Captain Zaid Zemeni

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. Only the worthy can perceive it.

“Strange thing to carve into stone,” Mac, my second mused. The words, old and eaten by rain and wind lined the arch of the perimeter gate. Behind it a castle thrust from cliff face, almost like a crystal that had grown from the stone.

The day had finally come.

“They say the water is blessed,” Mac chuckled, "cursed more like.”

Suspicious of everything. Mac believed any conspiracy whispered to him after a bottle of rum. He had clearly spent too much time in the tavern the night before.

“I’ve heard the same thing said about Whiskey,” I said, “but I’ve never found any answers at the bottom of a bottle.”

“Drinking from the wrong bottles then,” said Mac.

The river ran in the chasm below us, loud enough to hear but too far to see which way its rapids flowed.

“Hear she’s engaged to somebody else. Thinks you’re dead,” Mac smirked.

“Just here to send my well wishes,” I said.

I was of course, lying. Men that wished people well, tended not to carry blackmail material in their pockets. My men thought their captain was about to reunite with a love after nearly a decade at war. But in truth we had never met, and she had no idea I existed.

Deep in the valley behind me my men set up camp. Some wounded. All tired. I had made a promise to them when they pledged themselves to service. A promise I now had to keep. My honour would take a battering today regardless of the choice I made.

“Well then,” said Mac, reaching to straighten my lapels. “News is always better coming from a pretty face.”

Somehow Mac had made it out of the war with his pretty face intact. I had been less lucky. An angry scar curved around my right eye, a near black line against already dark skin. A taste of countless more. Weeks of travel hadn’t done much to help matters. It had been too long since I’d had a chance to shave or do much more than simple bathing.

“You’d be wanting to be wrong about that,” I said, batting the man away when he tried to straighten my black curls.

“I did my best,” said Mac, hands up in surrender.

“Keep the men occupied. Don’t need them wandering off in search of Wilmington.” The name left a sour taste in my mouth. Rumour had it the traitor lived near these parts.

The castle was a beast of stone, covered with wounds from some long-forgotten battle. By the time I made it to the grand green doors I had developed an affinity for the fortress.

As a maid led me through a maze of corridors, I wondered what the lady would look like. Years of letters and never once did she deign to mention her appearance. Would I be greeted with a plain noble woman or a bog troll?

The maid knocked on a set of ornate doors, stylized waves cut into its intricate surface. Once. Twice. The door swung open before she could knock a third.

The woman that opened the door was certainly not plain. But beautiful was too soft a word. She had the sharp brown eyes common to all Athesh citizens. Her black hair tumbled out of a haphazard braid. Golden beads thread through the twist with a decorative pin precariously stuck. She looked manic, like a caged animal ready to strike.

“I thought I told you to leave?” Said Lady Ward.

“I thought I told you, no?” replied the maid.

“Is this him?” she asked, I went to speak but she cut me off ,“No I don’t need your name. Tell you master that I have not changed my mind about changing my mind!”

At that she slammed the door in my face. The sharp wooden waves too close for comfort.

“My master?” I asked

“I believe she means the Duke,” the maid sighed.

She knocked again; this time she did not make it to the second.

“I am no Dukes man,” I said

“Oh?” Said Lady Ward “well go away then.”

The door slammed shut again.

I’d had enough of this. I pushed the into the room. What had once surely been a grand ballroom was filled with all manner of curiosities. Strange metal contraptions that spun. Books piled against walls with scrolls spilling to the floor to mix with the autumn leaves. It curled around a grand atrium. A balcony through which an imposing waterfall flowed to the ravine below. Lady Ward stood over a strange table. Like a battle map the land of Athesh played out across its surface, bordering Creuso and Troi Don. Each hill, castle and cliff carved from wood. The known world in all its glory. A dagger was stabbed into the next valley over skewering the duchy of Merdan. I figured she didn’t much like her neighbor.

She sighed heavily as I approached. “Look sir,” she said the word like it pained her, “I am very busy. There’s a wedding happening at twelve and I need to figure out an excuse not to attend. Injury, sickness, death maybe. If you are not here to guard me or give me ideas, then feel free to evaporate.”

A mechanical clock-face on the far wall read half eleven. It didn’t matter. This wouldn’t take long.

“That is not why I am here,” before I could move she had spun, the dagger I had mistaken for a hair pin now held to my throat.

“Fine,” she said as I raised my hands, “Why are you here?”

“Captain Zemeni,” I said, admiring the steady way she held the blade. It was clear by the brief widening of her eyes that the name surprised her.

“Captain Zemeni. . Is dead. Thrown from his horse. Very tragic. That all?” She pressed the dagger more firmly against my neck. I smiled.

“Yes, I was rather put out when I saw that letter.”

She stilled. An almost imperceptible tremor now flowing through the metal at my throat.

“Almost as surprising as the first. My Dearest,” I said from memory, “I am pretending to write to you to get my frigid aunt off my back. Surely no parents are cruel enough to call their child Zaid Zemeni.”

Except that was my name. For seven years I received letters from my fiancé, this strange woman who I had never met. She drew the blade from my neck and stepped back.

“A spoiled little rich girl making up a pretend fiancé to avoid marrying a harmless prince? Imagine a lowly cadet receiving mail for Captain Zaid Zememi.” I said “How well do you think that would have been received?”

“They rewarded you for your ambition?” she joked backing around the strange table. Putting the space of countries between us.

“No,” I cut out. Matching her footsteps, we began to circle each other around castles, and duchies. “Do you not believe me, My Lady?”

“You are a fairy-tale my father told me. The Noble Captain Zaid Zemeni and his undead men.” I bristled at the title.

“In my head you were shorter. Softer, less-” she waved her arm to encompass all of me.

“Scarred?”

“They are Intriguing,” she said, she lent over the table to get a better look, wary at first, then more bold. I mirrored her. “You look like a man that has seen many battles.”

“As a Captain should,” We hovered over the borders of countries as her eyes traced every line of my face. I expected revulsion to stamp across her features. But it never came. Just that same wary curiosity and something I couldn’t name.

“My imagination was certainly not this. . .” she stopped herself. Red struck across her cheeks.

Her eyes sharpened on me.

“Creuso soldiers tattoo their names across their body’s. To easily identify them if they have fallen in battle.” She tapped her finger against her temple, before pointing at me. “If you are who you say you are, you will have Zaid Zemeni in faded ink across your collar bone.”

She thought she had trumped me, her gait more confident as she rounded the table.

Her smile began to falter as I undid the buttons of my coat. Draping it over my old country. Creuso covered by weathered wool and mud. Fitting.

I undid the tie of my shirt and pulled it to the side.

Her fingers rose, smoothing over the name. The lightest touch. It lingered across the old scar, the slash of a dagger across the M.

Her breathing hitched. I felt it on my neck. So close. Too close for civility. And yet I didn’t move.

She shook her head. “Impossible, impossible, impossible” she whispered as she backed away. Coming up against the table with a start. I pulled a stack of letters from my coat and placed them beside her. There was more of course. Years more. Her eyes widened as she read her penmanship across the war stained parchment.

“I never posted the letters,” she said. Grabbing at the top of the stack she dashed past me to the balcony. Holding it over the edge towards the spray. The water roared sending strands of her hair dancing in the wind. “I threw them in the river” she said.

With a flick of her wrist the letter sailed towards the rapids. But instead of crashing down the paper carried up. Up, up, with the flow of the current, up into the pink clouds of the sky.

“The river does flow backwards, “I gasped.

She began to pace around me as I stared dumbstruck at the point where water met sky. “If you received the letters then that means things that go into the river can come back.” She stopped joining me at the railing. “That means that she. . she could. . “

But I wasn’t listening. I’d seen magic in my time, but this. Was this where he got it from? That cursed elixir that had burnt my throat so long ago?

“I had always wondered why your letters only arrived when it rained,” I whispered.

“What do you want?” She asked. I managed to pull myself away from the balcony and move back inside. My eyes dashing back to the view of the waterfall whenever they could.

“My men are from the borderlands between Creuso and Troi Dron.”

When the battle was over a man named Wilmington was put in charge of writing the treaty. Wilmington was rewarded handsomely. If I ever saw him I would wring his neck.

“You won the war but lost your home,” she surmised, “If I do not agree to give lands to your men?”

“The letters will become public,”

“They will destroy me. I will lose the castle,” Her eyes joined mine on the flood outside. Again, I saw the look of a caged animal about her.

“Treasonous, aren’t they? You are already on shaky ground with the King,” this time it was me that backed around the table. Finding safety behind the wooden hills.

“Regent,” she cut in. And there it was.

“What would the King Regent say if he knew-”

She held up her hand to silence me.

“I will not allow my men to die of hunger after beating every blade in battle,” I explained.

She began to laugh. A fragile and bitter sound just shy of weeping. The sound cut at my honour. Honour I would willingly sacrifice to repay my men. But it cut just the same.

“I ask for divine intervention and you are what I get?”

The clock struck twelve and the castle seemed to hold its breath.

With each toll of the bell a frantic light intensified in her eyes. I waited for her answer.

“Marry me,” she said.

“What?” the clock boomed again, bells cascading in a discordant harmony.

“Marry me,” she said, “As my husband you will get access to all my lands to do with as you wish. As far as the world knows I was engaged to you first. Of course we will have to sell it. The court will have to believe that we are incandescently infatuated. We will need to attend balls, galas.” She paused gulping “Host one.”

“I have no interest in being your puppet,” I said.

“And I have no interest in being your victim.” She paused at that. The word hanging heavily in the room. “Choose a condition, I assume land and medical attention for your men. Then I will choose a condition, and we will agree and it will be done. We will make it mutually beneficial. A business proposal. Together in public, separate in private.” We stood on opposite sides of the table. Like we were planning a battle or going to war.

“And if I say no?”

“Destroy me then, I should honestly prefer it to the destiny I have engineered for myself.”

“If I marry you, I will be connected to you always. Your treason will become mine.”

Her hands pressed against Athesh country, mine leant on Creuso.

“Mutually assured destruction,” She nodded with a smile, “How far are you willing to go for your men.” In that moment she looked so much like her father. He had said the same words to me too long ago. Offering that goblet of cursed water.

I knew exactly how far I would go for my men.

She spied the direction of my thoughts but not their destination.

“Tell your men I have been wooed by your charm. You are tall, strong looking.” She stopped as though those two attributes were the only positive ones she could think of . “. . you can read,” she concluded. “What more could a girl want?” She moved around the table. Wary eyes fixed on the door. Someone was coming down the corridor. Multiple someone’s.

“Kiss me,” she said, “We must create a scandal or we will not be believed.”

“I have not agreed, My Lady.”

“Duke Wilmington is about the storm through that door with a priest. Intent on marrying me despite my many objections.”

“Wilmington?” I paused, “Writer of treaties, betrayer of men. Sniveling little gutter snipe with a weak chin”

“Oh, you’ve met him?”

“You are telling me that if I marry you, I will be stealing the bride of Phillip Wilmington?”

“You are smiling,” she said.

“He will not let this go. It will be an insult to his very core.”

“You are still smiling.”

“So are you,” I said back, “What is your condition woman?” I wasn’t a fool.

“You must never drink the water, from the river.”

Revenge and salvation were within my grasp. I would not let that one godforsaken sip to cost me another life.

As the doors opened, instead of lying, I pulled her to me and kissed her.