Just a note.
This chapter contains a depiction of self-harm that readers may find disturbing. I do not endorse the character’s actions; in fact I struggled for a while over whether to post or even write this section at all. Eventually I decided not to shy away from the tragic reality of mental health and self-harm. I tried to approach the subject delicately, but please skip this installment if you need to.
~
The first section of the archives was just down the hall from the general’s office. Tariq walked slowly with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, his feet creaking on the dusty, rotting floorboards, kicking at loose nails. He felt as though his body were dead, and his soul were dragging it down the hall by the collar. He felt heavy; he could hardly move his feet.
His soul dragged him into the library. The general sat cross-legged on a crumbling table peering at a handful of maps through a magnifying glass.
“‘Scuse me, sir,” Tariq mumbled, standing at attention.
Zarael peered at him through his eyeglasses and smiled. “Tariq. Are you done already?”
“Yes, sir. His lordship asks if you will please come back, sir.”
“Of course.” He folded up the maps with a rustle, put them aside, and hopped off the table, which squeaked in protest. “Lead on, Tariq.”
Tariq saluted and turned crisply to march back down the hall. The general walked beside him. Tariq tried not to glance at him; he’d never seen the general in glasses, and it looked both very wrong and very right. Zarael removed the glasses as he walked, and he smiled at Tariq when he caught him sneaking looks. For a horrible moment Tariq thought he would ask what Lord Clade had said—and he couldn’t disobey his general—but he didn’t. The only sound was their footsteps on the creaking floorboards and the whirr of a mechanical fan in a nearby room.
They reentered the office. The general sat down at the desk; Tariq stood at attention near the door.
Zarael and Lord Clade smiled stiffly at each other.
Tariq frowned. He hadn’t sensed any tension between them before.
“Finished already?” the general asked.
“Yes, it went very smoothly, thank you, Alaric.”
There was a moment of stiff silence. Tariq felt the humidity pressing in around him, the air palpably hostile.
I don’t understand...
Lord Clade looked abruptly at Tariq. “You’re dismissed, Private. Go back to your duties.”
“I’d like him to stay here.”
They both looked at Zarael, startled. He was sitting up very straight, his eyes glittering dangerously.
“I beg your pardon?” Clade said.
“I have a few things I’d like to say to him. He stays here.”
“But—”
“Your lordship, with respect,” Tariq said, not meeting Clade’s eyes, “I obey the king first and my general second. I can’t take an order from you if my general overrides it.”
Clade grimaced briefly, but Zarael grinned at Tariq and relaxed. “What you have to say to me you can say in front of him, my lord, he’s very trustworthy,” he said.
Lord Clade rose like a thundercloud.
“I just wanted to thank you for your time,” he said politely. “I will see you later, Alaric?”
“Yes. Good day.”
Clade stalked towards the door. As he reached Tariq, he tried to meet the young soldier’s eyes, but he kept his gaze stoically forward. Clade left, and with the bang of the door the tension faded like a whiff of bad air.
Tariq slowly, cautiously, allowed himself to relax.
“No need to stand over there, lad,” said Zarael. “At ease. Come sit.”
His voice was kind, and Tariq obeyed, bracing himself for whatever else might come.
“I understand that the conversation between you and his lordship was an entirely personal matter, and I won’t ask about it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Tariq said, relieved.
“You look a little pale. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Will you do me a favor? Do you remember those maps I was looking at?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you bring them with you when you go back to training and give them to Captain Thierry? I want him to see them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zarael got up, and Tariq stood too.
“I’m going down there now to let him know that it was me that made you late to training, so he won’t be angry at you. I’ll see you there,” Zarael said. He put a hand on Tariq’s shoulder, met his eyes, and added quietly, “Take as long as you need, Tariq.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Zarael smiled at him and walked quickly out of the room, leaving Tariq bewildered in the ugly little office, saluting too late.
~
Lord Clade brooded in his carriage as he rode back to his estate.
He could still feel the filth, the poverty of that place. It stuck to his fingers, his clothes, his face. He’d known the army was underfunded; he hadn’t really seen it until then. He couldn’t get out of his head the eyes of that young soldier—his son.
So much like Phineas, he thought again. Too much like Phineas. Enough to drive him insane.
He gritted his teeth. He knew he’d said some horrible things. He regretted it—but at the same time he was furious the boy had survived. It made things so complicated now. It hadn’t been so hard to give a screaming, squirming, ugly, disgusting little newborn to a servant with the order to leave it in an alley. It was hard now, to think about killing a boy—a young man—with sad, confused eyes and beautiful hands callused by constant hard work.
He pressed his fists into his eyes. He should have just been stony-hearted, like he had all those years ago. He shouldn’t have given the boy a choice. He should have killed him then and there. Too risky to let him live.
He shook his head and dropped it into his hands. Too late now.
~
Back in the library, Tariq picked up the maps and stood looking absently at them.
He was mystified as to why Zarael hadn’t just taken the maps himself. So strange. What a strange man. Take as much time as you need.
He touched his cheek. It felt cold; his fingers were cold. Was he paler than normal?
He dismissed it, rolled the maps and deposited them in an extra carrier, and left the building. Cool autumn air was a relief, even city air. He tried to walk quickly, but his steps slowed in spite of himself as Clade’s horrible, cutting words caught up with him.
You are the little brat I tried to do away with because I couldn’t have a crippled heir.
You weren’t meant to survive—you must have realized that.
Everyone who’s anyone knows you were stillborn.
You must swear to forget what you’ve learned, or I’ll have to kill you.
Keep silent or disappear.
Why don’t you go fetch him like a good boy?
Tariq gritted his teeth.
If Lord Clade hated him so much—if he was so detestable—if it was so dangerous to let him live—why did the nobleman have to keep him alive? Tell him? It would have been so much easier to simply send an assassin to a tavern late at night and off him under the guise of a bar fight. No one would have asked questions. No one would miss him. Maybe not even notice he was gone.
He jumped into the street to stop a public carriage, gave the driver a coin, and climbed on. A plump lady with a basket of flowers scooched over and a mother moved her squirmy child to her lap to make room for him. Blushing, he squeezed himself in between them with a murmured word of thanks, hugging the map case to his chest. He tried to push away the thoughts, afraid someone in the coach would see it on his face. The carriage started with a tremendous lurch and jostled down the street at a breakneck pace, shaking the passengers around.
The plump lady leaned over on Tariq by accident, nearly crushing him, as they turned a corner. She apologized, saw his uniform, and smiled at him.
“Thank you for your service,” she said, and handed him one of the flowers from her basket. A rare stem of asphodel. The delicate white petals trembled with the movement of the carriage. Tariq took it, mustering a smile.
“Thanks, ma’am.”
He clutched the flower and rubbed his eyes. Kind words almost hurt more than cruel ones. He wondered if she had meant to pick asphodel. She probably just thought it was pretty.
The squirmy child whacked him in the face, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he tucked the flower carefully into the map case for safekeeping.
He stared at his hands the rest of the way, wondering what the nobleman had seen there that had made him look so anguished.
The carriage stopped; the mother and her child got off along with a dour-faced man and a thin teen; Tariq didn’t notice. A few more stops, and more people got on and a few got off. He only noticed when the plump lady got off because she nudged him and said goodbye and told him to take care of himself. He thanked her and realized his stop was next. He scooted up against the window to make room for another passenger.
The coach stopped again, and he got off.
He stood rather dazed by the side of the street for a minute, as if he’d forgotten the direction of the army base or even forgotten where he was supposed to go anyway.
It was beginning to cloud over again. The buildings above him loomed gray and sad, and the people hurrying past about their business were hardly more than shadows.
He turned and left the city.
The south and west sides of the city were developed into villages and farmland, relatively prosperous; on the north side ran the Nor River, so to the north was bustling harbor town; but to the east side, where the army base lay, was the slums.
Toragon’s ninth sector, a notoriously bad neighborhood, was the only part of the inner city that could rival the slums in poverty. And the slums were the place Tariq felt most at home. The slums were the place he went to get a drink late at night. He’d gotten his ears pierced multiple times in the slums, despite the danger of infection.
In the slums, the people were sullen and silent: no one spoke unless absolutely necessary, no one made eye contact, no one minded anyone’s business but their own. The houses were small, made of clay and scrap metal and wood haphazardly nailed together, placed randomly with no effort to make tidy rows. People built new shacks all the time, and all the time tore them down. Likewise, aspiring businessmen set up new shops time and time again, and time and time again those shops went out of business. Only the tavern stayed, because everyone used it.
There were no streets, only the winding maze of alleys formed by the spaces between buildings. The ground was packed, rocky dirt, infested with weeds that grabbed at your ankles and tripped you. Countless dirty children played meaningless games in the alleys until a stranger came past; then they would silently disappear into hidden doors.
Tariq, who didn’t like anything, liked the slums.
He liked kicking rocks in the maze of alleys, watching the children play and sometimes joining them. Before he’d been recruited to ESAIC and lost all his free time, he’d spent hours sitting unnoticed on trash piles or flimsy rooftops, black with soot. No one cared, no one kicked him out. He liked it there.
Now, he decided to take the general up on his offer to take as much time as he needed, whatever that meant. He wanted to think some more. He didn’t feel like going back to base now, where no one minded their own business and everything was fuss and bother and commotion.
He kicked rocks all the way to an alley that was deserted and sat down against a pile of homemade bricks with the map carrier across his lap.
Tipping his head back, he looked up at a single small patch of blue sky between the dirty walls overhead.
You are the little brat I tried to do away with because I couldn’t have a crippled heir.
He bit his lip. Him, a lord’s son—a lord’s unwanted son.
Ridiculous, just ridiculous. He kicked a rock.
He opened the map carrier and stuck his hand in to feel for the stem of asphodel. He took it out and looked at it. It was wilting, but still fragrant. He thought of the plump, smiling lady on the coach. He thought of Zarael, always smiling. He thought of Torrin, always smiling. He thought of Lord Clade smiling. Everyone was always smiling. It was so annoying.
He kicked another rock.
He hadn’t brought his weapons, but what the commander who had fetched him earlier that afternoon hadn’t realized was that all the ESAIC recruits kept a knife in their boot. He could feel it against his ankle now. He had a sudden urge to cut things, so he took it out and cut things. He cut the weeds within reach, whapping off stems like heads and trimming down the tattered leaves. His dirty fingernails were already short, but he pared them shorter and dug out all the grime from underneath them. He carved a pattern in the hard dirt below him.
He sighed. There were other things he wanted to cut, but he had to get the maps to Zarael. He stood up reluctantly, put away the flower and the knife, and walked slowly down the alley.
~
Thierry and Zarael sat outside the gym waiting for the recruits to come back from their afternoon training. A bit of a wind had come up, and it was getting chillier.
“Tariq’s taking his sweet time,” Thierry growled finally.
“I told him to take as much time as he needed. I don’t know what Clade told him, but he looked awfully sick. I have a feeling it was bad news. Though I don’t know what news the prime minister could have for…a kid he’s never met.”
“You’re awfully concerned about this kid. What’s the deal with him, anyway? He’s just another soldier. A smart one, but a lot of them are smart. There’s definitely a lot of boys here much more brilliant than him.”
“He’s the only one left of those children…so many of them died…”
Zarael scowled and buried his head in his hands.
“I sometimes wish I weren’t general. I wasn’t meant to be important, I honestly only ever wanted to have a family and a normal life. But I am glad, too, because I can make sure nothing like that ever happens again. And Tariq’s the last of them, and I feel as though I’m…almost making up for it if I make him happy.” He paused, pensive. “I hope…I hope Clade hasn’t ruined the little progress I think I’ve made.”
Thierry was silent for a minute.
“Putting him in the Elite Corps was a good idea,” he offered, trying to be helpful. “He seems to like it.”
“Damn him!” Zarael burst out with such a fury that Thierry jumped, alarmed.
“Eh? Tariq?”
“No-o-o, you fool, damn Kieran Clade!” The general had been still wrapped in his thoughts and hadn’t even heard what Thierry had said. “I hate that man. He’s so—so wasteful.”
“Deep breath,” Thierry said wryly.
Zarael looked at him.
“Clade’s none of your or my concern,” said Thierry. “My question right now is, what’s the deal with Tariq? Yes, you told him to take his time, but he’s been gone for a long time now.”
Zarael hesitated. “Maybe he needed a lot of time.”
“From what I’ve seen of him, he’s not a very emotional young fellow.”
“Then he should be fine…right?”
They frowned at each other, wondering if they should go look for him.
~
Tariq was fine—at least that was what he was telling himself as he dragged his feet through the slums slowly, slowly back towards base. He was fine. Clade had just felt obligated to tell him, that was all, and he would have felt guilty killing his son.
Tariq told himself it was all fine, but it wasn’t adding up. He wasn’t satisfied with the answers he was giving himself.
He’d almost reached the edge of the slums when an answer more obvious and logical than any other he’d come up with occurred to him. Clade had discovered he was alive, decided it would be too awkward and messy to have him killed, and come up with some way to use him.
It made perfect sense. And Tariq suddenly felt rage even hotter than he’d felt in Clade’s presence boil up inside of him.
He didn’t care how rich or powerful Clade was—how dare that man presume to use him! Yes, he, Tariq, was nothing, but there was a little pride left in him still, and he would not be used. And he would do anything, powerless as he was, to avoid it.
He turned around and headed back into the slums. There was a man—he didn’t know the name—but this old man always sat in the same spot, in front of a wooden shack covered in peeling, garish yellow paint, every day, all day, smoking his pipe and watching the people who passed. He knew Tariq by sight since Tariq had spent so much time in the slums the past couple years, and he would know Zarael by sight since the general passed between the base and the city at least twice every day.
Just as he’d expected, the man was there, slumped against the wall where he always sat. Tariq came up to him and greeted him, a bit shyly.
The man squinted up at him, as if it was sunny, though it wasn’t sunny anymore.
“Hi there, kid. What can I do for ya?”
“You know the general who comes through here every day, several times a day?”
“The smiley one with his hair in a pony-tail, like?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Ya, I know ‘im, kid.”
“I was supposed to deliver these maps to him, but I’m not able to now. Will you please give them to him next time he comes by?”
“Sure I can, kid.”
Tariq gave the man the map carrier, and the man laid it carefully by the wall. Tariq held out his last coin.
“No thanks, kid.”
“I don’t need it anymore,” Tariq whispered, and the man accepted the coin.
That was another thing about people in the slums. They didn’t take money easily.
Tariq thanked the man and slipped off again into the nearest alley.
~
Zarael and Thierry had decided that, although Tariq had a heart as hard as a rock and was probably just dawdling scatter-brained as he often did, they had better play it safe and go look for him. So hardly a quarter of an hour after their conversation, they were heading on horseback into the slums, wondering which alleys to check first or if they should go straight through to the city.
Dusk was coming on at that point, though it was only around suppertime. It came earlier every night. The lowering sun threw odd gold-and-blue shadows around the narrow streets and over the closed faces of the people who shut themselves away from sight as the two horses and their riders passed through, single file. The alleys they passed faded into dimness, their ends hidden in gloom.
The man sitting by the yellow shack was there so much that he was as much a part of the slum landscape to the two officers as the alleys and the rotting weeds. They didn’t give him a second glance as they rode by, not even as he silently held up a map case to Zarael as he passed. They left him sitting there, chewing on the stem of his pipe and grinning at their middle-class stupidity.
But he couldn’t just sit there and laugh; the soldier boy had given him a job and by hell or high water he’d get it done. He stood up and called out to the officers before they disappeared into the growing dark.
“Ho there!”
Startled, Thierry reined in his horse and dismounted, and Zarael followed suit.
The man sat down again, holding forth the map case. “This be for you, master general.”
Zarael came forward cautiously and took the map case, an odd feeling growing within him. “Who’s it from?”
As the man explained, he opened the case and squatted to shake the contents out onto the ground. Thierry went to tie the horses’ reins to a nearby rail.
The man said, “It was given me by the blonde soldier boy who used to play here all the time. The one who always be dirty and never smiles. He told me to give it you.”
Zarael looked down at the two maps he’d requested Tariq bring to him, as an excuse to give the boy some time to himself. There was something else there, too. He picked it up and squinted at it, wishing for his spectacles, which he’d left behind in his office.
A sad, wilted sprig of asphodel.
He set it down carefully and gathered the maps back into their carrier.
“Sir,” Thierry said. “It seems Private Wahidan’s gone AWOL.”
Zarael stood up and stowed the map carrier in his saddlebag. He didn’t appear to be listening.
“Sir,” Thierry repeated. The man leaned back against the ugly yellow wall behind him and smoked impassively.
The general scowled to himself.
He rounded on the man then, his voice savage with worry. “Where did he go?”
The man settled further down against the wall, taking a leisurely pull at his pipe before he answered. “Went off that way.” He jerked his thumb at one of the nearby alleys. “Seemed in a hurry. Prob’ly deserting. Good for him, says I,” he added in a lower voice.
Thierry scowled. “Mind yourself.”
The man shrugged, unfazed. “Don’t mind me. I’m just sayin, that boy been slavin’ for you lot for a disgraceful long time. I seen him. Too young, even now. Child like that shouldn’t be holdin’ a sword or a gun. Bloody shame,” he said, looking Zarael straight in the eyes. The general flinched. Thierry put a hand on his shoulder.
“We should look for him,” he said in a low voice.
The man took out his pipe and spat at their feet, making the horses whicker and shy away anxiously. “Go ahead, drag him back. Punish him real good. Make sure he never even thinks of helpin’ hisself again.”
“No,” Zarael said hoarsely. “I just want to make sure he isn’t hurt.”
Thierry dragged him away. “Leave it, sir. Let’s go. The horses can stay here for now, they’ll be fine.”
As they went down the alley the man had pointed out, Zarael couldn’t stop looking back at the man, who sat slumped there smoking his pipe, somehow looking a little older and sadder than before.
“Thierry,” he said. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should discharge the kid.”
“And where would he go?” Thierry snapped. “He hasn’t got a home. He’s never had one. He’d hate you for that. Here, he gets free meals and a roof to sleep under and a salary.”
They’d reached the end of the alley the man had designated, and hesitated before Zarael’s instinct told him to turn right.
“Sir—” Thierry began, but Zarael waved a hand.
“Shut up.”
They continued in silence.
Tariq hadn’t made much of an effort not to be found; he simply hadn’t cared. So it wasn’t long before they did find him, curled up under a pile of crates as if asleep, looking very comfortable and contented except for the dark pool of blood that had spread out around him.
You have done an exceptional job writing this. So much more intrigue as the story unfolds. The interest in seeing what will happen next continues to grow. Can't wait for more!!!!!! Great job!