those that have no grave (ithacles)
Any time you couldn't find a spare drop or four of phoenix blood, a sickbed turned into a prison. He couldn't imagine laying on a cot for the six weeks that the medic recommended. Oh, of course, it took at least a week for the fever to die down and the shoulder to feel well enough for a sling. Even that felt like a betrayal. As if his body had given everything it could, and whose fault was it - other than his - that he had to lay here? Skandra could have gone insane, if he hadn't started that particular journey long ago. Being well on his way, there was nothing to do but read. This particular room was full of texts. Bookshelves adorned the wall next to every bed. And a near half, maybe less, of the men who occupied these cots could actually read.
That was the best joke he saw while laid up.
Many of the books concerned patriotic behavior while being ruled by a monarchy. There was nothing else, unless you counted the Free Cities, but he didn't. They were less ruled than operated as a collective. Some sort of strange system wherein persons voted on their leadership but still answered to a high lord. It made no sense when he thought about it. So he didn't. Specifically, what sort of sacrifice was required of a soldier. He gave up after two pages. Not just because the book was handwritten but hard-bound, but also because the subject matter was disgustingly unfortunate. Cavras. He still didn't believe what his mind told him was real. Cavras. The bastard had saved Skandra's life a couple dozen times. He was nearly overzealous in his pursuit of a clean body and a clean mind.
Nobody liked a traitor around here.
Ithacles would come and report on the hangings. There were trials. Damned show-trials, they sounded like to Skandra, but over the course of weeks perhaps it was more likely that time felt both compressed and elongated for him, in here. Certainly it was cause to wonder if some politician wasn't using this as an excuse to clean out those with whom he disagreed. And they were cleaned out. Not counting Cavras or the soldiers that had been killed in the castle on the night in question there were seven hundred and seventy-four soldiers who confessed their guilt or were implicated in confession. Seven hundred and seventy-four. They'd done everything from arrange border crossings for some material to fix promotions and assignments over the course of a five-year period.
Through it all Skandra never asked, and Ithacles never did say. Across the board, all of them - all of them - had one thing to say. Pathacles had orchestrated the entire affair. Pathacles was the one who'd arranged the first and most essential group of core believers. Some of them were even old enough to have been in the military at the time of Pathacles' death. Skandra wondered what sort of man inspired not only loyalty but a sort of lust. The kind that could twist your decent name into the call sign of a revolution that had intended in the main to put itself in power. Surely they weren't going to let Ithacles do whatever he wanted, assuming Ithacles could stand aside and let his father die in the first place. These were men who'd shown their oaths and their promises meant nothing.
Sometimes they played cards. Sometimes, Skandra even forgot to cheat.
There would never be any proof but the tongues of men who'd revealed most of the words they'd spoken for the last ten years to be lies. What wouldn't they try to implicate Pathacles, to try and stir a greater unrest that would force the ruling family out of its home? What amazed him more than anything was not the nature of the conspiracy, which was standard in a mind programmed by years of deceit and betrayal in the quest for power, but the scope of it. Ordinarily there were only a few conspirators. Seven hundred and seventy-four. That many men did not become disillusioned for nothing. That many men did not simply turn to hatred and conspiracy because they were bored. There had to be a reason.
Yet another question that Skandra never quite got around to asking Ithacles.
Having a male attendant to help settle your trousers on your hips, and tighten your belt to your exacting specifications, made the process go much faster. Skandra didn't want a man fiddling with his belt for longer than absolutely necessary. And it was necessary - the sling couldn't come off for another two days, but by that time Skandra would be well west of here. Going now by carriage guaranteed nobody would want his testimony in a gods-damned trial. They had Ithacles and Vedette for that, after all.
He wanted to be in the frontier again, that space between nations where nothing was settled.
Somehow Ithacles must have gotten wind of his departure. There was the prince, slouching in the doorway as though he hadn't pitched his childhood friend over a rail and to his death. Skandra always had to remind himself that Ithacles was more dangerous than he looked. Something about the face of a child concealing the mind of a killer. If Ithacles was at all upset that Cavras was dead he didn't show it. As though Ithacles were just like them, in some way - able to reach a point where the bond of friendship didn't matter. That it could just be turned on or off, at a whim, seemed somehow wrong to Skandra.
What did it mean, if it vanished so quickly?
That question, he most assuredly was not going to ask. Skandra hooked the toe of his boot under the hat, which rested on the edge of the bed. A kick sent it sailing into the air. His lone good hand snatched the brim. It settled on his head with a flourish and a tug of the brim, as though this was how all men put on hats, and Skandra had refined the practice into an art. Felt tight against his forehead. Only some of the bruises had faded, and none of the cuts, but maybe all the stitches would keep someone from noticing precisely how ugly he was.