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    February 29, 2012 /  Memories

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  • February 22, 2012 /  Entries

    * Have finally almost got all the Group business settled. Replaced a lot of Alastair’s conservative old codgers with newer people, with newer ideas. Not all of them, though; the voice of experience is invaluable. It’s just not the only thing that matters. There’s not a man or woman on the investment prospect team now with a record of losing money, and that’s not something I could have said before. Alastair will simply have to live with it.

    * Need to talk to Trouble again about that play. I think it could be pretty grand. It was foolish of me to let my feelings get hurt. I’m just so fond of her, and the way she brings laughter wherever she goes… to be seen as someone so petty and vain as that… I’m sure it was just a teasing comment. It’s hardly her fault I took it so seriously.

    * Still haven’t managed to arrange a tour. Frustrating. Especially since I got myself all filthily disguised for nothing once already. Bah.

    * Hear we’re getting a new Poet Laudate. Where -is- she? I’ve got about a million things to discuss with her. I say ‘her’; I suppose it could be a man, a dashing handsome man to distract all the apprentices. I’m not going to be that lucky, though.

    * Need to write up those reports. Where are all of the hours in the day?

    * Also need more handkerchiefs. Too many people bleeding/crying/getting dirty. Singlehandedly working for better hygiene in Lithmore! Dubious accomplishment.

    * Maman’s due to arrive soon. I’m far more excited than any man should probably be about his mother coming to live with him. But finally I can give her everything she deserves in the world. Going to spoil her rotten.

    * Oh lord. That reminds me of the heir thing. Do I really have to make a decision on that? I’m young yet, right? But… I’m the last one. There’s not even anybody left with the last name Orban, and that’s one of the stipulations. Damnation.

    * Need more whiskey. Clear solution to life’s problems – the ones it doesn’t create, anyway.

  • February 17, 2012 /  Entries

    I must have begun a dozen entries over the last month, only to tear them out of this book and toss them into the fire as my feelings violently swung from one extreme to another. At this rate of indecision, I’ll soon have to rebind this thing.

    The choices that we make are what defines us as human beings. In the last few weeks, I’ve gained considerable insight into my self. Avenue after avenue of making a difference in this world has been presented to me, and one by one, I’ve turned away
    from them. I look at the man reflected by these choices, and I’m not sure I like him very much at all.

    At times, I think that I have proved that my selfishness remains my defining characteristic, that those optimistic dreams I had of becoming a better person were just more ego-saving delusions. I have chosen love over duty; how can that be the choice of a good man?

    But at other times, I think it is the least selfish decision I’ve ever made. That I was a fool to believe I had something unique to contribute, any reason to think I was somehow essential. In that light, this is the first time in my life I’ve put someone else before my own desire to be valuable and worthwhile.

    I don’t anticipate that this dilemma will be resolved any time soon; instead, I hope that it will lose its power to wound me as it recedes into the distance. Time will show that the consequences of my decision were hardly so grave, and that there must be some way I can do something meaningful with my life.

    There’s more I wish to write on that topic, but… isn’t it funny? I’m too paranoid to put some thoughts to paper even in cipher in a journal I keep hidden somewhere secret. I laugh at my instincts even as I resolve to obey them in the future; old habits are loath to die, one supposes.

    Well, then, onto secrets dangerous only to my… pride? Frankly, I don’t know why I keep my involvement with the almshouse secret at all. Perhaps I don’t want people thinking it’s some sort of condescending publicity stunt. Either way, it’s just about ready now and I’m very eager to see its work begun. I wonder if the Order’s willing to fund the staff? It cost an obscene amount of money to retrofit, more than I’d have expected, and there’s no reason I should limit its scope out of some absurd desire to finance the entire project out of my own pocket. I don’t regret the cost, though. If it achieves its mission at all, it’ll be worth it.

    I will do -some- good for this city; I will not be satisfied until I have. If certain methods are unavailable, that does not mean my hands are completely tied.

    …I seem to always end these with some sort of grand declaration, followed a few entries later by something along the lines of ‘well, that didn’t work out!” Let’s break up that pattern with some sort of plan I actually can complete.

    Alright: I’m going to take Beauty out and wrestle in the backyard, and then we’ll go on a long run for no reason other than that we can. Isn’t it an amazing blessing to only have to run when you actually -feel like running-, as opposed to because somebody is chasing you wanting something you nicked back?

    Not that I’ve ever done anything like that.

    Nope.

  • February 10, 2012 /  Writing

    We are the same, she and I
    Two broken bottles after the barfight;
    We shatter skulls.
    Though side by side,
    companionable on the counter,
    grind us together and edges only shriek-
    Always a half-step apart.

    We are so different, she and I
    Silk all the way through or on the surface,
    a shining veneer.
    Though of two worlds,
    the coarse and the supple,
    we cleave into something extraordinary-
    An interval of harmony.

  • February 8, 2012 /  Entries

    Happy birthday to me… well, in two days, anyway.

    I’ll be twenty-one. Strange how wrong that feels. I should be turning… thirty, yes, thirty seems just about right. I found a few more grey hairs today, though I don’t bother to pluck them out. In my vanity, I am quite certain that I will even go grey in an attractively debonair fashion.

    All I can think about, with the date approaching, is where I stood a year ago.

    A year ago, I was alone.

    A year ago, I was still barely above poor, living off the remnants of my money from Vavard – and more primarily Marisa’s largesse. I was exulting in the fact that I was actually wearing silk, and that no one would challenge me as to my right to do so.

    A year ago I was just on the threshold of… the events that so changed my life. Even here, I dare not elaborate on what they meant to me in detail. But I thought myself a competent, experienced fellow, who had seen much of the worst the world had to offer and could face it all without hesitation. Now I know that I was wrong.

    Experience… I am no longer stunned every time I set foot inside the Palazzo Damassande; even the palace does not make me stop and catch my breath. I walk in velvet, sleep in silk, bathe in hot water whenever I desire it. Gold does not astonish, stone does not intimidate. (And it’s been a really long time since I ate out of a garbage midden, which is pretty great too, actually?)

    Yet I feel as if my sense of wonder has only been sharpened. I have been rendered down to my component dreams, virtues and vices. Uncertainty burned away with all of them, and I see the world for what it is now, taking nothing for granted.

    In this one way I am grateful, because I am stripped of doubt. I know that there are beautiful things in this world worth protecting, worth marvelling at. I know they have nothing to do with silk or stone or silver. I know that I can do anything that is required to protect them, because that is the kind of man that I am, and that makes me appreciate them all the more.

    Here’s to a year of changes, simultaneously the best and the worst days I have ever known.

  • February 5, 2012 /  Memories

    “Come along.”

    The young man has been shivering for two hours in the hall, thanks to wearing nothing better than rags with a spattering of blood from the nose to lend color. No doubt they had thought he’d slink out of the cheerless marble antechamber before now. Clutching his papers in his hand, he goes where he is directed, all strength leached from his passions in the interminable wait. Now he wonders dully why he came, what he expected to accomplish, why they are even bothering to escort him from one appallingly expensive room to the next when everyone knows none of them will ever be his.

    Alastair le Orban is not the imposing figure he had expected; at seventeen, Ari is taller than his grandfather, taller and leaner as if somebody seized him by the head and feet and wrung him out. He is much darker than his grandfather too, as if the ubiquitous mud of his upbringing got under his skin somehow. That’s silly, though; he knows it’s because of his mother. Then again, she is also intimately familiar with mud.

    But Alastair does look like the miniature of his father that his mother keeps safely buried in the corner, all ruddy cheeks and wood-brown hair and eye. Ari’s spent evenings turning it over in hand, wondering that this stranger could be half of him, hunting for commonalities. So he can recognize the line of Alastair’s and Raymond’s and Ari’s jaw, the heaviness of their brows and the thickness of their hair, and for a moment a relief he is ashamed of floods through him. He -is- an Orban, not a delusion.

    “I have consented to give you a moment of my time, Camille, because to my ever-lasting shame we are indeed connected in a way no dictate of man can erase.” Alastair’s voice is low and infinitely cultured. “So say your piece and have done.”

    He will not allow himself to care that he is sore and exhausted, that this is his only chance at ever seeing Faia again, that his voice has a hopelessly thick dockside twang even after all of his lessons. He definitely won’t allow himself to care about how much he hates that name. He unfolds the papers and throws them down, right there atop the nightpine desk. “I am your grandson, Master le Orban – your only grandson. I have the Orban blood  and there’s the proof. My father, your son, his name is right there on my papers. I want to be acknowledged. I can be useful to you. I’m clever, and I know how to get things done. Maybe I don’t know anything about business, but I can learn. Take me in. You need me.”

    “I… need you,” Alastair muses, toying with his quill. Ari has never seen anything like it; the spine of the feather is layered with gold, the edges too. He’ll have one just like that, himself. “You, an ignorant gutter rat? Aye, you have the Orban blood. Mingled with filth. I do -not- need you, child. Petyr will marry, and have fine sons of his own, and you will be forgotten.”

    “I won’t let myself be forgotten.” He’s getting angry now, which he can’t. He has to show him he’s worthy. Cool, controlled,  always in command. “I’ll tell them. I’ll tell everybody that I’m the grandson of Alastair le Orban: and if I am a gutter rat, you are the man who left your legitimate grandson in poverty. The papers prove that. I can be useful to you, Grandfather… or I can be useful to your enemies. It’s your choice.”

    “A strategy indeed worthy of your upbringing. Allow me to make something clear to you now, Camille.” Alastair’s hand closes on the papers. He is not old, not truly; it is no wizened claw, the parchment crumpling under his strength. “Blood is destiny. One must make allowances for the confusion of one such as yourself, born with one foot in squalor and the other in greatness. There is no place set aside for such people in this world… but there is a reason for that.”

    He turned to the hearth, gold against his black velvets, and tossed the papers into the fire. The flames hungrily accept them, seeming to roar – but no, it’s the blood in his ears, the pounding of his heart. The only evidence of his birth is gone before he can force words through the sickening bile in his throat.

    “You should have never been born.”

  • February 5, 2012 /  Entries

    It’s the middle of the night, actually, so if you want to be particular about it I suppose it’s no day at all. I hate people who engage in that kind of excessively literal thinking.

    I couldn’t sleep, so here I am in my study, ruminating about things far beyond me. But the truth of the matter is that something has to be done. Somebody has to make sure that people are held accountable.

    I detest the choice that I’m facing. I am not comfortable betting on myself for such large stakes. I am tolerably clever, I suppose; I am reasonably well-educated and quick to become more so. I am not afraid to say what I mean and to enforce my opinions with whatever power I have at my disposal, but I think I consider the words of others before making my decisions.

    But is that enough? Do I have the talent, the will; have I earned the respect? Am I wise enough to know the answers – more importantly, am I wise enough to know when I know nothing? I don’t know. The story of my life is a long list of follies barely escaped by the width of a hair, the breadth of a nail. I have so many flaws, and I’ve made so many mistakes. I know that I want to do what’s best, but I don’t know if I deserve the trust they want to place in me.

    And even if I in and of myself am sufficient, am I good enough to outweigh the impersonal disadvantages that accompany me? Even she doesn’t think so, and no one is likely to judge me more kindly. Yet they’re right; they need someone, and who else can and will do it? I have my reservations about any of the other answers that come to mind. If she were interested, it’d be different, but she is already doing good work where she is. No, as unsure as I am about myself, I’m hard-pressed to nominate someone better once all the contextual factors are figured in.

    To find yourself in a situation where you have only bad choices is rarely poor luck; it is more often a direct reflection of personal failure, whether to plan ahead or to take a superior third option.

    I refuse to be a failure.

  • February 1, 2012 /  Entries

    I helped save a life the other day.

    A life that I had some small part in putting in jeopardy, it’s true, but when one weighs the life against the soul there is no question of the outcome.

    It was harder than I had expected, controlling the tremble in my hands. With every stitch I recalled Madi’s face, waxen and still. I’ve seen dead bodies before, friends and foes. Yet never before was it so apparent – what was lost, I mean. Her spirit was sick, but it always filled up the room with pure vitality. Seeing her so lifeless like no corpse I’d ever seen before… it was probably just my imagination that made it such a searing moment, or the knowledge that her soul was already wandering lost and confused in the darkness it would call home for the rest of time. And while I was sitting there there was a thirteen-year-old girl about to join her in the same fate, again courtesy of me.

    In shorter and more colloquial terms, I’m amazed I didn’t lose my shit all over the place. I don’t know how I didn’t scream at Jei. Yes, she’s a mage or heretic or something; yes, she was wielding a blade against us; no, that doesn’t mean we should run the risk of seeing her dead and her soul condemned forever. I wonder if it’s just what happens, after you’ve been a Knight for a while. To care about their souls could give you that split-second hesitation they need to end your life. Probably it’s a luxury, caring, that they can’t afford.

    But she survived… as far as I know, anyway. She survived, and with that another of the chains left on my soul has relaxed. It’s not the first of those moments, when a burden has dropped away from me of its own accord, and I have hope it shall not be the last. I come to think there will be a time where I am… not the man I was before, no. Going backwards is never possible. But I come to think I could even be a better one.

    Right now, the future looks as bright as it ever has. Four years ago, I could never have guessed I’d be a rich, respected bard in Lithmore herself, accepted heir to the Orban family. Oh, I might have told everybody that was the plan… come to think of it I think I did tell everybody that was the exact plan… but it’s not as if I ever expected it to -happen-. I have my troubles, but they pale in the face of my blessings. For that, I will ever give thanks to my Lord… and my lady.