Peculiar Soul - Chapter 71: Of Monsters and Men

Chapter 71: Of Monsters and Men

Fear is an oft-misunderstood facet of war. People think foremost of the fear that a soldier feels when faced with the enemy, but that is only one piece of a larger whole. There is the fear that builds before the charge, the fear that lingers on the eve of battle.

But even those are the small, personal fears of a soldier. They may shape his life, divert him from his path or reinforce his faith, but ultimately they are constrained to his heart.

The fear that shapes the battle itself is a tenuous and abstract thing. It is the fear that the enemy might destroy water and food, or that one lacks doctors to treat the wounded. From misery and struggle it arises, whispering that it might all be for naught.

It is the fear of victory, for in victory there are no more problems to lay at your enemy’s feet.

– Saleh Taskin, On Reclamation, 687

“Here!” The Mendiko soldier waved his arm frantically, beckoning the others to where a rowhouse had collapsed outward into the street. “At least two under this beam.”

Charles jogged over, stopping short of the heaped mound of rubble blocking the alley; he placed one leg up on a stone, running his hand thoughtfully across his jaw. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay,” he said, pointing to the two stone artifices in their party. “I’ll stabilize the smaller pieces – you two go first, take the masonry slab and enmesh it back into the rest like before.”

The artifices nodded, walking around to place their hands on exposed sections of stonework. Dust rose up as the stone quivered, flowed – and melted back into the chaotic debris, holding it firmly in place. Charles frowned as strands of metal curled out from his fingers to do the same across a precarious slope of cracked brickwork. When the stone was safely behind a shining lattice, he turned to Michael and nodded.

“All right, lordling,” he said. “Nice and slow.”

Michael stepped up to the gigantic wooden beam that lay partially-hidden amid the bricks, laying his hand on it. He moved his sight around it, passing into the rubble until he saw the splintered terminus. Jumbled impressions of stone, dust and blood flashed by as he peered under the beam; his sight sharpened in the dim half-light that filtered through the stone pile.

“One woman,” he said quietly. “Her leg is crushed. One boy, eight or nine, he doesn’t seem to be injured.” He looked around, spying another hand, its fingers curled under a thick coating of plaster dust. It didn’t move. “Just two. You’ll need to move more stone off the woman once I’ve shifted the beam.”

“Jauna,” the nearest artifex confirmed. “When you’re ready.”

Michael let his breath out, then slid his free hand under the beam as far as he could reach. His muscles tensed. Creaking protests emanated from the wood as it slid outward. He paused as the broken end snagged on an outcrop of masonry, shifting his focus; he whispered quiet words to the long-dead wood as it darkened amid glittering mirrorlight, softened, rotted – then pulled free.

The beam raised up like the mast of an ancient ship rising in the street, trailing its wreath of dust. Michael lowered it gently against the side of the road and turned back to where the artifices had rushed in to clear away the remaining stone. The child came out first, quiet and wide-eyed, followed by the woman. Her leg was misshapen and bloody, beyond Michael’s skill to fully mend. He placed his hand on it nevertheless.

A whisper of doubt gnawed at him, as it had many times throughout the day; he wondered if this small kindness would bind the woman to him. He could see her life’s blood seeping from torn arteries, the flow quickening now that her leg was free of the collapse. The healing he was about to give would save her life, without question, and in so doing would provide a base for possible affinity to bloom.

For a moment he saw endless branching paths spreading forward from this moment – and then there was only a dying woman, her breath coming shallow and fast while her child watched wide-eyed from a soldier’s arms.

He would heal her, of course. His trepidation over low souls finding him in death had dwindled in the wake of the Safid attack. Each of the nine who had died and passed to him had shown him a different facet of that truth, enough to rob him of his fear.

But even absent fear, there was a terrible weight to his actions. Michael looked at the woman, stilling his thoughts and trying his best to be present in the moment – to offer it the respect that it deserved.

She cried out as he stemmed the worst of the bleeding, a weak gasp that was lost against the shifting crumble of stone – then slumped senseless in the arms of the soldier carrying her. That man spared no more than a nod for Michael before following his fellow towards a waiting truck. As the vehicle departed Michael turned back to his makeshift team; Charles raised an eyebrow at him.

“Two more,” he said. “That’s something.”

Michael pressed his lips together. “They were lucky,” he said. “The collapse kept the worst of the gas from them.” He gestured towards the interior of the building; absent the obstructing beam, light penetrated into the undamaged portion of the residence. Quiet, dark shapes littered the floor.

Nobody said anything. There were no words left to them. The first bodies had provoked outrage, the next grim acceptance. Michael had stopped counting the dead long ago, stopped even counting survivors. His day had reduced to dust, rubble and blood; even the gnawing hunger his durens soul provoked had ceased to trouble him. There was only the next house, and the next.

Spark remained silent as well, for there were few left in the rubble that still felt fear or pain. Instead there was only a terrible numbness that emanated out from them, punctuated by the recognition that they would, after all, live past the entombing horror of this day.

In fact, the only disturbance in the preternatural quiet of the ruined city was the unassuming resolve of the few soldiers on his crew. Even Charles contributed to the warm ember they carried between them, flaring a little with each set of eyes that peered out from rubble or emerged from behind hasty barricades against Safid gas.

As the day wore on, though, that ember dimmed. Those who could cry out for help had been found. All that was left was sifting, Michael probing the wreckage for anyone who still drew breath in the crushing dark. They found only two more in the last hours of their search. They ended by collective assent; there was no directive from Antolin that drew them back. Michael and Charles exchanged a glance, nodded, and found themselves walking back along the long, silent streets of Imes.

Their small crew saw nobody else as they walked, passing through deserted plazas and parks. Michael spared a glance for the corpses of songbirds dotting the grass below the trees, then shook his head. It invited comment, but there was no word he knew to capture the enormity of Saleh’s crime against the city.

Instead, his sight drifted to a row of tents that blew disconsolately in the lingering wind from Leire’s storm. He frowned, and turned to Charles. “Are we at the rally point already?” he asked, his voice harsh; he had not spoken for hours. “I thought it wasn’t until past the Rue des Fleurs.”

Charles turned to look. “Not military, I think,” he said. “One of the civilian clinics they set up, isn’t it? Anything this close to the lines should have been evacuated before morning.”

Michael turned back to inspect it, letting his sight float higher to improve his vantage. Now that he knew what to look for, the telltale signs were obvious – the stacked cots, piles of dirtied blankets, the stylized tree picked out in gold embroidery at the apex of a few larger tents. But those were not what drew his attention.

“This one wasn’t evacuated,” he said grimly, changing his course. He heard the low intake of breath from Charles as the artifex saw what Michael had spotted from a distance; bodies, sprawled outside the tents and half-hidden amid the blowing canvas. They were split evenly between the austere garb of Mendiko doctors and the more-varied clothing of Imes residents; he spotted at least one pair of tree-embroidered gloves on the fallen, noting a Mendiko anatomens.

Wearily, Michael sent his sight into each of the tents as they drew close, checking for survivors with rote, mechanical precision. His vision showed him the usual grotesquerie – a mother and child, their lips and nose crusted with dried mucus from the gas. A soldier with his mask still clipped uselessly to his belt, a doctor clutching a wad of bedding against his face in a futile shield. A small bag, its drawstring loosened-

Michael froze. Small stone figures littered the ground around the discarded bag; a horse, a soldier, a mountain pine. He veered to the side abruptly, nearly bowling Charles over in his haste. The artifex cursed and followed him in, waving for the soldiers to follow.

“What is it?” he asked. “I didn’t think anyone-” Charles broke off as he ducked into the tent behind Michael and saw the figurines. He bent slowly down to pick one up, turning it over in dirty fingers.

“These are Gerard’s,” he said. “The ones Luc – took. Is he-” He looked around, seeing nobody in the tent, then turned his eyes to Michael.

Michael shook his head. “I would have felt,” he murmured, absently working the fingers of his left hand open and closed, open and closed. There had been a numbness there, a tingling that came and went-

“He must have been able to leave before the gas came,” he said. “Maybe one of the supply trucks…”

“Blind luck, then,” Charles said slowly. “Any evacuation would have moved the patients first, and – well.” He gestured to the tents outside, filled with row after row of dead. “But if you’re sure, you’re sure.”

“I’m-” Michael trailed off, feeling doubt creep into his voice. If he shared affinity with anyone, it was Luc. Yet a gnawing unease had awoken within him at seeing the bag, something emboldened by his recognition of it. “We should search the buildings nearby.”

Charles gave him an evaluating look, then nodded and turned to the others. “Basic sweep,” he said. “I’m betting we’re not the first through here, but we’ll see if they missed something.”

Michael followed gratefully, sending his sight forward into the nearby row of buildings. People had run here from the medical tents; some had fallen short, their bodies buzzing with flies in the afternoon sunlight. Still more had made it to the buildings – their corpses hid in cupboards and closets, proof of how little such shelter meant against gas.

A shout from one of the artifices hurried his step. The others were standing in front of a building that bore the telltale marks of artificing, its doorway sealed with smooth, flowing stone. The window glass had been stretched into a single seamless pane; Michael sent his sight into the barricaded house and saw that the interior bore such marks all around. It had been proofed against the gas, and no bodies lay within.

“Some of them made it through,” Michael murmured, pivoting his sight to the one breach in the stonework – a hole in a rear door, broken open with mundane tools. “And back out again.”

“Some of them,” Charles agreed, walking over to where two nurses and a Daressan man lay in front of the barricaded door. He nudged the man with his foot, rolling him over to show an unfamiliar, bloated face.

Michael pursed his lips, then lifted his head. “Sera,” he said. “Have you seen Luc?”

There was no answer. He waited; the Mendiko ignored the apparent non sequitur. Charles lifted an eyebrow-

“What?” her voice replied irritably. “I’m guiding three teams right now, I haven’t had time to watch him.”

“He was in the city when it was gassed,” Michael said; he felt the vague motes of her presence grow still. “I don’t think he’s dead, but-”

“Hold on.” Sobriquet was silent for a few moments further. “He’s not dead. He’s on the airship, so he should be fine. I’m sorry, Michael, but we’ve still got people trapped on the north side-”

“It’s fine,” Michael said. “Thank you, Sera.” He let his breath out slowly, then looked back up at his team. “Sorry to hold everyone up.”

A few Mendiko soldiers smiled or made dismissive gestures; Charles grunted irritably. “I never saw why you put up with him,” he muttered, falling into step beside Michael as they walked back towards the main boulevard. “Always full of opinions on what we were doing wrong, but never lifted a finger to help.”

Michael smiled, his spirits still feeling buoyed from talking with Sobriquet. “Luc is a fixed point,” he said. “He’s familiar with the exercise of power as only the powerless can be, and he sees – what it does to people.”

Charles looked dubious; Michael laughed as he sidestepped a stray bit of debris in the street.

“He’s too much of an idealist,” Michael said, “I’ll grant you that. But when everyone around me – Leire, especially, but even Antolin. Even Sera, or you.” He raised his eyebrows at Charles. “You all see the ways I can apply my power to solve problems. Luc-”

Michael broke off as they passed a shattered window; a hand dangled from inside, its fingers bloated and swollen. He pressed his lips together, smelling the faint rot on the air. “He’s one of the few people I know telling me to stop and think about the consequences. To me, and to those nobody considers. The powerless, the bystanders.” He shook his head, a sudden wave of fatigue gripping him. “All this.”

Charles narrowed his eyes. “Lordling,” he said. “If any this was actually your fault I’d have killed you already.” He gave an amused chuff at Michael’s expression, then shook his head. “Most people don’t like killing. When they have to do it, they come up with fancy lies to explain why it’s okay. It’s for their country, or for revenge. Because the other bastard deserves it.”

He waved a hand at the deserted street. “But this? This isn’t one man lying to himself. This was a plan, like the one dear old dad made to kill us in Leik. Now you tell me, because you know him – did any Daressan do something to provoke him? Did we ask to be slaughtered?” Charles turned to face him, his face dark.

Michael shook his head slowly, feeling heat on his cheeks. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t – Daressa had nothing to do with it, except that you were a convenient tool for him to use.”

“Exactly,” Charles growled. “Because he’s not a man. He’s a monster. Monsters don’t have to lie to themselves. They kill if they need to, or want to, or if it’s convenient. And there’s not a damn thing you can do to sway them, because they don’t care about you either.”

He spat on the ground. “You’re turned around on Taskin because he gave you that book. Men read books. But there’s nothing in there that explains how he thinks, because for him it’s a useful mask. It’s how he pretends to be a man.” Charles gestured to the empty street, the wind blowing through vacant windows. “You want to understand Taskin – here he is.”

Michael frowned, letting his eyes stray around the deserted boulevard; his thoughts were restless, too perturbed to produce any sense while he stood amid the vast emptiness of Imes. He looked back at Charles, instead.

“Thank you,” he said. “Though I believe the monsters remain men. Evil men, perhaps, but human nonetheless. To dismiss them as fundamentally different – it excuses what they’ve done. Cheapens what they’ve cast off. Saleh might have been a good man, if events had conspired differently. A great man. That he is what he is now – it deepens the crime.”

Charles laughed. “Ah, lordling,” he said. “You’re so damnably solemn that sometimes I forget you’re young.” He picked up a cracked brick from the street, metal flowing from his bracers to work against the stone. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe we all have that chance when we’re young, and the world hasn’t shown us its worst.”

He looked back at Michael. “But there’s no value in understanding men who have closed that door behind them. There’s only an animal left inside, hunger and fear. Treating them like men gives them a weapon. Taskin will kill you if you let him.” His eyes did not blink, fixed on Michael’s. “So will your father.”

Michael frowned, then coughed. “I want to argue, but he’s killed me once already.”

“Natural to have conflicted feelings about the old fucker,” Charles said. “But never you worry. When you meet him next, step aside and let me do what I do.”

There was a pause; Michael’s boots scuffed against the broken cobbles. “I have to remark on the contrast in that offer,” he said. “Weren’t you just warning me about men who kill too easily?”

Charles gave him a slow smile. “Those who kill men, sure.” He twisted his fingers; the metal scythed through the brick in his palm. The artifex brushed the remaining stone fragments lazily away. “But I’ve never killed a man in my life.”

He walked forward, whistling tunelessly. Michael let it fill the silence as they left the city.

The airship was nearly unbearable when Michael returned; the ship’s ventilation system had been locked down since the Safid attack, a bare minimum of airflow running through filtered ducts. It was hot despite the weather, stuffy and ripe with the smell of overworked soldiers.

Their tension pressed on him in a sickly duet to the offensive air. It was a different tenor than the men who walked among the dead; those men, at least, had faced the raw measure of the act. The airmen, by contrast, had only their imagination to limit the scope of the atrocity. Michael felt that they were the worse off of the two groups, by now, steeping in an unfortunate brew of impotence and mislaid guilt.

A joyless smile tugged at his lips as he realized the hypocrisy of the thought. Perhaps that was the way of tragedy; each man took the blame for acts not taken and signs not seen.

He turned the corner towards the bridge, veering slightly aside until he stood before the door to Antolin’s private staffroom. He knocked sharply on the door, wincing as his knuckles left a dent in the metal; a moment later he opened it and strode inside.

Antolin was at his desk, alone. He nodded to Michael, brushing a weary hand across his face; he had pronounced circles under his eyes, his skin pale despite the heat.

“Thank you for coming,” Antolin said. His voice was a match for his face, quiet and drawn. “I wasn’t sure we’d catch you coming back until later. You were on patrol the entire time?”

Michael nodded. “I was,” he said. “Until the afternoon-”

He broke off as a side door opened. Leire’s pavilion was tiny, in deference to the small bounds of the room; she closed the door behind her and sat. Michael looked at her for a long moment, then turned his eyes back to Antolin.

The grand marshal sighed, gesturing to a chair at his table. “Take a seat.”

A beat passed before Michael lowered himself into the offered chair. “I suppose this is where you tell me that I must forgive everything for the good of the campaign,” he said.

“No,” Antolin said. “Forgiveness is a personal matter. The campaign only needs coordination, and it has suffered from this – estrangement. If yesterday’s debacle proved anything, it is that the enemy is well-aware of our weaknesses. Division is another of these, and one Taskin will exploit ruthlessly.”

Michael looked at Leire, then back at Antolin; a deep fatigue pressed on him. He shook his head. “Fine,” he said, looking once again at Leire. “I have no objections, provided you can restrain yourself from meddling with affairs of my soul.”

She laughed, a hoarse, throaty chuckle. “I have had nothing but object lessons in unintended consequences since we crossed the strait,” she said. “And even at my age, a lesson may be felt. I erred in arranging for the prisoner’s death against your wishes.”

“That stops short of an apology,” Michael noted.

Leire snorted. “It does, for I cannot be sorry. I maintain that you would have been killed and this whole enterprise shattered without that soul.” She gestured irritably at Antolin, who seemed on the verge of saying something; her eyes remained on Michael. “Understand me: there is duality in power. I have no wish to inflict pain upon you, and regret the necessity. In retrospect it would have been better to pause and convince you, delay notwithstanding.”

“I-” Michael pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “I really don’t care,” he said. “I can’t. I’ll work with you, I’ll keep up my end of the bargain. If you ever feel like apologizing I will listen; you may reserve your justifications for the mirror.”

Antolin held up a hand before Leire could retort; Michael had not thought the man could look more fatigued, but somehow he had managed. “Thank you both for agreeing to cooperate,” he sighed. “I believe that is enough. The Safid forces seem content to harry our pickets for now, therefore I see no need to resolve the entire grand strategy of the campaign tonight.”

For a moment it appeared that Leire had more to say; her eyes bored into Antolin’s, and Michael saw her soul ripple in agitated bursts; he caught flashes of irritation, frustration and a bone-deep pain before she stood abruptly, turned and left the way she had come.

Antolin slouched back into his chair. “Thank you again,” he said. “Our strategy is built around Leire as a primary element of our forces; I will not say that we would have avoided Taskin’s trap if we were better-coordinated on that day, but as for the next…” He shook his head. “For all of her faults, she knows her power like none other.”

“Daressa has suffered enough,” Michael said. “She owes Daressa no apologies, but I would if my grievance denied them her aid.”

“I believe she may yet come around,” Antolin said. “I will not demand it of you, but if you caught her in conversation when visiting your friend-”

“My friend?” Michael asked, frowning.

Antolin’s eyebrow went up. “The gloomy boy – Luc. I understand that he was injured during the attack.”

Michael shook his head, feeling a cold pang of adrenaline at the mention of an injury. “I knew he was involved, but – do you know anything else? How badly was he hurt?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know the details. I only heard of it because Leire was grumbling at Unai having given over a cot in his quarters for your friend’s convalescence.” Antolin leaned forward. “He’s one of the best anatomentes in Mendian; your friend is in good hands. Find some time to visit, and when you do I would wager that Leire makes herself available for conversation. I won’t ask you to forgive her, but – she may find different words if it’s only the two of you.”

The fatigue washed back over Michael; he nodded. “I’ll make some time,” he said. “And I’ll listen to whatever she has to say. But if it’s the same thing-” He shook his head. “I’ll listen.”

“That’s all I ask,” the grand marshal said. “Now go, get some food and rest – you look ready to fall over.”

Michael found the fragments of a real laugh somewhere, though it came out hoarse and strangled. “I don’t want to hear that from you,” he said. “Do the same, or I’ll tell your staff you haven’t been sleeping. They’ll tie you to your bed.”

Antolin barked out a laugh of his own. “I’ll have to, for there won’t be much opportunity tomorrow. For all that I’m glad to dally, we’re still pressed for time.” His expression sobered. “One more day in Imes, then we’re pressing north-west to follow the Safid retreat. Taskin will toy with us at every turn, but we’ll make a corpse of him by the end.”

The smile on Michael’s lips was rote and leaden. “That’s where it ends,” he agreed. He exchanged nods with Antolin before leaving, making his somewhat-unsteady way to the mess.

A short moment later he stood with a tray of food, a moment after that he sat. There was no taste. The spoon went up and down woodenly a few times before he felt a weight settle onto the seat across from him, he looked up and saw Vernon.

“Hello,” Vernon said amicably.

Michael swallowed his current mouthful of food. “Hello, Vernon,” he said. “Long day.”

“And yet they’re all about the same length in the end,” Vernon chuckled. “But I take your meaning. I was on the southern crews. Not as bad down there, most of the gas stayed in the north quarter of the city.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Small mercies.”

“That’s good,” Michael murmured. “That it wasn’t everywhere. Sometimes it felt like the whole city had been scoured clean. Good that it wasn’t-” He shook his head and ate another spoonful. “Sorry, my words are failing me.”

The auditor shook his head, smiling. “I’m not here to steal words from you,” he said. “I just think it’s better to eat with company.”

Michael looked at the bare table across from him, then up at Vernon. “I think you’re right,” he said. “Thanks.”

Vernon sat, and smiled, and said nothing.