Sicora Online_The Sorting

by S. W. Clarke

  “I got enough.”

  “Just eight of you women now,” Anya said. “And only you and Amy make it on time.”

  As she said it, the capsule next to hers creaked as Amy dropped onto the bed. “That’s right, ma’am. Strap me in and put me under.”

  For the first time since dinner, Veda smiled. “Wait your turn, Park.”

  “Oh, Powell’s got a tongue now. I like that. Maybe we’ll end up 19th century saloon girls so I can help you raise your sass to level 2.”

  “As long as there’s not an orc waiting to behead me,” Veda said, wincing as Anya applied the immobilizing drug.

  “No one’s that unlucky twice,” Amy said as the retainer was set into Veda’s mouth. “See you on the other side, Powell.”

  Veda closed her eyes. The capsule sealed, and she could feel herself slipping. A last thought came to her: This. This was what Prairie would have done. She would face what was difficult, and she would do it with dignity. She would be unflappable.

  Veda was bone cold. She opened her eyes, and the world opened with them. Before her spread a white valley, iridescent as a pearl, and she at the top, her snow-tipped boots inches from a sheer drop. She had never experienced snow; the last time flakes had fallen on the east coast had been before the first reclaiming, she’d heard, and it was beautiful. But this was a malicious miracle: snowflakes as big as feathers blew hard right, perfect stars slipping past, stinging her cheeks and eyes. Her hair stuck in frozen lines to her face.

  A countdown appeared at the bottom corner of her interface. TIME: 119:59:30. It ticked toward zero. She had exactly five days. Until what?

  She looked down; her plain cloth had reformed into leather. The game’s tagline came to her: Sicora is a shifting world. Now she wore a heavier tunic and some natty leather pants. Instead of the roughspun shoes, this pair covered her knees, buckled at the top. But she didn’t have gloves, and she didn’t have a hat or even a cloak. That needed to be remedied, and fast.

  One thing hadn’t changed. She pulled Wa’s Gift from her back; the wood felt warm in her hands. She lifted the gem to her mouth, kissed the swirling green. “Thank you,” she whispered, and replaced it on her back with the bow and quiver.

  Survive. She had to survive. That was what a healer did.

  She shivered through her survey of the valley, turning a full circle. Her plateau sat high up, and the mountain rose right into the clouds behind her. The spot she’d dropped into offered nothing but a slab of white ice jutting from the ridge, but something moved in the valley below. She couldn’t be sure with the wind and snow, but Veda thought it bore the characteristic grey of smoke. Fire. Warmth.

  She knelt, her fingers touching the edge of the plateau; hard ice bit back. She jerked her hand away, surveying the drop. It was steep, but not so much that she couldn’t make her way into the valley. With her climbing skill at 1, it might take her half an hour. Her hands would pay, but she could heal damage now.

  She let a long, visible exhale and set a tentative foot over the edge, seeking purchase on the ice. The boot didn’t have much tread and she slipped, nearly losing herself over the side before she found a foothold. From this angle she spied a ledge maybe ten feet down; if she could lower herself a few more feet, she could drop to it.

  Veda eased herself over, hands gripping the ice. Her fingers burned with the cold, but she focused on her feet, pressing both into the same foothold, searching out another with her dominant foot. She made to look down, but snow blew straight up and into her eyes. Come on, Powell. You’re blind anyway.

  She closed her stinging eyes, felt along with her foot until she found another hold just down and right. Now for the challenge.

  She let her grip go, pressing her hands instead into the sheer side, her fingers feeling, searching left and right. Her left hand found a grip large enough for two fingers. It was enough: she used it to step down to the second foothold. And again she began the searching process, reaching out with the toe for a place to stand.

  She dropped to the ledge with jarring inaccuracy, the left ankle rolling a little. She straightened, rubbing the feeling back into her fingers. The ankle twinged when she tested it, but didn’t otherwise complain. The one bright spot was that her climbing skill had leveled to 2. She hunched, arms pulled together, squinting down into the valley. It was further than she’d thought. And worse, her health had dropped to 105/115. She was losing health to cold exposure. She needed to get into the valley, and fast.

  Beyond this plateau the slope appeared less severe, would send her to another ledge twenty feet down. She might not even need to climb this one. Veda sat on the edge, testing the angle. If she set her heels against the slope and her staff into the ice as a wedge, she could probably ease her way down. And with her health falling, she had no choice.

  The heel trick worked. She planted the staff at an angle, drove her foot down, then the other, sliding half upright. She kept steady for the first few feet, and then she lost it: a slow slide became a fast one, and then she was saying no, no, no. She scrabbled with one hand, tried to plant the staff with the other, but she was moving too fast. Soon she was barreling toward the ledge, and she could only brace.

  Veda hit it with her feet. Pain bloomed in her ankles and she dropped to her side, slid into the center of the overhang. In her interface, her health blinked with a new number: 30/115.

  A groan guttered up through her throat. It was taken by the wind, carried into the valley. Her ankles throbbed, and her fingers slid down the length of her pants to her calves and the slender bones below. Nothing broken, she guessed—at least, nothing jutted from the skin.

  Veda set her rawed hands to the ledge, pushed to her knees. When she reached for the staff, her palm left red streaks on the ice. Veda flipped her hands, stared: they had been eaten up by the climbing and the slide down, the soft skin ripped and bloody. And as confirmation, her health dropped again: 28/115. She was going to die in the first half hour.

  No—she had her spell. Veda focused on the Minor Heal icon in her interface. At once, a soft warmth welled in her chest, seeped into her arms. Her hands sprouted a golden glow, and as she looked on, her fingers began to mend, the skin reforming itself. The warmth spread into her legs, easing the throb in both ankles. Vitality issued through her, and the light shone brilliant a moment before diffusing into the air. In her interface, her health ticked up: 46/115.

  18 hitpoints. Not much, but it was enough; the pain had shrunk from nearly unbearable to grimacingly bad. She tried standing, found that her ankles could hold the load. Beneath her the slope became more gradual, and snow had begun to accumulate. She could walk it—if she could walk. Veda took one step, swallowed a cry; the pain came as sharp and sudden as if she’d stepped on a stake. She willed the other foot forward, and then the right, and the left. If she didn’t, she was dead.

  She paused to cast Minor Heal six more times, until her health was capped. And for one moment she felt deliriously happy and well, as though she’d slipped an opioid. Then her health ticked down again: 114/115. She needed to get out of this storm.

  She continued down the slope, half sliding, half wavering and regaining balance against gravity. From her ledge the descent had appeared much shorter than actually descending, and after a half hour she was still on the gradual slope, still not quite inside the valley. She tried to keep her health topped up with Minor Heal, but her mana depleted fully after three more casts.

  Ten feet on, her boots depressed the snow like sand, each step a deeper one. Before long she pressed holes up to her knees, and Veda inclined her body forward, arms crossed over her chest. The valley swam, swinging like a pendulum in her vision. She followed the smoke, the long grey curl through the pure white.

  Veda couldn’t hear through the wind, couldn’t see through the snow. She couldn’t feel her face. It was through this sensory deprivation that the memory slithered from its box. It emerged like a snake; it had waited ten years.

  That afternoon she had missed th
e transport back to the apartment. She walked alone from formatory, eight and uniformed, her hair braided over both shoulders. She knew the path well enough: she was chronically late because of Prairie and so often missed the transport to and from class that she almost preferred walking.

  Walking was quieter. She could hear the world.

  He’d approached her with an uncharacteristic soft walk for a man, and she mistook him for a woman until he stopped in front of her and his tenor sounded. Even then, he had Sarai Waters’ wholesome, encouraging sort of speech. A deception. He asked her if she needed help back home.

  Veda was trained for compliance, especially to human requests. She said yes, and then her hand was in his—large, warm—and they were walking, she directing him toward the apartment. His name was Jacob, Jacob Henry. He asked her questions, all sorts: her name, and where did she go to formatory, and what model she was. And she answered them with growing confidence, radiant beneath this rare attention. She was so taken she didn’t notice when they deviated from the path. They had gone elsewhere, and by the time she did notice, his large, warm hand was a vice grip around hers.

  Compliant. Passive. Docile. She didn’t scream, didn’t fight. All these things poured through her head, and she knew Prairie would never forgive her for allowing herself to be taken so easily. But she wasn’t Prairie.

  Jacob brought her into a house. She had never been in a real house, a human’s house. Somewhere a dog barked, its shrill notes muffled through a wall or a door. She smelled tobacco and lysol. They crossed a tiled floor and she descended wooden steps into a cold, creaking place. He sat her on the floor atop cushions and her hands came away with a residue when she touched it and he said don’t move, Veda Powell.

  Don’t go anywhere, or I’ll hurt you.

  That was when she understood his name wasn’t something so pretty and easy as Jacob Henry. She didn’t allow her face to crumple until he had left the cold place and then she spent a timeless span fetal, imagining the dog was Willow from her block and she was in fact in Mrs. J’s house. Some part of her also contemplated her new life, whether the cushion would be her new pod, and for how long, and how she might find some measure of happiness. But that only brought her to crying again, so she didn’t follow that mental trap.

  The first morning he brought her oatmeal. The first evening he brought her oatmeal. She had used to love oatmeal, a rare treat. He didn’t pepper her with questions anymore, but he did tell her where she could relieve herself. The far corner, a bucket.

  On the second evening she had fallen asleep when the dog started. Veda sat up, and at once the door opened and footsteps came down to the cold place. They were not Jacob’s; these came softer, less certain. A boy’s voice whispered out: “Girl?”

  She didn’t speak; she sobbed on an inhale. He came to her like she was a nervous bird, and she flinched at his warm breath on her cheek. “Come with me,” he said. “You have to be quiet.”

  She was good at quiet. He offered his shoulder—a slight boy’s wingblade—and she followed him out of the cold place and through the tiled room with the tobacco and lysol. They came through a door and into the chill of night, and when they had walked three blocks he asked her where she lived. She told him, and he brought her there, to where Willow barked in the yard and above, Mother and Prairie slept. And instead of an introduction or an explanation, the boy said: “Goodnight.” Goodnight as though they had been on a playdate, goodnight as though it had been a good night. As though they would see each other again.

  They would never see each other again.

  In the snow, Veda spied a cabin beneath the smoke. Her eyes filled, sending the cabin into watery relief. She took another step, and her foot sank deeper than she’d expected. When she tried to lift it, the boot caught. Her momentum sent her right into the drift, snow flying up in her wake like she had dropped into water.

  8% health was the critical range, she realized. It was the delicate space between health and death, and once she reached this point, she’d be much more susceptible to 8/115, and then 6/115, and then slipping away. Near her head she spied the emerald hue on the snow. Wa’s Gift, the gem aloft on her back. With her mana gone, she couldn’t even use it.

  One of her eyes had stuck shut, but the other saw the thick clouds, snow forming from nowhere as it landed on her. She lay for an indeterminate time, everything softening with this gentle burial. She could have been back on the cushion, back in her pod. The pain lessened. She didn’t need to look at her health to know she was dying.

  Both her eyes had closed when the crunching sounded in the snow. The noise raised another memory: eleven-year-old Prairie disintegrating a fistful of toasted o’s at breakfast, furious at the man called Jacob Henry. She demanded Veda tell her the way back to the house, to the cold place. She would hurt him. She would do more than hurt him. Her anger came so keen that Veda felt afraid, and the more afraid she became, the louder Prairie’s demands became. Tell her, just tell her where to find him.

  But Veda would not tell her.

  Fifteen

  She scented pork and smoke. Her throat caught on it, and she coughed. She opened her eyes, focused on the long-haired brown fibers of a fur blanket laid over her.

  “About time, healer.” A man’s deep baritone, shot through with gravel. Veda turned her face, surveyed the watercolor portrait of a man sat at a hearth, nurturing the fire whose smoke she had seen from the valley. His broad back smeared as he stoked the wood. She pulled one hand out, rubbed both eyes until he came clear. The man was very nearly a giant—or this place was comically small. It held only the hearth, the bed, a few stools, a two-handed axe hung from its curved head on the wall, and a solid chest with a fur skin laid over. In the corner, Wa’s Gift leaned against the wall by a window. Snow rushed past the panes where outside, something snorted.

  She was inside the cabin in the valley.

  “How did you find me?” Her voice sounded like cracked clay.

  “You screamed. Wasn’t hard to spot that red hair in the snow.” The fire hissed as he adjusted the spit. “I found you with two bunged ankles and both hands covered in blood. Not the best way to survive.”

  So even though she'd topped her health after the hard landing in the snow, her wounds had been carried as a sort of muscle memory, the weak spots re-emerging when her health dropped critically low. In her interface, Veda’s health had changed: 85/115. And, more curiously, her mana had regenerated to 130/160. Perhaps the regeneration had to do with sitting, or sleep.

  She cast her eyes up. The ceiling rose to a point, thick logs thatching at the center. Her legs still ached. “I came from halfway up that mountain.”

  “Fjall Bjornstad? You must be a seer or a loon. Maybe both.” He moved around the cabin; everything in it shook, jangled. A massive black beard and the apples of two ruddy cheeks appeared over her. “I hope you’re not one of those who forgoes pork. May I?”

  His hand, which was missing the two end-fingers, had gone to the base of the coverlet and given it a slight lift. She nodded, and he flipped it up to reveal her ankles. The huge fingers pressed at them, and Veda winced, lifted her head to watch. “Are they broken?”

  He laughed, unwinding some sort of gauze. “Oh no—else you wouldn’t be wiggling those toes so awful much. Just sprains, and they look to be much healed.”

  Her eyes closed, and she allowed him to lift each foot at a time, roll the feet, flex the toes. It was uncomfortable but not anything near the pain from before. He wrapped the gauze tight around each ankle, and the pressure spiked the pain, had her wincing. When he’d finished, he pulled the coverlet back over and returned to the fire. “Seems what you need most is food to keep you, waif.”

  As he said it, hunger swept over her like a clenched hand. “How long have I been here?”

  “One sleep. And now the sun’s getting below its peak, so I’d say—“

  “No.” Her eyes had gone to the countdown in her interface, which now read 92:44:15. Twenty-eight hours.
>
  The man turned from the spit, his eyebrows risen. “No?”

  “I’ve been here a full day. I only have four days.”

  “Four days.” He turned back to the spit, sliced off a hefty piece of meat. He set the meat between his teeth, yanked off a section. He let a noise of approval, and then he returned to the bed, held the remaining slice to her on the flat of his knife. “Much can happen in four days. When I lost my Sigrid, the days after were an eternity.”

  Veda lifted her hand, found it also wrapped in gauze. She accepted the pork between two fingers. “Sigrid?”

  “The smallest half-giant you ever saw. Gone after two years, and she’d just gotten into the habit of calling me Papa.”

  While he spoke, Veda brought the pork to her mouth; it was fragrant, dripping grease onto the fur cover. This was her first attempt to eat in the game, and she yanked off a small section. It tasted divine, better than anything she’d eaten even in real life. She chewed the pork into the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she managed.

  “For what?”

  “You lost your daughter. I feel sorry for you.”

  His great shoulders raised and then slumped, and he had nothing else to say. He waited for her to finish the meat, sliced another portion from the spit.

  This time she ate straight off the blade. “Who are you?”

  His lips curved under his beard, and one thumb went to his chest. “The only man who ever laid a she-giant: Herathor Stonearm.”

  Veda’s eyes widened. “You’re…not a giant?”

  He laughed; the rafters shook. “No, girl. Human as much as you, though a far sight sturdier.”

  When he handed her another piece of pork, Veda chewed for a long while before she spoke. “Where is the nearest town, Herathor?”

  “Town? This is the far north, girl—you’re in the town, if there was one.”

  Her eyes went to the white canvas of the window. “Do you have a map?”