A rhythmic scratching noise of tools chipping away at wood filled the wide room of the cave. The artisan stood in a corner in front of the workbench. From time to time he paused for a moment to exchange the bronze tool in his hand for one of several others spread out on the workbench. Watching his hands move, any layman would have been able to tell he was watching a master applying a craft perfected over many years.
Over the course of an hour, the hand-sized piece of wood on the bench changed shape steadily, the front showing the first outlines of a face. Choosing a particularly delicate tool, the artisan deepened the cavities that would become the eyes. A blow cleared away the smaller shavings.
Looking down at his progress, the artisan almost smiled in satisfaction. Then the moment had passed, and he placed tool and piece back on the workbench.
“You’re still here,” he said without turning to the figure standing in the room’s entrance.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you. I enjoyed watching you work.”
“Ha!” The artisan turned to face his visitor, wiping his hands on his apron. “What do you want? Do you have a message for me?”
The man was young and extraordinarily good-looking. The fire of the forge at the opposite side of the cave made his white teeth shine. “Are you not going to invite me in?” the messenger said, his smile never faltering. “It’s custom. Even with family.” He cocked his head.
The artisan’s expression darkened and he swallowed his first replay. Nothing good would come of him airing his feelings toward his family in front of this one. “May I offer you a cup of wine, brother?” Slightly dragging one of his legs, he crossed the room to another table where some cold meats, bread, and a pitcher of deep maroon liquid waited for him.
“I shall gladly accept,” the messenger said.
The two men sat down at the simple but sturdy benches and shared a silent meal.
The messenger took a thoughtful sip from his wine cup and nodded. “Passable. You’re lucky you have those Helcanean settlers down there.” He waved in the direction of the cave entrance. “Otherwise, you would have to subsist on that rotten grain water from the south.”
Ignoring his half-brother’s comment, the artisan placed his own cup on the table. “You ate my food, you drank my wine. Now deliver father’s words so you can leave me to my work again.”
There was a hesitation in the massager’s expression. For the blink of an eye, he seemed unsure, maybe even nervous. Whatever it was, it disappeared behind a cocky smile so fast a mortal would never have picked up on it. But the artisan had seen it.
That’s a first, he thought, considering the young face across from him. For a long time, the messenger had been the only one of his family he spoke with directly. Dropping by every other decade to deliver him a commission or announce a proclamation of the father they shared. His role was a reason his half-brother could behave as he did. But maybe today is different.
“You aren’t here for the family,” the artisan said. Running official errands, the messenger was untouchable, their father’s might looming behind him.
The other man’s eyebrows rose. Then his smile turned lopsided. “You aren’t as simple as our people think.”
“Barely anybody is,” the artisan said, without taking his eyes off his guest. “So, what are you here for?”
The messenger stood up, his wine cup in hand, and strolled through the large cave. “I see you’re doing a lot of woodwork these days.” He nodded towards the workbench. “Most only know you for your metalwork.”
“I built ships when I lived on the islands. After father first threw me out.” The artisan subconsciously massaged his lame leg.
“You’re a master of many crafts,” the messenger said, walking around the forge. “Aren’t you afraid that a spark, a little flame could set those shavings alight? It might be hard to get the burn marks of the cave walls.”
“I keep my workshop clean,” the artisan said, “and this is my domain.”
You are stalling, he thought, watching his half-brother circle the cave. What surprised him even more, he was indulging him. The artisan had never enjoyed company, especially not in his workshop. But whatever made his guest so hesitant might be worth hearing out. Especially, if it’s something father wouldn’t approve of.
The messenger had moved on to the corner furnished for masonry. “Is there a craft you haven’t mastered?” he asked, his finger gliding along a long chisel made from a particularly strong copper.
“Probably,” the artisan said slowly. “The mortals have many.”
“Didn’t we teach them all they know?”
The artisan took another sip of his cup. “We, and those that came before us. But they come up with new things all the time.”
“And you go and master them. I guess it’s a way to pass the time.” The messenger sighed. “Makes existence less tedious, I guess.”
“Are you bored with your life?” the artisan asked, letting a little derision seep into his tone. “No people to annoy, no cattle to steal?”
His guest ignored the needling. “Have you heard? The time of the great upheaval is upon us. Again.”
The artisan leaned back. “We’re far away from everything here. I don’t get much news and I like it that way.”
“You might hear about this one soon,” the messenger said, slowly returning to the table. “With mother’s city next door.”
The artisan shrugged. “At least you will be entertained.”
“Ha!”
His brother’s reaction surprised the artisan. Gods, monsters, and mortal men fighting for hegemony or just pure survival should be quiet to his taste for diversion. Entire civilizations tended to disappear in times like this, often taking their gods right with them.
The messenger stopped in front of the table looking down at him. “Don’t you ever feel the repetitiveness of it? Gods and heroes. Everybody following their predestined roles.”
The artisan shrugged, unsure where this was going. “It’s fate. It has always been like this and it will continue long after we’re gone.” Not that he expected that to happen any time soon. Father has a lot of flaws, but he is a tough bastard, he thought grudgingly.
“Yes, yes,” the messenger almost shouted, “exactly. Isn’t that infuriatingly boring?”
The artisan wasn’t sure how to respond. The sudden outbreak of emotion had surprised him. So he just shrugged.
That seemed to irritate his brother. “Don’t just sit there, shrugging!”
The artisan’s expression hardened. “This is my home.”
Realizing his mistake his guest raised his hand. “I apologize.”
Another first, the artisan thought. Then he had a terrible thought. “I hope you’re not here to suggest anything…any radical changes.”
The half-brother locked eyes, studying each other.
“And what if I am?” the messenger asked eventually.
“Then I wouldn’t want to know about it,” the artisan said. “And I would advise anybody not to speak of such things out loud. Challenging father for the rule is suicide. Nobody would follow…somebody who suggested anything in that direction.” His half-brother had the reputation of a troublemaker, but he had always been obedient and loyal. In truth, the artisan had had more fits of rebellion against their father than most but he had never done anything close to trying to usurp the rule. Wherever this was coming from, it was insanity.
The messenger stared down at him openmouthed. Then he started laughing. “You think, I want to rebel against the old man?” He tried to drink but started giggling again, wine dripping down his chin. “Excuse me a moment.” Wiping his mouth with the seams of his Helcanean tunic, he turned to the entrance of the cave. He stepped around the corner, returning a heartbeat later with a leather pouch in his left hand and a dirty linen sack over his right shoulder.
“The only thing I want to do,” he said, setting the sack on the ground, “is spread a little chaos. Maybe throw fate of course a bit.” With these words, he handed the artisan the leather pouch.
The artisan accepted it cautiously. “Oh, is that all?” He opened the pouch. It contained two roles of papyrus as it was used in the far, far south, a couple of stone tablets filled with symbols of the old tongue, half of which hadn’t been used for so long, they had probably drifted from mortal’s memory and a painted stone fragment that looked like somebody had broken it out of a wall. “What’s all this?”
“You tell me,” the messenger said, seemingly trying to contain his excitement.
Warily, the artisan pulled out one of the scrolls. It was old and he took utmost care not to damage it during the unrolling. Lines formed on his forehead as he tried to understand what he saw. A heartbeat later his brother was forgotten, as his hands fished for the next object from the bag. And the one after that. What he read had absorbed his full attention.
At some point, his hand went into the pouch but came back empty. Irritated he confirmed with his eyes what his hand had already told him. “Where’s the rest?” he asked, looking up at his brother. “There has to be more.”
The messenger smiled, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “There isn’t. What you see is it.”
Frustrated the artisan’s eyes wandered over the fragmented documents in front of him. They were of varying ages and filled with half a dozen different scripts.
“I know what you want to say,” the messenger said, “but I’ve been looking for a long time. I traded in a lot of favors.” He flipped against one of the clay tablets on the table. “What you see here is it.”
The artisan was only half listening, his mind already piecing together what he had read. “This is in Nemki’s hand,” he said absentmindedly, pointing at a particularly small clay table. “The broken stone piece is from somebody even older. Who knows who?”
“Sure, sure,” the artisan said. “You can figure out the rest?”
“Hm?” The sound came out as a question, but the artisan realized that his mind was already at work, forming and dismissing ideas.
“Can you build it?”
“…what?” This time he looked up at his half-brother, who stood there both hands on the table, his eyebrows raised in expectation.
After a moment of silence, the artisan’s hand slightly rearranged the tablet, the messenger had flipped against a couple of seconds ago. “This isn’t a construction plan,” he said evasively. “And it describes barely a third. The pieces don’t even fit together.”
The messenger sat down, leaning forward to force the artisan to meet his eyes. “Maybe not but it is an idea,” he whispered. “And that is all you need.” There was an intensity in his voice.
The half-brothers locked eyes. This time the artisan didn’t look away. “Why?”
The corner of the messenger’s mouth slowly rose. It was the smile of somebody who knew he had already won his negotiation. “For you, because the idea is now in your head. You will have to figure it out, see if it can be built if it can be made to work.” He made a small pause, taking another sip from his cup. “And I, because I want to see what’s on the other side of that door. See what comes through, what will happen.” He reached out for the wine pitcher, but the artisan’s hand was faster and he pulled it away.
The messenger cocked his head and held out his cup. “Finally, neither of us cares too much to cause some trouble for our seniors as long as they don’t find out about it.” He quickly glanced at the cave’s northern wall. Had someone drawn a long line from his eyes to the wall and beyond, they would have eventually reached the mountain on the northern continent where their father held court.
Maybe even his seat in the main hall, the artisan thought, shaking his head. “Something like this, it has scarcely ever been done before. You cannot just construct it from stone, wood, and bronze.”
“And nobody would expect you to,” his brother said, reaching down. He placed the dirty linen sack on the table and opened it. His hand disappeared inside and returned with a helmet in the Helcenaean style. It was a masterpiece, engraved with beautiful decorations.
The artisan recognized it right away. He had made it. “You stole sister’s helmet?” he asked dryly.
“It can’t have been I,” the messenger said unperturbed. “I spent all that time helping her search after all.” All the while he pulled other objects from his sack. Instruments, jewelry, weapons, the array of possessions just kept coming. The artisan recognized most of them. Finally, his brother reached under the table and placed his sandals on the pile. “I think you might receive a few new commissions in the not-so-distant future.”
“You don’t stop at cattle, I see,” the artisan said, considering if he cared. He concluded that he didn’t. He took pride in his creations but once they were in the hands of the intended owner, it was their responsibility to look after them.
“Will it suffice?” the messenger asked.
The artisan considered the pile of magical items in front of him. There was enough power to overthrow any mortal empire and maybe some higher ones as well. “It might be enough for a frame.” He shook his head. “We need some material that holds way more magical power than any object made from metal, wood, or stone could hold.”
“A sacrifice?” The messenger asked. “We could grab some beast.”
The artisan stroked his chin. ”It’s not enough.”
“What then?” His brother asked impatiently. “Do we need to cut up a god?”
The artisan nodded thoughtfully. “That might work.” If he made the attempt, he would need the strongest material otherwise the weight of the world would just tear it apart immediately. Bones and sinew of a titan would be ideal, he thought. Of course, these considerations were only theoretical. There was no way to procure anything like it without basically murdering somebody.
“Ok.”
“Hm?” They had been silent for a while, each in his own thoughts. Now his brother looked like he had made a decision.
“How much do you need?” The messenger asked, pounding his own chest. “How much to build this door?”
Crazy, the artisan thought. “A lot.” He couldn’t stop himself from making the calculations. “If we would want it to hold together for longer than the blink of an eye. And it’s more like a bridge.” The challenge was too enticing.
The messenger frowned. “Nothing that won't grow back given enough centuries, I assume?”
The artisan’s eyes narrowed. If he threw his brother out now, he could threaten him with telling the family about his thievery. Dealing with the bored trickster wouldn’t lead to anything good. “If we’re careful.”
“Ok then,” the messenger said, straightening up.
The artisan stared up at him. Am I truly about to do this?
“Are you really this bored?” he asked. “You would let yourself be crippled to spread some chaos?”
His brother didn’t answer. He just stood there, his head tilted, grinning down at him with the infuriating smugness only he seemed to be capable of. It was a challenge.
The artisan’s eyes returned to the fragmented documents in front of him. Nobody had ever created anything like it. As far as he knew nobody had even attempted it. It was like building a bridge across an ocean to an unknown shore – a shore he couldn’t even see. He would have to use all his skill, solving problems he couldn’t even foresee yet on the fly. It was all he could do to keep his excitement off his face. And all I have to do is take a knife to my brother’s body, he thought.
He emptied his cup in a single gulp. “Yes.”
A rhythmic scratching noise of tools chipping away at wood filled the wide room of the cave. The artisan stood in a corner in front of the workbench. From time to time he paused for a moment to exchange the bronze tool in his hand for one of several others spread out on the workbench. Watching his hands move, any layman would have been able to tell he was watching a master applying a craft perfected over many years.
Over the course of an hour, the hand-sized piece of wood on the bench changed shape steadily, the front showing the first outlines of a face. Choosing a particularly delicate tool, the artisan deepened the cavities that would become the eyes. A blow cleared away the smaller shavings.
Looking down at his progress, the artisan almost smiled in satisfaction. Then the moment had passed, and he placed tool and piece back on the workbench.
“You’re still here,” he said without turning to the figure standing in the room’s entrance.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you. I enjoyed watching you work.”
“Ha!” The artisan turned to face his visitor, wiping his hands on his apron. “What do you want? Do you have a message for me?”
The man was young and extraordinarily good-looking. The fire of the forge at the opposite side of the cave made his white teeth shine. “Are you not going to invite me in?” the messenger said, his smile never faltering. “It’s custom. Even with family.” He cocked his head.
The artisan’s expression darkened and he swallowed his first replay. Nothing good would come of him airing his feelings toward his family in front of this one. “May I offer you a cup of wine, brother?” Slightly dragging one of his legs, he crossed the room to another table where some cold meats, bread, and a pitcher of deep maroon liquid waited for him.
“I shall gladly accept,” the messenger said.
The two men sat down at the simple but sturdy benches and shared a silent meal.
The messenger took a thoughtful sip from his wine cup and nodded. “Passable. You’re lucky you have those Helcanean settlers down there.” He waved in the direction of the cave entrance. “Otherwise, you would have to subsist on that rotten grain water from the south.”
Ignoring his half-brother’s comment, the artisan placed his own cup on the table. “You ate my food, you drank my wine. Now deliver father’s words so you can leave me to my work again.”
There was a hesitation in the massager’s expression. For the blink of an eye, he seemed unsure, maybe even nervous. Whatever it was, it disappeared behind a cocky smile so fast a mortal would never have picked up on it. But the artisan had seen it.
That’s a first, he thought, considering the young face across from him. For a long time, the messenger had been the only one of his family he spoke with directly. Dropping by every other decade to deliver him a commission or announce a proclamation of the father they shared. His role was a reason his half-brother could behave as he did. But maybe today is different.
“You aren’t here for the family,” the artisan said. Running official errands, the messenger was untouchable, their father’s might looming behind him.
The other man’s eyebrows rose. Then his smile turned lopsided. “You aren’t as simple as our people think.”
“Barely anybody is,” the artisan said, without taking his eyes off his guest. “So, what are you here for?”
The messenger stood up, his wine cup in hand, and strolled through the large cave. “I see you’re doing a lot of woodwork these days.” He nodded towards the workbench. “Most only know you for your metalwork.”
“I built ships when I lived on the islands. After father first threw me out.” The artisan subconsciously massaged his lame leg.
“You’re a master of many crafts,” the messenger said, walking around the forge. “Aren’t you afraid that a spark, a little flame could set those shavings alight? It might be hard to get the burn marks of the cave walls.”
“I keep my workshop clean,” the artisan said, “and this is my domain.”
You are stalling, he thought, watching his half-brother circle the cave. What surprised him even more, he was indulging him. The artisan had never enjoyed company, especially not in his workshop. But whatever made his guest so hesitant might be worth hearing out. Especially, if it’s something father wouldn’t approve of.
The messenger had moved on to the corner furnished for masonry. “Is there a craft you haven’t mastered?” he asked, his finger gliding along a long chisel made from a particularly strong copper.
“Probably,” the artisan said slowly. “The mortals have many.”
“Didn’t we teach them all they know?”
The artisan took another sip of his cup. “We, and those that came before us. But they come up with new things all the time.”
“And you go and master them. I guess it’s a way to pass the time.” The messenger sighed. “Makes existence less tedious, I guess.”
“Are you bored with your life?” the artisan asked, letting a little derision seep into his tone. “No people to annoy, no cattle to steal?”
His guest ignored the needling. “Have you heard? The time of the great upheaval is upon us. Again.”
The artisan leaned back. “We’re far away from everything here. I don’t get much news and I like it that way.”
“You might hear about this one soon,” the messenger said, slowly returning to the table. “With mother’s city next door.”
The artisan shrugged. “At least you will be entertained.”
“Ha!”
His brother’s reaction surprised the artisan. Gods, monsters, and mortal men fighting for hegemony or just pure survival should be quiet to his taste for diversion. Entire civilizations tended to disappear in times like this, often taking their gods right with them.
The messenger stopped in front of the table looking down at him. “Don’t you ever feel the repetitiveness of it? Gods and heroes. Everybody following their predestined roles.”
The artisan shrugged, unsure where this was going. “It’s fate. It has always been like this and it will continue long after we’re gone.” Not that he expected that to happen any time soon. Father has a lot of flaws, but he is a tough bastard, he thought grudgingly.
“Yes, yes,” the messenger almost shouted, “exactly. Isn’t that infuriatingly boring?”
The artisan wasn’t sure how to respond. The sudden outbreak of emotion had surprised him. So he just shrugged.
That seemed to irritate his brother. “Don’t just sit there, shrugging!”
The artisan’s expression hardened. “This is my home.”
Realizing his mistake his guest raised his hand. “I apologize.”
Another first, the artisan thought. Then he had a terrible thought. “I hope you’re not here to suggest anything…any radical changes.”
The half-brother locked eyes, studying each other.
“And what if I am?” the messenger asked eventually.
“Then I wouldn’t want to know about it,” the artisan said. “And I would advise anybody not to speak of such things out loud. Challenging father for the rule is suicide. Nobody would follow…somebody who suggested anything in that direction.” His half-brother had the reputation of a troublemaker, but he had always been obedient and loyal. In truth, the artisan had had more fits of rebellion against their father than most but he had never done anything close to trying to usurp the rule. Wherever this was coming from, it was insanity.
The messenger stared down at him openmouthed. Then he started laughing. “You think, I want to rebel against the old man?” He tried to drink but started giggling again, wine dripping down his chin. “Excuse me a moment.” Wiping his mouth with the seams of his Helcanean tunic, he turned to the entrance of the cave. He stepped around the corner, returning a heartbeat later with a leather pouch in his left hand and a dirty linen sack over his right shoulder.
“The only thing I want to do,” he said, setting the sack on the ground, “is spread a little chaos. Maybe throw fate of course a bit.” With these words, he handed the artisan the leather pouch.
The artisan accepted it cautiously. “Oh, is that all?” He opened the pouch. It contained two roles of papyrus as it was used in the far, far south, a couple of stone tablets filled with symbols of the old tongue, half of which hadn’t been used for so long, they had probably drifted from mortal’s memory and a painted stone fragment that looked like somebody had broken it out of a wall. “What’s all this?”
“You tell me,” the messenger said, seemingly trying to contain his excitement.
Warily, the artisan pulled out one of the scrolls. It was old and he took utmost care not to damage it during the unrolling. Lines formed on his forehead as he tried to understand what he saw. A heartbeat later his brother was forgotten, as his hands fished for the next object from the bag. And the one after that. What he read had absorbed his full attention.
At some point, his hand went into the pouch but came back empty. Irritated he confirmed with his eyes what his hand had already told him. “Where’s the rest?” he asked, looking up at his brother. “There has to be more.”
The messenger smiled, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “There isn’t. What you see is it.”
Frustrated the artisan’s eyes wandered over the fragmented documents in front of him. They were of varying ages and filled with half a dozen different scripts.
“I know what you want to say,” the messenger said, “but I’ve been looking for a long time. I traded in a lot of favors.” He flipped against one of the clay tablets on the table. “What you see here is it.”
The artisan was only half listening, his mind already piecing together what he had read. “This is in Nemki’s hand,” he said absentmindedly, pointing at a particularly small clay table. “The broken stone piece is from somebody even older. Who knows who?”
“Sure, sure,” the artisan said. “You can figure out the rest?”
“Hm?” The sound came out as a question, but the artisan realized that his mind was already at work, forming and dismissing ideas.
“Can you build it?”
“…what?” This time he looked up at his half-brother, who stood there both hands on the table, his eyebrows raised in expectation.
After a moment of silence, the artisan’s hand slightly rearranged the tablet, the messenger had flipped against a couple of seconds ago. “This isn’t a construction plan,” he said evasively. “And it describes barely a third. The pieces don’t even fit together.”
The messenger sat down, leaning forward to force the artisan to meet his eyes. “Maybe not but it is an idea,” he whispered. “And that is all you need.” There was an intensity in his voice.
The half-brothers locked eyes. This time the artisan didn’t look away. “Why?”
The corner of the messenger’s mouth slowly rose. It was the smile of somebody who knew he had already won his negotiation. “For you, because the idea is now in your head. You will have to figure it out, see if it can be built if it can be made to work.” He made a small pause, taking another sip from his cup. “And I, because I want to see what’s on the other side of that door. See what comes through, what will happen.” He reached out for the wine pitcher, but the artisan’s hand was faster and he pulled it away.
The messenger cocked his head and held out his cup. “Finally, neither of us cares too much to cause some trouble for our seniors as long as they don’t find out about it.” He quickly glanced at the cave’s northern wall. Had someone drawn a long line from his eyes to the wall and beyond, they would have eventually reached the mountain on the northern continent where their father held court.
Maybe even his seat in the main hall, the artisan thought, shaking his head. “Something like this, it has scarcely ever been done before. You cannot just construct it from stone, wood, and bronze.”
“And nobody would expect you to,” his brother said, reaching down. He placed the dirty linen sack on the table and opened it. His hand disappeared inside and returned with a helmet in the Helcenaean style. It was a masterpiece, engraved with beautiful decorations.
The artisan recognized it right away. He had made it. “You stole sister’s helmet?” he asked dryly.
“It can’t have been I,” the messenger said unperturbed. “I spent all that time helping her search after all.” All the while he pulled other objects from his sack. Instruments, jewelry, weapons, the array of possessions just kept coming. The artisan recognized most of them. Finally, his brother reached under the table and placed his sandals on the pile. “I think you might receive a few new commissions in the not-so-distant future.”
“You don’t stop at cattle, I see,” the artisan said, considering if he cared. He concluded that he didn’t. He took pride in his creations but once they were in the hands of the intended owner, it was their responsibility to look after them.
“Will it suffice?” the messenger asked.
The artisan considered the pile of magical items in front of him. There was enough power to overthrow any mortal empire and maybe some higher ones as well. “It might be enough for a frame.” He shook his head. “We need some material that holds way more magical power than any object made from metal, wood, or stone could hold.”
“A sacrifice?” The messenger asked. “We could grab some beast.”
The artisan stroked his chin. ”It’s not enough.”
“What then?” His brother asked impatiently. “Do we need to cut up a god?”
The artisan nodded thoughtfully. “That might work.” If he made the attempt, he would need the strongest material otherwise the weight of the world would just tear it apart immediately. Bones and sinew of a titan would be ideal, he thought. Of course, these considerations were only theoretical. There was no way to procure anything like it without basically murdering somebody.
“Ok.”
“Hm?” They had been silent for a while, each in his own thoughts. Now his brother looked like he had made a decision.
“How much do you need?” The messenger asked, pounding his own chest. “How much to build this door?”
Crazy, the artisan thought. “A lot.” He couldn’t stop himself from making the calculations. “If we would want it to hold together for longer than the blink of an eye. And it’s more like a bridge.” The challenge was too enticing.
The messenger frowned. “Nothing that won't grow back given enough centuries, I assume?”
The artisan’s eyes narrowed. If he threw his brother out now, he could threaten him with telling the family about his thievery. Dealing with the bored trickster wouldn’t lead to anything good. “If we’re careful.”
“Ok then,” the messenger said, straightening up.
The artisan stared up at him. Am I truly about to do this?
“Are you really this bored?” he asked. “You would let yourself be crippled to spread some chaos?”
His brother didn’t answer. He just stood there, his head tilted, grinning down at him with the infuriating smugness only he seemed to be capable of. It was a challenge.
The artisan’s eyes returned to the fragmented documents in front of him. Nobody had ever created anything like it. As far as he knew nobody had even attempted it. It was like building a bridge across an ocean to an unknown shore – a shore he couldn’t even see. He would have to use all his skill, solving problems he couldn’t even foresee yet on the fly. It was all he could do to keep his excitement off his face. And all I have to do is take a knife to my brother’s body, he thought.
He emptied his cup in a single gulp. “Yes.”
