Breaking the Gloaming (11 page)

He assured himself that Ravien would not betray him. Their love was real; it had been too visceral to fade like a mirage in this desert place. But Ball had once been loyal, too.
 

He followed the waddling boulder and felt trust unraveling all around him. Trust was worth more than gold, and he had always had plenty of both. Now he felt bankrupt.

*
*
*

By evening, Wren’s temper had cooled and left a throbbing block of jealousy and hurt. He sat at a table and dipped his pen in ink. A blank note was before him. The night air was cool through the open windows. The lamps gave the whitewashed walls a rich luster. Ball’s estate made for a much finer prison.

Wren had been crafting these words in his mind, seeking the delicate balance of telling his brother all he needed to know while hiding the meaning from those who would inspect it. When Ball had agreed to arrange for its delivery, he had made no promises of keeping it secret. He did, however, consent to a messenger Wren trusted: Cid. He was a Sunan who knew the black market and could make sure the message reached his brother.

Jon,

The dark bird has landed on another’s shoulder.
 

Wren wrote meticulously on the small paper.

Her song is a spell, convincing when to fly and where to land.
 

At least, that was Wren’s hope. He restrained his hand from penning his next words: Her song pleases her perch, plays upon his desires. Those words were too revealing, and Wren’s feelings were not relevant. He dipped the pen back in the ink and continued.

The little bird flutters in a cage
. 
He will go about his business with a ball under the sun. 

Jon would know the little bird as Wren, the ball as Ball, and the sun as Sunan. 

Tell our man the sun is at its zenith and setting soon toward the west. Stay the course, consider the coming dusk, and withhold no gold. Bright metals mean nothing inside the fire. 

—her little bird
 

Wren set down the pen and waited for the ink to dry. Andor had to know that war was coming soon. Judging from the fleet in the harbor, Wren guessed the Sunans would come with forces tripling that of Valemidas. He hoped Ravien knew what she was doing. He had to believe it was all a game, but the throbbing in his head diminished his trust.

He folded the note and stood with it in hand. After stopping to pick up his empty wine glass and the empty bottle beside it, he walked to the door. He tapped the bottle against it, and the door opened a moment later.

The two guards standing in the hall outside pretended to be servants. Their hard faces gave them away almost as clearly as their spears. 

“Take this to Ball,” Wren demanded, “and bring me more wine.”

The men looked at him with surprise at his orders. Neither budged.

Wren waved the note in their faces. “Ball said I was his honored guest. Do you always disobey his guests?”

One of the men said something in the Sunan tongue to the other. They rolled their eyes, but the man who spoke took the paper and the glass.

Wren went back into his room and fell onto the bed. It was going to take more than wine and sleep to ease this throbbing.

Chapter 11

THE STRANGER

“I opened myself to the

gentle indifference of the world.

Finding it so much like myself –
 

so like a brother, really –
 

I felt that I had been happy

and that I was happy again.”

Mersault and I had talked for hours, days, months. We talked of nothingness in all the ways we could. I had come to accept his company—the fits of laughter and aloof stares. Everything was a grasping after the wind, he would say. In our short lives, he would ask, what was better than to eat, drink, and enjoy our works? I had no answers to questions like that.

Our attic could almost have become a home, if not for the smell. It smelled like burnt hair, excrement, and dead rats. Only it was worse than that, because they were dead men, not rats.

We left rarely, when our stomachs demanded it. Mersault had been right about the food. We would go to the central square of the Gloaming together and wait for a falling. When it came, there were no longer any new men. There were baskets, full baskets, of real food. Cain’s men, the only armed men, would gather armloads, but it was too much for them to carry. Crumbs would fall as they hauled their loads to the tower where I had lived and reigned. Once they were inside, Mersault and I and other grey men would rush to pick up what we could. A few fights broke out, but not as they once had. Mersault and I would take the food we grabbed and return to the attic hideaway.
 

After I lost count of the fallings, at some number in the twenties, something began to tug me back toward Cain and the tall building. I pretended it was just Zarathus, my sword, restless for action. I pretended I could be satisfied with enough food and more discussions of nothingness in an attic with a lunatic.

Pretend as I might, there was nowhere to run from the truth. A simple life of food and talk would never satisfy me. I wanted power. I had always wanted power. I no longer craved it for power’s sake, but leading men was what I was born to do. Here in the Gloaming I had ruled men like a strong wind rules the waves. They would obey me on the surface. Underneath, below my influence, their motions were governed by something more powerful. Survival was the moon to their tides. It was such a base reason to go on living.

I wondered whether the Gloaming made clear what had always been true. Maybe men were all born fallen, and a terrible place like this only exposed our inner natures. We were harsh, unforgiving, and selfish. Men also wanted to survive in the world above, but everything up there was softer, colorful, and better smelling. Down here men needed more order. They needed me to lead them.
 

And so I decided to fight my way back into command. Mersault had only laughed when I told him I was going to kill Cain and regain power.

Cain had given me the opportunity. After he had attacked me, he continued securing his position and gathering followers. He probably knew I was still alive, and that I would come back for him. Maybe that fear had motivated him, for he had called a meeting. At the prior falling, his men had announced that this meeting would follow the next falling and take place at the top of the tall building. The announcement had sounded almost civilized.

Mersault came with me to the meeting. We followed the hushed voices and the flow of shadowy figures into the building and up the stairs. The gathering was on the fifth floor, below my former home. Mersault and I moved to a corner of the room, where we had the wall behind us.
 

A few dozen men were there. They kept their distance from each other, but no one attacked. I guessed their stomachs were not empty. They each tried to be no one, to be some fleck of dust on the floor. Their clothes were ragged. A few wore nothing but grime. They held bones and other crude weapons. 

Cain stood in the center of the room. He towered over the others and missed grazing the ceiling by mere inches. After a few weeks here, no one shines as a physical specimen. But a man like Cain wore scars and dirt as if he was born with them, and the horrors of this place only fed his disposition. He glimmered with brutality. Still, I saw the subtle signs of his stress—his nervous eyes, his shoulder still stiff from the wound I had inflicted. Leading men was no light burden, especially men like these.

He suddenly yelled out from his enormous chest. He raised his arms and shouted, “Do you not want better than this? Follow me, and you will live in peace. We will all have a share of the food.”
 

A man yelled back in desperation: “And who will get the food first, your guards? How will you restrain them?”

“You will all be guards, obedient to me,” Cain said. “Each of you will have a turn guarding the square.” He motioned towards a few of the men standing closest to him, and he held up several metal bars for distribution. Those were the weapons that my men had gathered and Cain had stolen. 

“Lies!” shouted a man in the crowd. “You take all the best food, all the weapons!”

“I will not play favorites.” Cain scanned the crowd, as if looking for the man who spoke against him. Then his eyes caught mine. His face darkened in fury.

“I will not be like that man!” He pointed his sword at me.

Everyone in the room turned toward me. Fifteen feet of empty floor separated the others from Mersault and me. I drew my sword. Zarathus gleamed.

Cain’s newly announced division seemed to ignite the smoldering group. Men began shouting, shoving, some of them charging at me, others at Cain. Within seconds, the whole mass was in a frenzy.

Cain was submerged, completely lost to my sight, while I was surrounded. The onslaught hit me like waves against a great stone arising from the shore. I did not budge, and they parted around me. I deflected their crude weapons, but my blade did not graze their skin. This time I wanted only Cain. I began to circle towards where he had been standing.

He spotted me first. “Kill him!” he screamed.

We began fighting to reach each other, through the brawling men between us. A few of Cain’s men tried to stop me. I flowed through their attacks. They stood no chance against my blade. I was healed and strong again. I severed one man’s sword hand. I knocked out two others with the hilt of my sword. They could thank me later for letting them live.

A high-pitched shout grabbed my attention. Mersault. Cain was standing before him, pulling his sword out of the man’s stomach. Cain stepped toward me. Mersault fell to his knees.

I realized the men around me had mostly backed away. Others were laid out on the floor, or writhing from their wounds. I closed the short distance between Cain and me.

He swung his sword at me with the force of an ogre. I spun out of its path and swiped at his legs, drawing blood. He screamed out in pain.

His eyes showed fear as he limped towards me. He stabbed at my chest, and I parried the blow. The force of our striking blades made him stumble back.

I jumped high by his side and swung Zarathus through his neck. His head fell back as his body fell forward.

Just as the men remaining in the room began to scatter, I announced myself. They needed something more than a man to bind them together.

“
I am your Lord!
”

Their heads snapped towards me. 

“
Kneel before me!
” I shouted in the midst of the confusion. One by one, they began to bow down.

The fight had taken mere minutes. At least a dozen men remained in the room, on their knees in a crescent around me.

I turned to Mersault, relieved to see his wild smile. Maybe Cain’s stab had not been as deep as it had looked. 

He was kneeled over like the others. I pulled him up by the shoulder, but he groaned. As his torso straightened, I saw blood.

“See,” he smiled through the pain, “it does not matter.”
 

He tried to stand, but fell to his knees.
 

“Would you end this pain for me?” He asked.

I shook my head. “We will get you food and tend your wound.”

“I am bleeding to death. Would you make me suffer longer?” He glanced to the men around us. “Show these men your mercy!” He groaned.

I looked down at him. He met my eyes calmly. The hysteria was gone. Pure innocence was there, like I had seen in him before. His presence here was my fault. I would not let him suffer.

He nodded, as if reading my thoughts. He leaned back and offered his chest to my sword.

When I pulled the blade out of him, the last thread connecting me to my past was severed. He was dead, relieved of his duty and his breath. I was alive, obligated to breathe and to lead again, alone.

I had an odd thought in that moment. I wondered what it would feel like to kill Andor. Would it feel worse than losing Mersault? I knew that it would, even if I had once wanted it. The past was dead to me and ahead laid a steady march to the grave.

Chapter 12

CHILDREN'S SENSES

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world’s
 

more full of weeping

than you can understand.”

Lorien’s stomach twisted, her head spun, and she vomited. This was the third morning in a row. She had never felt ill like this before. 

When her breakfast arrived, she poked at the eggs but settled on a few bites of toast. It was a rare morning when she was glad to be alone. Andor had been gone by the time she rose from bed, as he had been almost every day since his return. His days were overly full of duties. Her days were, too, but she had more freedom to set her agenda.

Her head continued spinning while she dressed, but at least she kept her bites of toast down. She moved to the desk that she and Andor had requested for the prince’s quarters. The huge slab of wood was meant for them to share, working across from each other, but Andor had little time to sit here.

She began reviewing a stack of reports from the prior day. There was little good news. The harvest in Valemidas’ lands was going poorly. Food would be short this winter. Gold would be even shorter, as the Sunans no longer lended to the palace and the few merchants who still did were charging much more, fearing that Valemidas itself might not be able to pay. Still, soldiers must be paid, walls must be maintained, and the work of the palace must continue.

So she began writing a slew of notes. She wrote directly to the many merchants she knew in the city. She wrote to targeted nobles. She wrote to the councils of towns under Valemidas’ control. By midday, she had read and discarded the stack of reports. A new stack of messages rose high from the desk. Seventy papers with the prince’s seal and with the princess’s script. Seventy demands that read like gentle requests. She prayed they would not be like seeds scattered on barren soil. All she needed was for a few to take hold, root down, and grow flowers in the coming winter.