Greetings!
I guess I wasn't really very clear about what happened with the dream rose powder. She inhaled it (gross, I know, but I couldn't shake the idea, so there it is.)
Enjoy reading!
Sir Gwydion
P.S. If anyone is interested in how wildly different from the original idea I had this story is, read Catch As Catch Can and Gapskipping and Ice, pieces of plot that didn't work with the final outline. They were lots of fun to write!
P.P.S. I've also started writing a Beka-Rosto story called Dreaming of You. It's main idea actual came from this chapter.
P.P.P.S. I just realized how long its been since I updated this story -- too long. What can I say? This chapter wasn't an easy one to write.
P.P.P.P.S. Don't you hate it when people write so many post scripts that they're longer then the actual thing that was written? (Looks sheepish and changes the subject)
Sunday, December 20, 246
Before dawn.
My head is still ringing. I cannot begin to comprehend what I dreamed. I feel as though I'm missing something so important that I aught to have realized it long ago, but it won't come. Mayhap I'll understand better if I write it out, like the Dogs do on their reports for Ahuda. That's it. I'll write just like it happens, then maybe I'll have something to tell Corhalt other then 'It was the queerest thing I've ever felt.'
I concentrated as hard as I could on counterfeit, and the mage I saw too. (I aught to have told Reemest Corhalt about she yesterday, I'm a ducknob for not remembering to.) I couldn't fall asleep though. I finally gave up and sat at my desk, turning the fake coin Corhalt had discovered yesterday in my hand, turning it over and over till the curl of metal cut my palm. Pounce was sleeping as soundly as he always does, though I suspect that he has on eye on me, even when he's asleep.
Finally I fell asleep at my desk, my cheek sticking to the pages of this journal.
In my dream, the silence seemed to be very loud, or mayhap it was just my ears ringing, because there were other noises. Regular, Lower City noises; boots on the cobbles, course laughter, haggling, arguing.
And a little girl singing as she skipped rope with a length of knotted rags.
"Three bold sailor, late come from the sea,
Telling a tale of how bold they be,
Two were blind and the other couldn't see,
And they told tell of the wonders over-sea.
.
They told of the fair land, called Dream-a-bye,
They swore, they did, that they told no lie,
About the orange sea and purple sky,
And the lovely blue sea-birds' haunting cry."
I remembered the rhyme well, had sung it myself often. Mama taught it to us, and others. Skipping-songs. And then I saw that the little girl was my sister, Diona, afore her mouth soured and brows tilted down. She had the best singing voice in the family, mayhap because her father was a player before he turned to being a rusher.
The door to the one-room house that was little more then a hovel rattled, and Haynsen staggered out. He was mama's man when I was eight, then meanest one she ever had. When he found out that she had the lung-rot, he beat her up and ran off to his gang. The Bold Brass Gang. He stuck Diona across the mouth, and she fell, crying out. He didn't do it in anger or because he'd drunk more then was good for him. It was the kind of unthinking, cold cruelty that I've always hated in a person more then anything else. It dosen't feel, it just hurts, and that makes it worse.
A young girl with long, tousled blond hair came out of the house and helped Diona to pick herself up. For a moment I had the oddest feeling that I aught to remember her, the I realized that she was me. like looking in a perfect mirror, or a window to the past.
The whole scene jolted sideways and I felt dizzy as it changed from Mutt Piddle Lane to somewhere else that I didn't know. There was the blond little girl again, crouched behind a wall, listening to two men talk. One was Haynsen, the other I didn't recognize at first, until his name was spoke. He was tall, with dark hair and eyes and a savage grace about him.
"I don't know, Cavic. I don't like that man's past. He's dealt double every day of his life, and he'll double deal you too." Haynsen said, and then I knew who the other man was. Cavic of the Bold Brass Gang, its leader, and as slippery a Rat as the Provost's Guard has ever had to deal with.
Cavic laughed, and it was a frightning sound. The little girl shivered.
"A cove can't deal double when he's been dealt the was himself already."
"You mean, you're going to kill him? Kill Wenton Par?"
The girl shivered again. I could remember the feeling of ice rolling down my spine and my stomach lurching. Wenton Par was nearly as bad a Crookshank, and a sight better known in Corus. He didn't limit his deeds to the Lower City.
"Yes. Tonight, when the Dog Watch changes from Evening to Night. Spread the news."
Cavic strode off into a dark alleyway, and Haynsen paused before walking toward the girl's hiding place. Terrified of being discovered, she buried her face in her ragged cloak and didn't look up. Haynsen glanced down at her, then delivered an idle kick to her side. "Mumper," he said scornfully, and the street lurched again, and was gone.
Next came a whirl of images, going to Dogs, telling them I could give them the Bold Brass Gang, then even to the Kennel itself when none would hear me. But the Day Watch Commander just looked at me, and looked and looked, and then told one of the Cage Dogs to throw me out.
Then, when I'd given up, seeing my Lord Provost, and telling him about the Gang's plans for the night. And he listened.
That night, he brought down the Bold Brass Gang, for good and ever.
Next came the hanging on Executioner's Hill. The smell that made me wretch and the sickening way that everyone seemed to enjoy the sight of those men dying. I didn't like it, but I knew that the Bold Brass Gang had known what they were doing was wrong and they'd known the punishment, and they'd done it anyway.
Images from the crowd bloomed in my mind. Two mots with dark hair, smiling strangely. A cove with a short beard and beady eyes selling sticky sugar candy. A little boy making faces at the men waiting to hang.
There was sommat else that just won't come clear in my mind. It was there, a ballad of some sort, sung in the streets weeks later when no one remembered the cruel things the gang had done, only how dashing they'd been. A ballad about the Bold Brass Gang . . .
I wish I could remember! But I spent eight years trying to forget how awful that time was. It won't come back.
My head is aching fit to burst. I feel sick. I'm going to go wake Kora. She'll be able to tell me whether I'm dying. I feel like it.
