To Rhial

32

Adam

I got used to spending summer days in the armory cleaning armor with Alwen. He was a good guy, and one I probably would have been pretty good friends with back home. Our conversations were frequently interrupted by the tonal clicks and chirps coming from the west gate. Tensions had been rising for a while apparently, as small groups, small protests of yeffen gathered outside the gates. The yeffen here were much younger than Geren, seeming like a different race entirely. Their feathers were lush, beaks were made of bone or gilded plates, they were far nimbler, and less hunched. I couldn't understand what they were saying or singing. I was just in the armory unbending dents and passing them to Alwen to buff the scratches out. Despite hearing them all day long, the Viscount and Simira never did anything about it, so Captain Zev or some other guards would get fed up with the noise and disperse them, only for them to move to another gate. Apparently, due to a legal arrangement the yeffen had with Lord Hallax, they were protected from being harmed or imprisoned by Amien guards unless they caused any direct damage. And the protests couldn't technically be called protests, which would have made them a crime. Nobody spoke yeffen, and the yeffen would only say they were "singing songs of praise for the Amiens," so they were by all accounts toeing the line of legality perfectly.

"Alwen, do you know what they're all doing out there?"

He stopped cleaning as he thought. "I don't know. The yeffen haven't ever really liked the Amiens, I think." He began wiping again.

"Huh, I couldn't imagine why."

"Me too. My parents and my grandparents tell me stories about the Amiens all the time. The yeffen and the Amiens should be close friends. Like allies. The Amien family liberated the yeffen from a cruel tyrant. The tyrant had been controlling the minds of the yeffen for centuries. They called it the Taker. The Baron Amien, several generations of Amiens ago and before they were viscounts, fought the tyrant and defeated it in the caves that they used to live in. The yeffen wanted a fresh start, so they found a new land, to get away from the terrible place they had been enslaved forever. That's how the Amiens got this manor and became viscounts instead of just small barons. Things have been peaceful forever here. And then when the yeffen were inducted two years ago, they started trying to slander the viscount because of the accident those years back."

"What do you mean, inducted?"

"Oh, right, you're from the sticks. The yeffen got inducted into humanity two years ago. They're the most recent humans." He leaned in like he had some secret knowledge. "I heard they barely managed to show enough smarts to pass, and the ones who passed were the smartest. Most of the regular yeffen are actually as dumb as animals, still. They can talk and act like people, but they ain't got nothing to contribute."

"Uh huh, sure. What was the accident?"

"Right. Viscountess Amien made a deal with the yeffen about twenty years ago. The yeffen offered fealty if the Viscountess let them visit the tunnels and collect some historic paintings or tablets or whatever they were looking for. Since nobody had been down there in so long, I guess the rocks were loose and the group of them were killed in a cave-in. Them and the Viscountess. Apparently everybody liked her, a real crowd pleaser, fixin' a lot o' things. I only seen her once, but I was still a kid. We were closer to her and the rest of the Amiens when I was younger."

"Huh, damn. I've only ever met one yeffen, and he was a nice older guy living alone in a cabin."

"Well, there are plenty out the gate if you wanna meet more. I personally hope I don't have to talk to them ever again. I ain't much of a conspiracy man, but I think they're the ones that caused the cave-in. Look at how big and clumsy they are, probably screamed and banged into the rocks to make 'em fall. Just as stupid as they are ugly. They can't even speak proper Triali 'cause it 'hurts' to talk like us, over there screaming like cubbins instead."