Chapter Text
My dear Finn,
I write to you already three days en route; perhaps I will post this envelope once we reach Kazan, and find out which of us wins the privilege of arriving to you first.
Now, when my return is almost at hand, the days seem to have stretched immeasurably; the first leg out of Tayshet to Krasnoyarsk felt much like an eternity rather than a day. I had slept, lulled by the tattoo of the wheels upon the track, through the departure of my brief traveling companion, a merchant’s factor, sometime after we’d passed Yekaterinburg. He had been pleasant enough a neighbor, his interest in my person having waned considerably after he had ascertained I was not returning from the taiga with bags of Siberian gold, and that such prospecting had not been the aim of the Skywalker expedition. It appeared that I would be undertaking the next part of the journey alone, which, after almost a year of close quarters in tents and hunters’ huts, suited me well enough.
However, I had only a few hours in which to savor my new-found privacy. We stopped next in N-sk. The milky mid-morning fog lifted in scraps over the station, much like any other provincial stop, west, north, or east: the railway office with its peeling brick facade, the kerchiefed women peddling red apples and sour milk, the ever-present asters and bluebells, bundles of herbs, tin buckets filled to the brim with dew-wet mushrooms.
As the train began to lumber slowly away from the N-sk platform, the door to my compartment slid open, admitting a tall, red-haired man in a smart wool jacket, and with him, leaning heavily upon his arm, a lanky youth, his face shadowed by the hood of his odd, bulky coat, rather like the cowl of a monk. His older companion assisted him into the berth opposite mine before sitting down beside him. After the porter had deposited their bags, and the train’s steward had brought around the the hot water for tea, I offered up a hand in introduction.
“You may call me ‘Hux’,” the red-haired man nodded, agreeably genial, yet plainly reluctant to reveal his incognito.
“Benjamin,” said the other; now that he had removed the hooded coat, I could examine him clearly. He was not quite so young as I had first imagined; perhaps his twenties to his companion’s thirties. Long black curls framed his narrow cheeks, pale and dotted here and there with moles; his mouth was full, his eyes dark and limpid. His otherwise pleasant visage was marred by a thick scar, the pitted, ropy skin shiny and pink, as if recently burned.
I quickly averted my gaze and picked up my tea, sipping with care from the steaming glass.
“Ben,” Hux said softly; when I looked up again, his arm was wrapped protectively around the young man’s back, and Benjamin had laid his head onto Hux’s stiff woolen shoulder, his wounded cheek now concealed from me.
“Forgive me,” I said, shameful color rising in my own face. “While my months in the taiga haven’t left me with a score of gold, they seem to have left me bereft of good manners. It is peculiar to be back in the world after so long a time in near isolation.”
It is; though every station along my journey brings me closer and closer to you, each seems more swarmed by fellow-travelers than the last, the churn of people upon each platform buzzing with more and more noise. I suppose it is to be expected, after the vast stretches of the forests: neither truly empty, of course, nor absolutely quiet -- but where one can go for weeks without encountering a human presence.
My new companions seemed mollified by my compunction, and Hux in particular quite interested in news of our expedition. From his posture and carriage, I had thought him a military man, and he proved now to have a passable knowledge of cartography; his late father, he divulged, a tremor passing over his fine features, had been a general serving in the Eastern Military District, and a dues member of the Geographical Society all through his retirement.
We drank our tea and I spoke at length about our efforts in mapping the topography of the Iya basin, the new sections of rail being laid even now farther in the east, and the vast areas still remaining untouched, from the Amur to the Lena. I could not help but notice, however, that Ben had remained mostly quiet through our exchange. He had set his glass down some while ago; from time to time, a jolt of sudden unease flitted through his eyes. Hux seemed to sense it each time, his fingers coming to rest on Ben’s shoulder, massaging it lightly. At that, he would lift his face and fix Hux with a look of such intense devotion so as to make my longing to be reunited with you rear up with a near painful potency.
I will admit; my curiosity about the young man’s disfigurement, and the easy, close intimacy he and Hux shared only rose as we went on. Eventually, Ben dozed, pressed still against Hux’s side; his clever dark brown eyes fell shut, and a calm settled upon his long, drawn face. The tea was gone; Hux paused suddenly, mid-sentence into an anecdote of an ill-conceived winter swim in the Yenisei, and looked at me, considering.
“You would like to know, would you not, how it came to be? I do not think he will begrudge me the telling.”
“I would,” I answered sincerely; Hux nodded, shifted, resettling Ben carefully upon his arm, and began. The account that followed, though I am not quite certain whether I’m convinced of its veracity, is one I felt compelled to commit to memory and put to paper as urgently as I could, and so you shall read it below, and tell me if you believe a single word.
His father, the old general, had passed away the previous autumn, and Hux, with a heavy heart, but a son’s duty, had taken a leave of his service in the capital, and returned to the estate where he had spent his youth, to bury the man with all the ceremony he deserved, and to settle his affairs. He’d ensconced himself in his father’s former study most evenings, armed with his pipe and a glass of brandy, and sorted through ledgers, books, and years’ worth of correspondence. Though his father had used only a small suite of rooms in his final years, all of the wings of the old manor house had now been opened, including the disused guest bedrooms, the library, and the attic, once young Hux’s childhood hideaway --
“And it is there that I found it,” Hux told me solemnly, “when I climbed the rickety stairs, lantern in hand, ready to consign the ancient, dusty contents to be disposed of: the portrait of the knight.”
“A portrait?”
“Yes. I didn’t recall having laid eyes upon it as a child; it must have been one of my father’s later acquisitions, or perhaps his second wife’s. Unfortunately, she had gone on some years prior as well, and the painting’s provenance remained lost to me, though I would have much liked to know from whence it came. It was reminiscent of a Velasquez, perhaps, or a Holbein, though far too well-preserved to have been as old as that; the subject was a young man in cloak and armor, posed with sword in hand, his black hair loose about his pale face, and his eyes --
“His gaze seemed to have fixed upon me,” Hux sighed. “His eyes, piercing and dark, unsettled me at first, following my every move as I sorted through the packed away knick knacks, the old furniture swathed in linen sheets, some of the wardrobe left from my stepmother’s trousseau. Everything crumbling, decaying, the scent of camphor and naphthalene filling the stale air. Yet when I told the servants to clear the rest, I suddenly could not bear to do so with the knight. His stare, no longer unsettling, now appeared lost, beseeching: take me with you -- and so I did.
I had the frame re-gilded, the painting cleaned, and moved to the study where I spent most of my time, and so we went about our doings. Me, with my father’s promissory notes, books, and letters, sorting them into piles without end -- to do, to file, to burn -- and Kylo, watching me with those dark, clever eyes, sword aloft in one gloved hand, and the other extended, as if in invitation.”
“Kylo,” I repeated. “The portrait had a name?”
“Oh, yes. The only indication of any origin, a small brass plaque hammered into the bottom of the frame, the name etched upon it now visible upon its restoration: Kylo, Knight of Ren.”
“I am not familiar with the Order of Ren,” I said.
“Neither was I,” Hux continued. “His hauberk and surcoat resembled those of a Templar, or one of the early Knights Hospitaller; I scoured the estate library, but was unable to learn anything of use. I wrote then to the Register of Antiquities, and also to an old friend at the university, imploring him for any records he could locate, but in the meantime, I remained buried in work. My father had left far too much unfinished. His passing had been unexpected; though advanced in age, he had remained in remarkable good health, and true to his character, had been engaged in a number of ventures that now had suddenly been cut short. More and more items cropped up on my list by the day. There, a woodcutter had not yet been paid for clearing brush by the road leading to town, here, father’s old housekeeper wished to retire, and a replacement was needed to be selected and hired at once. The grain taxes for the previous year were in arrears, the N-sk Compassionate Society was still expecting my father’s usual contribution to the annual charity lotto, the town engineer ought to be consulted for dispensation on filling a small pond on the property. At dusk, I would light candles all around the study; my knight’s stern face was softened by their glow, and his deep, thoughtful eyes glistened as if pricked with moisture.”
Hux confessed, then, to conversing with the knight.
“It sounds foolish, even as I say it now, but he quickly became the trusted companion of my days. Father’s secretary, M. Mitaka, was, of course, indispensable in his assistance, and I frequently sent him out to settle with those factors of my father’s he was infinitely more familiar with than I, but Kylo, you see -- I’d begun to air my frustrations at him in jest, to start, the dreadful mess with the grain, the lotto. I doubt you ever had to burden yourself with any paperwork you could not solve with that great big sword of yours, I told him once, and I could have sworn his bowed, red mouth crinkled at the corners.
“Little by little, I became attached. Mitaka dismissed for the night, and everything cleared up as best as could be, I’d light my pipe and pour my usual brandy and speak to Kylo of all the matters I could entrust to no one else, and could hardly shape well enough to commit to a journal. I’d always prided myself on being a thinking man, and a rational one, but here I was, my father’s only son, protecting yet disposing of his legacy in equal measure. I imagined someone, someday, performing the solemn task of doing so with my own remains, and was suddenly overcome with a stark, aching awareness of the fragility of my own existence, of the transitory nature of all things.
“I suppose I was dreadfully lonely, and Kylo an excellent listener, his countenance now appearing to me full of sympathy, of compassionate concern. You must think me rather witless, must you not?”
I did not, and told him so; such thoughts as Hux described had come to me frequently in the depths of the wilderness. I wish I could convey to you, my dearest, of how small, and yet how fitting into the pattern of all things one can feel, when after days of hard trek through the densest forest, the trees give way, and suddenly one finds himself on the edge of a cliff, the bluest, clearest water revealed below, like a jewel reflecting the vast sky, but I digress.
Hux spoke now of his lonely attachment growing; he had begun to feel protective of the knight, any other visitors to their study intruding upon something not meant for their eyes. The newly hired housekeeper, instructed to avoid the study and forbidden from neatening anything contained therein, was similarly not permitted to dust the portrait; Hux did it himself, wiping the frame with a soft cloth every morning, running his fingers over the etched letters of the knight’s name as he polished the brass plaque.
He had begun to spend almost all of his waking hours locked into the little room, though the remainder of his business in N-sk was finally approaching its end; the grain taxes had been remitted, and the decision made to leave the little pond as is -- Hux did like to take his evening constitutional by there, listening to the frog calls from the water, the nightingale somewhere in the branches above. Afterwards, he returned neither to his childhood room, nor to the master bedroom prepared for his use, but to the armchair he had moved into the study, facing his beloved portrait, head pillowed on his arms, until sleep claimed him.
“I’d dream of him -- of us,” Hux said wistfully, letting his fingers comb into one of Ben’s soft black curls; the latter let out a heavy breath, but did not wake. “I would see myself, seated, no longer in an armchair covered in gaudy chintz, but upon an ancient, carved throne, a circlet of laurel upon my brow. And Kylo, my faithful knight, attending on me, dutiful, devoted, and yes: beloved.”
Letters came from the capital, from his fellows in the service, filled now less with words of sympathy, but of inquiries of his return. Hux read them, and promptly disposed of them in the fireplace. A missive from his university friend had finally arrived back; alas, it contained precious little information pertaining to the Order of the Knights of Ren. They had been founded by the Prince-Bishop in Riga, alongside the Brothers of the Sword; both eventually subsumed into the Livonian, and then the Teutonic Order some centuries ago. Hux was no closer to discovering the painting’s provenance than he had previously been, though his friend wrote to him also of various social goings on: a masque ball, the debut of a new symphony by Borodin. A seance, sponsored by Her Serene Highness, and conducted, to great success, by --
“Have you heard of one Professor Snoke?” Hux asked me.
“The so-called alchemist? I had not realized he was still in the capital; I might have imagined the court would have eventually grown tired of his smoke and mirrors.”
“Mmhmm,” Hux confirmed, rather circumspectly. “Again, I tell you: I had always considered myself a rational creature, one with a proper respect for science and logic, and so my friend’s account of Prof. Snoke’s exploits, despite the endorsement by Her Serene Highness, seemed to me smoke and mirrors of the most insidious order, indeed. He was rumored to increase the weight of gems and to restore their clarity; he had grown rubies from fifteen to over twenty carats, and had healed Her Serene Highness’s favorite pearls from dull and grey to their original lustre. He claimed the ability to find lost objects, conjure the spirits of fire and air, and converse with the dead; all of these of course, the same pretensions as those of Constante or the Comte St. Germain, which is to say, artifices aimed to part the gullible from their money. And yet, as I read the remainder of the letter, wherein my friend described, in some detail, Prof. Snoke having summoned forth, per the desires of his widow, the shade of the late Prince M-ov from his portrait, I could not help but wonder what Kylo would make of such an endeavor.
Would that it were true, I thought, reading the letter anew, aloud. Would you wish that, my lord Ren? To leave behind the confines of this canvas? To walk with me in the gardens, to speak --
I could say no more, my throat seizing; I looked, instead to Kylo, whose eyes turned to dark pools at my words. His outstretched hand, extended to me as always, looked tense within its glove; had he a pulse, I imagined it would be racing, and a feeling of such sadness and yearning overtook me, that I thought my heart might burst forth from my chest. I always should have known, of course, that my attachment to the portrait was not quite sane, but never had it been so sharply clear in my mind until that moment. Were my Livonian knight a man living, and not a creation of oils and cloth, there likely would be nothing to tie us together. Alive, he had undoubtedly been a creature of his time, and I of mine. Dispirited, I rose from my usual berth in the study, and went instead to the master suite to sleep.”
Meanwhile, Hux’s business in N-sk was concluded, and his return to Piter long overdue; the servants and M. Mitaka would stay on to keep the estate running as they had done. And yet, he dawdled, able to neither leave his precious portrait, nor to carry it with him. He had finally resolved to leave N-sk before the start of the new month, but the day of his intended departure brought with it a torrential downpour and gusting winds; judging it imprudent to travel in such weather, he stayed put.
The fire built up in the grate to ward him against the thunder and rain, he had just sat down to a late dinner, when one of the pages ran in, announcing sudden visitors to the estate.
“Travelers, their carriage having been damaged, they were unlikely to reach N-sk proper easily in the storm; of course, I offered them hospitality,” Hux said. He’d ordered for rooms to be prepared, and for the servants to convey the unexpected guests inside. Rising from the table, he went along to the sitting room, ready to receive them.
A young man entered first, peculiarly dressed in an old-fashioned black zupan, long and belted. His face was partially concealed by a tattered cowl, also black, which he removed before giving Hux a shallow bow.
“My master,” he said, straightening, “thanks you for your generosity, and would be happy to join you for supper.”
“Tell me, then,” Hux asked, “what is your master’s name and title, so I may know how to address him?”
The young man sighed, and bent his head; his dark hair was braided into a neat plait, revealing a pair of unfortunately overlarge ears, a long, slightly askew nose, and chalk-pale cheeks dotted here and there with dark moles.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but my master’s true name has not been revealed to me.”
“I see,” Hux replied, puzzled. “Have you only recently been in your master’s employ?”
“My master acquired me in Vidzeme, not long after the Truce of Altmark,” said the young man solemnly. His full lower lip trembled, but he spoke no more.
Hux balked at that; though he did not get the opportunity to ask the youth if he truly meant he had been serving his employer for over 200 years, or if it had been an unfortunate jest, for then the doors opened, and a tall, spindly man in a garish, golden-yellow embroidered kaftan walked into the room.
“I trust that Benjamin has conveyed to you my sincere gratitude for your assistance,” he spoke in a heavily accented voice, reaching out a long, claw-like hand. “It is a delight to make your acquaintance, messere Hux. I myself have been known by many names, but it would please me well if you addressed me as Snoke.”
“Surely not the professor who has caused such a furor in Petersburg,” said Hux, and his visitor stretched his mouth into a lopsided smile more akin to a grimace.
“The very same,” Professor Snoke said.