April 28, 3904

I fear I am going mad.

I was fortunate enough to steal this scrap of parchment and a dull quill from the Shakir's chambers, but I must take care not to waste it. I can barely see while I write -- I have no candle and I am tilting the page to catch the moonlight coming in through the tiny window. My cell -- I can call it nothing else -- is a cramped room with a cot that is little softer than the floor. I have a single dingy blanket, yet I am fortunate that the season is warm. Initially, I was to share this room with others in my position, but I gather they did not wish to room with a feathered "munafiqun," and so I have my privacy, at least.

My hands hurt. My back hurts. My feet hurt, and my wings are constantly cramped and aching. They have bound them. Each night, just after meal-time, one of the Agni-Haidar releases the bonds so that I can stretch my wings, but that is all. I have not flown for three weeks. I miss the sky -- I can see only a sliver of it from the window. After that moment's respite, the bonds are returned, and my wings resume their aching.

I do not know how long I shall be kept here. Khalid Atar placed me in the "custody" of his Pasha, the Seraskier, and... his halfbreed. My daughter. Her name is Kiera. I have barely seen her since that audience in the throne room, where my shame was revealed. I suspect that she has been avoiding me, and I thank the lares for that small blessing, at least. I do not know what I could say to her. I do not know how I could stand to look at her. I made a mistake twenty-two years ago, and it has come back to haunt me. Every time I see her, I am reminded of that.

There is so much to write that I cannot fathom where to begin. I work, every day, from the earliest hours of dawn until late in the evening -- well after sundown. The work is grueling, but that, I think I could bear. It is the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of these tasks that drives me to the edge of madness. I scrub floors, I clean the stables (avoiding the snapping teeth of those wretched steeds of theirs, more vicious than the most stubborn of griffins), I empty chamberpots, I wash laundry, I polish supperware, I wipe candle-soot from the walls and ceilings (one task where I am allowed some semblance of flight, for it allows me to clean more thoroughly), I sweep, mop, swab, polish, shine, lift, tote, carry, brush, scrub... ah, gods! There is no end to it all! Sometimes I wonder if the Varati are really this obsessed with cleanliness, or if they merely set me to do the same tasks over and over again out of some particularly cruel malevolence. My hands bled for the first week straight, and now they are so blistered that I hardly recognize them anymore.

I was whipped. In my fatigue and clumsiness, I broke a vase that must have had some special value to its owner. I was taken out into the courtyard, my back was stripped bare, and those beasts whipped me. Me! My wings still ache with the sting of it. I tried to be stoic and refrain from crying out -- I was so furious, so incensed at the indignity of it all. The pain was great, yes, but the pain of humiliation greater still. I do not recall if I succeeded in my silence or not -- I was immersed in a haze of fury so palpable that I do not remember much of the incident. Only that I swore it would never happen again.

But this is what comes of hubris, is it not?

I have had time to speculate. These tasks they set me to are so infernally dull that I know I would lose all faculties of reasoning just through the endless repetition of it all -- but I try to keep my mind honed while I work. I do not speak unless addressed, and I try to stay out of the way of the others. Ahh yes, that is another indignity I must suffer -- being stared at like a curiosity piece. Some whisper, some taunt, some threaten, but I attempt to show nothing. After the second week, it was less intense -- perhaps they grew bored of their sport. There are still stares and jeers -- and those damned Agni-Haidar keep plucking my feathers as "trophies" -- but it is better than before. I suppose that, too, is part of my penance.

I have thought about the events of my life, and gradually I have come to suspect that they led me here. That I set out on a path to which there was only one ending. I fully expected to die, that night I stood before the God-King. He all but held my heart in his palm, and the scar of his handprint on my chest is one I will bear forever. But I was presented with a choice. I do not know if it was intended or not. Yet I could have refused. I could have spat in his face -- a final defiance in the name of pride. He would have killed me then -- probably not quickly, and no doubt in some twisted, creatively malicious manner that would have broken my mind well before my body. But I would have been dead, and my pride intact. Perhaps that would have been easier.

But I caved. I agreed to this price -- my sweat, my blood, my suffering -- in exchange for life. Is it so precious to me now? I do not know. I fear I have already lost everything. Elidi... dear gods, Elidi... I bared my soul to her. All of it. She must have read my papers by now -- all those recounts of my past sins. Why didn't I burn them long ago? What is it in me that makes me hold onto darkness so tenaciously, rather than merely surrender to it? I could have been ruthless. I could have performed those deeds without regret and never looked back -- never felt anything. And I think that is where I was headed. I would have lost any trace of a conscience had I burned those pages. I would have lost what little I have left of a soul.

Instead, I gave it to her. What she must think of me now, I cannot guess. In a way, I fear the day I am granted my freedom -- if, indeed, it ever happens -- for then I will have to face her again. Her, my family, my colleagues... with my hypocrisy revealed for all to see. I am a murderer, a mutilator, a deceiver, an adulterer, and this... this is my penance.

But will it be enough?

I cannot answer that question. I do not know if anything will ever be "enough." The voices of my gods faded from my mind a long time ago. They turned their backs on me. It was only this creature... this legend... this "pretender" god of my enemies that ever judged me. What precious irony. I loathe living among these people, serving them in the most menial of fashions, and watching all that I had become and achieved be stripped away, piece by piece. And yet, some part of me revels in it. This will absolve me, I want to believe. I have been judged, this is my punishment, and when it is over, all will be forgiven.

How desperately I want to cling to that notion. But I no longer believe in the gods -- any of them. Perhaps, in the end, I am merely doing this because I am a coward at heart, and I do not want to die.

~ Cassius

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