It's quiet here. The hedges absorb the sounds coming from outside, protecting the silence of my little plot of land. They isolate me, too, locking me away from other people, protecting them from me.

As if I could ever hurt anyone. But, of course, it's my ideas they fear, my terrible words of freedom and individuality.

I've done nothing they could arrest me for, and I was well-respected, in my day. In the days of the Kings. So they hide me away in here, for my own good, for the good of the people. Food and clothes and anything else I should take it into my senile head to request is delivered by nameless, hostile messengers. I don't try to talk to them, and they don't try to talk to me.

They think I am thus silenced, that by having so little contact with other people I am robbed of influence, my old man's ravings rendered harmless.

They are, of course, wrong. In the first years of my gilded captivity I railed and ranted, tried to escape, tried to sway the messengers to my way of thinking. They guarded me carefully, then. But I've grown old, now, and seem content in my obscurity. So they indulge me. They ignore me. They forget about me in their complacency.

Piece by piece I built my workshop, one innocuous request at a time. Years passed before it was complete. Decades passed before I dared ask that I might be allowed to speak with an old friend, a priest, pious and loyal. They had no need to fear him, he'd never spoken out against them, never even questioned them. He was friends with me out of pity, perhaps, or the hope that he might some day reach me, convert me back to the fold.

They are wrong about him, too. If I but had his skill at artifice when I was younger, I would never have been put into this damnable retreat in the first place. And so, I give him my precious bundles, my life's work, my writings and my Gemswords, and he delivers them to the places they most need to be.

Sometimes, I'm forced to sacrifice a blade or two to the thieves and murderers of the underworld, circulate them normally through the black market, without any care to who my babies are purchased by. It's the only way word will spread. More often, my Gemswords are given to rebels, to hidden and frightened people who want to fight the tyrant but do not know how. And someday, one very special blade will be given to one very special person.