Behind the candle, Talha’s outline blurred and all Lhaurel could see was the solitary flame against a field of darkness. It was just her and the flame. Alone and silent, within and without. Talha’s voice sounded as if from a great distance away.
“Travel back, Lhaurel,” Talha said. “Travel back to a time when you were not yet Lhaurel, but someone else. Travel back up the Path you have previously trod.”
The flame danced and a bead of wax slipped down the candle’s side, trailing down to the floor like a purple tear. Lhaurel felt her thoughts recede even deeper into the dark places of her mind until they were all but forgotten, a distant sound that no one was present to hear. Nothing existed outside the candle’s flickering light.
“Go back into memory long forgotten,” she said. “Go back to the time when you were Elyana.”
The light consumed her.
“Honor . . . honor denotes an adherence to a code of moral conduct and action. The question remains, however – whose code?”
—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 17, Year 1171
Brisson’s administration building—as he called it—rested up against a large cliff. The building was an odd, ornate affair, built in three interconnected parts, with the center part twice as tall and wide as the two other sections. A number of glass windows with thick wooden coverings faced outward from the front of the building. The windows were all covered at the moment, but a number of younger boys scampered in and out of the open doorway.
Gavin waited for one of the boys to dart through the door before stepping into the room himself. He had to blink a few times to adjust to the dim light inside the room. While sunlight streamed in through the door, only a single lantern lit the rest of the space, leaving a strange mixture of yellowish and white light playing against shadow. When his eyes adjusted, Gavin saw an older man sitting behind an oddly thick table, bent over some papers on the desk. The room was shallow, though several doors sat behind the desk in the far wall, presumably leading further into the room. The boy who had run into the room ahead of Gavin stood in front of the desk, one booted foot idly scratching his other calf. The man at the desk—not Brisson or anyone Gavin recognized—finished looking over the papers before him on the desk and promptly folded the top sheet twice and handed it to the boy.
“Take this to the stores and find the man in charge there,” the man said, his aged voice seeming to whistle with each “s.” “He’ll know what to do with it. Then come right back here.”
The boy nodded and reached for the letter, but the man didn’t let go when the boy grabbed hold of it.
“Did you hear me?” The man asked, a hard edge creeping into his voice.
The boy nodded and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Yes, Master.”
The older man’s mouth twisted into a grimace, but he released the paper and the boy hurried off, nearly running into Gavin in his haste to get out the door.
“Can I help you?” the man asked before Gavin even had a chance to speak.
Gavin raised an eyebrow at him.
The man returned Gavin’s gaze with an impassivity that bordered on absolute. “If you don’t have business here, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the man said. “I haven’t the time to deal with some petty dispute between you and your neighbors.”
Gavin felt his incredulity slip into irritation, but only let the barest trace of a frown cross his face. Could this man really not know who he was?
“I’m here to see Brisson. He wanted to me to discuss what tasks the Rahuli would be most suited for.”
The older man pursed his lips and gave Gavin an appraising look, as if seeing him for the first time. He tapped a finger to his lips a few times, as if trying hard to remember something, and then gave a small frown, heightening the faint wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
“Ah, yes, the Rahuli,” the man said musingly. “I’d expected to see someone a little—well,
older.
”
“People age differently in the Sharani Desert.”
“Really?” the older man asked, riffling through some papers on the table before him in a distracted manner. “And how is that?”
“Anyone who would have reached your age would be dead by now. The genesauri would have seen to that.”
The man paused and looked up at Gavin. His dark brown eyes reflected a minor curiosity, but the rest of his posture bespoke a sudden unease, as if he’d expected the response, but not the impassive way Gavin had said it. Gavin gave a small voice to his irritation and continued.
“There are only a few exceptions to that,” Gavin said rubbing his chin with one hand as if deep in thought. “Take Cobb for example. He’s far older than you, but they don’t make them tougher. The man could give stones lessons in stubbornness. He’s probably one of the finest warriors you’ll ever meet. My grandmother, before she died that is, got to where she was using her wits to see her through the challenges of being an outcast
and
a woman. Then there were the third type of older people.”
After a long pause, the man asked the obvious question. “And those are?”
“The ones who hide behind the tough and clever ones.”
The man harrumphed and sniffed indignantly. He snatched a piece of paper from the pile at his desk and thrust it toward Gavin.
“Here’s your assignments for the next fortnight. Assign who you will to fill the duties you’ve been given. We’ll evaluate their effectiveness after that time and reassign them to the activities for which they are most suited.”
“I believe there may have been a misunderstanding,” Gavin said, glancing down at the paper in the man’s hand without taking it. “This meeting was to
discuss
those duties my people would have the capacity to accomplish well.”
“These are the tasks you were assigned,” the man said, brandishing the paper.
Gavin smiled at the man, still not reaching for the paper. “I think I’d like to discuss this with Brisson, directly,” Gavin said. “Is he back there?” Gavin gestured toward the doors in the far wall behind the man’s desk.
“Brisson is busy right now.” The man gave the paper a small shake, causing it to flutter in the air between them.
“That’s perfectly alright. I understand the many tasks associated with leading a people. I’ll just wait for him over there.” Gavin gestured at a low bench he’d noticed sitting along one wall. “Could you let him know I’m here, please?”
The man spluttered and licked his lips, clearly out of sorts at Gavin’s reaction. Gavin, for his part, fought to keep his flaring temper in check. He wanted nothing more than to simply ignore the man and start opening doors on his own until he found Brisson. Instead Gavin forced himself to walk calmly to the bench and take a seat, pointedly adjusting the greatsword at his belt so it didn’t scrape the wood. He leaned forward and, after putting his elbows on his knees, cupped his chin on top of his balled fists. The man stared at Gavin for a long moment, mouth working, before realizing that he still held the paper in the air before him and slapped it down onto the desk with more force than was necessary.
“Now see here—” the man began, but Gavin cut him off.
“Thank you for your hospitality. Please let me know what Brisson says once you tell him I’m here. Please pass on my regards and my desire to meet at his earliest availability.”
The man stared at Gavin indignantly for a long moment. Gavin almost felt sorry for him, but immediately dismissed the thought. The man reminded Gavin of every Warlord who had ever dismissed his grandmother and the other outcasts simply for being who they were. Gavin recognized what was going on here. This was vain posturing, a power struggle at its most basic level. Thankfully, Gavin had experience—both his own and vicariously through his grandmother’s example—in dealing with situations such as these.
“You never did tell me your name,” Gavin said to the man, as if coming into a sudden realization. “When I speak with Brisson, I want to let him know just how kind you were to me.”
The man’s head spun back around to stare at Gavin, face a sour mess of anger and resentment, as if he had been forced to swallow a bitter plant or unripe fruit.
“Shaw,” the man snapped. “My name is Shaw.” Without another word, the man spun around and opened the nearest door, disappearing into the room beyond. For a brief moment, voices could be heard, though the door snapped shut within moments and Gavin wasn’t able to hear more than a few broken, disjointed words which held little real meaning on their own. Despite that, he found himself grinning.
A minute passed before Gavin began drumming his fingers on the hilt of his sword. He recognized the stalling tactics and fought to keep down his own irritation, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of the ploy actually working as intended. Instead, he turned his focus back over his plan. There were obstacles he needed to overcome, but he was confident he could get it done in a way that would benefit his people. His grandmother had taught him how to focus on specific tasks and the last few weeks had let him hone the skills his grandmother had only been able to show him by example. Painful experience was a much more effective teacher, Gavin had found.
A shadow darkened the room and drew Gavin’s attention toward the door. A small boy stood in the doorway, his silhouette outlined by the sunlight behind him. The boy squinted through a bush of dirty brown hair that fell down over his forehead and into his eyes. His clothes were dirty, but thick and well fitting, made from a gray material that Gavin didn’t recognize. The boy’s feet were bare. He clutched a paper in one grubby fist at his side, clearly one of the messenger boys.
The boy stared around the room, mouth forming into a frown when he didn’t see anyone at the table. He took a step further into the room, then noticed Gavin sitting on the bench.
The boy’s eyes went wide. “You’re one of the Rahuli,” he said in a high, sharp voice. The hand holding the paper trembled slightly, making the paper flutter as if it were a leaf caught in a breeze.
Gavin smiled and nodded. “I am. Who are you?”
“My name’s Benji. The other boys won’t never believe me when I tell ‘em about this.”
“About what?” Gavin asked, realizing that what he’d initially taken as nervousness could actually be excitement.
“About meeting you, of course! I mean, they say you people are—” The boy made an inarticulate sound and gestured expansively, the paper in his hand flapping against his wrist. “I mean you showed up out of nowhere, like we never seen before. They say you lived with monsters for over a thousand years.” The boy’s voice dropped and he looked around nervously before continuing in a whisper. “They say your ancestors killed one of the Sisters and that you never tasted real food before.”
Gavin blinked, slightly taken aback. “We’re just people. Same as you.”
Benji snorted. “My mother says you can call down lighting and death, like the Great Ones. She says you’re the hope we’ve been waiting for, a chance to do more than simply hide like sheep in the mountains.”
“All that?”
The boy nodded vigorously.
“Just that? Nothing about the aevians, or the genesauri monsters that would fly up out of the sand and try and kill us while we walked the sands of the Sharani Desert?” Gavin asked, keeping his voice light, yet hushed as if he were telling a secret.
“You mean them snake things some of the Rahuli children draw in the dirt?” Benji’s brow furrowed above thin eyebrows. Now that the boy was closer, Gavin noticed a half dozen small, thin scars running up and down the length of his arms and a few on his forehead. Where had a child gotten such scars?
Gavin nodded slowly. “Those monsters are the things of which nightmares are made.”
“Did you ever kill one?” Benji’s voice was so earnest, Gavin couldn’t help but smile, though the subject wasn’t really one that warranted any levity.
“That is not a polite question to ask,” Gavin said sternly, though it was struggle to contain his smile at the boy’s look of chagrin.
“Sorry.”
Gavin waved a hand dismissively, which drew Benji’s eyes to the greatsword at his waist. Benji’s eyes—if anything—got wider.
“You’re
him
,” Benji whispered. The paper slipped out of Benji’s suddenly slack fingers and drifted to the floor.
“Him who?”
“The leader of the Rahuli,” Benji said after licking his lips. “My mom overheard some of the other womenfolk saying you’d killed an entire Honor Squad by yourself. They say you’re a Great One in disguise, like the one who was stoned today, but on our side, like Master Nikanor.”
Gavin felt himself flush and shook his head. “I’m just a person. Nothing special really.”
Benji rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something else when the back door opened and Shaw walked back into the room. The older man glanced from Gavin to Benji and then darted to the piece of paper lying on the floor. His eyes narrowed.
“What is your name, boy?” Shaw said in a voice as cold as the air outside.
The excitement that colored Benji’s cheek a pale pink blanched to ashen grey in mere moments. He bent over and snatched the paper from the ground with scrabbling, shaky fingers.
“I, um . . .” Benji said, trailing off lamely as he shuffled forward and held out the folded piece of paper to Shaw.
“It was me,” Gavin interrupted, drawing both Shaw and Benji’s attention. “I startled the boy and he dropped the paper on his way in.”
Shaw frowned and looked from the door to where the paper had been lying on the ground a few feet in front of Gavin. There couldn’t have been a more indirect route to the desk if the boy had been trying. Gavin put on his best, confident smile and met Shaw’s eye. Benji squirmed and shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably, hand still upraised with the paper extended toward Shaw. At length, Shaw snatched the paper from Benji’s hand, making the boy jump, and then waved a hand dismissively at him.
“You are excused from duties for the rest of the day.”
Benji’s face twisted in a mixture of competing emotions, shifting from surprise, to joy, to sudden, sharp regret, before finally settling back on surprise.