CHAPTER 15

  E screamed once she’d done it. Then, after turning several times to examine her whole head, she screamed again. "I did it! I did it! Shake yeah!”

  Her ocean blinked as a monitor with a seconds loss of power. Her head swam, she gripped the sink. "I shaking hate shinasshu.”

  She’d considered ripping her hair out and going bald. Thank rokk she hadn't.

  Strauss would have been ashamed, and yet she'd d one it. Conviction, even in the face of absurdity, was key with shinasshu. Unfortunately, another key was patience.

  She pulled from her gauge until a small, too small to be sensed, circling current of water sat in its corner, automatically pulling from the ocean. No rashin or anushin. No battle. If she did either she'd break it. She just wasn't talented enough. Until then everyone would see deep brown hair, not red.

  LJ still paced the length of the shop, hands in back pockets, when she stepped into it. Worry lines set so deep on his child’s face that he looked like a tiny old man.

  "Huh? Huh?” E spun. "Looks good, right?”

  LJ stopped, hooked his hands behind his head, tapped his foot in odd rhythm. "Don’t do this.”

  "I’m not going to fight.”

  LJ made a fart sound.

  "Confidence. Thanks for it.”

  "E, this is basically, no, not basically, is treason.”

  "I’m going. End. Count it lucky I didn’t just attack.”

  LJ resumed pacing. "This is stupid. I mean, not stupid. You're stupid. No, I'm sorry. Yes, it is stupid. I trust you E, trust you more than any shaker in the world, but if the Wordhealers had three shiners on deck I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have any walls right now and you’d be out there hacking, slashing and loving every second of it!”

  E took beauty down from its hook, spun the blade through the air, testing, feeling, adoring. So often had she read or heard some idiot author or poet describe a blade as an extension of a warrior’s arm. Stupid. In a fight, beauty was E, and E was beauty.

  "Another thing!” LJ shouted. "What? Are you going to walk around the streets with that monster hanging on your back?”

  "I was going through something just now with my sword. I don’t get many of those. You ruined it. I’ll find a place to stash it first, chill.”

  LJ had never ceased talking, "-- think they won’t notice you’re you right off? We’ve always thought they don’t know what you look like, but what if we’re wrong? C’mon E! This is stupid. This is so stupid.” He stabbed out his finger. "This is stupider than you!”

  E considered this. "Sounds about right.”

  "Jokes!” LJ slopped onto the middle sofa, put his head into his hands.

  "Dude, I can’t wait anymore,” said E. "That’s not true, I can wait. I won’t. I’ll never be able to describe it to you. It’s like this pressure that’s hemmed me in so heavy for so long is just bubbling up to the surface, ready to break out, and now that I’m resolved to do this, that pressufre. . .it's just gone. I’m so calm about it, dude. More than I’ve ever been about anything. I haven't felt calm in so long and now. . . I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be without it. I feel like I can do anything." She took a deep breath. "Bring order out of all this chaos.”

  LJ pulled his hands away from a face framed in disgust. "Blow it out your ass, E.”

  "Ok, fine.”

  "'Order from chaos?’”

  E shook her head. "Fine. It was stupid. I don’t care. My only problem now is getting into Wordheal.” She couldn’t just walk through a gate. Even she wasn’t that stupid/awesome.

  "E--’

  "You don’t get it.”

  LJ’s eyes popped wide, his jaw hardened. "I don't! Given murdered my grandpa, my hatucha right beside him after they refused the Gift. I wouldn’t care if you snuffed every single one out like a field of candles in a hurricane!”

  E was, briefly, stunned. Rarely had she seen LJ mad. She didn't like the mad-dog eyes she saw now. They were wrong, all wrong, in her sweet little LJ's head. Was that what she looked like to him? She returned to the couch, sat beside him, suddenly amazed at his tininess. Just a kid. So easy to forget.

  Hateful silence followed, and she ignored it by stared down at an old map of Wordheal she’d bought off some traders in Port years back. Decades out of date when it came to the interior, it was not so with the wall. Not a stone had moved.

  "E,” LJ choked on nothing, "what if you. . .you. . .”

  Now E was annoyed. "What? Die? Then I die, LJ. I’ll be gone. You know that. That’s the way it works. We eat, drink and die. That’s it.” She meant to reassure him with iron conviction, but he began to weep.

  "Hey,” awkwardly she drew LJ to herself. "Hey. No. No don't do that. Cry not, I mean, cool it genius. I’m not going to die. Have you ever even met me? I’m TNT with legs. Long legs.” He wrapped his small arms around her, and for a moment they were quiet.

  When she pulled back the kid, adorably, tried to pretend he hadn’t just cried. She let him. He looked back down at the map and cleared his throat. "Ok. A way into Wordheal.”

  "LJ, I don’t want you to think I don’t--”

  He waved her off, "No. I get it E. I’m sorry. I. . . I can’t stop you, but I trust you.” He pulled his pad from his jacket, unfolded it. Sniffling, one hand danced across the screen, and his face was immersed in bright blue light. Finally he turned it toward E. "Can’t stop, so I’ll help.”

  E had studied her antique map for so long that she recognized this in a second. She looked until she found the small yellow circle LJ had set near the rise wall. "How?”

  He did not look at E, but pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, something he did whenever he thought deeply about something, or lied. His eyes shifted in their sockets, his leg shook.

  "LJ?"

  "Nothing.”

  "What?"

  "It is nothing."

  E’s eyes narrowed. Anger in LJ’s eyes, only just for a moment. As when a great spear of lightening stabs down, seeking the heart of Nameless, strikes miles off and the eyes catch the brightness and are then left only with the image of the lightening that was, so was the speed with which the anger came and went.

  "I’m just scared,” he said. "But I think this will work.” He gestured to the screen. "It’s not that big, and the structure is definitely still there. I can’t imagine anyone still knows about it else they'd have caved the whole thing in. Who knows with Given. Probably think the building a relic or whatever.”

  How unlike her friend to lie. Had she time, she would have thought on it, found out why. Tried to help."

  She didn't. Instead she grabbed his shoulders and laughed. "This could work. This could get me inside Wordheal.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

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  E had developed many paths to move about untracked, unseen. Aside from its height Regent Tower didn’t look like much, but so long had it stood the home of the Regents that, inside, it was more like a castle: a patchwork of tunnels, vents, pipes and passages that had been opened and sealed off and forgotten and discovered and sealed off so many times no one really knew it.

  E did.

  As a child, she’d often used these to scare Wag. That habit had never ceased, and so she stood unlooked-for behind his office door in R&D when he entered with his morning coffee.

  "Heya,” said she, and closed the door with her foot.

  Wag's coffee splashing against the ugly rug covering the length of one wall.

  "E! What are you doing? Shhh. Don’t you laugh. You little. . . The rug! Yellow-eye make. . . Fortune.” Watching him try to wipe off the rug with his tie only made her laugh harder.

  Beauty bounced on her back as she grabbed a cloth from his sink, moved to help him. "You paid for this thing?”

  The rug’s delicately woven, even squares depicted many small, crude human figures in profile around its border, and each row was the supporting ground upon which slightly bigger, more detailed figures above did the same. It went like this until it the center where many bright figures with skins of blue and black and red and yellow and orange and many arms and no arms formed the border of the centermost square, within which was a simple dash.

  "Weird,” said E.

  "Yellow-eye cosmology,” Wag growled, and then scratched his head. "At least that’s what the fellow I purchased it from said.”

  "Cooler than Given crap, I’ll give them that.” She tapped the dash. "Ran out of ideas, though.”

  "That is the sound of creation.” Wag wiped his forehead. "So the fellow I purchased it from said.”

  "Ah, now it sucks again.” She turned to Wag. "Man should be at its center. Only thing we’ll ever know.”

  Wag rung the rag over the sink. "Why even rove about, child? With that sword no less? Back to your hideaway until the ancient madman finds a new outrage. He has searched for you all day.”

  "Who you callin’ 'old’?” E had already swept the office, but now took a closer look. LJ gave her cover from within the system, but that didn’t stop unconnected devices. The wide walls were all covered in beautiful, elegant works of art from across Nameless.

  "Are we still animals?” Wag had asked a tiny, giggling E when he’d first been promoted and lamented all that space wasted by bookcases, "that we must stand and search for a book?”

  Behind a great desk made of some rare wood sat a small, sleek refrigerator as well as several cabinets constantly replenished with different kinds of snacks. Dotted throughout the room were lit stands on which old relics were displayed in clear cases.

  "You and your things,” she studied him for a long moment. "I’m leaving, Wag.”

  "Leaving?” Wag spurted as he moved from the sink to his desk. "Blind you mean, 'leaving?’” His eyes fixed on her for the first time, "Your hair?”

  "For a trip I’m taking."

  The old guy’s eyes narrowed. "No. Do you hear me? No, E. Forbid. I forbid, FORBID you hear?”

  He'd raised his voice to her, so cute.

  "I love you Wag,” she smiled. "Not asking.”

  "What will you do?” Wag approached her with hands outstretched, as if to grasp her thought. "Assassinate the Words? Blow up the walls? This will end in unimaginable suffering for First.”

  E was struck by the alarm in his eyes. An odd mix of irritation, malice even, she’d never before seen. "I’m not going to do anything to First. No one will ever know I’m there if you keep your mouth shut. I’ll be out of your guy’s collective hair for a couple of days. Even you gotta admit that’s tempting.”

  "Out of. . .,” Wag bleated. "’Out of hair?’ Girl do you believe Eterna will aid you if you are injured? Imprisoned? I know you speak to Ammi much these days. You’ve seen the massive leaps she’s made in counter-shiner weaponry. Who can say if the Wordhealers have its like? They’ve certainly had greater cause to develop such.”

  E chuckled, "You’re getting paranoid, old man. That is beyond them.”

  Wag stared up at her, and his lapzu eyes sparkled, and he thought a long moment before turning away. "Ah, E. You are so intelligent. Always have been. All by your lonesome you’ve created shine-powered machines and weapons that could change the face of Nameless if we could just but power them. I watched you grow up, watched you learn. Taught you. As much a parent to you as your own mother.” He sat behind his desk, locked his fingers before him, as if afraid they’d wriggle away. Something was wrong.

  "You know,” E said, sitting on the desk. "I can't help feeling that people are keeping secrets from me a lot these days.” She looked into his eyes, "What’s going on Wag? You can tell me.”

  Wag waved this off, "You are intelligent, dearest but even you believe the propaganda. When you get over there, don’t look at the phone, I’ll not call for anyone, won’t try to stop you, I am not stupid or desirous to see you exiled, you’d be out of the city before I even hung the shaking thing up, but you will attend to me. Just listen to an old man, humor him. What I’ll say is this: it won’t be what you expect.”

  E waited. "What?"

  Wag smiled, "People, E. That’s what you’ll find over there. Just people. Just like us. People.”

  E let out a great groan. "I thought you were going to say something useful. I really could use something useful."

  "My lovely. Narokks, Given, have you ever considered it? They exist for some reason, as do all things, parasites and predators and. . .black holes alike. Nasty, to be sure, but necessary in their own way. They will never change, their city has always been larger, and it will always be so. Neither shall we ever change. Does any of it really matter, E?”

  E was dumbstruck, and struggled to answer. "It’s not true Wag. What they believe is not true.”

  Wag sighed, his face limp, almost as in sleep. "So?” It was only a moment before a wide smile broke across his face, "I have grown old. Prone to philosophizing.” He smiled at her. "Take every precaution, dearest. And notes, many notes. I should like a real report upon your,” here his voice faltered, "your return.”

  The shitty moment was upon them, and E hated that her voice broke too. "Wag, I can’t. . . You’re more than just. . .”

  "I know,” and he patted her hand gently. "You are not good at these things."

  E wiped her eyes, "Shaking maw! Emotion shit!”

  "Language, young lady.”

  "Take care of mom. Watch her, you know? Help her to understand. LJ too?”

  "I have suddenly thought of a wonderful vengeance for you ruining my rug.” He was suddenly next to her, lifting her up and unclipping the charm on his wrist. "Take this with you. A piece of First in Wordheal. The Deep Dreamer herself amongst the Given. If only I could see their faces!”

  "Oh, come on!” All of the emotion vanished, now just annoyance.

  But Wag only smiled, let the horrid thing dangle until E snatched it away. "The maw you have a shaking rug on the wall anyway? Rugs go on the ground, Wag! Ground!” She stared at the small curled serpent "I’ll never understand you. All the silly things you believe about the Sebi and yet you carry around one of their rokkae on your wrist.”

  Wag’s face darkened as it only ever did whenever he spoke of Sebi. "You are intelligent E, but when it comes to the world you’re little more than a child. You know First and only First. She is not my rokkea, but a representation, a reminder, of the deep truth of the universe: Chaos. Barbaric sophistication. Spiraling on into eternity. In the Dead Light we find peace in meaninglessness, and then recited the stupid creed. 'Ignorance, the Mercy, Light reveals only Death, All will Know, All will be Mad.’”

  "You’re already mad.” E kissed his bald head. "Back soon.”

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  She should have left after talking with Wag. Just how great a moron could she be?

  Great enough to still be standing there, next to the lift on an empty floor, staring at air and hating and pitying herself in cycles for at least an hour.

  She pulled on strap of her pack ferociously, hatred for the lift increasing exponentially with each heart thrum. Hate. Thrum. Hate. Thrum.

  "Hi, mom!” she mocked herself. "Just stepping out for a tick, make war on our ancient enemy for a bit is all.” She wanted to see her mom. She looked up at the sparkling shiny surface of the camera she’d disabled before entering the floor, lifted her pinkies.

  "For you, Eterna, but you can't see me, because I DON'T MAKE MISTAKES!”

  "E?” a tiny voice behind said.

  Standing there in her stylish black coat, pants and boots, great sword hanging from her back, E should have looked cool as maw. Instead, voice, she spun on one foot, nearly, falling, froze with one leg hanging.

  "Ammi? Heeeey. I’m uh, I’m just deciding if I want to go up to see my mom or not. You know, maybe apologize to her and, um, and Eterna and whatever and I. . .found this bag on the way.”

  "Wagner told me you were leaving," said the girl in her humdrum way.

  "Oh,” E replied with a happy bounce. "Much easier. Wait, what? Why? Why did he tell you?”

  The question caught Ammi off guard, and for the first time since E had met the girl she struggled to respond. "I accidentally saw you just as you entered his office. I just wanted to make sure everything was ok. You. . .you may have noticed how hard it is for me to connect with people. When I asked Wagner he blurted it all out. He felt terrible. But I think it might be a good thing. It gave me a chance to retrieve something you’ll find useful.” Ammi began to rifle through her coat’s large pockets.

  "Ok, but. How did--?”

  "I believe you, E.” Ammi dropped two palm-sized balls into E’s hand. "About the shiners.”

  E looked at the spheres. Two perfect, burnished copies of the shine-inhibitor Ammi had shown her just the day before.

  "Of course. We may know nothing about shine, but you certainly do. It would be the height of irrationality to believe otherwise. I’m sorry I did not tell you I would be attending the security meeting. I believe Eterna wants to use me to get to you. His intentions are bare before me, the old codger.”

  E could crush the girl in a hug, and not just for insulting the old man. Instead, she said, "Ready for the field?”

  "Press the button and throw, it will emit a bright light, the sensors scanning for vital patterns we’ve isolated in you. I can’t imagine any shiner diverges significantly in that respect.”

  "It might save my life, is all!” Why hadn't she thought of this?

  E thought of what’s Wag had said. "Ammi, I am in all likelihood doing something insane that could easily get me killed, so I may just need to vent, but I have to ask: how would you describe the truth of the world?”

  Ammi shifted, her foot gently tapping, and then she said, "Brutal. Live and die."

  E nodded, turned her back on the lift, pushed the door to the stairs open instead, "Don’t be like Wag. I’m really trusting you with this.”

  "Don’t die, E.”