Arduous
Orange. Autumn foliage, rust, sunlight spilling onto a closed mahogany door. Paper held up to a candle to inspect it. The taste of bile as the guilt is pushed down again.
His antlers are growing, slowly but surely. It's not a painful process by any means, not really – like shedding feathers, down replaced by things capable of flight.
Soon they can be decorative again. But it is not blue jewels that crown his antlers this time. No, the days of that are long over – rubies take their place instead, the light catching on them to cast droplets of blood upon the ground and the people who pass around him. Far more beautiful, Kit would agree.
There was, of course, no space for such frivolity when working in the NOTE. But that is more joy than anything. His shirt and trousers are a crisp, unblemished white. The colours of someone he owes his life to; the colours of someone he resents.
He dons a black velvet cloak, making the customary unnecessary motion of dusting it off. Unnecessary, because as always, it is pristine.
Rhys smiles.
Black. Tree trunks in winter, ink, the dark behind your eyes when you close them. The night sky persisting in staining every hour it touches. The taste of tears as they are pushed away again. Black; because the Story can't end yet.1)
The Snake Beneath
DOCKLANDS FIRE: ARSON SUSPECTED
And the dockland workers, now witnesses to an unsolved crime, continue to exist.
MARADONNA FAMILY BUTCHERED
And their gang’s plan to blow up the Palace, ending organisation in the kingdom, is snuffed out overnight.
BREAK-IN AT THE ROYAL PALACE
And the wealth of their coffers is redistributed, tying every recipient to the plot.
THE SNAKE BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS: INVESTIGATING THE CITY’S UNDERWORLD
And the people of Ytic continue to live their lives, not knowing the role played by those that keep away their End.
The Assistant filed away the latest newspaper, rolling shut the carefully alphabetised drawer. It had been another success fortnight for the business. Just the right amount of chaos had been sown, just the necessary level of fear injected into the populace. Meanwhile roots were being strengthened, the cracks in the city’s organisation being widened imperceptibly to allow the company to snuggle into them. The criminal empire once driven by Siyah Singh was regrowing. And it was regrowing better than before. It would not be dismantled as the first one was. Not when it needed to last a thousand years. Not when its mission in that time was so vitally important: giving everyone in this city a chance to do with their lives as they saw fit, not what the narrative demanded of them before their exit call. Because an Antagonist locked away might keep the world alive, but for the people of today, the ones that are not Queens or Captains whose arcs have been determined to be incomplete by arbitrary forces… that requires a plot. Or, in the case of the organisation, several simultaneously.
And the key to all this, the pivot upon which every success depended, was of course the piece most oft overlooked by the flashiest of villains.
Organisation.
With but a few strokes of a pen on the right documents, a booming corporation could collapse; with nothing but a sentence said on the right street corner, a politician’s power puff into thin air. But only if one knew the right documents, the right corners. Knowledge was power, but the ability to utilise that knowledge lay in the mundanity of spreadsheets and payslips.
The Assistant knew this better than almost anyone else. He had, after all, learned much of it from the very best.
Speaking of, he would be expecting the minutes from the last meeting soon. The Assistant picked through a new cabinet, pulling free the pages with his own blue highlighting, and marched down the tunnel. Knocking on the door, he waited for the acknowledging, “Come in,” before pushing it open and stepping inside.
The antagonist waited within, writing at his desk. He put the pen down and looked up, smiling in an almost fatherly way. “How may I help?”
“The minutes you asked for, sir,” offered the Assistant, putting them on the desk. “And Lieutenant Marina has asked for another meeting.”
“She often does,” hums the antagonist. “Schedule that in, if it will put her mind at ease about rerouting the Guard around the High Street next week.”
“Very good, sir,” bowed the Assistant, before turning on his heel to carry out the order.
The company certainly was very different from Siyah’s day. Not just for its more altruistic task, nor its effectiveness, nor its stability. But because it had a new head. A better head. A better antagonist. The best.
And because in truth, the snake beneath had not one, but two of them.
The door swung open as the Assistant reached it, revealing the only person who would do so without a knock. The Assistant bowed deeply before his other boss. “Mx Kittiwake. Master Vaughan is at his desk.”
“Thanks Marc,” smiled Kittiwake back, holding the door open to let him out.