June-Leckie looks down into one of Kaskit’s artificial rivers from the alley's mouth. Tale Jethry stands a few feet away, the closest she will allow the man to come to her tonight. Since awakening in Skelton’s apartment and experiencing the virility of a young man so hungry for her, Tale Jethry seems less masculine than ever.
“How much did he commit to?” Tale asks. The subject of the previous night’s excursion has been on Jethry’s lips the whole evening. He jitters as they wait, eager to learn anything of this situation he wasn’t a part of.
“As much as I want.” The young Skelton hadn’t given June a number but something better: his unfettered devotion towards her. She had trouble pulling the man away when she finally left early this dawn, the guard not asking any questions.
A cannonball affixed to a chain sits in the gap between them. June watches it, eager to get the business going so she doesn’t have to spend another minute next to Tale. The links lead from their perch to the bottom of the river and go through periods of tautness and loosening—tautness and loosening. As June peers over the edge of the promenade’s railing, she sees a man poke his head up, wipe a piece of trash from his face, and swim back to them.
The clothes he had been wearing when they recruited him are now soaked, but on this cold night, he does not shiver. His chest deflates from where his outer lungs work, black sacks like dirty fish, smaller ones than the raw man from the Hyrnlak briefing but equally as disgusting. He pulls his drenched tunic tighter when he sees June looking. “I found them,” he says. “Can’t get in, though. Maybe seven chambers. I’m guessing probably big enough to hold you.” He nods to June. “You want me cutting the locks? That’s extra, and I didn’t bring my tools. You got tools?”
June shakes her head and pays the man most of the retainer plus a little extra. “Not a word we were here.”
He bows, the entire river seeming to drip from his chin. “Alone with the Lone tonight.” He looks up and walks off, and June never sees him again.
June has refrained from telling Tale anything beyond the firestarter negotiation with the young Skelton, and the man doesn’t inquire despite his apparent unease. June decides to calm him. “The Surgeon Elder is part of some smuggling web.” She carefully skirts any mention that would lead to the Inciter strand. She’s still unsure how many people in Kaskit know about that, but knowing would cause an uproar.
A KCP patrol passes by and asks them for the man matching the diver’s description. June does the talking, says it’s been quiet, and that she would have reported such a man immediately. The two officers choose not to question an incubator’s opinion.
“I could have told you that,” says Tale after a time. “Yeah, they’re storage lockers. We’ve used them before for other stuff.” His cheeks pinch. “You’re implying you got… smuggled in? How? You would have remembered that.” Not once does he make eye contact with her as he speaks.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have. I could have been tranquilized. Some keep you down for days.”
“But for five years, June? What are the chances?” Tale’s insistence is so high he seems to overstep. “Chalk it up to amnesia or something. Maybe PTSD. You saw a lot of crazy shit there at Hyrnlak. Maybe this is your mind’s way of compartmentalizing and letting it go.”
She hasn’t thought about that before; strangely, it makes sense. Would she even remember if she mastered such a skill? Still, the magnitude of five years perplexes her.
“Let it go, June,” he continues. “We’re going to attack soon.”
Her thoughts drift back to the conspirators gathering in the back room of the pub. “So they all said.”
“I mean real soon. Maybe tomorrow.” Tale looks to her. “I have to know where he is. Come on.”
“I can’t.” The words arrive autonomously, the product of her unconscious willingness to keep everything hidden from this man and everyone. “Just be at the spot we agreed upon. I’ll meet you there. Bring everyone.”
“No.” The word is so blunt and forthright that it cuts over the screeching turn of the city’s bullwheels. Two men argue in an adjoining alley, but June doesn’t hear them. “No, June. Enough. You’ve been way too secret. I need to know now.” He takes her by the shoulders when she doesn't speak, and June can’t remember the last time he did that. “I need something. We must know where in the alcazar to attack, or else we’ll waste our forces. They are already thin enough. If you’re getting fire starters from the smugglers, they’ll also need to know where to drop the stuff off. You have to be careful when transporting fire starters.” He scans her up and down, pausing not on her chest or anywhere else, the interest in her as a woman gone. “I’m not going to let you undo my progress.”
Those words, something about them, how they stick to June’s thoughts like some remora onto a shark, a parasitic relationship with herself as the host. Tale didn’t have to take her into his good graces; he could have reported her to the Second Signature while she slept in his shed. He didn’t, but he was never quiet about the fact, was he?
June ponders the possibility that Tale Jethry has had the upper hand the entire time. Such an outcome makes her shutter in the cold night. To be handled by a man who drools over me.
But the words do come. “Underneath her mycorrhizal, as General Gauss told me.” It might be too much to say, but Tale’s forcefulness seems to brim on the psychotic. He’s breathing hard now, and are those clenched fists? He looks—June is surprised to observe—ready to run at her.
“Herbert Gauss?” Tale asks. “Cackles? That crazed lunatic?” He sweeps his arm, almost smacking into a brick wall beside them. “How are you so sure he is telling the truth?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
Tale stares with an open mouth at her. “You don’t know him at all, do you? Did you learn nothing while being alongside the Corps? Oh, of course not. Hells, maybe he knew you wouldn’t tell me until it was too late.” Tale clenches his teeth, and his jaw is tighter than June’s ever seen. “Cackles is a master of deception. I swear that invisible puzzle is a charade. He has no strands to compel him to do that, not that I’m aware of.”
June cannot speak at this new Tale Jethry revealing himself. Where had this man been?
“He wants people to underestimate him. How do you think this all worked? They don’t know how strong we are, but we don’t know what Gauss is packing, either. And now he’s directing us.”
This is all too much for June to take. She thought the information was definitive and that Tale would run forward with the plan too early if he knew the details, like some salivating dog. Yet it’s evident Tale has thought about this and probably a lot more. Who is the dog now?
He is right in one thing: June cannot mess this up for anyone. This is their only chance to strike at the First Signature.
“I’ll go tonight,” she says. “She’ll ask questions, sure, but I can check if he’s there.”
Tale doesn’t look her way, as if this was the only outcome possible. “We’ll be ready,” he says. “Noon, when the whole city is watching. We’ll burn that alcazar to the ground.”
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June will be watching too, from her vantage in the alcazar, with a head start.
She leaves Tale in the alley, staring at the ground and considering.
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It’s not hard finding the little girl appointed to lead humanity; June only has to follow the alcazar’s elites until she spots her far on the other side of the complex. She dodges castellans and emissaries to get to her, flipping them rude gestures when their concerns border on the incessant. They continue to harangue her, seeming to spring out of the woodwork as if a woman should not have free reign of this place.
The Entrusted carries the Second Signature to the front of a foggy glass door and sets her down. She smirks like she’s achieved a playground victory by reaching her destination first. “How was your jaunt? You’ve been gone quite a long time. ”
“Had a blast.”
The girl eyes her. “You remember more, then?”
She has a remarkable sense of intuition for a child, or June is too obvious. At that, it seems her entire self peels away to anger. “He’s lying.”
The Second Signature looks around. Nods. Her Entrusted waits behind her as if the beetle will pounce on June any moment. “Take your time getting her, Vakye.”
The Entrusted trudges through the door and disappears in the mist beyond. Low-hanging leaves cling to the glass like hands pressing for a way out. A phalanx on legs, one of the conspirators had said. They must be guarding something.
“I know,” says the girl. “He has not commissioned any trials to start, you know. I dare say he’s not even trying to make a neutralizer. I see no progress.” The girl laughs. “And there are other reasons, many more.” She shakes her head. “To think I would have used you as a test subject.”
“You can’t chain me up to a vat.” The old phrase leaks through even though the women are in quarters now.
“I can do exactly that.” Despite her decades of existence, the words mean nothing from such a tiny human. “He was telling the truth about some things. For one, inhibitors still work. Two-”
“I know where he is.”
The girl only needs a moment to narrow her eyes and comprehend what is being said. “Who told you?”
“I did.” The voice comes from around the hallway. Herbert Gauss strides over, donning not his customary lieutenant general’s uniform but a heavy shell suit of armor. June feels naked in comparison.
The Second Signature squints. “A secret for three?”
“A secret for three.”
“You’re alone. Where’s Drinnam?”
“Don’t need him.” The man nods, seems to take June in for the first time, and scowls. “You’re so predictable, you know. Did you believe I told you that in confidence? That I thought you would keep that information for yourself? You can’t keep a Hells damned thing to yourself.” He turns to the Second Signature. “This Thurmgeist is a rat.”
The glass doors behind the Second Signature swing open. Sixt steps out, adopting a defender’s stance. She is a walking shield wall that could surround the girl anytime. “Are they giving you trouble, Pasha?” she asks.
“I hate keeping secrets,” says the girl.
“I hate rats,” says Gauss. “Alas, she led us to their nest.”
June spins on the general. “What?”
“Your fellow conspirators think they’ve got the upper hand.”
The Second Signature is about to say something, but Sixt steps forward. “What’s the fat man speaking of?”
“They’re amassing,” says Cackles, looking the least fragile he’s ever been. “Right outside our gates. Dare I say they’ll be here tomorrow at noon? That would be the poetic thing to do, but hardly sensible. Brighten the show so that the whole city witnesses.” The man bellows like he had in the briefing. “That whole group has been charged for years since their first attempt. Dangle the bait in front of them, and they take it!”
June recoils, searching for a retort, but comes up with nothing. Tale Jethry was utterly correct about Gauss; the general had seen everything and had anticipated the attack would come. Of course, he would. No one leading the Emergence Corps would do otherwise. And you fell for it.
The Second Signature closes her eyes and rubs them. “Why must you make everything difficult as all the Hells? First my incubators, now this.”
The quip doesn’t sit well, and June decides she can’t hold anything back from this girl. She walks closer, the Second Signature taking a cautious step back. Something about that gesture hammers June hard, and she thinks about lunging, of slapping sense into this tiny creature. Eleven women were in those pods, plus seven Thurmgeists June left behind. Grace probably didn’t make it out, leaving sixteen besides June. All women that she led to Hyrnlak.
She is the only one who made it out, and as she ponders this, she looks at her hands, of all things; her useless, helpless hands—worn but selfish and incapable. She couldn’t save any of them. All June does is get people killed.
The Second Signature stares at her like Alcina’s maligned had from the back of the towering krab thing. “There’s no way you’re leaving the alcazar now,” she says. “I don’t care if my elites have to build a cage around you.”
Sixt searches June with dark pits. Then, the beetle looks over her shoulder. “We’ve attracted quite the crowd.”
June turns around and finds the cooks, castellans, butlers, gardeners, and cleaners that had given her a hard time on the way over. They peer around the corner like curious mammals, their necks craned.
“Are you always so attentive?” Gauss asks the crowd. “Be gone.”
But they don’t move.
The Second Signature does not speak after that, nor does Gauss, who has the level head to put a hand on his machete. The crowd of curious alcazar staff swells to twice their size, then three times, standing in two lines, the tallest in the rear towering over as if on purpose. The ensemble has an uncanny resemblance to a military formation or a barrier.
Gauss unsheathes his machete. The Second Signature steps back. The end of the Entrusted’s mandible rests on the girl’s shoulder, the other settling on June’s. She wonders why the Entrusted has them in this hold and then remembers they’re the most valuable targets.
The crowd runs forward. The Entrusted spreads its two humongous wings and throws June and the Second Signature behind her. June slams into the wall, narrowly missing one of the chefs. She rolls forward and misses a rolling pin splintering as the chef who threw it grabs one of the pieces. Seeing the beetle’s carapace blocking their way, the chef dives for June. She notices this, grabs a splinter of the rolling pin, and thrusts it right into the chef’s neck just as the man falls on top of her. He squirms. June throws him off and jumps to her feet.
“Pasha!” Sixt yells. “Behind!”
A servant runs at the shell barrier. Sixt curves one side so the man falls on top of it. Feet off the ground and lying on the shell, Sixt hurls the man against the wall. Gauss runs over and hacks at him, laughing, manic with glee as he cuts through two more servants, intent on using only their hands to push past him on the way to the Second Signature.
June catches a fire poker the fallen men had been holding and slams the face of an approaching mail courier with it, her red velvet hat still on, eyes hungry. She keeps the little form of the Second Signature behind her, eager to protect anything, as if doing so would bring those Thurmgeists back.
Two runners leap on the beetle and try to climb up. Sixt forces herself against the wall, crushing one with her outspread carapace and throwing the other onto the floor. June closes the distance on one of the downed before they can rise and jabs the fire poker into their chest, breaking ribs and impaling their heart.
There is no distress in the man’s eyes as June rips the fire poker out, no scorn or anger. His deadpan stare is free of any emotion, even after Sixt picks up the groaning man and hurls him across the hallway, leaving Gauss to hack down two more staff and stand over the bodies.
A calm settles, the bodies still, gore and blood sprayed. The general meets the alcazar elites when they arrive, none of whom were in attendance until now. “Secure a perimeter,” he tells them, pushing one aside and not laughing.
The men hasten to obey, seeing them upstaged by their highest in command, instead searching for the bodies, pulling them to a line in the hallway, and ensuring they’re dead. The mail courier, the man June had stabbed through the chest, convulses on the floor, spasms and froths at the mouth. Seconds later, he stills.
The Second Signature huddles behind Sixt, gripping one of the Entrusted’s legs, her ankles inches away from the outstretched hand of an assailant’s corpse. The man’s head is five feet away, and the girl regards it in a horror that seems fitting for someone so young but unnerving for a Signature on the Decree.
Gauss finds June and smiles. “Your little assault came a day early.”
The Second Signature cares little for the exchange, rising immediately and leaving the assailant reaching for her. The girl finds another dying against the hallway wall. The man clutches his hands to his chest, where a cook’s apron clings.
“Back,” June tells the girl.
The Second Signature waves the Thurmgeist away, kneels, and listens to the man’s bubbling murmurs. June reads his lips. “A decade’s service, Signature. What compelled me?”
His head slumps to rest on the floor.