The Sinful Young Master

Chapter 476: Talk with the patriarch – 1

Not immediately. Not in ways that are immediately obvious. But measurably, progressively, in ways that don’t reverse.”

“Understood,” Jolthar said.

“Do you?” Haryntha asked, and the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Yes,” Jolthar said and meant it.

He lay there for another moment, honest with himself about what he’d heard and what it meant for how he conducted himself going forward.

Then he sat up slowly, the channels she’d described making their roughness known through the movement.

“Caelum is waiting for me,” he said.

“He has been for several hours,” Haryntha confirmed.

“Patiently. Which tells you something about him.”

*

Caelum was sitting outside the tent on a low formation of corrupted rock that had been cleared and made functional, looking out at the suppressed field around the camp where the absence of nynthralls was still notable enough to feel like its own kind of presence.

Jolthar sat across from him.

They were quiet for a moment, the two of them, and the quiet had the quality of space being made rather than words being avoided.

“The sword you used against the creature,” Jolthar said finally.

“I’ve never seen you do that.”

“You’ve never seen me need to,” Caelum replied.

Another pause.

“The sword strikes of Chaosbane,” Caelum said.

“Where did you learn them?”

“The ancestor left a manual for his sword, and I read his book and practiced for days.”

Caelum considered this, turning it over with the thoroughness of someone examining something from multiple angles before setting it down.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

The Depths made its sounds around them. Distant and wrong.

The fire between them was small and steady.

Caelum spoke first.

“A sword held too tight becomes a liability,” he said.

Not looking at Jolthar. Still watching the field.

“The young people think grip is strength. They squeeze the handle until their knuckles go pale and they call it control.”

He turned the sword slowly across his knees, a small, deliberate movement.

“A master holds his sword the way he holds his breath before speaking. Present and ready but never tense. One should wield it with poise.”

Jolthar listened; he didn’t know why he was suddenly teaching him sword manners.

“I watched you fight today,” Caelum continued.

“From the moment you walked into that horde alone with Horgath until the moment your legs gave out. The sword of Chaosbane really lives up to its name. I had seen the Sovereign wield it a couple of times, and it was close to what you delivered today. He had complete mastery over the sword.”

“You are the most naturally gifted swordsman I have seen in forty years of holding a blade. And I have stood across from kings.”

He said it plainly, the way someone states the weather. No flattery in it. Just observation from someone whose opinion on the subject carried more weight than almost anyone alive.

“But you burn,” Caelum said.

“You burn through everything you have like a man who doesn’t believe tomorrow is coming. Like every fight might be the last one and so everything must go into this one.”

He finally looked at Jolthar. “That is not strength. That is fear wearing strength’s clothing.”

Jolthar met his eyes. “I finished the fight.”

“You did,” Caelum said.

“And it nearly finished you in return.”

He didn’t say it with criticism. Just with the weight of a man who had seen that equation resolve badly more times than he cared to remember.

“The sword that breaks its wielder wins nothing. The enemy doesn’t need to defeat you if you have already defeated yourself getting to him.”

The fire moved between them. Somewhere out in the Depths something shrieked and went quiet fast.

“I have lived a long time,” Caelum said.

“Long enough to understand that the most dangerous battles are rarely the ones in front of you. They are the ones you carry inside. The ones that make you grip the handle too tight. The ones that make you pour everything out because some part of you believes you do not deserve to hold anything back.”

Jolthar said nothing. But something in his jaw tightened slightly.

Caelum saw it. He had been watching people his entire life. He saw everything.

“I will not speak of the past,” Caelum said simply.

“Though I wish I had done something to change it.”

“It is behind us both and the ground behind a man does not change, no matter how long he stares at it.”

He looked back at the field.

“But I will say this. A boy who survives what you survived and walks out the other side carrying what you carry is not someone the world made strong. He is someone who made himself strong because the world gave him no other choice.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“That kind of strength is real,” he said.

“It is the only kind that is. But it comes with a cost. It teaches a man to need no one to trust no wall but the one he built himself. And walls that are never opened eventually become prisons.”

Jolthar looked at his uncle.

“I trust people; it takes time.”

“You trust people to fight beside you,” Caelum said.

“That is different.”

He turned to face Jolthar fully now, his old eyes steady and direct.

“There is a woman traveling with you who has divine blood and has chosen to stand in the Dreadland Depths alongside a mortal. There is a prince in the capital who put his position at risk to stand beside you in a courtroom. There are people in a barony who transformed their entire lives because you gave them reason to believe something better was possible.”

Jolthar was surprised that he learned so much about himself and the people around him. He wasn’t upset that his uncle was keeping tabs on him, but just surprised to know that he still cared.

Not that it made any change in his feelings towards the clan.

He let that sit for a moment.

“Those people are not walls,” Caelum said.

“Do not treat them like walls. Do not shut them out because shutting people out is the habit that kept you alive when you were young and had no other option. You have other options now.”