by Olivie Blake
She wondered if it would have been the same if it was Callum’s seat that had emptied.
“This,” Dalton said, “is Viviana Absalon.”
The others tensed as he waved in a cadaver, neatly preserved, the facial expression limp and non-committal, as if death had been something she’d preferred not to do but had gone ahead with anyway. Nothing gory had been done to the body, aside from a gaping incision that had been tastefully resewn. Obviously an autopsy had been performed somewhat recently, but outside of that, in death Viviana Absalon lay as still and tranquil as if she’d fallen asleep.
Briefly, Parisa’s stomach churned with the memory of Libby’s animation; the way Libby had been broken and contorted, her eyes vacant and wide. That, unlike this, had been gruesome, Parisa’s hands sweltering with the blood her mind had refused to grasp was actually nothing. The idea that it was all magic, none of it real, had unnerved her deeply, reminding her what was at stake in the world.
Mortality was one thing; power was another. It was a lesson she would have to remember not to forget.
“Viviana is a forty-five-year-old female of French and Italian descent. She was misclassified as a mortal,” said Dalton, “in more ways than one.”
He pulled up a projection of pictures. Not unlike the preservation of the body, there was a clinical nature to the slides. Handwritten notes were scribbled unobtrusively next to arrows, annotative observations from the cadaver’s incisions.
“By the age of eighteen, which is when most medeians have already shown signs of magical prowess, Viviana had revealed nothing out of the ordinary. She lacked any conceivable talent for witchcraft, and by age twenty-one, the alarms she had begun to set off were formally dismissed. 99% of medeians are identified correctly,” Dalton reminded them, “but when it comes to a population of nearly ten billion people, there is a lot of room for error in the remaining 1%.”
He waved a hand to move to the next slide. “At the time of her death, Viviana was in excellent physical health. She had already given birth to four children by the time she was thirty, while many in her village of Uzès still regarded her as the town beauty, even more lovely than the young women seeking husbands in their twenties. Unfortunately,” Dalton said, “Viviana was hit by an automobile a matter of weeks ago. She died instantly.”
Another wave, another slide, this one showing the accident before moving onto the details of Viviana’s peculiarities. “As you can see,” Dalton said, pulling up a side by side comparison with two sets of similar cadavers, “Viviana’s internal organs stopped aging around twenty-one.”
He swept through quickly, comparing incomprehensible (to Parisa) portions of her body first to those of a twenty-one-year-old, then a comparable forty-five-year-old.
“Her skin had not lost any elasticity. The features of her face were unchanged. Her hair did not turn grey. Most of her village simply believed she had exercised and eaten well, and perhaps dyed her hair. As for whether Viviana herself noticed anything suspicious, it appears not. She seems to have merely considered herself lucky—inordinately so, but not extraordinarily.”
The slides concluded as Dalton turned to face them.
“As far as we can surmise, Viviana would not have died of natural causes if not for her accident,” Dalton said, clarifying what had already been heavily implied. “Her death was not the result of any form of degeneration. What we do not know,” he emphasized, “is how long she would have lived had she not met an untimely end, nor how frequently this occurs in other undiagnosed medeians.”
“Did she show any signs of regeneration?” Tristan asked.
“Damage that repaired itself magically, you mean? No,” Dalton said. “She simply didn’t degenerate as a mortal should.”
“Would she have been more or less susceptible to disease?” (Reina.)
“Unclear. Her village was particularly homogenous.”
“Did she contract any significant illnesses?” (Tristan again.)
“No, but she was regularly vaccinated, so that would not be out of the ordinary.”
“The common cold,” Callum suggested drily, and Dalton shrugged.
“Most people do not take note of commonalities,” he said, “hence the inadequacy of our existing research.”
“What exactly are we supposed to do with this?” Nico asked, his fingers tapping impatiently at his sides. “Her magical specialty was… life?”
“Somewhere in her genetics is the ability to not decay,” Dalton replied, which appeared to be confirmation. “We have no way of knowing how common this ability is, which is part of the purpose for research. Is Viviana the only one?” he posed to the group. “Have there been, historically, others? If none have lived long enough to become remarkable, then do people blessed with longevity typically attract fatalities? Is it possible they habitually die young, and if so, is this a result of magic?”
“Or,” Dalton asked after a moment of silence, “is it somehow proof of fate?”
Parisa felt her eyes narrow, at odds with Dalton’s offhanded remark. Magic the way they typically studied it was narrow, predictable, scientific in its results. Fate was inherently not. The magnetic quality of being drawn to a particular end was to remove the option of choice, which was so displeasing as to prick her slightly. Parisa did not care for the sensation of not being in control; it filled her mouth with bitterness, like excess salivation.
“You said something had come up,” Reina said in her low voice. “Is this not what was planned for our next subject?”
Dalton tilted his head, reconciling with what appeared to be his own thoughts. “Yes and no. The unit of study following the initiation rites is always death,” he said. “Most often we perform the traditional rituals on the eliminated member.”
Tristan twitched with discomfort. Callum, solemnly, did not move.
“This particular case is, contrary to its appearance, fortuitous timing,” Dalton flippantly remarked. “The Society’s work remains uninterrupted, in a sense.”
“Does it?” said Nico blisteringly, and Dalton slid a glance to him.
“For all intents and purposes, yes,” he said. “Initiation will move forward as scheduled. You will also find that the units on life and death will allow you to access far more of the library’s resources.”
“And in exchange?” Parisa prompted.
Dalton’s shoulders gave his customary indication of tension at the sound of her voice. It was a reflex born from a need to not look so quickly, fighting eagerness, which ultimately manifested like a tic of hesitation.
“You are beholden to the Society as it is beholden to you,” he said without expression, before returning his attention to the details of Viviana’s undiagnosed medeian status.
Parisa left the remainder of her questions for when they were alone. When she found him, Dalton was sitting in the reading room over a single book, toying with something out of her sight; invisible. Whatever it was he was doing, it was causing him intense strain. She watched the fight go out of him at the realization of her presence and stepped forward to reach him, smoothing a bead of sweat from his brow.
“What is it?” she murmured.
He glanced blearily up at her from a distance, traversing miles of thought.
“Do you know why he wants you?” he asked.
It was a question that had been plaguing Parisa since Libby’s disappearance, if not earlier.
“No,” she said.
“I do.” He leaned his cheek against her hand, closing his eyes. “It’s because you know how to starve.”
They sat in silence as Parisa considered the implications of this. After all, was there a way to starve properly?
Yes. Conservation done well was to survive when others would perish.
Longevity, she thought in silence.
Then she stroked the back of Dalton’s neck, smoothing the tension from his vertebrae.
“You saw something,” she said. “In Libby’s… in that thing.”
It had been ha
unting her a bit from night to night. First the image of Libby on the floor, bleeding out, contorted. Then what Dalton had done, launching the corpse upright, making it dance.
An animation, he said. For which he was briefly the puppeteer.
“What is it?” she asked him again, and in the moment Dalton’s eyes met hers, she thought she caught a glimpse of the familiar. Not the man in her bed from time to time, but the one she sought like firelight, drawn to him like a flame.
“Only one person could have made that animation,” Dalton said.
“Who?”
She knew the answer before he said it.
“Me.”
There was no point asking what he remembered. If that animation had ever been his creation, he clearly didn’t know. Whether Dalton was indeed some god descending from machines was outside his existing mind’s jurisdiction, and now he was pleading with her in silence. Begging for her to take away the guilt unearned.
Parisa slid the contents of the desk aside, replacing them with herself, and Dalton leaned forward to breathe her in, a wrench from his throat like a silent sob to bury in the fabric of her dress.
This was the difference between life and longevity; somewhere between a car crash and a splintered soul.
“I’ll get you out,” Parisa whispered to him. To some distant him, to his little fractures. The solution dawned like clarity in her mind.
If he was in pieces, she would take whatever rubble remained for herself.
REINA
“Help me with something.”
Nico looked up from a long distance. As far as Reina could tell, the introduction of a new subject hadn’t distracted him or eased his guilt, but something had. He was less aimless now, more determined, properly sleeping again. Impatiently waiting, but waiting nonetheless.
“Help you with what?” he asked.
“I have a theory.”
She sat across from him in the grass, which protested as it always did. For once, she was glad to hear it. It served as a confirmation of sorts.
“Okay. About what?”
“I was thinking about what Callum said about sentience. Naturalism,” Reina said, gesturing wordlessly to the whispers of MotherMotherMother that ached below her palms in tiny, willowy blades. “And about that medeian, her specialty of longevity.”
“What about it?” Nico wasn’t leaping to curiosity, but he was interested enough.
“Life,” Reina posited, “must be an element. I can’t use it, but maybe someone could.” She fixed him with a careful glance. “You could.”
“Could what?” He looked startled.
She sighed, “Use it.”
“Use it?” he echoed.
“Yes.” Maybe there was a better way to explain it. Maybe not. “Maybe you could manipulate it, shape it, like any other force. Like gravity.” She paused. “Possibly you could even create it.”
“You think I could create life?” Nico sat up slightly, frowning. “If it were a physical element then yes, theoretically speaking. Maybe.” His brow furrowed. “But even if I could—”
“Energy doesn’t come from nothing, I know.” She’d already thought about it at length. “That’s where I come in.”
“But—”
“The theory is a quite straightforward. Suppose life is its own element. What if Viviana Absalon’s magical specialty really was life—the ability to be alive and stay that way?” she said, waiting to see if he followed. “Life and sentience are not the same, but there are microorganisms that live without sentience, so if magic like an animation can live, in some sense—”
Nico was staring at her, brows still furrowed, and Reina reached out with a sigh, gruffly placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Just try it,” she said, and he balked.
“Try… what, exactly?”
Ha ha ha, laughed the grass, rustling with amusement. Mother is much too clever, much more clever, she seesandseesandsees ha haaaaa—
“Just try,” Reina repeated.
She felt Nico’s shoulder stiffen beneath her touch, bracing for an argument, but then it settled gradually into place as he must have conceded, either willingly giving in or responding against his own volition to something she was offering him. Reina wondered, not for the first time, if he could now hear what she could hear, or if that was still reserved for her personal annoyance. At least when Nico was using it she was permitted moments of reprieve, the rush of channeling it into something. It was indistinct from the sensation of allowing nature itself to take from her, as she had when Atlas had first entered her cafe.
Grow, Reina had told the seed then, and it had grown.
Now she told Nico try, and she could feel the way his power had accepted hers gratefully, willingly, hungrily. There was a sense of both relief and release, and when he lifted his palm, the response was a staggered lurch, like a full-bodied gasp.
There was no other way to describe it outside of a spark. Whether they saw it or felt it or merely intuited its presence was grossly indeterminable. Reina knew only that something which had not existed previously had existed briefly for a time, and she knew that Nico knew it too, his dark eyes widening with astonishment and the aftershocks of belated apprehension.
He had expected nothing; if she had expected anything more, it was only for having been the one to own the theory, to make use of the thought.
It really was a simple idea, almost laughable in its lack of complexity. If life could come from nothing—if it could be born at all, created like the universe itself—then why should it not come from her?
Mother, sighed the sweep of a nearby branch.
She and Nico both seemed to know what they’d done without consulting the other for evidence.
“What does it mean?” asked Nico.
“I don’t know.” She didn’t. Not yet.
“What could you do with it?”
“Me?” Reina turned to him with surprise. “Nothing.”
He frowned back at her, not understanding. “What?”
“I can’t do anything with it.”
“But—”
“You used it,” she said.
“But you gave it to me!”
“So? What’s electricity without a lightbulb? Useless.”
“That’s—”
But then he shook his head, seeming to see no point in furthering the argument.
“If Rhodes were here,” he said deflatingly, “then maybe I could do something with it. But as it is, it’s just… that.” A spark. “Whatever that was.”
“So you need more power?”
“More than that. More than more.” He drummed his fingers in the grass, a brief return to his usual state of fidgeting. “It’s not a matter of how much, it’s how… good. How pure.”
“So if Libby were here it would be something?”
“Yes.” He sounded certain. He always sounded certain, but that particular certainty was more persuasive than smug. “I don’t know what, but something.”
“Well.” Reina paused to shield her eyes as the sun broke through the cloud cover overhead, enveloping them in a harsh wave of brightness. “We’ll have to find her, then.”
There was a pulse of tension as Nico braced himself again.
“We?”
“If I can help, yes.” She glanced at him. “I assumed you were doing something already.”
“Well—” He stopped. “I’m not. I’m out of options, but—”
“Your friend,” she guessed. “The one who can move through dreams?”
He said nothing.
“You never mentioned that about him,” Reina observed aloud. “His name, yes, but never what it was he could do.”
Nico seemed retroactively guilty, kicking out his feet in the grass. “I never planned to tell anyone.”
“Because he is… secretive?”
“Him? Not so much. But what he can do…” Nico sighed. “It’s just best if people don’t know.”
To her displeasure, Reina found herself more
annoyed by that than usual.
“You should trust us.” She was surprised by how adamant she was. “Don’t you think?”
Nico’s expression in reply was one of total, incomprehensible openness. Parisa had been right that he was scarcely capable of guile.
“Why?” he said.
Reina considered it. Nico would want a good answer, a thorough one, and for possibly selfish reasons, she needed him to be persuaded.
“Do you understand,” she said slowly, “how alone we are one thing, but together we are another?”
A beat of silence.
Then, “Yes.”
“So it is a waste, then. Not to use the resources you have.” Another simple concept.
“You would trust Callum? Or Parisa?”
Nico sounded skeptical, for good reason.
“I trust that they are talented,” Reina confirmed slowly. “I trust their skill. I trust that when their interests align with mine, they are useful.”
“And if they don’t align?”
“Then make them.” To Reina it was logical, sequential, if-this-then-that. “Why are we part of this if not to be great? I could be good alone, as could you,” she reminded him. “We would not still be here if we wished to settle only for goodness.”
“Are you—” Nico faltered. “Are you really so certain about this?”
About the Society, he meant.
“Yes,” she said.
It wasn’t true at the time, but she had plans to make it so. She intended to become that certain, and to do so would only require a few answers.
Only one man could satisfactorily provide her with those.
She could see she hadn’t startled him with her presence. Perhaps he’d been expecting her. His office had always held little interest for any of them, largely because the space itself contained nothing worth inspection. Only he was interesting, in his unobtrusive way. There had always been an air of eternal patience about him.