1
”The ninth century after waking will seed and still sow change”. Maybe in the past, those kinds of proclamations would have been held close to the heart of the faithful, a secret, sacred part never to be seen or spoken aloud. Maybe it was mystical texts on stone tablets once, or shape-fed bloodwood covering the walls of doubters and tyrants. She remembered at the start of the century placards draped across the frost-kissed storefronts of old Vitayeen, scalding hot mugs of chocolate bearing a recently fired inlay across the brim with the word change in a sweeping and exaggerated cursive. A swift pain and her lower lip clinging to the silver, lovers newly bonded and her usually deep purple lips playing host to an irritated and stinging red lowercase h which had stayed for too long. Erika had started calling her Hanna, which she found very funny. Here though, at the end of said century, Anna Witten, formerly Nadia Kazev, formerly Lady Anna Mazayen, couldn’t help but agree with the base truth of the sentiment, too much and too far and for too long, the world had changed.
Gilbe saw no snow or frost, the houses were spread far apart in intricate and meticulously calculated grids, everything to maximize primary establishment output and convection of the people she was starting to feel she had tricked into coming here. Old Vitayeen had not been planned, it had been a collection of hovels and walls draped across an unused pass along an unimportant border, the snow from the two peaks caressed the slopes to either sides like silk and from afar, on a particularly cold and clear day it looked like a long white hammock, and her hovels and the Masayen estate like forgotten toys. There was art in that though, the dirt-crusted old wood and its peeling brown-black paint, pine statues of romantic figures from scripture and birchwood carvings of the oaths and fates. Gilbe had no old things, no cheap things and at night the absence of the pink-red sheen of the lived places made it feel like a collection of the most boring dollhouses imaginable.
Having lived for nearly a full century she was nearing the tail-end of middle age. When she’d first started considering mortality as a child she had always imagined herself dying young, it just seemed right, and a morose and gloomy little girl had accepted that about herself. But when it had come to it, she had struggled and fought and bribed and accepted new, terrible skillsets just to keep going. And then that had changed as well and while a numb, anodyne period in between, the feverish struggle to see snow like white silk again made way for a detached longing to be embraced by the red electric pulse that presaged a shell misfire and the cascading backlash. It had been like watching herself through a spyglass, what remained of her then just a hidden observer of her body feeding shells into screaming brass and iron, praying each one would give a final kindness. It was selfish, and when it had faded, there was only what should have been there in the first place, a hateful, calculated and efficient anger. That anger had seen the death of the gallant and charming artillery officer Anna Mazayen and a few months later, her gunnery crew were counter-mining the imperial advance, new names given by sacred thistles in old, grey hands.
The simultaneously tall and tiny woman sitting patiently in the strategically too comfortable chair across from the desk of city mother and first citizen Anna Witten was used to this. She had abandoned a respectable, if not necessarily lucrative career at the People’s University back home in the swamps to cross the sickly green sealanes through the mist because she was a person of faith, and for a while now, that faith had been placed in the black-haired woman gazing out at the ugly things they had spent everything to build.
“We need to abandon the notion that convection is necessary for storage, build warehouses along the road to the extraction sites. I dislike relying on the residual for protection but ultimately they’ll be largely unattended.”
Her voice carried a naturally authoritative and competent tone, which, had Mitte not known Anna she would have assumed it was as obvious a part of her being as her eyebrows or the dark brown eyes of all Tolvoi.
“It will be hard to persuade the miners, ma’am. We still need more hands as well.”
A light purple hand traveled the relatively short distance from her waist, along the uncreased citizen uniform to her black hair and began a fast rustling motion which tossed it to one side, and as she turned to smile at her old friend, signaling the end of them pretending to be faultless professionals with everything under control, the sound of old, military issue Imperial boots impacting the polished wood floor beyond the closed door came on metronomic intervals.
What should’ve been the second and far more pleasant part of their bi-weekly meetings became condensed into a few moments of long, familiar eye contact. When the footsteps stopped, a moment passed and then a knock, with the same inflection as that quick march, tac-tac.
“Just come in, Mina, it’s not like you’re going to startle us”
The door swung open and the Guard-Captain angled her wide frame through the narrow doorway with the ease of someone half her weight and the door quickly and silently shut behind her.
“I apologize for the interruption, ma’am, but a transmission came through from second patrol, and I deemed it pertinent to bring it to your attention.”
“Cut the ma’am shit, Mina. It’s just us here anyway.”
A furrow crossed the dark purple brow of the Guard-Captain.
“I believe appearances should be kept ma’am.”
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It was difficult to speak to Mina most of the time for Anna and that always made her feel awful, very rarely did she smile or let slip the mask that she had made for herself when she began her exile from old Vitayeen.
“Second patrol is Inny and Vita right?”
“Uh, it’s Inny and Lio now ma’am, Vita is on extraction duty. They are currently headed for Gilbe at speed from point one before the Grass. The transmission was scrambled but I believe they picked up a wounded local, an unconscious or delirious girl they came upon just outside the safe-zone at point one.”
“Wounded how, and how was she treated? If they need more than a ready kit to treat her injuries they should not be moving at speed.”
Mina’s eyes fell to the darkwood floor briefly, but shot up again quickly, and she stifled a brief cough that crept up in her throat.
“They had left their ready kit at four to recharge and the kit at four was expired.”
Before Anna began to speak, Mina shamefacedly continued.
“Inny is the patrol officer responsible for point one but ultimately, this is my fault. I believe I have let a culture of lenience develop among the frontier officers. Though familiarity and a casual attitude would aid in morale as well as convection. I would recommend against bringing Inny up on charges should the girl, uh, expire.”
As Mina spoke the word expire there was a rustle of movement from the supposedly unoccupied supply closet next door and then the sound of far lighter and faster footsteps against the hallway floor.
At that the tension in Anna’s body gave out and she threw her head back and gave out an exasperated sigh.
“Save me from that little demon.”
“I’ll go after her, she isn’t a very good rider, ma’am.”
As Mina turned to leave, she stopped as her hand touched the door handle.
“And i would thank you not to talk about my niece like that”
2
The world was stupid and unfair. This was obvious to Tana as the ready kit she had bravely liberated pushed into her stomach everytime the hooves of her horse impacted against the gravel road.It had been the thesis statement and title of an essay she had written two years ago, which would have seen wide and popular circulation among the thinking, radical women of the new world had it not been brutally suppressed by the regime and its agents, this time in the form of her former tutor, the hated and callous Miss Valentine.That was anew word to Tana, a good word you read in a book and realize it can be used in many ways, Tana had cleverly engineered a situation where she might deploy it casually in conversation to impress mom. The stupid and unfair world, however, had conspired against her and she had pronounced it cal-louse, which had made Mitte laugh.
The world was stupid and unfair in many other ways too, there were stupid and unfair rules guiding how people could talk and relate to each other, even here they had to pretend like they were loyal subjects of the competing powers in the old world. Mom said they were playing both sides and that soon they would have the leverage they needed to truly make themselves free. But that was still unfair, if perhaps not stupid but a look behind her made her feel guilty about ever entertaining it. She had to pretend like Aunt Mina was some agent of the imperial military and Mom never called her sister. Tana hated it, she hated that her mom was first citizen, she hated that she wasn’t raised together with the other girls, kept instead in a big pretty house with tutors and guards. She didn’t hate mom but sometimes she wished she could.
As it turns out she had actually improved a bit when it came to wrangling big scary animals as she maintained a solid lead on Aunt Mina right until Inny and Lio came into view. It vanished suspiciously quickly as they drew closer, though.
“Please let me use the kit, young miss. I know you’re smart enough to understand that I’m better than you at dressing wounds in the field. We have to do our very best to help the girl, anything else would be immoral, right?”
Tana had riled herself up a bit during the ride, which she knew was stupid but sometimes her mind just ran ahead of her and it was hard to stop. She had been trying to convince herself that she was in seclusion to finish writing her collection of poetry, or that she was eavesdropping on mom so she could maintain a necessary radicalism in colonial administration, or that now she was acting entirely out of the goodness of her own heart, just racing to help someone who was hurt. Deep down Tana knew those things were a bit true, but they were subservient and chained to a much larger and closer truth. Tana was deeply, awfully, lonely.
Inny had a green-brown skin tone which would have lent itself to well for frontier work had it not been for her seemingly luminous white hair which stabbed down the sides of her helmet, she was small and lithe, just a bit shorter than Tana, and Tana had just about entered puberty, people said she would look exactly like mom but she wanted to look exactly like herself, whoever that ended up being. Apart from her hair there was something else about Inny that now seemed to stand out even more, she was alone.
“Young miss, the sun is harsh today, perhaps you might use the guard captain’s mighty frame to draw some shade? Preferably a long one, you should stay some distance from this one.” She indicated, nodding towards the little girl slumbering peacefully against the neck of her horse. Her arms dangled lifelessly down and swayed as Innny drew up her mount. They looked odd and Tana very quickly realized why, they were pale white from the hands to the elbow, then they were twisted and took on a deep purple, darker than Tana’s own. The position and squaring of the shoulders told of dislocation as well. Her hair was golden, though, which was very rare among Tolvoi, a sign of a seer or wise woman, when those things mattered anyway. Aunt Mina quietly moved herself in between them and suddenly Tana’s sight was limited and the recently freed ready kit was again liberated, this time from her slightly chubby fingers. Aunt Mina and Inny seemed to close around the girl in an almost scary way, but Aunt Mina had said that they would do what’s best for the girl.
“Careful Cap, she cut up Lio pretty bad. No clue how and Lio didn’t see shit, but she’s probably faking being out like that. Can’t find the knife either, although I can't say I really want to touch her.”
One thing Tana found out early in life was that soldiers changed tone depending who they were speaking to. Most people did, but mom said that killer-to-killer communication tended to take on a certain direct and, to Tana unpleasant tone. Aunt Mina didn’t say anything but the familiar scent of the Vinn-treated coagulants and salves in the ready kit made themselves known the moment Aunt Mina leaned over the girl.
Tana anxiously watched Aunt Mina’s back as she tended to the girl, Tana made herself believe they wouldn’t actually hurt her. When Aunt Mina spoke, she spoke softly for the first time, perhaps ever, at least to Tana’s ears and in a downright unpleasant tone.
“You have cloth under your saddle as well as on your body and her arms were not slinged, you left her leaning against your horse instead of holding her, her arms aren’t even cleaned despite there being obvious open wounds. And Lio fucked up bad enough that she got injured by an unconscious child. Vantage point one is fucking unmanned, Inny. I have kept it manned every second since we lost that Kindi survey team. 10 fucking years, Inny”
Aunt Mina lifted the girl over and placed her gently in the tiny space between her thighs and the horse’s neck. Briefly adjusting something on the girl, and then turning back to face Tana, and Gilbe behind her.
“If the young lady weren’t here you would’ve had an unfortunate run-in with uncategorized and unidentified local fauna, tragically bleeding out before seeing Gilbe. You will give blood, urine and hair samples to the clinic when we get back and if they find anything I will have you tried for sedition or desertion.”
With that Mina grabbed Tana’s reins and began leading them back home. The Girl’s head lolled to the side, one eye open.