The Good Days, Before the Day of Destiny 1

After the Day of Destiny, tremendous things happened, but we too had our good days. Though not the kind of happiness ordinary students might enjoy, skipping class on a fine summer afternoon to picnic beside a nearby river, then putting the wine they had bought too much of into their water bottles because it was too heavy to carry, drinking every drop, and coming to themselves to find even themselves floating away downstream. No, of course, I do not mean we never drank, or never went on picnics… In any case, let me say beforehand that everything happened to us in slightly different colors.

We were students, and young girls, and terrifying legends of the back alleys, or insignificant poets, or noble wanderers. And daughters of illustrious families too. Where we, so different from head to toe, met was the great city Delphinad, nicknamed “the capital of the continent.” Only Eanna among us was a native of Delphinad. The rest, myself included, were outsiders drawn by this city’s splendid light. That we came to know one another was the gods’… No, it does not seem appropriate to mention the gods in connection with us, so let us call it chance. A strange and exquisite chance.

The story begins like this. A third-rate poet and playwright, Lucius had been barely keeping himself alive from day to day, wandering from city to city and selling his wretched writings. Then he heard a rumor that in Delphinad, there were plenty of fools who would pay a high price for even a pathetic script. Since Delphinad overflowed with every kind of material good, many citizens walked about with a bundle of money stuffed into their pockets, ready to go at once to see even a play in which a herd of goats bleated in chorus, provided it was new. On days so dull that no such frivolous spectacle was available, some tried strangling themselves merely to escape boredom, only to die in the process.

Though he had heard a rumor so hard to distinguish as a joke, drunken talk, or even a jest of any sort, Lucius felt certain it was a gold mine. He found a seat on a horse-drawn merchant wagon headed for Delphinad. Trying to obtain one as cheaply as possible, he ended up wedged between chests on the wagon’s roof, but having nothing except a spine as sturdy as any young man’s, he suffered no great harm. Arriving before Delphinad’s wall, Lucius leaped lightly down from the roof and bid the people farewell.

…That would have been nice, but in truth, battered once or twice by the heavy chests whenever the wagon crossed a stone bridge, Lucius had collapsed from exhaustion, and the driver dragged him down like a stone and abandoned him beside the road. Lucius woke in the evening and crawled as far as the gate, but it was already closed. Fortunately, he was accustomed to sleeping outdoors, and after sleeping a night on solid ground that did not sway, he felt more energetic. Among the people camping there while waiting for the gate to open, he even found a kind fool who bought him a bowl of tripe soup the following morning. Thinking the rumor that Delphinad had plenty of fools was quite accurate, Lucius sat on the creaking chair of a pilgrims’ dining house serving breakfast and recited a fine poem he had just composed.

A bowl of warm soup, with blood sausage sliced into rounds, was set before him, giving off a pungent smell.

“Did you compose that?”

When the kind fool, no, the man who said he had been south to buy rope, asked, Lucius merely shrugged and shook his head. Wandering poets pieced together poems they had heard here and there, then recited them boldly in another region as if they had written them, so Lucius had no particular reason to be ashamed. Yet third-rate as he was, Lucius had a useless stubbornness about him. He did use poems composed in that fashion, but he never claimed to have written them. On the other hand, he had spent years pouring his heart into an epic made entirely of lines he had composed himself. At the speed it was progressing, he had no prospect of finishing within a hundred years, yet seized by some hazy premonition, Lucius felt certain that once inspiration came to him, he could write it all in a single night.

Meanwhile, he was exceptionally good at spilling out the pleasant, ticklish, vaguely familiar poems people liked. In this instance, “soup-money verses” would be the right term. Such verses tumbled out the instant he opened his mouth, so he neither bothered to memorize nor record them. Parody was, after all, a play upon language, and often he could not tell where someone else’s work ended and his own began.

The man who had slurped down his soup set the bowl aside and looked at Lucius.

“Well, yes, half is by Theophilos and the other half by Milen, but I’m asking whether you composed the part that remains.”

Lucius nearly spat out his sausage, but just managed to avert the crisis.

“The opening of the refrain is inscribed on the tombstone of Edan I, king of northern Mea.”

“You’ve pieced together stories hundreds of years apart very neatly. Fine talent.”

As always, Lucius had simply said whatever came into his mouth without any particular thought, so it never occurred to him that this was a useful skill. But the man paid for the soup, then introduced Lucius to a well-dressed potbellied man. The potbelly was Leonis, a renowned theatrical promoter in Delphinad. When Lucius gave Leonis his first script, connecting kings from seven eras however he pleased, Leonis put it on the stage, and…

But let us leave the story of third-rate poet Lucius before he met his friends there. To return to the main matter, how did we meet and become friends?

There are many ways to tell a story. How about writing in the order we arrived in Delphinad? Then Eanna would have to be the main character. Since she came from Delphinad. But I think merely describing the many dresses Eanna had worn since her birth would wear out all seven of the white peacock quills I had prepared. That method will not do.

So I think it would be better to begin with the first great incident in which we became involved. After it was resolved, I called the affair “The Secret of the Manor.” It seemed quite a good title then, but looking back now, I think I missed the point. In that affair, there was something more important than the “manor.” Yet even I did not realize it at the time.

Since the title has already been given, let us call it “The Secret of the Manor” this time too. “The Secret of the Manor” was a great conspiracy, but people knew almost nothing of it. Because we buried it. At the time, it was the best choice. Looking back, though, I think the affair of “The Secret of the Manor” foretold our future to a disquieting degree. Shall I call it a foretaste? So “The Secret of the Manor” deserves to open the long epic I shall write from here onward.