by J M D Reid
Jilly weathered the truth that her husband had been dead for over a month. That she’d been sharing a bed with an impostor for sixty or more days. Joayne collapsed into a chair when she learned her son had been killed, his body buried along the lake.
“Dualayn’s associates murdered my husband so this monster could replace him and guard that piss-soaked roach?” Jilly demanded at the end. The fragility vanished. Fury brimmed in her face. “The Brotherhood stole away my child’s father for that pathetic piece of dog excrement?”
“Yeah,” Ōbhin said. “We wanted to tell you, but we didn’t want to reveal what we knew. Not until we could understand it. We were trying to protect everyone.” That piece of dog shit included . . .
“I’m sorry!” Avena said; she moved close and went to hug Jilly. For a moment, Jilly looked about to rebuff Avena, but then she relaxed and the pair embraced. “I promise you, Jilly, Ōbhin and I will look after you and your child. And you, too, Joayne. We’re so sorry. We didn’t think No One would kill anyone else, let alone your son.”
Joayne nodded as she sat on the chair. “He liked the ducks, you know,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “He’d have liked being buried by the lake and . . .” She swallowed. “I think I need to lie down.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Ōbhin nodded as she passed.
“And what about him?” Jilly asked. “What punishment will Dualayn receive? What justice will I find for my husband? None! He has powerful friends. They’ll protect him. If I brought this complaint to a magistrate, they would laugh at me. He’ll be free! Him and this monster and that Black-cursed Brotherhood!”
“For now,” Ōbhin said. “They’re getting away with it for now.”
She shot him a look. “You could kill him. Right now! Just cut off his head!”
“Maybe,” Ōbhin said. The darkness swirled in him. He had found his way out to the light, but it would be so easy to fall into the Black again.
A rap knocked on the door. “We should begin the procedure so you can vacate my house.”
Ōbhin turned to face Dualayn standing unapologetic at the door. Ōbhin was finding standing in the light to be difficult. In the dark, you didn’t have to care about right or wrong; you could just act.
*
As Avena and Ōbhin followed Dualayn to his lab, her father pulled her aside. She paused as she stared up at his face. It was the first time he’d approached her since their conversation in the ruins. “Can you give us a few moments?”
Dualayn sighed. “Fine, fine. We’ll be downstairs. I have to get things ready.” He glanced at his lab door. “I hope none of the servants have ransacked it.”
“We didn’t go in your horror dungeon!” spat Jilly as she stalked by.
Avena swallowed her emotions. She wanted to hug Jilly and take away her pain. Losing Chames had hurt, but Jilly and Smiles—his real name was Phelep—had been married for five years. They’d known each other as children. She’d had the support in her life gouged out and replaced with a monster and hadn’t even realized it.
Her father shook his head as he watched Jilly vanish. “Should just unleash her on Dualayn and be done with it.”
“Yeah,” Avena said. Part of her wanted to let Ōbhin or Jilly or anyone kill Dualayn. However, it went against all the teachings of Elohm. It would stain their souls. She had an obsidian mind in her head now. She was already touched by darkness. If she gave in to the worse impulses of her soul, what would happen to her when she died?
Would she be too weighed down to rise up to Elohm?
And what about the cost murdering him would put on Ōbhin? she asked herself. He would do it for me, and it would be one more burden for him to carry. How can I say I love him and do that to him?
Justice for Dualayn would have to wait.
“I’m sorry I abandoned you,” her father said. He cupped her chin, lifting her gaze to his face. His thumb stroked across her cheekbone.
“So you’re admitting it.”
He nodded. “Named you and Evane after my ma and her ma. Thought they sounded good together, you know? Avena and Evane.”
“They do,” Avena said. “We do.”
“It’s myself I hate,” he continued, looking not at her but beyond her. “For Evane being dead. Your mother. It’s my fault.”
“It was Mom,” Avena said. She seized his shoulders. “I thought that it was my fault for the longest time. That you hated me for just standing there.”
He shook his head. Emotion filled his eyes. “I hate myself for abandoning you, but every time I look at you, I see Evane. I failed to save my daughter. I let her die. Your mother, Usrella, she’d said things a few times. Things that concerned me, but I ignored them. She wasn’t herself when she was dark, but she usually was bright. She loved you girls. From the moment she found out she was pregnant until the last time she tucked you both in. I could see it. She treasured being a mother. She wanted more, but the birth was hard on her. She almost died bringing you two into the world.”
Avena hadn’t known that.
“I didn’t hit your ma to save your life, I did it out of fury. At myself for ignoring those warnings. For pushing down those whispers of fear and pretending everything was fine. I destroyed our family because I couldn’t face the truth about her. So I ran.”
“Not far,” said Avena. “You’ve been near me, haven’t you? While I was living in the orphanage. Then you came to work here to watch over me.”
“Too ashamed to ever say anything.” He still wouldn’t look at her.
“You’re here now.” She slid her hands from his shoulders to around his neck. She hugged her father. “That’s enough. I can help you forgive yourself. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, not even hers. She was broken, wasn’t she? She couldn’t help the things she said. I’ve learned about the sickness of the mind. Dementia, depression, grief, mania, and more.”
“I could have taken her to a sanitarium. The first time she told me Elohm whispered to her and that she had to cleanse our daughters, I should have done it. The way she talked . . .” His arms went around her. “Evane could be here with you.”
She would help her father like she was helping Ōbhin. Like they were helping each other. Letting go of the past was difficult. Accepting fault for your actions and not taking the blame for others was such a hard thing to do. It could destroy even a good man.
And that was what her father was. A good man who’d been broken by the terrible events of his life. She would mend him. “I love you, Dad.”
He let out a sobbing groan and squeezed her tight. Her ribs creaked and she reveled in the strength of him. Her eyes closed and she breathed in his scent. Memories sparked through her of riding on his shoulder, Evane on the other, through golden fields of ripe wheat. Of kisses placed on her brow as she was tucked into bed at night, her favorite doll clutched to her side, Evane beside her. She savored this moment.
Then she broke away. “We’ll talk more once Dualayn is finished.”
He nodded and cleared his throat. “Don’t let that bastard hurt you again.”
“Ōbhin will be standing by with his sword.” Her face tightened. “Dualayn thinks himself too important to risk dying.”
“Besides, you’re his next great work.” Disgust flicked across her father’s face. He glanced up. “If anything happens to her, don’t kill Dualayn. Let me beat him to death.”
“He won’t harm her,” Ōbhin answered as he stepped into the room. “He’s waiting. He’s growing . . . impatient.”
“He’s not the one about to have his chest cut open,” muttered Avena. “He can wait.”
A smile flicked across his face.
“You take care of her, Ōbhin,” her father said.
The men exchanged stares. Ōbhin nodded. So did her father. Then they both turned away. She shook her head, at a loss for what had just passed between the two. Did men have some secret form of telepathy?
Fear tightened about her chest as
she took Ōbhin’s arm. In the true lab, beneath the other, she would be on the table again. Dualayn had to replace her mind’s antenna, and that meant severing her connection to her body. He had to keep her alive with jewelchines, the reason they had to wait to affect the repair until they had returned to his lab.
One last time losing control of my body, she thought. It’s like falling asleep. That’s all.
*
Ōbhin hated seeing Avena on the table. She was naked from the waist up, her body anesthetized. A long tube of leather had been forced down her airway. Dualayn called it intubation. It was hooked up to a pig’s bladder and a heliodor jewelchine that kept filling it with air. The bladder was held between a pair of wooden paddles connected to a set of gears turned by a ruby jewelchine. The paddles compressed the bladder in a steady rhythm.
Her chest rose and fell with the compression.
When Dualayn made the incision down her chest, Ōbhin gripped his sword tight. He held the pommel as the blood spilled between her breasts and across her throat. Dualayn applied boiled cloths to stem the rivulets before grabbing a metal tool with teeth-like notches designed to ratchet something open.
The sounds of Avena’s ribs cracking as Dualayn spread them apart would haunt Ōbhin’s nightmares for the rest of his life.
There, nestled between lungs inflating and deflating, lay Avena’s beating heart. Dualayn brought a ruby, no bigger than the beating organ, to it. Black iron wires wrapped about it. Four leads thrust from it. The jewelchine in position, Dualayn gave the order.
Ōbhin closed his eyes then pulled the antenna from Avena’s brain, leaving it sitting in the bubbling water, kept alive by the other jewelchine. The signal to her body ended. Her heart stopped beating in an instant.
Dualayn worked fast. He pressed the four wires into Avena’s heart at specific spots before triggering the ruby. It burst with red light. Her heart beat again, pumping life through her body. Dualayn sighed in relief.
“I have done this dozens of times,” he said, glancing at Ōbhin, “but never with a death sentence should I fail.”
“Pity,” said Ōbhin. “Might be more people alive today.”
“Doubtful, since what I learned from their deaths has saved countless more.” Dualayn moved around the table and unwrapped the antenna they’d procured in Koilon. He hooked it up to her mind with the black iron wires, sliding them into her brain suspended in the liquid.
I’ll never sleep well again, Ōbhin thought as he watched the macabre experiment.
He’d prefer for Dualayn to restore her brain to her body, but he insisted there would be side-effects. Drastic ones. This was better than nothing.
Ōbhin’s anger burned.
“There,” Dualayn said. “Now to test it.” He disconnected the artificial heart.
Avena’s real one kept beating.
“This antenna should give her a clear signal. Even if she’s on the far side of the world from her mind, she’ll never have any interference issues.”
“Close her up,” Ōbhin said.
“And me?” Dualayn asked. “Will I die once I do that?”
Ōbhin shook his head. “She doesn’t want to make me into a murderer again.”
“She told you that?”
“She doesn’t have to.” He glanced down at her sleeping face. “I know her.”
*
Avena dreamed of the Shattering again. She watched the darkness warping the world, turning everything black. There must be a city somewhere transmuted to obsidian instead of ruby, drifted through her mind. Where ant-like demons were unleashed.
The vision of the past faded after a while and she entered normal dreams until she finally rose out of groggy sleep. Her body was coming awake. She fluttered open her eyes to see Ōbhin staring down at her. A smile crossed his lips. His hand stroked her brow.
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. She flexed her fingers and toes. She could feel the linen weave of a dressing gown cladding her body, and the silky caress of a few strands of hair brushing her cheek. She felt . . . different than she had earlier. There was more of an immediacy about her. A pressure in her bladder. An ache in her back from lying on the hard surface. “I have to pee.”
“That’s how you feel?” asked Ōbhin.
“Yeah,” she said. She sat up and enjoyed the sensation of the dressing gown shifting around her. “I feel solid. Real. I’m not a guest in my own body.” She looked around. She was in the lab where she’d gone to sleep. They were alone. “Ōbhin, I don’t feel weird. Not like I did after I woke up from my injury. I feel like me!”
She threw her arms around his neck. She hugged him tight. She held him and shook. Her mind lay in that jar feet away, but to her perception, it didn’t seem that way. Her thoughts echoed in her head where they belonged. His arms held her, strong, protective.
She didn’t care that she had to pee. In fact, she reveled in that simple bodily function. The fear that she might lose control had utterly vanished. This antenna was an upgrade. Dualayn was correct. She had nothing to fear from interference.
She just had to worry about the black gem being in her head. She had an obsidian mind controlling her body. What would that mean for her soul?
She should denounce Dualayn—he should be executed for his work—but who would investigate him? He had powerful allies, even when excluding the Brotherhood. Many nobles and merchants profited from his inventions. Magistrates would be bribed. His crimes would be overlooked.
No justice would be found, but that didn’t mean that Avena would just sit by. The Brotherhood was trying to destroy her country. They had killed the high refractor, orchestrated the riots, and were driving resentment against the king. Of course, King Anglon wasn’t helping with his desire for war, but one problem at a time.
Most of all, the White Lady’s intentions terrified her. The woman needed something from Grey and Dualayn. Something that would free the man she loved. Avena had experienced Raya’s desperation as the Warding imprisoned her lover. If that had been Ōbhin trapped, what would Avena do to save him?
How far would she go? Dualayn had been driven beyond any moral limits to restore Bravine. The White Lady said she was just like Dualayn. That he was someone who understood her pain.
“I want to do something, Ōbhin,” she said. “I want to stop the Brotherhood, Dje’awsa, the White Lady. All of them. I don’t want them meddling in my country. My city. I want to bring some form of justice to them all.”
Ōbhin nodded. “Ideas?”
“No,” she admitted. Then her brow furrowed. “Refractor Charlis. He’s working in Parliament to keep things from fracturing worse. Deffona is his secretary. He’s a good man, and she’ll want to help us. Maybe he will, too. We’re going to stop them, Ōbhin. All of them.”
Ōbhin smiled. “There are those thorns of yours.”
Avena smiled.
They could discuss plans later. She had to pass her water and leave this place. She never wanted to enter Dualayn’s manor again. All her happy memories were sullied by this room they were in. This was where Chames had died, killed by his own father.
Where Ōbhin’s friend had been turned into a monster with no identity.
She and Ōbhin left the foul room behind, her brain carried in his strong grip. They traveled upstairs and closed the door to Dualayn’s lab. They would pack up and leave, find a new place to live in Kash, and then figure out how to save it from the corruption festering in the midden heaps.
Everyone was waiting outside of it. Miguil and Dajouth, Cerdyn and plump Layni. Joayne and Jilly stood by each other, one wilted and the other blazing. The poor cook looked befuddled as Hajina whispered to her and held her hand.
Everyone was here but her father.
After everyone had hugged her, Cerdyn said, “Fingers left this letter for you, Avena.”
A pit formed in her stomach. Even before she’d unfolded the parchment, she knew he’d fled. That guilt had driven him away onc
e again. She trembled as she read the scrawled words begging for her forgiveness.
She would be patient with her father. She would save him, too.
The last thing he’d written was the address to a banker in Kash. “I’ve been telling everyone I’m sending my pay to my wife, but I’ve been depositing it in a trust for you. You’re the only one who can access it. It’s yours. Make something with it. The best I can give you. I ain’t worthy to be your dad.”
“But you are,” she whispered as she pressed the letter to her chest and fought the tears.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirtieth Day of Patience, 755 EU
The summer heat roiled around them as Ōbhin and Avena walked down the overgrown lane of the farm where she’d grown up. It lay on the outskirts of the village of Upper Kash, a few hours’ travel on foot north of the city. From the banker who held the trust her father had created, she’d also been given the deed to this land. Her father had signed it to her before he’d vanished.
Ōbhin had never suspected Fingers’s true identity.
The farmhouse’s roof had collapsed in many spots years ago. Plants poked up through the rotting floorboards. Streaks of mud from flooding caused by heavy rains rippled across the interior. Avena wandered lost through it while Ōbhin looked around for the perfect place to hide her brain.
If they were going to take on the Brotherhood, they would have to be careful. They couldn’t leave the most vulnerable part of her where it could be easily found. With Fingers’s money, they had bought a small house in the Breezy Hills. Avena was popular in that neighborhood thanks to her habit of giving away her pay to the street urchins. Jilly, Joayne, Cerdyn, Dajouth, Layni, and Hajina had all chosen to help Avena in her plan on bringing justice to those who had wronged them.
Dualayn. The Brotherhood. Even the White Lady.
Ōbhin would help in any way he could.
Avena drifted from a room. Her expression flicked from fond remembrance to grief. She would pause to touch a wall or a piece of rotten furniture before letting out a heavy sigh. He left her to her exploration as he pried up the soot-crusted hearthstones, his purple gloves digging them up one by one. He didn’t mind the black stains left behind.
