Lions and Lambs

Chapter 7

Azli

For two days Azli did not move from his spot curled at the bottom of the boat. Muton tried to lure him out with promises of food from the sack he had prepared, but the one chunk of bread he had tasted dissolved in his mouth like dust. Every so often he would open his mouth to ask Nisma some obscure fact only she might know, or he would begin to wonder what Eshmun might be doing on such a tiny boring little dingy. The reminder was enough to cripple him, and he sank back into his nest.

The how was very clear to him, but the why puzzled him. They were all good children; in fact, their father had never heard a peep from them. So why were they shot one by one, like goldfish in a barrel? Azli's brain ran through every possible explanation that he could think of, but every answer seemed insufficient, certainly not worth the blood sure to stain the wood of that deck. Once he considered asking Muton, but the idea of speaking to the man who'd let his siblings die made him so angry that his blood boiled.

It wasn't until the sun crested on the second day that Muton made an attempt to speak to him. He had done all of the rowing for the past two nights, grunting each time the sea made an especially violent movement against his oars.

"Are you going to let yourself starve to death, boy?" When Azli didn't respond, Muton snorted and set the oars down. "All my hard work gone to waste." Anger stirred in the pit of Azli's stomach, and his hand fisted in the cloth of his shirt.

Muton was silent for a few more minutes as he rifled through the sack. "I should have brought Eshmun along instead. That boy might have held a conversation."

Blood rushed to Azli's cheeks in two bright spots, and he jerked up from his position on the boat.

"Shut up," he hissed, his voice weak and hoarse. "How dare you say his name?" The deserted ocean swallowed his words so that they sounded like every bit the weak outrage of a young boy.

Muton shrugged, unfazed by Azli's outburst. "That may be so, but if I don't speak about them no one will, certainly not you."

"What, pray tell, would you have me say?" He pushed as much venom into the words as he could manage, suddenly wishing that he knew some nasty sailor curses to throw at Muton.

"All I am saying is that if you refuse to speak about them, they will remain forgotten at the bottom of this forsaken ocean. What do you expect for a couple of illegitimate children?"

"We-we are more than that," he blustered. "We are princes."

Muton snorted and rubbed his sore shoulder. "You think too highly of yourself, boy. The only prince that matters to your father is Zair. The rest of you were sent to rot."

"You liar," he hissed, climbing to his knees as if he might turn into a shark and catch Muton between his jaw.

"Who do you think ordered you shot?" he asked with a sneer.

"No!" Azli screamed, clapping his hands over his ears. "My father would not kill his children. He would never..." The passion in his voice faltered. Was he truly defending Onkalov Teznun? This was the man who did not hesitate to slaughter villages if it would keep his subjects in check. The man who had burned his son's own mother alive close enough for him to smell her charred flesh. Murdering seven children would not place any strain on his conscious.

Azli sank back to the bottom of the boat as the sobering realization crashed against him like a tidal wave.

"Now what?" he whispered, arms threading around his knees as a crushing sense of isolation fell over him.