“Regrets will find you on their own, but redemption must be sought.”

– Hektor the Ecclesiast, Atalante preacher

In Brus there was a story every child knew, about the birth of kingfishers.

Some said it had been the House of Goethal that first spread it, for the kingfisher was their emblem, yet shrewder souls instead mused that it had long been a popular legend among the Bruseni and that a young royal line would be wise to tie itself to such roots. The House of Barthen was long gone, the last of its line married into the Goethals, but some yet remembered that Florianne Goethal had first seized the crown from a boy of three after the entire adult line of the Barthen had perished on the killing fields of the Sixth Crusade. Yet the story was told to children, and as is ever the way with stories it grew and changed with the span of the years.

Brus, the story went, was once a green and fertile land. Blessed by the Gods Above with ever-bountiful crops, its weather was fairer than even that of the southlands and none knew hunger within its bounds. It was a kingdom of peace and plenty where swords and disease were banished, for in those days the Halcyon kings and queens ruled and they had been hallowed above all others. Every year the king and queen journeyed west to the Skyron Ocean, where they humbly gave themselves to the waves and asked for the blessings of Above. And so, pleased with their obeisance and humility, Above returned them to the shore along with the favour of the Heavens for the coming year.

So it was, until Queen Alisanne and King Cenrich ruled, for the two were fair to behold and clever of mind. Their three sons were worthy princes too, and Halcyon was set to thrive for my years to come. Yet the king and queen of their virtues they grew too proud, telling men that they ruled a great realm of their own making and that its greatness owed nothing to the Heavens. When the days grew short and the nights long, they did not journey west to the sea and instead threw a great banquet where all were invited. For this impiety, the Gods Above punished them, turning their three sons into beasts: the eldest into a wolf, the second into a snake and the youngest into a bird.

Angry at the punishment, the king and queen renounced the Heavens and incited the people of Halcyon to anger. When statues of the Gods were broken and temples burned, Above sent a great wave from the sea that turned a third of the kingdom to rotting swamplands. There the people starved, until the youngest son taught them to fish and partake of the flesh. In doing so the bird-prince stained his throat red and belly with the guts of the catches, the feathers forever grown red. There the people renounced the king and queen and returned to the embrace of Above, sowing great fury in the heart of prideful rulers.

They set a crown on the brow of their eldest son, the wolf, and sent him to cause death and dismay among the people who had renounced them. For this heinous act the Gods Above made barren a third another third of the kingdom, making hills of stone where there had once been golden fields. The bird-prince, seeing the plight of his people, struck at his brother with sharp talons and sent him fleeing north, where he would breed with wolves and rule them, ever scheming vengeance. The lost people of the hills he led to a river whose waters had turned blue and bathed in it, teaching them the secrets of the hills: within the barren stone lay cobalt and copper, which could be dug out and traded for food. His feathers, doused in the waters, turned blue save for those which were already red. And so the people of the hills renounced the king and queen as well, singing praise to the Heavens.

Queen Alisanne and King Cenrich grew fearful, then, of what they had wrought through their arrogance. They sought to make amends and sent for the youngest son the bird-prince, but they had closed their eyes to evil. Their second son, the snake, had sworn his soul to Below for the throne and sunk his fangs deep into their hearts as they slept. He claimed the crown, coiling around the realm, and the people acclaimed him. For this obscene act the last third of the kingdom was cursed with strife, death repaid in death as all the kingdoms of the world struck the realm to take its bounties. It was to a land of swords and fear that the bird-prince returned, and at this he grew wroth.

The youngest son sought the people of the swamps and the hills, telling them of his brother’s foul deed, and asked for their aid. The people of the swamps, fishermen with spears of bone, answered the call but those of the hills were fearful of death. They made swords of copper, to arm the fishers, but did not heed their prince and for this were made lesser: the metals they dug out from the earth began to seed sickness in them, a weakness of the body to match the weakness of their souls. Yet with the fishermen alone the bird-prince went to war, and with the blessing of the Heavens cast down his treacherous brother before making peace with the kingdoms of the world.

There were those who would have proclaimed him king, then, yet instead he flew west and humbly gave himself to the sea. The Gods Above returned him to the shore, once more a man, and with their blessing he returned to be crowned. Never again would the golden days of Halcyon come, but King of Fishers had through the curse been taught how his people should be made to thrive and heeded the lessons of the Gods Above until old age took him. At the moment of his death it is said that his last breath left him in the shape of a bird in feathers of red and blue, which men now know as the kingfisher: the soul of the King of Fishers, hateful of wolf and snake until the Last Dusk, eternal guardian of the Bruseni.

On the day Florianne Goethal became Princess of Brus, it is said that hundreds of kingfishers were seen flocking to the capital. Struck by the sign from Above she chose the bird as her sigil, and ever since the House of Goethal had ruled ably and justly.

—

Frederic Goethal was five years old when his mother told him the story, and he only half-listened. It had been a long tale and he’d been tired out from his lessons of the day, then lulled into half-sleep by her tender hand against his brow. He could not remember falling into slumber, only waking up late the following morning with the unearthly slight of a kingfisher perched on his windowsill. The brazen plumage and long beak had him string in awe as the bird cast him a long glance before flying away. Somehow, even at five, he’d felt like he’d just failed at something. When the servants came and clothed him, later, they brought him into his father’s parlour and Robert Goethal glared down at his son through a thick frown to inform him that his mother had been sent away for being an embarrassment to the family.

Frederic asked what that meant and was slapped across the face. Tears stung his eyes, but he asked if he would ever see Mother again. He was slapped across the face, harder this time. He began weeping, five and in pain and confused. Father furiously bellowed for the servants to come and take him away.

As he grew older Frederic learned what an embarrassment to the family had truly meant, listening to the gossip of servants and household guards. Mother had taken a lover from the city’s House of Light, a sister good standing and high birth. That meant that when Mother refused to end the affair when confronted, Robert Goethal had not been able to simply order the priestess killed. Instead he’d had to ask a favour of his brother, the Prince of Brus, and use his influence to have the other woman sent to a temple in the far south. His wayward wife he’d had sent away to a summer house on the shores of Lake Pavins, where she would be kept luxuriously enough her kin in Lyonis could not complain but kept in utter isolation from the rest of the world.

At the age of seven, Frederic bribed a passing fantassin with nine stolen silver butter knives to bring a letter to Mother. Before the day’s end Father slapped him across the face and sent him in the courtyard to be switched by a servant. The mercenary had turned him in, of course she had. Why travel all the way lakeside when she could earn an even greater reward by betraying him? Twice more he attempted, once with a brother from the House – who left the mansion before day’s end with fresh Goethal silver for his temple wile Frederic got switched – and the other with a grizzled old Lycaonese soldier, who simply took the reward and left. The last stung most of all, in a way, for he’d been told that the northerners were savages but an honourable breed in their own way. Evidently not.

At the age of ten years old, Frederic Goethal set down his training sword after a afternoon’s work with his swordsmanship tutor and reached for a cool wet cloth only to find a kingfisher perched on the edge of the basin, long thin beak drinking from the water.

“If I am to lose the other,” Frederic told the bird, “you’ll get no grief from me.”

The bird flew away at the noise, spooked. It was just a bird, of course, and he’d been silly to believe otherwise. So he kept believing, until he was called to his father’s parlour that night.

“You will be leaving this house tomorrow,” Robert Goethal told him, deeply delighted.

He did not ask if he was to be sent to Mother’s side. Frederic had not taken long to learn that the slightest mention of her would have his cheek stinging.

“Am I to understand I have displeased you?” he asked instead.

“No, Frederic, you have done well,” his father said. “You have lived up to my blood. Tomorrow morning you will begin fostering with your uncle, at the palace.”

“With Prince Amaury?” Frederic exclaimed, genuinely surprised.

Though his father had another sibling, a younger brother, he hardly ever spoke of him.

“Indeed,” Robert Goethal triumphantly smiled. “His own sons have proved to be weak seeds. Bide your time, Frederic, and we might just get the last laugh.”

Frederic Goethal thought of the kingfisher, then, of the swift beat of wings and the ripples they’d caused across the water. A warning, a promise, or simply a herald of change? Perhaps the choice was his to make.

“Of course, Father,” Frederic smiled back.

There was no we to be had, here, and never would be. If there was a choice to be made on this night, let that be it.

—

He never called the man Uncle Amaury, not even once.

Prince Amaury Goethal of Brus was not a man who invited informality, not from his closest kin or even his wife. Being fostered in the palace was a bewildering experience for the first year largely because Frederic had no real notion of why he was even there. Prince Amaury had two sons, the first of his cousins the young boy had met, and it was the poisonous hatred the eldest of the two showed him at every opportunity that eventually allowed Frederic to put the pieces together. Nathanael was a womanizing drunk with persisting gambling debts, though his royal father had only washed his hands of him entirely after an incident where he killed the son of good family over allegedly cheating at cards. Frederic refrained from asking how many sons from families not quite as good had died and gone unlamented before the line was judged to be crossed.

His other cousin, Auguste, was on some days a perfectly fine and amiable fellow. Yet not even the finest efforts of the House of Light had not managed to end his unfortunate tendencies to fall into black rages and address thin air. A wizard had been brought in and fed him some tonics before babbling a few incantations, which only succeeded at making Auguste blind in one eye when the rages struck. The wizard was hanged as a charlatan, but there was no denying that Prince Amaury’s youngest son was no more suitable to rule than his eldest. And so Frederic Goethal, sole child of Prince Amaury’s oldest brother, had been brought to foster at the palace. No formal announcement was made, at first. Stringent lessons by an ever-shifting roster of tutors filled his days.

Languages with Monsieur Lucien, until his Tolesian and his Reitz were as fine as his Chantant, riding lessons with Captain Ghyslaine of the Lances Farfelues, the noble sword with an Arlesite nine-sun duellist and the soldier’s sword with a retired Hannoven instructor. History and poetry, the lute and the seventeen formal dances of Alamans courts, arithmetic and heraldry. His head was filled to burst and sometimes it felt like half of what was poured into him spilled out, but Prince Amaury did not send him away. Cousin Nathanel’s cruelties became more frequent as his stay lengthened. The older boy – who should have been a man, by that age, but Prince Amaury had ever only called his eldest son boy where Frederic could hear – was a petty tyrant, helped in arranging insults and torments by his feckless friends and favourite servants.

His uncle treated Frederic in a way the boy found hard to place at first, until one morning he went to the stables and realized he was being treated the same as stallion being trained to race. Watched closely, worked to exhaustion and scrutinized for every imperfection. Whatever kindness was doled out was distant and measured, but neither was he offered cruelty or mistreatment. Frederic Goethal was being assessed for his suitability to inherit Brus, and should he be found lacking one of his cousins from the third branch of the House of Goethal would be sent for as he returned to the house in the city, to live with Father. That, more than anything else, drove Frederic to excellence. He would not return there, he would not. He would distinguish himself, and one day he would be important enough that when he went to see Mother no one would be able to stop him. The fire lit in him was enough, in the end, to attract Prince Amaury’s approval.

His uncle found him, one afternoon, looking at one of the tapestries in the ivory wing of the palace. It was a beautiful piece, lightly woven with fil d’or and the finest Lange linen. It depicted Florianne Goethal’s victory over the grasping traitors who’d tried to sell Brus to foreign crowns after the House of Barthen was decimated in the Sixth Crusade. A flock of kingfishers flying above the triumphant warrior-princess as she led noble riders in trampling an assembly of distinctly snake-like traitors.

“My prince,” Frederic knelt, when he saw his uncle.

“Rise,” Prince Amaury replied, flicking a dismissive hand and turning his gaze to the tapestry. “A pretty thing, isn’t it?”

“Glorious, even,” Frederic replied. “It is the true birth of our house, my prince.”

“True? Truth has naught to do with it. Learn this well, nephew: all pretty things are lies,” his uncle conversationally said.

Frederic was rather aghast, though he kept this away from his face.

“Did you ever hear the story of the kingfisher’s birth, Frederic?” Prince Amaury asked.

“I have, my prince,” he replied.

“Stories are the dregs that gather in the grooves left by truth,” the ruler of Brus said. “The Bruseni, long ago, ruled a great kingdom in the north of what became Procer. That kingdom broke, and the kingfisher’s story tells us of reasons why – the sea’s encroachment, land turning barren, civil wars. Lycaonese raids. The rest is what men believe ought to be there, or were told was by their fathers.”

“Is there not truth in the story as well, then?” Frederic asked.

“Not in the manner you mean, nephew,” the prince thinly smiled. “Florianne Goethal had a wicked sense of humour, you see. Or so the story goes, among our kin. She chose the kingfisher as her royal sigil for the lesson she’d discerned in the story.”

“And what lessons were these?” the boy softly asked.

“Opportunity, Frederic,” Prince Amaury smiled. “Opportunity must always be seized, that is the lesson of our blood. The kingfisher-prince found fish in the swamps, found wealth within barren hills, found a throne amidst wars. Always where lesser souls faltered he sought opportunity and rose.”

“Is the lesson not one of humility, my prince?” Frederic asked. “For all his exploits he remained but a bird, until the Heavens deemed it otherwise.”

“The Heavens are another story we tell ourselves,” Prince Amaury said. “There is a groove of truth beneath it, never doubt that. But we have filled the silence with a madness of words. We must always fill the silence, nephew, as Florianne herself once did.”

The older man, handsome and regal even in his growing age, ran an almost tender hand down the tapestry.

“There were families that were closer kin to the Barthen,” the Prince of Brus told his nephew. “The Fenvain were so deeply married into the line they were considered a cadet branch. There were more powerful families, as well: the Manvers were seneschals of the city, the Loncoeur had ties to Lyonis and the greatest standing army in Brus. And yet it was Florianne Goethal, her line noble for only three generations and of soldier’s stock at the root, who became Princess of Brus.”

Prince Amaury stared at the depiction of their common forbear, her splendid golden locks a crown before she’d ever worn one.

“While they all quibbled at the capital, fighting over who would be regent and who would get the last Barthen as a son-in-law, she went to the country instead,” the fair-haired prince smiled. “She gathered every soldier she could call on, the sunk her fortune into buying every fantassin company in Brus.”

A pause, an admiring sigh.

“She took the city and she hung them all,” Prince Amaury said. “Every single last one of them. Because she had seen the opportunity and they had not. Oh, we wove stories afterwards. That the Loncouer were trying to sell the crown to Lyonis, that Fenvain and the Manvers had sworn oaths to part Brus in two so both could rule, and perhaps there is even a grain of truth to them. But we shall never know, because Florianne hanged everybody who might speak to that.”

“That is savagery,” Frederic said.

“That is ruling,” the Prince of Brus replied. “That is the truth of the House of Goethal, nephew: we are, in the end, the kingfishers. The children of opportunity. And that is why where other houses boast of honour and faith and prowess, ours are simpler. What are they, Frederic? Our words.”

“J’ose,” the boy replied.

I dare, it meant. And Frederic now heard words at the end of them he had never imagined before: I dare to murder, to betray, to usurp. I dare to rule. All the pretty things he’d believed in now tasted like lies.

“It was my mother, who first told me this story,” Frederic said.

The fair-haired prince did not reply. Would not, the boy grasped, until he dared to ask.

“Is she still in the house by the lake?” he asked.

His cheek did not sting, though what followed made him wish it did.

“She is dead, Frederic,” Prince Amaury replied. “She was dead before you began your fostering. She went for a swim the first spring after her consignment and drowned.”

The sting of a hand would have passed. This, Frederic knew, this would not. This would stay.

“Are you going to defend him?” the boy asked, dimly curious.

“Your father is my brother, and there can be no closer tie than blood,” the fair-haired man said.

“That is not a defence,” Frederic said.

“He is my brother,” Prince Amaury acknowledged. “Yet I will not have my successor unduly influenced by even my kin.”

Past the tapestry, through the long sunny corridor of windowpanes filled by light and warmth, Frederic Goethal glimpsed a bird of red and blue.

He too, the boy decided, was a child of opportunity.