I swapped writing dares/prompts with my brother many moons ago. What I gave him turned into a six-page sci-fi thing. (Neither of us knows how to write something short, apparently.)
Later on, he gave me a dare in the form of a piece of dialogue. I didn’t have time to use it then, but I finally sat down and splattered a scene across the page this week.
As is often the case with writing prompts, the idea ran away in my imagination to happily sequester itself in my brain’s File of Future Novels. As if I didn’t have enough to write already! The Brightest Thread, my four-book fantasy work-in-progress, other ideas that can claim more seniority in my File of Future Novels than this little dare, etc. Anyhow. The first line is my brother’s; the rest is what followed.
“I’m beginning
to think your debts are going to cost you more than your life.”
I paused,
playing card balanced between my index and middle fingers, and stared across
the tunnel at Shin. He stared back, almond eyes burning dark the way they
always did when he tried to sway me. I broke the gaze and laughed long and
loud. The sound rattled down the metal-ribbed tunnel, a hollow noise.
Hollow like me.
“You’re just now
catching on?” I chuckled. “My debts are such that I could not repay them with a
hundred lives.”
Shin folded his
leather-clad arms and raised his chin, as if waiting for me to admit my
foolishness or produce a brilliant plan to correct it.
In contrast, I
slouched lower against the tunnel’s curved wall opposite him, and turned my
attention back to the playing card, a king of spades. It flipped back and forth
crisply between my fingers. For a moment the only sound was the greyish stream
of water running down the middle of the tunnel to some far-off drain.
“Kai, you have
but one life like the rest of us. Or have you forgotten?” Shin’s burning eyes
cracked his calm demeanor like lava welling up through deep crevices to split
the earth. He jabbed a finger in my direction. “And if you don’t do something
to pull that life out of the gutter, you’re going to drown and drag all of us
with you!”
I folded the
card in thirds. “Relax, Shin. You say my debts will cost more than my life, and
I agree.” Quickly, I tore a small section out, then paused to grin wickedly.
“It will cost me the kingdom.”
Shin’s hands
fell to his sides. “You mean to say that after all you’re doing—dishonorably, I
might add!—to reclaim your throne, you’re just going to parcel up the kingdom
to satisfy your debts the minute you take the crown? You’ll gain nothing.”
“That’s exactly
what I’ll do.”
“Thunder smite
you, Kai!” Shin turned away and smacked a fist against the wall. The echoing
sound was denser than my laugh—it rang with substance.
“And you, my
friend, will help me do it.”
Shin cursed.
I stood, brushed
grit off my pants, and walked down the tunnel, leaving the torn card on the
ground.
“Where are you
going?” Shin shouted after me.
I chose not to
answer. He would follow eventually. He would see things my way, and then we
could go about assembling the resources I’d stirred up over the last eight
months. If we moved fast enough, I just might have something to appease the
Guild when they came knocking at my door. If not . . . well, Shin was right.
What I owed was more than I could pay, even if I were to spill every drop of
blood in my veins. Next time the Guild came collecting, I wouldn’t be able to
talk my way out.
Too many
borrowed coins rode on my shoulders, too many favors, too many lives.
I chanced a peek
over my shoulder and smiled. Shin stood in the trickle of water in the middle
of the tunnel. He stood perfectly still, staring at something in his hand—the
card I’d left.
The card with a
torn hole where the king of spade’s face should have been.
I clenched the
ripped out face in my own hand. It was time to take my rightful place. Thunder
smite me if I failed to do so.
Right now, Bryan Davis is holding a campaign to raise the funds needed to create an audiobook of the CotB series. His publisher made audiobooks of the first two series, but decided not to do the same for the third. Audiobooks make stories available to a wider scope of readers–the traveling, the busy, the visually impaired, the bedridden. His novels have changed my life. I want them to change the lives of others as well.
