A/N – The second chapter. I do not believe that this will be a long epic; it'll probably only be about five or so chapters.
Disclaimer – I don't own the Underground. Nor do I own the concept of tattooed totemic markings around the eyes – that belongs to Fraggin'Aardvark. I've only mentioned it once.
Chapter Two
The next morning brought bright sunlight, thick mud, and Nevismouth himself, flanked on either side by his wife and his brother-in-law. Bran, in no mood to play the diplomat, nevertheless answered his questions as courteously as possible –
Yes, he had sheltered the man in his tent all night.
No, he had not thought to report him – he had interviewed the intruder himself and had been satisfied that he was no spy. If I may be frank, my lord, bruised and battered as he was, he posed no real threat to anyone except himself. I did not think to disturb you, sir, because I knew that you dislike being bothered with the petty concerns of day-to-day operations, preferring to focus on far more important matters –
Indulging your beauteous, treacherous wife, who casts seductive eyes towards her brother as you look on, blind and besotted…
Yes, I completely understand, my lord. I apologise profoundly. Yes, Lord Borgia, I am a coward, an honourless worm worth far less than your horse. Please forgive this unworthy one –
Son of a pox-ridden whore!
Eyes lowered, hidden, he turned his cheek. He could feel them watching, waiting for his reaction, and he would not give them the satisfaction of eliciting one.
Bran watched them ride away, his jaw rigid and his fists clenched so tightly his nails cut half-moon crescents in his palms. His heart pounded with the need to let out the anger, the terrible, terrible anger that had been building for century upon worthless century, as he went from contract to contract, employer to employer, and every time felt himself slipping further and further away from what he had once been.
Slowly, with the ease of long, long practice, he buried his temper deep, deep down. Blood trickled down his chin and he wiped it off with his fingers, wincing as his split lip stung. The blood was thick, viscous bright crimson – one day he would kill Cesare Borgia for that.
By all the gods of earth and sky, he swore it.
"Good morning, master spy," came a vaguely familiar voice. Jareth rolled over, groaned, and opened his eyes –
The sunlight blinded him. There was a soft, malicious chuckle, and then the entrance to the tent fell back down, recreating the blessedly shadowed half-light of before.
"Open your eyes, my friend," the voice spoke again. "It is safe now."
Warily, he cracked one eye half open, saw that it was indeed much darker, and ventured to open the other. Sight fully restored, he looked about him with interest – he hadn't had a chance to observe much last night, thanks to the combined effect of fatigue, bruises and alcohol.
It was an old, small tent, repaired here and there with mismatched patches, containing nothing more than a tiny camp bed, a table and a chair. There was one other person in the tent with him – the man who had woken him, who had laughed, but who had also been good enough to shut out the bright sunlight.
"You're…the captain," he managed to groan. "Remember you from…last night."
"Yes," said the other man. "However, I am no longer the captain of this force – it is past dawn, and I am now unemployed."
Ah. That would explain why he was moving about, packing his possessions into his saddlebags. Jareth forced himself to sit up, caught the thick, dark woolen cloak that covered him before it slipped to the ground. It was not his cloak – bandits had stolen his cloak not ten miles from his home – so it must belong to the captain.
"Here," he said, extending it out to the other man, "this is yours, isn't it?"
The captain took it with an absent murmur of thanks.
"May I ask," he began cautiously, "where you will go, now that Nevismouth no longer employs you?"
In the morning light, he could see the other man's face – split lip and all. He was pureblooded sidhe, beautiful in a remote, angular fashion, with cool grey eyes and long, thick black braids woven with feathers and beads. Raven feathers they were, large and glossy, and there were raven markings tattooed around his old, old eyes –
"Yes," the captain said dryly, "I am called Bran."
The word meant simply raven or crow – it could not be his name, but the captain had not said it so either. Sometimes exiles took another name, out of shame or regret.
He took a deep breath. "My name," he said quietly, wondering whether this mercenary would recognize it, "is Jareth. And I am not a spy – but I think that if I stay in this camp, I will be executed as one."
"Undoubtedly you will, friend Jareth. I suggest you get out as soon as possible –"
"I would like to go with you."
Bran paused and looked at him through grave, steady eyes. "You would follow the path of a wandering mercenary? Fighting in endless scraps and petty conflicts until one day, your luck finally runs out? I don't think that's what you want from life, Jareth – gods, even your name brands you high court. Go seek some rival king who'll take you in and use you as a puppet."
"I am not of the blood royal, Bran. I would not be of any use – besides, my father has placed a ban on any of the Summer courts accepting my service."
Bran half-raised a brow. Jareth wondered whether he had just given himself away – there were few outside the royal family who could enforce such a ban. But if Bran had been an exile for a very, very long time, then perhaps he didn't know of Aethan, the King of Summer's right hand…
Or of the scandal surrounding Jareth, son of Aethan, who had been exiled for life from the Summerlands following the attempted murder of his elder brothers.
"I can't return to the courts. I won't. But I won't fade quietly into obscurity either – I failed once, but I will gain enough power to have my revenge…"
Another cool stare. "And you think that you will find your power base riding with me? Let me tell you something, boy – exiles on the road never make it anywhere, and they never leave anything behind when they're gone, either. If you want to build power, go to a Winter court if you must, because there's not a kingdom in the Underground that will take you in otherwise. If you had ambitions once, let them go – the exile's road leads only to war and death."
Jareth opened his mouth to argue, but Bran turned his back, signaling an end to the discussion. Quickly, efficiently – the result of long, long practice – he bundled up his cloak and stuffed it into his saddlebags, then slung them over his shoulder and ducked out of the tent. Jareth followed him out.
"Where will you go?" he asked, squinting in the blinding morning light.
"Out. Away. South, where the Mariner seeks troops to sail against Caenis' pirates, east, in the Summerlands, where at least it is warm and dry – does it matter? There is nowhere in this world free of war."
They walked over to the picketed horses, Bran heading towards a nondescript dun and a bay with one white sock. Jareth knew he would have to think quickly, before the other man rode off without him.
"They say there are untouched lands to the far west, beyond the Great Plain. Perhaps there, there could be a place for all, even exiles."
Bran said nothing for a moment, while he greeted the horses and fed them an apple each, patting their noses and whispering into their ears. Finally, he said, "The far west?" He laughed, his eyes old, tired and bitter. "There's nothing but wasteland and goblins, lad…"
"Then we can make a place of our own."
That gave the other man pause.
A place of our own?
Bran wondered how a whelp of barely two hundred years, not even a year on the road by the look of him, would so easily class himself an exile. Except he was not a whelp, he was gentry of the Summer courts, born to luxury and idle intrigue, meaningless dalliance and cruel, elaborate games. Whoever had exiled him had been cruel enough to know what long years on the road, denied access to the courts, would do to such a flittering, idle dilettante – look at him, now, even after only one year.
His white, no doubt beautiful face was bruised and swollen, his fair hair haphazardly hacked and shorn, and he was clad in filthy rags and castoffs. He looked nothing like the courtier he must once have been, draped in silks and satins, eyes slyly painted, every word and gesture both significant and deceptive.
It was an improvement.
"You would be an exile, Jareth?" he asked, deliberately. "You would take to the road with me?"
Jareth seemed to understand the significance of his question. "Yes," he replied. "Yes, I would."
Bran sighed. "So be it." He swung up onto Inganiad, nodded to the bay. "Ride Whitesock for the moment, until you get another horse." His men, overenthusiastic, had shot the one Jareth had been riding last night.
He watched the boy mount, noting both his excellent seat and the way he favoured his left side – the broken ribs again.
"Whose is that magnificent black, over there?" Jareth asked, his eyes roving covetously over the glossy black stallion in an enclosure all by itself.
"Borgia's."
He did not need to turn his head to see the look he knew Jareth was giving him; it was pure mischief, whether delivered from eyes swollen and bruised, or outlined in kohl and malachite. "Borgia? Is he not the one responsible for your mouth?"
"Hmm." He gave in. He turned his head, and met those sly eyes. "But we will not be taking his horse today. The black is far too noticeable…"
"There are ways around that."
"I know. But I am prepared to wait – and here, Jareth, is your first lesson: patience is preferable to instant gratification. And the grand ironic gesture, while no doubt de rigeur at Court, where reputations and social influence hinge on appearances and superficialities, is ultimately worthless out here in the real world."
"You're saying you can't afford it."
"I can't afford it. We can't afford it. That's why I stood still this morning and let him strike me, and that's why even you, proud and haughty sidhe lord, must learn to bow your head if the situation calls for it."
For the first time, Jareth looked affronted. It was fascinating to watch – he drew himself up, his head lifted, and even his nostrils flared with haughty indignation. "I bow to nothing and no one. Not my father, not my king, not even the High King himself."
"You'll bow to necessity, lad. We all do, in the end."
In the end, they rode out of the camp without Borgia's black, although Jareth did cast a few wistful glances back towards it as they left. He vaguely remembered that confrontation from this morning, remembered Bran's appeasing, placatory voice and Borgia's angry, impatient voice, and then the sharp crack of a palm striking flesh.
At court it would have been a deadly insult if anyone had dared to even touch him without his permission, but here, in this place, Bran – proud, dignified Bran – had allowed that puffed-up fool to not only strike him, but to backhand him, the most contemptuous of blows.
Afterwards he had bowed, and apologized for it.
"You'll bow to necessity, lad. We all do, in the end."
Exiles, those who were cast out of their own kingdoms for common crimes, not political ones, and so could not find a home in another kingdom or court, were the most despised beings in the Underground. They were beneath even peasants, because even the lowest peasant had an accepted place in the hierarchy of his kingdom; exiles existed outside the security of such structures, had no place, no rank, nothing but their own two hands. Some became bandits and thieves, and others, like Bran became mercenaries, but they were all united by one common characteristic – they had nowhere to go, and were universally despised.
Now Jareth had joined their ranks.
"I bow to nothing and no one. Not my father, not my king, not even the High King himself."
The exiles bowed their heads to necessity, accepted the despite and contempt of all they came across because they had been beaten down by life, by circumstance, by years and years of degradation.
But not him. Never him.
Jareth refused to end up like that.
He would die first.
A/N – Next chapter, Jareth begins to see the potential of the exiles. Unfortunately, Bran notices Jareth's resemblance to his father. Interesting events occur.
Please don't forget to feed the author! Thanks to all my reviewers for their encouraging comments.