Chapter Text
January, 622 C.E.
An inevitable consequence of their preference, Mother and Father catered exclusively to Ferris’s wishes. It didn’t anger Halt, who prided himself on the fact that his self-worth, unlike Ferris’s, didn’t depend on his parents’ attention. But it would be a lie to say he wasn’t a little bothered, if only in that his and Ferris’s wishes were always so different.
Ferris, ever the vain, indolent child, offered no objection to the comfortable life of the upper class. He welcomed it, in fact, soaked up the extravagances with an eager and almost embarrassing indulgence. By contrast, Halt found the royal atmosphere excessive and painfully dull. He scorned Ferris’s fine silks and choice foods, his lavish ceremonies and ornate jewelry. The greater pride was in simplicity, in the roughness of handmade tools and worn-out clothing. The virtuous life, Halt liked to think, was lived by one’s own hand. Independent and unadorned. A fantastical ideal, and for him a dangerous one, but the foolishness of such beliefs had never held him from them for long.
His parents were confused by this, but it was easier to satisfy Ferris, and since he was the favorite they seldom bothered to either understand or accommodate Halt’s desires.
So it was with their thirteenth birthday. Ferris had requested a party, and though the event itself was still a week away already it was a grand affair. Servants cleaned tirelessly, the kitchens labored through the night, and endless hordes of entertainment streamed in from the countryside and surrounding kingdoms. Minstrels and dancers, having been assigned rooms at the castle, practiced loudly in the courtyards. Decorations, hanging vines and cloth banners and bright paper fixtures, appeared seemingly of their own accord. It was more than had been done even for Solstice.
Those who sought to curry favor with the royal family, minor nobles and foreign aristocrats and coastal landowners newly wealthy from trade, seized upon the celebration as an opportunity to introduce themselves, and the castle’s many guest rooms filled as quickly as the inns in town. Inevitably, each family had brought an attractive young daughter in the hopes that she might catch a prince’s eye. So it was that whenever Halt left his rooms, he was immediately accosted by throngs of elaborately adorned girls. Some were young enough still to count their years on their fingers and some were near twice his age, but all were dripping with jewels and false flattery and all vied unashamedly for his courtship. They were as irritating and persistent as a swarm of biting flies.
Caught in the storm of noise and activity and unwelcome attentions, Halt found himself desperate for respite, for a secluded corner or a moment of quiet. As the event neared, however, these became increasingly more elusive.
Still riding the lingering excitement from the winter festivities, the townsfolk needed no encouragement to embrace their high spirits. There was a lively air within the walls of Dun Kilty, conversations louder and footsteps lighter, droves of children gathering at the castle to watch the practicing entertainment. It was as if every person in the Six were eager for the event. Even the king’s carefully rigid posture relaxed slightly under the colorful glow of the hanging paper lanterns. This only served to worsen Halt’s mood, illogically, he knew, as his father would never have entertained requests for a smaller celebration regardless.
Fitting that the only person to share his objections was as powerless to act on them as he—his sister was largely ignored by their parents and Ferris both.
Caitlyn was a vague figure in the eyes of most. Weak, thin, and prone to illness since birth, she spent many of her days either laid up in bed or drifting wraithlike through the corridors. When people happened to interact with her they found her a witty, thoughtful, and animated child, and the dichotomy between that and her physical frailty invited an uncomfortable sort of pity that usually led them to avoid her altogether.
Whenever she was well enough to tolerate longer excursions, she and Halt enjoyed similar activities, traipsing through the woods or sparring with blunted knives or playing pranks on unsuspecting noblemen. None of these were acceptable pastimes for royalty, though she was never punished for them as he was. As heir, Halt was subject to his parents’ scrutiny and, when he invariably fell short of model behavior, their disapproval. With Caitlyn’s poor health and status as third in line it was unlikely that she would ever ascend, and so the king and queen seldom bothered to give her much thought at all.
Caitlyn had never given any outward indication that this affected her, but she was a deceptively guarded person and much of her inner world was a mystery to Halt.
He found her in the old stables, one of the few places yet untouched by the celebration. Nestled between two battlements on the west wall, it was a small stone building secluded from the rest of the castle. It had been abandoned long ago in favor of the larger southern stables, and over the years had steadily collected cracks and creeping vines until it now housed only worn benches and fraying rags. Far enough from the palace proper to give some privacy but close enough for her to tolerate on most days, it had become a favorite haunt of Caitlyn’s. She was positioned now with her back to the doors, playing a soft melody on her bow harp. Halt entered quietly, sitting against the wall.
Halt had never been an avid fan of music. He found it either obnoxious or boring or both, and didn’t tolerate art much as it was. But Caitlyn’s music was different. She didn’t play the popular songs, didn’t degrade herself to the jigs and reels and off-key ballads that frequented the inns in town. Instead, she played her own creations. Winding melodies constructed as she went, atonal pieces layered with complex rhythms and strange chords, music that wasn’t music so much as it was a story. Halt didn’t like music, but he’d spend hours listening to hers, watching the epic unfold, deciphering the sharp interjections and jarring chromatics, hearing her voice through her fingers clearer than from her mouth.
She was playing a lilting tune now, and it fell and rose in even steps like the ebbing and swelling of the tides. Then the song dropped to the bottom of the harp’s range and stayed there, dancing between two notes, and the rhythm began to stutter. It sped up, swelling in volume, and when the melody rose again it was frantic like a seaborne storm. Then it stopped abruptly, unresolved, the unnatural last note hanging in the air with terrible weight.
Caitlyn turned and for the first time noticed Halt. She grinned, and the grave atmosphere borne by her song dissipated.
“Did you like it?”
“The ending was wrong,” he said.
“Most are,” Caitlyn agreed. She turned back to her harp and picked out another note.
The distant shrieks of children’s games floated in through the windows. Not for the first time, Halt felt a mild regret that Caitlyn, nine years old herself, was never given the opportunity for such a childhood. Of course, he reasoned, she likely wouldn’t have taken interest in those games even if she had been healthier. He certainly hadn’t.
A winter songbird alighted on a tree outside and overlaid the children’s laughter with its chittering call. Caitlyn’s fingers traced a string, but they made no sound.
There was a way to her, a knowing, a wisdom uncommon in a girl so young. Often it was as if she knew what Halt was thinking before he spoke it. Sometimes before he knew it himself.
“You don’t have to go to Ferris’s party,” she said.
Not attend? It was a novel thought. He saw it: slipping out his window with the lighting of the first torches, lying on the roof until the halfhearted calls of his name faded, returning only in the small hours of the morning when the last guests had long filtered out and the queen’s mind was too worn to lecture, the king’s hands too sluggish to strike. But it was fantasy. “I don’t have a choice,” he finally replied.
“A choice,” Caitlyn repeated pensively. She played two notes, a strange unharmonious interval. “Come out with me instead. We’ll explore the woods.”
“Will you be well enough?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The doing isn’t ever as important as the planning.”
Another note.
For all the ways in which Halt and Caitlyn were similar they were also wildly different, and he had long given up trying to make sense of her layered words, let alone convince her to speak practically.
“Alright,” he agreed.
She smiled, as if she knew he hadn’t understood. Then she repositioned the harp on her knees and began to play again. This time the song was slow, each heavy and deliberate note given proper respect, allowed time to sit before the next took its place. Halt put the party from his mind for a few more minutes and closed his eyes, feeling the dark, rich music fill the room. He breathed in this moment of calm and cemented it to memory, aware of the chaos the coming days would bring.
Later, standing stiffly at the periphery of the celebration, Halt looked out across the great hall and met a familiar set of eyes. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing her out of bed and so elegantly dressed, perhaps it was the endless chaos of the day’s festivities gone to his head, or perhaps it was nothing at all, but for an instant he saw Caitlyn’s face illuminated by moonlight, restless shadows of leaves and passing birds, and for an instant he saw freedom as from an insurmountable distance and from within an inescapable prison.