Chapter Text
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
- T.S.Eliot
Gabranth had traveled to Nalbina Fortress as an ordinary man, his armor packed in a chest, which enabled him to keep his movements relatively secret. He had no doubt that Lord Vayne knew anyhow — what Vayne’s spies didn’t tell him, his lapdog Bergan would, and Bergan kept a wary eye on the newest, youngest, foreign-born Magister, just waiting for Gabranth to slip up. This visit would qualify as a career-ending mistake; Gabranth was too new to his power and had not yet entrenched himself with highly-placed supporters who would add a layer of protection against his removal. He did have Larsa, however, and he hoped his charge’s attachment to him might shield him from repercussions if his business here were known.
Once at the Fortress, however, he changed into his full plate and helm, hiding his youth behind the gravity of his office. He stalked through the prison level, intimidating guards with his presence, and inadvertently taking years off the Warden’s life by showing up unannounced at his office door and demanding to be granted access to the lower levels. Of course, the man denied the existence of lower levels; reigning in his irritation, Gabranth raised a hand to stop his protests and stared, unspeaking. The Warden stammered a moment more, then his shoulders slump.
“M’Lord, I cannot —”
“I am not a lord,” Gabranth interrupted coldly, “and I know you cannot admit to the existence of the prisoner I seek. I need no guide, nor accompaniment. Only point the way and I will...tour...on my own recognizance.”
The Warden gave up and said, “Yes, my— Your Honor. The western hall is still being cleared. Please watch your step as you descend.”
Gabranth picked his way through rubble, hearing the yells of workers hauling heavy blocks and reconstructing the fortress walls. He could not help but think of another fort in a distant life, this one nestled on the slopes of ancient mountains and warded by giant pines. He had been born in the shadow of those high walls, youngest son of the former ruling family and entitled to bear the fort’s storied name.
His rejection of that name was absolute. Gabranth reminded himself of that as he descended a long staircase down to the lower levels that had been turned into a prison. He passed through no fewer than three mage-locked portals and traveled down what might be miles of stairs before he reached the bottom, below the sub-basement, a level forgotten by all but a select few. The walls and floor here were thick stone over compacted dirt; sounds echoed strangely and the light from Gabranth’s torch barely penetrated the gloom.
Before he arrived he had gone over his notes from the file he’d compiled on the prisoner. He was angry at feeling guilty for accessing the information — he was the head of the bloody Ninth, a Judge Magister now, and the Empire had no secrets from one such as he. Or it should not, anyway. So he told himself as he flipped through pages late at night before replacing the file exactly where he found it, secrecy ribbons intact and sealed with the Ninth Bureau’s sigil. He knew the conditions of the Kingslayer’s imprisonment, had written the orders himself. The disgraced Dalmascan Captain remained in solitary confinement, now a tiny cell hidden deep under the Fortress, attended by a team of guards who were criminals themselves and were given a choice of this or death. Official records indicated the latter. Gabranth approved; the fewer who knew of the Kingslayer’s continued existence, the fewer who would ask questions at the Magister’s presence.
At the end of a long corridor, he came to a cell of mist-blocked stone, with a door of thick ironwood and an inset of steel bars that would allow light in, if there were any in the hall other than his torch.
The man in the cell lay curled in on himself, naked, his golden skin mottled with grime, blood, and bruises. He lay so still that Gabranth wondered if he still breathed. As he approached the bars, though, the prisoner stirred, slowly pushing himself to a sitting position, knees drawn up to chest and arms looped around them protectively. Filthy, matted hair parted around his battered face as his lifted his chin, and Gabranth’s heart skipped a beat. That clear blue stare was exactly as he remembered it, only burning with pain and rage, the same as it had during his first interrogation when Gabranth had cut that ragged wound in his brother’s face, destroying their identicalness with a single powerful swing of the Highway Star.
He looked for a long moment at Basch’s face, noting the swelling, blood, and pus that cakes his left eye shut. He wondered if Basch had lost the use of it forever. Gabranth removed his helm, perhaps to show his twin their unblemished features for comparison, or else just to make his glaring more obvious in the gloom. It honestly surprised him when Basch was the first to speak, voice ragged and hoarse.
“Have you come to kill me now?”
Gabranth’s eye twitched, but after a long moment, he answered, “No.”
Basch’s lip curled in what could be a twisted smile or sneer. “Have you come to rape me again?”
Gabranth physically flinched back before recovering his composure. “Looking like that? You hardly entice,” he said evenly, though his heart hammered in his chest.
“As if raping me was about desire,” Basch scoffed, tightening his grip around his knees. Again, Gabranth must pause to gather his thoughts; this confrontation had him off balance. He should never have come here. He started to turn away and Basch croaked furious laughter.
“You would run?” he spat. “Is that not why you had me condemned, for running away?”
Gabranth turned back, now sure of himself and the rage that ignited in his belly. “You hardly have the moral high ground here, brother.”
“No? I am the one behind the bars while you stand there wearing the armor of our enemies,” Basch snarled. “Archadians killed our people, killed people we knew! Tried to kill us!”
“Our mother was Archadian,” Gabranth retorted, biting off each word with a ferocity that burns like acid. “We are Archadian by blood, and accepting that —”
“Oh, fuck blood, brother. Fuck your rationalizations.” Basch’s head slumped down in exhaustion. “I left to find a way to save us from Archades. You joined them. What else is there to say?”
“You still think of yourself as the hero?” Gabranth asked with brittle humor. “Of course you do, your precious honor is all you have to cling to now. You left because you were afraid, because you could not stand to lose. Because you wanted to be our savior. All selfish reasons, Basch, so do not think you can chide me for selfishly wishing to provide for our sick mother through whatever opportunities remained to me.”
“Aye, you the paragon of responsibility there, abandoning our home—”
“Mumma was dying—”
“Mumma was dying before I left, Noah!”
The name shocked him, an intimacy that pierced through his mythril armor and into his heart. No one called him that, though it appeared on official documents as his forename. He shook his head, mutely denying the sounds of the vowels, the memory of that ragged voice moaning the two syllables in his ear. “Aye, she was. And you still left us.”
“Left you, you mean.” Basch looked up again, his one open eye filled with an emotion that might be called sadness if his mouth weren’t still set in such a bitter sneer. “As if you didn’t do what you could to drive me away.”
“Back to that, are we?” Noah’s own lip curled; he was tired of taking Basch’s verbal darts and decided to throw his own. “As if you didn’t enjoy the experience. I remember you moaning like a whore when I took you, I remember your spend hot on my skin, so don’t pretend like it was a hardship that scarred you.”
Basch stared at him, jaw slack, unable to formulate a response. Gabranth felt filthy the moment the words left his lips, but his anger drove him now, and he lifted his chin, too proud to call them back. He watched as expressions chased themselves across Basch’s battered face: shock gave way to contempt, contempt to anger, anger to a profound weariness. After a long moment, Basch’s head dropped again, his dirty hair hiding emotions he hadn’t the strength to keep to himself.
“What do you want, Noah?” he asked in a small, tired voice. “To gloat? You’ve stripped me of everything, reduced me to meat rotting in a cell, denied even any light. What more can you take from me?”
Gabranth knew the answer, and he spoke now with the edge of cold triumph in his voice. “Everything. You are a failure, Basch. You couldn’t defend our homeland, so you fled. You couldn’t defend your adopted home either. Your king is dead, your princes, dead. Your Order destroyed. The Marquis of Bhujerba just announced that your princess committed suicide out of grief. Everything you have ever tried to protect is dead or ruined, and your name is synonymous with betrayal and spoken with hatred and scorn.”
Basch startled visibly and looked up with real misery in his expression. “The Lady Ashelia?” he whispered.
“Aye,” Gabranth said, relishing the way Basch assumed an attitude of defeat. “Dead by her own hand without her Knight to guard her.” He stepped close to the bars and tossed the torch through them; Basch flinched away from the light, then picked up the torch before it could burn out against the stones. With his brother holding it, Gabranth could better see the ravages of torture on Basch’s body, the lacerations and bruises, the bones standing out under skin made taut as the muscle melted off him after so many months of poor rations. Gabranth had been right, earlier — little about Basch’s body could be called attractive now. And yet, he had to fight a flutter in his belly as the torch’s light flickered over Basch’s nakedness. He bit the inside of his cheek and showed only a cold smirk, his gaze focused on a shapeless blotch of blue-purple spanning Basch’s hip.
Basch stood suddenly, the movement lacking any of his ordinary grace; he wobbled and staggered forward on unsteady legs, hunched over slightly in pain and with his free arm crossed over his concave belly. Gabranth looked at the bruises on his ribs and suspected fractured bones. This failed to delight him, though; he frowned as Basch stopped just out of arm’s reach.
“You are wrong, Noah,” Basch said quietly, with a peculiar intensity. “Not about me, I am the failure you rightfully name me. You have seen to that.” He stepped forward deliberately until he stood next to the bars, inches from Gabranth. “No, Ashelia still retains her Knight. It’s just not me. The Order is not utterly destroyed. As long as Vossler York Azelas draws breath, he will defend the princess. I do not believe Ondore’s announcement of her death any more than his announcement of mine. She would not take her own life as long as Vossler’s sword remains hers, she will fight to reclaim her birthright.” His lips peeled back in a sneer that matched Gabranth’s as he added, “And he will eventually find a way to free me as well and make you pay for your crimes.”
Gabranth laughed. “Oh, Basch. You think your lover will come for you? After he denounced you at the trial? After your execution was publicly announced by a neutral party?”
“Ondore is hardly neutral,” Basch growled, but Gabranth shook his head.
“You of all people should know by now that appearances are all that matter. To the world, you are defamed and dead. To your precious lover, you are a pariah. You will end your days forgotten, never mourned by anyone.”
Basch’s one visible eye gleamed in the torch’s flickering light. “Not even by you, my brother?”
Gabranth shoved a hand through the bars faster than Basch could stumble back, and seized a handful of dirty, matted hair to drag Basch’s face closer. “You died to me years ago,” he hissed. “It’s past time for you to rot.”
Basch tried to jerk his head back and Gabranth tightened his fist, yanking Basch’s face into the bars. Basch dropped the torch and threw both hands up for balance, but Gabranth smacked his face into the heavy steel again. The crusted mess on Basch’s face broke open and blood slid down his cheek, reminding Gabranth of his tears that once spattered on Basch’s face while Noah hovered above him. Basch grit his teeth to keep from crying out in pain, but Gabranth’s knuckles grazed his jaw and fingers tightened in his hair and though it was cruel, it was human contact after so much emptiness and ceaseless whispering in the dark and Basch could not hold in the small whimper that keened high in his throat.
Gabranth bared his teeth and pulled his brother’s face close through the bars. He could smell the reek of him, filth and decay; could hear Basch’s teeth chatter with cold at the chill dank air this close to the Nalbina aquifer that lay beneath the town. He spied a glimmer of blue between bloodied lashes and felt relief that Basch still had his left eye, then fury and self-hatred that it mattered to him. “Why do you still live?” he snarled. “To what do you cling, with nothing left to you?”
Basch’s hand lifted, trembling fingers encircling the gauntlet at Gabranth’s wrist. “Noah,” he whispered, “please.”
It rocked Gabranth on his feet, the memory of Basch begging in lust, in fear, in pain. He thought it might ease some of the acid hate that etched wounds deep within, but instead the familiar refrain tore something wide open. Without thought, he crushed his mouth to Basch’s, and his brother yielded so quickly to him that Gabranth felt a flicker of surprise and unease. Every line of Basch’s body sagged into submission, his knees buckling.
Gabranth reached through the bars to grab his waist and hold him up. Gabranth bit down on Basch’s split lip, drawing blood, forced his tongue deep into his twin’s mouth, controlling and powerful. Basch whimpered again, aloud this time, as Gabranth’s fist twisted his hair painfully, but made no move to draw back. On the contrary, his shaking hands passed through the cell bars to curve around the hard plates of Gabranth’s armor at shoulder and chest, and he pressed himself against the barrier between them as if he could melt through it and into his brother’s arms.
Gabranth refused to offer anything but dominance, no hint of the tenderness that bubbled up in his memory and seeped into his thoughts. His hands on Basch were hard and merciless, adding bruises to the already livid map of abuse on his skin. He pulled back for breath and was astonished and infuriated by the needy expression on Basch’s maimed face, his pallid and sunken cheeks flushed and his bloody lips parted. “Gods, you slut,” Gabranth seethed almost under his breath, but of course Basch could hear him in the stillness and quiet this far underground. “Miss Azelas’ cock that much, do you?”
Basch only stared at him silently, trying to recover ragged composure. Pride breaks in his gaze, profound shame crossed his expression, and Gabranth finally felt as if he’d won something. He pressed his advantage the only way he knew how, wielding words with the same dexterity as he did his blades, wickedly sharp edges causing numerous bloody wounds.
“I’ve read your files, brother, and I know of the way you lived. Did Azelas not care that he shared you with half the city’s population?” His pitch dropped lower, turned mocking. “Were you so empty without my cock in your ass that you fucked anything that held still long enough just to feel loved?” Basch’s chest hitched, a sigh or a sob, and Gabranth grinned savagely. “I wonder, did you always know they only wanted your flesh, or did you manage to convince yourself that anyone would care about you the way I did?”
Basch tried to turn his face away, cut deep by the hateful jab, but Gabranth’s fierce grip on his hair prevented him. He stroked a gloved thumb over Basch’s bearded cheek, relishing the way Basch let out a tiny sigh and leaned into the caress. With a swift, brutal motion, Gabranth released his twin’s hair and slapped him hard across the face. Basch recoiled and Gabranth grabbed him this time by the necklace that hung on his thin chest. The sturdy links dug deep into Basch’s neck as Gabranth reeled him in with the chain and again covered Basch’s mouth with his own, gnashing their teeth together while he wound the chain around his hand until Basch gasped for breath. Gabranth filled his twin’s open mouth with his tongue and his hatred until Basch choked, weak hands beating at Gabranth’s mythril chest, strength running from him like water in a river. Blackness bloomed behind Basch’s eyes and he surrendered to it, distantly content to end this way, by the hand of his soul’s other half.
Gabranth let him go and Basch collapsed to the hard floor, skinning his knees and palms on the rough stone. “You won’t fight back, will you?” Gabranth sneered. “Coward.” His blood roiled with emotions he could not name and had no desire to examine, and he spit on his stunned and cringing brother. Basch breathed hard, fingers white-knuckled tight around the pendant that was his twin’s cloak pin half a lifetime ago. Gabranth could see old bruises in the red friction marks burning around Basch’s throat. “So far from the hero you imagined yourself to be when you left us,” he said.
Basch looked up through the matted hair hanging over his face and grimaced. “I hear the Emperor’s dog snarling,” he said quietly, “but I see my brother wounded. I always meant to return to you, my Noah. Always. I wanted a life by your side. I loved you. I’ve never been so much in love since.”
Rage, white-hot and instant, burned so suddenly through Gabranth that Mist sparked around his clenched fists, making Basch shift back in alarm. “I am not your Noah,” Gabranth hissed. “Do. Not. Pity. Me.” He bit off each word, magicks lashing closer to where Basch sprawled with each syllable.
Basch drew himself to his feet, a laborious process that was painful to watch. He stood with his back straight, though it clearly cost him, and raked his hair back so he could meet Gabranth’s furious eyes. “I do not,” he replied. “I have no pity for an Archadian Magister.”
“And I have none for a Dalmascan prisoner,” Gabranth retorted. “Our mother died calling your name. She went to Faram thinking of how you abandoned us. Let that keep you warm while you wait to meet her.” He grinned savagely at Basch’s stricken expression, then replaced his helm and stalked away.
As an afterthought, he extinguished the torch with a touch of magick, leaving his brother in utter darkness.