An Unkindness of Ghosts

by Rivers Solomon

  Aster tiptoed into the exam room and shut the door behind her, dogged it. Aches in her body made themselves known all at once. She curled into Theo’s mechanical chair. Atop the tray table next to her lay a row of surgical devices: vascular occluders, retractors, scalpels, drill bits. She studied the display, remembered that the C-shaped silicone device was necessary to block compromised blood vessels. The metallic sheen of lancets and forceps dulled as Aster drifted sleepward. She now felt, inexplicably, safe.

  * * *

  When a whisper woke her sometime later, particles of breath hot on her outer ear, she shivered and forced her eyes open. Crusted with rheum, her lids stuck to her waterline.

  “Giselle?” she asked, but that wasn’t right. She wasn’t in Quarry.

  “Aster, I’m sorry.” The voice came at her more loudly this time. It was Theo, and his palm squeezed her shoulder.

  “What is it?” she asked, stretching herself up. The back of the exam chair inclined, but only just, and she maneuvered into a sitting position.

  “He knows you’re here.” Aster noticed the tininess of his voice. It cracked with pain.

  Fuzzy-headed, Aster understood only half of what he said. His words had shocked her awake, but she had yet to catch up to their meaning. She glanced to the door, which was closed, the shelf she’d wedged beneath the nob broken and on the floor. The exam room, for sterility’s sake, contained no vents, hidden compartments. The cabinets were too small to hold her.

  “Is he coming for me?” she asked, swinging her legs out of the chair and sliding to the floor.

  “His guards are already here, beyond that door,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do.”

  Escape impossible, Aster cleaned herself off as well as she could. She wiped her eyes and the creases of her lips. Without asking, she went to the sink and splashed cold running water onto her face, massaged the skin with her fingertips. Then she scooped some of it into her mouth. Knocking on the door roused her from her ministrations.

  “Now, Surgeon, or we’ll break it down,” they called.

  “Aster, you must come,” said Theo, holding out his hand.

  She did not take it, but went to open the door herself.

  “Apologize, apologize, apologize. Apologize profusely. And lie,” he said. “Please.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  Four guards stood in the lobby, none of whom Aster had seen before. Except for one, they had dark-brown eyes. Three stood in formation, their arms folded behind them. The leader, one with squinted eyes, high, square cheekbones that frightened Aster with their strength, and sand-colored hair, presented a pair of cuffs. “I wouldn’t resist, if I were you,” he stated.

  Aster turned and let the guard clasp the metal over her wrist, much too tightly so that her fingers buzzed.

  “Theo,” she said, or tried to say, the words hiccupping out of her mouth in a syncopated mess.

  * * *

  The blow from the guard dulled Aster’s senses. When they reached the top of the stairs, pushing her toward a hatch, she struggled to read the words on the cabin door. She narrowed her eyes, brought the calligraphic letters into focus: Interrogation—D-00.

  Her breathing descended into a fit of erratic gasps, and she jerked out of the guard’s hold with a yelp. He tightened his grip on the back of her neck, fingers drilling into her levator scapulae and sternocleidomastoid. “What does a girl as ugly as you need with a face?” he asked, then tore his knife across her cheek, chin to temple. Aster was no stranger to extraordinary pain, but she screamed as loudly as she had when she’d received her first blow as a child, the sting of the cut spreading over her entire face. She cried out again, sound trickling from her lips halfheartedly. “You try something again, and it’ll be an ear,” he said, knife pressed against her hairline, cold. She dared not shiver.

  Another guard keyed open the door, shoving Aster inside. Her feet dragged. The room was tiny, seven by seven meters, even tinier for the imposing presence of Lieutenant, who sat with one leg crossed over the other, eyes on his wristwatch. “About time, gentleman,” he said.

  A single lightbulb hung down over a wooden table. The guards dragged her to a stool across from him, uncuffed her, only to recuff her to the table. Aster stretched her fingers, wiggled them, but her wrists were locked firmly in place, bound in metal.

  “Leave us,” Lieutenant said, calm. The guards saluted and filed out, the one with the knife slipping his blade back into its sheath.

  Sweat trickled down Aster’s neck. Her face bled, but chained to the table, she could do nothing about it. She made note of a metal toolbox on the table, the name Sovereign Lieutenant Smith written in marker at the bottom; above, Please ask before borrowing.

  Lieutenant drew his hands into a pyramid. “You know why you’re here today?”

  “I’m sorry I missed headcount,” said Aster, maintaining what she hoped was a contrite tone.

  “I have expectations for every citizen of Matilda, and you continue to fail to meet those expectations.”

  Aster laid her sweating palms on the surface of the table, sat straight and unmoving like a metal beam. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Nothing you won’t survive,” he said. Lieutenant opened the toolbox, the lid obscuring the contents from her view. He removed a hammer from within. Aster watched as he grabbed the handle in his fist, began to gesture his arms flamboyantly, shaking the hammer into the air. “You’re a—what’s the word you used when we last spoke? An aberration. I’d thought I’d made myself quite clear at that meeting, yet you are still playing by your own rules.”

  Aster tapped her feet on the floor, right foot then left foot. The room was uncomfortably hot. Her shirt, wet with sweat, stuck to her heavily.

  “I’d thought you a smart woman. Now, I’m not so sure. Or perhaps you have no conscience . . . Did you feel shame when you found out about Flick?”

  Aster felt her lips tremble at the sound of their name.

  “It is you who killed her, Aster. Do you understand that?”

  Aster remained silent.

  “Answer me.” Lieutenant rested his chin on the metal of the hammer.

  “Yes,” she whispered, curled her hands into a fist.

  “I spoke to her before we led her out onto the block. A sweet child. A good child. You may rest assured knowing that she is safe now on the Other Side, embraced by the Celestial Shores,” he said. “Her death could’ve meant something, yet you dishonor her memory by continuing to be insubordinate and incorrigible.”

  Aster’s eyes flicked to Lieutenant’s. She studied the rims of his irises and the diameter of his pupils, looked and looked for a secret, or a key, a cipher, but found the same bits of anatomy present in any eye—cornea, sclera, lens. Her own facade of calm was failing, wobbling on its arthritic knees. Lieutenant’s practiced ease showed no signs of imminent dissolution.

  “This could be over, Aster, right now. You tell me you’re sorry, and it’s done. Forgotten. Say it, Aster. Say it, and Flick’s death isn’t meaningless. Say it, and beg forgiveness.”

  Aster knew he lied. This could never be over. “No,” she said.

  “Say it!” he barked. “Say it, and mean it.”

  “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry.”

  “Enough,” Lieutenant said.

  “Why are you doing this? Please tell me so I can understand. What do you want me to apologize for? Being alive? Breathing? I can’t help it that I exist. If my presence hurts you so much, end me. Snap my neck and be done with it.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? An easy end to your pathetic existence. You think you’re a martyr? To be a martyr you must have a cause, you stupid, stupid naive girl. It does not end with you. It does not end with me. The Sovereignty is forever because the Gulf of Sin is forever. We were yesterday, and we will be tomorrow. One uppity lowdeck cunt cannot change that.” He massaged his palm, pinched the flesh with the index finger and thumb of his other hand,
working out some invisible strain. “It does, however, require maintenance. And that is why you are here.”

  Before Aster could hitch a breath or beg for reconsideration, Lieutenant raised the hammer and smashed it over her right hand in three different spots, with enough force to crack the underlying bones.

  xxv

  Little Silver, so named for the strip of shimmering gray in her otherwise black hair, had six elder sisters, all of whom were married to the king. The king had acquired much wealth through a variety of business endeavors, and he felt entitled to the world and all that was in it simply because much of the world and much of what was in it already belonged to him. Thirty-six wives, swaths of land stretching from the swamps in the north to the gulf in the south, an estate of considerable size, another estate of even more considerable size, and yet still another estate larger than the other two combined.

  This is where Little Silver worked the kitchens, saved from marriage to the chieftain for her young age. Yet she would not be such an age much longer, as was the nature of things. Little Silver walked northward for many days until she reached the place where the water waifs lived, and sat herself upon the muddy bank, saying, “Make me forever young, so I do not have to marry the king.”

  A rousing murmur from the swamps—and it was settled. Little Silver should go back to her village, but they would grant her request on the eve of her fourteenth birthday, which would give them time to learn the magic necessary to do what she bid.

  A warm summer evening, one of Silver’s sisters came to her, chanting: “Little Silver, Little Silver, hair painted ghost. You are the earthly vessel for our heavenly host.” She continued: “I no longer wish to be enslaved as the king’s wife, and I request the counsel of the spirits in your communion. What say they?”

  Little Silver said, “Eldest Sister, I have communed with the spirits, and it is their opinion that you must kill the king, lest live life his slave.” Little Silver had not really communed with the spirits. The streak of white in her hair was not a mark from the netherworld, as her sisters and the villagers believed, but the result of her first encounter with the water waifs, their strange faces scaring her not quite dead. But she knew that if her sister killed the king, she’d be spared from being his seventh wife, even without the waifs’ help.

  “How do I kill the king, Little Silver?” her sister asked.

  “Here, you must find a way to feed him these.” Little Silver gave her herbs she’d picked in the village outskirts.

  That night, the eldest sister sprinkled the herbs into her husband’s tea, waiting patiently in bed for him to die. “Wife, let us kiss,” he said. And so she kissed him, knowing it would be the last time, and therefore not minding it as much as she had previously. Little Silver’s sister proved herself much more sensitive to the poison leaves than the king, however, and died as soon as their lips touched, falling back into the sheets, a warm heap. Yet the king was unaffected, less sensitive to the poison than she.

  The next day, another of Silver’s sisters came to her.

  “Little Silver, Little Silver, hair painted ghost. You are the earthly vessel for our heavenly host.” She continued: “The king has killed our eldest sister, and I fear that I am next. I request the counsel of the spirits in your communion. What say they?”

  Little Silver said, “I have communed with the spirits, and it is their opinion that you must kill the king, lest you die as well.” Silver gave her herbs much, much stronger than the last. That night, when the sister prepared tea for her husband, she died from simply touching the leaves.

  And so it went with Little Silver’s four other sisters as well. One dying from simply smelling the tea, another from looking upon it, another from being in the same vicinity, and the last from even thinking about it. So the king decided to make Silver his bride now, rather than waiting till her birthday, out of other wives and therefore very lonely.

  Little Silver had to ride to the swamps to escape, seeking the counsel of the water waifs. The king, also on horseback, rode after her, only a few paces behind. Silver kicked her horse’s side and said, “Gyup, gyup!” spurring it to move more swiftly. She could hear the stomping hooves of the king’s stallion behind her, and Silver gripped her mare’s mane.

  The waifs did not appear when first she arrived, so she jumped into the swamps to escape from the king, leaving her silver pony behind. She swam and swam, but the water was too murky and too vast and too filled with beastly creatures, and she drowned straight quick.

  Keeping true to their promise to keep her young forever, so she might be free, the waifs used all the power inside themselves to make Little Silver into a ghost, draining themselves until they were weak and brittle and dissolved into the water like so many dead before.

  Little Silver sat perched on a tiny little island in the middle of the swamp, too afraid from having drowned before to leave her place. To keep herself company in the dark, she hummed, rousing the attention of the king, who had been searching for her onshore.

  “Little Silver, are you ready to end this foolishness?”

  “Aye,” she said.

  He jumped in after her, leaving his white pony behind. The chieftain swam and swam, but the water was too murky and too vast and too filled with beastly creatures, and he drowned straight quick, dissolving into the water just as the water waifs had done, and like so many dead before.

  * * *

  It was a grim sort of tale but one that used to give Aster much comfort. A poison so strong that the mere scent of it leveled an entire castle? Perfection. That the king escaped its power was a fluke of the narrative.

  She used to think that. But Aster understood now that kings don’t die. Even when they do, they have sons, and those sons have sons, and so on. Was that what Lieutenant meant? The Sovereignty is forever.

  * * *

  She awoke in her botanarium alone. The alert bell rang and she ignored it. Eventually, she used her good hand to rip it from the wall, the force of which jostled her right hand into a fit of agonizing throbs. Time got mixed up, lost, confused. She measured hours in pain. When she needed to inject more poppyserum into her neck, she figured four hours had passed. Had it been a day? Half a day? Two guards had led her in chains back to Q, the ship still dark in the early morning. Somehow she’d made it here, epinephrine doing what her normal self could not.

  Aster’s brain felt fogged, the serum slowing her thought processes into a slow drawl. It hurt, and she didn’t want it to hurt.

  Next to her, where she lay in a self-made den beneath a desk, sat the leather bag filled with some of her medical instruments. She’d grabbed it to use as a pillow, the leather thick enough to provide cushion. Inside was a large knife, larger than that of the guard who’d mangled her face. Resolved, she picked it up and stumbled to a chair.

  She unfastened her suspenders, the movement taking her twice as long as usual with only the one hand, and used them to tie her wrist to the arm of the chair where she sat. With the knife in her left hand, her bad arm locked in place, she started to bear down with the blade.

  Aster shivered. She knew that she had to be quick, a quick swipe just past the styloid process. She’d performed amputations before. It would hurt, but no more than what she was feeling now, the unfathomable aching in her metacarpals.

  “Aster?”

  She heard banging against the hatch.

  “Are you in there? Aster. It’s Theo. Please let me in.”

  “Go away,” she said, the blade still in her left hand.

  “You know I know how to override the lock,” said Theo.

  “I also know that you won’t do it,” she said.

  “You think you know me so well?”

  “I do.”

  Then nothing, not another sound.

  “So? Go ahead. Override the lock. Do it,” she said.

  Aster hated how weak her voice sounded, longed for her monotone back. The pain in her hand radiated outward and everywhere, affecting her vocals.

 
“Aster, please let me in,” he said.

  She loosened the tie she’d made with her suspenders and stood, hand limp and resting at her belly. “I told you that you wouldn’t bust in.” She undogged the lock and opened the hatch, turning away before he could get a good look at the guard’s and Lieutenant’s handiwork.

  “Thank you,” he said, reaching for her shoulder. She felt the pressure of the squeeze and jerked away, the movement sending a pang to her fingers.

  “Turn around.”

  “No.”

  “Please, Aster. Let me see your face.”

  “Why? So you can dry my tears? I’m not crying.”

  There was a whistling sound as Theo sucked in air through pursed lips.

  “Please don’t say sorry,” Aster said.

  He started to speak then stopped. “Please look at me.”

  Aster went back to her chair, turned to sit, and finally faced him.

  “Aster,” he said.

  She’d not bothered to bandage the gash on her face. It would need stitches, a wound like that, the way it split the side of her face open. She could feel it tingling all raw and exposed.

  “You should have come to me after,” he said, and the words faltered when he glanced down at her hand.

  “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your and Lieutenant’s private time,” she responded, not knowing whether she meant it sincerely or sarcastically. Her right mind was somewhere else, in its place a bitter, angry, lashing mass. She fiddled with the dangling elastic of her suspenders. “I regret saying that.”

  “I forgive you. I deserved it. I am as angry with myself as you are at me for letting them take you.”