by Eden Wolfe
The infiltrator had pulled forth a spear, and Aria had not even seen it before it slid through her gut.
How did she move so fast? I landed the knife. I know I did. But how did she pull out the spear so quickly? How did I not perceive it was there?
She could not take the thought any further. All she felt was warmth. She marveled at her own physiological reaction.
I have no training for this.
She knew she was in pain, the madness of rushing from brain to site, and back again, messages flurrying in speeds she couldn’t follow, the pain was only a fragment of the moment. She was consumed. And paralyzed.
Poison.
Every bit of every cell, every pathway, every idea, and memory had only one focus -
Do not give in!
Her consciousness pulled back deeper and her brain went into unnatural slumber. She pulled back as though in a tunnel that was sucking her like a magnet, the strongest magnet in the universe and deep she went, the force taking her down and backward, but she had no fear, no reluctance.
Only warmth.
She was enveloped by warmth, a burning hot but inviting warmth in the deep.
She turned her head, whispering the name she could rely on. He had to be near.
“Archer-”
Her eyes wouldn't focus, all was confused. Poisoned. Was this Upper Earth's doing? A poison-tipped spear? It was medieval but effective. Her eyes closed. She didn't feel the presence of the other anymore, the scout - the woman – the infiltrator.
Dead, she must be dead.
She had landed the dagger in the woman’s chest just in time, it must have pierced the heart. The lump of body lay just beyond what she could see through hazed eyes. Now she had to get the spear out before too much blood was lost. She couldn’t heal herself. Everything was spinning.
And she couldn’t move.
“Archer, where are you?”
Time passed.
She couldn't heal.
Too much time, Archer should have been there.
He promised.
He should have been there.
“I’m here.” At last, Archer stood over her. He was in silhouette from the fire, the flames rising behind him. She couldn’t make out his face. He did not come any closer to her.
“Archer, is she dead?”
He stepped away, out of sight. Aria tried to send the blood rushing to her wounds, but she was so tired. Archer came back into view, though he stood several feet from her.
“She is dead.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I am sure.”
She hesitated. The scene was all wrong, but her mind wouldn’t clear long enough to give her the answer. It had mostly gone to plan, but the scout’s movement. Her face. It didn’t make sense. The scout had been swift, silent, and focused.
Aria had to get the spear out and overcome the deep fatigue that was consuming her. She couldn’t find the strength to heal. She needed Archer.
He was still there; his body cast shadows from the fire. And still, he did not kneel to tend to her wounds. He kept his distance, but the blood on his hands –
It was all wrong.
“Archer, you have my blood on your hands."
"No."
"I know my blood. I can smell it from here."
Her head rang, deep voices clamoring inside her, but the picture wouldn’t come clear and she couldn’t will herself to move.
"I promise you, Ariane, my little Aria, it is not your blood."
It is my blood. There is no sense; I can make no sense.
She heard his footsteps approach, the sound scraping at her brain as she struggled for consciousness. His breath brushed her cheek, heavy breath. A droplet fell on her brow as she felt his hand clutch the spear in her chest. She felt the slide of it being removed and finally she could exhale, weakly willing the blood to travel to the place, for the cells to split and renew. Nothing would move as fast as it ought to. Her eyes were closing against her will, her peripheral vision closing in.
He whispered in her ear, "I'm sorry."
She barely heard the words, but she felt the violence as a knife came down into her chest.
And again.
And again.
She could not lift herself. She could not think. She watched from the inside as cell after cell died and shriveled, slowing to a complete stop as her heart wept blood. Her body and mind faded until she had only a passing thought of death.
She let a long, last breath escape her lips as everything inside and out went dark.
35
Archer
Let it be quick.
He prayed that she understood why. Why he had no choice. Why he had to do this.
He couldn't bear to watch it even as he brought his hand down into her again. He closed his eyes. He forced himself to hold his breath as he drove it in further, her body unresponsive to either death or life.
He silenced his agony, his heart tearing apart as he pushed the knife even deeper into her.
Go quick, my Aria. Go quick.
She did not move.
He brought her into his arms and twisted the knife in her chest. He felt everything in her let go, little by little. Her legs, her neck, her back. The blood loss, the poison, it would be enough.
His eyes tightly shut, he curled her body into him, cradling her and remembering when she smelled like a baby. He couldn’t reconcile the woman in his arms with the infant he’d once held.
He let the tears grow under his lashes and stream down his chin. He tried to exhale the memories, spit them out but they caught in his throat. He was choking on memories and his lungs burned with them.
Dirty hands, mingled with their bloods, their singular blood. His betrayal made him black inside. His mind was black, his bones were black, his heart was black, his soul went black.
He stopped crying.
Eyes more tightly shut than before, he lowered her to the ground. He feared what would happen if he dared to look upon her. His body was almost too heavy to lift itself.
Right foot.
Left foot.
He stood with eyes still clamped shut. He took a step backward, and then another. Finally, he turned, opened his eyes, and walked away from the fire, the cold night, and his orchestrated scene of death.
He walked in a trance to a creek. He washed his hands and face, but nothing felt clean.
A wash of red went past his eyes, and he shook his head to pull himself into the moment.
Red like blood. Am I seeing blood before my eyes now?
Again the image flew by, and this time he was sure it was human.
Only they can move like that, only my Arianes.
And the Queen.
He stood straighter, listening, but hearing and seeing nothing.
I am going mad. The two are gone. My head is making memories alive from their dead bodies. And the memories are surfacing in the color red.
The figure appeared, far away. She moved toward him, but he couldn’t make out the detail. Her movement, slow as the earth and then faster than he could see. It had to be one of them, or both of them together. Both at once, finally reunited in a single body.
He was caught in deer-like fear. Frozen.
I am watching them dead, now a single dead angel walking towards me.
She moved towards him steady and fast, yards away, he thought, but no, she was just there, now to the right, now to the left.
And then she was just in front of him, eye to eye.
But deformed.
For only a flash he saw the face he knew so well, but in a horrid twist of animal and child and woman with eyes abhorrent, red bursting from her head. He gasped in fear as her hands flew at his face and all went black.
36
Maeva
The Queen stirred, then jolted awake. Upright, alert.
Something is wrong.
She closed her eyes to focus on the sounds of the fortress, the wind echoing through the corridors, nearly silent but
audible in the distance. She perceived footsteps in the east wing, on the upper floor. Walking toward her. Then walking away.
The night guard; no reason for this alarm.
She didn’t know what woke her, but whatever it was had hit her hard.
Has Archer done it?
She pushed the thought out of her head. He was not to tell her the exact day, this way she remained innocent to its knowledge. It could have happened days earlier or not for days to come.
Closing her eyes, Maeva heard the sounds of the people in her head. She heard their breathing, thousands of lungs lifting in slumbered breath, and an exhale, unencumbered and free. These sounds used to haunt her, for she felt she was never alone. No peace or privacy. Over time she had learned to shut out some of the murmurs.
But some sounds, especially the sounds of massacre from generations past, would boil up from within. It took all her focus not to be consumed when those sounds came. They were low and heavy. Her inheritance from her mother. And her mother's mother. And her mother before that.
And what about the two? Are they gone?
Perhaps. Perhaps, at last, it is done.
She let out a long exhale, one that seemed to have been waiting for years to release. Her body was not as swift to regenerate as it had once been, though in itself that was no cause for alarm. It was to be expected, even given her advanced capability of cellular divide. She would not be infinite; she had never expected to be. Still, she despised the sleep. She was over sixty years old, but her skin was as fresh as one in her thirties.
Her internal condition was a different matter, though she had been well designed indeed.
The freshness in the air swept along the Queen's bare arms. She lifted the heavy velvet cape that had long been the trademark of Lower Earth’s queens. The summer heat lingered in her breath.
This night is too dark. The sounds are too loud and the night too dark. Where is the moon?
She roamed the halls, carefully avoiding the night guard, not wanting words to pierce her thinking. Sounds and memories rustled and she listened. She had to trust the voices now more than ever. She would be lost without them.
The announcement of the new royal - her successor - she would have to do it soon, now that the two were gone.
All things must ride gently and cautiously.
She stood still in the hall, allowing herself to go deeper within, to hear the voices that rumbled there. There was a message for her, she knew it, even if she couldn’t yet decipher it. And all the better it happened in the dead of the night when she was alone. Not in front of others, not like the episode at court.
Perhaps I should have done this sooner. Perhaps this culling is long overdue. But how could I have known all the consequences?
A sound reached her ears from somewhere beyond the fortress walls. Maeva walked to the windows that faced the city. Central Tower rose in front of her.
Two lights on, floors seventeen and nineteen. Roman still at work. Good.
She was comforted knowing he led all research now, with his impeccable record of reporting. She calmed her breathing.
Her heartbeat accelerated, a change nearly imperceptible.
Something isn’t right. What then? It can’t be the culling. It can't have gone wrong. Anything but that.
Archer wouldn’t dare disobey her. Certainly, he would try to do right by the two; he would try to give them the peaceful and honorable death he felt they deserved. He wouldn’t want someone else to do it and risk it being blunt and undignified.
But the feeling wouldn’t leave her.
I should have known the calm would be short-lived.
Roman's body came into her view from the Tower, standing on the nineteenth floor, in front of the full-length window. Maeva focused in on his hair, his jaw, his gaze. He was far, but not too far for her. She could see the look across his face. His mouth was turned in angles, the skin pulled forward as he brought up his hands and buried his face in them.
From behind Roman, Archer came into view, his face twisting.
Archer.
From the nineteenth floor, Archer cried out, inaudible to all in the city except Maeva’s ears.
His torment pierced the night and struck her ears with such violence that she recoiled before breaking into a run toward Central Tower.
37
Archer
"You're a complete mess, Archer. You're going to ruin everything, heavens help us, you might have already." Roman punched his cabinet. "What were you thinking, just leaving them there that way?”
"I don't know." The fever was getting worse and Archer thought he might throw up. A sob from deep inside him escaped his lips.
"You won't be able to keep this a secret." His words were spitting and sharp, but Archer could only nod. Roman stepped closer to him. "There is too much relying on this. If they live –"
"They don’t. They can’t. You weren't there!" Archer snapped, feeling guilt and righteousness and anger all at once.
"Do you think she knows? She must know."
"She knows. She might not know she knows, but she knows."
"You're a traitor, Archer."
"Archer, a traitor?" The Queen arrived silently as she always did, startling both of them and jolting them out of the argument.
"My Queen," Archer moved toward her.
"Now, now, Archer, you've had quite the accusation thrown at you. Be out with it, fast."
"I've done as you commanded," he spat out.
The Queen stared him down, a movement ticking within her eyes. He felt the guilt oozing out his pores.
She knows.
"Where are the bodies then?"
“I killed them, Maeva.”
“You were to mark the bodies. Where are they, Archer?”
There was no hiding it anymore. "I don't know."
The Queen's nails slashed at the left side of his face. He reeled against the office wall, never having seen the hand raise from her side. She betrayed no evidence of the attack. She grew taller over him. Towering with fury.
He put his hands out to her "Maeva, listen, I have done everything you asked - " he couldn't bring himself to continue.
The Queen lowered her chin, burning her eyes at him. “I will go too far if I stay here another moment.” She turned and ran from the room, away from the Tower, running faster than Archer’s eyes could follow.
"Maeva, please!" He cried, desperate, coarse tears pushing out, a break in his voice. "Please!"
But she was gone.
38
Maeva
Soft man! Spoiled man! Dead, dead man!
Everything had changed; the voices deep within had known before she did.
Imagine that I believed in him! The man with the code of Kings! Ha!
I should have known. Weak, soft man.
Her instructions to him had been clear. She had faced threats from Man, from Upper Earth, from the failure of science and from her own birth's chaos.
She had conquered over the thousands of others, winning her mother's acceptance, winning the love of the people.
She had looked into the next generation and made the decision. The culling.
There could only be one - she'd had to make a choice. She had assigned the near-divine act of saving Lower Earth from eventual civil war to the only man she trusted.
The one. Only him. She had only trusted him. She trusted him because they trusted him, he could get close to them without suspecting. That's what she'd thought.
And now it was all crashing down around her. All because she wouldn’t do it herself.
Oh, but I was a fool, wasn’t I? I could have known. If I had listened to those who came before. I could have guessed he would betray me. Lucius was right. More right than he knew.
She ran to the fortress hill's edge, desperate to be out of sight before it exploded in her. A scream boiled from her gut, up her lungs, through her throat, and burst with such ferocity that birds sleeping across the city block flew from her in fear. As she m
oved deeper into the forest, her fingernails dug trenches in her hands, her fist so tight that blood drew and trickled down, melting into the burgundy of her velvet nightdress.
She quieted her heart.
Quiet now.
She felt the air slide into her nose. Her nostrils relax. Air cooling her brain. A rush of calmness. Sanity returning.
They must be dead. Certainly, they are dead.
She watched from the inside as she healed the lesions on her hands, willing the wounds to close, splitting new cells until her cheek had only a gentle glow of new flesh. A moment's pause and she was back in control. She began the walk back to her quarters in the fortress as the old queens spoke from deep within her.
“They are alive.”
They must be dead. He did that much.
“But dead women don't vanish into thin air.”
They're still human. Eaten by animals. They're gone.
Looking out from her bedroom window she saw a blur in the distance under the moonlight of the clear sky. She knew who it was.
Her last hope.
Her last Ariane.
She waited for the message. The confirmation. Thank goodness she sent for confirmation. She just needed to know that the bodies were there, or even just that there was no sign of them whatsoever. A sign that what had been too many was now only one.
One Queen.
One Successor.
One Future for Lower Earth.
Silent steps approached that no human ears could hear except those of a Queen. She raised her nose in the air but had no sign of scent of the one approaching.
No scent, no sound - the code has been perfectly executed in her. Just let her speak the words that they are gone.
Her voice spoke with barely more than a whisper as she passed the door. Almost as quickly as it came, it was gone. Only the words were left hanging in the air.
"I still feel them."
Questions rose and the Queen raced through her mind. Memories flew in and out as if single panels on a screen moving faster than light and she searched. She searched through years, through generations, for an answer.
