Tales from the Universe
Moral Dilemma: If you have genuinely become someone different, how much authority should your past retain over who you are allowed to be now?
The men looking for Cael had a drawing of him.
That was their first problem.
It was a very good drawing.
Cael had grown a beard.
Cut his hair.
Gained weight.
Broken his nose.
Changed his clothes.
Changed his profession.
Changed his name.
Unfortunately, none of those things had changed his ears.
The artist had drawn the ears perfectly.
Cael looked at the notice nailed beside the bakery door.
WANTED ALIVE
Below it was his old name.
PRINCE ADEL VAREN
Cael sighed.
The baker leaned over his shoulder.
“That’s you.”
“No.”
“It has your ears.”
“A great many people have ears.”
“Not those ears.”
Cael tore down the notice.
He had been Cael for eleven years.
Long enough that sometimes he forgot there had been another name.
Cael repaired roofs.
He owned three ladders.
He rented a room above a cooper’s shop.
He owed the butcher six silver.
He was terrible at cards.
He had once spent an entire winter trying unsuccessfully to grow onions in a window box.
Prince Adel Varen had done none of those things.
Prince Adel Varen had lived in a tower.
He had servants.
Tutors.
Guards.
A ceremonial sword he wasn’t allowed to sharpen.
At sixteen, he had been expected to become king.
Instead, he ran away.
People assumed he’d fled because of an assassination attempt.
There had been several.
That wasn’t why.
He fled because one morning his tutor placed a document before him listing seventeen men who would need to be executed when Adel became king.
“Why?”
“Stability.”
“What did they do?”
“Some have done nothing yet.”
Adel stared at the names.
“Then why would I execute them?”
“Because eventually they will oppose you.”
“How do you know?”
His tutor smiled patiently.
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Adel decided he had no interest in becoming old enough to understand.
Three nights later, he climbed down the tower wall using bedsheets.
The future king of Varen landed in a manure cart.
History did not record this.
Cael was grateful.
Now history had found him anyway.
He returned home and packed.
His neighbor Nessa watched from the doorway.
“Going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Elsewhere.”
“You owe me a chair.”
“I’ll send one.”
“You’ve been repairing that chair for six months.”
“Then statistically, you were never getting it.”
Nessa didn’t laugh.
She held up another wanted notice.
“Who are you?”
Cael stopped packing.
“Cael.”
“That isn’t what this says.”
“That paper is eleven years out of date.”
“It says you’re a prince.”
“I repair roofs.”
“Both could be true.”
“No.”
Nessa entered.
“That’s not how truth works.”
Cael looked at her.
“You’d be surprised.”
The king had died.
Cael learned this from the men who found him two days later.
There were five.
They surrounded his room politely.
Their leader bowed.
“Your Highness.”
“Don’t.”
“The kingdom requires you.”
“No.”
“The throne is empty.”
“Find another person.”
“You are the lawful heir.”
“I resigned.”
“You cannot resign from blood.”
Cael laughed.
“Watch me.”
The commander did not.
They did not arrest him.
That would have been simpler.
Instead they followed him.
Everywhere.
When Cael repaired a roof, five royal guards stood below.
When he bought vegetables, merchants bowed.
When he entered the tavern, someone shouted:
“The king!”
Cael stopped going to the tavern.
Within a week, people he had known for years behaved differently.
The butcher forgave his debt.
Cael immediately paid it.
His landlord refused rent.
Cael left the coins on the table.
Children followed him.
Adults asked favors.
Disputes appeared at his door.
A farmer wanted him to settle a boundary disagreement.
“Go to the magistrate.”
“He’s corrupt.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re the king.”
“I am a roofer.”
The farmer looked at him.
“Can you be both?”
Cael hated the question.
Then the delegation arrived.
Thirty people from Varen.
Not nobles.
Ordinary people.
Farmers.
Soldiers.
Two teachers.
A midwife.
A man missing an arm.
They stood in the street outside Cael’s room.
The midwife spoke.
“Please come home.”
Cael looked at them.
“No.”
Someone began crying.
He wished they’d brought nobles.
Nobles were easier to refuse.
That evening Nessa found him on the roof.
“You’re hiding.”
“I’m repairing.”
“You’ve been repairing the same tile for an hour.”
“Difficult tile.”
She sat beside him.
“Why won’t you go?”
Cael looked across the town.
“Because I escaped.”
“From what?”
“Being turned into someone I didn’t want to become.”
“And you’re afraid it’ll happen again.”
“Yes.”
Nessa nodded.
“Reasonable.”
Cael looked at her.
“That sounded suspiciously like agreement.”
“It was.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not finished.”
“Of course not.”
She pointed toward the delegation below.
“They don’t seem interested in who you were.”
“They want Prince Adel.”
“They want someone to govern.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Nessa looked at him.
“Maybe that’s the mistake.”
Cael met the delegation the next morning.
“I will not become Adel again.”
The midwife nodded.
“Fine.”
Cael blinked.
“What?”
“We didn’t come for Adel.”
“You called me Your Highness.”
“That was the guards.”
The one-armed man laughed.
“We came because the nobles are preparing to divide the kingdom.”
“You need an heir.”
“We need someone with enough legal claim to stop them.”
“So you do need Adel.”
The midwife shrugged.
“We need his name.”
Cael went still.
“You can keep the rest.”
He returned to Varen.
Not as Prince Adel.
He refused the old clothes.
Refused the ceremonial sword.
Refused to sleep in the tower.
On the day of his coronation, he wore a roofer’s boots.
This caused a scandal.
Cael enjoyed that immensely.
Then governing began.
It was awful.
Everyone knew who he was supposed to be.
Advisers told him what his father would have done.
Nobles told him what tradition required.
Servants corrected the way he held cups.
A historian informed him that kings did not eat in kitchens.
Cael ate in the kitchen for a month.
Then stopped because the cooks couldn’t work with a king sitting in their way.
That irritated him too.
Some traditions, he discovered, existed because they were sensible.
Others existed because nobody remembered they could stop.
Determining which was which became most of his job.
Then Cael found the list.
Seventeen names.
The same document from eleven years before.
Only five people on it were still alive.
His new adviser placed it before him.
“For stability.”
Cael stared.
He almost laughed.
Eleven years.
Different king.
Different adviser.
Same sentence.
“What have they done?”
“Two are actively organizing opposition.”
“And the others?”
“Potential threats.”
Cael looked at the adviser.
“No.”
“Your Majesty—”
“No.”
“You don’t understand.”
Cael leaned back.
A strange feeling passed through him.
He remembered being sixteen.
He remembered the tower.
The bedsheets.
The manure cart.
Then eleven years of roofs.
Broken tiles.
Rain.
Rent.
Neighbors.
Being nobody important.
Perhaps that boy had not been running away from becoming king.
Perhaps he had been going somewhere to learn what a king was for.
“I understand exactly.”
He tore the list in half.
Cael ruled for twenty-two years.
Not particularly brilliantly.
That disappointed later historians.
There were no great conquests.
No golden age.
No monumental palace.
Taxes remained irritating.
Roads remained imperfect.
Two rebellions occurred.
One was justified.
Cael negotiated.
The other was not.
Cael crushed it.
He hated doing so.
That did not make it unnecessary.
People continued calling him Adel in formal documents.
He signed them:
Cael Varen
Historians argued about this for centuries.
Some claimed Cael had rejected his heritage.
Others claimed he had fulfilled it.
Both schools wrote extremely long books.
Cael would have hated them.
Near the end of his life, Nessa visited.
She brought the chair.
The same chair Cael had promised to repair decades earlier.
One leg was still broken.
“You kept this?”
“You said you’d fix it.”
“You’ve had twenty-two years.”
“You’ve been busy.”
Cael laughed.
They sat together.
After a while Nessa asked:
“Do you regret coming back?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you regret leaving?”
“Sometimes.”
“Useful.”
“I’ve become very wise.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Cael looked toward the old tower.
“I spent years thinking I had to choose between being Adel and being Cael.”
“And?”
“I was wrong.”
Nessa waited.
“The boy who left was me.”
He touched the crown sitting unused on the table.
“The man who came back was also me.”
“The king?”
“Unfortunately.”
“The roofer?”
Cael smiled.
“My roofs were excellent.”
Nessa pointed at the broken chair.
“Evidence suggests otherwise.”
After Cael died, the court prepared his tomb.
Tradition required the inscription:
ADEL VAREN, KING
Nessa objected.
She was very old by then.
Nobody enjoyed arguing with her.
The inscription was changed.
It read:
CAEL VAREN
HE LEFT A PRINCE.
HE RETURNED HIMSELF.
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