Arendas, Quintilis [Dream]

March 25th, 2015

It reeks of wine-sweat; the sort Mister Ashford had at Lauds, thickly threaded over layers of cologne. Coming from the pores, not the skin. Standing by with his candle while little girls are roused from their beds and brought out into the day room, one by one, to eat with their father; tow-headed dolls in silks and satins, finery for the sake of finery. Father can afford it.

Alexander reclining moodily in a slant of light, one boot unlaced, irritated by everything. Still angry about having to wed a Vandagan; worse, a Baron’s “stout” daughter, future hinged upon our family refilling their long-empty coffers. “The nobility think they have it bad,” he would often mutter on those early mornings, “but they’ll all be extinct in another century.” The looks he got from father…

“They spend lavishly from their pauper’s purses. Let them reap that vanity.
“If they wasted less on ugly jewelery and tacky clothes, they wouldn’t be in this predicament.
“One would think by nature of being ‘noble’ they would be adverse to accepting charity.
“If the Lord meant for the nobility to be divine, he would have provided them with better sense.”

Little wonder Alexander did not fare well in Vandago.

He left his marriage bed titled and landed, but neither really mattered. He hated his wife, hated her father, hated kowtowing to the prideful poor that he had found himself entangled with; nobility who treated him as if he had been given some grand favor, when he alone had saved them from destitution; by his largess they would survive. A fat, brown-skinned bitch and her father’s unbearable, frozen land. Wonderful. All hail the Baron of Mozenk, you ungrateful, Arien bastards.

It’s the stink of wine that brings it back. For a moment I can almost hear him.

But it isn’t breakfast, and he isn’t alive. Father isn’t shaking his head or digging in his heels to negotiate. Mister Ashford’s stink is the stink of the room, and the bodies on the floor aren’t little blonde-haired sisters protesting the injustice of wakefulness.

The Cardinal is impaled with pitch-black spikes, driven through both eyes, his familiar hands and still booted feet; he’s sitting upright. Dozing. Rotting. A bottle of wine rests at the corner of his desk, three-quarters emptied. With a quarter left it could not have been as bad a night as many others. The erudite sophistication of the office clashes with the indignity of the scene, but that had always been so. Finding Gerolf drunk or drugged had been enough. Now he is sitting up, transfixed on death. There are flecks of blood on his springtime tapestry. No different than the other wildflowers.

I hear him whisper against my ear: “I will find her, Emma. I will.” His tears are warm on my skin. A golden fog is rolling over Southside.

Something is rapping at the windows. When I find Joseph staring I mistake him. He realizes at once, and he nearly flinches. It’s the drums while Casimir hangs and Lady Cellan’s thudding heartbeat; we’re talking loudly, trying to drown them out. Someone lifts the dead Knight’s head and holds it up over the crowd. They cheer without knowing why.