O Holy of Holies
Light us with Your Desire
Oh Holy of Holies
Recreate us in Your Fires
Spring 45 (Side B)
1540 Conclave Square had its perks. Not pay, admittedly. That was still pegged to the old rates! No, the real perks depended on a bit of entrepreneurial spirit.
“I raise you this…Azure turquoise brooch.”
“They sell those for a copper down south. Put something valuable down.”
“Fine. Silver hair clip!”
“Bah! Barely worth the ante, but let’s go.”
“Not my fault the pickings reek! Even that Azure kid came in pre-skint.”
“You damn well know Margaret fleeces the best stuff herself.”
“Tch! Margaret gets the goods, and Hill gets the goods if you catch my drift.”
Their laughter echoed through the cells, a pitiless and black cackle.
Outside this place, each guard had a family; had children; held respectable and esteemed positions in the community.
Here, they were Jim, John, and Joe – shift names that set them free.
Jim and Joe glanced up from their game of cards as the third member of their shift returned down the elevator with his arms full of wine.
“Finally! Some decent stuff!” Jim congratulated. “What’s the occasion?”
“Deacon party. Seems they’re in high spirits!” John smirked as he laid his booty on the table. “Keep it to a glass each for now.”
Both recoiled.
“Oh, sod off!”
“I can hold my liquor better than you!”
John raised an eyebrow. “Unless you lot would like to see Mister Hill in his professional capacity.”
Like the three J’s, Mister Hill was a shift name. There was always a Hill downstairs.
But no matter which Hill held the title, they all enjoyed the particulars of their work.
Though Jim and Joe complained under their breath, they opened only a single bottle of wine. The rest were quietly laid to divided between their personal lockers.
“Let us toast,” John advised.
“To the Holy Receivership!” Jim agreed.
“And our dear Inquisition!” Joe added.
And to the day when those venereal parasites called Houses finally disappear
They tipped drinks to the end of noble rot and heresy.
***
Horace Manwell twitched. Eyes unfocused, his hand squeezed and released his swollen leg over and over. Sweat beaded his forehead, and the flesh around his knee bulged outwards like a balloon against his pants.
He’s not going to make it another day, Valkyrie thought.
She needed more rest.
She needed more practice.
But she looked at Manwell, groaning with every other breath, and she felt the weight of Time.
People down here didn’t get a casket. Didn’t get a funeral. They simply ceased to exist.
Now or never, Rie.
Wish us luck.
***
“Alright, alright! That’s enough!” John shook his head, jabbing a finger at the second bottle of wine that had mysteriously reappeared. “We’ve a job to do! Finish the counts already!”
Listing slightly, Joe rose and shuffled down the hall. He knocked his club on every right cell, reached the elevator, and turned to count back towards his game of cards.
Halfway, he paused at an empty cell – the one across from Horace Manwell.
Joe squinted a moment. Then scoffed.
“No time for that, lass,” he warned the cell. “We’ve an ice-cold hose that can reach every crevice, and it won’t leave a mark come tomorrow.”
He waited.
“We’ll take your clothes and your bedsheet. Cuff your ankles to your bed and let everyone get a good look.”
No answer. He squinted, but he could not spot hide nor hair of the lass. Then again, she was a slip of a girl, and he had seen desperate prisoners manage all manner of stunts. Couple months ago, one crawled up on the ceiling and dropped on Jim!
“I warned you.” Shrugging, Joe whistled for his fellows.
The other two groused, abandoning their wine and card game.
“What’s the problem?” John demanded.
“Our 13-C is playing hide and seek.”
“They never learn…”
Jim arrived with a heavy flashlight and John with the keys. Jim swept the light back and forth, illuminating the cell in a long sweep.
“Get the roof too,” John remarked.
Craning their necks, they spotted nothing.
“This is a new one,” Joe muttered into his stubble, baffled. “Should I get the hose?”
John scowled. Snatching the club from Joe, he rattled the bars. “Pop out, girl! We’ve plenty of experience putting brats in their place.”
The empty cell defied them.
“She wants to do it the hard way,” John decided. “Pull her out.”
Joe accepted the club; Jim took the keys; and John stepped back to cover the hall. Then Jim unlocked the cell and dragged the door back while Joe covered him with the club.
Well-rehearsed standard procedure.
Joe with the club stepped into the cell; Jim handed the keys back to John and trailed after.
They stopped in the middle of the empty cell and scratched their heads.
“Looking for someone?” sang out a girl from behind John.
The keys in his hands lurched away. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on the keyring and yanked inwards to teach this brat–
But as he turned, he beheld a hallway of faces. Hundreds of them, blackened and bruised, sullen and hopeless; all the passengers his dread ferry had ushered into the earth, never to be seen again. They stared at him, unblinking, unflinching, roaring with the silence of their judgement…
…and John stumbled backwards into the cell, the keys lost and his head with the quiet voice of a conscience he had long thought strangled.
Valkyrie triumphantly heaved the cell closed. “You thick donkeys really–”
Jim hurled himself against the bars, grasping for her throat.
The girl flinched away, and he came away with a tuft of hair.
“Stormmother’s tit!” she yelped, backpedaling with the keys clutched tight as a talisman.
Jim strained for her, screaming invectives. Joe joined in, yanking on the cell door for any sign of weakness.
John, meanwhile, shook his head against a sudden nausea deeper than the wine. He suddenly felt old, worn and weighted, and sank to the bed with his head almost to his knees.
How had he misjudged the hall so badly?
Was he not a loyal son of Fire?
Why was his chest so tight with this foul guilt?
“I was thinking about letting you louts go after this,” the girl muttered, “but not if you’re gonna threaten me like a–”
Her head tilted, listening to an unseen advisor.
“I’m not taunting them! I’m pointing out that threats of violence are not…”
Then she huffed.
“Fine, fine. We’ll do it your way…”
Valkyrie offered a little wave and hurried to release all the prisoners.
Jim kept shouting and pounding.
Soon Joe joined John on the bed.
“When’s Margaret due?” he whispered.
“Half an hour, give or take,” John grunted.
“She’s gonna be livid…”
John didn’t bother to reply.
Letting a prisoner slip came with a hefty beating at the best. The entire floor? They’d be lucky to leave by the public elevator.
***
To Valkyrie’s bafflement, two of the prisoners refused to leave their cells. They huddled in their beds, refusing to meet her eyes and mumbling about the punishment for attempted escape.
Flickers of silver fire played across Valkyrie’s fingertips as she considered shifting them out with a trick of the Light…
They must choose their own path, Rie whispered.
They might not make it out of here alive!
Are we their master?
The question rattled around in her head, and Valkyrie finally stepped back from the open doors. I’d be a pathetic master.
Then leave the cells open and let them choose.
“Elevator’s locked!” shouted one of the men from the guard station.
“If you change your mind, we’re here for you,” she whispered to the stragglers. Louder, she called, “Coming!”
Why do they expect me to have the answer! They’re twice my age!
Rie ignored that whine. Was she really going to have her overzealous guardian whispering like an aunt in her head for the rest of her life?
Shaking her head, Valkyrie hurried to the guard station. She swept her gaze across the eight people now freed, the guard’s table, the wine, the lockers, and the blank face of the elevator.
“No other keys,” one of the men said, arms deep in the lockers. “What’s your next trick, 13-C?”
She suppressed the urge to shout, How would I know?!
“We could try the call button?” someone suggested.
“We’re in no shape for a fight,” she muttered, trying not to look at Horace Manwell.
He moaned with every movement, only able to make it this far thanks to a helping hand from a tall Deepbloom woman.
Could this new power of hers mute sound? If she tried and found herself wrong…
Catching her gaze, the woman spoke with Jungle accent heavy on her tongue. “Call me Abigail. I will look after your accountant.”
She was deep-tanned, black haired, and had a scar across her left ear. She was also the only other person standing straight in this thrice-damned prison despite her heavy bruising.
“I’m…in no shape to…” Horace wheezed.
“Well, good thing Abigail can carry you then!” Valkyrie snapped.
One of the men rose from the elevator, shaking his head. He held up the stolen keyring. “No match.”
“Then John must still have it,” Valkyrie answered.
Which meant they’d have to open the cell and subdue three large, angry wardens to get it.
She glanced across this bedraggled group. Everyone except Little Miss 13-C sported significant injuries. Most of her new companions limped, coughed, or groaned with every movement. Given how fast the group tore through the deacon leftovers, most were shy on proper meals as well.
Even eight on three, she was not sure they would win that melee.
Gritting her teeth, Valkyrie stepped around the group and knelt at the elevator. Squinting, she examined the keyhole…
“Got a witch trick for this, girl?” the first man asked.
“No, but this looks like a Nickel Trilock three-ten…” She ran a finger along the lock’s seam. “Anybody have some hair pins?”
Abigail ordered, “Find her hair pins!”
The men leaped to the task.
How very odd for her words to become orders.
For those orders to be obeyed.
A new mantle settling across her shoulders, heavy and strange.
After a bit of scrounging, the group provided her a heap of hair pins, barrettes, combs, and brushes, and she tried very hard not to think about the past owners of all those objects.
These guards grew rich off the jewelry of the dead…
“Pendant for luck?” Abigail dangled an Azure pendant by her head.
“If I was lucky, the Tempest would have answered my call,” Valkyrie shot back. First thing I tried soon as I could talk again!
Shrugging, the Jungle woman dropped the pendant back on the table.
“Talk to the two still in their cells. See you can convince them to come.”
Abigail nodded and strode away for a chat.
Settling on her knees at eye level with her opponent, Valkyrie took a deep breath and put what had been a little girl’s hobby to a real test.
Nickel Trilock three-ten…highest she had managed in the loft was a two-eighty…her fingers slipped, again and again…she felt the combs catch her nails and draw blood…
Faerie fire useless against uncaring stone.
She wanted to scream as she lost her grip and snapped a precious hair pin.
Let our voice rise in Song not through prayer but deed, Rie offered, the calm in her storm.
Having no idea what that meant, Valkyrie just focused on measured breathing. Counting with her pulse until her heart grew louder than the numbers. Letting the feeling return to her fingertips.
Then, just when the men started to mumble that this witch had lost her last marbles, she leaned forward and popped the lock in three more twists.
The hall burst into cheers so loud she jumped out of her socks. Whirling, she found the entire party staring over her shoulder – even the two who had stayed in their cells before!
Abigail smirked from the back.
Ten people, their fates now riding on me. Might as well make it a performance. Like my dance instructors would say – never let them see you sweat!
“Ground floor, anyone?” she sang, summoning a grin.
“And what’s gonna be the witch trick for the guards there?” one of the men rumbled.
“I’ll play them my fire and you all sneak by.”
The man glanced at Mister Manwell.
“You. All.”
All or nothing. Nobody left behind.
Rie thrummed warmly in her breast – the warm breeze to her sails.
“Pile in.”
Eleven people squeezed into an elevator meant for five. Tight enough that Valkyrie felt the ribs of the man next to her, and the ripe fragrance of unwashed bodies swiftly stank up the box car.
“I…I need a little room up front,” she apologized, squeezing forward.
Reaching the front, she claimed enough space to sway side to side like a singer preparing her duet.
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They must think me mad!
Are they incorrect? asked the voice in her head.
It’s not mad if it works!
“Hands together, everyone!”
They all linked hands.
“And if the spell goes south…book it, okay?”
A statement of little confidence, admittedly, but she preferred a little doubt. She had plenty herself!
How far will this strange fae fire take us before it claims me?
“Follow my lead.”
The elevator dinged, and Valkyrie stepped bravely out into the bright hall. The dazzle of afternoon sunlight stunned her senses, and she stuttered on the first notes of her power!
A dozen constables stared at the crammed elevator, two of them with rifles on their backs.
Sing, encouraged her guardian.
So she did.
Chains rattle ‘cross heavy hearts
Guilty men done bowed their heads
They’ve got the weight
The weight of what they done
The faerie fire sparked around her. Caught and billowed outwards, a dream and an illusion weaving around bureaucrat eyes. The weight of their minds hit her shoulders like sandbags, and she strained for the next stanza.
Faerie fire – a trickster’s tool.
The more she asked her witnesses to forgive, the greater her debt.
Credulity became her currency – may these fools be eager to believe the sight of the downtrodden in chains!
Fire knows what man won’t say
Fire comes for what man must pay
Chains rattle
Judgment song, judgement song
Let them witness a constable woman…perhaps a little short…leading her gang of convicts to their just punishment.
Hells, the bitterness near choked her – to exult the merciless machine!
But the chains rattled from their wrists to the satisfaction of those present.
Flickers of faerie fire winding like the blindfold of Grace around self-righteous eyes.
They see only what serves their purposes, Rie mourned softly.
Valkyrie led them towards the processing gate.
When that rope sways low
And that chain hangs still
Then we’ll show our sons
Don’t you be no guilty men
A constable opened it for them.
Mister Manwell moaned, and she wove that moan into the rattling shakes. She felt like a river pouring off a cliff, dumping everything forth until her beds went dry to buy a few more steps…
Through the gate, into open receiving. Ahead, the bay where the constables unloaded, currently home to three waiting wagons. A short walk up the slope and the freedom of the Conclave square!
Valkyrie stopped at the bay, turning to sing as the last of her refugees approached. To her eyes, both visions warred: escaped prisoners and doomed convicts, overlaid in the same space, and the conflicting visions threatened to split her head.
As she repeated that sour refrain, a serious problem swung into view.
“What are you standing around for?” snapped Margaret, rounding the corner with a box of papers tucked under her arm. “What witless lout struck you between the eyes now?!”
That old crone locked eyes with Valkyrie.
There are no prisoner transfers scheduled before ninth bell tonight.
Disbelief crashed into the girl like a wave, and her faerie fire flickered in panic.
Oh, hells!
Abandoning the dirge, Valkyrie instead sang, “It is ninth bell!”
Her faerie fire surged, throwing a shadow across the afternoon light. It demanded more from her – demanded an ocean of her river…
The further I sing from what they expect…
“She’s wavering!” one of the men hissed.
“Run for it!”
“Ninth bell and the prisoners long gone!” she sang into the hungry void, discovering the limits of a power born from desire on the fly.
Even sleeping minds rejected the twist in this song.
Why am I still here? Didn’t my shift end three bells back?
If its that late, where’s Johnson with the…
Night already? But we haven’t finished the…
Margaret dropped the box of papers and raised her hand to sketch the three rings of the ward of Fire, evoking an opposing dream.
Valkyrie appreciated the irony. After all, to onlookers, it would appear the woman banished an enchantment by invoking Aure. Sure, the truth was that any disbelief would work just as well, but…
More immediately, however, she focused on a last-ditch effort.
You want a war of heresy. Fine, have some heresy!
She drew her faerie fire inwards with a breath and sang out, “Witch.”
Drawing the image of their dreaded enemy, sallow skinned and wicked, to step forward and offer battle against Margaret’s faith.
Then, remembering fragments of Mirielle’s shadow dance, she let the witch step forward while she remained.
Like falling off the back of a wagon, nothing but the least important bit of luggage.
Stumbling back, she almost toppled off the bay.
Abigail caught her. “Time to go.”
“I-it very much is,” she rasped, head swimming.
Abigail heaved her over the lip of the loading dock and into the back of the wagon. Mister Manwell rested in the bed, barely conscious, and there was no sign of the other prisoners.
Good luck, guys. Nice knowing you.
Abigail called to the horse now attached to the wagon, and they trotted up the ramp.
The last Valkyrie saw of her illusion below was a storybook vision: constables arrayed against an evil witch, guns drawn and prayers triumphant…
Their desire for victory feeding the faerie fire after her own strength had run out.
Their own belief feeds it. What dragons might be conjured of such…
“This power…is dangerous…” she mumbled.
Yes, Rie agreed.
“Can we hurry it up?” the girl asked Abigail, taking deep breaths to steady herself as the wagon crested the ramp.
“If we run, they take us.”
Slumping into the wagon, Valkyrie caught sight of the free clouds for the first time in days.
The first time since her eyes opened.
Rebirth by fire in the dark. Wasn’t that what the Aurens so craved?
As she recovered, the Conclave Square rang with its usual crowds. Vendors shouted their street food; the faithful led a prayer; and horse hooves clattered on the cobblestones.
How many of them cheer for what Angela Cecille does in the basements beneath their feet?
She laid back, eyes unfocused, and drifted with the clouds. Maybe now…
“Hells,” Abigail whispered.
“Oh gods, what now?”
“Constables.”
Heavy voices rang out across the square, demanding everyone present attend. “Foul criminals have escaped justice, and…”
The Verdant woman angled her stolen wagon away, but the set of her jaw bespoke serious trouble.
“You got more in you, lass?”
Valkyrie tried to rise and suffered vertigo like she’d jumped off a cliff.
“That’s a no. Why do you witches always go soggy so quick?”
She who Sings pays with flesh, Rie intoned. A good price; efficient and self-evident.
It’s a problem right now! I can’t even stand up!
Would you prefer to pay with your wits? Find your spark grown dimmer by each Art until one day you realize yourself diminished?
Valkyrie sobered before that thought. She’d met drunks like that, sodden until they stumbled like dying elk, and wondered what brilliant men had sank into those cups.
In the gap between her thoughts, an odd impression bubbled up. Complex, shimmering, a subtle bead…
Power must needs be paid
Not for cruelty nor toll of high or low
Power is change is movement is action
Equal opposite overcoming reaction
Energy input requires expenditure
The same price as a boulder rolled uphill
Spirit and flesh equal weight
The foreign thought left her stunned, and the sensation vanished as quickly as it had come.
Like a stray note from a distant flute; like a cosmic ray flickering a lightbulb…
The Chorus…?
And why did she feel the faintest hint of guilt from Rie?
Apologies, her guardian reluctantly confirmed. This new balance is…difficult…
Abigail interrupted to announce, “We’re spotted.”
She tightened her grip on the reigns, ready to bolt.
Then some old woman started shouting – and shots rang out!
“The hells is that?!” Valkyrie muttered.
“Don’t know, but I’m not sticking around!” Abigail answered, snapping the horse to speed.
The wagon bucked, and Valkyrie pushed past her nausea to grab Mister Manwell against the jostling.
Behind them, the commotion drew the constables away wonderfully.
***
Betha led those louts on a merry chase.
Honestly, she hadn’t thought she had this kind of spunk still in her!
The first shots had just been to buy the Valkyrie that crucial moment.
The rest? Well, she did enjoy shooting constables.
“You lily white bastards are always so brave when nobody’s fighting back!” she’d jeered somewhere in there.
But one of the constables had winged her in the shoulder in the narrow alleys, and her ancient bones couldn’t handle this mule of a rifle with one hand.
Instead, she’d staggered to this dingy dead end at the back of an alley and sagged to a seat.
Head swimming, shoulder aching, blood everywhere.
She sighted the rifle on her knee, listening to the calls of the constables drawing nearer.
“Gonna give the first conehead around that corner a surprise,” she assured herself.
As her gaze wobbled and her thoughts fought to string together, her eyes drifted to a dirty lump among the refuse.
Miss Apple, that natty-eared old donkey, here to witness her at the end.
Betha laughed. “You’re gonna grow up to be a fine woman, Lethe.”
Shouting growing nearer.
Finger on the trigger.
“And then, one day, you’ll understand.”
The adults?
We’re just doing what has to be done
What’s the best
You’ll see
***
Abigail steered them straight north to the Briarwood fence, and Valkyrie snapped back from a thoughtless daze at the rumble of heavy engines.
“Briarwood patrols,” the Verdant woman reassured.
Is that really all that reassuring?
Valkyrie bit her lip and kept low.
The army trucks rumbled past on the opposite side of the barbed wire, rocking on every pothole, and honked their horns like baseball stars on the prowl as they passed the constable wagon.
Peeking as the dust washed over them, Valkyrie remarked, “That driver barely looked older than me.”
“Army boys are still dangerous over short distances,” Abigail cautioned. “…though they sell good metal.”
“Good metal…from where?”
The Verdant woman smiled, pointing across the fence towards distant warehouses. “They are paid poorly. They find another way. Same as Sevensborough.”
A wave of sympathy rolled over Valkyrie. She had never stopped to consider the plight of an infantry man in a country so devoted to its naval exploits that it had consumed its natural forests in the name of shipping timber.
“Like Sevensborough…” she wondered. “Just on the other side of the fence…”
Again, she shuddered against the cruelty that could fester in Malkuth. If the Conclave called on the military to enforce order, then the unwanted sons of Fire would fight and die against the unwanted daughters of the Waters.
The Song resounds with many such tragedies, Rie offered.
Why? Valkyrie wondered.
Her guardian offered no answer.
She shifted, aching, and laid her hand on the rough floor of the cart.
The wood warm and sticky with Mister Manwell’s blood.
Her mind kicked back into focus. “Abigail, where ae we headed?”
“Out of town.”
“Mister Manwell needs help!”
The Verdant woman nodded. “He must be strong.”
Valkyrie leaned over Mister Manwell. His face was slack, his gaze unfocused, and his fouled pants soaked through with blood. She dared to touch the edge of his swollen leg. She was greeted by a thick moan and the smell of rot.
“He’s not going to last for a journey!”
Abigail glanced back, lips pressed.
The weak don’t last long in the Jungle
Deepbloom philosophy, huh? I bet you seem very exotic to the Catechism-raised.
Unfortunately for Abigail, Valkyrie had actually read Jungle lore!
“You owe me a Debt,” the young witch snapped.
Abigail stopped the cart dead. “You wish to claim it?”
“We need to help him!”
“We will help,” the Jungle woman replied, not unkind. “I know a good doctor. A place of understanding. The journey cannot be helped.”
“He’ll be dead by morning!”
The woman raised her gaze to the sky, thought, and shrugged. “Cheap payment for a Debt.”
“Mine to spend.”
“Very well!” Abigail smiled. “Decisive. You should come to the Jungle. Verdandi whispers to us. There are secrets waiting there for one like you. Secrets even the Tempest does not know.”
The very grass shivered suddenly, echoing with the passage of a greater mind.
Secrets
And Trials
Come, little Dancer
Join your faerie fire to the drums of evolution
“Sod off,” Valkyrie spat.
The grass laughed, unperturbed.
Oblivious to meddling angels, Abigail turned the wagon south against the fading light of evening. Back into the boroughs they went.
Craning her neck, Valkyrie spotted the distant spire of a familiar church. They were near the northern border of Fourthborough and about a half-mile from her former school.
My former life.
“There’s a constable precinct not far from here,” Valkyrie warned.
“I know,” Abigail responded, stopping the cart at the beginning of the better paved road. She hopped over from the driver’s seat and pulled the groaning Mister Manwell to the tailgate of the wagon.
“W-why are we…”
“Back streets. Wagon marked for constables.”
“You can’t just carry him the whole way!” she squeaked.
“You sound like a noble Lady.” Abigail hauled Mister Manwell over her shoulders like a bag of grain. Grunting, she adjusted his weight. “Like as not to be struck by a fit of vapors by the touch of sun!”
Annoyed, Valkyrie leaped down from the wagon. “Fine.”
“No men here to haul our purses. Shoo the horse home.”
Muttering, Valkyrie crossed to the horse and gave it a nudge. “Uh…home! Go home!”
It stared at her.
Sighing, Valkyrie raised a hand, swayed on her toes, and hummed a little ditty called Does a Horse Dream of Fresh Oats?
Her faerie fire flickered to life across her nails, glimmering with fresh oats and cold water.
The horse perked, sniffed, and bit. When its teeth snapped through the illusion – uncomfortably close to her fingertips! – it instead turned and dragged the wagon in a trot back the way it came.
Valkyrie’s sway became a swoon, and she sagged under the weight of living.
“Coming?” Abigail asked.
I really need to learn how to pace myself better! “Y-Yes!”
***
Though they required a little time to regather themselves after witchcraft and shooters, the constables now swarmed like hornets.
The younger ones expected the Deacons to raise the sirens and put all of Mel into lockdown.
The older ones knew why the church refrained: because a breakout was an embarrassment. The kind of embarrassment that brought scandal, produced resignations, and rolled heads.
Instead, the church would do what it always did: cover up their embarrassing secrets with extreme prejudice.
Leading a large contingent, Margaret ordered her men to shoot on sight.
By the time the light failed, she had bagged four bodies. Four but not the one she required.
Soon her men reported a constable wagon recovered without its driver in Thirdborough. Commandeering a horse, she rushed to pick up the trail.
By lantern-light, she found the confirmation she needed in the back of the wagon: a young woman’s delicate handprint pressed into the dark stain of hours-old blood.
Turning to the nearest constable, she growled, “Find me a list of every back-alley clinic between here and Sevensborough!”
***
Even Valkyrie had no idea where in Fourthborough they wandered in this dark. Low clouds swirled overhead, and curtains hung tight over the crowded apartment windows. They fumbled through shadow on shadow.
Abigail breathed slow as an ox, sweat dripping down her face but stride steady.
“It’s so strange,” Valkyrie breathed. “Hunted without siren or whistle…”
“Almost there, 13-C,” the Jungle woman replied.
“Hear that, Mister Manwell?” the girl encouraged.
He did not stir. Thin rivulets of his blood trickled down Abigail’s back.
The twists and turns continued through unfamiliar territory so close to her old home turf.
“Two dash and a circle for medicine,” Abigail noted, nodding to the old brick at the corner.
Blinking, Valkyrie spied the symbol among the rough-edged façade.
“Stacked crosses for constables near. Interlocked loops for fence. Signs to lead the way.”
Abigail instructed, and Valkyrie repeated after her. Simple symbols, easily scribbled on a brick or a tree.
I wouldn’t have understood the need a season ago.
Now she wondered if this knowledge would save her life someday.
Finally, they stumbled from the warrens onto a small square. All the shops were closed at this hour except one: House Mishkan Medical Charity Fourthborough.
“If they ask, say it was a riding accident,” Abigail noted. “They do not usually ask.”
Valkyrie nodded.
This proved a wise but unnecessary precaution. The duty nurse saw them approaching by the light of the sign and rushed from her desk. The woman assessed them with a glance and helped carry Mister Manwell straight into the back. Her voice rang through the little clinic, calling for the doctor, and Valkyrie was free to trail after.
She hesitated by the front desk, unsure what more would be required.
Please not money.
Another nurse emerged with a stiff cup of tea, a napkin full of snacks, and zero time for nonsense. She hooked Valkyrie by the elbow and dragged the girl to a corner seat, well out of view from the street. Then she placed food and drink in the girl’s hands and tilted her chin to examine her bruised eye.
“Two sips. One bite. Two breaths. Repeat,” the nurse ordered, pulling out a wet compress and dabbing around the bruise.
Little late on the eye. Valkyrie suppressed that comment. Instead, she sunk deeper in the chair and pulled her knees up. Her stomach hurt, threatening to reject even simple bread. When had she last actually eaten?!
“No real damage. You will heal fast,” the nurse assured, prodding her way down the girl’s body. Palpitating the bruising around her left knuckles, she asked. “Parents?”
“I’m sixteen today,” she murmured. An adult, legally speaking. God help us all, right?
The nurse shrugged. “We still need a reference. Preferably a guardian.”
“Lady Mishkan,” the girl responded.
Sighing, the nurse stowed her compress. “Please take this seriously. We must put something on the paperwork.”
Whether that something is true or not is not our department
Valkyrie offered a tissue-thin background, and the nurse dutifully recorded the lies. Then, satisfied, the nurse patted Valkyrie on the knee at last. “You’re safe here. Rest.”
Left alone, Valkyrie leaned her head against the cool metal of the chair and drifted.
How to get word to Mother? Woodhaven’s compromised by those stalkers, and Sevensborough is even worse. She had caught enough of the garbled radio broadcasts from her cell to guess that Oliver had finally pulled the wrong shoelace – something about Lee. Does this mean the Conclave is going to move on the borough?
Maybe she could network her way through the outer boroughs on the strength of the Azure. All she needed was a few minutes with one of the other dancers and somewhere to lay low for a few days. Word would reach Belle, and then…
Well, she didn’t know what then.
“Alisandra?” she whispered.
You said you would come.
“Can you hear us?”
Or did the heavens call you to grander things?
If she had not shown for Oliver either, then Alisandra was busy with something truly dire.
Who am I to command the attention of angels, I guess?
Though she rather thought her plight worthy of one!
Half-eaten bits cupped in her hands, Valkyrie perceived the rolling of a great boulder. It began high and distant, a problem for the peaks; it rolled, gathering speed, and announced itself to her with a terrible rumble; and now – having somehow avoided her end beneath its weight – she watched it tumble past, still gathering speed.
She did not know where it would stop. Perhaps not until it flattened the country and reached the uncaring sea.
The clinic bell rang as Sebastian Mishkan stepped inside. He withdrew a parcel from the satchel at his side, laid it on the front desk, pivoted smoothly on a foot and bowed to the girl in her corner.
For her part, Valkyrie was several steps past shocked at his ability to appear at his own convenience. “Still doing mail?” she mumbled.
“Our connections are the lifeline through tumultuous times,” he answered. “Your mother is outside.”
“Mom?!” Snapping alert, she hopped to her feet and hurried past the angel.
Outside, four of her mother’s posse waited at the corners, and Belle herself plucked at her dress while she waited.
Not even a season since they parted, but Valkyrie spotted fresh grey hairs on her account.
She crossed the ten steps into the street at a clip and hurled herself into her mother.
“I’m sorry for being such an unbearable little stain,” Valkyrie muttered, hugging tight. The words felt thin and weak, a paltry payment for everything.
Her mother stared in shock, sensing the change in her daughter. “W-well…w-what matters is that you will be safe now, sweetheart.”
The girl straightened. Somberly, she corrected, “We will be safe when you no longer need an escort to come to Fourthborough.”
Belle winced. “That’s why we’re leaving,” she said, braced for an adolescent reaction.
“That’s probably for the best,” Valkyrie agreed, “given I just broke out of prison and all that.”
Her mother paled. “Lynne preserve us…”
Behind them, Abigail emerged from the clinic. Belle’s guards stepped forward to stop her, but the Jungle woman offered them a sailor’s salute as she marched past – covered in tremendous splashes of wet blood.
“Wavespeaker,” the woman greeted. Turning her attention lower, she informed Valkyrie, “The leg had to go. Rot was too deep. He has a chance now.”
“He lost the leg?!” she gasped.
“You were right,” Abigail said. “He had not the strength to last on the journey. He owes you his life.”
A life berefts the leg to stand on…
“Some scars last,” the woman sympathized. “This world preys on the weak. The less you have, the more it will take. Meditate on this brutality. Meet it with matching savagery. When it knows you are strong, it will flinch before you.”
Valkyrie nodded somberly. Disagree though she may, she finally understood the logic of this Jungle obsession with strength.
Fire to burn and Fire to warm. Strength to dominate and strength to protect…
The lines blur in the fray, Rie agreed.
Glancing between Abigail and her daughter, Belle raised one protective hand from around Valkyrie and stated, “I witness your aid this day.”
Abigail nodded at the Deepbloom formality. “It was in service to a Debt. Naught else is required. Be brave on your way, lass.”
With a final wave, Abigail took her leave.
“His leg…” Valkyrie sighed, leaning in. “It’s just…just a waste.”
I don’t understand
What purpose did it even serve the Fire?
Pain without meaning and scars without rhyme
Her mother hugged her tighter, and the girl felt a small, warm lump curled up in the safety of Belle’s bosom.
A kitten? she wondered.
“Things are moving very fast now, sweetie. We should talk somewhere safe.”
“R-right! Is Oliver a fugitive now?!”
Belle shook her head. “Valkyrie, dear, we’ll all be fugitives by daybreak.”
***
Margaret picked up the Wavespeaker’s trail at the edge of Fourthborough.
The woman’s guards were sharp enough to know the trot of a constable horse, and she had to circle into Fifthborough and then back on foot.
She guessed their destination, and her intuition led her true.
She spotted the Wavespeaker, her men, and the Mishkan butler approaching a Mishkan clinic. Letting that scene play out, she crept into the shadow of a bakery and considered her options.
Noise would draw the posse’s attention, four against one. Maybe more waiting in the darkness.
If she retreated to muster men, her quarry would vanish. Plus, the Fourthborough precinct was derelict on a good day; what other explanation for the Osh child’s antics under their very nose?
No, the answer to rot was always simple. Fools just flinched from it.
Deliberately, Margaret unslung her rifle.
She waited, watching the reunion unfold.
She noted how the Wavespeaker’s fingers shook in that first hug, unmoved by the theatrics of a heretic.
She waited, relieved when Abigail turned north. That woman worked hand in hand with Greenleaf and other smugglers to poison the nation, and that heretic feared no evil.
Margaret had spent three constables to bring her in.
Then there were only the two, mother and daughter, hugging as they spoke.
Now Margaret sighted her shot, aim firm between the girl’s slim shoulder blades.
One bullet to remove two problems.
She would tell Her Grace that the duo had resisted arrest.
***
A shot rang out through the night.
***
The Archangel despaired.
She could touch one star a second, yet she found herself defeated by a host beyond reckoning. She neatly ruled out the nebulae and the celestial core, hot enough with radiation that even her skin itched, and still found herself facing billions!
Stepping ten times a second, star to star, never accidentally leaping beyond this host of stars into another, and never backtracking, how many years would she wander?
She cursed herself for never pressing her father for more celestial details. All the time in the world for those questions, the foolish girl had figured, and now she stumbled through the ignorant gap.
Alisandra coasted to a stop.
“Esmie…at this rate, I will miss your birthday party,” she mourned.
Her drums of war stilled.
She thought of her mother, devoted to the Work; her little sister, struggling to manage Waves by herself…
Wondered about Oliver and his diner; were they holding up?
What of Valkyrie? Had she graduated into adulthood with fanfare?
Finally coming to a stop, Alisandra dreamed not of her worries – Conclave and cities and Bones and monsters – but of the bonds that drove her forward…
And heard the whisper of the Song.
The echo of a star is but one among many
Grains of sand
Does your heart not shine like diamond?
Do you not gleam with the love of your own kin?
Alisandra jerked to attention.
Listening with her heart and not her halo.
And she heard, faint but clear, her sister’s distant voice beckoning her home.