by Matt Wallace
The Ignoble moves her focus to Lexi once more. “I truly hoped you would understand and accept my position. Perhaps even see some value in it. A futile hope, I suppose. This would have been much easier and much more effective with your full cooperation.”
“Why?” Lexi demands. “Why do you need me? I don’t have the evidence Brio collected. If Taru was able to retrieve it, the Protectorate Ministry has them both by now. I can’t prove anything. What good am I to you or your cause?”
“All is not as it may seem,” Burr says cryptically.
Lexi glances at Daian. “Nothing is, as of late.”
“You have far more value than you may be aware,” Burr reiterates, again without further explanation. “However, the usefulness of your Gen, to Crache and to my cause, has expired. I’m afraid you won’t be attending the academy or becoming a pleader after all. You and your retainer have murdered several agents of the Protectorate Ministry and disappeared. No doubt you’re hiding amongst the rabble in the Bottoms you love so much.”
The implication lashes Lexi like the chain of a flail. Winter fills her veins and she takes a wild, angry step toward Burr.
Daian deftly steps between them, raising a hand to halt her. “Now, now, tread softly. Your eyes don’t hold murder well, Lexi. They’re too innocent.”
“I’m learning,” she all but spits up at him.
“The Council will most certainly revoke the Stalbraid franchise by week’s end,” Burr assures Lexi.
“What value can I possibly have to you, then?” Lexi demands. “Why hold me here like this?”
“It’s actually quite simple, my dear,” Burr patiently explains. “For our plans to bear fruit, we will first need a revolution. You’re going to give us one.”
Lexi can’t even begin to find meaning in those words. “What are you talking about? I’m not a revolutionary. I’m not any kind of military leader.”
“No, of course not. But you will make a fantastic symbol. Better than your husband would’ve, I’m beginning to believe. We were quite distraught when he disappeared, you see.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, originally we were going to use him. Daian would’ve approached him at the proper time to confirm all his suspicions about what the Protectorate Ministry was up to. We waited too long, sadly. Then Daian was presented with an opportunity to get close to you. At first we hoped it might lead us back to Brio, or at least to whatever leverage he had over the Ministry, but now I see we don’t need him. We have you. It’s fascinating how these things work out sometimes.”
“What did you want Brio for? What do you want me for now?”
Burr seems genuinely delighted. “Because you’ve exceeded all our expectations. Oh, you should have seen yourself on the pleading floor of the Spectrum. You were a shining light for every dreg and vagabond in the Capitol. I never would have expected it from you, but the filthy peasants in those galleries were thoroughly unhinged. They would have named you their empress then and there. They loved your husband, and they now adore you. It’s absolutely perfect!”
The pieces revealed in Burr’s words begin to form a clear picture in Lexi’s mind.
“The Bottoms,” she says. “You want the people in the Bottoms to rise up and attack the Capitol.”
“I told you, we need a rebellion. The oppressed are traditionally the ones who rebel, are they not? And the Bottoms is filled with them. They’re angry and abused and gnashing their rotten teeth, ready to lash out. They simply need a flag under which to form.”
“Why would you want that?” Lexi asks, more aghast than outraged.
“Disorder,” Burr answers simply. “Chaos. Social breakdown. These are the things that create the greatness of opportunity. Opportunity we shall seize when the disorder reaches a healthy crescendo of blood and madness and destruction.”
“To what end?” Lexi demands. “What will you gain from sending the entire Capitol… the entire nation spiraling into chaos?”
“We will fill the void, my dear,” Burr explains patiently. “We will bring what’s left in the wake of that chaos under the yoke of nobility once more. The Crachian philosophy of submission through illusion is a fallacy. You do not gain control over a people by convincing them they are the ones in control. You do it by making them accept that they are your inferiors. They must all at once fear and revere the purity and power of your bloodline. They must know they can never be your equal. Then they submit. Then they live to serve.”
“The people of Crache will never yield to nobility.”
“Of course they will. Because I intend to see to it that we are the only choice left to them. When I’m done, they will beg for a return to the old ways.”
“If the people of the Bottoms rise up they will be slaughtered by Aegins before the Skrain is even called.”
Burr shrugs. “That’s simply a matter of organization and the proper, albeit clandestine support. Logistics are a matter for another day, however. You’re going to be a guest of my house for a goodly while. I want to give you time to reconsider. As I said, this will proceed much better with your full cooperation. I strongly suggest you use the time I’m gifting you to find common ground with our position.”
Lexi’s eyes again flash defiantly. “And if I simply cannot locate that common ground?”
“Then I will be forced to turn these negotiations over to Daian, my house’s very skilled master of persuasion.”
“He promised no harm would come to me.”
Daian shrugs, a thoroughly pleased smile on his face. “I’m afraid I lie quite often.”
“He’s very skilled at that, as well,” Burr seconds. “Trust me, Lady Xia, you have no wish to experience his other specialty. I will leave you to ponder that. And please remember, for our purposes a martyr will serve just as well as a symbol. Decide which you’d prefer. And should you require anything in the interim, please do not hesitate to ring your bell. We shall speak again soon.”
Burr gathers her gleaming skirts and exits the room without waiting for a response.
Daian lingers, watching Lexi with that same smile edged with madness.
“You know, I’m happy you’re here with us,” he says. “I find your presence… comforting.”
Lexi forces a mocking smile to her lips. “That’s very kind. My only wish is to live long enough to watch Taru rip your manhood from your body so that you may gaze upon it from a previously unseen angle before you die.”
“Now that will be a fight worth waking up in the morning for,” Daian says with a wicked grin. “Let’s just hope your retainer is in battle-ready shape when next we meet.”
He leaves her with that, closing the doors behind him and latching them both from the outside.
Lexi suppresses the urge to take up the nearest vase and hurl it at those doors. She turns and walks back to the open picture windows, staring down at the magnificent gardens far below. The serenity and beauty and seeming openness completely belies her predicament, and Lexi can’t help bitterly reflecting on her fate.
If it comes to that, I will jump, she promises herself.
The true absurdity of this situation is that Burr and Daian are in essence offering Lexi exactly what she and Taru have needed since Brio disappeared: allies with the power to help them. It would be a blessing if not for the obvious truth that Burr is a megalomaniac and Daian is a madman. In Lexi’s eyes, the Ignobles are the same as the Protectorate Ministry they are opposing. The only difference between the Ignobles and the Ministry seems to be that the Ignobles want to openly oppress the people while the Ministry is content to rule from the shadows and fool the people into thinking their lives are free from subjugation and control.
There has to be a third option for Crache, though Lexi cannot see it from where she stands now.
Lexi finds she can’t command her heart or mind to stop racing. Her only goal since Ashana took on her role of Evie and departed has been to hold Stalbraid together, by any means necessary, first to preserve Brio
’s position, and then because Lexi found that not only did she have the ability to lead the Gen herself, she wanted to lead. More than that, Lexi wanted to best their enemies on the only battlefield available to her.
The thought of having that small victory snatched away, and watching the home built by their mothers and fathers be ripped apart and buried is almost too much for Lexi to bear.
When this all began she was a woman driven solely by loyalty, to her husband, to her Gen and its legacy. Now she finds the fire burning in the pit of her stomach is fed by principle, by that which Gen Stalbraid represents and its duty to the people for whom they’ve spent generations advocating. She won’t betray that, whether the Council razes the Stalbraid franchise or not. She won’t see harm come to those people who have no one else to speak for them, either.
Her thoughts turn to Brio and Taru and Ashana, wherever they may be in that moment. Perhaps they’re all dead by now, and in the end Lexi’s best efforts for them have amounted to ash. Perhaps they’re all still alive, and even if constrained are plotting their own means of escape. She wants to believe that above all else.
One thing holds true in either case: Lexi cannot depend on anyone else to come for her. There will be no rescue, no saving grace forged from the bravery and risk of others to aid her in her darkest hour.
It’s up to her to save herself.
It’s up to her to protect the Bottoms and all its children.
It’s up to her to stop Burr and Daian.
It’s up to her to be Gen Stalbraid.
We are not flowers. We do wilt.
Even in winter, the strongest flower may find a way to thrive.
And Lexi remains her mother’s daughter.
THE ONES WE KEEP CLOSE
A STORM IS BREWING IN the east.
Dyeawan can see swollen clouds, as large as godheads and gray as cold steel, rolling in over the steadily agitated waters of the bay. It’s the peak of afternoon, yet the sun is a thing poorly remembered by a pale and sickly sky that might have known nothing but gloom since it first spread over the Earth. The wind has teeth and a hunger to match, its appetite seeming to grow and bite more fiercely with every passing moment. Barely rising above the crashing of angry waves, thunder is a whispered warning on the horizon.
Dyeawan paddles her tender up the beach herself, politely declining Edger’s offer to push her. The tender is aided through the wet sand by a new set of hollow wheels around the exterior of which a series of three-inch spikes protrude. A bellows affixed to Dyeawan’s right-hand paddle operates the spikes. Compressing the bellows fills the hollow body of the wheels with air, deploying them, while decompressing the bellows’ lung sucks the spikes back inside the wheels.
Edger walks beside her, silent and pointing his corpse’s face toward the advancing storm clouds.
“You’ve chosen a strange afternoon for a walk along the beach,” Dyeawan observes, mostly speaking because Edger is not.
“The weather seems appropriate for this discussion,” he says, the muscles of his throat straining to pipe the words through Ku’s body with enough volume to be heard above the excited climate.
“What do you mean? What discussion?”
Edger hesitates a moment longer, and then, “I feel as though something has changed between us. There’s a division I didn’t anticipate, and I fear it’s growing.”
“Do you regret elevating me to planner?”
Ku pipes the sputtering hiss of wind that serves as Edger’s laughter.
“I might as well regret the expansion of your vocabulary. No, you are a planner, Dyeawan.”
“Then what is it?”
“I foresaw you upsetting the balance among the rest of the twelve, but I never expected you to begin pulling away from me, as well.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I may not be quite as observant as you, but I do possess some facilities. I can’t help but feel as though the closer I bring you, the less you seem to trust me.”
“You choose to share your truth with me in slices,” Dyeawan states plainly. “Every time you bring me closer it only raises more questions about the Planning Cadre that you choose not to answer.”
“And there it is, the rancid core of the problem. Thank you for being honest with me. You are absolutely correct, Dyeawan.”
They reach the finger of piled stone that extends out into the bay. It was one of those stones, flattened and smoothed by centuries of waves, which aided Dyeawan in solving the riddle of the Spectrum’s construction that clinched her place at the planner’s table.
It is clear Edger intends to traverse the stones.
“Why are we returning here?” Dyeawan asks.
“Indulge me” is his only answer.
With a sigh, Dyeawan lifts the handle of the bellows, filling its bladder with air from the tender’s wheels and causing their many spikes to retract. She has no choice but to allow Edger to push her and the tender up onto the uneven surface of the stone bank, but at least once they’re astride the rocks Dyeawan can steer and paddle the tender on her own once more. They make their way across the stone bank in silence, Edger leading the way.
The God Rung hangs from its hand-carved monolith rising at the end of the rocky terrain. The wind is causing the heavy steel circle to creak and clank loudly against its rusted base.
Dyeawan finds she dislikes the sight of it even more now that she knows its history.
“The weather is not, I’m afraid, conducive to what I must ask you to do next,” Edger tells her. “Fortunately, I know you are more than strong enough to adapt.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Go for a swim. More precisely, a dive.”
Dyeawan stares up at him without surprise, but with a clear amount of resentment.
“I thought I was done taking tests.”
“You are,” he assures her. “This isn’t a test. There’s something at the bottom of the bay I need you to investigate. I need to know your understanding of it.”
He’s telling the truth, though what that truth means to Edger is always open to debate.
He reaches inside his tunic and removes a pair of glass rounds bound together by a thick hide cord. The rounds of glass are set inside what appear to be covers fashioned from some form of shell. Longer lengths of cord are attached to either cover. The article looks as though it’s meant to be worn around the head, over one’s eyes.
“These will allow you to see beneath the bay. The glass is specially treated so it will neither fog nor streak, thus obscuring your vision. I refined the process myself.”
“Of course you did,” Dyeawan says, and Edger can’t discern whether she’s in awe or mocking him.
He offers her the eye covers. “Will you do this thing? Will you trust me this one final time, with the provision that I will never have to ask you again?”
Intrigued, Dyeawan accepts the pair of covers. She ties the hide straps together around her head, carefully fitting each viewing piece over her eyes.
“Where am I going? And how will I know I’ve reached whatever it is you want me to inspect?”
“Simply swim straight down. I know you’re a strong swimmer. And you’ll know what you’re looking for when you see it.”
Dyeawan sets the brake of her tender and begins pulling herself over the edge of the litter.
“May I assist you?” Edger asks.
Dyeawan ignores him, climbing down onto the rocks with the fluid ease of one accustomed to navigating the world by their hands while pulling the lower half of their body behind them. She crawls across the rocks, and slinks down the incline toward the bay, reaching the final boulder rising above the water. Dyeawan glances back at Edger briefly through the lenses he’s fashioned for her, then pulls her body over the boulder and lets its own momentum propel her through the surface.
The water is cold and dark, and though the lenses over her eyes are clear Dyeawan isn’t certain how she’s meant to see anything down here. The
bottom of the bay appears black when she first enters the water, though it can’t be more than a few dozen yards deep this far from the shore. She strokes her arms and swims straight down, the natural buoyancy of her legs pulling them toward the surface and keeping her body level.
An object rises from the darkness below, very nearly colliding with Dyeawan’s face. She reaches out simply to deflect whatever it is, finding her hands grabbing at the material of a garment. It is a simple dress, thin and not well made. She yanks it aside, turning the body of a young woman. Dyeawan stares through her lenses into the eternally closed eyes of her shrunken face.
The girl is missing her arms and legs. Even in the grip of shock and panic and fear, Dyeawan’s mind can’t help examining the stumps left of her limbs. It’s clear they have not been severed, either in life or death. The girl was born that way. Her arms and legs grew only a few inches and then ceased growing forever.
Dyeawan allows the girl’s body to drift back toward the shadowy depths. She is ready to swim back up to the surface then, but something in her gut even colder than the water surrounding her compels Dyeawan to remain there. A moment later she begins stroking her arms anew, driving herself deeper into the shadows, following the path of the limbless girl’s corpse. Dyeawan watches her sink back to the shallow ocean bed, her descent abruptly halted. As Dyeawan swims closer, shapes beneath the girl begin to reveal themselves to her adjusting eyes.
The warning comes from the back of her mind, that place which knows before the rest of her truly sees. That warning is rooted in a horror Dyeawan cannot fully comprehend until she blinks, and the focal point of that warning is brought into focus.
There are more bodies beneath the limbless girl, and not just a few or even a few dozen. The bottom of the bay is one ceaseless mass grave. There are men, women, children, young and old. There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them interred beneath the water here. All of them were either born with some disability, or, like Dyeawan, injured later in their lives. She sees open eyes overwrought with milky cataracts. She sees withered limbs and empty spaces where most possess sturdy flesh.
