"Lone Soldier, called to the coast.
Lone Soldier, asleep at his post.
Lone Soldier, pale as a ghost."
—Recovered from a stone tablet found in the Abscess, in pristine condition. Author unknown. 91 AB.
----------------------------------------
Inside the alcazar’s bullwheel terminal, Jowles of the Ferrence Gondola Company welcomes Stalt with a nod and bow. “I hope the circumstances that cross our paths are more pleasant than before, Mr. Stalt.”
“Oh, they’re worse.” Stalt waves his salutations away. “Is everyone I know coming along?” First Bolen, then Jowles—two men he thought he’d never see again.
“If the price is sufficient, Ferrence has no qualms accompanying any endeavor. Though, if it were up to me, we’d ride a Ferrence vessel. Those have ample facilities to make a journey of this length quite comfortable.”
“Even barbers?” Stalt has yet to redeem any of his Kaskit Special Persons benefits and may never get a chance.
A loud clang sounds as the terminal’s enormous bullwheel starts to move. Two double doors swing open on the opposite side of the large room. “Let’s see for ourselves, Mr. Stalt.”
Her Soaring Guardian the Skelton lists and sways as it shifts out of the gaping doors. It seems as large as a portion of the Second Signature’s alcazar, an entire palace shoveled out of the grounds and hooked onto a ropeway line as if it was an afterthought. The vessel is anvil-shaped, the pointed prowl admitting an observation deck underneath. A myriad of glass windows cover the top half of the vessel, suggesting enough room for a small hamlet. Dotted equally along the lower portion of the gondola are broadside gun ports, cannons poking out while men fixed by harnesses inspect their nozzles. Harpoon cannons sit on the highest deck, where only a netting dome keeps a passenger from falling over the side. It clamps onto the ropeway cord with three detachable grips as thick as trees.
It is not alone in this journey, with six skiffs leading and another six trailing behind. These are smaller craft holding crews of ten or so, with minimal quarters and an overall shape reminiscent of a bar of gold, turned so the larger side faces skywards.
On the Skelton’s observation deck, Stalt stares down the length of the ropeway line, the sheening raw ground that is one product of his years at Basket Y-64. It is slick with a lubricant that slips the cord faster through the bullwheels while keeping it safe from burning. The glistening line snakes into the horizon until the next supporting tower beyond Kaskit’s enclosure turns it over the city’s outskirts to another tower and beyond.
“It’s a lot like the Glownabar.”
Stalt expects to find Jowles speaking but instead sees, of all people, the Surgeon Elder. The man folds his arms, looking at the cord as if it would take him out of this place. He’s got the appearance of a younger man forced into middle age through overwork.
“You rode it?” asks Stalt.
The elder nods. “I hear she was ruthless, though I couldn’t tell in person.” It seems he wants to say more, maybe about some topic Stalt doesn’t care much about.
“That about sums her up.” Stalt rubs the back of his neck. “You’re coming along?”
The Surgeon Elder stares forward. “I owe her my life. I always wanted to tell her that. Without her, things would be… worse.”
Stalt can’t count how many people have uttered that remark, but he never tires of hearing it. “I’ll be sure to pass it along to her.” Hells, he is still not used to her presence.
He’s about to say more when bells ring, marking their departure. The Surgeon Elder walks off, down the ramp, and into the terminal. He looks back to the Skelton once more before disappearing.
Your hands are everywhere, Stalt tells his sister. You touched so much of the world, and I barely knew it.
Once the Ferrence staff finish loading the Skelton’s cargo, they lock the ramp doors and free the docking ropes. Through mycorrhizal, they send instructions to activate the bullwheel’s prime mover. Beneath the terminal, the Gash’s heat is used to boil water, producing steam, which powers a turbine that turns the enormous bullwheel.
The Skelton groans, shifting as the rope thousands of kilometers long lurches onwards, carrying thirteen gondolas over the Second Signature’s garden of a compound, grazing a hanging plant. Bricked tenements follow below, then townhouses and stone towers propped up against the great enclosure. The blue, filtered rivers in the wealthier districts brighten an otherwise crumbling cityscape. Stalt’s never feared the grit and grime of Kaskit’s dank corners, for life is in the details and the dirt.
They reach the edge of Kaskit’s enclosure, the airlock door already open to admit the Skelton. While they pass through, Stalt has the piece of mind to ask Jowles for a headcount.
“Eighty-three here in the flagship,” says the old man. “The captain and his officers, helmsman and their mates, the engineers, the chefs and their cooks, the lookouts, harpoonists, you, I, that militia captain you brought along, his men, the Flung’s marines, and some of our own. That’s not including the skiffs, either. There are ten souls in each of those. That brings our total to about 200.”
Two hundred men seems a paltry number to light a whole archipelago ablaze until Stalt feels the reminder in his pocket. He removes the glass case, inspecting the fire seed inside, the tiny object that could burn for eternity if you let it, as some have said.
Are you going to be mad that I’m finishing your job? He asks Delah.
Silence—not a word spoken since the cenotaph. Every hour that passes, Stalt becomes more skeptical that the whole experience is just a vivid hallucination, only for his suspicions to be cast away in a whisper.
As if he’s being strung along.
----------------------------------------
Stalt stands behind his quarter’s bedroom window above a drop fifty stories down. Kaskit is nothing more than a bulging pimple on the horizon now, its tangle of cords hardly visible against the deep black of the night sky. Kaskitian elites patrol in pairs and triplets around the Skelton. Tip tap, says their boots, like spider legs, outside his room.
Would it kill him if he somehow got loose and jumped? Would they even notice? Would anyone even miss him? Delah would if she were here, but no one else. She was the only family he had, and then she was gone and now returned as an object in the Second Signature’s iron sights. It would have been easier to leave him out of the loop entirely, to remain at the Basket away from this great uncertainty. Regardless of where he ended up, his humanity still retreats every day.
Stalt lifts his feet and finds his soles are wet. He checks his trousers and his thighs and wonders if pissing himself is just a side effect of something the staff added to his food again, but his pants are dry.
The water rises above his toes. He sloshes across to his bedside table and finds the wash basin empty. The Lone’s light peeks through the open window to the gap under his suite’s door, shining on a torrent of water flowing underneath. He swings it open.
The hallway is different from the one outside his quarters. Here, crates two stories tall tower over him, jumbled together, offering only one path with a staircase leading above. He says a silent prayer but can not hear himself talk or feel his lips move.
He climbs the staircase and emerges not below a ropeway cord but onto the deck of a naval ship, one sailing on a calm shimmer of open waters extending as far as he can see. Such a place has not existed for decades.
Throngs of faceless people litter the deck, staring straight at him, or so he thinks. As he glances towards them, they walk backward through the railings and fall into the water, one by one, with no splashes, no screams, until no one else is on board save for himself and a woman.
“I imagine it was like this,” Delah says.
Stalt takes two fingers in his mouth and bites down as hard as possible. He feels nothing.
“That won’t help.” Delah scans him. “You look... different, brother.”
This is the point where Stalt should wake up. He blinks, but Delah is still there, same as the day he had last seen her, shortly before departing on the Glownabar. Her hair matches the deck’s wood, long as she had worn it her whole life. “So do you.” He looks around and finds the ship’s masthead bent at an angle it shouldn’t be. “Have you been talking to me?”
Delah smiles. “So you have heard that.”
“Bits of it. You’ve been quiet for a day or two.”
“I’ve been busy, so I won’t keep you long.” She steps forward, her footsteps silent. “I just wanted to know that you’re alright.”
How much does she know already? Who says this figment has anything to do with the voice in his head? “Is it you out there?”
Delah considers something. “You are riding with the Ferrence Gondola Company to get here. Your provisioner, named Jowles, accompanied you to the cenotaph. He’s a nice fellow, better than Ingram, who is hardly my replacement. Don’t let him tell you otherwise. I took that title with me for a reason.”
She must have seen everything, including the briefing. Can she hear his thoughts now? He says nothing as if a whisper could break this haze.
He suppresses the urge to reach out to her, to embrace her. His only family, dead and gone and now in front of him again. Maybe it’s pride that roots him in place or a brotherly affection that keeps him stalwart, on guard. “Is all of it true?”
Delah takes a moment to answer, pacing around the deck that is not a deck, the place that is not a place. “Would you be angry if I said yes?”
He would be. His sister? “No.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Then, yes.” A long, drawn-out sigh, her exasperation matching her memory, the ghost of her. “I’m sorry, but you would have been a fine admiral alongside me.”
“More like a second brain.”
“Even still, some of my officers were flimsier than you, brother. You would make a fine ‘second brain.’”
Stalt doesn’t think he should laugh at that. “Why didn’t you tell me then? Not even once? Not even before you went?”
“Had you discovered how I acquired the Myco strand, you would have denied me.”
“So that much was true as well.”
“Everything she told you is correct.” Delah stops walking. “I’m not proud of what I did, brother, but if it worked… can you imagine? Sister and brother tacticians. We could have kept the seas full! We could have pushed the maligned back and burned all the raw!” Her eyes stare out into this meaningless place, then back to him. “You look like shit, but I guess I am to blame for most of that.”
Stalt looks at his arm, still pale and gray even in this place. “How do you know I wouldn’t have accepted?”
“You were always the purist. You hated the Chant even then, yet you know little about them. A stubborn and ignorant bastard as always, but family, nonetheless.” Delah sits on one of the railings, where five crewmen apparitions had previously gathered. “Your solution was always to stay away, and now look at you.”
“Maybe that’s what you should have done. Brothers can take it.”
Delah slumps. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t believe it would be better for both of us. But now, well, I know it was a mistake. You didn’t deserve any of it. It would have been so much simpler if I never involved you.”
Stalt’s eyes sting as he sees a pinch of Delah’s tears splash onto the deck, but he snaps himself out of his sympathy and turns to the facts. She had started an entire process to turn him by injecting that strand. Suddenly, years at the basket seem minuscule in comparison. Yet, despite it, his brotherly responsibility returns, faint as a knocking sensation on a distant door but still there. He wants to protect her, even after all she’s done.
“Indulge me,” he manages. “How much do you hear or see from my perspective?”
“A lot.” She wipes her eyes. “It’s not always clear. It comes in splotches, but I can tune out when I want to. Those fragments are starting to intertwine, though, and I guess soon it will be everything.” She smirks. “No more private moments.”
Why doesn’t he feel uneasy about that? “How soon?”
“Three months? Maybe two.” Delah shrugs as if under the weight of those words. “I’ve doomed you to death, brother.”
Three months can pass in a few days. His appetite started fading years ago, his skin turning gray even before that. He can still remember first seeing the mix of shock and disgust thrown his way as if he had just crawled out of some pocket of the Hells, seeking refuge among their clean, pure selves.
So that is the way things are. In a couple of months, Stalt will malign. His entire existence seems small compared to what it could have been, with so many gaps and things left to do. There are places he wants to see and conversations he’d like to have. Even if he woke up in the Basket, he wouldn’t have enough time to do anything worthwhile. He is adrift now, and all he has left is the clothes on his back and his sister. Whether this mission succeeds or not, he won’t be around to see the outcome.
“Just don’t let that girl run you into the ground,” Delah says, likely referring to the Second Signature. “They are on a deadline.”
“The Inciter strand?”
Delah pauses. “That’s a fitting name for it.” She ponders. “I’ll start using it, too.”
“Could you think of something better?”
Delah scratches her head. “It is a strand, Gen, just as old as the others. I suspect it wasn’t exactly an oversight, more like…” She dispels the point, whatever it is. “That she already told you about it means the whole city will know it soon, and every city in the Smatter as well.”
“It’s true, then? It’s turning women?”
Delah nods.
Strands had turned women before the Decree, yet the import of this settles almost too quickly. “Where did it come from?”
Delah shakes her head and shrugs. “Secreted from the raw ground, brother, where else? Regardless, such primal forces need not be exterminated like that little girl believes. Better to contain them, to study them first.”
“Won’t be much to study if we’re all maligned.”
Delah doesn’t say anything for a minute or two. Stalt uses the time to examine this strange place. His vision ripples if he stares anywhere long enough as if noticing the smoke in the threads that make up the illusion. That will be his humanity in a few months, puffing up and vanishing.
But now, he is himself, and it should stay that way. “You have a way to sever this link?” Judging by his sister’s grimace, this was not a question she wanted to answer. “I am my own person, Deh. I haven’t been the best brother, and I couldn’t be there for you in the end, but if I’m going to die anyway, I’d like to go without anyone else in my head. Not… not even you.”
“I know,” she says. “I know, and yes, if you’re serious about leaving this behind, there is a way.” Her pause seems to capture both of them in a memory. “It’s in the box, with the proceeds from my pension.”
He’s about to ask what she means by that when he remembers. “The galley?”
Delah nods. “You’ll hit there by mid-morning. If you can get out, it’s all you need to go anywhere. Never have to touch raw ground again if that’s what you want.” She looks over to him, finds the unanswered questions, and looks pained to admit it. “It will only take one shot of a Myco strand neutralizer. The serum itself doesn’t decompose, so it should still work. If you don’t trust me, you can get one crafted, but it’s expensive, and the Second Signature will no doubt follow your every step once she discovers you’ve deserted.”
Stalt doesn’t doubt that for a moment. “Would you try to stop me?”
She shakes her head. “I never meant to control you, Gen, only help you—help us.” She stares up at a waving flag in this windless place.
So, neutralize the Myco strand inside him and move on. Let Delah lead whatever campaign she wants to. The world is large, and he’ll never have a chance to explore it all, but if he can live it out on his terms, that will be enough.
“It’s good to know you’re alright,” Delah says.
He wants to tell her he feels the same, but his thoughts are a jumbled mess. His sister is alive, leading the Chant but alive. “What will happen to you?”
“Don’t worry about me.” She walks towards him and fixes a stare that he can never recall her doing before. “If the Second Signature does come after me, Gen, I will swat away her efforts so easily that anyone caught in the mess will die needlessly. By disagreeing with her pleas, by leaving, you could save the lives of the people who leave with you. Think about that.”
Stalt cares more about Delah than the Flung or anyone else who would follow him. He tries to sympathize with the families of whoever Delah would tear down in her path, but he feels nothing. Maybe that’s the workings of this place or his indifference to his future, but so long as he can rid himself of this voice in his head, it doesn’t matter what Delah does.
She leans in and hugs him. The gesture is cold, nothing of the sisterly warmth he felt years ago. Yet this sensation seems the most real of anything he’s felt in this place or any other. She is back again, but she will be gone just as quickly.
“I mean it, brother,” she says. “Don’t come after me.”
“I won’t.”
----------------------------------------
“What did she tell you?”
Stalt shoots up, his blankets as heavy as corpses. He may as well be bolted to the bed.
“What. Did. She. Tell. You?”
Hands grip him. He tries to squirm out of their grasp, but it’s no use. A pain stings his cheek, and then he’s out of the bed, hands around his shoulders. Another slap, and his eyes shoot open.
Ingram stands in front of him. “Tell us exactly what she said.”
There’s a man beside the captain in a black trench coat with the same Flung insignia on his chest. He must be the Skelton’s medical zoologist, and the syringe he’s holding looks like it can stab through anything.
Stalt only comprehends what Ingram is saying now. He fiddles with his hands as if there’s a pen there. “She said don’t come.”
“That’s all?” Ingram squints. “How sure are you?”
The black-coated medical zoologist holds a finger up. “Follow this, Mr. Stalt.”
Stalt pushes the hand away. “I’m fine, and that’s what she said! Don’t come. Now, can I put some damn clothes on?” The two men wait, three more guarding the door, all with their eyes trained on him. He figures they won’t be leaving anytime soon. “Fucking perverts.” He breathes out, letting his outer lungs deflate like a defense mechanism.
This time, Ingram gets the indication to turn away. “Anything abnormal? Does she know where we are?”
“This whole damn situation is abnormal.” Stalt finds a dresser across the small room and is not surprised to see clothes inside. The pants are too tight, but the tunics are loose, leaving ample space around the chest. He leaves the buttons undone. “And yes, she knows we’re coming. So what do we do?” He looks around again, only noticing now that Bolen is there, too.
“It’s true, mate,” says the militia captain. “You were blubbering like some kind of drunken idiot.”
“We just want to see if your murmurs match what you dreamt,” says Ingram.
“Why would that matter?” Stalt sees the medical zoologist holding a notepad, and he vaults over, snatches it out of his hand, and skims it. “You know it’s fucked up to watch people sleep?” He hands the notepad back to the man. “Close enough.”
They pin Stalt to his quarters until dawn breaks, even wheeling in his breakfast. Ingram hands off the questioning to one of his lieutenants while Stalt reveals most of what Delah said, leaving the gaps alone. Then, he considers how much he can hide from these people. It’s not like he can jump off the Skelton, land on the ground, and climb back up. If he’s to reach the galley, he will need their help.
When he’s finished eating and Ingram enters, Stalt informs him of the galley but not the pension or the neutralizer. Somehow, those parts had been left out of the notes.
It’s enough for the fleet commander to speak on a black spotted mycorrhizal to the alcazar bullwheel terminal. In minutes, the technicians on the other side hear the message, expedite the approvals, and stop the wheel, ceasing thousands of kilometers of ropeway cord. The Skelton, its forward and rear skiffs, grind to a halt.
They ride a gantry down from the gondola’s lower deck, a contingent formed by a smattering of Bolen’s youthful militia and Ingram’s marines. They hack through the overgrown bush and burn through raw ground. Stalt leads, stepping atop the roots and forging a path for the others to follow.
During the middle of Delah’s training as a cadet, Stalt, while experiencing a bout of homesickness, snuck out of his chapter house, ventured out to this exact location, and met Delah. He recalls the weaving along the same pathways of the swamp, past the lilies and the bogged islands holding decrepit shacks. He was missing for weeks back then, and when he returned to Kaskit, he concocted some elaborate story about a kidnapping and escape. It mattered little by then, for the whole chapter house, the boys and the guardians, had been drafted to the Corps.
On the night of his arrival to this place, Delah led him into the swamp, trudging through the muck, heedless. “Washed up on high tide. That’s why they build the houses on silts. Could have very well washed one of them away.” He remembers her stepping into the space when they discovered it. “Better to sleep here than in the dorms. You know. Men.”
The galley had been washed up years before, and in its broken hold, they talked for hours, gazing upon the midnight view while swatting away giant reptiles with snapping jaws and teeth as long as dagger blades.
“If I ever get into trouble,” Stalt had said then, “I’ll come here. All this way. You do the same.”
She hadn’t responded, and until last night, Stalt thought she hadn’t heard a thing.
It appears vandals have found the wreck before Stalt has, marking their territory with engravings in its hull of lewd phrases and the names of people probably long dead. Stalt’s about to run forward when Bolen holds up a hand to halt the party. They soon discover why.
The thin steel line must be Flung caliber, not the weak stuff competing foragers plant in the Basket’s dried lakes. It runs between a broken opening in the hull, taught for years. With a mix of Bolen, his youth, and the Flung marines watching, Stalt snaps off the branch of a rotting tree and slams it down on the tripwire. Two boards spring from passages cut open in the hull, rusted knives tied to their ends. They jut out in the air where Stalt’s leg would have been.
Bolen leans in and scoops up green jelly off the knives. It’s not enough to burn through the fabric but starts to steam.
With the way clear, Stalt steps over the disarmed trap, uses the stick to trip two more wires and examines the center of the broken hull, where a lonely patch of earth sits. Soon after he starts digging, he clanks against something solid. He pulls out a steel tote and checks it for finger traps. Satisfied, he clicks open the lock.
Inside is paperwork from the Flung’s treasury office signed with Delah’s hand. Stalt tucks it away and digs deeper to find a pouch with a single syringe inside. The liquid in its chamber is a murky gray, the same color as his skin.
Ingram’s marines see first that the syringe contains a neutralizer and that Genebrict Stalt would very much want to rid himself of this obligation to them. He primes the needle, holds it above his forearm, and jabs it inside just before two of the marines tackle him to the ground. A cool trickle overtakes him, seeping into every crevice of his being, ignoring the pain as he is smashed against the galley’s hull.
They pull him back to the Skelton and throw him into his chambers like he’s a mangy dog. Ingram learns of it, brings his pad of dream notes, and hurls it at Stalt. “You idiot! You could have-”
Stalt holds up a hand. Sitting on the bed and feeling his arm, he concentrates, detecting that sensation still lingering, that phantom breath on the back of his neck, the presence of eyes trained on him from just around the corner. The blind spot hasn’t gone anywhere. Delah is still there.
“She lied to me,” he says.