#pfh d2

Halt

The water gates to the palace’s bay had been left unlocked, but Kiris’ discomfort at that little factoid paled in comparison to the summer-meadow figure posted at the dock. Nazvili’s swordsman held an oil lamp, flickering yellow in the thin fog, and Kiris halted the bathtub well out of reach of the man. The swordsman had lifted him like he weighed the same as a kitten. He had controlled him with the same effort it took to draw his sword.

“Who are you?” Kiris demanded, across the water.

“Aris of Krigover, your grace.”

Hot

“Do you hear any gods here?” Batar hissed, her dagger, hot, blistering the fraud’s neck. “I see none. Your words will be in Zavorr, your songs will be in Zavorr, your thoughts will be in Zavorr. Who is your master?”

The fraud began the poem again.

Hole

Kiris looked up. Ovria and all the other Boyars were watching him as if a stage play. Nazvili wasn’t. Nazvili, more than anyone else, knew what this meant.

No more freedom.

Kiris’ breath stalled. Those stolen coins suddenly weighed the same as Miridin’s moose, and his lock pick kit could have burned a hole through his tunics. No more—

“Prince na Suem?”

Half (cw: gore)

Duvutriok Vuun drew his sickle-sword and slit the western prince from shoulder to thigh. He cut off one of their hands and caught it in an oil-cloth, then bowed to head table. Kiris couldn’t look away, half-deafened in the torrent of the western prince’s affiliation bursting from their body just as much as lifeblood and organs flopped onto the wood floor.

“Would ‘L Tuola care for a memento for the occasion?”

Hurl

N/A (first one in a while—nice!)

Answer

“Then is it not right for me to punish you, as you would a thief? Have you all become so greedy for my authority that you have neglected honor amongst yourselves?”

The princes shuffled. It was a very quiet sort of shuffle, one where they each looked to their neighbors, encouraging them to answer even though they all had the words at the tips of their tongues. Before someone dared, she continued, “Ta Ritasa.”

Wrong

“Noble,” Nazvili said, “but ultimately futile. You ought to be concerned with yourself first, Yphant; your development of your affiliation gives me right to torture and humiliate you.”

“Yes,” Kiris said, “but if you think I place my life higher than those of your people, you’re wrong.” He swallowed. “I’m selfish and condemned. But I can’t let an innocent people suffer when I can do something about it.”

Doubt

“There are two yn Musyrs in the middle,” he said, rather than voice his concerns.

“’L Tuola is only accepting one prince per principality. I doubt those two will compete, but even should they, your only concern would be their forming an alliance with Evina, Grahtzha, and their father’s other dogs.”

“And them murdering me,” Kiris said.

Nazvili smiled. “Obviously.”

Foreign

“No,” Nelovskevouk agreed. “What was so appealing about your fire, other than tales from Aris of Krigover?”

“Cards, mostly.” Kiris shrugged, the guards with Aris now flipping through a sheaf of papers. “Eskarez has a deck—a nice one, too, probably cost him a mry and a favor.”

“You expect me to believe my men would leave my side to play cards with foreigners?”

“And me,” Kiris said. “Do I count as a foreigner?”

Stone

Grab

“You would grant rule to a peasant?”

“There are so many of you already,” she said. “One more will not go noticed.”

“He is a criminal!” Iiriok snapped, and Kiris grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back. It wasn’t an effective yank, but the shock of the contact worked as well as anything.

“You can’t fight her,” he whispered.

Iiriok scowled. “I will end this villainy now.”

Taste

Only the memory of hunger could make Kiris force down breakfast, and even then the rich meats and warm cakes were as tasteless as snowpack. He only had to last until the end of Truce, but not eight hours in, that next day and a half already felt impossible.

Scent

The next day, someone attempted to drug Kiris again. It was Realms-thinning this time, that sticky scent wrapping his memories and plummeting him to Toor, and it was all he could do to stumble out of the dining hall and into hiding before he broke down entirely. Someone knew. Someone knew.

Someone knew.

Fight

Kiris didn’t consider himself a brave person. Even when he existed in this awkward state of ‘now what’ he was a runner, not a fighter. Damn it, he was good at running. It was these ‘run away!’ instincts now which pressed against his brain as much as his usual headache.

Soft

Stranger

Kiris couldn’t speak, still dampened by the circlet, by the tunic and the cloak, his reflection in the mirror grabbing them and strangling his words. This was a lie. A beautiful, horrible lie.

“Prince Nazvili would not have made any stranger her heir. She consulted with me, as well as others in her trust. With a measure of care, I agreed that you could rule Strauv.” Aris smiled, and it crinkled around his eyes. “If you were not so adept at disappearing, she would have claimed you years ago.”

Remember

When Kiris fought to put on his tunics the next morning, when the sunrise was nothing but a vague idea of light, he did so with dread curdling his stomach. His sleep had been plagued in nightmare: memories, mostly, with occasional bursts of panic over failing to remember some obscure fact about Strauv or its prince. Even as he splashed cool water on his face in an attempt to rouse himself, even as he wiped the remnants of sleep seeds from olive brown eyes and tried to tame his curls of a slightly darker shade, he recited to himself everything he could recall about Prince Martarez Nazvili.

Dream

Fear woke him. Ringing bells bled from the Other and into his sleep, and Kiris flailed in the dark, lurching upright and pawing at his ears. His lungs heaved and the room was as ethereal as his dreams, awake or yet sleeping and he couldn’t tell, couldn’t discern human from Other with the bells so loud and the room reflecting his dim blue.

Music

The swordsman shook his head, turned, and he shouted something—Kiris heard it, barely. It was as if someone were speaking to him from a room flooded in people and music; he could see it, he knew they were producing sounds, and maybe if he imagined it, he could even hear the vague tone. He thought the swordsman’s voice might be warm.

Night

“There was plenty of food vakon.”

“Ah,” Nazvili said, wisely. “This wealth of food—did it ever touch the vault of your stomach?”

Kiris slumped deep into his seat.