"They’ll sing songs of the Bastion, my lord. No doubt on that."

The words drifted through the relentless late-October rain, nearly drowned out by the rhythmic drumming of water on sodden wool. Lord Thalien, third-born of His Grace the Dog of Herculia, pulled his heavy cloak tighter, trying to shield his finery from the deluge as he navigated the muddy arteries of the camp.

Since the arrival of the Kakunian madman, the camp had become twice as loud and half as tolerable. The Prince had been moved by some sudden fit of hospitality, or perhaps a desperate need to keep their allies happy, and had honored them with a banquet that felt more like a circus than a celebration.

Thalien wouldn’t lie to himself; after three months of crouched misery in the brush, eating salted leather and killing whatever stray parties wandered inland and hanging the rest, a proper feast was a mercy. But the company? That soured all the good that was on the table.

He had caught a long look at the Bull of Kakunia during the festivities. Merelao had spent half the night draped in the arms of that paramour of his, seemingly oblivious to the envious, narrowed eyes of the lords around him. There were men at that table who had been trapped with unwashed bodies in the Bastion for months, and others who had slept on frozen rugs only to wake and hunt for their lives. To see a man so pampered was a bitter pill.

Merelao was more woman than man to look at; were it not for the heavy muscle his silk struggled to contain, he could have donned a kirtle and put half the court beauties to shame.

Perhaps that was why he clung to his whore so publicly to remind all he wasn’t a girl in a gilded plate. He was as insipid as spoiled milk, always wearing that fixed, vacant smile as if the world were one long, private joke that only he was privy to the answer.

And the Prince? The Prince seemed as obstinate as a mule in his desire to please the man. It was nauseating. Was the Kakunian a child who required constant rattling of toys to remind him he existed? He was as fickle as he was arrogant, Thalien decided.

"I wonder if the Lord of Epirietoli dresses in silk for our Prince at night, or if it’s the other way around," his knight ventured. Unlike Thalien, the man let the rain sluice freely off his iron helm, his visor raised just enough to keep the water from his eyes.

Thalien turned, his gaze cold. "Careful, Ser. I appreciate and am amused by your company, but if the wrong ears caught that, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the axe headed for your neck. Look twice before you speak; your mouth is a leak in a sinking ship."

"Well, luckily for us, I doubt anyone can hear a confession over this downpour."

Thalien gave a terse nod. "It’s been raining dogs for a god-cursed eternity. By the time we actually take the road, the world will be nothing but muck."

"Assuming the Prince finds time between feasts," the knight added, his tone growing bolder. "One wouldn’t think we were at war. I suppose we’re meant to make up for lost time. It’s been a hard campaign, every road a league on each directiong is nothing but ash and bone. The bastards burnt what they wanted and dipped, and His Grace just... let them. After all the trouble we went to, slaughtering those who tried to take what wasn’t theirs."

"I doubt you would have fared better in his boots," Thalien snapped. "Now, seal that insolent mouth. We were hard-pressed, and His Grace did what was necessary."

"I’m sure. Just as you did before. Just like your brother. And yet, I don’t see the Prince launching banquets for your house.He honored your brother well enough that is indeed true.They say an older brother’s honor is the pleasure of his youngest.

Have you heard what they’ve started calling him? Your brother, I mean."

"No," Thalien lied.

It was impossible not to hear it.

"The Limping Lion, my lord. That’s the name on the soldiers’ tongues and lords’."

Thalien knew. And he had heard of it . Some meant it as a sneer, a jab at the wooden prosthetic he’d been fitted with and the uneven, clicking gait he now possessed. But Thalien knew most meant it as a mark of respect. Even the All-Knower knew his brother wore that limp like a belt of honor, and the Prince was always the first to commend his bravery, whenever his brother came wobbling like a drunk.

And yet, how was Thalien himself known? The Betrayer.

The injustice of it burned hotter than any fever. Had Arnold not betrayed their father too? It wasn’t Thalien’s hand that had unbarred the gate, leading an entire army out to be butchered in the rain. It wasn’t him who had knelt in the filth and the piss of that failure they called a father to hand the golden laurel of Herculia to the Prince.

And yet they all forgot.

An entire army slaughtered. An invader invited into the very heart of the nobility. With one command, the Prince could have ended their lines forever, yet he had spared them.

The world had a short memory for the crimes of kings and princes , but a long one , no doubt, for the men who helped them fall.

Gods knew he didn’t regret it. Watching the look on his father’s face at that final banquet had been a prize worth every agonizing moment he’d suffered under the man’s heel.

All the scorn. All the insults. The suffocating isolation of a childhood spent in shadows. His father likely didn’t recall half the wounds he’d inflicted, but Thalien remembered them all.

Mind over Marrow, the priests of the All-Knower preached, and Thalien’s mind remembered them all.

He recalled being locked in that drafty library, forced to mutter prayers he had no business saying while the servants laughed in the hallway, mocking how slowly he moved his eyes across the page. He remembered his father’s booming laugh, Lorens’s sneer, and even Arnold’s muffled chuckle behind that heavy wooden door.

He’d turned that door into kindling for his own fire once he’d poisoned his way into control of the city. Just before gifting it to the invader and earning his monicker.

The priests had called him cursed when he had admitted to his father of his troubles on studying.

’’The words on parchments wriggle and dance like insects, I can’t read father.’’

Foolishs of him to admit of it, as if they had any solution or if it were normal. It was not, he was the one different, apparently.

One of them, that old bastard Bartheloum, had even convinced his father that Thalien was possessed for that, for being unable to read only scripture was a sign of demonhood.

They forced him to soak in a tub of holy water for an entire day until his skin was pruned and raw. He would have relished killing that priest by drowning him in holy water, if only the man hadn’t had the gall to drop dead of his own accord first.

The weaver should have waited with his shears, until he had his due. But when was the last time the gods and their priest were just?Even that priest he had met in that village, had sacrificed his young helpers to claim the lives of the invaders.

He had tried to be loved; the Gods were his witnesses to that.

He’d tracked that buck for miles, didn’t he?Filling himself with thorns and dirt along the cross. Gods made the animal fast, but they made men so they could hold their own water, and he held it in his pouch in a waterskin.

It took hours, but he had made it. One arrow, took him the leg, from there it was easy, he just had to follow the blood.

Bringing back the antlers as a gift for his father since he could bring back the whole carcass, how jolly he was, when he had done what his brothers could not.

Instead of a warm praise, he had been reprimanded for wasting time on "sport" while he should be praying instead.

The old man had forgotten that, too.So small was his mind for things he had no interest in.

He’d spent his days blowing into a flute carved from those very horns before he was scurried off to his convent.

Thalien promised himself that the next time he visited, he’d bring that flute and a honey cake. Perhaps he’d hide a rat’s head deep inside the sponge. He’d have to eat the first slice himself to prove it wasn’t poisoned, but his father, frail and starving on a diet of bland porridge for the last of three years, would ravage the rest. He would find it eventually.Inexorable as the Weaver cutting the threat at the end of each man’s life.

He would find it. That little small thing.

Deep inside. Hidden away from everyone’s sight.

Alone in a world of heavens, seemingly holding its only hell.

"Stand guard outside," Thalien ordered Ser Malovio, his voice snapping the knight out of his rain-drenched stupor. His tone even colder than the air.

He had gotten himself in a bad mood, thinking of that.

It was foolish.

They had reached the center of the Herculian quarters, where a massive silk tent rose from the mud. It was a grand affair, the fabric a deep, expensive crimson with a roaring lion emblazoned across the front, a bolt of silk far larger and more imposing than the one over Thalien’s own quarters . It got wet from the rain, falling down on the wood stick that held him, instead of fluttering from the rain.

Thalien brushed the moisture from his shoulders and ducked inside, leaving the drum of the rain behind to meet with his most dear brother.