30. The End of an Alliance
The End of an Alliance
Meg wakes me the next morning, and I’m almost surprised to find myself back in my body, and not still locked in my mind. As my eyes adjust to the light, I see she’s peering down at me. She’s fully dressed, her hair braided in Rhavnan fashion.
I think back to the conversation I’d overheard last night. She doesn’t look cruel or devious. She just looks like a normal, albeit beautiful, woman trying to do a job – and do it well.
“I can’t let you sleep anymore,” she says. “We’ve already missed breakfast. I can take you to the infirmary and tell them you’re ill, or you can do my Inspection round with me before you have your next corrective instruction session. You choose.”
I sit up. Other than a faint headache, my body feels surprisingly strong, like it’s been knitted anew.
It’s my emotions that feel unravelled.
I’d love to spend the day in the infirmary. But I’m learning there is no safe place to be on this ship. Why take the risk of going there, only to find out their way of curing me would be, oh, I don’t know, osimidite again, since that seems to be the answer for everything here.
“I’ll come with you.”
“Do you remember what happened last night?”
The words are hard for me to say, and harder for me to hear. “My magic didn’t work.”
She offers me a weak smile. “Try not to dwell on it,” she says, in a tone that isn’t kind, but could be, if I convinced myself it was.
It’s a confusing thought about her, but it’s true.
“Just take it as a lesson. You can’t ask your magic for things that aren’t in your scope to influence.
Something as personal as what you tried to do, wouldn’t be. ”
“So, that’s it?” I press. “There’s nothing I can do to stop Cosmer becoming an addict again?”
“Magic doesn’t fix everything,” she replies, simply.
I pull off the nightdress. I’d have felt embarrassed doing this in front of Meg a few days ago. Now, I feel nothing.
I open her dresser to put it away. My eyes immediately fall on the satchel with Cosmer’s things in, tucked on the bottom shelf.
Checking first that Meg’s distracted – she’s reading through my Integration notes on her bed, facing away from me – I look inside the satchel, for nothing but curiosity.
The cord with the key to his ship is there – Meg must have taken it from around my neck and returned it there.
His standard pocket watch. His leather belt.
The holster of it is empty. So’s the sleeve for his radio.
But his comb is fitted inside. Looking at it up close for the first time, I realise it’s made from bone, and has been engraved in a curling pattern that looks more Rhavnan than Hevallan.
The only other item in the bag is his silver flask.
I’d forgotten about that.
It really is beautiful. As is the comb. For Cosmer to have not one but two Rhavnan items...
It was a gift, he’d said about the flask. Was the comb a gift, too?
I take a last look at the items before I close the bag. They look so small in the space.
Are these the only possessions of his own he has in the world?
I should have left him my ribbon.
Doing an Inspection round ends up being somewhat entertaining, if a job up here can be described as that.
Meg takes us down to the deck below and checks seven cabins at random, making notes in a book as she goes on cleanliness and how the bed has been made.
She searches each room thoroughly for contraband, and marks down one of them because a comb was left out.
After, we head up to the Bridge. But Riss and Drake are already by the vaulted door.
Riss addresses Meg only. I can’t help but feel that’s deliberate. “Why are you here?”
“Ara has corrective instruction.”
“No, Drake does.”
They go over to each other to show each other their Integration books.
Eyes flitting between the two books, Riss says, “They want them in together?”
“Apparently.”
Meg makes for the door, at the same time that Ephraine appears. His muscles make him almost wide enough to be the door.
Drake glances at me. I try not to glance at him.
Get into her head.
Is that what he will try to do? He should know it’s a losing battle. I don’t care about our magic stabilising, whatever that means. I don’t care about anything now but getting home with Cosmer.
I touch the ribbon in my hair, making sure it’s still in place, before I start walking. Ephraine stands aside to let us enter.
It’s a different layout. Two high-backed chairs have been placed side by side on the wooden platform. The other first officers are seated around the perimeter. Meg takes the empty seat that has been left for her.
I stare at the chairs. The way they have an audience. I can’t help but think they look like two thrones.
Oh, the irony.
Drake steps up onto the platform, then offers me his hand to help me up.
As there are a lot of eyes on us, I take it.
We fill our seats – Drake on the right, and me on the left.
“Lights on or off?” Dezeeves asks.
“On,” we say at the same time.
Oh. I’m going to hate every minute of this.
“We have a tank,” Dezeeves says, indicating a white balloon on a cart. “Would you prefer to proceed with osimidite, or without it?”
“Without it,” I say instantly. “Of course.”
Dezeeves nods. “I had thought that would be your answer, Ara, but I still wanted to check. I hope you will forgive us for using the osimidite on you yesterday. But learning that particular lesson about Rhavna can be rather upsetting for our prisoners. For those who have lived in the Palace, and those who have not.”
I do nothing but glare at him.
“Now, let us continue the conversation where we left off. We enjoyed hearing about your childhood in the Palace, Ara, and your childhood in the Mechanical City, Drake.”
My first thought is, he told them where he was from?
Then again, Dezeeves already did seem to know who Drake was, right when we first met him.
“And thank you, Drake, for generally giving us the information we required of you, when prompted.”
Prompted. So that’s what they’re calling being punched in the face by Ephraine.
“Now, we will move onto more formative years. You will see that for this session we have joined you together. I am afraid, with the ambush yesterday, that we do require both of your Integrations to be expedited.”
He locks his fingers together thoughtfully.
“Drake, we will start with you. When was it that you would say your childhood ended?”
“When I went to war,” he replies.
“And how old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“And that was how long ago?”
“Five years ago.”
“You joined at the very beginning of the war?”
“Yes.”
“What was the reasoning behind you joining the war effort?”
“I was told to. By my mother.”
This receives some chuckles from around the room. But Drake’s face is perfectly composed.
“She felt it would be an honourable thing for you to do?”
“Yes.”
“Build character in you?”
“Quite.”
“And did it? Build character in you?”
Drake sits higher in his chair. “I would not know. I believe character is assessed by the way others perceive you.”
Dezeeves’ face flushes. “An excellent point. Ara – please could you offer a word or two on Drake’s character?”
The light from the beams in the ceiling seems brighter, suddenly. It’s right in my eyes.
“Oh. Drake is—”
Say something. Anything.
“— a good dancer.”
More laughs from the officers.
My eyes meet Meg’s. She taps my Integration book on her lap with her sharp nails.
I get the message. I am failing this test.
Pass the tests they have for you, my mother had said.
Although she had also asked me not to do anything that might get me killed, and I hadn’t heeded that last night.
Dezeeves was also amused by my comment, but now his face has rearranged itself. “A humorous answer. But I had asked about character rather than skill. Can you think of any character attributes Drake possesses?”
“He is…” I think back to last night. “Clever. Always one step ahead of everyone else. Or… me, at least.”
“Excellent. Anything else?”
“He is…”
An image in my mind. Drake and me. The world that had cleared for us, in my dream.
I learned it when I felt it. Just now.
“He is intuitive,” I say. “About how people might be thinking. And feeling.”
“Thank you. We will move on. Ara, please could you tell us when your childhood ended?”
Did I even have a childhood?
From what I’ve understood, it wasn’t a childhood so much as an extended training.
But I can’t talk about that here.
I say instead, “It ended when I moved to Hevalla. Your Provision system is tough.”
“Tough, yes,” Dezeeves comments. “But just. No?” He smiles. “To get back from the world exactly what you have given it. Is that not the ultimate ideal?”
I’m floundering.
Integration will mess with your head. Drake warned me of that.
“Drake,” Dezeeves says, turning to him. “We will ask you the same question we posed to Ara. How would you describe her character?”
I flinch. But keep on staring straight ahead.
It’s as if his answer is already planned. It falls smoothly from his lips.
“Ara is wiser than her nineteen years. She prefers to do things alone. She believes she knows what’s right and what’s wrong. When presented with a choice between them, generally she chooses well.”
“An excellent analysis,” Dezeeves declares with a clap of his hands. “Although perhaps you could elaborate on why she only generally chooses well?”
“She can let her heart rule her head.”
My eyes find his profile – his structured nose and jaw. I can’t detect a single thought he might be thinking.
“Yes,” Dezeeves is saying, face ruddy. “As can we all.” He scratches his face. “And what would your advice be to Ara? In those moments of weakness, she may have?”
“She needs to slow down. Think things through.”
Drake looks right at me.
“Every decision you make offers you something, and what’s best for you is rarely what’s best for the world. You need to think, hard, about what you want. What you could give,” he adds, so slowly the words creep over my skull, “And what you could have.”