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I should have known that I wouldn’t have been able to push past ten push ups. I stopped at about eight, which was really seven and a half, with my arms shaking and my face collapsing into a puddle of sweat. They hay lay scattered, my leg bruised from striking the wall when I’d gone and gotten all frustrated. And I’d spent the next hour thinking of Chaucer, seeing in my head nothing but his body. Seeing in my head nothing but his bloody stump neck.
I laid on my back. My chest and arms swollen. Moving, turning, my bones cracked.
“How’d I even do it back then?” I said, to no one in particular. I looked at the ceiling. A water drop fell on my face and I started on sit ups. Which as I found out were much, much worse.
“They killed him.” Ritcher said. He came, chair and all. Though the guards weren’t here anymore, it was just him and the hallway and the shushing prisoners to our rear.
“I’m glad to know you’re not blind.” I said. “Yeah, they killed him.”
“You didn’t stay afterwords? They dumped his body in the ocean.” He said.
“They do that to everyone.”
“Oh? Is that right?”
“Do you have anything you want? I’m busy.” I said.
“Can you sit up up properly? Why do you keep moving like that?” He asked. “You alright.”
I stood up halfway through a situp, staring at the wall.
“No. I’m not alright.” Back down I went.
Each time I went up, I’d get sweatier and redder on the face and each time I’d see his apathetic non-face looking at me, two dead blue eyes that couldn’t take themselves away from me.
“I need you to read again. We’re not even close to what I need.” He said.
“What you need. Always what you need.” I said. “Three names, three locations. You want my friends, you want to go off and capture and kill them. You want to do to them what happened to Chaucer.”
“If we’re lucky, yes.” He said.
“You know what? I think I’ve got all I want from you. I think I know my score now, so you can go fuck off.” I said.
“I can’t do that. You must read this.” He said.
I walked up to the bars.
“I don’t need you anymore. I know who I am. I am Virgil Darko. I am, at this time, twenty seven years old. I was someone who loved my companions, and some who now lost them.”
“This isn’t about what you need-”
“Yes. Yes it is.” I said. “I haven’t lived my whole life to this point to sit my ass and read you stories, I haven’t lived to fill your quota. I don’t need you in my life, Ritcher. I don’t want you in it. I’ll get by.”
“I could have you executed for talking back.” He said.
“As if a bitch like you could talk back to Hannibal.”
He tried to slap my through the bars, I backed away.
“My mistake was ever thinking you had power.” I walked back, until I touched the wall. “You know Chaucer hoped for that too, right? He hoped you’d get us out with your big boat. Thought it right up until the point he was decapitated, I’m sure.”
“I can send you to him so you can tell him my regards, if you’d like.” He said.
“No, you wont. For whatever reason, Hannibal of all people wants me alive. At least for now. I recognize that. Do you?” I said. “Why do you think Gunther was so interested in having my admit to the crime? Why do you think he wanted to send me to the upper levels? Hannibal wants me. I know it.”
He stayed quiet.
“I know why. I could tell yo-”
“It doesn’t matter.” I said. “I could figure it out on my own eventually. My life comes back to me every now and then, did you know that? I get images. Words. Feelings. They come in dreams or at random, when I’m eating or when I’m shitting. Fragments of my past like odd jigsaw pieces, waiting to be put in place. Some I have to wait more than others, but I’m starting to connect them all. By myself, Ritcher.”
“So that’s it then, you’re done?”
“I’ve barely started. But I’m done with you.”
“I can’t have that.” His head got closer and for the first time I saw his face morph. “I can’t have you quitting on me.”
“Give me one good reason why I should help you?” I asked.
His lips twitched. He looked around and leaned in.
“I could get you out.” His voice, so low I could barely hear it. I stepped closer.
“What?”
“I said I could get you out. On the boat.”
“No. No. I don’t believe you.” I said.
“You don’t have to, you just have to believe that I need these names.”
“No, you don’t need these names.” I said. “Why would someone sent by the king of Xyra, allegedly, be looking to free the man who almost killed that very king? Why is Vincent called the king? Some of this isn’t adding up. You wanna know what I know?”
Ritcher stepped back, he bumped into the wall.
“I think you took advantage of my foolishness. I think your story is the fake one.”
“If you promise to stay quiet I could find you some land to disappear in.” He said, sweating. It wasn’t the leather armor, or his clothes, it was something else that made his eyes shift and his body heat up.
“Tell me the fucking truth. What do you want?” I asked. “Who do you want?”
He sucked in his lips and put his head down. I felt a pain in my head something sharp like a chisel, something inscribing slowly into my bone.
“What’s your last name, Ritcher?” I said.
“Virgil. Just listen to me-”
“What’s your fucking last name? Prince of the roses. Such and such…Ritcher…Ritcher. I heard it in the mess halls.”
“Ritcher Wolfe.” He said.
My head burst - all qualia coming to me all at once.
“Shit. Shit.” I snapped my fingers. “W…w…Wolfe. Ritcher Wolfe. Wolfe, where have I heard that before?”
His head rose to. It was like both of us were feeling the same pain, the same eye widening epiphany. The same dread.
“Obrick Wolfe.” My lips trembled. “Obrick. Obrick’s last name was Wolfe, that’s right. I remember.”
He looked at me, a little pale. We maintained that same glare, that same awe. But his face softened. His head looked away, he breathed a sigh of relief or perhaps, a sigh to new struggles and his face came back up.
“I know you don’t trust me.” I said. “But you have to trust what I want.”
I walked up to him. He already had the book out.
“I’m looking for my older brother, Obrick Wolfe. I must find him.” He said. “I need you to help me.”
Thousands of questions struck me. I snatched the book. My head rolled around like a newborn. I sat. I breathed. My body ached.
“You came all this way for a location on your brother? Chaucer died for your stupid map quest?”
“Yes.” Ritcher said.
“Does Vicentius know you’re here? The true king?” I asked. “Was he the one I tried to kill? What about the rest of my comrades? How long have they been missing? What do you know about Hannibal?”
“You have your leverage. I have mine.” He said. “Now I told you what I’d do. And you know the lengths I’ll go to. Do you want me to help you get out?”
I looked at the book then to Ritcher.
“You really do look like him…”
“Do you want me to help you get out or not?”
“You want your brother that badly?”
“I’d set a thousand murderers loose to reclaim my brother to the throne.” Ritcher said.
“Your land must be suffering then.”
“That’s not your concern.”
I took a deep breath. A sharp inhale that hurt my ribs. For a minute, I could imagine it, not Chaucer’s body but my own. Not Chaucer’s head, but my own. All there, on the slab and in Hannibal’s hands. My body, cut up and thrown into the ocean, back to where it came from. And to be honest, it shook me to the core. But so did the idea of leaving.
“Yes.” I said. “Now, that’s a deal.”
“Then fucking read.” He said.
