by Eden Wolfe
"I am unwell. I am unwell with disgust and anger and I won't let this continue." Leadon could see Irene arriving, fifty steps away now, her image growing in her approach.
Priyantha nodded, "What will you have us do?"
"Where's the contingent?"
"I can see them making the turn onto the path now, they'll be here in a moment."
"Fine."
Irene's hair sat in long braids down her back, bouncing with every step. Her face had no specific expression. Leadon felt another flare of temper at the sight of Irene's resolute calm.
She has no shame. No sense of what she's done. As ever. When has she ever thought of anyone but herself? She insults my authority. Worse than that. She treats me like a dog. She pushes me too far.
Leadon paused. Suddenly she realized she'd lost sight of the larger issue.
This isn't about me. It can't be about me, nor the insult she's cast upon me. If I make this about me, then I'm no better than her.
Leadon's shoulders relaxed and lowered. She took a deep breath.
This is about what her fortress has done to Gana, to her own people. What they will continue to do if their power evolves unchecked. She is as much a part of that power structure as the Queen.
This can't be about me.
Lea's lungs filled with cooler air and she felt her head clear.
"I see you've brought a party to greet me," Irene spoke through the gate, still no sign of any emotion.
Leadon looked at Irene, scanned down her body, and back up. She did not appear changed, though something in her posture told Leadon that Irene was tired.
"Open the gate," Leadon said in a low voice to Murrani, who obeyed, the gate clicking as she lifted the lock bar and slowly swinging open.
Irene stepped in, back onto her land. But where Leadon was now firmly in charge.
She's in my territory, not hers. And as much as this is about Gana, she must also know how to treat us with respect.
Irene inhaled, "I must speak with you, Leadon. Alone."
A long pause followed and Leadon could hear the warriors behind her growing tense at the silence. Leadon turned to them.
"Arrest her."
"Arrest me?"
"You have violated my commands." She turned back to the warriors, "Make sure she has good food and drink, and a comfortable mattress." She tilted her head toward Irene, who's mouth was agape. "I will speak to you when I'm ready." She nodded to the arresting warriors.
"You don't understand, Leadon. Things have changed. I must speak with you. I shouldn't even be here. You don't know what I had to arrange in order to come."
"You will explain everything to me. Later."
"It's going sour, Leadon. Let me speak with you."
"I will. Later."
"This is ridiculous!" Irene threw her head back and broke her arms from the warriors. She pointed at Leadon, "Play at Chief if you want, but this isn't about all that. It's not about me and it's not about you."
"I agree with you entirely on that. You'll tell me all it is about. Later."
Leadon turned and walked to her hut without stopping. She feared she would lose her nerve.
Have I been too hasty? Of course, she wouldn't come simply to flout her authority like a peacock. That was never Irene's way. The conditions in which we are kept here with their planted "representative" is already enough to show Geb's superiority.
She's come for another reason, and I have no idea what it is.
Leadon cursed herself for deciding in haste, even though it had seemed appropriate. For the warrior priestesses of Gana, Irene's arrest would send a good message.
Perhaps it's not bad that they have seen this. It makes our role clear. I do not have the information about why she has come, but this solidifies something in the women's way of thinking. That we are not victims to the whims of the fortress.
But still.
Lea waited an hour.
That was long enough for the message to be clear. And she couldn't wait a minute more. She walked to the reinforced hut where Irene was being kept. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside, but Irene's outline was there, right in front of her, standing in the middle of the cell.
"You throw me in like a thief, like a common rat."
"Come, Irene. You didn't give me much choice." Leadon's voice was calm now. Calmer than she even expected to hear her voice.
Irene's face tensed - and then relaxed. "You're right."
Both women looked at each other, the sounds of the training outside underway.
"They are improving." Irene looked to the small brick-sized window.
"They are."
"We must speak."
"I agree." Leadon unlocked the cell. "But not here. Let's walk."
They walked at a quick pace towards the village's boundaries. Warrior priestesses stopped whatever activity they were doing as they passed. Two women of the same face, thirty-five years between them, the future of Gana and the iron fist of the fortress. Leadon saw that the women knew how important this meeting would be. They didn't interrupt. They cast their eyes back to their respective work, albeit moving more slowly upon seeing them.
They reached the far end of the village limits, the sound of the river growing before them. Irene stopped, and Leadon stopped with her.
Irene looked at Leadon and then looked at the sky. "I have been charged with an impossible task."
"Little is impossible for you." Leadon meant it.
"This is different." Irene kept her eyes set straight ahead.
They walked a while further before Irene continued.
"Maeva is dead."
"Oh." Leadon didn't know what else to say. She'd had such little interaction with Maeva other than as a child and then during her visit just a few weeks earlier. She had seemed distracted and unfocused, but Leadon never would have guessed she was close to death. "There's been no announcement."
"Exactly."
Leadon didn't know what to make of that. "And this jeopardizes your position?"
Irene looked into the distance, "That's not why I'm here, though that may be true." She sighed, "And if it is, then I can't imagine Ariane allowing me to simply retire to the Gana countryside. It's also why I had to come immediately. What she's planning, what she'll have me do-" Irene swallowed, words seeming to get stuck in her throat as Leadon watched her struggle to speak. "Thousands and thousands of girls, Leadon. Babies. She'll have me kill them, Lea."
Leadon looked hard at Irene. "That makes no sense. Why? Why would she - "
"There's a problem with them. They were born in incubation and the effects of it seem to be life-long. A clinical depression. No medical intervention seems to reverse it. They're in a wretched state. But to kill them? That's not who we are. That's not the Lower Earth I serve. We are about preserving life in the face of everything the Final War threw at us." Irene's chest inflated and she pulled her shoulders back. "I have to serve the world we should be. Not the one the Queen commands it to be."
Leadon could only bring her voice to a whisper, "She wants you to kill children? Thousands of them?"
"Infants, toddlers. First all those under three years, but soon it'll be all under five. I'm to make it look like a quarantine that is so secure that no one sees them again. Certainly, in some time she'll announce that they've been reintegrated into different counties and no one in Geb will be the wiser. And meanwhile, we'll have committed a genocide as bad as, or worse, than any which came before the Mist."
Leadon closed her eyes, a dizziness invading her.
"Why have you come here to tell me this?" Leadon's stomach turned.
Irene grabbed Leadon's shoulders. Her eyes were wide with desperation. "Because we have to find another way, Leadon. This is our land. Lower Earth is ours. Our ancestors built this society out of love for one another, even for those who were different from us. Even when it brought misfortune on our own people. That is what we stand for. Strength and perseverance, care for one another, no matter
how hard. These girls are not ethnic Ganese but they are as much a part of our Lower Earth sisterhood as anyone. Even more so because they are just children. There is no one protecting them. We are warrior priestesses. This is our greatest calling, and I'd be insulting the generations who came before, every ancestor who took any risk to save the life of another if I didn't do everything in my power to save them."
"Thousands," Leadon whispered to herself. Her mind was blank. She sought some kind of message from beyond, a sign, a feeling, but inside her was vacant. The thought of thousands of girls being led to their death hit her somewhere deep. "It's not possible, not without the Queen knowing - "
"Don't tell me it's not possible." Irene pointed in Leadon's face and then paced, her hands on her head. "We have to find a way, Leadon. Geb is going to become an ugly place. The clear-out of Cork Town will turn worse soon. Not just disappearances of the known betrayers; that's been accepted as normal. No, this will be a culling. A culling. Those are the Queen's own words. A culling of those undesirable, those who take resources without giving. I can't fight her on that. The animosity against Cork Town is already great, brewing for years as the rumors circulate of the deviants causing havoc, stealing, and never mind the opies. I can't do anything about Cork Town. But there must be something to do about this. "
The river rushed by them, the sound filling Leadon's head as it masked their voices. She brought her hands to her face, rubbing her temples, hoping a solution would come, a way to do it that didn't risk all of Gana, something that didn't put their very existence in danger. But every thought came back to the same conclusion.
The moment the Queen finds out, she'll come for us.
Torn between dedication to Gana and shock at the inhumanity, at the very idea of thousands of incubated children being marched to their death, Leadon felt her blood drain.
"It's horrible, it's horrifying. Everything you've said, which I accept as truth - "
"It is the truth - "
" - makes my stomach turn. But Irene, what can possibly be done? How could we even begin without risking a massacre of our own people? Irene, it can't be done."
A voice behind them stepped out from the trees.
"It can be done. I'll do it."
36
Rose
Rose recognized the voices long before they arrived near the river edge. And more so, she recognized the cruelty in Irene's recounting of the plans for the incubates. She knew it was true of the Queen. There was no question to the truth of her story. Rose had felt it in her sister Queen from the moment she'd first been announced on the balcony of the fortress.
There was something dark in her from the very beginning. The way she could detach herself from those around her, those who loved her, from those who could have loved her. Anyone who can kill her sister, kill the one who wears her own face, has something broken inside. But I never thought this - I never imagined it could come to this.
Rose waited, hearing out the story.
Irene is right. This cannot be permitted, we cannot stand by and watch a generation of children be led to die for a decision that hadn't been their own.
Leadon cannot do it. She risks too much if she is at the helm. And what of Gana then? She's only just begun to bring East and West together, only just begun to unite them as a single people in the vision of their ancestors. No, Leadon can't do it.
But I can.
Rose stepped out from the trees, knowing the shock it would have on the discussion. She had seen the Commandante many times since the coronation, but the Commandante hadn't seen her.
"It can be done. I'll do it."
The two faces, the same face but in two, snapped toward her.
"Rose?" The Commandante's eyes narrowed while Leadon's relaxed.
Rose nodded.
The Commandant approached her, "But you're... limited. Rose. I certainly didn't expect to see you here. You hide well and hear everything. You did inherit certain abilities from your mother."
"You said she's dead."
"She is."
"Ariane killed her."
"I don't know that."
"I do. I didn't have to see it to know it."
Irene nodded slowly.
Rose continued, "Leadon cannot leave. Not now. But I can. No one knows where we - I - am." Rose blinked at the memory of Zev. He would support this decision, there was no doubt. But she would be putting him in harm's way. "I will need help - "
"The warrior priestesses will not hesitate to support you." Leadon bowed.
"Wait, wait, wait." Irene stepped forward. "Rose, you hide in shadows. You have never grown past the body of a girl. I'm not trying to be cruel here, but this is a serious matter that can only be handled by those with great resolve and courage in the face of what could be death. You are kind. You are gentle. You are - "
Rose ran at Irene, knowing she could move faster than Irene could catch with her eyes. She leaped and grabbed Irene's throat, pulling her to the ground. Irene coughed, the air knocked out of her.
"You know nothing of who I am." Rose stood, allowing Irene to regain her footing.
"And so I continue to be wrong." Irene shook her head and looked at Leadon, "There was a time when I was so sure. So sure of myself, so sure of our direction." She looked back at Rose. "I don't know anything anymore."
Rose lifted her chin. "Don't fall into the mistake of believing that you ever did."
Irene bowed her head low and then brought her hands to her hips. "I have an idea."
Rose listened carefully, curious at the sincerity in the Commandante's voice. There was no doubt that what she was proposing could get Irene disappeared. She could be publicly flogged, and then worse. Rose could see it. Ariane would enact incredible horrors upon her. She would feel she had to, in order to send a message. And a part of Ariane, that false Queen, would relish it.
She only ever lived to have an enemy.
Irene outlined her plan. It was simple - it had to be. The logistics of moving nearly fifteen thousand children would be challenging enough. The rest had to be as easy as possible.
Leadon spoke as Irene finished, "If we are to make this work then we'll need to set up a collection point from the location in the Central Mass you already suggested to the Queen. The less you change now, the more likely she is to accept it."
"I agree. Once I leave here, I cannot sway from the plan in place. She'll hear it in me the moment I open my mouth to lie. I must only speak truth. I must commit myself to the plan. The rest will be up to you."
"The island must be prepared in advance," Rose whispered herself out of her thoughts.
Lea spoke up. "I'll send a group ahead. There are several warrior priestesses who can be trusted with the task. And they shall stay on as educators and carers. No one else attends to that island. Once they pass the Forgotten Islands, the rest is truly forgotten until Upper Earth, and we know that is several thousand kilometers away."
"We don't know that," the Commandante added, "but that was the best intelligence we ever got from the scouts."
Rose nodded. She hadn't heard talk of the scouts in years. Upper Earth had become a forgotten enemy like the island on which they lived. There had been a time when Upper Earth consumed the consciousness of all peoples across the land.
And now? Those women scouts were as real as any. It was not an invention. But the fear of an enemy on our shores has faded into the enemy that lives upon our own land. The enemy who leads our land.
Rose stepped close. "We have much to prepare."
The Commandante nodded, "Rose, I shall not see you again."
"Never again."
The Commandante lowered her head. "May the wisdom of the ancestors be with you." She kneeled.
As did Leadon. "We bend to you, Rose. You carry the blessing of our ancestors. You embody their values as much as any Ganese."
Rose brought her hands to her heart and then placed one on each of the kneeling Ganese warrior priestesses' shoulders. "We each have our duty to fulfi
ll. This one is mine. My restitution for the Queen. I cannot undo all she has done. But I will not let her do this."
And with that Rose ran, unconcerned at what the double faces would believe at her leaving. She needed to see Zev. She had to explain to him their mission. And she had to prepare herself to fulfill the meaning of her life.
37
Roman
Queen Ariane's eyes widened. Roman had known they would. He had known she'd be displeased, but there was no hiding any of it from her anymore. She had to be told and Roman had to face the heat.
She flipped through the pages Roman handed to her. He stroked the lava amulet without realizing he was doing it.
"You need to know just how far behind we've become. I know this is disappointing."
"So you've made no advances on any of the new crop killers? Not the rice crinkle disease, nor the bacteria in the water of the Dark Counties pipeline?"
"None."
"You've got some guts bringing this report to me. You don't need me to tell you that the ratios don't work. I'm doing simple math here, Roman, and our arable land is decreasing on a monthly basis. I told you that the newer generations in Willing Women had to be less dependent, able to manage with fewer natural resources. You haven't solved for that, and meanwhile, the viruses continue to run rampant across the fields. Over four hundred active viruses, am I reading this right?"
"This is precisely why I've brought it to you, and why I've brought it now."
"Roman, do you understand that what you've put before me is not just unacceptable, but it is a travesty and an insult to my intelligence?"
"No, my Queen, never. Quite the contrary. This is what I've been trying to tell you. We've pivoted to work on the incubates. And now we've reached the limits of our resources in the Tower. We're spread too thin. The biologists and statisticians and bioinformaticians working on the viruses of West Fields and East Fields are the same we need working on the revised incubation program, as you commanded. We can't be in two places at once. We've tried prioritizing and we've tried strategizing but ultimately we've come up against a wall. The resources in the Tower are insufficient to meet both the demands of the incubation program and the issues of climate evolution and virus proliferation." He closed his eyes, not knowing how she would take his next words. "If we are going to solve every angle of the problem, we need to do some things differently. And this is where I need your help, my Queen."
