by J. C. Staudt
In the classroom, things were proceeding just as Bastille had imagined: a touch of firsthand experience for her students here and there had been sufficient to keep them at bay. By harping on Sister Severin’s ‘intellect’ and Brother Travers’s ‘natural talent,’ each when the other was not present, she had created an atmosphere where neither student felt pressured to excel, thereby curtailing the pace at which she taught without making them dissatisfied. At the same time, she was able to provide favorable reports whenever the Most High called upon her to share her progress.
Half a year’s time was the interval Brother Liero had thrown out as an off-hand comment during that first meeting. Somehow the oblivious estimate had stuck, and the Most High seemed to think Sister Bastille could have both her students fully trained in six months. She was convinced it would take far less time to uncover the mystery behind Froderic’s elevation, however. Whether she would still have to cater to their every whim by that time remained to be seen.
As the starwinds took their toll on the basilica’s faithful, Sister Severin began to fall ill more and more often. That left Brother Travers to assume the mantle of disciplined education—a responsibility for which he was predictably ill-suited. His air of easygoing levity bothered Sister Bastille at times. He talked too much and listened too little. He was unfocused, and he seldom heeded Bastille’s warning or instruction before plowing ahead on his own.
Perhaps the most aggravating thing of all was that Brother Travers appeared wholly unaffected by the starwinds. While others were seesawing in and out of bed rest due to long periods of fever, dizzy spells, nausea, and mental fog, Travers strolled the basilica’s halls as if he hadn’t a care. That made him the banner-carrier in Bastille’s classroom during that span of weeks; the default pupil when it came to helping her with the rites.
Bastille was disinclined to allow Travers a leading role, as yet. She accepted his assistance and used each procedure as a teaching opportunity. The rites were not so delicate as the Enhancements, which came about less often anyway. Travers would finish flushed and out of breath, symptoms Bastille had witnessed in prior students and had always chalked up to discomfort. Somehow Travers did not strike her as uncomfortable, however; he seemed almost happy—if human dissection could elicit such a mood.
Then one night, everything changed.
Bastille was performing the disembowelment phase of the rites. Brother Travers stood beside her. The corpse was that of a middle-aged man, the last dead heathen the Cypriests had dragged through the gates before the storms began. She could hear Travers’s heavy breathing, feel his wind on the back of her arm.
A headache exploded through her so strong and sudden it made Bastille drop her scalpel into the corpse’s abdominal cavity and reel backward, bumping the wall behind. She let out a groan and sank to her knees, prompting Brother Travers to crouch beside her and ask what the matter was.
“Get help,” she said. “Brother Reynard, in the hospital.”
“Sure,” he said.
Bastille felt him hop over her, heard his sandals beating a hasty retreat down the corridor. She managed a glance up at the coat hooks, saw his prosaics still hanging next to hers. The Mouth-forsaken fool is running through the halls in his underclothes, she thought, just before a new series of sharp pangs wracked her.
The pain in her head was immense, maybe the worst it had ever been. Pressing her thumbs hard into her temples relieved the effects, but only in lieu of a different, tighter sort of throbbing.
Faint footsteps grew louder, and Brother Reynard was there with Sisters Rousseau and Mareau, a surprising muster in light of how busy the hospital staff had been of late. They laid her on the floor, put something soft beneath her head, and lifted her so Reynard could press a flask of morphine to her lips.
Bastille took a sip and waited for cool relief, but the pain barely receded. “What’s happening to me?”
Reynard hushed her. “Don’t speak. Just relax. Is it helping?”
“No,” she said, voice breaking.
“Lift her again. Let’s have another sip.”
This time the pain subsided a little.
“I think we’d better get you to the hospital, Sister Bastille. Do you feel you can stand and walk, if we were to help you?”
“I think so.”
It took a long time. Every step made the steel ball in her head roll and crash from side to side. They laid her in a hospital bed and connected her to an intravenous line with a refurbished needle. The bed was softer than her own, and it wasn’t long after they pushed a shot of morphine into her bloodstream that the room around her dimmed and faded away.
She woke in a cold sweat after a series of strange and disturbing dreams. The last was the most unsettling; the rains had filled the basilica walls like a giant tub, rising to the highest parapet. Heathens were clambering over the top and diving in, while corpses of Cypriests bobbed and drifted on the surface.
In the submerged depths lay the basilica itself. Priests floated through the halls, dead and bloated. The avatar of the fates remained in his watertight cell beneath the conservatory, undiscovered. Eons passed in the dream, and no one found him. He sank beneath the waves until all the world was drowned, and the prison which held him never opened.
“I’ll let you out,” Bastille was saying when she awoke. “I’ll free you.”
“What was that, Sister?” asked a familiar voice. Brother Travers was sitting beside her bed, slouched in his chair, dreadlocks hanging over the backrest.
Bastille caught her breath. “What’s the time? Are we late for class?”
“Class ended hours ago,” Travers said. “It’s long past midnight now. I took the liberty of finishing the rites myself.”
“You did what? Without my permission?”
“Calm down. You look like you’re about to pass out again. Everything’s fine. I took care of it.”
“You were not to—” she groaned as a wave of pain swept through her.
“You’re going to have to let Sister Severin and I do this on our own at some point,” he said.
“Not yet. Not before—”
“Not before what?”
“Nothing. Why are you here, Brother Travers?”
“I thought you’d like some support. Sorry if I’m bothering you. It doesn’t seem like you have many friends around here.”
“No, I meant—what did you say?”
“I said sorry.”
“No. After that. About… friends.”
“I said you don’t seem to have many friends. I see you sitting alone at mealtimes. You hardly talk to anyone. You always have that thoughtful look on your face, like you’re stewing over something. In class, it’s hard to get a word out of you, except when you’re droning on and on during a lecture. You don’t like people very much, do you?”
“Well, I—” Bastille didn’t know what to say. Her blind stupor didn’t exactly lend itself to rational thought. “I guess I don’t, when you put it that way.”
“Is that why you like cutting them open?”
Bastille’s head was pounding, but she entertained his remark anyway. “Do not confuse talent with motive, kind Brother. Enjoying something and being good at it are hardly the same thing.”
“But you do enjoy it…”
“It’s how I contribute.”
“Sometimes I don’t like people either. Only sometimes, though. Just when they get on my nerves.”
“And does this happen often?”
“Often enough,” he said. “Every now and then, people really piss me off.”
We are kindred spirits in that regard, she thought. “Why did you come to the Order, Brother Travers? What made you leave your seafaring life in Spearhead Point?”
Travers cracked a smile, but there was no joy in it. “I wanted to cut people open.”
Bastille felt a flutter in her chest. She responded in level tones nonetheless. “You might’ve been assigned to Brother Reynard here in the hospital if I hadn’t hand
-picked you.”
“I would’ve volunteered if you hadn’t. I’m glad you did, though. I’d rather be doing what we’re doing down there than treating headaches and sore throats.”
“What was it about the rites that drew you initially?”
Travers pondered. “The Aionach may not have laws,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you can go around doing whatever you want. I figured that out pretty quick.”
Though her head throbbed and her heart was racing, Bastille took a calming breath and asked, “What are you saying? How did you figure that out?”
“I had to leave,” he sighed. “Too many people getting suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?”
That same smile again. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt anyone.”
Bastille wasn’t worried so much as terrified. “Brother Travers…”
“I want you to know how much it means to me to be your assistant. Your student. I’m learning from the best, and it makes me happy. Today, when I was preparing that corpse for sacrifice… I realized. There’s nothing like it. Nothing at all. You know what I mean. You’re the only other person in this place who does.” His nostrils flared. He rubbed his lips together. Curled his fingers like claws, as if to grasp something that wasn’t there.
“I thought you had a weak stomach,” Bastille said. “The first time I let you handle one—”
“I’m not proud of that. It wasn’t the body, it was the smell of the chemicals. It reminded me of… something I’d rather not talk about. I’m used to it now. A necessary evil in our line of work, huh?”
There is something rather evil here, yes, she thought. “The embalming fluids do take some getting used to.”
“You know the best part? The rush. I do get a little sick from it sometimes. I can’t stop, though.”
“You haven’t found that the sanctioned nature of our work takes the thrill out of it?”
“Oh, no way. It’s not the fear of getting caught that gives me the rush. It’s the sensation—the sight, the smell, the touch of cold flesh. Even the taste. I love the way it sounds, the way it feels when it’s coming apart in my hands. Between my teeth.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. “I’m sorry. I’ve been dying to talk to someone about this, and you’re the only one I knew would understand.”
I do not at all understand, Bastille wanted to say. “Yes, well… it is a thankless job we do. One might as well get some enjoyment out of it.”
Brother Travers rose from his chair and sat beside her on the bed. “I’ve been enjoying our lessons a lot lately. Without Sister Severin. I like being there beside you, watching. I’d really like it if you could watch me sometime too. Soon, I hope. You’ll let me take the lead soon, won’t you?”
It has become apparent that I must do something soon, she thought. Very soon.
CHAPTER 32
Revolution’s Harvest
The air was thick with anarchy. Or perhaps that was merely the stench of the hundreds of parasitic vagrants who followed Merrick Bouchard day and night, clamoring for him, begging for the chance to beseech the healer’s graces. Merrick had decided it best to use his gift sparingly, to keep the crowds wanting more. He found their number grew faster that way. And so, day after day, the people had come from all over.
They were coming not just from Belmond and its surrounding suburbs anymore, but from all throughout the Inner East and beyond. There were seafarers from settlements along the Horned Gulf and Farstranders from across the Slickwash; coarse mountainfolk from the Vors’ Rhachis; ruddy-skinned wastelanders from the Amber Coast; drawl-mouthed northerners with their oversized hats and pompous swagger; and blistered Bleakshorers with savage blood.
Belmond’s own were not lost in the shuffle. Everyone from gang outcasts to friendless drifters had shown up on Merrick’s doorstep—wherever his doorstep happened to be on a given day. Though he never stopped moving, it was getting harder to hide. His legend had grown such that he would’ve preferred to establish a permanent home and let the people come to him. But his home was in the Hull Tower. Until he got there, the danger to his life remained too great to stay in one place for long.
Raith and Derrow cleared a path through the crowd to let Merrick pass onto the open circle of pavement where a captive awaited him; a captive in the khaki and gray fatigues of the Scarred Comrades. Merrick’s guards had caught the man late the previous night, part of a strike team trying to infiltrate his sleeping hole. Merrick had no doubt Pilot Wax had sent the team to eliminate him.
They’d bound the soldier’s hands and feet and strung him to a crooked street lamp, from which they’d been dunking him head-first into a rusted fifty-gallon drum of putrid rainwater all morning long. Merrick recognized him instantly. It was Admison Kugh, one of his closest friends from Mobile Ops.
Kugh’s eyes were red-veined, his face puffy and waterlogged. “Bouchard? Bouchard… holy shit, thank the fates it’s you. You gotta get me down from here, man. These coffin’ bastards are trying to kill me.”
“Wax sent you to kill me.”
Kugh’s mouth gaped open. “No… No, we were just gathering intel.”
“Intel on the best way to assassinate me.”
“… I had to follow orders, man.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t know it was you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear, man. I swear. You know how Wax gives orders. Mobile Ops is his bitch. He tells us what he wants, and we do it. No questions asked.”
“You’re telling me you were too stupid to put the pieces together? How many dways you know in the city south with a thousand people behind them?”
“Look, man… I tried to help you. That night they rode you out into the wastes, they were gonna kill you. I stopped ‘em. Bouch… I dropped my knife in the sand. I left it for you, so you could get free.”
Merrick rubbed the scar between his thumb and forefinger where his mark had once been. He raised his voice to the crowd. “How many of you here want to see this man spared?”
The crowd decried the notion with jeers and heckling.
Merrick turned to the ropers. “Dunk him.”
Kugh screamed for mercy, wriggling like a worm at the end of a line. The rope creaked and the street lamp groaned. Kugh’s head went under. The crowd raised a shout of approval. Kugh struggled. Merrick heard his head hit the side of the barrel with a flat bonging sound. They lowered him until his broad shoulders stuck.
Merrick waited.
The crowd quieted.
Kugh stopped squirming.
“Haul him up.”
They lifted him, coughing and sputtering.
Merrick stepped in close and whispered into Kugh’s ear. “Did you know they’re calling me Merrick the Mender now? Cute, right? It has a certain ring to it. They’re saying all a person has to do is stand close enough, and my miraculous powers will rub off on them. I can keep you alive for as long as I want. Indefinitely, if it comes to that. You won’t die. You’ll just keep suffering. Tell me the truth, and I’ll end this.”
“I swear, I didn’t know it was you. That’s the honest truth.”
Merrick stepped away from him and shouted to the crowd. “Mercy or death?”
“Death,” came the reply, a sibilant hiss spiked with poison.
“This is a man who serves the city north,” Merrick said.
More booing.
“What has the north ever given us?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s right. They’ve taken everything for themselves. Life is fragile, my friends. We live without issue until we aren’t fed, or given drink, or allowed to sleep. Until our needs go unmet. Look at this place. Look at us. We scrape by while the people of the north indulge themselves on all the luxuries we don’t have. Many of us spend our days chasing our next meal, our next sip of clean water… our next safe place to sleep. The north has let us go hungry. They’ve watched us lay our heads on hard pavement and hot sand. What gives t
hem the right to deny us the things we need?”
The crowd seethed.
Merrick waited for the noise to abate. There was a fire in his chest; a fire not of his gift, but of pride. As his following had grown, he’d found that the more he spoke, the more they wanted to listen. The jitters he’d felt speaking before the Gray Revenants had melted away at the acceptance of his new audience. This filthy rabble were changing him into the great conqueror he was always meant to become. “Some of you came here searching for a healer’s touch. But hear me now: the truest healing can never begin until the barricades come down. Until the walls that divide north from south are broken. Until our city’s abundance, and the prosperity granted by free trade with communities across the Aionach, are poured out for everyone to enjoy. Not just the privileged few.”
The sheer volume of noise made Merrick flinch. He wanted to cover his ears, but opted to endure the racket instead. “For all this greed, there is one man responsible. His name is Pilot Wax, and the north has called him its Commissar for nearly twenty years. So I ask you again: what would you have me do with this soldier of the north—this servant of Pilot Wax—who hangs here, a symbol of the north’s treachery? Would you show him mercy, or give him the death he deserves?”
“Death.” A chant grew from that single word, a rhythm emerging from a disharmony of voices. “Death,” they shouted in a deafening whisper. “Death. Death. Death.”
“You hear that, Kugh?” Merrick shouted, stepping in beside him. “That’s truth.”
“I never did anything to you, Bouch. I stuck up for you. I even warned you about Wax. Didn’t I tell you he wouldn’t put up with somebody better than him? Didn’t I? I was right. Sure enough, he kicked you out. You can’t blame me for that shit, man. I thought we used to be buddies.”
“We did,” Merrick said. “And I forgive you.”
“What?”
“I forgive you. You did help me. You did try to stop me from sabotaging myself. So I forgive you for following Wax’s orders—even though you knew it was me he sent you to kill.”