Chapter 5 #6
First she skimmed for Esme’s name, but she didn’t find it. Whoever she’d been in her days as a denizen of the Seven Sisters, she was not highborn, not to the curias. As for Elloven’s real mother... She had no name—no idea who the woman was or whether she was alive or dead.
But there was one person she found with no trouble at all.
Laxius of the Twilight Falcons, Seventh of the Name, Pretor in Absentia.
Pretor in absentia. In the story she’d observed with Velanthe, Laxius’s Fall, he’d been a tragic figure who’d lost everything to his siblings, one of whom had no appetite for power, the other ravenous for it.
Elloven read the summary aloud. “Laxius of the Twilight Falcons, the seventh to carry such name, was pretor of Curia Rivenholde. He sired three children: Acheron, Aelloven, and Gennadarius. Upon his fall, he became pretor in absentia. He is damned to roam Infinita Mori until the Great Curse is lifted.”
Beside his entry was a hand-drawn sketch of a gaunt man, eyes cast downward in shame.
She sat back. Neither the Cry of the Ancestors nor the book would give her the full truth, but each provided different perspectives of the man. She read on.
Laxius of the Twilight Falcons, eldest progeny of Pretor Antibanex of the Seventh Season and Esperia of Silken Fields and the Pathways, was the heir presumptive to Curia Rivenholde.
He was primed for stewardship from a young age, despite showing no affinity or talent.
He had one sister, Velanthe, She of the Star Cities, and one brother, Estelar the Unmoved, each of whom succeeded him when he was forced by unanimous coup to abdicate his authority.
As a young man, he was nominated conductor of the famed Cirque Calliope six years running.
His signature was added to the Pretors for Peacetime Treaty, which aimed to end decades of warring between the curias but failed.
One positive mark upon his legacy was his first act as pretor, when he released every prisoner incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, their wrongdoings expunged from record.
He abolished prisons altogether next. This made him a popular leader among his people but created enmity between himself and those who lost considerable fortunes when the penal system collapsed.
His short tenure was to be marked with many such controversial moves, which endeared him to the people and distanced himself from peers, but none were as egregiously unforgivable as his years-long dalliance with the youngest daughter of Pretor Feleanor of Curia Duskmaw, a quiet, beautiful woman with fiery hair and eyes that were said to hold magic.
Laxius met Shioven of the Arctic Valley, Nineteenth of the Name, on a diplomatic trip as a young man, when his father was pretor.
They reunited in the days leading to his father’s death, when he was paraded around the curias as the heir-in-waiting to Rivenholde.
Upon this second meeting, Laxius was believed to have said that Shioven “made the world fall away, and as for me, I forgot why I should fuss myself with its return at all.”
Their affair remained a well-kept secret for over three years. In that time, she was delivered of a son, Acheron, and a daughter, Aelloven. It was Estelar who first discovered their treachery, but the extent of their dalliance was not to be known for several more years.
Acheron and Aelloven spent their early years in Duskmaw, reared as bastard children of the pretor’s wayward son, Filipe, who maintained the lie for his sister until his untimely death.
Shioven was carrying her third and final child, Gennadarius, whom she delivered days prior to her murder.
Many believed it was Pretor Feleanor himself who’d ended his daughter’s life, upon discovering her errant behavior.
Laxius went public with his affair by demanding all three children be remanded to his custody.
When Feleanor refused, sending, instead of a traditional response, a smear of feces upon scratched-out words, Laxius deployed a secret envoy into Duskmaw.
Many men on the mission were killed, and only the eldest child, Acheron, was successfully extracted.
The fates of Aelloven and Gennadarius are obscure. Some said they were killed, like their mother, while others claimed they’d been placed into refugee camps. Their fates remain unknown.
Following the Duskmaw Affair, Estelar climbed upon the highest hill in Rivenholde and sent his message in smoke, a move enacted only in times of crisis.
Estelar proclaimed his brother unfit for leadership, a damning accusation made only twice before in Rivenholde’s recorded history.
Velanthe surprised all when she joined her voice to Estelar’s rather than supporting Laxius, and it did not take long for the nobles to follow their lead.
As is custom when a pretor is deemed unfit, Laxius was taken to the Obsidian Abyss, where after a brief speech and a prayer to the Glass Tree, he was ejected into the nether. His surviving son, Acheron, was taken in by Estelar and raised along with his own children.
Laxius of the Twilight Falcons leaves a legacy scattered with equal parts shame and magnanimity.
An annual memorial, held by the common people, commemorates his good deeds.
Higher on the hill, his legacy receives less honor, and his story now is told exclusively within the cycles of the Cry of the Ancestors event of Cirque Calliope.
Reputation notwithstanding, Laxius was a pretor of Rivenholde and assumed his rightful place at Imperator Hall. It is said he has become a hermit, wandering the balustrades and calling for his Shioven, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Elloven turned another page, but that was all there was.
As she flipped back and fixed on the words wandering the balustrades and calling for his Shioven, the ink turned to dust and blew away.
Sentences were rewritten, so fast her eyes couldn’t focus on anything.
It seemed to begin with a particular line, one that had stuck with her before the ink dissolved.
The fates of Aelloven and Gennadarius are obscure was gone entirely, rewritten to Aelloven and Gennadarius were discovered to have been victims of an elaborate kidnapping plot led by Curia Eversong.
Eversong. The silver tongues. The same curia who’d snuck into Rivenholde and murdered her.
Elloven passed a glance around the area. She was alone, though she did not feel that way at all.
The silver tongues, arbiters of inane superstitions, came for the siblings and several other children, who were secreted away to the White Kingdom.
She skimmed the rest, but it was all the same until she read, The other two children were raised in obscurity in Riverchapel, Westerlands, the White Kingdom. Gennadarius perished as a young man under dubious circumstances.
The daughter, Aelloven, spent some of her youth at the Resplendent Reliquary of the Guardians as an abbess, on the heels of great shame from an inappropriate dalliance.
Mercy arrived in the form of one of the most highborn men of the realm, Lord Fabrien Quinlanden, second son of the sitting lord, but mercy did not follow her to her marriage bed.
Only pain greeted her in her ill-fated union, which culminated in the death of her husband and four other men.
Aelloven, guilty of their murder, fled Whitechurch and returned to Riverchapel and the home of her abductor.
She soon found herself in another challenging situation when she agreed to a Vinculo Sagrado arrangement with a highborn man of the White Kingdom, Jesstin of Houses Skylark and Edevane, which led her on a journey to Rivenholde, her father’s seat.
Soon after arriving, the same silver tongues who’d kidnapped Aelloven as a young girl snuck into the village and murdered her in the halls of the sept.
All of this before she could count three decades to her name.
Laxius of the Twilight Falcons leaves a legacy scattered with equal parts...
The rest was unchanged.
She was meant to see two different versions of the same story. The words, the rewrite, the theatrics. They were a message... but what?
And Gennady’s death had been reduced to dubious circumstances, when the curators of the chronicles knew damn well what had happened to him.
For the first time, though, she had her mother’s name.
Shioven. There were no sketches in the book, and finding someone she hadn’t seen before seemed as impossible as returning to life.
Would she know if she passed her on a road?
Would it be like looking in a mirror? Would Shioven recognize the daughter she’d lost, all those years ago?
The room suddenly dimmed. In a panic, she gazed up through the skylight above her and found evening in full descent.
Elloven startled, dropping the book. Full moonrise, not even twilight. There’d been no warning at all; she hadn’t lost track of time, because she had full view of the sky from her reading nook, and it had been illumina when she started, illumina while reading, illumina mere moments ago.
A feminine voice echoed distantly through the rows of books. “All patrons of the Magna Annalis must depart promptly. We say again, all patrons must depart promptly. Remember your manners and order as you leave the confines of our sacred grounds, and may the gods bless your hasty steps.”
A rather pleasant way to usher people to their doom, Elloven thought but was already working through a plan.
The library had been only a dozen yards from the gates, and the gates roughly.
.. She couldn’t calculate the distance, but the walk had taken around ten minutes from the path’s fork.
So, make it fifteen, to account for the lack of light.
Fifteen minutes to the divergence in the road. Another thirty or so to the havre.
Forty-five harrowing minutes to protect her flame.