by J. C. Staudt
“May I excuse myself?”
Bastille snicked, resting her hands on the slab, palms up. “Must it be now? We’ve come almost to the dissection of the heart.”
Brother Mortial lowered his eyes to study his toes—or perhaps to look for patterns in the flagstones and distract himself from nausea.
“Are you going to be sick?”
“Don’t know, kind Sister,” Mortial said, gulping.
Bastille flung a dripping hand toward the door. “Go, then. We’ll wait.” Kindest and Most High Infernal Mouth! Who can I entrust to perform the sacred rites when I’m gone if there isn’t a single soul who can so much as stomach the instruction?
Sister Adeleine, the lone female acolyte who remained, crossed her arms over her chest. Whether it was for warmth or to comfort her stomach, Sister Bastille couldn’t guess. Sister Adeleine had long, wavy hair that hung past her shoulders, a muted strawberry blonde. Her bulky white underclothes were more flattering than most, clinging to her curves without effort or strain.
“You must have been an avid seamstress in your past life,” Bastille said.
“I… um. Pardon, kind Sister?” Adeleine said, shrinking.
“Needlework appears to be a strong suit of yours. That isn’t so with the average initiate, but your workmanship is quite good. Most of you look like badly shorn sheep in your first set of undergarments.”
Sister Adeleine gave a nervous laugh. She had appeared as sick as the others earlier, but now the rosy color had returned to her cheeks, and she was looking on with what might’ve passed for vague interest.
“Have you a mind to stare at this poor fellow all morning?”
Adeleine was caught off-guard. “No… I was… uh…”
The acolyte’s reaction pleased Bastille, though she gave no outward sign of it. Sister Adeleine had shown her penitence, a virtue praised in the scriptures. Bastille recited the words to herself. A heart of contrition is quick to accept guilt, which is borne of heathen desire. The apostasy of desire is the recognition of shame, and shame is the stimulus for sanctification.
“One who misses one’s opportunity to learn,” Bastille said, “may find oneself unable to perform his or her destined service.”
“Yes, kind Sister,” Adeleine said.
Sanctification, Brothers and Sisters, is what separates us from those who do not yield to the all-devouring Mouth. So burn your desires, and let them not consume you in their destruction. For the Mouth desires all things to be devoured by its smile, and to devour is to aid the Mouth in its infinite design. Bastille almost smiled. “Well then. What questions do you have of me, while we wait for Mortial’s return?”
“How… or, um… what…” the younger woman said, grasping. “What was… his name?”
Bastille was surprised. “Everyone admitted inside the basilica’s walls either joins the Order or is disposed of. This man failed to meet the requirements for conduct during his initiation. Thus, he was never officially inducted as an acolyte, and he had not been given a sacred name at the time of his death.”
“His… before-name… I mean,” the younger woman pressed further.
This is a feisty one, this Adeleine. These questions border on insolence. “I told you, he had no gifted name. I do not know, nor would I care to know, his before-name. That information is inconsequential and irrelevant. Now. Any questions about the rites?” Bastille articulated the last three words with no attempt to hide her irritation. Lakalie Hestenblach, the daughter of Kabel Hestenblach and his erstwhile partner Yuliya Friedlander, had lived in Wynesring before she came to Belmond to join the Order of the Infernal Mouth. She considered herself fortunate to have been given the sacred name Bastille; it was a name of great honor and tradition in the Order, and while she thought it rather mannish and brute-sounding, she would never have expressed that sentiment aloud. Lakalie Hestenblach’s parents were dead now, and the stepmother who lived in her father’s house in Wynesring was a cold sort of woman whom Bastille would sooner forget. Carudith had always treated her as though she were a specimen in a laboratory. Perhaps that was where Bastille had picked up the habit.
“Uh, yes…” Sister Adeleine said. Her uncertainty made the lie apparent. “I want to know, if… if…”
The heavy wooden door creaked on its hinges as Brother Mortial slinked into the room and retook his place next to Sister Adeleine.
Bastille eyed him. Blood was congealing around her fingernails and in the creases of her skin. “Feeling better?” she asked, though she meant something different by it.
Brother Mortial’s oblique posture was more evident than before. He gave her a bashful nod, as though he wanted to be invisible.
“Very well. As you were saying, kind Sister?”
“I… I meant to ask, do you have to ever… remove things, in a different order, if the procedure is… if it—if it is a…”
“If it is a what? Spit it out.”
“An Enhancement.”
“Why yes. That is a very good question.” Again, Bastille was pleased, but not so much as to reward the acolyte with a smile. “However, a far greater deal of care must be taken with the Enhancement surgeries, since we intend on the subject being at least partly alive afterward. By the time you learn those procedures, kind Brother Soleil will be instructing you.”
Bastille was about to continue when she noticed Brother Mortial’s blank stare. His eyes were fixed on the concrete slab, open-mouthed and daydreaming, absorbed in a thought that had taken him far from the room.
“Brother Mortial. Your attention, please.”
Mortial snapped back to the present, blinking.
Bastille kept her gaze on him as she shoved her hand into the corpse and groped past the remaining obstacles.
The dead fellow began to dance again.
“Do you know what an Enhancement is, Brother Mortial?”
Dazed, he looked around the room, as if to find the answer hidden in the flagstones. “The Enhancement Rites are performed on prospective Cypriests,” he said.
“That is correct. So you have been paying attention. You must also know why we have the Cypriests, then.”
“To protect the basilica grounds against all who would seek to destroy our Order and disrupt our way of life,” Brother Mortial said.
“Good. And?”
“And…” Mortial shook his head.
“Sister Adeleine?”
“To… preach to the heathens?”
“No, dear girl,” said Bastille, with something that sounded more like disdain than laughter. Her hands were halfway up the chest cavity, sawing again. “There are two other reasons we have Cypriests—or rather, one reason that is two-fold. NewTech devices replicate the functions of the flesh. We can circumvent the effects of disease and injury, thereby both prolonging the lives of our high priests and preserving the technology of the past. A Cypriest with a NewHeart can live up to three times as long as an unenhanced person. After storing human tissues for a time, a Cypriest can survive with far less sustenance and under much harsher conditions.
“Those who possess NewLungs, NewEyes, or any of the other available components have an even longer expected lifespan. Of course, the quantity of NewTech organs is severely limited, since none have been manufactured since the Heat. There are many members of our Order who came here with some malady or another, in hopes of eventually becoming a Cypriest one day. In truth, we should all be so fortunate.”
Both acolytes’ eyes lit up in silent recognition. Brother Mortial’s health-related issues were evident in his posture; Sister Adeleine’s were not so apparent.
“Kind Sister, you look like you have another question,” Bastille said.
“How does one… store… human tissues?”
“Surely you know this, child. Did I not review it in my previous lesson? A portion of each sacrifice is fed to the Cypriests. The blood and certain other tissues are highly sought-after for their preservative qualities. The Cypriests can eat the same food you and I do, of cour
se, but NewTech organs operate at a far higher efficiency when a Cypriest consumes… readily usable materials.”
Finishing her cuts, Bastille groped around inside the corpse until her fingers slid over the heart. She grasped it and held on, half-expecting to feel a sudden throb, and to see the dead man sit upright and gasp for breath. Many such anomalies took place among the recently departed, and Bastille had witnessed more than her fair share of them.
She pulled her hand free of the slit, the red muscle glistening and still, her arms red past the elbows. “Here we have it—the heart.” It was a rare talent, she knew, her austere manner of sounding glad while looking grim; of softening the eyes while leaving the mouth rigid and morose. It seemed to Sister Bastille that smiling at a time like this—ruining so great a moment with an expression of uncontrolled joy—would’ve been a tragedy. I must look rather like my stepmother, as abhorrent as that is to consider.
Her lesson over, Bastille studied her subject once more. This man was not coming back, and neither were any of the others in her lockers.
Not without a machine for a heart.
CHAPTER 6
Found
Daxin’s mare hung its head as it trudged through the Skeletonwood. The landscape began to shift from the impossible flatness of the scrublands into a string of rolling, tree-lined hills. The locals often called this forest The Standing Bones, and the name was fitting. The trees hardly looked like trees anymore, their rich dark browns and gingers and mahoganies faded to sickly grays and ashes and off-whites. Ages had passed in front of these trees, and the life in them was failing. Somehow, they still had the resolve to stand and grasp the earth, arthritic fingers reaching deep for some hope of moisture, though none had borne leaf, nut or flower for longer than any of them cared to remember.
Daxin swayed in the saddle, his head bobbing with each step. He’d been riding for the better part of the day, and the strips of cloth he’d used to staunch his wounds were crusted with dried blood. He’d quenched himself with the only full waterskin Toler’s men hadn’t managed to steal, and a ravening thirst was already building inside him again. His lungs gave a dull rattle when he breathed. The hazy air out here was as thick as old campfire smoke, and the only time it ever let up was when it rained. But the rains brought with them their own set of problems, none of which an Aionach-worlder ever wanted to be above surface for.
As hesitant as Daxin was to aggravate his wounds further, he was afraid that if he stopped to rest he wouldn’t be able to get up again. I’m as dried-up and frail as these old trees, he reflected. What I wouldn’t give to have a sandcipher around right about now. One of the Calsaires from up north. We’d have more water than we knew what to do with. How did I get myself into this mess?
When Toler and the rest of Vantanible’s men had returned to Bradsleigh just days after leaving, Daxin had known right away that they’d discovered his deception. My own brother has grown to hate me enough that he thinks I’m his enemy. And that’s no thanks to Nichel Vantanible, the most despicable man in all the Aionach.
Daxin remembered the stories Grandpa Weilan had told him as a boy, while he was perched on the arm of the big corduroy chair in the den of the Glaive estate. It had seemed like such a big room to him back then, with its deep cushions and high ceilings, and the column of gray riverstone climbing over the hearth in the south wall. Their parents were away often in those days, riding with some great force of nomads or venturing to the Slickwash and north into the old country. Toler, no more than a toddler then, would sit on Grandma Neoma’s lap as the smell of breakfast faded from the air and the last wisps of steam fled their teacups.
Grandpa Weilan would begin his story in that slow, gruff voice of his, always with the same absent-minded forgetfulness. “Your great-great-great… no, that’s not right. My great-great… six greats. Our great—our ancestor, Luther Glaive. He had the spark of genius, that one. He was an inventor. HydroPyre was his life’s work—clean energy, and a nigh-infinite source of it. Luther Glaive’s invention spurred an age of progress in the Aionach. All the great sand cities were built back then: Tristol, Belmond, Southcape, New Kettering. We Glaives were at the pinnacle of our success, and we had HydroPyre to thank for it.
“But in those days, there was a bad man named Brauman Vantanible, and he had plans of his own. The Vantanibles were building their own city, smack in the middle of a different desert—Celios, on the Amber Coast. Now, Brauman Vantanible pestered our dear great-grandpa Luther about using our power for his city. He pestered poor Luther so much he nearly talked his ear off, but Luther held strong. You see, the Vantanible family once owned half the Aionach—or so goes the legend. That’s not to mention we owned the other half.”
Grandpa Luther would chuckle to himself, a satisfied laugh, full of memory. “It came to pass that the Vantanibles conjured up a contraption quite like Luther’s own, only they called theirs PuroFuel. Now tell me, little Dax. How’d you suppose that happened?”
Daxin would shrug every time he heard the tale, though he knew by then what grandpa Luther was going to say next.
“Someone had spilled the secret of how HydroPyre worked,” Grandpa would say. “That’s why it’s important to keep secrets, you see. Well, great-grandpa Luther went after the Vantanibles to get back what was his, but the Ministry looked the other way. And of course, the Vantanibles had the gall to say they devised their little PuroFuel gadget themselves. Hah!
“So by the time the century turned and the Great Heat started, the Glaives and the Vantanibles had each built half a dozen cities. Both families were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, but with the Heat came the first starwinds, and we all know too well what they’re like. Little Toler had a bad time of it a few weeks ago, didn’t he? Yes, the starwinds made a real mess of things, same as they do now, only worse. See, we used to have electric everything. Air coolers and food coolers and all kinds of things to make life easier. The starwinds came and broke everything; HydroPyre and PuroFuel, and every other kind of power they used back then.
“Without power, the cities stopped working. People died. And along comes Siymon Vantanible, the patriarch of the Vantanibles at that time. Patriarch means the head of the family, you see. Siymon decides one day that the Heat is here to stay, that the starwinds are going to change life in the Aionach forever. Dunno how he knew it, but he was right. Vantanible got into the goods-trading business. Joined with merchants all across the Aionach, and it turned out to be the best move they ever made—even better than stealing HydroPyre from us. Heh.
“The Glaives followed suit, but by the time we got our foot in the door Vantanible had a whole leg in. Drove us right outta business. All we got left now is our livestock and the old shipping yard outside town. That’ll belong to you boys someday, tho’ I can’t imagine what good it’ll be to you. Been rotting in the daylight for close on thirty years now and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. Unless you two get an itching to go back into business.”
Grandpa Weilan would hoot at the idea. Daxin would laugh along, though the humor was lost on him, and little Toler would drool and bounce on Grandma’s knee and smile his single-toothed grin.
The old Glaive shipping yard Grandpa always spoke of, fenced in with chainlink and razorwire, was nothing now but a crumbling building and a few hundred rusted shipping crates stacked one on top of the other. Vagrants and vandals had snipped holes in the fencing from time to time, making shanty homes of the big steel rectangles. The crates were more like ovens than shelters during the day, but at night they often made the perfect haven for the occasional cadre of bandits or the odd pair of lovers.
Once, the townsfolk had summoned Daxin to the yard after a couple had crawled inside one of the crates and shut the door behind them on a cool night. By the time they were ready to open it again, they found that the locking bolt had fallen into place and was impossible to unlatch from the inside. They’d been trapped for hours, screaming for help and slamming their fists against the sides of their new
found prison even as Infernal rose above them. As fate would have it, no one passed by the yard that night or the morning of the next day. The family of the missing girl had traced her steps from that night back to the old shipping yard. When Daxin had arrived to unlock the gates and let the family through, he could already smell the lovers’ fate on the breeze.
Daxin couldn’t think about Bradsleigh without wondering how Savannah was doing. His daughter was used to him leaving at odd hours, sometimes at a moment’s notice, but he had always come back.
“Don’t be long, daddy,” Savvy would say, whenever she had the chance.
“I’ll miss you too much, baby girl,” Daxin always told her.
“I don’t want you to go away again,” she’d say, looking up at him with those deep brown eyes that reminded him so much of her mother’s.
But that was exactly why he had to go. This time, he wasn’t so sure he’d be back. If Toler had anything to say about it, Daxin would never see Savannah or Bradsleigh again.
A man appeared over the rise, strolling toward Daxin with a cocky swagger, as if his worries were far away. Daxin blinked the sweat from his eyes and forced himself to shake off the sour mood his thoughts and his wounds had driven him to. Then two more men emerged from behind a boulder just ahead. All three were dressed in old worn cloth, tattered and patched with small animal hides sewn together with thick gut cord. Each man was carrying a small waterskin, not big enough to hold more than half a day’s water, but any water at all was enough to catch Daxin’s attention.
The cocky man was a short, dark-haired fellow, whose hand was planted on the hilt of an ornate cutlass on his belt. One of the others had a big flat forehead, crooked teeth, no hair, and dark circles under his eyes. The third man had a long face with an even longer red-gray beard and an awkward pot belly that looked out of place on his gaunt frame. He was aiming a compound sportsman’s bow in Daxin’s direction, while the crooked-toothed man was wielding a stick that had a sizeable hunting dagger lashed to one end. All three of them looked as if they hadn’t eaten in days.
