Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 993: Father and prince(2)

For the young boy Alpheo had always been the sun around which the world was forced to orbit, the definitive blueprint of a sovereign. He was a man who balanced the scales of power with a terrifying grace: generous to a fault with his allies, a hearth of warmth for his family, and possessed of a will that could bend iron, yet never once descending into the hollow cruelty of a tyrant.

Basil was a child of the New Era. He had no memory of the shadowed, starving years of his grandfather’s reign, but the stories whispered by his mother and the "uncles" painted a picture of a land transformed.

Under his father’s hand, Yarzat had breathed again.

He had never been formally paraded before the masses or presented at the opulent feasts typical of the Great Houses, his father always kept him hidden, but the boy felt the pulse of his father’s work in every full belly and paved road of the capital.

Usually the heir would be showed to the whole reign, but Basil came to the conclusion that his father had plans for him, so he reached that conclusion and mused on it no more.

He had spent years imagining this sanctum, the forge where the future of the South was hammered out. Now that he had finally crossed the threshold, the room was exactly as he had envisioned: a sprawling chamber dominated by a single, vast window, minimal in its vanity and maximal in its purpose. Mountains of parchment, reports, ledgers, and maps, cluttered every surface, revealing the aim of the room since the first step.

But the man at the center of the mountain was a stranger.

Alpheo was not the titan who could carry the world on his shoulders. He sat slumped behind the desk, his back curved like a broken bow. The air in the room was stagnant, thick with the cloying, fermented rot of sour wine and the chill of a hearth long gone cold.

As the light from the corridor spilled in, Alpheo turned.

The proud, sharp lines of his face had been eroded by a year of silent screaming; his eyes were bloodshot pits, rimmed with a bruised purple that spoke of a week without true sleep. A heavy, silver chalice sat near his trembling hand, and his clothes, usually so impeccably maintained though not always elegant, were stained and rumpled, hanging off a frame that did not have the appearance of the energetic ruler Basil knew him to be.

"Father," Basil said, forcing a small, fragile smile onto his face as if he could simply ignore the wreckage of the man before him. He moved closer, his boots whispering against the stone, but his breath caught in his throat as he realized what had become of the Romelian usurper’s head

He had been made into a cup.

"I recall firmly ordering Vrosk to let no one pass," His voice was a deep, gravelly vibration that, despite the haze of the wine, still carried the edge that made his enemies tremble.

"Exceptions have been made," Basil replied, attempting a jest that withered and died before it could clear his lips. He could feel his heart drumming against his ribs, a frantic prisoner begging to be released from its cage. His eyes darted to the skull-cup one too many times, a magnetic pull he couldn’t resist.

"Why are you here if you intend only to stand there in silence?" Alpheo snapped, his eyes flicking toward his son like flint striking steel.

"I..."

He followed the direction of his eyes.

"Oh. I see. You’ve never seen a dead man, have you? Well, there isn’t much to look at here." Alpheo grabbed the skull by the rim, peering into its hollows as if inspecting a worm that had spoiled a choice fruit. "You should walk a battlefield three days after the slaughter, boy. The smell will daunt you more than any punch, and you see enough eyeless, maggot-ridden husks that eventually, nothing can move you."

Without warning, he tossed the cup. Basil lunged, catching the cold, heavy bone in his arms. The son stared down at the prize of his father .

"You know whose head you hold?" Alpheo asked suddenly.

"I think I have an idea..." Basil whispered.

"I was going to give it to Rykio. Make it an artifact for the Hounds."

"That is.... a terrible idea, Father," Basil muttered, his voice trembling as he leaned forward to set the skull back upon the table. He could not bear the feel of it against his skin a moment longer.

"Yeah. I figured that, too," Alpheo admitted, leaning back into the shadows of his chair. "Not exactly the kind of announcement one makes to a civilized court. Still, I might give it to Rykio in private. He blames himself for not catching the bastard personally. He’d appreciate the gesture."

"And you don’t, Father?" Basil asked softly. He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth; the air in the room seemed to freeze.

Alpheo didn’t answer. Instead, he emptied the remaining dregs of wine and extended the empty chalice toward the boy. "Fill it."

Basil moved to one of the urns on the table, his hands steady despite the turmoil in his chest, and did as he was told.

"Why are you here, Basil?" Alpheo asked, his voice drained of its earlier bite, leaving only a hollow exhaustion.

"It has been... a long time since we passed an hour together," Basil said, taking a cautious step toward the desk, hoping to bridge the chasm between them. "Rosalind weeps asking of you. Mother watches the door whenever we dine. We miss you."

Alpheo waved a hand dismissively at the mountains of parchment surrounding him, his expression hardening into a mask of duty. "We will have enough time in the future, but for now other duty calls to me. Look around you. The world doesn’t stop turning because I am tired. I have a duty that requires me to be here, and you to be elsewhere."

"Is the duty so heavy it requires you to disappear entirely?" Basil pressed, reaching out as if to touch his father’s sleeve.

He recoiled slightly. "It is heavy enough that I cannot waste it doing anything else today. "

Basil stood his ground, though his gaze drifted pointedly to the silver-rimmed cup he had just filled. Alpheo did not miss the judgment in that silence.

"I recall teaching you to find your own voice and use it," Alpheo rumbled, his eyes hooded. "What? Is the lesson suddenly void because it’s your father on the other side of the desk? Have you lost your tongue, or are you simply too much of a coward to say what you mean?Which is it?"

"The Church says a son should always respect his father and mother,"

"And they also say that if a lowborn dares strike a noble, his head should be forfeit," Alpheo countered, a cynical sneer twisting his pale lips. "I have ended the lives of princes with a single word. Should my tongue be harvested? Never take another man’s lesson as universal, Basil.

Experience is the only true teacher. Use it to decide what to heed and what to burn. Respect your father? What if he is a murderer? What if he beats your mother until she is bruised and broken? Would you respect him then? Were my own father here today, I would show him exactly the ’respect’ he earned."

He leaned forward, the smell of wine thick in the air. "Find your own voice. Speak."

"I feel like you are dealing with something... different than duty," Basil said, his eyes flicking once more to the cup.

Alpheo shifted back into the shadows of his seat, a laugh escaping his throat. "Now, that’s a start. So, you think I spend my days merely drowning myself? That I pass out on the floor like a common drunkard? Is that the image you have of me?That of the prince of Yarzat?"

Basil made no move to answer, his silence acting as a mirror Alpheo wasn’t ready to look into.

"What?!" he shouted bringing his fist down on the table’’ Once you have started a thought, bring it to its conclusion! Don’t take the coward’s exit!"

"I didn’t mean that," Basil blurted out, his voice cracking as his composure finally began to splinter. "But you are drinking more and more! You spend less time with us every day. The only thing that stays with you is that cup!"

"There is little else to be done when work overwhelms you." Alpheo icely said as he rose from his seat. "Tell me, from which pedestal you speak? So that I may climb up there and see if the view is as clear as you think it is.

Not a worry in the world. Not a duty. Not a fear.Not a flicker of anger or pain. Not a single ordeal you had to surpass. What makes you think you have the right to criticize me when your entire world is roses and flowers?

You haven’t the slightest idea what I am doing for everyone’s sake.Aye I may be drinking but I also am extending more than ten hours a day toiling to make sure that we have a future.But go on, speak your mind, what else is there that troubles your little mind?"

’’It is not you that is speaking’’

’’You do not know anything Basil.’’

"I don’t know because you never tell anything to anyone!" Basil shouted back, tears which had threatened to come since the start of the conversation, finally spilled over his lashes, looking like the boy he attempted so often not to be.

Not tears of fear or pain but of frustration.

He trembled under his father’s roar, but to his courage, he didn’t retreat.

He had taken his father’s lessons well, more than the teacher knew.

"You don’t tell Mother! Even after a decade of marriage. You don’t tell me! Your own blood! You keep every secret and every pain locked behind that door, and then you’re angry that we don’t understand?Where is the sense in that?Where is the logic? How could I know when you threw the key away and you let none get inside to see what it is like?"