The bell over the door jingled softly. I looked up to see Marlo.
He was a wolf species, but nothing like K'arib. Where he was sharp angles, Marlo was more soft and smooth.
His grey fur was muted, his eyes a gentle redish color, and his movements were quiet.
"Cruthfior," he said. "I was told you're the man for delicate work."
"It depends," I said, wiping my hands on a rag. "What have you brought me today?"
He reached into the worn satchel slung across his chest and withdrew a bundle of cloth.
Laying it on my workbench, he peeled back the cloth.
It was a revolver. Old. Really old, a proper firearm from around half a century ago. Chemically-propelled. A wheel-gun. Its frame was steel, now smooth from the passing of time, accompanied by a brownish color.
The walnut grips were worn from a lifetime of being handled around, the checkin almost gone.
It was an elegant, yet simplistic design, you could say its beauty relied on that, a tool from an era before technology became overcomplicated.
"My grandfather's," Marlo said, his voice now softer. "From the old country, before the war. It misfires. And the cylinder doesn't lock tight anymore."
I didn't touch it right away, being a little scared of damaging it. I leaned in, the wear wasn't from neglect, you could notice the most frequently handled spots by the smoothness of the area, all the friction was out of love for the firearm.
"I can bring it back. It won't look like new, but it will do."
Relief washed over his face. "Thank you."
He took a seat on the client stool as I got to work.
This wasn't a job for my power tools.
It was for my own hands and measures in micrometers.
I began the meticulous disassembly, each part laid out on a clean cloth in order. My vision narrowed down to my workbench and nothing else.
The silence was comfortable, filled with the tiny ticks and clicks of parts being freed.
After a while, Marlo spoke, his eyes on my hands.
"There have been a lot of Geortarian wards walking around."
I didn't look up, I just muttered a "Yeah, I've seen them."
"I think they're preparing for the initation."
My file paused for a half-second. "The prince?"
"Hyde K'onoma. They're shipping white stone from the Yatara quarries for the procession path in the capital."
"From the Yatara quarries? Won't that cause avalanches for the mountainous villages?"
"It is. My brother moved to the Yatara mountains, he sends me messages about how you never know when a giant boulder will crush you."
I grunted, resuming my filing. The politics of the crown were hateful noise to me.
But the name Hyde. It dragged up a memory.
It was... six years ago.
- - - - - - - - - -
I was 18 dressed up in gray clothes.
Everything was huge and clean.
Walls surrounded the entire kingdom, almost 20 meters tall from every side, encapsulating you into a giant square.
I was a part of a "Honor Guard" for a diplomatic visit.
My "post" was a sun-drenched courtyard garden. My only orders were to stand there and don't touch anything.
Then he'd appeared.
A small, slender figure in white formal clothes, with a black wool cape that surrounded their shoulders.
His fur was so white it seemed to glow from the sunlight.
Prince Hyde K'onoma.
He had two large handlers hovering, but he'd slipped away to the fountain where I was standing.
Simply standing beside me, none of us spoke for a moment, looking away at the water. He was pale, not just his fur, his eyes too, a bleached almost empty gray.
"You're from the Protectorate." He'd said, simply stating the fact.
"Yes, your... sir." I stumbled on the honorific. How the hell did that kid figure it out with a simple glance?
"Only the Protectorate folk can have red and purple eyes."
Well my question was answered without having to ask.
"Is it hot?"
"It's... a cold desert, sir."
"Oh. So like here but cold."
Geortaria was also a desert nation, compared to the cold climate of Undeb Dehulm, this one was more tempered, it didn't snow during winter.
"Are you afraid of the monsters at night?"
"Everyone is, sir. That's why our houses have walls."
"They're building walls for me, too," he'd whispered. "Every day. Higher and whiter. Soon I won't see the fountain."
One of his handlers had swooped in then, apologizing to me with a sharp glare. Hyde looked back once, his grey eyes meeting mine.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Cruthfior?"
Marlo's voice pulled me back. The vivid memory from the royal capital still fresh in my mind.
"Sorry," I muttered, shaking off the memory. I picked up the old hammer spring. "The stone. Yeah. I heard."
"They say the Prince is... unfit for the throne," Marlo ventured, speaking the treason quietly. "He's been sheltered all his life. They fear he'll be the start of the kingdom's collapse.
I held the new spring up to the light, checking its curve.
Unfit? No. The correct phrasing would be that no one ever is fit to be king from such a young age. He's only turning 16 years old.
The kid I'd met wasn't unfit or weak.
"A weak king might be better for us than a strong one," I said, the words almost fleeing my mouth.
Marlo fell silent, the implication hanging in the air.
A strong K'onoma king meant they'd be exploited more efficiently. A weak one, a collapse... meant stability.
Maybe it would bring chaos too. For Undeb Dehulm, trapped between the devil and the dark sea, there were no good options, only different methods of survival.
I returned to the revolver, fitting the new spring.
The gun had been restored to function.
It would fire. But now came the second step. I set the file aside and took up a set of fine-grit abrasive pads and a bottle of linseed oil.
"You can make it pretty, too?" Marlo asked, watching as I began to gently, in tiny circles, rub the aged patina on the frame.
I wasn't stripping it down to bare metal, that would be a desecration of the technology. I was simply polishing it, letting the deep colors shine.
"That's what you could say," I murmured, my focus on the motion. "I'm just removing some grime off the steel. Not returning it to former glory, just renovating it, like an old human filling in their wrinkles."
Marlo nodded, appreciating the distinction. The comfortable silence returned, filled with the soft, papery sound of the abrasive.
"It's got people thinking. About the future. My friend... Rasko. He couldn't stop spinning around it."
I glanced up. The name was new. Rasko... Never heard of them. I was familiar enough with my town's community, but granted, I couldn't know every single person.
"He was a fisherman. Oh, a great one, he'd bring us nets full of fish, we'd be eating good for weeks, even with mid-day snacks. He had a little skiff, one of the old diesel-engine ones he kept patched with stolen parts. When the first rumors about the Prince's incompetence came around and the power struggle started leaking from the capital. It was his breaking point. He said he wouldn't get caught in the crossfire of a regime fighting over a heir."
I began working on the cylinder, polishing the faint lines where it had rotated against the frame a million times. Just listening.
"He wouldn't wait for the initiation. One night, without telling anyone, he loaded his skiff with fuel siphoned from the depot, a sack of fried fish, and every Skirlia he'd hidden over the past months. He pointed the bow west and just... disappeared."
My hands stilled for a moment. The western sea. The Geortarian navy patrols there. They always have a dozen or so ships, patrolling in circles, making sure no illegal Undebians escape the land of the Protectorate.
That wasn't the only issue. Although never being a part of the marines, I'd met a couple. And all they could tell were horror stories.
Treacherous currents that could be the end of your life.
Venomous or carnivorous marine creatures that only seeked out for the nearest prey.
"He somehow made it," Marlo said, answering my unspoken doubt.
"Eight days at sea, hiding from patrols. He landed on the western shore of Eastern Manaho. His boat almost falling apart."
The two Manaho were the nearest sovereign country to the western shore of Undeb Dehulm, where I lived.
Western Manaho was a large island, the shape of a boot, nothing really goes on there. I've heard indigenous communities just do their day to day lives without bothering anyone.
Eastern Manaho is an interesting case. Despite not offering much with infertile land and a humid climate, its a thriving touristic spot.
The beaches are apparently beautiful and the sand is so delicate it feels like walking on air. And in the center there are swamps, somehow popular for resorts.
"He still wasn't safe there. But the hardest part was over. The Manaho officials would've deported him on sight. So he found a community. All the way north in Galyscia."
Galyscia was the most northwestern country in the continent.
Well, not really, actually. Oman e' Katharsys would be. But no one has legal access to it. So Galyscia is the most northwestern publicly accesible country.
Its politics are interesting, too.
The land is divided into two peninsulas, completely disconnected from each other.
On the northern peninsula, everyone is rich. Its in fact, the richest place in the entire continent.
While the south is the place where thousands of indigenous communities live. According to official statistics, its the most culturally diverse region in the continent. So that's three things Galyscia excels at.
"Does the tribe 'Yabancilar Dogdu-en' chime any bells?"
I thought for a moment. I'd studied about indigenous tribes from all over the continent. But that one didn't resonate with me in the slightest.
"No. Not at all."
"That's because its not a real village. Long story short, there was an indigenous village there of two people, who decided to take in a couple who escaped Kortaria. After, those indigenous two people died, the couple began taking in refugees from all over the continent. Wanna know why?"
"Why?"
"A legal loophole. In the Galyscian constitution its stated that every person from an indigenous community of either peninsula, will receive citizenship immediately. Meaning if they created an 'artificial' community..."
"And began taking in others as their own..."
"Those new people would receive a citizenship, even if they had never touched Galyscian soil before."
That was smart. Although on retrospective, that's such an obvious legal loophole.
"Article 12 of the Galyscian Constituion: 'All peoples indigenous to the lands under the Crown's protection are granted immediate and irrevocable citizenship, with all attendant rights and dignities.' It was written centuries ago to calm down the warfare between the indigenous and the new settlers."
I set the revolver down, fully absorbed now.
"Rasko made his way to Galyscia. Presented himself at the Yabancilar Dogdu-en 'leader'. Then he spent the following six moths, learning the 'customs' which was just basic history and language lessons. Then, he applied for citizenship. And he got it."
The simplicity was almost breathtaking.
"As a Galyscian citizen, he had the right to change his legal name. To sever all ties to the past that had been forged for him. Rasko of Undeb Dehulm, subject of the K'onoma Crown was no more. He's someone else now. I don't know his new name. I only know all this from a letter he sent us months ago."
I picked up the revolver again, the restored metal cool and weighty in my hand. I cycled the cylinder. It locked up tight, with a satisfying click.
Rasko had found a way to be made whole as someone else entirely.
I looked at Marlo, seeing the mix of loss and wonder in his reddish eyes.
His friend was gone, not in the dead way, simply, his old indentity was no more.
"So he basically erased himself."
"He traded one identity for another. He tends gardens or something in Galyscia now, I'm just assuming."
I handed the restored revolver back to him. The old steel gleamed with a soft light.
Marlo took it, his paw closing around the grip. He held it, feeling the balance of it.
He paid me with three Skirlias and two bars of real soap.
And left with a softer step than he'd entered with.
I stood in the workshop after he was gone. The smell of soap hanging in the air.
I glanced at my own hands, covered in mysterious oils and stains.
What if I could, like Rasko, simply cease to be Farsi den Ghunnaich Cruthfior?