text: I gritted my teeth and winced as the needle pushed into and pulled out of the skin of my left shoulder. With one final tug, I was done. I looked at my arm in the mirror propped up on the table and smiled. This was my finest piece yet. The tattoo was in a rich black ink; the lines were clean and bold. It depicted a lion, rearing up on its hind legs and roaring. Below the lion was a crest depicting royalty. This was indeed a tattoo worthy of a duke. I stepped back from the mirror so that my whole body was in view and pulled up my pant leg. My eyes traced the tattoos up my leg, across my chest, and came to rest on the new one now on my arm before falling back down and looking at the small markings on my foot. This particular tattoo, though crude and faded, would always be the most important to me. It was my very first. It grounded me, reminded me of my humble beginnings. It was a shipyard slave's tattoo. A mark applied by cruel owners to signify the bearer was nothing more than property, worth less even than the cattle they herded onto and off of the ships. Further up my leg, on my calf, was an eagle. This tattoo belong to a soldier, a man who was still a slave, albeit to a general rather than a cruel shipyard master. A man who had faced the horrors of gory combat and yet had fought bravely to earn his freedom. My second. My forearm bore the image of a whale with two crossed harpoons underneath. The tattoo of a man who had saved to buy his own ship. A man who had clawed his way up in the world and become a successful merchant. My first tattoo that had belonged to a truly free man. On my chest, above my heart was an olive branch. This tattoo had belonged to a politician. A man of the people. A man who had fought bravely against all odds in the parliament to enact laws against cruelty to slaves. A man who truly saw all humans as equals and spread that vision with a passion. Now, I wear the tattoo of a duke. My tattoos tell the story of a man's progress in the world. They tell my story. A story of hope. A story of a small man achieving greatness against all odds. They are my tokens, my reminders. I stared at the body lying on the floor behind me and scoffed. For being a duke, he had gone down without much of a fight at all. His arm glistened bright red in the moonlight where I had peeled the skin containing his tattoo. Looking one final time in the mirror I smiled at my handiwork. My stitches were small, clean... neat. Much neater than my first attempt stitching the slave's tattoo to my foot. As I hopped out the window and ran from the manor I glanced at my bare right shoulder. I heard that the king would be coming into town next month. Yes, this spot deserves the tattoo of a king.