(~3,100 words)

Open and airy, the parlor in the Tower of Nissonos sat exposed; a half cracked, domed cylinder perched atop Nero’s Thumb with its closed back to the Uralic Sea. Sculpted in the likeness of the Gods, nine pillars of carved snowstone stood in a half circle around the room’s perimeter, gazing down on all that remained of the once sprawling Aerodin Empire. Benches of felted cotton bordered the pillars, their rosewood frames topped with folded wool blankets and silk pillows to protect against the cold wind which blew through the high mountains. Forgoing these easy comforts, King Callius Nisodon sat atop a slab of cold snowstone on the parlor’s perimeter, where the floor in the Tower of Nissonos ended and fell the long way down to the top of the mountain. Only in this high place with the wind on his face and the mountains of Nero’s Claw sprawling out below him, did the King believe he could find perspective enough to see both the Empire, and the impact his decisions would have on it.

Too young to be called old and too old to be without an heir, the King wore the weight of his people on his face, hard lines and heavy creases like a farmer’s field after a blighted Scything. In spite of this, he appeared relaxed, as though the hardships that brought those lines had been given to a younger, greener man while the one who wore them now, had -for the nonce at least- found mastery over them. He raked a hand through his hair as he contemplated the coming exchange.

For twenty three turning seasons he had lived with the missteps of his younger self, tirelessly recovering the power he had traded in the earliest days of his reign. This chore represented the last of those mistakes and also the least of them. So minor a misstep that in the twenty three seasons since, the King had not bothered to remedy it. He wondered about that now.

“Callius…”

A dark skinned woman with bright eyes padded across the parlor floor, she wore a plain white robe belted at the waist and held a cup of wine which she offered as she arrived. With an eye for the unseen and the boldness to speak where others kept silent, Callius thought of Desma as the parlor’s tenth pillar. Surrounded by sycophants as he so often was, his wife’s honesty made her a kind of god unto herself. Even the Arbiter of Stones was rarely so frank.

“Desma.” Declining the wine, Callius took her hand.

“You’re upset,” said Desma bluntly. She set the wine down and sat beside him. “It’s him isn’t it?”

Callius leaned back. “It is not the man himself who upsets me so, but the man I’m reminded of…”

Desma sighed. “It’s not healthy to live in the shadow of your failures for so long, Callius. You were a child then, and have accomplished much in the time since. We cannot change the past, my love, much as we might like to.”

“Much as we might like to?” said Callius, feigning indignation.

Desma slapped him on the back. “He’s been here nearly an hour now. How much longer will you make him wait?”

“I am the only one in the Empire for whom he must wait. The rest faun over him like an idol made of precious stones, as though he were Aeras made manifest in the soul of a man. No…” said Callius with a shake of his head. “A bit of waiting will not hurt him.”

“Do you think he will make another joke about the King’s Boon?”

“He will doubtless lead with it,” said Callius with a snort. He shook his head. “All the more reason to delay…”

Desma sighed. “Callius, if you think continuing to delay your council will help, then I am fully in favor of it. That said, I see no reason why I should be inconvenienced as well. Use one of them to handle it, Aeras knows they could use a stretch.” She cast a hand towards the King’s blooded guards who stood as statues at the parlor’s entrance. Clad in black segmented cuirass’s with yellow cloaks pinned at the shoulder, they held spear’s in one hand and black shield’s in the other, the Aerodin sigil of Nero’s Claw inlaid in gold across it’s center.

“The Queen wishes to abandon her duties?”

Desma dropped her head in mock challenge, glaring at Callius until he gave in with a chuckle.

“All right,” he said, surrendering. “All right, I’ll have Fexin see to it in your stead, I’m sure he’ll be honored to have the task. Come here.”

Callius pulled Desma close until they were nearly nose to nose.

“Thank you,” said Callius.

“For what?”

“For the wine, and your council…” He rested a hand on her belly. “For everything.”

They shared a kiss and Desma stepped away.

“See you this evening?” she said.

“As soon as I’m able.”

They shared a knowing smile and Callius watched Desma go, calling out just before he lost sight of her. “Send Fexin on your way out?”

She waved an acknowledgment, and he turned back to his view of Aerodin, the chill mountain air biting into his bare feet. Lynceus would expect him to be dressed for ceremony; armored boots and cuirass, a fixed cape and ornamental staff. But there would be time enough for grandeur in the coming months. For now, he meant to enjoy the Noble from Nothing’s discomfort at his King’s most humble appearance. He pulled his meager robes around him in an effort to block the cold, and though it did nothing to warm him, a bit of cold was a small price to pay to put a man off of his footing. Especially this man.

Still, seeing no reason he should not take the sharpest edge of his discomfort away, he picked up the wine Desma had left him, and drank. Swallowing, he shook his head.

Would he continue to freeze on the steps of the parlor so that he might needle a man whose council he had never valued in the first place? No. He had already wasted Desma’s time, he would not compound that mistake by wasting more of his own.

A man in a segmented black cuirass approached, stiff-backed and square-chinned.

“Your majesty?”

“Fexin. Lynceus waits below, escort him to the parlor immediately.”

“The Sword of the King is… downstairs?”

Finishing what remained of his wine, Callius shook his head. “The Noble from Nothing is downstairs, the Sword of the King stands before me bearing the livery of his majesty but -for reasons unknown- not his message.”

Fexin’s jaw tightened. “Apologies, my King. Right away.”

Callius clapped one of Fexin’s black pauldrons, set his empty cup of wine on a felted seat and watched the guard set out. Once Fexin had left the room, Callius snorted. Even at the rim of the world, atop the tower of his ancestors, in the very room where the fate of Empires past and present had been weighed, King Nisodon, thirteenth of his line, could not avoid the shadows of his past. He refused to let it bother him. These were the burdens of a King, the cost of choices made for good and ill. You shot your agate like an arrow and let the spheres scatter where they would, and if this particular sphere -warped though it might be- was still rolling, well, Callius figured, such was the unavoidable consequence of shooting at all.

Even so, much had changed. As a child, he had loved the Beggar’s Journey, reveled in it even. It had taken him out of the tower and brought him to his people, and through it he had seen things few men and women ever had. He had enjoyed those early days when he had been too naive to understand its purpose. The danger, the profiteering, the death. Twenty three seasons later and he had gotten more than his fill. What once he had welcomed, he now reviled, and if there was a curse greater than his forced participation, it was his hand in it’s heralding.

A tapping sounded behind him followed by the patter of leather feet on spiraled stone steps. Finding the task more tolerable because he could track its end in a sandglass, King Nisodon bit back against the cold and the shiver that threatened to follow.

“Whose boon is this? Mine or yours!?” Called a voice from the parlor’s entrance.

Being right was rarely so upsetting and King Nisodon groaned into his empty cup. He took a moment to compose himself, then turned to the man with a smile. “Aeras be praised, is that the Hero of the Bloat?”

Tall and lean, Lynceus had a jaw to rival Fexin’s. Throwing his arms out wide, the man crossed the room and embraced
Callius like an old friend.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Callius nodded in answer.

Clapping his hands together, Lynceus strode past the King as though he were an afterthought, looking out through the carved pillars and down on Aerodin with a satisfied smile.

The Noble from Nothing was as ostentatious as ever. He wore crisp leather boots and a black silk cloak that billowed out behind him as he stood at the parlor’s edge, the roughly stitched outline of the Rolling Gyre, a five spoked wheel and the sigil of the Beggar’s Journey, emblazoned on the back of the cloak in yellow. A clever re-appropriation of the sigil using the colors of Aerodin. Curiously, while the stitching of the Gyre had been masterfully tailored, the template he’d used to craft it looked as though it had been scribbled out by a child. Callius could only marvel at the man’s effortless knack for turning a crowd. Lynceus had taken the sigil’s lowest form and spun it in black silk and gold leaf, reinforcing his ties to the Empire and endearing himself to Nobles and commoners alike in the process. It was a talent Lynceus had possessed for as long as Callius had known him.

Callius watched as the Noble from Nothing pondered his return to relevance, intending for the man come to his manners on his own time.

It was asking too much.

“I’ve stayed up many a late night thinking about this and I’ve come to a decision. We’ll do away with the leaflets entirely and double or even triple the amount of Criers lining the King’s Road. There is something… ephemeral about the spoken word, about feeling and rumor passed from one mouth to another. They grow with time, changing and expanding as the original words are lost, forgotten, and reinterpreted. The leaflets…” Lynceus shook his head, not truly seeing the King nor the city stretched out below him. “…where is the space to breathe in a rote list? The room for rumor? The margin for mystery? What surprises can be had by words that never change no matter how many times you read them?”

King Nisodon knew full well that Lynceus’s resentment towards the written word came in the hang-ups that arose when those words were called back to account. Uncatalogued, words could be moved, reshaped, denied, or created at will, while those set to ink and parchment could be called back, disruptive and inconvenient.

“And why must I remain limited to a single announcement in Aeras Square? Where is the sense in that? The Bloat is large, sure, yet it’s only a single locality in a city with many. There should be another on the Kingsway at the very least, and a third on Cloudstep for the High Nobles.”

King Nisodon shook his head. Left unchecked, the man would talk well into the evening. “Are those formal requests?”

Lynceus turned back to parlor and King while the wind shaped his black silk cloak against his legs. He looked at Callius as if roused, as though they had not embraced a moment ago. A curse given to those who spent their days in the eyes of the public, glad-handing and proffering themselves to others for social leverage. Except, Callius Nisodon was not the public, Callius Nisodon was the King, and the King -having interrupted Lynceus- padded over to the Noble from Nothing on bare feet. He’d sent his servants down into Aeras Square the day before with instructions to procure a few articles of simple clothing which he now wore; an off-white robe pinched at the shoulder and tied around the waist by a strip of leather so thin it could not even be called a belt despite doing the job of one. For the first time since he’d arrived, Lynceus took in the King’s modest appearance.

“I… of course. Yes, your majesty, they’re formal requests.”

“Well then as formal requests, they will have to be written down and given to the Archon of Records,” King Nisodon spoke in flat tones, careful that his satisfaction at Lynceus’s discomfort not bleed into his words. “As to the likelihood of their approval… well… I can see no reason we could not double the amount of criers, and likewise no reason we could not have a second announcement made on the Kingsway. However, removal of the leaflets is out of the question as predictable expectations must be set regarding the melee and it’s path. An announcement on Cloudstep is similarly doomed. I refuse to waste the resources.”

Lynceus flinched as though struck and King Nisodon suppressed a smile. The idea that anything involving the Noble from Nothing could be considered a waste of resources, had seemingly never occurred to the man. However an idea did occur to the King, a brilliant one brought on by none other than Lynceus himself. It was all Callius could do to keep a straight face.

“Oh, but that does give me an idea, an excellent idea,” King Nisodon turned to Lynceus and this time he let the smile come, broad and genuine. “Old friend, you solve problems I did not even know I had. Perhaps we can save on a few leaflets after all.”

Perking up, Lynceus pulled his shoulders back, finally giving the King his full attention.

“Though the proximity of the Kingsway to Cloudstep makes the need for an announcement there redundant, I cannot say the same for the five fiefs.” Lynceus groaned like an insolent child, but the King -having anticipated it’s coming- turned smoothly away. “Yes, that’s a wonderful idea, Lynceus. I will send you ahead of the games as a special envoy to announce its coming to each fief personally. Why have we not thought of this before? How surprised they will be to have a man of such esteem in their midst. Most clever my friend, most clever indeed.”

“I…” Lynceus stood at odds with himself. His enjoyment of this event had just been significantly reduced, yet he was incapable of letting a compliment slide by unacknowledged. “…yes, thank you your majesty.”

“You will start at Exul Rill, then work east and north…” Stroking his beard, King Nisodon, wondered at his luck. He would have Lynceus out of the way for all of Scything at the minimum, a King’s Boon indeed. “I’m told the wine from Exul Rill is unrivaled by the other fiefs, you know.”

Behind him, Lynceus stood silent, the giddy momentum of earlier snuffed out. Were it not for his arrogance and competing popularity, Callius might have felt pity for the man, certainly he’d never seen anything from Lynceus that would indicate disloyalty. Never that. The Noble from Nothing was always appropriately humbled whenever there was occasion to remind the man of his place, it was in the fleeting moments in-between that made King Nisodon wary of his charge, and in the stories that had burned through the Bloat like wildfire over the last twenty three seasons. Stories which -if true- indicated Lynceus would leave a thriving generation of his blood behind when he died, a stunning legacy that sat in mocking contrast to the King’s presumed failure to sire an heir. Among the people of the Bloat, ‘Sword of the King’ held very different meanings. No, it was safe to say that King Nisodon did not feel pity for Lynceus.

“My Ki-”

“Who knew,” King Nisodon cut him off, his words snapping across Lynceus’s own like a willow-switch. “What you would become to this Empire when I bestowed you your title in Aeras Square all those seasons ago?” he smiled. A wicked thing. “And to think, you had already accomplished so much of note before you mastered the Beggar’s Journey. I imagine men must feel small in your presence knowing how little they have done by comparison.”

“I have been fortunate, my King.” Lynceus bowed respectfully.

“Yes…” King Nisodon mused. “You have. Tell me something.”

“My King, what would you know?”

“Does it ever vex you?”

“Does what vex me?”

“That your greatest accomplishment must remain hidden behind a veil of necessity. That you are largely… seasonal. That despite your considerable standing in the Empire, your story remains… untold?” The King watched Lynceus as he waited for a response.

“My King…” Lynceus began, the words coming slowly. “You know my story, and that is enough.”

Such a careful man, thought King Nisodon. But I’ll get what I’m after. “I’m honored you feel that way. Perhaps you’d honor me again?”

“My King?”

“Tell it to me once more.”

“Tell you-”

“The story, Lynceus, the one only I know. It will do you good I think to share with me what you can’t with others.”

Lynceus licked his lips.

“Come now old friend, you’ve joked of it enough. I’d have the tale again.”

“It has been a… considerable time between tellings,” said Lynceus.

Callius dismissed Lynceus’s words with a wave. “You will be forgiven any gaps in the story,”

He would forgive nothing.

It had been twenty three seasons since he had heard this man’s story, and for all the shortcomings of his youth, Callius Nisodon had never forgotten it. Its impact had precipitated the first mistake of his young rule. With the help of Hyssop’s Library, the Archon of Records, and a not insubstantial amount of personal investment, Callius had spent the last twenty three seasons working to remedy that mistake. The rest he would learn now. If a second hand retelling could stick with him this long, Lynceus -having experienced the events firsthand- should have little trouble recounting it with the same clarity.

And yet, King Nisodon could not help but wonder if today’s account would resemble the one from so long ago.

He wondered very much.

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