#1493

He finds Yusuf fully dressed—truly a work of the heavens given the hour—a crumpled sheet of paper in his hand. “It is true,” Yusuf says, standing, offering no context, needing none. He gestures with the paper. “A letter. I paid too much but . . .”

Nicolo nods, and wonders for a moment if the strange sense of foreboding he feels will be diminished if he does not read it. But such thinking is foolishness. He takes the letter, sinks onto the rough bench by the table and smooths out the paper with his fingertips. Epistola Christofori Colom: cui etas nostra multum debet. “Letter of Christopher Columbus: to whom our age owes much,” he says aloud. He blows out a breath of exasperation. “Of course the first line is replete with the man’s ego. He would not be a Corombo if it were otherwise.”

Yusuf pauses in chewing on a fingernail. “You know the family?”

Nicolo looks up. “Once. Many generations ago.”

“And?”

“They are men with . . . their reputation would . . .”  Nicolo gestures with one hand for want of the most fitting words. “As boys his ancestors would pull the legs from spiders,” he replies.

Yusuf blinks. “A telling anecdote.”

“Indeed.” Nicolo turns back to the letter. “Should I continue?  Did you read the . . .”

“I did not finish,” says Yusuf, sitting down across from him. “Please.”

Nicolo reads aloud, translating the Latin as much for the slower pace it affords them both —space to parse both the words and their deeper meaning—as for any other reason.

“Tell me your thoughts,” says Yusuf as Nicolo reaches the end.

Nicolo looks up. “If all the men have long hair, then surely they wear their hair long like men. His comparison to women is meant to belittle them.”

Yusuf bursts out laughing. “I admire your insight,” he says, reaching over the table to grab Nicolo’s hand. “Did you notice that he says that they have no weapons, but describes their spears and shields?”

Nicolo allows himself a small smile. “They have no government, but they have kings.”

“No cities, but houses without number.”

“A muddle,” Nicolo says with a nod. He looks back at the letter spread out between them. “And yet I fear the mindset this betrays.”

“As do I,” says Yusuf. “How many others have we encountered with such partial views?”

Nicolo nods. He once held such views, raised his sword in honor of a god conjured by men more powerful than he, though his devotion was given freely. He killed to redeem the world—or so he thought until he was run through a half-dozen times by the blade of the man before him. He had struggled back from death and into a life he barely recognized, a truce declared with wild eyes over clasped, bloodied hands, a promise he assumed to fall from the lips of a man whose language he did not comprehend.  Still, these centuries later, he cannot pretend to understand what power lives in his blood, his heart, animates his breath and blesses his sleep, but he knows few humans have the grace of long life to educate them as he has been educated by distance and time. “We need not look far,” he says to Yusuf. “I was such a man.”

“So was I.” Yusuf pats the back of Nicolo’s hand before he rises, preoccupied with the worries of this world and not those of the ones gone before. “So what do we do?”

Nicolo shakes his head. “We have rushed in before.”

“And been fools for it,” Yusuf agrees. “But this . . .”

Nicolo knows Yusuf’s mind has turned, as has his, to the peninsula wars, to Granada and the single-minded devotion of the Aragonese and Castilians to the expulsion, conversion, and death of those who had lived together for centuries, Muslim, Christian, and Jew. “They have shown us what they will do.”

“Sadly so.” Yusuf turns back to face him. “Can we alter the course of those attached to their swords with such fervor?”

Nicolo looks back at the letter, at the square, blocky shapes of a printer’s consonants and vowels. With Yusuf he has seen the worst that people might conjure out of hatred and pain. Yet more often they have discovered beauty in one another’s company, more than the holiest or finest-born men of their early acquaintance could have conceived. They have wandered to communities who have shared their bread and the work of their hands, the great knowledge of their cities, the cadence of song and the twist of their bodies in dance. Though they have traveled beyond the reaches of his anticipation, he has discovered no monopods, and understands that fictions will flourish given welcome soil. He has kissed the forehead of those dying, and held newborn infants, played games of vast invention with adult and child alike. He has learned, and learned again, how inconsequential he is beneath the grand, star-flung arc of the heavens, and how much he matters to the mother needing water, the family set upon by bandits, the elder who requires that he listen to her words.

Nicolo stands and crosses the room. “We cannot halt anything. We should not style ourselves as saviors.”

“No.”

“But we may do some good,” Nicolo suggests, and Yusuf’s lips twitch into a smile.

“A voyage, then.”

“To be of service to those already in the fight.”

Ivan Demidov/Nick Suzuki, rated T, 2.9k words Vampires, vampire Ivan, teething, Fingers in Mouth, Human/Vampire Relationship, Blood Drinking, captain and rookie dynamic, captains put your fingers in your rookie's mouth now!

Vampires have to grow new fangs every few hundred years and Demi's are coming in now. Nick helps him through it, like a good captain should.

Roland (Harvest) from Library of Ruina

"sometimes you have a mental breakdown and turn into a fucked up version of the scarecrow from the wizard of oz. i like it when some guy who just looks like a boring office worker goes off the deep end"