by D M Wozniak
Not me. I have always kept both my mind and body honed, since that is the proper thing to do. Anything less is a sign of weakness. My studies have kept my mind sharp, while a younger wife ensured that my body didn’t lag behind.
Why wasn’t I enough for her?
Touching the smooth, black surface of my voidstone, I shatter the mirror to pieces.
I let out a sharp breath, letting go.
What are you doing?
This is not acceptable—no matter how devastated I feel, I must not lose control. Working voidance under emotion is dangerous. Anger especially leads to overconsumption. It leads to voideath.
Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I wipe the corner of my eye and walk around the room.
Miscellaneous items lie everywhere. Marine was not a tidy woman. Vials of perfumed oils, orchid vases, makeup cases, feather plumes and jewelry litter her immense marble-top vanity. In the center rests her wedding ring, and I stand for a moment looking at it before moving on. Her cream nightgown lay in a pile on the floor, next to the bed.
Candelabras rest in odd places, too close to the curtains. She actually preferred it this way, and often told the maids not to clean every day. Now I realize this touch of chaos suited her exuberance for life. She treated all the things around her like she treated me when we made love—a little bit out of control and a little bit like I didn’t matter. A frame to her picture.
But this room is in tatters, even for her.
I imagine her, awash in candlelight, fullbells ago, frantically packing for her midnight trip.
How long has she planned this?
She didn’t take much, and seemingly left in a hurry. Rifling through her wardrobe, many of her clothes are still here. Her lingerie, gowns, shoes—all of it.
But her voidstone, diminutive and lined with diamonds, is gone. She never wore it to bed. Instead, she always rested it on the headboard’s turned bedpost, keeping it within arm’s reach.
Walking into her bathroom, I open the shutters to let in the sunlight. Here there are no rugs. Only hard stone, and a large clawfoot tub still full of tepid water and rose petals.
A soiled towel rests against the sink.
I pick it up by one of the clean, white sections and bring it to my face. The smears covering it are black, and sticky. There is a strong smell to it that I cannot place.
Walking back to her vanity, I check her makeup. The only thing that it could be is eyeshadow, but I quickly use my voidstone to compare the two substances—they don’t match. They are made of different indivisibles.
Running footsteps pause outside the bedroom door. After a moment, a knock follows.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Lord Democryos, may I enter? It’s Anna.”
“Of course,” I say. I wonder if she can hear the sarcasm in my voice.
She opens the door, and cautiously makes her way through the parlor into the bedchamber, holding her full, black skirt to prevent herself from tripping over it. She looks at the shards of mirror covering the floor, and then back to me with wide eyes.
“I—” she stammers. “I heard the noise from down the hall, my lord.”
I wave the soiled towel in the general direction of the damage. “That is of no importance,” I say, but then I extend the towel in front of me. “But this is.”
“My lord?”
“What is on this?”
“I—” Anna curls a blonde lock over her ear, a confused expression on her face.
“This was left by the Lady Marine,” I say between clenched teeth. “In her bathroom.”
“That is her washing linen.”
“I know it’s her washing linen. What is on it?” I ask, louder this time.
She looks at me as if I am asking the stupidest question in the world. “I do not know, my lord.”
Although her expression makes me even more angry, I can see that she is telling the truth. But there are lies of omission, too.
My eyes narrow. “You assisted her, this morning.”
For a moment, Anna looks down at the shattered mirror, and takes a step or two around the shards, as if calculating the extent of the damage. But I know she is only biding time. She didn’t expect to run into me this morning, here in Marine’s bedchamber. Her steps resemble those of a caged animal testing the limits of a new confinement.
She starts to cry, wringing her hands in her black dress, and I sense that she is about to tell me something.
“Talk,” I say.
“There was a man here, in her bedchamber.”
I nod once, waiting for her to continue.
“I am so sorry, my lord. He told me that if I said anything he would hurt my family. I wanted to let Elrich know, so he could warn you. But my little Liuka. And my husband, Bartha. He said that people would come for them unless I was quiet. Unless I keep his secret.” She wipes her face. “I am so sorry!”
“Who was he?” I scream.
She shakes her head. “His face was veiled, my lord.”
“What does that mean?”
“I never saw him!” She seems at a loss for words. “A cloud always hung about his face. It made him blurry.”
“You mean something physical?”
She shakes her head. “Something in the air.”
Voidance.
There are so many things I could ask her, but one word cuts deeper than the rest.
“Always?” I snarl.
“My lord?”
“You said always.” I swallow. “A cloud always hung about his face. How long has this been going on?”
She closes her eyes tightly, as if trying to remember the ugly truth, or maybe trying desperately not to reveal it.
“Months, my lord,” she eventually whispers. “Since the rainy season ended.”
My mouth hangs open, ready to ask another question, but eventually I feel my chest expanding and contracting in large breaths. I force myself to inhale slowly through my nostrils. My entire body softens. I push all of my emotions and visions of Marine into the back of my mind, and focus on what’s in front of me. Anna looks at me, as though I am another mirror that might shatter.
I have seen the baby Liuka, and the oaf Bartha. I know the love this woman has for both of them. Part of me envies the tidy family they have begun together. Perhaps there is something indivisible left in this world, after all.
The man behind the veil threatened them.
Repulsed with myself, I realize I was close to doing the same. When Anna first hesitated, I was half-prepared to threaten voidance as a way to pull the truth out of her. But the truth is already evident. It’s all over Marine’s bed sheets.
Before self-loathing fully consumes me, I tell myself there is an important distinction. In the end, my threats to Anna would have been empty. I could never harm this gentle woman—instilling fear in her would have been my only crime. But that is a crime, nonetheless.
Can the same be said for this mysterious veiled man?
“My lord,” she says, as if reading my mind. “Please do not say anything. He could still hurt—”
I cut her off with a wave of my hand, the soiled towel still clutched in it. “I will not betray your trust, Anna. But you should have come to me. There is no man on this world—veiled or not—that you need fear. If this thief shows himself again, he is the one who will know fear.”
She closes her eyes as if she were an effulgent, praying.
Meanwhile, I keep a small sample of the black, sticky substance to take back to my lab. Touching my voidstone, I create a perfect square about one finger’s length, dropping the rest of the towel at my feet.
“Is there anything else you wish to tell me?” I ask her, as I carefully fold the swatch and place it in my cloak pocket.
She goes into more detail, about how she was awoken, and asked to carry a single case of clothes down for Marine. A spare pair of boots. Her journal, ink vial and quills. Marine was alone and in a hurry. She could have done all of this by herself, but only Anna
knew the way from the servant’s entrance of the Royal House to the Southern Gate of the First Ring where fewer guards patrolled.
One thing becomes clear: Anna didn’t know anything about Marine’s decision to leave prior to last night. And quite possibly, neither did Marine.
“I will clean up this mess, my lord,” she assures me, already on her knees, carefully picking up the larger shards and placing them into the silver bucket from the bathroom. As she works, her tears fall inside of it, clinking like rain on a soldier’s armor.
I nod distantly, slowly spinning in place. I look upon all of this luxury, so rare, with an entire war going on to the south. Most people live and die without seeing such opulence, even in times of peace. Quite the life, even for the daughter of a Giriyan landowner.
Marine threw it all away.
Which means that whatever she is after must be greater than all of this.
The Second Ring
It’s much worse than I feared.
Everyone on the wide, black cobblestone street is avoiding me. Merchants gaze downward over their barrels of wares, unconcerned with making a sale. Passersby huddle in urgent, forced discussion behind arborvitae. Wrinkled men too old for war sit mutely underneath the green awning of a corner cafe, gazing at me with glassy eyes from behind a storm cloud of tobacco smoke. Above them, women peek out at me behind the thin undershirts they hang to dry in the breeze.
Only the children approach me, asking to see my voidstone, or for me to show them a sign. They are too innocent to understand the nature of disgrace.
I ignore them all.
Only near the arched Southern Gate of the First Ring does an adult greet me, though I doubt he has good intent.
“Greetings, Democryos,” bellows the head effulgent. “Be nothing,” he adds the idiotic, common effulgency greeting.
His temple sits just inside the First Ring, almost within the shadow of the impossibly-high wall, and right off Xi Bay Road. Its towering plaster spire gleams in the mid-day sun, as do his robes.
The large, bald man walks down red-brick steps toward the road with his arms out at his sides, having seen me from a distance. His skin is impossibly smooth, like all effulgents. Not a patch of his body is covered in hair. No eyebrows, no beard, no arm hair—nothing.
“Your Effulgency,” I say, using the common greeting. I don’t stop walking. I am intent on reaching the archway in the distance, while keeping a keen lookout for anything out of place. Anything that would lead me to Marine’s whereabouts. This is the way she went last night, from what Anna had said, but for the thousandth time today, I feel I am on a fool’s errand.
Surprisingly, he matches my stride and joins in. I hear the exertion on his breath.
“Congratulations on your graduating class,” he says. “The ceremony yesterday was impressive. I hope the students bring a quick end to the war.”
I know this man all too well—he is my peer in many ways, reporting to the king in very much the same fashion that I do. He, however, has nothing to offer the king but a few of his younger effulgents and graycloaks to lead soldiers in prayer on foreign battlefields before dying wretched deaths. And to deliver bouquets of flowery language, like the one he’s producing for me now.
“You can spare me the bullshit,” I mumble.
The older man lets out a deep laugh. “I know we may not see eye to eye on most things, but I actually mean the words I say. Anything to stop this war is a good thing.”
I wait for him to reveal his true reason for approaching me. These complements are but one of his devices.
“My point is,” he continues, “just because I see you as evil doesn’t mean we cannot work together on a common cause.”
I shoot him a glance, but do not stop.
“Well, you are not evil, to be clear. But the black arcana you proselytize is, just as swinging a sword to kill another is evil. War is evil. This is what I wanted to tell the students yesterday in my final blessing to them. But I couldn’t with the king there. His lordship would have my head.”
“That would be a shame.”
Soon we reach the sheltering archway of the Southern Gate. Beneath it, everything becomes cool and dark. I stop and look sideways at him, hoping to end the discussion.
“What do you want?”
He catches his breath. Beyond that, I hear soft rattling as he fidgets with a set of ivory beads in his hand.
“I heard what happened.”
I don’t say anything. Based on his prior compliments, I was half-expecting him to ask me a favor. Something to do with the king or the war. Certainly not Marine.
“And I just wanted to add that if you need someone to talk to—for guidance, or counseling—I am here.”
“How can you possibly offer me guidance?” I instinctively answer. “You don’t even share a bed with a woman.”
It’s bright enough in the tunnel to see his self-deprecating smile.
“That’s true,” he answers, “But I do know how hard it is to let go of one’s possessions.”
It takes me a moment to understand his jab, and when I do, I feel my brow furrow. “She’s not my possession,” I say to him, raising my voice.
A passing family turns our way briefly. They walk next to their old horse, which is carrying burlap bags of goods through the tunnel. I’m immediately embarrassed for losing my composure in public. They walk on, and the head effulgent and I are again left in relative privacy.
I had not intended to make a mockery of the situation by asking strangers if they had seen my wife the night before. But this effulgent might be able to help. He’s already brought up the bitter conversation, and as we’re standing within the moderate shelter of the tunnel, it doesn’t seem harmful to ask.
“Did you see anything early this morning?” I ask him quietly.
The holy man tilts his head.
“Before sunrise,” I add. “The Lady Marine may have passed this way. Possibly with another man. I heard she took Xi Bay Road.”
The effulgent looks at me with a mix of sympathy and disgust, and I have the urge to put my hands around his throat and press him up against the tunnel wall. “Oh, my son,” he says deeply. “Is that why you are walking here in this neighborhood? You are looking for her?”
“Never mind,” I mumble as I walk away, realizing it was a stupid idea. Anything involving an effulgent is a stupid idea.
The hairless man stays where he is, but after I’ve put some distance between us, he calls out to me, his baritone voice echoing off of the damp stone.
“That is the problem with all of you voiders! You think that you can use people! Just like the poor souls in your stones!”
I pick up my pace and contemplate filling this entire tunnel with a windstorm.
The effulgents—they’re all the same. Deep down, they hate voiders. Their writings proclaim that we’re evil—that living beings are trapped in every voidstone, but of course they have no proof for such nonsense. They wrap their ignorance in false compassion and pretend to invite us into the light. But secretly, they wish they had such power themselves. They are hypocrites.
Warm sunlight hits me, and I raise my face. I’ve exited through the tunnel and am now on the other side of the wall.
The Second Ring.
I’m still within the safety of the citadel, but it’s markedly less dense here. Gone are the paved surfaces and stone facades of the First Ring. Buildings exist, but they only dot the grassy, rolling landscape, offering a much-needed change of pace. Groves of pine and oak are the towers here, and somewhere to the east must be the river.
The gravel road leads into the distance, so narrow here that I need to step off its path as a horse and carriage pass by. My boots make shallow prints in the fine sand.
An entire countryside lies before me.
It will be impossible to locate her. Even if this was the way she came—even if she had exited through the Southern Gate and I am now following her exact footprints—what am I supposed to do? I trace her moo
nlit journey in my mind—permutations of the past. Most likely, by now, she is on horseback. Elrich said he checked the stables, but that just meant the Royal House. Marine could have walked a few king’s miles down Xi Bay Road and paid off a stable boy or innkeeper for a horse. Or maybe she walked all this way and visited one of the farms in the Second Ring.
The bell tower of the effulgency temple starts ringing out the time of the day. Even though it’s on the other side of the thick wall, the tip of the spire peeks through, mocking me.
It’s threebell.
In four fullbells I need to be at dinner with the king. That is not something one is late for. Not even a master voider plays with that sort of fire.
The problem is that I have no idea where Marine was going. From here, though there are not many options, each would take days to explore. This gravel road continues for many miles to the Outer Wall. That entrance is gated and staffed with a guardhouse. If she went that way, the guards would have noticed, but she could have paid them to stay silent. Besides, it would take me a fullbell to reach it, which would put me late for dinner. Unless I procure a carriage.
But then what?
Past the Outer Wall, Wainwright is the nearest village to the south. I suppose I could travel there tomorrow and see if she passed through. Wainwright is known for superb parchment production. I have one nearly-empty box of it in my lab.
I begin walking south again, though slower this time without a destination. I won’t reach the Outer Wall, nor Wainwright. At least not today.
But walking helps me think.
The man she was seeing covered himself in a veil. A cloud always hung about his face. It made him blurry. That is what Anna said.
So he was a voider, too.
He used a simple trick any first-year student learns: speeding up the indivisibles in the air surrounding the subject. This creates disturbances. A haziness. This morning, the sun shown off of the black road that led me here, creating the same illusion. Perhaps in a non-voider’s eyes, this made his face appear veiled.
Did he and Marine rendezvous here? In the Second Ring?
And if so, where would two voiders supposedly in love go?
Anywhere they wanted to.