Thursday 16 July 2009

Cymru - Chapter 18

So, I'm still finding Madog incredibly hard to write, but less so that I was. The lateness of this chapter is entirely his fault, though. The points where he got really really hard to write can be easily spotted; I just inserted some scene-change asterisks and ran away. This is not the most coherent thing I've ever written therefore. Soz.


MADOG

As Calon's hooves landed neatly on the Tregwylan runway carpet Madog tried his hardest not to wince at the formal dress robes of the stable hands who marched confidently forward. They weren't that unusual. With the Archwiliad approaching every single Alpha Wing in the country would be passing through here within a week or so, and Lady Gwenda was certainly a Sovereign who liked to show off how well-kept her City was to foreigners. It wasn't completely atypical for them to be shown a Landing Tower in which the stable hands were in formal dress and - Madog looked closer - even the spokes on the wheelbarrows that mucked out the stalls had been polished until they gleamed. It wasn't a totally abnormal situation. Objectively, Madog knew this.

Subjectively it felt like Lady Gwenda was intentionally aiming it solely at him, and he was already fighting the urge to drop the bitch off the Landing Tower anyway. Madog strongly suspected the need to set a good example to Dylan would be the only thing that kept him from doing so. Dylan so desperately needed a good example. The man was a veritable liability.

A young stable hand with a few missing teeth stepped to Calon's head and smiled genuinely at him, an act that served to calm Madog down considerably. Calon snorted.

"Good afternoon, Leader," she said pleasantly. "Welcome to Tregwylan. My name is Carys; I'll be your stable hand for your stay if it pleases you."

"It does," Madog said, the standard response as automatic as blinking. "Thank you."

They'd somehow managed to remove every single cobweb from the rafters too, Madog noted sourly as he unbuckled the harness straps himself and leapt off. And every hinge in the place seemed to have been oiled. There were probably other details he was missing; he'd have to ask Dylan about it afterwards. Dylan's eye for details was truly formidable. Right now, details would probably depress Madog.

"Stop thinking, boy," Dylan's voice said adruptly into his ear. "It looks painful."

"Is that why you avoid it?" Madog quipped back. "It's actually not, you should try it."

"Oh, Madog," Dylan said expressionlessly, his quick eyes sweeping the stalls around them. "You and your wit. My leathers need rewaxing. Can I go?"

"Really?" They both drew into a corner as the stable hands pulled the merod into stalls around them, Wing Riders stretching and pulling off head gear and chatting away to form a useful cover of noise. Madog dipped his voice slightly lower. "You want to miss Lady Gwenda?"

Dylan glanced at him briefly before his visual attention was predictably swept away by nothing so much as air currents.

"Of course not, you square," he snorted. "But she'll only try to plot at you, not at all of us. I'll be missing Boring Official Stuff, not Interesting Treasonous Stuff."

Well, that was actually a very good point. Madog sighed, gloomily. He really wanted nothing less than to face Lady Gwenda alone.

But...

Dylan wasn't just good at seeing details. His ability to seek out useful information from the gods only knew where was both extraordinary and invaluable, and right now any sort of additional information on Tregwylan, Lady Gwenda or any other aspect of this whole tedious situation would be gratefully received.

"Fine," Madog sighed, putting on an affected air. "Go then. Wax your leathers, which should have been waxed in Aberystwyth. Don't worry, it's only the Archwiliad that's coming up. It's nothing important. We can all take care of it."

"You're a square," Dylan told him, Saluting. "Later."

"Where's Dylan going?" Madog glanced around at the mild voice and found Menna, watching Dylan's swiftly disappearing back as she tied her hair back with a knotted length of string, her beads swinging loose against her chin. "Aren't we meeting Lady Gwenda first?"

"Oh, that was the plan," Madog nodded. "But Dylan needs to re-wax his flying leathers, and I'm only his Wingleader. I have no authority to stop him."

"Wow." Menna looked wistful for a moment. "If I crack the wax off my leathers quickly, can I miss out on the boring political talk too?"

"Certainly not." Madog raised an arm and clicked his fingers above his head, and the rest of the Wing ambled vaguely over. "You have to set a good example, or this Wing will disintegrate around us and we'll all be murdered by Saxons in our beds. And I want to see you look interested," he added sternly. "There will be a test later."

"I make no promises, Leader," Menna said gravely. "Between Saxons and Sovereigns, I know which I'd rather pick."

That was fair. So would Madog.

****

In the end it was a miserable affair. Lord Gwilym had been fun to talk to, friendly and attentive and quite eager to have them all make jokes around the official lines, a bit like Lady Marged but without the added Crazy. Lady Gwenda was dry and snooty, with an unpleasant glint in her narrow eyes and a tone that occasionally bordered on supercillious. Madog opted for as neutral and professional a bearing as he possibly could and allowed the dialogue to trip off his tongue with the ease of long practice. The less he gave her, the less she could ask of him. Or so he hoped.

It didn't help that her hair really grated on Madog's nerves. It was probably just as well that Dylan wasn't present, or he and Menna might well have been fighting to suppress a few sniggers by now. Lady Gwenda appeared to have wanted to become a redhead, but the shade she'd become was 'garish' at best. Idly, Madog wondered how she'd done it. One of the Indo-Greek substances probably; Cymru certainly didn't produce anything up to this task.

"Well," Lady Gwenda purred finally, just as Madog was starting to consider retirement. "I believe that about wraps it up. Leader?"

"That's everything thank you, Sovereign," Madog returned politely as they all stood and did the bowing thing. Some days he really hated the bowing thing. Lady Gwenda smiled, a sharp smile that didn't really reach her eyes.

"Not at all," she returned. "Oh; although, I have a letter I'd like you to take to Lord Iestyn, if you could?" She gestured to an aid, who vanished. "It'll be brought here now. There's no need to keep your Wing, though; I imagine you're all tired."

Well, that was swish. Madog forced a gritty smile and nodded.

"Certainly," he said, and glanced at the others. "Go on. I'll be out in a minute."

They went, very carefully covering their relief by not cheering. Menna gave him an odd look as she passed that Madog couldn't quite decipher, but it was only fleeting; and then they were gone, the door clicking neatly shut behind them and leaving Madog alone with Lady Gwenda. She smiled again, and sat herself carefully back down. She leaned forward too much as she did; Madog was abruptly treated to an eyeful of her withering cleavage that he would have much preferred to have never seen.

"Do sit, Leader," Lady Gwenda said, slightly too sharp to be gracious. "We may as well be comfortable."

While we conspire, Madog thought beligerently, but he said nothing, and sat again. The more taciturn the better, he decided. If she wanted to play games she could bloody well work for it.

"Is this your first time to Tregwylan?" Lady Gwenda asked delicately. She was leaning forward again, the edge of the table carefully pushing up her already-elevated bust. Madog kept his eyes stonily on her face; although, he had to admit, it wasn't much of an improvement. He'd never seen so much make up on a living face before. "How do you like it?"

"I've been before, Sovereign," Madog said non-committally. "It's a beautiful City." Especially when it's been carefully scrubbed within an inch of its life.

"Thank you, Leader," Lady Gwenda all but simpered. Had she just batted her eyelashes at him? Madog wasn't sure. "I'm very proud of it. Archipelagan Cities are delicate things, you know. They aren't like mainland Cities."

She glanced out of the enormous north-facing window at the end of the room, running almost floor-to-ceiling, and Madog followed her gaze. The sea below was a grey, choppy expanse that stretched away, fishing boats bobbing tenaciously on the swirling Archipelagan currents. To the left and ahead of them, looming here and there above the waves stood more Cities, more Archipelago, squat, misshapen towers molded out of stone. To the right stretched the end of the Lleyn Penninsula, reaching its solitary arm out into the water, Aberdaron nestled, just visible, in its palm. From here it was clear that the weather was starting to change, the wind carrying the gulls towards Cymru and clouds just starting to gather away to the north west. Madog wondered if they'd have to stay tonight. He fervently hoped not.

"We have no real resources of our own, you see," Lady Gwenda said quietly, breaking his reverie. Madog looked back at her but her gaze was still lost out of the window, fixed on the gathering tide. "We have our fishing industries, of course, and salt. But no more. All other raw materials we have to import from others. Not that this is always a bad thing."

She smiled back at Madog briefly, that same sharp expression, before looking back to the glass.

"A drought in one place may destroy crops that were needed for sale," she continued. "Mines can be exhausted of ores. Floods can kill whole herds of livestock. A City with only natural resources, you see, will only prosper as long as those resources don't run dry. We don't have that problem. If Aberhonddu can't give us wheat, we can always get it from Bangor. If Glyn Ebwy can no longer produce iron ore we can go to Abertawe. We need only change our supplier."

"I can see the advantage," Madog said blandly. He wished she'd get to the point.

"The trade-off is the cost, of course," Lady Gwenda said thoughtfully. She was absent-mindedly twirling a strand of gaudily red hair around a finger, eyes hard and narrowed. "Which is why we have so many secondary industries. We buy ores, we sell weapons and pans and jewellery. We buy timber, we sell boats and furniture and more weapons. We buy flax, we sell clothes and ropes; we buy animals, and in addition to consuming the meat we make shoes and harnesses and instruments with the leather. These are more stable industries than many of those on the mainland, Leader. This is why we grow rich. But there is one thing that we do rely on, in the same way as you need the sun and the rain to appear in equal measure."

She looked away from the window and met Madog's eye fully, the predatory gaze of a politician, and he was reminded of just how much ruthless ambition Lady Gwenda was made of.

"Trade," Madog said. She nodded, her gaze intense.

"Indeed," she said. "Trade. Without trade, without a market to buy our wares, it doesn't matter how stable our industries are. They become worse than useless in fact; just an extra few hundred mouths to feed on food we don't have. This is why much of Archipelagan politics are based around trade agreements and exchange rates. Do you see?"

"I do, Sovereign," Madog said neutrally. Lady Gwenda didn't even blink. Her eyes bored into his unwaveringly.

"Imagine then, Leader, if you will," Gwenda said carefully, "an Archipelagan City whose economy was... somewhat less affluent than ours. There would be great hardship in a City like that. I imagine that there would even be enough hardship that its Sovereign might try to formulate some sort of plan. One that would ensure that all of the trade links would be open to them, but probably closed to others."

Madog said nothing. Punching Lady Gwenda would solve nothing, he reminded himself. And anyway, it would probably cause a scene.

"But that's merely hypothetical," Lady Gwenda continued, reattaching her creepy smile. "Where were we? Oh yes. Trade is important to us all, whether we're in the Archipelago or on the mainland. I think some Sovereigns understand that better than others."

"You may be right, Sovereign," Madog said, and finally, mercifully, the aide who'd scuttled off to fetch Lady Gwenda's letter opened the door and slipped inside the room with it. Lady Gwenda stood, and Madog followed suit.

"Here we are," Lady Gwenda said smoothly, taking the elegantly sealed parchment and holding it out to Madog. He managed to take it without punching her, and congratulated himself. "Please tell Lord Iestyn that it goes with our full blessing."

"I will Sovereign," Madog said and bowed, forcing his teeth not to grind. "Enjoy the Archwiliad."

He tried not to run as he left.

****

"I think you should calm down," Dylan said indifferently as he picked his way surprisingly fastidiously between the cormorant droppings on the fishing tower steps. Madog glared at his ascending back in front of him and wished fervently that he'd slip.

"I will not calm down," he snapped back. A cormorant squawked in alarm beside him, its neck ring bobbing as it flapped its outstretched wings. Madog gave it a sour look. "She sat there, right in front of my bloody face, and tried to manipulate me into manipulating Lord Iestyn. Me! A Rider! Who in the name of everything holy does she think she is?"

"A Sovereign, you retard," Dylan sniffed. He was still climbing the curving staircase, apparently bent on reaching the top of the tall tower. Madog was quite prepared to bet it was to satisfy his own curiosity. The man was like a kitten. "That's what politicians are meant to do. Just wait until we go to Casnewydd."

"Sovereigns are meant to try to manipulate each other," Madog contradicted harshly. "And other Nobles. And foreign dignitaries, and whoever else may cross their paths. Not Riders. That's the whole point of us. We're above this kind of politics."

"Not always," Dylan muttered. Madog looked up sharply at the back of Dylan's head, silhouetted above him in the dying light through the open tower windows. His hair was as wild as ever, bouncing in a corona of curls and beads around his scalp and toussled into a frenzy by the only mild wind. It gave no clues to that last statement; Madog wondered if he was supposed to have heard.

"Excuse me?" he asked pointedly. Dylan's stride didn't falter on the steps.

"Context, Madog," he said diffidently. "We're usually above this. Not always. Like right now. They have good boats, so why the cormorants?"

"Cormorants are safer in bad weather," Madog shrugged irritably. "Don't change the subject. Why is this happening? Why are we, right now, sneaking around fishing towers and discussing evil plans rather than just arresting everyone and taking them all to the Union?"

They finally reached the top of the stairs and stopped on the small landing, Dylan immediately settling himself on a stack of wooden crates that presumably contained food for the birds or something. Madog paced instead. He was far too angry to sit. Bloody politics.

"Because," Dylan said, giving Madog an unusually focused look, "this level of secrecy is what this situation requires. Stop being a square and think. Right now we have no evidence of anything except a few Caerleuad dissenters; only logic. Which, if I ran everything, would be enough, but sadly I don't. So instead, we have to get to the root of the problem, which we can only do if all of the lame little conspirators don't take their plots underground. Do you see?"

"No." His pacing was becoming almost frenetic he knew; it was a good job the rest of the Wing wasn't here. "Because if this was a genuine conspiracy, we wouldn't already know about it. They wouldn't already have been telling Riders. I only found out about this because it started killing people back home and I confronted Lord Iestyn. Do you see? I had to demand the information, because my Sovereign knows that he'd lose a gods damned kidney the second he tried to start scheming something with me."

The rush of anger was heady, and growing. Madog could feel his hands starting to shake with the tension and adrenaline, and he balled them into fists as he walked. Dylan said nothing. He carried on.

"So how do we know about this?" Madog continued, almost snarling. "Awen knew all about it, apparently because Flyn has been involving her in all of his plans. Apparently she's letting him use her as a messenger in everything. And not only that, she's gone and involved Lord Gwilym, another Sovereign entirely, for no evident reason! How has that happened? How has an Alpha Wingleader become nothing more than a pawn for a Sovereign to use in his political games? When did that become what being a Rider is about? And if that's the example she's setting, is it really any wonder that her Deputy has suddenly gone rogue?"

"You don't seem to realise that being a Rider is about more than you, Madog," Dylan said, his tone brittle, and Madog froze. It was like being savaged by a beloved pet sheep it was so unexpected. "Are you finished bitching? Because if you're ready to engage your brain again, answer me this: if Lord Iestyn genuinely was involved up to his eyelids in this conspiracy, how would you possibly know?"

The silence rang between them as Madog stared, shocked, at his Deputy. For once Dylan was completely still, his gaze solid and unflinching, a stern intensity filling his features that Madog had never seen before. Outside the wind was starting to gather in speed, a soft brushing undercut with the harsh screech of the occasional gull and the muted hiss of the waves lapping at the foot of the tower. The cormorants rustled. The pitch torches spat. The scents of salt and nearing rain mingled with pine resin and rope and animal. The world sat quietly around them, and still Madog stared.

"I wouldn't," he said at last, his voice blank and almost too loud now. Dylan nodded curtly.

"No," he said. "You wouldn't. Because he values both kidneys, and fortunately for us all Lord Iestyn isn't the kind of man to make grand designs on the country anyway. Lucky for us, yes?"

"Dylan - " Madog started, irritated, but apparently he'd really pissed Dylan off. It was fascinating. He'd never managed it before.

"Leader Awen is gifted with being able to see the bigger picture," Dylan said harshly. "She works under the most ruthless and ambitious man in the country, Madog. One who definitely would plan his lame little conspiracies to make his penis seem bigger under her radar if she strutted about outwardly eying up his kidneys. And so she's playing along, and acting like Flyn's messenger, and probably hating every second of it, because she knows that if she doesn't this country could well be headed straight back into round two of the Wars. Could you do that, Madog?"

Could he? There was a question. He wasn't convinced he could.

"No," Dylan sniffed. "I thought not. Because you've got this idealistic idea as to what being a Rider is. You're wrong, Madog. Being a Rider is about being whatever this country needs. There's nothing else."

There was another pause, heavy with the bizarre hostility and Dylan's unwavering, lancing stare, until Madog looked away out of the window. Dylan was right, of course. As much as it galled, he was right. In a perfect world Sovereigns could be instantly stopped by their vigilant Riders as soon as they held their first meeting in their first darkened room; but this wasn't that world. Nothing was that black and white. It was sort of astounding that he'd served so much of his career without realising it, actually; but then again, Dylan had always seemed to know the slightly seedier details of court life. How much had Madog been relying on that? Surely that ought to have been his job, as Wingleader? Possibly it was a minor miracle that it had been Owain who'd snapped rather than Dylan.

"Do I really strut while I eye up people's kidneys?" he asked the window. Dylan snorted, his tone abruptly back to its normal light indifference as though it had never changed.

"All the time, boy," he said. "Makes you look gay."

"I am gay," Madog reminded him, voice pained. "Why must we have this conversation so many times?"

"I'm a slow learner," Dylan shrugged. "Anyway. I come bearing much important information, if you're off your high horse. Or high meraden, I suppose."

"I am," Madog said solemnly. He leaned a shoulder against the stone windowsill and looked back at Dylan, who had resumed his customary spirited study of nothing so much as the brickwork around him. "Pray, continue."

"Trade logs." Dylan grinned. "And shipping manifests. Like she told you in her big elite members-only meeting, the popular fetish here is for secondary and tertiary industries, and their main customers are the Phoenicians."

"No surpirses there," Madog mused. Dylan linked his fingers behind his head - or possibly in his mass of hair - and leaned back casually against the wall.

"Don't interrupt, you cretin," he said irreverently. "What are you, six? No, no surprises there, but this is where a bit of background knowledge is useful. In this case, it's all about understanding which trade ships carry which cargoes where. The Phoenicians use set trade routes, see."

"Don't tell me you know what they are," Madog said disbelievingly. Dylan shrugged, now looking at a hundle of slightly self-conscious looking cormorants.

"I do now," he grinned. "Dispossessed sailors are even better than manifests. Anyway; the main focus of the industrial sector here is metalworking, of all kinds. Jewellery, stuff you put in kitchens to concoct food - "

"It's called 'cooking'," Madog supplied mildly.

"- and weaponry being the main things," Dylan continued, ignoring the interruption. "Now, they only get some of the ores from Cymric mines. The rest is filthy foreign muck. Not like our good stuff we used in my day."

"Faux xenophobia aside?" Madog pressed. Dylan waved a hand lazily.

"Their main customers are Phoenicians, like I say," he said, "but the important things here are who they then sell those things to. And buy the ores from originally. Now, I didn't have time to look beyond the last Half, but almost every ship they've sold to in that time has been listed as being on one of the same two routes."

"How do you know that?" Madog asked, impressed. This was sounding more and more mental by the second.

"Phoenician ships have serial numbers," Dylan shrugged. "It's all about the paperwork for them. We have Saxon troubles, they have pirate troubles. They get around it by a complicated system of paperwork and receipts and serial numbers and something called 'insurance'; it's not really important. Each ship gets listed by name and serial number in each port it arrives in, though, and the serial numbers contain the route numbers."

He should probably hand over Wingleadership to Dylan, Madog decided. Clearly he was better-equipped to being in charge. Apparently Madog was only good for pointing at Saxons and shouting 'Charge!' if the amount of work Dylan had achieved in an hour was anything to go by, and he was fairly certain even Calon could be trained to do that.

"And you know the route numbers," he said faintly. Dylan snorted.

"Of course not, you square," he said derisively. "What am I, Carthiginian? No. The dispossessed sailor knew. And he's a complete loser who's angry at his own government, so he told me."

Madog stared. "You made a Phoenician tell you the secrets of their trade routes?" He was definitely better equipped for leadership. They might as well just lock Dylan in a room with Flyn in that case, apparently everything would be sorted in an hour.

"No," Dylan snorted again. "What am I, divine? I just asked him where the routes go, not how to sail them. And I gave him a beer."

Oh. Well, that was actually sort of reassuring. For a second there, Madog had started to wonder if Dylan could secretly convince rain to fall upwards, which suggested all sorts of things about his heritage that Madog simply wouldn't have guessed, even if Dylan did have crazy hair.

"Go on," Dylan grinned suddenly, his tone the sort someone might use to try to tempt a cat or a stupid child. "Go on. Ask me the big question. You know you want to."

"Where do the ships go?" Madog asked dutifully, manfully resisting the urge to smack Dylan upside the head. Dylan sat up, his eyes alight with the information, and abruptly Madog knew the answer.

"Saxonia," Dylan said, with the air of a druid pulling a coin from behind someone's ear. "That's the previous stop for the ships that bring the ore shipments, almost every time, usually iron and tin. And it's the next stop for the outgoing ships carrying the jewellery and the kitchen stuff and -"

"The weapons," Madog finished quietly. He felt slightly sick, and tried to suppress the feeling of sudden, gnawing horror. "She's found a way around the trade embargo."

"Yes," Dylan nodded. "And it's not accidental. Everyone else in the Archipelago - well, and the mainland - all have signed agreements with the Phoenicians about where certain goods get sold afterwards. I mean, everyone sort of looks the other way like good little politicians about where the resources are sourced, and no one much cares if some Saxon loser dies wearing a Cymric brooch-pin, but weapons have to be signed for and assured for. I managed to get a look at Tregwylan's contract, though. It's differently worded from most. It's got loopholes."

Madog swore viciously. It didn't help. He tried again, but with the same result.

"I want nothing more than to go and arrest her right now," he ground out through gritted teeth. "With a copy of that trade agreement and the manifests and maybe even the weapons designs from here, and then I'll go and pluck one of those swords from a Saxon's cold dead hands and I might just behead her with it."

"I wouldn't," Dylan advised. "She's a small fish, remember? We want the bigger one. Also, we could only get hold of the evidence by making a big noisy fuss, and it might very well disappear then anyway. It would need to be a Rider from Tregwylan."

"Like Aerona," Madog said. The feeling of nausea wasn't abating. How many Cymric people had been killed by weapons from Tregwylan? How many Riders? How many villages burned down and ransacked? And why had no one noticed?

Because, a small voice in his head chimed in, you strut around eyeing up people's kidneys, remember? You see the whole world in black and white. You don't see the bigger picture. You leave that to other people to look at, and sort out, and regulate as best they can. And you're really not the only one.

"Like Aerona," Dylan agreed, snapping Madog back into the present. "She'll probably be able to amass far more than we could anyway."

"I should have seen all of this," Madog said quietly. The rain was moving in now, adding a muted whisper to the sounds around him and intensifying the metallic scent undercut with salt. The natural light from the window had gone grey, leaching all colour from the ocean and the stonework and the grim mountains of the Lleyn. It reflected his mood almost perfectly. "You're right. I think I'm living in this perfect world..."

"Actually, that's important," Dylan interrupted, his voice unusually somber. "You're not thinking again. If every Rider seemed happy to go along with anyone's conspiracies, literally no Sovereigns would ever stop conspiring. They need to be afraid of us. Most Riders need to be like you. Only a few are needed to be like Awen. Can you open wax without cracking it?"

"Can I what?" Madog looked back at Dylan who was standing again and stretching.

"Open wax without cracking it," he repeated. "On a letter. I want to know what Gwenda wants to tell Lord Iestyn."

"I can't, and if you tell me you can I'll cry," Madog said curtly. "To be honest, I'm just going to give it to Lord Iestyn and then badger him to tell me. Easier all round."

"Good idea," Dylan said mildly. "Can we eat now? I'm hungry, and Menna owes me a meddeglyn."

Sometimes, Madog truly envied Dylan's attention span.

7 comments:

Blossom said...

This is great! What are you talking about? I get Madog, I think. Maybe his narrative voice needs to be addressed, because he talks a bit like Awen, but that's really second draft stuff. As a character, I get him, or I think I do. He's an old school hero - black and white morals and straight as an arrow, utterly trustworthy and swarve but in a world where that's not as straight forward as it used to be. He's totally noble, and always fights the good fight, and suddenly he's in a world of grey where his deputy has to explain how Awen is still one of the good guys. He's Jom squared, really!

Love the concept of Dylan as a wheeler-dealer info gatherer! I think possibly it should't come as such a surprise to Madog when he talks so seriously and intelligently though - they've been friends their whole lives, so I think it would be a rare, rather than unheard of, occurrence.

Write more!! :-)

Quoth the Raven said...

Ah, yes. Awen's narrative voice is the one I write most naturally, so when writing Madog - which I still find really hard - it's the one I lapse into. Normally I'd temper that with just yanking in some phrases from their real-life counterparts, but that's stopped being possible in a few cases by now, because these characters are finally becoming different people in my head. Which is a good thing mostly, but it does mean that I can't just raid the Jomtionary like I once would have. Ah, well. I suppose I shall have to actually write properly.

As a character - yes, that's pretty much how I imagine him. I wanted the contrast to be clearer between the three main Rider characters; Aerona is an Intelligencer but not in an active fighting Wing or even a Wingleader, Madog is an Alpha Wingleader and so very high up but not an Intelligencer, and Awen is juggling both. As such, they all have very different outlooks on society and their roles in it. Madog isn't necessarily out of date, therefore; he's more classic, and the majority of Riders in the country do actually think like him. It's only the Intelligencers that see all the shades of grey, like Dylan.

Don't tell Jom he's squared, by the way. He'll thump you. It's a Swansea thing.

Blossom said...

Right, yes, that all more or less comes through, and I think as we see more of their three perspectives on events, it'll become clearer.

What's th deal with Aerona, by the way? She's a member of a Wing, so presumably has a Wing Leader, but also has a lot of time to go swanning about! Is it different because she's a teacher? More independent Wing members?

Quoth the Raven said...

She does have a Wingleader, yes. Her Wing isn't an active fighting Wing, though; each City-state has about five or six active ones, one or two messenger ones and one or two teaching Wings who are busy indoctrinating the next generation of chibi-Riders. Many members of Aerona's Wing - herself included, I suspect - simply lack the ruthless cutting edge needed to butcher anyone looking a bit grumpy by day while blending into the socio-political nuances of courtlife by night. And then there's the torture thing... Overall, she's not cut out for Alpha Wing - or even just active Wing - fun and games.

Her job is a bit like lecturing, therefore. She specifically teaches Woodscraft, the art of not dying in a forest/up a mountain/whatever. If she needs to leave for some reason, someone can cover her. In this case, the darling little children of Aerona's class aren't being taught at the moment on account of them Being Very Excited about nearly dying. She has a few days in hand, therefore.

Steffan said...

Wonderful stuff! Some lovely revelations, and Dylan's evolved well.

I think Lady Gwenda could do with being made more irritating. Her spiel is more tiresome than annoying, and annoying makes for better reading!

Are you still struggling to write Madog? Here's my insight, in case it helps.

What you've basically established is a class system. The Intelligencers being generally middle-class, and pretty comfortable mingling with sovereigns and such, and the fighters are generally working-class, hence Dylan getting information by buying an old sea-dog a pint!

I love Madog's internal dialogue, but I think it could be spiced up by that basic contrast. Where Aerona sees splendour, Madog would see pretension.

Awen's a great central character because she can comfortably exist in either world. She can mingle with the great and the good, and get stuck in with the soldiers. She and Gwilym meet somewhere in the middle, coming from opposite ends, and their dynamic is engaging because they seem to transcend their roles.

This doesn't undermine the other characters. Like Dylan says, most Wingers NEED to be like Madog. And most Intelligencers need to be like Aerona. They're focused and ideal. But Awen is complicated and fascinating, and she's at her best when she surprises you. Whether that's by crossing the boundaries of polite conversation with sovereigns or suddenly being prepared to torture a prisoner, it's impossible to predict quite what she's going to do, and I suspect that's why you find her more interesting to write.

And although I'm not given to wanton plot speculation - ahem - I'd like to go on the record now as saying that I strongly feel the resolution of this story will have to hang on a dilemma for Awen. This story is so much more about character than action that it'll really need meaty character material as it reaches its climax.

Quoth the Raven said...

I'm not really following your class divide theory here - I can't work out which side of it you think Madog and Dylan fall on. Also, you realise that Dylan is also an Intelligencer, yes? I can't work out if you've spotted that or not, but now that I look back Blossom also seems surprised by Dylan's role in this chapter. Dylan was established as an Intelligencer way back when Aerona first met him, though. It's why Awen hesitated to talk about things in front of him and Madog until she saw Dylan's beads, though. And this is why he's pissed off with Madog suddenly; he's defending his own role and himself as much as he is Awen, here.

I am genuinely thrilled by your input on Awen, by the by. That's largely what I was aiming for with her, so I'm very glad it's paying off. And oh, resolution! The resolution is why production has slowed down. I have a few ideas, but I'm not fully decided yet, and now I've reached a point where I need to decide before I can continue. Cheers for your thoughts on that one.

Steffan said...

Oops, yes, I'd forgotten Dylan was an Intelligencer - it's been a while since I read the earlier chapters. That wasn't really clear in this chapter - I think it could've helped to make explicit that that was part of the reason for his outburst. Anyway, scrap any correlation I suggested between fighter/intelligencer and class. I'll try and make myself clearer.

Basically, Madog and Dylan come across as working class because they're more rough and ready than the others, and work best when they're at ground level, investigating the dirty corners. It totally makes sense that Madog's sniffy that Tregwylan's been polished - he knows better than to believe the city always looks like this - and I've already mentioned Dylan's sailor friend.

Basically, these guys' chapters work best when they're in the middle of the community - much like the Watch in Discworld. It's still fun to put them among lords and ladies every now and then (same goes for Vimes!), but they're most satisfying when they're exploring the minutiae of everyday life in this world. We hear a lot about sovereigns elsewhere, and don't see very many ordinary people. That's what I think works about this chapter, and would love to see more of. I realise you've probably changed their role for the novel version, but for me, they work best in this version when they're interacting with the proles.

Glad my input on Awen helped! I'm very resolution-focused when I write, and I realise that some people aren't. I remember Blossom saying once that it hadn't occurred to her that a play she wrote contained a main character until I pointed out who it was. Here, although there's a lot of teambuilding going on, the weight will have to be placed on Awen, as the most interesting and central character, and Gwilym should take a bit since he's got such a different role to the other five.