The Silver Sparrow

A Life Worth Ending

There were times, when Lasura was certain his mother had considered killing him. He wondered if she'd ever tried when he was little, or had come close to trying in the past seventeen years. Eighteen, to be accurate—one would assume she wanted him dead before he came into the world as his father's son given the circumstances.

He also wondered if she would have succeeded, had his father not threatened to kill all those slaves.

'Would it have been easier, mother? If there had been fifty or a hundred prisoners instead? Would you have let me live?'

He'd been foolish enough to ask the other night, half-drunk from too much wine at his father's table, half-deaf from the rage pouring out of her after he'd accepted the mission to negotiate with Sarasef, as if he ever had a choice in it. That memory, as much as he wanted to forget, was still unbearably fresh and raw in his mind.

She'd straightened then, raising her chin to look up at him in disgust the same way she'd always looked at her husband. She hated their resemblance—the same black hair, deep-set eyes, harsh, prominent jawline, and the way they were built that held enough similarities to be mistaken sometimes by silhouette. That was the only thing his mother ever saw when she looked at him; the shadow of the man she wanted to see dead.

'I should have killed myself before you were born!' She'd said, grinding her teeth as if to keep at bay an even worse insult, which, given his mother's exceptional creativity in delivering them, could be possible. 'If I'd known you'd willingly slaughter your own people—'

'My people?' It had slipped out of him before he could stop himself, the words he'd been trying to hold back for her sake, words he might have still been able to swallow had he not been so drunk, so tired from the climb. 'There are four Shakshis I've known in my life and half of them would rather see me dead.' Yes, dead. His own mother and her handmaiden to be exact. 'The Black Tower is my home, Rasharwi is my city, he is my father as much as you are my mother and for the very least he wants me to live! As far as I'm concerned, it was your part of my blood that has dragged me through all kinds of shit in this Tow—' 

The sound of her knuckles crashing into his jaw had finished the sentence for him, as always. She was too small to deliver a punch that would throw him off his balance, but that side of his face was going to bruise nonetheless. It used to hurt a lot more when he was little, but he'd gotten used to it after a few years.

It had become clear to Lasura a long time ago, that what his mother couldn't take out on her husband, she resorted to take it out on his son. And while he could sympathize with her how all that anger had to go somewhere, being given his own quarter five years ago which allowed him the possibility fo avoiding her most of the time had been the best gift his father had ever bestowed upon him. Still, every now and then she would pay him a visit, usually most often right after his father's return to the Tower. It usually ended with her raging over something her son had done or hadn't done, but it had been a while since he'd goaded her into throwing a fist at him.

'Oh, that was a good one, mother,' he'd told her, spitting the small amount of blood onto the floor to make a point. 'Are you calm now or would you like another go at it?'

She'd stood shaking her fist as she looked at him, breathing hard from the exertion. No remorse, no apologies in those eyes, of course. The Lady Zahara of the Black Tower was not someone who apologized for her actions, nor a person you could strike at without getting your hand stung in the process.

Neither was he, for that matter. Worse, if one were to consider that he was also a son of Salar Muradi of Rasharwi and had also been raised rather close to him.