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Senna and I waded through the unkempt grass. It stood nearly up to my waist, higher in some places, crunching underfoot and dragging across our legs. Senna led the way in a curved path away from the track, circling the edge of the denser wooded areas to stay in the open of the meadow.
We didn’t talk any more, and that was fine by me. The collective glow of Roan – and even closer, of the train, and all the people on it – grasped at the edges of my senses, but even so, the escape from Solace’s non-stop chaos was more than welcome. Out here, what seemed most pressing were the currents of the breeze and the armies of insects and other tiny things marching across the earth and through the trees. There weren’t many insects back home. I went out of my way not to crush any.
By the time we reached the station at the edge of the town, the train had already slid to a halt. It was quite similar to the terminals on the wall, if smaller, less lavish; an open platform, attached to a squat stone building and shaded by a canopy of woven beams, too short for all half-dozen cars of the train to fit at once.
Marcel was standing halfway in the shade outside, handing off a slip of paper to someone who seemed to have been working at the station upon our arrival, but as soon as that was dealt with he looked up and started over toward us.
“I see I’m proven obsolete once again!” called Senna with a flourish, really playing up our entrance, probably more than it deserved considering we’d mostly just been running through a field for the last few minutes. Several of the others already unloading from the train turned to seek the cause of the commotion, and Marcel himself felt even tenser than usual, but he put on a smile nonetheless.
“So nice of you both to rejoin us,” he said. “If you were trying to get the drop on the rest of us, Senna, I guess I’ll have to wish you better luck next time. Although both of us know that won’t help much.”
“I believe it’s more a matter of what you put out into the world than what the world promises in return. But perhaps we’ll have to wreck the tracks or something next time around. Give ourselves a little edge, huh?”
Marcel seemed to hum his tacit acceptance, lips thin. He reached out and brushed a few flecks of dirt from Senna’s muddied scarlet jacket before smoothing it around his shoulders. “Please don’t even joke about that,” he said softly. “And coming in damp and grimy like this may not be the best for image, don’t you think?”
“Don’t even worry about that! I fully intend to get out of this stuffy thing as soon as possible,” Senna said, before seeing Marcel’s expression and adding, “And yes, I brought perfectly serviceable changes anyway.”
I reached around to feel my own sleeves, kneading the fabric in against my palm and feeling the Court sigil’s thread on my arm. The dew did soak in a bit; Senna surely got it worse than I did. “Honestly, yeah, I would like to get out of this.”
“Right, right. Fine. Now that we’re here, though, I have to ask both of you to please take this seriously. Alright? No more running off.”
“You know responsibility and decorum are my two worst middle names, old man.”
“Right. Sorry,” I said. “...We didn’t stray very far. We certainly weren’t lost.”
He sighed the very particular sigh I was already growing used to. “Just… use common sense, please,” he said. “Now–”
There was a muted crash from the direction of the train, at the other end of the platform, and all our eyes turned to see: someone just dropped a very heavy-sounding box, and while several others were huddled around it, opening it up to check what was inside – I only caught a glimpse of metallic silver and matte grey – Rode was leaning over and supervising, head pointed forward and hands behind her back.
Right behind her was Valerie, hanging further back from the fray of people moving in and out, letting a handful of their people drift past him into the street, their paths converging in the direction of wherever we were all headed. Marcel’s eyes lingered for a second longer than mine before he once more plunged his face and his aura into the depths of all-business.
“...You two accompany me to our accommodations. We’ll get settled in, put on some fresh clothes while the medical staff set up at the subject’s location. Before long we should be ready to meet her, and… we’ll get started.”
Roan was actually a lot like Vermiles, in many ways. Smaller and sleepier, yes, but the low buildings and wide streets and stretches of plain beyond the furthest buildings were all familiar. At the same time, though, something was clearly different.
The older stonework was strangled with ivy, and the sounds of rusted metal creaked and crowed over the wind, rising from somewhere far out of sight and carrying across the low rooftops. I felt the warmth near where people were going about their business, like anywhere else; I even felt electrics, though none shone remotely as brightly as in Solace. But beyond the edges of our loose group, steadily trickling down through the streets, there was no bustle. No anything.
On the whole walk across town I didn’t see a single other person; nobody who hadn’t arrived with us, anyhow. Even with the cries of birds in the distance, the gentle ambient murmur of the countryside, it was unnerving. Eerie.
And something else was familiar, too. A ripple that I just barely made out against the noise. A knot in the world. A skein. That’s who we’re here for, then, I thought. The sudden reality of that was daunting. But this time would not turn out the same.
We didn’t stick around very long after visiting the empty house the Court must have secured for our stay. It didn’t seem big enough for the entire entourage, at first glance, despite standing taller than most of the other rough buildings in the area, but it wasn’t terrible. The bare inside was cozy, even, once it was lit up by the dozen others milling through it.
They were only planning for us to be here in person for a couple of days at most, depending on how things went. But for the brief stay, the four of us immortals on this mission were to share the two bedrooms on the top floor (no matter how sure I was that I wouldn’t be using them). The rest not used for quarters would store all the equipment that didn’t need to be there with Renee herself.
Most of the work would be done there, with her.
After dredging up some comfortable, less-flashy clothes with Marcel’s help – a thick black sweater I could pull over my undershirt, a pair of pants that were at least one step up in terms of comfort, the scarf draped around my neck – I descended the remarkably narrow staircase and slipped outside as he and the others continued to set up in the house.
By then, the sun was well above the horizon, the sky darkened to a deep blue and the clouds spun long and silvery. My arms crackled as I stretched them out above my head, leaning against the wall next to the door. The noise inside was low, constant, but outside it was softer. Ethereal chimes in the distance. Creaking metal. Even more distant, the rush of water. And yet, underneath it all...
Valerie’s aura flickered, and I turned to see him approaching alone from some distance away. Maybe he’d been trying to warn me of his arrival, but I was still startled, for a moment. I was keenly aware of the tiniest fluctuations. How could I not be?
“Hi,” I said. He didn’t. He stopped on the other side of the closed doorway, his heavy gaze wandering over the rows of similar, half-empty houses lining the street.
He rubbed his fingers across one palm. “Is everyone settling in?”
“I think so. I haven’t seen Rode since the station, but Balancia and most of the others are inside and getting–”
“I meant Marcel,” he said. “And Senna. Sorry. I haven’t been here. How are they.”
“Oh. They’re fine.” He nodded, apparently satisfied, but didn’t add anything else. Neither of us seemed particularly good at keeping up a rapport. Not like some of the others. Not like River. It was strange, that he was similar to me like that. But not in a bad way.
For a few more minutes we stood outside in silence, as a few mortals went in and out– including Balancia, his two compatriots right behind. They nodded to both of us, and then started down the road, in the direction Valerie had come from. The direction of the skein.
He turned to me. “They’ll be staying out of the way for now. But I believe you and I should go to the site and meet the patient. And her family.”
My heart pounded. “Personally? The two of us?”
“The two of us,” he affirmed. “Before everything else descends upon them in full force.”
The prospect was unnerving, but that didn’t matter, I told myself. I’d known this was how it was going to go. I knew what I’d agreed to, and what they would need from me. I knew what it was we were dealing with. At least, as far as anyone else did.
I knew that the skein was terrifying, but knowing that made it a little less so, too.
I pushed myself off of the wall, feeling a faint dose of adrenaline taking over. “Okay,” I said. “Good idea. Let’s do it.”
He seemed surprised, for a moment. But he was ready to go as quickly as I was.
We approached the invisible point where the skein was twisting everything up in an uncomfortably familiar manner. The few townspeople on my periphery stayed out of sight. The others, though, the newcomers, were much more obvious– half were behind us, and half were ahead. With her.
Valerie glanced over at me out of the corner of his eye as we walked. He must’ve realized where my focus was. “You can sense it.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s her, right?”
He nodded, once. “Are you feeling anything else yet?” he asked. “Headaches? Dizziness? You know the symptoms.”
“No, not yet… I think I can tell better now that I know what to look for, but it doesn’t feel as bad as the first time. A little nauseating.” I thought about it for a moment. It really was not pleasant, but I was managing. “I should be able to actually stick around for everything this time, right?”
It wasn’t much of a joke. He ignored it.
“What was it– what was it like for you?” I asked. “You know. When it happened, with Anton. I– I feel like you two were better off than I was.” I swallowed, then chuckled, nervously, mechanically.
He was silent for a long time, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and then finally he said, “Well. It wasn’t good.” He didn’t elaborate, but it wasn’t like I disagreed.
It was obvious which house we were looking for. It was one of the better-maintained ones, of those I’d seen, standing between two others at the edge of a little garden square. A dry fountain out front was entwined by two grotesque stone serpents, and I could make out half a sign in elegant and, as I was now quite accustomed to, woefully illegible script engraved on the open front door.
Dr. Rode was already there, along with several other members of the entourage I couldn’t possibly name, their heat acting almost like a wall between me and the wrongness that could only have been Renee. We wouldn’t have that for long, though. Valerie exchanged a few words with Rode before she went back to overseeing the luggage and people being set up inside the house. She cast a sidelong glance at me as she passed, her brow sharply furrowed and her mouth set hard, but clearly she was more than occupied with the rest of her work.
We didn’t waste any time after that before going in ourselves. Again, that sensation, like passing through an invisible threshold into a place tainted by the skein. Little changed on the surface, besides perhaps the taste of the air and the closeness of the shadow looming over us, but the flow of energy felt off. Neat lines all twisted up into a whirlpool that scraped at my attention.
I did my best to avert it, as difficult as it was; but I knew what to look for, and I knew what not to look for. I managed.
Renee’s house wasn’t like Anton’s, that much was clear. Those halls had looked like nobody had tended them for weeks, maybe– the air was laden with dust, the corners dark and cold. This was almost pleasant in comparison. It was all tall open windows and bright sunlight, even with a couple more of the Court’s people and their austere uniforms pushing back and forth past us inside.
Through a few open doors, where they were setting up glass and metal machines and other things I could only guess about, I saw an uncomfortably lifelike mannequin draped in emerald fabric, surrounded by sheets of silky material and sketches pinned to the walls.
Once again, I was struck by a flash of… something. Something I didn’t want to place. Thinking about that won’t help, I reminded myself. Here and now.
Here and now, we entered the commons, and there was someone sitting rigidly on the couch against one wall, wearing loose clothes and a pair of elaborate earrings over her flawless dark skin. Her hands were wrapped around a glass of something golden, half full of ice; they were perfectly steady. When she looked up, the eyes beneath her eyeshadow were clear and focused. It wasn’t Renee.
No, Renee was in the next room. Doing my best to avoid the aching nausea that came with acknowledging the knot inside her, I only caught a glimpse of a sunny bedroom through the door to one side before one of the Court’s doctors slid it closed.
The person in front of us reacted to that certainly, her knuckles whitening. But her stare didn’t waver, and neither did her voice.
“You’ve brought a whole lotta people into my town and into my living room, Mr. Valerie,” she said, her voice heavy in accent.
“I prefer to be over-prepared than underprepared,” he said back, and gestured to the closed door. “With your blessing, may we see her?”
“I was under the impression you brought the doctors along for a reason,” she said. “And you’re a lot of things but you aren’t no doctor. You can wait.” Finally, she seemed to relax, leaning back with her drink. “Sit down with me for a minute. I think I might make for better conversation than my wife, don’t you?”
“...Of course. If you’d like.”
We sat across the table from her. I tried in vain to figure out what to do with my hands, for a while, before just clasping them in my lap and leaning in.
“So,” she said, clicking her tongue. “I’m Beau. That’s Rey in bed in the other room. Other than that I don’t know what to say that I didn’t tell the folks on the wire this morning.” She took a sip from her glass, the ice clattering. “Either of you want anything? Drinks? Unfortunately there’s no breakfast. I had a rough early morning.”
“No. Thank you.”
Valerie agreed with me, and she didn’t push any further. “To formally introduce ourselves, I’m Valerie. This is Adeline. She will be assisting me in the experimentation and treatment of Miss Renee while we are here.”
“That’s a nasty word, but toward an amicable stay I’ll choose to ignore it and give you… my honest thanks, instead. And I do mean that,” Beau said. A stray shadow fell across her face. “I know the relationship between our… our family, and your authority, I know we’ve had our ups and downs. So to speak.”
“I recall. But any past disagreements aside, we extend our condolences, and our thanks, as well,” Valerie replied.
“Right. ‘Course. That’s not what’s gonna help her, though, is it?” she said. “Rey is, uh– ultimately the one really keeps up with politics between the two of us, the cutting edge, you know, but I know that whatever this is, it’s immortal kind of stuff. Some preternatural bullshit.”
He nodded. “So,” she continued. “The two of you are gonna be working on fixing her here. What about the other two?”
“...Other members of the Court,” he said. “What about them?”
“Now, I really, sincerely appreciate all the show you’ve put on for our sake, Mr. Valerie. But I have a hunch – and do tell me if I’m mistaken – that just the two of you here would’ve been enough to take care of her. Not to mention that last time I checked, Solace doctors weren’t dressing up in Peaceguard press.” She took another long drink, but her eyes never left Valerie’s. “Or am I wrong?”
She had a point. I glanced sidelong at Valerie, whose expression remained unmoved.
“Not wrong,” he said. “We’d simply like to maintain the security of everybody here.”
Beau laughed, deep and measured. “Well, sir, thank you for your service,” she said. I felt myself slump a little in my soft chair, gripping the armrest with one hand. Beau watched me for a few seconds – she was nearing the bottom of the glass – and leaned in towards me with the same odd intensity.
“Miss Adeline,” she said. “I’m sorry, my manners. Can I call you miss?”
“Um. Sure.”
“You look nervous.”
I thought I was keeping it together pretty well, but maybe something was showing. The sweat beading on my neck and the slight flutter of my eyelids that might’ve betrayed the maelstrom I was forcing myself to block out. She was smart. She couldn’t feel what Renee was going through, but she knew.
“Do I?” I asked, a dumb question, before finding my words. “Yes, I am. It’s just very noisy in here, so close to– to–”
Don’t say something to upset her even more!
“...So close to Rey.”
Something flickered on Beau’s face – a familiar kind of desperation, maybe, buried under an easygoing facade, the kind of feeling that went along with a drop in one’s heart – but she cracked a small smile. “Don’t worry about it. The kind of company you keep… meeting an immortal with a few nerves is a good thing. You’re new, ain'tcha?”
“Fairly,” I said, then paused. “How did you know?”
Valerie leaned in almost imperceptibly, at that, but she just held a finger lightly up to her lips. “Oh, a lady doesn’t reveal her secrets. It’s not a bad thing. Just a thing. And if you’re here, I’m sure there’s a good reason. I suppose I should welcome you.”
I nodded, feeling the corners of my mouth turn upwards to match hers. “I suppose I should thank you.”
“You don’t need to let him talk for you, you know,” she said, completely ignoring him now. She pushed herself up from the couch and motioned towards the door. “...You wanna come in and meet her?”
It all had to happen sooner or later. I knew that.
We went in to meet her.
Renee was lying in bed, which wasn’t a surprise. Forcing myself into the room behind Beau was a struggle. But despite the awful way that thing inside her bent the world out of shape, she seemed… fine. Her eyes were listlessly closed, one hand raised next to her face, buried in a slightly-matted nest of curls radiating out beneath her.
Wires and tubes ran from her arms and chest and head, away to the machines two doctors were tending to in the corner, quietly humming and beeping and buzzing. They didn’t pay us much mind as we entered; they were busy, hovering over her. Beau approached and they backed away a little, but after whatever unspoken exchange they had, they studiously went back to work.
She sat down in a chair next to the bed and slid Renee’s hand into her own. She rubbed the waxy skin of her palm with her thumb.
Renee didn’t notice. Renee didn’t stir. Like they’d said, she was… asleep. Or something very much like that. Something a little worse.
“She’s been out since she woke me up this morning,” Beau said. “Valerie, Adeline, when she was staring and gasping and– and shouting at me, talking nonsense, like she couldn’t see where she was, who I was, I didn’t–”
She cut herself off, knuckles tightening, and then she looked back at us and the intensity in her stare was back in full force. “When I saw her, she wasn’t herself. However sick she might be, I promise you, what I saw this morning was not Renee Weaver. I don’t know where she is, or what else I can do for her, but she needs help. So we’re counting on you. I’ve got no choice.”
Valerie wasn’t exactly loud, but when he spoke then, his voice was soft. Maybe gentler than I’d ever heard it. “Every case of this we’ve encountered has reacted differently. Renee is very fortunate. We will do everything we can.”
“I promise I will,” I said.
“If the monitors are set–” Valerie glanced to the mortals tweaking the machines in the corner, who gave him a discreet thumbs-up “–Miss Weaver, you don’t have to be here while we work on treating her.”
Beau laughed, strained. “Oh, nah, neither of you get to be in here without me. Same goes for the doctor hawking over the front door, whose reputation precedes her. But I’m staying,” she said. “And as long as I’m here you can stay too. Do whatever… whatever can help. I’m not turning anything down at this point.”
“...Adeline?” Valerie asked, and sensing what he meant, I nodded.
He crossed his legs and sat down at the foot of the low bed, resting his hands on his knees. Slightly unfocused, he stared ahead at Renee with intensity. I sat down next to him as he started pushing his aura out to brush against the knotted field of the skein. There were no blazing lamps this time. Just the background noise and sunlight, and our own energy, and the sickening presence. I was already better at feeling out the interactions between it all, which in this case was a blessing and a curse.
Beau couldn’t sense any of that, though. She probably just watched and guessed.
“The changes the skein causes in the flux, on such a delicate scale, will be the most dangerous thing if we fail to handle them,” he said to me. He pushed further, exerting more force onto the messy tangle of electricity in her body. He winced, but he didn’t move. “They interfere with the muscles, the blood, respiration, chemical reactions necessary for the body to function, cellular growth itself. So we will begin by easing the fields into a more natural state. Something the body can sustain.”
He spent a few more silent moments fighting the skein’s field, enveloping the room in some approximation of calm; and then he started… untangling it. Picking apart the miniscule threads and fields and woven layers of energy coursing through her. With just a tiny magnetic tug from his fingertips at a time, carefully calculated, he started to calm the storm.
It was very, very slow, and I had to imagine incredibly taxing as well, but pull by pull, he was actually making a difference. The painful nest that had taken Renee became a little less painful. The void almost started to fill.
It clearly became more difficult as time went on, though. The next time I looked over at his face his eyes were screwed shut, sweat beading on his temple. He let out a long, slow breath, and his focus wavered and the fields he’d been tweaking around his fingertips collapsed. Renee twitched. The threads he’d been untangling fell back into their currents, tangling up in a new way, now, but he’d made progress.
Valerie silently caught his breath, and then half-turned to me. “You’re the one who stirred up a reaction last time. So I’ll try again, and you try to follow along with what I do. It’s the best way for you to understand how this works. That’s somewhere to start.”
“Let’s do it.”
I mentally reached into the skein, as tenderly as possible, for Renee’s sake and for mine. As Valerie kept his grasp on the bigger fields, he let me focus on the small ones within the knot, threads and points of light wrapped up in her heart and lungs.
He started picking away at it again, and as one of the doctors kept her body steady, I followed his lead. When working in the same place it was all but impossible to differentiate what was his doing and what was my own, but after a while of awkward synchronization we managed to fall into a rhythm. Like the tides, pushing and pulling as one at what seemed to me to be, like in the immortals, the very essence of her. It was intimate work. And in every sense of the word it was rough work, too.
I plucked a string without moving a muscle, Valerie eased its stirring, I tried to keep some errant jolts of energy in check, he helped do the same, I did something wrong, miscalculating the electromagnetic force by a fraction of a degree, he lost his balance and then I lost my balance, he picked up the slack and smoothed the tempest of our mingling aura, and I was thankful for that.
I took a breath and settled into another chair in the corner of the room, next to the bright windows, facing Beau and Renee. Then I shut my eyes and rolled my head back, so all I could see was the light and the heat. I pressed a hand to my forehead, and it came back slick. I rolled up my sleeves. I really wasn’t pleased with how all this made me feel, but… for Renee, it was probably even worse. I couldn’t imagine.
I met Beau’s stare – the one she’d been giving us ever since we started – and she cocked an eyebrow. I didn’t know what to say. All of this must’ve seemed so strange to her.
Without a word Valerie tried pulling at the skein again, and I closed my eyes and followed. After just a few minutes we had to break; we were making almost-unnoticeable progress, true, but that didn’t make it any less exhausting. I considered that at some point I might actually have to take a nap.
While we were here to care for her, we had time. That was good. We were going to need a lot of it.
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