Andrei

After two days traveling southwest through endless forest, Emerich Bach and I skirted the city of Verena. While it would have been nice to sleep in a bed and eat something other than dry rations, we wouldn’t be stopping there. This will be expanded upon later, but to make a long story short, Partisans were not welcome in the city since the events leading up to the Verena Revolt. This historical battle was where Commander Reider earned his sword, Intrepidity, as a reward for his bravery in freeing dozens of enslaved Partisans.

Ultimately, the city surrendered, and in an unprecedented twist, was granted its full independence by Councilwoman Faust. Verena would be no safer for Emerich Bach than it was for me, as he reminded, “Defected or not, they hate us all as long as our eyes are still in our heads.”

Along the way, I caught Mister Bach up on the events at the church, how we’d located the crypt and encountered who we suspected was Zacharias Vonsinfonie. I expected he’d be more concerned, but other than, “That’s an old one,” and, “That should be interesting,” the man didn’t have much more to say on the subject.

Apparently, some of the particularly long-lived Devourers chose to take extended naps.

Our journey was otherwise uneventful, and upon reaching the Amali shore-side, we sloshed through the abundant corridors of a waterlogged cavern until we arrived at our destination on the opposite end. A defected Celestian Navigator waited for us at the edge of the inlet, urging us to hurry up and board the embark. We were late, and it would be another day and another night before we arrived on the island. A literal speck of dust on my map, which I brushed away. Other than the six territories and the Isle of Palisade, there were of course a number of smaller masses making up the whole of Auditoria. Some had been charted, some had not. Most had been discovered and were surveyed by the Assembly.

“How have Palisade forces not found you here?” I asked.

“Perhaps they have, Father Strauss, and perhaps our forces are better.”

Father Strauss. How bizarre. “Would you mind calling me Andrei?”

“Only if you start calling me Rick instead of Mister Bach.”

Once we arrived on the island, we journeyed through another dense forest until Rick and the sleepy Celestian escorted me through yet another cavern. This one was concealed behind a gate fashioned from sticks and vines. I thought of Sinclair then—always looking for something in nothing. She’d have seen the door.

Down and around the initial corridor, the first chamber past the entryway was sprawling. There were upholstered couches and pelt rugs. There was fire, and laughter, and Partisans of all shapes and sizes.

“Enjoy your rest, Father.” The Navigator slipped off with no more than a nod.

She hadn’t been speaking to me.

“Father?” I asked. “I didn’t realize you were still serving.”

“I have abandoned Palisade, Andrei, not my faith in Amalia.”

“Why haven’t we spoken on the matter?”

The elder smiled. “What is there to speak of?”

A gruff voice emerged from the darkest corner of the chamber. “I’ll be damned,” the man said. “Where was that attitude our entire lives?”

The man who approached was without a doubt Strachan. He was blonde, bearded, and overall unkempt. His shoulder-length hair was matted, a fashion more commonly observed among the Endican. The air around him smelled of tobacco and cloves.

“There is always something to speak of with you, old friend,” Rick said.

Those around us carried on uninterested. Pages turned, conversations were had. An Endican and an Amali stopped just short of fornicating in the corner.

The Strachan flicked his head in my direction. “You’re the one, eh?”

“If you mean Rick’s guest, then yes.”

“Right,” the Strachan said. “You’re pissing me off already.”

A man in his forties, the Strachan was lean, well-muscled, and to the top of my chest in height. I knew he could hear my heart battering furiously, the same way I could hear his—slow, steady. Unfamiliar yet so familiar. The mannerisms, the stance—confident, teetering on the border of arrogance. Always expecting. The eyes. Her eyes.

“By the goddesses,” I said. “You’re Sinclair’s father.”

“Got a bloody genius on our hands, haven’t we? Well, now we’ve got that out of the way, there’s something you need to know: this is our place. Mine and Rick’s. Fuck with it, fuck with us. You don’t want to fuck with us. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.” I said.

The Strachan grunted. Satisfaction? Disgust?

“By the way,” Mister Sinclair addressed his comrade this time. “I’m missing a flask—the one engraved with my initials. Keep an eye out, will you?”

“Of course.” Emerich Bach dipped his head. “I know it means a lot to you.”

And with that, Rick bid us both our blessings and good evening, leaving me at the mercy of my lover’s father.

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The lair housed fifty-four Partisans. Not staggering, but an impressive number in just over two decades.

“We’re due for another expansion,” the senior Sinclair said. While we walked, he shouted at the curtains behind which I imagine there were bedrooms. “Oi, got space for one more?” he’d ask, and the response was universally, “No.”

“Gonna have to stash your lanky arse under a goddess-be-damned table,” he said.

Fortunately, we did eventually find a bed, and my guide spared no time unloading me into the company of a pair of colourful strangers. The curtain closed behind me.

“You’re new,” said the girl. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. “How do you know Rick and Rhydian?”

“I hardly do,” I said. “Unusual circumstances.”

“Oh, well—they rescued most of us and raised almost all of us, but we’ve picked up a few strays along the way, you know? I was wondering if you were one of them.”

“You’ll have to forgive her,” said the boy.

He was relatively the same age as the girl, but he was enormous. One head and a half taller than I was, with shoulders twice my width. He was Endican, but not quite. His hair was too red, and his face was too freckled.

“She was born annoying,” he added.

“Shut up.” The girl scowled, but her eyes were playful. “So, are you staying long?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Right,” the girl replied. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“Celestian, definitely,” the boy said.

The girl hesitated. “Celestian and… Delphi?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

What harm could there be indulging their game?

“Amali,” I said. “Celestian and Amali.”

“Damn.” The boy snapped his fingers. “I was gonna say that. We’ve got a few like you.”

The girl smiled. “Care to have a go at us?”

I was correct when I guessed the boy was Endican and Strachan. His mother was not the Strachan, thank the goddesses. A matter of logistics, as Endican babies were notoriously large and Strachan women notoriously small. The girl’s heritage was a simple deduction. Petite and a built for acrobatics, but with the southern colouring of a Senec. Fast, flexible, precognitive, regenerative. It was fascinating, and it was most likely the reason I’d been asked to accompany Rick to the lair. Not because I was special, or because I was different, but because there existed a place in which I was ordinary.

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The next morning, breakfast was not served. It was the organization’s philosophy that its members be self-sufficient in all things, so I fell back on an old favourite—oats with honey, cinnamon, and apples. Following that, I was punished with an in-depth tour of the lair by none other than Rhydian Sinclair. The facilities reminded me of Palisade in that there were chambers for training, for eating, and for sleeping. There was a library, and there were lesson halls. But the similarities ended there, and the differences were far more significant. The freedom to choose one’s own mate and field of study, for example. Moreover, Palisade had never felt so inviting. There was no alternative to the Assembly, only Rick and Rhydian, and their respect seemed to have been earned rather than forced.

“Mister Sinclair, I’ve noticed you’re seen as a parental figure to many, but your own daughter, she—”

“She’s an egg best left unhatched. Reckon you’re done talking now.”

“Forgive me, sir, but Rhian has long since hatched.”

“Prepared to keep your trap shut the rest of the way, lad?”

In the interest of peacekeeping, I obliged.

The final stop on our tour was the most interesting. A vast, rectangular chamber designed a lot like a crypt. There were plaques on the walls with names, but instead of drawers, there were silver cages, and in each of those cages, a miserable looking person.

Those who worked in the laboratory continued without interruption.

“Repeat after me,” Rhydian said. “Apart from now, I’ve no clearance to be in the lab.”

“Apart from now, I’ve no clearance to be in the lab.”

“We work an honour system,” he said. “That means, no doors and no locks except on those cages. Now, repeat what I said afore.”

“Apart from now, I’ve no clearance to be in the lab.”

“Again.”

“Apart from now, I’ve no clearance to be in the lab.”

“Again.”

“Apart from now—”

“Pissing hells, lad. When something stops making sense, stop doing it. Better yet, start questioning it.”

The smirks on the faces of those around us told me they’d all had a similar interaction. The lingering smile on the bright-eyed brunette, however…

Well, she was beautiful, and intelligent I suspected, but she was not Sinclair.

“Some folk expect to feel satisfaction seeing those beasts behind bars,” Mister Sinclair said, his tone hoarse and without inflection. “Word of advice? Fuck satisfaction. The abominations aren’t getting the least of what they deserve.”

A voice echoed from one of the cages. “Tell us how you really feel, Rhydian.”

“That poor, poor man,” added another.

“Careful, one who smells of words and spice,” said a third. His tone recalled a familiar melody, but the voice was young—at the cusp of maturity. According to the plaque, his name was Jakob Adler.

Those who worked around us were unaffected by the noise, and the elder Strachan carried on smoking his tobacco.

All in all, there were sixteen Devourers in twenty-four cages, and it wasn’t satisfaction I felt. It was curiosity, and it was empathy.

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After first spotting the brunette in the laboratory, it seemed our paths were destined to cross. Coincidental meetings in the library, in the kitchen, in passing through the corridors. It wasn’t until the second night we spoke, after another chance encounter on the way back to my bunk. I learned the Delphi’s name was Maryse, and she was one of the pure-bred Partisan orphans apprehended prior to their conscription to Palisade. Like many Partisans, she’d never met her parents.

“The way I see it, I’ve got Rick and Rhydian and loads of brothers and sisters,” she said. “I’m doing what I love, and if my parents were any sort of decent people, they’d be happy for me. And if they were assholes, then I’m happy for me.”

“What precisely do you do?”

“I’m a psychologist.”

“You study the minds of these Devourers?”

“Around the lab, we prefer the term Anima.”

“And which do they prefer?”

“Their names.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What can you tell me about the one called Jakob?”

Jakob Adler could not be so easily summarized, she said. I’d have to see for myself, she insisted. And as the words, “Apart from now, you’ve no clearance to be in the lab,” repeated in my head, Maryse assured me I’d be safe in her hands.

By the time we arrived, those who worked the laboratory had gone to bed, but the torches around the room remained lit.

“Go on, then,” she said. “It can’t hurt you.”

“What if he—it—Jakob—is asleep?”

“What if I were?” Jakob asked. “Would you watch me as they do?”

I hadn’t noticed Maryse slip out of the lab, but it would have made no difference if I had. There was nothing but the voice.

I expected the Devourer to look young, and he did. But as we each closed in on the bars neither of us could touch without consequence, I was surprised by what I saw.

Jakob’s eyes were bound by a cutting of black cloth.

“Welcome, welcome,” he said. “Let’s chat.”

The Devourer’s skin was pale like mine, and his shoulder-length hair was just as black.

“Hello, Jakob,” I said. “My name is Andrei.”

“Andrei, Andrei, son of Andreas. I knew I recognized that smell. Well, how is your father besides dead?”

“Spiteful one, are you?”

“So many things I’ve just about lost track, Andrei, son of Andreas.”

“You knew my father, so did you know my mother?”

“Yes, she brought me books.”

“But you’re blind?”

“Exactly! Your mother was a bitch.”

I glanced over my shoulder, only then realizing I was alone.

“You seem to know a great deal about me, and here I know nothing about you. How old are you, Jakob?”

“One, one—no, no—one, zero, three and nine. 1039. How does that make you feel?”

“What happened to your eyes, Jakob?”

“Oh, I imagine by now they’ve decomposed. Ha! It’s really too bad. They were so pretty.”

The way he said that struck me strangely, but there were no Partisans 1039 years ago—or were there? What could I be sure of anymore?

“By the goddesses, were you—”

“Shh.” Jakob held a finger to his lips. “I liked you the moment I smelled you, Andrei, son of Andreas. We should be—oh, goodnight.”

Click. A bolt whizzed past my bicep and through the silver bars, striking Jakob in the shoulder. The immortal boy yelped and tugged the shaft out, before skittering backward. In those same short seconds, I prepared myself for the wrath of a Sinclair.

Rhydian rushed at me as I turned, pulling me to his level by the collar.

“One. Simple. Rule.”

“Maryse said it would be—that Jakob could not—”

“Easiest job Mary’s had in a while, I reckon. Your folks died on account of they stopped for a sneeze. Prepared to make that condition hereditary?”

Fear turned to anger, and mild irritation turned moderate. “My parents—what is with my parents? If not the Assembly, then the Administrator, and Faust, and the seamstress, and that ancient child, and now you. What has you all so excited?”

“They were good people, died doing good things. If the world were allowed to celebrate them, there’d be a goddess-be-damned parade every year. But you?” Rhydian shook me three times before releasing me altogether. “You’re a disappointment.”

My hands began sweating the way they did when it was about to happen. The Strachan blurred hypnotically with the torchlight around us. “What about your comrades?” he said. “Just gonna stand around, watch them have their heads yanked from their bodies, hearts still beating?” His voice phased in, and out, and in, and out as my temples throbbed. “…gonna pray? Bloody that’ll do… coward? …suicide? They’ll tear your—”

I caught the man’s throat in my hand. So delicate, and my strength so prodigious. The Strachan’s warmth pulled from his body and coursed through mine. “And what about you? The true coward accuses others only of that which he refuses to see in himself. You’ll hide in your cavern as your own flesh and blood fights a fight she doesn’t understand?”

While I perspired, the Strachan turned pale, pale, blue. His teeth chattered, his hands trembled. If not for the eyes, so like hers—so full of anger, guilt, passion. Sinclair.

I tossed the man to the ground…

…and the caged audience exploded in applause while the room sped into sickening motion. I could hardly breathe, and the thirst was unbearable—like swallowing a mouthful of sand, while the laughs from the Anima around me were hollow and thick—garbled as though we were submurged underwater. I staggered through the laboratory, not another word exchanged.

The next morning, I boarded the embark with a fever, a friend, and a massive pain in the rear. Emerich Bach and Rhydian Sinclair had accomplished all they’d hoped to accomplish in my time at the lair. In giving into my rage, I’d proved the potential of my power. More importantly, I’d proved my restraint.

That said, the topic of my parents did not resurface for the duration of our trip back to Oskari.