Tag: fiction

The same altered-knife symbol as the previous entry, appended with two tally marks.

The events immediately following my previous entry are rapidly decaying to something of a blur in my memory, but I will endeavor to recount them as accurately as possible.  Upon realizing my oversight (which, in retrospect, could hardly have been blamed on me despite my feelings of foolishness), I rushed to assemble a unit of guardsmen, and, having done so, I proceeded to the LaSein estate in order to apprehend the old man I now understand to be Arman LaSein.

My greeting there was not so warm this time, though not for any hostility on the part of the estate.  Perhaps it was our lack of appointment or the armed demeanor of the guards, but beyond distant acquiescence from the servants, we were not greeted at all.  Rather, on our own, we found Arman LaSein in a far-flung parlor, playing some sonata on an old grand piano. He informed us, without interruption to his melody, that the Captain was unwell and would not be able to entertain that day.

I of course replied with the truth: We were not there for the Captain.  As he nodded, still playing his music, I directed the guards to arrest him, but they would not.  The sergeant just shook his head at me and departed. His subordinates followed, leaving me dumbfounded in the parlor when, at last, LaSein stopped playing.  Unnerved but undeterred, I asked him a number of questions there, but still I cannot help but feel that his answers have not substantially enhanced my understanding of the situation.

I asked him what he had done to the guards–he said he showed them the truth.  I asked why he was here in the city–he replied it was to persuade his daughter to cease her patriotism.  I asked him what any of that meant, and he just sneered, asking me in return why I thought he was bothering to answer my questions at all.  Without waiting for my response, he began to play again, a cyclical series of variations, alternating between dissonance and harmony. After a few moments, he elaborated:

He stated that he had devoted his life to the study of a particular pattern, and he had returned to Thago to answer the question of whether that pattern might be able to be broken if its components were simply made aware of their preordination.  I remained bewildered as he bade me farewell, but then he issued a pointed suggestion: “Why don’t you write it down?”

That is what I am doing now, though I must confess I feel no wiser and all the more discomfited by Captain LaSein’s impending fate.

Another date symbol, altered only slightly from the previous one.

It seems Captain LaSein has additional secrets the Shareholders would prefer buried.  I met with Prince Cotnoir today to raise my concerns regarding the timing and publicity of her trial.  He was not receptive, but as he understands my concerns to be related to his own safety, he did share with me the reason for his beliefs.

This is, according to the Prince, the third time that Euphonia LaSein has emerged with her life from a massacre, each one very costly to the Federation.  The second was, of course, the incident with Ignigoet, but the first predated it by nearly twenty years, well before my time, indeed before any of the present Shareholders had reached their current positions.  LaSein was only a child, but it was then that her father, Arman LaSein, was put on trial for unlawful magical experimentation.

The crime is familiar to me: I have known Riverwalkers to occasionally develop an unhealthy interest in the occult, and I have personally presided over investigations into those uncommon cases of mages acquiring an interest in the dissection and other subjection of human specimens in their research.  The penalty for such actions is of course death, and this was precisely that prescribed for Arman. According to the records, he was executed in the third week of the harvest, nearly forty years ago. I was aware of this conclusion, aware as well that Captain LaSein’s military career was no doubt stunted by her inauspicious parentage.  I did not hold it against her. What I did not realize was the extent to which the former Shareholders had been able to obscure the true narrative of Arman LaSein’s execution.

The Prince was in the audience on the day of the old mage’s hanging, had been brought there by his own father, and all seemed to go according to plan until the moment the block was kicked from under LaSein’s feet.  As he dangled there, the Prince told me, Arman LaSein did not kick, did not thrash, indeed, did not die. He simply stared with “eyes like coal” upon the crowd, and as he did, the hangman, the guards and magistrates, all in attendance who facilitated the execution fell to their knees and died with rope-marks about their necks.  Amid the screams, the Prince did not see what became of LaSein, but when the commotion finally settled, the old man was gone.

It is his opinion that a pattern has emerged, and the danger posed by Euphonia LaSein’s continued citizenship in Thago is greater than any possible threat she may profess regarding the defeat of her float.

I do not know if I agree with him–I feel that Captain LaSein’s account still merits preventative action–but it does not appear the point is negotiable.  Even so, I am far, far more concerned by the fruits of my visit to the records office following my appointment with the Prince. I sought to glean background on his story in a report on the precise crimes of Arman LaSein, but my eye was taken by sketch of the man appended to the main document.  I have seen this man before, in the LaSein estate, barely a week ago. I mistook him for the butler.

A third date symbol, resembling a small blade.

Charges were brought against Euphonia LaSein today by Prince Cotnoir on behalf of the Shareholders.  I understand their reasoning. News of defeat means the riverways aren’t safe. It scares investors, or it would if it were a sign we were not handily winning our war.  Thus, the reason for the destruction of Captain LaSein’s float must have been isolated incompetence on the part of her crew, and as her crew is entirely absent–almost entirely confirmed dead, by her account–the scapegoat must be Captain LaSein herself.

I do understand, and I understand as well that the Federation’s fortunes may have a bearing on the outcome of this war beyond the Shareholders’ personal profits, but the particulars are most inconvenient.  From a strategic perspective, the LaSein account may indicate an actual threat from the Diarchy of Spar that we ought to mitigate. If Captain LaSein’s credibility is crushed here, I will lose most of my ground for argument on that point.  Unfortunately, I fear that is exactly what will happen.

My research subsequent to my meeting with the captain has yielded a disturbing connection.  The current commander of the Diarchian pseudo-military in the Revián is a man who goes by the name Selenus Ignigoet, and though it is not widely spoken of, he served in a security company in Thago some decades ago under the command of the very same Euphonia LaSein.  Evidently he betrayed his unit, leaving LaSein as the only survivor, stole a cargo skiff, and bolted north. Though it is clear from the record that LaSein was in no way involved in this mutiny, it remains a point of curiosity that Ignigoet did not kill her as well. I did not have to search hard for this information–I have little doubt it will be raised in her trial.

Also, though Captain LaSein did not raise this connection as a factor for her concern in her most recent report, I suspect it is very much relevant.

At the top of the page is a smudged symbol that may indicate a date.

I have received word of a costly skirmish in the northern reaches between one of our peacekeeping floats and an enemy raiding party.  Diarchian, according to the scouts. The presence of the troublemakers in the area is of course no anomaly, but the outcome was apparently dire: They sunk the entire float.  Barring the amassment of a far more significant force than we anticipated–a possibility the scouts’ report attempts to discredit–this is highly irregular.

The captain of the vessel was one Euphonia LaSein, and it seems she escaped with her life.  The scouts found her maimed and delirious. Her recovery will likely take some time, but I am eager to hear her report as soon as possible.

A second symbol marks the top of the next page.

I have decided that I will compile these notes separately from my regular reports to the Shareholders.  Captain LaSein’s account unsettled me, and I fear spreading it might induce a panic in the barge-districts we ought pointedly to avoid.

I had an opportunity to visit the LaSein estate on the northern plaza two days hence, and I found the captain there in a sorry state.  She was confined to an infirmary chair, wheeled by her butler, as during the battle for her float, her leg had been crushed beyond any hope of healing.  The scouts amputated it in the field. This war is a sordid business, and I shall be well glad to be rid of it when Spar is finally crushed. Still, though, the captain spoke very little of her physical state beyond those spare facts explaining her disposition.  Her worries seemed to lie elsewhere.

She confided in me a disturbing theory.  That her forces were defeated in the first place she was able to explain: The Diarchian raiding party attacked in the midst of a mutiny by the float’s slaves.  However, that they were ready and waiting for the opportunity, indeed that they were even aware of the mutiny merits further examination. Captain LaSein posited that a portion of the slave crew–a group of ten or so that the float had captured while following a lead in the Windwood–had been deliberately planted by Spar.  The slaves, in her opinion, had an unusual level of military training and cooperation, and the timing of their revolt alongside the raiding party’s assault could not have been a coincidence.

It is clear she fears the Diarchy may attempt a similar tactic closer to the Federation’s primary holdings, perhaps even within Thago itself.  While I do not wish that such exaggerated fears should spread among the populace, I do think her story merits cautious concern: I intend to immediately undertake an evaluation of my subordinates’ loyalties, in case some sort of infiltration has already begun.

Of course, I attempted to relay the same measured concern in my feedback to the captain, but it seemed she found my reaction insufficient.  After a time, she lapsed into an angry silence, and her butler, an elderly gentleman in conspicuously plain clothes, asked me politely to take my leave.

This is the interlude preceding Part 5 of the Sevenfold Gyre. That part is in progress and will be posted soon. This interlude is shorter than its predecessors, but things are coming together, and the pace will speed up from here.

It has been two years since the walls of Mudhull burst, releasing their torrents of undead upon the Riverlands.  It has been nineteen months since the region fell to the Bloodfish, its last defenders retreating, with every citizen they could persuade, to the Bloodwood, the Dunes, the northern hills, whichever domain brought them relief from the Sadist’s inexorable advance.  It has been a hard, hellish war, but its life has thus far been short. For the man that calls himself Matze Matsua, though, it has been much longer. He has seen this all before, seen its beginnings and ends again and again. As before, he remembers the beginning–the first beginning.  He always will. But since then, he has discovered just how long life is.

This time, the war is going well.  The coalition, the forces of Harmony, fled the roaches for a time, but upon their first counterattack, far from the Sadist’s main force, they discovered the weakness, the hollowness of the Bloodfish’s stunted war machine.  Its monsters are swift, strong, inhumanly vicious. They know not fear nor pain, but, as Harmony discovered, falling upon the most far-flung of Ka’s outposts, this is because the creatures know almost nothing at all.

Harmony has now learned a great deal about their enemy, that the roaches are no more loyal to their keepers than to their enemies, that Ka’s soldiers keep them chained as threats to their sparse prisoners but never free them, that only Ka and the One-Eyed Sadist are able to command them.  And, of course: the monsters are fueled by magic, imbued with a lifespan of months instead of years, and each wretched one is made–unborn, undead–by Ka himself in Bloodhull. In this knowledge, Harmony has found its target. They will destroy the Bloodfish’s death camps, his grim depots for his armies’ harvests.  In so doing, they will rob him of his bones, his eyes, his teeth, the materials the camps channel back to Bloodhull. Without them, the roaches’ numbers will dwindle. Ka, influence shrinking, will grow desperate, stupid, and then, then the tide of discord–as it always does–will ebb.

Teaser, coming from here.

There was once a man who wished to hide from the truth.  He gathered his flock and said unto them: “See how we cower in servitude before death and shadow.  Do you not wish to escape this tyranny?” His flock did, they replied, but they could see no path, no way by which they might escape.  So the man gathered the clouds from the sky and wrapped them about his people, that when the agents of death came to find them, they encountered only mist and lies.  The man then swept his flock and his clouds both to a peak rising high above the land, and from there, they ascended to the heavens.

There was once a man who realized the world was a lie.  He saw what the Man of the Clouds had wrought. He saw that what was real had been split in twain.  Others beheld the city in the clouds and declared it fantasy, an escape, but this man questioned: Was the world they had escaped any more true?  Was it so in any way that mattered? He thought to the lies the world had told him, that when men and women ceased to be they ascended to Heaven or descended somewhere else below.  But he had ascended and, in so doing, made true that lie, made it indistinguishable from truth, made a lie of Truth in its entirety.  So, to perform a miracle of one only thing, he resolved he must descend, to link the Sky to the Deep that had unraveled before him.

Martin,

Yield from your province was low this season.  I await your explanation. Do not disappoint.

Mikel

***

-For the Quartermaster–

His Lordship, Martin, informs that the wagon delivered unto the Revián Highlord was lacking in supplies.  His Lordship reminds you that this is an unacceptable outcome and demands you produce collection records for the most recent three seasons thus past.  His Lordship reminds you as well that failure, either to comply with the demand mentioned or in the adequate performance of your duties, portends grave consequences for your future.

Kindest regards,

Luc, Favored Scribe to Lord Martin

***

-For His Lordship’s Snivelling, Frog-Buggering Shadow-

Feck off.  Per your bloody demands, I’ve included three seasons of collection records, and I added some big feckin’ circles so your blind arse can see the problem I wrote you about three feckin’ months ago.  It’s salt fish. There ain’t none of it. And there ain’t none of it ‘cause all the salt fish in the territory comes from Mudhull. As it so feckin’ happens, the last two tax collectors we sent there never reported back.  I’ll go ahead and repeat what I feckin’ wrote you before: Sounds like you and His Lordship ought to get an explanation from Ka, but that ain’t my problem.

Feck your kindness,

“The Quartermaster”

***

Lord Martin,

Our scouting parties have encountered armed resistance near the bayou.  While my shame is great in admitting this so late, it seems the Mudfish has declared himself in silent rebellion.  I have engaged a small group of mercenaries to infiltrate his fortress and determine the scale and specifics of his military operation.  Afterwards, we will ride for Mudhull and put these traitors down.

Your Obedient,

Rein-Captain Jean Paul

***

The date at the top of the page is smudged, and the scrawl is messy.  Numerous lines have been rendered illegible by water damage.

It’s //// four days since we reached the bayou /////////////////////////////////// near Mudhull.  What we have seen so far already //////////////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////  I am making this record now, that our observations may return to Lord Martin by way of a messenger, as the possibility of no return has grown real.  The walls of Mudhull are //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// with a crawfish smuggler who claims he can grant us safe entry.  I will continue to write what we find as we uncover it.

/////////////////////////////// Day 6

Those within Mudhull have been pressed into the worship of Ka as a sort of deity, ///////////////////////////////////////////////////// usually teeth, arms, or legs.  There are few men in the walls, and we have yet to encounter a woman or child who is not, in some way maimed.  Determining how this came to be ////////////////////////////////////////////// not speak a word against Ka for fear of their life, and even some who seem to believe truly that Ka has //////////////////////////  We have engaged ////////////////////////// “palace”.  She is afraid and seems sympathetic to our aims.

According to her, this began after the the one-eyed man and an ///////// arrived and met with Ka.  Soon after, Ka began–she says–to ///////////////////////////////////////////////// men of the town, perhaps by fear, to enlist as his enforcers.  Those enforcers are few, but we are able to see they are very zealous.  There is otherwise talk of a purpose for /////////////////////////////// as they are taken into the lower levels of the palace each day.  The slave has agreed to escort us there after nightfall that we may observe.

The rest of the document is written in a different hand, without smudges.

Fuck this.  Fuck all of this.  I show up here half-dead, no doubt raving about horrors and dire emergencies, and Martin can’t bother to see me for three fucking days?  Well good fucking luck. He gets this note instead. Go ahead and ignore the unreadable garbage up top, I’ll make it very simple: Mudhull is an abomination, corpses are sewn together and up, walking, mauling people in the streets.  Ka has declared himself god of this hell he’s brought to earth. You need to get every fucking soldier you have and wipe that place out of existence.

I’m getting the fuck out of here.  If you fail, I’m not sticking around.

***

Great Highlord Mikel of the Revián,

My sincerest apologies for the lack of explanation included with my diminished lot of tribute.  Alas, a village lord within my province, Ka of Mudhull, has rebelled, amassing an army in defiance of your just rule.  My forces are mobilizing to destroy him now, but lest his impertinence disturb the peace you have so carefully constructed in this fair land, I humbly request your troops and assistance in making an example of him.

Deepest apologies, with great loyalty,

Martin, Governing Lord of the Southern Reaches