Whomever had carved the chair upon which I now sat must have been a rube, a know-nothing villager, who, upon their first visit to a city, decided that arches were so great that henceforth all furniture should consist of arches and nothing but arches. Onto this abomination he had carved tigers, lions, leopards, and various birds of prey, with snarls that were meant to project fierceness but succeeded only in making the animals appear as though they had the runs.

At least the facial expression on the lady sitting across from me matched her taste in decor.

"Hello, mother mine," I said, smiling. The servants had been sent away. What a shame this Lady Arianites did not pay her seneschal a decent wage. Securing this meeting had cost me three-fourths of the money I had stockpiled from Ada's stealing, and after setting everything up, the seneschal had hopped on a horse and gone on the run, but I considered it all an investment. Not for the last time did I thank myself for picking a cheat skill that gave me information I otherwise had no business knowing. 

"No." She said, shaking her head in such minute movements that she reminded me of a minnow. "No. No. Aunt...she, you--"

"Yes," I said. "Me. The son you tossed away. What did you tell Lord Arianites on the wedding bed? That you rode a stallion and broke your hymen dismounting? Or that the stallion rode you, and left you with his get?"

That late Lord Agnellus was a pig through and through, rutting with his own cousin.

She looked at the floor. I glanced down. A mosaic. Was this an appropriate time to admire art? "I'm sorry, Balthazar. I-- Aunt-- the family, I couldn't--"

"I understand." I said. "But that was then and this is now. And now I need your aid, and you will give it to me."

Her head jerked up. "I can't. Please, Balthazar, I have two daughters and Aunt won't allow it. She said I couldn't ever see you or speak to you; if the other noble families even guess that you're my son, the harm it could do to the Skantarii--"

I stood up. Took a step, then another. Belted to the side of my waist was a longsword meant for an adult man; on my vertically-challenged frame, the scabbard scraped my ankles.

Lady Arianites flinched. A thirty-two year old woman flinching at a thirteen-year old boy; why did my heart fill with such disgust? Disgust was unproductive.

Yet..."You disgust me." I was playing a role. A role. The angry, angsty teenage boy. It was just a role.

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"Balthazar-- I'm sorry, don't kill me-- servants! Jody! Jody! Help!" She yelled. Pointless. This entire wing of the castle was empty. Stupid, it was Jody, your seneschal, who betrayed you.

I drew the sword. A longsword, as the name suggested, was a long sword. It came equipped with a crossguard and a pommel. Unlike a katana, a longsword in this world wasn't usually pattern-welded, the flat instead polished steel. Which is why I could see the dawning horror on her face: her shifting eyes, that pale-faced stare I had previously only seen in slasher movies.

She screamed. Made sense. Lord Agnellus the pig, Lady Arianites the sow. Could two pigs give birth to a man?

I stopped a step away from her and knelt down, swinging the sword about until it rested at my throat. She shut up.

"Kill me." I said.

Crickets.

"You gave me life. Spent nine months nurturing me in your womb. Do you not find it appropriate that our tale should end where it began?"

She stared at me, but with a different kind of fear. "You're mad. Some Asura or-- or foul spirit--"

Nonsense. The Avesta told the followers of Zarathustra that Asuras were beings of good. It was the Daevas who were evil, but in this world everything was topsy-turvy. Not that I cared. My god was the almighty free market, his apostles Keynes, Smith, Friedman, Hayek, Sen and Marx.

"If you don't aid me, mother, Lady Skantarii will see to it that I am dead within the month. Poison or beheading, a hunting accident or a manure explosion, and it will be as good as if you did the deed yourself. So why pretend? If you wish to condemn me to death, here I am! Kill me and set yourself free. Bury me under the floorboards and plug your nose to the stink."

"Balthazar..." The floor, when wet, deepened from brown to a proper red; I had seen bark like that before, in the giant redwood trees that gave Redwood City its name. One in particular was among the tallest trees in the world, a goliath with a hollow belly that Ada and I had scampered about in, a boy and his toddler. At the time I saw it as a corpse substituting granduer for life...would it have taken even three-dozen strokes of an axe to topple it? Yet life was strange, for once again we had found ourselves in the belly of a giant rotting tree, this family called Skantarii. 

"Put the sword away." She said, her voice so quiet and high I thought it the squeaking of the floorboards. "I'll do it. I'll help you, my Balthazar. My darling son." Her fingers ran across my face. I resisted the urge to bite them and noted that something about this woman set me out of sorts. I was playing a role, after all.

"Thank you," I said, rising and sliding the sword back into the sheath, but not before missing and slicing the cloth of my pants. I yelped. Then: "Er, you didn't see me slice my own pants."

"Of course," she said, her eyes red. Giggle, woman, and I'll-- I'll-- ugh. 

I turned for the door. Without looking back, I said, "Good. Remember what you have promised me, because if you forget, then I too might forget. About keeping your secrets, that is."

Ada, Ada, my sweet cousin. I won't hurt that woman you insist on calling mother. For your sake, I'll even slip white gloves over my bloody hands. I'll let you live your dream of becoming a hero. And if this world opposes it-- this pre-industrial, parasitical and inefficient society, I'll recycle it and everything in it to fertilizer so something better can grow in its stead.  

If the Lady Arianites said something, I didn't hear it. I left that castle and rode a pair of borrowed mares overnight to the Skantarii estate.