Work Text:
Peace
The summer heat dissipated as Tamacti Jun stepped into the subterranean jail. A knock of his staff against the stone wall sufficed to dismiss the guard, and he felt the air stir briefly as the soldier passed him on the landing. Then the outside bolt slid shut with a sharp rasp.
He paused. The quiet was marred by the dripping of water through the cracks in the ancient structure, and the deep breathing of a man asleep, or pretending to be.
Taking no care to hide his approach from the unexpected guest within the cell, he let the gritty tap of his boots echo loudly before him. There followed rather convincing sounds of waking, then the creak of an old pallet as a heavy mass moved about on it.
“Baba Voss?” he asked politely, though he had no need to. The scent of tree sap—mixed with even more pungent substances—might have hidden the man's presence from wild animals, but to anyone who knew his tricks, it confirmed Baba was on the opposite side of the iron bars. Presumably, he had been living in uncivilized places since disappearing many months ago.
“Not dead yet?” Baba asked, yawning.
“Not quite,” he answered.
“Good.” There was a surprising lack of tension in Baba’s voice—more like a bear lounging in a den, than a wolf struggling in a trap.
“I wasn't expecting to meet you like this…again,” Tamacti said, remembering how their first real introduction had occurred through the steel bars of a Trivantian dungeon.
“My wife is angry,” Baba explained.
The queen had ordered her own husband to be imprisoned after his assault on the Trivantian delegation. Luckily for everyone, Baba had gone willingly—no casualties had been reported. When questioned about it, Maghra would only say it was for his protection.
“Maybe she's afraid…of losing you once more?” he proposed.
“Mmn,” Baba grunted. “Or maybe she wishes I had not come back.”
He doubted that. Maghra had been coping with her husband's absence, but she could not hide the pain it caused her. He knew she felt abandoned, and it was difficult to disagree. To avoid compounding the problem, he had reluctantly chosen to stay in his position as high general. The queen could not be left without a protector, especially not when she was forced to rely on the goodwill of that ignoble idiot, the Lord of Pennsa.
He understood why Baba would not wish to live with the Harlan situation forever; allowing the man to pretend to be married to his wife—for political reasons—was asking a lot. But Tamacti expected that matter to be sorted out after the battle of Greenhill, not for Baba to back away entirely.
“I can imagine why you left. But you swore an oath to her too, once,” he said reproachfully.
“I swore an oath to my wife, not to a queen,” Baba corrected.
“She's still your wife,” he argued. “Maghra can't help what she was born to be. And now that she's queen, she has many enemies. I do what I can to keep her safe, but I could use help.”
“She has a whole army now. She doesn't need me.” Baba sounded as if he were relieved of duty.
“She has half an army,” Tamacti informed him. “The other half believe she's bewitched, and refuse to serve her.”
“Your Witchfinders?”
“They are no longer mine,” he said ruefully. With his former followers openly cursing their new queen—and her children—the level of threat had greatly increased. “This may come as no surprise, but the thought of one day being ruled by bastard witches did not sit well with most of them.”
He could hardly fault them for it. For decades he had encouraged that hatred, believing it was their holy duty to eradicate sight. And now he lacked the ability to do the opposite. The most he could manage was an uncomfortable neutrality. Yet by staying in the queen's service, he could not avoid the hypocrisy of his situation—three of his men would soon hang for staying true to their beliefs, while he remained free to reinvent his own.
“My Witchfinders never failed to follow orders—before now—because they believed those orders came from God. But unlike her sister, Maghra makes no claim to divinity, so they discount her authority to challenge God’s will. And who's to say they're wrong?”
“You,” Baba said, as if it should not be an issue.
He sighed. “They don't respect my opinion anymore.” Their disgruntlement was understandable, yet he could do nothing to change what had been revealed to him. Since then, he had learned to adapt, but he was not sure how to convince others to do likewise.
Personal experience had proven those with vision could be useful, but also treacherous, to which the deep scar on his chest could attest. It was therefore difficult to argue that they posed no danger. The question was, how significant was that danger, compared to any other? He wondered, not for the first time, what Baba truly felt about them, having had both positive and negative exposure over the years.
“Since you're here,” he tapped his staff against the bars, “you won't mind if I ask a question?”
“Can I stop you?” Baba asked.
“Not from there,” he reasoned. He took Baba’s bemused snort as permission to continue. “Ever since I became aware of your wife’s…life choices, I've had to alter some of my deepest convictions. I don’t regret that, but I'm having trouble getting others to accept something I'm ambivalent about. So perhaps you’ll understand when I ask, what do you really think of sight returning?”
“I try not to think,” Baba said dismissively.
“Great plan,” he replied sarcastically. But when Baba offered nothing more, he declared, “Then perhaps only the God Flame knows what is right.”
That seemed to aggravate the warrior. “I do not care what the God Flame knows. I know what I know.”
“And that is?” he prompted.
An irritated growl followed, as if Baba considered ignoring the question, but finally he continued. “The sighted lost the world they built. But what have we done with our own? My home, and yours, were destroyed. Pennsa will be next. Evil did not stop when our eyes shut.”
“Yes, but if you had to make a choice…?” Tamacti pressed.
“My mind had been as closed as yours,” Baba admitted, “but Maghra’s children pried it open. I had no reason to love the sighted—until I had two. Kofun and Haniwa have returned that love, like any children would. But just like any child, they learn from our examples. I tried to raise them as I wished I had been, with the kindness I was denied. But I knew, sooner or later, they would see what I had hidden. I did not want them to become like me.” He sounded as if he had failed.
Tamacti did not quite understand his disappointment. It was not possible to escape all brutality, only to become more efficient at it. “They have doubtless seen all you are, good and bad,” he agreed, “but they can either be victims, or victors—life offers few options. You can be proud they are still alive.”
“Yes. And I do not know if that is because they can see, or in spite of it,” Baba concluded.
While it was not the unequivocal answer Tamacti sought, it reinforced the notion that vision was neither a gift, nor a curse. Which meant, at least to him, that they could make up the rules about it as they went, so long as the safety of the kingdom was maintained.
“Thank you, for your honesty.” Pivoting, he took a set of rusty keys from their place on the wall. “I could let you out. I owe you that.” He had not forgotten the former Alkenny chief’s decision, however reluctant, to release him from the Trivantian jail a year ago.
“Don't bother,” Baba said wearily. “It will make her more mad.”
“Then, is there anything you need?”
“Peace.” Though only one word, the big man's voice cracked upon uttering it.
The rawness of the request left Tamacti with no quip to offer. Instead he asked, “Was it not out…there?” He imagined the warrior had returned to the mountains, or wherever he thought of as home.
“There were…moments,” Baba said slowly, “when my heart was almost too frozen to beat. I could feel the whiskers of wolves as they passed over—their breath the only warmth. It was close then.”
Tamacti waited for him to share more, but there was only silence.
“Well, at least you know it exists. And, I hope, someday you will reach it,” he said, with as much feeling as he had left. “But right now, Maghra needs a king,” he added bluntly.
“She's got one—Harlan.”
His jaw tightened in annoyance. “He is not worthy.”
“Neither am I,” Baba said, as if the whole thing mattered little to him.
“I don't believe that,” he said harshly. “I haven't forgotten how they all listened to you, at Greenhill—even my soldiers. Great leaders must inspire their people, especially in the worst of times. You gave them hope, without lying to them.”
Baba deflected the appraisal. “No one listens to me now. And none of it will matter when this place is torn up like a root from the ground.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Trivantians have a weapon you cannot fight. It is like God-thunder.”
That sounded both ominous, and unhelpful. He was about to ask for clarification, but Baba cut in.
“Do me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Tell my wife to come here.” His tone had grown more urgent. “But make sure she's not angry. She cannot hear anything when she's angry.”
Finding a moment when the queen was not upset would be a challenge, Tamacti thought. “I'll do what I can,” he promised, turning to leave.
“Tamacti,” Baba called, moving closer to the front of the cell, “you should have killed her.”
“Who?” he asked, momentarily confused.
“Sibeth,” Baba hissed her name like an accusation.
“Many times over,” he agreed. He had spent a sleepless night organizing a search for the deposed queen. The possibility of her escape had been lurking in the back of his mind, ever since Maghra insisted she be confined in the palace rather than the dungeon. But being unsurprised by the disaster did little to compensate for it.
“She killed Paris,” Baba said with subdued rage.
“Ironic,” Tamacti remarked evenly, “as it was she who called to spare Sibeth's head.” The presage had suffered the standard reward for favors rendered to the former queen—a sliced artery, and a cold death.
“You should not have listened,” Baba persisted.
“Perhaps not.” He had little reason to, except there had been something beyond the matter of Sibeth's fate in that demand; it would have ended yet another innocent life, had he followed through. Though she despised him, Paris had given him a chance to change, and in that moment—foolhardy or not—he had taken it. “Had I not done as she insisted, your grandson wouldn’t have been born.”
Baba groaned like a mortally wounded animal.
Tamacti suppressed a chuckle. Clearly the news of that birth had not been well-received. No one could deny the baby of Kofun and Sibeth was problematic, on many levels. But Maghra had accepted it as family, so her husband would likely be forced to. “Congratulations,” he added, with effortless cruelty.
Baba countered with a guttural dismissal. “Just go find Maghra.”
“After the drama of last night, your specific requirement may delay an audience, until I can find an opportunistic moment,” he warned, heading towards the stairs. “I will have food brought to you, while you wait,” he called over his shoulder.
He heard a chuff of acknowledgement.
“In the meantime,” he said quietly, “I'll leave you in peace.”