Deep Echoes

  ~~

  Forum thrived that night, enjoying the early days of spring: taverns pulsed with fiddle and guitar music; restaurants conversed excitedly with the street outside; people swayed from parlours to dens, waving bottles at the moon and greeting one another with hugs or bone-breaking handshakes. The contrast with Aureu couldn't have been starker.

  Wafts of food, alcohol, and sweat assailed Maya. She had never been in Forum at night, but she loved it: people joyously waved at her, a complete stranger, and she waved back with a smile.

  “I'm home,” she whispered as the revellers stumbled into another tavern.

  Maya grew up just half a mile south from the Great Road in an area called Fixing. She gently pushed through the streets and went home, imagining that the partying became just a little louder and more joyous for her sake.

  Silence soon cloaked her as Forum's poverty pressed in like a bad smell. Maya passed through the poor areas of Snail and Formation to Fixing, which was the worst off. Each borough was so familiar, but so different: new buildings, new colour schemes, and new shops. Quiet, the streets seemed to ignore her.

  In Snail there had been a tailor called Swirl, an extravagant woman who made good-looking clothes from the cheapest fabrics. Her parents would take her there every year to get her fitted for another 'best' outfit, the one which would be worn at Joinings or funerals, and she loved every trip. Swirl would shower her in stories of the finely-dressed of Forum, the women who wear elaborate wigs made of cloth and men with long, sweeping cloaks.

  Mum had never approved of this and resented that Swirl was the best they could afford. After every visit, she would sit Maya down and make sure she understood that they were just stories and she was unlikely to be able to afford such things.

  Maya had to stop and see if Swirl was still weaving dresses and stories. She took a detour along the concrete road and smiled when she saw the flourish she'd come to look forward to as a girl: a circular motion which moved out from a central point to the very edges of the sign. Either Swirl was still going or some family member had taken over the business.

  She grinned. It was good to see that some things never changed. Especially when she herself was so different now, even than just three weeks ago.

  Also in Snail was Forum's largest school, an enormous squat building with a belfry that jutted from its roof. It could be seen from anywhere in Snail, and it sent shivers down her spine: that was the reason she'd been sent to the Academy, that belfry.

  When she was nine, Maya had been a tomboy and a frustrated one at that. None of the boys would play with her any more because she'd bested them all, and the girls weren't interested in running and rough-housing. So she'd had a solitary childhood, mostly wandering the streets by herself and making her own fun.

  One day, a group of aimless teenagers had happened across her scaling the side of a building and actually given her some attention. She became enamoured with them and would do errands, shoplift, or do other menial things for them.

  Maya's smile disappeared. Her mood darkened. Part of her training as a Contegon involved purging all sin and what had happened next was technically sinful, so she'd gone through 'training exercises' that ensured she couldn't remember any of her friends' names. Not one. They flitted on the edge of her memory, but had been beaten into an inscrutable chest she might never get to open.

  As such, she can't recall how she was dared to do so, but she'd been told to climb the school's tower. Somehow, she obtained two strong daggers and used them as grips to assail it. Eleven years old, she'd ascended the tallest building for miles. Everyone saw this. Match and several other annoyed adults had been waiting for her in the belfry when she got to the top.

  After a great deal of discipline, Match had taken her home and announced her intention to take Maya to be a Contegon. Only a Teacher may present a young girl to the Academy, and how they chose who they sent came down to the individual Teacher. Maya imagined that sending too many weak or unsuitable candidates would destroy their reputation and threaten their Station.

  So that tower represented her arrogance, really. A young Maya had thought she could climb it without repercussion. Well, days after, she'd been taken to Aureu, and now she was a Heretic as she returned to Fixing.

  Glorious Fixing. It felt smaller now, more confined, somehow intimate. The borough was nine short streets crammed to the very edge of Forum, but these streets were capillaries now where once they had been arteries. The resplendent tuck shop she'd often shoplifted from, filled with sweet, candied fruits or unattainable chocolates, seemed small and barren now. And the air smelt faintly like Outer Aureu: desperation and poor drainage. But this didn't matter because it was home. She was home.

  And somebody she had grown up with might recognise her, report her. She was still a fugitive, even out here. Unlikely though the risk was, it allowed clarity to set in and empty the well of emotion within her. The very fact that she was a local might make Fixing the worst place to have gone, at least until she'd met her parents and they could rally support around her.

  With deep breaths to calm a rising panic, she pulled her hood over her head and snuck up to her house.

  Her status wasn't all that worried her... She didn't truly know how her parents would receive her after eight years: sure they loved her, and they would try to understand but could they? And what if the Bureau had got to them first, accused her of theft or even murder? Maya was scared, not of capture or rejection, but of this trip home not giving her what she needed. Her parents had to, had to, welcome her.

  The house, her house, waited ahead like a faithful dog. Her worries faded. Old though it was, her windows and doors were clean and glowing bright with the pride of regular coats of paint on their panes. Solid mortar hugged the brickwork and numerous repairs made it a collage of time's grinding effects. Odd-coloured tiles freckled the roof. The whole building seemed like a young, eclectic man in antique clothing.

  And why had she worried about being caught? The night was quiet, the air sterile, as ever. Fixing was only active during the day, when children went to school, and adults travelled to jobs or looked after their families. She was not going to be seen. Still, Maya kept her hood up.

  She approached her salvation slowly.

  The front door used to be black. As gradual, darkening clouds smeared themselves across the sky, Maya saw it was no longer black but blue. The change jolted her. Stealing up to it, she felt the unfamiliar smoothness of fresh paint. Such a small thing, but it made Maya feel out of place. Instead of knocking, she went to the kitchen windows, but the tiny room guarded its contents with a veil of thick darkness.

  Paranoia, confusion, and worry. She ran to the living room window.

  A candle sat proudly at her living room's centre, glowing across the old wooden furniture... and the people kneeling on the floor. Her parents were kneeling. Kneeling before a carved image of Sol. They were praying. Praying to Sol.

  Maya fell backwards, bruising her coccyx on the cobbled street. One of her blades, probably the thin stiletto, snapped in the fall. She stood, rubbed her eyes and looked again but nothing changed. They were praying. They were Solarists. And so she had no place here, and there would be no salvation, no place to call hers. Sure, she could try and talk to them, but how could they recognise the truth without reading that book, without seeing all that Maya had seen?

  Her parents had been her whole reason for coming to Forum. She had never been wealthy enough to afford to come back during her breaks from the Academy, so she hadn't seen them in eight years. In her mind they were hard, logical people. It would never have occurred to her that they would fully convert to Solarism. Not out here, where Sol could seem distant sometimes, where the people didn't have the oppressive beauty of the Cathedral looking down on them but did have practical, day-to-day concerns like harvests and cattle. In her memories, the people of Forum followed Solarism in a half-hearted way, preferring the practical but covering their backs in case the faith were true.

&nb
sp; Obviously she had been wrong.

  Maya turned away and found a dark corner to hide in. Without looking, and without knowing why, she carefully slipped on her leather gloves before pulling out her stiletto and staring at it. She didn't feel anything. Anything.

  Numb, she gave her house a final look and then wandered back towards the Great Road, to leave Forum as soon as possible. As she went, she mumbled to herself. “When did they become... No, it wasn't because I got... so they believe because of me? They... they won't... No, they won't. What... what do I do? Who am I?”

  Her last sentence was shouted, almost shrieked, into the cold, careless street. Two children who'd apparently been watching her scurried away, scared. They left no answer behind. The blade in her hand felt cold even through her gloves, and she was alone. Who was she?

  “I can't live like this. Can't. I'm alone. No one else will understand me. I'm... I'm dead.”

  She rejoined the life at Forum's centre. It was tempting to become one of the revellers, to drink in nihilism, end her days with the bottle, but she couldn't: the people were enjoying themselves, they were living, but she couldn't waste her training and the years of agony and practice she'd endured. It would be a waste to die like that. Maya couldn't do that to herself, couldn't do that to the few good people of the Academy who'd poured their lives into securing her strength.

  But... but she could die in battle. Not as a Shield, she'd be picked out and brought back to Aureu. The Disciples wouldn't be hard to find. Hope flickered inside her: she could die a warrior with a place in the world.

  Besides, it would be interesting to see a Disciple, to keep its gaze as it took her life.

  No, what was she thinking? There was no point in just dying, in killing herself meaninglessly. It would be as bad as giving herself over to alcohol.

  Maybe it didn't have to be meaningless? What if she killed a Disciple, one who would otherwise have taken out a Shield? Surely then she would have saved a life, and she would have had a purpose on Geos, a positive effect? And she might even kill more than one, get to cause some distress to whatever malignant intelligence directed them.

  Yes. That seemed right. That felt like a purpose, a reason to live. A tentative smile floated across her face like a wisp of smoke.

  She slipped the broken stiletto into her robes, put her hands to her head and stopped. A veil lifted, and Maya knew she wasn't thinking right. Her gloved fingers grabbed great handfuls of her now-short hair. Deep breaths. She made herself take deep breaths. The anguish and confusion passed with each breath.

  Forcing peace into her mind, she ensured that this idea wouldn't come up again tonight, not whilst the pain of rejection by her parents was so great.

  Untangling her hands, Maya blanked her mind and left Forum.

  11

  New Contegons pay for nothing during their Ten Days, especially not in taverns. Which was why Chain couldn't remember most of hers. After lunch at the Chamber, Chain met up with friends, people from school, and went to... Sol, she couldn't even remember where they'd gone. The week was a blur of half memories: waking in familiar houses with familiar headaches, eating a rough breakfast and then repeating the mistakes of the previous day. No one asked her about the Heretic: no one cared, they just wanted to celebrate.

  It was bliss.

  Chain had missed them more than she'd realised, and they all seemed happy for her: tough old Bracket, shy but witty Sleep, Ascend, and then the boys, Wreath, Life, and Drop. She saw them all every summer, but this would be the last time they'd be together, so they'd toasted their friendships and their friend. After the pain of her Naming, it had been exactly what she needed.

  Then she'd had to stop. She needed to recover, regain the rhythm of training and mental exercises which kept her sharp. So the last night had been the heaviest, the one she remembered least of, but she'd said her farewells, some cheerful, some teary, all heartfelt. For she could be dead in two weeks, killed on the Front. But, if Sol willed it, it would be so.

  Three days in the Academy, two wasted on recuperation, and her Ten Days were almost done. She woke on her tenth day knowing she faced a week of heavy training and then placement somewhere in Geos. Before that, there was the Ten Days Ball. She probably wasn't expected to attend and that was fine: she didn't want to go anyway.

  Chain had the Servant attending her get a breakfast. As a Contegon, she had a room of her own for the time being, and she used this privilege to its fullest by bathing in the room. When the water was high and steaming, and the Servant had gone, she sank into it and closed her eyes.

  Images of Wasp sprung from the darkness: his confident grin, those ice-blue eyes, and him bowed, eyes closed, before her fury. He was rude, an upstart, but there was something to him, more than his attractiveness.

  She lolled her head and opened her eyes to see her open wardrobe. Spare Contegon robes watched her: woven manifestations of faith, Sol's magnificence shaped for wearing. Glorious, they were hers by right but did she deserve them? Without... the Heretic... could Chain uphold the ideals of that colour, fight in those clothes?

  Staring at her robes brought no answers, so Chain got out of the bath and walked to them, dripping wet. A soaked hand clenched the white material: a thick wool, rough between her fingers, strong. The robes are layered, protective, filled with pockets for hidden advantages and relics. But they were only robes. They alone did not grant magnificence. It's the person inside who has earned the right and honour of wearing them.

  “Wasp... was right,” Chain whispered. “Damn him, he was right.”

  Chain dried and got dressed. She looked in the mirror and told herself to act like she deserved her robes. And that meant not languishing in bed or avoiding duties. It had been so easy to ignore what had happened with... the Heretic, to enjoy her absolution and forget what she had done, and that was okay during her Ten Days. But now she had come to the end of that grace period.

  A grace period that, in fact, had come early due to her abject failure. She felt a great anger at herself, a feeling which had apparently been bubbling beneath the surface throughout her Ten Days. It was a fire she would tame for Sol, one she would turn onto every task set to her.

  Resolute, she braided her dull brown hair, hands crossing and dancing behind her head. “It's my duty to go to the ball,” she told herself. “I can't let the Heretic's absence rule my life. It'd be cowardice not to go. Especially with that whelp Wasp going.”

  Feeling like she was filling her robes better than she ever had, Chain left her room: she had training to do. Maybe she'd spar with some of the young trainees today, teach them and test herself. Either way, she would do her duty, be a Contegon.