webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/tex/Ch-022.md.tex

\hypertarget{peregrine-iv}{%
\section{Peregrine IV}\label{peregrine-iv}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Justice is not the end of a road, the closing of a tale. One
cannot be just, one can only act justly: it is a struggle from cradle to
grave, not a prize seized and kept.''}-- Daphne of the Homilies, best
known for ending hereditary rule in Atalante
\end{quote}

``You are not, I think, an evil man,'' Tariq pensively said. ``I have
seen those among your peers who have allowed desire to master all else,
and you fall well short of that depravity.''

Prince Alejandro Trastanes of Orense hid his fury well, though it was a
paltry effort in the face of the sight the Gods had granted the Grey
Pilgrim. Tariq was still learning the subtleties of the aspect despair
had led him towards, the answer to his frightened prayer. To behold the
truth of someone was not as paging through a manuscript, all to be found
laid out in neat calligraphy. It was more akin to exposing a raw nerve,
seeing what made it tense and flinch. Deeper natures could be learned
from such a thing, the needs and beliefs that drove men like men drove
carts, but to grasp truths less primal his own wit was needed. The
Prince of Orense, for example, did not feel fury untainted. It was woven
along the thread of pride, both arrogant and earned. Alejandro Trastanes
was furious, Tariq decided, because a man he considered his inferior was
passing judgement over him.

``Yet,'' Tariq continued, ``it cannot be denied that you have done an
evil thing.''

Regret tightened in the man's soul, but it was threaded too deep with
fear to be genuine. It was the regret of one caught and facing
consequence, not any true repentance. Pride pushed aside the rest, hand
in hand with something more resolute.

``Good things as well,'' the Prince of Orense said. ``No true judgement,
that which ignores all there is to be judged.''

Tariq had thought there would be only rage in him, facing the man who
had ordered the murder of his sister. Something burning and righteous, a
flame that would only gut out when the blot on Creation was harshly
erased. Instead he found himself hesitant, as if on the edge of a
precipice tall and windy. Like there should be consideration where
before he had believed there would only be verdict. The Choir of Mercy
spoke not a whisper, had not since his last brother had gone from
traitor to ash. The Ophanim watched, always did, but now they kept their
own council. The choices were his to make, the consequences his to
discern. \emph{Is this disappointment, old friends}, he wondered,
\emph{or is it respect?}

``You speak as if justice is a scale,'' Tariq said. ``The good of a man
weighed against the bad, an arithmetic of choices.''

Alejandro Trastanes had set down the sword he had bared in surprise,
when finding the intruder in his sanctum, and the Pilgrim had placed the
now-empty cup of Praesi tea he'd taken by its side. The fragrance of the
dark leaves from faraway Thalassina wafted up still, filling the small
study with its scent. A single pot of that tea, Tariq knew, was worth a
week of meals for a small family. That was the kind luxury the lean man
across the desk was accustomed to, thinking it so natural it was not
worthy of acknowledgement. Power held and kept for so long it was no
longer questioned. Prince Alejandro thumbed the pendant hanging from his
neck, the copper rose that held almost-unreadable inscriptions on the
petals. \emph{Beware of war, for in waging it to earthly purpose you
have lost the war waged within your soul.} Famous words, these. Written
by the renowned holy woman Sister Salienta in her work `The Faith of
Crowns'.

``Is it not, Pilgrim?'' the dark-eyed prince said. ``Why else would the
Heavens wait until death to part the wheat from the chaff? The sum of a
man cannot be a single act, worthy or wicked.''

---

Izil Isbili, Holy Seljun of Levant, was eight years old.

The listlessness in the boy's dark eyes had waned, after he was returned
to his father. It took months of kindness and safety, of his uncle
standing by his bed as the nightmares of sudden arrows and gasping
deaths woke him screaming, until Tariq's nephew became a child again.
And the something more, for the Blood ran true. Tariq had beheld in
silence as fire spread where there before had been a hole in the shape
of Yasa, grief turning to the burning will to \emph{act}. To do more
than hold a title and officiate the debates of the great of Levant, to
set out into the world unbent in the face of fear. Tariq beheld, and
knew that in the precise moment where anguish was transmuted to resolve
Izil had never more been his mother's son. It was a second chance, the
Pilgrim thought, a mercy bestowed upon him by the Heavens. His sister
given back to him in that small, frail body moved by something greater
than itself. And so Tariq stayed in Levante, where is heart had died and
been born again.

He watched as his nephew sunk his teeth into his lessons with ferocious
tenacity. Numbers and letters, every line of Blood and their greatest
deeds. The routes of trade by sea and land, the beasts that still roamed
the rough countryside of the Dominion or laired in its deep forests.
Languages, more than even Tariq himself knew. The Three Sisters --
Lunara, Ceseo, Murcadan -- but also Tolesian and Chantant, Ashur's High
Tyrian and the tradertongue of the Free Cities. All these Izil Isbili
attacked with a fervour that belied his age, and what others at first
dismissed as a child's fancy turned to admiration when the passing of
months did nothing to fray it. At the age of nine the lessons of ink and
word were portioned to leave room for those of steel, and there Tariq
asked favour: in blade and warfare, his nephew's tutor would be the Lady
of Malaga herself. Sintra left her holdings in the hand of her brother
and heir, and his heart sang almost as much for her presence at his side
as it did for the sight of her teaching Izil how to swing a sword. The
trite, mundane evil of mankind had robbed the world of Yasa Isbili, of
all that she might have accomplished. Of all that she had to give to the
land she had so deeply loved.

The Grey Pilgrim could think of no greater answer to that sin than
helping her son do it all in her place.

---

``You speak of the soul as a ledger to balance,'' Tariq said. ``Like an
evil can be excused, if there is an act of greater good to match it
against. But \emph{every} act matters. Each is judged, each is held up
to the teachings of the Heavens. Holding to virtue nine choices out of
ten does not make the tenth any less of a sin.''

Alejandro Trastanes laughed, the bark of it quiet but fierce.

``You speak as one of the Chosen,'' the prince said. ``One in a thousand
times a thousand. How many mortals match your exacting standards, I must
wonder? I am not \emph{exceptional}, Pilgrim, in any sense of the word.
I have been done ill, and done ill in turn -- as those before me have,
and those after will.''

``Is the wickedness of others an excuse for our own, then?'' Tariq said.
``Once upon a time the Empress Triumphant lived, and evils greater than
any before her did she enact. Are all we born since that day to live
lawless for it? Should our forebears have wallowed in vice and
submission, instead of casting down the Tower?''

``You take my meaning to the absurd,'' the prince said. ``I did not walk
under the same skies as the Empress Most Dread, and cannot speak to what
I might have done then. I \emph{can} speak as a prince among princes,
born in this day. Did you not say, Chosen, that you have seen those
among my peers mastered by desire and made vile for it?''

Tariq nodded, for he had. Crowned heads and those of their blood, having
grown to see the span of their authority as a fence to break instead of
a boundary to dread. Those who drunk of privilege so deeply they became
intoxicated with the exemption of consequence to their actions.

``Why then, Grey Pilgrim, do you sit in \emph{my} study and not
theirs?'' the Prince of Orense said.

---

Izil Isbili, Holy Seljun of Levant, was ten years old.

He'd sprouted like a weed, over the last year, and there was fond jest
in the old city that never before had a Seljun needed ceremonial garb so
quickly adjusted in size. Not even the almost legendarily fat Jarin
Isbili, who by the age of thirty would have broken the back of a horse
simply by mounting it. Tariq nephew was also patiently teaching a girl
mere months younger than him how to properly place her feet to
accurately loose an arrow. The Pilgrim watched it unfold, leaning
against the edge of the balcony overlooking the palace's archery yard,
and smiled at the sight. Sintra chuckled, similarly amused.

``Do you think he's figured out she damn well knows how to shoot a bow,
by now?'' his lover asked.

Tariq glanced at the woman at his side, and could not help but see more
than his lover -- there was also the Lady Marave, ruler of Alava, and it
was her niece speaking with his nephew below. The daughter of her
brother and heir. Now that Izil was growing older, what might have once
been children at play held other implications. Sintra's niece was not
the only girl of similar age brought to Levante since the turn of the
year, and none of them had been more than two degrees from one of the
ruling lines of the Dominion. Word had spread that his sister's talents
had flowered again in her son, and this time few of the mighty in Levant
did not want blood tie to the boat they thought would rise with the
tide.

``He has,'' Tariq said, looking away. ``He'll be seeing how outrageous
he can make the lesson before she visibly reacts.''

Sintra snorted approvingly.

``That'll teach the girl,'' she said. ``She's of the Champion's line,
not some delicate flower in need of hand-holding.''

He inclined his head, neither in agreement nor disagreement. Whatever
Sintra's niece might have intended, she was interrupted by a throng of
other children. Many of them girls, meant for the same purpose, but
there were boys as well. Two Tanja cousins from Malaga, a main line
Ifriqui from Vaccei, even the youngest brother of the ruling Osena in
Tartessos. Two dozen children, all in all, some from minor Blood but all
from an old line. The jostled and the laughed and they argued, but all
of them turned towards his nephew like sunflowers following the sun. He
could already see it in them, the beginning of true kinship. And now
that Sintra's niece was among the lot, an old path was taking shape.
Champion, Binder, Slayer, Brigand, Pilgrim. The founding lines of the
Dominion, coalescing around an Isbili.

Izil's reign would be many things, Tariq suspected, but banal would not
be one of them.

---

``I am here,'' the Pilgrim said, ``because you ordered the murder of my
sister.''

The prince's surprise was obvious. He had, Tariq saw, expected denial
and obfuscation. Or perhaps some sort of justification for twining
mortal kinship with an act that would see the powers of a Bestowed put
to use. The healer saw no need for any such convolution, for the truth
was plain and even if it had been unworthy he would not have balked from
it. It was, however, not unworthy in the slightest.

``Then this is vengeance,'' Prince Alejandro said. ``And not justice,
for all your pretence otherwise.''

``You have ordered the murder of another child of the Heavens,'' Tariq
mildly said. ``You are now being put to judgement for this act. Where,
prince, is the injustice?''

``You are no impartial judge,'' the Prince of Orense said.

``The act is writ in you,'' the Pilgrim said. ``Confession was given as
to the means and motive. The truth is clear as cloudless sky. There is
no partiality to be \emph{had}.''

``That you are here at all is partial,'' the other man hissed. ``Are
there no greater evils to be seen to than a man with blood on his hands?
Are there not thousands in Procer alone who have done what I have done,
and more of it still?''

``And this,'' Tariq said, ``excuses your act?''

``You chose me,'' Alejandro Trastanes insisted. ``Is that just, Pilgrim?
That what brought you here is a brother's wroth, yet you would force on
me a Chosen's fatal decree?''

``I chose the evil that was wrought,'' Tariq said. ``And that evil
brought me to you, demanding reckoning. You are not \emph{underserving},
Alejandro Trastanes.''

---

Izil Isbili, Holy Seljun of Levant, was twelve years old.

Too serious for a child, Tariq often thought, but then was this not so
often the way for tragedy's get? Joy did not come easy to Izil, though
neither was it unknown to him. Curiosity came more often, and when the
line of teacher and pupil did not stand between them his nephew
sometimes sought out his company for talk of faraway places. Of the
Heavens and the Gods Above they did not speak, for Tariq would not force
such harsh truths on one so young. It was not all harshness, the Pilgrim
knew. There was kindness and warmth, too, a patience to the grace that
was offered to all the souls of Creation. But Good could not be only
that, lest Evil triumph over it, and fool he might be but he still he
hoped Izil might never have to embrace that axiom. Not if Tariq remained
at his side, as he should have Yasa's. Once the Pilgrim had been blind
to the ugliness that cornered his kin even as he journeyed across
Calernia to ward off the same taint, but he would not repeat his
mistake. The Ophanim had answered that choice with only silence, but he
knew they did not disapprove.

They were waiting, patient in the giving of their grace.

The summer night was lazing on towards dawn when his nephew knocked at
his door. Tariq's sleep had long been light, so it was with messy robes
with sharp mind that he ushered in Izil. The boy's eyes were surrounded
by dark circles, and the older man wondered if his nephew had not begun
to push himself too hard. His mother had been the same, once upon a
time, that light in her almost furious that there was so much to learn
and so little time to learn it. That hours would need to be wasted on
something as empty as sleep. The Pilgrim's calloused hand tucked back an
errant curl of hair on Izil's brow. They both pretended his nephew did
not lean into the touch. The same way they pretended Izil did not
sometimes look at him in a way that whispered \emph{father}, and at
Sintra with an even more hesitant \emph{mother}. There were too many
knots unseen to it, too many things unresolved. All grieved Yasa Isbili
still, and Izil's true father still lived. But the boy had grown to
resent the man's powerlessness, Tariq had beheld it unfold. And shameful
as it was, neither he nor Sintra had turned away the affection so
quietly offered.

They would never have children, the two of them. Yet sometimes, when he
watched his lover teach Izil the swordsman's stance from the balcony, he
could almost close his eyes and\ldots{} It was a shameful thing, but
Tariq had not pulled away from it as perhaps he should have.

``Sleep is not without purpose, Izil,'' Tariq gently chided. ``The books
will still be there come morn.''

His nephew's dark eyes -- \emph{Yasa's eyes, Isbili eyes} -- flicked
down, but in the boy he saw the truth that his assumption had been
mistaken.

``Nightmares,'' Tariq stated, and withdrew his hand. ``I will make us
tea, then.''

The Ashuran leaves were bitter on the tongue, though he had always been
partial to the taste. His nephew was not, and so he now kept a small pot
of honey in his rooms. It was not long before the water was boiled and
poured into ornate clay cups Tari had been gifted by a grateful merchant
in Nicae, what felt like a lifetime ago. While he set himself to the
work, his nephew had wandered onto the balcony and the stained glass
doors to it lay open. The Pilgrim joined his nephew outside, and pressed
the warm cup into the boy's hands. They stood there for some time,
waiting for the tea to cool they watched the distant sea. A storm was
brewing, very far away.

``You have been to Procer, uncle,'' Izil said.

``I have,'' Tariq agreed. ``Many a time, when I wandered still. It is a
strange land, in many ways. Its people are capable of both great
sacrifices and great odiousness, and it is not always a different soul
that holds this capacity.''

``They made us slaves, once upon a time,'' Izil softly said, eyes on the
dawning storm. ``Took everything that we were, until we took it back
with blood.''

``All those that did the taking are long passed, nephew,'' Tariq quietly
replied. ``We do disservice to the living by warring in the name of the
dead.''

``Are they?'' Izil said, turning with a hard stare. ``Gone, truly?''

The Grey Pilgrim met his eyes, and said nothing.

``It doesn't matter,'' the Holy Seljun of Levant suddenly said. ``It
doesn't matter if they're dead, uncle, because their children are just
like them. Blood told. The only difference between the princes that took
Levant and those that rule now is that there's a wall in the way. And
walls don't protect from everything, do they?''

``Someone told you,'' Tariq said.

``Of course someone told me,'' Izil tiredly replied. ``I am to rule, one
day. They all curry favour.''

``Mercy,'' he said, ``can be a cold thing to behold. But it must be
offered, nonetheless.''

``Why?'' his nephew said. ``We might as well be tossing silvers into the
sea, uncle. They do not \emph{learn}. They do not \emph{change}. They
take because they think themselves stronger, that no one will ever call
them to account.''

``It's not about them, Izil,'' Tariq said. ``It's about us. Who we are
willing to be, when the choice stands before us.''

``They didn't give Mother a choice,'' Izil hissed, eyes reddening.
``They just \emph{shot} her.''

The weeping took him, after that, and Tariq cradled his nephew's small
frame as the sobs made it shake. He would only understand it years
later, that you cannot truly look at someone when you hold them so
closely.

---

Tariq's hand was already raised, when the door flew open. It was not
soldiers with swords bared that entered. That would not have seen him
release the Light as he did. No, it was laughing children. A girl and
boy, neither older than seven, both dark-haired and bearing clever green
eyes.

``Papa,'' the girl said. ``Gorja said that-''

``She's lying,'' the boy insisted.

Neither of them even noticed him sitting across from their father, a
bare sword and a pot of tea between them. Their mother -- tall and
shapely, fair-haired -- followed behind, looking as put-upon as amused.
Prince Alejandro had gone still as a statue, and Tariq did not need to
look to know the terror that had seized him.

``\emph{Caridon},'' the mother began in Tolesian, ``It appears that-''

She froze at the sight of them, at the blankness of her husband's face.

``Children,'' she said, voice tight. ``Your father is entertaining a
guest.''

Their eyes only turned to Tariq then, and he smiled gently. They both
looked dubious at his presence, perhaps skeptical that their princely
father would entertain one as obviously travel-worn as he. They were
mannerly enough not to speak their thoughts.

``I will speak with you all later,'' Prince Alejandro said, his tone
admirably calm. ``But you must leave me to attend to this matter
first.''

``Come along,'' the Princess of Orense said, tone brisk as she tugged
back her children.

The boy protested, and her fingers clenched like claws when she
forcefully dragged him out. Tariq rose to close the doors himself, as
they had not.

``My family, Pilgrim,'' the prince said. ``They are not -- they did not
know.''

A lie, Tariq beheld it immediately. He must have spoken of the matter
with his wife.

``I am not the murderer in this room,'' the Pilgrim said. ``They have
nothing to fear from me.''

Prince Alejandro's answering smile was bleak.

``Not yet, no,'' he said.

And that, more than anything else spoken tonight, gave Tariq pause.

``The girl,'' he murmured. ``She is eldest?''

``My heir,'' the prince agreed, just as quietly.

He could see it, Tariq thought, as clearly as if the Ophanim had granted
him the vision. The shape of this, sculpted by ineffable hands. In
Levante, the son of a slain mother. In Orense, the daughter of a slain
father. Between them a wroth that no fear no reason would abate, and the
sea of corpses it would lead to. War between Levant and Procer, and how
it would pull in all the rest. Ashur, wary of its protectorate again
being swallowed by the greatest power of Calernia, would strike out. In
the League of Free Cities war would bloom sure as the coming of dawn,
from the opportunities or the mere debate over whether they should be
taken or allowed to pass. It would spiral outwards, a madness that would
make a hundred thousand orphans out of the unbending hatred laying
between two. Tariq would not stay his hand because Alejandro Trastanes
had a family that loved him. It changed nothing. But neither could he
raise his hand in the service of unnecessary suffering.

``You will abdicate,'' the Grey Pilgrim said, and soft as the words were
they rang with the steel of a decree. ``And spend the rest of your life
as a lay brother in the House of Light.''

The Prince of Orense shivered.

``That is just,'' the man who'd murdered Yasa said.

``No, it isn't,'' Tariq sadly said.

But it was not the Choir of Justice that he was sworn to.

---

Izil Isbili, Holy Seljun of Levant, was fifteen years old.

With the turn of dawn he would be sixteen and rule the Dominion of
Levant in truth. For many years he had prepared for this day, Tariq
knew. Promises had been made, both in the realm and beyond it. Grand
designs had been patiently awaited, and among them lay the taking of war
to the north. Years of argument had done nothing to change this, or
change the choice of those who would go to war at the side of Izil
Isbili. And so the Grey Pilgrim tread the quiet halls of the palace, in
the dark of night, and into his nephew's rooms did he creep. He wept as
he pressed the pillow over the boy's face, but his hand did not fail. He
would despise himself for this, Tariq knew, until the day he died. But
he despised unnecessary suffering even more. The Ophanim laid their hand
on his shoulder, afterwards, in comfort. Their saddened whispers broke
the silence of many years with a chorus of grief.

But none called him \emph{wrong}.