Aero is bound on his knees with his hands and his head in stocks. Huge chains keep them in place, and do not budge an inch to give him any relief.
How long has he been in here? Days, a week maybe… The inner dungeon in Meego has no windows, so the young prince has lost track of time.
In the darkness of his cell, he feels alone. Not the normal outsider of the royal family loneliness that’s always been with him. This is different. This is much deeper than that.
The cell door rattles. A guard coming back in so soon? It’s only been a few hours since his meal and restroom break… This has to be something different. He braces himself for what’s next.
The guard steps in the cell and lights two torches on the wall.
“Prince Aero, you have a visitor.”
“Rania?”
“Ser Matthew, the hero of the Battle of Inland Docks.”
Matthew steps into the cell. Aero notices that he has on expensive Meegan style clothes, and his hair and beard have been trimmed, and he is wearing a turban. He also has a medal on his chest.
As Aero looks over his friend, the guard steps out of the cell and shuts and locks the door.
Matthew looks around the small damp cell that smells of steaming bodily fluids with straw spread around the old rock floor. He then looks to his friend and the stocks around his shoulders.
“Man am I glad that I can knock on the door at any time and they will let me out.” Matthew says.
Aero, even in his depressed state forms a smile on his face and lets out a small chuckle.
“Well hero, when you do, see if they will let me go with you.”
“They would probably arrest me for even asking. The Governor is furious with us, and by us… I mean you.”
“He’s going to kill me, Matt. What’s taking so long?”
“The Meegan people are mourning their losses, there were a lot of them. They say they are observing their traditional mourning period of a fortnight… Whatever that is…”
“Two weeks Matt. How long have I been in here?”
“Today is the third day.”
“I have eleven more days of this before they kill me? Let me tell you, despite how this looks, it’s really not comfortable at all.”
“I know, I’ve been in stocks before. I hope you know what this cell is for… it’s a drunk tank. That’s why it smells so amazing in here. But you should see David’s cell, it’s way better than this. He is under guard at the Governor’s mansion. He’s doing great too, huge comfortable bed, three meals a day… The good stuff too, what the Governor eats. They even allowed Ser Stephan to stay with him as a protector.”
“You want to stay here to protect me?”
“I’ll pass on that one. He’s safe for now. It’s weird, Rain, Ali and I are all awarded medals of valor for fighting to save Meego, but all I was doing was following you.”
“Why are you not in a cell then? I don’t understand the logic.”
“Me neither really. All I know is that I didn’t lie to the Governor about who I was or steal his sword.”
“I didn’t steal the sword, the assassin’s made a move to steal it and something happened. They probably bumped in a guard or something and dropped it. Then they started killing the guards, it was the only thing I could grab to defend myself. Believe me Matt, it didn’t even look like a sword. I didn’t pick it up to steal it, I picked it up to save our lives. I saved Governor Dabir’s life by picking it up. How many more Meegan lives did we save because I picked it up?”
“I know if you hadn’t then we would never have killed a single assassin, and David told me how you got the sword. He even said you refused to pick it up before everything went down.”
“Matt, how did you talk them into letting you in here?”
“I went to the Governor and told him what I wanted, and we haggled a bit. Finally, he got what he wanted, and I got what I wanted but better.”
“Which is?”
“I have arranged for you to have three visitors a day for fifteen minutes a day and the Governors personal ale for the next two weeks. The Governor got three barrels of midnight wine. Meegan’s really do enjoy the art of trading.”
“You gave up your wine?”
“I drank all I could, wine is great, but ale is better. That stuff is better on special occasions. Tonight, Ser Ali Saah, of the Battle of Inland Docks and I are going to drink all the ale we can. Maybe I will end up in here after all.”
“You knighted Ali?”
“I did, and he deserved it. When every other Meegan was standing back, he was in the fight with us. He had your back the entire time.”
“Yes he did, please tell him I said congratulations and it’s very much deserved.”
“I will, he has become a legend around here so fast. He is the first Meegan Knight in many years. My time is almost up, do you want me to see if I can bring you anything tomorrow?”
“A key to these stocks perhaps.”
Matthew laughs as the guard lets him out.
“This man needs a key to unlock the stocks, can you get it for him?”
The guard just looks at Matthew and shakes his head no.
Aero, alone again falls asleep out of exhaustion.
Sometime later he is awoken by the rattling of the cell door. The guard walks in and announces a guest.
“Lady Roasa, A Durrie from nowhere.”
She walks in and the guard shuts them in.
“Prince Aero! What have they done to you?”
“Not enough, they are going to kill me soon.”
“What? No, you are going to trial. You can explain yourself there.”
“It will all be a farse to appease the masses. Another Meegan Governor showing he has power over the royals.”
“Don’t say that. You will be alright.”
Aero knows his time with her is limited so he decides to ask some questions.
“Roasa, you’re friends with Rania. Did you know she is the Governor’s daughter?”
Roasa looks down at her feet. She is clearly shameful about something.
“Yes, she told me the next day after you met me and Matthew in the streets.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She asked me not to, and you were in love. I can’t come between that.”
“Did you tell her who I was?”
“No. But they already knew. First Rania knew you were a prince when she looked at you and felt the bond of the magic take hold. Before that, Meego always gets kingdom news from the mainland every cycle. They know who the members of the royal family are, what they look like and their deeds. They knew you were a knight, when you were introduced as ‘Ser Aero’ David’s plan was over.”
“I didn’t agree to his plan, he just did it himself. I knew we should have been truthful, but the Governor wasn’t. He had Rania appear as a handmaiden to his daughter, Azka. He was hiding the truth too.”
“Rania said that she dressed as a handmaiden to observe the royal delegation in safety. It was her father’s plan. She wasn’t going to be revealed until he knew for sure that Azka wasn’t the match. It was her decision to speak with you upon arrival, but she would have been revealed as his daughter eventually according to her.”
“I just wished you would have told me. When she came to get the sword and revealed to me that she was a daughter of the Governor, Matt says that she had a dagger in her hand. Had I hesitated to give the sword back she would have killed me per this stupid curse. I would have stayed away, and I wouldn’t have touched the damn sword to begin with…”
“You had to… Prince Aero, you know it. I don’t understand the magic but I do know this… she loves you, if you think that’s a curse then you are a fool.”
Aero hangs his head in shame. Roasa’s words cut deep. He loses himself in thought for the remainder of Roasa’s time with him. While she is there, she does some motherly things for him such as clean his face and force a few bites of food down his mouth. In another time, Roasa could have been his lover. He knows this, and deep down he thinks she feels it too. But even that thought brings Aero shame, it was with his hands that her husband Jose was buried. Given the choice, that’s the life Roasa would choose, her and Jose on the road. Them versus the world, and not with a prince of the kingdom.
Before she leaves, he asks her to return soon. He says he has somethings he wants to tell her but needs time to do it. Roasa agrees before being escorted out by the guard.
Alone again, lost in his thoughts, still exhausted he passes out again. Over and over he wakes just to fall back asleep. A rat runs across the cell floor, a guard coughs in the hallway, his knees need adjusting. He passes out without really sleeping. Coming to Meego was a mistake, had he refused his father’s order he would probably be in a Capital jail now but at least he would still have his mind. Meego, Governor Dabir, David, the assassins, and Rania have all conspired to break him. What’s left is a shell of his former self, that’s what he tells himself in his pity anyway.
There’s another shuffling in the cell, that damn rat again? Aero looks up to see someone standing before him, but he didn’t hear the cell door open.
“Rania! What are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you.”
“I… I’m fine…”
“You don’t look fine. You look like shit.”
“Then I look like I feel.”
“You do.”
“Are you here to kill me?”
“Is that really what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. Matt told me you had a dagger in your hand when you asked for the sword.”
“I did, but I knew you would give it back. My father gave it to me to protect myself. I never…”
“I wonder if that’s what all the other Meegan daughters said before they killed their princes?”
“That’s not fair. I am not them, and neither are you.”
“Roasa said you knew who I was, why didn’t you tell me who you are?”
“I was going to…”
“At our bench that night?”
“No, I was going to ask you some questions. I wasn’t ready to tell you yet. I wasn’t sure if you were ready to hear the truth.”
“You got me here and now, I’m not going anywhere. Ask me what you wanted to know.”
“I was going to ask you about your mother.”
“My mother? Why?”
“I wanted to know about your relationship. Why she chose Aero for an island name for you. Stuff like that.”
“You want to know why I am Aero? He was some great dolphin rider on the island. So when I was a kid playing with my older brothers, David would be King David the fifth, known as the Reformer because he brought the kingdom back from ruin and had his twenty great warriors that followed him anywhere. Or John Henry would be John Henry the second, one of the greatest warrior kings in history. Then I could be Aero, dolphin rider… That may mean something somewhere, but in the Capital it meant humiliation. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“No, I wanted to know about her. How you felt about her, and how she died.”
“She was beautiful. People say when I was a baby, if I was crying all I needed to stop was to see her smile. When I got a little bit older, I would do the same for her. I didn’t get swept up into the political scene like my brothers did. So I was always with my mother. I always thought my father didn’t pull me into his world because of how I looked. I didn’t have the appearance of a royal… so I wasn’t one. She was my world and I was hers… Father hardly looked at her as he went to visit his harem girls more and more…”
“Harem girls? The king has harem girls, and the queen lets him?”
“My mother was queen in name alone. My father saw her as his main whore, the one his heir gets born through and nothing more. My father has over fifty comfort women now. When he married my mother, he took some of her closest friends and relatives to start his collection of women.”
“He’s a pig!”
“I can’t argue that. Looking back, I can see how that whole lifestyle wore on her. Plus as the people say, she was a fish out of water any way. She would never genuinely be happy in the Capital. I was told by one of her handmaidens that I was the only thing that could bring a smile to her face. She died when I was ten years old during childbirth. Neither her nor the baby survived. The day after my mother’s funeral, my father called me to the throne and assigned me to a knight to be a squire. Since then, I’ve been away from home more than I’ve been there. I’ve been to every corner of the kingdom and seen so many atrocities that no one wants to admit to that it makes me sick. And yes, I miss my mother terribly…”
“But you’ve never been to your mother’s home, you should have gone.”
“Doesn’t matter anymore. Your father is going to have me killed in a few days, and everyone in Meego will curse the name Aero for hundreds of years…”
Rania hears the words Aero says but has no words of comfort for him. She feels his burden through the bond they share and is as hurt as he is, but she doesn’t have comforting words for him. Instead, she quietly sings an old Meegan song to sooth him. She sings until he is asleep.
He sleeps until a sound in the cell startles him back awake.
“Rania!”
No one is there. Was there ever? Aero really doesn’t know.
Relics of the Old Age 