What?"
"Please forgive my incom—" The man tried to repeat but was cut off.
"I heard you," Riel said while gathering his thoughts. "Raise your head. You look ridiculous."
He straightened the rest of the way. His face was composed, but the composition had cracks in it — a faint line between his brows and a tightness in his jaw.
"Is this a scheme?" Riel asked. "I want to be clear about something. I patch fences and carry things for people. If you're trying to scam me you've made a bad choice. I'm probably the second poorest in the village."
"I assure you, I am not," the man said.
"Then prove it."
The man reached into the inner lining of his top and produced something small wrapped in dark velvet, and unfolded it without making anything of the motion. Just a man showing a thing.
Even in the flat late-afternoon light the seal caught. Gold pressed into heavy wax, a sigil of a crown engraved with a precision that spoke of someone who had been paid well and had earned it. Riel had seen it once before, years ago, stamped onto a tax decree some official had nailed to the tavern wall and left there until the weather made it illegible. He'd been nine but he still remembered the shape.
The Court Seal. It wasn't a copy nor was it a fake. The kind of seal that sat at the top of documents that changed the shape of things. The real deal.
For a moment he forgot to breathe.
Then he stepped forward hard and fast.
"Are you out of your mind?" His voice came out low and sharp. "Put that away. Right now."
His eyes went up the road. Then behind him. The tree line, the path back to the village, the fading light. The man had the velvet folded and the seal back in his coat before Riel had to say it again.
"We are not far enough from anything for you to be showing that in the open," Riel said. "Word moves fast in a place this size. Questions follow word. Then somebody decides you look like you're worth the trouble and makes it everybody's problem." He pressed the flat of his hand over his face for a second. "Follow me. Not through the main road."
He took him the back way, along the fence line on the eastern edge of the village where the path got narrow and foot traffic thinned to nothing in the early evening. Before they reached the first houses he stopped and pulled off his outer cloak.
"Put this on. Hood up."
The man looked at the cloak. It had a hole worn through one elbow and smelled like the day Riel had just had. He put it on without a word and pulled the hood forward. From a distance he became indistinct. His boots were still too good if you were looking for it, but people in Cael mostly looked at the things that were their immediate concern and left everything else alone.
They moved through the village. Riel set the pace. The man followed and was too precise in his step, too upright, too measured, the walk of someone who had been trained to carry themselves a certain way and couldn't fully set it down. There wasn't much to be done about that. Riel nodded at the few people they passed and kept moving.
Their house was at the far edge, slightly apart, behind a fence that leaned and weeds that had survived three winters without anyone asking them to. Riel stopped at the door and stood there for a moment to think about what he was doing. He was bringing this stranger into his already vulnerable home. Sure it was a spur of the moment kind of thing but Riel thought he already had enough problems and he might be bringing another one upon himself.
He sighed then opened the door.
Inside was dim and cool. The smell of herbs and old wood. From behind the curtain, the faint uneven rhythm of his mother's breathing. He crossed to the gap in the curtain and looked through. She was on her side, face slack, the bowl beside the cot still empty. Good.
He let the curtain fall.
The man had lowered his hood and was standing near the door with his hands folded in front of him. In the low light of the house his court clothes were more visible under the cloak, the quality of the fabric, the cut of it. His hands, though. Riel looked at his hands. The knuckles were roughed up and there were calluses along the palm in a particular way, the kind that came from actual use, not the soft clean hands of someone who existed in offices and corridors. Whatever this man was, he was more than what he seemed.
"Sit," Riel said.
He took the stool without argument. Riel sat in the chair across from him. The house felt smaller than usual.
"We have water," Riel said. "The bread is basically concrete. So if you're expecting hospitality you've made a second miscalculation today."
"I require nothing, My Gr—"
"Don't."
There was a pause.
"Understood."
Riel leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at him directly. "Now what's all this. Please explain as to why you think I'm some Heir."
The man took a long pause then spoke, "My name is Ardith Croul, one of many envoys that have been searching tirelessly for the final Heir of the throne," He then continued, "Have you heard of the Last King?"
"I may be poor but even I know basic history."
"Humor me."
Riel looked at him for a moment. Then he exhaled. "Seventy years ago the king died in his sleep. He died without producing an heir, so the throne went empty and everything that had been organized around it started coming apart. Crime rose and Defiled Monsters began to grow stronger and the world entered its worst era. Then a prophecy came, Gaia would choose a new king. A child marked at birth by the Ruler's Seal who will bring the world back to its peaceful glory. One child, one king, the world made whole again." He held Ardith's gaze. "That's the version people know. But you just told me I'm the twelfth heir. So the version I know is a lie or at least not the full story."
"The full prophecy was never made public," Ardith said. "What was shared with the people was simplified. Made easier to accept."
"What does it actually say?"
Ardith was quiet for a moment. Not gathering the words — he knew the words. It was something else. The quiet of a person about to say something they had repeated many times and still had not made their peace with.
"'Twelve shall rise with the turning of the moons marked by the Kiss of Gaia. They shall walk the path of breaking, until the many are fallen and but One remains to Stand. Let the world tremble and rejoice, for The One Who Stands shall take the Crown of All and bear the weight of every soul, that the Greatest Night may be undone.'"
The words settled into the room and stayed there.
Riel stared at the surface of the table. The grain of the wood. The small crack that ran from one edge toward the center that he'd been meaning to fill for two years.
The room went silent.
"…That sounds ominous," Riel finally spoke.
"You can see why telling the populous the truth was not an option."
"It sounds more like an omen of doom than a prophecy of inheritance. If people were to know about this the world would be in way more chaos than it is now," Riel surmised.
"Yes, The Royal Court was only able to keep some semblance of structure and order by manipulating this information."
Riel was digesting all of what he just heard while simultaneously thinking of what to ask next.
Then he asked, "You called me the twelfth, does that mean I'm the youngest or is it because I was found last?"
"Each heir is born on the first of each month within the same year. The other Heirs were all born to families each with some form of high status so it wasn't difficult to locate and verify them from the day they were born. From what I know you would be the Sixth eldest. However you are indeed labeled the Twelfth due to your time of being located." Ardith answered.
Riel shook his head, "Given that I was born in a village that isn't even present on most maps it would make sense it took longer to locate me," He took a contemplative pause then continued, "However if you think about it realistically, it took fourteen years for me to be found and even then it was by luck. For the people that basically run the world, that seems like an awfully long time to find someone who wasn't even trying to hide, even if they had to search the entire world."
A small bead of sweat fell down Ardith's cheek.
Riel continued, "It's almost as if the search for the Twelfth Heir was hindered."
Ardith's eyes moved to one side. Not evasion exactly. Something closer to the discomfort of a man who had been asked to deliver a message that included things he wasn't proud of.
"Right," Riel said, before Ardith could form a response. "I guess I have my answer. I can figure out why it took fourteen years without being told." He leaned back. "I'm a problem. While the other Heirs have confirmed high standing, the status of the last one was still unknown. It makes sense that those aware would eventually halt their support. Even more so from those whose children are Heirs. Not only are they securing the chances of the next king being someone who is "pure" but they'll also eliminate any competition. You people in power care too much about that stuff to even risk the chance of an heir born of commoner blood gaining a shot at the throne."
"You are correct," Ardith said.
"There were factions within the Court who made the argument that since you were not found even after years of searching you must have either died or you weren't worth the resources, " Ardith said, quietly.
"And there were other factions who kept looking?"
"Yes. Who believed the search mattered. Either out of pure loyalty to the throne or out of faith. Some of them put their standing at risk to keep it funded."
Riel studied him. This part felt true. He filed it alongside everything else and kept going.
"What does the competition actually look like?" he asked. "Not the prophecy. What it looks like in practice."
"It is not a simple contest of strength," Ardith said. "A king is not chosen because he overpowered everyone else. Gaia's recognition requires something more than that — proof of worthiness, in the broadest sense. Leadership. Judgment. The capacity to govern, to connect with people, to demonstrate that the title wouldn't break them. The heirs build fame. They go out into the world and do things that matter and let what they are speak for them."
"And killing each other."
"Is not forbidden."
"But."
"But it would be read as exactly the wrong kind of character. A man who rises to a throne built upon corpses is no king, he is a tyrant. The crown is meant to hold a world together. It doesn't do that in the hands of someone who only knows how to take."
"So we could kill each other, it's just frowned upon."
"That is…true."
"Well that's comforting."
Riel stood up. Not because he was done, but because sitting still with all of this inside him had become difficult. He moved to the small window and looked out at the village going about its evening. The fire is starting up, the few people still moving on the road, ordinary things moving through an ordinary hour that had no idea what was happening inside this house.
"This is all just so much," he said, without turning around.
Ardith stayed silent.
"I mean it. I'm not saying it to express some feeling about it. I was born with a mark I didn't ask for and for fourteen years absolutely nothing happened and now you're standing in my house telling me I have enemies I've never met in a fight I never signed up for?" He turned. "I have a mother behind that curtain who needs an actual healer. I have a ten-year-old sister who sells flowers at the road crossing because there are weeks I can't cover everything we need. I have a father who—" He stopped. Pressed his mouth flat. "My world is this house and the lower road. That's what I have. And you're asking me to walk into the middle of something that has been building for seventy years, fourteen years late, against eleven people who've had training and resources and preparation for every day of those years."
He said it without heat. That was the thing about it. It wasn't a speech and it wasn't an outburst. It was just the sad shape of his life, laid out plainly.
Ardith let it sit. He didn't reach for a counter-argument or try to minimize it. He sat with it for a moment, which told Riel something about him.
Then he spoke, "If you come to the Palace, your family comes under the Crown's protection the day you arrive. By all standards you would be elevated immediately to first-class nobility. There would be healers of the highest caliber there to tend to your mother."
Riel heard the word and felt what it did to him and didn't show it. He looked at the curtain. From behind it, the faint slow rhythm of his mother's breathing.
"Automatically," Riel said. "Not dependent on anything else?"
"On your arrival. Yes."
"And if I lose or even if I die would they still be safe when it's all over."
"They would still be treated with the same approbation."
"What if I were to die and another heir becomes king?" Riel asked, "What would stop that king from killing them to prevent any possible issues?"
Ardith paused before answering, "That.. I can not fully assure you of, however I am confident that any king chosen would not be the kind to kill without purpose."
Riel looked at him for a long moment.
"You believe that?" he asked.
"I do."
The house settled around them. Outside, someone's fire snapped. The bowl in the corner rang once.
"The others have had years," Riel said. "Tutors. Combat training. Connections. Everything I don't have. What am I supposed to bring to this."
Ardith was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke it was with the careful precision of someone saying something they had thought about rather than something they had prepared.
"Forgive me for speaking out of line but, since the moment we met," he said, "you have not once adjusted yourself to me. You haven't chosen your words around my rank, you haven't deferred when you disagreed, you haven't performed the version of yourself you thought I wanted to see. Most people of lower status, when they encounter someone of my station, become a slightly different version of themselves. They give show the surface. You haven't done that for a single moment."
"That's just how I talk," Riel said.
"I know," Ardith said. "That is what I meant."
Riel looked away.
"Authority isn't a discipline," Ardith continued. "Not the kind that actually matters. You can teach someone to hold a title. You can drill them until they carry themselves correctly and recite the right things and never show weakness in the wrong moment. The few heirs I've met have learned all of it very well. But when something unexpected happens, when the situation steps outside what they've rehearsed, you can see the seams. The gap between the person and the performance." He looked at Riel steadily. "From what I've observed you don't have that gap."
"That's not authority, it's just the responsibility I have to take up," Riel said flatly.
"Responsibility and authority fall hand in hand."
Riel opened his mouth. Then he closed it.
He slowly sat back down and put his elbows on his knees and his hands loose between them and looked at the floor, and he let the question do what it was going to do.
Eleven people in a palace he'd never seen. Years of preparation he didn't have. A prophecy that read less like a promise and more like a document describing the conditions under which something terrible would happen, and who would be left at the end of it.
The sounds of the village came faintly through the walls. From behind the curtain, his mother's breathing.
He swallowed.
Ardith didn't say anything. He understood, apparently, that some things needed space to be what they were.
Riel sat there for a long time. The candle on the table had burned down a little. The room had gotten darker without him noticing.
When he looked up something had changed in his face. Not resolution, not acceptance. Something more honest than either of those. The calculation of a person who had run out of options that were better than this one, and had arrived at that conclusion and decided to look at it directly.
"I haven't decided yet," he said.
"I understand it may be a difficult choice for you to make," Ardith replied.
"I'm not deciding tonight."
"Very well."
"But." He exhaled, once, through his nose. "Don't leave the village yet."
Ardith inclined his head.
Riel sat still without anything to do next. Without a task waiting on the other side of the moment, without a problem he already knew how to work at.
It was a strange feeling and he didn't trust it even slightly.