Writing: Conventicle, Chapter Six

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

            “Mare!” Aldous jerked awake, startled to find herself in an unfamiliar place. It took her a few moments to place herself, the strange bed with its strange smell. But Cressus asleep beside her felt anything but strange. She watched him in the half-light, steadying her thoughts. It had been an unsettling dream. Weiss, falling down a steep slope on a backdrop of fire, and it had been her hands that pushed him down, and yet as he fell, instead of the dark, angry red swallowing him, golden light swept up from the valley and welcomed him. She had tried to call after him, but she felt her feet planted, her back suddenly bowed by the weight that she had borne on her back since the day she was born. No words had come.

            “Just a dream,” she told herself, but she was worried about Weiss. Cressus had promised that Terrick would talk Weiss home, but after all, the Blind Eye was known for their kills, not their diplomacy.

            Aldous’ stirring woke Cressus, slowly, and he cupped her face in his broad hand, and said, “It’s early.”

            “I had a dream,” she said.

            “Tell me,” he said, and as he lay on his back, listening in that deep way no one ever had before, Aldous told him.

            “It is not your hands hurting Weiss,” said Cressus when she was done. “You’re trying to help him.”

            Aldous nodded and tried not to wonder if it were true.

            “Who is Mare?” added Cressus after a moment.

            “I don’t know,” she replied. “It was just what he said as he was falling.”

#

            She came running up the path, breathing hard, her face set, her red dress a banner. She clutched a staff of wood as she ran.

            “You shall not have him!” she cried, and Terrick spun to face her. The triumph that died on his face at her cry flared up again when he saw her slight figure. Even to Weiss, her long black braid tossed by her steps looked ridiculously childlike as she ran, but her dress was a banner, her mouth, her eyes, and he struggled up the slope even as the weeds and saplings he tried to anchor himself with came up by the roots in his hands.

            “Mare!” he said, but she did not slow or look at him. She sprang at Terrick with the staff already a blur. Terrick whipped a short sword out of a sheath at his thigh and Weiss’s world seemed to distill down to the racket of wood against metal. His Deedsweight pulled him down and pulled him down but he pulled up to level ground and felt for his own long knife when the sound changed to that of wood against flesh and bone, a dull thud, and Terrick fell. Weiss was in time to put the knife at his throat as Mare kicked away his sword. With her staff braced against his chest she said again, with a fierce joy, “You shall not have him.”

            “Check his arm,” she told Weiss, nodding at Terrick’s left arm, and Weiss pushed up the sleeve to reveal a blind eye slashed top to bottom picked out in black ink on the skin of his forearm.

            “Oh,” said Weiss in a small voice, and then he was angry.

            “What is this place?” he demanded of Terrick, but it was Mare who answered.

            “Tirsin,” she said. “Oh, Weiss, I told you to make for the pass in the mountains; how came you to be here?” Her face was no longer a banner, but a cold rain.

            “He told me it was a safe way,” said Weiss. He was afraid again, suddenly; he knew not why, but that there was something dark and brooding lurking in the fire beyond the mountain.

            “A safe way? Tirsin? There is naught but death here!”

            “Aye, death and woe aplenty,” sneered Terrick suddenly. “But I’d ha’ brought you back to your sister safe and sound alright if not for this bloody Thron’s interference. It’s only them that won’t see reason nor surrender in a fight that I give to the Lady,” and he cast a significant backwards glance towards the fiery mountaintop.

            “’The Lady’? I don’t understand.”

            “Let us deal with this man first,” said Mare, “and get away from Her, and then I will tell you.”

#

            “She is old, very old,” said Mare, “and very hungry.” Terrick was tied to a tree. Mare had explained conscientiously that he would not be left there long—the Blind Eye would be sure to follow his trail when he did not return to the city. “So he won’t,” she had said, “die of exposure or hunger here.” Weiss would’ve muttered something to the effect of ‘better if he did’ but Mare’s voice leaned shame on his.

            Now, looking back to the mountain, Mare told him of Tirsin, the name of the mountain and the name of she who lived inside the mountain, which in the old tongue meant ‘Weight’. She was a dragon of the old kind, wingless and blind, stirring up the stones, humming with fire. An open maw, waiting for souls to stumble in, or be stumbled. All this Mare explained in a few vivid strokes that left Weiss breathless with his narrow escape, and trembling with his weariness.

            “But how did you find me?” he asked then.

            “Though Aiken may be full of people who wish you off your path,” said Mare, “Elionae’s wish is for you to go on, and he is not easily gainsaid. I chanced to see you as I was leaving the village, up on the ridge as you followed that man.” And ran all the way up, thought Weiss, disgusted with himself. He was weary and weak, but Mare had seemed strong before. Now she, too, walked with a leaden step, and there was a long, shallow cut along her arm. She would not let Weiss look at it.

            “The Blind Eye are tailing us now. I have one more village to go to, and I cannot stop. When I am safe in the stronghold they will treat it; it isn’t deep. As for you, make all speed for the pass, and beyond it—“ she pointed to his map markedly, that, he supposed, he might not yet again part from the way—“Caethron.”

#

            Aldous passed the afternoon peacefully in Cressus’ room at the Ravenshead Inn. The noises of the Racketeer’s Quarter—horses, bartering, coming-and-goings—were very different from the noises of the Queen’s Quarter where Aldous lived, where quiet murmurs prevailed, punctuated only by the marching boots of the Geridspolice.

            She had spent the afternoon copying leaflets for Cressus in her precise, sloping hand. It pleased her that there was something she could do for him, so much so that she did not take much notice of the words she was copying. Precise, sloping hateful words about the Throns, precise, sloping sneers at the Queen, at the police for their lack of action. She savoured the rhythm of the quill and the ink and the scratch on the paper, and as dusk began to settle, Cressus came in and kissed her shoulder. He pulled her upright as she turned to kiss his mouth, and for a moment she was lost in that tangle, but then he said abruptly,

            “Terrick hasn’t returned.”

            “Weiss wouldn’t…” she said at once, and then stopped because she didn’t, after all, really know what Weiss would or wouldn’t do. Brother and stranger. “So what happens next?” she said instead.

            “Vana and I will go find him and see what’s happened.”
            “Why Vana?” It had come out as more of a whine than she'd intended, but she didn’t trust Vana.

            “Because if Weiss did overpower Terrick, he may not have been alone. I’ll be with her,” said Cressus, lifting Aldous’ chin to meet her eyes. “I won’t let her hurt him.”

            “Very well,” replied Aldous. His eyes on hers had bloomed a sudden purpose in her chest. “But I will be with you as well.”

            And so it was that she found herself on horseback, with a black cloak and knife in her belt, riding between Vana and Cressus out into the marshes that rustled their dark secrets under the arch of the stars.

Writing: Conventicle, Chapter Five

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

            A hundred years, a thousand, who knew anymore? Weiss had been struggling through the mud for more lifetimes than he could count when he bit down on the notion that he would not get out. Every step he took towards the mountains shaved away a little more of his strength, and behind him the leaden Deedsweight sheared off great sheets of it. It was full dark now, with only the feeble light of a crescent moon above, and over and over Weiss lost his footing, fell, tore himself loose from the clutch of the muck and clambered upright. Sometimes he fell again on his very next step, and the clinging weight of the mud that coated cloak and boots and jerkin and all added its strength to the weariness and darkness and Deedsweight in trying to put him under the mud for good.

            At last he found himself on a hummock and could not go on. He lay still, eyes closed, his feet still soaking in the slough, bowed under a despair so strong he could not even weep. He only opened his lips to whisper, “Elionae…” He felt he had no right to ask for help, even to say that name, but help came nonetheless, for after a few long and silent minutes, a light bobbed into his view.

            “Here!” cried Weiss, not caring if it was Aldous, Signa, even the Geridspolice—any face would’ve been welcome. “Help me, please! Help me!”

            “Weiss?” said a voice, and Weiss’s veins lit up with gold, for it was Mare. He scrambled to his feet, splashing water about him as he headed for the light. When he came to her, she grasped his arm and pulled, and he came loose from the mud with a sick squelch, stepping up onto the broad flat stone on which she stood. He only stood for a moment before he felt his knees buckling and he lowered himself quickly to sit at her feet.

            “How did you come to be so lost?” she said, crouching beside him. From a pouch at her hip, she pulled out a strip of sweet-spiced dried meat and he ate gratefully.

            “By following your directions,” said Weiss, less crossly than he would’ve if he had’ve been speaking to somewhere other than Mare.

            “But did you not look for the steps? They’re marked on your map. There is little enough influence we have out here but Elionae sends workers out to keep the way clear when it is possible.” She lifted her lantern and Weiss saw in the flickering light that there was indeed a path, large stones at intervals to make a bridge through the mire.

            “I forgot to pay mind to the map,” he confessed. “There was another with me but he turned back at the marsh, and I went on without stopping to mark my way.”

            He was ashamed of himself, but she said only, “Well, you are not the first, and you will not be the last to lose his way in this place.”

            He gathered up his strength with the help of a little wine from a flask she carried, and they went on together, slowly and painfully, as the mud dried on his clothes and the stars tracked across the sky.

            “How came you to be here?” he asked as they journeyed.

            “I had meant to carry on into the city, but it seems there is a price on my head in Aiken now. Word got out that I had convinced you to leave, and you know that is against the rules.” She spoke seriously but not as if she were frightened. “My Gathering decided it was best for me to make myself scarce before the Geridspolice—or worse—came hunting for me. I am to stop in one or two villages and then wait at the safehouse for my Gathering to meet with me on the other side of the pass.”

            “Then we can journey together?” said Weiss with a leap of hope in his heart. And then, suddenly—“’Word got out’ about me? What does that mean?”

            “You should know better than I, should you not? Who knows that you have left, and why you have?”

            “Signa,” said Weiss slowly, moving around the outside of what he knew to be true, “and a sailor who I roughed up the night I left, and… Aldous.”

            “And I am right in thinking that you suspect Aldous.” It was not a question.

            “My sister,” said Weiss. “But who would she tell? She came after me herself, with Signa. She has no friends. She was worried I would disgrace her; she takes great pride in her undissenting reputation.”

            “Nevertheless she must have told someone—and not, I think, just a friend. You and I will not travel together, I think. I must stop in the villages, for I have work to do there, but more to the point, if the Geridspolice find you alone, they will give you mercy, take you back to Aiken, and you might someday be able to slip away again. If they find you in my company, they will execute us both on the spot. We can camp together tonight, our lead is enough to keep us safe ‘til Signa gets back to the city. But tomorrow we had best go on alone.”

            Weiss’s heart dropped its hope and fell like a stone into his feet.

            “But what if they find you alone?” he said.

            “They will execute me, of course,” said Mare, raising her chin to look at him. “But Elionae will take my spirit to his city if they do, and if they do not, then I will go on as I have.” Simple, arrow-straight. It was hard, but it was easy. Weiss bowed his head in a nod.

            “If the Blind Eye find us though…” she shook her head, and then said, “Pray that they do not.”

#

            “You will… rein in Vana?” said Aldous to Cressus. They were in a public house in the Racketeer’s Quarter, and Aldous was worried about it in the back of her mind, for it was not the sort of place an upstanding undissenting would be found hanging about, but in the front of her mind, broad and warm and windblown as the plains, there was only Cressus. They were sat near enough together that she could smell him, a dusty tang of smoke and hyssop and metal and leather. She had known him for not-quite twenty-four hours, but already she was wound into him like a braid. He spoke to her as if he were the first person alive who had ever seen her, and she could feel herself rising to it like cream, bold and level. Though perhaps that was just the alcohol. She’d already drunk much more of it than she was used to.

            “She is busy with another project just at present,” said Cressus. “but anyhow I wouldn’t send her after your brother. Vana never does well with a mission that doesn’t involve putting a knife in someone, preferably a Thron.”

            Aldous flinched inwardly, but it had been twenty-four hours she had known Cressus, and she had already taught herself not to flinch outwardly.

            “So who will you send?” she said. Level. Bold. Broad as plains.

            “Terrick,” he said at once. “He can talk as well as kill, and I think he can put your brother off-course enough that we can convince him to come back.”

            “You don’t know Weiss as I do,” laughed Aldous bitterly.

            “If he’s anything like his sister,” said Cressus, rough heart singing against Aldous’ heart just come out of its cave, “he will show a pleasing steadiness of purpose but will not be able to ignore reason, in the end.”

            “You don’t know Weiss as I do,” said the back of Aldous’ head, but the front of it was broad and windblown and those were the thoughts holding the reins.

            “Should you like to meet Terrick before I send him out?” said Cressus. Their eyes met. That, Aldous thought, was the strength of it, like an undertow. He looked at her and knew that she wanted only to be with him. She looked at him and knew that he only wanted to be with her. She shook her head, and he ducked away to another corner. A few moments after their hushed conversation, a middle-aged man slipped out into the street and there was a sound of horse’s hooves, an urgent clatter across the cobblestones outside. Then Cressus sat down again, just a little nearer than he had been before.

            “Aldous,” he said softly, “will you tell me what it was you were thinking of so wearily while you listened to Slava yesterday evening?”

            They were weaving together like a braid.

#

            Mare was gone before Weiss woke, stiff and sore and cold and filthy by the ashes of last night’s fire. He made a poor breakfast of water and dried meat, helped along by a few roots he knew how to find amongst the reeds. He ate those as he went, moving slowly but as steadily as he could. He was weary, bone-weary, but Mare had said the Blind Eye might be hunting him already. Weiss knew enough about the Blind Eye to be shaken by that thought.

            He tried to read from his book, but mostly the day was just wan gold reeds and wan gold sun and the mountain pass getting closer only in the most reluctant and painstaking fashion.

            At length, though, the ground began to rise, and the shapes of villages rose up amid the foothills. It was the first time in all his life he had been out of the vast carpet of marshes that surrounded Aiken. He was afraid he was rather gawping. The mountains were so astonishingly present.

            Weiss was wakened from his watching by a smell of roasting meat that almost bowled him over. A little ways ahead, sitting by a fire lit off to the side of the road, there was a middle-aged man, dressed not quite like a Thron, but certainly not like a man of Aiken.

            The man hailed Weiss. Weiss could feel the plain hunger stamped on his face such that courtesy would’ve demanded nothing less of the man.

            “Hi, traveller!” the man called, “You look as though the road has been less than kind. I’ve taken a rabbit with my sling and would be glad to share in return for company.”

            Weiss sat, rather faster than courtesy demanded, at the fireside, and failed to keep his eyes off the spitted rabbit and on the face of his companion.

            “Eh, never mind the formalities,” laughed the man, when Weiss in his distraction missed the man’s outstretched hand. “I’m Terrick, and you’re hungry. That’ll do well enough.”

            For some blessed minutes, Terrick let Weiss absorb himself in the business of clearing every scrap of meat of the leg of the rabbit.

            “I’m more in your debt than I can say, mate,” sighed Weiss at last.

            “Don’t mention it.” Terrick waved it away airily. “Must be some journey you’ve had. You look as though you’ve been wandering the marshes for weeks! Where are you going that you’ll slog on through such misery?”

            “No greater misery than that I’ve left behind,” said Weiss, suddenly serious. “I am for Jesh’s Land beyond the pass in the mountains. For the joy I am promised ahead, I’d endure more than a rough few nights out on the marshes—for the shedding of this Deedsweight.”

            Terrick seemed surprised.

            “Aye, now. To be rid of a Deedsweight is a joy indeed, but to journey to Jesh’s Land by the pass? Why, the mud and weariness of the marshes is nothing to the hardness of that way! Wild beasts, places of gloom, hunters with spears, and hunger that will make your hunger this day seem child’s play; that’s all you’ll get by that road. I’ve heard many a story of that road in my fifty-odd years, mate, and I tell you whoever counselled you to go by that road as good as sent you to your death.”

            “Nonetheless,” said Weiss stubbornly, “it would take a good many terrors to outweigh the crushing of this Deedsweight.”

            “So be rid of it,” said Terrick. “But not by going to your death. You’ve had a hard journey, but I can show you a quick end to it.” He shook his head in disgust. “What kind of cruelty, to send a man blind into all kinds of peril when there’s a simple remedy right at hand?”

            And so Weiss found himself following Terrick to the village over the rise, where it seemed there was a man, a mage, who had skills to remove Deedsweights and to heal and comfort a battered body, too, which, the further they travelled, the more Weiss felt need for. The muscles in his legs were knotting in protest and his step was leaden.  He was dismayed when they went off the broad track to the village and onto an overgrown trail.

            “Patience, mate,” said Terrick brightly. “’Tis a short way. The mage’s house is just outside the village, ‘round to the north.”

            But as the way grew rougher, Weiss began to doubt. The path was craggy and steep now, and he slipped often on the scree underfoot. Then, very suddenly the path opened to a plateau, and Weiss stumbled back as Terrick suddenly turned on him with a strange light in his eyes. Above the plateau, the eastern side of the mountain was visible, and it was smoking and shining with a dull red glow, and great boulders were breaking loose all the time from the mountainside and hurtling past.

            “What is this place?” cried Weiss. “Where have you taken me?”

            “Ach, you’re a fool.” Terrick spat on the ground, unshaken by the boiling mountainside that hung above them. “Perhaps now you’ve seen with your own eyes the blackness of the way you’ve chosen, you’ll turn back with me. Indeed, anyone with the wits of a dog would keep away from these paths. But,” and he strode determinedly at Weiss as he spoke, “Mark me, if you won’t see reason, I’ve made well sure to walk you far enough to take the fight out of you, and if I have to bundle you back to your sister by force, well, my horse will take your sorry carcass without complaint. But one way or another, turn back you will—“ and Terrick leapt at Weiss as he backed down the rough trail, and caught him a hard shove directly in the chest that sent him sprawling into the rocky bracken. His Deedsweight pulled him down, and pulled him down.

Writing Wednesdays: Conventicle, Chapter Four

            Signa and Weiss eyed each other for a long moment. It was true that they were friends, and yet their friendship was long, whey-thin, founded more on drinking together than talking together. Here in the rustling silence of the marshes, with nothing to loosen their tongues, they stared at their hands or the mountains, trying to form words. Weiss spoke first.

            “I’m glad you’ve chosen to come,” he said. The sincerity clung awkwardly to his shoulders, but he was glad. “If I could only paint with my words, as Mare did, even Aldous would’ve come.”

            “Mare is the Thron?”

            “Mare is the Thron. She was…” Weiss shook his head, and sighed. “I don’t know. I can understand far better than I can speak. She was right, like a straight street. The first person I think I have ever met who was neither mud-brown or cold grey.”

            “Tell me, what did she say to you that was so moving?”

            “She told me of Jesh, and Elionae, and gave me this book and this map.” From inside his vest, Weiss pulled out a little leather-bound volume. Books were scarce in Aiken, but a book as fine as this was even rarer. Illuminated in gold, frail with age, it was wonder enough just for the beauty of it, and Weiss already considered it as fine a treasure as he had ever owned. But the greatest wonder, the one that made Weiss hollow with awe, was the mark, stamped in the inside cover: the seal of Elionae, intricate and organic, almost as if it had grown there instead of been marked.

            That was the first thing Weiss showed Signa, but as they walked deeper into the marshes, he showed him more, lit from within like a lantern. He showed him the map, the spires and gates of Elionae’s City, the mountain pass that lay on their horizon. He read passages from the Book: the Song of the Living, the measurements of the walls and gates of the golden city that gave a ring of truth to that faraway place, the prophecies of destruction on Aiken and on many other cities. Jesh’s Lore. The dawning of the world, and the dusking of it.

#

            “There also you shall meet with thousands and ten thousands that have gone before you to that place. None of them are hurtful; all are loving and holy, and every one walking in the sight of Elionae, and standing in his presence by the Acceptance of Jesh, given freely to all truly willing to have it.”  Weiss was still reading, rapt and alive, as they trekked, when he noticed very suddenly that it was getting hard to see. The sun at his back was low and red, and Signa lagged a few steps behind him.

            “Might be time to make camp,” said Weiss. Signa merely grunted. Weiss peered back at his companion and realized something was amiss. “Signa?”

            Signa made as if to wave him off, but Weiss hurried back to him. Signa’s face was sharp and pale, and his hands trembled.

            “You’re ill, man,” said Weiss. “Here, let’s find a clearing and make camp.”

            “I’m fine,” said Signa irritably. “It’s just your fool of a sister rushed me out of the house this morning with not a single packet on me.”

            Weiss dropped his hands from where they hovered around Signa’s shoulders and said, “Oh. The hyssop.” He had known, idly, that Signa used hyssop-and-achanes; many of the dissenting did, or black drop, along with their drinking. It felt a faraway knowledge, now, vague and unimportant in the face of what lay ahead. But Signa evidently did not think it faraway or unimportant. He mistook Weiss’s sudden silence and stumbled forward again, casting over his shoulder,

            “I know you always thought yourself such a pillar of virtue, using philosophizing in the place of a good tincture, but you needn’t bother looking down on me.”

            The reeds closed behind him as Weiss stirred himself to answer, and for several minutes he could not catch up to Signa. He began to wonder if he had gone amiss. The sun had suffused into evening now, and it was hard to tell the path amid the reeds. At the same time he noticed the ground growing spongy, sucking at his feet. And then, suddenly, it was sucking at his knees, thick black mud with water pooling up around it. Weiss dragged forward to a hummock of grass and called out for Signa.

            “Where are you?” came Signa’s voice, and Weiss tried to struggle towards it. He felt heavy as a stone; the Deedsweight lashed to his shoulders seemed a biting, pressing force shoving him down towards the mud. Once he fell, getting a mouthful of foul siltiness.

            “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Weiss called, half to Signa and half to himself. “Ah, Signa, keep talking, let me find you!”

            “Keep talking?” Signa’s voice was a snappish shriek. “Is this the bright happiness you promised me? Eli’s damnation, I can scarce walk straight!”

            “It’s the withdrawal,” said Weiss, trying to call loudly and gently at once. “Think of everything I spoke of this afternoon.”

            “Damn everything you spoke of this afternoon!” It seemed to Weiss that Signa’s voice was fading towards the west. “If I find my way out from this thrice-cursed muck, you may possess your brave country alone!”

            “Signa!” called Weiss. “Signa!” But there was nothing more after that. Knee-deep in the mud, Weiss was forced to acknowledge himself alone.

#

            It was late when Aldous emerged from the bath-houses down the street from her uncle’s, respectable once again with the wildness of the swamp scoured away and her damp hair combed back into a braid, but she did not want to go home. To go home would be to face the scandal of Weiss’s second night away from home, her uncle’s scolding, her aunt’s damp smiles. Anything would be better than facing damp smiles. So Aldous left the bath-houses and her heart was open like a raw wound.

            If not home, where? The question had been dragging its feet through her mind for the last hour as she soaked in the warm water, combed the tangles from her hair, eyed the window as if it were an enemy. She had an idea, perhaps even a good one, but it harried her like a hound.

            The Blind Eye. They might be able to bring Weiss back. Their mark was everywhere, sprouted up overnight like mushrooms when the news of the Thron camp arrived in the city. The Geridspolice were ruthless with Throns, scrupulously upholding the Queen’s word that no Thron should speak to a citizen of Aiken, on pain of death. But the Blind Eye were not satisfied with such devotion. They were hunting the Throns down, daring by their very name for the Geridspolice to do other than turn a blind eye. The Geridspolice would probably not stop them. Nobody liked a Thron.

            Aldous had seen their symbol scrawled on the signalboard at the square: the white outline of a blank eye, slashed top to bottom with a stroke of white paint. Underneath, in a quick, careless hand, was an address, a house in the Racketeer’s Quarter. Aldous felt a little sick to her stomach when she found herself at the door of that house.

           

Aldous knew as soon as she entered the house that she should leave. A woman dressed in black was flinging knives with deafening precision at a crude human-shaped target with the word ‘Thron’ scrawled across the head.

But Aldous did not leave. Poison seemed a better alternative than suffocating inaction. The black-clad woman turned idle alcoholic eyes on Aldous she passed. Aldous glanced away very quickly, training her own paled eyes on the back of the slave who escorted her.  

The slave led Aldous to a spacious common room that held an eclectic group of about forty people, some of them obviously in no better shape than Weiss or Signa, some of them as obviously very wealthy and undissenting. They stood in knots around the room, talking amongst themselves. A few turned and examined Aldous with the same detached precision that the black-clad woman had used. Aldous thought that poison was very hard to face. She shrank into herself and wanted to leave. Her body dilated. A sharp-bodied man- also dressed in black- climbed up onto a platform built on one end of the room. He seemed to look right through Aldous’s throat as he asked everyone to please sit down as the meeting was about to commence. Aldous took a seat in the back, removed from the crowd. Her breath came quickly from fear. 

            The meeting was not so different from the many political meetings Aldous was wont to attend. The owner of the home, a man called Slava, was calling for action against the Throns. People came to such meetings, she thought, to hear that other people thought as they did. Most of the audience was nodding and frowning righteously. But there was one there who was not. Seated behind Slava, in the shadows of the drapery, so still that for the first long while Aldous didn’t notice him there, was a man. He was big, broad of shoulder and well-muscled with a rough-shaven head, and he sat as if waiting for something momentous; his legs were firmly planted and his hands, with leonine grace, rested on his knees. These things Aldous noticed mutely, but what was chiefly important was that he was watching her. Watching her not idly or vacantly, but with a steady purpose. Whenever her eyes caught his, they seemed to change imperceptibly, as if asking her to acknowledge his staring. At length, she did, lifting her chin and holding his gaze for a few seconds that seemed to drag themselves achingly into minutes. He seemed satisfied and did not watch her any longer, but when Slava had finished his invective and the audience had broken back up into inflamed knots, she found he was at her side, and behind him the woman who had been throwing knives when Aldous entered.

#

            Aldous left the house in a strange twist of thought. Memories stuck into her like pins: the pliant hatred on the tongue of the woman, Vana. The deadly simplicity of it all, how she had just stated as if it were nothing, “I need you to get my brother back from the marshes to the east. Alive, if possible.” The equal carelessness with which the two accepted the assignment along with her coin, and then pushed forward into talking of the Thron problem. The vivid roil of her breath and body at the man’s hand on her bare arm, when Aldous had made a motion of protest at some particularly vicious words from Vana. Cressus, his name was. It had been a long time since anyone had touched Aldous; longer still since it was a man. She could not even recollect the last time. Aldous was frightened; Aldous was tasting poison, but she could still feel the burning imprint of a man’s fingers on her skin, and Aldous was not lonely anymore.

Foundland Fridays: "Why Don't You People Just Get Over It?"

Sometimes I get mailers in my postbox from the Conservative Party of Canada, with happy middle class people putting their kids in sports and arts activities, or getting a home reno credit, or what have you. I always feel saddened at the assumed-- or perhaps real-- selfishness of myself and people similar to me.

Dear Conservative Party of Canada,
I'm a middle-class woman. I own my own home and car; I buy my kids educational toys and take them to educational activities. I have strong community support from my family and church. I live happily and comfortably-- I don't need any more tax credits. If you want my vote, please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me about what you're doing for the 42% of native children with no dental care. Take my share of the home renovation tax credit and use it to make up the $2000 deficit in native high schools. I'll pay for my own kids' art lessons and you do something about our missing and murdered aboriginal women. Please. I have enough and more than enough to be happy and healthy. Let's right some of these wrongs.
Regards,
Avery