The Noble's Story

That night, exhaustion made sleeping surprisingly easy, even after an eerie silence fell over the nomad’s camp. The Knight had promised to keep watch, but when I woke from a dream, I saw the Knight and the Singer creep over a shadowy dune and out of sight. I wondered if the Knight even liked her—whom he had generally ignored and whose advances had seemed so useless against him until now. She didn’t seem like his type. But maybe the stress of what had transpired and the fear of what would come next had forced them together. Without realizing it, I looked toward the Noble’s sleeping bag.

I blinked. It was empty. The Fool, the Mourner, the Wizard, the Hunter, and the Old Lady were sleeping soundly. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and looked around.

There she was, at the crest of a dune, not far away. A cigar burned in her fingertips, floating like a red star near her lips. When I reached her, she held her golden box out to me without speaking. I took one of the cigars—also without speaking. In the past, opening my mouth had only fouled things up.

“Did you see them?” asked the Noble. “Sneaking off like little children.”

I didn’t think children tended to do what the two absent pilgrims were likely to do. But I didn’t say so.

I was rewarded for my silence when the Noble took the cigar from my hand, put it between her own lips, and lit it from the embers of the one she held. My gut wrenched when she handed it back. Transfixed, I watched it release starlit wisps into the sky. Then, with the utmost reverence, I put it in my mouth, placing my lips where hers had been only seconds ago. It was still wet. When the taste of honey crept into my mouth, I wondered if it was the cigar’s taste or hers. Can a person taste like honey? I wondered.

“This batch is honey flavored,” she said, resolving the matter. “It sells at enormous prices across the South Sea Nations.”

“I can see why,” I said, even though I hadn’t yet inhaled. When I did, I choked and started a coughing fit to rival the Old Lady.

“You’re not supposed to breathe it,” she said. “That was stupid.”

“Oh.”

I took the next puff into my mouth and released slowly, as I’d seen her do. I wondered if my initial mistake had destroyed my chances for conversation. But after a moment of silence, she was talking again. Her gaze was far away. She may or may not have realized I was still there.

“I should have paid for the whole damn trip myself—with a whole army for protection,” she said. “I could have bought twenty mercenaries for a few thousand gold pieces. I don’t know what I was thinking. My father always said you have to do things yourself. You can’t rely on others.”

“Mine too.”

There seemed to be more stars in the Noble’s eyes than in the sky they reflected. I could tell she was holding something in; the emotions were there, a storm just beneath the surface. But she simply said, conversationally, “Are your parents waiting for you somewhere back in the Nations?”

“No,” I said. “Not in the Nations—maybe in a different place.”

“Yeah. Okay,” she said, getting the hint. She smoked in silence for a few minutes. “So I guess we have something in common. No one will miss us if the nomads kill us in the morning.”

Her observation spiked my anxiety, which was, perhaps her intent, for she smiled faintly (though not meanly) when I squirmed. I said, “If they come after us without water, it’ll be a suicide mission for them.”

“So?”

And I realized that I had no idea who these nomads were and how they might feel about a suicide mission. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I doubt anyone will miss me. The captain of the ship I worked on said he would write every now and then. But he was just being polite.”

“Have you ever thought about what you would say if you could… you know… talk to your parents?”

I didn’t answer because, at first, I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Not once?” she said. “If someone gave you a chance to talk to them just once more, to ask them any question you wanted…”

You should know, it’s always gut-wrenching for me to think about my parents, and I didn’t really want her making me think about things that I had gotten pretty good at not thinking about. So before I could embarrass myself by getting misty, I said, “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”

A good minute passed. We simply stood and faced the wind. Then, she said, “Fine, change of topic. What do you think about necromancy?”

Somehow I sensed that this was not really a change of topic. “I… I know the Great Academy banned it completely a few years ago. Necromancers used to bind souls into cooking pots and wash basins and things, making machines and stuff. But, you know… ethics…”

She seemed displeased with my answer and said evenly, “But what’s your opinion about it?”

“I don’t have a…” I cut myself off. Someone like the Knight, or the Hunter, or the Morl would, no doubt, have an opinion, I realized. In fact, I could tell she wanted me to have an opinion; I just couldn’t tell which opinion she wanted me to have. Then again, maybe I was overthinking it: Someone who is opinionated wouldn’t spend all their time thinking about what opinion someone wanted them to have. Just as my overactive thoughts were beginning to take me, she said:

“I mean, like, are you one of those people who thinks necromancy is categorically evil? Or…” She gave me a meaningful look. “…are you one of those people who thinks before they lump everyone into a single category?”

I used the cigar as an excuse not to answer right away—taking pains to look pensive as I produced awkward puffs of moonlit smoke. She clearly wanted to talk about necromancy, which wasn’t exactly illegal (even though the practice of it was). I had a distinct sense that if I said yes, she was going to start telling me things that, perhaps, I didn’t want to know. The anxiety in my stomach was urging me to just go to bed. But her starlit eyes, still studying my face, held me spellbound, tempting me with another option. Finally, I took it, feeling my stomach churn even as I said the words. “I suppose it depends on the person and the category. Some people think all morls are evil, but I’ve never believed it. Some people think all pirates are evil, but I once met a pirate who was quite apologetic even as he was taking possession of our cargo. With necromancers… I suppose it’s the same. The details matter.”

She began rummaging through her golden box, pushing cigars aside. Hidden at the bottom was a folded piece of paper. Even in the moonlight, I could tell that it was tattered and yellow with age. When she unfolded it, my breath caught.

It was an ancient “WANTED” poster. A drawing of a hooded man gazed at me—out of the paper, out of the past. The title read, “Wanted for Necromancy.” Beneath that, smaller text warned, “Beware. Extremely dangerous. Do not approach.” The poster listed the proper authorities to notify with information about this particular necromancer or about necromancy in general. The bounty at the top of the page was enough to buy a fleet of ships and several pilgrimages.

“He was always perfectly nice to me,” said the Noble. “When I found out who he was, he didn’t even get angry. He just put his finger to his lips and said, ‘It’ll be our secret, okay?’ The details matter, right? Well, he taught me how to speak and eat properly, how to use my fork and napkins, and how to keep the books for all of our farms. Do you have any idea how much accounting there is to do when you run over a hundred farms? He was the smartest person I’ve ever known.” She stuck her chin into the air as if she expected someone to correct her. I certainly didn’t.

Instead, I asked, “Who was he? An accountant on your farms or something?”

She shoved the paper back into its box and slammed the lid shut. “This is the most powerful uncaught necromancer in recent history. And you think he would waste his time being some kind of accountant on a tobacco plantation?”

“But you said he taught you—”

“Of course he taught me things! He’s my father!” She wasn’t yelling, but she was doing the kind of whisper-yelling you do when you wish you could yell, but you don’t want to wake everyone up.

“Your father?” I hissed back. “A necromancer owns the South Sea Nations tobacco empire?”

“Yes. He ‘owns the empire,’” she said, using air-quotes and a mocking voice, as if I’d chosen words that were technically correct but laughably unrefined. “If he’s still alive. Fourteen months ago, he was just gone. My mother was already dead, so I was suddenly alone. I tried to rush through the paperwork for the pilgrimage, but the idiot bureaucrats botched everything and I had to wait an entire year. Two months ago, I turned seventeen and officially inherited the farms. I inherited the whole empty house. Every single room, every single floor, every single servant. And every single—how should I say?—hidden secret.”

“I think I get it,” I said, shivering. “You’re a…”

She looked at me, apparently waiting for me to say the right thing, whatever that might be. “A… what?” she said.

“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “someone for whom the details matter, I guess.”

A smile played at the corner of her mouth, and I could tell I had somehow said something right. She said, “One day I was walking through the empty house, and I realized that it wasn’t really empty. I could hear voices speaking to me from the cooking pots, the farm equipment, from our automatic doors, from basically every machine my father had ever enchanted. I could hear them begging me to let them go, so I tried to do just that. And when it worked, I realized I had the gift. I tried to summon my father, and it didn’t work, which told me that either he wasn’t dead, or I didn’t have that gift. So naturally… I went to my mother’s room, and, well…”

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“You summoned her?” I said, swallowing.

“Creeped out yet?”

“A little,” I said. “In a good way. I think?”

This earned me a small laugh. She went on: “We talked, just like old times, about the farms, and about the men who wanted to marry me, about tobacco. Sometimes she would start crying, but she wouldn’t tell me why. And I would try to hug her, but she would disappear like fog. She told me that my father had brought her soul back from the dead many times after I thought she was gone forever. Most souls decay quickly after death, but my father had done a lot of work, apparently, to preserve hers. This had allowed them to continue their relationship for years after she was officially dead. Apparently, for a few years, my father had even found a young woman to be the receptacle for my mother’s soul.” She looked at me, as if assessing my mettle based on how I took the information. I must have passed the test because she went on: “Apparently, they continued life as if nothing had happened. Except, of course, that they didn’t tell me.”

I sat down on the dune and hugged my knees. I couldn’t believe how nonchalantly she tossed out mind-shattering details. Was this because she knew that tomorrow might bring our deaths? Or was it because she had been holding it all in, just waiting for someone to confide in. I’ll be honest, the idea of someone placing his dead wife’s soul into another woman’s body and proceeding “as if nothing had happened” made me queasy. Had the unsuspecting servant girl known what she was being hired for? What would it feel like to be evicted from your own body? And had she been able to return after the necromancer was gone, when his spell was no longer in effect? Or had the used body simply fallen dead?

“I understand why they didn’t tell me,” said the Noble, still standing. Her voice cracked, suggesting that maybe she did not, in fact, fully understand. “I was fourteen when she died. What would I have thought? My mother’s mind in someone else’s body? No, I’d have freaked out or something. I’m sure if I could ask my father what he was thinking, that’s what he would say.”

After joining me sitting on the sand, she continued. “One day, not very long ago, when I told her I was going to go out looking for him, she cried and cried and wouldn’t tell me why. So I started yelling at her, demanding that she tell me. And, of course, she had to. Necromancers like my father… and me—we can command the dead. That’s one of the necromantic gifts.” The cigar shook in her hand. Her breathing was ragged. “Suddenly, she changed shape—right in front of me, getting all misty like a cloud. And I realized I had perceived her the way I wanted to perceive her. Souls don’t really have a shape, I guess. They’re more like dreamstuff, or whatever it is that makes morls look all shimmery. Our minds supply the details if we let them. A new woman’s face formed, one I didn’t recognize. And she started telling me things I couldn’t even comprehend at first.”

I couldn’t help but breathe, “What’d she say?” fascinated by how much more interesting Lilly’s story was than my own. I felt boring by comparison.

“She told me,” she said, watching my eyes the whole time, “that she had died before she had even given birth to me.”

A sleeping bag at the bottom of the dune rustled, and the Wizard gave a loud snore.

The Noble lowered her voice. “It turned out that she had known my father when he was on the run, after he had been thrown out of the Great Academy. He used to be headmaster, you know? They’d gotten together while he was skipping from town to town, trying to avoid the authorities and bounty hunters. One day, she died. I don’t know how. But my father promised to find her a better life and bring her back.

“Then, years later, he met Ellen Overlai, the heiress to the South Sea tobacco empire. My father put my mother’s soul into this woman. I guess that killed her—whoever Ellen Overlai really was. My mother took her place, assumed Ellen’s identity, married my father officially, and had me. And I grew up as ‘Lilly Overlai’—never knowing any of it. I learned how to sit, how to eat, and how to walk. I learned how to be an Overlai from the moment I was born. Funny story, huh? If we survive, you should write it down and publish it as a comedy.” She gave a nervous titter, and the words kept tumbling out. Yes, I could tell she’d been keeping this in for a long time now. “Want to know an even funnier story? My mother’s third body, the serving girl I mentioned? She gave birth to what I guess you would call… my half-siblings, biologically. A boy and a girl, both three years old. But non-biologically speaking (if that’s even a thing that makes sense), they’re my real brother and sister—though they don’t know it. When they turn five, they will like all children of serving girls, learn to sew and/or cook. When they turn eight, they are expected to have mastered these skills. By age ten, they will be full fledged servants of the tobacco plantation. When I was five, just so you know, I was learning the six different ways to cross my legs when sitting. For all intents and purposes, I own those two children. They are my property. And what’s the difference between us really? What am I supposed to do? Tell them that they are rightfully co-owners of the tobacco empire? Tell them that our parents were two very strange people that weren’t exactly on the right side of the law?”

Tears had materialized and were now creeping down her cheeks, catching the starlight. But she was also laughing, like someone who can hardly believe that what they are saying is true. “Well?” she whispered.

“Well, what?” I said, mystified.

“Dammit, Nial. Listen for once. Who are they? Who the hell am I? I know you’re not the damn shrine, but don’t pretend to be an idiot. And don’t sit there with your mouth open—it’s a gross habit.”

I choked. What did she want to hear? Oh, you’re a necromancer’s daughter? Living a stolen life? There are more of you? That’s nice. Can I have another cigar? Did she want forgiveness? I thought of the Morl and the Old Lady: were some things unforgivable?

“You’re the only person I’ve told,” she said. “And all you can do is sit there?”

Disgusted, she stood up and turned to leave. I terrified myself by grabbing her wrist and pulling her back. She didn’t seem angry about it, though. In fact, she seemed relieved; she seemed to really care about whatever I was about to say next. Hugging her knees beside me, she watched my lips.

“I won’t lie,” I said, trying to figure out what to say. “I don’t know what to say. And usually, when I don’t know what to say, I just make things up. My father called it ‘bullshitting.’ Like, if I wanted to, I could just keep talking and asking questions for hours without stopping. But… with this…” I looked her in the eyes and found myself just telling her the truth. My exact words were: “It creeps me out a bit? Like, your parents just stepped in and stole a whole tobacco empire. But the details matter. That’s something they did. And now, somehow, I guess it’s your job to fix it. Or to leave it the way it is. It’s like they left you with a mess to clean up, and… it’s not really fair, is it?”

She continued watching my lips as she said, “It really isn’t.”

I went for it; I tried to kiss her. I don’t know why. It just felt right. But she jerked and pulled away. “What are you doing?”

“I really don’t know.”

Her fingers went to her lips, as if she thought she had a cigar. At least she didn’t seem furious about it. My own lips were tingling where they had met hers.

“Nial,” she said, “I need to be honest with you.”

“I assumed you already were.”

“About me, yes,” she said, “But I need to be honest about how I feel about you.”

“You… have feelings for me?” I said, trying to suppress my sudden hope.

“No. And that’s the thing,” she said. “I know we’re literally the only two people on this pilgrimage younger than twenty, so pretty much everyone is expecting us to hook up or fall in love or whatever, but I need you to know that I’m not attracted to you.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I’m not attracted to you either,” I tried to say, but it just came out as a mumble.

“It’s not really about you,” said the Noble. “I’ve always been this way. I guess you could say, I just don’t… feel things.” I reached out to pinch her in a joking way, but she slapped my hand away and glared at me. “Not like that,” she said. “I mean I don’t feel love. I don’t feel physical attraction to people. I don’t ogle people’s shoulders the way you do.” I gulped; but she hadn’t said it particularly meanly, so I kept my mouth shut. “And I certainly don’t throw myself at people the way Gwen Florence does. It’s disgusting.”

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” I asked.

For a long moment, she didn’t answer. Finally: “No. And I’m not counting that one you stole from me just now.”

“Me neither,” I said, not able to look her in the eyes. Physical attraction was annoying, I realized.

“I need you to know something,” she said. Something about how she said it compelled me to meet her gaze, and when I did, the intensity of it made it impossible to look away. “My dresses,” she said, indicating her clothing, “it’s an act. I know how to seem like an Overlai, but it’s not really who I am.” As if to demonstrate, she took two fingers and pinched a strand of delicate lace on her dress’s sleeve. She ripped at it, unraveling the strands all the way around. Then she took it in her teeth and tore off a lacy band. “It was one of my mother’s dresses,” she said. “They all were. I brought most of her wardrobe with me. Things she treasured. They’re the only way I can talk to her. Or they were. Probably won’t work now that they’re all torn and disgusting.”

I had a sickening feeling that she was going to summon her mother right there and introduce me to her. She seemed to be trying, looking intently at the lacy band blowing in the breeze. Then her shoulders sank. “Nope, doesn’t work.” Suddenly, though, she threw it aside and kissed me. It lasted about two seconds.

When she pulled away, she explained, “I can’t feel love or much of anything really. I’m sort of dead inside. But I do need to be able to act like I can feel things. You know? Act like I’m not dead inside. I need to be able to pass as the heiress to a tobacco empire and not the daughter of a famous uncaught necromancer. I need to be able to kiss people without feeling like I’m going to throw up in my mouth at the very thought of it.” She covered her mouth and coughed then swallowed. “No offense. It’s me, not you. I get this way whenever I think about kissing anyone.”

“So you want to kiss to practice… not vomiting?” I said. “I figured you’d want to do it because we’ll all probably die tomorrow.”

She smiled at me calmly. “You might die tomorrow,” she said. “Necromancers never really die. Or so my father believed.”

Goosebumps spread across my skin, and I could not suppress a shiver.

“So,” she said. “I have two conditions. First, if we do survive, I don’t want you going around telling people I’m your girlfriend or doing any ‘bullshitting’ like that.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry, not bullshit. What’s a more ladylike word? Oh, well, bullshit is all I can think of right now. And secondly,” she said, “you’re not allowed to write any of it down. Not about my father. Not about me. Not about any kissing we might experiment with. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. It was agony to say it because I knew I wasn’t going to keep the promise. The fact that you’re reading this is evidence that I didn’t. But please know, that I feel bad even as I write these words.

“Well? Do it,” she said. “Before I start thinking about vomiting again.”

I moved my lips to hers. I could feel the warmth of her body. The practice session escalated quickly to a furious union of tongues and lips. We rolled down a dune and kept kissing. Most of the time I couldn’t tell who was on top, or which way was up, or whether we were doing it right. Still, it was quite nice, and she didn’t vomit in my mouth, which was a plus. Honestly, she seemed to enjoy it, but perhaps she was just practicing that too.

> Dear Human, I had started to suspect Lilly Overlai when my operatives began investigating her father five years prior. His disappearance (as you may have already guessed) had been by morlish design. Half of my mission with Lilly Overlai was to determine if she possessed any of her father’s gifts. Now that I had verbal confirmation of this, the next half was to determine if she might be a more controllable asset than her father had proven to be. Watching her tumble down the dune with Nial gave me hope in this regard. As we morls are fond of saying: love is a lever.

>

> I smiled in the dark, wishing only the best for the two young love birds. Let’s just say that I was more optimistic than Lilly about the prospects of their love story.