by C. A. Lang
Great timing. As far as she was concerned, this job was over. She tapped her jaw and began to think of excuses. “Vasi, it’s just that... there’s no more profit in it.”
As soon as she finished the sentence, she jammed her eyes closed and winced. Dannac would have something to say about such a callous remark in maybe three... two—
“Once a Valoii, always a Valoii. You see, Vasi, even the good ones will let you down sooner or later.”
It felt like one of Laik’s crushing blows hammering her chest. They just didn’t understand. How could they? They were the ones she had been hiding from in that stupid shelter, it was them who kept attacking and just would not stop, with their hoarded powers and terrible hatred—
Vasi sat on a broken crate. “Do you people think you are justified in what you do just because of what Yahrein did? Do you think they did not do the same thing to us?”
Capra jumped into her usual defensiveness. “What does that have to do with anything? That’s history. I’m talking about right here, right now. I’m sorry, I just don’t see why we should risk our lives in that tower anymore, now that Helverliss is gone.”
“And where do you think they took him, Valoii? Do you think they took him to the armoury? To that stupid palace? No. Helverliss is in that tower with the painting.”
Capra considered this. It did change things, provided that Sevari didn’t execute Helverliss. She could still, in theory, succeed. The tough part was that she had already started to feel a kind of relief that she would no longer need to climb through that tower’s machinery.
“Perhaps she actually enjoys this life,” Dannac said. “Is that why you are stalling?”
“Dannac, what’s happening to you? Where have you been these past few days? Something isn’t right. You can usually see the sense in being cautious, and now you want to run headlong into the most secure facility this side of the ocean.”
He began to walk towards the markets. “Perhaps we should leave this place before spilling our deepest secrets with soldiers in earshot.”
Dannac cursed under his breath and kicked at the garbage littering the alley. The girl was too perceptive for her own good. Correction: too perceptive for him to hide anything. His mind drifted between thoughts of telling her about his involvement with the Bhagovan Republic’s secret police, and simply distancing himself from her and cooling their relationship to one of strict professionalism.
Now she walked with her head low, with an uncharacteristic heaviness. Normally, he would be telling her to stop looking so haughty and try to blend in, and here she was looking like a sulking desert rat.
“I am confused,” Vasi said to him, and she was also stealing glances at Capra. “Will you help me or not? Rovan could already be in their laboratory, being drained into a crystal. Or maybe Helverliss has some obscene ritual to use him for.”
“Of course. One way or another, we will go to the refinery. If your brother is alive, I will try to free him.”
“You alone, though? Your partner seems to have given up.”
“We’ll see about that.”
They came out of the alley into the fringes of the markets. Dannac ignored a particular huckster who was trying to sell him a feather duster by declaring that everyone who used one of his dusters had an interesting story, and his ultimate pressure point was to ask the baffled passerby “what’s your dusting story?”. Also, he would ask, “How do you flick the duster?” as if the banal act were some stunning act of individual expression.
Dannac suppressed the urge to punch the man and led them deep into the crowd.
“Capra grew up in one of the heavily disputed zones. She has probably seen a lot. She is very able, but in the end she is fragile.”
“You feel sympathy for her?”
“No, but are we not supposed to forgive? We have a common goal: to be free of her government’s pursuit—me as an alleged terrorist, she as a deserter—and live unremarkable lives.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “Dannac... do you not recognize something different about her? Did you not recognize the amulet she wears?”
“It looked Ehzeri, but I assumed she just pillaged it from one of the notches on her sabre. I never asked about it, because I did not want to know. It is history.” He made sure Capra was not within earshot.
“No wonder she is confused and makes up for it by being impossible. She is Ehzeri, not Valoii.”
He stopped. “What?”
She pointed to her own amulet, and for the first time, it was clear to him that they were exactly the same. “I had not paid any attention because my family is drained and no longer has their own knot... are you sure she didn’t just take it from one of her victims?”
“No. If she did, it was coincidence. Look, in the palace, she was feeling ill. You were right, you know. She did have the cloud sickness.”
“But she is much too old. That only happens to teenagers.”
“She has been repressed, Dannac. That is why she still reacts to thunderstorms on occasion. A teenager, even a clumsy one who never really learns how to use vihs, eventually learns how to handle the buildups when they happen. Provided they are at least given some direction as to what’s happening to them, which Capra has never had.”
It was ridiculous, yet he could see that Vasi truly believed it. But she didn’t know Capra. She was forgetting about the tattoo hiding under that red cravat, and that only moments ago she had defended Valoii atrocities, if only in that argumentative way she was prone to.
“Look at her. She looks Valoii.”
“Open your eyes, Dannac. Is there really so much difference? We come from the same people. The people here can’t tell the difference, unless the Ehzeri is wearing their garb. But nobody does these days. Strip all that away, and what are we left with? People of the southeast.”
“She and her kind do not believe in the Blacksmith’s eternal toiling for our benefit. That could be why vihs diminishes—her people and their Tamarck allies refuse to acknowledge the divinity of the Blacksmith. Unlike our people.” Even the slight implication that Valoii and Ehzeri were the same made his veins boil. How could that be possible? They were opposed. The same could not exist as its opposite, could it?
Best kill the conversation altogether. There were more immediate concerns, like how he was going to get into the tower if Capra refused to go. “I am sure there is an explanation for why she suffered the cloud sickness and why she carries your family emblem.”
Vasi shook her head and dropped the issue, much to Dannac’s relief.
“Yet you care for her?” she finally said, just as Capra was catching up to them.
“When it is convenient.” He tried not to think of Yaz’s interest in them, since it was obvious that Yaz’s superiors would love a chance to interrogate a Valoii like Capra.
He just hoped he could find a way to avoid handing her to the Republic.
When Capra joined them, Dannac and Vasi made as though they had been discussing Ehzeri things. She had a look of contrition about her.
Perhaps, underneath Capra’s incredible drive to run, there was something more. Something besides the indulgent guilt that sustained her.
Vasi whispered, in their native tongue, “Would she be more likely to help if she knew she was related to me?”
He eyed Capra for a moment, read the rare glimmer of right in her eyes and tense mouth. “No. Just wait.”
Capra folded her arms and flicked a wisp of hair that had escaped from her plait. “I’m sorry. I... well, if your brother won’t leave that stupid clock tower, I guess we should go get him. And Helverliss. And the painting.”
It was an almost perverse setup: by all accounts, this room could be a public museum, with a rich blue carpet and little cards affixed to each glass box to explain the exhibits to casual observers. Alim had always hated museums, and folded his arms while Sevari looked on with a childish grin.
The perverse part was Noro Helverliss, chained to the grey stone wall at the back. It was
almost as if he were an exhibit himself, and Alim had the sickening suspicion that Sevari really treated him as such.
“Here he is, Alim,” Sevari said. He paced around the gaunt man and tugged the chains. “The great Noro Helverliss. The man who has sat in his little shop for nearly a decade, whining about every little thing that occurs in my district. As you can see, he is a pathetic creature; an ‘intellectual’, a nattering voice full of answers to questions nobody wants to ask.”
Sevari’s tone reminded Alim more of a curator dispassionately highlighting weaknesses in an historic piece of artwork than the voice of a jailer.
“I give up. Why is he here? Is it secure?” Alim took notice of the apparatus bolted to the wall. It hadn’t been there last time.
“He wanted so much to have his works returned.” Sevari took his prisoner’s jaw in his hand. “Now he can be with them, as he so desired.” He stared into Helverliss’ bloodshot eyes. “Isn’t that right, hm? Are you going to tell me what you did to that horrible painting of yours? That blasphemy against Akhli’s legacy?”
There was a silence, and Alim watched the prisoner’s face. Helverliss made no expression, and he seemed a mannequin hung as decoration for a travelling horror show.
“I should think that it might be better to hold him in the interrogation room, with the contessa.”
But Sevari ignored the comment. “You see, he knows his life’s work has been mostly impure philosophizing, and it is probably by dumb chance that he had stumbled upon these terrible ways of corrupting vihs for his strange urges—”
“You have no idea.” It was Helverliss, and he spoke slowly. “Akhli has no legacy. That was the entire point of the legend. He did not turn the shadow men’s trick upon themselves and destroy the primordial races. They had already buried themselves. What do you think fuels your machines? The stuff of their deaths. Akhli is merely the point at which the two species negate each other and unify: humanity.”
“Preposterous. Akhli was a warrior. Humanity existed alongside the primordial races. What you say is ridiculous.”
Helverliss let out a rattling laugh. “Akhli’s appearance marked an admission by the divine in its own failure. It was a reconciliation with meaninglessness. And that painting you are so obsessed with was meant to reacquaint us with that void.”
“The shadow beings,” Alim said, without being fully aware of it. “Shape-shifters, manipulators. Why would we want to be familiar with them?”
“Haha. Because people like you use myths to coerce whole populations into idiocy. I wanted everyone to see the void, the lack of any virtue, that any divine force must necessarily embody. And somehow this despot has come to the conclusion that there is some kind of big power waiting for him to master in that painting.”
Alim stepped closer to the prisoner, and for the moment forgot about Sevari. “And is there?” At the same time, he wondered why he was allowing himself to be captivated by this mystical nonsense. Mizkov did go through the motions of a state-sanctioned religion, but national unity was served more by their new militarism than half-hearted adherence to Akhli’s Church of the Teacher.
“Never mind all that, good soldier. Leave that to me— don’t expect the truth from him just yet. He is of a nervous, suspicious constitution, and my specialists still need to break him properly.”
Two guards stormed in, and between them stood the woman they had arrested along with Helverliss.
Sevari rubbed his hands together. “Take a good look at him, Ms. Irea.” He took her shackled hand and jerked her in front of him. When he spoke, he leaned into her, lips at her ear. “See how he is now? Reasonably intact? The more information I lack, the more skin and blood he will lose.”
Irea kept her head at its haughty angle. “I hate to disappoint you, but even I cannot get Noro to divulge his secrets. I just give him money and hang his paintings where I like.”
“Oh nonsense, nonsense. Why must you harbour this childish resentment? Even your parents realized why we needed their land. They were glad to be of service to me. Perhaps you should take their lead and cooperate.”
One of the guards said, “She could use some treatment.”
The guard’s sadistic grin made Alim step between them. Torturing women—not while he had any say in the matter.
“Relax, Alim.” Sevari released Irea into the guard’s custody. “Her family is far too integral to the class peace I have created. I would never torture someone like her.”
At least that. Strange how Sevari’s moods seemed to shift like the sand dunes in a storm.
“I will, however, execute her humanely should she prove uncooperative. Her family would understand.”
With that, the guards left with the woman, leaving an altogether nasty taste in Alim’s mouth. One he had to swallow and choke back, because in the end Sevari’s rule was none of his business. He took one last gaze at Helverliss, then turned to leave.
“Wait a moment, my good friend.”
“Yes?”
“My security personnel have been having a problem with some of the workers. It is to do with these murders they keep talking about.”
Again? Sevari was becoming an increasingly boring waste of time. Perhaps deep down he was a lonely man. Did he somehow feel that Alim was the replacement for his fallen lieutenant?
“What kind of problem?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. I was wanting your professional opinion on how best to tighten the reins on the Ehzeri without spooking them further. I need them to stop fighting amongst each other. There is a growing divide—the labourers versus the vihs-capable workers.”
They left the museum, and much to Alim’s annoyance, Sevari led him into the refinery. Only this time, he veered from the main area into a quieter, more secure section.
“Sir, I do have work to do. I have tightened the area around which Capra and her friend will be found.”
“You want to get back out there, eh? Well, I won’t keep you long. You know I use the vihs in my research laboratories in the clock tower. But I also employ vihs in the refining process.”
They stopped at a large iron door fitted with a massive combination lock. Sevari took a key from his belt, turned it, then began to spin the rings. “The problem is that the people beyond this door believe the workers are jealous and are killing anyone who might have the power, or even once had it, or is related to someone who uses it openly.”
Sevari opened the door, and beyond was a long chamber. Pipes ran through the entire section, and all along each wall stood person-sized alcoves. Around either side of each alcove was a knot of smaller pipe that joined with the larger ones.
Alim made a few tentative steps, like a pack animal unsure of the ground. His breath caught in his lungs when he saw the people standing in each alcove. Motionless, blank faces and a strange glow about them, like nighttime fog curling around a lantern.
“What have you done?”
“Maximized production. With the sad state of metallurgy and the sciences, could I have really brought this facility into the world-leading producer of fuel without a little magic?”
“A little magic? You must have two-hundred of them locked in there. Are they being harmed?”
Sevari rolled his eyes and waved to his machines. “They are on for just twelve hours each shift. They are well taken care of. Now, about this tension in my refinery...”
Alim stepped towards one of the alcoves. The person inside glowed with vihs, and his eyes were stark, glowing gems. They could have been statues.
He turned away, took a deep breath, and straightened his back. “You have to be careful. They do have a history of violence between different groups. I’m not surprised you don’t have more of a gang problem. My best advice is to begin a campaign among them that systematically disavows any differences between them. Sponsor cultural events, that sort of thing. Smooth out the variations between different groups by reinforcing the few things they all have in common. You need to avoid aspects specific to a certain knot.
”
“Knot?”
“Yes. Families, sects, whatever you want to call them. For example, the Hakerz—the one with four interlocking circular knots and emeralds—will celebrate the supposed occasion of Akhli passing through their ancestral pastures, but you will never catch another group acknowledging this. In fact, they find it offensive. So do not choose this as a refinery-sanctioned event. It will divide them.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
“You also need to make it appear as though this killer is being brought to justice. Increase the visibility of your security personnel. Have them perform random checks. They’ll be unnecessary, but the appearance of security will outweigh the few who are bothered by such intrusions. Despite what the Ehzeri say, they do respond to displays of authority, as long as they are comfortable enough.”
He made uneasy steps around the chamber, while Sevari prattled on about metallurgy, his accountant’s peculiar birthmark, and his own mother. It looked as though the room swam with a mist, a kind of almost-glow that one didn’t exactly see but perceived nonetheless. His neck became hot beneath his collar, and his clothes felt as though they were choking him.
He steadied himself against an empty alcove, but was horrified that he even touched the monstrosity.
“Something the matter?”
Something the matter? The haze, the war-vihs collecting, the only warning they ever give before they destroy whole villages...
“Nothing, sir. I really must be going.” He buried the images of Ehzeri attacks and told himself that here, they were harmless—they were being used, and the haze was just a byproduct of their collective work. Peaceful work.
“Oh, so soon?” Sevari looked a bit sheepish, and for some reason, this juxtaposition with his status as a dictator made Alim shiver.
He moved to leave. “We know that Jorassian has passed through my perimeter of surveillance. I must close in on her now. Perhaps another time.” He bowed.