by D M Wozniak
She looks back out into the gray distance, her brief smile fading.
“I’m going to help you, Chimeline. I promise. I’m going to get him out of your head.”
She nods absently.
“But I don’t think you should come with us to Winter’s Baiou. It’s too dangerous.”
She turns to me sharply, a hurt expression on her face.
“I’m going there to find and kill this man,” I explain. “It’s likely to be a very...unpleasant scene. And I don’t want you getting hurt in the process.”
She lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “You just said you would never send me away. And yet here you are, doing exactly that.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not sending you away because I don’t trust you. I’m sending you away...”
“Why?”
“Because I care deeply for you.”
She seems to relax somewhat.
“Chimeline, it’s for the best, based on what you just told me. The man behind the veil knows you. And if he sees you with me, he’ll use you to get to me.” I look back to Xi Road in the distance. “There are probably many safe plantations between here and the city—”
She grasps my hand. “I am not leaving you.”
I sigh.
“I’m coming with you,” she insists. Her voice is tight, either with tears or resolution. “After everything he’s done to me and my sisters. I deserve to be there when it happens.” She wipes her face with the side of her hand. “I deserve to help you. To be a part of it.”
Inwardly, I cringe. I have no intention of including Chimeline in my hunt.
“Thank you, but I don’t need your help,” I softly say. “I need you to stay safe.”
“You’re forgetting something,” she says.
“What?”
She looks away. “I’m an assassin.”
“But you don’t have to be.”
“Just like you don’t have to be a voider, now that you know the truth of what it means?”
Another gust of wind and rain hits us and I pull her even more into me.
“Sometimes you can’t leave who you are,” she whispers. “It’s a part of you.”
There is nothing I can say. I feel the heavy voidstone around my neck. I feel its wrongness mixed with its power, and I don’t know which is stronger. The thought of overcoming the man behind the veil without voidance at my side seems ludicrous. And yet, if I destroy this man using the same evil that he espouses, what does that make of me?
“Alright,” I gently answer her. “Alright.”
My reply is almost lost in the wind and the rain, and I imagine the millions of trapped souls encircling us. Souls whom I cannot see listening in, watching on.
Waiting.
The Edge of a Kingdom
Six guards stop us as we pass into the shadow of Winter’s Baiou’s northern entrance. They seem in high spirits, but are initially rude. Only towards Blythe do they show some respect, calling him graycloak and offering meager bows of their heads. One whistles at Chimeline until another sees me pull my voidstone out from underneath my white shirt, and hits him in the side to quiet him. Then they fall into line.
We’re kindly asked to dismount, citing safety orders from Commander Reddles, whom the king apparently appointed to run the city. No horses are allowed, due to the crowded streets.
They tag the four animals and one hands me a note with a number written on it, along with an address that states “Grenaden’s Stables.” Chimeline kisses hers on the muzzle.
“Who’s in charge here?” I ask the guard who handed me the note. He’s the same one who prodded the whistling guard.
“I am.”
“Have you been stationed here the past few days?”
“Yes.”
I lower my voice. “Have you seen the Lady Marine?”
He narrows his eyes. “Sir voider, we are not allowed to report on the comings or goings—”
I hold up the king’s signet ring in front of his face. “I am Master Voider Democryos from the Citadel. You are allowed to report anything to me.”
Colu swears. Behind me, the soldiers confiscate his sword and daggers, giving him another ticket with a number on it. They place his weapons in a small indentation built into the stone wall and lock them up behind iron bars.
“Your grace,” the guard says, bowing. “Yes, the Lady Marine came by here.” His focus momentarily goes to the barrel-vaulted, stone ceiling. “The day before last.”
I nod. “Whom was she with?”
His face scrunches up a bit, as if, only now, does he realize the absurdity of his words. “An effulgent.”
“Where did they go?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, your grace.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about their arrival? Anything at all?”
He stares into the distance while four of his other guards walk away with our horses.
“No, your grace.”
I exhale. “Alright, then. Let us in.”
The unbridled revelry in Winter’s Baiou is apparent even before we exit the other side of the shallow stone tunnel.
Its streets are flooded—not only with remains of the storm, but the remains of the war. Women wear brightly colored dresses, many on the arms of northern soldiers. These men walk around unarmored, but still in partial uniform, the sleeves of their red tunics rolled up to their elbows. They carry canteens in hand, no doubt filled with sugarcanex.
Children dance and jump in puddles. Performers tower a dozen feet over them, on stilts. A firebreather hangs off of the second-floor iron balcony by one hand, and a masked man juggles on the flat roof of the city wall.
“The commander was not lying,” says Colu, squinting as we leave the shadows. “The war has indeed ended.”
“Where is the temple?” I ask Blythe as the distilled sunlight hits me. The storm clouds have gone, but wispy remnants remain. The late afternoon light shines with a soft shade of lavender.
He points right, to the west. “There are three effulgency temples in Winter’s Baiou, but I only trust one. It is not the closest, unfortunately.”
“Why do you trust it?”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “I know the head effulgent—she’s a woman.”
“A woman,” I repeat into the cobblestones before looking back up at him. “We can trust her because the voider-effulgent is a man?”
“Correct.”
I hum in agreement.
Most of the crowd travels in the opposite direction, and we’re pushed a bit before we find a slender current going our way.
I look around in all directions. I have the itching feeling that I’m being watched.
“Do you think we’ll run into them?” Chimeline asks in my ear. She is very close to me, her arm tucked into mine.
I know who she’s referring to. “With this crowd, the odds are unlikely.”
“No effulgent would be out here in this debauchery,” Blythe says. “It is one thing to quietly thank the Unnamed for a peaceful end to the war. It is another to reduce oneself to this...” He waves his arms nonsensically around his head and accidentally hits a passing woman in the face, who curses loudly.
“Don’t forget, this isn’t a normal effulgent,” I point out.
As I say these words, I see someone.
Past the multi-colored chaos of the moving crowd, a voider stares back at me with a furrowed brow. His black flaxen cloak is like the darkened center of a child’s spinning pinwheel.
I mumble a curse and turn away, tightening my grip on Chimeline. “I don’t like this at all.”
“What don’t you like?” she asks.
I let out a deep breath. “We’re attracting too much attention.”
“But you don’t have your cloak on.”
“I know. But my face is familiar to all of my former students.”
“Maybe you should try a little harder not to look like you’re from the citadel,” Colu adds.
&nb
sp; “What do you mean?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It’s just the way you carry yourself, like your shit smells like flowers. Try to hunch your back or something.”
Chimeline laughs nervously and leans in, tapping my forearm with her hand. “You look fine, Dem.”
A quarter-bell later, we’re still in the midst of Winter’s Baiou when we reach the former edge of our kingdom.
It’s the old demarcation—where, up until now, the Northern Kingdom ended and Xiland began.
Normally, this would be a subtle transition in this border-town. White bricks inlaid down the middle of the street—a thin line. Clay tiles on buildings showing two languages instead of one.
But the war has changed all of this.
Wooden barricades still stand, some of them partially dismantled and strewn about, others used by the drunken crowd as a place to recline. Stacked burlap bags and barrels lay strewn about in odd locations.
It’s hard to believe that not too long ago, men were fighting here.
As we turn the corner, a large stone building comes into view. Or what remains of it.
Past a roped-off barrier with a soldier standing sentry, the walls are crumbled away at precise angles, as if they’re made of gingerbread. All three stories are opened up, the rooms inside vacant and painted green. A wooden bed hangs lopsided twenty feet in the air, and a white sheet blows in the shadowed wind, caught on a ceiling joist. A ghost, left behind.
A plus-sign remains etched into part of the intact exterior wall.
I stop.
“What is it?” Chimeline asks.
“This was a hospital.”
She looks up at me in confusion, and then back to the ruins.
“A place to heal the sick,” I explain. “With help from voidance.”
“Oh.”
I shake my head. “We built this just before the war. My submaster Herrophilus and the Xian master voider Bartholu worked together on it. It was the first of its kind in Xiland.”
“Whatever toppled these bricks must have been powerful, indeed,” Colu adds.
“It was voidance,” I add.
“Voidance?” Chimeline asks. “How do you know?”
I point at the destruction. “The way the walls fall away at precise angles. No battering ram would do that.”
“Why would voiders destroy their own creation?” Colu adds.
Blythe groans. “Voiders do not create. They only destroy.”
“Let’s keep walking,” I say softly.
After another block, we run into more northern soldiers. They’re markedly different than the ones by the city entrance. They’re all sober and at attention, a few of them on horseback bearing the king’s banner. With the north winning the war, they have come to occupy this section of the city, but their orders are obviously to maintain the peace. They stand mostly in the shadows, staying out of the way of the citizens, both Xian and northern alike.
One of these groups of soldiers speaks to another voider, clearly discernible in his flaxen cloak. As we approach, the voider nods and walks away, passing us on the street.
I turn my head away.
Winter’s Baiou slopes downward gradually toward the south. Just past the border, we all stop at a large park flanked by awninged shops. It looks like a play is about to be performed in the center. A wooden makeshift stage is set up, with people sitting on the surrounding grasses in all directions, many of them Xian. Past all of this, we can see the city sprawled out below and in front of us, narrow streets descending in angles. Xi Bay glistens in orange and pink far away over the slate rooftops, still wet with the passing storm.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Chimeline asks, as if reading my thoughts. But I don’t look at her, since I know that any smile I give her would be a halfhearted one, and she’s wise enough to know the difference.
I look out at the audience. It erupts in cheers and applause as the actors leave a nearby red and white-striped tent and arrive on stage.
Hundreds of couples and families recline on the grass on blankets, some wealthy enough to enjoy wine, cheese, fruit, and shellfish as they watch the production. They look like a great weight has been lifted from them—the war is over. It is finally time for celebration.
But in reality, no weight has been lifted. Unbeknownst to this audience, a massive voidstone lurks in the bay, mere miles from here. That is the real weight, and someone in our midst just might be powerful enough to claim it for his own.
“The temple is on the other side of this park,” Blythe says.
I see it when he points. Between the treetops, its damp spire reflects the waning sun.
Colu laughs.
“What is it?” Chimeline asks.
“Nothing,” he says, quieting down. “Life’s fortunes playing a trick on me.”
Chimeline charmingly wrinkles her nose in confusion as Colu shakes his head, as if to clear his thoughts. “This is where we part ways,” he says.
“What?” Chimeline asks, her voice raised in shock.
He shrugs his shoulders, as he surveys all of us. “I told you that our destinations were not the same, only our paths, and even that was a momentary thing.”
“Where are you headed?” I ask.
“The old Xian section of the city is near here,” he answers. “It will be my first stop on my way home.”
Everyone is clapping to something happening on stage, but I only look at the one-eyed, dark-skinned soldier in front of me.
I extend my hand to him. “This is farewell, then,” I say. “I wish you safe travels, il-Colu.”
He smiles wryly at my use of the il designation, something that he once said implies honor.
But before he can respond with words, Blythe interrupts.
“How about a dinner, first?” he says.
We all turn to him as he points again.
“We’re practically here. I will arrange a sustaining meal for tonight, before you part ways with the company. It is the least I can do for you.”
Colu looks down at my extended hand, to Blythe, and then back to me. He finally nods.
“Alright,” he says. “One last warm meal with you, and then I am gone.”
So together we meander around the perimeter of the park, which is the only place with open ground.
Soon we’re walking up stone steps to the temple, and Blythe opens the door, letting us all in. He shuts it afterward, and a warm echo reverberates through the lofty and empty space.
I would never admit it, but I am glad to be here, away from the noise of the crowd. It’s been a long day, and even though I spent a quarter of it in the void, that time was not in the least bit restful.
This temple is the same style as the one in Fiscarlo, only four times the size. While the walls are curated stone, the ceiling is made of black-stained planks, hung with massive, horizontal, iron circles. They hold candles that flicker in the early-evening breeze that came in with us.
The smell of incense and rain permeates the air.
“All of you, feel free to sit down,” Blythe says, motioning to the many wooden benches, as he begins to walk down the center aisle towards the front of the temple, which is a good fifty yards away. “When I return, I will have a meal prepared for us, as promised.”
“And where are you going?” I ask him.
“I am going to look for the head effulgent.”
“And then what?”
“When I find her, I’m going to tell her what I know. So that we can warn the others.”
“I’d like to come with,” I say.
“No,” he says, in all of his exhausting brevity, as he continues to walk away.
“What do you mean, no?”
“It’s best if I go alone,” he answers, over his shoulder.
“And I think that it’s best if I speak to this woman,” I add to his back, raising my voice slightly due to the increasing space between us. “To ask her about the voider-effulgent. She may know who he is. Or where he is.”
Blythe pauses and turns around. “Patience, master voider. This is an effulgency matter. I will speak to her, and all of your questions will be answered in due time.”
“In due time?” I reply. “What does that mean?”
“You really must learn patience,” he says. “Think of the lifetimes the enervated have been trapped in that stone of yours, waiting to be freed. And then think of the brief moment that you’ve spent waiting to talk to this woman.”
His perspective shocks me into silence.
I sit down on the wooden seat.
Chimeline sits next to me, while Colu crashes down on the bench in front of us and puts his feet up, which causes a loud creak to echo through the temple.
The commotion causes Blythe to turn around and stop in place.
“Please be respectful here,” he says. “This is the house of the Unnamed.” But he doesn’t wait for an answer or acquiescence. He simply turns and continues walking down the aisle, his posture as straight as a board.
Meanwhile, Colu lets out a deep laugh that sounds remarkably like the groaning wood we’re sitting on. “That’s what my le-Sante used to say before she left me for you.”
Blythe pauses a few feet from a shadowed doorway near the front of the temple.
Chimeline leans forward and forcefully taps Colu on the shoulder. “We are guests here!” she whispers. “Put your feet down! You act like you built this place.”
Colu laughs again. “I did.”
Chimeline and I exchange a sideways glance.
“You built this temple?” I ask, leaning forward.
He nods, picking his teeth with a fingernail.
My gaze moves to Blythe, who blinks a few times before walking out through the darkened doorway, a gray blur disappearing into the heart of the temple.
A New Presence
The head effulgent rushes into the lofty sanctuary where Chimeline, Colu and I have been waiting for a good half-bell.
In the stillness of this space, her presence is striking. Her white robes flow and rustle behind her. The fabric shimmers subtly as it picks up the colored light from above.
She pulls back her hood, revealing baldness, a gaunt, sexless face, and striking green eyes. With her hooked nose, she almost looks like one of the pigeons she keeps.