Chapter Text
"You are exceptionally bad at this," Jehan would say while Jacopo tried to do anything on his own. Giorgia would usually shrug and say, with the most factual face Jacopo had ever seen someone pull off, that he wasn't all that bad, just not very good. His travelling companions were not the most supportive, but when it boiled down to it he guessed he appreciated them anyway.
After all, he didn't have any other friends.
One moon turn had passed since they had left the safety of Lombrica and since then they had seen giants, magical creatures none of them had ever heard about, and people of every sort.
Today though seemed dreary. Jacopo sat atop his brown stallion and viewed their surroundings with disapproval.
Up ahead were fields of green pastures filled with wildflowers and miniature trees no higher than a man's knee. There were also mountains forming what Jacopo's tutor had once told him was the biggest mountain range in the known world. The mountains made the land hard to live on because it yielded few crops, so it was mostly barren of men. In the winter locals and travellers should take care to not be trapped in or without the passes between the mountain feet.
Jacopo looked at the distant walls of stone and hoped they were back long before then.
Further ahead Jehan gestured to the scenery and told Giorgia tales he made up on the spot about moon fairies and magical plants, and Giorgia listened with intensity, as they were wont to do whenever Jehan spoke.
Jacopo wondered how they could be bothered to speak so much when they also had to walk. He mostly rode and even so he felt tired.
Just then his friends began to point excitedly to something ahead. It was a church tower. Soon the figure of the monastery itself appeared. Jacopo had never seen brickwork that bright. For a moment he wondered what had been used to make the structure, till he heard distant screams and realised the monastery was engulfed in flames.
His heart dropped.
"Fire!" Jehan yelled. Both him and Giorgia ran towards the burning building. Jacopo saw Jehan running inside and Giorgia helping someone out from the wide open entrance, but he himself felt paralysed by fear. The closer he got the more intensely he could feel the heat on his skin and finally he beckoned for his horse to stop.
He was near enough to see the faces of the people standing outside by the entrance and counted a little more than a dozen. Jehan came out supporting another one with his arms.
Just then a dark shadow jumped out from a window on the ground floor. In their arms was something large and square.
"Stop the thief!" someone shouted, clearly not seeing the bloody knife the thief flashed as he flew by. Jacopo dared not move an inch. He looked on as the thief set for the mountains, too far ahead for any of the bystanders to reach him now.
"You should have caught him. He stole our sacred text!"
Jacopo turned his head and saw the man Jehan was supporting gesturing in the direction where the thief had went. The man might be around twenty name days or so, tall, with a broad and pale face, and a shaved head. Jehan tried to stop him from moving because every time he did a red rose flowered on his shirt.
"The text! It's important to us," he cried.
Jacopo felt his face turn red in shame. They stood there like wingless wirds, blackened from the smoke, all hairless, all dressed in the same woolen shirts and cotton trousers. Only their eyes shone clear and Jacopo saw blame in them. He felt them condemn him, silently and without words.
It made him think of his late father- he would never have succumbed to fear. Was Jacopo to be more cowardly than Cosimo The Fair? Was he to be called Jacopo the Craven? He decided he couldn't let that happen, even though fear was still clutching at his heart and making it yearn for escape.
"I will fix this," he said. "I- I will be back with your text. I won't fail you." Then he rode off after the thief with the stunned faces of Jehan and the other etched into his mind.
The sun cast long shadows over the fields, yet not comparable at all to the looming shadows cast by the approaching mountains. They were close now; Jacopo had been riding for what felt like hours. He thanked the heavens that he had spent some time hunting with Jehan the last year or he would never had known how to search his surroundings for imprints.
He finally caught up with the bandit by a large stream. The thief must have searched for a way to cross and after trying to cross found it was too deep, and so collapsed by the side of the stream, drenched from the waist down. In his arms was the book, still dry.
Jacopo got down from his horse as quietly as he could and approached the man, although to his dismay the man's eyelids opened at the sound and looked at him.
"So- you found me. What are you going to do?" he said.
Jacopo pointed at the book he was clutching. "I came only for that."
The man laughed. His chest rose rapidly as after a long struggle.
"Why? Better it get taken out of their hands. Do you even know who you are assisting? I bet you don't. They are called Channels, which is a finer title than they deserve. They are vile, unnatural beings with enough powers in their throats to throw all order to ruin. If the Old Prince was not so gutless he would order their treacherous tongues cut out. They use this-" he tapped the book with his fingers "-to train new mediums. If they lose this they will lose their grip in the kingdom. Thousands of lives may be saved."
The man finished with a sober look in his eyes, evidently fully believing this was true. Jacopo however couldn't remember the last time he felt so unsure.
"Did you set fire to the monastery?" he decided to ask. The man laughed.
"Did you stab one of the- what did you call them- Channels?" He got another laugh in return.
So he was dealing with the words of a brute and a circle of dangerous warlocks, if a thief could be believed.
Usually he would have taken the side of the group just on the account of the arsonary and violence, were if it not for the fact that the tale the man told was reminding him of a similiar story Jehan had told him once about The Bluejay, his daughter, and Dustfinger. If Jehan's words were true immense power could be derived from words and letters, enough to conjure things out of thin air, inflict pain or love, and control death.
Jacopo did not like being reminded of his grandfather and the eerie knowlegde of what the Bluejay had done to him had never left him. He knew what books could do. Still he liked pretending it never happened. If words alone could murder a wealthy ruler made immortal, was anyone ever really safe?
"What exactly is it they do?" he asked carefully. And so the thief told him of words- beautiful, vibrant words written on parchment or paper that- when read aloud could change the outcome of wars and decide the fate of both common man and mighty ruler alike. The more he told, the faster Jacopo felt his heart beat.
His first thought was getting away from these Channels as soon as possible, nevertheless there was something stopping him.
Running away wouldn't be prince- like. Neither was taking sides without having given the other part a chance to explain themselves. He made up his mind.
"I will take the book now. Before I give it back I will examine your claims," he said. Before the man could protest, Jacopo yanked the book from his grip and rode back to the monastery. The scene there was more peaceful by then. The fire had been either extinguished or gone out on its own, and the Channels were sitting on the ground watching Jehan tend the man who had been stabbed.
"Leon, please sitt still," Jehan implored, patting a wet cloth over his wound. It made Jacopo happy to see it wasn't as bad as it could have been and instead more of a light gash.
Leon's eyes met with Jacopo's as he approached.
"You brought it." He sounded surprised. Jacopo would have snapped at the insinuation if it hadn't been for the severity of the situation.
"Yes, I did, thank you very much. Before I give it to you I would like an explanation, though."
He told he congregation what the thief had said. They exhanged looks, uncertainty written upon their faces. Jehan and Giorgia too frowned, but only Leon spoke.
"By no means do I know for sure, but I can guess that the thief acted on behalf of the Old Prince and his distaste for us. Am I correct?"
When Jacopo said nothing Leon had gotten his answer. He spat on the ground and the drops were black from the smoke he had inhaled.
"Our ruler does not care for us. For years his court has been whispering hearsay about our kind, what we supposedly are capable of. Many years back his spies brought back reports from the country south of us. Undoubtedly you have heard tattle of a certain person that forced a bookbinder to trap death for him.
Of course that must be lies, because none of us has ever beheld a skill like that. We pray together for rain and so it might rain. We read out loud for the crops in the kingdom to prosper and so they might. Our practice does not allow violence. We don't use it to summon spirits or fabricate gold.
To be frank I would not think us capable. In truth our voices are small channels of magic that together may raise like a choire and perform great things. For that we need the text book. There is your explanation."
Jehan opened his mouth as to inject, but Jacopo cut him short.
"Why should I believe you? It sounds to me like you are just undervalueing your capabilities. Why should the monastery be allowed to hold this authority?"
"Jacopo!" Giorgia hissed, not agreeing with his critisicm.
Leon smiled at Jacopo. The smile did not reach his eyes, which were sad.
"Why should the Old Prince?"
Jacopo shifted uncomfortably. He looked at the people around him, suddenly feeling very, very stupid. "What... do you mean?"
Giorgia did not give the man an opportunity to explain his statement, just blurted out the following with a voice that insinuated this was an idea they all were well familiar with:
"He means to say that the Old Prince has no more right to authority than anyone else. No ruler does."
Giorgia looked at Leon who nodded, and Jehan who seemed to struggle with the though yet still feeling the validity of the argument. Jacopo on the other hand felt like the sky suddenly had turned green.
"No- no right? How come? How can that be?"
Giorgia was starting to look at him with a sympathy usually reserved for Dante when he failed to grasp simple concepts due to his age, and Jacopo did not enjoy it.
"Why should rulers have authority? What divinity is in the fabrics of a throne? What allows the wearer of a crown to issue imprissionment and death of anyone they disfavour? Like they do us," Leon pressed on. At this point Jacopo was starting to realise something he rather wouldn't.
"Stop that. Somebody has to decide. Somebody who was born for it," he said.
"Why? Why does a single man decide which ideas and philosophies are acceptable? Did we deserve almost getting murdered?"
"Of course not! It's never right to murder anyone!" Jacopo's shriek pierced the air. Oddly enough it made Leon beam.
"Now you get it," was all he said.