Work Text:
She had passed them, as she travelled from the darkness of her tomb into that chaotic moment of rhythmic hands and cracking ribs: two children, floating with arms linked at the elbows, forearms twisted up together, their fingers entwined so the current would not separate them; like sleeping creatures floating on the sea. She had tasted it in the water, the blood that followed them: the echo of a death too soon and too quick, and the promise of blood that bore them onward. Not ghosts called by a libation already made, but spirits rendered almost revenant by the debt they owed. That was something ancient, a blood promise. Perhaps she didn't see them at all, or not then - for neither time nor space was as it felt outside of the River - and anyway, if she had, she would soon forget.
At the other end of the promise, a child sat in a garden. No garden was it, deep in the cold blackness of space, encased in glass and metal, caught in the stormy edge of her dead...brother? Brother. Brother. A brother sat in a garden and grieved and time did not dull it. Around him, circinate sporophytes grew in alien soils, air made wet and warm for them by ancient machines. The brother sat on a stool by a bench covered in oil amalgam pots, and jars of artificial nutrients for the wet soil. The dirt lived yet, and the plants in it, but the worlds where they once grew were dead or dying, snuffed out by John's fingers.
The brother had consumed an intoxicant, and his empty glass sat beside him now, the bottom edges ringed in amber. He beheld an overfull notebook, turning the pages carefully, for between each one were interleaved notes and images, the whole book distended beyond its cover, at risk of disgorging itself across the floor. He paused on a page where a spidery diagram like the layers in a cake crackled with dried blood, his lips pursing and parsing: fluvial transitus… barathric settling… empyrean. And then, What did thou get thyself into, Abi?
The dead children drew closer, intent; coming to rest on the gravelly shore. The brother could surely smell the brine of the River now, and he started up, surprised as the electric lights around him flickered and failed. Pale spirit lights flared in the dark amidst the unfurling plants. The brother's heart pounded in his chest, weak like all those John had made in his own image. The edge of a worn mat before the bench bucked as if a wind were rushing that touched nothing else in the room. The brother dived for it, pushed it back, surveyed a smudged whorl chalked beneath it. He found chalk on the bench, hands shaking, and overlapped the lines, re-writing. The spirit lights flickered. If thou sayest so, muttered the brother, and he erased and redrew the final symbol. He spilled blood, and smiled strangely: No libation, I know. I never did have thy style. The air smelled of blood, of salt. And here was the other child, the sister, not in the River. The figure flickered, and for a moment something terrible was perceptible; broken and wet. And then she was as she had been alive, for ghosts were not always changed as bodies might be. The brother cried her name aloud, and the sister replied: I fear I have roped thee into something rather big, Shuggie.
The second child appeared now, two shimmering spirits crowded together inside the ward. They all spoke at once, a torrent of overlapping words: sorry and no ghosts! and unavoidably delayed and but the Bureau—. A jumble of sounds and feelings and reassurances. The brother was weeping, and as he spoke there was a pang of familiarity in her meat for half-remembered or yet-unheard words: What was done to make you this way?
The sister spoke of a summons. Of a Lyctor. Of an end unexpected and sudden. Of the place in the River wherein they had been beleaguered those nine months. Of the child that slept now in the Tomb, who had sojourned nine months at John's side, and of her sufferings. The brother paced, and questioned, Was he neither able nor willing? In her sorrow, and his anger, she wondered if they understood as she did, that John loved all those he called her children, but to be loved was not always to be saved.
They spoke now of the Houses John had spread across space, claiming each sad and terrible husk; of how each was travailed as theirs was. The brother told them of what had come to pass since their deaths, of questions left unanswered, of how the star John had rekindled had flickered and failed when for a moment he had been unmade by his own Hand. Of each House burdened with questions that received no answer. The other child shimmering within the ward inquired at one point, incredulous, five hundred and thirty-two?! and the brother and sister laughed: Dead nearly a year, and thou art still worried about the Stele Office. And he replied, The Sixth hath summoned people for less.
The sister told of the ancient warrior who was summoned on the promise of blood, fighting in the River. She could taste the ribbon that snaked through the waters: blood flowing as the brother gathered his living family and told them what was owed; blood summoning a ghost in a pocket of the River made by the girl in the Tomb; blood in the water as ghosts descended through the currents. Was that how it happened? She sorrowed that it had come to this, these combatants, children and her vengeful brother, all already slain, somewhere, somewhence, or would be. Marrowless, but blood will have blood.
The sister's blood was on the notebook. The brother picked it up and flicked through the pages. The sister exclaimed, Thou hast found it! The brother held the notebook out before him. That which thou hast written herein...it is heresy. The brother spoke, but he did not sound certain of himself. The second child, the one the sister loved, nudged her in the ribs and she shook her head at him, half smiling. The sister replied, Nothing therein speaks against the King Undying's own words. They looked at each other for a moment, no words passing between them, and then she added, with her mouth still caught in the strange half smile, Though mayhap that is on account of him saying suspiciously little on the matter. For a moment they all laughed amidst the unfurling fronds.
Then the brother stopped laughing and lowered his voice, although there was no one else there that might hear them and said, Thou art right, though. There is something wrong with the River.
They spoke of how the River was yet dead and flowed not as it should. Of where the dead should go, but did not. How they might yet cross. The brother seemed fearful to discuss it. Fluvial transitus. Barathric settling. Empyrean. The sister was shining-eyed behind her spectacles, her hands moving fast in the air as she spoke. But wherefore? cried the brother, who had never set foot upon a living planet, and had seen a river only in books, How can it be that a river does not keep its course, except it has been dammed or altered? How can it be a whole bank is put out of mind? She thought of living rivers, of mud and stones sloughing off banks, of courses that curved and changed their channels across the land, of ways carved out by water. It was not a river such as these, and never had been. Yet it was not so different. She recalled creatures that piled sticks and mud until a river was slowed, to make a place for themselves; the water pent up, safe for their young and full of food. Such a creature was not selfish, even as they changed the shape of a river, even as the bottom silted up and other creatures could not pass. She had not understood, and only half did now in this shape with its constraints, what John had done. A creature did not eat more leaves than it should, so that other creatures might die. A stone did not tumble from a river bank with the intent to change its course. They spoke at length, the brother paced, the second child, the one the sister loved, at one point said steady on, and the sister seemed sad as she said, Dost thou know, I longed mine whole life to send my notes unto the Emperor. Yet now that I am dead, I do not know which I fear more: that he should require them, or that he is not ignorant of what they contain. By the end the brother's jaw was set, and in place of his fear there was anger. He asked the sister, Would it make a difference? The sister began to answer and then fell silent, realising he was not truly asking her a question.
She recalled, some time very far away (she was not quite sure in which direction), begging her brother to stop his vengeance. But also in a dim and uncertain sense, soaked with some ancient or future memory of blood, she could not fault the desire for it. Had she, did she, hunger for it? Or was that always John?
I am sorry to leave thee with more questions and few answers. said the sister. The brother replied, Yet thou hast told me so much. Now I know in part. He looked about, at the built-up beds of plants, nestled amidst stones in the wet air, at the spirit lights amidst them, and for a long moment, he was silent, and looked only at a pair of cracked spectacles that sat folded on the edge of the bench. He let out a great sigh and his mouth was hard, though his eyes were soft. Thou wilt try to cross, then?. And the sister said, Truly I believe that we can. He nodded, Godspeed, then. Or, not his, as the case may be—. Swift crossing. If there is anyone that can find a way, I am sure thou canst, Abi. And meanwhile, I understand I have a promise to fulfil for thee. He flexed the hand upon which the wound from the summoning was half-healed, and she thought again of the ribbon, of what had been, and was, and would be. Though she would soon forget.
Before the children departed, the sister asked Wilt thou tell the other Houses? The other child, the one the sister loved, said carefully, Not knowing the circumstances, we leave it to thy discretion, of course, but...
The brother stopped and willed that he might clasp the sister's hand, and in love and anger said: Treason it is.