The Human Experience

Three-Quarter P, day 34, 3411.

The white, crowned wolf that is the Iron Helms’ sigil has always interested me. It has given me the name of Iron Wolf, forged my identity, even. Yet it has nothing to do with hunting or killing. It is taken from Star-Queen Neoma’s holy testaments on celestial worship. The wolf in question was Tychon’s loyal pet, Neoma writes, and held allegiance to him even after his death by Pyrrhus’s blade. When Amaris was to ascend to the Throne of the Universe, the wolf stood in her path, blocking her way to the dais. It refused to budge even as she beat it to death with her bare hands. Though it couldn’t attack a goddess, it would not succumb to her will.

Orcadis’s people chose the Wolf of Tychon as their symbol because they value control of mind and body over all else. The beast’s legendary willpower inspires their austere lifestyle and their exercises in pain endurance. Its loyalty to the true monarch is mirrored in the way the Helms have resolutely backed Star-King Serasta in his war against his younger brother. The crown worn by the wolf is an emblem of mental control as much as one of allegiance to the king.

My tattoo doesn’t have a crown. I take this to mean my allegiance to Orcadis is meant to be above all else – even above my allegiance to the Star-King.

But Orcadis says he is not my master. The world is your Tychon, he says, and the Voices, they are your Amaris. But they are not gods. And so you will fight back against them.

Stepping onto the dock at Port Crimson, Del may as well have been stepping back into the body of that fourteen-turn-old who’d docked here twelve turns ago. Only this time she stared at the citadel forking into the sky with dread, not awestruck hope.

Hector, always so much like her, was probably remembering Lykus landing here at ten. He’d been a different person then, too. He watched the imposing turrets dominating the landscape with heavy-lidded eyes stained pink from alcohol.

The architects who’d designed Fort Neoma had arranged it like a six-tiered cake, each level separated by a stone wall hugging its circumference to keep it isolated. Funny, coming from the civilization that preached equality. Only the Wall-Tube connected the tiers, winding around and up the mound like a great snake.

They washed out with the other passengers, the pier creaking beneath numerous feet. It fed into a sett-paved boardwalk, lined with multiple-storied shops displaying Fort Neoma’s gaudiest trends through their windows. There were jewelled headpieces, veils of authentic dyed silk imported from Akkút, corsets of silver chain-mail so fine each looked like a mesh of spider-thread. Del’s eyebrows shot up at that last one. Taking the Helms’ horrifying doctrine of restraint and turning it into a fashion statement? It certainly wasn’t beyond these ignorant imperialist lordlings. They knew nothing of restraint, except that it was in season.

Del let Hector lead the way into town – now wasn’t the time to explain how she’d lived here for six turns. He threaded through the tourists, swerving between shops and bakeries flaunting the smell of honey-cakes to come out into level one’s town square. They could see level two’s wall looming into the clouds, and as they approached Del heard the Tube’s faint hissing above.

Hector walked doggedly to the wall, barely throwing glances behind him. She picked up her pace, afraid that when asked to state his business, Hector would tell the fare collectors he’d come to kill Greathelm Orcadis Durant.

She found him at one of the fare screens in the wall, selecting his destination on the touch-pad. Level Two: farms, forests, lakes, and markets. Level Three: shopping, entertainment, local residences. Level Four: aristocratic residences.

He selected Level Five: the Iron Keep.

And the level where people went to work? Del’s lip curled. Anyone who lived in Fort Neoma could only afford to do so by doling out propaganda for the Helms. That was what the aristocracy concerned themselves with. Who needed to do other work, when the Helms rolled in the profits from their sick memory alterations? How many grief-stricken people like Hector had travelled to Fort Neoma to have their pasts removed and some happy lie inserted instead?

The pixels on the screen shifted and a man’s face eased into focus. “Your appointment number, please,” he said.

Hector tugged down the collar of his shirt. The black wolf glared back at the screen from overtop his collarbone.

The man, showing as little surprise as any Helm worth his salt, disappeared from the screen.

“Always so subtle,” Del muttered. She lowered her voice when someone appeared at the next fare screen some paces along the wall. “I thought we would stay at an inn so you could face Durant as Lykus?”

Hector watched the screen with unmasked hate darkening his eyes like a cloud blocking out the suns over a forest canopy. “Lykus would snap his neck the minute he saw him. He wouldn’t be able to think about the consequences. I can. I can put aside my anger long enough to ask him why he did this to me.”

She bit her lip. This would be where a normal person would place an arm around his shoulders, but the moment Del even thought of it her arms turned to lead.

The fare collector didn’t return to the screen, nor were they asked to deposit money into the machine. A tube-like capsule dropped into the cavity in the wall next to their screen, its plexiglass door hissing aside. Del blinked at it. After living in Van-Rath and then on the rural outskirts of Vangarde, Fort Neoma’s technological advancements seemed displaced in time. The royal family had been a paranoid bunch for generations, starting with the monarch who’d built the artificial island and decreed that all new science was henceforth to be conducted only here. It was the only way, the Vangardian royals claimed, to keep other lands from getting their hands on and possibly reproducing Vangarde’s innovations.

They stepped into the capsule, shut the door and took their seats on the bench. Del’s stomach plummeted as the capsule rose into the wall. They waited in darkness for it to detect a break in the flow of traffic before surfacing atop the wall. Finally it did, drowning them in light again, and began the sickening rotation around level one so quickly that all surroundings became a coloured blur.

The interplay of light and dark nauseated Del as the capsule went around the levels, then up on the cables connecting to the next wall. She shut her eyes. When the tube finally became still her brain rattled around her skull. Hector was first to slide the door open.

She couldn’t look. She knew what she’d see: her former prison, a place that had sworn to love her and mend her wounds only to rub them with salt.

A large palm patted her cheek. “Del, you sick? Delia?”

Her eyes fluttered open. She focused on Hector’s face and not the grey stone fortress beyond him. Nodding, she let him help her out of the capsule, relishing the excuse to hold him and lean her weight on him without looking needy.

Del forced her gaze to the labyrinth of edifices and towers climbing so high they blocked the wall to level six. Those horrible pointed spires rose like spears impaling the sky. The Iron Helms’ sigil flew from every flag snapping in the wind: a white wolf against a black background, a crown resting atop its ears and its blood-red eyes smouldering. From the open windows wafted the familiar smells of sage and incense, used in whatever deprivation ritual the inductees were practising today.

Hector led her to an archway entrance, urging her to sit on one of the stone benches lining the walkway. Who knew he could be so tender, so supportive, if only she’d give him the chance more often?

“You sure you want to do this today?” she asked, pushing away the water skin he offered. “Wouldn’t you rather sober up, rest for the night at an inn, think about what you’re going to say to Durant?”

I’m not ready...I can’t face him.

Looking puzzled, Hector stoppered the water skin and replaced it in the pouch at his belt. “I can’t stay like this any longer, Del.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. How could she give childhood nightmares priority over Hector’s sanity? It was time to face her terror of that dreadful man. She couldn’t get the answers she’d resolved to get out of him by running and hiding. Besides, Jesreal had promised Durant would never learn of what she’d done. He couldn’t know.

But if he exposed her past association with the Helms, would she lose Hector’s trust?

“By the stars, Lykus, are you drunk?”

A teenage girl with chestnut waves ogled Hector from down the walkway. Del glanced around for the source of the male voice that had spoken, but when the teenager advanced she saw it was actually a boy, eighteen or nineteen. His full lips and round, pale green eyes were striking if somewhat...effeminate.

As the boy walked Helms stopped in their tracks to glare at him, throwing disapproving wavelengths his way. In tight red jeans, an oversized black t-shirt, and thick-soled combat boots disproportionate to his skinny legs, he certainly wasn’t abiding by the dress code. The others in the courtyard swept their eyes over him, looking identical wearing the same brown robes and indignant frowns.

But the youth was either used to it or didn’t notice. He watched Hector with his lips parted, revealing somewhat bucked front teeth. “You look dreadful,” he said.

Del tried to place him. Something about the boy was familiar. She felt she’d seen him recently, though she couldn’t possibly have.

Hector pulled out a halfhearted smile. A guttering light like a starved candle ignited in his eyes. “At least I’ve made it through puberty, Kaed.”

Kaed. Yes, the tanned skin, the tall, skulking frame.

This was the Greathelm’s boy.

She’d seen him fleetingly as a child. He’d had the same demeanour then, all bent in on himself, his straight, heavy brows darkening the algae green of his eyes. He’d looked like a girl then, too.

Kaed glared at Hector through curtains of loosely wavy hair, not taking to the jape. “Come. Father expects you.”

The boy crammed his hands into pockets practically painted onto his thighs and started down the entrance aisle with a straddling gait, his stride as long as his pants allowed. He stopped them at the largest edifice’s doorway and eyed Del. “Who’s this?”

“Er, this is my...girlfriend.” Hector spared her a sideways glance as though worried she’d contradict him. She forced a smile. Part of her had been expecting ‘my mentalist,’ or even ‘my bodyguard who’s going to make sure I don’t join the Helms again.’

The youth gave her a look of blatant disdain. “Really? Women must have low self-esteem nowadays.” He grabbed the spears the sentries held crossed over the entrance and pushed them apart to shoulder his way into the Keep.

Funny, she thought as Hector shrugged meekly at her. I wouldn’t have thought the Greathelm of all people would tolerate a bratty kid.

The sentries shared flat looks that said they were well used to the boy’s moody ways, but they didn’t re-cross their spears. Del hesitated to step inside the building. Her terror spread from her mind and she knew those leeches were reading it. Some of the older members turned curious looks in her direction.

Hector took her hand and coaxed her forward. “Whoever sees us won’t bother probing your mind, if that’s what’s worrying you. It’s me they’ll search.”

The guards frisked them for weapons and they entered. Del let her eyes roam over the barrel-vaulted ceiling stretching above like the roof of a giant mouth, the mottled marble colonnades holding up archways and the carpet rolled along the floor like the monster’s great red tongue. Her grip on Hector’s hand tightened.

A girl in her early teens drew up alongside Kaed, matching his quick stride with a light jog. The silver band around her head sported but three garnets – one for each T-turn she’d trained with the Helms.

“Why aren’t you wearing your robes, Kaed?” she demanded.

“I’m not one of the clones in Father’s little cult.”

“You’re going to make him angry again, you know.”

He gave her a bored look. “Guess what? A man with a hatchet is butchering a kid.”

The girl flinched, blinking rapidly. “Stop it, Kaed, it’s not gonna work.”

“Oh, his arm came off. Stars, the blood is just spraying out of that severed artery!”

“It’s not working!” she yelled over him, shaking her head. “I’m not thinking about it! Nobody’s being murdered!”

“Yeah? Then how come I can see it? Yup, there goes his other arm. He’s screaming like mad now. Hot, sticky blood is dripping off the hatchet’s blade.”

“Stop! Stop thinking about it!”

Del rounded the corner after them. Kaed halted outside the grand pointed arches of the audience chamber, grinning darkly at his victim. “Shall I go on? Can you picture it yet?”

The girl choked a sob. “I’m telling the Fist!”

“I’m telling my fist if you don’t leave. The hatchet is levelled at his neck now. Shall I kill him?”

“Oh, you’re horrible, Kaed Durant, evil!” She grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him into the double arched doors. He staggered as the hollow bang of his head sounded against the redwood and the doors juddered on their hinges. The girl then ran off between the colonnades with her hands clamped over her ears.

Kaed clutched the doorframe to keep his balance. “The kid’s head was chopped straight off, Rhoswen!” he called after her. “I hope you’re happy! You killed him! You!”

Hector crossed his arms, looking unimpressed. “Tormenting little girls? You haven’t changed much.”

“She acts like a fool!” Kaed spat. He rubbed the offended area on the back of his head. “Believing all that ‘thinking is doing’ nonsense. Let her go to the punishing room for bad thoughts, if she’s so stupid. I bet she’s imagined me dead fifty times, and I’m still here.”

Del felt her mouth curl into a grin. Ten turns ago Kaed would have seemed the devil incarnate for inducing negative thoughts in a trainee too young to suppress them. Now he was just funny.

Her eyes strayed after the girl, and she saw herself running between the colonnades, nursing the Iron Helms’ teachings to her breast like some sacred testament.

The grand redwood doors swung inward and Del felt as if their very motion sucked all the heat from her body and into the audience chamber. There he was, his towering frame filling the doorway, silver hand-shaped clasps fastening his cloak to broad shoulders. Six turns had barely changed him. Still the same bronzed complexion and golden, silver-streaked hair that seemed to exude light like the desert sun, blinding her.

“Ah, Kaed, my boy, I thought I heard your dulcet tones. I pray I hear them less often in the future. Good, you’ve brought Lykus, and who is...?” Durant’s eyes shifted her way – the eyes Del had thought so compassionate once, that were really mind-sucking vortexes.

Her first instinct was to run. She twitched, but then willed herself to stare into the deep brown eyes, daring them to unlock her mind.

“Neria,” he murmured. As always she couldn’t detect the slightest ripple of thought-energy from him.

The anger clouding Hector’s face parted for confusion. “Neria? Is that one of your bullcrap Akkútian sayings? Or...are you talking about Delia?”

She held her breath, anticipating the blow. This was it. He’d expose her. Her past, her sins. Then she’d crack his skull against the edge of that door and spill his brains out like he’d spilled hers.

“Oh, my mistake, young lady,” Durant said. He leaned in, a reflective smile playing on his lips, then lowered his voice. “You look like a girl I once knew. Very kind, but...disturbed. She left one day, just like that. No explanation.”

She didn’t let her breath go. This couldn’t be it. He couldn’t not be angry with her. One didn’t just leave the Iron Helms! It was more than a cult, more than mere devotion to a people and a cause –

The Greathelm reached in with an iron grip to seize and pin down her mind.

My poor, treacherous child. How your thoughts have poisoned you in my absence. She could feel him filing through the archives of her mind with nimble mental fingers. Rage? Hatred? I have taught you better than this.

Gripped by panic, Del’s mind flailed. She struggled to store the secrets that had driven her from the Keep to the back of her consciousness, out of his reach. The more she squirmed the tighter his hold became. Again she felt helpless, and that helplessness quickly turned to desperation. She stumbled back to get her brainwaves out of his range.

Running away. Again, running away.

He was too strong. Somehow his outwardly gentle manner had always made her take that for granted. She’d grown rusty with her channelling after all the non-use, but she couldn’t let him revert her to her old, cowering, helpless self. Not ever again. He had to know he wasn’t dealing with the weakling Neria anymore. Instead of answering, she threw hatred at him, letting him read the high-frequency wavelengths, feeling their amplitudes increasing the more she pondered her hatred.

Durant’s lips thinned.

Are my bad thoughts bothering you? Shall I go to the punishing room? she mocked.

His heavy brows cast shadows over his eyes. You will answer for your abandonment, but not today.

Eat shit, Durant. Oh, wait...you already do.

He flinched as that last wave hit him like a slap. Del was left wide-eyed by her own audacity. If she’d still been an Iron Helm those kinds of thoughts would have earned her an eternity in the punishing room!

Durant shook himself out of it and turned to Hector, who was squinting at them as though sensing their unspoken communication. The Greathelm scanned Hector’s stained clothes, his stubble and the loose black hair hanging to his elbows. “Lykus, Lykus, Lykus,” he sighed. “What have they done to you? You were so perfect before. So perfect.”

Sorry, did I blunt your battle-axe? Delia couldn’t help scorning him. Turned out it was easier disrespecting him to his face than she’d figured. The trick now was not to go overboard. But if Durant heard, he ignored her.

Hector’s right eyelid twitched. “You summoned me, Master? I am at your service.”

“Six turns I’ve searched for you, Lykus. I knew your condition prevented you from developing any loyalty toward me, but to just leave like that...” He sighed his low, rumbling sigh. “You never gave me any indication that you didn’t like your home with the Helms.”

Nor did you, Neria. And you, girl, have no excuse for such ingratitude.

“I didn’t leave,” Hector growled. “I was captured by Rathian anti-colonialists on my last assassination assignment. They held me prisoner for three turns at an asylum, keeping my identity secret so you wouldn’t find me.”

“And when my men informed me you’d crossed the border into Vangarde three turns ago? I waited and waited. Why didn’t you return to the Keep?”

Hector lowered his head, his drapes of hair veiling his face.

“Ah,” Durant said softly. “You thought I’d have no use for you anymore. You couldn’t kill. Not with a conscience. Even if you’d been willing, you weren’t immune to the Voices anymore.”

Hector’s fists clenched by his sides. “Don’t ask me questions if you’re only going to go into my mind for the answers.”

“Pardon, pardon! Do try not to throw your thoughts at me like that, then. They float so visibly through the air and I can only ignore so much. Your friend is wise; she keeps out of my sensing radius.”

But Hector must have been stronger than Delia, because he didn’t step back. He didn’t feel the need to guard his state of mind like a naked, shivering baby. He offered it out, unashamed, while she withdrew in the corner nursing hers to her breast.

“Come inside,” Durant said, showing them through the doors. He strode to the back window in a swish of robes and threw the shutters open, filling the hall with the sweet scent of black orchid from the gardens he tended so meticulously. The wind breathed over Del’s face and her stomach knotted with the memories.

How much of that garden she’d planted alongside him, eager to mend the destruction she’d caused by restoring life. She remembered sobbing over her bed of wilting stalks, up to her elbows in mud, the rain beating down on her. He’d found her there. He’d wrapped her in the warmth of his cloak.

She’d asked him why everything she touched was destined to die.

You think of death and death follows you, child, he’d told her. Then the Greathelm took her hand, cold-bitten and filthy though it was, and held it clasped over his heart. Its strong, steady rhythm had thawed the stiffness from her fingers, spread its warmth up her forearm and into her core until she’d felt certain her own heart beat in accompaniment to it. You have touched my heart long ago with your loyalty and friendship, and look. It’s still beating. I’m still here.

And he’d dropped to his knees beside her, oblivious of the mud soiling his fine cashmere trousers, and guided her hand toward the plant flattened into the dirt. Together they’d raised it from its muddy grave, braced it against a stick, bound it with some cloth he ripped from his very sleeve. The Iron Fist of the Helms, down in the mud for her. Nothing about his touch had been made of iron then.

But it was a lie, likely no more than an implanted memory. Just, Gods, let it not be one of the generic templates. It sickened Del to think the memories that had shaped her identity were floating around in thousands of other heads with some details tweaked.

It sickened her to think her identity had been built on what Durant had wanted her to be.

“Orcadis.” Hector’s voice pulled her out of that uncertain trench. The circles under his eyes ran deeper and darker than ever. “You shouldn’t have done this. Anything but this, from you I would’ve been able to forgive.” He advanced with his arms tensed by his sides.

The Greathelm finally turned from the window. “Really, my boy, to bite the hand that feeds?”

A fiendish smile pulled Hector’s lips. “Woof woof.”

So much for Hector being able to think about the consequences. Del’s heart pounded as he advanced on Durant, all but foaming at the mouth. She almost wanted to order him to kill like the attack dog Durant had made him. But still not a crease of concern showed on the older man’s tanned, leathery skin.

“For real? You think Father hasn’t planned for this?” Kaed muttered, still standing beside the doors with Del. “I can smell the reek of your fury from here, Lykus.”

But Hector couldn’t help it, she knew. He halted a few paces from the Greathelm, angry breaths heaving in his chest, jaw working. Durant clasped his hands behind his back with his usual patience, humming the Black Night Hymn in his gentle baritone.

Kaed spoke again, still quietly. “We’ve just made a bet, Father and I. Father says you’ll go for the attack. I say you’re not stupid enough to try. I’ve got fifty silvers staked on you – don’t make me sorry.”

Stop him, stop him, Delia! He’ll get hurt!

Or...Durant might get hurt.

She moved just as Hector lunged for Durant’s throat. He barely got one pace before he stumbled, cried out, and redirected his hands to grab the Greathelm’s front in order to stay upright. Del rushed to pull him away as he fell to his knees, his head bowed, almost dragging Durant down with him. He collapsed in her arms, clutching his head.

“What did you do?” she screamed, feeling Hector’s agony battering her in sharp waves. Finally Hector lay still in her arms, his breaths shallow and his eyes dilating with horror.

Durant withdrew his hands from behind his back. Cupped in one palm was a small mechanical contraption. “Forgive me, I only intended to give you a small dose but you came at me so strongly you jostled the remote and my finger slipped. Are you alright?” He bent to survey Hector. Del threw out an arm.

“Stay away!”

Durant acquiesced. “You’ve had a nasty dose of neurotransmitters flowing through your brain just then. I think by now you’ve guessed that my Helms did not attack you coincidentally. They’ve made a little modification to your procedure: another little computerized spider inserted through your nose. It can send either inhibitors or stimulants to your Hormone and Emotion Controlling Tool for the Ordering of Responses, as my former colleague Jesreal calls it.” His features grew tough as tempered steel at the mention of the chirurgeon’s name. “I helped her design it, after all. Now the only thing that can control the strength of its emotional responses is,” he gave the remote a flourish, “right here.”

“Why do you have to destroy the lives of everyone who trusts you?” Del cried, trying to quell Hector’s shaking. “Just leave him alone, you bastard!”

“I saw her, Del,” Hector rasped, grappling at her tunic. “I was there again, the night she died. I s-saw it!”

Curiosity piqued on the man’s face. “Saw whom, Lykus?” he asked with the most absurd sincerity.

“Who do you think?” Del yelled. “Varali!”

Durant staggered. The air around him seemed to be sucked toward his body as he drew in his thoughts. Unconsciously he rapped his fingers against the windowsill.

“You must be exhausted from your journey,” he said vaguely. “We’ll talk in the morrow. Kaed, be so kind as to show our guests to their quarters. You may then show yourself to the punishing room for that absurd costume you’re wearing.”

Del and Kaed hauled Hector up between them. Though still shaken, he’d regained the grim darkness that had weighed his features since Varali’s death. Del cast Greathelm Durant a final glance as she helped Hector from the room, but he had already gone back to staring out the window.

“Next time,” Kaed said to Hector in the hallway, once the redwood doors had grumbled shut behind them, “be smart. Attack him when he doesn’t expect it.”