Prodigal - Book III

The Double-Edged Sword

They're balancing at the edge of a knife.

Ruben can feel it, feel the tenuous shift, like uncertain ground beneath his feet, like loose sift along a mountain crest. They waver this way and that, dangling over one side or the other, this path forward growing thinner, more treacherous, over time. It started eroding, Ruben thinks, at the first council of kings, when Rast revealed Meg was Ruben's pupil.

Accusation. Suspicion. He thought he had handled it well then, had eased these unsettling emotions back into their dark slumber, but now he wonders.

He wonders a lot.

They are balancing at the edge of a knife. Allayria is balancing at the edge of a knife.

There is something blooming there, something growing, that she has not told him. That she keeps secret. Which is fair, Ruben muses in his own dark way, given how much he keeps secret from her.

But that which he has withheld—Ben's slow but growing progress toward the bow, Balder, Abe, Olcay—has only ever been to protect her, to protect the secret, the riddle that barricades her from Ben, from real destruction. This double, triple blind, the allowance of only knowing as much as is needed to know—the bow is hidden, safe and protected—was the way to safeguard the information, to safeguard her. It couldn't be taken, given up from her, if she didn't know it. And to know, to understand how far Ben has already traveled on that path, surely would only divert her from the challenge at hand.

So, two days ago, when he found Allayria stewing in the dark, he coaxed her out of the tent and sent Lei, spinning in his own anxieties, down to Dost where the order, the planning would sort him out. Yes, the ritual of it all would smooth all those ticks and twitches out, just like they did when Lei was a child, when he first came to Ruben from the Jarles.

Allayria was trickier—has always been trickier. She's a cypher, unlike Lei or Meg; most like Ben.

Listening but suspicious, responsive but cagey, giving up some of her thoughts but not everything, not all the cards in her deck, Ruben thinks. She is like a wounded bird, wing tucked to chest, shuffling, trusting and mistrustful. And why shouldn't she be, when so many people have let her down? Her family, her friends, the man she first loved.

I'm not going to hurt you, he had wanted to say in those early days. I won't take anything else away. Let me help you, protect you, keep you unbeholden to Beinsho, Qui Wren, Sofo, Aren, or Rast. Let me help you be your best.

Because her mind had been a hazardscape of doubt, hadn't it? After Lethinor. And that doubt had deepened, turned more inward, when Ruben told her the rest of Lethinor. The basic concept of what she is had been put to question, and he had just wanted to be the watchful post that held her up as she swayed, that pointed in the right direction when she felt lost. Because no matter what she hid, Ruben had understood that Allayria had been alone all of her life, and now at least, with her biggest secret out, she deserved to have someone on her side. Someone better than Jon Akalia, kinder than Jon Akalia.

But Ruben is afraid.

Yes, afraid, and his fear spirals from several places, several things, because Ruben sometimes feels like there's a stranger peering out from the Paragon's black eyes, a person he doesn't know. And it unnerves him; for all of her hiding, all of her anxieties and doubts, he always knew the girl beneath it, the girl who wanted to belong, who gave herself up to protect her friends.

[Be careful, Skill master.]

Perhaps now, at least, he should admit it to himself: a part of him holds the location of Pang Sing bow a secret not for fear of that information being taken from Allayria, but for fear of what she might do with it.

The possibility of what she could do, if she had it.

But no... no, she fears it—as she should, as anyone should. And he did tell her in his own way, did he not? He planted the seed as they looked out at the plains of Keesark, as she said they were surrounded by enemies. He told her about Olcay, told her he was alive. He told her about Sarah. If she needs to find the bow, if she looks hard enough, that will lead her to him, wherever Wren stowed him.

And perhaps the effort, the time it would take, and Olcay, waiting at the end, would temper her. As well as her friends.

Yes, its in Allayria's friends Ruben will put faith. Fae's kindness, Lei's sense of duty, Caj's calmness, Tara's pragmatism, Finn's innocence, Hiran's charm. Hiran's cleverness. Hiran, if need be, will help Ruben. Will go to Solveig, if needed. And there is Rast, for all his unctuousness, all his selfishness. He would listen if he really had to, if it really came to it. He'd put aside all the pain and hurt Ruben has caused and come to his side.

Part of Ruben grimaces from this: for all of his promises, he always ends up causing other people (Rast) pain.

I'll cause Hiran pain too, he thinks. I'll tear him from his comfortable path, his friends. But it has to be done. The Order is dying, Ben is undoing us, one by one. Someone has to go on.

Someone has to endure.

Hiran, Ruben thinks, not for the first time, don't waste yourself on Rast's whims and idle quests; put that charm to good use.

Be my backup, Ruben admits to himself now, here on the front lines as he watches sunlight brim over the straight line of Allayria's back. Ruben will never have children—she, Meg, and Lei are as close as he will ever get.

[Have I made a mistake?]

Hiran, he thinks a touch desperately now, be the balance between all the kingdoms.

A/N: If Ruben worries, I worry.

It's time, everyone. Are we ready?

Chapter notes: Allayria warns Ruben to be careful in Prodigal's "I Remembered You, Once" and Ruben hints to Hiran he is capable of more in "Letters in the Dark." Rast reveals more about Ruben than he would like in Partisan's "Grave Dirt"; Ruben divulges what happened to her in "The Thing in the Water," and "Clear Air" and then carefully mentions Olcay in "The Breaking of a Fellowship."