Margaret didn’t answer. She didn’t take her eyes off Aurora Owens, nor did she accept her hand, she merely waited, listening. Aurora took this deal seriously enough to stand on broken legs one last time, using her crutches. There was a wall of silence around her, rigorous, passive defenses, one layer after another, no stray thoughts, no emotions could fly free. Margaret had done the same. Partially to disguise her own pain, partially out of respect.
“When this is over, I want the eye that does not see.”
It's not mine to give you, Margaret thought, but she didn’t hesitate to extend her left hand to shake Aurora’s. Clutched between their palms was the golden necklace.
“Deal.” Margaret said, her voice stern.
Just as her favorite niece had feigned terror on The Beast, just as she’d promised Margaret aid in legitimizing her as the daughter of Maggi Lopez, Margaret lied also. There was no shame at the back of her throat, no regret. She’d given twenty years in service to the Antecedent Empire, and there was no way that she’d be rewarded with death.
Margaret’s words bounced around her skull again, “Good witches lie.”
10:44am March 1st, 39 Veilfall
Stockton, California
“You’ve a handprint on your face.”
Margaret turned to look down at the boy who was studying her. She’d been aware of him at her heels through Stockton’s alleys. He smelled of warm bread and apples in the sun, traipsing building to building, evading her eyes as best he could.
“And your face is dirty, so I suppose we’re even.” Margaret offered a smile, affectionate and calm under her hood. The rain cloak that Aurora gifted her had an exterior of matte black, coated in hard paraffin and boiled oil; the inside was lined in crushed velvet and animal fur. It was an extravagant garment, and one that Margaret would almost certainly destroy.
“Why are you so close to the fighting?” The boy asked her. He couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. His brown tunic was stained at the wrists and chest, black with an amalgamation of colors, leaving hands tinted yellow or orange. His family did well for themselves judging by his proper boots and clean teeth.
Margaret sighed, and turned away. He reminded her of someone she’d known as a young girl, a boy named Daniel Hasgard. Perhaps it was the way his eyes moved across her, or perhaps it was the scent of his rising fear that he was biting back so hard.
Pretty girls don’t like cowards, she heard him think.
“This is my job. You’re a calico printer. I get close to the fighting.”
Planning to move up and into the smoky streets ahead, Margaret turned her back to this alley wall. It was covered in antique street signs, most of them upended squares, symmetrical diamonds. Each one had been hammered into place, laid down like tile, creating a checker pattern of white, black, blue and red in antique symbols and numbers, meaningless to anyone but those who’d been born before the Collapse.
“You don’t dress like a soldier.”
Frustrated and a little afraid for the boy, Margaret stopped sliding down the alley and turned to face the young man. Her eyes fell past, watching stories unfold a thousand yards away. She had set up a picnic in his mind, a checkered towel stretched out on the grass, and she’d begun to unpack her basket. There were things in that basket that she would never share with a curious lad, but she wanted him to show one memory in particular.
It was Daniel Hasgard’s body, seen through her eyes. It wasn’t merely the savage desecration of his chest at the hands of several well-placed shots, it wasn’t the five feet of intestines he had trailed, dragging his body to safety. She was sharing the smell of stale copper, dried shit, and burnt hair. The vision blurred and faded, as her own tears had ejaculated into field of view, blinding her.
“You’re no coward boy,” Margaret was speaking with her lips and her mind, creating a tandem echo across his awareness, “but if you follow me, you will die.”
The boy’s jaw fell open and a sea of fear surged up and across his expression. He closed his mouth a second later, whispered a single word, and then ran. He ran so hard and fast that his body was bent, driven by legs that hammered in a perpetual spiral to keep him upright, barreling forward.
Margaret couldn’t hear the word with her ears, but her mind was none so deaf.
Witch.
Turning away, pressing herself against the wall of tin and bolt, Margaret began to sidestep forward. The air smelled like ashen wood, oil, and gunpowder. There was no wind, not in the shade of Stockton’s walls, and hanging smoke diffused sunlight. Small arms fire sounded like chirping pops, the cries of morning songbirds, greeting a new day, only to be punctuated by a violent hammer. Heavier weapons, a kingdom of bees unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
As she got closer to the main street, she could see shadows running in the thick haze, moving with purpose, crouching or striding, shouldering weapons. No one shouted or yelled, no orders could be heard, only begging from the wounded.
They’re so close now, both sides can hear the other. Margaret thought, resting tongue on her lower lip where she could feel ragged blisters. This was door to door fighting. She couldn’t simply focus on a mass of enemy soldiers, she couldn’t see her foe across a battlefield, she had to listen, choose her targets, take her time.
The silence of the wounded and dying was nearly immediate, creating a void in the battle, pausing weapons fire.
Hush, hush, be still my beautifuls. Be still now and we’ll forget the pain.
If the body or the mind bled, she was powerless to effect repairs. All that she could do was distract, offer a parallel reality, devoid of agony. She could feel every mind that lay prone in the streets under a canopy of lead. She could feel the men pressed against barriers or clinging to cover, under the care of a doc, heads cradled in the arms of their brothers. All of them burning hot, venting suffering.
She sang to them, holding their thoughts, memories. She was a ghost, faceless and quiet, their hands pressed to her bosom as she reminded them of things, they loved so much more than bleeding out, punctured organs, or burned flesh. There were no promises to be made for the dying, Margaret wouldn’t lie that way.
This branch of the battle turned dead, quiet and quivering. Waiting for something, anything to shift. Stockton was a familiar partner for Margaret, unfolding around her, enveloping her guests.
Perhaps a few seasoned men of the 3rd Army knew what was happening.
Perhaps they know I’m here.
Margaret’s right arm still hung limp at her side. With her left she swept the hood off Aurora’s rain cloak and tipped her head back, inhaling deep. Acrid smoke was stinging at her sinuses. Her fingers clawed at the air above her head, and anyone watching her would have seen blue and white pigment dripping from nothing, then vanishing before falling to her forehead. She seemed like a dancer about to fall into an elaborate prance, her body stiff, and her eyes twitching behind lids. A single spark snapped off the metal signs next to her, creating an arc of harmless power, excess energy, shunting into nothing. A hundred tendrils swept out around her, diving for the warmth of beating hearts, latching around bone, tunneling into minds, one after another until Margaret had created a web across her city sprawl, linking one soldier to the next, regardless of what side they were on.
One of these men, not even twenty years old, sat on the second floor of a bakery, covered in flour. A stray round had exploded bags near him. He was listening to the silence, right eye a few inches from his scope, looking for anyone in range of view.
This could be a witch, he thought, and not Amy.
Margaret seized on the young man. He’d identified himself as her enemy. At the expense of her body, motor functions, and all others she was connected to, her mind leapt into the flour-covered soldier, possessed his nerves and bones, and all the winding electrical wires that powered his meat skeleton. With no hesitation the man leaned back, away from his rifle and scope, and withdrew a sidearm from his right hip; an old 1911.
I�
��m sorry you chose the wrong side. What’s your name? Margaret asked the man as he cocked the hammer on his antique pistol and lifted it to his skull, barrel on his ear.
“Calvin. My name is Calvin.”
Crack.
The connection was broken. A .45 round shattered Calvin’s skull, and Margaret was thrust back into her own body, eyes open, alert, ignoring the drool that ran past her ragged lips and onto flak vest.
What the fuck? That was Calvin’s window!
Margaret heard that next, and her eyes fall deep into the streets of soot and fog. This man was drowning in fear, Margaret could feel it all around him and her senses lapped at the choking dismay no different than a kitten would lick up a bit of milk. He was on the opposing street, behind a brick and mortar pillar, and he’d seen the muzzle flash. Calvin had just waved to him a few moments earlier.
I’m sorry you chose the wrong side. What’s your name?
Margaret severed threads that connected this man’s mind and body with a cuspate aspect of herself.
“Andrew Yates,” the man said. She was letting him stay awake, his consciousness fully aware that someone or something else now owned his body.
Back in her own skin, Margaret convolved and nearly doubled over, grinning. Lips pursed tight, to keep the moan in her throat. She was absorbing the terror of Andrew Yates, gobbling at it as an upended soup bowl, potatoes and clams flooding her throat. Unable to feel her own fear, Margaret found the visceral reaction in others to be an intoxicant, an unfettered power that was euphoric. She was a flower open in the sun, absorbing nothing but fuel she needed for her terrible engines to burn.
Show me your friends, Andrew Yates.
Andrew Yates did as he was told, turning away from the pillar and shouldering his rifle. He swept the barrels across muddy air, and Margaret could see a boy through his eyes. Shaved head, missing his left ear, and a visible 9th Battalion patch on his shoulder. Margaret giggled as the boy turned to see Andrew, just for a second, wondering why his friend was aiming a rifle at him.
That was as far he got. The boy with a missing ear was now dead, a five-five-six round opening a hole in his throat, tearing apart his arteries, windpipe, and shattering his spine.
Andrew Yates laughed as he turned the rifle on his companions, his lungs chortling with Margaret’s glee as he shot a second and third. Margaret could hear nothing with her own ears now, she was deep in the mind of Andrew Yates, and as fear spread around the man, so too did a complete understanding of her enemy. This was a tool Margaret could use to tell friend from foe, and even if she didn’t possess the knowledge of all 9th Battalion soldiers, she knew where enough of them were now.
Crack-crack, two rounds hit Andrew Yates in the chest. Neither Andrew nor Margaret felt the pain, or even the pressure, save that Andrew’s body stumbled backwards. The rounds had missed his spinal column, and his arms still worked. The arms Margaret owned. With fingers and hands, she brought the rifle back up to Andrew’s shoulder, sites locking with eyes, nothing but windows for Margaret.
It was a woman who shot Andrew. He knew her name, Angel McNally. Originally from Texas, she was a firecracker in bed. Margaret wondered if Angel loved Andrew? Perhaps that’s why she hesitated to deliver a fatal shot to Margaret’s puppet. Or, perhaps, she was simply dumbfounded as Andrew’s body moved so easily after consuming two rounds of lead.
It didn’t matter because Angel McNally took a five-five-six in her right eye. An eye that had been such a bright green, the green of sea foam and beach lichen.
Margaret executed a total of seven 9th Battalion soldiers before Andrew Yates had his body crippled. It was a round to his stomach that separated his spinal column, dropping the man to his knees.
I’m sorry you chose the wrong side, Margaret whispered in Andrew’s head as she withdrew her claws from his nerves and motor functions.
Awake, aware, in her own skin, Margaret’s chin was coated in shiny saliva, and her body was hunched against the alley wall. She stood up straight, reaching a palm up to wipe at her mouth. As she did, she also realized that her left hand was coated in something like black ink, thick and viscous, liquid charcoal dripping off her fingers, oozing from the pores of her forearm and falling down her velvet sleeves.
What? Margaret was pulled out of the fray for a second, until dusty morning light crossed her palm, turning the oily residue reflective and allowing Margaret to see her own face. The flesh where Amy’s hand had pushed her skull into tarmac was angry, punctuated by fatty, yellow blisters.
Whatever shock Margaret felt in looking at this umber liquid washed away, swept aside in a tsunami of rage that cradled around her heart.
“I loved you.” Amy had told her, jaw quivering, when she lit her aunt on fire. Not an aunt by blood, but the aunt who had changed her diapers as a baby, the aunt who had taught her the tenants of magic and told her tales of the gods.
Amy had delivered an intimate understanding of what it felt like to fall under the hands of a fire eater. She could not have told another with words, but there was a certain kind of horror to feeling bones glow hot as embers, melting flesh from the inside out. This was a memory that Margaret would walk with for the rest of her days.
This was also a memory that Margaret shared with the 9th Battalion.
Every one of them that she’d located with Andrew Yates. Men she couldn’t see, or Andrew barely knew, each one of them had their skulls drilled open and a boiling pot of Margaret’s agony poured in.
This was what Margaret called spreading her terrible wings. Showing them all a glimpse of her pain, distracting them, swelling up in their emotions, a soft and sallow balloon, pressing them to their limits of sanity and inducing waking terror.
Waking terror that existed only in their minds.
The streets of Stockton fell into a second maelstrom of violence. This time the 9th Battalion soldiers began screaming, begging, letting out cries of pain not hitherto known in this place. The 3rd Army held post and turned on their enemy as they fell to the ground, rifles clattering on cobbles, small arms fire bursting forth and igniting the streets anew with heat and glow. Men with bayonets and squad automatic weapons ran past Margaret’s alley, she heard a grenade fly and pop, the 3rd Army was descending on Amy’s men like a vulture on flesh carrion, drunk with hunger and bloodlust boiling hot in their loins.
An officer strode past the alley, easily six-foot-two or three, gaunt, his chin-to-toes may as well have been a flat board under armor, and kit. He stopped, turning to look at a tiny woman in the alley, covered in something like motor oil, her face burned with a handprint.
“Lady Mayhem,” the officer nodded, turning. He wore chainmail sleeves over his thickly woven shirt, blackened by flame to reduce reflection.
Margaret recognized him. He was another one of Townsend’s Captains. Jared? Margaret would never insult one of her men by forgetting his name, so instead of fumbling a reply she nodded smartly with a face covered in slobber, “Captain. How’s your day?”
The tall Captain smirked, looking around, understanding, “Better, now that Pups of War are falling all over themselves to retreat. What are your orders, Lady Mayhem?”
Margaret glanced down at her left hand, then dropped it below her cloaks, listening carefully to the tall Captain. His chest was stiff with pride. He knew quite well this was the work of Lady Mayhem, his battlewitch, his 3rd Army. There was nothing in his soul but total loyalty.
“Hunt down every member of the 9th Battalion. No prisoners, no quarter.” Her voice cracked as she growled a reply. Manic glee surfaced once more as a nasty smile spread across her face, cracking the scabs at her lower lip.
The tall Captain’s smirk became a grin. There was a sense of satisfaction about him now, a hammer with nail to strike, a wrench with bolt to turn. His imagination also fell to the spittle coating Margaret, a symptom of not fully commanding her own functions. He was imagining cock and balls in her mouth, the image as clear as a photograph in hand and as loud as the battle aroun
d them.
Margaret wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, and she replied with the same awful glee resonating in her tone, “You should probably raise your standards, Captain.”
If the tall Captain was embarrassed at the notion of his fantasy on display for the very object of his fantasy, he didn’t show it, “Never been my experience that a blowjob could be ruined by a few scars.”
She was pleased that at least one man didn’t find her burns as disgusting as she did, but Margaret had always used sexuality as a form of control. Its unleashed impact on this Captain made her uneasy and stole away confidence she never knew she possessed.
Margaret’s eyes rolled across smoky streets, down toward the 3rd Army lines. In all the world, right now, it was only Townsend who offered a sense of wholeness, belonging, something else it seemed which Amy had stolen.
“Escort me to the Lieutenant General.”
2:20pm March 1st, 39 Veilfall
Stockton, California
Townsend helped Margaret remove the rain cloak, tossing it to wooden chairs and tables of the abandoned tavern they occupied. Across the bar, sans stools, were dozens of maps, layer upon layer, with measure and leaden pencils. Most of the maps were views of Stockton’s street-level planning, but some also showed sewer mazes, and the internal structures of her city walls.
“I can’t tell if you’re in pain,” Townsend didn’t immediately look back at Margaret from her coat. What he could not read in her eyes, she could read in his. He was repulsed by the blisters along her lips and up her cheek, and she didn’t actually blame him. The wounds were gruesome, and she hardly wanted to look at them herself. Under bandages, and the black gown that Aurora loaned her, she could easily forget the extent of her injuries. It didn’t make her feel better physically, her face still cried out, and her chest ached savagely as she moved and twisted, warbling along cobbled streets and sidewalks to meet Townsend. She was physically exhausted, her eyes heavy, and mind drowsy. She wanted to just rest for a while.
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