Eathel the Bastard: Chapter 8: The Execution of Hejyman
When Hejyman died, Eathel had wanted to take a spike and thread it through his own temple to the other side until the hilt pressed into the patrician cheekbones that so echoed his father’s face.
When Hejyman died, Eathel had wanted to take a spike and thread it through his own temple to the other side until the hilt pressed into the patrician cheekbones that so echoed his father’s face.
He wanted that for three months, but then he began to pick himself back up together and then he was again aware of what Hejyman had told him, that to become a true warrior, the first thing you must kill is your heart.
Hejyman described his own heart as a scarred thing. He said he still felt some kind of tremor of remorse or pain, but that this dulled as years passed.
They used to duel until in the night, where Hejyman augmented the skills he’d developed with Haldric ad Seane with a sword
Hejyman always won; Eathel came to like that the scion of the Altamani refused to accord the Duchy reverence in the sparring ring
Now Eathel would win.
His father would later mock Eathel for not performing the execution himself.
Than his father would ridicule Eathel for killing such a good warrior.
But first, his father mocked him for allowing a traitor to enter into his midst.
It was strange to think about the fact that it was Hejyman who had been a paragon of resolution. He did not cry. He did not quaver. He did not shrink. When Tastya swung down the broadsword that chopped off Eathel's mentor's, his friend's, his older brother's, head, Eathel had to avert his eyes and tears streamed openly down his cheeks.
Later in that day, he burned the shirt he'd worn. He hated the look of the creamy silk and the edges gilded with golden thread. He remembered what Hejyman told him about the vanity of displaying one's wealth.
“Nobility,” Hejyman had said, “comes from within. Nobility is unadorned. Nobility is a quiet strength, an assurance that one is anointed.”
But Hejyman wasn't anointed. He was sick. A dog—with a sudden and ferocious mad streak that needed to be killed.
Serixiphina spat on the ground. I could’ve goddamn told you she said.
You didn’t know either, he said, when they had found out.
Oh, I did, she said. I tried to tell you, but the thought wasn’t yet formed yet. I had the intuition. You were supposed to put together the pieces.
No, you put together the pieces. That’s always what you’ve done, Sera, not I.
Our father is right about you, you know. You’re soft. You’re even soft when you’re eager to perform. Usually in men, Sera put the full weight of her derision into the word men, young ones can cobble together some measure of courage from that feeling of eagerness. You continue to let it affect you.
You’ve never had a heart, Sera, Eathel said. You don’t know what it feels like to have one broken.
I don’t need a heart, she said. No one needs hearts. The world is action and transaction. Hejyman is a criminal. His life is forfeit. There are consequences.
But you don’t feel anything, Sera. You don’t know what a connection is like.
I thought this was something we’d put aside, she said. A discussion that we had put aside.
No discussion is ever put aside by you, said Eathel.
Serixiphina squinted her eyes in a kind of bored curiousity as Tastya raised the blade.
Revenge, she said. And in one of the most august houses.
that’s what I said, when I felt that he was putting something out there, said Eathel
It was not, said Sera. What you need to remember, Telly, is that I am the better part of you. Our father loves me more. Our father doesn’t know who or what you are. He will never hear you.
Tastya stood in a patch of dirt where Hejyman, bound, knelt. The young man who behaved toward him like a loving, elder brother maintained a face of impassive pride.
Oh. Your father sees me in you, and it is those parts are he truly prizes. Were it not for me? You would be mashing hops and barley in Dastratera, like the common boy you are. Never forget that I had the misfortune to be interwoven with a filthy Dastrateran bastard boy who inherited nothing from our father.
They say I look like him, said Eathel with half his heart turned toward his friend, desperate to catch his eye while at the same time terrified to do so.
I don’t understand what it is with you and looking, said Sera
You don’t need to see. I hear. I don’t hear the way that you hear, Sera.
Well, your loss, opined the apparition of a lazy smile that Sera was. Our father knows that I, within you, am his true child. You have shackled me to this earthly realm. I could have been connected to God. And you, you low-born mongrel, get all the credit for everything that I do for you. You only make mistakes, and what’s more, you’re selfish. If you were truly selfless—which is a virtue that religion teaches and you claim to prize so much—then you would give up any number of things for me.
I thought not, the ghost continued when he didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure if she could read his innermost thoughts or not. But he was fairly sure that she could hear echoes of his mid, as if from far away down the hallway, some sort of argument happening between two people wafted into one’s chamber.
We’ve only ever seen the other one, Telly, she said, and he could feel her smile widen and glow. It was there, just off to his right. She seemed to be sending him genuine love and affection, to appreciate his being there and being her tether to the meat and dirt that she usually mocked. But Serixiphina was a merchant in matters of love.
She never made him feel the way he had always wanted to feel without demanding something, usually at considerable cost, in return.
You know, Telly, said Sera, even I, one with so capacious a capacity for the acquisition of knowledge and the deduction of the right strategies therefrom, think there has not been a revenge and noble in two hundred years.
There may be some you don’t know about, he said.
Serixiphina sighed. She didn’t really view it as her obligation to engage with him whatsoever. She never did unless he was paying for it. Paying her in time or attention, she expected something in return.
He was remembering the heart scars that Hejyman had often told him about. Hejyman had encouraged him to kill more and more regularly. Hejyman had even encouraged him to swing the blade that would take off his head, but Eathel couldn’t lift it.
He had to give it to Tastya. And the fact that Tastya resembled Eathel most of all of his men, though he was taller and had black eyes that bit out from more vicious a face, made it seem that Eathel could not avoid killing his friend, that whether he sat in front on the low chair or not, he and he alone was the one killing him.
I’ve never seen someone sit so still, said Sera. He’s very brave, said Eathel. Do you think anything comes out of their necks when the head gets chopped off? Sorry? Sera asked. I’d rather not right now, said Eathel. I don’t give a shit what you’d rather do. I’m watching this she said. And please be quiet, he said. Hejyman had asked for an honorable death, which meant that no cowl would be pulled over his face. Nothing came out when Tastya pulled down the blade. A lot of blood sank into the dirt and sand in the tanned heron. Hejyman was right about the scars on his heart. Gradually killing and mutilating became easier. In fact, Eathel became quite skilled at it. Even Sera had noticed. You certainly are a man of many ways, she said. You certainly are a bastard of many ways, she said. I didn’t know you knew that word. You force me, like an old rusty chain, to endure this soup you call life. I get bored and sometimes listen in. But ultimately, baby brother, you’re my baby brother. And she said, emulating Sagavond, Eathel’s tutor, I will now draw your attention to an emphasis on the word baby. Eathel found it much more difficult to handle the scars that Hejyman had never told him about—the ones that formed on his heart. They seemed distinct from the ones that came with each new death he prosecuted. They had a lower and more rhythmic hurt. They seemed to come and go with the rhythms of the day, with the movements of the day, like a tide of agony. It was usually Sera who attended these. She had a way of always being at the right place at the wrong time. What troubled him most were the romantic entanglements. Sera had, in jest, he later found out, offered to teach him the ways of women. He desperately wanted to be close and warm with one. He didn’t know why none were after him. People generally said he was very handsome, but none did. Serixiphina convinced him that it was simply because he was too stupid to understand women. Women are smarter than men, she said. This is one of the core truths of life, as I have learned it. Eathel conceded that she had a point. Ever the observer, he had watched with great perspicacity women exhibit signs of brilliance, outstripping even their mailcap counterparts, which seemed odd. That shouldn’t be something that could happen. And yet it did. Over time, as he looked more closely at women and the people with whom they dealt, he saw these creatures—and they were creatures—outmaneuver some fairly intelligent men. He came to the conclusion, watching from the outside, that women, as a whole, were smarter than men. Whether or not that was for some reason of innate power, perhaps as compensation for their generally weaker stature, he was not sure. He suspected, however, that it was because they seemed so constantly a threat from men, period. Most men wouldn’t admit it, but life for women seemed exceedingly difficult. To Eathel, at least. And he couldn’t lie to himself. Sera did plenty of that for him. But she was the smartest person he’d ever met. Some of the designs she was able to come up with allowed him to masquerade as some sort of military wunderkind at court and on the battlefield. It was even her strength that allowed him to kill. It was his weakness that made him want to kill himself by driving that dagger through his temple. These were the times she made fun of him the most—when he cried, when he felt alone despite her presence. Move on, he said, as Hejyman’s body was dragged off of the dais hastily constructed. He was a traitor. He wasn’t a traitor. Revenge are traitors, she said. They’re traitors against God. When have you been religious? You always leave when we do our prayers. Let me tell you something, Telly. And she turned to him and for a split second, he could see the curve of a jaw, of a woman just slightly shorter than him, standing askance with her arms crossed across her chest. And like a flicker, a flash of the sky during a storm, he saw her eyes for the first time flash with a white brighter than the sun at high noon, so much that it hurt him and made him draw back. What you need to understand, you byblow, is that I am God. And then, as he collapsed into the lowest dungeon of the despair, she left him alone as she always did. That day, he developed another scar. Multiple ones. It seemed the greatest strain of his life to hold back the tears that pressed against the window of his eyes, but he resolved to do it, and in so doing another scar was formed.