001. make or break

Eoran Toriet spread himself thin upon the platform of the balcony that hung over the busy avenue, stomach down, sweat beginning to bead upon his brow. Mid-year found the seasonal heat especially intense as various fronts from distant land masses conspired to make the passing days as uncomfortable as possible.

It was, of course, the Ossa that were made to feel the worst of all the wright classes in Port Haven, an inequality whose foundation was equal parts economics and heritage. Due to the high rate of poverty among their population, many Ossans lacked the means to afford a necessity considered a luxury: artificially cooled air. The air conditioners they were able to purchase only exacerbated the situation—the greatest downside to the cycle of creating coolness was that the leftover heat was spat back out into the street hotter than it had originally been taken in. On the other hand, pride made the Ossan people obstinate. 

Rather than seeking refuge, bloodwrights took to their stoops, balconies, and rooftops where they would lounge with feline disinterest, and from coal-dark pavement rose drunken striations of heat the shape of mirages. Eoran watched this natural phenomenon with an unfettered infatuation. He had always heard tales of hapless wayfarers receiving prophetic visions from breaks in the aether and couldn’t help but wonder if the material world was about to impart upon him some great secret.

In a nutshell, this was Eoran’s problem: despite his gregariousness, the fourteen year old boy had little interest for anything that existed outside of the fantastical perspective of his mind’s eye. He spent too much on the affluence of youth and had nothing to show for it aside from his clear conscience and the grey hairs such frivolity gave his immigrant parents.

The weight of adulthood had not yet crushed him but that did not mean it was afraid to threaten as much. Inside, through an open door and past a smattering of furniture, a schoolbook sat open on a low table, pages dutifully attended by a quickly passing breeze. It was a constant source of aggravation for his mother: that her youngest son was happy to let the wind be more well-read than him.

The balcony was adorned in a mess of laundry the Toriet matriarch recently hung, making bespoke drapes from the expert layering of loud and neurotic patterns. A hand stretched up to pull a lace curtain from the pins that held it and the boy quickly arranged it over himself as though it were a ghillie suit expertly tatted by a nana’s needle. From between a pair of sheets blotted with the bright sigils of Ossa, a pair of black eyes spied on the crowded street below. A pair of older men were debating if the merits of house slippers warranted the recent fluctuation in their price. He tilted his head in half-committed consideration, but soon saw a pretty classmate across the way and waved. She waved back.

The echo of the apartment door slamming broke through the groggy haze of the white noise humidity vaguely qualifying as air. Loose hinges always swung that door in anger, always abused the frame it lived in.

“Oi, Eo!”

Kaden Toriet, eldest son of that old family, flung a stack of mail on an already cluttered countertop, bookbag carelessly dropped on the tile. A boy of nineteen, awkward and tall, bookish but with a brusque sort of charm nurtured by the boisterous nature of their homeland, Kaden went searching for his brother on the balcony. Dark hair that their mother swore up and down was too long whipped in the concrete breeze as Kaden, proud and nervous and nauseous, held up a letter with the insignia of the Augustine Institute emblazoned across the front.

“Eo, it’s here.” 

Found, the spy scrambled from his fort, leaving a lump of linen in his absence. His clothes were slathered in dust; gangly knees scuffed and midnight hair awry.

“Finally!” Eoran chimed betwixt the shaking of his shirt and the patting of his shorts. “Are you going to open it? Or wait? Do you think you got in? What if you didn’t? Kaden. How sick do you feel right now?” The inquisitive onslaught was given nary a breath in its delivery. Eoran ducked behind his brother to see if he could decipher anything from the letter against the backdrop of the afternoon.

“Huh, even the paper is intimidating.” It was true—the paper was very nice.

“No more questions. I will fuckin’ puke on you.” If Kaden had felt queasy before, the endless barrage of his youthful interrogation was sure to empty his body of all contents. “Mom wanted me to wait to open it with her—I don’t think I can wait. What if it says no?”

It would break his mother’s heart. This was the ticket out of the slums that the Toriet family had worked so hard for—his mother and father who worked long hours, multiple jobs so he could go to school, study hard. How many nights had he gone sleepless? How long had he attended night schools and exam preparations, paid for with the money he earned in the Llamela with his blood calling?

Kaden had always been the only Ossan in every classroom and library and academic opportunity that Amstedian kids took for granted. He was brilliant—but in the eyes of the majority, he was a sewer rat prodigy amongst average humans. A quaint anomaly, a novel concept, but essentially nothing groundbreaking. Nothing to really take notice of.

Someday, Kaden would make them take notice.

“What if it was all for nothing, Eoran?” Kaden’s hands shook as he took the envelope back from his sibling’s torrential energy. 

“I’m just kidding, Kaden. Come on, stop. It won’t be. Let’s take it to the kettle—we can pry it open, take a peek inside. If it’s good news, we’ll seal it back up and let mom have her victory. If it’s not, then your secret is safe with me. It never came, and we’ll disappear in the dark. Become drifters and never have to deal with the shame of you letting us all down.” Eoran did not know how Kaden felt having him as a brother, but he assumed it was probably pretty miserable. Still, it was easy for the boy to tease because the sentiment’s source originated from a place of unabashed adoration—he had complete faith in his sibling, in the hard work that the older boy put into his studies and the effort expressed to see it through. If, by some cruel turn of fate, the Augustine Institute was not meant to be, then Eoran would give up everything and run away with him just as easily. He was a spectator to the glow of Kaden’s tremendous ambition, always his number one fan.

The boy was already in the kitchen by the time he finished his proposal. Rushing water created a racket as it filled the old oxidized metal of the kettle. Eoran struck a match to light the stove.

“If mom finds out, she’s going to kill us or I’m going to have to raise you to adulthood on the streets and then you definitely won’t get into college.” The older teen, somehow always patient despite the younger boy’s hummingbird energy, was already starting to blow under the edge of the envelope. He teased up a corner for the steam to catch on. “I’d be the worst father.”

Kaden ruffled his brother’s hair as they stood before the stove, watching and waiting for water to boil.

“I want you to try to get into that highschool I went to,” the elder imparted, quiet and serious in the comedown of their jokes. They were just far enough apart that Kaden was ever indulgent of Eoran’s curiosities, his questions, his desire to learn. Even Eo’s direct assault on authority when he couldn’t have his way was encouraged, much to the chagrin of the mother that had to deal with all that disrespect and all that backtalk. “You’re smart, Eo. You just gotta study. Focus. And get mad. That school will piss you off so much, you’ll be getting straight A’s in no time.”

A grumble shook within the confines of Eoran’s throat. Life was not a game and the youngest Toriet felt this truth tear into the security blanket of humors he gathered around himself. In an instant his lanky frame wilted, shoulders slumped, expression drab in the atmospheric shift of their new sobriety.

“Yeah, but I’m not like you, Kaden. I don’t have the stuff you have,” Eoran said in a low voice shared between them only, flustered by uncertainty about himself and his future. “It’s not that I don’t want to do right by our parents, or even that I’m not willing to try, it’s just that…” He paused struggling to find the right word to express his thoughts.

“I’m just terrified. Not even about high school, but Augustine. Like, I know you’re scared to see what’s in that envelope, but you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are. You’re resilient like mom. How can they say no to that? Me, on the other hand, I can’t compare. Most days, I feel like I can see everything except for what’s in front of me. It sucks, but…” Whatever conclusion his adolescent mind had been working toward was forgone.

The words were a flood of sentiment but if there was anyone who Eoran could be honest with, it was his brother.

“Hey, c’mon Eo.” The older boy wrapped an arm around the youth, pulling him from the flood of his thoughts, the riptide of his own self-doubt. “Everyone’s brain is different. Someday you’re gonna look and when everyone sees the thing that’s right in front of them and they can’t take their eyes off it, they’re going to need you to see all the things around it to bring them back to their senses—”

The wind-up whistle of the kettle interrupted Kaden’s words and he swiftly turned the heat off before the upstairs and downstairs families started yelling about the racket, telling their mother they were inconsiderate boys, heating up the building making tea on such a hot day.

“We’re standing upon the precipice of our futures, Kaden,” Eoran said with a mortal severity that clashed with his puerile vigor. “This is make or break for us.”

There was a symbiosis between them that surpassed innate bonds of blood. Kaden’s younger brother may have always lingered in his shadow, but Eoran very much used his sibling as a barometer to gauge the various expectations of him. If Kaden did not make it into the school, then there was certainly no way Eoran would get in. But, if his brother did triumph in the face of Port Haven’s systemically mandated adversity, Eoran would have to start taking things seriously. He felt this possibility to his core, suddenly, as if really experiencing the ineffable weight of a seemingly insuperable trial and their parents pressures to succeed for the very first time.

The boy took a bracing breath. He looked to his brother and asked: “Well…?”

Letting the rising steam creep under the lip of the envelope, that dark eyed boy and his blood like a lure, knuckles close to blistering, pulled the letter free from the envelope.

“Dear Mr. Toriet,” Kaden read, his voice shaking. “Upon reviewing your application for admission to Augustine Institute, the admissions council was torn. It is with rarity that a young wright with utility such as yours finds the tenacity and willpower to pursue a higher calling with The Expressionists, and even rarer for such applications to be submitted with high marks, community service, and letters of recommendation from any of the schools that Augustine typically recruits from.”

Perhaps the hopeful scholar was reading ahead just slightly, his hands beginning to tremble as he paused at the next indent.

“Ugh, I hate these people!” Suspense aggrandized Eoran’s frustration. Left hanging, the boy raised his hands; shook them expectantly in Kaden’s direction. “Kaden! What does that even mean!”

“W-we…” Kaden could barely form the words, the final result of so much effort, so much sacrifice heavy like an executioner’s weight on his chest. He could barely breathe through the clearing of his throat. He applied force to round the depths of his voice around the words. “We’re pleased to inform you of your admission to The Augustine Institute.”

Kaden’s shock was an anchor that rooted him to the stun, agape in silence.

Thrilled, Eoran covered his mouth and screamed victory into the echo chamber of his hands. It was impossible for the older boy to know that the mind of his sibling was already piecing together the attributes of what would grow to be a scheme. It was impossible for the Toriet children to know that this glimpse of success was the beginning of the end.

+++

Later that night, when the hours of the day before and the day to come merged into an epoch of timelessness beneath the darkened sky, Eoran took to the stoop outside of their building. The sound of the neighborhood quelled in the hangover of celebrations lauding Kaden’s achievement and the distant roar of vocal confetti fell scattered between shadowed alleys and the dingy buildings that formed them. The day burned but now its absence ushered reprieve. A breeze made mischief with a plastic bag, sending its possessed form tumbling down the drowsy thoroughfare.

Eoran perched upon the first step of the landing. His squat assumed an anuran form, head low, legs akimbo like some pitiful gargoyle. He followed the bag until it led him to his brother; it passed, but his stare lingered.

“Hey Kaden,” he said after a moment that wasn’t so much thoughtful as it was intrinsically preparatory, “Remember when I was six and dad took me to see Nana Rettka so she could see what my utility was because the blood stuff wasn’t really working, and she said I had the gift of taking? I was thinking…” The pause was ripe with a sedition that was enriched by the punctuation of an erratically flickering street lamp.

Immediately suspicious of his junior’s tone, Kaden Toriet, first generation of his family to attend a college at all nevermind the Augustine Institute, strolled up to the stoop. He stopped in front of the baby gargoyle he called a brother, both hands in his pockets. The teen’s ears were red from a bit of celebratory drink he’d not been able to refuse from Uncle Enji and the three Aunties he called wives from the far end of the block.

Kaden’s gift was his father’s gift and his grandfather’s gift. Utility, as they called it here. The call of the blood, their father would say when they were children. He would always tell them the old tales, the parables that decorated the walls of those now forgotten temples, left in ruin by scavengers and artillery. To call the blood is our family’s birthright, it is how we send our prayers to Varonian. To pull the sacrifice from the body of our enemies, to send the viper like a messenger to Orin so that our bodies do not falter—this is old Varaket.

Their mother, on the other hand, was always of the earth, tempering the fables their father spun with her constant reminders to work hard, to always question. There are no Gods waiting around for your sad snakes to hiss, Kirut, she would say in turn, always hard, ever frugal. It’s been a century since a sacrifice was made and we still die, husband. Your stories, they scare Eo—let them rest, ah.

Kaden couldn’t help but smirk at his brother’s nervous energy, his excitement crackling like the firecrackers still shooting off on the next street over. “What were you thinking, Eoran?”

“So I have pretty much no chance of getting into Augustine without help, right? I’m not talking about the kind of help you got either, where people just give you more homework and books to read.” Schemes were always couched in explanation—that was the crux of the sell. A small finger beckoned the older boy nearer, making the picture the child was presenting complete, a peddler of word-based wares, secrets among the shadows encroaching on their stoop-space that night.

“I need real help. If I can see the work before I have to do it, then maybe I will have a better chance of understanding it. Right? Well, I was thinking you could maybe… switch an eye with me.” It was the most Eoran had ever asked of his brother. He was already beginning to show signs of crumpling under the pressure instilled by the great expectation of their parents. “So that I can learn better.” 

So that he could game the system better.

Kaden almost acted like he didn’t hear the request. His shock at such an idea left him without an expression in the lamplit dark, his long hair like branches of the black barked trees that peppered the Ossan landscape but had difficulty taking root in Amstead’s clayless soil. The teen came to sit next to his younger brother, squinting into the street.

“Have you thought about this? Really, thought about it? If anything ever happens to me, what happens to you?” Kaden shook his head. “We have to talk to Nana if you want to do this. You know I’ll help you in whatever way I’m able, but if mom and dad knew you were putting your gift at risk for a shot at Augustine, if they knew I was letting you, they’d skin me alive.”

“What good is the gift if I can’t use it to help me when I need it the most?” Eoran watched Kaden to see if his reasoning was taking hold. “Of course I’ve thought about it. I’ve been thinking about it this entire time. You think mom and dad value some natural ability over all the risks they take and energy they spend to even just give us this chance of success? I can’t let them down, Kaden. I know it’s cheating, but it’s the only shot I have.” The younger boy rose from his perch, impetuous; ready.

“Besides, if I ever do lose my utility then that’s probably for the best. Then people will think I’m just a foreign piece of trash instead of a bloodwright piece of trash.” The words were blasphemous to the Ossan culture that had raised him. To speak ill of one’s gift, to think of it as something so easily disposable, a thing that one would be better without, was akin to spitting upon the graves of every single ancestor in a line. Eoran was being careless with the double-edged sword life had given him—in Amstead, and its main metropolis Port Haven, the difference between the two classifications ascribed to Ossans were enormous. Foreigners were annoying; bloodwrights were dangerous.

More than anything, Eoran’s safety was paramount. To secure Eoran’s future at Augustine was, to Kaden, something that would ensure future success, future happiness, future pride. Lips pressed together in thought, Kaden’s steepled fingers were a testament to his stance that rose and fell like a sine wave.

Kaden could’ve been their parents in this moment. Told Eoran to keep his eye, to focus up and work hard. He could have told him all the stories their parents told them both before—about hardship, about trouble, about failure, about pain. He could have been responsible, he could have made the choice that was, objectively, better.

But instead, Kaden chose to be the elder brother whose duty was always to protect his younger brother: no matter the cost.

The bloodwright prodigy, heir to the Toriet’s bloodwright burden and their archaic blood God of mercy, closed his eyes and sighed. “What do I need to do?”