Beyond Oblivion

by Daryl Banner

  No deaths. That was Aphne and Forge’s first rule to one another. “We will set a new precedent here,” Aphne had ordered, ever bossy but smart and quick as a blade. “No deaths. No punishment by death. No punishment by harm. Our people will be safe, happy, and learn someday to stop looking over their shoulders.”

  It is an idealistic approach, but it is worth a try.

  And I’m willing to try just about anything to keep the peace here until the world above our heads opens up once again.

  Forgemon strolls through the mines, the light of an occasional lantern bathing his face in an orange glow as he passes under. The women and men are hard at work with their pickaxes, each tink slamming against Forge’s ears as hard as they’re slamming against the stone. Along his way, Forgemon is met by the three supervisors, who each give him an update on their progresses. Yes, it was three supervisors he appointed in each working sector of the Undercity—three, so that no single person had all of the power. That was what Forge’s math told him: there must be multiple people in power, to look over the shoulders of other people in power. Everyone will be checked over. Every person will be accountable to another person.

  No machine runs on one gear; it must run on several, and Forge and Aphne both shall be the oil that facilitates their movement.

  That was how Sanctum was built and sustained for nearly one and a half thousand years. Three Marshals. Fifty members of the Court of Elders. Even the Queen or King isn’t all powerful; Forge sees that now more than ever.

  “Problem.”

  That one, single word Forge could go the rest of his life without hearing again. He doesn’t even turn to face her. “What is it?”

  “It’s Ello in the electricity. He’s making a fuss about his feet yet again. The other workers are starting to complain as a result.”

  Forge sighs and rubs his temples. Why didn’t the figures reveal such a disturbance? He’s been so good at predicting the ebb and flow of the Undercity for months now, like a spider feeling the tiniest pull of a fly on its web. “The machine only works if all its parts are well-oiled,” he notes, giving light to his own metaphor.

  “No shit,” she spits back. “How do you propose we oil the whiny fellow named Ello?”

  Just his name reminds me too much of my wife’s. Somehow, that little fact annoys him rather than lends him any sympathy for the man or his weary feet. “I’ll pay him a visit.”

  “Also, one of our food managers miscounted last week’s stock of berry blood, and a keg has apparently gone missing.”

  “Where might it be found?”

  “Up a slummer’s asshole. How the fuck should I know?”

  Forge turns to face her finally. Aphne chose to snip most of her hair off, cutting it nearly to the root with just enough to style, spiked up in the back and swept forward in the front. Some strands left long curl about the front of her ears like dark, wispy sideburns.

  Her mottled green eyes stare Forge down, half-lidded. The two friends have nurtured something of a caustic humor between them; the cruder one is to the other, the more trust they seem to build. Forge only has the one brother Redge he hasn’t seen in ages, and he never had the joy of a sister.

  Aphne is the closest he’ll ever get to knowing what one’s like.

  “Then best you stick your hand up every slummer’s asshole ‘til you find it,” Forge fires back.

  Aphne breaks a humored smile at that. “All’s good in asshole rummaging, but we’re still a keg short.”

  “So there’s a thief among all the sentenced criminals we share this Undercity with. Color me surprised.” Forge squints at a fissure running up the side of the cave wall, then runs the pads of his calloused fingers across it. “We need more bracing. The miners are getting lazy and only putting up timber every now and then. We need each to measure this wide,” he states, poking at the wall. “Twice as much. Our survival depends on it, the math tells me.”

  “The math,” Aphne almost mocks him. “Very well.” She turns to leave.

  Forge stops her with his voice. “The math is all we have and know here, Aphne.”

  She turns. A note of seriousness touches her eyes. “I know.”

  “The math is our Goddess. The math is our all-knowing. If we don’t trust in the math, then we are lost.”

  “I know.”

  The two of them stare off, almost challengingly. Then, finally, Forge gives her a short nod. “Good.”

  Aphne smirks. “I’ll have a talk with the mining managers about those bracings.” She turns to go.

  Forge calls down the hall at her: “Do you think they wish to be called Marshals? Marshals of Mining? Marshals of Electricity?”

  “Marshals of Munchies?” she japes of the food managers, calling back, then she turns back to him and shakes her head. “I think the whole lot of them take pride in having nothing to do with Sanctum or its customs of naming positions and assigning traditional titles. To fuck-all with traditional titles. You can call them piss-drinker number one and fart-face number two. They’ll all still listen to you.”

  Forge nods slowly, then says, “The keg is simply a miscount. It was numbered by a tenth ward teen—if my math is right—who did not complete nor excel in his schooling before he was arrested at the age of twelve for vandalizing the side of a building. Have them count again, and you’ll find a keg is not, in fact, missing at all.”

  Aphne smirks and shakes her head. “What are we without you, Forge, but a bunch of useless hands?” Then she turns and finally goes on her way, a bounce to her every other step.

  Forge watches her disappear farther down the shaft, then her voice echoes as she speaks to the miners and passes on his words about the extra-needed bracing. Forge nods slowly, gnawing on his lip in thought. I was right to put my trust in her, he realizes, thinking of all the times Aphne has pulled through. In only three or four months’ more time, he will have been down here for a whole year. She has been his best friend.

  That both comforts and hurts him, the realization of that.

  His best friend used to be Ellena Lesser, his wife, his companion, the love of all his anguished life. But what has come of her up on the surface? What state is his dear ninth ward in during the Madness that ensues? Every line of communication has been broken between the underground and the overground. He can’t even be sure there is a ninth ward anymore.

  It was once, three long months ago over a package of fork-tongued lizardmeal that Aphne asked the question: “You’re missing numbers, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” he had asked back, twisting his face up.

  “There isn’t a speck of stimulus from above.” She had pointed at the ceiling of the Great Hall high, high above them. “No news of the Mad King. No news of the slums. No news of Sanctum. No news of all the Guardian who put us down here. And if there is no news, then there are no numbers, and thereby, there is no math.”

  Forge had not quite considered it in that way.

  “You’ve been calmer.” Aphne tilted her head. She still had all her sharp, shoulder-length hair then, and it swung to one side as she studied him, some errant strands drifting over her face. “That doesn’t put me at ease, your calm.”

  “My calm?”

  “It’s the missing numbers. That’s what keeps you calm. All of your worldly math was cut off the day the King of Bones made his cowardly escape from here. He bombed the way out. And now the math you have—the only world you know—is the one down here.”

  “Aye, but what’s your damned point? Can’t you see I’m trying to enjoy my tasteless lizardmeal?—whatever the fuck this is?” In truth, he neither knew nor cared.

  “Say, if any of the countless entities above suddenly drilled their way down into our Undercity,” said Aphne, painting the picture, “you wouldn’t be the wiser. You couldn’t possibly see it coming.”

  The next bite sat frozen on his fork, not making its way past his thick beard to his half-parted lips as he let her words sink in.

  “Which leads me
to my original point,” she concluded. “You’re missing numbers.”

  Forge narrowed his eyes, set down his fork, then stated, “You let me worry of the numbers. Alright? You just do your job.”

  “Aye. Accounting for miners and pushers and pullers and—”

  “Six agencies,” Forge spat, interrupting her and vehemently not thinking of math or missing numbers. “Six. Mining. Electricity. Food. Housing. Armory. Forging. Six. And three managers in each agency. Eighteen managers. Eighteen additional calculators with numbers of ore, numbers of food, numbers of armors and weapons and cells, all of whom report to two of us—you and me—two. Sound like enough numbers to you? Or need you find more of them to cloud up my brain and set into me some more unnecessary worries?”

  Aphne smirked at all of that. “Lizardmeal is a deceitful Lifted name for lizard shit, that’s what it is.” Then she rose from the table and made her way toward the armory, disappearing down a distant hall. Forge sat there, leaving the rest of his meal untouched, as he thought and thought and thought of her words.

  He’s thought of them ever since.

  “Missing numbers,” he mumbles to himself as he recalls that conversation, moving on down the hall on his way to the electricity to deal with a certain whiny fool named Ello.

  And as he goes, passing face after face of man, woman, and youth who have been put in here by some circumstance or another—whether they were prisoners all along, or guards who once held them captive but now simply live among the others and doing their part—he thinks on all that has come since that conversation.

  Aye, missing numbers, he agrees with a smirk and a sucking of his teeth. Then we will attain the numbers by continuing to tunnel our way toward them.

  “Ello,” barks Forge when he reaches the electrical chambers at the other end of the caves, which are not far off from the mines.

  One of the electrical managers stops his survey, looking up from his clipboard and eyeing Forge. He’s a skinny man with too large a head to sit properly on his bony shoulders. His name is Dander. “Hello, K-King Lesser,” he sputters for a greeting.

  Several in the Undercity have taken to calling him that. “I’m not your King. What are your outputs?”

  Dander fumbles with his clipboard before producing an answer. “Eighty-eight, sir.”

  That’s much lower than he was expecting. “Have you rotated your crew on the hour, every hour? Are the members of your crew receiving adequate break times for rest and meals and recreation?”

  “We have a … W-Well, there is a bit of a disrupt in our regular scheduling that I’m having to compensate for. Except there is no one to rotate into my crew to … do the said compensating.”

  Ello.

  Forge straightens his spine. “I’ve been told there is an issue with someone’s feet.”

  “Aye, there is. And … A-And others as well.”

  The room is so thick with the heat of labor, already three beads of sweat skip down the side of Forge’s tensed brow. “Others?”

  “A worker has had to sit out four extra hours a day on account of his foot. Two others since have complained of their feet, too, and I’m …” Dander sighs and shakes his head. “I feel as if the second two wouldn’t have complained had the first one not.”

  “So they are dropping over like dominos,” mumbles Forge. “One goes, and the rest are inspired to go, too.”

  “Dominos?”

  Forge waves a hand dismissively. “Just an olden slum toy. Little weighted stones that stay abalance until its neighbor topples.”

  Dander’s eyes cross as he tries to imagine such stones. Forge swipes the clipboard from his hand and walks past him on his way toward a bench by the break area, where he sees two men sitting side by side, chatting.

  They look up the moment Forge approaches, and the looks of relaxed joy on one of their faces turns into fear and worry. “S-Sir Forge,” sputters the fearful one, sitting up at once.

  The other, Ello, doesn’t stir at all. In fact, he remains right where he’s seated, looking rather satisfied with himself. His greeting is a simple and curt: “Forge.”

  Forge faces him. “So I hear there is an issue with your feet.”

  “Aye,” agrees Ello. “It happens that they’re … weary. Perhaps this isn’t my proper job placement.”

  His feet are fine. I see and know that fact now from the way he sits, from the measure of complacency in his words, and from the manner in which his buddy here is regarding him.

  This Ello is testing Forge’s authority. And he’s doing it with exactly fourteen witnesses: the buddy at his side, Dander at Forge’s side, and twelve at the rotary, all of whom are paying attention with a sick curiosity for how this confrontation will go down. It’s the way with the folk down here in the Keep: the one with the most daring, the most strength, the most brazenness, that’s the one who gains everyone’s respect. They are all watching right now and wondering whether this is the day Forge will snap.

  He knows they have been waiting for it for a long time. I’m not a tyrant. I’m not power-happy. I’m not lusting for everyone’s obedience.

  Yet criminal minds think differently than softer ones, and no matter the peace that Forge promises, everyone is waiting for him to turn. Everyone has been lied to before. Everyone has been deceived, cheated, and wronged by people proclaiming to be good.

  No one trusts a smile.

  They only trust a fist.

  “Maybe,” Ello goes on, “you might have something for me to do in a sweeter area. Is there a section of the Undercity where a man may test the firmness of each woman’s tits?”

  A chorus of muted sneering and snickers pass through the large, heat-filled chamber.

  Forge’s mouth twitches. Then he lifts his chin. “Regrettably, no. I can, however, arrange for a section where a man gets his balls tested by having them boxed at by a hundred better men a day. But that man would have to have balls first.”

  The tide of laughter turns, and Ello’s smile is wiped clean away.

  Forge takes a step toward him. “Your feet are fine, Ello. You and I both know it. You, because they’re your stinky, warty feet. And I, because I know things.” He taps his temple. The picture of Ello in his mind is like a web of the most stereotypical probabilities Forge has encountered. It’s almost boring to recollect. “You had no feet issue all your life when you robbed food markets, ran streets and train-tops escaping afoot when Guardian gave you chase each time you failed to disappear quick enough.”

  Ello’s face grows pink, yet he lifts his chin defiantly despite it. “I need a drink of water. It’s a slummer’s right, isn’t it?”

  Forge gives him a firm nod. “Aye, it is. And you’ll get yourself water just as any other can. The station by the wall. You know the way. Now get on your stubborn feet and work the rotary like your fellow men and women are. You’ll have yourself a break and two days off like everyone else. It’s more than we ever had when fools up above us ran this place. Or have you forgotten?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. Have you?” he spits back.

  That question doesn’t even make sense. He’s just arguing now for the sake of it. “This place only works if we all keep it working. If you don’t contribute—”

  “Then what?” Ello is on his feet at once, no wince on his face or limp in his step. A faker. “Tell me, Forge. Then what? Are you gonna put a knife in me? Are you threatening me?”

  The lights in the room begin to dim and fizzle. Forge turns to find everyone at the rotary having stopped. At the realization, they all begin to move again, and the lights are pushed back to full power, the room brightening.

  Forge turns to Ello. “I don’t need to threaten you. It’s just as beneath me as your current behavior is beneath you. Don’t descend to a criminal’s habits and prove to the Banshee King why they put you here in the first place.”

  Ello isn’t eased by the words at all. “The Banshee’s dead.”

  “A good thing he wasn’t when you were sentenced,”
Forge counters. “Otherwise, you would have had the Mad King to answer to for your crimes, instead.”

  At that thought, Ello at last grows perfectly still.

  “And considering the very lack of folk finding their way down here since his reign began,” Forge goes on, his voice heavy and his words like hammers, “I don’t suspect being judged by Impis would spell good news for you at all.”

  Ello stumbles backwards a step, somehow affected by that bit of thought, of all thoughts. Perhaps he’s imagining what insane sort of torture Impis performs on those brought before him now in his throne room.

  “Aye, Impis is a mad one,” Forge goes on, having found his thing to scare Ello with. “He was present during my own sentencing, in fact. It was practically the flip of a coin, what he did with me. Keep? Or kill? Keep? Or kill? He played with me like a toy. He batted at me like an alley cat. He giggled and made everyone in the room giggle. Have you seen it before?” asks Forge, nearly nose-to-nose with Ello now. “Have you seen the Mad King’s mania as it spreads, up close, in the flesh? I felt it tickle my very nerves.”

  Ello is visibly shaking. Not even a pinch of defiance sits on his face anymore. He nearly looks as if he wants to piss himself, for all the fear that the subject of the Former Marshal of Madness has put into this man’s heart.

  Suddenly Forge loses his own stomach about it. “Listen,” he says in a tone far softer. “I don’t fucking like this position any more than you like me being in it. Managing hundreds of people is taxing. And I haven’t but a minute or two a day to relax myself. Do you know what my job was? Twenty. Red. That’s twenty hours a day in the red zone, right here at this rotary, and over in the mines chopping at stone. I’ve not had a moment of breath to myself in nearly a year. I know what it is to have weary feet, and the difference between that and a weary soul.” Forge dares to put a hand on Ello’s shoulder. Ello nearly jumps when he puts it there, startled. “If you’ve a weary soul, talk to me. But for now, put yourself behind that damned rotary and contribute, for fuck’s sake.”