the Fierce & the LintKing's Amber Bits

The waves did not bite as they would within the seas of waking life; instead they slashed away like at our feet, attempting to push us away with one growling splash, and then pull us down with the next. This boded ill weather, and the clouds deepened from grey to black. I heard the wind scream the way it had done in dark battles, and I kept one hand on a knife as I finished tying the last knots.

"They are secure?"

I looked up, dropping my hand with almost a twinge of guilt at my side. My Uncle Brand was standing there, looking troubled. His hair was plastered back with the salty water, and his piercing green eyes seemed unfocused, directed towards me but seeing something else instead.

I felt utterly cold and calm as I nodded. He was magnetic, with the charisma all of our Uncles could use to shine. There was some reason I needed to hate this man. Yet, when he came near me and smiled, I could not remember why it was that this rage grew within me. It bashed against the walls of a cage deep within my soul.

"The beast lives within us all," he said. I started, opening my mouth as if to protest my innocence. He waved it away. "Come inside," he gestured, and held open the door to the cabin. It looked warm and dry, and the walls were red, blood red.
I walked past him, feeling that I should not turn my back, and yet, there was a familiar smell inside the cabin. I can't remember if it was a perfume, something either my mother or one of my Aunts wore... not heady, but very light, very subtle. It distracted me, made me feel more comfortable than perhaps I should.

I took a chair that was draped in a silky, almost wet-feeling red fabric. There were a number of Trumps on the table, all of them face-up save one. Brand sat next to me, the fingers of his right hand drumming almost absentmindedly on the card that was face-down. I could not see the design on the back of the card - the heavy golden ring on his finger obscured it.

He watched me more like a snake than a cat, though his eyes suggested the latter. We were silent, perhaps sizing each other up. I saw that his hair, in this light, was redder than I had thought. It was an unnatural colour, one that mirrored the vibrancy within him, the strange volatility that emanated from his quick movements. I looked at how his eyebrows jutted from his head, as if daring someone to look him eye to eye.

"Your father was Caine?" he asked.

I did not answer. I didn't play those games, and if he did not know the truth, the illusion would serve us best in silence.

"I know you have taken the Walk," he said.

I remained silent. There was something strangely mesmerizing about him, yet it did not suggest to me to loosen my tongue.

He sighed and flipped over the card. It was Prince Martin. I almost did not recognize him. He wore a coronet that blazed with silver on his head, and eyes as intense as this Uncle who seemed disappointed in me. He leaned over the table, running his hands across the other cards as he did, gathering them and holding them as if they gave him some sort of comfort. They disappeared from his hands in a trick of some sort, whether prestidigitation or some darker magic I did not know.

"You are quiet. I like that. It means you can learn." He looked at me. "What to teach you? I haven't quite decided that, yet." He fiddled with a medallion of some sort that had come loose from his clothing. He tucked it back in, but I could see that it too was of the heavy gold of his ring.

From further across the table he pulled a parchment and a pen closer to him. He wrote something along the page, and the thunder boomed loudly enough to startle me. "Take this. You will know who to give it to," he said. He folded it up, and it disappeared like the cards. I was about to ask how he expected me to deliver it when he stood up, gesturing me to do the same.

"You are still a young man," he said. I did not know how he meant it until he pulled me towards him. He kissed me, and I was too surprised at first to push him away. I could not breathe for a moment, and he wavered, almost as if he were going to fall. He looked me in the eyes, gaining strength, and breathed words against my lips, some arcane, some mundane.

"Are you strong enough to rule?" he asked.

I nodded.

"You must be strong enough to destroy a kingdom, if you want to be a king. You must be strong enough to destroy the dream." He pulled back, giving me a chance to breathe. He gestured off in the distance, and lightning flashed through the ship's windows.

"The dream?" I asked, the words seeming foreign to my lips and tongue.

"Could I strike you down again?"

Again? Something...familiar. A sense of worry, and then he grabbed my wrist. "I will. I will pull you down like the undertow of the sea." Something boomed in his voice, and I could not look at him. It sounded more like the old King, a grandfather's unfriendly warning. "You can escape into the sky, but I will follow you. I will bring you to earth, until you are entombed in stone. You will fall to me."

I grabbed him. I don't know what I wanted to do.

This time, he was silent. In my arms he changed, from my Uncle Brand to the Old King, to...Martin. An empty Trump fell from his fingers. An empty Trump, like a portrait that had left its frame. I felt as if something cold enveloped my left hand in moisture, and I backed away, realizing I held a knife. I touched the blade, wonderingly. I did not recognize it, nor the blood that dripped cold down it. I held it up against the full moon, and realized it glowed like the stairs that led above.

Cambina stood on the steps and looked down at me. Her voice was Brand's. "What did you learn?" She looked at Martin. He was silent. I think the question was directed at me.

"What parts of a living kingdom can make a man?" she asked me, and I thought of Aisling and what I had learned of the affines. "Is that the lesson of Chaos, that all kingdoms solely live within our skin?"

"Brand wanted you to have this," I said, and I gave the knife to Martin. He looked for a moment like he would reject it, but I could see that it was too close to him. He held it like Brand had held the cards, as if it comforted him, as if it completed him, belonged bloody in his hand.

I turned towards Cambina, and she shook her head. "It's still within you," she said. "Entombed in stone, pulling you down like the undertow of the sea."

I awoke with the protestations still on my lips.