Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 166

by Neil Clarke

  Mourning ritual for the head of the House, House Gubhas. Its origins are shrouded in mystery; its phraseology suggests that it was incorporated into Imperial lore from High Plains tradition. The performer of the ritual—in most cases, the new head of the House—directly addresses the One Most High, but despite this notable . . .

  She skipped down.

  The ritual is exceedingly lengthy—her heart sank—as it is meant to allow the new head to reflect on the transitory nature of their position. The full mourning cycle lasts an Imperial year,

  She skimmed. How long would he stay here, reciting?

  One performance of the ritual takes about an hour and a half. It is recited on alternate weekdays and certain Imperial holidays, most notably the . . .

  She had time. She could wait. It was interesting, anyway. She made herself running subtitles and quietly lowered herself on the ground, behind her stele.

  He went on, never halting, never hurrying. While she couldn’t see the text carved into the stele in front of him, the ritual frequently called for a mention of the name of the person. She just had to wait for it to come up.

  “Ieyūni ta Enafisul, who died a violent death, who died at the hands of a murderer,” the ritual had multiple versions for natural deaths, accidental deaths, assassination attempts . . . she reflected on how many ways there were for a head of a house to die. “Your blood calls out to us. Aye, we say your blood has not been shed in vain. You, the most noble of us . . . ” She stopped paying attention as she frantically searched for the name. A secret lover? An illegitimate sibling? Or even a descendant? Court intrigue swirled in her head. And if the mourning cycle was only a year long, then why was he still saying these words? The war ended a long time ago.

  Ieyūni ta Enafisul was apparently not a remarkable person, as Oyārun found very little data. She fought and died in the war. She had been a young māwalēni who managed to escape induction to the ranks of the Imperial Seers, then she went up to the High Plains and received some training at HPRI. She joined the Column-Tree Forest guerrilla bands and participated in several important strikes on the Southern Passageway and the neighboring towns south of the Forest. She died in an ambush alongside four of her comrades. There wasn’t much else.

  The lover theory looked the most likely—but wasn’t Aramīn aromantic and asexual, like Oyārun herself? His profile clearly said so; this was one of the very few commonalities between the two of them. Oyārun bit down on her lower lip. She would have to ask around. Maybe someone remembered her. Maybe there was no more data because someone had been going around deleting information. Was that even possible?

  She sat in silence, listening. After a while, her teeming thoughts quieted down, and she was drawn into the ritual. He recited with grace and precision. Whoever this mysterious Ieyūni was, her soul would clearly be satisfied. Even the One Most High would be satisfied.

  She could feel herself slipping into a trance, but she didn’t mind. The world narrowed down to Aramīn, to the sound of his voice. She thought she’d like him to pray for her, too; then she didn’t think much at all.

  The ritual came to a close, she noticed with an unexpected wave of sadness. Everything was transitory—eventually, even mourning came to an end. He hadn’t arrived from the direction where she was presently standing—if she was lucky, he wouldn’t notice her at all on his way out. Still, better get some distance between them—she got slowly back up on her feet—

  Instead of turning around, he took a step back, then bent forward from the waist, beginning anew. She was so surprised that her legs tangled together, seemingly of their own accord, and she toppled forward and hit the ground.

  He turned around. Looked at her lying in a heap. She glanced up at him. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Have you been spying on me?”

  “I—no—I mean yes, but not like that—” She could feel her face redden as she babbled.

  He chuckled softly. “Security does not seem to be running at peak capability today,” he said, clearly amused.

  She got on her knees. “I’m not a danger to you.”

  “Hmm?”

  She got back up on her feet, brushed off her clothes with shaking hands. Looked at him. “I’m not a danger to you,” her voice trembled just as strongly, “so the fact that they didn’t catch me means they were performing well, not the opposite.” Why was she saying this? Why was she saying anything? She wanted to run away, but she felt rooted to the spot, and her mouth wouldn’t stop blabbering.

  He looked surprised for once, then . . . pleased? “Technically, yes,” he said and adjusted his overcoat with a minimal, automatic gesture, “but that’s of course only true if you are indeed not a danger to me.”

  She had no idea what to say next. She had not even known he had a security detail! There was so much she didn’t know about him. Her mind seemed to seesaw between trying to say everything at once and being so terrified she couldn’t get a single word out. Her mouth opened, then closed.

  He nodded slightly. “I suppose you’re not a danger to my person.” He paused. “Did you mean to talk to me?”

  She nodded, speechless.

  “Come closer, I don’t bite.” He held up both hands. “I won’t touch you without your permission, I promise.” He glanced around. “There is a bench toward the back, we can sit. Or we can go for a walk.”

  She held her ground.

  “You know I’m not lying to you,” Aramīn said. “You’re a māwalēni, you can sense it.”

  She blinked. “How did you know?”

  “I can recognize the signs. I’ve seen many people like you.”

  “And then you tortured them?” She felt like her entire body was on fire.

  “I would not do anything to anyone without their consent,” he said. He was telling the truth. The way he saw the truth, at least. After all, he didn’t force the High Council to do anything either; he just shamed them into following him, she realized. But she did not share that shame, that Imperial guilt. Before independence, she would have been labeled both a Seer and an Undesirable. She stepped closer.

  “A walk?” He turned around and strode ahead. She tagged along, still silent.

  “What’s your name?” He could’ve checked her profile for the answer. He was trying to make small talk, she realized with a sinking feeling.

  “Oyārun,” she said.

  “What are you studying?”

  “Preengineering subjects.” She swallowed. She was so afraid of him, and he looked nonchalant. Patient with her. “A lot of math and physics, mostly. I’m almost done with General Studies.” She tried not to think of her civics homework.

  The paths among the steles were narrow, and she was glad she could only see his back. It made talking a lot easier.

  “Which branches of engineering are you interested in?”

  “I don’t really . . . know, yet.” Another swallow. “I like aircraft. But they don’t really . . . don’t really . . . ”

  “See much use on Eren, you mean?” More of a statement than a question. With no hint of mockery in his voice.

  “Yes, yes. So I don’t really know. I thought I’d . . . look around. See what there is to do. Maybe something related to space travel.” She sighed. “I’ve been putting it off.” Why was she telling him this?

  “I could invite you to my workplace,” he said. “Plenty of work for engineers. Especially bioengineering, neuroengineering, but a little of everything. It might be something to aim toward. You will need to find an internship placement soon, and you might like this.”

  “S-sure. Thank you.”

  They walked ahead in silence. The hall was larger than she’d remembered. Eventually he offered, “That’s not why you’ve sought me out.”

  “I . . . I just wanted to know.” He didn’t respond. “ . . . About you. What kind of person you were. I read . . . a lot.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t make sense of it.”

  He turned left. “That’s the bench I was talking about. If y
ou would like to sit.”

  They sat with more than enough room between them. She stared straight ahead, at a small empty space in the maze, and a small fountain in the center of it. There were more steles in the hall than she’d thought, and only a few scraggly trees.

  “This is the only fountain on Eren,” he said, not looking at her.

  “You know this place very well.” She felt foolish for saying such a triviality.

  “I come here every day.”

  “Who was Ieyūni?”

  “One of my charges.”

  She blinked, stunned. When she’d stumbled, he was about to start the whole ritual over again with a different name. “Do you say prayers for every one of them?”

  “I try to.” He leaned back. “I aim to finish in this lifetime.” For a moment, sorrow and regret tinted his voice. Just for a moment.

  Her thoughts raced. He had to have trained hundreds of people. He surely didn’t only mean everyone he had commanded, because he had never commanded a unit where Ieyūni was serving.

  “You’re very . . . different from what I’d expected,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow again—she could tell without looking at him. He waited for her to speak.

  “People said you were a Falconer,” she said after some hesitation. She didn’t know of a less harsh term, the way Ereni cognotype had supplanted Undesirable.

  “Oh, I suppose I do have those tendencies.” He looked up at the domed ceiling high above. “It’s a spectrum, you know. Just like the Ereni cognotype.” So eerily calm, she thought. “I never even hunted for sport. I don’t go around murdering people. We are all different.”

  It was out of her mouth before she knew it. “Would you like to?”

  “To murder people?” His calm did not waver.

  She was sure he’d take offense. Then she realized that everything she could say, everything hurtful, someone must have said to him already. She saw those people in the archives. She felt her face burn in embarrassment. He went on, and she was sure he was only pretending not to notice her reaction.

  “I’m not interested. If I were to murder someone, it would be all over,” he said.

  “All over?”

  He closed his eyes. She turned to look at him. “Control,” he said after a while. “I need control.”

  “Over people?”

  “Yes.” He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly to look at her, a gracefully understated movement. He had known perfectly well that she’d look at him—he had known it so well that he didn’t even need to think of it. He automatically adjusted his behavior to take advantage of his situation. To reach his aims.

  “Complete control,” he said, his gaze fixed on her.

  She looked away, flustered. She tried to sound similarly nonchalant. “So . . . do you enjoy causing people pain?”

  “Yes, I do.” As if he was being quizzed by a teacher. An easy question. “I’m a sadist, after all. That’s different from being a Falconer. People of any cognotype can be sadists.” He paused a bit. “Even yours.”

  Was he goading her? She had to stay calm, calmer than this. Her mind held on to that template of question and answer, of education and teachers. She could get through this conversation without her heart jumping out of her chest if she thought of it as quizzing him. She went on.

  “And you did cause them pain.”

  “I do cause them pain,” he corrected her.

  “Why are you answering my questions?”

  “I have time, and I find them interesting.” So detached. That was the word—he felt permanently detached. And yet probably more in tune with his surroundings than she herself ever would, she suspected.

  “So you . . . ask them to allow you. To cause them pain.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they allow you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She could feel he was about to say What do you think?, but he changed his mind at the last moment.

  “I want them to be perfect.” He leaned forward. “I can improve on them. The best they can offer—I can help them achieve it. I want my charges to be perfect, you see?” A glimmer of eagerness. She realized he didn’t have very strong emotions, in general. She nodded.

  “So we make a deal. They give themselves over to me. And I make them perfect. As much as I can.” He did not take his eyes off her. “Everyone benefits.”

  It did make a twisted sort of sense to her. “But there is pain.”

  “No transformation is ever without pain,” he said. A quote from somewhere?

  She blinked. “You’ve found your niche.”

  “I have.” His gaze seemed questioning. “Are my answers bothering you?”

  She returned his gaze. “Why are you so honest?”

  “I have always been honest.”

  “I thought people like you often lied.”

  A trace of a smile. “I have no need to lie.”

  2.

  Oyārun knew all too well that she should study—she had quite an amount of math to review for her next meeting with her teacher—but instead she just sat, alone and in silence, replaying her sensory logs of the conversation with Aramīn.

  Her tiny living quarters were like a shirt, overly tight around her body.

  Did she finally understand what kind of man he was? She only knew that her abuwen showed no signs of subsiding. The more she knew about him, the more she wanted to know. Then again, this was a common characteristic of abuwen even when they were not person focused. Would the process ever run its course?

  Aramīn had invited her to see his workplace, reiterating the offer when the two of them had said goodbye. She had to overcome her fear of unfamiliar situations and make that visit; her own mind would not give her rest until then.

  She would love to work with him. As an engineer. As—

  She swallowed hard.

  Her fingers folded and unfolded a scrap of paper, over and over again.

  Her mind stopped. Time stopped.

  She had to make that visit.

  She took a deep breath, shut down playback, called up her organizer. On top, the random quote of the day from her favorite poems said, “Rip open the seal release the magic.”

  She blinked. She was sure the random quote had been something completely different just a moment ago. Had she overlooked it? She checked her system logs. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  She closed the organizer, got up—the chair toppling over—and rushed out, the echoes of the poem reverberating in her head.

  Rip open the seal release the magic;

  everything I can offer to draw you close

  is in the tiniest inflections of my voice—

  I am myself, and you—you abide in me

  until even the sunsets turn into dust;

  —The Blessings of the Path by Omasārun ta Idarawul, third stanza

  It was early in the morning; Oyārun was stunned to realize how early. Sleep and wakefulness had blended together. How much time had passed since her meeting with Aramīn? Three days—it was hard to fathom. Three days spent in a daze. If anyone had tried to contact her, she hadn’t noticed. She had to bring this to a close; force it if need be.

  She struggled to keep herself from breaking into a run. Her muscles were taut and rigid. The Institute was close by. After all that time, it was still called the Institute, a reminder of the High Plains of Emek forever and ever. A place of sanctity, a place of pain and blood and sacrifice. The High Plains far away, on another planet, in another solar system. The Institute remained, carrying the name ever onward into the future.

  She walked right in, no one stopping her. She halted to check—the place was still restricted-entry. Someone had put her onto the visitor list. Did Aramīn seriously think she would come to see him? Did he truly want that? Did he expect her?

  She ran along white corridors, without realizing where she was going. She only stopped when she painfully bumped into someone—

  The young māwa
lēni stared at her in surprise. Oyārun opened her mouth to apologize, but the māwalēni held up a hand, silenced her.

  “Are you looking for some—oh. Aramīn? I can show you the way to his office.”

  Oyārun nodded, then belatedly closed her mouth.

  “I am Emien,” the māwalēni said. She was young- and exhausted-looking, maybe just a year or two older than her. Dark semicircles stood out on the pale skin underneath her eyes. “Sorry, apparently someone forgot to clear you for the floor plans.” She closed her eyes for a second; when she reopened them, a craving for sleep hit Oyārun. “All done.”

  Oyārun murmured thanks, then called up a copy of the floor plans.

  “I can show you the way,” Emien said. “I’m going in that direction anyway.”

  Oyārun nodded gratefully.

  The two of them walked without saying much, Oyārun behind Emien. The māwalēni was wearing a long-sleeved white smock, matching trousers, and a white bandana. The smock had a turtleneck collar—Oyārun strained her eyes trying to see the implants peeking out from underneath the fabric. She stopped when she realized Emien had noticed; Oyārun didn’t mean to be rude, she was simply curious. Anything to take her mind off the constant, immense fear.

  Emien suddenly halted; Oyārun almost fell over her. “His office is at the end of this corridor,” Emien said and pointed right. “I’m going left here.”

  Oyārun wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. Emien was about to walk away but noticed her distress and stopped. She looked at Oyārun, head tilted to one side. “Mhm?”

  “I—What do you think of him?”

  “Huh? Oh, he’s all right. A bit on the strict side, but all right.” Emien looked concerned all of a sudden. “You heard those stories? That was just Imperial propaganda.” She rolled her eyes. “Trash for the yellow rags. Trust me, he’s all right.” She spoke with conviction and made no attempt to hide or camouflage her feelings.

  Oyārun gulped. They said goodbye and Oyārun walked down the corridor. Twenty-one steps altogether; twenty-one steps of mind-numbing fear.

  Oyārun pushed the door open. It yielded and she realized she had forgotten to knock. Embarrassment froze her and she stood still, unthinking. The walls were thick, and the doorway surrounded her. She felt boxed in.