Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Chs. 1 & 2

The First Two Chapters: Letter and Threat

Prince Kudu’Ra, Fieldwork: Spirit (September 23, 2023)

Thanks to

Andrew Robert Colom

for suggesting this, the Substack version of my novel, Rytius Records! The first two, short, chapters—with audio for easy listening!—are free.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank God, Its son Jesus Christ, my mother Saundra Taylor, her sister and my aunt Ama Shambulia, her son and my cousin Sundiata Shambulia, my grandmother Gaynelle Barksdale, her son and my uncle James Brooks, my great-uncle Lionel Taylor, my high-school debate coach Margo Kendrick, my high-school physics teacher Phyllis Catchings, my high-school guidance counselor Mary E. York, and my friends, who know who they are.

I would also like to thank my earthly though not biological father, the dearly departed retired LAPD Detective David Bludso, #14519, R.I.P.; and my likewise dearly departed intellectual father, Loren Goldner, R.I.P.

I would like to thank those who danced prayers for me, and the many others whose names I do not know.

Dedication

This is for my son, Ise Kadiri Scypion Barksdale, future Magister Ludi, the very best of me and his mother, my daily inspiration, and the lovingest person I know.

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1. Letter

Monday, February 4, 2143

Richus,

I make a tower of the errors of their ways to the glower of ours. U must help with records and books and all the truck u can muster. It will be to the greater glory and power of this principalitee and efforts here will be praised and rewarded. We have bilt two storys at the northest tip of Orange Mountain and there will be many more. In glower,

Your Master,

Feelharmonica

New Ark

The above were the contents of the letter delivered to Rytius on the Monday the freezing rains started to swell the Passaic. His ducks were lightly honking, the backyard brook was burbling, and he heard an urgent engine growl and cough from the kitchen where he was stirring groats and browning scrapple for his breakfast, so he dropped the spoon, removed the foods from their fires, and made his way quickly to the den, where he could retrieve the shotgun on the wall and post himself near the window, from which he could view his front porch safely from the side, and there he saw the prince’s postman in face leathers and rabbit collar dismount his motorbike and, wrapped head to toe in wax hides over his denim shirt and trousers, run up on to the porch, drop something into the mail slot, and get just as quick away. He had delivered the letter to the wrong address, because on the envelope there was no address but only a single name, RICHUS, and only a township, EO, and neither the prince nor Ritius nor anyone peered among them concerned themselves with such low details as addresses, and either Richus or Ritius could serve as a proper misspelling of Rytius, if one knew that ys can sound like is, and if one did not know that there were two of them and that they were brothers, and therefore that there must remain some distinction, and therefore that the strongest likeliest distinction between these two most similar names could only be the most striking subtlety.

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2. Threat

He knew three things right away. The first was that the prince’s tower of records had nothing to do with recordkeeping. The second was that the prince’s tower threatened both his livelihood and his reason for being. The third was that he could waste no time redelivering the letter to his brother.

It was after sunrise, but not even halfway to noon. Rytius dressed lightly, throwing his shearling coat over his woolens as though he were going out to feed his ducks, resleeved and pocketed the letter, and stepped out into the drizzly icefall. It would be easy to redeliver the letter. House Coleman was on a short, quiet, dead-end street catercorner one of the largest apartment complexes in Eo, which contained the weightiest concentration of such structures in all of North New Jersey. Once a government-funded apartment project, an assisted-living facility for elders, a home for the afflicted, and then a hospice for the war wounded, it had long since lost all civic charter, and was now among Prince Feelharmonica’s most productive residential properties. Ritius would be collecting rents from all the prince’s apartment homes this week, and he always started here, near Brookside.