Two trails in the sand followed his feet like half-finished snakes, the tip of his toes drawing through the fine grains, sometimes leaving divots, sometimes kicking them up and flinging them halfway down the side of the dune.
There was nothing between the mountains to his south and the ocean to his north; nothing besides the ruins of his dreams and a long, rough path carved by tyre tracks.
He’d taken it before, one of the few paths worth the risk of consistent travel. It was fast, yet still unpredictable, following the stars in a way no Spirit would ever think to. He followed those same stars again, watching the stolen cars he had once ridden with comrades cruise by him, their red tail lights like vapour trails in the night’s darkness.
Entire convoys, their black and green paint jobs obscured by darkness, well camouflaged if not for the headlights sparkling like embers lost in ash. He laughed at himself as he watched the cars go, wishing he could stick a thumb up and beg for a ride, but before his mind could even think to do so, they were already blurry specks on the horizon.
They had joined the dancing machines.
The laugh turned into a sputtering cough, warm saliva and cloudy breath escaping his mouth and taking with it precious body warmth. He’d scavenged as many pieces of clothing as he could and it still wasn’t enough. His fingers were blue, and his face had grown numb long ago. The movements of his legs were not his own, but he’d long surrendered to them.
His life was forfeit anyhow. Spending his last breath in trying to reach a city that wanted to kill him anyway was futile, but not the worst way to die. If being human meant reasoning with his death, then he would take the humiliation if it meant he could thrash like an animal until he succumbed to it.
Then, perhaps he’d see the dancing machines one more time.
Lights.
Not the ones heralding the arrival of his beloved convoys, but ones running perpendicular. Their high beams blinded him, but by the way the light spanned the horizon, he knew it was a formation of some sort rather than a column. They were sweeping the landscape, perhaps in search or something.
Their engines roared, unobstructed in such a desolate desert, audible for miles, yet he had not heard them. The convoys that now drifted into the distance had covered the sound, but now, there was nothing to distract him from the oncoming tide.
The lights arrested his movements and seized his senses. He could only stand there, shielding his eyes from the light as night suddenly turned to day and then some.
The engines stopped, worn brakes crunching and squealing as the long line came to a halt.
Sixteen lights meant eight cars.
Something moved, its partial silhouette blocking the lights directly before him—a slithering motion, translucent wisps of some kind of matter flowed before the headlights and over the drifting sand. The grain didn’t move; whatever was coming for him was weightless.
The translucent matter reared upwards, matching his height, although the man felt it was with mercy that the Spirit went no higher. It was shapeless, swirling with the will of the soft wind that pushed the dunes over the earth. The only thing that took form in the congregation of smoky, emerald matter were winding veins, branching from one strand to another in an interconnected network, keeping the apparatus in place.
“Slave.” It growled, drawing the man’s attention to a small voice box intertwined with the pulsating network. “Get in the car.”
It was the moment he expected gun barrels to point at him from all directions. Perhaps they were, but, behind blinding lights, he had no hope of seeing them. A convoy of slave wranglers drawn to news of the base’s destruction, hoping to mop up the military’s leftovers. They’d be more liberal with their choice of weapon than the military when standardisation wasn’t a concern. Those with something more lethal—or more cruel—than a bullet and barrel wouldn’t be afraid to use it.
He obliged, stepping past the headlights and keeping his head down. The lanterns directly in front of him belonged to a people-mover with a thin, canvas roof, but even then, the prospect of warmth in his dying breath was enough to excite the man even a little.
He would find a way to end his own life before he was ever made to work under the foot of a Spirit again.
“They’ve taken the case you refused,” Marie reported over the phone, hiding her disappointment behind the wire and receiver. “Won’t be back for a while, and, here’s the kicker, the Queen is going with them.”
“Trailing six feet of blue silk?”
“No. Put herself in a hairpiece. I think she wants to be in Iris’s hair. My bet is she won’t get much higher than her jacket collar.”
Colte answered with an agonising creak of his worn desk chair. The sun’s rays had tried—and failed—to weasel him out of the shade while he shuffled to follow the shadows.
“They’ll be all right, especially with the Queen there. I’d have less chance of dying to a firing squad than I would against those three all at once.”
“You know that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I know,” he said, turning his back to glance outside the window. The shadows had moved to point east, if only barely. He checked the clock ticking on the far wall. “But I’m doing my part in all this. Can’t stop now, especially when I’ve finally got something.”
Half past one. He hadn’t been given a time, only a date to receive a call from a caller whose situation was temperamental, to say the least. Missing it meant waiting who knew how long for another chance, assuming rapport hadn’t fallen through.
“Has that something gotten back to you yet?” Marie asked.
“No, not yet. Been waiting since twelve.”
“So an hour and a half? Can’t expect them to—”
“AM. Twelve AM.”
“Right. Look I’m not exactly free at the moment myself, I just called to let you know about those two. I don’t want to hog up your line much longer if that’s the case.”
“No worry, this is my Aether line phone. I’ve got my good old wire freed up for when they call me.”
He heard her muffled, exasperated sigh whisper through the small speaker. “All right…this lead then. How long do you think it’ll take you to exhaust?”
It was Colte’s turn to sigh. He didn’t want to think about it himself; he’d gotten too used to abstaining from fieldwork. “A week if things move quickly, maybe longer. Contact with everyone might be limited.”
When the network failed to get him anywhere or had simply been exhausted, new leads, new contacts, and new risks were needed to close in on an answer, a target, a goal.
“For the foreseeable future, I won’t be living as Liam Colte.”
“Then let’s celebrate your return to it. Sound good?”
Colte paused at her sudden invite. He was planning to do exactly that, with prior warning or without.
“Sounds good,” he said, choosing to say something simple lest the moment fall apart.
But his contact decided to ignore his best efforts.
“Sounds like you’ve got your lead. Good luck,” she said, signing off. The line faded in his ear, Aether twine unfurling into the wind until another ring finally scattered the delicate pieces.
“Hello?” he said, picking up the receiver with his off-hand as the other hung up the Aether line.
“This Mr Colte?” said a whisper, crackling over the line.
“Yes, this is Colte.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got yer meetin’ like I asked Mr Colte. I got yer meetin’ but I still can’t help but ask if you’d just…reconsider?”
Colte kept his objections silent. The man had a jitter, that was a no factor. Tolerable enough if he could roll with the punches. But he’d explained enough, and enough times at that.
His mouth shut, his eyebrow twitching, he pressed on. “No, unfortunately, I can’t and that’s final, Mr Jones. I already have the payment ready, it’s been shipped off, so I’ll need the details for this meeting right now or that money is turning right back around.”
“All right Mr Colte! I understand just…I think you’re underestimating them is all. Don’t want you to go through no trouble.”
“Thank you, Mr Jones. The details please.”
“Details, yeah. Yeah, I got them on me spare me a moment will ya.”
He heard a rattle as Mr Jones set the receiver down, and in the ensuing silence came incessant rustling at the behest of shaking hands looking for a note of some kind.
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Colte closed his eyes, searching—albeit silently—for any patience left in himself, shoring up a modicum that would see him through one final phone call.
“Just as you said Mr Colte, gave ‘em an alias, no mention you was in Geverde either. Put you as a fella out of Trepedite, just like you asked. Are you ready for the address Mr Colte, I won’t repeat it twice Mr Colte I can assure you that.”
“Yes, I am,” he said, grabbing a pen and paper and keeping the groan from escaping his lips.
“Eighteen slash two three two, Farakeep Street, Third Street, Trepedite. It’s downtown. Slums.”
“Loud and clear, Mr Jones, loud and clear. The money will arrive shortly. Please be prompt in collecting it, we don’t want it getting lost.”
“I certainly will Mr. Colte, I certainly will. Now, you keep your head on your shoulders Mr Colte and I hope to hear from you again. And not just because of the easy dosh I mean it Mr Colte.”
“Jolly,” he replied, promptly hanging up and heaving a sigh that tore the frustration from his lungs and expelled it into the air, marking an end to a consecutive thirteen painful hours.
The iron gates closed behind him, the squealing of their iron hinges preceding the weighty clunk of the locks closing shut. A full stop to the first half of the city, the side of the coin that was the epitome of human greed and excess: its logical conclusion, as far as current progress allowed.
In the garden Provenance walked through, Spirit Trees sprang in excess, and the silent hum of a magic shield overhead did not go by him unnoticed. Grey reigned supreme here, and the will that drove their oppressive spear was—to its very core—human, but the spear itself was coated in Aether.
A door awaited him at the gravel path's terminus, with two armed guards on either side. Armed was unfortunately an understatement.
Clad in medieval-style plate armour, blue lines ran down the metal like a pattern-reader, quietly circulating magic to every extremity like the flow of blood. Its design philosophy was ancient but purely aesthetic, the modern implements still present in portable radios and sidearms, albeit tucked away underneath cloth bearing the imperial insignia. Jet black, but that went without saying. Any equivalent of the Sidosian 42nd Division’s armour was reason to panic, but especially so when the inch-thick steel was substituted for layers and layers of raw power.
It wasn’t as though Provenance frequented the capital, but even so, their developments in weaponry were too fast to ignore. The rail lines in and out of the city now levitated entire trains like the cars in Excala, and the artillery cannons positioned around the administration compound like thorns on a rose were of new make too. Perhaps the empire had subdued another Higher Order Spirit and replicated its magic; it was a decent point of conversation primed for his upcoming meeting.
“State your business,” the left guard announced, hand on the hilt of an upturned longsword sword, similarly radiating magic.
Provenance opened his passport and showed it to the same guard. Their helmet remained motionless, but clearly, the eyes shrouded in shadow had seen all they needed to.
“Proceed,” the guard then stated, which would also be his final word on the matter. Provenance tucked his passport away in his breast pocket and reached for the door handle, hesitating as his hand touched the doorknob. Even through the thick layers of his suit, he recognised the Aether. Out of sheer exposure to the phenomenon, he knew it was Spacehopper magic.
It's magic, yes, but the Spirit itself was long disposed of. Even if he cared little for taboo, what was unthinkable to the average Geverdian managed to stall him, even for a second.
He opened the door and stepped through, watching as a ceiling plastered itself over the blue sky overhead, and four brick walls—from the scaffolding to the wallpaper—shut out the forest around him. Next came the marble floor and enough exotic furnishing to build an entire estate outright—money woven into the curtains and carpets, the culmination of thousands of years of craftsmanship into each table leg and cushion seat and cabinet hinge.
Such was the wealth of the Imperial family, so much treasure for a temporary residence in a city they rarely visited in person.
Tastefully sparse, little stood between him and the individual seated at the far end of the room. Provenance watched her, poised in front of the window as a golden glow streamed through the glass, the resulting halo her literal mandate from heaven.
Or close enough to it.
Provenance bowed. “Empress Fanreth,” he said.
The woman’s delicate features barely acknowledged him, but her hands, silhouetted against the light, beckoned him across the embroidered mauve carpet. He stepped closer, past a low table of artisan finger foods and drapes of richly dyed silk, holding his polite smile and straight posture.
The Empress finally turned, now that she was in full view. Her eyes scoured him like a hawk, scrutinising him from top to bottom, and yet he felt no offence in her doing so. She was too beautiful.
“Life has surely treated you quite poorly,” she said, brushing a hand over her lap while a silken, deeply embroidered sleeve trailed behind it. Like the guards outside her door, her body never moved unnecessarily. The chains of emerald hanging from her hair stick never swayed, and Provenance found not a single smudge on her makeup. Refined to a sharp edge, but for high society rather than combat.
“I make do as always, Your Highness.”
“Surely. Sit.”
Provenance obliged, taking the seat opposite the Empress as she turned back to the window.
One of the spires atop the administration complex. From such a point, one was no match for the tallest of the city’s structures, but the view remained sublime in its own way, rendering the mass of humans as the anarchic termite mound it functioned as.
The sheer scale of it all sealed Provenance’s mouth shut as he drank in the sight before him, a sinking feeling growing in his gut.
“Are you any closer to your dream yet?” the Empress asked.
“Yes. I can say that with confidence.”
“And where does this city fit in that dream of yours?”
He kept his eyes on the skyline, watching as splendour regressed to squalor the further he went down. Fighting for scraps at the lower levels, unable to count ones days in advance lest their hands stopped working the conveyor belt. So far removed, they sat like Gods atop the world, with no power to change it.
Utterly helpless, from very top to very bottom.
“It doesn’t,” he said. “I can say the same for any city.”
The Empress smirked, resting her hands on her lap and turning towards him. “It reassures me to no end to know you have not changed.”
“And have you, Empress?”
“Hardly,” she sighed, standing. “My husband’s forefathers built this empire on the bodies of thousands. If it comes down to me, I will not see those sacrifices be in vain.”
“Which is where I come into play,” he said, standing up to match her, hands by his side, shoulders firm. “What is it you ask of me this time?”
The woman stared into the abyss, rehearsing her words in her head before she spoke them so there was never a single flaw in her speech. Practiced, measured, cards close to her impeccably styled collar.
“Geverde and Sidos’s position amongst the middling nations continues to grow. Thanks to your people, recent events have stifled their progress. The benefits to my husband’s imperium aside, many nations hold similar views to us.”
She turned to him, her movements controlling the laws of inertia itself, as each piece of her outfit turned with grace. “Yet they still buy the Alliance’s Higher Order Armour, and day by day, it becomes more advanced. Their influence grows, even without considering their monopoly on the Aether Infused.”
“I am aware, Your Majesty. They have indeed played their hand well.”
She nodded, continuing. “Vesmos may have become the most powerful player in the lands between Human and Spirit country, but we have not lost sight of what we are.”
“An outpost for the human species. His Majesty told me as much when I first met him.”
The imposing man had treated him kindly, but not without a gleam in his eye. He knew what Provenance was capable of, and was yet unafraid to meet him in person. It was that sort of supreme confidence, belief in the folly of man that convinced Provenance that he would be an invaluable agent of chaos.
And his wife, whether terrified of losing her status or clawing for the admiration of the man with heavenly blessing, did his bidding like a dog. Did so with gusto, with glee in every stride, every word.
Provenance could never quite take her seriously.
She nodded, approving his assessment. “Vesmos could hold its own on all fronts for a while, but without support from the motherland, it would fall in time. It has always been this way, and we have fought ferociously to maintain the status quo.”
And so the subjugation of peoples was overlooked as long as the slaughter of Spirits continued. Subjugation not for subjugation’s sake, but to maintain order, so the machine could keep churning.
“And you are afraid this support may be…divided amongst your empire and the Alliance?”
“Vesmos’s ultimate goal is the eradication of Spirits wherever possible, to leave a habitable world for our kind. If the matter was simply a division in support to further the greater good, then our empire would adapt.”
With a great deal of spite, surely. Power was a drug, hard for a human to abdicate, let alone a society birthed from their greed.
“But for power to fall into the hands of a hermit kingdom,” the Empress said, the smallest hint of spite leaking into her voice. “People so wrapped up in themselves that they don’t have the slightest hint of how the world works. One half run by a Spirit at that.”
The Empress watched his smile, and he maintained it effortlessly.
“Is this the position of the Imperial family, Your Majesty?” he asked.
“It is, otherwise I would not include it in my briefing.”
“Is that what drove your Air Force to send that spy plane over Sidos?”
The Empress pressed her lips together, sensing the critique in his question, no doubt. “The actions taken by the Air Force were hasty, yes,” she said, leaving the conversation at that. Provenance pushed the issue no further. For his own machinations, it had worked out well enough, but they had squandered his gift—that fact could not be overlooked.
“Then let us pray they have learnt their lesson,” he replied, guessing that whoever was in charge no longer had a head to learn the lesson with.
“I would like to take a different approach instead,” the Empress ventured. “My husband has expressed interest in keeping you on…a retainer, so to speak.”
“You wish to keep me in the capital?”
“You will be permitted to continue with your business as you have, but we are in the midst of preparing for something unprecedented, and we require all the help we can muster.”
Provenance’s smile broke, first into an awkward chuckle he could not quite control, then into a growing show of unease. “I am not ‘help’, Your Majesty. Our relationship—”
“Our relationship is whatever I decide it is, given the right incentives.”
Provenance openly grimaced, grinding his teeth at the thought of it. “And what would those be, Your Majesty?”
“Backing, in short. More liberal access to our resources: say the word, and my husband will get it done within reason. Funding, as I know your plans live and die by faith and favours. Whatever else you desire can be settled in the fine print.”
“And in return?”
The Empress smiled. “We ask the same of you. We ask that the network which works for you will work for us as well, and those…brilliant talents of yours be put to use in furthering our common goal.”
Provenance took a step forward, shoes slowly crushing the velvety carpet underneath. “We do not have a common goal, Your Majesty. The path that leads there may follow similar routes, but make no mistake. I do not share such shortsighted desires.”
Her Majesty glared at him, ever defiant, the glimmer in her eyes an inferior replication of her husbands, but nonetheless spoke of unending confidence. The eyes of someone who had never heard the word ‘no’.
“Your fairytale still enraptures you, does it Provenance? All those promises, those…spiteful wishes for a world that will never exist.”
The Empress sat in her tower, watching the days go by underneath her as ants scurried from speck to speck. ‘It’s inevitable’. ‘It’s how it will always be’.
It was true. All of it was true. The assessment of those who could see it from the top down. But for every one of those ants...
“To be enraptured by it is to live.”
“And to know it isn’t true is to survive.”
Their differences were inconsolable, but business was business. Provenance could walk out of the door at that very moment, but they would find him eventually.
“The armour those guards wear outside,” the Empress started. “Defensive Aether is woven into the very fabric. Of course, they do not ‘see’ per se, and can’t make eye contact with you. In case you…felt there’d be no consequences for refusing us.”
Provenance kept his eyes trained on the Empress, suppressing a rage that festered in his gut. Conducting his business from the capital was possible, yes, in-betweens were a significant factor in how he operated. But ultimately, timelines would lengthen, leads would lose their reliability and his network would lose a face to rely upon.
Yet the benefits could not be ignored, either.
“I shall give you the night to think about it. This can be your room, it’ll be more suitable for habitation by nightfall.”