“The Peers” is the common name for state-sanctioned parabolists—those who study parabole, a discipline of violent power. This story of Edgar Ferruccio is told from the perspective of Gilead Sagitta, a fellow parabolist.
The following months revealed the situation as no shadowy joke of Wintwig’s; the messenger sent a superfluous missive ahead of himself, in turn ahead of the Magician’s arrival:
‘I alone excite at organising with your King before his throne in tall public building the arrival of my Master.’
Edgar roared, punched a wall reading it. We had been near-wilted kept inside, wasting our energy on this nonsense for weeks at a time, organising this pay-off and that hush-up and this escort and that farrier. The statesmen took what we said as rote, no fire in their blood—power-grubbers’ and politicians’ ears ache always for orders, so when we give them they replied Atten-shun!
Our marvellous Gentes building felt downright decrepit, & much smaller than it had in summer. Still new to the world of parabole, I had never yet felt insult or been given an order I would not stand fully alongside… But an order it remained, so I rubbed my eyes and trimmed my fingernails and made grimacing smiles whenever Wintwig came past to push forward progress.
Progress came altogether to sound a dirty word; the progression of something foul, something which disgraced the Monarchy and in turn our Country, but more importantly disgraced me and my power. I mean by this that I feel I possess an arrow of destiny within me, & IT IS BEING SUPPRESSED. Progress, after all, meant procuring immense favours from the slimy, useless, chestless, quiescent worms who made up a great deal of ‘the new priestly class,’ as the Apolog called them: the money-men, those newmade elites who had nefariously collapsed upwards at every turn throughout the preceding decades. These debts would eventually be called in, & at that time obligation would likely bind me to sin for these serpents.
Outside the Gentes building, it was the changing of seasons, the trees shed blossom as if they were embarrassed of the colours, showing bright verdance afore soon. The rare time we were able to get out—between wretched appointments with slouching fools—passions often overran us. We strode about sometimes seeking a haze of cruel emotion, & as sobriety is a necessity to maintain one's powers, our nights began with throwing hands, ended up all a-throng with songs and new faces and old. But this was rare, indeed.
Presently, I was caught in a long stint between these rare times, head in hands, rereading the same promotional material over and over, regarding the Magician’s last performance on these shores, which included discussion of the messenger; it read like a fable written of King Saul, so vaunting and rich was the language. By the accounts, the messenger and Magician clearly possessed some legitimate power—or illegitimate, one might say: as they were wanderers with no nation, their power could be considered the representation only of a homeless tribe, where the parabole of the Peers is the expression of the spirit of my people.
Making to put that thought aside, I set to reread the piece again. There were clues within it; tedious and minuscule markers of the type of power they possessed, but it was wrapped in foreign mysticism. Near every time I tried to put my finger on something specific that we should be wary of during the audience with the messenger, some other piece of contradicting evidence was revealed. It began at long last to feel like a lover’s spat, as if I was trying to find logic and point-of-view within a woman’s primordial rage.
Eventually I smacked the back of my head, nearly tore the scrap of pamphlet in two, & launched myself towards the exit of the building. On the way, Edgar’s fiery eyes caught me:
‘Gilead! Rushing off to war?’
I stopped myself and blew out a hot breath, ‘No, Edgar, just the fumes were becoming thick.’
He had a twitch of anger in himself, as always, & tried to peer through my eyes to provoke a more substantial moment of uncontrolled emotion—but I would not allow it through.
‘Really,’ I said, & tried to change the subject: ‘How did your meeting with the young Redshield go?’
Figured instantly that it was a mistake, as he bunched up his fists and spat. ‘The balding yid would not give an inch. If my elder, Mamon, had not been there, I would have knocked his jaw aside.’
‘Good Urius was there,’ I laughed. ‘We all hate the family; defrauding, invidious warmongers they are, dealers in finance and mercenaries all, & freemasons, I believe as well—but these days politics happens through trades, & bills of exchange, & all these now pass through the dark fingers of Amschel and his sons. Only a matter of time until he is stroking the nation’s bullion itself.’
‘A reality I choose to ignore—or I fear I would fight tooth and nail to change it,’ Edgar fingered the pistol on his hip, but seemed to think better of waving it around.
It was impossible to fully remove the irritation from my mind, but comparing myself to unstable Edgar Ferruccio helped me sober up, as always, & I began to see in my mind’s eye a familiar golden arrow, pointing me in the right direction. About us, the Gentes building was quiet; most everyone was stuck in rooms where both the air and time stand still.
And so I mused aloud:
‘This messenger is due at the end of this month, further preparation is depressive obsession. We can only safeguard His Majesty as much as he will allow, but let’s keep this foreigner in the antechamber for as long as possible. And keep His Majesty safely on the throne, with the Apolog, or even the Exemplar, if we can find him, between him and the messenger at all times. While in the antechamber, I am going to see what I can scry—my perception is sunlight-clear, & if he has any secrets, I will find them.’
‘Of that, I’ve no doubt,’ Edgar smiled, the first time in weeks, & some of the blood left his face, but even as his sight cleared, his words became bolder—giving a man with his temper too much time to think can be a bad thing. ‘This whole episode’s almost done, I feel sometimes it has been bloated by our own inaction into an era—for too long I have been pushed this way and that by small men with flapping lips. Bring the messenger, get it done!’