Fragmentary Record · The Oldest Pages
Five lives, before they were a company. Recovered whole; played once, at the very beginning, and never written down until now.
A dying Reichsgraf summons his son under "a dark and evil moonlight." Konrad's last charge to Axel survives nearly word for word:
"Eisen has no king, Axel. But a prince is coming. A prince of suffering… a beautiful prince, an arrogant prince, a prince who led a coup against Heaven and was struck down to the seven hells. And he waited. And HE STILL WAITS… It is his great hornblower who sleeps under this very house."
"You must unite the kingdoms of man. Through crown and church, you must raise the alarm and rally those who would resist. And you must find God's chosen — for above all things, the dark Prince retreats and cowers before God's purity."
"I leave you the book of the von Dämmerungs. May it bring you wisdom. I leave you the Schattenbruch. May it bring you protection. And lastly, I leave you Erlöser. May it bring me peace. You must fire true. I command it."
A Vesten crew, a barrel of herring, and a Montaigne noble who spat champagne at a shivering girl and threw coins at a bear ("Dance, bear. DANCE") until Kharkov the Red, First Hunter of the Czar, threw him overboard. The coins stayed on the deck. That was the arrangement.
A merchant's daughter who wasn't one, walking three fate witches out of a burned safehouse toward a ship called the Queen Elaine's Revenge. At pier three stood Giseppi: seventeen, newly engaged, her friend. He lowered his halberd at the women and reached for the watch bell. Yvette Bonnefoy got the witches to Innismore. Giseppi's blood never entirely left her hands. Some doors of that memory the company learned never to knock on.
A man lay freezing in the snow, having run out of reindeer-shape and luck at the same time. A gentleman in fine clothes stood over him with a glass of red wine and a terrible smile. Then a crone's voice cut the storm: "THAT'S MY CHILD, BEAST. AWAY… This child has been tested. He is mine."
"Now, now, Matushka. You know the rules. HIS rules. Free will, remember?" And then, between the two of them, over the body of a half-dead prophet: "This one will not bend." / "Is that a wager?" / "Why not?" / "How delightful."
The gentleman introduced himself to Grigori by name ("There is nothing more powerful in the entire world than a good story. Ours begins now") and walked into the blizzard. What came out of it instead was a great bear on its haunches, and behind the bear, a huge man. Kharkov saved Grigori's life before either knew the other's name. The company began there, years before it began.
Rain, a battlement over the sea, and a childhood friend who would not stay dead. Carlos Acosta de Trinidad, grey, loose-skinned, holed through and unbleeding, came at Diego for the third time: "I was better for her. I had a house. Title. A future. I loved Consuela. But you killed her — because she knew I WAS BETTER THAN YOU." Diego put him on the rocks below. Again. He is getting stronger.
A mob in red sashes, a father on a horse with a rope around his neck, "I shall always serve Sarmatia. I do not serve the will of a mindless mob", and a son made to watch before being strung up beside him as the last Turczyński. What cut Henryk down was not rescue. It was the hag: ten feet of shriveled dark-touched wrongness, dealing Sorte cards with too-long fingers: The War, for the coming of Axel. The Fool, for Kharkov… The same cards return to his pack no matter how many times he throws them away.
[ … what the remaining cards showed, the record does not say … ]
Where It Led