objects of desire (ithacles)
Ulbarich wanted nothing more than to seize the Prince's shoulder and draw him back of this. It was one thing to suggest that a Prince ought not to be informed about the doings in his kingdom. It was another thing entirely to put that same Prince in the room with a man who'd just attempted to kill a Captain of the army. If the man was willing to roll the dice on a Captain, how would he feel about the chance to kill a Prince? Yet there they were, Prince and Captain both, hustling down a narrow corridor of stone into dungeons that Princes had not seen in many a year. These were not the clean, bright blue stones of the city's jailers. These were a forbidding gray, caked with moss where water trailed down the walls, dank and dark as the day was long. The only light came from torches, and so the gray sometimes faded to orange in wide hideous circles on the wall. It smelled of smoke and oil and death. Not the sort of place one made a habit of visiting.

The business was important, indeed.

Ulbarich had a great many questions for the man, and no voice to ask even one of them. Ithacles was not a fool. He was also not a practiced investigator. If you walked with the civil guard for a week you learned a great deal about how and why men did what they did. If you walked with them for a month you learned even more. Ulbarich had pulled a year's duty on the civil guard, which his father had insisted upon, and there were questions that only a civil guardsman would have known to ask. Skilled questioners were actually not, in that they normally sought only a confession and rarely looked beyond for the motivation and the conspirators.

These questions were important because no man, not even a criminal, lived in a background. It was commonly accepted that the security of a plot depended entirely on the number of people who were aware of its existence. The more people who knew about a thing, the more likely it was that those people would tell what they knew to someone who disagreed with their intent. Ulbarich also knew that a man could accomplish very little on his own. Even the heroes of ages did not accomplish everything on their own. They were supported and aided by those with like minds. To suggest, then, that the other fools in that fight had been simply hired muscle was foolish. To suggest that the man they'd captured was a ringleader seemed equally foolish.

There was something else at work, here.

Yet his eyes searched not for Prince Ithacles' back - the fellow was taking long strides in this long corridor, the better to reach the gatehouse for the dungeons proper - but the cracks in the wall. Stone and mortar wore down, even when they were so carefully constructed as the entirety of this castle, and Ulbarich thought each crack was not just a break in the seam but also a mirror of his own declining sanity. What did it mean, that Vedette was back here? What did it mean, that she'd brought another smiling beauty with her? Their conversation couldn't have been less instructive if it had tried. It had not tried, all the same. He was beginning again to resent the lack of a true voice.

When you had nothing - no friends, no acquaintances and no intrigue - it mattered little if you could put a voice to your thoughts. The truth was that he could have just as easily stayed where he was, doing exactly as he'd been doing, and there would have been little reason to stop. He could have asked his father to find another detail for him. Now it was too late. If he were offered the chance to go back, he would not take it. For better or worse his lot was thrown in with theirs. Prince Ithacles did not realize how dangerous it was to be a Prince now, as dangerous as it could have been.

Drip said the water.

Shiver said the stone.

The portcullis was opened.

"Your Highness," the young soldier gave an elaborate bow, leg extended, in the old way. "If you please, I will lead you to the interrogation chamber."

Ithacles gave only a curt nod. The soldier turned smartly on his heel and began to walk. How many drills had they run, upon learning that Ithacles would be coming here? How many would they have time for? The fellow's coat looked freshly brushed, with all its blue and white.

That the man was here and not being treated in the medical wing spoke volumes. They were trying to get information out of him before he died. Ulbarich did not disapprove of such methodology. The man was a traitor and deserved his fate. He just wondered how lucid a stabbed man was going to be when all was said and done. If he could give them a tenth of what he wanted he would be a traitor twice, once to his nation and once to his comrades, so that there would be no home or salvation for him to claim as his own. Some underestimated how close the bond between thieves and murderers could be. Ithacles was not one of those persons. At least, Ulbarich did not think that he was.

Time would answer that question.

The room to which they were led was one of many. This close to the entrance of the prison, having passed through only one gate, they were nowhere near the prisoners or their cells. These were windowless, bar-less rooms where civil men could discuss civil things. Not everyone in the dungeons was a permanent resident. Some spoke with wives about an eventual release. Some merely... prayed for death in silence and solitude. There were a great many reasons the rooms were used, and few worth thinking of by honest men. Inside of the stone room there was more of the same. Trickles of water, bruised rock, a battered table and one battered stool. No one would sit in the presence of a prisoner.

At least, no one with intelligence.

"Your Highness, the prisoner is being retrieved," the young soldier barked. "I will knock when he arrives, sire."

Then that creaking, wooden door was smartly closed.