Out of the City [Gil and Mael]

[Mael Leblanc]

"Adrien, I don't think this is such a good idea," I said, fighting the urge to squirm in the saddle. "I can't feel the ground beneath my feet, am I expected to ride all the way to Azzalle like this?"

"Mael, calm down," Adrien was behind me, that much I could tell. "As long as you don't squirm about in the saddle, your mount is tethered so it can only move forward."

I snarled in frustration. "How can anyone ride these beasts? All this swaying to and fro and not being able to feel anything!" My hands kept an iron grip on the reins, I was afraid to loosen my grip lest the horse take that as a signal to bolt.

All of a sudden, we stopped.

"Why are we stopping?!" I cried, obviously panicked.

"Mael, the horse is emptying his bowels!" Adrien yelled. "Will you calm yourself? Kali-ma!"

I felt the horse relax as it finished its business, then we were moving again. "Oh, well, maybe this won't be so bad..."

[Gillermo Stregazza]

I was riding ahead of Mael, and the sound of him arguing with Adrien was in fact soothing, because amusing, and it kept my mind calm. Elua, I wanted to race to Azzalle, and I wondered if we shouldn't have simply put Mael atop Adrien's horse.

“Have heart,” I told him as I turned to look over my shoulder. “It will only get worse when we set to a gallop, though I trust you will adapt soon enough. Listen to the beast, feel his body under you. You will soon know the animal to be a part of yourself. Can't you tell the muscles moving below your thighs?”

[Mael Leblanc]

"I'll tell you what I can feel!" I exclaimed. "I can feel the ground beneath my feet and it doesn't....move around at random...apart from when the earth shakes...but that is beside the point!"

I heard the beast snort, as if expressing its opinion on the matter, but at least it was still plodding along sedately. It was apparently not a vindictive beast.

"I think I would prefer to walk to Azzalle," I muttered.

"Well, I'm certainly not dismounting to lead you around this time, Mael," Adrien said. "Why can you not just relax?"

"That's easy for you to say, you're not blind!" I shot back.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

Mael was severely disgruntled, and I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Enough, the both of you,” I said tiredly. “We are going to walk until the next bridge, but we are not going to walk to Azzalle. I did not settle all my matters posthaste to canter along so slowly.”

And taking a deep breath, I angled Strider so that he would come and sidle by Mael's horse. More gently, I said, “Take a moment, Mael, to focus on what is there, rather than on what is absent. Horses are goodly beings, and yours will commune with y ou, and can be your eyes, if you learn to trust the beast. Breathe, trust the animal. It has no interest in acting wildly at this time. It will be well.”

[Mael Leblanc]

I sighed. "Commune with the bedamned animal..." I took a deep breath, tried to feel the horse's flanks beneath my thighs, and through it, the ground beneath us.

Breathe in, feel the wind on your face. It's fresh, clean, not like the air in Night's Doorstep, which smells of filth and cheap wine on the best of days. Are those flowers I smell? I suddenly wanted nothing less than to dismount and start picking flowers, as if I were a young child again.

"I've never been outside of L'Agnace and now I find myself on a horse heading for Azzalle!" I muttered. "Fantastic!"

[Gillermo Stregazza]

Inwardly, I cursed myself for assuming the man could ride with alacrity – and I was getting impatient, feeling as if for every single moment we wasted, Mirielle was in greater danger.

“For slow step we take,” I said quietly, “a woman is closer to danger, mayhap. If something happens to her, so help me Asherat ---”

I stopped myself, taking a deep breath, trying to keep my calm.

[Mael Leblanc]

"Eisheth's tits, man!" I swore, forgetting, for the moment, that I was speaking to a Stregazza. "I am trying to cope to the best of my ability, but I don't imagine you know how difficult it is to ride without being able to see where you are going!"

I took a deep breath. "I can do this. I've been through much worse, much, much worse..." I heard the call of a bird I couldn't identify, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by how vast this space seemed.

"There's not so much space in the City, I don't think," I murmured. "It feels so...unusual..."

[Gillermo Stregazza]

I took another deep breath, feeling like I needed eons of patience which I could not beckon. “Yes,” I said, “there is space. And the sun shines brighter, and the birds sing louder, and war marches on, Mael. Will you let your own bewilderment stand in the way of you and the true enemy? Adrien is with us, and I am here as well. It will be well.”

A breath, again, and I added, quietly, making a promise, “Have you ever seen the ocean, Mael?”

[Mael Leblanc]

"No," I sighed. "I remember seeing a picture of it once, in a book, but pictures in books are not quite the same." I tilted my head up to feel the sun on my face. "I can remember, if I try hard enough, what the sky and the grass looks like, but it's not the same..." I hunched forward in the saddle. "I even remember what horses look like, and I can guess how high up I am right now, which means I can also guess how it will go if I fall from the saddle, so I will try not to think on it."

"You need to relax," Adrien said tersely.

"Those with eyes need to cease telling the blind man to relax until they ride a horse blindfolded!" I shot back.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

I frowned, and well... if that was what it would take to get us anywhere, then why not. “Adrien,” I said, my voice even and serious, bearing a command. “You will assume the leadership of our party until sun down. Sidle up, please.”

And letting Strider go as he needed, I took my handkerchief and proceeded to tie it over my eyes.

“Would you please kindly tell Mael what I am doing, Adrien?”

[Mael Leblanc]

I heard a soft thump and then heard a horse pass on my other side. "I need to tie the tether again, Mael," I heard Adrien say, from before me this time. There was a long pause, and then I heard him laugh. He rarely laughed in the presence of anyone who was not part of our group.

"Messire is giving you a taste of your own medicine, Mael!" He chortled. "Now it seems I must lead two blind men around!"

"What?" I was confused at first, but then my mind managed to piece together the conversation I had just had with the Stregazza, and now Adrien's cryptic remarks.

And then I swore...profusely...

"Have you truly gone mad!" I exclaimed. "What are we supposed to do if you fall and break your neck, ride to Azzalle to rescue your lady-friend?!"

[Gillermo Stregazza]

Under the blindfold, I smiled, and I bet it was audible, because I did nothing to hide it.

“I reckon that if I fall and break my neck, the regent Sovereign Duchesse of Azzalle will be relieved of my presence of good, and will be grateful for the service,” I replied sarcastically. “She is not expecting me, and likely does not wish to see me,” I told Mael. “But that is besides the point. The point is that I should not impose on men I intend to lead a hardship which I cannot bear myself. And so I will share your fate this day, Mael. Now stop complaining, and ride.”

That said, I gently nudged Strider with my legs, and let him start again on our way.

It was an important gesture. It told Mael and Adrien several things: that I'd opted to trust them, that I thought myself their equal, not their better, and most importantly, that we were going to be a team, regardless of the pay they were receiving.

[Mael Leblanc]

I sighed. "Go ahead, blind yourself," I muttered. "It's not as if I need your bedamned eyes to read and write or your bedamned coin to do other things. Mayhap we could purchase more spacious accommodations than a hole in an alley in Night's Doorstep, even though it does have a door." How much longer was it to Azzalle anyways? I could only vaguely recall viewing a map of Terre d'Ange, and Azzalle was far to the north, so I knew it would be longer than a day, perhaps several days, or weeks, even.

"Would someone remind me why I insisted on doing this?" I asked.

I heard someone snort, and then Adrien's voice: "Admit it, Mael, you've always wanted to travel but could never find the excuse to do so."

"Yes, to Eisande!" I shot back. "Where they have trained storytellers and wonderful music and less use for horses!" My mother had said that Marsilikos was a port city, and I wondered what it would be like to travel by ship.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

“You needed the coin, the man who could write, and his name,” I replied wryly. “Eisande will be the site of yet more fighting, I suspect, should naval fleets get busy. On to Azzalle now, and you'll have all the coin you need for a ship or a carriage to take you wherever you like.”

I smiled a little, sadly, thinking of Lessa as I'd known her, as I'd kissed her, in the bright rooms of her home in Marsilikos. It was another time, another place, another dream. “Marsilikos will stand, and you will hear all the bardic nonsense you want, though if your dream is to go to a place where horses are worthless, sail to La Serenissima, and give up the ground for permanent sea legs.”

[Mael Leblanc]

"It's not nonsense!" I retorted hotly. "And I would very much prefer temporary sea legs, thank you, just as I would prefer walking the land to riding astride a horse, but I suppose you nobles must keep up appearances!" I huffed. "Appearances don't matter when you're blind. They fuss over them in the City of Elua, but a person could be hideously scarred and a blind man wouldn't know it unless they were to touch the scars. There are some things I don't understand about D'Angelines..."

"I never understand why D'Angelines do anything that they do," Adrien remarked.

"You're half D'Angeline!" I shot back.

I received a grunt in response, evidently Adrien wasn't interested in speaking of it anymore.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

“You are bitter,” I told Mael quietly. “I care not for appearances – not anymore. If I did, would I be prancing around with my handkerchief over my eyes, trying to soothe the captain of my guard, while he scoffs about like a blind babe?”

I took a breath, and was irritated, for a moment. I felt the need to scratch my brand.

“The horse would be swifter than walking in most circum--- Oh, Elua! This is ridiculous and is getting nowhere.”

And then I fell silent, choosing, like Adrien, to say nothing, and seething in my self-imposed darkness.

[Mael Leblanc]

"I'm not your guard captain!" I snapped. "I neither need nor want a title; they bring nothing but trouble! And you might consider yourself fortunate, at least you can take off your blindfold and your sight will come back! I can't take mine off without everyone staring and gasping and saying: 'How hideous, what unsightly scars!' Bah!"

"Will you both calm down? Do not make me leave my post to box your ears in, the both of you!" This time, Adrien actually sounded like he was going to carry out the threat. "Kali-ma! You're both squabbling like children!"

[Gillermo Stregazza]

For a moment, I was quiet, mulling over the argument. After a while, though, I took my resolve.

“Very well,” I said quietly. “We are going to call a halt, and we are going to dismount.”

Self-pity was a feeling I knew well-enough. Gods knew, I indulged in it regularly – I knew how bitter it made one, and how it could compel a man to push away others. What I was about to do, I'd never done, but I needed their loyalty – we were travelling in a strange land, in strange times.

And besides.

I was more like them than they knew.

[Mael Leblanc]

If I had had eyes to see, I think I would have blinked. "Wh-What?" I asked, convinced that I must have misheard him. I went over the statement again in my head.

We were going to walk.

"Finally, you see sense!" I exclaimed as I pulled back on the reins and my horse came to a halt. Adrien was muttering obscenities in his native tongue, but in the end he was still there to help me dismount, at least until I could judge the distance from horse to ground on my own.

The moment my bare feet touched the ground was the brightest moment of the trip so far. The path we were on was smooth, and I wondered if it was because the priests of Elua--who always went barefoot--used it or if it was simply worn smooth by many travelers.

"Adrien, isn't this wonderful?!" I exclaimed, already striding forward as if I could find the way to Azzalle by seeing with my feet instead of my eyes.

"Yes, Mael, wonderful," Adrien replied dryly, and I knew then that he was less than thrilled at the prospect of walking for hours on end.

"This is quite preferable to being on that horse all the time," I remarked. "There's so much more to hear and smell when you're close to the ground like this..."

[Gillermo Stregazza]

I'd removed my own blindfold, and while Adrien assisted Mael, I'd come off the horse on my own, frowning still, my jaw set.

I was angry, and he was wasting my time. I needed to settle this quickly, one way or another.

“Don't go prancing about so fast,” I said dryly to the pair of them who were already walking. Instead, I'd found a stump to sit on, and I was removing my coat slowly, then my shirt.

I didn't give any explanations. Sometimes, keeping mystery is worth the effect.

[Mael Leblanc]

I heard our employer call us back, so, rather reluctantly, I veered from my course and let Adrien lead us back.

"I thought you said that time was of the essence," I said wryly. "Surely slowly moving is preferable to not moving at all, so why, if this lady-friend of yours is in danger, have we stopped moving?" I asked. This man was a walking contradiction, it seemed.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

“Sometimes one must stop to better go forward,” I replied quietly. “Come here, Mael. Adrien, please guide his hand to my left shoulder, I'm sure you know what I mean. I want you to touch my back and tell me what you feel.” More particularly, I wanted him to touch the brand on my shoulder, that marked me as a slave – there were the lashes of the whip, too, but the brand was most unsightly, it was still thick, still throbbing at times. The brand was in Ummayatti script, the name of the man who'd purchased my person in Carthage, and nothing more.

I understood his anger more than I could say – it was becoming apparent that he had been robbed, as I had been. I wanted to get that message across to Mael. Truth be, I had my own agenda. If he were to accept that, perhaps he would let himself trust me, and would accept to ride with me once more, but not alone on his steed, this time, but rather behind another.

[Mael Leblanc]

I heard Adrien gasp, but he took my hand and guided it as ordered. My fingers alighted on flesh, and something else. A scar, I thought at first, but no, the lines were too even, too neat, and they were too deeply set into the skin.

"What is this? A brand?" I asked, it certainly didn't feel like the raised markings with which the Albans were fond of marking themselves. I was only familiar with brands that were used to mark cattle, had this Stregazza been...

"Eisheth's perky tits..." I swore as I finally made the connection between what my hands and my head were telling me. I heard some shuffling behind me, and then Adrien cursing before saying: "Mael, his back..."

He took my hand again, and together we traced the scars--and I was certain they were scars this time. It was inconceivable to me that someone could have owned the Stregazza like cattle, and yet had I not, myself, been born to nobility and cast out onto the streets?

[Gillermo Stregazza]

I could feel Adrien guiding Mael's hands on my back, the odd tickle of a human touch on scarred skin. Was it pity that I heard in their voices? Was it?

I took a breath, and trying to steady my voice, which was trembling for sheer break of all that I'd held back since my return, I said, with more force than I expected, “Tell me, Mael, what you are feeling. Tell me, Adrien, what you are seeing. Tell me!”

There was rage and hurt in my voice, and I could feel myself shaking a little. It wasn't exactly about them, but it was, it wasn't exactly about me, but it was, too. I hadn't shown my mother. Mirielle had only seen my back as I'd left her to her carriage and her war. I'd told Leandre coldly, but hadn't expounded on it.

Now it needed to come out, it needed to pour forth. I grit my teeth and stood, then, taking my shirt and putting it back on my back harshly, and said nothing more, for fear of saying too much.

[Mael Leblanc]

I wasn't expecting that he would be come so emotional, so I was a little taken aback when he raised his voice to us. It seemed like something that was alien to him.

But I understood it,knew now that he and I were more alike than I had known.

"Gillermo," it was the first time I had said his name before I left. "My hands say that you have been...treated cruelly...but they also say that you have managed to rise above it, and I...was not expecting that sort of honesty." I took a deep breath, hands moving behind my head to undo the knot that held my blindfold in place, the same knot I tied every morning and only untied at night.

Well, usually...

I let the white strip of fabric fall limp in my hand, gasping as the air touched my scars. "Like lightning..." Adrien had said the first time he had beheld them, pink and puckered against my pale white skin. What was most unsettling for others, however, was the fact that the scars were where my eyes should have been.

"I thought you should see what I'm really hiding under here," I said softly.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

Mael's words struck a chord – but I didn't want praise. I wanted... aye, I wanted to be seen. He saw me, then, just as I was seeing him too, blind or no, it was another kind of eyesight, that was in play.

His voice was calm and quiet, respectful, for a change, and it mollified me enough that I turned and raised my eyes to his face.

Oh, Merciful Kushiel.

He'd been blinded. He'd been blinded and I didn't want to think of the sort of pain it was, the eyes that would never see again. The loss. Oh, by all the gods, it turned my stomach up side down to think of it. I was lucky, by comparison. Had been lucky. I lived, and I was whole.... mostly.

I touched the scar above my eye without thinking, and sighed.

“Elua, Mael --”

I had no words, but I wanted to call him brother. And the only thing that came out of my lips, then, was one word, full of everything I could not say, of my anger and his own, and a desire for revenge which I could absolutely understand.

“Who?”

[Mael Leblanc]

"I don't know," I replied. "If I knew, I wouldn't be bound for Azzalle at your side." My whole body shook as I made my hands into fists. "They committed foulest heresy with my mother, cut her throat, ripped my eyes from their sockets. destroyed my home..." Someone placed a hand on my shoulder--Adrien, I assumed. I was grateful for that simple act, and Adrien was normally adverse to such things.

"I can't even shed tears for her," I continued. "I want them to pay. I want them to pay for everything they've done!"

[Gillermo Stregazza]

“They will,” I replied quietly. “They will, and more,” I repeated. “So help me all the gods and demons of the world, your cause will be heard. You will tell me everything you know. You have a network on Night's Doorstep. I have my own.”

A breath, then, one that was quiet and resolved. “Azzalle awaits. Let us go, and if I can obtain the forgiveness I seek, perhaps I will obtain as well that one of the foremost peers of this country hear your voice.”

This was revenge, aye, but it was also justice, and that, I could embrace fully. “Ride now with me, Mael, and I will ride with you in return.”

I took a step his way, reached my hand out for his. “We will be avenged.”

[Mael Leblanc]

"Give him your hand, Mael, he's right in front of you," it was a strange turn of events, from shouting at each other to an accord of sorts, but now my aversion to riding seemed like such a small matter as I reached out and grasped his hand.

The matter might have been settled with a simple handshake, were I not suddenly struck by how idiotic I had been acting. Still grasping his hand, and acting purely on impulse, I knelt in the grass, tilting my chin upwards as if I could actually see his face.

"I know I said that I had forsworn all titles," I began. "But by all the gods, Gillermo Stregazza, I swear to be your man." I had heard the words said in a story once, so it was not the same as a true knighting, but it was as good an oath as any I'd ever sworn.

[Gillermo Stregazza]

When Mael's hand was extended and we clasped ours, I grinned, only to blink and stare a moment later at the fact that the blind man with the terrible past was now... on his knees, taking an oath of allegiance.

“-- you are right, titles matter little, Mael,” I replied, and still holding his hand, I tugged, that he may rise. “And any man of mine will never kneel before me, or be anything other than free.” My eyes stung as I spoke, the moment an important one if there ever was any. “If you are my captain, then never think yourself lesser than anyone. I would sooner call you my friend, than any other thing that would tether you.”

The words were important, but no less binding. But loyalty sworn for friendship, and not for submission to power, was far more valuable to me.