A boy is in the water. The narrow river is gushing blood downstream his mangled body. The day only began a few hours ago, I think. The water rushes over him, as if passing through
his very being.
If only there had been time for him to explain himself to her uncaring ears, to create some fake apology for doing what he had to do to survive. Bitter blood pouring out and a
remembrance of times before the boys were lost to dead fathers and never ending wars. Sweet liquor, full tankards, sour mash, a raging fire, a funny dance, and friends like
Ahmi tries to forget she never really had. The sight was beautiful, his jagged wound pouring blood and water.
A deep breath. Now.
Now Ahmi would bring the boy to Mr. Wellworth. She holsters her revolver. his hair flows with the tide, she pushed hers behind her ear, blonde ripples, and clings to his small
face as she pulls him
up. His body flops against her
in a ridiculous contortion. Ahme isn't there. Her
mind is reciting nursery rhymes. Her mother is within her now.
Olive green eyes. Mother, where now are these nursery personalities: the baker,
the old maid, pigs, dogs, and mice? She pauses a moment, with the dead boy draped across her, was that her voice?
then starting back toward the carriage. It's battery hums louder
than usual on her way to the farmhouse.
It would need changing soon. Soon Ahmi would leave this place.
Wellworth knelt there, his hands toiling in the weeds. The land was near barren. Only a careful man would produce anything but dust here, and he had been
so careful. Then everything changed. it wasn't long ago when it happened, only when the moon had last begun to wane. Wellworth was older now, aged by more than time.
There was toil to be had,
soil that hadn't seen rain in far to long.
He hadn't even brought himself to cry since they took her, and his wife, who he took when the girls'
mother died, had little love inside her for the children. That was something he would never understand, but he couldn't bring himself to ask her about it.
She waited a moment for him to acknowledge her, but he wouldn't. "This is the last one." That made him stop. He looked up. "How do you s'pose?" "because he was alone,
Gathering water from the stream just up the way." She jutted her chin north, in the direction she had killed the boy. "had there been more, he wouldn't have been,
not out in the open like that."
"Mmm." He kept looking at her a moment. Something was caged behind his eyes. Maybe he was just a lonely old man, but she was more than a
beautiful young girl. He knew that from speaking to her. She didn't mince words. "how bout you stay on? keep round make certain of it? We'll keep you fed. I'll saddle you
with another bag of grain." He wouldn't beg, but the farm wasn't a normal home anymore, and the grain was a small price to have another pair of eyes looking around. It
would make the rest of the girls less nervous.
There stood the eldest daughter in the window, sickle in hand, father's wife draping a careful hand across her. She wouldn't move.
They all idolized Ahmi, because she carried a gun and almost never talked. "I can't do that. I've stayed too long."
She turned away. "Beside that, my battery is near done, and I have trading to do." He rose from his knees slowly. "Well, your grain's round back. Give me a hand buryin him."
The boy went into the ground in the same manner as the dirt that went over him. Ahmi tried to remember a prayer. "I ain't an angry man. Ida done same were it another
man's daughter they took. I loved that girl like nothin else, but that ain't the reason. You know that."
He dropped the shovel and looked directly at the sun. He meant what
he said, but he didn't want to be the one to have to speak. Someone had to, though.
There was a body going into the ground. That meant this was a funeral. That meant someone
had to be the one to speak.
"World ain't right these days. Hard times comin.
People start to turn. Start actin like animals. If you don't get'em by the root-"
"The grain is by the mill? "Yea, five bags." "Pull me two more." "That mean you're stayin' on?"
"No, but I can tell you where her body is."
For a moment he didn't move.
Then he started toward the mill. He was trying to hide it, but he moved faster now. Ahmi looked away.
Prairie falcons made circles in the distance, chasing the wind.
She checked her wheels carefully as Wellworth loaded the last of the grain. He still wasn't going to beg. "Beyond the river, heading east, she's in the shrubs right before
the trail up that mountain pass." She paused a moment. He began to turn away. "Mr. Wellworth, Before you go... They were eating her. I wanted you to know that before
you saw it."
She wanted to say something else but she didn't. He looked so pale.
Like a man who had just died. Like the boy. When she left she felt like the tears would come
any moment, but as she got further away, the feeling passed into nothingness.
The High Tower, ceiling all gilded with images of the gods. And there too were the goddesses: the Virgin, the Maiden, the Widow-
but those Gods, all armor and muscle, with
faces twisted in passion and judgement. What memory is this? What was to happen here, below these gods?
Who stands now upon that alter? A young boy is leading a lamb up
there. It's quiet brays and the clopping of it's hooves are heard across the temple. And from the boy a man takes the reigns, young and handsome. He draws the
ceremonial knife, the curved blade of the harvest. He slides it across the lamb's neck. His arm is tight over her back, as she kicks and bleeds and cries out, dying. A young
woman joins him on the alter, a white dress he smears in the blood, a chant recited in unison. A promise. A priest of the temple joins the young couple as they embrace. This
is a wedding. The priest tells of a
woman's responsibility.
He calls her the future of the people. He talks of the man. How he will protect her. Ahmi is young, and the memory is weak. She isn't looking at the
priest. She's looking at her sister. Their eyes meet.
"Sama, will things be better, now that you're married?" The Temple was nearly empty now, with families drifting out into the courtyard. "Some things will get better, Ahmi,
but some things will never change. You know that." She could still recall the feeling of her sister's delicate hands, pushing back her hair. They sit in the front row now,
and beneath that veil of colored glass the ceiling feels endless, like she could drift into it and never come down
"Ahmi, don't be so upset. One
day you will be married.
You'll see." Beyond her sister's hands,
looking down, all those vicious gods stood in judgement.
But this is only a memory. A half truth.
Nevan's carriage glides over broken road as if it weren't even there. His fingers trace over the brass embossing that dresses his window. He doesn't look outside.
Gavriil
is seated beside him,
upright and focused.
"Gav, will we be there soon?" Gavriil hears his watch tick, breast pocket, eyes open wide. He served the crown since he was
young.
Most were boys at that age. Gavriil had been a man since he first heard gunfire in the distance, random and constant. He marched toward it with a gate he had learned a month prior, and rose quickly, becoming one of the youngest commanding officers in the war;
by his thirtieth birthday he was
serving directly under Nevan's father.
It was a ceremonial position,
and Gavriil wore a uniform heavy with medals.
That was then, before the nights of fire- the terror in
the streets.
"Gav, will we be here long." The boy was becoming impatient.
"We'll stay for the entire performance. People must see you now, to feel you are among them."
Nevan looked out the window, beyond the embossing and flourishes. "I'm not, though. Not really." These are words that Gavriil would say nothing to.
His posture would say
nothing,
either,
save the tightening of his right hand over his left wrist.
He listens to the tick of his watch. When they pull to the curb Gavriil keeps his eyes to the
alleyways, and from them comes the Peaceguard. They moved in unison,
like machinery. Seeing them appear, matriculating from alleys
and parked wagons and diners and even
on the balconies of the posh apartments overlooking the theater,
Gavriil holds his head high. His own movements become more defined, crisp,
the way they had been when he served under
Nevan's father. Nevan and Gavriil are soon surrounded. The public keep their distance.
A shabbily dressed man looks away. Inside the theater
they ascended to the balcony, with members of the guard stomping and looking back at the entrances.
They find their seats. Nevan's teachers, luminaries from the court of study, form a halo around him:
a carefully orchestrated show of support and fealty. Their
positions, remarks, and every conceivable interaction they might have with the prince are meticulously
planned and carefully recited. Gavrill makes his way into the right
corner of the room, a position where Nevan had learned not to see him, just as one learns not to see the
frames of their glasses. However, on this occasion Gavrill would leave the young prince
briefly under the care of the Peacegaurd.
It was a rare indulgence, but Gavrill had business to attend. Just as soon as all were seated,
Gavrill made a quiet exit.
Gavrill knew Morley from early on in the southern wars.
He was the first Serpentile Gavrill had come to trust.
Though he supposedly never studied the books of the snake, and was
not once know to have recited serpent charms, there was a barrier between him and his compatriots
that he would never penetrate. That embittering barrier was the bedrock of
Gavrill's ascent within the court. Few were privy to the extent to which Gavrill's politicing drew from Morley's
gossip, and for a man who was not once known to have recited
snake charms, there seemed almost to be a mystic quality to the vast knowledge Morley could sometimes produce.
There he was. Gavrill had ceremonially made his way into the alley beside the theater,
where Morley was leaning against the exterior in feigned relaxation. "You look like you need a cigarette." Morley gave nothing more than half a nod as Gavriil produced his cigarette holder,
then matches. "It's been some time. I'm hopeful that you can tell me something useful." Morley took a slow draw from the cigarette.
"It's no better, Gav.
Especially the plains. Lot of work out that way
for hired guns. Lords have begun enforcing their own law."
"You know that I'm not worried about the Plains. It's here in the capitol that we have to be worried. I've always
said that."
"Some of us should be more worried than others, Gavrill. Revolution is no longer a platitude.
You should be careful where you are standing when the sky begins to
fall."
"that doesn't sound like you, Morley.
It was right beside me that you stood when the sky began to fall.
Don't you remember the cannons?"
Morley freezes, shocked at the invocation. Hadn't he given enough? When would it all end. He wanted nothing more than to leave.
"Remember? I wake up and hear them. You speak too lightly of the past"
Gavriil puts his hand on his shoulder. "You were beside me when we raised the flag back over this city."
"You raised it, Gavriil."
The clap of an explosion. Glass rains down at a diagonal, then from straight above, with Gavriil pulling and yelling for Morley, who does not hear him, just as he
does not hear himself over the ringing. Smoke pours out overhead in billows vast and dense.
Gavriil is inside the theater, near the top of the stairs when he begins to hear again. A
woman is screaming. For a moment it sounds distant,
faint. No, she is right before him- Nevan's Language teacher. She had been seated directly behind Nevan.
Her face is a mess of blood, nearly covered in it's entirety. Her fingers try to reach it,
but contort before her eyes in uncertainty or disbelief. Her words are
excited nonsense. Gavriil grabs her behind the shoulders. "The Prince. Where is the Prince?" "He- beyond the stage. With the actors."
Gavriil doubled back. Down
the stairway, through a hall beside the lobby. Backstage Nevan was hiding behind a
dresser with a couple of dancers. These weren't peasant girls, some even had family within the high court,
and yet being here beside the young prince, lionized as
he was in print, charming as he was in person, the girls could almost forget the great explosion
that had only just then happened. Gavriil charged the door. "Gavriil!
I heard an explosion." Gavriil looked to the Peaceguardsman at the back exit. "When do we depart?"
"In three minutes a wagon will meet us back here."
Gunshots rattle out from the front of the theater. Loud. Unmistakable.
"We're leaving now" and they were out the door just as a wagon approached. Gavriil hoisted Nevan into the back and then took his place beside him. "Gavriil, I don't think I very much liked being among the people." The girls stood at that back exit as the Peacegaurd shuffled away, unsure where they were to go.
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