Marie left her perch to find Arron the moment news reached her. Gaias had found the killer in just half a month.
While great for her people, she was worried. About the Military Police head officer—technically her subject, but she resented those concepts.
Gaias's growth in popularity was now uncontainable. That was the true concern.
I suppose it's better than him still being loose, she told herself as she traversed a marble staircase. Hardened with metal inlaying, but not as harsh as the theatre, of which Arron was so fond.
When had she become so similar to them? When had her concern for politics overwritten her own empathy?
Then a hall of old stone, then back to glass and marble once more. Scorch marks still marred some surfaces—the fire had left its marks on her home, as well
as her. She asked that the builders keep a few of them, a reminder of sorts, from when she held on still. There was a point in her life when all she had, besides Arron and her kingdom, was anger.
She passed a clutch of muttering blondes, their dresses all different colours; they were the picture of vanity. She dragged herself back to business, not wanting to imagine what they said about her. If anything at all.
Apparently, it was a student; parents had come to the city at the start of the new regime. They had lived in the outer city—he was a scholarship student of her own campaign.
She passed floral paintings, irritated by how they contrasted with her hideous mood.
In hallways of glass and tainted white, carpets ancient in comparison to the part of the palace she was in. It gave the whole place an unnatural feeling, yet also a familiar one. Like seeing a part of your home you didn't know existed intermingled with one you did.
She had hardly seen her compatriot for some time—he had been diving into old writing.
She had, at first, thought it another of his fleeting interests, but this was different.
He'd spend days alone. Pouring through different records. Scouring diaries recorded in the archive.
A great mass of a building. It was cuboid in shape, and its mass dominated an entire city block. A testament to man's obsession with being the narrator. That's where she was going.
She strode out the doors of the palace, and several of her small councillors stood gossiping by a fountain toward the entrance. They did not look at her; they were too dignified for that. Unlike the bitches she passed in the hall.
What families were they from anyway? Was she meant to know?
She knew what they spoke of though.
Gaias. Gaias. Gaias. She doubted it would be a week before he made another move.
She passed them at a pace. Face and posture are hard.
Not bothering to threaten or to chastise them. She stormed out of the eastern gate.
When she reached the archive, a desk raised nearly twice Marie's, admittedly small stature. Awaited.
A pasty old man who looked like one of her uncles sat on the pedestal. Hardly hiding his surprise.
"Highness." He said shakily. "What a lovely surprise." He rose from his seat and came down to an appropriate height.
This place must be a death trap for this man. She thought as she looked around at the cruel architecture.
He lived in a world not made for him.
"My apologies, sir." She said with all the 'royal-ness' she could muster. "We should all be better patrons of your halls. Curator."
"Well. My lady, you could say that this place is time frozen. And one can see all that's frozen here if they wish."
"I'm afraid it's business today. Arron Loui, is he here?"
The old man nodded as he slowly made his way down from his post.
He put out a hand and bowed as low as he dared before leading the way.
****
Torrin awoke from his stupor. He was still clothed in his uniform. Though he at least had the dignity to return to his rooms.
He got up, checking that the glove on his right hand was still there. It was. So was the box he had been entrusted with.
His prosthetic did allow him to sense touch, but not the same way a normal hand would.
He didn't quite know how, but something in his arm. It could tell his body he was meant to feel something, so he did. Like the memory of sensation, rather than a true feeling.
The thing, while fascinating to Torrin, was more than he could ever understand.
The box, which in many ways was similar, inside was documented the lives of usually silent men. A true artefact.
Something that actually mattered.
He pulled it awkwardly from where it was pressing into his gut, and as he moved, the nausea set in. Along with a feeling.
This isn't going to be a good day.
He set it beside his head and willed his eyes to open.
He saw clean metal, starting to stain in his pocket. He wondered at that. Then abandoned the thought.
He couldn't get the stories out of his head. So akin to his, but yet so much worse. For they understood their betrayal. They knew why, whether they admitted it or not.
They weren't pilgrims or martyrs. They were victims.
Torrin didn't know whether he understood his. Whether his was of a more subtle kind, or even, whether it was crueller.
It wasn't important. He had suffered, but with dignity. The dregg army of the northern front was allowed no privilege, no humanity. Yet still it was there, a trail of afterthoughts.
To the soldiers of the empire, their slaves must be like the memory of a wound. A discomforting image that arises with no warning. A sensation that comes after the action.
Torrin had chosen his torment; it was the choice of a boy. A starving boy, for that matter.
At some point, he had begun tapping his false hand against the bed frame.
All of them were orphans, Arron's brood. Pre-existing rage makes it far easier to direct blame. That was Torrin and Rebekah's theory.
He smiled grimly to himself in his pre-fatal coffin.
He'd allowed them no dignity, the people he had killed. He didn't believe they deserved it, and many of them didn't.
Did I even change anything? Does what they did justify what I did in turn?
For one morning, painful and sickly, a morning to be sure. He felt like he wasn't alone on the northern front. Though he thought he deserved to be.
He dragged himself from where he lay, planning to use the communal shower at the end of the hall.
Conveniently, that was when Joyce appeared.
"Lancass." He called loudly from the end of the hall.
"Shit." Torrin sighed. The other man had a victorious smirk.
****
Bowman hauled.
The shipment had come in the morning. He and his current unit had been conscripted, guard duty. From the rim of the bunker, he could see the cold mountain, faintly blue in the sunlight. White snow peacefully above the corrupted foothills below.
A new shipment had come. More men trotted lifeless to an invisible ember. Soon they would know death, if they didn't already. Marching by with the grim determination of all dreggs before. They probably didn't need the extra guards, but William had thought it more of a stage. The dutiful prisoners doing their duty, a good image for the 'new lads.'
Bowman had heard of men consumed by drugs in the capital. As the men came, they put him in thought. He imagined it was quite the same. A hope for more, a need for purpose—at least the illusion of it. Beggars served a purpose, too.
"Doctors in the cities call these D.o.A's", Will said as the last group passed. The pair was trailing behind them as escorts.
"Meaning?" Bowman asked.
"Dead on arrival." He replied with a small smile. Looking like a painting, like one done by his grandfather. His whole family were artists in some way, but Bowman was an exception to that.
As many liked to say, he was unexceptional.
"Optimist, you are." He grunted as the pair began trudging up the steep climb from First Dock to the front.
"A rich statement from you, boy." The older man said, nudging his arm. "Almost as rich as calling us, rich men. Wouldn't you say?" His smile was becoming a grin.
"That was almost clever," Bowman said, forming a smile of his own. The first of the day.
"I was a trader before this smartass." His gruff compatriot said. "I'd like to see you do maths."
Ahead of them, the sun was dropping. The daily aurora of purple and green infected the sky, and the darkness followed.
As they walked and talked, Bowman began to wonder.
Was he 'unexceptional?'
He could never paint like his sisters; he never had his mother's hand for calligraphy. Not his father's aptitude at the piano. He had a mind for simple things and a habit of being led into trouble.
But one thing he could say for certain.
None of them would have survived as long as he had. None of them had the will for it. He barely had that himself.
If it were not for the man beside me, I would be dead ten times over.
But that didn't take away from Bowman himself. He had returned the favour in their months together.
And it was together that they held a light in the dark. Like stars of a constellation. Or rather lonely stars, drifting from their packs.
"Heard some people talking earlier," William said after a while. "Something about weather readings."
Confused, Bowman had to ask. "And why is that strange?"
"They said that the temperature at every weather post within three hundred miles of our post went up by the same amount." He looked at the sky as if expecting to see some change.
"Coincidence?" Bowman asked.
William scoffed. "The religious man is sceptical. How ironic."
"I think that might be the first time you referred to me as a man."
"Well, it's only recently you started acting like one." He grinned. "Do you even know how old you are? Nobody tracks days properly here."
"Path to madness." Bowman agreed.
"What would you call this?" The older man gestured at the walls of the path and the cliff ahead. They travelled up with the new bodies by a large lift built of chains and steel beams.
Ironically, Bowman had never seen so many marvels of technology before coming to the war.
Ironic that he believed in a god that supposedly gifted us such things, particularly since losing his faith immediately after arrival.
He didn't know exactly when his faith was lost in all honesty, but when he realised. He felt definitive for once, as if a shroud had been lifted.
It didn't feel like a betrayal in that sense for Bowman; it actually felt like moving forward.
As the sun dropped below the horizon, he smiled for a second time that day.
----
Gaias glared. Eyes burning with rage.
A member of the city fucking guard. He sneered to himself internally.
Tench was in a cell at the nearest guard station. Being vetted by Officer Lian Teller. Gaias had found her a few years back. She was the daughter of some minor lord in the west. She came to the capital to make a name for herself, a pleasant little sycophant.
The bright side was that, of all people, Rebekah Parsons, victim of the bombing and alleged agent of the illegal agency run by Arron Loui, was in touch with him. He grinned wolfishly, knowing how well this fell. That, on top of all that, he was a scholarship recipient of a program started by the queen.
Arron may have made that little play with the guard captains, but that was nothing compared to this. And he could live with the captains' disliking him for now; he knew their hatred of a foot on their neck would change their minds eventually. Then once they were spent, they could vanish.
'An animal cannot be re-tamed once it has tasted freedom.' He paced the apartment. Wife and child had been cleared out into a nearby hotel. His uncle said that to him once. He took the advice to heart.
So had his father, or so his views on women implied. He held no ill will toward his father. Only distaste, no matter her 'tastes', Gaias's mother was a woman of stature. Besides, some men lament discarding a broken tool; his father had done no such thing.
He booted a small stack of cubes on the floor, a childish act, one he was glad nobody had seen. A fucking guard.
Teller would be questioning him now if that was the proper term for what they were doing. He would deny planting that bomb. Lian, of course, would convince him he had. Another silver lining was that Arron would not be able to touch him.
"How many mistakes those two made." He mumbled to nobody.
It was a nice home; clean, organised, the picture of a familial place. It occurred to him then that Arron would not be able to get to Tench, his family, on the other hand. He was head of public relations.
Gaias would have to order the men watching them to stall him.
Of course, he could deny the man, as the case was not yet closed. If he wanted them to be, they could be suspects, accomplices, if nothing else. Matter of fact was old Loui would have to go through him.
He had to kill his smile as he left the building. Once again, this work he would usually hand off to lesser men, but of course, with the existence of the press, came an image to be held. If he were present, he looked proactive; if he appeared proactive, he then endeared himself to the public. Arron and Marie had always worked in the people's interest, not in their view. One of their many failings.
He walked out to hounding photographers, chittering men with notepads and though revolted by the scene. He basked in another victory.