He sat alone beneath the boughs of a willow,which old age seemed to be greatly hinted from the girth of the trunk. He was an unmistakable mirror of both his father and his mother. Waves of thick black hair fell across his brow in Alpheo’s unmistakable manner, his slight frame curled inward as he sat cross-legged upon the winter lawn.
Merelao paused at the edge of the grove, watching the boy’s back.
The northern sky was a flat, pale slate, and the emerald grass lay danceless in the dead air. A profound, unnatural tranquility hung over the private sanctuary, untouched by the clamor of the lower citadel.
So the monkey nests where his sire said he would,he thought.
For a fleeting heartbeat, he wondered if the Prince made a habit of vanishing into these shaded corners simply to escape the King’s shadow. Merelao had done precisely that in the wild dawn of his own youth. He had possessed a gift for steel even then, but he had loathed Master Varo’s relentless sword drills. They were never half as splendid as playing at war with Latio. The last time they had clashed with wooden blades, Latio had taken the mantle of Alonius at their very last play, before he was led away from his own death.
But in truth it was Merelao who took the role last, charging against impossible odds outside the gates of Ricorum.
Back then, whenever the drills grew bruised and tedious, Merelao would slip through the palace hedges and vanish. It was during one of those petulant flights that the viper had struck, a sudden knife in the dark that nearly ended his line before it began.
When he finally woke from the fever of that wound, the realization of the world’s savagery had settled into his bones.They found a dozen other of those snakes lurking in the grass, snakes that were original of Azania, which in some way had found home in his garden.
He never played at truant again. It was merely another piece of his boyhood stripped away, another entry in a list of debt he intended to collect from his uncle.
Yet he did not step forward to shatter the boy’s solitude.
He dropped silently onto the dew-damp grass, resting his chin upon his crossed wrists atop his knees, folding his tall frame into a compact ball. He simply watched.
It was peaceful.
Basil remained oblivious. The Prince twitched and muttered under his breath like a hound chasing rabbits in a dream. An open horn of black ink rested near his right knee, and his shoulders dipped and rose in short, feverish jerks. Though his hands were hidden, the rhythm of his elbows made the craft obvious: the boy was writing.
A strange pastime for a truant, Merelao mused. When he used to flee into the palace shrubbery, he would sit in breathless silence, listening with wicked delight as poor Varo tore through the courtyards calling his name. He had relished the sweet comfort of knowing he was sought after, leaping from the shadows only when his tutor’s panic had reached a fever pitch.
Does this cub hide to see if the court notices his absence?
Merelao doubted it. The boy’s solitude carried no theater; it held only the dull, heavy posture of labor.
Curiosity won out in the end. Merelao rose and stepped forward entirely on the balls of his boots. He wore no mail today, only supple leather and fine velvet; his movements made not a whisper against the grass.
He drifted behind the boy like a shadow behind a candle flame, leaned over his shoulder, and, with the blinding speed of a striking cobra, plucked the parchment clean from the Prince’s fingers.
Basil gasped, terror flashing across his pale face before instantly combusting into a furious, scarlet indignation.
"What in the Five hells is so grave that it kept you from greeting me in your father’s great hall?" Merelao mocked, holding the paper high above his head with an easy grin.
"Give it back!" Basil scrambled to his feet, lunging upward, his fingertips swatting at empty air as Merelao casually leaned away.
He was older , taller and more childish. Basil held no chance
"Give it here! I was working!"
"Working?" Merelao scoffed, ignoring the boy’s frantic swats as he cast his blue eyes over the stolen prize.
It was.....he did not know what it was, just ink-blots, and furious revisions:
410 spears. No women or babes. Soon to march.
Shepherds? Valleys.
Aranuai, blood-feud with the Valakii. Arrogant dogs. Too close to the northern road.
Fierce. Untrustworthy.
Freusen? No, the iron mines.
Oizen? Absolute folly. Vital river artery. Commercial hub.
Aragustaven? Desolate ridges. Broad meadows. Dense pine cover. NO!
Crossed-out names bled into question marks and angry, slashed runes.
Merelao stared at the madness a heartbeat too long. Seizing the distraction, Basil gathered himself, leaped with everything he had, and tore the wrinkled sheet from the older man’s grip.
The boy spun around, violently shoving the paper into the breast of his woolen doublet and pressing his arm flat against it, glaring at Merelao with the frantic ferocity of a stray cur defending a marrow bone.
"What that?" Merelao asked, genuinely baffled.
"None of your bloody business!" Basil snapped, his chest heaving. "It belongs to me!"
"Clearly," Merelao drawled, dusting a blade of grass from his velvet sleeve. "I thought it was a madman that made such messy ledger.
Basil’s nose flared, his dark eyes narrowing into an offended, sullen slit that made him look like an angry hare cornered in a briar patch.
"It is statecraft, and it was for my own eye alone. You came in, so you don’t get to complain." the boy muttered defensively. "I was conducting royal business.I am sure there is some dog in the garden that you could acquaint yourself with for some likeminded behaviour"
"Statecraft?" Merelao’s golden eyebrows shot up in dry amusement.He ignored the jab.
He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his hip against the rough bark of the willow. "I caught the names of three provinces, something about an iron mine, and a lament about mountain shepherds. Did your father deed you a barren county for your name-day, and you are trying to divine what manner of hovel to build upon the rocks?"Even as he said that it made little sense.
But it was his best shot.
Basil pressed his lips tight, his chin jutting out with stubborn, regal pride.
"I am deciding... what I write is..." Basil trailed off, the defensive anger draining from his shoulders into a heavy, frustrated sigh. "It is merely how I tether my thoughts. But the Five made my mind fast and hazy, so I forget a notion the moment a fresh one crowds in."
The young prince’s voice dropped into a tense, brooding rasp that carried an uncanny, startling ring of his father. It clearly pained the boy to confess even that small weakness.
"The ink keeps me from forgetting what I thought of," Basil muttered, staring down at the grass. "Father handed me a task, and it demands every scrap of wit I possess. And if you must know, I must determine where to settle the mountain auxiliaries who crossed the sea to bleed in our war."
"I see..." Merelao tapped a finger against his chin, his golden brows arching. "And what in the world does parceling out pastures have to do with sulking in the weeds, nursing a grudge against the King?"
The whole affair struck Merelao as absurd. Was this not the very cub who had smuggled himself into a baggage cart just to trail his sire onto a bloody campaign? Merelao had quietly admired the sheer nerve of it at the time, or perhaps it had merely been raw, unbridled stubbornness, though in the blood of Yarzat the two were rarely distinguishable.
Theirs was a mad blood , clearly.
"I am not sulking!" Basil snapped, his head snapping up with a furious glare. "And I am certainly not wroth with my father!"
"Is that so? Your sire seemed quite convinced otherwise," Merelao countered smoothly, a mocking smirk dancing on his lips. "He was ready to send someone to fish you out of the hedges.In the end I took on that duty"
"Well, his conviction is wrong," Basil huffed, crossing his arms tight against his chest. "I was working. It is an affair of state, and it requires careful thinking. He should know most of all."
Merelao offered a polite, noncommittal nod, though inwardly he found himself marveling at Alpheo’s methods. If this settlement was truly so precarious, why in the gods’ names had the Fox dumped the scales into the lap of a half-grown boy? ℯ𝕝.
"A careful reckoning to grant a few empty valleys to a rabble of hill-savages?" Merelao drawled, waving an idle hand. "Point a finger at some barren rocks, toss them a sack of turnip seeds, and let the brutes freeze and toil."
He had clearly struck a raw nerve. Basil fixed the Kakunian prince with a stare so icy and venomous it could have chilled a kettle of wine.
"Were it so simple, do you truly believe I would be tearing my hair out in the dirt?" Basil said, his voice dropping to a harsh, quiet whisper.
Merelao held his tongue, choosing for once not to sharpen the barb. He merely watched as the boy turned back toward the shadowed trunk of the willow, staring out over the empty lawns.
"They are not sheep to be herded into a pen," Basil murmured softly "They are wild, blood-soaked men who have spent two seasons gutting our enemies and burning crofts. If I plant them near the mines, they will trouble the king’s operation if they go rogues. If I plant them along the river trade, they will slit merchants’ throats before the autumn fair.
And if I exile them to the deep woods, they will turn into a plague of outlaws that my father’s own cohorts will have to hunt down and butcher for a work that will last months. I need to keep them happy however, for they are , as most said, fierce men for war. My father want more Voghondai clearly."
The boy looked down at his ink-stained knuckles, his jaw working as if chewing on dry ash.
"My father will not correct my hand," Basil whispered, his voice trembling faintly beneath the iron facade. "Whatever name I write upon that paper... it becomes law. And no matter which valley I choose... people are going to burn. People are going to die. So I must choose well. I must have as few as I can die. I was told already by Torghan that this was my father’s way to kill the softness and to make me understand people will die by my order in the future and to acquaint myself with that fact.
That may be. And if it so I will see it done nonetheless, no matter how much ill I feel from that. But that doesn’t make the choice any easier to do."