“Do not touch that.” Jester said, cross.
Anrik bit his lower lip, reached out and pressed his hand on the smooth stone face of the statue. His eyes cut at Jester, challenging. Jester paid him no attention, the old man flipped another page in the huge book inches away from his face. Twists of hair dangled towards the book as Jester hovered, hunched, over the tome. Anrik held his hand on the statue’s face for a count of ten, sighed and removed it. A vague tingling itched under his skin, he brushed the sensation aside.
Moving as silent as he knew how, Anrik strode behind the stool and desk where Jester sat, enraptured by the book. He leaned just over Jester’s shoulder to look down at the strange words scratched across the yellowed paper. The book stank.
Like dead animals.
The writing was all angular signs, vaguely familiar, in the way of a word which rhymes with a person’s own name. Anrik tried to make something of the markings, but just watching them made his eyes hurt. A hard feeling cracked below his shoulders, forcing him to look away. Still, Jester paid him no mind.
The Cleark’s room was incredibly tidy, despite being cluttered with a veritable hoard of things. Statues, books, scrolls, gems, rusted swords, pots of gleaming liquid silver, and even a cloak made of fabric so strange it appeared more a cloak-shaped hole in existence than any mere garment. Anrik moved towards the cloak. He was not often allowed in Jester’s room.
Chances not taken are chances lost.
Anrik’s hand had barely reached half way to the cloak when something terribly strong gripped his wrist and stopped him. His head cut in the direction of the grip and there was Jester. The old man was a full foot taller than Anrik, but that was not unusual. Almost everyone was taller than Anrik. His whole family ran small, save his uncle Tergus, who was short but quite thick. Jester’s dark brown eyes were narrowed and angry. His withered mouth was half-opened in a snarl.
“You are an impudent shit, Grinner.” Jester said, releasing Anrik’s wrist with a forceful shove. “And you would do well to keep you shitty little hands to yourself. Do you wish to be sent to the factories?”
Anrik shook with distaste, and though he would never have admitted it aloud, fear. The factories. No one leaves once they are assigned to a factory. Anrik had first hand evidence of this oft-denied truth. His grandfather Nerry had spent the better part of sixty years working in the factory, all so his sons could have a better life. That Peremus, Anrik’s father, had chosen to work at the factory was widely believed, in family lore, to be what killed old Nerry. Anrik couldn’t say, as Nerry had died shortly before Anrik was old enough to walk.
Jester knew all this full well. “I would think Peremus’ son would be extra careful not to discover what the black lung has to offer.”
Anrik had no response for this. His father, Peremus, did suffer from black lung. But Peremus was no mere factory worker. Anrik’s father was the Chief Engineer of the largest, most technologically amazing factory of all, Ithgar. Only two people were above Peremus in the entire structure of the company which owned and operated the factory: the owner J. Dardan Cappa and the Chief Manager, Parl Krups, who also happened to be Cappa’s daughter’s husband. Anrik did fear working in the factory, had no desire to learn its secrets, unlike his father who everyone said had a mind “of metal and wheels.” It was not always said as a compliment. Peremus had told Anrik, during Anrik’s father’s only attempt at teaching his skills to his son, “I would never have believed any flesh of mine could be so... incapable of the basic knowledge required to be an Engineer.” It certainly had not been a compliment. The next day Peremus had left for work without speaking to Anrik and Anrik’s mother had informed her son he was to study at the Church full-time from now on.
It doesn’t matter. I hated the factory. I’d rather be in the Church any day. Even with this arsehole. I do miss Mom though.
“You would do well, Anrik Grinner, to think a little less loudly.” Jester said. His eyes were dark, poisonous pits. Anrik gulped, nervous.
Can he really hear my thoughts?
“Of course I can’t, you dunderheaded nitwit.” Jester said. “I am simply an incredibly intelligent, disturbingly perceptive old man.” Jester shuffled off, the motion quite loud in contrast to how silent the man had been when he arose moments before to startle Anrik.
Old, batshit codger.
“I heard that.” Jester mumbled, but the he laughed. “Try to be a bit more colorful next time.”
The Cleark sat down and once again leaned his head far too close to the musty smelling volume he had been studying. “And go fetch my lunch. Tell old Janice if she continues to delay my meals I will end the delay of her presence in the afterlife.”
Anrik did not pause to consider, he darted from the room, pleased to be freed from Jester’s presence. In all his seventeen years, four of which had been spent as a ward of the Church, Anrik had never gotten used to doing any continuous amount of work. It was not that he did not like to be occupied, he simply did not enjoy being told how it was to be achieved. Jester, of course, never gave Anrik any meaningful work anymore. Not since the day Anrik had dropped a flask of liquid silver and gotten a splash of the stuff on his skin. He did not remember what happened after that, only that he had awoken in the Infirmary, to the nattering of a strange bearded man who called himself Norse Jerkin. When Norse Jerkin had released Anrik to return to Jester’s laboratory, the Cleark had immediately demanded Anrik leave and never return. When the High Manster had then ordered the Cleark to resume his duties as Anrik’s teacher, Anrik had fully expected the Cleark to refuse and slam the door full in the effeminate face of the chief Priest of the Church. But Jester had shrugged as though it were of no consequence, hustled Anrik back into the room and told him to sweep the place up. Still, Jester had watched him like a hawk afterwards, and had never again asked Anrik to carry anything glass.
Clean this, Anrik.
Sweep that, Anrik.
Fetch my lunch, Anrik.
Go deliver this order to the Apothecary, Anrik.
Stop by the Chapper and say my prayers to the One God, Anrik.
This last brought a snort of laughter from Anrik. He realized after the sound echoed through the stone hallway that he was not alone in the space. Three Acolytes were clustered together near a tapestry of some fictive woodland scene, whispering. Each of them looked up sharply at Anrik, took him in and glared. Anrik had never met a Acolyte he would describe with pleasant words and these three were among the worst.
Uliss. Nathan. Devid.
Those three are always hovering in odd places, whispering. Likely they are plotting some prank against a Manster or Header.
After long moments of staring at Anrik with calculated disdain all three Acolytes moved, almost as one, down the hallway, at a fast clip towards the Cleark’s study, their voices again whispering.
Arseholes.
Anrik forgot about them by the time he reached the kitchens to retrieve Jester’s lunch. He found the Mister of the Kitchen, Darnell Pasa, supervising a horde of young men and boys as they cleaned pots, pans, platters, utensils, tables, and floors. The nuncheon meal was long past and the dining area of the Dormitory would not again open for eating until after the Sun went below the horizon. Darnell did not look at all pleased to see Anrik. Darnell strode with his thick and oddly long legs across the vast dining room towards Anrik, already waving a thickly fat arm at Anrik, a clear warding gesture. A command for Anrik to turn around and be gone.
“Do not take another step, you little shit.” Darnell said.
Anrik froze, and the words, “Yes, sir, Janice, sir,” almost left his mouth. Janice was, of course, not Darnell’s name. Rather it was a insulting name Jester used for the man, much in the same way Anrik used Jester, because Jester was not Jester’s true name either. Still, he knew if he called Darnell Janice the man would see him beaten from sunrise to sunset. And that would be pleasant if Jester ever heard Anrik call him Jester. The two men loathed each other with the kind of passion only siblings and nemeses could inspire. That the men were both was, of course, entirely the point.
“Yes sir, um, J...Mister, sir.” Anrik said.
Darnell’s eyes narrowed with dangerous glints.
“The meal is long since over, boy. So turn right back around and go back to whatever level of Morn you seeped out of. Now.” Darnell snarled.
Anrik would have gulped, if this had been his first time acting out this now very familiar scene.
“But Mister, sir. I was sent by the High Cleark to retrieve his lunch, Mister sir.”
The High Cleark of the Holy Father Church of the One God was far higher in rank than the Mister of the Kitchens of the same group. Both Anrik and Darnell knew this meant Darnell would eventually retrieve the requested meal for the Cleark, but Anrik also knew it meant he would suffer whatever anger the Mister could not openly direct at his brother, the Cleark. That Anrik’s brother was expected to one day rule the Church meant nothing to a man like Darnell Pasa, a man who had reached his own apex, far higher than any man of his base station could have hoped. As Mister of the Kitchens Darnell had a steady, large income for the rest of his life and a guaranteed retirement in the Houses of Age, cared for by acolytes whose eyes saw their own future dotage in the wrinkles of those they served.
“Tark you and your damned Cleark of a brother.” Darnell said, slurring his dislike into a deeper form of the already telling drawl of his ancestry, the people of Rohan. Once they had been a proud people, Masters of the Horse, they had styled themselves. Men who ruled vast steppes of grassland under the thundering hooves of their immense, well-loved herds. But those days had fallen far in the last two centuries as the Minds of Metal gained prominence within the Church, as they grew in economic power. The Emperor himself was an adherent now, as were every rich and powerful man in the whole of Eriador. Anrik tried not to blanch at the castigation from the Mister of the Kitchens.
While Anrik’s brother had nothing to fear from Darnell Pasa, Anrik had much to worry over. The Mister could see Anrik shoveling oil from the fryers, scraping rust from the boilers, or worse, on the Penitent’s Farm, growing vegetables in the hothouses until the Mister saw fit to lift the punishment. The High Cleark would not intervene, it would smack of nepotism, a charge Anrik’s high-minded brother would not allow to tarnish his image.
“Yes, Mister.” Anrik said, swallowing back his anger. In his lessons he was often chided for moving too fast, for learning too quickly. The Masters would not willingly promote him as his skill deserved, not and be seen as dogs of the High Cleark, which they were. So they stifled Anrik, punished him for the most minor infractions, and chided him for anger when he showed none. It was old hat for Anrik, having grown up in the Monastery, his only family the much older Jester Grinner, son of a different mother, abandoned by their father as a child after the woman died in birth. Peremus Grinner had been appalled when Anrik had chosen the Church over the Minds of Metal, over the factory, over Peremus’ precious engineering. Peremus’s wife, Anrik’s mother, Wenna, had tried very hard to dissuade her only son from the Church, partly because she despised Jester for everything the man represented as an older son of her husband, but mostly because she had expected Anrik to care for her in her dotage with class and status Peremus had been unable to provide, despite his high position.
“Engineers are just glorified tinkerers, playing with their tools and metals, their precious Minds of Metal are nothing more than tools themselves, for the Minds of Money. In the end they all serve the men who own the banks and the men who own those men. You, Anrik, could own whatever you choose, thanks to what I have endured, what your father has endured. But you would read books and study history and dream of things which are no more, if they ever truly were. Elves! Talking trees! Halflings and dwarves! What utter, miserable nonsense!”
That Anrik could recall that particular conversation verbatim was not odd, for him. His memory worked in this fashion. He could remember every page he had ever read, recall any words spoken to him he chose to record, and remember the weather of every day of his life. It had taken numerous instances of reactionary cruelty by others to teach him to shepherd his gift, to keep it to himself.
They don’t understand.
It became a constant refrain in his thoughts. He thought it again, at the Mister of the Kitchens.
He doesn’t understand.
One day I will crush his fat self.