The atrium was abandoned then. It looked as if the entire wing of the prison had been really. A mat, an ash tray and a calendar that gave a date populated the entrance way. The place really hadn't been that bad for the imperials there. No time now, they dissolved into blurs behind me, stone brick and mortar flying by.
The sign ahead might as well have been written in a foreign script. Literacy learnt in that caged abode of ours be damned then, I couldn't even figure out why my head felt that fog of bliss that obfuscated at that moment. Something to figure out later, I'd thought. Something I'd ask Taylor.
"Cellblock 8-C"
Up the stairs and bursting through the doors. Hospitality gave way back to a familiar decrepit design as I barrelled down hallowed halls for the one that breathed erudition into a fool's lungs without air. I felt a skipping in my heart as I turned a corner for a glint of familiarity to catch my gaze.
The cafeteria.
Flashes of things that happened but mustn't have shown in my mind's eye. How many days had it been since the place had been in use? It looked almost forsaken. More images, skeletal demons with bloat on their stomachs – kids punished all too gravely for their folly of being. They used to be his friends, but in their last moments, white frames dug into calloused and calcified skin, threatening to rip and unravel the last of them. I'd nearly gagged, supporting my weight on a table, dry heaving, willing those demons to disappear.
'Medicine… kitchen wasn't it?'
I crashed into the door, clutching my ribs, they still bruised from the beating I'd gotten earlier. Tremors and darting eyes searched the bare-boned room. Deadly efficient, and with the stealth of a prisoner that had broken back into his prison, I began to slide and throw plates onto the floor to search under them, pulling clean out the drawers and cabinets onto the floor with the most deafening crashes when they hit the floor… with the utmost stealth. Then, I'd found it.
It was a satchel, bunches of them with countless poppy seeds in them. I snatched one, then one more before leaving to return to take another, smashing one to gag down the ungrinded nostrum.
Down the hall and a right turn to our cells, I yanked and tugged at the impossible weight of the crooked kennel's keep, opening the gates to our cells.
"Taylor?! Taylor you've got to wake up now buddy!"
I jogged to our cell, demarcated by that bite out of the walls, footsteps dampened by the tempo-ed clanging of the man in his cell. In the cell, Taylor was there. Taylor was still there, and I clung to a man that was there still, just resting on his bed.
"C-come on brother," I said tugging and pulling at his arms, a patch of purpled skin slothing off, "I promise I-I won't ever complain about the lessons again alright? Just l-let's go- we need to go now!"
A shadow looms over me, its hands raising a cane to put this dog in its place.
Bisected. I saw the man's shadow get cleaved into halves, a hand pulling at the back of my shirt, trying to pull me away from my last friend. Maybe it'd been hunger, I'd only remember the froth and curses that slid between my gnashing mouth as I fought against reason, tears streaming down my blue-blacked cheek.
"LET ME GO! WHAT'VE YOU DONE WITH HIM"
I turn back to see that it had been that same rebel officer from before, Horace, his face a grimace now as he kept his gaze shifting between me and the door behind, already, figures in imperial garb racing towards the cell block down that long stretch of corridor that had led here. Too many of them. I tussled and tried to force the man to let me go as I felt the pommel of a blade hit me squarely in my chin. The last thing I remembered had been the swordsman pulling out his ink and brush and scribbling down a circle on the floor.
Consciousness came in gaps. I'd been put down one too many times at this point. I vaguely remember the fight Horace gave through those halls, as I do the injuries he accrued as we made for the hill.
I remember waking up on a knoll removed from the sight of the prison, the worst of my wounds bandaged. Rustling came from my immediate right alongside scratchy snideness. I don't quite remember what Horace had said, for tears that remained elusive for so long had found their tender reprieve. Why hadn't I looked closer before? What kind of fog had kept me from really seeing Taylor, and when had he gotten so small and frail?
The swordsman's words dried up, his linen soaked through in parts with his blood as he leaned in for an embrace. I cried. I had cried until choked gasps of air had forced those stopping gags that caught in my throat. In that time, Horace's chest heaved faster at first, before slowing to the crawl it was now.
I'd only begun to wipe the snot from my lips when his hand so firm before, clung onto my hands. I leaned in to drink of his every word then.
"Help…"
And then he was gone. Fevin combed through his wares. In Horace's robes, a letter had been addressed to his mother in a frontier town of Xinhaai.
``` ```
*(Narrator)*
It was like watching a knife sink slowly into your own chest, wondering when the man staring at you and your killer would decide to intervene at last.
Imperial banners flew over the cities of the kingdom, their stalwart defenders being beaten back and torn down at every corner. From the get-go, it had seemed like a losing battle. A house divided could not stand and what was left to fight against the fanatical forces that fought in devotion for a god emperor across the straights had been a mismatch of pretenders and ruins, only deepest keep of that house still standing.
Weakened but not pacified, the throne of the kingdom still held and lorded that austerity demanded of the rulers that held the mandate of their people. Tall hubris stood awaiting the arrival of their king, murmuring soft utterances to one another. They wore silken ceremonial garb, colours reminiscent of carnivals that showed in similar measure their share of actors that played their roles of importance and grandeur in a modern age – uniforms of that better auspice of the court.
The kingdom had survived for long enough against the empire, and against modernity, renegades against disorder. That much had at least been dogma of the courtiers that now lay prostrate before the veiled figure that entered the room. The announcer bellowed.
"The king has arrived! Long may he live!"
Veiled and layered robes dyed of cochineal and gold, the king was a young one, perhaps soon to be of age to marry. Around him, his courtiers and magistrates that had gathered in the capital that day chanted, "Ten thousand years! For ten thousand years shall you rule!"
Beside his dragging train came a lady in a more modest robe, veiled too. Though she followed the young king, with the appearances of grace and proper she took in stride were the ones that the young king was trying to imitate shakily. Under dawn's light, they approached the throne, the regent's shadow appearing so big.
Jensen stood amidst his peers. He sat at the base of the stands, rising just now from his bow. He sat beside relative giants in these circles, those of highborn lineage or established achievement that had merited their posts. His, Jensen believed, had been a post of necessity. Talks of reform were thrown lightly across the high circles to appease the civil raffle. Representation, in particular, they spoke of quite often.
Jensen spoke the same as the rest of them, he had their same eyes and even faith for the most part. None of his ability did he doubt, but his ability to even implore beyond authority his for the respect his fellows carried.
His skin was bronzed, tanned in part from his years picking herbs in his hometown highlands, and in part his different blood. Yes, he knew what his place was there, just an over glorified ballot and extra voice to affirm decisions already set in stone. Decree is offered up, the court agrees. Discussion and query is pressed for, the outcome is unanimous.
"Heed notice! The two, read, two western commandaries have seceded to the rebels. One, read, one northern county has been captured by the Empire."
Yesterday's news.
"Heed notice! Four merchant courtiers from the land of the giants have come! They lay out concrete adages to our stores and their bring of new magic to our lands in contract."
The courtroom erupted into discussion at the news. One was the governor of a port city, one of the first opened to the stocks of this new magic, the ones their enemies used. The other was a magistrate of the capital, who dictated truth through printed pamphlet and articles
The governor extends his hands to the king and his regent, curtsey as he ought to, he announces standing up, "Your tenure is fair and sanctioned by heaven, your majesty. Yours will be a forward realm that embraces the progress your subjects have longed for."
Meaningless diction that forwards his audacity and not meekness towards the king, for all those words amounted to, would be what he'd ask next.
"From the Western Giants, the ones of great commerce and the fount of new magics, they have set up schools and colleges in our ports. Already, we see more freedoms afforded by our labourers, men patron the fine arts, as dissent has fallen with more platform given to subjects. In return, they humbly implore yourself to grant them sanction to set up their keeps and castles here – those of their lands' lords that churn out the fruits of a new era that put to death the tradition of the old. In particular, they seek to churn out their medicines and salves they say befits a modern man. Please, consider thusly."
And in his bow and withdrawal to his seat, the court gave its approval in flaps of their bills, a class-ed applause to the man that had suggested something that had helped that man staring at them from across the room, start to plunge a different knife into their chests. Perhaps most of them had already known it, Jensen set with an unease, shuffling in his seat as he lifts his bill to give his ritual ballot. From his side, that magistrate, son of past carrier of his post, benefactor of a merit inherited stood without objection from the king and regent.
"Your tenure is envy of all under heaven, your majesty. And yours is a realm that is bettered to day and grateful tomorrow."
A nebulous shadow nods behind his veil on the throne.
"The honourable gentlemen of the ports has brought up his peace on the matter. Forgive me then for suggesting the methods your eminence must have already considered for our adoption of the West's new magic. People remain in holed-up abodes, ignorant and practicing that antiquated ideal of anti-intellectualism in most of your realms today. Their blind piety to tradition and your dynasty is a foil to meaningful reform, but also apparatus. Boldness that precedes my own, I implore your majesty to charge mine the duty of portraying your rightness in line with the liberties and openness of the foreign giants from the west. Today's agnostics will be tomorrow's supporters, please consider thusly."
Out of the woodworks, more of the men, members of the old guard of yesterday popped out in new wares of short-fronted tailcoats, fitted waistcoats with pantaloons to match, suddenly trailblazers of modernity and reform today. So fast and eagerly had they turned. Continue they had to speak of poison ingested in honeyed tones. "Foreign investment", "Co-ownership of Rail", "Treaty Ports", "Western Newspapers", and Jensen continues to play his practiced role in this machine, flipping his bill to the new and packaged old that these old men espoused, though in his heart, wrested a deep unease.