valley
.valley
it's an old story: a knight, a prince, a kingdom in peril.
notes: written for i_reversebang for an art prompt by kamikaze_bunny. her illustrations are included in the story (if you like them go leave her a comment!).
thanks go to kamikaze_bunny for an amazing prompt, as well as my wonderful, beta readers: bauble, gelbwax, gollumgollum, and laria_gwyn. You people: I would thank you all individually, but that would probably take longer than this fic, which is already long. Suffice to say: you (they) were endlessly helpful, and I take full responsibility for any remaining errors.
nc17 . 30336 words . AO3
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When Arthur dreams it’s of Cadere, of riding on horseback across the plain, alongside a braided river, through rice paddies and wheat fields ringed by mountains red and purple. It feels like flying, and the air is light and clear, and he can see for miles, from the sails of ships along the coast to the falls and well beyond. It’s beautiful, and he tries to hold on to that--the clear air, the freedom, the feeling that he’s the only person in the world in the place that he loves.
If he sees a soul, he never touches them.
But ‘never’ is a bit difficult, and sometimes he slips.
From the high peaks of the Hardel Range, if the day was clear and your vision was good and you looked to the east, you could see across Cadere to the low hills that marked the border with Morrow. Arthur did not look east, though; everything east he had seen, and so he looked west.
The mountains sheared off in harsh, wild cliffs, and Arthur’s eyes traced down the slope--rock fading into forests that were thicker than they ever were on the leeward side, and then an expanse of flat land, clustered villages, and there, a glimmer of reflected light on the edge of his vision: the ocean, as near as Arthur could figure. The air was clear, cool, and vaguely damp, and Arthur wondered if the scent he was catching was salt. Unlikely, though--too far off. He was letting fancy overtake him.
“Well,” Eames said from the horse behind him. “What do you think?”
“I think we need to keep moving,” Arthur called back over his shoulder. “No reason to stop here, if there’s nothing to see.”
“Of course, Highness,” Eames said. Until Eames, Arthur had never met a knight with such a consistent habit of deferring without really deferring at all, but as Arthur clipped his heels into Rota’s sides he could hear the clatter of Chilk’s hoofs on stone, signaling that Eames was following behind. Arthur hazarded another glance down the slopes before their path veered away from the vista, north and east, carrying them over the ridge and dipping down to the other side where the ocean would fall out of sight. This was a border patrol, not an opportunity for the Crown Prince to go sightseeing, no matter what Eames thought.
Eames did think Arthur was some sort of coddled princeling who was riding the borders on a lark, though. Arthur could tell from the way Eames looked at him when they first met, sharp and assessing, lingering too long on the things that marked Arthur as royal: the pommel of his sword, the clasp of his cloak, the fine leatherwork of his saddle. It made something curl deep in Arthur’s gut, the familiar wakening of pride in response to a challenge.
“You ride well,” was the first thing Eames said to Arthur, and at the time he had sounded surprised.
Not that it mattered. Eames was a knight of no particular standing; what he thought of Arthur did not matter in the least. If, at the time, Arthur had done some particularly fancy rein work just to prove a point--well. He was the Crown Prince, after all, and he couldn’t have insubordinate knights, or rumors running through the ranks about his incompetence.
They broke for the evening on the eastern slope. After five days Arthur and Eames had a routine, or something like one, and Eames went to gather scraps of wood while Arthur set up the bivouac, collected water and started to put together dinner.
They settled across the fire from one another, passing skins of water and tea back and forth and exchanging hardtack and dried tomatoes and meat. It might have been companionable, if it hadn’t been like this every night since they began riding. They weren’t companions, not really, and without that their silence was just weighted with the barren potential for conversation.
“We should be able to break at the falls tomorrow,” Eames said, and Arthur glanced up at him. The firelight played across Eames’ features, catching on the short, fine hair brushed across his brow and the coarse wool of his cloak.
“I haven’t been to the falls since I was young,” Arthur said. “I’d like to see them again.” The L’Dere Falls were the wellspring of the L’Dere River, which spliced the valley in half and served as their kingdom’s primary water source.
“You’ve been to the falls, though?” Eames asked, giving Arthur pause. “They’re far from the capital.”
“For my sister’s dedication,” Arthur said. Every member of the royal family was dedicated at the falls; it was no secret, the procession from Daleth, the capital city, was part of every birthing celebration and a holiday for the citizens as well.
“Ah, yes,” Eames said after a moment, though he didn’t sound entirely certain. It made Arthur look at him again, more closely. He spoke with the accent of someone from the valley, and dressed the part: narrow canvas trousers, wool shirt and cloak, leather boots in the style favored by most of the knights, buckles up the side. But clothes were purchased easily enough.
Arthur stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles.
“I don’t know where you’re from, Sir Eames.”
“Oh, that’s not a terribly interesting story,” Eames said, grinning wryly, but there was another expression Arthur could quite name behind his eyes. “Roat. It’s a small town near the Morrow border. You won’t have heard of it.”
“We’ll be passing near it when we go east, then,” Arthur said, and Eames’ face stilled.
“Yes, I suppose we will be, Highness,” he replied. “Though I don’t imagine it will be of much interest to you.”
Arthur just glanced at him and took another swig of water from the skin.
“I’m sure you’re aware that the royal family takes an interest in every part of the kingdom,” Arthur said mildly, looking past Eames to the sun slipping over the shell of the ridgeline. “And I would be interested to know which side of the border this town of yours is on.”
“My vows are to Cadere,” Eames replied stiffly, his eyes flickering towards Arthur’s face.
“I wasn’t questioning your vows, knight,” Arthur bit back. Eames’ body had stiffened, his neck and back drawn in a taut, tense line, his body like the string of a bow before the arrow flies.
And then, suddenly, all the tension drained, and Eames slouched back into himself.
“Of course not, Highness,” Eames said.
“I’ll sit first watch tonight,” Arthur said, in the tone he had learned from his father when he was quite young, the one that said he would brook no argument. Eames glanced at him sidelong before retreating to the bivouac, and Arthur took his dagger from the scabbard in his boot and ran it through his fingers. Eames was larger than he was, if it came to that, but Arthur was quicker and had been training since he was young; and that was without even taking into account his other skills.
They said strange things pool up in noble blood, because they kept so tightly to themselves, commingling only with those of equivalent status. The Cobol family of Cobol, over the mountains, had white hair and eyes clear like glass; but physical features were less interesting than the other things, the things they didn’t talk about.
The skillset that ran in his lineage, in the Cadere lineage: it killed Arthur’s cousin.
Though in truth the threat wasn’t the skill so much as the witch hunts that had been blooming east from the Morrow border for the last decade, the witch hunts that had ensured Arthur and Ariadne both were scarcely trained, and that the Cadere family’s particular talents were hidden better than any of their wealth.
Arthur spun the dagger through his fingers, watching the blade catch and gleam in the fire. The pommel was stamped with the family crest, a bear curled into itself, the fur on its broad back rising in a defensive ruff.
Arthur went out to collect more wood for the fire before rousing Eames, who woke with the lightness of someone who was not asleep at all.
“There should be enough firewood to get you through the night,” Arthur said. For a moment Eames just looked at him, hitched up on his elbows, the light casting long shadows across his face.
“Okay,” he said, then hoisted himself up and pulled on his boots. He clasped his cloak at his throat while Arthur unlaced his own boots and slipped off his cloak, pulling it over himself as a blanket when he crawled into the bivouac.
“Sleep tight, Highness,” Eames said with a mincing salute that Arthur chose to disregard.
Arthur had rigged up the bivouac under a narrow rock outcrop, and instead of sleeping he stared up at the stone, inspecting its texture in the weak light for something to do. He knew border patrol was mostly dull. He supposed he should be grateful for the dash of intrigue, even if it did come commingled with a sardonic, perhaps vaguely resentful, and almost certainly untrustworthy patrol partner. That was part of the exercise, though; Arthur needed to know how to handle himself, needed to gain a clear vision of the kingdom he would eventually rule.
He didn’t dream. When he woke, it was to the blue light of twilight on the rocks, pink clouds further off. He couldn’t see Eames, but both horses were grazing nearby, so Eames couldn’t have gone far. Arthur was stoking the fire and frying griddlecakes when Eames reappeared, bearing a small bundle of sticks and had replaced the unease of the previous night with the veneer he usually wore, smooth and competent.
“Morning,” Eames said. “Those for me?”
“Of course not,” Arthur replied, and Eames laughed. He grabbed one from the pan and bounced it between his fingers as it cooled.
“That wasn’t done,” Arthur said as he poured more batter into the pan. He supposed pretending that Eames probably wasn’t a spy was one way of handling this.
“Tastes done,” Eames said. “You cook like this at the palace?”
“Do you think I cook like this at the palace?” Arthur asked, flipping the next cake.
“I don’t know what royals do with their spare time,” Eames shrugged.
“Nor do I,” Arthur replied.
“You’re saying you aren’t the crown prince?” Eames asked. “Because everything you’re wearing would beg to differ.”
Arthur moved his fingers to his brow to check for the circlet, but it wasn’t there. Which it shouldn’t have been, he had left it at the palace, and yet--
“I’m not wearing my circlet,” he said.
“The royal crest is on everything you own,” Eames said. “And I saw that, hand to head.”
“There are four of us,” Arthur said, studying his own hands. “In the royal family.”
“I am aware,” Eames said wryly. “I’ve sworn to serve and protect, and we commonfolk do learn our numbers most of the time.”
“I don’t think you are,” Arthur said, looking up to meet Eames’ eyes. “Cadere, by comparison to the other kingdoms--we have nothing to offer.” He laughed a little, at that, tried to restrain the upwelling of bitterness. “We have five noble families.”
“There are other kingdoms,” Eames said. “I believe we were discussing the border last night.”
“I believe we’re on the border, Sir Eames,” Arthur said, and got to his feet. “I believe we’re supposed to be patrolling the border. And aside from the occasional diplomatic mission, I’ve rarely crossed it.”
“We’re done sharing?” Eames asked as Arthur went to saddle Rota.
“Would you like to tell me more about our neighboring kingdoms?” Arthur asked. “And your hometown on the border?”
Eames met Arthur’s gaze with an inscrutable stare, then began to saddle Chilk.
They rode in silence until a cairn-marked juncture that Eames said was where the border of Cobol, to the west, transitioned into Proclus in the north.
“They say Proclus’ last king lives in the mountains here now,” Eames said, nodding to the hills to the north. “That he came here to die but he never did.”
Arthur looked back at him but didn’t reply. Their course was shifting, downslope, into the Cadere valley and away from the mountains. A rain of small pebbles slipped down the hill, but Rota maintained her footing.
“Are there dragons, too?” Arthur asked several moments later.
“Dragons,” Eames repeated. “Next you’ll be asking me if there are witches.”
Arthur laughed, strained in a way he hoped Eames doesn’t notice.
“I wasn’t going to ask about witches,” Arthur said, trying to keep his tone just this side of prim and his voice even. “It’s a wasteland up here.”
It was true; the clouds dropped most of the rain on the west side of the mountains, and to the east the hills were mostly bare scrub, with dry air that meant the sun’s heat wouldn’t last through the night. The soil was red here. In the valley they got sufficient water for their crops; wheat and rice, mostly, but it was drawn from a complex network of irrigation from the L’Dere and snowmelts, not from rain proper.
“And witches couldn’t survive in a wasteland?”
“Why would they want to?” Arthur asked. “They need to eat, same as you or I.”
“Apparently the former king of Proclus does not need to eat, then.”
“Do you know, this king, was this Saito?” Arthur asked.
“So you do know other royals,” Eames replied, a distinctly smug tint to his tone.
“He fought alongside my cousin’s husband in the war with Cobol,” Arthur said. “Knowing of a person isn’t the same as knowing them.”
“And you’ve never attended a Morrow ball.”
The witchhunts exacerbated it, but the thing between Cadere and Morrow was a quiet, deep tension, old as bones. Morrow was too large, its capital city of Vena too far, and Cadere was no threat.
“Vena is far,” Arthur said. “And the ball always happens during the harvest.”
Eames didn’t reply, and Arthur turned back to look at him. Eames’ lips were drawn in a narrow line.
“There’s tension there, then,” he said.
“You didn’t know,” Arthur stated, fact rather than question.
“There’s no war with Morrow,” Eames said.
“Cadere is small,” Arthur replied, his tone carefully mild. “I said it before.”
Eames nodded once.
They rode on.
The path was wide enough for Eames to ride alongside Arthur, which he did, though he did so without speaking to or looking at Arthur, so the only sound was Chilk and Rota’s hooves and the soft whistling of the wind.
Despite breaking for lunch they still managed to reach the falls well before nightfall, and Arthur would have probably insisted that they press on if it hadn’t been for the fact that these were L’Dere Falls, and they mattered in a way Arthur would find difficult to enunciate if asked; they could not pass unmarked. And, furthermore, he needed this place, where the water plunged down into a cerulean pool, clear to the bottom, before flowing into the river. The air tasted cool, clean, green and new here, thick with the mists that rose from the base of the falls, and tasting it brought back memories of Ariadne’s dedication. She had been seven then, and Arthur fourteen, and that was the last time the family had dreamt together. They had slept under the twisting vines that grew at the base of the falls, their dreams permeated by pounding water and one another, four minds twining together like vines.
They did not break at the vines, and Arthur did not so much as glance at them; if Eames noticed it would be more information than he needed. When Eames turned downstream to the river portage Arthur followed. Even here, where the river was wide and shallow, the water swirled and surged, and in the middle Arthur needed to lean forward so Rota could swim as the water rose above his hips. Once both Rota and Chilk had footing on the far side Eames glanced at Arthur, then away, towards the trail ahead of them.
“The campsite’s not much further off,” he said, nodding towards a bend in the path that would presumably take them far enough away from the pounding of the falls to allow them to speak normally. “We can put on dry clothes there.”
The campsite was a small plateau of rock tucked into the cliff face, and it was quieter there, though the falls were still a steady hum. Eames stripped down almost as soon as he dismounted, peeling off and shucking layers of clothing and spreading his wet clothes on the rocks to dry. Arthur followed suit, digging new layers from his oilskin-wrapped saddlebags. Heat was rising off the stones in comforting waves, and Arthur looked back at Eames, who was pulling on fresh trousers.
“Should’ve gone for a swim,” Arthur said. “It’s warm enough.”
“Won’t be after nightfall,” Eames replied, looking up at him as he adjusted his trousers and shook out a shirt. Their eyes met, and Arthur suddenly remembered that he was still undressed. There was rarely any privacy on the trail, but Arthur had never felt there was any need for it; maybe because they usually dressed and undressed in dim twilight hours. But with light laying everything bare, the musculature of Eames’ chest cast in sharp relief, the tail of the chimera Arthur had seen inked across Eames’ back curling over his shoulder, the whole world unspooling around them--something Arthur had been avoiding untied inside of him, and he turned away. He didn’t know what he must have looked like, himself; slightly rumpled, he imagined, damp trousers clinging to thighs. Not like a prince, surely; not like anyone who might be king.
“Were the falls as you remembered?” Eames asked once they’d returned to dry clothes and a semblance of normalcy, Arthur prodding the fire and Eames doing something that may or may not be preparing dinner.
“The falls--,” Arthur started. “Yes. They hardly change, do they?”
“Why do you do your dedications there?” Eames said. It gave Arthur pause; he resisted the urge to turn and look at Eames.
“It’s tradition,” Arthur said, after a moment. “And an old one. Even you must know how important the falls are--the water is--for our kingdom.”
“Even I,” Eames echoed, frowning, and Arthur’s smile only had a thin rind of bitterness, so grateful was he that Eames bought the lie. It wouldn’t do to say that the falls--the vingrove--had certain properties that enhanced the skills of witches, properties that were valuable to the royal family, as witches themselves--it wouldn’t do.
But that was the reason, and that was the reason Arthur needed to get back to the falls before they moved on.
They didn’t talk much more that night, but Arthur took first watch again, and after he confirmed Eames was asleep he put on his wet clothes and went back across the river. The moon was full and ripe, and by its light the return crossing was straightforward enough. If Eames woke and Rota was gone--
But Arthur needed to get to the vingrove, and it was not something he could tell Eames he needed to do. There was a clarity there, an alignment that was not quite right elsewhere in the kingdom.
There was, also, a figure there already. By the time Arthur saw he was too close to turn around, and his hand moved instinctively to the sword at his hip.
“Arthur,” the figure called; the voice was male, soft, like the edges had been sanded off, but even so hearing his name without honorific from a stranger made Arthur bristle. “Stand down.”
The man stepped from the grove out into the moonlight. He was older, with thinning hair combed back from his face.
“My name is Saito, Arthur. I have wanted to meet you,” he continued. “And Dominic had a message he wished for me to convey, about your cousin.”
“Mal?” Arthur asked. Saito--it made sense. He slid from Rota’s back and strode towards him, holding out a hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, sire.”
“No need for honorifics,” Saito said as they clasped hands. “I’m no longer king, and I feel we are friends already. If not--in times like these, we should be.”
Up close he was younger than he looked from a distance, and Arthur wondered why he had abdicated the throne with so much life still left.
“Times like these,” Arthur echoed softly. He knew, but to hear one say it--
“Witch hunts,” Saito replied simply.
“Mal,” Arthur said again, more slowly, this time. “Dom suspects Morrow? I thought it was an accident--”
“It was,” Saito said. “But it happened when she was walking in King Maurice’s dreams.”
“They know?” Arthur asked.
“Dominic does not know how much,” Saito said. “They don’t trust the families of witches, but they’ve never shown any inclination towards realizing the full extent to which the abilities move through blood--”
Arthur nodded. He hadn’t realized Saito had known, but it made sense--Proclus had always been more cautious than Morrow, and in their caution they made it their business to know all they could, making wisdom both their wealth and their power.
Saito waved a hand.
“That does not matter so much as the reason Mallorie was in Maurice’s dreams,” he said. “She and Dominic uncovered evidence that Morrow was planning an invasion. She intended to--shift his opinions.”
“Oh,” Arthur said, his voice draining out of him, grain from a bag overfull. “Oh.”
Cadere was small. They had their--ways--of protecting themselves, but Morrow was large, and their hunger was outpacing their size, and perhaps outpacing Cadere’s skills as well.
Saito nodded.
“She was concerned that the king and queen would not wish to be involved, because of the hunts,” Saito continued. “But now it is clear there is no other way, and as Dominic cannot walk himself--”
“Where is my cousin?” Arthur asked. Saito turned aside.
“He is with me,” he said, and Arthur looked at him sharply.
“And he didn’t come himself?” he asked.
“His wife has died,” Saito said. “There are implications. He wished to stay with his children.”
“And his children are with you, also?” Arthur asked.
“We will be old men together,” Saito said. “Though some thought I was old already.”
It’s not what Arthur expected, though the children did explain why Saito abdicated the throne; adopting another’s children would be considered a threat to Proclus’ established heirs, and an inappropriate one at that. He nodded in tacit acknowledgement.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will do what I can.”
Saito reached forward to clasp his hand again.
“If you need us, you may walk our dreams,” Saito said. “You are welcome.”
Arthur touched his own forehead in acknowledgment. His training was lacking, but he had been taught the old traditions; they were rarely followed, these days, but there were few whose dreams he was welcome in and it would not do to be impolite about it.
It made things easier to be welcomed. Safer, but also simpler, especially if one wished to walk another’s dreams across a great distance.
“But you came here to dream,” Saito said abruptly. “I will not distract you further. It may do you well.”
Arthur wasn’t sure if he had the time, but he nodded. Saito began to leave, and then he turned back.
“Your companion,” he said. “Do you trust him?”
“He’s a knight of the crown,” Arthur said.
“That’s not the same as yes,” Saito replied.
And then he turned and left, walking towards the western border trail and then up into the mountains, moving like some mountain creature--a goat, a gazelle--and not like an old man at all.
Arthur went to the grove, though he was not sure he had the time; nor was he certain he should, but he did. Dreams here had an unmatched clarity; it was like nothing he had experienced save for drinking from the falls themselves, these dreams sweet and clean and real.
He didn’t know when he would be back, and for that reason alone Arthur tethered Rota and stepped into the grove. Moonlight lanced through the tangle of vines, well on their way to being laden with grapes. Sleeping here should have been uncomfortable, but Arthur went to dip his hands into the thin channel from the falls that ran through the grove and drank, then went to the table rock in the center and curled himself up, and he was asleep as soon as his head touched the smooth stone.
He is underwater. Bubbles swirl upwards, and Arthur is rising with them, limbs flailing. His vision is green-blue, blue-green, every iteration of cyan, marine, jade, olive--and this spectrum seems sufficient, complete in itself.
There is no surface for him to break through, no gasping for air. He swallows bubbles, rises further still, and then he’s plunging down.
The light doesn’t shift, but Arthur can feel himself descending until he is looking out across Cadere, as it is, and perhaps he’s not swimming at all but flying through a strange, saturated sky.
It’s hard to explain, but there are towns he knows and towns he doesn’t, and he drifts through them all, and they are all there and populated, and every face is distinct, one from the other. He does not touch a one of them, but floats above, drifting like a boat unmoored.
He does not touch a one of them, until he sees Eames, Eames on his feet and walking, then Eames at a table gambling with dice, his eyes bright and laughing and completely incapable of seeing Arthur. Then Arthur sinks lower, falling through the thatch of a building’s roof as if it is air, and then he places his fingers on Eames’ temples and goes further in.
Inside Eames the other colors of the spectrum reassert themselves, cool and warm commingled. Arthur is standing, now, feet planted on the ground, looking out over low green hills, which unfurl before him in undulating waves. There is a house at the center of the scene, a coarse red thing, and it is there that Arthur goes, crossing the ground more quickly than he could if he were walking. And yet he is walking.
There is nothing inside the house, or there is something, but Arthur cannot see it--he can feel it, as if it were behind him at every turn. He’s see a woman, for just a moment, and she carries with her a burst of smoke and heat, Arthur wheels around for a better look, but even so--there is nothing to see. The walls seem nigh to invisible, and they may well be; they are fading, everything is--
Arthur is swimming.
Eames is awake.
Eames was awake.
Arthur woke himself with a jolt. He fumbled too quickly to his feet, scuffed them on the rock, slipped his fingers as he untied Rota’s reins and rode--too quickly, too heavily, with too much of every uncontrolled thing he tried to avoid--to the river portage and the campsite. The night was cold and the water was cold in turn, and Arthur was not sure how he would explain this--not keeping watch, going back across the river at night. One didn’t do innocuous things at night. He should have thought of that. People who skulked about doing things in secret did so because they had secrets.
So Arthur rode. Even as he did some part of him thought it was good to ride Rota like this--she was fast and strong, and this was the type of riding they didn’t do on long rides, for Rota’s sake as well as Arthur’s, but it was the type of riding that was akin to flying, or maybe dreaming, and with Rota moving under him, leaning forward, his mind roiling, Arthur fled through moments where he thought this might be okay, after all.
But Eames was awake, and Arthur discovered nothing in his dream, and Eames was awake.
Rota’s hooves were pounding, and the campsite began to coalesce against the horizon: a thin smolder of a campfire, the silhouette of Chilk, ears pointed towards them.
When Arthur careened into the campsite, Eames was sitting by the fire with his elbows heavy on his knees. He didn’t turn when Arthur arrived, didn’t so much as flinch.
“Go for a swim?” he asked, once Arthur dismounted and was standing behind him.
“I wanted to go to the vingrove,” Arthur said. It was half the truth. “Where we do the dedications.”
“At night?” Eames asked. Arthur couldn’t read anything into his voice. Arthur moved around the fire until he was standing opposite Eames, but Eames’ face was equally inscrutable.
“Yes,” Arthur said, firm.
“And if someone had come?” Eames asked. He looked up at Arthur, and their eyes met. “Jackals? You would’ve been sitting watch?”
“Nothing happened,” Arthur replied, but even he knew that was a weak defense.
“Nothing happened,” Eames hissed, getting to his feet. He moved around the fire like he was prowling, like a heavy animal, all muscles under skin. “You don’t--”
Eames paused and inhaled, like there was a weight on his chest.
“I know you’re a prince, Highness, but you can’t just go wherever your fancy takes you. This isn’t some Grand Tour. We sit watch for a reason. You know--”
“This isn’t a Grand Tour,” Arthur said. “I’m not some dilettante.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Eames said. He was close now--Arthur hadn’t realized how close, but he could feel Eames’ breath on his face, and Eames’ face, illuminated by firelight, was close enough that Arthur’s eyes needed to flicker from nose to lips to eyes to chin to see the whole of it.
“There was some crown business I needed to attend to,” Arthur said, because it was the only thing he could say. “Knight.”
Eames’ eyes went flat, and he stepped back from Arthur, pulling the warmth his body radiated back and away.
“You’re pulling rank on me,” Eames said and he barked a laugh that sounded like it physically pained him. “You’re pulling rank on me.”
Arthur watched as Eames moved back around the fire, dropped to his haunches and peered up, studying Arthur from a distance.
“You can sleep, sire,” he said, his tone turning the words into the worst kind of insult. “I’ll sit watch.”
Arthur heard the criticism implicit in that comment, and there was a piece of him that wanted to rail against it, as if that would accomplish anything--and there’s a part of him that was just relieved that Eames didn’t know where Arthur was when he was gone, that he was walking Eames’ dreams, even if he didn’t find anything there.
He retreated to the bivouac, stripped his wet clothes and curled himself up on the sleeping mat and pretended to sleep until he didn’t need to pretend anymore. It seemed the best of the possible options.
Morning came too quick, and Eames was there, cooking rice. He wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur knew any trust Eames had had been frittered away. Or perhaps not frittered: spent, but worth the price. The line was fine, there, and Arthur wasn’t entirely sure where it was drawn.
Saito had asked Arthur whether he trusted Eames, and Arthur didn’t know, and now their relationship had taken a step backwards. Or maybe it had just put everything Eames already thought--everything Arthur suspected he thought--on the surface. More honest, if nothing else.
Arthur closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before getting to his feet, going to Eames and accepting a plate of risotto, thick with cinnamon and raisins.
They didn’t talk. Eames didn’t say anything, and Arthur didn’t know anything to say. Trust had never come easily to Arthur, and it came less easily now, and Eames--Eames was, for the most part, inscrutable, and the chimera inked across his back had to mean something, so maybe they were both correct in their distrust, one of the other.
Cadere meant chance in the old tongue, which is something no one ever mentioned. There were stories about why they named the valley that, why the royal family bore the name, but none of them were true. It was happenstance, really. And so was this: Arthur here, the cadence of Rota’s hoofbeats beneath him, Eames at his side. They would be wheeling south, soon, and then they would approach the Morrow border.
Arthur needed to decide. He needed strong allies. And if Eames was not--he did not need that. Saito was right.
Something twisted inside him, grew like a vine, uncertainty and certainty commingled. Eames was keeping his profile steady, staring ahead and not at Arthur, and so Arthur looked at him, traced his brow down to his nose, the full bloom of his lips.
“Why did you become a knight?” Arthur said, for something to say.
Eames was silent for so long that Arthur wasn’t sure whether he had heard the question. When he did speak, he wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes.
“Because none of the masters in my town wanted to apprentice the son of a witch,” Eames said, and Arthur could feel his eyebrows rising.
“She wasn’t,” Eames added, quick and bitter. “But that didn’t stop them from burning her.”
“But you don’t believe in witches,” Arthur said, because apologizing seemed like such a small thing, and he wasn’t sure his sympathy was wanted.
“I’ve never met one,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.
“They--” Arthur paused. “They would be sorry, about your mother.”
“You know this?” Eames asked, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t blame them. I came here to escape those I do blame. To hurt them, if I could.”
“I know,” Arthur said, looking aside. “Because I’m sorry.”
The silence was palpable, and so heavy that Arthur found it difficult to lift his eyes to meet Eames’. When he did Eames face was papered over. Still, Eames looked like he was--waiting. Expectant.
It came out in a rush.
“Last night,” Arthur began. “I want back to the falls. There is a place, there. The vingrove. And Saito of Proclus was waiting for me. He’d been in touch with my cousin--Lady Mallorie’s--husband.”
“Lady Mallorie died recently,” Eames said, as if to confirm.
“Yes. She was walking the Morrow king’s dreams,” Arthur said. “Maurice. She caught wind of plans for an invasion, and she was trying to convince him otherwise. It didn’t work. Saito was telling me because my parents--because of the witch hunts--they don’t walk anymore. He and Dominic thought I could do something.”
“Your whole family, then?” Eames asked, and if Eames was anything other than what he said he was, anything other than loyal to Cadere, the small, stiff nod Arthur granted to him was some kind of death sentence.
“Maurice’s advisor, Browning,” Eames said softly. “He’s the one behind the witch hunts. Behind most everything, really.”
Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“That’s why you left Morrow, then,” Arthur said that evening, when they were seated by the fire and passing food back and forth. “Because of your mother.”
“I had my reasons,” Eames replied. “But you were right to guess that I’m from Morrow. And I am not supportive of the hunts, though I thought--”
“You thought they were a problem because witches weren’t real,” Arthur finished for him. “And what do you think now?”
Eames shook his head.
“The hunts are awful,” Eames said, before turning to meet Arthur’s eyes. “I don’t know about witchery, though.”
“Dreamwalking,” Arthur corrected. “We call it dreamwalking.”
“Fear drives the hunts,” Eames continued. “Because we don’t understand what a witch might be capable of, because we hardly know what you can access. Is it really better, to be so secretive? You expect us to trust the things you keep hidden?”
“You want to know, then,” Arthur said.
“Yes,” Eames said. “I can’t imagine you expected any less.”
“Shall I tell you or show you?” Arthur asked. That Arthur had already walked Eames’ dreams was not something Eames knew or needed to know; Arthur took nothing, left nothing, it didn’t matter. It was perhaps, Arthur would acknowledge, not the best thing to hide--but no one trusted a witch. No one ever wanted to.
This was easier.
“You could show me?” Eames asked.
“We’ll have to sleep together,” Arthur said, and Eames quirked one brow before Arthur added, flatly: “With no one on watch.”
“Tell me what it entails,” Eames said.
“What do you know?”
“You can get in our dreams and influence us. And take things--secrets, things deeply suppressed.”
“More or less,” Arthur replied. “Less, really, because it’s not as simple as that. Each dream is encrypted to the individual dreamer, so just being able to get in the dream doesn’t mean we understand what we see there. And changing behavior is even more difficult--almost mythical, it’s been so long since anyone has done it.”
“But that’s what your cousin was trying to do.”
“Cadere is a small kingdom,” Arthur said after a moment, then suppressed a bitter laugh at this thing which had become his refrain. “Family lore holds that dreamwalking is how we’ve protected ourselves all these years. When any of the neighboring kingdoms develop an interest, we go in and change their minds. But it’s been awhile since there’s been any need--Cobol, two generations ago--so.”
“You don’t really know how,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.
“And my parents have been avoiding it, because of the hunts,” Arthur said. “We should have seen it coming. They’ve never needed to, and Ariadne and I--we aren’t even properly trained.”
“Ariadne--the princess?”
“My sister, yes,” Arthur said, then allowed himself a wry grin. “You could’ve at least made an effort to learn something about your adopted kingdom.”
“She’s young, though, isn’t she?” Eames asked.
“Thirteen summers,” Arthur said. “It’s easier to start young. The mind is more flexible, or more comfortable with it--it’s hard to explain.”
“You must have records, for training,” Eames said. He was toying with his reins, twisting them between his fingers.
“Witchhunts, even before this most recent spate, meant it was better to keep those things hidden, or not to keep them at all,” Arthur said. “There’s a little, but not much, and most of what is written is very vague. Making it clear that this is a family trait--it’s a dangerous thing.”
“And yet here I am,” Eames replied.
“Here you are,” Arthur echoed. He could see Eames assessing him, and Arthur wondered if he’d been far too trusting. He was, after all, a coddled princeling, a dilettante with the royal crest on him like a brand. He had been prepared for things, but not for this.
“You have as much reason to want the witchhunts gone as I,” Arthur said.
“Not quite so much,” Eames replied. “But enough.”
“Come with me, then,” Arthur said, deciding he may as well complete this. “Back to the falls. I have permission to walk Dominic and Saito’s dreams, and we should be able to reach them from there. I’ll pull you in. You can see a dream, I can collect more information.”
“Do we have the time?” Eames asked.
“Time passes differently in dreams,” Arthur said. “But I hope you don’t mind crossing the river again.”
When they reached the vingrove the grapes were rich and ripe, tangled among curls of vines. Eames looked at the space strangely: the vines, the sleeping rock.
“I didn’t notice this place before,” he said. “How did I not notice it?”
He looked at Arthur accusingly, but Arthur just shook his head.
“People don’t always see what they don’t know what to look for.”
Eames reached up and plucked a grape, popped it into his mouth and sucked on it.
“These are--” he said, reaching for another one and holding it out towards Arthur. Arthur was still watching the pucker of Eames’ lips, which would be his excuse, if anyone were to ever ask him why he took the grape with his mouth instead of his fingers, holding it between his lips for a moment before biting down and letting the bitter juice explode on his tongue. Eames watched him with steady eyes, then turned and spit the seeds of his own grape out before taking another.
“Are they special?” Eames asked.
“No,” Arthur said, looking at a bundle of grapes, heavy on the vine. “They’re grapes.”
For some reason that had seemed profound at the time.
“Unusually good grapes, though,” Eames said, plucking another. “Have you ever made them into wine?”
“No,” Arthur said.
“We should try that,” Eames said.
“We should go to sleep,” Arthur said.
“On the rock,” Eames said, nodding towards it.
“On the rock,” Arthur said. “But first we drink.”
“Of course we do,” Eames said.
So they did.
He is underwater, and bubbles swirl upwards around him in wild plumes. When he swims down, Eames is there, standing on the ground but looking at him--meeting his eyes. Arthur offers a hand, and pulls him up.
They swim north with strong, languid strokes, over the ridgelines of the northern mountains, towards Proclus.
Saito is not waiting for them, but Dom is, standing and looking south like a sentinel. Arthur ducks and presses his fingers to Dom’s temples, indicates for Eames to follow, and they’re there, in an estate with polished floors and wrought railings, ringed by golden fields. Dom is not there, until he is, standing besides them with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Saito said to expect you,” he says, nodding to Arthur. “But not you.”
“This is Sir Eames. We need to know about Mal,” Arthur says. “What she was doing. What she knew.”
“No more than Saito told you,” Dom says. “She was dreamwalking Maurice.”
“And her death?”
“She went in too far,” Dom says, looking away. “Too far into the dream, too deep. Maurice--Maurice. He was prepared for her.”
“Prepared for her?”
“She could no longer distinguish the dream from reality,” Dom says, and there’s something frantic in his eyes when they meet Arthur’s. “She--”
“She could tell you herself,” interjects a soft voice from behind, and Mal is there, padding barefoot through the halls, a loose robe tied around her waist.
“Don’t,” Dom says, quick and sharp, and it’s only then that Arthur sees the short blade clutched in her left hand, and when Arthur looks up to her eyes they’re flat and dark. Arthur isn’t sure who she’ll move for first--her eyes are ranging between the three of them, passing harsh judgment.
“Sometimes dreams are more lovely than life,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to stay?”
She’s reaching towards Dom with her empty right hand, placing it on his shoulder.
”But Maurice?” Arthur asks, to restrain himself--this is not Mal, this is not.
“The mind has its own defenses,” Mal says, and then the knife is flying from her hand to Arthur’s heart.
It’s Eames who knocks Arthur aside, Eames who Arthur finds himself staring up at saying, “I would’ve just woken up.”
“Be careful about the water,” Mal says. “Maurice wants the--”
And then Arthur was awake, blinking the sleep from his eyes and staring up at the tangle of vine and sky above him.
“We didn’t get to Saito,” he said.
“Nice cousin you have there,” Eames replied after a moment.
“That wasn’t my cousin,” Arthur said.
Arthur could hear Eames roll over on his side, could feel his eyes on Arthur’s face.
“It wasn’t her. These things happen in dreams,” Arthur said.
“What was she?” Eames asked.
“A shade,” Arthur said, fixing his eyes on the sliver of the moon. “They dreamt together while she was alive, and her mind left an imprint on his, and now she haunts him.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Eames said.
Arthur rolled over so he was facing Eames, staring at the spiky shadows Eames’ eyelashes cast on his face.
“It’s not,” he said.
They lay there like that for a few moments, breath flowing in and out.
“Saito,” Arthur said.
“We’re going to do that again?” Eames asked.
Arthur paused, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No, we should move on. We have enough. I spoke to Saito last night.”
“Is dreaming always like that? Violent?” Eames sat up and hooked his arms around his legs.
“It’s never like you expect it to be,” Arthur said. “It always lies a little, or a lot. Don’t believe everything you dream.”
Eames looked at Arthur for a long, lucid moment, and then turned towards the horses, their reins and tethers.
“What was she saying?” Eames asked at midday. “About the water?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said.
“That might be something we want to know,” Eames said.
“We?” Arthur asked, turning to look at him.
“We,” Eames said, without looking away. “Highness.”
“My name’s Arthur,” Arthur said, and they kept riding.
They approached the Morrow border the next day. The hills became low and green, recalling those Arthur saw in Eames’ dream, and there were settlements closer to the border; they avoided those, mostly to avoid anyone recognizing Arthur. Not that--they probably wouldn’t, but it was an unnecessary hassle, and Arthur was neither prepared nor willing to be his political self, the charming and genial crown prince. This wasn’t a royal tour--it was a training circuit. He didn’t have the circlet, anyway, and the circlet marked him even more than the royal crest on the clasp of his cloak, the pommels of his sword and dagger.
“How plain is it?” Arthur asked. “That I’m royal?”
Eames glanced at him sidelong.
“About as clear as it is that I’m not originally from Cadere.”
“So if you speak with me you’ll know,” Arthur said, and Eames shrugged.
“Most will know when they see the bear.”
And so they kept to the outskirts of the towns, occasionally passing a cart or a farmer in his fields. At night they could see the soft light of towns on both sides of the border in the distance.
“How do you access someone’s dreams?” Eames asked one evening. He was lounging, stretched out on a soft expanse of grass with his head propped up on his hands.
“They have to be nearby,” Arthur said. “Most of us have a relatively small radius, but the grove by L’Dere expands it. That’s probably where we’d need to go to get to Morrow.”
“Or you could go to the Morrow ball,” Eames said.
“We never go,” Arthur replied, then peered across the fire at Eames. “You talk a lot about the Morrow ball.”
“It’s a significant event, in Morrow.”
“Are you jealous? Do you want to go to the ball?” Arthur asked.
“It’s an event, in Morrow,” Eames repeated. “Everyone knows about it. There are festivities.”
“The harvest is a significant event here, and there are festivities,” Arthur said, and Eames snorted.
“There’s no mystique to harvest festivals. No mystery,” Eames said. “You never had any interest in attending the balls?”
“By the time I knew about them I was too old to be especially interested,” Arthur replied. “So, no.”
“It would help to access Maurice, though,” Eames said.
“It would attract attention if any of my family were to attend after avoiding it for so long,” Arthur said. “And I like the harvest festivals.”
“Only because you don’t participate in the harvest,” Eames said.
“I participate in the fertility rites in the spring,” Arthur said, and Eames raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Should have known, what with your being witches,” Eames said, then leaned forward and allowed his expression to slide into something that might be termed lascivious. “Pagan nation and that. Fertility rites, though--what does that entail?”
“That information’s only available to participants,” Arthur said, ignoring Eames’ skeptical glance. “Witches only.”
Arthur lifted his shoulders against the cold and looked off to the west. The sun had been below the horizon for long enough for the last of the twilight to have burnt off. Someone should have claimed night watch and someone else should have been getting some sleep.
“I’ll take first watch,” Arthur said.
“Enjoy,” Eames replied, and twirled his fingers into a mock salute.
The hills got lower and greener still as they approached the sea, and the next morning the sky was free of clouds and the greens turned jewel bright. They were riding more slowly than they had in the far reaches of the valley, two abreast, which offered the opportunity for languid conversations that trailed off for hours at a time, then resumed without warning. And so Arthur learned that Eames had actually worked the harvest, in addition to apprenticing briefly to the swordsmith in the capital before entering the service. In exchange, Arthur offered pieces of his own history: the pranks he and Ariadne played on every tutor they ever had, the long, strange saga of the castle cat.
Their conversation was dogged by the unspoken truth that Arthur was a prince and Eames was not even noble. There was less striation between the nobility and the rest of the citizens in Cadere than there was in the neighboring kingdoms, but that didn’t change the bare facts, or the bears at Arthur’s throat and hip. And Eames wasn’t from Cadere to begin with, and he had a complex about royalty, spoken in the tight, uncomfortable twist of his lips whenever he used Arthur’s title.
“We’re almost to Roat,” Eames said, nodding at the trail ahead of them. “We should dip over the border.”
“Just dip over the border?” Arthur asked. “Any reason?”
“I know an alchemist,” Eames began, and Arthur raised an eyebrow. “He’s good. He has some theories about witchcraft, but he’s never worked with a proper witch.”
“And you think?”
“He could help,” Eames said. “He’d go with us, no questions asked. The alchemy business isn’t that good.”
“That’s a surprise,” Arthur muttered, and Eames shot him a grin.
“The witch is skeptical of the alchemist?” Eames said.
“People believe in witches,” Arthur said. “And witches generally aren’t self-proclaimed.”
“Don’t I know,” Eames said, his flat tone undercut by something deeper. Arthur turned to look at him, but Eames was looking directly ahead, pointedly avoiding eye contact.
“I didn’t--” Arthur said, but Eames shook his head.
“I know.”
“You could blame us, you know,” Arthur said, and now he looked away, towards the dip of the nearby hills, funneling down into a grassy hollow. He thought he saw a rabbit.
“I could,” Eames agreed. “But I doubt that would help much. You’re not the ones getting innocents caught in the crossfire,” Eames continued. “It’s not even really crossfire, is it?”
“So you protect the innocents?” Arthur asked. He hardly felt innocent, and he wondered if Eames was reading his mind when he caught Arthur’s eyes again.
“You tell me.”
Eames’ eyes were darker than Arthur thought they were, and a color he didn’t immediately have a name for. Their eyes held for a moment before Eames wheeled Chilk off the path and towards Morrow, which was a place Arthur would rather not be going. Even if most of the witchhunters wouldn’t know a witch from a pig’s backside, they were still there.
Eames waited for Arthur when he slowed.
“They wouldn’t know you for a witch if you wore a sign around your neck,” he said.
“And the Cadere crown prince?” Arthur asked. Eames shifted his body in a gesture that might have belied uncertainty.
“We probably won’t meet anyone,” he said. “Except Yusuf, and he wouldn’t recognize you for the crown prince or a witch with a sign around your neck.”
“And you say he knows things about witches,” Arthur said.
“He told me everything I told you,” Eames said. “Except he thinks all witches are female, which--”
Eames gives Arthur a look that’s just this side of accessing and lingered uncomfortably on Arthur’s torso, then dropped to the place where Arthur’s legs splayed across Rota’s back.
“Which is plainly false,” Arthur interjected. “Though that one’s quite common. Don’t know where it came from.”
“Your feminine hips, perhaps,” Eames said wryly, then clipped his heels into Chilk and disappeared over the next ridge before Arthur could retort.
Which was for the best, because Arthur didn’t have a retort, except with a hand gesture that a stablehand taught him when he was fifteen.
Arthur made it at Eames’ back, despite himself, and followed Eames across the border.
Nothing happened.
It was not a surprise. The border was unmarked--no one sat guard at the crossing, and they were not on an established route. But Arthur held his breath anyway and waited for the blow.
It was not long before things began to look familiar, though it took Arthur a few moments to place where the memory was from. Hills looked more or less the same everywhere, but these ones had a recognizable cast, low slopes, a brush of gold, trees growing close to the ground in the places where Arthur expected them to be.
It was when he saw the red house, sagging a little more than Arthur expected it to, that Arthur realized he was in Eames’ dream.
“Where are we?” he called downslope to Eames.
“Morrow,” Eames said.
“No--” Arthur said. “Where are we specifically?”
Eames reined Chilk in, and peered up at Arthur as he and Rota approached.
“You been here before?”
“No,” Arthur said. “--no. But this is where you’re from, isn’t it?”
Eames wound his hands through the reins and tightened his grip before turning up the hill, away from the house and the hollow.
“No one’s from here,” he said. “Been abandoned for years.”
Arthur followed, because it was all he could do.
The town, when they reached it, was a small cluster of stone and brick buildings collected around a green village center. Eames aimed for a building on the fringes, painted no color found in nature, which was a sure sign of an alchemist’s meddling. They approached from the back and hitched their horses there before Eames went to the door and tapped it five times in quick staccato.
The door swung open after enough time had passed to make it seem like the shop might be unoccupied. The man on the other side peered out without inviting them in.
“Eames,” he said, then glanced over at Arthur before looking back at Eames with a question in his eyes. “And--friend.”
“Arthur,” Eames said curtly. “Yusuf.”
“Pleasure I’m sure,” Yusuf said, running one hand through his dark curls and pulling them up on end. “By which I mean I doubt it. It’s been awhile, Eames.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll like this,” Eames said, and Yusuf sighed.
“Come in then,” he said. “But my letting you in is not a promise. Of anything.”
Eames made Yusuf bolt the front door, and then the pair of them leaned against the counters and descended into some sort of strangely combative combination of negotiating and reminiscing. Arthur kept one ear on the events while wandering the dimly lit shop, which was full of corked ceramic jars made from red clay and thick volumes bound in dark leather.
Arthur caught snatches of conversation: “I am not,” Yusuf was muttering. “For your latest--,” but then Eames said “a witch.” Arthur expected Yusuf to look at him like he would like to cork his parts up in bottles, but instead Yusuf just looked at Eames more intently and said “Cadere?” voice rising on the last syllable.
Eames nodded, and Arthur sidled over to hear better.
“It’s away from the hunts,” Eames said. “She didn’t want to come to Morrow.”
‘She?’ Arthur mouthed at Eames.
Yusuf looked around the shop.
“Business has been poor,” he said.
“It always is,” Eames replied. “So come with us.”
“And you’re not going to explain your friend to me?” Yusuf asked, jerking his chin in Arthur’s direction. “How do I know I can trust him?”
“Arthur, my traveling companion,” Eames said. “I introduced you already.”
“I never thought you were one to take up with nobility, Eames,” Yusuf said, arching an eyebrow. “A bit more polished than your usual type, isn’t he?”
“We’re riding border patrol,” Arthur said flatly. “Do you want to come with us or not?”
“Right charmer, you are,” Yusuf said, then sighs. “I’ll do it. I just need some time to pack.”
“Do you still have the mule and the cart?”
“Farley,” Yusuf said. “The mule’s name is Farley, and, yes, that’s what I’ll be taking.”
“You’ll have to meet us on the other side if the border if you’re planning to take the main roads,” Eames said.
“You haven’t changed a whit,” Yusuf said. “Sneaky bastard, leaving me before we even start.”
“There’s a river ferry, a day past the border crossing,” Eames said. “We can meet there.”
Yusuf made a vague, exasperated gesture.
“And we’ll just be going then,” Eames said. “Borders need patrolling, don’t they?”
“Of course,” Yusuf said. “Border patrol.”
“Right then,” Arthur said, and made a move for the back door. He was not completely obtuse, and Yusuf was hardly subtle; he understood what Yusuf had been implying, and he was quite happy to shunt it to the back of his mind and then go back to border patrol and easy companionship. Eames hadn’t expressed any especial interest in him; and if he did, that would be--complicated. Arthur had considered it, noticed the slope of Eames’ shoulders and the musculature of his arms, the fine curve of his ass, but Arthur didn’t need those flurries to take on the character of possibility. Besides, Yusuf’s comments suggested Eames was a bit of a cad.
part 2
it's an old story: a knight, a prince, a kingdom in peril.
notes: written for i_reversebang for an art prompt by kamikaze_bunny. her illustrations are included in the story (if you like them go leave her a comment!).
thanks go to kamikaze_bunny for an amazing prompt, as well as my wonderful, beta readers: bauble, gelbwax, gollumgollum, and laria_gwyn. You people: I would thank you all individually, but that would probably take longer than this fic, which is already long. Suffice to say: you (they) were endlessly helpful, and I take full responsibility for any remaining errors.
nc17 . 30336 words . AO3
map
When Arthur dreams it’s of Cadere, of riding on horseback across the plain, alongside a braided river, through rice paddies and wheat fields ringed by mountains red and purple. It feels like flying, and the air is light and clear, and he can see for miles, from the sails of ships along the coast to the falls and well beyond. It’s beautiful, and he tries to hold on to that--the clear air, the freedom, the feeling that he’s the only person in the world in the place that he loves.
If he sees a soul, he never touches them.
But ‘never’ is a bit difficult, and sometimes he slips.
From the high peaks of the Hardel Range, if the day was clear and your vision was good and you looked to the east, you could see across Cadere to the low hills that marked the border with Morrow. Arthur did not look east, though; everything east he had seen, and so he looked west.
The mountains sheared off in harsh, wild cliffs, and Arthur’s eyes traced down the slope--rock fading into forests that were thicker than they ever were on the leeward side, and then an expanse of flat land, clustered villages, and there, a glimmer of reflected light on the edge of his vision: the ocean, as near as Arthur could figure. The air was clear, cool, and vaguely damp, and Arthur wondered if the scent he was catching was salt. Unlikely, though--too far off. He was letting fancy overtake him.
“Well,” Eames said from the horse behind him. “What do you think?”
“I think we need to keep moving,” Arthur called back over his shoulder. “No reason to stop here, if there’s nothing to see.”
“Of course, Highness,” Eames said. Until Eames, Arthur had never met a knight with such a consistent habit of deferring without really deferring at all, but as Arthur clipped his heels into Rota’s sides he could hear the clatter of Chilk’s hoofs on stone, signaling that Eames was following behind. Arthur hazarded another glance down the slopes before their path veered away from the vista, north and east, carrying them over the ridge and dipping down to the other side where the ocean would fall out of sight. This was a border patrol, not an opportunity for the Crown Prince to go sightseeing, no matter what Eames thought.
Eames did think Arthur was some sort of coddled princeling who was riding the borders on a lark, though. Arthur could tell from the way Eames looked at him when they first met, sharp and assessing, lingering too long on the things that marked Arthur as royal: the pommel of his sword, the clasp of his cloak, the fine leatherwork of his saddle. It made something curl deep in Arthur’s gut, the familiar wakening of pride in response to a challenge.
“You ride well,” was the first thing Eames said to Arthur, and at the time he had sounded surprised.
Not that it mattered. Eames was a knight of no particular standing; what he thought of Arthur did not matter in the least. If, at the time, Arthur had done some particularly fancy rein work just to prove a point--well. He was the Crown Prince, after all, and he couldn’t have insubordinate knights, or rumors running through the ranks about his incompetence.
They broke for the evening on the eastern slope. After five days Arthur and Eames had a routine, or something like one, and Eames went to gather scraps of wood while Arthur set up the bivouac, collected water and started to put together dinner.
They settled across the fire from one another, passing skins of water and tea back and forth and exchanging hardtack and dried tomatoes and meat. It might have been companionable, if it hadn’t been like this every night since they began riding. They weren’t companions, not really, and without that their silence was just weighted with the barren potential for conversation.
“We should be able to break at the falls tomorrow,” Eames said, and Arthur glanced up at him. The firelight played across Eames’ features, catching on the short, fine hair brushed across his brow and the coarse wool of his cloak.
“I haven’t been to the falls since I was young,” Arthur said. “I’d like to see them again.” The L’Dere Falls were the wellspring of the L’Dere River, which spliced the valley in half and served as their kingdom’s primary water source.
“You’ve been to the falls, though?” Eames asked, giving Arthur pause. “They’re far from the capital.”
“For my sister’s dedication,” Arthur said. Every member of the royal family was dedicated at the falls; it was no secret, the procession from Daleth, the capital city, was part of every birthing celebration and a holiday for the citizens as well.
“Ah, yes,” Eames said after a moment, though he didn’t sound entirely certain. It made Arthur look at him again, more closely. He spoke with the accent of someone from the valley, and dressed the part: narrow canvas trousers, wool shirt and cloak, leather boots in the style favored by most of the knights, buckles up the side. But clothes were purchased easily enough.
Arthur stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles.
“I don’t know where you’re from, Sir Eames.”
“Oh, that’s not a terribly interesting story,” Eames said, grinning wryly, but there was another expression Arthur could quite name behind his eyes. “Roat. It’s a small town near the Morrow border. You won’t have heard of it.”
“We’ll be passing near it when we go east, then,” Arthur said, and Eames’ face stilled.
“Yes, I suppose we will be, Highness,” he replied. “Though I don’t imagine it will be of much interest to you.”
Arthur just glanced at him and took another swig of water from the skin.
“I’m sure you’re aware that the royal family takes an interest in every part of the kingdom,” Arthur said mildly, looking past Eames to the sun slipping over the shell of the ridgeline. “And I would be interested to know which side of the border this town of yours is on.”
“My vows are to Cadere,” Eames replied stiffly, his eyes flickering towards Arthur’s face.
“I wasn’t questioning your vows, knight,” Arthur bit back. Eames’ body had stiffened, his neck and back drawn in a taut, tense line, his body like the string of a bow before the arrow flies.
And then, suddenly, all the tension drained, and Eames slouched back into himself.
“Of course not, Highness,” Eames said.
“I’ll sit first watch tonight,” Arthur said, in the tone he had learned from his father when he was quite young, the one that said he would brook no argument. Eames glanced at him sidelong before retreating to the bivouac, and Arthur took his dagger from the scabbard in his boot and ran it through his fingers. Eames was larger than he was, if it came to that, but Arthur was quicker and had been training since he was young; and that was without even taking into account his other skills.
They said strange things pool up in noble blood, because they kept so tightly to themselves, commingling only with those of equivalent status. The Cobol family of Cobol, over the mountains, had white hair and eyes clear like glass; but physical features were less interesting than the other things, the things they didn’t talk about.
The skillset that ran in his lineage, in the Cadere lineage: it killed Arthur’s cousin.
Though in truth the threat wasn’t the skill so much as the witch hunts that had been blooming east from the Morrow border for the last decade, the witch hunts that had ensured Arthur and Ariadne both were scarcely trained, and that the Cadere family’s particular talents were hidden better than any of their wealth.
Arthur spun the dagger through his fingers, watching the blade catch and gleam in the fire. The pommel was stamped with the family crest, a bear curled into itself, the fur on its broad back rising in a defensive ruff.
Arthur went out to collect more wood for the fire before rousing Eames, who woke with the lightness of someone who was not asleep at all.
“There should be enough firewood to get you through the night,” Arthur said. For a moment Eames just looked at him, hitched up on his elbows, the light casting long shadows across his face.
“Okay,” he said, then hoisted himself up and pulled on his boots. He clasped his cloak at his throat while Arthur unlaced his own boots and slipped off his cloak, pulling it over himself as a blanket when he crawled into the bivouac.
“Sleep tight, Highness,” Eames said with a mincing salute that Arthur chose to disregard.
Arthur had rigged up the bivouac under a narrow rock outcrop, and instead of sleeping he stared up at the stone, inspecting its texture in the weak light for something to do. He knew border patrol was mostly dull. He supposed he should be grateful for the dash of intrigue, even if it did come commingled with a sardonic, perhaps vaguely resentful, and almost certainly untrustworthy patrol partner. That was part of the exercise, though; Arthur needed to know how to handle himself, needed to gain a clear vision of the kingdom he would eventually rule.
He didn’t dream. When he woke, it was to the blue light of twilight on the rocks, pink clouds further off. He couldn’t see Eames, but both horses were grazing nearby, so Eames couldn’t have gone far. Arthur was stoking the fire and frying griddlecakes when Eames reappeared, bearing a small bundle of sticks and had replaced the unease of the previous night with the veneer he usually wore, smooth and competent.
“Morning,” Eames said. “Those for me?”
“Of course not,” Arthur replied, and Eames laughed. He grabbed one from the pan and bounced it between his fingers as it cooled.
“That wasn’t done,” Arthur said as he poured more batter into the pan. He supposed pretending that Eames probably wasn’t a spy was one way of handling this.
“Tastes done,” Eames said. “You cook like this at the palace?”
“Do you think I cook like this at the palace?” Arthur asked, flipping the next cake.
“I don’t know what royals do with their spare time,” Eames shrugged.
“Nor do I,” Arthur replied.
“You’re saying you aren’t the crown prince?” Eames asked. “Because everything you’re wearing would beg to differ.”
Arthur moved his fingers to his brow to check for the circlet, but it wasn’t there. Which it shouldn’t have been, he had left it at the palace, and yet--
“I’m not wearing my circlet,” he said.
“The royal crest is on everything you own,” Eames said. “And I saw that, hand to head.”
“There are four of us,” Arthur said, studying his own hands. “In the royal family.”
“I am aware,” Eames said wryly. “I’ve sworn to serve and protect, and we commonfolk do learn our numbers most of the time.”
“I don’t think you are,” Arthur said, looking up to meet Eames’ eyes. “Cadere, by comparison to the other kingdoms--we have nothing to offer.” He laughed a little, at that, tried to restrain the upwelling of bitterness. “We have five noble families.”
“There are other kingdoms,” Eames said. “I believe we were discussing the border last night.”
“I believe we’re on the border, Sir Eames,” Arthur said, and got to his feet. “I believe we’re supposed to be patrolling the border. And aside from the occasional diplomatic mission, I’ve rarely crossed it.”
“We’re done sharing?” Eames asked as Arthur went to saddle Rota.
“Would you like to tell me more about our neighboring kingdoms?” Arthur asked. “And your hometown on the border?”
Eames met Arthur’s gaze with an inscrutable stare, then began to saddle Chilk.
They rode in silence until a cairn-marked juncture that Eames said was where the border of Cobol, to the west, transitioned into Proclus in the north.
“They say Proclus’ last king lives in the mountains here now,” Eames said, nodding to the hills to the north. “That he came here to die but he never did.”
Arthur looked back at him but didn’t reply. Their course was shifting, downslope, into the Cadere valley and away from the mountains. A rain of small pebbles slipped down the hill, but Rota maintained her footing.
“Are there dragons, too?” Arthur asked several moments later.
“Dragons,” Eames repeated. “Next you’ll be asking me if there are witches.”
Arthur laughed, strained in a way he hoped Eames doesn’t notice.
“I wasn’t going to ask about witches,” Arthur said, trying to keep his tone just this side of prim and his voice even. “It’s a wasteland up here.”
It was true; the clouds dropped most of the rain on the west side of the mountains, and to the east the hills were mostly bare scrub, with dry air that meant the sun’s heat wouldn’t last through the night. The soil was red here. In the valley they got sufficient water for their crops; wheat and rice, mostly, but it was drawn from a complex network of irrigation from the L’Dere and snowmelts, not from rain proper.
“And witches couldn’t survive in a wasteland?”
“Why would they want to?” Arthur asked. “They need to eat, same as you or I.”
“Apparently the former king of Proclus does not need to eat, then.”
“Do you know, this king, was this Saito?” Arthur asked.
“So you do know other royals,” Eames replied, a distinctly smug tint to his tone.
“He fought alongside my cousin’s husband in the war with Cobol,” Arthur said. “Knowing of a person isn’t the same as knowing them.”
“And you’ve never attended a Morrow ball.”
The witchhunts exacerbated it, but the thing between Cadere and Morrow was a quiet, deep tension, old as bones. Morrow was too large, its capital city of Vena too far, and Cadere was no threat.
“Vena is far,” Arthur said. “And the ball always happens during the harvest.”
Eames didn’t reply, and Arthur turned back to look at him. Eames’ lips were drawn in a narrow line.
“There’s tension there, then,” he said.
“You didn’t know,” Arthur stated, fact rather than question.
“There’s no war with Morrow,” Eames said.
“Cadere is small,” Arthur replied, his tone carefully mild. “I said it before.”
Eames nodded once.
They rode on.
The path was wide enough for Eames to ride alongside Arthur, which he did, though he did so without speaking to or looking at Arthur, so the only sound was Chilk and Rota’s hooves and the soft whistling of the wind.
Despite breaking for lunch they still managed to reach the falls well before nightfall, and Arthur would have probably insisted that they press on if it hadn’t been for the fact that these were L’Dere Falls, and they mattered in a way Arthur would find difficult to enunciate if asked; they could not pass unmarked. And, furthermore, he needed this place, where the water plunged down into a cerulean pool, clear to the bottom, before flowing into the river. The air tasted cool, clean, green and new here, thick with the mists that rose from the base of the falls, and tasting it brought back memories of Ariadne’s dedication. She had been seven then, and Arthur fourteen, and that was the last time the family had dreamt together. They had slept under the twisting vines that grew at the base of the falls, their dreams permeated by pounding water and one another, four minds twining together like vines.
They did not break at the vines, and Arthur did not so much as glance at them; if Eames noticed it would be more information than he needed. When Eames turned downstream to the river portage Arthur followed. Even here, where the river was wide and shallow, the water swirled and surged, and in the middle Arthur needed to lean forward so Rota could swim as the water rose above his hips. Once both Rota and Chilk had footing on the far side Eames glanced at Arthur, then away, towards the trail ahead of them.
“The campsite’s not much further off,” he said, nodding towards a bend in the path that would presumably take them far enough away from the pounding of the falls to allow them to speak normally. “We can put on dry clothes there.”
The campsite was a small plateau of rock tucked into the cliff face, and it was quieter there, though the falls were still a steady hum. Eames stripped down almost as soon as he dismounted, peeling off and shucking layers of clothing and spreading his wet clothes on the rocks to dry. Arthur followed suit, digging new layers from his oilskin-wrapped saddlebags. Heat was rising off the stones in comforting waves, and Arthur looked back at Eames, who was pulling on fresh trousers.
“Should’ve gone for a swim,” Arthur said. “It’s warm enough.”
“Won’t be after nightfall,” Eames replied, looking up at him as he adjusted his trousers and shook out a shirt. Their eyes met, and Arthur suddenly remembered that he was still undressed. There was rarely any privacy on the trail, but Arthur had never felt there was any need for it; maybe because they usually dressed and undressed in dim twilight hours. But with light laying everything bare, the musculature of Eames’ chest cast in sharp relief, the tail of the chimera Arthur had seen inked across Eames’ back curling over his shoulder, the whole world unspooling around them--something Arthur had been avoiding untied inside of him, and he turned away. He didn’t know what he must have looked like, himself; slightly rumpled, he imagined, damp trousers clinging to thighs. Not like a prince, surely; not like anyone who might be king.
“Were the falls as you remembered?” Eames asked once they’d returned to dry clothes and a semblance of normalcy, Arthur prodding the fire and Eames doing something that may or may not be preparing dinner.
“The falls--,” Arthur started. “Yes. They hardly change, do they?”
“Why do you do your dedications there?” Eames said. It gave Arthur pause; he resisted the urge to turn and look at Eames.
“It’s tradition,” Arthur said, after a moment. “And an old one. Even you must know how important the falls are--the water is--for our kingdom.”
“Even I,” Eames echoed, frowning, and Arthur’s smile only had a thin rind of bitterness, so grateful was he that Eames bought the lie. It wouldn’t do to say that the falls--the vingrove--had certain properties that enhanced the skills of witches, properties that were valuable to the royal family, as witches themselves--it wouldn’t do.
But that was the reason, and that was the reason Arthur needed to get back to the falls before they moved on.
They didn’t talk much more that night, but Arthur took first watch again, and after he confirmed Eames was asleep he put on his wet clothes and went back across the river. The moon was full and ripe, and by its light the return crossing was straightforward enough. If Eames woke and Rota was gone--
But Arthur needed to get to the vingrove, and it was not something he could tell Eames he needed to do. There was a clarity there, an alignment that was not quite right elsewhere in the kingdom.
There was, also, a figure there already. By the time Arthur saw he was too close to turn around, and his hand moved instinctively to the sword at his hip.
“Arthur,” the figure called; the voice was male, soft, like the edges had been sanded off, but even so hearing his name without honorific from a stranger made Arthur bristle. “Stand down.”
The man stepped from the grove out into the moonlight. He was older, with thinning hair combed back from his face.
“My name is Saito, Arthur. I have wanted to meet you,” he continued. “And Dominic had a message he wished for me to convey, about your cousin.”
“Mal?” Arthur asked. Saito--it made sense. He slid from Rota’s back and strode towards him, holding out a hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, sire.”
“No need for honorifics,” Saito said as they clasped hands. “I’m no longer king, and I feel we are friends already. If not--in times like these, we should be.”
Up close he was younger than he looked from a distance, and Arthur wondered why he had abdicated the throne with so much life still left.
“Times like these,” Arthur echoed softly. He knew, but to hear one say it--
“Witch hunts,” Saito replied simply.
“Mal,” Arthur said again, more slowly, this time. “Dom suspects Morrow? I thought it was an accident--”
“It was,” Saito said. “But it happened when she was walking in King Maurice’s dreams.”
“They know?” Arthur asked.
“Dominic does not know how much,” Saito said. “They don’t trust the families of witches, but they’ve never shown any inclination towards realizing the full extent to which the abilities move through blood--”
Arthur nodded. He hadn’t realized Saito had known, but it made sense--Proclus had always been more cautious than Morrow, and in their caution they made it their business to know all they could, making wisdom both their wealth and their power.
Saito waved a hand.
“That does not matter so much as the reason Mallorie was in Maurice’s dreams,” he said. “She and Dominic uncovered evidence that Morrow was planning an invasion. She intended to--shift his opinions.”
“Oh,” Arthur said, his voice draining out of him, grain from a bag overfull. “Oh.”
Cadere was small. They had their--ways--of protecting themselves, but Morrow was large, and their hunger was outpacing their size, and perhaps outpacing Cadere’s skills as well.
Saito nodded.
“She was concerned that the king and queen would not wish to be involved, because of the hunts,” Saito continued. “But now it is clear there is no other way, and as Dominic cannot walk himself--”
“Where is my cousin?” Arthur asked. Saito turned aside.
“He is with me,” he said, and Arthur looked at him sharply.
“And he didn’t come himself?” he asked.
“His wife has died,” Saito said. “There are implications. He wished to stay with his children.”
“And his children are with you, also?” Arthur asked.
“We will be old men together,” Saito said. “Though some thought I was old already.”
It’s not what Arthur expected, though the children did explain why Saito abdicated the throne; adopting another’s children would be considered a threat to Proclus’ established heirs, and an inappropriate one at that. He nodded in tacit acknowledgement.
“Thank you,” he said. “I will do what I can.”
Saito reached forward to clasp his hand again.
“If you need us, you may walk our dreams,” Saito said. “You are welcome.”
Arthur touched his own forehead in acknowledgment. His training was lacking, but he had been taught the old traditions; they were rarely followed, these days, but there were few whose dreams he was welcome in and it would not do to be impolite about it.
It made things easier to be welcomed. Safer, but also simpler, especially if one wished to walk another’s dreams across a great distance.
“But you came here to dream,” Saito said abruptly. “I will not distract you further. It may do you well.”
Arthur wasn’t sure if he had the time, but he nodded. Saito began to leave, and then he turned back.
“Your companion,” he said. “Do you trust him?”
“He’s a knight of the crown,” Arthur said.
“That’s not the same as yes,” Saito replied.
And then he turned and left, walking towards the western border trail and then up into the mountains, moving like some mountain creature--a goat, a gazelle--and not like an old man at all.
Arthur went to the grove, though he was not sure he had the time; nor was he certain he should, but he did. Dreams here had an unmatched clarity; it was like nothing he had experienced save for drinking from the falls themselves, these dreams sweet and clean and real.
He didn’t know when he would be back, and for that reason alone Arthur tethered Rota and stepped into the grove. Moonlight lanced through the tangle of vines, well on their way to being laden with grapes. Sleeping here should have been uncomfortable, but Arthur went to dip his hands into the thin channel from the falls that ran through the grove and drank, then went to the table rock in the center and curled himself up, and he was asleep as soon as his head touched the smooth stone.
He is underwater. Bubbles swirl upwards, and Arthur is rising with them, limbs flailing. His vision is green-blue, blue-green, every iteration of cyan, marine, jade, olive--and this spectrum seems sufficient, complete in itself.
There is no surface for him to break through, no gasping for air. He swallows bubbles, rises further still, and then he’s plunging down.
The light doesn’t shift, but Arthur can feel himself descending until he is looking out across Cadere, as it is, and perhaps he’s not swimming at all but flying through a strange, saturated sky.
It’s hard to explain, but there are towns he knows and towns he doesn’t, and he drifts through them all, and they are all there and populated, and every face is distinct, one from the other. He does not touch a one of them, but floats above, drifting like a boat unmoored.
He does not touch a one of them, until he sees Eames, Eames on his feet and walking, then Eames at a table gambling with dice, his eyes bright and laughing and completely incapable of seeing Arthur. Then Arthur sinks lower, falling through the thatch of a building’s roof as if it is air, and then he places his fingers on Eames’ temples and goes further in.
Inside Eames the other colors of the spectrum reassert themselves, cool and warm commingled. Arthur is standing, now, feet planted on the ground, looking out over low green hills, which unfurl before him in undulating waves. There is a house at the center of the scene, a coarse red thing, and it is there that Arthur goes, crossing the ground more quickly than he could if he were walking. And yet he is walking.
There is nothing inside the house, or there is something, but Arthur cannot see it--he can feel it, as if it were behind him at every turn. He’s see a woman, for just a moment, and she carries with her a burst of smoke and heat, Arthur wheels around for a better look, but even so--there is nothing to see. The walls seem nigh to invisible, and they may well be; they are fading, everything is--
Arthur is swimming.
Eames is awake.
Eames was awake.
Arthur woke himself with a jolt. He fumbled too quickly to his feet, scuffed them on the rock, slipped his fingers as he untied Rota’s reins and rode--too quickly, too heavily, with too much of every uncontrolled thing he tried to avoid--to the river portage and the campsite. The night was cold and the water was cold in turn, and Arthur was not sure how he would explain this--not keeping watch, going back across the river at night. One didn’t do innocuous things at night. He should have thought of that. People who skulked about doing things in secret did so because they had secrets.
So Arthur rode. Even as he did some part of him thought it was good to ride Rota like this--she was fast and strong, and this was the type of riding they didn’t do on long rides, for Rota’s sake as well as Arthur’s, but it was the type of riding that was akin to flying, or maybe dreaming, and with Rota moving under him, leaning forward, his mind roiling, Arthur fled through moments where he thought this might be okay, after all.
But Eames was awake, and Arthur discovered nothing in his dream, and Eames was awake.
Rota’s hooves were pounding, and the campsite began to coalesce against the horizon: a thin smolder of a campfire, the silhouette of Chilk, ears pointed towards them.
When Arthur careened into the campsite, Eames was sitting by the fire with his elbows heavy on his knees. He didn’t turn when Arthur arrived, didn’t so much as flinch.
“Go for a swim?” he asked, once Arthur dismounted and was standing behind him.
“I wanted to go to the vingrove,” Arthur said. It was half the truth. “Where we do the dedications.”
“At night?” Eames asked. Arthur couldn’t read anything into his voice. Arthur moved around the fire until he was standing opposite Eames, but Eames’ face was equally inscrutable.
“Yes,” Arthur said, firm.
“And if someone had come?” Eames asked. He looked up at Arthur, and their eyes met. “Jackals? You would’ve been sitting watch?”
“Nothing happened,” Arthur replied, but even he knew that was a weak defense.
“Nothing happened,” Eames hissed, getting to his feet. He moved around the fire like he was prowling, like a heavy animal, all muscles under skin. “You don’t--”
Eames paused and inhaled, like there was a weight on his chest.
“I know you’re a prince, Highness, but you can’t just go wherever your fancy takes you. This isn’t some Grand Tour. We sit watch for a reason. You know--”
“This isn’t a Grand Tour,” Arthur said. “I’m not some dilettante.”
“Then stop acting like one,” Eames said. He was close now--Arthur hadn’t realized how close, but he could feel Eames’ breath on his face, and Eames’ face, illuminated by firelight, was close enough that Arthur’s eyes needed to flicker from nose to lips to eyes to chin to see the whole of it.
“There was some crown business I needed to attend to,” Arthur said, because it was the only thing he could say. “Knight.”
Eames’ eyes went flat, and he stepped back from Arthur, pulling the warmth his body radiated back and away.
“You’re pulling rank on me,” Eames said and he barked a laugh that sounded like it physically pained him. “You’re pulling rank on me.”
Arthur watched as Eames moved back around the fire, dropped to his haunches and peered up, studying Arthur from a distance.
“You can sleep, sire,” he said, his tone turning the words into the worst kind of insult. “I’ll sit watch.”
Arthur heard the criticism implicit in that comment, and there was a piece of him that wanted to rail against it, as if that would accomplish anything--and there’s a part of him that was just relieved that Eames didn’t know where Arthur was when he was gone, that he was walking Eames’ dreams, even if he didn’t find anything there.
He retreated to the bivouac, stripped his wet clothes and curled himself up on the sleeping mat and pretended to sleep until he didn’t need to pretend anymore. It seemed the best of the possible options.
Morning came too quick, and Eames was there, cooking rice. He wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur knew any trust Eames had had been frittered away. Or perhaps not frittered: spent, but worth the price. The line was fine, there, and Arthur wasn’t entirely sure where it was drawn.
Saito had asked Arthur whether he trusted Eames, and Arthur didn’t know, and now their relationship had taken a step backwards. Or maybe it had just put everything Eames already thought--everything Arthur suspected he thought--on the surface. More honest, if nothing else.
Arthur closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before getting to his feet, going to Eames and accepting a plate of risotto, thick with cinnamon and raisins.
They didn’t talk. Eames didn’t say anything, and Arthur didn’t know anything to say. Trust had never come easily to Arthur, and it came less easily now, and Eames--Eames was, for the most part, inscrutable, and the chimera inked across his back had to mean something, so maybe they were both correct in their distrust, one of the other.
Cadere meant chance in the old tongue, which is something no one ever mentioned. There were stories about why they named the valley that, why the royal family bore the name, but none of them were true. It was happenstance, really. And so was this: Arthur here, the cadence of Rota’s hoofbeats beneath him, Eames at his side. They would be wheeling south, soon, and then they would approach the Morrow border.
Arthur needed to decide. He needed strong allies. And if Eames was not--he did not need that. Saito was right.
Something twisted inside him, grew like a vine, uncertainty and certainty commingled. Eames was keeping his profile steady, staring ahead and not at Arthur, and so Arthur looked at him, traced his brow down to his nose, the full bloom of his lips.
“Why did you become a knight?” Arthur said, for something to say.
Eames was silent for so long that Arthur wasn’t sure whether he had heard the question. When he did speak, he wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes.
“Because none of the masters in my town wanted to apprentice the son of a witch,” Eames said, and Arthur could feel his eyebrows rising.
“She wasn’t,” Eames added, quick and bitter. “But that didn’t stop them from burning her.”
“But you don’t believe in witches,” Arthur said, because apologizing seemed like such a small thing, and he wasn’t sure his sympathy was wanted.
“I’ve never met one,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.
“They--” Arthur paused. “They would be sorry, about your mother.”
“You know this?” Eames asked, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t blame them. I came here to escape those I do blame. To hurt them, if I could.”
“I know,” Arthur said, looking aside. “Because I’m sorry.”
The silence was palpable, and so heavy that Arthur found it difficult to lift his eyes to meet Eames’. When he did Eames face was papered over. Still, Eames looked like he was--waiting. Expectant.
It came out in a rush.
“Last night,” Arthur began. “I want back to the falls. There is a place, there. The vingrove. And Saito of Proclus was waiting for me. He’d been in touch with my cousin--Lady Mallorie’s--husband.”
“Lady Mallorie died recently,” Eames said, as if to confirm.
“Yes. She was walking the Morrow king’s dreams,” Arthur said. “Maurice. She caught wind of plans for an invasion, and she was trying to convince him otherwise. It didn’t work. Saito was telling me because my parents--because of the witch hunts--they don’t walk anymore. He and Dominic thought I could do something.”
“Your whole family, then?” Eames asked, and if Eames was anything other than what he said he was, anything other than loyal to Cadere, the small, stiff nod Arthur granted to him was some kind of death sentence.
“Maurice’s advisor, Browning,” Eames said softly. “He’s the one behind the witch hunts. Behind most everything, really.”
Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“That’s why you left Morrow, then,” Arthur said that evening, when they were seated by the fire and passing food back and forth. “Because of your mother.”
“I had my reasons,” Eames replied. “But you were right to guess that I’m from Morrow. And I am not supportive of the hunts, though I thought--”
“You thought they were a problem because witches weren’t real,” Arthur finished for him. “And what do you think now?”
Eames shook his head.
“The hunts are awful,” Eames said, before turning to meet Arthur’s eyes. “I don’t know about witchery, though.”
“Dreamwalking,” Arthur corrected. “We call it dreamwalking.”
“Fear drives the hunts,” Eames continued. “Because we don’t understand what a witch might be capable of, because we hardly know what you can access. Is it really better, to be so secretive? You expect us to trust the things you keep hidden?”
“You want to know, then,” Arthur said.
“Yes,” Eames said. “I can’t imagine you expected any less.”
“Shall I tell you or show you?” Arthur asked. That Arthur had already walked Eames’ dreams was not something Eames knew or needed to know; Arthur took nothing, left nothing, it didn’t matter. It was perhaps, Arthur would acknowledge, not the best thing to hide--but no one trusted a witch. No one ever wanted to.
This was easier.
“You could show me?” Eames asked.
“We’ll have to sleep together,” Arthur said, and Eames quirked one brow before Arthur added, flatly: “With no one on watch.”
“Tell me what it entails,” Eames said.
“What do you know?”
“You can get in our dreams and influence us. And take things--secrets, things deeply suppressed.”
“More or less,” Arthur replied. “Less, really, because it’s not as simple as that. Each dream is encrypted to the individual dreamer, so just being able to get in the dream doesn’t mean we understand what we see there. And changing behavior is even more difficult--almost mythical, it’s been so long since anyone has done it.”
“But that’s what your cousin was trying to do.”
“Cadere is a small kingdom,” Arthur said after a moment, then suppressed a bitter laugh at this thing which had become his refrain. “Family lore holds that dreamwalking is how we’ve protected ourselves all these years. When any of the neighboring kingdoms develop an interest, we go in and change their minds. But it’s been awhile since there’s been any need--Cobol, two generations ago--so.”
“You don’t really know how,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.
“And my parents have been avoiding it, because of the hunts,” Arthur said. “We should have seen it coming. They’ve never needed to, and Ariadne and I--we aren’t even properly trained.”
“Ariadne--the princess?”
“My sister, yes,” Arthur said, then allowed himself a wry grin. “You could’ve at least made an effort to learn something about your adopted kingdom.”
“She’s young, though, isn’t she?” Eames asked.
“Thirteen summers,” Arthur said. “It’s easier to start young. The mind is more flexible, or more comfortable with it--it’s hard to explain.”
“You must have records, for training,” Eames said. He was toying with his reins, twisting them between his fingers.
“Witchhunts, even before this most recent spate, meant it was better to keep those things hidden, or not to keep them at all,” Arthur said. “There’s a little, but not much, and most of what is written is very vague. Making it clear that this is a family trait--it’s a dangerous thing.”
“And yet here I am,” Eames replied.
“Here you are,” Arthur echoed. He could see Eames assessing him, and Arthur wondered if he’d been far too trusting. He was, after all, a coddled princeling, a dilettante with the royal crest on him like a brand. He had been prepared for things, but not for this.
“You have as much reason to want the witchhunts gone as I,” Arthur said.
“Not quite so much,” Eames replied. “But enough.”
“Come with me, then,” Arthur said, deciding he may as well complete this. “Back to the falls. I have permission to walk Dominic and Saito’s dreams, and we should be able to reach them from there. I’ll pull you in. You can see a dream, I can collect more information.”
“Do we have the time?” Eames asked.
“Time passes differently in dreams,” Arthur said. “But I hope you don’t mind crossing the river again.”
When they reached the vingrove the grapes were rich and ripe, tangled among curls of vines. Eames looked at the space strangely: the vines, the sleeping rock.
“I didn’t notice this place before,” he said. “How did I not notice it?”
He looked at Arthur accusingly, but Arthur just shook his head.
“People don’t always see what they don’t know what to look for.”
Eames reached up and plucked a grape, popped it into his mouth and sucked on it.
“These are--” he said, reaching for another one and holding it out towards Arthur. Arthur was still watching the pucker of Eames’ lips, which would be his excuse, if anyone were to ever ask him why he took the grape with his mouth instead of his fingers, holding it between his lips for a moment before biting down and letting the bitter juice explode on his tongue. Eames watched him with steady eyes, then turned and spit the seeds of his own grape out before taking another.
“Are they special?” Eames asked.
“No,” Arthur said, looking at a bundle of grapes, heavy on the vine. “They’re grapes.”
For some reason that had seemed profound at the time.
“Unusually good grapes, though,” Eames said, plucking another. “Have you ever made them into wine?”
“No,” Arthur said.
“We should try that,” Eames said.
“We should go to sleep,” Arthur said.
“On the rock,” Eames said, nodding towards it.
“On the rock,” Arthur said. “But first we drink.”
“Of course we do,” Eames said.
So they did.
He is underwater, and bubbles swirl upwards around him in wild plumes. When he swims down, Eames is there, standing on the ground but looking at him--meeting his eyes. Arthur offers a hand, and pulls him up.
They swim north with strong, languid strokes, over the ridgelines of the northern mountains, towards Proclus.
Saito is not waiting for them, but Dom is, standing and looking south like a sentinel. Arthur ducks and presses his fingers to Dom’s temples, indicates for Eames to follow, and they’re there, in an estate with polished floors and wrought railings, ringed by golden fields. Dom is not there, until he is, standing besides them with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Saito said to expect you,” he says, nodding to Arthur. “But not you.”
“This is Sir Eames. We need to know about Mal,” Arthur says. “What she was doing. What she knew.”
“No more than Saito told you,” Dom says. “She was dreamwalking Maurice.”
“And her death?”
“She went in too far,” Dom says, looking away. “Too far into the dream, too deep. Maurice--Maurice. He was prepared for her.”
“Prepared for her?”
“She could no longer distinguish the dream from reality,” Dom says, and there’s something frantic in his eyes when they meet Arthur’s. “She--”
“She could tell you herself,” interjects a soft voice from behind, and Mal is there, padding barefoot through the halls, a loose robe tied around her waist.
“Don’t,” Dom says, quick and sharp, and it’s only then that Arthur sees the short blade clutched in her left hand, and when Arthur looks up to her eyes they’re flat and dark. Arthur isn’t sure who she’ll move for first--her eyes are ranging between the three of them, passing harsh judgment.
“Sometimes dreams are more lovely than life,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to stay?”
She’s reaching towards Dom with her empty right hand, placing it on his shoulder.
”But Maurice?” Arthur asks, to restrain himself--this is not Mal, this is not.
“The mind has its own defenses,” Mal says, and then the knife is flying from her hand to Arthur’s heart.
It’s Eames who knocks Arthur aside, Eames who Arthur finds himself staring up at saying, “I would’ve just woken up.”
“Be careful about the water,” Mal says. “Maurice wants the--”
And then Arthur was awake, blinking the sleep from his eyes and staring up at the tangle of vine and sky above him.
“We didn’t get to Saito,” he said.
“Nice cousin you have there,” Eames replied after a moment.
“That wasn’t my cousin,” Arthur said.
Arthur could hear Eames roll over on his side, could feel his eyes on Arthur’s face.
“It wasn’t her. These things happen in dreams,” Arthur said.
“What was she?” Eames asked.
“A shade,” Arthur said, fixing his eyes on the sliver of the moon. “They dreamt together while she was alive, and her mind left an imprint on his, and now she haunts him.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Eames said.
Arthur rolled over so he was facing Eames, staring at the spiky shadows Eames’ eyelashes cast on his face.
“It’s not,” he said.
They lay there like that for a few moments, breath flowing in and out.
“Saito,” Arthur said.
“We’re going to do that again?” Eames asked.
Arthur paused, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No, we should move on. We have enough. I spoke to Saito last night.”
“Is dreaming always like that? Violent?” Eames sat up and hooked his arms around his legs.
“It’s never like you expect it to be,” Arthur said. “It always lies a little, or a lot. Don’t believe everything you dream.”
Eames looked at Arthur for a long, lucid moment, and then turned towards the horses, their reins and tethers.
“What was she saying?” Eames asked at midday. “About the water?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said.
“That might be something we want to know,” Eames said.
“We?” Arthur asked, turning to look at him.
“We,” Eames said, without looking away. “Highness.”
“My name’s Arthur,” Arthur said, and they kept riding.
They approached the Morrow border the next day. The hills became low and green, recalling those Arthur saw in Eames’ dream, and there were settlements closer to the border; they avoided those, mostly to avoid anyone recognizing Arthur. Not that--they probably wouldn’t, but it was an unnecessary hassle, and Arthur was neither prepared nor willing to be his political self, the charming and genial crown prince. This wasn’t a royal tour--it was a training circuit. He didn’t have the circlet, anyway, and the circlet marked him even more than the royal crest on the clasp of his cloak, the pommels of his sword and dagger.
“How plain is it?” Arthur asked. “That I’m royal?”
Eames glanced at him sidelong.
“About as clear as it is that I’m not originally from Cadere.”
“So if you speak with me you’ll know,” Arthur said, and Eames shrugged.
“Most will know when they see the bear.”
And so they kept to the outskirts of the towns, occasionally passing a cart or a farmer in his fields. At night they could see the soft light of towns on both sides of the border in the distance.
“How do you access someone’s dreams?” Eames asked one evening. He was lounging, stretched out on a soft expanse of grass with his head propped up on his hands.
“They have to be nearby,” Arthur said. “Most of us have a relatively small radius, but the grove by L’Dere expands it. That’s probably where we’d need to go to get to Morrow.”
“Or you could go to the Morrow ball,” Eames said.
“We never go,” Arthur replied, then peered across the fire at Eames. “You talk a lot about the Morrow ball.”
“It’s a significant event, in Morrow.”
“Are you jealous? Do you want to go to the ball?” Arthur asked.
“It’s an event, in Morrow,” Eames repeated. “Everyone knows about it. There are festivities.”
“The harvest is a significant event here, and there are festivities,” Arthur said, and Eames snorted.
“There’s no mystique to harvest festivals. No mystery,” Eames said. “You never had any interest in attending the balls?”
“By the time I knew about them I was too old to be especially interested,” Arthur replied. “So, no.”
“It would help to access Maurice, though,” Eames said.
“It would attract attention if any of my family were to attend after avoiding it for so long,” Arthur said. “And I like the harvest festivals.”
“Only because you don’t participate in the harvest,” Eames said.
“I participate in the fertility rites in the spring,” Arthur said, and Eames raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Should have known, what with your being witches,” Eames said, then leaned forward and allowed his expression to slide into something that might be termed lascivious. “Pagan nation and that. Fertility rites, though--what does that entail?”
“That information’s only available to participants,” Arthur said, ignoring Eames’ skeptical glance. “Witches only.”
Arthur lifted his shoulders against the cold and looked off to the west. The sun had been below the horizon for long enough for the last of the twilight to have burnt off. Someone should have claimed night watch and someone else should have been getting some sleep.
“I’ll take first watch,” Arthur said.
“Enjoy,” Eames replied, and twirled his fingers into a mock salute.
The hills got lower and greener still as they approached the sea, and the next morning the sky was free of clouds and the greens turned jewel bright. They were riding more slowly than they had in the far reaches of the valley, two abreast, which offered the opportunity for languid conversations that trailed off for hours at a time, then resumed without warning. And so Arthur learned that Eames had actually worked the harvest, in addition to apprenticing briefly to the swordsmith in the capital before entering the service. In exchange, Arthur offered pieces of his own history: the pranks he and Ariadne played on every tutor they ever had, the long, strange saga of the castle cat.
Their conversation was dogged by the unspoken truth that Arthur was a prince and Eames was not even noble. There was less striation between the nobility and the rest of the citizens in Cadere than there was in the neighboring kingdoms, but that didn’t change the bare facts, or the bears at Arthur’s throat and hip. And Eames wasn’t from Cadere to begin with, and he had a complex about royalty, spoken in the tight, uncomfortable twist of his lips whenever he used Arthur’s title.
“We’re almost to Roat,” Eames said, nodding at the trail ahead of them. “We should dip over the border.”
“Just dip over the border?” Arthur asked. “Any reason?”
“I know an alchemist,” Eames began, and Arthur raised an eyebrow. “He’s good. He has some theories about witchcraft, but he’s never worked with a proper witch.”
“And you think?”
“He could help,” Eames said. “He’d go with us, no questions asked. The alchemy business isn’t that good.”
“That’s a surprise,” Arthur muttered, and Eames shot him a grin.
“The witch is skeptical of the alchemist?” Eames said.
“People believe in witches,” Arthur said. “And witches generally aren’t self-proclaimed.”
“Don’t I know,” Eames said, his flat tone undercut by something deeper. Arthur turned to look at him, but Eames was looking directly ahead, pointedly avoiding eye contact.
“I didn’t--” Arthur said, but Eames shook his head.
“I know.”
“You could blame us, you know,” Arthur said, and now he looked away, towards the dip of the nearby hills, funneling down into a grassy hollow. He thought he saw a rabbit.
“I could,” Eames agreed. “But I doubt that would help much. You’re not the ones getting innocents caught in the crossfire,” Eames continued. “It’s not even really crossfire, is it?”
“So you protect the innocents?” Arthur asked. He hardly felt innocent, and he wondered if Eames was reading his mind when he caught Arthur’s eyes again.
“You tell me.”
Eames’ eyes were darker than Arthur thought they were, and a color he didn’t immediately have a name for. Their eyes held for a moment before Eames wheeled Chilk off the path and towards Morrow, which was a place Arthur would rather not be going. Even if most of the witchhunters wouldn’t know a witch from a pig’s backside, they were still there.
Eames waited for Arthur when he slowed.
“They wouldn’t know you for a witch if you wore a sign around your neck,” he said.
“And the Cadere crown prince?” Arthur asked. Eames shifted his body in a gesture that might have belied uncertainty.
“We probably won’t meet anyone,” he said. “Except Yusuf, and he wouldn’t recognize you for the crown prince or a witch with a sign around your neck.”
“And you say he knows things about witches,” Arthur said.
“He told me everything I told you,” Eames said. “Except he thinks all witches are female, which--”
Eames gives Arthur a look that’s just this side of accessing and lingered uncomfortably on Arthur’s torso, then dropped to the place where Arthur’s legs splayed across Rota’s back.
“Which is plainly false,” Arthur interjected. “Though that one’s quite common. Don’t know where it came from.”
“Your feminine hips, perhaps,” Eames said wryly, then clipped his heels into Chilk and disappeared over the next ridge before Arthur could retort.
Which was for the best, because Arthur didn’t have a retort, except with a hand gesture that a stablehand taught him when he was fifteen.
Arthur made it at Eames’ back, despite himself, and followed Eames across the border.
Nothing happened.
It was not a surprise. The border was unmarked--no one sat guard at the crossing, and they were not on an established route. But Arthur held his breath anyway and waited for the blow.
It was not long before things began to look familiar, though it took Arthur a few moments to place where the memory was from. Hills looked more or less the same everywhere, but these ones had a recognizable cast, low slopes, a brush of gold, trees growing close to the ground in the places where Arthur expected them to be.
It was when he saw the red house, sagging a little more than Arthur expected it to, that Arthur realized he was in Eames’ dream.
“Where are we?” he called downslope to Eames.
“Morrow,” Eames said.
“No--” Arthur said. “Where are we specifically?”
Eames reined Chilk in, and peered up at Arthur as he and Rota approached.
“You been here before?”
“No,” Arthur said. “--no. But this is where you’re from, isn’t it?”
Eames wound his hands through the reins and tightened his grip before turning up the hill, away from the house and the hollow.
“No one’s from here,” he said. “Been abandoned for years.”
Arthur followed, because it was all he could do.
The town, when they reached it, was a small cluster of stone and brick buildings collected around a green village center. Eames aimed for a building on the fringes, painted no color found in nature, which was a sure sign of an alchemist’s meddling. They approached from the back and hitched their horses there before Eames went to the door and tapped it five times in quick staccato.
The door swung open after enough time had passed to make it seem like the shop might be unoccupied. The man on the other side peered out without inviting them in.
“Eames,” he said, then glanced over at Arthur before looking back at Eames with a question in his eyes. “And--friend.”
“Arthur,” Eames said curtly. “Yusuf.”
“Pleasure I’m sure,” Yusuf said, running one hand through his dark curls and pulling them up on end. “By which I mean I doubt it. It’s been awhile, Eames.”
“Oh, but I think you’ll like this,” Eames said, and Yusuf sighed.
“Come in then,” he said. “But my letting you in is not a promise. Of anything.”
Eames made Yusuf bolt the front door, and then the pair of them leaned against the counters and descended into some sort of strangely combative combination of negotiating and reminiscing. Arthur kept one ear on the events while wandering the dimly lit shop, which was full of corked ceramic jars made from red clay and thick volumes bound in dark leather.
Arthur caught snatches of conversation: “I am not,” Yusuf was muttering. “For your latest--,” but then Eames said “a witch.” Arthur expected Yusuf to look at him like he would like to cork his parts up in bottles, but instead Yusuf just looked at Eames more intently and said “Cadere?” voice rising on the last syllable.
Eames nodded, and Arthur sidled over to hear better.
“It’s away from the hunts,” Eames said. “She didn’t want to come to Morrow.”
‘She?’ Arthur mouthed at Eames.
Yusuf looked around the shop.
“Business has been poor,” he said.
“It always is,” Eames replied. “So come with us.”
“And you’re not going to explain your friend to me?” Yusuf asked, jerking his chin in Arthur’s direction. “How do I know I can trust him?”
“Arthur, my traveling companion,” Eames said. “I introduced you already.”
“I never thought you were one to take up with nobility, Eames,” Yusuf said, arching an eyebrow. “A bit more polished than your usual type, isn’t he?”
“We’re riding border patrol,” Arthur said flatly. “Do you want to come with us or not?”
“Right charmer, you are,” Yusuf said, then sighs. “I’ll do it. I just need some time to pack.”
“Do you still have the mule and the cart?”
“Farley,” Yusuf said. “The mule’s name is Farley, and, yes, that’s what I’ll be taking.”
“You’ll have to meet us on the other side if the border if you’re planning to take the main roads,” Eames said.
“You haven’t changed a whit,” Yusuf said. “Sneaky bastard, leaving me before we even start.”
“There’s a river ferry, a day past the border crossing,” Eames said. “We can meet there.”
Yusuf made a vague, exasperated gesture.
“And we’ll just be going then,” Eames said. “Borders need patrolling, don’t they?”
“Of course,” Yusuf said. “Border patrol.”
“Right then,” Arthur said, and made a move for the back door. He was not completely obtuse, and Yusuf was hardly subtle; he understood what Yusuf had been implying, and he was quite happy to shunt it to the back of his mind and then go back to border patrol and easy companionship. Eames hadn’t expressed any especial interest in him; and if he did, that would be--complicated. Arthur had considered it, noticed the slope of Eames’ shoulders and the musculature of his arms, the fine curve of his ass, but Arthur didn’t need those flurries to take on the character of possibility. Besides, Yusuf’s comments suggested Eames was a bit of a cad.
part 2