Ilana experienced the night of April 25, ‘94, a bit differently from the rest of the world. She had seen Erysi throw Farisa’s knapsack in the bonfire, and she had seen tendrils of smoke emerge, and she had felt Erysi strike her—but this flitting into fear reversed itself—Erysi had never moved, Farisa’s knapsack lay untouched by her cut-off clothes—and she heard a voice:
“Your mind is the place you make it. I give you your heart’s highest desires for the rest of your life.”
The crowd chanted, “Ilana! Ilana! We love you, Ilana!”
Ilana realized she could do anything because she would never lose the love of this crowd. She swung the cane at her victim’s forearm—fuck the rules, she could. She twirled like an ecstatic dancer, delivering blows to shin and ankle and rib and collarbone. In a display of athletic prowess, basking in the crowd’s adoration, she struck a hundred blows at once. Every bone inside Farisa shattered, leaving the mage to hang defeated in the stocks like a bag of brown mud. Then Erysi handed her a dagger that she had heated red in the fire. She stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with the glowing knife, causing sizzling and spattering sounds to come from Farisa’s trembling body as she thrashed and screamed at a night sky full of stars that did not care. The crowd, along with Ilana, floated on a carpet above the world; the bonfire itself leapt through the pale moon.
Farisa cried. “Ilana, stop. I’ll do anything. Just stop.”
Ilana faced the crowd with a smile that could eat the world. “Iwana, staaaahp!”
Although only twenty had been invited, there were now forty, no, eighty, no, a hundred sixty, of Cait Forest’s finest students, and they had all come because they loved Ilana. There were three hundred people watching; Cait Forest was full of eyes. No, a whole village of six hundred had come to watch the woman in the striped dress perform. Included were some professors, second-guessing the low marks they had given her in the past. Ilana's father and mother had come. Her grandmother had come to see this. Ancestors watched from the heavens; the night glowed with their smiles.
Someone had left a brick near the firepit. Ilana grabbed it and slammed it once, twice, thrice into Farisa’s stomach, tearing skin and muscle, teasing the crowd with delicious odors of digestive failure. Fuck you, Farisa. Fuck you, you weird tarsha girl-loving fuck, you too-smart fuck-shoes, you fucking, you, fuck you to fucking fuck—
“We love you, Ilana! We love you so much!”
Ilana raised the brick over her head. This was her life's prime moment. She spun around herself, beaming. Cheers came from all directions. Ilana saw herself from the outside, as the full moon did—the most beautiful woman who had ever lived or ever would—and the defeated tarsha’s eyes, still open and receptive to light, showed more confusion and terror than the world’s most depraved artists had found colors or textures to portray. Ilana slammed the brick into the crown of Farisa’s head, opening the skull in one blow. Blood flew everywhere. Farisa’s whole body shook; pink spittle escaped her dying mouth. Ilana reached into the broken cranium, barely noticing the shard of broken skull that had cut her inner wrist, causing her own blood to gush into the cranial cavity as she grabbed a handful of brain tissue, which she tore apart, like cloves of garlic, as she threw bits into the endless adoring crowd.
#
“Good morning, Miss Harrow.”
She sat across from Elior XVI, the headmaster, in the first-class cabin of a train. She felt the fatigue of a hangover although she had not been drinking; last night’s performance had required exquisite athleticism. The sun came in through the window across the aisle.
“Please relax,” said Elior XVI as he put a hand on her arm. “I’m here to help you. These things happen. Keep the color of this thing off my nose, and you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Did I... kill her?”
The headmaster chuckled. “Believe it or not, she is alive.”
Across the aisle, Farisa’s eyes hung half open with no signs of intelligence behind them. Blood-soaked bandages covered the collapsed top of her head, and she was drooling like a baby.
“She’s in no shape to teach, but her pupils still react to light. We’re taking her to a facility in Exmore for those who cannot take care of themselves. They will clean up her bodily messes until she passes away.”
Ilana’s voice cracked. “Why are her teeth chattering?”
“Seizure. Nothing to worry about. I am glad you have done this. Given time, she would have become a danger to us all.”
As if at the bottom of a six-mile well, Farisa heard their voices. She could not speak or see or make any controlled movements but, to her surprise, this protracted death had given her the most vivid dreams. Knowing she was dying had brought to mind her father, and thus his living friend, Claes Bergryn, whom she’d imagined leading the expedition. Eric was produced by her longing to return to childhood, before the rushes of love and lust had battered her heart. Andor and Saito, laconic but gifted men from faraway lands, were projections of the intellect that was the reason no one could ever stand her. Runar signified honor and its senseless demise. And Mazie? She had only invented Mazie in the deviant hope that someone might find her beautiful. Not one of these people, she realized, had been real.
She had invented a story to give her life purpose as it ended. Farisa’s Fire? A perfect crime, too perfect. Twenty of her worst enemies dead—by fire, no less—and not an innocent killed? No. No. Such flawless revenge only existed in minds that invented it. The whole Mountain Road fantasy had been the dying dream of a broken woman, the hiss of a failing engine, the defiant false light in a dark madhouse that was—which is—the place she had never escaped, a place she had dreamt of leaving, escaping in one fantasy after another, this one so lucid she had come to believe it with total commitment, and now she was here in Qaelet, a place of lies that judges the dead, whose courtroom spectators in bright robes leered at her now, still seeming so real—the silk restraints on her legs could not be moved—that she could reach only one conclusion, one that had in the end so little to do with Ilana or Cait Forest or anything else that had brought her here.
“I must be in hell.”
#
The judge rubbed his scepter against the corner of the bench. “Excuse me?”
Farisa had said an ugly, but potentially appropriate, word in his presence. Ilana and Erysi were still visible, as real as iron and gold, but now hanging as if in suspension, their mouths slightly open as they floated above the floor.
She put out her chest. “You do not judge the dead, you said.”
The judge laughed. “Did I?”
“You said it when she”—Farisa pointed at Ilana—“requested immunity. Qaelet does not judge the dead. It appears I am so.”
“Are you telling me I cannot lie?” The judge paused, to give the crowd time to chuckle. “If you are surprised to find this place full of liars, you do not understand where you have been sent.”
“I do understand.”
“The architecture and the sunlight confuse some people. At first, they think they’re in the other kind of place.”
The prosecutor guffawed.
“Still,” Farisa said. “It seems this place wishes to give me some semblance of a trial. There must be some need to measure my guilt. I shall confess everything, if I am allowed to call one witness.”
“Ho!” The judge laughed, but then calmed the upset crowd. “In what world does the accused call witnesses?”
Farisa crossed her arms. “No witness, no confession.”
“I’ll allow it, but I make one condition. You must deliver your confession first.”
“Very well.” Farisa looked around. “I summon the Bl—I mean, I summon Idrissa Ngazo, Marquessa of Qaelet.”
The crowd fell so silent one could’ve heard a wren’s egg roll over in grass.
“You shall have her,” said the judge.
“I, Farisa La’ewind, confess the capital crime of sorcery. On the night of April 25, I—”
#
On a snowy night, seven-year-old Fay curled up with the Encyclopedia Veridica’s B volume.
The Blue Fancy cultivar of tulip is considered inedible, due to soporific oils found in the petals and the bulb. It is believed that Princess Xhofida’s infamous weeks-long coma was caused by the inclusion of a single plant in a burnt offering to celebrate her wedding.
Thirteen years later, Farisa knew that sophisticated maneuvers in the blue would be impossible, as the blackrue toxin was still thick inside her, so in fact she could do very little...
Erysi found herself grabbing Farisa’s knapsack of stolen tulip bulbs. She threw it into the bonfire. She, Ilana, and Farisa were downwind of it, and did not inhale smoke, though the other spectators were not so lucky. A boy began coughing, then broke out in a tingling sweat as the center of his chest locked up; he retched, sharing his dinner with the dress of the girl beside him. He slumped over and sleep took him. The others, after vomiting all over themselves and each other, fell like dominoes. Still unsure why she was doing so, Erysi struck Ilana between the breasts. The stunned reaction on Ilana’s face, but also a sense that it was not her own body she was inside, inspired a lust for more blows, although at some point she released Farisa’s arms from their restraints, after which she found herself standing over Ilana in a daze.
You have won, Ilana. Your mind is the place you make it. You shall have your highest desires for the rest of your life.
“The rest of your life,” Erysi muttered, unsure why she had said the words.
Some atavistic intuition told her that Ilana, on the ground with eyes gone sightless white, was in the throes of a fantasy of immaculate power, causing her skin to turn gray as her diseased heart quickened.
Erysi slammed on Ilana’s chest. “Wake up!”
Farisa, using the hands Erysi had unwillingly freed, undid the last of her restraints.
Erysi looked at Farisa. “You’re killing her.”
“She has never been so happy,” said Farisa. “She can come back to reality whenever she wants.”
Erysi clapped Ilana’s cheeks with open hands. “Ilana, your heart can’t take this! Come back!”
Ilana’s bowels relaxed, soiling her twigging dress and further poisoning the air.
Farisa checked Ilana’s pulse. The spell had killed her indeed and, given the nature of entanglement, the mage had no more than an hour before her mind would start falling apart. Clothing was a top priority—it would not help a wanted witch to also be naked. The eighteen formless spectators had fallen into a formless cuddle, bodies and limbs making scalene triangles, blissfully smiling despite being covered in each other’s vomit. Only one of the dresses was clean—she removed its owner from it, and put it on.
Erysi sat in the dirt, arms clamped around her knees, sobbing. “What happened to us, Farisa?”
“Think of it however you want,” Farisa said. “You’ll never see me again.”
“Why did you—?”
“You,” Farisa said. “You killed Ilana. Not me.”
Erysi squealed and kicked her legs.
“I will do you one last favor,” Farisa said as she lifted Ilana’s wrists. “Grab the ankles. If the body disappears, the story stays off the stone for as long as it can.”
They swung the body together and threw it into the fire. The twigging dress started burning immediately. The skin on Ilana’s feet and legs and forearms blackened. Her flame-lashed breasts sizzled, then fell into the glowing ashes one lipid dribble at a time.
“No one will know you killed her but you.”
“I’m so sorry,” Erysi said.
“Shut up,” Farisa said. A blue light, emanating from her hand, repaired her damaged foot. “You shut the fuck up forever.”
The mage poured a bucket of water over the bonfire, killing it, and ran off into the night.
Erysi, as flecks of Ilana’s ashes blew across her face, sobbed. Eighteen others of society’s best lay comatose under the same full moon and stars. She stirred Ilana’s ashes with the polished twigging cane, causing the fire to crackle. Knowing it would be prudent to have the weapon disappear, she put it in the corpse’s hand. Then she held herself, crying her eyes dry, until the forest floor beneath her rocking body turned cold.
She was no mage; she had no understanding of entanglement; she was ill-equipped to resolve three perspectives that had mingled inside her. She had been Ilana, even Ilana as she killed Farisa, which she did not believe had happened, for it did not seem that Farisa had died. She had also been Farisa, immobile in those stocks, driven to homicidal fury by physical agony as well as Erysi’s betrayal. She had seen the billowing tulip smoke sicken the others. She had experienced Ilana’s power and victory, a luscious crowd-love; she had felt the blows and delivered them, but she was also just Erysi, a girl shaking madly on a cold night after a warm day who suddenly could not tolerate the odors of blood and vomit and fire that were everywhere.
I’m a monster, a fucking monster. Farisa was the one person who truly loved me. I will go mad unless I forget. Forget? You can’t. Eighteen people are covered in each other’s vomit and shit. Ilana is dead. Farisa hates you now, utterly hates you.
She started running.
Those people have all seen you. You were in that crowd. How do—how do I—you are an I, Ersyi—How do I live with—? How do I—? There must be someone. Someone can tell me what to do.
Erysi bit the inside of her thumb. She dug her finger into the palm of her hand.
This can’t be real. These things don’t happen in Cait Forest. You’re sick, Erysi. I’m sick, I’m sick and that’s all this is. I must have a six-five fever. A bad dream, that’s it. So how do I get... out?
Still running as fast as she could, she scratched the flesh of her arm, to no effect. She smacked her own neck, as if a beetle worth a million grot had landed on it. She screamed so loud she scared an owl.
I must get back to Farisa. She will know what to do. If I get back to her cabin in this world, she will find a way back to the real one. I’ll wake up in her arms. She’ll stroke my hair and tell me I’m safe.
There were no lanterns up north, but moonlight sufficed to make her way to Witch’s Cabin, the door of which was closed. Her loyal friend would be inside, sleeping or reading, as on any ordinary night, and everything would be splendid...
She whipped open the door. The cabin was silent, empty, and dark—a real place, as hard as wood, with no one inside.
There’s one other way to get out of a dream.
She looked under Farisa’s bed, where she had stored the chemicals for her experiments. She swallowed bitter powders. She broke vials and drank their fluids. She ingested metal filings. She hoped a reaction would occur in this nightmare-body to kill it, returning her to the real one, and pain did spread through her chest and limbs, but not fast enough. Ten minutes of agony passed, but she felt no closer to death. Methods fail sometimes; combine them. She remembered the revolver she and Farisa had found in the woods, and this cabin was not large, so after searching through Farisa’s possessions, she found it, along with one cartridge. She also grabbed a three-legged stool and a length of rope, which she tied around a tree.
At the moment of the drop, I pull the trigger. Gun, rope, poison. Three outs. Two can fail and I still exit this awful dream. She climbed the stool and slid the scratchy, dry hemp rope across her face, letting the noose rest on her collarbone. She held the pistol to her head. One, two, three, Erysi. That’s all it is. Do this one hard thing in the dream world, and you’re back in the real one where you never did this horrible thing, where Ilana is still alive, where Farisa still loves you more than you deserve, and it’s all going to be so much better if you can just bring one moment of courage into this awful dream and, therefore, force yourself out of it.
She kicked the stool away. She was weightless for a split second. The rope’s force crushed her windpipe. She lost motor control and her gun arm spasmed. The gun fired but not did not hit Erysi. Nor did the rope strangle her; it was too weak to hold her, so it snapped, leaving her on the freezing forest floor. Three methods had been tried; all had failed. A broken rope, no longer tight enough to close her airway. A gun with no ammunition sat in her hand. The chemicals in her belly were still causing the worst pain she’d ever felt, but she saw no reason to believe it would kill her.
Erysi crawled beside Farisa’s empty cabin and sobbed.
Nature granted her one mercy. The bullet she had misfired had struck a stone, causing a spark that set the grass on fire. Smoke, heavier than air, took her life before she felt a single lick of flame. The other eighteen—in fact, the tulip’s oil had induced not a coma but conscious paralysis—were unable to scream out of their gleefully grinning faces when the fire reached them.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
#
“The defendant has confessed to sorcery,” said the judge in a calm tone. “The jury is instructed to reach a verdict.”
Farisa looked down. She had longed for truth in memory, but not like this. Two hundred people had seen her naked and tortured. She had been worse than stripped; she had been turned inside out, then broken in the bones so the world could judge the color of her marrow.
She could summon only two words. “My witness?”
A man in bronze armor said, “The message reached her home ten minutes ago. She should be here soon.”
The judge said, “Then we shall await Marquessa Ngazo.”
The crowd murmured in disdain of the wait.
“We do not have much to do until then. I call for a brief recess.”
A few spectators dissembled. Phaenys, no longer constrained by protocol, stepped up to the defendant’s stand.
“I don’t understand,” Farisa confessed.
Phaenys chuckled in contempt. “You don’t understand what?”
“Am I alive or dead?”
“Dead,” Phaenys said.
“So, does it even matter if I am put to death? Why have this trial?”
“You insinuated that this place is hell. You were incorrect, but not far off. This is the place where rebirths of the dead are decided. You could be sent to heaven or hell, depending on the outcome of your trial. You could be also be born in the world you have come from, or another world like it, as a prince or a slave, as an animal or a lingering ghost.”
“Then tell me, Phaenys: How did I die? When did I die? When did my experience diverge from the living world? If Ilana’s account were true, I would be innocent of all charges. If we were to accept Erysi’s account, there would be no evidence of murderous intentions.”
“You advocate well for yourself.”
“Which means what?”
“It means exactly what I said. Little more, I’m afraid.”
“Who are you, Phaenys? Are you human?”
“Sweet girl, I do not know that anymore. I was human once, I am sure of it, but I have existed for far too long. I have died a hundred thousand times, and my stung nerves remember every death. Yes, I have been human, more times than I can count. I have been born into each of those sibling races you call ‘orcs.’ I remember when the so-called orcs were turned—before the long plague poisoned their blood, making them inarticulate and brutish, they were quite beautiful. I’ve been a man and a woman, a warrior and a mage. I’ve commanded armies of living as well as dead. I’ve made ghouls, and I’ve been one. What have I learned? The question of an afterlife doesn’t vex me. I know that existence is eternal, but I wish it were not so, and do not ask me whether there is a God, for I suspect there is none but Misery.
“Today, I am a ghost in a cursed city, but I have lived for millions of years. I remember when the first stars were made. I must tell you, there is no progress. Do you really believe your world’s great monument to nihilism, the Global Company, is the first and only of its kind? My dear, it has been made—and unmade, by people just like you—hundreds of times, in the South as well as in the North. Tear it down, and the one god that is Misery shall build another. You have been brought here to see this, but you will likely forget. You shall take rebirth, and suffer endlessly.”
Farisa bit the corner of her mouth. “My life has ended. I understand.”
“Love, I told you this before. Our final king, the only honest one Qaelet has ever had, dies yesterday, every time. You die today. You will beg to live before the execution starts; during it, you will beg to die. In the dreamless black between existences, fight to stay awake as long as you can, for it is the only rest you will get before everything starts again.”
A shadow split the doorway’s sunlight. A man walked into the courtroom. “Idrissa Ngazo enters sight.”
The crowd booed. From them, four men went back to link arms, blocking the entrance.
The judge shouted, “You will be civilized.”
The intransigent men looked at each other, then broke formation.
“Sit down. The Marquessa of Qaelet comes to serve as a witness on Farisa’s behalf, and then we can finish this whole affair.”
The lead juror stood. “There is no need for her. We have reached a verdict.”
“What?” Farisa said. “They can’t do this.”
The judge frowned with one half of his face. “Our rules allow jurors to seal decisions at any time. If they have fixed their minds, there is no point in wasting time under a contrary expectation. Time is not something we have in endless supply.”
Phaenys mouthed silently, “We do.”
“Please announce your verdict on Farisa La’ewind’s final charge, that of sorcery.”
The juror cleared his throat. “Pursuant to the interests of Qaelet, this fine City of Amethyst, and the collective will of all its people, we have concluded, concerning the deaths in Cait Forest on April 25, that no intention to kill or maim existed. Sorcery, therefore, was not committed.”
The judge took a deep breath. “I see.”
The juror asked, “Does the judge contest the jury’s verdict?”
“I suppose I do not.”
The exonerated defendant, in shock, barely noticed the loosening of the restraints on her calves. Phaenys, a deranged nihilist proven wrong, looked down at her crossed arms. Indignant murmurs spread through the courtroom. Erysi, head now askew as if her neck had lost the ability to support it, finger twitching on the trigger of a gun that was not there, cried. Ilana, who had turned herself so the sunlight came through a rot hole in her neck, buried her head in fleshless hands. The dead—at least, these two dead—had been defeated again.
No one seemed to notice or address them, but three men in bronze armor entered the courtroom.
The juror continued. “In fact, we find that, given the crimes inflicted upon her, Farisa is entitled to restitution. Considering Qaelet’s present crisis, we have a solution that addresses her rights as well as our needs and interests.”
The judge said, “Please approach.”
The lead juror did so, and the men spoke inaudibly to each other. As they did so, vapors gathered in the courtroom’s open center, congealing into the form of a young girl who looked nothing like these Qaeleti people—in fact, with arms folded across her chest in placid sleep, she wore upper-class Ettasi clothing. The expression on her face was one Farisa had not seen for a long time—an uncomplicated, sweet smile.
The lead juror turned to face the courtroom.
“This is Venys Harrow, born May 28, ’79. She is in perfect health, and her beauty speaks for itself. She will attend Moyenne’s fine university, there known as City Private, this March. You surely know, Farisa, that your life is over, and although our powers are great, we cannot reverse your death. You were, indeed, struck comatose in Cait Forest—you died of your injuries three weeks later in a South Exmore madhouse.
“Given the enormity of Ilana’s crimes against you, we offer you the best remedy we can—ablative transmigration, or rebirth into a living being. You and Ilana’s young sister may switch places. You will inherit her life, and she will have your death.”
Farisa looked under her robe. The scar on her shoulder was still there.
“Understand,” said the judge, “that this is a privilege rarely given. Only one soul in a million gets to inherit a life already underway. If this is done for you, you will keep the wisdom and memories you want, while losing what burdens you. Your mind shall become, one might say, the place you make it.”
Ilana charged, requiring the efforts of two men, even though she had lost a quarter of her weight to desiccation and rot, to restrain her. She screamed. “You can’t do this! She’s an innocent child! If you take the pardon these devils are offering, you’re no better than me.”
The judge waved a hand. “I am no devil. The suggestion insults me.”
One of the two men holding Ilana covered her toothless screaming mouth. She bit the fingers with blackened gums.
The judge continued. “It is not for the court to make your decision, Farisa. You squandered your beauty and talent with insecurity. You could have been more, so much more. Venys has been nurtured, unlike you. She will use her gifts to the fullest. She will have a beautiful life. Why not make it yours? With your discipline and knowledge inside her, you-as-she will make top grades. You-as-Farisa may not love her family, but she-as-you will have a family that loves you to the utmost.
“Is this not the best revenge you could have against Ilana? And is Venys not what you have always wanted to be, and what you have gone to Cait Forest to become—a normal girl?”
Ilana fell to her knees. “My sister is innocent. She shouldn’t lose her life for what I did.”
Farisa smiled. “Ilana, she has not lost her life. You gave it to me.”
#
The green magpie flying over the ruin detested the smell of orc, including the five it had just flown over that seemed to be a new invasive species. The sixth, a madwoman, had evidently not batched for days.
“I could have a beautiful life,” she battled. “I could be dead, or I could go back, go back and have a beautiful...”
The corvid’s instinct of self-preservation took over. It never looked back at the labyrinthine ruins as it flew south, sure never to come this way again.
Down below, a judge cleared his throat. “Our offer is not without conditions. We are at war, and espionage continues to be a hazard. A rival state has sent five infiltrators. It is not clear that they mean any harm to us, but their presence may destroy our way of life. You are a mage of immense power. We will need you to, if I must put it in so many words, spare none of your capabilities in order to—”
“Kill them,” the lead juror said. “You will have to kill them.”
Farisa’s arms sweated. “Kill?”
The judge said, “It is the only way.”
Farisa’s eyes relaxed at the sight of Venys Harrow’s perfect form. All her suffering, all the pain that had pushed her beyond the edge of the world into this dangerous crypt, could be forgotten.
“Tell me about them.”
The judge wordlessly grabbed his mallet and once again struck the gong behind himself.
The stable world that had Farisa’s hands and arms in it was gone; she hung in the black pregnant nothingness for a moment, then felt an explosion of harsh light and found herself in an ugly, aggressively illuminated room where cement walls rose to a high grimy ceiling. Cuffs and chains and human filth stretched patternlessly across the floor. The only indication of place was a sign over a door bearing characters in a Wyovian language.
S read a mercury thermometer. “Six-point-three.”
The supervisor adjusted his white coat. “Her number?”
S picked up the wrist of a frail naked woman. Two hours ago, the gentlest touch would have made her squeal, but the experiments had sapped her will to live. “Her number is eight-two-seven-three-zero-two.”
“Blood pressure?”
S checked the strap around the woman’s arm, then looked at the dial. “I think there’s something wrong with the device. Systolic is two inches.”
The supervising doctor checked. “Device is fine. That reading’s high, given everything we’ve done to her.”
“I suppose it is.”
“Do you dislike the work?”
“I do not,” said S. “I’m learning. A boy becomes a man.”
“Indeed, a boy does.” The doctor moved his hand over the woman’s eyes. Despite her wretched state, the pupils responded. “Geshna’s world cannot be everyone’s. It simply isn't possible for everyone to have a decent life. There are not enough resources. For us to be us, some have to be her.”
“You don’t need to remind me of that,” S said. “I scored a hundred on the allegiance test.”
A Z-7 rushed into the room. “Good, you’re still here.” He stuck his head outside the door. “Wheel her in.”
The little girl, tied naked to a crude wooden wheelchair, fought her ropes; they always did, but the knots were tied so that movement only tightened the restraints. Her dark skin and flat eyebrows suggested a foreign origin—likely, southern Lorania. The whites of her furious eyes were brighter than S had ever seen.
“What’s her name?” said S.
The Z-7 scoffed. “Name.”
“S is new,” said the supervisor.
“Her number is one-zero-one-four-eight-five-five.”
The doctor smiled. “Seven digits. Proof that our work really does matter.”
The girl begged in a language none of the men understood.
“She’s not just a native,” said the Z-7. “She’s a... you know.”
S said, “Mage?”
The lead doctor asked, “What degree is she?”
The Z-7 said, “Upper second, possibly a low third. I have a Z-4 order: you are not to use any sedatives.”
S could smell malnourishment on the girl’s breath.
The doctor put his clipboard on a desk. “We are expected to work on a second-degree mage with no drugs?”
“I am told it will corrupt your results,” said the Z-7.
“Did we get the new shipment of blackrue?”
“No. Prices are through the roof. Every field office from Hell’s Twat to the Polar Ocean wants the stuff right now.”
“Of course.” The elder doctor looked at S. “We’ll have to handle this one the old-fashioned way.”
She was no older than nine or ten. The two men unfastened her squirming body from the wheelchair and hung her upside down, each ankle in a cuff mounted on the wall. She wriggled and swung, and the back of her head banged into the concrete.
“Protocol Q-9,” the supervisor said to S.
“We have your sister too,” said S. “Give us trouble, and we’ll kill her too.”
They had no narcotics for surgery. The girl screamed and thrashed the whole time. Nothing was learned about magic or about medicine from this useless experiment. Still, an order was an order.
The girl died after an hour and a half, and Saito was sent home shortly after that, having earned his daily wage.
The vision dissolved.
Qaelet’s courtroom had returned, but the odors of Camp Prosperity had not yet faded from Farisa’s nostrils, so she nearly retched.
The judge said, “You know who he is, right?”
Farisa said, “He is a different man today.”
“You are a fool if you have forgiven him. Have you forgiven Ilana? You should not, but Geshna does a hundred things an hour that are worse than what Ilana did to you.”
Farisa, unable to muster an argument in response, touched her neck, then held still, then touched her wrist, finally able to form words. “The past is the past. I do no good for anyone by killing him.”
“I see you are still not convinced,” said the judge as he struck the gong. This time, Farisa fought to stay in her own skin, imagining she could spin her mental body inside the real one to stay there, instead of being whisked into another place, but the darkness came again and she could do nothing but wait for the yellow lights of Ettasi house lanterns to settle in view.
A little boy was crying. “You said he would be back now.”
The woman patted his head. She was beautiful—dark-skinned with a prominent forehead, suggesting Teroshi origin. Her hair sat in braids. She seemed to be about forty years old. “I told you before that his work is very important.”
“So, I’m not?”
The woman stroked his hair. “No, the opposite. He is fighting for the future. Your future, too. He protects people, and sometimes he has to protect people far away from us.”
“Well, I don’t want him far away. I want him here. I hate those people.”
“Never say that,” said the dark-skinned mother.
“Dad’s always gone. It’s not fair. Who protects us, Mama?”
“I protect you. When you are older, you will protect me—and your father. We protect each other, at all times. The fight is long, but if he wins and the Company falls, we shall all have a better world.”
“Better world?” The boy balled his little fists. “My world is trash. I wish I were dead, Mom. I wish I were dead, and I hate Dad so much. He abandoned us.”
The vision faded. Farisa, as she returned to herself in Qaelet’s courtroom, felt her arms shake as if she’d been carrying a heavy weight.
The judge said, “That boy’s father is—”
Farisa said, “Claes Bergryn.”
“Does our guest have thoughts about what she has seen?”
“Does it matter? I am dead. I am not part of that world anymore.”
The judge pointed at Venys’s floating body. “You do not have to be dead. You have the option to return to life, and a better one than you left.”
Farisa covered her eyes. She did not want to accept either of the choices offered. She knew that, once reborn in Venys’s body and world, the five people Qaelet was asking her to kill would mean nothing to her, but she could not remove from herself, even in the depths of Qaelet’s twisted charms, the sense that the quest that had brought her here still mattered. It must have mattered—unless she really had died in the madhouse, in which case these people were figments of her imagination anyway, and so it would do no harm to anyone to snuff them out, but if this were all imaginary, then why...
The judge said, “You are not convinced.”
Farisa said nothing.
“I will share with you one more vision.”
“I don’t want one.”
“It is in Qaelet’s interest that you solve our espionage problem. Therefore, you must see it.”
He swung the hammer with such force she could hear the gong whip through the air, and this time she was so adamant about not getting lost in the discordant sound, she plugged her ears and focused her gaze on the outside light, fighting the fading with all she had—she attempted to enter the blue, but failed—but, in the end, it became clear that her mind was a billion springs and switches somehow rigged so that slack anywhere within it would pull her elsewhere, and she could not solve a system of a billion equations at once, so she found herself disembodied until she took form as roots and branches. She could not close her eyelids, because she had none—she saw through every leaf. A single star, in a break between clouds on a cold spring night, turned into a galaxy.
Her northern half had a clear view of a single-story cottage. A handsome couple was inside. The dark-skinned man was in his late thirties; his trimmed beard was turning gray. The woman was nearly thirty. She did not recognize them at first, as jealousy did not come naturally to trees, so it did not bother her when they kissed until she realized who she was watching.
As if her thoughts were being heard and judged, she insisted, There is no crime if this is in the future, a future in which I am dead. They have the right to move on. I must be happy for them, but please, please do not make me watch.
Alas, the tree had no choice in what its half-a-million leaves saw. Clothes came off. M gave A a look that had once belonged to Farisa. They made love, and it was not the gentle love two women made but a thrusting, powerful kind that caused M’s breasts to bounce and her navel to quiver, and all that beauty—M’s brown nipples, the sweat on her shoulders, the way her flanks curved from rib cage to hips—was not, would never be, part of Farisa’s lost life.
We had something, Mazie—something eternal—and fuck this world for—fuck that I have to watch this—fucking fuck that my life is over, it is fucking over, but I am stuck here having to watch the world forget me and—
“Stop it!”
The people in Qaelet’s courtroom, to which Farisa had returned, her face hot and sweaty, laughed.
The judge said, “You loved Mazie, did you not?”
“I still do.”
“You will soon forget all about her,” said the judge. “If you choose death here, though, you will not be free of images such as you have seen. You will see them until your mind has withered to nothing.”
Farisa’s fists were balled. Cramps twisted the corners of her jaw.
“We want the same thing,” the judge said. “A happy life for you. But it is not easy to transfuse a soul, least of all into a person already living. It will take effort on our part, and we will only do it if you save us from the infiltrators.”
“They hold no malice toward you,” she insisted.
“That is true, but irrelevant. If one outsider sees the White Shadow, we all die.”
Noise rose from outdoors, the city’s clamor rising like the swelled ocean before a storm. A man wearing a rapier with a gilded point came forward and handed the judge a letter.
“The infiltrators are now at our gates,” the judge announced. “You must decide on our offer now, Farisa. You know what you stand to gain, and you know what it costs.”
Farisa considered Venys’s perfect form. This young woman had never suffered the Marquessa’s embrace and never would. Venys would love, and be loved many times, in her life. Had Farisa ever been loved? Not enough, in the end—no such love to prevent this world from taking everything from her. Her parents were as long gone as history’s seasonless first day. Raqel was married, Erysi was dead, and Mazie had forgotten so much. Would it be wrong, when the world had refused to give her lasting love, to take Qaelet’s offer? There would be no penalty, for the prior self that could be punished would be left behind. She would forget having made the decision; she would be someone else.
Shadows flickered as guards blocked the entrance from the rest of the rowdy city. Bells were ringing everywhere and panicked voices shouted curses.
The judge said, “We have made you an excellent offer, but we cannot afford infinite patience. You must choose now.”
“Offer,” Farisa said. “Excellent made excellent decide must normal girl must decide.”
“Our way of life is very old. We have lived longer and better than nature or the gods intended, but if even one of those people from your world beholds the White Shadow, Qaelet will be destroyed, and you shall go with it.”
She mumbled, “If pass southern gate, destroy Qaelet. If they pass they do not mean to but they destroy themselves this me all of it.”
Lightness spread through her body. She could be free of this misery. She could be Venys Harrow. She could be so beautiful, so beautiful and rich and smart and perfect. She could forget the million traumas the world had hung on her soul. Freedom was right in front of her.
“Enemies. Why enemies. Why you say five enemies. Five? I can kill five. I have that in me. Offer conditional stop Harrow transfusion. Venys, there are five of them, I cannot resist it, but how can I do it without kill I don’t want to die I don't want to kill I do not have courage I want life I want life.”
The judge laughed. “We know you are a killer. You have always been one. This will be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.”
#
The madwoman danced under a blue December sky amid rubble where no city had stood for thousands of years. She sang, she laughed, she joked with people who were not there about the life she would have when she was finished with this, whatever it was. “Kill them I kill I kill them all my choice all my choice I kill I kill I am killer so I have no choice my choice is having no choice but kill and I kill them all five they do not belong they are outsiders so I kill them all.”