CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF CANNIBALISM
The voice which came from that adjoining room was quiet, and yet it dominated almost as much as Alonhall’s had. A wave of fear swept through the members of the Inner Circle and the stonewose alike, and even Alonhall jerked her head toward the source of the voice. There was something about it. Every word was laden with fear and despair in equal measure, anxious anticipation for a fate that she was, apparently, resigned to.
I ran to that door, found it wasn’t locked, threw it open. Someone tried to stop me, Alonhall or someone in the Inner Circle, I don’t even remember, but I was too fast for them.
The room was small and bare, the walls, ceiling, and floor all made from smooth stone, the only decoration being a huge painting of an angelic being hung on the right wall. Polished stone and glass are all materials which are easy to clean, which don’t absorb fluids; yet in spite of that, the moment I opened the door I nearly threw up from the sheer weight of the smell of old blood which struck me.
In the center of that room knelt a woman who was likely not much older than I was, facing the painting. Her shirt and pants were both plain linen, speckled with patches and small holes. Even from a distance I can tell she’d had it hard: her cheekbones stuck out from her gaunt face, and her hair was thin and knotted. She jumped when I opened the door, but then froze, squeezing shut her eyes and tensing up her whole body in preparation.
“Who are you?” I said.
That was what it took to get her to look at me. She only glanced at me for a couple of seconds, long enough to get a substantial shock, before turning back to face the painting. “You’re not with the Inner Circle. And you’re not… one of them. Figures that they’d get someone else to do it. Except, they told me you wouldn’t talk, or hesitate. Liars.”
“What do you think I’m about to do?”
The woman sucked in a breath, then started sobbing. “End it! Seal the deal, end the waiting, pay for all the money and the jobs and the… Please don’t tell me you’re going back on it. I have a wife, three daughters, if I don’t do this they’ll all die instead of just me.”
I stumbled back. My heart had already been racing a mile a minute, but suddenly I became worried that something would break. Vertigo spun around my head and swirled through my guts, the floor felt like it was falling, I saw stars.
The pieces all fit together, all of them, everything I’d learned was coming together and it painted a picture that made me want to destroy the whole world. I was scared, yes, I was horrified, I wanted to cry, I was already crying, but more than anything else I’d never been so angry in my entire motherfucking life. My fingers hurt from gripping the hilt of my sword.
I whirled around, facing the crowd of devils who called themselves the Inner Circle. They were looking at me like I’d just uncovered an embarrassing secret, like I’d pointed out that they’d made a poor choice of wine for the main course at one of their wretched functions.
“You bastards! You child-fucking, money-eating, head-up-your-ass rats! What have you been doing?”
One of the members of the Inner Circle, a sniveling little fuck in a red top hat and one of those coats with the trains, had the gall to try to respond. “You heard her. She agreed to it. And the stonewose have to eat something, after all.”
I leveled my sword at her and started walking forward. I was going to kill her. I was going to raise up my sword and I was going to cut off her head or stab her in the heart or hack her to pieces. She tried to backpedal, babbled something about mercy, threw up her arms, but I was faster and stronger. When I got close enough, I cocked my sword arm back and…
Reeled at the wave of nausea in my stomach. I couldn’t do it. I hated her, I hated her so goddamned much, I hated the whole Society, maybe she even deserved to die, but it wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t kill her. I couldn’t bring myself to kill this woman in anger.
But the tension in my arm could have shattered steel, and if I wasn’t going to let it out by killing this woman, it needed to go somewhere. Where better than into the woman who cannot die? I drew my sword to the side. The inner edge hit my throat and kept going, biting into the flesh and severing artery and trachea as I went, dragging the inner edge of the blood-soaked sword across my own neck. It hurt bad enough that I saw stars, and I made a horrible croaking sound as what was supposed to be a terrible scream instead slipped out through the gap.
Only after I’d finished my angry act of self-destruction did I remember that I was still weak to blood loss and I’d just opened my carotid. The hand holding the revolver slammed against my neck. It did a poor job of staunching the bleeding, on account of there still being a pistol grip in my fingers; the woman in front of me got a heavy sampling of arterial spray.
The sword was still in my hand, and so was the gun. I didn’t feel as angry any more, especially as the flesh stitched back together, as my severed vocal cords reattached one by one. While the blood seeped upward, back into the wound, I spun around and gave the whole room a nice, long look. Every eye was on me, and most of them were scared for their lives.
Lady Applewine was scared, too, but not so scared that she couldn’t step forward and speak. “It’s charitable,” she said. “We give these poor accursed ghouls a home, and that which they need to live. We give the destitute of this city the chance to make the ultimate sacrifice for the ones they love, and they do so willingly! So many of the children of New Alderburg have lived who would have died if not for the Society!”
I cleared my throat, humming softly to make sure that my vocal cords were in working order. “Choke on a cock, ma’am. And I hope the rathounds rut against your corpse like the bitch you are.”
Lady Applewine gritted her teeth. “There’s no need for that kind of language.”
I pointed the revolver at her face. “Don’t push me, murderer. So charitable, the way you feed the city’s poor to these stonewose, make them into your attack dogs, and sic them on protesters. Were the cops not enough for you? Not loyal enough? Not willing enough to shed blood?”
“We gave them a place where they could be safe,” she said, one hand raised in a gesture of surrender while the other leaned on her cane. “And in exchange, they help to maintain order in the city.”
My finger was off the trigger. If it wasn’t, I would have done something very stupid then. “I was there, at the abandoned factory protest, you know. I didn’t see order there. I saw violence.”
“A girl died, you know,” Laura said. “Broken limbs, stabbings. Bad time.”
I nodded in acknowledgement. “And speaking of people who were there…” I whirled around, looking for a specific face that I’d seen twice before. She was in the back: a tall figure, straight-backed, in a red overcoat. “I would address you by name, but I’m not sure which one. Is it Third, or is it Thiza?”
“Thiza,” she said. She advanced, head down and fists clenched, and for a second I thought that it wasn’t going to be me who initiated violence after all. “You’re an interesting person, alraune. Tersine’s pet, and yet you associate with the Blackbird.”
“She put me here,” I said, admitting it out loud for the first time. “That doesn’t mean I like her.”
Thiza blew right through me, talking as though I hadn’t said a thing. “You work with Ikamja the Conqueror, call her the Unifier, and yet here you are railing against us.”
I scowled. The image of the reikverratr being dragged off by Ikamja’s tribe to be cooked and eaten was still burned into my memory. “That was… an alliance of convenience. I needed the Cassandrans destroyed, and joining forces with Ikamja was the best way to do that.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Thiza said, her voice dropping to an animal growl.
“I know! I know that! I… I don’t like it, but I can at least sympathize. I don’t know if it’s right, but I can understand it.” I turned on Lady Applewine, the revolver still in my hand, grip trembling from exhaustion. “But you. You people.”
“Are not the womaneaters here,” Applewine said.
“No, because you’re worse. You have a choice. Every day, at every single step of this master plan of yours, you could have turned back. But for however long that you’ve been doing this, however long that you’ve been feeding the people of this city to your attack dogs for your own power, you never once had any second doubts.”
“Emma, darling. Lower the pistol.”
Alonhall’s voice, soft and smooth, was like having a needle jammed into my nerves. I tried to resist, to apply the lessons she’d given me and my newfound strength of purpose to reinforce my mental walls, but I was nothing compared to her. I pointed the gun down at the floor.
“Now, this revelation does seriously change the playing field, that much I admit. Nobility you may be, you have still committed a litany of crimes against Bluerose, crimes which you will have to face judgement for. So I offer you a bargain: tell me everything you know about Nika Tolva Tersiněvka, also known as Doctor Tersine, and I will ensure that, even when the lash falls, none of this will ever reach the ear of the public.”
“What are you doing?” I said. “You can’t seriously be—”
“We came here for information about Tersine, nothing more and nothing less. This secret you’ve uncovered puts us in an excellent position to negotiate.” Alonhall nodded at Lady Applewine.
She who spoke for the Inner Circle nodded back. “If there are any members of the Inner Circle who object to this deal, speak up now.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’ll tell you everything I know, then. Tersine is an associate of ours, yes. We had several run-ins with each other soon after her arrival in the city, the stonewose and her wolves not getting along. Eventually we realized that this fighting was pointless, and we came to an arrangement.”
“With an agent of the Cassandran Empire?” said Alonhall.
Applewine shrugged. “We had our suspicions to that effect, but how were we to know? She was very helpful, assisting us in keeping our secrets. And in exchange we gave her favors: lending the aid of our stonewose, giving her information when she asked for it, and so on.”
“Information like-like the shift schedules?” Unity said.
“Yes, things like that,” Applewine said. Either she had no idea what implication Unity was making, or she just didn’t care. “When she came here, I will also say, she was very… free, with her ideology. Though I always personally considered her quite mad, I believe several of our members were quite enamored with her philosophies.”
“Yeah, she gave me the whole speech,” I said. “Creating a future race of perfect women, genetically superior and immune to sickness and age. Classic eugenics shit, so I can see why you’d eat it up!” I took a breath, forcing myself not to scream. Information was information, even if I loathed the source with all of my being “Do you have any idea what she might want with the Secondmire expedition?”
Lady Applewine looked confused, furrowing her brow and looking around the room. “I haven’t the faintest. Anyone?”
One of the other women, an Inner Circle sycophant with long golden braids and crimson trousers, said, “Secondmire’s the furthest anyone’s been into the Great Desolation since Bluerose was founded. And they had a cartographer along, so if she could find what’s left of them, she would have the most complete map of the Desolation on Selene.”
Alonhall turned her gaze on the newcomer, her head flicking to the side like a vulture’s. “And what does Doctor Tersine want with a map of the Desolation?”
“I don’t know! Please believe me, I don’t know. She… she said a lot about the Forebearers. Said her goal was just to complete the work they’d started.”
I rolled my eyes. “Supervillain shit, how fantastic.” I turned back to Applewine. “Where’s her main base?”
She made a noncommittal flourish with one hand. “How would I know? We only ever met here, at the Lodge, or in her office at the University. If her ‘main base’ isn’t there, then I haven’t the faintest idea where it could be.”
I heard Alonhall swear under her breath. “If you know anything at all that could point us to Tersine’s current whereabouts, I want to know. Make this deal worth it to me, Viscount.”
“Well, from the materials we’ve helped her smuggle in, we know that she must be in a rather large building,” Applewine said. “And one on the far side of the river. She hasn’t asked for any assistance in keeping it hidden, so she must have some way of evading attention. That’s all I know.”
“Which isn’t much,” Laura said. “You’re bargaining with scraps.”
Applewine raised an eyebrow. “I know where Tersine isn’t, and if that isn’t enough for you…tell me, Blackbird, where is the rest of your backup? Surely you did not make this raid with only four?”
She let the threat sit in the air. She’d realized what I’d realized from the very beginning: we didn’t have the advantage. Alonhall realized it too, and suddenly I understood another benefit of covering her face: if she was afraid, or reticent, she didn’t show it. I don’t think I did either: my face was still tense with anger that I couldn’t let out.
“No, this works,” Alonhall said, her voice clipped and professional. “I will be back, and I imagine that there are many people who will have some serious questions about this system of yours.”
“I’m sure,” said Applewine.
I knew just from the look on her face that she would never go down for this. However many days it took for Alonhall to get an investigation going would be more than enough time for the Society to move its operations elsewhere, cover everything up, explain why Alonhall had made baseless accusations against them. The way it always went.
And then I remembered the woman in the side room. She was still on her knees, silently waiting for the end. In all of my rage, I’d nearly forgotten about her. While Alonhall retreated, and Unity and Laura muttered to themselves about scumfucking rich people, I made a dash for the side door.
“What’s your name?” I sheathed my sword, keeping the revolver in my hand, and knelt down next to her.
“Claudia.” She didn’t sound quite as scared anymore. More tired than anything else.
“Okay, Claudia. My name is Emma. And you are not going to die today.”
“What? No, stop—”
I took her by the arm and dragged her to her feet, then forced her with me back into the main room. She dug in her heels, screaming and complaining as she did. Maybe I should have obeyed her wishes, maybe that would have been the right thing to do. But it wasn’t the option that I would be able to stomach for the rest of my life. By the time I made it through the door, I was met by a cordon of stonewose… and Alonhall, the filament engine in hand.
“Please, you can’t do this, my family needs the jobs. I’m just another mouth to feed, and if I go back on this, then…”
I glared at Alonhall. “What was it you introduced yourself to me as? Baron of…?”
“Emma,” Alonhall said, a warning bite in her voice.
“You’re rich,” I said. “Make use of it.”
Someone, presumably a member of the Inner Circle, shouted, “That’s not part of the deal!”
“She agreed, fair and square!”
“We can’t find another one so quickly!”
“She was going to die anyway!”
Alonhall closed in on me, reaching out for the wrist of my gun hand. “I know you hate this. I do as well. But there are times, Emma, where we have to admit to ourselves that we don’t have a choice.”
There was no point in looking into the blank black mesh of Alonhall’s Blackbird mask, so instead I glanced over her shoulder. Laura’s eyes briefly met mine. Her jaw was set, her expression determined, and I might have been imagining it but I was sure that I saw her give me a brief nod. I scanned my surroundings: four stonewose were within lunging distance, though only one of them was armed. The dining room was still lit by gas lamps on the walls. Up above, the high arched ceiling of this basement was held up by curved wooden beams.
“You might not have a choice,” I said to Alonhall. “But I do.”
Moving as quickly as my limbs allowed me to, I wrenched my hand out of Alonhall’s grip, half-turned, and fired the revolver directly into the nearest wall light. My aim was on point, and the bullet struck the swan-necked stem of the lamp, shattering it open and causing the light itself to hang precariously from the thin strip of twisted metal. Everyone in the room fell silent; so silent that you could hear the hiss of illumination gas seeping out.
With a wave of heat and light, the leaking gas met the still-burning lamp. A plume of flames shot out of the wall, charring the wallpaper and singeing the ceiling. Alonhall lunged at me, trying to pin me down, but I rushed to the side, out of her grasp, and kept firing. Lamps shattered, metal bent, glass fell, chunks of wall burst open, and for a second I wasn’t sure if I’d hit anything at all. But when the revolver finally clicked empty, the room was already beginning to fill with smoke, and flames were bursting from the walls as the flame burned back up the gas pipes.
“You aren’t going to do this to anyone else!” I screamed. “Get out while you still can, because the Society is over!”
I knew from experience how quickly smoke could build up in a burning building, and I didn’t particularly want to get my hair burned off again, so I rushed to grab Claudia and get out.
“Get some cloth over your mouth,” I said. “That’ll keep the smoke out.”
Thankfully her self-preservation instinct had kicked in, adrenaline clearing her thoughts. All around us, obscured by heat and smoke, the stonewose and the Inner circle were in a blind panic. The flames were spreading too quickly to be put out, so it was every woman for herself. Laura and Unity were hand in hand, racing for the exit.
And Alonhall did something I’d never expected of the Blackbird. She froze. No movement, not even preparation for movement, neither the agile tension of the Blackbird preparing for a fight nor the relaxed ease of Alonhall on the prowl. Just nothing at all.
I stopped, stupidly forgetting about Claudia at my side. “Hey. We need to get out of here.”
“You’re insane,” she said.
“Sure, whatever you say, we need to go. Come on.”
She remained where she was.
“Alonhall,” I said, voice cracking, the taste of smoke on my tongue. “You aren’t going to die here.”
For a second it seemed like I was going to have to leave her behind. The beams on the ceiling were properly burning. Then, suddenly, Alonhall sprang to life again.
“Deputies, to me!” she roared, and charged for the staircase.
It was a mad dash through the Lodge. Smoke billowed up from the basement, and before long the burning inside the gas pipes started bursting out in the upper levels. The whole structure lurched and creaked as structural members charred and failed. My attention was focused on two people: in front, Alonhall, the only one who remembered the way to the outside; and behind, Claudia, who had to be constantly pulled forward when her exhausted legs started to fail her.
In the end, we all collapsed onto the grassy hillside, coughing and sputtering and exhausted, and watched the Lodge burn. It felt like a camping trip, with a big bonfire glowing red and yellow against the midnight blue sky, the awe of what I’d done so overwhelming that we couldn’t help but just sit back and watch it happen. Servants and nobles alike poured out of the doors, fleeing past us into the city, and we let them go. Even the ones who were a part of the Inner Circle had lived through enough.
There was a horrible crash and a rumble so deep you could feel it in your feet as the Society lodge crumbled. The basement had given out and collapsed, and the rest of the building fell into its own footprint like it was being swallowed up by a sinkhole, shedding stone and dust as it did. That was what shocked me back into reality.
I don’t think that I did the smart thing. Or even the right thing, really: what was the difference between killing one of the Inner Circle with a sword versus suffocating them with smoke or crushing them under brick and stone? But after what I’d learned, well, my heart and mind alike just couldn’t stand to see that Lodge survive to dawn. In a way, Alonhall was right: I didn’t have a choice after all.
While the others gaped at the ruins of the Lodge, I noticed another group that was failing to run away. Thiza stood tall, flanked by a few of the members of her tribe, and watched me from afar. I rested my hand on the hilt of my saber. If it had come to a fight, things would have gone very poorly, with us exhausted and forced to defend a bystander. But even as I made that gesture of intimidation, I got the feeling that she wasn’t going to attack. And, indeed, after a brief stare-off, Thiza and her people melted away into the darkness of the night.
There are times that we're reminded that for all her work, alonhall is still, at her core, a noble. Good for Emma.
Alright, Emma!!