Djince fell asleep as soon as his bedroll was laid out. He had positioned himself facedown, one gloved hand gripping his sword hilt, the other hand wrapped around the handgrip of his air pistol. Without so much as a good night, he was out before I could declare I was going to go dig the shitter and get firewood. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t imagine how Djince was faring. He hadn’t slept in more than twenty hours. He had his letters and he had his quarry's name. What more could a man ask for but sleep?357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyNJySCnP6v
Digging the little trench had me sweating by the time I was finished, but I shucked my green jacket and enjoyed the dry night air as I collected firewood and starter material. There wasn’t a whole lot of fallen wood in the forest, surprisingly. The vines hold the trees together, I thought, looking up into the canopy. Life clinging to the dead. At that, I pulled my glass ring out and held it up, looking through it. It widened like it was bidden and through it, I saw a bright blue sky, riddled with the cotton streaks of clouds.357Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmJ1HRF4lmC
My eyes widened. “Is this… a memory?” I asked.
“Right-o,” the ring said with my voice.
“When?”
“Can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember? What use are you?”
“Look Lady, I’m just a ring. You’re the brains of this operation.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course. “So you just show the memory?”
“Right-o… just like I said before.”
“Sorry, you weren’t exactly specific.”
“I am The First Thought: at once, miraculous and lame.”
I sighed, then I panned the ring around the clearing, looking at the vibrant, colorful world through its eye. “I do remember these plants… I just don’t know where or what they are. This place could be anytime during the second millennia or later,” I said. When I panned over our little campsite, I saw a meadow with a small pond. There was a deer in the center of the clearing. It was nosing about the green, picking at the bits there. Smiling, I stepped towards it, but it didn’t seem to notice me.
But then it wouldn’t. It was gone.
I dropped the ring. Then, chastising myself, I picked it back up. I looked through it, but the image within its glass circle had changed. There were only barren trees and little sprigs of green at their bases. I looked up at the sky and there was only ash and orange-tinted cloud cover spanning the distance. I could see the roll of the earth through the trees, the way it transformed into marshlands the color of blood as it rolled ever closer to the salt flats that had once been an ocean.
“Enough,” I whispered tiredly. I put the ring down and it shrank in size. I asked, “I can’t choose what to see?”
“You did,” the ring said. “It shows what you think.”
“The First Thought was a memory,” I said with a nod of understanding. “Of course it was…” I said. I shook my head at it then. “I’m done for now. I don’t think this place can tell me much more. Maybe Capitol will have more answers.” And now that we had the letters we could make haste once more.
As I pulled small limbs of the dead trees from their vines’ grips, I debated over Mordis and what his reappearance meant. They say he tried to stop me… Why then did he react like he did? Why didn’t he just kill me? If he knew who I was even in this new form, why didn’t he kill me? If he is Man’s God… why did he kill Ethis?
Part of me hoped that Mordis would intercept us again--if only to interrogate him--but another part of me dreaded it. I didn’t want anything to happen to Djince--not after what happened to his brother. That part of me hoped that we would never cross paths again… even if that meant Djince’s revenge would never be had.
If I could remember, all of this would be so much easier.
Maybe that’s why Mordis couldn’t stop you from ending the world.
Maybe you’re just that much more powerful than all the other gods.
I brushed those thoughts away, burning them off as I lit our little campfire. I put on my glass ring and watched it fill with fire and warm to my skin. It seemed happy. It was in its rightful place at last. “Why did I give you to Chalice?” I asked it quietly, resting my hand on my knees so it was eye level with me.
“Insurance, you told her,” it informed me. “You were afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Dunno. You never told me nothin’.”
“Why not?”
“I dunno. Being a stuck up bitch? Seemed to me you were more concerned with preserving the chronicles of history than making nice with your jewelry.”
“You’re out of turn,” I said with a laugh.
The ring seemed to relax on my finger. “Look… Lady… You know memories are the truth as you remember it. Nothing more, nothing less. I remember what I remember. It’s not a perfect recreation of the past--no memory ever is--but I remember what I remember.”
“You’re saying… you can forget things.”
“Right-o.”
“And you can misremember things.”
“Right… -o.”
“The world can misremember history… So there’s a chance that I didn’t end the world. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Well, yes,” the ring said.
I grinned. “That’s… the best thing I’ve heard since I woke up.”
“That one was free. The next peptalk is gonna cost you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For whatever I was before, I’m sorry.”
The ring laughed. “If it pleases the lady…” Then it fell silent.
A smiled still stuck to my face, I unrolled my own bed and made my jacket into a pillow, but I didn’t sleep. I was too wired with the prospect that I hadn’t ended the world. The notion invigorated me.
Curiosity getting the better of my sensibilities, and fueled by a fearless sort of inquiring spirit, I carefully pulled the messenger bag off Djince’s dead-to-rights body and sifted through its contents.
I read into the morning, pouring over each document and consuming each new revelation with an appetite that scared me. Every piece of vellum had the smell of secrecy on it, and each word carried with it the life of the man who’d penned it. There was a gravity to those letters, and as I read them, I understood why they were so confidential--why anyone would kill for them.
War was the word that met my eyes more than any other.
Kings’ Blood was a close second.
Conflict was a good thing in the time before. It was the force that drove innovation and progress. Without a problem, there could be no solution. Without an adversary, there could be no hero. Without conflict, there were no stories or chronicles. Things happened, but without conflict, the things that happened were invariably token.
The conflict that I found myself in at that moment was one that had been brewing for the last twelve years.
The Houses of Retzu were the only governing body on the continent, besides the scattered cells of Mordis Eyes anyway. House Veris was the most powerful, due in part to their control over most of the mines in the west and their army of mercenaries. They fed this army with food from House Bon who owned the only fertile farmland in the southeast. Veris provided them mercs and Bon fed the mercs. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship.
The other Houses out of the Capital were smaller, and more prone to infighting, but there was a newcomer in the hall of Matrons that was giving Veris a run for their silver. House Hive had appeared in the last year, led by a powerful family who claimed to be the only surviving branch in the Line of Kings. In the time before, Kings’ Blood was considered divine. If House Hive was a true manifestation of the late kings, then… there would be no election. There would be no dictator. There would only be House Hive and the first king seen in a hundred years… Provided they had divinity backing them. The thought chilled me to the bone. Who do they think backs them? I wondered more than once.
House Veris’ sensitive correspondence was addressed to each Matron of every House in Retzu’s Capitol--including the Matron of House Veris itself, oddly enough--calling to destroy House Hive. If a king sat on the throne once more, all the Houses would lose their power unless they pledged fealty... and despite the Houses’ close relationship with matriarchal family rule, House Veris would not kneel before anyone on the grounds of blood alone--but especially not divine blood.
If the Houses war over this, the Mordis Eyes will take advantage of the turmoil… and Ethis will have died for nothing if they rule.
As I placed the last letter back in its enveloped and sealed it using bits of broken wax found in the bottom of the messenger bag, I sat back up against my saddle and took a swig of wine. Conflict breeds progress, I thought. The question is… will I be a recorder of this historic event, or will I be a participant in it? Well, given the existence of a mysterious divine benefactor backing a new monarch faction, the Mordis Eyes themselves following Mordis, and my own awakening at the hands of the Houses… I had a portentous feeling that I would have little choice in the matter.
I remembered Mordis’ words back in the marsh: You are most welcome for this opportunity.
I took another drink and looked up at the sky. It was turning orange and pink and the palest of purples as the sun rose to greet the new morning.
Thank you, Mordis, I thought, but I didn’t repeat it out loud.
If I said it aloud, I might have meant it.
ns3.17.145.236da2
