Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Sins of Old
“Taro Coure. That was his name,” Sarah began by saying. “He was the Highlord of Cresik some eight hundred cycles ago. Spent his entire life mostly just making rich people richer and using poor people to do it. Nothing new. In the Fifty-fifth cycle of the age- this was about fifteen cycles after Talisatia had been colonised, mind you– Taro had started showing signs of Courtesan Madness. That or some other sex-disease, doesn’t matter which. What matters was what it did to his mind.”
Sarah sorted through the fragments of stone and took a broad pointed sliver from the pile, now covered in resin, and pushed it firmly into the spilt of the wood. She handed it to him to hold as she tore off the sleeves of her shirt.
“Can you show me how to make my arms look like yours?” Michael asked earnestly.
Sarah smiled to herself. “Of course. After Nikereus we’ll train every day, okay? Now, hush. After a few cycles, Highlord Taro Coure was little more than completely mad. He’s seeing things that aren’t there, hearing voices, you know the like. So, Taro shuts himself in. Becomes a complete recluse in the Great Library of Myner’s Hold. And somewhere, deep in one of those archives, he read the word Legacy, and decided it meant devil or witch. Most books used it that way- most still do. And according to the history books, he was driven to insanity by thoughts of Legacies. He began to claim he saw them everywhere he went. And one day he ordered a city-wide search of Myner’s Hold. Raided homes of nobility and peasants alike. Damn-near caused a riot on par with the Eriscian Revolt.” She tore the fabric into small strips and began tying them tightly around the meeting point of the wood and stone.
“And one, poor, poor bastard named Lewina Hues was caught using their Arcancy to put out a barn-fire.”
Michael’s mouth dropped with disbelief. “They caught a real Legacy because the Highlord ordered a city-wide search on the basis of a delusion?”
Sarah nodded and tamped down the fabric until she was happy. “Coure was sent into a frenzy. Of course, no one ever saw Hues again. And Coure used their discovery as reason enough to begin something which I’m sure you’ll have heard of… The Crekaen Witching Crusade.”
Michael pressed a hand into his hairline, utterly horrified. “The Crekaen Witching Crusade was for Legacies?”
Sarah began on another spear. “Yes. Managed to capture and kill about a hundred Legacies. This was before places like Fort Guardian, you see, so they had nowhere to hide.” Sarah stopped speaking for a moment and she cleared her throat with an unsteady cough. “Unfortunately, Taro the Immoral still had a very loose understanding of what Legacies were. And his mind grew steadily madder. So eventually he stopped looking for magic-wielders and starter looking for people who didn’t go to Riinin Church on Riiday and Thallinaday. Started hunting artists he didn’t particularly like. Herbalists whose medicines frightened him. Anyone practising the “wrong” religion. People caught talking to their pets. I believe the final count was well over three thousand people hanged. If you’ve ever Myner’s Hold referred to as ‘the City of the Noose’, then now you know why.”
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“Good Gods,” Michael breathed. The ever-blowing breeze of the Treewater seemed cold as ice.
“Legacies left Cresik as quickly as they could. They went to Olympium, to the Ringlands, to Ahuralend and the Drift Isles. Fort Guardian was one of the first strongholds made. It wasn’t the last.” Sarah sighed and began binding the second spear tightly at its neck.
It took Michael some time to speak again, but he felt it necessary to say, when his voice finally returned. “So even though Taro Coure isn’t the Highlord, anymore, and even though this isn’t Cresik...”
“We still hide. Because although that man was basically Thall, himself, Taro Coure didn’t kill three thousand people on his own. He was an insane tyrant, and his insanity was followed to the letter by perfectly sane people. Is anyone alive today as mad as him? Maybe not. But Ardic Grimhold is just as cruel, and if he had any reason to think that a Talisatian Crusade would benefit him, I don’t think he’d be above inciting one. Or paying people enough to carry one out.”
“Most people can’t be paid enough to commit an act of inhumanity like that,” Michael said firmly, only to find himself thinking of the guard who fired the crossbow into the house of unarmed Dim-siders, and the faded scars on his ribs.
Sarah sucked her teeth and nodded. “Like I said before, we’re not worried about the masses… just the dedicated, malicious few, and how reasonable they can make themselves appear."
Michael tried to picture his homeland enthralled in ideas of such bizarre, religious zealotry. But within the thought he knew real life didn’t play out like that. It was never obvious and ridiculous enough to be easily denounced. Bad people are too clever to make it easy on the good. Evil festered on the line between okay and not. Just close enough to someone’s idea of justifiable that no one feels comfortable saying its right or wrong. The most evil things in the world were made possible by making enough people too uncomfortable to say anything. Michael knew, beyond anything, how powerful the act of saying something was, and how often people neglected that privilege out of discomfort.
Sarah finished up her second spear and saw his forlorn face. She touched his chin in a sisterly fashion and said, “Come on, let’s find some wood we can use for knife-handles. Now, it’s your turn. Tell me a story about your friends.”
Michael began small, with little tales of mischief. He left out their family names, not wanting to cloud the stories with connotations that he didn’t put there himself. At first it was hard, like talking about a lost one, but the more he spoke, the more it was like stretching a sore arm. It was numb and painful in an idle way, but they were things he’d yearned to think of, to speak of, ever since he’d left home. Once he’d finished talking about the time they’d stolen the donkey from a priest, both himself and Sarah were weeping in laughter.
So much so, Michael almost didn’t notice his vein twinge.
So much so, that his face was still sore with laughter as the cloud of arrows flew over their heads.