• They said you could never escape Damir Han Q'orzyu. It was the Fraternity's highest security prison, on a cliff-ringed island in the Sea of Bright Promise, which would later be called the of Sea of Despair. Past the ring of cliffs the prison complex itself rose, barbed wire and steel, and in the moat surrounding it ran not water but acid. Once a month the entrance gates opened, for five minutes, a changing of the guard. They opened into the hallway of the second gates, and only once the entrance gates had been closed and welded shut would the secondary gates open. The same process repeated itself with the tertiary gates.

    Aside from these three gates, there was no entrance or exit out of Damir Han Q'orzyu at all. There were no windows. What little light there was came from fluorescent moss. The air was stale and oxygen-poor.

    Prisoner's roll call occured twice a day, before each meal. If there were any irregularities the entire complex would be searched, with huge sweeping searchlights. Usually it was discovered that the missing prisoner had committed suicide. This was against the regulations, and so all the other inmates would be punished.
    They said you could never escape Damir Han Q'orzyu.

    But my father did.

    ---

    My father only spoke sparingly about the escape. It had been a joint effort-- himself and two friends. He never told us what happened to the friends-- it did not need to be told. How he got past the great gates he never explained in detail.

    After escaping from the complex itself he had hidden himself in the cliffs. There was no food-- he drank dew, and waited, and starved. Somehow he got to the shoreline-- perhaps he threw himself from a cliff. Somehow he crossed the sea.

    When he arrived at the shores Bright Promise Beach, he was barely conscious-- how he was alive at all was a sheer miracle. He curled up in the sand and could not cry. When he felt a shadow fall on him he knew it was a Fraternity office and he knew he would be killed and he did not care and he simply wished to be dead.

    But it was a farmer. And it was not any farmer. It was a farmer whose brother was Carmleis Dimak.

    And so Carmleis and my father met and my father was not killed and my father lived his live fighting for Bright Promise.

    ---
    The cells in Damir Han Q'orzyu were designed with ceilings lower than the height of an average man. My father had been taller than average height and so he suffered always from back pain. He suffered also from chronic bone problems-- malnutrition had taken his toll. He suffered from nightmares most of all.

    The ceilings in Damir Han Q'orzyu had made him stoop, also. But every day he fought that stoop, pressing himself against the wall, willing himself to stand straight, stand straight.

    He wanted to be proud and tall when he killed the Beloved Guide. He told us this very often. He wanted to look down at the Beloved Father (who was very short), he wanted to spit on him before he killed him.

    When we would slouch, at the table, he would rap us on the shoulders and tell us to stand tall and be proud. And then he would say how he deliberated for months, how he should kill the Beloved Guide. Whether he should break his fingers, one by one, like the guard in C-Block did to the women who did not fill their quota. Maybe he would suffocate him, almost to death, and stop right before the Beloved Guide passed out and let him catch half a breath of air and then punch him, viciously, in the gut, so that he would expel out any precious air and be left breathless, and do this again and again and only then break the Beloved Guide's neck. Something slow, he wanted the death to be. He would lie awake racked with pain and distract himself, comfort himself, with the image of the Beloved Guide, writhing at his feet.

    In the end he shot the Beloved Guide with a single bullet, to the temple, through the brain. It was a very short death.

    ---

    My father did not speak very much about Damir Han Q'orzyu but he spoke a lot about the Revolution. He was very weak and sickly when he escaped and he was ready to die. He was ready to die but Carmleis Dimak did not let him, because Carmleis thought that my father was important. My father was too weak to fight but he could be a symbol and also he was very good at speaking. So my father fought with words and they fought with everything else.

    They fought with everything they had. So did my father. It consumed him like a flame. They all fought, but it wasn't enough.

    Until it was. Until the Amin Kai switched sides, until the Serisin shipments stopped coming. The Great Panic came. So did the Revolutionaries.

    I used to wish my father would tell me more stories about the last battle. The one we all learned about. When the Heroes' Army defeated the evil Fraternity at last. I used to wish that, when I was very small and didn't understand the world yet.

    ---

    My father gave the Revolution everything he had, his broken body, his broken voice, his broken soul.

    He was-- He was-- a free man. He would wake screaming choking on the sheets. He was free.

    The Revolution ended. People married. So did my father. He kept the window open at night when he slept.

    They wrote pamphlets and flurried them from the skies. Sometimes there were pictures of my father in them. My father was a war hero. My father had lifted the hearts of so many. And he had done the impossible. He had escaped. He was free.

    He used to tell us that. We were free. He never smiled. Some old injury had injured the muscles of his face. I don't know if he could have smiled even if he hadn't been injured, though. There is only so much you can run from.

    They said you could never escape Damir Han Q'orzyu. My father never did.