Young Writers Society

Rated "R" for violence. It's not really *that* violent -- buut -- I suppose if you think about the amount of blood that would issue from the violent act ... well. You'll have to read it, I suppose. :]

I don't like his cousins. Have I said that before? I HATE HIS COUSINS. muahaha.

~*~

Daeun was furious.

He could count on one hand the amount of times he had been this angry, and more often than not, his cousins were the source of this anger. This time it was not because a dead rabbit, or an abused blacksmith’s daughter, but because of his people. He stood in the center of a hospital, the moans of his people echoing through his mind, and clenched his fists to keep from hitting the nearest moving body.

He had returned to squalor. The people were sick, and poor, for the cousins had increased the taxes. Less money meant less availability for items like food, medicine, clothing. Orphans wandered the streets, their parents killed or imprisoned for neglecting to pay the outrageous taxes. Hospitals had been erected by a few kind-hearted citizens, in the hopes of saving Genor, but they managed precious little without supplies. He had visited many of these makeshift hospitals, his anger increasing with every step, until he had come here, and had been unable to walk any further.

“M’lord?” a woman asked, one of the few healers in the city. Her pale green eyes were worried, searching his. “Is there—anything I can get for you?”

He took her hands in his, and said earnestly to the astonishment of all within range, “There is nothing you can do that you have not already done, and tenfold.”

He turned, and left, making his way back to the main roads, which were cleaner only because they were the roads the nobles must walk. It was there that he found his cousins, loitering beside a gold merchant, for they had refused to come with him.

“Joseun,” Daeun snarled. “Vearon, Theron—look at me.”

They turned, slowly, and met his eyes straight on, but warily.

“I left to you the duty of caring for my people in my absence,” Daeun said, his voice climbing in volume. “I should have you whipped!”

Vearon and Theron flinched, but Joseun held his ground. “You are an incompetent ruler, cousin,” Joseun cried, hands forming into fists. “You wander Talon, refusing to care for your own people!”

Around them the people congregated, silent and watching, eyes moving between Daeun and Joseun. They hoped for Daeun’s triumph, for he had never cheated them, and treated them fairly.

“My travels keep them safe,” Daeun said darkly, and when Joseun opened his mouth to contradict him, Daeun roared at him, an inarticulate sound of rage that was an unmistakable command for silence. “This ends now,” Daeun snarled, blue eyes brilliant with anger so fierce it outshone Joseun’s evil. “My people will no longer suffer by your hand.”

“What, are you going to kill us, cousin?” Joseun said mockingly. “Young Dae, too weak-stomached to kill a doe—”

From his heart grew a shining crimson blade, but it existed there only a moment before disappearing back into his chest. Joseun looked mildly stunned as he toppled, revealing the dark form of Ianna, a bloody knife in her grasp. She wiped Joseun’s blood on a rag, wrinkling her nose contemptuously. “It is good to know my hate for Talons was not unfounded,” she said, as if she had a particularly bad taste in her mouth.

“Come away,” Daeun said harshly, reaching out and grasping her by her elbow. She allowed him to drag her back, though it was clear she thought very little of the gesture. “Have you anything to say?” Daeun demanded of the twins.

“You can’t mean this, cousin,” Theron begged. “It was a little harmless fun!”

Silence.

If he had been angry before, he was livid now, his hands shaking with the force of it. “WHAT FUN IS THERE TO BE HAD IN THE DEATH OF MY PEOPLE?”

They flinched at the harsh crack of his voice, and when he advanced, they fell back, but the people pushed them forward again. He grabbed them by the throat, and shook them. “You are no cousins of mine!” Daeun shouted. “You are erased from my memory! Your blood is worth less than the dirt—I banish you—”

“What, to J’engar?” Vearon quipped.

“To the Polar Regions!” Daeun growled, his hands closing down around their throats so that they could not speak. “My allays in the mountains will alert me if you seek to delay there—run!”

They stared at him as he dropped his hands.

“Run away!” Daeun shouted, turning his back to them. “Remain in my sight and you will receive the same fate as your brother!”

The crowds parted, and the twins fled, too frightened to slow until Genor had left their sights.

Daeun stood very still, looking at his people as they looked back at him, and he said, very softly, so that they had to lean forward to hear him, “All taxes will be what they were before my absence.”

Whispers flew along the crowd, as those who had heard told those who had not, but all fell to silence when he opened his mouth once more. “I have failed you,” he said sadly, and tears filled the peoples’ eyes. “I will not fail you again.”

By nightfall the city rang with celebration, its people happier than they had been for many, many months, and from every mouth issued the eager retelling of Daeun’s retaking of the city, in song and in stories and in poems. At midnight, the celebration doubled in size, for, wonder of wonders, the prison gates had opened, and a sea of people had flooded out, half-starved and weak, into the arms of their families.

“Congratulations, Daeun,” Ianna said, standing at a window and looking down at the brightly lit city of Genor. “You have finally learned what it is to be king.”

“I am not a king,” Daeun reminded her, ever so lightly, from the chair facing away from the window.

“Here, tonight,” Ianna replied, crossing over to him and touching his face so that he looked at her, “you are their king, not their lord, for no king of theirs ever saved them from the brink of death.”

“You are wrong, dinsatas,” Daeun whispered. “I am a lord, and unworthy of even that.”

Ianna’s eyes searched his. “Many years ago, when the crown had been thrust upon me, Aedaan came to me. I told him that I did not deserve to be queen, and that he should pick another. He said to me, ‘Nani, only a true queen believes she is undeserving—arrogance is a quality of fools.’ He was not wrong, Daeun. I am not wrong.”

He looked at her, in the darkness, and she found to her surprise that he was crying, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. “I hope so, dinsatas,” he said softly, and she could hear no trace of the tears in his voice for all that. “I hope so.”