Chapter Text
When it happened, Leon had already been with the prince commander for months: Joaquin d’Albert, of the d’Alberts of Fortun, whose shield was silver with a blue saltire and a panther’s head cut off at the neck, spitting fire. The prince commander of Valtierra, master of every soul inside and outside its walls.
It wasn’t by choice that he’d ended up in Valtierra. Choice was a luxury his people, in their remote mountain capital and the villages scattered at the mountains’ root, did not enjoy.
In Arcasia, at the borders of Fortun, they were left to their own devices: their clan lords, their rituals, their olive groves and herds - their insignificant lives, provided. Provided they observed the laws of fealty which bound them to the masters of Valtierra: pay in gold, give up part of the crops, send horses and herds, send gold and children to fight for Valtierra.
Leon had been one of those children, taken at fourteen, with nothing to distinguish him from the rest, not until he’d shot up in a growth spurt that left him a head taller than his fellows. Then came guard duty, and the discovery of his sword hand. That a lanky, awkward highlander should show such prowess was a revelation to his masters, and a shock to Leon himself.
He had been resigned to his fate. He knew it was the price for the relative welfare of his people back home — his parents and siblings, his kin. Lacking the powerless anger and defiance that marked so many of his peers in their dealings with the Valtierrans, Leon moved quickly through training. He was a shaman’s son, raised in the practice of order and duty. He neither longed to die nor to see another taken in his place. Early on he decided to obey, to make what life he could from this land so different from the green hills of home, barren and crushing in its vastness.
He had grown up on the stories his people told, the ones his father insisted were not stories but history: of the lords with their pale skin and clear eyes, so different from the bronze shades of the locals, the warm tones of Leon himself. Of betrayal. They had come under false pretence only to take, had settled as rulers of the conquered land, adopting local names and the local tongue. The battles had been gruesome, leaving behind grey fields of bones still uncovered now and then between the hills. The tales spoke of curses unleashed there, of beasts fighting on the foreigners’ side, of Arcasian shamans bleeding the earth red and thick.
The stories travelled with the tributes to Valtierra, whispered around campfires. Tales of cruelty and sacrilege behind the veneer of propriety; of demons and foul magic and tainted blood. Of shrilling cries in the night, of bodies changing shape, of claws and fangs and torn flesh, of people vanishing, never seen again.
Leon had never dwelt on them. He took them as they were: his people’s knowledge, and therefore carrying some core of truth. Like everyone else, he tucked his thumb beneath his fingers, made the fist meant to ward off evil, touched the iron arrowhead he wore around his neck. He hoped never to face such things. He kept his head down, grinding his teeth, and kept his distance from the lords.
And then, after countless brutal training bouts — always watched, as Leon later understood — he had been chosen. Chosen to serve the master himself, tearing away what little peace he had found in surrender. On the road to the palace he found the arrowhead a poor ward against the terror in his gut.
The prince commander looked no demon. He looked a young man not far from Leon’s own age. His sleeveless white shirt blazed in the Valtierran sun, his fair skin burnished gold. Leon kept his eyes on the tiles. The lord’s green ones flicked over him and dismissed him in two words, flat and without inflection:
“He’ll do.”
So Leon stood guard at the door, sleeping and eating at its side. He followed the lord on his rides, stumbling through court protocol like a bear aping a cat. He stood behind the council chair, turned lovers out before dawn, cleared away untouched trays when the master shut himself inside dark moods. He sometimes wondered whose eyes watched him in turn, but never looked away from the door long enough to find out.
He allowed himself no opinion of the master. The fear remained, duller but lodged deep, his free hand often curling into a fist. In the end it wasn’t fear that undid him, but what came after: hate.
**
Long blade in hand, Leon kept guard in the terrible afternoon heat. The lord had gone hunting with his falcons and his guest from across the sea, the lord Henri from Albretain, who shared both his name and his blood: Leon followed, wordless as always, the shadow to the princes's steps.
He had grown used to being a shadow. Shadows drew no notice. Yet everyone knew: a shadow could not be brushed aside. To lay a hand on the guard was to trespass against the prince himself.
The guest shattered that order, striding for the tent as though Leon weren’t there. Rich silks shimmered like ice under the desert sun. Leon shifted, body tightening, hand set firm on his hilt. He did not speak — it was not his place — but stepped in the man’s way, gaze fixed on the horizon where the sky met the mountains.
The foreign noble measured him, silver flashing, and laughed — a brief sound that curdled into contempt.
“Move, guard.”
“I have orders, my lord,” Leon said, quiet, respectful. When the man moved again, Leon mirrored him, chest squared.
“Are you mad, dog?”
“I’m whatever the prince commander needs me to be,” Leon answered, because reply was expected. He dug his heels into the earth.
The noble’s laugh cut sharper. “Convenient. Insolent, too.”
The backhand cracked across Leon’s face. He tasted blood, the thrum of drums deep in his bones. For a heartbeat he could not believe it — nobody laid hands on the prince’s guard. Nobody touched the prince. Then instinct overtook disbelief, and he leapt. Cries of alarm blurred at the edge of hearing. Leon froze in his lunge, knees bent, blade pressed to the foreign lord’s throat.
“Don’t,” he said, voice low and shaking with fury. “Do not, my lord.”
Terror glazed the noble’s eyes. His hand fell from his hilt. Behind Leon, silence swallowed the camp. He knew the cause before he turned his head.
“Leon.”
The prince commander stood in the tent’s doorway, eyes dark and intent like a hunting cat.
“Fall back.”
Leon obeyed, blade lowering. No further orders came. Joaquin stepped to his guest.
“Satisfied, Henri?”
Still pale, the foreign lord sneered. “You took your time.”
“You took liberties.”
“Your beast is dangerous.”
“He’s tame enough.”
“You’re overconfident.” Henri vanished into the tent with him.
Left outside, Leon resumed his guard. He hadn’t meant to overhear, but the words were spoken as if he were furniture. A dog. He felt the welt on his cheek burn. The rest of him was numb.
That evening, for the first time since his appointment, he was ordered away from the door.
The barracks met him with silence. Men he had trained beside since boyhood slipped aside, eyes falling away. He was marked, a target for the prince's ire. Perhaps he had been marked from the day he was chosen, simply for doing his duty too well.
He found an empty bed. The blanket was thin, the breathing of others unbearable, but still it felt lavish after nights on pallets. He could not rest. He tossed, pulled the blanket high, pushed it away again, suffocating. Even the moonlight through the tent slit seemed wrong: a reddish half-moon, too close to earth.
Each time he closed his eyes the day replayed: Henri’s laughter, the sting of his blow, the edge of Leon’s sword at his throat. In that moment Leon had known his hopes for a future were forfeit. Perhaps he should have pressed on. Perhaps he would have, if Henri had drawn. To prove that conquerors’ blood ran red and copper like anyone’s. Rust-red like the moon’s halo. Scarlet like the fevers that had nearly taken him as a child.
Sweat drenched him, then chills. His throat was parched. Colours swam at the edge of sight — copper, scarlet, rust — until they blazed too near, unbearably bright. Vertigo struck, shaking him to the core. Then came darkness, red and liquid, and through it a fitful sleep full of terrors without shape. For the first time in twelve years, Leon did not hear the alarm bells.
Leon woke up to Ager, the old army surgeon looming over him, a frown of concern twisting his features when he threw his feet over the side of the bed.
“Wait, not so fast! How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” He halted his movement, assessing his state. A tad dizzy, but his thoughts were starting to draw home. He sat up. “Why are you here?”
“Why am I here?” The surgeon let out a disbelieving laugh. “Why am I ever here, boy? I had to patch you up. You’ve been out cold for two full days.”
Confused, Leon took in his surroundings. He was no longer in his bed, but in what he distinctly recognised as the surgery.
“What happened?”
“Desert fever. Must’ve been building for a while, and then it hit you. It was bad, Leon, you scared me. Did you feel tired these days? Had trouble breathing? Muscle pains?”
“I thought it was nothing,” Leon said. It was often hard to breathe in the desert, and some part of him always ached under duty. He explained as much, and the surgeon nodded. He sat through the examination, jaw tight, letting Ager poke and prod. He felt weak, though he tried not to admit it, even to himself.
“Let’s see how you’re faring now.”
He sat through the surgeon’s examination, clenched his teeth, and let the man position him and poke at him. He felt fine, if a little weak, but that may have been the hunger. He said as much once the surgeon declared himself satisfied.
“Go clean up then. Change. You’ll make it in time for lunch. I’d say keep out of trouble, but it’s already too late.”
Leon smiled a small smile and pulled his worn-out shirt over his head. It went easily — something was amiss. He touched his hand to his neck and glanced down. Red, tender marks stood where the arrowhead used to be.
“Ager—”
“Looking for this?”
The surgeon held out the leather cord for him to see. “I took it off you. You were thrashing about, and that thing is sharp.”
“Thank you.” Leon breathed out, closing his fingers around it. “For keeping it,” he added, embarrassed at the relief he felt. “It’s from back home. My people.”
“Wouldn’t want you to miss it, then. You missed out on all the excitement as it is.”
“Excitement?” Leon asked, tying the cord back around his neck.
“There was an attack on the night you took ill, a cougar.”
Goosebumps rose on the back of his neck, all over his clammy skin. “A cougar so far from the mountain? Isn’t it odd?”
Ager nodded. “Odd, yes. Unheard of, no. Some years ago, when the old lord still lived, attacks were known to happen now and then. Not for a while, though, and this one was vicious. The beast mangled three horses, expensive ones, at that. The foreign lord’s mare had its skull crushed. But the odd thing is, when they sounded the alarm there was no trace of the creature. Didn’t feed on the horses, either. Just mauled them – I guess it didn’t have the time. They searched for it for hours, but the wind had stirred the sand and it must have covered the tracks. The foreign lord went into a fit, but the prince called out the search. You slept through all that, though, like a lug.”
“Not the best of my days,” Leon said, reflecting with a concerned frown.
“Not by far. There’s more you should know, Leon: the lord came to see for himself.”
His stomach clenched. “Came to see what?”
“You,” Ager said. “He sat by, watched, convinced himself we couldn’t wake you up, and went away. He was displeased.”
“Thank you, Ager,” Leon said, willing his voice steady. His appetite had fled, and nausea was quickly settling in its footsteps. The lord had asked after his illness and was sure to learn of his recovery. It had been kind of Ager to warn him, in so far as he had. “For everything.”
He didn’t mention how he wasn’t grateful, how maybe Ager shouldn’t have gone through the trouble of waking him up to begin with.
**
Lunch was silent and tense, the rest of the men carefully keeping their distance, but Leon was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to mind. He caught bits and pieces of conversation, distant remarks on the cougar attack and hushed whispers about Leon himself attacking a foreign guest. He couldn’t find it in his heart to care.
When dispatched on watch duty in the gardens, a part of him appreciated the irony. Unlike the Badlands surrounding Valtierra, the palace garden, with its small pool of water and its sweeps of gently rolling lawn set against groves of trees, was very much alive. Stairways and ramps united its different levels. There were grottos and labyrinths, and blossoming roses, with pastel shades of white, pink, and yellow, climbing on the walls.
In contrast with the desert heat, it was pleasant here, the air sweet and easy. From his post, Leon surveyed the distance, the sun that stood high in the sky, a blazing circle of fire, and the white clouds surrounding it, the kind that never brought rain. Sometimes, Leon missed the storms of his childhood, in the forested mountains of home, the sound and the fresh smell most of all.
He stared at the clouds for so long that when he made out the hooded figure, it seemed to him as though he was cutting through mists. Then he remembered there was no mist here. The sharp brilliance surrounding the man like a halo was the silver thread of princely robes.
Coming down the path was the lord himself, the prince commander Joaquin. Body singing with tension, Leon stood to attention, but the lord hardly seemed to notice him. He carried a flower, a blossoming sword lily standing out like a blood stain against his white garments. He’d all but bypassed Leon when he turned unexpectedly and said over his shoulder,
“With me.”
Leon followed, falling, like so many times before, into a cadence behind. The lord walked in silence, twisting the flower in his hand, crushing the crimson petals and the tender stem with his fingers. He came to an abrupt halt by a cypress grove. Green pupils darkened by the long, old shadow of the trees, he took his time scanning Leon, who waited in terse silence, chest out, shoulders tense and hands clasped behind his back.
“Speak for yourself,” he said unexpectedly when he grew tired of staring, with suaveness that was cold as steel. His voice carried, also, a sense of expectation, like that a hunter might experience when setting a trap.
This was not the chance he’d thought he’d never get. The prince commander was still toying with him. He said nothing, unwilling to engage in a game that was rigged from the onset, fixing his eyes to the ground instead. Prince Joaquin’s gaze grazed his skin like a sharp blade.
“Won’t you argue your case? Maybe you were unaware of your actions. I was told you were coming ill.”
The mockery brought hot blood to his face. “I wasn’t mistaken, my lord.”
The prince commander dropped the crushed flower and rubbed his hands together. His fingers were stained the colour of thick wine.
“You’re supposed to kneel to me,” he said in the same poisonous tone of voice. “Why haven’t you yet?”
“I cannot guard you if I’m on my knees, my lord. And my duties,” Leon added, staring down at his boots, angry and humiliated, “have not been cancelled.”
“You take my orders, but not those of my cousin. What gives you the privilege to choose?”
Leon stared up, dumbfounded, forgetting how he’d avoided looking at the lord directly so far. “I serve you, my lord.”
“Why?”
The question hollowed him. The prince commander’s power needed no answer — Leon had lived beneath it since the day he was taken. What bound him now was the covenant: the old bargain that had bought Valtierra his obedience and stripped him of freedom before he had a chance to claim it. That chain was his birthright, heavier than blood or fear, and it left him only one reply.
“You’re the prince commander. Your covenant with Arcasia compels me to serve you.”
“Henri was right, you aren’t tame.” The lord’s look was one of remote distaste. “Do you understand everyone here is your better?”
“I understand, my lord.”
His green eyes flared. “Then why must I repeat myself?”
Leon felt his chest constrict. The pull of the lord’s eyes was almost hypnotic. The muscles of his body, which were already tense, slipped instantly into defence. He had to fight the quivering, the sudden urge to fight or flee, the blood like a roar of a wave rushing to his head. He fought it, forcing his mind blank and his body loose, the way he did when he centred himself for swordplay. His knees hit the ground in one fluid move. The metal of his sword scraped on pavement. He brought his hands behind his back, hung his head, and waited.
The lord’s boots moved forward, closer. His robe brushed the side of Leon’s downturn face. His scent brushed his senses, a note of desert sand and cedar wood. Strong fingers gripped his chin, forcing his head up. Leon met his eyes reluctantly.
“This,” he said, bringing up his other hand to press hot fingers against the dark-blue mark on Leon’s cheek, “makes you look weak. Fitting because you are. You understand that, as well?”
“I know what I am, my lord,” Leon said, steadily.
“I should,” the lord said, with the same venom, “flay the skin from your back and make an example out of you.”
Leon’s heart threw itself at the enclosure of his ribcage. It was as though the world ground to a halt. The raising of blood to his head echoed in his ears, like the screeching of a giant hawk. The prince commander had stood by, he’d let Ager heal him – for this.
“I can see the mark of your shamans on you.” The green waters of his eyes were murky with loathing. “You stink of their iron, and salt, and of their hatred.”
He let go suddenly, with a frown of aversion, as if Leon’s touch soiled him.
“It will be the strap, in the morning. To the satisfaction of the offended party.”
Leon breathed – he just breathed. “Your will.”
He left Leon there, on his knees, and walked away without acknowledging him.