The Kalis Experiments

by R A Fisher

  “I have to see an Astrologer. So, in fact, I have to go wherever there’s one of those.” She still spoke with a harsh, strange accent, but her Ristroan wasn’t as broken as it had been a few minutes ago.

  Tævarnavasi grimaced, but no one fired.

  Instead, the voice behind him, dead-serious, said, “If you attempt to leave the spot on which you are standing, you will be killed, and apologies to your hostage’s family will be issued.”

  The hostage guard made a whimpering sound.

  “Wow.” She laughed, a sound without humor. “You’re as bad as the Syndicate.”

  The speaker didn’t answer.

  “Look.” She sighed. “If you kill me, you’d be doing this gentleman,” she wiggled the borderman’s head, “me, and the Astrologers a grave disservice. If I wanted to kill someone, I would’ve done it and left again. Or more likely, just gotten killed trying. I’m here now because I want to talk an Astrologer, not kill one.”

  “There’s no reason we should believe you, and no convincing argument you could produce.”

  “No. Probably, other Kalis have been through here, or somewhere, and they met with ends just like the one waiting for me. Or maybe different ones with the same ultimate result. They weren’t trying to kill anyone either, probably. Just spy, which to you is almost certainly just as bad. Maybe even worse. By the same token, I could probably kill this unfortunate gentleman and disappear into the forest before any of you could even pull the trigger.”

  She paused, and her eyes sparkled at what must’ve been some private joke. “There’s a… part of myself who wants to do just that, as would—probably did—any other Kalis you’ve caught poking around where she’s not wanted, which I guess is anywhere you find one. As far as I know, you’ve either caught them all up to this point, or I’ve been lied to. Probably both. My point is, I didn’t do that. I’m not going to. Don’t you want to know why?”

  As she went on, Tævarnavasi built up enough courage to look around. The man behind him who’d addressed Ser’ai—or rather, the woman who called herself Ser’ai—was bulky and dark. He had a shaved head set with three large pearls and a robust Corsair’s beard with a clean upper lip. Around his waist, he wore the wide belt of a border captain, the iron buckle depicting the teardrop-shaped flame of Vormisæn. On either side of him, wrapping around Tævarnavasi’s camel wagon in a misshapen circle, were the men and women of his guard. Outside of the circle, back the way they’d come, more wagons had lined up. Fifty or so gawkers watched in terrified fascination. The smell of fish oil wafted on the warm breeze from one of the carts.

  Tævarnavasi looked back at the woman calling herself Ser’ai and wondered about her. In the stories, Kalis were always so sly and subtle, murderous and manipulative. This woman might’ve been comically obvious if he hadn’t been stuck in the middle of an incident she’d started. He wondered whether this was some weird hoax, but then he looked at the shifting tattoos under the peeled strips of fake skin again and looked away.

  The border captain didn’t bother to respond, and Ser’ai answered her own question.

  “I’ve decided to work for the Astrologers rather than my… current employer.”

  She sounded so unhappy it was hard not to believe her. The silence that followed was drawn out by the shifting, grunting camels. Tævarnavasi was looking forward to a stiff drink, but that luxury was looking further and further away.

  “Your words are poison,” the border captain said. “There is no evidence you should be believed.”

  The woman calling herself Ser’ai adjusted her grip on the kneeling border guard. “Nevertheless, if you kill me, you need to face the possibility that you’re depriving your Astrologers of something they’d be interested in. I’m willing to be restrained in any manner that will make you comfortable. Let your leaders decide what to do with me.”

  23

  The Astrologer

  You killed us both.

  “Probably.” Syrina was happy that all she could do was grunt around the thin metal bar pressed through her mouth.

  She still preferred speaking out loud to the voice, despite its objections, but incessant muttering would have made her escort even more nervous.

  She couldn’t decide whether she regretted her new course of action. She’d made up her mind when she saw the borderman coming toward her with the scalpel, and she was still trying to sort out the consequences. Ever since she’d washed up on the beach in northern Ristro, she’d acknowledged that she would never make it to Chamælivishi. Then, in the long silence in front of the guard hut, she’d decided.

  “Can you help me lie to Ormo?” She’d she stood in the road, surrounded, clinging to her hostage.

  Maybe. The voice had sounded like it didn’t like where Syrina was going with the question. I doubt it.

  “Good enough,” Syrina had said. “I’m going to get some answers. Even if they kill me afterward.”

  Even by her standards, it was a terrible plan, but she wasn’t smart enough to come up with anything better. She was willing to admit as much to herself, but she wished the voice would shut up about it.

  She’d expected the restraints to be thorough, but even so, she was surprised when they’d pulled out the bronze wheeled prison from the guardhouse that now suspended her.

  The first thing they did was strip off Ser’ai until Syrina was naked. Then they ratcheted her ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, waist, and neck in place with brass vices, and pinched her head in place by a bit that crossed her mouth and eight blunt screws that dug into her skull. A leather strap squeezed across her forehead, just to be sure. She hung, suspended in a bronze frame the size of a coffin, only more open and less comfortable. They’d needed to adjust it at length to make it small enough to hold her. It had two leather-wrapped brass wheels at the head, while leather-gripped handles protruded from the bottom. They rolled her down the road, which went from gravel to flagstones just after the checkpoint, upside-down in this coffin-wheelbarrow. The border captain doused her with oily, fishy white paint someone found a half-span further on, just in case she somehow slipped free.

  Syrina had every intention of seeing an Astrologer, and if suspended upside down in a metal coffin covered in stinking paint was the only way it was going to happen, so be it. She wondered if all the guard posts in Ristro had a few of these things lying around, just in case they ever found a Kalis.

  Who was she kidding? More likely, they wheeled around all their criminals like that. And maybe the High Merchants sent Kalis to Ristro all the time.

  That brought her thoughts around to why she’d come. One of the Astrologers was funding Kavik’s research, and she wanted to know what they knew, whatever she ended up telling Ormo. They supposedly shared their information and documented everything, so in theory, it didn’t matter which one she talked to. On the other hand, that was how the Syndicate was supposed to run Skalkaad, and Syrina knew how that worked out most of the time.

  Her first experience of Vormisæn was limited to what was in front of her face—gray cobbles and the backs of the boots of the borderman in front of her, which were brown leather and caked in dried mud.

  Passersby muttered in fear. Syrina didn’t know enough Ristroan to understand much, but she got the gist. She imagined a mob following their procession at a safe distance, though she had no way of knowing if that’s what was going on. Just cobbles and muddy boots and the hiss of incoherent whispering.

  The building they wheeled her into late that afternoon was higher than those around it by three or four stories and constructed of massive rough-cut blocks of obsidian. The prefecture capitol seemed to be the only structure in the city that warranted the expense of shipping rock from the Black Wall. A veranda that traced its front formed arms that curved around in an oblong crescent reminiscent of the Syndicate Palace and the heavy awning of black stone was supported by smooth square pillars.

  As they bounced her up the stairs to the main entrance, Syrina could feel the heat gathered in the rock
hammering her face, but inside was dark and cool. A high-ceilinged hallway held aloft with jagged flying buttresses curved along the inside. The stone floor hummed and whistled as they traversed it the same way it did in Ormo’s audience hall, and every other lamp was hooded with a weird, violet shade a deeper purple than the Eye. Their light was all but invisible until she noticed her legs at the edge of her vision. Her tattoos glowed blue in the strange luminescence where they weren’t covered by the paint.

  The voice remained silent.

  They rolled Syrina through a pair of huge bronze doors, into a courtyard rich with the smell of flowers, and deposited her at the end of a causeway across a reflecting pool, which was ringed with immaculately kept gardens full of bright, exotic blossoms. At the center of the pool was a circular grassy island. A white marble gazebo perched there which would put the best Artisans of Valez’Mui to shame. Or maybe not, since it looked like it had been sculpted by the best Artisans in Valez’Mui. Its delicate roof balanced on pillars no bigger around than Syrina’s thumb, and it cast wildflower shadows under its carved dome.

  A lone man sat in a modest chair of wood and red velvet at the center of the gazebo, tall, thin, dark and old. He wore white linen, unadorned with anything but some flower embroidery along the seams of the front. He looked tired.

  She hoped someone would let her out of the coffin so she could meet whoever it was with dignity intact, but she couldn’t say it surprised her when the escort left her there the way she was and backed off somewhere out of sight.

  The old man studied her for a while, and she studied him. His face was brown and hard. He looked like he smiled a lot, but he wasn’t smiling now, and the creases around his dark eyes were as still as granite. His hair and beard were shaved down to a dusting of gray, like the first frost on a lump of rich soil.

  He stood and sauntered down the causeway until he was five or six feet away, and then he studied her more.

  “And who might you be?” he said, in Ristroan, but he had directed his gaze at someone behind her.

  She dangled there and studied his ankles. He was barefoot, but his feet were immaculate.

  “Um,” an uncertain voice replied. “Ahem. Tævarnavasi. Of the Neevirisee family. A cartman.”

  Syrina winced. She hoped they’d let the poor driver go.

  The old man made a non-committal noise in his throat and turned his attention back to her. “We don’t know if your kind has names, so we will not ask you. And as to the reason you are here, we hope you will enlighten. Do you have a message?”

  He took one step forward to lean over to slide the bit out of Syrina’s mouth before stepping back again. She was taken aback that he spoke perfect Skald, even if it was in a roundabout way.

  “I have no message to deliver beyond the one from myself. And I have a name. It’s Syrina. Kalis Syrina, if you want to be formal, but you don’t have to be.”

  As she answered him, she noticed how heavy her face and lips felt, and it occurred to her she’d been hanging upside down for most of the day.

  He arched a single, white eyebrow. “Well, then this is interesting. So you were not sent here by your master to deliver another message?”

  “Another message? No. I was sent to Chamælivishi to find a man named Asapalashvari, by my master, but he’s not the same High Merchant who controls the Northern Resource Initiative if that’s who you’re talking about. That one is called Ma’is Kavik if you didn’t already know that. I was sent here to find out more about him. But I came here for my own reasons. I want to kill Ma’is Ormo, my master, but there are some things I need to know, and I need to find out if there’s anywhere or anyone besides him I can learn them from. Like, maybe you.”

  A long silence followed. The Astrologer’s face was unreadable, but there was a fair amount of surprise in there somewhere. Whether or not he was prepared to believe anything she said, he hadn’t expected her to say that.

  At length, he sighed, gave Syrina a quizzical look, and spoke past her in Ristroan. “Tævarnavasi the cartman, you are free to roam the Prefecture Building at your leisure. We’re sure that Vesmalii will show you to the dining hall. We must humbly ask you, however, not to leave the premises, in case we require you later. A message will be sent to your family, so they will not worry.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Eminence.”

  Syrina could hear the bow from Tævarnavasi as he shuffled away, followed by the more certain footsteps of the man named Vesmalii.

  “As for this one, store her.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that.

  You’ve killed us both, the voice said again, several hours later.

  Syrina dangled, still upside down, staring into the pitch blackness of whatever closet they’d stuck her in.

  She agreed but didn’t say anything.

  Syrina lapsed into meditation for a long while until they wheeled her again into the courtyard, to the gazebo and the Astrologer. It was night. The half-Eye loomed above them, washing everything in its polarized, ruddy light and making the shadows sharp and angular. Half-Eye. She’d been meditating upside down in the dark for the better part of a week. The scarlet hurricane of the pupil glared down on them, half-shadowed by its night side.

  “Why do you call yourself, we?” Syrina asked, before the old man could say anything.

  His voice was soft as he glided toward her, down the stone causeway. The white of his linen clothes glowed under the Eye like some malevolent ghost. Behind her, the door to the courtyard boomed shut.

  “Why do you tell us you wish to betray your Merchant’s Syndicate?” He halted three feet in front of her.

  She could see his ankles but needed to peer up her nose to catch his face. From that angle, he was all chin and nostrils until he looked down at her.

  Syrina told him all of it. About Triglav, the insanity, and the voice in her head that wasn’t hers. Her failed attack on Ormo, her ensuing imprisonment, her driving need for revenge, and the even greater need to understand herself.

  He nodded through it, watching her eyes, then sauntered back to his chair. The edge of the Eye kissed the roof of the Prefecture Building, and the shadows were longer but no less sharp.

  “I see the things you say to be the truth, at least to yourself. But if that is so, why did you not attempt to kill your Ma’is when you first returned to him, before he suspected your rage?”

  “I wasn’t sure if it was him at first. He’d conditioned me to not believe it. And like I said, he’s the only one I know who can help me figure out what I am. There was something else, too.”

  “Yes?”

  “If I’ve earned your trust enough for you to hear me out, haven’t I earned your trust enough to at least speak right-side up?”

  There was the slightest hesitation before he nodded and made a small, vague gesture. Syrina heard the door open, and she was wheeled two-thirds of the way down the causeway and flipped unceremoniously over by a pair of guards, who then went to stand behind the Astrologer, under the gazebo. They settled their gazes on Syrina and kept them there.

  The rush of being right-side up made her giddy, and it took a second or two to gain control of her senses.

  “The Tidal Works,” she said. “Everyone’s got their fingers in it. It’s at least ten thousand years old. By most accounts, more. And if it ever stopped doing whatever it’s doing, it would reduce a fifth of the continent to ashes and steam. Including half of Ristro.” She paused. “This half.”

  The old man, his dusting of beard a violent purple in the Eyelight, stared at her with an intense unreadable expression. The men standing behind him remained blasé. Syrina wondered if one of them was the one called Vesmalii, which made her wonder about Tævarnavasi, but she decided now wasn’t a good time to ask about the cart driver. She wanted a bath, too, but she wasn’t going to ask for that either.

  “How much do you know of the Tidal Works?” The old man’s eyes glittered moist and blue.

  She shrugged as well as she could still strapped
in the coffin. “That’s pretty much it. I know it pumps hot water for Fom and they use it for heating. And it powers their glow globes and everything else in the city that’s attached to the ground. But that’s not what it’s for. As far as I know, no one knows what it’s doing, except maybe you, judging by the way you’re looking at me.”

  The Astrologer stared at her for a long time, shaking his head, but she didn’t know enough about Ristroan body language to understand what that meant. Then he stood with a tired groan that surprised her and began to pace in front of his chair.

  “About the Kalis, there are very few records that remain from before the Age. Very few that we here in Ristro know of. In one of them, however, it’s mentioned that the servants of the Ancients, and also the Ancient masters themselves, possessed a second soul, so we agree with your Ma’is Ormo. This voice must be real. These spirits existed to serve their vessels and to grant them strength.

  “The Ancients and their servants now are ten thousand years gone, so who can know what your demon serves, or whom. Though it is safe to say that your Ma’is Ormo wishes it to serve him. That, perhaps, can serve us, even if the demon cannot. As to our interest in the so-called Tidal Works, you are correct in thinking we know a little. We might be willing to speak of it. On condition.”

  He stopped, so Syrina said, “I’m waiting.”

  “Just as the Fifteen wish to know about us, we wish to know about the Fifteen. You will serve this Ormo until it suits us otherwise, but now you will keep us in your thoughts as well. Whatever is left, you may keep for yourself.”

  Syrina spent a minute thinking about that. “So, you want me to serve you first, Ormo second, and my own goals third?”