an extra credit thingy

Yeah. Fun.

He isn’t evil.

I believe this fully. He’s volatile, yes. Unpredictable, troubled, scarred, betrayed, yes. But not evil.

When I found him, he was lying in an alley, bleeding on the cobblestones. He had just suffered a horrendous beating. His dirt-stained tunic was in ribbons, and so was the skin of his back. I looked at him, and saw pain. I saw anger. But mostly, his eyes screamed of betrayal, louder than words. He didn’t trust me, at the beginning. He watched me with those sharp green eyes, watched my every move like a bird watches a cat. He didn’t trust me, but he wasn’t afraid of me either, and there was a spark of something in him that couldn’t be beaten out.
It was a miracle Mirano let me keep him. He didn’t like the looks of the boy, he said. Something off about his face. Sneaky. Sharp. Too clever for his own good. I defended him from Mirano and the other skeptical members of the Council, gave him time to heal, and began teaching him. He was a slow healer, but a very quick learner. He had never been taught to read, write, or do mathematics. We started from the ground and worked our way up. He was like an empty pit that was never filled. I threw knowledge at him, enough to drown any other human or Mast-angel without a Mindgift. He drank everything in and still hungered for more. He caught up with other boys his age, and I watched him grow from a scrawny, beaten boy into a young man who was confident to a fault. During this period of growth, Mirano worried. And sometimes, so did I.

“What?” I asked him one day. “What are you worried about? He’s progressing wonderfully. He’s very quick.”

Mirano sighed through his nose, watching Briar engage in swordplay with a Mast-angel twice his height. “I worry about him because he’s quick. Too quick for my liking.”

The arena behind the Sanctum was hardly ever empty, but today it was only Briar and his opponent on the ground, Mirano and I in the balcony. I kept an eye on my pupil as the dust swirled up around the two of them. “He’ll turn out. You’ll see. He’ll turn out fine.”

“As long as he doesn’t kill us all in our beds first,” Mirano muttered with an uneasy shuffle of his wings.

I arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Beg pardon?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. There’s a lot of anger locked away inside that boy. Mark me, Memory, it’s there. It manifests itself in small amounts, and you don’t notice or choose not to notice. But he’s bottling everything up within himself. He was betrayed as a child and he’s just waiting for it to happen again. He hasn’t forgiven Mourn for turning on him, beating him. His scars aren’t healing. You know all this, but you don’t acknowledge it. You just put the sword into his hands and hope he doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Put the sword in his hands…

“Don’t tell me what to do, Memory! I know! I know enough to make my own decisions! Don’t try to stop me!”

His face is contorted as he screams at me. I’ve never seen him so angry. “You will not learn killing arts from me, Briar. Drop the sword. Now.”

“No! I’m tired of being defenseless. I need to learn this! If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone else. But I am going to learn!” His fist clenches on the hilt of the deadly weapon. I think of the scars across his back. “You can’t stop me from learning!”

He is only fourteen years old, but the hatred in his eyes makes him look far older. “Briar. Put the sword down. I forbid you to wield it.”

“You can’t forbid me!” He screams. “You don’t control me! I hate you, I hate you!”

Another memory surfaced as I staggered against the balcony railing.

Briar wraps his arms around me as I stand before my desk, weeping. “Don’t cry. It isn’t real. It isn’t happening.”

I’m watching my sister die again. Images and voices crash together in my head. I can’t feel Briar’s sleeve on my face, drying my tears. I can’t feel anything. There is only my mother’s scream as Kindred’s wings fold and she plummets from the top of the wall
into the roiling sea. The blaze of lightning over the water. The tearing of fabric as my mother and I run through the bramble thicket at the foot of the wall. We leap in, ripped cloaks billowing around us. Salt water, everywhere, in my eyes, in my ears, up my nose. I wrench my eyes open underwater and search the murk for Kindred’s pale hair, her white dress, her gleaming bronze wings. But she isn’t there.

Then the study swims back into focus and I notice Briar hugging me. His little brow is crinkled as he looks up at me, green eyes bright with concern. “Memory? Are you all right?”

“He’s a good boy,” I said, steadying myself on the railing. “I know he is. He’s rough about the edges, perhaps, but there’s good in him.”


When Andra came to me and spoke of Fable, my head told me at once who he was, and what he’d done. But my heart rebelled. I cannot believe this. I will not.

I didn’t tell her that Fable used to be known by another name. I didn’t let myself flinch as she described the face of the man I trained from boyhood, the man who murdered the first friend he ever had. The man who wouldn’t drop his sword and let go of his hurts.

I looked Andra in the eyes and lied.

“Fable? I don’t know this Fable. You’d best do as Mirano says and start with him, if he’s acting so suspicious.”

“He tried to kill Flavius! He burned the library to ash! If that’s not suspicious, I’m sure I don’t know what is.”

I knew only what Briar told me about Mourn, and I’d seen him just once, at his Council trial, but I saw him in her, the clenching of her fists, the posture, the sparks flying from her green eyes, the black in her hair.

I didn’t tell her that. I also didn’t tell her Fable killed her father in cold blood thirteen years ago. She hates it when I don’t tell her things, but in this case I thought it the best way. If she found out Fable’s past, I couldn’t be sure what she would do.

In that sense she reminded me of my poor old apprentice. Scarred and unpredictable, with a bit of betrayal thrown in. A loose end. But still a good person, inside where it matters.

I didn’t tell her that, either.


Yay for extra credit. We were supposed to write a short biography thing on our villain from the viewpoint of someone who sees him as a real human being with real human feelings. How did I do?

Commander Kip
I WANT YOUR EYES!!!!1!!!!11!!! O.o
Normal is overrated!