They ran riot through Cold Garden, those hundred gray souled men and women of the Scriptorum. They laughed. Kissed strangers or each other, discovering that they were still strangers to each other after all these years. They poured into bars, into brothels, into family homes and everywhere their boney fingers and silver locks went, laughter followed. Singing followed. Their fellow citizens rose as one… and threw a party. Nobody partied like the Joyful Throng in Cold Garden in the days before the war.
A withered elder of sixty crammed his mouth full of grapes, then tore into a roast peafowl, heedless of the shocked looks. He had never eaten flesh before, and perhaps never would again. Now, this magic night and forever after, he would know how roast peafowl tasted. He would know how the skin crackled with salt and nutty brown warm flavors gave way to twisting rivers of unctuous grease. He would taste the flesh. Resistant at first, then yielding against his teeth. Bathed in its own fat, refreshed by onions and thyme. When the flavor overwhelmed him, he took a bite of periwinkle grapes and let the sweet sharpness wash his mouth. Then he tore into the flesh again. He was crying. For forty five of his sixty years, he had never dared show his colors, afraid the scandal would ruin him. Forty years of gray. Tonight would last forever, and he would bloom eternally.
Another house saw an old woman begging her lover.
“Please. You are so good at it.”
“I don’t even understand why you want this?”
“I want to fall asleep. I want to slip under feeling all warm and safe and completely relaxed. No fear. No anxiety. Just a perfect night’s sleep. But it would be a crime to sleep tonight. After I have been asleep for a few minutes, I want you to wake me up.” Her smile lit up a face that had almost forgotten joy, or mischief. Her lover saw the woman she fell in love with resurrected in that smile. “And then I want you to wake me my favorite way.”
“We’ve never actually done that, you goose. You always wake up first.”
“Not tonight. Right?”
Her lover gently kissed the scribe, then pushed her down on their bed. She carefully stood on the soft mattress and hung a little hammered silver pendant on a hook right above the bed. It was their pledge gift, a reminder of poorer, simpler times. Precious memories like rugs, worn from being trodden over and over. But not tonight. Tonight would be fresh and perfectly preserved forever.
The pendant was hung just where eyes could focus on it, as the head containing those eyes rested on the cotton stuffed pillow. Her lover set it spinning, flickering the dim light. Light cores were rare and expensive, but hell, she was a Scribe of the Scriptorum. She could more than afford it.
“Keep your eyes on the pendant. Just focus on it and let yourself go. I’m here. I will carry you all the way down. Down. Down. Down. Down into this perfect moment. A moment of eternal peace, just for you and me. Down. Down. Down.”
Two old scribes, forgetting the ominous twinges in their fingers, slammed strong applejack and chased it with long drags from a communal pipe. It was the first time they had visited this bar. It was their first time mixing kesh and hard liquor. They passed the bar every day for thirty years, telling each other “We really need to try that place some time.” Such things were an extravagance of the wrong sort and they didn’t want to be thought of as that sort. Tonight was special. They stormed through the bright blue door, sat at a round wooden table and demanded the bar’s finest. They bellowed, trying to let the sudden fire in their veins escape through their throats.
“Sing! Sing!”
“I’m going to sing March of-of-of DALLYD’S PIKE!”
“Of-of-of! I’m going to sing it so so so much better than you, you old fool! Listen and learn how it’s done.”
“Screw off, you ancient bat! No one wants to hear you shrieking. It would put them off their drink.” He forced arthritic bones to stand on top of the table and yelled over to the band. “Dallyd’s Pike! Let’s make it roar!”
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
His drinking companion refused to be out done and climbed up next to him. By the gods, they gave it their all! The whole bar was singing along with them and slamming the table to the chorus. The way they always dreamed it would be. The way it always would be, this magic night.
When the song ended, they hugged and yelled “Three cheers for the Xia! Joyous forever!”
“Live forever or die by torture. The next twenty four hours will decide everything.” Xiatoktok looked at his cousins, his two closest allies, and smiled confidently. “Let us quickly review- Our revered Patriarch, the Immortal Xiatamtai, has successfully persuaded the Five City Alliance to unify their currencies into a single, new currency called the Rad. Same name as the cities out east, but so what. Each city’s currency is now trading at a fixed exchange rate for the other currencies and the Rad. Red Mountain sold us a ton of their sovereign debt-”
“A concept we introduced them to.” Xiatokmai muttered.
“Debt payable in Quetzal, which will still be their currency until the change over a year from now. They “kindly” agreed to set their exchange rate at between half and two thirds what it should be. This wipes out their savings and most of their debt. It also screws us to the tune of two hundred million Rads a month. More than enough money to sink the whole bank, not just our department. Wiping out the interests of… a lot of very powerful Xia.”
Xiatokte swore. “I will personally skin Jerri Nomeki.”
“Oh bullshit. You would hire someone to do it.” Xiatokmai sniffed dismissively. She was sweating. So was Xiatokte.
“This leaves the Bank generally, our Investment Banking division in particular, and us three very specifically, on the hook for two hundred million Rads a month in revenue. Revenue we will need to pay back deposits, service existing loans, paying salaries plus the “float” our seniors will be skimming from the top in addition to their usual salaries from the clan. The same Elders who strong-armed us into buying up all that sovereign debt.”
No one had anything funny to say about that.
“We all know how the Clan will make up for such a serious failure. ’Te’s skinner will be busy. Maybe, in exchange for our years of loyal service, they will simply execute our families after harvesting their time. But I doubt it.”
’Te and ’Mai were turning green. “Justice must be seen to be done,” was a very old slogan, and one heartily endorsed by the Disciplinary Committee. Lots and lots of excellent examples available every day. Time to change the mood. ‘Tok clapped once, firmly.
“No matter. I have solved our problems. Step one- we steal the bank. Time to use that pawn and remove Fattie ’Lu. And then we wipe out the networks of Xiatamro, Xiatamzan, Xiatamliu and Xiatamboi.”
Xiatokte looked interested. “All of them are fat ducks, but why Xiatamboi? He has to be the poorest of the lot, probably the poorest on the Council?” His deep set eyes flickered, like a rat getting ready to run up a trouser leg.
“The richest in time, though.” Xiatokmai’s eyes squinted. You could practically hear the gears turning in her excellent head. “The clerks from the Scriptorum. The remission of hours.”
“The Patriarch will be awfully hungry tomorrow morning. It would be filial to prepare a meal for him. We can’t neglect the rest of the Council either. After all, we want them to be strictly “fair” in how they apply the rules.” Said ’Te.
Xiatoktok just looked at the two of them and smiled. They got the hint.
“Steps Two through infinity?”
“Won’t matter if Step One fails. ‘Mia, you are going to round up the Group and take them over to the Golden Sparrow for a party. Let’s get the morale cranked nice and high. We want them doing, not thinking, tomorrow.”
“No problem.”
“’Te will handle ’Lu and the customers. Expect a visit from the City Council and the Vigiles later.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Speed and irresistible force. We control the timing, the momentum, we even have surprise on our side. So we must make our attack with speed and irresistible force! Any obstacle is to be bypassed or smashed through, consequences be damned. If we don’t have the bank by this time tomorrow night, we might as well flee into the mountains and live like Ma for the rest of our lives.”
Xiatoktok rose. “’Mia, I will be joining you at the Golden Sparrow in a few minutes- just need to make myself presentable.”
They looked at his refreshed, moisturized face, immaculate, creaseless robes of hideously expensive bamboo silk and the gold threads stitched tens of thousands of times into exquisite embroidery upon it. His nails were neatly trimmed and polished, his elegant mustache brushed and ever so slightly waxed. His hair was impeccably styled and shone with rare nut oils. The fragrance he wore was exclusively his- made by his brilliant and beautiful wife. Hours from death by torture, and he wasn’t even sweating. Xiatoktok felt his cousins’ hate. He smiled.