by Kerstin Hall
Although my words were soft, a shiver rippled through the onlookers. The Winter Gardens had become very quiet.
“So?”
What was this? With so many witnesses, I knew I needed to respond. His behaviour verged on the treasonous. Actually, it probably was treasonous. And yet he clearly wanted me to react, which meant that this had to be some kind of trap. Absurd. My anger, always close to the surface, spilled over.
“I don’t know who you are,” I said, still without raising my voice, “but you seem to be under the impression that I give a damn about your opinions.”
“Oh, but you do, corpse eater.”
“Don’t test me.”
“Or what?” He knew that he had gotten under my skin. “Gonna send me to the Renewal Wards?”
It was a push too far. I drew on my lace and slammed a rope into his torso, intending to throw him off his feet.
Instead, my power hit an invisible wall and rebounded.
I took a step backwards.
He laughed. “What’s wrong?”
I tried again; wound the lace tighter and stronger this time. Again, it snapped away from him like a repulsed magnet. The civilians whispered. To them, it looked like I was doing nothing at all. A horrible feeling of helplessness welled up from the pit of my stomach.
“Anything to say?”
I took a step toward him.
“Don’t test me,” he mocked, and snapped his fingers.
An invisible rope caught me around the shoulders. I jerked to a halt. My anger and shock made it difficult to weave lace; it turned slick and slipped away from me. As I fumbled to sever the first rope, another took its place.
I was outmatched.
“How are you doing that?” I growled.
The man feigned a look of innocence. One of the civilians edged closer to him, apparently with the intention of tackling him from behind. She came to an abrupt stop.
“Please stay back,” I said to the onlookers. Where is Enforcement?
“Very noble of you.” The man walked toward me.
I smiled thinly. “You must realise that the Sisterhood will not tolerate this. There’s no way you can evade us.”
He patted me on the head as he passed.
“Want to bet?” he whispered.
Outrage rendered me speechless. I drew on my power and hacked at the rope until it disintegrated. How dare he? The power binding me fell away. The civilian woman stumbled as I freed her.
“Please do not leave the area!” I shouted to the onlookers, as I turned on heel. “You may be required to serve as witnesses!”
The man was already at the arch. Eater, he was fast. I ran after him, my feet pounding on the walkway. The Enforcer shouted in surprise, her body stiffening as if paralysed. This made no sense; only Sisters could use lace, and yet those had definitely been lacework bindings. I balled my fists. Humiliated. He had treated me like a child in front of civilians.
Through the arch, and past the Enforcer. The man was halfway down the stairs.
Even though the distance was too great, I threw a lacework rope at him. The binding fell short, but clipped his ankle. He staggered sideways and knocked into the balustrade. For a moment, I thought that he might fall over the edge. There was a twenty-foot drop to the level below, enough to break his neck. My stomach lurched. Then he caught himself and stumbled on down the stairs.
“Stop right there, Acolyte!”
The Enforcer had worked her way free from the binding and caught up to me.
“Let him go,” she panted. “I’ve triggered the alarm. Enforcement will apprehend him at the gates.”
“But…” The man had reached the base of the stairs.
“We don’t know what he’s capable of, Acolyte.”
Another person to identify me without my robes, I thought, as the man vanished into the lower Gardens. For the first time it struck me that the woman did not resemble an Enforcer. Although she wore the sharp-cut maroon uniform of their order, she had black lace-ups instead of work boots, and the brief run had left her out of breath. A suspicion formed in my mind.
“Understood,” I said. I gestured regret with my hands. “I’m sorry for getting in your way.”
The woman shook her head. “No need to apologize; there wasn’t anything I could have done anyway.”
She’s lying, I thought. There was something slightly false about her expression, too much emphasis behind her words.
“You’ll have to make a witness statement at the Detainment Offices. Ask for Herald Rhyanon Hayder.” The woman sighed heavily. “I must reassure the civilians. Please excuse me.”
Rhyanon Hayder did not work in the Detainment Office; she was Deputy Chief of Civil Obligations. But I nodded anyway.
“Eater’s grace upon you,” I said.
I watched the Enforcer walk toward the Winter Gardens. The man was long gone now, and I stood alone at the top of the stairs. A breeze rustled through the trees.
I wasn’t sure why she had tried to deceive me. But it looked an awful lot like both she and Herald Hayder were impersonating Enforcement staff. That interested me.
I turned right and headed toward Minor West and the Detainment Offices. Time to find some answers.
CHAPTER SIX
THE NAME ‘DETAINMENT Offices’ was misleading. Few criminals were ever housed within the triple-storey complex. Depending on the severity of their offenses, felons were either sent to the mines, the Cosun province jail, or the Renewal Wards. Although the Detainment Offices did have a limited number of holding cells in the basement, it primarily served as the Enforcement Department’s administrative headquarters.
I sat on a chair in the first-floor corridor, waiting for an appointment with Herald Hayder, which—disconcertingly—was to take place in one of the building’s interrogation rooms.
The Enforcer who had sent me here was a senior Acolyte. I had filed a preliminary report with her, sketching the outlines of the incident. To my surprise, she took down the details without comment. She scarcely batted an eyelid when I asked to speak to Herald Hayder.
“She’ll return shortly. You can wait outside room fifteen.”
I followed her directions, and sat where I was told. Doubts had crept into my mind. In the years prior to her martyrdom, my mother had spoken of Herald Rhyanon Hayder more than once. They had been colleagues at Civil Obligations. When I was a child, Rhyanon had hosted a daughter-naming celebration, and I brought a gift for her newborn. Jene? Joane? That might have been the name. My memory of the day nagged at me; something unusual had happened, but I couldn’t recall the specifics.
Then again, this woman could simply have transferred to Enforcement. I grimaced. I had no grounds for making wild assumptions, and yet …
Down the corridor, the stairs creaked. I looked up.
Herald Hayder was unassuming. She had a slightly frayed, frazzled appearance, and her skin was milky and flushed at the cheeks. When she walked, she hunched her shoulders forward, the posture of someone who worked at a desk all day. But for all that her appearance was forgettable, she was also definitely the same woman from my childhood memories. And, I noted with interest, she was not wearing an Enforcer’s badge.
I stood and gestured respect.
“Yes?” Her gaze flicked to me. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Herald Hayder?”
“That’s me. You are?”
I introduced myself and explained that I had been sent to provide a witness statement. The Herald had sharp eyes, a deep reddish brown colour like cedar bark. I had assumed she was in her forties; up close she appeared a little younger.
“I’d better ask you a few questions, then,” she said.
The interrogation room was sparse and undecorated, the walls a dull beige. A large table dominated the space, with a writing pad and an inkblot at one corner. If not for the cuffs on the chairs and the mirrored panel set into the left wall, it could have been an ordinary meeting room.
Rhyanon closed the door be
hind her and sat down. She gestured to the other chair, and I took it. She stared at me, and I stared right back.
Eventually, she smiled.
“So, an instance of civil disobedience?” she said. “Strange, that this man would target a Sister who wasn’t wearing robes. Please tell me everything that you can remember.”
I recounted the situation, but carefully excluded my interactions with the Enforcer. The man’s appearance, his insults, and the witnesses, I described in methodical and precise detail. Rhyanon did not take notes. Through it all, she was silent.
“That’s enough,” she said at last. She propped her elbows up on the table and rested her chin on her hands. Weak neck muscles, I thought. “Do you normally attract this level of trouble?”
“I’m not sure I understand, Herald.”
“Hm. And this stranger … now, what was it that you said? He repelled your lace. Any idea how a man might suddenly be capable of using the Eater’s power?”
“With respect, I can only tell you what I experienced.”
“You must realise that this all sounds rather unlikely.”
Another long silence.
“If you have no further questions, Herald, I can see myself out,” I said, with all the politeness I could muster. I stood up.
She leaned back in her chair, examining her nails. “So let’s say that everything you’ve told me is true. How would a man be capable of using the Eater’s power?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“And yet…”
“Someone else could use it on his behalf.”
Rhyanon’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh? Please explain, Acolyte.”
“I’ll be happy to, as soon as you tell me why the Deputy Chief of Civil Obligations is posing as a member of the Enforcement Department.”
This time I did surprise her. She blinked, and her smile slipped. Then she laughed.
“Hah! I hadn’t counted on you recognising me. Bit of a miscalculation there.”
I said nothing.
“Oh, sit down.” She waved at the chair. “And stop scowling.”
“You set this up.”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to test a few things. And I needed a private conversation with you.”
“You could have asked for one.”
“Well, I also needed collateral.”
“Excuse me?”
Rhyanon looked pointedly at my chair. I hesitated, then sat.
“I’ll sketch you a picture,” she said. “A troubled Acolyte with a history of instability attacks a civilian in the Gardens. When questioned about the incident, she raves that the man wielded lace against her. Then her story changes. Suddenly there is a grand conspiracy at play. She starts talking about secret meetings with Heralds from other Departments. Heralds who possess irrefutable alibis.”
I kept my voice even. “There were witnesses in the Gardens.”
“Were there? When called upon to give testimony, they all present a rather different and consistent account of what happened. They say that the man did nothing to provoke you.”
Her smugness was infuriating.
“So sad,” she continued, “when a promising young Acolyte is martyred for—”
“What do you want?”
She grinned. Her teeth were straight and white. “I have a proposition for you. If you say no, I want you to forget this meeting took place. In return for your discretion, your preliminary incident report will get lost in the Enforcement filing cabinets.”
“I would prefer it burned.”
“Then how could I be sure of your ongoing silence? I’m sure you understand.”
I nodded stiffly.
“Good,” she said. “In that case, what are you doing tomorrow evening?”
“Herald, if you wanted a date…”
“Funny, but no. I need you to attend Reverend Olwen Kisme’s party.”
That caught me off-guard. “I’m not invited.”
“I can get you onto the guest list.” Her eyes glinted. “While you’re there, I want you to take a look at some papers in Kisme’s office. Nothing too delicate, but I need a bank account number.”
Alarm bells were going off in my head. “Why?”
“Because I want to check the transactions listed against it.”
“And you couldn’t do this yourself?”
“Well, no. I would be a reasonably high-profile guest. You are more, um, obscure.”
I rubbed my forehead. “You set this up so you could ask me to break into a Reverend’s office?”
“Actually, I set this up with the hopes of forming a long-term arrangement. But for now, yes. That will do.”
She smiled genially, and I found myself smiling back. Then I recognised the faint numbing sensation that had been seeping outwards from my temples since the start of the meeting.
Rhyanon was compulsing me. To do so to a citizen was taboo; to compulse a fellow Sister was unthinkable.
“You’re mad,” I said.
The pressure behind the compulse increased, demanding that I stay. With a thread of my lace, I severed the bond. Rhyanon felt it give way and frowned.
“I’m done here.” I rose.
“I chose you for a reason,” she spoke calmly, as if I hadn’t said anything. “You have an excellent memory and a keen eye for detail. Your hot-headedness, however, might be a problem.”
“You have the wrong woman.”
“I can get you out of Renewal duty.”
I thought that I had misheard her, but no, she had said those words, and now she observed me to gauge my reaction. Sly, calculating, like a snake watching a mouse through the grass.
I gripped the back of the chair, my mouth dry. “Excuse me?”
“Not the Renewal you’re scheduled to perform tomorrow. But subsequently, it’s a possibility.”
She can’t be serious. “How did you know—”
“That you’re expected at the Wards in the morning?” She shook her head. “That would be telling. Suffice to say I know a lot about you, Elfreda. Your placement test results, for example, and the way you scored exactly seventy-five percent every year. That your counsellor happens to be a childhood acquaintance, and she muddies the official records to allow you to skip sessions. Kamillian Vidar, I believe.”
I stiffened.
“Relax,” she said. “I’m not here to harm you. All I’m offering is an opportunity.”
“What you’re offering amounts to treason.”
“I’m well aware of that. Are you saying no?”
She had me there. I hesitated a moment too long, and she continued.
“Think about it, then. A cab will be waiting on Reverence Street in the evening. Eighteenth bell. If you decide to attend the party, the driver will provide further details.” She got up. “The choice is yours to make.”
I didn’t perform the gestures for respect due to her station. “I’ll consider it.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “I’m glad to hear that. If you’ll excuse me, I have a preliminary report to misplace.”
Was it a trick? I wondered as she left the room. Some kind of cruel and extravagant test of my loyalty to the Order? And, if so, had I already failed?
The sun had travelled halfway across the sky when I emerged from the Detainment Offices. Rhyanon’s words repeated in my mind.
I can get you out of Renewal duty.
So casual, so self-assured. If nothing else, the woman was bold. Difficult, then, to reconcile this smirking stranger with my memories of her daughter’s naming ceremony.
The details surrounding the event still remained a little hazy in my mind. I had been young, perhaps eleven, and while I had not fully understood the situation at the time, I had been aware that everyone at the gathering was deeply uncomfortable. The guests spoke too loudly, and the conversation moved in circles. Rhyanon sat in the corner beside the cradle. She cried over her sleeping infant.
I rem
embered handing her the doll I had brought.
“What’s wrong?” I had asked.
“Hush, Ellie,” my mother scolded, but Rhyanon smiled and shook her head.
“It’s fine, Kirane,” she said. “I should pull myself together, shouldn’t I? It’s just … twenty-five is earlier than I expected.”
My mother muttered something. We left soon after that, but not before Rhyanon slipped me a packet of caramel sweets. I felt too uneasy to enjoy them.
“What did she mean, twenty-five is earlier than she expected?” I had asked.
“It’s her age.”
“How can her age be earlier than she expected?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” said my mother.
And I did. The older we are when we have children, the longer we live. Unless we’re unlucky. My mother was unlucky.
I headed for the Gardens. Finn and Millie would be worried; I needed to apologize. I needed to invent an explanation for my disappearance. And then I needed to go home and think.
Although I already knew, deep down, that my mind was made up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN THE SUN pierced the moth-eaten fabric of my curtains, I kept my eyes closed.
Acolytes in the neighbouring rooms opened doors and windows, and blurred voices seeped through the walls. Water gurgled up from the boiler in the basement. I had slept badly. My sheets tangled around me like vines.
Renewal duty. Again.
I sat up. Goose bumps prickled across my bare arms; the corners of my window panes were washed white with mist. Outside, the sky was overcast. A good thing. Less evaporation on cloudy days, a higher chance of rain. But I could not bring myself to care.
I dressed. No robes today, they would not be needed. I made my bed, and set a jar of salve and flask of water on my sideboard. Every movement took a conscious effort. One small action, then another. I squared my shoulders and left the dormitories.
The world outside had developed a raw, over-saturated quality. On the street, voices rang loud and crass. Colours smouldered. Even the air tasted sour, contaminated by the press of thousands of other people. I came to a stop halfway across the bridge spanning Pearl Boulevard. My skin burned, but the sweat running down my back was ice-cold.