If his brother was one thing, it was predictable.
Alidor found him where he thought he would, poring over parchments like an old maester in the castle's library. He sat awkwardly in an armchair made for a man thrice his size, sitting upright so as not to lean off to one end. Whenever he slumped, it seemed, an unseen hand pulled him back up. A mug, half-full of mulled cider, sat on the floor by his crossed feet.
Alidor approached him, one hand tracing the wooden frame of a bookshelf. His brother looked em style="box-sizing: border-box;"tired/em, his sandy hair tousled and lackluster, his eyes rimmed with red. When he blinked, as he did when he pushed the parchment through dry fingers to come to a new line, he opened them deliberately, as if coming out of a reverie.
He seemed to take no particular notice of the books piled about his throne, nor his brother's tall frame propped against the shelf. em style="box-sizing: border-box;"I'll wait a minute more/em, Alidor decided, looking up and down the ponderous stacks with growing enmity. If he doesn't acknowledge me, I'll turn back and leave the way I came.
That minute passed punctuated only by the soft crinkling of paper as Lucas fumbled at it. "I thought to find you here," Alidor ventured, straightening. Though his patience had long since left him, and the dust hanging in the air was growing more vexing with each breath he drew, the thought of being cowed by no more than a boy's silence angered Alidor. So he pressed on despite his resolution, hoping to elicit a response: "You missed the morning's archery drills."
"I'm aware," Lucas said, turning a page. He didn't have the grace to look up at Alidor. "I was reading."
"You read too much."
"And you don't read enough." Lucas blinked. His eyes stayed firmly lidded, giving Alidor the vague apprehension he had fallen asleep in his chair. But after a moment he spoke, in the slow drawl of a peasant, "It would do you well to take up a tome or three."
"What would you have me read?" Alidor fingered the spine of a book lying skewed on his bookshelf, his nail piercing its cracked leather easily as a tooth pierced flesh. It was a thick forest of pages, sturdy as any armor, if not worn about the edges. "Perhaps I could use the books he suggests to craft a shield. Read, I'd call it.
"You could start with the one right there-" Lucas pointed somewhere behind Alidor, his head still lowered-" it's called em style="box-sizing: border-box;"The Lords and Ladies of Seahaven, Past to Present. "I'm sure you would find it enlightening, and if anything it will serve as a reminder of duty."
A flush crept up Alidor's neck, warm and red as wine. He presumes to speak to me of this. It seemed an eternity since he'd claimed lordship over Seahaven, but Alidor had yet to find a wife, sire an heir, and restore his kingdom the posture it once held. His title was more nominal than anything, and Lucas knew it. I don't see him jumping to offer assistance, apt to plain as he is.
It was said a lord must have buttocks harder than their seat if they wished to rule prosperously, and Lucas all but lived in his chair. Or so Alidor assumed, from the long hours he spent in it. He would make a decent lord. But he had been born two years after Alidor, a twist of the knife the Guardian probably still chuckled at. When you play the game of kobatu, the pieces never quite go where you want them to, he mused. He liked to think himself the player, but the longer he stood staring at his brother, the more apprehension bit at him.
As matters stood, Alidor did not have the cheeks of iron his seat required. He had not sat the thing since news came of his father's death. I was made for the battlefield, he thought, rolling his shoulders to let the tension from them. I should be serving Seahaven atop a horse, not atop an old gnarled chair.
Most diminutive tasks Alidor left to his councilmen, matters of Wingull and the like. I'll have to ensure they haven't sent any letters without my leave recently, he thought. Uncertain are the times when a man cannot be trusted to select his own wife. But when had the Seavens ever been able to marry for love?
Seahaven was part of a desirable empire, in a bay well-sheltered from attacks by sea and land both; it was far enough from the ocean to keep itself above water should a storm hit, but not so far as to limit trade; and championing them all, the Lord of Seahaven was a young, impressionable lad unversed in the ways of ruling a city. It would be more than simple for a woman thirty years his senior to find a way to dispose of him. Such women were always first to respond to news of a lord's death, and likely before the corpse began to rot. Lady Dyanne of Westwind had put her hand forward the moon before last, and Lady Angelica of the Scaled Mont had done similar. The two had been sisters, once, sharing the surname Reign before marrying into families with castles a thousand leagues apart. They wrote each other, in the beginning, but the Hoothoot of their House were ineffective couriers at best. Afterwards they contented themselves with striving to outlive their lord husbands. Both succeeded, and since then it had been a competition to see which of the two could claim more land for themselves. The tale of their rivalry had become notorious in brothels and bars alike, though it was rumored the two planned to join their kingdoms when they grew old. They've grown old, aye, but the kingdoms remain asunder, Alidor reflected.
His other suitors were petty ladies of pettier claim and not worth acknowledging. I'm left my pick of two old, fat widows. He had plead a month to review the letters he'd been sent, on account of his father's death, and been granted two weeks. His suitors held formidable kingdoms, and that could only be overlooked for so long. em style="box-sizing: border-box;"I am too fresh an orphan to be seeking marriage, /emhe told himself, as he had told his council. I should be mourning. Lucas too. He took his hand, suddenly moist, from the book, and pulled the seasilk scarf about his throat up to cover his lips. If he could hide his shame from his brother, he could hide it from anyone.
"You are next in line to rule Seahaven," he said after a pause, "don't you think it's time you set down the scrolls and bend a bow?
"Now Lucas glanced up. His cobalt eyes cut through Alidor. "Scrolls are undervalued in the world of war, brother. See, this particular one is titled The Innermost Workings of the Battlefield, Volume I. I suggest you give it a read. It covers the various armor styles of Neorian smiths, as well as an odd few archery techniques." He rolled the parchment and set it down beside his ale. "I am attending your drills in my own way. Besides, Ripple here can kill men faster than I nock arrows. He doesn't miss, either."
As if he knew Lucas was speaking of him, the Croconaw stretched out beside a towering pile of books looked up. Alidor had his doubts about the claim, but said nothing. He knew as well as Lucas that the Pokemon had no teeth. The lie is sweet enough now, but it will do naught to glance a blade from your flesh.
Other boys of an age with Lucas had wielded swords of wood and shale and iron in turn, and moved their sparring from courtyard to battlefield, but the Prince had refused to do any of it with them. His brother was sixteen, a man grown, yet he hadn't taken on the responsibilities that came with manhood.
Not that Alidor had taken the proper measures to drive his brother from the library and to the yard. He'd been contending with demons of his own, the most combatant of them the weight of a crown he'd never wanted. He'd meant to put a sword in Lucas's hand, as he'd meant to board Seaswind in his father's stead, but neither had come to pass; his brother had become some knowledge-hungry craven, and his father... his father was dead.
Anger swelled up in Alidor sudden as a storm. The soft crinkling of paper as Lucas turned page to page only served to magnify the feeling. "Why?" he felt like yelling at his brother, "why do you forsake your duties as a Seaven?"
Instead he stood there, his sword hanging in its sheath at his hip. Somewhere deep within himself he knew Lucas would never hold his own, that the younger Seaven would always favor words over swords. He also knew that his brother would have some quip ready to answer his question, perhaps another shot at Alidor's own incompetence.
But his kingdom came first, it seemed. Alidor had scarce found time to pay the blue-cloaked guards that patrolled Seahaven day and night. The days seemed to blur together until he no longer knew how long it had been since Father perished. em style="box-sizing: border-box;"It cannot have been more than two moons, he told himself. But even then, he wasn't sure.
"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" Lucas had picked up the mug of ale, and was taking tentative sips. He expects me to show myself out, the Lord of Seahaven realized. The tacit slight set his skin to bristling. Croconaw pushed himself up, jaws clacking. The beast stood only half as tall as the stacked books, yet cast a long dark shadow along the carpet.
"I have naught to say," said Alidor. "Only... I'd like to see you at tomorrow's drills. If even for a moment." His brother blinked, then turned his gaze back to eThe Innermost Workings of the Battlefield, whichever volume he had said it was. Alidor left him to his studies, hoping there was a yes behind those deep blue eyes of his.
Evening saw Alidor in his solar, resting in a stout armchair with Feraligatr sleeping by the doors leading out to a porch overlooking the palace's water garden. A soft breeze caught them, sending shudders through the oak. Feraligatr grunted at the sudden cold. Alidor Seaven watched in silence. He knew his Feraligatr had never been fond of the cold. Even as a Totodile, he favored bathing in the sulfur springs.
Alidor couldn't count the times that preference had saved him from having to attend drowning ceremonies with his lord father. If you have a Pokemon who can't stand cool ocean water, who can question your decision to stray from it?
Certain people were connected to their partners spiritually, if the tales were to be believed, sharing thoughts, emotions, and interests. Some smallfolk went as far as to say those individuals shared skins with their Pokemon.A queer thought, but just that. Still, Alidor wondered...
It was well past evenfall when a knock sounded someone's arrival at his door. Lucas, was his first thought, but when he bid them in, his younger brother did not stand before him. Instead it was a scruffy man older than himself, draped in the colors of Seahaven. "Brayden," Alidor began, recognizing the tenebrous look his squire oft wore.
"Sire." There was no courtesy in his bow.
"I am a lord now, let me remind you," said Alidor. There was no point in correcting the Willim lad, he knew, but firmness of command was a glass he would have to drink from now and again. I am a lord now.
Brayden grit his teeth. "M'lord," he said, taking care to overpronounce each syllable. "I have returned with your mount, and something else as well."
"I would see this 'something'," said Alidor. "Was it so large that you could not bring it in here?"
Feraligatr's eyes had snapped open. The beast was was pushing himself up in a half-conscious reverie, slamming the doors behind him shut with his tail. Brayden flinched. "No," he admitted. "I didn't want the bastard to bleed out before I made it up the stairs."
Bleed out? "Fetch the potions maester, Feral," he said to Feraligatr. The Pokemon gave a lethargic snort before making his way to the door Brayden had entered through. He shut it with his tail when he was through, as was his wont, and Alidor could hear him padding down the hall to Freslen's quartering. It seems everyone but The Lord of Seahaven knows what's happening, he reflected, before saying, "Take me to it. Preferably before it's bled out."
Brayden led him through the castle's broad hallways for what seemed like hours, going up and down staircases Alidor hadn't known existed. At the end of one of them, they found a tall redwood door. Carved in it's face was the crown of a Magikarp, resplendent even on lackluster wood. Golden beadings dribbled down it like melted candlewax, and a fish-headed doorhandle glared up at them.
"It's the back entrance to the stables," Brayden explained, before Alidor could question him. "I'd rather not draw undue suspicion by entering through the yard."
Alidor nodded to his squire as he pulled the door inward. A prudent move, to be sure, but was it necessary? I am the Lord of Seahaven, what have I to fear of my subjects?
"Over here," Brayden said when the two reached at bale of hay at the far end of the stable. At first, Alidor didn't see the creature the squire had described. But as Brayden grasped the silvery wire about the hay and pulled it aside, a bony head made itself visible in the poor light of the stable, half-draped by a wing white as winter.
A queer creature, but... Alidor knelt. Somehow he found it familiar. Had he seen this type of Pokemon before? If I have, it certainly wasn't one so malnourished.The thing's bones jutted out beneath its skin in sharp mounds, and its eyes burned a dull red, clouded and unblinking. Alidor could see its ribs pulsing with each breath it took, however shallow they were. It was sombering to look on, when his own partner was in such good health.
"Will Freslen know where we are?" asked Brayden.
"Yes." What faith Alidor lacked in Seahaven's potions maester, Feral made up tenfold. "We may not have need of him, though. I see no blood spilled."
Brayden shifted his weight. "The light," he put forward.
"Or lack thereof," said Alidor, unsmiling. "Did you not think to bring a torch?"
"I..." Brayden paused when a soft knock sounded at the far side of the stable, followed by a low growl. He looked almost grateful at the disturbance, and went to let the visitors in. "Maester Freslen," came his greeting.
Alidor turned his head to see the bulbous Maester of Potions striding towards him, his roughspun robes swirling about his feet. Thankfully, he'd thought to bring a torch, and the light brought with it welcome relief.
"Where is the creature?" he asked, only sparing a moment to bow curtly to the young Lord of Seahaven. Alidor moved aside and the maester bustled past, clucking like some hen over the sorry state of the Pokemon.
"My squire said it was injured, but I see no blood," said Alidor Seaven. Freslen put two fingers to the creature's wing and drew them back slowly. In the torchlight, Alidor could see a slick liquid covering their tips. "There is the blood," the maester said. "I would ask your leave to stitch what wounds the poor thing has, and perhaps feed it a bit. From my own plate, to be sure." He licked his lip.
"Do what you will to staunch the flow of blood," Alidor permitted, "but I will see to rehabilitating it."
If there was any hesitation in the maester's eyes, it made its leave when Feral snapped his massive jaws. "It will be done," he mumbled, bowing. "I have brought a smatter of apothecary tools, yes..." He busied himself with wresting a pouch from the folds of his robe. When he pulled the string about its vair mouth, a few vials tumbled out into his palm. "Dreamwind will do nicely.. yes... and Citrus grounds for the pain..."
Alidor was about to leave Fresen to his work, but took a moment to wonder if it would be best to leave Brayden, too. He would be more suited to carry a Pokemon up to the potion master's quarters than the potion master himself, and it would do nicely to be free of his dismal attitude for a time. "You will assist Maester Fresen," Alidor bid his squire, before standing quietly and turning to leave.
I am the Lord of Seahaven, what have I to fear of my subjects?
Much and more, apparently.
