The wind sang through Evalyn’s office windows and whistled down the corridor, reaching Iris’s ears as she mopped down the length of the floorboards. Evalyn had cleared the shattered pottery, but the same could not be said for the liquid remnants of her dropped tea mug. Evalyn blamed it on fatigue, but Iris did not feel tired, at least not in the sense that she needed to rest.

A faint thumping sounded from the other side of the doorway at a rhythmic, rushed pace. It got louder, dispelling Iris’s fears that the fatigue was playing tricks on her ears as well as her hands. She moved closer to the door, pressing up against it to listen in on what she hoped was just another resident.

But the footsteps were too close; no one else lived on the fifth floor.

A note slid under the doorway, stopping at Iris’s feet. She looked down and backed away a step or two, eyeing the ripped square of paper with caution. Faint scrawl stretched from left to right, evenly spaced and allowing room for margins. The footsteps disappeared soon after.

Iris glanced down the hallway into Evalyn’s office, but she saw no indication Evalyn was expecting any mail. She crouched, her hand running down the length of her mop’s handle until she could rest it against her neck. She picked up the paper and turned it over before reading.

I want your help again; this may turn the tide.

Meet me in the Royal Parklands at 1:00 am,

and don’t tell Mrs. Hardridge.

* Harbourman

Help. Surely another fight, but against whom, she could not be sure. She was certain he had refrained from being clearer so she would at least have to meet him. But turn the tide? Perhaps it was another way they could avoid the war, a way to avoid killing Wesper.

If the blood of those lives did not have to end up on Iris’s hands, anything was worth hearing out.

She began to tear up the piece of paper, halving and quartering until it was nothing more than confetti. She strode into the archive room nearby and opened the far window, letting the paper fly out of her hands and rain on the nocturnal streets below.

“Everything all right?” Evalyn’s voice said, calling from the hallway. Iris turned around, clutching the mop tightly. She nodded sheepishly, flicking a final sliver of paper off her palm.

Evalyn squinted and tilted her head. “I did the archive yesterday; we’re all fine to go home if you’ve done the hall.”

Iris nodded. “Yeah. It’s all finished.”

“Good,” Evalyn smiled, “I’ll lock up, so after you.”

What was perhaps riskier than sneaking away from the most powerful being in the world was probably sneaking away from one’s mother. It did not help then that Iris was doing both at the same time.

The discreet purple pads under her feet crawled along the floorboards silently down the hall and into the living. The clock hanging at the end of the hall showed it was twelve-thirty in the morning, and its counting of the seconds was the only sound Iris could hear. She reached the coat stand by the door and pulled on her field jacket.

She heard a rustle, but nothing loud enough to be damning. From her many sleepless nights in the living room, waiting for her eyes to grow dreary, she had learnt that Evalyn’s sleep cycles were light. That was unless Elliot was sleeping with her; all the more reason to count her lucky stars.

She undid the latch on the door slowly, drawing out the click for as long as possible. The door did not creak normally, and on this occasion, it stayed loyal. She stepped outside, grabbing her shoes as she went.

She closed the door and locked it as slowly as she had unlocked it, turning the key millimetre by millimetre. The door locked, and she waited.

She sighed, shivers refusing to leave her limbs as she pulled on her shoes.

Iris kept an efficient pace as she walked through the city streets, keeping to sidewalks well-lit by streetlights. The Royal Parklands were a fair walk away, and waiting for the tram only made her antsy. She could not even be sure if they’d let her on. No one would want to be the one to let the ten-year-old child go missing.

Begrudgingly she turned away, heading for a nearby alleyway dark enough to hide her silver hair. She disassembled it, sending forth a spindling limb that whistled through the air and caught the rooftop. The sky’s blazing orange light never reached the rooftops, so crouching along them was always a surefire way to travel undetected.

She sped to the roof's edge, catching the tiles with her foot and leaning forward to not tumble back down. She relinquished some more hair and attached three new limbs to her back, using them to move across and between buildings without the thumping of boots on terracotta.

With each building she traversed and each gap she leapt across, her body became more and more attuned to the technique. Soon, she was chaining movements and conserving momentum, moving faster and jumping farther. The streets underneath her flew by like scenery from a train-car window, and before long, she allowed herself to enjoy the sensation a little.

The wind playing with her hair, the field jacket trailing her in a fluttering frenzy. She squinted her eyes against the rushing air, the actions becoming almost like instinct.

The break in the repeated city blocks drew nearer, and the parkland treeline blotted out her field of vision as she made her final approach. She skidded to a halt, her boots coming millimetres away from the rooftop’s edge. She looked over the ledge at the street below; well-lit but dark enough that she could get away with the drop. If she was seen, she’d just have to convince whoever saw her that they were hallucinating.

Taking a deep breath, she recalled what she had practised. Eyes firmly on the ground and stay calm enough to judge the distance from it. She stepped off, the freefall sending her heart into her mouth. Her instincts screamed at her rational mind to flail around, but Iris kept steady.

The limbs extended past her legs and slowed her movement, albeit giving her more whiplash than she intended. Her feet hit the pavement with a light tap, and she looked left and right before crossing the street, entering through one of the many gated entrances.

The gravel pathway crunched pleasantly underneath her boots, and not a pebble fell too far left or too far right. Whatever shingle she did disturb reordered itself as soon as she turned back to check for footsteps, like an invisible groundsman was following her.

Looking upwards did not seem to do her much good; the gargantuan trees were not too dissimilar to the ones in the Queen’s Forest. Unusually tall, but this time uninhabited. Their peeling bark ran undisturbed from branches of orange leaves to mighty roots drowning in a thin layer of wilting foliage. The place was awash with sleeping colours, illuminated only by fairy lights drifting throughout the forest’s chilled air. They generally continued the golden-orange theme of the city, yet some lights rebelled, expressing reds, blues, and purples.

The pathway terminated ahead, leading to a girthy avenue; its gravel was interrupted by a line of flowerbeds running through the centre. She saw a figure sitting beside a flowerbed, hunched over themselves as if waiting. A fairy light drifted past their face, and she recognised it.

“Alis.”

Alis looked up and smiled. “You came.”

“Of course I did,” Iris whined, “how’d you escape?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Admittedly, it wasn’t as easy as I expected. Getting the brass knuckles was the hardest part. After that, it was a lot of Beak magic until I got here.”

“Aren’t you going to be found—”

“They keep me in a hotel room. Guards only check every two hours, so we’ve got until three,” he said, peeling back his sleeve. “Should be done by then.”

“What should be done?” Iris asked, meeting him by the flowers and sitting down. Alis licked his lips, and his eyes wandered. He turned his body toward her and began to explain.

“I’ve received contact from the United Liberation, saying they want me to change tactics. Came across a paper hidden under my breakfast plate, saying they needed me to perform some jobs for them. If I do those, then they’ll let me join.”

A change of tactics? So late in the game?

“What do they want you to do?”

“There’s a Geverde Councillor that’s supposed to be meeting tonight with Vesmos agents for some sort of intelligence deal. They want me to get there first and stop it by any means necessary.”

A mole in the council, information that Elvera had only figured out a few days ago. Iris couldn’t understand it—a revolutionary party with better intelligence than a country? That, or even the revolution had rats inside Geverde’s government.

The institution could be replaced with a block of cheese, and no one would notice the difference.

“Why do they want me?”

"We made a good tag team last time, and it turns out they were watching.”

Iris watched Alis in silence. His face was ever so serious about it all, showing no sign that he meant any harm. What he said was what he believed in, but Iris was not sure her trust extended beyond him.

But she wanted to trust him. She wanted what was best for him, and in this case, what was best for him was what was best for Geverde. Joining the revolution could mean Alis taking the enemy fleet back to Vesmos with him. It was still one possibility of many, but she could only consider what was at stake.

What would befall her life if the cannons at the edge of those waters were to light ablaze? What she would be made to do, made to defend, made to destroy. Perhaps, it was his presence that had spurred her on into action before, and perhaps that strange magic was acting again.

“If you wait here, I’ll go get Evalyn and ask her—”

“We can’t; she has too many connections to the government. I don’t like what the revolution is doing as much as she probably won’t, but I can’t risk them getting found out.”

“Found out? Alis, moles are moles; the risk is still so big!”

“I know, I know. But until I get back to Vesmos, I need your help with this.”

Iris pursed her lips and held her head. She exhaled her stress, but it didn’t seem to lessen. What was helping a revolution with good intentions if it cost her own country? Then again, what was helping her own country at the cost of a revolution with good intentions? She had learnt in Fadaak that nothing could be so black and white. One thing always came at the expense of another.

Perhaps that’s why Evalyn no longer believed much in allegiance. She had realised that fact ten years ago.

Iris stood and began to pace, her mind working overtime yet producing no apparent answers. She had nothing to guide herself to a decision, no guardian figure to outline her objectives. It was her and only her, making decisions that could put her at odds with everything dear to her.

“What do you want to do, Iris?”

What did she want to do?

There wasn’t much, at least nothing that carried weight like Alis’s ambitions. Nothing so blindingly sincere it was comparable to Evalyn or Elliot’s life goals.

But she knew what she didn’t want to do.

She did not want to fight in a war yet. She did not want to be responsible for more sadness. She did not want such an interesting person to suffer, not on her conscience.

“Okay,” she finally said, calming her nerves as best she could. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Alis nodded, a slight smile forming at the edge of his mouth. He let out a sigh, sounding relieved. He looked up at her as if unsure how to express it. “Thank you, Iris. Thank you.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” she said, realising only after the fact how Elliot that phrase sounded. She shook her hands up and down, walking in circles as Alis stood up.

“The meeting starts in half an hour, just nearby.”

Iris curled herself up against the trunk of the tree. Being so high up was not a new experience for her, but the lack of any consistent surface to rest on still troubled her. The branch wasn’t wide enough for both of them to rest their backs, so Alis had taken a precarious position further down.

She looked down at the gardens below, although it did little for her but heighten her fidgeting. She turned her eyes past the veil of foliage and across the Royal Parkland’s borders, square at an apartment building across the street.

Its design fell in line with the buildings to its left and right, but by Alis’s word, it held far more importance. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk at the building’s entrance for any sign of movement.

“Is there an entrance on the other side?” Iris asked.

“No. I checked earlier. It’s just a back alley.”

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her head. The atmosphere had been silent for what she assumed were practical reasons. But even if the intention was to stay hidden, it didn’t make things any less uncomfortable.

She glanced at him, feet dangling and back arched forward. He looked too confident in his balance. His stare though was much less pointed than what she had expected. It was absent-minded, not the type of stare she’d hoped for in such a situation.

“I’ve caused a lot of trouble, huh.”

Iris perked up at the sudden conversation starter. “What?”

“I mean,” he began, not turning away from his objective, “me coming here has put a lot of people in trouble, hasn’t it?”

Even if comforting someone was the right thing to do, Iris could not condone false confidence. Not in someone like him, at least.

“Yeah. People are talking about war now. Evalyn was thinking about how to protect me, keep me from fighting.”

Alis nodded. “I’m sorry.”

An apology so late in the game. With such life-changing commitments already made, what use was one now?

“I doubt if putting this country through hell is worth the chance of bringing mine out of it.”

Iris let the line sink in, feeling its weight reverberate inside her heart. The fate of millions, encapsulated in a small sentence, from an even smaller entity.

“What’s your hell like?” Iris asked.

“My hell? I’ve been in the army too long to know what hell is like. But, when I stepped foot outside and into the cities, I began to see it clearer.”

“What did that hell look like?”

“A city where so many people have forgotten what to be fearful of. Forgotten that the masked men that keep them safe are there to keep them in line. Even then, generations of being herded like sheep have already bred it into their DNA. Just…I don’t know…cattle, going from one place to another. Each one gets the illusion of free choice, but both sides of the argument lead to the same loyalty to the emperor. Where…where it's normal to watch your sons and daughters shipped off to war, with a chance you’ll never see them again.”

“Where did you fit in all of that?”

“I didn’t. I found relatives—relatives in name only. They knew my family before they gave me up to the army. They were nobility, apparently. Fled when they invaded. Don’t know if they abandoned me out of love or neglect, but the fact that I had become one of Vesmos’s dogs was what I ended up hating.”

“You want your country back?”

“I don’t remember when I had one that wasn’t the Empire. Maybe I’m blindly continuing a fight that ended before I was born.”

She watched him, waiting for their eyes to meet, but they never did. She tilted her head, wondering what was swirling around in his head. Even so, she had a rough idea pieced together already.

“There was a rebel group that was trying to save a lot of people,” Iris started, recounting the story out loud. It was just as much to inform him as it was to set it straight in her own head. No matter how much she agonised over it or how many times she wrote it down, it never felt right.

“This rebel group was building an army to rescue these people from…a bad person.”

She hesitated, considering if stating Wesper’s name was a good idea. It would complicate things and divulge into matters that Alis could not come to know about, lest she herself became a mole. Even then, she did not have all the answers.

“But that group had taken hostages, innocent people from this country that wanted to go home.”

“What did you do?” Alis asked, guessing the conversation’s heading before Iris mentioned it herself. She exhaled, closing her eyes.

“I wasn’t careful enough. I saved the hostages but destroyed the army. I don’t know how many people…how many people died, but there were many more who weren’t saved because of me.”

Alis finally faced her, down-turned eyes barely meeting hers. Nothing needed saying, even if she wanted so desperately for him to say something. And eventually, he did.

“You have to choose, huh? Not based on anything logical or rational. Just pure selfish side picking.”

“I don’t want to have to pick sides, though.”

“Then why do you fight?”

His eyes finally came level with hers, glinting in the fairy light as if they were sparkling themselves. She turned away, eyes watering at the unbearable contact, voice giving out at the unbearable question.

“Because…,” she started. “Because there’s no use for me if I don’t. If I don’t pick, then all I am is dangerous. A danger with no friends that will keep me safe from people saying I’m horrible and that I shouldn’t exist.”

The conversation froze over like water in a Frostbox. Alis shuffled closer, extending a hand and resting it on one of hers. “You can’t deny that people owe you their lives.”

Iris watched his hand. It was cold—cold and foreign. The alien sensation made her heart skip a beat, and she found his eyes again, unable to wholly trust his words. She wasn’t strong enough to pick sides, not confident enough to choose who she would save and who she would condemn.

“I’m not like you or Evalyn,” she said. “I’m not someone who can choose a reason and stick to it.”

Alis smiled. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” he muttered. “What does she fight for?”

“Herself, she says. Just to protect her life and the people in it.”

“Does that involve doing whatever Geverde tells her to do?”

Iris nodded, and Alis understood. “Sounds like a gift and a curse. It must be nice, though, to have the power to fight for something only you care about. It would mean that everything, almost everything in your life is completely up to you.”

He turned away, back to the street below. “Neither humans nor Spirits can’t do that. Only gods can.”