After several centuries of life, it is my firm conviction that a man is the culmination of his acts. Accordingly, I will begin this tale not while he was the mere victim of those with power, but upon the night he stepped out from my tutelage. Across the stage from him, another youth out from the protection of his father and bloodied for it. One from the conquering land of Vassermark, the other betrayed and left for dead by them. The young Medorosa Canta clawed his way back from the jaws of death and brought a declaration of war with him. In so doing, he tied their fates together, inextricably pulling them towards an embrace of steel.

When the first rumors of Medorosa Canta’s intent began to circulate, my pupil was but the smallest man at the table and too easily overlooked. The whispers of betrayal and hatred spread like lit kindling, working to catch the logs of a fire. I had prepared for the conflagration for months, and yet, in the hours before the event, we could do nothing but wait.

My student, young as he was, struck out to the taverns while he still could. For him, alcohol retained a seductive allure and façade of maturity. More importantly, there were men to gamble with, men whose money was easy to win. The bet he won earned him more than money.

He won a heart.

A great many things can come together within the fire-licked mud walls of a tavern. Exhaustion and frustration is loosened and released by the flow of drinks. Very terrible things were loosened that night.

Arguments over the Canta boy flared up around him, bringing the drunkards of Puerto Faro to the brink. Sailors no more, those men had crashed upon the rocks of that rotten port and never escaped. Drifters, vagabonds, deserters, and rogues from all over the world clung to that Giordanan city till the sun cooked their skin like a brand. No decent captain would ever take them aboard. That city trapped them at the edge of the desert as surely as an island in the sea.

“I knew we should never have trusted the Vassish.” The man was as thick as an ox and his purse was as thin as his temper. Rather than linger upon how much of his coin sat inside my pupil’s pocket, he pressed the malcontent of the day. “I could wipe my ass with their noble honor. They left Canta’s crew to die!”

The bookie leaned in to meet him. Years of knife-fighting had given the tavern bookie an appearance much like a piece of pottery smashed on the ground and put back together. “Stop complaining just because you lost a ship bet. You’re gripping your coins like a peddler now. Buy yourself a drink, why don’t you?” He wouldn’t have lasted long as a bookie if his tongue wasn’t as useful as his knife. Ship bets were a black thing for wishing death upon the free men who passed in and out of the city and left the locals behind. A black-hearted indulgence for sullen men to push coins from one hand to the next while sneering at the visitors.

“Forget the ship bet!” the large man bellowed, hammering his fist on the table. Everyone else had to snatch up their mugs. The ale’s vile taste deserved no such protection, but the dry heat of Giordana demanded something to soothe the throat. “Obviously I want my money back, but I had friends with Canta’s crew! Those Vassish bastards abandoned them.”

“So Medorosa says,” my pupil said. He alone kept his elbows off the table, keeping his face out of the argument. His ears were engaged with the men, but his eyes sat upon the serving girl and to the fiery haired songstress dancing near the hearth.

“I’d trust the Canta boy over the Vassish any day,” said the old sailor beside my pupil. It seemed to surprise most people that he in fact did have a mouth beneath his solemn white whiskers. “But, he’s damned young to have sworn a vendetta. His father should have taught him better restraint.”

“It’s about honor, you old barnacle!” the large man said. People at adjacent tables murmured agreement at that. “It was his people that were killed. It’s the good men of Tavina that have their heads on spikes, never to know peace in the next life.”

“I wasn’t aware Vassish blood would fix that,” my pupil said. This was an error born of his wandering eyes. He had misjudged the table and should have kept his mouth shut. All turned on him as he sat there alone.

“Who exactly are you, anyways?” the large man asked, setting his arm in front of himself. Etched into his skin was the crest of the merchant family that had openly taken in Medorosa Canta, the Medini’s.

“Me? I’m nobody. I’m just waiting to get my pay,” he said, leaning back into the table and meeting the large man’s gaze for a moment. When he saw the flicker of confusion, he looked to the back corner of the tavern, to where the bookie’s backer sat. The old merchant who owned the establishment had been watching and listening, and in turn he looked at the bookie.

“Ah, right. About that,” the bookie said, smiling and holding up a finger as he tried to think up his lie.

The eyes that had been fixing my pupil to his seat did the same to the bookie. “What’s this about then? I wasn’t aware anyone had arrived today,” one of the other men at the table asked.

My pupil smirked. “I bet on Medorosa.”

“But that pay was settled two days ago when the big fleet fled west. Canta’s ship never made it on time!” the man said.

The burn in the bookie’s cheeks set in like a teenager courting a girl for the first time. “Well he didn’t quite bet on that.”

“He bet my brother survived,” the songstress said as she stepped up behind my pupil and planted her hands on his shoulders. “I was here. The day that Vassish noble said my brother had been killed by the cannibals. He came in and put a bet down that he hadn’t!”

The backer sent one of his personal thugs over to the table, a giant-marked brute that had to stoop his head lest he bump the rafters. Sadly, I never got the chance to inspect just what form his stigmata had taken to gift him such an imposing frame, but he knew how to put it to good use. “What were the odds?” he asked, standing directly behind the bookie.

My pupil shrugged and turned up his hands. “Twenty to one that he would arrive within the week.”

“And how much did you bet?” the thug asked, squeezing the bookie’s shoulder.

In those days, my pupil was still too young to keep the smile off his face. “One hundred talons.”

The backer nearly had a fit at that. He grabbed at the table with withered, miserly fingers, which made his opinion on paying out clear to his thug. The indigenous scoundrels of Puerto Faro knew the best ways to fleece sailors of all they’re worth, but soldiers had stubbornly resisted. After all their efforts, only a few thousand talons had made it from the pockets of the Vassish and into the pockets of the locals. Almost all of that had come directly from the young and stupid Lucius von Solhart; the commander of the garrison.

Two thousand talons were due into the waiting hands of my student; a boy hailing from the lands of Vassermark. It doesn’t take my wealth of knowledge to see how that would go over.

“Why don’t you come to the backroom,” the thug said. “We can’t pay you that much gold out here.”

“Sounds good to me,” my pupil said, and rose from his chair. He followed the thug, eager to get away from the malcontents, from those ready to throw their weight behind Medorosa’s vendetta.

The singer girl tried to stop him. She tugged on his arm and pulled herself tight against him with a smile, and quite unbefitting of her looks, she whispered, “Are you an idiot? They’re going to kill you. You’d be lucky to end up in a slave pit.”

Her soft embrace made his head light and his thoughts fleeting. He had only just had his eighteenth year begin, and she was the jewel of Tavina to the north, plucked from her home by the caravans and so close he could smell her perfume over the pepper-leaf candles and ale. “I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out somehow. Don’t you have another song to perform? You’re… did you say you were Medorosa’s sister?”

“Aisha Canta, at your service! And presently trying to keep you from getting killed,” she said with the smile that had made a dozen coin purses open that night.

My pupil turned and put his hand on her arm. “You should leave the city, or at least go somewhere safe. Go back to Tavina when you can. Things are going to get very bloody here tonight. Your brother brought the fires to Puerto Faro,” he said, and walked out behind the tavern with the thug.

Nights on the Giordanan coast could be quite pleasant, if one didn’t mind the grape-sized flies. The pepper-leaf candles within the nighttime oases of depravity kept them at bay, but the filth of a back alley was rife with them. Fortunately for my pupil, they much preferred the giant. One of the insects made a dive bomb right onto the thug’s neck as soon as he stepped out. He swatted it dead. “You must be a lot dumber than you are lucky,” he said, flicking the insect guts off his hand.

My pupil shrugged and glanced around. Scant few windows cast light across the pallid plaster. The main street would have been open, with rows of shops and cafes almost as enticing as the sequestered brothels. Behind the buildings, there wasn’t even color to the city aside from a few tattered rugs out for cleaning. That, and any blood that would be spilt. “Not even going to make pretenses? I got you good and you know it. It’s just two thousand talons.”

The thug pulled out a blade. “You chose a bad night to be Vassish.”

“You don’t choose your ethnicity, man. Besides, I’m from Jarnmark. Look at you, you don’t even know what Jarnmark is.”

“Does it matter? You’re Vassish. There’s a vendetta against all of you. No one will notice one more dead and that makes us two thousand talons richer. Besides, if I do let you go, someone else will slit your throat anyways. And if I let you run, there’d be rumors. Can’t have that. You know how it is,” the thug said, carefully stepping closer. He had done it before, he knew he was cornering a cagey animal.

Most gamblers trembled in front of him, their knees shook and their eyes darted. Something they did would betray whether they would go left or right. Some went at him. My pupil lunged forward, one hand darting at the thug’s face, fingers extended, and the other closing around the knife hand. Had he been against a normal sized man, he would have gouged their eyes out, but the giant jerked away just as my student’s hand closed around the knife.

The next move would have been obvious, to break the blade free of his grasp and take the advantage. Perfect to win a duel. My student was not in a duel. The giant was the imposing face of the enforcement, but he came with backup. An accomplice lurked atop the roof and put an arrow into my pupil's back, the iron tip plunging through his shirt and past his ribs. It struck him like a planted flag, the banner was the splurt of blood from his lips.

“Oh… shit…” he said, and coughed up blood. Warmth pooled up inside his chest. He toppled and hit the dirt, drooling his life out across the alley.

The thug grumbled and shook his hand out. He sheathed the blade again and left him to die. The thug left him upon the ground, nothing more than one more inglorious grave come the morrow. Hundreds of men answered the call of Medorosa’s vendetta and let their evil loose upon the Vassish garrison. Soldiers who were drunk, who thought they were among local friends or courting local women, came to know knives, clubs, and hatred.

Shouting filled the streets of Puerto Faro, including Aisha’s as she threw herself on the ground next to my pupil and tore his shirt open. “It’s okay, hey stay with me. It’s just an arrow. You’re a man, aren’t you?” she asked as she rolled him onto his side. Blood squirted out of him, splattering her dress and coating her hands as it ran down to the gutters.

“Are they gone?”

“Yes, yes, they’re gone. You’ll be alright.”

“Pull it out. I can’t move my arm,” he ordered.

Aisha had little medical knowledge. She had been raised by a trader, not a doctor, so she complied. She took hold of the stubby shaft and, after my student gritted his teeth, ripped it out of his chest. He grunted, and she quickly started wiping the blood off of him before applying pressure. “You’re going to be alright. I’ll get you to a doctor, okay?”

“I am alright,” my student grunted, pushing himself up to his knees. “Get off of me, will you? You’re ruining your clothes.”

“Are you insane? You’re nearly dead!” she shouted as he spat the blood out of his mouth and wiped his chin off.

“I’m fine, the wound is already closed,” he said, stretching his shoulder out to show her that the skin had sealed up once more. “Stigmata,” he said, tapping the mark across his breast. Dirt and blood marred the divine sigil to the point of illegibility, not that anyone other than a wizard could actually read it regardless. “Forget you saw me. Helping a Vassish man will be nothing but trouble for you. The riot has started.”

She swatted him in the shoulder. Her cheeks darkened. “I was worried about you and you’re fine?”

“For the love of- are you upset that I’m fine? What is wrong with you?”

Before she could retort, a sudden defenestration smashed a man’s body through the awning over the horse water. He didn’t get up. Aisha looked at her bloody hands as my pupil slipped over and stole the dead man’s sword. It was a fine, Vassish infantry blade. “Um, you wouldn’t just abandon me after I tried to save you, would you?”

“You should go in the exact opposite direction as me. I’m going to the garrison.”

“Wait!” she cried out as he peered around the corner. “What’s your name?”

My pupil hesitated at the edge of shadows within the alley. He could hear shouts and fighting, the clash of steel and the cries of death, and one name rose up again and again. From the lips of dozens of men, and soon from dozens more, there was the name of a new army. “Cynizia!”

The girl still stared at him, still expected an answer, but all he could say was, “I don’t have one… yet.”