by Eden Wolfe
"I was cresting a hill, the big one to the east of Longor Town, on the eastern edge of the Dark Counties, and the first thing I saw was her hair. It was wild-like. She kept brushing it out of her eyes while she hummed something that I had no idea what it was. And then I thought maybe she was from somewhere deep in the dark counties because they have lots of habits in those places that I could never understand, having been born in - "
"Focus, Gillard. What did you see her do? What did she have?"
Gillard raised her eyes upwards, remembering. "She had on a normal long brown skirt, standard issue from the fabric drops, nothing unusual in it. She was carrying a kind of satchel type thing, I hadn't seen it before, looked like maybe she'd made it herself and wasn't a pro at it. "
"What was the satchel made of?"
"Standard issue."
"Okay, go on."
Gillard's eyes looked left and right as she pursed her lips. "I'm not sure there's anything else to tell, Commandante."
"Of course, there is. Think it through, what else did you see?"
"Well, I saw her react, you know, when she saw me seeing her."
"What did she do?"
"It was kind of animal-like. She crouched down, hands on the ground, only because I stepped on some kind of stick and it made a snapping noise. She could have thought me an animal or something, given the time of night it was, but I'd already seen her blood wrap and her knees pushed out-like from her body in that crouch, and her hands were kind of like this - "
Gillard held her hands out in front of her almost like claws, one lower and one higher with her shoulders at an angle. It was the defense position Upper Earth was said to teach. It apparently extended to their women as well as the men.
Gillard held the pose and continued her story. "That's when something just went click in my head and next thing I knew it was my instincts - I ran at her and neutralized her by the neck, putting her out so I could carry her back to the city."
"And where's her satchel now?"
"Uh," Elen eyes darted around, looking for an answer, "Must be by the river, Commandante."
"By the river," Irene sighed. They'd have to send someone out now, and chances were it had already been picked up.
"Sorry, Commandante." Elen lowered her head and cursed at herself under her breath.
"It's fine, Gillard. You only did as we would have expected."
Gillard gave a quick smile, not hearing the insult in Irene's tone.
Irene spoke quietly into the Queen’s ear, "We’ve found another one. A woman this time.”
The Queen hadn't yet risen from her bed, despite Mary's morning voice having already awakened the city. Irene could see the Queen’s bare shoulder cresting the silk sheets. She knew she was awake. The Queen hardly slept.
"We'll need to interrogate." Irene approached the bed. "I suspect she's not alone. They wouldn't send just one. Their women aren't up to it. Still, this development, the use of female scouts is - " Irene chose her words carefully, " - disturbing."
Still, the Queen didn't budge. Irene knew she'd heard every word, so she waited.
She saw the Queen's side ribs rise and fall with a sigh. "Sit."
Irene sat on the side of the bed, the Queen's body facing away from her.
"My Queen, I think the time has come for us to expand the Willing Woman program, as I recommended. We are going to need warriors in the coming times."
The Queen did not respond.
"Maeva, we can start with the Ganese. I think they are ready. And they come from the stock of warriors." She cleared her throat. "I mean that we come from a stock of warriors. Going back generations. And we were one of the few peoples to survive the Final War - "
"Yes, yes. Hush. I'm thinking."
Irene waited.
She was sure the Queen's mind was moving faster than a comet. She had this way of appearing sullen when in fact there were a thousand firing pistols in her brain, each one spreading to another until a fully formed idea would emerge. And it was always something greater and bolder and wiser than Irene could have imagined.
So she waited.
The Queen sat upright with a shock.
She looked possessed. Her eyes widened, the whites of them shining in the early morning glow. Irene jumped back off the bed. The face of the Queen contorted and froze, horrible, almost disfigured. Slowly the muscles in her brow eased. Then her cheeks, and finally her jaw slackened.
Irene was held in limbo, a rabbit before the fox, struck dumb. She couldn't will herself to move. She couldn't even will herself to think.
What's happening to her?
She watched the Queen's mouth open, silent, inhaling across her tongue in almost a wheeze.
Then a sound emerged ever so quietly, hardly above a whisper, and yet banal. Raw. The pitch was inhuman and the depth of it so profound that Irene felt punched and all the air burst out of her lungs. She cringed, the cry filling her head, ricocheting against the inside of her skull.
Finally, the wail stopped. She waited for a sign the Queen was herself again and tried to regain her breath.
The Queen's shoulders relaxed. Her breathing was labored and quick, but constant. Sounds came out, words, though her lips barely moved.
"It's nearly time. Someone stronger than me. I cannot manage them anymore. The time has come to arrange a meeting, pave the way, prepare the new leader." The Queen inhaled. "Clear the past."
Irene waited for more, but the Queen fell silent.
"Maeva?" Irene’s voice trailed off. It was always best not to interrupt.
"The Future Queen must have a reign clear of conscience."
Irene hesitated. "What conscience?"
"I'd had faith that the passing of time would have made this easier." She heaved a heavy breath.
Irene's mind was racing. She couldn't keep up. "My Queen - "
The Queen glanced at her, annoyed, then looked off into an unknown distance. "It's time for the two to be set aside. Ariane must have a clear reign. I won’t let it be for her the way it was for me," the Queen whispered.
Irene's head was pounding. Her heart sunk into her stomach. Now she understood.
There can only be one Queen.
"Yes, my Queen. I will take care of this."
"Don't be an idiot."
Irene took a step backward. If there was to be only one Queen, then it was her responsibility to oversee the culling of any other who might threaten that right.
"You are a warrior, Irene," the Queen's tone sounded nearly ironic, "but this is beyond stratagems and sheer force. You don't know what they are capable of. I do."
"But if not me, then who?"
"I don't know." The Queen's nostrils flared. "I'm going to consult Lucius."
Irene froze.
Lucius? What does he have to do with any of this?
The Queen seemed to read the question in her eyes.
"He designed them. Lucius. He's the only one who'll know how to kill them so they’ll never come back."
18
Maeva
"We'll need to interrogate. I suspect she's not alone."
Irene continued speaking. She felt it, but inside Maeva's head, everything had gone black. The day she was dreading had arrived, and she had barely sensed it was coming.
"Yes, yes. Hush. I'm thinking."
Lower Earth was being penetrated, and this time by a female scout. A female. This was too far. It was only a matter of time. Upper Earth and their pre-Mist ways were coming. The oppression, the rash violence. Everything the settlers had demanded that Lower Earth end. The voices within her blood screeched; her brain snapped into mad action, visions and memories and screams from the past, the threats of so many generations rose up inside her.
They're coming. Oh settlers, mothers of the past, quiet, please let me think! Do not interrupt me now. Let me think.
But it was too late.
Words, clear and articulate, rang at her, bouncing in her brain, deafening her. The voices of the old Queens c
limbed over each other into her ears.
“You’ve been playing at this for too long.”
“It’s the Future Queen who will pay for your weakness.”
"You must pave the way for the Future Queen to reign. The others must be gone. You must cull them now."
"Or else you leave Ariane with no choice but to do as you did - to kill her own genetic kin. And you know the price of such an act."
"You can't let her become like you."
Maeva didn't want to listen, but she had no choice. They held her consciousness hostage, pulling her deeper inside.
"You let this go on for too long, your genetic experiment. It ends now. You must have them killed. They must be killed."
No. Their skills will be necessary during dark times -
"You will be the undoing of Lower Earth if you let it fall into civil war."
"Civil war will erupt. You know it. Loyalties will divide."
No, no, no. I don't believe it and I won't do it. I won't.
She was dead upright in bed. The sound of the voices echoed against the walls, though Irene sat, mute, clearly innocent to the war inside the Queen's head.
"You must cull those which remain. There can only be one Future Queen Ariane."
There must be another way.
"Then listen. Listen to what you already know."
"There can only be one."
"They were each born for a single purpose. Their blood rings with the call of the throne. They do not know any other life. You know how it will end. You saw it with your own eyes and you killed with your own hands."
This isn't the same.
"It's exactly the same. You've been lying to yourself for a very long time."
The rush came. Maeva felt it first in her bowels, and then in her chest, rising to her throat and on to her face. It was all she could do to stifle the sound, but her whole face was on fire and the cry burst out face first.
A cry of mother's love, a cry of Queen's fear, a cry of hate and grief for the act she had no choice but to take.
The voices inside pulled themselves inwards, quick as they came, skittering away. Cowardly voices who taunted, but who felt nothing.
She spoke in half-awareness, needing aloneness, needing Irene gone.
"Lucius. He's the only one who'll know how to kill them so they’ll never come back."
She was hardly conscious as she dressed and ran to the hilltop. A few minutes to think. Time to be sure of what had to be done.
Time. There is no more time.
The sights and sounds of the city dulled as she meditated on it quietly from the hilltop behind the fortress, just past the city limits. She breathed in deep through her nose and out fast through her teeth, willing the world to be something different, for it to change before her.
I am Queen. I create. I destroy. I decide. There must be a way. There must be some function they can perform. There must be a way they can be of service to Lower Earth, even if they are not declared Queen.
But she could see no other way.
They were born from the blood of Queens. A Queen is born to lead. Nothing less.
There was no other way. They would only become obstacles, or worse, to the new Queen. She knew all it too well herself.
They have to die.
The balance in which they hung was too precious, too delicate. It was all her bloodlines had fought for. So many she had killed already for their world to be saved - it would come to nothing.
She had to go to Cork Town. A small part of her clung to hope that Lucius would tell her something different. But her hope was thin and fragile. Eighteen years she knew this moment was coming. But how to do it, how to cull the failed models, the previous methods she'd considered all faded to black. The code of Queens was strong in them all.
Only Lucius would know.
Eight miles in short minutes, she crossed Geb to the gateway of Cork Town. The gate stood wide open, the Queen's Guard at their posts.
I cannot see anyone now. No one must know I'm here.
She swung around, north of the city, approaching from Power Hub, the hum of the generator low as the city slept.
She scaled the perimeter wall, passed the power conversion plant, and scaled the second wall, landing on the asphalt of Cork Town's far north border. She closed her eyes.
Thumping of drums in the distance reached her ears.
A blowout. Good. I can move without fear of being seen.
The women wouldn't emerge from the caves on Cork Town's southern edge until near sunrise. She had more than enough time.
As she strode through the commune, she sought out any sensation of Rose. A gentle wave, like a benign current of electricity, washed over her. Rose was there. Somewhere.
Don't think about her now. Not now.
She passed women on opies passed out in the streets, none the wiser to the Queen's presence beside them. Maeva shook her head.
Get to Lucius. The rest will have to be addressed later. Cork Town is descending. We have to invest to bring it back to level. Or else it will become a ghetto worse than in the pre-Mist days.
Maeva laid her face in her hands for a moment.
Remember why you're here. Go straight to Lucius. Perhaps there is a way - perhaps there is a purpose for the others. Perhaps the culling need not be a culling at all.
She banged on the door hard enough to wake Lucius and then climbed through the open window. She sat on the single chair as Lucius muttered in the separated sleeping area. Finally, he emerged. The look on his face made it clear he didn't yet know why she had come.
"Maeva. I don't recall inviting you for a middle-of-the-night visit."
"You're going to want to sit down, Lucius. We have much to discuss and I don't have much time."
"You want them dead? You want those designed to anticipate and sense any danger in a five-mile radius, you want to have them killed?”
“It’s not that I want it.”
Lucius huffed.
“Come now, Lucius, you are not so naïve.” Maeva stood. "You knew this time would come, and you would be doing the same thing in my position.”
“Oh, Maeva, there is so much I would have done differently, had I been in your position.” She watched Lucius catch his breath. His heartbeat quickened. “And Rose?”
Rose. So she called herself now.
Rose. Can a half-wit, disfigured, nearly disabled woman-child pose any threat to the new Queen?
Maeva inhaled slowly.
She too was born with the code of Queens.
But Rose had been broken and repaired with the genetic equivalent of mud and guts. She was the deformed mosaic of a Future Queen.
She may have some version of the code, but she is no Queen.
Maeva didn’t lift her voice above a whisper.
“Does she show any signs, anything, of what she was supposed to be?”
“Maeva, she’s a twenty-eight-year-old frightened child. She hardly speaks. She hides in shadows. She may have been designed for – ” he swallowed hard, “but she does little more than mop floors, pick flowers, and hum at the moon.”
As expected. There is no threat from a would-be Queen who was broken before she lived.
Maeva sat on the edge of the bed. The studio in which he lived – though what he did could hardly be called living – was stiflingly small. “Then the others. Tell me, Lucius, how can it be done?”
Lucius sat back in his wheelchair, the draping fabric of his nightclothes sticking to his skin as sweat soaked through. Maeva still couldn’t reconcile the body he’d become since his degradation began. And yet he still lived. He knew something the others didn’t. In fact, he knew much the others didn’t - that’s why he was the Great Geneticist.
Lucius looked her straight in the eye and lowered his voice.
“A knife through the heart," he said. “It's the only way."
The Queen flinched. "So violent. There must be something more dignified.”
"Certainly, but the method woul
d take longer. They might sense it coming. They might be able to block the effects of any poison, and you’d risk their fight response if you went for strangulation or another type of physical attack.”
Maeva closed her eyes. Lucius was right.
Lucius cleared his throat. “I’m not finished.”
She opened her eyes.
“It has to be you.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lucius.”
“Anyone else will fail. You can get close. They have no choice but to trust you. Their future, as they know it, hangs on you.” He looked at the ceiling, “They have no idea.” He brought his eyes back to hers. “You must go for the heart. They'll hesitate, and then it will be too late. This is how you had me build them."
She lifted her hand "But there's - "
Lucius cut her off, "You come to me for advice for this gruesome act. You dare to ask me. And then you challenge me? I designed their code for any such eventuality. As you commanded, I’ll remind you. You and your offspring experiments. I designed them to be even better than you, and you know it. I designed them so they wouldn’t be throwing themselves off the edge of cliffs.” Lucius jutted his chin forward. “If they are to die, then they must be dead. If you are going to kill what I have created then it’s you who must kill them. That is the only way.”
She turned and walked to the door.
"You, Maeva. Do you understand me? It must be you. Anyone else and it will fail. It will. It’s the betrayal that will kill them as well as the blade."
Impossible, this mad world speaks in impossibilities.
Lucius had never been wrong. But she was the Queen of the ages. The ages!
And Lucius had betrayed her before.
He’s exaggerating. He’s overstating it, just so that I will be the instrument of the act. No, I will not let him control me.
Yes, she would see them dead. But she would do it her way. Lucius didn’t have to know.
She looked Lucius in the eye and stood taller.
"So be it."
She left Cork Town, her feet moving from underneath her as fast as they could. She’d kept the voices at bay but they were boiling inside her now. Hot lava of voices threatening to burst any second. Maeva had to get away, run, far, and fast to the place she knew they were taking her. Back to Rainfields.
