NOW
At some angles, the Congmis’ villa looked like a fortress. At others, it looked like a prison.
It sat on a cliff, with only a weathered stone wall separating the garden from a steep, fatal fall into gnashing white waters. Everywhere else was just forest—other than the thin, lonely road that cut from the villa like a shave line. But if it was a prison, it was an understaffed one; there was an uncharacteristic absence of servants, with Hendon filling the gaps. Nhika might’ve been able to convince herself it was due to the remoteness, but Trin—whom she’d always considered a head warden—was also gone.
She found herself missing him, the steadfastness of his presence, a ready receptacle for all her taunts and jeers. But, without him, there was no one to watch her every move, and she had free rein to explore the house. She familiarized herself with its libraries, none so expansive as the one in their Central manor, and all the furnished parlors. The only place she couldn’t investigate was the carriage house, which had been buckled with lock and key, its windows boarded and curtained. Nhika might’ve found that strange, but this family didn’t need many autocarriages. There was an atmosphere of desolation, with guest rooms standing empty and no random home visits from physicians and their annoying aides.
Hendon, steward turned cook, spent most of his time in their kitchen. When lunch ended, he started making dinner. She might’ve pitied the poor man but quickly found there was nothing better to do in Western Theumas—and the job was preferable to Mimi’s and Andao’s, who both spent the day in their offices, on the telephone. It was strange, finding Mimi so busy. She never remembered Mimi to be involved in the family business, but that’s all she did now, making phone calls and balancing ledgers.
Right now, neither Mimi nor Andao were in their normal spots. When she sought them out, she spied Mimi on the patio, sitting on a tarp laden with automaton parts, wrenches, oil bottles, and blueprints. The girl sat at the center, surrounded by stray metal plating and strewn automaton parts, dressed in a greasy tunic and loose pants with her hair pinned back. Nhika almost hadn’t recognized her.
Quietly, she crept up behind Mimi until she could read the blueprint. MEDI-GLOVE 2.0 read bolded text at the top of an automaton rendering. As the name suggested, the sketch detailed an automaton meant to be worn on the forearm, its compartments armored and filled with medical supplies. At the bottom, the diagram had been signed by Andao.
“What’s this for?” Nhika asked, and watched Mimi jump out of her skin.
Mimi collected herself, pushing parts around the tarp. It looked like she wanted to conceal the blueprint, but Nhika had already seen it.
“This?” Mimi said, holding up an incomplete glove. “Just a prototype for one of Andao’s new models. He said it was inspired by you—medicine in the palm of your hand.”
“No offense, but it’s a bit cumbersome for surgery, isn’t it?”
“It’s not for surgery. It’s for the field,” Mimi said. More hid behind her tone, but Nhika couldn’t parse it before Mimi slipped the glove on. Angling her wrist back popped open a syringe compartment at the forearm, and she slid open a metal plate along her fingers to reveal suture needles, ready with thread. “Like it?”
It was interesting, a healing device in the shape of a glove. To her, those two things felt exclusive, because she’d never be able to heal through metal, no matter how delicate the plating.
“Andao’s been studying his anatomy,” she said. There were many corollaries to the human hand, springs in the place of muscle and the tendonous rays on the back of the hand re-created with wire.
“Someone’s had to, now that we don’t have a trusted physician we can consult.”
“If this isn’t a partnership, what made Andao dabble in medical technology?”
“Well, technically, it is a partnership. Just not with doctors. With—” The rest of the sentence turned into a yelp as Mimi dropped her half-assembled device. She’d pressed the wrong button, and a blade had popped out of its compartment. Nhika hadn’t witnessed the cut, but a line of red bloomed against white silk.
“Mother, are you okay?” Nhika asked, drawing forward as Mimi tugged off her glove.
“Fine, fine,” Mimi said, but there was water in her eyes.
“I thought you said this wasn’t for surgery. Why’s it got a scalpel?”
“Well, sometimes … sometimes healers need to defend themselves, don’t they?” Mimi asked, meeting Nhika’s eye. She was still nursing her hand, the bleed growing. It was a shallow cut, but long—a terrible mess dripping onto white silk.
By instinct, Nhika placed cool fingers against Mimi’s bare skin until she remembered decorum and snapped herself away.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I … I mean, I can heal it, if you want.”
Mimi gave her a curious look, and Nhika realized that she’d healed Hendon, and she soothed Trin, but never had she used the gift with Mimi. But Mimi said, “Will it hurt?”
“Yes. Unbearably.”
“Okay, no need to make fun.” Mimi prostrated her palm. “Well then, go ahead.”
Nhika almost thought she’d misheard—because she hadn’t expected such an easy agreement. The Congmis had always hidden it behind respectful smiles and polite words, but she knew they distrusted heartsoothing. Yet Mimi was looking at her with anticipation—no, expectation—and she wondered if her near-death incident had proven something to them.
Nhika cupped Mimi’s hand in her palms and let her influence sink in. There came a flinch, like Mimi’s natural instinct was to resist it, but the girl didn’t move—hardly even breathed. There was reservation, but Mimi was being accepting. Nhika wondered if this was grace, if Mimi knew what it meant to Nhika to soothe another.
The cut itself was small, one that would heal in its own time, but the palm was rife with throbbing nerves. Nhika dampened those first, then stitched up the skin with collagen until the cut pulled tight and the bleeding stopped. Just a simple mend, over in less than a minute.
Mimi’s eyebrows lifted in awe as she pulled her hand away and turned her palm, as though looking for the shine of a scar or a new palm line. “I see,” she said, as though musing to herself. “I always figured it would feel like an invasion. But it’s more like … when I would skin my knee and Father would kiss it better.”
“Your father’s kisses accelerated healing?”
Mimi let out a tired breath. “I can’t say I’ve missed your sarcasm.”
With a glance at the glove, the knife still extended, Nhika said, “Don’t you Congmis usually hire someone to do this part for you?”
“We’re spread a little thin at the moment.”
“I’ve noticed. What happened to the help? Budget cuts or something?”
“Privacy comes at the cost of some luxuries,” Mimi answered. “But at least politics and reporters can’t follow us out here.”
“You could at least ask Andao to help you.”
“He’s in Central today,” Mimi responded. Her expression darkened, and she wrung the glove in her lap. “Visiting Trin.”
There it was again, that imperceptible sadness that had clung to the corners of the mansion since Nhika had awoken. The way they said Trin’s name sounded like a prayer. It turned Nhika’s stomach.
“What happened to Trin, Mimi?” Nhika asked—because she knew something must’ve. There were only a few things she could imagine that would keep Trin from Andao’s side.
Mimi’s expression wilted, like she realized she could no longer lie. In a soft tone, she said, “He’s in the hospital.”
Her throat tightened. “Why?”
“Surgery,” Mimi said. “We … None of us know how it happened. Just that, one day, he came home and he was … he was bleeding from the inside out.”
Nhika’s blood ran cold. “Well? Is he okay?”
At that, tears welled to Mimi’s eyes. “We have to believe so.”
A knock came at the patio door, interrupting their conversation. Hendon stood at the entrance to the manor, hands clasped behind his back. At his side was a familiar man: broad shouldered, hawkish brow, black robe thrown over his shoulders. It was Mr. Nem, who Nhika remembered constantly hounding Andao with war talks. Some things didn’t change, she supposed.
“Commissioner Nem,” Mimi said, swiping tears out of her eyes and hiding the bloodied gloves as she stood. She looked occupied with how unbecoming her engineer’s outfit was, while Nhika was still stuck on Nem’s title: Commissioner.
But of course. Last she remembered, the election was fast approaching, and Mr. Nem had been the natural choice. Yet, it still jarred her—the thought that Theumas hadn’t even lurched in her absence when her world had nearly ended that night in the operating suite.
When Nhika looked up, she found Nem’s singular attention on her.
“Ms. Suon,” he said, lips pulling into a smile. She remembered only sharing a single dinner with him—but Nhika supposed that was the way with commissioners, remembering people’s names.
“Commissioner,” she greeted, following Mimi’s decorum.
“I wasn’t aware you’d rejoined the Congmi household.”
Nhika glanced at Mimi, feeling suddenly naked without a prepared backstory. Mimi spoke up. “Just for the time being,” she said. “She was ill and is now looking to get back on her feet.”
“Is that so?” Nem asked, his words still directed at Nhika. His eyes roved her like she was one of Andao’s designs, a lump of cogwork to appraise. “Well, it certainly seems like you’ve made a full recovery.”
“That I have,” Nhika said.
“I would expect nothing less of the Congmis’ hospitality.”
“Generous, aren’t they?”
“I’m holding a dinner party at the end of the week. I’ve invited the siblings, but that invitation extends to you, too.”
“Commissioner,” Mimi interjected. “I’d be happy to meet you on my brother’s behalf. Please, follow me.”
Nem complied, but his stare lingered on Nhika as he turned toward the house. Just before he entered, he paused to tell her, “I do hope we see more of each other, Ms. Suon.”
Nhika didn’t know how to respond to that, but Nem disappeared into the house before she had to. Mimi and Hendon trailed after him, leaving her alone on the patio. Nhika found herself back in the past, piecing together Kochin’s identity from discrepancies alone. This time, it was Nem.
They’d only met once, yet he remembered her. He was a commissioner, yet so far from Central. And he’d invited her, a Yarongese nobody, to a dinner. The last time anyone had shown that much undue interest in her, she’d nearly died on his operating table. Where she’d grown up, evil was apparent. Evil spat at her in the streets and caught her ankles in catchpoles. Here, evil had to blend in, and she hadn’t been so great at noticing it the first time. She’d be smarter the second.
Her eyes fell to the abandoned Medi-Glove on the tarp, and thoughts of Trin returned. She wondered why the siblings built gloves like these when they had her heartsoothing. And when she awoke, the first thing they should’ve asked her was to heal Trin. So why hadn’t they?
She’d promised Mimi she’d stay, but it couldn’t be helped. Nhika was a healer, so she’d heal.
Growing surer by the step, Nhika returned to the house and scrounged up enough chem for a round-trip train ticket to Central. Then, slipping out between the raised voices of Mimi and Nem, she was off on that lonely road through the trees.
Toward Central. Toward Trin. And toward that haunting building that had once tried claiming her and Kochin both.