Friday Fiction: Thrand (Part 19, Notes and Outline)

Kettle comes in from a day off, disheveled, bruised, black-eyed but grinning. It seems that some of the other pages and apprentices have taken exception to the young Morg’s position under Thrand. Apprentice to the Lord High Justice is a coveted position, and it doesn’t seem right to them that someone with no education or breeding or experience should suddenly just pop into it. Some of their masters, Judges of high degree, have grumbled at it as well, and the impression they’ve given is that they will support any ‘hazing’ their servants might initiate.

But Kettle’s street training has allowed the young Morg to set several bigger, older apprentices on their backs, and earn a certain new degree of fear and respect, even more than is due from being Thrand’s protégé. The old Morg chuckles at it, his mood momentarily lightened. The pressing matter of who shall be King is still weighing heavily on his mind.

The problem is driving him to distraction. He goes over the conundrum with Kettle, more to think out loud than anything. Things are complicated by his personal ambition, to really come to a good decision, something that people will point to and say he was truly wise to do that. His legacy, his reputation, is riding on things as well. Although there are plenty of candidates that would make … adequate rulers, it would be a letdown after a couple of heroic monarchs (and Thron is certainly seen as a heroic King now, if lesser than Taryn) to descend into mere bureaucracy. Every qualification, every political criterion must be weighed.

Kettle questions whether he’s just making it too complicated. Set aside noble house or private talents. Perhaps he should ask what sort of person he wants to be King? Think about all the candidates. Who would he want to have dinner with? Who would he trust to stand by his side in a fight? Who would he loan money to? Who would he like his son to be like? Who would listen to good advice?

The young Morg brightens. Come to that, why doesn’t Thrand just make himself King? He’s still got a few good years yet. Thrand barks bleakly at the idea.

That would not only be against the Lore, he explains, it would be against the Law. And both can be very stubborn masters. Every Morg knows in his bones that self-proclaimed rulers are bad news, and the Law, while elements of it can be amended, has a few iron precepts at its core, and that’s one of them.

And I can’t make you King, either, he adds humorously. You’re not old enough. A Morg must be at least fifty. Though you seem, in many ways, to be wise enough. You’ve certainly given me something to think about. Now go clean up and put something on that eye.

Notes

This little section is sort of an insight into my writing process. I know what has to happen, but not always how. I make an outline of the story as foreseen, and let details emerge as I think about it. Bits and pieces may be be fairly close to the actual writing, when I flesh it out and make 'blocking' as it were. That last speech of Thrand's, for instance, may be used almost verbatim in the actual draft. In the meantime I have something to work with and from. Morgs, being longer lived than humans at a 250 year average, have their own standards of when one is mature. Fifty would be their equivalent of twenty-one, or near enough.