VIII
PIÉTÉ, PITIÉ
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> Do not withhold discipline from a child;
>
> If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Hagiographia of Solomon I 54:4-5 (the Verse of the Rod) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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Father was a loyalist to the Church rather than the Crown.
He was fond of uttering Verses of his little red-bible while he struck me; the New Standard Version cir. 627 I think given that it was written in short lines of one or two clauses in the Gascoine tradition. On its front was the Cross of Golgotha annealed in gold while its back had the heat-stamped maker’s mark of Argo & Sons—a hammer with a quill for a handle to signify the might of the pen over that of the sword.
Religion in Serein was a reflection of that of Ossir; the many peoples of the Old World brought their customs to the serein-infested Western Coasts, bringing the word of Lucifer to the ‘unenlightened’ tribes of the Tir and the Jartosh and the Qasid.
The same way that clergymen scratched wisdom into the hides of their brothers and sisters with a quill taken from a phoenician bird, Father cut his wisdom into his one and only son by the edge of the blade.
We wrote our legends into the skin of our saints because vellum taken from beasts or unholy men turned to dust but saint-skin prevailed before the millstone of time; how I wished that it crumbled no different than common leather, so that, maybe then, I might not be as I was and had been as I had. Fed singularly on God’s very blood, the mummified bodies of the clergy were preserved until Lucifer returned to usher us into the World Thereafter.
I didn't practise anymore—with either blade or bible. Couldn’t stomach it. Not without liquor or opium or whatever other draught there was to drown a man’s sorrow even if temporarily—because my sorrows knew how to swim. They knew how to bide their time and strike at the most opportune moment, to drag me back, kicking and screaming, to whence I came. To whence I ran.
Wasn’t used to being touched so I spooked when I felt a hand reach towards me. It was like an olive branch but my mind held no good faith towards switches and sticks and rods; it associated the shape with the slow dread of pain to come.
“Sorry, forgot to ask: can I put an arm around your shoulder, Lamaré?”
“As if I could stop you inside your own mind.”
“You can; you just need to say no.”
The concept was so novel, so alien to me that I was left stunned and stupid. Because the men and women in my past life didn’t care for consent in regards to my body. It was moulded by them into whatever shape they had wanted, shaped to whatever whim and fancy they needed and shaped without regards to the cracked clay left in their wake.
“No.” I said. “I… don’t want to be touched right now.”
And Raphaël listened. That scared me. I waited and waited and then waited some more but his presence near me did not budge any closer.
“Would you like to talk about it? Or stay in silence.”
“I’d like to keep quiet.”
And so there we stayed, El’s mouth shut as if sealed under seven keys. It did not take long for his shape to remember me the slow dread of pain to come—I could not forget; it had been etched further than my skin, deeper than my flesh; had been carved into the lumps of the bones of my lost body. It stayed with me, that pale shadow of a shadow, even now in this vast place of nothing.
“You can go back to sparring with Durante.” My mouth said. “I’d… I’d like some privacy, Raphaël.” I said.
He gave me a voiceless nod and then his presence retreated from me.
I was alone and did not know whether I would ever be fine with that.
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There were very few things worse in this world than not being able to help a friend.
I wanted to hug Lamaré, to tell him that he would be safe; that I would do my best to protect him; that there was someone that would not betray his trust and break his confidence in himself.
Self-esteem was the currency of the self and Lamaré was dirt-poor in it. His bravado was a veneer that hid away an ego so thin and frail that it could not conceptualise of deserving better. That the deprivations he had suffered were not his fault but that of those that afflicted such upon him; because beyond the sorrow, there was a guilt so deep that I felt a lump in my throat.
Lamaré blamed himself—if only he’d done better as a son; if only he wasn’t born the way that he was; if only he wasn’t a coward; if only, if only, if only.
Lucifer’s bleeding light, how I hated those two words.
Yet I could not intervene, could not comfort because to do so was to perpetuate the lack of respect endemic to Lamaré’s kith and kin; they did not care for his own free will and so I had to do better. To ignore his wishes would do worse. I could only wait and hope that he’d pull through.
The weight of Ashen in my right hand comforted me but the newfound mastery of that very same blade was colder than any iron left out in the night. I knew then, everything that Lamaré D’Amice knew in regards to swordsmanship, endowed with the skills of a lifetime of bruises and cuts and broken bones.
My passion for fighting dimmed from a great conflagration to a humble hearthfire, doused by water so frigid and alive that it could not help but die.
There was space around me so I took to the Escalier—the Steps—the sequence of martial forms known to all swordsmen this side of the Aller. A spearman need not know any skill to defeat a swordsman of equal compare but the same could not be said for the contra.
The First Step went from unsheathing your arm to blocking a phantom blade with an understrike right from the scabbard as you stepped forward and breathed out. At the apex of the cut, I transitioned into a half-step in between the First and Second, relaxing my blade down to my side to put it into the first guard of the seven guards: the long-guard.
It was an unstable guard that used the blade less like a cutting tool and more like a living serpent of steel; made to weave in with a thrust or to strike from many angles or to parry from many more.
I struck out with an overcut just as I did with another forward step, revolving around the axis of the Escalier. With dexterity, I turned my sword into the window-guard to parry something unseen, catching it with my false and sliding the imaginary blade out. A window-guard is a thing of beauty, with the haft held close to the face and just above the shoulders, the blade held out in ready; the window-guard is called the guillotine for its propensity for chopping off heads.
From Second, I stepped to Third; set my sword in the crown-guard with my hands spread out from one another, the hilt held between as the mean while the blade itself angled outwards as if a king was ready to anoint a knight into a paladino. Or to decree war and strife and death and taxes.
The transition between Third and Fourth consisted of striking down with a diagonal overcut, parrying the phantom so that its sword went above the shoulder, and then slaying it by running your blade through its imaginary heart. But ghosts, you see, cannot die but by silver or platinum, but by circles of salt or ash, but by the occultist’s spell or the exorcist’s prayer.
Another step took me to Fifth and there I became the D’yabel incarnate, assuming the bicorne-guard; the guard of two horns is that one which places the hilt parallel to the forearms, a mockery of the crown for it holds lower and ready to gore.
And gore I did, choosing the white variant of the guard, thrusting out as I kicked the legs out from under the spectre unseen; its sword had fallen prey to my abrazaré, my blade embrace, as we wrestled to cast out the other in a battle of dexterity.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
But, you see, the D’yabel always wins when you deal and traffick with the One that Fooled God.
And so came the Sixth where I travelled my sword down into the brief path of the short-guard, a reflection of the long but stout rather than fickle. Stable with my hands, I channelled the specter’s blade down the length of mine own until I could throw it out and strike with the tip to blind my assailant wraith.
I stepped into the Seventh Form, arriving at the gates of Hel and so with a door-guard; it was a low and stable guard given its connotations to the bowels of the earth. I opened the gates with an undercut, strong and fierce enough such that I needed not to rely on the unstable nature of the previous guards to snatch victory from the jaws of the beast.
Gates broken marked my passage into the Eighth and so I reset to a guard even lower than before, the boar-guard; that one which ruts in the dirt and is ready to gore. My blade was held much like with a door-guard but to the side, hands angled so as to make an undercut or a feint into an overcut.
I struck up, feinted as if to thrust, then overcut into the phantom, using the momentum to position to the lowest, most stable guard there was.
The Ninth and final step took me back to where I began the Danse. I was at the tail end and so it was appropriate that the guard be the tail-guard; once again the blade is angled behind me, held downwards and ready to strike out with all my force.
I cut up, parrying the imaginary blade and laying back to rest my phantom with a decapitation that ran from his collar bone to his throat.
With a flourish, I sheathed Ashen in its scabbard that I held in my left hand.
This specific Danse was named the Pilgrim’s Danse; it was the Church’s variation of the Escalier, made for physical prayer and to exalt the body in Lucifer’s image. The sword-forms of crusader’s were known only to them and other Luciferines.
With my Danse complete, I stepped forward to dance with Durante in a dance of steel and blood and sweat and laceration.
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I recovered my wits much like an invalid recovers their limbs, which was to say: I did not.
But the world does not wait and so I stepped out from the vast nothingness and stepped into Naranca as a spectre within the vessel of Raphaël-Son-of-the-Éder’s body.
I saw him Step to the Danse of the Pilgrim, a reflection of myself therein. It was the strangest thing to see him move as if Father, sure and stout. Where once El might have fallen to rage and anger and the lust of blood, now he fought cold and slow.
He lost many exchanges and won many more; no master won every play. It was impossible to do so without the aid of rúna and the lack thereof in your opponent.
From long-guard to short-guard; from window to crown; from bicorne to door-guard; from boar’s tooth to its tail, I saw Raphaël walk with Ashen. I walked with him, in spirit; felt him drawing on my soul to drink of its knowledge of Escalier, of the Art of the War Flower.
I was glad then, that at least someone could make use of that. A gift, of something that hurt me too much for me to properly use, but that would serve to protect another.
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“I yield!” Durante held back his blade. I gave him a nod of respect, a grin on my face and went on to pat him on the back.
“You are far too good with your armizarét to be stuck with Claude, Durante.” He laughed in that deep and amicable way that men were wont to do in response to flagrant and shameless flattery.
“You fightin’ tonight?” The lithe and deadly swordsman asked me.
“Aye, though this time I know there’ll be live blades.”
Durante’s eyes widened.
“So what they say is true: you didn’t know that Mallory would be bladed.”
I scoffed and spat out a wad of bloodied saliva—that was the libation for Claude’s coming death. The bastard’s debt was due just before I left for the Cairn between the Three Mountains.
“Got shanked in the kidneys, in the neck and probably somewhere else I can’t remember.”
He looked me up and down and called bluff.
In response I took out Ashen and slit my own throat. Blood welled up at the wound but did not spill or stain my blade. It scabbed over and shut and then scarred over and was subsumed into the surrounding epithelial tissue.
Duran whistled, low and slow and impressed.
“Bleed me dry, what’d you sell to get that kind of rúna? Sell your soul to the D’yabel?”
Oh if only he knew that he was right.
“Crossed my heart and swore to die, Duran—can’t tell no lie and can’t tell no truth either ‘bout my rúna besides that it's a back script and it bloody hurt to get inked.”
My swordsman friend had that disgusted look on his face of a man with envy in his heart. “God’s Son on the Cross, I’d sell my maman and papa if it meant not needing to bleed like a stuck pig every week.”
“There you are wrong, Duran—nothing you could sell would be worth more than this. Don’t look at me like that; I don’t mean it as an insult. This is just as much curse as blessing.”
I sighed and looked around to see the many fighters bleeding on the sand of the Pit, throwing up dust and cough and sweat.
“Anyhows, see you tonight.” Gave a nod to Durante and Arcanzol, crouched low and then leaped up and out of the Pit in a single bound.
I grabbed my cloak on the way out—I heard Bellamie sleeping soundly inside.
“Hey, Lamaré, you want to catch a bite? Maybe go to a restaurant you like? We’re swimming in Her Majesty’s silver.”
My silent spectre grumbled something nearly inaudible but I understood enough to know that it was assent. Though he did not say it, I grasped at his vague mist of memories for the eatery that he most enjoyed—a little place in the West District near the Docks that served clam chowder and raw molluscs and océan fricassées well-salted and well-spiced.
Got me salivating at the thought and for once my life wasn’t in mortal danger.
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I sat at a table that overlooked the wine-dark sky and the wine-dark sea, both melting into one another as if dye in a vat. I waited, cleaning my blade and oiling it to preserve it from rust. My scabbard was washed out in the back with water then spirit and finally whale-bile diluted in an alkaline solution that rapidly dried when exposed to the open air.
Rust spirits, much like plague spirits, were weak to the influence of soaps and resins of eucalyptus. Ashen could be left out in the night for a heptade and it would only darken but not scale over with heavy oxidation—a supernatural property of lévayathan bones; though, I reckoned that it wasn’t a specific consequence thereof. God’s blood had a preserving effect on material substances and monsters were but mutated wildlife imbued with ichor, so it followed that arms and armour wrought of such would keep.
When a wench came and put my order on the table, I thanked her and tipped her five coppers. She gave me a wink and I heard her pulse go from a steady trot to a high-tempo canter; the expansion of the blood vessels on the surface of her skin was like a release of perfume from an exhalatorie ampoule.
Gave her a wink back but didn’t otherwise pursue; odd how the language of love and war were one and the same. ‘Your conquests’; ‘Win her over’; ‘Take her’; turns of phrase that could be used interchangeably in either courting or in raping and pillaging.
It said something about the nature of menkind—and that word is not misspoken or misused because I do not refer to mankind as in Man, as in humanity, but as the unfairer sex. It made sense that Adam was moulded out of Lilith.
My thoughts became a tad too dark then and my food was beginning to cool and so I decided to lighten myselves up.
“All yours, Ré.”
We fought a bit, arguing that the other should at least take a bite before I sort of shoved the man into my body—phrasing.
“Very well, since you insist.” He said as if his mouth did not salivate just as much as mine own.
The chowder was spiced with Jartoshi clove, little bits of chopped-up muscle thrown inside to add texture and disparity to the soup along with root vegetables. It was a nice entreé, simple and yet stout with an aftertaste of content appetite, of napping under the shade of a cerim tree on a hot summer’s day.
Bellamie did not take to anything spiced or salted, enjoying instead the unleavened bread and the dried meats we were supplied with to fortify the chowder—Lamaré even fed him, forgetting for a moment his reticence for the ratling.
The next meal was a fricasseé lightly dusted with what Lamaré recognized as sendal-wood bark and Adraqi cinnamon—black cannelle, in specific. It made the dish seem as if alive in our mouth, burning and cooling and relaxing and waking. The salty undertone of the Océan Aller bled through to remind us that the dish was, in fact, something of the sea rather than the land.
The last and final step of our course were seven clams, the muscles laid out on their shells with spices set to our right so that we might make them to our own taste. Lamaré had no pity for the still-living sea-creatures, salting the slug-like things without mercy and spicing them this way and that.
The scarlet tub āq, in particular, was rather astringent on the nose; almost made us sneeze. Otherwise, the spice made the muscle taste like fire and burn twice as hot, and yet the pain was like a poppy-draught; sweet and numb.
As we waited there with our sword laid against the wall and our breeches unknotted so as to make room for all the food in our belly, I could hear the workers whisper their gossip. The ladies encouraged the wench that had served us to invite me out for drinks; I did not want to disappoint her and so got the attention of the nearest server, paid him for the meal and left with Ashen on my shoulder.
“How was the food?” I asked Lamaré as I walked parallel to the Aller, watching the sun set under my hood.
He took a moment and I knew then that he smiled with that peaceful smile of someone reliving a calm memory of low summer and high tide.
“It was exquisite, mon ami.”
Through the heart-binding, I felt something akin to a phantom peck on my cheek. Soft and quick and nearly unseen.
“Merci beaucoup, El.”
In response I simply smiled as he had, reliving that calm memory of high summer and low tide.