Chapter 1410: Too many bulls(3)

For a long time, Varo said nothing.

The old knight simply stood beneath the high, vaulted stones, his one good eye and his one clouded locked upon the young man he had carried through fire. He had watched Merelao sprout from a terrified orphan into a warrior; had washed the road-dirt from his small hands; had shielded him from the poisoned daggers and midnight riders dispatched by his own blood.

Merelao met that gaze, and despite all his arrogance, felt his throat tighten.

“My Lord,” Varo spoke at last, his voice thick and low, vibrating with the weight of two decades. “I have walked behind you since you could scarcely reach my sword-belt. I dedicated every breath of my life to see you grow strong, but above all, to see you draw breath. Everything your lord father should have shared with you, I gave in his stead. I taught your hands the grip of the hilt and your knees the feel of the saddle. When I look upon you now, I feel the fierce pride a father was denied.”

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, struggling to hold back the tide rising in his chest. “I failed to shield you when that serpent in the capital sent his kind into your garden. There is no sunrise I do not rue that failure. That week you spent writhing in the fever-tents, your infant skin burning while you screamed into the dark… those were the blackest days of my life. Blacker, even, than the night I held your father’s dying frame in the mud and took his final, desperate charge.”

“I know, ” Merelao murmured softly.

Two simple words. Words that carried the weight of a lifetime, yet felt utterly powerless in others.

“Then let me shield you now from your own blindness!” Varo stepped forward, his fists clenching. “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, is that the poetry you whisper to yourself? The King of Yarzat is neither your brother nor your leal friend! He is a viper, a treacherous cunt that stood to inherit nothing he did not seize! Little better than your bloated uncle. He will see your throat slit the very heartbeat it serves his ledger. A low-born commoner does not claw his way from the dust to a royal dais by minding his honor! There are no holy lines he will not cross, no oaths he will not burn. His hands are drenched in blood.”

“Mine are drenched just as deep,” Merelao said coolly.

“NO!”

Varo’s roar shattered the quiet of the hall, echoing violently down the corridor and scattering the terrified servants lingering near the archways.

“They are not!” the old knight snarled, trembling with fury. “Your hands are red with the honest gore of the battlefield! You faced armed men in the open sun, warriors who came to kill or be killed! His hands are steeped in the slaughter of the bedchamber! First his own good-father, then his wife’s uncles and nephews, butchered, perhaps, on his lady’s command, which names her a kinslayer twice over! He is not your friend, Merelao. He will never be your friend. He played you for a fool once; how many daggers must he plant in your spine before you open your eyes and see him for what he is?”

“I see clearly enough,” Merelao replied, his voice maintaining an infuriating, icy calm. “I spoke with Alpheo on that very matter. He made no pathetic excuses, nor did he deny the deed. He captured the Usurper’s bastard, aye. And he traded the boy’s miserable hide back to the enemy in exchange for the full retreat of the Habadian, Kakunian, and Ezvanian hosts from Yarzat’s borders, clearing the board for the slaughter at the Ford.”

“You raised your banner against a throne that outnumbered you ten to one!” Varo shouted, his voice cracking with exasperation. “You bled your lands white, risked everything you owned, and when the Fox held the literal key to the Kakunian throne in his fist, he sold it behind our backs to save his own hide!”

“And in doing so,” Merelao fired back, a sharp, delighted grin cutting across his lips, “he sent three-quarters of the grand alliance scurrying home without striking a single blow. Can’t praise the action but I can respect the gall.

He shattered an empire’s host with a scrap of parchment and a bastard boy! By the Five, Varo, it must be the first time in history a whore’s son fetched such a price!”

“And that very bastard may very well be the death of you!” Varo lunged a half-step closer, his aged face flushed crimson. “I did not spend twelve winters sleeping in the mud to watch you throw your life into the fire for a clever mummer! You are letting your damned vanity cloud your reason! He betrayed you! Have you gone mad and blind?”

That struck the nerve.

“My reason is untouched,” Merelao said, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.

“It is rotting” Varo cried out. “It is rotting where you stand!”

“I would return the accusation,” Merelao retorted, stepping up until their chests nearly met, his aristocratic grace hardened into iron. “You are the only man in this hall blinded by sentiment. Alpheo did not betray me as much as you make it seem; he played the board that was laid before him.He cheated me of my prize, not betrayed me.

And until I hold Kakunia by the throat, I intend to make sure his board matches mine.If it does not I will kill him, simple as that.”

Varo stared at him. The rage slowly drained from the old man’s face, replaced by a look of sheer, hollow bewilderment.

His broad shoulders slouched, the years settling back onto his frame like a shroud of lead, as if the last frail tether of hope had snapped clean in his hands.

Merelao seized the quiet to press his advantage.

“Betrayal is cold iron plunged between the shoulder blades. What Alpheo did… that was merely a sharp swindle. A merchant’s sleight of hand. And in truth, how can I truly fault the man? The cost was a trifle compared to the prize he snatched from the jaws of ruin.

What is a passing promise made to an ally, a pledge of a bastard’s severed head, weighed against the very survival of one’s own realm and blood?Had I been sitting on his chair, would you not have bid me to do what he did?”

His voice softened, shedding its arrogant edge for something remarkably tender. “Surely you, of all men breathing, understand that? The fierce, desperate urge of a sire shielding his hearth from the flames?”

Varo winced, the truth pricking him deep. “I can…” the old lord admitted reluctantly.

Merelao offered him a smile, not the cruel, glittering smirk he brandished before the haughty lords of the south, but a genuine, radiant warmth reserved only for those few souls who held a sacred corner of his heart. For only for them did his sun rise truly bright; only beneath their boots did the barren grass turn green.

“You should have joined us at the feast table,” Merelao said after a quiet pause, striding along the slate floor to look back at the painting.

“Which feast, my Prince?”

“Two winters past. In the Fox’s hall. I dined at the high dais with the Prince and his kin, while you remained barricaded in your quarters, nursing your sour bile. Sulking.”

“I was not sulking, my Lord,” Varo muttered with stiff dignity.

“And pray, what grand name would you give it?”

“Being justly wroth.”

The Lord of Epietoli chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Well, while you were being justly wroth with me, the Fox, and the five gods above, I was breaking bread with Alpheo, his lady, and their two little cubs. A sweeter brood you could scarcely imagine. The little girl was a blooming rose, all dimples, light, and easy laughter. But the boy… the boy was something rarer still.”

Merelao’s eyes drifted toward the vaulted ceiling, fond amusement playing upon his lips. “Sharp as a skinning blade, kind to a fault, stupidly so, in the way only the pure-hearted can be, even gave his horse to a damn passing hedge knight” He gave a merry chuckled ”And yet… blessed with a terrifying tenacity. I recognized it the very first hour I stumbled upon him in that overgrown courtyard.

The lad is cut from his father’s own hide, though he knows it not, yet. He bends himself in two trying not to frighten the sparrows, the small people, to speak softly to servants, to not let other mind he is of high blood, but mark my words: one day the beast will slip the leash and the world will be poorer for it. I’d wager half this fortress on that bet.”

He smiled at some private jest known only to himself, his fingers drumming lightly against his scabbard.

“The point of the matter is, they were whole. It was the happiest hearth I have ever laid eyes upon. I tasted a crumb of that warmth once, long ago, with Latio of all people, when we were barefoot boys batting each other with ash-wood sticks, bloodying noses over who had the right to play the Lightbringer.” A faint, wistful breath escaped him.It was a world now lost for him and them. For a moment Merelao wondered if Latio too missed those days, and came to see this present and wonder how they came to it….but he was of bastard blood and envy was his ware.

“What is an oath whispered to an ally when weighed against the sacred shelter of your own? Love is the executioner of all grand designs. The bane of honor and duty wilts to nothing beneath its fire. So no… I do not call what Alpheo did a betrayal. I call it the desperate gamble of a father. I can blame the man, but not the intent behind the action.”

Merelao turned back to the great archway, a low, wicked chuckle slipping from his throat.

“And besides, my dear old protector,” the Prince added, his sharp blue eyes glinting “I am far from the romantic fool you take me for. Do not imagine for a second that this journey north is merely for sweet wine, tourney ribbons, and royal flattery. We ride to Yarzat to bend the King’s new crown to Kakunian steel and interest, there are words that I must hurry to share yet with the fox.”