The stone palace was eerie.
Cold, but draped in empty glory.
Kai Low couldn't make sense of it. They carved rock into something unnatural, piled them on top of one another, and then decorated them?
They fought and toiled to collect all their pretty rocks and metals, fought over them some more, and then gave them away for things made of common materials just so they could lord them over others.
Why work that hard for something you didn't even want to share? That you probably didn't like either? You just wanted it because others wanted it.
Kai Low hated the hypocrasy, a word he'd only learned because some trader from the capital with an over inflated ego had called him a simplton so Kai Low naturally had sought out one of the village teacher's during one of the short peaceful periods and leanred hipocrite, pretender, charlatan, and a whole list of things to describe the judegemental fucks from the stone cities that thought they were the pinnacle of humanity.
They were delusional fools in Kai Low's opinion. Poisoned by all this rock they surrounded themselves with.
He's only been in the Camelia for half a day, and he already missed the wide open sky of the borderlands. The fresh wind, the smell of the earth after the rain, the warmth from an unobstructed sun.
What did Kai San see in this place?
Something that convinced Kai Low's beloved older brother to leave behind their family and tribe and everything they knew to throw his lot in with the immorally civilized patriarchs that destroyed everything in order to create so little.
The ways of the tribes may have been simple, but they were honest and far less confusing.
Why did Kai Low need to be introduced to everyone all at once? In that huge, stuffy room with no windows and all the decorations that none of them really cared about, but would judge Lord Ye mercilessly if they were the same year after year.
Kai Low was no fool. He may have been impulsive, as his father complained. Foolheartedly, as his mother worried. Naive, as Kai San no longer had the right to call him.
But Kai Low was above all else a survivor. He had lost his brother, his sister, countless friends and lovers, and he was barely into his twenty-fourth year, having spent thirteen of those years at war, but he was still here.
Still standing.
And now they were supposedly at peace. Or as much as any human could be in life.
Kai Low couldn't say he'd ever have predicted this, that he'd ever set foot willingly inside the walls of this place, but Beng Shan didn't trust anyone else, and really, neither did Kai Low.
Too many lives depended on this going well for as long as possible.
The young Lord Ye may have claimed to want peace, to want to stop the fighting and protect everyone on both sides, but he wouldn't live forever. He might not even stay that way forever. The people who lived in stone cities were fickle; their loyalties changed with the wind and sometimes even more often.
For all that they talked of enlightenment, looking down on the tribes for their blood feuds, they were exactly the same. Apparently, that was excusable if you were doing it for noble reasons.
Whatever noble meant.
The rooms they'd given Kai Low were filled with fancy furniture that actually made him feel small. Not an easy feat. With a huge bed surrounded by curtains and chairs that he doubted he'd be able to get out of if he actually sat on them.
He'd spent his entire life sleeping on furs and piles of wheat stalks. Why these people thought they needed a tree's worth of wood and mattresses that weighed almost as much as a horse, he had no idea, but maybe that was why they were all miserable.
That and the lack of sunlight.
Even Lord Rong seemed struck by it, and Kai Low was oddly disappointed. During their trip north, he'd almost bought into the other man's claims that he was a tribesman.
Almost.
And he'd certainly seemed more at peace then than he did now, back in this place he claimed.
Maybe this place had driven his brother mad?
Except Kai San had done his worst before he'd ever come here, which Kai Low knew for an unfortunate fact.
But that didn't mean one of them hadn't gotten their claws into his brother long before he'd left them for the stone city.
Kai Low must have missed it. Which was possible, given that the last few years Kai San had been with the family had been fraught with conflict and infighting.
The near civil war the Bandri had faced then had almost destroyed the tribe completely, and only Beng Shai and Beng Shan's father taking leadership and declaring war against the Camelia had saved them.
Thinking of that time always made Kai Low angry. He'd never been able to shake it or outgrow it, much to his parents' concerns. When Kai San had left, they'd written him off, apparently capable of deciding to forget their oldest child at will, but Kai Low hadn't been able to forget the betrayal, the pain, the loss from his brother's abandonment.
He'd been searching for him secretly for years, trying to figure out why he'd left.
He'd never expected to stumble upon him in that tent.
Or for Kai San to be rescuing one of their tribes biggest threats.
But he supposed he shouldn't be surprised by that.
Kai San had been a traitor after all.
~ tbc