To rix_scaedu‘s prompt. This is part of the main story, set very early on, their second day on the road, after Ch2: Strangers (LJ)

Rin stood in front of Girey’s goat, trying to look imposing despite her bare feet and loose hair. The goat nibbled on her hair, un-worried by the sudden shift in events. Girey tried not to laugh, and tried harder than that not to bolt. His hands itched for his sword.

“Right this way.” The Callenian voices had the thick border accent he was more used to, their vowels sounding properly rounded, unlike the way his captor talked, with the short hasty sounds of their northern capital. But they sounded angry, and angry wasn’t something he wanted to deal with, chained to a goat and without a weapon.

“Give me my sword,” he hissed. “Or at least a knife.”

“Stay there and stay quiet.” Her voice was just as low, and she’d shifted back to Callenian.

“Right through here.” The voices were just on the other side of the brush now, pushing through. “They keep taking the side road here, like they think we won’t find them here. Avoiding the main routes.”

“It does help avoid the army.” Impossibly, Rin’s accent had gotten even shorter, and she seemed to have gotten taller. She faced the intruders head-on, despite her apparent lack of weapons.

They stopped short as they entered the clearing, two men and a woman in huntsmen’s garb and with the muddled-bloodlines look of the borderlands. “I heard two Bitrani strays over here.” The man in charge, as tall as Girey and twice as broad, sounded offended.

“You heard myself and my captive.” She gestured at Girey, and he tried to look more… captive, or something. He didn’t deal well with this whole idea. He was a prince!

“Why were you talking in Bitrani, then? And what are you doing all bare?”

The woman, closer to Rin’s size and closer to Girey’s coloration, punched the big man in the arm. “Don’t be a moron, don’t you see what’s going on?”

What was going on? Girey hunched lower on his goat. No, don’t let them recognize him. He wasn’t sure his pride could take that, being jeered at by peasants.

“Oh-ho-ho.” The big man guffawed. “Begging your pardon, miss. Yes, I see. Listen, we’ll let you two finish up, but if you aren’t too… ah-ha-ha… too busy, why don’t you stop down into town for the wedding today? We know what it’s like, bringing home a war-spouse. We do, don’t we, Ririna?”

“That we do.” The woman giggled throatily. Her eyes were raking over Girey in a way that left him feeling a bit dirty and completely naked. “Bring him by, miss. We’d like to see how he cleans up.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/368912.html. You can comment here or there.

To rix_scaedu‘s prompt. This is part of the main story, set very early on, their second day on the road.

Chapter 2: Strangers
After a war-season, we look for friends in the faces of strangers, and for enemies in the faces of our friends.

Her companion was a bit of a grumbler.

Rin was not all that surprised. A career in the army and a lifetime of being royalty both tended to lead one to complain; the former out of a ritualized counter to obligation and responsibility, the second for much the same reason, at least in Callenia. A royal soldier, then, and a captive to boot, was probably entitled a bit of complaining. She couldn’t say she wouldn’t do the same, were the roles reversed.

Of course, if the roles were reserved, she might be facing far less kind treatment, something the damn morning, the difficulty of their mounts, and her companion’s near-incessant whining were bringing to the forefront of her mind. How would he like it, draped over the saddle instead of riding properly?

“Mount.” She snapped the word out in his own language before she could follow through with the thought. “Come on, the sun moves more quickly than you do.”

“And it set on the wrong side of you last night.” He smirked as he got onto the gelding, the smirk fading as the beast gave a settling buck that must have jarred him in all the wrong places.

“I’m not the only one.” She was still answering in Bitrani; it was a better language for being irritable in. And they had seen no-one on the road for the last few hours of the night before. It was not the wisest decision she had made.

“Over here!” The voice came through the bushes, a southern Callenian accent with the clipped syllables of an Army scout. “I heard some strays this way.”

“Behind me.” She pushed the goat behind her and stood as professionally as she could while still bootless and with her hair unbraided.

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For clare_dragonfly‘s commissioned continuation of Roots.

Reiasson has a landing page here And a wiki here.

Girey wasn’t sure she’d heard him at first. She didn’t answer, at least, instead continuing to flip through the ancient book in front of her.

“The papers go back further,” she said, instead of answering, after a while. “Not much more, and most of it is incomprehensible. But it’s clear we came here, my people, yours, the Arrans, all of us.”

He was not yet used to her speaking heresy as if it were truth, and, more so, as if nobody would stop her. “That’s what…” He trailed off, frowning. Rin picked up the thread of the conversation.

“You said the heretical texts mentioned Tabersi. You’ve heard of those texts then, or read them?”

“It’s a crime against the throne to read the texts. The priests keep them locked up.”

“But you…” She paused, and looked around, and raised one black eyebrow in question.

Son of Tugia, she taunted in his memory. But she was asking the Prince of Bithrain this question.

“I did. And the Tabersi are mentioned, them, and the callentate of barbarians, the Ideztozhyuh.” The word was uncomfortable on his tongue, the consonants sounding harsh and alien.

“The Idez… the people of the old earth. Interesting.” She flipped through a few more pages of the book. “So my texts speak of the origins of your people, while yours -“

“Talk of visiting barbarians who decided to stay.” He frowned at her head. “Not about how they set up shop here, on this continent, though.” And not how they’d beaten his people at war.

“Interesting.” She flipped through the book. “This one’s too old, it doesn’t say where the wars started.”

“Didn’t it say your people rebelled?”

“The looks of that, however, was a bloodless rebellion. The cold season was hard, the passes were closed, and it was long into the hot season before anyone noticed anything had changed.”

Girey frowned, and didn’t say what he was thinking. That seemed wrong, somehow, but it had been many years ago that he’d read the proscribed texts. “The Bitrani don’t speak much of that era.”

“I think it has something to do with your priests.” She held up both hands, forestalling a complaint he hadn’t been intending on making. “I am not speaking ill of your people or your priests.”

“The Bitrani and the Callenians have the same faith.” It came out like the complaint he had been trying not to make, and he frowned in frustration. “We worship the same three gods, in the same temples, with the same words. You took me to a service,” he reminded her, “to show me that.”

“We do. I’ve been to Bitrani services, as well. In disguise, and with the headscarf some women wore covering her hair, but she had been. “We worship the same gods. I believe that. But your priests hide things by calling them heresy…”

He couldn’t help interrupting. “We don’t have priests anymore, remember? ‘We’ don’t have anything anymore.”

Her hand in his hair was surprisingly tender. “You still have a culture. We couldn’t wipe that out if we tried. And that’s the thing.”

“What’s the thing?” He was both lost and angry now, his confusion making both worse.

“We couldn’t erase your culture if we tried – but I’m beginning to wonder if somebody else tried. And from the inside, maybe it was easier.” She set a finger on the book. “Where did the Tabersi go? And the Ideztozhyuh? And why?”

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For clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.

Reiasson has a landing page here And a wiki here.

Rin opened up one of the oldest books in the library. “How good is your Old Bitrani?”

“Wouldn’t you mean Old Callennan?” Girey leaned over her shoulder, studying the old, creaky parchment. “Unless you’ve been raiding our libraries.”

“I’m sure we have. But the thing is, when you go back this far, a good number of our record books are in Bitrani. Well, in Tabersi.”

Behind her, he went very still. “Say that again?”

“Tabersi. She glanced over her shoulder at his face, which, for once in his life, revealed nothing at all. “You’ve heard the word before,” she hazarded.

“Only in the heretical texts.” His voice was very careful. He didn’t want to call her a heretic, not again, she guessed. Unusually wise of him.

“Mm. It’s not a common word in Callenia, either. Not so much heretical, here, as the stains behind the tent walls.”

“Stains behind…?”

“Hidden secrets. The things you want to cover up.”

“But you, what, brushed the tent wall aside?”

“Not I. I’m no scholar. But a friend of mine in University was. And for her thesis, she researched our first Emperor.”

“And found…” There was a great deal of tension in his body, and his voice was tight. Did he already know some of this?”

She read from the book instead of answering, translating it into Bitrani. “It is here, on this tenth day of summer in the fifth year since landfall, that the independent cities of Lannamer, Aneksundon, and Terrekya declare their sovereignty and their nationhood, separate from and free of Tabersi rule and law. Let it be known that Eszhettozh, son of Emanek, claims rulership of this newly formed nation, and will be known henceforth as Emperor of the Callentate of North Reiassannon-land.”

Girey, behind her, nodded slowly. “Callentate. It means ‘tribe-leaders,’ I think. It’s older than Old Bitrani. Heh.”

“Indeed.” She closed the book, smiling. “Our nation began as a rebel state of tribe leaders.”

“And now you rule the whole continent.”

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