“It is the cloud of anodyne, a concentration of addicts,” Vesna informed them both.
“It is not the dreams of the somnolent,” Isabelle stated. “It is a void, and within it is black silence.”
The words shivered down Aidan’s spine. It had been so very long since he had been moved, he did nothing to conceal the effect. Instead, he silently repeated Isabelle’s words to feel the sensation again.
Vesna studied him for understanding, but she had not yet fully accepted his eyes would tell her nothing. His pupils constricted and dilated according to the light, and his breath changed when he willed it, and, unlike the mothers, the two functions were not dependent on the other. From his arrival, his expression barely rose above apathy. Even before the crowds of the Basilica, he seldom displayed more than cool tolerance, but now the muscles in his face tightened to show interest.
Isabelle stepped back from the unfamiliar smile.
But Vesna was more concerned to see his attention fade into the distance. Her deference was forced and her offer circumspect, “Lest the future Queen Mother’s parentage be assumed, we cannot ask you to attend this matter. I will take it upon myself to look again into this darkness.” And then when he remained silent, she added, “It is certainly the result of a new street drug.”
Aidan’s voice was low and remote, “It has been many years since I last walked in the night, and I prefer to walk alone.”
~~~~~~
In the places Aidan cast his mental sights, darkness receded. The shadows evident to the mothers were hidden to him, but Isabelle had also spoken of a void of black silence, and it was this he sought. He entered the slums after midnight, walking the buckled sidewalks before the rail houses, listening to the chaotic turmoil of untamed thoughts clamoring in the ether. It sounded much the same in the wealthiest districts, but the uncontrolled chattering of the repetitive mind was denser here and it stayed awake later.
In some locations it was more frantic, hurtling along under artificial speed, until the breeze brought to him the sweet chemical burn of narcotics, and then the pace slackened, becoming almost quiet, almost comfortable. He passed one dilapidated structure after another, searching for the promised void, undeceived by the sleepers and the dreamers, the stupefied and the stoned.
What he had come for was silence, and the stillness from one house pulled against the edges of the others. He found the neighbors taking shelter at the furthest sides of their homes, unaware of what caused their discomfort, except their walls were too near the place that felt haunted.
It did not lack for light though. Of all the houses on the street, this one was unnaturally bright. In every window, bare bulbs could be seen through the thin sheets used as curtains, but beneath the electric glow was a darkness he could not see within.
Aidan stood before the strip of lawn lost to the weeds and stared into the void with painful wonder. He was the Creator, the Architect, the One, and somehow he had been given a gift, something unexpected. More than anything, he wanted to test his mastery. He wanted to be taxed, to feel the stress of potential defeat, to be engaged and enthralled, to be challenged and matched, and ahead was a darkness his mind could not penetrate.
The emptiness pulled him forward until he was standing on the paint-peeled porch, filled with hope and expectation.
He wanted to draw the whole of the night into himself, to be aware of every detail. The moisture in the air, the smell of decayed wood, the faint scent of perfume, he needed to breathe in everything while taking in the surrounding sounds. He heard dogs barking and a chain link fence rattle as someone bolted over it, and then farther away came to him the steady beat of bass from a parked car.
He gazed over the ruined neighborhood without judgment. It was what it was, and for the moment, it was marvelous.
Turning back to the house, he found the door closed, the lock weak in rotten wood. He listened to music from inside and broke through the resistance when it was at its loudest.
From the open door, he saw the child sleeping on the couch, undisturbed by the blaring symphony, the glare of three electric bulbs, and the noise he had made. He stood attentive at the threshold, smelling the heavy use of someone smoking speed, and then, from an adjoining room, he heard the synthesized beat of techno trance being turned low while someone listened for another disturbance.
Mind free of body, he pushed through the house and found only the girl and her mother.
With the flick of a lighter, he heard the pull of air sucked through a pipe and then the volume was returned to deafening.
The mother did not hear him walking down the short hall or moving through her bedroom door. Her head was bent over the dresser, crushing an anodyne tablet into dust, when Aidan dropped one hand over her head forcing it into her chest and wrapped the other around both her arms to swing her away from the mirror. With the perfect pitch of influence, he commanded her “Down,” and she slumped to the floor. Then he rumbled, “Sleep,” and released her.
Rolling her onto her back, he examined her.
Just a teenager but with deep gaunt cheeks and red swollen eyes. Her frame was small and delicate, appearing frail from years of use. Her hair was a dull black over anemic skin. Aidan cast his eyes over the room. Stockings, garters, and bras were kicked across the floor. Long links of packaged condoms hung over the bedside drawers. She was likely a prostitute, the child’s father irrelevant if even known. It didn’t matter; he had seen worse.
Back in the living room, he sat on the edge of the coffee table and studied the child. She was barely five years if not malnourished. Her mother’s black hair shone in loose curls against pale skin. Her head rested lightly on the arm of the couch making her image soft with the same innocence seen in all sleeping children. Aidan leaned closer as though something might reveal itself, but there was nothing about the child’s appearance that suggested she was responsible for the darkness.
He touched her lightly on the foot so that her eyes opened and she sat upright to meet his gaze.
And there was the blackness. He stared at the blue eyes lost to pupils far too large for the bare bulbs above, feeling a powerful force rip at the edges of his mind, tearing apart the light that defined him.
Marveling at the sensation, he stared full into the destruction and silently recited, From the Void the Creator is made and to the Void will he return.
The merest hint of a smile pulled her lips upward, an expression that made her seem warmly familiar. With an unhurried curiosity, she examined him. She explored his face, lingering on the scar that split his dark brow in two, and squinted to find the nearly invisible line that once marred his broad cheek bone. Reaching for his hand, she ran her fingers under the heavy sleeves of his robe to trace the hidden scars on his wrists, and with the same certainty, she sat forward to pull the collar from his neck and expose the mark the rope had left there as well. She winced with pain and anger.
Taking his hand again, she flipped it from the light color of his palm to the darker skin on the back, neither as light as an Errian nor as dark as the foreigners who had swept fast and fleeting across the continent five centuries before. Tall, broad, and strong, he was foreign, but his features were sharply defined like a native. She took in the whole of him and then returned her focus to his eyes. She was trying to read something there, or tell him something, or—Aidan felt her push—connect.
If he opened to her, she would stumble headlong and panic. He left her searching.
With great sadness, she said, “It begins.”
And after a time, he replied, “So it does.”
~~~~~~
“My mother?”
“Sleeping.”
She studied him with doubt before exhaling a warning that he would be sorry if she found the facts different. She pushed off the couch and disappeared into her mother’s room. He heard the girl pulling pillows and a blanket off the bed to arrange her mother’s comfort.
When she came back to the couch, her appearance was somber.
“You mean you will never lie to me if I am who you think I am.”
“I will only ever say what I mean.”
“I have not agreed to be the person you seek.”
“You believe yourself to have a choice?”
“That is the one question that troubles me more than any.”
“If you are not who I have come to find, then who are you?”
“There is the problem,” she admitted. Crawling back onto the couch, she held her hand up for him to wait. She was thinking how to tell him. What to tell him.
He watched as she repeatedly formulated then refused explanations. She would draw in a breath, meet his eyes, then frown, shake her head, hold her hand up for more time and start again. Finally, irritated with herself, she blurted out, “I remember. I remember everything.”
Her whole demeanor sagged as though the confession had been too much.
Intent on hearing the truth, he spoke with his true voice, the voice of influence, the voice of the Architect. He asked, “Do you know who I am?”
She gawked at him in open shock and then laughed. Rocking forward, eyes open wide, she held herself and laughed in hysterics. It bordered on derisive.
Aidan was fascinated. He let the fury of her outburst peak and then settle. As quickly as she entered the mania, she emerged gravely ominous to answer, “You are everything. You are my maker and my undoing. You are my savior and my death. You are the one that has been with me since the beginning and you will be with me ever after. You are the only one that can save me and you are the one who is going to make me forget. More than know you, I remember you.”
A chill rose on his neck and shivered down his spine, making his muscles tremble to release the effect. He’d been moved. He’d been asleep for longer than he knew, but now he was fully in possession of his consciousness. She did not balk when he brought it to bear on her either.
“What do you remember?”
“Everything.”
Again he felt the chill. Mind free of body, he moved through the distance looking for her. Going back, into the past, he searched for her memory. He found scraps like dreams of a forming mind, but little to explain the foreboding in her words. She held his gaze unafraid. He pushed deeper.
Back, back through the confusion, through the mind that tried to grab hold of memories that laid disjointed and grotesque over the present: the child that struck out with the practiced blade of repetition, the toddler that fell to her knees but remembered a kick that broke bone, the infant that screamed for retribution.
The mind was in warfare, railing against past grievances too old for the body to conceive.
Aidan pushed through the distress, further into the past, into the black until thunder rent the darkness and then he was himself. Order over chaos. He was himself but undeceived, bitter, wishing he had done different. At the end of his life, he—the Creator, the Architect, the One—had sat down to make one last perfect thing for himself. He had gone into the black to forge, giving everything to be free of himself. In his death, she was made.
He groaned at the monstrosity of his deed. She would remember everything from the first moment he became aware.
She said, “You must make me forget.”
It had taken years, but she had forgotten. He had held her in the present, whispering here and now, until she lost her way to the past. Now he held her in the distance, remembering her as a child, holding her safe for the long hours it would take to reach her.
He had asked her that night so long ago, “What is your name?”
And she had replied, “What would you like?”
He had known from the beginning what he would rename her.
12:30 p.m.
Sable needed to die. The opportunity to free the kingdom, without obvious culpability, from the obligation that had threatened it for generations was plunging fast into history. Girard’s Guard Dog was silent. She did not control him, and it was too frequent he reminded her of this detail in their arrangement. He would neither meet her nor reveal himself. He would no longer work any job he considered too trivial for his skills. He would accept, decline, or change her instructions at will. He could not be shadowed, filmed, or photographed, and he would not tolerate fallback agents ready to step in should he fail.
Early into their unconventional relationship, she had tried to trap him with the offer of an unattainable mission. She pulled it off the top of her head, a wish, if one could be granted, for the impossible.
She wanted access to the internal communications of Alena’s Intelligence Department. It would mean getting into the cellar of the Helena headquarters and direct wiring a relay box. It was absurdly farcical.
He had written back: You doubt my skills, kitty? I will bring you cream.
If he was sincerely foolish enough to try, she would take him down before he was captured by the Alenans. Commencing at the sewers and closing on the roof, she had agents in the area armed with the full gambit. From bullets to tranquilizers, thermal cameras to biometric readers, there would not be a creature of any significance that would enter the Alenan Intelligence Department without being marked. Her agents would either capture or kill him. After two years of ambiguity, she was past caring which.
She would harass him with single demands, “Update?” or “Well?”, but he remained silent for weeks. She wondered whether he would vanish entirely. Then, in the sixth week, she received the message on her phone: Open the attachment and install the program.
The folder was named Bitten, and once started, it began blasting documents across her screen.
He wrote: Now, because I can’t trust you, I take it away.
And he had. The connection to the source was lost.
Then: Do not bother to ask for it again.
Months of curt denials later, he resumed communication: You may come to me with legitimate threats that affect the King. You may not test our agreement again, or I will kill you for the impertinence.
One of the agreements was not to organize replacement agents to fulfill his accepted contracts. Girard had never been so agitated. She could not waste more than an hour waiting for him to signal his assent. She watched the minutes vanish.
She typed to the team already in route: Go.
As yet, the runaway bride had not even been located.
12:30 p.m.
King Remius Clement had taken the news without remark. He stood in the salt flats where the General found him, his attention fixed to the tablet in his hand, scanning the lithium report with the same serious face he presented to almost every occasion.
Berringer suspected, but he could never be sure with the man, that Remy was not actually reading. He believed Remy was instead searching for an appropriate reaction. Berringer understood those responses were limited. He knew Remy to have essentially two: seriously angry and benevolently serious, at all other times he was simply serious. His attempts to be jocular were so disastrous only Berringer could genuinely laugh, and then Remy would smile at the failure, but such occasions were rare.
The two had been friends since they were sixteen, when Remy was a prince and they had served together in the King’s Army. Even then he had held himself in reserve, too dignified to run for cover—at least that was the young soldier’s assessment at the time—so that Berringer felt forced to tackle him into a trench. Just slightly smaller than Berringer, and without the same training, Remy had gone down easily and rolled over blinking dirt out of his eyes. With a mouth set firm in sharp features, he looked ready to be severe but was surprisingly indulgent, saying only, “Never cared much for long dialogue either.”
As the young Remy seemed determined to treat artillery in a casual manner, and every other soldier was too apprehensive to throw the future king in the mud, Berringer had been tasked with keeping him alive. Over the years, the scale of things had become significantly larger, but he’d essentially been doing much the same job ever si
nce.
No one knew the King better, but Berringer could not guess what Remy was thinking. He waved away the approaching workers and stood silently waiting for a reply.
And Remy stared at the lithium report, struggling not to allow a particular emotion to gain enough strength to surface. It had been twenty-two years since the appearance of the Master and Mentor, and Remy had spent most of them learning what it was to truly hate another. In the first year of Aidan’s arrival, the Cloitare had forced his father to abdicate, driving his family out of the capital and into the country. Not yet satisfied showing their dominance over the Clementyne Dynasty, the clergy had then scattered his father’s advisors into retirement abroad.
He had been twenty when he was crowned King of Erentrude. In his first years, he saw nearly every government on the world’s third largest continent, the emerging warring Erria, ripped apart as the fervent rioted against the skeptics, the atheists, and the heretics. To keep his head, he had been forced to his knees in the Cloitare Basilica and made to accept the title of the Chosen King, agreeing to pay the dynasty’s debt to the nuns.
The first years had been the worst. He remembers holding a blade to his own throat, taking himself hostage, to prevent the Cloitare from forcing on him their Ministry of Clergy and the laws they had written to be sanctioned in his name. At the time, virtually unknown to the people and untried with the military, his life was the only thing of value he had to bargain with.
He had made his own small council, each of them known to him from when he’d served in his father’s army. All of them faithless. The Ministry of Clergy had refused at first to recognize them. In retrospect, Remy was certain it was their blind, youthful optimism and ignorance of the impossible task before them that swayed public, diplomatic, and military opinion. And of course money. The last century of Clements had a tenacious hold on property and industry, particularly the refinement of lithium to store the world’s power. He and his three advisors had agreed to gamble large and play with the highest stakes to gain enough influence to rule without constant Cloitare interference. They had been reckless with the newly minted coin, but a simple observation made by Berringer had set their path. When first they gathered, the future general had said, “We will win nothing if we allow ourselves to be led about by the enemy.”
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 3