Chapter XXX: The Cold Shoulder

We made camp at the foot of the mountains. After the ambush, the rest of the journey had been, to put it lightly, hell. We had been forced to zig-zag across the plains to avoid being found, and make up for the less direct route by going as quickly as we possibly could. That made it obvious just how much my stamina had increased; I could go at just below a jogging pace for almost an hour without needing to stop, something that would have been completely unimaginable back on earth. That didn’t mean that my lungs didn’t start burning after a whole day of it. The downside to short legs. 

But, against all odds, we made it to the end of the day alive, and without even having to get in any more fights, despite a few close calls. The ghouls were, indeed, out in force, groups of up to around thirty spread across the plains hunting down anyone not wearing green. Finding a good place to set up camp, which would have been basically impossible out in the open fields, had taken about half an hour, until Rook stumbled across a huge glacier-deposited boulder that would give us cover. 

And so the four of us clustered around a pile of sticks and leaves, trying not to inhale too much smoke while we nibbled on bits of dry bread and withered fruit. I, more than anything, just wanted to lie back on the grass and pass out. But I was hungry, and also fairly sure that if I fell asleep without a blanket I’d just freeze solid. I got the feeling that not even regeneration could make the sensation of being defrosted pleasant. 

“We need to talk about something.”

Rook’s simple statement hit me in the stomach, dragged me into the alleyway, and stole my wallet. Nothing good was going to happen after she had said something like that. I chewed and swallowed the dried date very, very slowly.

“Go right ahead.”

“There’s more to your problem with death than just the natural reluctance of someone without training,” she said. It was a statement of fact, not of uncertainty. “There’s something else going on there. Tell me about it.”

Every muscle in my body tensed at once. “What, am I not being traumatized in the right way?”

“I’ve spent years of my life amongst soldiers. I know what happens to a woman when she’s thrown into battle against people who want her dead, trust me. It’s not good, never is, but it’s never as bad as you, not without a reason.”

“Maybe I’m just a pacifist,” I said with a sigh. “Have you considered that?”

“Perhaps,” Rook said. “But you’ve never said that you won’t kill. You’ve never even said that you don’t want to kill. You’ve said you can’t.”

She had me cornered. I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to talk about any of it. What I wanted was to shove the whole thing into the darkest, most easily forgotten corner of my mind and never have to think about it ever again. But as I sat there staring into the flickering firelight, I realized that that had never been an option anyway: it had been a factor whether I wanted it to be or not since the duel with Regan Leyrender. So either I could keep the story close to my chest and suffer, or I could talk. And maybe talking would help.

“Fine. Fucking fine. I’ll tell you everything. But listen closely, yeah? Because I don’t know if I’ll be able to go through it all again.”

Sir Margaret nodded. “I won’t make you tell it again. And I’ll be sure to keep it all a secret, if that’s what you want me to do.”

Rook just squinted at me, like she was trying to see through me. For all I knew, she could. I shook the tension out of my body as best as I could, took a long drink of the cold river-water we’d gathered the day before, and spent a few moments practicing breathing exercises. You never wanted to recount a traumatic experience while under stress, that was something I half-remembered from therapy. Then, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I began.

“When I was younger, my parents weren’t around very often. My father,” dropping the English word “father” into the middle of a sentence in Blueroser felt like pouring sand into a gearbox, but what else could I do, “travelled a lot, because his company had offices all over the world and all of them needed accountants, while my mother just had… the worst hours at her programming job. Which basically meant that they didn’t have the time to raise me, at least not after I hit the age of… six, or so? That was… bad, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because I had Abby.”

“You’ve mentioned the name before,” said Rook. “Or, rather, mumbled it in a blood-soaked daze. I’m guessing family member?”

I nodded. “She was my sister. I’m the youngest of three, Abby was eleven years older than me. She pretty much raised us, both of us, and she did it well, all things considered. She was almost more my mother than my mother was, and she was my friend, and she knew me so well, and… it all fell apart.”

“I was twelve when Abby met…” I had to stop and take a breath. This was where it got hard, hard enough that my heart started trying to leap up my throat and choke me. “She met Ethan. Ethan Cairne. A monster pretending to be human. The absolute fucking worst that humanity has to offer, all condensed into the body of one greasy, manipulative, self-centered bastard with a messiah complex. At first he seemed perfectly fine, but then… he drew her in, closer and closer. He told her he loved her, he gave her expensive gifts, he told her that she was special and that he wanted to share wonders with her. It was all a lie.

“But she was vulnerable. I mean, she was young, about the same age I am now, and she was under so much stress between school and taking care of the two of us. And I have to imagine that he knew that. People like him are smart, they recognize the easy targets. So he drew her in to his sphere, further and further, told her that everything he did, he did only because of how much he loved her. Abby would vanish for days, and come back to tell the rest of us that she and Ethan had been on a surprise trip, or she’d been at his house talking… philosophy. And when he revealed that there were others, well, it was fine. Even though he’d never told her. After all, polyamory is still oppressed, he had to be careful, and on and on the excuses flowed.

“Oh, right, the philosophy, yeah. He had this whole thing, his own personal mix of Zen and stolen Indigenous religion and whatever else he thought would make him look wise. A lot of it boiled down to ‘Never question anything I say because that causes conflict’. But, anyway, it got worse over time. Abby…” The memory came back more vivid than it had in a long time, making my eyes water and my jaw clench. “…missed my fourteenth birthday. Because Ethan and all the other women he’d tricked and lied to and manipulated and abused were going to some sort of retreat for three whole weeks, alone, so he could tell them how much they meant the world to him, and how he’d never had anything like them before.

“By the time my parents caught on that something was wrong, it was too late.They tried to intervene, they tried to tell her that what Ethan was doing to her wasn’t healthy, but she was in too deep. She told them that she was old enough to make her own choices, that he’d been there for her more than they had, that they just didn’t understand the kind of bond she had with him. It was too late. Too goddamn late. I don’t think Abby trusted any of us after that; she felt like the world was out to get her, and I can only imagine that Ethan was good at reinforcing that feeling. She was still around, sometimes, to drive me places and make meals and get on the phone to help me with homework, but… she didn’t talk to me any more, not like she used to. She didn’t talk about herself, and I didn’t feel like I could talk about myself, so we just talked about surface level nonsense.

“She kept drifting further and further away from us. It went on for months. I don’t even really know what Ethan was doing with her and the others, because she kept it all a secret. Afterwards, it turned out that Ethan was trying to get her to cut ties entirely, go with him to some estate in the Appalachians. But we didn’t know that; we didn’t know anything. We didn’t realize how bad things had become until the police called.

“I never really paid much attention to it, but… Ethan had committed a lot of crimes. Like, a lot of crimes. And some pretty bad ones. Defrauded people, evaded taxes, sold drugs, sexually assaulted and stalked women, probably more that I don’t remember. And they’d finally found him, and because the people he’d hurt were rich and white, they wanted to bring him in. My parents, obviously, were more involved than I was, but I heard more than enough from overhearing conversations or reading between the lines during the questionings. It went on for a while, back and forth, lots of twists and turns and yada yada yada. The police claimed that they wanted my sister safe and out of there, but you know how cops are. They wanted all the people Ethan had ripped off to stop complaining, and that was it.

“We got the phone call about the standoff after it was already in progress. Ethan and Abby and all the rest of them had been found, holed up in a house on the edge of the city. We drove over as quickly as we could, to see if we could convince Abby at least to come out and talk. I don’t… remember much of what happened next. It’s all a blur of… people shouting and sound and fury and bright lights and my heart pounding in my chest. We tried to get to her, but I don’t think any of us ever even spoke to her during the whole six hours of it. 

“Eventually the cops got impatient and they brought out a ram to break down the door. But…”

A shiver passed through my entire body. The memory came back strong, too strong, like an ice-cold flood threatening to steal my breath away. I didn’t want to finish the story, but I had to. Sucking in a shaky breath, I continued, the words flowing from my mouth automatically.

“It was too late. I don’t know if he forced them to do it or if he convinced them all, and I don’t think anyone ever will know, but… All I know is that the police went in, and there was a lot of shouting. And then the EMTs showed up, and—” the sirens were so loud, they felt like they were scraping against my eardrums “—my parents were panicking, and I barely knew what was going on because they wouldn’t let anyone in the building—” even though we all knew what was happening, that was the worst part about it was that it felt so inevitable from the moment the door went down. “They wheeled her out on a gurney. I can still remember the moment when they took a turn too sharply, and her hand spilled out from under the sheet, and I knew it was hers because she had that same fucking awful gaudy ring Ethan had given her on it.”

I curled in on myself, finally overcome. The memories washed over me on a loop, repeating a dozen, a hundred times until the pain was too much and I went completely numb. The pale hand on the gurney, Abby’s pale hand, the glint of the green ring in the harsh light, the smell of the antiseptic that Ethan had tried to use to cover everything up. Regan Leyrender’s face, blood-spattered and dead, and Lady Halflance executing that poor girl. It was all mixed, blurred, and it stung worse than a bullet to the torso. I’d been crying for most of the story, but now I sobbed until my eyes were red and sore, until I could barely breathe because every time I tried to drag air into my lungs they spasmed with sobs. The cold night air felt all the colder with wet cheeks, almost cold enough to burn. I wanted to burn.

“The cause of death was morphine overdose, self-administered,” I said. All emotion was gone from my voice; I’d burned out. “All of the women still with him had done it. But he was still alive, so they could drag him out of there and throw him into prison forever. The court was never able to prove that it was murder as opposed to encouraged suicide, but really, the only difference was he ended up serving three or four life sentences instead of the full… eight? Ten? I don’t remember. I’m not normally one to support prisons. But for him? He can rot.”

I sighed, pulling my knees up against my breasts, looking up at the other three. I couldn’t focus on them, really, couldn’t see more than three vague shapes watching me with frowning faces. “We could have done something,” I said. “If any of us had known, if we’d paid more attention early on, we could have helped her. We could have been there for her, been her support so that he couldn’t draw her in deeper and deeper and deeper. I could have done something. And when I killed Regan Leyrender… I realized I was just like him! A killer. Regan’s corpse looked just like Abby’s, pale and… Do you fucking get it now, Rook? Do you fucking understand why I don’t want to have to see any more people die?!”

I snapped out of it, suddenly making a u-turn into absolutely pissed. Rook had had the gall to ask me for a full explanation of every little aspect of my trauma. So goddamnit, she had better respect me for it. That the anger toward the others helped to overwhelm my anger toward myself was just an unexpected bonus. 

Nobody wanted to make the first move. The only sounds were my ragged breathing and the crackling of the fire. The others—Sarnai, Rook, Sir Margaret—were painted with various shades of pity and sadness, even Rook’s normally stoic face marked with a frown. The silence stung.

“Is that. Enough. For you?”

Rook nodded. “It would explain a few things.”

“Good,” I said. “Because you owe me some explanations of your own.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I said. “You just asked me to lay everything out, relive… everything. I can still see it, you know. It’s still echoing.”

Sir Margaret shifted closer to me, slowly extending a hand. “It’s a really brave thing of you, you know, to share something like that with the three of us. I can’t even really imagine how it must feel to—”

I convulsively brushed Margaret’s hand aside. “So now you need to tell me what your deal is, Myrna.”

“My deal?” Rook straightened her back, her voice fading slightly into her false Blueroser accent. 

“Yes. We all know that you’re some kind of…” I didn’t want to use the word robot or cyborg, both of them being borrowed from Earth languages “…machine woman with human skin, or whatever you are. So explain.”

“No.”

There was a pause while I tried to put what I was thinking into words. “Is that it? Just… no? Rook, I just told you everything! The only other person who knows the full story is my therapist!”

“And I feel truly blessed that you have decided to give me this story as well, trust me.”

“But you don’t trust me enough to let me know anything about you? After all the training, and how much we’ve fought together, you still don’t trust me? You won’t even tell me why you hide your accent!”

Rook folded her arms and scowled across the campfire. “There are some things… that just have to remain secret.”

“Oh yeah, but you just ask for me to relay my whole trauma to you at the drop of a hat? Because, what, mine is less important?”

Sir Margaret tried to put herself between the two of us. “Oh come on now, Emma, that’s a lot to infer just because—”

“Go fuck yourself,” I said. Then, to Rook, “Answer my question.”

Rook shook her head. “I’m not going to just tell you everything I know, Emma, and just because I’m not doesn’t mean I don’t know the importance of everything you just said. Quit your damned whining.”

“Then stop acting like you don’t know! Stop acting like it didn’t mean anything for me to tell you what I just told you, Rook!”

“It means more than I can express, Emma,” Rook said, rising up to a crouch, leaning forward as she did. “I’m sorry about what happened to your sis.” 

I kicked at the dirt, making a high-pitched growl of unexpressed anger. “Then if you’re so sorry, fucking open up to me for once? Tell me something, anything!”

Rook just shook her head. “No. I can’t. I won’t.”

“Then you can fuck right off with that sappy nonsense,” I said. “You abused my trust, and now what? You act like I’m a stranger. Go to hell.”

Rook stood up, and in two steps she’d crossed over to where she’d dropped her bag at the end of the day’s march. “I’m leaving,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“You heard me right the first time. Let’s see how you like freezing in the mountains without my help. Because you will freeze, trust me.” She slung the bag over her shoulder and started walking off into the night. 

I wanted to ask her to stay. But even I knew how hollow that would sound after everything else that had just been said. It wasn’t very long at all before Rook had been completely swallowed up by the darkness of the night.

“Lightning strike me, you people are dysfunctional,” Sarnai muttered.

“I can tell you most of the story if you really want me to,” Sir Margaret said. “I know the important parts, hell, I was actually there for most of them if you’d believe it.”

“No,” I whispered. “No, I need to hear it from her if I’m going to hear it at all. It’s more real that way.”

Suddenly exhausted, I dragged myself over to my sleeping bag, letting the cold seep into my skin as I left the campfire. I piled the wool on top of myself and tried not to think about what tomorrow would bring. The thoughts happened anyway: cold as bad as the journey to Zrimash but with less equipment, and no Rook.

“How old were you when your sister died?” Sir Margaret asked.

I shut my eyes, curling up deeper into the blankets. “Thirteen.”

“Then it wasn’t your fault. Nobody that young has the power of life and death in their hands.”

“No. I could have. I could have helped her. If anyone could have helped her, it would have been…”

I wasn’t sure whether to say “her sister” or try to explain what “her brother” meant. Instead, I took the third option, and passed out. My sleep was wracked with nightmares of dead flesh, freezing cold, and flashing blades.

SaffronDragon

And there you have it. The backstory I've been building up to since chapter 13 of the last book. It feels good to have it out in the open, I think.
Now, on to business. I already announced this in the author notes for my other novel, but in case you didn't hear: I'm currently holding a poll on my Patreon, available for all patrons at the $5 tier and higher, to determine what my next patron-exclusive story is going to be. If you want to have a vote in that poll, it will be up until this Sunday, August 1st. If you do decide to join at the $5 level, you'll also gain access to all seven of my current Patreon exclusives, as well as all of the ones I plan to release in the future! If not, that's fine, I'll see you in two weeks for Chapter XXXI: Over The Mountains Cold