by Lucia Ashta
She nodded.
“I didn’t look anything like Dingaling before the body image transference. Thank the oasis.”
“Dingaling?” Ilara asked.
“It was just something Lila and I did to try to get into the palace to rescue Tan when he was about to have his head lopped off. We used one of her vials to transfer the body image of one of the courtiers, Lord Dingaling, onto me.” He shivered. “It was frightful to be in such a lumpy, round body.”
“And did you take on his memories too?” she asked.
“No, but they were there. I suppose I could have if I’d wanted to. But I wanted to take on as little of Dingaling as I could. I wouldn’t want him to rub off on me. It was truly awful to feel trapped in such a useless body.”
“It can’t be,” Lila said again.
“But it can, Lila,” Dolpheus insisted. “Or are we missing something? You of all of us would know better than the rest of us. Is it possible?”
“No, it’s not possible.”
“Just because you don’t want to believe it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Come on, Lila. You’re a scientist. Is it possible?”
Lila sat still as the dead atop Jillee while we all watched her. Finally, reluctantly, she nodded with the slightest motion of her head.
“Then we can’t discard it as a possibility,” Dolpheus said. “Until it’s proven otherwise, we need to assume that this is as great a possibility as the understanding you had of splicing.”
Another long moment passed in which Lila didn’t move from shock, disbelief, something. Then, “I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, well,” Dolpheus said. “You of all people should know what Brachius is like. And Aletox too. Do you believe them capable of something like this?”
“I don’t want to,” Lila said.
“But…?”
“But I guess I do.”
Our discussion was drawn out, long pauses in between. Of all of us, the one that looked the least shocked was Ilara, the one who had no memory of this world. The rest of us were all too familiar with the greed, corruption, and deceit that might lead to actions such as these.
“Damn,” Kai said, and the gentle tone of his voice, for some reason, snapped me from my silence. I was thinking the same thing, only my words were more colorful.
“If they’re really doing this,” Lila said, “then splicing’s even more evil than I thought.”
“I hate to say this, but you were right,” Dolpheus said. “If this is what’s going on, then splicing’s E-VIL.”
“Evil,” I repeated. “Lila, you’re sure Brachius is splicing the eternalities? Even if you haven’t seen where he’s stored the splices or what he does with them after, are you sure he’s actually removing pieces of his clients’ eternalities?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him do it a few times. It’s like a hazy glow, like a lit-up cloud or something, only super small. He traps a part of it in a vial. That’s as far as I’ve seen him go with the process though.” Her shoulders slumped, and I wondered if Lila was a better person than I thought her to be. At least if the thought of Brachius trapping people’s eternalities for his own use bothered her, that was something. It wouldn’t quite make up for her casual disregard of the lives of rebels, but it was something.
I turned to face Dolpheus, my longtime companion on every terrible mission. This one had potential to be one of the worst. “We have to find out if this is what’s really happening or not, and if it is, what the hell those fuckers are doing with the eternalities they’re splicing.”
Dolpheus’ hand came to rest on the sword that hung from his belt. “Yep. We have to. We can’t stand around and let something this evil take place right under our noses.”
And just like that, life got a hundred times more complicated, and Dolpheus and I became more than soldiers. We became heroes fighting for a cause. We fought for the good of all Oers.
15
As soon as I had the thought, I discovered I wasn’t ready to be a hero. Not being one was hard enough.
Perhaps Dolpheus and I could defend Oers from the evils of splicing without becoming something so noble. Something so big that, once we achieved it, we’d forever have to live up to that standard. I was far more comfortable being a mercenary soldier with some good days than trying to be what I doubted I was.
But hadn’t I decided I wanted to be a good man not that long ago? When my death had seemed an immediate possibility within the dungeons of the palace? Why did I shy away from being what was within my grasp? Dolpheus and I possessed the skills to fight for just causes and secure them. We were some of the few really great soldiers upon O. So what was it that made me recoil from the thought of becoming a hero? I had a chance to be a man far better than either of my potential fathers—a low standard, to be sure.
“You know,” Dolpheus said, interrupting thoughts that weren’t getting me anywhere, “the only Oers that are directly hurt by this splicing scheme, if it’s what we’re starting to think it is, are the courtiers.”
Olph, my man, I thought. He always seemed to be able to read the whereabouts of my thoughts, if not, he was having them before me.
“We could let them just suffer their accounting,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“‘Suffer their accounting?’” Ilara asked.
“It’s the idea that what everyone does in life goes either rewarded or punished, depending on what it is,” I said. I didn’t like to think of some of the actions that might come up in my accounting. It was generally understood that actions in battle were justified because they happened in the course of military engagement. But that’s not how it felt in my gut.
Ilara looked confused.
“The Devoteds, those that believe in the Something Greater, say that, at the end of life, when the eternality leaves the body, there’s an accounting. All of one’s good actions are weighed against their bad ones, and then, depending on which is more prevalent, there’s a reward or punishment.”
“So it’s kind of like karma?” Ilara asked.
“Maybe. We don’t have that word on O. If karma indicates that there are repercussions for all of your actions, even if they aren’t immediate, then I guess so. The rewards and the punishments don’t always wait to come until the end of life. Sometimes they show up during life. Such as with the courtiers and splicing.”
Dolpheus jumped in, “Courtiers are despicable, almost without exception. They hurt others without care. They’d kill an infant if it served their gain.”
“So you’re saying their karma, or their accounting, would be to let them suffer the effects of having their eternalities spliced? Whatever Brachius is actually doing with the spliced pieces?” Ilara asked.
“Yes,” Dolpheus and I said at the same time. Dolpheus continued, “If you remembered what courtiers are like, you wouldn’t have that shocked look on your face. They deserve what’s coming to them.”
“Courtiers are nasty pricks, the lot of them. They’re the very worst of O,” Lila affirmed. “They wouldn’t stop to rescue a family from a burning building if they passed by while they were screaming. They value only their own interests, above all else.”
“Precisely,” Dolpheus said, happy that Lila was agreeing with us so readily.
“If it were truly just the courtiers who’d suffer, I’d say, hell yes let’s just leave splicing be. After all, I’m not stupid. I realize that interfering with Brachius’ splicing empire that has him rolling in pure sand, is probably one of the most dangerous pursuits on O. And the courtiers can go fuck themselves, to borrow an expression from our lovely princess here, several times over. They’re fuckers, every single one of them.”
“But…” Dolpheus said on a sigh.
“But it’s not that simple.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Dolpheus dismounted and stretched his back.
“The courtiers are becoming more terrible versions of themselves every single time they’re spliced. As we’ve agreed, they’re cruel fuckers
to begin with, so them getting worse is very bad.”
“Because…” Dolpheus nudged her while he ran an affectionate hand across his stallion’s neck.
“Because the courtiers don’t live in a bubble. Hey, if he can get off his horse, can I?”
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, dismounting myself and moving to help Ilara, who allowed me to help her from her horse this time, even though it was evident she didn’t need my help.
Lila’s dismount was awkward and immediately she groaned at the ache in her thighs and buttocks that we’d all predicted. She rubbed a hand up and down her thighs, making swishy sounds across the fabric of her lab suit. “I told you guys this horse is trying to kill me. I’ll never be able to walk again.”
Kai, already off his horse, rolled his eyes, looking a bit like a crazy man under his orange eyebrows and hair.
I laughed without meaning to. Lila glared at me, reminding me to tread carefully with the she-dragon. I said, “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at him.”
Lila turned to glare at Kai. I only felt a little bad that I’d deflected her attention toward him. He was proving himself quite capable of handling himself. And one of the most important traits of a good soldier was to laugh when life offered the opportunity. If Kai was to train with us to become a good soldier, then he’d have to learn this first. Life was too brutal not to laugh when you had the chance.
Lila, tired of glaring, walked a few steps away, just out of range of the horses’ powerful hind legs, and she plopped on the wild, purple grasses that edged the clearing we were in. Just beyond was the dense forest that surrounded the splicing lab.
She picked up where she left off. “The courtiers don’t live in a world isolated from the rest of us, much as we’d like them to. It’s not just their families, because we could potentially assume that majority of them also fit into the category of vicious human beings. It’s their employees, their servants, the people who live as tenants on their land. It’s these people who already suffer the courtiers’ indifference to their well being. They already live in a dangerous environment, just because they’re at the whims of the courtiers, and you know have fickle they can be. It’s all these innocent—or mostly innocent, because I knew of few Oers who are innocent—who’ll suffer as the courtiers continue to splice themselves and continue to grow more evil. If we think they’re bad now, just wait.”
No one said anything as the reality of what she said sunk in.
“Trust me. I’m the one responsible for monitoring their biorhythms and other things. I don’t tell them, but one of the main things I make note of now, once I started noticing something strange happening, is what their personality’s like. Each time they get spliced, they get nastier, meaner, more uncaring of everyone else, if that’s even possible to contemplate.”
“Why would they splice themselves more than once?” Ilara asked. “Is it a several part process or something?”
“They do it because they’re greedy fuckers. If one splicing of the eternality provides them with one additional lifetime after they either die or their body becomes so injured they don’t want to continue living in that way, then multiple splicings, theoretically, provide them with multiple lifetimes. They’re trying to achieve their own version of immortality.”
“Fuck,” Ilara said.
“Yes. It’s a fucking big deal. That’s why I want these two to stop it. Splicing’s evil, as I’ve been saying. Now there’s a chance it might be even more evil than I thought before.”
Ilara turned to Dolpheus and me. “You all have made Brachius and Aletox out to be the most terrible of them all. Do you two stand a chance of taking them down? Taking the splicing industry down?”
Kai was the one who appeared slighted at Ilara’s questioning of our prowess, not us. “Your Majesty,” he said, “Lord Tanus and his Arms Master, Dolpheus, are legendary. There are no better soldiers than them on all of O.”
Perhaps.
“Sorry, Kai. I told you all, I don’t remember things. I just didn’t want them to risk taking on such a terrible enterprise if they weren’t skilled enough to do it. I didn’t want them to gamble their lives if the risk was too high.”
“Oh. They’re skilled enough. Dolpheus once tore a mowab’s head from its body. With his bare hands! And Tanus took on one of the most fearsome of all the rebel leaders in the Koal Desert. He was injured and he still defeated the rebel leader. And then—”
Dolpheus chuckled. “I think she gets the idea, man.”
Kai looked a bit flustered and the pink spread rapidly across his face again.
“Those feats sound better recounted than lived,” Dolpheus added.
“Should I bother asking what a mowab is?” Ilara asked.
“Nah,” I said. “It’s not important right now.”
“What is important is that we take down Brachius’ splicing empire,” Lila said vigorously.
“We?” I said.
“Hell yes, we. You didn’t think I was going to sit out here while you two gallivant around in there, did you?”
“Gallivant,” Dolpheus muttered to me. “That’s fucking ridiculous.”
Neither one of us had forgotten that we’d nearly frozen our balls off last time we’d been in the lab. We were lucky to be in one piece, with all our parts properly attached.
“Lila,” I started, “if we’re actually going to do this and break into the splicing lab, with a vague mission of just stumbling upon something, which is ridiculous, I’ll add, then the fewer of us put into danger, the better. As Kai so aptly pointed out—” I offered the gangly redhead a smile “—Dolpheus and I are soldiers with a certain level of skill. If any of us have to go in there, again, it should be us. Or, really, just me.”
I turned to face Dolpheus.
“Oh no,” he said. “Don’t even start. You know I won’t let you go in there without me. It’s bad enough you tried to go to Sand without me, there’s no way I’m letting you take on your fathers without my help.”
“Olph, this isn’t your battle. I’m the one who dragged you into this.”
“Tan, you’ve been dragging me into things since we were boys, and since then, your battles are my battles. When are you going to get that through your thick head?”
“Olph—”
But Dolpheus put a hand up to stop my protests. “I mean it, Tan. Knock it off. I have your back, you have mine, remember?”
“I know, but lately it seems one-sided.”
“Tan, you’ve always gotten into more trouble than me. Now, enough of this ridiculousness. Use your energy more wisely. Use it to talk the rest of them from coming with us.”
I looked at the rest of them. Lila, Kai, and Ilara wore matching looks of resolve.
“None of you are going to listen to me, are you?” I asked. I’d seen that same look on Ilara’s face many times. Not once had I been able to sway her toward my reasoning afterward. Whatever Ilara this was, I doubted I’d have better luck this time. Ilara’s look was fierce and she was checking her various knives were well fastened, even if she claimed she didn’t remember how to use them.
“Okay, fine,” I conceded. “Come then, if you insist, even if I think it’s ridiculous to consider that five of us can bumble about in there and not get caught. Just hang tight and give Dolpheus and me some time to plan however much we can.”
Dolpheus and I started to move to the side. “Kai,” I said, “will you take care of the horses please? We’ll leave them here and proceed on foot.”
“Of course,” he said and started grabbing reins.
Ilara watched our retreat with suspicion. Lila lay back onto the ground and closed her eyes. She winked one open for a second. “Don’t take too long,” she said.
“We wouldn’t dare,” I muttered, ushering Dolpheus as far away from her pert ears as possible.
16
“You want to go once they’re asleep, don’t you?” Dolpheus asked as soon as were beyond earshot.
“Of course I do. There�
��s no way we’re bringing all them with us.”
“Agreed. They’ll be pissed we tricked them, but we’ll sound like a herd of mowabs in there with five of us. There’s no way we can do that.”
“And there’s no way we went through all this trouble to bring Ilara back just to take her straight into the nest of the Vikas vipers. I wouldn’t put it past Brachius, or even Aletox for that matter, to kill her on the spot if it suited his purposes to overthrow the monarchy.”
“If that’s what he’s actually trying to do,” Dolpheus added. “Now that we have to consider that splicing might not be about what we thought it was about, we have to question everything we’ve assumed about Brachius.”
“And Aletox.”
“Absolutely. They’re both brilliant. Who knows what they’re really up to? What if the assassination attempts on the royals has nothing to do with the monarchy?”
“Whatever it is, we can be sure that Ilara will be in danger inside the lab,” I said.
“More than the rest of us, even.”
“For sure. I can’t let her do it.”
“Tan, I don’t think she’s going to give you a choice.”
We both turned to look back at our companions. Lila still rested on the ground, eyes closed. Kai was off to the side, his attention on the horses. But Ilara was staring straight at us.
“Good thing this Ilara can’t get inside your mind, or that she hasn’t remembered how to do it yet,” Dolpheus said.
“I don’t think she’s tried.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“It doesn’t look like she needs to be able to mind speak with you to figure out we’re up to something,” Dolpheus said.
He was right. I smiled at Ilara. She narrowed her eyes further and crossed her arms over her chest.
She called out to me, “If you think you’re going to slip away while we’re off gathering wood for a fire or some other such bullshit and leave us behind, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Or me,” Lila added. “If you’re waiting to sing us a song and put us to sleep before you gallivant off, you’d better believe you’re mistaken.” She didn’t even open her eyes.