Varak Traiker On The Ledge

Ruined.

Utterly ruined. I stand and look over The City and know that it will never, never be for me. All my work, everything is gone. Cast down.

It wasn't for lack of trying that I failed, either. I worked, I squeezed every penny until it bled, I did everything I could.

Hard work counts for nothing, though, when no one buys your wares.

My wife is screeching from the next room, wondering aloud why she married a useless waste of flesh. On the street, I can see the wagon of my creditors, the furniture and art they are loading upon it. My warehouses are lost in the smoke of The City's multitude of chimneys, but I know that they, too, are being emptied.

It is a long way down from here. The wind pulls at my clothes.

Ruined.

Curse you, Jerubel Weyland. Curse you and your monstrous greed that won't let any other man succeed in your shadow. Curse your connections, your hold on the moneylenders and shipyards. For the sake of less than a thousandth of your trading empire, you have destroyed me.

If I cannot pay my debts, I will go to prison. That in itself is no shame - I took the loans knowing I was gambling, and if it were only my life, I would be happy to do what was necessary to even the score.

If I go to prison, though, the annuities I created for my sons will be taken to pay the debt. I cannot make them suffer for my sins. If I am dead, the annuities become wholly theirs. Alive, I ruin my sons. Dead, I give them a chance.

It's funny, this. I have faced the hetman of the Tiger Clan of the northern orc horde - I refused to pay his extortion - and I felt no fear. When a young wyrm attacked my ship, when the decks burned and I had a choice between death by fire and death in the feeding frenzy of the eaters in the water, I was calm. All of the times death came looking for me in my life, I did not blink.

Today, though, I am afraid. I fear for my sons and I fear for myself. All I have to do is step - one step, and I am free of the shame and free of the fear and free of concern for ever and ever - yet I cannot bring myself to do it.

I have no hope - that and my pride were the last things I had, and now the hope is gone. I cannot wait any longer, though. I cannot let this continue, cannot let the world twist the knife in my gut any more. I will not.

All I have to do is step, and then it is over.