moment be blown open by a fiery explosion or a visit from a terrible guest, I feel like a decrepit old man. Even, my hand trembles when I write, unable to write out the letters accurately. Please tell me the secret of your transformation, if only as a reward for the one year, seven months, twenty-nine days and five hours I served you in so many positions before you not quite politely chased me out. I served you faithfully, and this sudden dismissal can be explained either by an empty treasury or the appearance of a new favorite, but I am not offended. As a reward for all the services I have rendered you, out of infinite respect for your person I do not demand a penny of money, only send me a prescription so that I can, like you, rejuvenate myself. P.S.. A blank piece of paper, so you don’t waste any money, enclosed. I would also enclose a postage stamp and printing wax, if you and I were to use regular postage. Thank you in advance, eternally yours, Vincent.»
«It’s a good thing I didn’t correspond with you,» I said with a sigh of relief as I read the letter. – You show a meticulousness in your written explanations that you would have been beaten for in real life.»
«And it was all for your sake,» Vincent said angrily. «I wanted to help, but it hasn’t worked out yet. Do you know what that fuddy-duddy wrote back? That he didn’t want anything to do with beggars. Then I wrote to him again, in the same way, but no longer with requests, but with threats. Only sternness has an effect on scoundrels. I was immediately given a polite answer, with even more meticulous apologies than mine, but he did not dare to reveal his secrets, as if he did not know what he was talking about, saying that he had no secrets from society, and he asked me humbly not to write further, as he had no money for a secretary, and he could no longer be away from work just to write some letters.»
«Has he sent you your letters back?»
«Yes, he must have thought that every piece of paper was precious to me, or maybe he thought it was bad luck to keep the things of someone who was about to be caught in the clutches of Monseigneur dragon. Just don’t think I gave him our address in Lara. I found letters every time in the hollow of an elm tree. The crows would bring them. I would put mine under my pillow, wish before I went to sleep the name of the addressee, and in the morning it would disappear, already in his hands.»
«It’s funny,» I agreed. «It’s news to me, too, that you’re in such dire straits.»
«Well…» Vincent blushed. «It would be a plight, though, if I took my scribbles closer to the printing press.»
«Who would agree to that?» I laughed. «Remember the sad experience of Camille, who only managed to get a play into an unpopular theater by threatening the director?»
«My case is quite different,» said Vincent confidently. – In addition, you are able to buy for us all the bookstores in Lara and not one printing press, and not a dozen pairs of workers. Gold or threats, it doesn’t matter to you what you pay with.»
«I may soon find myself in the claws of your venerable former employer, and you want to make a book hero out of me.
«For if the prince gets you back on your old path, you might find your biography with a delicate velvet bookmark on your bedside table, and you wouldn’t have to seduce anyone, they’d already be in love with you.»
«And if it’s not about the girls? What about the agitated superstitious peasantry, the suspicious laymen, the soldiers, the youths, the merchants, the proprietors? Do you think they will all love the one whose fiery breath could at any moment collapse on the roofs of their houses and turn a peaceful night to a burning hell. No one, from ministers to long-suffering students, wishes for such an end.
«Stop, Edwin. People are mostly mistrustful. They will consider all my work to be mere authorial fiction.»
«And that outlaw I spared? He told anyone who wanted to know about me. What if there was a survivor who managed to leave the burning city and noticed me. They wouldn’t believe them either.»
«Of course they wouldn’t. Sometimes in books, there’s a line where the fictional character becomes flesh. He’s already living on his own and can be too affecting for the impressionable. Ask Rose. She’ll confirm.»
Rose, who was at this moment looking for a way to coax the curled-up gremlin out of her new dresses, looked at Vincent dubiously and shrugged her shoulders.
«Francesca would have confirmed it,» he sighed. «You were a legend to her above all else.»
Rose gave up trying to wriggle new dresses out of her boyfriend’s clutches and came around to us.
«Edwin!» She rustled a cloud of silk skirts toward me. «It’s been hours and hours and the parcel is still on our table. You see, I cannot bear to have a dead rival near me.»
«It will be a long journey, with no map, compass, or guiding star to guide us.»
«But your magic will save us.»
«I hope so,» I said modestly. Rose was confident in my abilities, while I myself had my doubts.
It didn’t take long to pack. I didn’t need much to take with me, just a few scrolls, which I stuffed in my pocket as a precaution, a flask of wine, and some food in case Rose got hungry. I had no need for a telescope or compass. Superhuman eyesight substituted for the former, and intuition and the ability to orient myself in any unfamiliar space for the latter. I took my weapon with me not for self-defense, but out of habit. I liked to have a sword on my side and a musket in its holster, so that I looked like a simple man who could not grow dragon claws on his bare arm in a moment of danger. I carried the bloody bundle under my arm, and covered it with the hem of my cloak.
Rose was sure we would have to walk for God knows how long to our destination, so she spent a long time choosing shoes with sturdy soles, trying on boots, lace-up boots, and even some of my pairs of boots before she found something she liked, but despite her calculations we got there in a matter of minutes. The ocean was behind us, and before us was the desert mainland.
«Could this parched soil ever have been cultivated and sown?» Rose looked critically at the thick smears of ash on her leather boots. «Oh, Edwin, I find it hard to believe that even the smallest settlement, let alone an entire country, could once have stood here.»
«But it was here, there, on the coast, was the castle where I lived. Not alone, of course, but among an anthill of courtiers, advisors, consuls, servants, and many idlers who did who knows what they did and did what they did, just to stay near the shadow of the royal throne. There was the port,» I waved toward the sandy shore. The sand was now mixed with ash and had long since lost its usual yellow color. «There had been a flourishing city near the port, trade, merchant ships came here from the farthest shores, and then the watchmen on the ships could even see the light on the lighthouse, but they could no longer dock ashore. Back then, the world still remembered that my father’s country existed, but no one could reach it anymore, an invisible barrier prevented it, and gradually the whole state disappeared from the world map. You wouldn’t believe, of course, that once this desert had blossomed and borne fruit. Now, even if someone settled here, the withered earth would never grow again.»
I glanced toward the waves licking the scorched shores. Only the foamy swells remained unchanged. The fires of hell had flared up, devoured the country, and faded away, but the ocean remained.
«How I would have liked to put the prince on that very galleon, denying
