by Adam Vine
Contrary to what his enemies said about him, Hyro - unlike his Lord Master - did not enjoy the death of those little vermin. There was a certain thrill to killing - yes, of freezing their bones and shattering them like icicles, or slashing them to pieces with his chain, but there were so few worthy adversaries left in this waning world, and eternity is not what it looks like from outside. Eternity is tedious. Boring. Full of doubts and bubbling dreams. Eternity doesn’t merely want for noble enemies. It requires them.
The lift arrived, and they went up.
Hyro took the secret way out of the lift, exiting into the outermost of the city’s nine concentric rings, the sprawling public garden known as the Arboretum. The towering redwood trees and dense ferns of the forest floor provided easy cover from the milling throngs of students and lovers meandering along the main paths. Hyro would take his charges to the Palace via the Skyline, so as not to arouse a public stir. This was protocol.
The camouflaged transport arrived at the hidden station, high above the pyramid-like tips of the redwood trees, an invisible, one-lane fast-track to the Palace built only for him. As they skimmed soundlessly above the crimson-verdant forest, over the universities of the Eighth Ring and then the dive bars, taverns, and dance clubs of the Seventh, a fragmented memory effervesced from the darkness of the Blot, of the time long ago when this forest had been a broad, open plain, an endless ark of grassland where multitudes of species grazed and galloped between the impossibly-spaced campsites of the research teams. Portions of that biome remained in certain places along the outer ring, but they were like all things preserved after their time has passed: tired, small, and growing ever smaller.
When the Little Lord Master had begun the current phase of the Biome Plan, he’d filled those plains with seeds of myriad trees and the things that grew under them. The memory gave Hyro a strange sensation, an old one that had lingered in his mind for days, then months, then years after the Great Planting. A secondary memory arose, that he’d recalled the first time many times before, every time he rode the Skyline to the Palace and looked down on the tops of those towering trees that had replaced his beloved open hills. What he felt was not sorrow, or regret, or joy. Those were empty vessels. This was something deeper, an infection of the soul rather than the body.
What Hyro felt was loss. Those wild hills of the old grassland were the only place he had ever found where the memories had stayed gone.
They passed into the Sixth Ring, where the city’s middle income housing was - there was no such thing as “low income” in the Amber City - then the Fifth, the market district and the boundary delineating the start of the City Arcanum. The Fourth Ring was the fashion district, with its panoply of bright, modern loft houses and aesthetic high rises; the Third, the memorial district, a floating garden of clean urban parks full of looming statues, garish murals, and carefully-curated government museums to remind the people of the world that was lost; the Second Ring was the waterfront district, where the grand estates of the Amber City’s richest and most important citizens marched alongside the beautiful promenade of the Amber River.
At last they came to the Priorion, the First Ring, where the Palace jutted like a gargantuan hand carved from pure, glittering amber raised palm-out over the vastness of the city. Within the walls, the lush hanging gardens of the Little Lord Master’s estates stood out like pieces of floating jade. Busy lines of air trains and military cars drifted in and out of the thin gray clouds. There were an unusual number of soldiers about the Palace, companies of them upon companies marching and drilling all in their shining solarite crystal armor.
Hyro paused the tram to take a closer look. He held the controls so the Skytrain wouldn’t start again before he was ready. It wasn’t just an unusually high number of soldiers gathered at the Palace; it was a veritable army.
Typically, the Palace of Dolls kept several specially-trained units of the Amber Guard to act as the Lord Master’s bodyguards - not that he needed any - and to protect the grounds from thieves, horny teenagers looking for a secret place to explore each other, and the occasional political malcontent. Yet today there were so many that the usually vast, open walkways were barely visible beneath the armored boots and bodies marching in perfect synchronicity.
There were troop transports, as well. Practically a fleet of them, their light-slowing cloaks already active, drifting in and out of the motes of light that fell through the Palace’s outstretched amber fingers like ghost machines built of prismatic ether. The traffic had seemed abnormal, yes.
Yes, they were definitely planning something. An operation. Perhaps the final operation, yes. But why had Hyro not been made aware of it? He’d received no orders for a purging. Had barely felt the mask thrum at all since he’d left the Surface.
He released the Skytrain controls, and the panel fell from the wall in a flurry of frost and shattering, frozen metal.
He found the Lord Master kneeling in a pool of his own magnificent prayer robes on the Palace’s observatory deck, meditating as he did above the skyline and the trees and even the city’s second sun, which burned several meters lower than the rooftop’s terminus. The Lord Master had lowered the shade, blacking out that brilliant ball of storming gold to a thin red line, so that the stars could shine in all their infinite, terrible splendor.
There was nothing the Lord Master loved more than thinking under the stars. “The Pale Vertigo,” he called it, that feeling of falling upward into the heavens.
“Wait,” the Lord Master said to him as Hyro crossed the threshold. Hyro waited. The ageless man did not rise. He finished his contemplation, made the Sign of Rendition, but remained kneeling on his little lordly pillow, preferring to speak over his shoulder instead. His voice had a lute-like quality, soft and elegiac, kind perhaps, but not gentle.
“Enter, old friend. Noble servant. Loyal Knight of the Last Republic. The honorable Ratkeeper. Show me what spoils you’ve brought me.”
Ratkeeper. There it was again, that name. That was what his enemies called him. Hyro did not consider it an honor to be a keeper of rats.
Hyro set the Brave Ones down on the observatory floor. They did not stir as the Lord Master rose and examined them. The ageless, hairless man was wearing the face that looked like the Prophet today, though Hyro would never be fooled by it, and they both knew it. Did that make him a danger to the Master?
The Lord Master bent down and stroked the shaved remnants of the little Brave One’s hair with his good arm. The lamp had done its work to put the girl’s mind at ease (the old man’s, too), to give them the peace required to become fixtures in the Master’s garden. For an instant, Hyro wondered why he’d done it.
The Lord Master lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “They’re still having problems with lice down in the Burrow. Those poor people. Of all the indignities man and womankind were not meant to suffer, insects of the scalp would be chief among them. Someday, my friend. When they are tired, and sad, and weary, and have no more tolerance for the cold and the endless hunger, they will come to us and end this idiotic rebellion. Maybe then, we will know peace, eh, old friend?
“These are good, brave warriors. But they are not strong. Look who they make to fight their war for them. A one-eyed old man and a teenage girl. They even gave her the responsibility of carrying a ghost. Despicable.”
The Lord Master pressed the palm of his good hand against the Little Brave One’s and withdrew the ancient weapon with a silent shivering. Then the ageless man raised a hypnotically garmented arm toward the door.
“People like these should be innocent. They should not be forced to carry the burdens of this sick, corrupted world. We will give them the highest places of honor in the Garden. I want them to enjoy their new lives here, to spend the remainder of their days without a shred of pain or worry. I want the public to know at last what our enemy is capable of, what the Burrow does to old people and children. Can your magic lamp do that for me, Good Sir Knight?”
Hyro nodded.
“Splendid.”
Hyro knelt, scooped the Brave Ones up from the floor, then waited to receive the Master’s blessing. But the Master did not give it. Instead, the ageless man began to pace, his mesmeric robes drifting in the low gravity of the observatory deck to mirror the sun-strewn curtain of the stairs.
“I didn’t tell you we are ramping up preparations. I apologize. I don’t want you to think I was hiding it from you. There are no secrets between us, old friend. I simply wanted you to keep your mind on the task at hand, and the one to come. Everything for its proper time and place, right? Wasn’t that one of your favorite sayings, back before all this?”
That seemed right, yes.
“When the moment comes for us to strike, and to kill those little rats who do such vile things as conscripting innocent old men and teenage girls to war, I promise that you, my Ratkeeper, will lead the charge. But first, we must prepare. Make your enemy underestimate you, and victory is yours - another of your favorite sayings, was it not, comrade? I will not make the same mistake again. We will bait them into the open. Make them show their hand. Expose their weak points. Then, and only then, will we do what we must to end this madness. To win the game of war, you must think five steps ahead of your opponent. Didn’t you tell me that, too? Way back in the childhood of our souls? And I never forgot it.”
Hyro couldn’t remember if he had or hadn’t.
The Lord Master went back to the edge of the rooftop and knelt once more, tucking his good right arm back inside his robes to match the lame one resting in the makeshift sling of his lapel. It was always strange to Hyro that the Master could wear so many different faces without ever changing such a simple thing as a lame left arm. The Master had not needed to suffer his disability since his birth-face, and yet, he did. The Master was crippled by choice.
Why? Did he cling to his inadequacy? Was it out of superstition? Or was it out of some sense of duty to the people, who had grown to expect it? Was it for the same reason Hyro had chosen to wear the mask? If all we are is a story, then which version is true - the story we tell ourselves, or the one other people tell about us after we are gone?
The Lord Master settled back on his heels for a deep, long kneel and cleared his throat. “But this war is not over, as you know better than anyone else, old friend. The Vermins’ Rebellion is far from broken. They will send us more old men and child warriors until they have sent them all, if I allow it. But I will not. I am still their sovereign, whether they choose to accept my divinity or they deny it. I have a duty to protect them, even from themselves… most of all from the radicals among them, those dishonorable and extreme enough to terrorize, kidnap, and brainwash the innocent into fighting.
“Fire and shadow create balance. When one grows too bold, the other retreats, so it can lash back stronger and more efficient to regain equilibrium. When our enemies turn to using our own fears against us, we must become the most terrifying thing of all to stop the escalation. Didn’t you tell me that once, Hyro?”
Hyro couldn’t recall, but was almost certain he had. In the fragments of memories that the Blot gave him he’d been a foolish, violent young man, a single atom on the Spiral made of balls and fear and hate, and - yes - brutal talent, whose errors should’ve been erased ages ago by the Spiral’s spinning. But they never would be now, would they? No, not until…
Not unless he…
No. Such thoughts were forbidden.
But what if…
No.
But it was only a mask...
Never. To imagine such things was...
Inside him, the coldness thickened.
Hyro’s thoughts jumped to the Glass Book. Part of him demanded that he confess to the Little Lord Master he’d found it, that he’d almost hidden it away and committed an unthinkable crime against the regime. But a deeper part, the part upon which the mask’s control was slipping, told him wait, read, learn. Everything for its proper place and time.
When the Little Lord Master spoke again, his voice had lost all its music, and had taken a metallic quality, still smooth, but hard where it had been kind. “I want to tell you this in person, so you understand the importance of this charge. Intelligence has located a village deep within the settled region of the Undersprawl, in the ruins of an ancient cistern that now provides key ventilation to the network of tunnels our enemies call the Burrow. They believe this village has strong blood and military ties with the top leaders of the rebellion.”
Hyro drifted as the dream of a dingy village nestled between towering stone pillars and gentle winds blowing deep underground came to him through the mask.
“You will cleanse this village of every man, woman, and child,” the Lord Master said. “Take any able-bodied prisoners you find to Ganheim. Pacify those too weak to survive the harsh climate of the Surface. Destroy any human remains or signs of a slaughter. Uncertainty will be our weapon. We will not give them the courtesy of knowing. Their loved ones shall not sleep, shall not mourn. Leave nothing but silence and ruin. Do you understand these orders?”
The Ratkeeper bowed.
“Good. One more thing,” his Lord Master said. “There comes a Visitor, and with him a time of unbalancing to the Great Spiral. I do not wish for you to interfere, yet. I see potential for this Visitor to serve our holy cause… even if he joins our enemies.”
That wasn’t all of it, though. There was something else the Lord Master wasn't telling him, would not tell him until the time was convenient. Something powerful, a game-changer. Hyro knew his Lord Master well enough to know when he was emotionally affected, and he had not seen this much of a tremble in the last joint of the ageless man’s middle finger in a very long time. This had nothing to do with Visitors or vague, eschatological prophecies. But it was not his place to ask. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. The mask did not permit Hyro to question.
No secrets between old friends, indeed.
The Lord Master raised his palm in the Sign of the Wanderer. “Go now, in providential service of this republic.”
The Ratkeeper took his blessing and went.
THE CITY
I THOUGHT about her almost every second until I saw her again.
I spent the afternoon drinking alone at my apartment, then waited for Kashka at the corner of St. John’s Street, leaning against a lamp post in a way I thought looked cool. The air was chilly, the first night of autumn that was supposed to fall below freezing.
I scanned the crowds of strolling people - much thinner than the night before, I guessed because of the weather – until I saw her walking toward me, bundled in a red pea coat, her pale face bobbing with a huge, toothy smile. There was that awkward pause when you see someone you know from a distance, and they’re still too close for you to pretend you don’t see them, but too far to say anything.
When Kasha got close enough, she said, “Hey, babe.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her. Her chin tilted up and her mouth opened to mine. We kissed for ten or fifteen seconds before our lips parted.
“You look like Little Red Riding Hood,” I said.
“Who?”
“You know, the fairy tale. About a girl with a red coat who goes to her grandmother’s house, but her grandmother has been eaten by a wolf.”
“Oh!” Kashka nodded. “We call it different, here. In Countryish, it calls Little Red Coat.”
“And what do you call the Big Bad Wolf?” I said.
“Big Bad Wolf is the same. Where are we going?”
“I was thinking the Jewish Quarter,” I said.
Kashka’s face lit. She linked her arm into mine and said, “Yes! Jewish. It’s my favorite place in City.”
We walked into the sideways pillars of mist that had fallen after the rain abated, heading south from the Market Square into a world of shadows, the glowing islands of the streetlamps guiding us through empty, narrow streets.
The Jewish Quarter was a twenty-minute walk from the Main Square. It was a UNESCO World Heritage site, an
d unlike that far more touristy attraction, the smog-blackened tenements and brick synagogues of the Jewish Quarter hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint or plaster since the 1920’s.
The Quarter was settled in the thirteenth century as a separate town where the Jews could live in peace and privacy, and spent most of its history as a suburb of the City, until the City grew and swallowed it up. When the Nazis came in the 1940s, they transformed the place into a ghetto where the Jews were held prisoner before being shipped off to the death camps.
I was surprised to see that old hate was still alive. Graffiti covered the grimy walls, slurs like “Gay Jews” or giant swastikas. The slick cobblestones pleaded for remembrance with every footstep, but their whispers were as thin as the bare branches we passed under. Kashka was so quiet on my arm that I briefly wondered if she was having second thoughts.
But once we got deeper into the quarter, I saw that behind the sloughed-off patches of broken plaster and their inherent ghosts, there were worlds blooming. Pubs and restaurants full of laughter and light; hawkers selling antique jewelry, knives, and hot chestnuts; old cemeteries where the grass grew unabashedly across the time-smoothed graves, as if to say, You belong to us now, welcome home.
“So, what’s the best spot around here?” I said.
Kashka looked at me quizzically. “A spot? Where is a spot?”
“A bar or a place we can get a drink.”
“Oh. Yes. I will show you.”
We arrived at the Jewish Quarter’s small market square, dominated by a huge gothic brick building that I had read on Wikipedia was the Old Slaughterhouse, now home to a row of café bars and music clubs. The outside tables were all full, despite the cold, and the crowd was raging.
