Brothers in Arms
Copyright© 2026 by Oz Ozzie
Chapter 3: The Great White Castle
The last of the climb to my rooms is the hardest of the whole way. The holds are few and far apart, and at the end of it a man must throw himself out to the left, at just the right angle and no other, to come down on the little balcony. I came down as soft as I could manage. There should be no one in my rooms — but still I did not want the thump of it to carry, lest someone come to look. There would be no hiding my arrival from anyone already inside, of course; but no one came to my chambers by night save my own body-servant, and I had sent him away before I left.
I sat back against the wall a while and got my breath, and worked my fingers and toes against the ache in them. And they did ache. More than a season, it told me, since last I had gone down the wall — too long; I had let the skill go soft. At last I stood, and turned toward my bed.
My heart near stopped in me. There was someone sitting on my bed.
A girl. Eleven years old, her long fair hair spread loose about her shoulders, a long and fine nightgown about her. “Where have you been?” she asked, her eyes huge and round.
“Aelea! What are you doing in my bed?”
My sister’s face fell, and I was sorry the instant the words were out. “Oh, Gord. I heard Mother —” Her voice broke, and I saw the tears coming. My heart went out to her all at once, and I crossed the room and gathered her up in my arms and held her while she sobbed.
My sister. My poor, dear sister.
I can pity myself well enough, when I have a mind to. But whenever I find myself growing too fond of my own hard lot, I have only to think of Aelea. The beautiful princess — the one every other girl in the kingdom dreams herself to be, the one who has whatever she desires the moment she desires it. And she is beautiful already, with the promise of far more to come. We have a beautiful princess, we say — not like the cursed Seronians, whose princess is no beauty at all, or so every man swears, though it seems little likely I shall ever set eyes on her to judge.
Yes. My sister, the beautiful princess. The bird in the gilded cage, and a prisoner of the kingdom’s will down to her very bones. No romance for my sister, ever. No freedom. Not so much as the choosing of how she spends an idle afternoon. She is the beautiful princess, and that is the whole of what she will ever be let to be. There is not even a man yet — that is the part that turns my stomach. She is not promised to anyone. She is only promised, the way a coin in a purse is promised, to be spent on whichever fat old lord or foreign princeling falls out most to my father’s advantage when the day comes. Not the kingdom’s advantage. His. And when he has found his man, there will be a beautiful wedding, and every soul in two lands will tell her how fortunate she is, and she will smile back through the whole long night and say it too, yes, how fortunate, how very fortunate — and then she will be handed across like the coin she is, to be opened and used and got with child by a stranger she was never once asked to want. That is what waits for my sister at the end of the music. They will call it a marriage. I know the shorter word for it, and I will not write even that down, for the shame of being able to do nothing but write it
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.