Sarah Does Bookish Stuff | Infinite Fascism: The Infini...
Infinite Fascism: The Infinite State
Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 28
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1984 meets The Handmaid's Tale meets Blade Runner 2049. That's the best mashup I can think of for this book.
I flew through The Infinite State and I barely know how I managed it. The pacing was breathless and tense and nonstop, I really like Swan's writing style! I will wholly admit this is my first book by him, but man... what a banger to start with. This was clearly a poignant project he was passionate about that involved processing a lot of things all at once. It took risks, it was fun, and the characters were all difficult people in an impossible situation.
I love when a book can engage in political commentary without it feeling overburdened and I felt like Swan did a great job. For me, it occasionally felt hamfisted at parts but that's because I am very aware (too aware) of political systems and how they work - that was a Me problem not a Richard problem. For someone who has no foreknowledge, I think the explanations of fascism and democracy are fantastic. He made them conversational and didn't bulldoze you with a billion explainers on theory, he just gave very accessible overviews of what different political systems are and the fact that none of them are perfect. These explainers were essential, too, which sometimes books can forget about when we get too deep in the weeds. He gave readers as much theory as they needed to understand the Empire's threat and the reasons Gabriel was an important project.
I loved the atmosphere Swan included in this book, too. The dreary landscapes of the Empire juxtaposed with the humid, colorful Gabriel was a great visual and even before he described Gabriel in such a way I was already seeing it in that palette. One thing he did well, though, which I think is both hard to do and uncommon to see is the threat of a concept. It's challenging to get the sense of threat in a fascist state translated into a fictional book - let alone a fictional space book - because there's no one singular threatening enemy. Books tend to crystalize around a clear enemy and a clear hero or heroes. I love when they manage to subvert that and turn either into something new, which Swan manages in The Infinite State. He makes the very concept of fascism the bad guy and shows you using the actions of his characters. From the Emperor to Cyprian to Droor to Morita to Morozov, Swan makes it hard to separate the idea of "bad guy" into any singular operator for the Decurion Empire. It isn't even the Decurion Empire that's the villain, necessarily, its the systems and antithetical mindsets that let the Empire exist in the first place.
Swan was very smart and thoughtful about how he leveraged human nature and how the Empire acts in conflict with what we have naturally evolved into. As someone who lovingly refers to myself as a defiant optimist - someone who refuses to stop believing in the best in things or people or situations - I felt very, very seen in this book. Swan believes in the inherent human desire to help and do good and the Empire beating and tormenting that out of people is turning its people into these twisted, abominable visages of humanity that are in direct conflict with one of our most important base instincts. It's the denial of agency and the discouragement of joy that sets the Empire's people to suffering. In their suffering, they're too tired and scared and cynical to do anything to oppose their fascist overlords.
He put so many different facets of what fascism does to people in here that I feel like I could talk about this for a dozen pages at least. One of my favorites was his demonstration of how the Empire's own worst enemy was... the Empire. Not the Free Nations, but itself. You can only stagnate and oppress your people for so long because you start to fall so far behind you create the tools for your own system to collapse. Denial of what human beings are and what we need at our core is a house of cards that always collapses in on itself, it's only ever been a matter of time.
His inclusion of the technology disparity was also very, very fun to watch. When Katherine gets out into the wider world (space, fine fine fine), she's blown away by how much of their suffering in the Empire is the Empire's choice. It's a decision that helps facilitate the repeated subjugation of their people by keeping them sick when they don't have to be, overworked when they don't have to be, poor when they don't have to be. It was a great way to show that the obligation of a government is to care for its people and its decay begins when it loses sight of that goal. When our basic needs aren't met and a government turns it into a flagellation of the people, a moralistic chiding that blames the people it was established to govern instead of itself, it begins to poison itself and heralds its own doom.
Somehow, in all of this, we also managed to fit one of my favorite topics to rant about and I will do my best to stay high level with it: the military industrial complex. I hate the military industrial complex and I got the impression Swan does, too, but he was much better about making The Infinite State informative as to why it's so damaging and terrible for a population to let military privateers run amok than I would have been. The Perpetual War Council from the get go gave me TMJ because, yeah. If you're engaged in perpetual warfare, you're probably in the wrong. He talked about the human canon fodder of their own children the Party members create, how the constant forced birthing and obsession with pregnancy is just a mechanism to feed the constant machine of interstellar war and has nothing to do with women's rights or family, the lack of technological improvement feeds their trumped up propaganda narrative about the nobility of these stupid wars, and how the distance of the people watching the footage of these endless wars keeps them removed from the true horror of them and thus continually in support of these "expansion efforts". The arms fair made my skin crawl, but Swan also was very smart about including why it's necessary to be armed when everyone else around you is armed. I appreciated that inclusion a lot because it's under discussed how when everyone around you has nukes, you need to be able to also defend yourself from nukes kind of thing. Smaller countries arm themselves up because everyone around them has armed themselves up. If they don't they just open themselves up to being overtaken under the guise of "protection" and then fully annexed against their will. Sounds remarkably like a very recent conflict occurring actively today, right?
Okay, I won't preach, I swear. As someone who loves political themes in books and believes fully that reading is political, books are political, and books are affected by the political climate of the era they were written in, this was a very bold story that directly faced down modern issues and conflicts most authors shy away from or leave room to pretend has nothing to do with modern day situations. I felt like Swan confronted complicated current events in a smart, accessible, thoughtful way that you could couch as a reader in terms of science fiction and places that don't exist. While the removal from the current day is there plainly and front and center (in my opinion), the way he bluntly addresses systems is very easily taken into our own world. Too often, authors rename fascism like "urblanagism" or "portoricianism" or give it some made up name that allows us to remove ourselves even farther from the concepts and pretend that's fully made up and not real and doesn't exist outside of the context of that story. Swan didn't. He called a spade a spade and I think in the era of surveillance states, flirting with fascism, and watching once-great governments forget that their priority is the wellbeing of the people they govern? This distinction is relevant, important, and will be a lens into the current state of the world to future readers.
Pater Delenda Est
Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 28
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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 27
[Let's go chapter 2! I actually have a few chapters already written, I'm trying to get one done a week for this project at minimum give or take. I like this so far and I have a character in Book 2 conjured up that I am already so excited to get to. She's gonna be my favorite, honestly. Still. Gotta use this as a setup for the bigger breakout in the series. This is kinda fun, guys. \ \
- \ \ Chapter 2: Traitors\ \ Castor stood outside the double doors to the throne room and took a long, steadying breath. The ritual he had perfected over the last ten years in service of his mortal enemy came so easily now. He breathed--slow and deep--and checked all the buckles and belts and fasteners on his armor. Counting as he went. Clearing his mind, smothering the fire that burned at the back of it as if the Dawn Emperor might see it someday. He touched the notches on the edges of his steel bracers - one for every member of his dead family, dead friends, dead court. One for every person he loved that the Dawn Emperor had taken from him. \ \ He prayed for their strength, lifted his head, and nodded to the guards. They opened the doors on terrible, silent hinges and the throne room painted across his vision. The walk, as always, felt interminable. He kept a lazy hand on his sword and a lazier grin on his face as he approached the man seated on the golden sunburst of a throne. The Emperor leaned on his hand, watching Castor approach through half-lidded pale blue eyes under tightly trimmed black hair. His thin mouth was set in a permanent partial smile, as if he always found something vaguely amusing or was plotting something unspeakably wicked. \ \ Castor usually found it was the latter. \ \ The Emperor raised a hand covered in golden rings, sweeping the dark blue of his robes along the pale stone floor. Castor took the invitation and kneeled, kissing the serpent signet ring of his liege and bowing his head. \ \ “Rise,” the emperor sighed. “Tell me of the north.”\ \ He always sounded bored, which Castor assumed he must be. With two thirds of Moranthe now under the Dawn Empire, he was running out of places to conquer. He fought the urge to clench his hand into a fist and stood. He was no coward, despite what everyone said about him in the north. He looked the Emperor in the eyes when he spoke. \ \ “Small pockets of rebellion, nothing we aren’t accustomed to,” he clasped his hands behind his back to steady them. “Put down swiftly. The Forestmen are pillaging again, though. I believe the Ice Witches laid waste to some of their hunting grounds, the feral bitches. It’s forcing them through the Wastewood to pillage. I’ve got my men forming patrols and ending the bands when we find them.”\ \ The Emperor hummed his approval, scanning his cold eyes up Castor’s body the way a lord might eye a good horse. That’s what he was to this man, really. A prized stallion. Proof that even the strongest-willed of his enemies could be broken and cowed to the point of becoming a beloved general in his army. Valasen rallied the world to help close the Tempest Gate and beat back the demon hordes that surged across Moranthe and the Dawn Emperor took the moment to spread his army out and occupy any throne left unguarded. His little cousin had saved the world and the world rewarded her with a dead family and dead allies. \ \ Castor was only a boy when he was taken into the emperor’s court as a ward. Eleven and frothing with rage, a wild creature all snapping teeth and raking claws. The Guard Captain was still missing half an ear. They had found him guarding the bodies of his murdered parents with a sword twice his size. The last living member of House Tartenna, ruling family of Valasen.\ \ He wished they had killed him. \ \ The Emperor remarked to his miserable son without looking at the young man fixed slightly behind the left side of his obnoxious throne, “General Tartenna is our greatest asset in the north. He knows the people intimately and is the only one the Ice Witches will entreat with.”\ \ “Yes, father,” the young man watched Castor through frigid glacial blue eyes. \ \ He took after his mother, the long-dead Empress Delia, thankfully. The only thing he inherited from his tyrant father were his eyes and his penchant for being an asshole. Prince Ciro was everything the court wanted from an heir. Just barely shorter than his father, an already towering man, he was broad-shouldered and carried himself with an easy confidence. Simple to do when you’re the future Emperor. He was sharp-jawed and high-boned as all good royal sons are, his thin silver circlet half hidden under a cornsilk forelock. \ \ Compared to Castor, though, he might as well have been a boy. They were two years apart in age, but impossibly different in stature and appearance. Castor was the hulking mass of war, built like a battleaxe with pale blond hair nearly silver, kept far too long in a mess of braids and tangles he knotted atop his head to keep out of his face. Cold, bright green eyes fixed on the prince from under a weary brow. Castor’s nose had been broken more than once, a scar slashed across it that added a dash of menace into the wild attraction of him. \ \ The two young men regarded each other with the disdain neither of them had ever bothered to hide. As boys, they had never made peace. As men, they interacted only as much as decorum demanded. Decorum, of course, being the Dawn Emperor. \ \ “I should like you to stay for the opening ceremony of the Games, General,” the Emperor waved a hand. “The additional guards will come from the ranks and they would be more receptive to you than the Captain, I believe.”\ \ Castor agreed. For all his hatred of the Dawn Emperor and his Day Prince, he held the undying love and admiration of the soldiers. He had fought for his place in their ranks, chosen to start where everyone else did despite the Emperor’s offer of command. He wanted to earn it. More than that, he wanted to owe the Emperor who had destroyed his family as little as possible. \ \ It helped that he had a death wish and regularly threw himself in harm’s way during campaigns to save his men. He did it under the guise of honor and valor, but the truth was much simpler. He wanted someone to kill him. Whatever god had decided to make him their pet project, however, had not allowed for this. Instead, he found himself the center of many celebrations and a long and growing list of soldiers who owed him their lives. He couldn’t remember the last time he paid for a drink.\ \ “Yes, your majesty,” Castor thumped a fist to his chest and bowed enough to satisfy. “Anything else I can offer you, my Emperor?”\ \ “No,” he sighed and waved a hand, “you are dismissed. Attend the barracks and coordinate security with the Captain, please.”\ \ He turned on his heel and stalked out, controlling his gait the way he always did. Not too fast, not too slow. Languid, as though he loved his role as the Traitor General. The wolfish grin he paid the guards bought their belief and they gave him one back, loving his role, too. \ \\\\ \ Castor stared at himself in the mirror, leaning over the washbasin. Water dripped down his back in cool rivers, pooling and shifting and turning around the cords of muscle and scar. He marveled at how tired he looked. How tired he was. All of his sins weighed him down and he let himself have a moment to stop trying to hold them off. His back bowed and he was looking down in the still water at a distorted version of himself. \ \ Fitting, he mused. The warped version of his face mirrored how he felt under all the complicated layers of who he believed himself to be. \ \ He glanced at the small scroll of parchment, his reason for bathing and tidying as best he could. He had another role to play while he was here. A drowning, hedonistic role he let himself disappear to and pretend everything was fine. He would attend their parties, be marveled at like a hound, and accept their offers of beds and drugs and wine until he forgot his own name. \ \ How else was he supposed to cope with the knowledge of everything he was?\ \ Traitor to his people, yes, but also the only thing keeping them safe. If he hadn’t let himself be cowed, if he hadn’t bent the knee and sworn his fealty, the Dawn Emperor was going to murder them all. They believed he was the last Tartenna left, that he carried their hope of liberation in his heart. Then he knelt and kissed the serpent ring and that hope had been snuffed out. All that remained of Valasen now was a corpse, bones picked clean by a cobbled-together council of low-House survivors too mealy to ever foment insurrection. \ \ Castor knew, though. Deep in his heart in the place where secret, soul-bound knowledge lived--Elara was alive. With every fiber of his being, he knew it. It was why he bent the knee, why he joined the army, why he went north when ordered and fought for glory under the Dawn Empire’s rising-sun banner. He was looking for his lost cousin, the true Princess of Valasen, the real Tartenna heir. \ \ She was out there and he would find her. They would restore the castle at Reyna and rally their conquered allies to her throne. They would beat back the Dawn Empire and undo the man who had destroyed them. He would find her. He would find her. \ \\\\ \ Finn dropped his head to rest against the cold wood of his bedroom door. He hardly dared to breathe, to speak. His debt would be paid. By the end of this plan that was, in truth, absolute madness, he would be free of this life he did not want. He could go. He could join the Brothers of Death or become a silk merchant or open a fish stand and sell grilled hatya trout he caught in the Maga. After this, he was no longer a prisoner of violence to a man he hated. \ \ He just had to find a way to stomach being around Keelie fucking Sharp for two weeks. \ \ It didn’t matter. He would do it. She might have absolutely zero self control, but he did. He could hunker down and drag himself through any situation if it meant he could come here, pack his bags, and never look back. He went to the closet and pulled out a trunk, pushing the taste of freedom to the back of his tongue long enough to sort out what he would need. Suits and tunics and jerkins and jackets of the finest possible make Tobin could find, awash in what was to be his House colors of plum and silver. He tried not to cringe. He looked dreadful in plum. \ \ Of course, Keelie wouldn’t. Probably why Tobin chose them. He swallowed the bitter pill of Tobin’s affection for Keelie, misplaced as it might be. All of them, on some level, craved Tobin’s approval and only Keelie had managed to actually obtain it. How? He had no idea. He put it all out of his mind and loaded his things for travel, summoning one of the house servants to bring it down and ready it for the carriage. His second trunk he would take down himself. That one was full of all his tools he would need for his role. \ \ If it was spycraft he would be doing, it would be the best damned spycraft he had ever done in his life. Finn would leave nothing to chance. He was getting out of this life that never should have been his one way or another. When he finally lay down to sleep, he stared at the familiar crack in the plaster ceiling he had slowly watched bloom and grow over the years. He had no idea how it had started, only that it was there one day. It grew a little every year and Finn liked to imagine it as the road to his new life slowly inching closer to the door through which he would escape.\ \ Gods willing and kind, this would be the last night he spent in this bed looking at that crack. \ \\\\ \ Finneas tapped his foot on the marble floor of the foyer, glancing at the clock with a sigh. He looked to Whistler who lounged against the railing, “What could possibly be taking her so long? She already loaded three trunks into the carriage, it’s a miracle she has anything left to wear!”\ \ Whistler just shrugged indifferently. No help, as usual. Finn approached the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Will someone tell her highness that we have to leave?! Whatever she’s doing can wait!”\ \ “I assure you it could not,” Keelie threw open the door to her room - the second largest, of course, justified by her unquenchable thirst for finery that bordered on pathological as far as he was concerned. \ \ She whirled in a flurry of pale yellow silk, the gown full skirted and laced tight up the back. He grimaced and considered the mechanics of fitting that, himself, and her litany of trunks into the carriage. Briefly, he considered asking Tobin to call up a second. It might be nice to enjoy his last hour of peace before he was stuck with her for two straight weeks. Her hair was long, falling nearly to her waist in artful waves and curls. She had secured it over one shoulder with a gold and peridot comb that matched the embroidery thread stitched into the bodice. Her face had been painted subtly, augmenting angles and drawing out the brightness in her green eyes. \ \ Saskia’s handiwork, no doubt. Much as she was an artist with a blade, it seemed to be the only medium in which she had any sort of finesse. Behold, Saskia appeared in her bedroom doorway frowning unpleasantly at the back of her head. She met Finn’s irritated gaze and rolled her eyes, her muscles shifting subtly in the language they had developed after so many years to communicate things Keelie would probably break their noses for. He concealed the twitch of a smile and motioned at Keelie to hurry. \ \ “Would you stop preening over yourself and come on? If we’re the last ones there, it’s harder to blend in. The entire point of this is to blend in,” he watched her stroll down the stairs, each step a pointed essay on sloth. He set his mouth in a firm line, “I’ll leave without you if you’re going to be petulant.”\ \ He turned to make good on his threat and heard her sigh with no small amount of sulk in it. She refused his proffered arm with a sneer and shoved past him to be helped into the carriage. He took a moment to breathe. In, out, and in, out. Saskia broke his concentration. \ \ “Smuggle me back something from the castle,” she was grinning slyly at him, leaning over the railing. “Don’t get in trouble, stay safe, and talk to her as little as possible, Fins.”\ \ He smiled at her, letting his affection be plain and unguarded on his face. He and Saskia had been fast friends, two people who ended up someplace they should not have. Kindred spirits in their displacement. He felt the twinge of regret in his heart knowing he would be free while she remained a captive princess in Tobin’s grimy tower. It made him ill to think how much he would have to pay for her freedom. \ \ He would, someday. They had made that promise years ago and whatever she felt about him now, Finn intended to keep it. He offered her a nod and sweeping bow befitting any full-blooded nobleman, “A trinket for the lady, so ordered.”\ \ She rolled her eyes and grinned, waving him off, “Don’t get killed and don’t kill each other. Come back to me, Finneas Asper, and rescue me from my tower when you’re done.”\ \ He blew her a kiss and didn’t wait to see what she did with it. Keelie waited sullenly, staring out the window at the curving drive and manicured gardens. He steeled himself and climbed into the carriage behind her. With a thump, they were off. Passengers in a prison of silence. \ \ He was counting the trees, watching them fade into estates, then well-made houses, then much nicer row houses. The capital passed them by in a blur of wealth through the Gilded Quarter, skirting the slums and the working Rose Quarter. Keelie traced shapes on the glass and stared at the prints she was leaving behind. \ \ “At the castle,” her tone was serious, which concerned him, “be smart. Not that you won’t be, before you take a tone about it. Just… be smart and be safe. I don’t like the Labyrinth Castle, it just… sits wrong in my head.”\ \ Finn tilted his head in curiosity, staring at her, looking for the trap she was laying for him. Finding none felt worse, “You, too, Sharp. We’re walking a fine line with this job. Any of those noble Houses can finger us for frauds, if given sufficient motivation. Don’t give them any.”\ \ “The only thing I plan to give them,” she looked at him and grinned, “is a sufficient beating at these asinine Games they love to pretend mean anything at all.”\ \ He couldn’t resist grinning back, “Good. Do us slum dogs proud and let them lose that purse to rabble. Even if they’ll never know it, I will. If you succeed, I’ll even do you the favor of spreading that rumor all through the Rose.”\ \ She feigned surprise, “Truly? You would do something so kind for me?”\ \ “Let that be our deal, Keels,” he raised a hand and extended it to her. “We get through this, I get free, you get your purse, and if we can manage to be civil the whole time I’ll spread rumors of your greatness to the masses.”\ \ She stared at his hand in suspicion, mulling it over for a long time. Finally, she reached out and shook, “Done.”\ \ In her periphery, she tried not to look at the looming mass of the Labyrinth Castle that made a chill run down her spine.\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/mSHIW89ZGkVFh40mGViQ/)
Untitled Fantasy Book Chapter 2
Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 24
[I did it. I finally finished The Faithful and the Fallen with the ending of Wrath by John Gwynne. This series was a rollercoaster for me and I have a lot of things to say - good and bad - that might upset folks. Here's the thing, I won't lie about things I read even if I feel bad for saying some of them. \ \ Let me quickly recap because I read the first two before I started writing out my feelings and thoughts.\ \
- Malice: I struggled with Malice. The first half I almost put it down and I was actually shocked people loved it so much. Still, I see it on people's favorites list and it evokes a visceral reaction in me. The second half, however, proved me wrong. It picked up in huge ways I really needed. So much of Malice was Corban training and losing, repeat. The latter half, though, was all plot and story and action and moved at a much better pace. \ \
- Valour: I liked Valour so much more, but it still had the same pacing issue. There were so many repeated motifs and settings. Run, rest, be discovered, repeat was the entire book. The exception for me was Maquin and his storyline. I lived for Maquin and Fidele's storyline in this book, it was exactly the deviation from the formula I needed. \ \
- Ruin: Ruin was the best of the series to me. A great balance of action, plot, characters, development, and motion that I really enjoyed. It slogged itself down at times, but overall this was the strongest book in the series! \ \ \ One thing I've felt about this series is every single book could've done with a 30% trim and been so much stronger and better paced for it. Each book had 20-30% in it that was just repetitive or bland or didn't serve the story or anything to me. Some of the POVs reached a point of comical versions of an archetype that if we had trimmed them back or done with one less, it would have sung. \ \ Wrath, for me, suffered from the same problem. I'll start with the things I disliked and get those out of the way. Wrath was, overall, good. A good ending to a very popular series, in my opinion. However, there were a lot of cyclical moments in this book that pulled me out of feeling like I was reading a Book 4 story while characters do Book 1 things. Most prominent for me is Camlin and Rafe. Camlin has multiple chances to kill Rafe and after everything he has been through and how Camlin has grown and developed, he opts to... let him go? Many, many times. Camlin is the one character who has consistently believed in just taking action and putting someone down because they're a threat. Until it came to Rafe. Which, of course, bit him in the ass. Not once - multiple times. That was the infuriating bit. I could have forgiven once, but it was thrice that Camlin was making Book 1 choices in Book 4. That detracted from his character to me and undid what had been careful and smart development. \ \ The other example I have is the repeating Maquin-Fidele-Lykos saga. At a certain point, when they get captured for the fifth time, all I'm hearing is yakkity sax. That repeated capturing over and over actually turned Lykos from Book 2's scariest villain into a comedy trope to me. It deflated the threat of Lykos and made his character feel... silly. It also undermined Fidele's smarts and her coming into her power when, in the end, she didn't overcome Lykos at all and was exactly who she was when he bewitched her. And Maquin - GOAT and true hero of the tale - Three Stooges-tier repetitive failure to kill him. He's deadly and skilled and the best warrior they have, but comically stumbles over a root or gets elbowed in the back right when he's going in for the kill. There's a point at which I just don't care anymore and I reached that point with the Lykos cycle. \ \ My other issue stems sometimes from Gwynne's writing style. The man can write the heck out of a fight scene. Like. The absolute heck. But I can feel it in everything else that he doesn't like writing the journeying parts to get to the fight scenes. Moving around the map had a tendency to feel rushed and everything I needed to create a scene or space was left too open for me to feel grounded in the locations, but the fights were so well coordinated I could visualize them the entire time. \ \ Now onto the good bits. \ \ Camlin "For Love of the Game" whatever his last name is remains one of my favorite characters. I loved him and Edana's friendship and how his loyalty was born from just wanting something different for his life. He turns into the cool adoptive forest dad and ends up with a beautiful ending I really loved for him. \ \ Veradis, my son, finally got it together and has his "wait is this play about us" moment in Ruin that he carried into this one. His desperation to find his friend again in Nathair and the gutting knowledge he can't was a phenomenal trajectory for him. I love this idiot because even with Nathair's betrayal and breaking his oath, he remains a loyal and moralistic man to his core. He understands that his role within his oath to protect Nathair means, in this moment, from Nathair himself. \ \ Maquin's ending though. Loved it. Won't say anything else. \ \ One character who surprised me with how much they grew on me? Corban. I kinda felt like Corban was boring. In Valour I would heavy sigh at his chapters, I can't lie. But in Wrath, I really loved reading his character. He comes into his own and all the things that made him who he was pulled together here. Gwynne wrote him not as a reluctant hero, but as a man choosing to be heroic. There's a huge difference! Corban spoke to his fear and how it was fear that made him brave. He cares about his people beyond just his friends. He doesn't want power, he wants peace, but he recognizes the necessity of violence to obtain that peace.\ \ Wrath, overall, gave me a satisfying ending. I felt the twist was handled really well, the characters were where they should have been, and everything tied up nicely without feeling forced. Every ending felt earned. I did enjoy the series, but it has its flaws. It's good, not great, but I'm locked in now so I guess I have to dive into Era 2.](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/MxwRF8GTZ4AM3z4BrPIr/)
1 book
Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 24
[I posted about adding exclusive written content for Tier 1 members and beyond and I figured it's only fair folks get the chance to see the stuff I plan to write and what they can anticipate.\ \ Currently, I have two dueling works-in-progress I will be sharing chapter by chapter. I'll be open for feedback, changes, criticism, etc. on both projects and figured I'd let people decide which one they want to follow and go for that since they're both so different.\ \ The first project I'm posting about is this one: The Book of Icarus. It's a blend of Catholicism, Celtic folklore, and Greek mythology about two disgraced exorcists who discover one of their own who they thought was missing might not, in fact, be missing at all. Icarus and Maren unravel something the Church has been hiding from them for over a decade and have to choose a side in the war between faith and fae.\ \ The second project I'm posing about is currently unnamed. That's how new it is. Maybe I'll open the floor and let readers help me decide on a name so I can stop calling it Unnamed Fantasy WIP. This one is very different from The Book of Icarus. It's an epic character-driven fantasy meant to evoke classic juggernauts like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones where the world is huge, the characters are the focus, and we start returning old, forgotten fantasy creatures to our beloved genre.\ \ It turns out life doesn't end when you close the Tempest Gate and save the world. Keelie Sharp, unfortunately, would rather not talk about all that. She's a simple woman who kills people for money and accepts that her childhood dreams will only ever stay dreams. Until, of course, her patron sends her and the one person she can't stand into the heart of the kingdom to find out what exactly the Dawn Emperor is doing in the dungeons. While she avoids a face from her past, a nosy prince, and an Emperor who may or may not be going mad, she begins to wonder if she really wants to know the answer.\ \ So. Without further blathering. Enjoy the first chapter of The Book of Icarus and decide if you'd like to keep enjoying future chapters exclusively reserved for Tier 1 subscribers.\ \
- \ \ Chapter 1\ \ Exorcising demons was killing Icarus Ulrich slowly and painfully. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back, chest heaving, the knife wound in his forearm a distant pulsing memory. The pile of ash erupted in a dim blue flame and reclaimed his attention. Vial in hand, he dipped it into the fire and captured the shimmering sludge within. When he straightened, he found the elderly couple staring at him wide-eyed in the doorway. He politely palmed the vial into his pocket and gave them a sharp nod. \ \ “My secretary will be in touch for payment,” he didn’t wait for them to respond and shoved his way past.\ \ The cold Dublin air bit at his skin despite his effort to sink back into the high coat collar of his long, wool coat. His stride was long and fast, escaping the shadow of the cramped row house until he found an alley he could use. He cracked open an ampule and let the iridescent liquid drip into one eye, then the other. Blinking, he leaned into the stone wall and slid to the ground. \ \ The numbing wash of pleasure flooded his veins, empty smile on his lips. He knew what he looked like to any passers-by: sclera flaring brilliant blue, expression slack and joyful, skin just slightly thin enough to show his pulsing veins for anyone who cared to look hard enough. Fifteen minutes passed and the world ate away at the feeling until his vision cleared and his head was sharp again. He rubbed his eyes with a calloused hand, resting against his knees while the effects wore off in full. \ \ Two more weeks until he would have to do that again. Two more weeks until the Rot tried to claim him and he fought back valiantly with a substance that would drive him mad someday if he let it. He shoved off the damp flagstone and brushed off the back of his coat halfheartedly. He needed a cigarette. Fumbling for a moment while the Eidolon wore off, he found a rogue tobacco soldier in his pocket and the last gasp of a matchbook with it.\ \ It burned his lungs deliciously while he walked the uneven cobbles and slithered around the iron poles of unlit gaslamps lining the street. The rattle and shout of horses and hawkers crashed into him like a wave when he spilled out onto the main thoroughfare into the lifeblood of industry. He tugged the white Roman collar free and shoved it in the pocket with the vial. People tended to stare more when they spotted a priest with a cigarette between his lips and he did not much enjoy being stared at. He kept his head down while he walked, mindful that he would have to dispose of his vice--one of many, if he were being honest--far enough from his destination to avoid being chastised by his loving colleagues.\ \ He flicked the butt away, lamenting the loss of a third of it, and patted his coat until he found what he needed. Keys jangled in his hands when he reached the iron-barred door of the office tucked away on the busy Temple Bar street corner. It was not his first choice, Temple Bar, but nothing matched the price so this was where they were forced to set up shop. \ \ Inside, a fire warmed the small offices upstairs against the prewinter chill. Heat carried all the way to the paned front door and he shut it quickly to stop it from escaping. He stamped the city off his boots and shrugged his coat onto a hook. A crackling, wizened voice called down from the top of the stairs, “Back so soon?”\ \ He grunted affirmation and ran a hand through slightly-too-long hair the color of sodden wheat, “Hadn’t attached to the place too hard, one foot still in the Veil.”\ \ His boots fell heavy on the wooden stairs, amber lamps stretched his shadow too long across the floor. The woman at the desk was older than she had any right to be, but more reliable than the younger ones who had come before her. Edith was never late and always methodically locked everything up at the end of the day. Her calendars were clean, easy to read, and she had no problem shaking down clients who thought they could avoid the whole “half later” part of the “half now, half later” contracts they signed. Icarus liked her very, very much.\ \ “Maren back yet?” He asked with a glance to the dark office nearest them. He knew the answer, the ask was a reflex.\ \ Edith shook her perfectly pinned white head and peered over thick spectacles, “No. Any minute now. You have a visitor.”\ \ She jerked her chin towards his office. He paused, “Who?”\ \ “Father Reed,” came a familiar strained voice behind the cracked door. Floorboards creaked under the man’s feet when he rose and widened it. His face was drawn, eyes tired. He had the ever-increasing hunch of someone who saw too much too often. \ \ Icarus took a deep breath and attempted--poorly--to hide a sigh. He placed the vial firmly on Edith’s desk, “Make sure Maren distills that. I’m running low. Father, lovely to see you.”\ \ “I’m most definitely sure it is not,” Reed smiled warmly and moved out of Icarus’s way, closing the door behind him. He remained on his feet when Icarus sat behind the weathered wooden desk.\ \ When Reed didn’t immediately explain himself, Icarus prompted him, “What brings you to the dregs of exorcist society?”\ \ He exhaled and finally sank down into the chair opposite. He leaned on the simple silver-handled cane he carried and brushed imaginary lint from his sleeve. Though he liked Father Reed, Icarus had little patience for the Church’s unexpected visits. It took the older priest a long, studious moment of silence before he decided to speak. Icarus hid his growing irritation in the grip on his pencil while he filled out the remaining fields for his most recent client. \ \ “There’s a case I’d like you to take. North of the city in Baldongan,” Reed examined his gloves. He wasn’t making eye contact, already the sign of something peculiar that set Icarus on edge.\ \ Storm-blue eyes snapped to him so sharp they could cut glass, “ You, not we. Not a Church-sanctioned house call?”\ \ He extended a hand for the yellowed folder Reed passed him and leafed through it. Eyebrow arched, he studied the details. Nothing stuck out to him as unusual. A woman showing early signs of possession, no spatial distortions, no evidence of anything other than a run-of-the-mill Bánánach trying to force its way in. The grainy black and white photo showed a buoyant woman in her late teens or early twenties, the one behind it a more recent version of her that looked a hundred years older. Jarring, but all the signs of a standard possession.\ \ “This is child’s play. A baby Caldrist could do this. You don’t need a Nytherist to slap a Bánánach around,” he dropped the folder with a clap. “Rejected until you tell me why this one specifically.”\ \ Icarus leaned back and steepled his fingers across his chest, boots thudding when they landed on the desk. The priest frowned at the impropriety, but ignored it. They had known each other long enough that Reed expected rudeness without being affected anymore. At one point, they had even been friends, “You think I didn’t already send one to handle it? The last thing I’d like to do is contract your services, you know that. The local bishop asked me to discreetly send someone more… gifted.”\ \ Icarus smirked, “And you had to admit that someone was me? I’m flattered. What about it’s different? You sure your Caldrist wasn’t just incompetent?”\ \ “I’m sure,” he shot back with a warning look. “Father Simon was efficient and effective, but this… whatever it is… couldn’t be shaken. It’s all the signs of a Bánánach, but it threw him clear across the room and broke his leg. Then it blew out all the windows and blacked out the town. Bánánach can’t do that.”\ \ “So you misclassified a demon,” Icarus shrugged. “Happens to the best of us. Well. The best of you lot anyway.”\ \ “Icarus,” Reed warned again, “don’t make me regret asking you. Just go investigate, at the very least. If it’s something Simon screwed up, I’ll double your contract fee for the inconvenience.”\ \ That made him pause. He did not like the Church, but he did like the Church’s money. He ran his tongue along his teeth and glanced at the clock ticking away at the back wall. Maren should be back by now. He would want her input on it, but Reed seemed twitchy about this case for some reason. It was unlike the man to hide his nerves, which made Icarus all the more intrigued. He sighed dramatically and dropped his feet to the floor. He put on a good show of thinking it through, bobbing his head eventually in a halfhearted nod.\ \ “Fine,” he thrust a hand at Reed, “I’ll take your ridiculously simple case and prove the Church fucked it up.”\ \ “Language, Father Icarus.” Reed shook the outstretched hand in the style of makeshift deal that had often been made about these things between them. \ \ “Father feels a bit formal,” Icarus scrunched his face to hide his disdain. He got feet to show Reed the door, “Perhaps Brother? Cousin, maybe? Hell, Uncle might be more fitting.”\ \ Reed shot him a confusing paternal look and paused at Edith’s desk. He had taken a shine to her since she started two years back and it was very much reciprocated. The older woman beamed at the opportunity to settle contract terms with him. Beside her desk stood a figure Icarus was grateful to see again. She was only shoulder height to him, but that wasn’t her fault. Icarus had always been tall. Her limbs were long, body catlike, dark almost eyes perpetually narrowed as though she constantly scrutinized everything they settled on. She did, so it was fitting. She kept her straight, black hair pulled into a low ponytail secured at the nape of her neck. Her arms were folded over her black shirt, Roman collar flashing white in sharp contrast to the dark. She liked her collar. She also didn’t smoke.\ \ He gave her a half smile, the best he could do, and she tilted her head at him. A silent conversation played out between them--what was Father Reed doing there, he would tell her in a moment, she hoped he got a good price, he absolutely did. \ \ Reed started when he noticed her and offered a small smile, “Father Maren! My apologies, I didn’t see you, my dear. You’ve always been so quiet.”\ \ It was true. Maren had a magical way of going unnoticed when she wanted to, which was essentially all the time. Her expression stayed unchanged, but it relaxed when she looked at the old man, “A pleasure, as always, Father. I look forward to Icarus’s debrief.”\ \ They exchanged a pleasant farewell and waited until the small bell stopped tinkling before sealing themselves away in Icarus’s office. She never rounded on him, Maren was not the kind to get worked up easily. She would study, ask questions, be thoughtful. Explosive response was Icarus’s specialty. He leaned against the edge of his desk and passed her the file, waiting for her to finish her methodical evaluation. \ \ “And the Church wants us to look into this?” She read through it again, her tone wary, “Seems fairly rudimentary.”\ \ He shrugged, “Beneath us, but he’ll double the fee if it turns out to be incompetence. So, there’s that.”\ \ “Hm,” she nodded, “and we do like money.”\ \ “How’d it go in Clondalkin?” He watched her ever-placid expression, always hoping someday she would give something more away to him.\ \ She put the file back down on his desk, “Fine. Nothing a Sídhe Binding couldn’t handle. Yours?”\ \ “Throw some Pale Doctrine and blood into a seal and that tends to do the trick. Left you some raw Eidolon to distill, did Edith give it?” At her affirmative, he relaxed, “I’m nearly out. I’d like to live a bit longer before Rot takes me, if you don’t mind.”\ \ “Never do,” she kept her focus on the closed file with suspicion. “Why do you think they asked for us?”\ \ He breathed a laugh, “They didn’t. Reed did. That’s the strangest bit of it. He’s selling it as Church business and I’m fairly sure the Church doesn’t have the faintest idea.”\ \ Maren watched the frosted window behind him and listened to the sounds of the city. Carriages rolling, steam trams in the distance screaming along the rails, voices muffled by the early evening fog. She turned, hands shoved into her pockets, and went to leave the room. \ \ “Tomorrow at seven there’s an early train north,” she paused to look back at him, her tone firm from giving the same lecture too many times. “Do not be late, Icarus. Repeat it back. Do not be late.”\ \ He rolled his eyes, hands up in defeat, “I won’t be late, Father Maren.”\ \ He was absolutely going to be late. \ \\\\ \ When he showed up promptly at half past, Maren was ready for him. She said nothing of it and hoisted her bag over her shoulder. He trailed after her through the hissing, steaming station disappointed by her lack of disappointment. When he glanced at the ticket she gave him, he made a noise.\ \ “You tricky bastard. Eight. Not seven,” he brandished the ticket in the air and laughed. “You’ve known me too long, my friend.”\ \ He could have sworn he saw a smile on her impassive face, but he knew better than to draw attention to it. He kept his coat wrapped and his scarf tight, the flash of his white collar hidden underneath the dark red wool. Maren stood like a statue beside him, her dark hair barely affected by the morning breeze. They waited on the brass and tile platform in silence, watching the trains pulled in and out along flickering copper wires overhead. Amber light from ornate gaslamps wavered uneasily in the receding dark. \ \ He eyed the ticker above the platform and watched the letters flutter and change. Their train drew in with a sigh--a testament to industrial engineering at its finest. Rich red and gold paints along its body, an interior of plush rose velvet in the second class car, and glorious heat that gallantly kept the Ireland cold at bay. \ \ Icarus settled into his seat and shed his coat down to his black clerical shirt and collar, relishing the warmth in the air when he hung it on the communal hook. Maren did the same, but with far less flourish. They settled in companionable silence and waited until the train jerked away from the platform before she spoke. \ \ “What do you suppose it means, that Reed is asking this and not the Church?” She mused, hand-sharpened pencil scratching away at a leatherbound journal full of secrets and sketches he had never concerned himself with knowing. \ \ He shrugged and stretched out long, arms folded, “No idea, but I’m looking forward to the double fee.”\ \ His hand slipped into his pocket and he drew out a silver flask. Maren made a disapproving sound when he shook it at her in offering. He uncapped it and drained enough to make the passage of time more bearable. Then a bit more to make it nonexistent.](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/ZYGXdztZC7SsNqR31z6g/)
Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 21
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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 21
[That's right. This is so early in the process I haven't decided on a name for this beast yet. I've written the spine of the story so far and it's probably going to cap out at 6/7 books. Screw it. Let's have fun and write it anyway.\ \ The whole purpose of this project? Write an epic fantasy character-driven story with inspiration from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Throne of Glass, and several other epic series that make me want to try my hand at character-driven storytelling. I'm typically more thematic and atmospheric so this is going to challenge me in big ways to do something different. In the spirit of bravery, catch Chapter 1 in all it's rough-draft glory below.\ \
- *\ \ Chapter 1: Whisper\ \ Nobody ever tells you what happens after you save the world. If someone had, maybe eight-year-old Elara Tartenna would have left the Tempest Gate open and let it burn. She had not, unfortunately, and it changed nothing. The Gate closed, but the wars raged on and over the course of sixteen years she had lost her family, her kingdom, and the life she was delusional enough to believe she was supposed to have. Now, the world thought Elara Tartenna had died when she closed the Gate. As far as Keelie Sharp was concerned? She did. \ \ Keelie knew one thing better than most people at the ripe old age of twenty-four--she knew how to listen. Hood high to cover the distinct silver-blonde hair she kept tightly plaited down her back, she leaned on her forearms and listened. The stew in front of her steamed, bread broken in her hands paused on its journey from bowl to mouth. All her focus lingered on the figure in the other chair, back to her. \ \ “You know how he is. Selling out his own uncle so he can inch closer to the seat of power,” the man spoke too loud, too drunk, and threw an arm across the empty seat beside him. “Finch will do what he always does. He’s a rat bastard, he’ll be at the Pits and make it look like he had no idea what’s been done.”\ \ It was what she needed to hear. She dug into one of several pouches belted around her waist and left a coin on the table, striding for the back door. Darkness had become the nature of her, the night opened its arms to welcome her out. Black cloak over a black tunic and a dark vest. Gray wool pants tucked into calf-high boots that ended at her knees. Her work tended to be nocturnal, so that was what she had become. Save for the blasted silvery hair that only ever came out when the moon was full, anyway. She should dye it again, she knew that, but it washed out her already too-pale skin and made her look like a ghost. In her line of work, ghosts stuck out. \ \ Finch was a bastard, the man spoke true. A dumb bastard, but still one all the same. The dumb ones died same as the smart ones--with one of her longknives in their throat. She adjusted her sleeves, bracers snagging the fabric, and checked the hold on her bandolier. Everything orderly, everything sharp. That was how she liked it. \ \ She had no plan for him, not yet. It would come to her while she walked the streets of the Dawn Empire’s illustrious capital Hoardann, pinnacle of civilization. The shining city of the shining Empire that swallowed the continent by inches. Eroding the nations it called allies, bleeding their wealth dry, and leaving them withered in its wake. To know Hoardann, was to love it and hate it. Usually the latter a little more. \ \ She stayed out of the wealthy neighborhoods, preferring to catch her quarry when it dared to venture into the slums she called home. Buildings cramped against each other, bending inward on shaky foundations over cobbled streets that had seen better days. Shouts from amber glowing windows, men stumbling from taverns half removed and half of their own accord. She moved without a sound around the teeming life of the darkest parts of the city. Women discretely watching for customers lingered in doorways that smelled like jasmine and rose to mask the opium smoke. Weathered-faced men exchanged whispered words and bags whose contents she would rather not ask about. A cat stepped into her path and she danced over it without losing her pace. \ \ She knew what she sought in these stinking, crumbling alleys. Knew it too well from her time in Hoardann. The last seventeen years of her life had been spent here, found and trained and tested against everything the city had to offer. Trained to fight and survive, watch the movements of people, read unspoken thoughts in every furtive glance. Trained to listen. \ \ The Pit was always heard before it was seen. Shouting, cheering. Not the good kind. Men came in droves to this cesspool, women followed in hopes of making or taking good coin. The briny scent of the River Maga washed away the human stench of the alley thanks to a well-timed breeze. The rickety docks stretched into the river, lit by dull lanterns in a feeble effort to make all of the slapdash boats feel watched over as they bobbed in the harbor. It was already drizzling when she reached the Pit. It was always drizzling. That was the worst part about this place--everything was damp. Nobody bothered to dry anymore. \ \ The building stood several floors tall and long, the only one on the block that looked to be marginally stable. The only one that made any real money, thanks to the fighting pits it pretended not to have buried inside. Its owner, a skeletal man she had only met once, called it “hiding in plain sight”. Keelie called it “idiocy”. They had exchanged a few fist-based words about it before she was banned for a month. \ \ She stared at the heavy wooden doors that did nothing to dampen the sound. The brilliant light dancing in the blown glass windows, flickering as the shadows of spectators drifted around tables and bars. Breathing deep, she stepped up and pushed. The noise hit her like a wall and she flinched, trying to make herself small. She slipped across the back wall as far as she could go before a worn wooden bar forced her to either order a drink or walk with too much purpose for a place like this.\ \ Hood still up, she flagged the bartender, “Whatever’s tapped and cheap.”\ \ He grunted, eyeing her, before turning to pour her a glass of something that foamed too much. He knew better than to ask anyone who went to that much trouble to hide their face many questions. She was known here, to her great misfortune. It was likely this would be traced back to her, yes. By the time they had, she was sure it wouldn’t matter and nothing would come out of it. She turned and crossed one booted ankle over the other, leaning back against the bar, and scanned the upper viewing area. \ \ It was two stories only, the rest reserved for the illegal brothel and gambling houses disguised as tenant properties. At the center of a square of boardwalks lined with railings threatening to collapse from the crowd, a square pit was sunken several yards into the ground. The tunnels at the back were the only way in or out. There were five of these pits built into the foundation. Five squares filled with two men each who paid or were paid good money to brawl. Sometimes it was less clear how willing each fighter was. \ \ Sometimes, she remembered with a familiar ache in her shoulder, it was a fighter who was foolish enough to think herself capable of a noble deed. She pushed the thought out and rolled her shoulders. She sipped and grimaced, half tempted to cause a scene over the audacity they had to serve something so grotesque. Cheering erupted and she used the moment to lean forward and scan anyone who stood around this pit. \ \ No sign of Finch, but she could feel him. Sense him in this place. It was her gift from Oisha, the Guild Master said. Her ability to sense things if she focused, sense people more easily. Magic? No, they would not dare utter the possibility it was magic. Not in these times where it was becoming increasingly dangerous to engage in that nasty business. She had fought the urge to spit on Oisha’s name back then. Young enough to be taken and taught, old enough to remember this was not where she was supposed to be. Not even a little. Another life she shook off with a shrug and continued her scouting around the space. Slow, unhurried steps. Weaving through the ebbing and flowing tide of the crowd, dodging a waitress with a too-full tray and ducking under the wide-thrown arm of a patron deep in his cups. \ \ It was the third pit where she found her mark. The young nephew she had been told in no uncertain terms to dispense with. The weak link in the family chain. A child who fancied himself a schemer against the master of scheming himself. The boy was a fool. Finch sat with a glass of something cherry red and expensive in his hand, leaning against a balustrade with a concubine on his lap. Also expensive, from the look of her. His dark hair too short, his nose too flat, his eyes too beady. It irritated Keelie to look at a man and know on appearances alone that he was a slimy, miserable thing. She would not feel an ounce of remorse for this. \ \ So she sat and she watched and she tracked and she waited. Most importantly, she listened. \ \ “Their tab’s getting awfully high,” the barmaid who had been running trays up and down muttered. “Last time he did this, he stumbled out and we had to call in the account to his uncle.”\ \ “Filch?” Both women laughed quietly at the mocking nickname, “Fancies himself the heir of Tobin’s secret empire. Wouldn’t shock me if he was dumb enough to try and take it.”\ \ Then what Keelie knew would not shock this woman, indeed. Finch had made a mistake. A series of them, actually. He had decided he was tired of playing the libertine to his underworld-myth of an uncle. The man was hard as nails, vicious as sea dragon, and ruthless as the death-god Haln himself. She should know. Tobin was her Guild Master, after all. \ \ His idiot of a nephew had wanted more. Gorged himself on a cushioned lifestyle and decided he was now hungry for power. That was his first mistake. The second was believing anyone in that den of vipers was his friend and ally. An unofficial Guild, they were. Bound by loyalty, money, and a healthy fear of the man in charge. Tobin, unfortunately for all but himself, possessed a formidable amount of fire affinity. He was Katur-touched, so they liked to say. He was very strong and very good at wielding what he had been given. He was also very, very good at hiding it until it was too late to do anything about it.\ \ If you called it a god-touch, you could skirt the technicalities about calling it magic. That’s what most people did to avoid getting pinched by the Black Guard, those secret police the Dawn Emperor had patrolling every street in his empire who were more than happy to make examples out of the gifted who failed to report and be registered. She shuddered at the thought of the last example making she had accidentally passed by. \ \ Finch, that was her priority. Not the Black Guard and certainly not magic.\ \ Keelie stared up at the man too old to be pulling this shit and made her plan up in her head. She was typically better than that, but Finch was a dumb bastard and she didn’t feel like it would take too much to handle him. When one of the barmaids began filling a tray with drinks, the other made an irritated sound. \ \ “Again?” \ \ “Just ready the runner to go find his uncle again,” one sighed, annoyed, and turned her back. \ \ With a pass of her hand and a twitch of her fingers--quick as a blink--Keelie unstoppered and dropped an equally mean-looking liquid into the glass of something cherry red and expensive. She made the maneuver look like she was turning back to stare down at the bar and into her glass of what was really just tangy water pretending to be ale. She kept her eyes in shadow and waited. \ \ The barmaid said something innocuous, gathered her tray, and headed for the stairs. Keelie turned her head slightly and took in the sounds of the crowd. Jeering, angry bets being fulfilled, some crooning too-young woman insisting a man too old and too drunk could afford it. She did her best to pretend she didn’t know what he could potentially afford. Being an assassin--a Whisper, as Tobin loved to call them as if it made what they did not the exact same thing--was not as exciting as she had been led to believe as a child. Yes, there were the knives and the acrobatics and the disguises and the coded languages, but mostly it was just a lot of sitting around and waiting. \ \ She timed it in breaths, how long she would have before it would be best to pack it up and leave. Each one passed, each sound becoming a dull buzz in her ear. It was like being underwater, tossed around by a river, unable to hear anything but the roar of static and silence in her head. \ \ Finally, a scream. \ \ It cut through the buzz and the water and snapped her attention along with the other patrons who knew a death scream when they heard one. Which, frankly, was far too many for one building. She glanced up and saw her mark--slumped over the railing, red foam falling from his pale lips with a sickening plop onto the floor below. He was twitching and spasming, would be for a while if the dose of gadras poison she had been forced to estimate was correct. \ \ Keelie took advantage of the momentary pause, then the subsequent chaotic shouting. She pulled off her cloak and tugged her hair free, screaming and pushing with the flow of the crowd like the rest of them. They mobbed towards the front door and she was so immersed in her act of panic that it almost felt real for a moment. The crowd spilled out onto the street into the dark, heading for the Avenue Provence as if the main street in the worst part of the city would offer them any safety. The guards that patrolled it were mostly decorative this far down. \ \ She ran and shoved and surged and eventually, slipped quietly off down an alley and slowed her pace to a leisurely walk. She sighed and raked her hands through now-tangled hair, irked at how much time she’d spent brushing it that morning. A shadow fell in beside her, swallowing the light. The only sign it was a person was the burning end of a hand rolled cigarette on the inhale and a tendril of earthy smoke on the exhale. \ \ She coughed theatrically and waved it away, “That’s a horrible habit, Whis.”\ \ The figure shrugged and light caught its face. A man, older than her by a decade with a battlescarred face and too much gray threading the black at his temples to be nowhere close to forty yet. He was wiry and lithe, like most of them in this line of work. It didn’t do well to be a barrel chested bruiser when you were trying to kill people with subtlety. \ \ “Yeah, well, don’t tell my mum will you,” he flicked the butt away knowing full well his mum was dead. All of their parents were, it was practically a prerequisite for depressing, murderous work, “You get it done?”\ \ “You think a mob of people just decided to run out of the Pit screaming?” She hastily plaited her hair again and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. He was looking at her with a raised brow, she could see it even in the dark, “If you walk into someplace with your hood up acting mysterious, then someone dies, do you think it’s best to keep looking mysterious with your hood up when you leave?” He shrugged, “Thought not.”\ \ They walked in companionable silence for a while. Whistler was less of an active taker of lives nowadays and more of a master of espionage. If someone made it ten years in the trenches, Tobin tended to find a better use for them. Recently, his empire had been expanding into rudimentary spycraft she suspected had to do with a natural inclination to grab for power that seemed to run in his family. \ \ “Boss wants to see you tomorrow night,” Whistler said in his reedy voice. He had so many now that Keelie wondered occasionally if that was the real one or if he’d forgotten what his real one sounded like, “I’ll tell him it’s a success. Give the man the evening to mourn. But you’re back out on something big, Keels.”\ \ She sighed heavily and held out her hand. The pouch appeared without so much as a perceptible movement of his hand and she weighed it, calculating in her head. It was almost double what Tobin had said she would make for this. She frowned, “He feeling generous?”\ \ It was not a good thing when the boss felt generous. \ \ “Nah,” he struck a match along the wall and lit another cigarette, “Finch was up to worse than he thought. Decided to add a bit’a weight to match the recalculated value of the target.”\ \ She hummed and pocketed the coins, then reached out to pluck the smoke from his fingers. She took a long drag and grimaced, hating the smoke as much as she hated herself for indulging the habit, “What’s the job tomorrow? Or are you solemnly sworn to secrecy?”\ \ He shrugged and exhaled, “Don’t know the details. Just know you’re involved. Something about a lovely field trip to the castle, I hear.”\ \ Keelie froze, a chill settling into her blood. She repeated dumbly, “The Labyrinth Castle?”\ \ Whistler took two or three steps that felt a lot like skipping to her, then turned with a far more theatrical shrug that betrayed he knew significantly more than he was ever going to tell her, “And Finn’s going, too.”\ \ She groaned and threw her hands in the air, “Of course he is. Finn. Spectacular. Keelie, please kill my nephew. Keelie, please spend more time with the worst man in the Guild in the worst place in the city for one of the Whispers to go--let alone two.”\ \ Whistler laughed, musical in a way that chilled the bones of anyone who didn’t know him well. She lengthened her strides and caught up with him, annoyed, and unwilling to hide it. Whatever this mysterious job was, there was no way in all of the hells that she was going to agree to that. Haln himself could step across the Veiled Sea and tell her she had to do it and she would still not agree. She and Finneas didn’t do jobs together anymore for a reason and the reason was Finneas.\ **\ \ “No,” Keelie folded her arms. She was slouched in a fine velvet chair in a fine velvet room in a fine velvet house in the Gilded Quarter. \ \ Tobin’s house, borrowing from the “in plain sight” mantra of the Pit’s owner. Ever the mask covering his true line of work, Tobin played the successful merchant-lord who had hit the ceiling of his power without a family House. It made a wonderful alibi for what he really did and explained the regular comings and goings of all manner of person in his home. Their home, really. Base, Whistler called it. \ \ Tobin sighed, exasperated, and ran a hand across his brow. He was a handsome man, by all accounts. Tall, well-built with hair that had gone silver-gray in his twenties and become a bit of a trademark for him. He retained the boyish youth in his face, tempered by time and an impeccably maintained silver beard. He looked at her with melancholy, honey-brown eyes and a reprimanding frown. \ \ “Keelie,” he said, voice a firm and deep baritone, “nobody else can do this.”\ \ “Of course nobody else can do this, nobody else is me.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder for emphasis, “Whatever it is, I’m not doing it with him.”\ \ She jammed a finger in the direction of the young man, a year her senior and cocky as hell. His thoughtful frown and handsome face weren’t fooling her. She could see through the short ash-brown hair and soulful dark eyes, all the accoutrements of a young man with a noble calling who took a wrong turn and ended up in the Whisper Guild. \ \ He leaned against the far wall, arms folded over a blue wrapped tunic secured with the dark leather belt of a shortsword. He balanced the heel of one dark boot against the wall, the other kept long. Finn sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair, tousling it in a way that somehow made him more irritating and handsome at the same time. Women tended to fawn over Finn, which he pretended to hate as much as he pretended to be humble. Keelie hated him. \ \ “It’s not a matter of whether or not you want to, my darling girl,” Tobin unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured himself a drink. He thought better of it, and poured one for her, too. She accepted the bribe with a glower, “I need information and Finn can get it for me. I need Finn protected and you can protect him for me.”\ \ “How does it feel to know you’re going to play fetch while I watch over you, Finnsy?” Keelie fired off a sharp smirk at him. He rolled his eyes, but wouldn’t dignify her with a response, “I hate this and I don’t want to go.”\ \ “I know you don’t, beloved pain in my ass,” Tobin patted her shoulder. She would go. They all knew it. She just wouldn’t go without a fight.\ \ “Whistler said it involved the castle,” she frowned, grim. “I really, really don’t want to go to the castle. Especially not with that pompous ass.”\ \ “Right, I’m the pompous, arrogant one,” Finn finally spoke and pushed away from the wall. He dropped into the seat across from her, face serious, “Can you ever take this work seriously, Keelie? Just once in your life, can we pretend that we are affected by what we do?”\ \ She scoffed and took a long drink, waving Tobin on. Only she could get away with such an affectation. Tobin loved her, she was essentially his adopted daughter. She was also the best weapon he had. People rarely suspected a beautiful woman had the ability to cut their throat in an alley or poison their drink in a bar. They expected her to wind up more in Saskia’s line of work. \ \ The woman opened the ornate wooden door and peered around it, beaming at Finn. Her seaglass eyes settled on Keelie and her expression soured, “I thought I smelled piss. Hello, Keelie.”\ \ Her smile curved like a scimitar, sharp and perfect. Everything about Saskia was perfect. Her stunning face, her perfectly shaped figure, her wavy black hair. She was an absolute beauty and the crown of Tobin’s brothel empire. Men and women paid by the pound for a night with his favorite concubine and he gladly charged it. She and Keelie had been found at about the same time, but Keelie ended up under Tobin’s wing while he sent Saskia to Madam Artois. Keelie killed, Saskia moaned. They, too, hated each other. \ \ “Funny, I thought I smelled opium. Lovely to see you, Sas,” Keelie raised her glass to the woman and was pointedly ignored. \ \ “The dressmaker dropped off your parcels,” Saskia directed her statement to Tobin. “The final fitting will have to be tonight so when you’re done with her, I’ll take her up.”\ \ “Her is capable of speaking,” Keelie frowned now. She looked between the two of them, then at Finn, “What’s going on? I love a new dress and all, but this feels like an awful lot of people to put me in a gown.”\ \ Tobin sighed and sat down in the only remaining chair. He pinched his nose and finished his drink. Saskia slipped away and shut the door behind her, ever the emotionally attuned lady, “You’re going to participate in the Argunfell Games and get Finneas access to the castle. He’s going to do some fact-finding for me while all the lovely lords and ladies of the realm are gathered in one place. Your only job is to do your best without exposing either of you and keep Finn from trouble.”\ \ “What?!” She half spit out her drink and hissed at the residual burn in her throat, “Are you serious?” She looked frantically at Finn, “Is he serious?”\ \ “As a summer day,” Finn sighed. “Papers are already forged. Congratulations on qualifying with flying colors, by the way. Everything’s been worked out for months, we just needed the final approval before bringing you in.”\ \ Keelie sneered at him, then at Tobin, “There’s not a better way to do any of this? I feel like we could come up with several plans to get this information you’re so worried about without involving me. Send him in as a serf or a stable boy! Let him get kicked around by a few of the royal horses, it’ll build character!”\ \ Tobin was already shaking his head, “Someone needs to be able to converse with the Houses in ways I cannot. It’s rare they gather like this in one place so I’m seizing a moment. You and Finn look the most passable for nobility from the bunch, so it’s you two going in.”\ \ Something passed between them. A knowing look that reminded her he knew all too well why she would pass just fine in Hoardann’s central court. Finn just happened to avoid any work that wound up with a scar on his pretty face or a broken nose. Maybe if she changed that, she could get out of this. As if he could read her mind, Finn made a disgusted sound and threw up his hands. \ \ “Why don’t I go in alone and fish up your information?” She bargained, “I can tease it out of them over two weeks. I can get anyone to tell me anything. I learned from the best, remember?”\ \ “You have the spycrafting ability of an ox and you are quite possibly the least charming person I have ever met,” Finn spat. \ \ She leaned forward and pointed at him with her now empty glass, “Only with you. I’m the most charming person with everyone else-”\ \ “You can’t even charm your shoes on in the morning-”\ \ “I will charm that look right off your f-”\ \ “Enough!” Tobin shouted with a finality that shut them both up. Not without an exchange of withering glares, though. “Oisha forgive me for this horrible mistake I am making. I need you both to find a way to work together and get this done. It’s two weeks. Keelie, go participate in the Games and enjoy yourself. Win, even. You can keep the whole purse if you do. Finn, do your job and get me my intelligence and I’ll forgive the last of your debt. Fair?”\ \ Finn blinked at him, stunned. The last of his debt. Keelie stared, too. This was how Tobin kept them all. He invested in every Whisper he brought on, so he expected that investment to pay him back. He kept meticulous ledgers of what every single Whisper owed him and allowed them to cash out or repay every time they finished a job. Keelie had no intention of leaving this life, not when Tobin made it clear she was his heir-apparent. All of her earnings had gone right into her bank account and subsequently into her rather elevated tastes. \ \ She liked nice things, sue her. \ \ Finneas Asper, though. He was a completely different kind of animal. She didn’t know how he’d ended up in the Guild, nobody really did. He had the stick-up-his-ass morality of a noble-born fop and took everything so seriously. He offered prayer candles at all of the altars to Haln and Emrillen after every job and, she suspected, twice on Altarday. Every kill came with a plea for forgiveness and he never took jobs that ended the life of someone who didn’t have an existing criminal background. It was insufferable how painfully moralistic he was. \ \ He had put every piece of his earnings to pay back his debts. The debts were, of course, nearly insurmountable. Designed to be. It was more likely to achieve a lordship than to pay off Tobin Parnel, still Finn tried. Now, on a silver platter, was his freedom. \ \ Keelie was staring at him, the haughty irritation fell away for a moment and she looked at him with genuine hope. Finn wasn’t made for their world. Her loathing aside, she felt a flicker of elation for him at the sound of his freedom. She could see him joining the Brothers of Death, the servants of Haln tucked deep in the mountain monastery in the Ubron Peaks to the north. \ \ She blinked away her surprise and the mask slid back on, “What if I don’t win, though? Finn gets to run free and I get the satisfaction of placing, what, third?”\ \ “You’ll win,” Tobin waved her off, but his focus was entirely on Finn. “Acceptable terms, then?”\ \ Finn nodded, mute. If he spoke, he feared the offer would vanish before he had time to enjoy it. Keelie grumbled her annoyance, “Fine. Accepted. Now,” she clapped her hand against her empty glass, “I believe I was promised dresses?”\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/hgQXYgEaornz1kEhx08I/)
Untitled Fantasy Book Chapter 1