And now, the rewrite of For the Glory of the Wretched.
Chapter 1
“And when you dream, what do you dream of? Never thought to ask, but it’d be interesting to know,” She asks with such a coy smile. She sits there on the leather couch, brushing her golden hair. The ethereal rays of the morning sun shine behind her, making her appear so surreal.
“And if I say you?” I say, leaning against a stone and mortar pillar that’s absorbed so many conversations, sordid and candid, intimate and spurious.
“Then,” she says. She sets down the brush on the oak coffee table and picks up her ruby-glazed ceramic coffee mug. Takes a sip. An audible sound of satisfaction. “Then I wouldn’t believe you. I’d call you a liar. Are you a liar?”
“I am,” I say. I look at the partially nibbled sandwich left on the counter, I go to pick it up and then take a couple giant bites. “A thief, too.”
“So what’s the greatest thing you’ve ever stole?”
“I’d say your heart, but you’d call me a liar again. You gave that to me.” A blush appears on her pale cheeks. “But to tell you the truth, all my past thefts pale in comparison to what I’ve yet to take.”
“And that is?” She asks, innocently. Yet. “But don’t think I don’t know. I know. You’ve got to understand that I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen that look in your eyes way too many times.”
“Where?”
“In the mirror. You don’t dream of me,” she says and she looks at me square in the eyes, demanding me to keep eye contact. So I do. “Because you dream of revenge, when and if you dream at all.”
“Justice. It’s justice.”
“Is stealing a life truly justice? And don’t you dare say that it’s your job to arrange the meeting between them and God. You were wronged, deeply wronged, tragically wronged. You died many deaths that day. I can’t understand what you went through, but I understand you want vengeance.”
“Why this? Why now?”
“Because you never told me what happened.”
“I couldn’t. You shouldn’t carry that weight.”
“But you were going to drag me into it whether I knew or not, because I’d follow you and be right behind you, and I wouldn’t have understood a thing.”
“How did you find out?”
“No one told me anything, not explicitly. Heard that the great pirate ship The Dreaded was sunk a while back. My divers found the wreckage and they said it had been attacked. And with your past…”
“You put together the puzzle pieces.”
“I did. So I want you to tell me.”
“Tell you what, exactly?”
“What happened.”
And so I do. The explanation, the back and forth, the questions, the tangents, the laughs, a tear or two, the pacing around, knocks on the door, and phone calls ignored make for a morning of abandonment of supposedly greater responsibilities. The stakes did make it seem that nothing else did matter until there was some greater understanding.
“And before I go, you won’t have any choice but to help me. You can’t hear it from me, but Florian has something to tell you.”
“You have to tell me now.”
“As your love, Sanna, I wish I could, but as what do they call me, Pirate King?, I can’t. You know this.”
“I know,” she says. “But where are you going?”
“There is business that I must attend to,” I say, playfully. She rolls her eyes.
“You mean, you’re sick of me and you’ll take a nap on a rock?”
“Yes.”
There was some truth in those words. I decided to take a walk to clear my mind before returning any of the ignored calls. A message from Achi to meet at a tavern near the beach. Drakon was to be found at a fishing pier on the north side of the city, and Maria in all likelihood passed out in some library.
Solton, the Golden City, the City of the Good Life, the City of Fire and Liberty. A city built from sandstone and marble. A city built into the cliffside some centuries ago by a people who had more in common with those who lived a few millennia ago than those who live today. Firekeepers, the people that built Solton and most of the modern world, they still live, exist. Sanna is one of them. But too many are shallow husks of their ancestors. As if their connection had been severed somewhere along the way.
A city like this could never be built today, or at least, that’s the way it seems. Original dreamers don’t build and the powerbroker builders don’t dream. A never-ending cycle of false promises of a greater future and fragile, rootless towers prone to freefall. A civilization propped up by dead, rotting giants that yearn to become free of their burden.
That is to say, Solton is an otherworldly, beautiful city that is rotten to the core.
To be continued…