Blood, Paint, and Tears
an excerpt

The heavy door could be heard as it opened, then slammed shut again. A tall man, young and strong, with handsome dark hair and brown eyes, rushed down the hallway without pausing to take off his sandals or red cloak. His mouth was curved upward in a smile, but his hurry betrayed his nervousness. He looked back and forth impatiently at the fine paintings on the wall—portraits of apparently important people in the past—as if to hurry through a daily habit of doing so. There were but a few doors in the hallway, and those that were open revealed almost extravagantly spacious rooms behind them. Of expensive objects, there were few, but everything was in its place.
In the hallway ahead, a plump lady wearing a patched dress emerged from a room, and seeing the man coming, shut the door behind her. The man abandoned his glances at the walls and slowed to a stop, his smile breaking into a grin. He scratched his cheek, trying to suppress the undignified smile, but it would not go away.
“What's the news?” He inquired quietly but quickly, his eyes trying to read her answer on her face before she said it.
The lady, her face lined with years of worry, sighed, looked down and smoothed out a wrinkle in her dress, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The man did not move, but leaned forward a little as if he would fall as soon as she replied. Muffled sounds drifted into the hallway from behind the door, but nothing discernable.
“Well,” She began torturingly slowly, “Everything went fine, but she needs to rest.”
“Thank you.” The man stepped forward to open the door, but the lady put her hand forcefully on his arm. The man halted with his hand on the handle of the door, surprised.
“You don't want to know whether it is a son or a daughter?” The lady suddenly removed her hand as if it had been burnt, folded her hands, and looked down at the floor.
“What's wrong?” The man's grin instantly died and he swung open the door to find out for himself. Sobs could be heard from the other side of the room.
“Nothing's wrong, but—“ The lady said after him, her calm voice more insistent.
“Please, sir,” A young woman and an old one who were in the room turned and tried to hamper his progress. “Everything went wonderfully.” “Can I get you anything?” “Please, sir, she needs her rest.”
The man fixed his eyes on the other side of the room, where a woman with blond, messy hair, sat on a bed, smiling down at a bundle wrapped in blankets. The man relaxed a little at the sight of her smile, then calmly ignored the other two women and strode over to the side of the bed.
“I came as soon as I heard.” The man sat down beside her, smiling. She did not answer. “Mirasi?” He reached for the blankets to see the bundle himself. To his surprise, she pulled it away, hugging it to herself.
“Swear.” She looked up at him for the first time, and he realized that she had been crying, not smiling. His own smile vanished.
“Mirasi,” The man held out his hands, asking for the bundle.
“Swear by the gods.” Mirasi took a shaky breath. “Swear by the gods you'll keep her.”
“Mirasi.” The man reached for the bundle again, quickly.
“No!” Mirasi pulled the bundle away again, desperately holding it out of his reach. The bundle began to whimper and fidget. “Swear it!” For a moment, she looked into his searching eyes and his into hers. Then she looked away and set down the bundle down on the bed, out of his reach. “Please.” Mirasi hung her head, closed her eyes and began to cry again.
“Swear by the gods?” The man hesitated. The other women had withdrawn to a corner of the room and now whispered amongst themselves.
Mirasi nodded, choking on sobs, tears streaming down her face.
But instead of promising, the man stood up suddenly and snatched the bundle before Mirasi could reach it with her exhausted arms. Mirasi let out an anguished scream, then sunk to the floor beside the bed, softly crying.
The small bundle kicked and wailed. The man moved a flap of the blanket to reveal the baby's face.
Mirasi looked up at the man, and for a moment everyone was still but the baby.
After an eternity, the man stepped forward numbly, still gazing into the face of the baby, and placed it on the bed.
“Please,” Mirasi screamed, lunged forward, reaching for edge of the man's cloak with the last of her strength, but he swiftly turned and hurried for the door, leaving her to snatch at air.
Again the other women tried to stop him, but this time the man roughly pushed them away, left the room, and dashed down the hall. He opened the door he had come in and slammed it shut. From there he turned to face the street. It was a quiet neighborhood, with well-to-do inhabitants. Even the commoners possessed a slightly unusual amount of wealth in this part of the city. Green cloaks and grey cloaks passed him, but none wore anything so gaudy as his red and deep-blue one.
The man turned right and walked quickly down the street, avoiding people as little as possible.
“Sorry, sir,” “Hey, wha—pardon me, sir,” “Excuse me,” The man paid no heed to the apologies, and continued to bump into shoulders if he deemed the distance around a person too great. He glared at everything and everyone, seeming to condemn them of every horrible crime in the history of mankind. Most looked away when he met their eyes, but he continued to keep his glare until he happened to pass them. The longer he walked, the faster he walked, and with greater strides. Many took a second look at him, the man, cloaked in red and yet fuming down the street in this manner. Perhaps he was looking for a thief.
He bumped into one man so solid and immovable that he himself stumbled, and in response he turned and walked backwards for a few steps to keep a burning eye contact with the other man to accuse him of not yielding.
“Pardon me, s-sir.” The man bowed a little, fearful of the man in the red cloak's irate, flashing eyes.
The man in the red cloak turned around, pulled the hood up over his head, and continued down the street, his expression more deadly and his manner of making his way down the street more disgraceful to his cloak by the minute.
The man reached the marketplace, where he proceeded to knock over a man's wheelbarrow of some strange fruit and force his way through several clusters of chatting people without regard to anything or anyone. Finally, as he neared the edge of the marketplace, a trail of staring and angrily whispering people in his wake, his face knotted up and the man broke into a run, his hood falling back and his red cloak flapping behind him. He choked on his own sobs as he tried to stop them.
The man sprinted into the main plaza, a sight to behold. A marble walkway stretched from one end of the plaza to the marble steps of a building which the plaza seemed to revolve around. The giant, white slabs shone in the sun. The steps of the building consisted of white, almost spotless marble as well, supporting a grand, upside-down-V-shaped archway which may or may not have been made of the same substance all the way through. The building itself was shaped like a round tent with a great, glass ceiling unlike any anywhere else in the world. White marble pillars supposedly supported a good part of the ceiling, although, this being a modern architectural marvel, the massive columns were probably mostly unnecessary. As the man came closer to the building's steps, engravings in the archway became apparent, and the scenes carved into the pillars were recognizable.
The man flew up the stairs and into the open space of the building, paying no attention to the marble statues watching his progress with perfectly still eyes, each possessing a small set of stairs leading up to a platform which the statue was placed on the end of. Men in light blue cloaks and women with dresses fringed in the same color were prevalent here, and those that were not kneeling on a set of stairs or speaking with a commoner who did so stared in shock, wonder, or at least mild curiosity at the man who ran so irreverently across their mighty marble floor.
The man ran around the central fountain and arrived at the bottom of yet another set of stairs, stretching up towards a huge statue of a young woman. The woman stood lightly (at least in pose) on the front of her feet, with most of her weight on one. She held a flower close to her face in one hand and stretched the other towards the platform and stairs at her feet as if to help someone up, if someone would have an arm thirty feet long to take it. She smiled softly, kindly, , tenderly, compassionately down at the platform and stairs, her eyes made of blank white marble like the rest of her. Her hair appeared to be billowing in the wind, other than the fact that it was also stone. Her dress was simple, also flowing with the same grace as her hair, the bottom sculpted blown back in such a way which revealed that she was barefoot.
About thirty people were situated here and there on the steps (although concentrated mostly on the bottom five), each hunched over, some bowing and mumbling and others performing strange motions, occasionally cutting their fingers and hands with knives.
The man in the red cloak, tears now streaming from his red eyes, took the bottom of the stairs two at a time. The others on the stairs around him looked up, watching, mesmerized, as if he would be hit by a lightning bolt from the sky any moment now. The man reached the middle of the stairs and finally his efforts seemed to catch up with him, he stumbled, and collapsed there, on all fours. The mumbling of the others slowed to a stop as even the most fervent were distracted from their tasks. Those on the staircase dared not whisper, but below it and around the fountain the question of what had happened, the word “council,” and the name “Danier Byna” circulated around the room.
“Why?” Danier's raspy scream echoed through the building. He twice pounded his fists uselessly on the staircase, his knuckles almost as white as the rock. “Why?” His shoulders heaved underneath the red cloak, his uneven breathing and occasional involuntary sob heard when the echoes of his voice died away.
The statue smiled down at Danier Byna.