It was a simple fact of the world that war and starvation came together. Like two brothers, twins who could not bear to be apart, when one arrived, the other came with it. When people starved, they went to war to secure food for themselves; and when war came, it brought starvation as the clashing armies devoured everything around them. No more true was this than in a siege of a city such as Chrysopolis.
Starvation was everywhere to be seen. The siege had only gone on for a handful of days, barely two weeks, and already the oldest and weakest had begun to die of it, their corpses lining the streets where they had fallen. To listen to Chrysopolis was to hear the wailing of hungry babies, the shouts and roars of men who were willing to kill to supplement their own diet, the begging and moaning of women who needed just a bit more added to their ration, for the baby’s sake. So vast a population simply could not be sustained off of granaries and reservoirs for very long. And with the docks mostly still destroyed and the land routes guarded by the rebels, there was no choice but to let it starve.
Of course, all that glum stuff about hungry babies didn’t mean one couldn’t still live it up, or at least that’s what Bellerophon always felt. What better time to liven things than during times of severe deprivation? The Senate had spent so long listening to the moans of the dying and the weeping of the bereaved that they just had to take a break to listen to some music.
So it was that he had begun arranging for the party barely a few days after the siege had begun. Acquiring entertainment had been the easiest part: quite a few of the desperate people who needed bronze to be able to bid for the ever-smaller servings of black market grain going around, knew how to dance or sing or play an instrument, or do other things which men of influence found enjoyable at a party. Food had been, for obvious reasons, much more difficult; but when one had money in excess, all things were possible.
It had taken little persuasion for Bellerophon to convince the scribes in charge of such things to overestimate the size of his household and how many of its members earned an extra share. There was also the fact that, though totally insufficient to meet the city’s needs, there were still those who smuggled foodstuffs into Chrysopolis, evading the rebel cordon at great risk. A substantial fraction of those smugglers worked in exchange for Bellerophon’s coin. And, of course, that which Bellerophon could not obtain illicitly could be acquired via the simple means of out-spending everyone else. Only grain, oil, and a couple of other important foodstuffs such as pork were properly rationed: wealth could still acquire other things, spices and vegetables and fish.
So it was that the invitations which Bellerophon sent out to all of the members of his party included an exultation in the fine food that would be on offer, alongside descriptions of the music and entertainment. Such perks proved quite enticing to those who had grown weary due to the war. In less than a day, the guest list had expanded to two-score. It had doubled a day after that.
On the evening of the party, Bellerophon welcomed each arriving guest with open arms and wide smiles, for he knew already that he was ruined. The money was gone. His finances had been in a bad state before the siege, the constant demands for money from his blackmailers pushing his ability to create liquid funds to their limits; now there was nothing. Each additional guest on the list had increased the expected cost, requiring more food, more drink, more entertainment, until at last it had become clear that there would be no repaying the debts acquired that night. Best to drink, sing, and be merry; for tomorrow Bellerophon would have nothing but his jollity to sustain him.
Not that jollity couldn’t be sustaining, he would remind himself. Even if the sums could not be made to sum, there were other ways; friends might give him coin that needed no repayment when they had heard of the depths of his need, political allies convinced to protect him from debtors. Bankruptcy would not be Bellerophon’s destruction.
The first part of the party was a rousing success. Vivacious talk was the order of the day, friends who had too long been consumed in dark business finally finding the time to converse, joking and reminiscing about better times. When the time finally came for the main meal of the evening, all were shocked by the variety on display. Loaves of airy acorn-bread, delicate displays of finely-sliced horse, duck, and pig, and for the centerpiece, a pyramid of candied apples. There was a round of applause for Bellerophon as the feast-table was all arranged, the gratitude of the assembled potentates tactile in the air.
And the music! A rotating cast of musicians, each with their own style, took up a place of honor in the corner of Bellerophon’s main hall: there were Kemtryai dancers who danced to warbling pipes, old-fashioned Macarian fiddlers and lyre-players to sing songs of love, and even a Trabakondai drum-dancer to show off Bellerophon’s worldliness.
The music was a constant factor primarily because of the irritating noise from outside. There was one point, partway through the dinner, when Bellerophon scheduled a break in the music, that the diners could more easily converse with one another. Almost immediately, from without, came a horrible shrill wailing. Some poor thing or another had lost her child to sickness and starvation, and instead of silently existing within her grief, decided to make it everyone else’s problem. Bellerophon rushed at once to cover up the noise, using money he did not have to bribe the Macarian fiddlers into performing an extra set during the gap.
Even that brief interlude of dissonance did not sap the mood, though. Drink flowed, food was consumed in vast quantities, and the dancers were of such beauty that the eye could not escape them. The sun set fully, and Bellerophon’s villa was plunged into dark, except for that scant light which was scattered by the ever-present braziers. Bellerophon had planned for the vast majority of his guests to remain overnight.
Dark and drink naturally sour the moods of men. The first evidence of this came when one of Bellerophon’s friends from the Senate, a fellow named Ilios, suddenly leapt up onto the dinner-table. By his motions alone he could be seen to be drunk: but where Ilios was normally joy-riddled while under the effects of alcohol, on that particular evening he had nothing to speak but venom.
“Drink, drink, drink! Drink all you like, drink our host dry, it’s not as though they’ll let us drink in hell!”
One man jeered at him, another man tried to grab Ilios by the ankle and drag him down. Ilios responded by kicking him in the arm and capering down the table, knocking over plates and cups as he went.
“Don’t you get it! If we wanted to live we’d have all nailed together boats out of scrap-wood and rowed off into the sea! We’re stuck, trapped between hammer and anvil, our best hope being that we’ll only be smashed instead of broken! If you think the rebels are going to treat us as well as we’re accustomed to, you have a camel’s brains.”
Ilios continued making such premonitions of doom until, off-balanced by wine, he finally fell from the table. That might have been the end of Ilios altogether had it not been for Bellerophon, who was there to catch him as he fell. He succored the drunkard away into a quiet, dark sitting room, and spent a minute ensuring that he was in a good condition.
Once he was sure that Ilios’s body was intact, though, there was an obvious question on Bellerophon’s lips. “What is this that has come over you? What spirit has caused you such grief? Is the wine bad?”
Ilios gave Bellerophon a narrow-eyed look, one that at first seemed to be that of a drunkard judging what was real and what was a phantom of his addled mind, but over the seconds narrowed into a glare of disdain.
“The wine is perfectly acceptable,” Ilios said coldly. “After all, in wine, there is the truth. No spirit has come for me except, perhaps, the spirit of truth come to wipe the dust from my eyes and show me my impending doom.”
Ilios lurched upright, and Bellerophon did so as well, staggering backward as though under assault. “No, no not the truth. Surely the drink has made you melancholy…”
“Melancholy? Melancholy!” Ilios spun about on the balls of his feet, a dance of joy. “Melancholy is what you see out there, what you see in all the halls of power with each passing way of the siege. They drown in melancholy, burying their heads in it even as they talk and joke.”
“Happy is sad and sad is happy. By the Golden Lord, I did not realize quite how drunk you were. Perhaps you should lie down, Ilios, and sleep away the drink.”
“We’re all doomed,” Ilios said, circling around Bellerophon. “If we’re lucky we’ll all live on as slaves or beggars; if we’re unlucky the rebels will just kill us. You’re burning the last of your gold just to feel as though we aren’t sat astride a horse racing madly towards a cliff’s edge.”
A cold, heavy sensation fell to the bottom of Bellerophon’s stomach. He pivoted, eyes following Ilios. “How did you know about the state of my finances?”
Ilios made an exaggerated shrug. “The alcohol has brought ruin to my memory. Someone said it; you know how things are at parties.”
And with that, the drunkard leapt back out through the doors of the sitting room to continue his drunken ways. The wise thing would have been for Bellerophon to stop him, to demand on the basis of their friendship that he allow the wine to loosen its grip on him in quietude; but Bellerophon was not acting wisely. He was paralyzed with fear.
Bellerophon tried his best to ignore his friend’s prognostications and enjoy the party as it was, a brief respite from bad times. But even as he emerged back into the firelight, swimming in music and the sounds of conversation, the mood simply could not be made to return to what it had been. Everywhere Bellerophon looked there were sinister tidings on display. Even as the musicians played and played, the sounds of wailing and grief could still be faintly heard. Lingering in the corners of Bellerophon’s villa, men sat collapsed and drunk, bemoaning their fates. Those who still stood and conversed held onto sour looks and did not talk openly and joyously, but instead whispered furtively to one another of dark and angry events.
Each hateful glance and melancholy look was a rebuke to Bellerophon, to the very idea of this grand celebration. Like gnats biting at the ankles of an ox, they drove him further and further into a frenzy. He rushed from place to place, making jokes and bringing forth entertainment, handing out fresh drinks and complimenting every guest for having made an appearance at this wondrous gala. More celebration, more drink, more song, more jollity! But it simply couldn’t be done; the illusion had been broken.
Bellerophon found two women talking to one another, evil smirks on their faces, and prepared to offer them drinks… except that he had not invited any women as guests, and the girls he’d hired on as entertainment couldn’t possibly be dressed so finely.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?”
The woman he’d addressed turned around. There was something intensely familiar in the set of her, the way she held her curvaceous, tanned body in a posture of absolute confidence and control.
And then she spoke, and Bellerophon understood. “I had to see how well you’re pulling it off. And I have to say, Bellerophon, you’ve decided to go out on quite the high note.”
It was difficult to hear her over the roar of the conversation, which had somehow grown louder than ever before, but he recognized it nonetheless. “You!” Bellerophon replied, his voice cracking with sudden weakness. “Damn you, you’ve taken all the money I have, what more could you possibly want? Or are you here to squeeze more water from this poor, suffering stone?”
The leader of Bellerophon’s blackmailers—he realized suddenly that he had never learned her name—grinned, and may have even laughed, though it was impossible to hear a quiet chuckle over the din of the party. “No, idiot,” she said, “we know all too well about the state of your finances. Who do you think’s been telling all the partygoers that you’re bankrupt?”
Bellerophon frowned. That answered the question he’d had for Ilios, then, though one might wonder how the conspirators knew the state of his finances. At this point, though, it seemed they knew almost everything. He leaned in closer in order to be understood without having to raise his voice.
“So that’s it, then? You can’t get any more money out of me, so you spread word of my ruination to spite me?”
The woman shook her head. “Spite? No, not spite. Not spite at all.” She turned, looking first to her conversation partner, then to another man standing nearby who Bellerophon hadn’t even realized was aligned with them.
“Do you want to be let in on a secret, Bellerophon?”
The question chilled him to the bone, the way that she bared her teeth, the gleam in her eye. But was there any world in which Bellerophon did not answer in the affirmative? No. Of course there wasn’t. He glanced around once more. The guests had gotten so loud all of a sudden; what was the cause of this? Bellerophon tried to read their angry looks and hunched shoulders, but his attention was too squarely focused on those before him, the ones who had brought him to ruin.
“Yes, please,” he whispered. There was no way the woman in front of him could have heard. “Yes, please!”
The awful grin grew even wider. She threw up her hands as if in ecstatic celebration and screamed with all her might, “It was never about the money, Bellerophon! It was never about the secrets! It was about you! It was all about you!”
Bellerophon staggered back, ears ringing from the sudden scream so close to his ear. “What? Me? Why me?”
“Because you’re a very important man, Bellerophon! And a fool! And you were willing to do whatever we asked for just a hint of power, no matter the repercussions!”
It didn’t make any sense. The woman before him, the woman who had always stood at the head of the conspiracy, had always been so calm. And now she was screaming, screaming like she was about to burst, and her hands were trembling and her face was covered in sweat. The mask had been covering something up.
“What are you talking about?” Bellerophon said, still having to raise his voice to be heard. “Is this about burning the docks? I didn’t know that would happen!”
“But you did it anyway, and now look at the consequences!”
“So what? It was the fault of those damn street-thugs, I just hired them!”
It was as though all the air had gotten sucked out of the room at once. The din was still present, but muted. Where the noise had been, it was replaced by sheer psychic weight as Bellerophon realized exactly what he had done. His throat was rendered impotent as though by sudden seizure, such that he could only spin about on his axis and listen, really listen to what everyone was talking about.
“I lost half my fortune in that fire!”
“He did it? What the hell was he thinking?”
“—Because of him! Stuck in this city to die because of him!”
The docks. It all came back to the docks. The damage which had been done to the city’s economy by that act of all-consuming destruction had been immense, as had been the ongoing costs of reconstruction. But there was more to it than that; had the docks been in full service, it would have been trivial for most of these men of leisure to buy their way into an escape boat. With nothing but the overland routes, and so few days warning? So many of Bellerophon’s own peers in the Senate had become trapped because of him.
And if what Ilios had said was correct, most of them felt that their death was inevitable. Because of the burning of the docks. Because of him.
The young man, apparently a member of the conspiracy by the way the leader had looked at him, took advantage of the moment. “He admitted it! The bastard, the scourge just said it with his own lips! The rumors were right!”
All around the room, eyes converged upon Bellerophon. He tried to speak in his own defense, but his throat was still frozen, spasming, uncontrollable. The roar of words came back, this time tinged with true anger and all directed at the same target. Bellerophon received so many slurs, so many accusations, so many outbursts of purest anger in those moments that his mind did not even comprehend them; he only heard the anger, the surging rage of the proud men who saw before them the single tangible cause of their inevitable doom.
Clenched fists and scowling faces advanced towards Bellerophon. He retreated, holding up his hands in supplication and surrender, but there was no mercy to be found. Someone swung a fist at his face, and he dodged to the side, but there was less room to dodge in with each passing moment. People were grabbing table-knives now, dull blades but still good enough to cut skin. In the back, someone who had bred particular cruelty had overturned a brazier and started a fire.
“Come on, Frasalu,” came a familiar voice from behind Bellerophon. “He’s done for. We need to get out of here now before things go too far.”
Frasalu. The name of his tormentor, the name of the woman who had brought about Bellerophon’s ruin. He would never realize the motivation behind it, or that she was merely taking orders from a higher authority. That wasn’t what he was thinking about as his jaw screamed from the first punch, as the first knife scored his skin.
He was thinking about the fact that he’d been brought low by a Trabakondai. A lowly, stupid Trabakondai.
As Bellerophon fell to the floor, as the sandaled feet cracked his ribs and the knives sank into his flesh, he murmured, “No, Please. I was supposed to be better than this.” Those were his last words.
This had a very "Masque of the Red Death" feel, was waiting to see how badly it was going to go for him.
I mean, if he hadnt just been thinking about how the grieving should have kept it to themselves instead of "making it everyone else's problem" I might have found it in me to have an ounce of sympathy.
Well, an asshole to the very end.
Huh, I didn't realize some people have issues with itch.io. I've never had trouble with their system. Anyway, these past 2 chapters were great as usual. Everyone is reacting to this disaster in their own way.
Will that end the siege and spare the city?
well... shit! he had it coming, but yeesh