by Matt Weber
insight, and think Don't.
I twist the quill a bit so it bounces off Elias' fingers.
Elias begins to lunge, but Sim ducks his head to slip Elias' grip.
Elias roars and drives the knife.
I move as quickly, as strongly, as I can and feel a spray and hear a scream.
There's a thump on the stage like a sack of rocks. There's a little body in my left arm, wailing and sobbing and leaking from all over, blood on my upper arm and tears into my shoulder and sweat into my mouth as he frantically headbutts me for comfort from the pain. In my right hand there's the thick wrist of a limp arm.
The scene finally crystallizes. Sim is bleeding and weeping in my arms, but I can tell his neck wound is superficial, bloody but not arterial. I've got my right hand around Elias' right wrist, although his fingers have gone limp and he's dropped the knife, which is bloody only at its tip. I drop Elias' arm like I would a rotten egg. He's crumpled on the ground like the sack of rocks he sounded like when he fell, twitching and making indistinct vowel noises in his throat.
Behind him, shrouded in the dark theater's gloom, is the Dandelion Knight, staff in one hand, an empty syringe in the other.
Even better, he's brought bandages and ointments. Sim is scared to see him at first, but I talk quietly to him and eventually he consents to sit on my lap, my arms wrapped around his elbows to block any sudden flailings, while Aurcryn-Jon bandages his neck.
Sim is wounded and his blood is on my clothes; there's no way we're getting to St. Nox's without attracting the attention of the gendarmerie. So I find a gendarme and tell him more or less the truth, including the fact that Sim's mother is at St. Nox's and he really ought to see her. We're separated, of course, and I'm questioned in a number of degrading and insinuating ways, but at day's end I know the evidence is in my favor: Sim's blood is on my clothes, but also on Elias', and only Elias has touched the knife. The gendarmerie don't fail to notice the syringe wound in his neck, but I spread my hands and say "Who knows what he was taking, or when?" and at that point they're enough in my corner that they just grimace and agree.
When I described my conversation with the Dandelion Knight, I cut out early. That's good scriptwriting, of course, but there are things we said that you really ought to know.
"You know we can see the Champions," the Dandelion Knight says. "Do you believe it?"
"Yes."
"Do you know why we can see them?"
"No."
"Do you know why you don't see them?"
My invective at this point is neither original nor amusing enough to repeat in company—shut up, Sandrine, this is serious.
"You don't see them," the Dandelion Knight glacially explains, "because they exude a chemical that makes you not pay attention to them. What's the problem with that?"
"Are you seriously trying to teach me how Champions do fucking magic? I don't know."
"It's a chemical floating through the air and attaching to a tiny little bit of flesh deep inside your nose—it's like a smell. You have almost no way of knowing where a smell comes from, especially if you're standing still. So why don't you ignore everything when a Champion is around?"
I wait.
"You don't ignore everything because the chemical evokes shaped patterns of brain responses that act on your visual system. Champions have a particular pattern of facial markings they use to identify one another. You selectively ignore anything with those markings. Get exposed enough and you actually build up a habit of ignoring the markings even absent the chemical—which, incidentally, is why you only rarely see Champions from far away instead of absolutely all the time—"
"Great. What does this have to do with rescuing a helpless little boy from a remorseless ex-militia predator?"
"What mutual acquaintance of ours has a fixation on a certain set of visual patterns that you'd really like him to ignore?"
Again, a series of highly derivative oaths, though this time in a tone of awe rather than irritation. Or, well, admixed with the irritation. Then I actually try to work out some of the implications. "So... he won't be able to see children?"
"We can mute the ignoring effect, and restrict the modality to visual so he doesn't ignore what they say. He'll find them unmemorable in appearance. Not salient enough to activate the really bad attractors. And if he tries to chase one, he won't have an especially good idea where they are. Useful fail-safe."
Don't judge me for asking the question I'm about to ask. You're thinking it, too, if you have a shred of decency. Remember, this isn't in the past for me, this isn't a fait fucking accompli, this is Aurcryn-Jon in green motley calmly explaining to me by gaslight that he's going to keep a predator from his helpless prey for good—for life—with nothing but a magic potion. So don't judge me when I tell you my next question was, "Could I spare your research budget and downgrade to your basic fatal blunt force trauma?"
And he tells me, I almost weep to remember it, "Sim needs a mother and a father, or the closest he can get. He's going to have a lot of responsibilities when he grows up."
I somehow manage to contain my rage at this statement. Instead of screaming, I say "So you see me as the spinster type, do you?"
Even the Dandelion Knight doesn't want to touch that one. And so we make the plan—for the Blue-Roofed Room, the distraction, the syringe.
It took a while, but Elias woke up and began speaking. We took Sim to see him, to test what the Dandelion Knight had done. When Elias laid eyes on Sim, he blubbered like a child, so sick at himself he couldn't even name his crimes to apologize.
Aimée was not so lucky. There was a will drawn up, though, at least.
And I've slipped into past tense because I'm back in the present—that was how the whole sorry thing ended. Sim grew up; by that time we'd bought out some members of the board, so he reached his majority with a controlling interest in Greyking Books, and he's made canny use of it since. I raised him in the ways I could, hired help to raise him in the other ways, and kept the Leblanc finances on more or less an even keel until Sim could claim them. Elias, fucked up as it sounds, stayed on to help until he died. He was free of his compulsion, and Sim grew in time to trust him like Aimée had when she was little, before she learned what he was and what he wanted. And as far as I know, none of the three of us ever put a dandelion out on our windowsill again—or, if we did, the call was never answered.
And then, a few years later, Altronne was bombarded by an invasion force of unknown objectives, and a bunch of scraggly thespians gathered in Folio's grandest theater to hash out what to do, and a little blonde woman harangued them for an hour with a story whose import some of them probably still haven't picked up. So here's the epilogue, with policy prescriptions.
We know what happened two nights ago in Aerestan, and last night on the second. We know which side the Dandelion Knight is on. It means they've come out in support of dispossession and violence, and of course that isn't anything we wouldn't have guessed of them, and I don't mean for a moment to dismiss that.
But.
I know a Dandelion Knight who hurt, to be sure, and sometimes killed. But I know a Dandelion Knight who hurt the pederast Elias Charbon—hurt him and then repaired him, so he could atone for his crimes. I know a Dandelion Knight who would have cured Gauthier Leblanc's bodily sickness, or at least tried, and asked nothing in return but that he accept his due fame and bring more beauty to the world.
What do I know of the synod and Champions of Altronne? I know they hurt and kill us so we won't be like the Dandelion Knight. And when I say "us," I mean us in this room, who build worlds out of rags and paint and air, and dare to populate those worlds according to the truth of what we see, whether or not it's politically convenient to those who claim the right and means to hurt us. Ambrose will tell you all about that, but he'll have to write it out. We're told that the Dandelion Knight kill civilians, but how many do you know who've been collateral damage in their attacks? Now, how many do you know who said a few strong words, or made th
e wrong sort of acquaintance, and just didn't come home for dinner?
That's all I have for you, rogues and reeves. A story fraying with loose threads, thin armor for what I'm asking you to do. Then again, I'm not asking you to take up arms against your invaders, as Daniel before me has. As the government that's called you terrorist and traitor will, if they can spare the time from this war that they're about to lose.
It's time to stop fighting for those who hurt us. Aimée taught me that, but at too high a cost. But, then, that's why Imen invented stories—so you could learn her lesson without paying her price.
Good night, my fellow shadows, and good-bye. We won't be the same when next we meet, whatever you choose.
No applause followed Pel's last line; she slipped into the wings and disappeared, never emerging from backstage to talk amongst the members of the audience, as the man who had preceded her had done. A gangly, yellow-haired young man stood and suggested an intermezzo before the next speech, and the audience began to chatter and diffuse.
A woman in her thirties worked her way through the crowd toward the yellow-haired man; she was dressed oddly for the crowd, in loose, well-cut dark suit, a polychrome scarf and a few large pieces of false jewelry gesturing at camouflage. On closer examination, though, it was clear that the suit had recently been scrubbed of several black and brown stains;