Songs of Experience

I keep going over the situation again and again, in my head. The damnedest part of it is… I don’t see what I could have done differently.

Couldn’t let the Tenebrae think that he could threaten me with the lives of innocent people. It’s the ransom example, but so much more raw and immediate. If I will give in to those kind of tactics, then he’s won – completely and irrevocably, he’s won. He could ask anything of me and have it granted.

And he doesn’t intend to only ask things I can agree with. He wants my Almshouse. The whole bloody point of my Almshouse is to provide a springboard for those who want to escape Southside without being caught up in the cycle of crime that exacerbates their poverty. You start seeing the Brotherhood as the only ones who care, the only way out, when in reality they just use you as foot soldiers and get you caught in deeper. If I gave him my Almshouse… it would mean quashing that dream. I know there are people who have already benefited from it to save up enough to get away, move Northside, find a job with our placement services.

I can’t give that up.

He wasn’t going to kill her. I knew that as soon as I stepped one step closer, just as he threatened, and he didn’t. And I suspected it as soon as I came in. I’ve known a lot of villains in my time, and one eventually begins to recognize which sort you’re dealing with. This Tenebrae is the sort who believes himself to be a hero. The mage murders, the distribution of the silver to Southside… many of them pretend to be a savior for the poor, but this one actually believes it. So she was safe. Saviors don’t murder innocents.

Those are the facts that I – and I alone, in that bar – had to work with. Knowing them, I had to convince him that I didn’t care, so completely and thoroughly that he wouldn’t try again. I had to minimize the importance of her life to a trifle, while getting close enough to disarm him safely at the right moment.

I had to.

Or is that what I tell myself?

I tried to apologize to her. She accepted the words, but the sentiments slid off her like water on stone. I don’t think she understands that I did what I had to do, or if she does, she doesn’t care; it’s not sufficient and I should have done anything else. I’m not forgiven. But it’s utterly misunderstanding the point of an apology to say that I -should- be, that I ought to be. Being sorry gives you no right to demand forgiveness; especially when you’re sorry, but you’d do the same thing all over again. So why should I expect that she’d forgive me? I earned the ill regard fair and square.

This is the price you pay, Ari. Don’t let yourself forget that. This is the price you pay for being the one who’s willing to do anything for the greater good. You pay in rumors, and you pay in hatred. You pay in eyes that smoulder with resentment and bows that you coerce with the threat of the whip. You pay in being the cold bastard who does arithmetic with lives.

I threw away honor long ago as the self-satisfied luxury of men who quail at doing what needs to be done. So I shouldn’t falter at the cost.

…at least I can comfort myself by saying I’m not Uvarov. He wouldn’t even have been bluffing, and she’d be dead. The Tenebrae probably would have escaped all the same, and he would have called it a ‘victory’ because he blooded the man, whatever the cost. I shudder to think of what he said he’d do, in a pitying way as if it were a shame I was not hard enough to do it myself.

I may be willing to do what’s required for the greater good, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost all perspective about what the greater good is. It’s not sacrificing the people I do all these things to protect.

BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

CAFIOD???

CAFIO’D. Hahaha. You just got CAFIO’d.

(Increasingly elaborate and ridiculous designs for sumptuous cloaks are sketched here, including one made entirely of purple-dyed fur over which is written VANDAGAN WHITE BEAR??)

Birthday’s approaching again. Every year they seem to come a little faster. Is that how one becomes old? The subtle shortening of the weeks and months adding up to a subtle shortening of the years? Unremarked increases in the speed of things? Well, I am young enough yet to not fear age. And there are more immediate and brutal dangers at hand, always.

More than anything, these days, I find myself thinking how important it is to know yourself if you want to survive and flourish. To know your values, your virtues, and your flaws. Lord, I pray that I never lose sight of which of my problems are my own creation; I pray that I never make a habit of blaming others for my mistakes.

But perhaps I do that already? The devil of such things is that it’s far easier to see others’ faults than one’s own. Well.

I am hot-tempered, suspicious, paranoid, self-righteous, stubborn, sharp-tongued, mercurial and sardonic. I hold others to nigh-impossible standards… the same standards I hold myself to, but without recognition of the fact that people are all different, and may not be able to live their lives the way I have. I have grown accustomed to the respect nobles receive and chafe without it. I allow my pain to override my better self on bad days. I either trust too easily or not enough, and place said trust in all the wrong people.

Marisa would say I’m reckless, but that one I actually must dispute. I always know what it is I’m putting on the line. I always make a conscious decision about costs and benefits before I act. It’s just that I would rather be dead than be the man who didn’t give everything that he could. That kind of operating principle skews your decisions a little past the commonly subscribed-to borders of rationality.

But I get tired. Of giving, I mean. Giving time, money and blood. Lithmore will greedily imbibe everything you throw at it, and at best you stop the madness for a season before it arises again in new form.

Is that a fault? From an objective perspective, it’s only human nature, no doubt. No one is built to live this way without wearing out. So why do I hold myself to these kind of expectations? It’s the one standard I apply to myself and not to others.

Oh, aye, I’m angry when Reeves don’t uphold the law, or Knights don’t stop mages, or individuals who are perfectly capable of addressing need with which they’re confronted simply let it go unanswered. But if someone else lived the kind of insane life that I do and wanted to retire, I’d shake their hand for what they’ve done and tell them they deserve a nice, peaceful vacation for the rest of their days. So I guess if there’s anything wrong with me in that regard, it’s the guilt I feel for even thinking of leaving all the madness behind. As if I don’t deserve these kind of human weaknesses.

I found it amusing when Savann talked of self-flagellation, she who simply likes to flagellate others. She who pretends she will not achieve her hollow ambitions because she is *too* clever, not ‘vapid’ enough. She who so casually comes from a place of assumptions that I know nothing about being a commoner, that I know nothing about dreaming of raising my place in the world.

I want to ask her what she knows of suffering, what she knows of earning her way up, what she knows of actually being so desperate that you will do anything to survive let alone progress. Turning your nose up at cleaning inn rooms for money, Arien. I’d have been glad for that kind of honest work… if I’d been clean enough myself to be hired to clean anything else.

But it mirrors all my own flaws, doesn’t it? My vicious temper, enraged so badly because she happened to insult Marisa once. My self-righteous disdain for her flawed personality. The way I apply my own standards to her. I can argue that I was doing fine with the work of my own two hands, and that would be true. I was Marisa’s Court Bard. But then I came into my inheritence; without that benefit, there’s no way I would be a noble today. My misplaced trust – a good deal of why I’m so angry in the first place is that I thought much better of her, and foolishly invested so much trust in her before I actually got to know her.

I don’t think I can forgive her, even knowing all of this. For all that my reaction to her shows my own flaws, that doesn’t excuse hers. She has no interest in being a better person, either. She is perfectly content to think herself superior to all the world, and that individuals who do not seem sufficiently interesting to her are genuinely inferior people. And that… that I can’t abide.

There are certainly inferior people in this world; it would be foolish to deny it. But people are inferior or superior on a wide array of continua. How could I in good conscience say that it breaks down solely according to social class, when I myself was once as common as any other? Oh, I am sure one finds more superior people as one moves up the classes, but that is no sign that all commoners are necessarily inferior; gems in the rough, one might say. And these gems have a way of floating to the top. (Though I hesitate to characterize myself as a gem…)

So throwing out social class, how do we define inferiority? Should it be based on intelligence? Oh, why not; tis a very important element of a person, after all. Very well, then; show me how to measure such a thing. Show me the difference between an intelligent and unintelligent person, where the cutoff lies. But you say “It’s clear when a person is unintelligent!”, do you?  It’s clear to you, is it? Someone more intelligent than you may view it as clear that you are inferior, and are they then not equally right? (“You say” – arguing philosophy with myself, that’s a new low.)

If there is any way in which we can separate the superior from the inferior, it must solely be on moral fiber. Again we face the same distinctions, but at least there is one clear rule here: If one attempts to live by the word of Dav and the Lord, attempts in all good faith, then that is enough for me. You cannot truly be evil and be a servant of the Lord. Look at what He asks of us: to serve and protect our brethren, to uphold our community, and to save souls.

All acts that are morally wrong transgress the Church’s code; no acts that are morally right are forbidden by it.

…Arien, I’ve gone and written half a philosophical treatise here. Ultimately all that we are here for on Urth is to be good  to one another. It is the most difficult mission of all, but the most rewarding, even when we are called to harm others for their own salvation.

And somebody who doesn’t value that is somebody I can’t value, even if perhaps the Lord calls me to save them too. I’m only human.

Things I Never Wanted To Do In My Life But Did Anyway (the far more revealing opposite of “Things I Want To Do Before I Die”):

1. Profaning a truly sacred location by having sex in it with a witch

2. Also, having sex with a heretic in Ahalin Tower

3. Having sex with a Reeve in the Interrogation Room – can I just put ‘all the sex I wish I hadn’t had?’

4. Special mention: Getting tied to a bed… that I DIDN’T want to get tied to

5. Meeting ‘Woody’

6. Discovering the myriad joys of torture (at the hands of both the Church and mages)

7. Knocking over the Fountis Major (even in order to put out a fire)

8. Jumping under a demon’s claws to play meat shield

9. Headbutting Her Royal Majesty Cellan ab Samael (or was it getting headbutted by?)

10. Being accused of sleeping with the Queen AND the King to get a title. (At the same time? Rumor was unspecific)

11. Performing emergency life-saving medical care on an unwillingly castrated man

12. Becoming overly fond of a large procession of mages, heretics and traitors whose true qualities were unclear to me

13. Getting lost in the Lithmorran sewer system for an approximately twenty-four-hour period

14. Getting lost in the Hedge Maze for at -least- a twenty-four-hour period

15. Falling into a pit of decomposing bodies

16. Assuming a long-time ally had turned on me with completely insufficient evidence and wallowing in angry, angst-filled betrayal before waiting to find out if it was true

17. Killing enough people that I’m not actually sure how many have died as a direct or indirect result of my actions

18. Failing to save Madilaire’s soul

19. Writing this depressing damn list

20. …becoming a cripple.

So, life goes on.

One of those trite statements you don’t particularly see the value of until you’ve been in a position where it seemed impossible that things might continue, even as your heart kept beating.

I haven’t dared to touch this volume in a long, long time. I have felt the distant apprehension that my veneer of calm and control was as thin as paper, and the tip of a quill might tear right through it. Surely my insides would leak out, liquefied and irretrievable.

But that’s the thing about acting I didn’t really mention in my last entry. Act like something long enough, and it becomes reality. I get annoyed when people bow to me, but I also get annoyed when they don’t. I can tell myself it’s because it means I’ll have to try and force the question (and I genuinely hate doing that), but if I’m honest with myself, I have become accustomed to the presumption of respect.

Anyway, I guess I’ve acted like I am fine and can deal with this for so long that… perhaps I am fine, and perhaps I can deal with this. Writing this is half expression and half test of my sanity.

I can’t write about what happened to me down there. Not really. There’s a point at which rehashing the past is nothing more than torture, which I guess is why I’ve never talked about all what happened to anyone. I probably should; talk means healing. But it’s been four months now and I still can’t. I just can’t.

Leaving the memories behind… the hardest part is realizing that things won’t be -easy- anymore. I mean, there’s almost nothing that I can’t do now. I can still climb stairs, run, dance. Tumbling’s out of the question, but it’s not as if I went around doing flips all the time (in the last few years of my life, anyway). With enough practice and training to suppress the limp when I have to, I’ll likely even be able to fight almost like my old self. What I’ve lost is the ability to do those things gracefully, naturally, without thought or difficulty or pain.

Shoes with asymmetrical soles, canes, floleaf or willowbark (or mandrake on a bad day). Soaking for hours in the hot water not for the sheer joy of it, but to soothe my aching bones. Being winded when I go up a single flight of stairs. Being called ‘grandfather’ by careless young Vavardi men.

That’s life now. And… it’s not so bad as it first seemed when I realized the limp was almost certainly permanent.

Life goes on.

The fifth birthday that I’ve passed in Lithmore.

My life is utterly unrecognizable these days. People perceive me so wrongly, but I’m not able to show them the real me. If a “real me” even exists any longer, I can count the people who know him on well less than the finger of one hand.

I don’t have friends, she told me, and perhaps she was right.  Certainly she was never one, whatever I liked to think. I can thank my foolish words for clarifying that.

And I have changed. Not as profoundly as people think, I’m sure. But… I have changed. Nobody could live a noble’s life without changing, though I think I thought I could. Just another part, eh, Ari? And you are such an actor.

People would laugh at me if I tried to tell them that I never wanted to be a noble for its own sake, that I paid a high price for my title. What could be bad about being nobility?

The answer, of course, is “everything –  beyond the power to right wrongs and the beautiful jewelry, anyway.” But I knew what I wanted and I made the trade to get it. I do not regret my choice, even if it sounds like it sometimes.

Still… I can wish there had been a better way, can’t I?

Am I losing my mind?

Ever since the shadow touched me, it feels as if everything I see is viewed through a veil of darkness. I should be happy. I have what I wanted most in the world, and more beside. I am noble, rich, successful, respected, Courting the most incomparable woman in the Realm.

And I was happy, the happiest I’ve ever been. For such a brief shining time.

I haven’t heard anything from Bryne. I think he got my letter… and he ran.

All I can think about is my sins and my mistakes. It’s overwhelming me again… like the water over my head I wrote about before, except this time it’s blood choking me. Even the things that I had to do to save souls feel like regrets now. Lord, I am no Knight, no Inquisitor; I am too weak to bear these burdens. Knowing I brought them to salvation is precious little comfort.

The day I’m too weak to help save a soul is the day I should go to the pyre myself for my monstrous selfishness. But I fear I’m coming undone and I don’t even understand why. Why do I feel so filthy? I’ve bathed again and again, several times a day. My hands are cracked and my skin sore from all this scrubbing but it doesn’t help. I thought Caria would help, but those penances aren’t remotely enough. I just need to feel clean.

Arien. What I’ve just written… I reread it and – I’m losing it. Why? Nothing’s even -happened-. What did that mage do to me?

No. It doesn’t matter. I can’t go mad. Not when I’m needed, appreciated. Not when I finally have her.

Do you hear that, mage? Can you read these words, or my thoughts? Know this: I’ve faced darker creatures than you and they are dead and gone, while I’m still here on this Urth mostly in one piece. Whatever you did to me, I will defeat it and emerge stronger than before.

I will make up for my mistakes, somehow, someday. I will. There must be a way out.

8/25/355

Damn my infernal temper!

I hadn’t even considered the duel a necessary part of this. Theatre never hurts, but the true work of stopping this man didn’t have anything to do with weapons. It was just a little show, an excuse to tell everyone what he’d done.

But when I heard he had the cowardice to decline the duel and escape all physical consequences, so smugly talking about it – “Guess I have no honor!” – I wanted him to pay.

Not even for Sayrei. I hardly know her.

No, ultimately, for myself. For all of the people who, in my life, have reduced me to nothing but a body.

Gianina told me, the last time we spoke, that someone as petty and common as me would never have anything that he didn’t buy with his body. That I lacked the worth and skill to get ahead in life in a legitimate fashion and I should just accept such bargains, because I would never become a bard unless some woman liked the look of me enough to bestow the honor on me.

It’s difficult to put those words to paper even now, when I have achieved so much. They raise whispers in my head. Madilaire promoted me to a full bard instantly upon becoming Poet Knight… and wanted me in her bed. I know it’s ridiculous. I know. The other things I’ve achieved here in Lithmore had nothing to do with sex.

But it haunts me, and it makes me so angry. No one should have to feel this, this sense that all they are in the eyes of someone else is an attractive body. And a bard especially should never feel like all they are is a whore, with no choice but to go along with a powerful person’s desire.

I let it make me too angry. It’s probably alright; the flogging seems to have also had the intended purpose of bringing the Justiciar’s crimes to light, and possibly with more humiliation than a duel. But… I lost my temper over a matter that ultimately has nothing to do with me.

When will I learn to control myself?

The games we play with each other.

I’ve been too busy to write, so of course approximately a million things have happened since I last put quill to paper.

The melancholic humors that were consuming me have abated. While I am hardly past the horrors of the last few months, I have my feet under me again and can continue to move onward, trusting my healing to time.

Much of that I owe to Marisa. Courting, at last! I frankly don’t care at this point if we never marry. Though I suppose I must, for our baronies’ sake… but we are both young enough I think we needn’t worry. Well, I am. Do you know, I still don’t know how old she is? Four years we’ve known each other and she’s never confessed it to me. I suppose she must be thirty by now, but she hasn’t really aged a day since we met.

I have never been as happy as I was after her birthday party, after she accepted my gift and my suit. Never in my entire life. And I think it would have stayed that way… if I hadn’t seen him. I’d known that sigil anywhere, the morning bird.

I wasn’t prepared for how seeing him again would make me react. I’m still not prepared, truth be told. The contradictory feelings that reared up in me have only gotten worse after reading his letter.

You were my best friend in all the world, Bryne. I couldn’t understand when or how or why things went so incredibly wrong as to turn you into my enemy.

And now I’ve flirted with heresy myself by telling you about the warrant. I knew even as I put quill to paper that I shouldn’t be doing it, and the moment the letter was sent I regretted it. I probably could have paid the courier to give it back, and yet… I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I had to give you the chance to prove that you meant your words, but it’s already haunting me. What if that chance ends up being the death of someone who tries to take you in? What if that chance means you run away, unrepentent, uncleansed and unsaved to die just like Madi did? What you did wasn’t worthy of execution, but to run from it again… probably would be.

I don’t even understand why it’s so painful.

…enough of that. At least I’m working on something practical, meaningful right now rather than just sitting around. After reading her testimony, my resolve crystallized. Anyone who thinks bard is synonymous with whore is my enemy, and worthy of destruction. I think I could have taken my dagger to hand again and duelled him myself. It would have been unpleasant… at first. Then it would have been too pleasant.

But it wasn’t necessary, as the duel is just the theatre, the drama. The real work of taking him out happens behind the scenes. Still, people buy your vision a lot more easily when you spin it into a story they recognize. The wicked Justiciar, misusing his power and position to oppress the people. The righteous Proconsul, taking up his weapon to defend an innocent young maiden from the Justiciar’s perfidy. He demonstrates that the Reeves categorically reject their leader’s sins and still stand up for justice. The Justiciar is shamed, and the people’s faith is renewed.

Two birds, one stone.

Bryne, did you write me and only me because you suspected I was the weakest one out of everybody you wronged? Because you knew that I would find it so hard not to forgive you, after everything? Because you knew that if you could only convince me, I’d argue for you til my breath ran out? If you did, I guess you were right. Lord forgive me, I want my friend back – I want my partner back.

The games we play. Two birds, one stone.

At times I wonder just when our aim became so good, and if it’s actually a good thing.

Years ago, I sensed – knew – that I was at a crossroads in my life.

The two paths I could walk were embodied in the two women I had met my very first day in Lithmore.

I could take the easy path and idle away my life in Madilaire’s poisoned garden. Drunk on women, wine and song, uncaring of any reputation I won in the outside world. Again a pretty toy for a powerful woman, with no higher aspirations than to amuse and be amused. A two-bit bard in cheap taverns.

Or I could take the hard path and live up to the potential Marisa seemed to see in me. Change my entire self; take the lessons that I had bought so dearly to heart. Become a gentleman in clothing and airs, in bearing and in words… in truth. Become a man of substance, known throughout the Realm and respected.

I took the hard path. Of course, I was barely more than a lad then; in reality it turned out to be far less simple. In choosing the light, I had to go through the dark, and I paid a price I could have never fathomed. I try not to think about my days in the Tower… though I do anyway from time to time, albeit rarely now. I was a wounded animal, half-mad with loss and rage, and still forced every second to wear the mask lest my fellow prisoners discover the truth.

In all the horror and misery that has followed me since, I have never been as… abject as during those last few days in the cage. I clutched her handkerchief as the only line to sanity that I had left. Lying in my own vomit with the burns along my sides searing with every breath, my ribs stabbing and my broken nose a constant ache, desperately praying that no one would be able to touch me again…

…but I digress. Those days are gone, even if I still have the handkerchief.

I made the choice, and I followed the road, and it went further than I could have imagined. I have many regrets, but not the path I took.

Yet here, it stops. Again, I’ve come to a fork in the road. This time, it’s not two women representing the choice I have to make… it’s what I hold in my hands.

Down one path, I hold a sword. Scarred and weary, bitter and cold. I have chosen to walk the road of the blade to the bitter end, and what do I have to show for it? Countless wounds, an aching soul, and solitude. I know, deep in my bones, that when it ends I will be alone. Those I love will have been taken in retribution, or find themselves unable to deal with the walking mass of scars I would become. I would, too; I’m not that strong as to keep on fighting without being ruined by it.

In the other path, I hold a needle. I have still seen atrocities, and many of them I have no doubt found myself unable to prevent. I have had to watch while others protect the Realm, and if they do so with stronger hearts and souls, they still may not do so with the same success. Proud, perhaps, but I think I’d be a fool to pretend that my efforts have meant nothing. Down this road, I’d be helpless… but my triumphs would be lives saved. Not nebulously, because they didn’t become victims, but directly. People who are alive because I and my needle were there.

It’s a false dichotomy, again. It will never be a hundred percent one way or the other. But that doesn’t make the essential choice any less true. The sword, or the needle?

I feel like I’m swimming, sometimes, in a great lightless ocean. I’m exhausted from treading water, but I can’t stop. If you ask me what I would have changed among my past actions, I can’t tell you. What I’ve done needed to be done; protecting people is how I make up for my sins. And yet… the more blood I spill, the higher it all rises over my head. I can’t keep my head above the surface anymore; I’m drowning.

Somewhere along the way, I dedicated my life to saving and protecting others. The graveyard is full of people I have both helped save, and those I have failed. Somewhere Madilaire lies, mouldering to dust, in a grave I will never find how many times I look.

And now Sophie, too. Sophie, whom I failed twice. I could not help Anna… and I could not kill Sophie as I intended. Quick, quiet, peaceful, painless. I don’t know why I’m so sure she was coming to me – she sent several letters – but I feel it in my bones. I would have, Sophie. I promise you that.

I can’t do this anymore.