by Claire North
The debriefing lasts four days. Yue picks me up at the end of every day, escorts me through Council security, nothing in, nothing out, has secured a guesthouse for me to stay in rather than Temple grounds.
“Ven will stay at Temple,” replies my handler from the inquisition. “He is still one of us.”
Only later do I realise what my handler must already have known: that the guesthouse would be bugged, every twitch of my toes or snort in my sleep monitored. I do not begrudge Yue doing her duty, and she does not fight my handler on the point.
In my cold little room in the temple, I wonder if the inquisition has also bugged me, and have to resist the temptation to search under the lamp by my roll-out mattress, to run my hands over the walls, shake out every corner of my clothes.
Krima says: “Maze is poised to invade Magyarzag, but they want Council to start the conflict. If Jia fires the first shot, then Ull and Han will have an excuse to stay neutral, brush it off as some philosophical dispute and keep their Provinces out of it. Maze is pushing her to make that mistake – provocations along the border, heresies within their lands. Thus far, she’s managed to hold back.”
Witt says: “We don’t have an answer to armour-piercing rounds. We barely have armour. Some of the newer resins are promising, but if Georg knows how to enrich the tips then…”
Krima says: “If he is mining here, why haven’t the kakuy woken? Why aren’t they raining fire?”
Witt says: “We can’t trust in kakuy to do man’s business, can’t trust in some… spirit…”
Krima says: “Jia is organising peace talks. A final attempt to stop a war. All the Provinces will send representatives. You helped, Ven. The information you supplied is vital – it will force Georg to reconsider his strategy. It buys us time. Council is very appreciative.”
She does not mention her attempt to recruit me, and neither do I.
How many years was I in Vien?
How many weeks did those years buy?
I try to ask, but this is not that place. Their questions matter more than mine. They see things I do not. But they do not see Pontus.
Krima says: “Again. One more time.”
Again.
One more time.
And I tell them all of it again.
A week after I arrived in Budapesht, Temple summoned me to Bukarest. I had no bags to pack, sat watching the winter world outside the window rolling by with nothing in my hands and a borrowed hat on my head. No one came to the station to wave me off save a pair of Council watchers too new at their job to be unobserved; but Yue left a message at the shrine, which I only received several days later by forwarded telegram.
STAY SAFE, she said. TRAVEL WELL.
Chapter 32
Bukarest, the Temple of the Lake.
I had been a novice here, all those years ago.
Then Lah had asked: “But why did you join the temple?”
And I’d replied: “I think it’s important not to take things for granted.”
And somehow, in their mind, that had been enough.
Lah met me at the station with a bicycle scrounged from a novice who preferred to walk. Hugged me. I hadn’t been held in that way for…
… I wasn’t sure how long.
Then let go and said: “Well isn’t it all a fucking disaster?”
And laughed, and so did I. We stood in the middle of the station, two priests in fading robes, and laughed like we’d just heard a very dirty joke.
For my first few weeks back in Bukarest, I went to the server port twice a day to download the latest news to my inkstone. Then Lah pointed out that knowing, devouring every bulletin and rumour sent down the line from Budapesht or Vien, facilitated neither my equanimity nor the calm of others.
Then I put my inkstone away, finally sat in silence before the cracking ice on the surface of the lake, and permitted myself to be simply small in this place. Somewhere behind me there was a version of myself that had perhaps wanted to be a hero, who had walked mighty on the earth and unravelled the secrets of heretics. Today, there was only the new sun rising, the sky and the earth, the black pine trees and the gods of the stones.
We too are the kakuy, Lah proclaimed. The spirits of earth and sky, sun and moon give life, and we are of the world, flesh made animate, blood made fire by our living. We are the kakuy of humans, a piece of the great turning of the world, tiny upon its surface, and no less than the mountain.
“Why do we give thanks to the kakuy?” the Medj asked, and the congregation sang its ritual response – we give thanks for the sun that warms us, the moon that guides us, the sea that carries us, the sky that gives us breath. These were the words Nadira had sung, the first night I met her.
I tried to sing the ritual words and could not. The kakuy have no interest in the prayers of men; why heed the imprecations of an ant?
We give thanks because we are the mountain. We give thanks because we are the forest. We give thanks because to honour the kakuy is to honour ourselves; we forgive ourselves, we love ourselves, thank our bodies and our sight, our coming in and our going out. We know at last what we are – life shining in a pearl of blue spinning through space, separate and together. Thank you, sky and earth; thank you, sister and brother of sea and fire. We are one.
Even cut off from the world, I heard rumours of the peace conference unfolding on the isle of Kirrk, a last desperate attempt to put off war. I wondered if Georg was dead and what had happened to Nadira’s body. I wondered if Witt was looking now at all the intelligence I’d stolen from Georg’s desk and tutting and whispering: we must fight fire with fire. Perhaps all I’d done was turn a short war into a long one.
In the end, we offered a body of straw and winter flowers to the sky, not having Nadira’s corpse. In the mornings, I swept snow from the path so the elders might not slip as they shuffled to prayers. At lunch, I worked in the steam of the kitchen, chopping carrots and stirring vats on the stove. In the afternoon, I folded over the dark matter of the smouldering compost heaps, read the writings of scholars both ancient and new, sat beside the lake and watched the crystals on the cracked edge of the ice shrivel and grow with the changing movement of the sun, and gave thanks that I lived, and healed, and tried not to smell the Ube in flood, or the forest aflame, or the blood as it rolled through my fingers.
Lah said: “It is good to grieve,” and it hadn’t occurred to me that I was grieving, and I didn’t think they were right. I tried to find a way to express what I actually felt, and couldn’t. To feel was vulnerability, a habit lost while serving the inquisition. Only the job remained.
“I can send you out to do something more involved, more engaged. But then you will simply be doing in order not to feel, rather than being here, and feeling. What would you like to do?”
I thought about it for a while, knew the answer they wanted, and said: “Please put me to work.”
They smiled, perhaps hiding a little disappointment in my reply, and I was sent to the local Assembly to offer advice on archival matters, translate archaic texts, and advocate on subjects heretical and pious. The work was hard, long, frequently tedious, and I was grateful for it. I turned off the radio when it talked about the coming war, and resolved not to think about Yue, and refused to think about Pontus, and thought about them all the time. I peered at the scar across my chest in the dusty mirror of the washroom, then bathed in a tub so hot and deep that to fall asleep in it was to drown. I looked at the timbers that framed the room, wondered what thanks had been offered to the kakuy from whose trunks such things were taken, and if the spirits of the things lived on even here, and concluded that they probably did, altered by man’s intervention but still honoured in their way. Then I thanked the forest and the water and, for the first time in a very long while, thought I understood what “thank you” meant.
Drinking tea, Lah slides the door to the balcony outside their room back a little so that the cold of the air outside might mingle with the warmth of the cups in our hands; the contrast
, they said, pleasing, invigorating, a sacred thing, if only you’re willing to feel a little blessed.
They have planted winter bulbs in the garden, and talk idly about squashes and the taste of hot rice on a frozen morning, and how much they love the taste of apricots, until finally, seeing that I’m not really listening, they fall silent.
For a while we sit there, quiet together.
Then they say: “You may as well ask. It’ll eat you up if you don’t.”
“Who do you think Pontus is?” They sighed, bowed a little, adjusted some hidden limb within the great grey sweep of their robes, didn’t answer. I tutted. “Come on. The inquisition won’t just be praying it’s all okay – you have a theory. Who do you think Pontus is?”
“It’s very hard to say.”
“But?”
“There are some leading suspects. Pav Krillovko has some problematic relationships – bad influences, you might say. And for all that he was not in Budapesht when our trapped document leaked, it still came from his system – his inkstone. I don’t know how he could have done it, but he is hardly exonerated in the inquisition’s eye. Witt has always been a heretic at heart. He wants us to open up the archives in Martyza Eztok and tell him all about military vehicles and tactical nuclear devices, and so on. If he could have jet fuel, he would. He calls solar planes ‘those little sky-farts’. In past border skirmishes with the Rus, he proved fantastically good at guerrilla tactics; even if he’s ideologically suspect, Jia won’t want to lose that skill. If Krima vaMiyani has betrayed her own department, there’s very little we can do, realistically – just hope that Yue Taaq or someone in a similar position spots it before it’s too late.”
“Is Yue a suspect?”
“She doesn’t have access to the kind of intelligence Pontus is feeding Georg. That doesn’t mean she isn’t compromised in some other way, of course – one must be careful about these things – but she isn’t senior enough to pose a threat. Then there’s the Ministers themselves. The read-list for the intelligence you provided was small, but Council is meant to keep the peace between the Provinces, not secrets. Jia would be forced to share intelligence with Provincial Ministers – Shamim perhaps, Han or Ull. Maybe even Farii. As you have demonstrated, you don’t have to share much to risk even the most diligent Minister falling prey to a clever secretary. Information spreads like oil through water, clinging to even the cleanest of us.”
“Lah – is Georg Mestri dead?”
They blinked in surprise. “Sky and sea, no. Why would you think that?”
I felt heat blaze through my face. “I stabbed him.”
“In the leg, Ven! In the leg.”
“I really meant it.”
“He’s not dead. He’s on Kirrk at the peace talks, muttering into Antti’s ear as usual. Did you really think you killed him?”
“It was a possibility.”
“Sun and moon! What a twist that would have been! But no, Ven. Excellent scholar of archaic heresies you may be – a solid inquisitor, all things considered – but you are not, in fact, an assassin. More tea?”
“I think perhaps something stronger.”
They shook their head and puckered their lips, but they fetched something a little stronger from their stash behind the kitchen cabinet.
The next day, the Colonel came.
Chapter 33
Her name was Merthe. She was far too senior for the task given her, but she was, as she put it, “heading in the right direction”. She was nearly two inches taller than me, all hips and boots and curly brown hair. She waited for me in Lah’s office, wrapped in a grey winter coat, and shot bolt upright as I entered, handing me the letter like a lawyer delivering a summons.
“Is this…”
“Please read it now.”
I stood awkwardly in the door, opened the letter, read it, read it again, folded it, put it in my pocket.
“Are you ready to come?” she asked. “There is a train in three hours; I have booked a berth.”
I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
It took nearly two days to get from Bukarest to Kirrk. The sleeper train was quiet; empty beds and empty stations. The carriage guard beamed at me and my travelling companion as we settled into our bunks, thick duvets and prickly blankets. “Breakfast is at 6.30 a.m.,” he chimed. “And I recommend the oats.”
In the dark of the rattling train, a few lights glimmered over the regimented beds as the travellers rocked sleepless in the gloom. Sometimes I slept, and jerking awake thought maybe hours had passed, and we had missed our stop, even though it was at the end of the line. Then I lay awake, and didn’t sleep, and must have slept again, and pulled my knees up to my chest and found that made me a little too wide for my berth, and then stretched out all the way and found then I was a little too long, toes tickling out into the corridor.
When the guard opened the blinds for morning breakfast, I expected a dazzling explosion of light, driving back the thick darkness of an uncertain night. Instead, thin pre-dawn glow ran in grey diagonals through the rattling interior, catching on pole and mattress, sluggish stirring shadow of bleary-eyed waking traveller.
In Budapesht there was nearly an hour and a half before the train to Bljaina. I wandered round the perimeter of the station, saw soldiers’ trucks and guardia checking papers, families queuing for tickets, thick crowds of the determined, the listless, the confused and those whose earnestness was one trodden toe away from desperate. Merthe walked with me, as if anxious I might be mugged, and finally said: “Everyone thinks that Maze will attack Budapesht first. It’s so close to the border, it’s an easy target. We are not prepared for urban warfare. There is talk of mining the river.”
A memory, loosely dredged from the mind of whoever I was before I fled through the winter wood. “Nasty things, mines. Never kill who you think they will.”
She nodded briskly, without comment, as we turned back towards the train.
Valleys and hills; train clinging to the running edge of the thawing river. A waterfall bursting rich from ice above; a den for wolves below. Sometimes terraced fields, growing biomatter for the vats or turned-over soil ready for a spring planting. Forest framing winding roads, wiggling tracks. Tunnels that hit like a punch to the gut. We threaded the mountains like a needle, and I wondered what the mountain heard as we passed through it and out the other side. Some routes were ancient, paths unearthed from the blasting of the Burning Age. Others were newer tracks laid through the kingdoms of the kakuy. Glance out of the window, and for a brief moment a line of wind-worn stones, dressed in fading woven crimson hats, lined the railway path – guardians raised to shield the spirits of the living from the spirits of the dead. Then a town, temple above and post office below, a single telephone line stretching through the trees, a single road leading out. We waited at the station for the up train from Bljaina to arrive, wheezing into the opposite platform so we could pass each other without incident on the one-track line towards the sea.
Merthe said: “I’m with the Lyvodian army, 2nd Infantry. I answer to Ull and the Provincial Assembly, not Jia, but you’re technically a Lyvodian citizen, and as I was going the right way—”
“Technically a Lyvodian?”
“I don’t know if priests are supposed to swear to some higher… state? Power? What do you swear to?”
“I’m not a proper priest.”
“Then why do you live in the temple?”
“I suppose no one can think of anywhere better for me to go.”
“Don’t you have a home?”
“I did. It’s been… a long time.”
“All the more reason to go back, isn’t it?”
“You make it sound simple.”
“Isn’t it?”
Merthe liked things simple. Complex, she had decided, was for idiots who talked too much.
In Bljaina, no more trains. The city sat in a premature winter dusk of bruised purple and salt-smeared clouds. The snow was nearly gone here, black patches o
f mud worming through the trodden white like new continents rising from the deep. People glanced at Merthe and smiled wanly; she smiled back and mused: “No one wants the Brotherhood’s heresy here.”
She sounded like she believed it, the passion of the just. I wondered what it felt like to believe, thought I had a vague memory of it, but it broke like cobweb when I fumbled for it.
Yue had sent an electric car, charging up outside the station. I got in uneasily, folding myself into the tight back seats between Merthe and a man in glasses who did not introduce himself, did not make eye contact, would not say the purpose of his mission or what he carried in the bag that he clung onto with the passion of a father for a weeping child. We stopped once, to recharge in a sarai as the night settled. I got out, stretched my legs, smelt something strange on the air – rotten eggs and sawdust – stood on the edge of the sarai, sniffing the darkness, puzzling, until Merthe appeared at my side.
“We’re above an old landfill site,” she explained. “The miners picked out what they could, but there are layers that are too dangerous to disturb. Nothing lives or grows around here – but the road passes by because it’s the quickest route, and it’s not like there are any kakuy we can disturb in this place.”
I nodded, staring into the flat dark beyond and finding it suddenly far darker, far blacker than the forest. “Have you ever been to a place called Martyza Eztok?”
“No. Why?”
“There are old tunnels beneath it – mining tunnels – from the burning. When the kakuy woke, the ancient archivists hid their books and their hard drives in the caves, the most valuable information they could find. They intended it as a gift to help the future. Combustion engines. Fractional distillation of crude oil. Deep shaft mining. They wanted to help us. They wanted to make a better world.”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “Who doesn’t? But as my old Medj would say: there’s wanting something, and then there’s being a dickhead about it.”
