LERWaltz

The Emperors of Panarine

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:53:40 -0400

This list is currently incomplete.

Agmapallan Danechē I (114-128)

Danechē Agmapalla was born into the Tanthene Agmapalla dynasty during the dissolution of the eleventh (Naidiechan) dynasty. Like Goesena, Pelöissod, and Tanthes itself, Panarina had emerged as a powerful rump state centred around the eponymous city. Danechē began his career as a general in Panarina’s provincial legion; following the collapse of the dynasty and Tanthene rule, Danechē quickly consolidated enough power to rival the Tanthene Governor. In 113, Agmapalla secured the support of many of the other Tanthene nobles and in 114 carried out a bloodless coup in which he seized the city of Panarina at the head of his armies and removed the Governor from his palace. Now in captivity, the Governor was induced to appoint Danechē commander of all provincial armies, a power that Danechē already had in all but name.

Following his appointment as dictator, Danechē Agmapalla conquered the Crown, including Tanthes, by 118. After his conquest of Tanthes, he received the title of Emperor. Over the next 9 years, he campaigned in Goessena and Peloïssod, quickly retaking the already-Sasinthēnized provinces by the age of 40. The next year, he became the first Sasinthēne ruler to cross the Laham into Issod proper, sieging and taking Caleogart, but succumbing to an arrow to the stomach. Accounts of his death diverge. In the national myth which sprung up around his life and conquests, he was shot at the beginning of a battle and continued to fight valiantly until he reached the river, at which point a riderless mare passed in front of him and stamped a snake. He dismounted and went to the riverside to wet his lips, but was too weak. A young soldier of Hesod stops, recognizing his enemy, and wets his lips with his own waterskin. Danechē Agmapalla calls himself Nagienai (king of kings), names the soldier Agmapallanes (son of Agmapalla) and relates his Promise to deliver the whole northern part of Ōchis to the Sasinthēnes.

Agmapallan Sabbas I (128-159)

Danechē Agmapalla was extremely circumspect when it came to managing his succession. He adopted the Tanthene tradition of designating a family member and installing him as junior Emperor, in this case, his nephew, Agmapallan Sabbas. Danechē had a young son of his own, but Sabbas was by his death far more qualified, and had already been installed at the Agmapallas’ palace in Danechaïa, near Panarina.

Sabbas I focused initially on pacifying the new province of Issod, which had a strong and distinct culture from the rest of his empire. He founded the city of Lōgomachaïa, also called Sabbassalea or Sabasgart, and installed a despot, whom he married to a local princess. He spent much of his reign in Lōgomachaïa while conquering the northeast reaches of Issod, and was nicknamed Sabbas ēLōgomachaïcōs as a result. He was unable to take Hišu. Under his reign, the succession tradition employed by his uncle gained a new distinction: while the Emperor would campaign, his designated heir would remain as a regent, a kind of limited junior emperor, in the Imperial Palace.

Agmapallan Larestē I (159-182)

(Moves capital to Lōgomachaïa)

Agmapallan Adaneléōs (182-197)

(Moves capital back after expansion into Arpenea fails)

Agmapallan Sabbastōs I (197-216)

Agmapallan Elōsechēléōs (216-231)

Agmapallan Danechē II (231-235)

Agmapallan Sabbastōs II (235-272)

Agmapallan Larestē II (272-289)

Agmapallan Lareston (289-319)

Larestē’s son, Lareston, was the last of the Agmapalla emperors.

First Imperial Interregnum

During this period, no lasting dynasties are established. The Imperial Palace itself, that being the regents and the military governors, run the Empire. during this period, the Talens migrate from Voradena. Voradena is also conquered.

Antheas (Xanathaïanes) Xanathaōs (556-578)

Xanathaōs Antheas was born to a wealthy military family. He started the Xanathaïanes dynasty, the second of the big 3.

Xanathaïanes Danechē V (578-589)

Son of Xanathaōs.

Xanathaïanes Mitreiōs (591-598)

Conquers Voradena but dies in the process.

Xanathaïanes Danechon I (598-601)

Assassinated after being persuaded to make someone a palatial emperor like a dipshit.

(Some more emperors; Second interregnum occurs (20 years), Xanathaïanes restoration follows.)

Despotate of the Palace (665-685)

Xanathaïanes Nicheleōs (685-694)

Xanathaïanes Danechē VII (694-712)

Xanathaïanes Abbeléōs (712-718)

Xanathaïanes Eleōs IV (718-719)

Xanathaïanes Paōs III (719-728)

Xanathaïanes Thémōs (728-739)

Xanathaïanes Chorōs (739-758)

Xanathaïanes Zaïdōs (758-775)

Zaïdōs Xanathaïanes ‘bowed’ Rosgart and was assassinated by Oronar nationalists.

Xanathaïanes Danechē VIII (775-769)

Danechē VIII Xanathaïanes ruled for a few days before being killed at his coronation. Around this period the Imperial Palace in Danechaïa consolidates power over the ‘cloistered Emperors’.

Xanathaïanes Sabbas III (775-818)

Cloistered Emperor. The Imperial Palace had near total control over him and his rule, using him as a mere figurehead. His paranoia was fanned by the Palace, and as his one act of defiance, he refused to name a successor or have children of his own, for fear that he would be killed by his captors when he ceased to be useful. Regardless of the Palace’s designs for him, Sabbas was killed by the Imperial Cabal in an attempt to reassert control from the Palace.

Xanathaïanes Danechē (IX) & Ourōneas Adanasē II (818-873, -843)

Danechē IV, Sabbas’s nephew, was the Palace’s chosen successor. However, The Cabal and military propped up the 40-year-old general Ourōneas Adanasē, who effectively sidestepped Palatial control by administering the Empire from Bregién. The Palace continued to prop Danechē IV up after Adanasē’s death.

Ourōneas Safenōs (843-874)

Midway into his reign, Safenōs mended the rift with the Palace by returning to the Palace at Danechaïa. He took Danechē IV hostage, but was a merciful jailor, and eventually married Xanathaïanes’ daughter to his son. Throughout his reign, he carefully managed the rivalry between the Palace and the Cabal to ensure neither developed overwhelming power.

Ourōneas Xanastōs I (874-883)

Ourōneas Xanastōs II (883-906)

Ourōneas Danechē IX (906-925)

Ourōneas Eleōs V (925-936)

Ourōneas Steloïssōs (936-958)

Ourōneas Anadanechē (958-983)

Second to last. Succeeds during the war with Cazia-Orod, signs ceasefire two years into reign.

Ourōneas Danechon II (983-1011)

Last one. Cazia-Orod takes Panarine and he fucking dies in a swamp.

The Death of the Ourōneas

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:52:33 -0400

Context.

Following the Vorodena Accord of 953, Cazia-Orod made rapid gains against Imperial Panarine, which prior losses had left nearly surrounded by separatist states. Officially, Iantigē, since renamed Xantic, remained a neutral polity, though Talenic sympathies saw Roscarthine merchants favor Cazia-Orod as a creditor. The Crown-Sasinthene state of Goentia was at no time more a lukewarm ally to Imperial Panarine than during this war, making substantial loans to Cazia-Orod as well as their embattled ally.

In 960, Ouroneas Anadanechē signed a ceasefire with Maro Sejdenec, ceding the Vorad riverlands up to the White River, 30 kilometers short of Panarine’s western wall. Nearly bankrupt, Anadanech also ceded Sechors to his Roscarthine debtors, while Goentia refused to make further loans. A strict regime of taxation and rationing was adopted in the heartland itself as a result.

Though reduced to its heartland territories and a few scant accessories, Imperial Panarine’s financial situation recovered substantially. In 978 Maro Sejdenec died, and his cousin, Xanos Sejdenec, was elected to the throne of Cazia-Orod. During the week-long interregnum, Anadanech broke the ceasefire and reclaimed territory up to Vorodena, but failed to deliver a fatal blow on Cazia. The emperor entrenched outside of the city, but his emplacements were swamped during the Battle of the Crossing, named so for the ford across the Vorad that guarded Imperial retreat. However, during the battle, Panarine lost four magi of the Imperial Cabal, and were forced to abandon the push.

By 1005, a sixty-year war of attrition had left the city of Panarine and its new emperor, Ouroneas Danechon II, back in the position it held after 960. It faced a four-year siege from the southern side, while Oronar forces made sustained progress in a campaign across Gesena. In late 1008, Cazian forces breached from the south, quickly seizing the southern half of the city in an urban offensive. The defending forces detonated the canal bridges, effectively dividing the city in two, but still faced the approaching Oronar as the Cazians dug in.

By 1000, northern Panarine was encircled, concentrated on the critical water supply lines of the Vorad and Lake Panarine. In early 1011, the fatal blow came as urban warfare erupted in the fortified northern districts and approached the palace complex. By the time the Cazian-Oronar forces reached the palace, however, the Imperial family had fled the city, across Menovina for Voleize, which held pro-Imperial sentiments.

In the late spring of 1011, Sgt. Giulon Sergeō of the Voleizene military identified a band of roving armsmen riding up through Menovina. They carried no colors, wore shoddy cloaks and broke into a ragged sprint upon sighting the Voleizenes in the predawn light. Fearing attack by marauders, long a problem in light of the war, Giulon gave a hasty order to fire. In all, the entire Emperor line ended there, and the brief skirmish was a massacre, save for Royal Guardsman Agmederan Zosteir, who survived with a wounded leg.

Outcome.

The inarguable end of an empire just under 900 years since inception, the killing of Ouroneas Danechon II on Sgt. Giulon’s orders was thoroughly investigated by tribunal, and while he was stripped of rank and service, Giulon was cleared of wrongdoing as part of a policy of Voleizene neutrality and in light of intensifying bandit problems. This decision was incendiary, sparking a bloody civil war between neutral ‘Red’ and pro-Imperial ‘Gold’ Voleize. The city of Panarine was fully lost to Cazia-Orod and would remain so until the establishment of Gold Panarine out of Gold Voleize.

Calassine Names

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:30:00 -0400

Calassine names are not totally gendered, but have trends. A masculine name may be appropriate for a woman, or vice versa, though masculine names in women is more common than feminine names in men are. As a brief pronunciation guide, say h, except before an a, as in loch, z as j, and ş as in shush. An á after a vowel has a (normal) h sound before it.

Masculine and Unisex:

Hádan, Háranay, Hasáleh, Haşpar, Barsaş, Damaán, Damor, Damyár, Dano, Geleh, Godoş, Kárete, Manay, Manaş, Noyáhtan, Rósoştan, Simyar, Sölöhtan, Zálehyar, Zaloán

Feminine:

Háneş, Işmir, Narahan, Olenehy, Sölöhy, Zálehy

Family:

Gibosuhis, Asarahes, Turok

Sasinthēne Names

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:30:00 -0400

Sasinthēne names are not totally gendered. Rather, many names are unisex, particularly those ending in -a. Those ending in -ōs are almost always masculine, while those ending in -e or -o are almost always feminine– albeit old-fashioned. Modern feminine names often end with -a and tend to be unisex. Some deriving directly from a masculine name and ending in -a are exclusively feminine. First names also tend to be the names of saints in Adanism, or a person’s middle name will be. As a rough pronunciation guide, say ph, th, and ch like p, t, and k, ä et al simply say separately, like the uh and oh sounds in ‘uh-oh’, and g before any other consonant (including itself) is like the ng in… well, ng.

Masculine and Unisex:

Abbeleōs, Abbrigeōs, Adanasē, Ádanōs, Aggatheōs, Agiaména, Aibbeleōs, Aibbelaïr, Alféna, Alfesōs, Aléchē, Aléchōs, Amilcharōs, Amilchaïr, Amiléōs, Ampeleōs, Ampilcharōs, Amprigeōs, Ana-, Anthē, Arregéa, Arregéōs, Assoddōs, Atamiōs, Beléssaïr, Belazaïr, Benefena, Benerédeōs, Béthenōs, Béthēna, Benerēdéa, Biagéa, Biagéōs, Bronōs, Brégia, Caïssa, Caētē, Caloärōs, Cassaïr, Cazaïr, Céraōs, Cérōs, Cherōne, Chiara, Chora, Chorōs, Cleïta, Costōs, Deōnata, Deōnathōs, Deōnathē, Deōnexea, Dourōs, Dánechē, Ègéa, Eleiōs, Elossēne, Gianē, Gianōs, Giougénea, Gioustaïr, Gioustorōs, Giouthégesta, Giouthéxea, Giōna, Laréstē, Laréōs, Larē, Larēda, Elosēcheōs, Lourōs, Macháōs, Marthéa, Marthéōs, Marzéa, Marzéōs, Meddourōs, Mesdourōs, Mitréōs, Mérōs, Nathaōs, Nicheléōs, Nichéfena, Panōs, Parexea, Pargésta, Pargéōs, Paössa, Paōfena, Paōs, Sabbastōs, Sabbazōs, Safa, Safena, Sampastōs, Seloïsi, Semónōs, Sergeōs, Steloïssōs, Stefénōs, Stefēna, Tamōs, Taziana, Thegéa, Thexéa, Thémōs, Toumestōs, Toumezōs, Xanastōs, Xanathaōs, Zadēra, Zadērōs, Zaidōs, Zanazōs, Zegéa, Zeloïssōs, Zōstaïr

Feminine:

Abbezore, Aibbéle, Aiméle, Airēne, Alfēse, Aliche, Anthe, Caddélo, Caēte, Cére, Ceréno, Choreïsso, Deōnessa, Echléme, Gioríte, Giouléssa, Ignése, Laöpherné, Lauphérne, Lauréne, Marthessa, Medére, Mesdouro, Mezóuro, Méde, Medére, Nichelessa, Nicheleïssa, Nousso, Ourōne, Paōlessa, Sabbe, Seloïse, Sotēre, Steloïssa, Thexe, Theïsso, Thébe, Théssa, Zeloïssa, Zeloïsse

Family names are usually patronymic, ending in the genitive, or in -icos/-as/-eas/-anes, or locational, ending in -stes/-sti/-zi/-ssi.

Family:

Abbeleiou, Abbrigeiou, Adanaseu, Adanou, Aggatheiou, Aggathau, Aibbeleiou, Aibbeleanes, Aibbeleas, Aimeleas, Aimeleau, Alfeseu, Alecheas, Alecheanes, Alechou, Amileou, Ampeleou, Ampilcharou, Amprigeiou, Amprigeas, Antheas, Arregeou, Arregeanes, Assoddoas, Atamiou, Benefenas, Beneredeas, Biageanes, Bronōanes, Bregias, Bethenou, Betheneas, Dōnatas, Douras, Elōsseas, Gianeas, Laresteas, Lareas, Laureneas, Louras, Macháianes, Marthéas, Marzéas, Mitréianes, Mitréiou, Medéianes, Méras, Natháianes, Nichelessas, Nichefenas, Noussas, Ourōneu, Ourōneas, (Ama-)Panou, Pargeianes, Paōfenas, Paōlessas, Sabbastas, Sabbazou, Safenas, Sampastou, Seloïsas, Semonou, Sotēriou, Steloïssas, Tamanes, Thexeiou, Theïssas, Thébeas, Thémanes, Toumestou, Toumezas, Xanastou, Xanatháianes, Zadereas, Zaidou, Zanazeas, Zeloïssas, Goezenestes, Menofinezi, Calicastes, Voleïsti, Giraïr*/Agmapalla

*The Imperial house of Panarine.

Talenic Names

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:30:00 -0400

Talenic names are fairly strictly gendered. Some surnames have masculine and feminine forms. Some surnames have ‘dynastic’ forms, given to a dynast and the heir-apparent. These are marked with ‘D:’. As a rough pronunciation guide, ś is as in shush, ä et al. receive a slight ‘y’ sound, x is as in loch, and s and j become t before a second consonant.

Masculine:

Aksinatay, Aksinay, Alaśt, Alyä, Alyäsen, Alyäśt, Andon, Anelyä, Asen, Atamay, Atanas, Atanasay, Danatay, Danay, Denëc, Diyän, Emsyän, Ersyän, Etegas, Gabo, Gabor, Gezay, Kalman, Karas, Kaśman, Kolös, Korös, Larestay, Matxay, Maras, Markol, Maro, Marssä, Martagay, Martog, Melëc, Mirssä, Nikeley, Parvan, Paräśtan, Piro, Rada, Sabas, Salan, Sambor, Staman, Śtarole, Śtabaśt, Śterey, Śtoyän, Tamaśt, Taysas, Temay, Tozgan, Vartagay, Vartog, Vendole, Vëśtan, Viktin, Vlorin, Vorogay, Voyän, Vranitan, Xanas, Xeno, Zalan, Zagran, Zetenay, Zgolan

Feminine:

Aksina, Alaśtina, Albena, Alyäśtina, Alyëna, Andona, Aneta, Atana, Aymela, Darinka, Dayüna, Diyäna, Ersäna, Ezel, Gabrina, Galëna, Geza, Julena, Kalmena, Katina, Kerona, Klata, Klaśtina, Lüben, Lüra, Lüssa, Malëna, Markila, Marën, Nayäm, Neydel, Paräśtina, Pirina, Radina, Rega, Renata, Salëna, Sofina, Śtaram, Śteram, Stoyäna, Tamaśta, Tatayäna, Vartam, Vela, Vendolena, Vesera, Vëśtena, Viktina, Viktinayä, Vlorina, Voyäna, Vranitana, Xana, Xanaśtina, Xena, Zalëna, Zetina, Zgolana, Zornëna

Family:

Ademec/Ademissa, Katoss, Kolossec/Kolossa, Koloss, Marassa, Miślovec/Miślovissa (D: Miśogrevec), Sudenec/Sudenissa (D: Sejdenec), Velass,…

The Daartlawer Confederacy

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:00:00 -0400

Daartlaw is a modern nation established sometime after the formation of Gosselevism, first as a defensive alliance between Gosselevist dukes attempting to secede from the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea. Many of these dukes had been rendered nearly landless or vassalized under Orthodox lieges. The republics of Daartlaw and Ezstlaw, well-defended on the titular island of Daartlaw, had a modern, fortified citadel. Their Gosselevist mercantile classes, especially the guild ascendancy, had more in common with the separatist dukes than the Imperials, whose tax policies and protectionism against the Sasinthēnes had long stanched profits. Within the Citadel of Daartlaw, federalists met in guildhalls, and in conjunction with the lesser assemblies of Daartlaw and Ezstlaw, created the State Assembly, colloquially called the House of Masters, because members of the assembly are called Masters, in imitation of guild tradition.

With the wane of the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea, fractured but still nominally extant, Daartlaw has little in the way of existential threats. Prior to the Great War, Daartlaw’s foreign policy interests were defined by holdings across the eastern sea, particularly in its colonization of ’the islands’ (Daartlawer. ‘Surneleer’), such as Reineslew. Daartlaw during its golden age (around 1000) philosophically justified its actions as ‘bringing the rest of the world up with it’, in its attempt to found an idealized capital city for the whole world on an isolated yet inhabited island at what the Hesods imagined to be the center of the world ocean. Reineslew remained part of Daartlaw’s holdings, but after the closing of the 11th century, most of the rest of the world had moved on. Hostilities with the Sasinthēne world began to build again when Goentea continued the Empire of Panarine’s political support of the Orthodox Empire. The Great War is commonly held to have begun when Daartlaw seized Paramanta, an island north of Hesod claimed by Sasinthy.

The Kingdom and Empire of Goentea

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 23:40:30 -0400

At the time of the fall of Imperial Panarine, the Kingdom of Goentea ruled the entire western shore of the sea of Goent. While Goentea’s ambitions for control over the entirety of the Crown were obvious, the Kingdom made extremely little progress until their mediation in the Volissēne civil war demonstrated their outsized influence in the area. Several duchies and republics joined willingly. A swift campaign in divided Voleïze ended with no concessions save a remarkably permissive subjugation. Tanthes did not formally give up sovereignty, conscious of its neutrality between Cazia-Orod and the now-Imperial Goentea, with the Primate’s position being that the Sasinths and Talens were two branches of the Orthodox family.

However, Tanthes was under the de facto control of Imperial Goentea by all metrics. Imperial policy became that Tanthes was functionally a subject, and the Primate of Tanthes responded by passing an act which precluded the Empire of Goentea from ever receiving the status of ‘Sasinthēne Empire’, as Panarine and Tanthes had formerly held. Menovina was the last to be absorbed. Goentea afterwards incorporated Iantōs.

During the Great War, the Empire of Goentea was forced to make heavy concessions to the victorious Daartlaw and Cazia-Orod, including trade guarantees in Great Sasinthy and the loss of territory in Gesena and Belethion. Menovina was made independent, as a buffer territory with Cazia-Orod. While Goentea is factually the most powerful Sasinthēne nation, it’s checkered relationship with Tanthes, changing modern sensibilities, and failure to hold onto heartland Imperial territories precludes its status as a successor to Imperial Panarine, or as a nation unto all Sasinthēnes. In the wake of sharp losses, Goentea after the Great War is merely known as the Kingdom of Goentea.

The Union of Cazia-Orod

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 23:40:30 -0400

Cazia-Orod is a modern nation established shortly before the fall of Imperial Panarine, and notable as a direct cause of its dissolution. It was formed as a dual monarchy under the royal house of Cazia, Mislovec, which received the kingdom of Orod from house Sudenec, in exchange for the irredentism of the entire kingdom of Orod from Panarine. Owing to shared history and a series of intermarriages with the Sudenec, the royal branch of house Mislovec eventually took the name ‘Suden-Mislovec’. Cazia-Orod shares its capital with that of Cazia, Kenofal. Briefly, its capital was Panarine, before that was conquered by Gold Voleize. Currently, its capital is the city of Menoven, near Panarine.

Cazia-Orod espouses a pan-Talenic philosophy, and has long sought control of Roscart, viewing it as a fundamentally Talenic polity. In the decades leading up to the Great War, Cazia-Orod attempted to act as a strongman in its immediate territorial vicinity, attempting to curtail the influence of Goentea over Tanthes to avoid the reemergence of a unified Sasinthēne state backed by the Orthodox church. It also provided security guarantees to separatist Segouza in exchange for the immediate vicinity of Ilimpar, in the name of Talenic self-rule. The Great War itself had as much, if not more, to do with Cazia-Orod’s response to the unification of the Crown under Goentea, than it did with the invasion of eastern Great Sasinthy. Cazia-Orod made significant territorial gains, including Gesena, in the aftermath of the war.

The Volissēne Civil War

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 23:40:30 -0400

When Imperial Panarine fell and the last of the Ourōneas Emperors were mistakenly killed by Volissēne cannonfire, it led to widespread scandal. The remaining holdouts of Gesena, Belethion, and Peloïssod were roundly ignored by the victorious and largely satisfied Cazia-Orod, and turned their attention on Voleïze. However, these holdouts were nearly destitute. Without access to the Imperial treasury, they were at risk of default on their war loans, and therefore could not muster a force to attack the republic immediately. They would not need to. While the Volissēnes had not recently been fond of Imperial Panarine as a nation, they were Sasinthēnes, and many were offended by what they viewed as soft treatment of the Imperial family’s accidental killers.

A faction within the Volissēne military arose, supported by large contingents of rural malcontents, calling themselves ‘Golds’, for the undecorated golden flags they adopted in reference to the colors of Panarine. The loyalist faction became known as ‘Reds’ due to the traditional colors of the city of Voleize. The war lasted only a few years, but had a drastic impact, both on the state and culture of Voleize. The Reds lost all territory in the Volissēne March to a new Gold state, Menovina, which re-annexed the city of Panarine. After the war ended, Sasinthēne polities initially refused to recognize the Gold state under any name including Panarine so as not to provide pretext for calling their old provincial statuses; eventually, a compromise was reached and the official name of the Gold state was made ‘The Republic of Menovina at Panarine’.

The impact on culture was especially pronounced because of the high number of irregular soldiers enlisted from the civilian population, to either side. In many cases, this was a matter of class, particularly between the borgeousie and the aristocracy; many rural estate-owners fought for the Golds, while many noble scions, proud of their Volissēne heritage, fought for the Reds. The training these irregulars received was highly variable, and partly for their close contact with hired mercenaries, they marauded as much as they fought. Collectively, these irregulars were called Rifle-sons and Cutlass-daughters, and they established a fashion of coarse, roguish, but romantic gallivanters in Volissēne literature and poetry. Many Volissene folk songs refer to adopting or returning home and settling down from this vulgar lifestyle.

The Talenic Invasions

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 18:05:30 -0400

The Talens originate from a nomadic people from the south of Mitrion. During the time of Nous, the ancestors of the Talens were effectively outlaws, one of several neighboring nomadic peoples variably warred with and permitted settling rights. They likely played a role in the destruction of Nous. When the Noumesians were restored to power in Ondmar and Sutthmar, many of the Talens were exiled– the first (Misselovene) Talenic migration– and crossed Calassy to settle on the Vorad riverlands, which at the time was under Calassine control. Talenic forces at one point threatened to control over half of ancient Calassy, and are listed in the Black Vanuko cycle as one of the foes of Hasaleh, as the rulers of Ilimpar and mercenaries commissioned by the southern Dorohats.

The second (Sudenene) Talenic migration went further, pushing into Arpenea to take Tarheny (Tarxena), and pushing into the Tanthēne Empire, leading to the eventual establishment of the kingdom of Orod. While many Talens who had already settled in Voradena joined the migrants, most had come directly from Mitrion due to encroachment on the part of Sutthmar, and over several generations had come through Calassy, leading a long interregnum in that country in the process. The Asaromin, a ‘heathen’ Calassine people long on the outskirts of Calassine society, are thought to have accompanied the invaders to Voradena, Tarheny, and Gesena.

Talenic Clans

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 01:30:30 -0400

The Talenic house structure does not operate like a Sasinthēne house’s, where children are born into one of their parents’ houses. Rather, one individual, typically the person who holds the most esteemed ancestral title (for instance the Kingdom of Orod, in the case of the Sudenec dynasty), is considered the house head. Everyone more closely related than a second cousin is considered part of that house or clan, but their membership is in relation to the house head. This is literal in the naming structure. The head is named, for instance, ’the Sejdenec’, whereas their kin would be ‘of Sudenec’, typically infixing a kinship term. This example also demonstrates a strange property of some Talenic surnames where the name has a slightly different form for the clan head.

In practice, clan membership is not so hard-and-fast. Parents of members, sworn servants, and esteemed distant relations can all be claimed by the clan, and typically, once recognized by a head, it’s not lost– but new, more distant members, may not receive recognition. Succession is an internal affair. In places with substantial Sasinthēne influence, the eldest child, preferring male children, takes the lion’s share. In some areas, it’s the most prominent male relative, preferring closer ties. Clan kinship doesn’t vary by gender. Because a highborn child’s mother and father will both be members of prominent clans, and typically different ones, that child is typically considered to belong to both. Practically speaking, the one they actually belong to is determined by strength of kinship and prominence of the clan. Of course, this varies substantially depending on their parents relationships, and even their own relationships with their respective clan heads.

After having children, spouses are considered to hold roughly equivalent standing within a clan. In-laws are also extremely important. As a general result, women historically held better positions within Talenic society than women in many other societies across Ōchis, because they were considered about as important to their husbands’ clans as their husbands were themselves. A sister-in-law or aunt was, similarly, an extremely important relation. Rather predictably, the influence and predominance of the Sasinthēne dynastic system has altered how the aristocracy reckon clan relations, but the Talenic family structure remains alive in all levels of Talenic society, and persists unaltered among the commons.

One practice extremely peculiar to the Talenic clan structure is the practice of Sword-Cousins. A sword-cousin is typically, but not always, an elite champion sworn to a clan member. Traditionally, they are lesser nobility, though a lowborn sword-cousin is a popular fixture in stories, and certainly happens. The sword-cousin is considered to be a member of the clan, albeit at the farthest rung in terms of status. This status does not extend to spouses or children. Talens often practice honorary clan adoption, which operates in a similar capacity, though does not always confer on the adoptee the status of being a certain member’s child. Even in very ordinary houses, clan membership is a complex and important feature of Talenic society.

Orthodox Adanism

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 23:55:30 -0400

Orthodox Adanism, as opposed to Gosselevism or God’s Worship, is a branch of Adanism in which the God is said to have a double nature. This is called the doctrine of dualism, as opposed to monism. The nature of the Double Lord, as the Orthodox faith holds, is that the God is whole, double, and divided. The Double Lord’s nature is further described by the doctrines of Eleia and Mesdouro, the divine and continual grace which instilled Adanōs and instills the Saints, and worldly evil as a separated creation of the God. Orthodox Adanists believe that evil was necessary for the creation of free will to have meaning, and that humanity collectively chose evil over grace.

Orthodox Adanists believe that both before and after the prophet, Adanōs, the divine spirit of Eleia inhabited those who were spurred by ’the grace of the God’ to commit great acts upon the world. Those determined by Tanthes to be instilled with Eleia are remembered as saints within the faith. One other class of people are considered to touch, but not have, Eleia, particularly, the Primate of Tanthes upon election is believed to commune with Eleia for the tenure of his position, but is not seen as having the power of a Saint, merely the power necessarily afforded by the God as the successor of Adanōs as a prophet. ‘Prophet and Saint’, one of the styles of Adanōs, is also afforded to the Primate of Tanthes, however, Adanōs is believed to have been born instilled with ’the whole of Eleia’. Orthodox Adanists believe that the Primarch of Tanthes has special spiritual capacities as leader of the church. Some Orthodox Adanists believe that some figures, including the Blessed Magi, are ‘devolved’ the Eleia of the Primarch of Tanthes, or ‘sanctified in absence’, such as the hierarch of Orod.

Primacy of Tanthes

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 23:55:30 -0400

When Adanōs accepted the submission of the twelve Magi at Tanthes, he declared the city holy among all the holiness of the world. There, selfish, power-hungry, and black-hearted men were persuaded by the grace of the God to set aside their corruption and iniquity and with him build a church to spread the world over. Adanōs, though the doctrine of his faith affirmed his possession of Eleia, the grace of the prophets, was mortal, and died some 30 years after the prostration of the Magi. Adanōs was a shrewd administrator, and in his later years, ran his nascent church with a firm hand. He stipulated that his successor, called the Primate of Tanthes, would be chosen by the twelve Blessed Magi (who nowadays are not Magi), of which all but one had by then died, and been replaced by his dearest apostles, and by the hierarchs of the domains his faith spread to. He did not stipulate that there would always be twelve, or that they would always remain in Tanthes, though he replaced each that died during his lifetime.

The doctrine of Tanthene Primacy declared that Tanthes would forever be the center of his faith, and the Primate of Tanthes forever the center of Tanthes. When the Agmapallan emperor marched east to found his empire, the Primate of Tanthes blessed Panarine before the nations of the world, as the sword and shield of the faith, and heirs to the Empire of Tanthes. When Panarine fell, this station was coveted by Goentea, though the blessing of Tanthes has yet to be extended. The number of Blessed Magi, or Tanthene Electors, has varied between 8 and 13, with 12 preferred for symmetry with Adanōs. In addition, several hierarchs outside of Tanthes have at various points been given the distinction: the head of the Oronar Orthodox church is a Tanthene Elector, as was the hierarch of Panarine. Prior to the Gosselevian Schism, the hierarch of Goscelebe was briefly considered by the Primate of Tanthes as successor to a vacant seat as Blessed Magus. Before the title was given to the hierarch of Panarine, three Panarinian emperors held the title of Blessed Magus and passed it to their heirs.

The Primate of Tanthes has broad authority and spiritual relevance in Orthodox Adanism. Their vast power over Adanist nations, including the prospect of grants of status as successor to Panarine, means that the Primate has historically been extremely powerful. The Primate of Tanthes has historically held the authority to place an Adanist polity under Theocracy, via one of the faith’s military orders. Finally, in Orthodox doctrine, only the Primate holds a permanent state of intercession with Eleia, though ’touching’, but not ‘bearing’. In other words, the Primate of Tanthes is thought to hold great sway in granting blessings to the faithful.

The Soul

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 22:58:30 -0400

Souls are real– the human psyche possesses an undeniable spiritual component. The unseen world is a realm made of thought, dream, intuition, and feeling, and the soul lives there, albeit forever anchored to its body. Using radiometry, anatomists one day determine that the feelings and instincts of animals also have a footprint in the unseen world, but animals do not seem to invite possession or have capacity for the Magic in the way humans do. Upon death, it is thought that a soul may become something like a daemon. Prayer and exorcism both seemingly have an impact on this process.

The soul seems to be extremely picky about what sort of body it can anchor to. No homunculus has been invented which a human soul can inhabit stably, though some Magi have claimed this feat by technicality, i.e., by blending their original body with a homunculus. Polymorphism is never stable for the same reason, but ‘spreading’ ones soul between ones human body and that of a homunculus or animal is doable, in fact, it’s a specialty of certain cultures. It’s thought that death due to shock is due to the soul rejecting the body. The soul is partly responsible for healing– without the direction of the soul, healing is often cancerous. Demoniacs and those suffering partial soul loss cannot properly heal.

The soul has something to do with both Magism and magicianship. The souls of Magi are dramatically different than those of magicians and ordinary humans, though it would be wrong to say souls do not vary in shape or composition. Magi create spells in the unseen world using their outsized presence in that world– that is, their souls. Magicians merely must use their souls to coordinate with daemons in spellcasting.

Le Comte

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:07:57 -0400

In a prison seventy leagues from Kreshelan, under the operation of the state of Unitas, there was a grate atop a narrow channel fifteen feet deep. No light entered through the tight bars. No light emanated from within. The carcass was pinned in the bottom of that crevice, stuffed in like meat in a can. A senselessly long period of time had shaped it after the suggestion of the hollow, which was squared and tight and impossible to climb. The carcass was stuck. It had a broad chest and two shoulders and one arm between them, but the arm was wedged and potentially fused to the belly. The arm had eaten its own muscles to fortify the skin and the bone, and the rest of it had rotten. Neither could it turn, or shimmy itself free of its pinning. It belonged to an immortal thing. A thing which was powered by blood and starlight, like the machines of the old Empire. It was an imitation of what could be called a vampire.

Hunger returned as it always did. It was not a new hunger, it was old and clawing. The kind which returned fortified after giving up, lucid to the truth of imminent starvation. After disappearing and leaving in its place a nauseating emptiness. It came again like fire. Imagine a fire which starts, smokeless and airless, in the little atrophied hollows of the abdomen and burns outward. Imagine rot burning through the body. Imagine that burn slowing, and finally, feebly crawling through every empty and branching vein. Sometimes when it came it came easy, and the thing that persisted inside the stuck lug of meat could pretend that there was, in truth, no being at all. The carcass did not know how long it had been since it last beat its heart, but it could feel even the hindbrain beginning to go. Its head was beginning to die. In the dry cavity of its heart, black and hypoxic, there remained a small slickening of blood. Sick blood. Rats’ blood. The effluence of rot.

The hindbrain startled. It felt an oncoming nothingness start to overtake it, and it flooded signals, climbing up and down the protruding spine. The heart squeezed, weak, submitting dregs to the pinprick of starlight at its center. Something else screamed into existence. The carcass beheld some untold agony, with something, something capable of beholding, something which had come piteously lurching up again. A weak, sick fire coursed through its head. Sight was gone. Smell was gone. All that remained with any use was hearing. There was hearing, and perhaps, with the flab of meat in the cave in its head, speech. The fire– livening fire– was filthy. It was bilious. It washed over the brain, and it sickened. Nausea clawed up from a stomach which had rotted. And then there was so little left in the heart, but there was vigor there.

Four close walls kept its head forever turned to the right. The carcass’s legs were twisted inwards. It did not feel them. One of two ears– it had once had two ears– was pressed against the stone. The ear could hear, but it had been a long time since there had last been anything behind it to listen. It heard a din of tiny thumps. It separated– and this came easy– it into nearly a score, a dull roar of twenty-some heartbeats. They were rapid. It picked out the churn of blood through tiny pinhole veins, and the scrape of claws through tunnels scarcely larger. Memory came with the screaming thing which beheld and listened. It did not remember a time without rats or the heartbeats of rats. The slosh of their blood in their gravid veins could not be ignored, instead, it drew a focus nearing on infatuation.

Without a voice it begged one to come closer, to plunge its head through a crack in the wall near its teeth. Its teeth ached from disuse. It trembled with anticipation as one of the score grew louder, clearer through the rock. The thudding of a rat’s heart crescendoed; the carcass began to perceive the scratching of tiny paws over the gaps in the stones by its ear. It was tunneling. The carcass’s jaw skidded on rough stone as it opened, leaving behind ghosts of skin. It was raw but there was no blood to issue from its now-exposed veins. Figments roared into its mind, imagined scenarios of the rat’s head in its fangs. The heart was the enemy of the bleeding creature. When opened, the heart pushes the blood out. When shut, when trapped within the thing, blood merely flooded against the winds of the veins. The carcass heard it thunder. As though it was trying to leave the rat. As though it was trying to get to the carcass.

Soon, though, the heart of this rat grew no louder. Desperation kept the carcass from accepting that it was quieting, that the rat was starting to move away again. The rat was not coming closer. Anguish replaced hope, an unconscious hope that had come alive in the mind of the carcass. If it had fluid with which to sob, if it had the vigor to crane its neck, tears would rinse down its shapeless face. One socket was empty and sunken. It was covered in the dried jelly of a ruined eye, which would then drip down to pool where the legs were sunken under the rot and the filth. Another rat’s heartbeat drove to the forefront if its awareness. It could not ignore it. The sound of the blood tantalized it, promising an end to starvation. It promised the return of a clarity it could not see past. There was no hope of a certain thought within the carcass’s head, but perhaps the rats had tormented it forever.

Once, it had eaten one. That was why the dregs of blood in the crevice-like folds of its heart were putrid. It had left a hole by its mouth, a rat-hole. Perhaps the rats could smell the rot in the wall, a scent the carcass could not discern. It had a ruin of a nose, and it did not need to smell. Perhaps the tormenting rats, the thousand little beating hearts in the wall, evil and hateful things which would not come near enough, were hungry. Perhaps this would mean one would eventually seek the source of the rot and draw near enough. Perhaps– now that it could listen, and now that it could imagine– the ground was thick and covered with rats. Perhaps there were thousands and it was they its legs buried down into. It scarcely felt the difference between flesh and stone. The carcass began and ended with the tight close of stone around it.

It hoped for so long for one to climb up, or to protrude from the wall. It prayed, though it did not know to what, or indeed what existed to be prayed to. Mostly, wordlessly, thoughtlessly, it begged. It begged, without so much as a voice to croon with, and more rats seemed to arrive, but none drew closer. Their hearts beat, one over another, until it could not discern between the sound of one heart beating and another. There were so many of them. One cascade of blood that flooded over itself and swelled the veins and the body into a distended and throbbing shape. It was a malignant sound. It had always been. The carcass had always known it to be, but it had forgotten. It roared and disappeared. Its presence could not be relied upon to remind it of the treachery of the rats. Soon, the mind had gone again, except for a stirring, which crescendoed with every sound. It took and it brought untidy thoughts.

After a long time, though not so long that its hindbrain had clenched its heart and flooded the carcass again with the horrors of awareness, a clawing came sharp and clear. Beneath the hot rancor of starvation, its ear pricked with the thumping of something near, not covered by rock or by distance. A rat had drawn near to the hole. The carcass fell silent. Its jaw was leaden, the muscles which might have actuated the bite were half missing, and otherwise weak. The stirring mind in the carcass brought with it a fact, a hardly conscious fact, which crept up to the surface. It loved this rat. It was infatuated with the steady thrum, moving so near that the sound might have been felt rather than heard. The carcass waited.

Pattering to the end of the tunnel came the rat. The carcass remained perfectly still, its tongue-tip faintly raised, until the snout of the creature floated a hair’s-breadth from it. It could taste its breath. It could feel the warm shudder of its issuance on the tip of its tongue. Fitfully, the hindbrain sought to bring its jaw shut. Muscles protested, other ghostings of skin left scraped onto the rocks. It was near enough to kiss the rat, its heartbeat a thunder unlike any other in its ear. So the carcass loved it. The jaw closed like a steel trap, pinning the creature by a fang beside its spine. It scurried. With its forepaws it flayed the lips half-off the carcass, but it was stuck fast. The fang had gone by the bone. Blood burgeoned in the arteries by the tooth, blood the carcass could smell, but not reach, which the fang had missed. It desired it with a heady sharpness that blinded the carcass to all else, but instinct overtook it. It could not allow the thing to escape.

The warm thing fought between its lips. This most beloved creature fought to pry itself out and could not. The carcass was bemused. Then, it clamped its jaw tighter until the head fell inert into the cavity of its mouth and the creature’s blood reciprocated. It sunk the tongue in its filth. Filth that would douse its hunger. Filth that proved the rat loved it, and it dried, and, far thinner, slid from the crevice in the wall past the carcass’s chin and down to the rot where its legs were buried.

–

The fleet address would have to come once the suns sank beneath the horizon. Right now, Kalivan was admiral of the Black Fleet of Polocarija, and he had spread his gift of blood and starlight to every seaman in his fleet. None were without his blessing. None were without the favor of Isabella Petrovich, for whom he sailed to gold and slaughter. He had made his base on the dull rock of Zlacinica, the gate to the East. The rock was glut on the prizes of the treasure fleets of Temeryon and Unitas. Twenty-two ships sat moored in the cove at Pais-du-Selen. No fewer than seventy men, now fed by starving stars, crewed each ship.

He wallowed in a blood-drunk mind. Kalivan mused over what the men would learn, when the suns fell again. Formerly brave navymen of Zedarja, all. Bosom-clingers to the Haruta. Bedfellows to the den of vipers they propped up. Zedarja would have to fall, and with it, the decadent Ronodors. The suns began to rise, beyond the threshold, but he could not sleep yet. Merely thinking of it incensed him, the Ronodors who could not pacify Doleri. The Ronodors who could much less bring the world to heel again. If it had been him on the throne, with the crown on his head, he would have smashed the impudent Mežižan and Nodjiewac both. Kalivan knew precious little of the Axtadum, less that which was not taught to any supplicant to the faith, but now he wagered he knew a little something no Three-fearing scholar dared to venture. The Axtadum was weak, too, when it died. It should’ve just kept all those damn slaves down.

Kalivan wound his way down into the great caches underneath the rock. A treacherous tangle of sea cavelets and tunnels wound down to the strand, and the red of the suns ran across the water beneath the arch, almost reaching the edge of the water. He let it approach until the foam around his boots was in the color of frothy blood, and then stalked back to the long rows of coffers and trunks, piled to meet the stalactites in some places, or traded for exquisite gemstones in miniscule chests kept just beside the path. Still restless, he found himself in front of a high pile of crowns, stolen from antiquities cargo bound from Temeryon and the Makrisakt. Without needing to think, he plucked one from the stack and turned it over in his hands.

A star of five points wrought in decadent gold rose above a horizon of glittering spikes, encrusted with rubies and pearls. It shone in conspiracy, like a buttercup, the gleam of truest gold against his skin. He imagined it sitting on Isabella’s hair, imagined how it would shine in his hands as he crowned her. They wouldn’t have need for the Euclija’s crown. There would be no reminders of a reign before. An insipid and languid reign. He ground his teeth at the thought, then inspected the crown a little closer. Something would have to be done about the star. Then again, something could be done. With a thumb he pinched one point and bent it until it snapped. He did the same with the one immediately opposite, and left it a slightly distorted triangle. A shape with three points. It would suit until he abducted a goldsmith.

Gingerly, he returned the crown to the top of the stack. Soon, his banners would fly above Polocarija, set in place by the vast political engine of the Secret Fire, when Isabella’s persuasions paid off. He produced a letter from the pocket within his jerkin, nearest his chest, and read it over once. Her words, the words of his beloved.

"...And the fleet shall join you where you say you are docked, my sweeting. We shall couple when I join you, after their banners have sat beside yours."

Beyond the paper, he eyed the amended crown at the top, with satisfaction. Isabella would denounce the ignominious Markov, merely required for the begetting of her whelps. A convenience for the law of true birth. He would place the crown upon her head. He would restore respectability to Zedarja and the station of the Euclija. His wife’s Zedarja. He went through the chests for regalia, and for necklaces to layer on overtop. As he shifted the piles, yellow gleamings danced across the roof, like the burgeoning blue reflections on the roof over the waters in a sea cave. His grin was wolfish in his estimate, in the reflection of a puddle of drip-water.

He caught his face in the gleam of a ruby, toothy, manicured, when the first cannon shot rang out. At first, he feared that fire had caught in the magazines. But it was far too rhythmic. It wasn’t a chain. The order rose in his mind, “rolling fire”. It stung his tongue with a bitter taste, a order he had given and heard carried out, as the gun crews fired in asynchronous sections with a battering, constant pace. It was regular. In a stupor, he counted the batteries, the sounds of a drilled militia. It was bemusing. He hadn’t given any order.

Then came the bells. Down in the caches, it was clamorous, the tolling of all calamity. The caves were stuffed with daylight sentries, the denizens of the bare rock and the seamen too insignificant to receive his gift. They ought to clang their bell sooner, or rather not at all, because no muster need be called when, near as he could tell, his own fleet was wasting munitions to the sea. It was fifteen seconds, stock-still and standing in his caches when the thought arose, independent of anything but the unceasing sound of rolling fire, and now the hushed breaking of timbers, that his fleet was not the one firing. The very notion extended his stupor, until one of the daylight sentries broke, full-sprint, past the door to the caches.

Spluttering, the boy spilled before him, raving nonsenses about the colors of the Haruta and a blockade. A few words in each blabbering rush made any sense at all– the loss of the Darling Conquest, the Red Morning, the Opportune Delight. The flagship, near to timbers. He squeezed his eyes shut, then he fixed the boy in a gaze honed so hard the boy froze in place.

“What good is a mustering clamor after the battle has begun?!” The boy recoiled as though struck, but that was hardly a satisfactory response. No, a black wroth poured down every nerve, and he pulled back and struck. His nails sliced clean through the boy’s torso, and he fell into two shapeless lumps. Again, Kalivan shouted, “Useless idiots! Useless beyond livestock!” He stamped down on the piece he thought must have been the boy’s head, though he scarcely looked. Fitfully, he roved for the regalia and the crown, then plucked it up.

Still, the question of who maintained his state of confusion, even as he passed a chest of trade gems and took it up, in case of a raid. A chest which held a quarter of the wealth of the entire cache. The cannons sounded almost indistinct from his own. The Haruta banner. Their banners have sat beside yours. A blockade. Realization rose, and with it, the stupor ebbed. It was replaced by another rage. This one yawned deeper and darker than the last, and he nearly ran his hands bloody on the crown before remembering the weakness of the gold. It would press. So he put it on his head. The Dolerani had betrayed him!

He stormed to the mouth of the cave to look out under the lip of the cave. Though eastward, the suns had climbed high enough so that their light, which had become hateful to him, did not immolate him. Kalivan watched his flagship sink beneath the waves, and a Dolerani galley trawl up beside it. But another confusion remained. Zedarja had found his cove, hidden in a desolate rock. His fleet was coming apart, and the bay was blockaded. Kalivan’s mind raced, then turned to the tunnels, where a sloop waited, a failsafe in case of an attack, and a system that ought to have given warning.

That thought turned to ice in his mind. They hadn’t known to give warning, of course they hadn’t; on sighting the banner of the Haruta they had been told to hail, but expose no cannons. The Zedari who would join his cause would be welcomed and allowed to moor. But now, Kalivan had been betrayed. He hustled through the corridors within the rock, a natural fortress. The mountains served as a wall. The tunnels were too treacherous and winding to be navigated by an invading force. They would protect him and his marines from the suns, and an invading force would lack even dim light to see by.

It ought to have worked that way, the thought rose, but as he raced towards the western mouth, the cries of sentries and his newly-wakened spawn echoed through the halls. They’re stoppering the entrances, a voice cried. It’s all collapsed, forty feet deep! To the northern mouth!

Incredulousness gave way to a worse realization. A worse betrayal. The thought that Isabella might have forsaken him. It was a horror more hateful than the dawn, and he plunged deeper through the passages of Zlacinica, of his impregnable rock. But they didn’t need to. The marines and their sappers didn’t need to, they were going to bring the rock down. Would he have been crushed, already, if not for his restlessness? He steeled himself, drawing on every ounce of revulsion to banish the thought as he scurried over the rough-hewn bowels of the tunnel system. An immortal had no need of a tomb.

When he reached the mouth, it hadn’t yet been sealed. It opened into a pockmarked cave with a basin deep enough to house a single sloop, his freedom. Kalivan slung a sailcloth around himself like a shroud to keep the sun at bay, over the crown on his head, until he reached the ship. There was a day crew, one which lived, though fifteen were his spawn. Only when he pulled aboard did he stop, and the incredulous rage of the tirade started to ebb. Mercifully, there were no questions when he demanded cast-off and fled into a black stupor, and he embraced his anger and his bafflement like bosom-friends.

He barely felt the ship slip away into the day. They did not wake him until the rendezvous.

–

In the crevice in the wall, the carcass remembered. First, it remembered another burning, a burning worse than the fire of hunger chewing through empty veins. It remembered hate, a thing which flared to life in its dead gut and made it shiver, a waste of blood, but it was alive in the carcass. The carcass remembered its name. It was Kalivan Rakulvaya. The star in his chest flared, gleaming with vigor. His heart– still empty and dry, still starving, still full of putrid dregs that sickened his mind when it beat– was filled with a vigor he no longer had the strength to find pitiful. The satiation did not drive away the sounds of rats, nor the agonized wanting which gripped his chest at every beat of every tiny heart, a thousand times a minute. Kalivan could not shut it out. Then Kalivan disappeared for a long time.

He stirred when a scrape reached the carcass’s ear. There was only one ear which really remained, the other was a smoothed-over ruin. The sound came down through the grate at the top of the pit. The ear twitched. It had, scarcely, the room to twitch. It was like a metal-footed chair being pushed along the stonework. A voice came, formless and muted, without hope for understanding, in the language of Unitas. Kalivan could only assume there had been a response, for then, the sound of a mortal thing, footsteps on tiles in a room big enough to echo, retreated. He was left with the rats.

Then came the fear. Kalivan had known the fear by another name before. It was black and complex and it pulled the mote of starlight cradling his heart up into his throat, like gravity, like its little light spluttered out all at once. The nerves in the carcass grew sharp, glands without sweat pricked. His head went hot. In its darkness was a blind, black, dread. He wished he could see. He wished he could escape and crawl out of that hole, but he was pinned. Stuck meat, rot squeezed and sinking under stone. The fear came slowly. It agonized as it crept closer, still coming, but impossibly slow now. When it stopped and at last came no closer, he could still feel the fear seeping through the bars above him. It wafted down, through thick, dead air. The same voice came again. An honorific followed; the only part he actually heard.

The wait grew long, until his nerves went quiet. He had no endurance which had withstood the oubliette and the tight press of the stone. Without the nerves singing, buried in the carcass, Kalivan could only feel the ache of what joints remained. The fear would wait, he knew, until he was ready to beg for a word from above. To gift him with its regard. Horror became another dear friend to him, rancor, sealed in the close as he was. A rancor strong enough so that, if he could move but a half-inch, he thought he might tear the cell to dust and rubble. Too tight to flail. Too close to climb. Too solid to force himself against the stones and shove them out. He’d heard the rats. The walls were thick and fast. He was seething when it came to him, in its dooming simplicity. The fear, she had graced him with an opportunity to taste her cruelty.

Kalivan would be expected to say the first word. He had been given an eternity to burgeon with cruel barbs to spit up from the hole if he ever so much as got the chance. To wound the fear. They all fought for supremacy. He could not, for the fear which crushed him down into the very depths of the channel, speak. He tried to summon his rage, but instead fell silent. Long stints of silence did not have a meaning to Kalivan anymore. He heard the fear sit down. Its intensity did not diminish.

Instead, the fear flared. It was oppressive, omnipresent, pouring down from above. Isabella Petrovich was about to speak. The carcass’s ear was pointed and well-attenuated. Kalivan could hear the draw of breath. It prickled at the back of his neck. Her voice trickled down through the grate, it poured over him like ice. It forced the thing that hid inside the carcass away, down into the hollow of his chest. “Once, you came to me on the eastward winds with the treasures of the whole Elan over in your hold, my love. You said you would elude the vastness of eternity. You would win me and make me your wife. Now you flinch at my coming,” she said. Her voice was a slow, dreadful draw. It was like a talon of ice, piercing through the carcass. Wounded, and wounding. “My love. I can hear you like a rat in the wall. I can hear your heart.”

The awful thing, the heart, It spat acrid blood through atrophied tubes. Kalivan tilted his head up, and the wall scored the skin from his cheek as his cheekbone juddered along the bricks. “Faithless bitch,” he spat, like a door creaking. When it echoed back, again and again, he wished he could eat it. He wished that the anger he sunk into the words could feed him. His face was torn open from the texture of the stones.

Her response was a strange, choked snort. It sounded like laughter. Hateful mockery. He heard her eyes roll in her head, turn down. Look, perhaps, through the grate. “Faithless…? How could I ever forget you, my Kalivan? I see that they’ve ruined it all, misconstrued the purpose of my designs. You’ve grown hungry, when you should have simply slumbered. It ought to have been as a dream, a dream I could one day hope to wake you from, and you’d sweetly beg me to take you back. How could I have said no?”

The carcass lowed. It squalled like livestock in the abattoir rail, wheezing like a squeezebox in horrible rage that he could not contain. His whole body shook, it wanted to thrash itself against the walls and either break them down or break itself, until at last Kalivan reasserted his control. No, there was something distinctly wrong. Something had to have changed, he was wise to it. She had changed.

Kalivan clawed his disparate mind together. He could not beg, he could scarcely dream of begging her to take him back. The rage rose in one hideous and certain squall. He would not leave with her. He would sooner remain in the close with the rats and come to pieces, or rather claw his way out and tear her apart. He rubbed the carcass’s face against the wall until he felt it and sneered, “How young is his new whore?”

“Inhospitable, Kalivan,” Isabella said. No, the wrongness he sensed was stronger, even as she shook off the barb. She sounded mournful. “They slaughtered Markov. My only husband, father to my children and the laughing man stuck him like livestock. The laughing man killed him.”

Kalivan laughed. It rose through the grate.

“I’ve come to give you the opportunity to thank me, to forgive me,” Isabella said, with a nerve Kalivan scarcely thought could be possible. “Someday soon, when my children have failed me, I will take them to learn your lesson. You will help me teach them. My children grasp. They lie. But when you have done this, they could not be able to stop me from bringing you out again. Markov has served his purpose,” she drawled. “Now, you. Beg, and I’ll take you back, when the time comes. Give me Doleri. Be my king.”

The carcass raged and Kalivan sank in it. He went somewhere beyond words, beyond love, and then he emerged. In a terrible howl, he said, “Then I would eat them, and grow back my wits bit by bit. I would bleed them both, your whelps with Markov, and then you’d love me. You’d beg. You’d wander back to your betrayal. You’d feel it in your heart, knowing you’ve been left alone, you cunt, and then I’d eat you. Arms, legs, all the way up to the middle of the back and I’d bury you in a hole. Can you kill me? For every itch unscratched, can you kill me? I spit on your children. I spit on the grate you put over me.”

He could hear her lips curl into a bitter smile. She said, “My perfect brute. You don’t get it, yet. You will, when I pull you out, when you play your part. Things will be right. It wasn’t time for you to do what you tried. I’ve only given you more time. But I need you. I needed Markov,” she spat, “And they killed him. If only you can love me, I can give it to you, what you wanted. The Euclija is weak, and Markov is gone. Come, forgive me.” When she said that– forgive me– Kalivan almost heard a whinge in her voice.

Kalivan laughed, inconsolable. “It’s too late for that, you fucking whore. Go fuck his stuck corpse and pretend he was ever as good as me alive. You could have had it,” he screamed, his dead heart pounding, churning inside the carcass. It screamed for blood it didn’t have and the tiny star made sang chorus to those awful, empty pangs. He ripped his tongue open on his teeth and shrilled, a cacophony inside the close, until, panting, the storm abated. “But you fucked it. The Gods shall bless he who bathes the world in blood and starlight, in love and war. With my teeth I opened armadas in your name, in your love, feeding your star in my heart. Fear—” he shouted the syllable, and frenzy overtook him again. “—You never wanted power, you feared it! You weren’t big enough for the bounty won by your love! You never were! First among squanderers, inventor of a power you could never alone see the worth of. I pity you in your smallness, in your insignificance. You needed me to show you what you’d made! Whore! Do not deign to ask me for it! There is no love in me for you! Rather, kill me! Dig me up and kill me!”

Slow, measured, the fear spoke. “I disagree,” she said. It drew closer, and he heard a slow sound, a sticking sound, the quiet little mangling of skin. The scent of blood flooded the air, even detectable by the ruin of his nose. He heard the first few drops hit the grate and felt it. Terror. For a horrible wince of a moment, he knew what came next. The betrayal. The betrayal of the carcass, which would be given what it demanded. It would demean him for it. In a handful of moments, he would be lost to hunger. He would be at her command. “Now, drink,” she commanded.

The carcass drank. It came in a slow, narrow curtain, running down the walls. It slithered in the cracks of the grout and the carcass lapped it up, forcing itself into new and terrible positions in the bind, licking what slithered over the putrid stones of the channel. No thoughts could surface. The rancor was quelled, his heart slowed, as the awful organ filled with Isabella’s blood. Hunger diminished. Gratitude rose in him, an awful and betraying gratitude. There was no fiber of the carcass that remained under his command. Isabella Petrovich’s treachery was complete.

There was another squishing sound and the draw of fabric. He could hear a knot come together, and the seeping of blood, which blended with rot and putrescence, the droppings of rats, and centuries of dust on his tongue, slowly stopped. He wallowed, moaning in his impotence. Again he heard her lips creak and draw, becoming what he knew must be the picture of satisfaction. “If I never wanted the power you ‘deigned!’ to grant me, they would have known what you were and what you’d done. I made them spare you, my love. You just needed to learn restraint. It’s not too late, my beloved Kalivan. The time is nigh. Do not choose to suffer down here longer. It is not how I wish to reward your initiative. I have loved you ceaselessly; come. I wish to repair my family, even as my children wallow in their victory, in their killing of my darling Markov.”

The blood twisted inside him, churning, his hunger sated, and the horrible rancor it brought becoming foreign to him. His hatred remained, but estranged. It was sated. Curling his neck, he angled his head down, until his forehead touched the near wall and pressed it into the corner. Briefly, he blinked back the horror of what he was about to do. Betraying himself, Kalivan permitted himself a moment to enjoy this, this satiation, the first in an eternity.

The organs in the carcass had nearly atrophied. He clenched those which remained. The blood ebbed back up his throat and down his chin, beyond his reach, to the floor, to the rats. He retched again, choking off horrible sounds which echoed and flooded his ears, as the hunger returned. The star excoriated him for his betrayal, but still he regurgitated the blood, liquefying every tract he still had. Rejecting Isabella’s false favor. He prepared himself to die, but, cruelly, the star did not take him. It continued as it had. It continued to eat him. When he was done, he lowed again.

He panted and said, shudderingly, “The fear we would have inspired, my Isabella, you at my side. I would have ground the whole of the Haruta and the thousand tribal pretenders beneath my feet for you. I would have made you the Axtadum anew for the fervor of my love, my—” he bit his lips, what lips remained, to shreds– “love, my Isabella.” He choked out a horrible laugh. “When I drink of your blood again, it shall be with my teeth. Mercifully, this forgetting-hole has not dulled them. I give you this,” he said, forceful, but whining, “This opportunity to prevent it. Kill me, you faithless, stupid cunt. Vindicate me, show me the truth of your love. Kill me before I slaughter your children. I think… I shall make a bludgeon of the boy’s head, and see whether his little bones will crack before I’ve beaten your head in,” he said, and that was one of the last coherent words he could manage.

High above, he heard Isabella Petrovich sigh with finality. Kalivan heard her breath draw. He knew the ice would come again. She said, with a chord of pity that tasted far too saccharine to his tongue, and scorn sweetened to taste, “Oh, my darling, I’m not confident that there is anything left to kill. I admit I thought you’d be more resilient. Your… talk. Your ravings about delivering me the empire I deserved, the Hidden Fire brought to a glory it had never before had. It seduced me in a way Markov was never quite the man to. It exhilarated me.”

Kalivan screamed in rage, a scream that tore at his insides, leaving ribbons. One eye, the one that remained at least somewhat intact, twitched as if to bulge, and he quailed, “Do it! Burn me, let me die!”

But his words came to no avail. The fear was gone.

–

Into the second night, they had been joined by only a second ship, a ship-of-the-line which had been on patrol and caught the signal in time. It had been called the Joyful Regard when it moored at the rendezvous point. When he awoke, he ordered the ships brought together, and crossed the gangway to stand on the ship, now his flagship. He named it as his prior one had been called, White Tip.

When the fourth night came and no further ships had arrived, beyond the loping half-wreck of his new flagship, Kalivan struggled not to give over to despair. His mood worsened like overripe fruit on the vine, before the schooner returned with tidings that the Haruta’s armada had been sighted over the horizon to the southeast. He was still bereft of any lucid sense, even though he was well-sated on blood and retained a third of his treasury. No word from Isabella, no inkling had applied anything less than support for his endeavor, an endeavor which would plant her on the throne of Doleri. He raged at the ungrateful seed which had poisoned her heart against him. The seed which had chosen Markov, unlovable Markov!

Then the armadas began to brim on the horizon and the crew quailed, restless for want of a sensible order. That was mercifully easy: he would give them chase and find another desolate rock. The game would continue. Isabella would return when she realized it was possible, that the trap had failed. Whether he would grant the crown to the bitch, though, was questionable. In the depth of his anger, laid clear before him as the armada kept pace behind, he thought likely not.

They scavenged on the way to Kreshalan, where they moored by the leeward side until a prize came into view. The White Tip II had been repaired and her guns refitted. He scowled all the way to the command deck, where the unworthy few survivors had assembled. Most of them had lived because they were the sailors of the escape sloop– no hardened sailors, but a swift, cowardly lot. While the livery was being changed, Kalivan turned ten of the fifteen daylight sentinels to his spawn. It embittered him to gift the unworthy so.

It was in service of something greater– the reoutfitting of his immortal navy. It meant the White Tip could be crewed as befitted his force. The prize was sighted by one of the new mates, a name not worthy of memory, so he called the mortal thing Spyglass. An Unitas ship, undoubtedly rich, though undoubtedly staffed by the merchant navy. Spyglass limbered down from the crow’s nest and claimed merely that the tip had been right. She was large enough to carry the treasure wares described, a bounty which could buy them enough livery to outfit one of the coves south of Kreshalan, a rock scarce worth mentioning on any map.

His fury meant the rock might suffice in the interim. It would have to suffice in the interim. Kalivan, admiral of the Black Fleet, had survived the first and most likely attempt on his reign. The treachery of Isabella Petrovich had been wasted, for he still sailed free. A weakness she had been thoughtful enough to free him of. His blood, stolen and pillaged, ran hot when his mind drifted to her. He smiled, wolvish, dancing between hatred and adoration, wallowing in an infatuation her betrayal could not have broken. Rather, his desire for Isabella Petrovich, to lay a crown of gold on her burnished hair, had waxed. She had lain unto him the first blow of many, which he would answer, until at her feet he had made a corpse-hoard of all Doleri, and made of it her bridal-bed...

The wind lifted his hair, his men clung to, more bolstering the sails and the rigging lines as the sun dipped beneath the water and he could come onto the prow in proper. He relished in it, in the scant remnants of light which seared his skin though not enough to wound. This was to be the character of her love. Nothing remained save for that pale certainty, one which bolstered his desire to return to her side with a thousand ships. Every enemy raised against him he would turn back and grind beneath the heel. Love would be war and love again, and suddenly, Kalivan was elated. It sang in his veins. Through her treachery, he had been given the chance to demonstrate beyond any shadow his worthiness.

The prize rose on the horizon, a treasure galleon and its escort. The banners flew a medallion coin, struck with the sigil of a lord of Unitas. The White Tip II rode the waves, and at each crest Kalivan felt predatory glee mount. With wonder, Kalivan lavished himself in fantasy, in visions of the gold and firepower alike he would return with. The Euclija would kneel, Isabella would be brought low, as a dog, worthless before her, and he would return her to glory by his side. He would show her the flat of his sabre, but hold it away, and instead of striking her, lay her a crown, a new crown. It would be grander than the antique he held. It was a cheap thing. Suddenly, its cheapness disgusted him.

The ship rolled forward and he quit the prow, returning swiftly to the command. He ordered the gunports opened. Kalivan bore down on the treasure galleon with a complement of one ship extra, the sloop that had flown him from Zlacinica. At least one worthy man remained to him– a quartermaster who bore the name Feodor– whom he sent to keep the gunners to. As he came near to range of fire, he showed the black, and with a thrill, the treasure galleon began to turn in response. A critical moment approached, one Kalivan relished in above any other. The moment when a prize chooses whether to surrender or give fight.

On the rail, peering out into the night, to the treasure ship and its escort where they sat, dimly illuminated by lamps, Kalivan felt a joyful madness swell within him. He leaned forward, as though he could reach across the space between the ships– and his answer came. Like one hundred lidded eyes, the gunports opened. Kalivan laughed a black laugh and whirled around on the stair, the crew assembled and to. Across the evening wind, he shouted, “Give them rolling fire!” and his words were lost under the thunder of cannonshot. A huge curtain of smoke rose over the sea.

As the cannonade rolled, the White Tip II’s port shroud was turned to shivers. A sole sight pierced through his roaring mania– interlocking sigils, the makings of a paling– and he turned about, wildly, to see the sloop complement brought down by the prize’s guns. He couldn’t see the escort, a smaller ship, a corvette, perhaps, which had joined the prize. The stolen blood ran cold, he searched for Spyglass, and found him clinging to the mast. Kalivan charged across the deck. “The corvette?” Kalivan demanded.

Spyglass shook his head, and Kalivan didn’t stay for the answer. He withdrew, bidding his mind to think, to strategize. He resolved. “Arcane shot,” he shouted, though without certainty any had heard. “Bring the paling down!”

Any response was drowned out under the explosive reemergence of the corvette, pinning the White Tip II with a barrage of raking fire. The prize joined salvo and the whole of the ship was thrown across a swell. When she recovered, Kalivan redoubled his order, but many of the gun crews had quit posts to patch the hull. The ship would not survive another barrage. As the deck heaved, Kalivan took one of the bow chasers, fiddling with the match as horror dawned. He lit the fuse. The cannon flew back, but it never caught against the chains. The deck disappeared from beneath Kalivan’s feet and there could be no ascertaining where he was, whether flying or falling or dead. He began to see planks scattering across the black, and determined he had been thrown from the ship. He looked; the White Tip II was scuttled. Kalivan bit his lip hard and swam for Kreshalan. He did not reach it.

–

It began as it always did, with the rattle of chains overtaking all other sounds and the creak of bars falling into place. When his ear was away from the wall, he could hear the thing’s heart, slow and deliberate. It was not, as he had for a moment hoped, Isabella returned. The thing was merely mortal. The sound of its blood was deeper than the heartbeats of the rats in the walls. Hunger nearly destroyed him again at the thought. It nearly rose to join chorus with his fury, it almost persuaded him to beat his heart, to flood those last dregs of blood into the pyre she had put in him and scuttle up and get through the grate and feast. The Axtadum did not feed rats to its great stars.

This is what the pangs of roaring hunger sang to him, renewed and renewed again in ensemble. The carcass quaked in its sickness. As that headless rage began to realize it would not be answered by action, by the animation of his limbs and the supplying of livening fire to seize something that wouldn’t be choked down but savored and taken of its nourishment, it howled, and the pang renewed. It was ever hard to think for the burning inside the carcass. But as the carcass roared, wailing its death throes and its starvation, there was, for a time, no Kalivan. Not until it quieted.

If Kalivan had done so, it would have killed him. A stronger body had clawed to the throat of the four sided shaft by pinning itself, inch by inch across days, as the rats flayed his fingers and toes with their teeth, before most of the rats knew to stay away. He had raised his arm to the grate and pulled until the muscles in his arm tore apart and could not repair themselves and he slid, slow, back to the ground. That the arm had become pinned beside him had been a fluke. The carcass that Kalivan was could not feel fingers. It could hardly feel an elbow, but it was possible that it still had any of these things.

Then he spoke a long and mournful lowing which was answered by a rattle above. They had filled in the cell which had his shaft as a drain, blocked by a grate of iron. He imagined he could smell the man’s sweat, imagined that it might prick, and tinge with the scent of agitation, anxiety, fear. But his nose was dead. Dead like his eyes, so he smelled nothing. Of the organs which felt any of the energy which remained to him, he fed it, slow, to his tongue, his lungs, and to his ears. The response was slow, but the sound of frightened rats grew cacophonous in his ears as his hearing strained further and further from his cell.

He had been right. The beating in the cell above had quickened and sharpened. He imagined what whispers might flow through the walls in the dark, forcing his mind to conceive once again of language, and not heartbeats. To speak to an animal which could be coerced nearer, not merely hoped for. Once, he could command mens’ hearts. He had tried it before, in this shaft. Memory of this fact trickled in, but details would have been far too costly. There was no consciousness to this fact. Kalivan merely shut the channels which might have fed the mind what it required. He feared allowing it to take all the fire it desired.

This one, the one in the cell above him, might free him where the others did not. Or otherwise Kalivan would cease to be. It did not ring significant to him that he had thought this before attempting this, each time he had attempted this in the past. What he attempted to say resolved into another mournful groan, which met another rustle of chains. The quickening of a heart, eliciting excitement in the hungry star which was eating him. He tried again, and he spoke.

“Who’s there? Who’s above me, in the cell? Who rattles those chains? You have no need to fear me,” said Kalivan. His voice horrified him, but then, so did his words. Pliant and weak in scratching tones. Dirge to his slow rot.

The heart quickened. It resonated through a body above, a wet body, full to bursting with blood spurting against the walls of its veins and surging over and through each organ. Subtler than the blood, there was a breathing, a breathing which caught and unlatched, as though bemoaning its worry. Then there came a rattle, a slow quieting of the blood, as something pulled away from the grate.

“Please,” said Kalivan. “Don’t you know how hard it has gotten to speak?”

“Be silent, dread spirit,” a voice quailed from above. It said a prayer, a frightened plea, but the prayer was familiar to Kalivan. Kalivan echoed it in his heart. Begged it to bear truth. The one who had done this to him would know love which was war. A love he no longer possessed. It had all given over to hatred and anger. That she had dared to return, and speak to him.

While he carefully fed his ear from the blood in his heart and the star, he could ick out the changes in the heartbeat of the man above, and name them day and night. Kalivan was silent for ten days, to hear the fear working out of the thing’s mind like a sieve as his sole interaction would be the pushing of food beneath his door, which Kalivan heard twice daily as a dry scrape on stone. The carcass had stopped demanding anything at all.

It was silent when Kalivan spoke again. “Let’s have words,” he said.

“You will haunt me here forever, then?”

“Yes,” Kalivan said. “I am a prisoner, too, no wraith. But I very much fear I will be here forever.”

The voice was silent for a long time. When it came again, sinking through the grate in the ceiling, it was fearful. “They’ll keep us here that long?”

There was truth to his fear. Kalivan heard it in the speed of his heartbeats, and so close to the grate, the sound of sweat beading and dropping against the metal. So near to his tongue, some of his lip yet lived, and pulled into a slow draw of wonderment. Perhaps this one would listen. It tempered his hunger, became a brief indulgence of hope. There was nothing left of the carcass to revel in it. Kalivan let this indulgence briefly abate, and said, “Oh yes, yes, on and to forever.”

Kalivan could not have known how long it had been when the voice above first spoke of time. It did so in aching tones and with a distinct hollowness. Its blood churned louder, as though the heartbeats had grown pitched.

“Nineteen years they’ve taken. Six here, thirteen before,” it said.

“Meaningless,” Kalivan drawled. “There is no time here. You will see that soon.”

There was a quiver from above, a sad shudder, and the voice returned. “No, it does. She would be twenty, now.”

“She?”

“Maybe he, I don’t know,” came the reply. “But I always picture a little girl. There was a whore, in Polocarija. I shouldn’t call her a whore,” it said, tinged with remorse. “The mother. I had leave, we… coupled, seven days. I saw her once since, before they took me in. She said she was keeping it.”

The rats had grown merciful. Their hearts were quiet. The inside of the carcass’s head had grown quiet enough for Kalivan to eke out thought. Disgust roiled in him, an emotion he had no use for in this crevice, but it burgeoned all the same. The prisoner above was pathetic. His very blood protested against the idea of the offer he now tried to prepare, but his hunger cowed him. His all-consuming thirst for revenge wheedled him down until he shrank, scraping once again on the stones of the chute. “Yes,” he quailed. “They’ve taken so very much. Time… lost forever, with only fractions of a life left to exact on it.”

The voice agreed and then was quiet for a long time. A long time had passed, perhaps several days, or longer, when Kalivan replied.

“I could help you.”

“To escape?” The voice replied, weaker now. It was thin, near to breaking.

“No. You are in a better position to escape than I, I’m afraid,” Kalivan said. “Help me. Help me escape, and I can give you the time you need.”

There was a cracking laugh from above, a mournful sound. The sound of something breaking. The inmate above said, “Turn back the flow of time? Who am I above, a miracle man? You must expect me to marvel at my good fortune. No. No man can do that.”

Kalivan sensed something then, in this one. A weakness. A desire to believe. A hunger, too. “But I can,” he said. “I do not know how long I have been here, but I have witnessed three men like you, live out their pointless, sad, lives above the grate you see there. Each of them heard my offer. All of them chose insignificance and death in captivity. And each of them did, while I yet live. I was sealed down here at the convenience of Isabella Petrovich.”

There was a shifting above him.

“Ye-e-es,” he drawled, though uncertain whether the shift was due to some disquiet or mere restlessness. “A name you recognize? She has lived far longer in the gentle embrace of youth than any, elf or otherwise, can be afforded any right. And she made me her blood. I am more of her being than either one of those dreadful whelps. I am more than mortal. I sought to build an empire. Ruins, now, but its riches must remain.”

His voice met only silence.

“I am the blood of Isabella Petrovich. Not… oh, what were their names? Sorin, Viktoria?” They’d feel it too, his beloved war. Kalivan laughed. “Help me escape, and I will take you beyond fear of time. Help me reach my wealth, and I will make it yours.”

When he had finished speaking, Kalivan felt the strength begin to ebb again from the carcass. Were it not for how thoroughly it was pinned in the shaft, he might have slumped over and sunk to the floor. He revoked the fire to his tongue and to vast parts of his mind, to his memories. He let his mind become an echoing chamber for his anger, and let that sustain him.

“And I could pass it to her?” The voice said, after agonizing hours during which the rats had grown loud again, and beyond that he heard the slow and deliberate thrum of the inmate above’s blood. He heard his little mind trying to think.

“Yes, of course,” Kalivan said. He could not drink the satisfaction of that moment. It fizzled in the atrophied hollow of his mind. He despised the inmate’s small-mindedness, but instead, he continued, “What is your name?”

“Lovro,” the man replied, growing weak. “I was a captain– Captain Vratikov. I sailed for Le Compte. It’s a life sentence, piracy.”

Kalivan hummed and did not commit the name to memory. “Charming. This ‘Le Compte’ must be a novelty,” he said.

“I was a privateer for the Haruta. They pressed me into it,” Lovro said. “I didn’t deserve this.”

Feebly, Kalivan clawed to bring his temper back under his control. The carcass’s head swam madly, filled with a howling anger that this pathetic thing was to be relied upon, for his salvation and for his vengeance. Kalivan lulled himself, and slowly, the carcass quieted. “Oh, they will have what they earned, Captain Vratikov. There is no justice in this world save for that which we can bring about. This I have learned well,” he said, and said nothing more.

The scraping which had, slowly, deliberately, proceeded since the last Kalivan’s brain could conjure, began to grow frighteningly near. He feared the thought of light touching the hideousness of the carcass, even the light of a torch. He feared sight. He feared sensation. Still, the inmate’s heart was terribly near, on the other side of the wall and half a man’s height above. Were it not for the walls and the pinning of his arm, Kalivan felt he might be able to touch him, at this range. His heart was thunderous. With each beat, Kalivan could hear the blood splashing across the walls of his veins, though he felt, lately, that perhaps he would like to keep his promise.

He felt it first, a singing feeling on the surface of the carcass, not the interior. Astoundingly, one eye remained to him, though its vision was much constrained by the near-sealing of his eyelids. There was a horrifying pinprick of the dimmest light, but the first light he had seen in a lifetime nonetheless. It was followed by the falling of a rope, which thumped on the rough-hewn sides of a chute.

A small connective passage had been dug out between the cell above, his oubliette, and a small room somewhere horizontal to Kalivan’s confines in which he had sometimes heard the scampering of rats. The voice issued from that room, in which Kalivan could hear the hastened thumping of his heart.

“Are you strong enough to come through on your own?” The inmate’s voice came.

“Nearly,” Kalivan replied, and began to wedge himself bodily through the passage. After a horrific pause, during which he contemplated the death which awaited him should he fail, he flushed the dregs of blood from his heart into the star. Every sensation sang alive, vision, which muscles he still had access to, pain, the desperate reminders of hunger. He began to slide further through the passage, stripping skin from his limbs. He was still to weak and too muted to feel it, but his arm was ahead of him, and miraculously, when he clawed, it had fingers which grasped and roved and at last plunged out into moving air.

He followed it forward, an agonizing process. Partway through, the inmate began to pull on the rope and with a terrible pop Kalivan’s legs slipped free from the passage and the carcass fell to the floor. His face thumped against the ground. Where his eyesight could reach, between the battered lids, he could see the carcass in reflections on damp stones. His iris glittered in its socket, nearly sealed over. His limbs were atrophied, sticklike. His trunk was naked, clad in hanging flaps of ripped and dead flesh. Gangrene and scaly muscle was visible where skin should have covered, torn and tatty. His face…

Kalivan’s face was a sallow ruin. One eye had come apart and run down his face like a tear. The tip of his nose had rotted away. His hair was patchy, with vast blotches of his scalp torn bare and missing any hair at all. Only a few scraps of lip remained at all, with vicious white teeth nestled behind. One ear remained, and it was ragged. His throat was so horrifically papery he wondered how it could channel the sound of a voice. Totteringly, he picked himself up on those sticklike legs, balancing on flayed and bony toes, picked clean by rats. His one remaining hand was about as picked out, with his terminal phalanges visible and a baleful white.

The inmate turned back, and his face fell into a senseless horror. Kalivan didn’t have the strength to close the distance. For a moment, he nearly thought to repay the man’s good favor, rather than merely to feign it, difficult as it would be in this state. As his one remaining eye fell upon the inmate, however, the star in his chest sang a furious hunger, at the sound of the blood surging through the inmate’s veins. Still. There wasn’t enough in Kalivan’s body to rush him. He would fall to the ground first.

The inmate began to back away. Kalivan approached.

Then Kalivan spoke. “Don’t you want your reward?”

The inmate stopped dumb. “Is that what it looks like?”

The truth was, not typically. But Kalivan’s mind could not manage nuance, not in this state. Not here. He stumbled, but made a bow of it, sweeping out his arm. “Immortality,” he managed to say, in the tones of wonderment.

The inmate began to nod. “I believe no mortal could survive what you must have,” he said. “But–”

His reply did not matter. The inmate had hesitated. Kalivan had staggered close enough to lunge, and the pinhole of livening flame at his core surged out enough might and enough speed to close and reach him. Kalivan seized him with his one hand and pulled him near. Kalivan squeezed his own heart and flooded the last of his blood into the star, forcing the inmate’s head against the tile, lengthening the arc of his neck. There was an awful crack. He came down over his neck, spread the skin out with the points of his fangs and the tips of his incisors and clamped down. First he punctured the carotid, and warm, new blood sprayed into the ruins of his mouth and he gulped greedily. In the same motion he had pierced through his jugular, and a weaker ebb began to fill, but not nearly fast enough.

All of it flooded down into his core, into the greedy, burning pinhole, and he flooded his might into his tongue, ripping out the flesh between vein and artery, beating it down into the hollow of the neck with his tongue until blood spilled into the trough he had dug. He swallowed mouthfuls of it until, frenzied, he found himself sucking on the dry tissue left behind.

Daemons

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:19:19 -0400

The inhabitants of the unseen world are called Daemons. Ranging from mindless winds brushing across the border of the real, sometimes felt as a passing malaise, to sentient, alien beings, bent on proliferation through contact with other daemons and the psyches of mortals, a daemon is anything solely within the unseen world and capable of activity. While often hazardous, daemons are not entirely harmful to humans. Philosophers suggest that the human soul is in fact a daemon accumulated around the mind. However, daemons form another sort of life cycle which sentience has forced humanity to take part in. In other words, an evil spirit which drives a man to evil deeds, a dangerous and infectious idea, and a magical spell are all examples of daemons. Some schools of atheist believe that gods are in fact daemons.

Space in the unseen is poorly understood, but it’s thought that daemons expand and contract to fill space in that realm, as they are not constrained by bodies. As void and air fill the physical world, daemons fill the unseen world. Daemons can do extremely little to impact the real world without possessing a body, being perhaps as unaware of the physical world as ordinary humans are of the unseen. When possessing the body of an animal, they may act more intentionally, but only with a human body (or a homunculus) are they able to perform magic. While the root cause is unknown, this is thought to relate to the fact that human psyches also have souls and the fact that Magi cannot polymorph for extended periods of time.

Daemons, being largely unknowable forces with the potential for great harm to humans, feature prominently in religion. Though daemons are in truth disembodied, demoniacs are seldom seen as victims of possession, but as daemons in their own right. In Adanism, demoniacism is a grave but situationally excusable sin. The Sasinthēne religion has accounts of ‘sea demons’, bloodthirsty monsters which arise from dark water and heathen religion to corrupt good society. In Namorism, they are the preferred children of a rival god to Namor, a divine patriarch who favors humankind. Culturally speaking, the concept of a daemon is only in specialist cases distinct from that of a demon. Often seen as the sources of misfortune and malediction, and not always wrongly, few outside of the Lodge system feel the need to distinguish between benign and malignant daemons.

There are some parts of the world which draw distinction between daemons of ill and daemons of good. In the spiritualism of old Hesod, daemons were referred to as the Birds of Harwa, Harwa itself referring to the patch of the spring and early summer sky, 17 degrees northwest of the Wayfarer, and 2 degrees north of the Eagle, which is utterly starless. Due to the prominence of the House of Ansus, a Hesodic lodge, Lodge Magi tend to call daemons Birds, too.

Magicians \& Magi

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 02:05:44 -0400

There is little doubt that magicianship preceded any real prevalence of Magi. As the Magic was initially solely rooted in the natural processes of the unseen world and its inhabitants, that is, daemons, human harnessing of daemons was the earliest form of magical art. Modern magicianship, and the Magic at large, requires two things: a grounding of magic in gross matter of the real world, such as the flesh of daemoniacs (the possessed) or magi, and intercession with some force in the unseen capable of enacting spells, typically a daemon itself. As the most common form of magic user, magicians are a class of expert ubiquitous to cultures around the world, for their abilities of exorcism and weather magic.

The emergence of Magi required a more sophisticated sort of spiritualism or philosophy. Magi are rarely born, and even then, it’s not predictable. The vast majority of Magi are instead made, by (through various means) irreversibly altering the psyche and physicality of a human non-magus to act as each of the crucial components of magic. Should this be successful, and there is little certainty it will be, the new Magus will have to learn to perform the Magic of their own capacity. Without practice, a Magus will atrophy. About 60% of Magi are created by Lodges, organizations they are born into, before the age of twenty, with little choice in the matter. About 36% create themselves, beginning as magicians of exceptional skill. The remaining 4% are born. Magi are also ubiquitous, though far rarer, and hold a far wider variety of perceptions across cultures. In Ōchis, they are symbolized by the hippocampus.

Magi (and magicians to a lesser extent) organize themselves– thus self-policing the use of magic– into Lodges to concentrate their power and knowledge. Lodges are essentially secret societies, organized around a tight-knit cluster of Magi and their direct apprentices. Around them are magicians, who receive spells and esoteric knowledge in exchange for assistance with rituals, and operate roughly as a cult. The official Lodge of a nation is called a Cabal or Agency. In the Sasinthēne world, Cabals are the norm. In Arpenea, however, the Guild system is preferred, effectively, a short-list of public Lodges in competition with each other.

The Magic

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 02:05:28 -0400

The Magic is a force of nature– the nature of the unseen world, which underlies the world of sense and experience. Ancient natural philosophers were the first to conclusively demonstrate the existence of the unseen world, but the Magic has been practiced by humans for longer. Humans should not be able to use the Magic any more than they should be able to light controlled fires or sow grain. The Magic would otherwise only impact the world in two ways: first, through powerful storms defying the mere explanations of physics, and second, through daemons who either influence or possess living creatures.

But this is not the case. Humans have used the Magic in some form since their first intercessions with daemons, although these daemons were no more potent than mere blessings or curses. When brought into the real world, the Magic is highly unstable. Whenever channeled through the body, either by a Magus or demoniac, it is traumatic to the flesh, and flushes the blood with mercury. Magi are fortunately resilient against the effects of mercury. The basic capacities of the Magic are as follows: the practices which step into the real world are the manipulation of storms, the generation of physical energy, the distortion of spaces, the empowering of spirits to affect the physical world, and the manipulation of living flesh.

It is not possible to affect inert matter by Magic directly. Classically considered to be more important, the practices which exist solely within the unseen world are the manipulation of spirits, astral projection, and the warding of places, things, and ideas beyond sense or thought. Practices like alchemy and radiometry are also considered to be magical techniques, because it relies on laws of nature that exist wholly within the unseen. However, they not require any use of the Magic, so they are not always thought of as magic.

The unseen world is not merely invisible, it actively defies understanding. In other words, its properties are not consistent in a way that makes sense to mortal perspective when observed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the unseen is very difficult to observe. The best existing methods rely on its effects in the physical, the most obvious of which is radio interference. In fact, the distinction between storms of magical origin and those solely driven by wind is interference. Specialized devices, however, can be used to attempt to detect spellcasting, and even demons. Studies in the field of radiometry have even attempted to diagnose sicknesses of the soul.

Arpeneans

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 23:36:19 -0400

‘Real-World’ Influences: Dutch, Scots, Baltic. A little bit of Disco Elysium. Arpeneans hail from the far south of Ōchis, stemming in part from early People of the Ox and Talenic cultures which inhabited those lands. They tend to have fairer skin than the Talens, and sometimes possess light hair and eyes. Sometimes, they have red hair. Arpeneans’ ancestors were swift to build settled agrarian societies. Arpenea proper was a province of the Sasinthēne Empire of Tanthes, but was never thereafter conquered. Rather, Arpeneans were largely unified by their own Orthodox Empire, recognized from Tanthes, albeit with a highly contested border with Panarine. Though long a bulwark of Adanist Orthodoxy in the south, their distance from Tanthes ultimately laid the groundwork for a Monist schism in Goscelebe. Most Arpeneans, as a result, are Adanist– either Orthodox or Gosselevite.

Generally, Arpeneans are stately, mercantile, and philosophical. While the history of southern Ōchis is largely defined by frequent warfare, it was also a hub for great political and artistic thought. Aalmergrafe and Goscelebe were centers for vast leaps in the arts, particularly in painting. Arpenean painting tends to be dramatic and naturalistic, whereas their statuary tends to be highly utilitarian. Their clothing is austere, preferring monochrome courtly fashions with embroidery that contrasts in texture but not in tone. The powerful wear white, which represents virtue. Their designs favor the white lily, the hedge, and the pentacle.

They’re represented by the Daartlawer language.

Ōchian Collapses

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:56:00 -0400

Before the arrival of the Sasinthēnes, several great kingdoms were present across the north of Ōchis, including Nous, spanning Calassy and Noumesia, Naršun, in Hesod, and many others whose names have since been lost to history. About two millennia before the birth of Adanōs, a string of upheavals, revolts, and collapses plunged nearly all into ruin. While any unifying cause of these collapses remains obscure, the arrival of the Near Sea Peoples (who would unify into the Sasinthēnes as they integrated with the native Sagur Hesods) at Ōnavara as raiders and mercenaries is thought to have exacerbated already-dire matters.

In short summary: a peasant leader in Noumesea, who may have been called Kales, led an uprising among the Calassine-speaking undercaste against Sangasa, the king of Nous, which had passed into decline under the depredations of Ōnavarene raids; The first city called Naršun, on the river Laham, was sacked by a combined force of Ōnavarenes and Sagur allies, who had been driven from the country by the king of Naršun. An unknown number of kingdoms at Iantōs and on the Sea of Goent were pushed into decline by constant raiding. Tanthes– a name with no root in Sasinthy– came to primacy as a tributary state to Ōnavara.

The Empires of Tanthes & the Crown

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:51 -0400

The Sasinthēne Empire of Tanthes preceded Panarine and founded the right which Giraïr Danechē leveraged to bring most of the Crown to heel under the blessing of Tanthes. The Empire of Tanthes was not one political entity, but a succession of polities and interregna which ruled the Crown from Tanthes for nearly 2000 years, stemming from the first colonial settlements in Iantōs and on the Sea of Goent. Crown Sasinthēnes descend from those assimilated under those millennia of Tanthēne rule. The last Empire of Tanthes was more aptly a city state or small domain, ruled by a cabal of Magi. This cabal is better known, however, for prostrating before Adanōs and hearing the renewed word of the God of Sasinthy.

Tanthes– a name with no root in Sasinthy– came to primacy as a tributary state to Ōnavara. In legend, it was pacified by Danaōchon Matoua of the house Òxianopha, the unifier of the Sasinthēnes under the rule of Ōnavara. Panarine and therefore the modern Sasinthēne Empire is the foremost legacy of that of Tanthes, but Tanthes was also responsible for making the region of Belethion, also called Peloïssod, the vast stretch of ancient Hesod which lay between the Orod and Laham rivers, Sasinthēne. Because it was pacified under the Tanthēne regime, this vast territory posed little opposition to the Panarinian emperors in their long tenure as rulers of the Sasinthēne world.

The Empire of Panarine

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:41 -0400

The Empire, the legacy of ancient Sasinthy, by the grace of the Double Lord, the Sasinthēne Empire of Panarine! In the Year of Tanthes 118, Danechē of the house Agmapalla, a nobleman from the city of Panarine brought all of the Crown under Panarine’s rule. When he was named Emperor of Sasinthy in Tanthes, he vowed to recapture the lost colonies in Belethion, Hesod, and Voradena. Though he would die before his campaigns reached Voradena, he marshalled the first Sasinthēne army to cross the river Laham in over 500 years, before succumbing to his wounds in sight of Calicart, a city he had conquered, but that his son would ultimately pacify.

In the end, his heirs succeeded in his promise, establishing an empire that ruled over the Talens, the Hesods, and a number of Arpenean and Calassine lands, over the roughly-800 year history of the empire. Three major dynasties (Agmapalla, Xanatháia, and Ourōnea) and countless smaller held the throne. The Xanathaianes and Ourōneas each descended from Agmapallan Danechē by at least the male or female line. The end of the ‘Marching Emperors’, Emperors who ruled from the frontiers, expanding their domains, brought the atrophy of Imperial military power. As the Empire at large declined, stark cultural divisions led to unrest as provincial holdings began to exert their influence. Tanthes itself began to lose faith in the Imperial rule. At its imperial height under the Xanatháia dynasty, the Empire held Voradena and the Tiegrafe frontier, Iantōs, the Crown, and Sechore and Peloïssod. In its decline, under the Ourōnea dynasty, it maintained only meagre colonial holdings before ultimately abandoning the endeavor and attempting to solidify power on the Ōchian mainland.

In the end, it was the Empire’s former Talenic provinces, Cazia and Orod, who laid the mortal blow. Following their secessions from Panarinian rule, the two crowns banded together into a single nation. After a long period of irredentism, the city of Panarine itself lay open before Cazia-Orod, and the city fell, but the occupiers found little trace of the imperial family. The last of the Ourōneas had fled north, where an overzealous Voleïzēne watchman, who, misidentifying the bannerless and weary imperials, cut them down in cannonfire when their retinue kept advancing despite orders. In ten seconds, a world defined by Panarine was now without Panarine or her Emperor, even in exile. It would be wrenching, and it would be forever. Sasinthēne culture is sharply preoccupied with their lost empire. The cultures of their vassals are preoccupied, too, but rather with the still-felt weight of the imperial yoke.

The Talenic Provinces

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:29 -0400

The kingdoms of Cazia (Kossän) and Orod were historically the two largest Talenic-majority provinces held by the Empire of Panarine. They were governed by vassal kings (Misselovec and Sejdenec, respectively) of the Emperor in Panarine, but they were subjected to the imperial policy of Hegemonic Marriage, in which the firstborn son of each royal house must marry a noblewoman from the city of Panarine. This policy was supported by the Tanthene church, which had sole power over marriages between noble houses. Cazia was only held under Imperial rule for a little over half of a century, but Orod remained much longer.

There was another ‘Talenic Province’, Gesena, but it was not ruled by a Talenic dynasty. Instead, Gesena was ruled by a governor appointed in Panarine, though a few have been Talens. Prior to Imperial rule, in the age of the Tanthene Empire, these provinces were settled by large contingents of nomads from Mitrion– the original Talens. They settled around the rivers Orod and Vorad, and pushed towards their sources. Imperial power began to slip when the king of Orod lobbied Tanthes to recognize a Southern church, with ministry over Oronar nobility. Hegemonic Marriage ended, but the pulling-away of Orod from the Empire could no longer be stopped. Cazia-Orod would eventually topple the Empire of Panarine, and remains to the 12th century after Adanōs as one of Ōchis’s great powers, having faced down the grand jewel of Sasinthy and plucked it from her serpentine crown.

Provincial Hesod

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:19 -0400

The Ōchian Collapses were disastrous in Hesod. By the arrival of the Sasinthēnes, a kingdom centered in Naršun had endured in one form or another for time immemorial. Hesod is a dry land, spared the torrential rains of the rest of Ōchis, but spared also their fertility. Therefore, it has always been dependent on the floodplains of the three rivers, the Orod (Gesun), Laham, and Maššan. Hesod, named for the Sagur port of Hišu, once spanned between the verdant plains of Gesena and the mouth of the Maššan to the far east, covering Belethion, Udniša, and Naršusa. Belethion was lost, irrecoverably, under Tanthes. In legend, Naršun and its domain was refounded by a king named Ušwašardun, who emerged from the Laham. In time, Naršun although it came to be named Calicart, and its culture took a distinctly Sagur and ‘Sasintho-philic’ turn. Once the envy of the world for its expansive domain and efficient tribute bureaucracy, Naršun was at that time floundering amidst powerful upstarts.

Largely unlike the Talens, whose culture was preserved by hostility with the ruling Sasinthēne Empire, Hesodic culture was miraculously preserved within it. However, this too left an indelible mark when the Empire did eventually fall. Hesod has since been war-torn and disunited, with Calicart itself in twilight, vying for influence as a ‘Sasinthēnized’ nation among the nations of the old Crown. In the modern day, it bears the wounds of long exploitation, and though stretched between Sasinthēne and Arpenean spheres of influence, many see future primacy, or even the evidence of current primacy; for magicians across Ōchis can scarcely deny that their techniques stem from the old Hesodic masters of the House of Ansus. The Hesods, whether accepting their modern status, or reclaiming the heights of old Naršun, are proud. Many would say with good reason.

Greater Calassy

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:09 -0400

The region of Calassy, or Pelomitrion, was also devastated by the Ōchian Collapses, but the Calassines were the beneficiaries of, rather than the victims of, this collapse. The ruins of city of Nous, the center of an early empire of the same name, lie beneath the city of Kimyarsal, where in the Noumesian Cycle of Calassine myth a hero named Kales rallied the nomadic, Calassine-speaking undercastes to topple the Noumesian god-king Sangasa. Thereafter, Calassy came under the rule of several Calassine-speaking peoples who formed large clans headed by Dorohats, the lords of massive herds, and unified against outsiders under Azet warlords. In that time, they routinely warred with their former social betters, the Noumesians, the Sasinthēnes, and the Talens, who, also being a nomadic people, at times inhabited parts of Calassy. At one point, there were even a handful of Talenic herders considered Dorohat, before ultimately being driven out during unification.

The Black Vanuko mythic cycle describes the unification of Calassy under an Azet named Hasaleh, who took the title of Galat, from ‘Kales’. Rulers over part or all of Calassy have variably taken that title, but there have been many interregna. Calassy has frequently leveraged its historical claims as a successor state to Nous to subjugate vast swathes of Noumesia, but following a protracted war in Sutthmar, unrest in Calassy erupted into the secession of Segouza, its vast mountainous hinterland. While Calassines think little of the legacy of Panarine, preferring instead the glories of their own history, practical concerns and an affinity with their diasporas in the Crown have seen them squared off against Cazia-Orod. It is fortunate, then, that though seceded, the placement of Segouza still acts as a bulwark to their southeastern flank.

Greater Arpenea

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 22:55:04 -0400

Located inland and to the south of Ōchis, the Arpeneans were spared the widespread collapse which felled their northern neighbors, and were spared the Sasinthēne invaders which took their places. Rather, the early Arpeneans hailed from a number of tribes around modern-day Aalmergrafe and Goscelebe who confederated to stem the expansion of the Talens, who had made it up the Vorad beyond Tarheny. With the exception of the border with the Talens, the Arpenean tribes remained in near disunity until Tanthes pacified Belethion and began to push south. The modern site of Aalmergrafe passed beneath the Tanthene yoke a millennium before Adanōs. Facing a shrinking frontier in the northwest, the Arpenean aristocracy convened at the site of Goscelebe to form a more permanent confederacy.

Tarheny was reconquered over half a millennium of bloody struggle, at last seeing the Talens pushed back across Tiegrafe (Tëgrab to the Talens). The province of Arpenea, around Aalmergrafe, was at last released with the final dissolution of Tanthene power. When Goscelebe waned, Aalmergrafe took its place, bringing Adanism with it. Throughout the late medieval period, the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea exerted regional power. It also founded a seaport on the isle of Daartlaw, whose mercantile riches from ports as far as Ondmar saw it match the capital in influence. In the end, though, a schism in Goscelebe brought the rise of a new Adanist faith, Gosselevian Monism, and the decline of Aalmergrafe’s Arpenean Empire. Unscathed by the slow decline of Panarine, the Kingdom of Daartlaw emerged at the head of the merchant nations of the world, bringing grand designs for the colonization of the newly-discovered eastern continent and the foundation of a world capital to eclipse all capitals at Reineslew, an equatorial island halfway across the sea.

Calassines

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 01:38:38 -0400

Real-World Influences: This one’s a little vaguer. Generally, Turkic, Incan, and Scythian. Calassines hail from the continent of Mitrion, which they call Nöş, but migrated to modern-day Calassy long ago. They tend to have mid-to-dark brown skin and black hair. Stemming from a few initial families, about 70% of Calassines have blue or light-colored eyes. Calassines are communal, even collectivist, historically belligerent, and industrious. Historically, Calassines were nomadic, organizing both around powerful herder lords (Dorohat) and warlords (Azet) in times of strife. Like the Talens, Calassines are quite equestrian, favoring heavy shock cavalry and horse archers. In terms of faith, they are split. Most worship the God of Sasinthy, but in a form contemporary to Adanism. A notable minority, called the Asarom, worship Basoznom, a god of plenty some believe derives from the Mitrionan faith of Namorism.

Calassines favor ornamental art and tapestry, though some prominent Dorohat funded statues throughout history. Typically, Calassine art favors animal and figure motifs. Gold ornaments tend to be intricate, while masonry sculpture tends to be smoothly geometric in style. They wear bulky clothing, typically made of wool, cut in diagonal lapels across the body. More lavish clothing is silken. Almost universally, they prefer red and white as colors, and prefer to dress austerely with the exception of ornamentation and accessories. Their designs favor the bull and the horse (Damor-de Tokat), the spear of Kales (Hasyan Kaleyeh), and red and white lilies, which represent the love of Hasaleh and Olenehy in the Black Vanuko mythic cycle.

They’re represented by the Ketsalanka dialect of Calassine, which looks like this: Mútuda, veh Védikates, Selaáyáze Dámor’zaha va bezevit, kósök salozam sögukvakam-tohazu prakemötakages. (To you, my first-among-lords, I give the Bulls of Damor, a ship of war that bears in force fifty and twenty-five cannons.)

Gosselevism

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:23:32 -0400

Gosselevism is a branch of Adanism which formed in the 7th century in Goscelebe, in the Orthodox Empire of Arpenea. Gosselevism rejects several core features of mainstream Adanism, believing that they were not original to the words of the prophet Adanōs: first, Gosselevites reject the doctrine of dualism, believing that The God is rather singular, whole, and indivisible. Consequently, most Gosselevites reject the doctrines of Eleia, the divine and continual grace which instilled Adanōs and instills the Saints, and the doctrine of Mesdouro, in which worldly evil was a separated creation of the God. Therefore, most Gosselevites do not believe in Saints, believing instead that Adanōs was singular and unique before the God, and in some cases, himself the God in totality. Some Gosselevites, particularly ‘Continualist’ Gosselevites, believe that the God continued to bless Saints.

Arpenean rule was greatly damaged by the conversion of many of its southern nobles away from the faith of Tanthes, and Orthodox rulers were encouraged by Tanthes and Imperial Panarine to censure this move. Even in the Orthodox stronghold provinces of Tarheny and Aalmergrafe, Orthodox rule was nearly diminished. The modern state of Almeria exists solely due to the intervention of Orthodox Tanthene northerners, including a great many holy warriors sent to reestablish the Orthodoxy in Arpenea. In centuries of war, Orthodoxy could not be reestablished in the vicinity of Goscelebe, Kandergrafe, Daartlaw, and other southern lands.

Astrology

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:20:12 -0400

Most astrology of the Sasinthēne mainland comes from early Hesodic tradition, particularly that of the tribe of Sakhar. The Sakhar tribe were among those who early Sasinthēnes had close relations with, and in some cases, claimed descent from. During the emergence of the classical Sasinthēne culture, the Sakhar were emulated and seen as an ideal.

This system of astrology was first devised from astronomical readings taken at Calicart. The Solar Houses are the twelve constellations the sun travels through in the course of a year. The Spring Guides are the twelve constellations, two of which are also Solar Houses, which sit about 30 degrees above the horizon in each of the twelve classical directions, eight of which are named for them.

Solar Houses:

Start Date	End Date	Interpretation	Hesodic	Sasinthēne	Talenic
25 Dawn II	25 Waking	Twin serpents.		Òxias	Uksiäs
26 Waking	25 Tears	Lyrist.		Gioulade	Üladie
26 Tears	25 Wayfarer	Winged scorpion.		Charxōphōs	Karksops
26 Wayfarer	25 Wheel	Albatross.		Procoëges	Prokoejes
26 Wheel	26 Red	Hippocampus.	Ansus	Cataddouxa	Anssos
27 Red	26 October	Chariot.	Goemsut	Agéa	Gomsot
27 October	27 November	Dolphin.		Laöpherné	Loperne
28 November	27 December	Bowl.		Stozion	Stossiän
28 December	28 Undecember	Lion.		Zōchōs	Zogoss
29 Undecember	28 Night	Bull.	Hagharut	Acharōs	Hagrot
29 Night	23 Dawn I	Leaping fishes.		Techteri	Tekterie
24 Dawn I	24 Dawn II	Dog.		Caleōs	Kaliöss

Spring Guides:

Direction	Interpretation	Hesodic	Sasinthēne	Talenic
East	Dog.		Caleōs	Kaliöss
ESE	Dragon.	Zekulun	Azichor	Zgolan
SSE	Lovers.		Melōmmas
South	Lamb.		Móulo
SSW	Shepherd.	Hedet/Ospede	Pleömedōs	Ospad
WSW	Maiden.		Thébe
West	Lyrist.		Gioulade	Üladie
WNW	Clavicle.		Mitrea
NNW	Ram.		Cherdōs	Kerdos
North	Spearman.		Pógramon
NNE	Eagle and Gulf.	Harwa	Àroua/Zēgas
ENE	Wayfarer*		Etridōs
*Wayfarer points towards the Albatross and the Wayfarer’s stars.

Adanism

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:19:49 -0400

Adanism is a faith codified by the prophet Adanōs, born near modern-day Ilimpar, in Sasinthēne Voradena. It may be described as a descendant of old Sasinthēne Dyotheism, which was Adanōs’s native faith. Adanist tradition holds that there is a single God, which initially appeared to their creations as two halves (Eleio and Meddorōs). In the beginning, humanity, who were granted free will, were placed in an idealized society. However, time and moral corruption caused them to forget their piety, and they annihilated their first home. For this trespass, their creator scattered them to the distant corners of the world. In Adanist doctrine, it is only possible to return to this idealized former state by rebuilding what was destroyed, but not without true obedience to the creator.

In the words of Adanōs at Tanthes, where in legend he persuaded the ten masters of the city to submit to the God and bind themselves as the Sasinths had long ago, when all the world stands as a monument to the works of Heaven will we know it is come. The holiest symbol is the Yoke of Adanōs, representing the sacred convent forged at Tanthes, where the God granted Adanōs a vision of hope for restoration. The Yoke is the mark of submission and responsibility to service of the God, as its wearer cannot claim to be ignorant, only willfully astray. In many religious ceremonies, a priest raises the icon of the Yoke, and himself passes beneath it, before inviting the adherents to follow, reasserting their servitude of the God.

Inherited from Dyotheism is a lasting belief in mythical individuals blessed with prophecy, such as Daneiōchon Matoua ia’Òxianophea (The Demōxiphi). Adanists believe that Sanghatsa was a prophet in Ondmar, as Sölöhtan was in Calassy. In Adanism, the word Eleio refers to the prophetic spirit which infuses the souls and words of the prophets with wisdom. It can be said that Eleio, who takes name from the god of divine fire revealed to the Onavarans by the prophet Pargeōs, is the sole prophet, and the companion of Adanōs in the Coming World. A looped string stretched in a star shape between many points is the symbol of Eleio as the spirit of prophecy. Following Adanōs, as the prophet wrote, Eleio does not infuse prophets, but saints, those who make themselves a monument of Heaven upon the world.

Similarly inherited from Dyotheism is the belief in deceiving spirits, which hail from the depths of the sea. Pargeōs revealed that they are the spawn of Meddorōs, who himself (as a horizon god) acts as a seal upon the dark world beneath. Adanōs, however, clarified that this was necessary to create a seal to house demons, which had been created when humanity forgot their piety. Adanists unilaterally associate daemons with these deceiving spirits.

Hesods

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:14:12 -0400

Real-World Influence: Babylonian, Syriac, Hittite, sometimes Berber Hesods are ethnically similar to Crown Sasinthēnes, both stemming from the Peoples of the Ox who inhabited northeastern Ōchis in antiquity. They tend to have mid-brown skin and dark eyes, with darker skin tones around the northern extents like Udniša. Some may have lighter eyes, or even red hair. Where Sasinthēnes are ethnically bifurcated but unified in culture, Hesods hail almost entirely from one ethnic group, but are bifurcated in culture. Owing to their shared roots, many Hesods, particularly the Sagur and the people of Naršun, were receptive to Sasinthēne religion, and given a privileged status, Sasinthēne rule. Many others, especially among the Matašwut, were not. Their deserts were historically much smaller, but grew with the destruction of several dams during the tumult in the first and second centuries.

Generally, Hesods are metropolitan, agrarian, and highly philosophical, having invented the best-known systems of astrology and celestial reckoning. Their philosophical precepts form the backbone of many modern magical schools of thought. Most Hesods are proud of this ancient origin, but are often quite removed from it: some, particularly those most zealously Adanist, exalt it and simultaneously decry it as pagan. Hesods build monuments with celestially-exact angles and favor art that integrates mythical heroes and beasts, sometimes clashingly with Adanist content matter. Their clothing is draped and flowing, made of light fabrics. They typically dress darkly except in the high summer, and wear geometric, floral, or symbolic patterns. Their designs favor the Spring Guides, the Lotus, and a number of prescribed patterns, called ‘Vines’, sometimes including Cotton.

They’re represented by the Caliche language.

Talens

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:14:06 -0400

Real-World Influences: Kazakh, South Slavic, Hungarian Talens tend to have light, but not ‘fair’, to mid-brown skin, and often have amber eyes. Generally, they’re highly communal, tend to be stoïc in public, and place value in honor and kinship– with a strong tradition of sworn bodyguards exchanging a perpetual oath of military service for standing as a member of a house, regardless of birth. Houses are large, with house membership determined by kinship to the house head. They are more strongly egalitarian in terms of sex than either the Sasinthēnes or the Arpeneans, with most women of high status receiving said status from their own kinship ties, but also the kinship ties of their spouse. This strongly communal culture has proven resilient against long centuries of occupation. They migrated to Ōchis sometime before the rise of the Sasinthēne Empire of Tanthes, settling along the river Vorad, south of Calassy, and in west Arpenea. During the Empire of Tanthes, they were deputized as mercenaries to fight on the southeastern frontier, and when that empire fell, they founded a kingdom in Gesena. Their resistance to Sasinthēne rule has left a lasting impression on the very idea of revolution.

The Talens are religious and orthodox, at least since Sasinthēne rule, but value oaths to a ruler and even oaths between peers as binding under the God. Talenic art is generally intricate and impressionistic, rather than lifelike. Their culture is highly equestrian, especially among the nobility. Their paintings reflect long traditions of woven portraiture, stemming from wool-and-horsehair tapestries prior to some ancient migration across the Calassine highlands. They maintain a similar tradition of woven crafts. They wear duller base tones for their clothing, made of heavy cloth in square cuts, with intricate embroidery patterns which are sometimes as extensive as their portraits. They favor the horse, the tidewaters of the rivers Vorad and Orod, and the ring-wearing hand as symbols.

They’re represented by the Kossän language.

Sasinthēnes

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:13:32 -0400

Real World Influence: Venetian, Byzantine, Phoenician, Ptolemaïc Egyptian Sasinthēnes include two larger ethnic groups, the Onavarans, who come from the archipelago of Great Sasinthē and formed the aristocracy of the Empire, and the Crowns, who descend from the original People of the Ox inhabitants of their early colonies in the Crown. Nowadays, about half of commoners and half of Sasinthēne aristocrats come from either camp. Onavarans tend to have rich, mid-dark skin. Crowns tend to have mid-brown skin.

Sasinthēnes are diligent, belligerent, and maritime. They build obelisk-like monuments and austere statues. They paint primarily figurative subjects but favor sculpture. They are religious and once viewed the expansion of their empires as holy war, as Adanōs, who was a Crown Sasinth, also founded a kingdom. They wear dramatic, colorful clothes in velvet, wool, and linen, or light cream fabrics embroidered with dark, symbolic patterns. Their designs favor the thunderbolt (Elosēchēlon), the twin snakes (Òxion), and the golden crocus (Òuroxon) as symbols. The last represents Panarine. Their music is brassy, integrating buzzing pipes and horns with zithers and a stately, vibrato voice.

They’re represented by the Goentean language, which looks like: ē’Eixou ten atorrēnetam nai di ē’pograstam egi a echē per dai gian nou zemagtheni sousseglesteu xanōchoun (The front is entrenched and the fighting is slim but there are all kinds of presentation of maladies.)

Macaques

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 23:40:12 -0500

This piece is part of a project called ‘Style Matches’, and is intended to resemble the style of Bret Easton Ellis. This imitation is, I hope, a sincere and true form of flattery.

Well so the way it started was, my mother’s new husband was hovering by the island in the middle of the combination lounge and dining room, something quaint, something continental, in his house on the north end of York Avenue where it hits the water, with bulkhead fittings joining the slab table and he’s been talking about steam turbines and coaling for the better part of an hour in the kind of voice that I heard buzzing out through the station floor loudspeaker at Penn coming down from Poughkeepsie on the mainland. My mother’s new husband Barrett Holloway Rolfe, who looks about as old as one of my schoolmates, or maybe a class or two above, and who’s in a new twill wool jacket, worsted, from high street, Italian, but the kind you can get here, was steering for the topic since we got back from midnight mass. Like my grandfather, he’s in shipping, with his own fleet. I say fleet because I’ve heard as much. I fiddle with the stem on my wineglass, which is full of Prosecco, and I wonder if he put on the twill wool jacket because that’s what I was wearing when I came off the train. I’m sitting on the couch in the other half of the room. The shirt I have on underneath is muslin, but I have a sweater on between– wool, knit with a broad ribbing– and I wonder whether he’d backed off from matching all the way. Everyone up by the island is looking over and I’m looking back, perfectly serene, because I’m quite unbothered when you get right down to it.

One of my aunts manages to get her voice in and really lay her opinion out about ocean liners, and I realize that everyone’s talking the way Barrett does now, over the water. I’m starting to feel a bit quaint and upstate, in that sort of way. That’s what I’m trying to say. My mother’s husband tucks his handkerchief which has the letters BHR on it back in his breast pocket. I guess I’m paying so much attention to him because he was chummy at the station and I’ve never met him before. “I’ll tell you, any of you can mark me on this one, and you can thank me later for the foresight,” he’s saying. “But the steam liner is what’s really going to let us pull ahead. Now, it used to be, Cunard and White Star couldn’t be competed with because of the position of the British Isles as a port of entry for the Continent, but this is a day for America. We’ll be able to make ports as far as Hamburg and Copenhagen come spring. In fact, I’ve just bought myself another, a new liner from a berth out in Vailsburg, to add to the modest old fleet, as a bit of a Christ’s-mass present to myself. The point is—” he says, really starting to get into it— “is I’ll be able to run the liner from the harbor to Galway come spring. When Christ is born once again, we’ll have it in the Old Country, now how’s that, eh?”

Marvelous, just marvelous, was the singsong tune from one of the great aunts, the one who’d been talking about ocean liners in that same blaring voice. “Of course, now that both of the kids are going to be around, I think it would be just tremendous to start getting everyone together again. And, ah, you know, I’ve made the journey myself, to Galway,” Barrett was saying to the great aunts when the Devlin procession came in from the carriage stop. He was fiddling with his tie and I was spreading my knees apart where I sat, both to face my grandfather as he came in. Spreading your knees projects confidence, and you should bring your hands together, but you shouldn’t close your body off. Well, I’m sitting totally opened up. Barrett says Merry Christmas, and I do to, and my grandfather puts up by the island. There’s a nativity scene on a hall table splitting the combination room, in eyeshot of one of the holly-decked crucifixes along the walls. Barrett pours himself a drink, and one for my grandfather, and says Sláinte loudly.

“Conell!” Barrett exclaims. He slides the tumbler along the table. Grandfather picks it up. I don’t hear the response.

I’m sitting by myself still when the rest of them come in from the car and the room really starts to fill out. Most of them are in the other half of the room and I’ll be getting up soon. My mother is in a tan church dress and hat and a twill worsted waistcoat, British-made. She has long gloves on and she was clutching her calfskin purse when she came in. Of course she and I had talked when she and Barrett came to get me from Central, and right now she’s talking to my grandfather, which suits me just fine because I’m finishing my prosecco. I take slow sips because it tastes cheap. I don’t let my face show it. There was a zoo on the river on the way down. I’d gone between trains, since they’d filled out the schedule so badly today that I had four hours and nothing to do while the train was coaling after the leg up by Poughkeepsie. I was there with my italian leather briefcase and a new pair of boots on the platform when I thought to go. There was a troop of macaques on the other side of the fence when I’d worked my way to the far end, and I spent probably too long looking at it, just watching them bang rocks together and pick bugs off each others’ back.

I’m still sitting there with an expression that projects unbothered confidence and thinking about the tribulations of the Blessed Virgin when my baby sister sits down next to me with a glass of prosecco in her hand. She practically drops and lets the couch catch her. She’s saying something inane about the way the garland’s wrapped around these cast iron hooks my mother’s husband has put up on the wall above the windows to someone, possibly me, and I wait a few seconds before I look up because I’m not surprised by its presence. The hooks hadn’t been there the last time I came by. I’m living up by Chelsea, now, except I’m not really. I’ve been upstate for a while, but really what I’m getting at is that I’m buying an apartment, so I won’t be here long. My sister is wearing a Scottish cashmere cord-knit sweater over her church dress, which is more tasteful than my mother’s, and she has a white calfskin purse with brass clasps. She’s started to curl her hair. She’s actually my age, my twin. Her teeth are whitened and when she talks she sounds like she’s crooning to a baby or something. My great aunts are also talking like that, actually, so I guess that people talk like this in the city now. She sounds really unperturbed. “Merry Christmas,” she says, hovering right by my ear, then she puts her arms around my shoulders and squeezes, like she’s trying to hang on. I spot her eyes dart over to mother when she does this, maybe to check if she’s still watching. I spot this because I do it too. “I’m so glad you’re back, Junior,” she says.

“I’m glad to be back,” I say.

“Did you get my letters?” she asks. I tell her that I got her letters and read them all several times. I actually read a few of them several times. Then she looks at me and a little through me and doesn’t seem to care much anyway. “I passed my bar,” she says, still crooning like she’s talking to a baby, or maybe a really stupid person. Then she slowly looks over at Barrett, who is digging the cork out of a bottle of champagne. When it goes pop, I imagine it’s his head. His left eye soars across the room like a loosed bullet, clinging to one of the cast-iron hooks by a little tail of nerve. His right eye bounces, bits of brains and skull and nose and lip scatter through the air like confetti. Blood dribbles down and soaks his undershirt and his London herringbone waistcoat. He’s still standing when it happens, with all the blood running down his tie and dripping off of his pocketwatch chain and blotting out the letters on his handkerchief. A few pieces of skull land in Beatrix’s wineglass. I’m thinking of whether I want to pick the imaginary piece of his ear out of my own when Beatrix shakes me again, plainly oblivious, and repeats, “Isn’t that great?” And I say it’s the greatest news I’ve heard and think of picking a piece of his skull out of hers, too. Then she smiles and there’s a real sort of edge to it.

“You know,” she says.

I don’t know, so I say as much. She leans in to my ear and I can smell the eucharist and the prosecco. She adjusts her posture and pretends to lean her head on my shoulder.

“Barrett bought you a Model T for Christmas,” she says, and then her smile curls against my cheek. “But you should still act surprised when he shows it to you.”

I don’t feel surprised. I guess what I’m saying is that I would have been acting surprised anyway, but I don’t feel the need to explain that to her. Then she drinks a sip of wine and leans back in her chair and giggles shrilly, and her eyes flash with self-satisfaction and I mean really flash, and her hair looks like she stole baby Jesus’s halo. I look at one of the darkened windows and check myself out for a few moments until I get my smile just as bright. Then I lift her arms from around me to on my shoulder, and say, “We should go up.”

My mother beams when I walk up with my sister’s arms around my shoulders still. She takes them off to play with her shawl, and then she chirps, “Axel was just telling me about how it is upstate.” One of my great aunts chips in on the topic, graciously talking about how great the privilege of watching me grow into a charming young man had been, and I take that to be the shape of my mother’s white lie. Well! Don’t I know it!

I’m thinking about the monkeys again when I bring up going to school. Monkeys use tools. Primates do. That’s the thing, you know, people say it’s a dog eat dog world. People say, but eating other dogs is what’s wrong with dogs in the first place. Monkeys, though, monkeys don’t need to eat other monkeys. They pick bugs off of other monkeys backs. I’m thinking about monkeys and I’m holding my wineglass by the stem. “Of course,” I say, “I have a lot to thank Aunt Enya for as far as my upbringing is concerned, but I can hardly let Beatrix get too far ahead. Keeping pace is important in this city.”

“You’re not thinking of law, too, are you?” Bea says. She’s draping her arms on my shoulder again.

“Actually, I have been thinking of a legal program,” I say. “You studied up in Greenwich Village, didn’t you?”

“Well, I do still correspond with some of the faculty,” she says. I am positive she has no intention of following through on the offer that implies.

My sister starts talking about legal advocacy, and Barrett and grandfather are chipping in about how much they could use someone to look after their shipping agreements.

“It’s easy to sway a Manhattan jury, you know,” Beatrix says, with a hint of a sniff.

“I was thinking politics, actually,” I say. That’s the part where I flash a smile. I make sure not to smile to broadly– that stretches the laugh lines, and premature aging is a sign of weakness. Everyone looks over, except for Beatrix, who says politics is easy, too, these days, and anyway, she prefers a courtroom to a room full of stodgy old men. It doesn’t really make any sense; I’ve seen the kind of judges they publish in the papers, but when she says it, Enya starts nodding and hums. Beatrix is starting to talk about the National Association of Woman Lawyers when I lift my glass and say, “I think it would be plenty interesting once I got into it.” I have a second, while I’m swallowing the sip of wine, which I still don’t like.

“Oh, my god,” Aunt Enya says. Her voice sounds strained by the enthusiasm in her voice. “You should do something about the taxes, import duties,” she adds, and Beatrix rolls her eyes.

“Oh, yes—,” my mother starts to cut in.

“You know,” Enya is saying, “I was talking to an old colleague from the Aid Society who said her grandson wasn’t seeing a penny of his inheritance, all because of the taxes here!”

“—Well, someone has to do something about the taxes,” my mother says.

Barrett says, “They’re strangling my business. You’ll do something about the taxes, won’t you, Junior?”

“Call me that again,” I cut in with a glare. “Yeah, don’t.”

“Alright,” Barrett says with a laugh. I’m still not looking at him. I like the image I still have in my imagination. “You should do something about harbor control, too.”

“There’s a lot more to be concerned about than taxes, you know,” I sigh. “I mean it, I think this country’s gone to the dogs for lack of good leadership. Something…” I trail, but I haven’t lost my roll. I’m trying to work out exactly what’s so exciting about politics, other than the kind of thing that really gets blood going, I mean, getting new blood onto the city council. You can convince anyone that the old guard or the old way of doing things is bad. I look. Everyone else has cake in their mouths. I purse my lips easily and find my word. “…in line with the will of the people. God appointed the new world to be the testing ground for a new kind of governance and we are falling behind, I say, and local politics would get us moving in the right direction. I mean, ‘The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act’? I hear talk of prohibiting liquor,”

“You should,” Grandfather says. His mustache waggles like an inchworm as his eyes fix on me. “Prohibition would be wonderful for business, much in the way Narcotics was.” Beatrix gives me an odd side-eye, a side-eye I frankly hardly catch, and much less understand. “It’s been just tremendous for business.”

“Cake anyone?” Barrett cuts in. “Boosh-ay de No-elle.”

“Oh, sure, if you want constant court-calls,” Beatrix answers.

“It’s Boosh,” Aunt Enya says. “Isn’t it?”

“Cream and cho-co-lait,” Barrett says. Mother’s face twitches for a second. I caught it stealing glances.

“It’s Boosh,” Mom says. “Oh sure, if we want constant court-calls.”

“Oh, sure,” Grandfather says gruffly. “I want constant court-calls. You can win them, and we’ll hardly need to worry, anyway, once your brother gets on the city council.” I swear I see my sister lick her lips, as fluid as a shark.

“Anyway,” I say, “I don’t plan on prohibiting liquor unless that’s just what the people want. That’s the problem with New York, you know. The city council doesn’t work with the city. They’re out of touch, and they don’t work with the good businesspeople of this city, much less the people. You know, we have to worry about things like disease and random killings and animal cruelty and whether, in all of this, it really matters all that much to go after narcotics.” Grandfather looks at me with cake in his mouth and a fork in his hand. I add, “And we have to support the port, and the people who keep it moving.”

I pick my Christmas cake apart with a fork, and then I put it in my mouth and it tastes alright and somewhat dry. Mom dabs at her lip with a green handkerchief.

“Well said,” Barrett says, after (and I assume this) he’s finished chewing.

“Well said!” my mother adds. Well said, well said, they echo, up until my grandfather does too. Beatrix smiles and squeezes my shoulders and shakes me for a moment.

“Let’s see how N-Y-U treats you, Junior,” Beatrix says.

I lift my glass and pull the smile back out. “Alright, baby sister, let’s,” I say.

Oh, God, Beatrix is saying. We’re over on the couch again. Mom looks over, and she smiles like the lord’s angel. I suppose I look pretty well like Jesus, because I’m grinning like a baby, too. Smiles go a long way. “Oh, God,” she’s crooning, and laughing. I pin down what I think it sounds like: a bit southern, really, mixed with some kind of affect from across the pond. She’s putting it on effortlessly. I guess I’ll probably ought to, too.

“Nobody cares that much about the city council, you know. It’s hardly governorship, or state senate. I thought this was a lark.” My little sister’s cheeks are flared red at the edges, but she’s not that drunk. I can tell because she keeps looking back at our mother and Barrett. Which I know because I’m doing that too. I say that I guess that’s what got us into this situation in the first place, and that I’m plenty secure in my cares about politics, anyway. Barrett looks over again and says I’ve turned into quite the firebrand. “Oh, that’s true,” Beatrix says. She turns on me like a shark, but still mostly looks through me. “You’re turning into quite the firebrand, Junior.” Then she leans back in the couch and I lean into my corner and twirl my wineglass to get the wine spinning. Beatrix is smiling in my direction but her eyes won’t meet mine, and I don’t really care to meet hers, so we go on like that for a little while until I shrug, and say I think someone ought to be, and they’ve all gotten enough fun out of the matter. Barrett’s been looking over again, all misty-eyed. He’s actually drunk, I think. His cheeks look like hot coals. So I sit there sort of serene again for a while until Bea puts her head back on my shoulder and turns in towards my ear.

“You’re being such a suckup,” she whispers, nearly ghosting my ear.

I laugh, totally out of nowhere, and I smile genially at the whole room, but irritation flares in me. There hadn’t been a hint of insincerity in my heart, except the once I’d smiled at my mother’s husband. I look over and she rolls her head to look out at the room, swaying off of my shoulder. “I’m not,” I say warningly. “I’ve been entirely sincere this whole time.”

Beatrix scoffs into her hand. She looks out at mother and makes her eyes glitter somehow and says, “Mom, I think we could both use some more wine.” Then she turns and looks at me cheerfully and says, “I might have to get us that if she doesn’t come over.”

I look at her a little askance.

“Okay,” Beatrix says in my ear, like a baby. “What are you being, then?”

“I mean it,” I answer, under my breath, with the glass held to my lips. Barrett’s coming over with a pair of wineglasses in his fingers and an intact head on his shoulders.

“Here, darling,” he says to Beatrix. “Here, sport,” he says to me.

I put the new glass to my lips and try not to think about how cheap the wine tastes. That’s another thing, cheap wine. You never want to go under on the drinks, because good drinks can make bad food work. Cheap drink just projects cheapness. When he steps away, I glance at mother to make sure she’s gotten back into conversation with Barrett. I say, “I’m planning on getting into politics, and the family is a boon to that, as I see it.”

She takes a long sip, then covers her lips with the glass and snorts.

I look at her askance again.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “What?”

“Forget the wine. I have a present for you, too, but I never care for waiting ’til morning, anyway. You should come with me a second,” she says, and then rises from the couch.

I get up and we both look at mother. “Well, I’ll be to bed after,” I say.

“We’ll be to mass in the morning,” Enya says.

I step out into the room and my mother comes over and puts her head on my shoulder. She kisses my hairline and says she’s so pleased with the man I’ve become and I can’t deny it makes me proud to hear it. Barrett says something too. I follow Beatrix.

Beatrix tells me to wait outside the bathroom as she disappears inside, so I repeat, “What?”

“Have you ever done cocaine?” Beatrix says after a moment. “Would you like to?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, to the first question. I say, “Sure,” to the one after that.

Beatrix takes a pot out from under the sink and shapes up a few lines on the lid with a nail file. Then she leans down and snorts and snorts phlegm into a napkin or something.

I lean down to the lid and roll a dollar and suck in through my nostril. I’d lied. I’d never done it before. As soon as it hits my nose, I can barely hold back the sneeze. Stifling it leaves me coughing and coughing. Beatrix is leaning up against the counter watching me puff out little clouds of powder. She purses her lips and gives me a look I can’t make sense of. “Seriously, Junior,” she says, laughing, and I realize she isn’t talking about the coke a second before she goes on. “Municipal politics? Chrissakes.” She puts a finger to her lip and hisses, “Why? …I’m opening a firm, you should come join.”

“Oh, so you lied about looking out for the family interests?” I reply.

“I’m disappointed that you didn’t lie,” Beatrix shoots back.

“What, to grandfather? No! I want to get a seat on the city council, and he wants an inside man. It’s an obvious synergy,” I say. “Buzzy,” I add–

“Fuck,” she she cuts in, pouting her lip. “I thought I’d heard the last of that nickname.”

“—Look, family business is family business. That means a free ticket in. That’s a gift and as you can see, I won’t turn down a gift if I think it’ll help. You should think about that, too,” I say. “I mean, so, you’re striking out on your own… why?”

“God.” she tosses her head dramatically. “What did they do to you upstate?”

“Nothing. What has you so pissed off?” I cut back in. She shakes her head vigorously.

“Oh, please. I’m not pissed off at all. I don’t know about you, but it’s shameful,” she says, and she’s starting to sound genuinely incensed. “Just shameful! I don’t want to be tied down to the likes of them forever. But—” and a note of disappointment creeps into her voice, still crooning. “I guess you do.”

“Buzzy,” I say, “I’m going to get on the city council. Hell, maybe I’ll be the mayor. I’m going to keep my promises, because you know what, I’m sincere when I make them. If that ties me to the Devlins, well, I’m already tied to the Devlins. So are you.” I stop. My blood’s starting to run hot in my veins. “It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Bea says. “I’m cutting myself off. I’m going against them. I’m doing this on my own merit.”

“Your own merit.”

“Yeah, I’m a hell of a prosecutor. That’s the thing, Junior,” she drawls. “I mean, hell. You wanna show it to the Muntzes, I’ll get that done without mom. I’m just going to put them in jail,” she says.

“I’m just fucking going to,” she adds.

“It’s stupid,” I say, and I cut out another line after Beatrix does. I’m thinking about the macaques. I shut my eyes and just think. About Beatrix and this stupid lawyer business. Then I’m thinking about the macaques again. I think, I wanna be the macaque who picks and eats the bugs off of all the other monkeys. That’s power. I think I wanna be the monkey who picks and eats the bugs. I guess I’m really feeling the powder and it’s making the cake swirl in my gut. I’m trying not to make eye contact with Beatrix because she’s still looking at me like she isn’t done, I guess she has more of a tolerance up. I’m thinking I’m going to be king of the monkeys. “You went to college with all the money they gave you to– to help them cheat out of racketeering laws or whatever. That’s not your own merit, that’s an heiress throwing a tantrum.”

“Fuck off,” she says, finally giving up on whatever she’d been trying to say. “I don’t know why I thought I’d share that with you after how we left things. You’re such a suckup.”

“No, I’m not,” I say in a whisper. I add, not loud enough to be heard, “I’m king of the monkeys.”

We’re on the roof. We’re up on the roof of my mother’s husband’s new house when Beatrix suddenly sits up straight and stares down over the edge of the rooftop. “What the fuck?!” she hisses. I don’t see anything, but I reach over and put the lid back on the pot. Beatrix’s eyes are narrowed, and she’s darting to and fro. It wrenches me back to alertness.

“What?” I cut in.

Beatrix starts to raggedly stand up. She puts her belly to the roof and slips out of her white italian calfskin pumps. “I think there’s a drunk on the property,” she gets out.

I shake my head and look. I don’t see a thing. I reach up for her arm and tug her. “Hey, siddown,” I say. “There’s nobody on the property.”

“No,” she hisses again. “Look, by the gate. Just by the wall.” She points, and I see it– a bum, or something, climbing up on the knee-high brick fence. What a travesty. I feel my arm pull. She’s stood all the way up on the roof, trying to pull away from my grasp. “Hey, you, Jack!” Beatrix yells. I can’t tell whether the drunk actually looks. My sister sways for a moment and yells again. “Hey, ya drunk! I’m in with law-yers!” Beatrix says, enunciating her syllables as though if she talks down just enough she’ll cut through the haze of whatever narcotics are coursing through the veins of the bum, who’s started to climb back over the wall to continue on his stumbling way. Probably a reveler from down at the bar, someone without anyone to celebrate with, and drunk or drugged out of his mind, too. “In with law-yers,” Beatrix repeats. “Hey! Bring me a beer from whatever dive you crawled out of or scram—”

I tug on Beatrix’s shoulder. “Cut it out, do you want mother to hear?”

She barely listens, muttering something I can’t catch. “–or me and my lawyer friends will fuck you into the ground!” she shouts.

I start slapping her arm and finally she sits down. I pull out a cigar and put it to my lips and light it and blow a ring through another. “He looks like father,” I say. Beatrix keeps her eyes on the bum, who’s holding his head in his hands midway over the wall, looking down and away. Beatrix puts her shoes back on.

“Who, the drunk?” Beatrix says.

I give him a long hard look. I didn’t remember him so scruffy, but he’d been a pretty sad wretch the last he’d turned up. The thought that he’d turned into that wreck felt like vague despair. “No,” I say, finally. “I meant Barrett.”

“Barrett… Holloway… Rolfe,” Beatrix says. “He does look like father.”

“I’ve known him for eight hours,” I say. I’m looking at a big painted billboard on one of the rowhouses along the harbor. There’s a model’s face down the side. Sunglasses perch on his perfect brow, a splendid white grin splitting his face like the rock in the monkey’s hands. See The New You, the sign says. My blood’s still buzzing from the cocaine, and I’m about ready to hatch into something new and something better.

(Unedited) A Sieve for Ghosts

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 23:40:12 -0500

Nine years had gone, in the teeth of a kind of ratlike dirsrepute, since Ceddleria Vedova had last been in Zedarja. It had a sharp scent of salt. It was arid, even surrounded by sea. It was arid as the desert just a narrow strait away, but here, even crouching amid the austere foundations of the city, they were without the safety of the vast waste. Here, they were far more exposed. The set in her jaw and the grit of her teeth would not let her forget it.

Nine years gone made nine years too short. Never would have been too short to suffer the sight of the heart of the Holy Empire again, where it stood like a talon over her throat. Zedarium was forged of conquest. In its oldest histories, it alone survived the fall of an empire the world over. Given lease by the Gods, it stood only to take the whole of Doleri beneath imperium.

There had been histories for her, her and hers, once. Before the House of Ronodor called the elven houses to the call of Empire again, and drove them once more to the deserts. Bitterly, Ceddleria knew, they were merely to be Dadzhvoy. They were not to inherit the blessing of starlight, as Zedarium imagined of itself. They were to accept that lot– root among the rocks and die beneath the hot suns, or flee, and seek hollow prosperity elsewhere.

Ceddleria detested one who could forget. There had been history too at Mežižan, when the Euclija Katarinija Ronodor had crushed it beneath her heel. At her mother’s breast, she’d heard it, and heard it since, until the Petroviches had brought Zedarium to her, too, and shuffled their hopes beneath Doleri’s sands. The only conclusion that did not betray it held that someone had to remember, even if memory was torment. She thought longer, ghosting the threshold of a squat building in the armpit of the city, and grew angry. Then she thought of Effrosyni’s words, and grew angrier. Finally, she sighed. First light was coming.

She’d tucked inside again, not deigning to be so exposed by day, when the red of the suns started to trace the edges of the buildings. The momentary doubt– the sheer bafflement she’d felt at coming back, even with the dream of rebellion to fuel her– had put her mind in a spiral. Now she wondered, now that the dream had quit her, this hour and change before the carriage, if she’d come back at all. If the danger and the proximity of Zedarja wasn’t merely imagined. The memory of coming was stale enough that she could hardly pick it out as her own.

It was another scar she bore, given by that irredeemable Petrovich daughter, the attacks, and the visitors. It was easiest for her to think of them as ghosts, ghosts that twisted her memories about their own, and thoughts which were altogether foreign from her mind. In the nine years since, Ceddleria found the visits milder, but she had long before learned to dread their coming, which so confused her good sense. Which placed her in the cart rather than at the reins of her own mind, and precluded all sanctuary therein. But not this morning. Her mind was still, which meant this was real– her doubts, the mission, and Zedarja. The first, the doubts, she could make an enemy of, and work to flush them out of her mind. It didn’t bear thinking about any longer. The others, she could only live with. It made her feel like a toy. Which, and she grudged it, had been near to accurate once.

It was no surprise that Effrosyni was the first to emerge from the corridor of the building, and to join her in the shabby front room. Ceddleria was at the counter, looking through a crack in the drapes, which kept much of the room dim, when she did. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a brief, sad, look from Effrosyni. The whole look had been a packaging of statements– an impassive nod as a greeting, and one brow lagged behind to tell her it was a pleasant one; the look in her eye was the closest thing to an apology for her words the night before that Ceddleria was like to get. It was an apology Ceddleria had made up her mind to accept, but she was still dragging her feet in the mud on the follow-up.

What Effrosyni said was, “The weapons need to be out on the table, wrapped and set for bear. That was the job of the morning guard.”

Thus went the cadence of their romance. She could only really allot the one brief moment to the thought; wherein, paradoxically, the maddening question of Effrosyni, even though they both were far too grown for the infatuations of youth, was not snuffed out in her heart by the way she’d felt. Biting back words she’d had waking hours since an early rising to ponder, to her own chagrin. Fighting for a girl who patronized, who needled her to spill guts to the rest of the crew, fighters all that ought to trust her. Fighting for a girl who meant it. Ceddleria had yet to pick one who wasn’t half-hostile. Like the desert. Well, at least with Effrosyni there was something of care, there.

She’d been staring, watching Effie’s jaw start to tighten, as she maybe pondered whether to say something, caring or entrenched. Ceddleria sighed. “The oils were still wet, on the blades, last I went to try,” she said. No, there wasn’t going to be a rehash it over this morning. Not while they were kissed up to the wire. “So I went to meditate.”

Ceddleria expected a riposte, something fueled by something residual, lingering in the tank when they’d cut it off. There was something laughable to it, Effrosyni’s efficiency; the timepiece had passed the hour, and all her force waned, and then she was sleeping an arms-span away. But Effrosyni nodded and started grabbing up the tarps. “Meditation. Good,” she said. The hairs between her brows, like a soft undershadow between her horns, seemed to mingle as she slipped into momentary thought. “We will all need clarity of mind ere long. I’ll set the gear—”

Ceddleria suddenly found her perch by the window stifling. She cut in, “Good. Then I’ll wake the others. They’ll need not be drowsy.”

“Yes,” Effrosyni said, but there was a sliver of exasperation in her voice. Her brow set. Effrosyni caught her out a pace from the corridor. Stifled. That was the word for it, what felt like a swarm was stifled somewhere down her throat. Effrosyni put a hand on, held her fast. Her face was blank for a few seconds.

“I’m good for it,” Ceddleria said, flatly, and part for her own doubts. “Give it time, give it the day.”

Effrosyni let out a sharp sigh. “And this is me listening.”

Ceddleria put a hair behind Effie’s ear, but jumped her hand off. It wasn’t either, infatuation, care. Frustration, a stifling. It was both. Effrosyni’s eyes caught hers for a second longer. They made her nostalgic for the sort of thing she immediately wanted to be anything else about. It was an awful idea to be pissed off and nostalgic for other girls. Especially as… Ceddleria detested someone who could forget. Then she really looked at Effrosyni, and finally, withdrew.

It had not been hard to coax the others from rest. Sleeping in hostile territory bred a light slumber, one for which one’s full kit was kept close at hand. Not twenty minutes passed in dead silence, after Ceddleria had noted those already awake, and rustled those who still slumbered. The silence was only broken by a few grunts of exertion and the shifting of weight on groaning planks as they shuffled into stiff leather kits and wound on their gear. In the front room, Effrosyni had labored swiftly to bag all the weapons in black tarpaulin, muffled with scrap wool to silence their movements. As each hitched the bags to their rigging, Ceddleria nudged the curtain open. Five sets of bleary eyes watched a coach, drawn by a pair of camels, lose a wheel in the middle of the road perpendicular to the alley.

The driver was Zedari. If all was well, Ceddleria knew, it’d be a glamour, or maybe a turncoat. Cezona had called the infiltrator ‘Nefeli’. It sounded Dadzhvoy, but that was no reason to leave behind her concern. The driver came down from the front and into the alley a ways, then pulled open the back of the carriage for a pack of tools. Ceddleria peered longer, through the slit in the curtain, even while Effrosyni came up to her back and hitched what felt like an axe inside the rigged tarpaulin to her kit. She let the ropes hang by her side. If she had blinked, she would have missed it when the driver left a small, tatty scarf on the back lip of the coach, where the pulled tools were. She took out a small lens. The knit was unmistakeably the fashion of Mežižan. This was the signal.

Ceddleria pulled back from the window and let it fall shut. When she turned, all four sets of eyes fell on her. She pushed down her doubt.

“Go in pairs, stagger exits. Don’t be seen, even by Cez’s turncoat. I will have words,” said Ceddleria in a hush. “Spryesh, Islijna first. Get settled, and partly detach your gear once you’re in. Effrosyni, Neroz, you’ll push their gear in, keep the floor of the wagon flat, then detach.” She unslung the gear-bag from her back. Neroz took it and slung it over his front. “I’ll come in when I’ve spoken to the turncoat. Keep the floor flat, then pull the crates over.”

“And if we can’t manage to get it to lie flat?” Spryesh asked.

Ceddleria fixed him in a gaze. “It’ll have to. We’ll have two chances to adjust. I’ll put the final look together. If there are no other questions…” she waited a beat. “First two. Go.”

The dim red dawn beyond the window was briefly interrupted Spryesh and Islijna, just along the wall. If this ‘Nefeli’ saw them… well, it was hardly damning. But it worried her nonetheless. They were either lucky, or the driver was well-directed; the driver was intently focused on the wheel, eyes cast towards the camels. There was a slight shudder to the cart as Spryesh clambered up into the back. It became obvious, then: the driver, head bowed over the wheel bearing, pretended not to notice. Ceddleria nodded.

Neroz left. When Effrosyni started to pull away, Ceddleria caught her arm. She said, knitting her brows over feelings which were working their way through her face, “I should have made better use of our leave, however brief. This isn’t an armistice, but I should have.”

Effrosyni let a breath slip. “Armistice.” She shook her head. “By Ay’yramox, you’re still pissed off.”

“No,” Ceddleria said, clinging onto the wrist. “I’m just slower. But I wanted you to know I can recognize that. And I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Effrosyni pressed her lips. Then, her gaze grew stern, buttressed by her raised, prominent brow. Her hand twisted to brace Ceddleria’s arm, then pulled away. “You’re worrying. Just nerves.”

Once they had all laid down inside the cart, crammed in on their bellies, braced under hollow crates and tied-down fixtures. Clairvoyance would be foiled– the official shipment, for which the manifest remained, listed esotericists’ paraphernalia, with which it was easy to intermix talismans foiling magical sight. Sturdier scrutiny could be turned away with the assurance that such power would damage the spellwork, which dated back to the Axtadum. It had been a stroke of luck capturing this coach and manifest so early into the year, far enough from its destination that plans could be set and times could be adjusted within reason, might take sole credit for the viability of the plan if not for the foil against visual inspection. The younger Ronodor Euclija, the second Ceddleria had the misfortune of ever once thinking of, would today receive a jubilee. If not for the fact of a handful of complacent zealots, it would not have been possible to force a delivery today.

They each lay there in the dark of the coach interior. Their cloaks, which were also dark tarpaulin, formed a floor for the goods stacked up. Even though they were empty, in number they were quite heavy. At the same time, the slightest shift would be obvious when viewed from above, which left Ceddleria with the sole option of total stillness. It made her tired. It had made her tired when they’d tested the fit, back in the desert.

It was a relief, then, when the coach finally slowed to a halt. There was a big shudder as the driver came down from the front. She could just scarcely hear the footsteps against the road through the floor of the carriage. Then another. Distinct, heavier. Erratic, though, so she interpreted two sets of boots.

A voice, muffled, came in Zedarijuce, “Oljebuc Doleri.”

The response– “Magnjstrac. Oljebuc,” and in double, “Oljebuc.” The latter was simply a greeting, Ceddleria knew, but the first had been a rank. A higher one. Their turncoat driver had the rare audacity to play at being Secret Fire ascendancy.

She wondered, momentarily, just how deep Cezona’s infiltrator had managed to get. It didn’t sound at all the first time. The next Ceddleria managed to hear was in the driver’s voice, what she assumed was the driver, and she hadn’t heard much of what preceded it. “...Had said the delivery was paramount and time-sensitive.”

Another stretch went by. Ceddleria strained her ears to hear. The darkness seemed to help, lidding the rest of her awareness. Finally, she caught another stint of words. “...An overnight crew,” one of the other voices was saying. They could only be referring to the token defense of the archive, which would mean Cezona’s intel had come through. Another one of the thousand things weighing on Ceddleria’s mind, bloodying themselves up against the sides of her skull, slid into place without fanfare. A bead of sweat caught between her and the tarp.

Suddenly, the three sets of footsteps were circling the back of the coach. One or two of the pairs had real weight, a kit of armor, or the drag of fastened weapons. The back heaved open. Through the canvas she could feel the dawn air brush up against the interior. She willed herself to stillness, willed the others to more than stillness. The darkness, the lid over her senses, was pierced by dim light.

Less muffled now, the second voice returned, “Do you have the manifest on you?”

“Yes,” the first voice answered. That of Cezona’s infiltrator, she now surmised. “Give me a moment.”

The light dimmed further. Ceddleria heard a wave of breath hit the canvas just to her left, accompanied by the faint rustle of heavy fabric moving. A hand probed the canvas next to her. That of ‘Nefeli’, she could only pray. Without warning, the hand closed around something. Ceddleria felt the canvas drag at the touch. That she’d be so careless!

Her breath was still seized in her lungs, she hadn’t dared go for the tarp over her weapons, when the hand withdrew.

There was a long silence as the sentries read over the manifest. Finally, their driver interjected. “I really wouldn’t worry over it. Your captains got a copy when the delivery was confirmed. It’s just going to sit in the compound until tomorrow, regardless.”

For the briefest of moments, before she remembered to thank her good fortune, Ceddleria was blindsided by the complacency of the Zedari machine, at the nucleus of their imperial might. The back of the coach shut, plunging them back into disquieted darkness, and the coach trundled a few minutes longer.

They emerged when the driver’s footfalls had gone away, and two hundred counts past. Each wore a mask and headwrap, and dark colored leathers, with dark tarps over their weapons lashed to their backs. Then they were up against the wall, just under a window, with only a faint limning glow to betray them. Zedarja was cold without the suns high above, and the light that was only starting to bathe it was cold too. She remembered, as in a faintly-remembered dream, the cold of the desert at morning. The banner of the Haruta flapped unceasingly against the walls of the compound. Unlike the sun, Zedarium did not cease in its cruel radiance, burning across miles of sand.

It was profoundly ugly, gaudy as jewelry, as a polished shell where it was hunkered over the rock it sat on like a predatory beast rearing back. The walls and gates were huge blocks, almost bruise-blue in the dim, though turning a salt-pink as the morning grew. Here was one of its apices, visible from anywhere within the city’s walls. The city itself was visible from the whole of the coastline, so that none may be spared the affront of its visage. In her youth, it had never been a happy reminder, but it had not always seemed to regard her with such an open cruelty.

In a fugue, she’d given the go-ahead. She’d hardly needed to give word. As soon as she put the end of the rope in Spryesh’s hand, he helped her skitter up onto the juts between the first and second stories. She jammed her body, with her leg to brace, within the hollow of a window, first glancing into the corridor beyond. As she scanned across, it was deserted until the very end, where she caught an armored figure with a chain in hand. She went still. Dogs!

Ceddleria pulled herself from the window, but remained splayed across the upper wall. It hadn’t been out of the question, but they’d thought it unlikely in a library, even given the reduced schedule. They’d smell the naphtha, maybe even through the bottle. The reduction in time it would lead to weighed heavy on her mind as they turned the topic over in furtive signs.

She pulled back against the wall, and prepared to lean back over the window, counting breaths as the figure, or another, passed again with the dog. She wet her lips, under her mask, and signed down, in a few one-handed moves, I’m not calling it off.

The archive had seven sections, of which only five had shelves. There were doubtless other storage rooms, but the five main libraries comprised the vast majority of volumes in the building. Moving quickly, they might be able to put the rooms to flame without raising any prior alarm. Unnervingly, they hadn’t been able to see the real size of the reduction in schedule for the Euclija’s jubilee, they merely knew that only security personnel would be on site, and at about half-strength. That they hadn’t known about the dogs now called that into question.

The window Ceddleria was braced against led into one of the antechambers, between the first library wing and a wing deemed low-priority: merely a loading dock, the intended destination of the shipment they’d diverted. The useless cargo still waited in the courtyard for hands who would not come until the next morning. With fires set, it would be worthless as an escape route. She put down a hand for Islijna to pass up a charm, to abey the alarm doubtless placed on the windows. Then Ceddleria jimmied the lock and tumbled down from the sill onto a worn rug. She hooked the other end of the rope under the sill, then made down the hall to watch the prior door, where the guard and the dog had come from.

Neroz was the last to enter, when Ceddleria’s hackles started to rise, even as the hall beyond remained silent. With the window open, the air wouldn’t be dead. Scent would carry, which would be worse than otherwise– which was bad already, they’d need to hope it dissipated enough for the dogs to not raise alarm. At the least, she could let her breath go when Neroz shut it and locked.

From there, they made down the corridor the other way, following the two loops’ patrol Ceddleria had seen. With a shoulder to the door, she beckoned Neroz to enter, and report back with a brief sweep. They’d reached the first archival room sooner than she’d had cause to expect: a wraparound tier at the second level. The middle, by the brief description Neroz offered by way of sign, was nearly bare, with most of the volumes in shelves along the walls. The fortune of their immediate proximity was made worse by one factor, however. He’d caught the faintest hint of footsteps approaching from the other way. The patrols went both ways. For a disquieting moment, Ceddleria decided she’d simply missed the opposite rotation, between the two loops she’d caught at the window.

How long do we have? She asked, deft on her fingers.

Two minutes, and that’s just one out of sight, Neroz guessed.

Ceddleria shifted gently past the bend, back towards their entrance. In an instant, she caught a flash of mottled fur and flattened herself against the wall.

She tucked back by the others. Anyone below? She signed to Neroz.

He simply gestured a negation.

Down, Ceddleria said, then tucked up and over the bannister, to fit herself into the crevice between the highest shelf and the second-story platform. Slowly, and with her foot braced against the highest shelf, she helped Spryesh first down and over, prising the tarp-wrapped weapon from his back to wedge it atop the shelf.

He hung there awkwardly at his perch until they managed to hook his foot between the back of the shelf and the wall, and he slipped back on his belly. Islijna came next.

As Islijna’s weight hit Ceddleria’s shoulder, Ceddleria felt her foot give from its purchase. Spryesh caught Islijna’s ankle. Ceddleria’s other leg started to slip from atop the shelf, her left hand having only an inverted grip on the platform above. Wildly, she grasped with the other for the bannister, and caught it, gouging a nail deep into the wood. Her finger protested, like knives in the nailbed. She could feel herself starting to lose grip again.

Effrosyni’s hand caught hers. She let her breath go, and folded herself back under the lip of the platform, just as a patrolman passed underneath. It had been thirty seconds of their apparent two minutes, and one minute without line of sight. Ceddleria didn’t know how long they had in the other direction. It was best not to wonder, except, perhaps, in that it was better to be certain. The others clambered down without incident, now having Spryesh and herself prepared to ease the clamber down.

As the seconds wound down, Ceddleria heard the footfalls growing louder, from the way they’d come, and the low snuffling of the dog. The platform began to creak above them, as weight set where they’d just been.

Ceddleria felt for the corks in her pots of naphtha, through the tarp on her back. As though she could really do anything about it now. As the footfalls neared the edge of the platform, she felt her heart skip a beat. That must be a diversion of the usual course.

Now mere feet from where they’d jammed themselves, she heard the low breathing of the dog. She swore she could feel the wetness of its breath. She held her own, as it began to sniff the bannister.

Gingerly, she felt for her nail. On her right ring finger, the bed was tender. The nail was jagged. It had broken off in the wood. Ceddleria squeezed her eyes shut.

“That’s enough,” a sharp voice came, in Zedarijuce. “I won’t have you sniffing out any reports for me. The captain will have my hide for the extra work.” The chain went taut, with a clattering of metal. “And I’ll have yours for that.”

Then, as if all at once, the footsteps began to recede, around to the right, to continue to the right, towards where Neroz had heard the other patrolman approaching.

We can’t move fast enough as one, Ceddleria said, just where her hands had enough light to be seen. Islijna should be with me. We set and move.

Spryesh’s fingers jumped into motion, still on one hand only, as his other steadied his large frame atop the shelves. His eyes roved the platform, even as he signed, this is no time to make hasty calls. The dogs call for more care, not swifter movement.

Effrosyni raised a hand, and made a few curt gestures. Her word goes. It’s too tight between the patrols, and the ones with dogs will raise the alarm too fast.

For nearly a minute there was stillness, then at last footfalls began to approach, from the opposite direction. Without any hint of a sniffing dog. Spryesh’s brow furrowed. The tightness in his face betrayed a short stint of calculation, then he lifted his fingers in faint submission. Slowly, he started to shift forward. With the other hand, he began to bare his weapon, a thick cudgel strapped to his back. He was preparing to climb up. Wait, Ceddleria signed. We do this quiet until the oil’s down.

Tension left Spryesh’s face, but Ceddleria knew, in some measure, she’d gone against his better wisdom. It’s decided, then, he signed. His grizzled face looked grave in the shadow of the platform above. Ceddleria glanced from one to the next. The calm of the score had set in, putting the crud in her mind to a clean burn. She recognized the look on each face– anticipation, but the truer look was that of veiled fear. She felt it too. Felt them waiting on her word. It gave her chills, even if she had, then, wanted it. She felt half-mad to think it.

That leaves Spryesh with Neroz. Skulks should be separated– she signed, and nodded to Neroz. You all go to the last, come back. We meet in the third.

Effrosyni jerked her hand into her field of view. Where do you need me?

True, Ceddleria had hesitated. Had just been winding up for it. The logic was simple, any way she could cut it. Islijna was veteran. She was also a mage. Neroz and Spryesh were a proven combination, tested in frontier raids, but neither had that capability. It made sense that Effrosyni should go with them. She rolled the bare apology she’d received this morning over in her mind, the twinge in Effrosyni’s eye. Even here, Ceddleria struggled to think of words to put to why it had worn her down as much as it had. Her hands spoke for her. With them.

Soundlessly, Spryesh and Neroz clambered back up. Ceddleria held the rope as they rose back over the bannister, and Effrosyni lingered.

And that was when the visitor came.

It started as it always did, with an unbidden breath, filling the crevices in her lungs with something cold, then out through the blood, and back through the veins, like a thick haze. The thoughts started to flow, infant and unformed, first unnoticed, and then with breaching awareness, as through a hole drilled in the base of her skull. They engulfed her own, like an encroaching glacier.

Ceddleria looked at Effrosyni, as her brain buzzed with a deep, foreign disorientation. She remembered the desert of her youth, but she wasn’t much younger. Rather, both suns were orange on the sky, she was nowhere, but the strongest feeling that came from the memory was that she was, pressingly, free. Most pressingly, Viktoria, the Petrovich monster, was not there. Her mind shuddered at the name.

Effrosyni scowled. Some distance in her eye must have given her pause, because concern was etching into the look. It put her off. Ceddleria felt her jaw set, even as her vision split between places. She’d insisted to Effrosyni that she was happiest when they were her problem and hers alone. It was better that way; there’d be no need to chafe at platitudes of care, or propositions of a cure. The genocidal caveman king’s scion with her psychotherapy, or the Temeryon queenling with her quack medicine. She struggled to care about that right now. It sapped her energy, even as committed as she was to preventing the episode from coming between them and a successful mission. Ceddleria was rarely capable of swallowing her pride, and this was bigger than pride.

It would’ve gone on like that had Effrosyni not lifted her fingers again. As near as Ceddleria could tell, Effrosyni had caught on to the slip in her expression no sooner than she’d felt it coming on herself. She signed, what’s the matter?

As though she didn’t know.

I’m fine, Ceddleria responded, curtly, though she was certain what she was seeing was not Effrosyni, but the desert. I’ll be fine.

Effrosyni pressed her lips. She fixed Ceddleria in what felt like a long look, though both were conscious of how much time was going by. It was short, needless to say. Effrosyni’s look was disbelieving, and not altogether cold. A rarer look, in that. She signed, simply, you made the call.

That took the wind out of her anger. The stillness it left was gnawing. Ceddleria was standing on a hill. Whenever it would be, when she finally worked up the nerve to look over to one side, she knew she’d see someone she didn’t recognize anymore. Ceddleria was wedged under her platform. To the other side, there was just Effrosyni.

It was hard to make it feel real when Effrosyni’s expression finally softened. Dimly, Ceddleria realized, she was making up for it. With her hands, she said, I’m going up. I’m not going to nag. You heard what I needed you to hear. So: say it one more time, will you be fine?

Yes, Ceddleria responded. It was hasty, so she paused, and made the same sign again. At last, Effrosyni crawled out, but before she did, she clung to Ceddleria’s wrist, and gave her another long look. Effrosyni, who was so rare to touch, sex being the occasional, and it sometimes felt sole, exception. Ceddleria met the look, as best as she can. Then Effrosyni was gone, and sand filled the floor of the chamber, blown in through some crevice in the wall she couldn’t pick out.

When the other three had vanished, after she and Islijna hunkered down while the patrolman passed over head, they clambered up. Just adjacent to this room, there was a stair linking the platform down to the ground. It was completely enclosed; for the whole minute in descent they had no ability to see the archival room beyond. It made sense that none of the patrols would pass through these stairs, at least before the guard changed. Still, the two of them were swift to descend, pausing only briefly for the ground level to clear. There was a door at the bottom. When they’d passed it, the sand seemed to flee away from wherever she planted her feet. Ceddleria shut the door and jammed it with a screwdriver.

The room itself was almost daunting when viewed from the ground. Shelves scaled the nearly fourty feet of wall uninterrupted before stopping just below the platforms, where they had wedged themselves. Ladders on tracks spanned to just below the highest shelf. She met Islijna’s eyes, midway through circling the room. There were crows’ feet pressed into the greyish skin at the corners of her eyes. Islijna signed out the time, insistent, then turned around. She hiked up the tarpaulin-bag on her back. Ceddleria jostled it until she could bring the pots of naphtha up and out of the wrapping. With them held close to her nose, even sealed, she could smell the faint stench of oil.

Ceddleria looked back. She searched for some acknowledgement in Islijna, acknowledgement that she knew the next step was irrevocable. Islijna simply repeated her dwindling count of time. They both pulled their corks.

Arson was easy, when one got down to it. An archive full of dusty tomes ranks somewhere near hay when it came to flammability. The role of the naphtha becomes insurance, a way to control the spread, and a way to spike the heat. Ceddleria was careful to keep herself flicking it out in little spurts, circling the room.

It shouldn’t have taken the effort it did, but Ceddleria could not trust the archive around her. It had been amorphous for a time now. She still felt the naphtha-bottle in her right hand, but by her left, there was a limp form slumped on the ground. There was a feeling of some profound amusement in the feelings of the visitor when she went for the wrist and started to drag it, even as she took pains to shut it out, and to keep her attention on the shelves.

She was dragging a heavy, limp form down a long corridor, fenestrated on the right by windows which let in the last light of a sunset on the far side of the building, light on its second bounce. She was still near Zedarium. She could smell the desert. There was oil on the air, yes, but she didn’t need to note that. She already knew that was real. She, or the visitor, was walking with a profound sense of amusement through an estate house which she planned to inherit, one of a few.

At the end of the hall there would be a stairway. At the top of the stairs, there would be her idiot brother. But she wasn’t here to see him, she was here because of the other boy. The thoughts came in waves as she finished with the shelves.

A hand closed around her shoulder and yanked her to the wall. Islijna’s, interrupting her as she followed the turns of the narrow estate halls. She held a beat, where Islijna had put her. A flash of momentary horror set her nerves on fire. Then, aghast, she could see the patrolman in the next room. She’d nearly walked out before it. Its armor was tinking faintly as it walked the perimeter of the archive floor just next, merely through a short connecting hall. It was approaching, and sooner than either her or Islijna’s count.

Ceddleria’s face had started to run hot. She kept her eyes cast away from Islijna, even as she felt the veteran’s eyes on her. With a hand held aside, she signed, I don’t see a dog. You don’t see a dog?

No, Islijna replied. Ceddleria nodded, finally starting to lift her chin. The shame of it sat like manic anticipation in her gullet. Exacerbated by the words shared with Effrosyni. She stashed the naphtha-bottles, let her own tarp-bag fall to her hand, and pulled Islijna’s sword from the rest of her gear. With her tongue-tip to her teeth, she glanced into the next room, the patrolman was starting to turn around. She’d have a moment to spring across the passage, to hunker by the archway. Islijna pulled her sabre from the tarp. When the sabre-grip hit her hand, she crossed and put her shoulder to the wall.

Listen for a dog, she signed to Islijna. The older woman shut her eyes. They were gently lidded in the shadows of her headwrap, which laced around the bases of her horns and covered her lower face. Ceddleria clamped her off-hand around the flats of her sabre, letting go of the lump she’d been dragging. Islijna had seemed to glance straight through it.

Have you figured it out yet? The thought arose, fully-formed. It hissed as she smothered it. Once, it would have easily bought her disdain, that the visitor made no attempts at burying itself within her cognition. A lazy parasite, flaunting its trespasses. Ceddleria couldn’t stomach the thought of rewarding such cheapness with real thought, but even now, her grip tightened where it clamped the sword. Islijna shook her head. No dogs.

The patrolman exited from the mouth of the passage not moments later in a trance-like lockstep. Islijna, folded in the crevice of the turn of two walls mere feet from where he passed went fortunately unnoticed, but he made it only a handful of steps into the room before he paused, seeming to catch the smell of naphtha on the air. There’d be a moment of confusion; a moment which would have to be long enough. She signalled to Islijna, who slowly lifted the tarp, her chopping sword in the other hand.

Ceddleria nodded, and they both crept from the wall. The hall of the estate stretched out in front of her, even as the patrolman in his light brigandine started to turn, as though to look through one of the walls. She felt every bunch as the rubber of her soles curled beneath her tread. Islijna was almost on him. She clutched one end of the sword in her armpit, reaching out with the handle, like a snare. Ceddleria closed, almost within reach.

Pick yourself back up, the visitor said.

The patrolman turned. He spotted Islijna first, and stumbled back in surprise. She struck his helmet with a dull clang, with the handle of the sword, then shot her elbow over his shoulder to get its length around his torso, and the tarp over his face. Ceddleria scrambled to help her pull the sentry back to the passage. He heaved as his shoulder hit the ground, shooting past Islijna’s grip. She still had the tarp over his face.

Ceddleria scurried, probing for the lip between plates in his jack. She found it with the tip of the sabre and rammed it home. Bone cracked when she plunged her sword through. She wrenched it back out and dove to his shoulder, helping Islijna keep the tarp taut until the nerves died down. They left the sentry’s body in the passage. They weren’t going to worry at getting the blades back in the rigging, so they doused the tarps in a bit of oil and jammed the threshold to the stair.

As Ceddleria moved on the next room, Islijna caught her shoulder and rapped twice, lightly, on the wall. Ceddleria put her back against it and turned.

Are you holding? Islijna signed, on the hand held away from the mouth of the passage. You keep looking about.

I’m holding, Ceddleria replied. She pressed her lips and made an effort to look Islijna straight in the eye. Coming here, she signed. It’s difficult.

Islijna didn’t verbally question the half-truth, though a furrow in her brow remained. It was, perhaps, uniquely true for all Dadzhvoy. Her head turned, already roving the next room, but for a moment, she glanced back. Then you’ve learned the first lesson, she signed, curtly. When you lead, you have doubts, you keep them down. You make a call, you hold to it. Then she put her hand back on her sword-hilt, and entered.

Casting naphtha over this room felt as though it went by quicker, at least with Ceddleria’s efforts to smother any foreign thoughts from her mind. It wasn’t the same as stumbling through a mirage; it felt more akin to throwing out half of everything she saw. Whenever she’d look to one side, the body– her body– was slumped on the floor, even as she drew further across the estate hall. She stared down at it once she’d finished her side, biting her tongue until the patches of red skin through a threadbare set of rags went blurry.

Then she dragged a rope doused in oil from the prior room, and found herself side by side with Islijna before the estate staircase. She pushed stubbornly to look through it, the swimming scene, to see the archive around her. Islijna was readied to move on to the next room.

This isn’t cute, arose a thought. The visitor’s. The worthless leech’s, spewing nonsense into her inconsolable daydreaming hindbrain. Ceddleria found it suddenly all painfully obvious. The awful bind in it all being, of course, that this was one that she struggled to ignore. It caught her far too close to the heart to shut out, for the directionless rage it inspired. Ceddleria would not let herself think it, because thinking was ever what fed the ghosts, but she would not so easily have forgotten the presence of Viktoria Petrovich, even as she struggled to scrape that acrid being from herself.

The visitor’s memories came clear back around in her mind. She staggered forward down that estate hall. Ceddleria hated to admit it, even to herself, but she needed a second in peace. She busied herself with tying fuses along the wall, until Islijna started to beckon from the landing ahead, haste plain on her face. Ceddleria had already banished the stairway out of mind. The visitor in her head railed against her, mounting in indignation. The thoughts were starting to dizzy her. She was wasting time, standing here dumbstruck. She buried it under the little effort of picking up another rope, doused in oil, and hustling to the archway.

You’re wasting time. I don’t have time to waste, the ghost of Viktoria thought into her head. You’re wasting time you could be doing something pointless with. Ceddleria looked on: Effrosyni, Neroz, and Spryesh emerged moments later from the opposite hall, taking cover by a low shelf. Dragging a body on a tarp. The blood sat on top of it, not saturating the cloth. The ground was clean, but the score…

She and Islijna climbed halfway up the estate hall’s stairs, and hunkered down in the mouth of the passage into the third archival room. At the top of the stairs, there would be her idiot brother. She wasn’t here to see him. But she was here because of the other boy.

Spryesh signed to Islijna, who responded. Both uncorked bottles of naphtha, and started to push towards the interior of the room.

A small patrol– a pair of sentries, came in from a third entrance, towards the center of the compound, perhaps drawn by two sentries now unresponsive. Any second now they’d look, see Spryesh, or see Islijna.

One didn’t have the chance. Neroz caught it just under the helmet with a crossbow bolt, and it dropped like a shot bird. Neroz ducked, reloading the crossbow. The other, stupefied for a bare moment…

Ceddleria considered the gun she’d taken from her tarp. It was loaded. The living sentry had started to back up, but he was meandering towards a node ensconced in the wall. An alarm. She started to circle out, careful to keep out of sight, but Spryesh was now behind his field of view. Spryesh had his cudgel in hand. It would have rang far too loud for comfort, had he swung for the patrolman’s head. Instead it crunched straight through the ribcage, and he crumpled. Spryesh followed him down.

Ceddleria caught his eye. She signed, with as much emphasis as she could, oil!

For a moment, there was relative stillness again. With all five of them present, laying out the naphtha as a starter proved trivial. Islijna had knelt a moment over the body of the sentry Neroz shot, then dragged him to the tarp with the others. Ceddleria and Effrosyni had nearly joined the fuses, Spryesh had started to pull the other, the man he’d cudgeled, away, when Neroz straightened up, stock still. He signed out, patrol! And at once there was the rush of five bodies and several corpses tucking in the passage the other team had come through, the one that led to the fourth archival room. There was no chance Spryesh could make it over with the body. He tucked the sentry beneath a case.

Faint, from above, there was the clinking of a chain, and the low sniffing of a dog. Ceddleria risked a short moment leaning out. The armored figure was taking a slow circle on the second tier. If the dog didn’t smell them, she worried, it might catch scent of the oil. If the sentry looked, it wasn’t subtle, the splashes of black tar over tarpaulin at the thresholds, or smeared on the shelves. Then she saw another, just behind the first. One was just starting to swivel his head. Ceddleria retreated beyond the lip of the passage.

That was when she saw it. Spryesh’s kill had crawled out from under the plinth, now nearly reaching the node he’d sought before. The alarm. His breathing was ragged as he started to bend up, partly clawing at the apron of the wall. It was grotesque, his chest had been crushed, and Ceddleria doubted he could cry out. But if shot again…

The patrol on the upper tier was starting to come around. Her tongue went dry. Ceddleria was about to alert Neroz when the patrollers above glanced towards the archway. She went still, trusting in the distance and poor lighting. She swore she saw one of the dogs lower to sniff through the bannister.

When she looked again, the surviving sentry was nearly to the node.

Ceddleria nearly took Neroz’s hand and indicated. Instead, she tipped her head to the others. Death or absolution, she said, on her hands, and lit the fuse. Four sets of eyes caught the sentry, his hand inches from the alarm. They caught one of the dogs, approaching the bannister, snuffing faintly. Effrosyni nodded.

They dove right, barrelling through the passage to the complex’s hub as the third archival room went up like a grain fire. The tall, cylindrical structure of the room channeled a column of roaring flame swirling up to the ceiling until the pressure burst shattered one of the high windows and the column, spinning like a top, began to flood through the vent left behind. The complex came aroar with fire and barking in a matter of moments.

The grand archival complex of the Secret Fire, testament to the mandate of the Gods to conquer, spat black smoke into the sky.

It mattered extremely little how quickly Ceddleria ran. Climbing the estate staircase took as long as though she had simply walked, dragging a limp body in her left hand. She closed her left hand around the handle of her pistol and drew.

They were waiting when they made it to the lobby, some of them singed, but massed, and with dogs. The complex’s stair was a mere rush left and behind. They’d need to make it back to the window above the cart, to there, then to the rendezvous.

At the top of the staircase in the estate there was a door. She didn’t remember what had been said after the door opened. Viktoria Petrovich’s ghost gave no clarity. The room beyond was something like an attic, but it had an opulent circular window, framed by a chest of drawers and a wall table. The rest of the room was sparse. It was only faintly lit.

There was her idiot brother. He had just drawn a crossbow, clutched in his scrawny blue hands, pointed directly at the other boy, Sorin Petrovich, who was smiling with cruel abandon. The sight of it filled her with a terrible and foreign conceitedness.

Mircea pulled the trigger and shot out a pane of glass. It streaked out into the night.

Ceddleria aimed. Spryesh had already leapt over a secretary’s desk, his cudgel pounding one of the men-at-arms to the floor. Abject chaos had broken out. She fired. A marksman fell, and she led Islijna and Effrosyni across, towards the stair. Beside her, heat streaking from her hands, Effrosyni nullified a mage’s spell.

They hit the first step, and Spryesh fell in line behind them. At the top of the stair emerged six more sentries and three dogs on chains. Islijna led them up, close to the railing. Neroz’s bolt dropped one of the dogs. As Islijna advanced, she brought her sword arcing around. Another dog drew back, and she locked blades with the foremost sentry. Ceddleria stashed and drew another pistol, pulling back.

Spryesh rushed to the front. His cudgel was a thing apart, breaking the slapdash line of them, even as Effrosyni slung bolts of malignant heat into their scattered formation. Ceddleria dropped another marksman to their rear and let the pistol rest. They shouldered, themselves ragged, through the breach in the row. She held her sabre like a ward as they passed toward the mouth of the hall linking this antechamber to the first archival room, where they’d entered.

Ceddleria and Spryesh had been first through, which left them the work of ensuring the others made it. Even as they stood little chance of cutting down on the sentries’ numbers in any real way. The breach had been short lived, and Neroz, Islijna, and Effrosyni were still reaching their position. There were two nearing them, both with swords drawn, and she didn’t see the remaining dog. That left out the marksmen and mage below, plus the forces now pushing up the stair.

She got her momentary opening. Spryesh brought the cudgel down on one of them, ringing the helmet like a bell. There was another, beside.

Of all of the despicable things that the Petrovich had made of her, there were a rare few that had occasional benefit, though, Ceddleria seldom did so with any thought. In this case, had she, she would have suppressed it, in hopes of preventing the trespasser spirit of Viktoria from sharing in an ounce of her gain.

She put her sabre through the side of the sentry’s chest, beneath the underarm. As she stuck him, she called out with that awful hollow in her, the crevice Viktoria had dug out, for the visitant ghosts to crawl into, and found the sentry beside him. When she dug her sabre out of the first’s ribs, both went down. Neroz rushed past. A bolt whizzed from his crossbow, finding no purchase, and as they retreated, orderly as they could, Islijna and Effrosyni drew close.

Standing there in the threshold, leading to their entry corridor, or rather, the third floor of the estate, before that opulent window, she reached down and grabbed the limp body’s hair. Her own hair, and pulled her gaze up. Mircea reloaded his crossbow, still shaking. Sorin put his arms wide, now with an expression of mock sadness. Mircea loosed. The bolt leapt into the meat of his shoulder. Suddenly, Sorin’s hand went to his shoulder, and his expression turned to genuine sorrow.

“Hey, little lark,” Ceddleria remembered Sorin saying. “Hey, let’s stop playing now. Let’s just go home,” he said. “You’ve been talking with my sister. How… awful of you.”

He kept saying it until Mircea had loaded another, and he started to stagger forward, sluggish from some curse or some poison on the bolts. He reached out with both hands, like for an embrace, her brother staggering back. It was, for some reason, abjectly funny. For all the effort of procuring the crossbow, he couldn’t procure a shootist of any talent.

Mircea’s back hit the wall and he squeezed down. When the bolt hit this time, Sorin staggered back. Suddenly, Mircea was advancing on him, as he stood there motionless. He heaved with all of his strength, as Sorin’s boots groaned, nearly tipping over. With a final burst of strength, Mircea shoved him through the broken window.

Suddenly, Ceddleria felt the front of her skull split open. Lifting her sword, she put one hand to her forehead, and it came away clean. It felt as though a great mass was prying through her head, battering it into chunks. As though her life was snuffing out, like fainting, or drowning, but she could feel every inch the mass moved inwards. If you wanted to know what it felt like, a sole thought arose, screaming with rage, with all else drowned out by the agony. When he does that. And when that round-eared slut cut my head off.

Ceddleria punched through it. She was coming around on the left, Spryesh on the right, matching the lines of sentries, as they reinforced, when a dog leapt from the dizzying chaos at their feet and caught Islijna by the arm. Without a moment to intervene, one of the sentries put his sword across her torso and pulled her back down the stairs. The dog’s mouth came away and bit down again and again, reddening each time. The lines of them converged, as if to swallow her up.

Effrosyni whirled, still feet from the line of them. Her hands opened and she threw out a gout of flame. For a moment, between the fire bursting from the adjacent halls, archways straining as the supports began to fall, and Effrosyni’s fire, the hub was a vibrant orange. Then a spear came out of her back.

Spryesh’s club fell on the spear and it splintered into pieces. In a mad dash, they rushed down the corridor to the window. Ceddleria could not remember whether it had been her or Spryesh to carry Effrosyni, bleeding badly. The air was thick with smoke. And Islijna was gone.

Spryesh bashed out the window. Ceddleria took the brunt of a score of jagged chunks of glass, wrapping Effrosyni as best as she could. The spear-tip was cold beneath her left hand. When she landed– and somehow, perhaps by Neroz’s aid, it was on her feet– she could not say which wounds had been sustained in the fighting, and which by the glass. A bolt which had found itself in her other shoulder was more obvious. Then Spryesh took Effrosyni from her shoulder onto his.

Then, Ceddleria remembered splitting, and running block after block through the daytime streets of Zedarja, and harrowingly, by the gate. She darted in the shadow of the aqueduct to the lower city, before they found the hatch to the temporary shelter. The backyard cellar of some paid-off hotel with no appreciation for what they were abetting.

The mage, Cezona’s man and their way out, wouldn’t arrive until sundown. The sudden switch from a pitched escape to utter stillness was an affront– it stripped her ability to flush her mind, even as she yoked it to the task of plotting a route further and further, by the wharves, or to the slums. And Islijna was gone!

She was pacing again when they laid out Effrosyni on a coffee table found in that same cellar, but Ceddleria was watching her brother run his hands bloody on the broken shards of the opulent attic window. Her body was crumpled in front of the window, like it had just come careening in. She was, Viktoria was, laughing. Ceddleria went to Effrosyni’s side, and started undoing the ties of her armor, and replacing the panels of leather that came away damp, red, and copper-smelling with bandage cloth. She was doing this without any real strategy, until Neroz gently rebuffed her and went to clean the wound.

Neroz had a mite of magic. Ceddleria doubted it would be enough, but when she looked at Neroz to say it, there was a pain, a small kind of begging in his eyes. She wiped her hands on the quilting under her armor until they hurt.

She was starting to spin out when Neroz straightened up and said it. The spear had punctured her right lung. She had hypoxia of the blood, and was still bleeding. Ceddleria was near sick when he’d finished saying it. A cold sweat had started up at her neck.

“Can you buy her a few hours,” she said, scarcely thinking through the implication of her words. Neroz had stripped his armor down to a simple shirt. There was a halo of sweat around his neck, on his hairline. His shirt nearly black with it, and blood ran up his arms. His sandy skin looked flushed. Something close to stricken had hit his expression.

“I care about her too, Cedd,” Neroz cut in. For a moment, he sulked, then his eyes came up. “We all do. So don’t think for a second I’m not trying.”

Ceddleria chewed on her cheek and started to puzzle over their contingencies. There was no returning to the initial safehouse. Her focus, her temper was focused to a pinhole, as Neroz rolled Effrosyni onto her side. She’d opened her eyes, eyes darting, for a moment, but lost consciousness again just as fast. The tarp she was on was slick with blood; it burgeoned from around the spearhead. Her complexion had gone from ash near to stone.

She was slipping, and Neroz was too proud by half to admit he didn’t have the talent to fix it. Any longer like this, Ceddleria wagered, and she’d be gone. Up and vanished like Oskar, again and again, dragged off like Mircea, like Islijna, and if any of them came back again, that’d be for the worse. Another turn of Zedarja’s crushing wheel. She felt the thought burn down like a fuse. Another eaten to fill Doleri’s boundless ravin. She flushed the thought out with her breaths. There’d been…

There’d been a list of healers, with the plans, Dadzhvoy all, slum-dwellers with applicable training, keeping the few sad dregs who fled behind enemy lines to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that Zedarja wasn’t a declaration of existential war forever. Her hand twitched at her side. Ceddleria brought her head up to look at Neroz again, and scoffed, “But this isn’t about love, Neroz. Admit it. If Islijna were here, the both of you could fix this. But they dragged her off. I’m taking her to a doctor.”

She really guessed Neroz might have chafed at it. She hadn’t been worried about being cruel, not now of all times. Neroz dipped his head, shaking it slowly. Finally, he snorted, faint. “Alone?” His eyes fell to the body. “Yeah. There’s little I can do for her now. She’s been on the brink since we got here, anyway. But you’re more like to aggravate it, or get caught on the way.”

“I’ll not be idle,” Ceddleria said. “I won’t. So if she’s meat either way, I’ll take my chances.” On her second thought, she grew angrier. “Are any of us going to take defeat lying down?”

“This is victory,” Spryesh cut in, with a grizzled wisdom in his voice that may as well have been a hand of nails down a chalkboard. “Your victory, and it’ll seldom be but bitter and filling. Pray, and come the worst, at least this way you say farewell.” He added, “But not another life.”

She let her tongue sit behind her teeth for a moment, then squeezed her eyes. “Will either of you stop me?”

When she rounded her glare on Neroz, something in his eyes shrank. So she glanced sidelong to Spryesh, working the anger around in her mind. She felt well boneheaded enough to punch through any opposition he raised, but at last, he lifted his fingers. That’d be the leave Ceddleria got. It was more than enough for her to pick Effrosyni up onto her shoulder and stalk out.

For the first hour, after the dash from the shelter to the solace of alleys, Ceddleria traveled by burying herself in tight, winding streets. The leathers she’d worn now changed for baggy rags, like a bum, with Effrosyni draped across her shoulder. Even where the streets tightened, and the walls around changed from blocks of polished white capped with gold to dilapidated structures, braced with rotting wood and battered by sand, the sun was constant. Worse, the streets had been near-deserted as she wandered, emptied for the jubilee.

Empty save for the occasional patrol of soldiers, brought on by the ripening reports of arson in the upper city. Blood had saturated her shoulder. Hers, Effrosyni’s, it hardly mattered. It stuck against her neck and darkened the rags. Effrosyni wasn’t stirring anymore. The whitish cobblestones had grown as bright as the late morning sun, like a sunstroke. Ceddleria’s eyes roved for a landmark, to steer her on towards the ghettoes where she was bound. The rowhouses had long since turned to small, loosely-arranged conglomerates of blocks, the alleys between them growing dizzying, or turning into loops.

On a whim, for the pointlessness of it all, she turned out onto the road. It was wide, all around her, and bare as in the dead of night. All around, a thousand sparkling flagstones threatened to blind her. The whole world was rendered in an unwholesome, all-consuming brightness. She loped on, with Effrosyni’s unmoving body slung over, like a hunch in her back. She felt at once unmoored, like the ground rising up to meet her. Slowly, she laced her hand around to grip Effrosyni’s right, limply hanging over her shoulder. It twitched, it still felt faintly warm. What little warmth remained.

The survivors had been right, of course. It was the only conclusion she could draw, as Effrosyni’s blood continued to slowly saturate her shirt. Effrosyni was going to die. Islijna was gone, and perhaps that had been the moment which doomed her. Like her father, the moment he’d shackled himself to her kind. Death was fated, again, and again, as it came to Mircea, to father, the moment he’d shackled himself to her kind, to Nestor, to Eleni. To Mežižan. The sand would eat them all. That was the choice she’d made, the price she’d agreed to, to save her ego, to die on her feet, wasn’t it?

That was the command she’d given to press on, the dogs be damned, the Secret Fire be damned, Zedarja itself be eaten by the sand. To watch all the others drown in it first, to see how much blood it took to slake a desert. What a nice dream it had been to rebel. This was the life, as Ceddleria imagined it. Effrosyni would be gone, too. To lose until you finally couldn’t any longer, and died, or worse, lived. Because that’s what so many had done, right? Stopped walking against the tow, stopped running themselves into the ground, ad infinitum. She gave the hand another squeeze. Perhaps Viktoria had gone. Parasites were always quick to quit the dying. She’d once blamed them for it all. This morning, she might have said all of Zedarja.

Ceddleria Vedova looked up. Four soldiers were approaching, on horseback, gendarmes, in tabarded armor and visorless helms. She stared at them for a time, dimly aware that they were growing nearer. She stilled, the whirling of her thoughts growing into a feeble hope they wouldn’t notice her. She started to stagger to the side, to rest Effrosyni near the wall. She turned her head in a lame attempt to hide, so plainly caught out. The hooves drummed on the cobblestones.

One spurred his horse on. He was scarcely far now, and she hadn’t made it to the streetside, much less cover. She knew she hadn’t the will to flee now, to stymied by her agony, by the corpse or the near corpse on her shoulder. The survivors had been right, Spryesh and Neroz. Perhaps she could have prayed and waited and said farewell. She might have lived on.

The horse drove by, and its rider spat at her feet.

Effrosyni’s right hand was nearly cold when she staggered into a clinic, the first she could find without a boarded-up door. She clasped onto it like a vise, as though the moment she let it go, it would at last lose all warmth. Perhaps indeed it would.

The front room was empty, save for an unattended reception desk. There was only a sole other door in the building, so Ceddleria shoved into the next room. A Dadzhvo physician stood over a sickly-looking man, with drawn breathing. There were trays about the space, with surgical tools, poultices, and medicines. The physician, a woman in an apron with dark ashen skin, stepped back from the bed, eyes shot wide.

Her hands were halfway up when she saw Ceddleria’s horns. Then her face turned to incredulity. “I’m with a patient,” she cut in.

Ceddleria nearly dropped Effrosyni into the chair by the door. She was pale as a ghost, and the fabric around the spearhead had grown hard and black. An instant later, the physician was beside her, with a few glances cast back to her own patient.

She was already asking what had happened when she caught sight of the spearhead, and froze. Her hands started to shake. “Get out,” she started to say. Her breath came fast. “I heard rumors, an attack in the upper city. That the perpetrators were, that you were one of us. Get out! Get out, before you bring them here!”

Ceddleria rounded on her, despair forgotten. “Is she dead? Tell me if she’s dead!” It was all coalescing in her head, into a black spiral. “I’m not leaving. Not until she can walk out with me!”

“You’ll bring them here!” the physician wailed, but she was already starting to step around Ceddleria. She craned her neck to get a better look at Effrosyni. “Oh, ancestors,” she said, caught up in a breath. “I… I can’t tell.” Ceddleria’s eyes were near to bulging when the physician rounded on her, terror, exasperation, and all haste forgotten. She looked at Ceddleria with a black rage she’d only seen a handful of times, in inductees to the Order, those who had the most grievances to toll from Zedarja. “You,” the physician redoubled with a contempt that shook her. “Watch my patient. He has children, a wife. If they lose a father, a husband, what little prosperity they’ve managed to eke out, it is not Zedarja’s doing. It’s yours.”

The words hit her like a blow from Spryesh’s club. She let her eyes drift to the man, drawn in his illness, with gurgling breaths. He’d been naive to imagine there’d be anything for him here. Anything, for any of them. He’d sold out millennia of hostility to cozy up to the enemy, to stick his head in the mouth of a dragon and pray that he would not chance its whim to bite down. But the look in the physician’s eye was unflinching. Ceddleria slinked over to his bedside and stared up as she moved Effrosyni to another bed and drew the curtain.

As she lingered there, listening to the weak breathing of an old man, she strained to hear any whimper from Effrosyni through the curtain. Time to time, the room seemed to drift around here. Time and again, her efforts were met with nothing. But neither did the physician emerge.

At some point, the awareness filtered in between her thoughts that the visitor, that Viktoria, had not left her. The ghost lingered there, cruelly, bringing the estate house back around her, transposing the little clinic back into that attic, the Mircea that returned to her standing by the window, running his hands bloody. She looked down at herself on the floor, her ruddy skin filling back in. The head was starting to raise.

In her memory, Viktoria said, “Tremendous work, ’little lark’. I do wish you luck getting out.”

Say it. Say I should have killed him right then, a thought welled up. Oh, it would have saved me a lot of pain.

Ceddleria would have shot her dead in that forgettable Temeryon port, had it not been for Adara Teghraid. And Adara Teghraid had been Mircea’s fault.

You’re a terrible host, the ghost said. I suppose I have no choice but to take fault for that. It’s not like any of you sand rats was going to come up with any kind of manners, otherwise. But he always was the interesting one, to me. Sorin got to be the favorite, and that means he got to snap him up. Leaving me stuck with terrible little you. You, though. Killing you just would have been smart, wouldn’t it have been? I was always too reticent to give up my consolation prize.

And you were a parasite before you died, too. Ceddleria looked back down at the patient. His breathing, though laborious, hadn’t morphed into anything she’d consider unstable. For a moment, the room spun, until she shook her head. Her stomach was rising up towards her throat again.

Ceddleria had come to standing in the estate house attic. She stood not three feet away from herself, where she was in Viktoria’s memories. Ceddleria felt… she felt pinned between them, between bodies. Ceddleria in the memory was coming off of the narcotics Viktoria had pumped her full of. She’d started when she saw Mircea, run over, put her arms around him and pulled him kicking from the window, like if she squeezed hard enough it’d suddenly be the same. But she was standing where Viktoria had been, and Mircea…

There was a blinding flash of light, and Oskar came, back from nowhere, soon to slip back to nowhere. He walked up, slow, put his arms around both of them, and there was another flash. Ceddleria lifted her hand to her chin, smothering a splitting grin. I never saw this part, she said to herself.

No. Viktoria did.

Then there stood a dune, the highest in the featureless desert around. It looked like a rumpled blanket in the language of her seething mind, even as she pushed to keep one eye on the patient. Mircea was standing, blue against orange, at its crest, talking to Oskar. Ceddleria started to push up it, pacing around what she dimly knew to be a small clinic. The sand slid around her feet as she walked, climbing though she knew such a thing was impossible, and stumbling though she knew there was nothing to slip upon.

Ceddleria remembered perfectly what she said, then. She’d demanded to know where Oskar had been, but nothing he said could have satisfied the hatred that saturated her. It was unfair and bestial in its heat, for the mere fact that he had vanished, and not been destroyed with the rest of them, by sword, or by survival. She’d stood there upon the dune a while, with the wind brushing the sand around her feet. Words had been difficult, even as the sky started to burn with that first awful new dawn. It had been a long time, then, since she’d had a memory that made sense. This one, the one that had tangled itself so inexorably around Viktoria that it spun around in the confines of her skull at the presence of her ghost, was the first.

When she’d finally got to talking, plumbed the root of the whole awful fact that neither Oskar nor Mircea had the will any longer to stand beside her, take their lives back, to kill her tormentor any longer, to free mother, she’d driven them both off. Oskar had fled, weeping, when his Gods, potent enough to grant their decree unto the might of Zedarja, to whisk him away from the killing field where Ceddleria and her brother had lost any semblance of a home, could not save him from a little nagging. She’d thought of it that way for a long time. But it had been Mircea to betray her, all the more severely.

He’d slain his captor. She’d watched him do it, in a daze, but it had been obvious. But when she’d put the case before them, to go back, to finally end the whole awful lot, he’d proven himself the coward, laying down before the memory of their mother, and left her to go about her vengeance alone. When at last he saw the light, when he slaughtered Viktoria, ended Isabella, he had long since stopped fighting. The brother she’d known, bright, driven, the most like father… had died with the rest of them. With Nestor and Eleni. Oh, if Nestor could have seen it, her, alone, with the whole of their awful absolution on her back. Mircea may as well have forgotten the lot of them.

When Viktoria’s thoughts welled up again, Ceddleria put her face into a towel and bit down on her tongue until, howling, the room spun and there were no thoughts, hers or otherwise.

When the slightest rattling came from the next room, the physician found her bleeding into the cloth and staring down at the sleeping body of the old man. “Your accomplice is awake,” she said. “She’s through the worst of it, but I wouldn’t wager all.”

She thought again of Effrosyni’s words the night before. She’d reassured her of her love, but rebuked her questions, and rebuked her for seeking something to tie her down, a link, a surrogate home. Her mother had spoken of Mežižan, and that had long been her anchor, but if she was truthful with herself, she had not felt that cord since before Oskar had fled, since before Mircea had abandoned her. Mežižan had been a ruin already when she was born. When she was taken, it ceased to be worth remembering.

Ceddleria had a hard time feeling it, love, when it was there. Now she looked at Effrosyni. She’d clearly been unconscious when the spearhead had come out of her, because Ceddleria hadn’t heard screams enough to match the bandage over her chest that fanned out across the whole of her body. Her right arm had bruised a purplish color, and gone black near the fingers. If she survived, she was likely to lose them, if not the whole hand, the physician had said. The rest of her was drawn and pale.

Ceddleria came to her side and drew the curtain part-way. As she did, she caught a sliver of concern in the physician’s eye, but thought little of it.

You’ll pull through, she signed. You think?

“I can’t… feel that hand,” Effrosyni said, dry in the voice. “I can’t see well, either. Repeat that last.”

“You’ll pull through,” Ceddleria repeated, aloud. “I carried you here, from the rendezvous. We couldn’t get Islijna back, but you’re going to survive. I’ve fought for it. I’m not going to stop.”

Effrosyni exhaled, and it was awful. Then she hushed Ceddleria. “They’ll feel it,” she said, “what we did to them. For years. Forever, perhaps.”

“Not my point,” Ceddleria cut in. “I’m no idiot, damn you. Perhaps you’ll be quick to leave me, yet. But I don’t want to lose you, yet, Effie. I want a win to chew on, and this… this has all felt far too close to defeat for me.”
Effrosyni’s other arm twitched. She tried to elevate it across her body, to probe with her fingers. But her hand was struggling to raise. Ceddleria leaned down and clasped it, careful to keep her weight off of her chest. As she settled into the sort of splay, her vision blurred. She shook her head. “This is a death march, love,” Effrosyni said. “The reward,” she went on, her voice low. “It’s not for us… just the act of it. Failing to ever stop. Beyond all sense, all reason, all hope of home. Someday, maybe someone will have a fair fight out of it. A good, clean win. But not us. We’ll always lose something.”

“All I’ve wanted, for years,” Ceddleria said, low beneath her breath. She laughed, a little. The room had really picked up spinning, now. She couldn’t be sure, but she felt like she was swaying. Perhaps only just a bit. Her stomach was starting to turn again. “...Something to keep.”

She hit her head on the gurney when she went down. The curtain’s rod started to groan when she caught the waist of it. In a ruffle, the physician threw the curtain open. Dimly, Ceddleria could pick out the shock on her face.

“Your—” she heard the physician blurt. “Your shoulder! You were shot?!”

And then she went under.

The Evening Prayer

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 17:42:30 -0500

From the Book of Prayers & Psalms

Let us praise you, O God of the Day of Return, For you are most blessed, O Master of Adanōs, Who you bade gave us truth.

O God of the Day of Return, Who made for us the going Of the sun that we might find rest, And shields us from the power of dark things, Keep me this night in your watchful vigil, And fortify my heart that I always keep you, For you alone are worthy of praise, Through you alone may we be worthy of blessing.

O Master of Adanōs, Grant me peace, and when I wake guide me, For wholly have you blessed me, And governed me to worship you alone.

And we say: ‘and I most blessed be.’

Prayer to St. Sölöhtan

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 17:42:20 -0500

This prayer is not present in any books in Tanthene canon, though its first portion is akin to a standard veneration of a saint. Rather, it is popular in Calassy.

Some Volissenes and assimilated Calassine expats refer to St. Sölöhtan by his chosen Sasinthēne name, Semonōs. However, he is the second of two saints so-named, and to make matters worse, they share a Feast Day, so this may lead to confusion in stricter theological settings.

O Blessed Sölöhtan, Guide of my Ancestors, Your Master is the Master of Adanōs, and the Master of me. Your word is the help of the Prophet, And your deed led us to the God’s truth.

Pray for us now, and forever, That we may correct our sorry ways, That we may join you, blessed upon all the world, And that we may join you, in the service of the God.

The traditional ending to a prayer to a saint is, ‘Through you, may we be said to be blessed. Through your Master, are we most blessed indeed.’

Prayer to a Saint

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 17:42:11 -0500

This prayer may be, and often is, altered to reflect the veneration of a particular saint. For purpose of example, this prayer is directed to St. Sampastōs, patron saint of Imperial Panarine.

O Blessed Sampastōs, herald of Danechē, Your Master is the Master of Adanōs, and the Master of me.

I bid you, pray for life of the Emperor, And the health of its people.

Through you, may we be said to be blessed. Through your Master, are we most blessed indeed.

Promissory for the Dead

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 17:42:02 -0500

Parables, written by the Prophet Adanōs, are traditionally started with the phrase, “The Prophet said:”

And when you shall go down into the cleft Where your fathers lay in death, You shall find not the dark nor the chill of the grave But that the place where they have been borne, dying, Is rather the breast of the God, And of them has been made a monument To the glory of the God, all-holy, Which shall stand eternal into the coming world.

And when from that place you shall rise, And be reunited with your beloved dead, Shall you know joy everlasting.

And you may know this, For it is by the words of the God’s prophet, And my tongue is animated by holy inspiration, And for the God said, ‘The seal of our covenant is the course of the sun, In its coming and going, That in our mercy we shall grant you light, And we shall grant you rest.’

The Prophet said: ‘We are most blessed.’

The traditional ending is, “And we say,: ‘And I most blessed be.’”

The Adanic Calendar and Saints' Days

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 18:03:30 -0500

In the Book of Parables, Adanōs proclaimed that he would be the last to receive the spirit of prophecy, Eleio, as a prophet, and that all future recipients would in fact be Saints, who would use it to ‘make themselves as monuments to Heaven upon earth’. In the words of Adanōs, on their seventh day of life, when receiving their Breath of Life (Ann. An Adanic ritual in which a priest exhales into a baby’s mouth), they will instead inhale Eleio, and thereafter work in the name of the Glorious One. Some Saints are noted to have received Eleio in this manner at different points in their lives, for instance after surviving a drowning.

Ann. A parallel to the story of the Demōchipē, who is said to have drawn first breath only after his eighth day of life, when he strangled and made a crown of the serpent he was born wrestling.

A person may not be confirmed as possessing Eleio in life. This is because the wicked may falsify signs, whereas the most certain signs of a blessed individual’s passing is their appearance during communion with the God, intercession, or inexplicable incorruption of their mortal remains. Saints’ Days are placed into the Tanthene calendar according to their date of receipt of Eleio, that is, typically a week following their birth. Certain major saints instead received days according to deeds.

I. The Calendar

The calendar consists of 12 months of 30 days, with a fast of 5 (6 every fourth year) leading up to the First Dawn each year, the first day the sun rises over Tanthes after the month of Night. In ancient Hesod, the months were devised according to the lunar cycle. The first seven months have names referring to their attributes in nature and society, whereas the latter four receive numerical names, and the final month is called Night. In all:

First Dawn
Second Dawn
Waking
Tears
The Wayfarer
The Wheel
Red
October
November
December
Undecember
Night
Intercalary Days (The Lustration)

II. Holidays and Saints’ Days

What follows is a non-comprehensive list of feasts, fasts, and holidays held in Adanism. The most important such are bolded. They are presented in order of the course of a year, beginning with the intercalary days and the Lustration. Some include particularities of celebrations or rituals carried out on these days.

The Lustration, or the Purification, is a solemn ritual undertaken during the 5-6 days intercalated after the end of Night, but before the sun has risen for the
first time, beginning the year. The healthy are expected to fast for the first 12 hours of wakefulness, traditionally heralded by public worship bells. The sick are expected to eat, oftentimes fed by their fasting neighbors. These hours are to be spent in worship and reflection, and followed by a solemn dedication for the coming year.
The Feast of First Dawn (1 First Dawn) is the traditional end of the Lustration. Adherents are expected to awake ’naturally’ (with the sunrise) and attend worship, where, after the saying of blessings, a feast is conducted for the entire period of daylight.
The Feast of the Prophet (8 First Dawn) is the celebration of the Prophet Adanōs who was, according to the Book of Parables ‘born with the world’, that is, on 1 First Dawn. His receipt of Eleio occurred, then, on 8 First Dawn. The day is marked by feasting and public singing. Some adherents choose to fast prior to the evening feasts. The period leading up to the eighth is called the Ascent, and is marked by preparation and a return to labor after the Lustration.
St. Machaōs’s Day (19 First Dawn)
St. Thegéa’s Day (23 First Dawn)
Caleōs Begins (24 First Dawn)
St. Gianōs’s Day (28 First Dawn)
St. Eleiōs’s Day (2 Second Dawn)
The Feast of St. Sampastōs (10 Second Dawn) is the celebration of a first-century priest who marched alongside Agmapallan Danechē in his conquests, blessing his host in exchange for conversion. He was considered the patron saint of Panarine, and now Antōmenea. Celebrants traditionally fast a half-day, then feast in the evening.
St. Echléme’s Day (13 Second Dawn)
Second Dawn (Vernal Equinox, 25 Second Dawn) – Òxias Begins
St. Pargeōs’s Day (30 Second Dawn)
St. Larestē’s Day (5 Waking)
Ox-Turning (8 Waking) is a minor planting festival.
St. Eleiōs Callichoréne’s Day (14 Waking)
St. Airēne’s Day (20 Waking)
St. Mede’s Day (21 Waking)
St. Cherōne’s Day (24 Waking)
Gioulade Begins (26 Waking)
St. Giorite’s Day (28 Waking)
St. Eulessa’s Day (1 Tears) is a celebration of love.
St. Pargesta’s Day (7 Tears)
The Feast of St. Mitreiōs (15 Tears) is the celebration of a third-century priest and martyr slain during the imperial conquest of Orod. He gave alms to refugees of the fighting, regardless of their faith, and is regarded even more highly within the Southern Church for it. Celebrants traditionally spend the day giving alms. Children receive presents from their families.
St. Semonōs’s Day (23 Tears), or The Feast of St. Sölöhtan in Calassy, is the celebration of a third-century priest and scholar from Calassy who converted to Adanism and brought the faith to his native country. Rather than the date of his Breath of Life, he is remembered on the anniversary of his translation of the Gospel of Adan. While the religion of God’s Worship is not in communication with the Tanthene rite, St. Semonōs’s day is celebrated as the Feast of St. Sampastōs is in Antōmenea.
St. Laurene’s Day (25 Tears)
St. Atamiōs’s Day (26 Tears) – Charxōphōs Begins
St. Lareiōs’s Day (3 The Wayfarer)
St. Ignese’s Day (6 The Wayfarer)
St. Maro’s (Meirōs’s) Day (11 The Wayfarer)
St. Adanasē’s Day (16 The Wayfarer)
St. Nathaōs’s Day (21 The Wayfarer)
Procoëges Begins (26 The Wayfarer)
St. Zaidōs’s Day (30 The Wayfarer)
St. Thebe’s Day (3 The Wheel)
St. Themōs’s Day (10 The Wheel)
The Pilgrimage of St. Adanōs (15 The Wheel) commemorates the journey of the Prophet Adanōs from his native Ilimpar to Tanthes. The next three Mondays are to be spent in prayer and reflection, living as a penniless wanderer. Charity and fasting are encouraged.
St. Cleita’s Day celebrates a first-century peasant woman who sheltered the Prophet as he neared Tanthes. It is said that she found him collapsed and nearly expired from the arid heat south of the Sea of Goent.
Cataddouxa Begins (26 The Wheel)
The Prostration of the Magi (1 Red) commemorates the Cabal of Tanthes’s acceptance of Adanōs’s terms, and their taking up of the Yoke of Adanōs. As first-century Tanthes was ruled by its cabal, the Prostration is a celebration of community especially in urban environments. One more fast is undertaken, and then a feast precedes evening prayer. Compositions and dedications are made to the glory and the future of the faith.
St. Xanastōs’s Day (3 Red)
St. Ourōne’s Day (9 Red)
St. Toumestōs’s Day (11 Red)
St. Fiorenōs’s Day (13 Red)
St. Euthegista’s Day (20 Red)
St. Paōs’s Day (27 Red) – Agéa Begins
St. Tamōs’s Day (1 October)
St. Larē’s Day (9 October)
St. Anamarthea’s Day (19 October)
St. Elosēcheōs’s Day (25 October)
Laöpherné Begins (27 October)
St. Giugenea’s Day (10 November)
St. Theisso’s Day (16 November)
St. Nicheleōs’s Day (21 November)
Stozion Begins (28 November)
St. Danechē’s Day (9 December) commemorates the first Emperor of Panarine. This was a national holiday during the time of Imperial Panarine.
St. Chorōs’s Day (14 December)
St. Aimele’s Day (25 December)
Zōchōs Begins (28 December)
St. Xanathaōs’s Day (30 December)
St. Elosēne’s Day (2 Undecember)
St. Agiamena’s Day (13 Undecember)
St. Nousso’s Day (21 Undecember)
Acharōs Begins (28 Undecember)
St. Mesdouro’s Day (10 Night) & The Going of the Year is a reflective but not overly solemn day of feasting and charity which traditionally starts on the feast day of St. Mesdouro, a second-century martyr from the very periphery of Hesod who was slain by heathens. She is seen as a patron saint of the persecuted. The feasting is often allowed to continue until the ‘morning’ bells after the sun sets for the year, but fasting is prohibited.
Techteri Begins (29 Night)

The Calassine Diaspora and the Volessines

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 18:47:33 -0500

Migrants from classical Calassy have settled and passed through Antōmenea since antiquity, appearing in censuses since the foundation of the Sasinthene colonies of Voleize and Nōmoura. When asked where one hails from, a Sasinthene colonist would often say ‘Sasinthy’, while an immigrant was likely to reply ‘Voleize’, or ‘Nōmoura’. As Voleize was the largest colony, the term ‘Volessine’ slowly came to be applied to all Calassine migrants in Antōmenea. In Imperial times, Sasinths considered Volessines distinct from Calassines as an ethnicity, noted for having ‘Sasinthene sensibilities’. Calassine patronymics are formed using the -hepár particle. Many early notaries and records-keepers chose to translate this as a distinct last name, as ‘Cheparon’ or ‘Chephon’. The backformed names ‘Chephōs’ and ‘Chephe’ began to surface as a derogatory term. Generally, ‘Kep’ or ‘Kepp’ is used as a slur against Volessines and those of Calassine descent.

The cities of Antōmenea did not submit fully to the rule of Imperial Panarine. Instead, they variably received status as protectorates, vassal states, or independent territories throughout their history. This autonomous status was particularly of interest in Calassine foreign policy, as Calassy sought to buffer themselves against Imperial expansion. Simultaneously, the relative lack of direct Imperial protection made it more feasible for Calassy to influence the Antōmenean states, and in the Imperial period, Calassine backing kept total Imperial subjugation at bay. During the reign of Emperor Girair X Safa, Alesphan Gianōs was elected grand magistrate. He is suspected to have been a Calassine puppet in the handling of his majordomo, Işmír Hásarakeş-hepar.

Intervention by an Imperial Panarine unwilling to see a Calassine treaty port on their border prevented the full admission of Goentea under the ascendancy system. Nevertheless, Goentea was effectively under Calassine suzerainty. By the Segouzan Secession of 1056, Goentea had regained its independence. It became a major destination for refugees fleeing retribution and persecution on either side, with violence flaring up in Goentea between Segouzans and Loyalists, who found sympathy among many of the naturalized ‘Volissenes’. Segouzan organized crime collectives were outraged when the Goentean League established a defensive alliance with Calassy in the face of Daartlawer and Cazian-Oronar collaboration. The largest and most violent such collectives were the Segouzan Remembrance Brigade and the White Guard in Exile.

Killing Anharwa's Paradox

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 22:09:08 -0500

Ann. Daartlawer Agency of Magi: This text, a recent corpus, is a contiguous and annotated extract from the written confession of Pagmallon Larēda to the murder of the Goentean opera composer Cleiton Analarēda. Despite this context, it provides a remarkably up-to-date explanation of the modern Body Art, which was previously the jealous secret of the Onavaran’s Circle.

I am not writing this for the benefit of any other magus. I am writing this because otherwise, as did not the late Cleiton Analarēda, there shall be none with the requisite understanding of the art which I, Pagmallon Larēda, have come to master to understand precisely how it is I have outclassed the entirety of the backwards Circle of the Onavaran. I am writing this to boast: Anharwa’s Paradox is my truer casualty, the librettist may as well have slain herself years ago. Beyond the Circle, there are few who understand the Body Art (Ann: Ms. Pagmallon refers here to magic which concerns the command of bodily material, and the command of life processes), but all shall benefit from the knowledge that this Paradox is no longer relevant in the wider art of magic.

Ann. The reader may skip or read Ms. Pagmallon’s introduction…

[Allow me to state Anharwa’s Paradox as the putative foe of Mesiantes conceived it. He was undoubtedly an inferior duelist than Mesiantes, and he famously cautioned in his recommendation that the dueling magus learn demonology that using minions is not a sufficient protection against direct attack. His point is, as I’m sure you know, now a ritualized and overblown axiom:

“The demonologist, through his ability to employ a variety of hostile bodies in a confrontation, gains the ability to attack without opening. Yet, as the Law of Mesiantes states, the demonologist’s body remains the combative point of least resistance.”

In other words, “you can throw attack dogs at people, but they won’t take a bullet for you (unless they do).” Of course, he cites the Law of Mesiantes, which states, in so many words, if you find yourself fighting a magus, who is engaged in some exceedingly complicated hokum, just destroy their body. The difference between a dead magus and a dead human is nil. The difference between a magus and a dead magus is a living body. So, Anharwa claims it’s a strange paradox that magi who use demons or other sorts of minions may believe they are creating more targets, but in fact, to the wise magus, they are not. The defining factor of a firebrand magus-cum-philosopher is being a blithering idiot with no taste for nuance.

I also have no taste for nuance. I will say, in no uncertain terms, that the result of my recent advances in the Body Art is that Anharwa’s admonition is in fact a load of tripe. This fact occurs by one particular vector: it is idiotic to present a single point of least resistance to your opponent. Through the use of homunculi and an effective defense, the “demonologist’s body” becomes a point of much resistance indeed. I will explain the Onavaran methodology of the Body Art as follows: the manipulation of the own body, and the separability of the own body. The Body Art cannot be realistically applied to another; this is why we devised Distortions.]

I. The Manipulation of the Own Body

It is well known that a magus is almost powerless to affect by magic the body of another magus. This is because the magus has total dominion over the space one’s own body takes up. I will assume that you, reader, are able to access cadavers, or your apprenticeship included the study of cadavers. It is necessary to understand basal human anatomy to manipulate the own body. Transplantation, particularly with inert matter (my preference is porcelain), can be harmoniously maintained within the body via constant low-grade suppression.

I briefly must condemn the purported Art of ‘healing’. Which is to say, one can accelerate the growth and regrowth of flesh, but a common result is tumors. The best practice is first to avoid needing to reverse large amounts of cell death, and second to kill and separate what you do choose to grow once you’re done with it. Typically, one must prevent bodily processes from circulating between the original and grown flesh to avoid the creation of tumors. A few examples of magical processes follow which, given adequate suspension of vital processes like blood loss in novel areas, are safe: deformation without ripping of flesh, separation and reattachment of connected tissue, and suspension of cell death. If your flesh tears, suspend it long enough to stitch it back together. I can’t teach you how to do it. Cut yourself and keep it from going red. Furthermore, it is relatively safe to amplify physical strength. Mental finesse can similarly be substituted for physical grace. This is perhaps the oldest example of the Body Art.

It is also untrue that it is impossible to possess an inanimate object. It is impossible to stably possess an inanimate object, and that you must remain somewhat in your flesh. I suspect that the […] (Ann. Ms. Pagmallon’s speculation herein is irresponsible and cannot be printed). It is untrue that the body cannot withstand polymorphism. The soul prefers to remain in a compatible human body. Maintaining inanimate transplants, possessing mundane objects, and existing in polymorphic states is possible for long periods of time by damaging the body. I cannot be certain why, but my hypothesis is that as a person fights to maintain its life, it is less picky about its condition. My preference is a nonlethal poison.

Ann. Ms. Pagmallon hereafter details a series of exercises for the Body Art, as she puts it. These are not instructive from a theoretical standpoint.

II. The Separability of the Own Body

I also assume that you understand the anatomy of the ‘virtual system’. There are seven points of coherence between the system and the body: between the eyes, the heart, the small of the back, just below the elbows, just above the knees. If you don’t believe me, magus, sustain a transmutation of sand to glass, draw blood at these spots, find mercury. Consider this a complete list of such coherences in the body. You may, should you choose, replace every inch of flesh except for these points of coherence to little detriment, disregarding the poison. Further, I assume you are competent at creating Homunculi: that is, growing a body from a small piece of your own. Typically blood. They must be incubated in lab setting due to the difficulties outlined above with rapid cell growth. Their flesh must be continuously stitched. Toxins are preferable to keep them a state of mutability for the same reason I describe in the first section.

The drawback with the Homunculus is obvious: given their abject lack of magic, it is trivial for a magus to determine that the Homunculus is not the magus, even if shaped into a facsimile. The presence of a demon is quite obvious. The creation of a Homunculus, then, is the first kind of separability, and indeed the only kind I believe has ever been done by another. As described otherwise in the arts of Manipulation, it is possible to detach parts of the physical form, so long as they are prevented from dying. This is another example of ordinary separation. The loss of a limb which contains a point of coherence will merely cause it to move nearer to the heart, remaining with virtual system, which does not stray from the heart. I have determined this through the obvious course of experimentation: flesh magic in order to detach the article, and measurement of mercury. This was determined by my former order long ago.

I have determined a means by which to extend my soul from my body to a homunculus. I do not need to sublimate minions, or rely upon demonic vessels, though it is possible to make use of them. I will not reveal my methodology, except to my apprentice, should I take one, but each such homunculus is in fact derived from a perfect separation, and each has a point of coherence. Therefore, they are as capable as I am of the Magic. I am not so vain as to devise copies of myself, and my soul remains incontrovertibly housed in my natural body. Its abject annihilation might, perhaps, destroy me. However, there are simply more of me to repair it. Therefore, to you, Anharwa, yes: I have seven points of least resistance.

The Gulf of Harwa

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 17:25:56 -0500

Ann. Daartlawer Agency of Magi: This text, predating the Sasinthēne prophet Adanōs by over 500 years, details the conventions of demonism as practiced by lodge Magi. It is suitable on an informative basis, though notations have been made where the difference in what was permissible in primitive Onavara is unacceptable in modern Daartlaw and her territories. Moreover, it is the belief of this body that much of demonism may be classed as such except when practice within the strict policy outlined by the Five Guilds. Large (biographical) portions and included diagrams have been excised, and are available by request. Otherwise, all succeeding excerpts are contiguous and presented without redaction. Hairam (Sasinthēne: ē’Onafàrenon Àiramōs) writes:

Long has it been that the Magus has utilized the intercession of ‘dark spirits’ where it suits him and his ends, which our twice-blessed ancestors have so nobly determined to hail from the Gulf of Harwa (Ann. Hairam refers to the small portion of the night sky 10 degrees due northwest of the Ox.) and in fact to ensue from it as birds. The secret employment of these Birds of Harwa is indeed part and parcel to the practice of the Learned Magus. For this reason, permit me to be your guide in the recommended means of intercession, that is, the construction, summoning, and binding of these beings.

Ann. The reader may skip or read…

[My motherland is the isle of Onavara, whereupon I was taken up in the technique of the Magus from my youth. I shall assume, noble reader, that you too have learned well the techniques pertaining to our Art, and are possessed of an upright and Sasinthēne perspective such as that prescribed by our priests. It is well that a Magus bears a sound mind and wise intentions, even when so often we are given to conflict with our fellows, as is the nature of those who strive for great things. Perhaps you, who have so well-reared a view, might wonder why we Magi intercede at all with the Birds of Harwa, when from the mouth of the Demōchipē (Ann. the serpent-crowned hero god of the Sasinths) we know that the Double Lord considers them as enemies unto all mankind. I counter with a maxim he who has been made to exist upon the world ought know well: it is not by forgetting evil in the world that we are made good, it is by ensuring that good masters evil, and never that evil masters good, that righteousness is maintained.

I shall make one further argument as to why intercession with the Birds of Harwa is a wise undertaking for the Magus, should you, wise reader, be not persuaded by the theological argument. It is certain in the work of the Magus that he be confronted by a Bird, regardless of his intent. It is only through understanding their nature that he may undo their dread influence, where it is most dreadful. Indeed, be he versed in the words of the Demōchipē, perhaps he may exorcise their influence, but even the priests of Onavara are given to understanding their enemy, and not to ignore their attributes for fear of enticing their corruption. It is well-known that a Bird may choose to malignantly inhabit a man, and thereby direct their will to ill design; this will be outlined as I discuss what sorts of matter a Bird may be clad in when so called in a further section.

Ann. It is the opinion of this body that possession or ‘inhabitation’ poses a far greater risk than Hairam implies. Negligence resulting in an incident of possession by a licensed Magus on Daartlaw or its territories can be punished least by expulsion.

At last, I claim that the utility of employing the Birds of Harwa far outweighs their risks. Little can the Magus do that he designs only of himself. Intercession with the Birds grants him an ally that he may call upon totally, and one who is not so vulnerable to the designs of his enemy Magus as a magician or even a mere man. Further, our elders have so nobly determined that the use of a spell from legend is no different from calling upon a Bird, except in that the Bird is often possessed of a cunning which rivals or exceeds human intent. Goodly reader, I shall not pretend it is unwise to fear the designs of a Bird of Harwa. I will instead impress that should you be wise in your selection and unsparing in your dealings, you shall make good use of their aid.]

I. Construction

There is no exception for the fact that the Birds of Harwa are discarnate, and arrived when called from the black without form or weight. The Magus is sensitive to their being, however, and may determine through sixth sense their mass. In my earlier manual (Ann. The Manual of Hiram, a text jealously guarded by the House of Ansus. A copy was acquired from the Museum of Iantōs, which this body is preparing for transcription as of this publication, 1115.) I gave without clarification my chosen unit for mass of ‘soul’, that is, the weight of a human soul. Here I expound: a Bird of Harwa weighing precisely that of a human soul is moderate but weak. I describe this as ‘1 weight’. It is at the mark of 10 weights that a Bird becomes formidable, and I recommend to my apprentices that they preference the mark of 5 weights for their initial crafts. Only in the devising of a limited servitor do I suggest the employment of a Bird weighing less than 1 weight.

Ann. The recommendation of this body remains that the use of a demon no more than 1/2 weight is entirely safe. At this weight, little more than a thought is required to abjure it, and a single repetition of the Supper Prayer shall suffice otherwise.

A Bird without body is only as formidable as it can influence man to its tendency; it is seldom useful for the Magus to employ a Bird without also employing a form for it to inhabit. For you, noble reader, I include diagrams for the constructions, as well as my recommendations, on the following: It has been my favored practice to construct a body of river clay and ash made of Heathen bone, as it is not inhibited by twice-blessing. For each shovel of river clay, inmix a small handful of ash. Wet it with water or blood, if there is supply. Ten of these shall suit a single weight of soul, once fired by kiln.

It has been done to find or construct of pieces a body which had once been occupied by a man. This shall work without difficulty of construction, though two obstacles face a Magus so inclined: the first is that the flesh must be livened by considerable transfusion. The second is that even the blessings of Heathen rites are resilient to the occupancy of flesh by a Bird. Though the priests are possessed of prayers which exorcise the influence of such rites, the Double Lord abhors this practice even for the astray. The Magus is wise to fear the bearing of such sin. Finally, allow me to detail briefly a practice I discourage: It has on occasion been the practice of a Magus to utilize his captive enemies as vessels for the Birds of Harwa. I am certain, noble reader, that naught produces so much disgust in your mind as the submission of the mortal to the arts of the Magus in this manner. However, there is reason further that this be avoided: when inhabiting a living body in its whole, the Bird dominates not merely the body, but the soul, and can thus obtain a facsimile of life which is destructive to the inhabited body. The most natural result is a deeply unnatural hunger, only sated by hideous consumption, and resulting invariably in the final damnation of the captive.

Ann. The only acceptable use of flesh as a housing for demons in the eyes of this body is the Homunculus Art, that is, the use of living but separated flesh from the Magus’s own body. It goes without saying that Hairam suggests a practice wholly inimical to Daartlawer morality. This body shall also herein note that the determined intentional submission of a living human for possession can be punished least by execution.

II. Summoning

Ann. The following section has been deemed unfit for publication. The interested party may request permission from the Agency of Magi to view, given suitable licensure by the Five Guilds.

III. Binding

I shall presuppose, noble reader, that you have not preceded your reading of this chapter with the summoning of a Bird of Harwa, or that if you have, you have executed the summoning of a Bird of minor weight and swiftly thereafter banished it. It shall be necessary twofold for you to bind a Bird of Harwa after calling it: first, you must ensure that the Bird is not only coaxed into your prepared vessel, and locked therein, but also that the Bird is not able to influence you unduly. Good reader, you shall not believe falsely that due to your talent as a Magus, that you are immune to their power. Rather, a Magus is moreso affected by the depredations of the Bird of Harwa when he believes he cannot be, and thereafter he is most formidable indeed, because he has not prepared for such a circumstance. Then, I shall advise the methods of binding which are most potent against the Birds of Harwa, which occur in two stages, once summoned, but not embodied, and once embodied.

Once summoned, the Bird of Harwa may be enclosed by means of ritual or symbol. Because the un-embodied Bird is discarnate and lives solely within the domain of the spirit, it can be entrapped by means of mere suggestion in the living world. I do not feel the need to duplicate here an explanation of the treatises which putatively exist and detail sigils and rites for the entrapping of Birds of Harwa. Those prescribed as evil eyes by priests of Onavara shall suffice as well as those drawn in chalk or blood. The blessed oil of the Double Lord shall be suitable when one is faced with a Bird exceeding 25 weights, or otherwise relic ash of a saint, though one must be certain to collect it afterwards.

Ann. Despite himself, Hairam proceeds to detail several rites he finds suitable for binding various weights of demon. Needless to say, these exact materials are preferenced for magicians within this body. However, if you believe they may be relevant for a project, do not hesitate to request access.

Once embodied, binding is a far easier enterprise. The sigils you have undoubtedly prepared on the body shall suffice, but in fact, the Bird is now on an island apart, and cannot so easily influence the world beyond, as carnation mutes and limits the expansion of the soul to be so dense as to mirror the body. To this, noble reader, I shall level my most stringent warning: once bound, the Magus should be so wise to prevent the Bird of Harwa, given wing, from contact with the common man, he who lacks the practice of our Art. Given body, the Bird of Harwa is capable of our Art in its primitivity. Moreover, the Bird remains capable of influencing men, and having so done, may possess them without the bidding of the Magus. Even with active suppression on the part of the Magus, a Bird exceeding 10 weights is cunning and capable of malignant design. It must be kept apart from the common man by employment of binding sigils as described earlier in this section, and should not be used where men abound to be swayed by its power.

And Calliope Bound

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 23:56:32 -0500

It was newly Traastr. In Unitas, the summer did not come, at first, with violence. It came in creeping heat, swaddled by gasps of littoral wind from the bay. One such fluttered the slats of the carriage, and the first of two travelers settled, uneasily, into one propped up hand, then unsettled just as soon. The air itself was sticky, as even as early as it was, a summer in Unitas can be likened to fruit on the vine, overripe in the humid air. Like the sweat around the back of his collar. In Doleri, under two suns, maddened like aggrieved wounds, sweat evaporated. This carriage belonged to Mr. Mircea Vedova, who owned Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice. It was drawn as though by mechanical horses, and set by one of his automata– which played the part of draft– upon a preordained path.

The matter which saw him away from the complex at Industry Park was an old matter, one that predated concerns of the Board and the Bahn. In Unitas, and for a matter of fact that was partly regrettable, a hard line had been drawn between the past of five years prior, or beyond, and the present. It was a line which choked off three whole blocks to a side, like a clot in the arteries of the city itself. The gold-plated rise of the part-factory, part-fortress building on Industry Park, which into deep summer would soon burn to the touch like an impending apocalypse beyond the solace of every sharp shadow.

Once upon a time, there had been those he would have liked to see within the confidance of that complex. The second of two travelers would be the first to come, and that was a disquieting thought indeed. No others had come. Perhaps, snared in the wire of pains, neuroses, histories he shared but not nearly closely enough to abjure, none would ever come. The great mystery of what all had been lost to him would persist. If that was what was to be, then his life would continue as it had.

When at last he lifted his hand from his face, set as it often was in a dour pinch, to befit the truth of Mircea Vedova far nearer and far more intimately than the likes of his simulacra, it came away with a tug. He padded the sweat from his cheek with part of his collar and took a darting look around the interior of the carriage, which was dark. In his eyes, it had the color of early twilight, except for searing lines where sunlight got through the cracks. The second would be here soon. On the return, within the interior of the carriage, under layers of abjura and armor panels alike, a proof against the counter of the maxim so proudly touted in Unitas, he would once again share company.

That is to say, 'Health is Wealth'. The dead can take nothing, and the living occasionally become dead. And for the latter part, it was not exceedingly rare that the young inventor spoke to another. Rather, the rarity in this case was a measure of respect that could, perhaps, be only afforded to a past five years since gone.

Even had he opened the slats somewhat and chanced the possibility that someone from beyond the thick shell of his carriage might see within, a thought that ought be foregone, from where the carriage was coming down the hills towards the wharves it would not have been possible to see the ship which was just now entering the bay. As the suns might have seen it, now passing one of the lower capes where they near the Great Elan, a barque of three masts plodded along overtop the breakers. The second of the two travelers ran his hand on the rail. If wood could be mussed into shape, it would have been, but not for any sort of disquietude. If you had been there, on the rail of the ship, you would have been able to perceive in him a kind of ecstatic mania. Whenever he'd glance up, helped by the tip of a wave under the barque, and sunlight hit his eye, you would have been able to see the glimmer of brassy metal and the dim luster of a mechanical aperture under each eyelid.

The second traveler did not always have sight, and before that, he had not always been blind; there were scars at the corners, linking temple to eye, eye to eye, eye to temple. His name was Valyron, but seven and change exisited who would know him, properly, as what he was: Kosmatyr, bearer of the Grail, and Mr. Vedova was one such. This narrow circle confidence was partly by design, but so close as you'd be, you'd see the curl of his lips gently tucked in the boyish cut of his face at the thought, at the restraint. The goal of the meeting was, of course, the conjunction. It needn't all be the conjunction. For those keen enough to pick out his double act, there lay a second idiosyncrasy. The pointed possibility that Valyron indeed did not know of his own deception.

As time advanced– the trundling of the carriage, the rolling of the barque– the distance between the two travelers grew shorter and at last came to collapse. It was in the air, even in the air of the carriage, with its little fan, which kept the interior from warming like that of an oven, hot, like the ground where the buildings shielded it on the leeside, away from the sea. A buzz collected, for which two explanations were known to the first traveler, to Mircea Vedova of Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice. First, the conjunction of two Kosmatyr bred a unique presence, which can be described only in the magnitudes of its potential to throw the world as it is into disarray. More had met before, and indeed, as one surmised and another hoped, more would meet again. It was an electricity that had not been evident to Mr. Vedova until late in the process, alongside Genesis, alongside Halcyon, and Tara. Alongside Valyron.

In spite of this fact, lying a hair's breadth beneath his ken, there was a second possibility which sought to explain the exact origin of the unease Mr. Vedova felt, as the carriage descended the final few runs of switchbacks. It was a thought which would not be admitted, nor, of course, willingly entertained past the stage of conception. It spoke of a tenor within him which lay outside of his command. A rogue thought. Perhaps, in the dim of his carriage, which possessed a golden blush from the brass of the interior, even given the lacquer, a shiver might be picked out in his expression, one that wavered. It said that perhaps there was a crux of anxiety there, too, and not for the metaphysical implications of such a meeting. That it sourced from another reason entirely. If that were true, it was too late to matter.

The mask– of course he'd brought the mask– threatened to spill forth a sea of foreboding into the root of his mind. He didn't need to touch it to feel the terrible, mounting presence it relayed to him. The nearness. The only conclusion was that Mircea Vedova was losing his edge, so far removed from his entrenched arguments with Halcyon and the only person who had ever really met Valyron on a level in terms of the Kosmatyr, a name he would not conscience to think on what ought to be a good day.

The prodigal chairman of Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice bid his mind to change course. Mircea Vedova threw a switch. Immediately, a small battery of mirrors sprung on their settings from a panel in the wall. His face, rendered small and sullen in the reflective brass, was not overly scruffy. His skin had ever been smooth, but he had shaved recently as well. He remained lean and far more apparitional than his duplicate, a problem he had briefly hoped to rectify by sending the image in his stead. It would not have worked; Valyron required a much more direct touch. Valyron required strategy, a strategy the duplicate could not be assured to have. And it would not have fooled him, of that Mr. Vedova was certain. No, the greater performance was his to present, and not altogether illusory. He would present a picture of prosperity, his picture. Valyron, he was determined, would be brought forward into his Unitas. That called for a greater degree of presentation, and, gently, he pat his cheeks with a faint amount of water and pigment. Mircea Vedova thereby restored what vigor had seemingly been lost in his brooding in the carriage prior to arrival.

Strictly, there was no need for the automaton to chirp its alarm as the ship carrying Valyron arrived. It was a clever system, one synchronized with a battery of sensors he had prepared and painstakingly linked over a short stint of time and distance to the centaur-like driver and draft of the carriage. Veil was alarm enough, the agony of the Kosmat spilled across the gap between the bagged mask and person. It was a dolorous upwelling at the root of his mind, or rather, something just removed from it, in that in between space. It was a clarion call and its hearer both, and that horrible combination existed solely within his being. Even still, Mr. Vedova reacted precisely as he had designed to the alarm. He scarcely started, rather, he threw another switch, and the whole of the carriage's right-hand face opened. Summer equalized, though on the water it was not stuffy.

Unitas beyond the carriage came into definition. The barque sat high on the water, and all of its passengers began streaming off in procession, or were picked up by other waiting vehicles. The carriage had opened– or perhaps more aptly, uncurled– behind him, like a vanity, and like a bird taking wing. He let it frame him. He faced the bay and a shoreward wind picked up the hem of his coat and his hair; he peered a detesting venom through the shade of his glasses. Time advanced, a fact he was unaccustomed to take note of unless the events included were of particular interest. Today, there would just be the one, and so he was content to let it pass.

There was something he was looking for, something he might have seen had he been just ahead of the ship short minutes prior, when the barque crossed the breakers and stopped its rolling within the calm of the bay. There, he would have seen Valyron retreat from the head of the ship to find a posting by the gangway, where he might take it down towards the end of the trickle of passengers. Most present among his thoughts was the simple fact that he could afford to wait– Mircea Vedova was here, waiting, by the dock. That awareness which gripped the inventor at the base of the mind was present for him, too, though Valyron would likely have opined that it was not nearly so dissonant nor sorrowful. No, the conjunction was a joyous thing, and therefore so was the sense which came out before it. In the end, Valyron was among the last to come walking up from the seaside, but that phrasing leaves out quite a bit.

It might be chalked up to the closure of the last percent of the space which had existed between both Kosmatyr when Mr. Vedova had first perceived the presence of the other, but the moment hung on. More accurately, he hung onto it. The few notable thoughts which surfaced in his mind, between the carriage and the sea, where the barque was, and boxed in to either side by the procession of people, were as follows: first, and strictly observational, he could see Valyron now. Within that moment, and the limitations of space and positionality, he could barely prise him out from behind the people which were splitting around his carriage. Secondly, and in contrast to any extenuating circumstances, Valyron was in fact there. The presentation would occur as he had conceived of it. Third, perhaps he ought to have sent the double.

There is a moment in a fall in which arrest ceases to be possible. So, he stepped out in front of the crowd, waited just long enough, and announced his presence. Whenever the moment were to end, his eyes would have the better part of the task in finding their mark. His eyes caught.

Mircea Vedova said, "Ah. Good, you're here. I should say, welcome to Unitas."

Valyron did not reply in kind. He made for the carriage before he made any kind of response, but for a moment he was near enough for Mircea to see the brass eyes he had devised, before they went to the carriage, zipping from angle to angle in a sort of apparent glee. When he did reply, he said, "This is another thing you've made, isn't it? Very intricate," and then he opened out and at last faced him, with a lopsided smile. "Yes, I feel terribly welcome. It's... warm."

Mircea's pause lingered perhaps longer than he had intended it to. He wasn't going to bring Veil in yet, though the thought of counsel had grown enticing. He would not, because Valyron would certainly note it. Therefore, a certain amount of subtlety remained necessary. That thought, arising from the way his prior conceptions of his own goals had seemed to tangle at this meeting and the collapse of a past five years now gone into the present, was exacerbated by Valyron's non-sequitur. He supposed it was impressive. Rather, internally, he puffed out his chest at the thought, but in truth it paled. Briefly, he thought to explain it. Upon revision, he did not.

Mircea replied, "It is. It will take us to Pandion– to the complex I have constructed for my artifice. I wrote to you about it, I expect that's part of why you came?"

Valyron took one last look at the carriage before offering a mere shrug as explanation. "Yes," he said, a lingering thought evident in his intonation. A good few moments came and went before he followed it up. "But were we not friends? I should like to ask you about your life, now. Would you... let me speak to Veil as well, perhaps?"

When both individuals folded into the carriage and the brass siding came back into place, it would have been briefly difficult for one to see the other, despite the swift adjustment to dimness of both men's eyes. Therefore, in that moment, it cannot be known whether Mr. Vedova winced at a thought which had entered unwelcome, from the part of his mind which fell under Veil’s influence. Nevertheless, his face was impassive again quickly afterwards. He tilted his nose up. It was a natural topic of interest for Valyron, his fellow Kosmatyr. It would not preclude the rest of the presentation, of showing the complex, of this he felt quite sure. Mircea bid the carriage move, and it began back up the hill.

“Well, of course. Of course. In my complex, I have specialized tools for dealing with entities of a Kosmyk nature,” said Mircea, after weighing his reply with all the care of a chemist. “So… why not.”

Gold under gold tones, Valyron’s face wavered. It became thin and an ounce sorrowful. “I think I forgot how little of my enthusiasm the rest of you shared for the rejoining of the shards,” he said, after a fair deal of hand-wringing. It had been severe; as though Mircea could watch the thoughts, bubbling up, and still they caused him to feel a sliver of guilt.

“Veil is…” Mircea began, and felt, in the space behind his mind, the weight of some great attention whirl upon him. He wondered if he’d regret the lie if later he acquiesced, and Valyron spoke to Veil. He wondered whether what he thought to say would even be a lie, if not merely some means to drive distance between Valyron and his thoughts, his intentions. Even when blind, his read of others had always been uncanny.

Veil was primarily concerned with mourning a world it knew was gone. A simple alteration can be made to that description: Veil was primarily consumed with mourning a world it knew was gone. At the root of its being was an all-encompassing fixation with death. Veil did not wish action, because it was far too obsessed with a moment which had already passed to see any value in the present. That was what Mircea Vedova knew.

What Mircea Vedova thought was a completely different matter. Suppose it were to be revised: Veil was primarily concerned with mourning a world it knew was gone. Being principally fixated on its own death, it required remarkably little of him, and yet, when he had taken up the mask back in Effelheim, and when he had finally acquiesced to Veil’s insistence and become a full ‘Herald’, it had placed him on level ground with the likes of Genesis, Halcyon, Tara. A power Adara had claimed she would have refused on principle. A power Nathra had not considered. It was power applied as a god ought to apply it. Pity it had come far too late. Pity he didn’t see fit to honor it with prayer.

Far from his mind, parceled in a depth he hoped he could sequester away and keep from bleeding into where he felt Veil’s influence stir as though it had ears to feel burning, came a brief wondering– that Veil might be getting something else. Something unsaid.

The weight did not dissipate. From where it crouched like a spider in a crack in his subconscious, it issued a rejoinder. Veil said, though he had not touched the mask, “How pithy. How true. Do you not think the moment of your death will eclipse you?”

Mircea Vedova refocused on the carriage around him. He finished, “...inert. Well, he doesn’t fucking shut up, but I don’t think letting the two of you speak would yield results. Not the results you’re looking for. Not to mention, you were sharp with him. What makes you think he would think to reward that? Like he rewarded Epheram?”

Something– likely the ‘pith’, as Veil put it– cut through Valyron’s dour whim. It dissipated, and he grinned, from across the carriage, with a level of reverie Mircea found briefly nostalgic. Valyron marveled, then said, “I think I’d needed a refresher on you, then. I haven’t had anybody, these years. Anybody but the work. Ah,” he said, and for the blink of an eye the corners of the Herald Valyron’s mouth fell. “...Forgive me, but I have not seen or felt sign of the Thorn.”

A thought surfaced– from himself, not from Veil, nor any other interceding thing– in the mind of Mircea Vedova, with a cruel kind of jealousy he failed to examine. Mr. Vedova’s cruel jealousies always went without examination. It remarked, ah, of course. It remarked, there had been another reason for your coming. Finally, it said, it will be difficult if you were to learn that we had become estranged.

“Yes,” began Mr. Vedova. Behind his darkened lenses, as the cart trundled over a particularly rough patch of cobblestones he knew marked the final approach to Industry Park, at least by this route, his eyes darted for something to focus on. The pause ended, and he gathered his hands. “...Well. We six have had to forge our own paths in the aftermath. In the time since.”

Valyron sustained his look with such an intensity, though belied by his cheery expression, that Mircea was pulled back to the immediacy of the conversation. Standing closer to the side of Valyron’s face than Mircea could, for the roomy span of the carriage, it would be possible to glean two things. First, a mite of doubt was passing through his features. It was followed by a shiver, something sad, something short-lived. As though Valyron did not want to doubt Mircea. By the time he spoke, it would be forgivable to imagine that Valyron had re-contextualized the way Mircea’s eyes had strayed as he spoke, the tenor of uncertainty in his voice.

Mircea was not so close as to glean that in its full presentation, especially as his lenses prioritized traces of magic over the nuances of distant phenomena. Now, though, noticing a hint of reticence in the expression of his companion, he reached across to speak to Veil.

There was, of course, no passage of time in the space that was like a drainpipe flowing out of his mind. When he spoke, he spoke out into a big, echoless space. Rather, he did not speak at all. Neither did he have the chance to make his thoughts resound there, because the space was already filled with Veil. It was ready, as if with characteristically weepy commentary.

Veil said, “What, ought I do aught to help that the little mender has noticed you’ve driven off all of your friends? Shall I cry out in the void and summon them back?”

Mircea Vedova thought better of something. Valyron replied, as if after a long, drawn out silence. It had only been a jumble of seconds. “Oh,” he said, with a mournful twinge to his voice. Crestfallen, perhaps. “Maybe it had been ambitious to think I’d have the fortune to see both of them.”

“Well, both of us shall have to suffice,” said Mircea. The callousness of his reply came as easily as it had come to wipe any residual concern from his expression. Callousness was a tool of the chairman. It was a facet of Unitas’s Mircea. Perhaps the blue-skinned man behind the smoky lenses knew of some alternate truth to the ease with which he plunged into it, embodied it. Perhaps, in the peculiarities of the chairman’s self-image, it had become unfortunately easy to wear it. He finished: “Both of us will suffice, will we not?”

The carriage lurched to a stop, to something close. A slow crawl. Both occupants swayed from the sudden change in speed. Mircea Vedova imagined his question suspended in the middle of the carriage, in pause. Valyron replied, almost cheery, “The reunion of the divine corpse can weather a few setbacks.”

Excellent.

The carriage resumed, and half an hour ensued, by the end of which the carriage was pulling up alongside the big brass gates to his complex. Gates which, set on clutches and flywheels, parted at the nearing of his carriage. Scarce little conversation had occurred in the intervening time, but Valyron’s moods had returned, and he grew cheerier and yet, seemingly, more melancholic by the second.

When the automatic draught finally ceased ambling forward, there was a great hiss as the bed of the carriage lowered to the ground on a set of long cylinders. Mr. Vedova unlatched the door and put out a hand to guide Valyron down from the carriage. Graciously accepted, he walked out to intercept the sole other resident of his compound. There had been a time– a recent time– when he had occupied all twelve of the spacious city blocks of Industry Park real estate which lay beneath his foundries, workshops, and warehouses. It was a far more modest establishment than that of his industrial zone properties, if one were to look out across the city, and fix both in one’s sight.

But there comes a point where the term ’looking out across’, as in the case of the late Valetriec Helkzen, becomes inexact. The more apt term becomes ‘fucking with ones eyes’, and this was something that Mircea did not stoop to, as laughably common as it was for the Unitas thoroughbred, the nepotist, and the favored of fortune. It had been under his single habitance before his associations with Tara Archilo had become too expensive to maintain. She had defended him. She had been fast, capable, and endowed with the requisite pieces of artifice to ensure that, though she lived apart, she could answer an emergency. So it had happened that his first brushes with the corporate ladder had gone exceedingly well.

In Archilo’s absence he had been forced to seek alternatives. It seemed altogether that trust had gone the way of his former Dorixatl friend; far too expensive to maintain in any endeavor that might otherwise be worth its price. Of course, one such endeavor was his life.

His answer came out to meet them: five feet tall, peering over the rims of polished glasses. Under the inspection of one who knew her, the Bahn’s expression practically simmered with rage, a constant tweak at her lip, a movement which, given hundreds of years, might eventually produce a snarl. The Bahn followed the arc of the hand with which Mircea was, caught in the passage of a moment, gesticulating. She reached Valyron just past its extent, stood by the carriage, perhaps– disgustingly– awed by the place. She scrutinized him and said nothing. The tie between Bahn and plutocrat was one mutually forged in convenience and benefit.

The look with which Mr. Vedova ever fixed her dared her to dissolve it, to– as would be, for her, as easy as simply choosing to fall while walking– wither under his gaze into an indistinct grey sludge person. The Bahn did neither such thing; she had her ego to contend with. Furthermore, the tie between Bahn and plutocrat was what rendered her above the scum and the commons of this city. If you were to peel the skin from her face, you might notice how she was, at this moment, devising new ligaments with which to fix her lips into a salesman’s rictus.

“Master Vedova,” she said.

“Please,” he replied, and when she put out her arm, he slung his outer coat over it, and beckoned Valyron to do the same. When he entered the foyer of his compound with Valyron, she did not follow. Mircea Vedova indulged in something of a daily mantra: he passed then to the coat closet, where he hung up the inner coat and removed his shoes. They would be polished by simulacrum prior to his next need. He traded into a pair of gold silk slippers and a long, monogrammed robe. When he was done, he rubbed his hands over the pockets of the robe, a little ruefully, and turned to where Valyron stood, agape.

“The luxuries are expected of me,” said Mircea. He gestured to a spare set, and Valyron spared little effort getting similarly dressed.

“I can see how someone would get used to it all, though,” Valyron replied.

“Well,” Mircea said, more intent on dispelling the thought itself, than any commentary from Valyron, “I haven’t.”

As he passed across the working floor he had here in his compound, he droned on, purely for Valyron’s benefit. It wasn’t that he found the floor to be an eyesore, or even markedly disinteresting, but he hadn’t reached the part of his compound which he felt he had a particular interest in sharing. As he had not when they exchanged coats for fine robes. Nor had he when they paused for refreshments and to discuss what, to Mircea, were the finer points of Valyron’s visit.

Valyron pulled a chair out and sat, affably, across from him. He seemed genuinely impressed by what he’d seen so far. That was a sweet thought, and Mircea determined it made him want to choke. A simulacrum came out with teas and small finger-food, a routine he’d instilled for office guests, but on a lark taught his household retainers. Valyron took the serving plate whole, picked up a hors d’oeuvre, and ate it. He said, “I was glad to hear it, when you wanted to meet.”

Mircea nodded along. His request would certainly become more material after this short break ended, in a few rooms. Valyron was pushing ahead. Or… had he lost his sociability? “Since Archilo and I diverged paths, you are the first of my old traveling companions I have brought here, to Unitas. I will not beat around the bush, there are some things I had hoped we might accomplish together, and this is not a social call,” Mircea said, then, after a few moments spent with the bitter note on which he had ended, chose to soften it. “Well, it isn’t… wholly, a social call.”

“And that does not diminish my joy,” Valyron said. A glint in his eye… no, even from where Mircea sat, he could see the minute shifts in Valyron’s face, almost muted by the fact that, perhaps, to Valyron, this kind of duplicity was still honest. He was more excited by the fact that there would be work. There was something else, there, too.

Mircea replied, “Good,” and rose to his feet. Part of Valyron’s strangeness, he imagined, might be due to the fact that he had ever been ill at ease on the road. Recently, though, he thought he felt a calm which verged on the manic, and though it was not a permanent state, Mircea imagined it might be disarming to one who had only known him before. “I require your expertise in harnessing a number of spirits. An expertise I have, admittedly, extrapolated from your skill with the Kosmats, but, indeed, one I believe worthy of commendation.”

Valyron beamed. “You think I’m skilled? Yes, I suppose I have been involved in quite a lot.”

There were points at which Valyron’s false cheer was acceptable. He was, as Mircea was, foremost skilled at getting what he wanted. Valyron’s false cheer was but another route to achieving his ends. Other times, though, it was aggravating. Mircea did not grace it with a direct response.

Valyron’s face remained in that brilliant, affable flight for another beat, then fell back to baseline. He said, “I would be happy to help carry this project of yours forward.” Then he frowned, and Mircea’s throat tightened. This was paid no mind.

Mircea let a long moment pass in silent thought, himself, standing, Valyron still seated, and picking at the finger food. The robe– which he didn’t like– made him feel like an overstuffed bird of paradise. Then he looked down, at Valyron, at a slant. Then he announced, “I have decided I will let you speak with Veil.” A sparkle hit Valyron’s eye, but Mircea steamrolled on, “I have brought you here– well, that’s obvious. I have brought you here because you have a foremost mind, where the Kosmats are to be concerned, but unlike all other such, their divinity has not staunched you. It is a remarkable quality,” he said, with derision, “that has escaped many of our fellows. The project… well, it is not so dissimilar, I think, from the end sought by Grail. It is unchanged from the work that has ever captivated me. But I am tired of raising the dead. I will create life from nothingness. Not from life, and neither from death.”

Mircea Vedova paused when he realized that Valyron was now staring directly at him, bemused but unbothered by the tirade. Mircea slowed, then finished, “The problem is the soul. The soul of a corpse will move on if the body is destroyed. The soul of a corpse will remain with it if it is not. That leaves the third category. Well, I’m getting ahead of things. Come.”

Valyron, however, was somewhat stuck on a prior note. A bit bleary-eyed, he said, “You’ll let me speak to Veil?”

Mircea felt– without his will– his lips pull back from over his teeth. He sighed, and a brow went up when he said, “Yes.”

Valyron’s smile stilled. “Oh,” he said. “But in that case, I ought to share with you why I came all this way.” He put out a hand, with a shrug. It was a gesture Mircea read as a request for Mircea to help him up. With another brief glance, he complied. Valyron stood stock-still for a moment, and toyed with the drape of the gold silk robe he’d put on. It ill fit him. Finally satisfied, he added, “Shall we?”

Mircea took the platter from the side of Valyron’s chair and set it on the table, then pulled a chain. A simulacrum would be by to port it off. He led into the next room, which was a corridor adjoining the various support rooms for his primary workshop. They finally passed into the workshop itself, which was made, surface to surface, of burnished brass and expensive wood. The cost of the design had, given recent successes, grown rather immaterial. A whim had seen it to its present state.

There were a hundred-odd counters and cabinets, many of which contained his latest homunculi. They were scores of bird-like embryos in various states of suspended development, fixing him in glassy and unseeing eyes. Valyron wandered about the space in barely-bated wonder. There were the objects he sought– 23 reliquaries containing his ’third category’ of souls. But he didn’t dare recall his cliffnotes on the project, not yet, not while Valyron was still getting around to actually asking to speak with Veil. Veil, who had been utterly silent, except for faint pangs of amusement.

Valyron broke the silence first. “I have attained more shards. I am, multiple times, a Herald, as Genesis was.”

The weight of presence. It clarified, in Mircea’s feeling, in Veil’s, which was conveyed to him from the back of his mind. He had, erroneously, chalked it up to the intensity created when two Kosmats meet, when their Kosmatyr are physically close, and their presences nearly overlap. It had taken a long time for him to learn to appreciate the lack of that feeling, as he had become a Herald for the first time in the presence of several others. But this intensity must be near in factor to that he had felt in the presence of Genesis, Halcyon, Tara… Valyron, atimes. He was, for the moment, taken aback. Recalling himself, he said, “It’s destructive to the soul to hold two at once, is it not? At least, so Genesis said.” The end of that sentence kicked up a bit of black humor, and a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“That’s close to being right, but not exactly,” said Valyron. “Grail says that ‘consonant’ shards will… willingly, live together. It still requires management of energy, to ensure your soul isn’t drowned, or torn apart, but it’s stable. The Wheel is stable,” he finished.

Mircea tensed. He prepared himself for the inevitable switchback. The but.

“The Stylus is not.”

There were four, three for which Valyron alone served as Herald. A sort of rueful foreboding came across him now, and Veil’s voice rose up to sing chorus.

It said, burnished with a glee Mircea could almost feel, like an ache at the hollow of his throat, “Grail means to merge the World, of course. Ah, but you should rather hear it from him. Unless you mean to find yourself wound up.”

For Mircea, time nearly stops when Veil speaks, and Valyron, the workshop, the presence of three other Kosmats, becomes impossibly distant. Mircea arches a brow, and replies, “He means to discuss this with you. That’s the point, that’s his ‘why he came all this way’, is it?”

A slow, rising sense comes from Veil. Though he makes no contact with the mask, this fact seems to make no difference when Veil so wishes. “Ye-e-es,” says the mask, slow. “Of course, you’re already reunifying the World. Lifting Erxya from the deep. What will spread across the world, will spread.”

When he says it, Mircea doesn’t believe him. This dissent, however, he keeps from Veil.

Mircea nearly pouted, at the dispelling of the thought that Valyron had, truly, come for him. It was a hope he hadn’t realized he had been holding onto. “So,” he said, “You want to see how Stylus and Veil would synergize, if they’d be consonant.” He marveled at the shape of the thing, now that it was fully lucid to him. Veil had, peaceably, operated at his whim, with little recompense beyond a strange, pooling satisfaction at what he imagined Veil perceived as his slow corruption. It was laughable, and Mircea almost laughed at it. If Valyron spoke to Veil, they would surely come to an agreement.

If he forbade it, Valyron may not assist him with the souls. Worse… oh, yes, somehow, as the thought rose in his mind, it was worse, he might leave in search of Archilo. He might leave Unitas. With a start, Mircea spoke again. “I will not allow it. Well, this goal, which is not my goal, I have no reservations with, but it would not serve me to contend with the double effort of bearing a second shard. I thought this would have been obvious to you.”

“I meant only to speak to Veil,” Valyron said, plaintively. He sounded sad, which shouldn’t have hurt.

“And to set him in alliance against me. Tell me I’m wrong, but I won’t fucking believe it.”

Valyron’s expression grew, briefly, dire and sad.

“Oh, come now. Obviously I was going to dissent, and you weren’t going to slip this past me.” He squinted, lingering before he spoke again. “But you knew I’d make a counter-proposition.” He laughed, and it was forced. Standing on-side, one perceive in Mr. Vedova a distinct instability. It was a sharp laugh. A black laugh, and it threw his expression into disarray. “Well, I will. I have, for a long time, been trying to unravel what magic went into the Needle Athame. It was difficult particularly because Genesis would not let me see the blade. The avarice of the pious is, as ever, fucking famous.”

Valyron, then, did Mircea the distinct service of ending the charade. Where before the pinch of his face had threatened tears and soft words of disappointment, the soft smile had returned. A look of wonder had returned to his eyes. He said, “Then yes, I think I may be able to help you with your soul problem. I am glad of it, though, and won’t work too quickly. I think I want to linger.”

Joylessly, though with a perplexing, despicable sensation in his chest, Mircea went to his schematics and withdrew the appropriate notes. He said, “I will have a room prepared,” but made no effort to expel Valyron from the workshop. It would be a gift. There was nothing compassionate in the gift; it was part of the ransom for a part of his life he wisely sought complete sovereignty over.

Allegory of Spring

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 23:40:12 -0500

Ștefan’s mind was aswirl with the words of the Petrovich boy as he stalked the streets of Polocarija. The horror he felt in its face was scarcely coherent; he a spring lover, and his spring love found, then taken and damaged in a heartbeat by the designs of a cruel man. In an afternoon, a horrible afternoon, the truth of near a week of sorrow and concern was laid horribly bare; the assailant’s son had come and confided in him the truth, but moreover that now, in some horrendous twist, he had stolen her away from him.

The others had gone, even Zriyne, with the gruff promise she would be their line of communication. So, the son was the only one who shadowed his steps now. A perfectly terrible little boy-- Ștefan realized this, the moment they’d met-- but Ștefan was too far gone to care. The fear was in him and not like to leave. Neither did he want it to. He didn’t want what came after the fear. So Polocarija, muse for his spring, lay unfurled before him, with deep afternoon shadows and haunts and malaise. He missed the beach, the smell of the sea which might have set his gut nearer to ease, but home would speed him to Zriyne and the victorious Djesdeona; she’d await with his beloved and he’d soothe her ills and they’d forget, or rather he’d take the son’s advice, another haunt and another malaise.

The dreadful son had a cocksure walk. Ștefan could hear it and know plainly the quality of man it supported; though how terrible it was to charge a son with his father’s crimes the translation was plain to him. How insincerely he had found him, found Zriyne, told them. He’d promised aid. Vengeance, a dream of vengeance which would be next to delight. They’d plot.

“Hold,” the son said. Ștefan looked where he directed, at the street ahead, which was bare and lined with summer homes. “Here comes my father now.”

Ștefan’s world grew dimmer still. Distantly, he felt doubt, doubt at the strangeness of the son’s account, but he was a swift sword, and Polocarija was largely without gendarmes. The son had said that this villain’s honor, once wounded, might be held to account. His footing came easier now. Dimly, he wondered, in his whirling mind, where the idea of the duel had come from.

A man emerged from through an arch, a shorter woman with lighter hair in tow, both Zedarjr. Owing to the son’s description, Ștefan recognized Markov Petrovich. Ștefan did not see the son-- Sorin-- share a look with the daughter, Viktoria.

A beat slow.

Markov recognized him, that much was obvious in the leer her received. His lower face was split by the angry purple wound that was his mouth, which tinged worse and he said, “Look, and here comes the jilted lover of my dear reluctant mistress.”

Jilted. Dear, reluctant. The words struck like hailstones. Ștefan’s world was free from daughter or son. Just Markov. Crossing that short stint of street between them felt like it took an instant, just forward. His feet and mouth decided for him. They planted; he said, “On the town, after what you did, and unattended, too. I have a mind to teach you regret.”

Ștefan was faintly aware that he had lost sight of both terrible daughter and dreadful son in the brief moments between, but he would not, in that moment, do himself the cruelty of tearing his eyes from the object of his hatred. Markov moved nearly to pass him by. Still not a chance. Markov snorted derisively when he turned.

“Don’t teach me,” he said, “Learn it yourself. She’d come now, if I called. You, though? Leave it and crawl back to your paints. The horned thing is mine.”

How could a paltry word like rage describe it? Ștefan exploded: “Dog! For her abduction alone, I would call you to stand, you ravener.”

Markov’s sneer passed into a bemusement which Ștefan did not understand. Nor did he make an effort. Markov stopped somewhere in the slow circle he had been making, Ștefan tracked his turn. He took a bullish step forward and said, an eyebrow peaking, “Dog? I would have thought you desired nothing more than to lay down with dogs.” His face grew cruel. “And for the conquest?”

“Either would be cause enough,” Ștefan said, bile beating down reason under its torrent. He wagered his good reason would agree. “Now, where did that girl crawl to? Bring her here, I won’t waste another word on you. My darling’s sister will set the arrangements. I want them to see me choke you on those words.”

Markov had said something then, but stubbornly, and by great effort, Ștefan had succeeded in paying it no mind, pacing long around that stretch of street. Markov was incensed, he would not leave now, not without seeing him silenced for good. Good! Let him rage, and let him drown in it.

The world whirled as an hour proceeded from that point, one spent leering bitterly at Markov, and pacing, until Zriyne returned. The better part, the harder part, was convincing her not to take up the sword herself. He’d seen it dance in her hand, the classical full-edged saber; it danced as light as an Argonnaise rapier in the hand of an acrobat. But the thought of standing on-side, as another went to account for the capture of Cantata washed over him each time he considered it, and the despair in his heart compelled him to stand.

Zriyne acquiesced, at the promise Markov would bleed. Ștefan relished that oath. When the daughter, Viktoria, came forth with a priest, likely Xokorx’xtratyme, it didn’t matter. Djesdeona would heal Ștefan, when she returned with Cantata. They could have their priest, and also shove it. No, what the bringing of the priest signified was that the square would be drawn. Viktoria withdrew from their huddle, by a line of trees; they hadn’t moved far from the street by the arch where they had met. Zriyne had left just after Ștefan had convinced her to let him duel, and perhaps reached Djesdeona. But now she’d returned.

They’d all relocated, since dueling was not to be tolerated on the open street, to a park outside the high city. His surroundings were the subject of little mystery for Ștefan, whose mind had shut out most of the details since raising the challenge. Viktoria and her dreadful brother had suggested it, or Zriyne had. They were cruel in a thin way, or otherwise bored, but they did not act as though they feared their father’s demise*,* Ștefan reflected. It made his lip curl.

Viktoria sauntered out into the open. “Who will speak for you, Vedova?”

“Zriyne of Mežižan,” Zriyne said, and she sneered. Viktoria’s eyes fell upon her. There was an unnerved twinge at her lip, one Ștefan was eager to credit Zriyne with. “The talk will be short. Tell your rat fuck father to stand to fucking account.”

“Excellent,” Viktoria said, her voice light and airy. Ștefan had scarcely hated the sound of a voice so much as he did hers, in this moment. “Provincials.” She continued, her tone dripping with sarcasm, “How might we avoid this sad affair?”

“Tear his entrails out yourself.”

Viktoria’s teeth gnashed behind her lips, though through great effort, she kept a canned smile. “Then let the Threefold Three witness, in defense of his honor, the Patriarch Markov Petrovich.” She tipped her head, baring mocking expectation. Her eyebrows and expression said, horribly, and…?

“For my sister, Ștefan Vedova,” said Zriyne. Her voice sounded bored, but Ștefan could see her hand, tight by her side, was trembling.

“By custom, first blood shall mark the proof or settlement of honor, and the first to lay a wound on his foe may consider the matter settled. Otherwise, this proceeds to the concession,” Viktoria said, and a great weight fell from her as she finished, and turned towards her father. “Now,” she said, and spread her arms, unable to conceal a hard hint of mockery, “Stand to account.”

Only when Zriyne placed a saber in Ștefan’s hand did he revive. Viktoria withdrew a handful of handkerchiefs, each golden and decorated with stars and triangles. She met Zriyne by the turn of Polocarija’s wall. “We agree on the bounds. Understood?”

Zriyne sneered in response, then took off her own scarf, brilliantly red, by the wall. Viktoria marked opposite, and Ștefan watched as Zriyne glanced at his sword, then nodded. She took out a handkerchief of her own. It was grey. She deposited it just by a tatty wooden scaffold. When Viktoria let another scarf drop, Zriyne stormed up and kicked it a few feet away.

Ștefan could only make out a few choked words, but he heard Zriyne announce she would show Viktoria ‘fucking square’, before she took off one of her shawls and cast it down. It was blue. Viktoria had already begun to turn away when she did this, and all that Ștefan couldn’t read on her face was announced by a bemused snort. Zriyne spryly climbed onto the scaffold. All the while, Markov paced. He had escaped the kind of stupor Ștefan had been left stumbling through. Of course he had; he was the cause of Ștefan’s. Markov tilted his head and stared straight at Ștefan. It was a horrible, proud face. His lips parted, and he rolled his own sword, behind Viktoria’s sole remaining gold handkerchief.

Markov held the look until Ștefan’s face pinched and his teeth gnashed together and he had to turn part away. Viktoria climbed up onto the scaffold herself and tugged the priest aside. They were grinning like spies, Ștefan thought. Ștefan turned back and marched up to Zriyne’s grey scarf. He glanced to her over his shoulder. She nodded the sort of nod which made him press his lips into a hard line, with what resolve he could muster. He stood stopped a moment, then looked dead at Markov.

“Leave Polocarija. Crawl back to Zedarja, you filth, and nevermore cast such a shadow over mine or my love’s,” Ștefan said.

Markov sat his hand on his sword, cocksure. By the cut of his mouth in his face, Ștefan could see the resemblance to the terrible son. “You won’t win my craven with words, dandy,” he replied. “Turn tail and leave me my spoils, you privateer. Or, keen as you are to piss me off, come and prove your yellow.” When he’d said all, he drew, and rolled the sword in his hand. The high sun made its edge a hard line of white.

Ștefan exhaled hard through his nose and passed the scarf. He drew, pointed at the ground, and saluted. In an instant, Zriyne was shouting, and the people on the scaffold, there a moment before, faded from his mind.

There were four corners. There was Markov. Ștefan saluted, swinging the blade through a trio of points-- a reference to a religion he was far too wise to follow. He took the center.

Markov bulled forth, his face a fury. Ștefan’s hindbrain fought for control, to get him to dash aside, but Markov was-- stupefyingly-- merely walking. Ștefan was dumbfounded until the moment he brought the blade up. He chopped. Ștefan seized himself and faded to the side. The sabre whistled by his ear. Ștefan scampered until he had the space to point his sword. His foot nudged the side of the scaffold.

Markov leered. “Stupid boy,” he drawled, finally answering Ștefan’s salute with one of his own. He circled, coming to toe Zriyne’s shawl, by the stands. “I might have let you have her, when I got tired. But you’ve supposed you’re my equal, brought me here,” he said, and a low venom edged into his voice, “to waste my time.”

Ștefan threw himself at Markov, and threw the tip of his sword a little farther. He looked; the thrust had been close enough, because Markov’s sword came up and his point batted it away.

As much as his hatred for Markov dominated his mind, his heart sang as he bound swords. The rhythm-- probe, bind, break, cut, parry riposte-- felt like dancing. He laughed, laughed until Markov’s teeth grit and he couched more force behind his blade.

“Makes you feel big, doesn’t it?!” Ștefan wrestled Markov’s guard from between them to shout in his face. The laugh still burbled up from the hollow of his neck. It made him want to scream. “Defenseless,” he said, dropping the bind. “Innocent. Immaterial to you. Makes you feel fucking big,” he said, “The power to hurt someone like that?”

Amazement leeched into Markov’s face, or something like he’d bit his tongue. “Keep talking,” he said, and real hatred drew into his voice. He lowered his hand-- an early opening! Ștefan rewound and lunged for it, blade diving like a corkscrew.

Markov’s sword drove his into the scaffold’s handrail, then Markov was by him, pulling towards the square’s center. Ștefan had moments to dip past a counter, Markov’s sabre passed inches from his eyes.

Too close, he thought, and picked his guard back up. He neared the wall and found his foe again. He was already panting.

Ștefan passed the red scarf, and dispossessed of himself, roared, “I’ll see you regret laying so much as a finger.”

“Yes, yes,” Markov snarled, as though the burden of consideration was agonizing. “On your woman.” He laughed, and it was hideous. “Mongrels,” he continued, “laying down with animals.”

“Kill him!” At last Zriyne’s shouts coalesced into a single sentiment. One that made sense in his screaming mind. His thoughts ran one and all towards a precipice beyond which they were lost to him, beneath all the hard white steel and the laughter. For a bare moment, he felt safe to spare a glance, the sword stretched forward three paces from Markov like a ward. Zriyne was unrecognizable under an anger which resounded too in him. The son. The daughter. The priest was gone.

No time. Markov’s confidence left the far greater wound, as in a score of strikes, Ștefan hadn’t won an inch. “Confess, you ravener!” Ștefan bellowed. “What honor have you left to blacken?” He stole the center of the square, with Markov lingering back towards Viktoria, towards the garden walk, and Zriyne’s shawl.

Markov’s face went grim, and the movements behind his eyes no longer made sense. Suddenly, Markov was upon him, and his sabre was bearing down for center mass. A twitch brought his guard up, and Ștefan avoided his own bisection, just as Markov brought the sword around again.

Ștefan leaned into his defense, working around the blade. His own point flew like a dart, but Markov shut him out, and the attempt cost him another narrow brush.

Blow by blow, every one leased with killing force, scraping down Ștefan’s sabre in his desperate guard, Markov pushed him to the far corner. Ștefan realized he was worse, far worse. Markov had hardly had to try. Another blow; Ștefan closed his other hand around his grip. The window for riposte vanished.

Ștefan was suddenly terribly conscious of how near he had drawn to the city wall. He stepped for space, pre-emptively parrying to keep Markov back. Like a hammer, Markov struck his blade-tip to the dirt. Ștefan scrabbled back, pressed tighter to the wall as Markov reclaimed the center. Then Markov was upon him again, and he stumbled and suddenly the red scarf was at his feet. He’d nearly lost his balance.

It ought to have been the end when Markov’s sword came down again. Some hindbrain prowess had whipped his guard up, even as he wavered, bucking both of their swords clattered into the wall.

When Markov cut again, Ștefan had regained his balance. Even with his guard set, the blow nearly toppled him. It pounded up his arm, like steel bars shot through his skull. Slinging his weight, he let it propel him under and out, back towards the center, then towards the lump of blue. He rounded again at the far corner.

Then, there was movement on the scaffold. He looked, and caught Djesdeona’s arrival. She came to stop by Zriyne, and with her-- Ștefan’s heart pounded-- shrouded like an invalid in a blanket, was Cantata. He could have fallen to his knees at the sight of her, in red and stony blue, eyes soft as still water, and shaken as though by an unseasonable chill.

Even as she ached, clinging to the blanket and watching with the most horrific expression, an expression which Ștefan could not escape blame for, her face was delicate, lips bowed, with plum ringlets which slipped the gap between blanket and pallor-brushed skin. Ștefan longed--

“Ay!” Markov’s shout fixed him in place, like a pin through a trophy corpse, and he struck the ground with his sword. He spat. “You deign to call me a brigand, and then show me your yellow, you cur of ill breeding?”

--to leap from the square, to answer the sorrow and fear he felt with love renewed.

“Ill bred,” Ștefan said, or rather, his mouth did. His brain hadn’t caught up. Hatred did not describe the feeling he felt next. It fell short of describing the animus that twisted his face into knots. “The name I wear is a noble one. Vedova. And once I have taught you this,” he said, flashing the worst smile he could, “so too will she wear it.”

Ștefan heard, for a bare moment, the sound of Cantata’s voice. It was thin. He turned aside, raising his guard. “Zriyne,” she said.

“She’ll wear a welt for every presumption you’ve made,” Markov riposted.

Cantata continued. Ștefan raised a finger, his jaw tightening. “Why does he have the sword, Zriyne?”

A cackle erupted from Markov. His sword came down like an axe and Ștefan darted short. He passed in front of the scaffold. Markov was still turning. Ștefan’s mind swam, but the opportunity was clear. He planted and lunged, desperate for reach to win before Markov could recover.

It was far too late to avert when Markov straightened his back, revealing a sword already couched. It came rising up, his blade twisting to full extent. Ștefan was far too committed to dodge, his blade far too weak at this range-- he seized, and bat lamely at the

blade.

Fortune alone kept Markov’s from puncturing him through, the fact that when the blade had arced inwards, he had twisted behind his own sword, and Markov’s skipped just aside when his sharp hit Ștefan’s. Ștefan stumbled forth, and jerked his blade once more, into the bind. His sword-tip bounced off of Markov’s guard and came away blooded.

Ștefan’s heart nearly seized. He glanced agog at the red tip, and Markov’s own horrified fury. “Blood!” he bellowed, and his throat went ragged. “Blood, man,” he stumbled, and danced a few paces away to keep Markov at swordpoint. “Yield.”

No sooner had Markov bulled through his guard again. Ștefan had scarcely had the chance to recover his guard as he fought for space, finding the grey scarf by his foot.

And Cantata screamed. It was a sound that transfixed him, and threw his heart somewhere between despair and revenge. Sweat beaded on his chest. Not sweat. Blood, blood from a gash. He danced back, turning around Markov at range to remain in the square, then raised his sword again.

“Yield, I’ve had your blood,” he said.

“Concede,” Markov’s voice returned, like a sliver of ice.

“Dishonorable dog,” Ștefan shouted, and horror carried him back within Markov’s reach. He brought up the sword, seeing Markov’s guard jump in step, and swung. Markov made no attempt to parry; he swat it down, as though Ștefan had merely raised his sword. Both sabres bit into the wood of the scaffold. Cantata leapt back with a frightened cry. He could hardly hope to go on like this. He could hardly hope, but what else was there to do?

Desperate for purchase, he twisted his blade. He felt the steel bite into Markov’s. He battled for leverage, to sling Markov’s blade aside, but he was rewarded with another careless swat. It lashed across Ștefan’s fingers, and he fixed Markov in his eyes, praying to the Witch or the Wavemother or Cantata’s gods to cut Markov’s rictus from his face and leave it a ruin. He panted. Sweat pricked at his temples and under his arms.

Another series of blows left him dazed.

He saw Markov plant a foot. He watched on, his muscles feeling like steel, as the sabre-tip corkscrewed. It was a killing blow. It ate his hope. It bore down on his chest. Markov’s hand started to rise, the cruel corners of his mouth twitched. Ștefan’s body moved unbidden. It was the untrained impulse which saved him, as the stab dove through the outer meat of his arm and scored his back.

His sabre bit the false edge of Markov’s sword as it arrived, far too late to have been the thing to save him. As he pulled it back, Markov’s preemptive flourish slipped apart.

It made sense now why his defense had been careless, how Ștefan had been able to steal first blood. He had no mind to respect it.

Ștefan’s mind went out in a flash. With more strength than he knew existed in his arm, he bore down. Every slash was a perplexity. Springing and deforming metal, used to hack against Markov’s guard, around and around again.

Twice his mind returned to him. First, it bubbled up when Markov waited a beat before bringing his sword ripping through where Ștefan’s head had been moments before, barely able to avoid its path even with the cocksure hesitation. To better present Cantata his mangled corpse. Ștefan’s horror waxed.

It was everything he could do to keep from looking at Cantata, and seeing the nightmare realized in her expression. Doubtless she saw it already. To continue was to abandon her. To continue was never to give up in her defense.

Her avenging. He had seen the hurt on her face, huddled under the blanket. It was the most base and obvious kind of hurt, with limpid eyes and a taut face. He found the blue shawl by his foot again, and looked up at Markov. By his expression, not a chink had been made in his hide, though the oozing at the back of his hand belied a different story. And yet, Ștefan found himself agreeing. He had, perhaps, already lost.

When Markov came for him, Ștefan dashed at the last moment for an inch more. Markov swung hard, and even though he’d been able to brace, it nearly bisected Ștefan.

As though slowed, he pulled back and allowed it through. That was the second time his mind returned to him. Markov’s strike had been overwrought. Luck had scored him an instant to save himself, as he brought his blade around. He could have the fingers from Markov’s guard if he lunged, this instant.

It nearly worked.

Markov pulled his hand back. He wouldn’t outrun Markov’s guard, there was no disarming him now. Ștefan had left himself undefended. He’d committed hard, and if he pulled back, Markov’s riposte would be swift.

Their swords extended past one another, both racing, one pulling away from a lunge, the other reaching one. No clever trick of the bind to prise the sword away. In a jumble of moments, Markov would kill him.

But Markov was off of line. He’d avoided a disarm. He’d warded off most sensible attacks. Before the last moment, a thrust down line of center would have run him along Markov’s sword, but now? Ștefan would die in moments. His sword was already moving.

It whispered over Markov’s as he twisted, bringing the arc of the point home. The grip transferred the brunt of the juddering shock as the tip of the sabre dove between rib and collarbone. There was no disbelief on Markov’s face. There was annihilation.

Markov tried to bring his blade up, and Ștefan-- now desperately off-guard-- wiggled his fingers away and bore down. His hilt came closer to Markov’s chest. Ștefan panted. Both he and his foe staggered for footing. Markov seemed-- unacceptably-- to fail to grasp the situation.

“Then regret it!” Ștefan shouted, inanely. “Contrition! You horrible ravenous man, you thought—” he stumbled over his words, and Markov’s mouth twitched, agog. A sword had gone through his trachea— “You thought to make a ruin of her. Then learn it well, this regret. Whatever horrible fluke has made goodness foreign to you,” All at once, his adrenaline forced a hateful laugh from his lips. “Say my name,” he said, though this time, the irony did not fully escape him. “Say it.”

Ștefan levered the sword to turn Markov towards the scaffold.

“Vedova,” Ștefan said. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, a part of Ștefan could not accept that even so damaged, Markov could be made speechless. Markov spluttered without sound, and Ștefan turned away.

The priest--

The children, the dreadful son and his sister had done something with the priest. Had they been so certain Ștefan would lose? Of course they had. They were shaken and huddled together. What would it have mattered for a little Elantir dandy to die? Ștefan was holding a sword, and it went straight through their father’s chest. He would likely die. He couldn’t stomach the thought of dredging up sympathy for the children.

Zriyne was a marvel of shock and relief, as was Djesdeona, both of whom were clearly thinking far ahead of what Ștefan could now, in his state. His gaze fell upon Cantata, and gingerly so. He scarcely dared to look. Her face seemed mutilated for one horrible moment, so intensely had emotion twisted it.

Ștefan lost himself to the sight of it.

That was the moment he decided that the children had been complicit in the spectacle. Markov’s spectacle. Another, deeper cruelty to punish Cantata. All for… he didn’t want to imagine why.

Ștefan whirled back around on Markov and tore the sabre out of his chest. He fell, as though prostrated. His sword-hand, empty, leapt for something.

Ștefan couldn’t have been certain whether he truly saw the flash of metal. He stamped down on Markov’s hand. Markov’s other hand splayed, for something. Maybe he’d just flinched. But the attempt was enough.

His fury demanded an answer. He slashed like a hammer blow. It cut Markov to the ground, and the most terrible thing was that he meant every ounce of strength. There was an awful suction when the sabre bashed in his breastbone. With the sound of snapping bone, the tip caught Markov’s jaw, and he went down. Then he just had the sabre in his hand.

Bile filled the back of his throat like paste. Sweat pricked, sharp as the cuts Markov had dealt. Markov, a ruin. He realized it then-- he’d hang for this and that would be the best outcome. No, he realized, and glanced down at the wreck on the ground. While he would hang in the square. They’d massacre the Dadzhvoy. Zriyne, noble Zriyne, Djesdeona, his Cantata.

The sabre. Markov wouldn’t have yielded, from the moment the square was drawn. As though it had been predetermined, but the parameters of it eluded Ștefan. Then the weight of the man on the sword seemed to return, gaping where his insides hung onto it like a lifeline. Was it because he couldn’t yield? Would Markov have allowed him to yield, or otherwise, would he have butchered him in front of his beloved, in a grotesque show of dominion? The weight doubled. He felt it careening towards some indistinct cliff, the unraveling of a crime unintended except in the totality of its moment.

Towards where it raced Ștefan could only be dimly aware. But he felt far more sick than he had moments earlier. He stumbled around, vaguely conscious of the body. He struck the sight of it from his mind. He would have groped for some way to stop what was already happening, if he perceived one, but the dream of vengeance had not abated. Rather, it had been no dream at all. Victory looked like a corpse and a reddened sabre. It felt like seasickness.

It bothered him to hold it like that. It was the strangest preoccupation. His thoughts were indistinct. They sloshed, and he struggled to wrestle with them, so he didn’t try. His dueling experience said, the next thing to do was to wipe the blade clean. Dimly, he picked up the grey scarf and ran it over the sabre. Then Polocarija blinked out around him.

He hadn’t really passed out when next he was aware. His body had been moved maybe a couple of feet, up onto the scaffold. Zriyne was holding him up. Ștefan felt a large hand slip into his grip. It felt a little like Cantata’s, so he squeezed, and then it split. He looked. It was two hands, Zriyne’s closed around her sister’s, and Zriyne withdrew her own. Then, Djesdeona cut open his shirt and pressed on a big clump of gauze. It hadn’t hurt before. Now it screamed in betrayal, like his fingers, and his side, and near misses Ștefan had not realized had not been misses. Cantata’s fingers wriggled in his hand. He could hear Zriyne talking to her in another language.

Ștefan looked up at the sky. It was so bright it was almost gold. He squinted up until he heard a sound from Cantata he understood-- a whimper.

Zriyne said, no longer aside, “We must leave Doleri.”

Cantata whimpered again, and this time, wreathed in a blanket, she pressed against his side. When she spoke into his ear it dwarfed the pain in his chest and across his knuckles. She said, “How can I lose Mežižan again?”

Zriyne redoubled, again in the language of the Dadzhvo, and she shuffled Ștefan against the rail of the scaffold, where it hadn’t been cut nearly through by Markov’s relentless assault, then she stuck Cantata’s other hand in Ștefan’s, and said something once again. Her tone seemed hasty. Then she said, as though repeating, “Tell him.”

Cantata pulled her hand-- his too, by proxy-- and pulled her shroud taut. Ștefan watched as the little muscles in her face gathered their strength, and she said, “We have to leave Doleri. It won’t be—” so went the first time she lost her hold on herself, and it broke Ștefan’s heart to pieces to watch— “The Petroviches have noble blood. Even an Elantir, they’ll see it as murder. We can’t stay,” she repeated. Then she squeezed his hands so tight that the gash over his knuckles oozed slick blood, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her lip adjusted. “But please come with us.”

Ștefan thought of his dreamed-for spring wedding. The wrecked little veins in his hand burned. He broke the look for a moment and looked aside to the children. They were still there. Neither seemed to have been looking; they seemed absorbed in their own conversation, too furtive and too steeped in fraternal jargon to understand. But then, for a horrible moment, the girl child looked. There was a malignant satisfaction so potent in her expression that Ștefan could not bear to look any longer.

Cantata lay her head against his chest. He looked at Zriyne. Her expression was unmistakable: she was at her wits’ end persuading Cantata. She looked desperate for his help. The assignment could not be simpler in scope: persuade Cantata to leave. But Cantata had never even left Mežižan. Cantata, brilliant Cantata, who had suffered an ordeal unimaginable. Whom he had avenged, and was now to hurt again? Something hardened in his face. He looked at Zriyne when he spoke to Cantata, bundled in his arms.

“No,” he said. He hadn’t been sure until he said it. “We go into the desert. Past Mežižan, far, to the north, where Zedarium cannot reach us. But we don’t leave, Zriyne. After today, there will be no more losing. Not anyone, not the memory of Mežižan. I can’t allow it.”

Zriyne’s face went stricken. Ștefan knew what she wanted to say, what she had begged him to say in her stead, and why she couldn’t say it. They were both bound by their inability to hurt Cantata. Silent rage, then fear, and at last, a passing figment of understanding, dashed through her expression. Then, perhaps out of desperation, she started to nod. Djesdeona looked sidelong, but finally nodded as well.

Cantata’s head lifted. Zriyne’s hand brushed his arm and he met her eyes again, long enough for her glance to pass along a silent promise. When Zriyne looked, he could see in her eyes remorse. Remorse at expecting him to do what she herself had lacked the strength to. How could he have had any more? Perhaps she should have asked Djesdeona. He was, to his horror, glad, that he would not be alone in carrying regret. Djesdeona stood off.

“It’s past time to leave,” Djesdeona said.

Zriyne’s eyes left his, but that did nothing to unburden him. Cantata flinched when he put a hand on her kerchief, but she settled again. She pulled between Ștefan and Zriyne, unwilling to unhitch herself from either. She seemed leery of the Petrovich children, who remained after they departed, wordless and expressionless except for the horrible hint of a look Viktoria had given him.

Before Ștefan let go of her kerchief, he turned her face to his, aghast at the strength she had to bear. Her red eyes were now doubly so. It would have been too much to ask to abandon her, much too much to force her away from Mežižan. Too much to ask to die in front of her, not to kill Markov, and not to live to fear what came of it. Ștefan took pains to conceal, now, the truth of his fears. He was certain she knew he held them, but if such terror could be let lie, then perhaps it needn’t be so terrifying. He smiled.

“Now, come,” said Ștefan to Cantata. “I still have a month to make you my springtime bride.”

(Unedited) The Desolation

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 23:59:52 -0500

The sky was dark and without substance; it chased a red line until the line became nothing. Night took the sound from the world. It muffled it, the sound of a boy and his bird clawing up from a trapdoor to crouch among the scarps, and the sound of the trapdoor falling shut. They spoke, but it was indistinct. The daytime had been loud. One of them had not earned more than a wink of sleep, and the other never did. The dark which sapped the energy of the desert invigorated the boy, because it was cold, and because there was work to be done.

The pair moved circuitously, protruding just a head’s height above the remains of a rampart. The fort was little more than a collection of these, a corpse made of foundations and crumbled walls. It had been a long time since the bailey had protected anything worth protecting. Now, it protected Mircea Vedova and his metal bird, Nimbus. He had already said all of his words in the basement to the bird, but neither had he been ready for the quiet.

He thought of the warband which they had walk move up, day by day, once the sun had fallen. It was in service to the Holy Empire. It ought to have struck dread into him, seeing the banners proceed from night to night. He’d watch them split. Some moved on northward. Some split east. They ought to have inspired bile. But now, the boy thought of his distant people just north. They would have met. It was useless to think of it. By morning they had perceived the sounds of conflict, and the bird had confirmed it. So they would go forth and join the vultures.

*Not useless, *the bird answered, and it startled him. Metal sheathing, skin-thin and burnished, clucked as Nimbus ambled alongside the boy. *You could find them still, warn them. But I’m worried that it isn’t a good night for seeking the charnel field. I heard them still dying an hour ago. Some of them might not have. Maybe someone won. Maybe someone dug in, *it protested. Its head swept to and fro, with a clean hiss of plates on plates.

The boy huffed through his nose. “No,” he said. This time, the night permitted the sound of his voice. It echoed across the old stones. “The corpse collectors will come. I won’t give up my right at first choosing. As for the Dadzhvoy,” Mircea said, cringing at the association he had gained to the word. He huffed again, playing at black humor. “I’m sure we’ll see them there.”

The boy stopped by a big crumbled work of rock and balled his fists up by his sides. He suddenly felt sick, and stood there swallowing gulps of night air, with lips thin to keep the blowing sand out. The desert air felt like a bad dream. It wasn’t hot anymore, but the air buzzed like it still was. He couldn’t picture himself anymore. He tried not to see himself in the shine of the bird, it was a face which had ill associations to him now. He didn’t burnish the bird except to keep the sand from wearing it down.

*You shouldn’t be so quick to assume they’re already dead. They’ve been guerrillas for generations. Find the army, see where it’s bound. Let them know, *the bird replied.

“Quiet,” he hissed. The wind whistled at his words. The bird had answered a part of his reply he hadn’t voiced aloud. He had thought to say, and as for giving warning, there’s nothing for me there, now.

*The boy scrutinized the bird’s face for any hint of dissent. Its eyes glittered emptily. He huffed again. A part of him had wanted it, but the bird was silent. He wanted to get it to understand the why of it all. Why it was pointless. Besides, he had to look after himself before tethering himself to another brush with death. He looked out across the desert. It was upsettingly serene, like it refused to reveal its hostility. Perhaps he had misremembered his home. The season had been mild since he’d returned.

They left the haunt together. From the ridge further on, Mircea reckoned no passers-by could tell the ruin was inhabited. The remaining towers stood half-demolished like broken-off ribs with all the meat picked off. The banners had been southeast of the hilltop the last they had come, but now they were gone. In their place was a smoky horizon, like a badly-hung curtain.

Mircea had reckoned the warband would have gotten further north before this happened. He ambled a ways through the desert, kicking sand as he went. The bird puttered beside him, carrying a knapsack full of his tools. It was only the absence of stars that made it clear that the sky was clouded.

Soon, the smoke grew close enough to smell. The air was thick with sand where the ground had been agitated in the fighting. Black smoke and black sand, with the faintest smell of burning flesh. Mircea put on a grim face and scuttled over the ridge. At the foot of the hill was a blasted plain, littered with the newly-dead. He pulled a scarf tight around his face; soldiers were rarely without disease, with wounds that must have been festering in the desert suns for hours.

The ground was pockmarked with small holes. Corpses, horses, and weapons littered the lip of each crater, in the process of burial into the sand. There were long black burns at odd angles, where some of the sand had vitrified. It was dark and clumpy elsewhere. The footprints beaten into it were dense and disordered. The impression was obvious: a great struggle. A decisive struggle, he noted, by the amount of the dead who wore Imperial uniform.

An emboldening struggle. Mircea did something he did very seldom. He thought of his father. Less the man he knew, more the man the Petroviches called Stefan. The Dadzhvo here would be bolstered by this victory, despite the losses plainly in the sand before him. He scrutinized the bodies, the Dadzhvoy among them; strong fighters, all, well-muscled. The sinew was well formed when he looked at the juncture of shoulder and arm on a body, just under the surcoat. But it was missing fingers.

The next few were not intact. As for the Zedari, some cut apart in the sand, others fused to their helmets, a few largely integral; the Zedari did not deserve his assistance. It would be ironic and nothing more. He looked to Nimbus. The bird only commented the obvious: *I still think it’s a bad idea to be here so early. I keep hearing movements on the wind, *it said. Mircea heard them too.

The low flatland and the wind brushing through made it impossible to resolve from where, but there were voices. When they resolved to a language he knew, the language of his people, and not another he might have dreaded, it did not relax him. His heart fluttered, coming into his constant awareness. An uneasy rhythm as he scanned the horizon, and kept low to the sand.

The voices stayed at a constant volume for a time. They were passing around the ridge just ahead. He crept up from where he had pressed himself to the ground, almost straddling a corpse in close inspection. Nimbus looked at him forlornly. He said: Maybe it’s time to quit all this. You look like a vulture, barely a person. You hate the smell, hate the corpse-stench on your coat. What would they think if they saw you? A ghoul, a necrophage? The obvious has come and gone. They’re not following you. You killed him. It’s over.

*Mircea crawled a ways forward. He let himself breathe, cycle the dead-smell out of his lungs there in the sand. Then he rolled himself over and looked up at the sky. All the familiar stars were in place. A few years was far too short for that vault to change. When so much beneath had. He heaved until the nausea was gone and looked at the bird. Keeping his voice low, he said, “You were right. First choosing wasn’t worth the risk.” He paused, quickly leading with a “But.”

The bird looked on unfazed.

“It can’t be over. One of these bodies should have been the key. One of them will be, when I find it. Then it’ll be safe to accept I killed him. Being a vulture won’t kill me,” Mircea said, fighting himself to keep his voice low. His heart skipped. He no longer heard the voices. He realized he had lost them in his tirade. His blood ran cold, he scuttled to his feet, almost stumbling on the sand.

They’ve just come to see the aftermath. Come, we’ll go back together. Safer this way, said Nimbus. The bird stuck out like a sore thumb, even though the brass was scuffed dim. Now at his feet, Mircea started to move towards him, signalling him to move back. These hadn’t been voices he recognized. That shouldn’t have disquieted him. Far worse would it have been if he had.

But Mircea couldn’t stop thinking about the bird’s point. It enraged him, because it echoed a little voice in his heart, one that urged prudence, prudence, prudence. “Prudence won’t save me,” he said, aloud. “Didn’t save father. Too fucking* *complacent, ’til it fucked us all.”

【“Who’s there?!” a voice called from the dark, and his face ran hot. He pulled a cowl over his horns and darted low. He threw his cloak over Nimbus, so he wouldn’t shine in the moonlight. His heart pounded in his ears. “We just want our dead,” the voice came. Young. Feminine. Accented, Dadzhvoy, as he had thought, but they were calling out in Zedarijuce.

*Go to them, *the bird said. *You aren’t their quarry. *A flicker in his heart echoed the sentiment. It agonized him, wheedling him from the safer, from the wiser, and for a moment, Mircea Vedova considered it.

“We have an archer,” the voice called. “You, there! At the south of the bowl. Zedari corpse-collector, I wager?!”

“Wrong,” Mircea replied, faster than was prudent. *But a good choice, *the bird said, even if hasty. His heart raced. “Wrong,” he said again, this time in Dadzhvoy, in his and their language. He looked down. He clenched a fist, now hopelessly bound to this course of action. Fuck it all. It had all been a mistake. Since when had Nimbus, the poor, brilliant thing, had the right of it, over him?

“What tribe?” came the reply, and far off came the sound of footfalls spilling sand down the ridge. “Wouldn’t be the first *imperial *to learn the mother tongue.”

Mircea’s clenched his teeth. Somehow, the horror of the comparison exceeded anything that he had let into his mind yet this night. Or was it all gone? The accent, the correct speech? “No tribe,” he replied. “Well, none you’d recall. But Dadzhvoy. I came to see for myself the might of the Holy Empire, marching its way into the sand. You and yours that did this,” he said, thinking madly over the larger contingent still working its way north. “It serves them fucking right.”

“Come closer,” came the voice. The tone of command was gone, but this was no suggestion. Mircea eyed the bird. A considerable sprint of sand was between him and the ridge behind, where he could hope to escape a bowshot. The bird was silent. It forsook him. Slim chance became slimmer. It made him furious to be pinned down like a rat by his own.

“Come over the ridge,” he countered. Internally, he seethed. He wanted to clamp his eyes shut, because they’d started to burn. He kept it down. “I’m alone.”

“My hunter marks two.”

The bird seemed to smile impassively. Its glassy eyes twinkled, as though genuinely curious to hear his reply. Slowly, he took his glance off of the bird. He shrugged, and, glibly, thought to say, “Two can be alone."】 good

Finally, the source of the voice crested atop the ridge. In the moonlight, he saw a pair of horns, though the rest was hard to resolve in silhouette. She started down from the far hill, but stopped, a few steps down, to shout something inaudible over her shoulder. A few more shapes crested, then silently proliferated down to the charnel field. Then she continued. Mircea Vedova remained at his station, near to the top of the hill. In the distance, he picked out a bow, not slackened, but lowered.

His heart quickened, realizing a moment faster than his mind that his last chance to flee would soon be gone. The arrow was still on the string. He hated the thought of one flying even inches from him. He hated it to his gut, so he stayed put and fiddled with his hands until the woman– girl, really, by her posture– came across the sand and stopped at the foot of the hill.

“Then your name, stranger,” the girl said. She had a burnt orange tone to her, as well as Mircea could tell in the dark. Her horns were simple, and not to full growth. She was younger than he was, though barely.

“Mircea,” he said. A pause came then, one he couldn’t justify, but he just couldn’t get his tongue to hit it right. “Vedova.”

“I don’t know any Vedovas,” she replied. “I was hoping we could help your case, Mr. Vedova—”

“Mircea,” he cut in, though the unease lingered long after her face went sympathetic and the pang of anger faded. “Or not at all.”

“And I don’t know you. But, eh, methinks a liar would have picked a name I was like to know. Kritamera of Vidurawar,” she said. The name had little meaning for him, except that the sound was faintly familiar, as it was like to be. It didn’t do for him to go noting anything resembling the comforts of home. Comfort was the danger, he thought, with a sidelong glance to the bird. At best, more Oskars.

*Which is hardly fair, *the bird said. He snorted. Kritamera gave him a look, half like surprise.

“Did I say something funny?” she started, but turned her look on Nimbus, finally realizing what it was under the cloak. Mircea sighed. He needed to get back. He didn’t need to spend time he didn’t have explaining his work, magnificent as it was in this case. Kritamera’s face turned to faint confusion, then awe. “It’s… all a machine, isn’t it? The bird.”

His lip curled, reflexively. “Yes, my design. I suppose it impresses you?”

“Impresses me?” Kritamera replied, leaning back, and set hands on her hips. “Well, I’ve not seen it’s like.” Then she pivoted, and Mircea found the new direction less than appealing from the moment she reopened her mouth. “You have no tribe. Are you alone, Mircea Vedova?”

He stuck his chin up. The words felt dead, even before he said them, but he turned a glance on Nimbus, and started, “Alone,” and infixed a huff through his nose. “I am never alone. Nimbus is constant, reliable.”

Kritamera started to nod, but countered, “I would like to show the design to my kin. My father is Uttares.” She stuck out her chin in turn. “You stand on his victory.”

Despair. Not at the invitation, despair blossomed. It blossomed at what ought not be called a victory. A moment of survival against an innumerate foe, celebrating the making of two score of corpses. It was cruel to call it a victory. The phrase ought be reserved for mockery.

Far worse, he was considering accepting. He felt it turning within him, he balked when he found himself agreeing when– There will be provisions. The conversations will be short, we shall return soon, and wealthier for it. Or else, if the Zedari come upon them...– Nimbus cut in. He let his gaze linger on the bird a long while.

“Tell your bowmen not to shoot me,” he said, and Kritamera turned, beckoning as she did. She seemed happy, and he found it unseemly.

You fear victory, *Nimbus said.

“Yes,” he said. Kritamera turned, and he dispelled her interest with a black look. *I am a testament to why one ought fear victory, *Mircea thought.

Then I’m not here, the bird said with a look. And you’re with S–

*He shut his eyes and caught up with Kritamera.

As promised, he was soon before Uttares, headman of the Viturawar. He introduced himself, long-windedly, as such, and ‘signatory to the Treaty at Trijawac’. Mircea flared his nostrils; hence the bloody affairs with the Zedari. There was a piece that the bird had been right about. As much as he had tried to mold himself into something efficient, he found he couldn’t leave, not without giving warning that their victory was hollow, that he’d seen more on their way.

So it was that he was there when Uttares, at the head of the tents, looked him with hunger in his eyes, glittering out from under one broken horn. “The machine, is it fit for war?”

It was certainly true that the machine could be used to keep this hopeless crusade going, at least another turn. Something must have changed in his face, because both father and daughter now turned to him, pointedly.

“Forgive me,” Uttares said. “Inventor. I see the edge you’ve put on its wings, the plates over its mechanisms.”

“It can,” said Mircea. He gave Uttares a scrunched-up kind of look. “It is my protector. But merely a first draft, and not soon enough for this war you’ve already embarked on.”

Uttares turned aside. His face masked a flicker of frustration, but not well. He was big, well-muscled. Better muscled than any of the corpses. “What war has a Dadzhvo ever embarked on, blood of our predecessors? What war but the always-war?”

He bit back every incisive response he wanted to level, mocking their small-mindedness. He told himself he envied it, and walked his eyes over to his wondrous machine. In the language only they shared, he said, with the maw of despair widening in the hollow of his chest, I feel fucking wealthy. Like I said, nothing and less for me here. Well, about fucking time I put this incessant dream to rest.

*Dimly, he was aware that Uttares had started to speak again. He disregarded it, awaiting Nimbus, whose eyes flickered in a constant pattern. *But they’ll see. One day, *it blinked, in a scintillating blue. *You’ll help them see. *
*He stopped himself at the precipice, right before the messy bundle of it all fell out of him and he laid it all into the bird. When he looked to Uttares, the headman sighed. “But I suppose you must have your time to think over this commitment, Mr. Vedova.”

He did not correct it, for the moment.

Suddenly, recognition flowed through Uttares’ face, which was broad now that Mircea looked at it, a sparkling burnt umber. It was scarred, the nose done worse than his own. “You bear an Elvish name, Inventor,” he said, almost carelessly.

Mircea scoffed, almost incredulous. “Is it? On me?”

Uttares’ nostrils flared. Perhaps finally tired of the lack of decorum Mircea could not bring himself to amend. Kritamera stepped, ever so slightly, between them. Mircea watched the frustration ebb, only for a moment. He put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, and stepped forward. A bull of a man, looking down on him. He was taller than even Oskar had been. “I do not doubt my daughter’s heart, in bringing you to this place,” he said. “You seem hungry, misbegotten. You are young, and you are frightened.”

Mircea’s jaw set, bearing together at the nerve of the headman. He mirrored the gesture, stepping closer. It took nerve he didn’t have, but he put his chin out. His cranium felt like it was in a vise.

“I find myself worried for my kin, though,” Uttares said. “You will say nothing of your people, blood of our predecessors. You speak as though half Zedari, or more.”

“So am I a spy?!” Mircea said, lurching towards Nimbus, and seizing the cloak. Reflexively, he covered his creation, deeming Uttares momentarily unfit to even examine it. His molars bit cheek. “Am I a fucking mole, in your small-minded assessment? That I would be so hesitant, to shackle myself to the world’s longest and most pathetic attempt to avoid tragedy by running headlong through nightmare after nightmare after nightmare? Well I would! I would be so fucking hesitant,” he said.

Uttares started to speak.

“Shut up,” he said, and stumbled over a few repetitions, jerky and distended. “Well, I would be *so *fucking hesitant that I’ve stopped thinking about driving my head into the nearest barricade. The ignorance—” he gnashed his teeth, his tail coming, dartingly, to life— “No. I have a better purpose than your industry of self-destruction. But for your benefit, yes. While you scream headlong into death, bringing countless others to their righteous demise, as all of our blood have ever been able to righteously do is die,”

Mircea laughed, sudden and unmitigated, like a spray of sparks. Uttares clapped a hand on his shoulder and jostled him, but he grasped onto the hand and balked, haltingly. Uttares pressed his lips. “I’ll forget your accusations,” he said, in a voice that felt like danger.

“While you do this,” he said, a little shakily, rage coming to his salvation, giving force to his words, “I will solve death. Unmake this injustice. I will right this wrong. That is my work, and I will not redirect it.”

Uttares’ lip broke from its hard line, his face drifting somewhere towards purple. Kritamera stepped between them. Suddenly, Mircea was aware again of the hand on his shoulder. It seized him with terror, and he struggled to pull away. Kritamera put a hand on his other arm. He couldn’t move if he couldn’t pull away. He thought he might be able to, but with Uttares that came into question. Especially without Nimbus. He felt himself blanche.

Kritamera came about, and looked at him. It wasn’t a hard look. “Let’s go out to the feast,” she said, and glanced at her father.

“Return to me when you’ve thought my proposition over,” Uttares said. “Feast well to my victory. I will not apologize for saving my own.”

Ahead of all of the tents, a number of tables were set out. The tribe was decently sizeable. Evidently few had been lost in the fighting. That matched what he knew, from the corpses piled in the field. So it had been a victory. He sat, with Kritamera at his side. Some hunk of a fighter was to his left, though he’d been firm. Nimbus was between them.

His stomach had felt positively tiny. It made it hard for him to eat, but the flavor was faintly nostalgic. This, too, brought on nausea, but interpreted through the haze of hunger, which had been constant since he’d returned to the desert, he piled on food. Briefly, he caught a look of amusement on Kritamera’s face, one he warded off with a dim look.

Mircea spent much of that dinner in silence. When he thought of his conversation with Uttares, he fumed. He couldn’t imagine going back to him now. The nerve of asking him to come crawling back, when Nimbus was merely the first step in the road. Fixation on the first step. Was it so endemic to all of them? Everyone who hadn’t been forced to see, the way he had.

The bird’s head swiveled over. Its eyes buzzed. Meanwhile, Mircea scanned the crowd. Many of them had the look of warriors, of which many were wounded, likely from the day before. He wondered if any of them would survive the larger contingent. Just as like, this place would be empty by the next evening. A few of them might survive, they might escape, if they were protected by others.

So he couldn’t see the victory Uttares saw. It would be ruined soon after the dawn, under the high suns. There were wounds, yes, cuts, bruises, gashes wrapped in plaster, but what appalled him more were the few who lacked limbs, or eyes, or for whom they were broken beyond repair. The bird caught his eye, with a head tipped. It said *he could repair them, show them to leave. He could replace their limbs, with the craft that he had meant for the dead. They could be whole, and they could survive. *

*But Mircea Vedova could not tie himself to their fate. He leered at the bird and answered it with nothing more than a look. It knew as well as him what the limits of his presence here were, and as parts of the table trickled away to fill the spaces between the feast and the camp plan, and the air filled with song and the flat sand with dance, familiar songs, he looked away again.

One of the Dadzhvoy came past him and slid a bowl of something hot and spiced, more of what he had been eating prior. Mircea Vedova would only in retrospect recognize the archer from the corpse-field, and only with strain, and with doubt. Something inside Mircea broke at the gesture, and he stared at the man with plain malignance until he left him to eat in peace. At that point, few, including Kritamera, remained by the tables, by the edge of camp.

She was trying to explain something to him, that she understood he might not want to see the man who drew a bow on him. She tried to tell him the man’s name. It didn’t stick in his memory. Kritamera continued this, this attempt at a conversation. Nimbus pled with him, too. Pled with him to act on his pity, and to offer more than a warning. *Uttares would not heed him. *He knew that. He turned, abrupt, away from Kritamera.

In their own secret language, a language of thought, free of the limitations of sound and form, vision and hearing, Mircea told Nimbus that those who would listen, would listen. They would have their chance to demonstrate or defy their helplessness, their myopic fixation with running themselves into the ground. He could not help them. He didn’t have the time, not without binding himself to their fate, too. It was too much of a risk. A warning would have to be enough. He—

Kritamera leaned in front of his deadened gaze, her face written over with frustration. Her eyebrow pitched like she had been mid-question. She had been. She jerked a finger towards the circle of dancers, to the singers, to the rest of the camp. Briefly, Kritamera possessed a fiery temper. A brow fell, and she asked again. “Come, dance with me,” she said. Her face, in turn, suggested she was still doing her best to be hospitable, a misplaced concern that Mircea still struggled to tolerate.

For a moment, he was stupefied, struck from his argument with Nimbus by the gesture. It was a ridiculous suggestion, he determined quickly. But it didn’t matter. She put a hand on his, and Mircea Vedova was gone.

He didn’t recall coming to a stand. He only recalled jerking his hand back and stumbling, suddenly feeling his weight over his feet. He tripped over his words. “I’ve decided, I’ve made my decision.” he said, startingly. “I have words still with your father. Certainly no thanks to you.”

His footing was still uneasy when he was back under the headman’s pavilion. Eating, pausing, even a moment, had granted him a momentary clarity, and for only a moment, the grandeur of the tent was plain around Mircea Vedova. He forbade it from amazing him, but he could read, as plain as words, the account of countless victories. Uttares’ horns were banded, several times, in several precious metals. Silver, gold. Adamantine stuck out, green and heavy. This perplexed Mircea, where had he won it?

He was looking past Mircea, at his camp. Even when Mircea sat, Uttares did not initially dignify him with his attention. One of his bodyguards, a big man, held Nimbus outside. He nearly hadn’t entered, but he found himself unable to leave. He had to be heard first, at least for his absolution. He could see it clear as day, as he waited for Uttares to turn. He would hear his words and stir to glory. He would confirm Mircea’s suspicions and, simultaneously, justify his exit. He would run himself and the camp into the ground, and Mircea would pick through the corpse-field. This he knew.

“Mircea Vedova,” said Uttares. “That you have returned to me tells me you have seen sense. That you have eaten and sat as a guest at my camp tells me you have returned to your faculties, after earlier. As such, let us speak of how your machines may aid my kin. I invite you to speak freely.”

*Ha! *Mircea thought, only realizing moments late he had laughed aloud. He bit his cheek, but disdain was plainly displayed on his face nonetheless. If Mircea Vedova had been planning to come to an arrangement, to strike up ties here, with the headman of Vidurawar, he might have had to compose himself. But Mircea Vedova was not. He shivered, then said, rushingly, “Speak freely? In my experience, that is never an invitation to negotiate. But join you, die by your side? A… waste. I think not. There is no worthy death, headman, surely you must have realized that by now. If you do not believe I can bring you a future, a better future…” he trailed, then shook his head. All the while, Uttares looked on with a new expression. A changed expression.

Uttares gave him a look of pity. Anger boiled through Mircea’s body.

It mounted, layering a seizing quiver onto Mircea’s voice, but it didn’t break the surface when he continued, “Leave this place. Go north, past Ojo Valacsi.” He was balanced on a knife’s edge, above the horror of his own words. He let out a humorless laugh. He let it strengthen him, even as Uttares’ look shifted grim and hard.

Mirthlessly, the headman extended a hand.

“No,” Mircea barked, with a fervor which surprised him. But he wouldn’t Uttares see the gesture shake him. He put his chin out, willing his tail still, though it continued to threaten to flick.

“Speak sense, boy,” Uttares said, and Mircea felt his jaw lock. In Uttares’ face, epiphany built. “Why go north? Are you a spy, after all?”

“Because,” Mircea spat, gnashing his teeth. “You think yourself mighty, powerful? That was the reserve force you killed. The rest, the van, the mages? They’re still coming!” He rolled every word into a bullet, and they seized him with an airy and inane laughter he tried to keep boxed in his chest. “So go on, take your men to glory! But I’ll have no part of it,” he said. “Or leave.”

His outburst was met with silence from Uttares. He had stumped the titan, this mountainous lump of a man. Uttares hunched over, pressing a fist close to his own chin. He said nothing. Mircea’s nostrils flared a few times in sequence, his irritation slowly draining. Uttares made a bitter face, one he turned on Mircea, for once returning a hint of dark mirth. “You think I don’t know more are coming? What use are you to me?” he said, with finality. “You can keep the succor of my hospitality. My men shall not harm you.”

Mircea’s mouth twisted into an ugly gash. “I don’t care,” he said. Something within him cracked, and he missed Nimbus sorely.

Not even Kritamera came along to see him beyond the perimeter of camp. Nimbus turned towards him with a forlorn look. He returned it, then rolled his eyes, with a forced scoff. Silently, they two returned to the ruin, where he slept without dreams in a shelter beneath the ground, surrounded by his equipment, as hot as the sand at midday. When he rose again, fitfully, through the next few days, his mouth was dry, and exhaustion clung onto his bones. Uninvited yet come was a deep, raking sorrow. One which, rising from his pile, he answered with resolve.

Not resolve. Something cheaper. Something which rusted, or burnished, at least. He had no doubt that Uttares had made his stand. The caravan, the Vidurawar, were gone. When he emerged from his refuge, the sky was thick, like sourceless smoke. It didn’t bleed; he’d slept past the sunset. It was cold in his bailey without walls. He moved slickly down the redoubts, Nimbus in silent tow. The bird had no words of reassurance for him, nor words of condemnation. Not even the frothing black energy which sometimes possessed him had the power to convince him there was anything he could have done to stop the Vidurawar, and Uttares at their head, from going to their deaths.

Sand whisped by his feet as he walked. He took off his glasses, attenuated to magic, rather than focused for sight, and picked out a plume of smoke, mere inches from where he had predicted. Farther north than he had expected. No matter, he said in his heart. He had stipulated no conditions on his work, on the real way he had set out to help the Vidurawar. To return to them that which was now lost to him. For though Uttares had been more a fool than he had dared fear was possible, he was certain Uttares would now agree.

For a second, Mircea allowed his face to slacken. He looked to Nimbus, daring its mocking commentary. “What? Out of barbs about seeking another corpse pile? About my people’s marvelous ability to live just long enough to die in the dirt another day?” He rolled his eyes, sweeping a gesture and a look out into the desert. “Of course you are. Because I was right all along. But, Nimbus, that will not always be the way. One of them will have another chance, a chance to learn a better way. When it is proven…”

Nimbus’s head swiveled. There was a slight clatter– perhaps sand had infiltrated between its plates. Both eyes blinked to full intensity, saying, I don’t know. I’m just a metal bird.

*Mircea sneered, rushing a few paces ahead of his automaton. “Of course. When I have proven the means, never again will they suffer in this way. Not from grief, not from the agony of mutilation, nor from the Holy Empire,” he said, spitting the last few syllables. He turned about to the bird, levelling a well-aimed foot into a prominence of sand, which ran down the face of the dunes. “But of course. I shouldn’t have expected understanding, even from you. You’re just…” he said, holding onto the words with his teeth, “a fucking metal bird.”

Nimbus’s head swiveled the other way, and Mircea’s heart skipped. Suddenly, he felt cold, and dreadfully alone.

Hoarsely, he said, “I’m sorry,” and then he added, “Nimbus. Don’t…” he said. He paused, waiting for the bird to catch up, then squeezed his eyes shut to vanish the landscape around him. He started to amble forward again. “Don’t, Nimbus,” he said, at a whisper. The bird’s head swiveled the other way. There was nothing in its glittering eyes.

It was not long before the horizon vanished beneath smoke and drifting sand. Huge clumps of it choked the air, rising slowly and ever higher, even in the dead air. The thicker the sky grew, the less it felt like night, but rather like nothing, neither day nor night. Just a clogged and backlit sky. Following the drifts of sand chasing to the ground, he began to pick out once again the signs of battle. A far larger host had swept through and met the Vidurawar. He made himself ignorant of the Zedari losses, and set to inspecting the corpses of the Dadzhvoy. None among the Zedari were deserving of his gift, he was certain.

For a time, he hoped to come upon the corpse of one of the large warriors who had sat alongside him at the feast. He once suspected he had, but the corpse was far too badly burned and cut to identify. The next few were much the same, but from where he sat aside one of the fighters, he spotted a small knoll, upon which a number of felled imperial soldiers surrounded a great motionless form. Uttares, was his first thought, and his approach merely confirmed it. Beyond the knoll was another, larger, corpse field. The sight left a terrible hollow in his throat.

Some of the strongest among them, those he recognized from the caravan, had died alongside carts, laden with tents and containers for provisions. Not far from Uttares was the pavilion, loaded for carriage. Six soldiers lay dead around it, though its wheel had been hacked off. Mircea came to a stand, a sudden and horrible nausea rising in his throat. Cart tracks crisscrossed the ground, all leading to the north. He traced them in his mind’s eye, leading from the south, from where he had seen the caravan. He looked again at the corpses, now no longer selecting for the strongest or the most intact. He saw faces whose names he had not committed to memory. Not warriors, all, but a cross-section of the caravan. The Vidurawar here had tried to flee.

*Uttares had listened. *Mircea lowered his head and looked down at the headman, now a ruin of gashes on the ground. He squeezed his fist and was helpless to prevent a strained sob from escaping his throat.

“Fucking… You!” came a startled cry. Half-remembered, Kritamera. Mircea looked towards the sound of a great spilling of sand down the side of the knoll, where the girl with burnt orange skin rushed to the top, a shapeless rage burning out from her eyes. “After speaking to you,” she huffed, words spilling out in a jumbled rush, “My father, he—” she repeated* he* several times— “He lost himself, he had us move north. They caught us. I don’t know if anyone escaped,” she said, a horrible scream edging into her voice.

*“Just me,” she repeated, “Just me. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me at the start? I could have convinced him,” she said, her words turning to an agonized lowing. Her eyes burned red. She was shaking with fear and Mircea, for once, could not despise her for it. “You sat at his table the whole evening, and only at the end did you tell him!”

Mircea looked down again. His mind raced, howled to defend itself, and then he shook his head, looking out at the desert beneath him. The butchery which littered it. “No. He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. He was always going to fight them, even when it was hopeless. He should have run, used the desert. But he couldn’t have believed me, not before I’d explained myself.”

Kritamera let out a harrowed laugh, taking another dogged step up the hill. “I could have convinced him,” she repeated, though without much force of belief. Her eyes unfocused, and a sob shook through her like a storm.

Mircea shook his head. “No,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been enough time. He already knew—” he stuttered— “He already knew. He must have been convinced, in the end, or by something else. But, Kritamera,” he finished, looking back to her. His face felt heavy, even as he tried to maintain a stony expression.

She didn’t look back, but her nose slowly drew up into a snarl. “What could you possibly have to tell me?”

Mircea Vedova’s lip curled. “If you have to ask that, it means you hadn’t been listening,” he said, and shook his head. “I experienced a grief like this once. I saw it all. And the horror that did it spared me like it was nothing.” He dropped his head down to Uttares, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Somewhere in him, anger came to a simmer. “The greatest injustice I shall ever endure…” he began, “...is that none but I shall ever* need *to suffer this fate again.”

Kritamera’s grimace finally broke. It collapsed, replaced which a short, bemused laugh, before she said, “What?”

“I said I would solve death,” he said, defying the theatrics of his statement with a mere shrug. “Understand this, Kritamera. The miracles of the divine are not beyond reach, just… veiled in showmanship and cruel chance. The deception of worthiness, the fortune of those few who have returned ‘by the grace of the Divine!’—” he said, seized by a sudden excitement— “I will take his body from this place. I will return him to being, he will confirm my methodology. And—” he stuttered, *and, and, and,— *“And then the rest. All of us.”

Mircea Vedova licked his lips. His face felt twitchy, cycling from expression to expression, as he scrutinized Kritamera’s face. Shock. Shock dawned into horror. No, this was all going wrong. “What you are feeling, Kritamera, I know it,” he said. He scoffed, though the scorn was directed elsewhere. “I’ve carried it. Well, it’s carried me. That’s not a life, just some fucking shitfest to slog through, and you are a fool if you believe there is strength in taking on undue suffering. But you don’t have to subject yourself to this. Please, I can fix this all. I can bring him back, and then, the rest of them. Into bodies which don’t die, don’t hurt, don’t suffer as I have. As you might otherwise.”

Kritamera stared, aghast. “What are you going to do to him?”

Mircea spoke without thinking. “Make him right again,” he said. Kritamera’s expression resolved. A hard expression, grim and certain.

“I don’t believe you,” she finished.

Mircea shut his eyes. The moment he had seen Uttares, he had expected this. Feared the man would be unyielding, then turned to relying on it. Like brittle iron, he’d seen the type before. Loved the type before. He knew how it would end before it did. Maybe he had hoped against himself, but in the pavilion, all he could think of was the quality of the flesh, the life force, the being. He would suit the role, first to receive his salvation. Kritamera did not deserve this loss, dually at the hands of Zedari and her father’s inflexibility. Mircea pressed his eyes shut. But she wouldn’t like this part.

Kritamera took a step.

Mircea pulled his crossbow and shouted, “Don’t come any closer!” He trained the crossbow on her center of mass, as best he could tell. He trembled, even as the trained weapon gave him certainty. Her face turned to amazement, then its horror redoubled. It *did *pain him to hurt her, in this way. Her pain was no stranger to him, nor the fear she must feel at that moment. “You fear what it would mean for my claim to be true,” he said, an agonized pleading bleeding through his face, against his will. “Let me prove it to you.”

She stopped. A purplish hatred broke through the horror in her expression. Her cheeks filled in the same livid color, she said, “It wasn’t enough to doom us all, was it? For my father to die? Now you have to take him from me a second time, while his corpse is still warm?!”

Irritation finally won out. Mircea narrowed his eyes. “You’re delirious, your grief has taken hold of your faculties. You’re not thinking clearly. I’m not going to take him, I’m—” he stuttered— “I’m going to bring him back. So whatever you’re going to say, save it. Let me prove it, first, let that be atonement enough,” he said, and dug his nails into his palm.

“Delirious?!” Kritamera echoed, then went for a step.

“No closer!” Mircea barked again, jerking with the crossbow. He tossed his head to Nimbus, which approached Uttares’ body and gathered it up in its wings. When it had secured the body, it tottered back slightly.

Mircea Vedova watched Kritamera lose her nerve. She rushed him, past him, and Mircea hesitated. He was utterly aware that the second he loosed the bolt he lost power, either Kritamera was injured, or dead, or she had no cause to fear him. He brandished the thing furiously, but when she sped past him, going for the corpse, he signalled again, and Nimbus lifted up into the air with the body in hand. Mircea once again brought the crossbow between them. “Leave!”

When Nimbus had lifted the body far out of reach, Kritamera was left dumbstruck. For a long time there was nothing written on her face except for an ever-changing expression, told in little twitches. She heaved; something had given out.

“Leave,” Mircea said. She looked at him, a baleful and sidelong glare. He dared not flinch. He’d known they would be hard to convince, a symptom of a culture of death and hopelessness, but something within him died with it. The part of him that had hoped he could get through to Kritamera, to return her father with her blessing.

After ages of that single withering look, she withdrew. Mircea waited until he could no longer hear her footfalls on the sand to leave.

Two days had been, Mircea supposed, a hasty estimate. The better part of two weeks ensued, in the inescapable heat of that ruin’s undercroft, as he labored over the body of Uttares. Uttares had died whole but horribly gashed, and though there had been no need to manufacture a limb to replace a ruined stump, as he had feared when he first took sight of the wreck, he had washed and sewn each wound, and scaffolded over those which could not be closed with metal plates. The result was a gruesome sight, especially as embalming would have rendered the organs beyond the point of revivification.

In the most laborious phase of his pursuit, near to the beginning, Mircea Vedova had had to transfer volumes of his blood, transformed into a quickening serum by the first proof of his art, into the body. This, of all of the stages he had to swiftly bring the body of Uttares through, was the most proven. In the dismallest cellars of the undercroft, Mircea had a small midden of miscellanea– scraps of bodies, small desert creatures, a hand– which he had kept from decay by the application of this serum. The fruits of a summer spent tirelessly perfecting the process could be seen in a hand of a Zedari duelist, scarred over– wounded and healed after the point of death.

Yes, Uttares’ body had been incorruptible by decay or time for a week when Mircea, sweating through his undershirt by the candlelight and night-time heat of the cellar, could no longer avoid the final step. All else in the process had been proven, well over. A thin cut he had made in the soft flesh by the throat had closed, far faster than a wound ought to. The body hadn’t even twitched. The eyes responded to light, they moved– though vacantly– for a period of four hours by night, and this pattern matched his own.

Should this step– his final step– fail, or prove to be impossible, the effort would be vain. This was what Mircea had worried over for long hours. As he grew unable to ignore it, Mircea despised his own indecision. He hated his trepidation, not merely for himself, but for Kritamera. What gift could this be said to be? The return of the body of her father, not ressurrected and merely revived? He ground his pride to dust; Lo, the corpse could bleed and close wounds! A triumph it had been, and certainly a further step to maintain a full body without rot. But the process would be nothing without drawing a tether to Uttares’ vital essence and calling him back.

Mircea quit his chambers for the surface, cradled by the stones of his great, absent fortification. The night air chilled him, slicing through both the sweat-drenched shirt and his whirling nerves. He scowled at the depth of his indecision, he tried to forbid it from himself, and finally merely searched the rocks for Nimbus. He felt as though he had gone a week without seeing a hint of the bird, and yet, the moment he looked, the bird was there, puttering softly beside him.

He gave the bird what felt like a particularly stern look, but where the sand had burnished his plates, he could– for a moment before recoiling– make out his own face. Puffy eyes and his mouth a short bow of pain, underneath a dark fringe of hair. Mircea Vedova did not think of Kritamera, he agonized himself with the fact that he did not. The issue of where she could have gone, when bidden to leave, only just punctured that refusal. Instead, he took clumps of hair and pushed them up to his forehead, and leaned his head against Nimbus.

The sun was starting to rise. It was a line of red, searing and treacherous in the east. Two ruddy contusions in the black run above cast the desert in brilliant orange, and Mircea Vedova turned to his bird in proper. “I’m going to do it,” he said, and kicked up from the ground. The bird said nothing, and silently, Mircea Vedova returned beneath the ruin. The weight of anticipation seemed like a just-withheld flood, liable to crumple his ribcage and crush his heart within.

His instruments would be the needle and the scalpel, the first dually-purposed, to bring his blood out, and to feed the serum into the corpse. The second was cruder, simpler. It would impress the language which would convey Uttares’ vital essence, by blood and his alchemy, and seal it back within its body. The language was flawless, though the method was– by necessity– untested. The animals he had revived had come to life when instilled with the blood alone, low enough as beasts and far enough from his understanding that their revivified behavior could not be distinguished from the normal. But Uttares slumbered. It would work.

Neither could he have picked an incomplete body, or one he did not wish to see saved. When risen, a consequence of his formulation, it would be bound to him. Given an incomplete body, this life would be fragile and agonizing. Given an unworthy subject, he would always seek to cast the newly-risen out on its own. For all the cruelty which Kritamera perceived in him, for the doubt the Vidurawar had borne, Mircea Vedova would not abandon his creation. Thus Mircea Vedova would only create that which he would not abandon. He bade the shaking of his hand to stop.

Now merely trembling, he surrounded the body in his determined language, etching painstakingly and with even spacing. The scalpel-point had been devised to leave wounds the body would not swiftly seal, though if he was slow, he would still have to start anew. In the end, he split each etched form open twice, drawing a sluice for the blood that oozed from each to the next. A machine at the head of the table cycled in blood and produced the basal stage of his serum, inert but nearly prepared.

Mircea was never quite ready for the pain. A torn-off piece of leather sat between his teeth when he sunk the trochar into a vein, and the machine came to life. The process would require a considerable sacrifice, one Mircea could only provide himself. When enough of the serum had been prepared, he stopped the conversion, though it continued to draw out his blood. He nearly leapt when the candle burned out; merely at the end of its wick, though he hadn’t noticed it grow dim.

As he felt his heart speed his blood racing through his arm and out the trochar, he jostled a switch into position. It filled out a sigil; the air accepted his sacrifice, turning it from matter to steam. The serum in the machine was enriched, and began to pump into Uttares, a bluish substance, which filled out the carved channels in his body. His heart beat again, continually cycling blood through the trochar, through the second valve, through the sigil, and a simmering sound as whatever essential force governed such things accepted, and accepted again. At last, the serum brimmed from each of the etchings.

At that moment, Mircea Vedova felt an agony beyond any pain he had ever experienced. Atop the table, an imperceptible change swept over the body, and it was heralded by a burning pull in his arm, the price exceeding that which the trochar had just drawn out, and chasing up his veins. The feeling of it seized him, and panting, he pulled out the trochar. It left him on the floor, a trickle down his arm, and a sob racked through him.

And then Uttares moved. Mircea had not seen his eyes open again, for once driven by some will beyond Mircea’s own. A convulsive force agitated his limbs. They splayed like a spider’s legs curling after the moment of death, but in reverse, slowly settling by his side. Then he came to his feet. In a roaring instant, the hulk of flesh was upon Mircea, driven either by sheer inhumanity or a rage so thick and so dense no humanity could be picked out from within it. A thick hand chased for him, but by some dumb luck, the cart with the alchemical machine on it was between them, and the body stumbled. Mircea shot to his feet and fled the undercroft.

Night had come again when he surfaced. Uttares emerged within moments, and faster than any hope to evade, was upon him again. Mircea scrabbled for his crossbow, finding it loaded, but its shape difficult to get hands around, and the thing that was Uttares pressed down, its eyes filmy, yellowed, and malign. Mircea curled his fingers around the grip. Uttares clamped a hand on his shoulder, he shimmied, but was caught fast. The ground left him, first his back– his back *had *been to the ground, then his feet. He kicked, grasped aloft in midair.

The other hand grasped his, crushing his knuckles over the crossbow-grip, until his finger bent away from the trigger. His heart pounded, he squeezed his eyes in hopes the thing would come to some sense, but it would not.

Nimbus, his saving grace, appeared. The full extent of his wing struck Uttares sidelong, and the thing huffed, briefly doubled over. Mircea was brought along, dragged across the ground as it recovered, but swiftly, it grasped Mircea back up, and slammed his back into the ground. The crossbow nearly left his hand. His fingers protested when he tried to better his grip, and the thing was still over him. A revivified heat coming off of it, through its grasp, it closed one hand around his throat.

Mircea did not feel his breathing constricted, though it grew very difficult. Rather, he felt a terrible pressure in his head and his jaw, one which did not abate, even as his eyes bulged. Nimbus’s wings clattered again and again into Uttares’ back, but the serum, Mircea realized, over the pounding in his head, his success, would damn him. Nimbus could not disable him, not permanently. He tried again to fix his grip on the crossbow, but his fingers were growing difficult to command.

A thick haze built, his sight grew dark. Uttares’ full weight was now upon him, pressing down onto the little bones of his head. His heart fluttered madly, straining against the oncoming dark. If he could merely bring his hand up, level his shot…

It wasn’t a shot he could see. He could scarcely feel the trigger, nor its pressure, even with his finger laid across it.

He couldn’t move. It was like there was something on his arm. Sheer terror pumped through his head, his hand twitched, he nearly opened it, just to feel it, but that would have lost him the crossbow.

He couldn’t die.

No, Uttares couldn’t die. His body could heave, as Nimbus swatted uselessly at it. Could his protector not save him?

He would need to unmake Uttares. That was a shame, because he wouldn’t be able to do that now. Anger seized him, but could not bring him to overpower the hulking thing atop him. It held him on the edge of consciousness. So he could bear full witness to one more fucking disaster.

One more shitty twist in a cheap fucking opera.

Every opera Mircea Vedova had ever seen had been expensive. He’d still hated them, because it had been S–

Not with that fucking name in his mind.

He perceived he was shaking. He heard Nimbus’s plates slide across each other, its actuators hiss. He heard footfalls.

“Father?!”

The pressure released. Mircea’s hand acquiesced, it came up. He squeezed. He didn’t feel the trigger jump. He saw the bolt go through Uttares’ head and Uttares toppled and wasn’t a thing anymore.

Between oncoming sleep and suffocating wakefulness, Kritamera– it had to be Kritamera– came and took the body. Perhaps she had tried to kill him. Perhaps Nimbus had saved him. He awoke, dry-mouthed, surrounded by ruins, his ruin. He was rail-thin. He was coated in sweat, blood, and sand. Long before he could move again, when first his mind came into being again, he sobbed.

The Most Peculiar Demise of Samuel Langbroek

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:08:47 -0500

*As with my later work with the Style Matching project, this piece is intended to replicate something of a Lovecraftian feel. It’s something of an early foray into unsettling fiction.

The whole of the Royal Admiralty Hotel had been booked for Mr. John Varley Fitzroy’s Conservatory. This distally-flung city felt the strain, far into the provincial periphery and long into the autumn of the year. It quickly became the talk of the staff that never before in a single phase of bookings had the middens grown so heaping with the detritus of highest art, nor since had the faucets in the veranda suite on the fifth floor worked. Yet the particulars of the hospitality of the Fitzroy Conservatory are not what need be reported. Rather, it is the most peculiar demise of Mr. Samuel Langbroek, a critic come to the hotel for the fete later that month, one which continues to stymie all attempts at clarity, if only for one miniscule detail.

The critic Langbroek had arrived in weeks prior, with the intention of bringing legitimacy to Mr. Fitzroy’s weekly galleries leading up to the autumnal fete. In the testimony of the Royal Admiralty staff, in particular the words of one bellhop, his arrival had come in the middle of the night. He was carrying two heavy duffels, one of which he tore back from the bellboy when he in his utmost incompetence attempted to fit both on a pushcart. From there, quite altogether ruffled, Mr. Langbroek huffed and carried the second duffel himself, waiting half-turned by the stair for the boy to follow him with the pushcart to the luggage pulley. When they made the little cupboard where the crane was, Mr. Langbroek stopped, and in a reversal of his earlier attitude, faced the porter and inquired, in a steeped yet nearly educated-out accent, “Would you like to see what Mr. Fitzroy asked I bring?”

Needless to elaborate, the bellhop agreed warmly, as was the custom at the Royal Admiralty.

Mr. Langbroek without further preface unhitched the top of the duffel he himself had carried, withdrawing a number of banded sleeves. One, with penultimate care, he unrolled, and nearly slapped the boy silly when his look of runny curiosity did not deepen into recognition. He indicated, reasserting his belligerent carry, a canvas bearing an oil painting, of unmistakably skilled technique, but with no immediate recognition that could be inspired in the bellhop. Instead, Mr. Langbroek made a chalky, bitter laugh, and said, “So it is true that the youth of today have lost their appreciation for fine art and the old masters. This malady, young porter, was diagnosed to me by Mr. Varley Fitzroy, who arranged for me to port a number of the pieces from the great old museums, to discern whether his students would truly recognize their value when placed in stark contrast with the dowdy work his galleries otherwise display. This, my boy, is a peerless secret you must keep. The tier of journeyman who people these shows are mean and base in art, and will undoubtedly scry any advantage they espy to make their attempts at swaying the patron; you must preserve my confidence.”

Then, willed by his own belligerence, Mr. Langbroek hitched the other duffel to the porter crane, and with a slap on the back, sent the bellhop to hoist it to the fifth floor. He himself fastened the canvases back into their sleeves and ported the luggage to his room, where he retired for the evening.

The next occasion on which the bellhop saw Mr. Langbroek was a weekend gala on the ninth floor of the Royal Admiralty, one of the esteemed evenings on which Mr. Varley Fitzroy called up the porter staff to assemble a gallery of contemporary art extracted from his private collection and the works of his Conservatory. The occasion called to mind Mr. Langbroek’s words by the porter crane, and indeed, the bellhop spied several of the pieces Mr. Langbroek had fussed over while composing the gallery. Their attributions had been struck, signatures carefully hidden by ornamental prominences on the frame, and counterfeit attributions to figuratively nameless artists, with names which called to mind long toiling hours between shifts at the manufactory. The art of the remarkable yet unheroic, footnotes of their era.

Of course, the bellhop knew nothing of such things. Rather, he in the spans between portings dreamt himself an artist in a seaside town, further flung from the Royal Admiralty, among the clink-clinking of plates and the stilted chatter and surfeit of decadence. The lazy cloying of the daydream left him as his task pivoted to that of a doorman, but he carefully kept Mr. Langbroek in his eye, fitfully tailing the critic as he fretted over the fruits of the modern age. He traced a forefinger along the brassy ostentation of a frame, worried his thumb on the other hand and felt the layering of the oil. In Mr. Langbroek’s eye, he watched the pretention of each work stripped away, laid bare, and violated for hint of artistic value. He helmed a posse of critics-hopeful who, following, worried their thumbs as though they could taste the flecks of paint strewn off by a careless stroke of a master in the resin of their saliva, but for the varnish.

Each time, Mr. Langbroek would smack his lips, and his apostles would follow suit, echoing his decrees of amateur or outmoded, in spans apart from the vaunted techniques of old. Such was his supernal clout that his following would wait, agog, for his decree. When he reached one of the disguised museum works, the bellhop detected in him a canny sneer, as he stopped, gesticulated like a hierophant, and asked his flock what they thought. After a moment of milling silence, one brave soul came forward, licked a thumb, and extended his arm– only for Mr. Langbroek to strike it red, condemning the hapless application of his divining practice. The bellhop would have terribly liked to continue his observation, but for the arrival of a pair of porters at the door, pushing a framed gallery piece on a wheeled cart.

The bellhop, though he had scrutinized the critic Langbroek’s specifications for the gallery showing the morning prior and would have otherwise suspected no further pieces to come through the door from the porter crane, reached for the sheet slung over the piece, because the instinct engendered by his repetitive task had come to full swell, burying what he thought was a reasonable confusion.

He stopped, a reaction which he would only later recount with a sense of peculiarity. A third figure had inserted himself in front of the sheeted frame, a person shorter than the bellhop was himself, and wreathed in a big red robe and cowl. Strangest of all was that he hadn’t noticed the person– who seemed to be a young boy– until the moment he had gone to remove the sheet. The boy did not chide him.

Instead, the boy lifted his chin, pristine except for a lichtenberg mark struck across his lower face. The bellhop struggled to meet his eyes, but perceived that one was lifeless and instead in fact a cut stone, white and yawning. The other was a vitreous amber, but for a trick of the light which called to mind that of a cat or a serpent. The bellhop did not trouble himself with further scrutiny, and instead remained agog, arm outstretched, until the boy spoke, “Please don’t, it isn’t time yet,” and gave him a peculiar smile, at which point the bellhop gladly stepped back.

The other porters were far more imposing figures, both towering and with a musculature the bellhop had seldom seen in his life. When his eyes reached their heads, which were cowled as well, he regretted looking. Where he had expected to see the weathered and heavy-set jowls of the sturdy older figures who had otherwise worn such silhouettes in his experience, from within the cowl came a terrible, squirming, probing mass of appendages. They were purpureal in color, and burnished and muscular like sea serpents’ tails, but their lengths were suckered and gripped upon themselves as they seethed. The bellhop felt nausea churn in his gut, and before he broke his look, a shine glinting from further up in the cowl told him that his observation had been noticed. Nothing further came of the encounter as both porters proceeded with the gallery piece.

The following is well-attested by the onlookers, the bellhop’s so-called critics-hopeful and apostles of Mr. Langbroek. Though the bellhop had been only dimly aware of this fact, among this gathering was the esteemed Mr. Varley Fitzroy, and of note if only for his testimony, one Mr. Hanraets. The stranger– the bellhop’s ‘boy’– approached the assembly, only noticed by the body, so engrossed in the choleric gesticulations and spoutings of Mr. Langbroek, as he approached, directing his porters by means of some inaudible and invisible communication or not at all to bring the sheeted frame to pass in front of the piece Mr. Langbroek was discussing, in terms which verged on the vainglorious.

For a time, Mr. Langbroek valorously stymied his approach with sheer disregard, but as the stranger continued to eke closer to the center-space previously occupied alone by the critic and his painting, and as his porters continued to placidly wheel their charge to eclipse the gallery piece, such a susurration of unease emerged in the crowd that Mr. Langbroek was forced to give pause and respond. As one porter drew near, evident in Mr. Hanraets’ testimony, Mr. Langbroek noticed the fervid massing of protrusions from under its cowl, and was struck to galled silence a moment longer, before he drew away.

Finally, as if he had been waiting for the stranger to give word, Mr. Langbroek’s face grew with a figment of purpura and he demanded, “What is the meaning of this? Which incompetent was it who allowed you in here, or otherwise left me unaware that your arrival would coincide with this gala?” He fixed Mr. Varley Fitzroy in a deep grimace, then impugned him, “Did you permit this? Do you wilfully invite your esteemed guests to be so embarrassed?”

At long last, if only to break the long-drawn sigh held by the assembly at large, the stranger spoke. According to the word of Mr. Hanraets, the content of the character of this stranger was of utmost concern to the assembled guests, as the picture of his porters even negating their ghastly countenances, a feature which most tried to put out of mind outright, had put them to a great deal of fright on account of their evident strength. He doubted very much that anyone in the room might stand up to them alone, and that was on the assumption that they were unarmed, which felt to him entirely unsafe considering the brusqueness of their entry, and their uncertain, and in fact quite otherworldly, origin. He was greatly relieved when the words that passed the stranger’s lips were in a quite ordinary and modern mode.

The stranger said, “That man had as much foreknowledge as you did that I would come. Nevertheless, I was made aware that this is a gallery viewing, here in this Royal Admiralty. Therefore, I have a piece I wish to submit, if you would permit this viewing to take place, Mr. Langbroek. Please, permit it.”

If he could ever hope to express such a simple fact to the hotel-goers before him, the stranger would have wished to express an earnest confusion. The whole affair had begun rotten, if partly for the bellicose character of Mr. Langbroek, an impression he had prised gently from the mind of the bellhop, but here he found he had to quit any expectation he had brought of a reasonable reception. The stranger watched in dawning curiosity as the critic Langbroek stirred, his face deepening in its bruisy color. He spoke like the snap of a whip, “So too has the gallantry of rogues past been lost in this day. You are no artist, I mark you for a common cutpurse, hoping to make hostages of Mr. Fitzroy’s Conservatory, with your entourage of ruffians. I will not be cowed by it, nor will Mr. Fitzroy, or his esteemed guests. And I take your so-claimed piece for what it is– I have caught you in your attempt to spirit one of Fitzroy’s from this very hotel, and I have sniffed out your plot, in your flaccid hopes to conceal this truth from the minds of the Conservatory!”

From here, the testimony of Mr. Hanraets grows frantic. Much deliberation has been put into the composition of his statements on the matter, stemming from a great deal of effort put towards divining the exact procession of events which concern the demise of Mr. Samuel Langbroek. Needless to say, that tale begins, in full, with his conversation with Mr. Hanraets’ stranger. The testimony ensuing was withdrawn following great effort on the part of Mr. Hanraets to expurgate his own mind by way of the imbibing of various spirits and medicinals, though, in his words, no more perfect a testimony could exist than that which floods into his dreams every night, and by day threatens to invade his waking thoughts. Perhaps the preceding is an adequate pretext for what grave misdeeds are therein accounted.

From where he stood, the stranger remained utmostly placid, as though a supernal stillness had taken him in its grip. He wrung his hands for several long moments in silence, then replied, “I am here because an acclaimed critic of fine art has come from a great distance to this gallery, here in the Royal Admiralty Hotel. So, you mistake me. This is not a stolen piece, but my own making, and I wish to submit it for viewing. Please, Mr. Langbroek, if you would,” he said, and in Mr. Hanraets’ words, an uneasy pause ensued, as the stranger seemed struck in thought, or perhaps by mere dark whimsy. The stranger then finished, “Criticize.”

Mr. Langbroek did not stop to consider a reply. Like an old war cannon, already loaded, he decreed, “It is amateur.”

The assembly was much disturbed when with superlative swiftness the stranger withdrew a hand, pristine and unblemished from his robe, and seemed to caress his own jaw as though puzzling. It slithered until curled in a facsimile of thought, puissant in its movements. The flesh of it seemed to shine. It tugged on his lips, as if the expression produced made any hint at the thoughts he weighed behind eyes he kept shadowed in the cowl. Then, in a tenor which belied what struck Mr. Hanraets as genuine curiosity, he replied, “How can you say that, if you have not seen it?”

Mr. Langbroek replied, as in his belligerent custom, though the act of decreeing had instilled in him a faint ebb to the ruddiness in his veins, and he deflated. He said, “A critic of art cannot help but to be a critic of artists, scoundrel. A masterwork is not presented by an amateur, nor, indeed, are any great masterworks presented anymore. But this farce has endured long enough. Submit your piece.”

At last, all gathered could espy in the stranger a monition, a upwelling, one that appeared like elation, as though stricken with some dancing plague he turned in childlike glee and set both smooth hands on the sheet, and pulled it from the frame. Mr. Hanraets continues to struggle to describe the composition which was revealed by the pulling of the sheet, and was dimly aware of the towering porters kneeling to take up the sheet in a bundle and ferrying it aside. He fascinated himself with the edge of the image before him, like the verge of insanity opening itself in full presentation before his mind. Some of the gallery pieces Mr. Varley Fitzroy had exhibited in weeks prior followed newer fringe movements, those that cherished rather than concealing the work of every brush. Mr. Hanraets was a dilettante, but moreso a devotee of the critic, Mr. Langbroek, and disdained such a revelry in poor technique as he observed it. Cognizant of the factual foundation which now fell away from him, sending him careening into a fissure he could not comprehend, he nauseously contemplated for a brushstroke on the periphery to which to anchor himself, but found none, only lineaments which betrayed this end in the merest fact that they were not brushstrokes, but seemed to shift under scrutiny.

Even in the recounting of the features of the piece presented by the stranger on the night of Mr. Samuel Langbroek’s demise, the effort demanded in Mr. Hanraets’ imagination, in hopes of providing accurate testimony, seems at times likely to doom him. As he described it, he rapidly turned between raving utterances, describing ululations issuing forth as from the painting itself, though in fact imagined, by the transfixed faces around him and seeming unawareness of the critic, Langbroek, and worried shouting, anguished by the thought that his testimony might transmit whatever nightmarish theme had so transfixed him. Of chiefmost evidence in his testimony is the simple fact that the piece presented by the stranger on the night of Langbroek’s demise was no mere painting, or was otherwise rendered in such a way that it engendered a look far too near to the Other to leave the observation of onlookers unmolested.

He describes growing weary of the nauseating trammels of the periphery, a destructive urge, like that of self-annihilation; and resigning himself to wander deeper. The tethers of the frame, festooned with silvery prominences, remained the only thing markedly ordinary about the piece, and it had been in that shadow made where the frame met canvas that Mr. Hanraets had confined the wandering of his eyes, with the comfortable towhead of normalcy to stay him from the riptides and lineaments leading deeper across the canvas. Then he let them free. Mr. Hanraets describes an eternity in an ever-shifting image in the moments when he can speak. For the rest, and indeed for a marked majority of his testimony, he has folded into himself in silence, but in other, sparser moments, spoken of colors and forms never before seen, and indeed never seen since. When the attacks subside, Mr. Hanraets seems as if a mewling infant, in awe of the world he finds himself in, but it is superlatively clear that his mind is burdened by what he saw that night.

Though he made no pretense at understanding, Mr. Hanraets came to understand the stranger as he looked upon his artwork. At times, though the stranger merely waited to be addressed again, he felt as though he had been spoken to, and imparted an awareness of the stranger’s own thoughts.

Pride was chiefmost. As the stranger surveyed his work, he felt a cloying pride in his chest, one so potent he could sing! In his time, though critique was far from the urges which possessed him body and mind, he had come into contact with what must be considered amateur work, and it wounded him sorely that a genteel critic such as Mr. Samuel Langbroek might perceive his own as amateur, especially before having laid eyes on it. Dimly, the stranger must have been aware of what was meant by the span between silver limit and silver limit, inside the frame, where the lineaments worried together and became great, gaping, and celestial form. He must have been aware of how the colors danced, and how they obscured the oil strokes which gave them shape. He must have, because the stranger considered them duly part of his technique. They were what instilled him with that most puissant pride, only second in instilling the ferocious spirit that took through his gut as he looked at it to the miraculous afterbirth of its execution.

He did not need to view his piece to know it, though this knowing could seldom be communicated in the ways the stranger desired. He wished for the critic to lay it bare and divine from its entrails something which approached his pride, but the sorry man, red face and all, was turning a sickened color as he fought to find purchase in the artwork the stranger had brought forward. The want it left him, watching Mr. Langbroek’s insides knot in on themselves by proxy of his face, made him want to take the critic bodily and shake from his lips an analysis that might satisfy him, but he let patience grow instead. He returned his hands to a clasp at his beltline, and waited, and indeed, at last, was rewarded.

When Mr. Langbroek spoke, the stranger could not help but to lean forward and furtively chew on his fingertip, which was once again by way of the curling of his hand pressed between his lips at the corner. Gone was the deep sanguine in Mr. Langbroek’s countenance, and the heady rage at his jowls. Instead, shaking like all hell, he raised a finger, and high-handed, brought it trembling forth in an accusatory thrust. Suddenly, that bellicose color revived in his dour cheeks, and when he spoke, his voice rumbled, like a righteous decree. He said, “I rescind my prior assessment. Mr. Varley Fitzroy, I am only sorry that I have erred in countenancing this as amateur, when it so clearly falls short of such a vaunted definition as art. It is worse than puerile, for it goes without any attempt at delivering truth. This, I say, is core to the very practice of art, and there is no truth to be found in this color-smeared canvas. Where is the hope to deliver some honest simile of form? Where is the loving sculpt of some landscape, of a face, of the terminator of a cast shadow, drawn from some invisible luminary? Where, I demand of you, is the respect for the craft? Even the graspers of today, so perplexed by the novelty of impression, of the betrayal of form, belie a certain preoccupation with essential truth! Even the liars who tease form in between their hollow assessments of shape, abstracting away the very substance an artist ought hope to imprison by brush, and wholly pregnant with their surfeit of occult and self-indulgent expression, those sappers of the fine arts, are possessed of greater integrity! But here, I say, there is nothing! What substance, what integrity? Mr. Varley Fitzroy, the greatest of travesties is upon us! I say, that to countenance the mere submission of this canvas, the mere presence, is tantamount to the slaying by knife of the very masters of our craft. I urge you, banish this smatterer.”

The critic Langbroek’s incensed words fanned a black flame in the deepest nook of the stranger’s chest. Here, trammeled by the vitriol of his words, the critic had transgressed a pace too far. Though professed in him was a sole, solemn hope, one which Mr. Hanraets reports an utter lack of certainty as to how clearly it had been transmitted to him, except perhaps by the miraculous painting which sits so centrally in the demise he witnessed, excepting further that even he professes that the critique was perhaps unduly scathing, here again the stranger’s hope had been stymied. Perhaps, he might have been thought to conclude, his loneliness might thereafter grow. There would not be a gallery here which might cherish his work. There might not be one in all the world, but for the works of its deified figures, perhaps only regarded in their death as great. But what good was it to be a saint to such critics of art? If here was presented truth, could it not be witnessed?

Mr. Hanraets reports one further peculiarity before the occurrence of the event which is most pivotal on that night. By his observation of the painting, he has since been aware of a presence, as though observed from the eaves of every building he passes. He has no hope of naming it, nor would he ever wish to, since the events of the night he witnessed, except for the fact that the stranger thought kindly of an individual, one who, excepting the critics of the gallery, might reflect fondly on his efforts on that evening. He has never once claimed any justification for how he might know this, and indeed, it seems any clarity demands far more fleeting a hope than most would afford, but he imagined the stranger must have thought his father might be proud.

All in attendance on that evening recount well what events afterwards transpired, though in what continues to be a most peculiar fashion, Mr. Hanraets’ telling, though superlatively comprehensive, is fitful. He is plagued by what he describes as ‘seizing terrors’, for their propensity to wind his body in on itself in suffocating fear of what occurred. It bears report that the stranger has not been otherwise recorded in the province, nor indeed elsewhere in the world, since the night of Mr. Samuel Langbroek’s demise. Along with the painting, which disappeared shortly after, the stranger and his porters remain integral to this mystery.

The stranger was now thoroughly steeped in his vexation, first at the critic Langbroek’s refusal to even observe his painting, then further at his condemnation. The critic’s finger still hovered like a dagger in his field of view. He dropped his hand to his side and made manifest his dejection. For the briefest of spans, it was apparent to those assembled that the stranger might simply leave, as though his arrival had so wrenchingly captivated the guests, to the extent that all present had brought their glasses and hors d’oeuvres and left their conversations to observe the commotion, his sorrow seemed to eclipse any recollection of his previous vim. The lapsing of this period was only heralded by a single, sleek motion, which saw the hood he’d worn over his head thrown down to rest on his shoulders; his head was hairless and smooth, though seemingly made of scales, like the body of a serpent. There was something distinctly thalassic about the texture of it; a motif which only called to mind the seething tentacular appendages which bevied the porters’ lower faces. His countenance was roundly youthful, and though erroneous, this characterization justified the bellhop’s prior assessment that the stranger was a mere boy.

The whole attention of the gallery that night in the Royal Admiralty now fell upon the stranger, who seemed once again to commune with his porters as though speaking without words, such was the fluidity with which they acted as one. He said, “Why do you only lick your thumb and touch when you stand before the work of a contemporary artist? When I passed the bellhop, it was made manifest to me that you stood before the work of an old master in disguise. Oh, do not be angry, he did not volunteer this to me. Then, why did you not lick your thumb to judge it?”

Mr. Langbroek, in the mode which has throughout this accounting been made greatly manifest, replied, “Among the surest marks of bygone mastery which exists in the mind, to us critics, among their studious and lasting respect for anatomy, their concern with good and righteous subjects, and the edification of their apprentices, is a true respect for the power of the brushstroke. If one can observe the strokes that one feels, from the distance of the arm, it is clear that the amateur has relied on the contour of the stroke to provide a mere deception of form. There is no respect, and the substance is hollow. The masters need not pretend to respect the form which they impart to canvas. Nor must I molest their work with such a question.”

The stranger looked on, as though some spirit of friendliness had returned to his features. He worried his hand back up his cheek, then finally, like an odd animal, cocked his head. He inquired, “How do I become an old master?”

Like the blazing sword of some avenging angel, the critic Samuel Langbroek brought his finger up again, then arced it, as though presenting his ire to the assembly. Choleric, he said, “There has been no master who was born, all were given to us, as though by intercession with the divine! It is tantamount to blasphemy to even suggest that you– you who soundly cannot party with the barest necessities of art, nay, who so blatantly undermines what substance the fine arts have given us– could ‘become’ one, of all the amateurs in the world.”

With all finality, the stranger’s jaw set, and the greatest peculiarity of all then transpired. He said, “Tell me if my brushwork is a deception of form, then, Mr. Langbroek. Lick your thumb. Touch my painting,” and as one, his porters seized Mr. Langbroek, and with strength unbecoming of any living men, lifted him from the ground. All assembled were too transfixed by the horrible might they displayed in plucking an adult man from the ground and ferrying him, as though a mere piece of luggage. They loped forward and brought him within an arm’s span of the painting. A horrible worm of fear seized Mr. Langbroek, and he was unable to lift his arm for the horrified juddering of his body, until the porters set him down again.

The stranger looked on, as though judging the quality of his brushstroke, and said, “Then help him,” which were the first three and only words any heard him say to his porters, and indeed seemed in response to nothing at all. They eased his arm back towards his face, gentle as anything else in existence, as though any resistance posed by his body did not require aggression or strain, or the cruelty of a stern grip. Mr. Langbroek fought, a man drowning, to turn his head away, and up, back at the crowd. His eyes pleaded; but none could help, such was the horrible transfixion of the scene which played before them, as though actors in the wings. Inaction had pierced them through the heart and taken them like yoked livestock, they could merely watch with the eyes of staid oxen, lashed to the hitching post as it transpired. One meaty hand eased his jaw until the lips parted, another extracted his tongue. Finally, the thumb touched it, and wet. For the span of a breath, the thumb was wiggled against his tongue, until saliva cloyed at it like a string from his mouth when it was gently let to pull away.

One porter eased his arm back to full extent, and the thumb touched the canvas. Impassively, the stranger inquired, “Can you see any brushstrokes?”

Mr. Samuel Langbroek stuttered over the first syllable, the start to a negative his voice couldn’t manage. As his saliva pressed between his thumb and the dark, lineamented canvas, it bowed out around his thumb, and both of his eyes went wide as serving-plates. Mr. Samuel Langbroek looked at the stranger’s painting, and his jaw twitched in dumbstruck awe, still desperate in his attempts to reply to the stranger’s inquiry. None, least of all Mr. Hanraets, could attest to what they thought Mr. Langbroek might have seen, as his thumb drew his eye to the square center of the painting, which at a distance thwarted any attempts at resolution into any recognizable form; rather, seeming a iridescent pattern one might expect in the swellings of the sea, or in the shape of wind. The lineaments which had stymied Mr. Hanraets must have resolved at such a distance, when Mr. Langbroek touched the canvas, and he must have felt the quality of technique the stranger had applied, in his assessment, but now, it seemed, the critic Langbroek must have joined those gathered in his state of transfixion, as the stranger observed with a placid smile, as though his face was merely a mask cut in such a rictus of serenity.

Then, something occurred which shattered any state of transfixion which had taken the Royal Admiralty. As tears welling for the vision he alone could have seen, blood issued forth from Mr. Langbroek’s eyes, then from his nose, and finally from his ears, before spilling from his still-open mouth. As the very innards within him liquefied into that sanguine flow, issuing from every orifice of his head, the spell in the room was broken, and calamity arrived to the gallery scene. Both porters let the critic Langbroek fall to his knees, whereafter he looked up in mystified horror at the scene that must have appeared to him, that afflicted him with such a devastating vision as this, and in his eyes, the slickened lineaments still played, a reproduction of the substance captured within the painting.

Such was the terror that seized the ninth floor of the Royal Admiralty Hotel, that as in his reporting the good Mr. Hanraets arrived to his accounting of the moment of the critic Langbroek’s demise, he could speak of it only falteringly, as if recalling the details of some afflicting night terror. Chiefmost among his recollections was the issuance of clotted matter and viscera through the thickened grotesque of blood which rapidly surged from every particularity of his countenance; further, as it spouted it had borne with it some essential factor of Mr. Langbroek’s mien, as when he collapsed, his very carriage exited with the stain of rage and the great irascible animus in his cheeks diminished as they went slack with pallor. A great portion of the sanguine matter issued fell upon the canvas, whereafter, with great timidity Mr. Hanraets thought to look, and seeming near to exhibit symptoms of the seizing terrors he had before described, saw to his utter horror that the red coverage of much of the canvas did not abey the peculiar sense of drowning which had previously afflicted him when he looked at the canvas. Instead, where the great patch of red drew the eye, he recalls himself marooned in the great dazzling expanse between the silver frames, where the great horror of the painting around offered no easy path for the eye to escape to safe harbor. Solace, then, only existed in the slow, dripping expansion of that sanguine patch, which, dimly cognizant in his reporting of the horror that saved him, Mr. Hanraets followed gingerly down until it spilled over the edge of that silver ornament and onto the floor. Perhaps another matter might have saved his attentions, but it seemed that the gurgles issued by the critic did nothing to dissipate the hold that peculiar canvas held on his eye.

Of final, yet critical import to this most peculiar demise is the matter of the critic Langbroek’s eyes, which seemed to replicate the character of the painting to such a degree that Mr. Hanraets was timid to look too closely. At first, the change was merely that of a strange glimmer visible through the film of sanguine matter which burgeoned past the eyelids, but as the critic collapsed and convulsed and finally looked upward to the center of the canvas, the very image of the painting overtook and reflected on both sclerae. As the moment of his expiry became certain to have passed, though none had any method of reckoning beyond the quitting of that hideous gurgling, his eyes did not shut, and in fact, one brave soul among the gathering issued forth and attempted to close them; but found them held fast, as though stunned, and came away with only a building smear of red matter cloying to the hands, until, bodily, one of those horrible porters diverted him back into the assembly.

For the stranger’s part, the matter of the critic’s death briefly stumped him, though no doubt existed in the onlookers that he was responsible for this most peculiar demise. For his part, however, he felt a most curious pang, in the fashion of dawning discovery. This, perhaps, he had not expected. He seemed to stand taller in the room, his skin shined, as though fortified by the bloodshed, or perhaps he was merely alone in that it had not cowed him. Then, he spoke. He said, “Does anyone else wish to take a closer look?”

Euterpe on a Thistle

Sat, 11 May 2024 07:59:53 -0500

On a cold and rainy Plyrist morning, the sole proprietor of Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice looks at himself. Two snarls exist in this characterization of the sole proprietor. First, Pandion is not a sole-proprietorship. As registered with the Board, Pandion is a Corporate Group, incorporated around a board of directors, with the aforementioned ‘sole proprietor’ sitting chairman. However, this is also inaccurate. The board is a conjuration; and a well-managed one at that. It proceeds on by the first and only rule of Unitas with any real weight: Wealth is Health, and a deniable question directed towards one of means is no question at all.

The second snarl is that the chairman is not looking at himself. Rather, Mircea Vedova is looking at a duplicate of himself, one exhibiting (to the uninitiated eye) all of the characteristics of Mircea Vedova, sans any unfortunate qualities which might preclude him from necessary work, such as his well-defended pride. The sole proprietor has instructed his duplicate to match his every move, and then has crossed what was a lavish interior suite to a calibrated series of mirrors. Then, with far more care than he had not so long ago, when presented with the choice between a mere prestidigitation and the time-consuming and inexact task of rinsing his body, he grooms himself.

Through the series of mirrors, his duplicate is presented to him as though a reflection. The glass is imperfect in its reflections. This draws his ire. It wells from a source like perfectionism, until a second thought, like a chaser, calls back to its utility. He sees his own face, a ghostly image, scragglier and leaner than the duplicate. It reminds him to shave. He watches the trailing images of blue fingers lift the razor to his jaw, and draw it clean. Repeat. Tap the gold-plated faucets, lather water. Repeat. Like carving out soapstone, that sallow blue ghost of a face loses its scruff. He massages water into his cheeks, trying to fill out the weightlessness the bolder image had, that of the duplicate. It will have to be enough.

Elsewhere, that Plyrist morning, an agent within the Parsifer Group, Oversight Branch K, draws black hair back in her chalk-white fingers. She has a smaller mirror, which returns her sullen reflection in inverse, with hands that work a knot through her hair perfectly backwards. If you could look close enough, you’d see every follicle stretch near to breaking. If you could see beneath the skin, you’d see how it pulls on the muscles in her face, tight enough to fix a permanent scowl. That’d be the hopeful reading. Otherwise, the face of Luziana Pelcrn leaves a single, dismal option: that the expression is one of grim attentiveness, and Oversight Branch K is always watching.

Of the many myriad in Unitas, at this moment, preparing before a mirror or a series thereof, one more approaches the same strand of preparation as the sole proprietor of Pandion and the agent of Oversight Branch K. He stands in a towel just beyond the threshold to his private bath. The water rolls off his skin and meets the wrap around his waist, or ventures further, finding a bathmat beneath his feet. His skin is not gold, but it is, for this brief moment, lustrous. He stands in front of a window, and he feels untouchable. He is the Fiscal Chair of Helkzen-Vrastthoph Steel and Mithril, and he is looking out at Unitas.

Except, there becomes a point where the term ’looking out at’ becomes inexact, far too clumsy a verb to describe the nuance of an individual’s bearing towards their observation. He is dissecting it with his eyes. He is laying his finger on the pulse, first at the wrist, where his ships arrive daily, and bring in ore from what remains of Wotantu, and his stevedores bring it up the main production thoroughfares. He imagines it traveling further, to his refineries first and then to his metal foundries. His name is Valetriec Helkzen, and when he was a boy he already owned half of what he does now. Today, Valetriec monopolizes the metallurgical foundation for one of Unitas’s brightest, a diamond amidst coal of his own finding.

He thinks of the miles of runework that must be etched into a single lode within an automaton. He thinks of the miles of metal which must be etched, as a lode. Then, he hits a gold-plated tap and rinses his face, and pulls on a shirt. By the end of it, he is golden– sheathed in it, like electroplating.

At this moment, Mr. Vedova and his duplicate retreat from the series of mirrors which had momentarily united them. As they walk in unison towards the exit of the compound Vedova has made a residence in, the real sole proprietor deviates in his course, causing his duplicate to meander pointlessly within the living room. Mr. Vedova has just reached for something his duplicate has no answer to– a little mask kept in a place of security, in this sanctum of safety he has built himself. The duplicate smiles hollowly, it does not know what it’s missing, and moreover cannot care. When the chairman of the board has reached the door, he has decided.

“It will remain here,” he says to the air. “It should go. I will attend to today’s matters,” never once referring to the simulacrum but as an object. The simulacrum does not rebuke this categorization. It is an object, after all, and even though it looks like meat, it cannot feel or think. Furthermore, there is much to be done in the real Vedova’s absence.

The moment broke. The rain on that Plyrist morning stopped. Mircea Vedova stuffed the mask somewhere deep inside a messenger bag, and threw it over his shoulder, over his coat. It was a far nicer coat than the kind he used to wear, but luxury no longer bothered him. It was merely part of the performance, he told himself, to abey thoughts he might genuinely have begun to develop a taste for it. The coat was chased with gold, with the sigil of Pandion inscribed in the middle-back. It befit the young, bright-eyed inventor he was not. When he exited the door, he befit it. As he walked, he threaded his little finger through a bespoke hole in the bag, until the meat just by his nail touched the mask.

Two hours ensued, by carriage once Mircea reached the edge of his compound. Money exchanged hands. Attendants pulled the doors open when he arrived, the doors were massive and banded in brass. They were drawn open by ropes on gilded runners. Counterweights giving in slid the doors shut behind him. A lobby came and ended, and he wound higher up until he stepped trimly inside a boardroom. He swept a glance across the room. Nobody of consequence, a pencil-pusher, a sycophant… a prize but weak-chinned investor, and Mr. Helkzen. The other side went after the same fashion. Two lackeys of Helkzen had joined them, and to their left…

Someone new sits in a chair. Mircea notes this, in the span between a second and another. Someone else is still raising their hand to their mouth to furtively cough when his eyes flit away, and when his brain begins poring over the details it visually recalls. Black hair, a trim suit. Nondescript tailoring, a standard pattern. The first tip-off he registers is the cut. Brief regret follows the realization, he hates that the frivolous and miasmic trappings of wealth in this place register in his mind so quickly. The cut is standardized, patterned, without prior tailoring. Someone below the boardroom in a company large enough to standardize a cut.

Parsifer Group, or Clydsring. She’s long in the face. Her hair is tight. She isn’t dressed to stand out. She’s here late in the stage. A lackey of Helkzen, or… Board-sent. Mircea reaches for his chair to pull it out. He swings the bag around and nudges the mask. The black-haired woman pulls her chair out. Mircea smiles. Helkzen rises, all rise. In the space between neurons, Mircea makes contact with Veil, inside the mask. He imagines his own voice.

It echoes out into a new space, a between-space.

“Helkzen-Vrasttoph has grown bold if he thinks he has the reach at this juncture to bring in a new partner. Well, it surprises me that anyone involved should have the nerve. If that’s what he’s done, Veil, I will bring in my arbitrators and he will have much more difficulty making this sort of play in the future. She’s too pared-down to be Bahn. And this isn’t about Archilo, I would have smelt it by now. No, the alternative is that the Board has taken an interest. This needed to be smaller than this smells, Veil.”

He imagines another voice. Rather, by the mask, another voice is imagined within him. I do not feel failure for us, in this, it says. You should listen.

Mircea jumps his gaze over to Helkzen. His retinue sits largely to his right. Had she been here when he arrived, too? His voice continues: “That would mean they mean to constrain my movements. They want to ensure I do not get what I want from Helkzen.”

You are getting upset. You know that you cannot play this like Zeeman.

“Well, Zeeman was never an object. I am saying they should not have taken notice so soon. I cannot face risk of hostile takeover by Dwer Baan’, if Unity and Parsifer are in bed together,” Mircea returns. He clenches the top rail a bit too hard. He pulls out his chair, and then he sits.

When he sat, the black-haired woman spoke. “Mr. Vedova, Pandion, associates,” she said, and lifted a briefcase onto the table. She clicked it open and withdrew a journal. Then she put the briefcase back down. “I have already spoken with Mr. Helkzen and his associates. My name is Luziana Pelcrn, on behalf of the Parsifer Group, Observation Branch K. As we are signatories to Pandion, financial stratum, particularly where acquisitions are involved, Parsifer group has elected to send myself and my retinue as auditors. Your arbitrators will receive notice of grounds,” she continued, and after a pause, asked, “Do you agree you have heard and understood this introduction?” Mircea merely said, “Yes, I do,” and sat down.

The woman picks up a pen in chalk-white fingers. She takes a deep breath to clear the last of the notice out of her mouth. It tastes like bile, manufactured and sick. She opens the journal. A continuous scrawl tumbles down its pages. Mircea can’t make them out, and in any case, he withdraws a sheathe and puts on spectacles from inside. They sit evenly on the bridge of his nose. He sees his reflection on the dark surface of the table.

“Parsifer Group,” are the words he says in his mind as he laces his little finger back into the bag. “Then they may take an interest and form a bloc with Unity. This would represent a more overt kind of hostility, the kind–” he exhales through the bridge of his nose, so softly nobody else hears it– “I had hoped to avoid by ending my arrangement with Archilo. Nevertheless, that only moves things up.” The black haired woman uncaps her pen and begins to write. “They want to see how I’ll play this, if surveillance will keep me manageable. Therefore, it cannot be fruitful, or they will always integrate this restrictive strategy. But it must also be civil. Parsifer’s interest alone is dangerous enough.”

I tire of a little… an imagined voice trails, then digs through his mind in movements he feels for a suitably-barbed moniker, …prodigy, cowed this deeply. He has forgotten what we have helped him accomplish.

The room is harder to read through the glasses, but nevertheless, the chairman prefers what he sees through them. One look confirms that his artifice is still the dominant presence in the room. There will be no tricks, and his heart settles. No, he has donned the spectacles more as a show of command. They have become a part of him. There are those that favor his work elsewhere in Unitas. He is seldom seen without them. For this reason, he does not take them off. “Nevertheless,” he says, out in between his thoughts. “Parsifer’s involvement is too little, too late. Rather, well, they have bought themselves prime seating. We were never going to give them anything to pin on us, though I am certain they will see what we are doing, they can no more afford to preference Helkzen than we. I will chance a guess, Parsifer’s interest is in prolonging the negotiations. A pity; I almost agree. But I don’t fully. My interest is in finishing this matter. The way is clear, Veil. Helkzen will not see the ploy. I suspect Parsifer shall, but they can do nothing. Of this, I am certain.” I ever have been watching, nestling, the mask says, and the bag– as though by chance alone– resettles. His finger is no longer touching it.

“Mr. Vedova, members of the board of Pandion. Of course, the good Ms. Pelcrn, here from Parsifer. And do not worry yourselves, we are already acquainted,” said Valetriec Helkzen. He steepled his fingers, speaking as easily as if he stood in one of his foundries. Mircea’s lip curled at the presumption. “I’d like to thank you once more, chairman, for your courtesy in providing the space for this meeting. As much as I’ve relished our many discussions on the matter, I believe it’s time to reach a decision. With that in mind, I have prepared a few projections regarding each of the ‘styles’ we have outlined, where progressing our business cooperation is concerned.”

At long last, and at great cost of wind, blown in through a long switchback of ducts to avoid the factory smoke clogging the districts without, Mr. Helkzen reached his point: “My only question is, are you ready to elevate our cooperation?” Mircea unclasped his hands. He smiled, like the simulacrum did, and spoke: “Yes, I received your projections. Logistically speaking, the agreement is watertight. But, I trust you’re not leaving out my tweaks in error?”

“Watch,” Vedova says to Veil. The Parsifer girl inhales; she shifts in her seat, she fiddles with her pen. She hasn’t received a copy. She’s going to submit an inquiry. She’ll see the ploy, but Helkzen smiles. He’s read it all. “Helkzen knows what he’s playing at, but I’m leagues ahead. The fact he’s here at all is proof of it. ‘You godsdamned son of a gun!’.”

“You godsdamned son of a gun!” Helkzen applauds. He’d slap Mircea on the back if he could, the chairman wagered. “You’re just as savvy as they say.”

“Don’t… patronize me,” Mr. Vedova replied, but smiled, like the double would.

“Of course, Mr. Vedova. Your logistical mind is sharp as ever, and I have implemented a plan that will bring costs in line with your directions,” Helkzen finished. He was still cavalier. The easy reading was that he’d already put the necessary groundwork in place, perhaps before Mircea’s direction. But Helkzen was a brute. He’d grown accustomed to working with Pandion, and he tolerated Mircea’s balder plays on the assumption he could leverage him into a long-term partnership.

“It’s only that…”

And so, the thread snarls. Mircea doesn’t smile, he looks at Parsifer, who is still silent. Helkzen waves, a briefcase hits the table, and Unitas holds its breath. “If he’s smart,” Mr. Vedova says, “this means he’s picked up on how tightly my materials specifications situate his costs according to my financing plan, supply lines I’ve already dominated. He’ll want to unsnarl it, but that means broadening his dependency on mining labor.”

The Parsifer girl knows this, little blue.

“Doesn’t she? She can’t torpedo it, either, because my financing plan is her supervisors’, and Parsifer sets the rates of manual labor-hours. I only ever said she meant to stop me from getting what I want from Helkzen-Vrastthoph. But she cannot. That’s the genius of it, Veil,” Mircea thinks, and studies Helkzen’s face. He’s undoubtedly spent hours putting himself together, only to pick it slightly apart. Helkzen is cavalier in that way. It’s what made him an ideal mark."

“I wonder, though, what he’s thought of. I wonder if it’s close enough to matter. Impress me, Helkzen,” thinks Mircea. “Or don’t.”

But you don’t want that.

“No, it would be inconvenient. But why wouldn’t I?”

And then Helkzen spoke. “Cooperative financing is a big step forward in terms of our partnership, don’t you think, Mr. Vedova? We’ve taken it upon ourselves to have our own analysts look at some of your proposed supply routes, and I’m afraid we’ve prepared a counter-proposition.” One of the Helkzen-Vrastthophs opened a briefcase, and produced a few collected reams of paper, circulating it around the table.

Mircea read.

“I think we should move forward with provisions A, those pertaining to the hiring of some of your automata for labor purposes, but we decline a full contract out of hand. We’re going to be taking the Parsifers’ offer instead on the matter,” Helkzen said.

“Not savvy enough,” Mircea echoes inwardly.

“Unless you would be amenable to a counteroffer, Mr. Vedova,” Helkzen said.

Interesting. “Go on,” Mircea said.

“Three squads of your automata, for the mine-teams,” Mr. Helkzen proceeded, “with belayed payment plans for two calendar years.”

As the light of the suns upon mine own countenance, my little fledgling. Too rich, and too rich by far. He has taken up your bait, but not the one he ought to have. See the Parsifer. Veil’s words bubble up to the surface of his mind. Mr. Vedova glances to the Parsifer girl, whose interest stands plainly bared. It gleams like the roots at her temples. The obvious move is far too overt for this. Wait. Watch.

Laughter wells up in his chest, where none but Veil can hear. “That wasn’t the trap, either,” Mircea says, inward. “You were watching. Yet you don’t seem to follow what I’m doing.”

Where, we wonder forlornly, might be the fun in that?

“Parsifer has no counterplay for the obvious move, because the obvious move is entirely fair. Helkzen has dared me to make him my dependent. He doubts I’m capable of it– he prepared a poison pill within his finances for this exact outcome, far earlier. It’s the opening play for a hostile takeover,” Mircea said. “and we will accept the gambit.”

Oh? I had given up on warming you to the prospect of your own demise. Perhaps it must be reconsidered.

Mircea reaches. He slides the paper back across the table, smiles genially. He gestures to his attendants in turn. “Do you forget, we’re both now plainly in bed with Parsifer? The girl has documented this all. They’ll have to go through both of our finances thoroughly, now. But, see, we’ve been drawing him into some unscrupulous deals for months. He’s insulated them against Parsifer’s observation, but we haven’t. He’s done all the work I need to bring himself down to where I need him. Where he’ll accept my idea of this deal.”

Parsifer will see you as complicit.

“Parsifer will not self-report. Ostensibly, they have been screening our finances for months. This makes them look bad. Not to mention, Financial Observation Branch K has ties to Clydsring. Clydsring makes Helkzen-Vrastthoph redundant, but not Pandion. The Board would have other concerns if their negligence in my affairs were unearthed. The only crime, Veil, in Unitas, is getting caught.”

Mircea rose. “Three squads is ridiculous,” he said, “and you know it. One year’s financing, or two squads.”

Helkzen considered. “Eighteen months.”

So quick to agree, nestling?

Mircea hums. Black laughter wells up and he traps it, but Veil hears. “The particulars of the deal don’t matter. He’s clearly blinded by the genius of his own strategy, and he’ll never see that my defense has been already prepared.”

You’re showing a lot to the Parsifer.

“So it would seem. But the Parsifer apparatus is slow and inflexible. Think over what I said. Parsifer has control over Pandion’s financial deals with Helkzen-Vrastthoph. This deal has clearly raised enough interest that they’ve sent an auditor, but they haven’t shut it down. It’s like I said, they want this deal with Helkzen-Vrastthoph to cripple me, to slow my rise. They don’t want it to destroy me, there’s no profit in that. I’m showing them what they’ve hoped to see. That for all my bluster, I can be strung along and baited. When after all that, I’ve been lucid to their ploy the whole time. In my time working with the Parsifers, they have been reticent to engage with overtures of business collaboration. Their board stifles any transaction where Parsifer does not hold a dominant position. But I am now broadcasting I am far more manipulable than I am, in reality, and by the time they see it, Helkzen-Vrastthoph will be no obstacle,” Mircea says, and removes his glasses. Then, he puts his hand out, but stops, midway through.

“Well, one concern, before we go through with this,” Mircea said. He felt a little smile wriggle up through his mind, one from Veil. “Helkzen will fund a small automaton manufactory, by the necessary mining district. In this sheaf–” He gestured, and an attendant popped the latches and slid a briefcase across the table– “You will find the initial surveys and plans for such a facility, and I will require no less than a 55% stake in any excess profits reaped. I intend to be liable, in addition, for no more than 35% of operating costs.”

“Mr. Vedova, as you would have seen in the outlined provisions, we had intended to bring in a private party for all repair needs.”

“Out of the question. There will be no special provision afforded for private repair. I believe you will find this consistent with all prior deals on the subject, I have always and will always maintain sole right to the repair and construction of leased automata,” replied Mr. Vedova.

Veil laughs, and the Parsifer girl’s interest seems to dim. How… contradictory, little blue. You could have had him there.

“My financiers estimate the costs associated with such a facility to be consistent with an extra six months paid-for on the lease,” Helkzen replied.

“You ought to have known this provision existed when you offered ’eighteen months’. Now you want two years?”

Helkzen put out his hand to shake. “Three squads of automata. Two years reprieve, no interest.”

In Helkzen’s hand, out over the center of the table, is a financial poison pill braced against the sole proprietor of Pandion Manufacturing & Artifice’s acquisition interests in his business. The Parsifer girl bites back a sigh– this means more paperwork, should the Vedova be naive enough to accept it. She is preparing to inform the rest of the auditors. Helkzen doesn’t even shiver; he hasn’t realized how deeply the chairman is prepared to bury him with this single choice. Mr. Vedova smiles, like the simulacrum. “Once his mines are operated by Pandion automata, Pandion’s stake in their operation will grow considerably. His investors will pressure him to reinvest, and he won’t decline.”

The solution is more automation. His automation. Mr. Vedova smiles, like himself, and he hears, in the basin of his mind, Veil sing. A dangerous play, nestling.

Mr. Vedova is slow to reply. He takes Helkzen’s hand. He shakes firmly. Once, twice. The details finalize before him. “He believes he has insulated himself against my attempts to ramp my stake. But Helkzen thinks he’s winning. Well. It’s easy to defeat someone who has never lost. They never think that they can.”

The Feud

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:01:43 -0500

Chapter 1

708 years had transpired since the construction of the Divine Gate. 169 had transpired since the august reign of Emperor Manfried Dwendal, whose distant successor had now dispatched Keir to Icehaven, with an attache of shipsmen and a Julous mage. They had made their coming by carriage and by horse up the Zemni fields from Odessloe, where Keir bade them gather. In Icehaven waited an icebreaking ship, equipped with blasting powder and rations should the Frigid Depths offer scarce mercy. No; Keir prayed the Duskmaven still had aught favor for him and the mission. For his Empire.

The cadre of shipmen were Righteous Brand, old bannermen of the Halsteads, Keir’s family, or oathmen from Bladegarden. The Julous mage was named Brumewick. Six years prior, Keir came to know him as Graeme, when he traveled north from the Zauberspire to find fortune as a wizard in the capital. Halstead had scarcely known a mage of his stature apart from the wizards of the Assembly, whose draconian schemes posed an eternal disruption to Imperial life. Graeme was always wiser than that, and more attuned to the needs of his Empire. It had been refreshing, then.

Snow fell hard over the house at Odessloe, that winter of 702. It weighed at the eaves, it tumbled down past the windows in clumps when it came. Keir was sorely glad to be inside, though at times he wished to return his estate house to its proper state, that of solitude. The planning of this function had taxed his efforts well into the past two weekends, but the King himself had suggested his interest to attend with his two young sons. Inside, it was cheery. The fire livened him, and he mustered the stomach to pull away from the window for another round of introductions.

He had just fitted his best doublet with a new pair of cufflinks, struck with a pair of wolfhound figures– Gulvain, who stalked on the family crest. He thumbed the brass heads a moment, sterning up, and moved out through his own ballroom. The biting cold of the world outside was only evident in the frost sticking to the corners of each window, with big, clear, oblong thumb-prints that gave view to the snowfall beyond. Candles flickered their defiance just ahead, where they could be spotted through the flocking guests. Keir could be struck blind, he thought. There were simply so many guests.

As though feeling for the lamp atop his nightstand in the dark, he made his first stop the buffet tables, for no small measure of comfort. Keir was chastising himself for feeling the guest in his own home when he spied another man, paused stock-still by the hors d’oeuvres and wine-flutes. A pair of circlets hung at his wrists, his shirt seemed rented. He had a short coiffure of near-white hair, but was young in the face. Critically, Keir did not know him. So, he flashed a smile, gauging the smile the man returned, and moved to play the host.

The guest seemed ill-at-ease, though not in a particularly untoward fashion. Keir imagined he might have continued on, looking out at the gathering, if not for his approach. As Keir arrived, he raised his own flute, topping it up from the plate– another, stamped with Gulvain’s head– and positioning himself under the cheery lighting. To his slight dismay, the streamers were coming undone from the ceiling. He teased a lock of his own hair, where it had grown tight in his updo.

“Penance,” the guest said, and not in a way that suggested he was particularly devout. He looked up, past the cheery little lights, to the rafters, and the dark wood eaves. He didn’t comment on the streamers, if he even noticed them. A mercy, Keir well thought, because they were bothering him sorely. It ruined the airy feel he had been hoping to convey. “What a relief it is to see another soul who seems not quite sure what to do with himself, here. I think I may be the only one here who doesn’t know the host. Do you, my sir?”

“Yes, and I think it appropriate that you change your assessment. You’ve just met him,” Keir replied.

The guest was momentarily transfixed by his drink, then, cheeks flashing rosy for a split second above his freshly-shaven face, admitted, “I’m afraid I’ve done both of us a terrible discourtesy, then.” Ponderously, he set down the drink, and stuck out his hand as if to dry, a half-step between them. Keir took it, and the shake was hasty. “Brumewick, my sir. Graeme Brumewick. My friends have all abandoned me for more… interesting parties, so I’ve taken up with the refuge of the buffet,” he said, and gestured to the table, and his own plate, which seemed hardly picked at.

“Halstead,” he returned, “Keir Halstead. I hope you’re finding my house comfortable, lively as the night has grown. I sense a certain kindred… reclusive spirit in you.” Keir glanced at the plate, smiled a brief appreciation and almost asked how he liked the food, but thought better of it. “Well, be welcome anyway, my friend. Who are these friends? We may yet know the same people.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Brumewick said, with a light and self-directed scoff and smile, and he gestured: Keir followed his hand, and felt his smile tighten. It passed by the Martinet– Duskmaven be thanked, and doubly so–, eventually settling on a human man, apparently a wizard, whom Keir did not know. “I’ve come from Zadash, from the Hall of Erudition. I’ve come in the company of Morwyn Wylock, and I’m afraid I can’t imagine why. He said there’d be an introduction to the echelons of magic in Rexxentrum in it, though he left me to attend the cheese platters for the past two hours. I’ll be plain, I think there’s liable to be more in the Brand for my talents, humble as they may be, at this point.”

Keir felt his anxiety ebb somewhat. Here stood a wizard of nearing common mind with him; he found relief in that, and picked up his drink.

Graeme evidently saw the flash of momentary consternation in his face, because his own expression soured somewhere past embarrassment. “I’m sorry, have I said something to offend? I’ve not been up north before, it may be that things move differently in this…” he gestured for time, “…sphere.”

Keir fortified his smile. “Oh, certainly not, Mr. Brumewick. Certainly not. It’s merely refreshing to meet a wizard of such keen appraisal of what part he may play for King and Empire. If I’m plain, intersections with the Assembly are in my belief one of the great exhaustions of my stature, but while the King requires stiff competition to keep his wizards on the level with those of other countries, in my assessment there is often too little certainty in the way of who serves whom. Moreover, while there is less esteem to be had in the Brand, I find service to be its own reward. It is what sets our Empire apart from the other nations of the world.”

Graeme hummed at that. “I sense I’ve clumsily stumbled into something of a contentious subject,” he said, and cracked a all-too-self-conscious smile. “Might I ask your advice in avoiding these in the future? I share your sentiment– foremost because I am merely not brave enough for these Assembly types, I’m afraid, though I’d hate to alienate my good friend, either.”

Keir felt disappointment creep into his smile, and glanced away, recomposing the shine in his eyes. He clapped a hand on Graeme’s shoulder and turned him to the party. “Of course,” he said, a little too haltingly. After a short huff, he offered Graeme’s drink back to him, and offered further, “I had no intention of throwing you so quickly into politics, for your first outing. Still, you spoke glowingly of the Brand. Do you mind taking the rounds with me? I might introduce you to a few of my friends. With the right introductions, I’m sure you’ll go far.”

Graeme huffed, faintly, perhaps a little surprised. “What a wonderful suggestion,” he remarked. “I ought to be stolen away from the platters, otherwise I might pilfer the rest of your desserts.”

Keir eyed the uneaten pastries on his plate, and the fork which had tugged a few scones apart, now massacred and clinging to the fork, though for the most part untouched too, and internally bemoaned the waste. He found himself agreeing with Graeme, but not before his counterpart remarked again.

“Shall we?” Graeme said, and let Keir lead him out through the ballroom. Keir was much relieved when he was back nestled between the throngs of the party rather than the sparse flow of guests which stalked the desserts table.

Following his introductions, Graeme had risen far, though not to the heights he later revealed he had hoped. Disappointment seemed a perpetual character in Keir’s new friend, at least for the next half-decade. Even so, there was pride there. Here stood a brilliant man, a mage Keir believed on par with many of the devious characters embroiled in his perennial contentions with the Assembly, diverted to the service of the Brand. Keir often reminded him of service’s own reward, which, eternally, was met with a smile and a response of “Too right, my old friend, too right.”

The matter of Graeme’s dissatisfaction didn’t worry Keir in the slightest. In the time since, they had both taken wives, and the support of the Brand had bought Brumewick a home as well in Odessloe. For the past matter of years, Graeme was routinely called between the garrisons at Ashguard and back. When he was away, his wife, Fiona liked to join Keir and Elspet at the estate. Keir found joy that the women had become quick friends, as well, and had found himself looking forward to Graeme’s return at each assignment.

He spoke of work unraveling the cricks’ night-making magic at each assignment, making use of Keir’s confidance as a born officer of the Brand. Of course the wizard was drawn in by magical pursuits, but it suited Keir far better to think of him as a friend, not a mage. There were far fewer wizards which Keir had tolerated in his time. Had it not been for his good fortune, when they met, that the man was amenable to joining the Righteous Brand, Keir fearfully doubted they would have ever become friends.

707 came and went. As it waned into Duscar, Keir was again attended in Odessloe by a broad swathe of Rexxentrum’s aristocracy, particularly the ascendancy of the Brand, and he found himself drawn back into the old pattern of fretfully setting up the ballroom. It weathered long periods of disuse, standing stern and austere, full of cold, gray light in the rafters. It made him feel tiny, and before he dragged out the tables with Elspet’s help, he busied himself with pacing in front of the gallery. He paused in front of the pinnacle– Tristen and Gulvain, the former holding the head of the gorgon. Keir matched his pose, for a moment, then shook his head, abashedly, and went to find Elspet.

By the end of it, some amount of cheer had returned to the ballroom. Between Elspet and Fiona, the latter at the urging of Graeme, who seemed to pity Keir, the tables were all set with hand-stitched doilies. Little cakes were set out, brought down from Uthodurn, and a whole drove of roasts was brought from the Pearlbow Wilderness by a brother of his. He almost threw his back out putting the damn streamers up. Amidst Keir’s complaints on the subject, Graeme finally revealed he had noticed the streamers falling down that night in 702, but delivered a bushel of wreathes for the windowtoppers as apology.

Keir took solace in the simple fact that he was not tasked with party-planning on his own, even if the Martinet was coming again. The only scarce anxiety Keir had, really, was his friend’s– perhaps predictable– excitement at the prospect of seeing Wylock again. He tried to keep his distaste for even his friend’s alma mater far from mind, because it remained a scarce, if certain, point of contention between the two. Otherwise, the day approached all the same, and he prepared himself for the dreadful task of welcoming both cherished friends, awkward company, and hated rivals into his Odessloe home. As the ballroom grew warm and cheery, his home ceased to be his own. It felt strangely counter-intuitive. Perhaps he ought to liven up the estate after all, but it was so much work to keep tidy. Graeme, through it all, remained a source of reassurance.

The evening came. As the first guests were arriving, Keir felt already exhausted. The party from the Brand came early. Keir had to be hasty with his coatee, which Elspet buttoned up around his throat as they approached the ballroom-side entrance. He took a breath in that he knew he wouldn’t let go until the function ended. Several hierarchs in the Brand arrived, escorted from Odessloe’s gates by Graeme, who had started trying to wear a beard and mustache. It was trim, but Keir rather thought it would take a few more shapings to take full form. Even still, he had no cause to tease him on the subject until they met again as friends. He was confident there would be the opportunity following the toasts, even though some of the hierarchs had suggested there would be Assembly members and perhaps Imperial courtiers in attendance. He rued the thought of alienating Brumewick in front of such an audience, and in such company.

Keir hoped that tonight the Brand would present a united front in front of the Assembly, and that the Imperial court might see that loyalty to the Empire inspired even a wizard of modest decoration such as Brumewick. He presented the hierarchs with the first of the mulled wine and tried to content himself with losing track of the hours. There was paranoia, too. He was nervous that guests might be dissatisfied with his hosting, or worse, that the damn streamers might come down. Worst of all, he thought he spied a coiffure of white hair– Graeme, Duskmaven forbid– in conversation with the Martinet. Ah, and he’d forgotten what that wizard, Wylock, looked like. That would have been the damning detail of it all. Inevitably, though, the anxieties of hosting pulled him in dizzying arcs around the room, until at long last, Graeme stepped out to catch him. He had a plate of tea-cakes and he stuck it right in Keir’s hand.

“General Saugiss has a proposition. Thought I’d save you the trouble of another round, eh, old dog, since the party’s been dragging you around so? You,” he pointed a finger, then picked a tea-cake up from the plate he’d given Keir with his fork, and ate it whole. “Need saving. And Elspet’s catching up on councilroom gossip. So I didn’t foresee help from that department.”

“Is that a fortune-telling, you weasel? There’s hardly enough to stroke ponderously on your face. It’s like a tree with half of its leaves,” Keir countered, then broke out into a smile. Brumewick seemed struck dumb, a frown stuck on his face until Keir started to worry it was real. When his own face dropped, Brumewick animated, and slapped him on the back.

“Good to see you, old dog,” he said. “Easy on the beard.”

Keir clucked at the rejoinder, then countered, “Were that true, you would have seen me as soon as you got back from Ashguard. You’ve had a week, now haven’t you? I’ve seen nary a gray hair, but your hair’s been white since I’ve known you. Can’t imagine that it’s I, too old for you.”

They sidled up under one of the gables. He’d stuck a wreathe up there just this morning, and it was starting to come askew. Good humor glittered in Graeme’s eyes and he pulled back. “Truly, Keir. You’ll want to hear this. Think of it as an… outgrowth of my work at Ashguard. Caught word from a crick, the Kryn, they’re sniffing around the Biting North. The Trust knows what for, too, but Saugiss has a mind that we ought to catch up. But,” he said, and raised his glass, gesturing out at where the hierarchs of the Brand had clustered. “I won’t steal Saugiss’s chance to explain his idea. He needed a wizard. I imagine… when the Martinet finds out, he’ll seethe that he put one of his own before King Dwendal for the expedition.”

“You’re saying…,” Keir replied.

“Your introduction panned out, Halstead. Took its time, I mark, but it panned out. Now, come on, I told him I’d pull you into the conversation. Give a nod to the guests as you do, though. Hate to give the Martinet any ideas,” Graeme said. Keir nodded along, slightly taken aback by his seemingly newfound savvy for the echelons of Rexxentrum aristocracy. His clothes– robes, in the colors of the Brand coatees– were tailored and well-fashioned. The fabric looked new. It was a far cry from the Graeme of five years prior, and made Keir almost feel shabby by comparison.

Swallowing his reticence, he came along with Graeme, stopping to kiss Fiona’s hand as he did. Graeme paused for a moment, stealing a hushed word with his wife, and he attended, politely a few feet away.

General Saugiss raised his glass as the two joined his tidy circle. His hairline had receded since Halstead had last been to Bladegarden, but he was every bit the barrel-chested old brass he remembered meeting fresh out of the academy. “What a… delight, this room,” Saugiss said. He had a trost in his hand, his cheeks already ruddy with what Halstead had to assume was only a polite amount of drink, and he paused to smile and point out every wreath Keir had hung up. The whole gathering clustered under one of the chandeliers, the one that hung a little askew. “I see why the Halsteads have remained a… household name, even in the royal councilroom.”

Keir nearly swallowed his tongue, then nodded, madly composing a response. Every option felt like a bad option when speaking on friendly terms with a superior. Graeme squeezed his shoulder, and put a flute of light wine in his hand. Finally, Keir nodded. “The credit must be given to my lady wife, Elspet. You’ve ah, met, haven’t you? I hear your son and his wife are expecting soon, General. You must be very proud.”

Saugiss grinned, his ruddy cheeks lifting into a well-worn rictus. “Ah, yes, Elspet. She… sent flowers for my son’s wedding. Holly and crocus, I recall, it was a touching gift. A boy, the doctors believe. Oh, but let me rescue you from such pointless small talk. I’m sure Mage Brumewick has already spilled some of the good news, tight-lipped as I know he’s tried to be,” he said, raucously, and nudged towards Graeme. “Wizards never can quite keep quiet about what gets them ticking, can they?”

“Nor can a general refrain from dressing one down, it would seem,” Graeme riposted, settling into an easy expression by Keir’s side.

“Not nearly enough, sir,” Keir replied, ignoring Graeme’s comment.

“Oh, please!” Saugiss interjected, “I will not be called ‘sir’ by a man of your quality, while a guest at your comfort, while standing under your roof. You will call me Mr. Saugiss, or you can call me Otto.”

“That’s as well, Mr. Saugiss,” Keir said, and the General nodded and raised his glass.

“Now, as I’m sure the Mage has implied, we’ve intercepted news of great interest from the cricks at border skirmish,” Saugiss began, then turned to one of the junior Officers. “Go on, boy, get the good Sir Halstead some more mulled wine. He looks parched for comfort, and we’re at his invitation!”

The boy ran off, and Saugiss turned, briefly glancing to the painting in the gallery. Keir thumbed his now-empty wine flute, and piped up, “Yes, something about the Biting North, was that it?”

“Right you are, or otherwise Mage Brumewick has spilled more than his due,” Saugiss said, shooting a dark look in good humor. “The Assembly has long opined that hints to the Calamity may yet lie on Eiselcross, but have seemingly not leapt at the opportunity to confirm it. Brumewick tells me it’s to do with the failure of teleportation magic to reach the islands, and otherwise the great difficulty of sailing northward. But King Dwendal, at this new intelligence from the cricks, has just commissioned a top-of-the-line icebreaker that can brave the frigid depths. And that’s where we have those damned wizards beat! Present company excluded, of course,” he added, and Graeme merely bowed his head, with a glint of returned humor.

“Exciting news, to be sure,” Keir said, and said a soft thank-you when the boy Officer placed a mug of mulled wine in his hand. “The Empire must needs stay competitive with the Dynasty, of course. Seems an odd time to be telling me about this all, though.”

“Good Sir Halstead,” General Saugiss said, with a jerk of his hand towards Graeme, “Why, I hardly agree. Inform the gentleman, if you please?”

“At Mr. Saugiss’s recommendation,” Graeme said, and took a long sip from his own mug for effect, “the King is willing to move forward with a plan which vests you with command of the expedition.”

Keir’s head spun, and he next remembered the whole group coming raucously around him, a toast from Saugiss, and everything growing difficult to follow until he ended right back up by the dessert table with Graeme. He hadn’t lost consciousness, merely, the whole of it had sorely overwhelmed him. He felt adrift at sea, with only the platters of tea-cakes, scones, and cookies to anchor him. Rather, their wives’ wondrous needlework, which lay undisturbed under the platters. He’d had servants act as buffers to prevent any overzealous revelers spilling wine over the doilies. It had happened once years ago, and the thought was wretched to consider.

“Not one for acclaim, I take it,” Graeme said, with a pitying, faint smile.

“Not one for crowds, I’m afraid,” Keir said. “If the soldiering life could be all ranging, horseriding, and travel, I think that’d suit me fine.”

“Oh, it can be,” Graeme said. “If you’re a grunt. But you’re a Halstead, and I’m a War-Mage in the Brand now. It’s a privilege we’re not sucking up mud for desserts in the Ashkeepers, I say.” There came a long pause.

“You never stop to sample your own hospitality. Awfully dogged, I say, too. Like an… old dog.”

“Lay off, you pest,” Keir said, and tidied up his plate to pile on a slice of hot pie. “It’s… merely a surprise. I’m no navyman, you know.”

“The King doesn’t want navymen serving his expedition. The navymen spend their days on loan to the Menagerie Coast, fighting pirates, and that. The Brand know the cricks. Know how they fight. And you’re decorated, Keir.”

Realization dawned in Keir, in equal horror and awe. “This was your recommendation, to General Saugiss,” he said, exhaling gently.

“Well, yes, ‘Good Sir Halstead’, he was going to assign me to be someone’s second, and I’d hate for that to be Truscan. King forbid, Denzala or Sauer…,” Graeme said, and drank long. “They weren’t going to take any other option. I’m hardly the only War-Mage they have, but I have the most experience in the Ashkeepers. And there was no chance any of the Brand hierarchy would have accepted an Assembly member. So, me. And so, you, old dog. Can you learn a few new tricks?”

Keir huffed through his nose. “For King and Empire.”

“You don’t want the glory?” Graeme countered. He was starting to pull away, angling off from the platters. Keir would soon be abandoned to his anchorage at the tableside, he knew. It was just as well. Rather, it was a natural part of the ebb and flow of the function… but he resented it for the short moment he could afford to resent.

“Perhaps it’s just been a long night, old friend,” Keir answered. “I’ll think more fondly on it in the morning, I’m certain. The glory, in no small measure, would well-suit the Halstead name. But tonight… for King and Empire, tell Saugiss I accept.”

“That I cannot do for you, I doubt he’d have it. But, Halstead, I’ll keep your company until you’re charged with seeing him out, if that suits you.”

Chapter 2

Graeme came up to flank Keir as they made their final approach on Icehaven. Snow was coming down hard, even in Thunsheer. The Biting North would be worse, he knew, but even now he clung to his cloak like a babe in a swaddle. Sheepishly, he’d briefly asked Graeme if he had spells to banish cold. He hadn’t, of course. There wouldn’t be any point to the magic, once they reached Eiselcross, Graeme claimed. Magic worked weirdly past the Frigid Depths. That was why the Assembly mages couldn’t just teleport in. It’s also why it fascinated them.

The first port recommended had been Uthodurn, but Saugiss had rejected the idea out of hand. There was too much risk of bald-faced interference on the Assembly’s part leaving from an independent port. Despite the more treacherous journey, Keir was glad to be leaving from Icehaven. They had a party of 45 good men to crew the ship, which was named The Zeideler, which had been tested twice now in short journeys into out between Icehaven and Bysaes Tyl.

Keir’s heart sank as they passed through the gates of the port. A whole battalion of Brand soldiers stood at parade to flank their journey to The Zeideler, headed up by Saugiss. It threatened to drag him into the same spell that afflicted him during the party. A spell he rather preferred to call ’loathing attention’. Further, the details of the expedition gave him cause for concern– a long stay in the southernmost isle, before Brumewick could develop means to push through what he described as a ‘dangerous magical disruption’.

Graeme was in good spirits, which was about the only consolation the day could offer short of a break in the snow, which didn’t at all thin in its driving fall. With a pang of ill humor, Keir remembered he had been forewarned to prepare a speech. He’d just hadn’t hoped to give it before half a thousand men or more. Hurrahs accompanied them down to the docks, where the shape of the bay whipped up the snow squall into a fierce, biting whip. Vested so with command, with a captain, named Werner Tressala, for the expedition at his subordinate, he was first onto The Zeideler, and when he stood with his hip at the bulwark the whole of the party waited on the quay. His heart sank further.

Graeme looked up. Keir could almost imagine the man’s words, complete with a good-natured jeer of old dog. Keir looked across the ship. Several huge chains ran down into the water, down past the bobbing plugs of ice that filled the span from quay to ship. They were piled over with snow and frozen to the anchor-lines. Hoarfrost ran up the ropes. The cold bound them to the masts, and the sails in kind. He spared a glance out towards the sea, which ran thick with floating, white-topped mountains, like the caps of murderous waves.

He cleared his throat, and began: “I’ve prepared a few words, ahead of this journey…” And those words were the last he remembered before being roused by the sounds of cheers, repeated exhortations of For King and Empire!, in an apparent echo of his own words. Captain Tressala was the second aboard, and then came Graeme, who said exactly what Keir had heard in his head. The rest of that day went by, bidding the crewsman to keep the deck clear of snow, and learning at Tressala’s hand the workings of The Zeideler. When it came down to the moment of pushing off, Keir found he could only rely on the Duskmaven’s favor, which he begged, inwardly. That the seas should be kind.

Their good fortune lasted until the end of the first week. Icehaven was surrounded by a quintet of barrier islands, which made ward against the worst of the Frigid Depths. The bay within alone, even in Thunsheer, had drawn the icebreaking mettle of The Zeideler into an echo of its tests out towards Bysaes Tyl. The great white floes made an awful shudder as they cracked through. The bow was enchanted to weather its scraping, but when the bergs grew tight, passage reduced to a crawl. At Keir’s order, Graeme blasted apart the ice with bolts of magic. At each splitting burst of force, he’d remark, chipper as ever into the biting wind, that things would grow worse once they fell beneath the spell of Eiselcross.

“As I’ve ever heard tell,” Graeme’d say, as sleet lashed their faces raw. “The cricks only know why the ice keeps magic at bay. The best of the Assembly, mark me, know less than I, and that’s only for the tell from Ashguard.”

Then Keir would give the word again, and Graeme threw his hands out wide, a staff clutched in his right, and the ice gave way another five yards. By the end of it, it was blue– the heart of it. Nights came and went. Through each night, the blue heart of the floes would stop their running, and grow thick with crystal teeth. When they lurched through at long last, Keir could scarcely spy the pair of islands, their last guardians, through the blowing of the gale. It threw piles of snow across the deck, staggering the men from their work.

On that day, the seventh, the end of the first week, The Zeideler made past the islands, and when they came about windward the gale hammered the ship’s pitch almost to the waterline. The deck was blown clear, and the ship was thrown skating tens of fathoms to the north, just clear of the islets’ icy bounds. The crew aboard was left clinging to the ropes, blasted by snow. All sound– if indeed any arose– was deafened, drowned beneath a new kind of silence entirely. And then, the spar came about.

If indeed any sound arose, it was deafened. One of the men, a decksman, was struck in the trunk and thrown into the sea. The ship was keeling too far towards the lee, coming about in a dragging arc already tens of fathoms from his fall for any to hope for his salvation. For Keir to hope for his salvation. They had all braced; Tressala had raised the call, and Keir had echoed it, high into the wind. The spar which ought to have been lashed had come loose and alive and there had been nothing to be done.

When the sea at last gave mercy, it was of a piteous sort. The bellowing winds still ran the deck, port to starboard. A pittance, Graeme said. The deck swabbed itself. Keir called up an assembly with a medallion from the hold. One of the Duskmaven’s, the last token to be afforded those who died without remains. Tanzer had been his name, Aurel. Keir smacked his lips to warm them, clasping a whistle to keep it from freezing raw, and blew a charge. Despite his faltering warmth, it still nearly froze to his lips. Graeme and Tressala came to his flank, cloaks flapping.

The spar groaned its mournful, doddering apology, cowed by the ropes that now– refastened– drew it down towards the larboard. Through it, Keir divined the Duskmaven’s attendance, and looked up, past the flurries to the airy eaves from which the gales had come and the great blue beyond them. The wind changed and swirled their coattails. Keir exhaled, like the rattle of the grave, and unstuck his tongue where it seemed doombound to chill to the roof of his mouth.

“The whistle will have to suffice, for the horn,” Keir said, faltering a breath. He gestured for time and swallowed. “Seaman Aurel Tanzer has been lost to us. We gather with heavy hearts to honor and bid farewell, as fellow charges in the King’s name, to one of our finest. Seaman Tanzer, in full knowledge and unbidden except by the charge of loyalty to his Empire, joined us on a journey he knew to be treacherous.”

The words came in pieces. Keir had them as a matter of recall, the aggregate memory of a thousand such ceremonies. But now they seemed to freeze as soon as they passed his lips, no matter how much he smacked them to keep them from freezing, like the flurries on his mustache. His skin felt like leather. His breath returned warmth to the inside of his mouth, each time he tried to speak. It was a losing battle.

Instead, it felt like the cold was getting in, freezing down the inside of his throat. It came as a sharpness within his nose and mouth. His breath rattled again. “And he did so… willing and ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, should the Duskmaven call him back to her side, to be free from the toils of life. In war as in duty, Seaman Tanzer made manifest the very meaning of valor. He proved himself a champion of the Empire, dauntless and unwavering in his commitment, in his keeping of Imperial virtue.”

His eyes felt glassy, as though frost clung to his lashes. The assembly around him furtively rubbed their hands. Even Graeme, constant, shifted around in his discomfort. Keir mustered his voice for a third and final bout, just as the wind started to well back up and the clouds started to pull in. “This day, we salute Tanzer and all others who have given their lives for the Empire. Let us recall their sacrifice, not solely in sorrow, but in glory. And may their souls see us safe on through to the end of our journey.”

He unfolded the parcel, with the medallion. “This medallion stands in for a last token of Seaman Tanzer. A tribute, to signify his passage beyond. A tithe, for the Duskmaven’s kind guidance,” Keir said, finally bidding his limbs to animate and to skirt over to the rail, overlooking the dark churn of the sea. “I bid it go now, carried by the depths to join him,” he said, and he spilled the medallion from his hand. Only when he rejoined Graeme did he notice a chill by his wrist. The cufflink, stamped with Gulvain, had come undone. Perhaps lost to the churn as well, Keir mused, and the wind redoubled.

Soon again the Frigid Depths revealed their ravin. The floes were inescapable, hounding them on all sides as they pitched ever further north. A pair of funerals came and went, the first tolled to hammering ice, crushing first the leg and then severing clean through an artery as a petty officer strained against the weight of The Zeideler, the second trying to free him, as the ship tipped back about. Both wrenched from the clutches of any who could save them. Any sound drowned under a howling across the ice. Two more medallions given to the sea.

There’d be an ice sheet ahead of Eiselcross, Graeme said, on the windward side of Frostbogen, where the sheets piled up in the winter. Frostbogen would be their first and best hope, solid ground from which to catch herring and restock for the return. Then, Keir recalled, the wizard would have to get to work. The Wizard. Graeme stood by the prow, most days, and they shared what few words were necessary, and scarcer still which could make it through the howling of the wind.

They had lost only three by the entrenchment, as the ice sheet split ahead of The Zeideler. On the far edge rose what could have been the white peaks of an islet, or perhaps rather frigid spires rising from the sea. Day by day, blasting powder stole a few fathoms further inland, but Graeme remained unconvinced. He hadn’t felt any slippage of control in his magic. This proceeded until mid-Unndilar, when at last the two sheets parted and The Zeideler passed, almost merry in the toss of its masts, through a lagoon in the sheet. With a slow release of breath, Graeme intoned what ought to have sounded like good news– he had felt the first stutters in his arcane power. They had reached Eiselcross.

And in Eiselcross, it seemed, as flurries relentlessly lifted from the horizon and brushed across The Zeideler, they would summer. The ship plodded along, spurred by a weak southerly drift, no doubt far crueler to the north, where it slung the great hunks of ice around them from the glaciers. With a tightening in his gut, Keir once again entreated the Duskmaven for kindness. A kindness that he hoped would be offered. Ahead, Graeme stood at the prow, unflappable. Perhaps Graeme was the one to entreat– their fates rested with the Brumewick mage, now. And with the King’s curiosity.

Keir wondered whether it had been that Graeme had thought him too simple to follow what explanations he might offer for the perplexities of this place, or the fault had been his in not asking. He felt as though frozen to the slick of the deck, only ten fathoms removed from his friend, but kept apart all the same. When the feel of the spell at last ebbed, he turned, keen on discerning if Tressala’s preparations were on schedule. When he made back over, Graeme had fastened up his cloak and moved on towards the interior.

Whatever had transpired between them in that briefest of spans, though only Keir had actually been facing Graeme, his counterpart brought about as though scrying the deep black sea, or the battered plugs of ice, it had welled up and ended. There was nothing more there.

Chapter 3

Dark. Dark was the word which best befit an Eiselcross summer, for a dour Brussendar of black skies at night which wheeled into gray dawns, nearly bleeding into their dusks, until each darkness’s return. Keir had spoken of the Duskmaven’s embrace, a coldness, a coldness beyond warmth and a relief from all toil. That was what Keir thought of as he warmed his insides with a tight ration of liquor, each small and aseptic sip from a jigger-glass rationed over the minutes he spent on perimeter around the encampment they had made on the southernmost spur of the islet. It was hardly an islet, in truth, more a convergence of the vast sheets around Frostbogen and the bars running off of its windward side.

The nights were spent watching the cetuses take their wide arcs. Perhaps, was a thought Keir might have busied himself with, they knew better than to come so close. Graeme spent most of his days busied from waking to long after dusk entrenched in his work. Keir had spent two weeks now in the process of building up to ask for the cliffnotes, for anything that might assure him something at all was being done. He’d stopped shaving, but Graeme had kept with it. He was always in that same tidy way, as though timeless. It perplexed Keir in the extreme.

There was a long passage that they’d carved into the ice, about a foot deep, from where The Zeideler sat moored, cupped on all sides by the ice. Tressala claimed the water its keel touched was still liquid, and on days when the sun made a brief procession from behind the cloud cover, Keir almost believed it, when the ice around the walls of the ship welled up as though weeping. The trench ran all the way to the encampment, where a canopy of skins stood over a pit several feet deep they had cut into the thaw and packed down. It defied all sense, but the ice was shockingly warm when it surrounded on all sides, and when the weather turned bitter, all 44 of them huddled in.

In the taut splay of the canopy, with the whole of the crew gathered underneath, Keir saw the suggestion of the rafters and the gables of the Odessloe house. The men busied themselves with working songs and chatter. Tressala sat opposite him, wringing a bundle of warming herbs through his hands. He had a wizened sort of look to him, honed in the Frigid Depths, there could be no doubt. There were lines like riverbeds in his face where the wind had driven sleet through. He was dour. Keir found him a difficult subordinate, though not for any matter of disobedience.

Keir stoked the fire with a blackened iron rod. “Sir Halstead. Your wizard,” Tressala said. The span between words was lengthened by a plop, plop, plop, as snow bowed the canopy, and the man worked the herbs through his hands. “The men are relentless in asking. How soon can we pass onward?”

“I spoke to him just this morrow,” Keir said, more into the fire than anything apart. The smoke rose through a tight o in the skins overtop. Where the snow piled on, the skins seemed to shrivel and grow whitish, like the windows at home. “Mage Brumewick remains at work, and longer hence will.” Tressala’s features grew thin, perhaps weighted in disappointment. “Tell the men, yourself,” Keir continued. “We simply must entrench.”

The wind drove for weeks in vain, rallying against the canopy. Where the snow-filled bouts of each gale had previously carried with them the strength to throw men bodily into the sea, in attempts to thrash The Zeideler to splinters. Now, it only forced snow up and over the ice in huge dune-like piles. The trench-path had been buried, and The Zeideler was brought closer as the ice began to ebb. Graeme had begun taking long spells closer to the land, though cautioned them from moving onto the shore, even as the ice grew thin.

He came upon Graeme by the rim of the sheet, where the ice had stacked against the shore. He had struck a canopy there, and underneath, into the ice, he had drawn a contrivance Keir had no description for. There were books splayed out, and a chisel Brumewick had which he gathered was intended for carving into the sheet. Keir stopped at what he made to be a stoop. “Mage Brumewick,” he said.

A steady chink-chink-chink, the work of the chisel, came to a stop. Graeme straightened his back and came about, and replied, “Keir.” Then he spread his arms, indicating the circles under his tent, scoffing faintly to clear his throat. “My handiwork,” he said, with a waggle of his hand, playing at humility. After another pause, Graeme turned his chin up, coming to look at Keir fully. “You need another report, for the men. The information we gained, at Ashguard, it was incomplete. The crick didn’t understand it any better than I did, several weeks ago,” he finished, but faintly narrowed his eyes.

“No,” Keir said. “That isn’t quite it, Graeme. They do, they’ve been asking,” he continued, stepping a little past the stoop. He set his eyes on a bench that Graeme must have been using to rest, if not to sleep. Graeme gave him a little nod, with a firmer look reserved for him than he had fixed when Keir entered. “But the expedition is you, Graeme. For the glory of it, maybe, but I can’t say you’re just my charge, here. I’ve not made your work my interest before, and that’s partly for lack of understanding it. Today, though. Thought I’d repay the honor back.”

Graeme slipped the chisel into a leather sheathe and folded up his books. For a worried moment, Keir realized the extent of how far they had drifted; indeed, it had been weeks since they’d shared more than brief company at mess in the mornings, though Graeme kept that distance with everyone as Keir knew it. That moment drew on as Graeme stood, as he looked around, appearing almost small and lost, with his white hair a little askew on his head. And then he sat down next to Keir with a dogged look in his bleary eyes.

“So, a report for you. I can do that, old dog, but I can’t understand it for you,” Graeme said, and then a smile split through his face. “That means you’ll have to get faster on the uptake, I should think. But–” a beat, as the smile dropped, and something more like genuine affection took its place– “I see the respect, Halstead. The typical War-Mage’s command has never much taken an interest,” he finished, and he wet his lips.

Keir pulled back, then for the briefest of moments, Graeme put a hand on his shoulder, and with the other picked up a journal, split it face-open, and put it in Keir’s lap.

“I told you the Assembly thought the storms around Eiselcross, the unseasonable coldness of the Frigid Depths might have its roots in the Calamity, and the Age of Arcanum. That would have suggested a divine origin, but the magic is… arcane. It resembles what was spoken of in the Halls of Erudition as ‘wild magic’. The ice is hiding something,” Graeme said, and a presence came to his eyes as he spoke, one Keir had never before seen in his friend.

“You mean this metaphorically, of course,” Keir said, “or should we treat the ice itself as a foe?”

“No. Not yet, anyway,” Graeme answered. His eyes went askew, to the sigil on the ground. “I’ve nearly finished tracing it, the cross-section of the magic. You can’t feel it, but we’re caught in a storm, one that rages purely within the weave of magic. It’s like… pulling the fibers on a loom taut, stretching a blanket, and snipping some of the threads. They curl and snarl, and between here, this island, Frostbogen, and Foren, the bigger one, I don’t think we can pass. It’s as though magic itself has gone mad. If nature alone were not enough, convinced and set for our demise as it is, so too is the magic here. We would be beset from the land, from the sea, from the air.”

Keir strained to follow, but the wizard made less sense as he proceeded. Still, one indelible fact became perfectly clear to him, and he gave it voice. “You are doing your nation proud, Graeme, and I by it. Should the King hold the means to travel and study these islands, he will have yet another tool arrayed against the Assembly’s proliferation. Their reach eclipses his too thoroughly. But you, Graeme, are an exemplar of the Imperial mage. Do not let the men’s treatment of you let you forget it.”

Graeme laughed, but did not share Keir’s enthusiasm. Keir looked off briefly, but the sound of Graeme’s voice called him back, even as he took his hand from Keir’s shoulder. “Remember, we are beset on all sides, whether or not we feel it. It will be around us in full once the ice thins and we must stand on dry land. That is the kind of storm I tell you surrounds us. I have its shape, but shape alone isn’t enough. Tomorrow, I will need parties to take me onto the islet. I need to inscribe a kind of stabilizer, something to weigh down its winds.”

“You have explained it, as you can, then, Graeme?” Keir inquired, and Graeme nodded, his breath coming suddenly short. Keir huffed. “I have tried to understand. But, its as you said, fortune-teller. You can’t understand it for me.”

“No,” Graeme said, with a distinct slip to his grin. “It’s a fact that has stymied many a professor, at the Halls and elsewhere. The aptitude isn’t learned in a conversation, and certainly not by a dour old boor like you.”

“Yes, well,” Keir said, and then he took out his jigger-glass and whiskey, proffering some to Graeme, “I can’t say you don’t look or sound the part for the wiry old tutor.”

Then, Keir very nearly pulled away, and crossed back over the stoop for the canopy. But Keir instead asked a question which, in a less fraught environment, he might have blamed Tressala for: “How much longer will it take, Graeme? The work on Frostbogen, after the thaw.”

Never before had Keir more clearly perceived defeat in Graeme. He scooted back along the makeshift bench, and with unreadable blue eyes, replied, “Fessuran, the end. Or Quen’pillar. The cricks did not understand it as I do now, I say this, Sir Halstead.”

Keir heaved out a low sigh. “The freeze will have begun, and deepened still. We allotted provisions to winter, but the men are not prepared for it.”

“Then we won’t winter,” Graeme shook his head. “That assumed no magic, but we’ll have magic, Keir. If I can assuage this… storm,” he said.

“If,” Keir echoed, resenting how low the response felt.

“Fine, when,” Graeme retorted, and Keir broke off, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You’d chance the lives of 43 men, and I, on if,” Keir began. “I entreat you, Graeme, think clearly. The Brand already recognizes you for your… singularity, as a mage. You needn’t be a miracle-worker, too. That’s more than we can demand of anyone, more than I can demand of you.”

Graeme shook his head in turn. “Not on if, Keir, on my magic. At Ashguard, they entrusted whole centuries on my magic. If a crick’s spell broke through, if I couldn’t counter it in time, fifty, sixty dead. I am equipped to guard the lives of forty, my conscience is clear.”

“Against the cricks!” Keir retorted.

“We no less understand their magic, Keir. The Assembly’s just too proud to tell you. Ashguard… it might as well be the Calamity out there.”

“Three are dead already, Graeme,” Keir said. “Men you ate with. I will take word to Captain Tressala, and we will return, not as victors, but as valiant servants. Then we will return. For King and Empire,” Keir said.

“And the cricks will have beaten us,” Graeme replied. Keir began to pull away, and Graeme leapt to his feet in a flash, returning his hand to Keir’s shoulder with surprising strength. His arms were thin as ever, but there was a steely fervor in his eyes. “Fine, yes. You speak truly, Quen’pillar is too much to ask. But I entreat you, let me make the first stabilizer. I…” Graeme stumbled, “I know the place, I just need a party, on the islet. If the first takes too long, I will go back with you. This I swear to you, Keir, on Good King Dwendal.”

Keir paused, and he let his head fall. Defeat was a bitter thought to him as well, one he did not relish. His mind returned to Saugiss, at the party. His remarks. That ‘Halstead’ remained a household name in the Imperial court, the dress Elspet saw in Rexxentrum, for the coming-of-age of the Crown Prince. The invitation he returned, stamped with Gulvain’s face. Tristen, in the gallery. “Fine,” Keir said.

The black waters that had grown between the sheet of ice and the islet, full of big, bobbing plugs of ice, rippled gently beneath them, pacific in the absence of wind. They were loaded into dinghies, rowed out from The Zeideler, where it was anchored against the sheet. The spray from the sea leapt up and into the boats. It turned to ice along the oars, and frost along their cloaks. The cold was worst where the surf inside that ice-floe lagoon met the shore, which was piled high with ice and snow.

A party of marines were first onto the shore, with Graeme at their heels. When all of the dinghies had been pulled up onto the beach, Keir stood a moment unceremoniously before realizing that the men had assembled for his direction.

He took a shaky breath, then glanced at Graeme. The wizard seemed even more trimmed than he had been prior, stately and ironclad in his course of action. Keir scried him for any hint of wavering, then settling his gut, began: “Mage Brumewick has convinced myself and Captain Tressala that the magical phenomena exhibited further into the Biting North are of arcane origin, and can indeed be controlled by the practice of magic. A party of six marines and six seaman will accompany Mage Brumewick for his work on the northern part of Frostbogen. The remainder will remake camp here until his signal.”

Keir looked out at the assembly. His look garnered only a nod from Graeme.

“Good. On his completion, we return to Icehaven. Prepare statements for the King.” He paused, as though his tongue had frozen to the roof of his mouth. “Until then, Mage Brumewick is vested with command. For King and Empire,” Keir said.

For King and Empire, came the response. Graeme nodded further approval, then selected 12 companions, and set off.

Late Fessuran arrived, with no word from Brumewick. The brief reprieve summer had bought them from the driving snows and wind was starting to ebb. At Tressala’s word, Keir set out with another dozen for Brumewick’s last location, drawing sleds and dinghies for fear of risking the waters where the ice tightened up around the shore. It took two days to reach the site Graeme had indicated, and they came upon a much reduced camp by morning, where a pair of marines and a seaman sat preparing breakfast.

“Where’s the Mage?” Keir demanded. The men roused, and staggered to attention.

“A week gone now,” the senior marine said. “Mage Brumewick said we had completed our work far faster than expected, that he might manage both necessary before the freeze comes. The… sigil, he said. It’s just over the hill,” the marine finished, indicating a nearby rise.

Keir waved terse refusal. He pulled out the journal Graeme had stuck in his hands, and suppressed the seething anger in his chest. There was a second feeling, too, one he resented in himself: the hope that Graeme might have succeeded. As they traveled west by northwest, the wind picked up. Across Frostbogen, snow swept like a great white blanket. They brought the two marines and the seaman with the party, drawing the sleds along. The ground cambred up, cutting off sight just ahead. Keir swore; his cloak had come undone.

Bereft of his sight, Keir’s attention restricted to his hearing. They trudged onwards, as a distinct whistling began to pick up in the air. The shape of the islet, as they had seen it earlier in Brussendar, lent its shape to the howl of the gale. It made it seem alive. Disquieted, Keir recalled what Graeme had said about the storm. The storm he could not see. The storm that promised to meld with another storm entirely, the one that was present for them all.

He found himself walking in a white void. The marines were all around him, in a tidy circle. He shouldered Taibhselann as he shoved on, and he kept patting his cheek, when the wet of the snow, the sharpness of the rivulets, brought to mind the distinct fear he was bleeding. In time, the screams became their new silence, as had been the case on The Zeideler, before Tanzer was lost to the Depths. When it ebbed in its violence, it was as though silence itself grew quieter. He could feel his extremities going.

Worst was the cracking. It was only sometimes audible, like a splitting in the ice somewhere beyond immediate vision. It could have been under the snow, and there would have been no way to tell. For the time being, the snow did not give way. It merely quieted, or otherwise grew too far away to hear. Their surroundings returned to that odd sort of silence.

Their camp suffered the same conditions. Dinner was carried out in silence, and as they piled into their tents, they were subject to the drifting of the snowbank beneath them, and piles of snow as they tumbled down over the tent skins. Sleep was fleeting until the void around them turned from dim gray to white, with no great improvement in visibility. The night was fraught with that same continuous sound of splitting, though its source avoided making any appearance.

Late into the morning, the snow faded, and was replaced with a thick and dismal fog. The wind at last quieted, sparing his ears, but leaving his imagination to grapple with a far worse, deeper silence. In that quiet, Keir could more keenly hear the clink of every shifting section of ice. In what visions he strained to make out, through the dense fog, assisted only by the worried huddle of his men and the guesswork his ears could support, he sensed the entire island coming apart, like the ice sheets splitting apart in summer. But that higher splitting sound did not resurface.

There came no confirmation of any rapid, horrifying fate, drawn into the sea by the ground beneath his feet. Instead, a different sound made it through the fog– the sounds of toil. Graeme’s voice. Immediately, Keir shoved forward. “Mage Graeme Brumewick!” Keir shouted, animated by a rage that didn’t quite feel his own. “Explain yourself!”

“Keir,” a voice replied from the fog, somewhere ahead and just left. Graeme’s. “It is still Fessuran, by my count– the work is done!”

Keir rushed forward, until Graeme, crouched over something indistinct, beside a shabby little lean-to, became visible through the fog.

“It’s all done,” Graeme repeated. “It just remains to…” he nodded, as though making an understatement. “Test it. Now, there were a few issues…”

“The issue–” Keir cried out, in a high pitch– “The issue is insubordination, Mage Brumewick! Done or not, you have exploited my trust and the command I have vested you with!”

His voice echoed across the ice, to join that strange clinking sound. Keir trudged up and picked the wizard up by the lapels. Graeme shrunk back, forming a protest on his lips.

“You have dishonored yourself and your Empire. You have jeopardized the lives of these men!”

“I have saved the mission,” Graeme said. “I have–”

A searing red flash cut through the fog. It came from the south; the main camp. Tressala. The Zeideler. A flare. No, a signal. Keir let Graeme down, and stepped back, shaking his arms out. “Go!!” Keir shouted, and rushed past the lines of marines. Shaken from his stupor, he thought he spied Graeme sprinting after him, but couldn’t be sure.

He couldn’t have been sure how long they ran. All supplies were left at Graeme’s camp, which was indeed nearer to the anchorage of The Zeideler than Graeme’s point A. The sound of the camp at muster arose, as the fog broke and was replaced by upswirlings of snow from the sea winds. Through the clearing, Keir saw Tressala and the rest of the marines standing at the lip of a high hill. The ice before them was split, as though large chunks had fallen towards the sea. No, it hadn’t split– it was splitting.

Keir met Tressala’s eyes, his frenzied rush carrying him to the edge of the rift. “The signal,” he made out, breathing hard. “Tressala. You signalled.”

The man turned his head, indicating the far-off shore with his look. The tent was in tatters. Bodies. Seared black. Keir counted the men with Tressala. Nine remained. Then, that cracking sound returned. Tressala backed up; Graeme began sweeping his eyes in a wide, frantic arc. The wind billowed, and Tressala passed behind another curtain of snow, before Keir’s vision cleared again.

Then it changed direction. The wind wasn’t towards them now, it was up. The snow lifted from the ground in a huge shower. No, not wind, something else. The ice shelf fractured. Keir couldn’t see the marines on the hill. He caught a stray look at Tressala, and then something blue as the ice itself. There was a horrible hiss, like steam, and then there was quiet, but for the shuffling of the men on the hill. Keir counted seven, now. And then he pulled Taibhselann.

There was a glimmer of blue in the crack ahead, and Keir swung down. There was a hiss as a spray of scalding blood struck his arm. He fell to his knees and punched through snow. Graeme followed his lead. Keir saw the glint first, as a swirl of sigils came up around his hand and streaking magical stars drove forth. The creature pelted back.

“That’s tested,” Graeme said. “We…” he breathed heavily. “Must have disturbed it.”

The creature came about again. It came down hard on his party, now, which had fallen out in a loose line. Two marines took the brunt of its rush. The smell of cooking flesh filled the air– three scalded, fatally by any assessment– as more of the thing’s blood hissed, rapidly cooling in the cold. Matron, the cold. His fingers were freezing to the haft. “What is it?” He bellowed, rage still welling from his chest.

“Remorhaz,” Graeme said. The creature bore down. Graeme swung his arms wide, the sigils returning like crystals suspended in the air. The smell of ozone, a hideous crack, and several segments of the creature’s body burst open. Keir swung his axe down into its chitin, and it writhed, horribly. There were little skittering legs underneath that pulled it along the ice, as though driven to cool.

Graeme shuddered forward. “To the shore,” he said, sounding more uncertain than Keir had ever heard. The bulk of the men, those that survived, those that weren’t charred yet, were cowed by the bank. Tressala’s men were looking about with wild eyes.

Keir resolved himself. “Do it,” he said. Graeme seemed to be shaking, even as they clustered with Tressala. Keir straightened his back, struggling to hide how shaken he felt. Matron, his hands were shaking, and his tongue was as though frozen to the roof of his mouth. He shouted, from a raw throat, “Marines, form a line. Weapons against shields! Clamor! Now!!”

Graeme stepped back, as though making a discreet exit. It wormed through Keir’s head, the way he was backing up. But Keir was already angry. He gave Graeme a nod.

Graeme cast a spell. The splitting sound continued, but there was no sign of the creature, that… Remorhaz. Nothing immediately transpired.

“What’s the plan, Brumewick?!” Keir said. Graeme made no response. And then the air split. It happened again, two white flashes. In an instant, there stood Morwyn Wylock and another, whom Keir did not recognize. Both wore Assembly robes. The disquiet in Keir’s gut deepened. Both came forward.

Keir heard Graeme cry out, “Fifteen men remain!” Keir counted them– it was true.

Wylock and the other came forward. “Join hands,” he ordered.

“Do it!” Graeme echoed.

Keir turned towards him, incredulous. His mind was spinning; he hardly felt the cold. He bellowed out, “Was this your plan, Graeme?”

“No,” Graeme said, joining hands with Wylock, and with nine others. “Not at first,” he said. “Not like this.”

“Not until you made it so,” Graeme said, and then he, Wylock, and the seven others vanished. And then Keir felt a strange tugging sensation, and Frostbogen, too, vanished.

Epilogue 1

Soon, it was Duscar again, and all throughout the Odessloe house ballroom, Elspet was busy with needling the doilies for the tables, and the streamers. They put up wreathes over the inside siding of each gable. They put up cheery little candles, and when Keir passed in front of Tristen, in the gallery, he looked Gulvain in the painted eyes with a dour little look. The wolfhound seemed to look knowingly back. Whether it was loyalty or disgruntlement, Keir could never quite tell.

It was the size of the room, Keir concluded. The distance between the walls, the space between the rafters, the height of each window. Those qualities were to blame for how drafty the room got, how it could never quite keep out the chill in the winter. Elspet kept moving between the tables, furtively. She was thinking something sad and discreet, but Keir knew the form it must have taken. She was wondering why Fiona couldn’t be here to help her set up.

Keir pitied her that. He could never impress upon her the weight of the insult Graeme had done him, then. He had hijacked the expedition. Had they returned in late Sydenstar, as Keir had impressed, 29 men would have kept their lives. 29 able soldiers of the Righteous Brand. 29 funerals, 29 effects that a token of the Duskmaven had to stand in for. And he had sold it to the Assembly, those underminers of King Dwendal’s reign. Graeme Brumewick bought a house in the Tangles. They had spoken on the topic much earlier, even picked out a house. It was a house which faced the Candles, with high windows and spacious rooms. It was three doors from Keir’s manor in the city.

He banished the thought from his mind, and set to bringing out the tables. There would be no dessert table, this year, he decided. Keir had hired a chef in lieu. Dinner would be eaten seated, in several courses. He busied himself with the utensils, rejoining with Elspet to fix their outfits. King Dwendal and General Saugiss would be in attendance, and he would have to meet the Brand’s party at the Odessloe gates. He looked forward to that most of all, only second to the relief when it ended, and he could rest. When he could release the dogs from the kennels, and they could pad inside, and he could sleep in front of the fireplace. The room still had two chairs, ahead of the painting of Malcolm Halstead, but Elspet never used the other. Even the dogs preferred his lap.

He and Elspet were in their evening attire long before the runner came to alert him of Saugiss’s arrival. As they turned the corner to the main road towards the gate, he cheerily recounted the faces in the party, Saugiss, Denzala, Truscan, and a retinue of lieutenants. There was another face, in Mage’s attire, a new face he didn’t recognize. Cheerily, Saugiss introduced her as Ingrid Meer. They shook hands, Elspet hiked her skirts, and they all returned to the ballroom.

Much of it was a reserved affair, in the end. Dwendal’s party were the next to arrive, and finally several other nobles from around the Zemni fields. As the dinner bell neared, most guests settled down to their assigned tables. Elspet’s skill, it turned out, was evident in the harmonious conversations which seemed to fill the room. The time before dinner wound down to ten minutes, and a runner announced a late arrival. Keir made for the door.

Just beyond stood Wylock and the Martinet, with a coiffure of white hair further back– Graeme. The retinue from the Cerberus Assembly. Keir began to pull away from the door, with a thin smile spanning his features. Graeme gave him only a courteous look as he withdrew, and the Assembly sat down on the far side of the room. Still, amid the polite conversation, the constant rounds of meetings, and the frost-speckled windows, Keir caught his vision finding the dessert tables, where they would have stood. But never once did his gaze wander across the room.

When it was all over, he found Malcolm in the gallery, and tried to match his expression.

Epilogue 2

Dawn came to the Candles. The academy dorms were shabby, in her opinion, but she’d gone from her home in the Tangles, which was large, and empty, to this room, which was small, and full. She wriggled over the edge of the bed, still adjusting to height, to being long enough that her feet stuck off the end of her bed. She looked down at the bunk below, where there was a whorl of red hair rammed straight into a pillow.

“Annie?” She said.

“Eddie?” Came the reply, muffled by the pillows.

“I think I have to leave soon, Annie,” she said, and rolled until the ceiling spun overhead, but not so much that she fell down from the bunk. Her trunk was disassembled on the floor, but it was her kind of dissassembly. Everything was in stacks, so it was different, but still a blatant protest against this injustice. “I don’t want to leave soon, Annie.”

“It isn’t fair, Eddie,” said the mass of red hair and sheets.

“I know it isn’t fair, Annie, but it’s really not that far. It’s three times as far as Odessloe,” she said, matter-of-factly, “but not half as far as Zadash. And you go to Odessloe four times a term, so you can go see me once every term, plus a second time every third.”

There was a shuffling from the bed beneath, and what started as a low groaning, “Ohhhhh, that’s not how that works, Eddie!”

“Sure it is,” she said, “I’m plenty important, and you said you’d rather stay here with me than go to see your Malcolm and his mean old dog.”

The bottom bunk creaked, with another groan of protest. She wasn’t sure whether it was from the mop of red hair or the bed. “Be reasonable, Eddie! It isn’t fair. You should get mad. Professor Margolin has to help. If you told Miss Elspeth to ask, I bet Dad might do something…”

“Annie,” she groaned. “You know I’m a Brumewick…”

“Eddie,” the mop said into the bed. Then it rolled over, and Henriette Brumewick looked down at Annetta Halstead, with wide blue eyes. “You know I don’t really see you as a Brumewick. Not one of those Assembly lapdogs, anyway. Just… fight it, please! I hate when you give up, because… well, that’s magic! You said you believed it could do anything.”

“Yeah, but Old Marg doesn’t teach any debt avoidance magic. Plus, all Mom’s ancestors were decrepit old wizards. If they could do debt avoidance magic, they totally would have,” Henriette said. She looked down, morosely. “Please say you’ll come visit me, Annie.”

“Gods, okay. I’ll come and visit you, Eddie, in Nogvurot,” Annetta replied, and reached up to the upper bunk. “Now come on down.”

“Once a term, and twice every third, Annie,” Henriette said. “Gods, just give me a hug, alright?”

“If you come on down, Eddie,” Annetta replied.

Henriette fiddled over to the ladder, then swung over the edge until she could lower herself to the ground. Finally, she wormed her lips into a little grimace, and got over to pack up her trunk. “Now come hug me,” she said, having a hard time mustering the resolve to turn around. She felt freckled arms tighten around her midsection, and she twisted about, and buried her face in Annetta’s big mop of red hair. Then she tipped her head down so as not to get any snot on her shirt.

“Are you crying, Eddie?”

“Gods, just shut up, Annie,” Henriette replied.

“We can say this year is one of the third years.”

The Snowling Queen

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 18:00:00 -0500

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

WENDELL: A wizard's apprentice and Willow's brother.
WILLOW: A wizard's apprentice and Wendell's sister.
WORMWOOD: A talking rook and Wendell's familiar.
SILANIA: Queen of the Snowling Fairies.
WAX: A Snowling Fairy and Knight.
TAM: Tamarlin, Younger sister of Silania and a Snowling Fairy.
LIE: A Snowling Fairy and Herald.
MAGGY: A Snowling Fairy and friend of Tam.
A NAIAD: A river spirit in the Snowling Grove.
A REAPER: A psychopomp from the realm of the dead.

THE PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus.

Look north, in Ettinhome, our tale is sown,
Two siblings, plucked from hearth by crones perverse,
Now from the heath, their master’s newly flown,
Where biting winds turn wintry airs for worse.
Left sealed within that wizard’s dire tow’r,
These siblings plot their master’s circumvent.
Impel’d to rivalry by their mentór;
Gave each a clutch of eggs to win ascent.
The brother, fearing loss but more for kin,
To speed his sister’s chance his own task spurns,
Among the fairies wicked plots he spins,
And winning much, but losing more, returns.
A pair of dragons’ eggs and kinful wards,
Give us our plot, attending your regards.

ACT I

SCENE I
A tower standing in a forest, early day.
Enter Willow, Wendell.

WENDELL: O sister mine, I ask thee how I may,
Assist thee in this task of Master's giving,
I know it to be likely his design,
A task I fear not one can do alone.

WILLOW: O brother mine I had not met thee since
Were our tasks giv’n-- I'll receive thee hence.

WENDELL: I say I think it to be his design,
But rather know 'tis true he'd wish us quarrel.
To frustrate him I give freely my aid,
And for the fact that thou art blood of mine.
For many a mage of greater tier hath found,
Even the brood of a sole dragon's clutch,
Of great perniciousness

WILLOW: Indeed.
Look here, ’tis only that thou’rt blood of mine,
Might I accede to chance at thy design
And hold, thee! Brother, heed too caution, sense--
I’d chance to task thee at thy own expense.
Assure me, that thy own clutch thou hast cared,
And, surely thou hast not one effort spared.

WENDELL: Evasive. I say, thee that my clutch is sound in hand,
If I should part it but for one erránd.

WENDELL: Aside. I lied not: ’tis ‘stable’ for I've not begun;
Cruel Master works to send us 'gainst to wroth,
These ends that he would see us forced onto,
And see us rent apart; This chance I would,
Not wilf'ly pass into the hands of fate,
As once the hags abduct'd us from our hearth;
For hearth again I'll lend my fortune out,
To thee, O sister mine, that I shall ne'er
Towards thee oppose.

WILLOW: For in thy reck'ning thou hadst not forgot,
That Master wish'd to spur us to a wroth,
Indeed; that thou wouldst help warméth my heart,
Than count'nance what thee he wish'd me impart,
And most joyous is it to flourish forth,
From but a single root which had thence forked,
In parity thence flowered. Now say I,
From far, the Snowling Grove I have espied,
Is plant'd a flower grown of magic ice.
I beg thee pluck it from the fairies' vice.

WENDELL: Then hurry forth I will and further take,
That I might race thy clutch's expiry;
Without the magic brought on by this bloom,
Thy dragon brood would else be misbegot.

WILLOW: I know not how thy clutch can spare thy care,
To pry shall not thy aid secure.

WENDELL: ‘Tis fair!

WILLOW: Then fare thee well, O brother mine, who go’st,
But trifle not with fairies what thou sow’st.

WENDELL: Aye, 'tis a lesson I have surely learned,
But rather thou must think first of thyself,
For Master shall count thee adept, to turn
Me to thy will and on this errand send,
Yet wary be to his blackest of plots,
For favor from him never once endures.
O sister mine now go, but mark thee well,
Ne'er once spurn thou what thou can freely take.

WILLOW: Truly thou speak'st O brother mine.

Exit Willow.

WENDELL: Be damned, thee, Master, for this axe betwixt
Her and my fate. But it shall come to naught,
For thy good favor I shall ever spurn,
'Tis nonetheless as sour as the fruit,
Of apples deep into the winter's chill,
And for this her fate I would never chance,
So flounder now O Master thusly vexed.
But chance this and to her reveal my plot?
No, I think not, for to her tears inspire,
Or otherwise spur her to it exploit,
'Twould be a fruit far sourer indeed,
Therefore I damn thee all the same alone,
In solitude, that I shall come to reap,
My pride as brother when she should flourish.
The weight of curses were upon me laid,
O Master, in thy hate and in thy grace,
Moreso thy favor hath afflicted me,
In moments when thou’st picked me over her,
Ay, she, th’ fitter deserver of thy grace.
Insooth! I say she doth deserve’t, for I,
Am bound to speak but truth by such a hex,
By thou, who sought’st to laden on one more,
By thy hex too my step was crooked turned,
And bugs I must devour by the hand,
And otherwise fear the kiss of iron,
Like th’same when giv’n the vitriolic oil,
Didst thou hope that so struck dumb and lame,
Dispell’d of tooth or claw and favorless,
That I would be spurred thence to fall in line,
And not oppose thee thereafter the same?

WENDELL: Aloud. Come ye, Wormwood!

Enter Wormwood.

WORMWOOD: Aye, master!

WENDELL: To himself. My sister sends me to the Snowling Grove,
Thou hast it, Queen Silania-of-the-Snow,
Thy reign is spread across that wintry copse,
As wise as I am to thy claiming court,
Which claims the flower she hath sent me for,
Thy royal prize hath lain it in its hive,
And circl'd by thy wintry bees, I shall
Not take it lest thou givést it to me.
Yet fairies, caprice is what rules your hearts,
Thy sister, Queen, is jealous of thy reign,
If surely I can turn she against thee,
A boon she would be therefore bound to give.

WENDELL: Quick Wormwood, quick, and hasten thee[fix] on wing!
To Tam the Snowling quickly thou report!

WORMWOOD: Aye, master, aye!

WENDELL: And go, then Wormwood, by the gate we'll meet.

WORMWOOD: Aye, master, I shall take swift wing, for I,
Among the other rooks cannot compare,
For none can match my speed.

Exit Wormwood.

WENDELL: I will go now and first seclude my clutch,
So that nor sister nor Master can find,
Even prepared I must be quick anon,
Else either seek to my errand disrupt.

Exit Wendell.
Exit Willow.
End Scene I.

SCENE II
The border of the Grove of the Snowlings, a forest at midday.
Enter Wendell and Silania.

WENDELL: How now, here com'th a fay from out the wood,
Your coming had first stirred me to afright,
But only for the downy dust of snow.

SILANIA: Well met ye mortal soul here drove,
That wand'reth from afar, to pass
And dither 'bout we Snowlings' land,
Who cometh, who, I ask?

WENDELL: Well met, ye fay, I come from further on
And back my way, but hope to pass your gate,
And enter, by the Keeper's leave anon.
To meet you here betwixt the pines and birch,
Wherefore have you come then a-riding up?

SILANIA: But hark! I say 'tis plain as day,
I rode forth from the gate to meet,
This stranger on his way.

WENDELL: Aside. Avaunt! To meet me 'neath deceit's plain thrust,
Like cat when from her maw the songbird croons,
Better I’ll sell thee smoke made silk and jewels,
And tender th’ dewy dapplings of the moon.
'Tis clear thou hast mistook and made me for
A natúral. But fate grins not for thee,
I wonder, is Silania clev'rer grown,
Or has another come t’ ensorcell me?

WENDELL: Perchance you'll come to fare me to the gate,
And help this guest along the way beyond,
By rung blossoms and to ye Snowlings' land,
I've come to seek the succor of your Queen.
O ye, who's come to take me further hence,
May I request the honor of your name?

SILANIA: Amused. Ay, trav'ling soul, who'd tarry here,
To you I am called Maeve, and to
The gate I'll ferry you, for the
Mere pittance of your name.

WENDELL: To you I am called Bishop, then,
And swiftly, to the gate!

A horn sounds. Enter Wax.

SILANIA: Aside. So thou hast danced this step, before,
O Bishop of the men, but thou
Hast giv'n me not a truer name,
Than that I gave to thee, I shall
Not follow in the steps thou lead’st,
But tire thee to thy fault instead.
O'er pond and brook, thou, clever man,
Thou'd never find, a clev'rer Queen,
Than I.

SILANIA: Come, come, ye keeper, throw the gate!
A mortal tarries here, O Wax,
And send ye forth to set the games,
And furnish us a feast!

WAX: To all. Spruce and pine,
Mark my lines;
Dapple downs,
Make my gate;
Wax I'm called,
Bee or bear,
A-ranging,
Be my fate.
'Tis good, to in the summer us,
Be joinéd hence in wanderlust,
Who is it he that comes?

SILANIA: Ay, Bishop, be he called, keen Wax.

WAX: And doth he come to stay anon?

WENDELL: I visit hence for now, O gate-watcher,
Good Maeve hath shown me to your door, but that
My comp'ny you'd afford.

WAX: Nary harm,
Nary harm!

WENDELL: O gate-watcher, then you'd permit me hence?

WAX: Ay, weary is the soul, and though,
I shall permit him in, but so
He might go on and meet my Queen,
And ask to stay. For all we, mean,
And common things in Snowlings' land,
From cowslip to the lily-o-pand,
To bee and worm and foxglove tall,
All thank her for the wintry fall.

SILANIA: Then please, be off, and give her word,
And furnish us some sporting game,
And lay us out a feast!

Exit Wax.

WENDELL: O genial Maeve, ere we make through the gate,
I must admit, I mark ye for a soul,
I've marked before but cannot chance to name.

SILANIA: O Bishop, ye sojourner come,
Ay, if ye mark me then you're wise,
We Snowlings' game is bartering,
In that you've given me no prize.

WENDELL: There are those to whom Bishop is my name.

SILANIA: No kindly host is she who'd guilt,
A guest, and suspect him deceit.

WENDELL: No kindly guest is he who'd charge, and mark,
His host in kind and spur her on to tell.
Oh, then, perhaps in place, you'd make a game,
To us this impasse between us decide,
For surely I tell you I cannot say,
That Bishop's not the name to all I'm known.

SILANIA: And surely.

WENDELL: Aside. And surely thou canst not count'nance to claim,
That Maeve be truly to all things thy name.

WENDELL: Then nary more shall we ask but ourselves,
And rather we shall make of it a game.
Then, tell me, ye, you Snowling fay, do know,
Ye many games? List for me three and then,
The three we'll play.

SILANIA: In Snowling land, a river cours’th,
A Naiad doth ordain its way
And shan't turn it, but for the pawn,
Of goodly names given by day.
In Ettinhome no apple trees,
Remain but ours, in Snowling land,
And golden are its honey sweets,
That rot which touch a liar’s hand.
And thirdly, shalt thou nock a bow,
And spear for us a field-mouse there,
And when Death send'th a reaper low,
He'll mark our names and our game spare.

WENDELL: Aside. Is each a clever game, but one that's fooled,
If by my sporting chance, I marked aright,
And thou the proudest Queen Silania be,
And decree thou the rules thou fixed altered?
Yet should thou twist this game by tyrant force,
'Twill undermine thy rule in leál hearts.

WENDELL: Then I must accept, but see no reason,
Why these this party cannot comprehend;
So let us go forth and then tarry here,
And bring ye kinfolk into this, our sport.

Exeunt Wendell and Silania.
End Scene II.
End Act I.

ACT II

Scene I
A small brook in the Grove, at midday.
Enter Wendell, Silania, Wax, Tam, Lie, and Maggy.

SILANIA: Lo, O, good guest, the babbling brook,
That runneth from a yonder nook,
This bend it wind’th and pooleth out,
‘Tis where we’ll draw-th’good Naiad out.
O b’nignmost nymph, ye come on forth,
Appraise us each, what our names’ worth,
For lest our names we truly tell,
This river’s tide shall never quell.

TAM: Aside with Lie and Maggy. How strange indeed, it seems to me,
This ploy of hers, so gingerly,
She carries forth beyond the ‘xchange,
Lest she have doubts, all was arranged.

LIE: Aside, cont. ‘Tis true, O Tam, he sniffed her ruse,
He made her fool, and worst, accused,
That she in turn, had to him lied,
This, even, ye, Tam, cannot chide.

TAM: Aside, cont. This mortal thing hath offer’d me,
A prize I shan’t deny, let’s see,
And vouchsafe he is true. Oh, well!

TAM: Very well,
Very well.
My comp’ny comes as Wax and Lie,
Maggy not far behind.

WENDELL: Then it remains for the Naiad to come.

Enter a Naiad.

A NAIAD: Wherefore, O wherefore, am I brought,
To join, this gath’ring here, thus caught,
In sweeting scent, of flow’r and tree,
By fairy and mortal joined[fix] be,
The glacier hath near melted down,
By lower forks I’d shelter found,
But games and feasts, you had promised,
I’ll rise, and dance ’top water’s kiss.

SILANIA: O joy, ’tis here, we Snowlings meet,
And celebrate this game we keep,
First, tell me, O, b’nignest Naiad,
D’you turn your stream, the course it had,
But for a solemn name?

A NAIAD: I tax a name that I might know,
The heart that asks is true-- ’tis so!

SILANIA: Aside, to a Naiad. And thou shall turn it without pay,
For I am Queen, and this I say,
Where flow’th your source, ’tis in my realm.

SILANIA: Then, as your host, O traveler,
You’ll take your turn, but mine’s before.
O Naiad, heed, I am called Maeve,
And for my joy, turn course!

NAIAD: Then lo, for I have heard, and done.

SILANIA: Then mine is prov’n; now course it back!

WENDELL: Aside. Wormwood, It seems my doubt was wise and right,
Fly quick, we can’t delay, ’tis impolite.

Enter Wormwood

WENDELL: Aside. When I address the Naiad, give, thy name,
And ask, as I said breaths before, the same.

WORMWOOD: Aside. Aye, master, aye!

WENDELL: O Naiad, heed me, I am called Bishop,
And for my joy, turn course!

WORMWOOD: Aside. O Naiad, heed, I Wormwood be,
And for my joy, turn course!

NAIAD: Then lo, for I have heard, and done.

SILANIA: Aside. Nothing hath this confirméd, but,
That Bishop, thou’rt cunningly cut,
And for the revelry abound,
None can condemn thy ploy-- How sound.

Exit a Naiad.

SILANIA: O guest, your play, is passing still!
For th’apple tree, let’s quit this rill.
In merriment, let’s joinéd be.

WENDELL: Aye, host, let’s quit-- and to this tree, anon.

Exeunt Silania, Wendell, and Wormwood.

MAGGY: Thou spakest true, Tam, thee grasper,
Her tyrant ways may us scupper,
But what, might’st thou give me, to join?

TAM: That changeling Knight, she did purloin,
And ever since hath kept her smile,
It serveth me no good.

WAX: What’s on!
That you are both engaged, anon,
And speak so quiet’ly.

MAGGY: Put all thou heard far from thy mind,
Thou, hound of Silania! Go thee!

TAM: ‘Tis no use,
‘Tis no use!
Not long, I’ll plan to call a moot!

WAX: Nevertheless, we’ll miss the feast.

Exeunt all.
End Scene I.

Scene II
An apple tree with golden apples, proud over the grove.
Enter Silania, Wendell, Wormwood, Tam, and Wax.

SILANIA: Come, come, my kin, and be merry!
A ring we’ll make ’neath apple-tree,
And make us all a game!

TAM: Aside, to Wax. My kin make’th mock’ry of our
Dearmost claim to royal power.
No Snowling’s right, was ever drawn,
From apples man’s hand’s lain upon.

WAX: Aside, cont’d. Ho-hum, ye incorrig’ble tart,
Uncask some mead, from in the start,
Of winter seal’d away, it hath
Grown sweeter still.

WENDELL: My host, shall I, be first to pick, or you?

SILANIA: My guest, go meet the tree’s high crown,
Go pluck a fruit, and take it down,
But first, hark ye, it climbs the sky!
And in its boughs we Snowlings’ prize.
No elsewhere in all Ettinhome,
Do apples glisten in the gloam,
Nor rest in creek, on field, on down,
Nor in the tilling can be sown.
And once you pluck it from the bough,
Should your words your heart disavow,
It rots.

WENDELL: Aside, to Wormwood. Lo, my Wormwood, mark thee well, and carry
My deceit forth to Tam, and don’t you tarry.
Though my hand’s flesh, may look as skin, indeed,
A glove, I’ve slipped, over my hand- now heed:
Betwixt myself and Silania I’ll vest,
The apple, to Tam’s hand briefly to rest.

WENDELL: Hark, O Fairies, and see, down I’ve brought,
An apple, from the boughs high- doth it rot?
I say to ye all I am called Bishop,
And lo, ’tis golden still.

SILANIA: So it is,
So it is.

FAIRIES: So it is!
So it is!

WENDELL: Now, Tam, take here, this fruit and pass to Maeve.

SILANIA: Aback. I shall take it from your hand myself!
For another might giv’t rot.

WENDELL: Wherefore, wherefore? Surely, no harm can lie,
In passing, swift, and should it fall awry,
The grove is lush and full.

TAM: I have taken it up, O Maeve,
Now pluck it here.

SILANIA: Good, it was not given to rot.

SILANIA: Aside. I freeze it with my Snowling charm,
That though I lie, it won’t be harmed.

SILANIA: Lo, all ye merry folk, this fruit,
I am called Maeve- rot took no root.
My guest, we away, to the field,
Lie, fetch my bow, attend my heel!

Exit Silania.

WENDELL: Aside. This too, Silania, was clever of thee,
Yet, mind thy realm, for claims have come to brew.
I see thee now, for whom I thought thee for,
By th’work of Snowling’s craft thou, careless, bore.

Exit Wendell.

Enter Maggy.

MAGGY: And even thee, O Wax, thou dog,
Can’t deny it a moment hence,
For Tam has held the apple now;
A better Queen she’d be.

WAX: I’ll forget those treasonous words.
Better we follow them to game.

Exeunt all.

Enter Silania, Wendell, and Lie.

LIE: Very well,
Very well.
O guest, take up the bow and spy,
A mouse there in the field- then fly,
Your arrow swift, or find reproach;
The Queen hates even the small, poached.

WENDELL: Certainly not- Then, summer air, my lance,
And float it forth, until it striking lands.
O mouse, die swift, and well; forgive me, thing,
That we did not a more skilled hunter bring.

LIE: Lo, it is dead, and here, its corse,
Prepare ye, both-- the reaper’s horse.

Enter a Reaper.

SILANIA: O guest, are you prepared to close,
This game we’ve struck betwixt?

WENDELL: Aye, I am.

A REAPER: How strange, to be, awaited so.

SILANIA: Join us, O reaper from beneath,
We make a game, in yonder heath.
You’ll touch my heart, and know my name,
I’ll say it, and you’ll test my claim;
Now come-- the last bout’s here!

A REAPER: Hm, very well, though on a lark.

Enter Wax, Maggy, and Lie.

SILANIA: And where is Tam? Why tarrieth she?

MAGGY: She comes here quick anon-- and here!

SILANIA: But for this Reaper’s time we start,
O death, lay your hand ‘pon my heart.

SILANIA: Aside, with the Reaper. O death, you know as well as I
That unlike men, we seldom die,
And not for age nor time nor thou,
But since I’m Queen, thou’lt say I’m true;
Since ‘pon my land, thou now have stood,
I bind thee by my right.

A REAPER: Aside, cont’d. I will do as I have been bid.

SILANIA: I say I am called Maeve, Snowling.

The Reaper nods.

WENDELL: Then, it is my turn. Come, and touch my heart.

WENDELL: Aside, with the Reaper. O Reaper, I enchant thee by this spell,
Though I deceive, thou’lt nod as though it’s well.

A REAPER: Aside, cont’d. I will do as I have been bid.

WENDELL: I say--

Enter Tam.

SILANIA: Enough! The game is near to close!

TAM: Nevermind this game, Silania,
I call moot, this trifle be damned.

SILANIA: Insolent, Tamaris-- my game!
Thou spoilest my game.

TAM: Would that that were all I have spoiled.

Exeunt all.
End Scene II.
End Act II.

ACT III

SCENE I

Add an account between Wax and Maggy about how it came to be that Silania and Tam are rivals.

(Wax enters, leading Maggy. He seems concerned and agitated.

WAX: Well here’s a tall trellis, covered in green from the roots to the canopy. Neither queen nor claimant, nor agents here, nor other class of interloper. And it does for sight as well as it does for the hearing. Well, you should be happy, Maggy, because here you are, and here you have me. I’ve gone around the vines here three times and can say for certain none are hiding, so here I’ll hear you out. You’ve been anxious with words this whole day through, and this is something I’ve noticed, because a ranger is tasked with noticing.

MAGGY: I’d like to see the ranger who could miss the words that give me anxiety, so blatant have I been. Perhaps he is the one before me, who cannot see how thorough his abuse has been at the hands of the Queen.

WAX: Peace! What did I tell you about treasonous words?

MAGGY: Is discussion so bad now that Princess Tam is openly rebelling?

WAX: To side with the Princess should remain treason, I think. Even the Queen’s vassals ought know this. I expect by moonrise to run them from the gates, the yellow-bellied lot.

MAGGY: Well, forget me one more treason, having come all this way.

WAX: That I can allow.

MAGGY: In short, surely we could be more beloved by our Queen than our Queen’s bees, who occupy her attention constantly. Spring til Autumn, she neglects the grove, all manner of beasts and interlopers affront our affairs, and she greets them heartily and lavishly, with a gusto she never turns on us.

WAX: Too, I will allow that she has no respect for my all-important work, indeed, she seems to have no respect for the work that any of us do. At the least, I would want her to understand. But there is one thing I don’t understand.

MAGGY: What’s that?

WAX: How come she and her sister are such violent rivals?

MAGGY: I forget that when someone spends their days staring at flowers and trees in case one of them moves, they miss everything else.

WAX: That’s not fair, my work is important.

MAGGY: Nor, it seems, do they often have reason to talk. Any fairy would know that I meant no insult. Regardless, it’d be a long talk.

WAX: I have long ears, and we both have a long time.

MAGGY: Oh, very well.)

SCENE II
A clearing in the grove, with a throne made of roots and branches. A flower made of ice sits behind a trellis of vines.
Enter Wendell.

WENDELL: Vainest Queen, ’twas wise to doubt my aims,
Thou wer’t right to suspect me from the start.
Nevertheless, in thy quickness to judge
My threat, thou wer’t driven to focus wrong,
On names, and not on realm, where thou oughtest.
For once erenow I had seen thy orchard,
By mine eyes withered, but for slith’ring plots,
Which thou faced and face still; Now, Silania,
Let us go and swiftly see thy downfall.
Indeed, proud Silania, I misled thee,
In sooth, though I wore my name ‘gainst my breast,
For thou, like thine, are cruel and driven to,
Mischiefs. I fearéd the weight of thy curse;
Thy mind had set: and therefore in thy midst,
Another plot I’ve sown.

Exit Wendell.

Enter Silania, Lie, a Reaper, and Wax, from left door; enter Wendell, Tam, and Maggy from right door.

LIE: Hark, court, hear me! Here comes the Queen,
And claimant, too! Fairies, we moot!

SILANIA: Yes, let us lay this farce to rest.

TAM: Farce! Indeed, that’d be thy day.

SILANIA: Prithee, hope so. Lest, afterwards,
I’ll banish thee, and suffer not
Tamaris, my prattling sister.

TAM: Dear, thou’rt entwined
Thou pay’st no mind.

SILANIA: Art thou not loath,
To make so bold a play when met
By guests from without the grove, come
To meet and make a feast. In place
Of dance, we convene court. In place
Of song, we bandy thy deceits.
Thou, O sister, wrack! My tongue
Is sullied to call thee, ven’mous
Such; hast abused me in thy wiles.
Thou too hast grasped for thy fortune.
Thou shalt lose it to graspers still.
Thou hast fled all hospital’ty.
No sour’r a misery there was.
No kin of mine, thou art, so grasp!

TAM: How would it be enough to meet
Thee by thy politic? For it,
My challenge, which I pass to thee,
Is based ‘pon tyranny.

LIE: Enough! You both have dallied long,
Upon remarks which ought be short.
Now we, Snowling aristocrats,
Shall convene, hear, and heard, decide.
O Tam, then, make thy case.

TAM: We Snowlings’ Grove hath long been run,
By Silania, who cares for none,
But for her bees, which helps us naught,
And hunts her whims, and loves us not.
She’s run us all around!

SILANIA: What case is this? I’ve heard no case.

TAM: Wax, pray tell, then!

WAX: This morrow I stood at our gate,
And sung myself a tune; My work,
Is that of ranger-brave, and stern,
Not errand boy at all, at all.
The Queen, my liege, came to my side,
And drove me down to set a feast,
With nary care for that function,
I proudly do uphold.

SILANIA: As this mortal hath plain surmised,
I was at mischief then, what fault,
Canst find thee, ’n play?

TAM: ‘Tis plainly true!
We Snowlings fault thy rule. And on,
I cede this clearing to Maggy,
Who saw thy handling of the nymph.

SILANIA: Be silent, vassal!

MAGGY: You forced her,
‘Thout offer of thy name; she went,
And turned for thee the river-course,
For thy selfish and petty game.
Thou didst once more, with the reaper,
What thou didst do to her.

LIE: Indeed, calléd to fare the soul,
Of a field-mouse, thou, selfish, slew,
Though your refuge he hath taken.

TAM: And lo, all here, have seen my hand,
Which prised an apple forth; the sign,
We Snowlings hold, of regency,
Which in my hand, showed nary sign,
Nor tarnish’d, fell, or any rot,
But in thine froze.

SILANIA: Heed thy better!

TAM: But thy undoing is thy own.

LIE: Enough! We vassals go to moot!

Exeunt Wax, Lie, and Maggy.

SILANIA: Despair, boor, should thy count come short.
Thou hast exposed mine enemies.

WENDELL: Not she, the mother of their enmity.

SILANIA: Then thou!

TAM: No, thou! Soon comes the count,
Which shall-- swift-- lie my grievance bare,
Whilst thou did with thine bees enrapt,
Neglect the duties of thy throne.

SILANIA: Brook not the man to speak t’this grove.

Enter Lie.

TAM: Regardless, now the fatal count,
Brought on the wing by faithful Lie.

SILANIA: Enraged. Lie, confound now this foulest plot.

LIE: Twelve to she, ten to you.

SILANIA: Would thou’d also confound thy tongue.
Say: Be it so? I make it void.

TAM: Then add thy peril: better the sword,
Better to march ’neath red star’s shine.

SILANIA: Thou, poxy shit of our mother,
Violate in the goriest red,
This purest white, this peace’ble frost,
Melt’d by blist’ring summer of arms,
This sleeping winter of our home.
Heed, thou grasper!

TAM: Heed, thou. Draw now:
The battl’ing lines, or rather turn,
Quit now this grove, and despair hope.
T’will do no good.

Exeunt Tam, Wax, and Wendell.

SILANIA: Come vict’ry or defeat, I hold
My Queendom over all this Grove,
Thou standest here, thou’rt bound by law,
I compel thee, report his name.
This mortal, Bishop, shall suffer,
A pain to match this slight.

A REAPER: Aside. Very well, ’tis Wendell Huxley.

Exeunt all.

All players re-enter, the din of battle arises. Exeunt all.
End Scene II.
End Act II.

ACT IV

SCENE I
The same clearing, snow melted, smoke filling the sky, grass stamped out. The flower remains, the din of battle fills the air.
Enter Tam.

TAM: Bedlam! Bedlam! Riot, ruin!
Calam’ty-come and wage my claim!
That way, the Queen, near the taking.
Hark! Take her by arms, more her crown,
Soon lain at my feet, better worn,
No fairy’s he whose confidence,
Her wintry tresses still beguile.
Finish we our words, turn’d to arms,
And better we met, in my pow’r.
Bedlam! Bedlam! Bear me my crown!
Then, tribute, then the boy.

Enter Lie, Wendell, Wax, Maggy, and Silania, in chains.

WAX: Lo, see ye now the deposed Queen!
Silania, bowed ere your regard!
No other, bound by fateful chain,
How from on high! The fall, how hard!

TAM: What words now, O sister?

SILANIA: Oh, laugh!
Ay, and feast your fill of merry,
Be well sated, treasonous lot.
But for words, O sister, hunger not,
Or better starve.

TAM: Best not sated,
I the better fruit of mother,
Shall not suffer for lack of words,
Spit and scowled.

LIE: Hie! We shall crown a Snowling Queen!
All break before the passing crown,
Go forth another, now, and send,
A word out for King Aed!

TAM: Hold, a moment, Bishop, O guest,
Thy help has earnéd you favor.
For thy assistance, ask a boon.

WENDELL: I have come for the ice flower you keep,
O Snowling Queen, This boon I ask of you.

TAM: And why, this precious flower, guest?

WENDELL: In sooth, ’tis for my sister, O Queen Tam.
We two, enslaved beneath a cruelest liege,
Slave too, to intrigues ‘gainst our good natúre:
To give us wickedness, and stamp us out,
To one of us, in betraying earn his grace,
But I yield not, instead, I take this task,
And only to aid her.

She gives him the flower.

TAM: Very well,
Very well.
Thou might’st take this, thy prize, and go,
Though thou hast today aided me,
I banish thee, nevertheless,
And never more to here return.

Exeunt Tam, Wax, Lie, and Maggy.

SILANIA: Hark, now, but stay, Wendell Huxley!

WENDELL: Aback. What treachery hast thou employ’d to learn,
What thou by rights ought’st ne’er had chance to know--
Ah, thy decree, withheld ere Tam’s crowning.

SILANIA: Indeed, clever, but not enough.
Now, I make my Snowling curse ‘pon
Thee; and I turn thy heart to ice. [lengthen]

WENDELL: What strangest kind of pain is this that sets,
‘Pon not my flesh but my spirit, and then,
To find myself forgetting why I came,
And whose sake if not mine I chancéd this.
‘Tis not mine alone, I sought to profit,
What hollowness I feel!

WENDELL: Aside, to Wormwood. Fly, Wormwood, and draw back the Reaper here.

WORMWOOD: I’ll trim my wings t’ go the faster.

Exit Wormwood.

SILANIA: ‘Tis as I said t’my sister, Tam,
Thou mocked our hospitality,
Thou shirked thy place as guest, instead,
And though thou’st ruined me this day,
The way of Fairies, old and long,
Shall see me to my throne. This, guest,
My vict’ry’s made before defeat,
Thy slight will fade, like tilléd soil,
‘Neath time like greenery; and I,
Not suff’ring for the thing thou’st done,
Shall forget thy name, swift as that,
Though thou made good quarry, O guest,
Thy mem’ry shall slip my mind’s traps,
Obliviate, as moss forgets,
Where thy tread hath tampéd it down;
What shall remain? Oh, what, indeed?
‘Tis plain, O wizardling: thy pain.
Thou hast done naught, but aught I’ve done
To thee; Love, joy, are locked to thee,
All human good, forevermore.
But this, O thing, is sweet to thee,
Or rather ought it be, for thou,
Who ne’er before couldst stomach it,
Might make a passing mage-- Now go.

WENDELL: Now hold!

Enter the Reaper and Wormwood.

WORMWOOD: Here, Master!

WENDELL: O Wormwood-- confound the Snowling!

Wormwood harries Silania. Wendell pulls the Reaper into close confidence.

WENDELL: Aside, to the Reaper. O, Snowling Queen that was, a fool thou wer’t,
To only seal my good, for now, I’ve lost,
What good will that I held for Tam, that spared,
Thee a true fate; My whim is this, for I,
Am mortal, and, I shan’t forget thy slight.
O Reaper, I enchant you by this spell,
Take your scythe of cruelest death, and slay,
The Snowling Silania.

A REAPER: Aside. I will do as I have been bid.

He attacks.

SILANIA: What treachery is this, Wendell,
I thought it fair to spare thee, then,
Excepting this lesson given,
But I am gravely maimed! I flee.

Exit Silania pursued by the Reaper.

WENDELL: No, O Queen, thou hast undone me.

Exit Wendell.
End Scene I.

SCENE II
Enter Willow.

WILLOW: There, nested clutch. Do not thee die so quick,
soon, my brother returns, and thou shalt grow.
But here’s an egg! And greyer day by day,
Yes, look, this dragon’s spawn, nearly expir’d.
How slow the snuffing of the wick, and how
Arrest the steady winding down of time?
And every gentlest succor in my care,
Is made as squall to speed thy withering--
Then how? My brother precious days can spend,
Abandons his, and rather gives me aid.
Some hidden art, I must then have of him;
I can but fan thy pithy spark; were it
A suckling-babe, I’d swaddle ’t and be done,
Then, what!? What hope had I to he outshine?
...Or else, in other plots he has ensnared,
For in the course of Master’s game, might be
Anything permitt’d, being natúral
For wizard’s kind. But, brother, made thee me,
Or master as thy knave? To one, give aid,
Th’other, nothing. All aid, otherwise, naught.
For that thou’rt blood of mine, I shall think twice,
And not seek th’truth, but await thy return,
Unanswered, this, the fatal question stands
yet… Willow, or Poliander…? Master?

Footsteps approach.

WILLOW: Hark, him! Comes Master-- Quick, out the doorway!
Him I shall meet, but surely nowise here.

Exit Willow, fleeing deeper into the tower.

Enter Wendell.

WENDELL: Where hast thou gone, O sister mine, I’m home.
And bearing what thou’d asked of me before.

Enter Willow, returning.

WILLOW: And with good time, for else, the clutch might die.

WENDELL: ‘Tis best I’ve come, and tarried not to long,
Thou cannot chance it, O sister, the clutch,
Be certain that it grows.

WILLOW: Aye, then what, brother mine, of the fairies?
They’re given to their tolls, and did they ask?

WENDELL: Evasive. To the Snowlings’ Grove I went and met,
The Snowling Queen Silania in her guise,
Her hope was to beguile of me my name,
But long have I treated with fairykind,
And in my carefulness I ne’er divulged.

WILLOW: Thou wer’t shrewd, but shrewd ought be more than shrewd
Whene’er thou treat’st with fairykind.

WENDELL: That’s wisely said, but I fear naught of it.
Do mark thee also, sister mine, my dear,
A wizard’s heart must e’er first guard itself.
Thou hast prised this favor from me, slow not,
Lest thou draw Master’s ill temper, not I.

WILLOW: That’s wisely said in turn. But why, Wendell
Hast thou who, first before all who yet live
I may believe to know in mind as my
Own self, why say’st thee not all thou mean’st?
The hearth’s gone out. But there shall must lie th’ devil.
For this good turn thou hast done me,
I’ll give thee now my gladdest thanks, and off.

Exit Willow.

WENDELL: Bedlam, Bedlam… See, O Master?

WENDELL: Damn thee, master, but thou never
Will stifle her. Ah, tis just as…
Thou hast made a mockery of all
The ways of us mortals, thou shirked
Thy place as pedagogue, thou still,
Hast sought our turn from love and joy,
(Though now I am as thou design’st)
Nor thou nor Silania e’er saw,
But neither gave my first reason--
Rather, duty, burd’ning duty,
Not dulled a whit by fairy’s ice,
Ay, hoped thou still I’d fall in line?
Bereft, ne’er ‘posing thee the same.
Ay, vict’ry’s made before defeat,
For mine’s a way, that’s old and long:
Match thee my rise, but as inverse,
Wither thee, and grow complacent
Ail thy strength and bleed thy power,
As poppies bow’d by callous time,
Cursed I be: thus, ever hung’ring,
This be sure: too, ever waiting,
In thy talent, O master, slip,
For ’tis thy way for thou art cruel,
To slip, thence favor I’ll need not.

Exit Wendell.
End Scene II.
End Act II.