Heaven Can't Wait ۞ Baldwin IV

XXI - Feathers

Please consider listening to the music. Ik that it may disrupt your reading and the immersion, but if when you finish reading you have time to listen, I think you'd like them :D they are usually relevant in one way or another to the chapter. The whole Vision album from the music below is so cool.

Kabir's mixed feelings on his brother's possible new title would have jeopardized the wishes of his Sultan, so he did not let them interfere whenever he found himself within the talks over the lordship.

Nobody was willing to compromise. However, the uncle and the other Muslim emissaries that were to come and go were exceptionally welcomed and tended to in Jerusalem. Lluna, by extension, provided this. And Baudouin demanded respect for the People of The Book all the same. All were safe in Jerusalem whom Jerusalem had under her wings of clouds, or of sunshine, of stars, or of moonlight.

But sometimes, this safety had conditions, and not all could rely on passive decision. Crime forfeited it, if temporarily. Judgment had to pass.

This was the case for the man who had attacked the Queen.

She wanted—needed to speak to him directly in order to decide on her course of action.

"Why did you do it?" She asked, sitting in front of his dark cell, not hovering or overpowering. He might have been just as afraid of her as she was of him.

He was not a big man, after all. His arms were sturdy, trained, hands strong and calloused, with a dark silvery shine on the fingertips. But the rest of him was... pitiful. What was left of his hair was like a poor wheat harvest. His eye bags had basically become part of his yellowish cheeks.

But that was not what she was there to judge.

"I need a reason." When he still did not say anything, she persisted with a patient sigh. "To set you free."

He remained silent. She continued.

"Ancelin, is it? Ancelin Argens. Maistre forgeron."

This got his parched lips to open.

"Your French is poor for a Frankish queen. And your Occitain nonexistent, I presume," the blacksmith accused.

"I need neither to carve your fate." Thinking this sounded too harsh, she reminded herself of gentleness. Of the purpose of this and her presence in it. "I want you to be free. You did not do this with great harm in mind. You are no violent man. Only a man who has seen too much violence." And inebriation, she could not help but to think inwardly.

Ancelin's eyes lost wrinkles as they stretched open. The laugh he made came out choppy, insecure. It was no laugh.

"The kind of violence that takes a whole family away." The tremble taking hold of him at that moment resulted too familiar. "While I was not there... Cowards."

She blinked in understanding.

"A Saracen nearly killed my whole family, too. He only got to one. But did succeed in taking our home away from us."

Lluna heard the faint sound of Baudouin calling her soon after saying this.

"Ma reine."

He'd been overseeing, but giving her space. She reached him, a bit out of sorts for being interrupted at the peak of the conversation.

"He did not intend to kill you, but that does not mean that he has not caused inmensurable damage. He put a marker on you, zawjati. So another may commit what he has not the spine to do."