FORTY-TWO - Silvan

Silvan wakes up and does as realizes the magnitude of his actions.

“What are we going to do?” Vivica asked.  “There isn’t enough food for the two of us, and with the baby on the way... We have to do something.”

“What can we do?  I can’t go back to Bufort.”

“Then find a different armorer to apprentice for.  I’m sure someone will take you.”

“No.  Bufort was clear.  As long as I didn’t come back and I didn’t go to anyone else, he wouldn’t tell the King what I did.  He doesn’t want to see another Exile either.  I got lucky.”

“We don’t have anything left.  This child is going to die if you don’t do something.  You really think you can be a father if you can’t even support the two of us?”

That stung.  I’m trying as hard as I can.  “I’ll think of something.”

“There are… things… that I could do.  Just for a while, after the baby comes.”

“No.”

“I’m not saying long-term.  Just until you find something else we can barter with.  You learned a lot from Bufort�"I’m sure you’ll be able to use those skills.  We just have to figure out how.”

“You’re not doing that.  I won’t allow it.”

“Then you have to solve this one on your own.  But I will not allow my child to starve, Silvan.”

“I don’t want to lose the baby either!  You’re acting like you’re the only person who cares, but you’re not!”  He took a deep breath.  “I could join the Hunt.”

“I don’t want you doing that.  It’s too dangerous.  You’ll leave me all alone with a child to raise, and we’ll be worse off than we are now.”

“I can help them.  Bufort was training me to fight as well.  And at least then I’m guaranteed a share of food.  It may not be much, but it’s something.”

Tears welled up in Vivica’s eyes.  “Please, no.  Anything but that.”

There’s no point in arguing with her.  But I can’t stay here or we’re going to keep arguing in circles until curfew ends.  “I’m going for a walk.  Maybe Elian and Antigone have some food they can share with us.”

“Don’t ask them.  They don’t get any more food than we do.  Isn’t there some way you can request a meeting with the King?”

“Even if I put in a request, it might be months before I actually got in to see him.  Besides, you don’t ask the King for extra food, not unless you want to be sent to the dungeons, or if he’s in a bad mood, exiled.  Everyone knows that.”

“I’m just throwing out ideas.  You don’t have to snap at me, Silvan.”

“I’m sorry.  I know.”  He embraced her, placing his hand on her bulging belly.  I can feel the baby’s heartbeat.  It simultaneously calmed him and put him into a state of panic.

The two sat in silence, holding one another.  Finally, Vivica cleared her throat.  “I have an idea.  You might not like it, but… it’s something.”

“Tell me.”

“What if you were to save the King’s life?”

Silvan laughed.  “How am I supposed to do that?”

She took a deep breath and spoke slowly, carefully choosing each and every word.  “There are a lot of people out here who talk about it.  Nobody gets enough food, nobody is happy.  Any of them would be willing to do just about anything to save themselves and their families, if only the right person were to come along and ask.  They just need that little extra push.”

“What are you saying?”

An hour later, Silvan was standing in the back of the Outskirts, having gathered three men to help him plan.  Together, they were going to attempt to assassinate King Xanthus VIII.

And while they talked, a fifth person approached the group.  He stepped into the torchlight, and it was none other than Elian.  No… you shouldn’t be here.

“You have to leave.  We’re�"” Silvan began, but he was immediately cut off by one of the others.

“I know you’re interested in this, Elian.  I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt us to have a few more bodies.”

“I have to say, it’s a little suspicious�"four men meeting near the Barelands in the middle of curfew?”

“We’re going to kill King Xanthus.  It was Silvan’s idea.”

Elian and Silvan’s eyes met.  Elian’s expression was clearly surprised and somewhat horrified�"but a part of him seemed interested.  He’s going to come.  I’ll never be able to talk him out of it.

And Silvan was right.  No matter how much he told Elian to stay behind, he refused.  “I’m going to be a part of this.  Anything you do, I’m in.”

They went their separate ways that night, the plans finalized.  And Silvan immediately made his way for the front gate to the city.  The guard had been Cassian.  Luckily, for Silvan, he wasn’t the smartest guard in the city.  As soon as he mentioned that he had word for Xanthus about a threat to his life, Cassian had opened the gate and let him through.  He sent one of the guard’s on the wall as an escort and before long, Silvan was standing before the King, explaining how four men from the Outskirts were planning to assassinate him.

“Let them try,” Xanthus had said.  “Thank you for the warning.  When the attempt happens, we’ll be ready for them.”

During curfew before the attempt was set to take place, Elian came to see Silvan in his tent.  “I can’t do it… I can’t go through with this.  What if we fail?”

If I go in with only three people, The King won’t trust me… the whole plan will have been for nothing.  I have no choice.  “We’re not going to fail, Elian.  Trust me.  We’ve planned the entire thing perfectly.  All we have to do now is follow through.”

And a few hours later, the five of them were walking through the castle corridors on what seemed to be a surprisingly easy mission.  “I think we might actually pull this off,” one of the men whispered excitedly.

They burst through the doors into the King’s Chambers�"where the entirety of the King’s Guard stood waiting for them, swords drawn.  Elian and the others dropped their weapons immediately while Xanthus applauded slowly from behind the Guard.

“Well done, men.  Very well done.”  He stepped through the men and stopped in front of Silvan.  “If it weren’t for you, that might have gone very poorly.”

Silvan couldn’t even turn his head to face the others, but he could feel their hatred pouring into him.  I did what I had to do, he kept telling himself.

The King’s Guard gathered up the other men and dragged them into the Throne Room.  Xanthus took a seat and brought Silvan up beside him.  On the other side of the throne, Thaddeus stood, smirking.

“I’m sure all of you know that Exile isn’t an option for you here.  You attempted to take my life… so I will succeed in taking yours.”  He snapped his fingers.  “Vanderford.  Bring me the Sword of Justice.”

Vanderford left and quickly returned to the room holding a massive weapon.  “Here you are, Sir,” he said as he handed it off to Xanthus.  Xanthus took the sword thankfully.  Then he turned and held it out for Silvan to take.

“Sir?” Silvan asked.

“These are yours to kill,” he said.

Silvan reluctantly took the blade and stepped down in front of his former friend.  He couldn’t look them in the eyes.  They cursed him, shouted profanities, spat in his face, but he blocked all of that out.  I’m doing this for my family.

He walked down the line, ending in front of Elian.

“I’m going to do you the honor of going first,” Silvan said.

“You have no honor,” Elian said.  And when Silvan looked up, Elian was staring him directly in the eyes, daring him to go through with it.  Silvan shrank into his own body.  This is all my fault.  But I can’t stop now or it will have been for nothing.

He raised the sword and brought it down swiftly onto Elian’s neck.  His body collapsed onto the floor, his head rolling away through the blood that poured out onto the floor.  It rolled forward, coming to a stop in front of the stairs leading up to the throne.

He didn’t even look at the other three men before killing them.  When it was finished, he threw the sword to the ground, where it splashed in the river of blood that had formed at Silvan’s feet.

“It is done.”

Silvan was promoted to a guard.  The next day, he and Vivica moved into the city.  But even being inside the city walls with better access to the Healers and an increase in food couldn’t save her from dying.  She went soon after, leaving Silvan alone to raise Esmarine.  He quickly rose through the ranks and was a member of the King’s Guard in the time it took for most men to make it to city guard.

Elian’s final expression�"full of hatred, confusion, and condemnation�" manifested in Silvan’s mind.  He opened his mouth to speak and blood came pouring out.  It spewed out and onto Silvan’s body, coating him with red.  He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe�"the blood was pulling him down.  He felt heavy.  He heard Elian’s voice, not coming from his mouth, say, “You deserve this.”

Silvan’s eyes bolted open.  He was lying on a cold stone table in complete agony; his neck was on fire, searing.  He wanted to scream but he couldn’t make his mouth move.  He was paralyzed, frozen to slab he was lying on, sticky blood surrounding him on all sides.  He caught a glimpse of something�"was that Esmarine?�"she was screaming, horrified by something.  Is it me?  Is she afraid of me?

Where am I?  But he didn’t have time to figure out the answer.  The pain was in complete control.  There were other people in the room with him, but their faces kept changing.  First it was Elian, then it changed to Willoughby and back into Vivica, before finally resting on Thaddeus.  Is any of this real?  Am I dead?  The pain was bad enough he almost wished he was. 

Time didn’t seem to make sense anymore.  He felt as though he had been lying on the stone table for decades, but that couldn’t be true.  Who were these people who kept appearing around him?  At one point, he thought he recognized Rhoswen.  Are you dead, too?  Did I condemn you when I forced you to spread that rumor for me?  But she was gone as quickly as she had arrived, being replaced by the ghostly visage of his dead friend, hovering over him, laughing.

And then there was Quintessa, who he had seen very briefly while ushering her into the King’s Chambers and then again briefly during the Exiling Ceremony.  What was she doing here?  She stood before him with a knife.

“I killed two of your brothers and I’ll kill you, too.  Everyone on the King’s Guard deserves death, and you’re no different.”

He tried to raise his arms and fight back but they were as heavy as boulders.  She moved slowly towards him, her mouth twisting into an evil smile, her knife raised above her, pointing directly at his heart.  She licked her lips and slid the blade slowly into the side of Silvan’s neck.  He felt every inch of the steel cutting his flesh, re-opening the wound as the blood spilled out onto his chest.  He tried to scream, but he couldn’t�"no sound escaped his lips, only hot blood.

Slowly, his eyes opened.  They closed again and remained that way for a long time.  Open them.  You have to figure out where you are.  He forced himself to try to open his eyes again, putting all of his available energy into the simple act of spreading his eyelids.  Success!

He still felt the wound on his neck.  The pain was real, but nobody was in the room with him.  Not Quintessa, not Vivica, not Rhoswen, and certainly not Esmarine.  He couldn’t turn his head but he shifted his eyes enough to check that nobody was hiding just out of eyesight, but there wasn’t.  He was completely alone.

Dull voices could be heard from the next room.  His eyes closed, not by choice, but because he physically couldn’t keep them open any longer.  He couldn’t be sure if what he was hearing was real, but he made sure to hear every word.

“You can’t speak with him now, he isn’t well!”  The voice sounded like Willoughby, but who he was speaking to, Silvan couldn’t be sure.  “He couldn’t answer your questions even if he wanted to!”

“If you don’t move out of the way, I’ll throw you into the dungeons with the others.”  Silvan focused hard.  Is that Thaddeus?  “And when we’re done with you, you’ll wish you were dead.”

“Threaten me all you want.  If you don’t let me take care of Silvan, you’ll never get your answers.”

“I don’t care how pointless it is, I’m going in there, and I’m speaking with him.  You might want to give me a chance, because if he doesn’t get this whole thing sorted out before he dies, I’m putting the blame on you.  Good luck dealing with the angry mob of hunters and apprentices and other Outskirt Scum when they think you’re the cause of all their problems.  It’d probably be even worse than anything I could do to you.  Zultan, how long do you think he would last out there?  Twenty minutes?  I think I’d bet ten.”

Zultan.  He had a sudden flash of memories and a surge of pain in his neck.  He felt like his throat was being slit all over again.  He did this to me.

Silvan heard the door open, followed by a shuffling of feet.  More than just Thaddeus had just entered the room.  Had he brought Zultan with him?  No… He can’t be here.

“Now try to imagine what I’m going to do to your daughter,” Zultan’s voice said.  Silvan felt terror.  Is that a memory?  Or did I imagine that?  He couldn’t seem to keep the two straight anymore.  Suddenly it didn’t matter because all he could feel was pain.

“How does that feel?” Thaddeus asked.  “Does it hurt a lot when I do this?”  Silvan didn’t know what Thaddeus was doing, but the answer was definitely ‘yes.’  He still couldn’t scream.  His vision went white.

“Don’t touch him!”  Willoughby shouted.  “You’re going to kill him!”

“I want to know what you said to the people in the Outskirts, Silvan.  For some reason they’re under the impression that you’re their savior.  You’re going to lead them all the health and happiness and salvation.  Why would they think that?”

Silvan couldn’t respond.  He couldn’t even hear the questions.  He choked out a noise of some sort, but the sound meant nothing.  He gasped for oxygen; still reeling from whatever Thaddeus had done to his neck a moment ago.

“They’re out there chanting your name!” Thaddeus yelled.  Those words were clear.

“I told you, he isn’t going to be very�"” Willoughby started, but then there was a gurgling sound and his voice stopped.

“Do not say another word.”

What happened?  Is Willoughby okay?  I can’t say I love the guy, but he’s the only one on my side right now.

“You… need me!” Willoughby choked out.

“I decide what I need.  And right now, I need for you to refer to me by my proper title.”

“You can’t kill me, Sir, because I’m the only one who can keep Silvan alive.”  He cleared his throat loudly, clearly trying to recover from Thaddeus’s attack.

“You already did the hard part.  Keeping Silvan alive shouldn’t be nearly as difficult as saving him was.  I’m sure your apprentice will be of some use.”

“I never took one.”

“What?”

“I never took an apprentice.  It’s just me.  And if I die, not only will you never get the answers you need from Silvan, but you’ll never heal another illness or save another human for as long as you’re King.  Good luck getting the people on your side when you can’t save them from even the simplest wounds.”

A number of very loud noises accompanied grunts of rage from Thaddeus.  Silvan imagined him throwing things around the room or kicking things in fury.  But there were no cries of pain.  He was leaving Willoughby alone.

“This is your fault,” Thaddeus said.

“Mine, Sir?” the voice belonged to Zultan.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was following your orders, Sir.  You said he couldn’t be trusted, and you said you’d let me do it because I’d get the most pleasure out of it.”

“Well I didn’t know how far his treachery went.  I didn’t know he’d already won over every damn person in the Outskirts!”

“If I’d known�"”

“Save your excuses.  If anyone finds out Silvan is dying, they’ll turn on us.  They were close enough to rebellion when the hunt returned without Xanthus.  It all would have been so perfect if Silvan hadn’t messed the whole thing up!

Vanderford was right�"Thaddeus was planning something all along.  It was no coincidence that the Hunt returned without Xanthus.  The whole thing was set up so that Thaddeus could become King.  I should have known that would mean he was going to try to take out everyone who wasn’t already on his side.  I never stood a chance�"until I accidentally saved myself by spreading rumors in the Outskirts.  If he weren’t in complete agony, he would have laughed.

“What exactly are the people saying, Sir?” a new voice.  Silvan couldn’t place it.  Had this other person been in the room with them the whole time?  He hadn’t made a sound up until this point.

“They aren’t saying anything,” Thaddeus responded.  The anger in his voice was unmistakable.  “They’re just saying they want to see Silvan.  They want to know that he’s alive, because ‘he’s their savior.’  The whole thing makes me sick.”

“A Healer might be able to help you with that,” Willoughby said.

Thaddeus slammed his fists onto the table beside Silvan.  “I’m about ready to kill you because it will please me to no end!” Thaddeus shouted.

“We have to stall, Sir,” that voice again.  It has to be Castiel.  I don’t know who else it could be.  “We can’t show him to them now, we can’t even move him without risking killing him.  But we also can’t sit here and do nothing.  The people�"they’re getting angrier by the minute.  They know something is wrong.  We have to convince them otherwise.”

“What can we tell them?” Thaddeus asked.  “You’re my idea man, give me anything.”  Nobody spoke.  “Come on!  This is why you’re my Guard!  Do we have anyone else we can give them?  Someone in the dungeons, maybe?”

“No,” Castiel said.  “They don’t want any of your new prisoners.  They only want Silvan.  We have to tell them the truth.  That Silvan was injured in combat, but he’s recovering.  They’ll get to see him as soon as he’s able to move.  That will hold them over.  But I don’t think it will be long before they forget about the whole thing.  They haven’t eaten in a while.”

“We have to deal with that, too.  If we don’t feed them…”

“Right now the most important thing is calming them down.  If they get inside the city and riot, it won’t matter what we tell them or how much food we give them, it’ll all be over.  Everything else comes after.”

“So… what kind of combat was Silvan injured in?  What sounds the best… what will they be the happiest to hear?”

“Tell them he was injured being a hero.  Tell them that he valiantly risked his own life to save yours, because he believes in you.  He recognizes that you are the true ruler of this city, and was willing to do anything he could to keep it that way.  Tell them there was a traitor.  Say that Vanderford tried to kill you and take the throne for himself.  And Silvan was able to stop him and kill him, but at great cost.”

“Then that’s the story.  Vanderford was a traitor.  Silvan is a hero.  And they get to hear exactly what they want and we still win.  If Silvan believes in me�"they all will as well.”

“It’s perfect, Sir.  And once Silvan is healed, we can coach him to say exactly what we want.  We’ll put him on display for everyone to see and he’ll say exactly what we tell him�"or we kill his daughter.”

They have Esmarine.

“Let’s go tell the people of the Outskirts what really happened.”