short story – Salt-Powered Investments, LLC

Temple Dogs, Chapter 1: The Sun Requires You

Building an implement upon which to hang the flesh of the world.

While histories over the ages have indisputably privileged the happenings of the southern kingdoms, of the Revián Federation and Spar, the absence of widespread accounts north of the Gravestone Mountains–indeed, called the Wall by the northerners–should not be taken as absence of activity. Spar, ever the partisan of the written record–and of history as written by victors–saturated its lands, its neighbors, its far-flung trading partners, even the hinterlands of the northern Windwood with stories of its conquests, which is, of course, how Taamir Ra recognized the asymmetry. But north of the Wall, Khet, the jewel of the Shrah, the great City of the Sun, had no shortage of history. Neither the Sun Queen nor the hierarchs of the Temple favored the pamphlet, which meant that though Khet was not quite cut off from the south–lines of trade persisted via Khet’s vassal port of Saltstill and the occasional trans-Wall caravans–its glory was not well-known to the Diarchian historians. But it was glorious, Taamir knew, and for the popular disfavor of the inscribed word, its influence flowed strong in different ways. Taamir knew, and he partook, and he supposed that was why he was now bound for the Ziggurat.

As he emerged from the Spicegut onto the southwest corner of the Palace Plaza, he felt a conspicuous wave of observation–not unexpected by any means in a district where royals wandered unaccompanied–and a matching sense of relief that the scarabglow still showed on his forehead from his attendance at service yesterday in the seedy chapel on Carpet Street. Temple service was not compulsory for Khettite citizens, but participation in social activity, even the unsavory genre that Taamir facilitated, did rely on a certain measure of ecclesiastical approval. Heresy was a crime, and it was well known that the Temple’s agents tended to use the label for any sufficient accrual of influence beyond the clergy’s vision. Even Taamir was not sure how a weekly Temple service accomplished adequate supervision on matter, but as any savvy Khettite knew, the hierarchs’ means were not to be questioned. The Temple was the one thing no Khettite–save maybe the Queen herself–ought fuck with.

Taamir the Exile had been a savvy Khettite for nearly twenty years now. He had been born here to merchant parents long before that, but except for a few years of barely conscious childhood, his youth had been spent in torturous near-solitude south of the Wall after his parents–and their whole caravan–were slaughtered by bandits. He escaped the massacre–apparently alone among the fifty-odd men, women, and children traveling with them–and scraped by for a few years foraging at the outskirts of an insular fur trapping camp in the Windwood before he became fortuitously embroiled in a reputational feud between neighboring Diarchian governors, in which he acted as a go-between, trading favors advantageously until he was able to negotiate passage aboard an adventurer’s vessel from Calais to Saltstill, returning home finally after a decades-long absence.

He was acutely aware that his proclivities, his infectious friendliness, his talents for squirming into the graces of royal and cutthroat circles alike, arose from trauma, from the years of silence and loneliness he had endured after watching his parents’ murder, but he was still grateful enough that his narcotic relationship with conversational company was, on the whole, productive. It had helped him become established upon his return, and he’d discovered that for one with his exceptional talent for ubiquity, a career as a rumor broker, a dealer in nothing at all but overheard phrases, of vibrations and broad strokes of social environments, was actually possible. Within ten years, he had risen to prominence as one of the most useful sources of sensitive information in Khet. As of today, he gathered with chagrin at the scroll delivered to his doorstep–the summons to the Ziggurat–he may have become the single most useful.

Assured that he looked presentable, if sheepish, amid the intense surveillance of the Plaza, he crossed quickly, turning from the western gate onto Brass Row, walking with broadcast intent toward the Temple District and the Ziggurat, the seat of the hierarchs’ power.

Taamir did not think he had anything to fear from the hierarchs regarding his own behavior. He attended service, he did not blaspheme, he did not deal in rumors concerning the clergy–though he did encounter them, some even salacious. But still, a summons to the Ziggurat for a denizen of Carpet Street…it was not friendly outreach. Whatever this was about, it was surely serious, and his worry–that it would put him, one road or another, in harm’s way–was certainly legitimate.

Upon reaching the Ziggurat, pausing for a moment to appreciate the immense scale of the structure–the base occupied a larger area than some of Khet’s smaller districts–Taamir found one of the temple guards to convey him to Blessed Aten, the hierarch whose name adorned the summons he had received. Blessed Aten was, Taamir knew, effectively first among the equals of the high clergy, and as such his hearing chamber was likely to be the one at the center of the Ziggurat’s first tier, just above street level. It was an interesting contradiction that the highest ranking hierarchs were stationed lowest in the Ziggurat, farthest from the Scarab Who Lights the Way, but Taamir suspected it was a prosaic function of the interaction between old joints and the Ziggurat’s abundant stairs which drove the inversion. In any case, even if he knew where to find Aten, he had little to gain and quite a lot to lose by flexing his information and showing up unescorted. No. In this instance, better to appear small.

The guard’s response to the summons was, in fact, perfectly reasonable, and ten minutes later, he was waiting in that central hearing chamber, a wide, rectangular room lit dimly–though cleverly, he had to admit–by beams of sunlight reflected on mirrored passages bored through to the Ziggurat’s outer walls. Before Taamir, bathed in the majority of this glow, was an imposing stone chair, where the hierarch would presumably sit during formal hearings, and behind it, in the shadows, were two scribe tables, each adorned by a candle, for who could expect the Temple to use its painstakingly acquired sunlight productively?

Taamir took a deep breath. Sarcasm, even unspoken, would not behoove him here. Still, he was annoyed. The chair and tables were unoccupied, and he had been left to wait in the sanctum alone. His summons had implied the utmost urgency, but it seemed the urgency was for him specifically. It was not so urgent for Blessed Aten.

He turned, hearing the curtains which served as a chamber door shift behind him. He was prepared to bow before the hierarch, but the two women who entered were not the hierarch. But now he was truly worried.

“Hello, my friend,” the first said. She wore a fine dress and shawl, embroidered with gold thread, along with matching gold earrings, necklace, bangles, and a circlet on her forehead. Below the circlet, the golden smudge of scarabglow shone, mirroring his own. And though she eschewed the eye pain popular among the nobility, Taamir did note that she was pretty in the way a well-fed cobra was pretty. Wary or no, it was a rare observation–he did not usually see her face when they met.

The second woman, for her part astonishingly beautiful but dressed in the nondescript cuirass of a caravan guard, met his gaze but said nothing, pulling the curtain closed as she limped into the room.

For several years now, Taamir’s single highest volume client had been a fixer known as Naham, the Serpent, a masked underworld luminary whose influence over Khet’s criminal domains had grown explosively of late. She had a rare touch, Taamir acknowledged, for subtle bribery, gentle coercion, encouragement of subversive loyalty that made the brutality of Khettite criminal business seem genteel, approachable.

Nobles with more gold than sense lapped it up, and her business carried with it a nigh-inexhaustible demand for Taamir’s services. It kept him financially very comfortable, but he would be remiss not to notice that the image she conveyed to her clients was in fact quite far from the truth. He’d dug into her business exactly as much as a subcontractor ought, and the reality was clear enough: She was ruthless. She was ambitious. And her capacity to make–and often directly eliminate–enemies made him nervous. A few years on, their relationship reached a point that he needed either more insurance or less liability, so with her implicit blessing, he dug deeper.

The veiled Serpent did, in fact, have a face she showed the public: Lady Bas’ahra, once scion of a cadet branch of the Halima royal family, now de facto head of the Halima clan in their dethroned afterlife. Dynastic shifts were historically not uncommon in Khet. The most recent was fifteen years ago, at the height of an escalating feud between the Queen and the Temple over a petty request from the clergy to modify the Brass Army officer’s uniform. Amidst an outpouring of combative rhetoric from various royal functionaries, Queen Petra VII fell suddenly ill, died, and her next three heirs all declined the crown, “prompting” the hierarchs to intervene, elevating Merin, matriarch of the comparatively minor Neema clan, to the throne. The skulduggery was barely hidden. Taamir had been new to the information trade at the time, but it had been trivial to discern that Petra had been poisoned, her heirs had abdicated at the point of the Shining Guard’s spears, and the rest of the Halima clan, ejected into Khettite society with only a fraction of the resources they had relied upon for years, had been ousted, no two ways about it.

Bas’ahra, barely in the line of succession in the first place–barely of age, for that matter–apparently took her family’s looming poverty personally. She founded a merchant company when she was seventeen, moderately successful, enough for survival, but she didn’t want survival. She wanted her clan ascendant once more, which meant she needed to stem their financial bleeding as well as her own. She began to buy up purveyors of vice, taverns, pimps, spurge, donning Naham’s name and veil to conduct business thus. These earned decent enough returns to keep her family aristocratically relevant, which formed the basis for her noble connections.

Taamir had been able to get much of this from a series of tipsy conversations with Nasir, a prolific copper smuggler who had rebuffed Naham’s attempts to encroach on his business in those early days. It was logical he had dirt–he was still alive after refusing her. But while the link between Naham the Serpent and Bas’ahra of Halima was probably sufficient insurance–a complaint to the Temple of a former royal stirring up the city’s undesirables would serve as a fine scorcher of earth–it didn’t fully explain her. The woman who Taamir knew had moved on from managing whores and spurge addicts. The Spicegut’s money wasn’t enough for her. Carpet Street’s money wasn’t enough for her. She solved royal problems because she wanted royal money, royal influence again.

But now she was here with him at the Ziggurat. What was the next step up from royal influence, then?

“Lady Bas’ahra,” he greeted her with a polite bow, much shallower than the one he’d held in reserve for Blessed Aten. “Saph,” he added with a nod to her bodyguard. Saph turned up the side of her mouth with a practiced, flirtaceous–though, Taamir knew, entirely artificial–smile before returning to her stone-faced stare. His use of Bas’ahra’s name, of course, was not an aggression. She had come without the veil, to say nothing of the foolhardiness of arriving at the Ziggurat in the guise of an underworld broker–but she smirked at his greeting anyway, as if her own name was an in-joke.

“Aren’t we a curious pair, two children of the Scarab, barely acquainted, yet chosen together for this honor. Why do you imagine we are here, Taamir?”

Taamir limited his response to a nervous smile. He was just as curious, but he wasn’t comfortable with the goading, the insolence. He didn’t like it. There was nothing good that the hierarchs could be asking of him in the depths of the Ziggurat, and Bas’ahra being here as well meant the Temple was not merely aware of his dealings with this former royal–those dealings were at the top of mind. Taamir was growing more and more concerned that what came through the door next was going to be violent. But then–the glimmer of hope–why bring them here just to dispose of them?

It was less than a minute before the curtains moved again, but the white-robed, wizened man and single, gold-clad guard who came through did not portend violence. This was not to say their entrance was humble: The Shining Guard were invariably armored ostentatiously and…reflectively, chosen from the largest, most physically capable specimens in the Brass Army. This one was no exception. And the cleric–Blessed Aten, presumably–was simply-dressed but literally luminescent, shining undulations wavering across his skin as if bending through rippling water, rendering him simultaneously resplendent and, if Taamir was honest, quite difficult to look at.

Bas’ahra and Saph bowed adroitly, and, stunned for only a moment, Taamir followed. At first, Aten did not speak. He stood, one hand upon the chair, studying them with either suspicion or disdain, though Taamir could not tell which. The effect of the guard remaining at the door–armor reflecting the hierarch’s oppressive glow upon them from two sides–was not lost on him either. It felt like being grasped, held up and considered, as if for nutritional value by something very large indeed. Then:

“Do you know why you are here?” Aten asked. His voice was thin, but it reverberated, ethereal, larger than he was.

“The Sun requires us,” Bas’ahra replied with almost convincing humility.

“Well chosen words. Empty,” Aten said, practically spitting. “You will be forthright to me, and your forthright answer is ‘no’. We require substance of you, not rhetoric.”

Taamir caught Bas’ahra’s vanishing eyebrow raise and chose to preempt her:

“What is it you need us to accomplish?”

Aten’s gaze shifted to Taamir. He paced in front of the chair, nodding slowly.

“You are both familiar with the difficulties Khet has with its leadership,” he said, prompting Taamir to steal another glance at Bas’ahra. “And you are aware by now that the Queen’s health is degrading swiftly. Matters thought to be solvable by more civilized means will, I think, require more severe measures.”

“You think that current plans for succession are a little too…gray?” Bas’ahra interjected, smirk returning.

The scorn in Aten’s gaze was plain but telling. Taamir was following now as well: Khettite law was clear that the office of monarch was strictly matriarchal, and Queen Neeth’s only child was a son. There was a clear heir–Princess Persephone, the Queen’s granddaughter–but Aten’s problem surely lay with the other side of the family. Prince Djoser, prior to his mother taking the throne, had married Helen of the Elea clan–the Gray tribe, as they were called, for their pale skin–a move that had surprised Taamir at the time for a host of reasons, all coming to a head now, it seemed. The cultural divide between the Gray tribe and the rest of Khet was complicated, longstanding, and, Taamir suspected, an increasing risk for the Temple, which had painted their people as spiritual pariahs for perhaps a generation longer than was wise. In any case, Bas’ahra’s pun was adequately descriptive: Aten would prefer that Persephone not become Queen.

Taamir opened his mouth to voice the obvious objection: Why would they ask a rumormonger to manipulate the royal line of succession? But he swallowed the thought. No, he wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t a request for him. The request was for Bas’ahra–Aten merely knew that she would engage his services. His presence here, being brought into the fold, was merely to ensure he would not poke into the matter on his own and, perhaps more importantly, that he would not spread word of its occurrence.

“Well, that is a serious concern,” Bas’ahra continued, taking Aten’s protracted glare as answer enough. “When all settles, how would you like the situation to look?”

“The heir brought to us,” Aten replied, syllables clipped. “Alone, of course. Her parents removed from Khet permanently. The Queen would surely object, but she is of course infirm–and under the regrettable influence of parties for whom Khet’s welfare is secondary. It would be wise to obfuscate any deliberate intention behind your results.”

Regrettable influences, Taamir noticed, did seem to be a relative thing, but he was relieved to see Aten shed his intense air of derision as they moved onto the business at hand.

“I imagine you will hear no more of the details,” Bas’ahra said. “They are assuredly beneath the dignity of the Sun. But the gravity of the request…”

“Is it beyond your capabilities, Lady Bas’ahra?”

Her smile was genteel and certainly venomous.

“I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “I merely refer to the price.”

“The price is consideration that even you will find valuable.” Bas’ahra’s smile waned, but Aten did not elaborate. He only held her gaze.

“…your Radiance?” Taamir spoke up, drawing attention from both of them. “When the heir is brought to you, do you imagine she will be convinced of an…agreeable future–in the absence of these regrettable influences?”

Taamir was calculating prices as well. He knew that one of his many costs of doing business was the knowledge that what he sold would be used on occasion to hurt people. It eased the burden that many of them had it coming, but many, of course, did not. He was not Bas’ahra. He was not infinitely hungry for wealth of influence. He wanted to survive, to not have to be alone the way he had been down south. It did not seem like refusal was an option at the moment, but there were still lines. There were outcomes he would not aid. Aten’s expression remained aloof as he replied:

“If the Sun wills it.”

Forever ago, now, Taamir had been a child deprived of his parents by this same grim sort of taking, and he was not eager to pay that forward to the princess. He would, though, if it came to it. It would hurt him, but it wouldn’t be the field he died on. What occupied his thoughts in this moment was what happened after the attack. He had searched the wreckage, the smashed wagons, the overturned barrels, the…corpses. His parents. Their partners and contractors. There was a body missing that day. Taamir had a brother before the attack, and after…he never saw him again, after. For close to twenty years, he had tried to make it back to Khet in case his brother had too.

For twenty-odd years, he remained there, disheartened, clinging to that futile rationalization that there was nowhere else he was likely to find him.

Yes, if he had to, he would deprive the girl of her parents. But he could not help but see the same thread in her impending tragedy. If she didn’t make it out alive–if she didn’t make it out alive because of him–what business did he have hoping he would one day find his brother? That was the line, it seemed. So it was indeed important that the hierarchs’ intentions were to influence the girl. Reeducate her. Compel her to abdicate, the way they did with Bas’ahra’s cousins. But Taamir would not deliver Persephone to her death.

Taamir remained silent as Bas’ahra and Blessed Aten exchanged the concluding formalities, established the choking pact. They turned to leave, and Taamir caught a significant glance from Saph. The bodyguard had a way, he had realized, of noticing people’s cracks, though she refrained from commenting, at least publicly. Even so, he consciously reinforced his expression. He must not appear uneasy, lest either Bas’ahra or the Temple judge him a loose end.

Still. If the Sun wills it. Saph’s pointed stare had rendered his own conclusion quite conscious. He did not trust Aten’s intentions for the princess at all.

Ferrik’s Journal

Day 1

Starting a first officer’s log in case something goes wrong with our pay and this needs to go to a magistrate. I’ve signed onto this contract with fourteen acquaintances and one confused vagabond for one Edward of Corino, known as “Edward the Pirate”, recently returned to Piraeus after a decade of exile. His reputation is poor and well-known, hence this log, but the crew was paid an advance of 10 silver a head on total wages of two Verduan marks per man. Frankly far more than a month of our time is worth. The men believe Edward has a rich sponsor for the voyage, but if he does, he’s kept quiet about it.

Issues with his reputation–and his exile–stem from a smuggling deal gone bad. He was carrying contraband to Verdua and failed to deliver payment back to the praetor who hired him. He says Verdua confiscated the goods, but who knows. Things with Verdua have been tense for years. About as long as he was exiled. The old timers doubt it’s a coincidence.

***

Day 7

One week in, no sign of this “god of the seas”, but the Captain isn’t agitated yet. He keeps quiet, though. No sense among the crew of whether this is according to plan or not. The vagabond tagging along is an odd bird. His name is also Edward, which is damned confusing. Surprisingly competent sailor, but he says he’s never been to sea. Apparently he’s been wandering the Riverlands teaching children arithmetic for soup. Crew have taken to calling him “Teach” to keep the Edwards straight.

***

Day 10

There’s a growing sense of unease with our course. Nothing of our quarry still, but I’m more concerned that we’ve been sailing due west, way off any route any of us have ever taken. Captain ain’t showing us the charts, and the main worry now is we might be lost. What’s more, at sunrise, it feels like we can see land on the eastern horizon, which is obviously impossible.

Teach’s interest in this job clearly has nothing to do with the pay. He’s an amateur mage, which is divisive, since the old and new timers have their superstitions both ways about that, but he also has this almost childlike interest in stories about gods. Says he has this friend in the Bloodwood with some harebrained historical theories he’s trying to learn more about , and the job is a lead, I guess.

I assume the Captain knows. I wouldn’t have allowed it, though. Magic is whatever. Ulterior motives are the real bad luck.

***

Day 17

The crew was already on edge finding nothing, but now we’ve found something, and it certainly isn’t a “god”. We’ve come upon a drift of things that look a little like jellyfish, but they also seem to dart about intermittently in a way that jellyfish never would. We can’t seem to touch them with oars or nets. They just avoid them. The sea is full of weird shit, though, so this wouldn’t be so notable if not for the air around this shoal. It’s thick, like you’re breathing vapor, chilly even though the sun’s out, and it smells like rot, like a fish market abandoned for a week.

The men don’t like it. Captain says put the sails down, we’re drifting with this stuff for the night. I might need to talk someone out of a mutiny.

Teach seems excited. Not sure whether that’s a good or bad sign.

***

Something is wrong with me. I can’t be seeing this.

***

Day 18

When I awoke today the sea was different. Fuck, the whole world was different. The sky’s gone dark, but it isn’t just the clouds. It’s like the light that makes it through them is shining through fluid, like that fish mist we’re breathing is actually the sea, and we’re submerged. And above us, just hanging there–mostly in the distance, though one got close enough we could see it was at least three times the size of a warship–are these jellyfish. They look kind of like jellyfish anyway–they aren’t. Still not sure they are even really there. They look like reflections on rippling water, but you can’t tell what they’re reflecting. And the reflection unravels at the end and streams off into these branching string-tentacles.

One of the ones in the distance seemed to get sucked into the darkness before our eyes. None of us realized what we were seeing until hours later.

The surface of the water has grown cloudy, almost silvery, and it’s become like slime. The creatures from before are still there, but there are more of them, and they’re more varied. A times, they seem to rise up above the surface and just swim in the air, but it might be a trick of the light. When it’s quiet, it almost sounds like they’re humming. We can touch them now, too. One of the crew picked one up and just sort of lost track of where he was. He just stared off as the thing slipped out of his fingers, and it was minutes before he came to again.

In the distance, it’s hard to distinguish where the horizon is, what’s sea and what’s sky. At one point we saw the whole fucking sky move, a shadow the size of a city just slip down beneath the slime. We were too afraid to speak for nearly an hour, everyone except the Captain and Teach fucking pissing themselves.

***

The lookout says a shadow just passed underneath us.

***

Day 21. We’re back in the real world. We met god, and there is an angel with us.

I cannot tell how much is true and how much is just Teach’s speculation, but he believes that we just sailed up against was the end of the world, where everything unravels into the void. And the vast creature that surfaced beside us–that is a god, I now see. Teach describes it as “glaucus”, a term I’m not familiar with, but it’s caught on with the crew. Glaucus shall be the name of the god who reigns at the end of the world.

The angel who we call the Endling, the strange, eight-legged child we pulled from Glaucus’ flesh has its own mystique. It does not speak, at least not in any way we can understand, but as Teach observed–and I am inclined to agree–it seems intelligent. Far more intelligent than a creature of the sea ought to be.

Unfortunately, we lost one sailor in the process of recovering the Endling. Anton touched the appendage where the Endling clung. As soon as he did, we saw him reel back as if stung. All we could do was watch as he mouthed words without sound, and his body grew translucent before decomposing into slime that just…wafted into the air.

A lesson for me as a not especially religious man: It is no small thing to touch a god and survive.

***

Day 24

We have made port in Piraeus nearly a week ahead of schedule. To think that Teach’s supposed “end of the world” was so close to the city, and no one knew of it. I wonder why it’s remained secret for so long?

The crew has been paid, a development which moots the original purpose of this log–though I now believe myself to be chronicling something more important–but the way the payment was delivered has made me damned curious. Upon disembarking, the crew was greeted by a man named Thrasymachus, representing the Blue Ring Cooperative, who handed each of us a purse with our full wage. It seems there was something to the rumors of a sponsor after all.

The Captain has asked Teach and me to accompany him to present the Endling to his benefactor. I had no reason to refuse, but besides: How could I? I believe I am now tied to the Endling. I helped to bring this messenger of god to Piraeus. It is my responsibility to ensure its message–whatever it may be–is delivered.

***

Edward’s sponsor, the head of this “Blue Ring Cooperative”, is no more than a child–a girl, barely of marriageable age! I am unfamiliar with her persona–this “Halia of Thazan”–but she seems to be taking pains to disguise herself. She wears a heavy cloak, darkened lenses over her eyes, speaks with this strange, affected accent that still sounds vaguely Verduan. She’s hiding almost everything, and I don’t trust her.

She seemed happy with the Endling, though. She and Edward are going to present it to the Council of Praetors. The want the city’s support in investigating the opportunity on their borders. I hid my rage well, but the fury has been difficult to suppress in the hours since the meeting.

Glaucus is no opportunity. And the Endling is no sample to be dissected!

Their appointment is in three days. I must rescue the Endling from their grasp before then. I think Teach may be sympathetic. Perhaps I can persuade him to help me. We have found something sacred. The last thing we should do is present it to the politicians for defilement.

***

I have spoken with several of the crew now, and it seems even having been in Glaucus’ presence is having a lingering effect. All of them are dazed, have barely eaten since we last spoke. Some are saying that they dream of floating through the sky as great Glaucus swims below them, and they awake to find their skin translucent like Anton’s. They say it soon recongealed, but one showed me his foot. It now appears more mollusc than human.

I seem to have been affected much less, though I am also finding my daydreams to have a stickiness to them, as if I am drifting into that inter-zone reality at the end of the world. My thoughts linger on the god, and it is as if the whole world grows moist, but once I shake myself alert, moments pass before the slime dries from the walls, before the people around me cease to waver as wraiths.

Growing more concerned, as much for our wellbeing as for Halia’s plans for the Endling, I tracked Teach down at the tea house on the south side of the city. He was having symptoms similar to mine, but he’d already put together an idea of what was going on, magically. He told me the human body normally exudes mana, but whatever happened to us has caused that mana to start degrading into something less stable. Unlike regular mana, he says, this “proto” mana seems to do some amount of magic by itself, changing bodies, warping reality, pulling us onto reality’s exterior, that inter-zone that exists everywhere, not merely at the end of the world.

Teach thinks that the reason my symptoms are milder than the crew’s is because I too have some latent magical ability, and I’m reflexively resisting the proto mana’s attempts to change me. He shares my concern for the rest of the crew but also agrees that we must rescue the Endling immediately. He thinks that the council is incapable of any decision but foolishness with respect to Glaucus. I suspect he does not share my reverence. I may ultimately need to save the Endling from him as well, but for now he is a much-needed ally.

***

The Endling is safe! It was a poorly hidden operation, and I have certainly invited the Blue Ring girl’s wrath, but as I have seen no sign of cooperation from the city guard in their search for me, I can only conclude that Edward and Halia’s meeting was a failure. The Captain’s efforts were noble–if misguided, I now understand–and it is a shame they must end in ignominy, but perhaps he too will soon share in the future I intend to build.

Teach, unfortunately, was wounded in our flight. I had expected the Captain to be armed–I did not expect Halia to be carrying a crossbow under her cloak. I think he made it to safety, but I cannot be sure as yet.

After losing my pursuit in the Hospitality Quarter, I doubled all the way back south to the tea house where I had met with Edward. It is dilapidated and undistricted and limited to the oddest and cheapest of clientele. I rented a room there, and I doubt any but Teach will find me.

Most fortunate, though, perhaps even divine recompense: The Endling has spoken to me. He knows my name and desires that I gather the rest of the crew that brought him here.

***

Teach has found us, and alas, he could not be convinced of the providence fallen upon us and our city. He was alarmed at the spirit that now animates me–as if I had any choice but to make myself an implement of the divine will before me. He was frightened of the Endling, who has grown to the size of a man since Teach last saw him. It is natural to quake before the miraculous, but Teach is slow to be persuaded.

I should have struck him down there as the Endling suggested. I hesitated. I still hope Teach will come around, but I admit that hope isn’t pragmatic. No doubt he will defect now, and we will have to contend with Halia’s enforcers. With any luck, though, we will be beyond any reasonable possibility of enforcement.

In the two weeks we have been hiding, the Endling has shared with me unthinkable secrets. Most miraculous among them is that those of the crew who could not control Glaucus’ gifts have found themselves Sent into a state of strange apotheosis. Their minds waver–if they remain at all–but the Blood of Glaucus runs through their veins in diluted form, seeping from their skin and mouths. The Blood is new life. Injected into one’s blood, it remakes them, strips away their shames, mistakes, failures, and ignoble predilections. It builds them anew, as they were meant to be, supplanting their flaws with a new need for the Blood, for Glaucus’ blessing. With the Endling’s guidance, I have been gathering it. And I have been bringing it to those of Piraeus who need a star upon which to orient themselves.

We have a flock of almost twenty now. Many are still sick, all are learning their new place in the world. Amusingly, the two most dependable among them are children: two orphan boys named Alaric and Badger. But we are growing. Soon, all of Piraeus will understand what we are before Glaucus.

***

Badger has let me know that a “delegation” is on its way to our makeshift church. Halia and her mercenaries, with two in tow who sound like they must be the Edwards. Our congregation is still sickly. It is unlikely that we could overpower them, but the Endling assures me I need not fear. His Song, combined with our voices, will surely hold off any threat of force within our sanctum. But he also intends to offer them something.

It is improbable that the Blood from the crew would appeal to Halia or her men–though perhaps Edward’s shame bears scouring at this juncture–but even she must have regrets.

The Endling has shared with me that the Blood is, in fact, named poetically. It is actually Glaucus’ venom, in this case a flawed and weakened copy, but even an image of the divine is potent, of course. But while my fellow crew was touched merely with Glaucus’ presence, the Endling had attached himself to Glaucus’ flesh. Within his body is a much purer form of the Blood, capable of dissolving even those regrets buttressed by privilege and ambition. The allure is incredible, and even I struggle to hold myself back from the serum the Endling has prepared.

***

The methods of divinity are…more twisted than I anticipated. Our congregation is shattered, the Endling is injured, our blessed crew have been consumed. I don’t understand how we did not foresee this.

As the Endling predicted, the Song effectively stalemated the confrontation, allowing us to make our peace offering of the Endling’s serum. Edward accepted it reticently, and upon injection, he faded quickly into the inter-zone, where he remained, unresponsive. I worried that this would be an unwelcome warning to Halia, but she all but seized the next syringe.

I do not know how, but it seems as if she understood its function even better than the Endling. The serum transformed her into a horrific, billowing monster. She turned upon us, engulfing our congregation, liquefying their flesh and drinking them. Were it not for Teach, she might have swallowed all of us.

My memory of Teach’s reaction is the haziest. I distinctly remember him accepting the serum and injecting it. He was…dimly resigned. As if this end was inevitable. But my memory of him throwing the full syringe aside and leaping to Alaric’s and Badger’s defense is equally clear. Ultimately, the handful of us who survived, including the Endling–who now bears multiple wounds from Halia’s molluscoid barbs–owe it to Teach’s sudden and fierce resistance.

Halia escaped into the harbor. Teach left, seemingly disgusted. The Endling is recuperating in the inter-zone, and he has advised that I take the faithful into hiding. It seems that our nascent temple will need to remain a cult awhile longer, though the thought fills me with despair.

The Endling is vexed but not enraged. He says it is fitting–though he says it reluctantly–that the compass rose should have more than one direction. I wish I understood what he means.

The Theban Interview

The previous CEO inappropriately exhibited behavior.

This closely references a passage of dialogue in Sadly, Porn, by Edward Teach M.D. Some of the H.R. rep’s phrasing comes from that passage, but while he leaned into the comedy of the exchange, I’m attempting to focus more on the surreal elements.

The woman’s age is…unclear, but she’s dressed young. Her hair is green, shaved on one side but still dyed down to the roots. Her left ear has three piercings, her right four, a rhinestone on the side of her nostril, and two black, snakebite studs frame her smile. Her black pantsuit fits well, jacket tight but not creased, buttoned low over a white silk blouse with a thin neckline that plunges to the bottom of her sternum. It does not seem work-appropriate, but perhaps times have changed. She doesn’t have much cleavage, but the low neckline displays an intricate tattoo of patterned feathers on her chest.

“Ed, right?” she says. “Thanks so much for taking the time today. The board was thrilled with your resumé, and we’re really excited to explore the competencies you bring to the table.”

“My…resumé?” Ed asks. The woman hands him a bottle of water. The way she moves is uncanny–very quick, very precise, but the end result is odd: She executes the motion only 90% of the way. Ed has to reach for the bottle just slightly more than he expects.

“Yes.” The frosty smile returns. “The way we see it, the company is undergoing a rightsizing, and as you know, the previous CEO inappropriately exhibited behavior.”

“Inappropriately–”

“The board believes that shareholders need strong assurances that this Ship of Theseus is in Shape of Theseus. Millennials killed the bull market, but we still need that cowboy symbol to keep the substance moving, you know? Now, of course…” She reaches out and smooths a wrinkle on Ed’s lapel. Her nails are green, the same shade as her hair, clipped short except for the little finger. “We need to make sure your playbook has all the right pages. This is a fast-paced operation, buy-in, lean-in, work-in, and when the music starts playing, all eyes are on you.”

Ed unscrews the cap of the bottle and takes a drink. The water is room temperature and tastes like plastic.

“So, are you ready?” the woman asks, as if her previous sentence had clearly warranted a response. Ed swallows quickly, inhaling a little of the water. He struggles to cough it up without an undignified fit.

“Um, y–” He coughs into his sleeve. “Sorry, yes.”

“Perfect. First question: What walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?”

Ed blinks. He’s heard this one before, but there has to be a twist, right?

“A…man,” he says, pausing. “Or a woman–except a woman wouldn’t need to lean on anything, so: a man.”

“Excellent!” Her smile is vaguely carnivorous now. “I love the process. We also would’ve accepted one of those new Amazon delivery drones, with the different ambulatory configurations for variable traffic conditions–you can’t fight the AI tide–but who can resist the flattery of the truth you think we think you should live? Market conditions are changing, and unless you want to have to report your minorities, you need to be including as many diverse equities as possible.

“Second question: Say you’re negotiating a consensually non-consensual merger and/or acquisition in flagrant violation of established antitrust law, and the other guys agree to a meeting. They show up with the full C-suite, all their reports, and 300 lawyers, then at exactly noon, they tell you they need further instructions from the shareholders and break for the day. They do the same thing the next day and the day after. What’s your strategy?”

“Is this company currently involved in an acquisition?” Ed asks. He doesn’t want to appear nervous, but the question seems oddly specific.

“Relax, Ed.” The woman glances at her nails, picking disinterestedly at her cuticle. “Strictly hypothetical, but we need to know you’re hyperengaged, that you’re the guy who’s gonna get the best people the latex-free material they need to erect better ones.”

“Well, then I’d say…they don’t really want the grueling negotiation and all that. But they probably have internal pressures mandating pointless shows of force.”

“What sort of pressures do you think?”

“Uh…toxic masculinity?”

“10-4, kiddo. So what’s the play?”

“I think we’d do the same thing, right? Pack up, fly out, say we also need guidance from the board. It’ll be expensive for us too, but that’ll raise organic pressure to finish the negotiation, which lets both sides save face. And as a bonus, the media coverage will be so exhausting that the FTC wouldn’t dare risk blocking the merger in the end.”

“I love how you dig deep to deploy empathy, Ed.” The woman gestures for him to follow as she proceeds to the other end of the lobby. “Taking the guilt out of global strategy lets us prioritize conforming over performing so we can be prophet-guided for our community instead of profit-seeking.”

They approach a wide, concrete column, adorned by two sets of silver elevator doors. Between them is a panel with several LED-lit buttons. Two are easily distinguishable as “Up” and “Down”, but beside those are five more, circular, unlabeled, their purpose entirely unclear.

The woman approaches and presses one of the side buttons. It lights up.

“I think the board will be pleased, Ed. You have all the bona fides we need for you to plug and play in this culture. Go ahead and breathe in the moment, and when you’re ready, head up to the tenth floor.” She smiles. Her canines are noticeably pronounced. “Welcome to Thebes, Ed.”

The elevator doors open, and the woman steps inside. Ed, slightly stunned at the pace of the interview, does not notice until after she vanishes that the elevator does not seem to have a floor. He rushes over to it just in time for the doors to close. Alarmed, he mashes the circular buttons on the panel, trying to remember which one she pressed. None of them light up.

Eventually the doors open again. Ed looks at the panel. He seems to have accidentally pressed the “Up” button, and now, beyond the doors, a perfectly normal elevator–with a floor and green-felt carpet and tasteful, brushed-steel paneling–is waiting for him.

He steps in. Inside, the button labeled “10” is already lit.

Edward’s Account of the Dereliction

Historical fiction is great and all, but have you tried fictional history?

You say her name is Anna? This may be a lark, but…is this Anna Vael we’re talking about?

Godshell. Then she’s really still alive. And you don’t have a clue who she is, do you? Fine, then, I’ll tell you while she listens–yes, I know she’s listening. Anyone would know that if they just knew who she was.

Anna Vael’s limited fame–or infamy, depending on the side you might have been on in a conflict that ended over a century ago–has to do with the events of the Blood God’s Dereliction, which I think you’ll agree is a poorly-recorded story these days. Piraeus keeps uncommonly good records, so around here, we at least know that the Dereliction did happen, but it’s worth noting that in the stretch between here and Ulrich’s Bend, most consider the Blood God a myth at this point. Something to tell the kids. The type of thing you don’t need to bring economics into–the Blood God disappeared, and his empire crumbled, that’s it.

Of course, in the real world, it doesn’t work like that. The Blood God disappeared, yeah, but he spent most of his time disappeared for the decades before that anyway. For the last thirty, forty years of his reign, he made a low-single-digit number of public appearances, all of them spectacular, filled with mass murder. Putting down rebellions, mostly. When you add in accounts from much earlier in the Kolai Dominion–recovered from the Blood Knight stronghold here in the city, actually; Peren Stratus made sure the archives were extracted before he burned the place–you get a picture of a Blood God who was interested, to a point, in a particular sort of rule, but very disinterested in personally ruling. So very early on, he handed the job off to the Magni Kolai.

The Magni were like his high priests, selected meritocratically, but the merits they were selected for–devotion to the Blood God and his philosophies, and absurd, raw, magical talent–mostly didn’t translate to skill in governance. You probably had one or two that figured out what needed to be done, and they channeled a whole lot of hostile work environment onto the Migni Kolai, their handpicked subordinates who went on to become the Dominion’s central bureaucracy.

This kept the ship sailing for a century or so, but as the Blood God grew less and less engaged, the Magni were left with way less pressure to get any of it done right, which meant that more and more of the Migni positions got filled lazily. On average, that meant you had folks in there mildly unsuited to keeping an empire running. As it got worse, it meant that more and more positions in the bureaucracy were filled–as a matter of course–by bribery and nepotism. Remember: Kol’s anti-corruption measures didn’t have moral norms. They were, collectively, “if you break it, I’ll turn all of your veins inside out”. As the guy saying that stopped paying attention, the backroom deals stopped having consequences. Then it took awhile, but eventually the cracks in the system caught up with them.

When, for example, the city of Cantabyz suffered a plague that decimated their iron output for the better part of a year, a skilled provincial governor might have channeled central resources toward aid to mitigate the economic disruption. They might have adjusted taxation, pushing that burden into future, less plague-ridden years. But should the governor not have reacted at all, the city, already impoverished by circumstance, would have been liable to snap when the Dominion’s unadjusted taxes dragged what was left of it into the ground. So they would rebel–and they did rebel, as it happened. The Blood God dragged himself out of his temple, put down the rebellion, then went back to bed or whatever. Except he put down the rebellion by killing everyone involved–along with a really-not-trivial number of bystanders–which meant that the economic impact radiated out to the rest of the Dominion.

Long story short, this all happened a couple of times, in this outlying province or that one, before the economic implications finally crashed into Kol proper, in the form of a famine. And this time, when the torches and pitchforks crossed that unimaginably foolhardly threshold of marching on the Blood God’s temple and throwing the doors wide…they lucked out. The bastard was gone. To this day, no one knows what happened to him, but that’s not the point. The point is that this was where the games began. It’s where Anna Vael comes in, in fact.

To clarify, when I say the torches and pitchforks lucked out, I mean their cause–and, again, the bystanders–lucked out. Those specific idiots all died very quickly, because the Magni were plenty capable of putting down a disorganized riot by themselves. Still, I don’t want that initial stall to detract from how big a paradigm shift this was. The Blood God was, not mincing words, a god. He killed the Dead Queen of Khet. There literally is no entity–not even a collective entity–that I am confident could stand against him. That’s a more nuanced qualification than I would like to make, but the point is: Overthrowing him was straight-up impossible. Overthrowing the Magni Kolai, on the other hand, was merely difficult.

At this point, I’ll add that the number of sources on the record declines precipitously. There were lots of corroborating sources for the rebellion at Cantabyz, the famine, the storming of the temple, but from then on, the only account that’s survived to today is by our friend, the Abbot Ezekiel Polyon, who, as you are well aware, may or may not currently have command of a stable nervous system. That said, he did keep regular journals up to a point, and those have since been copied extensively.

In any case, Polygon describes Anna Vael as one of the central players of the Dereliction. Prior to the riot that reached the Blood God’s temple, she was an underworld fixer of sorts, some mix of information dealer, mercenary, and assassin, earning her bread on whatever skulduggery the Migni let happen within their walls. Pretty sharp–she’d have to be for the ensuing events to be true–and apparently notable for her appearance. Her body was, he says, infested with flies–to the point where he was not sure whether she was carrying the insects with her or if, somehow, she was the flies, and the body was merely a vessel.

In any case, in the leadup to the big riot, the Migni must’ve seen the writing on the wall. They realized that if the Blood God got involved, it might not have been on their terms, so they raised a militia to keep the peace and recalled a selection of the Blood Knights–Polyon included–to lead it.

Solid short term plan, yeah? The problem is that militias are rickety things, lots of competing priorities and loyalties, cracks that will get exploited sooner or later if they don’t get cleaned up into a formally-administrated army. And despite the militia’s best efforts, the riot did break through to the temple, and the revelation therein meant that keeping the operation running wasn’t discretionary anymore.

The Kolai tried to recall more Blood Knights, but news traveled faster than their missives. A number of Kol’s outlying provinces rebelled outright–Piraeus included, and the question of loyalist reinforcements became one of if, not when. And in the meantime, they were left with this large force of conscripts and mercenaries, poorly paid and extremely sensitive to payment, trying to hold back a tide of suddenly-emboldened insurgent movements with whom they probably shared more in common than their Kolai overlords.

Vael was among those conscripts, and she made herself very useful very quickly by gathering intelligence on the rebel cells, which she provided to the militia, obviously–but also to Polyon and the Migni, who were at this point growing suspicious of the militia’s intermediary leadership. The commander who bubbled to the top of that mess, a former mercenary named Adrian Martell, was charismatic, clearly ambitious, and beholden to the Kolai solely on the basis of coin. His loyalties were in sharp doubt, but based on Vael’s surveillance, he was making no imminent moves to consolidate power. And with micro-rebellions breaking out all across the territory map–vandalism, attacks on tax collectors, mass theft of the Migni’s stockpiled food–replacing him would have been costly indeed.

The balancing act continued for months, as message after message rolled in, sending word of the slaughter of the Blood Knights in Piraeus and elsewhere, all confirming that, ultimately, no reinforcements would be coming. The Migni’s resources began to run thin. And then, gradually, they began taking casualties.

Assassination attempts. Poorly equipped, poorly thought out, by Polyon’s description. Usually they would fail, but occasionally they would get lucky. And all of them were fanatics, apparently brainwashed to the edge of sanity, all repeating the same mantra as they were imprisoned, interrogated, tortured to death, what have you:

“Forty hands with forty daggers will find the oppressor’s heart.”

Pretty cold, right? Wish I’d thought of it. Well, the Migni started dropping, either from these creepy assassins or just outright desertion. Then, the Magni started infighting. There were just nine or ten of them at this point, all wildly-dangerous humanoid death engines, but in their jockeying for power, one of them was killed, one severely injured before Polyon finally found an out for the Dominion. Vael delivered him a report one day detailing evidence from scores of witnesses that all of the insurgent movements in the city were being coordinated by a “Gutterway Oracle”, who she identified as Karl Hamlin, another militia conscript who had been selling tax collector schedules for favors and coin to anyone who would listen. And Hamlin, she said, was lying low at that moment at an inn on the outskirts of Kol’s pastoral territories.

Polyon interlaced his account of what followed with so much self-flagellation that it’s frankly hard to parse, but my translation is this: He took this intel to the Magni and gathered a task force comprised of most of the remaining Blood Knights in the city to go hunt down Hamlin. And as soon as he left Kol, Adrian Martell commanded his troops to slaughter the Magni.

The truth, it turned out, was that Karl Hamlin was nothing but a skilled distraction. He may, in fact, have been delivering the messages the rebels were coordinating around, but Anna Vael was writing them. She was collaborating with Martell to ensure the militia always kept a brisk pace just two steps behind. She was the one who brainwashed the Migni’s assassins, who coordinated the forty hands and forty daggers which bled out the Kolai bureaucracy, primarily to develop and test a method by which the militia might actually kill the Magni. Her answer was simple enough to be upsetting: snake venom. It stops blood from coagulating. Coat arrows and blades with the shit, and now you can make wounds a blood mage can’t easily close.

To Polyon’s credit, he smelled shit way sooner than he should’ve. He aborted his mission just a few hours after his departure, but he still returned too late. By his account, he made it to Kol’s central plaza just in time to witness the last Magnia, surrounded by dismembered militiamen, fall dead at Anna Vael’s feet.

“The Apiarist”, Excerpt 7: Peren Stratus

“Ezekiel Polyon. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Don’t know if you’ve heard–you have a reputation among the sailors now.”

“The…sailors?”

“The navy. Ever since we broke the Saltstill Cabal’s blockade two weeks ago. While we were fending off their reinforcements, somehow the fucking city guard repelled their primary invasion force at the Fisher’s docks and didn’t give a fucking inch. We got outmaneuvered plain and simple, but we didn’t pay for it, all owing to a Kolai reject who charged a ten-man advance unit with nothing but a spear and a bucket of pitch, killed them all, then set fire to a galleon. Among what I’m sure are many acts of heroism, of course.”

“Rumors are prone to exaggeration, Lord Stratus.”

“Perhaps, but I personally witnessed some of the carnage you left. Impressive. Ironic as well, given the actual Kolai were no damn help at all.”

“You honor me. I can’t help but assume, though, that Piraeus’ most promising young admiral should have a more pressing cause for this meeting.”

“Most promising, Lord Polyon? You honor me, though far less deservedly.”

“I am no lord.”

“Oh? Am I mistaken, then, in my understanding that you are the son of Maria Athene, herself a cousin of Councillor Ekreon Athene?”

“I am not accustomed to masquerading as nobility here. I am merely the son of an apiarist.”

“An unruly branch, to be sure, but you still possess the right to petition the council.”

“Provided I never avail myself of it.”

“…”

“Very well, Lord Polyon, I will get to the point. You have heard the directive by now that the guards and navy both are to root out the remnant smuggling operations the Cabal still has in the city? And I expect your commander has received additional intelligence regarding regular shipments arriving each week on the southern Fisher’s dock that then disappear into the city tunnels?”

“I have received both of these directives, yes.”

“Would it interest you to know that this second piece of intelligence was delivered by a known agent of Lord Teleos? It would, wouldn’t it?”

“My interest in such a detail would be a dangerous thing to express, Lord Stratus. Though if what you say were to be true, it would introduce a battery of additional questions.”

“Then let’s speak plainly. My aims here are dangerous to express too. Treasonous, some might say, but I think you’ll be receptive.”

“Receptive…to what?”

“I want to overthrow the council. Teleos, Athene, Alcyon, all of them.”

“…”

“Come now, Lord Polyon. I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t be interested. Or do you not think me–”

“I’m listening, Lord Stratus. Tell me more about this conversation with Teleos’ agent.”

“The Apiarist”, Excerpt 6: A Thousand Cuts

My training took the better part of six years, in which time I enthusiastically apprehended the skills I would need as a soldier, as a mage, and as a de facto cleric of the Blood God. I was good. Far better than my recruiting class, better, even, than many of the Knights in full standing. But it had turned out that despite these products of my hard work, my most interesting quality to chapterhouse leadership was actually my pedigree. I was, of course, Piraean, but more uniquely, I was of the noble class–albeit its bourgeois fringe.

As it was, the fight against the Atheists was angling more and more uphill with each passing year. The Knights had little difficulty eliminating the radical elements who made themselves visible, but they were having a much more perilous time navigating the invisible gauntlet of small resistances the Atheists placed in their way. Delayed responses from the Piraean Council, effectively tying the Knights’ hands in civil matters; the ubiquitous threat of petty theft and vandalism that compromised the movement of Blood Knight assets throughout the city; and the occasional assassination of Knights on patrol–retributed fiercely, but not fiercely enough to outweigh the attrition–all combined to ensure that the Knights’ existence in Piraeus remained decidedly hostile. And where new Atheist aggressors seemed to spring up almost passively, owing to the unrest sowed by the noble families, new Knights…took six years to train.

It was, as the Knight Captain told me in a private meeting two weeks before my knighting ceremony, unsustainable. Indeed, though I was not a Knight yet myself, I had felt the effects of the Atheists’ resistance keenly. I had long since lost count of the meals I had skipped due to supply shortages, and just the previous month, Cassandra of Coralta–the Knight who had intervened on my father’s behalf at the city gates over a decade ago–had been killed when a group of Atheist riverwalkers pushed her from a pier in the harbor and held the water around her head until she asphyxiated. She had been a mentor to me since I enlisted, and the rage that filled me when I heard the news has, to this day, only been equaled once.

It was for this reason especially that I was receptive to the assignment the Captain had for me in that meeting. We could no longer ignore the Atheists’ inner workings, he said. In all likelihood, they had an agent, an informant in the chapterhouse, and there was little we could do about it. We simply could not afford to purge every Piraean from our ranks, and there was little else to go on. The only sensible course of action was to manufacture a spy of our own. I had the right characteristics, he said, and there was no one whose loyalty he trusted more. It was a light blow to my pride that I would not have my knighthood recognized for some time–perhaps for years–but he knighted me there in his office. Then, following a public and ignominious display of my expulsion from the chapterhouse for “disloyalty and heresy”, I was left on the streets of Piraeus to begin my mission.

Were the Atheists a centralized organization, I have little doubt that my chances of infiltration so soon after my exit from the chapterhouse would have been zero, pageantry or no. But I knew they were not, and I knew the city guard had reason enough not to be suspicious of a new recruit.

If any faction had suffered worse attrition than the Knights in the Atheists’ protracted rebellion, it was Piraeus’ armed forces. Since it was of the utmost importance that the Atheists did not establish anything resembling a fighting force, the guards and the navy had permanent places on the Knights’ list of usual suspects for any Atheist activity needing investigation. Needless to say, damage to their ranks–both collateral and targeted–was substantial, and they were in constant need of new recruits to keep their numbers stable. I had the martial skills they required, and they certainly did not have the luxury of investigating the unstated suspicions of the Piraean nobility. They accepted my application without question, and within a few months, my history of allegiance to Piraeus’ “illegal occupiers” had been buried if not forgotten entirely.

The Peisistratan Myth

Sloppy and weird, but I kind of like it. A supplement to “The Apiarist”, borrowing from Thucydides via a particular frame.

It was a dark time for Piraeus after the fall of Kol. Even though the oppressors were driven out, they left a vacuum behind, a vacuum filled all too readily by the greedy, the indolent, the tyrannical. Many believed that in time, justice would win out, that the will of the people would once again reassert itself, but in fact, the opposite came to be.

Eventually, a tyrant by the name of Thraseem Stratus seized power, and he was a terror the likes of which Piraeus had never seen. He had the Council of Elders imprisoned or assassinated, stripping the people of their last vestiges of freedom and power. His taxes broke the back of every citizen, from the wealthiest merchant to–far more frequently–the honest laborer. And constantly, his spies skulked through the streets, listening at windows and stalls for words that might condemn–to slavery or death–anyone foolhardy enough to cry foul at this rape of their fair city.

But he had one weakness, and it was his lust that would be his undoing. He took a man, a young winemaker named Modius, as his lover, and though his paranoia ran deep, Modius seemed to escape that suspicion. And Modius did not hate Thraseem, but he saw what had become of Piraeus under his rule and knew it could not continue. One night, Modius and his companion, named Alisto, snuck into Thraseem’s manor and stabbed him to death as he was dining. Sadly, both Modius and Alisto were killed by Thraseem’s guards before they could escape, but their death was the spark that would set Piraeus ablaze. The people rose up, they armed themselves, they imprisoned Thraseem’s guards and spies, and they convened a council of all citizens to ensure that no tyrant would ever grip the fortunes of their city again. This was the new founding of Piraeus, the founding of democracy.

…

But do you believe that shit?

Do you believe that the noble people of this city were so swayed by Modius’ and Alisto’s sacrifice that they just…snapped out of it? After tolerance for two generations of tyrants?

Do you believe that Thraseem was even a tyrant himself? Do you wonder why histories of those years often mention that Thraseem had a brother–do you wonder how Erac Stratus factored into all of this?

Would you believe that Erac Stratus, son of Peren Stratus–who himself ousted the Blood Knights from Piraeus–was ruler of the city, with broad popular support? Would you believe that Thraseem Stratus attempted to steal Modius from his lover, Alisto? Would you believe that the two of them killed Thraseem for the cheap insult he delivered them after he was rejected?

Would you believe that Modius and Alisto were long in their graves when the tyranny of Erac Stratus, distraught after the death of his brother at the hands of those bickering mongrels, was at last inflicted upon Piraeus?

I’m sure you’re wondering why all of this should be hidden. Why should a jilted lover be made into a villain? Why should two weak men, willed to violence over the pettiest of disputes, be built into the heroes that “ushered in democracy”?

You’re asking the wrong question. The real question is: What happened next?

Erac Stratus became a tyrant, yes, but he was not the intolerable yoke that Piraeus could not abide. Not truly. Eventually, tensions rose and his power waned, and circumstances conspired to remove him from power, but it was not Erac or his tyranny whose very memory would poison democracy, would doom this fantasy of self-governance before it escaped its infancy. It was the circumstances. It was the conspiracy.

You see, power in Piraeus has always been a product of alliance, and Erac knew this. He knew which families to compromise, which relationships to dismantle. He knew how to make his tyranny unassailable by the people of Piraeus alone. The force behind the rebellion came from without, from a man banished from Piraeus since the fall of Kol.

Maybe you know who I’m describing. Ezekiel Polyon. The Blood Knight who helped Peren Stratus unify Piraeus under his rule, whom Peren betrayed when he slaughtered all the Kolai remaining in the city during the Dereliction. The one now called Abbott Ezekiel of the Knights Ichneumonous.

Democracy had a goal, of course. It was meant to ensure that never again would a tyrant grip the fortunes of Piraeus and its people. But in order for it to succeed, a truth had to be buried, disavowed. Because if history were recorded plainly, it would be plain to see: Even as Piraeus shouted to the world that it would not be denied its freedom, it sought out the oppression of Kol once again.

“The Apiarist”, Excerpt 5: The Right Side of History

I enlisted with the Blood Knights in the eighty-second year of the Blood God’s reign, when I was twenty years old. This was somewhat older than most recruits, but my path in life had been dominated by other factors, and I had yet to seize any particular control over it.

The previous year, my father was stricken with a consumptive infection of the lungs and–mercifully, perhaps–passed quickly. It wasn’t precisely the attack in Piraeus that had brought about his end: His injuries healed mostly, leaving him with a limp and limited function in his right eye. But it had, in hindsight, been the beginning of a downward slide.

He, of course, did not return to the city from then on, for the very reasonable desire not to become a martyr or scapegoat to either side in the thinly-veiled conflict now ongoing between the Knights and Piraeus’ self-determinative Atheist faction. But I suspected it was also deeper than that, a phobic unwillingness to face even the place, much less the people, which had subjected him to that trauma. The result was that he was confined to our home and grounds, occupied by not busy, increasingly present and irritable to Mother, the servants, and myself. That he was moving so much less than he had been, that even his limited mobility in that limited space was painful for him–it all meant that even before the infection set in, he had become little more than a cruel, vaporous reminder of his former self. I found it striking that when he died, not even Mother truly mourned.

The legacy he left, though, was complicated for everyone. Despite his many enemies, Father was still regarded as one of the most talented artisans in the region. Our family’s honey fetched an outright exotic price as far away as Kol, and even despite our lifestyle of rural borderline-nobility, the business had been shockingly frugal. It turned out Father had left behind a fortune in silver, valuable goods, and stock certificates in a number of successful merchant companies, each of which had been paying dividends for years. The future of the apiary was, of course, uncertain, but it quickly became clear that Mother and I were in no danger of starvation. What was less clear was whether either of us had any desire to carry on Father’s work.

Eventually we settled on a course. Our head servant, Giuseppe, the very same servant who had sought help for Father the night of the attack, would take charge of the apiary, and when Mother passed, he would be the one to inherit it. I, meanwhile, had taken my father’s rejection to heart and fully accepted I would have no future in beekeeping, truly assumed I had no aptitude for it. And my mind had belatedly wandered to the political unrest in Piraeus, and tectonics of power I now saw shifting around us. So it was with not insignificant enthusiasm that I renounced my inheritance and made my way to the city, determined to stand on the right side of history.

Despite my ardent opposition, I have little doubt that if the political skirmish I arrived in had taken place even twenty years later, the Atheists would have won handily. Though the Knights were formidable warriors, anti-Kolai sentiment ran deeply through Piraeus, and they were outnumbered–possibly a hundred to one. Their advantage was that the Uprising of the 79th was fresh in the collective memory of the Kolai dominion: Only three years earlier, the city of Cantabyz, the source of the majority of the Dominion’s iron, had declared open rebellion against the Magni Kolai. The Blood God’s arrival at their gates–his first public appearance in a decade–claimed over 10,000 lives.

In the wake of this event, Piraeus’ cooler heads overwhelmingly opted to lie low, leavin the Knights to contend only with the Atheist’s firebrands. My allegiances were unconflicted. I had no grievance against the Kolai’s taxes, and the only meddling I had seen from the Knights had been clearly on the side of justice. It did not matter that when I arrived at the chapterhouse, the squire on duty in the hall urged me to consider that I would very likely not become a Knight without any magical talent I knew about. And it did not matter that my enthusiasm was met by a bemused chuckle from the only Knight in the hall at the time. I had existed too long in a state of terror at the unbelonging I had felt from my father, from the apiary, from the indolent, insular people of Piraeus. I knew that the Blood Knights–even simple service to the Blood Knights–was something greater that I would be glad to be part of. The Knight Captain’s speculative nod, when it came time to provide him my reason for enlisting, was tepid vindication. But it was enough.

“The Apiarist”, Excerpt 4: The Blood Knights of Piraeus

My first contact with the Blood Knights was when I was eleven years old. Against my father’s wishes, I was made to accompany him into the city on a delivery to the Hospitality Quarter, as the servant who normally helped him with those trips had fallen ill. It was a fraught journey, but I was familiar enough with the work that I no longer roused his anger, so long as I stayed quiet.

Some years later, I would become acquainted with a common template of a man: the type who charmes, who is a socialite to all except those with whom he lives–to them he is a terror. As that template is well understood by many, I wish to emphasize that my father was very certainly not this type of man. He was not merely irritable and angry to his family–he was irritable and angry to everyone, and, as I discovered on this trip, these qualities had earned him enemies in Piraeus.

At the gates of the city, we were stopped by a guard who requested, smirking lasciviously, that my father produce his licensure. Rather than showing documents, my father handed over a large parcel of his goods before continuing through the gates. He did not offer me any explanation, and I did not ask, but I found the interaction decidedly tense. And I was not the only one–I distinctly recall the skeptical glance of the woman in armor on the other side of the checkpoint.

As we were finishing our third delivery, that same woman approached us, carrying the parcel Father had given the guard.

“Piraeus has no licensure requirements for apiarists,” she said. “I guess you knew that, but extortion is also prohibited. If it happens again, you can let us know at the chapterhouse.”

Father accepted the parcel, eyes down and jaw set with an emotion that seemed perturbed but otherwise lacked definition. When we passed back through the gates on our way home, the guard we had spoken with was no longer there, and the one who had taken his place fixed us with a look of such hatred that I could not bear to hold his gaze.

I was at the time too young, too sheltered to understand the political implications of what occurred that day, but as my role facilitating Father’s deliveries expanded, the situation grew clearer:

In those days, Piraeus was ruled by a council of elders who nominally commanded the loyalty of the city’s entrenched aristocracy. It had been this way for as long as most citizens could remember, but where, a century ago, Piraeus had taken pride in being the last stronghold of Riverlander rule unswayed by the machinations of Spar, the city had finally surrendered rather than face ruin at the hands of the Blood God. Even now, there were many Piraeans who resented this obeisance, who refused to recognize the Blood Knights’ authority to oversee and overrule the city’s various administrative functions. That the Knights were largely hands-off and demonstrably less corrupt than their local counterparts–a notion for which the incident at the gate was, to me, irrefutable evidence–was beside the point. Nor did it matter that the Blood Knights in Piraeus were a majority ethnically-Piraean: The Kolai were outsiders, and those that bent the knee were, behind certain doors, traitors.

Of course, when those criticisms emerged publicly, the repercussions were severe. A month after that first incident, a group of guards, displeased with the Blood Knights intervening on his behalf, ambushed my father in the midst of his deliveries. They destroyed his goods and beat him so severely that his servant had to fetch me and a separate wagon in order to bring him back home. And though, to my knowledge, Father never reported the incident, the Knights seemingly discovered the incident on their own. They massacred the city’s peacekeeping force, assuming their duties for the better part of a year, and the guards’ flayed and exsanguinated corpses were hung from the city walls for months after the altercation.

Father never set foot in Piraeus again. I never learned whether he had a stance of his own on the Blood Knights’ rule. He certainly did not seek their aid–I discovered from his ledgers that he had been paying bribes to the guards for over a decade. But that was a stable arrangement: He was paying for his ill repute among the citizens. It had nothing to do with the Blood Knights, and it was not by his will that his business became a battleground in their fight over who would control their hive.

“The Apiarist” Excerpt 3: A Lesson on Free Magic

“I do so hate these commencement speeches, but our mission can get so muddled in all the regimens and pageantry and Sacristi; especially out here, so far from Kol…”

It was customary, the Knight Captain had explained, that each new class of recruits receive its first training in Kol’s sacred art from the visiting Magnia that year. It was a great honor, and exposure to the Magni was otherwise highly limited. Command of the Blood Knights mixed only tepidly with the ranks of the Migni Kolai, the World City’s administrators and functionaries, and promotion to civilian office from the Blood Knight rank and file was vanishingly rare. And it was almost unheard of that any of these should join the company of the Magni, the Blood God’s high priests. Kol’s leaders, for the most part, were born rather than made. So to be close to a Magnia, to have her attention, was not to be squandered.

Even at the time, though, I was under little illusion as to how practical the instruction would be. The chapterhouse’s senior squires had already put us through remedial arms training, and I was well familiar with how foundational any introduction to a martial art would have to be. And of course, we had little time: Magnia Livia was important, and we, plainly, were not.

This impression proved only partially correct. I did not learn to call the Blood that day–that would be a process of slow growth over decades, as it was for nearly every recruit–but the pith she did dispense was more impactful than all the tutelage I would soon receive from lesser teachers. She began with a demonstration:

“As I’m sure you all know,” she said, unsheathing a razor, “the armament our God wields is blood, and the strength by which he wields it is violence.” She cut a deep line from her elbow to her wrist and turned her palm upward. Solid, sharp tendrils of blood erupted from the wound. She continued:

“Both violence and blood exist within all of us which is both blah blah blah and blegh blegh blegh…”

Rolling her eyes, she shook her arm, and the writhing tendrils collapsed in a wet cascade, which seeped back up into her arm as she turned to us.

“You will learn how to do that with a lot of practice, and you’ll learn the apologetics and justifications–probably with a bit less practice. But all of that–the weapons and discipline–is what we use to maintain our strength. None of it is, by itself, going to tell you what it’s for, and the lot of you are going to be damned miserable excuses for knights if you can’t grasp why the Blood God sent us out here in the first place!

“To that point,” she said, “consider a bit of heresy.”

Once again, she drew her razor from her elbow to her wrist, but this time, instead of a roiling scourge of blood, a blast of flame surged from the wound, engulfing her arm and prompting more than one of us to stagger backward at the sudden wave of heat. And then, just as suddenly, the flame extinguished, and her flesh knit itself back together.

“The Blood God decreed Free Magic, so we mustn’t forget that the arts of the pyromancer, the Greyskin, the beastman–all are like to ours. Free Magic means that never again shall a tyrant claim control over the potential that lies within us. That is the legacy the Blood Knights are meant to protect. We do not cultivate strength for its own sake, we don’t imitate our God out of vanity, and we certainly don’t become strong so we can bully the weak. You are protectors, and it will serve you to learn a thing or two about what you aim to protect!”