Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1019: From the dirt(3)

"Supper will be served late this evening, my lord. His Grace invites your lordship to a night of theater," Sebastian muttered. He stood with his back as straight as a mountain pine, his voice devoid of the slightest tremor as the Star of Yarzat began to strip away the day’s finery.

"A night of theater? Then I shall certainly attend. I have always preferred a stage to a banquet table," Merelao replied, his tone airy and resonant.

"Does your lordship require any aid with the lacings?"

"I do not."

"If the need arises, please do not hesitate to summon me. I wish you a grand evening, my lord."

Merelao offered no spoken farewell, merely dismissively waving a hand over his shoulder as he pulled the shimmering silk from his frame. The fabric pooled at his feet revealing a back broad and sculpted, the result to a life spent in the pursuit of physical perfection. Sebastian bowed low to the empty air and retreated, the door clicking shut leaving the other man to say his own.

"Must you undress with such reckless abandon before the domestic staff?" Varo muttered, his voice thick with a weary and yet paternal agitation. "We are guests in a foreign nest, Merelao. A little modesty serves as a fine shield."

"The Five gifted me this vessel, Varo," Merelao said, turning slowly. He stood unashamed, his presence filling the room with a quiet, statuesque power. "There is nothing more unsightly, more truly vulgar, than a man who lives in shame of his own skin. Whether a man is a masterpiece or a ruin, he must inhabit every inch of himself, for it his vessel against the storm. If my nakedness offends the delicate sensibilities of the help, they are more than welcome to cast their eyes to the floor."

As Merelao bundled the silk into a heap, the flickering lamplight caught the jagged, ivory trail of a deep scar across his shoulder. Varo stared at it, the sight a bitter sting to his memory. They had never discovered which hand had bribed the servant who held that blade; since that night, Merelao had never allowed another soul to touch him while he dressed. It was a silent, permanent boundary, the result of one of the many times Varo felt he had nearly broken the oath he swore to a dying friend.

Protect him, Varo. Safeguard my son.

"I must confess," Merelao continued, his voice regaining its theatrical lilt as he paced the rug, "I am quite captivated by this place. I had prepared myself to be bored into a stupor by these ’peasants,’ yet I have never been more delighted to be proven a fool. Did you truly look at the Prince’s men today, Varo? I mean, did you look into their marrow?"

He paused, his eyes gleaming with a fierce, professional appreciation. "By the gods, those are men I would be honored to lead into the mouth of hell and spit in the face of its ruler without trace of fear. You can see the tally of the dead written in their pupils; they have sent more men to the worms than most princes have seen in their dreams. I finally grasp how our host humbled the Oizenians and the Romelians alike. I sparred with a few of them this afternoon, those who hail themselves from the Aracinea."

Merelao touched a hand to his ribs, a grimace of pleasure crossing his face. "Strange, fluid movements... like a ranging river. I parried an overhead blow with what I thought was perfect timing, and before I could even rotate my wrist, the butt of the halberd was already buried in my armpit. My body sings with a magnificent soreness. I shall have to ask the Fox to lend me an instructor; I refuse to leave this city until I have mastered the rhythm of such a style."

"It would seem," Varo noted dryly, "that you have found this den of foxes much to your liking."

"Indeed. I even challenged our host to a bout with the steel. He refused, citing his ’frail constitution,’ and offered to wrestle on the sand instead." Merelao flexed his arms, the muscles rippling beneath his skin. "He made me eat the dirt twice. Twice, Varo! How long has it been since I found such sport? You look at that man and see a weakling, a scholar clutching at a map, but he is a slippery devil. Nimble as a cat and more elusive than a rat in the dark."

Varo stared at his lord. The Yarzat Prince was a full head shorter than Merelao, a man of slight frame and unassuming presence. To hear that he had subdued a warrior of Merelao’s caliber was hard to believe, but he knew the boy he had see grow to a man would not lie about defeat. There was an unadulterated, childlike excitement in Merelao’s eyes, a flash of the golden youth from the high gardens, before the poison blackened his spirit.

But it was a fleeting ghost. The Merelao of old was dead, and the man standing here was all that he had of that once happy boy.

Sometimes he believed that snake, had killed his boy and another soul from the hell had come in its stead.

With a heavy mind, Varo sank onto the plush sofa, his old bones aching with the weight of the unknown.

"What ails you, Varo?" Merelao asked, his theatricality dropping away for a moment of sharp, piercing observation. "You sit there like a man waiting for his own executioner."

Varo looked up, his face a landscape of deep-set furrows and soul-weary exhaustion. "I fear the path we are trudging upon, my lord. I fear that this ’sport’ and these ’theaters’ are merely the gilding on our own mausoleum.

Every step we take into this alliance feels like a march toward a grave that will be neither poetic nor remembered. We are playing a game with a master who has already decided the manner of our fall. The Prince of Yarzat may possess the charm of the gods and the knowledge of the ancients, but he stands with one foot already in the shroud. I fear that if we follow him, we simply follow a corpse into the dark."

Merelao turned, the light of the candles catching the hard planes of his face. He looked at the man who had been his shadow and his shield since he was a child of eight summers.

"And what is so terrifying in that, my old friend? Do you truly believe that the specter of the end has the power to poison a mind like mine?

Every man must die, Varo. It is the only absolute, the only law that neither peasant nor emperor can repeal. Death is the great equalizer, a lover who waits for all of us with the same patient, unyielding embrace.

We cannot live our existences perpetually counting the heartbeats we have left, for if we do, our lives become a living death long before the pulse fails. Do you not see the splendor that surrounds us? It is at our backs and before our eyes, screaming to be noticed and witnessed!"

He paced the room, his naked chest gleaming like polished marble. "There is beauty in the mouse that eludes the feline’s claw! There is beauty in the hound that finally sinks its teeth into the soaring bird! There is a divine, tragic grace in even the most meaningless struggle. No odds are so overwhelming, no force so catastrophic, that the act of struggle loses its luster. Should we meet our end on this path, as you so grimly predict, then I shall greet the Black Lady with a smile and offer these lips to her fair kiss. I shall do so with a heart as light as thistledown, for I will know, in the final flickering of my consciousness, that I have in fact lived."

Merelao stopped, his gaze piercing. "Why does man tremble at the dark? Is death not merely the twin of sleep? Men look at the absence of existence and allow fear to paralyze their earth! Did we exist when the foundations of the world were laid? No. We were naught but silence and dust. To die is simply to return to the peace we knew before we were ever summoned to this noisy stage."

Varo remained motionless for a long heartbeat. As he looked at the young man, the golden light seemed to blur his features until the image of Merelao’s father shimmered there in his place.

He looks just like you, Varo thought, a bittersweet ache blooming in his chest. Despite the madness and the pride, he is your soul made flesh.

But exactly for that reason he could not allow this to happen.

"And what if it is not my own cold end that I dread, but yours?" Varo asked, his voice cracking with a vulnerability he usually kept locked behind iron plates. "With what face shall I greet your father in the halls of the ancestors? How can I stand before him and report the total failure of the oath I whispered into his dying ear? I swore to safeguard you, Merelao. To see you fall is to see my own soul erased."

At that Merelao took a breath, a slow, sorrowful inhalation that seemed to weigh more than any armor. He stepped forward and placed a firm, steady hand upon his mentor’s shoulder.

"In that case, old friend," Merelao whispered, his sapphire eyes softening with a genuine, heartbreaking tenderness, "you shall go to him with the most radiant, most pure smile you can muster. You shall look him in the eye and tell him that his son, despite the shadows, despite the enemies, and despite the cost... truly and magnificently lived." After that he took a deep breath and gave a sad smile. Realizing that the sorrow he was feeling was far deeper than he had initially thought.

"And perhaps I believe that it is time that I told you in earnestness what that letter truly contained.’’