by D M Wozniak
“I don’t know. I woke up in it.”
She winces in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“My hand hurts, your—” She sniffles again. “It really hurts, Dem. I think I injured it in the crash.”
“Can you move it?”
She shakes her head.
“Let me get a better look.”
Very carefully, she weaves her right hand through the space between two sticks of bamboo and lifts it up on the other side. She eventually weaves her left hand through as well, and uses it to support the right.
I can see a large, red swelling above her right wrist.
“You have a broken bone,” I say, as I unconsciously reach for my necklace, before realizing that it’s gone.
I exhale. “I could heal you, if I only had my voidstone.”
She nods. “Maybe whoever locked us up will give it back.”
I nod, but as I look at the effulgency temple in the distance, doubt fills me.
Walking over to the door, I inspect the locking mechanism. It’s an elaborate device that uses some sort of counterweight, which is only accessible from the outside. Again, if I had my voidstone, I could cut the rope in the blink of an eye, springing it. I could sever every bar of bamboo and turn these cells upside down.
If I only had my voidstone.
Chimeline begins softly whimpering again, and I look back at her. She brings her hands back inside the cage and slinks down onto the dirt ground, her back to the bars and to me.
A strange contrast of guilt and gratitude fills me. Fullbells ago, this girl was safe and pampered in the king’s residence with the others in the harem—her sisters, as she referred to them. I took her from that place, made her cross the citadel barefoot and on horseback to a hidden laboratory. I forced her to climb into an airship to escape a burning room. And now, because we’ve crashed due to my own negligence, she’s maimed, in pain, and imprisoned. All because of me.
But then I think on how lucky we are. We survived the apparent crash, largely intact, and have traveled far south of the citadel—undoubtedly closer to Marine and the veiled man.
My mind wanders to one of her prior comments. Three of my sisters who came before me. They were not as lucky.
I walk back over to the bars that are closest to her, and press my face to them.
“The three graves,” I say. “By the laboratory. Were others from the harem buried there?”
Her back is to me, leaning upon the bamboo, but I see her head turn somewhat in my direction.
“The king gave you and your sisters to the veiled man,” I surmise. “His Majesty knew full well that the bastard performed experiments on you. He allowed it to happen.”
I watching her back profile closely. She remains motionless for a while, but then she nods subtly in the shadows of her cell. “Yes, that is true,” she says quietly, sniffling and wiping her face with her good hand. “The king knew.”
I decide to push further. She didn’t answer me in the macabre barn. But now, with her back to me and her body caged in, perhaps she will let some of her dark secrets free.
“What did he do to you?”
Her head is cast downward. I hear her fidget with the ivory beads of her necklace.
“He made me sit on the bed and face him. He also sat down, but in a chair, facing me. He held his voidstone. His face was behind shimmering air, but I know he was looking at me the entire time. He kept asking me: What do you feel now? Over and over. If I stopped talking, he would get very angry.”
“And what did you feel?”
“All sorts of things.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I mumble.
“It means all sorts of things!”
I’m taken aback by her uncharacteristic outburst, but also encouraged by it. If anger is part of her letting go, then so be it.
I wait for her to continue.
“Excruciating pain in my head, like what my wrist feels like now, but worse. After a while, I could hear his voice in my head.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just like you’re talking to me now. Except in my head.”
I know that she’s not lying. And I don’t think she’s misinterpreting things. The veiled man was obviously using his voider powers in a perverted way. He was doing something unthinkable—manipulating the indivisibles that make up her mind.
Manipulating the indivisibles of the body is only allowed under special circumstances, which always involved healing—Chimeline’s broken wrist being a prime example. To use them to interrogate one’s mind, to make them feel pain, to communicate remotely... It is an aberration of the highest order.
She said that her sisters were not as lucky as her.
Perhaps she simply means that they came before her. The veiled man must have learned off of them. And as he accidentally killed them with his voidance, he learned which lines were never to be crossed. By the time he got to his fourth test subject, death was avoidable, but pain apparently not.
It’s hard to believe that this monster was once a student of mine.
He must have asked the king for test subjects, and the king had given his harem. Why not? They have no family. Soldiers are too valuable with the war. It would be too risky to reveal that hidden place to lowlife criminals. Hilma addicts? Too unpredictable—their minds are already half gone. He needed reliable people whom nobody would go looking for when they went missing.
My knuckles are white, clutching the bamboo.
“Chimeline,” I say.
Her head turns to the side, but her back is still facing me.
“I don’t know who did this to you—this veiled man. But he had to have been a student of mine. And I want you to know that I would never condone such a thing. To use voidance on the mind of another is strictly forbidden. It is punishable by exile from the university.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize how fruitless they sound. Like leaving bouquets on the three unmarked graves of her sisters, to wither and decay under the shade of weeping willows.
No. What those three young women need is what Chimeline needs. And if I’m being completely honest with myself, it’s what I need as well.
Justice.
“I’m going to find him, Chimeline. This man who tortured you.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’m going to kill him.”
Introductions
At threebell, villagers begin shuffling in from the fields.
I know the time because the effulgency temple’s steeple has a bell in it. It must be small, to match the scale of the building, because the sound is tinny. While it probably does not carry far into the rice fields beyond, at least here in the center, it commands attention.
Which means someone is in there, pulling upon the rope, fullbell after fullbell.
Meanwhile, I’ve been stuck inside this cursed cage. The same for Chimeline.
Only the women are walking into town. I see them easily from my darkened spot underneath the palm fronds and behind the bamboo bars. They trudge back in the hot sun, their sunburnt shoulders rounded and their gaits dreamlike. A few carry infants nestled in slings across their chests. Children old enough to walk travel with them. They stop to look at me, to the admonishment of their mothers. The women yell out for them to keep moving or spank their behinds.
Soon, smoke from cooking fires emanates from the centers of the thatched, rounded huts.
The men and older children come at fivebell, some walking in oxen with their burden of large burlap bags. Remembering the inundated, moon-filled fields I recently flew over, I wager that they’re full of rice.
When exactly was that? Last night? The night before?
How long were we unconscious?
As a possible indication, my hunger has reached the point to where it has begun to weaken me.
I call out to the villagers, asking for food. For myself and Chimeline. I feel hollow inside. To think that my last meal was a feast with the king...
By sixbell, my throat is painfully hoarse, and I’ve already exhausted the bowl of warm water that was left for me this morning.
The doors to the effulgency temple open.
The temple stands proudly on the opposite side of the small village, past many rounded huts, the stone well, with even more homes on the other side. But it sits on a hill, shining white-orange in the evening sun, and I clearly see a young, Xian man exit and stand upon the front steps, looking in our direction. His dark skin reflects the sun in a metallic way.
He’s carrying what looks to be two terracotta bowls of food.
Both Chimeline and I stand and walk to the front of our cages, grasping the bars in silence as the man approaches. He is almost as tall as me, but much skinnier. The way he walks so briskly, with his face free of wrinkles, suggests that he’s in his teens.
It’s soon obvious that he’s not an effulgent, but a graycloak—the child of an effulgent. The familial practices of these supposed holy people confound me, but I know enough. They consider long-term, sexual relationships as evil—a sign of ownership over others. Effulgents, whether they are male or female, do procreate—always with a non-effulgent—but the act itself is done out of necessity and always within the trappings of a holy service. Outside of this, there is no marriage, and celibacy endures.
One day, this graycloak approaching me will become an effulgent, and the entire process will begin anew.
Once he passes the stone well in the center of town, I can see more than just his rough, drab cloak and dark sandals. A necklace of ivory beads hangs around his gaunt neck. He’s bald, of course, and his skin is completely hairless, like an effulgent’s.
All of them are hairless since birth. King Andrej IX once told me about a birthing celebration he attended years ago. When the graycloak infant was sleeping, it looked like a statue honed from alabaster or obsidian. Only movement and crying revealed it to be a living thing.
Something in their heredity, I suppose.
“Be nothing,” the graycloak says in a bright voice, coming within arm’s reach of our bars.
I inhale in surprise.
This is no man standing before me. It’s a woman.
The lack of any hair on a woman is still strange to me. I’ve met female effulgents in other cities before, but they were far older than this girl. Thus, their gender was more obvious. Wide hips, the presence of breasts. You could just tell.
This graycloak is younger than twenty years of age, thin and waif-like.
“Be nothing,” says Chimeline, and the woman smiles kindly with a nod.
The graycloak is waiting for my reply, and even though it pains me to utter their stupid phrase, my hunger pushes my pride aside.
“Be nothing,” I mumble.
Starting with Chimeline, she carefully slides a large bowl and dining sticks into her cage through the space underneath the door. Chimeline immediately begins eating, using the fingers of her good hand instead of the provided dining sticks.
I shut my eyes momentarily, telling myself that I will not allow myself to lose so much composure as to eat with my bare hands, like some animal would. Even though my body urges me to do what Chimeline is doing, I must restrain myself and act with the dignity of a master voider. I feel regret now, for how I acted earlier: begging for food, like some homeless hilma addict. Even though my voidstone has been taken away from me, it does not change or diminish who I am.
When the graycloak slides the bowl of food underneath my door, I sit on the dirt floor, legs crossed, and accept it calmly with both hands. My mouth watering, I use the dining sticks to gather a small bite carefully and put it in my mouth. It tastes bland. White rice with pieces of chicken so small I silently and comically consider them as indivisibles. And broccoli, in a clear broth. No salt or seasoning whatsoever.
It’s euphoric.
Before I realize it, the woman has swiveled upon the balls of her feet, and begins walking away.
“Wait,” I tell her, and she stops suddenly, turning back in my direction as a small cloud of dirt blows away.
“Can I speak to your father?”
She cocks her head to the side. “Your father implies ownership. Ownership is evil. I do not own a father.”
“But you have one. The man who raised you.”
She shakes her head. “I have nothing. I was raised by the Unnamed.”
I resist rolling my eyes at her reference, and try a different strategy. “May I speak with the effulgent?”
She nods. “Yes. His Effulgency wishes to speak to you as well. He has been praying for you ever since you fell from the sky. He will be with you at sunset.”
With a smile, she walks on.
“Where is my voidstone?” are the first words out of my mouth as the effulgent nears my cell. I don’t return his greeting like I did with the graycloak, since he offers me nothing besides open arms.
The man is predictably bald, and even with the sun just below the horizon, his skin gleams with smoothness. But unlike the head effulgent at the citadel, this man is very thin underneath his white robe, just like the graycloak.
Now that I think about it, I am not too sure that he is even her father. The young girl, with her dark skin, is obviously of Xian decent, while this man is clearly a northerner, pale as snow.
There is not one strand of hair on his body. Below where his eyebrows should be, his eyes are dark and cavernous.
“May I enter?” he asks me pleasantly, ignoring my question.
I suppress bitter laughter. It’s just like an effulgent to act in this way. He has imprisoned me here in this cage—all day—yet the way he speaks to me now makes it seem like he’s a neighbor stopping by for a friendly visit on a summer’s eve. So typically hypocritical.
“Yes, by all means, make yourself welcome.”
I too can play this game.
The man unlocks the door from the outside. I try to study his movements, but his hands are blocked from view by the bamboo.
Swinging the door open, he steps inside, leaving the door ajar behind him.
He’s testing me.
But there’s nothing to prove. I need my voidstone before I need my freedom. Can I overpower this man with my bare hands? Possibly. I am no trained fighter, but most likely neither is he. Will the other men in the village come to his defense? Perhaps. Am I capable of beating this man within an inch of his life, just to take back what is rightfully mine?
I fear the answer to that question.
In the end, I decide that the open door means nothing to me. I need to convince this effulgent—a man who loathes possessions—to return the greatest of mine.
I am already sitting cross-legged on the dirt ground, and he mimics me, a few feet away. A small groan escapes his mouth as he bends down, but it carries with it a tint of contentment. As if the pain in his legs is a blessing.
He’s probably the same age as I am.
“How was your dinner?” he asks me as he settles into an upright, cross-legged position, resting his hands gently on his thighs.
I decide to continue along with my switch in strategy. The man ignored my initial outburst, so I will match his courtesy in kind, but I also need to be careful with my answer. If I say it was delicious, he would chide my preoccupation with my sense of taste. If I answer bland, he would say the same.
“Filling,” I eventually say. “Thank you for feeding us.”
“The Unnamed is the one who feeds you, master voider. Not I.”
Ignoring his platitude, I raise my head at the sound of my name. “You know who I am?”
He nods.
“How?”
“I am under the authority of the head effulgent at your citadel, and I t
ravel there once a year. We have met before.”
I don’t remember him.
He looks to the cell next door. Chimeline lies back on the ground. Her eyes are partially open and her head rests on her good arm. Some of her bangs are swept aside, and underneath them, I see the wrinkle of her furrowed brow. She’s listening, although she’s not being obvious about it.
“That’s my assistant, Chimeline," I say, hoping that she is listening attentively. The need may arise for her to continue this lie.
“Assistant,” he shakes his head. “Another word that implies ownership.”
“She has a fractured wrist and is in need of attention,” I say.
“Fear not. Despite being so far off the way of unwanting, I have prayed for you both.”
She needs voidance, not your useless prayers!
I close my eyes, summoning patience.
“At the very least, there is no need to keep her locked up,” I add. “She is innocent.”
“We are all innocent, master voider. And we are all guilty. The sun both rises and sets.”
“What I mean is that she’s not a voider. You have no reason to fear her.”
He tilts his head. “Is that why you think I am keeping you locked up? Because I fear you?”
I let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t presume to understand what you think.”
“You’re in these cages for your protection.”
“My protection?” I ask, hearing the derision in my voice.
He nods. “The villagers wanted to kill you when you fell from the sky. They still do.”
Fell from the sky.
“My airship,” I say. “Where is it?”
“Is that what you call it?” he says. “It’s destroyed, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps I can repair it.”
He shakes his head. “Do you see what wanting does? You so casually dismiss the fact that some in this village seek your death. Instead, you fixate on your possessions.”
“Nevertheless, where is it?”
“It’s been reduced to ashes.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, feeling even more ire than before. Without the airship, how are we going to continue south?
“I can see that you're frustrated,” the effulgent says, almost with a smile of amusement. “This attachment complex you have will one day be your downfall. Nothing is permanent. Ownership is an illusion. Do not let the loss of a thing affect who you are.”
