I watched them storm the inner walls of the old city this morning. I saw him lead them, there’s no doubt about it – his mother’s leather-skin people. There’s no mistaking it, he moves like the son of his father. I wonder if they share the same ice-grey eyes. Doubtless I’ll find out soon enough. My time is short.

They’ll put the sword to children. That has been his way. The statues of our heroes, our forebears, our gods – his own too by birthright – they all fall, they all burn. The great library too burns. They crash over us like battering land-waves, will recede high into their mountains after the deluge. That too is his way, this nephew of sorts. They’ll leave nothing to remain but sand. Is this the end of meaning itself?

Oh the library. That hurts me most. More than the children if I’m honest. A child is borne of a mere 9 months of a woman’s labour. How many decades for men to carve out the womb of civilisation? I was schooled in those halls, as were my father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers – and his too, this nephew of mine. Their ghosts will wander ruins now.

I see now of course the fault has been all mine. The fault always lay with me, as it should. A crown ought to lie thorny on the head. But it stings to know I’m the cause of the very sacking I intended to prevent. A tragedy much like those I learned of in the library halls.

His father was an altogether much more reasonable man, though equally dangerous. Of an age with me, learned and courageous, he was an admirable peer and a great friend to me besides, notwithstanding what came to transpire between us. Those ice-grey eyes, honest. Soft. His heart was pure and therein lay his insidious nature. 

He took to wife one of the queer mountain-folk, with their dark dry skin. Her love corrupted his mind and he intended to corrupt our society likewise. I wouldnt stand for it. 

Well the man wouldnt break! Fines and imprisonment meant nothing to him. Torture and destitution only made him grow bolder. How do you stop a great man of misled convictions? I could see nothing in his future but death now, for our greater good. I warned him for the last time on a Tuesday and hung him in the commons square the following Monday. I havent slept a night well since.

I wouldnt kill the boy or his mother. Whether out of weakness or some fool duty to his father, I cant say. But I couldnt kill him when all sense and instinct said I should. I was young then and unwise and the crown was yet to fit me. I could feel its choking thorns scratch for my throat.

To martyr a man you need only kill him. But to martyr his ideas you must tar his reputation and assassinate his character. He’d forced my hand in the matter. On this point I lost no sleep I can assure you. 

The people fell as I knew they would. The juiciest tale always beat out the truth with them. The nobles read the winds and fell fast back in line. The boy I took care of from afar, made sure to school his head with poison of his father.

Where I had miscalculated was that the boy didnt care about character or sullied reputation. He would live up to the image of his father, whatever that was. And the image he had – the image I had carefully, foolishly cultivated in him – was that of a violent brute and agent of destruction. 

Well I stand face-to-face with that image come to life now. My nephew of sorts returns to meet me at last. I watch him as he knocks back a priestess with a monstrous mace and bludgeons her to death. A little young thing she had been.

He does indeed have his father’s ice-grey eyes. But they are not soft and know nothing of honesty. They are cold and gleeful in temperament. They are eyes of my own making and they are to be my reckoning.