A Dream of the Heaven

Chapter 6 (Part 1 of 2)

Chapter 6

Imlon

*

Doctor Ivon Raetho, Dean, House Exodus, Princeheight College; may you be blessed.

I most humbly make a petition unto you, sir, that you will accept me as a fellow of House Exodus.  Your worthy institution has at present no resident scholar of astronomy.  It is my wish to establish a workshop to further the pursuit of astronomical studies by means of the construction and maintenance of optic instruments.  Such work I have of late carried out as a fellow of the University of Casa Flow and as Astronomer Royal to his Majesty King Agostes of Emmares.  Following certain difficulties in this endeavour

The quill hovered above the parchment for a moment as Imlon searched for the right words, but after an hour’s endeavour it was still no easier to find them.  As he thought, a great drop of black ink dripped onto the page, obscuring one word and immediately seeping over more.  The astronomer tried to rescue the document, to no success.  Despite the disappointment, he smiled, looked over the other discarded attempts mounting by the edge of the table, and gave up for the night.

He went to the open window, looking out into the starlit dark.  Moonlight sat gently on the rooftops that stretched away nonetheless into gloom.  Another long day had followed the fatiguing ride from the border into Monruath.  Firstly he had visited the barber: beards were not the fashion in Monruath and certainly not in the college.  Next he went on to the Hillsmarket to find paper and ink and lastly he had enquired after his friend Pyros.  He had feared that he would be recognised by someone at House Ustis, of which Pyros was a member, but he had safely acquired the Phoronacian’s address.  He would pay him a visit in the morning.

A sudden noise made him jump: without any warning, the door to his room opened and Isendrin walked in.  He looked at Imlon beneath a heavy brow, a confused look set on his features.

“Imlon?  Are you...” He paused, his speech heavy and ponderous, like his eyes.  “Oh God, is this your room?”

Imlon tried his best to smile.  The smell on Isendrin’s breath was unavoidable.  “It is.”

His brother only grunted in response.  The general tried to lower himself into a seat, but his arms gave way and he somehow fell the tiny distance onto the chair.  He stared around the room, the fingers of his right hand writhing needlessly, like struggling worms reaching through the dirt.

Imlon reached over and shut the window: the black night was far colder, more oppressive than before.  He wasn’t sure if Isendrin knew he was there, and he felt like a ghost in his own room.  It wasn’t just the dark crowding at the window, but the whole city, clutching at the lintel and trying to see who was seated within. 

“A useful day?”

The astronomer could hear Monruath sneering at his awkward question before it turned back to the man on the stage.  Isendrin stared for a while longer, but then he turned his head up and began conversing as if in company, where Imlon was but one of many listeners.

“No.  I wondered about going to Jewelcutters, didn’t manage it.  The hill’s too steep to bother with in the morning.  So I went to the bank, but then the clerks, oh...they were prancing across the street in their dresses, looking so pleased with their money and their Dukes and their Princes.  So I didn’t go there.  Don’t know why I went to Speakerfield, but I did.  Some fool thinks I came by Eastergate.  Plague on them, what do any of them know?”  Isendrin shrank back into his seat.

Imlon didn’t know what to say.  He had seen his brother before after nights in a tavern, though the last occasion was several years ago, well before Isendrin was even general of Roethenna, maybe even a decade past.  The date didn’t matter – Imlon remembered how he had always felt, as if in the presence of another man, another being wearing his brother’s skin, louder and cruder, with the same presence and confidence, but lacking so much more.