The Hidden Icon

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  I looked back only once and straight into Imke’s eyes, shining with sudden and cold potency. A chill passed through me as I saw her draw the little knife, her movements calculated, expert. Her lips were set in a thin line, but in the corners there were shadows, and like a child wandering into a darkness that hosts more monsters than any story, I followed them into memory, to the source of Imke’s satisfaction.

  Her hooded figure was poised for assault, trembling in anticipation while the players moved to take their bows. These were not their first kills, but were the first among many and publicly intended, necessary now that I had come to Ambar well and whole. I knew that I was not their target, that the attempts upon my life had been wasted ones. All of the intelligence she and Kurdan had supplied didn’t paint me as the adversary their preparations deserved. They would keep me right where I was, and turn the hearts of the Ambarians to their cause through terror.

  In the instant I laid her bare, there was a heat in me I couldn’t contain, licking at my limbs with the potency of real flame. When I spoke, it was my voice, my will, my want to hurt that left my lips.

  “Do not presume me as weak as the children that have died at your hands,” I spat, and my mouth tasted acrid, like smoke. I thought I might rub my hands together and build a fire between my palms. Imke’s look was one of fearlessness and fervor. My bones were grinding to keep from leaping upon her, but Imke alone would not do. She hadn’t operated alone, and wouldn’t die alone, either.

  The heat that threatened to cook me in my skin I expelled, and it started first smoldering at my feet, waves of heat passing off of my hands. This was more than the manipulation that Gannet had shown me, more than firing a spark that existed already. I grew the fire as though from my own gut, bellowing forth like a volcano all of the anger and ash of rage enough for all of the lives cut senselessly short.

  “You were foolish to underestimate me,” I muttered, shouted, stormed, my body racked as flames poured off my skin. I didn’t see Morainn or her parents or the soldiers, merely the blur of bodies as they rushed away from me. In that moment I didn’t care for their lives, nor did I spare a thought for the hordes that still crushed against each other below, neither their bodies nor minds fleet enough to escape the wave of flame that crashed against the floor of the opera house. Their screams did not reach me, for my ears and mind were crowded with fury, with the faces and cries of the players, the babes who had not grown as I had, to be able to do what I could. I would be a force enough for them all.

  I was party to Imke’s death, though, because she was nearest, because I vaulted over the edge of the stage where she thought to escape and pressed my burning hands against her face, feeling her features bubble and fail against the heat, losing all human shape. The thrill, terrible and dark, filled me, and I stepped over her body to face the fleeing crowd. They disgusted me; this land disgusted me, what it had been and what it had become. I would start here. I would cleanse what had been sullied.

  Smoke belched from my ears and mouth, flame roiling from my hair and fingertips, whipping like lashes on the ground and in the air around me. Even as the fires raged under my control, Paivi’s mind burst into mine, his triumph, his exultation, his plans as startlingly and suddenly clear to me as Imke’s had been. I understood that Paivi had known Imke’s face, her motives and deeds, hers and a score of others. He had stayed his vengeance until now because he had lacked the tool required to deliver that vengeance: me.

  The fires failed as surely as if the air had been sucked from the room. I stood alone and trembling woman amidst the smell of seared flesh and smoldering stone, the screams of the fleeing and the pained silence of the dead or dying. My vision blurred and I couldn’t focus, couldn’t return to myself. What I’d done I’d wanted to do, but I had been pushed, manipulated, and I couldn’t, as Theba might have, dismiss myself from the human consequence of my actions. I was human, and I had wrought inhuman evils.

  I spun about, senseless, my feet sliding on the char of what I hoped was torn clothing. I ran, making for one of the stone openings that allowed for the artful passage of light into the opera house. It was too narrow, or was until I reached it, when the stone shrugged, crumbled, and parted for my exit. Outside I knew that I was recognized only by the gasps, the fall of bodies against other bodies, walls, the floor, anything to keep from being caught under my feet, grazed by my hands. I moved as fast as I might upon horseback or cart, feeling the fire that I had released from my body building in my lungs. It was torture, but one I welcomed. I wanted to feel pain as keenly as I had dealt it. But more, I wanted this city and all of its simpering faith behind me, to leave behind me the Ambarians who would fall before me instead of fighting.

  I heard something like shouting, felt it in my blood, and I knew he followed me. Gannet. I was at the gate to the city and I was alone; the guard all raced for the opera house, it seemed, when their greatest threat lie within Jhosch instead of without. I felt my heart in my ears, pounding with his call for me. I turned and stopped only long enough to see him, running without any aid of whatever immortal spirit inhabited him. I studied his lips, the warm curve that I had hoped to know better, the eyes guarded by the mask, and by extension the whole of his face. I had only one question for him then, and I didn’t deign to speak it aloud.

  Did you know?

  It was many questions: my nature, my purpose, the murders, but his answer to all or one would condemn him utterly. He had stopped far enough from me that I couldn’t reach out to touch him, but it wasn’t fear that stayed him, not like the others. I could have his reasons, could tear them from his heart as readily as his answer might have mine, but I didn’t need to force him. Like all of the rest, he came willingly, he obeyed.

  Yes.

  I was little more than the scent of ash and blood on the wind that I became, tearing out of Jhosch, aimed like an arrow for the territory beyond Zhaeha, the witch.

  Eiren or Theba, there was no distinction for them, and no more for me.

  ***

  Jillian Kuhlmann received her BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. She has been published in Paper Darts literary magazine and Cincinnati’s CityBeat. In junior high school, she peopled post-apocalyptic adventure stories with her friends... and her enemies. It was a far more satisfying way of killing off the classmates she didn't like than letting them die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

  She maintains a garden, a husband, a baby girl, and a wicked costume collection in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hidden Icon is her first novel.

  Visit her blog for more of the ridiculous and mundane.

  http://returnofthegirl.wordpress.com/