Fraudulence is a vacuum for love.

I will plunge my hands into the recesses of your hollow heart,

And I will force-feed you the human elements you are missing.

The hemorrhage of a shrunken heart is as ash and blazes

Spewing scintillas mark the ragged void of honor

Smoking and empty by the smoldering erosions of jealousy and hate

The kindest soul under the sun might fall perverted by demonic yearnings

Might crawl inside a child, worse even than a pedophile

The pervert, if nothing else, might love the flesh it violates

The wanting of flesh, however earnest, makes only for the wanting of more

It is love alone that makes for honor, for love is interchangeable with God

Love is the holy fire that burns through jealousy and hate

And leaves the heart as stout and resolute as paladin steel

That the sword itself is honor is a folly that should inspire adolescent guilt

For shame instead is a hopeless thing, a washboard for consciousness

while guilt is the holy heat that tempers the sword with honor true

-From the journals of Poesie Vella Fiocca, Age Thirteen

The report of clashing oak sabers reminded Poesie of thunder when she sparred with her father. She heard nothing else when they dueled. Their even, labored breathing was lost in the silenced wind, the dusty scrape of their boots were diminished with the other sounds of nature.

The force of his strikes shocked her arm and shook sweat loose from her short body. Her legs were getting sore now; her back and sword arm as well, a precursor to the endorphin elation they wanted. The wrist of her other hand was chafing from the rope tying it to her waist, but now wasn’t the time to complain about that, or even think about it. She could feel blisters blooming on her palm. He would have them too, but trivial pains like those never showed on his crevassed face.

Her father Domenico was a good man. He was the only person in the world she could trust to advance on her like he meant to crush her skull.

Poesie guarded her face, slapping away a strike that would have impaled between the eyes in combat with true blades. Dom strode up close—just inside her weapon’s reach—and slashed downward at her shoulder. She caught his false blade with her own and stood against his weight, bending her knees forward as he’d taught her. Their weapons shook with strained tension as she pressed back against him.

Dom gritted his teeth, huffing ash-breath in her face. He knew how she hated that acrid breath his cigars gave him.

By Dom’s account, the wandering of the mind was a deadly bad habit. Shocking distractedness out of his eldest daughter was less abusive, he would say, then allowing her to be undisciplined. Poesie concurred.

She stood fast against Dom, tolerating stench and soreness in equal measure. Dom was about three inches taller than his eldest daughter. He did not let her budge even an inch.

Finally, Poesie shoved Dom away and rushed forward with a succession of thrusts. The first strike he blocked would have severed his right kidney from the bladder. The second would have pierced a lung. The following series of stabs would have perforated his intestines.

She realized she was making herself predictable a moment too late. Dom feinted around another thrust meant to displace his hip and kicked one leg out from under her. Instead of trying to regain her footing as her instincts commanded, she accepted the fall, using the inertia to roll away from Dom and rise back up in a defensive stance.

Dom met her with another downward slash, holding her in place. It was a predictable move, but frustratingly effective given the advantage she’d let him gain.

“Are we finished for the day?” he asked her. His tone was cordial–somehow not at all tired–belying the furious look on his face. He always set his face in this mask during combat, but after five years of sparring she was used to looking beyond it.

“Not yet, papa.”

Poesie shoved Dom away, using her full rising force as she stood, and struck his knuckles twice with the tip of her weapon.

Compromising his grip like that was a cheap move, but so was kicking her leg out from under her—dirty tricks were part of their training regiment. Dom didn’t want his daughter going into combat expecting chivalry from criminals.

Since she had just made a mistake, she knew Dom would try to trick her again in exactly the same way, to test her. She would pass the test.

She loved passing his tests.

Poesie strode inside Dom’s reach and thrust at his chest. He feinted again, just the same way as before, and she stepped into the space he was moving into, wrapping her leg around his, their knees interlocking. Before he could cross their weapons, she slammed her crossguard into his knuckles.

And the good man’s iron grip finally loosened.

Poesie wormed her cross-guard between Dom’s hilt and his purlicue then vaulted his weapon into the air. She stabbed at Dom under his jaw, stopping just short, careful not to hit his laryngeal prominence. His weapon fell somewhere behind her. She couldn’t tell how it landed based on the sound, but she imagined it landing point first with theatrical decency. Dom held up both his hands in surrender.

“Now we’re done for the afternoon.” Poesie said, withdrawing her weapon and unlocking her leg from his. She sauntered over to the stone pine where their things were. She clipped her false blade to her belt then took a long, satisfied swig from the water skin. It wasn’t until the relief of drink washed through her that she remembered her wrist was still bound.

“It’s not often I best you, papa,” Poesie said, untying her wrist from her hip. There was a pink imprint from the rope there. It wasn’t very deep, but her mother would probably still fret over it. She turned around, rubbing it back to normalcy. “Perhaps you’re starting to slow in your middle years.”

Poesie was smirking until she looked up at Dom’s face. His mask of faux rage was replaced by a genuine look of displeasure. He was scowling and untying his own wrist with his false blade tucked under his arm. Poesie felt ice crystals grinding against the inside grains of her heart.

“What’s wrong papa? I thought my form was perfect this time.”

Dom nodded assuredly, “it was,” his tone was satisfied, happy even. Too happy.

Oh no.

Poesie struggled to figure out what she’d done wrong. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have insulted your age. That was rude, I’m sorry.” She mentally kicked herself for apologizing twice in the same sentence.

Dom was still rubbing his wrist. “That’s good.” His tone told her that hadn’t been it either. Then he clipped his own weapon to his belt. He turned on his heel and started walking, leaving her to carry their things.

Poesie huffed but collected everything in a sack and slung it over her shoulder. She caught back up with Dom as soon as he was crossing the short bridge over the creek into town.

Tano was one of the smaller towns of rural Altiya, but it was near enough to some of the greater cities that it had absorbed some modern architectural sensibilities. Most of the buildings were brick now—which hadn’t been the case as many as fifty years ago—the streets were cobblestone and lined with electric lights, with elevated walkways beside homes and businesses. Long fountains erupted from the center of the streets for citizens to rinse their hands and faces. There were children up ahead, splashing each other and making a mess that would generally be cleaned up by the sun's rays.

Even after they were well into town Dom didn’t have anything to say.

“Papa,” Poesie didn’t like turning on the ‘little girl’ voice these days, but Dom was giving her little choice at this point. “Please tell me what I’ve done wrong. You have me at a loss.”

Dom pulled his silver cigar holder out of the inside pocket of his constable’s jacket. He snapped it open with a flick of his wrist and put one cigar in his mouth. “You went for the throat,” he said, patting his pockets for his clipper. “That’s a killing stroke.”

Poesie frowned. “A killing stroke means victory.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Against a revenant,” he corrected, talking around the wagging cigar. He found his clipper and circumcised the cap before lighting it and taking the first of countless drags. Dom was very adept at being frugal with his luxuries. “I’m training you to be an officer of the law, my dear heart, not a paladin. It may be more mundane, but you need to start at the bottom of the ladder like everyone else.”

Poesie rolled her eyes–although she turned her head away from Dom first so he wouldn’t see her doing it. “I think if I can handle you at my age, I won’t have a problem with revenants. Not after I’m promoted to paladin,” she said.

Dom chuckled around his burning cigar. That was good. It looked like a little genuine mirth was starting to melt his anger away. “You flatter me dear heart, and I’m thrilled by your confidence in yourself. But just because you can handle evil, that doesn’t mean you should be wantonly fostering it.”

“I suppose so,” she said, with nearly all the adolescent ennui she had.

“You suppose?”

Damn. Dom’s tone was granite-abrasive now. Poesie knew what that meant. She was about to address Dom but he spoke first. “Remind me,” he asked, “what happens when a person dies with unresolved Yearning?”

She had to resist the urge to sigh, as she knew as well as he did the question was inherently flawed, but these were the established semantics of their religion, Injelism, and so they were obligated to use them. “Any person who dies with unresolved Yearning may survive death as a Shade.”

“And what do Shades do?”

“They Possess people–sometimes animals–in order to live again as Revenants. They Return with magic derived from their identity, and the circumstances of their deaths.”

“So,” he inclined his head toward her as they walked, “officers of the law can’t very well stab human criminals to death, can they?”

Poesie sighed resignedly. “No papa, I suppose they can’t.”

“Then why are you trying to win duels with a killing stroke?”

“Because I want to fight revenants, papa!” Poesie threw her arms up in the air. “I want to be a paladin like you used to be.” She leaned close to him, “I want to be ready for the damnable things!” She hissed.

“You want to fight revenants?”

“Yes!”

“So,” Dom gestured ahead with his burning cigar, now one eighth of the way taxed, “it’s the conflict itself that you love. You have no interest in purifying the world of evil, nor do you care about protecting the innocent. You just love swinging your sword.”

Poesie let herself sigh this time. “Now you’re just being a stickler for semantics, papa. You know what I mean. I want to be a paladin. I want to be someone who fights evil.”

“Well you have to be a policewoman first,” he said breezily, bringing his cigar back to his lips with a flourish and blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth.

Poesie scoffed. Now Dom was just being obnoxious. Maybe he hadn’t really been mad to begin with. With that face of his it was easy for him to fake it, sometimes even with her. “What’s the point of starting at the bottom of the ladder if I can jump to a higher step?”

Dom didn’t miss a beat. “Because that’s too dangerous, even if you can succeed. You don’t know that you will. You go one step at a time.” That last sentence was spoken like an order.

Poesie didn’t agree with Dom, but she thought better of saying so. There was no need for this argument to last all day. And it could, especially since they were seriously testing the integrity of a stretching metaphor.

“If you say so, papa.”

“I do.” Dom did that silly thing where he blew smoke out his mouth just to suck it back in through his nose, forming twin wheels of grotesque vapor. He exhaled again, then said, “you don’t literally jump on ladders, do you?”

“No papa.”

“Good. If you did, I would have to tell your mother.”

Poesie smiled. It was a relief to talk Dom back down to his typical, easy self. At the dawn of her adolescence, Poesie started to have a hard time caring whenever people got angry–her mother included, which of course made her mother very mad–but Dom was still the heart-clenching exception. She always started to hate herself a little when he got angry with her. She had not confessed this even to him.

She wondered if she would always be this way.

The sun was setting now, casting a broad shadow evenly down the street. Up ahead, the sunlight sliced through the phosphorescent blue shape of a man at his shoulders, making him appear headless. That would be, of course, until the sun descended further.

Dom and Poesie halted. She almost put her hand on her weapon, but that was a meaningless gesture against a Shade. She left her hand hanging at her side.

From where she stood, Poesie could tell the Shade was only about three quarters defined. Parts of his legs resembled pants and boots, and one hand was visible, but the rest of his form looked very much like the bluish smoke wafting off Dom’s cigar.

As the sun descended, his wispy face was more and more revealed. The departed man was staring up at the sky.

“How do you feel about this one?” Dom’s tone suggested this may have been urgent, which meant it wasn’t.

Poesie considered the Shade. Very often, when a Shade was prowling for a Host, said Host could sense the Shade’s malicious intent the way a fawn might sense the gaze of a hungry wolf. It was an unnerving feeling, like freezing insects crawling under one’s skin and through one’s guts.

From this Shade, Poesie felt nothing.

“This one isn’t a threat.” Poesie said, and Dom relaxed. Poesie herself didn’t relax until after she felt that Dom had. They started walking again, but neither one of them could take their eyes off the Shade.

He had been young in one fashion or another, she could tell. The Shade had a young face, and his form projected something like the uniform of a paladin. He had his smoke-like arms wrapped around his defined legs and he stared up at the sky as though there were a face there, endlessly staring back. He was likely imagining a woman.

The look in the Shade’s eyes were imprinted in Poesie’s mind well after they had walked past It.

“Poesie.”

Poesie looked up at Dom. “Yes, papa?”

“I’m willing to bet, one way or another, the young man back there tried jumping on a ladder of his own.”

Knowing what Dom was after, Poesie made to look up at him as though he’d said something very wise. “Okay papa,” she said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

Very often in stories designed to thrill—those cheap little dreadfuls—this was when the hero would look over their shoulder and the Shade would have disappeared. Poesie looked over her shoulder one last time, thinking of this, but the Shade remained sitting where It was. It was still except for the sway of It’s ghostly vapors like any other Shade.

Poesie and Dom walked the rest of the way home in a manufactured companionable silence.

He couldn’t remember his name.

He wanted to sometimes, but it hurt to remember, however distant the pain may have been. But it didn’t really matter how little the pain was when it was the sort of pain that never went away.

Anytime he tried, anytime he reached into himself for his name, it felt like scraping the inside of an empty oysters shell, the meat already devoured.

He could only ever think of himself as He anymore, and even that individual assignment was as foggy as his arms.

There was only one thing he could do to feel something the way he once did, the way he’d felt when he had lived. The existence of a Shade was mostly a dull one.

Except for when you were tempted to live again. Then you felt again. It was a feeling greater than life, even. It was like being filled with lightning.

But that hurt even more than trying to remember his name. Better, most of the time, to just sit and stare at the sky. To drift with the planet…

...of course, sometimes the worst memories came back anyway. When that happened he had to live through the lightning whether he wanted to or not.

Watching the living was a good practice to avoid that most of the time, which he supposed was why he and his fellow departed were in the habit of stalking and watching them. Living people ignored Shades for the most part, either because they were so used to seeing them, or because the presence of the paladins made the possibility of Possession less of an issue. In either case he was content with their aloofness. There was only one person he would ever want to live again for, and he didn’t have a clue where she was.

Thinking of her he thought of her name. Of course, her name he could never forget.

...Lenore…

And that name shot the lightning through him.

...Beautiful Lenore…

He heard the whisper of her hand slipping from his as she walked to the door.

...Succulent Lenore…

He felt the bite of her secret lover’s blade between his shoulder-blades, he saw her smile when that sword, his own Schiavona, erupted out of his chest.

...Sarcastic Lenore…

He smelled the smoke before he saw it, curling up the walls to the ceiling, a silent, hoary precursor to the roaring flames that would disintegrate him along with their home.

The home they had made together.

...Fraudulent Lenore…

He could still see her eyes. The dark, chocolate eyes he’d loved so, melting with relief as the wet, red blade inched through him, and slowly towards her.

Someone else had been running their fingers through her nightmare black curls, had been stroking her olive skin, had been lighting fires in their cupboards and under the bed and the floorboards…

“Lenore…” He said to himself as that lightning within him subsided

But really... it had been her guiding those unknown hands hadn't it? Just as she had guided his hands before she replaced Him.

“Lenore…” He whispered.

He needed to watch the people again, that would relieve the memory of pain. It could keep the memories at bay. If he watched the people around him he wouldn’t have to think about her.

Don’t think of her name. Don’t even think of it.

And so he did. He tilted his head to watch the people.

And the first thing he saw was bouncing black curls out of the corner of his eye.

The lightning ripped through his phantom self and everything became fire again. Waves of it made him feel real again as he took in her features; her hair, her skin, her eyes, her short stature and athletic build. This was Lenore. It could be nobody else.

There could only ever be one Lenore to him.

The Shade turned around well after the traitorous whore and her companion had passed him by. It didn’t occur to him right away that she hadn’t noticed him, but she had always regarded him as guileless, even when she pretended to love him. She wouldn’t have expected him to be the sort that survived death.

“Lenore…” He said out loud, his voice a faint echo of the fire and lightning raging within him.

The Shade watched them walk away. When they turned around a corner, he made a mental note of where they were heading, then he sank into the street and out of sight.

Lenore… Lenore… Lenore…