Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1 - ME
I remember everything now. My name is Mohei, and I am old. Older than anyone you’ve ever met. The rest of the folks who were older than me are gone and Freg and I probably had a hand in that. I remember my childhood life growing up in opulence in the desert. I remember being raided by bandits and joining them, only to be forced to leave years later. I remember wasting centuries of my life on a murderous rampage. I remember how I met Freg and how I lost my memory.
You’re looking at me in rapt attention. My mentioning Freg has sparked your interest – we’ve both met him now, but you don’t even know the half of what he’s capable of. I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to tell you what I remember more or less from the beginning so you understand what we have to do next.
You know that I’ve not really been the best person since you’ve known me. But I used to be much, much worse. I’m going to tell you what I was like, what I did, what motivated me, and why I’m here like this now, and it’s not going to be anything that’ll make you like me, that’s for sure. I don’t like me. By the time this fire dies down and I’m done telling my story, I think you’ll agree with me that losing my memory was probably for the best. But let’s go through it from as far back as when I was a kid…
I lived in a big house in a town made of sand in the desert. It sounds like it wasn’t anything much, but it was basically a palace with soft sandstone walls and archways, cool hallways painted blue, and ponds of water to show off the wealth and reflect the beauty of the oversized flowers and deep blue sky in the courtyards. The rooms were cushioned with silky pillows of a rich blue color, and every tool down to our tableware was metal instead of rock or wood.
I would have been kind of a prince, or whatever the equivalent of the son of a mayor was, if I was actually my dad’s kid. But I wasn’t. I have no idea whose kid I was, except for my mom’s. Somehow I understood that from a young age. I think it was because I got beat up a lot about it by my older siblings. I had about 5 brothers and sisters who would, depending on the day, gang up on me and punch-on-sight, or pointedly ignore me. I got pretty good at hiding from them, but I also really wanted to please my mom by attending functions that I needed to be at, come when I was called, and generally obey the instructions of my elders, which included my siblings. So the beatings happened at a steady rhythm. Not that it was understood to be okay with everyone – my tutor stood up for me half the time, and a few other servants showed me some concern when it looked like the other siblings were being favored. But apathy generally won out, and no one really got anything out of sticking their neck out for me, so it happened less and less. And the older kids were smart and learned to leave wounds where they were not visible.
But I worshipped my mom, and so I was okay with it. She was beautiful to me: tall and dark-haired, dressed fantastically well to my eyes: all bangles and baubles. She surrounded herself with people, and kept up all appearances of a queen of the court. She had a long neck and a well-humored sneer, and she could keep up with all manner of wit from any of the smartest people she talked to. Her love was for courtly appearances and so I tried my best to appear in-line with whatever an openly-secret bastard of the court was supposed to be. This put me into a tricky position at official social events, of which there were many. As my mom flirted with out-of-town business people, watched parades of dancers and merchants go by, and delighted herself with entertainers of all persuations, I held my head high and wore the right clothes, stood in the right place. My mom said that she loved me and that I was important to her, despite that the world would never think so. So I loved her, too.
My love fell apart pretty quickly one day.
A caravan of travelling merchants had come directly to our house to sell their wares. This happened semi-frequently – the merchants would come to the foyer, someone in the household would organize a whole set of times when it would be okay for members of the household and their friends or agents would come to buy things. We were so rich that even the servants would come out and trade with the merchants. That was where a lot of household gossip was traded as well. I had been lurking around, wondering when I could make my opportunity to casually glance over the items. I was nursing a pretty bad burn on my stomach from when an older brother had cornered me a week ago, so I had purposefully stayed back until my family had finished picking through things. I was just eyeing some glass necklace when I noticed that one of the merchants, an older lady, pointed at me. A servant, who had been talking to the woman, noticed me stop, and immediately walked away. I stared. This happened sometimes because I was a bastard son, but it was usually not this blatant.
Before I could turn fully away, the merchant woman beckoned me over to her temporary stall. I looked over my shoulder before coming closer. Her stall smelled like sawdust. The woman’s face looked like an unpeeled potato, and when it split into a grin as I walked over, it smelled like soil.
“You, boy.”
“What?”
“Your mother. She’s the queen around here. You the one everybody talks about, who’s her bastard son?”
I stared at her blankly. Not very many people openly acklowledged that to my face. I looked around the crowded stalls, and could tell some people were straining to listen. The old lady cackled through her potato face and someone coughed. Conversations started up again as people realised they were being rude by listening to this particular juicy conversation.
“What do you care?” I think she already knew I was the one she was talking about.
“It’s a kindness to let you know that your mother tells them to do it.”
“What?”
“Your mother told them. She’s the one getting your siblings to beat you up. You should know that.”
“Huh?”
“No one else here would ever tell you, but it’s pretty much obvious that she does that. You’re an embarrassment to her, but she can’t get her own hands dirty, so she uses her children to make it clear to you what you’re worth. Understand? That’s what’s going on.”
My sense that I shouldn’t be seen talking to this woman about this topic was suddenly overwhelming. I knew that what we had been talking about would embarrass my mom, so I had to be out of there as soon as I could and my body started moving faster to put more distance between me and the people who were obviously listening intently. I was in such a daze that I didn’t even hear the woman calling out to me inviting me to come with the caravan, with her.
But as I ran out of the foyer, past the conversation and laughter, through the hallways and out to the wing where my room was, my mind started to work some things out. I started putting together timelines in my head. There were the times when my mom’s husband was out traveling and she would hold court with her young, handsome courtesans. That was when she was nicest to me. Then when her husband would return and yell at her behind closed doors, she would start with the heavier drinking, and when a sibling or two would show up to beat me. I couldn’t believe how obvious the pattern was. I started to understand that pretty much everyone in the court knew what game my mom was playing, and that it was a dull, sad one, earning me pity but no help whatsoever. The fragile pride I felt at being held in some esteem at social events fully melted away into a deep self-hatred at my own naivete.
That was when I was 15, and I started drinking, too.
The raiders came when I was 17.
By that time, I had stopped pretending to be worth something to my family and took to a kind of restless laziness: one moment my legs wanting to move my body at frantic pace, the next sleeping all day.
My mom and her husband were still the wealthiest in town, and the most powerful. They did a really good job of making our house the biggest target. It was a daytime raid, which sounds kinda crazy but people really slow down in the daytime when you live in the desert. It happened at about midday, which is when folks are just about to take in a nice long meal and have a big fat nap. I was skulking around in the shady, cooler hallways of my palatial home as usual that day. I had a lot of energy and was restless with it. I think that I was frustrated with myself and the world. I probably had some sort of bottle near me.
The first hint that something was wrong was the screaming. I walked cautiously towards the sound, across the garden (which had the large reflection pool in it – talk about wealth) and down towards the entrance of the house. Two servants who had most likely been chatting with the guards ran past me, and one of them dropped to the ground instantly with a dagger in his back. The other was able to reach cover and kept running, but I could see the assailant reach for another knife. The assailant was a small, wiry fellow, wearing a scarf that hid his face, and a ragged cloak that dragged on the ground a little behind him as he calmly approached me.
I had frozen in place, body not really reacting to the situation but instead shutting down to assess what was happening. The assailant’s blade whizzed past my face and I was able to turn my head and follow it after it landed in someone with a soft “thock” noise. The person it had “thocked” into happened to be my mother, who was now lying down bleeding.
I remember clear as anything that I just shrugged and thought, “oh.”
You probably think I’m a monster. I can’t disagree with you. She was my own mother, and had taught me everything I knew. Now, she also taught me that I was worthless as a person, and that I was just a pawn in her courtly game. But all the same I think it is a little crazy that I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything at her death. Not even to ache for a time where I used to love her.
The guy who killed my mother bent over her to take her beautiful turqoise necklace, and started patting her down, looking for any other valuables. Since her long hair had covered her ear lobes, I spoke before really thinking:
“Don’t forget her earrings, too.”
…Yes I really said that. You really must think I’m a monster now.
Well, the guy didn’t seem surprised.
“Yeah?” He said, nonchalantly. He was extremely cool and looked back at me from where he was kneeling next to my deceased mother in her nice airy blue dress, all splayed out from falling on her back after he threw a knife at her.
“Yeah, they’re turqoise, too.”
“Hmm.” He looked at me a little harder and then decided to leave her and face me to size me up (even though I was like a foot taller than he was). His eyes were narrow, cold, and grey. His hair was the color of dust, and his face pointed. He looked like a coyote who hated you.
“If you want to help out, show me where the real treasure is. Not this semi-precious garbage.”
Despite the fact that I tended to disobey direct orders from people, I found myself doing exactly what he told me to do and liking it. I led him to the coffers, watched as he offed anyone else he felt like, and even marveled at his skill at throwing knives. The way he strode around in my house and undid the fabric of all I ever knew made me want to keep helping him. I wanted to do this kind of thing just as easily as he could. I think he picked up on it, because when he was done with my house, carrying a big bag full of the most valuable of our house’s treasures (I don’t know how his small frame hefted all that gold around – he certainly didn’t let me carry any of it), he let me choose which house to hit next out of the ones his friends hadn’t already pillaged.
There was chaos and people running all around, and I was impressed to see that the bandits all seemed to be only ones totally calm. The guy who killed my mom (I later learned his name, but have since forgotten it, sorry) had me follow him house to house in the richer part of the town, keeping an eye on me as we did a round of the houses that had already been hit – this was clean-up duty: making sure that there was no one left who was able-bodied enough to follow us back to our hideout for revenge. I respected the logic of it, as someone who was lied to by their closest family, the openness of the violence appealed to me. No one here was being forced to cover their bruises and pretend like it didn’t actually happen. Everyone here was just crying, dead, or in charge.
After we finished our rounds, the guy lead me back to my house, which was being used as a rendez-vous point, to meet with who I came to know as the leader of the gang, a man named Moreyih.
Now, he was a man who is best described as a king. He was always right. Everybody listened to him, and deferred to him. He was even the tallest and best looking out of everyone. He always spoke last and sat at the head of the table. Even though he drank and ate the same as everyone, he didn’t seem to get embarrassingly full or drunk. He was the perfect leader and the perfect object of my confused 17-year-old attraction. His name was Moreyih and I desparately needed approval from him.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. After the guy introduced me to his leader, and vouched for me, Moreyih looked me up and down and said no word, but only nodded to his underling, who then looked me square in the eye. He didn’t ask the question whether I wanted to join, but I knew that if I didn’t act or say something to the effect of, “I want to join you even though you killed my family” he probably would have tried to kill me right there. I wasn’t afraid, though. I said whatever words it took to convince everyone that I was out of that town and out of that life for good. I guess I was convincing because that night, I was introduced to the rest of the gang as they trickled in with their loot. Everyone greeted me with cheer, and I was told to help carry everything as the gang made their retreat back to their hideout. I left with them, with only whatever clothes I was wearing that day, plus a sword I had picked up from the house guard who was dead on the ground.
And that’s when I started my life with the gang of raiders.