by Andy Graham
Lena opened her mouth to ask him what he meant. He waved her to silence and poured her another drink. She adjusted the hood on her cloak. She really shouldn’t be drinking but he hadn’t taken no for an answer.
The minute she had entered this so-called secret society under the ruined Palaces of Democracy, he had introduced himself. There had been no need. She knew who he was. His face and those delicious eyes of his were some of the most well-known in the country. In the flesh there was a side to him that the broadcasts hadn’t prepared her for: a visceral persuasiveness that evoked a species of fascinated revulsion.
The tip of his tongue darted out to moisten his lips. A tingle ran through Lena’s body. Though whether that was fascination, revulsion, or both, writhing under her skin, she didn’t know.
He prodded the glass towards her. “Real power lies in problems. We all get paid to fix problems. Doctors fix health problems, at least they think they do, technicians fix IT problems, politicians fix social problems, and legionnaires fix politicians’ problems. I, for example, have a very special team of gardeners” — he grinned to himself — “tackling a particularly thorny weed for me out in the Weeping Woods at the moment.”
“The Weeping Woods?”
“You may know it as the White Wood.”
“No.”
Lena caught the hint of his eyes rolling. She dropped her head, twitching the hood forwards to hide the heat in her cheeks. She wasn’t stupid, she told herself. He made her feel stupid. Why was she here? Her brother Jamie had warned her about men like this.
The VP placed a smooth finger under her chin, lifting her head up. The candlelight danced in his eyes. His smile promised a professional level of attention, a devotion that, as temporary as it may be, would be unforgettable. With a catch in her throat, Lena’s shoulders relaxed. The candle flames flickered in a sudden rush of cold air.
“Problems make the world go round. I have problems, I’m sure you have problems. Everyone has problems. And there’s the beauty, they’re ubiquitous. You know what that means, right?”
She nodded.
“For some people their problems become their identity, the problems give them a reason to live. For others they become a status symbol: how early they have to get up in the morning to look after their kids, how hard they work, how long they were made to wait, and so on and so on.”
He paused to place his empty glass back on the coaster and reached for the bottle. Lena put her hand over her glass. She hadn’t drunk anything for a few weeks and was already feeling dizzy. She was flattered that such a man was taking an interest in her. Options and solutions to her current situation were rearing up to be noticed in her head, but the conversation seemed to be skidding along without her.
“It’s ridiculous. What’s the point in competitive poverty? Where’s the prize in winning the comparison of the relative nastiness of your diagnosis?” Gently pushing her hand away, he poured a generous measure over the melting ice cubes.
“I really shouldn’t,” she said, stammering slightly. “I have work tomorrow. And I’m . . .” She clutched the glass tight to her stomach.
“I know, you’re busy.” This time the eye roll was obvious. “My point exactly. We’ve had fat-shaming and sleep-shaming, followed by unnecessary displays of adults humiliating their kids as they tried to outparent each other in public. We hung a left at humble-bragging, and now society’s stuck on busy-bragging: how little time we have, how many commitments we have, and yet how much we achieve. I. Don’t. Care.”
The last words were not much more than whispers. She leant across the table. As she did so, he mirrored her movement and brushed the curls that lay across her shoulder with the back of his fingers. The smell of alcohol and mint cut through the incense drifting up from the old crypt, where the secret society held their ceremonies.
“We’re all busy. Everyone is busy. We all have to sleep, wash, get food and fluids in and out, just like everyone else. Being busy is another war wound for those with insurmountable problems to overcome. They outsource those problems, pay to deposit them somewhere else, and make them someone else’s problems. So the problems change hands and mutate into new problems.” The ice chinked in the glass as he waved his hand around to emphasise his point. “And those that think they don’t have any problems, or those that don’t farm out their problems, accrue interest, and so end up with bigger problems than before.”
“Where do you fit into this?” she asked when he finally paused for breath. Apart from talking in lists, she thought but dared not say. Men like the VP had a very well-developed sense of humour only when it came to laughing at other people.
“Me?” He smiled at her.
Her pulse quickened. He was not an unattractive man by any means, and had taken meticulous care in his appearance. But what excited and intrigued her (fascinated and revulsed her) wasn’t his carefully chosen clothes, nor was it the precise growth of his stubble. It was the brash confidence and arrogance that he wore both as shield and sword.
The VP put his glass down and slid his free hand under her hood. Cupping the back of her neck, he pulled her closer. “I make everyone else’s problems my problem, and manipulating them is the true secret to power.” The Vice President’s breath was hot and moist in her ear. “Shall we go?”
Beth’s hand strayed up to the mole on the end of her nose. Part of her wanted to celebrate. Part of her wanted to crawl onto her sofa, stuff herself between the cushions and cry herself to sleep. The comforting hands that she had always craved as a child, despite her protestations to the contrary, were gone forever. “When?” she asked.
“This morning. I’m not sure if you’ll be happy to know that it was peaceful or not.”
There was a pause. A silence that was waiting to be filled. Beth said nothing. She imagined she could see the disdainful shake of the woman’s head on the end of the phone.
“I waited until now to call as I figured you’d be busy saving the world all day. And I know you were at the Ward tonight.”
“How do you know that?” Beth asked.
“You’re not the only one with rats scurrying through the crooks and crannies of the city, my dear. Carrying messages alongside their fleas.”
“Please, Verina, enough with the hyperbole.”
“That’s not my name.” The phone crackled. “I had it officially changed. I got special dispensation from my sister to do it. You’ve had twenty years to get used to my new name; use it.”
Beth glanced up at the sofa, at the gloves sticking out of the cushions like dismembered hands. “I still struggle, to be honest, early imprinting and all that.”
Silence.
“And how are you taking it?” Beth asked.
The window panes thudded in the wind. A hole in the clouds that had looked briefly like a skull was slowly being ripped apart.
“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure whether it’s better to lose someone suddenly, like with Dad, or to know someone’s dying and then play the waiting game like this time.”
The line went quiet.
“I watched her die, Beth,” the voice said finally. “Over the last week, I saw her slipping away little by little like a snowman melting. One day she struggled to remember my name, the next day she was pretending she knew my name, the day after I was a stranger. She went from being the most talkative person I know—”
“Irritatingly so.”
“To a twitching lump of meat with less control over its body than a newborn.”
“Your mother always used to say that one day you’d be changing her nappy for her.”
“Yes. My mother did say that, didn’t she?” The bitterness in the phone voice faded. “I was hoping that comment was a joke. There are some circles of life that I’d rather not see played out.”
“A vicious circle of life,” Beth whispered. She heard the unspoken question on the end of the line. “It’s nothing, just something someone once said to a friend of mine.” A lover of mine.
“Well,
you can stuff your enigmas up their backsides with your portentous statements, and hang them off that bloody fool’s tree of yours for all I care. I’ll let you know when the cremation is.”
Outside the windows, the tree continued its silent dance, thrashing in the wind.
“Is there any news on the other thing?” the phone voice asked.
Beth filed her grief away to be dealt with at a later date, and added another juggler’s ball spinning through the air. “We know where he is. Properly this time.” The line hissed. Beth was vaguely aware of muffled voices talking. One of her dogs, always by her side, pushed its scarred muzzle into her lap.
There was a plastic clacking noise from the receiver. “That’s good news, right, that you’ve found Ray Franklin?”
“Not for him. The VP’s men got there before mine could.”
“The VP’s men?”
“He has bribed and blackmailed the 13th Legion, the Unsung, into taking orders from him,” Beth said. “They appear to be operating outside the usual chain of command.”
“You’re OK with this?”
“So far.”
“Does Field-Marshal Chester know?”
“Not yet.”
Silence.
Beth dabbed the sweat off her forehead. “The Unsung, aided by some of Ray Franklin’s former colleagues, set him up in a lose-lose situation. The VP was banking on the fact the boy’s overly developed moral compass wouldn’t allow him to do anything else. You’d think an ex-10th legionnaire with his genes would be less naive. He walked straight into it and sprang the trap.”
“Now what happens?”
“Once they have Franklin in custody, I have requested he be brought to me,” Beth said. “I only hope, for all our sakes, that the VP can restrain himself.”
“The VP’s become an angry young man.”
“He always was. He just kept that anger under control.”
“What happened? Prothero?”
Beth snorted and pushed the dog away. “You don’t know the half of it. Do you mean is it because the VP seduced the daughter of the man he hated as a form of silent punishment?”
“Who? Joanna Miescher?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my word.”
“I hear some men see this as a righteous thing to do: a form of possession, carnal one-upmanship,” Beth said. “Or is the VP’s sudden lack of control because he murdered the man he hated, only to discover that the corpse splattered over the pavement under Lesau Tower was his father? Or because the VP worked out that if he had just killed his father, the woman he had been fucking was his half-sister?”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the phone. “Is it really that bad?”
“Yes, and if you’re in any doubt, then maybe you need some new rats. Rats with bigger noses and sharper ears to sniff out the secrets you claim to be party to.”
“Why don’t you pull him in? Having your VP running wild is not going to help you.”
Getting rid of him would help you and your friends in the Resistance, you mean. “He’s still useful. He’s a vital part of the government, but I’m having him watched. I’m not going to get caught out again like I was with that camp. Camp X517 was supposed to hold secrets from the population, not from me. Secrets like this genetic dirty bomb the VP is trying to build are too dangerous. Now, don’t you have some grieving to do?” Beth slammed the phone down. “Take that info and feed it to your friends. We’ll see how far it gets you all.”
Outside the wind howled its silent scream, ripping at the leaves on the tree branches. Beth’s dogs, annoyed by the lack of attention, slunk into the shadows.
A single tear splashed onto her desk. She stared at it. Another joined it. She wiped them away with her thumb. A third was joined by another.
“No. I can’t do this. Not now.”
Then when?
A burning, lurching sob ripped through her throat. Beth’s grief, for her mother, for her sister, refused to be filed away. It burst out in torrents.
5
Under the Donian Mountains
Bright moonlight streamed into the cave. It cut past the stalactites that hung from the ceiling — stony witches’ fingers that grasped downwards. The column of light carved the floor in two, leaving a shimmering trail in its wake. Dogs lay packed nose to tail in that column. Their ears twitched as they sheltered from the damp shadows that nipped at the moonlight. One, its fur as grey as evening snow, was watching the elder of the two women that had disturbed its sleep.
Kaleyne’s green eyes bored out from under a hive of white hair. The unruly waves were pegged back with vicious-looking metal clips. One had a serrated edge, the second a point that disappeared into pinprick sharpness. Another was an odd mix of a flaying knife and an apple corer. Rose Franklin hadn’t been able to make out what the others were. The Elder had explained that it had taken a long time to get used to the hair clips, despite their usefulness. Putting them in without scalping herself had been the main challenge. Kaleyne had been wearing them for over fifty years now and used at least one of them daily.
The Hoyden, the boisterous Donian youths who followed the older, harsher customs, had mocked her for her multi-function hair clips. Their leader, Lukaz, in one of his kinder moments, had pointed out that she only used them because she had them. Without them, she wouldn’t need them.
“I ignored the remarks for the most part,” Kaleyne said. “Most of the comments the kids were making should’ve been put out to pasture when I was trying to shock my grandparents with them.”
“There’s nothing new under the moons,” Rose agreed.
“And every generation has to learn that for themselves.” Kaleyne adjusted the blankets on the sleeping figure in front of her. “Unfortunately, one of the younger, dumber boys—”
“Is there a different type?”
The Elder grinned. “One of the particularly dumb boys made a lunge for me, tried to grab a handful of my hair clips. I don’t know what possessed him.” From one breath to the next, the clip that looked like a cross between an apple corer and a flaying knife was in Kaleyne’s hand. “I gouged a hole in the boy’s arm that took half a year to heal. It wasn’t a long cut, but it was deep enough that they had to prise the clip out of the bone. The kids left me alone after that.” The steel clip vanished into her hair. “I warned the kids back then as I’m warning you now: force begets force, hate breeds hate. It’s a vicious spiral that will choke you.”
“You don’t understand, Kaleyne. I will give the tribes their freedom back. I promised you that almost thirty tears ago when you gave me refuge in your Angel City and I have not forgotten.”
“Do you think we need an outsider to give us our freedom? You lived with us for many years. Of all outsiders you know us best: our history, traditions and mores. Do you still consider us so impotent that we need another culture to rescue us? Are you trying to force freedom upon us so you feel good about yourself? Or do you want moral justification for your personal crusade to bring Bethina Laudanum down?”
The tone of voice was gentle. Rose would have preferred it to be harsh. It was hard to fight understanding with aggression.
“What you’re planning is dangerous, Rose Franklin.”
Rose bunched her hands into fists. “A hypocritical statement, given you used violence to teach the kid who took your hair clip a lesson.”
“Possibly, but an ex-colleague of your son’s put it in a surprisingly eloquent manner. ‘Violence is the most honest form of diplomacy.’ Baris Orr said that. Not something I always agree with but the old ways are not as dead to us Elders as the Hoyden think. Tradition still underpins our decisions. We’ve realised, however, it needs to respect the people and the times those people live in, not the other way round. Forcing our children to live and think how our ancestors thought is wrong. This belief is nothing but a fear of change. Our history was once someone’s future. Our future will one day be someone’s past. It has to be. And for that, we sometimes need t
o destroy that vicious spiral of violent debt and recriminations before it chokes us and kills all our futures. Like hers, for example.” She gestured to the sleeping figure Rose had come to the Donian Mountains to see.
The woman’s chest rose and fell with long pauses between movements. The dark hair that was once cropped close was now growing out in fuzzy waves that were still too short to know what they wanted to do. Kaleyne took the woman’s hand in hers, whispering words Rose couldn’t catch.
“Why are you keeping her underground?” Rose asked.
“She’s happier here. We don’t know why.”
“When did you find her?”
“A month to the day after the rescue team brought the rest of her squad out of the caves. The government team left her for last. I suspect because she was not originally born in Ailan. But by the time they went back for her, they could’t find her. That scared them so much they refused to send out search parties. Lukaz and the Hoyden refused to stop looking. When they found Brooke, they took her to the surface. She was weak but healthy. Whoever had been looking after her had dressed her wounds, kept her fed and watered.”
“Whoever? You mean Professor Shaw?” Rose grimaced. “Or at least whatever he has become.”
“Shaw?” Kaleyne fixed Rose’s eyes with her own. Rose felt as if her heart and soul were on trial. Then, with a slight shake of her head, Kaleyne continued. “What your people have named the Monster-under-the-Mountain found Brooke, yes.”
Rose studied Kaleyne, trying to work out what was hidden behind the mask. “You’re not going to tell me what you’re thinking, are you?”
“Not yet. Sorry.”
“I guess we all need our secrets to make ourselves feel special.”
Kaleyne raised an imperious eyebrow, but let the comment slide.
“I don’t understand why Shaw would save Brooke, though,” Rose said, “if the gwenium has mutated him like this.”
“Whatever the red element has done to that creature, I still believe there is a very human need for love burning within him.”