by Olivie Blake
Silence.
“Being magic is even worse,” said Ezra. “Your body doesn’t want to die, it has too much inside it. So you want more powerfully. You starve more quickly. Your capacity to have nothing is abysmal, cataclysmic. There isn’t a medeian on earth capable of casting themselves down to ordinariness, much less to dust. We’re all starving, but not everyone is doing it correctly. Some people are taking too much, making themselves sick, and it kills them. The excess is poison; even food is a poison to someone who’s been deprived. Everything has the capacity to turn toxic. It’s easy, so fucking easy to die, so the ones who make themselves something are the same ones who learn to starve correctly. They take in small amounts, in survivable doses. We’re immunizing ourselves to something—against something. Everything we manage to have successfully becomes a vaccine over time, but the illness is always much larger. We’re still naturally susceptible. We fight it, trying to starve well or starve cleverly, but it comes for us eventually. We all have different reasons for wanting, but inevitably it comes.”
“What does?” asked Atlas.
Ezra smiled, closing his eyes in the sun.
“Power,” he said. “A little at a time until we break.”
CALLUM
As a child Callum never sympathized much with storybook villains, who were always clinging to some sort of broad, unspecific drive. It wasn’t the depravity that unnerved him, but the desperation to it all; the need, the compulsion, which always destroyed them in the end. That was the distasteful thing about villains, really. Not the manner in which they went about their business, which was certainly gruesome and morally corrupt, but the fact that they desired things so intensely.
The heroes were always reluctant, always pushed into their roles, martyring themselves. Callum didn’t like that either, but at least it made sense. Villains were far too proactive. Why the drudgery of it, being despised for the purpose of some interminable crusade, when it would be so much easier to simply let things happen? Taking over the world was a mostly nonsensical agenda. Have control of these puppets, with their empty heads and their pitchforked mobs? Why? The world didn’t even love a hero for long. Wanting anything—beauty, omnipotence, absolution—was a natural flaw in being human, but the elective tirelessness of villainy made it indigestibly worse.
Simple choices were what registered to Callum most honestly, the truest truths: fairytale peasant needs money for dying child, accepts whatever consequences follow. The rest of the story was always too lofty, about choosing good or the inevitable collapse of desperation and vice; recordings of human nature, prescriptions to rectify its ills. They were the lying truths, ideologically grand but implausible on the whole. In his view, human nature wasn’t an artful curation of morality, but merely cyclical patterns of behavior. Self-correcting; leaning one way only to balance it out with the other over time.
Callum had always tended towards the assassins in the stories, the dutiful soldiers, those driven by reaction rather than a cause. Perhaps it was a small role to serve on the whole but at least it was rational, explainable by even biological terms. A person had to have a foothold somewhere; a role in the ecosystem, like any species. Callum admired that, the ability to choose a side and behave as it dictated. Take the huntsman who failed to kill Snow White, for example. An assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether he lived or died as a result of his choice? Unimportant. He didn’t raise an army, didn’t fight for good, didn’t interfere much with the queen’s other evils. It wasn’t the whole world at stake; it was never about destiny. It was whether or not he could live with his own decision, because life was the only thing that truly mattered.
The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In terms of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself.
Libby was a hero. Parisa was a villain. Their goals were overarching, appositional.
Nico and Reina were so impartial and self-interested as to be wholly negligible.
Tristan was a soldier. He would follow wherever he was most persuasively led.
It was Callum who was an assassin. It was the same as a soldier, but when he worked, he worked alone.
“Do you worry about dying?” Tristan asked him after dinner one evening, the two of them left behind beside the dining room fire. Unnecessary warmth, given the spring breeze outside, but the Society was nothing if not committed to aesthetics. “That someone might choose you to die, I mean.”
“I will die someday,” Callum said. “I’ve come to terms with it. People are free to choose me if they wish.” He permitted half a smile as he raised his glass to his lips, glancing at Tristan. “I am equally free to disagree.”
“So it doesn’t bother you that the rest of the group might elect—”
Tristan stopped.
“Elect what? To kill me?” Callum prompted. “If I feared elimination I would not have come.”
“Why did you come?”
Reaction. Tristan would not understand that, of course, even if his reasons were precisely the same. He was a soldier who wanted a principled king, though he seemed unaware what his own principles were.
How pitiful, really.
“You keep asking me that,” commented Callum. “Why should it matter?”
“Doesn’t it? The point of the current subject is intention.”
“So you’re asking my intentions?”
Callum took another sip while he considered his answer, allowing his thoughts to steep.
His life at the Society was not uninteresting. It was methodical, habitual, but that was a consequence of life in any collective. Self-interest was more exciting—sleeping through the afternoon one day, climbing Olympus to threaten the gods the next—but it scared people, upset them. Tending to every whim made others unnecessarily combative, mistrustful. They preferred the reassurance of customs, little traditions, the more inconsequential the better. Breakfast in the morning, supper at the sound of the gong. It soothed them, normality. Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb.
Humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. “My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.”
“Better than what?”
Callum shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. Does it matter?”
He glanced at Tristan over his glass and registered a vibration of malcontent.
“Ah,” Callum said. “You’d prefer me to lie to you.”
Tristan bristled. “I don’t want you to lie—”
“No, you want my truths to be different, which you know they won’t be. The more of my true intentions you know, the guiltier you feel. That’s good, you know,” Callum assured him. “You want so terribly to dissociate, but the truth is you feel more than anyone in this house.”
“More?” Tristan echoed doubtfully, recoiling from the prospect.
“More,” Callum confirmed. “At higher volumes. At broader spectrums.”
“I would have guessed you’d say Rhodes.”
“Rhodes hasn’t the faintest idea who she is,” said Callum. “She feels nothing.”
Tristan’s brow furrowed. “A bit harsh, isn’t it?”
“Not in the slightest.” Libby Rhodes was an anxious impending meltdown whose decisions were based entirely on what she allowed the world to shape her into. She was more powerful than all of them except for Nico, and of course she was. Because she would not misuse it. She was too small-minded, too un-hungry for that. Too trapped within the cage of her own fears, her desires to be liked. The day she woke up and realized she could make her own world would be a dangerous one, but it was so unlikely it hardly kept Callum up at night.
“It is for her own safety that she feels nothing,” Callum said. “It is something she does to s
urvive.”
He had not told Tristan the truth, which was that Tristan was asking the wrong questions. For example, Tristan had never asked Callum what books the library gave him access to. It was a grave error, and perhaps even fatal.
“Tell me about your father,” Callum said, and Tristan blinked, taken aback.
“What? Why?”
“Indulge me,” Callum said. “Call it bonding.”
Tristan gave him a hawk-eyed glare. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What?”
“Act like everything is some sort of performance. Like you’re a machine replicating human behaviors. ‘Call it bonding,’ honestly.” Tristan glanced moodily at his glass. “Sometimes I wonder if you even understand what it means to care about someone else, or if you’re just imitating the motions of whatever it’s meant to look like.”
“You wonder that constantly,” Callum said.
“What?”
“You said you sometimes wonder. You don’t. It’s constant.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I’m just telling you, since you seem to like it when I do that.”
Tristan glared at him again, which was at least an improvement. “You do realize what I know, don’t you?”
“The betrayal, you mean?”
Tristan blinked.
Blinked again.
“You feel betrayed by me,” Callum clarified. “Because you think I have influenced you.”
“Manipulated me.” The words left Tristan’s mouth with a snarl.
It had certainly been a mistake. Callum couldn’t think how Tristan had suddenly conjured up a method to test him, but now that it had happened it couldn’t be undone. People hated to lose autonomy, free will. It revulsed them, the controls of another. Tristan would not trust him again, and it would only get worse. The difficulty of it was the festering, the ongoing sickness. Tristan would wonder forever whether his feelings were his own, no matter what Callum did to reassure him.
“Can you really blame me? I preferred the libation of my choice,” said Callum, suddenly finding the whole thing rather exhausting. “Anyone given a talent has a tendency to use it.”
“What else have you done to me?”
“Nothing worse than Parisa has done to you,” Callum said. “Or do you really think she cares about you more sincerely than I do?”
Tristan’s expression was anguished, curiosity warring with suspicion. That was the trouble with possessing too many feelings, Callum thought. So difficult to choose one.
“What does Parisa have to do with it?”
“Everything,” Callum said. “She controls you and you don’t even see it.”
“Do you even hear the irony of what you just said?”
“Oh, it is exceptionally ironic,” Callum assured him. “Petrifyingly so. Tell me about your father,” he added tangentially, and Tristan scowled.
“My father is not at issue.”
“Why not? You discuss him at length, you know, but you never actually say anything when you do it.”
“Ridiculous.” A scoff.
“Is it? Speaking of ironies,” Callum mused. “Upfront but never true.”
“Why would I be honest with you?” Tristan retorted. “Why would anyone, ever, be honest with you?”
The question fell like an axe over them both, clumsily surprising them.
A shift, then.
For a moment, Callum said nothing.
Then, “When Elizabeth Rhodes was a child, she discovered she could fly,” Callum said. “She didn’t know at the time that she was altering the molecular structure within the room while shifting the force of gravity. She already had a predilection for fire, always reaching for candle flames, but that was normal for a child her age, and her parents were devoted, attentive. They kept her from burning, so she has never actually discovered that she cannot, as a rule, burn. Her understanding is that she can only alter physical forces without disturbing natural elements,” Callum added, “but she is wrong. The amount of energy it would require for her to change molecular composition is simply more than she possesses on her own.”
Tristan said nothing, so Callum continued, “It startled her sister, or so Libby thought. In reality her sister was suffering the early symptoms of her degenerative illness: weight loss, loss of hearing, loss of vision, weakening bones. Her sister fainted, which was purely coincidence. Lacking an explanation, Libby blamed herself and did not use her powers for close to a decade, not until after her sister passed away. Now she thinks of it only as she would think of a recurring dream.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Tristan attempted brusquely, but Callum pressed on.
“Nicolás Ferrer de Varona is the only child of two deeply average medeians who made a considerable profit on good investments, despite what talent they lacked themselves. He is, of course, their most profitable investment, being more aware of his talents than Libby, but not by much.”
At Tristan’s arched brow, Callum shrugged. “He can transform his own shape as well as the things around him.” Few medeians who were not naturally shifters could do so, and shifters could not perform Nico’s magic in reverse: shifters could transform themselves, but nothing else.
Tristan, already familiar with the difficulty of the magic involved, furrowed his brow into the obvious question of why.
“I don’t know if he’s in love with his roommate and unaware of it, or simply careless with his life,” Callum commented with a roll of his eyes, “but unbeknownst to him, Nico de Varona died briefly in the process of transforming the first time. Now he can do it easily,” Callum assured Tristan, “having trained his body to recognize the muscle memory of being forced into its alternate shape, but if not for the magic in his veins restarting his heart, he would not still be breathing. Now he is quicker, more intuitive, his senses keener because they have to be, for survival. Because his body understands that by trying to keep up with him, it might die again.”
“What animal?” Tristan asked. An irrelevant question, but interesting enough.
“A falcon,” said Callum.
“Why?”
“Unclear,” Callum said, and moved on. “Reina Mori is an illegitimate daughter belonging to an influential mortal clan, the primary branch of which are members of the Japanese nobility. Her father is unknown and she was raised in secret, albeit in wealth and privilege, by her grandmother. The control she has over nature is nearly that of a necromancer. Why she resists it so much is incomprehensible—why she refuses to use it, even more so—but it has something to do with resentment. She resents it.”
“Because it makes her too powerful?”
“Because it weakens her,” Callum corrected. “She is a universal donor for some life source she cannot use herself, and there is nothing available to strengthen her in return. Her own magic is essentially non-existent. Everything she possesses can be used to whatever excess it wishes by anyone but her.”
“So she refuses to use it out of,” Tristan began, and frowned. “Self-interest?”
“Perhaps,” Callum said. When Tristan paused in thought, he added, “As for Parisa, you know her story. She is the most aware of her talents. All of her talents,” Callum qualified with half a smile, “but the magical ones in particular.”
When Tristan was quiet again, Callum glanced at him. “Ask.”
“Ask what?”
“What you always ask me. Why is she here?”
“Who, Parisa?”
“Yes. Ask me why Parisa is here.”
“Boredom, I assume,” Tristan muttered, which proved how little he knew.
“Perhaps a bit,” Callum acknowledged, “but in fact, Parisa is dangerous. She is angry,” he clarified. “She is furious, vindictive, spiteful, naturally misanthropic. If she had Libby’s power, or Nico’s, she would have destroyed what remains of society by now.”
Tristan looked doubtful. “So then why is she here, according to you?”
“To find a way to do it,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Destroy things. Or take control of them. Whatever suits her when she finds it.”
“That’s absurd,” said Tristan.
“Is it?” countered Callum. “She knows what people are. With very few exceptions, she hates them.”
“Are you saying you don’t?”
“I can’t afford hatred,” said Callum. “I’ve told you this, as you may recall.”
“So you are capable of feeling nothing when it’s convenient for you,” Tristan muttered.
Callum slid him a grim smile.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
Tristan braced for something. Rightfully. “Did what hurt?”
“The things your father did, the things he said,” Callum said. “Was it painful, or just humiliating?”
Tristan looked away. “How do you know all of this about us? Surely not just by sensing our emotions.”
“No, not just that,” Callum confirmed, adding, “Why wouldn’t you leave?”
“What?”
“Well, that’s the story, isn’t it? If it was so bad, why didn’t they leave. Why didn’t Cinderella leave the home of her wicked stepmother, why didn’t Snow White flee the evil queen’s kingdom. Why didn’t Rapunzel leave her tower?”