The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (61 page)

“Perhaps it would be more satisfactory, Strafe,” snapped Gully hotly, “if I made this man your personal valet, bound to your side,
every
moment, waking or not, until the day he died. Would that be punishment enough for him? Would that perchance be more to your liking?”

Strafe’s mouth twisted almost into a snarl at the veiled insult, but he bowed his head. “No, Your Highness.”

“Then we are all agreed,” said Gully. He resolved to find out exactly when Strafe would be returning to his home city of Lonness and then he would have a great feast the day after that.

As the thief was led out, relieved that he would not be hanging in the Bonedown after all, Gully motioned to the Archbishop to approach him.

He whispered to him, “Nellist, find out whom that man’s sister is. If she truly is sick, and I expect that she probably is, I will give an extra contribution to the church. I ask that you make sure that, as a charitable work, the church helps take care of her and sees to her illness, please.”

Nellist nodded with a smile and said, “Certainly, Your Highness.”

“And Nellist,” said Gully as the Archbishop had turned to step back down off the dais, “these two things are completely unrelated to one another, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Nellist chuckled and said, “Quite, Your Majesty!”

~~~~~

The royal orchards occupied a walled section of the city to the immediate north of the Folly. They had started out as one of the original farms when the entire village of Lohrdanwuld resided up on the promontory itself. When the city spread and moved out below, this one section of original farmland was kept, walled in, and became a garden for the use of the royal family. It held vegetable gardens of carrots and radishes and greens, and apple and pear and plum trees, and flower-lined walkways.

Gully had, of course, been in it before. He had even stolen fruit from it on occasion. Unlike those times, this was his first visit to it where all of it legitimately belonged to him.

Gully had wondered if Thaybrill would be willing to accompany him and the patriarch as they strolled through the meandering pathways when he had asked. He had thought that, perhaps, Thaybrill’s abduction would have left a scar that would make him want to avoid the gardens. When he had asked Thaybrill if he would come, Thaybrill had agreed without a second thought. Gully had asked if he had any misgivings about the orchard after what had happened there, and Thaybrill’s response had been that, as long as Gully had his throwing knife with him, what fear of the orchard should he continue to harbor?

It amused Gully that Thaybrill seemed more comforted by the presence of a knife in his boot than in the two wolves that insisted on following along with them, almost overcoming the shadow over his mood for a few seconds.

The three of them had sat on a few benches beneath the plum trees. Wyael had run off through the trees exploring and pretending to be a panther like Aalehvan. He chased after Gallun and Gellen, snarling and gnashing his teeth, while the wolves pretended to be terrified, their tails between their legs.

Throughout their walk to and amongst the gardens, Gully had been more silent than usual. His reticence was enough that Thaybrill finally asked, “My brother, what is it that must be on your mind? You’ve barely spoken while we’ve walked.”

Gully nodded weakly and offered no explanation. As glad as he was to have Thaybrill, the patriarch, Gallun and Gellen, and Wyael with him, he wished Roald had come along as well. The men with him were comforting, but not quite like Roald had always been for him.

Thaybrill watched, hoping for something of more substance than a shrug from his brother, but received nothing else.

“Prince Thaybrill, your brother is bothered by what happened in court today, if I guess correctly,” explained the patriarch, after a moment of the king’s continued silence. He added, “Even though he should not be.”

Thaybrill seemed confused. “I do not understand. By what happened in court today? It seemed to me that everything went smoothly. Gully, you’re handling it like you’ve been doing it for years now. You should be pleased!”

Gully shrugged and said nothing.

The patriarch said to him, “Strafe is playing his hand very openly, Highness, as you’re well aware. He shows no subtlety of art. You should not concern yourself with him.” He added for Thaybrill’s benefit, “He is worried by the maneuverings of veWarrnest.”

“Yes, he is,” said Gully, finally joining the conversation since the patriarch had gotten to the heart of it. “But, as a result of today, I gave him the knife with which now to stab me in the back. I showed weakness with the thief, especially one that acted against a nobleman. In front of all, I’ve shown with whom I stand, and now is when veWarrnest will begin the subtle, hushed campaign against me. I side more with thieves and peasants, and the noble families be damned. At least, that will be the gist of his venom.”

Gully had grown more animated as he explained it. “And on top of that, I sit on a throne and proclaim guilt and decree punishments on someone who is guilty of crimes less than I, myself, have openly admitted to. Who am I to sit in judgment of a man who acted poorly when fate left him few other options? veWarrnest, maybe others, will be less kind in their assessment. He will ask the other nobles, who else will suffer because of the king’s arbitrary application of justice? What other crimes against the nobility will this king overlook because he sides with the peasantry and refuses to face his own crimes?”

“The worst of it is that I feel that, when Strafe begins his murmured accusations, he will have a valid point,” said Gully with a sigh.

“This is preposterous!” exclaimed Thaybrill. “You are not subject to his standard of right and wrong. You are king, not him!”

“I doubt he realizes he is doing this, but he is not holding me to his standard of right and wrong, Thaybrill. He is forcing me to hold myself to my
own
standard. If I expect the thief today to make amends for his crime, then I must somehow make amends for my own. I have ignored my own crimes long enough. I must take my place in irons in front of the throne as the thief today did, at least figuratively.”

The patriarch took Gully’s hand and said, “Saving the throne and saving the Iisendom should count well enough towards that, my young king!”

“Yes, precisely!” agreed Thaybrill.

“But it does not,” said Gully miserably. “I can sense how I am torn in these ways, by everything that is expected of me, and I do not know how to be all these things. I should not be king.”

“But!” said a voice behind them, surprising them all. They turned and saw Wyael looking on the verge of crying at the comment he had overheard. “But... but I like you being king, Gully! You’re a good one!”

Gully forced a half-hearted smile to his face again. He pulled Wyael around to the front of him and sat him upon his lap. Those gathered around him, including Gallun and Gellen now in human form, watched for his response intently.

“Even today, the merchant Allerdaain came begging for indulgences, more favorable terms for borrowing money so he can have leverage over his fellow merchants in Lohrdanwuld. He has the nerve to ask me this in Mariealle’s name! Mariealle would have been horrified at such a request in her name,” said Gully, remembering how he had fought hard to hold his anger in check at the bald audacity of the merchant.

“Ignoring the insulting use of his dead daughter’s memory to curry my favor, I have no idea what is the right answer for something like this. I have no experience in these kinds of dealings. I sent him away, but was that really the right thing to do? It certainly displeased him, and I’m sure he thinks I do not honor Mariealle’s memory after this.”

“As horrible as the Domo Regent was for all the crimes he committed, at least he knew how to run the kingdom,” said Gully softly.

“You misunderstand your position,” said the patriarch emphatically, “and you most
definitely
misunderstand what Iisen needs! Krayell was an administrator. What Iisen needs is a king! This land needs a leader that all will look up to.”

Gully rested his chin on Wyael’s head and said, “Then I have already failed. People are angry and dissatisfied with me and I cannot seem to make them happy. I make decisions and they sit around with their arms crossed, nursing their mugs filled to the rim with mead and grievances.”

“Your Highness,” said the patriarch, “you are not here to please them!
They
follow
your
lead, not the other way around! You cannot lead by pleasing others; you lead by doing right in your own heart and soul.”

Gully sighed and closed his eyes. The patriarch had spoken true. The problem that the patriarch did not recognize was that Gully did not know what was in his heart and soul.

“You must decide on that, and the kingdom will fall in line behind you,” finished the patriarch.

Gully said helplessly, “I no longer know whom I am. I think that there are too many me, patriarch. Di’taro, the Gully Snipe, Bayle, Thayliss... I am drowning in all of these people. I am drowning like a soul at the bottom of the Ouleand Sea.”

Gully fell into a morose silence, holding tightly onto Wyael.

The patriarch cleared his throat and said, “You are right, Your Highness. You are saddled with many expectations. Many identities have been thrust upon you, including by me. The rest of us have a simpler path before us. Ours is largely, but not entirely, determined by our birth and our family. For you, fate has heaped all of these people that you are onto your conscience, and I do not believe it to be coincidence. We have spoken of fate before, and you know my beliefs. I think that many lines of fate have been working for a
very
long time to converge on you this way, Gully... the thief of Iisen. You have seen the problem... it is not to satisfy the petty, daily demands that a line of people thrust at you. It is not to pick which side you prefer in any given meaningless argument. The problem... the
gift
you are given... is to decide
whom you are
. Not whom others want you to be.
You
decide whom you are.”

“Once you decide that, everything else will fall into place,” said the patriarch.

Gully still felt like this was an overwhelming problem. Pick? How could he pick? It wasn’t like walking up to a pear tree and deciding which one was the ripest and choosing it.

“And your choice, so long as it comes freely from inside yourself, will change the world as we have known it for generations back,” added the patriarch.

~~~~~

Over the rolling farmland that stretched out beyond Lohrdanwuld, the twilight of the moongloam began to lessen. The faint halo of sunlight around the trickster moon drifted lower, becoming more pronounced on the bottom rim and less at the top as the sun slipped closer to emerging from below for its final dip into sunset for the day. Indistinct, gray clouds seemed to be gathering in the north, beyond Thayhold and Kelber Peak.

Gully watched from his room’s balcony and guessed that, as Pelaysha slowly sank in the west, it would only be a few more weeks before the bottom of the moon and the western horizon joined. There would be no more moongloams for the year then and there would be only sunset as soon as the sun sank behind the trickster moon.

The conversation that afternoon in the orchards had only served to muddle Gully’s mind even more on the matter. Running the land was difficult enough without the patriarch demanding he lead it as well. He wasn’t sure what that even meant. What else was there besides deciding on these issues that came before him?

Down below, in the inner bailey of the Folly, he saw Thaybrill and Roald walking closely together and talking. It looked like they were going towards the stables next to the Kingdom Guard garrison house, a place that Gully had not frequented because he did not know how to ride a horse and had little inclination to learn.

The sight of the two of them together, Roald gesturing animatedly with his hands and Thaybrill nodding, did little to help Gully’s mood. He did not feel jealous of them, and was quite glad they had each other’s company. He already felt alone, and seeing Roald put his hand in the small of Thaybrill’s back as they walked did little to increase or lessen that feeling. He wondered if he would feel this detached if Mariealle were still alive. It both hurt and felt warm to know that she would have no end of opinions about his current situation.

He heard a noise in his room and saw through the oriel window Gallun and Gellen entering. He shook his head a little at how they refused to leave him for hardly more than a few minutes at a time now. If he had not insisted they start sleeping with him in his bed, he believed they would simply never sleep again, and instead stand watch outside his door until they dropped from the effort.

He waved at them to come out onto the balcony with him, and they did.

When they joined him, they looked like they were about to transform into wolves but Gully asked them to stay in their human form a moment longer.

He asked them, “Is the only reason you refuse to leave my side from some sort of duty to which you feel bound? Is it because I set you free that night, and now you have set for yourself some sort of obligation towards me?”

He paused a moment and the two twin brothers exchanged a quick glance.

Gully continued, “You know I would never demand anything of the sort from you. You owe me nothing and, unlike me, you are free to live any life you wish to live now.”

He expected the usual superficially irritated response from Gellen, but that is not what he got this time.

Gellen gestured all around him, indicating all of the Folly, and then shook his head no. Gellen then pointed at the crystal pendant beneath Gully’s tunic and shook his head no again. Finally, Gellen stepped forward. His dark eyes, which were so normally hard and moody and fierce, were gentle this time. He took Gully’s hand and placed their palms together.

Gully nodded his understanding. They did not do it because he was the king of Iisen. They did not do it because he was the last emperor of a dead empire. They stayed with him because they considered him family.