Chapter Seven: Sunstone Rock, Part One
The young soldier sighed.
He sat idly on a cleaved boulder, his chin resting on his palm. Perspiration dappled his face and neck, and it dampened his loose-fitting shirt where it draped against his body. The airy jungle surrounding him warbled in his ears. Birds carried the melody, but the wind rustling through the treetops and the distant thunder of waterfalls transformed it into a symphony. The sparse canopy overhead cast the lush vegetation with bright sunlight, and he watched as a boar trotted through it, her retinue of striped piglets trailing behind her. They hopped and squealed contentedly as she foraged, their little bodies basking in the yellow warmth of the season.
He sighed again.
And hoped for a fox.
He was drawn back by footfalls plodding steadily over the gritty courtyard, and when he spied over his shoulder, he spotted an approaching guard. The guard stopped several paces away, a wise distance to avoid anyone but an archer. Not that the young soldier was armed with anything more than the sheath to the dagger he'd gifted to Helis.
"The warden will see you now," the guard said with a slight waver in his voice.
"You must have lost the bet if you're the one they sent to get me," the young soldier said, smirking as he climbed to his feet. "Or maybe you're just the greenest and the rest pulled rank on you."
The guard's face flushed.
He snorted. "I'm guessing it was the latter then."
"This way, sir," the guard said too quickly, gesturing to the towered gate.
Still smirking, the young soldier headed across the courtyard, his escort following behind him at a generous distance. His eye traced the imposing ridge looming in front of him, its massive rock face spanning limitlessly in either direction. And carved into its shadow was a prison. Red banners flapped from the parapets of its stout towers and fortified walls. An open, ironclad gate awaited him, and when he crossed it, he was greeted with a sunny yard. Its encroaching walls pressed in from all sides, but its ceiling was the endless cerulean sky, and he couldn't tell if it was meant to be a sanctum for the penitent or a perverse dungeon for the interminably guilty.
Another guard whistled at him, stealing his attention, then pointed at a door, the entrance to the complex. The young soldier went inside with two guards accompanying him now, and he thought about the sow and her trailing piglets. He followed a lamplit hallway, encountering more guards at each intersection. They menaced him with scowls and snarled slurs, their armored bodies filling every egress but the one offered. He smiled back at them, seeing through their hard façades for their sweating brows and pulsing veins. The stench of fear radiated from them, which leached them of their power and gave it to him. And for that, he let them herd him through the maze until he arrived at the end of the hall. A red door waited, its guard at attention. The guard nodded an affirmative at someone behind the young soldier and turned to knock politely on the door.
"Yes?" a gruff voice called out from the other side.
"The new prisoner is here, sir" he said.
"Let him in."
He opened the door and stepped inside. The young soldier followed, his confidence rewarded when no one grabbed his shoulder and demanded that he ask for permission first. It was a cramped space, more closet than office. Its sole light was a battered oil lantern. It illuminated the wooden crates stacked against the walls, each overflowing with ledgers and loose sheaves of paper, a few of which spilled across the floor. At the center of the room was a broad desk, its messy surface piled with unfurled scrolls and more disheveled paperwork. He spotted a trail of ink blots among them, like blood on snow, and he traced it back to a smudgy ink well and its abused quills.
"Take a seat," a person said, gesturing to a chair.
He blinked, only now seeing them. They sat behind the desk, their officer uniform bulky on their small frame. Their short hair was tied back with a red bandanna, revealing a brow etched with permanent annoyance. They stared at him expectantly, and he realized why he hadn't noticed them. The ways in which the others exuded fear, this person could care less. Their power in this place was unassailable, and they felt no need to prove it otherwise.
He sat down.
"My name is Warden Janeva…" they said, then their brow furrowed.
He could feel the guards pressing in around him, looming like heavy storm clouds. There were at least five of them, trampling papers with their boots, and more lurking in the hallway.
"What the fuck are you all doing in here?" Janeva asked, their expression a battle between bewilderment and irritation, and the latter was winning the war.
"He's… He's dangerous, sir," one of the guards stuttered. "We can't leave you alone with him."
"He's an unarmed man," Janeva growled. "I don't need you all in here to protect me. I mean, who's even guarding the rest of the prison if every one of you is trying to fit yourself into my office?"
"But he's…"
"He's what?"
The guard sighed, and he followed it with a whisper, "Do you know who he is, sir?"
"No," Janeva said, frowning, and they began to fumble through their paperwork. After flipping over some pages, they teased a few from the pile, their color crisper than the rest. "There's no warrant for him, and I hadn't read the intake form yet. But I will now."
The young soldier waited, his smile becoming smugger.
Janeva's eyes scanned the scribbled ink, and then they widened. "Oh shit..."
"Yes, sir," the guard agreed.
Janeva set the paperwork down and looked up at them with unexpected pleasantness. "All of you can stay then, but I don't want to see anyone else trying to cram themselves in here, okay? We're going to suffocate as it is."
"Yes, sir," they replied.
"Scared?" the young soldier asked coolly.
Janeva's eyes snapped to him, and they smirked. "Let's call it being prepared."
He frowned, though his eyes still twinkled. "You'll need more men if that's your reason."
Janeva sighed, waving their hand dismissively. "Then we'll call it being woefully unprepared. I really don't give a fuck. What I want to know is why are you here?"
The twinkling faded.
"Avad made a decree," the young soldier said. "His court issued warrants for all Jiran loyalists and war criminals. They're to be remanded at Sunstone Rock where they will toil for the Sundom until they have atoned in the eyes of the new sun-king."
"A concise summary," Janeva said, "But I fail to see how it applies to you. Like I said earlier. There is no warrant with your name on it, so our sun-king demands no penance from you."
"There must be a mistake. I served in Jiran's army. I was even recognized by his court."
"Oh, I know. You're a legend in officer circles. A veritable child soldier who became the youngest man nominated to kestrel status." Janeva nodded towards his plumed headdress. "Seems you achieved it in every way but the actual title."
"And that doesn't condemn me?"
"No," they snorted, suppressing a laugh, "If serving the mad sun-king while he was in power was a condemnable offense, then I'd have to lock up half the Carja army. If you want to be considered a Jiran loyalist, you must be a member of the Shadow Carja and have engaged in a plot to unseat Avad. Have you conspired to do any of that?"
He frowned pensively. "No. When Helis attempted to recruit me, I rejected him. We engaged in combat, and I stabbed him."
A guard behind him muttered a prayer under his breath.
"I'd say that disqualifies you as a Jiran loyalist and then some," Janeva said smirking. "If you managed to kill that bastard, you'll probably find yourself back in the sun-king's court getting honored with a new hat."
The young soldier blew out a long breath teeming with frustration. "Then if I'm not a loyalist, I'm a war criminal."
"A war criminal?" Janeva said, raising their eyebrows. "How so?"
"For over two years, I was party to the raids in the west and to the north. I slaughtered people or captured them for sacrifice in the Sun Ring. I burned their homes and villages and destroyed their crops. I was ruthless and violent. And every day, I reveled in it. It was a high like no other, and I crave it even as we speak."
"You sound like a weapon," Janeva remarked, their countenance unfazed by his admission. "But are you a war criminal? Enjoying battle to the point where you might want to fuck it, doesn't make you a criminal. Is it terrifying? Sure. Am I glad you're unarmed right now? Absolutely. But it's nothing more than that."
"But I—" he began.
"What you did under the last sun-king is what you were ordered to do," they said, interrupting him. "Jiran and his court orchestrated the invasions and demanded captives to be taken, either as sacrifices or as slaves. The commanding officers of his armies had great latitude in how they accomplished that. If they commanded you to burn villages and farmlands, you did it. If they commanded you to line up for a battle or a raid, you did it. You followed orders and that's not a crime. Going beyond that is what would make you a criminal."
He eyed them, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
Janeva sighed. "Okay, let me ask you this… When you were serving the mad sun-king, did you ever slaughter children or babies? Did you ever torture the beaten or the injured? When someone surrendered, did you ever continue to wound or kill them? Did you ever rape a captive or exploit them in any kind of way?"
He looked away. "No."
"Then I'm sorry," Janeva said, their eyebrows pinching with sympathy, "You're not a war criminal. And I have no reason to incarcerate you."
His chest tightened and his pulse thundered in his ears. A curious sensation surged inside him. It felt like nausea, turning his stomach, but worse. He gripped the chair, his blunt fingernails digging into its arms.
"How about if I kill someone?" he asked, then nodded towards one of the guards pressed in beside him. "What if I kill him?"
The guard shifted nervously, and the packed room suddenly became a kill box. They were all crushed in together like trees in a forest, and in their midst, a fire started to smolder.
"What if I kill all of them?" the young soldier asked, his warm amiability boiling away to something cold.
Janeva watched him, their expression inscrutable. When they spoke, their words were as careful as they were firm. "If you kill a guard, that's a capital offense. You wouldn't go to prison. You'd just be executed. You could kill one guard or wipe out the entire Carja army, but your fate wouldn't change. You won't get what you want."
He glanced at the guard to his left, his attention fixating on his hip and the sheathed sword that hung there.
"Would you kill me?" Janeva asked.
He snapped back to them. "What?"
"Would you kill me?" Janeva repeated. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that to be imprisoned here all you needed to do is kill me right now. I'm unarmed and the only threat I pose is a devastating inability to be the least bit organized. If you attack me, I won't put up a fight. I'll be even easier to slaughter than what you're used to, and my guards will immediately lock you up as requested." They locked eyes with him. "Would you do it? Would you kill me?"
He glared at Janeva.
"Well?" they asked.
"No."
"And that's the problem," Janeva sighed, leaning back in their chair. "You don't belong here. There's nothing for you to atone for as far as the sun-king is concerned. Your crime and its absolution live inside your own head."
Janeva nodded towards the door, their eyes on one of the guards. A signal that their meeting was done. Then with grumbling dissatisfaction, they turned back to their paperwork and began to sort through it.
The young soldier could feel the guards shifting around him, weighing the strategies needed to extricate him from the warden's office with the minimum loss of limb or life. Unexpected desperation knotted in his gut, and the confidence he'd had when he entered the prison withered. He couldn't let it end like this.
"I can't go back out there," he said, almost in a whisper.
Janeva tapped a sheaf of loose papers against their desk, evening their edges. "What do you mean?"
"I love war," he explained, angry that he couldn't purge the quavering from his voice. "I live for the thrill of battle and for every drop of blood spilled. When I fight, it feels like poetry. It's both my art and my purpose. And until the mad sun-king fell, I had a reason to exist. I had someone to wield me for the betterment of the Sundom."
"Then go back to the army," they offered. "I'm sure Avad will welcome you into his ranks as long as you play nice with his new vanguard. You've earned as much for your loyalty."
"I can't. If this civil war has proven anything, it's that the will of the Sundom is fallible, because those who control it are simply human. Slaves to their own desires that have nothing to do with the greater good. I can't let them wield me. But if I stay out there with this bloodlust and no purpose, I'm afraid of what I might become."
"I don't—" Janeva began.
"I need to think," he said emphatically, clenching his fists. "I need a place where I can do that. Where I and everyone around me will be safe until I figure out where to go from here."
"I can't just incarcerate you for no reason," Janeva said, rubbing their face with apparent frustration. "I only have so many prison cells, and there are other costs. This isn't an inn or some resort…"
He could feel them beginning to yield, and he ransacked his mind, searching for a solution. He was so close.
"…Most of these ledgers are for accounting," they continued, "Running this prison is expensive. The Sundom must provide for everyone here. Even basic necessities like food and clothing add up—"
"I can stitch," he interrupted. "I can sew anything. From silk to scale mail. I will earn my stay, and you will have no reason to deny me a place here."
Janeva crossed their arms, their unseeing gaze on their paperwork as they mulled over his offer.
He waited.
A long, irritated sigh groaned from them. "Fine. You can go to prison."
"Thank you," he said, surprised by the depth of the gratitude that filled his voice.
"Yeah, you're welcome," Janeva grumbled, and they looked to one of the guards. "Take him down to processing. Afterwards, find him a cell on the northern wing. I don't want him anywhere near that crazy Tenakth bandit."
"Yes, sir," he replied.
The tension in the office eased as the guards started filing out. When there was only one left to cover the rear, the young soldier stood up and let them guide him out to the hall. He followed them as they wound their way through new hallways, penetrating deeper into the complex. Most of the guards slowly split off, returning to their normal duties. He'd gone from legend to something broken in their eyes, and he couldn't tell if it was for the best. He'd benefited from fear for so long.
But if he'd had any misgivings, they were assuaged when they finished processing him. After stripping him of his clothes and handing him a set made from undyed linen, he watched them as they admired his headdress, envy contorting their expressions. The threat he'd made in response had been pleasantly spoken. Ending the family lineages of every guard stationed at the prison if something happened to his property was an ambitious goal, but one he could easily accomplish within a few weeks upon release. However, given how quickly and carefully they stowed his headdress away, he was certain he wouldn't have to carry it out when it was finally time to leave.
They escorted him down a final passageway. Reinforced doors lined both sides with sequential numbers branded into their surfaces. When they reached the final one, a guard turned the key in its lock and opened it wide for him. He stepped inside, and the door slammed shut behind him.
And the lock turned with a heavy clank.
It was a small room with a terra-cotta tile floor and brick walls that loomed close on every side like a tomb. There was a thin cot and a filthy bucket. But what drew him were the slit windows. Fiery beams of sunlight poured through them, illuminating the floor. He dropped onto his knees, then laid down beneath them. Even in the sweltering heat, he could feel the slivers of light cutting into him like knives.
And there, he fell into a sleep deeper than anything he'd known in years.
He was home.