Tatterdemalion

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Constance Nim has stopped listening to me. So I shall speak to you, instead.

Constance has turned with the seasons. Her skin is pale, her gown is the color of fresh snow, the fur of her stole is the pure white of miniver. This is new. This is worrying. She has become less human, after what happened; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she has chosen to be less human. She has removed herself from the rhythms and cycles of man except when, by some unspoken sign, she returns to Lostwithiel; and even then there is separation between her and the world.

When she chose to travel, with Tristan and with Mort, she simply told them that they would all be traveling, together. Three to go; three to return. Those were her exact words.

She bears the Cath Palug in her arms, and when she stands before the lady of the green dress, her cheeks are bloodless. She could be Lot’s wife, standing on the road to Sodom, save for the inclination of her head.

“Your hospitality is more than enough for us,” she says, and her breath does not steam. “We rode, and the days are short, and there is little enough to be seen. We passed unseen by wolves as hungry as men. You honor us by opening your home and seating us at your table, in this season, in these days.” Her eyes are dull and have no reflection.

And then there is a silence so grievous (as is becoming usual with Constance) that any young squire would certainly feel his honor prick at him to break it, to say something, anything.

Hider

Constance has taken the right to give someone the healing of her gods. I was tempted to give her an inhuman genealogy, but Robena might need saving before the end of this.

Sunshards

Rose from the River was, as always and ever, an anchor of calm in the vehicle, a mountain that set itself in opposition to the world and refused to move. It would be rude to say she “clung” to the frame of the car, or to point out the “holes” where her fingers “punched through.” “Dear life” should not even enter the picture. And she’s definitely not sore where Chen’s head kept bouncing off of her. The slow and very particular way she exited the vehicle, with the shear of metal following her, was deliberate grace and not a word more shall be said about it. As her companions groan and flop, Rose from the River stands straight and tall and makes a sound through tightly pursed lips that is something like a teakettle.

Then she scoops up the limp form of dearly departed Cyanis, who really did make a sparkly mess in the grass, and pats her with her best estimation of maternal care. There. There. You’re held. Please don’t— oh, that was just a dry heave. Okay. You’re okay.

Rose opens her mouth to speak. Sound doesn’t come out. She coughs and tries again. “Chen and I are going to have her attention the moment we set foot there. If you were trying to sneak in, it would be best for us to be a distraction, but as it is...”

As it is, she is being a fool. She is walking into Qiu’s jaws directly so that this ditz and this Princess can be silly and hopeful, and when Qiu demands their arrest en masse, Rose from the River knows that she will fight with the fury of three bears (and ten thousand rats) to allow these silly, silly girls the chance to run away. She’ll fling Chen away herself, if she has to. (It’s quite all right; the little thing will bounce.)

“Well,” she says, hoisting the quivering bundle of fox up higher on her shoulder. “After you, ladies.”

Breathless Dead

The words that scrape their way out of Redana’s throat aren’t hers. They belong to those old, aching bones. They belong to the woman who broke the Spear, who shattered it over her knee, and will always and forever remember the cost she paid for it.

“Don’t speak too loudly,” she says, with an exhausted attempt at wit. “The gods love to punish hubris when they hear it; they’ll upend plans generations in the making at a whim, just to defy our expectations.” She steps back, but her fingers linger on the railing. “The gods have no peers save themselves. I will not be baited into saying otherwise.”

The ruins drift before them, and there is something beautiful to the sight that makes Redana ache, a shiver in her flesh, and speak again, in a smaller voice, in her own voice, as she watches the light of stars sparkle on frozen jewels of blood, as she did before the Eater of Worlds.

“But I don’t think what she— what I— what we did was about forever,” she says. “It was about now. What we have to live with right now. Who makes choices about things right now. How we get to live.” The red sun shines through the ruin of a ship’s corpse. “Because right now is what really matters.”

When she touches her cheek, her fingers come away wet. Her shoulders shake, sudden and scary. Why does it hurt?

The stars offer no answer but themselves.

Fellowship: The Heart

Coleman! Jackdaw!

Wolf makes an annoyed snuffle. “Not mirror,” she points out. “Mirror was... it was... unique. Distinct. That’s it. Distinct.” She gives Coleman a flat glare and then awkwardly pats the bundle of quivering fox. “You’d tell,” she says, and then clams up again, having presumably used all of her words for now. But she keeps patting fox and being present. A skinny, traumatized rock for foxes to cling to.

“I must confess some curiosity,” the Blemmyae says, turning to look at Jackdaw (a movement of his entire torso). “What, precisely, brought this one down here? She’s not one of the Vermissian’s folk, and she seems constitutionally unfit for the environs of the Heart.” A gleam enters his dark nipple-eyes. “Now, if she has some pressing business... perhaps I could augment her, for a fair price.”

***

Ailee! Lucien!

“Surma,” the one-armed mouse says, by way of introduction. “And hopefully we won’t have to fight at all. It’s like, who’d come to a carnival just to get their hands on clown books?” But Ailee notices her tensing up, and she’s definitely sizing up Lucien and the Professor.

The sound of the rain on the canvas is becoming almost deafening. There must have been a sudden storm rolling in. The lanterns hanging from the top of the tent start swaying, casting shadows this way and that as Surma approaches the pile of books.

“Find anything interesting?” she asks, with a surprising amount of menace for how terribly small she is.

A crack of thunder almost drowns out the rain— and Jackdaw enters the tent. She’s had a carnival makeover and is under the influence of another name she’s picked up, thus the glowing spray-paint tattoos and the uncharacteristic confidence. Everybody say hi, Jackdaw. Come to watch Ailee’s crush beat up Lucien?

Sunshards

Rose from the River and Princess Chen of the Northern Wind end up joining the rest of their merry band of travelers for lunch. It’s easy enough to see them coming, as Chen sways up and down as Rose walks, perched on the monk’s broad shoulder like a colorful parrot. Rose has one arm up to keep her aloft, and another on her walking stick, and waves at Yue and Hyra (and Kat and Cyanis) with a third.

“Maybe you can help our dear, sweet little princess out,” Rose says, swinging down Chen neatly and putting her down in a seat. “She can’t seem to decide what she should get as a souvenir, and she’s having such trouble enunciating clearly. You’d think all those royal tutors would teach her how to speak, not squeak~” Condescending headpats, deployed! Pat pat pat!

But can you blame Chen, when she’s been shown off like a trophy on Rose’s shoulder all morning? When Rose has had girls come up to her oohing and aahing over her strength, taking her for a last marvel of the market, and asking if they can touch her muscles? When Rose has quietly reminded Chen that all she needs to do to be put down is ask like a good little girl? Anyone would be a flustered wreck under those circumstances, the poor darling— and still she’s got that ring in a death grip, not having figured out what to spend such a precious treasure on at all. (Why, surely, she doesn’t mean to keep it. But what if, hypothetically, she didn’t get anything? Would Rose demand it back, or would she get to keep it, or would Rose take her by the chin and tell her that she’d look beautiful wearing it? So many distracting thoughts to think about!)

Rose buying Chen noodles without asking her what she wanted is also a flex. A gambling flex— Rose might quietly be hoping she read the princess right— but a flex nonetheless. Rose from the River rides the hard edge of temptation, just so she can see Chen hide her face and make those incoherent little noises in front of everybody.

If only they could have continued all day, and into the night, when it comes to that! As it is said,

The pheasant calls his mating-song,
the water ripples in the rushes.
How pleasant is the wickedness of a lover
in the coolness of the patient dawn.

Breathless Dead

“Right, yes, the Sowers!” The Sowers? The Sowers. The Sowers? Redana needs to start visualizing something that’s not those little spherical constructs from that adventure serial. Nope. That’s all she’s getting: swarms of spheres descending on the skies of Ridenki. Auspex! Help her!

And while you’re at it: Mom, stop! You’re going to win! Redana has seen the wreck of that station with her own eye; this story has a happy...

No. Redana frowns, and it’s a serious enough expression that it sends every servitor in the room into an anguished hush. This wasn’t a happily ever after. This war might have been the right thing to do, to wage, to struggle through... but it’s going to lead back to Tellus. Back to a prison for humanity. Back to a little girl watching the clouds in the hope a star would pierce through.

“Was it the guilt?” She asks herself, fingers brushing on the map spread out upon the table. “Was it because you felt like this, that you needed to... make up for it? Why did you take us there?”

Athena only knows what conclusion her generals are going to jump to.

Sunshards

Rose from the River has gentle hands that could split open logs of wood. There is no clumsiness in them, and neither does she overpower Chen like an overexcited hound. When she places the nose ring in Chen’s palm and curls Chen’s fingers around them, it is simply that resisting those fingers would be like throwing yourself repeatedly against a tree trunk. And when she encloses her fingers around Chen’s hand! Chen could tug and tug and set her heels in the grass and fling herself backwards and still not free herself from that tomb of fingers, that prison of cool flesh (or is it simply that Chen is too, too warm?).

“I do insist, Princess,” she says, and the capital letter is perfectly enunciated. “After all, you are such a polite and pleasant young girl. Eloquent, too.” When those eyes glance up, those eyes so used to betraying weariness and the inner grief of a princess, they find Rose’s steady gaze and the corner of her mouth cocked up just so. “As a devotee of the Way, it is my responsibility to both accept the gifts I am given for my services,” and the way she purrs the word might send a lightning bolt right down through a Princess’s spine until it dissipates in the earth below, “and to give freely as the Way moves me.”

She does not let on that she is far less certain that this use is, strictly speaking, the will of the Way. Bringing joy to Yue was one thing, but this is winding up a girl just for the satisfaction, for the way her heart jumps when Chen squeaks, for the feeling of her hot pulse where Rose’s fingers rest against that pale wrist, for knowing that every word she speaks makes Chen redder and happier. And happiness is good; and as long as her touch is light, she will leave Chen with fond memories, not a broken heart. But she plays a perilous game with high stakes, and she will not suffer the loss if she loses. Or, at least, not as much of a loss. Surely.

But she does not let go of Chen’s hand. “But remind me. What do polite little girls say when they are given a gift? I’m sure you know the answer, Princess Chen of the Twin Shards, Bladesaint and aspiring artist. Hmm? Use your words, Chen. I haven’t gagged you again, after all.”

The yet is palpable but unspoken.

Breathless Dead

SING, O Muse, of the fury of Nero—
daughter of the virgin goddess[1], who brought upon her home
ruin. Many a noble man found himself cast down,
made a meal for the red jaws of her hounds.
That was good feasting they had at Hades’ table[2].

Her hair is up, wrapped around the iron wreath. Red Saber lies naked on her lap; despite the name, it is a wicked-tipped flamberge, gleaming like blood in the low light. Her armor is layered; the ornaments and gilded tabard belying the mail and padding below. The Ianuspater attends to its functions admirably: perimeter scan, war archival (entry: Ridenki, agri-world, supply lynchpin, subversion priority Alpha, theater ongoing for forty days, Theater Commander: Daimyo Mengekai.), aetheric receptor (entry: Demeter immanent. Hades, Athena in attention. Arrival: Artemis, among your commanders.), and second eye, burning bright when she looks at herself in the mirror and looks again because she is something between the Empress and the Princess. She is younger than she had thought. Mothers are ancient forever, unassailable, impossible to catch up to.

She twitches back a curtain, not quite trusting the Ianuspater, that thousand-fold jewel. Conversation outside stops, all eyes turn to her, and Redana panic-shuts the curtain again. But what is she doing? Like Mom would have been caught dead peeping out and second-guessing herself! Be the Nero you pretended to be, Dany[3]!

So the Director pulls back the curtain decisively and puts on her game face, looking down upon the assembly. “Daimyo Mengekai,” she says, one hand resting on Red Saber. “I have waited long enough. Present your proposal.” And Mengekai turns[4] to face her, Artemis by his side.

***

[1]: almost certainly artistic license. The only grandparents that Redana knows about with any certainty are the Castrate and the Sicklekeeper. The origins of Nero Claudius are a great sweep of imperial mythology, and the truth lies at the bottom of those waters.

[2]: the iconic opening lines of the Neroiad, composed three centuries post-Declaration by Avernon Septimus, Poet Laureate of Tellus. The uncharacteristically dark tone was made at the subject’s request; the sweep of the poem depicts Nero as receiving the blessings of the Olympians, and through each blessing, becoming worthy of rule.

[3]: “Come, Daimyo Beylaketan! To the Southern Reach!”

[4]: oh Stormfather he big. Resist the urge to challenge him to sparring right now. Or give him headpats[5].

[5]: we do not give Ceronian Daimyos headpats, Dany!!

Fellowship: The Heart

slap slap slap pittapap slap.

The mime falls on his white face and grovels expressively, shoulders heaving silently in the smoky gloom.

“Well now, brother,” comes the rich, low voice. No, not low: subterranean. “What’s got you all up and in a twist, then?”

The hot coal eyes watch the mime-art close. Lips curl up into an amused smile, baring yellowed fangs.

“Well, now. Don’t you worry yourself, brother. Good of you to bring word, and you’re right, you got the learning in your head. That’s a sin, you know— letting the mirrors out but not taking their place. Two guests on one ticket? Can’t have that. Can’t have that.”

Fingers thick as sausages close around a cane. It is a cane in the same way that Excalibur is a sword; it is huge and black and capped with a gilded skull.

“But it’s a miracle, too,” the Ringmaster says, and his bulk in the gloom may as well be a mountain. “It’s been too long since we had ourselves a proper holler. You’re all letting yourselves go to rust. And I ask you: are we called to be tame? No, I say; and no, I’ll tell you again. We’re called to the Blood! And it weren’t never made to lie in idleness...”

***

Ailee!

First comes the wind. It rattles the lights and snaps the lines back and forth. It groans as it snatches up hats and wigs, and with it blowing at your back, every step is light and close to losing control.

Then, behind the two of you, the shrieks begin, and the hammering sound of rain. She takes your hand in hers and together you bolt, the deluge barely missing the tips of your tails as you stumble into—

Well. She’s a Bookhunter. Of course she’s still on the hustle. Because the two of you have made it to the sorriest pile of books you’ve seen since that time Jackdaw got into the artisanal coffee. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s Lucien and the Professor. Because that’s totally what you wanted: their company, while your new bestie (and what’s even her name, you didn’t think to ask) tries casually to take a look around without looking like she’s looking around.

“Ah, Ailee,” the Professor says. “Come to sift through the wisdom of bygone eras?”

***

Coleman!

“Mirrors,” Wolf says, and gives Jackdaw a pat of halting, worried affection, as if she’s trying to convince herself that the fox won’t just be a drain on the few rations she could scrape together in Wormwood. “Dangerous mirrors.”

“The House of Mirrors is a sacred place,” the Blemmyae says. He holds a Ringmaster-sized tub of popped and buttered corn to one side of his body and shovels another handful into his navel-mouth. “Not holy. Distinct words. Dedicated, set apart. I do not know what it is dedicated to. I pray never to find out.”

The aquarium is full of dark glass and bright fish, most of which are orange-and-white. They flit playfully in and out of huge tangled anemone-forests, and behind and beyond them are vast things that should not fit in a circus sideshow.

There’s also a stingray of some sort clinging to the glass. It’s got a smiley face! And fangs!

Sunshards

Rose from the River has been very much like a tree. Which is to say, she looms, and in looming offers shade on the road; her voice is like the rustle of leaves as the wind kisses them, one by one, and she has offered up wordless walking-songs and quiet, straight-faced jokes and has made many an appreciative noise listening to Chen and Cyanis and Yue talk; she has been a quiet strength, though never too far away from Cyanis, who is still (eventually) headed to Cutie Fox Jail.

And perhaps someone remembers getting up in the middle of the night, because there’s nothing like sleeping under the stars for making you need to go after just a few hours of sleep, and hearing that low, husky laugh, and peering in through the dingy glass windshield of the helm to see Rose curled up in a chair, legs crossed, chin on her palm and elbow on her knee, bottle of the local special resting in the hollow of her body, hunched over the Go board. She was playing black, they might remember. Did they stay to watch her consider her next play, finger running circles around the mouth of the bottle, the low lamplight playing on her beech-smooth skin? Rose didn’t seem to see them, if they did; or did she simply not acknowledge them? It’s hard to tell with her, after all. The creak of his voice, the rich vibration of hers, sound without coherence, all mingled together with the lap of water on the side of the boat (a reminder of why they woke up in the first place, come to think of it) and the whine of the mosquitoes all about.

And yet she remains as mild and pleasant as ever the next day, despite how little sleep she may have had. The danger of her is a deep-hidden thing on the road, only visible in the way her muscles work under her skin as she walks, slow and slithering, lightly coated in sweat by the time the temple is reached. And there, oh, her swordplay! That was a chance for Chen to watch what Rose is like when she is simply playing for time, effortless, not even drawing her sword from its staff-form. Her opponent attacks, and she simply envelops the move as if she had been in charge of the stage-directions. Her staff hooks ankles and pins wrists and lays the priestess out right on her rear end and lifts her chin up so playfully, so carelessly, to that low and seemingly careless smile. And then perhaps Yue was glad not to see Hyra fight her, then!

Rose has been very much a tree, and so it was perhaps, not surprising when the horses shied away from her, and knickered their concern, and Rose ruefully chuckled and told them that she could keep up with horses if she pleased, but that was before the big teal-blue horse with the shaggy fetlocks approached her, the one with a shoulder as tall as Yue. Then Rose reached out and touched its cheek, and a moment passed between them, and Rose bowed her head until her forehead rested on his, and she thanked him for his service. She rides side-saddle, with her staff over one shoulder and her hand on his flank, effortless in how she shifts her balance to avoid being thrown.

And now we are in the now, and her companions are delighted by the sight of the balloons, and perhaps no one is looking at Rose from the River (which is to be expected, when there are such wonderful things to look at just above their heads), but that would be a shame, because her smile is a sudden flash of white and her eyes shine as she looks up and sees the balloons and the dragon, and she does not look away from the lightning-strike, she drinks it in and watches as the balloons soar. And only then does she breathe out. “Ah,” she says, in gratitude. The world has given something to her again. It has given her a dragon today, and a hundred balloons, and, yes, a chocolate egg, for (and perhaps someone who glances back might read this in her smile and the way she watches so intently) Rose from the River has never had the good fortune to attend the carnival of balloons, descended all the way from the Sky Castle.

And when Yue asks if she can without explaining what she means, because it’s clear as dawn what she means, and charges off without waiting, Rose meets Hyra’s eye for a moment, and a moment of acknowledgement between guardians passes between them. Then she nods, and pats her equine companion, and slides off him with serpentine grace. “Of course, Yue the Sun Farmer!” She plays with one of her golden earrings as she catches up with the excitable girl, and by the time she catches up with Yue, she’s able to slide it easily out of the furrow in her skin, already closing again in its wake. Her changing may be slower now, but it still comes well enough for such small things. “Here,” she says, her voice the sort of gentle that makes grand proclamations sound quite ordinary, dropping it into Yue’s palm and closing her fingers around it. “Jeska the Fire Sage gave this to me for my service. Now I give it freely. Trade it for whatever you like.”

Then she gives a playful look to Chen and taps the ring in her nose. “Would you like an allowance, too, illustrious Twinshard Princess? I might not be as rich as your mothers, but in their absence… well, someone has to take care of you,” she purrs, almost keeping her intent to fluster off her face. Dear, darling little Chen, beware! If you accept a ring-gift from Rose from the River, you expose yourself to headpats and affectionate condescension-- but if you don’t happen to have your allowance on you, what else are you to do? (And even if you do have it, perhaps you might want to be taken care of, to have Rose’s strong, sure fingers curl around your hand as she looks you in the eye and you go redder and redder until you’re as red as the cherry tomatoes, and to hear her whisper good girl juuuust loud enough for Yue to hear…)

[If Chen is enticed by Rose from the River, at any point on this journey, Rose has rolled a 10 just for her.]