by Andy Havens
/// hear me… please… you were never in any danger. I bent the snipers’ aim using the Way of Sight and your own Way, the one that made – tried to make – your words seem true and important to me. and in case everything else went all pear-shaped, Vannia was set to get you out of the line of fire. she knew. ‘save Alderaan’ was the code. ///
None of the words came out. Because he hadn’t willed her to speak.
He reached up with one hand and laid it, gently, on her shoulder.
No word, no change, not even a breath but in an instant she knew exactly what he could do with that hand. She saw/felt/understood a future moment where/when he crushed through her skin and muscle, pinching bone and pulping flesh to the point where of her arm simply fell off. She saw/felt his hand move so quickly that he deflected a bullet in flight. She saw/felt him point at the horizon and a hundred-thousand soldiers turned as one to march off under his command. Fingertips so sensitive that they could discern and identify a particular grain of wood. Muscles so strong that he could lift her off the ground and fling her across the room the way she’d pull a tissue out of her pocket.
/// not a Way. just him. what he is. who he is. he is the Way of his House. he is the physical embodiment of Increase. the invocation of his Domain. ///
She understood that in earlier ages he’d been worshipped as a god, both by Mundanes and lesser Reckoners. That made sense to her. He’d been the kind of leader that inspired armies to attack against the most daunting odds. Not because of lies about honor or patriotic propaganda. Because he’d been right. And they knew it. They would follow him and fall down at the gates of Hell, happy to help him take one more step toward his right and righteous goals.
And she couldn’t.
Do.
Anything.
Anything.
Anything that he didn’t will for her.
If he told her to die, she would find the quickest way to do so. If he told her to stop believing that down was down, she’d come to that conclusion gladly. She would have gone outside, rubbed grass in her hair and juggled puppies if that had been his whim. Because, clearly, he knew what was best. For her. For everyone.
She understood that he was angry with her. Very angry. And she accepted that. If there was punishment, it would be just and she’d applaud it even as it was applied to her. If she had to promise to atone for her actions with favors and money and effort… that was fine. She’d spend the rest of her life doing so.
She waited. Smiling slightly.
/// because waiting is what I’m supposed to be doing right now. ///
But somewhere very deep inside her, in the place that felt the Narrow Roads more fully than ever before… she was terrified. Not just scared of what he’d do to her. But scared that anyone could be this powerful and influential.
She sensed that, in most situations, his Way was not applied with such blunt ferocity. That he spread it out thin and delicate over his people’s lives. That he would dip into it and anoint them from time-to-time. Not soak them in his will the way he was doing with her. She could tell that this wasn’t something he enjoyed.
It’s not efficient, she realized. If he has to resort to this, he’s failed. He’s forgotten something or neglected a clue or moved too far down the wrong path. Part of what makes him so effective is that he knows how to apply a light touch to get what he wants.
Except for right now…
The realization didn’t help her. It formed in her mind while she waited to do whatever he asked.
His eyes were a cool, pretty blue. They were infuriated. Which was OK. Because he’d only be angry if someone deserved his anger. Even if that was her.
She sensed Vannia moving up behind her, and then Parrot Girl made a noise like a mouse being stepped on and was quiet.
/// if she’s dead, that’s OK… as long as that’s what he wants. ///
That wasn’t really her thought. She knew that. But it still made her sad. In the tiny little part of her mind that was observing her attention and obedience.
In that little part of her mind, with what remained of her own, actual perception, she admitted, I was arrogant, too.
She sensed that he’d somehow heard/felt that admission.
At which point he released her.
She fell to her knees on the floor, broken glass trying to stab at her through the black cloth of her slacks. She inhaled deeply and painfully, realizing she hadn’t even breathed while he’d held her, fixed, in his path.
In and out, in and out… she breathed heavily and turned her head to see that Vannia was also on the floor, chest heaving, eyes fluttering as if coming out of sleep.
Looking up at Ezer, she realized that something of his power still lingered. She wasn’t committed to blind obedience or perfect submission, but she understood something about him because of how completely she’d been transfixed by his Way:
He actually deserves to be followed. He is, in fact, a worthy leader.
Because the Way wouldn’t have worked for a lesser man. Maybe it could have helped an ordinary person seem grandiose. But it couldn’t have commanded complete surrender. She would have sensed it as a kind of extraordinary Seeming. Like a mask or a costume.
I can imagine a Way that would fool you into thinking someone is powerful, she thought. But not one that was based on the essential qualities of the Reckoner himself.
Increase, she realized with an abrupt flash of insight, requires a genuine source. You can’t make “more” of something unless there’s something there to begin with.
Kendra looked up from her knees at the Warden of Increase and held out a hand. He paused for a moment, then seemed to come to a conclusion, reaching out to take her hand in his. He began to draw her up, assuming that that’s what she wanted; help getting to her feet. But she leaned back a bit, simply holding his hand in hers as she knelt before him, looking up directly into his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked surprised. It was the first time she’d really seen that look on his face. Then he tilted his head a bit to one side and said simply, “OK. So am I.”
She nodded and let him pull her up to her feet.
Behind her, she heard Vannia getting up, cursing lightly under her breath.
“No worries, Parrot Girl,” she said.
“Just impacted on the surface, eh?”
Ezer shook his head, chuckling, and asked, “What’s that make you, little assassin? Gold Leader?”
“No,” the small, blonde girl said, her large, emerald-colored wings surprised into visibility for just a moment before disappearing. “Green Two.”
Kendra realized the whole incident, from the time the shots rang out until Ezer had lifted her from the floor, had probably taken less than two minutes. She was about to ask, What now? when her mother came jogging down the stairs.
“What the hell happened here?” Lane asked, rumpled from her nap and clearly agitated.
Gareth turned smoothly to Kendra’s mother and said, “I’m so sorry to disturb you, ma’am. My son and I were just throwing a football around on the street and I wildly miscalculated. I’ll have someone out to fix your window later today, I assure you.”
He was smooth as cream and easy to trust as a big, handsome puppy. He gestured at the guard/assassin who had followed him into the house as if that man were his son, and Lane made the, O, kids! What are you going to do? face at him. Within moments she and Ezer were chuckling and she went into the kitchen to make them some tea while they waited for the repair man.
The Warden’s eyes lingered on Lane as she walked into the other room.
“She really is empty, isn’t she?” he asked.
“I think so, yes,” Kendra replied. “I never noticed it before, of course. Though there was always something a bit… sparse… about her to me. Even back then.”
Ezer shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“She seems at least content most days. Not sad or depressed, I mean.”
“Tha
t may even be worse.”
Kendra knew what he meant.
“I blamed her, you know, back then,” Ezer said, stepping out of the way so his people could start cleaning things up; three of them had joined the first man with no visible signal from their Warden.
“Blamed her?”
“For the plot. The treachery I imagined that she had cooked up with your father and Lady Percy. The evidence was there. And your father was clearly in love. He did and said some foolish things. But I really believed that Elainya Geary – your mother’s name then—was conspiring against both Increase and Release. There was evidence.”
“But not really.” Kendra sat down again in one of the two chairs that hadn’t turned explosively inside out.
“No. Not really,” Ezer said, taking the other chair. Vannia busied herself helping with the clean-up, inexplicably taking a few pieces of the fluffy chair stuffing and putting them in a pocket.
Lane came back in with tea. She didn’t ask about why a football would have torn off the top half of a wing chair, or why the people doing the cleanup looked more like FBI agents than repairmen.
Like most Mundanes, Kendra thought, she just wants things to be normal.
Hard on the heels of that thought, though, she realized, Most Reckoners want that, too. It’s just a different, more colorful normal for them.
For us.
By the time they’d finished tea and a few butter cookies, the window was repaired, the room was clean and the exploded chair had been removed. A new one, an identical one, would be delivered within the hour, Ezer explained.
As her mom took the tea cups and dessert plates back to the kitchen, Kendra asked the delayed question from earlier:
“What now?”
Ezer frowned attractively, rubbing his chin. The very picture of mature wisdom, Kendra thought.
“I think we do something I haven’t done in nearly a thousand years.”
“Wear shorts in public?” Vannia offered.
Ezer laughed out loud. “You’re a hoot, little assassin. But, to be clear, I’ve never worn shorts in public.”
“Shut up, Parrot Girl,” Kendra said, giving her friend an exaggeratedly dirty look. “You were saying, Warden?”
“Let’s visit the Library,” Ezer said, standing and brushing imaginary detritus from his already pristine jacket and slacks.
As Lane came back into the living room, he turned to her and shook her hand. “I am truly sorry for the trouble, Mrs. White,” he said.
“The window is already as good as new,” she said, smiling up at him. “Boys will be boys. No hard feelings, I assure you.”
He held her hand a little longer than maybe was appropriate, and looked a bit more remorseful than a broken window should have required. But he finally released her and said simply, “Thank you for understanding.”
Turning to leave, he said quietly to Kendra and Vannia, “I’ll meet you there after it closes to the public. Around 9pm.”
They both nodded and he left, along with his team, retrieving all their tools along with the bags of trash they’d collected during the cleanup.
Vannia was sitting on top of the couch back, legs crossed, playing with the bit of fluff she’d picked up earlier. Lane had already headed back into the kitchen to run their tiny, apartment-sized dishwasher. Kendra knew that whatever excuse she gave her mother for going out later would be fine.
“What do you want to do for the next couple hours?” she asked Vannia.
The other girl shrugged and stuffed the fluff back in her pocket. “I don’t know. Watch some TV. Talk about boys. Hone my knives.”
Kendra nodded and gestured for her friend to follow her upstairs. “We’ll be in my room, mom!” she called out.
“OK, honey. Let me know if you’ll be staying for dinner.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s fine.”
Friday afternoon TV was awful. They didn’t really know any boys. So Vannia taught Kendra how to clean and sharpen knives and test them for proper balance.
* * * * *
Bastiaan Huber kept whispering to himself, My name is not Thomas Brownfield Edgington, while he took the monocle out of his eye and examined the thin piece of clear glass. The clarity and knowledge he’d gained while looking through it remained. Though he realized he couldn’t really understand all the languages bubbling up from the conference room below completely. Just English and German. Those he understood at a native, child-like level. The other languages simply made a lot more sense to him.
But I speak German?
He realized he did speak German. And Dutch. But they weren’t speaking any Dutch down below.
The others? Not sure but…
He put the glass back in his eye and recognition snapped back into place. English and German, perfectly, yes… and Italian and French in an academic way. All the speakers seemed to understand each other, too, but most seemed comfortable in a particular language. From time to time, they’d also break into… Chinese, Spanish and a dialect of Farsi. It was if they preferred different languages for specific concepts as well as being most fluent in one or two particular tongues.
I understand all of it.
Ken was looking at him strangely. Bastiaan mouthed the words, “It’s OK” and gave his friend the thumbs-up.
Ken leaned in close and whispered, “I’m kind of bored. And hungry. And I have to pee. So we should go back down.”
Bastiaan nodded and gestured for Ken to lean on him while standing up, which he did. Then Ken helped Bastiaan to his feet and the two of them spent a moment letting the blood flow back into their legs. Quietly and softly, they retreated back down the length of the attic. Bastiaan saw that the late afternoon sun had moved such that the shadows were long and the objects and boxes harder to make out.
Looking through the monocle, Bastiaan could read the tiniest text etched in the most pale script on the lip of a pewter mug even though it was ten yards away and almost entirely obscured by dust and the gathering darkness:
To Amelia and Charles on Their 50th.
He took the monocle out and couldn’t even see that the text was there. So he put it back in. All along the shelves and dressers, racks and boxes, he saw detail after detail jumping out at him. Thread counts of the fine, cotton sheets. Not printed on a tag; he could just tell. The stain on a pair of shoes that he knew was red wine. That he knew was Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan. That he knew was from the 1982 vintage.
Later in the season…
The grooves on an old phonograph record. He could tell from just looking that it was a recording of the musical “Anything Goes.” He wasn’t familiar with the show, but could read the lyrics from the grooves on the disk:
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare's sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse.
None of that made a bit of sense to him. He knew the words, but they didn’t seem to go together. How could someone be a symphony, a hat, a poem and a mouse?
That made him confused and a bit sad and angry. So he thought, again:
My name is not Thomas Brownfield Edgington.
That seemed to help. The repetition of the name, even though he knew it wasn’t his, calmed him. Made him feel connected to something. All the objects in the attic were confusing and had too much detail. They wanted to tell him more about themselves. About where they were from and who had used them. About how they were broken or what pieces were missing. They seemed to be mumbling and whispering to each other. To him.
My name is not Thomas Brownfield Edgington.
He concentrated on looking at the back of Ken’s head as they located the right air duct. Ken was about to open it when Bastiaan placed a hand on his arm.
Wait… he mouthed. Ken looked questioningly at his friend for a moment, but then they heard steps in the room beneath the duct, so Ken nodded, not questioning how Bastiaan had known about the person down there before he had
.
After a moment, Bastiaan nodded and tapped Ken on the shoulder and they descended. Quietly crawling on their knees through the duct. Quietly waiting at the panel in the ceiling of the hall. Quietly opening the panel and descending – Ken first, dropping noiselessly to the floor and then helping his friend lower himself a bit more awkwardly.
Back to the day room. Where nobody had noticed their absence. Partly because of the important guests. Partly because of the number of residents. Partly because the residents hardly ever got into any trouble. Partly because keeping 24/7 watch on these two wasn’t part of the Taxonomy.
Dinner was pork chops, which was fine. With redskin potatoes and apple sauce and tiny, soft, cooked carrots. All of which was fine. Dessert was ice-cream.
Bastiaan wasn’t sure how he felt about ice-cream. He remembered that he used to like it. But now? It seemed… suspicious. Like something your mother tells you you’re supposed to like. Everyone likes ice-cream.
He played with the mint-chip scoop in his dish and thought, My name is not Thomas Brownfield Edgington. And I do not like ice-cream.
The monocle was in his bathrobe pocket. I’ll spend some time with it later in my room.
Most of the important guests had left, but one stayed to talk at length with Roland Daniels, the Director of the Center. Over their own dinner (similar to that of the residents, but with a few bottles of a nice, local micro-brew) they kept to small talk. But when the sun went down they shooed away the kitchen staff and took their bottles to the back porch. During the day, residents would often sit on the porch and play cards or do puzzles. It was a peaceful spot overlooking the large yard and grounds. Screens on three sides kept out the bugs and the night was cool with a lovely breeze.
Back from dinner, Bastiaan could see them from his room. Not directly, but by using the monocle as a kind of telescope to bounce light around corners and reflect it back to him. He wanted to watch Dr. Daniels because, of all the men who’d been at the meeting, Dr. Daniels was the most familiar to him. He’d also seemed like the most calm and friendly of the group.
He was content to watch the two men sit in the low Adirondack chairs and drink beer, almost finding a kind of calm in their own relaxation, when a third person appeared suddenly at the doorway. The two men stood, immediately, and gestured politely for their guest to join them.
