Soul Remains

by Sam Hooker

  “No, Your Dominance. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  It was unnerving, watching Vlad swallow her tirade. It was apparent to Sloot that she had very little practice with that sort of thing. He thought that if he’d been born into the greatest line of warriors that the world had ever seen, he’d probably not be very good at holding back his anger either. Of course, the amount of conjecture that Sloot had to put into that assumption was unnerving on its own. Sloot was as far from being the greatest warrior that the world had ever seen as Vlad was from wishing the Domnitor a long reign.

  “Very well,” said Vlad from between clenched teeth. “What are your demands?”

  “Oh, we have no demands,” said Lilacs. “That would be very rude. Very rude, indeed!”

  There was a chorus of agreement from the amphitheater. All of the fairies in attendance nodded.

  “As you prefer,” growled Vlad, her teeth grinding together. “What are your concessions, then?”

  “There is only one, and it is the source of the silence between Our Majesties since my last conversation with Vlad the Twenty-Eighth.” One of Lilacs’ eyebrows went up, and his eyes danced an enticing arc around the room. He evidently hoped to pique everyone’s interest, but predictably ended up only piquing more of Vlad’s irritation. Little credit should be extended to Lilacs for this, as it was exceedingly easy to manage.

  Vlad’s stony silence convinced any excitement that might have otherwise buzzed into the room that it would do well to remain silent.

  “Recognition,” Lilacs said at last.

  Vlad said nothing, but maintained her icy stare.

  Roman cleared his throat. “Recognition, King Lilacs?” he asked on Vlad’s behalf.

  “We have dwelled in the forests of Carpathia since long before you lot started chucking people out of windows,” said Lilacs. “We are as much a part of this land as the humans who call themselves ‘Carpathians,’ if not more so. We would like to hear you say so, please.”

  “Carpathians are Carpathians,” said Vlad. “Fairies are fairies. We do not ask for recognition among your people, why should you want it from us?”

  “Because we got left out!” The air went whump when Lilacs stomped his dainty little foot in midair. Of course, Vlad couldn’t have been seen to be impressed by this tiny marvel of physics, so it was left to Sloot to give a wide-eyed look that was half wonder and half terror. Who knew what else that dainty little foot was capable of doing?

  “You got left out,” Vlad repeated. Her eyes narrowed. They were narrow before, so it was a wonder that they were not now shut altogether.

  “Vlad the First united all of the warlords in the land against the Plutocrat,” said General Dandelion. “Why didn’t he come and talk to me, please? I’d met the Plutocrat before. He was a real jerk. Why didn’t Vlad ask me to bring our army into it, please?”

  Vlad turned to Roman, giving him a blank look. Roman cleared his throat, giving the appearance that this was something they’d planned before everyone else arrived.

  “Er, well,” Roman began, “if the Carpathian history books are to be believed, Vlad the First had amassed a great host. The greatest that the land had ever seen, in fact. Perhaps he already had all the soldiers he needed.”

  “Oh, the history books may indeed be believed,” said Dandelion. “It was a mighty host, far larger than any assembled before, and none have rivaled it since. But he could have stopped far short of that and gotten the job done. Why did he keep recruiting, please? There’s only one logical explanation, thank you: to show off.”

  “To show off?”

  “To strike terror into the hearts of your enemies,” Dandelion continued. “If Vlad the First had asked us to take the field with him on that fateful day, we’d have nearly doubled the size of his host.”

  “Doubled?” marveled Nicoleta.

  “Indeed,” said Dandelion with a wink. “In fact, we’d fully expected him to do so. We’d gotten our armor polished up and everything, so we’d be ready when Vlad came to call on us. We were still standing in formation and waiting when we heard that Vlad had thrown the Plutocrat from his window, and they were forming a new nation! How do you think that made us feel, please?”

  “Left out,” said Lilacs.

  “Left out!” said Dandelion. “Thank you, your Majesty.”

  “You’re welcome, General.”

  “All we’re asking is that you kindly correct an oversight. Recognize the fairies as Carpathians, please, and we can get on with it.”

  If Sloot had been granted a wish in that particular moment, he’d have squandered it. It would have made sense to wish to avert the impending goblin war, or remove the stain of the Serpents of the Earth from history, or possibly even wind back the clock and put himself blissfully back into his cramped apartment above the butcher shop. He’d have given up any measure of adventure for a return to his halcyon days, hunched over his little desk in the Three Bells’ counting house, sweating through his wool suit in the stale air, breathing in the sweet smell of moldering ledgers.

  Even considering all of that, Sloot found himself desperately wishing for something—anything—to break the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over the room. He’d seen Vlad on the battlefield, and had been filled with dread at hearing her bloodthirsty roar. Well, roars would be more accurate. There’s the one she bellows before cleaving two people in half with a single stroke of her longsword, the one she thunders when her hammer pushes her foe’s head down inside his chest, the one she howls when her dagger causes an arterial spray to coat half of her face in a very theatrical way ... the list goes on, but suffice it to say that even though Sloot was terrified to his core by each and every one that he’d ever heard, he’d have taken a dozen of them directly in his face if it meant not having to listen to this particular silence for another instant.

  It was the sort of silence that eroded mountains. Even with hundreds of fairies in the little amphitheater, the absence of sound in the room was so potent that idioms about pins being dropped were far too nervous to get on with themselves. A thousand years of fairy angst was plain on as many fairy faces as they watched Vlad, willing her to agree.

  “No,” said Vlad.

  “No, please?” Lilacs’ voice quivered, his question the very soul of disappointment. It was accompanied by the sound of the dreams of a thousand fairies deflating in unison. Just the sort of thing that could ruin the rest of one’s Saturday, though a Tuesday would be unaffected. Tuesdays are the worst.

  “No,” Vlad repeated. A further silence hanged itself in the air between her Dominance and the fairies, flailing and kicking in the breeze.

  “Well,” Dandelion sighed, “good luck fighting the goblins without—”

  “There’s more to it,” Roman interjected. “If I may, your Dominance?”

  Vlad gave a barely perceptible nod, one rife with loathing for the idea of further explaining a “no.” Vlads the Invader were accustomed to being obeyed, or at least openly challenged with sharpened bits of steel. Explanations were for people who wore spectacles and never got blood on them.

  “Your request for recognition is more than reasonable,” said Roman.

  “Thank you,” said Lilacs.

  “You’re welcome. However, there’s too much at stake for her Dominance to simply acquiesce. Namely, the curse.”

  “We’ve considered that,” said Lilacs. “We’re sure that it doesn’t apply to our army. We asked lawyers and everything.”

  “Fairy lawyers?”

  “Of course! We’ve got quite a few of them. They all specialize in mediation and equity.”

  “It’s a pity that none of them specialize in Carpathian law,” said Roman. “Then they might have known that Vlad’s recognition would make all of you eligible for service in the Carpathian army.”

  “There would have to be an exception,” Dandelion interjected. “Every fairy serves in the fairy army, and—”

  “There are no exceptions.” Vlad’s voice rumbled like a bear
just waking from its long winter slumber, and her tone invited as much scrutiny as said hungry bear would apply to any morsel it deemed edible.

  “Do you know much about curses?” Roman asked.

  “I should think so,” said Lilacs, puffing up his chest. Then his head tilted a bit, and his brow wrinkled. “Well, perhaps not me personally, but several of my kinsmen have studied them at university.”

  A few hands shot up in the little amphitheatre. It probably wasn’t often that that sort of experience became relevant to a conversation, a fact that said fairies’ parents had no doubt pointed out to them when they’d decided on their majors.

  “Oh, that’s good. They could probably have told your lawyers that curses cannot be circumvented by legal means.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “Curses are intricately detailed constructs of Infernal law,” Roman began. “When a wizard casts one, an Infernal legal team gets to work, cataloging every law and precedent of every tangentially relevant system, to define the scope of the curse in a maddeningly precise level of detail.”

  “Meaning, if you please?”

  “Meaning that Vlad couldn’t carve out an exemption for fairy service in the Carpathian army, even if she wanted to. Had that exemption existed before the curse had been uttered, you’d be all set. However, since it was not, it can’t be changed now. Carpathians serve in the Carpathian army, human or otherwise.”

  Dandelion’s hands flew to his hips, and he rounded on Lilacs. “I told you we should’ve had some curse experts working with the lawyers on that one!”

  “That would have made sense,” Lilacs replied, “but I wasn’t about to dictate that sort of thing. Wouldn’t have been fair to the lawyers.”

  Hundreds of tiny fairy heads nodded in agreement.

  “So if I follow,” Lilacs continued, “if Vlad recognizes us as Carpathians, we would be compelled to disband our army and join hers, and then ... what, please? Metaphysics would intervene and, I dunno, turn us all into conscientious objectors or something?”

  “Well,” said Roman, “Carpathian law does not allow for objections to military service, conscientious or otherwise, but something like that.”

  The assembly descended into a sussurus, as everyone suddenly became a legal expert and started whispering their opinions to the person sitting next to them. Any of the actual lawyers could have explained that it doesn’t work that way, but they doubted that anyone was interested in paying their premium rates for the privilege.

  “Enough,” Vlad boomed, her brooding posture no longer content to be mistaken for patience. “The goblins will find their way into Carpathia soon, and no one will be safe unless we fight them together. Will you fight with me or not?”

  “Just a moment, please,” said Lilacs. “We understand that recognition as Carpathians is a fraught subject, but we’ve been overlooked for a thousand years! You can’t just say, ‘sorry, it’s complicated,’ and expect us to say, ‘oh, all right then.’ It wouldn’t be fair!”

  “I didn’t apologize,” Vlad seethed.

  “Do it the other way,” blurted Sloot. His voice had started to climb back up to its proper octave, which was a relief.

  “What?” asked Vlad’s expression, though no words crossed her lips.

  It was an interesting problem. So interesting, in fact, that Sloot had neglected to tremble for the fates of his two nations for a moment while he considered it. If ever there were a place for the ghost of Sloot Peril in international politics, this was it. It wasn’t balancing numbers in columns, but it wasn’t far off. Two parties in a dispute over titular rights in a matter of controlling interest. International politics? Humbug. This was accounting.

  “It’s too problematic to acknowledge the fairies as Carpathians,” said Sloot, “so why don’t you become a fairy?”

  The air sizzled. Sloot was already dead, but he wilted away from the heat of Vlad’s death stare out of respect. That was what you were supposed to do when fearsome warlords glared at you, even if they couldn’t make you any deader than you already were. It was expected.

  Vlad rose slowly, deliberately from her throne. The seething fury in her eyes managed to intensify and fix itself on Sloot. “I am a Carpathian. I am Carpathia!”

  Sloot cringed. He was very good at it. “Forgive me, your Dominance, but so am I. Er, so was I.”

  “Ha!” Vlad spat. “Barely.”

  “Perhaps,” Sloot continued, only mildly wounded, “but I was also a true salt of the Old Country, and a loyal subject of the Domnitor, long may he reign.”

  “That was just your cover.” A nervous laugh floundered out of Roman with all the grace of a drunk whose shoelaces had been tied together. “No need to lay it on so thick, eh?”

  “Well, yes,” said Sloot, “but, in another way … in a more confusing, but also accurate way … one in which, if you look at it objectively, setting aside blind patriotism … that is to say, pragmatically speaking—”

  “Would you mind getting on with it, please?” asked Dandelion.

  “Well, I’m both, aren’t I? A salt and a Carpathian.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Myrtle. “After coming to Carpathia and experiencing real freedom? You still defend the Domnitor—don’t you dare say it—after feeling the weight of his boot lifted from your neck?”

  Long may he reign, thought Sloot to himself. Myrtle hadn’t asked in a way that invited him to a conversation about the subject. It was more like a magician swinging a watch in front of his nose and asking whether he was sleepy, or whether his assistant should knock his head in. Either way, he was going to end up on the floor.

  “It’s not a perfect analogy,” said Sloot, dodging Myrtle’s baleful glare as best he could. “What I mean to say is why couldn’t Vlad be a Carpathian—Carpathia, for that matter—and a fairy at the same time?”

  “Unthinkable!” Vlad splintered the arm of a chair with a well-placed kick. “Out of the question!”

  “Why not, please?” Dandelion fixed Vlad with a squint, looking at her askance.

  “Indeed,” said Lilacs. “What’s so unthinkable about being a fairy, please?”

  “Now, now,” said Roman, his nervous laugh returning for the most awkward encore in Carpathian history. “I’m sure that her Dominance didn’t mean to imply that—”

  “Implications are where cowards go to cry,” Vlad snarled. “I said what I meant, and I’ll slay everyone in this room if—”

  “Incorporate!”

  All eyes were on Sloot. That was horrible in its own right, but at least no one was shouting death threats. Yet.

  “I used to run the numbers for incorporations at the Three Bells all the time,” Sloot continued. “Two separate entities merge into one corporation, for a period of time, to work together toward a common goal.”

  “Carpathia is a sovereign nation,” Vlad sneered, “not a shipping company.”

  “Well, that’s true, but you’re the sovereign, aren’t you? Er, your Dominance?”

  Vlad went back to brooding. Sloot began to wonder if that was just her face’s resting position. But before he was able to consider it further, or reach any sort of conclusion, bad timing reared its ugly head and he found himself elsewhere.

  Wink and a Bob

  Winking Bob’s sitting room was a lavish, airy affair. Impressive, especially given that it was most likely situated in an unused sewer tunnel, like every other place associated with Bob’s black market. It had nothing on the views that Sloot had seen in places like Whitewood and Gildedhearth, the resplendent mansions of the late Lords Hapsgalt, but views were notoriously difficult to come by underground, where they almost certainly were. Pristine white upholstery was likewise impressive in such a filthy place.

  Bob was wearing her reaping smirk. The last time she’d spoken to Sloot, she’d made it clear that unless he was able to help her kidnap the Domnitor, long may he reign, she’d attach the disastrous financial report that was the source of all of Sloot’s tribula
tions to the blank piece of paper he’d signed. She could use that to drive financial markets into utter chaos and ruin, leaving her the only person to turn a profit.

  Sloot hadn’t delivered, of course. Moreover, the Domnitor had been kidnapped by Vlad the Invader, and Bob’s penetrating stare made it clear that she knew Sloot had something to do with it.

  “I don’t need any proof,” said Bob with a wry smile. “I’m holding all of the cards! I’m a woman of my word, and I told you I’d collect from you one way or the other.”

  “All aforementioned references to concepts of proof and promises shall be interpreted in theoretical contexts,” said Edmund, “no evidence being available that said references ever took place.”

  Sloot trembled for the fate of the global economy.

  Fortunately for the global economy, Myrtle was getting the hang of tagging along with Sloot when he was unexpectedly summoned away. Perks of being a demon who knew a thing or two about the future.

  “Careful,” Myrtle sneered. “That’s a demon’s boyfriend you’re threatening.”

  Bob smiled in the unsettling way that every gran in Salzstadt knows how to do. It would not be entirely unbelievable to learn that they’d all gone to school for it, so subtle was its execution. Originally designed as a response to “I’m not eating these vegetables, and you can’t make me,” it worked surprisingly well in conversations with demons, too.

  “It’s a pity you don’t want to be friends anymore,” said Bob, a hint of a pout creeping across her face like a burglar with a sack full of silverware. “How quickly we forget who it was who brought us up from nothing. Edmund?”

  “Statements pertaining to the alleged past associations between parties allegedly engaged in conversation at this or any other point in time shall not be admissible in any deliberation regarding the enterprise thereof, owing to the degree of speculation that may or may not have been involved therein.”

  “Blow it out your ears,” Myrtle spat. “We’re not friends, we’re not associates, and if you continue threatening Sloot, I’ll stop withholding my demonic compulsion to do some impromptu quilting with your skin.”