Your Blood is Mine (Vampire’s Revenge) - Chapter 161

Faestien had learned several things about Xendros upon staying close to his side.

One is that he does not like sleeping by the side. He sleeps like a corpse, completely straight, no pillows either. He doesn’t use any blanket even during the cold of the night.

Two, he bathes at the break of dawn, never later than that. He sleeps exactly at the fourth hour of the night, after dusk. He prays before and after eating, sleeping, and traveling outside the inn.

Third, he does not haggle, even when Maelle encourages him so. He pays for the exact price the peddler asks of him, nothing more and nothing less. He gives away tenth of his food to the nearest homeless or beggar he sees. If he can’t find one, he asks around for any citizen that would need helps and have nothing to eat for that day.

“But Brother Xendros, if you haggle, you’ll pay less. And if you pay less, you’ll get more money to give out to the poor.” Maelle countered. “Haggling is benevolent.”

“It is not to the merchants, Brother Maelle.” He placed his hand over his thick eyebrows to cover it from the heat of the burning Crescentian sun. “They are doing an honest business and trying their best to earn money and sustain their families. Who am I to hinder that? My duty is to always deliver the goodness of the Lord to the people.”

“But you do know, Brother Xendros….” Faestien twirled his long and carefully styled raven hair. “That some of these merchants are not fair with these prices at all, right? That is why people see through it and haggle, to attain the real price.”

“Is that the logic of haggling? Is that proven to be generally true?” Xendros narrowed his fuzzy eyebrows and considered it.

Prince Faestien could only chuckle. Ah, he is like an innocent, gullible child!

“Yes, I was surprised too when I first learned it.” He frowned, wearing the face of a wronged lamb that just realized that some plants are poisonous and not good to eat. “But upon interacting with much of the common folk, and even those of the lowest of sectors, I have come to learn that the trade industry is one of their more frequent oppressors.”

“Merchants slyly change the prices they put on placards on their goods and wares depending on the person buying. If they dislike a person, they would change it with a higher price. If they are friends, they would place a higher price. Moreover, if they know that this person is not a frequent customer, they would place a very high price. Do you follow how this will affect the lowest sectors?”

Xendros frowned. “I don’t. Can you please explain it to me further?”

Faestien saw Maelle just whistling to the side, not paying attention to them. But he can sense wariness and hesitation in him, like he is trying hard not to interfere.

He remembered their conversation in the carriage.

“I shall not spoil it for you. Your own tale in this land of mine is not for me to tell, but for you. You shall wait and see.” Maelle said with much air of mystique even with his voice.

Prince Faestien could not help but smile when he first heard it, comparing him to the characters he read in the books. That strange prince that knows far too much for people to comprehend, and lead on the traveler to move further through the entrancing curiosity and wonder he had cast upon that hero. What a shame that he was born a priest and not a prince indeed.

The Ilvedian prince is a great connoisseur of very dramatic and niche books called ‘svetochny’. It means floral in Old Ilvedian.

Floral is a euphemism for men who loves men, though only known by those who are floral themselves, particularly in smaller sections of the aristocratic and upper classes, and never widespread.

Svetochny or floral stories are written by floral men themselves, in small notebooks and parchments. But the most famous form they come from is through big folded parchments known as Eights. Eights are normal paper folder eight times over, and in those eight ‘pages’, a story is written in tiny letters, almost too compacted to be read. Most floral men use glasses and lenses to read them.

Such is their desperation indeed, but it is the only way. After all, having your family learn of this floralness will automatically lead to being disowned or exiled.

Prince Faestien recalled that night when a friend from school handed out an Eight to him. His scholastic years is truly the best, as it gives him a moment to breathe from that suffocating palace of his. But it was short-lived, as all good things are.

In school, he came to learn of men like him. Men who would never like women, both in body and soul, and seek affection from their fellow men. He had learned terms such as ‘piercer’ and ‘defender’….. such terms are obvious in the context of floral men already, but not to outsiders.

There are also people like him who would not mind being on both sides, and thus called ‘double edged’. But though he claims to be such a thing…

He had never pierced or defended his honor from anyone.

He just thought how lovely it would be from the svetochny novels he read. He would read them at night after a difficult day of boring lectures and symposiums. Maybe these priests could make him experience what he longed for in novels…

Such were his twisted thoughts as Xendros and Maelle continued their discourse.

Maelle continued to entice Xendros with high praises for his kingdom. “Crescentia is a land full of wonders. We like red things, and believe that red symbolizes joy and life, because red is the color of our blood.”

Xendros countered this with skepticism. “But blood can also symbolize suffering and warfare.”

“Precisely. Blood is a necessity of life, and if it is shed, joy will be lost. But people’s suffering is a joy to some. Beware of such people.”

There was a pause, and Faestien could even taste the turbulence in the air. He had controlled the reins a little to make the horses go slower and not disrupt them.

To which the Ilvedian priest replied, his apprehension and agitation caught only by the observant Prince Faestien. “Can you sense me suffering from such people?”

“No. I’m simply warning you in general, since I have more experience than you. As I have said, I have traveled to five kingdoms already, excluding my own, and you are new to this emissary business.”

“Have you met other emissaries before then? Did you meet someone that is the reason for you to tell me not to trust people too much who might harm me?”

“I haven’t…. yet. But the Crimson Wolf had told me I will in the future.”

“The Crimson Wolf?”

“Yes. I sometimes talk to him over some nice snacks and tea.” Maelle chuckled. “He’s a very fun guy to talk to, he always has so many things to say yet none at the same time. Most of the things he tells me get forgotten anyway. It is what it is.”

Even Faestien could not understand what exactly Maelle means by that. Whether he means that he does believe he can communicate with his deity, or this is like his hourglass stories again, a truth deeply hidden in layers of symbolism. But one things is for sure…

He knows more than he lets on.

About the future, about what will happen to Xendros…. and about him.

Somehow, he felt a bit of guilt from it. ANd knowing how much of a genuine and pure person this Xendros is….

It’s like stealing candy from a kid. And what he is stealing is is sweet heart….. and his sweet honor too.

He recalled another speech by a philosopher:

The “free” man, the owner of an enduring unbreakable will, by possessing this, also acquires his own standard of value: he looks out from himself at others and confers respect or withholds it.

And just as it will be necessary for him to honour those like him, the strong and dependable (who are entitled to make promises), in other words everyone who makes promises like a sovereign, seriously, rarely, and slowly, who is sparing with his trust, who honours another when he does trust, who gives his word as something reliable, because he knows he is strong enough to remain upright when opposed by misfortune, even when “opposed by fate,” so it will be necessary for him to keep his foot ready to kick the scrawny unreliable men, who make promises without being entitled to, and hold his cane ready to punish the liar who breaks his word in the very moment it comes out of his mouth.

The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, this power over oneself and destiny have become internalized into the deepest parts of him and grown instinctual, have now become a dominating instinct. What will he call it, this dominating instinct, given that he finds he needs a word for it? There’s no doubt about this question:

This sovereign man calls this instinct his conscience.

“Conscience is also an instinct.” He whispered to himself, and kept this as his inner dogma.

If instinct can be suppressed, and if conscience and guilt is an instinct…..

Then he can suppress it too.. This growing guilt towards Xendros, he can suppress it.