Castle Shyr

I\'m not dead. :) And neither is the story.

Tehehe..

More Rhin and Kyin - and I promise you there IS yaoi in this story.. despite what it seems. Kyin is totally in love with Rhin, obviously, but he doesn\'t return her feelings quite like that... I\'ll probably do some off the wall side fics with some Yaoi for you guys... since there won\'t be anything hard core until the end of this novel...


-The Decision To Begin-

\"Rhinwyn? Are you awake..” Kyin whispered as she gently eased open his door, peering inside.

“Yeah.” He said with a small smile, turning from the window to look at her. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

“No. I keep thinking about what Bitti said.” She replied softly, taking a seat at the foot of his bed.

“Me too.” Rhin said in a quick, almost too eager voice. “I - I think someone is trying to tell us something.”

Kyin gave him a strange look as he sat down next to her, removing his head wrap so she could brush out his hair - something she enjoyed, and he didn’t mind.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked cautiously, now working on a clump of knots near the end of Rhin’s mane.

“Haven’t you felt - I don’t know - empty, since we got here?” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “Not-not because of all we lost, but because we’re just sort of ‘here’? We help Bitti and the others bring in the fish at night, but we really don’t do anything.”

“Rhin,” Kyin said, laying her head on his shoulder as she spoke to him as if he were unstable, “we do chores here like we did at home. Other than those we really didn’t ‘do’ much else anyway.”

“I-I know. I just.. I’ve felt like we’ve forgotten them all too quickly, I suppose. Like we didn’t even try to-” Rhin stopped short as Kyin stood and slapped him hard across the face. “K-kyin.”

“Don’t you dare start that hawk-shit again, Rhinwyn!”

“Kyin!”

“Hush-it! You listen to me and you listen good. We did everything we could. Nothing more can possibly be expected. Bitti and Raban organized that magnificent funeral, we went through all the rituals, our hair is finally loosing it’s white. The grieving period is over. You can’t spend the rest of your life thinking like this. What do you want to do? Gather an army and attack Castle Tevlar!”

“Yes.” Rhin breathed, though still a bit dumbstruck by Kyin’s odd speech, rather reminiscent of the one Bitti gave him weeks ago. Kyin took a deep breath to start again while he watched her, waiting for the realization of what he said to sink in.

“Wh- what did you say?”

“I said ‘yes.’ I would like to gather an army and attack Castle Tevlar.”

“Did I slap you too hard?”

“No. I’m serious.” Rhin slowly got to his feet and began a strange sort of half-hearted pacing. “This isn’t about grieving for those we lost - it’s about finally doing something about the attack itself. Johan and I did our share of eavesdropping back home - he liked to know what was going on in the Shyriol - and from what we heard the Tev have gone unchecked for years. They’ve been making advances through the Votoc Mountains for months and the King turned a blind eye. If he had enough notice to send a messenger to Sentram, he had to know they were marching on the rest of the villages as well. He could have sent a small armed troupe or something! If they made it to the Castle with an army large enough to murder the King - I want to know what he was doing that made him so oblivious. I want to know what was so important that he could shirk his duty to the people like that. All our foreign treaties are going well, last I heard, and so our all our home-land relations. I just don’t understand, and it’s about time someone showed the Tev they don’t own Nanio.”

“No one owns Nanio.” Kyin whispered, looking a bit horrified. “I- where did that come from? I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

“I’ve been thinking on it since we got here.” Rhin answered truthfully, leaning up against the wall by the window. “It never really interested me until now - it just seems like if we don’t act - if I don’t act, then no-one will ever try to avenge what happened to Crawyn - what happened to all the Shadow Villages.”

“We’re not soldiers, Rhinwyn. That’s not our job.”

“I know.”

Kyin stared at him hard for a while, making him feel uneasy as he sat down and she turned her head to watch him. After a few moments of testing silence Kyin narrowed her eyes.

“You were serious, weren’t you?”

“Completely.”

She sighed and shook her head, finally looking away. Rhin tilted his head to watch her, knitting his eyebrows together as she pulled her bottom lip into her mouth in deep thought. He frowned and looked away.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He muttered softly, picking up the discarded brush and turning it over in his hands.

“You didn’t,” she answered, sounding vaguely distant, “not really.”

“Kyin, please don’t brush this off. If I upset you, tell me - holding it in is only going to make things worse later on.” Kyin slowly turned to look at him and as he scanned her expression he began to wonder if he’d said something wrong. She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again and looked away. He raised his eyebrows.

“Kyin?”

“It- it’s nothing.”

“Kyin don’t. Don’t shut me out.”

She turned to look at him once more, her expression hard to read. He never used to look at her that way. He never used to try so hard. She sighed and reached for the brush - it wouldn’t do to get her hopes up.

“Kyin - please.”

“We would have to convince Suhayl to take us - I wouldn’t want to go on our own.”

“What?”

“If we want to go - to gather your army and teach the Tev a lesson - we’d have to get Suhayl to take us to the Shyriol.” She looked over at him when he didn’t answer and was almost immediately pulled into a strong embrace.

“You’d go with me?” He said in a slight whimper.

“I won’t fight, but I’ll go. I’ll help any way I can as long as I don’t have to fight.” Kyin rested her head against Rhin’s shoulder as he squeezed her a little harder. “I’ll do anything for you as long as you don’t make me bloody my hands - not even with an enemy. I couldn’t cope.” Rhin’s eyes grew slightly wider at this. Kyin sounded so mature - and it made him again recall Johan’s words from the inn that night. Did Kyin really have feelings for him - or was it just because she was his sister? Rhin frowned as Kyin moved away and took the brush to his hair.

He should just ask her.

“K-kyin,” He started, and felt a lump rise in his throat - he couldn’t do this.

“Mmm?”

“U-h.. Nothing.” He smiled a little as he heard her click her tongue against the roof of her mouth, pull a little harder on his hair. “Ow- that hurts.”

“Well, if you would take better care of it on your own - then I wouldn’t have to do it so hard.”

“You don’t have to do it so hard either way. Combing softly will get the knots out just like combing hard.”

“Yes, but combing softly will take longer - and you’ve got too many knots to go slow.”


Austly narrowed his eyes and rolled over again grinding his teeth together in agitation. No. His mind was made up now. All he had to do was go through with it. After another short moment of hesitation he threw off his blankets and stood quietly, slipping his feet into his step-in sandals and looking around for his knapsack.

If his father was too blind to see how Lan was more than just six pieces of eight, and if his mother was too stubborn to work out things with his father - then he would just teach them both a lesson. He would gather his crew and board Lan’s ship - come back in a few years and tell them all just how stupid they’d been. That’d fix them good.

He quickly began piling the ‘necessary’s into his bag - a long coat, a slingshot, his medallion, his bracelet, two apples he’d sneaked from the kitchen earlier, his treasure map, and an extra bandana - just in case. He folded up the open side of the sack and swung it over his shoulders, walking determinedly towards the window.

Yeah - this would work. He’d get his crew, they’d all pack their bags and board Lan’s ship, they’d spend the next few years having the time of their lives, and then they’d come back as pirates - and show them all.

He carefully pushed open his window, knowing that it liked to make a lot of noise when you opened it from the inside. He managed to open it just enough for him to slip through and quietly did so - finding, as he got stuck the first time, that he had to toss his knapsack onto the small balcony first, and then climb out after it. Once he was on the balcony, sack again strapped to his shoulders, things were easy. He swung into the branches of the tree just outside his window, and walked along the roofs and branches of trees on the way to Til’s house.

He quietly slid down onto the porch and made his way to the semi-circle window jutting out onto the platform - Til’s window. He leapt up onto the railing, testing his balance a bit, and sat down where the railing ended, leaving the window to his left. He reached over and knocked twice in quick succession, crossing his arms over his chest to wait.

He was rewarded shortly after by a hand groping blindly at the curtain from inside the room. It finally found the crease and pulled the fabric apart, revealing a very disheveled Til, blinking wildly to adjust his eyes.

“’stly?” He mumbled, opening the middle pane of his window and climbing up onto the sil on the inside. “Wha’dya doin’ here so late?” He said, his words broken by a loud yawn.

“We’re leavin’ - pack your things. We’re hitchin’ a ride on Lan’s ship. We’re gonna be real pirates now.”

“Ok.” Til said groggily, turning and walking back into his room. He started to pack his very own ‘necessary’s but paused in the middle and wobbled back over to the window, peering scrupulously at Austly.

“Austly - are you sleep-walkin’?”

“No.”

“We can’t leave on Lan’s ship yet - ‘member? He says we’re too little.”

“Yeah, well - things’ve changed. Get dressed and pack your stuff -we still have to gather the rest of the crew.”

“Austly -”

“Til, that’s an order.”

Til looked at Austly again, this time in slight shock. Austly had never really given him a direct order like that - he sounded so grown-up and final about the whole thing. Til frowned and nodded, then hobbled back down and finished packing his things. He pulled on a pair of over-alls and some step-in sandals, his ‘pirate’ outfit folded up neatly in the bag. He stepped onto the window sil and paused, looking over his shoulder.

“What now?”

“I-I should say goodbye to my parents..” He said, starting off the sil. Austly reached through the open window and grabbed Til’s arm lightly, shaking his head when they met eyes.

“Naw - we can’t say ‘bye. We’re kinda tryin’ to teach ‘em a lesson - if we said ‘bye they wouldn’t learn nuthin’.”

Til gave Austly a confused look, but stepped back up onto the window sil, handing Austly his bag.

“What kinda lesson?”

“I’ll tell you on the way to get Yuhin - now c’mon.”