Writing Index
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Preface: No Home 'Round These Parts Preamble: A Myth of A Man Fair With The Family Distinction The Lamb Heist Disaster Mission In The Woods
Act 1: Iron Will Lost Inside the Forest's Throat The Trapper's Son Resignation and High Hopes The First Notoriety of Renard Cox Easy Accolades Cased in Steel Cold and Cavalier The Dove Foxed Usurpers Ill Thought Taking Water From Pilamine Peace Sprig Kingslayer Near to Heaven Putting Down Your Best Friend
Act 2: An Old Knight In New Lacren The Everyday, Normal Bounding, The Consequence The Source of All Sin in The World The Party Mirror of The Pit Audience With Verdan The Indifferent Night Good Role Model Denies You Again Only a Killer
Act 3: Love Affairs Who Massacred A Million Monsters A Sweet Touch For A Hard Man Scheming The Hunt in Fayette The Purpose of Slaying Ghouls Colette Too Much Of What You Want Stuck in a Corner A Notch of Aspiration All Possibility The Last Open Door
Act 4: Prodigal, Prodigious Settling Only For Her The Call Arrival in Ashurst That Boy, Fidel A Day of Adventure Into The Forest Left It To Fester Cleanup Leaving Ashurst The Best Course Inevitable Drift Concurrent Lives Off The Old Block Always Opportunity Unsheathe Planning The Offensive
Act 5: Nix Welcome To Nix Breathless The Shadows The Independent Summit Respite and Regroup Plunge Into Depths Hard Press Knotted Roots Searchlight The Night Glen Confronting Arsene Fight Against Evil One True Way That Monsters Are Vanquished Renard Cox Postscript

The Best Course

After a pleasant dinner, of entertaining a brightened Fidel with jokes, tricks, and stories, and of Colette’s chirpy table-chatter, the three push in their seats. Colette departs to attend to her usual evening rituals as Renard pulls Fidel aside.

Renard asks if their hospitality has been keeping him well.

Fidel responds that it certainly has, and asks, with a note of boyish hope and innocence, whether he’ll be staying here.

Guilt rattles Renard’s chest. Colette was right — he is about to severely disappoint the boy, and even having braced himself for it, Renard feels his heart begin to race, body begin to tremble, and pores begin to weep as he forces himself to hold his nerve. “No," he says, with that honesty that feels so dangerous to express anywhere except with Colette. He will not be hiring Fidel.

Fidel holds his silence, subtle expression unreadable.

—Of course, Renard blabbers, that is not to disrespect Fidel’s capacities or slight his ambition. Rather, Renard is…

…not comfortable teaching others how to kill as a profession, his mind supplies. Were Renard in Fidel’s position, he would be drooling over fantasies of receiving personalised lessons in swordcraft and monster-slaying from one of the most accomplished knights in the country. It’s a prospect from a dream, and the first, most critical rung on a ladder by which one might raise oneself to myth.

As if anything Renard did, the Pilamine slaughter, the bowing to hypocrites, the suicidal confrontations with ghouls, is worth modelling. There was never any future in that. He could refine anyone into a superb mercenary, a revolutionary assassin, or a hunter beyond par — and ensure they would ruin themselves or die by age twenty.

For as much as he’d like to help Fidel, Renard’s morally blank ethos is probably not worth passing on. At least, the thought of taking a bright-eyed boy and springing a life upon him where he is really only good as a well-aimed murderer, not even a soldier with cause or principles, fills Renard with too much unease to even imagine teaching the boy the most basic swing. ‘What is it for?’. Well, can you fill that question?

And of course, to have the direct patronage of Renard Cox, but not be taught swordsmanship, is a snub.

A memory comes to Renard’s mind of himself at Fidel’s age. Old pain stabs through his chest. The Iron King had rejected him, and he’d been crying on the steps of the palace…

Like flowing silver, a dark coolness settles over Renard’s guts. It purges all his anxiety, solidifying him instead with the suretude of an ancient black stone. As if the Iron King’s soul were speaking through him, Renard announces with frightening cold that Fidel will not be staying with him, but if he will nonetheless stay, he will stay in the town.

Fidel’s breath hitches sharply. It is tamer than how the Iron King treated Renard — but the frigid, cruel nature of this sentiment, ‘I will give you nothing’, still breaks whatever fiery, teenage determination Fidel had flickering in his chest like the impact of a cudgel. Authority spoken without compromise is, of course, terrifying to children and most adults. It shatters so many dreams, in an instant.

And though Fidel is terrified, he still admires Renard too much to speak against him. He trembles, wide-eyed, tongue-tied.

Renard clicks his throat heavily as if grinding a rock against the iron anvil that is his larynx. Colette will find you a bed tonight, where I find you one tomorrow. And that is all I will do for you. As charity, this is beyond fair. Yes, boy?, every syllable seethes like black iron, cooling in a forge.

Shaken, Fidel fails to respond.

Yes?, Renard presses further.

Yes, sir, Fidel nods quickly.

Renard straightens himself out of his oppressive looming and nods. Go as you would, he orders.

So dismissed, Fidel again nods and skitters to the parlour, scared, but also mystified with disbelief that Renard Cox could be so frightening. He glances thoughtlessly over his shoulder as if sending a fishing hook to snag upon Renard, that would tempt him to stay until the image of what just happened made sense, but his quick feet outpace these dumb thoughts.

Seeing him go, Renard chews his lip. His shoulders and his neck sag with the release of tension, he snorts a sigh, and he lumbers a return to his quarters.

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