Uses

            Tessa’s breath caught in her throat. They had found her. The enemy. The ones that killed Tall Man. She had stayed in one place for far too long. Why had they thought Kapla was such a safe and out-of-the-way hideout?

            Sar-short-for-Sarah was now standing directly in front of the bathroom stall in which Tessa had foolishly thought she would have time to collect herself.

            “Agent Dust, are you going to make this more difficult than it has to be?”

            Tessa thought about how, if she were a good House Agent, she would have a dozen contingency plans for a situation like this. She’d have gone to hide in a stall in which she had previously hidden a weapon, or she’d know some secret passage, or she’d have figured out Sar’s entire personal history and used psychology to manipulate her.

            But no, at this point Tessa felt more like a trapped animal – like a lone deer separated from the herd.

            She wasn’t going to stay in a bathroom stall for the rest of her life, and she suspected Sar would not be that patient either, so she stood up and opened the door.

            Sar was standing there, and the image in Tessa’s vision was one that she noted could easily be totally innocuous in a different context. Tessa suspected Sar was in her mid to late 30s. She was a bit shorter than Tessa, and wore denim jeans and a light leather jacket that was dust-stained from the desert.

            “You’re going to consider running,” said Sar. “I do not recommend it.”

            “Give me a reason not to,” said Tessa. She genuinely hoped it would be an honest reason.

            “Boss Man wants to talk. You know, he took a special interest in Jack, naturally. But, of course, he also took an interest in you.”

            “He’s House?”

            “That’s a complicated question.”

            “Can I get the complicated answer?”

            “Maybe from him.”

            Tessa stepped over to the sink. She figured Sar had already checked underneath it to know that there were no stashed knives or guns or whatever, and Sar’s relaxed stance when she made that move suggested put Tessa slightly more at ease.

            “My superior was stabbed to death. I don’t even know what we’re doing,” said Tessa. “Before I met Jack, my job was just to keep my superior updated on my exoplanetology studies.” The djinn bathroom sink dispensed alcohol-based hand sanitizer – it was another reminder how odd it was to be amongst a people who had so little use for water. “Coming out here, I’m the farthest into the desert I’ve been since I flew over it as a teenager. And you’re saying that you want me to go further out there. The only thing I think I can reasonably expect to find there is a shallow grave.”

            “We’re not going to kill you, Dust.”

            “What assurance do I have of that?”

            “We know about the schism. House Agents slaughtering House Agents. It’s not just here, Dust. It’s all over the world. And the whole thing is so compartmentalized that no one even knows which side they’re on.”

            “But you do?”

            “Oh, I’m not House. Never have been.”

            “You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical.”

            “It’s true. Boss Man couldn’t afford to bring in anyone from the House, even if he could find those of a similar mind to his.”

            “So, what does he want with me?”

            Sar leaned against the wall. “He wants to use you.”

            “That’s not a very enticing pitch.”

            “Dust, I’ve got to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know what he intends to do with you. Jack’s the main event, sure. But I think he’s going to need you too.”

            “What does he want with us, then?”

            “You’ve figured out why the House sent you to recruit Jack, right?”

            “He has powers.”

            “Sure, you could say that. But there are powers and there are powers. Boss Man is playing things close to the vest, as is his wont. My job here is relatively simple. I’ve got to get you and Jack over to our camp.”

            “What happens if I don’t come?”

            “Then my part in this is over. That’s when others get involved.”

            “That’s ominous,” said Tessa.

            “Again, I recommend you come with.”

            “Threats aren’t going to do much to endear me to this Boss Man of yours.”

            “I don’t think he cares whether you’re endeared. I recommend thinking about your options. I think you’ll find you don’t have many other than to cooperate.”

            Tessa walked over to the mirror, glancing over to the door, performing some calculations about how fast she could run. Sar took a step toward the door.

            “In the interest of playing fair here, you should know that I’m not the only one who works for him here. It’s the closest settlement to our camp.”

            “How did you know that Jack would come here?”

            Sar shook her head. “Boss Man knows things. It’s amazing, frankly.”

            “And why are you working for him?”

            Sar rested her back against the door jam. “Let’s see, that’s an interesting question. Dust, you’ve been with the House for a while, right? Since childhood?”

            “Yes, and don’t think your knowing that is going to make this any less creepy for me.”

            “So, this might be a difficult exercise in imagination. Imagine you’d never been recruited. You have no connection to this thing. Imagine, then, that for your entire life, you’ve heard paranoid conspiracy theories that there is a clandestine organization that has infiltrated every government, every major learning institution, every major business. And this organization manipulates them – to entirely mysterious ends. So, you think, this must be ridiculous – a fantasy to blame for systemic problems rather than addressing the real issues. Some new medicine isn’t getting to people who need it? Oh, that’s not mismanagement or incompetence – it’s The House! Some unpopular law passes, seemingly against the will of the people? It’s not the result of your own myopic political perspective, no, it’s The House!”

            “But the House is real.”

            “Yes, the House is real. Can’t you see why we’d want to fight against it then? We’ve discovered that the boogeyman is real. What other rational step is there to take but to rise up in opposition to it?”

            “That ‘boogeyman’ saved my life when I was a child.”

            Sar nodded. “That’s true. And I know that’s why this is difficult for you. But look at the lives it has taken. It’s eating its own tail. Tall Man was killed by Agents of the House. Mr. Flow was shot by Agents of the House. It was Agents of the House who almost killed you, and who destroyed your life’s work. Do you really think you still owe the House anything?”

            Tessa – Agent Dust – let loose a deep sigh. “I’m not saying I trust you,”

            “That’s perfectly reasonable,” replied Sar.

            “But I suppose that if I don’t come with, your friends are just going to shoot me in the back.”

            Sar did not respond to this.

            “If Jack is as powerful as you say he is, then you should know that he’s going to protect me.”

            “We suspect he will. That’s why we don’t mean to do anything that will provoke him.”

            “Then give me a few minutes and I’ll pack my bags.”

            Sar smiled. “Good. You’ll see when you meet Boss Man, he’s reasonable, and really, the main thing he want right now is to talk.”

            Tessa went back to her room, keenly aware that Sar was probably waiting just outside the door. Fear flowed through her veins like ice water. But there was nothing to do, so she gathered the clothes the kind djinn had given to her and stuffed them in a bag.

            And then she saw the phone. There was an old telephone with a rotary dial in the corner of the room. She had seen it before, hadn’t she? Maybe there just hadn’t been anyone to call before.

            She picked it up and dialed. It was an old phone number – one that she knew by heart. It was the number of the baker who gave her a cookie when she skinned her knee, and then gave her both of her names.

            “Hello?” said the voice on the other end.

            “Ellie, it’s me, Tessa.”

            “Tessa, thank the gods. Are you all right? I read about the observatory and Tom and I have been in a panic for the past few-“

            “I’m alive, Ellie. I’m ok. But I need you to do me a favor.”

            “Sure, Tessa. Anything you want.”

            “Kapla Furance Village. I’m going to see Boss Man. Tell the appropriate people.”

            And then she hung up.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2020)

Carom's Hight: At the Outset of it All

            There was a time, of course, when Henry Thall was just an ordinary young man, when he met Richard Airbright at university and perhaps the course of their lives might have gone in a different way.

            There is, of course, a vexing ambiguity about fate: even if there is no intelligent hand that guides its direction, is there simply one path that time’s arrow travels? Is our future merely ours to discover, and what appear to be our choices simply the culmination of stimuli and circumstance?

            One could imagine, of course, many different outcomes of the tragedy of Henry Thall. He did not know, and would not know, that it was his friend Richard who was first approached with the offer to become something other than what he was. Had Richard agreed, perhaps Thall would be the hero of this story. Or perhaps he would have been another victim. Had Thall resisted the offer, maybe both men would have gone on to live happier lives. What might have occurred if these young, ambitious arcanists, had not conjured up something that they truly did not understand? What great feats and accomplishments might have their friends – Chloe, Terrence, Wulf, and Astrid – been able to complete had their lives not been cut short so cruelly? Might Esmeralda Locks, the only other survivor from their group, have felt freer to pursue some other path, instead of cloistering herself within the building where her friends died, forgoing any other goal than to prevent other young students from making the same mistakes?

            When we look back at life, we only get the one story. And the story of Richard Airbright and Henry Thall is one of blood, death, and coffee.

            Richard arrived in a coach. It was traditional for members of major families to come in this archaic manner. The road to the Royal Academy had an entire lane set aside for horse-drawn vehicles, which sounded exciting and romantic until one experienced the momentary terror of speeding cars zipping past one’s carriage for the full day of travel that would take a trivial amount of time in a motorized vehicle.

            Richard was eighteen, skinny, and felt a tingle of almost electrical energy under his skin as they came to the university. His hair was cropped short and precisely parted, and, much to his mother’s horror, he had, over the summer, grown out a goatee. He had been trying to do so throughout his teen years, but now, as he had reached the technical definition of adulthood, it seemed as if his hormones had fully caught up, giving him the density of facial hair for it to look at least somewhat plausible as an actual beard and mustache.

            His hair was dark enough to almost be called black. He did not think much of his looks, and felt his nose was too large and his eyes too small. What girlfriends he had had he attributed to his curious intellect and attention to detail, though in truth it was his looks that had drawn his female companions to him, and often it was that “curious intellect” that then drove them away.

            Like many young men away from home for the first time at eighteen, he hoped that one element of his university experience would be a bacchanalian cavalcade of sexual encounters, but it seemed as if his old school friends fixated on this aspect of higher education more than he did.

            Academia, Richard felt, had the potential for greater long-term satisfaction than sex. Or rather, not academia itself – which had the potential to be dull and dreary – but his particular field of study: Magic.

            Most of the noble families eschewed the study of the arcane, considering it beneath them. In the earliest days of the country, thousands of years ago when Retrein was just a colony of Narcia, the Witches’ Coven was one of the four chartered guilds that established the fort around which the royal capital would later form. It was the soldiers who held the coin to fund the colony, and it was their descendants who would become Retrein’s nobility. The arcanists were advisors and journeymen who worked for those nobles, but the station of an arcanist was always considered at least one rung below the true ruling aristocrats.

            Which was, of course, absurd given that over the millennia Richard was probably no more of a descendant of those soldiers than any beggar on the street.

            But the Airbrights, so long the same kind of pompous, greedy nobility as anyone else, was transformed when an ancestor, Theodosia Airbright, took on the eccentricity of practicing magic. It would be another six generations before Paul Airbright, the necromancer, ruined their name completely, but their house was, after Theodosia, the flock of black sheep amongst the nobility.

            Among the nobles, the Airbrights had a technical right to a seat in the House of Peers, though that physical seat had been left empty for so many generations that, centuries ago, Parliament quietly removed it. And among the arcanists of the Royal Arcane Society, the Airbrights were banned from membership thanks to their membership in too high of a social class.

            They were the libertines, the iconoclasts, and outcasts.

            And Richard loved it that way.

           

            Richard kept his eyes fixated on the point where he expected to see the tower of Carom’s Hight as they rounded the last hill before the university, and was disappointed in himself when it was not where he had imagined it. It was closer to the other buildings, boxed in and not the true, remote wizard’s tower that he had always though it to be.

            The Hight was the site of the Arcanum, the school in which arcane physics and its various disciplines were taught. There were other students here at the Royal Academy who would learn business, the practical sciences, history, sociology, and the other rather commonplace academic pursuits, but the Arcanum was one of only three such institutions in the country, and Richard had come to the most prestigious of them.

             And Richard decided, as he arrived, that he would be the greatest arcanist to ever set foot within Carom’s Hight.

            Ambition requires a bit of arrogance, and there is no more natural time for arrogance than the outset of adulthood, when the restrictions of youth fall away but none of the burdens and disappointments of experience weigh upon a person like the one Richard Airbright was at that time.

            Here he stood, sure of his future, sure of his identity, and the world that he knew. Yet it would be hours, days, and months before he would meet the people whose dying screams and vicious betrayals would haunt him for the rest of his life.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2019)

Never Met a Wise Man, If So It's a Woman

            “I see. You’re saying we should have done this ‘in-House’ the first time.”

            Barclay nodded, puffing on a blackroot cigarette. “The last one was a disaster.”

            “You think that the other side was involved?”

            Barclay took Mr. Bramble aside, to a corner of the apartment where Bramble’s subordinates were standing. “How well have you vetted them?”

            Bramble glanced back at them. “They’ve all been with me at least four years. I recruited each of them myself.”

            “That means very little to me, Brambles.”

            Mr. Brambles took a step back. Barclay respected Mr. Brambles – he had been loyal for nearly thirty years now, and had acted like a real Agent would when the schism began to break out. He went underground, sent out feelers, and behaved in a rational manner – suspicious, cautious, and self-interested. There were no declarations of loyalty, no passionate appeals to camaraderie. Nothing to suggest that he was trying to prove himself more trustworthy than he was.

            But at the same time, Mr. Brambles had been in long enough that he thought himself Barclay’s equal, and just as smart. Barclay certainly tried never to overestimate his own intelligence. Indeed, he even sometimes wondered if the errors he made – like when he had allowed that woman in Jack Milton’s bed to survive – were some subconscious desire to remain humble. The Milton affair yielded nothing – they hadn’t learned anything new about June Greene or her companions. And they had lost Milton and now, the story went, Milton had discovered some ability to destroy the faceless men.

            “Remember, Mr. Brambles, that our enemy is identical to us in most ways. The moment we allow ourselves to think we have outmaneuvered them is the moment they gain the advantage.”

            “You really are as paranoid as they say,” said Brambles.

            “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you,” said Barclay.

            “What’s that from?”

            Barclay shook his head. “Not important.”

            Mr. Brambles shrugged. “So why the crappy suit?” The one they had selected for the interrogations was sitting in a garment bag, hung over the back of a chair.

            Barclay had to hold back a sigh. He missed the days when Mr. Brambles didn’t try to understand the underlying meaning of his orders. Again, Brambles felt he was one of the elite. Barclay never entertained such delusions. “Patterns have meaning. We don’t always see each iteration of the pattern, but the pattern holds power nonetheless.”

            “So the last guy wore something like this?”

            “He wore that one, actually. We had to clean his blood off of it.”

            Brambles frowned in disgust. “Similar build to me?”

            “We had it tailored as well.”

            “Well, pardon me if I find it a little discomforting to wear a dead man’s suit and do his job in the same place he got his throat sliced out.”

            “Ok, I pardon you. But you still have to do it.”

            “And what about this guy? Four Eyes? What do we want to get out of him?”

            “I’ll let you know when you find it.”

            This time, Mr. Brambles accepted it like a good House Agent.

            There was no ashtray in the apartment – it was enough of a luxury for them to get the ratty old couch for Brambles’ team to sit on. All in all, Barclay wasn’t too concerned about their loyalty. The faceless man in the corner of the room that only he could see would ensure that.

            “Do you know what time it is?” asked the man James Tarson thought of a Mr. Cheap, and who went by the codename Mr. Brambles, but was born with the name Clifford H. Anvar.

            Tarson leaned against the glass wall that separated them, and from Mr. Cheap’s point of view, his voice was distorted through the crappy intercom system that allowed communication from his cell. “No.”

            “Good,” said Mr. Cheap, and he made note of it in his book. “Please answer the following questions. Do you believe that you can trust the reality you see?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “When were you recruited for the House?”

            “Nine years ago, in Reben.”

            “How old were you when you were recruited?”

            “Uh… it was spring so I was twenty-three.”

            “And what Agent recruited you?”

            “Six Coins.”

            “Do you know what Six Coins’ real name was?”

            “Sir Roderick Candel, RAS.”

            “Where is he now?”

            “Buried, I assume. He’s dead.”

            “Tell me if you have heard of the following people. Henry Thall.”

            “No.”

            “Jack Milton.”

            “No.”

            “Jeremy Ford?”

            “No… wait, yes. He’s an assassin based in Wolfsmouth.”

            “Do you know that he was the one who killed Six Coins?”

            Tarson stepped back. “No.”

            “You might take some satisfaction in knowing that he also perished in the attack.”

            “Not really.”

            “More names. Rosanna Jaroka.”

            “Yes.”

            “Can you tell us who she is?”

            “Stag’s Head terrorist. Hired killer.”

            “And where she is?”

            “The Narcians got her. That’s what I know.”

            “Sky Dawson.”

            “No.”

            “June Greene.”

            “No.”

            “Tarra Woods.”

            “No.”

            “Eclerion, formerly known as James Arden.”

            “No… is that…?”

            Mr. Cheap looked up. “Yes?”

            “No, never mind.”

            Mr. Cheap closed his book. “You were fairly well-connected in the House, were you not?”

            “I suppose you could say that.”

            “When did you become aware of the schism?”

            “Later than I would have liked.”

            “Do you know the Diplomat?”

            Tarson sighed. “Not personally. I’ve heard of him.”

            “That puts you in quite the privileged position. You know, as envisioned, any Agent of the House is not meant to be aware of anyone except their direct superiors and subordinates, and to be ignorant of their placement within the ultimate hierarchy of its agents.”

            “Yet here you are. I’m assuming we’re both Agents?”

            Mr. Cheap nodded with a smile. “Colleagues and co-workers, my friend.”

            “Are you recruiting me?”

            At this, Mr. Cheap’s smile mutated from a warm one into a patronizingly mournful one. “I’m afraid not.” Cheap set aside his book altogether and leaned forward. “One last name. And I know you know who it is. I want to hear your opinion on him.”

            “Ok?”

            “Renford Harren.”

            Renford Harren was the Thiefmaster of the Rookery – publicly, that made him the leader of the entire organization, though in fact, there was a true leader given the style of Lord or Lady Crow, to whom Harren reported.

            Their meetings were sporadic, but always planned in advance. Harren was a public figure and thus could not always be sure that ordinary people would not notice him, so despite the complications that it entailed, their meetings would often take place within the Rookery building itself, or perhaps more accurately, beneath it.

            All these passages had been walked by the Queen, which troubled him. Yes, Tarson had been captured – privately he resented that they had chosen that as his designation, but it had stuck. The previous meeting with Lady Crow had predated that capture, and so Harren had been looking forward to this meeting with many questions rattling in his head.

            “Sir, this way,” said the pleasant young man who worked in the nondescript office at the end of the eastern hall on the 24^th floor. He welcomed the Thiefmaster into the office, closed the door, and the two of them began the sweep, searching for any sort of listening devices or hidden cameras.

            “You good, Johnson?” said Harren once he had completed his sweep.

            Johnson held up a finger. “One moment, just another drawer.” He removed the last drawer form his filing cabinet and shined his pocket-torch into the hole, then ran his fingers along the drawer’s rails. “Yes sir, I believe I am clear.”

            “Same. Let us proceed.”

            Johnson reached behind the cabinet and tripped the latch, which allowed the door hidden behind it to swing open. “Good to see you, Thiefmaster,” he said, and Harren walked in.

            The descent was down a tunnel of black brick. There was no light, but he easily navigated it by touch and memory. A Thiefmaster who was unable to climb down such a shaft had little business in that position, or so the logic went.

            Still, there was little opportunity to rebuild the passages with new traps and enigmas, and so he swiftly manipulated the levers and hidden switches and buttons that were needed to cross the labyrinth that sat below the Rookery. He found it all a bit theatrical, but if Lady Crow’s suspicions were correct, the Queen may have inherited this obsessive obfuscation from her true benefactors.

            At the center of the labyrinth was a cell that looked more like some kind of deep-sea exploration vessel than a conference room. But it was soundproof, windowless, and magically warded such that no one could possibly overhear what was said inside.

            He cranked the valve on the door and stepped inside. Lady Crow was already sitting there, always the first to arrive.

            “Renford.”

            “M’lady,” he responded.

            Lady Crow was an old woman. At his best estimate, he assumed she was somewhere between 65 and 70, though given her pluck and energy, she could be a well-preserved 80 for all he knew. She wore a simple grey dress and kept her hair tied up. Despite being in his late 50s, Harren felt like a child in her presence.

            The selection of Lord or Lady Crow was by Queen Elona herself. Sometimes they were drawn from the ranks of the Rookery – actually, that was usually the case, and though Harren had not ever worked with her prior to their promotions, he suspected she was an old veteran thief.

            “So, naturally you’ve seen about this Tarson chap.”

            “I’ve seen both that he was captured and then lost, yes.”

            “His exposure seems to confirm Yasik’s suspicions. But I take it you don’t find this answer satisfying.”

            “Do you?” she asked.

            “No. His disappearance is troubling.”

            “Certainly. You’ve sent Nascine on this mission?”

            “Yes.”

            “She’s not too close to it?”

            “I believe she is properly motivated.”

            Lady Crow nodded. “And you told her about your suspicions about the Queen?”

            “I did. Months ago.”

            “Does she trust you?”

            “I think she is dutiful.”

            “That is not a terribly satisfying answer.” Lady Crow stood up. “I have a man in Narcia. Well, many, but I have a particular man in Narcia with contacts in Arizradna.”

            “Yes?”

            “According to this source, the House has found someone exhibiting NMAP, and is seeking to recruit them.”

            “NMAP?”

            “Non-magical arcane phenomena.”

            “That sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

            “It’s not. Do you know what the largest example of NMAP is in the world?”

            “No.”

            “The Path of Aeoes.” Harren sat back. The Path of Aeoes – the shimmering, faint column of light that extended from the center of the Sarona desert up into the cosmos – was said to be the path that the creator-god traveled before settling on this world, Sarona-Ki, which in the old Arizi meant “Solid Ground.”

            “What is that supposed to suggest?”

            “The House is attempting to recruit a human god.”

            Harren grinned. “Can you imagine how excited the world’s conspiracy theorists would be to know that those words were uttered in this chamber?”

            “Renford, try to take this seriously.”

            “That is my intention.”

            “We have lived our lives in this country with an extraordinary fact staring us in the face. Our Queen is thousands of years old, and yet looks as if she has never suffered from any of the harmful effects of age. Not once since she took power has any significant challenge to her rule made the slightest bit of progress. She is this nation’s god, for all intents and purposes, as solidly as the Narcians worship their trio, or Sardok has Ashtor.”

            “So, why would such a powerful entity allow herself to be submersed within the hierarchy of the House?”

            Lady Crow took a deep breath. “I don’t believe she has. I believe that she is the House.”

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2019)