by Sarah Chorn
“Mouse?” Neryan asked. “You okay?”
She smiled.
“Fine,” she answered honestly. “I’m fine.”
Premier Eyad
He had a headache. No, it wasn’t a headache, it was more like a sledgehammer pummeling his brain. He felt like the world was a bell, and his head was the tongue making it ring. He couldn’t see straight. He was grinding his teeth so hard he was pretty sure everyone in the room could hear them working their way down to dust. His stomach churned, but he hadn’t been able to keep food down for days, so he hadn’t even tried.
It was the thoughts swirling around him that were doing it. He’d never had this problem before, but recently his talent had gotten stronger and stronger until it was nearly uncontrollable. Thoughts rubbed up against him like sandpaper. He was just one man, he couldn’t pay attention to all of it, so the minds around him grew louder and louder until it sounded like everyone alive was yelling at him at once. He was being suffocated by sound. He was being buried by the mental effluvia of everyone around him.
This was hell, this constant barrage of thoughts, each one louder than the last. His head was going to explode. This would be the end of him. He was going to die, right here, right now. His vision went black around the edges and—
No. He slammed his fist down on the table, belatedly remembering that he wasn’t alone and that he hadn’t been paying attention. Now he had to have some sort of an excuse, a reason for disrupting the meeting he hadn’t even really been a part of.
“Tell me about the collective farming,” he demanded.
There was a thick, uncomfortable silence before one of his ministers, Ivan, cleared his throat. “Premier, the drought is extensive, and—”
“That isn’t telling me how the farming is going.”
“The counter-revolutionary and subversive elements are thick in the peasant population. We have tried to root them all out, but I am afraid some remain. Grain production is lower, as is the work output—”
“Yes,” Eyad replied. “I have thought about this. We need to find the last of the subversives, and if we need to squeeze the peasants until they pop, we will. Igor, I assume you have the relevant numbers.”
“Yes, Premier,” the man in charge of population statistics said.
“We will assign each village a quota, and each collectivist commissar will be in charge of enforcing them.” He heard scribbling on parchment, notes being taken, the furious sound of minds at work. Taking in his every word. “Furthermore, each village will be in charge of producing a certain amount of grain. If these quotas cannot be met, then enforcers for the local commissar will be in charge of producing enough food to meet the quota.”
Scratching. No talking. Just scratch, scratch, scratch. This was the sound of an empire moving persistently forward.
“We will open up a bazaar outside of Lord’s Reach where peasants can trade what wealth they have for food and provisions. This is another way we can get the taxes we are owed. Everything they have, everything they grow belongs to the state. We will remind them of that.”
“How will they find the subver—”
“I don’t care how subversives are found, but they will be found!” He hammered the table again. “They are not paying the taxes we are owed and food is running low. It’s not because of the drought. We still have water underground. They could have earth talents find it. The fact is the peasants don’t want to, and they don’t want to because they are working against the state. They will starve everyone in the Sunset Lands to keep from modernizing and I won’t let them. I will end their little revolt before it even begins. They will become so weak they won’t have the strength to—”
He was ranting, his words falling all over each other. Everyone had stopped writing and instead sat staring at him, wide eyed, like he was having some sort of fit. Maybe he was.
“We will demand eighty million tons of grain from the peasants this year.”
Igor cleared his throat. “Sir, we are projecting fifty million tons this year—”
“Then take their food from them! Have commissars climb trees and look for smoke from chimneys. If they see smoke, then there is food, and if there is food, then they have not given it up to the state and they are subversive elements. Take their food and put the subversives in Slotskaya or one of the other camps where they will be made an example of.” He glared at the room, daring any to challenge him. His heart beat rapidly, sweat beading on his brow. Strange thoughts filled him up and he really just needed everyone to leave. “Do it. If those fools in Counsel feel like they need a vote, make sure the vote goes the right way and the papers are on my desk by this evening to be signed. Dismissed.”
He listened as feet shuffled around him. Igor’s thoughts wafted into his head, full of revulsion, distaste, and doubt. He’d have to take care of that man.
Once the room was silent, he let out a long, low sigh and rubbed his temples. He was dripping with sweat, his entire body covered in it and that infernal mental shrieking hadn’t gotten any quieter.
“Premier.”
Samson. The only man in the building he actually wanted to speak to. Eyad groaned and leaned back in his chair. “Samson, what was your born name before you took on the revolutionary one?”
“Sasha, sir.”
“I have long thought that we should change the name of this city, as we have changed our names. I am no longer Evgeny and you are no longer Sasha. Why do we still live in Lord’s Reach, a city with no lord? Why are people still using their pre-revolutionary names?”
There was a pause. Samson’s surprise hummed in his mind, but nothing other than surprise and an odd, cold curiosity. It didn’t matter. His thoughts were drifting, his mind taking him down twisting, tangled paths and he was too exhausted, too spent, to reign it in. He had more important things to worry about than names. Eyad looked at him and smiled. “What news do you bring me, Samson?”
The head of his secret police instantly relaxed. “The two subversives you requested have been brought to Slotskaya and their inn has been razed. They are being held, for now, until orders are given.”
“Question them. Keep one alive,” Eyad said, his voice cold as ice. These two subversives had been his bane since Vadden escaped. They had harbored him, and promoted his actions, working hard to send counter-revolutionary messages all over the Sunset Lands. He’d raided the inn a few times, but the proprietor and his husband were crafty, and Eyad’s men had never found concrete evidence of subversive activities. He’d eventually decided to let them be. It was easier to keep tabs on rats that weren’t running.
Samson nodded.
“And the countryside?” Eyad asked.
“Premier, a lot of people have died; peasants mostly, from nutrient-related illnesses. Healers are rare, so diseases are going unchecked, and in many villages all of the earth talents have been killed by the population in anger or protest,” he shrugged. “We are getting conflicting answers. Some blamed them for being unable or unwilling to find water or help seeds grow.”
“Subversives,” Eyad curled his lip. He was changing their way of life, bringing the Sunset Lands into the modern era, and the peasants were fighting him tooth and nail.
Samson licked his lips. “The further east we go, the worse it is, until there isn’t anyone alive. The only people we found were dead, and even further than that, there wasn’t even any dead. I assume most have fled the drought.”
“We need to close the borders,” Eyad hissed.
“Sir, I agree. The Red Desert is starting to send peasants back and—”
“Those who flee are not loyal to the state,” Eyad finished. Samson nodded. “What is this army I’ve heard rumors about?”
“In the east? We saw no signs of one, nor anyone capable of fighting. There were rumors but so far, they seem to be rumors only. We will keep a watch, but the land east of here is empty, all barren farmland and dry riverbeds. I can’t imagine an army coming from that direction, unless they are from la
nds we know nothing about.” Samson cleared his throat. “Premier, you told us to let those counter-revolutionaries you’ve been watching go, but I took a liberty and have kept eyes on them.”
Eyad smiled. He’d known Samson wouldn’t just let them go. “And?”
“They are in a cabin in the woods. An unmarked girl is with them, but she disappears nightly. Seraphina appears to be ill. Neryan is with her, and Vadden is there also. The cabin isn’t far from the Reach, maybe a day at the most. If they go anywhere we’ll know it.”
“Do they know they are being watched?”
“No. I have my best men monitoring them from a distance. If they leave, we will make sure they go in the right direction.”
“Thank you, Samson. If anything changes, you will keep me informed.” Eyad raked his teeth over his bottom lip and decided now was as good a time as any to deal with Igor. No point waiting. Waiting only gave the man time to undercut him. “One last thing. Igor needs to be dealt with.”
“Premier, he will be taken care of.” Samson bowed at the waist, a fist against his heart, and then departed. Igor would be taken care of, of that Eyad had no doubt. The man would be mopped up like he was a particularly nasty spill and nothing would remain of him. There then gone in a blink. Tomorrow another person would appear where Igor had been. No one would ask questions or raise eyebrows; they’d all act like they’d been there the whole time. Igor who?
Eyad’s head was still pounding, and now he felt feverish and shaky. He had a few hours before he needed to be at more meetings, so he decided to leave his office and travel through the spiderweb of hidden passageways that filled the castle walls like a rat warren, in an effort to avoid other people.
The corridors under Lord’s Reach were largely a maze. People went into them and often never came out. Long ago, he’d made a point of figuring out how to get from the palace to a point beyond the city walls in case he ever needed to escape. It had taken him months of exploring, each day going a little further, carefully marking his path as he went, making sure he could get back safely.
The city was built on the bones of ancient civilizations. It had always been a central location for people who ruled this land, for whatever reasons. The city itself wasn’t really close to any rivers, or natural tributaries. There was a high water table, so there were plenty of wells and fresh water from underground to fill them; but the farmland was in the east, and in the west all that existed was mostly businesses that thrived on trade between the Sunset Lands and the Red Desert.
He’d always wanted to know who had lived here before, but he’d never been able to find out. Whatever civilizations had existed in times gone by, all they’d left were the tunnels under Lord’s Reach, and a lot of silence.
He took one tunnel, and then the other, untucking his shirt, unbuttoning his coat, sliding off his vest as he went, until he popped out of the secret panel into his bedroom, comfortable at last.
He flung himself onto his bed and threw his arm over his eyes. Eventually, someone would look for him. They’d find their way to his room and wake him up; but until then he needed sleep.
His chamber was as dark as a tomb, and that’s how he needed it. These days, he kept the windows constantly shuttered and the lamps unlit. He knew where everything was by feel. He’d had headaches before, crippling, agonizing things that went on for days, but they’d always been rare. He used to go months, sometimes years, between them; but now, his migraines just lingered—day after day—much stronger than they ever had before. Darkness, pure and absolute, was his only sanctuary.
His bed was huge and empty. He curled up on his side, his mind finally finding some respite away from the thoughts of others. He’d chosen a room in the furthest, most abandoned, wing of the castle. Seraphina had thought he’d moved out this far just to make her life more miserable, to isolate her as much as possible, but what she didn’t know was that he’d done it to preserve some of his sanity.
She noticed so much, while somehow managing to miss what was right in front of her face—all of his cues, all of the small, overlooked ways he used to hide how his mind talent was turning from a blessing into an affliction, eating away at him like a cancer. He felt, sometimes, like he was barely hanging on to rationality. Moments where he lost his temper, started ranting and raving, were becoming more frequent.
There were a lot of reasons he’d started hiding himself away like this. Life, sometimes, was just too much. The more the pressures of the state weighed on him, the less he seemed to be able to handle it all. Nobody was capable of making even the simplest decisions without him. He’d stepped into this role with some ideals, some big visionary dreams, and had been completely and absolutely unprepared for the magnitude of what he was taking on. He’d thought he’d be doing this with Vadden beside him, helping him weigh and balance the complexities of governing. Instead, Vadden had left; and now he was alone, holding all of this on his shoulders, surrounded by a bunch of useless, groveling sycophants and yes-men.
He was still learning this role, but he was in truth blazing a new trail, with almost nothing to go on but the writings of other revolutionaries; men and women that had influenced him in his formative years, but nothing he hadn’t heard a hundred, thousand times before. The only thing new under the sun was… himself.
Somehow, he slept.
The relief he felt upon waking, with his headache diminishing to manageable levels, was tangible.
He stretched and started putting his clothes back on. Soon, someone would come knocking on his door, probably annoyed that he hadn’t been in his office or somewhere else.
His mind started firing, finding puzzles and solving them almost in an instant. This was what he was made for, this solving of problems. Vadden had balanced him out but sometimes, in these dark, quiet moments, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he was better off alone; unfettered, without another person holding him down or trying to control him.
He picked at the problems of the peasants and the drought while he got dressed. There was nothing he could do about the loss of winter, not even Vadden and his lightning could summon a storm. Earth talents could find water, but they were shockingly rare these days, and the ones that were out there seemed to be getting weaker by the day, which made Samson’s news about their demise in the villages even harder to swallow. What fool would kill off a person who used a talent that was irreplaceable? Water talents were hardly ever born. Neryan was the only one in generations. He wished there was another one he could call on, someone he could trust to bring water up to the surface. As it was, there were rivers deep underground that some digging could get to, but it would require…
Forced labor. Counter-revolutionary elements.
A servant was knocking on his door.
“Yes, I’ll be right there,” he shouted.
He moved around his room by feel, whistling an old tune under his breath, and changed into fresh clothes. Finally, when he was ready, he made his way out of his room into the wide hallway outside, closing his door behind him.
“What’s on the itinerary tonight?” he asked a nervous looking pageboy who had waited politely in the hall with a notepad. This was a new lad, one he’d never seen before. He was small and wiry with big black eyes and sharp features that hinted at the Desert. “Who are you, boy?”
“Omir,” the youth said, shuffling his feet a little. “I came to tell you about this evening’s meetings and…”
The child swallowed hard and looked everywhere but at the Premier.
Something was wrong—Eyad could smell it on the boy, and he cursed himself. He’d been so lost in his thoughts, consumed by his headache and the fact that he finally felt better after a day of feeling like he was second away from exploding, that he hadn’t been thinking. More than that, he hadn’t been listening. He hadn’t noticed there were less minds around him than there should have been, that the guards who stood outside of his door were gone, and the kid who was shifting anxiously in front of him was thinking dark, terrifying tho
ughts.
And now it was too late. He watched in numb horror as the boy bit some capsule in his mouth, blew a puff of yellow powder into the air, and then immediately started convulsing, his mouth foaming, falling to the ground, dead before his head hit the floor.
Eyad broke into a run but only made it two steps before his nerves set themselves on fire, his back bowed, and he lost control of his feet. His mind started spilling everywhere and suddenly all those thoughts he hadn’t heard before were rolling over him like an unstoppable tidal wave. His tongue was too big for his mouth. He heard howling. No, he was howling.
Pain.
So much pain!
How could one person hurt this much without burning up, blazing brighter than the sun?
He fell, crashing to the ground in a clatter of flesh and useless muscles. He heard footsteps, saw guards. The world was going dark, dimming, shrinking around him. He cried out, shouting for Vadden. Why wasn’t Vadden here? Where was his husband? He shouldn’t be alone now, not while he was dying not while—
He reached out and grabbed the cooling hand of the dead boy, squeezed it tight, and held on while his lungs fought for breath.
And then…
Darkness.
Seraphina
Seraphina surfaced slowly. Consciousness was fish-slippery, hard to hold on to. Reality seemed to be swimming away from her but she grabbed on and held tight.
She felt like she was lingering in that liminal space between worlds, waiting for realizations to sink in, for heart and lungs to remind her she was alive. Waiting for one world to claim her, or the other. Fire or mortality, with Seraphina poised between the two, eager to burn but afraid of the inferno.
“Seraphina?” Letters strung together like stars, turning her name into a diadem of shattered dreams. Edged in hope, colored by longing.
“Seraphina?” Spoken like a prayer, as though his yearning was a pearl hidden in the darkest folds of his heart. “Seraphina, come back to me.”
