by Matt Wallace
Sirach ponders that silently for a moment before saying, “Well then… should we invite him to join us?”
Evie’s head turns toward her, both her brows raised high and tight.
“Is that something you’d enjoy?”
Sirach shrugs. “I suppose I think about it the way I thought when you first proposed, after a life spent killing every Savage I see, that I ally myself with them to attack the largest nation in the known history of the world.”
“And what did you think?” Evie asks.
Sirach’s grin is an animal flash of teeth in the dark.
“It sounds like a good time,” she says.
THE GRAY AFTER THE STORM
THE PLANNER’S HIDDEN CHAMBER WITHIN the Cadre is unusually empty. Dyeawan’s tender is parked in the spot formerly reserved for Edger’s seat at the concentric stone circles that serve as the planner’s meeting table. She is the winding slab’s sole occupant. Quan serves her hot tea in a small cup. The attendant is forced to double his body over to pour the steaming, camellia-scented concoction. He still wears the black band of mourning around the right sleeve of his brown tunic.
“Thank you,” Dyeawan says. “You really needn’t fuss over me so, Mister Quan.”
“It is what he would have wanted,” Quan insists. “You were as a daughter to him.”
Those words sink hooks into her heart and drag the organ in opposite directions, but Dyeawan doesn’t allow the sensation to reshape her expression. She sips her tea silently, bowing her head in thanks to the kindly attendant.
Riko enters the chamber, her gaze clearly overwhelmed by its features and its mere existence. The lithe builder’s tanto-edged bangs are bound up in a topknot, and there are fresh grease stains streaking her tool-encumbered vest.
“This room is impossible,” she observes, her eyes soaking in every feature like a thirsty sponge. “I mean… like, truly impossible. Architecturally, I don’t understand how it exists.”
“This room is only the beginning of the impossible,” Dyeawan assures her.
Riko cocks her head, regarding the winding stone snake with Dyeawan as its head.
“This table doesn’t make much sense,” she says. “It’s not impossible, it’s just… stupid.”
Dyeawan grins. “I think it’s meant to be symbolic.”
The bridge of Riko’s small nose becomes a mass of wrinkles. “I detest form over function.”
Dyeawan shakes her head, never ceasing to enjoy the bluntness and honesty in Riko’s perception of the world and the people in it.
“Will you come to sit with me? Please?”
Riko leaps up onto the outermost circle of the stone slab, gleefully skipping across each interior circle with a smile untouched by the judgment of others until she reaches the center point beside which Dyeawan’s tender rests. Riko hunkers down with a giggle and sits atop the table, folding her legs comfortably. She uncoils the toggles of her overburdened vest, its dozens upon dozens of tools jostling and jangling as she slips it from her slight shoulders and lays it next to her.
Riko leans back, resting on the heels of her palm. “I feel like we’re getting away with something being here, yeah?”
Dyeawan nods. “I know precisely what you mean.”
Riko’s impish smile fades, the clouds of dark memory sweeping across her eyes.
“I’m sorry about Edger,” she says. “I know he meant a lot to you.”
“He will always mean a lot to me,” Dyeawan admits, and that much is true.
More than the act itself, Dyeawan regrets not being able to tell Riko the truth about Edger’s death. Riko is her truest friend, perhaps the first one she’s ever known, but she wouldn’t understand. She can’t understand, not yet, not without having seen inside Edger’s head the way Dyeawan did and having witnessed the results. Perhaps one day, when Riko knows the whole truth about Crache, Dyeawan will be able to reveal everything to her.
Riko leans forward and whispers almost conspiratorially. “Are they really going to let you lead the planners? I mean…”
“You don’t have to whisper, Riko. And no one is going to ‘let’ me do anything, not anymore. I’m going to do what needs to be done, regardless of what they want. They need us. Really, there is no ‘they’ anymore. They are gone. We are the new ‘they.’ Do you understand?”
Riko stares at her in awe, and with something skittish underlying that awe, fear for her friend, perhaps.
“I need to ask you something,” Dyeawan says.
“Of course.”
Dyeawan turns and raises her hand, looking like a tentative child in the back of a classroom requesting permission to speak.
Quan strides forward, his usual broad and warm smile on his face as he bears forth the same gray tunic he once presented to Dyeawan.
Riko watches him approach, her mouth agape and her eyes wide and rapidly blinking.
“What… what’s this?”
“I need someone I absolutely trust to sit here as a planner,” Dyeawan explains. “You deserve to be here, anyway. You have the best mind and the most capable hands in the entire Cadre.”
“What about… I mean, what about Tahei? He—”
“I still like Tahei. I believe he has a good heart, but he lets what he doesn’t have and others do poison him. He acts on his emotions too often.”
Riko clearly doesn’t understand the implications of that statement, but she’s more overcome by Dyeawan’s request.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Riko protests. “Everything is happening so fast.”
“This is overdue,” Dyeawan reminds her.
“I just don’t think—”
“If this isn’t something you want, I won’t force it on you. I wouldn’t do that to a friend. But I think you do want this. You just thought it could never happen, so you let yourself believe it shouldn’t happen.”
Riko’s eyes soften on her, the doubt and shock beginning to melt from her features.
“Tell me if I’m wrong,” Dyeawan bids her.
Riko shakes her head. “You’re not wrong. You’re never wrong, it seems like.”
“Then please accept, Riko. You’re my best friend. I need you.”
Riko hesitates a moment longer, then she nods several times in quick succession, a genuine smile spreading across her lips.
Dyeawan smiles. “Thank you.”
Riko slides down from the tabletop and throws her arms around Dyeawan’s shoulders, rocking her from side to side atop the litter. “Thank you!”
Dyeawan can’t help laughing as she gratefully returns the embrace. “I told you, it’s overdue.”
Riko releases her and turns to Quan, staring at the tunic with hands cupped against her chest as if she is afraid to touch it, lest the back of her palms be rebuked by a switch.
Quan bows to her, deeply, extending the tunic between his arms.
“Go try it on,” Dyeawan bids her. “It’s a little stiff and it takes some getting used to, but I think the color will suit you better than it does me.”
Riko accepts the tunic, grinning unabashedly.
“Can I… I mean, is it all right to still call you ‘Slider’?”
Dyeawan nods, the question inspiring a warm sensation in her chest.
“I still like the name,” she says. “Especially when a friend uses it. I suppose I just… I didn’t want to need the name anymore. Does that make sense?”
“I think I get it. Can I… try this on now?”
Dyeawan smiles. “Please.”
Riko practically skitters away, clasping the tunic against her.
They watch her go with shared pleasure, Quan smiling down at Dyeawan without comment.
A repeated echoing from the shadows filling the far side of the chamber draws their attention. It is the sound of two gloved hands clapping, slowly, with monotonous insincerity.
A moment later Oisin, still mocking Dyeawan with praise, steps from the shadows. The Protectorate Ministry agent is also smiling, but his i
s an expression filled with malice.
“And to think,” Oisin muses ruefully, “when I first saw you winding the corridors on that contraption I thought you the most pathetic of Edger’s pet rats.”
“Please leave us,” Dyeawan gently bids Quan.
The impossibly tall attendant immediately bows to her, though he does cast a sidelong glance of disdain in Oisin’s direction. Quan strides from the room in the same direction Riko left it.
“Are you here to kill me?” Dyeawan asks Oisin a moment later without a trace of fear or anticipation in her voice.
The agent laughs, empty and hollow and forced. “What a question.”
Dyeawan frowns. “If you aren’t going to kill me, what do you want?”
“How did you do it?” Oisin asks. “How did you cause Edger’s death? I know somehow you did, but I cannot for the life of me imagine how you arranged it.”
Dyeawan remains perfectly calm. “Edger spent his life with a wild creature’s teeth at his throat. It allowed him to speak, but he knew it came with great risk.”
Oisin waves a hand dismissively. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. His time was passing with or without you.”
“It matters very much,” Dyeawan disagrees.
“You cannot really believe you’ll sit in his place at that table, can you? You’ve been privy to enough Cadre information to know what we’re facing. There’s a full-blown rebellion in the east that must be dealt with. There’s an army marching on our border. You’re a child, however clever. You’re not equipped—”
“Stop speaking to me,” Dyeawan orders the sour-faced agent, and surprise more than anything else momentarily silences him. “Maybe Edger enjoyed dueling you with words, but I don’t. I find you very unpleasant, and I refuse to endure unpleasant, malicious men any longer. I don’t want to hear your complaints or your opinions or your accusations. Edger created you as a tool. You will act as one, and you will speak only as much as one of Riko’s vise grips from this moment forward.”
Oisin stares incredulously down at her.
“You impudent little—”
“There is nothing you can do to me. Nothing. Unless you are willing to take out your dagger and kill me here and now, you will do exactly as I say. You will do it because I am the only one left who knows what Edger knew and truly understands his methods. No one else has seen the whole of the picture. They only have pieces. No one else can replace him.”
“You think my only option is to murder you? Do you realize who I am? Do you comprehend the resources at my disposal?”
“You are a specter created by a dead man to frighten the ignorant, and nothing more. What will you do, Oisin? Rally the Protectorate Ministry to overthrow the Planning Cadre? What do you imagine occurs in the wake of such an act? Crache would fall apart. You know how to protect secrets and make people disappear. You haven’t the slightest idea how to maintain the machinery of Crache, whether this rebellion in the east you refer to succeeds or not. Not to mention you would have to rule openly. The people would rise against you before your first year saw its end. The Protectorate Ministry only functions in the shadows. Standing in the light of day you are powerless, and you know it.”
Oisin’s eyes are smoldering, but there is a tight-lipped recognition of the truth in her words, even if he isn’t ready to consciously accept it.
“You forget you are not the only planner in this keep. You are not even the—”
“Yes. The old men and women who wear this pendant would certainly side with you. Perhaps they hold enough sway in the Cadre to cast me and the other young planners out. What will you be left with when they are the only ones seated at this table? Every worthwhile idea they’ve had has been realized. They are equally worthless to you. Edger knew this, that’s one of the reasons he gave me this tunic, to drive them out. Planners, Oisin, don’t rule Crache. Leaders rule it. You have no leaders. You have no one to comprehend the shape of things, let alone reshape them as needed.”
“Is that what you are, little girl? Are you a leader?”
“I will learn,” she says, her resolve brooking no dissent. “I am very good at that, Oisin.”
The Protectorate Ministry agent swallows imperceptibly, the battle all but drained from his expression.
“I should say you’re off to a fair start,” he admits, however reluctant. “We shall see how you finish.”
“Say my name,” she instructs him.
Oisin blinks at her in surprise. “What? What do you—”
“I wish to hear you say my name. I wish to hear you say it with respect and recognition rather than disdain. If you cannot say my name without those qualities imbued in it then you and I obviously remain at odds. I do not wish to be at odds with you. I must know if I will be forced to resolve the matter another way.”
Oisin no longer seems to recognize her. The look on his face is surprised, even astonished. Dyeawan imagines he isn’t used to being bested, let alone by someone he thought of as a defenseless child confined to a chair with wheels, a little girl who should be vulnerable and frightened and grateful for the smallest kindness.
“As you wish, Dyeawan,” he says, and though it is quiet, the only emotion contained in his voice is repressed fear.
Dyeawan nods, her expression satisfied.
“You may go now.”
Oisin turns, sweeping his cape over his shoulder and pacing back into the shadows of the chamber.
Dyeawan waits for the report of his footfalls to become very far away before she commands him to halt.
“Oisin,” she calls to him.
The sounds of his footfalls cease.
“Gather as many agents as you need. I want you to remove every body from the bottom of the bay. You will have them properly wrapped. You will build pyres for each. They will be burned and you will show them all the deference and respect they deserve. I want it done immediately, in secret. I know you can manage that.”
No immediate answer is forthcoming. Dyeawan imagines Oisin stroking or perhaps gripping the handle of his dagger there in the dark, reconsidering the notion of slitting her throat and seizing the power he’d no doubt been dreaming of since Edger’s body was carried back to the Cadre.
Dyeawan knows the next moment will either solidify her new position or destroy it.
She finds to her surprise that her heart isn’t beating any faster than it would otherwise.
“As you wish,” Oisin repeats mechanically.
Dyeawan feels muscles she wasn’t even aware were tensed suddenly relax. The rest of her, most importantly her expression and voice, remain unchanged.
“Thank you,” she says. “There is one other matter with which I require your assistance. It is a service you and the Ministry are in a unique position to provide, being the authority on unearthing secret knowledge.”
She can practically hear his teeth grinding as Oisin asks, “And what is that?”
“I want to know where I come from,” she says. “I want to know who my parents were.”
“Why does that matter?”
Oisin sounds genuinely confused.
It takes a moment for Dyeawan to respond. Her mind is momentarily preoccupied with all those memories she can’t quite bring into focus, and an image of Edger, telling her again and again how special and unique she is and asking her about her origins.
“It may not matter at all,” Dyeawan admits. “It may also be very important. In either case, I want to know.”
“Even if I could find out what you want to know, aren’t you concerned I’d use such information against you?”
Dyeawan has weighed that very concern against her need to learn the answer, just as she’s sized up Oisin as an adversary.
“You don’t concern me, Oisin,” she says with finality. “Now you may go.”
For a moment she thinks he has a retort in him, but it never comes.
Dyeawan listens to the final chorus of his fading footfalls, and when she’s certain that he’s left the chamber her body invol
untarily slumps against the litter of her tender. Rationally she knew that their conversation would proceed and end precisely as it unfolded, but the part of her that will never truly leave the alleys of the Bottoms remained terrified that this entire illusion would shatter.
Just don’t lie to yourself, Dyeawan entreats like a silent mantra. You’re pretending you know what’s going to happen next, but you don’t.
She doesn’t. Dyeawan has no idea what will happen next. She has no plan beyond the actions she’s taken thus far. She only knows there must be change. There must be a way to make room in this world for all people, especially the weakest among them. She cannot accept that people like her are a burden at their worst, and a cheap and expendable resource at their best.
FINAL SELECTION
DOORS OF ROTTED WOOD ARE flung open and Taru and the rest are prodded from inside the darkened tunnel out into the harsh light of day. Taru limps across an expansive field of dead grass surrounded by tall walls beginning to crumble from age and neglect. The retainer has been divested of armor and short sword and hook-end, left in the simple street tunic and trousers they’ve always worn beneath. Taru has never felt so naked and vulnerable as an adult. The retainer’s hands physically ache to cradle the well-worn handle of a weapon.
There are perhaps fifty of them, gathered from three separate cities, including the Capitol. Taru has only been able to surmise this by interrogating several of them in the tunnels. It’s whispered that there are a few hardened murderers and criminals among them, but most of these people seem to be petty thieves or simply vagrants. The only quality they all seem to share is that no one in Crache who matters will miss them.
“Form a line!” a mush-mouthed voice hollers at the collection of minor lawbreakers and out-of-doors folk. “Facing me! Spread out an arm apart from each other, and stand straight! I don’t give a stallion’s steaming load whether you’re drunk, sick, or half dead! Stand! Now!”
The voice belongs to stocky man with the shoulders of a bull. His small head is shaved completely bald, making his thin mustache stand out far more than it should. He wears a tunic that is quite obviously too long for him, almost reaching his knees. He’s at least had enough sense to tear away the sleeves. Over the tunic, he’s strapped an armored leather vest decorated with the polished skulls of small animals, including a fanged monkey’s maw on his chest.