All the King's Men

by Alex Powell

  Seven had known that about himself in an abstract sort of way, that he had a body. But now, he knew.

  He looked in the mirror one last time, and finally, he made a change.

  His irises had turned blue. He snugly settled his goggles over his face. They covered his change, so no one else would know he’d made them blue. But Seven would know, and that was good enough for now.

  There was a knock on his front door.

  Slowly, he looked out the peephole. The Cat and the Reaper had returned. He couldn’t refuse them entrance, so he opened the door.

  “Yes?” he asked, tilting his head to the side to observe them more closely.

  “We bring news you must hear, Seven.”

  Seven let them in, but they didn’t seem to notice his reluctance or the change of his eye colour. It was paranoid of him to think they’d be able to see the change, but the worry gnawed at him while in their presence. They, on the other hand, were much more preoccupied by the King’s appearance.

  “We’ve done a good job,” the Cat said in satisfaction, looking at the King.

  “Yes, he doesn’t even recall he once had a different face.”

  Seven didn’t mention that when he’d come in, the King had reverted back to his original state and only the visual reminder had instigated the change. He’d let them think they were clever for now.

  “Never mind that. Seven, we have new orders for you.”

  Seven had been able to find neither hide nor hair of the slippery Fox, and so had nothing to report on that front, so the new orders were welcome. He nodded, waiting for the Cat to relay them.

  “Our inside contact has told us the latest mechanizations of the rebel group, and by all accounts, restoring this man’s memories is possible. If that is the case, then we still have a chance of getting that information after all.”

  Seven lifted his head in interest. Fascinating. “So what are my orders?”

  “We want you to harass the members of the rebel group as they try and recover those memories, but I don’t want you to stop them. They must not suspect that we want them to recover them. We’re going to take the memories once they’ve finished.”

  “So you’re going to capture them all?”

  “It should be easy. Our contact will keep us updated on their success and then he’ll turn them over to us so we can harvest the memories as planned.”

  “If they know what we were doing, then why would they restore the memories if we still have his body?” Seven asked.

  “They think they can recover his body. Pure folly, of course. They will never be able to find where we’ve put it. They don’t even know what country it’s in. Don’t worry, Seven, all is back on track and going according to plan.”

  “So you don’t want me to capture them right now,” Seven said, just to be clear.

  “No, just appear now and then to keep up the appearance of trying to stop them. We’ll capture them after they have what we need. We can even give you the last known coordinates of the Fox and the Maid, so you can start your harassment right away.”

  Seven nodded.

  The Reaper added in a tone of disappointment, “It’s too bad, but we won’t be able to keep carrying out our experiments on unfortunate agent One-Twenty-Two.”

  The Cat sighed, but dipped his head in acknowledgement. “That is very true, Reaper, my friend. We can’t risk corrupting his mind to the point that the memories can’t be restored.”

  Seven drew back his head in alarm. “That can happen?”

  “Oh, yes,” Reaper said, with a laugh, although whether he was pleased at Seven’s alarm or the information itself, Seven couldn’t tell. “We’ve done extensive tests on the subject. It is fully possible that with too much manipulation, a mind will no longer be able to retain the memories implanted. We tried it on several subjects, tried to give them other people’s memories. We thought of it like a computer program, installing and then erasing, but it turns out that eventually it erodes the ability to even retain memory, rendering the subject useless.”

  “Useless. So they were terminated,” Seven said, feeling slightly sick.

  “Of course. What do you think happened to Agents One through Six?”

  The Reaper and the Cat left, leaving him and the King alone, not seeming to notice or care about the impact their words had had on Seven. They considered him to be so much in their power that telling him government secrets didn’t raise any worry.

  Seven headed into the Cerebrum, looking around at the secure government domain as he left it behind and wondering how people could inflict such miseries on others, and how it had taken him so long to notice what was going on underneath his very nose.

  He was not only going to find the Fox, but he was also going to find out what else he’d been missing.

  * * * *

  “You look tired.”

  Fox heaved a sigh and glanced at Joanne, busy flicking through the archives, trying to find something that she hadn’t yet mentioned to him.

  “Jet lag,” he replied. “I had to take two planes to get where I am, and it is very cold and the roads—if you can even call them roads—are so covered in ice that their ground vehicles have to use metal studs and chains to go anywhere. Also, it’s already dark and it’s only four in the afternoon.”

  “They still use ground vehicles? What kind of country are you even in?”

  “According to them, it’s too windy to use a hover jet, the ice has caused all our navigation equipment to go haywire, and this entire place is so flat and empty that it all looks the same, so going by sight would leave us lost and stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Like I said, what kind of country are you in?”

  “I know for a fact this country has nice places, so I’m not sure why I’m in this frost-bitten nightmare place,” Fox complained, feeling slightly better having vented his problems. “At least it has good Cerebrum link-ins.”

  “A place in the middle of frost-bitten nowhere has Cerebrum link-ins?”

  “You know, now that you mention it, that is a bit weird.”

  “A problem for another day, my friend. We have some serious digging to do.”

  Fox sighed again, because far from looking alarmed by the prospect of digging through mounds of data that was likely all useless to their cause, Joanne looked excited. “Any particular reason we’re looking at medieval France?” he asked. “I’m not much of a history person, so I’m not sure how it’s relevant.”

  “I think the battlemaiden in King’s clue refers to Joan of Arc,” Joanne replied, shifting to another article. “See?” She pulled up a painting depicting a young woman in metal armour holding aloft a sword. Joanne looked extremely pleased with her find, staring at it in admiration.

  “Okay, so she’s obviously a battlemaiden,” Fox said, squinting at the old painting. “How is she the one that’s in King’s clue? It could be any battlemaiden. There are lots of them floating around in history—I could name several off the top of my head.”

  “Yes, but read the rest of the clue. A warrior that wields both sword and cross.” Joanne bounced with nervous energy, watching him eagerly, as if he would understand what she meant through some sort of telepathic bond.

  The girl in the picture definitely had a big sword, one that she probably wouldn’t be able to hold that way in real life, but there was no cross in sight. He said as much.

  Joanne glared at him, as if he’d purposefully ruined her breakthrough with his logic. “Do you know anything at all about Joan of Arc?” she asked.

  “Is she French?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then no, definitely not.”

  Joanne punched him in the arm.

  Fox winced and danced back from her. “That was completely uncalled-for.”

  “Right, well, let me give you a quick run-down. Joan of Arc was a peasant girl in fifteenth-century France during the Hundred Years’ War with England.”

  “I’m not sure I like how this story is starting.”r />
  Joanne shot him a severe look. “She heard the voices of Saints, telling her that she had to support the king and free France from under the domination of the English.”

  “Definitely don’t like how this story is starting.”

  “So she led the army to victory after victory, which led to the crowning of the French king. However, she was captured and then burned at the stake for heresy,” Joanne said, gesturing emphatically with one hand.

  “Are you sure it’s her?” Fox made a face. “That’s kind of gruesome, yeah?”

  “But then, there was a retrial and she was declared a martyr. Now she is one of the patron Saints of France.” Joanne gave him an exasperated look.

  “Okay, fine, I guess the cross bit makes sense,” Fox said, ironically crossing his arms. “And the king-crowning part, too.”

  “Don’t forget, Fox, King wanted us to be able to figure it out. He’d choose things that were clear to us, but wouldn’t be very helpful to any enemies should they find the clue. He must have known I took a minor study in French history.”

  “Right, so we have part of the clue figured out, but we still have no idea where he put the memories or how we’re supposed to retrieve them.”

  “That’s why we’re doing research, silly.”

  Fox sighed again, but took out an article to read. It was long and involved, not at all something he was used to reading. He tried to remember going to university, and how he was supposed to do something to figure out impact and cause and effect, but those memories wouldn’t come to him. “This can’t be accomplishing anything,” he eventually complained, bored of reading the same information over and over again.

  Joanne almost didn’t pay him any attention, utterly absorbed in whatever article she had in front of her. “What can’t?” she asked, voice distracted.

  “King can’t have wanted us to go through so much data like this. You’re right, it should be obvious to us what he meant by the clue. We’re wasting time poring over all this endless information. It’s not a very effective method.”

  Joanne glared at him again, having been effectively dragged from her article. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Fox didn’t, so he went back to reading. He skimmed the page, barely absorbing it, when two words suddenly jumped out at him. He stopped and reread the entire paragraph, just to be sure. He might be on to something after all.

  “Joanne, it says that Joan of Arc was also known as—”

  “Found you.”

  Joanne attacked.

  Fox didn’t have time to realize there was an agent behind them before Joanne had dropped everything and launched herself at the intruder. She didn’t need weapons; her bare hands could do enough damage by themselves.

  The agent didn’t try to attack them, however, simply dodged Joanne’s blows. He didn’t even move, his limbs simply blurred and shifted just enough that she never laid a hand on him.

  “Don’t make me shoot you again.”

  “He shot you?” Fox asked in alarm, looking at her as if he could tell by sight where she’d been injured.

  “It must be the same one. I can’t tell them apart.”

  “Surely you know me?” The agent smiled, a sharp-angled thing filled with dark amusement. “Then again, you have all the sand in Egypt for company, so what need have you to remember me?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Fox demanded, watching as Joanne made a fresh attempt to put her foot through his face.

  “Still in denial, I see. That was an Egypt reference again, in case you missed it,” the agent sang, easily avoiding Joanne’s attacks.

  What was with this man’s preoccupation with Egypt? He wasn’t making any sense at all.

  “I’d say something about locating your pyramids, but I’m not sure you’d like that at all.”

  Oh. Oh.

  “You!” Fox hissed before leaping at him, shifting into a fox mid-jump.

  “Oh, you do remember me,” the agent said, sounding delighted. “But maybe next time you could take me to Paris instead. I’ve heard the view’s lovely from the top of the Eiffel Tower at night.”

  “Fox, is this guy flirting with you?”

  “Not a word, Joanne. Nothing about him touching my Eiffel Tower or anything of the sort!”

  “You said it so much better than I ever could.”

  “You shut up, too, crazy government guy!”

  “Seven.”

  “What?” Fox stopped trying to claw his face off.

  “I’m Seven. That’s what I’m called, just so you know. I’m a different one than all the others.”

  “That doesn’t matter when I can’t tell you lot apart from each other,” Fox said.

  Joanne and the agent had stopped attacking and dodging in turn, cautiously eyeing one another instead.

  “You know, your friend King can tell us apart.”

  Fox was struck speechless with indignation. How dare he mention King so casually, when Fox and Joanne and everyone were all scared of what had happened to him once in the government’s clutches!

  While Fox was distracted with rage, Seven got close enough to get his gloved hands around Fox’s middle. Fox froze in surprise before automatically becoming human again. This time, though, that psychological trick didn’t work.

  Suddenly, Fox’s face was close enough that he could see the man’s eyes through the tinted lenses of his goggles. Even the agent seemed surprised, and in his periphery, Joanne stared in shock, motionless.

  “So, you’ve got me. Now what?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Seven said.

  “Your hands are—”

  “On your pyramids.”

  They stared at one another, and Fox thought that if he really wanted to, he could probably put an elbow in Seven’s throat, or a knee in his groin. That was what Joanne would do, if she were in this situation. Or he could try and get into the agent’s head. From this close, the required touching of foreheads was a matter of a few inches. Less than that even.

  “My eyes are blue,” the agent said, his voice vibrating in Fox’s chest.

  “I’ve not really been in a position to check the colour of an agent’s eyes,” Fox said, holding still and wondering why Joanne hadn’t tried to kill the agent, Fox’s proximity be damned.

  “Not an agent’s eyes. My eyes,” Seven said, then slowly raised a hand to pull back his goggles. “Shhh. It’s a secret.”

  “Why is it a secret?” It was a strange secret, if that was really what it was.

  “It’s how you can tell I’m me.”

  Before Fox could ask anything else, Seven disappeared into the Cerebrum, leaving Fox to blink dazedly at the empty place.

  “What the hell was that?” Joanne asked, one hand on her cocked hip.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Fox said, confused. “Scratch that, I haven’t a bloody idea. Should we go after him?”

  It was far too late for that anyway; the trail was gone already. The two of them puzzled over this for several minutes before Fox remembered.

  “Joanne! The clue! That git distracted me, but I know what the clue is referencing. Come on, we have to go to a private domain.”

  “What, right now?”

  “And it should be your domain, to make things easier.”

  “All right, link-in.”

  Joanne’s domain was almost always a library when Fox visited. It wasn’t always the same library, and this time it looked a bit more like a tiny book shop, cosily disorganized and with an attached café.

  Fox took a seat in a puffy armchair.

  “So what do you mean you know what the clue references?” Joanne asked, sounding slightly put out that she hadn’t been the one to solve the riddle.

  “I suddenly noticed that Joan of Arc has more than one alias, and one of those is—”

  “The Maid.”

  “Yes, the same as yours.”

  “I know. I chose my alias based on her name,” Joanne said, as if it were obvious.

 
; “But Joanne, the clue King left us wasn’t talking about Joan of Arc at all. He was talking about you.” Fox could see her adding it all up in her head.

  “That’s why you wanted to come to my domain. You think the memory is somewhere in here.”

  “Yes, and you know where it is. The clue has to tell us something.”

  “There’s nothing else to go on.”

  “Well, what do you do when you have to figure something out and you’re stuck? Surely you scholarly types have a way with words, and King knew it. He wouldn’t have made it impossible for you to deduce. What does he know about you that he could use?”

  Joanne looked around, then lowered her voice, although there was no one else I the room but him. “I’m a professor of literature. That’s what King knew about me.”

  “Right. So what do literary professors do when they’re stuck?”

  “We ask our colleagues for help. We write it down on a big board so we can all see the problem, and maybe there’s something there that we missed.”

  “Let’s write it down, then.”

  Joanne’s writing was elegant and looping as she wrote the clue on a board that suddenly appeared. She wasn’t writing it down the same way in which Fox would have, and it gave him pause.

  He stopped her. “Why are you writing it down like that?”

  A Battlemaiden

  Hands to wield both sword and cross

  Fit to crown a King

  Joanne looked at it. “It’s the logical way to write it. It’s how the words flow. How else would you write it without it looking strange or interrupting the cadence?”

  “It’s just that…the structure looks familiar. Not like a clue at all, but it looks like—”

  “A poem!” Joanne finished triumphantly, eyes gleaming. “Fox, you’re brilliant! It does look like a stanza of some sort.” She started mouthing the words and counting on her fingers. Was she looking for rhyme schemes or something? “It’s a haiku,” she said finally. “And that means—”

  “Japan.”

  They looked at each other and grinned.

  “I’ve been to Japan only once,” she said. “It was on a business trip back when I was first being considered for a position with…a certain prestigious university.” The little book store flickered around them and disappeared. “I was there with my mentor, and he didn’t want me to accept a position there.”