The King's Might: A Legend of Averdan

Part One, Chapter Two

TWO

In Which Justice is Meted, and Jalith has a Strange Dream

"Not Jalith," the Seventeenth Prince said, shaking his head vehemently. "Never Jalith. The men must be mistaken. It's simply not in his nature to do such a thing."

"While I applaud your sentiment, I doubt the logic involved," Lanon said dryly. "These guards noticed the First Prince's absence, tracked him to the Market--where, I may add, we know he goes every year around this time--and were confronted there by a pale-haired, pale-faced gentleman who broke three of one man's ribs and blinded the other man in one eye. Ergo, it was Jalith. How many Northmen make it this deep into the Souchlad? It had to be him. Trust me, I am less than pleased by it. But it had to be him."

"Well..." Alair chewed his lip. "I'm just saying, my Lord. Jalith is my friend, and this isn't like him. There had to be some reason for him to do it."

"Doubtless he thought they were attackers. Alone in the Great Market, conscious of public opinion--he must have been on his guard. I've explained this to the men, but they are understandably still unhappy. Jalith will have to pay recompensation to them for their injuries. And if he's very lucky--if the men have wit enough to be silent--that is all he'll have to pay. Unpopular princes have been mobbed for less than this. And the people don't trust him already."

The two men walked together in the Appointed Gardens, watching the sun set over the dunes in the distance. The Gardens were the highest point of the palace, built over what had once been the peak of the great desert mountain Setsuma. The rest of the palace fell away below them in a series of sandy terraces and towers, blending almost seamlessly into the sandstone jumble of the city below. Lanon had lived here all his life--since he was a little boy, taken from his birth father and mother in the province of Oot and delivered into the house of King Lukan fifty years ago. Fifty years--it might as well have been fifty thousand. He didn't remember ever feeling out of place here, feeling the other nintey-nine boys who made up the House of Heirs were anything but friends.

His had been an easy succession, approved by both the people and the courts. The people had liked his square brown face and honest simple manner. The courts had liked his sharp wits and his diplomatic skill. From the taking of his Appointed Scars, even before his coronation, Lanon had been just fine with the thought of being a king.

He knew it was not the same way for Jalith. He knew the boy was, at twenty, just as uneasy with his role as he had been at four. His superficial differences made him unpopular. If he didn't know better, he would have even doubted his own decision in making the boy First Prince.

But Lanon was not the sort of man who doubted a decision once he made it. Lukere would have been acceptable--could have scraped by as King with little damage to the people or the land.

But he loved Jalith. He did not love Lukere.

Yet it was not an irrational decision. When he had seen Jalith for the first time--a little boy, muddy and bloody and infested with lice found in a state of half-collapse at the palace gates--he had somehow known. This half-dead child, who barely spoke the Southern tongue of Mendelefa, had faced the king on his throne with dignity and grace, with gratitude and yet also with a firm request. Would the king give him asylum?

Yes. Yes, the king would.

The child's beauty had been a pleasant surprise, once he had been cleaned and fed and deloused, and his intelligence even pleasanter. But Lanon had known. He had known the instant he saw him.

Time had changed him, of course. The pressure of the courts and the hatred of his fellow heirs had made him more cautious, more timid. But that bright, hard nature was still there underneath. Lanon had made him First Prince in his seventeenth year and gods damn the consequences. He was not well liked, true, but he loved his people. And his few friends--like Alair here, the Seventeenth Prince--had shown him unswerving loyalty. In time, when they got the true measure of the man, so would all his kingdom.