They say that the ink wasn’t even dry on Emperor Sevrus’ last decree before everything went utterly and completely to shit.


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">The Life and Times of Legionary Titus Nasica</li>


    </ul>


    ?


    4th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    “We’re leaving, Trist,” Margaret said.  Once, he would have opened his eyes, but there was little point to that now.  He’d seen her and the other two Exarchs coming through the fields of silver wheat anyway.


    “Good,” Trist said.  He was sitting with his legs crossed, as he and the other children of the village had done when playing in the dirt.  He’d learned to build a fire, sitting like this, from Percy, and how to cook fish.  “The king will need all three of you.  Cynric is well enough to travel?”


    “Aye,” Margaret said, coming over to sit down next to him.  She looked better, herself: clean, finally, as she’d never been during her time in the cage, or even after their escape in the basement.  Her hair was pulled back in a neat braid, and she wore a gambeson over a linen shirt and doeskin trousers provided by Queen Niviène’s servants.  The Exarch of Rahab had regained weight, too, during her convalescence: she no longer had the sunken cheeks and eyes, the skeletal ribs visible through her skin, that came of weeks held captive in Avitus’ cage.  “He’s a shit swordsman with his left hand, but that was never his strong point in the first place.”


    “Will Cern provide you an escort through the Ardenwood?”  Trist asked.  He was pretty certain that he already knew the answer, but he’d paid less and less attention to the other Exarchs and their travel plans, as the faerie queen’s lessons consumed his days.


    “Riding with the Horned Hunter - there’s another thing I never thought I’d do,” Margaret grumbled.  “But yes, he says he’ll see us to King Lionel tonight.  I don’t know how he thinks we’ll cover the distance that quickly-”


    “You will,” Trist assured her.  “He’s far better at using that Boon than I will ever be.  Just don’t fall behind or get lost.”


    She nodded.  People seemed to do that without thinking, even when they knew he couldn’t see.  Of course, here he could, after all.  “Anything else you want us to tell them?”


    Trist shook his head.  “We’ve already talked it over three times, and you have my letter,” he said.  “Cern will get you to Lionel, and then the five of you will have to see him through at Lutetia.  Make sure he knows that General Ismet is alive, and what she is doing in the Caliphate.”


    “I will,” Margaret promised.  “And I’ll tell him not to expect food from Raetia, either.  You still can’t see your wife?”


    “Not since she crossed the mountains heading north,” Trist admitted.  “I am going to try again after you leave.  But I think I would rather have her with the Queen of Winter than within arm’s reach of the Leviathan.”  His power as an Exarch, not to mention the magic of the faerie court, would probably protect him, if Forneus’ attention settled here.  However, Trist had taken to using the moniker instead of the daemon’s name, anyway, since seeing it with Claire.  He couldn’t be too careful, and he’d already drawn the monster’s attention once.


    “This is farewell, then,” Margaret said.  “At least for a while.  I hope to see you alive after it’s all over.”


    “And you, Dame Margaret,” Trist said.  “Thank you.”


    “For what?” she asked, with a laugh.  “You got us out of Cheverny, Trist.  And then you dragged us out from under the cathedral, as well.  It’s us who should be thanking you we’re still alive.”


    “I could not have done any of that without the three of you,” Trist pointed out.  “Especially not after losing my eyes.”


    “It’s all even, then,” Margaret said.  “And we can share a drink after the war.”  She stood, brushed dirt off her breeches, and extended a hand to him.  Trist accepted, and held the clasp for a moment before releasing her.


    “After the war,” he agreed.  “You will need to come find me in Camaret-à-Arden.  I intend to plant myself there and not leave, once this is over.  I will have a child to raise.”  If I survive, he did not say out loud.


    “Oh, I’ll visit you,” Margaret promised, then turned away from him and made her way off through the wheat.  “You can be certain of that.  Until then, Sir Trist.”


    “It does not make you uncomfortable,” Osma asked from over his shoulder, “to be the only mortal remaining here, after they leave?”


    “I felt you coming,” Trist said, then rose.  “I am not certain that any mortal will still be here, when those three depart.  Is your mother ready for me?”


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    “Queen Niviène is ready for your lesson,” the faerie princess said, and Trist did not miss her insistence on the title.  Osma did not speak to him while they walked to Niviène’s pool, and Trist kept his own silence, as well, until they reached the root steps.  There, the princess turned aside, and Trist descended alone.


    “Welcome back, Sir Trist,” the faerie queen called to him, from where she knelt at the edge of the pool.


    “Your Majesty,” Trist called back, in return, and picked his way over to join her.  “I am ready to get back to practicing.”


    “Put that aside for a moment and join me,” Niviène said.  “I need to show you something, and I think the time has come.”


    “As you like,” Trist said, and got himself comfortable on the edge of the pool while the faerie stirred the waters with her hand.  The reflections of branches and leaves were broken by spreading ripples, which shimmered until the entire expanse of water took on a glow.  Niviène withdrew her hand, and the pool settled - not into a reflection of the glade around them, but instead into the image of a woman, a complete stranger to Trist.  Her face was flushed, and her dark hair was plastered to her forehead by sweat.  As Trist watched, an infant’s shriek broke the quiet of the trees, and a naked babe was placed in the woman’s arms.


    “Who is she?” Trist asked.


    “Ravena,” Niviène explained.  “wife of Sevrus, the last Emperor of Etalus.  And that child is Decimus Avitus, the man who opened the Gate of Horn, made an Accord with the Sun Eater, and began the Cataclysm.”


    “He doesn’t look like a monster,” Trist admitted.  “He looks like any other infant.”


    “You are going to be a father yourself, soon,” the faerie queen observed.  “You will find, I think, that no child is quite as beautiful as your own.  But have you ever thought what it would be like if there was something wrong with them?”


    “One of the woodsmen,” Trist recalled, “had a child that did not live, when I was a boy.  I remember the funeral.  Something was wrong with the heart, Brother Alberic said.  And I know that some children pass in the night, and that no one knows why.  Though some say it is Agrat or her owls, come to steal their souls.  I try not to think about it,” he admitted.


    “To lose a child is heartbreaking,”  Niviène continued.  “And yet, what Ravena had to live through may have been worse.  Her son did not die.  Indeed, Avitus was always physically healthy.  He seemed eager to live up to the nine Emperors who had carried the name before him.  But there was something wrong, nonetheless.”  She waved her hand again, and the waters rippled.


    Trist frowned.  A young boy shoved another child down a flight of marble steps; finally coming to rest at the bottom, bruised and bloody, the smaller boy wailed.  He watched as people swarmed into the scene, some to care for the injured boy, others to chastise the one who had pushed him.  Though the words would have been in Etalan, Trist found that through the magic of Niviène’s pool he could understand Ravena perfectly when she took her son aside.


    “We’ve talked about this,” the mother scolded him.  “Even if you are frustrated or angry, you cannot hit other people.”


    “I didn’t hit him,” Aurelius sulked.


    “You pushed him down the steps!”


    “That isn’t hitting,” the boy protested, and the waters rippled again.


    “He seems a piece of work even then,” Trist observed.


    “Ravena did the best she could,” Niviène continued.  “She tried to discipline him.  She loved him, I am certain, like any mother loves her child.  But as Avitus grew older, I believe she also grew to fear him.  And he could sense that.  People like him always can.”


    Images flickered through the water, one after the other: Avitus, always growing older and larger, throwing tantrums.  The boy would fly into violent rages, breaking vases or sculptures, assaulting servants and other children.  And then, once again, the pool showed an image of Ravena giving birth.


    “His brother?” Trist asked.


    “Younger brother, yes,” Niviène explained.  “Tatius.  And he was everything his sibling wasn’t.  A gentle, kind child who loved for his mother to read to him, and his father to carry him.  It must have been a relief, after dealing with Avitus for so many years.  But it also meant, I think, that the mother and father turned away from their eldest son even more.”


    The pool showed a third birth, and Trist leaned forward to get a closer look at the infant.  “Is that-”


    “Your mother, yes,” the faerie queen confirmed.  “Cecilia.  Perhaps the only person that Avitus ever truly loved, in his own way.  And the only one willing to forgive him, even able to moderate his bad behavior, to an extent.  I suspect that is why she accompanied him to Velatessia, when his was made governor of the Provincia Narvonnia.  By that point, you see, Sevrus and Ravena had already made up their minds to groom Tatius as the next Emperor.  They wanted their eldest son out of the way, and where better than over an ocean?”


    “Did they know the Gate of Horn was there?” Trist asked.


    Niviène shook her head.  “Not what it was, at least.  A piece of ancient art, uncovered in the forest and worshipped by the barbaric tribes of the Narvonni, they would have said.  The Etalans were always arrogant.”


    “Avitus found it, then,” Trist guessed.


    “Found it, and tried to learn its secrets,” the faerie queen explained.  “But I am not certain he would ever have used it, if his father had not passed him over.  Emperor Sevrus visited Velatessia.  He felt he had to tell his son in person, I believe.  That he owed the boy that.  Avitus flew into a rage, and his father left him there.  He thought Cecilia might be able to talk sense into him.  Instead, Avitus invited the Sun Eater through the Gate of Horn as soon as his father had left.  By the time Emperor Sevrus had reached his ship, the Cataclysm had begun.”


    “He wasn’t beaten,” Trist pressed.  “Or abused as a child?”  The faerie shook her head.  “My squire,” Trist continued.  “Yaél.  If anyone has reason to grow up twisted, it would have been her.  Abandoned to the streets, an orphan.  Forced to steal.  Beaten and starved and used by evil men.  Avitus did not suffer any of those things.”


    “For all our knowledge,” Niviène said, “who can say what makes people who they are?  I cannot point to any cause that turned Decimus into a monster.  Being passed over for his brother was the trigger, certainly.  But it was not the cause.  The terrifying truth is this: some people, despite being loved, are simply rotten at their core.  Despite everything Ravena did, she was helpless to change him.  Some people, Trist, cannot be saved.  And he has only grown worse as the years have passed.  Power had made him free to be who he truly is: a violent, cruel, manipulative man.  I do not think he considers anything but his own desires.  And what he has wanted, since he was a small boy, is what he considers his due: to sit atop the throne of an empire, as his father did.  He believes it is his right and his due, and he does not care how many corpses he must pile to climb into that throne.  This is the man you must stop.”