Living in Fear, Part 1

Fear is such a damn useless emotion. What does it do for you? You cringe in a corner, heart racing, limbs weakened. Every part of your body and mind telling you to escape. But when escape is impossible? When it is the very country, the very world that you live in that threatens? Then it is worse than useless.

It has been ten years since the uprising. I have spent the great majority of that time cloistered away in my country estate. Restless. Sleepless. Jumping at the sound of every horse to ride by, every sound of marching troops. All for fear that I should be the next one on their List.

I have never been that important. I suppose that is the reason why I still live. An assistant to a lesser talent, barely noble-born at all. If not for the riots and the overthrow, I would expect to have spent the rest of my life taking notes and performing nothing of great use until a respectable retirement.

Now? Now my master is rotting in prison or – perhaps more likely – dead. By my good fortune, he was in the city when the riots broke out. He was taken and nobody thought to look to his estates. The New Order seems to trouble itself only with the great cities and the royalty. For now, at least, they have a great many more of the famous talents to drag down and burn at their stakes.

In time, though, their List will run short. To maintain their power, they will need to seek out smaller and smaller remnants of the old order. And then, even nothings such as I will face the mob and the torch.

It is simply a matter of time.