Rising from Dust (Light from Aphelion Book 1)

by Carlsson, Martine

  Selen sat on the bed in the solar while Louis paced in front of him. His friend still hadn’t calmed down.

  “I can’t believe they tried to poison me,” Louis said.

  “I think it was an initiative from Hallecos. The man probably felt secure enough to make such an attempt,” Selen said. “The other vipers in the court are more cunning. They have too much to lose with a new anarchy.” Selen rose and walked towards Louis. “We know that we displease many with our decrees. These kinds of things may happen. You better forget it and concentrate on your work,” Selen said with a smile.

  “Our decrees?” Louis said.

  Selen blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to take credit…”

  “Don’t be sorry. I like that you feel concerned about it.” Louis grabbed him by the waist and took Selen’s hand with his other hand.

  Selen chuckled. “There is no music.”

  “Do we need some?” Louis said, staring into his eyes. Louis’s steps were graceful and short. Selen let himself be carried along. The music of the evening still rang in his head. His love leaned towards him. “And keep your boots on tonight,” he whispered in his ear.

  Selen’s cheeks burned. His heart beat faster. The feeling he had spared earlier for this moment came back, stronger. He understood what Lissandro had meant with his description of dance. He leaned towards Louis. “Only if you keep your vest on.”

  CHAPTER 66

  It had only been a month since their arrival, but the atmosphere in the streets of Nysa Serin had changed. It was more popular. The heavy decorated litters Lissandro had seen before were now scarce. The exotic fragrances of mango and cinnamon rising from the food shops had been replaced by the more common perfumes of strawberries and lavender. Lissandro missed the smell of cinnamon buns. The bread was cheaper but reduced to a few sorts and not as tasteful as before. Louis has made sure that everyone ate, should everyone from the palace to the slums feast on pigeon and cabbage.

  Lissandro rode down a street of the shopping area. In the summer light, the people of the city sauntered around merrily, sitting near the fountains, listening to the minstrels. He did not remember ever hearing so much music in a city before, as if the bards had been pushed out of the taverns to perform on the streets. Many songs were different versions of the ballad of “The Hero of Earthfell.” In one song, the man had lost an arm. In another song, he had been eaten alive. The maidens yearned at the description of the blond knight, while children ran, mimicking the attack on the dragon. The street opened on to a square. Lissandro halted. His horse was blocked by a crowd.

  “…for opposing the guards during your arrest, for refusing to pay the tribute, and for having concealed goods from the Crown, you, Brecken Whitfield, have been sentenced to death by beheading,” the herald cried out.

  Lissandro saw the guards drag a quivering man from the line of prisoners. Judging by the rests of his torn silk outfits, he must have been someone important a few days ago. As the guards rudely pushed him to the ground and placed his head on the stump, the man yelped some unintelligible words. The axe fell sharp. The head rolled in spurts of blood down the platform to the feet of the crowd. Lissandro heard cheers and bawdy jokes. Another man was pushed forward. This one was shaggy and wore a leather apron. He was obviously a commoner.

  “In the name of King Louis and the people of Trevalden, you have been found guilty of charges. For abusing your authority, for the rapes of maids, and for the detention of false coins, you, Gilbert Tikell, have been sentenced…”

  Lissandro did not stay to hear the rest. He pulled the reins left and spurred his horse into the street leading to the north districts. There had been complaints that it was an insult to hang the nobles. So Louis had decided that no one would be hung anymore. Every criminal condemned to death would be beheaded. Louis had added that the commoners could see it as a promotion. As Lissandro had foreseen, the decrees condemning the lack of war effort had been a scandal. Some of those stubborn nobles and merchants who had not been able to show proof of their engagement to the Rebellion had held more to their gold and lands than to their lives. Yet, after a few days of examples of that kind, many had submitted. Today, only the blood of the few recalcitrants left tainting the cobbles.

  The gold that had poured into the open trunks of the Crown’s treasure had been widely reinvested in the construction of hospitals, schools, and a complex sewer system. Lissandro still remembered the face of Evrardin when the minister had approached Louis with the plans for a Pharaonic coliseum and had been charged to build the sewers instead.

  Lissandro had no illusions about how this would end. Though he loved and admired Louis, his friend was a lunatic. Unlike Louis, and therefore, he could not blame him, Lissandro had seen the drift of democracy. Louis’s precious people were this crowd massed in front of the scaffold, waiting to be entertained, not men like Selen. Once the show was over, and they were put to work in the name of ideals they could barely grasp, the people would bite the hand that fed them. Louis could understand and control an army because he shared the soldiers’ values of honour and courage. To understand a crowd, he would need to share their flaws. Yet, Louis despised what made the essence of the people. Therefore, Lissandro’s men-loving, ascetic friend wanted to turn the crowd into an army. Lissandro hoped it would work and that Louis wasn’t giving them the power and the training to put him down. At least, working with Louis had felt to Lissandro like kicking his heavy boot in the ass of all the oppressors he had met in his lives, and he had loved that!

  However, he felt like he would not delay his journey any longer. He longed to look for his soul mate. His position at court had not been as useful to his search as he had hoped. No one in the city corresponded to the description he had given, and he had not received positive answers from Millhaven and Embermire. Maybe he would need to journey east, or even further. Lissandro’s heart was filled with sorrow. He often looked at his friends’ love with envy. Selen would die for Louis, but Lissandro did not need nor want to go to these extremities. Though he hated the idea of abandoning his friends, his future was not here.

  While he was lost in his thoughts, his mount had reached a large townhouse. The building had been seized by the Crown and would be a school for boys. Lissandro got down from his horse and entered the building. The large entrance hall was under renovations. The walls had been bleached, and every bit of luxury had been removed. Lissandro walked around, peeping inside the rooms. Even decorated with sobriety, the townhouse would be a beautiful learning environment.

  The atrium had been designed as a garden with orange trees and rose bushes growing in rings of earth among the stone plates. On the wall in front of him, men perched on a scaffold built a giant mosaic. Moving with agility between the levels of the structure, Selen counseled the men. Though it was totally out of his functions and status, his friend had worked with the builders on the different working sites. He was the only one apt to give counsel on the classical architecture Louis had wanted. Lissandro watched him get down from the scaffold. As he swung on the metal poles, the muscles of his arms and shoulders stretched and danced under his waving, flowing lilac hair. Lissandro could see the top of his hips stick out of his pants at the bottom of his long, bare back. Should there ever be an illustration of the men performing at the first classical Olympiads, it must have been Selen. His friend landed gracefully a few inches from him. His innocent, joyful face gleamed at his sight. Selen was catching his breath, and sweat ran down his throat. Most of the time, his two friends’ behavior was a deafening slap at his forced celibacy.

  “Lilo! I am pleased to see you here,” Selen exclaimed.

  “Me too, Selen. Don’t you see the contradiction between standing on the dais at the court session and climbing a scaffolding half naked?” Lissandro pointed out kindly.

  “I can’t climb up there with my robes. Besides, there is no one here to stare at me or judge me, and most of the men work bare-chested. The robes make me look a bit too…mannered,” Sele
n answered. He bent closer to Lissandro. “I think the men here like me. They are nice and ask for my help. I don’t want to ruin it by acting snobbish.”

  Selen’s need to feel accepted was touching. Lissandro believed that Selen did not expect to make friends, but that gratification for his actions was important to him.

  “Do you want me to show you around?” Selen proposed. “There is still a lot to do, but you can have an idea of how it will look. I have followed Louis’s plans to the letter.”

  “With pleasure,” Lissandro answered. He was curious to see what kind of school Louis had in mind. Selen dried himself with a rag and put peach silk robes on.

  They walked around the townhouse. Selen showed him what would be the library. Hundreds of books were piled against a wall.

  “Louis insisted we have as much literature as this world can provide, in every language. There are treatises on nature, poems, books on history, math, and physics,” Selen said.

  “No novels? I mean, fictional books?” Lissandro asked.

  “Only epic tales,” Selen answered.

  They left the room and progressed along a gallery.

  “And here, next to the conservatory, is the kitchen.”

  “May I point out that the fireplaces are ridiculously small? You will never roast a beef in there,” Lissandro said.

  “Oh, but they won’t. No meat is allowed,” Selen said.

  Lissandro gaped. It was the first time he heard of a vegetarian school. It would have been inconceivable in his time yet not in Selen’s. “They didn’t give you meat in your childhood?”

  “In my childhood? You mean, in my life. Soldiers did not feast on meat. You could buy some—of course, if you could afford it—or wait for celebrations and the meat from the rituals, but cheese, fish, vegetables, and cereals were our everyday. These children will be just fine. They will even receive fresh fruits. You don’t need meat to be healthy.” Selen smiled.

  Lissandro sneered. “I suppose that with such a diet, your body suffered from severe lack of proteins, thus leading to hormonal deficiencies.” Lissandro regretted his words as they left his mouth.

  “This is a wholesome diet, but I don’t expect someone who fries his food in oil to have notions in nutrition.”

  Well-deserved and certainly far too nice, Lissandro thought. “I put my foot in my mouth. I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh yes, you did. You just never care.” Selen kept his voice soft, but his irritation was clear. “You’ve seen me. Do I look like I have deficiencies?”

  “No. On the contrary.” He lowered his head with shame and shrank in his bones. On an evolutionary scale, Selen was a butterfly, while he was stuck at the caterpillar stage.

  “You don’t need to pick on friends for what others did to you,” Selen said, gentle again. “Come. There is more to show you.” They left the room and progressed through the hall.

  “I’m curious. Why did you paint everything white and remove all furniture?” Lissandro asked to change the subject.

  “It’s for the noise.”

  Lissandro looked at Selen with an inquiring look. “The noise?”

  “Yes. To teach the children to be silent. The sound reverberation is so intense that you are forced to whisper if you don’t want your head to explode with pain. We noticed how unbearable it was when we emptied the place.”

  “But it’s children. They need to play,” Lissandro objected.

  “Of course, this is why we have the garden and this place.” They arrived on a second atrium. The floor was covered with sand.

  “Is it an impression or is this an arena?” Lissandro asked.

  Selen looked at him, surprised. “It’s a training yard for gymnastics. An arena? It’s forbidden to hurt a child. They will learn to fight, but to abuse a child is punishable by death. To avoid such things, the teachers will be rigorously selected from among the best guild masters of the city.”

  “This sounds ambitious.”

  “The Treasure can afford it.”

  “Do you mean the school is free?” Lissandro asked.

  “It won’t cost anything for the commoners, but education is obligatory, nobles included. Every child from the age of five must stay at the school. This is why we needed such a big building. There must be room for everyone to sleep. There are more schools like this in the city and we will have schools in the countryside for—”

  “…military training?”

  “How did you know?” Selen asked.

  “A feeling.” If the population were educated, trained, and armed, they wouldn’t fear the nobles anymore. Besides, they would train together to learn unity. This was clever. But once again, it failed to take into account the flaws of the men. The word play had been banned from these walls. “I guess you did not plan to have the same kind of schools for girls,” Lissandro said.

  “A school for girls?” Selen asked, as if he heard the words for the first time.

  Lissandro was not a bit surprised. “Never mind. Should we ride back to the palace?”

  “Yes. I wonder how it went today with the princes of the Windy Isles.”

  Lissandro saw that Selen was worried. They walked back to the entrance and mounted their horses.

  Once they arrived in the palace’s stables, they dismounted and headed towards the main gallery. Folc strode from the opposite direction. The boy hailed them.

  “Are you in a hurry?” Lissandro asked.

  “I’m on my way to ask the lads to saddle the horses,” Folc said.

  “Is the king leaving?” Selen asked.

  “I don’t know. I just follow the orders. If you search for him, he is in the solar,” Folc said. “I can’t talk too long as I should be at my post in the gallery. It was just a short errand.”

  Lissandro and Selen headed to the solar.

  “The boy is always around. Was it your idea?” Lissandro asked.

  “We need people we can trust around us,” Selen answered. “I thought that Folc would be glad to live here, and at the same time, I don’t need to worry about something happening to him in the city. We would gladly give him lands, but he needs to reach manhood first.”

  They entered the solar. Louis stood near the door, dressed in a long, turquoise tunic. He fastened a dagger on his belt and barely glanced at them. He looked annoyed and tired.

  “Are you going somewhere?” Selen inquired.

  “Like every day for the last two weeks, I have discussed with the princes about probably every subject in this world. And yet, I feel like I have lost my time. Some people can’t have a real, interesting conversation,” Louis grunted. “I suppose it is my punishment for refusing their sister,” he sighed.

  “They can’t be that boring,” Lissandro relativized. “Most people enjoy discussions on food, women, horses, and idle talk.”

  Louis gave him a look that suggested he was not most people. “Anyway, now they want to go hunting,” Louis snarled.

  “Now? In the middle of the afternoon?” Selen exclaimed.

  “It’s as long as I could make them wait. There is plenty of food in the kitchens, and I see no interest in this aristocratic sport, but I could hardly say no.”

  “Are you sure they meant that kind of hunt?” Lissandro teased.

  Louis turned to Lissandro with a frightful look. “They mentioned boars.” His trembling fingers still fought to tie the ropes of the scabbard. The dagger fell on the floor. “Bordel de merde!” Louis yelled.

  Lissandro knew when to stop with the teasing, and it was right now. Selen picked up the dagger and attached it to his friend’s belt.

  “Take the royal guard with you. Boars are dangerous. I would come if I could,” Selen whispered.

  “I know,” Louis sighed. He turned to Lissandro. “Lilo, do you think I could consider opening the high council to commoners? I would like to hear the voice of the street, but I can’t go down to the city every day. I would like to start working on the laws.”

  If Louis asked for his opinion on such thin
gs, he must really have had his brain mashed by the princes. “If you want my opinion, I would say no. Don’t open the high council. You can’t trust half of the men who sit there, and it would weaken your credibility. Organize special sessions with Mauger, your keeper of the seals, and masters of guilds. It should help.”

  Louis put a hand on Lissandro’s shoulder. “Thank you. I will try not to kill something for once.” His friend kissed Selen and left the room.

  “He is wacked,” Lissandro said, feeling sorry for Louis. “This function must be torture for him.”

  “He doesn’t sleep much,” Selen sighed, “and he still checks the ministers’ reports and the reports on the ministers. The princes return to the Windy Isles tomorrow. I think Louis managed to install diplomatic alliances,” Selen said. “Sadly, I have heard that the king of the Frozen Mountains will be here in eight days.”

  “I suggest we share the work here. Louis needs rest,” Lissandro said. He saw the plans for his journey drift away as a nutshell on the ocean.

  CHAPTER 67

  The juice of the pomegranate spilled on the table as Evrardin cleft it in two with his knife. For a second, it reminded him of the sight he had observed in the market square. He had known Brecken Whitfield since they had been young knights, scouring the taverns and whorehouses. His stubborn friend had refused to pay the tribute and had paid the price. He had died for a few trunks of gold and a miserable marble country house on the southern shore. Ridiculous.

  Evrardin had had to choose between the axe and the loss of a property of ninety thousand acres south of Millhaven. Like all nobles, he still had had the option to move back on to his lands, but it would have meant the loss of his townhouse in Nysa Serin and the loss of his charge as minister. In other words, the loss of his whole fortune and status. The bone was still stuck in his throat.