Re: Unsaid Things Our Story Epub 23
Kistiñe Dziuk
When characters leave things unsaid, and the reader is able to sense the inner conflicts, it creates tension that can add to the story. In couple relationships, the intensity of feelings can often be unbalanced, with one more devoted than the other. This balance is often in flux, shifting over time or in response to life events. It is something I like to explore in my fiction.
Kate is young and her dreams could still be developing. But at the time of the story, she is occupied with fears of motherhood and the perception that her love for her new husband is not fully returned. I found her interesting because she does not automatically embrace the popular culture ideas of pregnancy and motherhood as both exalted and natural. She resists becoming a mother until the moment she cannot resist falling in love with her own child.
I have always been fascinated by the way parenthood can transform people. I considered presenting Kate as a happy and excited expectant mother, as is more commonly the case, but I decided it would be more interesting to explore the opposite mindset, a struggle I once observed in a close friend.
I enjoy real life stories of hauntings, and I happen to believe in ghosts, but I would agree that in many cases there is another explanation. The idea for this story developed after I had read about a real-life incident of infant abduction that had left the police baffled by the lack of clues, as if the child had vanished into thin air. I started to speculate on the idea of a time-traveling kidnapper.
For twenty years the Dread Empress has ruled over the lands that were once the Kingdom of Callow, but behind the scenes of this dawning golden age threats to the crown are rising. The nobles of the Wasteland, denied the power they crave, weave their plots behind pleasant smiles. In the north the Forever King eyes the ever-expanding borders of the Empire and ponders war. The greatest danger lies to the west, where the First Prince of Procer has finally claimed her throne: her people sundered, she wonders if a crusade might not be the way to secure her reign. Yet none of this matters, for in the heart of the conquered lands the most dangerous man alive sat across an orphan girl and offered her a knife.
Civilization huddles around pits of the light that falls through the cracks in firmament, known by men as the Glare. It is the unblinking stare of the never-setting sun that destroyed the Old World, the cruel mortar that allows survival far below. Few venture beyond its cast, for in the monstrous and primordial darkness of the Gloam old gods and devils prowl as men made into darklings worship hateful powers. So it has been for millennia, from the fabled reign of the Antediluvians to these modern nights of blackpowder and sail. And now the times are changing again.
The fragile peace that emerged after the last of the Succession Wars is falling apart, the great powers squabbling over trade and colonies. Conspiracies bloom behind every throne, gods of the Old Night offer wicked pacts to those who would tear down the order things and of all Vesper only the Watch has seen the signs of the madness to come. God-killers whose duty is to enforce the peace between men and monsters, the Watch would hunt the shadows. Yet its captain-generals know the strength of their companies has waned, and to meet the coming doom measures will have to be taken.
Tristan Abrascal is a thief, one of many making their living under the perpetual twilight of the greatest city in all of Vesper: Sacromonte. Quick wit and a contract with a capricious goddess have always kept him one step ahead, until one night he crosses a line by accident that burns all the bridges he had left. But not all is lost, for his mentor offers a way out of peril that turns out to be more than a simple escape.
Lady Angharad Tredegar has fled halfway across the world, leaving behind a ruin of a life: her family butchered by a ruthless enemy, their estate torched and their nobility revoked. Yet no matter how far she flees the blades of assassins follow, and she finds herself growing desperate for any protection. She has one relative left to call on, her estranged uncle in Sacromonte, but she finds that the safety he offers comes at a cost.
The paths of the two take them to the doorstep of the Watch, but for desperate souls like them enrolment is a lost cause. They will have to do it the hard way instead, by surviving the trials on the isle known as the Dominion of Lost Things.
With the Last Dusk will come the passing of Creation, discording turning to concord as the wager of Fate is resolved. Yet it shall not be the end of everything, for though all came of the emptiness of Void to create is to make something from nothing. That is our gift, and so the sum of the choices we have made will echo beyond the bounds of time.
Neither recognized that they were being visited by the Warden and the White Knight until they were told, and quickly acceded to silence when it was asked of them. Borders were still being drawn, after all, but Beaumarais might well be part of the lands ceded to Cardinal before the year was out.
The burial of the Rogue Sorcerer, Roland de Beaumarais, attracted something of a crowd. Magistrate Alisanne handled the early arrangements, but then turned the affair over to Brother Albert. Catherine Foundling had known many a shade of grief over her years, both hers and that of others, so she did not ask why the beautiful grey-eyed woman could not stand to look at the coffin. Roland had said there would be a woman in Beaumarais and there was no need to ask who she might be.
Roland was buried by the banks of the spring among a bed of red flowers. A stele of stone was left to remember him by, simply reading: Roland de Beaumarais, the Rogue Sorcerer. A life spent for another is never wasted. As dusk approached the crowd dispersed, heading back into town for the funerary banquet. The White Knight took a single look at the magistrate and the once-queen standing among red flowers before taking his leave with them, leaving them to the privacy of their grief.
Only the swing of public opinion in favour of the First Princess since the victory in Keter had stopped war from erupting, but that would not last. Rozala Malanza was not as skilled a diplomat as her predecessor, for all that she was significantly more beloved of the people of Procer.
The rest was yet as villages dotting the empty belly of a great city, workers come from abroad and migrants drawn by rumours of work taking up residence in clumps, but in time the city would fill itself. It might never be as large as Salia or Ater, the mountains would forbid such heedless growth, but in time it might become one of the great cities of Calernia regardless. Finishing to would be the work of decades yet, but already Cardinal had begun to pay for itself in part by collecting taxes in coin and food from its territories on both sides of the Whitecaps. It was a long way from no longer needing foreign coin to continue growing, but it would be provided for some years yet.
Besides, Chancellor Alaya and Empress Basilia had proved willing to sink a great deal more gold into the city than the Accords mandated. Not without concessions to show for it, of course, but negotiations with the seneschal of the city had not yielded as much as they might have hoped. Lady Cordelia was yet one of the finest diplomats on the continent.
Guests had begun arriving a month before the ceremony was due, but the grand names only in the sennight before. The incoming tide of crowned heads excited even the already infamously blithe Cardinalians, who had seen so many great works of magic used to mundane building purposes that very little could yet shock them. Formal reception only took place when the last of the delegations arrived, in the grand plaza between the two towers of the College. It was a long, ceremonious affair where the delegations marched up the avenue one after another to be welcomed and only made less dull to behold for the crowds by how richly dressed the delegations were.
The Lord Hierophant having adamantly refused the office of Rector of Cardinal College in favour of remaining a permanent Senior Lecturer, he had gotten out of attending. First Princess Rozala and her consort Louis Rohanon were welcomed first, a panoply of princes trailing behind them.
In return she received an open guarantee that Valencis would never receive help from Tenerife or be allowed to apply to join the League, a diplomatic coup that forced the rulers of Valencis to return to the negotiating table with a much weaker hand and a ruined reputation.
After Callow came the League of Free Cities, Empress Basilia her vassal rulers of Nicae and Stygia arriving first. Formal diplomats from the other cities followed, as though Anaxares the Hierarch had kept his Name he had spurned invitations to return to the League when invited during his reappearance in Orense. It had been considered a surrender of the title, even by Bellerophon, which had allowed the League cities to resume foreign affairs and vote on joining the Liesse Accords.
The head archivist of Cardinal College, Nestor Ikaroi, was not longer formally of the Secretariat but was still rather openly and amiably spying for Delos. He was so useful none of them particularly minded. The humour that had touched them at that retreated when the following delegation arrived.
The border between the Confederation of Praes and the Kingdom of Callow had been a matter of some debate after the end of the War on Keter. The Blessed Isle was in Praesi hands and the Fields of Streges in Callowan ones, but the land had never been formally ceded and there had never been a declaration of war between either realms since the secession of Callow. Chancellor Alaya had traded the disarmament of the Isle to the Callowan crown in exchange for a lasting treaty that allowed the Confederation to buy a fixed quantity of grain at a fixed price every year, bolstering her position and securing food for Ater, but the borders had yet to be formally fixed.
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