There Are No Zombies in Atharen

[Andros]

Ajax let out an aggravated puff of breath and got up off of Hakon’s lap. He took the letter and put it back in his book, then started to putter. He put the book in its place, tidied the shaving supplies, and gathered discarded clothes off the floor. Hakon was still naked, a condition Ajax wouldn’t ordinarily want to correct, but he grabbed some clothes and brought them to the mage so he could dress. The message you have blown your chance at round 2 at the moment was implied, though Ajax was unlikely able stick to that resolve if Hakon tempted him.

Something about what Hakon said rubbed him the wrong way and he needed to think it over. Hence the puttering. It wasn’t just that Hakon was raining on what ought to be a rather spectacular parade. His question was fair, after all, and at the top of Ajax’s mind too: why had the children been made to think Fell was dead? Whose doing was that and was it done honestly? Where had Fell been all this time?

No, there was more. It almost seemed like Hakon wanted Ajax to distrust his own father. Why? Was he jealous that Ajax got this wonderful revelation and Hakon never would? That seemed too churlish for Hakon? Was he upset that he’d have to share Ajax’s attention for a time? Possible but not likely. They’d have nearly a month together on the road. A few days with his father wouldn’t make a difference.

He looked at Hakon, who seemed distinctly unhappy. Ajax was making him stew a bit while he thought, which was maybe a little mean. Whatever Hakon had intended it couldn’t have been malicious. To reassure him, Ajax came back and sat beside him on the bed. He looked Hakon in the eye and patted his leg. Ajax had figured it out, or thought he had anyway.

“Are you worried he won’t like you because you’re in the guild? Or you don’t like him already because he used to be, decades ago. You’ll be fine. When I tell him about how you keep saving my life and how wonderful and trustworthy you are, he’ll love you. And you’ll see he’s not like you’re imagining. He’s just an artist and a singer. He’s a lot like me. Does that put your mind at ease?”

[Hakon]

Hakon received the clothes soberly. He had been wondering, part of him, if this joyful news would translate into a particular kind of celebration. It was one of Ajax's favorite activities, after all, and he was happy, or had been. Now his mood seemed to be a bit more mixed. Hakon got dressed while Ajax went through his belongings, prodded at random things in their room, and wandered about, seemingly lost in thought. Hakon, in turn, took this time to stretch out his arms and shoulders while sitting on the bed and to take some deep breaths. Ajax was rattled, and it was threatening to make him rattled, too.

When the lad finally spoke, Hakon held in a snort of disbelief out of respect for his companion. For once, it was Hakon who was looking at Ajax like he was naive.

"Ajax," Hakon chided gently. "I don't care what your father may think of me. I don't care what most people may think of me. If I did, I would be rather sad a lot, I think, because many people think ill of me and it would drive me to distraction."

"I'm concerned because you're asking me, someone who is oath bound to quell iconoclasts, to come with you on a journey to, what, have supper with an iconoclast? Break bread with him? To try and win him over?" Hakon's incredulous tone indicated what he thought of that prospect.

"I remember Fell Oxenfrey, Ajax, from the logbook of icnocolasts. He was based in Northradica, but I looked through Northradican iconoclasts before I came up here, and he's still very much wanted for the cold-blooded murder of a serving girl. He killed her, broke her neck, actually, and then fled the tower. They gave up on searching for him, though they did come to Teos in search. He must have eluded them, perhaps using his Resonance. This does not mean he has been pardoned, however. Any member of the Watch who finds him is to kill him on sight. Any Guildmage who sees him and does not at least report doing so risks being branded an iconoclast as well, for aiding him."

"When you asked me to accompany you to visit him, I wasn't certain what kind of visit you had in mind. If you had wanted me to do my duty and fulfill my obligations to my Guild and the four kingdoms, I would do so happily. You don't appear to want that, however. You appear to want me to befriend this man," Hakon said, trying to keep his tone even.

"I am not sure events will transpire that way," was all he said, striving for careful neutrality.

[Andros]

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Hakon?”

Ajax was shouting before Hakon finished his little speech. He put his hands on Hakon’s shoulders and gave him a shove. Hakon didn’t seem to notice, let alone move, and that only made Ajax angrier. He spun on his heels, started to walk away, then turned back and opened his mouth to yell some more.

“You make an oath to take care of me. You tell me you loved me, way back when.” Ajax paused, pulling down his shirt. “I save your life and get this scar for my efforts. I swear an oath not to abandon you. We have beautiful, perfect sex. Then you tell me you want to kill my dad? What is wrong with you How could you say such a thing?”

He started to walk around, pacing manically and slapping the back of his left hand against his right palm to emphasize every point.

“Baba left Radenor because he wouldn’t live in a tower any more and they had know right to imprison him forever. End of story. I’m not surprised the Guild spread a bunch of lies about him when they couldn’t catch him. I’m sure it’s an embarrassment that a sweet musician got away from a gang of killers. I don’t believe a word of that, and if you believe everything they tell you, you’re a fool.”

It wasn’t just anger. Ajax felt betrayed. He had trusted Hakon, forgiven everything he’d done, and connected deeply with him. He bled for Hakon. If he were being honest with himself, which he was not, he’d admit he was falling in love, or at least things were heading in that direction. Now Hakon was contemplating such a hideous betrayal.

The energy drained out of Ajax as he thought about it, leaving only sadness and disappointment. This couldn’t be right. He decided to throw Hakon a life raft. Maybe he hadn’t meant it. Maybe he’d spoken without thinking.

“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” he asked quietly, with a quiver in his voice. “If you did I couldn’t forgive you. You’d never see me again, or Pappa either. You’re my knight. You wouldn’t break my heart like that. Please tell me you didn’t mean it.”

[Hakon]

Hakon watched Ajax lose his composure with his usual stoicism. It wasn't the first time someone had asked him if he was crazy. It would not be the last. People called him all sorts of things: crazy, cruel, mean, stupid, and ugly, or variants of those, were the top five, in that order. In his private opinion, if being crazy meant not flying off the handle every time they had a conversation, he was better off.

He watched the punch come in, and did nothing to stop it. Ajax was just mad, and it wouldn't hurt that much. His body absorbed the blow readily.

The storm that had blown in blew out just as quickly. Ajax went from angry to teary in the span of a few minutes.

Hakon shook his head at Ajax.

"I don't want to kill Fell," he said. "I don't want to not kill him, either. It's not about what I want. It's about my oaths. I swore to quell iconoclasts. I swore to protect the four kingdoms from rogues. I swore to --" he fumbled, trying to think of a way to characterize his vows to the Endurnotkun that would not be a violation of their secrecy, "to harvest sunderscraps for the betterment of the Four Kingdoms. This is what I do, just like you perform music and write songs and dance, or listen to your grandfather and grow your family's wine business. Surely, you don't wake up every day and think about how you want to do these things, or you want to not do them? They merely are, aren't they? They are tasks that you are obligated to perform."

"It's the same for me. Just a different set of oaths, and a different set of tasks."

Normally, that would be where it would end. Hakon would look at Ajax's shining eyes with a flat, blank expression and wait for the scorn to come, and the rejection. Then he'd be back to being alone. Normally, that was how it went. It was better that way.

This was not a normal situation, not today. He didn't want to be alone. He didn't want for things to go back to how they'd been. He wanted things to stay this way. He wanted Ajax to look at him with hope in his eyes.

So instead of bearing the brunt of whatever Ajax was about to say, Hakon held a hand up.

"Please wait; I'm not done. I'm... I'm sorry," he said -- a sincere if reluctant apology. "I'm sorry for thinking you were asking me to harm your father. Clearly, you care for him still even though he lied to you about being dead. I'm sorry for assuming otherwise. I don't know a lot about" he waved his hands around, "this stuff. Families. Or, or -- ugh," he made a frustrated noise in his throat.

His hands balled into fists. He hated not being able to express himself and when it came to emotions he felt like he had wandered in to a world underwater wearing a full suit of armor and then was expected to swim.

"I didn't mean to upset you. If you wish for me to meet your father, if this is important to you, I'll. I'll take my cues from you. I won't harm him unless you give your permission, or he moves to harm you, or me."

[Andros]

Hakon’s fists clenched and unclenched. To most people, that would look like barely controlled rage, like he was making this promise under duress and hated it and probably resented the hell out of Ajax for making say something so abhorrent. Ajax was not most people. He knew it for what it was.

The mage was making an immense effort and felt himself coming up short. He was trying to express himself and couldn’t get the words out. Ajax saw it in Hakon’s body language, in the way he started to speak and stopped again. At that moment, he felt a pang of sympathy for the man who was fighting so hard to say the right thing. He was willing to hear him out.

He didn’t, of course, say the right thing. That would have been something like I’m so sorry, that’s not what I meant at all. I’d never do anything to hurt you. Please forgive me for speaking out of turn. Hakon would never say anything like that, nor would Ajax have believed him. It would have been dishonest.

When Hakon did was to take back his threat. Not because he hadn’t meant it - that was very clear from the business about his oaths. He had meant what he said, and in any other circumstance Fell would be as doomed as Hildegard or the pyromancer. But this wasn’t any other circumstance. Ajax was not most people. For him, Hakon would betray the guild and violate an oath.


Ajax knew how much that mattered to Hakon. He was still shaken by how cold-hearted he had been, but Ajax wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Hakon was willing to go that far for him, he would accept it. Ajax knew perfectly well that his father was no threat to anybody, and that permission to hurt him would never be forthcoming. If Hakon would keep his word, there was no danger.


“All right. You scared me, but I’ll get over it. Make an oath to your own gods, exactly like you said. Then we are square. I want to be happy today. I don’t want to be upset like this.”


Hakon had made a sacrifice for Ajax. It was insanity to suggest that simply not murdering your lover’s family members was a sacrifice, but that didn’t make it any less true. Ajax decided to repay it with a small kindness of his own.


“I know how hard it is for you to get the words out sometimes. You don’t have to struggle around me. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

[Hakon]

Swearing to the Gods was easy enough. He had already given his personal oath, so Hakon did not need to think about following it up with an oath to the Path he followed.

"I so swear on the Living Gods and those who have fallen," Hakon said, looking Ajax in the eye. "He will not come to harm without your consent unless he seeks to harm either of us first."

In a small way, this was a relief. It meant he did not have to plan out how to assassinate Ajax's father and make it look like an accident, and then have Ajax not discover he'd done so. Just running the initial scenarios there had seemed like a headache.

In a much larger and more relevant way, Hakon was already horrified by what he'd done. He'd thrown aside his life's work for -- what exactly? Not love, certainly. Friendship? Companionship, perhaps, with some sexual trysts sprinkled in for variety? Still, he'd done things that horrified him before, and then kept doing them until they had seemed routine, and this was life beyond the safe and orderly confines of the Tower. He could try to justify it to himself in many ways, but what it came down to was simple: He needed Ajax and Andros more than he needed another sunderscrap.

"If we wish to make it to Iberique at the appointed time, we will have to ride harder, faster, and farther than we have been of late. Please pack up our belongings, settle up with the innkeeper, and see to it that our bags are packed. I will chart our course from here to Iberique, but I know the first bit already -- it's a three day hard ride across the mountain ridges here so that we end up able to cross the river at a bridge. I'll also pick out some choice targets from Daravin for us, given our route, and start thinking about ways to quell them that will not slow us down overmuch."

There was one small matter, though.

"You must tell no one that I helped you in this way, Ajax. I mean it. Not Andros, not your mother, not anyone. If anyone else asks, you requested we go to Iberique and I said yes. If anyone else asks, I did not meet Fell. I remained behind in our lodgings in the inn there and you met with him separately, and did not tell me about him. Even if you decide we are not close any more, and even if you grow to hate me. Swear you will tell no one, ever, under any circumstance, because if this gets out, it will mean my head."

[Andros]

The oath was simple. No grabbing of testicles, no long list of gods as witnesses, no curses if the promise was broken. But Hakon meant it. He respected his gods and he kept his word. And Ajax trusted him. It was a risk, of course. Hakon could betray him. He could arrive in Iberique and murder his companion’s father in cold blood. But fundamentally, Ajax didn’t believe that. He couldn’t imagine Hakon breaking a promise. The math didn’t work out.

And yet here he was, breaking a promise. An oath to the guild no less, one he’d followed all his adult life. What Ajax really couldn’t imagine, then, was Hakon breaking a promise to him. He had conflicting obligations, one to Ajax and the other his guild, and he’d chosen Ajax. It stung that Hakon had ever considered harming his father, but at the same time Ajax knew Hakon well enough to recognize what an enormous sacrifice this was to him and to appreciate it.

“No, Hakon,” he replied, then watched a look of horror bloom on his companion’s face. “I mean yes, of course I’ll keep your confidence, though it will be hard to hide it from my family. We’ll need to figure that out. I mean no, I won’t pack our things just yet. We have some business to take care of first. You are going leave feeling very relaxed and happy. You will leave here feeling relaxed and happy.” He smirked. “If I delay us more than five minutes I’ll be shocked. I’m very good, as you know..”

Hakon looked confused, naturally. It was hard for Ajax to remember everything needed to be spelled out literally.

“You just showed me that I mean something to you, Hakon. You’re willing to make a promise that pains you because I told you how important it is. That’s a sacrifice. It’s special and it deserves recognition. Ajax Chrysostephanos has a good way of showing his appreciation. You’ll like it. Take your pants off and sit down in the chair. And let me be perfectly clear, I am not going to decide to hate you. You are my friend, Hakon, and I don't want to hear you talk that way ever again. Now, hop to before this offer expires."