《The Clockwork Sky》 South of Dogtooth 1 ¡±The ninth century after waking will seed and still sow change¡±. Maybe in the past, those kinds of proclamations would have been held close to the heart of the faithful, a secret, sacred part never to be seen or spoken aloud. Maybe it was mystical texts on stone tablets once, or shape-fed bloodwood covering the walls of doubters and tyrants. She remembered at the start of the century placards draped across the frost-kissed storefronts of old Vitayeen, scalding hot mugs of chocolate bearing a recently fired inlay across the brim with the word change in a sweeping and exaggerated cursive. A swift pain and her lower lip clinging to the silver, lovers newly bonded and her usually deep purple lips playing host to an irritated and stinging red lowercase h which had stayed for too long. Erika had started calling her Hanna, which she found very funny. Here though, at the end of said century, Anna Witten, formerly Nadia Kazev, formerly Lady Anna Mazayen, couldn¡¯t help but agree with the base truth of the sentiment, too much and too far and for too long, the world had changed. Gilbe saw no snow or frost, the houses were spread far apart in intricate and meticulously calculated grids, everything to maximize primary establishment output and convection of the people she was starting to feel she had tricked into coming here. Old Vitayeen had not been planned, it had been a collection of hovels and walls draped across an unused pass along an unimportant border, the snow from the two peaks caressed the slopes to either sides like silk and from afar, on a particularly cold and clear day it looked like a long white hammock, and her hovels and the Masayen estate like forgotten toys. There was art in that though, the dirt-crusted old wood and its peeling brown-black paint, pine statues of romantic figures from scripture and birchwood carvings of the oaths and fates. Gilbe had no old things, no cheap things and at night the absence of the pink-red sheen of the lived places made it feel like a collection of the most boring dollhouses imaginable. Having lived for nearly a full century she was nearing the tail-end of middle age. When she¡¯d first started considering mortality as a child she had always imagined herself dying young, it just seemed right, and a morose and gloomy little girl had accepted that about herself. But when it had come to it, she had struggled and fought and bribed and accepted new, terrible skillsets just to keep going. And then that had changed as well and while a numb, anodyne period in between, the feverish struggle to see snow like white silk again made way for a detached longing to be embraced by the red electric pulse that presaged a shell misfire and the cascading backlash. It had been like watching herself through a spyglass, what remained of her then just a hidden observer of her body feeding shells into screaming brass and iron, praying each one would give a final kindness. It was selfish, and when it had faded, there was only what should have been there in the first place, a hateful, calculated and efficient anger. That anger had seen the death of the gallant and charming artillery officer Anna Mazayen and a few months later, her gunnery crew were counter-mining the imperial advance, new names given by sacred thistles in old, grey hands. The simultaneously tall and tiny woman sitting patiently in the strategically too comfortable chair across from the desk of city mother and first citizen Anna Witten was used to this. She had abandoned a respectable, if not necessarily lucrative career at the People¡¯s University back home in the swamps to cross the sickly green sealanes through the mist because she was a person of faith, and for a while now, that faith had been placed in the black-haired woman gazing out at the ugly things they had spent everything to build. ¡°We need to abandon the notion that convection is necessary for storage, build warehouses along the road to the extraction sites. I dislike relying on the residual for protection but ultimately they¡¯ll be largely unattended.¡± Her voice carried a naturally authoritative and competent tone, which, had Mitte not known Anna she would have assumed it was as obvious a part of her being as her eyebrows or the dark brown eyes of all Tolvoi. ¡°It will be hard to persuade the miners, ma¡¯am. We still need more hands as well.¡± A light purple hand traveled the relatively short distance from her waist, along the uncreased citizen uniform to her black hair and began a fast rustling motion which tossed it to one side, and as she turned to smile at her old friend, signaling the end of them pretending to be faultless professionals with everything under control, the sound of old, military issue Imperial boots impacting the polished wood floor beyond the closed door came on metronomic intervals. What should¡¯ve been the second and far more pleasant part of their bi-weekly meetings became condensed into a few moments of long, familiar eye contact. When the footsteps stopped, a moment passed and then a knock, with the same inflection as that quick march, tac-tac. ¡°Just come in, Mina, it¡¯s not like you¡¯re going to startle us¡± The door swung open and the Guard-Captain angled her wide frame through the narrow doorway with the ease of someone half her weight and the door quickly and silently shut behind her. ¡°I apologize for the interruption, ma¡¯am, but a transmission came through from second patrol, and I deemed it pertinent to bring it to your attention.¡± ¡°Cut the ma¡¯am shit, Mina. It¡¯s just us here anyway.¡± A furrow crossed the dark purple brow of the Guard-Captain. ¡°I believe appearances should be kept ma¡¯am.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. It was difficult to speak to Mina most of the time for Anna and that always made her feel awful, very rarely did she smile or let slip the mask that she had made for herself when she began her exile from old Vitayeen. ¡°Second patrol is Inny and Vita right?¡± ¡°Uh, it¡¯s Inny and Lio now ma¡¯am, Vita is on extraction duty. They are currently headed for Gilbe at speed from point one before the Grass. The transmission was scrambled but I believe they picked up a wounded local, an unconscious or delirious girl they came upon just outside the safe-zone at point one.¡± ¡°Wounded how, and how was she treated? If they need more than a ready kit to treat her injuries they should not be moving at speed.¡± Mina¡¯s eyes fell to the darkwood floor briefly, but shot up again quickly, and she stifled a brief cough that crept up in her throat. ¡°They had left their ready kit at four to recharge and the kit at four was expired.¡± Before Anna began to speak, Mina shamefacedly continued. ¡°Inny is the patrol officer responsible for point one but ultimately, this is my fault. I believe I have let a culture of lenience develop among the frontier officers. Though familiarity and a casual attitude would aid in morale as well as convection. I would recommend against bringing Inny up on charges should the girl, uh, expire.¡± As Mina spoke the word expire there was a rustle of movement from the supposedly unoccupied supply closet next door and then the sound of far lighter and faster footsteps against the hallway floor. At that the tension in Anna¡¯s body gave out and she threw her head back and gave out an exasperated sigh. ¡°Save me from that little demon.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll go after her, she isn¡¯t a very good rider, ma¡¯am.¡± As Mina turned to leave, she stopped as her hand touched the door handle. ¡°And i would thank you not to talk about my niece like that¡± 2 The world was stupid and unfair. This was obvious to Tana as the ready kit she had bravely liberated pushed into her stomach everytime the hooves of her horse impacted against the gravel road.It had been the thesis statement and title of an essay she had written two years ago, which would have seen wide and popular circulation among the thinking, radical women of the new world had it not been brutally suppressed by the regime and its agents, this time in the form of her former tutor, the hated and callous Miss Valentine.That was anew word to Tana, a good word you read in a book and realize it can be used in many ways, Tana had cleverly engineered a situation where she might deploy it casually in conversation to impress mom. The stupid and unfair world, however, had conspired against her and she had pronounced it cal-louse, which had made Mitte laugh. The world was stupid and unfair in many other ways too, there were stupid and unfair rules guiding how people could talk and relate to each other, even here they had to pretend like they were loyal subjects of the competing powers in the old world. Mom said they were playing both sides and that soon they would have the leverage they needed to truly make themselves free. But that was still unfair, if perhaps not stupid but a look behind her made her feel guilty about ever entertaining it. She had to pretend like Aunt Mina was some agent of the imperial military and Mom never called her sister. Tana hated it, she hated that her mom was first citizen, she hated that she wasn¡¯t raised together with the other girls, kept instead in a big pretty house with tutors and guards. She didn¡¯t hate mom but sometimes she wished she could. As it turns out she had actually improved a bit when it came to wrangling big scary animals as she maintained a solid lead on Aunt Mina right until Inny and Lio came into view. It vanished suspiciously quickly as they drew closer, though. ¡°Please let me use the kit, young miss. I know you¡¯re smart enough to understand that I¡¯m better than you at dressing wounds in the field. We have to do our very best to help the girl, anything else would be immoral, right?¡± Tana had riled herself up a bit during the ride, which she knew was stupid but sometimes her mind just ran ahead of her and it was hard to stop. She had been trying to convince herself that she was in seclusion to finish writing her collection of poetry, or that she was eavesdropping on mom so she could maintain a necessary radicalism in colonial administration, or that now she was acting entirely out of the goodness of her own heart, just racing to help someone who was hurt. Deep down Tana knew those things were a bit true, but they were subservient and chained to a much larger and closer truth. Tana was deeply, awfully, lonely. Inny had a green-brown skin tone which would have lent itself to well for frontier work had it not been for her seemingly luminous white hair which stabbed down the sides of her helmet, she was small and lithe, just a bit shorter than Tana, and Tana had just about entered puberty, people said she would look exactly like mom but she wanted to look exactly like herself, whoever that ended up being. Apart from her hair there was something else about Inny that now seemed to stand out even more, she was alone. ¡°Young miss, the sun is harsh today, perhaps you might use the guard captain¡¯s mighty frame to draw some shade? Preferably a long one, you should stay some distance from this one.¡± She indicated, nodding towards the little girl slumbering peacefully against the neck of her horse. Her arms dangled lifelessly down and swayed as Innny drew up her mount. They looked odd and Tana very quickly realized why, they were pale white from the hands to the elbow, then they were twisted and took on a deep purple, darker than Tana¡¯s own. The position and squaring of the shoulders told of dislocation as well. Her hair was golden, though, which was very rare among Tolvoi, a sign of a seer or wise woman, when those things mattered anyway. Aunt Mina quietly moved herself in between them and suddenly Tana¡¯s sight was limited and the recently freed ready kit was again liberated, this time from her slightly chubby fingers. Aunt Mina and Inny seemed to close around the girl in an almost scary way, but Aunt Mina had said that they would do what¡¯s best for the girl. ¡°Careful Cap, she cut up Lio pretty bad. No clue how and Lio didn¡¯t see shit, but she¡¯s probably faking being out like that. Can¡¯t find the knife either, although I can''t say I really want to touch her.¡± One thing Tana found out early in life was that soldiers changed tone depending who they were speaking to. Most people did, but mom said that killer-to-killer communication tended to take on a certain direct and, to Tana unpleasant tone. Aunt Mina didn¡¯t say anything but the familiar scent of the Vinn-treated coagulants and salves in the ready kit made themselves known the moment Aunt Mina leaned over the girl. Tana anxiously watched Aunt Mina¡¯s back as she tended to the girl, Tana made herself believe they wouldn¡¯t actually hurt her. When Aunt Mina spoke, she spoke softly for the first time, perhaps ever, at least to Tana¡¯s ears and in a downright unpleasant tone. ¡°You have cloth under your saddle as well as on your body and her arms were not slinged, you left her leaning against your horse instead of holding her, her arms aren¡¯t even cleaned despite there being obvious open wounds. And Lio fucked up bad enough that she got injured by an unconscious child. Vantage point one is fucking unmanned, Inny. I have kept it manned every second since we lost that Kindi survey team. 10 fucking years, Inny¡± Aunt Mina lifted the girl over and placed her gently in the tiny space between her thighs and the horse¡¯s neck. Briefly adjusting something on the girl, and then turning back to face Tana, and Gilbe behind her. ¡°If the young lady weren¡¯t here you would¡¯ve had an unfortunate run-in with uncategorized and unidentified local fauna, tragically bleeding out before seeing Gilbe. You will give blood, urine and hair samples to the clinic when we get back and if they find anything I will have you tried for sedition or desertion.¡± With that Mina grabbed Tana¡¯s reins and began leading them back home. The Girl¡¯s head lolled to the side, one eye open. Rivers, dry 1 Tana had managed the transferral of the girl to her house quite well, although she had expended certain resources to ensure she was to be treated in one of the guestrooms as opposed to the ugly clinic. It had been an intricate affair of bribing guards and pretending to be really scared of Aunt Mina now. That part felt manipulative and bad but it was a little bit true, any good lie is after all. There was a medical center under the house anyway, since the interior ring of the house was built as a somewhat secret fort, with Vinn-reinforced steel beams climbing across and over bland concrete walls. At least the Vinn added a bit of colour and fun angles. This, as it would turn out, was exceedingly fortuitous. When the successfully bribed guards had placed the girl in the very nice bed in the very nice guest room, overlooking Tana¡¯s very very nice rose garden, one of the guards had said that the girls tank-top like shirt was ruined and dirty, and that they should cut it open so they wouldn¡¯t have to move her arms to take it off and Tana had found herself agreeing. They had cut from the waist up, through the middle, and when they started cutting around the arms, the fabric covering the right side of her chest up to her neck fell to the side. The right side of her body seemed to have been painted a light blue, which was odd but kind of fun. There was writing in some odd script, large, intricate letters seeming more like pictures depicting odd shapes and forms. The writing itself was dull against the pale blue background which continued down under her tight black trousers. Her recently acquired retinue seemed startled at it, but Tana found it mesmerizing. The script reflected light somehow, and as she moved her head it seemed to go from a pale, shallow grey to a bone white and then finally murky and for some reason she felt it was translucent. At the top of her chest was a symbol, which definitely was not the same as the picture-like script, a tree parting at the middle into twelve small branches which separated and reached up, to then intertwine again at the very top. As she was admiring it, she realized something, and it was very important. She grabbed the scissors, held out in front of her by thin, dark red fingers and tried to project mom¡¯s toneless professional voice, the one she used with the trade delegations. ¡°Wait outside please. I would like to preserve some of her dignity and the winding thistle on her chest assures my safety.¡± She knew that at least the owner of the red fingers attended the town services, and that she carried iron thorns in the secret pocket behind the holy emblem which adorned the left side of her citizen uniform. It took some further convincing, but eventually she stood above the girl again, trying not to panic. She was a woman of faith, but she wasn¡¯t stupid. That wasn¡¯t a thistle and, further, at its base the girl was asymmetrical. The pale, unadorned side of her chest had a tiny, rose-coloured nipple and the blue side had nothing. It should be exactly at the base of the tree but it was perfectly smooth, no scarring, no old wound, just an obvious absence. Tana should let seers and priests and old hands interpret and punish this, but the girl was so small, and her ribs showed on the pale side of her chest. She was barefoot and the soles of her feet were cracked and irritated and blackened. Without thinking, she moved the scissors to her left hand, as the right drifted down, and soon found herself interlocking her fingers with the golden-haired girl¡¯s. When she looked down, she realized they were not as thick as hers but they were just as long. Tana stood there for too long, she knew that. She needed a plan and she needed to make sure that any and all negative reactions to the girl passed through her personally. She moved to finish cutting the shirt, and carefully lifted her almost weightless body to pull the tatters of cloth from the girl¡¯s back. When she was certain she had completely exorcised the shirt from the thin waifish frame of the alien, she made a stupid decision, one which, at best, made her a hypocrite and at worst a tyrant and a heretic. In the final stages of the long siege, when the war had turned really bad, they had burned those on top of the ever expanding fractal fortification that shielded the home swamps from imperial incursion. Mom had been there, and watched. After a few moments of internalizing that she was abandoning the right to fair treatment under the city charter, she took a breath and then stepped out into the hallway, swiftly closing the door to the hallway. First, she dismissed the bored looking guard she had bribed with promises of a key to the wine cellar. Off to the kitchens with the unbeliever. Then she turned her lying face to the righteous, red-skinned one she had enticed by invoking the sisterhood of faith. ¡°This situation needs to be resolved by the closed circle of faithful, dedicated to the final state of Gilbe and the new world. You are not inducted so you must swear yourself to the house, and the edict of silence. You are to guard this door with your life until my return, and let no one enter, not worker, soldier, farmer, clergy, sage or queen.¡± While speaking she felt taller than the guard, but when silence filled the gloomy hallway, she felt herself shrink and her mother¡¯s voice leave her. Looking up at the guard however, she saw a determined and proud gaze in her eyes, fixed on the long horizon of the people. She pressed her hand hard against the emblem on her chest and the white field behind the embracing twin thistles slowly turned a pale red. ¡°Same blood.¡± The guard swore, and Tana answered in a relieved and somewhat quivering voice The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°Same skin¡±. 2 The natives were impressively elusive, and had remained so for the past forty years, ever since the first settlement which had eventually grown to become the city-state of Thulin. They were largely uncontacted, their scant settlements were shrouded in a thick black petroleum fog that stung the nose and was certainly incredibly flammable. It had been decided pretty much unilaterally that they should be left to themselves until they grew comfortable enough with the new arrivals that they would come out and recognize themselves as Tolvoi. Anna had gathered from her sister¡¯s report that the girl was stable, did not require further treatment and would wake soon. They would not be able to speak, but if Tana went missing for a few days, only to turn up alive and well and happy and talking really fast about the little girl that had saved her from a certain death in the tall grass, well. Maybe they had different concepts of motherhood, most of it back home wasn¡¯t singular like it was for her, most did not have or seek privilege like that and Anna did sometimes feel guilty over it. The diffuse nature of Vinn convection made single-line pregnancy a luxury as well as a tool of the wealthy, noble, and royal. Regardless, returning a lost child would be appreciated be it singular, binary or communal. If one ignored the fact that a child had been injured in a way that must¡¯ve been both terrifying and incredibly painful, this was a good distraction from the current state of affairs. When the sealanes first opened the world was just reaching a state of peace, not from a decisive victory or heroic conquest but sheer attrition and exhaustion. Its throat was choked with corpse dust and the sealanes were fresh air, dust cleared by salt. And on the other side, something new without mass graves and guilt. The first exploration teams found long plains and fertile fields of yellow grass. There were dangers, sure, predators unlike the ones back home, but they stuck to deep woods and the long mountain chains that stretched from the coast inland. For the first few years the exploration had gone like that, settlements were established on the coast, farming communes in the fields and teams of methodic explorers braving the mountains and forests. The task eventually became to find the end of the yellow grasslands, as they stretched further inland than the early supply trains or convection could accommodate. And when they inevitably found it that frantic, life-affirming seven years of exploration came to an abrupt stop. Each of the five sealanes from the old continent of Tolvin lead to a massive bay, separated from one another by the mountains first, then the deep woods, each had the same yellow grass, even in the far north. Across the whole continent it ended in exactly 100 metres of sand, then tall green grass, always swaying, regardless of wind. Gilbe was the final sealane to open, far south of the others and the only one in firmly Imperial waters. It wasn¡¯t a bay, just the dogtooth range to the north and impenetrable mist to the south. The water itself stretched much further inland here than anywhere else, and the actual land past its shores was barely worth mentioning, just a few kilometers before yellow gave way to the green. Anna did not really like being an old woman staring out a window and doubting herself. She found herself drawn to it these past few months though, her purpose here was logical, it had firm basis in hard science, and when it paid off, which it would, she would be sitting on the single most valuable plot of land in the known world. She said these kinds of things many times, a few years ago in charismatic, confident tones to backers and friends and turncoats and spies and even bloodwood orders. Now she said them to herself, looking out a window, as a prayer. A small and exceedingly polite knock at her large white door brought her back to the real world like a gentle splash of ice cold water. Normally Tana would knock once and then just enter, usually after eavesdropping and with a well written little screed or soliloquy that she would oftentimes launch into before she had even turned the door handle. This time, she waited to be let in, which was worrying. When Anna opened the door, she looked down on the top of her daughter¡¯s head as her eyes were planted firmly on the floor. Tana was about a head shorter than Anna, which placed her around 175 cm, and she was growing quickly, while Mina was both much taller and wider, Mina wasn¡¯t singular, and Tana would be almost exactly Anna¡¯s own height. Tana was a bit more plump than her though, and while Anna was never a beautiful woman, Tana definitely would be. ¡°Did you drop something darling?¡± She asked in a warm, jocular tone while stroking her daughter¡¯s raven hair. ¡°I would like to come in, mom¡± A small voice came from under the curly black hair. Anna had been worried, and now she was panicking. Internally of course. So, accepting the inevitable ache in her back, she bent down slightly and picked Tana up in a hug, carrying her inside, eliciting no protest which was another cause for alarm. An elegant heel turn and kick saw them both inside and the door firmly shut. ¡°I need help and you have to trust me.¡± It wasn¡¯t really right to feel proud of Tana for not crying but Anna did anyway. She had been older than Tana when she first had to leave home, and those few years that lay between thirteen and seventeen weighed heavily. Tana wasn¡¯t her and that was important, and she knew the severity of sin that came with certain aspects of singular reproduction. ¡±Take your time, Tana. I¡¯m just a useless figurehead, everything runs without me, I promise.¡± She said, in a tone that she knew Tana would recognize as a comic exaggeration of her normally diplomatic and slightly distant bearing. Her daughter¡¯s face was placid as she set her down, and the girl walked over to what she had once referred to as the chair of tactical discomfort. It was carved and intricately adorned from beautiful, oiled darkwood. It was horrible and the girl sat down, facing Anna¡¯s desk, waiting for her Mother to assume the place of deliberation opposite her. As she sat down, Anna felt clearly that they had moved away from the first, familial part of the interaction, and were now firmly at the opening of the second act. ¡±Something was revealed to me about the native girl, my body spoke for her, I am certain, beyond any doubt that she is crowned.¡± Sitting where she was drew out the inquisitive, searching part of her, the one that had served the tribunals after the war. And invoking the older, blood-slaved sacraments of the larger faith drew it further still. Neither of them believed in the prophetic import some very old hands still placed on the random peculiarities of the body. It went against the central thesis of the new faith; all are Tolvoi, they all share the same blood and they are all born from the Vinn. To say that a certain attribute makes one skin holier than another was close to treason in the Communes of trade and to the secret roots Gilbe gave it¡¯s true allegiance. ¡°I¡¯m not going to insult your intelligence, Tana. You understand why that is a very stupid statement to make here.¡± A moment of hesitation drew a slightly pained expression from her daughter. Practised, Anna noted. ¡°She has markings on her skin and deformities in the shape of holy symbols, bloodwood and twelve leaves of the thistle. The markings are pictographic, and I have been chosen to interpret Her. No one else must see her.¡± She looked small now, a chosen zealot pleading against the new world of observation and study. Also practised. ¡°Who have you spoken to? What have you done?¡± The hurried rapping of fine Imperial leather against her very expensive wood heralded the end of the second act. Quicker this time, tac-tac-tac. Trowel 1 A broken tool was frantically trying, failing to mend himself. Whenever he made any progress, far enough that he was no longer actively dying, perception would resume. His body would register again what had made it trigger the failsafes, his memory would be burned out and the genecoded venom contained in his spinal cord would be forced out into his bloodstream. No venom left, this time, instead the metallic muscle convulsed and screamed, threatening to snap the weak bone it coiled around, like a black-silver snake around a white branch. Some subsystem contained in the elderflower markings on the head of that snake fired, and machine muscle gave way to the soft mind. He returned to himself somewhat, knowing that the slow pulse in his chest meant that the venom had been rebuffed by his immune system. The venom hadn¡¯t been defective, it couldn¡¯t be, and that left two options. Feeling the warm embrace of some kind of textile and insulation against his skin, he could immediately rule out the first, he wasn¡¯t dead. Hell was certainly not this comfortable. He must have somehow crossed from the grass, but he couldn¡¯t remember how. The lack of the singing pressure from above that told his body exactly what to be meant that he was under open skies but that was impossible, even beyond the Green. The lightning-fire of another forced memory burn forced him back into himself, not very effective but also not too much left to burn. He knew these were symptoms of something, he should know what. He came from somewhere, too. Hard to tell, really. He was fourteen, and he was imitating someone, trying to put up a sardonic disaffected persona. A smile that turned slightly up at the end, revealing where white teeth gave way to yellow and black. There were boxes somewhere, he would¡¯ve put stuff in boxes, it would be just like him. Would it? Shaded Tree. He was from Shaded Tree, he was fourteen, his body was small, would be forever. There were old roots over older metal, sunshine guided far, far below the grass, there was a spider in the tree. There shouldn¡¯t be, no breaches, not ever. He was something, made for something else, the smile with yellow teeth came with concerned blue eyes, the exact same as his own. Why was there a spider in the tree? Couldn¡¯t be, spiders were easy to deal with and there were no breaches. There wasn¡¯t much else. The fangs the snake had implanted in the back of his skull pulsed, and he was anxious. He had a body, and it was somewhere and that was good in a way but probably mostly bad. Should he not have a body or should he not be in a place? It wasn¡¯t even his spider, his spider was a burrower and the spider that skittered madly along old roots was a juvenile flood spider. He was in a room, it was made of wood. Perverse, don¡¯t know why. There was one window and one door, probably a normal amount of windows and doors for a normal room, couldn¡¯t complain. The smile was upside down and his arms were broken, a steel-toe boot pressing him underneath the rock so hard he thought me might break. A long, white tendril of something first caressed the calf and then lightly wrapped itself around it, once, twice, three times around the shaking muscle and bone, so gentle like a breeze, like the swaying grass. There were people outside the door, they were talking so loud but he couldn¡¯t hear a thing. A very, very old little man that he didn¡¯t know until now was stealing the sounds. The little man lived somewhere in his head and he was screaming, so many others were, too. Did the screaming men live in his boxes? Maybe, it seemed like the kind of thing men and boxes got up to when no-one was looking. The pressure from the boot gave way, and the tendril pulled so hard, an impact felt through the rock. Not who the smile was made for, it should¡¯ve been eaten by another burrower, they¡¯d bonded over that sometime long ago, by a fire. The door opened, the hallway beyond smelled like steel and blood, but not too much, maybe it was supposed to smell like that. Shouldn¡¯t judge, it wasn¡¯t his hallway. Someone had entered the room and closed the door behind her. She felt massive, and so much, most of it went down, far beneath the ground, but some shot over to him, to kiss his cheek and gossip for a while. The girl was sad and anxious, lonely and scared. She worried about him, which was a bit funny, he was a gardening tool, why would anyone worry over the fate of a trowel. The men in the boxes were screaming louder now, more of them, more boxes. Not his boxes either, old dusty boxes with markings in unscented, copper and silver. His boxes smelled like elderflower, like the snake. His mind was struggling with giving the angry little men enough mouths and voices so they could yell at him properly, some didn¡¯t have faces at all yet, waiting to be made so they could scream commands in ancient, dead languages. No room for them all but the oldest ones, they knew who the girl was, what she was for, but they wouldn¡¯t say, couldn¡¯t speak over the others and the snake really didn¡¯t like them. The girl sat next to him on a wooden chair, were these people made of trees or what. She faced the window, he did too. She liked the pretty things she kept there, and she held his hand. To comfort herself more than anything, not to comfort him, she thought he was asleep until he accidentally squeezed her hand. Not hard, the oldest little men would never allow that. To her credit, she didn¡¯t startle or jump, didn¡¯t pull away either. The oldest men said that she should¡¯ve, that he was dangerous and dirty and that she must have forgotten. He really, really wanted to open his eyes and look at her, or to be able to hear the words, and the men really didn¡¯t agree, a thousand little boxes shaking in impotent fury. He found he could scoop up most of them and put them in an even larger box, one with a lid. The snake was mostly asleep by now. That was supposed to be a very bad thing, one of the last little men told him in passing. He was going somewhere, probably a nice holiday. He hoped the men got holiday pay, he was a union gig after all. That didn¡¯t mean anything, and he was getting ready to open his eyes, the girl was looking at him. This was a mistake and premature and he realised it far too late, he tried to give the beautiful crying girl a winning, slightly upturned smile but his left eye was disobedient. At first he could feel her elation and excitement, then as the traitor flickered to the side and rolled back he felt fear, and to her credit, concern. There was also disgust but he tried to ignore that one. He tried to force Lefty to behave and forced it back dead centre, but it flickered back, asking for lubricant. We don¡¯t have anymore of that you spoiled dumbass. He decided it should be punished, so he forced it shut and made it roll around randomly so it would get nauseous. The girl was still scared but all the little men were on holiday now, or trapped in a big box. When he shook it he could hear them all tumble around in there, it was funny. The oldest man said that was undignified with a bit of a huff. When he tried to make amends the man just gave a grunt and turned his back on the poor trowel. His back was really well animated, should tell him later, maybe write a poem about it. The girl looked weird, brow all furrowed, eyes still red from crying and a forced, dimpled smile. She was not made of trees, trees were not purple, and there was no spider crawling across her roots. He looked down, had to check after all. He could almost hear her now, the man who stole sounds was trapped in a box and the oldest man had his back turned, rooting around in a briefcase. Forgot his lunch at home maybe? This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. 2 Anna was drunk, she shouldn¡¯t be but she was anyway, Mitte had just left and Mina was brooding. Her sister did that sometimes, most of the time if she was being honest, which was a very unfortunate side effect that came with distillation. ¡°It¡¯s a leak, Anna. We plug those or we sink.¡± Just 14 hours ago it had been all ¡°don''t talk about my niece like that you ugly whore¡±. Now Tana was something to be plugged. ¡°I understand that you feel like she is some last connection to Mom, being the way you are¡±. What the fuck did that have to do with anything, that hag burned with the rest of it, almost a century ago. ¡°We have to be rational and consider scope as well as where we are in the process. I can finish the letters to the homes of..¡± Mina glanced down at a pile of papers covering the small table that she hunched her massive frame over, Anna¡¯s poor couch straining against the weight. ¡°Maya Ayaresh and Ulli Tovo. Guess it¡¯s a bit lucky they¡¯re both Republic girls. Different republics but still, non-essential chaff.¡± That much was true at least, Tana had picked two very disposable people, she didn¡¯t know if she should be proud or not, though. She had been keeping most of the untoward aspects of their venture from her daughter, even when it led to unpleasant consequences for those around her. Like poor Miss Valentine who drowned in the bay. A drinker apparently, who knew. ¡°As for the leak itself, I''d rather not go down there and, uh, dislodge Miss Tovo personally, but I could do it quietly. Inny can report Tovo lost on patrol tomorrow, probably between points seven and eight, the woods have already taken two this year.¡± ¡°And Tana? What solution do you have in mind for your niece? Something quick and humane, I assume? No pain, no fear? Maybe even a nice, final hug goodbye?¡± ¡°How many times have we done this, Anna? How many Imperial girls are in the bay or in the grass? Morally, how is this any different? Do you think she¡¯ll just let us hand the native over to the church? Do you think that old moron won¡¯t burn her because she looks like you? I can do it after Tovo, say she was overcome with zeal and attacked me. It¡¯s a mercy, Anna.¡± There was prejudice against those with Mina¡¯s condition, non resonant and unattached, incapable of drawing roots. It wasn¡¯t a secret here, it was something open, something everyone knew about, a disquieting wrongness went well with the type of role Mina needed to play in their long-winded scheme. Sometimes it felt like it did make her wrong, it was probably the life-long punishment and ostracization that had made her sister into this thing, casually suggesting she murder her own blood but still, sometimes she felt like Mina really didn¡¯t have a soul. What she was talking about, anywhere in the world it was the worst sin, anywhere it was punishable by fire or rope or steel, even in the womb. ¡°Keep Ayaresh somewhere, at least a month, then get rid of her, method doesn¡¯t matter but make sure she is mentioned as normal in the frontier reports. The native broke out, it employed some hitherto unknown vinn-enhancement and stole away into the night.¡± Mina held her gaze for a long time, defiant and awful, her eyes looked black against the leather they were flanked by. ¡°And the leak is unplugged.¡± ¡°The leak,¡± Anna felt her voice rise in a way it shouldn¡¯t. ¡°The leak will have been lightly injured during the escape, and then brought to her room so she could be lightly sedated and rest.¡± Mina gave a sigh, the type of sigh you would give your younger sister when she clung to a token of childhood for too long. Like Anna was embarrassing her by crying over a broken doll in the street. ¡°As you say, ma¡¯am.¡± 3 The girl was clever, she had a little notebook, and she was writing quickly, trying to use math and geometry to translate, assuming trowels couldn¡¯t speak whatever language cute purple girls spoke. Binary was simple enough, yes or no. He was trying to do a lot of things, smile in a not scary but encouraging and slightly roguish way. He¡¯d tried rake-ish at first but it did seem a bit on the nose. The girl was asking questions using gestures and two figures drawn in her book; I and II, yes and no. Was he hungry, gesturing at something brown and yellow on a plate, no figure for kind of hungry but don¡¯t like the look of yellow and brown, so yes it was. She picked up the plate of yellow and brown, and held it out to him, and he was surprised to find it didn¡¯t taste like yellow or brown, but instead savory and foodlike. Didn¡¯t taste like colours at all. Was there a word for both bedside and tableside manners at the same time? Would save time in situations like these, he thought, taking another bite of the yellow, which had slightly divorced itself from the brown. He was making sure not to bite into the plate, the plate was a nice ceramic thing and yellow was taking it all in the divorce, that bitch. There was an idea, and it came from him this time, not interrupted by the apparently mad amalgam of information feeding through the big box. He sat up and moved closer to her, and felt kind of funny when she didn¡¯t pull back. He was wearing a poofy shirt so he took it off and felt decidedly un-funny when he both felt and saw her reaction. Undeterred he took her hand and moved it to the leftmost river on his chest, it had to be warm, it was him. He held her finger there and tapped I in her notebook. Then, he moved her finger to the river next to it, which he knew was cold and tapped II. Then he repeated the gesture, the girl understood the first time, but he was stalling, and didn''t actually want to know the rest. He moved her finger to the third river and her other hand pointed firmly at II, the third river probably had a name at some point, she had to. He moved her finger again, her other hand stayed unmoving. He moved it again, and those purple fingers seemed glued to the notebook, the fingertips turning white from the pressure. Did she understand what this was? The next two were important, but he knew the first was cold, and it almost felt comforting to have predicted it. The one after that was worse, no memory of her at all, no teeth or boots or screams, just an absence in the shape of a person. He rushed the rest, he knew the score by now and the girl never moved that awful hand. He almost threw her hand back in her face but was stopped by an old man. He drew up his legs and pressed his eyes into his kneecaps, vision dark first and then a buzzing grey from the pressure. He could open the box and let those guys run the show for a while. His knees were wet, funny. He didn¡¯t have tear ducts, maybe Lefty had some made in secret.