Chapter 15: The Astray

I took the time between our exiting the crypt and cemetery, and our arrival in the bazaar, to tactfully fill Noam in on precisely what’s been happening: Santiago losing control, our alliance with María, the assassins, Adorjan, Yoisen’s contract, et cetera.

Somewhat to my surprise, his complexion remained stoic throughout my explanation. Even when describing the death of our fellow enemy Ascended he didn’t so much as bat an eye, grunt, or… blink. He wasn’t blinking.

“What are you doing with your eyes, Noam?” I inquired, stopping mid-stride to ask as I realised just how statuesque the man seemed to be. A reply to this took the man a lengthy moment. I watched his eyes darting left and right, as if he were searching the depths of his mind for a proper, or political, answer.

“You are… you are too young to understand. Just as the sight comes without forcing, so too does my inhumanity. Remember, Jacobi–” I cut him off to insist on “Jack.” but he ignored me and went on without missing a beat. “–that we are not Human beings anymore, we are Ascended, and this means more than a change in status in the hierarchy. It means more than an ability to influence or to cast. It means more than the consumption of vita to live.”

As Noam began to list off what Ascended meant to him, I began to drown him out, finding my mental fortitude lacking in my ability to withstand the childlike annoyance of his down-talking. Yet, I considered that he didn’t mean it that way. Rather, it was as if he was merely trying to be helpful, or that he saw himself as the elder, experienced, and able person and so educating was a necessity.

I couldn’t glean even a fraction of clarity from that face of his, which remained still like stone. Whether teaching or condescending, I figured it remained in our best interest to continue taking steps towards our vague, conversational destination.

“Tell me more about Adorjan, Jacobi.” Noam made this request as he approached the great sequoia, and took a seat upon its top step. He had to clear away a dog’s carcass, and some fresh libations, to make room for himself.

Lorena excused herself, leaving me and María to forward the discussion. María had been taking notes the entire time since Noam awoke. I, having glanced from time to time over at her sheets, saw what seemed to be every line that’d left his lips, an illustration of the runes that had lit up along his arms, neck, and face, and other notes in the margins. Theories about his more cryptic musings, or about his hydraulic stillness, I guessed.

“I understand him only to be reckless and a foe. María Christina tells me he departed Santiago’s service gracefully. However, his actions as of late tell me this sense of etiquette has left him, or has taken a back seat to what he considers more pressing. Alternatively, mayhap, he’s undergone some immense change or experience that’s diverted his trajectory down a more insidious path.”

María picked up from there, “When we knew him under Santiago, he was always the quiet, loyal type. The one that stood there, in silence, only speaking up when he had something productive to say, and never disobeying or questioning orders or direction. This violent rebelliousness is new. However it built up, I couldn’t say, but I’d guess it started when he began working with the Lord.”

Noam leaned a bit forward as we gave our explanations, supporting his face cupped in a triangle formed by his hands, buttressed by his elbows on his knees. He responded just after María finished talking, “You said you suspected he revealed his true nature, because you saw the guards ignoring the violence his soldiers inflicted on the citizens?”

María and I nodded, and Noam continued, “On the contrary, I imagine he is puppeteering the Lord, not influencing him.”

I began to speak up, to question the difference, but Noam proceeded to answer my query before I’d uttered a single word. As far as I was concerned, at the moment, ‘puppeteering’ and ‘influence’ were synonymous, wherein the former may be long-term, and the latter may be moment-to-moment, as I did with Efrain. Once was enough to put the tender in his place.

“It is a short term, dangerous procedure wherein one seeds whispers of their quintessence into the mind of a subject, making permanent changes to their personality that, ultimately, turn them into marionettes. It is dangerous, because if the ritual-process is interrupted, it often causes fatal cranial haemorrhaging. Death, to put it more simply. It causes rapid, messy death.”

“If that’s the case…” I began, “…the Lord was never aware of us, nor, rather, of Adorjan’s real state of being.”

“Correct. Which would explain why Yoisen’s contract was only violated when his… assassins… you called them? Assassins attacked the festival. It was the first and only disruption of the calibre necessary to be considered a breach of the agreement.”

“We should consider the entire peerage compromised, then?” María asked, appearing more concerned now than ever before. It was that kind of concern that spoke to crumbling future plans; a lost sense of security and directional lucidity.

“No. What’s the relevancy of that? The Humans are chattel. If cows don’t move, they get struck. When has this not been the case? We do not kowtow to the Humans, their obedience to our whims is absolute.”

“Perhaps once, but I couldn’t say.” I replied for María, noting the taken-abackness washing over her face at his somewhat cavalier retort.

Noam continued, ignoring her morphing disposition and the subject matter of that tangent entirely, “The puppeteering of the Lord is an offence, whether understood clearly presently, or not, it is a matter-of-fact. Therefore, we should first consider executing the Lord to cut off Adorjan’s direct link to lording over the guard. Then, we should address whether the guard Captain has also been affected, and subsequently for relevant, problematic Ministers. So on, so forth.”

He declined to needlessly elaborate. The next steps, in that regard, were quite clear: Slay whatever was unfixably linked to Adorjan. So, letting that go, I prodded him about Adorjan, “What of the man himself? Is it within our right to remove him as we did late-Rodrigo? Or would you propose a more diplomatic approach, seeding weakness with the removal of his made agents to give him an out when he’s low? If he’s as powerful as you’ve made him out to be, with respect to what we’ve seen, his turning back to our side would be useful.”

“Useful if controllable.” Noam said, going on “Unfortunately, these practises and the unusual and unclear circumstances surrounding his sudden elevation in power suggest he’s become Astray.”

“Astray?” María Christina asked curiously.

“You’re not from Yhortor. If you haven’t heard of it, the light still shines on our people’s future. It is an ancient, damning designation.” Noam replied, smiling.

I asked him, “What makes you happy about this situation, about Adorjan possibly being Astray?”

He replied, saying “Because if it’s the case it’s a done deal. The matter is closed, simple, and straightforward. One does not weep for the dead, but is joyous at their parting into the next life. For, to weep would be to be selfish–insofar as to weep is to express woe and desire. For, to weep oneself decoupled from such grounding conditions is quite fine and natural.”

At that, Noam took a moment to twist around and peer up at the great sequoia. He granted himself nearly a minute wherein his eyes studied the detailed intermingling of its branches, as they formed a brown, blockading labyrinth of parts that precluded sight of the sky from its base.

“Such a journey, dear brother.” I believe he muttered, having placed his right hand into the small grasses around the foundation of the great sequoia’s trunk in what space he could manage around bloodstains and offerings.

“Returning…put simply, the Astray are lost, they are no longer Ascended. Literally, they have strayed from the path of righteousness; gallant service to the Mother and her plans. Such a step is irreversible, regardless of the possible purification of heart and mind. Would you forgive a kinslayer who, in their greed, took your parents from you, and then recanted when you put your blade to their neck?”

I shook my head to the negative, and Noam went on “Judging by your admission, Santiago may have tested the waters of such a fall, but declined to do so when he called for your help, and sought to reclaim lost lands. Why don’t you introduce me to your prodigy, Santiago’s replacement?”

The sour sobriety of his utterance of ‘replacement’ bothered me. Perhaps inexplicably, if I let it go then and there, but I let it linger. I wanted it to. It boiled the blood in my freshly pumping veins. He still deserved respect.

Santiago could not so easily be shoved off to the side. He still deserved respect. However, Noam seems to find the need for that only in power and loyalty. Santiago may have lost his power, but his loyalty to me remained stalwart, even when his loyalty to the Mother waned. I know he will one day soon redeem himself in the faces of all around us.

“I’ll fetch him.” María said, turning abruptly to enter the Silver Fawn. Perhaps she needed a break? I wonder if Noam’s insulting attitude was still clutching her soul, as it clutched mine.

“Where will you go when this is over?” I inquired, to pass the time, into his less pressing wants and needs.

“Yhortor.” He replied, speaking only once he perceived I was going to respond to the silence that followed my question, “Or the countryside. Juhasz is large and rife with trouble. Or to the fields of Great Kaedia, so too rife with criminal tumult. I will go where the Mother implores me to go.”

“Admirable. Do you find that she commands you, or do you find that she leads you with signs and visions, and dreams?”

“It has and forever shall be the latter, Jacobi. You know this, She speaks to you in precisely the same manner. We live lives guided by like minded strands, cut more than likely from the same blessed cloth.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, accusatorily, with a start of fear bubbling up in my chest, creating a great discomfort. The speed and obscurity with which he seemed to be able to read my mind was incredible, and unheard of–as far as I was concerned.

“Because I sense that you are quite similar to me, albeit of a later age. We are no champions, nor saints, as the of-Gods do say, the Mother needs no distinctions. The ranks at Yhortor are merely organising. They are our ranks, not Hers.”

“Those whom we may name Agent of the Mother are merely agents of our making, despite their rarity and obvious alacrity?”

“Absolutely. There are only three distinctions: Astray, Chattel, Ascended. Then, there is the Mother. She is above all distinctions.”

Astray listed first, I reckon it’s intentional. To rank a thing below the Humans is to declare it the summit of all possible anathema. To rank a thing before mosquitos from which you draw meagre sustenance, knowing a thousand others could perform the same job just as easily, is to call it rubbish of the lowest form. Disgardable in every sense. These are the Astray? Wicked things.

María Christina returned to us shortly thereafter, which Noam and I left to silence, with Vidal in tail. He looked apprehensive, but carried himself with a certain sense of open-minded trust, like a playful puppy.

“Greetings–Jack, greetings, Noam, was it?” He asked, stepping around me to offer Noam a customary embrace. He accepted it, and in the course of doing so appeared to cast, entirely to Vidal’s ignorance.

I sensed it only because I was looking, and looking hard, and I knew it. He rapidly scraped Vidal’s brain for useful information, sensations, and traits. The scowl he afforded me as Vidal pulled away conveyed two clear points: Vidal was unworthy, and I shouldn’t be so intrusive towards a friend.

“This is your leader, Jacobi? The uninitiated. The fresh and recently turned? The slow and disobedient? The questioning?” He spoke directly to me.

“I suppose that really hasn’t been… decided.” María said, out of the blue, taking the three of us by surprise.

What the fuck did she just imply? I was half disgusted, and half betrayed. However, I couldn’t allow myself to get too mad. As I had come to mind thoughts of confederation and joint-rulership. Of course she shared in Noam’s openly stated disdain. Vidal was fresh meat, yet unmolded and in need of intensive, years-long training. Or, would she ask Noam to lead? To stay and fight for a new Veha, under a new set of crowned eyes.