To Let Things Lie.

[Isvinity 729]

Spoiler

 

 

 

There is movement along the cobbled banks of Cauróst — a cat chirps and stalks the feet of a door that does not open to let it in, before diving sideways into the shadows of a small opening. Aldred rests on his calves on the edge of the wall, perched like a night bird. He has brought them to a quiet part of the city, where the air is crisp with the lightly sweet scent of the Ivorywood and the earthy musk rising off of the lake. Around a corner and behind the city, so unused that rubble still pockets the overgrown bushes. In a couple more years of residency the builders will surely align this place to a presentable effect too, but for now the wild remains, caught in the spray of yellow and orange flowers growing zealously out of the stone wall. 

 

Centuries ago, Aldred might have hid his smile — but he is different now. The both of them are different. He has no reservations in letting Orsina know that he is glad, so very glad, to see her. Relief and happiness at once, so strong as to be almost bittersweet, soft on his face.

 

It is his turn to speak. He hesitates. His niece blinks. Calm, and considering. Exceedingly patient. Anxious, he thinks, somewhere inside, but she weathers it as easily as his sister did.

 

"I hope you’re doing well," he begins. "It seems like it. I was sorry to hear of what happened to you. I am sorry that there was nothing I – that I did nothing." Aldred pauses; it is dusk now, and the rising swell of insects allows him time enough to think on what to say next. "You deserve better than what you’ve endured. It's why I came here. It's why I wrote to you."

 

"Vytrek raised you – that much is clear. I see so much of him in you," Aldred says, politely but abruptly. When Orsina looks at him, a little startled, Aldred takes the opportunity to study her face. Old and young at the same time. He doesn't know what he expected to find, but there is something unsettling in his niece’s scarred eyes that confirms his suspicions.  "And you look a great deal like your mother, too."

 

It hangs for a moment, though Aldred simply continues as though he, too, has no interest in facing the subject head-on.

 

"I know the burden you carry is a heavy one. The expectation to build another princedom atop another craggy hill and rule, as is your birthright."

 

Orsina does not grimace, though the impulse exists. She could, yes. "Maybe," she agrees. "Maybe not. The Drakons have raised the Palatine; many have rallied to their cause. Their plans are narrow-minded, but they are plans all the same — it is more than I can offer our people."

 

She does not argue her own influence. She is her people’s highest authority now. Without the Drakons at her side, vying for her, her people contest her, call her a false ruler, but she understands her uncle’s meaning: beyond all this, in the practical realm, her decisions, and the decisions of those she decides to trust, will move pieces. Put people into positions of authority. People who will then go on to stand on sides as the fight over the princedom’s floorbound corpse begins. Orsina does not shy from her accountability. She knows. But she knows, too, that there is... opportunity here. To let things lie where they have fallen.

 

Her people were decimated. Even if it is possible for the bloodlines to recover, and if they wish to continue their service, if the archons allow them... their losses have been many, and the battles are not over. They will lose many more. There are many more darkspawn now than mali’fenn in the world. Perhaps there always were.

 

Even still, Orsina hides these truths close to her chest as if refusing to believe them herself. She is a fiercely loyal person, guarding the secrets of a much beloved grave. She had asked Aroiia once if she thought she should rebuild it all in accordance to the old ways. And, with a dull sadness, Aroiia had watched her answer cut through the young Tundrak like a sword. Rebuild what, Aelyra?

 

"The Drakons mean well,"Aldred admits, running a hand down his sagging face, "But pride has led their hearts astray. They have always been our greatest soldiers — but soldiers, Orsina, do not make politicians, just as pens do not make poets. And plans are as dreams. They comfort us, but they do not always come true." It is a rephrasing of something he has been told since his earliest memories, now parsed in a gentler way: act, or your life is dictated by those who would do so in your place.

 

Aldred carries on, deep-toned and even. His brows are furrowed with troubled thought. He takes her elbow gently in his hand. Not turning her, but requesting she turn to him.

 

"In pressing you to give up your titles, the Drakons tested your interest. Your commitment and resolve. Do you want that? To have a part in what comes next?" Aldred exhales softly, eyes stormy, unhappy with the question he will have to ask now but also convinced of its necessity. "Would you accept a part, if I asked you to take it? If I asked you to step into your responsibilities — to break the chains of nostalgia and lead us forward into a new era — would you?"

 

His hand shifts its loose hold on her arm, thumb settling apologetically into the tender skin on the inside of the bend of her elbow. She does not often like to be touched, he knows. The bad void of his unfortunate luck is swirling, and he is always drawing others in. But it is the only way. Their people are in need of saving, yes — but it is not a thing one man can do. It is not a thing one man is doing. Their people must save themselves; his niece need only be the guiding force.

 

"I could still run from it. So could you," a simple, balanced answer. Orsina does not know the circumstances under which Aldred chose to leave the princedom, but certainly if she, a child of twenty and four, could have chosen, then Aldred could have chosen, too. "For me, for some time, it was easier to believe that I have not had a choice than to accept that I may have made the wrong one in leaving my destiny behind."

 

Orsina runs her eyes across the horizon of birch trees, holding back the darkening sky. Though she cannot see them she knows they are there, and so the details arrange themselves in her mind without effort. Stillness in wait of the vulgarity of movement. 

 

Not unlike they are now, poised at the edge of a precipice that once crossed cannot be uncrossed.

 

"But here, tonight, it seems we have made our choices yet again."

[Axelu 4333]

In the whispers betwixt the thickets, Orsina's mother - a forlorn and solitary Princess of Tahu'lareh - roamed. She had met with the Drakons, in anonymity, to gauge their ponderances, and to ascertain that the welfare of her only child was secured. What she had discovered was far more hurtful than she had imagined: the Fennic remnants, having forsaken her storied lineage. Patience, however, beckoned her at that moment, as it had so many of her predecessors. Perhaps in time, it, and her friendship with her daughter, would be restored.