The situation in the city had gone from bad to worse. The flagrant attack on the protestors by Sloan’s thugs had emboldened groups of monarchists in launching their own assaults on those they perceived as standing against the new order. Frankfort and Veronica were forced to try and stem the tide of violence, whilst evading WISA officers who were always on watch for their presence.
Samantha took a different approach.
She couldn’t stand to sit on her butt and let people get hurt for no good reason. She started leaving the safehouse and visiting sites where fights had broken out, using her magic to heal the seriously injured using what knowledge she possessed about medicine and her magic.
She saw a lot of bloodied faces, split heads, broken noses and smashed cheekbones. It was a sobering sight. Luckily the fights weren’t escalating into the use of firearms yet. They were afraid to be the ones who fired the first fatal shot. The judgement of history would not be kind to them if they did.
A lot of people were starting to recognize her and her good deeds. They would approach her once she arrived and quickly whisk her away to where the wounded were being kept protected from further reprisals. Young and old – there was no real pattern to the chaos she witnessed.
‘Am I ready for this?’ she wondered. Maria was clear-eyed about what Welt and Sloan’s plan would mean for the nation as a whole. Communities would turn on one another and submit themselves to this kind of anarchy. Friends and family divided by a conflict that she couldn’t understand or accept.
Her distress was clear to her friends. None of them could offer any words of comfort. There was a tension in the air that hung over their necks like the blade of a guillotine. Could they manage the situation before Maria came back from her mission? What could they possibly hope to do with their lack of combat power?
Samantha watched through one of the foggy windows at the group of protestors shuffling past the warehouse that morning. Veronica was sitting at the back of the room with a cup of tea in one hand and a pistol in the other. Veronica was still in a bad mood about what Maria revealed to her, so there was little discussion between her and the others.
“How long do you think she’ll be gone?”
Veronica glanced at her, “Why are you asking me?”
“I’m making small talk. My dad always tells me to be a good neighbour to everyone I meet.”
“Even the ones who try to murder you?”
“No. Not those sorts of people.”
Veronica put the gun down and walked over to where Samantha was sitting.
“You’ve been working yourself ragged these past few days. Are your magic reserves holding up well?”
“Well enough. It’s not as if I’m using it for anything else at the moment, so it’s good to go out there and train, and make sure that people aren’t going home covered in blood and stitches.”
Maria had gone the extra mile to enhance her magic by making a pair of catalytic gauntlets. She’d also absorbed some of the magical energy from the blood vials by holding onto the glass tubes. It was much less efficient than injecting it into the bloodstream – but it was also safe. The blood was dried up now, so they couldn’t rely on the watch to solve all of their problems.
“You said it’s like a muscle before.”
“That’s right. The more you use it, the more energy you can store.”
Samantha knew full well that she and Maria were a special class of mage. At Grade Five they could cast spells of a potency and frequency that eclipsed all of the grades beneath them. Even so, they didn’t possess a fraction of the immense magical power contained by the creatures from the Veil.
It was frustrating how exhausted she felt after helping so few people. It put into perspective that perhaps humans were not meant to wield these powers in such a manner. They were merely ants to those beasts. They had been given a gift that they had no idea of how to utilise to its full extent.
Samantha turned away from the window, “You’re worried about Maria again.”
“Is it that obvious? Not her physical safety, mind you, I don’t think an apocalyptic event could kill that girl.”
“I won’t argue with that. It’s just that I thought...”
“That I wouldn’t, knowing what I do?”
“Yeah.”
Veronica sighed, “You’re a mature girl, you know that these things aren’t so easy or straightforward to explain. She’s my daughter, but also not my daughter. I can’t detach myself from the sacrifices I made and the emotions I felt when giving birth to her.”
“I went through the same process. I thought I understood Maria until I didn’t. Dad always said I was good at picking out good company, but that was the first time I ever doubted it.”
“Because she killed a lot of people?”
“I already found out about that before her real identity. I told myself that she was doing it all for a good reason. She’s ruthless when you get down to it, like a rabid churnon stalking the fields.”
“Never seen one.”
“They don’t like being around people,” Samantha chuckled, “Sounds like Maria to me.”
Veronica pulled a chair towards the window and sat next to the country girl. She was a bit of a titan in terms of stature and presence. They must have been feeding her well back on the farm where she lived.
“This is chaos. How the bloody hell are we going to fix this?”
“You can’t, not fully. I’ve been shot, stabbed, got scars all over me. There’s no such thing as a wound that heals perfectly.”
Samantha clutched one of her sleeves and twiddled the fabric back and forth in an anxious spell.
“When the Civil War ended, I wondered if there’d ever come a day where people could forget about it. Everyone in this country were at each other’s throats. So many of them died in the fighting, and I swore there was no way that they could learn to forgive each other.”
Veronica could recall the exact way she felt. Three days after the Compromise was introduced into parliament and the fighting formally ended, she wandered past a graveyard in the city where dozens and dozens of war-dead were being buried in a large ceremony. The faces of despair and agony the mourners wore made her certain that it was not the end.
They wanted to move on. They never forgot what happened, but they couldn’t accept facing that kind of terror and loss for a second time. Some became enraged at their lack of will to carry on the fighting – and before she absconded from WISA to hide and deliver Maria, she was tasked with taking them out.
What they desired most was a return to normalcy. In that way, it was almost as if the war never happened in the first place. The bodies were buried, words were said, and everyone tried to move on as best they could. It was shocking to her. The scale of society’s collective amnesia was beyond her wildest expectations.
“Did they forgive each other?”
“I don’t think they did. It couldn’t go back to the way it was before. Even if on the surface it looked okay, there was still a change underneath the skin. You know what I think? People can’t live without each other. They’re drawn together, like gravity. It’s not the same. It won’t ever be the same, but peace came back to Walser anyway, no matter what I thought.”
“Gravity...” Samantha murmured.
“What Maria said – maybe she thought it’d push everyone away. I’m furious, but I can’t leave her alone. It’s different now, she can’t take it back and pretend it never happened, but I also can’t let it end like this. I might be one of those lunatics who can’t let go, but I sacrificed too much to give up.”
“That’s fine, isn’t it? It’s a good cause in the end. All you have to do is talk with her.”
Veronica chuckled, “You make it sound so simple. I’ve never been much of a talker. That happens when you spend your whole life hiding from people and putting on an act.”
“You’re doing a good job right now.”
“That’s because it’s easier to speak with a stranger than it is someone you care about.”
Samantha frowned. She’d never thought along those lines. It was a genuinely different perspective on relationships that seemed at complete odds with her own. Samantha would never speak so openly with someone she wasn’t familiar with. She had assumed that Veronica had gotten comfortable enough with her to share.
That was her fault for being too friendly. Veronica was as cold as they came, and the only glimpses of warmth she offered aimed to comfort who she saw as a group of troubled children. Even when she was around Maria she kept an all-business attitude.
Samantha found it difficult to imagine what Maria and Veronica’s relationship could be like after all of the chaos was cleared up. Veronica would have to resign her position at WISA somehow and move back to the estate, but what would the new status quo be? Maria, if what she said was true, didn’t need a new mother figure in her life to raise her.
“Do you want to be there for Maria?” Samantha asked, out of the blue.
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“Be there? What do you mean?”
“As a mother.”
Veronica averted her eyes and stared across the street, “I’m no mother of hers. The only thing I’m good for is destroying lives. That’s why I left her with Damian.”
“It’s funny. Maria said that too.”
Samantha could not place the emotion that was creeping through her stoic façade. Her brain was ticking over, cogs turning, as she thought about all of the different conversations and moments that built her understanding of who Maria was.
“Almost those exact words. This is all a punishment to her, for what she did in the past, and what she thinks she’ll do in the future. She wants to leave a piece of herself behind that isn’t built on violence, but she can’t accept that she’ll have the opportunity to do it.”
Veronica’s face softened.
“Stop trying to rile me up, lass.”
“I’m not. I think the Goddess chose whoever she was for a reason. Not just because of the skills she possesses, but because of how she connects with you. The Goddess made you mother and daughter in more than name only, don’t you think?”
“Give me a break. I left her with him because he was supposed to do a better job than I could! What the hell was the point if the Goddess was just going to turn her... into me...”
Samantha was uneasy, “Nothing’s set in stone. You should both stop worrying so much about the future and do what you want. We could all drop dead from a cardiac arrest tomorrow, but that’s not a reason to give up. We’ve got to live and make the most of the time we have. If you want to be Maria’s mother, if you want to put her on a better path, then you should.”
Veronica scoffed and rolled her eyes, “That’s all well and good – but idealism isn’t a substitute for reality. You know there’s a million and one reasons I can’t walk into Maria’s life and act like a mother, and that’s before I worry about whether she’d accept me.”
Samantha had pushed the issue a step over the line. Veronica got up from her chair and walked away, leaving her alone once more.
Samantha watched her back as she left. Once she was gone, she stood from her chair and wandered over to the nearest table where various discarded items were left behind. A stack of playing cards, discarded cups and cutlery, and a handful of stray bullets that had yet to be loaded into magazines.
“Like gravity.”
She closed her eyes and connected with the other side, spreading her magical senses through the room like Miss Jennings had taught her at the academy. There was one fact about ‘regeneration’ that stuck with her through all of her self-study. She was not creating new tissue and blood cells from thin air – she was merely stitching them back together. It was not a magical watch that could rewind time in a localized place.
Veronica’s words had unknowingly struck a chord with her. She used two of the empty shell casings, slowly pulling them together into the centre of her field of vision before casting the very same spell she had used to heal dozens and dozens of wounded civilians and protestors.
There was an inward force. Samantha felt a huge amount of strength and magical energy seep from her body like an open wound, before a blinding flash filled the air and sent her for a loop. Still she persisted. She kept pushing and pushing until there was nowhere else for them to go.
Samantha opened her eyes and reached out to take what was left.
Between shaking fingers was a strange object. A combination of the two shells. Not only were they warm to the touch, but the spots where they melded together had taken on an entirely new colouration and texture, like they had undergone a chemical reaction in the blink of an eye.
“Xenia, why couldn’t you say this outright?” she hissed to herself.
Regeneration? What she truly possessed was something far more dangerous than that...
----------------------------------------
Fleur forced us out onto the back lawn where a game of croquet awaited. The boys bickered over who would get the ‘best’ wooden mallet to play with while I stood on the side and wondered what exactly this dick-measuring contest was supposed to prove. Fleur, despite being the one to propose this game, was already getting frustrated with their ill manners and lack of sportsmanship.
“Stop fighting over the mallets. They’re all the same.”
Conrad disagreed, “No, they’re not. Otto’s been taking the best one every time we play lately.”
“You’re just angry because I’m the best at it. It has nothing to do with the bloody mallet I use,” Otto replied.
We were positioned close to the post office by one of the side gates. This was my chance to go snooping around while the boys had an extremely competitive game of croquet in an attempt to impress me. Fleur may have misjudged how much good sportsmanship they were going to demonstrate.
They lined up and started to play, and I immediately tuned out as each suitor attempted to swoon me with their incredible skills at a noble lawn game that was as out-of-touch as it was immensely tedious. I’d rather play a round of golf than ever have to think about croquet again.
From their perspective, this was the single most important game of croquet to ever be played across the world. It was directly connected with their chances of winning my hand and marriage and blowing this popsicle stand so they could enjoy the easy life in a wealthy family while escaping the shadow of the royal line. If not becoming the King or landing a plush nepotism-guarded job in government, then this was the next best outcome.
I kept an eye on the time and waited for around an hour, during which there were no less than three different spats between the boys that almost descended into physical exchanges of flying fists. It was a spectacle alright – and Fleur kept being pulled away to organize other matters around the palace so he wasn’t always there to stop them.
I sensed my opportunity and decided to move.
“I’m going for a short break,” I declared, “I’ll be back in a short while.”
Nobody could argue with me, or stop me, so I left them to the game and escaped down a narrow pathway near the grass pitch. It was surrounded on both sides by tall bushes and allowed me and Franklin to move unimpeded down the length of the rear garden. It was likely intended for romantic walks between young lovers in the palace, given the quantity of bright flowers and ornate archways.
“What are we going to do now?”
“I want to take a quick stop at the post office and see if we can find any clues.”
The post office was located near the Eastern wall of the palace interior. There was a long road that led up to it from the outside, with a booth checkpoint next to the wrought-iron gates. A cart would arrive with a bed filled with sacks, be waved through, and dumped into the office to be sorted and checked for harmful substances.
It was around the size of the average house you would find in the countryside. Two stories, with a squat roof that made it look smaller than it was on the inside. The outside walls were painted an odd light-yellow colour. None of the gardening staff were working at this time of day, so there were fewer witnesses to worry about. I did spy one or two guards waiting by the gate.
“Wait here. It’ll only take me a second.”
The office itself was left unguarded. That either meant there was nothing of interest to find in there, or someone had screwed up and reallocated the guards without checking first. I snuck over to the door and pulled my lockpick out, quickly working my way through the mechanism and pushing it open.
All that time learning to lockpick had paid off in spades...
I used to only use it to break into industrial sites and poorly secured residential buildings, but this was a world where nobody could build a digital lock, and where the padlocks they did use were cheap garbage without any effective anti-tampering features.
I ducked through the door and closed it behind me. I had to be mindful of the windows that looked into the two-story building on all sides. Someone could easily see my silhouette moving against the light backdrop. There was a musty, papery smell in the air.
The most important-looking desk was my target. There were only a handful to rifle through. The majority of the floor space was dominated by large shelves, stuffed to bursting with sealed letters and recently delivered packages. I didn’t have time to admire the controlled chaos of the office. They would expect me back at the croquet match soon enough.
Lucky number three was the desk where I struck gold. There were still pieces of correspondence strewn out across it, including a memo handwritten in ink and sealed with a purple mark. It came from one of the Royal Guard.
‘The commander would like to request a list of every individual who issued a missive to the post office in the past week,’ it read. The rest was dry technicalities about who they should pass the information onto when it was done, and an order to lock the place down so they could investigate. Nobody was getting their mail until the threat was taken care of.
So, they thought that one of the family on the inside had helped smuggle the packages inside. Farnham took them from the office by social engineering one of the posties into handing them over, presumably by pretending to be under their orders, and then dropped them inside of the palace for the assassin to utilise.
Farnham could easily squeal on the family member who did it. He would have been given the missive in person, and the guard could have asked them if he was really working for them as a personal attendant. Why hadn’t he? Was it a counterfeit? Did he break into their office and seal the damn letter himself?
Ambiguity like that was where we revelled. A flat denial from the Van Walser responsible would put a hard stop to any further questions. They could deploy any number of excuses to make the guards second-guess themselves.
I kept moving through whatever notes I could find. There was a memo-pad underneath the pile which had a list of names. A little cross-referencing with the other documents was enough evidence to me that the manager had written them down, thanks to the handwriting.
Mila, Matilda, Beatrice and Greta; all women who lived in the palace. No last names were attached, but they were all Van Walsers, so it didn’t matter. I snatched the note and pocketed it, before moving all of the other papers back into position where they were before I arrived. A good memory was always helpful in jobs like these.
There was no need to push my luck. I ducked back out of the door I came in through and quickly made my way back to where Franklin was waiting.
“Any news?”
“I have some names. All noble ladies in the palace who’ve issued privacy missives to the postmaster this week. I imagine the Royal Guard will be having some pointed discussions with them about what they brought through.”
Franklin was somewhat happy to have a real lead to follow. He tucked in behind me and we headed back towards the world’s most intense croquet match. I could already hear the raised voices of Otto and Felix before we got close. My interest was piqued when I heard my name mentioned in the fray.
Franklin and I remained behind the hedgerow and listened in on the argument that was happening on the other side. It didn’t take a genius to infer what they were talking about.
“Doesn’t it make sense?” Otto postured, “All of this trouble started when Maria arrived. What if she’s secretly a spy working for those assassins?”
“It doesn’t make any sense at all!” Felix replied furiously, “You are making patterns up out of whole cloth, and expecting all of us to go along with it.”
“She was skulking the corridors of the palace last night. I bet she was looking for a way to break into where the King is sleeping so they can be rid of him and put that idiot Ekkehard in charge of the estate.”
Felix wouldn’t stand for his delusions being commandeered in such a way.
“Excuse you. Maria was there to have a romantic late-night discussion with the object of her affection, that being me!”
“You’re as delusional as a Friedman!”
That was an oblique reference to an old noble family who became synonymous with overconfidence and hubris for a variety of high-profile misdeeds. People liked to say it without knowing the full context of why it became regular nomenclature.
“Me? Delusional? You’re the one posting these foolish theories about the kind lady being some kind of murderous beast! Your problem is obvious – you’ve always sought to be the one who outsmarts everyone else, yet you are so dedicated to it that you never think through what you say on the off chance that your wild guesses turn out to be correct.”
That reminded me of someone.
Franklin stared at me and whispered, “You are very talented at causing people to argue, ma’am.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose! Every time I walk into a room there’s a fifty percent chance that at least one person will accuse me of murder, or some other horrible crime, which I wasn’t involved in!”
Nothing could ever go smoothly, could it? Durandia must have been laughing her ass off at me having to deal with this shit every time she deployed me to take care of a pressing matter.
Otto scoffed, “It’s simple cause and effect. Even a moron can see that much.”
“You’re the moron. The staff changed over a few days ago! That’s dozens and dozens of new faces. They’re more likely to be a culprit than Lady Maria Walston-Carter.”
That was enough of this circus for my liking. I stepped out of my hiding place and approached the group. Otto and Felix looked terrified, worried that I’d overheard them arguing about his wild accusation of attempted murder. It’s not as if it ruined his chances of winning – none of them were in the running to start with.
“For what reason do you wear those gaunt, sheet-white faces?” I pondered, “I hope the weather hasn’t burdened you with a bout of ill health.”
Otto shook his head so quickly that his neatly combed and styled hair turned into a frizzled mess.
“Oh, no, no – no such problem here, my good lady. We appreciate your concern.”
“Very well. Would you mind catching me up on the state of your match?”