~~
After an hour or so, Nephilim appeared. He looked at her, surprised, but didn't say anything.
“How is he?” she asked.
Silent, Nephilim walked across the space and sat to her left. He looked up, either at the apples above him or the light-globes which fed the tree. “He's fine. The man lost a lot: he barely had anything left when you brought him to me.”
Maya looked at her boots. She still didn't know his name. She thought of asking Nephilim, but that would be the easy way out. The only fair thing to do was to ask herself.
“Are you out because you think you've worked things out?” Nephilim asked after a while.
She nodded, feeling his gaze on her. “Yeah. That 'dive' really helped. I don't think I'd have put it all together without that.” Her throat started to twitch uncomfortably. She rubbed her neck to soothe it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, examining her closely.
“Fine. It's just a cough.”
“Good. Then you're ready.”
Maya rubbed harder, trying to quell the twitch. She coughed violently and brought up some phlegm, thick and salty. Spitting it out, she went into another fit of coughs but this time the twitching stopped. Dropping her hands, she breathed in slowly.
“You sure you're okay?”
“I'm fine. Do you want to test my theory, make sure it's right?”
“No.”
It was the obvious answer. Maya sighed. “Why?”
“I don't want to question what you've tied together, what you think is true. Whatever you have, your thoughts and logic, is good enough for now. Everything relies on the strength of your belief. You will learn, adjust your perceptions, and perhaps eventually get things right... but what matters is that you're confident in what you know. I would achieve nothing by telling you if you were wrong. Learning for yourself will make you more powerful because you will have put the facts together. You can't have the power of a god unless you've built your own Universe.”
“'The power of a god?'”
Nephilim waved a hand at her. “A metaphor, Maya: nothing more.”
“So even if I'm wrong, I'll be stronger than if you set me right?”
Nephilim shrugged. “Admittedly, I'm putting faith in your mental acuity, but you don't seem the type to just accredit everything to a god or to magic. Your mind seems more inquisitive and unaccepting than that.”
“Thank you, I think” Maya blushed. Then she started fiddling with her robes, squeezing the material and running it through her hands. “Will you tell me anything about the Disciples, Warmth, my dive... anything? I'm not good with faith, Nephilim. I need facts.”
He shook his head. “So what, you want one fact every day? One little truth to reinforce your being here? A tiny rope of reality which will keep you from flight?”
“You know what? Forget it.” Maya got to her feet, dropping her robe. “I'll make my way out of here and leave you to this precious method you've inherited and that poor man.”
“Fine then, go. You're not unique. Strong, but not unique. I would have taught this to anyone who told me of the Disciples. You are replaceable, so your histrionics will have no effect. Either sit down and have an adult conversation or go.”
He pointed toward the ladder.
Maya span and threw out her arms. “Nephilim, I was just asking for some fucking truth after a lifetime of being lied to.”
“No, you were asking me to convince you to stay.” His mouth pulled into a sneer for just a moment. “The answers won't just appear before you, which goes against your entire life of knowing they would regardless of how you succeeded. This is going to be hard, will require a lot of introspection, so you want to know I'll hold your hand through all of this.”
Maya sneered back at him. “And this is you giving me a purpose? 'Sort yourself out, just be what I need you to be?' That's right, isn't it? I'm nothing more than a weapon to you. And now that I show the least bit of humanity, you distance yourself. Because you've already abandoned that part of you, haven't you? When you took the title of 'Woodsman,' you killed off your emotions and beat down your humanity.”
Nephilim flinched at this.
“Hah, look at you. I'm close aren't I? You, the 'god of your Universe,' can't even handle the anger of an eighteen year old girl! What have I to learn from you, beside the mechanics of this Cyrus Force? You're powerful, Nephilim, but you're not strong. That's why I almost killed you: when faced with something you hadn't expected, you could only defend yourself. Well, here I am again, something unexpected. I need more than whatever this plan you've had passed down. And what do you do? Defend yourself. Pathetic.”
Maya took a deep breath, feeling a little better, and sat down.
“You hate feeling weak, don't you?” Nephilim said eventually. He looked shocked, couldn't keep eye contact with her.
“Who doesn't?”
“Knowledge is power, and you need power to feel comfortable, right?”
“Knowledge is power? Sounds like an old aphorism...” Maya considered what he'd said, feeling calmer for having said her piece. “You might be on to something there, but you've swerved the real issue and brought the attention back onto me. Which means you're either callously ignoring my point, or you're still trying to understand what I said, trying to buy yourself some time. Which is it, Nephilim?”
He gave a small smile. “The latter. You surprise me, Maya, and I'll admit a weakness: I've no idea what to make of you.”
“A weapon. That's what you wanted, right? To make a weapon of me. You can read emotions, but you chose not to because it would humanise me, make it difficult for you to shape me into a tool to fight your war.”
“Not just my war, Maya, not just my war...” He looked away, smile fading. “But yes, a weapon. It seems you're much too... complex for that though.”
“Complex? I can accept that.” Maya looked at the back of his head, the long blonde hair that fell down over his shoulders. “So what will you do? You said it yourself, I was just present when you found out about the Disciples; I'm nothing. You can easily find someone more malleable to take your prescribed method. So do I go or do you change your mind?”
He looked back at her with a renewed grin. “You really know how to present a challenge.”
She gazed at the domed ceiling. That outburst had been coming for a while, with her pent up frustration and anger. Maya felt better, lighter.
Nephilim watched her, waited. Then, much like when Warmth had backed him into a corner, Nephilim threw his arms up and shouted “Fine!” He stood and moved away from the tree. “Fine, I'll do things a little more your way, but you're not allowed to question me over this.”
“I'm not wearing a gag for you, Nephilim.”
His face twitched. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he seemed to blush. “All right, we'll do things as you please. But within certain limits.”
“To my original question, will you tell me about the Disciples, Warmth, and Cyrus Force?”
He nodded. “As much as you need to know.” When Maya crossed her arms, he held his hands out. “Listen, there is much which won't concern you, that has no... no place to be brought up. The minutiae of history is useless, and I also don't want to tell you things which will break your image of the world.”
She blinked, thought it weird to hear him lapse into the Old Language for a moment. “All right. But what does minutiae mean? It's an Old Language word but...”
“Fine details: it means the fine details. ”
“Thank you.”
“Are you ready?” he asked, strangely nervous.
“Yes. Are you?”
“I need to be,” Nephilim replied, his face darkening. “Too much is at stake.”
'The first real challenge that Geos faced was the Disciples, those hateful engines of Lun that still bash numbly against our borders. They swept in from the East and destroyed all they saw. That was the First Invasion. The Contegons, formed by the First Servant, fought them off but a
t great cost: exemplars like Contegon Corner Strength gave their lives to save us. In the aftermath of the First Invasion, the First Servant knew that the Contegons could not manage this war alone so she ordered a new Station to be created: the Shield. To fight these aggressors, she gave power to men, an act she privately came to regret.'
--Further extracts from the 'Treatise on the First Servant'.
30
Pitch bolted awake with a scream. No other sleeper even so much as rustled as Call's nights were often filled with such outbursts now. Maybe it even made the others feel better about the nightmares that plagued them each night.
He had dreamt of Snow again as he huddled on the floor with the other captives. He saw Snow die every night, saw him running for days, pursued by vicious Disciples who wouldn't tire and wouldn't relent. His son was always on his last ounce of energy when the creatures caught him, and his death was always quick and brutal.
Pitch stood and left the house they slept in for some fresh air. Outside, Disciples guarded the front door, golden guards to keep their captives where they wanted them. The two creatures looked him up and down, assessing him, readying their terrible weapons, and then decided he was no threat and stepped aside.
Pitch watched them and had to cross his arms to stop himself taking a swing at them. He'd only break his hand and get shot. It would be satisfying though.
Lun was not in the night sky. Pitch knew why: he was here in Call. Lanterns lit the streets in horrible, low light. He looked down at his clothes, still stained with Scar's blood, and saw a butchers' apron covered in his last murderous session. Blinking and rubbing his eyes didn't help but at least this nightmare was tangible, grounding. He breathed in the night air and thought of Snow, prayed for Snow.
This cleared the images of his son's viscera. Turning, he went to fall sleep again. But the Disciples did not react to him trying to enter the house. In fact, they looked... odd: they stared across the street at nothing, frozen in place and pose even more so than usual.
Allowing himself a small flare of hope, Pitch approached slowly, got so close that his breath condensed on their gleaming skin.
They didn't react.
He moved his hand before their unnatural eyes.
No reaction.
The flare of hope caught on kindling. Maybe they'd broken down! Maybe he could escape. Scar had mentioned something about the Disciples being much more intelligent before he... before, so they could have burnt themselves out with the exertion.
He pressed his hand against the Disciple's face. It was bitterly cold, and his palm tingled. Again, no reaction. With a deep breath, Pitch opened the front door.
Suddenly, something gripped his shoulder. He cried out and turned. One of the Disciples had grabbed him.
“Wh-what is it?” he asked. He didn't expect a reaction: they never talk.
It dragged him away from its kin and pushed him into the street. The other Disciple turned and entered the house. Everyone inside screamed, but soon they were shouting: “Hey, what are you doing?”; “Get off me!”; “Where are we going?”; and one indignant “Don't you know what time it is?”
His house-mates were forcibly ejected. They gathered around Pitch and his escort, looking like scared, tired ghouls in the cruel light.
“What's going on?” Mug asked, his face more haggard than most. He was a Blacksmith, in his sixties, and he'd lost his wife and adult daughters when a stray bullet had ignited his home. His nightmares must have been worse than Pitch's. At least Pitch had hope.
“I don't know,” Pitch said, rubbing his arms to put warmth into them. “I came out for some air and when I went to go back in they grabbed me.”
“I don't like it,” Caution said. She stood with Flower, an almost-catatonic teenage girl who was one of the first captured. “They're probably collecting us together to kill us all.”
Pitch glowered at her. The panicked household whispered amongst themselves or started crying. “That doesn't make sense, Caution: why capture us to slaughter us days later? No, this is... this is something else.”
He didn't say what, people could imagine well enough for themselves. Others still hoped that the Council would send more forces, reclaim Call, but Pitch was not so optimistic. He felt that they would be taken to Moenian, the home of the Disciples, well before the Council could react. He watched the Disciples shepherd the last captive from the house and cursed them.
The Disciple beside him clicked, making everyone jump. Then it pushed people into a rough line with Pitch at its head, stood before him and started walking. They were being led somewhere. It seemed they were to find out why the Disciples had captured them.
Pitch kept his mind clear, calm. The emptiness of the streets, the horrible lanterns, and the rhythmic clank and whirr of the Disciples did not affect him as he disconnected himself from what was happening. His world became his marching feet and his slow, cautious breath. He was an expert at keeping calm.
The other captives screamed questions at the Disciples and one another, or tried to break ranks and escape. Without breaking pace, the Disciples fired at the road before the fleeing people each time, letting them know that there was a point they couldn't cross and keep living.
The escapees always returned to the line. After a few escape attempts, his house learned their lesson and no more tried to flee.
Leak, a wide-eyed Merchant, jogged forward and took Pitch's shoulder. He leant and whispered “I think some of us could make it if we scattered, went in different directions, confused them. They only have two weapons.”
“No,” Pitch replied from his calm centre. “Their accuracy is greater than our speed. And would you want to be someone who didn't get away?”
Leak didn't like this reply. He pouted slightly as he said. “I would get away and so would you.”
Pitch intensely disliked Leak. He was the kind of man who gave Merchants a bad name, who sadly rose very high in their shared Station. “Firstly, I don't accept proposals from those who benefit greatly from them. Secondly, where would you go? It's not like the Disciples sleep...” A flash of Snow being gored rippled his thoughts like a pond disturbed by a dumped corpse. “You wouldn't get away, not from this many. There must be at least fifty of them.”
“The women and children got away,” he replied, his voice bitter.
Pitch snapped. With one sudden movement, he elbowed Leak in the nose. The coward, middle-aged and vile, screamed and fell to the ground, bleeding. “Wha' the fu'?”
“You're an idiot, Leak. Do you really think the Disciples can't hear you? And you dared, you fucking dared, to be angry that the women and children got away? That's all that's keeping some of us going, that our loved ones having outrun these Sol-forsaken creations.” He jabbed towards one of the Disciples but dropped his finger quickly when it turned to him.
The Disciple turned its head on one side, as though curious. This almost-human expression calmed Pitch's rage, if only because it disturbed him so.
Leak was helped to his feet by his fellow captives. Some found Leak disgusting. Others shot daggers at Pitch for dashing their own selfish hopes of escape. Hope can be a very fine thing but to use others as armour is sick and wrong. Pitch wanted to spit at every one of them who hated him for condemning their thoughts.
Instead, he turned back to the Disciple, its head still cocked, and waited for the sign to keep moving. And he couldn't decide which sight he found the more revolting.
31
Days later, Wasp got up after Chain fell asleep. Street lights shone in through his window, painting everything in the sickly grey they loved to cast: his wide bed and its cotton dressing, his desk, his walk-in wardrobe, and his sleeping wonder.
He took them in for a moment before slipping out of the room.
Naked, he wandered through his large home, his way now lit by dying candles. He wasn't looking for something, or stretching his legs, or worrying about some intruder. No, he was thinking. Chain had stayed over twice in the last four days. The
Servants let her in without ringing the House Alarm now. She was getting to be a fixture. This presented a problem for Wasp, one that he couldn't face with her so close.
This house was his father's. Wasp owned it now, but he would never think of it as anything other than his father's. Every inch held the old man's personality like rot. Perhaps he was being unkind. Rubbing his hands over the walls, feeling his toes press against the wood, marble, or carpet, Wasp felt his father's will. Even if he owned this building for the rest of his life, it wouldn't be his. He'd have to knock the place down to really take ownership of it.
Not that he ever could. Besides the prohibitive costs, it would almost be sacrilege to tear the place down. These joined houses were a monument to how one can come from nothing, from the slums of Outer Aureu, and become the greatest Merchant in Geos. Wasp knew this because his father had told him every day.
After minutes of wandering, he stepped into an empty room. Many rooms stood empty after Wasp had cleared out all the extraneous furniture, the opulent billiards tables and the multiple bathrooms. Whilst the house was Ant's, the contents were Wasp's, and he didn't hold with so much valuable furniture just sitting around.
The room he chose that night was once an enormous bath. The iron taps and deep, marble bath were gone. All that remained were the tiles and the cold.
Wasp crossed his arms and leant against a wall. When the door closed behind him, he was plunged into darkness. The room was silent. Everyone slept. All that broke the stillness were his thoughts, crazed and erratic. He let them out, was safe to do so only here.
“Oh, Chain, could you understand the conflict you provide? No, I doubt you could. Not just because of your deficient mental capabilities or your gender, but because you didn't have parents as great as mine: you were raised by teacher and trainer, books and briefs. My question was stupid, then. Rhetorical even.”
Wasp blinked and heard what he'd just said. He grabbed his head and moaned, kneeling. Did he mean all that? Chain was an able partner for his verbal jousts. She could talk at length about politics and Solaric philosophy. So how could he consider her to be deficient? Add that she could almost certainly break both his arms before he could raise a hand, and you have someone who must be an equal. Surely?
Did he genuinely think of her as lesser? Or were those Ant's words on his lips?
Wasp punched the tiled wall. Twice. His knuckles cracked at the second strike, so he resisted a third one and instead licked his bruised skin. He tasted blood. The logical part of him knew he was stuck in a cycle, that there was some illness in him. The past two nights she'd stayed, he had spent his evening disparaging Chain, believing with everything he was that she was below him and should act as such... and then being furious with himself, despairing of his prejudices and begging Sol or anyone who would listen for forgiveness.
He crumpled against the wall and cradled his scattered head. “My dear love, forgive me, please. What is wrong with me?”
The house refused to answer, as though indignant that the son of Ant should apologise to a woman. Stuck between his father and Chain, he wept in the darkness.
His friends would jeer if they saw him like that. His father would have beaten him 'til he was but a smear on the wall. And his Mother would have let that happen, having no spine or soul of her own. Wasp roared, furious, at the thought of his weak Mother.
But then he pictured Chain coming to him, understanding and caring, strong and capable. She wouldn't comfort him if she knew about this. No, she'd respect him, just talk. She'd love him and that would be enough.
Or at least it should be. Why couldn't the love of a Contegon be enough for him? The love of someone who was beloved by Sol, who had been chosen by Him to serve Geos. Why wasn't it enough? Why?
His thoughts carried on like this, spiralling in on themselves, bringing paroxysms of rage as they dug into him.
Wasp was the defective one. He came to that conclusion after a few more outbursts. Having been raised in a domineered family with no strong female role models, he'd had the idea of the weak woman and the strong man bred into him. Ant always talked about the Shields and how they were the true protectors of Sol: the Contegons were only in the way, distractions. He had subscribed to a very particular kind of Solarism, one which believed that an error in the original translation of the Sol Lexic was to blame for the formation of the Contegons. 'Revisionists,' they called themselves. It was not woman who held the strength of Sol but man. They said that the First Servant made an error in writing out the second Sol Lexic... in public at least. In private, darker things were whispered.
Whilst not strictly Heretical, Revisionism was a taboo belief. But it was a strong one amongst certain members of the Solaric Council... at least, according to Ant.
Sometimes Wasp wondered what had happened to him to make his father into a Revisionist. His parents certainly hadn't been. Ant had been a member of the Shields briefly before he was rendered incapable by a stray bullet, losing an arm, so maybe he blamed a Contegon for that wound. Maybe he saw something during the war that changed him.
Or maybe he had just been a horrible person, like the son he came to raise.
Wasp stood. He swayed unevenly, on his feet and in his mind, and found no peace. Sol was soon to rise, banishing Lun and taking Wasp's pain with him. He would sleep when Chain had gone, run his inherited business in a few hours of daylight, numb as he concentrated on the tribulations of his new empire. Whenever Chain arrived, he felt happy, light. His worries and thoughts became joyful to match her entire being.
It was only when she slept, there but not there, that his mind tore him apart.
Wasp returned to his bedroom, to his bed, and wrapped himself around his sleeping love, indulging in her warmth like a parasite. The cycle would recommence as soon as she woke.
For Wasp, everything hinged on her, this beautiful creature, this eidolon of Sol. Everything in his life depended on Chain now. Perhaps every man thought this about the woman he loved, but to Wasp it was true. He knew that whatever would happen to him was down to her. He had no real control over how this relationship would pan out: it was all hers, all Chain’s.
She turned over, mumbling something in her sleep. Watching her, holding her, he realised it would take very little to break him. One look, one gesture, could cement his feelings one way or the other. Chain was his saviour or his damnation.
That was how it has always been, the Contegons determining the fates of those in lower Stations. Much as it irked him, Wasp was no different.
Soon, morning would shatter the night and scatter the stars to the winds. Now that Wasp had decided that his fate was out of his hands, that his future had always had been in Sol's care, his eyes closed and sleep took him. Sol would decide what would be, and all would be well.
All would be well.