Golden Renewal

“Sorry, I can’t sell you mead unless you turn this stone into a bird.”

Duncan frowned at the speckled, egg-shaped rock in the tavernmaster’s hand. “I… don’t understand.”

“It’s Town Law,” replied the tavernmaster.

“That I do understand. Why the stone?”

The tavernmaster held the egg-rock up to his eye. “This,” he said dramatically through his moustache, “Is the egg of the sword-beaked kingbird. When the mother lays at the beginning of winter, she sings and turns the eggs to stone. Keeps them safe from cold and predators. Once spring arrives, the father sings the stones back into eggs and the chicks emerge, breaking the shell with their sharpened beaks.”

“The king draws the sword from the stone,” Duncan mused with a half-grin.

The tavernmaster set the stone egg on the bartop. “The point is, old Town Law states that a person become an adult when they do what the male kingbird does, and only adults can drink. So -” he gestured to the egg – “If you turn that stone into a bird, I can sell you alcohol. If you can’t, best I can do is apple juice.”

Duncan took the stone into his hand. It was heavy. The speckles stood out as a gentle texture. The surface was just the slightest bit warm, though the heat may have come from the tavernmaster’s hand.

He looked around the room, chintzy golden dragons and tassels hung with care above the bar and hearth and windows, missing foil and tails from years of reuse. The place was void of customers save for one half-drunk regular humming to himself by a soft white window.

“Is Town Law the reason your establishment is so empty on Golden Renewal?” Duncan asked.

The tavernmaster crossed his arms and nodded. “Happy new year,” he said, voice dragged low by weight of the tavern’s silence.

Duncan understood. The man’s tone, the cheap decor on its last wings, and the sputtering crackle of a fire perpetually low on fuel told the story of inviolable Town Law threatening to strangle local business with the suffocating chains of baffling tradition. It was a story Duncan had seen in many small towns across the king’s land. Or, rather, towns that stayed small, slowly withering away because no one knew how to update ancient, outdated law magic. Modern cities owed their success to their locations away from old Law.

He turned his focus back to the stone egg. With a flick of his finger, Duncan sent a light antimagic charge into the stone and broke the enchantment. A soft crack; the rock became eggshell, a pale warm grey with rust-coloured spots. Another crack and a sharp, blade-like grey beak pushed aside a shard of former stone.

“Huh,” said the tavernmaster, “That’s not how I’ve ever seen it done, but it meets the requirements.” He reached out both hands, cupped, and accepted the egg from Duncan. “Let me put the chick in the incubator, and when I come back you’ll have your mead.”

A few moments later, Duncan sat in a booth by a window, thick local mead in hand. Outside, the town plaza roiled with a blizzard likely to be winter’s last. He could scarcely see the few townsfolk struggling to set out Renewal fireworks. Unusual for so fierce a snow to blow in on the eve of the new year and the first day of spring, but, well, it happened.

He stared at his mead. It felt unusually thick and heavy, much like the thoughts weighing on Duncan. He put off his decision in favour of grumbling to himself about the new year. Why celebrate with the iconography of the tyrant gold dragon who stole the holiday, centuries after the rebellion that liberated its empire?

Tradition, of course. The comfort of the usual. The same reason for magic-bound Laws that were already quaint a thousand years ago, some entirely nonsensical in modernity yet still fixed and unchanging. And yet people lived in these elderly towns shackled by ancient Law for one simple reason: they always had.

Tradition.

Duncan’s antimagic could dissolve Town Law, but he’d never felt comfortable doing it. Even if disgruntled locals like the tavernmaster would be better off without, it wasn’t Duncan’s place to choose for everyone. Especially not with the attention his recent activities had drawn.

The half-drunk from the other window seat dropped into Duncan’s booth. Some of the man’s mead slopped from his tankard and clung to his long, ragged beard like honey. “You’re the guy,” the man chuckled.

He hid his grimace as best he could. “The guy?” Duncan prompted. Had he been recognized? He glanced to the tavernmaster, who only shook his head and frowned at the local.

“The guy who hatched the sword bird,” laughed the half-drunk local. “Not many can do that anymore.”

Duncan gestured to the man’s tankard. “You did, I see.”

For a brief moment, the winter storm outside seemed to coalesce in the man’s eyes. “A long time ago,” he said. Then he smiled and the storm passed. “Happy Renewal. Cheers.”

Their mugs clunked together, but Duncan did not drink that toast. The other man did, with one eyebrow raised.

“Not a holiday man, are ya?”

“Not particularly. You?”

“Not particl – parcu – not really. Drinking to the end of some old grudges and the last storm of winter.”

“Sure, I can drink to that.”

The mead would have been cloyingly sweet had it not been quite so dense. Almost as though a generous glass of whiskey, a honeycomb, and a whole toasted loaf of dark rye bread had gone into a blender.

“Hunter, next round is on me if you’ll tell me why you don’t like the new year.”

Duncan raised an eyebrow. The man across from him peered through wild, bushy eyebrows. As far as Duncan could tell, the man truly hadn’t recognized him, yet still saw in him the bearing of a hunter. “Oh you know,” Duncan gestured noncommittal, “Traditions for traditions’ sake. Choices with no good answers.”

“Choices?”

“For work.”

“Ah. Of course.” The man nodded as if he understood. “What work?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

A tsk escaped the local’s lips like a rifle’s ricochet. “Tell you what, I’m buying your next drink whether you want to talk or not, but if you don’t I’ll hold it against you. And let me tell you, I keep my grudges. I believe in people getting what’s owed to them.”

From behind the bar, the tavernmaster nodded solemn.

What an odd threat. Duncan felt no menace from the hairy man across the booth, and his instinct was that he’d likely never see this man again. Why would he tell him anything?

“How do you feel about Golden Renewal?” Duncan redirected. “Celebrating the beginning of the dragon’s golden empire when it’s long dead?”

The local shrugged. “Is that really what we’re doing? It’s just decorations. They don’t mean anything.”

They did, though. Duncan refused to argue over it, but if the gold and the dragons strung up around the tavern didn’t mean anything, then why not decorate with something else? Anything else?

“You’re avoiding my question. What is it you do?”

Duncan sighed. “I’m… you could call it self-employed. People are noticing what I do, and some of them want to… join my company. Do what I do. I wouldn’t mind the help if I thought they could handle it, but what I do is very dangerous.”

“That’s very vague. What is it?”

“That’s not important.”

“I think it is. Context changes a lot. If you -“

The tavern door burst open. Not blown in by the snowstorm, but shoved hard by a bundled-up figure in a military flight jacket. “Duncan MacReady?” she called. Once she’d extracted herself from her tightly-wrapped scarf and hat, it didn’t take long for her to spot him at the only occupied table.

Recognition dawned in the local’s eyes and Duncan suppressed a sigh. “MacReady. That’s why you don’t like Renewal,” said the guy. “It’s the anniversary of the golden empire your family killed.”

“I am not my family,” Duncan hissed. A dozen more possible responses battled in Duncan’s head, ranging from fiery to exasperated. None of them had time to emerge victorious. The young woman who’d just arrived dropped into the booth next to the local.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “For a well-known monster hunter, you’re a hard man to find.”

She was familiar. Dark eyes, dark hair braided with feathers, the flight jacket… “Frej Arnesdotr, right?” Duncan asked, surprised. “I hunted the fire-eater bird for your sister Rejka?”

“That’s right,” she nodded. She held a hand out to the local. “Sorry to interrupt. Frej. You are?”

“Rotonako,” replied the local. He didn’t look at Frej. He stared hard at Duncan.

She turned her attention back to Duncan. “You don’t like Renewal?”

“It’s nothing but an old tradition maintained for the sake of continuity after -” He cut himself off, squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed his irritation by its tail to prevent it from running away with him. “Doesn’t matter. Why have you been looking for me?”

“I passed qualifications.” She pointed to the patch on her shoulder – no longer a trainee’s insignia, but a genuine military rank. “I’m a scout pilot now. I could be a lot of help in tracking.”

Duncan groaned and dropped his head into his hands. Another one. Another fool with gold in their eyes thinking only of the glory and righteousness of his hunt, not the risks or realities of murder as career.

“You remember what happened to your sister, don’t you?” he spat at her.

Frej leaned forward, her dark eyes now smoldering. “Of course I do. That’s why I’m here.”

Duncan pulled back from her, ran a hand through his hair. He felt the weight of his guns as if they were here. They weren’t – he’d wanted to get away from all that for a night.

Months earlier, in a small town he’d been passing through, Rejka Arnesdotr begged Duncan to hunt a monster that killed her son’s familiar. He’d dragged his feet, his path fogged by hate for the hunts his father had forced him into when he was young. As a result of his indecision, the fire-eater drained Rejka’s forge-magic, nearly killing her. Only afterward did Duncan truly hunt the outsized bird.

He jabbed an accusing finger at Frej. “You only want this because you don’t get that if I’d taken the job seriously, your sister would still have her forge-magic.”

Frej crossed her arms. “I want this because the same thing would have happened to my nephew if you hadn’t stopped the fire-eater.”

Duncan bit his tongue and seethed.

Rotonako slurped his mead, eyes wide and darting back and forth. “This is your work decision? Fight monsters by yourself or let her help?” he asked, incredulous.

Duncan nodded. He leaned back and crossed his arms, mirroring Frej, though he didn’t feel he looked as stormy as she.

“Why are those the only options?”

Duncan turned his frown on Rotonako.

The scruffy local shrugged. “I mean. She’s in the Aulonian military. She chose that. Is it the general’s fault if an enemy shoots down her plane?”

How dare he make sense, Duncan thought with a deep scowl. And how dare Frej look so smug about it. “How is this any of your business?” Duncan hissed at Rotonako.

The local held up his hands. “Just saying what I’m thinking. What if she’s right? What if you are worth following? It’s tradition to be honest on Renewal eve.”

Was that sarcasm on Rotonako’s tongue? “Tradition,” Duncan growled. “You’re suggesting I take command of all these people who think they want to do what I do. What if I my choice, my command, gets them -” He cut himself off. No. That argument was too easy.

Duncan pointed out the window at the town plaza, too hard, bent his finger on the glass with a thunk. “What if I decided to wipe out your Town Law? End all your tradition?”

Both Rotonako and Frej were shocked to silence. The tavernmaster perked up.

“I could do it,” Duncan continued. “The same way I hatched the egg. I can’t modify the Law magic, but I can get rid of it completely.”

“I trust your judgment,” Frej whispered through hair askew.

It was Duncan’s turn to goggle at her. “You barely know me. Why would you do that?”

Frej’s lips moved as though trying to catch words from smoky, stale air. “I feel like I can,” was all she managed.

Duncan stared at her, wondered how she could trust his judgment more than he did. Without a word, he stood, buttoned up his long blue coat, and stalked out into the storm. With one glance backward, he saw Frej staring out the window behind him. Rotonako was gone.

The storm was fierce. Snow forced its way under his collar, down his neck and back. Duncan shivered, pulled his coat tighter. Swirling gusts crusted on his eyelashes; drifts dragged at his ankles.

He could do so much more with eyes in the sky. With all the unique skills offered to him these past few months.

The storm needling at his exposed skin felt like the veiled pins under his relatives’ tongues. Duncan had always been the dull egg of the modern MacReady clan. Descended from rebels fighting for progress, the MacReadys of today were satisfied with mere incremental improvements to the status quo. The king and queen in particular were encrusted by the rigid, calcified armour of tradition.

Duncan tripped over something hard – a firework box, abandoned in the whiteout. He slipped on snow-slick flagstone, failed to catch himself, and scraped his hand and knee on a stone that loomed from the white with jagged, iced edges.

The Town Law stone. Etched with ancient script, ancient, dictating what was and was not permitted here. The tavernmaster’s bane. Illegible words in a tongue known only by scholars, slowly fading into monotony as chaotic snowflakes clumped bit by random bit into the corners and edges.

Duncan hauled himself back up by the edges of the Law stone and stared, heedless of the blizzard. It wouldn’t be long before the carved words disappeared under a blank canvas of white.

It was tradition to be honest on Renewal eve. If Duncan was honest with himself… truly honest… he did believe his work was right. Worth doing. Maybe even worth following. That his family’s inaction was stagnation requiring a churn, a new current.

Duncan concentrated his antimagic power in both palms and channeled it into his palms, building to direct toward the Town Law.

Tradition. No more.

“What are you doing?”

Duncan snapped his head to the side, instinctively reached for the revolver that wasn’t on his hip. He could scarce see through driving snow and wind and held a hand up.

Rotonako stood next to Duncan, his approach covered by the storm. “You said you weren’t your ancestors,” Rotonako growled, “But here you are, about to decide this town’s fate without consulting us. Just like they did.”

“They,” Duncan snarled back, “removed a tyrant from power and freed the people of Eramoc.”

Rotonako stepped closer. “Tyrant? The history books, even the ones written by your family, talk about how everyone had all they needed under the Emperor. Food. Shelter. Work. Safety.”

“Everything except freedom.”

“What good was freedom after MacReady and Ravenholm killed the dragon? What good was freedom to the half of people who starved and the other half who went to war? My family was wealthy under the dragon emperor. Half of them died and half of them fled. Now most of us are just… here.”

Rotonako held his arms out, gestured around the plaza. Duncan could see only the haze of a few lights through the blizzard, but he took Rotonako’s meaning. This was a small place, a backwater in the king’s land on an old trade route that no longer saw trade, under royal protection by law but not in practice.

What could Duncan say to such a man? One who held a generational grudge of personal fallout, who did not care for the overall advancement of society when it did not benefit him? This was not Duncan’s first time speaking with a man who saw the dark times as unnecessary failures of foresight on the part of the rebels against the Golden Emperor, and he had not found any method of changing their views.

Still Duncan held one hand by his eyes. It was falling numb in the wind, crusted with snowflakes fusing to ice. “As I said. I’m not my ancestors.”

“No,” agreed Rotonako, “But I’m very good at holding grudges.”

Duncan stared at him in silence. He brushed snow from his beard, from the tip of his numbed nose. “Would you still hold a grudge if I offered you a job?”

No response but the wind.

“I can’t pay. It won’t be safe. But… earlier, you suggested the possibility that Frej could be right for wanting to follow me. Why?”

Rotonako stared, eyes dark and unblinking. Then he shrugged. “She seemed like a smart, capable woman. And she thought so. You said she’s not the only one. They can’t all be morons. Maybe you do know what you’re doing.”

Duncan managed half a smile. “And you?”

Rotonako shrugged again.

Slow and shivering, Duncan extended his hands back toward the stone where lived the Town Law. He looked to Rotonako, the question in his eyes.

Rotonako hesitated for a long moment, long enough Duncan thought he may have frozen. Then, finally, once more, he shrugged. “Your call.”

The church bell chimed, muffled soft by falling snow. Perhaps it was midnight. Perhaps it was the wind.

Either way, this new year indeed brought a renewal for Duncan MacReady. And for his scout pilot Frej Arnesdotr. And for Rotonako, whatever he would be.