milliways_bar | (no subject)

Fate is as the Spinners spin it, and if one's life-thread turns for a time away from certain doors, there is not much to be done about that. Days may spin out into weeks, months; years, even, and at the end of that much time one may perhaps be forgiven for forgetting that merely because a door has opened onto one place for all the time you have known it, it may not necessarily always open so.

The lad who opens the door is not quite the height of a man yet, and moves with the odd grace of a young man striving to overcome the awkwardness that comes of shooting up a hand or two in height without warning. He wears dark kidskin breeches and a leather jerkin that might have been blue once. That was some time ago, by the sight of him. One does not end up covered in the grime of a roadside struggle, red to the elbows, without it leaving some mark on one's clothes. And one's weapons; while the bronze spear he bears looks as if he tried to wipe it clean, it could do with almost as much cleaning as he.

He stands a little inside the doorway, staring around him in something like wonder as very old memories come back to him. "Oh," he says. "This place again." The spear is shifted to his left hand as he awkwardly touches still-wet knuckles to his brow and bows deeply to the Bar.

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Hektor is going to have to have the breeches cleaned by one of the more skilled women, when all is said and done. Likely they will not be fit for anything but riding, after today.

Once inside the Bar, he supposes there is no further rule against speaking; he looks up. "Thank you. I will be going to Apollo's altar when I go home, of course, but I owe him anyway; and there is no harm in praying to him without need, anyway."

"That is a good idea," Zhaan says. "Hektor...I know you will have to go into combat again, and kill again. Such is the way of your world, from what I have gathered. But do not kill unless it is necessary, and then not in anger. It is not worth the price you will pay if you do." She knows that firsthand.

Hektor blinks, and then shrugs. "He spilled my cousin's blood; for that I owed at least some vengeance. And there was Aisakos to protect, though he is older than me, and betrothed now. It needed doing, that is all."

"I know. You had a reason, and since there was someone to protect, it was a good reason." Or, at least, a fair justification - Zhaan does not believe it is ever good to kill. "But if you fight and kill for petty reasons, or mere vengeance, you will destroy yourself. I only ask that you be careful not to act out of anger or pride." Her tone is even, her words straightforward. Zhaan is not begging a promise of Hektor, but merely offering advice.

Hektor shakes his head. "Uncle Klytios says random murders coarsen the spirit anyway," he says. "But there are some things for which a man will have blood if he is even half a man."

That sounds very Luxan - which is all right, she supposes, for though the Luxans are a warlike people, they are also honorable. "As long as there is some reason for it," she says, "and it is a good reason."

"There is no sense in bringing a blood-price down on my father's house; if I cannot pay it myself, all of us will have to, and I would not put our people in harm's path that way," says Hektor. "Perhaps in other lands they do, but there are feuds enough among my father's barons. We don't need more."

"Very sensible," Zhaan says approvingly. "One can always do with less conflict and bloodshed." She realizes now that the Hektor before her is not all that different from his younger self: more thoughtful and restrained, true, but the intelligence he has was there six years ago as well.

"A king's son, whether or not he is the heir, can't be his own man as other men's sons can," says Hektor. "There are always the people to think about, and what will become of them because of him."

"If you keep that in your mind, you will be a good prince," Zhaan says. "And, I hope, a good king. You serve your people: not the other way around." The leaders on her own world forgot that. She would not like to see that happen again.

Hektor nods soberly. "The king's heir is called Shepherd of the Poeple for a reason," he says. "Among us and the Hellenes, anyway."