The Comfort Of The Knife

It took us two cable cars to arrive at the heart of Brightgate, a large hill of many terraces devoted to civic buildings, a few residential areas, and the amenities needed to support them all. The driver for the cable car explained that it was the center of the city because it was the first hill to settle down and propose treaties of peace with the others. As compared to the Lodge district, it was apparent that the city had a peaceful heart despite the dogs that ran wild only two cable cars away—and the one that stood on the steps to the First Brightgate Public Library & Temple.

At its most simple, the building was a boxy resolute thing of concrete and brutalist determination. Yet it was adorned with stony petals that made the whole thing look fluffy and inviting. From the cable car you could see the temple that was built halfway into the terrace above the library with the other half resting atop its roof. The temple was larger than the one Dad had built back home. Designed using different principles for the same end result—providing access to the NewNet for about half of the city—it was something alien to look at. Dad’s temple was a thing of beams and pillars, all squared and wooden, but arranged like the most confounding puzzle box and living room game. Where if you removed just one beam the entire thing would collapse, but by them all being together it had weathered everything. Well, everything short of a goddess falling atop it. No, this temple was so fragile to look at. A twenty-sided polyhedral tesseract of colored glass that scattered wandering beams of color that painted the simple civic buildings while bouncing the beams off what glass they did have.

Rainbow polka dots crawled across our bodies as we stood there admiring the building. Soaking up the light that bounced off the temple atop the library. We took the stairs that cut through the winding slope which led to its double-sized front doors. Once inside we stalled again, as the sturdy concrete exterior hid an organic interior of rounded wooden terraces that formed the central reading area. Families sat on blankets as parents read to their children, and pairs of teens enjoyed coffees while co-reading magazines. At different terraces there were hallways that branched off to the library’s many sections.

We climbed up the stairs past terrace after terrace until we hit the administrative floor of the library. There wasn’t much to see beyond the hallways that led to offices, meeting rooms, and other unromantic locales that saw librarians to work. At the center of it all was a pair of double-helixed elevators which carried patrons, like us, to the temple up above. They were made from this succulent-red glass that reminded me of the organs that had looped about some of the Lodge district’s lamps last night. I exhaled a breath that wobbled under the pressure of my own gorey recollection.

“Are you going to be okay?” Melissa asked.

I scoffed, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s your first temple since you lost yours,” Amber answered. “Wouldn’t be off to be off about it.”

“So,” I said, “you’re both worried I’ll bawl at the sight of some sorc-desktops and ancient Old World computers? I think I’m stronger than that.”

I pushed past them to catch an elevator a second-to from leaving. The shimmering chrome doors cut me off from Melissa and Amber. I tapped my head against them and offered a brief smile to the grandmother in a pair of sunday-sweats as Mom referred to her laziest pair of clothes—I’d packed them for myself to sleep in. They maybe had a few days left before they stopped smelling of her.

When the doors opened I slowly stepped out into a nightmare world of light and noise. The grandmother was unbothered by the kaleidoscopic color which shifted seven shades in every direction. Bounded off happily into the rows and rows of screaming arcade cabinets, claw machines, and other games that saw a litany of patrons roaring and laughing in mad glee. It was worse than the wild hunt. Melissa and Amber arrived soon after finding me on a nearby bench.

“Holy shit, Temple, was your place like this?” Amber asked.

“You’d never been?” I asked.

“I have a lot to do most days. Never had any work that took me to your side of town.”

“Short answer is no,” I said. “Dad had quiet sensibilities. Why he enjoyed putting so much emphasis on the cafe part of computer cafe. Was his way of helping people wind down and connect. But every temple architect is allowed to monetize however they want around the function of providing NewNet access.”

“Says who?”

“SIRD. Was their major stipulation as a group when they released the first plans for rebuilding the ‘net to encourage individuals to build temples in as many places as possible.”

“So whoever did the build here got to decide that this place would be an arcade,” Amber said. “Alls below, didn’t think I’d see something like this since Tokyo.”

“You mean Shin-Tokyo?” I asked. “You’ve been?”

“Years ago. Though these days most just call it Tokyo.”

Melissa interjected, “Does the architect get to design the temple outfits as well?”

I followed her arm as it pointed out one of the temple-girls advancing toward us. Her vestments were a two-piece of a two-toned googie jacket and skirt combo. Though from the jacket’s crop and how short the skirt fell due to the multi-hued petticoat beneath, they hardly seemed enough fabric to make either.

“They do,” I said.

When the temple-girl arrived she asked, “How can we help you today?”

Melissa said, “We’re just trying to get our sorc-decks linked to the network while we’re in town.”

“Smart move,” the temple-girl said. “Follow me.”

As we followed her into the depths of this torturous arcade the architect designed, I did my best to just admire the tiles. It was the best option between making my eyes bleed from overstimulation or being stuck to observe the temple-girl’s flouncing skirt. The sight of which made my indignation roil into near-rage. There’s a propriety to temples. To the vestments worn by its girls, boys, and kin. It’s not a religious thing, but it’s an honorable one. He may have run a small town’s temple but he knew that much. Dad knew that much.

The temple-girl led us through a door into the only quiet place in here: the confessionals. There were about six booths built for each wall not counting the one the door was set into. They were only big enough for one person and a small counter for you to place your sorc-deck that you wanted linked to the network. Dad’s were pretty austere—all wood—but the function was an austere one. You had to clearly state your identity and last network access point. Any hint of a lie meant no NewNet until you told the truth. A way to keep people honest seeing as the Old World’s net granted copious ways to anonymity. ‘One of the positives and issues of the net that was,’ Dad used to say. This place’s confessionals had fucking plush pillows.

“What’d two questions they ask to give you a face like that, Temple?” Amber asked.

“My face is fine,” I said. Fixing my face into something presentable.

Amber smirked at my attempt. I turned from her to Melissa whose thumbs danced across her sorc-deck. She looked up from it blushing an apologetic hue.

Melissa said, “My mom’s freaking out, so I have to call her. Meet you two at the cafe next door?”

“Sure,” I said.

She texted me a list of books she’d put together for us to pour over. Then hurried off for the cafe, her sorc-deck already to her ear. Amber and I took to searching the stacks. As we followed Melissa’s list we cut through the history section—most libraries are pretty clear about what shelves hold books on the Changeover—and after loading all of those onto my sorc-deck the two of us hopped down two terraces to access the Myth and Folklore section. Melissa had the Gospel of the Godtenders on the list, and Changeover Folktales and Fairymyths. Apparently Brightgate had the fancy original version with all of the researcher’s marginalia from penning each entry. As well as the illustrated character plates that occupied the page next to every entry.

I ran my eyes over the dark bluish free-standing walls that served as the library’s stacks. Each wall marked by about fifty rectangular boxes across and five down denoting the glass servers that held about twenty books each. I waved my sorc-deck across the inlaid beads that functioned as the access port for my sorc-deck to read the server’s book list.

“Temple, did you ever wear a temple-girl’s vestments?” Amber asked.

“For a few summers. I started manning the temple three years ago. My mom wore the vestments way more than me.”

“Were they—”

“No,” I barked. “They were long. Normal. Not something floofy like the girls here.”

“Any photos I can see?”

“Ask Melissa.”

“Who’d you kill last night?”

I froze. Tilted my head out one end of the stacks scanned both ends of the room for anyone nearby. When I felt like we were alone—and had used the Omensight to confirm we were—I returned to scanning the shelves.

“No one.”

“That’s a lie, Temple,” she said.

“You can read my mind now?” I said, whirling on her.

“No, but when you kill enough people your eyes start to turn red. Yours are flecked with carmine.”

I reached up to my eye unconsciously. I was trying too hard to keep fixed an invisible mask, and Amber caught me trying to adjust it back in place. Her smirking mien cracked as grin turned to grimace. She reached out to me and I slid backwards—I was caught and didn’t want to be touched.

“Is it really?” I asked softly.

Amber wrapped her hand about her other one. Leaned against the wall opposite me. The stacks were narrow with a little under four feet between them. Yet we found plenty of places to look at that wasn’t each other. We had that much courtesy.

“Uh, not by and large. I knew one girl who it happened too, but she was fucking crazy. Changes like that can happen when you move up the Chain, but it’s not happening to you.”

“Good. I have my mom’s eyes. That’s what everyone said.”

“Yeah, I remember hearing that. Temple, who were they?”

“Other,” I said confidently. “Just like you said. No name, no face, and no problem. They were bad though.”

“Ah,” she said, refreshed like she’d just taken the first sip of cold bear. “Took my advice?”

“Mhmm. Worked great too. Thanks for that,” I said.

My eyes traced a squiggle around her face—I had to know, I just had to know—but it was shadowed by the way her head tilted. A great inky black that obscured her face. When she was ready she turned back to me, and into the light.

“They worth it?”

“I learned how to strike through fate.”

“Fate?” she asked.

“It’s what I call the lines, threads that connect everything to every other thing.”

Amber rocked on her heels. “Sympathy lines.”

“What?”

“No such thing as fate, Temple, but there are sympathy lines. Conceptually connects ‘everything to every other thing.’ A lot of formations and complex spell work makes use of them.”

I bit down on my own denial. Maybe that’s what she and others called it. I knew what it was thought, and it was sympathy and it was fate. That extra special connection.

Defensively, I said, “Sure, but I also got a spell. A defensive one. I have my four.”

“Mhmm,” Amber said.

“What?”

“I mean, Temple, you’re at the starting line now. Maybe it’s a good spell, but tell me it wasn’t a lot of people?”

My breath shortened. I could feel my wrists tensing from how my fists dragged themselves tight and dense as a star.

“Temple, please?”

“Temple—”

I snarled and threw myself at Amber. Trapped her against one of the stacks with both my arms barring an easy escape in either direction. My face was close enough that I could count her eyelashes—well I could if my eyes weren’t so blurry at the time. I just blinked rapidly to clear them up since I needed my hands to keep Amber trapped.

“Stop asking me things!” I hissed. “You don’t get to ask me things, or act like I’m just so readable. Maybe I don’t want you to see what’s inside. Maybe I want to be fucking blissful before we go into this madness of a test later. Maybe I just. . .”

“Maybe?” Amber asked.

“Maybe I’m tired of you asking me everything and taking answers from me while giving over nothing I want to know. So I’m done.”

Amber smirked at my primal grunts and hisses of displeasure. Her calm still around her she clasped my wrists in her grip then spun us about. Pressed my back into the wall, and pinned my arms above my head. She loomed over me with a bemused smile that had her incisors peeking out from behind full lips. Yet try as I might I couldn’t evade her rosy eyes that sought me out from every hiding spot within myself. She just saw me.

“Ask me a question,” she ordered.

“No, you’re not going to answer.”

“I will, Temple.”

“No.”

She shook me once. The inlaid bead ground itself into my shoulder blade.

Amber whispered, “Any question. I’ll answer.”

“What happened last night?” I asked.

Amber’s face softened. “Thought you’d give me a harder question. I killed people, Temple. A lot of people, but they were more dogs than people. Had these masks.”

“Masks,” I said. “Masked dog-people.”

“Don’t say it like I’m lying,” she chastised.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Why’d you ask?”

“Cause everything looked so weird. Dull in spots.”

Amber nodded as she understood. Removed a hand from imprisoning my arm—her other hand took up the slack easily—and held her palm out to me. Waved it to catch the light.

“Dull,” I said.

“Hm, well congrats Temple. Seems like your special eyes came home with a new feature. You can see, at least partially, into the UV section of light.”

“So those splatters. . .”

“Blood. Lucky us as I think urine would be more of a problem. We’d have to ask the princess’s mom to give us her special spell to get it out.”

I only cared about Amber’s initial answer. Blood. Splattered all over the room in arcs and droplets and massive running globs. My eyes fell on the palm she showed me, and the dull arm that matched. Blood to her elbows.

“Why?”

“I didn’t have much time to interrogate them. Their little pack was pretty big, and I had to work fast. Didn’t want them to harm Melissa. I knew you’d hate it if a single one got through.”

“If a single one,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“But that many summoners and not having an attack spell?”

“I had said maybe I don’t have one. Though it wasn’t as many as you’d think. Most of them just bled a lot and though a traditionalist I can be a bit rusty.”

She reached into her storage-spell and removed a chef’s knife still dripping in muddy red blood that hid every inch of steel that was needed to gather that much blood. I nodded slowly at the weapon. So humble. Then to Amber, who winked and slid the knife back into her storage-spell.

“You’re not scared of me, Temple?” she asked. Her face flushed ever so slightly.

I said, “No. I’m glad you were there. If Melissa. . . but why’d the wild hunt come for us?”

“Maybe the Secretary went tattling with some thought they shouldn’t know. I don’t know, but we were bound to face enemies when we set forth. It wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. Nor be unprepared to do again.”

My lip quivered. She stilled it with her thumb. Ran it across my lips before touching it to her own.

“Are you sure it won’t be too many ghosts for you to drink for?”

“Temple, I have a necropolis in my closet. What are a few more ghosts between friends?” she asked. “I kill for you after all. Whether I stay my hand, or drown this place in a red wave it’ll only be for you. Always for you.”

My cheeks were dusted with a nearly imperceptible blush. Her eyes never broke from mine throughout her gentle declaration. She tilted her head, and assumed an almost submissive expression. Eyes just barely wet.

“Do you want me to keep doing it?” Amber asked.

Her lips hovered over mine. “Yes,” I breathed.

“Who dies?”

“You’ll know best.”

“No, Temple, I want to know clearly who dies. I don’t want you snapping at me again. Who?”

“Anyone in my way,” I said. It was too broad, my answer, but Amber’s smile was even broader. A waxed moon of pleasure at the command that felt more like I was releasing something.

She dropped my arms and took a step back. Her body arched into the stack opposite me. My heart throbbed in my ears. My skin was hot from having been beneath her eyes.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“What’s it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I? Let’s use our words, Temple. We are in a library.”

“Killing. Do you like it?” I asked.

Scenes of her smile as she danced with the cultists back in the outpost before drugging them spiraled into my mind.

“Not really. It’s the most boring time. The dying of one thing, and the perpetuation of another who won their life by sacrificing something else’s. Seen that a hundred times. The fight through,” she said. “I cherish the fight. To see each new person and what genius they’ve brought into this world, or treachery that might redefine what summoner on summoner combat looks like.”

Amber dragged in a thin breath before exhaling in a puff of luxurious release.

She continued, “But beneath the steps is the person. What led them to this moment? Moved them to throw their life into the air in the hopes they’d still be standing to catch it. Is it just a job, or is this a matter of utmost vengeance—like your reasons are. Then when they start to come undone—they always come undone when they catch sight of death’s shadow—you learn who they were before this moment. The person they’ve decided is worth the life of another human being. It’s so intimate. With a climax I’ll never get enough of as we reach the ending and steel penetrates the safety of their rib cage. Nicks the heart, and lets spill their life.”

At some point in her answer a heat had settled against my heart. It pounded a lustful beat that missed the way blood painted the cobblestones just right; made it feel so good as it splattered against my skin. Amber quirked a brow at seeing the state she’d brought me to. A panting dog.

“Everything after that moment, gets boring,” she finished.

The denial was a polar front that chilled me back to self-awareness. My eyes flicked about in search of any voyeur that’d pushed Amber to stop. She winked at me—no voyeur, but not here—she said without words.

Amber waved her own sorc-deck over a bead—a hit. She used her thumb to select the option from a drop down menu that downloaded the Gospel. I quietly turned back to my stack. It was three beads over and one down before I found the server that had Changeover Folktales and Fairymyths. Both books downloaded, we made our way to the cafe to find Melissa.

* * *

Since I knew Amber had more money than me, I had her go buy us some drinks. I didn’t drink coffee and neither did she, but the place sold milkshakes and I was craving something indulgent. While she did that I sought out Melissa. Bobbing up and down to peer around the two-seat and four-seat drinking pods that made up the interior. I heard Melissa before I saw her.

“I don’t know what I’m doing after the exam,” she said. “I know. I know, I said I only wanted to see Nadia off, but we got exemptions. Don’t ask me how unless you’re ready for one of your four hearts to collapse.”

She sipped from her coffee—it was in a tiny mug—and slouched inside her pod. I’d found her in a corner where you could barely hear the phone call. She was so into it that I barely had to hide as I eavesdropped on her.

“If we pass, I don’t know what comes next. I’ll probably take my Lodgemember card and turn it in for an acceptance to some university or other. Brightgate has an intercontinental station. I could go anywhere. With Nadia? No, no not with her. Yeah, I promise Mom, after this it’s probably where we part ways. No, I agree, it’s for the best.”

I crumpled the end of my shirt in my fists. I’d thought—I don’t know what I thought. She’d come all this way, but that didn’t mean she’d come the entire way with me. It’d be for the best if she didn’t actually. I wouldn’t have done the wild hunt if I didn’t have to make things safer for her. My tongue slipped past my lips as I stuck it out at the Nadia reflected in the shiny brass shell coating the pods—that Nadia, me, knew that wasn’t a fair excuse.

Amber slipped behind me as I wallowed in the muck of a goodbye I didn’t have to make yet. She pressed the cold metal canister that held my milkshake against the back of my neck. I yelped and hopped out from my cover. Shot up as I locked eyes with Melissa who hurriedly hung up on her mom. I didn’t look back at Amber as I rushed over to the pod Melissa had established for us. Amber slid into the pod on Melissa’s side.

Melissa started, “Nadia—”

“Apparently they have a sakura flavored milkshake. Want a sip?” I asked.

She nodded and let me shut her up with the thick milkshake that took forever to squeeze itself through the metal straw. Her eyes were scrunched as she smiled around the straw at the pleasant taste. The straw fell from her lips with an airy pop.

“How was it?”

“Really sweet,” she said. Not even once looking back to the frothy pink milkshake. When I had my sip, I couldn’t taste anything beyond the bitter flavor of Melissa’s lips.

We uploaded the books we’d gathered into the group chat that Melissa made when she sent us the list. I sucked down my milkshake—riding it to the end so I didn’t have to speak—as we got to work. My thumbs swiping across my sorc-deck to turn the pages of the double-page spread conjuration that hovered in front of my face—I hated bending my neck.

First were the history books, but there wasn’t much to be read. There were a few historical groups trying to put together a record of the Changeover—problem was how do you cover the end of the world in one book? So while some groups chased the dragon on putting together the perfect definitive text others released multiple volumes on every continent. An absolute pain to reference considering some of the major fights of the period spanned multiple continents and bounced between Realspace and the Underside until they ended. Meaning you’d finish one paragraph then open a different volume to read another only to go through at least three other volumes before you finished one moment.

Melissa, ever the student, focused on journals instead. Pretty much everyone who survived wrote a journal or two. Noted down their experiences, grievances, and blessings if they were so lucky. Dad said he tried to keep one back in the day, but found most of his journals destroyed or lost as he bounced around the Changeover. When I think of that and the photos in that album, I wondered if they were destroyed during some old fights of his. Simple sacrifices that he’d have no idea would contribute to how gone he felt.

“Most of these journals are useless,” Amber said.

They were.

Melissa said, “I know, I just wanted to grab anything that referenced godtenders. It is the biggest detail about her dad’s identity.”

It was. If you didn’t see how he died, and if he wasn’t your dad.

I sighed, “This textbook doesn’t have much either. It’s more about the Godtenders as a group than godtenders as like, people. Lists all the important ones: Jiyoon the godtender of Tomorrow, Ahmed the godtender of Confession, and Marguerite Ghost-shepherd the godtender of Ghosts.”

They had the rest of the nine of course, but it’s why the book was useless. The nine godtenders were famous—divine mortals if you believed the followers of the Gospels. Each of them critical to one piece or another of the New World. Jiyoon had made the Thunder Declaration. Ahmed had compelled the Old World leaders to tell the truth of their plots to turn man against man. While Marguerite quelled the lich lords that sprung up from the battlefields across Turtle Island and prevented them from making it out alive—well, undead, I suppose. If any of them had died it’d be global news. Dad didn’t even make the front page of the town paper.

Melissa perked up and spun her own projected pages in my direction. I closed my projection and gave hers a once over. She’d highlighted a short passage of the journal: Through a blackened world lit by stars, she led us from the burning tips of Abya Yala to the tepid center of its northern end. Her breath was even and her temperament caring as she looked over us. A saint with a smile that shamed the moon. My niece, Clara, said that people called women like her ‘godtenders’. Bonded to entities that made magic mundane and miracles common.

“There’s not a woman like this amidst the nine,” Melissa said.

“Okay, are you thinking my dad was a woman?”

“No, but that’s a fair point. What I’m saying is we can confirm easily your dad wasn’t one of the nine that actually make up the Godtenders. But entries like this means there are probably more godtenders running about than make up the nine. Which means we ignore history—”

“After we already read them all,” Amber chimed.

Melissa ignored her. “We ignore history, and focus on folklore. The Gospel is mainly on the deeds of the nine, so we go straight to Folktales and Fairymyths.”

“Fine. Let’s see what’s here,” I said.

I duplicated my projection for Melissa and Amber, and then opened the book. Its chapters had titles like: Tales of the Unbonded, Conceptual Travel Stories, and Diasporic Survival Sagas. Before. . . everything, I used to read more. Most of the time it was temple and shrine architecture magazines. A few serial fiction catalogs I’d found on the NewNet and would download for Mom—we had different tastes, but now and again I’d find my head in her lap as she read a story. In fact, she had read Folktales and Fairymyths to me when I was a kid. Most people’s parents did, but they usually stuck to the long meandering ones emphasizing adventure, an unwillingness to give in, and ingenuity. The good children’s stories.

Mom never cared much about good children’s stories. She read me a little bit of everything from the dark diasporic sagas of communities whittled down to an undying nub as they traversed the death world of the Changeover to the haunting stories of unbonded entities roaming the hidden parts of the world. Though as I flicked through the chapter titles I tripped over the one category that she never read: Wandering Folk, a chapter on those weird figures who’d pop up all over the world, but who never fit into a neat archetype.

Knowing their relationship to Every Train, I hurriedly opened the section. The story that began it was less of a story, but more like anecdotes and interviews with maybe the longest entry being a few pages out of the twenty that composed the section of the chapter.

“The Ten Cruelties,” Amber said. “That’s a deep cut.”

“Who are they?” Melissa asked.

“The reason we don’t let you New World kids bond to an entity until you’re basically eighteen. According to the legend, each cruelty was pushed to bond way too early. Intending to be heroes, their entity’s power warped their minds and bodies.”

“And then?” I asked.

“They destroyed a bunch of shit. Admittedly, I doubt they’re real. Just society looking for a reason to explain away what basically everyone rushed to do initially,” Amber said. “Most of the Old World adults were too old to make rapid advancement up the Chain, so everyone looked to the kids to fill that role. The collectives did it the most. And it usually resulted in everyone’s demise including whatever reason was used to motivate things.”

Melissa said, “I mean, with names like the ‘Slaughteress,’ ‘The Faceless Lady,’ or the ‘Deathless Hedonist,’ it doesn’t help them sound real anyways. What’s the next section?”

I flipped forward through the section on the Ten Cruelties and paused as I stared at the illustrated plate. It was of a helmeted figure with a sword the size of a person. He crossed a ruined street while skyscrapers stood slashed to pieces in the distance with smoke covering the sky with only a red sun to mark it by. The man’s armor was the exact same as Dad’s was in the photo album Every Train gave me.

“I think this is my dad,” I said.

My eyes slid over to the name for this section, and my blood became a sluggish slushie that circulated a chill to the tips of my being. It was titled: City Killer, First Sword of the Changeover.