by D M Wozniak
“You can stay here,” he says. “The same thing with the assassin and graycloak. As long as you need to. Anything you need. My guests of honor, forever.”
I press my lips together, wondering if now is the right time to deliver more harsh news. I decide that it is.
“Actually, it’s not just hilma you need to leave behind. It’s this place altogether.”
He lifts his face from my shoulder and looks at me in confusion. His orange-red paint is smeared, revealing some of his freckles.
“I’m on my way south,” I say. “I want you to come with me.”
He squints further. “Where are you going?”
I pause as I decide to be truthful with him. “Do you remember the Lady Marine?”
“Your wife?”
I nod. “She left me.”
His lips are making shapes, as he tries to formulate a question.
“She left the citadel days ago with another voider. They took an airship and passed through these parts. I am intent on finding them.”
His face goes through a complex mix of emotions. The smeared paint on his face makes it almost impossible to read. He smiles bitterly, and then looks down.
“What is it?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Did you see the airship?”
He nods.
“Do you know where it went?”
“Xi Bay,” he says to the sand beneath his feet. “Colu mapped it out.”
I lean forward. “Where is this map?”
“My bedroom.”
“Will you show it to me?”
He looks up at me, and then I finally interpret the emotion upon his face. It’s disappointment.
“You didn’t come here to visit me,” he says quietly.
“What?”
He motions with a shaking finger to Xi Bay Road, beyond. “I thought that after all of this time, you were journeying here to visit me. But you weren’t. You were going south to find the woman who left you.”
I pause, a sliver of guilt stinging me.
“You didn’t even plan on running into me, did you? It was an accident.”
After a moment, I nod.
He looks down, forcing a laugh.
“Does it matter?” I ask. “Regardless of the circumstances, we are reunited. Much good can come of this.”
It’s impossible to read his reaction. He puts his elbows back on his knees, and looks down at the sand.
“We should leave tonight,” I add.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. It comes away with more paint, as he nods at the ground. A clock from inside the mansion rings out. It is fivebell.
“I’ll appoint Colu as the new redskull,” he says. “Inside, he is a good man. Outside, the people fear him.”
I don’t reply, since I don’t care. In a matter of fullbells, all of this will be behind us.
Cleanthes' Test
The freestanding clock against the dining room wall begins playing a tinny and discordant nursery rhyme.
It is a halfbell past seven.
“I will see what is keeping the redskull,” says the head waiter. “I heard him playing piano earlier.”
Colu flashes me a concerned look from across the flames of a candelabra.
“Do not enter his bedchamber,” Colu replies in his deep voice. “Knock only, and politely remind him that we await his presence for dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” the head waiter says, backing up into the shadows, as I silently look about the candlelit room.
Thirteen people sit around the table. Half of them know what is happening, and half of them do not.
Chimeline, the effulgent, and Colu are next to me. Colu has reapplied his skull paint—it’s bright white for probably the last time in his life, and perfectly drawn.
Four other skullmen sit at the table, along with five women who were outside by the pool. The men wear black shirts and vests. Not exactly formal dinner wear, but they don’t look completely disheveled either. It’s too dark to see if their eyes are yellow. Once Cleanthes shows up and we begin eating, I’ll be able to study their hands to see if they are shaking.
One of the skullmen is clearly sober. He has a scar that cuts upward from the bridge of his nose all the way into his hairline. He keeps playing with his steak knife, twirling it with deft fingers.
The women all wear silk gowns in deep, colorful hues. A fur wrap or two. One of them looks petite enough to be a child.
If fact, they all look like children, in a strange way. As if they are pretending at being a real family, with true prosperity and learned demure. It wasn’t just Cleanthes putting on a charade. They are all in this together.
Colu takes out a cigar from his black vest. “Fuck all this waiting. I’m going outside for a smoke.”
He stands and walks around the table, exiting the dining room.
I push my chair back and follow, feeling everyone’s gaze.
We pass through the dark library, and then head outdoors, onto the brick patio. There is nobody here, and the only sound is the trickle of a fountain at the edge of the empty pool. The moon reflects there.
Colu lights his cigar off a lantern, mumbles something, and puffs upon the cigar, and then takes it from his mouth.
“You're dead set on leaving tonight?” he asks.
“I'm afraid so,” I say.
He nods. “I’ll make sure your horses and the redskull’s mare are packed and ready to go.”
“I appreciate that.”
He looks at the cigar in his hand and grunts a laugh. “I'll throw in some sugarcanex. You're going to need it.”
“Sugarcanex?” I give Colu a dark look.
“If you plan on weening the redskull from hilma, you better have something else for him to lean on.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Colu takes another puff of his cigar and looks up to a candlelit window. “I don’t know what the fuck is taking him so long.”
“He said he had some things to prepare before he left for good. A letter to his family or something.”
“Must be writing a fucking memoir,” Colu says.
A breeze comes by, bringing with it the chill, night air, so I raise the collar of my flaxen cloak.
“You seem to have come out of this on top,” I say.
He forces a deep laugh. “You presume that I want to be the redskull.”
I nod.
“Well, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“The power is appealing, of course, but it comes with a price,” he says, turning to face Cleanthes' candlelit window.
“But you are Xian military,” I say. “I would think that this sort of promotion would suit you.”
“Ex-military,” he corrects me. “And no, it does not suit me.”
“Then why did you agree to it?”
“You gave me very little choice,” he says.
“You always have a choice.”
“Do I?” He looks at the tip of his cigar. “I've been searching for a new life ever since I left my home. I am a helmsman no more, and while I have no desire to live out the rest of my life as a redskull in northern lands, perhaps this is my destiny.”
I purse my lips in the darkness.
“You don’t use hilma, do you?”
“Fuck no.”
I nod in the darkness. “Your humility is probably a good thing for this cursed place. I hope you are the ruler whom these people deserve.”
“This place needs more than humility.”
He takes a puff, the tip lighting up like a red-hot coal.
“What do you mean?”
“It's only a matter of time before we’re attacked.”
I pause in surprise. “By who?”
“Prainise.” He flicks the ashen tip of his cigar away. “They’re brutal fuckers over there. When they realize that we have no voider...”
As he trails off, I frown in confusion. “But Cleanthes has lost voidance. Even if he stayed, it would do no good.”
“Nobody knows that," Colu says, then spits. “Not here, and not in Prainise. The mere threat of his power has been the only thing keeping them in check. Once they sense an opportunity, they will come tearing through here.”
“Come through here?”
He illustrates by waving the cigar between himself and the mansion. “They’ll kill all of these people.”
His one eye looks at me in the night, and I suddenly realize why he’s telling me all of this. “I’m not changing my mind, Colu. I can’t stay any longer.”
The wisdom of his age shows in his graceful yet disapproving nod.
“Prainise will eventually learn of what has happened, but if we’re lucky I’ll be ready by then. I’ll need to step up our defenses. Fortify our field towers. Lower our production as I train more fieldmen into skullmen for a season or two. Shift more of my men from daytime to nighttime watch.”
He blows out smoke, and then spits again. “We’ve gotten lazy, master voider. We’ve replaced might with make-believe. We’ve forgotten who we are.”
I look at him, trying to gauge the look upon his face.
“And who are you?” I ask.
“Something tells me that we're going to find out.”
After these words, the two of us stand in silence, looking out at the approaching night, until it is broken with a woman’s scream.
Colu looks up to the orange-lit window, as someone there opens the glass doors of the small balcony, banging them against the outside siding.
A man leans over the railing, a lantern in his hands. He looks downward, seeing us on the patio.
“Come quickly!” he shouts.
Colu tosses his cigar on the bricks and stamps it out.
“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath.
By the time Colu, Chimeline, the effulgent, and myself reach the third story, the dark hallway has already become congested with people. Young women in nightgowns, maids and footmen, and even skullmen. Nobody is speaking. I see a few of the women crying, so I know something serious has happened.
“Move it,” Colu booms, and everyone hugs the walls to let us through.
As soon I as enter through the doorway into the bedroom, my heart drops.
Cleanthes’ body leans over the keys of his black grand piano.
The room is bright. At least four candelabras glow, along with the lantern, which is still being carried by the head footman. The room is filled with hilma smoke. As we enter, it curls besides me like the swirls in a tide pool, thickly sweet and ghostly gray.
The room is similar to the library. Dozens of bookshelves are here, along with a few circular tables which are covered with papers and maps. A bed in the corner.
I head straight toward Cleanthes.
His body still sits upon the black tufted leather bench. His hands, head and chest rest upon the keys, almost as if he is softly playing the final, delicate notes of a song. An etude in a minor key.
His crimson robe is off, discarded on the floor next to the pedals. He wears only a thin undershirt and underpants, the attire of a man planning for a long night’s sleep.
Leaning over him, I gently pick his face up. A few of the touched piano keys hit the taut hidden strings, causing a discordant tone to fill the room.
He had wiped off his skull paint. His face, already gray, is unblemished, save for his youthful freckles.
He was practically a boy.
A slender white trail of smoke comes from a pipe in a glass ashtray resting on the piano.
I gently set his face back down upon the keys, so slowly that not a note sounds.
“Is he dead?” asks the head footman, raising his bright lantern in my face.
I nod, covering it with an outstretched hand in shelter from the light.
Suddenly, I feel dizzy and my body breaks out in sweat underneath my clothes. It’s probably the hilma smoke, which is a fog within the room. But it might be more than this.
I head to the alcove.
It’s the same set of glass doors that the head footman opened moments ago. There is a small balcony, and I step out onto it, looking down onto the brick patio where Colu and I recently stood. Where we discussed plans that are now irrefutably broken.
I take a deep breath, letting the pure night air fill my lungs.
But it doesn’t help as much as I was hoping for.
It’s my fault he’s dead.
First, I sent Anaxarchis to his death, and then I sent Cleanthes to his. And all the time, I did nothing. I navigated between perfect places, forgetting the people who needed me most.
The same is true with Marine. I lost her too, and it's probably my fault, somehow. Maybe I neglected her the way I neglected my graduates. Night after night, I left her alone while I studied, coming home at dawn. I put my university first, and my wife second. I put the void before everything else, and all of these great men and women—all of the people in the world that matter to me—are now gone.
Indivisibles divided.
I jump, startled by Chimeline. She puts a hand on my shoulder as she settles in besides me, against the iron railing. I feel her hips next to mine.
I didn’t even know she was here.
“You’re crying,” she says, looking sideways at me.
I quickly wipe away a tear with my hand. “It’s probably the smoke.”
She puts her slender hands on top of mine.
“I am sorry,” she says. “I know that he was your student, just like the man in Fiscarlo. You wanted to help him.”
For a while I don’t say anything. I’m keenly aware of more people coming into the room. It’s getting filled with more and more vultures. Colu speaks to them, but I can’t hear him from the balcony. And I don’t care.
All I can think about is how everything I have built has crumbled, and I just want the night to take me. I want the breeze to pick me up away from this place, to be among the stars. Freezing and alone. The world doesn’t need me. It has plans of its own.
“It was too much for him,” I eventually say. “Everything has fallen apart. Colu was right. I’m a child playing in the sand.”
She squeezes my hands in hers.
“Sand is the strongest thing in the world,” she replies.
I look at her, blinking away tears.
“Not every rocky mineral is equally built to last,” she adds. “Over time, the weather takes its toll. The world takes everything back to the sea, and only the strongest is left. Only the sand remains.”
She leans in, kissing me on the cheek, and then whispers in my ear. “You are strong, Democryos. You will endure, like the sand.”
I pull her into me, embracing her tightly. Almost as if the railing has fallen away, and I clutch her for fear of falling.
In a way, she could be anyone. I could be grasping Colu or the effulgent, or even a stranger, here on this window ledge. Some living person offering me hope and encouragement, an anchor that tethers me to this world. Because right now I feel that it’s the world, or nothing. It’s the indivisible or the void.
As I breathe in Chimeline’s scent and feel the curves of her body against mine, this universal feeling of companionship evolves into something more. This is not just kinship. This is not just hope. The fit is far too perfect.
I have forgotten the feeling of a woman’s caress. A man’s need and a woman’s need. How the two, so different from one another, are such perfect complements.
I used to tell Marine that our love was indivisible.
When I close my eyes, her memory swirls in the darkness, but for the first time, she fades slightly from view. It is as if she is standing on the opposite end of Cleanthes’ bedroom, a cloud of hilma smoke in-between. The thin hair against my face—it’s Chimeline’s darkness instead of Marine’s bleached tendrils. Deep brown eyes instead of the blue tones of Xi Bay. Caramel skin instead of milky-white.
A heart full of love instead of a head full of schemes.
At the time, Marine was the strongest of tethers, but i
f I focus on letting go, I can feel a similar pull now.
Is it possible that the feeling can be found again?
Things fall apart, Dem. I’ve fallen in love with someone else, and we are indivisible no more.
Marine’s last written words mix together within the smokescreen of Cleanthes’ paranoia. The stain of black pitch. Was the moonspit meant for me? Are these tethers meant for safety or treachery? Am I embracing the very woman tasked with murdering me? The desperate flailing of a drowning, lonely man?
Colu calls out to me.
“We should go inside,” I say, pulling away from her and reentering the bright, smoke-filled room.
I’m dizzy.
Colu speaks urgently to everyone, telling them that Cleanthes was going to leave with me tonight, and that he had silently transferred power. He raises up a parchment of Cleanthes’ handwriting.
He looks at me with his one eye. “Tell them,” he says gruffly.
I nod. “It is true,” I tell the packed room. “Colu is your new redskull. It was Cleanthes’ decision, and I supported it.”
Murmurs cascade through the crowd as I slowly work my way back to the center of the room, toward a round table with a map on it. Flat-bottomed, iron finials have been used to keep the rolls from closing in upon themselves.
One of the skullmen—the one with the scar—steps forward.
“Why would he transfer power to Colu?”
A few of the others in the room repeat his question and the momentum builds.
“He had lost his gift,” I say loudly, quieting down the crowd as I hold my voidstone in my hand by its gold setting. “This cursed drug you grow here consumed his mind and he lost the power of voidance.”
I look at Cleanthes’ dead body, still huddled upon the piano. “I had promised to take him with me, to help him regain his gift, but it was too much for him. He wanted the drug more.”
The one with the scar looks from him, to Colu, and then to me.
“Then why aren’t you the new redskull?” he says to me. “We need a voider.”
A few others mumble in agreement. “We need a voider!”
I shake my head. “I cannot stay here. I have responsibilities elsewhere.”
