Lies and Loss

I'll never finish this one either, but I like the beginning, overwritten as it is.

Lies and Loss

The whole mess began, as many things do, with a lie. It was not a mean lie, but it was a cruel one; it was not a malicious lie, but it was a very damaging one. The lie was told with the best of intentions, but as the witch said later “The road to hell is blah, blah, blah.”

Prince Nico regretted the lie as soon as he said it, but once released, it set into motion the curse, the assassination, and, of course, the war.

But that is not the beginning, and as my father had impressed upon me many times, experimentation is nice and all, but if your audience can’t keep track of the story, well, fancy techniques aren’t going to do you any good. The tale is complicated enough already. And while my dearly departed father—and by that I mean that I’m glad he’s dead—was a lush and a terrible womanizer, he was a storyteller without peer, and he saw fit to pass on his gift to me, and taught me how to turn talent into skill. For this, I am eternally grateful, except on those nights when I’m out of paper, the ink has frozen again, and stories scream in my ravaged mind. Still, my storytelling skills allow me to find the truth within the facts, and will help me to sort out this story for the future. Writing this will cause me some pain, for my stories are angered when I occupy myself with non-fiction, and will punish me for it, but I was determined that future readers should know the real history, as close as I can get it, rather than the revised version that might otherwise have ruled.

So, as I said, the whole thing—and my tale—begins with a lie.
The Kingdom of Skala—my guidebook reads dryly—has an area of 302, 748 square miles. It has a population of 268,000 people, and is famous for its beautiful forests and lakes and its pottery. It greatest export is lumber and wood products. Skala has a monarchy for its government, and the largest city is Yrgis, with a population of about 42,000 people. It also delineates a brief history that uses five pages to list every single king and queen for the past 3,000 years.

Which is of course not at all interesting, except that is reinforces that Skala had a king, a queen, and most importantly, a prince named Nico. The king, whose name was Rens, was perhaps a little too fond of tinkering with new inventions, and the queen, name Eina, was maybe a little too fixated on her gardens, and Prince Nico was perchance a little too eager to please other people.

No, I mis-speak, excuse me. He was definitely, certainly, and undoubtedly far too concerned about making other people happy. Nico wanted to be liked; he was not pathological about it, but he was over-inclined to take the middle road of issues, and sometimes suffered greatly in silence in order to spare someone a minor inconvenience. Never arguing about anything with anyone, his usual expression was a pleasant smile, and no-one had ever heard him raise his voice. This is a wonderful quality for a priest, or a personal assistant, but not very desirable in a royal, especially if that royal is first in line for the throne. If Nico had been a girl, the men of the kingdom said in annoyance, he would have been a tremendous asset to the monarchy, being easy to marry off. But as a male—the future king, the men would groan in horror—Nico was almost dangerous. Bartenders spoke darkly of a king who would listen to everything his advisors said; barbers told their customers of a king who would let an invading army walk right in. Cab drivers were sure that the palace would be run over by thieves, con artists, and jugglers; mind you, there were lots of thieves and con artists right now, but at least they were noble thieves and con artists, not those rough types that would show up as soon as they realized how weak the king was.

Not that Nico was a bad person; everybody agreed that if he’d been a normal person, or a third son or something, he would have been beloved by anybody who met him. But as the authority on the throne, holding responsibility for the whole realm? Well, there were quite a few people who quietly made plans to move when good King Rens died.