![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Author's Note
Fandom: Dragaera - Steven Brust; the Khaavren Romances more specifically
Characters: Pel, Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra
Word count: ~1800
Warnings: None
Notes: A treat for![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Zdenka for Yuletide. This one was... a lot of fun.
Which, in its Treatment of Several Duels Fought by the Duke of Galstan, Refutes Several Charges made against Paarfi of Roundwood.
We are not insensible of the incredulity expressed by readers at some events it has been our pleasure to place before them. As a historian we must, however, strenuously rebut any charge of invention. We do not contrive to place our heroes near the center of momentous events. If Khaavren and his friends witness great events, it is no artifice on our part that has placed them there; if Khaavren's sword pierces the heart of a foe, we have done nothing to steady his wrist. If any praise or blame attaches to us, the historian, it can only lie in selecting the subject of these studies. We follow Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra, and Pel - though by convention we may invoke them as "our friends" - not from personal warm feeling or a desire to improve the reputations of these worthies, but because their positions proximate to His late Imperial Majesty Tortaalik I allow us to illuminate a chain of important events in the history of our Empire, as well as to portray interesting particulars of daily life in the final centuries before Adron's Disaster - and moreover because they are documented. If a heroic tale emerges, we have chosen our protagonists well. If the narrative seems to hang on tenuous threads of chance and coincidence, we remind readers that no human life is guaranteed a compelling narrative or emotional arc.
So far from having invented incidents in these novels, we have sourced where possible even the smallest of assertions. Although to a true student of history we should not need to justify our decisions, we must acknowledge that our volumes concerning Khaavren of Castlerock have attracted a different audience, who may at times need to be led by the hand. And so consider this passage, from A Discussion of Some Events Occurring in the Latter Part of the Reign of His Imperial Majesty Tortaalik I (published in translation, we regret to say, as Five Hundred Years After):
In the subsequent paragraph each of these concerns is laid aside in turn. How Khaavren, Aerich, and Tazendra remained in practice is easily explained, given the personality and preferred occupations of each. With respect to the final member of the quartet we note that "Pel, of them all, had fought perhaps a hundred times since entering the Institute of Discretion." This may not seem as safe an assumption as in the cases preceding - and so it is the historian's great good fortune that this is no assumption, but a matter of record. As to the causes of these duels, the ground is well prepared for speculation, but water and light - that is to say, corroborating accounts - are lacking to nurture this crop into the long beans and wheat of a defensible thesis. Hence we stay our hand from claims about why Pel fought - but that he fought is indisputable, and we now present select examples.
1.
The first of these encounters is the simplest to relate. About fourteen years since the events of the Pepperfields, Pel contrived to meet Khaavren walking about the halls of the Imperial Palace. He did not make the customary pretense that this was coincidental; it would have fooled nobody. Instead, after greetings and embraces, Pel said, "Well, Ensign, what will you be doing in the third hour after midnight?"
"I think I will be in my bed," Khaavren replied - saying "I think" rather than speaking definitely because, still relatively new to his life as Ensign, not yet resigned to the scattering of his friends, he had not settled yet into the routines that would later govern his off-duty hours.
"Can the appointment be put off?"
"Do you suggest another?"
"At that hour, I shall be engaged in fighting a man who does not like my poetry; I believe he will bring friends enough to make entertainment for two."
"Is your poetry so objectionable?" said Khaavren, who had never been suffered to read it.
Pel gave a slight shrug. "Well, either it is, and he is entitled to fight me, or his taste is execrable, and I am entitled to fight him."
"Shards! but the literary world is contentious."
"I do not debate it. And so?"
"Name me the place, and my arm is yours."
Srahi's diary entry of the following morning speaks with great irritation of blood trodden into the carpet - but very little of it belonging to anyone we know.
9.
"So, Aerich, you have arrived."
"As you perceive," said Aerich, inclining his head.
"Then I will waste no time inquiring whether you received my letter, or whether you will assist me."
"And I will waste no time inquiring what assistance you may need, for I am at your disposal already."
"That is as well; I will tell you."
"Please do."
Pel drew closer, as one does when about to confide matters of a sensitive nature, but his tone of voice was light and his smile pleasant, as one does when one invites a friend into a conspiracy, provided that one is Pel. "I am going to have two words with a fellow initiate, and I wish you to be present."
"How, as a witness?"
Pel laughed. "My dear, we study the Art of Discretion here, not the blade."
"Nonetheless, Galstan, I know you of old."
"But I have changed my habit. Who is to say my other habits have not changed to match?" said Pel, which wordplay Aerich acknowledged as elegant, despite its slight inaccuracy in terming the robes of an initiate a "habit." For more on the habiliment of Discreets through the preceding twelve centuries, we refer the reader to an excellent monograph by Taanis. "I shall speak to my fellow student, in a hall I will point out to you. Do you but sit in the back of the hall, just out of earshot, and - have you brought your needles? that is good - perhaps you might sit there and crochet something, with your customary expression of face."
"How important is my expression of face to your proceedings?" said Aerich, who had by now an inkling of what these proceedings might be. "Have you anything to dictate regarding my costume?"
"You will know best, I think," said Pel, who had an inkling about Aerich's inkling.
We regret that we cannot provide the reader a detailed picture of the exchange that followed, as Pel kept no record of it, Aerich remained out of earshot, and we have been unable to definitively place the other initiate. Many such incidents as these, though of interest to literary audiences, we have omitted from the body of our narrative. We place them before you now to demonstrate our refusal to invent new details, and the ways in which this integrity is, at times, at odds with the putative goals of a novel. We leave out such exchanges from our novels to avoid tantalizing our audience with promises we scruple to deliver upon. We produce this account now only as evidence to rebut certain criticisms of an aggravating sort.
We can at least tell the reader that the affair did not end in blood; in Aerich's own diary he speculates that the presence of a Lyorn warrior impassively crocheting a hat acted to cool the temper of Pel's fellow initiate, so that she did not challenge him as she might have had cause to do, and so that the Yendi was not obliged to kill her, and evaded for another few years any suspicion of spadassinicide.
17.
When the victors in the affray had cleaned and securely sheathed their swords, the smaller party pivoted to address the larger in an ironical tone: "You have my thanks, Baroness."
"How, 'Baroness?'" cried the Dzurlord. "Pel! Do you not recognize your old friend Tazendra?" She stood before the Yendi with a fierce grin, fists planted proudly on her hips.
"Come to think of it, I have seen Tazendra strike such ferocious attitudes."
"When I received your letter, I remarked to myself, 'Who is this Duke Galstan, and what has he to do with me?' But of course, I recognized you as soon as I arrived."
"Well, you are perspicacious, my friend."
Tazendra, who had learned through practice to desist wrinkling her brow when addressed with large words, replied, "I am glad you noticed." She put an arm about Pel, which gesture - though he had moments before resisted attack on three sides and never felt himself imperiled - he had some doubt of surviving. "Now, let us drink and talk of the old days and our friendship! I can tell you how Aerich fares, and you must say what you know of Khaavren's doings -"
"You pretend the Ensign and I are still intimates?"
"And why should you not be?"
"Ah, perhaps you are right."
"I am not only right; I am perspicacious."
"Very well, I concede your point."
"Still, it is amusing."
"What is?"
"That you should write to Baroness Daavya, not knowing it was me, and that I should rush to your aid, not knowing it was you."
On this there was nothing more for Pel to say.
Conclusion.
We have here demonstrated that, as we claimed, Pel's sword did not slumber while he studied Discretion, and we have perhaps entertained the reader by parading before him a sequence of familiar faces. Were we to tell of the four comrades reuniting in common cause before the advent of Adron's Disaster, that would be invention. Should evidence of such a reunion exist, which we concealed from the reader to heighten the emotional impact of certain scenes on the Street of the Glass Cutters in the latter part of our history, that would be a different form of dishonesty - perhaps not incompatible with artistic license, but outside the bounds of the pact we, the historian, have made with the reader.
But this we say with scrupulous truth: when the time came, reunite they did, little changed by the years in strength of arm or of mutual affection. May we all wish for such comrades.
Characters: Pel, Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra
Word count: ~1800
Warnings: None
Notes: A treat for
Which, in its Treatment of Several Duels Fought by the Duke of Galstan, Refutes Several Charges made against Paarfi of Roundwood.
We are not insensible of the incredulity expressed by readers at some events it has been our pleasure to place before them. As a historian we must, however, strenuously rebut any charge of invention. We do not contrive to place our heroes near the center of momentous events. If Khaavren and his friends witness great events, it is no artifice on our part that has placed them there; if Khaavren's sword pierces the heart of a foe, we have done nothing to steady his wrist. If any praise or blame attaches to us, the historian, it can only lie in selecting the subject of these studies. We follow Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra, and Pel - though by convention we may invoke them as "our friends" - not from personal warm feeling or a desire to improve the reputations of these worthies, but because their positions proximate to His late Imperial Majesty Tortaalik I allow us to illuminate a chain of important events in the history of our Empire, as well as to portray interesting particulars of daily life in the final centuries before Adron's Disaster - and moreover because they are documented. If a heroic tale emerges, we have chosen our protagonists well. If the narrative seems to hang on tenuous threads of chance and coincidence, we remind readers that no human life is guaranteed a compelling narrative or emotional arc.
So far from having invented incidents in these novels, we have sourced where possible even the smallest of assertions. Although to a true student of history we should not need to justify our decisions, we must acknowledge that our volumes concerning Khaavren of Castlerock have attracted a different audience, who may at times need to be led by the hand. And so consider this passage, from A Discussion of Some Events Occurring in the Latter Part of the Reign of His Imperial Majesty Tortaalik I (published in translation, we regret to say, as Five Hundred Years After):
The historian might, in order to build tension in the reader, the release of which would provide a certain aesthetic pleasure, claim that our friends were, even apart from the dscrepancy of numbers, in a bad place, for Khaavren had not fought a duel in more years than he could remember; Aerich had hardly touched a blade, even in practice, since he had left the Guard; Tazendra's efforts had been mostly given over to sorcery; and Pel had been training, of all things, in the Art of Discretion.
In the subsequent paragraph each of these concerns is laid aside in turn. How Khaavren, Aerich, and Tazendra remained in practice is easily explained, given the personality and preferred occupations of each. With respect to the final member of the quartet we note that "Pel, of them all, had fought perhaps a hundred times since entering the Institute of Discretion." This may not seem as safe an assumption as in the cases preceding - and so it is the historian's great good fortune that this is no assumption, but a matter of record. As to the causes of these duels, the ground is well prepared for speculation, but water and light - that is to say, corroborating accounts - are lacking to nurture this crop into the long beans and wheat of a defensible thesis. Hence we stay our hand from claims about why Pel fought - but that he fought is indisputable, and we now present select examples.
1.
The first of these encounters is the simplest to relate. About fourteen years since the events of the Pepperfields, Pel contrived to meet Khaavren walking about the halls of the Imperial Palace. He did not make the customary pretense that this was coincidental; it would have fooled nobody. Instead, after greetings and embraces, Pel said, "Well, Ensign, what will you be doing in the third hour after midnight?"
"I think I will be in my bed," Khaavren replied - saying "I think" rather than speaking definitely because, still relatively new to his life as Ensign, not yet resigned to the scattering of his friends, he had not settled yet into the routines that would later govern his off-duty hours.
"Can the appointment be put off?"
"Do you suggest another?"
"At that hour, I shall be engaged in fighting a man who does not like my poetry; I believe he will bring friends enough to make entertainment for two."
"Is your poetry so objectionable?" said Khaavren, who had never been suffered to read it.
Pel gave a slight shrug. "Well, either it is, and he is entitled to fight me, or his taste is execrable, and I am entitled to fight him."
"Shards! but the literary world is contentious."
"I do not debate it. And so?"
"Name me the place, and my arm is yours."
Srahi's diary entry of the following morning speaks with great irritation of blood trodden into the carpet - but very little of it belonging to anyone we know.
9.
"So, Aerich, you have arrived."
"As you perceive," said Aerich, inclining his head.
"Then I will waste no time inquiring whether you received my letter, or whether you will assist me."
"And I will waste no time inquiring what assistance you may need, for I am at your disposal already."
"That is as well; I will tell you."
"Please do."
Pel drew closer, as one does when about to confide matters of a sensitive nature, but his tone of voice was light and his smile pleasant, as one does when one invites a friend into a conspiracy, provided that one is Pel. "I am going to have two words with a fellow initiate, and I wish you to be present."
"How, as a witness?"
Pel laughed. "My dear, we study the Art of Discretion here, not the blade."
"Nonetheless, Galstan, I know you of old."
"But I have changed my habit. Who is to say my other habits have not changed to match?" said Pel, which wordplay Aerich acknowledged as elegant, despite its slight inaccuracy in terming the robes of an initiate a "habit." For more on the habiliment of Discreets through the preceding twelve centuries, we refer the reader to an excellent monograph by Taanis. "I shall speak to my fellow student, in a hall I will point out to you. Do you but sit in the back of the hall, just out of earshot, and - have you brought your needles? that is good - perhaps you might sit there and crochet something, with your customary expression of face."
"How important is my expression of face to your proceedings?" said Aerich, who had by now an inkling of what these proceedings might be. "Have you anything to dictate regarding my costume?"
"You will know best, I think," said Pel, who had an inkling about Aerich's inkling.
We regret that we cannot provide the reader a detailed picture of the exchange that followed, as Pel kept no record of it, Aerich remained out of earshot, and we have been unable to definitively place the other initiate. Many such incidents as these, though of interest to literary audiences, we have omitted from the body of our narrative. We place them before you now to demonstrate our refusal to invent new details, and the ways in which this integrity is, at times, at odds with the putative goals of a novel. We leave out such exchanges from our novels to avoid tantalizing our audience with promises we scruple to deliver upon. We produce this account now only as evidence to rebut certain criticisms of an aggravating sort.
We can at least tell the reader that the affair did not end in blood; in Aerich's own diary he speculates that the presence of a Lyorn warrior impassively crocheting a hat acted to cool the temper of Pel's fellow initiate, so that she did not challenge him as she might have had cause to do, and so that the Yendi was not obliged to kill her, and evaded for another few years any suspicion of spadassinicide.
17.
When the victors in the affray had cleaned and securely sheathed their swords, the smaller party pivoted to address the larger in an ironical tone: "You have my thanks, Baroness."
"How, 'Baroness?'" cried the Dzurlord. "Pel! Do you not recognize your old friend Tazendra?" She stood before the Yendi with a fierce grin, fists planted proudly on her hips.
"Come to think of it, I have seen Tazendra strike such ferocious attitudes."
"When I received your letter, I remarked to myself, 'Who is this Duke Galstan, and what has he to do with me?' But of course, I recognized you as soon as I arrived."
"Well, you are perspicacious, my friend."
Tazendra, who had learned through practice to desist wrinkling her brow when addressed with large words, replied, "I am glad you noticed." She put an arm about Pel, which gesture - though he had moments before resisted attack on three sides and never felt himself imperiled - he had some doubt of surviving. "Now, let us drink and talk of the old days and our friendship! I can tell you how Aerich fares, and you must say what you know of Khaavren's doings -"
"You pretend the Ensign and I are still intimates?"
"And why should you not be?"
"Ah, perhaps you are right."
"I am not only right; I am perspicacious."
"Very well, I concede your point."
"Still, it is amusing."
"What is?"
"That you should write to Baroness Daavya, not knowing it was me, and that I should rush to your aid, not knowing it was you."
On this there was nothing more for Pel to say.
Conclusion.
We have here demonstrated that, as we claimed, Pel's sword did not slumber while he studied Discretion, and we have perhaps entertained the reader by parading before him a sequence of familiar faces. Were we to tell of the four comrades reuniting in common cause before the advent of Adron's Disaster, that would be invention. Should evidence of such a reunion exist, which we concealed from the reader to heighten the emotional impact of certain scenes on the Street of the Glass Cutters in the latter part of our history, that would be a different form of dishonesty - perhaps not incompatible with artistic license, but outside the bounds of the pact we, the historian, have made with the reader.
But this we say with scrupulous truth: when the time came, reunite they did, little changed by the years in strength of arm or of mutual affection. May we all wish for such comrades.