by Monte Cook
Overcome your fear, she thinks.
And stands before the device, unmoving. She can’t do it. She looks around for something to move it with. Thinks through the stuff in her pockets. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She can hear the time pass in the pulse of her heartbeats, the metronome of her breath. This thing, all of this, will crumble if she doesn’t move.
What is it she’s afraid of? It wasn’t even painful to her. Kyre touched it and almost died, but Kyre’s always been a better believer. Kyre is going to have to touch it again, she realizes. In another world. The lever he’s going to find will be this lever and he’s going to have to touch the thing that almost killed him and if she doesn’t do this, it will be his life, wasted. All their lives wasted. She has to believe in the plan.
She checks Delgha’s time tracker. She imagines Kyre doing the same, if he is where he needs to be. Timing is the important thing here. She won’t have to wait long. Even with the mishaps, they timed her trip here almost perfectly. She watches the device cycle down to the moment.
The moment comes.
She closes her eyes and reaches for the stem. Closes her fingers around it. Nothing happens and everything happens. This is going to work. She knows it with every heartbeat, every thump of pulse and breath. Blind, she navigates the stem, turns its purpose upside down. When she’s done, and she knows it’s right and true, she drops her hand away and opens her eyes. That’s it. It’s done.
Aviend flips the switch on her clothing – sending it back to the hidden, blue-black… crescent, she thinks, that’s what this color should be called.
Now all she has to do is get to–
Two steps toward the door and a crested shadow slides into it. A moment later, the sound of fabric whooshing and then a creature stands before her, calmly folding a camouflage cloak. Where the creature’s hands would be gripping the fabric, there’s only the appearance of air.
“I wouldn’t make that smiling face just yet, if I were you. Which of course, I am not, and glad enough for it. You look like you ghostfell ages ago and no one told you, Aviend.”
“Hello, Faleineir,” she says.
There’s no way out of this room, other than the door he’s blocking. She stands, trembling, like a frightened bippot, outside its shell. How did it see her through her disguise, she wonders. Varjellen eyesight, maybe, but she doesn’t think so. Did someone tip them off? Is Rillent already in Quenn’s mind somehow? Skist, she wishes she had an answer to just one of the questions working through her brain right now.
“I’d like to say I’m surprised, finding you here,” the varjellen says. It always did like to hold court – it’s a place that Rillent makes for it, when Rillent’s too busy or bored to do it himself – and she can see that it’s leaned into it, this idea that it’s usually the smartest creature in the room. “But it seems like you just can’t stay away.”
“You’re right,” she says. She reaches up and rubs the corner of her cheek, dispersing the disguise cypher. Her face returns to its normal arrangement so quickly it makes her stomach swoop. She pulls back her hood too, releases the trapped hair so that it springs around her face. “I’ve come for Rillent.”
“Again?” Faleineir’s tone says it knows that’s not true. That not in one hundred years will it believe that to be true. She holds her tongue, lets the varjellen think what it wants. She won’t try to convince it.
In the space of the silence, Faleineir calmly folds the camouflage cloak and tucks it into a pocket of the armor it wears. Where the fabric sticks out, it makes a hollow like a triangular wound. Everywhere else, the armor is a pale yellow, the color of shining bone. The click of Faleineir’s tongue in its mouth is the sound of a dry husk crunching underfoot. “And here I thought you’d come to ask for a job. Or at the very least, to grovel and beg for forgiveness for that horrible stunt you and your clave–” So much sarcasm in that word she can almost taste it. It tastes like anger and blue-black moss and the shell of a gone-bad egg. “–pulled, trying to kill the only man who’s ever loved you.”
The idea that Rillent loves her, loves anything beyond himself, nearly makes her laugh out loud. Still, the words hit as they were intended, a turn in her stomach at the reminder that she’d once believed such things to be true. It’s a soft turn, to be sure, little more than a cringe in her gut, but she thinks she sees a flicker of satisfaction in Faleineir’s yellow eyes.
She takes a breath into the space of her chest, unmoving for the moment, to steady before she speaks.
“There was a time I would have fallen for that,” she says. “But that day is long past. Surely, this isn’t news to you, Faleineir. Nor to Rillent.”
“No.”
It’s rare of Faleineir to be so short-tongued. She thinks there might be more forthcoming, as the varjellen seems to hesitate over the end of the word. But there’s nothing else to fill the silence, other than the eternal sound of the machines around them, humming, humming.
She wishes, just for a moment, she’d managed to sidestep him. That she’d been a little faster, a little less obvious, a little more invisible. But clearly that’s not how this was supposed to go, and so she steps into what she’s been given.
“If you are here to stop me, it’s probably time to get on with it,” she says.
“Stop you? Not I.” Faleineir doesn’t laugh or smile, but it makes a sound, like nails on metal, that passes as such. “I’m quite sure that Arch Rillent will be delighted to see you, up close and in person. I hear it’s been ever so long since the two of you had a proper chat.
“Well,” its voice is sly in a way that its face can’t ever reach. “Not that long.”
She thinks purpled before she can stop herself. Rillent in her head. Opening her like a doorway.
She shakes the thought away. Faleineir steps closer, probably at the obvious distress. A spider to its grasshopper. A snake to its mouse. A slistovile to its glaive. She refuses to back away, although every instinct says go. Run. Flee.
She can’t. Not now. Not this time.
Faleineir gestures ceilingward, toward the series of small black holes cut there. Each one has a glass plate across it, something behind it that beeps and moves. Through it, she can see, impossibly, a figure. Cloaked in purple and gold, staring across the expanse at them. Watching them. She’s surprised to see Rillent alone. No guards. But no Quenn either. Which means he doesn’t have him. If he did, he would want to show off his prize. Force her to see it.
Rillent is good at hiding his hand. Unless he already thinks he’s won. And then he wants nothing more than to plunk his card down on the table and crow. Impatience is a virtue, she thinks. His impatience. Her virtue.
She just has to let him keep thinking he’s winning.
The varjellen cants its head as if listening, then turns yellow eyes back to her.
“Arch Rillent says he would like you to kneel, here, in his hold, in the detritus of your broken home, so that you might more clearly see everything you’ve already lost. Or could lose again.”
She will not kneel. She will never kneel.
Inside her pocket, her fingers pop her last cypher. Through the fabric and the skin. She can feel it whoop through her blood. Instant. Rush.
Faleineir’s pre-attack shift gives away its intention. It’s purposeful. It wants her to fight. Well, then.
The wrist blades are not for Faleineir. Those are her last resort, should everything go terribly wrong. So she reaches for the obvious blade at the back of her waist. She’s better with hand-to-hand than she used to be. She needs to be careful.
When Faleineir reaches for her wrist, she thinks she’s ready for it. But the varjellen’s reforge is good, and it’s so much stronger than she expected. Varjellen can alter their physiology to better deal with the situation at hand, but they have to take some time to do it. So Faleineir was prepared for this fight. Expected it. Its grip is so tight it holds her blade inside her own grip. She tries to let the weapon fall, but can’t open her fist far enough. One fi
nger twists over the other, a knot of her skin and bones.
A single twist of the varjellen’s arm – a sear of pain and the grinding of bones inside her wrist – and Aviend finds herself kneeling after all. She still has her weapon in her hand, her hand that’s quickly losing feeling. Time’s running out. She has to…
She kicks out her leg sideways, a movement that does something strange inside her knee. The varjellen hisses. Shifts. She takes advantage and sends her blade clattering across the floor. Not too far. Still within reach.
Faleineir looks at it as it goes, a long moment. The varjellen is smart. She knows it is. She jabs out with her elbow. Gets Faleineir’s attention back on her. The hit lands on the sinewy length of its leg. Not much impact but at least the blade lies forgotten. For now.
“Up,” Faleineir says.
She tries to rise, a movement that is thwarted by a stab of pain riding up through her arm and into her shoulder. Faleineir is holding her down even as it’s telling her to rise. If Kyre were here, he’d have something to say about that. She says it to herself, in Kyre’s voice. Gives herself one small moment to pretend that he’s at her side and that all of this is all right.
Then the varjellen is talking and wrenching. “I said to get up.”
At this moment, Aviend is made for pain. She inhales it through her teeth, spits it out through her fingers. The cypher is doing its duty, and she can take it all. She will take it all. Keep coming, she thinks to the creature with its fists in her face. Watch, she thinks to Rillent. Keep coming. Don’t look at the blade. Don’t look at what’s happening in the trenches. Don’t look anywhere but my face. Keep coming.
She watches, as if from a distance, Faleineir enjoying this. She wishes she could tell it that she’s hardly feeling it, that it isn’t affecting her. But she will not show her hand for such small pleasure.
Despite everything that rises within her, she resists the impulse to fight. That is a game she can not win. She might be able to best Faleineir in the physical fight – might – but even with that, the varjellen will still win. For every time it gives pain, it gains pleasure. She will not give it that. Not willingly.
So she calms. Looses her muscles inside Faleineir’s grip. Bows her head so that she can see the floor of this room beneath her knees and the pointed toes of Faleineir’s leather boots. She wants to look away, but she will not close her eyes. This, here, is what they fight for. Their home. Their lives. Taken from them. She will not look away. She will not cry out. She will let it come.
They stay that way, silent, a long time. So long that her hitched breathing softens in his chest. So long that she begins to feel something other than the dulled pains in her arm and shoulder. The grooves of the floor pressing into the flat of her knees. The ache between her shoulder blades. The itch of the mesh inside her wrists.
“Of course…” the varjellen says. She realizes it’s talking not to her, but to the Rillent inside its head. How’s it feel in there, she wonders. Are you happy he’s in there? Sad? Does he make you feel special? Not that she can care much right now. Her wonder is a bug-like thing, tiny and crawling, hard to hold on to. There are more pressing things. Her body losing focus, growing slippery. It’s not just the cypher. She can feel blood on her teeth. Something ringing in her right ear.
She starts to look up, but finds her head forced back down by a single touch. “Stay,” the varjellen says from far away. “Rillent has asked me not to kill you. Yet.”
“Why?” she can’t help but ask. Her tongue is big. When this stim wears off, she’s going to hurt for a hundred days. Thankfully, it’s got a long way to go.
“Because he thinks he might be able to find a use for you. Again. Not that you haven’t already done enough to help our… cause…” Even without looking up, she can tell the varjellen is smiling. A human affectation it’s clearly picked up after all this time. The pleasure in its voice for its words is so palpable, she can practically smell it. It makes her want to retch. “You were instrumental in all of this destruction, after all. All those deaths. So maybe we should keep you alive just to thank you for that. For all you’ve done for Rillent. For us.”
“You know… that’s not why,” she says.
“No? What do you imagine the reason to be?” Faleineir says. There is anger in that voice. And… jealousy? Maybe.
She picks it apart, like the wound that she knows it is. Once, she thinks, Faleineir might have been saved. But Rillent’s been in its head too long. He’s eaten away at all that might have been right and true, and replaced it with darkness and hate. Not the varjellen’s fault. “All that loyalty. All those years of service, and still, you’re not first in Rillent’s heart, are you? Are. You?” Her last words punctuated by what would be new pain, if she still felt pain.
There’s a chance it might kill her. It’s a small chance, but still there. She has to take it.
Faleineir’s eyes are studying her. It’s the most human the varjellen has ever looked. It touches something along its jawline, a flick of magenta fingers over the small bit of metal that rests there. Rillent’s implant.
“Rillent says you may come and visit him now,” Faleineir said. “So that he may thank you properly for your contribution.
“Stand.” She doesn’t have a choice, as she’s pulled to her feet abruptly, a snatching, jerky movement so different from the smooth glide that had pulled her down that she has a hard time reconciling that it’s from the same captor.
She looks up. Rillent is gone from the black glass. Or perhaps she just can’t see him properly anymore. Her eyes are fuzzy, like she’s wearing gauze across her face. She shakes her head, sending spatters. No, he’s still there. Watching.
Good.
Whatever small kindness she might have seen in Faleineir’s eyes is gone now. There is nothing but yellow hatred.
“Oh, and Kyre says hello,” Faleineir says. “Well, not hello exactly. It’s terribly hard to talk when one is almost dead, isn’t it?”
Her heart goes flat inside her chest, deadens out. But no. They’ve made a mistake. They assumed she would come with Kyre, and they’ve made a mistake. If they had Quenn, if they knew about Quenn, they would have said so. Rillent never holds onto his trump card. Her heart thump-thumps back to life.
Everything’s in motion. Everything’s begun.
Aviend draws air in through her teeth, a burble of spit and blood. She lunges for her blade.
Faleineir seems to think she’s finally, finally going to fight back. It grins, pleasure and teeth, and reaches for a weapon of its own.
She uses all her strength to lift her blade. Not toward the varjellen, but toward the sky. She slams it hard against the floor. The nodule on its length cracks like bone, splintering the blade, the floor, and, she is pretty sure, one of her actual bones. Her hand, even through the cypher’s dulling, lights up with a pain that causes her to utter a sound that is somewhere between scream and cry.
The nodule releases with a crackle of electricity and char that reminds her of the destriatch. And well it should. Delgha built it from the same source. Except that Delgha is smarter than Rillent, and this works exactly as she made it to.
The creature that rises from the nodule is not crourhound. It is something else. Something new. Eight legs and teeth like motors, a mouth of blood and oil. Not solid. Not yet. It will not attack Faleineir, although she can see by the varjellen’s face that it does not know this.
Faleineir reaches, as she’d hoped it would, for the alarm. The high-pitched sound rises and rises, blotting out every noise that ever was. She’s almost grateful for the blood in her one ear, which brings the wail to nearly bearable.
The creature honed of metal and smoke walks by them both without a glance. It’s not made for human flesh. Its mission is elsewhere. It seeks its brothers and sisters, their broken half to be made whole. She wishes it – and Quenn – ghostspeed.
Faleineir is staring after it, stunned into stillness.
This time, she doesn’t run
.
“Rillent,” she says out loud as she looks up at the glass plates in the black holes. Mouths her words slowly so he can see. Gives him everything to look at in her face.
Rillent, she says in silence, as she opens up her mind to the man she’s come for. Her headvoice is not sweet or soft. He would see through that. Her headvoice is strong and solid. It is her mother’s voice. A leader’s voice. Her voice, as she might have been. As she pretends to be now.
“Come and get me.”
The kubric smelled the same. It felt the same, but it didn’t feel the same. There was no tug toward it, no pull, no tangle through his memories. He didn’t feel attached to the place. There was, he was grateful to admit, no emotion at least to this part of this world at all.
He had Quenn’s map in his brain. Once he reoriented – entering from the west instead of the east, he could figure out where he needed to be.
Each step he took, however, he knew he’d taken before. Other-Kyre had taken before. “Me but not me,” he whispered in the dim light the glowglobe shed. Was that comforting? He honestly didn’t know how to feel about it. Particularly since other-Kyre was dead. If it had been someone else, he realized, he would have almost felt like he was intruding. This was another person’s find. Another person’s place. And it had been important to him, because he’d put that fingerprint lock at the entrance. But could he intrude into a place that had been… his?
And why was it so important? Kyre thought about how he would have reacted to the discovery of the kubrics under different circumstances. With no Rillent there, driven as he was, what would Kyre have done? What kind of man would he have become in such circumstances?
He imagined a quiet life. Studying the numenera, carefully and safely. No running about the woods being chased by glaives and hounds and all the rest. Not having the love of his life risk everything by putting herself into the hands of the worst person he had ever met. It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t real. He might as well be standing in a dream world, but that didn’t mean he could get caught up in dreams. Aviend – his Aviend – was in real danger. He had to finish what he’d come for and get back to her.