seen from China
seen from Australia
seen from Ecuador
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Argentina
seen from China
seen from Ecuador
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from China
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from China
the choice that isn’t a choice remains a choice in the end the love for one extends out to others moving beyond and we are not pillars the best of us locked in nameless conflicts the weak hold to evil and good doing naught but making easy choices pretending to be free
There was no anger in him at all; in the face of that, I let my own go away as well.
“Sometimes, I said as softly, “you are far too good at bring a prince.”
“Even when I am not one?” he said.
“I think especially then.”
The thing they never taught about power is that it goes away. You could ride it for a time. There were riders without horses. Paths one can walk down faster than others could run. You could go on the right direction, ride power like a knife edge you never know is an edge at all.
You could do that, until one day you can’t anymore. One day the power just isn’t there. It is still you. You are still you: still speaking, still moving, but whatever you had over other people is gone. Perhaps we get complacent in our power, think it will last somehow when we will not. I think it is more than we come to desire other things than power, but it is hard to give that a name.
I know how to fight, better than most. But in time it will be something I know, and not something I can still do. I will still move, but it won’t be fast enough. Time withers all around us, but the lie of power is that we might be exempt. I suspect even the gifts of Providence are like that. Time diminishes. People fade. But the Blight just digs in deeper. Power goes away. Curses linger, no matter how far away from them we try and go.
I never thought such things in the Six Kingdoms. But here, in the Niand Empire, the weight of time presses in. Everything is so much older; what remains is that which has endured.
“We’re all prisoners,” he said.
“You are trapped in a cell,” I said.
“When is a prince not trapped?” He offered an almost-smile. “This is almost relaxing in its honesty.”
After a time we simply lay together in a gentle tangle. Relaxed, even after all the events of the last few days. The world had much strangeness and many skills that take so longer to master, but love was never one of them when done right.
We shared a final slow kiss before sleep, a gift and promise both.
On the walk back to the room we had been given I slowed at one somehow transparent section of stone wall and looked through it into a brief glimpse of an underground garden. Plants and vaulted ceilings, as if gardens simply grew under the earth as easily as they did above. As though winter did not matter to a land covered in in tundra. There were further transparent spaces down the long hallway; a simple, quiet statement about the power the empire had without needing to call attention to it at all.
We can do what is impossible, the garden said without anyone having to speak a single word.
“This entire country is probably insane,” I said as I sat down on one of the beds.
“Diplomacy at its finest,” Leos murmured.
“They spend at least half the year underground. That can’t be sane.”
“I imagine it is when the option is death.” Leos shrugged. “Or perhaps not. Knort once told me that too much sanity was also a kind of madness.”
I blinked. “How does that make sense?”
“‘The fact that you ask is proof it does.’ End quote.”
“I can’t make that right. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”
“It’s only been a week. Give me time to properly hate you before you think you can atone,” Cel said.
Leos twisted and stared at her.
“I don’t like how you used my wife. I don’t like how royalty uses people in a way that makes them think they should feel special for being used. You did to that to Sia. Even to me, a little. But you were used as well. Those wings Providence gave you are beyond easy answers.”
“I think he was an arrow, and us all shaped into the string,” I offered.
“I was given wings in order to fly. I doubt I was ever meant to land,” Leos whispered. “So all I did was crash, and I’ve ruined your lives. I can’t – I don’t know to –.” He looked away from the both of us. “Sorry isn’t enough, but there is no action I can do to make this better. All that I did in the last five years, all that I learned and everything that led to Meldak, and I never once considered what would happen if I survived.”
