Blackthorn blinked, and the Magrim was normal size again. In its hands was a gleaming fish, still twitching with life.
A feeling of astonishment and relief nearly lifted Blackthorn off her feet. The glow of it was so intense that it brought tears to her eyes.
“Do you know how the story ends?” the Magrim said, taking on Vermillia’s voice. The feeling of relief buoyed Blackthorn for a few more moments, then spilled from her like a warm and pleasant rain.
“The story?” Blackthorn asked.
“The Story of the Eagle and the Salmon,” Vermillia said. “The eagle dropped the fish and the magician caught it…”
Blackthorn felt her mind cut through the haze of the dream. She knew the next words she spoke were true.
“The magician called to the eagle, ‘Thank you for this fine meal. I must start a fire to cook it.’”
Vermillia spoke the quoted line in unison. Blackthorn shivered, as if from a cold touch, when she heard the magician’s voice and her own meld in chorus.
“How does it go on after that?” Vermillia asked.
Blackthorn stood rooted. The words, which had only just come to her so readily, escaped her. “I thought that was the end.”
Vermillia shook her head. The Magrim continued, “Faster than the eagle could fly away, the magician started a fire, which enveloped the salmon and the entire tree.”
The tree went up in a pillar of flame. Blackthorn screamed. The air turned hot, and the sky turned red, and the Magrim towered over her again.
“Magicians are tricksters,” the Magrim bellowed in her father’s voice. “Every last fucking one of them!”
He leaned down towards her with a massive hand. Blackthorn made out her father’s maddened face under the Magrim’s hat.
“Do you want to have me killed, Blackthorn?”
The hand touched her.
* * *
In the dark, Blackthorn felt the sensation of skin against her own. The feeling moved around her back, then snuck under her cloth jerkin and slid up her side. It took her seconds to realize she was awake.
“I’ve failed, haven’t I, Blackthorn?”
Her father’s voice was hoarse and slurred, and his breath smelled of vomit. Her heart jumped as she realized his face was just behind hers. The sensation of his hand became more forceful, moving down to her stomach. He was pulling her in. Blackthorn clutched Sky closer.
“I’ve failed, haven’t I?…”
At first, Blackthorn thought he might be making up for his earlier anger, but his touch seemed to say something different. His other hand moved underneath her on the bed and gripped still stronger. She felt his body touch her back.
“You’re just as beautiful as your mother was…”
Blackthorn had no way to move. She tried to stave off her panic––remind herself that she had weathered her father’s moods before––but this was nothing like she had ever experienced. His voice was low, and passionate, and alien to her. She felt the hands reach lower.
She wanted to feel relieved that her father was not striking her, or berating her, or slapping her. But she could not relinquish that crawling feeling, a cold spreading from her stomach to her legs and through her entire body that she had no idea what was in store for her.
Trying not to make her father think she was squirming away, she found the final pin and pulled it from Sky’s hair.
Her father’s hands relinquished their grip. Blackthorn heard a choking sound from behind her head. His voice sputtered out as a high squeal, then was squeezed into nothing. His knee collided with her as he thrashed about. The thump as he fell from her bed was surprisingly soft, as if he had only stepped down from the mattress after a long sleep.
His flailing continued for the longest moments of Blackthorn’s life, and then he became quiet.
Blackthorn could feel the pounding of her heart in every part of her body. When she turned to look at her father, she knew what had happened. Even in sleep, he was never this still. Against the dark floor, it looked like his pale form was floating on a nighttime cloud.
Blackthorn had no sense of minutes or hours as she sat on the edge of her bed in shock. Unable to look away, she studied every detail of her father’s body. The clammy hands grasping his throat that would never again strike her. His face, frozen with panic, that would never again glare down at her. His glassy eyes that would never look on her again with love or scorn.
For a glorious moment, Blackthorn was visited with the buoyant sense of relief she had felt in her dream. She thought she would rise off her bed from the weightlessness of it, until her fear caught up with her, and the fear brought guilt.
She was all alone in the house. Her father was gone, and she had killed him. She had killed him! Had she known what Vermillia had meant when the magician had described the protective spells on the hairpins? She had. She knew she had. She began to weep in great coughing sobs. Time passed indeterminately again. Seconds retreated into hours.
Her father had been an angry man, a frightening man, but he had given her food, water and life. What do I get for doing the right thing? He had said before he’d died. I get a daughter who would have me killed. I get a daughter who would sell me to the Magrim.
Her guilt and fear boiled into rage.
Blackthorn had not killed her father. It had been Vermillia. She had hidden the meaning of the pins, and forced Blackthorn to commit a terrible crime rather than do it herself.
Blackthorn jumped off the bed, ran past her father’s body, and began slamming Sky into the floor. Vermillia had left her all alone, with no food or money or family! Vermillia had tricked her, just as her father had warned her she would. Vermillia had! Vermillia had!
When Blackthorn finally stopped, she was gulping air. White spots popped in front of her eyes, and suddenly her whole body felt faint.
* * *
She awoke to the sound of an opening door. Her eyes crinkled at the sunlight, but she saw from her prone position the hem of a tan cloak, the hardened end of a wooden staff. She surged to her feet.
“Get away from me!” Blackthorn yelled, taking Sky and brandishing the doll like a sword. “You can’t make me disappear. You can’t make me disappear!”
Vermillia advanced calmly. “Blackthorn, please take my word on this. I am not here to make you disappear.”
“You made him disappear!” Blackthorn said, jabbing the doll towards her father. “You said you only wanted his debts.”
“Debts are often paid in more than silver.” It was the first thing Vermillia said to Blackthorn that sounded truly cold. “Are you sad that he is gone?”
Blackthorn had no answer.
“Are you?”
In a fit of rage, she charged at the magician. “Get away!”
A warm wind passed over Blackthorn, lifting her gently off her feet and guiding her to rest where she had started. She remembered the sensation from her first encounter with the magician, and again marveled at how easy it was for Vermillia to control her. Her anger had dissipated, but had left nothing behind––a hard pit of non-feeling.
“Blackthorn, you silly girl,” Vermillia’s tone lightened. “You are free.”
They locked eyes. Blackthorn was not so sure she felt free.
* * *
The black water of Linkstone Harbor that night seemed to boil and bubble. The towering flames hissing upward from the sea created a churning mass of froth and charred wood, but the heat did not reach the mossy pier where Blackthorn waited. She paced back and forth, trying to relieve the cold. The full moon had returned overhead, but did not give warmth like the sun.
Blackthorn could not see her father’s body, and did not want to. The smell of roasting flesh nearly made her cry.
She had become used to crying in the last week. She had not watched them cart her father’s body away, but afterwards Vermillia had told her to stay in the house.
“I’ve cast wards on every wall and door,” Vermillia had said. “Don’t leave here under any circ
umstance. I will make sure you are fed.”
“What are you going to do with me?” Blackthorn had asked.
“I will tell you,” Vermillia promised, “once the floating of the dead has passed.”
Blackthorn did not know what the magician had planned for her. She struggled to keep her mind off her father, but some part of her missed the routine of his stumbling late-night entrances, his afternoon awakenings leaving her to spend the morning as she pleased, his sloppy attempts at reconciliation. Now, even among hundreds of other people watching the ceremony from the waterfront, she felt alone.
The words echoed in her head. I will tell you.
A flickering light separated itself from the columns of flame in the distance and approached the pier. Other observers retreated as a shadowy boat approached the docks, but Blackthorn stepped forward to greet it. The torch, standing where an ordinary boat’s mast would be, was a deep wine red.
“I have seen your father,” Vermillia said as she stepped onto the dock. “His ashes float with the rest.”
Blackthorn could not resist looking back up at the city, to where she guessed her house must be––where she and her father had spent their entire lives. She could not make it out.
“Will you tell me?” Blackthorn asked.
Vermillia nodded. “I will tell you, Blackthorn, that magicians need more than just magic to survive. We could use a smart girl like you. You will see and learn many things.”
A bone-deep shudder passed through Blackthorn. She was not being given a choice. She recalled her father’s words from a moon ago that the Magrim were tricksters, one and all, and how she had trusted him without question. Then she remembered the sensation of pain and falling he had inflicted on her moments later.
She could still not comprehend that he was gone. She had never known how to feel, and still did not.
Blackthorn continued to shiver, but she hoped it might just be the cold passing from her. The red flame on Vermillia’s boat, and the towers of smoke and fire on the ocean where everyone she had ever known in her life had been burned to ashes, finally brought her some warmth.
“But I will not disappear,” Blackthorn said. “Right?”
“My child, nothing ever disappears,” Vermillia said. “It only burns.”
MANIPULATION
by E. V. Morozov
“There is a chance that the body will retain some of the energy transferred to it by a Flesh ward even once the ward is removed. This is called the Gabel Risk Factor. The Factor scales with several variables: species, ward complexity, longevity and so on. All of the wards that are currently legal have a negligible Gabel Risk Factor. The majority of the wards that would become legal under the Flesh Exploitation Bill have a high, or even a very high, Gabel Risk Factor.”
—Principal Dr Anak Gabel, Professor of Flesh Sciences, Free Research Institute of Arwall, Extract from an interview with The Gentry Herald, 3rd of Sunspawn, the year 67 PC.
The phonograph hissed quietly as the needle threaded its way around the recording cylinder. Three figures sat in the dim light of the interview room. One perfectly upright and still, her back not touching the chair, her left index and forefinger pressed to her temple, right hand palm-down, fingers open, on the table. Her features were clearly visible: plain and pale face, almost clean of make-up, clear of emotion if not for a line of intense concentration creasing her forehead; her hair, with a stark streak of white down the left side, was brushed back into a ponytail. She sat opposite a smaller huddled shape that had her knees drawn up to her face, hugging her legs, obscured by shadow but emanating a distinct scent of rot. A Flesh ward could make a corpse look and behave alive, but it could not mask the smell. The third figure reclined in a high-backed wooden chair, his right leg flung casually over the left, leather boot swaying a little. He was outside the immediate vicinity of the light, but every so often inhaled on a long metal pipe, the embers glowed orange and revealed two small eyes fixed intently on the huddled figure. When he exhaled, the cheap tobacco fumes mixed with the cloying scent of rot and caused the upright woman to wrinkle her nose.
The high-backed chair let out a sharp creak, the smoke moved about the room, and for a moment something flashed in the man’s eyes. A semblance of kindness, but too fleeting and too cold. “I really am sorry to put you through this, Miss Bekin,” his voice was bored and tired; this was routine. “But we really must ask you to try again.”
“I can’t remember,” the huddled figure did not look up. Her reply was detached, disinterested.
The man sighed and glanced at the other woman. “Brain rot?”
She nodded, “Most likely. Although given where and when she was found, I would say it is unlikely to be natural.”
“Yes,” his tone was meditative, “We’re seeing this sort of thing more often. You wouldn’t believe the amount of decapitated bodies we find these days.” He coughed. “Anyway, is there anything you can do?”
She hesitated before replying, “No.”
He arched an eyebrow, muttered “end of interview” into the phonograph and took the needle off the recording cylinder. “Why the hesitation?”
She glanced at the phonograph, at the huddled shape, then at the man. “The process is not legal.”
He mulled over this, took a long drag on his pipe, exhaled, watching her wrinkle her nose at the fumes. “Would it be legal under the new Bill?”
“Yes”, she answered. Of course he meant the Flesh Exploitation Bill; it was the only piece of legislation that mattered these days.
“Huh.” He leaned back, took another drag on his pipe. Finally, he spread his hands and smiled at her, trying to make it look genuine this time. “Doctor Serin, I’ll be frank.” He only used her title when he needed to lean on her, to let her know that he could make things very difficult. There were a lot of Flesh manipulators in Arwall after all, all freelance, all competing for warden contracts. “The Bill is going through the Large Council in two weeks. The department is under a lot of pressure to close all Flesh-based cases before then—preferably earlier. I have four leads on this one. If I don’t get a name out of Miss Bekin, I could be chasing it another month. And if I do that, I’ll get a visit from the Head Inquirer,” he paused for effect, speaking through a cloud of smoke, but his eyes fixed firmly on Serin’s, “I’d be sure to let him know why it was taking so long.”
“That does not concern me, Inspector,” she said. “And any information I would get out of her would be inadmissible at trial.”
“Naturally,” he agreed, “But I only need a name.”
If he could read her, he would have noticed that she had made her decision minutes ago, that she was merely going through the motions: under state-sponsored coercion, only give in after protest. If he knew her, he would have realised that she would be persuaded by sheer curiosity. He did not, so he was taken by surprise when she said, “Miss Bekin, give me your hand.”
The huddled figure stretched out its hand and placed it on the table. She did not look up, continuing to press her face into her knees. As Serin took hold of the hand, she noted how cold and inert it felt. She had been doing this for a long time, but she could not overcome the distaste. The fear and hesitation had gone, yes, but revulsion was a habit.
There were several seconds of silence, then a grotesque sound—cracking bone and tearing flesh, ripping sinew and ligament—as the huddled figure’s head snapped back at one hundred and eighty degrees, mouth gaping in a grimace of surprise and pain. Her head lolled from side to side, pressed against her back, hair dangling down like rope ends.
The inspector took out a dog-eared notebook from his jacket, made a few notes. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
“A Flesh memory,” Serin explained. “She is reliving her death.”
“Reliving?” He arched an eyebrow again.
“In a manner of speaking.”
Presently the corpse’s mouth—head still pulled back at an impossible angle—began to form a word. The inspector stood u
p from his chair and walked over, leaning in closely, concentrating on the moving lips.
“Urona Sornik,” he concluded and noted the name down in his notebook, looking satisfied. “Surprising. You know, nine times out of ten it’s their husband or lover.”
Serin did not reply. She removed the Flesh wards she was maintaining on the body and it crumpled to the floor like a rag doll made of rotten meat.
“I will leave the body and the paperwork to you, Inspector.”
* * *
Serin woke with a start. It took her half a minute to realise that someone was knocking on her door, loudly and persistently, and another minute or so to find her dressing gown and walk across the parquet floor. She glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room as she did so. It would not dawn for another hour. Something had happened. Given her occupation and lack of social ties in the city, it could only involve Flesh use. She composed herself and unlatched the door.
Her composure slipped for a moment as she recognised the Head Inquirer, flanked by two Council Guards in plain, utilitarian armour. She had only met him once and briefly while conducting Flesh manipulation on a high-profile serial killer case. Whatever this was, it was very bad indeed.
“Doctor Serin,” he said, pushing past her and motioning the guards to remain outside. “I’m sorry about the hour, there has been an emergency. You are required at the scene immediately.”
“Inquirer Leveen,” she inclined her head in greeting, regaining her composure. She would be dragged there by force if she did not agree to go; the lost time would only irritate him. She went over to the wardrobe, collected fresh undergarments, her usual black suit and walked into the bathroom. “I need two minutes.”
While Serin dressed, Leveen looked around the flat. It consisted of one large bedroom with a separate adjacent bathroom. Tall windows and a high ceiling suggested it was a few decades old, when local architecture was popular in Arwall. The décor was sparse: a Crywood wardrobe, bed, bookcase with a glass front, desk, chair and grandfather clock in the far corner. A reclining chair rested by one of the windows.
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