The Memory of Blades

By James Dwyer

They say to hold a Memory Blade is to live forever, both as a life trapped within the blade itself and as a Memory Lord to rule over one of the Five Cities – each one an immortal part of our nation’s history.
I say to hold a Memory Blade is to become an utter bastard, with the minds and memories of three dozen pricks inside your head, all encouraging you to do depraved and despicable things. It all sounds like immense fun, of course, but could you really sell your own self-worth for a lifetime of endless pleasures? Probably best not to answer that.
Well regardless of my feelings on the matter, in less than twenty-four hours I am due to become the new Lord Warrior, the thirtieth lucky Thurat heir to receive the Warrior’s Heart, the Memory Blade which grants its wielder unrivalled martial ability and twenty-nine bastards inside my head, including my own recently departed prick of a father. With the four other ruling Memory Lords coming to my city to witness the funeral, all I have to do is survive them all trying to politely kill me and pilfer my family’s all-powerful Memory Blade. Nothing too difficult, I’m sure, especially not with dear Dusty helping me.
‘Dusty?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘You’ll make certain that no-one kills me before tomorrow, won’t you?’
‘I won’t indeed, sir, yes.’
‘I’m not quite sure if I should be reassured by that, but let’s not dally any longer. Best to get this day over with and see who’s still alive by this time tomorrow!’

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Dwyer
• Release date: Dec 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781005690786

James Dwyer

James Dwyer is an aspiring writer based on the South coast of England. Living in Poole, Dorset, James has won prizes for his short film scripts. With a passion for storytelling and writing, James hopes to one day make a living out of monsters, mystery and murder. Until then, he hopes people will enjoy reading his stories as much as he enjoys writing them. Inspiration: Ancient Greece, Mythology, Monsters, Science Fiction, Robots, Organised Crime, Insects and other creepy crawlies. Influences: Ray Bradbury, Terry Pratchett, John Steinbeck, Daphne Du Maurier, Guillermo del Toro, Park Chan Wook, Michel Gondry

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The Memory of Blades by James Dwyer

Published by Paused Books 2020

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © Paused Books 2020

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

First Edition

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

www.pausedbooks.com

Other Works by James Dwyer:

Heights of Power series:

Fireborn

Masks of Moi'dan

War of Flames

Twelve Weapons

Senescence

The Grieving Soul

By Brendan Dwyer and James Dwyer:

Cult Fiction

Rowdy Roddy Randy

Cult Fiction: Player Two

Chapter One: Brothers, Sisters, Manservants, and Bastards

Chapter Two: Revolting Nobles and their Decadent Peasants

Chapter Three: The Possibility of Inevitability

Chapter Four: Heads Will Roll

Chapter Five: Who Knows More Than You

Chapter Six: Sons, Daughters, Mothers, Lovers

Chapter Seven: A Family of Marriage

Chapter Eight: Fucked

Chapter Nine: How Bloody and Convenient

Chapter Ten: Hungry for Answers

Chapter Eleven: Oh Stral Almighty, I Hate My Sister

Chapter Twelve: Some Things Are More Important

Chapter Thirteen: Vicious and Delicious

Chapter Fourteen: Satisfying Dining

Chapter Fifteen: Dishonesty, Disloyalty, Treachery, and Treason

Chapter Sixteen: All Wrapped Up

Chapter Seventeen: Who’s Left

Chapter Eighteen: Everyone

Chapter Nineteen: Good Night

Chapter Twenty: That Big Fat Fuck

Chapter Twenty One: Together at Last

Chapter Twenty Two: The Memory of Blades

Epilogue

Chapter One

Brothers, Sisters, Manservants, and Bastards

I do my best to be better.

My thoughts are thorough, covering as many possibilities as the blinkers of my perspective can possibly allow, and I truly believe that this thoroughness of thought leads me to produce wise and careful acts. Those actions distil to memory and those memories go on to join the respected council of my inner self. This wisdom of experience then serves to balance whatever rabble of mood and emotion is rampaging through my mind and, in theory, it all should create a cycle of improvement from which one could only continue to become better. So on that basis, I am a good man – or least I’m better than I was several moments before – but still, some days, I can’t help but feel slightly like a cad for constantly sleeping with my brother’s wife.

Shutting the door behind me, I exited Lilliana’s bedchamber and turned to find my manservant waiting.

‘Dusty?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Am I a cad?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re supposed to reassure me, you know.’

‘I thought I did, sir?’

‘Reassure me that I’m not a cad, Dusty, not that I am one.’

‘Ah. I see, sir.’ Dusty cleared his throat. ‘You are not a cad.’

‘Thank you, Dusty. Now was that so hard?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh for the love of Stral…’

I scowled at the man, damning him and his glorious moustache. Everything about the fiend was the picture of perfected dignity and I resisted my urge to disarray the dastard’s hair. I broke into a sudden march instead and my short-legged manservant kept pace with his usual and infuriating complete lack of effort.

‘Anything to report, Dusty? And try to remember that this is to be the last day off I’ll ever have, so keep things brief would you.’

‘Of course, sir. I shall be as brief as a badger.’

‘Are badgers brief, Dusty?’

‘Oh yes, sir, very much so.’

My eyebrows tried to dance some sense into that analogy but seemed quite unable to puzzle it out. ‘I’m not sure your comparison is entirely sane, Dusty, but do go on.’

‘As sane as a pigeon, sir. About whom do you wish to hear first?’

‘Ark, Dusty, it’s always Ark. Especially when pigeons are involved. How is he this morning?’ The past few days had been difficult for my brother (not the brother whose wife I was sleeping with, that was Trest – Ark was my other brother and the best of us all by far).

‘I fear that Lord Arkin is feeling particularly distressed this morning, sir, so I sent Sergeant Yunker to his rooms in the hope he may distract Lord Arkin from his recurring fears.’

Ark’s recurring fears of inevitable death… For you or me such a thought could be dismissed as easily as I dismissed dear Dusty, but for Ark’s mind he had no choice but to replay the notion over and over, searching for understanding about something fundamentally unknowable. Our father had died the week previous, with his funeral ceremony not scheduled until tomorrow. The delay was unavoidable but it prolonged Ark’s anxiety to unbearable degrees. It probably didn’t help either that our father’s body was chained up in a crystal casket inside the Warrior’s Vault, sword in hand, with his eyes ghoulishly frozen open for all to see and in turn be seen.

The eyes of history are watching, Seffult. Tell me, what do you think the world should see?

The world could see and kiss my hairless arse for all I cared about future histories. I had enough of the stuff in the past as it was.

I clapped Dusty on the back and we changed direction towards Ark’s rooms. ‘Yunker does great work, Dusty—’

‘Great work, sir.’

‘—but I fear he only ever cheers me up, and sometimes you, but never Ark. Ark finds him a little …’

‘Obscene, sir?’

My feet almost tripped in scandal at the man. How could he say such a thing about dear old Yunker!

‘I was going to say disorderly, Dusty. Stral Almighty, whatever made you say obscene?’

‘Humblest apologies, sir, but Sergeant Yunker does seem to be going through a phase of late where he finds difficulty in lacing up his breeches. In fact, I fear he has given up on the task completely.’

‘Ah. I thought I was hearing about a lot more sightings of little Yunker these days, but I’d assumed the man had simply taken to pissing in the plant pots again. Shouldn’t he be sleeping now? No, never mind. Send him to guard my mother, would you? She loves a good show. Honestly, Dusty, what made you think he’d be the right man to cheer up Ark?’

‘Well he does do great work, sir.’

‘Great work, Dusty,’ I agreed.

‘And since you ordered the Keep sealed, sir, the availability of soldiers has become somewhat limited.’

‘Yes, yes, alright.’ I waved the matter away and took a moment to notice how empty all these corridors were as we charged our way down them. Our castle’s staff had always been skilled in becoming invisible – a necessity while living under the grim rule of my dear departed fuck of a father – but this amount of emptiness was a leaping step beyond. Blank grey walls, windows caged by bars, dark and dingy rafters leering down on us from above; the great Thurat Keep of House Warrior was so old and dusty that I swear I could hear it wheeze.

‘Well go on, Dusty, what about all those other bastards dithering about my Keep? What manner of mischief are they up to today? And biggest bastard first, if you please.’

‘Well the biggest bastards, sir, Lord Command and Lord Eternal, continue to complain about the quality of their rooms, the quantity of their servants, and the respective lack of each.’

I grinned at Dusty. ‘Unable to decide which one’s bigger, eh? Well Eternal should win for sheer size of the man, but then Command’s level of bastardry is quite unrivalled. Have them both moved to the other two Wings: Divine’s and Merchant’s. That should cause some fun tomorrow when those last two beard-splitters get here.’

We had four entire Wings in the Thurat Keep dedicated to each of the visiting Memory Lords, custom built by the lords themselves over the numerous centuries, and still the pricks were never happy. Well when Lords Divine and Merchant arrived tomorrow they could duke it out themselves with Command and Eternal over whose rooms were worse, and may the best bastard win. Anything but bother me about it.

‘Very good, sir.’ Dusty snapped his fingers and one of his runners arrived out of nowhere. I’d seen it before, obviously, but it still amazed me. Did he keep the lads hiding inside every crack of the castle just waiting to hear one of those commanding snaps? Dusty relayed my flippant orders to the poor messenger boy who’d have the fun of delivering it and then continued on with his report.

‘Next we have your sister, sir.’

‘Fuck my sister, Dusty!’

I may have shouted that a little too loud. The poor lad running off with Dusty’s orders certainly gave me a wide-eyed look before sprinting about his business. I hoped he hadn’t taken my outburst as a direct command. Dusty certainly seemed to.

‘I’d rather not, sir, but while we are speaking of Lady Keshal, she has once again put forward that we are spending far too much coin on the city’s celebrations. She agrees that the arrival of four Memory Lords is a momentous event, but she has outlined seven reports on more efficient ways in which to run the festivities.’

I spun to confront the man. ‘Seven reports, Dusty?’

‘Seven, sir.’

‘Seven!’

‘Indeed, sir. Not so much as eight but many more than six.’

‘Stral Almighty. Where are these reports now?’

‘I gave them to Lord Tresten, sir, for him to best decide on which one was most effective.’

‘Ah ha! Good man, Dusty! I could kiss that clever head of yours.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t, sir.’

‘You love my kisses, Dusty!’ I recommenced my march and Dusty followed, although noticeably out of kissing distance. Giving Trest those reports was the best way to keep my younger brother both irrationally irritated and pointlessly busy, the exact two states I liked to keep the Marshal General of House Warrior. He had made Ark’s life an absolute misery when we were children together, and as adults now I preferred to take revenge on that cruelty with as much petty nonsense as I could possibly fling at the man – that, and by continuously fucking his wife.

I wished I could be there though, when Trest would storm into Kesh’s offices and demand that all seven long-winded reports be rewritten in one sentence each, using only words he could understand and maybe with a picture or two drawn in to help him pay attention. Our sister had a flare for the pretentious when it came to loquaciousness, whereas our brother Trest had a tendency to smash things with rocks and accuse them of witchcraft whenever his tiny brain tripped over any kind of depth. As I said before: when it came to the Thurat children, Ark was the best of us – and I fully included myself in that damning comparison. We were almost at Ark’s rooms now, so I shooed Dusty away to be about his tasks.

‘Tell my sister that I’ve given Trest permission to double the cost of whichever solution he eventually picks because damn it man, if a city can’t celebrate the death of our scoundrel of a father, then when can it! Now off with you and I don’t want to hear about any more problems until Lord Merchant and Lord Divine get here tomorrow to add their lordly whinging to the grand chorus of our own. Now shoo!’

‘Consider me shoed, sir,’ Dusty said with a gracious bow and a click of his heels. One day I’d find some way to rattle that fantastic man. I loved him just the way he was, naturally, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t constantly seek to completely undo him.

Trotting up a quick flight of stairs, I considered the various ways I could abuse my magnificent manservant but I arrived at Ark’s chambers before anything too diabolical came to mind. Giving the closed door to Ark’s apartment a single polite knock first, I barged my way in to greet my big brother.

‘It’s only me, Ark! It’s Seff,’ I announced to the room, only to see that it wasn’t only me. Our niece Illillia was there too. She was Lillianna’s daughter and for all her virtues – the foremost of them being that she had a delightful habit of getting into fistfights with our city’s soldiers – I still found it quite unforgiveable that I be made to articulate so many unpronounceable i’s and l’s in her sarding name. Hardly her fault, true, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t condemn her for it.

‘Hello little Lia,’ I said with a slight bow to the girl. ‘Where’s Yunker?’

Illillia scrunched her face up at the mention of Yunker and tipped her chin towards the door. The girl had the same dark curls as her mother and they bounced with distaste at the motion of her head. ‘I sent that awful man away. His breeches were undone, he dribbles when he smiles, and he smells like something awful that I don’t even know.’

‘Yes, quite tricky to pin down. The smell changes from day to day you see.’ Ocana save me but I loved Yunker. I tried to replicate his sloppy smile for little Lia now and by the grimace I received I must’ve done rather well. ‘Is Ark in his room?’

Illillia nodded. ‘I don’t think he slept last night. He said that if he falls asleep he might not wake up.’

It was my turn to grimace now as I recalled the fool chambermaid who had said that to Ark. She’d meant it as a kindness, I’m sure, to help Ark deal with the passing of our father, but she should’ve known that Ark took everything bloody literally. Old Nan explained it all to me a long time ago, and it was my fault, I supposed, for not better instructing the rest of the castle staff whenever I assigned new faces to Ark’s specific care. There was so much to explain that I often left large gaping chunks of it out. The most pressing topic to avoid though was always to do with death. Even before our father died it had been a terrifying subject for Ark. The relentless attempts on his life would fray the most robust of minds, but in the week since our father’s death, Ark was left in constant hysterics. I had to make some quite audacious promises in order to reassure my poor older brother, and for a day or two he was calmed. Until yesterday, of course, when the new chambermaid forgot all the rules I sarding gave her. They were quite simple. When Ark asks about our dead father: do not say that he passed away, since the wording was too vague; do not say that he’s gone to the heavens, since that implies he might come back; and do not say that the bastard has simply gone on a very long sleep, because now my brother was too terrified to close his sarding eyes!

Rolling my shoulders first and loosening my neck, I gave Illillia a quick nod of thanks and then made my way to Ark’s bedchamber. I gave the closed door another polite knock and paused for a moment this time before quietly slipping in. My brother was inside, standing with his back to me and staring out his chamber’s window, undoubtedly watching for birds. I took a moment to smile at the peace he could find in admiring those fowl things, and I took another moment then to turn my smile onto the decorations of my brother’s room.

Ark was a collector. He was a collector of birds, a collector of knowledge, a collector of so many sarding things that his room was a uniquely organised utter mess. Paintings and tapestries covered the walls, all of them depicting a grand variety of birds in flight, whereas the rest of the room was filled with cabinets and chests, tables and shelves, a chaotic clutter to anyone else but a treasure to Ark, all of them holding a wealth of bird-lore and other avian accoutrements. Ark liked to draw pictures of birds, so some of the chests would be filled with those, but Ark also liked to know absolutely everything about everything else, so there would be hundreds of books hidden about his room in a system that only Ark could understand. His mind didn’t work the same as yours or mine, and as a result he had difficulty understanding why people said and did certain things. But as I liked to explain to my brother in times of great distress, his mind was like an eagle soaring higher than everyone else and it was not the place of eagles to fully understand the daily doings of the common duck.

‘Hello, Ark. How are you today?’ I said as I stood beside him and joined my older brother in admiring the view. It was a bright clear morning, and the summer breeze carried in the sounds of the city and the smell of the sea. From our summit on the hill, the Thurat Castle Keep overlooked all of Fort Warrior, from the great cathedrals to each of the Four Gods, to the sprawling homes and business of the people who gave them worship. The city’s watchtowers and walls stood high and proud under our grand inspection, and the numerous ships coming in and out of port waved their sails at us in greeting. This was my city and I would love it and protect it until my dying day. It was the exact same passion with which I felt about Ark.

My eyes returned to my brother now, wondering if he heard my greeting or whether he heard me and decided he was just too busy right now to respond, but as I watched him, his arm eventually moved to clutch the sleeve of my shirt and make his reply.

‘Hello, Seff. I am fine. Thank you.’

‘Glad to hear it, Ark! But little Lia tells me that you didn’t sleep. Is that true?’

My brother’s gaze brushed along the bottom of the open window. ‘If I close my eyes I might not wake up.’

I closed my own eyes for a moment before resuming the same conversation we’ve had a hundred times.

‘Everybody sleeps every night, Ark, and they all wake up again each morning.’

‘Our father did not wake up. If I close my eyes I might not wake up.’

‘Ah, but our father went to sleep with his eyes open. So there you go. As long as you close your eyes before you go to sleep then you’ll be fine!’

It wasn’t exactly the truth, and it wasn’t exactly the reason that our father’s corpse was frozen with his eyes still open – the eyes of history are always watching, Seffult! – but if it helped my brother sleep then it was worth the lie. I hated lying to Ark though. Especially since he took everything so much to heart and also because he remembered every single word every sarding person ever said.

‘I hear Captain Jok sleeps with his eyes open,’ Illillia chirped in from the door quite helpfully.

‘Don’t listen to her, Ark. She’s just punch-drunk from one fistfight too many. And besides, children love to say ridiculous things. What age are you anyway, Lia, eight, seven?’

‘I’m fifteen!’

I frowned at the girl. She did seem rather tall and teenaged to be only seven or eight, but what did I know about the ages of children. ‘Regardless, I’d advise you to stay clear of Captain Jok and his volatile sleeping habits, and for Stral’s sake never wake him up.’ Stral Almighty, the last time he’d been woken up had been traumatising for all involved.

‘How am I supposed to know if he’s asleep if he always has his eyes open?’ the girl asked back.

‘Now you’re getting it!’ I earned a delightfully confused scowl from my niece for that but the same way thoughts of Yunker always brought a ready smile to my face, mention of Jok only ever made me shudder. I’d selected him as part of the elite skeleton guard inside my castle in the hope that he’d elicit similar terror in everyone else. The meetings of five Memory Lords were known to turn rather violent at times, and I’d prefer everyone to remain cautious and terrified for the entire duration of their stay. Everyone apart from Ark, of course. The poor man had enough constant fear in his life as it was.

‘Now, Ark,’ I said returning my attention to my beleaguered brother. ‘How about you try to get a few hours of sleep, eh? The birds will still be here later, and nothing else is due to happen today so you won’t miss a thing.’ Tomorrow was going to be the day of the damned and I could only wish to sleep through and miss all the pandemonium that was certain to take place.

Ark turned away from the window and looked down at my feet. Tall and slender with slightly speckled hair, my brother looked very much like the birds he so loved. His narrow face even pinched inward a bit like a pointed beak.

‘I do not want to go to sleep.’

‘You need to sleep, Ark.’

‘I do not want to go to sleep,’ he repeated a little more firmly. His face remained flat but I could see I was annoying him.

‘Okay, Ark, okay.’ I knew my brother well enough to know he knew his own bloody mind. If he did or did not want to do something, then Lord Arkin Thurat was not shy about saying it. Nothing but brutal honesty at all times, unfortunately. Perhaps all us other bastard nobles could learn more than a tad from the man. ‘What do you want then? Hmm?’

‘I want to go with you.’

‘Really? But I’m not going anywhere today, Ark. It’s my final day of rest before all the excitement starts tomorrow. A rather boring day planned all being said, unless of course Dusty—’

‘Yes, sir?’

My manservant had magically appeared in the doorway next to Illillia, both of them even mimicking the other in the same unassuming pose – Illillia just with slightly less of a lustrous moustache and Dusty with significantly less of a long mane of dark curling hair.

‘—unless of course Dusty arrives with some catastrophe for me to solve,’ I continued between gritted teeth. ‘Which he isn’t supposed to do until tomorrow when Lord Merchant and Lord Divine drag their fat lordly arses into my city.’

I stared at Dusty with expectation.

He stared back at me with nonchalance and slowly scratched his upper lip with the back of one thumb.

‘Well, Dusty?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Problem, sir?’

‘Yes! The problem, the one you’ve come here to tell me all about. Out with it!’

‘Ah. Yes, sir. That problem.’ I saw Dusty’s eyes flicker towards Illillia and Ark but rather than ask me if he should continue, the man simply twiddled his moustache and said what he had come to say. Damn it, the man was fantastic. ‘I’ve just been speaking to Old Nan, sir.’

‘That can often be a problem, Dusty, but I imagine there’s more.’

‘Yes, sir. She asked me to inform you that there is an assassin somewhere in the Thurat Keep.’

‘What!’ I wished I’d been sipping from a goblet of wine so that I could’ve spit it out.

‘Yes, sir. It would seem that your father was poisoned, the toxin responsible being coated on the pillows and sheeting of his bed.’

I threw my head back dramatically so that I could gape at the fucking ceiling. Anything but look at Ark. How in Stral’s name would my brother ever feel safe to fall asleep again if he could now think that his sarding bedsheets might be soaked with poison!

‘Dusty …’ I stopped what I was going to say and began again. ‘Our father has been dead for a week, Dusty. So why oh why has Old Nan chosen now of all times to decide that the old bastard was murdered? Well?’

‘It would seem that your mother ordered the Lord Warrior’s rooms be left untouched until after the ceremony, sir. Old Nan, however, remained unhappy with the manner of your father’s death and took it upon herself to sneak into the rooms where she found traces of halcyon venom. It’s her insistence that if she had been forced to wait another day, then the poison would have decomposed and been impossible to detect.’

‘That blistering bitch!’

‘Old Nan, sir?’

‘No, Dusty, not Old Nan. My mother! You’re saying that she poisoned her own husband? I mean, I can hardly blame the woman, and I suppose it’s better than her poisoning anyone else’s husband, but it’s still bad bloody form! Isn’t it? What in Vengeful Hyuss is halcyon venom anyway?’

‘My mother would probably know,’ Lia chipped in. Lillianna was quite the expert on deadly poisons, it was true. No need to suggest her as a possible suspect though.

‘The halcyon is a rare bird which lives out at sea,’ Ark informed me. ‘It’s blue and orange colours are designed to warn predators of its poison.’

‘Birds can be poisonous? When did that happen? Dusty? Did you know about this?’

My manservant gave me a very serious nod. ‘Absolutely, sir.’

‘Absolutely, is it? Oh, well thank you for that, Dusty.’

‘Many birds are poisonous to eat or touch,’ Ark continued to inform me, ‘although there are none which can use venom to attack, so halcyon venom is a mixture—’

‘Yes, alright, could you tell me all about it later, Ark? Thank you.’

I squeezed my brother’s arm to apologise for interrupting his train of thought, but that particular train – the one carrying all the birdly knowledge of the world – was very much unending. Ark’s expression was unchanged, but I could tell he was a little more than annoyed now, perhaps even bordering on outraged. He would have to restart the sentence in his own head and keep it going for however long it took. I’d make it up to him. But right now I had to deal with Dusty, and my mother, and the notion that she may have a happy assassin hiding within my Keep. Stral only knew who else she’d like to kill. The nobles of the Five Houses always expected a little treachery and murder when they visited the castles of the other Memory Blade families, but not before they’d even gotten here. I began massaging my eyes.

‘Dusty, didn’t I tell you that I didn’t want to hear about any more