t be long,” Danth said. “And, as the men and women here have been working at it a lot longer than you, I figured I’d ask you to give it a go.”
Basaal nodded, grabbing an edge of hard bread and pulling himself up to the wagon Danth was driving.
“I see they’ve given you the heel,” Danth said after some time.
Basaal chewed the difficult bread and swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “With almost every meal, they give me the small, hard end of the loaf, even when there are other pieces to be had. I’m beginning to take the hint.”
Danth was slow in responding, but when he did, it was with quiet words, and none of the brashness he’d shown in their first meeting almost a year ago, when they’d fought before the fen. “In Common Field,” he said, “the end of the bread is for luck.”
Basaal was taken aback. “Luck?”
“Tradition holds that it signifies you’ve a hard road and may there be luck in it. Or something of the sort.”
“And here I’ve been, grumbling about it for the last four days,” Basaal said, his face flushing.
“Don’t feel the badger,” Danth replied, and he actually smiled. “I’ve made more mistakes as fen lord than there ever was on the earth, and they still go chancing on me.”
“How has it been?” Basaal approached carefully.
“Whoa,” Danth said slowly to the horse as it took a misstep and jerked away. “At first, I kept feeling angry and sayin’ to myself, ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, is it?’” Danth pulled up to the freshly plowed field, spoke a word to the horses, and then dropped the reins, Basaal waited for him to continue. “But it took me about as long as it took to say the words for me to realize that saying them did me no good. There was a new place for me in this world, and, if I was going to take it right, I had to let it be what it was and try to find some peace about it.”
“Do you mean you forgave?” Basaal asked.
Danth looked towards Basaal a long moment. “It means I forgave you.”
Basaal did not know what to say. Danth seemed no more comfortable with the words than the prince, and so he motioned to the bags of seed in the wagon. “If we’re to get any work done before dark, we’d best get started.”
***
Even with Basaal gone, Eleanor’s nights of wakefulness did not disappear. More and more, she lay awake, thinking, wondering. But in her loss of sleep she found solitude. Her days were not restful—they had too much to accomplish before the attack—but at night, despite the exhaustion, she felt a hint of clarity through the fog, like the moonlight that invaded and illuminated the dark castle corridors.
It was in the throne room, where Eleanor found herself sitting for hours at a time. Though dark and deep, the shadows did not bother Eleanor. Here, she could spread each mental thread out—like ribbons across the floor—and sit and stare and think. If Hastian was aware of her wanderings, he did not interfere, and he did not follow. Still, she did not feel alone. The memory of the dead accompanied these wakeful hours.
One night, she saw Doughlas or thought she did. A movement or a feeling had caught her attention, and Eleanor had looked up to see her fen rider, walking from one side of the throne room to the other as if he were on some pressing business. She lifted her hand and was about to call out his name but said nothing. He turned and looked right to where Eleanor sat. His puckish grin spread quickly across his face, and he acknowledged the queen with a nod, though his manner was not as a subject to his queen but as an equal.
Then he was gone.
***
It must have been Hastian who told Basaal, upon the prince’s return to Ainsley Rise, how Eleanor was spending the long hours of the night.
“So, this is why you are losing color and form, dropping weight, your cheeks wan, and eyes tired,” Basaal exaggerated as he walked toward Eleanor across the late hour of the night. It was the first time he had entered the throne room since the day of his trial. “Had I returned from Common Field sooner, I should have pestered Hastian more quickly,” he added, “forced him to give up your secret.”
Basaal let himself down, leaning against the leg of her throne to the left of Eleanor’s feet, while his own feet fell down the steps. What she could see of him looked tussled and tired. He wore no shoes. “It’s the only thing he has ever given up, you know, about you,” Basaal said. “But I think Hastian was relieved to have someone else know.”
“I do manage a few hours of sleep,” Eleanor said, finding herself actually pleased to see he had returned. “The fighting at the pass keeps me up, the names of the dead, the preparations, the ghosts.”
“You and your ghosts,” Basaal said and then yawned, sounding more himself. “I’m never quite sure what to make of them all.”
Eleanor shifted her head in agreement.
“You are what, ten, eleven days from marching out? On the seven stars—” He blew the air from his lungs. “Crispin says you will ride before the army and watch the battle from Colun Tir?”
“Yes,” she said, leaning back, her fingers playing with loose locks of her own hair.
They sat in the silence, Basaal adjusting himself occasionally. Finally, he spoke again. “Eleanor, you need to sleep. Come.” He stood and offered her his hand, which she took because she would have been too tired to stand up on her own.
They walked together, through the corridors and stairwells, back to Eleanor’s apartments. Eleanor noticed that Hastian followed silently. Her Queen’s Own took up his position by the door as Basaal walked Eleanor, his arm around her waist, to her bedchamber. He helped her lay down, adjusting her covers about her—just as he had those nights in Zarbadast, when they had been more honest, more brave with one another.
Afterward, instead of going down the long spiral staircase to his dungeon cell, Basaal lay down before the fire in Eleanor’s audience chamber and fell asleep.
***
He woke early to the sound of someone moving about the room. Basaal turned his head to see Miya rushing silently past him. When he yawned and sat up, she turned, her face showing a fierce blush.
“Begging your pardon, Prince,” Miya said. “I did not
see you there at first, but I’m going now.”
“No,” Basaal said. He stood and rubbed his eyes before running his fingers through his hair. “I should be up. Go about your business, and pay me no mind.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said and then curtsied and left anyway.
Basaal half laughed then walked towards Eleanor’s partially open door. He knocked softly and, when there came no answer, peeked his head in. Sleeping deeply, Eleanor appeared to have not moved from the moment he had lain her down onto her bed. At the familiarity of the scene, Basaal felt one side of his mouth playing with a smile. He shut the door carefully before taking the stairs down into the dungeon to find his boots and cloak. He was going out this morning.
The sun had not yet broken into the day as Basaal walked down to the river north of the Ainsley Rise. There was a small spit of sand with a clump of cattails growing to one side. It was here he began the motions of ritual prayer, moving into a kneeling position before prostrating himself on the ground as he repeated the words of honor to the Illuminating God.
The sand felt cold against his knees, but Basaal didn’t mind. It had been hard to pray in Aemogen; his anger had created a wall between him and his meditations. Thayne had been right when he had taken Basaal to work in Common Field. He’d needed the exertion. He had needed, Basaal was forced to admit, to think of others before himself. Now, as his body moved in the patterns of worship, a balance was beginning to return, and his heart felt almost calm.
Finishing the rituals, Basaal reached down into the cold sand and moved it through his fingers, feeling the grains—gritty, smooth, perfect. Now came the time for him to call upon the Illuminating God with his own words. Perhaps pour out the heartache of turning his back on his own people. He placed his hands over his heart and began to offer whatever was before his mind. More than he asked for help, he asked for understanding and guidance. The sun broke out across the east, and Basaal could feel its warmth catching in his cloak and on his back. He continued to pray.