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1.
How can you look a boy in the eyes and tell him his Father is dead?
Eiko can’t. He has tried, mind, once he had understood who Jean was, which had admittedly taken a moment, because he hadn’t been sure… Sure, he had known his former Captain had had a son, but he hadn’t thought the boy to be already so old, nor had he expected to ever run into him.
For a time, he had hoped he was wrong. But really, once he had learned Jean’s last name was Rocque Lartigue, that he came from Le Havre, and his father was a sailor and commanded a ship called Elise Le Havre, well…
He should tell him. He really, really should tell that boy that his Father will never come home thank to Gargoyle and the Neo-Atlantean’s forces.
But he can’t. Not yet. Perhaps it makes him weak or a coward, but he cannot kill that hope in the boy’s eyes.
And Eiko knows that when he’ll finally admit the truth to him, he won’t be able to look at Jean either.
2.
The circus artists are taken aback, the first time Nadia refuses to touch the meat in her plate, but they let it slide. There are days where one isn’t hungry, or when the grub they’re served feel unappealing. Someone else picks the juicy, untouched lamb cut from her plate and ate it, and that’s the end of it.
But days and weeks pass, and whenever they’re served meat along with the potatoes, the soup or the vegetables-filled stew, Nadia won’t touch it and push her plate away, claiming she won’t eat a poor animal ever again. Before long, she’s doing the same with fish too, only accepting eggs, and it leaves them puzzled and annoyed.
Who does she think she is, to turn up her nose at food they are having trouble putting on the table?
But the ringmaster doesn’t see a problem with her continued refusals. After all, meat doesn’t come for cheap, so if they have one share less to buy, then it’s fine by him.
Anything that allows them to save money should be praised, after all.
3.
His Mom is dead, his Dad has disappeared, and people are calling him ‘Your Highness’ in deference whenever he takes a step out of his room. They don’t call him Venussis anymore, either.
They all call him Emperor Neo Icon Epiphanes, and they bow to him in a way they never did when Mom was alive.
It scares him.
He doesn’t want to be called Neo. He told so to Minister/Uncle Nemesis when he visited, but the man had only petted his hair and told him some things had to change if they were to make Tartessos and the Atlantean civilization great again. Then he had told Venussis – Neo, his name is Neo now, he must learn to answer to it since he’s apparently set to rule much, much earlier than planned – that he should call him Gargoyle now, and only Gargoyle.
At least nobody said Nadia had to change name too, the little boy thinks as he pears into his sister’s cradle, smiling at the sleeping baby.
Venussis… Neo doesn’t know what’s going on and what he should do anymore, but there is one thing he’s certain of, and it’s that he’s going to protect Nadia no matter what.
Because that’s what a big brother ought to do, right?
4.
Does she come from Africa? Or perhaps she has familial origins in India?
She’s dark skinned, sure, but Nadia doesn’t exactly resemble the handful of ‘true’ African men and women she has seen as they kept touring France. They had been much darker skinned, for one, and many had hair full of wiry curls, frizzy in a way Nadia’s hair never were.
Perhaps she’s mixed-race? Or perhaps she comes from further than Africa, from the East, somewhere in the Ottoman Empire, from the distant lands of Arabia, or from the large territories of India and its Rajs.
Nadia’s skin color is the origin of many debates, even among the circus’ troop. They don’t have much more of a clue than her. The most they can tell her, when she carefully asks and they’re in a good mood, was that the ringmaster got her from a southern France’s port town when she was a toddler, from a man who had spoken Spanish and who may have come from Morocco, given his clothes and the ship he had just disembarked from.
They don’t tell Nadia she was sold to the circus in those words, but she’s smart enough to understand it regardless.
That’s fine, she tells herself, ignoring the pinching in her heart. She has always known she wasn’t free.
But one day… one day she wishes she could fly, and discover where she comes from…
5.
Gargoyle is staring at a ghost.
Or rather, he’s staring at two ghosts at once. The ghost of a baby who should have been nothing more than ashes in the wind for thirteen years now, and the ghost of a regal woman who did die for the sake of his plans.
But the little princess is alive and breathing, and he sees her mother in her face just as easily as he sees it in Emperor Neo’s.
He’s glad that no-one can see his face in those precious first second, for he needs to school himself.
How can Nadia be alive? Who managed to smuggle her out of Tartessos? Surely not Nemo, for he wouldn’t have let the girl stray away from him. One of the palace’s servants, maybe? The nursery staff had been very devoted to the children back then, as he remembers. It wasn’t impossible one of them had taken Nadia away when the Tower collapsed the Week of Fire rained on Tartessos…
Whoever they had been, however, they couldn’t have been loyal to Neo-Atlantis, else the girl would have been brought to him in short order.
Ah, but does it truly matter?
The Princess is alive, and she has a Blue Water, the ultimate tool to his plan, and Gargoyle will be sure to make full use of both the tools fate has dropped at his feet.
6.
He’s looking at a ghost.
Or at least, he first thinks he’s looking at a ghost, one more to haunt his nights after what he has had to do to stop the man he once called a friend, a brother, to unleash the full power of the Tower of Babel. He had known he would sacrifice countless innocents, his whole kingdom, rebels and trapped civilians alike, but the fate of the world had been at this price.
There’s nothing left of Tartessos now. Nothing left of Venussis and Nadia, nothing left of his wife’s tomb. Nothing of the people he had ruled over but the two survivors he has picked so far.
And now, this little girl, clearly in shock, covered in grim, dust and blood and torn clothes, tears leaving paler tracks on her cheeks as she shakes and whimpers.
She’s pale and dirty, clearly dehydrated and famished, but she’s not a ghost after all. Just a miracle in itself.
Despite the destruction, a child still survived. He should take comfort in that. Perhaps they will find others as they finish prowling the ruins and gather supplies to make their way to a nearby village able to take them in, let them rest and recover.
Perhaps he will even find his children.
But the man who already thinks of himself as Nemo, the Nameless one, in penance for his crimes, knows better than to expect more than one miracle to happen.