The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (17 page)

“
Your Highness!
” said the Archbishop firmly as he stood, too. “Stop this nonsense!”

Thaybrill stopped and looked the Archbishop in the eye. Nellist said as he stood next to the prince, “Thaybrill... listen to me... you confuse matters of the heart with matters of state. The two are not the same!”

The old man’s hands fidgeted together nervously, something Thaybrill had never seen them do before. The old man said, “My young prince, you are not the only person in this kingdom to have swayed, and I daresay that you will not be the last. This kingdom does not collapse into ruin because such people exist.”

The Archbishop coughed nervously, trying to clear his throat before he added, “In fact, I would perhaps even venture that you would be surprised at who shares these propensities, even within the Folly walls, Highness.”

Thaybrill’s eyes started at what he suspected the Archbishop was saying, and his mouth hung open momentarily. He asked in disbelief, “Are you saying, Nellist, that even you—”

Nellist interrupted and said, “This is your confession, my young liege, not mine. But know this... as has always been true, you have a sympathetic ear in me should you need it.”

Prince Thaybrill nodded that he understood now, and felt truly better about his situation for the first time since Azi had kicked him out of Maqara. For the first time in his life, since he had discovered the true nature of his feelings years ago, he did not feel like a liar to all of Iisen.

“Your heart pulls on you in a direction you scarcely can control,” said Nellist, “but you are also unfortunate enough to be in a position where much is expected of you. All of this foolish business with the savages to the east notwithstanding, you will be expected to produce an heir to the throne. And even if your heart is not in the duty, you are physically capable. All of us, from the least of us to the greatest, are called upon from time to time to perform duties that we would rather not. We all deny our own wants and needs for the greater good, yes?”

Thaybrill nodded and said, “Of course. Yes, Nellist, you are, of course, right.”

“The Iisendom will need an heir one day. Perhaps a marriage out of duty and to satisfy a requirement of your station on behalf of the kingdom is best, leaving your
heart
free to find its own match one day, for the times you are not acting as the head of state. Consider that, my young prince,” said Nellist.

Thaybrill took the frail man and embraced him warmly, thankful for the unexpected comfort and understanding he found in him. He said, “Thank you, Nellist! I have felt quite hopeless these last several weeks, and you remind me that perhaps the night is not as dark as it seems.”

The Archbishop returned the prince’s embrace. “Remember that it is in the night that we are most watched after, Your Highness, by those that love us and look out for us.” He stepped back from Thaybrill and said, “I worry about you, Thaybrill. I have watched you grow up lonely and isolated due to your position, with only an old priest and a lemon-faced and overly strict teacher to serve as your friends. Not precisely the rich and satisfying life I have wanted for you from the first tragic day of your existence.”

Thaybrill laughed at the harmless insult the Archbishop had thrown at the Domo Regent. He sighed deeply and looked towards the top of Kitemount, seeing the first stars begin to peep out and show themselves as dimday gathered.

“Do you think...” asked Thaybrill, “Do you think my father hates me for what I have allowed myself to be?”

The prince watched the concern play over the Archbishop’s face as he tried to carefully frame the answer to the question posed to him.

Nellist replied, “Well, your father was a very traditional man. A good man, though. Very opinionated. The only person in the kingdom that would dare butt her head against his once he had made up his mind to a way of thinking was your mother, may her star shine brightly. I think he would have understood the desire to find a true love, the same kind of love he had for Queen Sophrienne, even if he would struggle with the object of your affection.”

“I see,” said Thaybrill, disappointed. He could tell the Archbishop was trying to be honest while not stealing the small amount of comfort he had offered that evening. Nellist was being kind and stepping around the fact that his father was cursing him from the Trine Range constellation.

“Wait, though...” said Nellist. “You must also remember that your father is no longer bound by the same restrictions to which all here in the mortal world are held, in his perception or in his ways of thinking. Colnor, your father, whom we have studied many a night, prominent in the constellation soon cresting over Kitemount, does not see you with the same eyes he might have seen you with had he had the pleasure of being father to you in person. He sees
more
now. He sees into your
heart
, my Thaybrill. He sees the good in it, the deep desire to be a just king, a wise leader, a father to all of the Iisendom, a
good
man.”

Thaybrill was unable to reply he was so moved at the Archbishop’s words.

“I
would
say,” continued Nellist, “let my interpreters study his star, let them divine his mood and intentions for you. But I can tell you already what they will say... your father would like nothing more than to allow you to seek your own happiness, but your obligation to your kingdom comes first. If there was a way around this, I’m sure your father would allow it. But you, young prince, are the heir. You are to be the one sitting in the sole chair that occupies the Throne Hall. All other wishes and desires must give way before that sacred charge.”

Thaybrill took the old man’s hand in his and said, “Thank you again, Nellist. You give me a strength I find hard to rally in myself alone.”

“We all need those we can rely on, Sire.”

“What were your own mother and father like, Nellist?” asked Thaybrill.

“Ahh... you take an old man’s mind back to people he has spent far more time with in the night sky than here in the world below. My father was an extremely strict and religious man, Thaybrill, and not much given to laughter or companionship. He was the one that pushed me into the priesthood at a young age. In his view, time here below was for the sole purpose of preparing yourself for the nighting, and that time wasn’t to be wasted on frivolous and worldly pursuits. He constantly warned that one never would have enough time to prove oneself worthy of a place in the sky, so every moment must be devoted to that goal. I now lead the entire church of Iisen, and I see his point of view, even as I disagree with it after a certain point. You have a life here, in this world, to live, so live it. It is precisely how you live that life, frivolous as it might be sometimes, that proves your worthiness to ascend to the firmament upon your death.”

Thaybrill nodded and felt quite glad he had not been the son of such a man, although Krayell seemed to share a certain philosophical similarity to the Archbishop’s father in that he warned there would never be time enough for Thaybrill to learn to be a good king.

“My mother was quite kind and loving, even as she was obedient and obeyed my father. Were it not for her heart tempering the strictness of my father, I think I would have turned out exactly like him,” said Nellist.

“Your father sounds as strict as the Domo Regent.”

The Archbishop laughed and said, “Quite!”

“I often get the feeling that Krayell does not like me, and that is really what drives his choler towards me,” admitted Thaybrill meekly.

“I am sure the Domo Regent is simply taking his role of preparing you for the throne very seriously. Perhaps too seriously sometimes,” suggested Nellist.

“Yes, I suppose,” said Thaybrill. “It does not always feel like that, but I suppose you’re right.”

Together, they watched a flock of geese fly by, making their way around Kitemount towards the bogs and ponds of the southern Ghellerweald to roost for the night. Throughout the grounds of the Folly, attendants were lighting torches in the dusk. The same could be seen beyond the Folly in the Bonedown and the King’s Market, too.

“Archbishop, is it wrong of me, so close to my coronation,” asked Thaybrill, “to have doubts about my abilities and my readiness for the crown?”

Nellist patted his hand on top of the prince’s. He said with a gleam in his eye, “Your Highness, it is precisely because you doubt, because you wish more for this kingdom than you feel like you are capable of giving, that I rest more easily for all of Iisen at night.”

Thaybrill accepted this even as he still worried a little that he would not prove good enough.

“Come, Sire,” said the Archbishop as he led Thaybrill to the turret at the far side of the tower. “If you would indulge an old dodderer and assist me down the steps so I do not break my neck and become a dim light in the sky this very night, we can have some supper.”

When he could no longer tolerate sitting still in the chair and staring at the embers of the fire, Gully stood and began to pace back and forth.

Even safe in Roald’s apartment, in front of a familiar hearth, he felt bone cold at the memory of what he had seen, the evil men he had escaped. Even out of harm’s way, to think of such powerful people in Iisen committing such vicious and execrable crimes made him feel helpless and afraid, something he had felt only one other time in his life. Was it a given fact of life that one class of people would abuse and callously exploit another class, the only difference between the two being the power one class was born into? The injustice of it all felt to Gully like one of the bogs of the wood, inexorably sucking him down into the earth to suffocate him without pity or mercy.

His thoughts tried to pull him to a specific and horrifying conclusion, but he forced his mind onto the peddler Brohnish and his daughter Luessa, who had gone missing four years ago, instead. The weight of knowing, with almost dead certainty, what her fate had been and that she might yet still be alive, was a great stone crushing the breath out of his chest.

The previous night that he had spent back in his cabin had been terrifying. Every sound he heard outside its walls were men coming to cut his tongue out with a hot knife, to reduce him to an animal for sale to a cruel people in a strange land. The night prior to that, frozen in place in the thicket of buckthorn, afraid that any movement or noise would give his position away had been even worse. Leaving the Ghellerweald, he had avoided the road entirely, instead picking his way parallel to it, slowly and carefully. But it had given him time to resolve his next step.

And so he now waited for Roald to arrive home.

He forced himself to sit back down in the chair, avoiding the worst thoughts of all, the thoughts that made it hard to breathe, and refused to give them any form at all in his mind no matter how much they screamed at him.

Thirty minutes later, the sound of a boot on the step outside the door caused him to start and leap up from his chair. Roald barely had time to set his foot inside the door and grin at the unexpected sight of his brother when the words began spilling out of Gully.

“Roald! It’s people! And they’re trading them and the Maqarans are a part of all of this and powerful people in Iisen are profiting—” spouted Gully.

Roald stood back at the maelstrom of words before he interrupted him, saying, “Gully? What in the blazing dawn? You speak as if words were angry hornets! Slow down! I didn’t expect you back for another week or so at least.”

It had no effect. Gully continued spewing what sounded like disturbing yet meaningless nonsense, but Roald had glanced over at the table and saw the dagger lying upon it, causing him to no longer hear his brother. He spied the noble crest on the hilt and interrupted him yet again.

“Oh no, Gully!” cried Roald, heartbroken. “You’re stealing from
guards
now? You’re stealing their
weapons
? Will I need to sleep with one eye awake and trained on my coinpurse to keep it safe?”

Gully frowned when he realized Roald had understood none of what he was saying. He scowled and then shouted at him, “Stop! You must listen to me!”

Roald closed his mouth, then gaped at his brother like he didn’t know him anymore. He said, more truly concerned at Gully’s agitation, “What has you so scrambled, Gully? I’ve never seen you so rattled thus before in all our days together! But you must slow down. I can make naught sense of what you’re tripping over yourself to say!”

Gully took a deep breath, closed his eyes and said, “You are right. It’s terrible and I need to pace myself so you can understand.”

Roald began to take his tabard and cuirass off to make himself more comfortable when Gully said, “I know what has happened to all the people who have disappeared! Twenty years and more worth of missing people! I know now!”

Roald stopped, his cuirass still in his hand. He said, utterly incredulous, “You do?”

“Yes! I wish that I did not, but I do! Finish undressing and make yourself comfortable and I’ll tell you how I know.”

Roald finished taking the rest of his swordsman uniform off while Gully filled Roald’s pipe with the Behndish tobacco his brother kept in a pig-leather pouch that hung by the fireplace. When Roald was more comfortable and had seated himself in a chair, Gully handed him his pipe and a tinder stick from the hearth with which to light it. Roald sat on the edge of his chair as he puffed on his pipe a few times, anxious to hear Gully’s tale at a more comprehensible pace.

Gully explained the story of running across the supposed highwaymen in the woods, and their two prisoners. He related freeing the captive men and the chase in the dark woods where he had barely escaped from the two kidnappers, kidnappers that were in veBasstrolle’s Guard unit. He told Roald that these prisoners would have been sold like cattle to the Maqarans.

At the end of the story, an agitated Roald stood from his chair and kneeled next to Gully. He took his hand and said, “This is why I worry that one day I’ll never see you again! Either you’ll be killed in the forest where no one will ever know, or you’ll misstep in the marshes and not be able to pull yourself free, or... or... or be attacked by a wild—”