What’s a Dollmage?”
Sal glanced up from the spot on the floor she’d been glowering at. “Huh?”
“You mentioned a Dollmage.” Ozhma shuffled some papers. “A… Poneir the Shawl?”
“Poneir the Curtain,” Sal replied.
A muttered curse, a few scratches. “Poneir… the… Curtain. Okay. And what does a Dollmage… do, exactly? It involves dolls, I gather.”
“Sometimes, yeah,” Sal replied. “A Dollmage can pull their own consciousness and energy out of their bodies and into inanimate objects. The ones with foresight and money like to have their effigies custom-made. And Vagrants have plenty of both.”
“Terrifying… but also that’s really impressive.”
“Right?” Sal paused, squinted across the table. “Are you taking notes?”
Ozhma paused, glanced up from the scribbled-upon papers in her hands. “Uh… yes?”
“Why?”
Ozhma furrowed her brow, offended in a way she didn’t know she could be. “I’ve been asked to act as envoy and I take that seriously, thank you very much. Any job worth doing is worth doing well, after all.” She held up a hand pointedly. “Especially, I’d like it emphasized, when the threat of imminent annihilation and mass death is a lingering possibility. We haven’t lost sight of that goal, have we? I hope? Right?”
Sal held her stare for a moment. A grin spread across her face, imperceptibly slowly. Ozhma tensed at the chuckle that ensued—typically, when people capable of massive destruction start laughing, it’s not for a good reason—but the dry laugh that came out of the woman was… weary. Remarkably, relatably weary. The Vagrant leaned over and elbowed the person next to her.
“Where’d you fucking get her?” she asked. “She’s adorable.”
Galatatian ki Zanzora, Imperial emissary, looked up from the fourteenth bloodied handkerchief and gaped at her beneath the ruin of his shattered nose.
“Are you not aware,” he uttered contemptuously, “of the grievous insult and injury you visited upon my person?”
“Fuck me, are you still hung up on that?” She reached down beside her chair and pulled out a bottle of brown liquid, thrusting it toward the Imperial. “Have a drink and forget about it. Wait, hang on.” She pulled it back, uncorked it, took a hasty few swigs. “Okay, now you can have it.”
Galatatian sneered at the bottle, causing his ruined nose to start bleeding again. She shrugged and glanced across the room, to the Revolutionary agent standing immobile in the shadows, eyes fixed and ears open.
“How about you, sadpuss?” She winked, waggled the liquor bottle suggestively. “I know it’s against Revolutionary Mandate, but we’re all going to die anyway. Do you really want to get blown to pieces having never gotten shit-faced before?”
“Do you mind?” Somewhere inside her, Ozhma knew it was probably not a wise idea to take that sort of tone with a woman who’d just finished telling her about how many people she’d killed, but manners were manners. “The severity of this task is enormous and I’m sure we would all appreciate it if you could at least feign concern for it.”
“I just said we were all going to die, didn’t I?” Sal shrugged, took another swig. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
“Acknowledgment,” Ozhma said. “Acknowledgment that this is serious.”
“I never said it wasn’t.” Sal yawned, sprawling out across her chair. “This is how I deal with serious situations.”
“You’re drunk.”
“And you’re all pissed off and flustered. But when we all end up dying in a sea of carnage, I’ll still be in a good mood.”
“How can you talk like that?” Ozhma shot out of her chair, clutching her notes before her like a shield. “How can you make this seem so… so…”
“Effortlessly attractive?”
“Awful.”
“Okay, see, I knew it was one of the two.”
“STOP THAT!” Ozhma’s objection came out breathless and belabored. “The Revolution has its guns poised on this city. The Imperium has its mages at its gates. The Ashmouths are in this. People will live and die based on what we do in this room and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that you put some fucking effort into…”
She had the words, excoriating and insightful, right there on her lips. But they wouldn’t come out for some reason. Her mouth tasted too dry, all of the sudden. Her breath was…
Gone.
I can’t breathe. Poison. She fumbled for the water cup she had been offered, saw it still untouched. Wait. Urgency punched through desperate thoughts. There’s no air. There’s no fucking air!
Ozhma’s eyes, now wide with terror, darted from Sal to the envoys. Each of them wore looks of strain, struggling with the same lack of air. But as none of them had been in the middle of screaming, her situation felt slightly more desperate. She clawed at her throat, gasping and struggling for breath.
But it wasn’t there. And neither was sound. The noises she made, the desperate and breathless pleas for aid, were silent in her ears. Air had vanished. Sound had disappeared. When she fell to the floor, she did so noiselessly. Her hands scrabbled against the wood in her desperation to claw herself to the door and escape. But the pressure inside her chest made her feel like she was about to explode. Everything was smothered beneath the sensation of her lungs being crushed. Everything but a thought.
No, she thought. Not yet. I still have so much to do.
Darkness crowded her vision. The world went black, along with silent. And Ozhma slid into a void.
Then. Cold. Damp. A noise, distantly heard though heard all the same.
“Hey. Stay with me.”
And then, the breath.
So clean and cold that it damn near sheared her lungs. She drew in a flurry of desperate breaths, hungry to hold on to them before they were snatched again. A hand lay upon her back, rubbed her gently.
“Easy. Easy. Slow breaths. Deep breaths. Like that.”
Funny thing.
There weren’t any stories about it. No one told tales. Hell, maybe no one even knew she could. But when Sal the Cacophony, killer of men and bringer of woe, held Ozhma gently and helped her to sit up, it felt…
“What happened?” Ozhma gasped, suddenly aware that she could hear herself—along with the other two envoys, who lay gasping on the ground. “We were talking and you were being an asshole.”
“All right, you ingrate,” Sal grunted, “just die next time, then.”
“And then… and then…” Ozhma rubbed her head, now pounding as breath stirred it awake. “No air. No sound. I couldn’t…” She shook her head. “How did that happen?”
“A reasonable question.” She glanced over at the envoys as they struggled for breath. “Dick-nose, you got anything to tell her on that?”
“The Imperium does not… does not…” Galatatian managed some form of indignity, to his credit, before descending into a coughing fit and hurrying for the door.
“No?” She glanced at the Revolutionary Agent Insightful. “How about you, friend? Do you want to tell her?” Sal stood up, held her hands out wide. “About Culven Loyal? About the weapons you’ve got?”
The agent glowered at her but said nothing. Sal sneered back at her.
“That’s the ugly part, isn’t it?” she chuckled. “All your fancy Revolutionary propaganda, all the speeches of your Great General about liberation and freedom from the Imperium, but you don’t even need an excuse to start dropping bombs on people, do you?
“And that,” Sal said, spitting pointedly toward the feet of Ozhma, “is why I don’t take this shit seriously. Because they sure as hell aren’t and neither should you. Negotiations, diplomacy, decorum—all the same fucking shit. Foreplay from a bunch of people with a lot of weapons and money justifying why they’re about to fuck everyone.”
The agent opened her mouth to retort, but settled instead for a scowl as she skulked away and out the door, followed by a litany of curses.
“That’s what I fucking thought,” Sal roared after her. “Ask the kitchen to loan you some oil so you can grease up before you crawl back up the Great General’s asshole. And when you get there, tell him and his fucking Revolution to come back when they’re fucking serious.”
The door slammed. The room shuddered. Ozhma, now conscious enough to feel disgust, winced as she tried to get up.
“That was not helpful,” she groaned. “They aren’t going to cooperate if we keep alienating them.”
“They aren’t going to cooperate…” A hand seized Ozhma by her arm, hauled her swiftly to her feet. “Because they aren’t here to negotiate.”
Sal took a long swig of whiskey as she helped Ozhma find her balance. She then glanced warily at the door before thrusting the liquor into Ozhma’s hands.
“Drink this, sit down, and shut the fuck up,” she muttered. “They’ll be gone, but not for long enough.”
“What?” Ozhma, too confused to resist, allowed herself to be sat down into a chair. “Wait, what are you talking about? How do you know they’ll be gone?” Her eyes widened, realizing for the first time who she was alone with. “Will… will they be back?”
“No, dumbass, they’re the kind of messengers that leave a room where sound and air disappeared and don’t tell it to their superiors. It’ll take some time for them to figure out what the fuck just happened and who to blame for it, but they will.” Sal took a seat, grunted at the cup in Ozhma’s hands. “Drink.”
Without thinking, she took a sip of bitter liquor and felt it settle like a cinder in her belly. “But you said it was them who caused it, right?”
“I didn’t say shit. I implied it was them because they don’t know neither of them has something that can’t do that.”
“Oh. Wait, what? So you lied?”
“Fucking drink,” Sal growled, provoking another sip. “I wasn’t lying, either. None of us are getting out of here alive if either the Revolution or the Imperium gets an opportunity. The only reason they haven’t is because they don’t have what they want yet.”
“They want an end to the violence,” Ozhma said, taking another drink instinctively. “Why wouldn’t they? I saw what happened on the battlefield. It was carnage like I’d never seen before.”
“Carnage you’d never seen before,” Sal replied. There was something different about her voice—urgency smothered her previously flippant tone, her words as hard and cold as her eyes. “You really think nations get as big and rich as theirs by caring about how many people have to die? They could turn us into ash from a hundred miles if they felt like it.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she scoffed. “I’ve known plenty of Revolutionaries and Imperials and they’re just like anyone else.”
“Fucking drink.” Sal groaned, running her hands over her face. “Yes, I’m sure you have known a lot of good ones. Yes, great, you’re an icon of rational diplomacy and I swear to the Scions I’ll sing your praises and go between your legs after all this is done if you’ll just listen to me.”
“I’m trying, but…” Ozhma glanced over the Vagrant, her many scars and fearsome tattoos. “Like, you know what people say about you, right?”
“Yes, I…” Sal paused, narrowed her eyes. “Wait, what do they say about me?”
“That you’re a killer.”
“Okay, just checking, I—”
“That you’re a destroyer.”
“Yes, I get it, but—”
“That you caused this whole fucking war, all these fucking Vagrants, all this… this blood just as easily as you brush snow from your shoulders. There are no stories about how reasonable and good at not-killing you are.” She met Sal’s gaze. “And frankly, I believe them.”
Sal sneered. “Birdshit.”
“I assure you, it’s not—”
“It is.” The furor slid from Sal’s face, revealing an unsettlingly confident grin. “Because if you really thought I was a liar, you wouldn’t have come here.” She leaned forward, the shadows making the crook of her smile all the more unappealing. “And if you really thought the Imperium and Revolution wouldn’t kill everyone, you wouldn’t have agreed in the first place.”
“I’m here because a dangerous Vagrant is threatening thousands,” Ozhma snapped back. “I’m here because even if I hadn’t heard the shit you’ve done, I’ve seen the shit you’ve done. I’ve traveled all over this forsaken spit of earth and worked with everyone under its sun and none of them have ever done anything half as violent as you.”
“None of them? None of them?” Sal snarled back, leaping out of her seat. “I am one woman. One woman with a big fuck-off gun, sure, but just one woman. I don’t have armies. I don’t have states. I don’t have cannons or magic or tanks or dragons. You can call me the most violent person you’ve ever met.” She leaned forward, her sneer curling her scars into briars. “But I’m just the only one whose name you know.”
Ozhma was not necessarily a confrontational woman. Her parents had always encouraged her to find a solution that made everyone happy—or at least, less mad. And though she knew life would never be easy enough for that to work all the time, she prided herself on three things: her calm, her wit, and her ability to handle conflict.
“Oh yeah?” she slurred as she staggered out of her chair. “Well, you’re a huge bitch and I’m fucking leaving!”
She did not pride herself on her alcohol tolerance.
Sal shouted something back at her, but the whiskey was boiling behind her eyes. She staggered unevenly away, pushing the door open—or trying to, before she realized it opened the other way—and storming out.
Cold air seeped through the dirt walls of the cellar. Beads of sweat became clammy on her face—she hadn’t realized how hot it was in there. She hadn’t even stopped to notice why that room had been so gently warm and this room had been so… so…
She paused, looked back over her shoulder. The door hung ajar, glimpses of the room and its furnishings and charming lighting shining bright behind it. She glanced back to the dingy, dirty, lightless cellar before her. In all the energy and anger and almost-getting-her-head-bashed-in, she hadn’t really stopped to wonder…
It wasn’t possible.
None of it. None of this.
A city being simultaneously attacked by both the Revolution and the Imperium? An exquisite room fit for a Freemaker in the middle of a dirty cellar? A city surviving a simultaneous attack by both the Revolution and Imperium?
The thoughts had struck her, here and there, like hail on a tin roof. And between everything else, she’d let them simply slide off of her, convinced herself she could get answers, convinced herself she wanted answers. But only now, with her brain stewing in a pool of liquor and the collar of her dress tightening around her neck, did she start to realize.
I shouldn’t be here, she gasped inwardly. I’m a fucking booze seller. I’m a fucking girl from the townships. I’m not… I can’t…
The pressure built inside her, grew terrible claws and teeth. She could feel it gnawing on her spine, bending her head low, sending her vision swimming. It was hard to breathe.
The Cacophony. She was caught between the Revolution, the Imperium, and the fucking Cacophony. All of them wanted something—what, she didn’t know—and all of them were willing to kill people—how much, she didn’t know—if they didn’t get it, and all of it relied on her—her, short and fat and small and weak—learning exactly the right thing to… to…
Actually, fuck this.
The only thought left.
Fuck this, fuck that, fuck all of it.
In between the hurried sound of her footsteps as she rushed for the stairs.
Fuck her, fuck them, fuck it.
She grabbed the door, threw it open, stumbled forward, and collided face-first with someone’s groin.
So things could get worse. She knew that now. That was good to know.
The figure that had appeared in the doorway moved swiftly out of the way, allowing Ozhma’s drunken stumble to complete itself gracefully by collapsing to the floor in a gasping, sweating, drunken heap.
Somehow, this was always the moment pretty people started talking to her.
“So.” Cavric, with his square jaw and kind eyes, looked down at her as she lay there, panting. “It’s going well down there?”
“Yes. Good. It’s great. It’s well. It’s perfectly well.” Ozhma managed a single manic smile before exhaling. “Uh… am I going to die?”
“At the moment, no. Sal’s a lot of things, but she’s not the type to kill someone like you. In the long term…” He looked over his shoulder, to a trio of people hurrying a grievously wounded woman to a cot. “We’ll see.”
He extended a long arm to her. The sleeve of his coat had been rolled back, exposing a long length of dark-skinned, muscular forearm. He held it there, expectantly, as she quietly took in its calluses, its weathering.
Its size.
But before it could get too weird, her hand shot up and took his arm. He hoisted her to her feet with just one hand, but she could feel the weariness in his grasp, and hear the exhaustion in his sigh.
“That first part is good to know, I suppose,” she said, dusting her dress off. “How did you meet… er… Madame Cacophony?”
“I tried to help her and she put her gun in my face.”
Ozhma’s smile fell. “And you consider that to be a good gauge of her character?”
“Well, give me a break, it was a long time ago,” he replied as he turned and trudged off. “At the very least, she didn’t kill me when she kidnapped me.”
“That… wait, what?” She hurried after him, neither willing nor really all that able to return to the room below. She shouted to be heard above the bustle of the command room, pulled her body in and out of people’s way as she followed the tall man through the crowd. “She’s a kidnapper, a murderer, and a Vagrant?”
“Really, that last part covers the first two, but yes,” Cavric sighed, the sort of sigh that suggested he had anticipated this to be a one-or-two sentence conversation and was sorely disappointed.
Which Ozhma might have felt bad about, under normal circumstances, but he had nice forearms and she had no desire to return to the lunatic woman below. And, she had to admit, she had a real nice whiskey buzz going.
“I really hate to criticize plans of actions established prior to my arrival,” she said, “especially since I’m sure that so many people worked hard on it, and I really, really don’t want to be seen as someone who can’t handle the task set before her but…” She winced. “Is… that woman really the person best suited to handling negotiations?”
“No.” Cavric’s answer was terse and worryingly straightforward. “In what I would call a reasonably informed opinion, I don’t think Sal the Cacophony should be handling any productive task more complicated than stirring soup.” A pair of soldiers rushed forward, seizing his attention with a hushed conversation. With a nod, he clasped their shoulders, whispered something in return, and sent them scurrying off. “Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up using the pot to kill someone.”
“All right, so…” Ozhma dabbed at sweat that was no longer there. “Can I ask then, why—”
“Are you serious?”
He froze there, tall and rigid in the middle of the tumult. And beneath his eyes, wide and wild with exhaustion and stress, the chatter and outbursts of the command room seemed to go quiet. Or maybe it was just her.
Her eyes were fixed on him. For the first time. Past the handsome face and strong arms, she could see something else. Shoulders that had been stronger now slumped beneath his coat. Hands that looked so capable trembled at his sides. And even though he was tall and big, she could see by the fit of his clothes that he had been much stronger, much less tired, once.
He’d buried himself beneath his stresses and his fears. It was all he could do not to disappear beneath them entirely.
“Because she’s the only thing they’re afraid of,” he said, pointing toward a door in a vague gesture. “Thousands of Revolutionary soldiers. Mages so thick it looks like a fucking cheap opera out there. Birds and tanks and beasts and monsters and all that’s holding them back is her.”
“Surely, the soldiers here—”
“Are farmers. And hunters. And carpenters and bartenders and fucking butter-churners,” he replied. “New Vigil isn’t…” He caught himself, drew in a breath. “We’re not idiots. We all knew that the Imperium and Revolution wouldn’t tolerate us building a new city with their leftovers. But I thought we’d have more time. This place was just a bunch of villages before we started building walls and… and…”
He teetered a little. She swept forward, concern overriding drunkenness, standing uncomfortably close to him. She seized his arm, pulling it onto her shoulder, steadying him right before he collapsed.
He weighed much less than she thought he would.
“Easy,” she whispered intently, pulling him close. “Easy. Lean into me. Don’t let them see you fall down.”
He nodded, the wisdom apparent to him as she helped him lean against a table. This was an old trick, one taught to her over and over by the wealthy and the strong she served. Powerful people couldn’t be seen flinching. Not bandit kings, not rich collectors, and certainly not him.
“Sal is… not my first choice for handling this. But how the fuck was I to know there would be a this?” He rubbed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and turned to a tin kettle on the table. He gave it a test, nodded at the sloshing sound within. “I’m irritated at her, but she’s not the one pointing a thousand cannons at my city. They are.”
“Sir, forgive me, but—”
“Just call me Cavric, please. I don’t want to get used to authority.”
“Okay. Cavric.” She fought to keep the delighted squeal from her voice. “Forgive me if you’ve already thought of this, but… that’s Sal the Cacophony. It certainly seems to me that having that weapon of hers inside the walls is just as dangerous as a thousand outside.”
“Yeah?” He glanced at her, his face too weary to be curious. “Have you seen it doing anything?”
The air. The sound. The room.
The thoughts pattered against her head, slid off, and were discarded. She had no idea what that was. It might not have been the gun. It might not have been anything. And frankly, she didn’t feel like it would benefit her, him, or the people he was protecting to add that burden to him.
“You’re right,” he said with a sigh as he poured himself a cup of visibly old and stale coffee, either not realizing or not caring as he sipped. “I know you’re right. Everyone here who’s heard even a little bit about her knows you’re right. That weapon is unholy. It shouldn’t be within six miles of a decent family, let alone inside the walls of a city.”
“Then why?” Ozhma asked. “Surely, limiting her role would appease the Imperium and the Revolution.”
“It would.”
“And that would save more lives, wouldn’t it?”
“Very likely, yes.”
“Then…” She winced. “Can I ask?”
Cavric’s finger returned to the cut on his cheek. He thumbed it thoughtfully for a moment, stared at his bloodstained fingers before rubbing them together. They smeared, the blood turning to a thick brown, sludgy as his coffee.
“Because Sal can only kill us,” he said. “They can do worse.”
She blinked. Her memory scrambled against his words, flooding with memories of the regal smiles of Imperial buyers and the earnest grins of Revolutionaries. Hard people, she remembered, as she had known many hard people. But kind, as she had hoped everyone was beneath that hardness.
“Sir… Cavric,” she said, “I don’t think I can agree; I’ve known many—”
“I know you have. So have I.” He pushed back his long mane of black hair in a vague imitation of a military cut. “Deserter here. Left the Revolution some time ago. I served with some men and women I thought were the greatest soldiers I’d ever seen. Hell, I still think they are.
“But that’s not what’s fighting us. We aren’t fighting good people. We are fighting the Imperium. We are fighting the Revolution. They have more weapons, more magic, more people, and more money than we do. We can’t hold out. And everyone here knows it. Just as they know that if we fall, it won’t be death that awaits us.”
She swallowed a dry, painful breath. “It can’t be that bad.”
“It can and it is,” he replied. “They didn’t come here to kill us. They came here to take us back. They came to dismantle our homes and our bodies until we agree to do things their way, to keep serving them so they can keep fighting. They’ll spare most of us. Maybe all of us. But we won’t be who we are anymore. We’ll be back under their control.”
His gaze grew distant. His face grew tight.
“And the story of New Vigil, how we stood against them and it was all for nothing,” he whispered, “will be another story they use to break everyone else. The Imperium and the Revolution can take away our history, our homes, our ideas. Sal can only blow everything up.” He sighed, knuckling the small of his back. “And the story of how New Vigil cast itself to ashes instead of agreeing to go politely into the fire? Well, it’s not great, but it’s better.”
The door burst open suddenly. A shout, something between a command and a plea. A body draped between people, bleeding and motionless. Someone caught Cavric’s attention. He shoved the mug of coffee into Ozhma’s hands, took off running toward the commotion.
She could only stare at him as he left, unable to comprehend what she had just heard.
He’s insane. She swallowed another painful, nervous breath. He wants to die. She glanced around the command room, saw all the people there embroiled in their tasks, not an ounce of fear on their faces that she could see through her heavy breathing. They all want to die. They’re going to die. I’m going to die.
Her eyes were pulled toward the open door. And without realizing it, she felt herself walking toward it. No one noticed. No one even looked at her.
Just leave, she told herself. Just go. Tell them you made a mistake. Tell them you’re not feeling well.
She made it halfway across the floor. No one did anything more than run around her.
Tell them you can’t do it. Make up something. Or don’t make up something. Do anything, please, just do anything. Just leave.
She made it to the threshold, licked her lips.
Tell them there’s nothing you can do. That’s the truth. You can’t do anything. You’re in way over your head. You can’t do anything. This isn’t where you need to be. You can’t do anything.
And she froze. A cold blast of air hit her. An uncomfortable thought.
Right?
She stared down into the coffee. A distorted face looked back at her.
Ozhma. Plump and happy merchant’s daughter. Saleswoman extraordinaire. Quivering, scared little girl. Helpless. Useless. Incapable. Too scared. Too small. Not enough.
She stared at her face. She brought the coffee to her lips, took a sip.
She smacked her lips. Blanched. Threw the rest of it out the door.
And then she turned around. And started walking. And she made it to the cellar stairs and the hall and the door. Until she finally found herself sitting in that room once again, across from Sal, who regarded her calmly.
“Ready?” she asked.
Ozhma closed her eyes. Nodded. Opened them as she felt the whiskey cup being pushed back into her hands.
“Oh, um,” she said, “I’m ready to hear you, I don’t need to—”
“I know you don’t. I do.” Sal grunted as she took a swig herself before returning it. “Trust me, this will be easier if we’re both a just a little shit-faced.”
Ozhma opened her mouth to object.
But then… if Cavric trusted her…
She sighed, threw her head back, drained all four fingers remaining, and tossed the cup aside.
“All right,” she said, pausing to belch. “Go on.”