Broadswords - 25. The Uncertainty

Broadswords

Chapter Twenty-Five
The Uncertainty

It had been several days since Birten had been sequestered in Oestra. Though he was initially chained down for the majority of each day, his captors slowly began allowing him more and more time out of the restraints. He was, however, still confined to the overly white room.

The first few days were the hardest. He was only granted reprieve from the shackles to eat and relieve himself. Even then, the food was delivered to the room and his bathroom breaks consisted of a bedpan placed on the floor while the peddler faced the other direction. Aside from that, most of his time was spent tied to the large stone slab in the middle of the room. It was uncomfortable, and the more he struggled the more the metal cuffs dug into his skin. Eventually, his wrists and ankles had begun to bleed, which is when he finally stopped writhing.

He slept a lot. He often felt much better when he woke, as if maybe things would improve. And as the days went by, the positive feelings felt stronger. His captors seemed to take notice too, that he wasn't quite as resistant. That's when they started granting him more freedom.

At first, it was primarily the peddler who had paid him the occasional visit. He made small talk with him, showed him trinkets that he'd gathered on his travels. Birten was hesitant at first, but it actually seemed like the peddler was trying to make him feel more comfortable. After all, the man had said he was just doing his job. He probably didn't have much choice in the matter.

His name was Deke, and he'd been all over the world. He'd been to every continent, to cities Birten had only read about, and several he'd never even heard of. The stories he shared were only recountings of what he'd been through, but the tales kept Birten sane. It was better than staring at the walls.

When Deke would visit him, he'd unclasp the cuffs and allow Birten to move about the room. Birten would use the time to stretch and get his blood flowing. Hours upon hours in the same position had caused his muscles to stiffen, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd been so uncomfortable. Deke was a savior, in a sense. He gave him the chance to prevent his body from becoming unusable.

Eventually, Rea started visiting him as well. At first he refused to talk to her. She tried, that was certain. But he didn't want to give her the time of day. It was one thing with Deke, who seemed to be almost enslaved by Elsior. But Rea was clearly much more capable. He wouldn't have been surprised if she was just as much a part of all of this as was Elsior.

But he slowly changed his mind on that, too. The more he listened to her speak, the more he considered that she was just trying to help him. "I understand why you must feel that we are your enemy," she had said. "Keeping you locked up in a room, tearing you away from your life. I would feel the same way you did, if I were in your situation."

He scowled at her, wanting to yell but feeling too much anger and hatred. So he kept his mouth shut. He watched as she delicately paced the room, almost floating as she walked back and forth. Her voice was gentle. Even though he wanted nothing more than to scream at her until he was blue in the face, her soft tone made it all the more difficult.

She continued. "But Birten, we are not the enemy at all. We just want to help. There are things at play that could threaten existence as we know it." She spoke sincerely, a legitimate look of concern on her face. Her hair was long, a bluish-black that broke the monotony of his imprisonment, and she tucked it behind her ears as she spoke. For some reason, it calmed him.

Though his voice was steady, and his demeanor quelled, his words were still pointed. They were the first words he had uttered in her presence, and he chose them carefully. "You mean Elsior." He delivered the statement flatly, ensuring there was no mistaking it for a question.

"Heavens, no. Elsior is a victim in all of this, like you are. Like we all are. This is bigger than him, bigger than all of us. It's… well, it's something that might be hard to hear. I'm not sure if…." She let her sentence trail off, and she turned away from him. Her elegant dress seemed to hang limply on her frame, its black folds enveloping one another. Her shoulders slumped.

Though he didn't want to, he bit. "Try me," he said through gritted teeth.

She faced him once again, smiling sadly. Her eyes were somehow dull, despite their almost black coloring. There was familiarity in them. As if he'd looked into those eyes before. "There's word of an uprising. In Jhirdyr. From within the walls of the castle itself." There was no hint of jest in her words.

He watched her carefully, part of him not wanting to believe her and another part scared that she could be telling the truth. He swallowed. "What are you implying?"

"It's not an implication at all. It's hearsay, really, but there's evidence to back it up. It seems as though the second eldest prince has formulated a plan to wipe out the reigning king and his immediate successor. And he may have gotten a dragonslayer to partake in his plot… your slayer, in fact… Daegon."

Birten shook his head viciously, as if coming out of a trance. It was horseshit. Sure, he didn't know anything about Harmon. For all he knew, that part could very well be true. But he knew Daegon better than he knew anyone. And there was no way in hell that Daegon was involved in some vicious, despicable attack against their home.

Rea didn't wait for a response from the squire; she kept talking as if she had been waiting for his reaction. "I know it must be hard for you to hear. I gather you were close with him."

"You're insane," he muttered. He couldn't believe he'd almost believed her, believed Deke. They were just as guilty in all of this as Elsior was, and they had almost gotten to him. The stories, the casual conversations. It had all been a ruse. A way to cause him to let his guard down.

She didn't show any emotion to his words, just continued to watch him sadly. "I've been called many things in my day, but I assure you that my mental health is very much intact. It can't be easy to learn of treachery at the hands of someone you've been close with for so long, but it doesn't change facts."

He continued to stare at her, his blood boiling. Daegon was many things. Arrogant, foul-mouthed, ungrateful… the list went on. He had plenty of questionable qualities. But there wasn't a truly evil bone in that man's body. He cared for his kingdom, he took his job seriously. "Your facts are wrong. If these things were true, why would Elsior have rendered me unconscious and brought me here? Why would you and Deke be keeping me here? If there was something afoot, why wouldn't you be granting me the ability to go out there and do something about it? Instead, you have me chained to a table on an entirely different continent. Your logic is flawed."

Rea's hand rose to her chest, almost instinctively, and she clutched something underneath the fabric of her dress. "Why? Birten, you're still not understanding. Elsior did this to protect you. To get you away from Daegon. He saw the way Daegon was misleading you, the same way Harmon had done to him. He loved that man. I can see it within you, too, that you feel the same way for the slayer. But let me ask you this. I know you're an insightful man, Birten, I can sense it. Have you never felt that Daegon had done something behind your back, kept a secret from you?"

Immediately, Birten's mind raced back to the night of and the morning after the royal feast. How Daegon hadn't come home. He'd gone to the castle and didn't return until well after noon the following day. He'd expected that Daegon had been unfaithful. But could it have been with Harmon?

He could feel Rea's eyes on him. She spoke again, a calmness still controlling her words but a hunger evident nonetheless. He didn't have to look at her to know she had closed the distance between them. "Is there something, Birten?"

He remembered Daegon asking if he had slept in his own home that night, and himself lying in response. Why had Daegon been so concerned? If he truly had been sleeping with Harmon, he could have just been honest. They had discussed that possibility at length, after all. Birten would not have held it against Daegon had it happened, though it might have stung a little. But the chance to share a bed with a royal was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And Daegon, the egotistical man that he was, shouldn't have been ashamed to admit such.

Unless there was more to it. If there was some deep, dark plot to overturn the royal succession, that would be something to keep quiet. But why? Why would Daegon take part in something like that?

His standing. Of course. He hated that he wasn't more renowned in the kingdom, that he wasn't the best at what he did. He'd scream at Birten for any miniscule detail that didn't go exactly according to plan. He would complain after every royal feast about how the king didn't give him as much light of day as he did with slayers such as Elan. Daegon felt underappreciated.

Birten looked at Rea. His lip quivered. She couldn't be right, he didn't want to believe it. He couldn't accept that Daegon had betrayed him, betrayed their kingdom. He wanted to remain as strong as he had thus far while being shackled there, holed up in some city in a foreign land. But he was finding it harder and harder to do.

"You're realizing the truth, aren't you Birten?" she said. She approached him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He held back tears and jerked away from her touch. Not that it mattered. He wasn't sure what was true anymore.

"Stop," he whimpered, closing his eyes tightly.

"It's going to be alright," she said softly, pushing him softly back onto the slab. "Go to sleep. Everything will be much clearer in the morning, I'm sure of it."

He felt as she placed him back in his restraints. He didn't fight this time. He kept his eyes closed, but a single tear made its way down his cheek. Maybe she was right. Maybe sleep would help clear his mind. He kept trying to assure himself of that as he finally gave in to exhaustion and drifted off into dreamworld.