Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Redana weeps. Redana weeps for cages. Redana weeps for the knife driven into her dreams. She weeps because the prison of humanity is not gravity. She weeps for the golden crown bloody on her brow. She weeps for the glory of Hermes, the messenger, for the injury of the message received. She weeps because the soldier next to her, holding her wrist, making soothing noises with a look of concern and incomprehension, is someone who will never love her again, who never did love her, who she could have lived with in innocence forever. Hermes strips away the lies. Hermes is revelation. Hermes is not the physician, no matter how many use her symbol in confusion.

The Imperial Princess of Tellus, Redana Claudius, born to dominion and power and authority forever and ever, born from a Director and a God, hero by the blood, chosen of her Father, delight of Polychromatikí, breaker of hearts, she who dared climb over the wall of thorns around the garden of paradise to escape into the wasteland of her own heart, reaches up, and up, and up. She seizes the solar crown, the Principality of Tellus, the birthright of command. She twists her fingers around it.

This thing that makes her important. This thing that makes her worth hating. This thing that is the collar on a chain that leads back to the wound in her mother’s heart. This mountain she never surmounted, this expectation she never met. It is hers, and it will not break.

She lowers it down into her lap, and the blood runs freely from her broken hands until the crown is red as copper. It remains inviolate, unbroken, and Redana breaks around it.

Bella takes those hands into hers and rests her forehead against Redana’s own, and their tears steam where they strike the crown, the hiss of evaporation like a depressurized plover. It is so hot. It scalds her. And even if she destroyed herself, throwing herself against it, it would remain inviolate and whole.

“I dreamed you were a shepherdess,” Bella sings softly. “And I a forest nymph. I dreamed myself a jeweler, and you my model dear. I dreamed you were a sailor, and I was all your sea...”

“I dreamed us both anything but what Olympus made us be.”

Breathless Dead

Then we bring them back.

“I won’t say it,” Redana bleeds out through a clenched jaw, even as the words suppurate all around her.

One world. One species. We can’t let humanity’s legacy be wasted.

“Shut up. That’s not me.” But she’s wrong. It’s her voice, or else impossible to distinguish. When the ship is repaired, plank by plank, is it still the same? When a girl is woven on a genetic loom, what flaw makes her less than her mother? Her mother, brilliant, decisive. The Director.

Until they learn empathy. Until they learn community. Until we remember we are mortal.

“Until they forget the stars!”

The die is cast.

Redana takes her head in both hands and squeezes. She mirrors, without knowing it, the pregnancy of her father: the terrible weight in her head, threatening to split open in her anguish. Her furious howl is drowned out by the steady, relentless logic of the Director’s last gambit, the authorization of her second galactic campaign.

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!!