Arathalian and Caren

[ladylight]

What Arathalian thinks of himself; why Caren gets slightly privileged treatment

How does Orinnia fit in world view? How seriously 'monsters' considered? Excuses? Exceptions?

Two weeks into spring, and Cochalyon was screaming in full voice today. Amazing how so many of Caren's Queries with Arathalian tended to be allocated around this time of season, really.

But this was no time to be fuming over the politics of the department. Caren prepared himself for a long, circuitous session as he stepped into Arathalian's cell, pleased to see that the fae wasn't pacing or glaring at his shelves, at least.

Arathalian was in child-shape at the moment, settled in his chair with an unopened book on his lap, studying his own small legs.

"Arathalian," Caren greeted.

"Can you see a hole there?" asked Arathalian, staring at his trousers. "I think the stitching's come loose in the seam. Tch."

"It has?" It seemed like a non-sequitur, but Caren knew better. "Why don't you change?"

"Since when has that been popular down here?" The fae poked a small finger through the hole. "I'm just trying to make conversation, Caren Brellview. Spare you the trouble, even, of picking some banal topic to stop me bringing up Cochalyon."

"I'm glad it worked."

"Ah, we're cheeky today. Not to worry. I'm feeling very mature and responsible this morning."

"If you think I'm touching the word 'responsible' with a ten-foot barge pole today, Arathalian, you're seriously mistaken."

Arathalian looked up with a little pout to play his age, which probably - probably - meant that he wasn't actually in a confrontational mood. "You're too suspicious. I'm a creature of reason and rationale, you know. I can discuss all kinds of things calmly."

"And yet I seem to recall a conversation where the mention of 'paper' eventually led to an early termination of Query."

"Oh, yes!" Arathalian laughed a bubbling, little-boy laugh. "Can't even remember exactly how we got there, now. Brilliant."

"That's one word to describe it."

"You know who else used to have fun with those kinds of games?"

Caren stayed silent and composed.

"You know," said Arathalian, "if none of you can even say the name Cochalyon without changing colour, there's really no way you'll be able to discuss him with me."

"That wasn't really what I wanted to discuss now, Arathalian."

"Now, or ever?" asked the fae. "Never mind. I'm not going to quibble over the centuries-old incarceration of a close friend today. It's not just your fault."

Again Caren responded with his steady 'not playing' look. The fae rolled his eyes.

"Well, it's not," he said. "If you wanted to be really pedantic, you could even say that some of it's my fault. For perpetuating our mythology, I mean. It works to my advantage, but not to his."

"Hmm?" returned Caren, caught off-guard by what looked like candour.

"Oh, come on. A magical fairy prince from across the waves, suffering over centuries - people like those sorts of stories, don't they? Lovely, sweeping tragedies. But they wouldn't enjoy it if they thought it was real. If they thought about a real man tortured out of his mind in a foreign country, they'd be horrified."

Caren gave a small sigh. He knew the rules and he knew he should change the subject while he still had a perfect safety record. He knew how Arathalian loved to switch these innocuous discussions on their head and watch Holders sweat. It was a trick for new bloods, not a trap that experienced researchers should fall into.

"I think they would be," was what he said. "They would be horrified. Even Holders are."

"'Oh, you poor thing,'" replied Arathalian, mock-quoting. "'But speak up, could you?'"

Caren spread his hands. It was a gesture he used quite often with the fae now, meaning 'What do you want me to say?' or 'You're just headhunting now, aren't you?' Oddly safer than asking the question aloud, too, if he chose his moments carefully.

"I know how it works, you know," Arathalian said with an obtuse look at the ceiling. "I gave you a hard time about it last time we talked, but I do know how it works."

"How what works?"

The fae rested a small finger at his temple. "Adjusting this. Rearranging reality so you don't have to think about it too hard. If you do, you can't work properly, can you?"

Caren tapped his pen on his clipboard for a moment, still trying to work out whether it was becoming more or less advisable to continue. "I don't quite follow."

Arathalian pulled his knees up under his chin, watching Caren from that deceptively childlike pose. "You're a timid, self-absorbed little Holder-slug, Caren Brellview," he said in friendly fashion. "The thing is, though, you don't strike me as the sort who enjoys the sound of screaming. I think you are a man with an ardent but misguided belief in his own virtue."

"Don't get carried away, now," replied Caren. "I'm blushing." But he was surprised. Even faint or partial praise was rare from Arathalian - unless sarcastically dispensed, of course.

"Someone said that to me once," Arathalian said. "They were wrong, but I quite like the quote. In any case, Caren Brellview, I think it requires careful adjustment for a man like you to listen to Cochalyon year after year. And I understand why you do it. I just don't like it." The fae gave a fractional smile.

Caren didn't like the smile, but then there was little in any of Arathalian's smiles to like. He deflected the subject without leaving it altogether, vaguely curious to know where all this had come from. "Who said it?"

"A very clever but extremely irritating woman," came the reply.

"Fae?"

"I said 'very clever', didn't I?"

"So you did." Caren smiled dryly. "Well, if she was very clever, why was she wrong?"

Arathalian reached down to brush a dust-ball off the cushion of his chair. "She was clever, but not a good judge of character. It's a common enough combination, I'm sure you'll agree."

"Quite." Although he was itching to make little notes and so on, Caren knew better. "What would you say instead?"

"Instead of what?"

"Her description. If you're not an ardent but misguided man, what are you?"

"A myth," replied Arathalian. "A demon prince. Your once and future nemesis. Lovely word, that."

"And Cochalyon is a dramatically suffering fairy prince?"

For a moment Caren suspected he might have taken his first incautious step. The return of the smile to Arathalian's face was a sure clue. He always seemed to get away with a few fractions more than other researchers, though, even if he wasn't sure why. Once upon a time he'd prided himself on the thought that it was his careful attention to procedure, but he knew now that was like a gambler patting himself on the back for a successful 'system'.

"I said that was partly my fault, didn't I?" Arathalian mused thoughtfully.

"You did," Caren replied. "It's awfully hard to have one fairytale and not the other."

"It is. Yes, it is. I know."

The fae picked at threads in his cushion, running out of more dust to flick at, and continued to watch Caren with that faint, fixed smile, as much a warning as anything else.

"Do you think you'll understand something if I explain it to you, Caren Brellview?" he asked in conversational tones. "I'm only asking because I don't care much for the subject, you see, and it sometimes makes me angry. It would be a shame to wreck your legendary safety record."

Caren met Arathalian's bright gaze for a while, shifting into the cautious analysis that had become second nature. That was a threat, of course, but there were many categories that Arathalian's threats could be slotted into, and this one was atypical. A warning to simply change topic would have been far plainer and blunter; the fae wouldn't have mentioned conversation as a possibility. This warning seemed to mean something rather different. It was a test of both his nerves and his seriousness, and the subtext was don't ask if you don't mean it.

He didn't have long to decide before silence would decide for him. Caren's brain skipped and skimmed with expert care as he calculated risks. If he didn't adequately demonstrate both nerves and sincerity to Arathalian, the implied threat would not be an empty one. They never were.

"Yes, coming up for seven years, now," said Caren, making his choice. "But I'm listening if you're talking, Arathalian. I often wonder."

"Really? Why?"

"I stopped believing in monsters when I was ten."

"That early? A nervous fellow like you?" Arathalian laughed, dropping his knees again and kicking his heels against the chair. "Monsters are a lot easier and a lot less complicated to deal with, you know."

"I suppose we are," said Caren.

Arathalian glanced up, a sharp leap of a look. All Caren could work out was that it wasn't aggressive.

"You know what the Oath of Three is, of course," said the fae, both the expression and the subject vanishing. "The real version, I mean. Not the one in plays."

"Yes." Caren waited for Arathalian to continue, then realised that he was being waited for. "Oh. It's the ruler's oath. The one that binds you to Inyaron."

"Too fluffy," said Arathalian. "It binds me to my duties to Inyaron. To what the old rulers who devised it decided were duties. There are three."

"Lawmaker, Remaker, Unmaker," Caren provided dutifully.

"Again, that's the pretty way of putting it. I don't really like pretty words, Caren Brellview. I understand the necessity for them very well, but I've just never learned to like them." The boy-shape kept kicking at his chair. "I would say the duty to instate and uphold beneficial law, the duty to avert and repair harm done to the country, and the duty to destroy whatever's doing the harming. Do you understand the general nature of oaths?"

"Fae oaths? You mean the fact that you physically can't break them?"

"No, the fact that they're ruled by the thoughts and beliefs of the one who swears them. If for some reason I believed that, say, cabbage were threatening the fabric of Inyaronian society, I would most likely be compelled to plough up every plant in the country."

"Go ahead. My son would love that."

"Ah, how is your son lately, by the way?"

"Fine." Caren sidestepped. "It sounds as though an insane ruler would be a fairly dangerous thing."

"More to fear from the sane, I should think," replied Arathalian. "In any case, my point is this. You asked me what sort of person I think I am. I am a man driven by the oath-sworn compulsion to do everything in his power to destroy your civilisation - and a man who would almost certainly have tried with or without that oath."

"You're a man who doesn't like ironbloods?" said Caren. "Aha, I knew it. I knew it all along."

Arathalian laughed his piping, child-shape laugh, leaning back in his chair. The fae could usually be counted on to appreciate dry remarks. "That was to answer your question about morality, my sarcastic little secretary. Contrary to what your ancestors liked to trumpet from the rooftops, genocide isn't a terribly moral impulse, is it?"

"Even as applied to ironbloods?"

"Even then, Caren Brellview. Even then. Shocking, I know."

Caren looked thoughtfully at the fae's angelic child-face rather than smile. "So if you think it's immoral -"

"Moral or immoral doesn't matter to me," Arathalian replied, second-guessing his question. "All I want is to wipe you lot out and make sure the fae survive. Then everyone else in Inyaron is free to be as moral or immoral as they like - hooray."

"I see."

"No, you don't. Ironbloods never understand it. You all think survival is the same as morality." The fae boy-shape leaned forward in his chair suddenly, gaze keen and unpleasant. "Philosophical question. You know I love these. If the only way to save your family - wife and little son - was to kill mine, would you do it?"

"Is that really -?"

"Necessary? I've answered a lot of your questions today, Caren Brellview. It's only polite to return the favour. So would you?"

Caren grimaced. "Should I assume that you or your family were enemies of ours?"

"What does that matter? Would you let your family die if the other family were countrymen?"

"Probably not. But that would be a horrible choice."

Arathalian lightly slapped the arm of his chair in satisfaction. "A straight answer. The world may end. All right, that was the easy question. Here's the other. Would it be moral to do so?"

"To kill an innocent family to save mine? No. But the family of an enemy - well, it's patriarchal duty to defend one's own family, so in Talton we'd say yes, as you well know. I think I see where this is going."

"Is that so?"

"I don't deny that from your perspective, Arathalian, there is a certain morality in what you've -"

"No! No, no, no!" The fae flapped an exasperated hand, unusually animated today. It was natural for him to be more energetic in the child-shape, but not quite so demonstrative. "You weren't listening. I said I was immoral and I meant it. They're both immoral choices. Survival is a drive, not a virtue."

"Interesting notion. I don't agree, but it's interesting."

The smile resurfaced on Arathalian's face, more crooked than before. "The only real difference between any Taltonian and myself, you know, is that I'm an immoral man who knows he's immoral."

"Oh?" Caren scratched at his temple with the capped end of his pen. "So does that make you better or worse?"

"Mm. Interesting question." Arathalian glanced up at the sallow cell-light, something he often did when bored or thoughtful. "Worse, probably."

Caren looked briefly at the cell-light himself, then down again at the fae's face. It was important to monitor silences carefully, even brief ones.

"I have another question for you, Arathalian," he offered after a while.

"Joy," said the fae.

"You believe in the Circle, don't you? The fae version?"

"None of the oaths I swore would bind me if I didn't, Caren Brellview."

"So that means you believe that immoral souls are never reborn, doesn't it? They perish?"

Arathalian nodded, still absently watching the cell-light.

Caren started comparing word-choices in his head, phrasing them in different configurations, testing each for selection.

"As for the question you're too cowardly to ask directly," said the fae's sweet soprano, "the answer is that young men rarely think so far ahead, and older men would rather not see other young men be compelled to do the same. And now, Caren Brellview, I do believe it's time that you quit while you're still ahead, and still have a head. You've done splendidly, I must say."

"I actually received a promotion this month," said Caren. "Third-level employee."

Arathalian laid a shocked hand over his heart, but didn't reply.

"Shall we move on to the Lowview gatewarder?"

"You still haven't worked that silly thing out? Good grief. All right, then."

"Thank you," Caren replied.