“My life has long been filled with much suffering,” said the Bogman. “Must I do unto others what has been done to me?” The Everswamp answered, “This is the way of man. This is the way of the world.” And Death was upon him, the last and greatest master. So the Bogman sacrificed himself, body and mind, to the Everswamp. He was granted everlasting life and power beyond men. The Bogman asked, “What of mercy?” The Everswamp answered, “What is mercy but justice forsaken?”
-The Legend of the Bogman
Holcort, Grackenwell
The morning smelled dewy, as far as Kimbel could tell through the sack over his head.
His four handlers marched him down a winding, gravelly road to a destination that had not one name but many, and which changed every time he asked: Shut Up, A Land of Honey and Sweet Breads and Pretty Girls, Where Do You Think, Your Mother’s House Because She Misses Us, Exactly Where I Say You’re Going Brat, and Oh You’ll See. The fine, sharp stones hurt Kimbel’s feet. He had the grave and all too plausible intuition that he was about to die.
His mind raced. What led him here. What happened. What lay ahead, he hoped and hoped not. He may as well have been a slave boy who had stolen the crown in the dead of night. So cold was his father now, a parent only by blood, an impassive king in every sentiment. He was pure power lorded over the weak. Cold as the Bogman. Every bit as mighty.
Power. Power was the law of the land in Grackenwell. It was a truth Kimbel knew and used to love; he was more accustomed to being the gator than the waterfowl, and the turning of the tables prodded a sore spot deep in his heart. He felt something alien. For the first time, he pitied, truly pitied, the slaves.
He had yet to feel any affection for them, not even compassion. But his hatred for them, his love for their mockery and torment, was mysteriously absent now, like a bad fever of his had broken and he’d sweat out his malice. Hane. Poor old man. Pitiable. Not unlike a sick, mangy dog that he would frown at but not want to touch.
It was a subtle change in the chemistry of Kimbel’s heart. Still, it was enough for him to notice. Maybe he could attribute this to his desperate howling dread of death. His head was swimming.
Whoosh. The sack flew off his head, ripped off, and the world was bathed in blue pre-dawn twilight. His quickening breaths made fog in the cool morning air like smoke out of a freshly fired cannon.
The world around him clarified blink by blink. A crowd stood gathered before him made of the bored, the angry, the excited, and the worried. He wasn’t sure which type of onlooker frightened him the most.
He stood on an elevated platform of stone. Behind him, the prison guards. To his left, the stocks; they were stained with flecks of old blood from past victims. To his right, a tall but unadorned wooden throne with a plain desk in front of it, which already held a scroll, a quill, and a well of ink.
Teralt hadn’t been bluffing. Kimbel truly was about to face his trial.
Not in Holcort proper, though. Not before an audience of noblemen. They were on the outskirts of the city, and these were commoners assembled here, dirty, simple, and there were even some slaves among them.
This was where offenders of the lower classes were tried and punished. Peasants. Farmers. Poor folk and coinless slaves. And now Kimbel’s fate would be decided here, too. He let out a loud groan of protest and felt like he might start to weep. How humiliating. The prodigal prince, fallen from grace, laid lower still.
But he wasn’t alone on the platform. Two others stood off in the corner, their ankles and wrists also bound in chains. He noticed the quindent brands on their necks first—slaves who were also facing some sort of judgment. Since slaves were property, they had no trials. This did not bode well.
He looked down and noticed something even more disturbing. Both of the slaves were missing their left hands. There was a common saying in Grackenwell: “No third chances.” Every time a slave attempted to escape his master, he had his non-dominant hand cut off by axe. If he survived, he was permitted to return to servitude without additional punishment.
But any slave who tried to escape a second time sealed his fate—execution.
“No,” Kimbel breathed. Then, louder, “No! No, wait!”
Teralt clopped to the front of the platform with an obnoxious swagger, hands on his belt. “Attention!” he roared. The crowd fell silent. “King Brynh Garrotin has now arrived.” Kimbel’s stomach sank. “The trial to determine the guilt of Kimbel Garrotin is now set to begin.”
“That’s Prince Kimbel,” said the boy, his voice small, quivering with the weight of his terrible circumstances, and he didn’t even earn an admonishment or the brandishing of a whip. Teralt just said nothing and walked back to his assigned place.
Then it happened. Red-caped soldiers parted the crowd, hollering for the onlookers to make way. Those who failed to obey—or fast enough—were brutally shoved aside, many of them knocked off their feet. Out of a slave-drawn carriage stepped the king.
At first glance, he looked just how Kimbel remembered him. He was the same man he’d wrestled on a bloodstained beach far from home not so long ago. The same man who’d taught him almost everything he knew. But the closer he drew, the less familiar he seemed. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep or last night’s drink, likely both, and his face was stubbly like a slave’s. He was a different man now. It was King Brynh Garrotin in the flesh, but Kimbel’s father was gone. Maybe dead.
Brynh sat in the tall wooden throne and unfurled the scroll in front of him with an air of dispassionate business. “I am here today, in the sight of soldiers, free men, and slaves, to conduct the trial of Kimbel Garrotin. He stands accused of one of the most severe crimes it is possible for a prince to commit: the treasonous theft of his royal birthright and disregard for the throne of Grackenwell.”
The crowd started to boo the prince. “Quiet!” Teralt bellowed, and the audience obeyed. “Humblest apologies, Your Majesty.”
Brynh proceeded as if nothing had happened. “As the primary witness to this crime, I am able to testify to the veracity of this charge. I was the one who found Kimbel reading the Secret Ledger in his half of the tent we shared on the shore of Le’Me. He’d stolen the key to my trunk while I slept and opened the book in private. This is why Kimbel has been imprisoned since then. This is why Kimbel stands trial today. I have before me the sworn written testimonies of my royal guards Sheam and Adhain, who were also witnesses to this crime.” He cleared his throat and clenched his jaw visibly. “If anyone here today has eyewitness testimony or some other evidence to present in defense of the accused, speak now.”
“Father,” Kimbel croaked. “Please.”
“I’ll ask once more. Does anyone have eyewitness testimony or any other evidence to present in defense of the accused?” All was quiet. “Very well then. Now, for the accused.” He didn’t look up from the scroll, much less in the direction of his son. “What do you have to say of your crime? Did you or did you not overstep the bounds of your birthright, reading the tome of greatest national significance in Grackenwell before your time, an act of treason against the reigning king?”
“Father,” he pleaded, “please just listen—”
Brynh slammed his hand down on the desk and finally looked at his son, eyes full of fire, two roaring funeral pyres. “Did you or did you not read the Secret Ledger while your father, the king, still lived and reigned?”
Kimbel wanted to argue. However, his father had him trapped. The questions were framed in such a way that they answered themselves. If he said yes, he was every bit the usurper his father claimed he was. If he said no, that flew in the face of two eyewitness testimonies and the word of the king—effectively making him a liar.
And he knew what Grackenwell did with its liars.
Don’t lie to me, boy.
“I did it,” the prince answered begrudgingly.
“The evidence is settled, then. The accused has confessed. His confession corroborates all available testimony. No doubt remains that he is, indeed, guilty. I formally declare that Kimbel Garrotin is guilty of treason against the free nation of Grackenwell.” Waves of gasps and exclamations ebbed and flowed through the crowd.
Kimbel’s heart sank into his stomach now. A shadow skulked in the corner of his blurring vision.
The king scanned the rest of the scroll but read nothing else aloud. Instead, he stood from the desk, reaching for something coiled around his belt.
“What’s happening?” Kimbel asked. No reply. No sound but the clicking of his father’s boots on the stone, the faint creaking of leather.
Then crack!
A bolt of pain lanced through Kimbel’s back. Hot. Stinging. Wet. He sputtered and coughed; that aggravated his fresh wound all the more. “F-father,” he wheezed. He staggered a step. “Father, please. What’s happ—” Crack!
Kimbel bit back the cries of agony that pushed their way up from his throat, held them there until he could swallow them down again. A few onlookers cheered. They waved rags and some of them stripped off their tunics or one of their shoes to wave in the air. He tried not to look any of them in the eye.
“Father,” said the prince more calmly, finally regaining some of his composure. “Why are you doing this? Is this the sentence for my crime? How many lashes?” Crack! Kimbel grunted this time. Teralt was a savage brute who delighted in torturing the boy, but nothing compared to the pain that his father inflicted. The king was an artist with instruments of pain when the occasion called for them. “Please tell me! Why are you doing this? You owe me the truth!”
“Now you want the truth?” His father’s eyes were bulging, crazed with rage. “Why am I doing this? Because it’s my right! I am your father!” Crack! “And you...” Crack! “...are my son!”
Kimbel bit down so hard on his tongue that he tasted iron. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a pained choking sound. He didn’t remember falling to his knees but his legs must have given out at some point.
“Or... you were my son.” The king panted, pacing around the platform. His face glistened with his own sweat and stray flecks of his son’s blood. “But that night on the island, you told me just how little you care for my life. Couldn’t even wait for me to die to snatch up your inheritance, could you?” Crack! “Upset a dynasty because you just had to meddle!” Crack! “You want the throne so badly that you betrayed your own father. Betrayed your nation. You betrayed the only flesh and blood you have left—after I gave you everything!” Crack! “And what you did can never be undone. Not even if I take this whip and shred your back until I see the white of your spine!”
This swing caught Kimbel over the knuckles of his left hand. He realized, only after the fact, that his body had moved instinctively to try to protect itself. He let out a wounded little whimper as the pain set in.
His back had been so wounded, healed, and then wounded again that he must have gotten used to the pain, or perhaps his body was no longer able to feel pain like that in that spot anymore. His hands were still soft and fresh. It hurt like the first time he was whipped in jail—no, worse.
“Milord!” a hoarse voice cried out from the crowd. It was Hane. “Forgive me, milord! Please show the boy mercy! I beg it!”
A guard broke rank to corner the old slave and whipped him once on the back. Hane stumbled and fell to the ground, his face now twisted up in his own pain. Onlookers rebuked his outburst.
“Mercy only benefits the weak!” said the king. “Justice, truth... These are the virtues of the strong. There can be no family without a man to rule over it, a wife and children to submit. There can be no nation without a king and his many subjects. There can be no such thing as strength or wealth or wisdom without the weak, the poor, the fools—those who are inferior! All a man can do is know his place. This is the way of the world. It has been since the beginning and will be until the end. Neither a slave nor a prince will ever change that!”
Kimbel waded deeper into the waters of his own mind. It was the only place he could escape the pain, or at least where it didn’t scream quite so loud. His grip on the world, on his fight, was slipping.
Hane hitting the ground in the throng of onlookers. A new whip wound against his thin skin, his brittle bones. Please show the boy mercy. I beg it.
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He’d been a slave for all but a recent few precious years of his life. He knew the price of speaking out of turn and still he dared to question the decision of the king in broad daylight. For Kimbel. The boy who delighted in tormenting him ever since he came into the world of royal parentage.
Might do well to stop thinking in terms of power. Whose face you got under your boot. Lived your whole life that way, you have. And look where it’s got you. Might rethink things. If you survive it, I reckon. I say, truly, I hope you do.
The friendly smile on Hane’s face that day.
This is the way of the world.
Surely there must have been another way.
There can be no nation without a king and his many subjects.
Kimbel thought of every nation in the whole known world. Grackenwell. King. Dridon. Queen. Zan Vayonado. A king-like figure, now dead. Qarda. A king, dead, and now a queen. The islanders to the west had their tribal chiefs, nothing but kings on a smaller scale.
The people of Xheng Yu Xi were different. They chose their own rulers by popular consensus. A delicate and alien system, to be sure, but even they could not sustain themselves without rulers of a sort.
There had to be another way. There had to be some other form of justice in the world. His father was no fool—he could see reason, if only Kimbel could collect himself and state his case quickly enough. He braced for the next vicious bite of the whip... but it never came.
He opened his eyes. In the corner of his vision, he spied Brynh cleaning his blood off the whip with a rag before coiling it back around his belt. A small shred of hope—he clung to it.
“Father,” he rasped. “Please... forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“That was a father’s punishment,” Brynh answered coldly. “Now comes the king’s judgment.” He turned to the guards holding the slaves across the platform. “You! The first one. Front and center.”
“My king,” said one of the guards, “we have no gallows. Shall we—”
“We won’t need it,” Brynh interrupted. “Ready the falling blade.”
Tears welled in Kimbel’s eyes as he saw what was about to happen. A group of red-caped soldiers hauled a tall wooden structure over their shoulders and dropped it so that it connected to the stocks. At the top was an angled iron blade suspended by a rope.
“No,” Kimbel whimpered tearfully. “Don’t... He...”
The guards dragged and shoved the first one-handed slave, although the slave said nothing. Finally he stubbornly went limp and the guards had to force his head through the open hole of the stocks before closing it around his neck. Now it was too tight for him to pull himself free.
“You were branded as property,” Brynh announced so all could hear. “You ran from your master—from your place in life. You were given a second chance... and you wasted it. Again, you forgot your place in life. And Grackenwell would not be the proud nation it is if people did not know their places. Isn’t that right?” The slave said nothing. “There must be consequences. Otherwise, our nation would cease to exist! From the king down to the youngest slave child... We all have our consequences.”
All he’d wanted was to make his own life. All he’d wanted was to find another way for himself. Now his eyes glazed over as he stared at something in the distance, accepting the fate he was dealt, and just as Kimbel opened his mouth to say something in the slave’s defense—shing!
Thud.
The crowd gasped. Kimbel watched in horror as the slave’s head bounced once off the stone platform, rolling to a stop at the edge of the row of soldiers. The body of the slave slumped lifelessly from the stocks and hit the ground. Then the crowd cheered.
Why is this happening? Kimbel wondered. It wasn’t so much the executions that confused him—he’d seen plenty of repeat offender runaways executed—but it felt different this time. It was the first time since he was a small child that he feared the sight of death. Maybe it was because he feared it was about to happen to him, too... but it was almost as though he could feel the falling blade at the nape of his neck, all from watching it happen to someone else.
It was a brand new feeling for him. It was horrific. Painful, even.
Then came memories rushing into his consciousness. He remembered all of the wounded Archipelagians, their limbs blown off by cannonballs or their skin burned to a crisp in the ensuing fires. The pain they must have felt. He remembered driving his sword into their backs to put them out of their misery—those were just words to him then, but now he was beginning to understand.
He showed them mercy. He can show me mercy—I know it!
“The second,” said Brynh.
“Please, Your Majesty,” the second slave begged. “Please take my other hand instead! Please! I can still work! I will—”
“Shut it!” Teralt growled. He personally swung on the unruly slave, punched him so hard across the jaw that a string of blood and a tooth went flying across the platform. The slave was silent after that save for his pained moans and whimpering.
“Wait,” Kimbel said a bit louder this time. “Father, wait!”
“You keep quiet,” Teralt snarled at him as he helped lead the slave to the stocks. “Or you’ll get the same treatment!”
Guards cleared away the headless body of the previous slave. They forced the still living, still struggling slave into the stocks and shut him inside. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone watched it happen again.
Shing!
Thud.
How they cheered.
The executioners hoisted the bloodied blade up a third time and held it in place.
“I read a book!” Kimbel rasped. “I only read a book! Father, please!”
“Don’t you lie to me! Or these people!” Brynh shoved the guards aside and took his son by the chains himself. “You stole your inheritance! What does it mean when a son takes his inheritance early? It means his father might as well be dead already! And what happens to someone who tells the king he ought to be dead?” The crowd watched in spellbound silence. “I asked you all a question!”
“You kill him!” “Kill him!” “You have to execute him!” The commoners praised the king for what he was about to do.
“From the king down to the youngest slave child... and everyone between.”
Kimbel’s handlers moved to grab him. “No!” Kimbel cried out. “Father, please! Stop this! I’ve learned my lesson!”
“I’ll do it myself.” The king stomped over and shoved the guards aside. “Don’t you touch him! I will do this myself. I’ll even drop the blade myself!”
“No! Please! I beg you! Father, please!” Kimbel was shrieking hysterically now like he did during his beatings as a child. He couldn’t help it. Even now, he remembered what his father used to tell him clear as day. This is for your own good, son. It builds character. You need to learn to stop crying and take it like a man. “Please, please! I am begging—”
“Enough out of you!” Brynh snarled. There was no sight that terrified Kimbel more than his father’s eyes full of rage like they were now. “Enough! Accept your death like a man.” He grabbed Kimbel by the chains that bound his wrists and led him along toward the stocks.
The boy drew in a deep, shuddering breath to calm himself. “You don’t have to do this. Don’t you love me anymore—your own flesh and blood? I’m the only son you’ve got. And I still love you!”
A look washed over the king’s face. His free hand fell to his side, his fingers open like a book.
Then his fingers closed into a fist. He hit Kimbel across the jaw.
The disgraced prince’s ears were ringing. He could scarcely hear his own pained moans over the rush of his father’s blood thumping through him. One of his teeth felt loose. Before him there were three kings, then five, then one, and the world had an odd tilt to it, so crooked he thought that he and everyone else might fall off the edge and into the sky.
“Don’t lie to me, boy.”
Was that real or imagined? It was hard to tell in the moment.
Reeling. Listing. Ringing. Blood dripping. Eyes blurry, a fire on his back and in his mouth. Vision tunneling. The shadow moved in closer, constricting.
He felt a weight drop from his wrists and ankles. His chains had been unlocked. They wouldn’t fit in the stocks. He was logically aware of his situation, or at least he thought he was, but everything else came second to the pain. No one had ever caused him greater pain in his life than his father. The agony ruled his mind.
There was some quiet. The king was saying something that Kimbel couldn’t hear, and then a figure appeared at his side all of a sudden, flailing his arms. The king took a step back.
“Are you certain?” Their voices seemed underwater.
“Yes, my king. By the Bogman.”
“You, remain where you are. You and you, your battalions, to the gates. Now!”
Word of what was happening hit the audience like a spark to cannon powder and then the whole crowd exploded into pandemonium. People shouted and pushed each other. A stampede broke out. Wide-eyed humans scattering like cockroaches, and a brave or stupid few staying behind, beating their puffed-out chests. Chaos. Still, he could barely hear it. It sounded like it was all happening somewhere far, far away.
Kimbel filtered out one repeated word from all the commotion. “Qardish! Qardish!” Behind the cacophony, he heard the sounds of distant cannon fire.
The Qardish were here.
They likely suspected Grackenwell in the assassination of their king. Or were they here because they’d heard the news of slavery being reinstated? It was unclear. All that was clear was that a battle was already underway, likely by sea—although the Qardish could make landfall at any moment.
That beautiful princess from the banquet. She was their queen now. She was behind this. He wondered, dreamily, if they were on the same continent again.
He came alert once more. The world was bright and incredibly loud again.
In the ensuing turmoil, everyone’s attention was split in every odd direction. Run. Shove. Dodge. Steal a fallen coin or a loose piece of jewelry. Whip that slave. Call for order. Form up and redirect the stampeding commoners. How quickly a crowd of men devolved into wide-eyed beasts, neither wiser nor nobler than startled cattle.
But it all meant nothing to Kimbel. He’d be dead so soon that he’d never even see the sun again. The thought made his belly heave with the kind of weeping that wrung him dry from the inside out, a sensation he hadn’t had in all the years since he last saw his mother alive.
“Oh, why? Why?” Were those his words or just his thoughts? He couldn’t tell anymore.
He wouldn’t survive the ordeal. Hane was wrong. His father was right. Mercy was an anomaly, a defect, not something on which to rest his hopes for survival, and he was a fool to entertain the simple-hearted old slave the way he did.
And look where it’s got you.
Another breath of clarity. Out of the cold, dark deep in his mind. Into the frigid light seeping through the canopy.
The words of the Secret Ledger flashed in his mind. What he read there was stitched into his veins, engraved on the inner walls of his bones forever and ever. He knew what it meant now. The Secret Ledger, the Legend of the Bogman, everything his father taught him... It all made sense. Finally.
“Face your death with honor,” his father growled, “and I won’t burn you. You might still come back one day.” Brynh dragged him forward to the stocks, through the coagulating blood of the two men who’d gone before him.
Will I be a wise king?
Kimbel was past the point of arguing. Nothing he said could reach his father now. This was the king talking, and it was the king who would execute him. Brynh hoisted his son’s dead weight up onto his feet—the sudden movement dizzied Kimbel, who grabbed the blood-wet stocks to steady himself. His own blood felt thinner than water. His back, his arms, and his jaw were in burning, throbbing pain. His head spun.
He thought of the Bogman. He saw himself in his place, at the bottom of the icy Everswamp. The water was freezing over, little by little, ice encroaching bit by bit, with only a tiny window to freedom remaining. He would either rise or die down here. He knew it.
For a moment, with all the strength he could muster, he shoved the pain down deep. He drowned it in his place. He felt a second wind rush through him.
Someday. Someday a long, long time from now.
Kimbel stood and whirled around suddenly on his father. Brynh flinched. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Before his father could react, Kimbel snatched the whip from his belt. Got behind him. Wrapped it around the man’s neck. Squeezed. A backward punch to the gut. Squeezed harder.
The king fell to his knees. Harder. The cord of leather tightened around the throat until its victim’s skin changed color. Harder.
Hands clawing at the whip. Then grasping it, trying to make it budge, but for him, the surface of the swamp had frozen over, the ice like diamond. Soon the strength had gone out of his arms, hands falling to the dying man’s sides, fingers open like a book.
A hurricane’s eye had passed over Holcort. People froze where they stood. The clopping of horse hooves ground to a halt. Then thud. Kimbel released his iron grasp on the whip and the body that had been his father fell forward, limp like a log. A few tiny flecks of dead blood splattered on impact with the stone.
Kimbel raised his right hand high into the air, fingers splayed and bent to make the Sign of the Bogman. More silence. Come what may, but he had a victory to take to the grave if nothing else.
Then the commoners cheered and applauded him. The soldiers, too, or at least most of them, but the dissenters were met with vicious looks, shoved with shields, prodded at the ends of spears and swords. The look in Teralt’s eyes was something Kimbel would remember until his dying breath, no matter what happened next.
“Bring me my trunk,” Kimbel rasped.
One of the guards stepped forward timidly. He made a small greeting gesture with his hand, then thought better of it. He gave a small bow. “Pardon, Your Grace? What trunk?”
“That is Your Majesty from this instant forth,” Kimbel replied, his voice cracking at first. “And I want my trunk. The one in the dead man’s carriage. It belongs to me, and I want it. Now.”
Three of the guards now sprang into action. They opened the wooden doors at the back of the carriage and retrieved the long trunk from the back, carrying it over to the wooden table and setting it down where Kimbel indicated. Then the young man retrieved the Garrotin family dagger—his dagger, which was stolen from him when he was imprisoned—from the dead man’s belt. He used it to cut the key from the dead man’s necklace and used the key to open the trunk.
He took out the Secret Ledger and dropped it with a thud on the table. He took the white feathered quill and dipped it into the night-black inkwell. Then he turned the pages of the book. Turned. Turned. Everyone regarded him and his book with shame, turning away until he was done. None of them wanted to find themselves in the stocks for prying at royal secrets.
He reached the first blank page and turned back to the one before it. The last words written in the book were Deliego Goches, Grand Emissary of Zan Vayonado. Tortured, drawn, quartered under orders of King Brynh Garrotin.
Kimbel set the quill to the page and wrote, with a trembling hand, King Brynh Garrotin of Grackenwell. Strangled with whip by Prince Kimbel Garrotin, now King Kimbel Garrotin.
He dropped the quill unceremoniously on the desk, closed the Secret Ledger, and set the tome carefully back in the trunk, which he closed and locked.
“Why are we all still standing around?” Kimbel shouted with the strength of a well-fed, unharmed, grown man, though he was none of those things. “The golden mongrels are at our gates! Would you slaves deny your sworn duties? Would you commoners sit idly by and let others fight for you? Decide where your loyalties lie! Do we drown? Or do we rise?” He made the Sign of the Bogman once more—an undead hand reaching up to rise from its grave.
The crowd cheered for him then, louder, fuller than ever. Kimbel called to his soldiers and ordered them to fetch him a set of armor and new clothes—and if they had none to give him, he ordered them to strip it from the corpse. They obeyed their king.
He smiled a wide, wild smile, wiping the dark blood leaking from the corners of his mouth.