Jack of Ravens

6

Niamh stood at the window as she had for so long, watching the rain cascade off the rooftops into the muddy streets. Here and there lamps flickered like fireflies sheltering from the storm.

‘I can understand why so many of my kind love this world. Even amidst all the horror and the despair and the degradation, tiny beacons of beauty shine through. The way the light falls on a cold day near the ocean, or the smell of a forest at summer’s twilight. The sound here, of the rain, the clatter and splash, so many subtleties … a symphony.’ She paused uncertainly. ‘And I have been thinking of late that perhaps that quiet beauty exists within Fragile Creatures, too, for they are a part of this world. What do you say?’

Jerzy sat on the bed, cross-legged. ‘I agree with whatever you say, mistress.’

Niamh made an irritable noise in her throat. ‘I suppose I wanted a performing monkey and that is what I have. Do you have any opinions of your own left, Mocker?’

‘If that is what my mistress requires.’

‘How do you find your companion?’

Jerzy considered the question. ‘He is a man filled with so many shadows, and doubts, and such a great sadness that he barely recognises himself.’

‘Go on.’

‘He surprises me, because he does not think only of himself. Indeed, on many occasions that is the last thing of which he thinks. He does not know himself at all, and he cannot see that he is capable of great things.’

‘But you think he is?’

‘Oh yes. Undoubtedly.’

‘A good man, then?’

‘Good-hearted. Fair. True. Unaware of his strengths. Overly conscious of his weaknesses.’

‘Yet I cannot understand why he pines for that other Fragile Creature when there is little hope they will ever meet again.’

‘You would not understand, mistress.’

‘Why not?’

‘You are a Golden One. Such things are not known to you.’

‘What things?’

‘Love …’ Jerzy’s voice trailed off. He thought he had begun to sense a hardness in Niamh’s voice that signalled one of her unpredictable responses.

Yet once again he was surprised. ‘Do you think that is true?’ she asked, with a note of puzzlement. ‘We Golden Ones see ourselves as never-ending, never-changing, a fixed axis of Existence. Yet now I wonder … If all that is joined to Existence is fluid, then surely we are fluid, too? We change-’

‘Without change, there is only stagnation.’

Niamh did not appear to notice that he had spoken out of turn. ‘I fear for my brother’s safety. It is a strange, troubling emotion and I do not care to experience it again. Before the Libertarian came to my quarters it was unknown to me. If only I could return to that state again.’

‘The Libertarian showed you mortality, mistress. He revealed what it means to be a Fragile Creature.’

This time Niamh whirled, her eyes blazing. ‘Be silent, you grinning jackanape! Be still, or I’ll return you to the Court of the Final Word to have your tongue removed!’

Jerzy scampered off the bed and cowered in the corner of the room, tears stinging his eyes.

‘Where is that pathetic Fragile Creature?’ Niamh snapped. She returned to the window to search the empty streets again. ‘If he does not find my brother, if my brother has already been wiped from the face of Existence, then I will show him mortality. And I will show him such pain on the road to it!’