Only the entrance was finished, the stone doors plated with bronze, and the walls smoothed and decorated on the right side with a fresco of Hermes carving a hammer out of a mountain. The lower half of the mountain was hollow, inside a dragon held on a leash by his master blew flames in vain towards the chimney. The tiny puffs of smoke rising from the mountain were barely as large as Hermes’ eyes. They all knew the story of how Hermes kept Azhi-Dahaka at bay while he shaped the world. On the left side, Fereydoon, David, and Kaveh, at the foot of the hill left by Hermes’ labour, were tying Zahak to two pillars under Maccabee’s watchful eye. Whatever the room was, Eitan had big plans for it.
“They died well. We all will,” Rina said.
“They died for your recklessness, little sister, there is no glory to this,” Eitan interjected.
She focused on her brother. “No, Eitan, they died for yours. What is this place? A throne room? Has Hades crowned you king? We are slaves, Eitan—where’s the glory in that?”
Eitan did not move, but his body tensed and the deep scar across his eye crimsoned darkly.
Majidi smirked. “Dror’s blood aye?” She looked slyly at Eitan. “Well, girl, we’ll find out soon enough if you’ve learned your lesson. Off to your comfort duties with you-”
Rina launched herself at her. Majidi moved faster than Rina had thought possible, leaving the chair vacant and appearing behind Rina, hands locked onto either side of her head. If she moved, her neck would snap.
“Missing your helmet, girl?” said Majidi with no satisfaction, Eitan’s face held even less.
He rolled a leaf into a cone, sparked a match on the chair and lit it. His face had changed. She remembered the gentle giant who had pushed her out of the room the last night she saw her father. That was how she’d wanted to remember him, before he carried her out of the comfort house. This man was not her brother. He might think he still was, but the man sitting in that chair was not Dror’s son. He was whatever the Fish had made him, and what he had allowed himself to become: something else, something cold.
Majidi released her grip.
“We never stop being comfort girls,” Rina said dejectedly. “That’s how you buy your allies.” A giggle built up in her stomach and exploded in laughter. “You’re a fool to count on those men, Eitan.” She could not stop the fit of laughter at the irony and naïve callousness of her brother’s plan. “A fool.”
Majidi raised an eyebrow. Eitan rose from his chair. “Every man has a price, and once it’s paid they’re in your debt. They know it. You know it too, every Mole girl pays that price, and you chose the comfort houses, you chose to be a Mole,” he said coldly.
“No, Eitan, I was trained to be a Mole. Then I was trained to blow up caves and dig tunnels. Then I was thrown in a pit for following orders. The Fish?” she said softly. “I know where I stand with the Fish.”
Eitan did not blink. “And now you know where you stand with me.” He smiled. “Councilman Tamhidi would like you, Rina.” He looked down at her, head tilted sideways, weighing her like she had seen Bees weigh cattle. “Yes. Yes, he certainly would.”
“No.” Rina could handle the old man, but she had been caught once. She would only get one shot at meeting with him again, and he was not ready; she needed four more days.
It did not matter what Eitan might do to her. It was too easy for him, using the comfort girls as the Fish did then trading them off for political favours. She did not know that man, and she owed him nothing.
Majidi stayed silent, but seemed to enjoy the exchange. Women in all the other Castes were free. There were no comfort duties for them, no pregnancy duties, no endless stream of raising and bearing children. Majidi was a councilwoman, and she knew what was at stake for the Moles. All Moles.
Eitan snapped his fingers. Two Mole guards unfolded from the walls and clamped her shoulders. “Three more days in the sweathouse, then take her immediately to Tamhidi. She’ll wake up there—make sure she does.”
Rina smiled up at her brother. “I won’t take any less than four.”
Eitan’s jaw trembled. He nodded slowly. Majidi’s eyes appeared to twinkle before they dragged her away.
Never again.
“Let... go of...me...” Rina’s hand crushed his throat little by little, making Tamhidi’s pleas all the more enjoyable.
She had slipped in and out of consciousness during the four days in the sweathouse, before the heat shut her system down and allowed her to drift into painless sleep.
When she opened her eyes, it was to find the old lecher standing over her naked body. Her first impulse was to struggle with her restraints, but she found that she had none. His mistake, she had thought and thrown her hand up catching the old man in the throat. She could almost see the fat shivering under his plush blue robe, and only released her grip when the colour of his face matched the colour of his clothes. She knew she would have enough time to roll off the table before he could respond to her assault in kind. Tamhidi was still valuable, and killing him would not serve her purposes; he was also valuable to the rebellion.
“Hades, girl,” he managed between wheezy breaths, “there is no need for this!” He grasped the table.
Rina would not hear any of his complaining, and leapt over the table, planning to pin him to the wall and get what she had suffered for. She landed, grinning for an instant before her bare foot slammed into a small pin lying on the floor. Her barely healed body felt like it had been dipped in acid from head to toe. Then a sudden jolt of cold numbed her out of pain. Her vision blurred from the shock, but she found Tamhidi holding her gently, laying her onto the table again, and pulling a syringe out of her arm.
“I told you there was no need for this. Damn you, girl, if I wanted to abuse you, I wouldn’t have woken you up. And you know how much your brother would have enjoyed it.”
He covered her in a cloak. It was dusty and itched, but compared to the bone searing agony of a moment earlier it was the sweet itch of life returning.
Tamhidi laughed. “Speaking of which...hold on, don’t move it will pass...speaking of which, you did show him didn’t you? Four days. Ha! Old Majidi was rolling on the floor telling me about it, and you would know just how much a mess that made. Well, you sure impressed him, and impressed her, and that is more important. Ever wondered how you’re still alive, girl?”
She did. In the sweathouse, just when she lost consciousness for the last time, knowing her water supply was finished, delirious, and with no real understanding of how much time she had left, she had hoped her death would reveal her brother for what he truly was.
“You’re something of a legend now,” he said, his back to her, removing pieces of equipment from the ceiling, “and you owe that to the old Beastess. Ha! Yes you do. ‘I won’t take any less than four!’ A steady stream of girls crept in at night, hydrating you at their own risk.”
He unloaded the items on a nearby table. His voice picked up with the clang of metal on its surface. “Anyhow, you didn’t need to push your luck to prove a point...turns out...” He lost track of his thoughts, engrossed in disassembling the various pieces of equipment on the table. “...Turns out I was already done when he sent you back in.”
She let out a groan.
“Yes, yes, would’ve said something akin to that I reckon.”
He lifted her up, gently again. “Think I couldn’t see it in your eyes, girl? Thought you were one in a long list of many, didn’t you now?”
He walked her to the table. Rina saw what looked like a fire-suit hanging from a wire thread. Something about it was different. She laid a hand on it. It was cold to the touch and seemed to drink in all the heat from her hands. She pulled back. He urged her forward.
“And wait till you try it! Who would have thought liquefying obsidian with lava would create an elastic rubber compound? No one! That’s because they don’t! Ha!” He cackled at his poor joke, “But Coils now, hmm, that was a finder. See? Turns out they are alive after all, and do extremely well under int
ense pressure. See? They bond with anything and when melted, they don’t die, see!” He got a hold of himself and went on, somewhat calmer. “They transfer their properties to whatever they are melted with and shift shape!”
Rina was not sure she followed, but tried anyway.
“Do you mean to say...the suit is...alive?!”
“That’s what I said didn’t I?” he snapped.
Rina winced but knew he had not meant rudeness. He was always three steps ahead of most people, and in her condition she could not have kept pace with her younger, more naïve self.
“Alive and well, and it will fit like a...well, a Coil I guess, but without any of the discomfort! Wait till you see the helmet!”
How wrong had she been about the old man? As she would find out, comfort girls had been fooling Eitan and his fanatics all along. Not all of them, many were not lucky enough to have landed on Tamhidi’s favourite list, but those who were gained a lot from him, and at no charge. Tamhidi offered healing services, food, rest, and care for the girls many had thought he abused over the years. Even in the Comfort Houses, he was not the infamous patron many thought him to be, an image he cultivated carefully even as he supported Eitan.
“Your brother...” he started, as if reading her thoughts, “...your brother is an aberration...” He shook his head. “An aberration! Your father, he had his faults, Hades knows, but your brother is another kind of animal. He will sacrifice everyone to get rid of the Fish. Good people seldom want to rule the world. That tells you something about power, girl...”
Rina knew the truth in his words as she recalled her brother’s aura of righteousness, sitting on his makeshift throne, even as he sentenced her to death or rape, or eventually both. A man who could have changed their world, but would not.
“Well?” he inquired, “what are you waiting for? Try it on! Try it on!”
Oblivious to his looks she let the cloak drop from her shoulders and slipped into the fire-suit.
The effect was immediate: she was submerged in intense cold as the suit sucked up all her heat and energy. She began to shiver, but almost immediately the suit started feeding her heat back into her, and stuck tightly to her skin just as the old man had said—tight like a Coil, but with no more pressure than needed to maintain contact with her body.
“What did I tell you? Coils, ha! Who would’ve thought? Now try this.”
He handed over the helmet. It was entirely black, and apparently seamless; you could not distinguish the visor from the rest of the headpiece. She slipped it on and felt the same cooling effect on her skin and through her scalp as with the body suit.
There was a visor, or maybe the whole thing was a visor; if she had eyes behind her head maybe they would... Instantly an image of Tamhidi standing behind her looking appreciatively at her reactions flooded her vision. She closed her eyes, opened them, and saw straight ahead again. She began to turn towards Tamhidi, reconsidered, and thought about what stood behind her, and again, Tamhidi appeared, a much wider grin on his face.
“Getting the hang of it already! Good, very good, it took me a while myself. I’m not gonna lie to you, I’d been working on this for a while before you asked, and it felt like a shame to hand it over to Eitan and his goons, although I would have had to eventually...” he sighed. “Won’t go into the details of it, too technical I’m afraid, and truth be told I’m not quite sure how it works myself, but why waste time wondering when it does? Wonderful things, Coils, truly wonderful... what else lies beneath the waters, I wonder, if only the Fish...”
Yes, if only the Fish... she thought, if only they were not mad, if only the winters would shorten, if only...
“The Fish will get what’s coming for them,” she said aloud, surprised at her own voice. Fire-helmets hardly carried sound at all, and you could barely hear anything through them either. You had to know your mission better than you knew yourself, hope that your teammates did as well, and rely on the heat sensors to warn you in time of a flood of running rock.
She picked up a small match from the table to her left; all she had to do to see it—think left—and she struck it on the table, and touched the helmet with it. The match went out: its heat went straight to the helmet and into her skin, and through the whole suit. She felt a surge of power through her entire body, as powerful as full immersion in lava with a regular fire-suit. She grabbed the table with her hand and raised it effortlessly over her head, thought back, and saw Tamhidi nodding his head appreciatively.
“Getting the hold of it indeed...”
“Coils again?”
He shrugged. “For some part, maybe the whole of it, maybe something else entirely, the same circuitry runs through fire-suits and with none of these results. Like I said, girl, the how isn’t always important when it works, and you’re in a hurry.”
Rina removed, or rather peeled off the helmet; concentrating was making her dizzy, and it snapped, wrapping itself back into its original shape the moment it she let go of it.
“Dizzy already?” laughed Tamhidi. “Don’t worry, it will come naturally enough.”
His ability to anticipate her thoughts was unnerving, but in spite of her distant demeanour, her respect for him grew with each passing second.
“Your brother is not expecting you to walk out standing upright, girl, you realise that, yes?”
She nodded resolutely. “Hit me,” she said calmly. She expected an argument; even after years as a comfort girl, she still believed that it was hard for men to strike women, even after Eitan, but to her surprise, Tamhidi nodded gravely in turn.
“I might have to. I might just. Don’t want to blow my cover, anything less than a bruise and your brother won’t buy it.”
Something strange was happening to her. She used to take pride in hearing people mention Eitan as her kin, but she winced when Tamhidi said it, and knew she would every time from this moment onward.
“Good thing you removed the helmet,” he said. He saw the question on her face. “It’s shock absorbent. I hadn’t mentioned?” He smiled faintly.
His uppercut caught her unexpected in the chin, she flew upwards and back, landing hard on the ground, but could only feel pain in her face and jaw. Shock absorbent indeed, she thought, and the old man still packed a punch and a surprising turn of speed under all that fat. She lifted herself up and his fist crashed into her skull and sent her back down.
“That should do it; anymore and someone might wonder how I could still have a go at you afterwards. Hate doing this every time I have to...”
She felt the bruise growing around her eye, and tasted blood in her mouth from his uppercut. She would not be a pretty sight when she was brought to Eitan, but it was worth it.
“I’ll call the guards.” He hit a switch on the wall. “Don’t worry about the suit. With Majidi on your side, I’ll have no difficulty smuggling it. She used to love your brother, you know? Hard to believe from a woman that size, love, but there you have it. Women scorned, ha!”
She limped to the door, and heard the oncoming footsteps through the stone wall.
Tamhidi grabbed her shoulder. “The Fish will get what they have coming, girl, you know that as well as I do. But ask yourself, do you want what’s coming next?”
Rina had let go of herself in the sweathouse, let go of who she thought she was, of who she had been told she was, and for that, she owed Eitan Arfazadeh. Now she had to find out for herself.
It was true she was no longer alone. In the early hours of the morning, before the Fish overseers prodded the Moles into the Divine Undertaking, a stream of former comfort girls would risk their lives to see her. She had few words at first, but her heart did the real talking, or perhaps they were just eager to hear. Hear, and listen.
One morning, one of them brought a small note in Tamhidi’s handwriting:
If you live, girl, think well before you act. You’ll find the suit waiting for you when he lets you out. Wear it. It will help you heal. Do you know what a phoenix is, girl? Bird from th
e dawn of Mars, perhaps even before we were blinded by the light; maybe its light shone against the cave, who knows and who cares, a bird of flame, girl, a bird of flame. Think on it. The suit will give you two minutes.
Two minutes! She thought back to the comfort girls who opened up to her, and she knew what needed to be done. I’m gonna need a hundred.
The explosion several weeks later caused a small avalanche, killing caste members indiscriminately. She had known that would happen, and as she had told Majidi, they died well. The avalanche sent a signal, and sealed the Divine Undertaking shut. It took the Fish by surprise, and Eitan and the rebels never saw it coming.
The ceiling showered the secret council hall with debris just as the door blew inward and a hundred women shrouded entirely in black, rushed inside.
Majidi smiled and turned to Eitan. “Another one of your tricks?” she said slyly.
Before he could answer, the leading shape leapt across the room, over the table, landed standing upright in front of him, and hit him with a soft blow from the flat of its hand, before turning to face the room, ignoring Eitan while he slammed into the wall on the far end of the cave.
The guards powered their launchers.
“Fry ’em!”
Weapons unloaded electric discharges on the intruders instantaneously. Instead of killing them, they gained speed and strength, appearing and disappearing in front of Mole guards too dumbstruck to fight back. They were everywhere at once, knocking weapons out of their hands, breaking limbs, ripping heads off shoulders, and slicing necks and skulls in half.
The commotion stopped. The dust settled, leaving behind a concussed silence broken by faint groans and the metallic stench of fresh blood.
Eitan rose slowly from a small pile of rubble, the cave wall shattered behind him, his face undecided between rage and surprise. Rage took over, but his step forward, usually unafraid and determined, trembled with a fear he’d thought he’d forgotten.
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