by Eden Wolfe
Irene said nothing.
“You’ll go to the Sisters, Irene.”
Irene felt like someone hit her in the stomach. Here was a chance to finally go back to Gana. There hadn’t been a moment she could escape to find out how Leadon was doing or if they’d had any word from the island where they’d sent the incubates. She just had to convince the Queen.
“Me? You know how they treat Ganese. I won’t be able to get any information from them if I tried.”
“You’ll go. You’ll find out what’s going on.”
“They’ll lynch me.”
“You’re a warrior.”
“What you need is information, right?”
“Don’t talk back at me!”
Irene paused, racking her brain for the right response.
“My Queen, I’ll get what you need. Let me first go to Gana.”
“Not a chance. You know as well as me we can’t give the Ganese an inch.” Ariane turned her back to Irene.
“Hear me out. If I go there, I can find out the stories. The travelers coming through will bring gossip. Some will be lies, but some will be true. Someone must have heard something of the Sisters’ condition. And we know Gana wouldn’t report that to Geb, they’d dismiss it as rumors. But to me, to one of their own... I can tease out the truth.”
Ariane turned back but didn’t look convinced.
Irene continued. She had to make Ariane believe. If she could get to Gana she really could get news on the Sisters.
And so much more.
“It is safer there for me to ask unusual questions. Then I’ll return and report. That’s how we can determine the best next steps forward. Perhaps at that point Daphna will have more information. We can prepare a strategy to address your...” Paranoia, Irene thought. “Your concerns.”
Ariane stepped close to Irene. Her body was slight, but all muscle. Her head arrived at Irene’s shoulder, but she walked around the warrior priestess as though she was a horse under inspection.
“You want to go to Gana.”
“To find out about the Sisters.”
“To find out about the Sisters. And what else?”
“I will limit my mission to that.”
“And what about your genetic double?”
“Leadon might have some information for us.”
“What does she have to say about me?”
Irene looked at Ariane. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her in nearly a year.”
Ariane’s eyes narrowed, “Not even a message?”
“She wouldn’t dare. She knows where my loyalty lies. If she had something to say, she would say it to you directly. You still receive her monthly reports, right?”
“Yes, I do. They speak of agriculture and checkpoints. Unified culture among the Ganese. Topics on which I really have very little interest.”
“Those are the topics of Ganese life.”
“Warrior priestesses have many more interests than that.”
“Times have changed, my Queen. So have the Ganese.”
“They still do their combat exercises, I imagine.”
“I would imagine, too. They are part of our culture. They are only exercises.”
“So you defend them?”
“I explain, my Queen,” Irene sighed. “But in fact, I don’t know the condition of life there anymore. As I said, it has been a long time.”
Ariane cocked her head and walked to the window that looked into the main square. She lifted her eyes. Irene followed them. The setting sun reflected off the top floor of Central Tower against the city below, a double sunset in west and east.
“Irene,” Ariane whispered, “What do the Ganese know about the incubates?”
Irene had been waiting for months for this topic to come up. Her heartbeat quickened. She’d been waiting ever since the Queen had demanded their execution. If there was ever a time she had to be careful with her words, it was now.
“They know what the rest of Lower Earth knows. There was a virus. It tragically infected the very young and some of the very old. They are,” Irene coughed, “in seclusion. Kept away from all who might fall ill because of them. Lower Earth Direction is protecting them and the rest of the country until such time as there is a treatment or vaccine.”
“Yes,” the Queen whispered. Her eyes showed doubt, and the doubt showed her age. Irene saw the little girl who still lived inside the twenty-four-year-old body of the Queen. “But they never go to the place, right? They aren’t allowed, right?”
“Of course they are not allowed. No one is allowed. But even if they did, for anyone who passes by, the compound looks like a series of high walls with a gate. I keep two guards at the entry at all times. Guards who know; guards I can trust.”
“So nobody else knows that the compound is, is a...”
“A shell? No. No one knows. No one except us.”
Irene told her head to believe it. She had to believe it herself if she was to convince the Queen of it. Otherwise, Queen Ariane would read the subtle change in her heartbeat, the rush of her blood as it reacted to the lie. Irene had become an excellent liar through a single trait: she believed it.
The rest was true. The compound was a shell. The guards kept the lie alive to anyone who happened to pass, though the location was already well off the beaten path from anyone traveling from the Dark Counties south. They would have to be lost, disappeared, or mad to stumble upon the compound. The guards could handle any of those.
“I dream about them, Irene.” Ariane looked out the window.
Irene blinked.
She wasn’t sure what to do with such intimacy. Ariane had always been clear that Irene served her. They were not friends, they were not kin.
But as Ariane turned her head now to face Irene, vulnerability rolled off the young Queen in waves. Irene had never seen anything like it.
“You dream about them?” Irene could have kicked herself. The Queen was opening up to her, and that was the best she could come up with?
“Yes,” Ariane turned her face back to the window. “They climb over me. I’m drowning under them. They’re begging, begging for their lives. I keep pushing them off me, but then more of them come.”
Irene felt her skin tingle. It would be a horrible dream.
But that was the consequence for commanding the death of thousands of children. Genetic deviants or not.
Ariane turned back to her again, “I hear you.” Ariane closed her eyes. “I hear your panic. Do you feel them, too? Do they come to you, too?”
“In a way, they do.” But it wasn’t in dreams. Irene had never received word about the well-being of the thousands commanded to drown in the sea.
They were supposed to drown, yes. But Ganese boats had navigated them to a new world instead.
Are they well? Have they been able to establish some kind of society? Are the Ganese carers able to manage them?
Most likely, Irene would never know.
Ariane’s eyes grew wide, the whites of them glowing in the evening sun. “You cannot speak of this to anyone!”
“I never would, my Queen.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. This is my burden, not yours.”
“If it weighs on you, my Queen, then it is also my burden to bear.”
Ariane cocked her head. “You believe that?”
“I don’t believe it, Ariane. I live it.” She meant it. There was no decision the Queen made that didn’t implicate her. Every disappearance, every choice made between researching Elgin or intensifying human resistance, every declaration against the Ganese, the Sisters, the farmers in the south, the Dark Counties... every word the Queen spoke was the Commandante’s order to live out.
Ariane was tall by the standards of Lower Earth’s women, but she still only reached the Commandante’s shoulder. She brought her hands to Irene’s arms. Her hands were cold against her skin; they sent a rush, little bumps lifting across her. Ariane was not one for affection.
“You surprise me, Irene.�
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Irene looked into the deep green eyes of the Queen. The color was unnaturally solid, and yet waves rolled through them like undulating water.
“I never thought I’d be able to trust you,” Ariane continued. “I thought I’d have to treat you like a beaten dog who did as he was told but would bite given the chance.”
Irene raised her eyebrows at the analogy.
“After all, you were never mine to take. You were my mother’s Commandante.”
“I am dedicated to Lower Earth and its Queen.”
“I am beginning to see this. And it pleases me.”
Irene started to feel very, very uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure she could keep up the appearance as long as Ariane was looking into her eyes. “So I’ll go to Gana then.”
“Yes, go to Gana. Go, and then tell me everything. Understood?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, my Queen.” Irene bowed deep.
“Go.”
Irene turned to leave.
“Irene!”
She turned back to face the Queen.
“Watch how you step. I may have been weak with you now, but you know the blood that runs through my veins.”
“I do, my Queen. I do.”
Irene left the room, a metallic taste rising in her throat.
7
Ariane
Run, run, run.
Ariane’s brain fired in twelve different directions at once. She was barely conscious, her eyes not fully open, but she was already in the hills north of Geb by the time she recognized where her body was taking her.
Rainfields.
Damn Rainfields. Always Rainfields, her feet continued moving her forward. It wasn’t against her will because when it came to Rainfields, she had no will. There wasn’t a choice. She was moving at deer pace, legs carrying her and body compliant. The air brushed against her face as she went.
She hated her legs for the way they lifted her off in the night. Ariane didn’t sleep, had never slept as the people slept. But she rested. And in those moments of rest when the small hours of night became morning, she was vulnerable. Weak.
Ariane hated weakness.
She hated the blood that carried her forward, the blood that demanded a return to Rainfields. Her mind rebelled against it but her body would never obey.
It would take her more than a day to get there. Her brain focused on the singular goal of her arrival. If she let it think on other things, the journey would just take longer. It was best to let herself go, forget the business of the fortress, of Upper Earth, of the Sisters.
The Sisters. That must have been the inciting factor.
The illness amongst the Sisters that was accelerating. The illness that was, at last, taking them down. The illness that finally would dismantle the subversives who never should have been allowed to congregate in the first place.
The illness that Ariane had planted among them.
She had never expected it to gather any momentum. She had thought of it as a test.
Ariane had never been gifted with genetics the way her doubles had been. She assumed that had been part of her own test. While her so-called sister-selves were highly trained in genetics, she was more attuned to waves that rolled among the people. Waves of insecurity. Waves of discontent. Waves of rebellion.
It wasn’t collective thought; she could never be one with the people. Never. She wasn’t prepared for that and even when she just felt whispers of it inside her, it grated like iron being forged. She didn’t know how to read the emotions that came. So instead she’d always remained focused on that which she felt a natural pull towards. Leadership. Direction. Forward-movement. Control.
But there was no ignoring that their delicate society was dependent on genetics to keep it alive.
She’d still been young when she’d first stolen into Central Tower, one of the few places in Geb her Queen Mother had made off-limits to her. But her Queen Mother should have known better than to say no to Ariane.
So many times Mother should have known better.
Ariane knew her way around the Tower, knew the rooms that carried the greatest secrets, even if she wasn’t capable of interpreting them.
It was after Gale had abandoned her that she went to the Tower with one goal in mind. She’d snuck her way in steps that were more a feather floating than human feet. She knew how to avoid every alarm.
She had filled a small vial from the soil sickness, the one left behind from the Mist. Only if they measured would they notice anything was missing. She’d always been curious about the effects of soil sickness if it were directly ingested instead of simply pushing through their food. Everyone was looking at the impact of eating it after it was produced. No one was planting it directly in the bloodstream. And there was no antidote except the one that would be in the carrier’s blood.
She had wondered about the impacts on the body, and now she was getting her answer.
Ariane would have been just as satisfied if it had only affected Subject Zero.
Gale.
Killing Gale would have been enough, but that it was now making its way through their community was an unexpected benefit. The spread was well underway, a slow and steady killer. No one could trace it. As it was, Central Tower still hadn’t cracked the soil sickness that had destroyed whole populations during the Final War.
If they couldn’t solve it for the soil, they stood no chance with the illness in human form.
Except that so-called Subject Zero’s whereabouts were now unknown. Ariane had her tracked, her demeanor had grown erratic. She was unpredictable, and unpredictable was dangerous.
It should have been an easy mission. Irene had sent the guard to do as she’d instructed. Left her in the plains of Rainfields, confused and rambling, where she’d die of her own madness and exposure.
Rainfields.
Ariane’s legs still moved forward, legs that disobeyed and voices deep within who recognized the way. The voices were brewing, coming closer to the surface. They always thrived when arrival at Rainfields loomed. The magnetic properties deep within the lava rock inspired their revelations. They would come clearer at any moment.
Ariane braced herself. They rarely had anything good to say, and never anything she wanted to hear.
“Ariane, the remaining sister-self.”
“She is a sister, but thankfully not Sister.”
“We know what she does to Sisters and sisters.”
“No sister of any sort is safe with her.”
No one is ever safe with me. That was my decision long ago.
“And look how you reap the rewards of such a decision.”
Ariane’s feet carried her faster, morning was rising and she wasn’t far from Gana. She did not want to take any chance that some early rising warrior priestess should happen to catch sight of her.
“So your plan against the Sisters has taken hold.”
“But now what?”
“You can’t leave this to chance.”
“If it is spreading then it can just as easily spread to Geb.”
“Spread through the countryside.”
“Even you are not immune to its effects.”
You know nothing of this illness. Ariane pushed at the voices and they slowly began to recede.
“Neither do you. Isn’t that the whole problem, young Queen?”
The voices chided, but Ariane also knew there was truth within them. Their presence was the consequence of her birth, a perfect genetic copy of the Queen who came before her, her Queen Mother, Maeva. Except that Maeva was the perfect copy of Queen Idia - though she could hardly have been called a mother for all she put Maeva through. And the Queen before her, and the Queen before her, and the Queen before her.
Somehow her predecessors had landed on the idea - a single chain of DNA with adjustments toward perfection with each generation. They couldn’t have foreseen the problems of echoes, reflections, impressions that came from some period before and manifested themselves at last in the form
of voices deep within their veins.
Ariane didn’t know how the others managed them, but she’d witnessed what they’d done to her mother, tearing her into a ticking time bomb.
She had vowed to overcome them.
Her legs ran and she resented the power within. She could muffle the voices, but the pull of Rainfields was stronger than that. An irresistable magnet.
A day later she stopped for water. She didn’t need it but the river in this place reminded her of another time.
It was the place where two rivers joined, the Gana River and the northern tributary. They smashed into each other with a collision of momentum and froth. It didn’t make sense from a geographic perspective; the two were unlikely partners, the Gana River being a slow-moving roll and the tributary hardly more than a creek.
But the sister-self Aria had changed all that.
As Ariane approached she could make out the silhouette of a dam and a mill. Without Aria, the Ganese would have been living in the literal dark with only their own sweat to mill grains. She didn’t approach too closely, knowing that inside would be at least two or three Ganese working the mill. She had no intention of being seen.
Aria.
When she closed her eyes Ariane could feel the memory alive on her arms. The knife in Aria’s body. Hot blood that rolled more than trickled from Aria to Ariane’s arms. Hot blood that burned her. It had burnt into her memory. She touched her arms again now, the memory as vibrant as it had been on that day.
A lifetime ago, and yet playing out before her eyes.
The double sensation.
The knife in Aria’s back, her own back, and holding it at the same time as she plunged it deeper. She’d never lived anything with another being in the same way. She watched it and felt the pressure of pushing while experiencing the stab herself. But the pain she could manage. She healed it as quickly as it came. For hers was not the back with the blade.
She’d twisted the knife. Cells rushed in Aria’s body, she heard them, and was intrigued. A tingle in her own back as her muscles tore and strengthened.
And then her heart.
Aria’s heart.
