Ourselves

by S. G. Redling

  “Oh, I went over last night after you left and worked all night.” She could hear dresser drawers being pulled. Tomas would make sure all his clothes stayed neatly folded in their drawers, not just paw through them looking for something to wear like she would. “Hey, I called Louis about some information I found out on Adlai’s friend. He and Aricelli are on their way over right now. He thinks he might have a way to—”

  Tomas stood in the doorway, his mouth open in mid-sentence as he stared at her. Stell didn’t move, feeling as if a movie screen had appeared behind her and the activities of the previous night were playing in vivid color for Tomas. Neither spoke until Tomas dropped his chin to his chest and let out a ragged breath. He headed back toward the bedroom.

  “You might want to shower before they get here.”

  Stell came back into the living room after her shower, her skin rosy from the steam and scrubbing. Tomas didn’t look up as she came in even when she dropped the towel she was using to dry her hair on the floor. He hated when she did that and would usually insist she pick it up. Today, however, he paid no mind to the damp heap on the carpet or to the woman who dropped it. Stell knelt beside where he sat on the couch.

  Tomas arched an eyebrow. “Kneeling? Really?”

  “I don’t want to sit in a chair. My back hurts. I got shot.”

  “Shit, Stell. Let me see.” She turned and lifted her shirt. The marks from Adlai’s lovemaking were gone but a small purple welt remained from the bullet. Tomas touched it gingerly, feeling her wince. “You know you can die from these things, right? You can be shot to death. If it punctures an organ or there are too many of them, you can bleed out. Did he tell you that, Stell? Or did he just throw you into gunfire and wish you luck?”

  Stell pulled her shirt down and settled back on her heels. “I’ve been around guns before. I’m okay. These were Russians. With the knob.”

  “The knob?” Tomas looked into her earnest face. “I think you mean the mob.”

  Stell dropped her gaze and Tomas hated himself for embarrassing her. He hated her for embarrassing him. “What are we doing, Stell? Are you happy?”

  It took her a long time to answer. “I miss you.” Her voice was small. “I miss . . .”

  “I know. I miss it too. But everything’s different now, isn’t it?”

  “No, Tomas. I just—”

  “It’s not that. It’s not that you slept with him.” He saw her blush. “You don’t need to be a Storyteller to see that. And it’s okay. I mean, obviously I would rather, you know, but we’ve got to face facts. You and I are on different paths now. Neither one of us is going to be a banker or an insurance salesman. We have very different callings.”

  “Adlai says that acul ‘ads work for the Storytellers. I could work for you.”

  “Dalle said something about that too. But Stell, if Adlai’s right—and I’m not saying he is—but if Hess is being held against his will, something is very, very wrong. Something that could be dangerous.” Tomas closed his eyes. “I think when we find out what’s going on, maybe you should leave. You should go with Adlai.”

  “What? No.” She grabbed his hands. “You said you’d never send me away. You said that. And if something is dangerous, I can help.”

  “This isn’t gangsters with guns, Stell. These are Storytellers.” He stared into her pale eyes. “Believe me, this is some serious shit. And if they’re imprisoning Hess, if anyone is imprisoning him, then everything I know is wrong. Everything I’ve trusted all my life falls apart.”

  “You can trust me.”

  He brought her fingers to his lips and whispered. “Maybe you can’t trust me. Maybe I have this all backward. Maybe it wasn’t Hess they broke. Maybe Hess was removed because he wouldn’t break. Maybe I’m the one they broke.”

  A knock at the door cut off Stell’s protest. Tomas pulled away when Aricelli and Louis arrived in a flurry of coats and scarves, coffee cups and pastry bags.

  Tomas counted eight tall cups of coffee. “Are we having a party?”

  Louis threw his coat on the floor. “If you’re going to drag us out at this unspeakable hour, it requires strong fuel.”

  “It’s almost noon.”

  Aricelli dropped into an easy chair and grabbed a cup. “Fortunately we’re staying in town. At the Drake. Well, I’m staying at the Drake; Louis is using my bathroom as a changing room while he cultivates some new urban relationships.”

  Louis lowered himself gingerly onto his coat on the floor. “And those relationships require solid hours of nocturnal attention. This morning conversation thing is bullshit.”

  Tomas pulled Stell down to sit with him on the couch. He knew she was still upset. He was too but this wasn’t the time to discuss it. He had other business at hand. Tomas didn’t know which was worse—how badly the pieces of his life fit together now or how used to it he was becoming. He fumbled with his coffee, just wanting to get started. As usual, Louis led the way.

  “So, Westin. It doesn’t officially exist.”

  “But my driver said—”

  “And I said it doesn’t officially exist.”

  Aricelli went on. “It’s not easy keeping something like that a secret. Real estate brings taxes and utilities and all sorts of paperwork. I checked as many places as I could. It would take some doing to keep that off the record.”

  “Who could do that? Who could pull off a place like that?” Tomas asked.

  Aricelli glanced at Louis before speaking. “Well, if the money people don’t know about it and the security people don’t know about it and real estate people don’t either, that narrows it down pretty well.”

  Tomas felt his stomach sour. “The Storytellers.”

  Louis gave a sympathetic nod. “He was their mess to clean up. He was their mistake.”

  “It’s not a mistake,” Tomas said. “It’s not like that. He couldn’t handle it. Not everybody can.”

  “Okay, so what do we do?” Aricelli asked. “Is that it? Do we drop it? Assume the Storytellers are exercising their authority to handle this their own way?”

  Louis shrugged. “I don’t see that we have any choice, do we? It’s not like we can question them. On the other hand . . .”

  That was when Tomas saw it—Louis and Aricelli had practiced this argument. They were dancing around him. For once in his life, Tomas didn’t feel like being handled by his friends.

  “What is it, you guys? Just say it.”

  Aricelli cleared her throat. “If the Storytellers are out of line, if they’re doing something dangerous, maybe people ought to know.”

  “They poisoned him,” Stell blurted.

  “Who?” Louis turned to her as if just noticing she sat with them. “Who poisoned who?”

  Tomas tried to talk her down but she spoke over him. “The Storytellers. They poisoned Tomas. I bet they poisoned Hess too.”

  “They didn’t, Stell.” Tomas shook his head. “He didn’t make it that far.”

  “How far?” Aricelli asked. “You were poisoned?”

  He kept shaking his head. “It’s not like that. That’s not what happened to Hess. The poison is . . . is . . . it’s part of our training. It’s what makes—”

  “Does Mr. Vartan know about this?”

  “Vartan doesn’t have any say over it. It’s a Storyteller issue. It doesn’t concern him.” Tomas stopped short, catching the surprised looks of Louis and Aricelli. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. He’s the Coordinator but the Storytellers are their own authority.”

  “The authority to poison and imprison people,” Louis said.

  “No, no.” Tomas felt a dull ache building behind his eyes. “It’s not like that. Hess’s mentor Lucien was really upset about Hess breaking down.”

  Aricelli cocked her head. “From the poison he’d been given by said mentor.”

  “Shut up about the poison!” Tomas flew to his feet. “You don’t understand.”

  Aricelli looked into her coffee. “Obviously we don’t but you seem
okay with it. You’re the one in training with the Storytellers.” Tomas could feel how carefully she chose her words, could almost see her verbal tiptoeing. “All I’m suggesting is that if we’re looking for someone else who was poisoned, regardless of how necessary it might have been, perhaps we ought to utilize the Council resources at our disposal.” She looked up at him. “It’s not like you’d have a difficult time convincing Mr. Vartan to launch an investigation.”

  “What do you mean?” Tomas asked.

  Louis kept his voice in the same careful tone as Aricelli. “It just means that we have avenues of recourse. The Council has certain checks and balances in place that—”

  “Would you guys stop talking like Council leaders?”

  Louis stared up at him. “If you’ll stop holding forth like a Storyteller. We still call you Tomas, remember? You haven’t totally crossed over.”

  Tomas took a deep breath and settled back down on the couch. “I’m sorry. I am.” He looked to each of them. “This is really hard for me. I feel pulled in all these different directions and I don’t know who to trust. Besides you guys.” He made sure to include Stell in his glance.

  “It’s all right, dude.” Louis punched his knuckles against Tomas’s knee. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Strange days indeed,” Aricelli said with a wink, defusing the tension. “Who’d have thought that of the three of us, Tomas would be the first one to get a real job at the complex? The only person alive who ever came close to flunking out of Heritage School.”

  Louis laughed. “All we’re saying is that Mr. Vartan would certainly be interested in any shady goings-on regarding the Storytellers. His ego took quite a hit after the famously failed Vartan Plan.”

  “The what?”

  Louis laughed again and Aricelli shook her head. “You really do live in the clouds, don’t you? Do you never listen to Council gossip? My father loves to tell that story.” She sipped her coffee and settled in to tell the tale.

  “They were building the complex and Vartan had all kinds of plans to make it even more of a command center than it was already supposed to be. We’re talking about the business communities paying taxes to it and reporting all their income to them; Heritage Schools having to send kids there for free internships: all kinds of crazy stuff.”

  “It sounds like he was dreaming of a feudal castle with him as the Lord Mayor.”

  “I guess,” Louis said. “But in some ways he was just trying to modernize the Council, bring it more in line with business, less in the hands of the magical, mystical Storytellers.”

  “Daddy said his mistake was that he overstepped the bounds of the money people. The tu Bith went to the Storytellers to complain. From what I heard, a Storyteller slapped the taste out of Vartan’s mouth. He didn’t just veto the new plans but even cut back on the authority already established for Coordinator. So you tell me, you’re Paul Vartan. You’ve just been bitch-slapped and humiliated in front of the entire community. How do you feel about Storytellers?”

  “I can’t imagine he’d complain about a complaint,” Louis said. “That kind of dressing-down must have stung like a sonofabitch.”

  Stung. Stung like a bee.

  Tomas closed his eyes, the words floating before him.

  Like bees.

  Bees.

  Patterns everywhere. That’s what Dalle had told him. Always look for patterns.

  Stell leaned forward, her hand on his arm. “Tomas?”

  “Bees.” Tomas said, the word tingling on his tongue. He felt phantom drifts of the poison under his skin and the room seemed to fade away from him. “Bees.”

  “Bees?” Louis asked. “Dude, are you okay?”

  Tomas opened his eyes. “I’m a Storyteller.”

  Louis stared at him. “Well you look like a crazy person.”

  “I know. I need to meditate. About the bees.”

  Tomas stepped away from the couch, his back to his friends, muttering under his breath. “Where? Where? Where?”

  “You’re going to meditate,” Aricelli said in disbelief. “Right now. About bees.”

  Tomas held up his hand to silence her. “Here. I have to do it here. If I go there, they’ll know. Dalle will know.”

  “Dude,” Louis said, “if you’re going to do some yoga shit, I’m going back to bed.”

  “Not yoga. Meditating. It’s what—” Tomas caught himself and smiled. “It’s what we do. Can you give me a few minutes? And I’ll need you to be really quiet.”

  Stell folded her legs beneath her on the couch. Aricelli huffed out a disgusted breath and Louis sprawled out on the floor.

  “Dude, all you’re going to hear from me is snoring.”

  Tomas settled on the floor behind the couch. In front of him sat a narrow hallway table with spindly legs that framed a square of beige wall. A blank screen. Behind him, through the sofa, he could feel the solid silence of Stell.

  He moved into lotus position, breathing deeply, and turned his focus to the small black lump that rested at his core. He’d felt that lump within him for so long. It was cold and dark.

  It was fear.

  Sylva was wrong. He wasn’t feeling the residual echoes of someone else’s fear. He couldn’t have explained how he knew but he knew that he had to fully understand his fear before he could begin to address it.

  Remaining still, he let breath run through his body until he sensed the small black lump begin to move. He didn’t react. It was his mind working to reveal to him what needed to be done. The black lump shifted, replicated, copying itself, spreading open from the center like a flower.

  No, like a honeycomb.

  Bees.

  A cloud of bees had poured from Hess’s throat in his induction vision. Bees—industrious and necessary, lives of honey and hierarchy. Queen bees and drones.

  He groaned. Drones.

  The black honeycomb spread, filling him from within, pushing open his lips.

  From his mouth flew a black bee, then another and another. Tomas watched as a dozen or more black bees flew from his mouth, landing on the blank wall before him. They landed in a random pattern and froze, waiting.

  “Show me,” he said.

  And they did. Flying together, their slender black bodies created lines and shadows, moving and shifting until Tomas could see the pictures being drawn on the wall before him. It was a storyboard, a living graphic novel drawn before his eyes by the black bees of fear that had taken up residence in his being after he had placed his life in the hands of the Storytellers.

  He stared at the story laid out before him. “Look and dream.” That’s what Dalle had told him to do. He looked at the story his fear was telling him and he dreamed.

  Could he do it?

  Back at the complex, Tomas checked the door to Dalle’s meditation room. It was still closed, a blue ribbon hanging from the knob. Dalle had settled in for deep meditation. Tomas slipped into the Storytelling room.

  As he had been experiencing the vision, he had been so sure of his plan of action. Aricelli obviously bought it and was preparing to follow it. Adlai and Stell and Louis would also be at the complex waiting to see if it worked. As the immediate effects of the meditation wore off, however, Tomas could feel a different sort of fear settle into his stomach.

  To call what he had planned inappropriate was laughable. His plan was insane.

  He paced the room, trying to calm himself. Like the meditation rooms, this room had been the scene of change for Tomas. He traced his fingers along the seams of the chairs in which he had learned the stories of the Nahan. He had passed their tests. His mentor had found him worthy to be called Storyteller. Now it was time to put that faith in himself. He took a deep breath and felt the insecurity ebb. Another deep breath and confidence began to seep in.

  Without giving himself another chance to delay, Tomas headed down the hall into the north end of the Nahan complex where the Kott were allowed to work.

  He had been in this part of the complex before
many times and for the same reason he was here now—to visit the Kott’del. These were the Kott who had agreed to avail themselves to be fed from for the convenience of the Nahan who didn’t wish to hunt. There were strict guidelines in place for their safety and they were regularly rotated on shifts for their health but there was still a level of nervousness among them anytime they were asked to provide blood.

  The more veteran Kott’del, like Nancy and Kanai, who had come to his hotel room to feed him last week, were allowed to be fed from off-site and without supervision. The newer recruits operated under the watchful eye of Mrs. Studdard, a sixty-something, ninth-generation Kott who was rumored to be utterly fearless.

  She might be fearless but Tomas was counting on her appreciation of hierarchy. And her patience. And her outrage. In that order.

  Bracing himself for the worst, Tomas pushed open the door and smiled.

  Her name was Rene. She was twenty-two and from the neck up looked no older than sixteen. Tight brown ringlets were pulled back from her face with a red hair band that matched her red-and-white striped cardigan. She rose when Tomas entered the room and he could see the girlishness ended at her face. Rene was blessed with a body that would best be described as luscious, with full breasts and a round bottom. He would have gone through with this regardless of what Kott’del was on duty, male or female. This just made it easier.

  If he was going to flip off the strict protocol protecting the Kott, he might as well enjoy it.

  He held open the door and addressed Mrs. Studdard. “Leave us. Now.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir, but the policy is that—”

  “I know what the policy is. I wish to feed in private. Leave us now.”

  Mrs. Studdard bristled. “Your wishes are not my concern. My job is—”

  “I know what your job is. Do you know mine?”

  She did. Mrs. Studdard had been raised among the highest levels of the Nahan and was well aware of the special regard held for Storytellers. She was also all too aware of her limited clout. Picking up her pocketbook, she marched to the door.

  “I shall be right outside. I would appreciate your respect for our rules.”