CiS Chapter Sixteen
Nov. 26th, 2005 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cygna_himeIn this chapter, no one actually kills anyone, despite their own best efforts to the contrary. And there would be angst, if I or they had time. So. Plot, characters, shouting. We good on this? 2,062 words. Mostly shouting.
Chapter Sixteen
They found lodgings in Mintaino, which Eluial paid for, and there settled down to what looked like being a particularly violent argument. Eluial and Maltar had not so much as looked at each other the entire day, and Corrin was beginning to feel once more that he and Lindau would have been better off without them. He himself was not entirely sure whose side he would take, if it came to that; he liked Maltar well enough, and yet Eluial did seem to have a point about the involvement of him and his sister in the whole complicated mess.
“So,” Lindau said with a cheerfulness that Corrin could tell was forced, “we’re here. What are we going to do next?”
“For myself,” said Eluial, “I will go not one step further in the company of this half-breed, who has proven himself to be everything my people know half-breeds to be: false, murderous, and utterly without principle.”
“Oh, is that so, snow queen?” Maltar snarled. “If I’m so ‘utterly without principle’, as you say, what’s to stop me killing you right here and now? I have cause enough and to spare!” He sprang to his feet, reaching for his sword.
Corrin caught him by the shoulder and forced his hand away. “No one is killing anyone! Not under any circumstances, not for any reason.”
“Why not?!”
“Because I won’t let you,” said Lindau. She had unshrunk her staff, and stood holding it before her. Outlined against the window, she looked to Corrin like a goddess herself. “We’ve gotten this far together, and I’m not going to let you kill each other over something so foolish.”
“Foolish?” Maltar said slowly, his pale eyes glittering. “You think my quarrel foolish, priest?”
“Well, yes, I do,” Lindau said, but before she could get into her full flow, Maltar continued,
“Do you even know what my quarrel is with this woman? Do you have the faintest idea why I should hate Eluial Weuilvenno?” He looked at Eluial, who had stood and was facing him proudly, hand on her sword-hilt. “Can you guess…father-sister?”
Corrin gasped. He had forgotten the day in Daritoll so long ago when Eluial and Maltar had introduced themselves by the same name, never thought to wonder about it. Taking advantage of his moment of confusion, Maltar slipped free of Corrin’s grip and drew his sword.
Eluial might as well have been made of stone, so little did she react to the threat or the words. “I have no brother,” she said clearly. “You are no kin to me.”
“No, you have no brother now,” growled Maltar, “but you had one once, didn’t you? Or have you managed to erase even the memory of Seilvei Weuilvenno?” He took one slow step forward. “Perhaps there wasn’t much for you to erase, was there? How old were you when he died? Five summers, perhaps? Just old enough—“ He took another step. “—to be shown an object lesson in the importance of blood purity.”
Eluial at last reacted. She gave a little shriek. “That was—that was you?! But I had thought they were all killed!”
Maltar smiled. His smile had no mirth in it; it gleamed like the smile of a stalking purka. “You thought wrong, though you tried hard enough. You thought, I suppose, that no one could possible escape the burning house without being seen and shot. You never guessed that they might have anticipated you.
“How stupid did you think my parents were? They knew you were coming, you kin-traitors! They knew how to hide us, even if they couldn’t hide themselves! And some god must have been there, because we did survive, I survived, to punish you as you deserve!”
He raised his sword to strike. Eluial went for her own sword, but Corrin could see that she wouldn’t be fast enough. He had left his own sword by the door, foolishly believing he wouldn’t need it. He couldn’t stop Maltar.
“No!” Lindau shouted, raising her staff. Maltar swore loudly and dropped his sword. The hilt clattered to the floor, and where it stuck a tendril of smoke rose up. Lindau kicked it away. “I can’t do what I could, but some things didn’t come from any special god, and I still have them,” she said with satisfaction. “No more fighting! No one deserves to kill anyone else, and that’s final.”
“No—“ Maltar was too furious too speak. “You heard what—how can you say I don’t—“
“You said yourself,” Corrin put in from behind, “she was five years old at most. How is what happened her fault?”
“Her death will be a vengeance,” he snarled. “Her father was willing to murder his son and heir in cold blood, and so he will have no heir at all.”
“That’s not fair, to kill her for what her father did. She’s not her father,” Lindau said sensibly.
Eluial tossed her head. Her long white-gold hair gleamed. “It seems he has decided to begin a blood-feud with his own kin.”
“We’re not kin,” said Maltar. “You said so yourself! And you began the blood feud when you killed my father before the door of his home, and shot my mother when she tried to run! You have had this coming to you for seventeen years, carrion-crow!”
“What part of ‘no one has anything coming to them, so stop shouting’ is so hard to understand?” Lindau asked the air. Corrin did not reply. He had concluded that the only way they might all survive was to let Maltar shout until he got tired of it. Arguments usually calmed down before they became fights if you let everyone say everything they wanted to say.
“I?” Eluial said. “How am I to blame for the foolishness of my erstwhile brother?”
Maltar looked disgusted. “You make me sick. You weren’t the only little girl who watched that blaze. My sister was five summers old, the same as you, when we crawled out of the wreckage. And you have the nerve to stand there, you who have had everything handed to you from the time you were born, and sneer at my sister for doing what she must to survive. It sickens me to look at you.”
Eluial looked almost guilty, though she tried to hide it. “I—“
“Don’t,” Maltar said. Suddenly, he looked very tired. “Don’t even try to say you deserved better than she did. Don’t try to tell me it’s her fault for being born. Just…don’t say anything.”
He sank onto a chair and buried his head in his hands. “You’ll just make it worse,” he said, his voice muffled.
Lindau, being Lindau, left her staff and wrapped her arms around Maltar. “It’s just fine,” she said quietly. “It’s no one’s fault. You both did everything you could.”
“It should have been more,” he said. “I should have—she shouldn’t have had to get mixed up in this. I shouldn’t have left, orders or no orders. I should have been here to take care of her.”
“Of all the foolish statements I have heard you make today,” Eluial said stiffly, “that is undoubtedly the most foolish. No woman of two-and-twenty years requires someone, brother or otherwise, to take care of her. I’m sure your sister is quite capable of looking out for herself.”
“What do you know?” Maltar muttered. “You’ve been protected and looked out for all your life—or was that escort of yours just there to carry baggage?”
“There is a difference between traveling in a foreign country and managing one’s own affairs in one’s own city. I am quite confident in your sister’s ability to do the latter, or she would not have obtained the position she currently occupies. I cannot imagine that there is no one else who could possibly do whatever is required for the office.”
Maltar looked up. “Did you just admit that a half-breed could be as good as anyone else?”
“I am occasionally willing to acknowledge the obvious,” said Eluial with just the hint of a smile.
Corrin laughed. It wasn’t much of a joke, but after the tense argument, it seemed hilarious. They all laughed, rather nervously, it was true, but afterward some of the tension in the room had dissipated.
Eluial said, in the most dignified possible manner, “For my part, I am willing to acknowledge you and your sister as kin, albeit more distant than most. In exchange, I would ask that you acknowledge me as something other than an enemy.”
Maltar looked hard at her, then nodded slowly. “Fair enough.” They touched hands. Corrin tried not to grin too widely. It seemed that even stuck-up princesses from backwater countries could change.
Lindau had no such scruples. Her smirk was enough to make Corrin want to leave the room immediately. “Should I tell Sheillornae he has competition when I see him again?”
Eluial choked. “Lindau, that is—you have the greatest talent for deliberate misinterpretation I have ever seen!”
“Which, considering that you’ve spent your entire life surrounded by gossiping nobility, is saying something,” Maltar quipped.
Some time later, they actually returned to the question of their plans for the next day.
“I’m going to see my sister,” Maltar repeated his earlier statement. “You can come, or not, as you like.”
“Of course we’re coming!” said Lindau. “As if you could keep us away!”
“That settles that, then. I think she has to do some ritual in the morning, so it will have to be the afternoon. I’ll go around in the morning, see if I can find out where she’s staying.”
“She might be in the palace,” Corrin said. “People have seen her with the king a lot. Do you think those rumors are true?”
“Corrin!” Maltar took a pillow off the bed he was sitting on and threw it at him. “First, that is a disgusting insinuation. Second, I very much doubt An would get involved in something like that. She has more sense. Third, I know the queen wouldn’t stand for it. Fourth, I don’t want to think about it. You’re horrible.”
“But do you think, even possibly—“
“No, I do not! I’ll only try the palace if nothing else offers—can you imagine me trying to get in, the way I look now?”
In the end, they fell asleep, propped on various chairs and cushions. Eluial actually got to sleep on the bed—Lindau insisted that she, Lindau, was used to sleeping on the floor, that the bed was far too narrow for two, and that Eluial needed it more. Corrin and Maltar avoided commenting. Neither of them felt up to another argument that evening.
***
The three of them were sitting around the room in the late morning, waiting for Maltar to come back with news of where his sister was staying. Eluial was polishing her sword, though it was already mirror-bright. Corrin was considering doing the same. He was extremely bored. He had not noticed how interesting the scenery could be until there was nothing at all to see.
Only Lindau didn’t look bored almost to tears. She was sitting on a cushion, tapping her re-miniaturized staff on the chair with an air of complete absorption in what she was doing. Corrin thought she probably was interested, though what she had to be interested in he couldn’t see. He thought he might start a fight with Eluial, which would at least be amusing, as they tried to find the right words to shout at each other.
Fortunately, Maltar came back in at that moment, so a pointless argument was avoided.
“Well, I found her,” he said.
Lindau looked up vaguely. “Really? That’s good.”
Eluial prodded her to wake her up. Corrin asked, “Where is she?”
“The palace,” admitted Maltar with a sigh.
Corrin grinned. “Ha! I told you she would be!”
“Oh, leave it. They’ve turned one section into some kind of temple, it looks like, and she lives there. People go in and out all the time, too, but I heard not many actually get to see her. It’s supposed to get less crowded when they get some other priests there, but she’s training them now, so it’s not easy to see her. Still, she does see people in the afternoon, and we should be able to get in.”
“We’d better.”
Chapter Sixteen
They found lodgings in Mintaino, which Eluial paid for, and there settled down to what looked like being a particularly violent argument. Eluial and Maltar had not so much as looked at each other the entire day, and Corrin was beginning to feel once more that he and Lindau would have been better off without them. He himself was not entirely sure whose side he would take, if it came to that; he liked Maltar well enough, and yet Eluial did seem to have a point about the involvement of him and his sister in the whole complicated mess.
“So,” Lindau said with a cheerfulness that Corrin could tell was forced, “we’re here. What are we going to do next?”
“For myself,” said Eluial, “I will go not one step further in the company of this half-breed, who has proven himself to be everything my people know half-breeds to be: false, murderous, and utterly without principle.”
“Oh, is that so, snow queen?” Maltar snarled. “If I’m so ‘utterly without principle’, as you say, what’s to stop me killing you right here and now? I have cause enough and to spare!” He sprang to his feet, reaching for his sword.
Corrin caught him by the shoulder and forced his hand away. “No one is killing anyone! Not under any circumstances, not for any reason.”
“Why not?!”
“Because I won’t let you,” said Lindau. She had unshrunk her staff, and stood holding it before her. Outlined against the window, she looked to Corrin like a goddess herself. “We’ve gotten this far together, and I’m not going to let you kill each other over something so foolish.”
“Foolish?” Maltar said slowly, his pale eyes glittering. “You think my quarrel foolish, priest?”
“Well, yes, I do,” Lindau said, but before she could get into her full flow, Maltar continued,
“Do you even know what my quarrel is with this woman? Do you have the faintest idea why I should hate Eluial Weuilvenno?” He looked at Eluial, who had stood and was facing him proudly, hand on her sword-hilt. “Can you guess…father-sister?”
Corrin gasped. He had forgotten the day in Daritoll so long ago when Eluial and Maltar had introduced themselves by the same name, never thought to wonder about it. Taking advantage of his moment of confusion, Maltar slipped free of Corrin’s grip and drew his sword.
Eluial might as well have been made of stone, so little did she react to the threat or the words. “I have no brother,” she said clearly. “You are no kin to me.”
“No, you have no brother now,” growled Maltar, “but you had one once, didn’t you? Or have you managed to erase even the memory of Seilvei Weuilvenno?” He took one slow step forward. “Perhaps there wasn’t much for you to erase, was there? How old were you when he died? Five summers, perhaps? Just old enough—“ He took another step. “—to be shown an object lesson in the importance of blood purity.”
Eluial at last reacted. She gave a little shriek. “That was—that was you?! But I had thought they were all killed!”
Maltar smiled. His smile had no mirth in it; it gleamed like the smile of a stalking purka. “You thought wrong, though you tried hard enough. You thought, I suppose, that no one could possible escape the burning house without being seen and shot. You never guessed that they might have anticipated you.
“How stupid did you think my parents were? They knew you were coming, you kin-traitors! They knew how to hide us, even if they couldn’t hide themselves! And some god must have been there, because we did survive, I survived, to punish you as you deserve!”
He raised his sword to strike. Eluial went for her own sword, but Corrin could see that she wouldn’t be fast enough. He had left his own sword by the door, foolishly believing he wouldn’t need it. He couldn’t stop Maltar.
“No!” Lindau shouted, raising her staff. Maltar swore loudly and dropped his sword. The hilt clattered to the floor, and where it stuck a tendril of smoke rose up. Lindau kicked it away. “I can’t do what I could, but some things didn’t come from any special god, and I still have them,” she said with satisfaction. “No more fighting! No one deserves to kill anyone else, and that’s final.”
“No—“ Maltar was too furious too speak. “You heard what—how can you say I don’t—“
“You said yourself,” Corrin put in from behind, “she was five years old at most. How is what happened her fault?”
“Her death will be a vengeance,” he snarled. “Her father was willing to murder his son and heir in cold blood, and so he will have no heir at all.”
“That’s not fair, to kill her for what her father did. She’s not her father,” Lindau said sensibly.
Eluial tossed her head. Her long white-gold hair gleamed. “It seems he has decided to begin a blood-feud with his own kin.”
“We’re not kin,” said Maltar. “You said so yourself! And you began the blood feud when you killed my father before the door of his home, and shot my mother when she tried to run! You have had this coming to you for seventeen years, carrion-crow!”
“What part of ‘no one has anything coming to them, so stop shouting’ is so hard to understand?” Lindau asked the air. Corrin did not reply. He had concluded that the only way they might all survive was to let Maltar shout until he got tired of it. Arguments usually calmed down before they became fights if you let everyone say everything they wanted to say.
“I?” Eluial said. “How am I to blame for the foolishness of my erstwhile brother?”
Maltar looked disgusted. “You make me sick. You weren’t the only little girl who watched that blaze. My sister was five summers old, the same as you, when we crawled out of the wreckage. And you have the nerve to stand there, you who have had everything handed to you from the time you were born, and sneer at my sister for doing what she must to survive. It sickens me to look at you.”
Eluial looked almost guilty, though she tried to hide it. “I—“
“Don’t,” Maltar said. Suddenly, he looked very tired. “Don’t even try to say you deserved better than she did. Don’t try to tell me it’s her fault for being born. Just…don’t say anything.”
He sank onto a chair and buried his head in his hands. “You’ll just make it worse,” he said, his voice muffled.
Lindau, being Lindau, left her staff and wrapped her arms around Maltar. “It’s just fine,” she said quietly. “It’s no one’s fault. You both did everything you could.”
“It should have been more,” he said. “I should have—she shouldn’t have had to get mixed up in this. I shouldn’t have left, orders or no orders. I should have been here to take care of her.”
“Of all the foolish statements I have heard you make today,” Eluial said stiffly, “that is undoubtedly the most foolish. No woman of two-and-twenty years requires someone, brother or otherwise, to take care of her. I’m sure your sister is quite capable of looking out for herself.”
“What do you know?” Maltar muttered. “You’ve been protected and looked out for all your life—or was that escort of yours just there to carry baggage?”
“There is a difference between traveling in a foreign country and managing one’s own affairs in one’s own city. I am quite confident in your sister’s ability to do the latter, or she would not have obtained the position she currently occupies. I cannot imagine that there is no one else who could possibly do whatever is required for the office.”
Maltar looked up. “Did you just admit that a half-breed could be as good as anyone else?”
“I am occasionally willing to acknowledge the obvious,” said Eluial with just the hint of a smile.
Corrin laughed. It wasn’t much of a joke, but after the tense argument, it seemed hilarious. They all laughed, rather nervously, it was true, but afterward some of the tension in the room had dissipated.
Eluial said, in the most dignified possible manner, “For my part, I am willing to acknowledge you and your sister as kin, albeit more distant than most. In exchange, I would ask that you acknowledge me as something other than an enemy.”
Maltar looked hard at her, then nodded slowly. “Fair enough.” They touched hands. Corrin tried not to grin too widely. It seemed that even stuck-up princesses from backwater countries could change.
Lindau had no such scruples. Her smirk was enough to make Corrin want to leave the room immediately. “Should I tell Sheillornae he has competition when I see him again?”
Eluial choked. “Lindau, that is—you have the greatest talent for deliberate misinterpretation I have ever seen!”
“Which, considering that you’ve spent your entire life surrounded by gossiping nobility, is saying something,” Maltar quipped.
Some time later, they actually returned to the question of their plans for the next day.
“I’m going to see my sister,” Maltar repeated his earlier statement. “You can come, or not, as you like.”
“Of course we’re coming!” said Lindau. “As if you could keep us away!”
“That settles that, then. I think she has to do some ritual in the morning, so it will have to be the afternoon. I’ll go around in the morning, see if I can find out where she’s staying.”
“She might be in the palace,” Corrin said. “People have seen her with the king a lot. Do you think those rumors are true?”
“Corrin!” Maltar took a pillow off the bed he was sitting on and threw it at him. “First, that is a disgusting insinuation. Second, I very much doubt An would get involved in something like that. She has more sense. Third, I know the queen wouldn’t stand for it. Fourth, I don’t want to think about it. You’re horrible.”
“But do you think, even possibly—“
“No, I do not! I’ll only try the palace if nothing else offers—can you imagine me trying to get in, the way I look now?”
In the end, they fell asleep, propped on various chairs and cushions. Eluial actually got to sleep on the bed—Lindau insisted that she, Lindau, was used to sleeping on the floor, that the bed was far too narrow for two, and that Eluial needed it more. Corrin and Maltar avoided commenting. Neither of them felt up to another argument that evening.
***
The three of them were sitting around the room in the late morning, waiting for Maltar to come back with news of where his sister was staying. Eluial was polishing her sword, though it was already mirror-bright. Corrin was considering doing the same. He was extremely bored. He had not noticed how interesting the scenery could be until there was nothing at all to see.
Only Lindau didn’t look bored almost to tears. She was sitting on a cushion, tapping her re-miniaturized staff on the chair with an air of complete absorption in what she was doing. Corrin thought she probably was interested, though what she had to be interested in he couldn’t see. He thought he might start a fight with Eluial, which would at least be amusing, as they tried to find the right words to shout at each other.
Fortunately, Maltar came back in at that moment, so a pointless argument was avoided.
“Well, I found her,” he said.
Lindau looked up vaguely. “Really? That’s good.”
Eluial prodded her to wake her up. Corrin asked, “Where is she?”
“The palace,” admitted Maltar with a sigh.
Corrin grinned. “Ha! I told you she would be!”
“Oh, leave it. They’ve turned one section into some kind of temple, it looks like, and she lives there. People go in and out all the time, too, but I heard not many actually get to see her. It’s supposed to get less crowded when they get some other priests there, but she’s training them now, so it’s not easy to see her. Still, she does see people in the afternoon, and we should be able to get in.”
“We’d better.”
