Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-01-16 12:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | ithacles, skandra tyullis, vedette uthral |
second sun (ithacles, vedette)
You didn't find taverns in castles. There was no merry place where men drank together except in the dining hall, which only served ale. And even that was not always a merry place. Especially when the entirety of the king's guard was waiting for a chance to get you alone. So here they sat, in one of what must have been hundreds of nondescript rooms. Cavras swore that it was a room he'd been given for the duration of his stay, but none of his personal effects were in the room. Only a wooden table coated in dust, a tapestry which depicted two nameless faceless armies marching against one another, and a misted window which revealed light - but nothing of the outside world. Safely ensconced behind fortifications and the iron determination of military men there was no chance of a scuffle or an encounter of chance. So he and Cavras had gambled for coppers a little while. Only when Skandra offered to make change for his silver pence did Cavras abandon the gambling.
The mood of the room was sour.
"You cheat more than a whore fu-"
"I cheat?" Cavras spat angrily. "I cheat? This is the second time I've won today!"
"With the highest stakes I'd add," Skandra muttered sourly.
Torchlight this late at night made the room seem alive under the light of an aged, decrepit second sun. It was a game of angles to light all of their faces - and shadows revealed as much as they hid. Vedette, who looked as though she'd been punched in the heart with wrathful fists. Ithacles, whose eyes were light and empty, but whose face was decorated with an expressionless grimace so perfect it must have been fake. Cavras would sip at his ale and then wince. And then sip again. For his part Skandra had tasted worse. Yet Cavras wasn't wincing because of the ale. Lethe was involved in something that looked like a power play. The king was believing her side of the story and her plan of action. They were forbidden to take any further action. And Skandra did not think Ithacles was the sort of fellow to go against the wishes of his king. How much did Prince Ithacles, Son of Ithunvel, think about his king as his father? Was there room for those two things to overlap? Or was he simply liege and lord?
It hardly mattered. Skandra would have laid even odds that Lethe wanted to be the one to prove that Pathacles was innocent or guilty. He would have laid better-than-even odds that Lethe loved Pathacles more than she loved Ithacles. The Immortal could imagine Pathacles as one of the men on that tapestry - so proud, shining, the impersonation of a gallant knight. The stories that sprang to mind were stories of courage and nobility in the face of impossible odds. Of a fellow who survived everything but the wrath of Leironuoth's enemies. How did Ithacles avoid blaming his cousin for what had happened? Oh, but Ithacles loved Leironuoth with something approaching worship. No one was easy in Leironuoth's company with the possible exception of Skandra himself - and only because he knew the elf's most terrible secret, that he wanted none of the accolades and the hero worship, that to him doing what he felt was right had become more important than the tenor of his name as it passed a stranger's lips.
Ithacles was still looking for something.
"Remember that orc-prince who challenged you to a duel?" Cavras asked around the stem of his pipe. "You said if you won you'd take three of his daughters as consorts, and he was so excited that he turned away to call them over."
"So excited," Skandra agreed blandly.
"Their prospects are improing," Cavras chortled heartily. "And you gave him a spear right in the neck as I recall..."
With a sniff and a hard stare Skandra resolved not to touch any food for the rest of the night. Orcs did not die nobly and they did not bleed pretty. Either memory was enough to have his stomach pleading for mercy, any amount that it could get.
Approval, maybe, or a word noble and strong from the throat of the king. What would Leironuoth say? The elf was sensitive to the mood of others, when he cared about those others. Sensitive enough that he might have told Ithacles it was a worthy goal. Yet the Prince would never be a king so long as he wanted approval from someone instead of passing interest. He would need to be his own man, cut loose from the ties of blood and family, to do things as he felt was best. Now Skandra sounded like a philosopher in his own head. Pinching thumb and forefinger together Skandra flipped a gold mark into the air. Each time it fell he lashed out at the opportune moment, flicking with his finger again to send it spinning into the empty air. Rapidly changing the face it presented to those torches made the coin appear alive. Gold flashes sprang out across the faces of those assembled - illuminating rays that were absorbed by firelight yet brilliant all the same. And in the comparative silence of the room, the stillness of the room, the coin was the only thing that seemed to move.
Each crack of nail against gold rang out solid in the chamber. Each manic dance of the coin was a tonic against the dark.
This was the sort of thing he'd learned from peddlers in the mountains, when he was a much younger man. The spinning of the coin without catching it - supposed to make your hands quicker if you did it right, getting the timing down to an exquisite art instead of simple instinct and guessing. Skandra didn't think it worked. The peddlers had also been swindlers, thieves, and lying sons of bitches when it suited them.
He supposed if he were Ithacles he might also think, from the outcome of this sad situation, that Ithunvel loved Pathacles more than Ithacles. The son that no one wanted. In a way Skandra could understand that very well. In a way he felt it too. The only difference was that Skandra's father had actually tried to kill him. Ithunvel just seemed to be disinterested. Oh, it was possible that Ithunvel was just trying to protect his son, but if that was true, why go to all of this trouble? Why not tell Ithacles himself instead of sending Lethe? They weren't going to find out sitting in this square room, with harsh wooden benches on three walls and a ramshackle wooden door on the fourth. This table had enough room for all of them. No one was scrambling to share a table with a couple of gambling, drinking fellows. It might hurt that Ithunvel loved Pathacles more - but only if Ithacles still thought of him as a father. Funny how easy it could be to dismiss pain that way. Skandra didn't think he would have been so easy with Gershul, after it was all done.
Skandra, of course, wanted to kill that old bastard.