Chapter Text
The sun is an unreasonable sort, in the sense that one cannot reason with it for anything.
The unit of squire model ersatz trains in the use of weaponry; spears, halberds, mauls, spell-arms, and occasionally swords. It is a difficult, awkward training, drilled in manners to wield weapons not against an opponent of equal size or strength, but of those bearing a greater capacity of both. The motions are derived from tales of those who’ve fought such foes, and theory. It’s grueling unpleasantness increased several fold by the insistence that they practice such untested forms anyhow, and, of course, by the blaring heat of the unreasonable sun.
The ersatz is left pondering if the knights and noble overseeing the practice feel heat in the same way, with their bodies of meat and sweat. Metal retains heat in a way most unpleasant against the enchanted wood—cut still living and maintained as such by the essence ritualed into it to replace that it rapidly lost from its mother tree—that makes up the core and life of the individuals of the units being drilled in such hopeful, frivolous forms. Unlike those borne of flesh, bone and feather—burst forth from some egg, fussed over and maintained in exact temperatures, pampered from before birth—who may seek relief from the unreasonable by means of consumption of cooled liquids and—in this particular case, and in no small part due to the pampering that continues from those earlier mentioned moments of pre-life—shade.
It is upset, is what it is trying to convey. The motions have been practiced at such length, and such repetition, with no dynamic shift to their execution, that it takes no thought for it to perform them. This leaves it plenty of time to, unfortunately, think, and have no niceties left to consider of those who request it continue in the manner it has since divination magic flickered into being, informing it of the things it would see and hear and smell, if it had all those parts what make it so one could see and hear and smell and unfortunately, in this particular instance, to feel, as well, the heat of that honorless, unreasonable sun.
Much to the chagrin of those pampered knights and their more pampered and more chagrined nobleman, each of these identically crafted, identically forged, identically ritualed units still had the audacity to be not as identical as each step of their creation. These drills, of course, are meant to not only try and make that gap of undesired individuality one much more acceptably smaller, but also to find which of these myriad means of scale piercing, draconic life ending violence each is best at. The goal, it has been told, each day for the past several pentad, is to sort these identical individuals into units of specialization—so they may diversify squads to have those best trained for each weapon available at hand—but also, still train in the others, so as to be capable of using each, so that in the inevitable case that its specialist be disentangled from the body that maintains them—usually by its gruesome destruction—someone can still wield it, if it is deemed to be the thing needed to strike out in hopes of weakening the foe they’ve been specifically crafted to harm and bring low, so a pampered knight or nobleman may strike it dead and gain accolades and titles.
It is, by unfortunate circumstance of chance and happenstance, that its comfort and seeming inherent familiarity is of course with the weapon deemed least useful for the task they have been given. The sword, it has be determined, at length, to have an issue of length and a lack thereof. However, on a lark, as a game, on a day of supposed downtime from the constant unending preparations, its unit’s knight decided it would be amusing to see, to test—for fun—the skill of each individual with a dagger, a weapon much smaller, much shorter, than that of even the maybe sometimes useful—but barely worth considering—sword. It is then that it found what it is best at, and with much frowning and disgruntlement of the knight, who’s fun had been thoroughly dampened, it had found where it was to be sorted. Generalist.
The training days, starting tomorrow—or the day after if they all do well enough to gain the nobleman’s grace for a day of rest—are to be split into regimen, determined by the old calender—of a time when all that mattered was the avian empire, and all else was crushed beneath talon and wing, and eventually pen and law—the year carved into five seasons, carved into fifteen months, carved into seventy-five pentads. Each day a different weapon to drill in, those with the knack for a weapon get their day of rest every other pentad on the day of the weapon for which they are best suited. Generalists do not have such a treat. It finds itself hoping that Karagaoni hears of the schemes on her life sooner than it takes for Varden Drena to decide he is ready to make an attempt at that life, if only to shorten the time spent in such monotony.
It strikes up with the spear in hand, into the imagined space in which the body of Karagaoni—or a similarly troublesome lizard of equal size and loathing—occupies, for about the hundredth time or so, when the oh so honorable Varden Drena decides he’s seen enough, and each of the frustratingly individual identical units is called to stand at attention as he converses with knights and comes to some decision. A decision he feels no strong need to share with those whose very stance is said to be one for listening, as he turns and walks off.
The ersatz and its kin are sent off, without clarification, to take up rest and residence in abandoned buildings of what was once the city of Eastmont, so creatively named for being east of the mountain that pierces the otherwise flat expanse of the prairie of the land of Drena. The farmers of Eastmont packed up and wandered elsewhere in hopes of finding a fiefdom—under watch of some other noble willing and able to profit off their labor—that does know what rain is, leaving their drought murdered farmland to bake in the unjust, unreasonable sun. The other residents—those not making a living off the land itself—found the city crumpled down to merely town by definition of population, with only the most unerringly stubborn, location-ally loyal, or desperately poor among them to stay and keep the sprawling of buildings from becoming a forgotten splotch on a map.
The myriad houses and businesses that stood empty for nearly a decade found themselves filled once more with life, albeit ones rarely home, so as to dance in flights of fancy of a deranged hopeful-would-be Kinsgaurd. The lingering residents seem to carry an amusement of the thousand or so new residents that look all the same, save for a small code etched into each chest—above where one would find a heart, if they had them—some of which take some time from their rest, to play at normality by visiting the third places of that audience. This is how it came to settle into the loose approximation of a, heavy and uncommitted, companionship with an avian individual of black plumage and short moniker.
Kes, if she is to be believed—which it would be safer to bet she is not—is not from Eastmont, and merely came to settle here as a location not often assumed to be a destination. Obscured from pursuit by discarding surname, trading forename, replacing gender, and—if she is to be believed—changing taxonomy. Luckily for her, it does not seek her comfortable companionship because of her rich and surely accurate history, but because of her humor, quick wit and warm caresses.
A seedy bar’s back room, reserved only for those who can tolerate the near arctic chill caused by a malfunctioning matrix, has been host to their nightly meetings of conversation and oft spoken mutual lust. As it enters, feeling the heat tortured metal groan slightly at the sudden snap of cold, she lights up, just a bit, “Stoat! Early day for the nobleman?”
“Yes.” It intones in its artificial, androgynous imitation of speech.
“Glad to ‘ear it! ‘Ave you ‘eard if ya got the morrow for yourself yet?” She leans forward, testing the limits of the stool’s balance, and of the floor’s grip.
“No.”
“Worry no mind of it then, love.” She swings a foot down, leveraging herself up and letting the stool clatter noisily to the frosted ground, to wrap it in arm and wing, “Come waste your precious free time with a precious freeloader, aye?”
“As planned.” Its face does not have a moving part, static pieces of rounded glass set above a curve of wood coaxed to the shape of a beak in its forming, just enough to give the idea of being a person, so as not to unnerve those who must deal with it. Despite this there is a semblance of warmth in its gaze, as it tilts its head in a manner that says, happy.
“There’s the sweet little thin’ then,” Kes coos, sweeping her way to the stiff sofa, which crunches slightly with the sound of breaking frost under her weight, three talons of her distantly injured hand curled in the dulled soft wood of its four digits, to guide it to sit with her.
Among her—true by faith only—history, Kes remarks that she comes from far south of Drena’s fiefdom, a shore-bound fisherman who made some foul discovery of the machinations of a syndicate of net-tounged miscreants and toughs. It does not take much to see her sleek black beak, feathers of nightly dark, eyes of deep endless abyss, traits of those kin to the deep woods of the far north, where heat is a suggestion in two of the seasons, and fleeting memory in the rest. By her claim, it was those foul criminals who met her left wing with cruel attentions of keen blade, though the scarring suggests a bite of some harsher instrument, and less deliberate malice.
She leans in, pressing face affectionately to wooden pretending of the same, hissing slightly at residual heat of hard and solidly affixed metal. “What did they ‘ave you demonstrate with today, love?”
“Spear.” It runs fingers under cloth, along feathers, feeling the long segmented bone of her spine through flesh, coaxing a sound of eager yearning from the collection of lies and half-truths that calls it hers, if only for the fleeting moments that it is not his.
“Oh, aye? Pray tell it did not tire you to the concept of thrustin’. Elsewise I may need words with this Varden fop for sourin’ my evenin’.”
“Hardly.” Its head tilts forward, and slightly to the side, mischievous, as hands explore and tease expertly with knowledge gained of many nights of diligent practice, and eager excitement.
The morning comes and goes, the great bell hanging silent in the tower by irrigation channels of dust. The day of rest granted, a mercy to the knights that happens to bring a mercy to the squires. It awakens—in the dusty stone basement of a once deserted house, on a mattress made of dried straw, patched cloth, and hopes of comfort—to the idle tracings of Kes’s knuckle against the engraved S-seven-zero-four-seven that ensures that the knights and noble can tell them apart in some small way. The sensation echos faintly through the matrix that props up its consciousness, sending tingling pleasure through its concept of chest. “Morning.”
“Aye, and no summons. I made sure to speak with ‘im. I said, Kes needs ‘er Stoat for another day, and if she doesn’t get it, then you’ll wish you found debts with someone less persistent, less powerful. Someone like a Galious or a Silveredge.”
“Funny.” Then, with a curious tilt to its head, “Breakfast?”
“You think a girl with such a comfortable bedmate could trouble ‘erself leave it? For what? Some nosh and slop?” She pantomimes offense, leaning back slightly, bringing winged arm to her chest with a soft gasp.
It shakes its head, sliding arms beneath knees and shoulders, lifting and standing in one effortless motion as she squeals and clings talons to metal and wood. “Eat.”
“You brute! I don’t wish for this carin’ and dotin’ nature! I yearn of you to avail yourself of me until neither can walk.”
It deposits her in a chair by a table, and turns to stolen foodstuffs stored in an icebox of similar origin. “Hunger would make that quick.”
“Then let me die of starvation while enthralled in your attentions.” She whines, but nonetheless eats the offered granola and berries.
“Dramatic.” It leans against the wall, in her line of sight.
“A girl can be dramatic when she’s being denied thin’s by the cruelty of ‘er weak flesh and ‘er obstinate lover.”
“Don’t get too attached.” It warns, staring off out the window toward the bell tower. Kes doesn’t respond to that, falling into a discomforted silence as her eating slows.
When it looks back at her, she shakes herself slightly, “As if I could get attached to one so distant and cruel. Found the furthest wall, kilometers away, on which to lean and judge me.”
“Two meters.” It eyes the distance between them, “Less.”
“Aye, kilometers by the metric of desire.” She laments, licking at sweetened crumbs and sticky seeds.
“Excessive today.” It eyes her, a book of many words and few truths, layered under a near endless cascade of subterfuge and noise. “Why?”
“Must be a time in my cycle,” she shrugs, rising to her feet. “There, I ate, you content I’ve enough in me to persist?”
“Yes.” It closes the distance, pressing the side of its head to hers, savoring the feel of her feathers as they dust over burnished steel and stained wood. “Worried.”
“Oh stop. You got a thought in that empty ‘ead o’ yours and it’s echoin’ around in there. My luck you’ll be worryin’ at me about it for weeks. Oh, that’s right, pentads they got you on.” Her giggle is a soft chime of her self inflicted amusement, intoxicating, yet hiding behind its dulcet tones is a quiver of something else. Hidden behind the reeds of distraction, cascades of lies, a deliberate misunderstanding of its monosyllabic vocalizations—as it is her concerns that it spoke of and not its—and that briefly glimpsed wavering confirms what she never will.
It tries to heed its own advice. Varden Drena is known for being patient only to a point, long plans with years of careful consideration, sharing attentions with other long schemed and deftly orchestrated back ups, until the moment it seems plausible the wait has borne fruit, then he’s grabbing with greedy, hungry hands to scrabble and grasp at the power stripped from him by the fickle weather of a thirty year drought, the last rain falling on the eve of his birth. It is not without reason that one could conclude, this day of rest is less a sign of his mercy, and more of his meetings with loyal knight’s commanders, one last prod at the hand-chosen flock for potential usurpers to his efforts. For it is only those who fell the scourge who become of the house of Kinsgaurd, and a stray blade or bolt may yet wrest that title from those reaching talons.
It is dragged, shivering and faux gasping, from its thoughts by teasing talons along gaps in armored joints. Areas made sensitive by their vulnerability, and known through long study and eager exploration in equal amounts to its own intimate knowledge of its dalliance. Worries of early deployment—to a far off coast, to drag draconic ire from its lair—squelched by deft hands, and ceaseless, crass desire.
It is late in the evening, after being coaxed into a nap by well worn exhaustion, that it awakes again, but this time only to the rough caress of an equally well worn, and hardly comfortable mattress. It sits up to find the room devoid of a lying, swooning, one winged menace. Normally it would assume its companion had slipped out to filch and procure more for her own sustenance, if not for the length of paper stabbed into the door by a dagger, whose home hangs from its hilt.
The missive, in a text near unreadable, tells it she won’t be coming back in about thrice as many words, and with no such direct clarity. It also instructs it to keep the blade with it at all times, in the manner it found it on her that first night. Strapped in some hidden spot that only the most intimate caresses might find it. Finally it is signed, with a mess of doodles of hearts and romantics, and a few sketches of crass lewdness. It does not give a reason, a destination, any such way to find its author again, which crumbles it hollow and forlorn.
It wedges the knife, and the paper, into a hollow behind its designation—a defect in the wood of its body, unshared and unnoticed by those who don’t feel every inch of its being through arcane means—where its weight pretends at filling a bit of the void left within its foolish self, lamenting loss and its own inability to heed its own oft spoken advice.
It leaves the room, for one last time, floor covered in shattered splinters of chair and table, victims of the deep depression wedged between it and reason.