After the Council session, I found myself in a state of sweaty, shaky exhaustion. I went straight back to the quiet of the Royal Residence.
My head was spinning with the list of preparations. Maps. Surveys. Elias' documents and my copies and translations. I needed to be able to hide them well lest they be discovered if the Spartovans searched me.
I was packing my clothing into the travel chest that I always took on expeditions when my door opened the rest of the way.
My parents came in. They had already changed out of their formal Council robes into simpler attire. The loss of their heavy clothing seemed to deflate them and highlight how terror-stricken they were.
My mother stood by the window as my father closed the door.
"You've never been a good liar, Elyan," my mother said. "Even when you were a little boy. You tried it a few times, but I always knew right away."
My father leaned against the door, his good eye accusing me.
"I didn't lie," I said as I reviewed the arguments I'd made. The exact words were slippery in my mind. Certainly, I had sold them more of a vision than facts.
"Well," my father said. "Maybe 'lie' is too strong a word. But you sold them on goods you don't actually have. We both know that the documents about the Golden Age, if there was such a time, are quite dubious. Elias himself didn't even believe they were more than a myth."
I stood frozen. I knew that was a weak part of my argument.
He continued. "We have coordinates for ruins, yes. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. We have geological surveys of the edges of the Red Sand Sea. But the specific location of Erewhon? The resting place of the Iron Men?" He shook his head. "Nothing more than the vaguest hunch."
"A hypothesis is not the same as a hunch," I said, without anything like the loud certainty I had used at the session. "My hypothesis is that the Spartovans need labor; otherwise, they wouldn't abduct people. I am using their own myth to give them hope of fulfilling their desires. I don't have to find the Iron Men; I just have to convince them the search is worth a treaty."
"What if you can't?" My mother turned back to me. "What if you waltz over to the Spartovans and they decide you are just a charlatan? Do you think your title will save you? Do you think _we_ can save you?"
"Of course not," I whispered. "There would be nothing you can do."
"Then why would you do this to us?" she asked as tears began running down her face. "We could have tried renegotiating with Carth. Just because they made an offer doesn't mean we couldn't try for better. We could have stalled. Why throw yourself onto your own funeral pyre? Don't you understand what this will do to us?"
"Because you taught me to look at the horizon, not just the ground beneath my feet. We all know waiting won't make this better. The city will starve," I said. "A surveyor doesn't guess the depth of a canyon; he climbs down and measures it. Spartova is that canyon. If I stay, we sit blind. If I go… maybe we'll learn what they really want. Maybe we learn what they fear. Maybe we discover the thing they don't even know they need. We have to measure if we want to understand."
My father grabbed my shoulder with a firm, desperate hand. "I never wanted you to be a hero, Elyan. I wanted you to be a scholar, a builder, and a wiser king than I've ever been. There is nothing I wanted more than to spare you from marching into danger simply because no one else will."
"I don't want this," I said. "But I can't pretend someone else is better equipped to save us. I'm not trying to be a hero. I just want to keep Heliqar alive."
My father pulled me and my mother into a tight embrace. We held each other as if it would somehow anchor us to the safety of home. We were just three people terrified of the future.
At last my father pulled back. "If you are going to do this," he said, "you aren't going alone."
"I have a team in mind," I said. "Bastien, of course. And Olen knows our equipment as well as anyone. I'll need some haulers for the gear."
"Good," he agreed. "But about Bastien..."
I said, "He's my second in command. I couldn't do it without him."
"One condition about Bastien." My father opened the door, and Bastien entered. "He'll go with you, but he goes as my eyes."
Bastien inside the room and my father turned to him. "Bastien, no one would question your loyalty to Prince Elyan, but you go on this mission not to help him succeed but to bring him back alive. You are loyal to me, not to him. Is this understood?"
"Yes, your Majesty." Bastien said with a deep bow. He looked me in the eyes. I saw the conflict there. He was being ordered to be my jailer more than my friend.
My father stepped closer to Bastien; his voice used a commanding tone I rarely heard him use. "If Elyan tries to walk into a situation thinking he can reason his way out... you stop him. You bind him, you gag him, and you drag him back to Heliqar. Do you understand? For this mission, you answer to the King, not the Prince."
Bastien nodded again, glancing guiltily back at me.
"And one more condition," my mother said. "You must swear to me. Swear that if you can come back a coward or die a hero, you'll choose to be a coward. If it looks dangerous, you will come back with Bastien immediately."
She cupped my face in her hands. "Swear to me," she repeated. "Swear that you will fail rather than die trying to succeed."
I looked into her terrified eyes, beginning to crust with dried tears. I couldn't refuse. "I swear," I said. "I will come home to you."
My father reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, heavy bag. He grabbed my hand and placed it there. "This is my discretionary allocation of city funds to be used for defense. Gems held for extreme contingencies. There is enough to bribe a guard or hire a ship. Don't bring them back to me." He closed my hand around the pouch.
"I will," I promised again.
They lingered a moment more, as if more words would somehow keep me safe. Then my father guided my mother and Bastien out. My mother's eyes were tearing up again. She gave me a last glance back, as if that was the last time she would see me.
I stood alone again, holding the bag of gems. I felt the trust in that bag. It was the most money that I'd ever held. The bag was heavy with fear. As if it expected I would buy my life back with it.
I opened the false bottom in my travel chest and placed Danio's mechanism along with the stones and my copy of the translated poem into the bottom. Then, putting back the false bottom, I put the telescope on top. Without it, the survey tools would be useless. I wrapped the precious lenses in three layers of cloth.
I folded my tunics, belts, and trousers with an effortlessness born from practicing on dozens of expeditions. Each item I packed seemed to carry me a mile farther from home.
I cinched the straps with shaking hands. I knew how tenuous my hypothesis was. Was a scholar really going to outwit or outnegotiate the Strategoi of Spartova? My parents saw me as an overly brave son. The Council saw me as a desperate hope. I was betting my life and the lives of my men, my friends, on a story I didn't fully believe. Was I a fraud?
I had my maps, my tools, and my documents. I looked at the chest and took a deep breath. I knew that no amount of preparation was enough for the depth of the canyon I was about to step into.