Jameson Janus Hoat was a large child, fat and with a large head. His mother swore to Syroa that her body would never be the same after he left it, and she was right. She had two more children after Janus, and both just sort of fell right out of the opening. As a baby, he was loud, wailing throughout the night and well into the morning. He couldn’t be appeased. Neither breast nor soft foods could stop the wailing, and his father said he was singing the praises of childhood. He wasn’t.
A boy of four or five, Janus loved to fight his older brothers. He hardly ever won, as they were forged in the dirt of the fields, but beaten and bloody, he’d eat his dinner with a smile on his face. It was often the only fond memories he had of his childhood, brawling his brothers in the yard while the corn roasted over the fire. Bloody knuckles and busted lips were his teachers, and he never learned how to read. Just how to fight.
As he grew, so too did his strength. At ten, he could fight most other kids and win, usually without breaking a sweat. And he started to get a taste for corn liquor, which his father distilled. It was strong, and it made his throat burn, but the feeling of release was something he learned to crave. By eleven arcs, he was a run-of-the-mill drunk. He fit right into the family.
It wasn’t until he stole a gittern that he found himself a direction. He was terrible, and mostly just plucked along while he was drunk. He thought it was music. It wasn’t. It was plucking strings never tuned and caterwauling like a woman in childbirth.
For arcs, he played his “music”. And with it came the desire to travel, to be the bard in all the stories. “Janus the Songbird”, or some stupid nickname, that’s what he’d earn. He got a gig on a ship, sailing with some tough old bastards who called themselves the “Skeleton Crew”. It wasn’t as cool as it sounded, Janus remember.
At seventeen arcs, he had achieved his dreams. He was playing bad music for illiterate sailors on a ship called “The Tomcat”. Bachelorhood never seemed so damn sweet. He bedded wenches, drank whisky or gin, and bedded women. Wait. It all ran together, until he became close with another sailor, a nobody named Devlin.
There was no love, but Devlin inspired him. To drink more, to fight more, to be a general rascal more. And in that, there was a kinship born. On the ship, the two were nearly inseparable, if only to challenge one another. Janus would play his music, fast and discordant, and Devlin would scream obscenities into the air. “Art”, they called it.
And the deck of the ship became a fight club, more often than not.
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