Chapter XXIV
Arlo snarled at the Speaker and flourished his sword, then lunged. Ordon dodged to one side, and as a punishment clubbed Arlo on the back with the flat of his axe, only to duck under the whirling slash he got in return.
“The Huber Bell! That’s my secret.” Ordon added next. His bright beaming face, spread into a broad grin displaying the recently-formed gap in his teeth was entirely unbothered by the circumstances, and it seemed like he only allowed Arlo to keep distance from them for the sake of the two of them talking. “I waited until your ship was leaving and I managed to climb aboard.”
Now, the Khaldonite tapped the side of his head with his left hand. The gesture was not even interrupted when Arlo lunged at him, for the big man casually parried and gathered Arlo’s sword to force him back.
“The great thing about my gift is I can always feel where people are, so it’s easy to avoid sentries.” said the Speaker with a look of extreme satisfaction. “I was naked as a jaybird save for my trusty old belt, here, and my axe. Since your crew was nice enough to feed me with their emotions, all I needed to sustain myself was water, and lucky for me your crew kept plenty in the Huber Bell as emergency supplies.”
Ordon paced around Arlo, and cheerfully swung his axe like a pendulum while Arlo merely pivoted on his heels holding his sword upside-down in a hanging guard while its point followed the arc of Ordon’s path. Since it seemed like the Speaker wasn’t going to let him go without some small attempt at making conversation, Arlo cleared his throat and managed a hoarse, “Why bother? You had no idea we were coming here.”
Instead of answering at first Ordon just gave two heavy swings at Arlo with the axe, but both would have fallen short even if Arlo hadn’t parried them; a fact that made Arlo growl and Ordon laugh.
“I had a fantasy of sneaking out and throwing a few men overboard every night. Imagine me, Arlo! A naked man-ghost haunting your little ship!” Ordon explained once he was sure they wouldn’t fight more. “But my wounds took longer to heal than I care to admit. After a bout of that horrible Wallrunning you apostates do to get around, I was still only just able to really move around. But imagine my surprise when I finally peeped out to see my own peoples’ ships on the horizon!”
Arlo did not want to know what else Ordon had done. His imagination could happily fill in the rest, and despite all he could feel something magnetic still in the man’s friendly countenance. So instead of asking how the Speaker had got from the Sunseeker to Redbrook to reunite with his doomed people, Arlo sprung forward with a heavy slash.
In a flash, Ordon lurched away from the attack and then swung his axe in an underhand crescent to parry the blade before outright kicking Arlo in the chest with such a powerful foot that it sent Arlo sprawling onto his back with a groan. Instead of approaching him to finish the job, however, Ordon did something impossible.
The Speaker held up his open hand, palm out, and met Arlo’s eyes from above while red flames seemed to sprout from his very skin.
“I’ll bet your Placelle Lamella can’t do this.” he growled with dark glee as he traced his burning hand along the curve of the axe’s blade. Arlo raised himself partly up and scurried backwards with his legs wriggling to propel him while he watched the Khaldonite’s axe heat up and begin to glow. Ordon laughed again and paced towards him with no urgency whatsoever, saying, “Oh, Friend Arlo, it sincerely pains me that you won’t ever see the way we live in the Redlands; but perhaps one of Khaldon’s miracles will suffice, as a lesson before dying.”
Steam hissed when the molten-hot axe head slammed into the mud between Arlo’s knees, eliciting a yelp from Arlo who felt the heat in his thighs. He sliced upward with his sword when Ordon pulled the axe free and grinning, the Speaker snatched it by the blade with his burning hand. Though a stream of blood squirted steaming from Ordon’s palm, the sabre also heated up tremendously and Arlo screamed as his thumb was seared by the thumb ring and the wire wrapping his hilt left a red spiral in his hand. He struggled to toss the blade away in an awkward moulinet, but his thumb stuck to the metal enough that he felt horrible peeling when the hilt came away from him. In sheer agony, Arlo held up the red and pink hand with his wrist clutched tightly in his other hand.
The burn looked bad already, and it hadn’t even really set yet, but Ordon was not satisfied to leave it at that, and in the next instant the Khaldonite stomped down between Arlo’s legs, laughing as he ground his heel against Arlo’s manhood to elicit another pained shout. Before Arlo could even think of how to escape the boot was driven into his backside and he twisted on the ground to try and crawl away. Gritty, uneven mud seared the burn on his hand painfully and seemed to tear the tender skin while he desperately clawed himself through it with Ordon’s laughter ringing in his ears.
For his next trick, Ordon jogged up to Arlo’s side and gave him a firm kick in the ribs to roll him over onto his back again, then another kick, and another. Ordon kicked Arlo over and over, rolling him with each kick until he found his back pressed against the mantlet of a howitzer half-buried in the mud. Ordon used the cold steel to brace Arlo so he could start kicking the lad in the stomach and he leaned against the surface with his leg swinging back and forth until he finally, after what felt like an eternity to Arlo, managed to get the thin man vomiting.
Ordon laughed once more and mercifully gave Arlo space to heave up the contents of his breakfast. Spurting jets of warm bile, meat with little bits of carrots, and what had once been friend buns meshed with the soft mud while Arlo struggled to take in breath against the pain and the dry heaving. When he finally thought he was finished, Arlo found himself reaching up to the barrel of the great gun and pulling himself up. As soon as he was draping himself over it, however, he groaned as he felt Ordon’s powerful hand closing around the double-up cue of his hair. While he was vomiting, the Speaker had moved his axe into his left hand, and this freed him up to first smash the side of Arlo’s face against the barrel of the gun and then shove it down into a pool of his own vomit. Ordon held Arlo down there in that dark, acrid world unable to breathe for so long that Arlo was certain he was about to drown in his own vomit before he was yanked up once again and thrown against the mantlet of the gun once more.
“You know, after all the kicking I did,” Ordon panned as he reached down to grasp Arlo’s left hand, then shoved back the sleeve of his coat. Arlo feebly resisted, but Ordon didn’t seem to even notice, “It seems like you’re kicked all over. It’s a little unfair that I only burned one side.”
Bulging eyes and more heartened resistance came at the revelation, but still it seemed like Arlo could do nothing to prevent Ordon from doing anything at all. He shook his head up at the Speaker and begged, “No! Please, no!”
Ordon’s grin didn’t budge a hair while he brushed the side of the axe gently against the back of Arlo’s arm and held it carefully still. Sizzling skin was drowned out by pained yowling that continued even after Ordon pulled the axe head away to survey his handiwork. He was pleased to see that he had successfully branded Arlo with the shape of a seven-pointed star that was emblazoned on the side of his axe head, and happily twisted Arlo’s arm at an unnatural angle to show it.
“Look at that!” he cheered, “Marked by Khaldon! See that, Arlo, you’ve been blessed! If you weren’t about to die, I’d say this is the kind of prize you could carry for the rest of your life…”
After thinking about that for a moment the Speaker found himself laughing again and stood up with a broad grin to finish, “Actually, I guess you can say that either way!”
He raised his axe high over his head and Arlo crossed his arms in front of his face, weeping miserably. Arlo knew Ordon would just chop at him until he died, and on some level he wished desperately to throw his arms open and take it on the neck so his suffering could end sooner, but nothing could supplant his severe desire to live no matter what. His drive for survival was going to make his already horrible fate last even longer. Arlo huddled deeper into the mantlet, shuddering with fear, misery, and pain for what felt like an awful long time. He sobbed a few times, perhaps tentatively, and then parted his warding arms ever-so slightly to peer up at Speaker Ordon.
Ordon was clearly distracted. He still had his axe raised into the air, but his head was on a tilt and his eyes darted searchingly around. Arlo shifted slowly and cautiously, hoping to surreptitiously slink around behind the mantlet and then perhaps further away, but as soon as he moved the heartleech’s hand was on his arm squeezing right where he’d been branded. Arlo moaned from the pain and Ordon shushed him aggressively and then pulled him up onto shaky feet.
“Friend Arlo,” he whispered into Arlo’s ear conspiratorially, “I am excited to tell you that you may actually survive this day; and both of us might walk away from this with a prize we can carry for the rest of our lives.”
Instead of responding, Arlo coughed and spat blood and bile onto the ground in front of him. Ordon affectionately patted his head and then pointed him back towards the far side of the mortar next. It looked like some kind of animal was approaching them. At first, Arlo thought it was a dog, then a bear. The closer it got, the bigger it turned out to be and the more unusual its movements.
“I’m hallucinating.” whispered Arlo as he came to realize that he was seeing something like a giant mechanical ant or beetle trotting up to them with Placelle Lamella seated on its back. She looked like a vision from some erotic dream, bare-chested save for a diagonal bandage and a thin linen chest wrap with her long strawberry-blonde hair billowing around and behind her in messy waves. Her pinkish amber eyes were wide open, full of life, and deeply intelligent while she approached them calmly. Her expression was regal, domineering, elegant, and gentle all at once, and her countenance was so perfectly composed that Arlo half-expected the grey clouds to part so the sun could shine down on her bare shoulders to ignite a red-gold glow in her hair.
Ordon called out to her, his booming voice right in Arlo’s ear only increasing the young man’s pain, “Friend Placelle Lamella! I’m glad you came!”
The Oathkeeper trotted her clockwork steed closer with no reply and brought it to a halt just ten or so paces away from them, turned at a quarter angle so she could look down and get a better view of the two of them.
“I have your precious Arlo, here.” Ordon said, then held his axe up facing inwards. The glowing edge of the blade pointed over Arlo’s shoulder, but the curving tip of the axe’s beard pointed right at his neck. The implication was clear. “Could we try talking about this again? You could come back with me. He can’t come with us this time, sadly.”
Placelle Lamella’s face had no visible emotion upon it. She almost looked uncaring and dismissive. Silence passed between them for a few moments, which seemed to puzzle Ordon somewhat, but they all stood still with no movement save for Placelle Lamella shifting slightly in her saddle while her steed adjusted its stance.
“So,” Ordon added when it seemed like no decision was made yet. “Perhaps, if you wanted him to live, you could step off the abomination-before-Khaldon and discard your Oath. I’ll do a bit of a speech of course, you have to indulge me that at least; and then we can go hide in a cave until this battle is over. After that, it’s as simple as pretending to be ordinary people who want to take the first redbound ship. You will find the Church to have helpful servants and feelers everywhere; not unlike your Orderhood.”
Arlo gasped when Placelle Lamella reached down and freed her leg from the brace of the first stirrup. She still remained perfectly silent while she freed the other and swung her legs over. Stepping nearer, she dipped her hand down into her holster and drew out her Oath. Speaker Ordon’s face broke out into a broad, victorious grin and he exhaled a contented sigh through his bared teeth.
He died with that smile still on his face, because in the next instant with no hesitation Placelle Lamella brought up her pistol and pulled the trigger before Ordon could even think to react. His head whipped back and his body instantaneously went limp while his brains poured out the back of his skull. She barely had to flick the head of his axe with the back of her free hand to send it limply swinging away so she could extend an arm to catch Arlo against herself. She stood there pointing the smoking pistol at Ordon’s unmoving corpse as though he might sit up at any moment, though she still showed no emotion on her face while Arlo buried his face in the side of her neck and wept just like she had the day that he stopped liking her.
She let him weep for a very long time before she asked him gently, “Arlo, can we be friends again?”
His only response was to wrap his arms tightly around her waist and squeeze her as tightly as he could, which wasn’t really very tight at all considering the circumstances. She simply held him and allowed him to take refuge in her for as long as he wanted. The distant sound of stickbombs preceded the sounds of gunfire and shouting men from the valley as the siege began on the chapel below. Arlo sniffed and tried to comport himself into something that had the barest appearance of a grown-up, and looked up to meet Placelle Lamella’s eyes expecting her to want him gone so she could go to the fight. He only saw the dull, half-lidded bovine gaze and gentle smile he was used to looking back at him and it made him want to cry all over again. Gingerly, the heartleech stroked a loving hand across the back of his neck and then holstered her Oath so she could next stroke his cheek.
“I’ll never make you keep me around.” she told him in a soft, friendly voice that he knew well, “But if you let me stay near you, I’ll protect you for the rest of your life; until you don’t need me anymore, or until I die. I was a gift to House Haradin, and you were the only member of the clan who seemed to want me.”
“I don’t suppose I have to tell you anything, do I?” Arlo asked up at her while he tried his best to wipe his eyes and stand up on his own power. “You can feel everything?”
“Well, Arlo, there’s a lot in there,” she revealed with a titter, “But I have the gist, I believe.”
Arlo hugged her one last time, but then separated himself and dragged himself back through the mud past Ordon’s body to sit atop the mantlet of the gun he’d been beaten against. He made sure to sit on the opposite side from all his vomit, much good it would do him being covered in the stuff along with his own blood and mud from head-to-foot. His ribs ached as well as his manhood, his burns scalded, and he had a sneaking suspicion that one of his ribs was even cracked for he suffered an extremely painful pinching sensation beneath his left scapula. At least his bandage might match his Oathkeeper’s. When he was sure that he could at least wait out the rest of the firefight here unmolested; or perhaps ‘further unmolested’ was the correct phrase, Arlo sighed and looked up at the huge woman who’d saved him and pointed his left arm towards the sound of the fighting.
“I think they could use you over there.” he suggested, and was surprised when she smiled and gave a gentle nod.
“Shall I come back and get you when I am done slaying Her enemies?” asked the woman, the same gentle tone she had used so far unchanging, even for this.
“If you wish, you could keep me company until I could be taken up by the medics.” Arlo answered with a shrug that sent a wave of anguish and nausea through him, “But you’ll forgive me if I have no wish to ride with you upon the, ah… Abomination-before-Khaldon.”
The Oathkeeper’s eyes looked down and she blushed slightly before admitting, “I had kind of hoped you would. I wish I could take you on a ride with it, but as I have to torture an innocent astermoth to even make it work, I don’t think it’s fair to use it outside of battle.”
Arlo nodded. He stared down at the mud while she climbed back into her saddle. Watching her trot away after hearing the description, he let out a little chuckle as realization finally dawned on him that the machine was shaped like the astermoth itself; a creature he knew little of other than that it was on the label of one of his favorite cheap wines which itself was said to be made by monks. He laughed at the idea of it, his friend Placelle Lamella riding off to battle on her giant wingless moth. It seemed so amusingly absurd to him in that moment, so patently ludicrous that he couldn’t help but laugh even though it hurt so much to do so that he had to stop shortly after and take a break so he could also breathe, and cry.
The grey skies opened up and poured heavy cleansing rain down onto the battlefield.
Epilogue
“Well, don’t you make for an awkward doormat, hey?”
Rapid, joyful pinset ticking filled the wide open space. The room was not a cabin in the officer’s quarters in the low larboard tower, but instead one of the guest suites somewhat high up in the skyscraping starboard tower. A vast picture window gave a view of the sea far below with the various ships in the flotilla of House Haradin’s homeship taskforce scattered across it like little figurines on a Trinket board. Speaking of Trinket boards, a half-completed game sat upon the sill of the great window with two empty chairs. A faded green-and-yellow ship had just about captured the treasure ship, but a yellow and blue ship from a different set was closing in as well and with luck might turn the match around in another turn or two. Plush off-white carpet covered the floor, with the House Haradin coat-of-arms printed in the middle of the open space, surrounded by fine furnishings of a chaise lounge and other pieces from an elegant parlor set; as well as a small library of books with a tea nook next to an artificial fireplace with an electric heater built into its hearth. The wall was broken by a vestibule of sorts with its own door. The walls themselves were an unusual pastel color that was like mauve with a little too much red on bottom, with a salmon color on the other side of brass gingerbread work trim that ran along the center of the room, only to be interrupted by the wide window. With another door at the back of the room that led into a private washroom complete with a bathtub, it was almost like one wasn’t on a ship at all if he didn’t look out the window to the grand and obvious sea or the just-barely visible deck of the homeship below.
Recumbent upon a huge bed of fluffy white pillows beneath a heavy pink comforter was Arlo. He was clean and bandaged in many places, wearing only an oversized bathrobe that his uncle had gifted him as punishment for the crime of liking it. Everything since the end of the siege on Redbrook Bay was seemingly being treated as a punishment in tone, Treistan’s beaming face joyous over his victory always becoming studiously neutral where Arlo was concerned. Ostensibly, the only reason he was even being quartered in the fine suite was the medical instrumentation that was surrounding the tall plush bed. An open gladstone bag was set up on a rolling instrument tray and a rolling magnifier was not far from it. There were also the printouts from some machine they’d hooked up to him after his surgery that Arlo couldn’t even begin to guess the meaning of as well as piles and piles of bandages in a bin that had been exchanged for clean ones twice a day. None of these things entertained or delighted Arlo quite so much as the gift he’d gotten from Master Balkan. It was set up on his bedside table next to the copy of ‘Close Renderings of the Art of Saint Tetra’ that had once been at the reception desk below; an interesting device of finely carved wood with little rounded crescent-moon slots in the front around a thick, heavy glass dome that magnified the dial of the pocket watch inside to the size of a desk clock. Thanks to the hollow construction and the fact that it was sealed on every other side, the sound of the pocket watch ticking was amplified by the box as soon as Arlo slipped his watch into the top and closed the lid.
He sat at length enjoying the comforting ticking throughout the day between bouts of fitful, nightmare-laden sleep and morose musings on the horrific nature of war and violence. The meals they had brought him were superb, the first truly good food Arlo had swallowed in his recent memory; though he himself admitted he was a snob. Still, he adored the roast goose, the fantastic piped squash flower with little glistening jewels of roe scattered over it, the tiny tarts and cakes on the daily tea trees, and of course the magnificent selection of wine that was brought to him as a new bottle every day. Arlo stuffed himself full again and again while he recovered from his wounds and read his books; his only visitors being Darwin for the occasional game of Trinket and the necessary ministrations of the doctor.
He was therefore surprised when he awakened that afternoon to find Irina standing over him. She seemed somewhat distant when he first cracked his eyes open, looking down at him with a calculating face. Once she saw he was looking back at her however, she brightened up into a smile and removed her peaked cap to tuck it beneath one arm. He noticed her greatcoat was adorned with the golden epaulette she wore when commanding a firing squad, but did not remark upon it. Instead, he gestured to a seat next to the bed and was pleased that she actually sat down next to him.
“It is good to see you, Madame Tribune.” he said, surprised to hear how weak his voice was and so grunted to clear his throat.
“Likewise, princeling.” she replied easily and reached over to jiggle his right hand sitting atop the comforter. “You look well. Almost fit to get back to it.”
“I’m just happy to be alive.” he started with a gentle smile, then turned his gaze out the window to the ships below and added, “Happy to see that you are alive as well. I confess I selfishly thought you might come and visit me sooner if you had lived; so I was worried that something may have befallen you after we were separated.”
Irina gave his hand another jiggle. “Sorry, shipmate. A Tribune is a busy gal after a dust up like this one. I could have let the Navy handle it all if I wanted, being that I was out here to audit your uncle in the first place, but…”
Arlo’s eye drifted back to her and he responded sardonically by way of quoting her, “You were no doubt wet in your nethers to kill more cultists, I make no doubt.”
She gave a chuckle at this and thumbed her nose, but ultimately shook her head, “No, I think I got my fair share at the chapel. I just didn’t feel right leavin’ quite yet.”
At this, Arlo simply grunted acquiescence and turned back out the window with a remote gaze. Irina didn’t seem to mind, however, and in a more official tone she said, “I happened to read the report you penned yesterday about your battle. I didn’t have to, it was mainly out of curiosity.”
Arlo nodded, but didn’t add anything, so she continued, “It matches up with the lay of the land. I even found the armored car where you stalled our mutual acquaintance.”
Sensing a ribbing of some kind coming on, Arlo sighed and looked back to her once more to say, “I know: It was stupid. Everything I do is stupid. I’m sorry I failed, and I’m grateful the Lady Oathkeeper came to bail us all out.”
Irina laughed right in his face the way she had when he told her that Placelle Lamella had come onto him in the abandoned seafort on Lortar. She covered her mouth after a few hearty guffaws and shook her head, then mimed wiping a tear from her eye as she reconstructed herself into an air of calmer friendliness.
“No, shipmate,” she told him next with a dismissive wave of her hand, “I was not coming to call you stupid, I was coming to call you brave and thank you.”
Blinking back at her stupidly, Arlo asked, “Thank me? For running my head into a brick wall?”
Irina shook her head again, skeptical but not hostile, and still chuckling, “No, princeling, for trying to save me and the boys. Even if he had killed you dead, you still distracted him and kept him away from that gun. You may have saved us either way, and you at least bought us some time. That’s action!”
“Action?” Arlo parroted.
“Initiative!” clarified the Tribune with a gleeful smile, “That stuff I was telling you about, that your uncle wanted from you! Deciding to jolly well get up and jolly well do something, hey?”
“I jolly well suppose so.” agreed Arlo at length, cupping his chin thoughtfully. He had not considered it from that point of view. “Suffice to say, I wasn’t trying to exhibit initiative, per se; it just occurred to me as the natural thing I had to do.”
Looking extremely skeptical and amused with her eyes boggling, Irina repeated herself, “That’s action! That’s initiative! That’s what it feels like, Arlo, like the natural thing to do.”
All Arlo could do was shrug. “I don’t see why everybody hated me before, then, it’s not as though I have control over what comes naturally to me.”
“Oh, stuff.” figured Irina with a light slap on the back of his hand. “We didn’t hate you, you was just frustrating was all. And anyhow, I am incredibly grateful.”
“It’s just too bad for me I am still too wounded to strap on a whalebone corset for you.” panned Arlo darkly.
Still, it lightened his mood that she was laughing so much and so even though he kept his eyes narrowed at her, Arlo relaxed somewhat and sat up in the bed. He piled pillows up behind his back and now admitted, “It does make me happy you came to see me, Madame Rathbone. Not only am I happy to discover you yet live, but I am also glad that you came to thank me. I wish my uncle felt the same as you. He seems to regard me very distantly every time we speak.”
“Well, it’s all a matter of relativity, innit?” Irina replied, now taking her own chance to look out the window. “For me, it’s raw gratitude, but for him I imagine it’s your first step towards being what he’s looking for in an agent and dare-I-say a nephew. I wouldn’t get too bent up over it, was I you. After all, I think he’s proud of you even if he don’t show it, and he did set you up in these fine digs, didn’t he?”
“They are very fine, these digs, it’s true.” Arlo agreed, looking around himself with some eminent satisfaction. He did like the room well enough, though he also wondered how long it would be before he was carted back across to the officers’ quarters instead. To take full advantage of it, he decided to turn to his side and reach for the bottle of wine they’d left him today.
“A glass of wine with you, Madame Tribune.” said he, “I have this lovely plum they’ve sent up that is sweet and complex.”
Irina stuck out a warding hand and hopped up from her chair to sadly say, “Ah, sorry shipmate, I can’t. Though I’d love to, and I hope you may invite me later in the week. There’s still a great deal to do before I scurry back off to the mainland.”
This drew a frown out of Arlo and set down the bottle once more. “I suppose when you come by later, we must bid each other farewell.”
The smile Irina returned was knowing and sad. “That’s right, lad. A Tribune is always on the move. But you’ll be free to write or radiogram me all you like. And who knows? Maybe you will stumble upon something of interest to the Committee and I will have to come out and fish you from a pot of sauce once more, hey?”
The prospect of being in figurative sauce did not delight Arlo, but the prospect that he had managed to make some kind of friendship out of his intersection with the scarred little woman did. Arlo nodded and took the bottle of wine up once more to pour himself a glass and held it up in a toast.
“To meeting again, sauce or no.” he said, then sipped and passed the glass across to her.
“To meeting again.” she agreed with a nod before she drained it and grinned. Once he took the glass back and set it down with the wine, she tucked her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels; somewhat excited to also tell him, “I have, it turns out, decided to advise your uncle to let you the Sunseeker again and commend me to the Tribunal Committee Regional Headquarters on Clausten where I can officially file my report before returning to Corovos on a government Wallrunner. If you heal up nice and strong, princeling, maybe he will even let you.”
“Maybe he will!” Arlo laughed back at her.
As soon as she left the room, he poured himself another glass of wine and sat back in bed with a soft smile. Amorous little creature that he was, he thought pleasantly of the moment when she’d kissed him in the armored car. The idea of strapping on a whalebone corset to amuse a baby-hungry lesbian was not altogether his greatest joy in life, but for some reason Arlo just tended to relish every kiss he got. Moriah was still at the top of his heart and he set to finally writing her a letter to relate the events that had transpired since he’d last seen her.
At the end, he had his pen hovering over the parchment while he struggled with deciding to list his injuries in the battle. It seemed vulnerable on the one hand, the kind of honesty that would have made their relationship bloom earlier. On the other hand, it might come off as braggardly or perhaps worse: over-soft. On top of that, Arlo himself felt an unusual ugly deep shame about the brand Ordon had left on him in particular. He unwrapped the bandage and looked down at it ruefully for a long while; a raised pink spot in the shape of a seven-pointed star that would forever make him unable to wear short sleeves in public unless he wanted to be mistaken for a Khaldon-worshipper or ridiculed as the sort of person who gets branded as one. The fact that it was so perfect annoyed him more. He had to admit even that annoyance was too soft a word.
It infuriated him.
With a pap, Arlo dropped the ink pen on the instrument tray over his bed and slipped his pocket watch out of its box before moving to the fireplace. The oversized robe swept all around him, and looking like an angry child he bunched it up closed over his chest and tied the sash tight despite the pain that sent through his ravaged abdomen. At the fireplace he grabbed a pair of ornamental tongs, thin brass things made to look like an elegant version of the sort of thing that would be made from cast iron at a traditional fireplace. Unscrewing the backplate from his watch, he held it pinched tightly in these tongs and stuck it up against the glowing orange element of the heater. There he remained for a long time. He watched as the brass transformed before his eyes from yellow to pink and finally brown. With a gloomy glare he proceeded back to the bedside table and sat down next to his wine. Sticking the cork from the bottle in his mouth, he laid his arm flat across the table and looked down at the red brand on his upper arm for a long time. Then, once he could finally marshall his courage, Arlo raised the hot backplate from his watch and then pressed it down on top of the brand.
It hurt so much worse than the brand had for some reason, but Arlo just groaned into the cork while his teeth chomped through it and pressed as hard as he could stand to, eager to burn his mother’s engraving into his flesh over the facets of the seven-pointed star. He kept it pressed tight until the spot was numb and then felt a slight thrill when the metal peeled off of his stretching pink skin. Despite the pain, he was extremely happy to see that his skin had raised and filled the grooves of his mother’s work so that when it was removed the shape remained embedded. As the new burn swelled into a red dome, Arlo sat down and wrote a letter telling Moriah that a wicked man had wounded him in battle; but he had been saved by Placelle Lamella.
Things were not what they used to be in his old life, that was certain. In fact, he had almost no hope of ever being truly happy or innocent again. Arlo could only speculate with dread what his uncle had planned for him next, other than a concrete certainty it would not involve auctions or galas.
He missed his old life, his rotten lover who’d taken everything, his art, and his music.
Most of all, Arlo missed his mother. While he finished the letter and sealed it with a kiss, a tear escaped from his eye and slightly wet the paper. Arlo ignored this and stuffed it into an envelope; which he then carefully addressed with the location of Moriah’s parents’ house that had been given to him with his last supply of dog biscuits.
In the vestibule, unseen by Arlo, and wearing a simple sleeveless frock; Placelle Lamella sat cross-legged on the floor with her back against the wall. She reclined peacefully with her arms limply draped across her knees, an empty glazed-over look in her thoughtless eyes while she sat silent sentry over his quarters… and fed.
The End of First Last Chance
Thank you for joining me all the way until the very end, shipmate. I hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve found here. As always, full versions can be found here in any format you may desire from a number of sellers. I’m grateful for any sales, but even more grateful for the care of a reader entertained.
I hope to see you all again after a time for the sequel to First Last Chance, where we will join Arlo and Placelle Lamella once more as they uncover a mysterious plot centered around an even more mysterious artifact— coveted by someone from Arlo’s past. Come aboard once more for…
