Peculiar Soul

You wield the price like a goad, but I have lost my fear of injury. The country is the body of the emperor, and mine already bears most grievous wounds; what more fear shall you inspire? You do not believe me, Star of Avarice? Hold out your hand, that I may place this bloody coin in it:

I, Marcus Argyros, shall be the last emperor of Ghar. As I kneel before this tree, its roots bear the weight of ages. The face of Ghar turns upwards towards Mendian and says: I have killed your children. I have made war on your lands. These things were unjust and unwarranted; in our power and might we did them. Yet power and might did not return from these acts, and we are left impoverished.

I abase myself before the tree, and its people. I call my own people murderers and warmongers. I name myself a leader of such men, and chief among their sorry company. And I enjoin you, O Wrathful Star, to remember your word set down in these chambers, for there is no salve for the blood of Ghar should Mendian forget its honor. I throw our children upon your mercy. May you watch them grow under your aegis, the children of murderers and warmongers, and remember what we were.

Is that enough? Shall I kiss the bark? Or if I am done, hand me your knife, Jealous Star, and watch blood feed this greedy soil. In distant days, when nothing else remains, the seed we plant today shall grow. There shall be a prince on the throne once more, and the world will tremble to see him. Now, the knife, before you lose your nerve. Is it sharp? Ah, it is.

- The last words of Marcus Argyros, Goitxea, 442.

The river was tepid and glassy, infested with the silence that gripped Gharon. Michael paced alongside it until he came to the first of the city’s bridges. There had been guardsmen when he had crossed before, to ward against Mendiko crossings. Now it was empty. The wind sighed through the span as he passed, but none stepped out to challenge him. He did not pause to think on it, continuing towards the encampment he remembered by the broad market square.

That square was still intact, when he reached it, with cloth draped in a varied canopy high over the empty streets. No crowds pressed through its narrow entrances, and none darkened its many doorways. There were people here - many of them, per Sobriquet, but they remained hidden in alcoves and darkened corners while Michael trespassed. It was less than ideal, because Michael had come with the aim of speaking to them.

He sighed, picking a door more or less at random; when his sight confirmed that the house beyond was occupied, he laid his hand upon it. The lock was not metal, but there were few doors that could hold against him now. Sever whispered through the air and picked apart a rope that held the door fast, sawed through a board that stopped it from opening. The halves of that board clattered to the ground with a shocking noise, echoing through the room. Michael saw the people in the back jump and cringe away at the sound, but they did not move to escape. There was a sad, resigned note to their fear; they had but one path to walk, even as they denied every moment of it.

Michael ducked through the doorway, closing the door behind him, and took stock of it. It was a modest house, decorated with incongruous cheer. There were colorful swatches of cloth tied overhead in a mockery of the market outside, and the tile in the kitchen had been meticulously painted with blue flowers on a white field. None of this mattered to the three in back, though.

There was an old woman, stooped and gap-toothed, breathing quick gasps of the chill winter air. A younger man lay beside her, listless, and a woman around the same age lay to his other side. Of the three, only her eyes tracked Michael as he walked forward. He took it as a good sign, kneeling down in front of her.

“Hello,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. She flinched at the noise nevertheless, her breath coming rapidly. Michael frowned, noting the glassy panic in her eyes; she wasn’t listening to his words, only panicking at the sound. He tried a different tactic, reaching out with Spark. The fear slammed into him as he drew upon the soul, but he bore it - grappled with it, as it assaulted him, and gently turned it aside.

He felt his own breathing slow, gaining a soothing rhythm. “Calm,” he murmured. “Be calm. I won’t hurt you.” The words sank into the woman, driven there by the urging of his soul, and her breathing began to mirror his own. Between shuddering breaths her eyes focused on him. The fear tried to return, then, as she grappled with the notion of a stranger in her house, but it was a reasonable and normal sort of fear to have - not the animal panic from before.

“So it’s our turn?” the woman rasped.

Michael frowned. “Your turn for what?” he asked.

Her eyes flitted over his face. “You’re not - aren’t you Ardan?”

“I am,” Michael said. At the look on her face, he raised his hands. “But I’m not with the Ardans. Quite the opposite, actually. I’m trying to find them and - well. Where are they?”

The woman laughed, quick and bitter, then clapped a hand over her mouth; Michael renewed his push with Spark to salve her fear. The laugh bubbled back up, quieter this time. “How should I know?” she said. We’ve been hiding - hiding inside. We welcomed them in. They were here to drive out the Mendiko. To keep us from the Safid. They put out a call for men, for ensouled, and they all gathered in the great square. A Gharic army, for the first time in-”

Her lip trembled, and she shook her head. “They mustered the men. The Ardans were already fighting the Safid in the north, and they were eager to help. We had a festival. Nonna made cakes-” The woman wrung her hands, her eyes darting to the old woman. “But then the orders changed. They weren’t to march out the Sea Gate, but past the Domus Gharis. West. The men marched.” Her fingers twisted, knuckles white in the cold. “Never reached the wall.”

“An attack?” Michael asked.

She shook her head; Michael kept Spark’s steadying pressure on her. “They never reached the wall,” she repeated. “We thought we had missed them, or they’d gone out by another way. Someone went to the Domus, to look there. They didn’t come back. Someone went to look for them. They didn’t come back.”

Her breathing had quickened. Michael was having to push against her harder to quiet that fear; he began to worry for her health. But that worry was a quiet voice in his mind; he was enthralled. He had to know. “Go on,” he urged her.

She licked her lips, nodding; her eyes were beginning to glaze. “The Ardans didn’t know either,” she said. “Some of the men that were - were left, they got angry, started accusing them, but they didn’t know. They got afraid. Some of theirs went missing too. Their soldiers started to panic. The obruors came together and broke them, though; the Ardans marched together to the Domus to investigate.” She shook her head, shivering. “Near two thousand of them. We heard - screams, that day, for the first time. They haven’t stopped since.”

Her pupils were wide and black, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. “That night we lit fires. The ones that were left. Didn’t know what else to do, but we wanted the light.” She laughed again, a manic tinge to her voice. “We wanted the light. And so did the thing in the Domus. We knew it had come when the fires died, and then-” She looked away. “And then it was our turn. I thought you were it. Come to take us with the rest.”

“I came to town just a bit ago,” Michael said.

The woman gave a delirious giggle. “More the fool you. Why? Why come here?” The smile slipped from her face; she looked up at him. “Why not turn back when you heard the screaming?”

Michael looked at her carefully. “I don’t hear any screaming,” he said. “It’s been very quiet in Gharon.”

“Quiet and loud,” the woman moaned. “You can’t stop your ears up against it. You can’t shut it behind a door. Ever since the Ardans died, we’ve been able to hear them. It’s been growing louder. Louder, every day. More. We can’t sleep. My nonni, he went outside to make it stop and now he’s-” She gestured miserably, towards the outside. “He’s with the rest.”

A creeping dread asserted itself in Michael’s gut; he looked back at the doorway. Nothing was there save for the door swinging gently in the breeze. “I don’t understand,” he said, only half directed at the woman. “There’s nothing to hear.”

The woman’s eyes closed, her jaw clenching. “There’s nothing else,” she hissed. “Nowhere you can go. No way to keep them out, they get - in, they get in, they get in-”

She began to rock back and forth, the tips of her fingers pressed against her head. Michael could feel the panic rising in her, but feared to exert any more force with Spark. She felt brittle, liable to snap at the slightest increase in that pressure. Gently, he withdrew the touch of his soul. The woman gasped, her breathing hitching slightly, but her hands fell away from her head. She slumped under her blanket. Her wide eyes no longer tracked Michael as he moved, but her lips continued to move in silent speech.

They get in.

Michael stood and exited the house, feeling profoundly ill-at-ease. The plaza was as quiet as it had been when he entered. The woman’s ravings continued to echo in his ears, though. He grimaced - then paused, his eyes widening in horrified realization. His head came up. Slowly, he released his grip on Spark. The fear slammed into him once more, only slightly more tolerable with repeated exposure.

He breathed in, then out, trying to gain his equilibrium in the storm. After a few more breaths, he clenched his teeth - then loosened his hold on Stanza as well. He had become accustomed to keeping the soul half-present at all times, letting it guide his movements, warn of dangers. It was comforting, reassuring - protective. But that protection slipped away as he set the soul aside.

There was still nothing to hear. No sound emerged to break the plaza’s silence. The fear remained, though, and in the quiet its chorus seemed to swell, to fragment into tones-

Michael grabbed at Stanza reflexively, letting it flood through him; he dropped to one knee with his hands over his ears, breathing hard as the blessed silence took hold once more.

“Michael!” Sobriquet shouted, blurring into being in front of him. “Are you okay? What’s-”

“Fine.” Michael waved her off, wiping a hand across his face. “I’m fine.” He stood up, looking back at the house where the woman lay mumbling to herself. “Tell the men to break camp and move away from the city.”

She paused. “Because of what that woman said? It doesn’t seem like there’s any forces here to contest a siege.”

“Gharon is already under siege. You were never close enough to feel it, and I had Stanza to protect me, but when I let it slip away…” His mouth twisted. “Their fear is being stoked, amplified.”

Sobriquet’s outline fuzzed briefly. “Across the entire city?” she muttered. “You’d need a good number of powerful instigators to get that kind of range.” She paused, and when she spoke again her voice carried a strong disquiet. “Which the Institute has. Or perhaps had.”

Michael nodded slowly. “Leaning towards the latter. Nothing else makes sense at this point.” He turned to look towards the center of the ancient government quarter, its ruins silently brooding over the city. “It’s Luc. Has to be. Nobody else could kill that many men - nor would they.”

“If that’s true,” Sobriquet said, “and if we can believe that woman, then he’s likely to have gained more than a few souls in the time since you last met.” She floated closer. “And potentially Sibyl, or Smoke for all we know. He may be more than a match for you.”

“He may be,” Michael conceded, “but I’m all there is. None of you can approach the city.” He held up a hand to forestall Sobriquet’s retort. “I’m serious. Without Stanza, I’d be in there with the rest of them, hiding under some blankets.”

“You can’t expect us to sit by idly while you fight,” she protested. “If nothing else, I can help; I don’t have to draw any closer than I am now.”

Michael shook his head. “You should veil the men as they retreat.”

“Shit.” She paused, crossing her arms. “Good point. If he has Sibyl, though, the veil isn’t going to matter much. I can’t hide an army from that soul.”

“I’m actually hoping he did take the soul,” Michael said. “I’ve seen a taste of what it shows; if he took it recently then he’ll be flat on his back right about now, terrified of dust motes. Without it he’ll still have what’s left of his faculties. I know which version of him I’d rather fight.”

“Classic delusion of the nobility, thinking the world will cater to your preferences.” She hovered closer. “Be careful. I’ll be watching. If there’s anything I can do-”

“I’ll remember to ask.” Michael leaned as close as he dared to her apparition. “Good luck.”

“That’s my line, you dolt. You’re the one who needs it.” She paused. “Good luck.”

Her form faded away, leaving Michael alone in the plaza. He turned back towards the remnants of the government quarter and began to jog along the icy stone. The ramshackle dwellings built into the ruins dwindled as he ran, yielding to huge colonnades and towering archways. Some of the buildings had collapsed, or were blackened by fire. Others were overgrown, impassable.

But there was no doubt in Michael’s mind which building the woman had spoken of. One stood prominently at the center of a large clear area, its stone facade clear of brush and debris. It bore the ravages of time, but also distinct signs that someone in the city had cared for the building.

More than that, though, the sense of dread hammering at Michael spiked when his eyes fell upon the hulking domed structure. What had been an invisible presence became a tangible pressure, like walking into a stiff wind. It was no worse than he had suffered while using Spark earlier, but the increase worried him - the sheer power of it worried him.

Thousands, the woman had said. How many ensouled? Likely not many, but Michael himself had only a handful of souls. Perhaps he could hold a city in thrall to fear like this, if he drew upon Spark in its fullness - but the fact that he was reaching that far for a comparison was worrying in itself.

He grit his teeth and kept moving towards the Domus Gharis. The front was not ornate, preferring instead to make its point with titanic stone columns. One on the right corner had fallen aside, littering the square with horse-sized stone chunks. The rest stood resolutely, though, holding up a high stone roof that ascended to a dome.

The size of it was deceptive. Michael was forced to adjust his estimate a few times as he approached; the building was larger than any other he had seen. Even the Assembly hall would have looked petite next to the towering stone entryway. Stairs descended from the colonnade into the square; Michael reached the bottom and began to climb.

Columns rose to either side like ancient trees as he reached the top. Fear gusted out from within, a quiet maelstrom; Michael fought against the urge to brace himself. It felt as though he should, as though the air would fling him from the steps to send him tumbling down. He pressed onward, stepping between the columns into a charnel house.

There was nothing else to call it. A few steps beyond the boundary made by the columns, the stone floor was strewn with bodies, their hands contorted into pale claws and their eyes white with frost. There was little blood, though Michael could smell it faintly on the air. He began to pick his way between the corpses.

Some were Gharic, clad in their rough clothing. Many were Ardan. Michael spotted infantry uniforms, the brimmed caps of the officer corps, the distinctive jackets issued to the obruors. By the time he had reached the mammoth doors to the Domus, he could no longer step between the bodies. They lay too thickly upon the floor; with a grimace, he began walking upon their frozen flesh. It was solid beneath his feet, but every few steps a body would turn or shift under his weight. Stanza guided his feet to surer placement even as his eyes were drawn up to the interior.

It had been a magnificent building in its day, that much was obvious. It still was. The mosaics on the walls had shed tiles, and the painted columns were faded and chipped, but the scale of the place was a statement as profound as any adornment. Light streamed in from open archways high overhead to illuminate the vaulted span.

Where it fell, Michael could see the growing toll of dead. Corpses lay two or three deep, piled across each other where they had fallen - and they had fallen here, Michael realized. The uniforms clustered in ranks, arranged in neat rows of men. But not stacked. They had collapsed from their formations like stringless puppets. Faces lay glittering under a rime of ice, their mouths hanging open; Michael felt the howling around him even through Stanza’s bulwark.

Not from the mouths themselves, of course, though his brain was eager to draw that connection. If that were true the noise would be rising from all around him, from the macabre carpet underfoot. But increasingly Michael felt the horror streaming from one place in particular, secluded in the farthest reach of the grand hall. There was a white marble dais there, a stone shoal in the deathly sea. The sunlight played across it and onto-

Michael’s sight swam, for it saw several things at once. There was a blur, as the light in the room shivered and bent around a dark locus. Beneath that, golden threads warped and bent against the great weight pressing upon them. That weight showed itself to Michael’s eyes as a great shifting bulk, its flesh contorted and broken with the burden of countless mouths screaming wet and fearful nothings. It shivered, writhed, slouched towards the center of the dais.

Where, underneath it all, Michael saw the slight form of a man sitting in a large stone chair, under an archway that had half-crumbled. A piece of that arch had been placed before the dais in a position of honor. On it were inscribed the words-

“Dum imperator est, permanebimus,” Luc said, his voice echoing in the hall. “I had read books on Ghar, and Gharon. Claude had several. Histories of the world when it was ruled from this seat.” He traced his fingers over the stone armrest of the throne for a moment, then gripped it and stood. “Subjugated. A people that craved rule, and sought to spread their addiction to the ends of the world. They didn’t carve that arch until Ghar was a shadow of its past self, yet still they bent their efforts towards declaring their love for the man with his boot on their neck.”

He took a step forward, sinking his foot deliberately into the stone; it parted around his foot like hot butter, the ancient carvings deforming and stretching until only a ruined mass lay on the dais. Luc shook his head, then looked up at Michael. His face was sallow, drawn. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of long, sleepless nights. Their eyes met; the cacophony of voices from the sightless mass of his soul increased tenfold.

“But people cannot help but admire their tyrants, yes?” Luc murmured. “Hello, Michael.”

An avalanche of thoughts jostled for room in Michael’s head. He was acutely aware of how close Luc was standing, of the vast dimensions of the Domus suddenly looking small and cramped when he contemplated fighting within them. He licked his lips. “Luc,” he said. “So this is your study of tyranny?”

Luc laughed, his voice echoing from the high ceiling; the myriad gaping mouths around him gave voice to their own wailing cry. Michael struggled to keep his focus trained on Luc amid the cacophony. The horror and fear reverberated around him, echoing from countless frozen lips.

“I know what it is to be ruled,” he said. “To know that someone greater than you holds your life in their hands. It’s all I’ve ever known. And I did love my tyrant, before you killed him. I only saw later how one-sided it was, even as I turned that adoration to a new master - because how could I do anything else? How could I exist without devoting myself to someone greater? I had no direction, but there were pillars around me. You knew where to go. You changed things. Everything made so much sense in your footsteps. Even when I began to see the destruction that came along with it, I contorted myself into believing that it was all for some mythical greater good.”

He stepped forward off the dais, his bare feet treading on dead, frozen flesh. “But you’re no different from any of those men,” he said softly. “You’re not special, only gripped in a righteous delusion.”

“I make no pretense at righteousness,” Michael retorted. “And my pile of dead is far smaller than yours. Can you even see yourself anymore? Those people you used to agonize over, you are their fear. You are their pain, their torment, their death. You’ve turned yourself into a fucking monster, Luc.”

“Says the man no less monstrous,” Luc murmured. “I see your soul, you know. The horrid uniformity of it, the subjugation of everything to your will. The uniqueness crushed away until there is only what you approve. You can say what you like, but your actions are written on that featureless orb.”

Michael could not help but laugh, his own voice echoing mockingly around the hall. “Is that what you think of me?” he spat. “This is consensus. You prefer a horrid, wailing mass that drives all men around to madness?”

“Yours is a very Mendiko consensus, driven as it is by the threat of annihilation,” Luc said. “I know what you take from people.”

Michael felt a chill. “Oh?”

“I felt the change at - some point. Perhaps in Ardalt.” Luc held up his scarred hand, turning it over idly. “There is a voice that persists after death. Whispers and wants. Nothing that I could hear clearly. I tried to ignore them at first.” He let his hand drop. “But I could not help but hear their - anger. They raged against the world - against me, but there is nothing within me. There is no purchase for them there.”

He gave a lopsided smile, shrugging helplessly; for a moment Michael saw the amicable young man that he had known from Spark’s island. The smile dropped, though, and the gaunt murderer stood in his place.

“And they are right to be angry, because subjugation was the only option they were given. So I kept the embers of their anger safe within me, even as I burned from the heat.” His eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t until we met for the final time in Ardalt that I truly understood why they were angry. There is nobody who wields power in their name. Nobody who truly cares for them. Men like you will always choose themselves, in the end.”

Michael met his gaze, his heart still pounding from the revelation. His low souls had been his primary advantage against Luc, or so he thought. If Luc had found his way to the same end...

He forced himself to focus on the man standing before him. “You’re wrong about me.”

“Perhaps.” Luc spread his hands. “I see more than I can pretend to understand. Glimpses of futures that shall never be, or of inevitability - but which is which? I’m sure Sibyl would see more clearly.” He shook his head. “But she was too clever by half, never let me get too close to her. Never let me mark her. She saw the ending paths…”

A brief flare of hope kindled in Michael’s chest; Luc had not managed to gain Sibyl after all. “She left without stopping here? For where?”

Luc gave him a disapproving look. “Look at your face light up. Are you so happy to hear that you might yet claim the soul? She’s far away from either of us, hiding in spaces only she can see. She sent her obruors here, though-” He craned his neck, then pointed to a less-frozen mound of bodies some distance from them. “There. A parting gift, and some appropriate irony. They didn’t much like when they were the ones being controlled. They railed against her even as I stole away their will. But she led them to me before she fled, because while she doesn’t trust me - you, she hates.”

“I’m surprised you two weren’t fast friends, with that in common,” Michael muttered.

Real surprise colored Luc’s face for a moment, replaced a moment later by a weary resignation. “I don’t hate you, Michael,” Luc said. “It’s the power that I hate. The control. No one man should hold so much sway over his fellows. We don’t deserve it.” He began to pace to the side, circling Michael. “There’s nobody who does.”

“I can’t disagree, but the power exists,” Michael said, echoing Luc’s movements to keep his distance. There was “It’s here, with us - and since I’d rather not die, there are only so many options left to me.”

“I don’t want you to die either,” Luc said. “I’m not sure what would happen to our peculiar arrangement if you did. It’s the sort of event that obliterates future paths, one of the moments that killed Carolus Altenbach when he stared too long. I can look without dying, now, but it’s-” He shivered, shaking his head. “It’s not meant for me. It’s never me. I’m no more worthy of this power than you are; the only difference is that I admit it. I accept it. And I’ve been working to find a better path.”

He smiled, and the chorus of mewling voices behind him rose, chanting their horrid litany. “The ones who know the face of power best are its victims,” he murmured. “None of them would fare any better than us, not alone, but they - they aren’t. All of the parts of them that yearned to survive are together now, striving towards a whole. Something new, something greater, that might be able to contest with the power they inherit from me. If I can gather enough of them, perhaps. And if they can’t - then their wrath will still be a sort of justice, yes?”

Michael stopped pacing, turning to face Luc. “I won’t be dragged into your madness,” he said. “I came here to end this.”

“I know,” Luc said. “I’ve seen it happen. I shouldn’t have let Sever slip from my grasp, but I was too fixated on the man. To fight and die as fodder - it was such symmetry. Such a fitting end for the man who did the same to my friends. But now the balance is off. My hatred of him is another proof of my unworth. You come with word and whisper and blade, and you are glorious.” He closed his eyes, his face bending into a blissful smile. The voices fell silent around him; Michael was momentarily disoriented by the change. “There is no other word for it. In the moment of my death there is a light that I cannot bear to look upon, and then - then there’s nothing more. Another path that isn’t meant for me.” He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I choose not to walk it.”

For the barest instant he still stood there, smiling knowingly at Michael. In the next heartbeat his feet blurred, sending shattered icy flesh scattering across the mound. A great crack erupted as Luc shot through the stone wall of the Domus, blasting the plaza with gravel and stone even as he leapt up to dance across the rooftops. He was fast, almost too fast for Michael to follow with his sight. The air surged in his wake, collapsing walls and roofs in a line across the city - outwards, towards the north.

Michael cursed and began to run as fast as he could in Luc’s wake, feeling sluggish even as the city blurred past him. His blood felt like ice; he could see Luc’s trajectory, and where it was going. Who it pursued. “Sera!” he shouted. “Hold your veil strong and get the men ready! Luc is coming north!”

“How the fuck are we supposed to-” she began, then cut off. “Okay, I see him. We’ll do what we can.”

“I’m right behind him,” Michael said, trying to believe it. Then he wasted no more breath on speech, and ran north with every mote of speed he could summon.