A little while later, Yuze was getting frustrated. Apparently, Kai Low had a higher tolerance than he'd expected. They were two carafes of wine in already, and Yuze had broken out one of his personal bottles, hoping the higher alcohol content would help.
So far, Kai Low had just become disturbingly quiet, strangely focused on his food, which, despite his earlier protests, he was putting away at a good pace. There wasn't going to be much left over after the two of them ate their fill.
The Bandri had maddeningly refused to answer Yuze's question, and Yuze's patience was running thin. Which was almost impressive; there were very few people alive who could wear down Yuze's patience so quickly, and Kai Low was on track to take the top spot.
"Why do you like it here?" The words came out of the blue, and Kai Low sounded drunk, but his words didn't slur. He hiccuped at the end, which startled Yuze almost as much as his question.
"What?"
Kai Low waved his fork around, thankfully empty of food. "This place. All this rock. Why do you stay here? Do you fear the sun? The wind?"
"This is my home," Yuze answered, unsure what the other man was looking for.
Kai Low squinted at him, exaggerated by the wine. "Why?"
Yuze opened his mouth to answer, realized he didn't know what to say, and shut it again. He sipped his own wine, a good bottle that had been a gift from Lady Yang after a particularly successful intelligence gambit. "Because it is."
Kai Low didn't look satisfied with his answer, but Yuze was sure how to put into words the feelings he had about this place. It was home. It was where he had begun. His parents were from a small village that had long since starved to death, and he had a few vague memories of fields and wagons and the long journey that had brought them to the Camelia when he was five. He remembered rather starkly the moment his parents had offered to sell him to the wandering martial master who had been kind enough to offer them food. The terror at their words and the persistent fear that had followed those first few days with his Master. He's still not sure how he got so lucky, that he hadn't ended up with someone even a hair less kind, but even in those wandering years with his Master, he didn't really think of anywhere as home. Not until they'd arrived at the Camelia and taken residence in the small temple, it was long gone now, converted to family housing, which would have pleased his Master. After the village that he didn't remember, it was the first place in his memories that he'd spent more than just a handful of nights.
And even then, it wasn't really that stability either. He'd met Chenzhou not long after that, the Camelia's regents eager to greet a martial master of such renown that they'd introduced him and his student to the young lord of the estate, and when the two children had formed an immediate attachment, encouraged it. Chenzhou had made this place home. His first friend, his first peer, his first and only brother. When his Master had finally succumbed to his illness, it had been without question that Yuze would stay; the Lord Regents had even allowed him to move into the main castle, into rooms right next to Chenzhou's, who was in the first throws of his own illness and who had little chance to interact with children his own age because of it.
Yuze had spent almost all of his time, waking and sleeping with Chenzhou, and had started to learn the ways of leadership, intelligence, and war just by virtue of proximity. When he'd started showing a talent for it, the Regents had seen to it he had his own tutors, and when Chenzhou had taken the oath of the Crimson Army at fourteen, Yuze had sworn in as its newest spy.
He never considered leaving permanently, even when his missions took him from one end of the borderlands to the next. There was something that always called him back to the craggy rocks, thundering waters, and high stone walls. Something comforting and warm and peaceful in a way nothing else had ever been for him.
He loved this place, the good and the bad.
He took one look at Kai Low's stunned face and was filled with horror. He'd thought he was thinking those thoughts, but from the other man's gobsmacked expression, he'd actually said them out loud.
Shame crawled through him, and he felt his cheeks burn. He'd been trying so hard to loosen Kai Low's tongue that he'd accidentally loosened his own.
"Sometimes, I look at a wall and feel trapped. Even if it's not all around me, just the idea of one is enough to make my skin crawl. If I go a day without seeing the sky, I am horribly enraged and sad. I usually sleep outside because I sleep better with the wind on my face and the stars above me. The earth is more comfortable than the softest feather bed that all your gold can buy." Kai Low's gaze shifted, going somewhere far away where Yuze couldn't follow. "There is more honesty and straightforwardness in nature than in anything made by us. For all that it can be uncomfortable and uncompromising, there is at least no doubt of what it wants and what it will do. Or how little it cares." The young man laughed, something sharp aimed at himself. "Is it strange, Lord Rong, to find more comfort in an honest lack of care than in the empty promise to do so in the future?"
Yuze couldn't answer him. He had only ever worried over the care from those he considered family. Nature, as forceful and important as she was, was not his to worry about. Humans took far too much effort to allow for additional worry anyway.
But…he did agree that an empty promise was the worst lie that could be told. "I would take an honest lack of care over a lie. I think most people would."
Kai Low's gaze returned to the moment, turning blazing golden eyes on Yuze and pinning him in place. "Then why lie?"
A frisson of waryness worked its way up Yuze's spine. "Sometimes it is necessary. Just as it is sometimes necessary to be cruel. Life is not so black and white that you can choose to be honest at all times and expect it not to go up in flames."
"If everyone were honest, it would not."
"And you are going to make everyone be honest? What value is there in forced honesty? It's just another lie."
"What point is there to a victory achieved on the battlefield then?" Kai Low's smile sharpened like a blade. "You win your argument by killing instead of changing minds and hearts. Is that a victory?"
"No." Yuze's agreement seemed to shock him. "Do you think we don't know that? Do you think we choose the path we do because we enjoyed it? Enjoyed killing and destroying things others have built? There are some who do, I won't deny that, but at Chenzhou and I and even Eirian, we have only chosen the path we think is best at the time. The most expeditious end to a conflict saves more lives than fighting for however long it takes to honestly change someone's mind."
"Then why not change your ways?" Kai Low snapped. "Have you not had enough time to learn they don't work?"
"But sometimes they do," Yuze said quietly. "And people do not let go of the comfort they find in their lives easily. Trying to change what they have accepted to be true and the right way and the way things are done for so long is no simple task. All change is destruction, and even if they don't recognize it as it's happening, all humans know that in their hearts, and they fight it at every turn because destruction, once it starts, is like a wildfire. You can never destroy just one thing. You can never change just one thing. Change begets change, and good change can beget bad change just as it brings on more good. Do you think there is a level of control enough to prevent that?"
Kai Low was silent, mullish, but at least, Yuze believed, he was thinking.
"You would be called a tyrant at best, and once you are a tyrant, everyone becomes your enemy, and there is no one to help you. Do you think you could do all that alone?" Yuze shook his head. "It is unrealistic to say things must change and then expect them to immediately do so just because others agree. There is work that must be done and done the right way, or it won't matter either way."
"And that's what you're trying to do?" Kai Low asked, and for once, Yuze couldn't identify the emotion in his voice. "You and your friends, you're trying to change things because you know they need to change?"
Yuze nodded. "Yes. It is a slow process, and probably one that will not be finished in our lifetime. But at least we might set the foundation for the future."
~ tbc