The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty One

[Elpis's POV]

I spent a large portion of the day with Helga, relaxing, playing a tune on my lyre which the creatures of the stable seemed to enjoy. Most of the horses were out on pasture, trained or ridden by their masters on the guard duty, but those that remained stationary and resting would peek their heads out above the stall doors and strain their necks to listen.

I only left once to get another treat. I really ought not to but Helga gave me such hopeful looks I failed to stop myself from spoiling her.

When I was younger I really didn't know her very well, only that my brother, Hathor, or sometimes Kthonia, took her to the Prowler's Market with our profit of the sea to sell. The market was situated outside the kingdom walls, a little way away, near the coast where the muddy banks were, prone to flooding no one could set up home there and all travelled instead.

When I would play the lyre, though, I did notice her glance at me. It wasn't hard to notice when a donkey was looking at you, because most of the time they seemed to be gazing down at the ground, the meagre straw and chopped vegetables, neglected offerings from the mess of the last nights dinner as a treat, her only concern.

She would tip her face up and look at me, and then listen, I thought, as I played. Never approached me or looked at me any further, but stayed rather still, so that I knew she was listening.

I began to feel sad as I sat by her. Because I realised not only had I undervalued her before, but that she was really the only one I could speak with freedom to.

I wanted to speak to the Demosthenes.

I wanted to badly.

Tell him who I was, that I was sorry for illegally trespassing. I would go back if he wanted me to, I would tell others not to enter as well, if he would forgive me I would hold a good image of him in my eyes. I would happily promise it...

But if he killed these men, for stepping inside the land they lived beside and contributed to all their lives without the benefits of money for building roads or good compensation underpaid labour and goods, without doctors or the prospect of them or their descendants joining challengers guilds... the great knowledge banks of Euphranor. 

How could I forgive him?

When he would not realise at all that I saw the misjustice of it.

How could I see anything but callous avarice in those often glacial, dark features...

I knew it was happening, now I had proof, and I still didn't believe it.

Could I have been taken in by him, confused by him? Sunken into that deep trap of lust that curled it's rough warm fingers over my torso and dragged me down till my eyes were covered...

If he was as they said, an enemy of us, dismissive and full of meanness, and I had been blinded by the glint of gold on his collar, then my impression of him would be rearranged entirely.

And yet even then I still wanted nothing more than to climb into his lap, rest my forehand on his shoulder, and spill all my worries.

Demand his version of the truth.

Strongarm him into seeing the truth if he denied it.

I closed my eyes tight, eyes wet at the impossibility of it all. The calamity of a relationship that in all truthfulness I would have quite liked to last forever. 

I strummed my fingers against the strings of the lyre, the wood of the barn wall cold against the back of my head.

"Deep into a quiet street,
If gold and plums were rare.
I would feed you every treat,
And comb and brush your hair.