The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (25 page)

“I take it you’ve heard that before?” Leah asked when he remained silent. “That’s why you were asking me questions about the Prince of the Veil at the Forum. That’s why you said it was an Imperial title. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Raven said quietly.

There was a knock at the door, and before they could respond it opened.

Tyla came in, accompanied by a slight, balding man, who, upon seeing them, turned bright red and lowered his gaze, looking embarrassed; apparently he hadn’t realized he’d be interrupting.

“Your time is up,” Tyla said, eyeing them sternly. “There are others waiting to see him now.”

“Well … I guess that’s all we needed to hear,” Tomaz said, looking at the other two.

“Yeah,” Leah said, still watching Raven with an unreadable expression, “I suppose so.”

Raven was silent, but he made no protest. His mind was a blank. They were all silent as they left the room, passing by the man who’d come in to take their place, and also silent as they left through the front door, passing a line of people that had begun to queue up outside.

The sun had just risen above the mountains, and they had a good view of the city as it began to stir, coming to life with quick efficiency that belied the season – men and women needed to make final preparations for winter, bringing in any last crops, storing food and firewood.

Raven thought about this all in a distant, distracted way, his thoughts slippery and untenable. They made it all the way back to Tomaz’s cabin without a word. When they arrived, they stopped at the door, and looked at each other.

“I wish we hadn’t gone,” Raven said. He couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. He felt, once again, as if he was never meant to be here. He wasn’t the right person for this, obviously Aemon had been thinking of someone else. Raven’s father maybe, but not him – not after all he had done. He was the Prince of the Imperial prophecy, not the Kindred one.

“Why do you say that?” Tomaz rumbled, looking confused. “We learned that the Talismans can be changed back to Aspects – whatever they are – by using the Raven Talisman; we learned that Aemon was the first bearer of the Raven Talisman, that he stole it from the Empress when he fled south; we know now there are two versions of the same prophecy – the Kindred one says that a Prince of the Veil will save us and bring the Talismans back, and the Imperial one says that the Prince of the Veil will destroy the Kindred and bring about a new age of Empire. All of this is useful to us, all of it can help us move forward.”

“I don’t want to move forward,” Raven said. “I don’t want to choose a prophecy to believe in, I don’t want to be one Prince or another.”

“Well they can’t both be true,” Leah said.

“Obviously,” Tomaz agreed.

“So that means one of them is false,” she continued.

“The Imperial is the one that– ”

“The Kindred one must be – ”

Raven and Leah both stopped speaking and looked at each other.

“The Imperial prophecies are propaganda,” Leah said calmly, “everyone knows that. Even the Most High admit it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, barely holding in his anger and frustration. “True prophecies, those that come through the Eagle Talisman, those that are written down and recorded by the Visigony, they are different. They can’t be faked – that’s the nature of them. They
must
be true.”

“The Eagle lies,” she said harshly, “the prophecy must have been twisted. Geofred is a master of propaganda; you’ve admitted it yourself.”

“The
Kindred
prophecies are propaganda,” Raven retorted. “Everyone knows Exiles lie – you’re born with lies already between your teeth, and you spit them at anything you fear, if you don’t try to kill it first.”

He knew immediately he’d crossed a line. Her face went completely blank, and her green eyes blazed with fury. She took a step forward, and for a moment he thought she was going to strike him, but she didn’t. She stared at him, lips pulled back in a snarl of disgust and then, pulling herself back with visible effort, she turned and left, her midnight black hair swirling behind her.

For a long time, Tomaz and Raven stood there, watching where she’d disappeared down the dirt path and into the trees.

“I don’t think I need to tell you that was unnecessary,” Tomaz rumbled, and Raven cringed against his will. The big man was right; he wasn’t angry at the girl, he was angry at … he was angry at everything
besides
the girl.

“I know,” he mumbled. “I know.”

Tomaz didn’t say anything else for a time, until he turned and opened the door to the cabin.

“Come inside and eat,” he rumbled. “And think twice about speaking to me like that – I’m not above dunking you in another barrel of water until you relearn those lessons about manners.”

Raven went inside, his heart heavy.

The following weeks were full of many things, but notably absent of Leah. She and Raven seemed to have decided on a mutual no-talking agreement until they had both had time to cool off. So, for a few weeks Raven’s world consisted only of Tomaz and the forest that encompassed Vale.

At first Raven just lived. He stayed out of the city, away from any Kindred, and went day-to-day, moment-to-moment, trying not to think about what Iliad had told them, trying not to think about anything. That wasn’t his life anymore – he didn’t want to be a Prince. He’d renounced his claim to his Mother’s throne, he’d turned down Autmaran’s nomination, he felt entitled to a life without demands. He was just another person. Ordinary. No one of importance. He liked this life Tomaz lived. He would live it too.

What about the Children?

“What about them?” He retorted out loud.

“What?” Tomaz rumbled.

“Nothing.”

But the voice didn’t find this argument convincing.

They won’t be idle. I killed Ramael and they know it. Mother knows we have the Ox Talisman and She must want it back. There are still Seekers hidden in Veil, there is still the chance of an attack, there might even be some way –

He needed something to do to distract his mind.

“Tomaz,” he said, “it occurs to me that you probably don’t want me sleeping on your couch for the rest of my time here.”

“It’s only now occurring to you?” The giant rumbled, looking put-upon.

“All right,” Raven said, “if you’re so eager to get rid of me, then help me build my own cabin.”

Tomaz dropped his amused airs.

“You know I was joking?” He asked.

“Yes,” Raven confirmed.

“You can stay with me as long as you need to.”

“I know, and I thank you for that. But I remember we talked about it and I think I would like a cabin of my own. And I know we’re friends, but you can’t really want to spend
all
of your time with me. If you do, then we need to have a different kind of conversation.”

Tomaz laughed, causing Raven to smile. It was the first smile he’d had in a while, and he was grateful for it.

And so they set about building a cabin. Raven had already selected a spot, a place surrounded by white rocks and pine trees, up beyond the giant’s cabin on a ridge that overlooked the city, and Tomaz took the time to help him go about it properly.

A surprising amount of planning went into the project. Apparently they needed actual drawn out plans that detailed height and weight and quantity. Raven had just assumed you did it as you went; an assumption he kept to himself when they got underway and he saw how much meticulous detail actually went into such a project.

He also realized that this kind of thing was not something that normally went so fast. It was only due to Tomaz’s boundless strength and good humor that the project progressed so quickly. Wielding his huge woodsman’s ax and belt of tools – containing scrapers, hammers, and a variety of other implements that did everything from cut round pegs to drill square holes – Tomaz quickly showed himself to be a master carpenter. Raven realized by the end of it all that while he’d certainly never thought of Tomaz as stupid, he’d also never thought of him as smart; Leah was the brains of the outfit and Tomaz was the first to say it. But now, in the midst of all this, Raven felt incredibly guilty for judging him so. The big man may not know anything about trade ledgers or civil law, but he knew more than Raven ever could about all manner of craftsmanship and forestry. The ex-BladeMaster was practically built for this kind of work, and he attacked it with a skill that elevated it to an art form.

And so as the weeks progressed, Raven began to pay more attention to his friend, who he seemed to have started taking for granted. The first thing he noticed was Tomaz’s eating habits; he was astonished by what he saw. First, as Leah had pointed out, the big man ate no bread nor grain of any kind.

He did, however, eat
everything
else.

There was no animal, plant, nut, seed, insect, fruit, or furry woodland creature that he deemed either too disgusting or too sacred to eat. And not just that, Tomaz ate
every
part of the creature. The internal organs were boiled down into a soup-like substance that turned out to be gravy – at which point Raven realized he really had no idea where most of the food he’d eaten all of his life truly came from – and also preserved feet, bones, cartilage, knuckles, tendons, beaks, and so forth, cooking half of them into a thing he called “bone broth” and boiling the other half at a different temperature to make, of all things, glue.

In fact, the big man wielded a cooking knife with just as much dexterity as he did his greatsword, and while most of the process was disgusting, the end result was almost sinfully decadent. Tomaz used large pads of butter or animal fat to grease his pans, and more often then not ate a whole dozen eggs with three or four slices of bacon as a “light” breakfast, skipped lunch entirely, and then ate a few pounds of meat each evening with a huge helping of freshly cut greens, peppers shaped like bells, tomatoes the size of Raven’s fist, sweet multi-hued apples, walnuts, cheese and anything else he had managed to store away or else collect from the modest garden behind his house.

“Gotta use all of these up,” Tomaz would tell Raven about this or that herb. “By tomorrow they’ll all be gone.”

And true enough, the next day snow fell. Not heavy enough to stop them in their cabin building pursuits, but certainly enough to kill most of what was growing in the giant’s garden.

“Your powers of weather prediction may border on the occult,” Raven said to the big man, wonder in his voice.

“No powers necessary,” the big man replied, trying to hide a smug smile. “I may have extra strength from the Talisman, but I’ve been able to tell the weather for years now.”

“Can you teach me?” Asked Raven. The way he’d spoken must have shown he was doubtful of the proposition; after all, he had asked the same question many times before during the cabin-building and had failed to grasp many of the concepts.

“Actually,” Tomaz said, “I think you may end up being better at this than I am from what you’ve told me about your Talisman.”

“Interesting,” Raven said, genuinely curious. “How so?”

“I’ll tell you,” Tomaz said, “but before I do, you spend another hour teaching me to use the Ox Talisman.”

Raven hesitated for a moment, and then mentally kicked himself for doing so. Of course he would help – there was no down side to Tomaz learning how to better channel the powers of the Ox Talisman; it would help both build the cabin, and keep the big man safe once the snow thawed and the Pass was opened.

He quickly agreed and they went about it once again, sitting opposite one another and focusing in on their breathing. They hadn’t made much progress yet; for Raven the whole thing was second nature, and it had taken some time to boil it down to the necessary parts. It was like trying to teach someone how to breathe – it was something that came so naturally now that it was hard to explain. It was something he did every day, usually unconsciously when he was around people or passing through a crowd. Usually nothing life-shaking occurred as a result: it was difficult to touch most people’s lives, simply because they weren’t very important and so left little impact on the world. But every so often Raven would be looking at someone and suddenly the sound of a forge hammer was ringing in his ears, the smell of painted walls was wafting through his nose, and he’d realize he was reaching through the Talisman. More than that, the Talisman heightened what he saw and experienced – a thousand details were constantly pressing in on his eyes, his ears, his skin, his tongue, every second he was connected to the Raven.

And it turned out that it was this that made it easier for him to predict the weather. Tomaz taught him how to feel the humidity of the air, to gauge the speed and intensity of the wind, to read cloud patterns, and so forth. And when he was connected to the Raven Talisman, seeing all of the little, mindless details of the world, these tasks were almost laughably simple.

But for Tomaz, it was all new. And what was more, the Ox Talisman just didn’t seem to work right – the big man said he felt stronger than he ever had before, but only in strange, irregular fits and spurts. At times he was able to perform incredible feats of strength, but then when they tried to repeat the process, nothing happened. They tried everything – placing him in a dangerous situation, running him almost to exhaustion, putting a weapon in his hands, but nothing seemed to work.

“Do you think something happened to it when it got transferred to me?” Tomaz asked one night as they ate their dinner. Fresh venison, Raven’s favorite.

“Can’t be,” Raven responded. “It’s worked before. I mean it’s an Aspect now, but that shouldn’t fundamentally change what it does. And we know it worked that one time outside Roarke, when you were running me to the others.”

“But not since then,” Tomaz insisted.

“It’s possible that something happened,” Raven said, reluctantly, seeing that the big man was trying to lower his expectations so as to not be disappointed. Raven was determined to help him make it work though; he owed him that much at least.

Just before the first true snowfall of winter, they finished the cabin. It was small, just a bedroom, a sitting room with a fireplace, and a small kitchen, but it was Raven’s and they celebrated with a huge feast that night. Raven was glad to have a place of his own, and he felt proud of it, but once Tomaz had left for the night and he’d cleared away the dishes and stored the left-over food, a sense of lonely melancholy descended on him, and the lingering feeling of fear came back to him as he thought about what the other Children could be doing right now. Were they marching on Roarke at this very moment? Were they gathering an army?

But finally he was able to put these thoughts away, and when he woke they were once again far from his mind.

Now that the cabin was complete, Tomaz began to encourage him to go into town on errands, asking him to get this thing or that thing, helping Raven come to understand the layout of the city. Where the blacksmiths were, where the Tailor Quarter was, which areas were residences, and so on. It was helpful, and Raven’s worries about his brothers and sisters, about the Empire, faded.

It was as if a whole new world had been opened to him. All of his life had been geared toward politics in the knowledge that eventually he would be called upon to help run the government of the Empire. Since his infancy he had been told that one day he would hold people’s lives in his hands, and their well-being would be his responsibility.

And now … the only responsibility he had was for his own life. With the help of Tomaz he wanted for very little in terms of food, and with the completion of his cabin, he was enjoying true solitude for the first time in his life.

And then he ran into the one person he’d been hoping to avoid.

“Hello! Raven!”

Raven, who had been leading Tomaz’s horse Mary through the streets back from the big man’s favorite blacksmith with an order of repaired equipment, turned to look for who had called his name.

It was Henri Perci, moving toward him through a crowd of Kindred, his long golden hair blowing in the wind, tight black-and-green military uniform immaculately pressed. He looked the perfect image of a Prince. Raven, who was dressed in some of Tomaz’s old woodsman’s clothing that had been severely taken in, looked downright shabby by comparison. For the first time in a long time, Raven wished he were wearing his ceremonial Imperial robes. Damned uncomfortable, but they made him look like the Ruler of the World with their jewels and gold stitching.

“Henri Perci,” he said when the man was within speaking distance of him, not knowing what else to say. The man was smiling his huge, handsome smile.

That was strange – Perci was
smiling
at him?