by Rey Balor
“There’ll be time for curiosity after we march,” she snapped back. “The Erie-folk chose us to take up command beside Da. You think they’ll understand if we abandon them for people who don’t give a shit about our fates?”
Illias made an expression eerily similar to Ma, but he refused to agree or disagree. “We aren’t chained-folk, and we shouldn’t act like it,” he spat in return, turning on his heels and walking away. She huffed and ignored her Ma, walking the opposite way of her spica — back to her Da, back to strategies, back to the war she was determined to fight in. The fresh markings on her collarbone, the deaths she carried with her, made her more certain than ever.
Chapter 3: The Space Station
“…and He found himself staring into the eyes of the sun,
who simply smiled and begged for Him to look closer.”
Death’s Lament, Verse 50.1
There was a new addition to the ghosts, Hypatia noted. The rising glare of the sun over the planet nearly blotted the body out, but she had stared out this window every day for fourteen years. Changes were rare, and when they occurred, they were near blinding in their upset of the station’s natural routine. She pressed her face against the window, trying to get a better view, but the small blur was too far in the distance. With a sigh, she pulled back and removed the tiny, falling-apart notebook from her bag.
SATURN DAY: Another soul, present for only a few days.
She was running before she had fully tucked away her notes, and she burst into Nikola’s chambers without hesitation. In their small, shrinking world, the idea that hesitation could mean collapse had been poured into her from her first taste of artificial air. Every heartbeat was a miracle; every breath had the potential to turn into something great. She burst into the chambers with the same vigor in which she did everything else, and Nikola hardly glanced up from his book, as used to it as he was to the words on the page.
“Nik, Nik, Nik! There’s—”
He held up his hand, the light nearly shining through his papery skin, as he finished reading the passage. With a frustrated sigh, she fell silent, and his hand dropped back to tug at his long beard in careful thought. Everything he did was careful; he was the antithesis to every other individual in the station. It was why Hypatia had always enjoyed speaking to him. He made her think, and as annoying as that could be, that was the very reason they were up here in the first place. Only when she had begun rocking on the heels of her feet did he put down his book.
“What is it, child?”
“There’s a new ghost out there, Nik, and when we passed close yesterday, it looked like they’re getting closer to the atmosphere — same as the last ones.” She wished her words carried the same weight as his did, but she still had the eagerness of youth on her side. It spilled from her with little restraint. “There’s no signs, nothing. There one day, pushed to earth the next, and I don’t understand. You have to have some idea, you know everything, Nik. If you don’t know what’s going on, I think it’s safe we’re doomed. We might as well step out on deck ourselves, and whoosh, we’re gone.”
He closed his book, and even the simple gesture seemed to take a huge amount of thought and effort. “To know everything, I would have to read much larger books,” he returned, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes folding upon themselves at the appearance of a smile. “But I understand your concern. It is our duty to uphold the Old Ways, and something is threatening to disturb that. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and the causes elude me. What is it we say about causation though?”
She hated his riddles and quizzes, and she would have made such a thing known if he hadn’t been looking at her so expectedly. “Cause and effect are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes, cause leads to effect; sometimes, effect leads to cause. It’s about as set as time, and we all know how that works. The answer is it doesn’t. I understand that, but I don’t understand what it has to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this. It is hard to discover a cause if there is not one. It is even harder to discover a cause if it has yet to set in.”
As vague as ever.
“A better question,” he posed as he took hold of one of the books nearby, flipping through the pages with only half-attention cast toward them. “Does it matter?”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste of the inquiry, pulling out her notebook once more. Each page was filled with words, tiny handwriting crammed onto every speck of white that was available. She flipped through until she found an entry from the sol prior, and she cleared her throat before reading it aloud. “‘MERCURY DAY: the flares are at their peak, the monsters are growing hungry, and I’m going home. All of these things are related. Causation is our fuel.’ It’s important, Nik. You can’t pull that philosophical mumbo jumbo over me. I have a job, but so do you.”
“I should have known better. What would you have me do then?”
“Tell me what’s going on. As soon as we get a hold of whatever craft that body flew up here with, we’ll be leaving. I can’t leave with more questions than I started with.” She could, considering that every other one that had left before her had left with a blurry future ahead and an even blurrier past behind them, but she certainly didn’t want to. They were already due to be shipped down to the surface, as puberty had begun to spread itself through each of the Light Bringers, and nothing would slow down the process once they set the ship itself into their sights. “Please?” she tried.
Rarely had he looked as old as he claimed to be, but the years seemed to wash over him all at once. Every wrinkle was highlighted; every callous was bright in the flickering, fluorescent lighting of the chambers. He was sagging into himself, crushed beneath the stress of the years. She almost placed her hand over his own, but she was far too antsy and he was far too tired for minute gestures of comfort as he spoke again. “You already wrote the answer: the monsters are growing hungry, Pat. It’s better you leave this place without any notion of what that hunger entails.”
Storming from the room wouldn’t leave the impression she wanted, so she sulked away instead, feet dragging on the floor and shoulders slumped in mock defeat. The minute she turned the corner of the hallway, she stood straight once more, and all hint of sulking vanished as quickly as it had come. Nikola had denied her answers, but answers were one thing that wouldn’t be denied. The truth crept through the cracks in the walls, even when the size of the cracks was no larger than the width of an atom.
Besides, Pat had always been a force to be reckoned with.
At five, she had stood in the pilot’s deck with her tiny hands balled into even tinier fists, trying to discern how they stayed in orbit. At ten, she had crept into the vents above her room, trying to determine where they led. At fourteen, she had questions burned into her mind and no answers to quench the pain of them; she needed them in a way that those who had come before her never needed them.
Change was a blinding thing, but she wanted to blink past its blinding nature and see it for what it was. To do that, she needed to enlist help, and instead of going to her own chambers, her path curved the other direction toward Marie’s room. The door was boarded over with steel bars, and it took several minutes of knocking before the silver planks started to slide back, allowing for a glimpse of the archway itself.
A blue eye appeared in the crack of the entrance, darting left to right before settling on Pat’s features — the dull, matching blue eyes,18 the dishwater blonde hair, the square of her jaw, and the large front teeth that were always showing through her grin. The woman seemed to be debating something, and the door slammed shut once more. It took the span of ten seconds, and Pat let out a groan as she knocked on it once more.
“Aw, come on, Marie! I won’t bother you for long, I promise,” the girl hissed, trying to keep her presence quiet and quick, but the woman didn’t seem to want to oblige her. “I’ll pay you the usual price, just come on.”
The door was slow to creak open, but creak open it did.
; Marie didn’t come outside, but Pat hadn’t expected her to. After all, the woman hadn’t left her chambers in well over fifteen years, if the rumors were true, and in a small place such as the one they lived, it was doubtful that they weren’t true. Instead, Pat was given an invitation: a trade of uncomfort for uncomfort. Marie would let her in, and Pat would give her a secret. It didn’t matter the secret, so long as it was something no one else knew.19 The trade itself was a secret, and it had become one the pair were well practiced in.
“Our lives are routine until they’re not. Our lives are routine until someone kills that routine. Someone’s killing that routine, Marie. You have to help me. Nikola has turned against me.” She paused a moment, flashing a chagrined smile the woman’s way. “Alright, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you know how he is.”
“Quiet birds, quiet birds,” Marie whispered in answer. She was nearing thirty years old, but instead of the usual stocky build of the Light Bringers, Marie was a skeleton barely held together. Her hair appeared far darker than its usual light color, clinging onto dirt and sweat from weeks of not cleaning, and she appeared sickly with how pale she had become — paler than any of the others, all of whom were a pasty color from lack of true sunlight. It was always disconcerting for Pat to see her, but she pushed forward all the same.
“Exactly! See why you have to help me?”
“Quiet birds, quiet birds,” Marie repeated.
Pat nodded in understanding, reaching for her notebook once more. She hadn’t had time to scribble in what Nikola had told her, and she found a spot to curl up on to write them now. Monsters, she jotted down. They’re the place beneath the shadows. “I know what you’re waiting for, and although I’m pretty sure I’ve told you every mundane moment in my life, there is one thing you don’t know. It’s a big one, so I’ll be expecting equal payment in return.”
“Quiet birds, quiet birds.”
Pat wrote something on the corner of a page and tore it out, handing it over. Marie’s blue hues focused on it sharply and suddenly, and she read over the words again and again before nodding in agreement. I saw the birth chamber, the paper said. I saw the next generation, ready for life. Marie tore the small paper into shreds and tossed the pieces into the air, sucking in a deep breath as they drifted around her. Never before had either of the young women seen snow, but it reminded Pat of the stories she read about it. Soft, sweet, calm, cold.
“They are blood and stories — the ones you seek.” It was always a strange moment when Marie became lucid, and it was one of the few moments that managed to silence Pat. She leaned forward, attention rapt. “Blood, stories, and ghosts, but you know this. Of course, you know this. You know more than they do, and they know more than you. Blood, stories, ghosts, and sadness.
“Don’t ask any more questions about it. There are words that can’t describe and designs that can’t be remade. The only way to get answers is to pull yourself apart, taste the atoms that created you, and let the chaos reign. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it. Knowledge kills tradition, and if you seek it, the goal you believe yourself to be destined for will die too. Is that worse than the death of routine or better? Quiet, quiet.”
Pat put a finger to her lips with the promise she would be silent. The gesture wasn’t a hard one to make when all words had been torn from her by the sheer force of the woman’s warning — if it could be called that.
“Quiet birds, quiet birds,” Marie returned instead, and Hypatia knew their session was at an end. The girl bounded to her feet and gave Marie’s hand a small squeeze of gratitude.
“Thank you, Marie. Thank you.”
Chapter 4: The Citadel
“Cage oneself so that Death may fly for you.”
Death’s Lament, Verse 3.8
The massive panopticon smelled of piss, rot, and a hopelessness that only came from a lack of death and an eternity of imprisonment. Even if one wanted to block out the stench of the cells, it would be an impossibility; it permeated every pore of the body the minute one ascended the long, narrow staircase up. The ceiling was low on each floor in the seemingly unending circle of prisons, and Claymore had to bend their neck to avoid hitting their head. Two of the Aegis, Shishpar and Glaive, trailed behind the captain, silent in both speech and footsteps.
The newest prisoners were kept closest to the only entranceway at the bottom, but it wasn’t the newest prisoners the group sought. To find the woman, they had to enter the labyrinth, using the light of the torch and their belief in the five Queens to guide them. It was said the path would only reveal itself to a true supporter. The flame Claymore carried flickered in protest of the darkness, but the darkness pushed back, content to remain.
Only the newest prisoners lifted their head in curiosity, and it almost saddened Claymore to see them still clinging to the hope of the flame. The captain knew the truth of the matter: the Aegis had placed most of the people there themselves, and it was destined to be their final resting place. Death would never take the captives, but they would be forced to stare at it until their very eyes turned to dust.
Claymore did not hate these prisons, for the cold hallways represented the justice of the Queens, but neither did they want to spend their evening lost within. The farther they ascended, the louder their footsteps echoed, and the stronger the stench of the cells grew. When they reached the first forked stairway, they did not hesitate as they moved up the corridor to the right. It wasn’t magic that lit the path; it was a simple remembrance — something each shield of the Aegis is told at their initiation and something that Claymore was reminded about once again when they were made captain.
The five Queens were each the point to a star, and upon drawing such a star edge-by-edge, one would discover the directions up the stairs matched the directions they connected the points: right, right, left, right, left. It was horrifically simple, but heretics would never draw the symbol. There had been more than a few instances in history where false believers had been exposed in this circular maze.20
In these far reaches of the dungeons, most of the cells remained empty. Those that weren’t housed lumps that had once been people, but could they truly be called people anymore when they were more statue than person? Claymore had only been so high in the tower once before, on their first mission as an Aegis. It had been a time of mercy and execution, but now, it was for a time of war.
Despite their position in the highest ranking task force, Claymore despised the thought of war. Battles were violent, ugly, and destructive, and ultimately, their duty was toward pure deaths — toward something quiet, soft, and warm at the end of a life. The members of the Aegis knew little of the calm, having been forged from the heat of violence. Their weapons sang in the air with the promise of absolution, but Claymore heard only the whisper of sin. And yet… Here they were, attempting to lead with that very ideology in mind.
The group drew near to their destination. The change in the atmosphere was palpable, shifting from emptiness to a stubborn clinging of life. Whereas the other cells and their inhabitants were forgettable, each one similar to the last, this one was immediately different. Already silent, the Aegis could only hold their torches upward and remain at the ready.
The walls of the cramped cell were decorated in a thousand pictures. Some were elaborate scenes, displaying men and women locked in battle or hunts in the deep forest. Others were simple, showing a face the prisoner didn’t want to forget or a place the prisoner had dreamed. All were shaky, done without the comfort of light, and all were deep reds and browns, done in blood and dirt. They overlapped each other in a hundred places, and each one frightened Claymore in the most primal sense. The pictures spoke of another world, of a wild world.
The woman in the cell stirred, squinting against the brightness of the fire. She held her hand out to block the light, and then she omitted a terrible sound. It took the captain a long moment to realize the sound was laughter. Her teeth were browned, her tongue near black, and she showed both as she continued to make
that horrible cackle. It appeared as if she had won her staring contest with Death.
“Come for me, have you?” It was strange how strong her voice still sounded after years of disuse. “I bloody well know it wasn’t from the mercy in their fuckin’ ‘arts, so that leaves but one question. Which one o’ your Queens sent for me then?” Thick clumps of hair covered her face, and she shook her head, flicking them out of her line of sight. The layer of dirt that covered her made the whites of her eyes the only recognizable feature. “What even are you? A man? Woman?”
“I’m an Aegis, and that is the only thing imperative for you to know.” Claymore pursed their lips as they unlocked the cage, motioning for their two companions to remain on alert. The iron of the bars required a firm pull to be fought loose from its rust, and the creak the cage made echoed long after they stopped tugging. “Stand carefully, my lady. We have a long walk back.”
The woman spit at them, a reaction she had clearly saved through the decades.
“Oi, that’s right. You lousy shields don’t know a single goddamn one o’ the Queens’ names, yet you serve them all the same. You think that’s right? I should’a listened to—”
“Caliana Sekhon,” Claymore spoke the wolfling’s trueborn name instead.
Claymore had never used a real name before. It was a sacred right, one reserved for whispered secrets and long nights together, but the prisoners had had their rights revoked years ago. It silenced the woman immediately. Perhaps once, it wouldn’t have; perhaps once, enough people in the outside world of the wolflings had known her name to diminish the effects — but it had been a long time, and all those people were dead. The bright anger that had threatened to burn through Caliana’s rags faded to a dim smolder when that age-old taboo was breached, and as it did, she seemed much more like the other prisoners. Subdued through a name alone… It was a fitting end for one who claimed such freedom.
