Noble Beginnings

by D. W. Jackson

  Myriel just nodded.

  "I know it may sound strange," Dorran said, trying for a conversational tone and mostly, he thought, succeeding, "but actually taking over Farlan was never something I imagined doing."

  "Never?" Myriel asked curiously.

  "No," he confirmed. "It wasn't that I didn't understand how the succession worked, it's just that there would be no way of knowing how long I would be gone in the war, and after training for it all my life, there wasn't much of a chance I would be much, if any good at politics." Dorran made a face. "I just always preferred to imagine Addie taking over from me. Preferably before I went anywhere near the title of Duke at all."

  Myriel hummed quietly as she considered this. "That's certainly not what I'd call common knowledge, my lord," she offered finally.

  He frowned. "Apparently not. Well, I'll have to think about it...but in the meantime, you'll report this to Mother, won't you? And possibly Addie and Nora as well?"

  A strange look passed over Myriel's face. "Report...?"

  "Sure," he said easily. "You do that all the time, don't you?"

  "Not to your family members about each other, no," Myriel said carefully.

  "I'd imagine you've been telling them everything we've talked about, though," he guessed.

  The way Myriel's eyes darted upwards and to the left made him believe that he had found the truth, even though she showed no other tells. He noted privately, not for the first time, that her eyes were very pretty indeed slightly delicately round, and a muted shade of green that somehow managed to find a sparkle even in the dimmest of light.

  "Nevertheless," he said, smiling at her even though he was still deep in thought, "do you think you could talk to them about it for me? I..." He frowned. "I'm sure there's a way I could explain it, but I haven't come up with it...and the less time they think I've got aspirations of treason, the better it will be for everyone, I think."

  She caught his joking tone and gave him one of her rare, natural smiles. "I'll be sure to do that, then." Picking up her dustpan and rag from where she had left them atop the mantelpiece, she curtsied casually to him on her way out.

  He nodded politely in return purely on reflex, his mind already turning over the beginnings of a plan.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  There was exactly a week left before the date Nora had predicted for the King's arrival when Dorran asked Myriel to summon two dozen of his best-known fighters to a clandestine meeting in the middle of the night.

  Ever since their conversation about what Dorran wanted to do with his future, an idea had been slowly gestating in the back of his mind. It had taken a day of skipping training to do it, which had earned him some questioning, and even a few disapproving looks, but he had found the historical references he was looking for in Thea's private library. Then, after researching his plan to his satisfaction, it took only a restless night or two to reach his decision.

  Now that he was looking at the confused and more than a little apprehensive group of men in front of him, ranging in age from a few years younger to a generation older than himself, he was glad that his resolve was so steady as it was. But he was operating, at least in part, on one of the pieces of wisdom he'd received from training that had stuck, that soldiers fought their best when under a leader who they trusted implicitly, not only in terms of their abilities but also their morals and goals. He wanted to provide the same basis of trust for these men, men that would likely follow him for the rest of their lives and his own, the closest he would ever come to brothers, that he himself would want in a leader. They deserved better than a man they believed might turn traitor in one, or five, or even twenty years.

  So he was going to prove his dedication to them, and hopefully, at the same time, to his family and to his people. Admittedly, this would prove something to himself as well, but it was something slightly different from what he was trying to prove to everyone else. They needed to know he was loyal to his family; and as for Dorran, he needed to know that even if he didn't reach it, he was at least planning for a future that extended well past the beginning of adulthood.

  For this show of loyalty, he'd picked one of his mother's smaller private chambers, the main attractions of which were, in this case, a small brazier in the corner which was merrily flickering with embers by the time Dorran's guests had settled themselves in the chairs he had helped Myriel to bring upstairs, and the small, curtained alcove which it had been Myriel's idea to include.

  "Well," he began, feeling a little awkward, "I'd like to thank you all for coming."

  They murmured their acknowledgment, which only made the awkward air increase. Growing frustrated, Dorran shoved his self-consciousness to one side with an effort of will and began.

  "As you all know," he said, "I have freely given away my rights as Thea's firstborn heir."

  Some of the men nodded cautiously. Others looked suspicious, and some looked downright nervous, but Dorran tried to ignore the dubious reactions. "I forwent my right to the crown of Farlan before it even had a Queen," he told them. "My Mother, then the Duchess, asked me whether I would be willing to lend my skills to her military instead of ruling. I agreed at once." He looked from face to face. "But as the sole male heir to a woman who has just created a Queendom, I have eventually realized that I appear to the outside eye to be Farlan's weak point. In the future, some may believe that they can tempt me into attempting to rejoin the Kingdom by enticing me with the crown of Farlan. Others may not take our goals seriously, believing that the inheritance of our newborn will revert to the ownership of a male heir and end in less than a generation. But that is not the country that Her Majesty, my mother, is trying to create. It is not what she has envisioned, and not what I have envisioned as her son.

  "So," he concluded, "I would like to make a show of my intention to follow Her Majesty, my mother, in her goals to establish a matriarchal line. I consider myself a servant of this tradition, no more, and I would like to use an old custom of Farlan to demonstrate as much." From the sleeve of a formal doublet that Myriel had insisted he wear, he pulled out a small square of metal with a handle in the back, turning it over and over in his fingers. "I intend to mark myself in eternal service to the Queen of Farlan and her line, and I would ask you, my brothers in arms, to be my witnesses."

  He watched as their eyes widened throughout the course of his speech, glittering in the light from the brazier behind him. He tried to draw amusement from it, to distract him from what was about to happen and how much it was probably going to hurt.

  "And," he added, "I have asked some others to bear witness as well. Myriel, if you will?"

  Myriel curtsied and drew aside the curtain in the alcove to reveal the rest of Dorran's family: Thea, Adhara, and Nora.

  Their faces were impassive, revealing nothing, but Dorran had not discussed his intentions with them beforehand, and was not sure whether Myriel had, so he thought that they might be concealing surprise or confusion. Other than that, he wondered what they might be thinking. However, he kept his own face expressionless as well as he gestured to Myriel to close the curtain again. She did so, and then walked over to Dorran, who placed the custom-made brand in her hand. "Will you heat it?" he asked quietly. "It can get a bit warm around the edges, and I'm worried about heating it unevenly."

  She nodded. He suspected she felt almost as nervous about this as he did, but that he couldn't tell whether or not he was imagining it. "Of course," she whispered back.

  She turned and began to heat the brand over the fire.

  "I'm planning to place the brand on my forehead," Dorran said as he waited, "so that it will never be something I can hide. My father and grandfather both taught me, in life and in the manner of their death, that to be a man of Farlan is to serve it as best one can. I intend to hold to that fully, until my dying breath."

  There was a long silence. Then a voice in the back of the small room spoke up. "My lord...think you might let that fine brand do its job more than once?"

  D
orran met Tam's eyes in confusion for a moment, not realizing what he meant; then he understood. "Oh," he said, taken aback. "I...I didn't invite any of you because I was expecting you to volunteer for this. I just wanted…"

  "Yes, I know, boy." Tam's eyes sparkled in the low light. "I just thought…perhaps our lovely new Queen might benefit from a queen's guard. The king has a guard of his own, doesn't he? And I should think our queen deserves yet better than everything he has."

  "I..." Dorran's mind raced as he considered the proposal. "Well..." Abruptly he stopped talking, turned to the curtain, and twitched it aside, falling into a kneeling position. "Well, Mother?" he asked, his voice slightly pleading. "What do you think?"

  Thea was silent for only a moment while she considered the request. "I would find it quite pleasing," she said finally. "I would demand it of no one…but if a man would be willing to pledge his life, loyalty, and blade to protecting me and mine and helping me to do the same for the country of Farlan, I would count it an honor to have them in my guard, and to bear in brotherhood the mark chosen by my son."

  Tam nodded, his gray beard bobbing slightly with the movement. "In that case, Your Majesty...please allow me to be the second member added to your guard, after your son."

  Thea nodded her head in acquiescence, and there was series of frantic mutterings in the ceremony's audience. Dorran had not intended for this to be more than a short ceremony marking him as a servant instead of a usurper, and now felt a twinge of guilt for the pressure he had inadvertently placed on the closest of his peers and friends.

  There wasn't much time to regret it at the moment, however. In the time that it had taken for Tam to make his request and for the Queen to grant it, Myriel had brought the metal in her hands to an appropriately skin-searing temperature. She held it up, and as the whispers around the room began to fade, she caught Dorran's eye and gave him a meaningful look.

  He nodded at her, then twitched the curtain back over the alcove, again shielding his family from view, and stood before his companions. He kept his hands fastened tightly around each other behind his back and knelt. Myriel moved so that she was standing and looking down at him, the brand held carefully in her right hand.

  "Are you ready?" she asked quietly.

  Dorran took a deep breath and shut his eyes. "I am. Go ahead."

  For a moment, there was nothing but the sensation of a cool, smooth hand on his face, and he savored that for a long moment. Then came the faintest impression of heat on his forehead, for just a split second, and then.

  Every one of Dorran's muscles tightened at once as blinding pain ripped across the sensitive skin of his forehead. He had wondered whether he would feel the mark itself, but all he felt was a general sensation of searing torment. It was a struggle to remain still, and even harder to keep his forehead from creasing as Myriel carefully tilted the metal plate back and forth over it to ensure that the whole mark was left on her first attempt.

  The entire process took less than a minute, but it took Dorran a moment to realize that Myriel had finished. The plate had been removed from his face, but if anything, the brand began to hurt more than it had when it was being applied, as the skin left undamaged enough to do so swiftly began to swell and throb in protest. Dorran allowed himself one hiss of pain and then gingerly opened his eyes, taking extra care not to move his eyebrows.

  The same small sea of faces was still staring at him, but he thought he saw a certain awe in them that had not been there before. He slowly brought a hand upward, wanting to explore the patch of fire above his eyes, but Myriel's hand beat him to it. She gently smeared something cool and soothing over his head, then applied a wad of bandage and finally wrapped a strip of cloth around his head. He looked up at her, but her face was as expressionless as a statue's.

  He smiled at her anyway. "Thanks."

  He saw a flicker of some strange emotion in her eyes, but then she was raising him to his feet, all business, and leading him behind the curtain, where Nora stood to give him a seat beside their mother. Dorran sat gratefully, closing his eyes for a moment in pain and exhaustion before opening them again. He wanted, with a perverse sort of curiosity, to see the ceremony performed on Tam, to see what it looked like from the outside.

  Tam took the same position as Dorran had, kneeling with his hands behind his back, and waited while Myriel took a moment to re-heat the brand. She asked him quietly if he was ready, and then, with one hand on the back of his gray head to hold it steady, brought the brand forward to touch his skin.

  The old man let out a small grunt of pain when the brand was applied to his forehead, but otherwise stayed silent throughout the ordeal. Dorran watched with a mix of horror and fascination as the brand was removed to show a reddish-brown, angry-looking set of moons on the man's forehead. He wondered what his own face would look like with the brand as another young man was led to kneel before Myriel, who remained careful and stoic throughout the procedure. The room slowly began to fill with the faintest smell of scorched flesh, and Dorran fought to keep the expression of faint disgust off his face. Turning to look at the rest of his family, he saw that Thea looked grave, Nora stoic, and Adhara a little pale. He reached out a hand and took one of the ones clenched tightly in her lap, grateful for the obstruction of the curtain.

  "Are you all right?" he asked quietly, as another man groaned under the hot metal.

  She nodded. "It's just...strange to see you and your friends brand yourselves to serve. I always thought I would spend most of my life serving you, but..."

  Dorran smiled faintly. "You're the better leader by far," he told her, squeezing her hand. "I've known that for years. Let it be my duty to protect you, little sister. I know you're going to be a wise and just queen someday."

  Her eyes were dark when they met his, but she nodded.

  The ceremony lasted only a little longer after that. By the end of it, fully two-thirds of the men in the room were branded, the rest looking uncomfortable. As soon as there was a short gap of hesitation between volunteers, Dorran spoke up, saying, "That's enough for tonight. Know that I think no less of you if you have elected to forgo the brand, but I want you to spread the word, the queen's guard can use all men devoted to the service of the queen."

  There was a flurry of smart salutes, and then the men filed out, talking quietly but excitedly to one another. Dorran found himself exchanging embraces and quiet words with his mother and sisters, whose eyes kept being drawn to his forehead. Dorran wondered whether that would ever go away, or if it would be something he'd notice for the rest of his life, though that was, he supposed, more or less his intention in the first place.

  "I should help Myriel tidy this up," he said, once they had exchanged a few last awkward pleasantries. "Good night, Addie, Nora, Mother."

  He bowed formally to them, and they smiled at him a bit awkwardly as they made their way out. He stood still for a moment in the room which was now empty except for him and Myriel, and savored the lack of expectant eyes. Then he turned to Myriel, who was burnishing the brand carefully with a clean cloth. The small brazier had already been put out, and the only remaining light in the room came from a few torches on the walls.

  "Thank you," he said, walking over to the last of the chairs and beginning to stack them. After a moment, Myriel finished her own task and joined him. "I never would have been able to get that together without your help...to say nothing of the rest of it."

  "I'm much obliged, my lord," Myriel said simply. Given the lateness of the hour, Dorran assumed that she was tired and not in the mood for conversation. They moved the chairs into the hallway in silence; Dorran told Myriel he would make a point of moving them in the morning, and she didn't argue. She also agreed, with a small smile, when he offered to walk her back to her chambers.

  "I've helped Berta with healing before, and I will again," she said on the way there, tone carefully light, "but before today, I'd never branded anyone."

  He realized how much sense that made, and was belatedly
impressed with how calm she'd been throughout the ordeal. But then he realized "I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I was only intending to ask you to brand me, and having it be you was your suggestion in the first place, but…"

  Myriel shook her head slightly. "Actually, it was truly an honor."

  Dorran ceased his frantic efforts to apologize. "Well, if you see it that way..." he said uncertainly, then added, "It was an honor for me as well."

  She took a look at his forehead, still bandaged and salved, and raised an eyebrow. "Could you do me a favor, my lord?"

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Tell me why you chose a brand," she said. "And why on your forehead? Please don't answer if you don't want to, of course, but I was wondering."

  "Because I'll never be able to avoid who I am," Dorran explained. When Myriel raised her eyebrow at him in incomprehension, he held up a finger for her to wait and tried to come up with a more detailed explanation. "When I was younger, I trained myself to be a good soldier. Part of being a good soldier is knowing how to get along with others, work as a unit, and often not stick out. I got so used to following orders or working as a seamless unit that I forgot who I was and the duty that put on me. This," he said, indicating the brand hidden under the bandage, "will both establish me as a servant, not a ruler, of Farlan, and at the same time, mark me for who I am. I chose this brand for myself, and I intend to wear it with pride. No matter the outcome of the siege or whatever may next come to pass. I wanted to prove once and for all that I would serve Farlan however I could for the rest of my life. As much as a brand could do that, anyway."

  They walked down the hall in silence for a few moments as Dorran wrestled with a lingering sense of embarrassment, wondering if he'd said too much.

  "If it helps to hear me say it," she said, voice quiet and honest, "your loyalty to your family and your people already seems like something that nobody could ever erase."