Dawnbreaker

by Posey, Jay

  Wren followed silently behind. His chest was tight with a dreadful excitement; a thrilling fear that filled him with emotions for which he had no names. And those nameless feelings pushed against the swirling thoughts about all that Haiku had just told him. There was a frightening quality to Haiku’s insistence that Foe’s cruelties be taken as kindness, that pain was a necessary component to true learning. It seemed more likely Haiku was too afraid to admit Foe was a ruthless old man who took joy in tormenting others.

  Foe was sitting in the parlor, in one of the chairs near the outer wall, by a window. Most of the shutters were still closed, but the one nearest Foe was open. He continued to stare out over the empty plain even when they’d come and stood beside him. Through the window, Wren here and there saw faint flickers in the open and amongst the distant ruins, like the shimmer of remote stars. A handful of Weir, roving.

  “Tell me, boy,” Foe said. “Have you considered?”

  “Yes, sir,” Wren answered.

  “And?”

  “I want to learn from you.”

  “Very well,” Foe said. For some reason, Wren had expected one final argument, one last attempt by the old man to dissuade him. But once again, Foe had surprised him with his simple, almost casual response. “Come, sit here,” he said, pointing to the floor at his feet. Wren sat down cross-legged in front of him.

  “Before we begin, there are two things you must understand,” he continued. “First, I will never ask you to do the impossible. Anything I ask you to do can be done.”

  “OK.”

  “Second, I will never ask you to do anything that will lead to your destruction. Anything I ask you to do is for your improvement, not your degradation.”

  “OK.”

  Foe leaned forward in his chair and looked Wren intently in the eye. “It is important you hear these things, important that you believe them and trust in them. There will soon be times when you may be tempted to believe otherwise.”

  “I believe you,” Wren said, because he knew he had to believe it to move forward, and he thought that maybe if he said it, he really would believe it. Foe looked at him hard for a few moments longer, and then leaned back in his chair again.

  “These two things, I promise to you,” he said. “And in return, you must promise to do whatever I ask of you.”

  “I will,” Wren said, and this time he really did mean it. “I promise.”

  Foe nodded. He was dressed in a loose shirt, or maybe a light jacket, with sleeves wide and draping at the wrist. His right hand disappeared inside his left sleeve, and when he withdrew it, he was holding a slender-bladed, double-edged knife, about the length of his hand from palm to fingertip.

  “Stand up,” Foe said. “Hold out your hand, boy.” Wren held out his left hand, and couldn’t prevent his eyes from straying down to the knife. Foe laid the blade flat against Wren’s palm with one edge pressed tight into the web between his thumb and forefinger. Before Wren could react, Foe gripped Wren’s left hand with his own, as though he were about to shake it in greeting with the blade held fast between. There was no doubt how sharp the knife was; it felt honed to a surgical edge. Though it had not yet bitten into his hand, Wren knew that even a slight motion could easily open the soft flesh.

  “Haiku?” said Foe, and Haiku stepped closer.

  “Wren, I’m going to recite an oath now. It is the one I have sworn to House, as have many before me. Listen carefully, because it is the one you too will have to swear. When I finish, you will have one final opportunity to decide whether or not you wish to take it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Wren said, and he tried to turn his focus to Haiku, and away from the blade against his flesh and the iron strength in Foe’s grip. Haiku cleared his throat, drew a breath, and began.

  “In all ways, at all times, I seek truth. With clarity, I see that which is.

  “In all ways, at all times, I master myself. Seen or unseen, I am the same.

  “In all ways, at all times, I safeguard life. Lost or taken, I cannot restore it.”

  At first, Wren struggled against his own divided mind; the conscious desire to absorb the significance of the oath wrestled against a raw, instinctual fear of imminent pain and danger. But as Haiku intoned the words of his oath, Wren found himself becoming entranced by them. Haiku’s recitation seemed to fill the room, even to expand it. It was more than an oath. It was a litany.

  “In all ways, at all times, I walk uprightly. On my shoulders, I bear the legacy of those who have gone before me.

  “In all ways, at all times, I serve resolutely. My every strength and skill, I submit to those who call upon me.

  “Truth, my foundation.

  “Discipline, my shield.

  “Life, my charge.

  “Honor, my way.

  “Service, my strength.

  “Through my life or by my death, I will serve my House,” Haiku said. “This is my solemn oath and pledge, sworn and sealed by the shedding of my blood.”

  As Haiku came to the conclusion of the oath, an electric silence descended, weighty but alive with significance. Here were concepts of the highest quality, ideals of true virtue and a weight of history and lineage that stirred Wren’s deepest heart and called to him, challenged him to rise to a standard beyond any he had before imagined. Now that his spirit had been awakened to the possibility, how could he choose to be anything other than the kind of person Haiku was describing? And what cost would be too high to attain it? The moment lingered, and Wren’s heart beat harder with anticipation.

  “Are you willing to take this oath, boy?” Foe said.

  Wren licked dry lips with a dry tongue, swallowed with difficulty. This was it. Point of no return. Nothing he’d done in life compared to this moment, not even when he’d taken on the title of governor. He nodded. “I am.”

  “Haiku,” Foe said. “Lead him.”

  Haiku repeated the oath in segments, and Wren repeated them, taking his time to give each phrase its full due. The words felt heavy in his mouth, substantial. Powerful.

  “Truth, my foundation,” he said. “Discipline, my shield. Life, my charge. Honor, my way. Service, my strength.” When it came to the final line, he stopped and breathed deeply. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “This is my solemn oath and pledge,” he said. Breathe. Swallow. “Sworn and sealed by the shedding of my blood.” He shut his eyes, steeling himself against what he knew must come next. Waited.

  “Open your eyes, boy,” Foe said. Wren obeyed, met Foe’s gaze. “Grip the knife.”

  Wren saw now that Foe was no longer holding the knife by its handle. He reached out and took hold.

  “This is your oath,” Foe said. “I will not spill your blood.”

  A drop of sweat rolled heavy past Wren’s temple, over his cheekbone. The instinct to avoid harming himself fought against the desire to complete his oath, to begin his training, to become that which had been presented as possible. He squeezed the handle of the knife.

  “This is my solemn oath and pledge,” he repeated. “Sworn and sealed by the shedding of my blood.”

  Wren tried to pull the knife in a rapid motion, but Foe had such a grip on his hand and the blade that he instead was forced to draw it slowly free. The pain was muted by the sharpness of the knife, but sensation of the flesh separating made his head swim. When the blade was fully clear, Foe swiftly shifted his grip so that their hands met web-to-web. The pressure was accompanied by the first angry sting of the self-inflicted injury and the welling of blood.

  “As you have spoken, so shall it be,” Foe said. He continued his grip on Wren’s hand. “You are a son of House Eight. From this moment forward, you will conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the legacy of this House.” Foe released Wren’s hand, and added. “I will show you how.”

  With the pressure released, blood flowed freely from the wound. Twin trails snaked on either side of Wren’s hand and met at a point just below his wrist, where they mingled and dripped. Haiku s
tepped forward and wordlessly set to addressing the laceration, pressing a gauzy material into it. Wren hissed reflexively as the pain exploded and surged through his hand and up into his forearm. The gauze was wet and cold, apparently soaked in some sort of antiseptic chemical, judging from the fire it lit in his nerves. Wren’s lips went numb and he felt chilled and strangely light, like all his blood had turned to arctic air.

  “Sit down over here,” Haiku said, guiding Wren firmly to another chair. Wren let himself be led and did as he was told. Haiku crouched in front of him with a smile. “It’s OK,” he said. “I almost passed out too when I did it.”

  Wren blinked several times, trying to chase away the dimness that seemed to be closing in on his vision from the sides. He sat still for a couple of minutes, allowing Haiku to clean his hand up. As he recovered himself, he noticed Foe was no longer sitting across from him, but was instead up by the table in the parlor, wrapping something around his own hand. It looked almost like a bandage. That was the first moment when Wren realized that Foe had shared the shedding of blood. Of course he had. The blade was double-edged. Though the oath had been Wren’s alone to give, Foe had participated in its sealing.

  “Recite the oath often,” Haiku said. “Each morning when you rise, each evening when you lie down, as often throughout the day as you remember. It is your code, and if you hold to it, it will define your life. Each day will deepen your understanding of those words, and you will find that even a lifetime isn’t long enough to work out all their promise.”

  After Foe had finished dressing his own hand, he approached and stood behind Haiku.

  “And now,” he said, “we will begin.” Wren was still feeling shaky, but he didn’t want to say anything about it. Foe didn’t seem like he would be concerned anyway.

  “As I said to you yesterday,” Foe continued, “the life you knew before is over. That’s the choice you’ve made, to turn away from everything that has come before. To that end, while you are here under my training, your world is only as big as I allow it to be.”

  “I won’t try to communicate with anyone,” Wren said. “I promise.”

  “The outside world no longer exists to you. And you, likewise, must not exist to it. To begin, I will hide you from it.”

  “I’m already doing that,” Wren said. Foe’s eyebrows raised slightly, and he cocked his head to one side. “I had to,” Wren continued. “Because of my brother. I had to make sure he couldn’t find me.”

  Foe smiled and shook his head. “Yes, I’ve seen what you’ve done, boy. And it is clever, in its way. But it would be easily defeated by anyone who had more than a passing interest in finding you. When I say I will hide you, I mean that you will, for all intents and purposes, vanish. I tell you this because you will likely find the sensation...” He paused, either searching for the word, or to emphasize it. “Disorienting.”

  Wren felt a fresh burst of anxiety, from the revelation that his technique for masking his signal wasn’t as effective as he’d believed. Did that mean that Asher could have been tracking him all this time? And did that mean that what he’d taught Mama wasn’t really working either? Mama. That brought its own wave of emotion. If Foe made him impossible to find, what would happen if Mama came looking for him?

  He knew he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that now. He’d sworn an oath. But the reality of what it meant in practice was only now beginning to settle on him.

  “Do not panic,” Foe said.

  And before Wren could respond, a vast emptiness fell upon him, an overwhelming sense of his smallness, as if he had been instantly transported to the top of a skyscraper with the ground ten thousand feet below. He was lost, drifting in a sea of silence, utterly isolated. Conflicting emotions raced through him; it felt as if everything had collapsed in upon him, as if all the world had compressed itself into this one room, and yet he was filled with a loneliness so expansive, it seemed impossible that he alone could contain it all.

  The isolation was so heavy it was almost tangible, but it was so foreign, so incomprehensible that Wren couldn’t process the source or cause. It was like the sudden loss of a sense, the deafness following an explosion, or numbness of a frost-chilled hand. He wondered with sudden horror if this is what it was to be disconnected.

  “Breathe, boy,” said Foe, and he chuckled, apparently amused by Wren’s reaction.

  Out of reflex, Wren tried to access something simple; with the flutter of an eye, he issued a request to the local grid to confirm his location. A routine process, normally so immediate that the interval between request and response was imperceptible. Instead, the request stalled, hung there in the ether, without even an echo to mark its existence. Nothing but the dull silence of a dead signal.

  “What’s happening to me?” Wren said. “Did you...” The thought of it made him want to throw up. “Am I disconnected?”

  “He’s insulated your signal,” Haiku said. “Nothing more.”

  “All that you need is here before you,” said Foe, holding out his bandaged hand to indicate the room around them. “For you, nothing else exists, nothing else need exist.”

  Wren wanted to believe that everything was all right, that there was no reason for the fear that dominated his every fiber, but his logical mind had no power over the instinct; he felt like he was being smothered.

  “As your training progresses, I will allow your world to expand to suit your capacity,” Foe continued. “For now, any and all traffic along your connection goes through me.”

  Internally, Wren thrashed against the suffocating presence, reached out through the digital and felt it now, Foe’s own processes hovering above him.

  “Please,” Wren said. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. Please.”

  “It’s for your safety, Wren,” Haiku said. “And for ours.”

  Foe walked over and stood in front of Wren, placed his hand on top of Wren’s head. He tilted Wren’s head back and looked him in the eyes. Foe’s dark eyes were cool and steady; there was no malice in them.

  “Right now, you think you’re strong enough,” Foe said. “You believe you have willpower enough to maintain the discipline of silence. And at the moment, I believe you do. But soon enough you’ll have exhausted your resolve, and I would not be a very good teacher if I were to leave you helpless in the face of temptation that I could otherwise remove.”

  The mention of discipline hearkened Wren back to the words of his oath, and he returned to them, recited them.

  In all ways, at all times, I seek truth. With clarity, I see that which is. In all ways, at all times, I master myself. Seen or unseen, I am the same.

  It didn’t make the suffocating feeling go away, but it gave his mind something to hold on to, something to do other than flail.

  Foe removed his hand and returned to the table in the middle of the parlor.

  “Steady your breathing,” Haiku said, as he put the final touches on Wren’s bandage. He lowered his voice, as though he were sharing a secret. “It’s harder for you, because of your age. Usually when the training begins, the young ones haven’t become as dependent on connectedness yet. But you’ll be OK.”

  “You went through this?” Wren asked. He forced himself to take deep breaths.

  Haiku smiled and shook his head. “I was never connected.”

  “Enough coddling, Haiku,” Foe called from across the room. “Come along, boy.”

  Haiku stood and stepped back. Wren got to his feet, flexed his hand, testing it against the tension of the bandage.

  “Thanks, Haiku.”

  Haiku dipped his head in a scant bow. Wren crossed to Foe, who led him out of the parlor and into the stairwell. Moving seemed to help calm the vertigo. Each footfall found something solid beneath it, reminded Wren of his place in space. He found that running a hand along the wall or the railing of the stairs steadied him, as if the physical world served to anchor him in reality.

  “My name is Wren,” Wren said.

  “Mmm?” Foe
replied, though the noise was non-committal; Wren wasn’t sure if the old man hadn’t heard what he’d said, or if he’d heard it and was merely acknowledging the statement.

  “I said my name is Wren,” he repeated. “Not ‘boy’.”

  Foe stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “You have not yet suffered enough to know your true name,” Foe said. “But you will learn it in time.”

  The answer was wholly unexpected and completely confusing. Wren immediately regretted having said anything. They descended in silence past the ground floor and continued down three more flights before turning into another passage. Wren glanced back as they left the stairwell. The stairs continued down into darkness. He couldn’t help but wonder just how far down it went.

  The lighting in the passage was minimal; thin fiberlights ran along the top and bottom of the walls and cast everything in a grey gloaming. Foe stopped briefly at a small box affixed to the wall just outside a door. He swept his thumb over a panel and the front of the case whirred open. The old man removed something from the box and dropped it casually into a pocket on his loose shirt, though Wren couldn’t see what it was. He closed the box and then opened the door next to it.

  Wren followed him in. As they entered, the lights came up with a hum and washed over the room with a blue-white intensity. The room was a large square, maybe thirty feet to a side, but oddly constructed. Wren stood next to Foe on what seemed to be a ledge or catwalk about four feet wide. Beyond that, the floor dropped seven feet or so to a lower level. Where the catwalk was grated metal, the lower section appeared to be flat, pale blue concrete. Short, round poles or pillars, narrow and flat on top, stood scattered on the concrete with no apparent design or pattern Wren could detect. The catwalk ran all the way around the sunken portion of the room. A slick touch-panel was inset in the wall by the door, dark and dormant.

  Next to Wren, Foe was busy taking off his shoes.

  “You may want to do the same,” Foe said. Wren didn’t understand why, but he sat down and started taking his boots off anyway. While he was doing that, Foe went to the touch-panel. It lit up under his fingers. As Wren was wondering whether he should remove his socks as well, the walls of the room groaned and clanked. A hissing sound rose from the lower section, and a few seconds later water burbled up from some great number of unseen jets. Wren pulled off his socks.