You remember the day you found him, dragging him out of the Dun like a piece of driftwood. You remember how stiff he was when you found him, and how cold. Cold as the water was on that winter day, freezing to the touch. You’d thought him dead, hadn’t known what to do with him – and then you saw him twitch. And then you really hadn’t known what to do with him.
You remember the fear you’d felt keeping a mongrel at your residence secretly, knowing by his injuries that someone wanted him dead, but unwilling to do the smart thing and throw him out to die like his previous owners had, whoever they were. You weren’t the kind of person to just let something die – man, animal, or hated creature, as this one was. For he was obviously hated, by the wounds inflicted upon him. A stolen voice, and clipped wings, and the marks of a hard-fought existence all over – and yet, whoever it was had not been thorough enough. The nameless man you’d taken in refused to die.
For the longest time, he had not been able to communicate beyond nods and shakes of the head, pantomimes of his huge calloused hands and dances. But you lived in a place that respected privacy, and he was an utterly silent being. You couldn’t exactly say why you kept him so long, but you talked to him every day, and he listened patiently. He took care of housework, like one from the old tales of house spirits from Krerdiff that you remembered your nanny telling you – that lower-class woman who knew the lore of the land that your parents regarded as old-fashioned and fantastical and useless, but that you loved to listen to when she would tell it. A hearth spirit that cared for the home as long as you kept it sated – a domovoy, hairy, but not small at all, and seen quite often. It was comfortable, that life, but you knew it could not possibly last forever. He was not a house spirit. He was a half-breed, and an obvious one.
You learned the language of the deaf, a construction that the domovoy could take up, and taught him. It was the thing you worked on to exhaustion, harder than your job, harder than keeping up to date with your friends and the girls who fancied you, who you grew distant with. It didn’t matter. It absorbed you, making this man whole again, though once again you couldn’t pin down why. The domovoy soon took up most of your free time. To you, making this creature live once more was more important than living your own life.
Quickly, and pleasingly, the domovoy learned to speak once again. He told you he was dead, but not gone, and that you owned the right to what was left of him. The concept frightened and abhorred you. You worried that the domovoy was willingly submitting himself to slavery with you as his owner, but the more you spoke with him, the more you understood that the concept was not the same as the Navroyan brand of ownership. He owed you his life; he would protect yours at all costs. He owed you his voice; he would make sure yours was heard. He owed you his freedom, such as it was; he would make sure none would dare impose on yours. But that wasn’t nearly enough to explain it, and you never understood the full concept of what he gave to you until much later.
When he had learned enough of the language that he could speak sufficiently, he told you about his life. It disgusted you, deeply. For a few months, you carried it with you. Your work suffered, and your friends grew even more distant. Your thoughts grew ever more radical, ever more disconnected from the mainstream idea of what was right and what was wrong, and you felt more and more that you didn’t belong in such a place as the dark, gray metropolis of Navroya. You moved back home, taking him with you, calling him your servant. But you didn’t feel at home there either.
You thought to a long-ago meeting you had with a Xekohym and his infant child of another species. You held the pictures, the evidence you had of that meeting, and thought of where they were. You thought of their fates and the fates of everyone you knew, and you realized that none of it was right. This wasn’t how the world was supposed to be. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.
Your family was ancient nobility. You were descended from warrior kings, great heroes and movers of worlds, at least in the small corner of the world called Krerdiff. And you were an environmental scientist. The desire for knowledge, discovery – it intrigued you greatly. Learning that the world you lived in was diseased, broken, and wrong left you in a state of sadness so great you spent two months living at your family’s estate trying to recover from that epiphany. Your friend – your only friend, now – spent every day of it at your side, out of character for him, as he would normally keep to himself.
And you realized that in his silent accompaniment he was telling you that he believed you could do something about it. You made plans. You could not stay here any longer – in this broken, horrible place that had once been such a good land. A ship to a far-off land, and a new life, in Lith. Your parents, worried though they were, had few objections. They, like your only friend, believed in your abilities, even if they had no conception of your new beliefs.
In Lith, you found yourself. Your servant showed his old skills had not faded when you made enemies of Acetate-contracted slavers over what you imagined to be a friendly game of dice. One of them drew a blade when you had a run of good luck, and your servant turned it back on the man, spilling his blood over the tavern floor. His friends attacked. You bludgeoned one over the head with a pewter mug, killing him. Afterwards, you felt bad, first because you’d taken a life, but then because the innkeep ran you out of the building. Your friend approved of your instinct for battle, and said, simply, that what you had done was justified. It made you feel better, knowing he approved.
After that, things happened quickly. You started to target men like the one you’d killed, encouraged by your friend. You bought a revolver as large as your forearm. You bought a horse. Your servant taught you how to fight. You made allies of bounty hunters who were as often as not also slave catchers and you ended up becoming someone they told stories about around the campfire. The Krerdiff spirit of vengeance that came in the night, leaving no one alive. Such a thing had no name in Krerdiff folklore – a focus on vengeance was mainly a part of old Navroyan culture. So the legend was called the Falcon, after his homeland’s flag. But you never embraced that legend, because you didn’t believe it was really you, and you never told allies you met who they thought you to be.
Some you met worked as part of organizations. You cultivated connections with them. And some you met worked alone. Some were human. Some were not. You connected with them as well. Everyone you met was an asset – and you made sure to make yourself a desirable contact for them. If you were going to make a difference, you would need all the help you could get, on both sides of the divide that had been torn between races and species. Your servant was sometimes useful for this, and sometimes a detriment. You kept him no matter what. You would never abandon him, and he would never abandon you.
It took a long time. Years. You hadn’t expected your journey here to take this course, and you hadn’t expected it to take as long as it had, but you didn’t regret it. Only parts of it. After so long, you felt it was time to return to where the real fight was. Your friend agreed when you asked him. You left subordinates in place in Lith to carry on your work, ones you’d variously gathered and coerced and blackmailed into working towards your goal, and you returned to Navroya. You could tell your servant was unhappy, but he did not complain and did not show it. You talked to him, and told him that the work you both would be doing would be in honor of his people. You meant this. What your servant had told you of his extinct people had stuck with you, and commemerating them this way felt right to you, though you failed to think of how he felt.
It took more work to build up the base of connections and operations you needed there, but after your time in Lith, it was startlingly easy. Life was cheaper here than in Lith, maybe cheaper than anywhere in the world, and that made it very easy. Kill the leader of a gang and install your own, discredit the leader of a charity and install your friend there, bankrupt a local business and buy it out for pennies on the dollar – you don’t imagine that your methods are noble at all, but you tell yourself the means you use are all worth it to further your goal.
Soon after you arrived back, in one of the first operations you undertook, you discovered the existence of something you hadn’t known existed. Something called a puppet parlor.
The horror of your discovery was beyond anything you’d ever imagined. The things you’d heard, the injustices you’d seen committed in Lith – it didn’t prepare you. This wasn’t humans enslaving monsters. This was humans enslaving humans – full-blooded Roner on both sides. And after everything you’d seen, witnessing your own people exploited in the same manner that you’d seen others exploited hit you harder than anything, and you felt for yourself the same feeling you realized all of those you’d fought for had felt. That anger, that maliciousness, that sorrow – you felt it, like you’d never felt the same feelings before. And you knew, after that, that not only the symptoms had to be dealt with, but that the root cause had to be dealt with. Navroya was diseased; you knew this. But you hadn’t know the extent of the corruption.
You tried to fight it. For years, you tried. But the horrible system was too strong, too self-sustaining. Any damage you did it healed too fast for you to take advantage. You tried to sow your ideas in the minds of the young, but it wasn’t fast enough for your liking. You had to be ensured of the system’s destruction, but you felt your body would fail before you saw Navroya crumble and be reborn.
Before you knew it, you had become old. Your life had passed before you. Chances at finding someone to love you had come and gone, ignored in the face of your mad desire for change. And in the small moments you weren’t thinking of your work, you regretted this. You kept trying to impress your ideals and beliefs on those you met – sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. You were never an extremely charistmatic speaker, but you tried. And now you find yourself in the dreadful position of having to wait to see if your work will be worthwhile, or if it will be for naught.
The people you’ve hurt, the lives you’ve saved, the allies you’ve gained, and the enemies you’ve made – this is what it boils down to. It’s time to see if it’s enough.
