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“What,” the creature crooned as its tongue flicked out to lick its lips, “is it that you want?”
Jullanar, Masseo and Pali were waiting for me back at the refuge, and I thought back on what had prompted my shameful outburst.
“I want to be Fitzroy Angursell again.”
The creature's eyes glittered. Magic stirred in the air, and it suddenly dawned on me that I had made a grave mistake.
“No! No wait, no–”
“Done,” it hissed, and the world went black.
~
“Lord Mdang, I presume?”
The man froze and looked up at me from the huge pile of ledgers he'd been hunched over. He had the same golden skin and dark brown eyes as Basil White the innkeeper, but he looked much older, his face worn by age and probably too much work.
“My lord!” he exclaimed, getting up with surprising alacrity and knocking over most of the inks and papers on the desk in his haste. “My lord. My– Tor,” he said in a low voice, and then, tentatively, “Fitzroy Angursell.”
“In the flesh,” I answered, grinning as I bowed to him with a flourish, the sort of bow I saved for when I met a stranger that I really wanted to impress.
This man wasn't a stranger, not really. At least intellectually, I was aware that we knew each other. Most of my memories of my time as the Emperor of Astandalas and Lord of Zunidh were that: faint echoes, snatches of events that fled as soon as my mind tried to focus on them. But I had read up and asked enough questions about my other life to at least know who I was talking to.
“And you are Cliopher sayo Mdang, whom Artorin Damara made his Viceroy?”
The man frowned.
“I… My lord?”
“Kip,” Sayo White beside me started, with a tone of such concern and pity that I turned to stare at him. “We should talk.”
“Basil? Is something wrong?”
“Kip. Kip, I'm sorry,” the innkeeper continued, drawing closer to Lord Mdang so he could pull him into a tight embrace. His words were faint, but still audible. “I talked to Jullanar and… oh gods, Kip, I'm so sorry but your lord–”
Lord Mdang looked up at me with alarm.
“I don’t remember you,” I said simply.
A resounding silence followed my words.
“What do you mean?” Lord Mdang finally asked. His tone was guarded.
I sighed, trying to rearrange my thoughts.
“When Artorin Damara left on his quest to find an heir, he came upon a creature that offered him a wish. I’m not quite sure what happened, but the creature took his memories and the pain that came with them, so I could be myself again.”
“Yourself,” Lord Mdang repeated.
Something very strange happened to his face. An invisible veil – no, not a veil, it was more like a– a mask – seemed to fall over it, replacing all traces of emotion with a blank, polite look.
“Kip,” the innkeeper started, but Lord Mdang interrupted him.
“Could you leave us alone for a moment, Basil?”
“Kip, are you sure? You look–” Lord Mdang nodded brisky, not taking his eyes off me. Sayo White seemed to hesitate, but relented after a moment. “I’m right next door if you need me.”
“Thank you,” Lord Mdang said.
He waited till the innkeeper – his cousin, Jullanar had told me – had left the room and closed the door behind him before speaking again.
“You don’t remember anything from your time as Emperor?”
“Not quite,” I said. “I can remember… the broad sequence of events, but it feels like a story that happened to someone else. It’s hard to explain,” I trailed off. “I– We worked together for a long time, didn’t we?”
He was standing still as a statue, staring at me with his perfectly, terrifyingly distant look.
“I read up about all the wonderful reforms you championed. I am sure that Artorin had complete trust in you, since he named you his Viceroy.” I forced a smile and tried not to let his strange demeanour rattle me. “Lord Mdang?”
“You can’t even pronounce my name properly anymore.”
The mask cracked and shattered.
My next breath stuttered in my chest as I took in the face that had been hiding underneath. He looked– tired and strained, yes, but his expression was now consumed by grief, and a weariness that seemed to weigh down on his very soul. Tears started to well up in his eyes and he turned away from me, but too late to prevent me from noticing that they had started to spill down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I eventually said, hating how empty the phrase sounded. I did not even know what I was apologising for, and he probably knew it as well as I did.
Lord Mdang had his back to me and was hunched over himself, his shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. I took a tentative step forward towards him.
“What were we?” I managed to ask, because this was not the kind of reaction I would have expected from an acquaintance or a work partner. This was… this was a depth of sorrow I would expect from someone who had just lost something – no, not something, someone – very precious to him. A dear friend or, or–
I paused to contemplate what I knew about him. Cliopher Mdang had worked closely with Artorin Damara for decades and had taken a very active role in the rebuilding (the improvement even) of the world after the Fall. He’d been the most important man in the Emperor’s government, first as his secretary, then as his Lord Chancellor before being made Viceroy of Zunidh when Artorin Damara left for his quest. How close would you have to be to someone to entrust a whole world in his care? Cliopher Mdang obviously had a brilliant mind and – judging by the reforms I had heard about – was driven by a strong sense of justice. These were all traits that I would have admired and treasured, if my other self and I were in any way similar.
Cliopher Mdang, I had been noticing despite myself, was also very attractive.
“Were we lovers?”
The words were out before I could stop to consider them, and he rounded on me abruptly, his face flushed with emotion.
“No,” he hissed, and I physically recoiled from the hard edge that had crept into his voice.
He looked, I thought, like a man beaten to the ground who was bracing himself for the next kick.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” He said nothing, and so I continued, hesitantly. “We were friends, then. Close friends.”
Lord Mdang shook his head, tears still running down his cheeks.
“I–” he started, and paused for a few seconds. “I don’t know.”
I frowned. “How can you not know?”
“You never told me your name.” There was anguish and shame in his voice. “I’ve only ever known you as Artorin Damara, the Last Emperor of Astandalas, even though you were–” His voice broke and his next words came out in hushed tones. “You were always more than that.”
I did not let the sudden spark of excitement I felt transform into a smile, but oh, I desperately wanted to know more about this man, who thought there could be more to the Lord of Five Thousand Lands and Ten Thousand Titles.
“But you– my lord, I mean, had always been miserable in his position, and it made even more sense to me when I found out that you were also Fitzroy Angursell.” His lips twisted and he lowered his eyes, his voice becoming distant once more. “And so I am shaken but not surprised that you chose to forget about this life, and everyone in it.”
There was a long silence as my mind scrambled to find some way to salvage the situation. After a short while, Lord Mdang looked at me again, poorly-concealed hurt swirling in his gaze.
“Are you happy?”
“Yes,” I said automatically, and wondered why the answer stirred such an uneasy feeling inside my chest.
“I am… glad,” he replied, looking anything but. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his tunic and wiped the tears from his face. “Now if you'll excuse me,” he added, before turning on his heels and stalking out of the room.
I kept standing where I was, shaking and rubbing at my chest, for the uncomfortable sensation had intensified after he left. I wanted to go after him but realised that I would still not know what to say. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, if I'd found my friends again and discovered that one of them had forgotten about me entirely. Had chosen to forget.
I shuddered and left the room, shutting the door behind me and shutting the thought firmly out of my mind.
~
The village musicians would be performing at the inn in the early evening. I was eager to join them but I was still wearing my travelling clothes, which would definitely not do for Fitzroy Angursell's first performance after his mysterious and prolonged disappearance.
The room I had been shown to was well furnished and had a large bed, certainly large enough to allow me to lay out clothes on it and consider my options for a more appropriate outfit. The garments I pulled out of my new bag (a tamer version of my Bag of Unusual Capacity, and one created by my other self) were of such exquisite quality that I spent an embarrassingly long time running my fingers over the fabric, following patterns of intricate beading and embroidery. A lot of them were in Imperial yellow, a colour that I could not remember ever having worn, and so I amused myself by draping the garments around my body and admiring the effect in the full-length mirror that stood in a corner of the room. I briefly considered having Fitzroy Angursell make his comeback wearing clothes fit for, well, an Emperor, but soon decided against it, since it would raise too many questions that I was not quite sure how I intended to answer.
I was brought out of my musings by the sound of my friend Sardeet's boisterous laughter coming from the room below. I quickly pulled more garments out of the bag until I found something in my usual colours that could pass for a simpler outfit, if one of exquisite craftsmanship.
I had performed at The Bee at the Border in the past, though it was hard to tell how long ago that had been. For all that I couldn't remember the last decades of my life (I didn't know exactly how long I had spent as a prisoner of the Empire, I certainly looked older than my friends but I was not yet decrepit), my latest adventures with the Red Company were not fresh in my mind. My last memories as a young man stopped abruptly at the moment when I had reached my old tower at the Long Edge of Colhélhé, at the end of my mad run from the enchantments of Astandalas. All that had happened between then and now had vanished, but this part of my life still had weight in my mind. The inn was thus familiar, in a way that a place from a fond and distant memory usually is.
The noise amplified as I went down the stairs and made for the parlour, where my friends were already gathered around the large rectangular table.
Jullanar saw me approach and cast me a worried look but I shook my head and forced a smile, taking the seat that had been ostensibly saved for me, between her and Pali.
We spent the late afternoon drinking and eating as we told each other stories. I met another member of Artorin Damara's household, a guard (and a spy? and Sardeet's correspondent?) named Ser Rhodin an Gaiange who seemed to have been warned about my condition beforehand and immediately struck me as a deeply entertaining man. I was, again, satisfied to see that my Imperial self seemed to have attracted such an interesting array of people around him.
Later, after the table was cleared, we moved to the taproom. I went to sit with the musicians and we launched into a merry rendition of the most popular songs from my musical repertoire.The softness at the tips of my fingers as they danced over the strings of my harp was unfamiliar, as were the higher pitch and tremors my voice had acquired. We started with Aurora, of course, followed by In the Company of Armed Gentlemen and Kissing the Moon until we had exhausted all the poems that my fellow musicians and indeed, our entire audience, knew by heart. I fully intended to keep playing but was soon frustrated to find that some of the lyrics of my most seditious songs had fled from my mind, probably due to the natural limitations of the human brain after so long rather than a consequence of the amnesia spell I was under. I could also not ignore that I did not have the stamina of my youth, so I gracefully bowed out after concluding the standard version of Donkey Ears.
The night had been a success, I decided as I went down the stairs that led to the cellar, hoping to find some more ginger wine to soothe my parched throat. It seemed I had not lost too much of my skill, and with half of the Red Company reunited, there had been moments when it had even felt like the old times again.
It should not bother me so much, I told myself firmly, that I hadn't seen Cliopher Mdang since our disastrous exchange earlier.
As I had been doing all evening, I chased the image of his forlorn expression from my mind. There wasn't anything I could think to do to help him, and if the knot in my chest had continued to constrict for the last few hours, it was unlikely that it would improve by continuing to worry about it, or him.
“Oh, you're here.”
Concealing my startlement, I turned towards Basil White. I had not seen him much during the evening, though I had caught glimpses of him in the back room, conversing quietly with his wife, Ser Rhodin or even Jullanar.
“How is he?” I blinked at the question I had not realised I was about to ask.
“Coping,” he said quietly, not asking who I was talking about. “Trying to come to terms with what happened.” He walked over to the sink to put down the empty mugs he was carrying. “We could hear the music from his room,” he went on, looking back at me from where he stood with an inscrutable expression. “Tonight was the return of Fitzroy Angursell, and I think… I think that this evening could have turned out very differently, if it wasn't for your–” He made a vague gesture in my direction.
“Amnesia?” I provided, and added after his nod, “How so?”
He smiled sourly. “Kip adores your songs, he always has. He taught me how to speak Shaian using Aurora, and you would be hard pressed to find someone who knows your poems as well as he does.”
And yet my other self had never disclosed his identity to him? How strange.
“I think,” Sayo White continued, his tone wistful, “that had he been in a state to do so, he would have come down, so you and him could have played together.”
“What instrument does he play?” I suddenly wanted to know.
“The oboe. And he sings,” a sad smile played at the edge of his lips and he seemed to be recalling a distant memory. “When one can get him to sing.”
“I wish I could have heard him,” I replied for lack of anything better to say, thinking about the way Lord Mdang had spoken earlier, his finely honed court accent not quite able to hide the way his pronunciation curled around some vowels.
Sayo White sighed. “Me too. But, well. Not tonight.” Sadness creased his features. “I have to go check on him, have you found everything you needed here?”
It took me a few seconds to understand that he meant the cellar.
“I have, thank you,” I said.
He nodded and started up the stairs again, but stopped halfway through, wheeling around in a way that reminded me of how his cousin had also done so earlier.
“I just–” he interrupted himself to take a slow breath. “I don't understand why you did it.”
He did not sound exactly angry, but I could not help but hear his words as an accusation.
“I believe that one does not decide to get rid of half his life without good reason,” I said, the iciness in my voice as foreign to me as the clothes I had taken out of the bag earlier. “I can only guess why I did what I did, but I have read up on Artorin Damara.” That had been a deeply bizarre experience, to learn about this public figure, knowing that he had inhabited my body. “I read about the taboos surrounding the Imperial person, and my friends confirmed to me that they had not been mere fiction.” I shuddered. “Do you know, Sayo White, that the Emperor’s gaze blinded, that his touch burned?” My voice had risen, and I forced more softness into it. “For decades, some say centuries, I was held hostage by the very Empire that I had fought against and crossed worlds to try and escape. From what I’ve gathered, Artorin Damara had no freedom, no hobbies, no friends–”
“No friends?”
The consternation in Sayo White’s voice was impossible to ignore. He stared at me with wide eyes for a moment, shock written plainly on his face.
And then he said, “Come with me.”
I did not want to. The musicians had started to play again, the door to the cellar was open and I could hear the familiar notes of a traditional Alinorel ballad. I wanted to go back to the taproom, sit with my friends and not think about the pain that my other life had brought, and was still bringing.
But I was Fitzroy Angursell, and curiosity had always been a weakness of mine.
I followed the innkeeper out of the cellar and down the hall towards what seemed to serve as an office. The room was cluttered and most of the space was taken by a large wooden crate filled with papers wrapped in oilskin packets. Letters, I could tell.
Basil White was staring at me expectantly, and I looked around in confusion.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” I asked.
He pointed at the crate of letters.
“These are some of the letters that my cousin wrote to me after the Fall. He didn’t know whether I was alive or not, but he never stopped writing to me.”
I gaped at the sheer quantity of packets I could see. There must have been hundreds of them.
“The Alinorel postal system had collapsed,” Sayo White explained, “so I only received them a couple of months ago. I haven't been able to go through them all yet.”
“I… can see why you wouldn't have,” I said, dumbfounded.
“But I have read enough,” Sayo White continued, “to say with certainty that Kip was– no. He is your friend.”
I frowned. “He told me he wasn't.”
Sayo White snorted and waved a hand derisively, the gesture sparking recognition within me, though I could not tell who it reminded me of.
“Sayo Angursell, my cousin buries his head in the sand about these things so often that I am surprised he hasn't turned into a crab yet.”
I opened my mouth, but could not find the witty response I certainly would have made when I was younger, so instead I asked, “Why have you brought me here?”
He seemed to think about his answer for a few seconds.
“I wouldn’t normally be so flippant about allowing someone to read the letters Kip wrote to me without asking him first. But I can't bear to see him like–” His expression turned sombre. “This is too important.”
He nodded to himself and picked up a letter, opening it and reviewing its content before placing it on the desk behind him. He did the same with the next one, and placed the third one back in its place inside the crate.
I waited, shifting uncomfortably, until Sayo White seemed to remember my presence. He picked up a parcel from the pile he was setting aside and handed it to me.
“There,” he said. “You might as well start while I keep looking for good ones.”
I took it, but was suddenly seized with uncertainty. These were private words, written by a man who had not intended to share them with me. A man, I thought, who probably despised me and would not–
Curiosity had always been a weakness of mine.
Cliopher Mdang’s handwriting was so neat and tidy that his letters could have been printed. The one I was holding had been written a couple of years after what people referred to as The Fall. I read it avidly and grabbed another from the pile as soon as I had finished the first one. I have always been a swift reader, but his letters weren't short and I was no longer young, so I lifted a handful of them from the pile and sat down on a stool to continue reading them.
I was distantly aware of the sound of voices and music coming from the taproom, but I could not focus on anything other than the words I was reading. I could see from the corner of my eyes that Basil White was still sorting letters. Very few seemed to be going back into the crate, so the pile on the desk was growing rapidly
“They’re all out of order,” he suddenly remarked. “They were all mixed up when I received them, so the timeline was just as confusing for me as it probably is for you.”
I nodded distractedly and carefully folded the letter I was holding to place it on the floor next to the ones I had already read.
Chest heaving, I read over letter after letter, diving into the depths of another man’s heart. The common thread was impossible to ignore.
Cliopher Mdang – or rather Kip, as his cousin named him and as he named himself when he signed his letters – wrote about his lord. He never named Artorin Damara, and so for someone who did not know who was writing, there would have been no way to know who exactly his lord was.
But Kip wrote about him, and through his words, I was able to better understand what my other life had been like. Kip’s lord was lonely. Kip’s lord was sad and melancholy, bound by unimaginable constraints and crushed under the tremendous weight of his responsibilities.
All of this, Kip saw, and wrote about, and yet this was not what explained why my heart ached so painfully in my chest.
Kip wrote about the chess games, the late dinners and the operas they went to see together. One letter was almost entirely dedicated to one play in particular, that seemed to have struck a chord with them both.
He wrote, also, about the work they did together, the morning sessions where Kip took dictation and the endless councils where only his lord's steadfast support had allowed him to stay upright. He wrote, in vague terms, about some terrible decision his lord had had to make, and about his paralysing fear that the light had been stolen from his lord’s eyes for good.
He wrote about bringing his lord to his homeland, and opening his heart to him. Several letters mentioned this obviously momentous vacation, at the end of which Artorin Damara had named Cliopher Mdang his Lord Chancellor. Kip missed his home, a fact that was glaringly obvious with how often and how lovingly he wrote about it, and yet he had stayed. For his work, for his goal, but also, it was clear, for his lord.
In a much older letter, Kip wrote about his first day as secretary-candidate, about his delight at meeting his lord and how much he regretted that he would not be back the next day, because of a mistake he had made. I shuddered, for his words sounded a lot like he was saying farewell.
He wrote about the time when an old friend of his lord's had come to the Palace, how helpless he had felt at the sight of the terrible hurt she had wrought, and how Kip's own heart had broken when he had thrown a blanket around his lord to hold him through his sorrow. I paused to regain my composure, and then read the letter again, remembering some of the things Pali had told me about the time when she had gone to meet my other self in the Palace, unaware of Artorin Damara’s true identity.
He wrote about his joy at knowing that his lord was leaving for his quest, and my throat closed when he confessed that he could not help but fear that his lord would soon forget about him, when faced with all the wonders a free life had to offer.
I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Curled up on myself, over my hands, the sound of my pounding heart was almost deafening. My laboured breathing settled at length, and I noticed that Sayo White was looking intently at me, with what I could only describe as a challenge in his expression.
“Well?” he said.
I looked down at my numb hands that were still holding the last letter, and at the trail of open parcels all around me, before I met his eyes again.
“Basil,” I choked. “What have I done?”