Welcome - I'm a humble writeblr who dabbles in short stories, poetry, fantasy novels and whodunnits (too many WIPs, not enough P). I'd love to hear from like-minded people, so feel free to introduce yourself!
I've been here for aeons and never actually made one of these when I started out... but as a bunch of new people just stumbled across my blog, I figured the second best time would be now!
poetry - every April I challenge myself to write one poem per day, which I have now done successfully (well, you be the judge) for four years running. these can all be found here.
short stories - I write a lot of short original fiction (some might say too much) which can be found here. at the moment I am sharing a new short story here every week, but that might slow a bit if I can force myself to focus on my actual WIP.
novels - I talk a lot about my tropical fantasy epic Archipelago (here), which features a day in the life of forty-four protagonists on a volcanic island chain stalked by komodo dragons and terror birds.
I am less open about my two previous fantasy novels in my Legacy series (four planned, each beginning with the death of a monarch and exploring what they leave behind), which are split over periods of thousands of years and set in a world where time is distorted due to magical fields around each pole. no, I don't make it easy on myself.
I recently finished a detective novel, Going Quietly, featuring disabled ex-cop Nathan Warner and his new assistant Cass Moreno as they work to find justice for a supposed suicide, work through their own mental health issues and secretive pasts, and maybe make some friends along the way.
I am now working on Swansong, a Regency era ghost story.
bad art - I also doodle, mostly pictures of animals, which can be found here.
when I find the time, I also like to participate in tag games and other writeblr community things, so do feel free to tag me in and introduce yourselves!
Laithe had the music in him - his folks had made sure of that. He'd been bathed in sound his whole life: his cradle rocked to standards from their own youth, his lullabies performed by minstrels on their way to a tavern. When he was older, his parents had taken him with them, his bedtime waiting for the end of the set. Sleep could come later. It was more important that he learnt the full repertoire; each rendition, every encore. Even in the womb, his mother had spent her time suffused in music, listening for two.
Looking back now, he wondered if it was like drowning a man, or applying a needle point's pressure to his skin. For a time, the body's defences hold firm, remembering their shape, distinguishing their contents from an outside world. But there comes a point of rupture, when the pressure of the waves overwhelms those sea walls, and it all comes flooding in. He had been eight, when they managed to puncture the membrane between music and man. The needle had driven smoothly in. The water had rushed to fill his lungs. The songs had become all that he was.
Today, Laithe was a jar for other people's souls, a reliquary for the voices of dead kings, a container only for something more valuable. The music had been etched into his memory, and he only needed to be commanded with the name of the song, an opening lines, to be compelled to regurgitate the rest. He was a music box, to be opened at Lady Esten's pleasure. She need only turn his handle and his lips would twitch into life, his fingers dancing freely on his lute, like a bird-catcher spider on the end of his hand, a puppet on his strings. He would vomit up the song for her. Then, when he was finally dismissed to his own dismal rooms, he would vomit for himself.
It was a tremendous honour, to be a minstrel in the great halls of the great houses, or so people said. That was why this had been done to him, his parents wanting to secure a higher place in the world, for themselves as much as Laithe. They had bought Lady Esten's influence with his life, like the firstborn sacrifices of olden times, and his youth brought them an excuse to stay close at hand: ostensibly to care for him, but that ship had sailed before he was born, when they had set this as its course. They only cared for their coveted place at court, where they might mingle with their betters and exaggerate their own importance. Perhaps it was a tremendous honour for them.
Laithe said nothing, and nobody asked him to. He watched in silence as his parents, proud to have laid the golden egg, preened and puffed out their new plumage. He watched them feather their own nest, not caring that it was empty. He listened to Lady Esten holding court, numb to his own playing, drinking in the music of her words instead. He listened when she asked him to attend the parlour outside her chambers, for quieter gatherings of confidants and friends. Nobody asked him to offer a preference, or opinion, or any spoken word at all. He only sang, reciting the words of other men long dead, without speech of his own. He was just the instrument. His voice, like that of his lute, was made only for music.
But his ears were for listening. They had taught him to play by ear; to sight-read without sight. He could hear a tune once, and know it forever, for it echoed always in the hollow space they'd left. He listened to the whispers in Lady Esten's chamber, and learnt to decipher the rhythm of their secrets. He heard footsteps in the night, and traced where they went, and when they softened their tread. He heard the discordant chords of lies; the muffled notes of betrayals. He drank in his parents' grasping and his patron's own ambitions, and heard all they had to say about those above and beneath them, and put it to the music that resounded with his heart.
Then, one night when the hall was full, he sang their secrets out for all to hear.
Mrs Thompson's boarding house, on Havering Avenue, was Linton's least discerning place to stay.
Where the more upmarket hotels required a form of identification for their guests, she declined to even ask for their name. Sir had always served her well enough, and she applied it to all of the shapes and sizes that came through her open door. Gender wasn't her business either.
Where some hotels passed over Floor 13, skipping straight from 12 to 14 out of fear it would attract bad fortune, she had only one upstairs floor, and named it Floor 13 anyway. She had never turned down a visitor, and figured even bad luck would need someplace to stay.
Jo had always slept there, when she was in town. On the first floor, affectionately referred to as the penthouse, with anybody else who might be visiting for the night. She could now afford a suite somewhere else, especially after some of her recent jobs, but she preferred the familiar anonymity of Floor 13.
Mrs Thompson didn't ask any questions, and neither did her guests.
Salma counted the bodies as she walked. The building had been a school before it was requisitioned as an infirmary, and it was now fast becoming a morgue. The afflicted were laid out on desks; one classroom for the dead, another for the dying. There were dozens of each, all walks of life now lying down in death. Students and teachers. Farmers and butchers. Guards and sailors. Doctors like her.
"Where is Cab Tal?" she asked her guide. "I was supposed to meet him here."
"He was taken unwell." Aitana said. She had not been the mayor of the town; he was in one of the other rooms, together with his replacement, and his, and hers. Aitana was just the one who had stepped up in their absence. Someone had needed to take control: to institute some sort of order as the infection spread, until the Caballero Medicos could arrive.
Salma was the second. She had travelled in on horseback, as was traditional, navigating marshland that surrounded this stretch of coast. A lagoon festooned with flamingos. Trees barnacled by timber crabs, a recent pest brought in from the docks; they had developed to feed on the sunken wood of wrecks, given the lack of organic material in the sea, but since moved on to intact ships, and now followed them back to their source. The lagoon was full of blue-green algae too. This town had already been diseased.
Aitana had met her at the gates. She was short, and slight, but Salma could not tell much more than that. The not-mayor was clad head-to-toe in greased leather, with her face further obscured with a conical, comical nosebag. It looked absurd, but Salma had read that this was a necessary precaution in places of plague. Aitana had prepared a spare suit for her, and helped her into it; organised even there.
"Do you know how it started?" she asked, her breath fogging the lenses for her eyes.
"It seemed to start from the docks, and spread inwards from there." Aitana's voice was muffled by the leather, but Salma knew that hers would be the same. The mask was hard to talk through. It felt like the sort of nosebag she might give to her horse. "Like the timber crabs."
Salma nodded. "It's been imported. Simarrons, they think."
"The rebels?"
"They've been harrying our ships for a while, and we think their piratical adventures have spread further afield. This is a contagion brought back from across the seas. They call it the velvet death, from what I've heard. A slow fever which furs a man's insides, transported using living sufferers in the hold."
"How can we know all that?"
"They went too far with this particular plot. Not all involved had the stomach for it. There was a dissenter; a rat from the stinking ship. He turned informant, and warned us of what they planned to do. That's why I was sent here. Cab Tal too."
She dabbed her brow. It was hot under the suit, and Salma could feel the squat beads of sweat as they squeezed from her pores, like slugs emerging after rain, and then rolled lazily down her neck, her back, the inside of her trouser legs. It would be hot here without the suit, and it was near intolerable inside. But she knew the alternative would be worse.
"But here..." Aitana was digesting what she'd heard. She seemed more accustomed to the heat, which made sense. She lived here, and must have long since adjusted to the suit as well. "Do you know why we would be the target?"
"You aren't. At least, not the ultimate one. We were told there would be an initial attack, at a coastal town; a test, before they move onto larger game, or with the home that it would spread. I've been sent to contain it by any means. To find a treatment, or a cure."
"By any means," she repeated. "And if you can't cure us? Will you seal us off? Burn the town to the ground?"
"It will not come to that." Salma avoided the answer, but she knew what she would do to keep the kingdom safe. She was a Caballero Medico, and that meant both the salve and the sword. She would would have no hesitation in taking lives to save more. "You have already done such good work in keeping it contained. Your quick action may have saved the town and kingdom both."
"I hope that is true." She paused. "How can I help you now?"
"If you wouldn't mind, I would like to see Cab Tal." The desire to see her mentor was personal, but Salma also told herself that it was the logical first step. If he was able to speak, he could catch her up on what he'd found out so far. If not, she needed to examine one of the infected, and knew that he would have volunteered.
Aitana led her through to the room where she'd put him, like a librarian remembering which books were on every shelf. Salma had thought she had a firm stomach, but the motion made her feel queasy, watching the movement through the lenses in her mask. Or perhaps that was the nosebag of aromatic herbs. The combination of rosemary and sage, combined with the odour of dead flesh, was sure to have ruined many a future meal.
"Can we go more slowly?" she asked.
"Of course," Aitana said. "You have had a long journey. If you need to rest, you only need to say. I can find an empty room for you to sit or lie down."
"On a desk?" The idea seemed wrong; like a mockery of those afflicted. But Salma didn't feel that she was well. She leant an arm against the wall whilst they paused, fighting to catch her breath.
"Are you feeling ill?"
"It's this mask, I think. I can't breath."
"Do you have a fever?"
"It's just hot in here..." She stopped. How would she react if she was standing where Aitana was, looking at her as a patient? "I can't be infected. You're the only person I've met since arrival, and you've been wearing a suit throughout. I've been wearing a suit since then. It must just be the mask. I'm not used to it."
"Yes," Aitana said. "Caballero-Medico Tal said much the same."
"This was how it started for him? Even in a mask?"
"This mask, in fact. He wore the same suit, before I took it from him and gave it to you. The next physician they send will wear it after you."
"The mask isn't clean," Salma realised, struggling to take it off. "The nosebag... forcing me to breath it in. Shutting out the sea breeze. Opening my pores. You put me in a trap, and I allowed you to fasten it around me."
"It's much too late, you know. Your predecessor made it out of his suit, and even tried to attack me, but the movement only hastens the decline. Physical activity will be difficult for you, and it only makes you need to breath more, pushing the contagion deeper. I have studied it extensively."
"You poisoned Tal. Me. All of these people. Your whole town?"
"Not my town. I only told you that. I just dumped a dying body in their midst, and waited to see how far it spread."
"You're one of the rebels." Salma felt that their positions were reversed, and reached back for Aitana's own initial questions. "But... why here? Why contain it like this? Surely you could have just sent your captives out into the city, and let it spread much further?"
"We wanted to study its progress for ourselves, first. To see how many infection points we needed, to create a plague that you couldn't control. We needed test subjects. And bait, of course. Your informant sold it to you perfectly."
"So... what he said about the attack?"
"All true, more or less," Aitana said. "We're planning something big. For deployment in the city. But this isn't designed to spread at all. In fact, that's the last thing we would have wanted; a trickle that you could easily stem, before we were ready for the flood. We chose this town because it was isolated by the marshes. There was no need for it to be contained."
She led Salma into one of the rooms, and folded her gently over a desk. There was no resistance. Her arms felt impossibly heavy. She tried to roll onto the floor, but only turned enough to see Tal lying next to her. She called his name, but could barely make out her own voice. If he was alive, he couldn't hear her to respond. Only Aitana could.
"It will be easier if you don't fight it."
"They'll send others after me," she whispered. "If I don't report back. That's what happened with Tal. This time, they'll know something is wrong."
"And they'll burn the whole town down, yes. I understood your threat before. I'll be long gone by then, of course, but the flames might bring you some relief. They'll save me having to clean up after myself, too."
"But having seen what you've done here, they'll be awake to the scale of your threat. They'll be ready for you."
"Or they'll think the danger has passed." Aitana shrugged, as if it didn't matter to her either way. "I'll ask the next one what they think. Sure, they'll go to extremes eventually, but I think I'll be able to speak to a few more of them first. I made a good impression on you, didn't I?"
"A whole town destroyed." Salma was still reeling from the magnitude of this atrocity. "And not even your target. Just... a test run. An experiment. To see if you could."
"That wasn't the main purpose, actually. We'd worked that out on the ship. But you'll like the real one even less."
"What do you mean?"
"I got to meet you." Aitana couldn't smile through her mask, but there was something sickly in her muffled voice. "Planning the perfect contagion was one thing, but we knew the Caballero Medicos would stand in our way. It made sense to start a small plague, and draw you all out first."
"This was all... for me?"
"For Tal, and you, and whoever comes next. Don't worry, I'll put you all in the same room. I've tried to keep things organised. On that note, I'll need your suit to give to your successor. If you hold on through the fever, you can be here when they arrive. I'm sure that they'll ask after you."
St Freida's was the most exclusive hospital in the Duchy; a place for the great and good to come when they weren't doing so great or good, and pay through the nose for the privilege. Heiner had served there for most of his career, and grown used to a certain calibre of clientele: the rich and the poorly, in sickness and in wealth.
He'd seen titans of industry stowed in wards which bore their names, blurring the line between patient and patron. He'd seen petty aristocrats with ailments of excess - a bloated liver, a swollen leg, a shrivelled lung - whilst he knew poor men starved just streets away. But the work had paid him well, and now he would never be one of them.
"Thank for agreeing to take a look." Jacinta led the way though hurried corridors. "It's been manic here lately. We're really short of bodies."
"Not at all," Heiner said. He was due to retire next year, and had ceased taking on new patients of his own, which had left him some flexibility to lend his experience to others. "It's a great honour to treat a Duke."
Alexander Elsvig, the 13th Duke of Honburg, did not look particularly ducal when they walked into his room. The straightjacket was white stained with a rusty red, and lacked the usual regalia, only stains of what looked like meat; Heiner was unsure if those were attempts to feed him, or something coming out the other way. It was livery only in a different sense of the word.
"What troubles his Excellency?" he asked, seeing that his mouth was also a mess of blood. "Consumption?"
"Of a sort," she said. "We think it's a fungus, originally. A flesh-eating kind. Its spores make their home in your stomach, and it grows outwards from there."
"He is being eaten from the inside out?" Heiner assessed his patient in that new light. "How long does he have?"
"We've been able to slow the progress to some extent. Giving him a diet of rare meat, offal, to sate the fungus and prevent it from feeding on its host."
"He eats that?" He was not sure what a Duke's diet usually included, but he imagined offal rarely featured at his table. Blue steak, perhaps.
"The fungus encourages it. It compels its host to share its appetites. He's become an obligate cannibal; he won't touch anything else. We have to crush vitamin pills in with the flesh."
"Like giving medicine to a cat?"
She nodded. "The appetite is quite something, too. We were too late to catch on, and he'd bitten off his own lips from the hunger first of all. Swallowed his tongue, too."
"God." That explained the bloodstains on his front, and meant the marks on his face weren't stains at all. He was eating through an open wound.
"Anything he could reach. He took the flesh from his fingers like drumsticks. Arms, legs, even some of his toes. He's surprisingly flexible."
"God," Heiner said again. That was enough on the symptoms. "How are you treating that?"
"The diet delays the deterioration, and we then try to work on the damage. The fungus had spread to a few of his internal organs, so we gave him a few transplants when donors became available. Moved him to the top of the list, of course."
"Of course." Heiner didn't like it, but that was how things in St. Freida's were done. More important patients received priority treatment. That was the whole principle of the place. Those who couldn't afford it got no treatment at all. "Did that work?"
"We haven't been able to cut it out entirely. We can swap in one organ at a time, but the spores still grow back. We're working on a treatment, but it's taking some time. The challenge now is keeping him alive for long enough."
"I thought you said you just needed to keep feeding him? To slow it down?"
"That's right."
"Surely we can get enough meat for that? I know you said the appetite is increased, but he's one man. A single butcher should be able to keep him fed."
"Oh. I didn't mention that it had to be human flesh?"
"What?"
"It's what the fungus feeds on. It's a human disease. If you don't provide it with another source, it starts to take apart its host." Jactina chewed her own lip. "Honestly, we tried everything we could. Pig, goat, cat, dog. Human was the only thing that stopped the spread."
"Where have you been getting human meat?"
"I mentioned the donated organs, right? We just kept them coming. Transplanting was too slow, so we start just feeding them to him direct. It's only temporary. Just until we can find the cure."
"How many organs has that taken?" Heiner stared at her. "How many other patients have died, waiting?"
"We've limited it as best we can," Jacinta said, shifting nervously. "We have tried all other options, believe me."
"Do I want to know?"
"No."
He paused, thinking it over. He already had a pretty good idea. "Tell me."
"Well, we're standing in a hospital. There are always bodies. Those we couldn't save. The family rarely need to see them, before the cremation, and ashes are easy to fake."
"You fed him... other patients?"
"Only the dead ones," she said. "Well, at first. When those ran out... well, there were some who were already dying. Terminal. It made no sense to keep them alive, and see the Duke die as a result. Or feed him another dozen donated organs, which could have gone to keep somebody else alive. A waste of resources all around."
"You killed them."
"We let a few of them pass gently away. The poorer patients, you understand. The philanthropic cases. Nobody that anyone would miss." Jacinta sighed. "He's the Duke. We need to keep him alive, to buy time to study this fungus. If I could cure him... it shouldn't be about that, but imagine the patronage I might enjoy. Who knows how many more lives that will save, if it spreads any more?"
Heiner nodded. It shouldn't be about that, but he knew how many of the staff here thought. He wouldn't mind a little of the credit himself. It might make for a more comfortable retirement. "How can I help?"
Jacinta gestured him back out of the book, and led him down a corridor to an empty room. The air was thick with the smell of the blood. This was clearly where she prepared the Duke's medicine and meals.
"I suppose I may as well tell you all of it," she said, preparing a syringe.
"There's more?"
"There weren't enough patients. Not enough dead, or dying and unimportant. We had to look elsewhere."
"You took in people dying on the streets?"
She shook her head. "Impossible. We would be seen. Nobody can know about any of this. If God is merciful, even the Duke will forget, and this burden will be mine to bear alone. No, we had to keep this in-house. We moved onto the poorer members of staff. The orderlies. The cleaners. The most easily replaced. It was an orderly who helped me, until now. Since then I've managed on my own."
"I can help with any carrying of bodies," Heiner told her, trying to focus on the job at hand. The less he thought about her choices, the better. They were for Jacinta's conscience to wrestle with. He was only here to follow her direction. "Even the butchery, although I am loathe to have any part of this. Whatever needs another hand. I may be old, but I might still have a bit more muscle in my arms than you do."
"I know," she said, depressing the syringe into his right. "I'm sorry, Heiner. I really am."
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
Lora cursed under her breath. She'd tried to slip back into their rooms without making a noise, but there was no sneaking past the Inspector. Talisa didn't miss a trick. She was the best in the city at sniffing out secrets in her interviews, unravelling people with something to hide. She could hear the slightly catch in breath or change of tone, and know exactly what it meant. She could certainly decipher Lora's footsteps in the hall.
"I went to the Duxen house," she said, knowing it would be futile to lie.
"What for?" Talisa propped herself up in her chair. "I thought that case was done. You wanted to say goodbye?"
"I wanted to see the murder scene, in person."
Talisa sniffed. "Personal visits are overrated, in my opinion. The guards had checked the room before we arrived, and they told us the little that they found. This wasn't a case with clues left behind. It was just a matter of finding a killer."
"The nephew." The guards had arrested him last night, on the strength of their report. He was probably already in a wagon for Kodena.
"We agreed he had a motive, I thought?" Talisa asked. "It certainly came out in his interview. He hated their guts, by all accounts, and has inherited a fortune. Or would have, if we weren't here to stick ourselves in his way. We don't need to see the bloodstains to know that, or retrace his steps for ourselves. In a manner of speaking. In my condition, you get used to not going anywhere you don't have to."
"I could have carried you," Lora told her.
"I know, but it would not have been easy for either of us." She sighed. "I value your services, you know. I will not waste your labour on a whim. I need you to take me to the guardhouse, or to any scene they think it's worth me seeing, not to those they don't. I'd rather you save your strength."
"Honestly, it would have been no trouble."
"That is one of the few dishonest things you have said to me." Talisa smiled, to show she was not speaking as an Investigator. Although Lora had heard she smiled throughout her interviews as well. "I know you would always be willing, but perhaps it is our different ways of seeing the world. You have always be able to come and go as you please, so you think nothing of it. I have always had to weigh up the cost, and am used to not going where I am not needed. Perhaps that means I no longer feel the inclination. Perhaps that is what makes it bearable."
"I'm sorry." Lora took a chair sitting across from her. The walk had taken the wind out of her sails, and she didn't want the symptoms to come back. "I did not mean it as a criticism. My legs are your legs when you want them, but I know you haven't always had that choice. Or that it's always had to be a choice for you. I know I still take much for granted."
"It's okay. I know that your freedom is also limited. You were not in the interview as I was, of course. It is natural that you would want your own closure."
As a sorn, Lora was not permitted in the room when the interrogations took place. Her place was only to serve. She had been assigned here as a body, not a mind. She would never resent her station, as many serving sorns did; she understood that Talisa needed her help, to do everything from cooking her meals to emptying her chamber pot. But she was particularly grateful to be treated as capable of something more.
Talisa had been good to her, allowing her to be a part of her work. She could have easily kept her as only a domestic servant, or transportation, like a mule, but instead she engaged her in discussions when working a case through, and showed genuine interest in her thoughts. Sometimes, like a recent theft from a jewellers in Hucsa, she even allowed her to scope out locations on her own. Lora could never be an Inspector herself, but Talisa allowed her to pretend by her side.
"But why there?" she asked. "He could have killed them in the street. On the road. Made it look like random banditry. This made it obvious it was him. The door hadn't even been forced."
"Not all murderers are as rational as us, my dear. They act out of anger, in the spur of the moment. It is not always a puzzle concocted for us to solve."
"You're right, of course." Lora put a hand to her head. A dull pulsing had begun, and it made it hard to keep her thoughts in order. "I just thought that I would go, to see if there was anything else."
"And was there?"
"Not that I could put my finger on. But I had an odd feeling; something I can't really explain. It just felt wrong."
"Two people had died there." Talisa smiled sadly, reaching across to lay a hand on her arm. "It would have been wrong for it to feel normal."
"Right." Lora closed her eyes for a moment. The throbbing was coming back. "I suppose that's true as well. Sorry, I'm clearly not thinking clearly. Clearly."
"Are you okay?" The hand on her arm was still there, and Talisa's face was a picture of concern. "Is it happening again?"
Lora had suffered from a recent bought of illness. She did not remember much of it herself, which was perhaps a small mercy, but she knew she had been drifting in and out of consciousness, the days and nights all blurred into one. Talisa had nursed her back to health. It was the opposite of how their relationship was supposed to be, the Inspector serving her sorn, and her gratitude had reached new depths; especially as she knew how difficult it must have been.
She had never learnt if Talisa had been born without legs, or simply lost them at an early age. She could maintain some range of movement in their rooms, thanks to a wheeled chair of her own design, but to get around city she had been carried: Lora had a sedan chair she wore strapped to her back, which was the most dignified option for Talisa, and only slightly dehumanising for her. She had to carry her to the guardhouse for the interrogations, but then wait outside until she was called. She was the one who walked her to the door, but she was never allowed in.
Her illness had meant this investigation had been difficult. Even after she had recovered, it had taken some time to build back her strength, both of them afraid that she might over-exert herself. They had made slow progress in finding their killer, puzzle or not, and Lora could understand why Talisa now wanted to wrap the case up so quickly. But she couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the solution. Perhaps it was just that her head still wasn't right, but she didn't feel satisfied like she had before.
"Sit here," Talisa said. "I'll make us some carf."
"I can do it."
"So can I."
Lora didn't press the point. She knew Talisa took pride in doing some things for herself, and perhaps twice as much in being able to do things for other people. Besides, she knew that she should rest. She watched the Inspector wheel her way into the kitchen, then closed her eyes to better focus on her thoughts. The sickness seemed to mostly plague her mind, and memories were the hardest part to keep straight.
"It's just frustrating, having this feeling that you can't explain," she said. "It was almost as if we'd been there before."
"The guards gave us sketches." Talisa called from the other room, above the clatter of pots and mugs. "We looked at them together."
"It wasn't just that. Not familiarity, but a sense of... presence. It felt like I'd been there. It felt that you'd been there."
"I haven't." She wheeled back in from the kitchen, a tray balanced precariously across her lap. Lora rose to help her, then staggered back to her seat as the room starting to spin around her. "It's not like I can get around without your help."
"Right. Of course. But it had... your scent, I suppose. The trace of you that you leave behind." A year following her everywhere, carrying her like a frog to a scorpion, attending to her cleaning and her washing had made Lora intensely familiar with that.
"So you're saying I smell like a house where two people died?" Talisa asked, sipping from her cup and motioning for Lora to do the same. "Charming!
"Not quite." Lora wasn't explaining this well. She drank, and tried to put her thoughts in order. As always, Talisa beat her to it.
"As I say, I could hardly go there by myself." She gestured at Lora, still slumped over her drink. "And we have not been able to travel much of late."
Lora nodded to that, which made the room swirl again. She had no desire to push that point. She already felt guilty about her sickness and the delays it had caused. To hear Talisa voice those sentiments might undo her.
"But what about before the murder?" she asked.
"Beforehand?" Talisa gave an odd little laugh. "Why would I visit the scene of the crime before it became one? I know you credit my skills of deduction, but I have not yet acquired the gift of foresight."
"I heard you that knew the deceased. One of them. The husband. The uncle."
"Where on Fes did you hear that?"
"At the watchhouse. When I was waiting outside the interrogation room, a couple of the guards were talking about it. They said he'd been linked to one of your earlier cases, but you'd never been able to prove his involvement. Or he'd paid somebody off. I don't quite remember."
"Oh, a long time ago then." Talisa sat back. "The guards keep much better records than I do, so we will have to take their word for it. Although I must caution them against airing them in the open."
"So you did not know him?"
"In a city like this, anyone who has a career as long as mine will have links to all manner of unsavoury characters. But even if I had wanted to pay a social call before he died, there would have been no time. We were in Husca before, remember? You fell ill almost as soon as we arrived back."
Lora took a long sip, buying time as she thought that over. That would have been the period she didn't remember. What if she'd forgotten something more important than just tossing and turning in her bed? She might have gone to the Duxen house. That felt right, from what she'd seen there today. Talisa would have been there too; the reason that they'd gone. But if that was the case, why would she lie about it? Lora could only think of one reason.
She took a careful look at her drink, suddenly reluctant to swallow. In that case, Talisa wouldn't have left anything to chance. She was too good an Investigator for that, and knew that Lora was too sharp of a servant to let it pass. Her sickness had not been an unfortunate delay, but something intended, and perfectly timed to cloud her thoughts. Not a sickness at all, but the effects of a poisoning. She remember Talisa nursing her back to health, but little more, because all of those cups of carf and bowls of soup had been robbing her of her memories instead.
She raised the cup back to her lips, letting the carf flow back out of her mouth, but knew that it was too late. It was more than half gone. Talisa had done it to her again. Come tomorrow, she would have no memories of today: the visit, her feelings, this conversation. She had to act now. The watchhouse. They might not allow a sorn as an Investigator, but Lora would throw herself upon their mercy as a victim. A witness. An accomplice
"I'm going out for a walk," she announced, as calmly as she could muster. "I think some fresh air will help."
Even before she finished speaking, she knew Talisa had heard the lie.
"They won't believe you," she said.
"What?"
"A sorn. Stumbling, ranting and raving. Even if you make it there, which in your current state I doubt."
"I will tell them I've been poisoned. If nothing else, that's something they will be able to prove." She seized upon that thought. Talisa might have escaped blame for the murder, but in her attempt to cover it up she had committed something easier to prove. Lora wished she had not mentioned it, which would give her the chance to hide the carf things away. But what if she placed them somewhere high, so that she couldn't reach them? What if she blocked the wheels of her chair? It felt cruel, but was she relying on that? Trusting that Lora would only ever do the honourable thing, even now?
"Of course, if you wanted them to believe you, you shouldn't have stolen this ring from the jewellers in Hucsa." She produced it: a glittering band of emeralds and gold. "A petty thief. The Investigator's own servant. An embarrassment, to be sure, but hardly surprising for a sorn."
"What?" Lora asked, blindsided by this new attack. Her memories were completely blank. "I didn't take that. Did I?"
"Does it matter? You confessed to me tonight. They'll believe me."
"I'll take it from you now, then." She had made up her mind. No more playing honourably. It felt wrong to take advantage of Talisa's total dependency on her, but there had been worse wrong committed here than that. "Hand it over. I don't want to have to hurt you."
"Even if you somehow hide it now, they'll check and find it missing, with all of the little clues you left behind. I must say, you were very careless." Talisa smiled back up at her. "You could kill me, I suppose, but then it would be worse for you. A slow death, to make an example for others. The theft you might survive. Especially if I plead on your behalf."
"I... would you?" Lora slumped back down. "Or, wait, if I don't go tonight, would this all go away. Would we go back to normal?"
"It can do, if you drink up nicely." Talisa put the ring away, and raised her own glass in salute. "You can go back to thinking you take mercy on me, if you like. That it's my life in your hands, and not the other way around. But the truth is that I'm the one who's long been carrying you."
The Párisi Udvar in Budapest, Hungary. Arcade/department store/ galleria built 1907-1913, in a mix of styles- venetian gothic, orientalism, jugendstil, renaissance.
I have read both A Song of Ice and Fire and The Kingkiller Chronicle, such as they are, and am glad to have done so. It's not like they're all set-up and zero payoff. A lot happens in the books that exist. The plot covers a lot of ground, and various arcs begin and end. There's plenty of storytelling to enjoy, even without a big ending to the whole series.
The idea that you might deprive yourself a book you would otherwise enjoy, just because it doesn't have a sequel, does not make sense in my mind.
The idea that you would stop reading a series you have already started upon learning it is missing the final book, thus depriving yourself of even more sequels that already exist, makes even less sense.
The idea that you would then avoid series from an entire genre that you otherwise love, out of the fear that the sequels will stop coming, simply because they are the same genre as two series where that happened, makes even less sense.
The idea that this is such a widespread attitude that publishers are following suit and not accepting books from the same genre out of the fear that the same thing will happen? Even though in both cases the series were still a massive success and continue to sell plenty of copies?
I would rather a brilliant story not finished than a completed story which is boring. A lot of the other comments are boasting about finishing series or pointing to authors who have finished series as superior options and I just don't think that's necessarily the case. Martin and Rothfuss only frustrate readers because we want the sequels, because the other books were so enjoyable and we want more of the same, not because sequels are inherently good in themselves. It's nice to have an ending, but the rest of the story is important too.
you don't actually have to post/share any of your writing to "participate" in writeblr btw. you don't even have to introduce your wip(s) if you don't want to. you can just talk about your process generally and the experience of writing. you can just reblog stuff. you are welcome to lurk, even (technically not "participating" but there's nothing wrong with that!) do whatever you want. be free
feminist retelling shoulsnt be the woman does some girlboss shit femist retelling is she does the same stuff except u actually give a shit abt her perspective and thoughts and feelings as a human being this time
