Pride of Princes - Part Two, Chapter Four

[kalinara]

So last time, Brennan met the girl from the bar fight again and got a meal. We got some interesting class dynamics, an element that wasn't really touched upon earlier in the series, and more implied bestiality.



So we rejoin Brennan at the end of his meal, he's observing Rhiannon:

The food was excellent, the wine even better. Now, sated, content, drowsy, Brennan watched Rhiannon move smoothly around the common room tending Jarek's custom, and reflected that except for poor quality clothing and a certain naive innocence in her manner, the young woman could easily pass for one of Deirdre's ladies. She was well-spoken for an uneducated commoner and her courtesy was boundless, even with those men who chose to make sport of her or those who attempted to arrange a tryst. Certainly she is lovely enough to grace Homana-Mujhar— Abruptly he caught himself. He had pointedly told Jarek the Prince of Homana had no intentions of elevating Rhiannon out of her present circumstances, and here he was considering what it would be tike. But he could not deny that he was attracted to her; for all Rhiannon's quiet, demure demeanor, he sensed she was also a passionate woman.

Sleeta calls him out on this, which I like a lot:

Who are you to contemplate bedding the girl when your Erinnish bride will soon be on her way? Sleeta asked, casually deliberate.

He sighed. Who am I, indeed? Hypocrite, I think. Or merely befuddled by too much wine. Brennan scrubbed his brow. We should go home, Sleeta—there are questions I have for Maeve.

If you recall, this all takes place the same day that Brennan learned that Teirnan has been taking advantage of his sister. I'm glad he hasn't forgotten about that. This is going to sound weird, but I really like the set up here: this isn't the first time Brennan has met Rhiannon or girls like her, and he's never been particularly concerned about their circumstances before. But now that he knows his own sister has been taken advantage of, in some form or another, he's more sensitive and alert to how vulnerable a woman can be in this setting.

I think that's a core element with how privilege works. Ideally a person should always be concerned about other people, but the farther we are from the problem, the more likely we are to have blinders to it. For many of us, it takes the shock of something hitting close to home to start paying attention to it.

It's not a flattering take, per se, but it feels realistic. I like that.

So anyway, Brennan, "recall[ing] Jarek's solution to compensation for Rhiannon's tardiness", puts a gold royal on the table, thinking about how it's worth considerably more than a week's lodging and full meals.

That...strikes me as a bit of a dick move, actually. Generous, but also a little dickish, when he's aware of Jarek's jealousy and insecurity.

He also shares a moment with Rhiannon that...well...dude, you ARE about to be married...

"Oh, my lord—are you going so soon?" Color sprang up in her face, as if she felt her question too personal, or too revealing.

I must," he told her, "but I will come again." If my jehan allows me to, he reflected wryly. Slim fingers grasped the sapphire ring on the thong around her throat as her eyes locked on his, and understood what she saw there. "I—I am Jarek's woman, my lord—" She broke off, then went on, as if determined to make things very clear. "You—do understand. . . ."

"I understand." He smoothed a strand of loosened hair away from her cheek, slipping it gently behind an ear naked of adornment. "Let us be friends, then, meijhana ... if you will allow it."

Dude...

I do have some sympathy for Brennan. He's betrothed to Aileen, but he's never met her. She's a name and an idea to him, not a person yet. It can be hard to remember that.

But Rhiannon has her own ties:

He looked past her to Jarek, watching them from beside the curtain divider. His face was a mask, but Brennan saw something in the eyes that spoke of many things a desperate man might know. "Tell Jarek I am not without honor," Brennan said. "Tell him I respect what others hold dear."

So Brennan heads out but as he gets close to the palace, Sleeta suddenly starts growling a warning. "Within the lir-link it was incoherent, more cat- than lir-like, as if the threat were something she might know in the world, and not a thing of men and women."

FASCINATING.

The lir link is quickly disrupted: Ihlini? Sleeta manages to say something about dogs and men. She's attacked, they're on her, baying and biting. And while Brennan is distracted, he's attacked.

We see the downsides to the lir bond immediately:

He tried to turn. He tried to defend himself. But his reflexes were curiously slowed. Only limply did his fingers clasp the knife hilt, offering no defense. Vision blurred. He cursed and thought to summon lir-shape regardless of Sleeta's straits, but hands fell on his arms, his wrists, his throat—fingers threaded themselves in his hair and knotted there—so much weight, so much power, all thrust against him, pressing him back against the wall.

And SOMEONE in the midst of his attackers knows exactly what they're dealing with:

"Strike him down," someone ordered. "One cat is threat enough; do you wish to contend with two?"

And he thought: I know that voice—

But the voice said nothing more. And if it had, he could not have heard it. With a club, they struck him down.

Brennan comes to...and it's not a great situation:

   He lay flat on his back. The stone beneath him was cold, hard, unyielding. The stone around him was equally so; he was inside, then, not out. He could tell by the closeness that weighed him down, the faint echo of the iron as it chimed. Cuffed at wrists and ankles, all he could do was stare blindly at what he might name a roof, had he the light to see it.

This doesn't sound good at all. Sleeta isn't answering his call. He's feeling nauseous and has to fight to not throw up that good meal he ate. And when he thinks about the Rampant Lion, he realizes why he recognized the voice. Jarek is one of his attackers. Buy why? Jealousy?

Who knows, still bleeding from a head wound, praying that his lir is still alive, Brennan passes out.

He wakes up again...and this is interesting.

He awakened shouting. The words he did not know, being little more than gibberish; he shouted, he shouted, and the sounds bounced back from the stone and beat against his ears.

He stank of his own sweat. And he knew the smell.

The stench filled up his nose and he knew it, he knew it, recalling how once before he had been trapped, trapped and completely terrified, so utterly terrified he had screamed and cried and soiled himself, beating boy's hands against naked walls—

—the lir. All the lir, with beaks agape and claws unsheathed, all of them, beating wings against the air, against his head, his face, his eyes—all of them trying to throw him into the oubliette, the Womb of the Earth—to throw him down and down and down, until he died of fear alone, because everyone knew there was no bottom—

 Gods, he was afraid.

So way back when, we saw Niall give his children a dressing down after a bar fight. And I pointed something out. Niall shows Brennan a LOT of favoritism, which his other children understandably resent, but there was another element: he clocked Hart and Colin's respective injuries immediately. He didn't notice anything wrong with his oldest son.

I wondered what else Niall might have missed. Maybe we're finding out:

—lir and lir and lir, shrouded in shadow, cloaked in secrecy—he heard them . . . he knew they were there, each and every one of them, speaking to one another, telling one another he was not fit to be the Mujhar's son because he was afraid, and Cheysuli feared nothing-Bat this Cheysuli did.

—so afraid, as the walls closed in. So AFRAID—

The memory washed up from the blackest depths of Brennan's inner self, battering at his awareness until it broke through to crash upon the cliffs of consciousness, and he remembered it all. Once, and once only, he had been enclosed as he was now, against his will, made helpless. There had been no iron, no purposeful imprisonment, but the result had been the same. The fear had been the same.

Then, there had been no lir; he was just a boy. Now, there was no lir; Sleeta could not be found.

So, it SOUNDS like we're dealing with a case of trauma-induced claustrophobia. A pretty severe one.

His wrists are "wet with blood" from twisting and jerking and even his captors have noticed that this is more than just fear of captivity. Which leads to another unpleasant reveal:

Later, when he came back to himself: "—afraid." The voice was smooth as clover honey, but honestly surprised. "Look at him, Rhiannon!"

Brennan did not move, did not speak, did not open his eyes to look. He lay in absolute stillness, tensed and rigid, in iron manacles and blood, and thought himself gone quite mad,

It could not possibly be Rhiannon—

"You struck him too hard," she said.

Let it not be Rhiannon— And yet he knew it was.

Rhiannon accuses Jarek of hitting Brennan too hard, knocking him out of his head. Jarek disagrees. He's heard of this before: a fear of being enclosed, but in a Cheysuli warrior??

There's an idea that was touched upon as far back as Song of Homana: when it was suggested that Finn losing his leg would be tantamount to losing his life. It came up more directly in Track of the White Wolf, when Niall saw that he'd lost his eye.

The Cheysuli are ableist as fuck. Niall skirted past, because losing his eye did not substantially affect his ability to fight. But how well do we think they deal with mental health issues?

Brennan is pompous and uptight, wrapped up in the idea of being the "responsible brother". Could some of that come from overcompensation?

But anyway, this does not look good:

"They are as human as the next man," she said sharply. "Do you think him a sorcerer? He is just a man."

"Shapechanger, Rhiannon. And—as the zealots would have it—pretender to the throne."

Rhiannon did not answer.

Lir—? he asked; he begged.

"He will be fit enough for the sacrifice," Jarek said. "Whether he is in his head or no, the gods will not care. Give them blood: they are content."

Rhiannon asks Jarek if he'll be content to kill the prince of Homana. Oh yes. Rhiannon points out that Niall is rich in sons.

Jarek: "And poor when all are slain." Movement. The clink of iron links as Jarek tested the bonds. "Not so soft a bed, is it? Cold, hard stone . . . iron for the bedclothes . . ." He laughed. "What was it he called you?—meijhana? Perhaps a bedding name ... a sweet Cheysuli love-name."

"It means 'lovely one,’ " Rhiannon said; then, laughing: "Do you know none of their Old Tongue? You, Jarek, who claim to know them so well? Even I know a little."

And I know less than nothing— Within the link, Brennan sent again to Sleeta. Lir—lir—where are you?

But nothing answered him.

Rhiannon's educated herself since their last encounter. Jarek sends her away, then talks to Brennan. He knows that Brennan's faking unconsciousness. Brennan opens his eyes, and we get a look at where he is:

Brennan opened his eyes. A dish of oil with a twist of wick filled his prison with smoky light. He saw squat stone walls, very low, and a half-doorway barely large enough to admit a man hunched over, with runes carved around the opening. He had seen a similar place once before, much younger, when the shar tahl had carefully tutored the Mujhar's sons in clan history. He frowned, then banished it at once as the expression pulled at the wound in his hairline.

And then he knew. A cell. The sort of cell a priest inhabited, not prisoner. But the runes around the low door were Old Tongue, not Humanan; this place, then, was of the Firstborn, and very old. Now freely profaned by Homanan zealots.

Fun!

Jarek asks if Brennan has questions. He has one: why?

Jarek nodded. "A good beginning, my lord." He shifted his position, moving from a squat into a kneeling posture, and Brennan saw past him to the doorway. Seated just outside was a Homanan, clearly on guard even with Jarek present. They took no chances. "There are many answers. One is that Cheysuli are demons and must be returned through death to the netherworld of Asar-Suti, from whence they issued." He smiled as his overdramatized voice echoed faintly. "Another is that the old gods of Homana have turned their eyes from us, requiring blood sacrifice to restore their favor." Jarek's grunt of laughter mocked the statement. "And yet a third requires the—reduction-—of those now close to the throne, to make way for the rightful ruler." He glanced briefly toward the guard.

Brennan's head pounded. But for the moment astonishment kept the fear of enclosure at bay. "Have you gone mad? I can refute each of those ridiculous reasons!"

"Can you? The first two, perhaps—I no more believe you are a demon than I am myself, and the old gods perished long ago—but I do subscribe to the final reason for your assassination, my lord." The guttering flames from the oil lamp scribed shadows in Jarek's face. "I personally have nothing against your race. Cheysuli have as much right to live in this land as Homanans do, but—"

"Then why—'

"Why?" Jarek's tone was intent. "Because through a miscarriage of a twisted prophecy and the blind acquiescence of Homanans overcome by Carillon's legend, Cheysuli now hold the Lion Throne. And that, my lord Prince of Homana, is why you—and others of your kin—must die."

Jarek believes that there is another candidate to rule, which causes Brennan to think that he might be Cheysuli, and part of Teirnan's a'saii. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense with Jarek's dialogue, but Brennan has a head wound and is coming down from a massive claustrophobic panic attack, so it's somewhat understandable. After all, Brennan thinks, Corin and Keely don't look particularly Cheysuli either.

Brennan finally realizes that Jarek doesn't mean Teirnan. He means Carollan. Jarek calls Carollan a "dispossessed king."

Brennan points out that Carollan was never acknowledged and is deaf and unable to speak aside. Jarek points out, rather rightly, that Carollan can still father children who aren't disabled.

Brennan's response is interesting actually, because it rather sounds like there's been continued contact between the family members:

Brennan rolled his head against the hard stone beneath his head. "This is madness, madness . . . this was settled twenty years ago, when my father and Caro met. There is no ambition in him. There is no desire for anything more than a peaceful life. And he has it, with Taliesin ... do you mean to tear him away from it? To force the Lion on him, even if he does not desire it?"

Brennan isn't the nickname type, so the fact that he calls Carollan "Caro", and the implications here about Taliesin, seems to indicate an ongoing relationship. That makes me happy.

Jarek's real motivation is because he's the son of Elek though. He believes Niall murdered him, and he has sworn himself to vengeance and carrying out his father's wishes.

...so yet again, this is Donal's fault. It's not Donal's fault that Carollan existed, but he DID set up that ridiculous meeting. He was the one who let Niall get set up.

And well, he's willing to go to considerable extremes for his followers:

Brennan tensed in his shackles. "You cannot simply slay me out of hand ... in war, aye, but like this? In the name of Carollan?"

"But we can." The light was stark on Jarek's face. "You questioned if I could be Cheysuli, working with—a'saii?" He nodded, went on. "Perhaps this will convince you otherwise. For a six-month, now, we have been catching and slaying Cheysuli—not warriors, unless we are forced, because too many lir deaths would be remarked by other lir—but women and children. It is necessary." He bent closer, lowering his voice. "Now we reach higher, touching the royal family itself, to show no one is invulnerable. That even the highest can be overtaken." He paused. "Left to me, alone, I would devise another means. Death is death, but there should be dignity involved. Sacrifice is barbaric . . . but also useful. For those who thrive on such things, it serves to keep the fire burning. And we do need a fire, my lord—bright and hot and clean—if we are to burn the Cheysuli infection from the wound you have made in Homana."

So, apparently, Homana really isn't any safer than Solinde or Atvia. Sorry, Brennan. Maybe Corin will finally shut the fuck up?

Comments

[pan2000]

"Oh, my lord—are you going so soon?" Color sprang up in her face, as if she felt her question too personal, or too revealing.

I must," he told her, "but I will come again." If my jehan allows me to, he reflected wryly. Slim fingers grasped the sapphire ring on the thong around her throat as her eyes locked on his, and understood what she saw there. "I—I am Jarek's woman, my lord—" She broke off, then went on, as if determined to make things very clear. "You—do understand. . . ."

"I understand." He smoothed a strand of loosened hair away from her cheek, slipping it gently behind an ear naked of adornment. "Let us be friends, then, meijhana ... if you will allow it."

This is the problem with loveless, arranged marriages. Cheating is far easier.

[kalinara]

Yeah. Especially if the engaged parties have never actually met.

It is a little hypocritical that I judge Donal a lot harder than I judge Niall*, but Donal suffers from the way that Roberson never bothered to develop Sorcha as a character, or show us the relationship in a meaningful context. All we really got to see was him being a dick to Aislinn.

In Niall's case, we got to know Deirdre as a person in her own right and see how the relationship developed. It was a lot easier to sympathize with his mistakes because of that, even before we met Gisella and saw the complicated issues there.

(I'm leaving Brennan out of this comparison for now, as the story is still to develop. But it might be fun to revisit this later. :-))

[ayasugi_san]

For a six-month, now, we have been catching and slaying Cheysuli—not warriors, unless we are forced, because too many lir deaths would be remarked by other lir—but women and children. It is necessary."

How have the Cheysuli not noticed anyway?! Presumably not everyone they killed was an orphan or unmarried! They'd have families who'd notice their disappearance! Do Cheysuli women and children regularly just vanish, so it's that hard to tell the new pattern of abductions from the regular deaths?

[kalinara]

A very good question! I like this book best of the ones we've got so far, but there are still some very obvious holes in the story.