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https://ift.tt/2NFGwAhI opened this window to brag about having written a thousand words on a project finally but then I checked and it was only 800, so this made me go back and round it out.
Here, have an excerpt, which is the prequel to the 300,000 word novel I never finished in 2004 or all the intervening times when i’ve rewritten it since then. I don’t know that this has a plot either but I’m writing it as a series of short stories, I think. I’ve never done that, why not do it now?
I designed this character before I’d ever heard of such a thing as a paladin, but he is a paladin really, and an uncanny berserker of one when he’s not being a self-negating martyr– but that happens in the opening of the main book, and I thought, if there were a prequel, one could appreciate the transformation a bit more. (Also I’ve rewritten the opening of the book literally a dozen times and never figured out how to make it actually work, so…) But as I’m discovering, he’s sort of always Been Like That.
Zinzi,” I said insistently. “Zinzi!”
I’d said his name nine times now and he hadn’t responded, and I knew it was because he wasn’t used to the nickname yet. I also knew it’d be my actual entire head if I used any of his real names, here, or called him by any of the addresses of respect he was entitled to.
“Zinzi!” I hissed, and threw a pebble at him. It missed, and I scrabbled up another and bounced it off the leather of his left shoulder’s pauldron.
At that, finally, he broke off his conversation and turned, fixing me with a glare where I stood holding the horses, which I’d been meant to get into a stable for the night. “What, Feliks!” The exasperation leached immediately out of his expression as he realized he’d used my real name. “Shit,” he said, grimacing. “I’m terrible at this.”
Fortunately, my name didn’t matter; I wasn’t anybody. And it was comical; he’d never been terrible at anything before in his life, and it was wearing at him.
“You are,” I couldn’t resist saying. “Zinzi, you know I hate to interrupt an important conversation, but I’ve just found out how much they charge for rooms and stabling at the inn here and we can’t afford it so I just wanted to let you know plans have changed.”
Zinzi, for so I had to think of him, went a little stiff at that, armored shoulders rising slightly; the money taboo was a strong one and he’d always taken it seriously. Some of the other gods-devoted knights would go so far as to handle money as long as it was in a container, but never Zinzi; he was unusually fervent in his beliefs and seemed to genuinely imagine that a sack of money would burn right through every shred of his holiness, and possibly kill him too. No, that was uncharitable– he didn’t fear death at all, he only lived in constant dread of dishonor.
But I wasn’t going to dance around with euphemisms, tired and filthy and exhausted as I was, and also the point of this was that the man he’d been talking to was a wealthy local and hopefully would step in.
“Ah,” Zinzi said, and he was too well-bred to swear. He was also, unfortunately, too well-bred to beg, ask outright, or even insinuate. “What’s the new plan? Can we at least feed the horses?”
Gods, he was so fucking noble.
“They eat grass, L– friend,” I said. I’d almost called him lord. This was impossible. I’d been lying my whole life and somehow MmmmZinzi could burn straight through it with a frown. Even in my head! Even in my head it was hard to call him anything other than what he was. “I’m certain we can find some of that. You and I, however, can either eat real food or sleep in a real bed and I thought I should ask you which you preferred before I made arrangements.”
The wealthy farmer was watching us somewhat dubiously. “They don’t charge that much at the inn, surely,” he said slowly. “For patrollers? They shouldn’t gouge you, that’s a scandal!”
“Well,” I said, “we don’t have much, not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re correct, it’s customary to offer our kind at least basic accommodation for no or low charge. That just… doesn’t seem to be the case, here in your lovely township.”
Zinzi looked from the farmer to me, and then glanced back at the farmer, and then turned the full force of his considerable attention onto me for a brief moment. He looked noble, his broad handsome face composed into a very mask of genteel, mild Disappointment, head tilted a bit, his arching eyebrows the perfect punctuation of it. He had caught on to my entire game. I gave him a beseeching look: we’d slept in a ditch the night before, and a barn the night before that, and I earnestly did not want to repeat the ditch experience so soon. We’d have plenty of that, going forward, and it would be preferable if we could space it out just a little bit, and one of the ways of doing that was saving our scant money whenever possible.
He did not do anything so coarse as sigh, but he did lift his chin minutely, and he turned back to the farmer and made a small, resigned smile. “It’s understandable,” he said, “in a town this free of trouble, that the inhabitants should not constantly be thinking of the dangers that are unlikely to befall them, after all.”
“But it is by the sacrifices of the border towns,” the farmer said, “and of course the unceasing vigilance of the patrollers, that our peace is won. We should not need to be reminded of that!”
Zinzi smiled beatifically. “We should consider the townsfolk’s blithe unawareness a reward in itself,” he said, and damn him, he probably meant it.
The problem with the inhuman regimen of training that the gods-devoted knights were subjected to from early childhood was that it left them completely bereft of any sense of healthy perspective about normal human things like sleep, comfort, grave bodily danger, and beds. Combined with the money taboo, it meant that Ma– Zinzi– really had no concrete grounding in literally any of the things that normal humans cared about. Which was probably great for his relationship with his personal deity, but made my job a whole lot more difficult most of the time.
It was now the farmer’s turn to look at him, then at me, then back to him, and finally back to me again. He’d noticed, too, that Zinzi was absolutely genuine. I gave him a meaningful boggle-eyed look: he’s always like this, I conveyed, as clearly as I was able, going so far as to nod slightly. If Zinzi noticed, he didn’t let it show.
“I don’t have a fine guesthouse,” the farmer said, “but I do have a spare room, and places at my table. I even have fodder for your horses. Perhaps my comfort is a reward to you but I suspect it would benefit all of us if I made it more materially relevant than symbolically.”
“We couldn’t impose,” Zinzi said, which I’d known he would, and I kept my gaze fixed on the farmer and looked as long-suffering as I could manage. The farmer had to bite his lips against a smile, and looked back at Zinzi with his face carefully solemn.
“No, I insist,” he said. “It has been too many years since patrollers on errantry have come through here, and a hot meal and a bed is approximately the least I can do.”
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