Chapter 347

"Master." Nua said when the door was open to their room, he turned around to see it click shut with her fingers on the handle. "Raymond," she added, "Did you want to write more letters today?"

"I do…" He said and pulled the seat out from the desk for her.

Their journey was more winding than originally planned, with stops at every village and town that he might have breezed past before, and there he was driven to question every priest and priestess, every human and, to Nua's delight, nonhuman in his path.

With the barrier in his heart lowered at last since their confrontation, it was as if an obstacle were removed that let him see the wider world. Whenever he wasn't looking, she watched him ask even common people with an almost childlike wonder.

It was almost a chore to keep up with him, 'That's a Black Scripture for you… even at his age.' Nua considered it often, and now in their room, it was time to transcribe what he'd seen and learned.

He was halfway through the letter when she stopped scribbling and he stopped talking. "Nua, is something wrong?" He asked.

"Raymond…" She said, and lowered her quill, she thought for a moment and then looked him square in the eye, "Master," she chose the title and it caught his ear, "Is it really wise to write about the belief in the Allfather's divinity? The rule of the Six has been firm… a god that doesn't mark humanity special, but treats humans, elves, dwarves… all as equally in service to him… you know as well as I do that this won't go over well."

Raymond inhaled deeply, reached for a chair and dragged it over to where Nua sat. He planted himself sideways so that he was facing her where she worked, the desk was ornate, polished dark wood, with fresh banded candles ready for use with clean sparkstones in their dish to make the wicks light with ease. It also came equipped with scribal materials, stationary, fresh ink, and a series of quills that preserved the materials brought with them.

The rest of the room contained a single large bed, a wardrobe the height of the ceiling, and its own bath access with a pump. With expensive sheets and service on call, it was what Nua expected a head of state to stay in. And yet when he sat himself down to face her, she could only think of him as naive.

Till he spoke.

"You're right." He said.

"You're crazy if-" She stopped.

Her ears wiggled up and down, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"I said, you're right." Raymond repeated, he exhaled and held out his hands, not to take her own, but to offer the ones he had.

She looked down at them, they weren't large, being only a little bigger than hers, nothing about Raymond was truly massive. Though he had square shoulders that were fairly broad, and a tight, solid body that paired well with his well tended brown beard, still, putting her hands into his seemed less than ideal. 'It's never ended well.' She thought, and cursed herself, as his hands began to withdraw, she took them and let his fingers close over her hands without complaint.

"And that's why somebody has to say it. I doubt it will be long before one nation or another decides to openly declare him to be a God. He certainly has the power of one, and that fact may draw a lot of people to yield faster… before they're destroyed." Raymond's lips went tight, his face was blank and though Nua searched it, she could read nothing.

"Raymond… what are you thinking?" She asked with a tentative lean forwards as if she expected him to whisper.

"Do you know what I see in my nightmares, Nua?" He asked, "What I've seen since I… I don't know… since you slapped some sense into me?" He tried to smile at her and reached up to rub his cheek, but she neither smiled nor laughed in return.

"I see revenge. I see a nightmare crossing the horizon, east and west, and there's nowhere to go. All our decisions, guided by our sense of divinely given superiority, and bringing down wrath on us that we cannot placate. Too late to change, all we can do is die, and all we can feast on is our own hubris. Sometimes… sometimes I think it happened. That this is all a dream. What if things went differently and we… this sounds insane, doesn't it?" He asked and brought a hand up to rub his temple.

"No, not as crazy as you think, Raymond. I understand, you want to start the discussion now, because you're afraid it'll be too late if you wait." Nua said, and far from the elation he expected, her face grew serious.

"If you do that, you know they'll come after you. The same ones who you say will come after me if you let me go… if you… send me away, they will try to kill you." She stood up and leaned forward, placing her hands on his shoulders, then moving them to his face. 'His beard is softer than I thought it would be…' She thought, but kept that to herself when she said, "These are the people who hunt my kind. Who take the children they made with us and turn them into hunters of the siblings who run, or into domestic servants to serve legitimate heirs. They're the people who… who did what they did… to my back… the ones who made me ugly forever because they got a thrill out of it for a few hours… they'll kill you if you take this too far." Nua pronounced her warning without pulling any punches. "You understand that, don't you?"

"I know they'll try." Raymond said, and reached up to take her wrists in his hands, he pulled them away from his face. "But I rose up through the ranks of the Black Scripture. Not the Windflower, or the Sunlight, or the Grey or the Agante or the Holocaust. The Black. We're the strongest of the strong, we have all of the godkin bloodlines. I didn't rise to the top just because I am a good administrator. I fought with the best of them. Even if the Agante were decked in some of our best equipment, anything less than a squad of them is not a threat."

"Still, you're risking your life… out of some love of your country… that's pretty… impressive." Nua acknowledged but he shook his head.

"No, not just for my country. In those nightmares I spoke of, I see the cause… and I see…" He reached behind her back, and though he didn't touch the vast ridges that made up the marks of more than three human lifetimes, he felt her stiffen and take his arm. He swept his hand up and down without touching them. "I see that. I see your face twisted in pain and I wonder what kind of monster could do that… and it's me. I was going to mutilate you… it was your face that stopped me first, I didn't see an elf, but a person. What if it had only been your back that I saw and there'd been nothing to move me to… what did you call it? Empathy…? I could have been a monster… I suppose… I still am."

He dropped his hand away, his body went limp and he looked up at the ceiling. "But I don't want to be. I'm trying… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry for what I almost did, and what I might have done, and what I've helped to keep alive for my whole life… for my ignorance… for my lies to the girl I love like a daughter… gods, she'll never forgive me either. How do I make up for this? How does my country make up for this if I succeed?"

Nua raised up her hand and slapped him across the face. Though she sensed that he could have easily stopped her, he didn't, and she lowered her hand while he touched the struck place and looked at her questioningly. "I'm sorry." She said and placed her hands on her lap. "Would you like to hit me in return? Or will you forgive me?"

"I don't want to hit you, but… what was that for?" He asked as he rubbed the spot some more as if he weren't sure it had actually happened.

"Will you forgive me? I was wrong and you didn't do anything… and I'm sorry." Nua said again, and he nodded.

"Just don't do that again. It may not hurt, but it's the principle of the thing." He said, and she inclined her head.

"I can forgive you… Raymond. For what you almost did… I can forgive you… for the things you've actually done to me… I don't know if I will ever think well of humans in general. I'd rather avoid you all if I can… not that that's possible," she groused a little, "but for what you've done, seeing what you're trying to do… I can forgive you. But there's a lot of things we'll never be able to make right. Not you, not me, not if all the world came together and worked with sincere hearts. It's just too late for some folks and that's that. You didn't make me ugly… someone else did that, and they'll never be punished for it, they died a long time ago. I'm just their living memorial, so I can't forgive you for it, you didn't do it. But if you're… if you're going to try to help my people in the here and now, I'll take the risk with you."

"What do you mean?" Raymond asked, and Nua's brief twisting of disgust when she spoke of herself vanished when she said, "You planned to send these copies to your comrades. But if you really want to go a step further… send them everywhere, to governors and bards, to temples and merchants. Tell them everything you saw, everything you learned, and everything you now believe. About nonhumans, about the Allfather, about home for you… everything."

"You really think that would be effective?" Raymond asked, he couldn't help but doubt it. "The Theocracy has always been a very 'top down' organization."

"If you want to shake a tower, the base is the only place to do it." Nua answered him, and then took up her quill again.

"New paper, we'll return to that letter afterward, I want to start something else." Raymond said with sudden iron in his voice.

"Master." She said with a touch of irony, and moved a blank sheet into place and held her quill at the ready.

"Before we begin," he said, "let me be clear… what happened… it was brutal, cruel and wrong… but…" He cleared his throat.

"But what?" Her blue eyes narrowed a little as the words dripped out.

"But none of you is ugly, no, not even that." He said, and her tongue was tied as he began.

"On the treatment of the elves and the monstrous injustice of our past and present, oh people of the Theocracy, I present to you a case study… a servant given to me for this journey, and what we have done and allowed to be done…"

He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "Now, tell your story." He said quietly, and though water dripped on the paper as she wrote, her quill never slowed, not from one page to the next, for hours.