by Matt Wallace
Those thick, heavy metal circles recall to Dyeawan’s mind the God Rung, and she is less than grateful for the reminder.
The cut of the doors themselves is also foreboding. Tall and wide enough to accommodate a wagon, their edges are flared at their narrowed top, almost like serrations in the spine of a camping knife.
She has no notion of what lies behind the doors, but it is apparent whoever fashioned them wanted petitioners to wonder, and did not want their guesses to be hopeful and bright.
Realizing that, Dyeawan begins to find the silence in the corridor increasingly oppressive.
“Do you know which task has been chosen for this challenge?” she asks Nia. “Assuming this is the challenge of the body.”
“Of course I don’t.” Her tone belies neither irritation nor impatience. She is merely a stating a fact that she seems to feel should be obvious to both of them.
Dyeawan lets the matter rest. She tells herself she has already spoken to the older woman too much. They are opponents, opposites. Nia is attempting to remove Dyeawan from her position—one that Dyeawan, who has decided despite her moments of doubt under volcanic duress, still wants and from which she can still create much needed change for people remaining mired in the circumstances from which Dyeawan was saved.
She can’t resist, however. A question presses heavily on her mind, and Nia is the only other person with the reference to answer it. “What did you think? When you saw the lava flowing toward you?”
Nia draws a slow, deep breath, her shoulders squaring back before she releases it. Dyeawan cannot discern whether the other planner’s gesture is born of annoyance or contemplation.
“I thought,” she answers carefully, “that I must be hallucinating.”
Dyeawan believes it, not because Nia is more intelligent or astute, but because she has been among the Cadre and the planners far longer. Nia knows how they operate, and how they test people. Of course she would be more able and quicker to arrive at that conclusion and proceed accordingly.
“What did you think?” Nia asks, surprising her.
Dyeawan finally turns her head toward the other woman, hoping her own expression remains neutral. “I thought I was going to die,” she answers honestly.
“And still you climbed?”
“Yes.”
Nia nods, continuing to stare straight ahead. Her expression is unreadable to Dyeawan, who continues to study her openly in the silence that follows.
She finally gives up, returning her gaze to the ominous doors awaiting them.
When the air between them finally starts to feel settled, Nia disrupts it anew by saying, “Then I suppose you should have won.”
Dyeawan’s head snaps around to regard her with unmasked shock. Nia betrays nothing. She continues to passively consider the doors before them, subtly cocking her head.
Dyeawan opens her mouth to speak, but she is completely unsure of what words are lingering behind her tongue and quickly seals her lips. She turns her gaze away and is left to puzzle over Nia’s words, their meaning, and their sincerity.
Dyeawan is still puzzling over all of those things when the doors finally begin to yawn open, their metallic edges echoing sickly through the corridor. Firelight spills out at Nia’s feet and Dyeawan’s wheel tracks.
There is no one to greet them, or usher them beyond the threshold. That absence only increases the feeling of underlying menace beneath the whole affair.
Nia rises from her seat, politely gesturing Dyeawan forward. “After you.”
Dyeawan says nothing. She is more than slightly annoyed by the older woman’s constant restraint and formality. It seems to run so contrary to Nia’s purpose in all of this.
Taking as deep a breath as she can without making a show of it, Dyeawan maneuvers her tender in front of the other planner and rows herself through the doors.
The room beyond is less sinister than she thought it might be. It is a circular chamber with low ceilings held up by four bare columns, the torch-filled sconces affixed to them the source of the firelight, and block walls composed of a differently colored stone than the rest of the keep. Dyeawan surmises this chamber is older, more original to the structure as when it was first erected. The floor is fashioned from glossy black obsidian, probably harvested from the island’s volcano ages ago, reinforcing Dyeawan’s suspicions.
Tinker is waiting for them inside, bereft of her sheep’s-wool shawl. Her faded gray tunic remains unadorned, though she has freed her milky white hair from its tail.
“Greetings, you two.”
Neither Dyeawan nor Nia feel compelled to reply, though they both bow their heads with varying degrees of depth and enthusiasm.
“It is entirely strange for me to find myself back between the walls of this keep,” Tinker muses, casting her gaze about the confines of the space, “much less in this awful space.”
“You are generous to agree to oversee these proceedings, Tinker,” Nia cordially tells the old woman.
Dyeawan chooses not to voice an opinion on the contents of either woman’s statement.
“Generosity doesn’t enter into it, I promise you. I find this whole thing quite silly, to be honest.”
Dyeawan drops her head, though her hair is not quite long enough to conceal her grin.
Nia is thoroughly unruffled. “Then may I inquire as to your motivation?” she presses Tinker.
“Respect for Edger, who was also quite silly at times, but to whom I owed much and cared for deeply despite his flaws.”
Dyeawan finds, oddly, she can appreciate that sentiment. Though she has currently lost interest in the brief exchange between Nia and Tinker. Her focus is on the only visible piece of furniture in the chamber. It is a small obsidian table, almost like an altar, rising up from the floor itself like a frozen wave upon a shining black tide. It resides in the center of the space, beside Tinker, with two obsidian stools fixed on either side of it. The surface of the table has handles on it, two of them, set into its top in opposing diagonal corners.
It is also supporting two square objects draped in white silk.
“You both succeeded in the first contest, a measure of the will, with equal aplomb,” Tinker says. “As it stands, in terms of scores, the challenge is a draw. The winner of the next two events will determine the outcome of the challenge as a whole.”
“And if we end up drawing twice more?” Dyeawan asks. “Or each of us wins one contest?”
“Don’t worry,” Tinker bids them with what seems to be her usual unperturbed smile. “This contest in particular will be decisive.”
Dyeawan quickly decides that statement cannot bode well for either of them.
Tinker motions to the table. “Please, sit. Both of you.”
Nia readily complies, striding forward and slipping in between the table’s edge and one of the stools. Dyeawan rows forward, turning her tender alongside the obsidian protrusion and inching as closely as she can steer her conveyance.
“Do you require assistance?” Tinker asks her.
“No,” Dyeawan curtly replies.
She leans over the side of her tender and grips the edge of the table, laying her other hand flat against the seat of the stool. Dyeawan slides herself from one surface onto the other with practiced ease, despite the awkward angle and the intense smoothness of the obsidian. She lifts her legs with her hands and fits them carefully beneath the tabletop, comfortably adjusting the rest of her body.
Lacing her fingers atop the table, Dyeawan stares briefly at Nia before gazing down once again at the two squares covered by silken cloths between them. Clever as Edger once declared her, Dyeawan has not a single guess what’s under those cloths or what purpose they will serve.
“The contest is simple enough,” Tinker announces. “In fact, it is one of the oldest contests we have, dating all the way back to the beginning of civilization.”
Short of fire, Dyeawan cannot conceive of what from then would still be useful today.
“There are cave pai
ntings found on this very island, in fact, that depict ancient men and women engaged in the contest you two are about to undertake against one another.”
“I recall less preamble before you sent me up the mountain,” Dyeawan blandly remarks.
If Tinker is offended, she doesn’t show it. She even chuckles warmly at Dyeawan. “I admire your wit and your frankness, my dear. I purely do admire it.”
Dyeawan feels entirely uncomforted by the compliment. She waits, silently if not impatiently.
Tinker shakes her head gently at Dyeawan. “Wrist wrestling,” the old woman says. “There are fancier names for it, but that’s what it is, essentially.”
Dyeawan stares up at her with a furrowed brow, and then she looks to Nia. Even the challenger to her title seems mildly befuddled by Tinker’s proposition.
“It is quite simple,” Tinker continues. “Elbows of your dominant hand on the table. Your other hand will grasp these convenient handles. You will press your wrists together. You will attempt to force your opponent’s wrist down upon the table. The first contestant whose wrist touches its surface is declared the loser.”
Dyeawan is not outraged. She is merely offended. “This is somehow even more ridiculous than having us climb a mountain after poisoning us to believe it was exploding.”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” Tinker assents without reservation. “I did not create the tasks. They have existed for hundreds of years. I simply chose one in each category at random.”
“What purpose is this meant to serve?” Dyeawan demands. “What does this have to do with planning beyond the base prejudice of the able-bodied?”
The retired planner shrugs. “I believe the thinking behind it was something along the lines of: Control over one’s mind is paramount as a planner, and by extension control of one’s mind over one’s body.”
“I cannot control the whole of my body,” Dyeawan replies. “Am I still thought lesser for it as I was when I first came here, when all those with such seeming limitations who live here were deemed fit only to clean and cook and serve your meals?”
“You are only required to use the upper portion for this challenge. Having spent much of your life with your arms compensating for your legs, I would imagine you might even have an advantage.”
Dyeawan is appalled by that statement, and by Tinker’s attitude toward her in general. More than that, she is deeply disturbed at how they have all treated her, whether with outright disdain or gentle dismissal, as if she were a pet. Dyeawan begins to understand she has tolerated it in her life at the Planning Cadre because being treated like a pet was an improvement over being treated like an unwanted cur in the streets.
She knows now she should not have to settle for one situation or another because of where she comes from or the condition of her legs.
“I believe you are a genuine and kind person,” Dyeawan says to Tinker. “You may be very smart, as well. But your years here have not relieved you of ignorance.”
For the first time since meeting the old woman, Dyeawan sees Tinker frown. “I sincerely apologize,” she says, earnestly. “I spoke thoughtlessly and with unwarranted presumption.”
“Thank you. I accept your apology. It does not make this contest any less absurd.”
“You can quit any time you wish,” Nia reminds her, almost sounding helpful.
The gaze Dyeawan fixes her with could melt steel.
“It is always worth asking yourself if you truly want what you are pursuing,” Tinker comments.
“I never asked for any of this,” Dyeawan says, still looking at Nia.
That is not strictly true, and Dyeawan knows it. She may not have chosen to come to the Cadre, but her actions since then sought this outcome.
The two of them don’t know that, however.
“Very well,” she says. “Let’s get this over with and done, then.” Dyeawan grasps the stone handle rising from the table’s surface to her left. She plants her opposite elbow and holds her wrist high.
Nia nods, and Dyeawan can’t tell whether it’s a gesture of satisfaction or simply continuation. Gripping her own handle, Nia digs her elbow into the tabletop and presses her wrist against Dyeawan’s.
She can feel the pulsing of both Nia’s lifeblood as well as her own pulse pressing against that vital throb in the older woman’s wrist.
Dyeawan cannot recall the last time she was so aware of the steady, rhythmic thrumming of the blood in her veins.
“If you intentionally break contact with your opponent, you lose.”
Dyeawan merely stares back at her opponent. Nia might as well be the cover of a book left blank.
“Begin,” Tinker instructs them.
The pressure of Nia’s wrist and arm comes so fast and so furiously that Dyeawan is taken almost completely by surprise. She is not overpowered. She is simply unprepared. Nia’s wrist quickly drives hers toward the table.
Only at the last moment is Dyeawan able to tense the muscles of her arm and stop the momentum of its fall.
She grunts, balling her fist tightly and reversing the pressure against Nia’s wrist, slowly forcing their conjoined appendages away from the table.
Nia is stronger than she would’ve anticipated, and Dyeawan is still sore and depleted from her climb, but she also has to believe her opponent is, as well.
They lock eyes, and Nia appears to be staring through her rather than at her.
As they grapple, Tinker leans over the side of the table. “I’m sorry to have to do this,” she says to both heated opponents in the throes of their contest. Tinker rips away the silk cloths from both rectangles occupying the tabletop.
The corner of Dyeawan’s gaze registers what has just been uncovered, and her jaw falls silently open as she struggles to maintain her wrist’s position and pressure.
The cloths were concealing small clay boxes with no covers. Inside each box, a large, thorny-haired spider resides. They are very much alive, as indicated by the continuous flexing of their many legs. The bulbous bodies of both creatures are adorned with a star-shaped pattern of red and green and black.
The boxes are positioned on either side of their wrestling match, directly on the spots where either Dyeawan’s or Nia’s wrists will fall.
“Their bite won’t kill you,” Tinker calmly informs them. “By now you’ve both realized none of the challenges or tests constructed by the planners are truly lethal. But their bite will cause agonizing pain, and that pain will last quite a while.”
Dyeawan’s jaw snaps shut. “Why?” is all she can manage through her grinding teeth.
“Motivation?” Tinker responds vaguely. “These challenges were designed generations before my time. Who knows what they were truly thinking. I believe this is meant to test your control over your body’s fight or flight response as much as your control over your opponent.”
Her serene and conversational tone is a macabre juxtaposition against Dyeawan and Nia grunting and hissing. They are evenly matched as Dyeawan peers over their red and white wrists and hands, seeking Nia’s gaze.
“We could both stop this,” she blurts out.
Nia’s face has turned as red as the flesh of her competing wrist at this point. She shakes her head definitively.
Angered and frustrated by that impenetrable stubbornness, Dyeawan refocuses on their locked wrists, doubling her already considerable effort. Slowly, she begins to force the older woman’s arm down toward the table and the embrace of the poisonous creature housed in its miniature pen there.
“We… could both… stop this,” Dyeawan repeats.
“No!” Nia practically screams.
Dyeawan watches as the physical strain peels back the layers of control and stoicism Nia has trained herself to impose on her expression. She sees desperation in Edger’s former protégé. Desperation, and a terrible fear of failing.
Still, the back of her wrist is now barely an inch from the top of that lidless box. The spider inside begins crawling against the walls of its pen. An inch becom
es a scant few millimeters, and still Nia will not relent.
Dyeawan’s frustration boils over. “You… are… so… irrational!”
With a very uncharacteristic cry, she breaks contact, pulling her wrist from atop Nia’s and leaning back from the table.
“Interesting,” she hears Tinker mutter to herself.
The two competing planners cradle their tormented wrists against their chests, panting and gasping for breath as they stare across the obsidian table at each other.
“Congratulations, Nia,” Tinker says to her. “You’ve triumphed in the challenge of the body.”
Nia ignores the old woman. She stares with a mixture of bewilderment and anger at Dyeawan.
“You could have won,” she all but spits.
“Won what?” Dyeawan fires back.
Nia has no answer for that, or at least she doesn’t voice one.
CRACKING SHELLS
TARU IS FAST LEARNING THAT when Rok Islanders gather to make important decisions, it is less like a summit of leaders and more like a family feast, and the family doesn’t necessarily like one another.
The food is fantastic, however.
Taru sits cross-legged on a luscious grass mat that feels as soft as silk. They’ve just about taken down their second bowl of fish soup, a towering pot of which Staz cooked up the night before.
Beside the retainer, the diminutive captain of the Black Turtle is bundled in the heavy coat that has protected the elderly woman from decades of harsh gales and biting sea breezes.
“The soup is delicious,” Taru states before sucking in the last spoonful.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe. The secret is to roll the conch in crushed difta root. My sister uses tort seed. She is an idiot.”
Taru laughs, more loudly than they would’ve preferred, but the old woman seems to do that to them.
They are gathered, perhaps two hundred Rok Islanders and the retainer, in a longhouse that seems to Taru to stretch half the length of the Capitol’s Spectrum. Every group in attendance brought with them a bounty of whatever dish they felt best represented their cooking skills and family recipes, and from what Taru has observed, proving their superiority, and arguing loudly about the inferiority of their neighbors’ offerings, appears to be the central item on their agenda for the evening.