by Hal Emerson
“Oh good!” Rumbled the voice of Tomaz behind him. “You found it all right.”
Raven turned away from the window as the giant came up beside him, his limbs now blessedly bereft of children. A small bell rang nearby and the door to the shop swung open to reveal Leah.
“What are you doing here?” She asked Raven, her expression polite but otherwise blank. Tomaz spoke before he could find an answer:
“Goldwyn let him off early. I figured I’d invite him to the Bricks with us.”
“Sounds good,” she said with small, indifferent smile. They all started walking, Raven and Leah on either side of Tomaz.
“My father let you out early?” She asked Raven. “What did you do – manage to explain the meaning of life?”
“I have no idea,” Raven said truthfully. “We were talking, and then he just smiled and said ‘thank you for the conversation, I’ll see you when you wake’.”
Both Tomaz and Leah groaned and he looked at them in surprise.
“What? What did I do?”
“He’s going to expect you to come back the next time remembering what you learned during this conversation,” Tomaz said. “I adore the man, but he can be a headache for certain.”
“I already feel like I talked myself hoarse, and it was only half the morning this time!”
“Here,” Leah said, untying a waterskin from around her waist.
He reached out to grab it and as he did his hand brushed hers and he suddenly felt oddly light. He uncorked the skin, drank, and handed it back. Neither of them said anything.
“Midwinter is coming up soon,” Tomaz said, who obviously hadn’t noticed a thing, “I’m excited for the Festival.”
“What happens at this Festival?” Raven asked. “I keep hearing people talk about it.”
“It’s a holiday of no work,” Leah said, “which means most people spend the day doing nothing. Except for the people who put on performances.”
“Performances?”
“People put on traditional plays and sing songs,” said Tomaz brightly, looking off into the distance in fond reminiscence. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re such a sap,” Leah said, smiling at him.
“And I’m damn proud of it,” he replied, smiling right back.
“Do you perform?” He asked.
“She dances and sings sometimes,” Tomaz said jabbing a thumb at Leah, “but that’s not what she likes the most.”
“I’m an actor,” Leah explained.
“An actor?” He asked, unable to keep the prejudice out of his voice. Actors were the lowest of the low in the Baseborn class of Lucia, a simple tool used to content the masses and distract the ungrateful working class from any thoughts of rebellion. Raven had gone to see one of these plays once – a crude thing, erected on a shabby stage with masks and exaggerated motions that lauded the wonder of the Empress and the Children and how they dispensed justice throughout the land. Simplified propaganda was really all it was.
“Hey don’t look like that,” Tomaz rumbled. “She’s good.”
“Don’t you remember those awful things Imperials call plays?” Leah asked Tomaz. “I’m not really offended considering that’s all he has to go by.”
“I’ve seen some bards that were respectable,” Raven said, trying to be polite, but knowing that court bards were different creatures all together; they were professional entertainers that did juggling and foolery as well as singing and bawding. Actors … actors were dirty, nasty creatures that couldn’t hold two thoughts in their head at the same time lest one of them take surprise and cudgel the other to death.
“Just wait until Midwinter,” Tomaz boasted, “she’ll show you something you’ve never seen before.”
“I bet he’s already seen it all,” Leah said.
Raven choked on nothing and found himself coughing and sputtering, trying his best not to think of the time a few months ago when he’d surprised her at a stream in their flight south through the Empire – the time he’d seen the scars that covered most of her body.
“What did you say?” Tomaz asked Leah obliviously, thumping Raven heartily on the back and nearly knocking his ribcage straight through his body.
Leah’s cheeks bore bright pink spots and she looked thoroughly flustered.
“I said … never mind, it’s not important,” she finished, not looking the big man in the eye, and also pointedly not looking at Raven. Tomaz, while not incredibly intuitive, was able to realize the subject was better off dropped. He gave it a parting snort, full of surprisingly articulate exasperation, but said nothing more.
“What do you do Tomaz?” Raven asked in order to fill the silence.
“He sings,” Leah responded immediately. “He’s famous for his voice actually. The deepest basso profundo to ever live among the Kindred.”
“You sing?”
“No need to be incredulous,” Tomaz said, looking stung. “You could hurt a person’s feelings that way.”
“He’s really quite good,” Leah said. “Just wait, you’ll hear. Elder Ceres asked him to perform in her piece this year. Each of the Elders put up something, and everyone goes from one to the other. They’re all small, but it’s fun. You’ll see.”
“So the Elders sponsor performances?”
“Sponsor?”
“Financially back them. Produce them.”
“No,” Leah said, amused. “Elders have no money.”
“Ah, of course,” Raven said. This made sense to him. None of the royalty of the Empire carried money – everything was given to them as was their due. He quickly explained as much to Leah.
“That’s not the way it is,” she said, her eyes laughing at him though she tried diplomatically to keep her mirth from coloring her voice. “When they become Elders, their money is distributed evenly to all five cities.”
“But … then why would any of them desire to be elected?”
“Some of them don’t,” Leah said, laughing ruefully. “But if the people choose you, you must go.”
“Wait … they’re forced to rule?”
“Yes,” Leah said, “in a way. When an Elder dies, the people choose who they think best exemplifies that area of study, and the man or woman who the most people choose is given the office. Unless they choose to resign, like Warryn, in which case he’s given a stipend and the Elders nominate a replacement who the Kindred vote on. But he’ll never be allowed to resume his old post – it would be unfair, now that he knows so much about politics and statecraft.”
“Why would you ever want that?” Raven asked, horrified. “And more so – who would allow themselves to be dictated to in such a way? It’s the complete reverse of the natural order, the complete opposite of how a government is effectively run!”
“When you’re chosen as Elder, you receive all the knowledge of all past Elders,” she said, reminding him of what Crane had told him of the daggers – the sambolin. “Who would turn down such a wealth of knowledge? And what’s more, each Elder is the de facto head of their respective Guild. They are given control over all the resources of their profession. True, they lose any fortune they may have gained, but in return they are given complete reign over the field that gave rise to that fortune. Not only that, they inherit the previous Elder’s study which usually contains craft secrets of which they barely even dreamed.”
“Knowledge,” Raven said suddenly, the pieces falling into place. “Your entire nation is built on an economy of knowledge.”
“Indeed,” she said, smiling, watching him with a strange hunger, as if envying him the chance to learn all of this again for the first time.
Raven was staggered by the idea. The shifts that such an economy would make in the basic values of the Commons … hundreds of new ideas seemed to unfold before him, new implications he could never have considered.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” he said to her.
Leah smiled knowingly and looked at Tomaz.
“I know we were headed to the Bri
cks … but what do you think about taking him to the Library?”
A smile split Tomaz’s face, and the big man nodded. Leah grinned back just as wide, then turned and punched Raven in the shoulder.
“By the – what was that for?!”
“Keep up if you can!”
And then she and Tomaz were gone, racing down the street between the people and carts going up and down the boulevard.
Raven ran after them as they jumped and dodged, slipping down side streets, through heavy traffic, around clusters of barrels. He almost lost sight of them once or twice, but he caught up in the end when they stopped before a large, sprawling building near the center of the city. The Library had large steps that they took three at a time, and long round columns they dodged around. They passed through what looked like a security checkpoint where people were signing things out, and then they were inside.
It was huge in there – lined with row after row and shelf after shelf of books. It wasn’t as big as the collection inside the Fortress at Lucien, but it was close.
Raven smiled and followed them into this treasure trove.
***
Raven’s life among the Kindred over the next month consisted of days like this. He’d wake up, go to speak with Goldwyn, spend time with Leah and Tomaz, and then return to his cabin for the night in time for dinner. It was a simple life, with no responsibility, and he deeply enjoyed it.
After gong through most things of note in the Vale Library, he began to read from Goldwyn’s private collection – the Elder had agreed to lend him books to further their conversations, a point that had left Leah in a state of stunned disbelief. His extraordinary memory, powered in part by the Raven Talisman that expanded his mind whenever he reached through it, meant he never had to read a single page of a single book more than once, but simply knew its contents by the time he closed the cover. In a matter of weeks he’d gone through almost half of the first wall of Goldwyn’s house.
He began to gain a reputation around the city, not just as the former Prince of Ravens, but also as Raven, the young Exile who had fallen in with Tomaz and Leah. The three of them were always together – sometimes in the woods, helping various Kindred who lived there make final preparations for winter, sometimes at the Bricks, sparring with the Kindred soldiers, and sometimes holed up in Goldwyn’s manor, talking and laughing long into the night.
And with some careful questioning, he began to piece together their history.
It was easy to see how Tomaz had gained a legendary reputation, considering he was likely both the tallest and biggest man any of them would ever see, and so was next to umissable. Leah’s fame on the other hand, was much harder to uncover. However, after some careful questions in the right places and some coin, borrowed from Tomaz, slipped casually into the right hands, he came upon some interesting information.
“Here’s something,” Raven said, the way he usually did when he’d found something he wanted to discuss. He and Leah were at Goldwyn’s manor that day, reading through the Elder’s collection while he held a conversation with another of his students in the courtyard.
“Mmm?” She asked, looking up, curious.
“Looks like your personal history,” he said and then paused. He looked up slowly and smiled.
Her face went dead white as all the blood drained away.
“My personal history isn’t in a book,” she said, voice carefully controlled.
“Oh no,” Raven said, “it’s written on this piece of paper I put inside the book to make it look like I was reading.”
He pulled out the piece of yellowed parchment, snapped the book closed, and began to read from it.
“It says: ‘Leah Goldwyn became a full member of the Eshendai after she completed her first task to Tyne, where she was responsible for seducing twelve prominent members of the Most High and luring them to an estate where they were ambushed and captured, yielding the single greatest influx of covert information since the time of Bealzim the Fierce two centuries before. For these exploits, among others, she was given a number of honorary awards and became known among the common populace as the –‘”
In a quick motion, faster than the blink of an eye, she had snatched up the paper and ripped it in two. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were bright red.
“Oh,” Raven said, “there wasn’t actually anything on that, I was reciting from memory.”
She looked down at the torn pieces – they were blank. She looked up again, eyes wide and even a bit fearful, and then bolted from the room. Raven ran after her, reciting the rest of what he’d read, following her from the house, until she turned and clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Shut up,” she hissed at him. “If you talk about any of that to me again I will knife you in your sleep, you know I will.”
He said something, but it was muffled, so she pulled her hand away.
“What?”
“I said ‘whatever you say Black Temptress’.”
Her olive skin turned bright red and her eyes burned with green fury. And Raven, like the strong, proud man that he was, turned and ran for his life.
“I WILL GET YOU BACK PRINCELING! YOU WON’T EVEN SEE IT COMING!”
And not a week later, she did.
She, Raven, and Tomaz, were walking to the Bricks to spar – Tomaz and Raven at least, Leah still refused to spar with anyone but the giant – when she made a passing comment about some of the decorations the Kindred had begun to put up in anticipation of the Midwinter Festival. This included huge evergreen trees that had been brought to the main Square of the city and erected around the perimeter.
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Raven, stopping them as something Leah said managed to penetrate his thoughts of sparring tactics. The Exiles looked at him questioningly.
“Did you just say you’re putting up those trees to pray to them?” He asked, incredulous. He was eyeing her suspiciously. “You worship trees?”
For a moment, Leah and Tomaz just stared at him, and then a look of some kind passed between them that he couldn’t understand.
“Of course we do,” Leah said, turning back to him, her whole manner changed. Her eyes were level with his, her lips slightly parted, and her breathing seemed to emphasize her chest. Was that possible, or was it just in his head? “When the great winter comes down around us, we gather as one people to feast and make merry at the foot of the tree.”
She took a step closer, and Raven found himself rooted to the spot. Her walk was now a sensual, waving thing that was completely unlike her. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and quickly clacked his jaws together and cleared his throat to speak, but she ignored him.
“We dance beneath the boughs,” she said, almost purring, “where huge fires roar, covering us in sweat despite the cold.”
She was still walking toward him, and Raven was finding it hard to breathe.
“And on the final night,” she said, now so close that they were almost touching, “a single woman is taken beneath the tree, where she is disrobed, and bathed in sap and honey. This is how we honor the tree gods.”
Raven tried to speak, but only managed to produce a strange mumbling gurgle.
“And then, when she is fully immersed … we sacrifice an ignorant, gullible princeling.”
The look on Raven’s face must have been horrific, as the image she had built in his head curdled and ran like old milk.
Leah and Tomaz burst into laughter so loud it caused several nearby Kindred to jump in alarm. One elderly man was so offended by this sign of open merriment that he gave them a look that could have burned the hair off a horse at twenty paces.
“Your … your face!” Leah gasped, laughing so hard she was nearly crying.
Raven turned and began to walk away, his face burning so badly he was quite certain he could light a fire with it.
Both Tomaz and Leah ran after him, and before he’d gone more than a few steps, they were grabbing his arms and apologizing, all the while falling over themselves in their
gaiety, though Tomaz, to his credit, was doing his best to stifle the more intense bouts of laughter.
“Hilarious,” Raven said scathingly, though it wasn’t very convincing, and they all knew it. “At least now I know how you got your nickname.”
Leah grinned, though the pink spots were back in her cheeks, and it made him feel … no. That was not a road he wanted to go down.
“Come,” Tomaz said, wiping away a tear from the corner of his eye with a huge finger, “we’ve had our fun, now please forgive us.”
Raven didn’t dignify this with a response, only turned away and crossed his arms. As a Prince, such a thing was a show of deepest anger. It was a gesture that represented the utmost amount of contempt for the people with whom one was speaking, and the handful of times he’d used it, even the most powerful of the Most High had shook with fear and begun to grovel, begging for his gratitude, pleading to know what they had done wrong and how, if at all, they could earn forgiveness.
