* * *
Stevane
* * *
Part of me just wants to stay asleep and be aware of nothing - to blank all of the last few days out and stop thinking at all. The rest of me knows that's a stupid wish because I dream too vividly for anything to be a rest - worst of all, I never stop thinking. And, like most Poets, I tend to notice things around me even as I sleep.
So I suppose I heard a conversation between Unkie and the other Advocate from across the ocean that I probably wasn't supposed to. Except, Unkie knows I'd hear it, so I don't understand why he'd just let it happen, unless he wanted it to. That means he wanted a witness around... or someone did. It's something to think about, which I'm welcoming right now, because I'm not dreaming heavily at all and I'm starting to notice things that I wish I wouldn't.
For one, Jhe h'Lete seems a little strange. He's always a little strange, of course - that's part of what makes him Jhe h'Lete. But he shouldn't be so active right now, talking to everyone so much - he should be resting! He's been so ill lately, and Father even threatened to take his crown away from him for being such a busybody. It's just like him to react by working even harder, but... this can't go on. I poke back at him with just a hint of Daddy-like disapproval.
He shrieks in reply, and that's what wakes me up.
I look around, so sure that someone else must have heard the scream. The room's empty, though. Unkie must still be with his daughter, and the other Advocate must be with them. I'm alone... except it feels like I'm not. It feels like I'm being watched. A rustle behind my head makes me almost jump across the room in panic - and then I hear a tiny mewl and realize that Millie, my Shenanigan, has found me. I pull the cute little thing to my chest and give it frantic stress-cuddles. That's why it takes me so long to see what's on the coffee table. Once I glance up, though...
My stomach feels like it's sinking into a pit. Jhe h'Lete's crown is on the table, and worse, it's... it's giving me a terrible feeling. As it is I can't think of any good reason at all for the crown to be off his head - he clutches that thing like it's the only thing that keeps him alive sometimes. I don't really want to touch it... except that I have to. I have to find out what's wrong. On some level, I already know that I will touch it, and that makes the foreboding even worse.
I sit up, set Millie gently on the couch next to me, and reach for the crown.
The world lurches.
* * *
Jules
* * *
This rotting husk of a ship disgusts me in all the right ways. If she weren't crawling with bug-kin she'd actually be quite pleasant - the craftsmanship is solid, and once I believe it was even well cared-for. Maybe in a time fairly recent. But now the thing's a hive - well, no, a nest. A funnel web of a vessel, the poor girl. These black wicked things don't deserve a ship as fine as this one.
Why, I'm much more wicked than all of them, and much more deserving.
Cutting through the chittering, venomous things is hard, but I lead the excursion nonetheless. My crew won't respect me if I don't, and by the abyss I wouldn't blame em for scourging me for a lack of courage. A pirate must be chickenhearted only when it counts - now is the time to be reckless and foolhardy. They're guarding treasure, that's for sure. Precious cargo. Live cargo too - I saw it being loaded on. One in particular, blindfolded and shrouded and chained, swaying back and forth from the confusion, and extremely well-guarded. The person must've been a hostage, that's my guess. If the wretch is still alive, we can free them and get ourselves the ransom instead. If they're worthless... well, there's more ocean on this world than all the corpses in it can fill. It won't make much of a difference.
Ah, here we are. Big, big guards - they fall pretty hard due to their size. Real satisfying, to be truthful. And within, a prisoner or two. More like a corpse or two. I give the shrouded body a nudge - it doesn't move.
But it seems warm.
Samuel's followed at my heels like a good boy. Never did understand what was in it for him, but he's a real charmer and I won't hold him back, young as he is. Four's a good age for adventuring, right? At least, I think he's four. So hard to tell with human young. The boy inspects the corpse, checks for a pulse... waits.
He squints.
Samuel looks up at me. "He might be not-dead." The boy seems dubious, as if he's scrutinizing the cook's mess pot.
I shrug. "We'll haul him in, then. No reason to leave the opportunity to rot."
Samuel flinches at that, hells if I know why. That boy knows what life is like on the high seas by now. I lean down to test out how many men should be here to left out this man - he's pretty tall, so I expect it'll take a few. Nudging the shroud aside, I see he's quite a looker, under the spiderwebs wrapping him up like a cocoon.
Samuel shudders. I just frown. This man's light enough for me to carry. "He's really alive?"
Samuel bites his lip. "He might be." The boy looks like he might cry. I roll my eyes. Not much of a weight on my back, either way. I heft the cargo out myself - the crew can take care of the gold, which no matter its age or condition is always heavy.
* * *
I blink through some sort of haze. Memory? Dizzyness. Eh, whatever it is I'll not worry about it. Ales is fretting. Fretting being an understatement for anyone else but him - Ales is well-known for his startles and fits. Such an easily frightened sort! Always a pleasure to keep around, if only for entertainment's sake.
Still... screams like this aren't common for him. It's rare his nightmares ever get this bad anymore, and as far as I can tell he isn't asleep. And nightmares he'd wake from - he's not waking from this. He's just terrified and stupid and shrieking at nothing--
No. Not at nothing.
A grin curls into my cheek. That curly-headed fop that called himself the Law was right on one count - Ales's old foe has successfully sought the poor fool out this time. I can feel that cold regard - can feel something else, too. Something more human than the old, cold one that I stole Ales away from long ago. He's the one that found Ales, and then led the cold one to the cage.
I hear the voice:
But I can't understand how it could possibly be him, my King!
My cutlass is ready, though there's no opponent in sight. I still grin. I can taste a fight upon us. Ales is still whimpering, but I'm ready.
* * *
Edward
* * *
My mind is still reeling. I don't understand. I know the Poet King died - yet here he is, still alive. He even reached for me, tried to invite me in. The question as to why he was so foolish as to even do that is crowded out by how he could be reaching for me in the first place.
My King will not provide any answers for me. He keeps going on about how he recognizes the Poet King, how he remembers him. I don't understand - maybe from when Jhe h'Logos lived under Lady Thelea's oversight?
Memories skirt in front of my eyes - memories that aren't mine. Perhaps they're my King's, then? I still don't understand what it is to be his Herald, and I'm sure I don't want to. It's better not knowing, not realizing - and in a way, I wonder if I'll even remember the images I'm seeing now. It's not my choice to, is it? It's just my choice to watch what he wants me to watch, to say what he orders me to say. Anything more than that is forbidden - and it's relaxing, in a way. Comforting to know exactly what I should be. It's nice to focus on that, instead of the pain radiating from those memories.
That is Jhe h'Logos in my King's memory - I can't see how anyone else could look so much like him. But I don't know when my King ever had Jhe h'Logos captured in his possession - he looks young in the memory, perhaps fifteen. Perhaps younger. It's difficult to tell with all the spiderwebs draped around him. Spider legs as well - he was chained in a dungeon, one huge spider curled around him like a tight cage.
I shudder just as the Jhe h'Logos in my memory does. If he hadn't done so, I'd have wondered if he were even conscious. He looks half-so - or perhaps asleep and vividly dreaming. He's so pale and sickly, the pain more than enough to keep him sedated.
Even so, once he moves the spider wrapped around him sinks its fangs into the young Poet King's neck to subdue the twitching. He screams.
No, the current Jhe h'Logos screams. How? Is this his memory? When is this? When am I?
* * *
Elesse
* * *
I'm going to die like this. The spiders won't get off me.
* * *
Edward
* * *
I hear my King, and think that I'm in the present now, because he says:
Enough. I know how to fix this. Here.
I reach forward towards my former King. He's in a cell now, just as he was in my King's memory. Except it's a different cell. Still, I've almost got my former King in my grip again - just as before, when he died. When I thought he died. Now we'll finish the job, and I...
...I won't have to remember how it was anymore, being a Poet.
My fingers brush his hair, and then I lose my hand. The cut is cold and clean, and my wrist ends in as much nothing as I've lived in for however long I've been my King's Herald.
Fool. We can't be cut by mortal blades.
"This be no mortal blade, ye great ugly bastards! Come at me, then! YAARH!!" The blade whicks through the air again, and if it weren't for my King pulling me back by the hair, my throat would have opened up just now.
The freakish man just cackles into the hole that's opened between my former King's and my current King's lands. "Come! I'm achin' for a fight! Or do ye have nothing of the sort in ye? HAH!"
My stump of a wrist aches until my King tells me to forget it was ever cut. There's no pain after that. In fact, I can't remember why there would be any pain - I've always had only one hand, have I not?
Where are they, Ed'huar-schelina?
Somehow by the feel of it I'm sure that it's in Radia. It's a cell in the Armed Hall - that would be too tightly warded to reach externally. Our connection into it was through the Poet King's reaching out to me - but it's being guarded by whoever that raving madman is. My King seizes on the idea, though--
Radia
--and decides that he knows yet one more way to fix things. I'm told to remember, through my King's memories of the imprisoned Jhe h'Logos.
I'm to remember the spiders that kept him.
* * *
Elesse
* * *
I can't forget. I can't forget it at all. I tried so hard... told so many stories... wrote it all away...
Now it's coming back. I can see that now. I can hear it, even, through the voices of the Poets that I'm supposed to lead. I don't understand that at all. I just tell them to run. No person could be worth the pain of protecting me from what's found me-- certainly, I'm not worth it.
Something growls, sending more chills down my spine. I look up, expecting to have to duck away. It's my Captain. Jules is growling - growling at me.
I duck away, but that just makes him give chase. He thwacks me in the rear with the flat of his cutlass.
"Useless ye are, snivelling like that when there's fighting to be done! I told ye long ago, if'n ya aren't gonna fight alongside me then ye'd better make yerself useful some other way!"
Tears wet my face, my eyes wide. "B-but... I can't oppose that thing! It'll only hurt me!"
He narrows his eyes. "A fine crew member you are." The words, cold and quiet, turn my stomach to stone.
"And besides, I... I don't have anything to write with here."
Jules snorts. "As if this cell can hold in a grand warrior like meself. Come on out!" He hauls me up, my legs still so wobbly. It's difficult enough to think straight while at the center of the thoughts of all the Poets - my fears added on top of that make it hard to even remember how to stand. I end up leaning against Jules, one arm thrown over his shoulder. Except he's so short that his head's nearly wedged into my armpit.
That doesn't faze him, of course. He merely kicks the cell door open and marches out, cutlass thrust out in front of us like the prow of a ship.
* * *
Julia
* * *
I'm lurking in the shadows, keeping my mind's eye on the wards around the whole Palace complex, when I hear Cary's voice - faint, but clear.
What's strange is that I can hear him at all.
Don't underestimate me. Just because I'm... young now... He's so calm, even in his annoyance.
Can I call death a minor annoyance? For Armed it tends to be, but I don't know if Cary takes that sort of thing more personally.
No time... well. He stops to mull something over. There seems to be a lot of it.
I blink.
Time, I mean, he clarifies. More than there should be. But maybe... maybe you don't feel the effects... Poets are. Jhe h'Logos seems distressed. He pauses for even longer. And maybe a little... weird, but it's Jhe h'Lo--
He breaks off then, and I almost curse aloud. Cary's usually so dependable and stable - regeneration seems to be bringing out the usual-for-other-Poets flaky nature in him. What are you trying to tell me? Please be clear. I don't want to lose my temper with him. By this point in regeneration he's probably physically three years old. It would feel weird.
He's quiet for a long time before he answers: It's difficult to explain when I don't understand what's going--
* * *
Gwen is her name.
That is good, and that is right. I don't know anything else now. My mind's flayed to hell, my clothing's shredded bits soaked with blood, and I'm missing some fingers. But her name is Gwen, and Gwen is happy now - satisfied. I wonder if she ate those fingers.
Just tasted them. Meh. Her chain-blade coils around my feet as I feel her stretch in my mind, sated and warm. You did well, Diyn says. For a kid.
I whip the sword's links out from around my feet, taking her by surprise as I fling her blade away from me. I suppose it makes some sort of a point, or exerts control. I'm not sure. I just feel angry, even while I feel good wielding her. Feel right. I'm not just some kid.
No. Gwen's tone is matter-of-fact, with just a hint of dagger to it - like my own, in fact. No, you are not just some kid. You are my Armed. You are also a kid.
I snarl as I fling the blade outward again, testing her tension and coil. Something makes me wobble a bit as I do so--
"I appreciate you training with your Arms as soon as possible, Jhe Wysthaven, but..." the Judge's voice is warm with pride and amusement intertwined. "Jhe Katherine would still have a look at you first, if you would permit it."
You're wounded. Gwen is smug about it, and well she should be. She dealt the damage, after all.
But I survived it.
I draw her length up into a flat blade, then tuck her away into the kind of mental pocket space we Armed have been trained to use for what is obviously that exact reason. I then let Jhe Cruxradia tsk over how much of my blood's been spilt.
It has been a good day.
* * *
My mind lurches and I almost fall out of the shadow I've tucked myself so nicely into. Carey! What was that?! That wasn't just a memory. I was there. Even though my initiation as an Armed happened years ago...
Time's-- His voice cuts out again, and I swear the Palace physically lurches this time. No, must just be perception. Time is shifting in its place. It's all out of order. Something's wrong with Jhe h'Logos, and he's panicking instead of telling us what the solution could be. I-- I was telling you so you could be on alert. No one can find Jhe h'Logos in the Poet Hall.
I nod. Well, it explains that intense reverie just now. Not that Gwen doesn't enjoy reliving the old days with me. I hear her chuckle in the back of my mind in response, and try to ignore it.
Then I sense a breach on the perimeter. This isn't some weird time fuckery - it's a real, physical combatant, followed by several more. They can't get into the Palace, whatever they are. Not yet. Another appears across the Palace complex, outside of the Poet Hall. They start clustering around the Poet Hall and disregarding the Palace altogether.
Arm the Poets, Jhe h'Akribastes said? They'll certainly have to meet assailants one way or the other! Cary. The Poet Hall is under attack. I've been left behind to defend the Complex, but you'll have to help me coordinate defenses.
I can feel him grinning. Just like old times.
I make my way towards the Poet Hall in stealth and make plans.
* * *
