Poetry of the Damned
Copyright© 2026 by Oz Ozzie
Chapter 19: As You Say
The club at that hour was nearly theirs alone, the late lamps lit and the good fires banked, the leather worn soft by better men than these, and the benefactor had seen to it that the best of the cellar came up without anyone asking. It was a small company tonight. Not the loose noisy circle of the early evenings, the grumblers and the hangers-on; only the few, the ones who had let themselves all the way in, the ones with something of themselves already laid on the table and no easy way now to pick it up again. Merko among them. The most junior of them, and — he had come to understand, with a feeling that was not entirely unpleasant — among the most deeply in. Valerian wasn’t there; his place was filled by a man they just called the benefactor.
It was the day after tomorrow. In the morning, once the square had filled, once the crown prince was down among the crowd where he liked to be seen. There was very little left to decide and they went through it in the low unhurried voices of men who have said it all before, and what was left to decide was the one thing none of them wanted to say first.
Someone had to carry it.
To make sure it was in the right place at the right time.
“We could buy a man,” said one. “Tomorrow. There’s the morning market. Buy something that won’t be missed and have it carry the thing in and not know what it’s carrying.” “And trust it not to bolt? Not to set the thing down and wander off? You can’t tell a bought slave ‘stand here a half hour with this at the appointed place’ and trust it past the first fright.” A pause. “What about a beast? A mule, a handcart with a dog tied to it —”
“Through that crowd. To that spot. At that minute.” The benefactor did not raise his voice; he never did. “No. It must be a thing that can be told where to stand and will stand. It must look like nothing and do exactly as it is bid and ask itself no questions at all. A beast won’t place itself. A stranger won’t be trusted. It wants — “ and here he turned his quiet considering look around the fire, unhurried,” — it wants to be one of ours. Or one belonging to one of ours.”
And nobody said anything, because to say anything was to volunteer, and they all had their parts to play afterward, their roles in the bright important morning that came after the noise, their places in the world the morning would make. None of them was the one who didn’t come home. That was the whole shape of the silence: every man at that fire meant to live.
The look came round to Merko and stopped. “You’re the freest of us, in a manner of speaking,” said the benefactor pleasantly. “Youngest. Newest. The least tied. You?”
Merko felt the sweat come up under his shirt. “I’m — you have me at the palace. At the head of the column. You said yourself, the King — there’s no one else you’d —” He heard himself and stopped.
“Exactly so.” The benefactor smiled. “You’re spoken for. We’ve spent you already, elsewhere, and well.” And the relief that went through Merko was so plain and so shaming he didn’t know how to contain it. But then benefactor said, “But those things can be changed. So we have to consider you.”
He sat there, sweating. It could not be, he would never agree. But they were all looking at him, clearly expecting him to say yes. To carry the device into the crowd, and stand there waiting, and then to be gone, to disappear in a way that made his skin crawl to even consider. But what could he say?
“Your girl.” It was another of them who said it, mild, half a joke, swirling his wine. “Hunsen’s girl. You’re forever telling us, aren’t you — the most biddable creature a man could want, does anything she’s told, never a word out of place. Obedient and pliant, your very words. Sits there while you talk and might as well be a stool.”
“She is,” Merko said, too quickly. “She is all of that.” And then, because more was wanted, because the table had turned on him and now he needed it to be true, he gave them the last of it, the thing that should have stayed his: “I’ll tell you how biddable. You remember the cousin’s man, the careful one, going round all of us about our houses — watch the servants, he says, a slave hears everything, a slave keeps things back, the quiet ones worst of all. Well, I took it to heart. I went through her things, the lot, found where she hides her bits of writing. You know what was in it? Verses. Little verses about how good her life is and what a fine fellow her master is. That’s what’s in the secret heart of her. That. I did the careful thing, and there is nothing in that girl but what I put there.”
And he had the proof of it, though he kept that to himself; it wasn’t for the table. He’d had it only lately, at Valerian’s — the one time he’d ever seen her truly balk at a thing, dig in, ask not to. He’d seen exactly how little she wanted it; he’d not been able to miss it, she’d as good as begged, and that why she never wanted to go in the first place. And he’d told her it went ahead regardless, and it had, and she’d done the whole of it, and done it well, and made no complaint after, none, not that night nor since. That was biddable. Not a girl who didn’t mind — any fool could keep one of those. A girl who minded, who minded to the bottom of herself, and did the thing anyway, and was quiet about it after: that was the article. That was what he’d brought them. He was almost easy again, thinking it.
“Is that so,” said the benefactor softly, and something settled in his face, some weighing-up come to its rest. “Well. Then I think we have found our carrier.” He set down his glass. “I should like to see her, though, before we say it’s done. One likes to know what one is trusting. Shall we? It’s no distance, and the night’s young, and Hunsen keeps a good fire too, I don’t doubt.”
And Merko understood, rising with the rest of them, his face arranged into the willingness of a host, that the floor of his life had begun very quietly to give way beneath him, and that he had pulled the first board up himself, with his own hands, out of his own mouth, to cover a moment’s shame. He told himself the things a man tells himself. He was fond of her, which made this a sacrifice and not a discarding. She was Vinda’s, when it came to it, and a man had to put the dead behind him and a house full of the dead wife’s things behind him with her. And the girl had said she’d do anything. And when the morning they were planning had been and gone and he was what the morning would make him, he would be a man who could trade up, keep whatever he liked, better than her, more than one. It was almost, by the time they reached his door, a kind of generosity he was doing. He had nearly talked himself the whole way there.
The girl came to the door, and saw the men at the door behind him, and he saw the small adjustment go through her — the surprise mastered, the face going smooth — and then she was only standing there waiting to be told, as she always was now. She was in the better of the house dresses, the dark one she’d got herself since — and it suited her; it hinted, now that he’d seen what there was to hint at, at the finer thing under it, at the place she ought to be kept at, a man’s proper girl, who also had the right clothing for later, and not the shabby bargain he’d once have brought to a door. He’d do more, he thought. This was only a start. Get her the good things, dress her as she warranted, see her turned out right — there was time enough, and he meant to.
Behind him the men came in out of the dark.
They sat about his table and he had her bring the wine, and the benefactor put himself where he could see her, and they talked. They talked the way men talk who are about to remake a kingdom and want, one last time, to warm their hands at the reasons. The taxes that fell on the wrong backs. The war that had eaten the best of a generation and given nothing back but cripples and grief — Merko’s own war, his own dead friends, trotted out in the litany. The King who would not listen, who was surrounded by the wrong men, who had to be made to listen for the kingdom’s own good. The litany rolled round the table, warm and aggrieved and entirely sure of itself, and all the while the benefactor was not quite watching it. He was watching the girl.
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