Claiming The Remnant

Chapter 84

[ Ethyn ]

“You should join us for dinner.” I told Garrett as I emerged with a clean face. My clothes would still need changing but I still had time. I would have changed for dinner anyway so it was no bother really. “Jo will be there.”

“Thank you but no.” Garrett was hunched over the table fiddling with that little box from Benton. He looked… rather miserable. It was as though those few moments that I’d left him to wash my face his thoughts had begun to drown him.

“Why not?”

"I just can't face it." He rubbed the scar on his chin. "All the luxury, the etiquette and pleasantries, I can't stomach it when everything is still so broken. Being Captain I thought I could do some good, make changes, help people but everything is just as bad. The standing hasn't helped, I feel like I'm failing at everything. If it wasn't for the prestige, how proud it makes my parents, I think I would have walked away by now. I can't do that to them though. They already lost so much of their hearts when Kieran died."

"You're a good Captain, -"

"No. I'm a good man, Ethyn but I'm not a good Captain. A good Captain would have at least voiced concerns and petitioned for change. I was a fool to think I could make a difference." Garrett argued with a tremble in his voice.

"You are no fool. You see. You see where those with privilege do not. If anyone is a fool it is me. It is my Father. It is all those with power who have not supported you. Father is not a King that wants puppets and boot lickers but he has fostered the environment that breeds such inclination and done nothing to correct it. Not that I'm saying you are either of those. You have tried, which is more than can be said of most. If anyone has failed here it is the King." The words came to me with ease. How had I not questioned such things before? "No matter how perfect the grape harvest, how good the wine it creates; if the glass into which it is poured will not retain it then no one will ever get to taste it. You are trying but you have been left with a damaged glass. I thought my Father a good King but … I suspect that he is perhaps a good man…" He was indeed a good man but was he a good King? I had thought so but how could he be when prejudice was rife in the Lystra.

"He is a good man." Garrett was guarded. He spoke carefully.

"Do you have parchment and ink?" Impulse took me.

"Yeh…what for?" He rose from the table, traversing the room to open the draw on an empty desk.

"Because, Garrett, why do tomorrow what you can do today!" He set the requested items down in front of me. "Right then, what do you want me to write?"

"Pardon?" The Captain froze.

"Come now, let's do something, let's make change. You have the knowledge, I have the power. The power of a Crown Prince." I laughed.

"I thought we were both off duty and you were just Ethyn." He sighed.

"Ye Gods, I would rather be 'just Ethyn' but for some reason the Earth and Sky decided to bring me into this world a Prince. Bless'ed knows why. On duty, off duty… in positions such as these as Father likes to say there is a line that can't be undrawn. We are forever on duty no matter what." I started writing out the basics like the date. "If you could have me change one thing right now - anything, what would it be?"

"Anything?" Garrett was hardly breathing.

"I can't see why not. You are not the kind of man to ask for something beyond reason and so if you deem it a need I shall pen it." With a shrug I dipped the pen to gather more ink. A light tap on the side of the glass jar removed the excess fluid.

"A temporary stop on executions. They are hanging people without any process. Mostly it's just accusation and prejudice." The delivery was flat and unemotional but the air was almost crackling with desperation.

“Accusation and prejudice are not worthy notions under which to end a life. What constitutes a worthy reason I could not tell you.” I muttered as I marked the paper with my decree. “Who are we to decide who lives and dies? Only temporary?” The thought came suddenly. My question had me pausing the pen.

“Yes but also no.”

“Not following.” I caught his eye.

“Hard as it might be to comprehend, there is… how to put this - a number of people in and outside of the city guard strongly believe that executing those with the Shade of the ‘deceivers’ or even those that hold no visible Fae traits is a public service. Even a service to the Earth and Sky. To outright tell these people ‘no’ will incite a reaction that undermines any action. No one likes to be told no, better to ease in.”

“Sorry, but what? This is really happening? In Lystra Capital City?” I was shocked. He had spoken of the prejudice but prejudice with such vehemence resulting in using the law as an excuse to murder those they considered unfit for society? Garrett went back to the desk draw.

“What did you think was happening? You have studied the laws of the land - you tell me how the current system fairly decides a person's guilt. The accuser decides. The guard decides. The ‘criminal’ has no voice. In keeping with that there are no standardised punishments proportionate to the crime. Here.” Garrett dropped what appeared to be a report on the table.

“What is this?” A slight tremor plagued my fingers as I reached for the document.

“A list of every person that has passed through the hands of the City Guard this past year. Name, age, Shade, charge, punishment. I was preparing it to present to the King. There is one for last year too. It was my intent to have brought it to his attention earlier but the chaos with Remnants across the lands and the threat of war had made the matter, much to my shame, become less of a priority.” The usually self assured Captain was looking small. “Each of those names weigh on my soul. My lack of action is to blame. I don’t care that my authority is over the city wall and the castle, not the City Guard, I have the King’s ear available to me but instead of utilising my position for the benefit of the people I was a coward. Frightened to bring truth to the King’s feet. People died because of my lack of action. Good man and great intentions aside - I failed these people. I don’t want to fail them again. An outright ban on executions will just result in ‘accidents’ and people taking matters into their own hands more than they already do. A pause will stay the hand; buying both time and lives.”

“I see. And this is all over Lystra, not just the capital city?” By all accounts it was a stupid question. Of course it was happening everywhere. My stupid hair and privileged position had just kept me from noticing.

“Across all of the Oshylands as far as I know.”

“How does Taiya fit into this… this…” I hunted for the phrasing. I started again. “Garrett, I see your passion for the people, for fairness and removing ambiguity as well as personal agenda from the system. Don’t get me wrong, I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with you, along with being entirely baffled as to why this has been overlooked but I can’t help but question how, considering your strong moral views, you could justify taking a person, who had technically commited no crime, and torturing them for an object that, technically, we had no claim over.” My Father would be having the same question put to him. Garrett looked rather pale. His lips were pressed to a thin uncomfortable line.

Silently he made more tea.

“What was I meant to do? If nothing else I was ordered by the King.” He spilled some tea bringing it to the table. “Reports coming out of Heldren basically confirmed King Fendryn had a Remnant and while he didn’t mobilize troops, the declarations of war had to be taken seriously. How could we fend off such a threat without possessing our own unrestricted source of magic? It was for the good of the whole Kingdom. Loathsome as it was, I would have traded her life for the safety of the Kingdom. I don’t know why she wouldn’t see reason and refused to give it up but I do know that she thought I would save her, that I would let her escape.”

“And would you?”

“Only if she gave up the Remnant and she wasn’t going to. I needed it to prevent the war and for whatever reason she disagreed. After she shifted, becoming Esther, your Father saw something in her. Everything changed in that moment. So now we’ve kept her because it was the only way we could retain it. All energies have gone into keeping her alive but in the future we will have to work out how to get Esther to access it. In between times King Leorè seems to have quelled the threat but there will be others. Whispers of more Remnants emerging are coming to me.” My brain was whirring. All the little bits that I had learned were coming together. Father said that they knew the location of the Remnant. Esther said she was sick with a magical ailment. Then there were the voices that called to her. Called her an Heir. Garrett had just told me that they would have to get her to learn how to use it. If she had lost her memories then there would be no reason for her not to relinquish it - unless she didn’t know she had it. The only way I could fathom such a truth was that it was part of her now. How else? Anger was pulsing in me once again.

As Garrett had explained, what was one life compared to the whole of the Kingdom? There was no doubt in my mind that my Father would have attempted to remove it from her body and had failed. Now they kept mon foudre as a weapon. Showering her with the luxury befitting a Lady just to curry her favour. Whether she stayed Esther or became Taiya once again my Father hoped to sway her. Use her.

“The magic chose her. She…” Should I tell him? Will he use it against her?

“It calls to her.” Garrett sighed, tiredly rubbing his face. “Benton gave your Father some message about it. The Eternal Forest is calling her.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong here because I’m just putting some things together. Magic is building up in her system. Due to her having lost her memories she has somehow been blocked from using the magic; so we are syphoning it. The Forest calls her. Esther said it told her she was an ‘Heir’.” I was on the cusp of a realisation. Everything I needed was here somewhere I just needed to put it together. “You know the history of the Eternal Forest and the Remnants, yes?”

“It used to be desert, right? But then the Fae left via some giant crystal gate according to the texts.”

“Yes, and the Remnants are broken pieces of the gate. What if… what if they are coming back? And that’s why they need her - to reopen the gate?” My frown was as deep as my thoughts. What else had mon foudre said? They want her to make the world ‘bloom’? That didn’t sound anything like reopening the gate.

“Apparently if she goes back we all die.”

“Humm, Esther said something else to me, something that doesn’t fit in with my first theory. Mon foudre said they will ‘make the world bloom’. Like flowers.” By the neverending Sky and Earth I felt struck.

“Flowers?”

“Yes…well anyway.” I signed the letter, changing the subject and keeping the thought to myself. “Let me know if you need anymore of these.” Carefully, I folded the letter, slipped it in an envelope and sealed it using my personal seal that I carried everywhere. The handle of the stamp contained wax disks in silver. The cap, imbued with heat, worked as a small melting pot for the silver wax. After dripping it onto the envelope, I pressed my stamp in to seal it. A silver EL in flowing letters surrounded by a wreath of Yelka flowers with HRH in tiny letters at the bottom was perfectly formed in the silver wax.

“Thank you, Ethyn.”

“You are welcome, Garrett. It’s about time I stepped up and took on meaningful tasks. I want to be a good King - It starts with this.” I pushed the letter towards him. “I will speak to my Father regarding this meeting, most certainly I shall be joining it. Change is in the wind. For now though I must go change for dinner.” Garrett rose as I did and bowed to me. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Garrett, while you won’t consider coming to dinner, I must insist you come to the solstice ball - with Jo, not to work but to dance. I will be taking Esther and I know she will want Jo there and… Jo will want you there.” I winked at the stunned Captain. “That’s an order Captain - this self-deprivation isn’t healthy nor is it wise. Ye Gods’ may have promised a life anew ‘A reshapen vessel and a soul refreshed, entwined once more’ but until we are unraveled we shan’t know if it is true.”

With that I left the Captain to his stunned silence; my letter clutched to his chest.