by S. K Munt
‘A ghost,’ she whispered, and I hugged myself, feeling ill. Everybody knew what ghosts were: spirits who were too strong to follow Satan to hell to atone, and hated God too much to make it to Heaven and so they lingered, waiting for their soul to pick a fate. And though some ghosts were harmless, weak and lost, some were powerful and angry enough to give themselves form and either way- good Nephilim did NOT become ghosts once they had passed, because they always loved God too much to miss their chance to join him in heaven. So if that man truly was my father, than I was undisputedly the descendant of a very dark and very powerful Nephilim, and accepting that- even a little- made me feel as though a cloud had just passed over my soul.
But only if he is your father! You don’t know ANYTHING for sure! And how could you be a dark Nephilim child of someone so powerful, and yet possess no power of your own?
‘What do you think he wants?’ I whispered, and she shrugged.
‘Form, probably. Just like God and Satan, enough love, or power or thought can give disgruntled, powerful spirits the energy to flicker back and forth between this plane and the afterlife, and being forgotten could fade them out of it. But your mother didn’t forget him, nor did that other woman that he impregnated, and neither will you or I- and so he probably lingers near to the child he has fathered, who is old enough to think of him, waiting for you to give him power enough to restore him completely.’
‘Can that happen?’ I asked, wide-eyed.
‘If the Nephilim is powerful enough, most definitely.’ She laced her fingers together and said: ‘remember the story of the dark Nephilim man who burned his village to the ground?’ When I nodded, she went on, whispering: ‘He had no fingerprints, no records and no one knew whom he had descended from. And after reading the story once, Kohén told me that he theorised that the criminal had not had a life because this was not his first life- that he had been a ghost who’d found a way to return and infiltrate our society. Now that I’ve had some time to ponder that, I think that I agree. And though I can’t place your father’s face, I do feel as though I have seen him before somewhere or somehow before today…’ she wrinkled up her nose. ‘Just where, I don’t know.’
I shivered, remembering stories of poltergeists that could move and hurl objects, and others who found a way to possess people - the way he must have possessed the nurse who my mother and the banished woman had lain with.
Oh well, better that he be a dark Nephilim possessing women’s bodies, then your own theory that he was Satan possessing a man’s!
I wrenched my eyes from him. ‘If that’s possible, then I will give him nothing to feed off,’ I whispered. ‘And I do not wish to, despite how little you think of me.’
‘Because you love God still,’ the duchess said, touching my hand again. ‘But look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never called to Satan in a moment of despair or weakness before this day- and have meant it?’
My nose was tingling as tears threatened. ‘Have you?’
She smiled at me, and she was golden despite her black hair. ‘Never.’
I glanced back at the man, feeling like I was being torn apart on the inside now that someone else had supported my mother’s theory. Was he dark, and I a recipient of that darkness? Had I called myself a tomboy when really, I’d been a little hellion? It explained a lot of things, but not the fear racing through my heart at the sight of him or the genuine love that I felt for Kohl. She was right- the circumstances of my life had made me dark, but was that because I had a corruptible soul, or because, as I’d always believed, the Given laws were corrupt? It was so unfair that I was supposed to accept that everything that had ever happened to me was my own fault! They were all weak too and they were supposed to be closer to divine than any human could be!
‘What do I do?’ I asked her.
‘Go inside, and pay him no mind and I will follow. Trust in me to get you of here and soon- and as far away as possible, perhaps Pacifica again-’
‘How?’ I asked, looking at the man again.
‘I cannot say that anything is for certain yet, but I have a sketch of a plan in mind.’ She smiled nervously. ‘They have built a small prototype aeroplane in Tariel, and Elijah is considering purchasing the first one produced, so that he can attempt to fly over the north and see if there is any way to access the oil fields in the old Alaska by boat, or a way to start clearing a road through- somewhere where the Wildwoods are thinner.’ She smoothed her skirt again and I struggled to process that. Aeroplanes, at last! It would change the world! ‘He leaves for Tariel in early December, and will be gone for at least two weeks to investigate the aircraft, and possibly longer if he flies a test mission from there, north, which is where he will have to depart from, because Tariel has the only operating airstrip and control tower in Calliel. He has already arranged to take Karol, Adeline, Kohén, Kelia, Emmerly, Rosina and Resonah with him on the journey south by road, and the boys on the flight- but you and I are going to be left behind.’ I flinched at that, seeing for the first time how far I’d fallen off my pedestal, and she did not miss it. In fact, she touched my hand again and regarded me with softer eyes. ‘I know… it hurts. It just never occurred to me to care that it hurt from your end of things before.’
‘Why did you agree to it?’ I asked softly. ‘I know you love to leave the kingdom with him and travel… without his ‘friends’.’
She smiled demurely. ‘Because with both sons gone- I will be acting regent in their stead. Not only have I been waiting a very long time for that, but I’ll have the power to dismiss anyone who pisses me off without Elijah or Kohén here to overrule it.’
My eyebrows shot up, and I felt a thrill sweep through me. ‘I can piss you off!’
She smiled again. ‘Of that I am well aware. And because we’re getting along now, they won’t see it coming.’
‘What will I have to do?’
She picked up her necklace, and the canary-yellow stone blinked at me. ‘Steal a heart,’ she said softly, and mine sank. ‘Fitting, don’t you think?’
‘I’d be banished and branded as a thief?’ I asked, dismayed. ‘Everyone will despise me!’
‘Only the men in the family and Shep will know of the charge, and you’ll want them to think so little of you, won’t you? As in… to not trust you to be around jewels, or inside the harem again?’ She smiled, continuing. ‘But you won’t be branded and banished- for one, that’s something that must be made a public fact, and we cannot let it be known that one of our trained, angelic whores has been raised so poorly, and secondly- the necklace will go missing while you are around but it won’t be found on you- so I’ll dismiss you on suspicion of theft, but without proof that theft has occurred. So instead of having the grounds to banish you, you’d be sent off with the next convict Corps… the one heading to Pacifica on a new mission to Isthmus Island that very week.’ She grinned at my obvious delight. ‘And then a few years later, just after you are released from your service, I will find it amongst my own things, apologise- and bless your union with Kohl.’
I clapped my hands to my boiling hot face, impressed beyond measure. ‘You would do that for us?’ I asked, my eyes growing wet, my insides expanding to make room for this new surge of… ownership? Responsibility? God, if she did that for me, Kohl would replace Kohén as the boy who I saw every day, and as exciting a notion as that should have been, it was a heady prospect all the same. Kohl was so certain of us- as certain as Kohén had once been- but as deeply as I cared for him in return, my tummy rolled a little at the idea of jumping out of the fire and into a matching frying pan. Letter writing and occasional visits were one thing… but was I ready to see Kohl every day?
And would I see Kohl every day? Or would I see Kohén in his eyes and smile?
Okay breathe… she’s talking about December… that gives you four months yet to distance yourself further from Kohén and bury your feelings. Besides, Isthmus and Caldera are a day’s sail away from one another, so you won’t be seeing him that o
ften, only sporadically, so you can handle that! In fact, the time between visits will probably be torturous!
The duchess smiled softly. ‘I was not yet completely sure, but seeing as you said ‘us,’ and not ‘we,’ Yes, Larkin, I will.’ She patted my hand then leaned back, as though she’d already hit her sentimental quota for the year in those few seconds. ‘But you must protect yourself until then, and help me keep things calm and that man from interfering.’ Her expression was insistent. ‘Avoid sin, Larkin, and do not present yourself as a temptation in any way. Do not call to her, do not be impatient and paranoid and do not antagonise Karol and Kohén further, or dwell in your misery… in fact, be kind to Karol, not sharp-tongued, so you don’t stir up his need to assert any sort of authority over you... try to look wounded rather than out for blood- and I will get you out of here.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re basically asking me to hide my personality as best as I can?’
‘Yes,’ she got to her feet and extended her hand to me. ‘Can you do that?’
I took her hand.
23.
I passed the early August days away by doing as I was told and laying low. I wrote to Lindy and Kohl, keeping the tone of the letters light so they wouldn’t sense my loneliness and so it wouldn’t cause a ripple of distress to tremble through my heart, across Calliel and to theirs. And I stopped counting jewellery on the girls- pretending like my eyes were as allergic to the sight of it as my skin was to the touch, and that little mind trick helped keep me calm in Kelia’s company- that and the fact that I kept my fist curled around the most valuable piece of jewellery in the kingdom- my wooden wave ring.
Four months, and I could be free, and with the version of Kohén who was not spoiled by indulgence...
As though he’d taken on his mother’s advice to me as well, Kohén became a ghost who could only occasionally be glimpsed on the grounds. He started running a lot along the perimeter fence, and surfing often in the freezing cold water, and the only time I saw him inside was if he was going down to the study to have a meeting with his father and other important nobles (which he’d started doing a LOT) or to the training room. I knew that he was preparing himself to kick my ass in the next examinations, but I refused to compete with anyone but myself and practiced my dancing in my room instead of seeking out a tutor with my curtains drawn, so that no one would sniff out my ambition.
Besides, according to the test results, I didn’t have nearly as much room to improve as he did, so why exhaust myself? Hadn’t I worked hard enough for no reason already? Didn’t I deserve the chance to relax and sulk and be a heartbroken seventeen-year-old for once?
It was a week before Karol had the nerve to approach me again, and even after he’d come to sit at my side in a bench seat in the courtyard and said: ‘Good afternoon, Larkin,’ it took me a full minute to work up a response.
‘Thank you for not filing a complaint against me with a Shepherd,’ I said softly, closing my book but keeping my eyes trained on the cover. It was hard not to spit on him, but the book I was reading was the biography of Arcadia’s most notorious criminal- a Shepherd who had once fought for the abolition of the drafted Companion caste. He’d made good progress, and could have very well have become a hero... except for the fact that the girl whose cause he was championing (a sweet, gentle soul who like Kelia, who had apparently withered into herself with fear at the idea of turning sixteen) was only thirteen years old when she admitted to being pregnant with the same Shepherd’s child.
Shepherd Birch was the only corrupt Shepherd that Calliel had ever known, but he had also been the most popular before he’d been caught, and apparently incredibly handsome to boot- which meant that he’d had far to fall, and he’d sadly taken the good Companion name down with him. Instead of winning hearts for God and freeing Elijah’s father’s underage courtesans-in-training, he’d been accused of approaching several of the girls, found guilty of impregnating the one, and branded with the glyph for sexual assault. Then, as a warning to others, the girl had been evicted from Elijah’s father’s harem and shipped off to New Rome with a prisoner Corps, and her ‘protector’ had been castrated and sent out into the Wildwoods.
It was a woeful tale and one that reminded me of how damn seriously my ‘position’ within Eden’s walls was taken, and of how much trouble I could get in if I didn’t learn to tow the line. I swallowed hard as I closed the book, knowing that I had to play this moment with Karol well. In fact, I had to play every moment until I got out of Eden like a hand of twos that I had to turn into a royal flush. Kohl and I could not be discovered. Actually no- we couldn’t even be suspected.
‘I am sorry that I shoved you… and punched you…’ I swallowed down the bile, which accompanied the next lie: ‘And I did not mean what I said.’
‘Yes you did.’ He tapped on the book. ‘You think I’m as evil as Bastien Birch.’
‘No I don’t.’ I sighed gently. ‘I did not mean that you have taken advantage of your girls with ill-intentions,’ I said softly. ‘I just mean… you are destroying things the way plucking a flower destroys a garden: innocently but self-indulgently.’
‘But people pick flowers on purpose,’ he said. ‘We don’t know that’s what we’re doing when we select you, but you do know what you’re doing when you come to us, and I’m yet to have anyone scream in fright when they do, and you’re the only person who believes that anyone ought to. So I can’t help but feel if you’d lain with Kohén by now, you too would feel differently, and understand that you’re more to us, than a mere flower in a vase.’
No, I’m one of many flowers in a vase, and that’s the problem. I am Kohén’s companion, but who is mine? Nobody. They’ve either been taken from me, or have turned against me.
‘Just like I believe that if you were in my position, you’d feel trapped by the glass walls that you cannot see. They do not stifle you, they do not press you, they…’ I swallowed and shook my head, remembering the duchess’s caution. ‘Never mind. It’s pointless, us trying to see eye to eye here Karol, for you are too far above my viewpoint for that to be feasible.’ I glanced at him. ‘That’s my problem though; the inequality between us, and how that contradicts God’s wishes.’
‘But God asked Miguel Barachiel to-’
‘To guide us,’ I said softly, deciding that throwing God in his face a little wasn’t something that could be misconstrued as flirting or provocation. ‘But I’ve never read anything in the Books of Creation, which translates that to using any of us for your own benefit or as punishment. In fact, I don’t remember the words heir or hereditary, or monopoly over the human race being used either…’ I stared down at the book, thinking about the nameless Companion who had been impregnated by Bastien Birch. What had become of her and her baby? If all of this had happened in AA563, then that baby had to be at least eighty-one years old by now but very possibly, still alive. In fact, now that the average life-expectancy of a Callielian citizen was ninety-two and a lot of people were lucky enough to make it to one hundred and ten years-old, there was a good chance that even the mother was still alive and living somewhere in New Rome still.
I felt the heat of Karol’s gaze on my profile. ‘God didn’t quote our kingdom’s laws in his own tongue, no- he didn’t have the time to. But we do know that he was against shaming women like Gabriella, and that he understood Miguel’s urges… and you should know better than anyone that the laws were set down in the hopes of creating a eudaemonist system, and that they restrict men almost as much-’
‘Almost as much as they restrict women,’ I said, more softly still. ‘Yet not equally.’ I looked at him at last, and my lip curled slightly in a rueful smile. I didn’t want to fight with him, but I still couldn’t let go of the hope of making him understand. The duchess swore that he was good or at least strove to be, and I myself had seen evidence of his logical thinking and good humour in the past… so was it impossible for me to convince him that what he was doing was wrong? ‘The male companion caste i
s voluntary, Karol- ours is forced. Women are ordered to take birth control, and yet nothing is offered to men until they are considered to be too old to father children and are moved to Rachiel. The Barachiel’s have had nine generations of kings, but not a single queen, and for a Barachiel marriage or Joining to take place, the female must be a virgin, but the male is expected to have experienced a harem’s worth of sexual exploration first.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me that’s equal.’ I hugged the book to my chest. ‘Tell me that if by some chance you have a powerful Nephilim daughter, she will be guaranteed a seraglio full of third-born sons of her own rather than married off young and virginal and most likely against her will.’
He frowned at me. ‘It’s assumed that a Barachiel princess would have a harem of her own- it just hasn’t happened yet.’
I leaned closer to him, locking my eyes on his. ‘I’m not asking about what’s assumed,’ I said pointedly. ‘I’m asking you to convince me that it will happen, and that the law won’t conveniently be changed in the name of protecting her before her fifth birthday arrives. Or that she won’t be forced to overcome her own urges, as Kohl has, in order to guard her royal womb.’
Karol stared back at me, and I saw a flicker of uncertainty behind his eyes and I knew that he didn’t see himself forcing birth control down his daughter’s throat so that she could have sex with multiple partners either. Hope brightened inside me, rising like a flame lifted by a fresh burst of oxygen- hope that I might get through to one of the perfect Barachiel creatures before it was too late for the next generation of Given girls.
Come on, come on… open your mind and the harem door!
But then Karol dropped his gaze to my lips and the heat of his stare- his prevalent, glowing green need was so bright in the facets of his emerald eyes that I sucked in a breath, snapping him out of his stupor just as he began to lean in.
‘Hell…’ I bemoaned under my breath, turning my face away just as his shimmering fingertips lifted to stroke my cheek- to rake me forward. I heard him groan in exasperation- what I prayed was exasperation with himself and not with me. ‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying-’
