“Is there a war? Who has attacked us?”
“There is no war just as yet,” said the Godfather. “But of course they will attack Us, unless We prove to them that they dare not attack. So, we plan a small campaign to commence Our reign. One insolent village, leveled. You’ll be in no great danger.”
“I’m not a coward.”
“Yes, in fact, you are a coward, Julian. You happened to live in a time when you could play-act otherwise. Those decadent times have passed. You’re a coward, and you always were. So, make a clean breast of your many failings. We pledge that you too will be spared. You might as well write your own confessions, for your sins are many and you know them better than anyone.”
“Once I do that for you, you’ll spare my friends.”
“We will. We don’t say they will suck the blood of the taxpayer anymore, but yes, they will be spared.”
“You’ll spare my students.”
“Fine young men. They were led astray. Young men of good family are natural officer material.”
“You’ll give me back my house and my servant.”
“Oh, you won’t need any house, and as for your wicked witch … You should read the thunderation that rings around her little head! Your friends denounced you—but in their wisdom, they denounced her much, much more violently. They all tell Us that this lamentable situation is not your fault at all. They proclaim that she seduced you to it, that she turned your head. She drove you mad, she drugged you. She used all the wicked wiles of a foreign courtesan. She descended to female depths of evil that no mere man can plumb.”
Julian sat on his stony bench for a moment. Then he rose again and put his hands around the bars. “Permit me to beg for her life.”
“To spare her is not possible. We can’t publish these many eloquent confessions without having her drowned in the Cistern right away. It would be madness to let a malignant creature like that walk in daylight for even an hour.”
“She did nothing except what I trained her to do! She’s completely harmless and timid. She’s the meekest creature alive. You are sacrificing an innocent for political expediency. It’s a shame.”
“Should We spare this meek creature and execute you, and four friends? She was a lost whore, and the lowest of the low, as soon as her own soldiers failed to protect her from the world. You want to blame someone for the cold facts? Blame yourself, professor. Let this be a good lesson to you.”
“You are breaking a bird on an anvil here. That’s easy for you to do, but it’s a cruelty. You’ll be remembered for that. It will weigh on your conscience.”
“It will not,” said the Godfather. “Because We will kindly offer to spare the witch’s life. Then We will watch your friends in a yapping frenzy to have her killed. Your noble scholars will do everything they can to have her vilified, lynched, dumped into the Cistern, and forgotten forever. They will blame her lavishly in order to absolve themselves. Then, when you meet each other again, you men with a cause, you literati—that’s when the conscience will sting.”
“So,” said Julian, “it’s not enough that we’re fools, or that we’re cowards, or that we failed to defend ourselves. We also have to be evil.”
“You are evil. Truly, you are fraudulent and wicked men. We should wash you from the fabric of society in a cleansing bath of blood. But We won’t do that. Do you know why? Because We understand necessity. We are responsible. We know what the state requires. We think these things through.”
“You could still spare us. You could forgive us for the things we wrote and thought. You could be courageous and generous. That is within your great power.”
The Godfather sighed. “That is so easy for a meager creature like you to say, and so difficult for Us to do. We will tell you a little parable about that. Soon, this cell door will open. Now: When this door is opened, place your right hand in this doorframe. We will have this husky bodyguard slam this iron door on your fingers. You will never scribble one mischievous word again. If you do that, Julian, that would be ‘courageous and generous.’ That would be the bravest act of your life. We will spare the life of your mystic witch for that noble act.”
Julian said nothing.
“You’re not volunteering to be so courageous and generous? You can marry her: You have Our blessing. We will perform that ceremony Ourselves.”
“You are right. I don’t want her,” said Julian. “I have no further need for her. Let her be strangled in all due haste and thrown down the well. Let the hungry fish nibble her flesh, let her body be turned into soup and poured through the greenhouses. She came to me half-dead, and every day I gave to her was some day she would never have seen! Let me see that sunlight she will never see again. I hate this cage. Let me out of here.”
After his release from darkness, very little happened to Julian that he found of any interest. After two years of service, Julian managed to desert the army of Selder. There had been no chance of that at first, because the army was so eager, bold, and well disciplined.
However, after two years of unalloyed successes, the army suffered a sharp reverse at the walls of Buena Vista. The hardscrabble villagers there were too stubborn, or perhaps too stupid, to be cowed by such a fine army. To the last man, woman, and child, they put up a lethal resistance. So the village was left in ruins, but so was the shining reputation of the Godfather and his troops.
Julian fled that fiery scene by night, losing any pursuers in the vast wild thickets of cactus and casuarina. Soon afterward, he was captured by the peasants of Denver. There was little enough left of that haunted place. However, the Denver peasants sold him to a regional court with a stony stronghold in the heights of Vale.
Julian was able to convince the scowling peers of that realm that they would manage better with tax records and literate official proclamations. That was true: They did improve with a gloss of civility. They never let him leave, but they let him live.
After a course of further indifferent years, word arrived in Vale that the Godfather of Selder had perished in his own turn. He had died of sickness in a war camp, plague and war being much the same thing. There were certain claims that he had been poisoned.
After some further tiresome passage of years, the reviving realm of Selder began to distribute traders, bankers, and ambassadors. They were a newer and younger-spirited people. They were better dressed and brighter-eyed. They wrote everything down. They observed new opportunities in places where nothing had happened for ages. They had grand plans for those places, and the ability to carry them out.
These new men of Selder seemed to revel in being a hundred things at once. Not just poets, but also architects. Not just artists, but also engineers. Not just bankers, but gourmands and art collectors. Even their women were astonishing.
Julian had no desire to return to the damp glassy shadows of Selder. He had come to realize that a Sustainable City that could never forget its past could become an object of terror to simpler people. Also, he had grown white-haired and old.
But he was not allowed to ignore a velvet invitation—a polite command, really—from Godfather Magnanimous Jef the First. Practical Jeffrey had outlasted his city’s woes with the stolid grace that was his trademark. Jef’s shrewd rise to power had cost him a brother and two bodyguards, but once in command, he never set his neatly shod foot wrong.
In his reign, men and women breathed a new air of magnificence, refinement, and vivacity. Troubles that would have crushed a lesser folk were made jest of, simply taken in stride.
Men even claimed that the climate was improving. This was delusional, for nothing would ever make the climate any better. But the climate within the hearts of men was better. Men were clearly and simply a better kind of man.