by A. E. Shaw
He continues, “I don’t mind that I won’t see him again. I remember him very well. He taught me all the things I think he knew.”
“And what about if we never see Aiden again?”
She sees him catch something, there, in his throat, in his chest. He shifts, and closes his eyes for a moment.
“We will see him again, though,” Alej answers, eventually. “I know that we will. So I don’t need to have any feelings about that, either.”
Selina runs her fingers through Alej’s hair, as much to comfort herself as to comfort him, and perhaps to explain that she accepts what he’s saying, that, somewhere, she too knows Aiden is alive and well, because he is too special and strange not to be. Because the world - this world appeared to be designed for him to be alive and well within it.
Then, worse than the other thoughts, having asked Alej about Michael, comes the consideration that she hasn’t reflected for a moment on Miriam’s death, that the woman who kept her fed, kept her…cared for, all this time is gone, lost to flames and falling. Not one thought. Why is that? It’s because she was never quite real, Selina catches herself answering, and that feels unpleasant, repellent. She boxes that away, reminding herself to breathe again, and rubs her hands together, like she’s trying to warm them - much less than necessary here.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, it’s all more than I can take in, and everyone here, they’re so…Eliza talked to me about some things which were…hard, which I think you should know, but I’m not sure that I can be the one to try to explain them to you…and maybe you don’t need to know, maybe they wouldn’t mean anything to you…I don’t know why I have to try to decide this…”
Alej feels awkward when he sees tears come to Selina’s eyes, and worse still when he sees her push them away. Should she have to cry? Should he have comforted her sufficiently before that she wouldn’t need to cry? For this, he has had no training. Why is he the one that is here?
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, in the end, turning off the torrent of dry and ragged contemplation as if it were a tap, whilst having no idea where his words are coming from. “It doesn’t matter what happened here. I know it matters to you. But I don’t know that I want to…know. It is important we stay together. It is important we stay well. And it is important I have some food?”
At this, Selina laughs, for the first time this morning. With her laugh, Alej feels a streak of relief, because food is the kind of thing that has been neglected, and of all the things he knows, that going too long without sustenance is bad is right up there with the most important of them.
“You can have some food,” she tells him, and this time he makes the gesture of putting a hand over hers, and pressing, slightly, carefully. She smiles at him. He smiles at her. Things matter less to them both. “I don’t know what comes next. But we’ll find out together.”
At this, his relief thickens into reassurance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Breakfast
“Aiden?” Den Huo is still waiting for a reply, unused to being kept waiting. After all, he is the only human alive who believes in his own absolute entitlement more than Aiden does. “How did you find my book? Do you understand?” As he scrutinises his son for an answer, he notices the slightest of twitches, along the line of the cheekbone. Den Huo mirrors it unconsciously, in his rising frustration.
“Father,” Aiden starts, still working with that word as a term of address, indeed, still finding his footing with addressing yet another person that he doesn’t know, with a new face, a new voice, a new manner, and all that goes with it, “as lessons go, I found your tale unusual. Remarkable. My legacy is, as far as I can see, suitable.” That’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? Suitable. Yes.
His Excellency leans forward a little, a terrible grin taking up across his lips. “Suitable, my goodness, you are indeed my son. And you have an infinity of possibilities ahead of you. And to think, I had given up…”
Aiden shakes his head in confused reaction. “Given up?”
His Excellency raises a dismissive hand. “Not for you. We will speak only of what is for you.”
Aiden nods. Things must, of course, always rearrange themselves to be only for him, once he is present.
He senses his father has a need for gratitude and flattery. He all but begged for it throughout that book. He must be a very nervous person. Greatness is obvious; it need not be so declared as it is in those pages. Let’s see. How to phrase it?
“I never imagined such a world as this one.” As phrases go, it’s not the best.
“There is no way you could have.” His Excellency is unimpressed.
Aiden rummages in his brain for a better frame of reference, and does not find one. He switches tack. He tries to modulate his voice. It sounds croaky on the outside, but Aiden thinks that he is putting himself forwards as best he can. Perhaps he is.
“I am pleased to be with you. I think you can see I have survived your trial by fire as well as anyone might.” Aiden slips up his silk sleeves and displays his thin forearms, only slightly scabbed, now, and he raises his jawline, allowing the grey-gold light to curl beneath it and illuminate the sores still drying there, where the flames drew too near his panicked inhalations. It also illuminates the marks Jere’s assault left at his throat, and Den Huo sees them for what they are: knows they mean that something, someone, has done something they should not have. He assumes it was a mistake by one of the retrieval team. A costly one.
“My trial by…” His Excellency repeats, recoiling at Aiden’s display of his injuries - the boy is more damaged than he should be, much more so - but he lets it lie, resets himself with an exhalation. This will be followed up. Perhaps he ought to have asked more questions yesterday. It is unthinkable that things have occurred outside of his expectations, his plans.
And at that, Aiden himself, with his angles and his quirks and his expressions has jolted those expectations. His son is unexpected, in every way.
Things which are unexpected are dangerous. Danger can be nullified, but, first it must be recognised. His Excellency deflects his contemplating hesitation by assuming a smile. “All these things for a reason, Aiden, all these things.”
“And Jere?” Because, if all things have a reason, what was his?
But here is a word that His Excellency does not know.
“Jere? What is Jere?” His Excellency rolls the name as awkwardly around his mouth as Aiden did himself, all that time ago, or really just a couple of days ago, but for Aiden that’s another time, a time in the middle that wasn’t as coated in gold and glory as it ought to have been.
“The man on the mountainside.” He’s as logical an existence to Aiden as the mountain itself, so he explains him with a side of confusion.
“What man?” so much for His Excellency.
“There was a man, living there.”
“On the side of the mountain.” The repetition is only because this is ridiculous. How could anyone live there?
“Yes!” Aiden doesn’t like being questioned like this. It’s as if his Father doesn’t understand him. Or doesn’t believe him. But in Aiden’s world, only Selina has lied, and he would never imagine that anyone would confuse him for her.
“Impossible.”
“I promise you, there was.”
“Was?”
“I killed him.” It feels good to say, but Aiden knows that a good commander of men at war is humble and wise, and expresses regret for any loss of life, however glad of it he might be on the inside. He has learned his history well, and must show this. “He was going to kill me - he tried to. He attacked me, and I got him back. I didn’t mean for it to happen; there was nothing I could do.”
His Excellency frowns. His voice takes a twist upwards, into the range of the concerned.
“There must have been an escapee. Was he alone? Are you sure there weren’t any signs of others with him?” Is there a chance his son hallucinated this man? It isn’t possible. There was no-one on the mo
untainside. There was no-one. Full stop. No-one else. But if there was one…
“And you killed him, you’re sure?” This cannot be a lasting state of affairs.
“Absolutely.”
“Good. Certainly the best thing you could have done. The animals will have disposed of his carcass, I’m sure. Let us forget him. We shall not speak of the man on the mountainside again. Now, please, have some of this.”
He proffers Aiden a firm, pale cheese. “It’s best eaten with wine in the evenings, but it has its own charm at the breakfast table, too. Flexibility is a marvellous attribute.”
Aiden finds it strangely rubbery, and lacking in any specific taste, but it’s an interesting experience nonetheless. All of this is, of course. It’s all learning. It’s all for a reason. It’s all to make him better, because in his case, perfection can be…if not improved upon, then at least, increased.
“And you take coffee, I imagine?” His Excellency has swapped interrogation for a further swathe of benevolence. He waves at his well-dressed servant, who has stood so silently by the door that Aiden had not noticed him at all. He moves forwards, and, with a smooth, fluid motion, takes up a grand golden pot and pours out a cup of thick dark brownness, deep and rich. He sets it before Aiden and meets his eyes directly. Aiden looks away, mildly unsettled by the direct address. The servant withdraws, melts back into the woodwork.
“Drink, then?” His Excellency presses.
Aiden cracks his warmest smile yet, in reply, as the familiar scent marches up to him enhanced and nuanced in ways he has not known before. “I shall. I am very fond of coffee.”
The coffee here is strong, much, much stronger than any he’s had before.
Aiden eats as well as he can. The cacophony of flavours and plethora of choice convinces him to consume far more than he usually would. His Excellency eats surprisingly little. He heaps berries of all kinds on a plate, a tumultuously purple pile, threatening to implode and tumble everywhere, spoiling the death-white tablecloth at any moment, but he eats them so neatly that that never happens, spearing them one by one, swiftly and accurately with the tine of a small silver fork, encasing each completely in his mouth with such great care that it’s peculiar.
There is a silence which ought to be filled by something, but isn’t. His Excellency is turning about the tale of the man on the mountain in the back of his mind, and the front of his mind is working in tandem with his eyes, analysing his son’s every move, wondering if the boy is everything he was meant to be, if he’s moved either too late, or too soon, in the game he plays alone with the world. His world. He clicks his fingers for wine, to mute the edges of his sharp morning thoughts, too harsh and tiring for now.
It’s so tiring, Aiden thinks, matching thoughts with his father for far-separate reasons. Why is he here? All of this is too insignificant, and too quiet. There is no structure. What comes next? What time is lunch? He wants a moment of the solitude back. He wants everything back. He misses routine; its absence swipes him like a skipped heartbeat, cold sweat, always missing something. Everything is different now. And it is only under the scrutiny of his father’s distracted eyes that Aiden understands that in this new wide world, things will never be as easy as they once were.
“Alej and Selina,” he says, out of the blue, unable to bear the pointless silence any longer. “Who were they?”
His Excellency clears his plate of berries with perfect deftness - one, two, three, gone - places his fork super quiet on the plate, swallows, steeples his fingers beneath his jaw, and answers, blank-toned.
“Playmates. Servants. Others. For you to learn, to love, to converse with. People to apply your early teachings to, to give you a sense of servitude and hierarchy. The aspects of discovery a young man set to inherit my world should have. Why do you ask?”
“Couldn’t you find anyone better?”
His Excellency looks surprised. “I selected the best prospects available. The best stock. The girl in particular had skills that merited preservation. You were well-matched in age and suitably different genetically. I saw no deficiencies. What are your complaints?”
“She lied about her past. She wasn’t…she didn’t…and he…” and as he tries to define it, and fails to find words sufficient for the pent-up ball of nauseous anger within him. He bangs a fist on the table, at odds with his previously placid demeanour, and His Excellency casts a startled eye across the shaking tumblers and wobbling decanters. Unpredictable.
He is tentative with the next question. “Are you sad to have lost them?” Perhaps he could have them brought here to fix whatever this is. This is why the numbers are kept small. The scenario is designed to promote strength, loyalty, efficiency. Grace. Wisdom. What has happened to the system, tried and tested by generations, that it results in the kind of petty conversation that ruined lesser kingdoms?
Aiden frowns. “I didn’t lose them. I left them. Halfway down the mountain.”
Well, that makes no sense at all.
“You left them?” His voice reaches a new pitch. It is neither grand, nor becoming. The grand picture is slipping from the canvas, even as it finally comes to light.
“Of course. Alive, well, interested in themselves and their lives. I thought we were equals, Father, but once I saw them together, I came to understand otherwise.”
His father fills his mouth with wine and lets it warm there, before swallowing it down and chasing it with a deep breath. He leans forwards, eyes wide but focused. “Where did they go?”
Aiden shrugs. For him, this is a simple matter of fact. “I’ve no idea. Surely they’re not our concern?”
His father shakes his head. “Oh, my boy,” my strange and stupid, careless boy, my stranger, stupider followers who have not followed the simplest of orders, what has happened here?
“They are very much our concern. Left alone, who knows what will become of them? They might breed, and begin to take their own foothold on streets that are still tainted. When the time comes, there must not be a population already, for I’ve taken every step to ensure the world will be…” he takes a deep breath, either to emphasise, or to choke out, “yours to allocate.”
Aiden frowns. His to allocate. That is not something he had thought of. It sounds like something he ought to have thought of. He’s so busy contemplating things he doesn’t even take in his father’s anger, oblivious to the meaning of the way his face has taken on the colour of the berries and the wine as he digests the information that things outside his walls are not as he’d thought. Not as he’d ordered. Not as he’d planned. This cannot wait any longer.
“You must excuse me, now. Return to your room.”
“But what should I do?” Aiden is not used to being discarded.
“Read the book again. You are insufficiently grateful. You are insufficient. Make yourself better by the time I next see you.”
“When will that be?”
His Excellency folds his face in curls of irritation. His son should not talk in this way. He’s so demanding. It’s infuriating. He is infuriating. This shouldn’t be.
“When I decide. I have things to fix. That you have broken.” These are words he would use to chastise a child for the most minor of offences; they are grating against his tongue even as he snaps them, but there are no words he knows that would rebuke this sufficiently.
And with a swish and a clatter of fabric and crockery, His Excellency is gone from the conservatory, and his footsteps gather pace in the distance.
And Aiden sits and looks at all the rest of the food that remains, bowls of things untouched and plates of stuff unconsidered, and he wonders who will eat it, and if he ought to, and if he could. But he is hauled away by the servant before he can even try.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Agreement
Selina has left Alej alone in the room only for a moment when Eliza collars her, sharp, square nails digging at her neck as she pulls her aside. It’s like she’s been standing right outside, waiting for her. Was she? Was
she listening? She’s fully dressed in heavy black clothing, with an expression set and furious
“You’re coming with me.” Her voice is clear and definite enough that Selina doesn’t even try to argue, just says she needs to tell Alej, needs to give him something to eat, and that she needs to know that he’ll be okay whilst she’s out. Eliza’s entire face curls in irritation at this smallest of delays but she waits, all the same, right there, by the door.
Alej tries to come too, because he doesn’t want to be left here alone, but Selina makes him feel as if he’s being ridiculous, like he’s an invalid, like he has to stay, like it would help her if he stayed, and that’s where it all comes good because he’ll still do anything to help, just so long as Selina pulls her strength and height and stern softness at him. There’s that conditioning to Alej: you do what you’re asked to, because that’s all part of serving someone well. Alej doesn’t have Aiden’s conviction that all is for him, but, increasingly, what he does have is a feeling that he is all for Selina.