CHAPTER 1.36 - OVERNIGHT INTERLUDE I - HUGO

Hugo comes upstairs, senses reeling.  Somewhat from alcohol, but less so than an observer might have expected.  Unless said observer were particularly gifted, and sober to boot.  The night was incredibly successful, and as these things go he could easily have drunk himself to injury or death as villagers showed their appreciation.  Instead, he practiced the art, perfected through the years, of accepting a great many drinks without actually consuming their bulk.

From handing a fresh drink to the next person to approach him, to simply placing one of ‘his’ drinks close enough to someone sufficiently in their cups to blur such details as ‘mine’ and ‘thine’.  By the end of the night, he had refilled his drink maybe twice and had surely handed off another dozen.  Often to people slurring at him about how drunk he was.

Where it was sometimes prudent to act intoxicated, particularly if a mark was certain they were about to swindle you, tonight had not been one of those scenarios.  Indeed, it was nice to be surrounded by people without agendas.  Those people accusing him of being ‘three sheets to the wind’ were simply projecting, jealous at worst.  They were burning off some of the tension of their recent struggles, even if their strategy spelled a difficult day tomo…today, he realises.

He already feels crushed with exhaustion, approaching 48 hours awake.  His brief naps today conspire to add to his tiredness, but he has a job to do.

He pads towards their assigned room, listening for the sounds of the others’ breathing.  Rian, he knows, is certainly asleep.  His snoring’s loud and uneven, never seeming to settle to an even rhythm.  At times, standing in the doorway trying to discern Thae’s and Anuk’s breath sounds, Hugo worries the man might be stifling, that his breathing might have stopped.  Then a new round of terrible gurgling or hawking noises would break out.

The man’s spreadeagled, big limbs dangling off the narrow cot.  Hugo swears he has one foot on the floor.  Thae, whom Hugo saw leaving for bed extremely early, is facing the wall breathing evenly.  He cares relatively little about those two.  Set in the farthest corner, of course, Anuk is lying on her back, head turned towards him.  Her right arm’s dangling out from her covers, hovering over her knapsack.  Dammit, he thinks, not that his task’s impossible.  Simply more difficult than it needs be.

He focuses on hurried calm.  Get in, get out, don’t dally.  But never rush.  It’s always a paradox, trying to elude the notice of others.  “We are social creatures, our senses calibrated to find others in our space.  Ask anyone over whose shoulder you have tried to read.  Did they detect you visually or just feel you hovering.”  He curses his brain, pushes aside thoughts of coaching Berin.  He doesn’t need to be emotional right now.

He dips into her backpack smoothly, suppressing a little panic as he can’t locate the book.   He feels a jolt of electricity down his spine as his fingers feel unmistakable leather, a spine.  Then, his heart almost stops as Anuk’s arm shifts, grasps.  He’s certain he’s caught, that the woman’s clawing at his face.  His eyes dart up, staring into a very certainly sleeping face.  And realises that the hand had been snatching towards the book’s resting place.  Thankfully, his instincts had ensured that he grab the thing rather than bolt empty handed.  He sneaks from the room, saving his sigh until he is out of earshot. 

He pauses to compose himself and to ensure his allies’ sleep is undisturbed.  It’s hard to hear much over Rian sawing wood, however the door at his back doesn’t explode into splinters so he reckons he is good.  Hugo strolls downstairs, bold as brass.  Another lesson to Berin, this time he allows his mind to travel the route.

“Never sneak when you don’t need to.  If you’re in public, BE there.  Hell, even some places you aren’t meant to be, walk like you belong.  You’ll be challenged if you look like you’re trying not to be seen.   If anything, be more present.  If a guard knows you see them and that you don’t seem to care, they’re less likely to buttonhole you.”

He was fairly certain he had been last to leave, but as he returns to the feast hall, a couple of folks are there.  One man had apparently fallen asleep in some corner, now blearily crossing towards the door.  Hugo winces as he weaves into a table, colliding heavily.  The other man in the room, Yorn or Yorrin or something Hugo forgets, catches his eye, looks to the drunk man and breaks into a grin.  As he catches up to the drunk, throwing an arm over his shoulder, he aims a wink in Hugo’s direction, mutters “Let’s get yer home safe, shall we?”

Hugo gives the pair a wave, additional affection for Highbarrow swelling in his chest.  Seeing a sober man moving around the post-party space, his mind defaulted to skullduggery.  Some opportunistic thief looking for discarded valuables, perhaps.  But the man left a heap of plates and tankards behind him, a do-gooder trying to reduce the burden of the morning’s chores.

And now Hugo is alone.

He examines the book that so encapsulates Anuk.  Immediately, he’s hit by its appearance.  The leather binding is an uneven brown, as though light leather partly stained, but the consistency of the material is bizarre.  As though somebody couldn’t decide between soft- and hardcover and opted for something between.  He gathers his focus, cursing the amount that he did drink.  He needs to scour this and return it before Anuk stirs, otherwise…he’d rather not think of the consequences. 

As he begins to read, Hugo’s disappointed.  A fucking journal.  Anuk has a plain but formal hand. momentarily he’s surprised as she appears so eloquent, yet her handwriting is that of someone to whom the shapes don’t come naturally.  Then context catches up with him and he realises this is someone else’s journal?  Some apprentice fletcher from Caladria, which explains the level of education, struggling to give her life meaning by recording it.  The first few pages are mundane records of a dull day-to-day, with a worrying subtext of neglect, maybe abuse from her father. 

But then, the journaling becomes a shade more interesting as the author dips into purple prose detailing the daughter of a nearby baker.  Hugo suppresses a chuckle that “Lena is so pretty but she doesn’t know I exist.”  “Lena smiled at me today” followed by swooning, “The dance is coming up but Lena’s too busy with her da’s telescope for me to even think of asking her.”  The term ‘yawnsome fawning’ occurs to Hugo but he dismisses this as unkind.  Teenagers, he decides, are more dramatic than actors with even less emotional stability.  It’s practically a disability.

Ooh!  An exciting twist around the fifth page of the fifteen-or-so in journal format.  Exciting for the author, at least, as Lena DOES notice her.  Hugo skims a few pages of breathless descriptions as a halting romance shudders into life.  The unnamed author’s existence now centres on nights spent picnicking on the baker’s roof, touching hands then lips as ‘Lena’ teaches her the basics of astronomy.  And more.

Then, before the tenth page, a sharp turn in the narrative as a long entry, apparently in company of Lena on the roof, focuses on a star.  Strings of numbers apparently notate the star’s position, multiple mentions if its purple hue.  Hugo can’t understand the numerical notations, but the author is repetitive, mentions over and over again that it‘s on the very lip of the horizon.  Hardly a mention of the paramour, although surely the sketchier, hurried handwriting indicates excitement?

The chronology, handwriting and coherence of the journal entries become increasingly erratic.  The focus swings, as well.  More and more details of hunting this purple star, less mention and then the utter disappearance of the name Lena.  More, and more crabbed, notations of numbers and times suggesting a nightly search for the star.  And with Lena’s disappearance from the increasingly disjointed narrative, a new name begins to emerge: Caiphon.

It feels like reading a mental breakdown.  Caiphon is the name of the star, but Caiphon is an entity.  It IS the star and yet totally separate from the star or our reality.  The star IS Caiphon and it's just the entity's blurred fingerprint smudging the sky.  Caiphon is the One Who Knows and the One Who Watches. It is the Bringer of Gifts and the Bringer of Calamitous Change.  It is the Star of the Midday Sun and the Shadow Over the Rising Sun.

It's mentioned endlessly for pages towards the end of the journal section, with increasingly worshipful gravitas and titles.  The writer sounds insane but writes with blotted, chicken-scratch certainty.  The final page of this section is a mess. Scrawl and doodle and inkblots like the tip of the quill was resting on the page.  And the name Caiphon is the only word, repeated over and over.

Hugo breathes a sigh, feeling the chill of the room now that the fireplaces are banked.  That fully explains the shiver as he peruses further.  The next ten or so pages of the book are blank, but don’t look unused.  If anything, these pages bear more evidence of repeated perusal than the journal.  The odd spot of dripped coffee or wine, and slight crumples or creases appear where someone fumbled turning a page.

Following the blank pages, a handwriting that fits with Hugo’s image of Anuk’s begins.  Immediately, this organises the strings of numbers from the journal section into sequence.  Anuk, assuming the pretty but slightly jagged hand is indeed hers, at some point added notations of the year.  The erratic mystery author had not seen fit to do so.  It appears the doomed romance occurred some five years ago.  Hugo wonders for a second how ‘Lena’ took being abandoned for a purple dot in the sky. 

Below this, a number of short notes.  “Caiphon”, “Caladria”, “Collars?”  He knows the latter as a district: part-residential, part commercial, suited to more journeyman-level businesses.  Like a fletcher’s.  A little down-at-heel, hardly impoverished but certainly not rich.  Then a list of names: “Martan Fletcher”, “Wilton Baker”, “Elena Baker Wiltonsey”, “Bermond”, “Miriam ‘Mirry’ Fletcher”, the latter underlined.

Over a two-page spread, Anuk has drawn a beautiful, if extremely overshaded circle.  Obviously purple, the woman has utilised chalk, pencils, crayons and paint, seeming to have layered these multiple times, shading and reshading the colours.  The result’s unsettling, seeming to lift off the page, and something subliminal inside Hugo feels that the featureless ball is watching him. 

The next few pages appear out of sequence, as though the list of names was compiled over a span of time.  Anuk had to research the location from the journal’s notes, a task no native Caladrian would have required.  And, seemingly, the journal was used for mundanities too.  A definite shopping list has been created and crossed off, little incidental notes here and there.  The shift of tone, of subjects, seems jarring. 

Following this, the book’s entries can only be described as…concerning.  The organised, neat notes at times become blotchy and hard to read.  Still definitively Anuk’s hand, but reminiscent of the transformation of Mirry’s writing when it pitched downhill. 

A section where CAIPHON is written multiple times, lots of hyperbolic descriptors like “bigger than the sky”, “inconceivable power”, many references to purple and LOTS of rough circles drawn.  It might be Hugo’s imagination but there’s a small inkblot in the largest circle which could, conceivably, be a human figure – if so, then the relative scale would be like a fruit fly or a mite on a purple dinner plate.

Then a pencil rendition of a wall with a circle and more numbers engraved into it.  He’s again impressed with Anuk’s artistic rendition, although the engravings appear wet, tinged with dark liquid.  Below this is a scrabbled flurry of notes, untidy hurried writing featuring the name again, with “Herald” and question marks, even a “Why?” dangling nearby.

This appears to have been drawn and jotted soon before they met, as there follows multiple pages of entries he recognises.  She’s been using the journal as a journal, it seems, since they all met.  His cheeks redden, feeling like a voyeur as he reads Anuk’s often scathing impressions of their group. 

As he pulls his eyes away guiltily, the book seems to squirm in his hands.  He yelps in surprise, drops the thing.  Sitting in his patch of illumination in an otherwise darkened room, Hugo feels the sapient fear of what is lurking in those shadows.  He gathers himself, grabs for the fallen tome.  The leather feels richer, the cover more robust, the book thicker than before as the hairs on his forearm rise.  Hugo pinches his nose, blowing to clear the pressure in his head.  He needs his bed, but moreso he needs to return this to its owner. 

He curses the drinks he did imbibe, his sudden attack of superstition.  But the book does feel heavier as he pads up the stairs to slip it into Anuk’s pack.