A lone white horse galloped west. West in an empty road filled with darkness. West on a road that, in many ways, was traveled by Mai and Broken alone.

After several hours, they crept into an old abandoned barn on the side of the road, beside a burned and empty farmhouse. If it had been yesterday, Mai would have complained about the conditions. But now, she was silent, without Broken asking her to be. She was humbled by what she had seen to be the consequences of her own actions.

As Broken settled Aruith in, Mai collapsed onto the damp floor, and curled herself into a ball. She thought she heard rats, which once she had been terrified of, but now she was terrified of other, much realer things.

Broken didn’t come over to Mai, to ask if she was all right. Mai hadn’t expected him to, even though, as tears ran down her face, she wished that just for a moment, he would forget what she had put him through. She wanted to be held, wanted someone, anyone, to tell her that things would work out.

Before, she had shed tears for what had been lost. Now, she shed tears for what had been created.

***

Light came though the broken barn windows, illuminating and shining with the light of the summer that had called it.

But Mai didn’t want to get up. Getting up meant that she would have to speak with Broken, and that his disappointment would be clear beyond all doubt. She didn’t want that.

Broken walked into Mai’s line of sight, leading Aruith. She found the strength to look at him, from the ground.

Broken’s eyes, gray, for they were truly gray, not murky, gazed at Mai with a look of utter disinterest. “I’m going out,” he said, leading Aruith away, and together, horse and rider left the barn.

Mai noted he didn’t say he would be back. In an odd sort of way, Mai didn’t care, either. She had been reduced to so little, nothing more could be taken away.

Broken would be back, or he wouldn’t. Regardless, life would go on, and Mai would live out the extent of her part in it, whatever that part was.

It might have been many hours later when Broken returned. He carried a large, off-white sack over his shoulder, which he set down on the ground. Broken found a barrel, and moved it right in front of her. He sat down on it.

And he said nothing.

Mai looked at him, not even daring to get up. What could she say to a may that was her opposite in so many different ways? He was strong where she was weak. When his back was to the wall, he hacked soldiers to pieces when she was too afraid to even open her eyes.

Once, Mai had thought that a proper princess was not supposed to look at men fighting each other, and perhaps that was true. But Mai was no proper princess. She was nothing, anymore.

At that moment, Broken spoke his first words to her since his return. “Can you grow?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Mai’s words were filled with irony.

“Do you see a future?” asked Broken.

“I don’t know,” said Mai.

“The sad truth is, about this world, that is so touted to be filled with shades of gray,” said Broken, “is that everything, when you break it down enough, is either black, or white. Within you, there is an answer to my question.”

Mai searched herself, and gave one. “I don’t see a future.”

“Then you have a blank slate,” said Broken. “In some cases this is good, and in others this is bad, but in your case, it is the former. Maiako as Arathou del Tachen, as she was, could not handle the new life she had been presented with. Can you, Mai? Can you?”

It was the first time he had called her Mai. She took heart in that, more than she herself though rational. “I can try,” she said.

“Unlike what some say, the phrase you just uttered is an absolute, Mai,” said Broken. “You have taken your first step towards a different life.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

Broken reached out and grabbed hold of the bag that he had brought in with him. “You need to wear something different now.” He pulled out something made of brownish fabric. “This is homespun. A commoner’s dress, or one of low enough class that it makes no difference. Put it on.”

Mai walked over to a corner of the barn, and did so. She then came back over to Broken.

“Now, sit back on the floor,” he said. “That will help facilitate things.”

Again, Mai obeyed Broken, without the slightest hesitation. She looked up to him, student to teacher.

“Now, think of which of the Codes of Sara you are breaking, by sitting at the feet of one known to be your lesser.”

The Codes of Sara were an ancient list of rules and regulations regarding the behavior and expectations of noble women. When Mai had been a little girl, she had lived and breathed them, and afterwards, the Codes had just been a fact of life. “Thirty-eight,” she said. “No noble lady may ever sit on the floor. And Seven. No noble lady may be humble before those of lower status.”

“Do you want to follow the codes?” asked Broken.

Mai hesitated, sensing a trick question. “…Yes.”

“Do you remember the first code?” asked Broken. “Never dishonor your House?”

Mai nodded. Obviously.

“When you were taught the codes, did your teachers cover all the implications?”

“Of course.”

“Then, you should well know, in accordance with the principles of honor, you should have killed yourself when your House fell in flames around you.”

Broken thinks he’s proving a point, Mai knew. But he wasn’t. “I tried to kill myself. I did! But then Varsis showed up, and then you, and I got sidetracked!”

“You had many other chances to kill yourself when you were with me,” Broken said. “Or do the laws of honor say that, when committing the Final Sacrifice, one must give it a half-hearted attempt, and then, when that does not succeed, never try again?”

Broken’s words were pointed, angry. They were like the words an elder would say. Coming from Broken’s mouth, they didn’t make sense.

And beyond that, Mai had no answer for him. “What are you trying to say?” said Mai. “That I should just kill myself, and be done with it?” Broken’s cut, though healing rapidly, was still evident on his face, the cut that he had been given while, trying to protect her. What is he playing at?

“No,” said Broken. “I am trying to say that, according to the system, you are supposed to be dead. It is clear that no matter what you have been indoctrinated to believe, you don’t want to kill yourself. And this in turn provides my larger point. It is because of the system that you have tried to act just as a princess should be, even when the situation does not call for that, at all. The same system.”

“What are you trying to tell me,” said Mai. “That everything I’ve ever believed in is wrong?”

“With a few exceptions, yes.”

“God-Kings preserve me,” muttered Mai. “God-Kings hold me safe, and keep me from danger.”

“And when, exactly, was the last time they did that?” asked Broken.

There was a proper answer somewhere, a proper answer that Mai couldn’t find. “I’ll do anything you want,” said Mai. “Please, just don’t talk about this anymore.” Broken is dragging my beliefs through the mud.

“As you wish,” said Broken. “Get up; we are riding on. When we are in public, you will call me Rassin, and I will call you Jess. We shall be partners, of a sort, I, a warrior-errant, down on his luck, and you, a girl he found somewhere, who tagged along for the trip. However, when we are in private, you will call me master, and I will call you servant.”

Mai nodded, still numb from the day before. Orders were things she could take, as opposed to what they had spoken of before.

Broken and Mai rode on Aruith until it grew dark, before stopping at a small town, and dismounting. The town’s name was Nath, and it was on the very outskirts of the land that recognized the Tachen House as direct overlords.

Broken quickly charmed the local tavern-keeper, and indeed, most of those inside the tavern. He entertained them with fanciful stories of his exploits, and how he had garnered great respect from many lords. When they asked him how he had fallen from their graces so far, he merely said that he would rather not say, which brought forth chuckles of laughter, which Broken seemed to encourage. Somehow, during all this, he managed to sell Mai’s old, tattered dress for a small amount of enu.

In the end, Mai was rather ignored, and she liked it that way. The tavern-keeper went to clear out a room, for them to stay in, after he had been persuaded with cash. And so Broken and Mai went to sleep. Broken had only called himself Rassin but once, and Mai had not yet said that name, or Jess. She liked it that way, too.

Morning came, and was not so much of a blur as the night before. Mai woke in the storeroom the tavern-keeper had cleaned out for her and Broken, and Broken was not to be seen. She decided to go out, to see where he was.

As soon as she reached the hall, a younger man beset her, one who Mai dimly remembered from the night before to be the tavern-keeper’s son.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, without doing so much as providing his own.

“Jess,” Mai provided, annoyed that she finally had to say it.

“That’s nice,” he said.

Mai made a point of continuing to walk down the hall, to the common room. The son continued to follow her.

“What are you doing with Rassin anyway?” he asked. “I mean, you don’t look like that kind of girl.”

The word girl itself was offensive to Mai, or, as she was sure Broken would put it, the word girl was offensive to Maiako as Arathou del Tachen. But it didn’t matter. Mai was still angry.

“What kind of girl?” asked Mai, the last word rolling off her tongue in an odd sort of way.

“Rassin’s kind of girl,” said the tavern-keeper’s son. “You sat and did nothing all of last night. It was like you were his prisoner, almost.”

It was a very odd choice of words. Am I Broken’s prisoner? Mai asked herself. What else does one call a relationship between two, where all one does is give orders, and all the other does is blindly follow. Would Broken let me leave him? Mad at something, Mai glared at the tavern-keeper’s son.

They turned a corner together, but he raised his hands defensively. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Just wonder’in.”

“Well then,” said Mai. “Good for you. Now leave me alone.”

“What are you, some kind of girl who thinks that she’s more that she really is?” asked the lad. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Rassin just picked you up in a tavern just like this one, right. I mean, you’re only with him for one thing.”

“And what’s that?” asked Mai.

The lad burst out laughing, clutching his stomach, and doubling over. He raised one finger at Mai, to say he would be done in a moment, but she just kept walking, and entered into the common room.

Broken was sitting on a stool there, lightly chatting with the tavern-keeper from behind the bar, as the owner half-heartedly wiped out some mugs. As Mai came over, the tavern-keeper chuckled at something Broken had said, and Mai wondered why he had never made her laugh.

Then, as Broken and the tavern-keeper turned to her, an even louder, spastic bust of laughter echoed from down the hall.

“He found something about me funny,” Mai explained.

“Who?” asked the tavern-keeper, “My son? He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just a little drunk, that’s all.”

“Let’s go,” said Broken, clasping Mai’s hand. “We have much in the way of provisions to acquire for the next leg of our journey, Jess.”

And so they walked out of the tavern, and through the relatively uncrowded streets, intermingling with the locals. There were few strange glances at them. Broken’s attire was a little odd, as compared to the rest, but the town had seen many soldiers before, and even had a local militia.

As they walked, Broken asked Mai what the tavern keeper’s son had be laughing at, and Mai said she didn’t know.

They soon reached a small open air market. Mai winced. Places like these were something she had always hated about commoners. They were inevitably filled with chaos.

And so it was. Fruits and vegetables seemed to be literally flying, and vendors called out from every angle for passerby to sample their wares. This place was nowhere near the size of any of the several located in the Imperial City, but it was bad enough.

Broken bought two saddlebags, and, when he could have much more easily carried them both himself, gave both to Mai. He then began loading more bought things into those saddlebags, while Mai barely kept from staggering under the weight.

Mai didn’t get it. She wasn’t about to start complaining in front of all the people, but she did not she why she had to be the one to hold everything. Her arms were not built for burden, and she had never had to hold anything so heavy in her life. Eventually, she discovered the weight was much easier when the saddlebags were slung over each of her shoulders, but not as much as she would have liked.

Through it all, Broken seemed oblivious. It was as if Mai was an object to work with, and nothing more, not even in the slightest. He just kept haggling, buying, and, in one or two instances, actually reselling some things to different vendors at a higher price from what he had originally paid.

But at last, they left. Back at the tavern, only when the burden of the saddlebags was passed to the ground of the spare room they had been given, was Mai allowed to rest.

She collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.