Today is an important anniversary for me. It marks the beginning of “the rest of my life,” as it were, which I’ve decided was going to include an unreal amount of writing from here on out. And it worked–the last year has seen me finish two and 1/3 epic fantasy novels, the beginning of a novella, and at least two short stories. I’ve never written this much before.
So I’m going to share one of those short stories in celebration, free for the time being. It’s a pointless little short story–a literary, slice-of-life piece that details a new character and one of the cities in The Agartes Epilogues. It may be a prequel, a sequel, or an in-between–I’m not going to say.
The shaft of sunlight broke through the cracked window like a valiant king, crowned with dust as it danced on the yellowed parchment on the wooden desk. It revealed drops of black ink splattered on the surface, which were marred by a trail of congealed red ink from an upturned jar. There were dots on the parchment, too, both red and black, giving the drawing underneath the impression of a castle to be built on a battlefield. Black and red, mud and blood. Mud and blood.
Portia’s eyes opened to the sight of this, and her first thought was that the cat had sneaked into her room again and ruined all her work. But then she remembered that he had taken the cat with him. Her mind cleared. The wound reopened.
She remembered Nerian’s hard eyes and taut jaw as he stuffed the few items he had in her apartment into a leather bag. “I just can’t see how we could make this work,” he had said. She remembered wondering how he could be so calm—how he could say these things with the same voice he had once caressed her with. “You’re too…you, Portia. Try to understand.”
She forced herself out of bed, stumbling first to the window to crank it open. Sunlight flooded the room, making her squint for a moment. She turned back to the desk, and had the recollection of having too much to drink and upending the ink jar herself in a moment of fury. Last night, she had decided not to care anymore, that she could build a boat on that sea of anger and float on it until the end of time.
Read the rest of The Architect and the Fork in PDF.
