The Common Good
The men driving the cart coughed as they slung the corpse onto it. Weak, ashen, and wheezing, they were likely to end up on it themselves before long. The patrons in my tavern stared after the cart until it passed on to the next shop in a whirlwind of bloodied sand.
“Second one before dusk,” said one patron. “Surprised they keep coming here.”
“If you can’t get any healing salves,” said the man beside him, “where else would you go but here? The plague gets me, you bet your ass I’m getting drunk.”
“This dragon’s plague hasn’t claimed me,” said the first as he rose, “but I’m drunk anyway. And I’m getting home to a bed I don’t have to share with anybody who might be infected.” He flicked a small copper coin toward me as he left. As he parted, another man slid across the threshold, bandaged, not someone I recognized.
“Probably a noble,” said the patron who remained. “Here to tell us they’re rationing more orichalcum from us commoners
to help with the war effort.”
“At least they aren’t rationing food yet,” I said.
The newcomer came close enough to respond to the last comment. Hobbling, he strode with one leg while dragging the other. That leg of his pants was tattered and uneven. I wondered if he had a club foot.
“Now that’s hardly the blithe conversation for a place like this.” Despite the white patch on his brow and the jagged scar reaching down his neck, he smiled as if he were meeting old friends to play cards.
“Definitely a noble.” The patron crossed to the other side of the bar.
“Just a common man looking for a common drink.”
The other patron either didn’t hear or didn’t believe this comment. He muttered to himself, “Probably going to start a damned drinking song.”
The newcomer did no such thing.
Matted, russet hair framed his face. Stubble encroached
his face but hadn’t bloomed there; this was a man who hadn’t shaved in weeks, but not months. His cheekbones were sharp, his brow wide, his nose pronounced. It was a noble look even if his ratty garments were anything but.
The cloak slung about his body, secured in front by an iron pin, had acquired a patina of dust. His doublet was the color of mud and peeling from the middle where its laces frayed. His trousers were the same; their original color, based on the portion closer to his waist, matched his cloak. As I assessed that part of his trousers, my eyes delighted at the other feature they noticed, whose size and shape excited my body. I quivered, but shook my head rapidly, as if the thoughts were soot I could release from my hair after a day trudging around the city.
“Well met, my lady…” He bowed his head, having no cap to tip.
“Cecelia,” I said.
“Then, my lady Cecelia--”
“Please just call me Cecelia,” I interrupted. “If
you’d be so kind, Mister…”
“I am called Octavian Marsh,” he said. The last name likely meant an orphan, foundling, or some other kind of abandonment. My father told me they named children that way in wet, boggy Traumwick. He looked like most citizens of Traumwick, dark hair against pale skin and eyes so blue they looked more like the sky than what I’d see if I exited the tavern and raised my head. Moreover, I didn’t know what other citystate would give a man such a strange name.
“How can I help you, Mister--” I began, about to form the sound of his last name, before realizing it might mock him, offend him even. “Mister Octavian?”
“I’d like a mug of ale. Cecelia,” he added, “with no title.” I nodded to show my thanks. Before I turned to pour it, he then said: “If it’s as fine as you, I’m sure it will not disappoint.”
“And if you’ve got as much silver in your pockets as on your tongue,” I said, “you’ll be able to pay me the three coins for it.”
He smirked as I turned away from him,
ostensibly to reach for a mug to serve him, but actually to smirk myself. Once calmed and equipped, I turned back with an even expression. The three glittering coins lay beside the mug I placed and the bag he’d removed from his back and slung on the counter.
“I told myself I wouldn’t buy a drop of this after I left home,” he said, “but I deserve it.”
“A great victory?”
“For Mastiga the Plague-Bearer, yes,” he said. Then he rolled up the sleeve of his pant leg to reveal the bone that had crept through the flesh and the splint he’d tied against it. “That old dragon nearly got me, and now I’m celebrating that he didn’t.”
“You fought the dragon?”
“Technically he fought me. I wasn’t expecting the ambush. Nor were the seven men who were with me.”
His tone and tense told me what happened to them.
“And you decided to visit a tavern afterwards?”
“I decided to visit the closest city-state with a
magister who might heal me. Besides, I had some ethereal root. This leg can’t do much for me, but I can’t feel the pain.” The enchanted drug seemed potent enough to dull the pain of his other men dying, too. “I should be fine until a magister can examine it tomorrow.”
“I don’t know if there are any magisters here.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t need an elite to work this spell,” he said. “Probably an augur is enough to do it.”
“You don’t look like a soldier from any of the major citystates,” I said. “And the magisterium isn’t helping you, or else you’d have church garb strewn all over your body. So let me guess: the king of Traumwick heard a prophecy that only you could kill Mastiga, thereby ending the wars?”
Rolling his eyes, he waved his mug to the side as he spoke. “The prophecy was actually directed to me. And Traumwick is technically ruled by a duke, not a king.”
“And that was enough to inspire all of you to charge at a dragon?”
“You sound skeptical.”
“It took five expeditions to kill Kirius during the First
Servile Wars. We haven’t had a single expedition get close to Mastiga, who’s supposed to be even stronger than Kirius was.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Octavian said. I tilted my head to the side. “Within a few days, the moon will be full. And so Mastiga will have to slumber on the Athalian Coast. And considering all the armies he’s possessed are fighting further inland, that means he’ll be defenseless.”
He smirked as he sipped his drink. His was the smug rather than the gentle charm, the kind whose success is known to the user, the kind I loathed for how it warmed my body.
“That’s why I need more than healing in the days before Mastiga has to roost. I need to see if I can find more men to help me. I need provisions, of course. And if there are augurs, I can also ask about enchantments for my sword, because the sharpened dragon tooth was—"
“I could spare a room for you at no charge.”
He furrowed his magnificent brow. He doubted that I would offer this without pay. Perhaps I planned to rob him, or assassinate him, or otherwise extract value from him.
“Call it an investment. Once I can say that my tavern housed the man who killed Mastiga, every traveler within ten leagues will want to stay here.”
This sounded better than me leaving multiple rooms open at a loss for three weeks because of how many people had recently died.
“By the gods,” he said. He slammed the mug against the wood. The counter rattled from the force. How I envied those beaten, battered panels of wood.
I helped him grab the railing for the stairs, steady his body, and ascend. Then I pointed to the room at the end of the hall that he could take. When I apologized for leaving him because I needed to tend to my ailing father, he waved off my concern. Then he turned to me.
“You are truly a woman beautiful in both body and spirit.”
“Thank you, kind sir.”
Although it was likely a lie, I had to believe it wasn’t. This want, at least, I might acquire.
When I brought him his mead, my father lay on his bed with a scroll. The pockmarks on his skin had faded; color had returned to his skin. Yet he coughed and wheezed when I crossed the threshold, longer and harsher than he had the past few weeks, as if strangled by his own body. I tried to approach during a lull, hoping to bring the goblet close enough for him to drink, thereby ending the fit. Every time I moved, however, the lull ended. And so I stood and waited for the salvo to conclude.
When I brought the drink to his lips, his breathing quieting, his writhing subsided. He placed the scroll on the table to his side. He thanked me for this, said he’d be his regular self after a nap, and offered assistance for tomorrow that I refused. Then his eyes closed, calmed.
This resulted from the quarter of a potion of oblivion I poured into his mead and that neither of us mentioned. He’d turned away two weeks before when he saw me decanting it into his drink. It was stronger than the potion of stupefaction that patrons requested in their ale for an extra coin if they wanted a
stronger, quicker euphoria. Potions of oblivion, though, dulled nearly everything, including pain, curses, and regret. I brewed this as if we had the orichalcum needed to act as catalyst. I brewed this as if it were a curative spell, a thaumaturgic challenge that we could solve. I brewed this as if it weren’t palliative, as if it were anything other than overwhelming numbness.
When Octavian came down the stairs, some of the older patrons had already arrived. Unlike Octavian, these men had bodies that could do little but consume and often in large quantities. I wondered if they did so to spend hours away from their descendants, who would not have to see their sorry state.
Were it not for his youth, Octavian would resemble these men. He had the same filth-smeared cloak, the same sullied trousers, the same disintegrating boots. His doublet, however, had intact laces and a color like the sediment in old wine. Evidently his bag held more than weapons.
Nonetheless, it did hold weapons, which one of the patrons noticed at Octavian’s side. He ogled Octavian’s literal
sword the way I’d ogled his metaphorical one. The patron’s hands fidgeted, his eyes twitched, his legs squirmed. I leaned forward to confirm he remained on the stool; I couldn’t bear the spectacle of another injured septuagenarian.
“There’s a fine blade,” he said.
“Well then,” Octavian said, “there’s a keen eye you rarely see these days. Hail and well met, sir.”
The man accepted his hand as they gave each other their names, hometowns, lineages. “Is that one from Clovis the Giant? I thought he’d stopped forging them.”
“He has. This was from Clotilde the Prisoner, his cousin. I went all the way east to Zedenhurst after the wars ended just to get it.”
“I thought Clotilde only made magic staves,” said a different patron.
“I thought she went blind,” volunteered another.
“It was only temporary,” I said. “It happened when the thrall besieged the city.”
“I didn’t know you were also an historian,” said Octavian. His teeth gleamed like his blade when he smiled at me.
I turned away from him. I wanted him to leave this tavern, either into the city streets without me, or up to his room with me. I couldn’t endure his public presence.
“I lived there when it happened. My brother was in the fighting. It’s how my mom died.”
“That undead army never got into the city,” said Octavian. “The only casualties were the soldiers on the battlefield.”
“My mom died of hunger. The noble families enforced the rations on everyone, regardless of family size or need, in order to feed the troops. Either my mom or I wouldn’t be able to eat enough. She gave me the food she’d eat so that I might survive, since I was smaller and needed less.”
“I thought all the city-states had food caches?”
“All the nobles had food caches.”
“I heard you had a blade of prophecy,” I said. As I entered his room, he had the sword against a whetstone resting on his leg. He sharpened the blade with long, slow, tender strokes. This was clearly something he valued in both form and function.
Of course, warm as it made me to watch those caresses, I stared instead at the muscularity of his exposed chest.
“I’d let you see it,” he said, “if I wasn’t working it right now.”
“You don’t have some other blade you’d let me touch?”
“Well, for the eager girl.” He reached into his bag, removed a small dagger with a gilded hilt, and threw it toward me.
I caught it, unsheathed it, regarded it. I could not admire this the way I could the beautiful blade on the whetstone.
Nonetheless, even without form, this had function. I sliced through the air, jabbed, pretended to parry and actually thrust. It satisfied me to hold it. I had missed the sensation of that firm, hard weapon in my hand. I missed it too much, evidently, from the way he smirked when I slid the blade into the lacquered red sheath.
“The only shiny objects I have that most ladies want to hold are coins.”
“I like those too,” I said. “But after my brother
died, my father said I needed to know how to defend our tavern. I also shot small arms, even heavy artillery. I can even swing that heavy blade of prophecy. Hauling barrels of ale keeps the muscles firm.”
“I can see that,” he said. He winked when I brought my arms close, let his fingers caress the skin. But he spoke as if it were an evaluation or appraisal. “I could use someone with that skill.”
“You’re very kind,” I said.
“So that’s a rejection?”
“Of course it is. I could never leave my ailing father. I can barely tend this place working sixteen hours a day.”
“But what of glory?”
“A toy for the nobility,” I said, “a trap for us commoners.” I paused. “Or at least some commoners.”
He began to recite lines from a ballad about the men who slew the dragon Kirius during the First Servile Wars. I shoved his sheath to his chest. Then I provided my brother’s name and asked the man if he knew him. He shook his head.
“A simple man, not highborn, not wealthy, who
wanted glory like every boy his age. He went on exploratory missions once he heard that Kirius had possessed so many men.”
“And he fell in combat while valiantly protecting Zedenhurst?”
“Yes,” I said, “and was then turned into part of the thrall. Turns out his comrades who survived didn’t want to write hymns for the man who went on to kill their friends.”
Every morning Octavian trotted down to the counter, regaled the old patrons with where he would go today, and then vowed to return. When he did, he brought something new, so that after three days he had polished boots, cleaned cloaks, food that wouldn’t spoil on the road.
The next day, he announced that he had all the gear he required and would leave in the morning.
Even though I had watched the sky and saw how the moon had waxed, his words chilled my body. I slashed against my skin with the hand beneath the counter. I berated myself. I knew this town, this suffering, this disease. I shouldn’t expect suitors, let alone husbands.
“What is it you need to acquire today?” asked one of the ancient patrons. Octavian beamed as he turned to them, delighted to discuss his own quest, purpose, destiny.
“The magisters in this city-state can make a serum of verity,” he said. “Despite my common status, they’ve said they can give it to me if I show my worth in the trials of the frost.”
“I know they won’t give you orichalcum if you beg,” I said. “But could you ask about a serum of longevity? I don’t know if it will help my father, but I will try anything to prevent the blight from taking him.”
When Octavian furrowed his brow, it did not excite or even intrigue me.
“I’d have to undergo the trials of the wind, at minimum,” he said. “Besides, I saw a series of staves when I entered your establishment. Surely your father must be able to work a spell to cure whatever Mastiga used to infect him?”
“Without orichalcum?”
“You don’t even have to be a magister for that.
Some of the augurs can do it.”
“Do I look like I know enough magic to even walk through the church doors?” I said. “Let alone have enough talent to rank among the augurs?”
“It would take me at least another day. I can’t spare that.” “Can you spare getting the serum of verity? Could you instead take the trials of the wind and get the serum I’ve requested?”
“The serum of verity displays truth and purpose, honor and vision, the meaning of my calling, and perhaps even my prophecy. I need to know that in order to conquer Mastiga.”
I tilted my head at his description. It was intangible, philosophical, and altogether the opposite of what men wanted in their arsenal. It was also vexing, as I showed when I sighed loudly enough that he responded.
“Pray be calm, my lady. You can’t believe that your family’s individual suffering is more important than the empire. Healing your father is now more important than defeating Mastiga? Than ending these wars?”
“That’s not true.”
“So then you’re not angry?”
“That’s not true either.”
After he left, I staggered into the cellar. The voices above me itched and burrowed into my skin. They were the locusts that wanted my crops and then, after devouring those crops, wanted me. I needed to heal my beleaguered mind.
I reached for a narrow oak staff kept in the corner. I recited the few ancient words of the basic, and only, dueling spell that I learned when I’d tried to become a simple cleric at the bottom of the magisterium. Like most spells taught to children to hurl at each other, it dealt momentary harm, leaving no marks or burns. Less flashy than fake fires or conjured animals, it created a series of small knives to hack at the target’s skin. In this case, the target was the caster.
It stung and burned and stole all of my attention, which made it ideal for both distracted opponents and overtaxed barmaids. It didn’t hobble, it didn’t incapacitate, and it didn’t
even scar.
I let the daggers scrape across my back, peeling away the anxiety and rage and babbling that surrounded me. The agony grew, swelled, shoved everything out of my sensorium. Eventually it spread to my hand. Unable to hold the staff, I dropped it and thereby the spell, turning the painful waves against the wall where they might crash, break. As they faded, I knew my thoughts and feelings and perceptions would return, but they would take hours at least.
I threw a cape over my dress so that none could see the momentary wounds--that would be worse for business than leaving the bar untended--and slowly stomped up the stairs.
A screaming came across the hall. Fearing it was the blight’s clutches tightening around my father, I dashed to his room only to find it pristine, dark, silent. In contrast, when I went to Octavian’s, I heard the clamor of a man roused from slumber.
When I entered, he was splayed supine over the bed, his pupils stretched wide.
He panted as he lay beneath the thick covers. Dirt
and grease matted his hair to his head. He looked confused more than groggy, less like he’d slept poorly and more like he just realized he’d fallen asleep.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried it before I went to sleep.”
One hand rubbed his eye while the other pointed to the crystalline cylinder of dusky liquid.
“The serum?” He nodded. “They said it had to follow a moment of bliss.”
I pulled the covers from his body so he could sit up and stood in front of him.
“Mead wasn’t enough to do that?”
“It wasn’t just mead,” he said. “I thought of Traumwick. I thought of returning to the man and woman who adopted me, speaking of my conquest, the everyday man-made hero. But I suppose I was too frightened that I might fail. I had a nightmare, of course. Everyone in Traumwick mocked me. They said I came from nothing, had no talents, had no reason for any woman to prophesize about me. So I was alone.”
“You aren’t alone,” I said. His body warmed me even before I touched him. I brought myself toward his legs. He steadied me, pulled me closer to him.
“No,” he said. “But I wonder if the rest of that is true.” “It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m not able to slay Mastiga?”
“It doesn’t matter where you came from,” I said.
“I don’t hear of orphans slaying dragons.”
“I don’t hear of prophecies being lies.” I slid my fingers from his hand to his chest. His muscles were hard enough I feared I might cut myself. He was hot and smooth; his taut flesh glistered beneath a faint film of sweat. The hand he braced against the bed he now brought atop my leg. It was like I’d walked into a forge the way the heat swelled in all directions, oppressed every part of my body. I needed him.
“Kiss me,” I said. As he did, his tongue flooded my mouth, claiming that space like he claimed my body, his hands pulling me against his overwhelming form. I was something he brought to himself and pulled apart, unwrapping every layer of
clothing like I were a gift presented to him. I was something he wanted, perhaps even expected.
He panted as he pushed his fingers into me. It was rhythmic and continued, slowing the more that I pressed my chest against his. And then he brought more of himself into me. He thrust with force and with regularity. I looked away from his closed eyes, his open mouth, his satisfied expression. The flames stoked within me erupted. My body melted against his, opening itself not only to him but to the world. Distinctions between bodies, between the bed, beneath us, between the air itself all dissipated. I collapsed into it all. There was nothing anchoring me, no threat of starvation, no fear of my father’s death, no creeping sickness, famine, death.
If only I could have stayed there.
I couldn’t have stayed there: a state of pleasure, a place he remained, a mental state in which I remembered him.
I was becoming an image rather than a girl, a character rather than an individual. I would be a bawdy story told to different septuagenarian men in different taverns when a
different dragon spawned its own demonic army. Bards would write ballads about his bravery, conquest, sacrifices. Bards would not write ballads about me so much as a single physical part of me.
I needed to mute my mind.
I hadn’t cleaned everything in the tavern and locked the doors by the time he crept down the stairs. Save for the laces on his boots, he’d dressed himself, shoved everything into an overflowing bag, even splashed some water over his face. He embraced me as he approached.
“Are you leaving?”
“I can’t stay in that bed.”
“Did you have another nightmare?”
“The serum worked,” he said. He released me, took to a chair, and began to tie his boots. “It was why the prophecy picked me. I saw my true parents, the ones I never knew. They were Baron and Baroness in Zedenhurst.” I put down the mug and walked to the counter. My hands, body, mind needed support more than they needed distractions.
“Do you know what this means? They were the
ones who protected the city during the war. They were powerful rulers. I come from them, rather than nothing. Of course, they couldn’t let me know this, in case any of Kirius’s worshippers tried to kill me.”
I didn’t understand why they’d kept it secret, why they didn’t tell him so he could train himself to fight any vengeful undead, rather than living unaware and vulnerable. I had to ask him about it before I succumbed to this mania, suffered the same nightmare I’d heard him endure.
“And you know all this from a dream?”
“It was a dream,” he said, “but it was also a vision. I knew it was a vision when I saw it. I felt it.”
“All dreams feel real when you’re having them.”
“But this was a dream specifically after I took the serum. And they wouldn’t have used all their orichalcum for this if it weren’t worthwhile.”
“They used orichalcum for it?”
“Defeating Mastiga the Plague-Bearer requires sacrifice.”
“How does this help you defeat him?”
He rolled his eyes like I’d asked him how his sword
would help him against the dragon. “Because I can trust in my ability. I know that what I did wasn’t a lie. I know that my nightmare was the deceit, because of my blood, my lineage, my destiny. I know that I wasn’t some…”
“Some what?” He walked toward the counter with eyes and mouth open. When pleading words attempted to escape, I continued. “Some commoner?”
When he stretched his hand toward mine, I swatted it away. “Get out.”