YOU: A Novel
Excerpt from YOU: A Novel by Austin Grossman, for more about this book see the latest.
He wasn't a a king but he might have been a king's vizier, a cunning man and master of many subtle arts. One of the ones who secretly lusts for power, and one day he betrays the king.
Why? It's hard to remember, just that every step seemed at the time like the logical and smart and easy way to play it. Maybe it wasn't before, but now it's what you do. It's your story.
. . .
You saw your moment. The king wasn't watching, and you stole the key to the royal aviary, in which there was a magic bird whose magic songs foretold the future. Of course it went wrong. You're not royalty and you're not the hero of the story. You're just a civil servant with a prelaw degree and a flair for languages. What made you think you could hang with the royals? Princes and kings have this kind of story in their blood.
When the king came back you panicked like a fool. Your sorcery lit the tower, but he tossed you into the moat anyways. It was the bird seed you bought, in the marketplace, the day you were wearing that disguise. It wasn't that good a disguise, was it? Who knew a king would have those kinds of connections on the street? If they'd enacted the educational reforms you'd asked for, those fucking urchins would have been in school, where they belong.
The townsfolk threw vegetables as you limped, dripping and sobbing, through town. The worst of it is, that king really liked you. He was a genuinely nice guy, never made you feel bad about the money thing from the first day you roomed together. As vizier you lived at the palace, ate with his family, played with his children, showed everybody magic tricks, and told stories from your early life, before the days of jewelry and fancy hats.
You pawned your sceptre of office for enough money to book passage out of the kingdom. No more dining on pheasant, no more carpets, no more starlit desert nights. You never wanted to see that place again. There are other lands, other kingdoms. You walked north until no one had heard of your crimes. You'll go as far as your movement points will take you.
. . .
You rode on barges, slept out on deck under the stars, bargained with men in their own tongues. At first your academic diction marked you as a stranger, but gradually you picked up their vernacular rhythms, dropped the subject and your fancy tenses. You crossed the continent's central desert in the company of a caravan, entertained their children with fire tricks from a first year alchemy class you dug out of your memory. In return, a wiry, tan man taught you the basics of fighting with a short blade by grabbing your arms and yanking them into position. You left the caravan at the foot of a mountain range, and you kept going.
. . .
In the mountains you learned another form of magic, whatever's fast and cheap. There was no time for a three-hour warm-up, and there was no place to get powdered peacock bone; there was only time to shout or make a rapid sketch in the dirt. You lay low by the fire, looking up at the stars, and your days at the academy, your days in the king's court, all of it seemed far off, which is what you'd like, really. Farther, if you could possibly get it.
On the far side of the mountain, the country was different. You met your first dwarves. They'd heard of your country, but maybe one in four could name the king, and none would speak the language.
You moved north through the forest lands while the long summer lasted, following the track of a lazy green river. At night you heard bats hunting in the warm air. You crossed a low stone wall that once marked the border of a farm. No one had lived there for centuries. You had never felt that alone, or that free. After weeks of travel you reached the northern ocean, and walked east.
…
In the darkness you thought again about who you were before this, a life you remember less and less well, but what you remember doesn't flatter you. You remembered lying to people about what you were thinking and feeling. You remembered constantly thinking about how unhappy you were. It was very different from the way you are now, before you wore a dagger and slept in forests.
You fell asleep trying to count days, trying to guess how many weeks are left before the snow will cut off the mountain passes. In the morning you learned how to negotiate with a sailor. You're not sure if you're here for forgetfulness or redemption, but you notice they're not calling you a vizier anymore. They call you a wizard.