Survivors

Chapter the Second: A Separate Peace

The Southern Uplands of Scotland, 3 January 18—

Dambarrow-by-the-Water was an Aberdeenshire parish and village like nearly any other: small in a way that Englishmen tended to describe as "charmingly provincial" by which they meant "not really worth building a summer-house in no matter how cheap the land might be," afflicted with the common number of churches (three, two of which were Protestant), a handful of industries (the majority of which revolved around the production and consumption of alcohol), and the usual assortment of homes, shops, and flocks of sheep, distinguished from its neighbours to the north and south by only two things. (Three if you counted the train stop, which almost no one did.) The first of those things was the Dambarrow Water itself, a brackish expanse that welled up from some place deep below the moor on which it lay just outside the town proper, cold and dark and deep as a sinner's heart in the centre, reedy fen about the deceptively irregular shore. (It was famous, locally, for having swallowed entire the first Christian church built in the parish, priest included, seven centuries before and no small number of drunkards, unwary sheep, and assorted luckless passers-by since.) The second was the enormous monastery brooding on the crag at the head of the valley, looking for all the world like something plucked out of the pages of some hideous penny-dreadful, all unwelcoming dark stone walls studded with statuary that didn't bear close examination and intermittently illuminated arrow-slit windows with dark figures darting past them and the occasional sound of deep-throated chanting in a language that was probably Latin echoing across the moors when the wind was right. (The motherhouse's protective façade had, in fact, been constructed, partially destroyed, and then reconstructed according to the dubious tastes of assorted members of the Science Division who, rather than pick one design schema and stick with it, had instead incorporated everyone's most deranged suggestions into a single repellent whole. Since the intent was to keep anyone with the aesthetic, or common, sense of a post away, it succeeded marvellously.) As a consequence of the Water's unsavoury reputation, and the unsightly pseudo-Gothic monstrosity blighting the view, the town of Dambarrow was spared the horrible fate of its neighbours in the spring-and-summer-time, which fate consisted principally of being beset by Englishmen with one Scots great-great-grandmother poncing about the moors in their "clan plaids," quoting Burns in atrocious accents and attempting to order whisky at the local taverns in the same. The folk of Dambarrow, as a result, were quite kindly disposed toward their neighbours on the hill, no matter how oddly they dressed, or behaved, or at what hours they came or went in their jet-black train, and even went so far as to run off anyone too foolish to be discouraged by the Order's own measures.

For the first forty years or so after the motherhouse's initial construction, the Order – more formally and properly known as the Black Order of Knights-Exorcist of the United Kingdom and the Colonies, of Europa, of Africa, of the Russias and the Orient – offered the people of Dambarrow no other visible benefits of association. They could not, even had they wished to, by the strictures of the Rule they adhered to as a function of their duties. They never truly knew their neighbours – the sorrows and the joys of the very people they were prepared to sacrifice themselves to protect. They could not, for to draw too close would bring danger to everyone's door.

But their neighbours knew them. They knew the Black Order for decades by the oblates who arrived on the train stop platform children and left it again men and women, clad in black and white with silver crosses over their hearts, armed for battle in ways that were not always easy to see. They knew the Black Order by the ones who came home weary in body and soul, wounded in the same, and smelling still of smoky battlefields and strange scents that were neither blood nor oil but a disturbing admixture of both. They knew the Black Order by the ones who returned in black-lacquered caskets, guarded and carried by silent, cassocked attendants who never showed their faces, or spoke unless they had to. And they knew, when the War broke upon the Continent – a War, so the newspapers all said, of monsters that wore human flesh, that had slaughtered thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, and had been stopped by forces unknown – they knew who had ended that War, if not how. The Black Order's fallen began their final journey in the town below their last home, after all, and as the news had spread from mouth to ear, the folk of Dambarrow had turned out to stand silent vigil as the Order took back its last sacrifice.

There hadn't been many of them, but, in the end, there had been enough. Enough to spare the world a scourging such as it had not felt since the Flood itself. Enough to save mankind, no matter how unworthy mankind might be of the price paid to ransom it, yet again, from its most ancient and implacable enemy. Five black caskets. Four strapped more dead than alive to hospital gurneys. One older man and one younger man bent with the weight of their grief. After that day, the people of Dambarrow saw none of them again, but neither did they forget, and a more fitting memorial could not have been asked.

Some months after the passage of the last of the Black Order's fallen, a message came to the parish Kirk, and shortly thereafter, the priest approached the mayor and the council, and some small time beyond that, ground was broken at the edge of town. Unlike the motherhouse, the school was the product of saner architectural impulses, a rambling, welcoming two-story structure with one wing for the housing and education of boys and one wing for the housing and education of girls, its walls of sturdy red brick and its roof of good slate, its dormitories models of modern comfort and hygiene, its dining-hall locally reputed to be somewhat better than even London's famed supper-clubs, its classrooms designed according to the standards of those who considered learning a joy rather than a chore or a punishment, its library stuffed to the rafters with a collection startling for its depth and breadth. The children of Dambarrow were invited to attend, and, once the suspicions concerning the potential for Papist Indoctrination of Our Impressionable Youth were dispersed by the indication that said indoctrination would be both free of charge and wholly secular in nature, the first classes were sat. Shortly thereafter, more students began to arrive, first as a trickle and then as a steady flood, aboard the Order's jet-black train, to take up residence and begin their education. Many of them came from Abroad, and spoke with rather odd accents, when they spoke English at all, though this was less trouble than it might have been, for most of the teachers themselves were rather far-travelled and schooled in a number of languages. Friendships among the children grew slowly but fast. That was generally construed, by the members of the Order who taught them, to be quite a fitting memorial, as well.

It was from their children that the folk of Dambarrow learned that the alien brood dwelling among them, colouring their little town with strange clothing and odd accents and unfamiliar holidays, were the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters of the fallen knights of the Black Order. It was from their children that they learned the name and some of the deeds of the smiling white-haired boy whose portrait hung behind the headmaster's desk and in such a way did the place become known forever thereafter as the Walker School, despite its official designation which was significantly longer and contained at least one completely gratuitous reference to Saint Scholastica. When news of this development reached the headmaster, he shook his head and was heard to mutter, "I've lived too long, to be holding forth over a school called after my own idiot apprentice. Somewhere, he's laughing at me."

Which, all things being equal, wasn't the worst way to be remembered, either.

As a child, River Wendham was a walking bundle of distinctly unchildlike worries. In the summer, he worried about wading in the invitingly warm waters of the sea any deeper than his ankles for fear of being eaten by a shark or other similarly large and non-discriminatory predator with a taste for human flesh. In the winter, when his parents moved their small family into the countryside in the pursuit of their work as natural scientists, he worried about fetching water from the creek-sides on the fairly reasonable grounds that, among other things, crocodiles tended to favour those particular banks. As with the seaside, his concern was fuelled by a certain desire to avoid being eaten by a large, non-discriminatory predator that would have absolutely no difficulty masticating his relatively soft bones. At all times of the year, he worried about being stung by scorpions or spiders or bitten by snakes, as his prodigious intellect and habit of becoming easily bored with the standard curricular readings he was required to complete had led him, early in his life, to sneak a look at his parents' working observational journals when they weren't about to stop him which, in turn, had led him to the conclusion that all the wildlife in Australia was either ridiculously, dangerously poisonous or possibly inclined to eat him, including his own younger siblings.

His parents, whose lives' work revolved around establishing close and personal relations with creatures of a particularly poisonous, predatory, and non-discriminatory nature, didn't realize the role their own research had played in their eldest son's decision to study chemistry rather than biology.

(They were, however, extremely pleased that he had chosen to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences, and even more pleased when he graduated, at the top of his class, from the storied institution at which he had studied. Somewhat less pleasing to them was his completely inexplicable decision, some years later, to abandon a promising career in the research sciences to run off to England with the most deranged of his University friends to take a position with, of all things, the Church. Not even a Church school, but some ridiculous variation of nearly Holy Orders, a cloistered, shuttered existence, locked away from the intellectually stimulating world of the burgeoning scientific community in his homeland. If they'd had an address to send letters to, the correspondence would have flowed like a mighty river, no pun at all intended, despite the fact that he had instructed him not to attempt to contact him in the same letter he'd used to inform them of his decision. They received no more letters from him themselves for nearly ten years.)

Working with potentially explosive chemicals for the better part of both his formal education and his professional life had long since cured River of most of his early childhood nervousness and, in fact, there was very little now that could disturb his disposition, which tended in the direction of unflappability. (In fact, had he remained in any way inclined toward an anxious personality condition, working with Komui Li and his propensity for building robots vulnerable to caffeine-fuelled psychosis on a regular basis would have rid him of it or driven him barking to Bedlam, with Bedlam displaying a slightly higher percentage of probability. Komui certainly had that effect on more than one lab assistant.) One thing that was, however, certain to result in quite a bit of disturbance in his placid demeanour was being woken at decidedly godless hours of the morning by violence being committed against the door to his quarters. Apparently by someone wearing brass knuckles.

"I'm awake, I'm awake – " And had, again, fallen asleep alone with the bedside lamp burning, surrounded in masses of scientific trade journals forwarded to him by his parents, overjoyed to hear from him again. "Just a moment!" The floor on his side of the room was, at least, uncluttered – unfortunately, clutter might have ameliorated some of the discomfort of hopping across largely uncarpeted flagstones in the dead of winter, especially since his slippers had gone missing some time before. "BerightthereGAH!"

Night-watch was the domain of the junior officers of the Science Division and the one they'd sent to wake him was the most junior of them all, so fresh that River didn't even know his name yet. He recoiled almost comically away from the door as it popped open and River hopped out, transferring his weight from foot to foot in a desperate effort to avoid frostbite. "What is it…Harrison?"

"Harrington, sir. General's respects and will you join him in the containment oversight level?" That one must have been recruited from some military source; he kept looking like he wanted to salute.

"Of course. Tell him I'll be along presently once I've – wait. Containment oversight? What's been going on?" River reached just inside the door, fished about for a moment, and pulled a pair of Komui's rattier old house slippers off the coat-rack, which rarely actually held any coats. "I thought I felt a tremor earlier, but I wasn't sure."

"I'm afraid that's why I was asked to get you, Chief. No-one rightly knows just yet." Harrington also had the sense to sound more than vaguely worried about that, a position with which River could absolutely sympathise.

Over the years, most of the residents of the motherhouse had grown accustomed to any number of oddities far stranger than the Chief of Operations stalking through the halls in the dead of night still clad in his night-shirt and dressing-gown, trailing a rosy-cheeked junior officer in his wake, and so that sight excited no comment from anyone. Assorted night-owls poked their heads out their doors to ask what was going on, only to be peremptorily shooed back to their beds and told not to worry, an admonition that, coming from River, carried more than its usual weight. Legendary competence and composure tended to have that effect even on high-strung adolescent exorcists and easily alarmed Science Division personnel alike, the numbers of which grew somewhat larger the further they descended into the lower reaches of the motherhouse, where lay Hebraska's quarters and, by necessity, the containment cell that sheltered the most precious relic in the Black Order's possession lay.

Very few people outside the Order knew that the hill upon which the motherhouse had been built was not a natural feature of the landscape, and within the Order the precise details of the situation were restricted to a knowledgeable handful. The Order itself hadn't known, when it first acquired the parcel of land: the most attractive feature, point in fact, had been its relative seclusion, far enough away from major human habitation to minimise any danger to bystanders, close enough to modern modes of transit that response time wasn't unacceptably compromised. The remnants of older structures on the site – shallow foundations, the rubble that remained of old walls and defensive fortifications – were a curiosity, and little more, until the excavation for the motherhouse's foundation broke completely through the false crust of the hill and into the space beneath. Within, layers of cut stone walls created a vast, galleried space, and in forty years, the Order still hadn't finished exploring it all, though they had adapted parts of it for usage. The transit watercourse connected to the lowest level they'd thus far found, and small, flat-bottomed skiffs came and went at all hours, for a multitude of purposes. Above that lay the tombs in which the ashes of the Order's fallen were interred behind the black marble plaques that bore their names. In the very centre of the massive edifice, buried deep and protected by the enormous mass of the retaining walls that held the hill's shape, was the chamber where the Order's most reclusive member, the Guardian of the Prophecy, slept in waiting for the coming of each new exorcist, nurturing the hope of the world within her own supernatural flesh.

Viewed from above, from the deck of the observational platform built across the vast central shaft of the hill, the Heart of All Innocence shone with a milky iridescence, protectively encased as it was within the nacreous coils of Hebraska's massive, largely immobile body. She seemed, from where River was standing, to still be asleep, or at least not agitated enough to move since the last time he saw her, much earlier in the day. Neither had the Heart's steady, constant glow appeared to have altered, or at least not enough to be visible to the naked eye.

"Chief!"

River stretched his legs and met Johnny half-way to the central observation platform, plucking the sheaf of papers he was waving around out of his hand and glancing through them quickly. "What's happening? Using small words and diagrams. And get me an elderberry fizz, I can't think with my blood sugar this low."

"We were performing routine observations at midnight. Hebraska was asleep, as always. The Heart started to resonate – you know, like it did before? – in a series of six short bursts, two minutes apart." River came to a halt, looked more closely at the mess of papers, and found small words and diagrams in plenty. "It's continued to do so every hour for the last three. Hebraska hasn't come out of her hibernation, but her vital signs are beginning to show indications of quickening. The General wanted to consult you before we made any decisions."

They were on the platform and an elderberry fizz manifested itself for him in the hand of General Komui Li, who looked like he'd been indulging in his own intoxicant of choice, the intensely black stuff he imported from Istanbul at ludicrous expense. "I'm sorry to drag you out of bed, River, but I rather thought you wouldn't want to hear about this over breakfast."

River snorted, sucked down a sip of fizz, and gestured out over the edge of the platform. "This started up apropos of nothing, I assume? No experiments in process of which I would have to formally disapprove in my capacity as Chief of Operations?"

Komui opened his eyes to their widest and most innocent-seeming extent. "I'm wounded. You know if I were going to do something completely insane I'd recruit you to help – ah – formally ask your permission first. But, no. No experiments. I was in my office, catching up on that mountain of backed-up paperwork that you left for me, when the Officer of the Watch," Johnny waved over his shoulder, and went back to scribbling as fast as he could write on a fresh sheet of paper, "buzzed my wireless and asked me to come down to confirm his observations. Which were correct. The Heart, metaphorically speaking, was beating a bit faster than normal, as you can see by the graphical plot. Energy output increased slightly, as well. Then it stopped, and then started again. If you felt the building shake a bit, it's because Hebraska shifted a little in her sleep."

River handed his cup back. "More sugar." The small words and diagrams in the report began to arrange themselves into a coherent series of numbers and letters, and he found his eyebrows migrating in the direction of his hairline. "Komui, some of these peaks aren't minor. Have we received any trouble calls from the patrol units on the Continent?"

"Nothing. I sent out an all-call to check in and thus far all the responses we've received have indicated no trouble. The stationary listening posts have reported all quiet. I even woke Bak up, and he was rather surly about it, too. But Asia Branch reports all clear." A pause. "I haven't called Miranda or Rinali or Ravi yet."

"We probably should," River accepted a second cup and sipped at it thoughtfully. "They might have sensed something that our instruments wouldn't be able to detect."

"…Perhaps." Komui's reluctance was clearly audible and River cocked a questioning brow at him; normally, there was very little that could dissuade him from harassing his sister, including her clearly expressed wishes. "It's not Twelfth Night yet. Rina…"

"…Would really appreciate being accosted even less than usual." Softly, "I'm sorry, I…almost forgot. Let's put in a call to Miranda, and she can decide whether or not she wants to involve Rinali now or later. Ravi, too, though I suspect if he noticed anything, he'd contact us first."

"Perhaps." Komui reached for one of the wireless golems hanging batlike from the platform railing. "Perhaps not."

Twelve-tide began at sunset on Christmas night and, even on the war-torn, death-haunted Continent, they were the twelve merriest days on the calendar in every nation under the Saviour's cross. In the kingdoms and principalities and duchies of the west, the traditional celebrations had taken on a far more altruistic than sybaritic character: little in evidence were the grand, nearly bacchanal fetes of wasteful self-indulgence that had excited so much condemnation from the pens of conscientious social investigators in the years before the War. Benevolent relief organizations of all stripes saw their numbers and funds swell during that twelve-day, allowing a far greater range of charity to be spread among a far greater range of sufferers. Even before the War, poverty and want were not strangers even in the richest cities of France, of Spain, of the Low Countries; after it, those cities groaned under the weight of both the native poor and the need to succour the tens of thousands of destitute refugees the tides of violence washed across their borders. Economies had crumbled. Crowns and thrones had been lost, whole governments had collapsed beneath the strain. And help had come from unexpected quarters, help clad in black and white and silver, carrying weapons forged by the hand of God and letters of credit signed by His earthly representatives, skilled in a hundred different trades and willing to put their knowledge to use. The Black Order carried the imprimatur and the authority of the Vatican to do what it must to maintain civility and order in the wavering western lands, and focused its mission through traditional routes: the communities of the Catholic faithful and the organizational powers they could bring to bear. The New World Alliance, its secular orientation more palatable to the nation-builders in the cradle of the Enlightenment, had in their turn approached the worldly governors with offers of financial and logistical support, offers which even the proudest regents eventually found it prudent to accept. Slowly, and not without effort, the nations of the west edged back from the brink of disastrous collapse, and on the twelve-night of Christmas-tide they gave thanks for their good fortune in the free giving of food and drink, clothing and money, gainful employment and a good roof above the heads of the poorest among them. Every man, woman, and child among them knew it for the grace of God and the courage of men that they had not suffered the fate of so many others.

In the lands that had, until recently, been the Holy Roman Empire and points to the East, the recovery had not yet significantly begun, and yet even there Twelve-tide was a time for joy and thanksgiving. Riven by supernatural warfare, the heart of Old Europe lay broken into a hundred petty states – pugnaciously sovereign republics modelled on revolutionary ideals, free cities struggling against the tide of restorationist sentiment to retain that status, isolated enclaves of humanity fighting to reach the level of barely medieval – and yet they each and every one held those days sacred as a time of peace in the midst of slowly receding horror. Famine and Pestilence, War's vile handmaidens, had taken their share, as well, and yet in every republic, in every free city, in every ruin and refugee camp, the people still gathered to offer thanks to the birth of the world's hope and give each other what comfort they could, sheltered beneath the protection of those who walked their borders and slew the things that would destroy not just them but all of mankind if they could. Feral akuma, bereft of the malignant will and malevolent intelligence that had guided them to war, haunted the mountains and forests and valleys of the Continent, shackled to their own instinctual imperatives: to perfect themselves into weapons of mass destruction, and to use themselves to wipe the grievous insult of defective, worthless humanity from the face of the Earth. The Black Order, its numbers once cruelly depleted, had grown again to meet the continuing threat, only barely diminished by the defeat of its author. And even they, humanity's black-clad protectors, paused in those days to give their thanks.

Sister Rinali Li, wherever she was at the time, kept the season according to her own custom and admitted very little change to that custom, unless the situation were truly dire. She had observed it in the ruins of Magdeburg at the altar of the cathedral of St. Maurice while around her a running battle commanded by her sister-in-arms, General Lotte, had raged and shook what was left of the cathedral walls. (She broke her observance that twelve-night to purify four highly evolved akuma herself, in defence of the two hundred women and children that had taken shelter in the cathedral with her; she rather thought that the objects of her devotion would have approved, even if the Prince of Peace did not.) She had observed it in the chapel tent of the enormous refugee camp south of Frankfurt am Main while around her the camp's residents came and went, offering their own devotions, their own candles and flowers and whispered prayers to the rough-hewn altar and the cross set behind it. She had observed it, faithfully, for the last three years in the chapel of the refurbished monastic complex where she and General Lotte were stationed as semi-permanent staff, she as a teacher in the orphan's asylum and Miranda as the trainer-commander of the Order's forces in the region.

By day, she kept her schedule in the asylum's classrooms, teaching science and mathematics to Magyar boys (who were, in general, quite pleased to have a pretty young woman – albeit a crippled one – as their instructor in such subjects) and girls (who were, in general, quite surprised to have a woman teaching them such subjects at all) and the occasional suspicious adult (who generally questioned her competence in her fields and who always went away some combination of flustered, convinced, and faintly intimidated). During the late afternoon, after classes had ended for the day, she took some small portion of rest and nourishment, though never enough to satisfy the overprotective attendants who laboured perpetually under the delusion that she used herself too severely during the Twelve-tide. An hour before sunset, she rose and, with the aid of one of the novices of the Black Order's civilian auxiliary, the Order of the Holy Merciful Saviour, bathed and dressed herself in the plain black habit of that organization. Chaoji, her Finder-attendant-bodyguard for the best part of a decade, would then make his usual almost ritual fuss over her, making certain that her habit was pinned to her short-cropped hair firmly enough to resist the stiffest winter wind and that the woollen blanket she wore tucked over her cruelly withered legs wouldn't catch on anything, and then he would wheel her in her chair to the chapel by the monastery's covered walkways to keep her even further from the cold. Once there, he would fetch and carry as she required, bringing the candles upon which she would write the names of those whom she remembered on those nights, bringing oil with which to anoint them and matches with which to light them, and then he would sit in a pew at her elbow while she whispered Our Father and Hail Mary and Glory Be to the Father and Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy and every word of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the candle burned slowly down. When she was done, and she had no more ritual words of prayer to offer, she would sit, and watch the fire dwindle away to a tiny curl of smoke, and the sunrise behind the chapel's lovely stained glass windows, but she would not close her eyes, no matter that she was weary in body and soul and mind. She mourned, but she had wept all her tears long ago, and the fury of her grief had made ashes of what had been left of her heart. (In the twelve days between Allen's birthday and the Feast of the Epiphany, she could barely close her eyes without dreaming, and her dreams on those days she dreaded more than anything else in the world or what waited beyond it.) During Twelve-tide, no one disturbed her in those devotions for reasons less than life or death, out of respect for that sorrow. It therefore came as something of a surprise when, early on the morning of the Feast of the Holy Name, a disturbance did, indeed, occur.

It lacked a few hours until dawn when the sound reached them where they sat, Chaoji in the chapel's first pew and Rinali in her wheeled chair next to him, running the ebony beads of her rosary across her palm, though she was no longer counting prayers. Her Finder had dosed off sometime after midnight, but came instantly awake when she laid her hand on his shoulder, and they turned as one to face the door. Footsteps were coming down the corridor at a rapid clip, hard-soled boots or shoes ringing on the worn flagstones rather than the whisper-soft tread of the resident chaplain's night-slippers as he came to say the early-morning Offices. Without even a perfunctory knock, the door flew open and a young man clad in the white uniform of a Science Division officer stepped inside, breathing heavily; he had obviously come at a run, and had been chased out of bed rather peremptorily by the way his hair was jutting off his skull in gravity-defying spirals, his clothing clearly having been buttoned while he was still too asleep to make straight lines. He did, however, make a very pretty bow to her by way of apology for his interruption and addressed his remarks to the floor, possibly in the hopes of avoiding being killed for the temerity.

"General Lotte's regrets, Lady Rina, and would you please join her in the infirmary?"

Rinali turned her chair quickly and wheeled herself up the aisle, Chaoji following close behind. "General Lotte isn't injured, is she? I wasn't aware that she was going out on patrol tonight."

"No! Oh, no. The General is fine." He straightened up and smoothed his hair back out of his face. "It's one of the younger parasite-types – OW!"

"I'm sorry," Rinali shouted from down the hall, as Chaoji supported the hopping, whimpering scientist out after her, holding his wheel-dented foot well off the floor. "Chaoji, make sure nothing's broken, will you?"

"Lady Rina!"

The complex infirmary was, fortunately, on the ground floor and did not require the somewhat problematic navigation of any staircases, though several of the halls were uncomfortably narrow and required her to pull herself along using the walls rather than the rails on her chair's wheels. Originally constructed in the thirteenth century, intended to be as much a fortress as a house of God, the monastery could only be modernized so far; most of the corridors in the oldest parts of the building weren't wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The infirmary, located just off those corridors, was however a much newer construction, built since the Black Order had acquired the property according to the standards laid out by the Science Division: open, roomy wards with plenty of windows to admit light and air and all of the most modern advances in medical technology and hygiene, only the best for the Order and its dependents. In the case of this particular chapter house, the infirmary serviced the needs of three mobile exorcist teams, one stationary exorcist team, and three hundred and six orphans, slightly more girls than boys, and approximately one third of which were accommodators themselves, exorcists-in-waiting. Almost half of those, contrary to statistics and the Black Order's past experiences with such things, were the previously exceeding rare parasite-type accommodators, the "naturals" born with the blessings of God and the power of their Innocence literally incarnate. Of those, Rinali could only think of one whose condition was such that Miranda might feel it necessary to interrupt her annual hermitage.

"Illes!" Rinali wheeled herself swiftly into the portion of the infirmary set aside for the use of the children, divided into individual "rooms" by pale green curtains, each containing a comfortable bed, a dresser for clothing, and a parasite-type child accommodator whose body had not yet adjusted to the awakening of his or her gift. At the moment, there were six, four girls and two boys.

General Lotte stepped out of the "room" at the far end of the ward, like her hapless assistant looking very much as though she had been roused without a great deal of notice, clad in her pyjamas and a dressing gown, curly dark hair pulled back in a haphazard attempt at a loose bun. "Rina…Forgive me. I wouldn't have called you, but he none of us could soothe him, and he kept asking for you."

"I understand." Miranda held the curtain aside for her and Rinali came to the side of the bed, where the youngest of her charges lay.

The vast majority of all parasite-types did not manifest their abilities until later in life, not infrequently at the onset of puberty or extremely close to it, once their bodies had begun attaining something approaching physical maturity, the emergence of their Innocence's power being only one more organic stress among many. Adolescence – fraught thought it otherwise was with emotional turmoil and physical awkwardness – was at least ideal in that regard. More rarely, a dormant parasite-type would manifest in adulthood, the Innocence sleeping within them responding to a threat or a trauma; even more rarely, the Innocence would awaken in early childhood. In both of those cases, the physical and psychological toll was different, and in many ways higher: adults typically had great difficulty adjusting their images of themselves, formed over a lifetime, and the alienists employed by the Black Order spent a great deal of time assisting in that adjustment; children tended toward physical fragility, vulnerability to illness and injury and slow to heal from both, until they reached adolescence and sometimes beyond. It was little wonder that parents, hard-pressed for mere survival in the plague-desolate, akuma-haunted East, would balk at the demands caring for such a child placed on them.

Illes Temesvari was, as near as anyone could tell, somewhat less than seven years old and easily the youngest active parasite-type accommodator in the history of the Black Order, a fact more or less confirmed by the researches of the Bookman on the subject. He had been abandoned in the vestibule of the monastery during a late-February blizzard, without even a blanket, though whoever had left him had, at least, pounded on the door to attract the attention of the night-watch, who brought him inside and to the infirmary. That was closing in on two years ago, and he hadn't left the infirmary since, being confined to his bed by several factors: the frailty of his body (he was slight in every way, a good hand-span shorter than all the other boys his age and many of the girls, as well, so light that a strong breeze probably could have blown him over on a bad day), his propensity for terrifyingly high fevers whenever he took a cold, and, the unkindest of all the cuts he'd suffered in his short life, the activation of his Innocence, which remained beyond his control, had rendered him physically blind. His Innocence sat in the very centre of his forehead, a jet-black cruciform rendered even more conspicuous by the milk-white skin upon which it was symbiotically joined, the eyes below it filmed over in lambent green radiance that obscured their natural colour completely. He recognized others by the sound of their voices, the size of their hands, for his eyes looked forever on sights that no one else could perceive and even he only understood, at best, part of the time.

Tonight, he lay twisted up in his sheets and blankets, pale cheeks flushed with fever, mouse-brown hair plastered to his skull by the sweat of it, and his eyes shining brightly enough that Rinali had to raise her hand to block out the glow. She fumbled about for a moment in the covers, found his own, smaller fingers, and gasped softly at the heat of them. "Illes? Can you hear me?"

Miranda stepped in behind her and pulled the curtains closed, waving off the ward nurse for the time being. "He was calling for you earlier. I'm sorry I didn't summon you sooner now."

"You needn't apologize, Miranda." Rinali reached over and rested her hand over Illes' eyes; he didn't so much as flinch from her touch. "How long has he been this way?"

"He began showing signs of the fever early in the evening, just after sunset, from what the ward nurse told me. He was rather active earlier in the day as I understand it." The older woman handed her a sheaf of foolscap from the top of the dresser, bending down to scoop up the pastel sticks she had knocked to the floor. "He was even out of bed in the solarium for a few hours."

Rinali took the pictures, clearly the work of her charge's hand. Despite his lack of physical sight and his youth, he was a startlingly competent artist, his gift granting him the ability to communicate his visions in such a way when he lacked the words and the experience to verbally describe what he was seeing. General Theodore, on his last visit, had given the boy a huge book of loose foolscap sheets and two boxes of pastels and, since then, he had produced dozens of drawings, most of which had been forwarded to the motherhouse for analysis by the Science Division. While Illes, in general, tended toward the abstract a good bit of the time, these drawings were quite the opposite: a very pretty repeating pattern of golden curlicue vines and delicately pink-tinted cruciform flowers, on a background that had been first collared the yellowish hue of fine parchment paper; a moon peering through thick grey clouds, shining on a snow-covered path, an expanse of rippling dark water, richly coloured in a blend of blues and blacks; a man's angular profile executed in blood red and stark black and faint silver tracery.

Her hand shook uncontrollably for a moment and when she looked up, she found her thoughts etched on Miranda's careworn face. "Ravi. He saw Ravi?"

Against her palm, Illes' eyelashes fluttered like the wings of tiny butterflies. "Ri…na."

Rinali laid the pictures down and Miranda came to join her at the bedside, bringing a cool, damp cloth from the lavabo to wash his face with. "I'm here, Illes. Can you hear me?" She accepted the cloth and stroked it over his cheeks, across his sweat-beaded forehead. The light from his eyes had perceptibly dimmed, the activation waning if not releasing its hold completely.

He "looked" toward the sound of her voice, his tiny face a mask of anguish so intense it twisted her heart. "Ri…na. Help…"

"I'm here, my love. Tell me what you need." Miranda took back the cloth and put a cup with a bent glass straw in her hand; she put it to his lips and he gratefully drank three deep gulps of water.

"You have to help him, Rina." A little mouse-whisper, soft and feverish. "He's hurt. I saw him."

"You were just dreaming, my love. Not everything you see is a real vision." Or, at the very least, that was the general presumption advanced by the Science Division; in this case, she devoutly hoped it was true. "And, even if it was, the man you saw is a grown-up who can take care of himself. He doesn't need any help from you or from me."

"No." Illes shook his head furiously for a moment then stopped, visibly dizzy. "He does. They both do. He told me to tell you that you have to help them."

"Who told you that?" Rinali set the cup aside and took his hand in her own; he was still worryingly hot, and with her free hand she gestured for Miranda to summon the nurse.

"I don't know. I've never heard his voice before. But he told me to tell you." His eyes drifted half-closed. "I'm tired, Rina."

"Then go to sleep. I'll have the nurse mix you a draught, if you like." The face he made in response to that suggestion was pure comedy, so she laughed at it for his sake. "I'll take that as a 'no.' Here, have a little more water…"

He drank, and the ward nurse poked her head through the gap in the curtains. "I beg your pardon, General Lotte, Lady Rina, but there's a call on the wireless for the General. It's from Home."

"I'd best take it then." Miranda rested a hand on her shoulder in passing. "Rina, do you want to stay? Very well, I'll have your duties reassigned for today. Do you think we should forward the pictures…?"

"Yes. If only to be sure." She handed them over, frankly glad to be rid of them of a sudden.

"Rina." Softly. "What if Ravi is really…?"

She felt her mouth tightening into a hard, thin line, and forced it to relax, forced her hand not to clench so tightly on the cup she held. "If the Bookman is really in danger, there are a hundred and more exorcists closer to his help than we are right now."

Miranda looked, for a moment, as though she very much wanted to say something else but, finally, she simply nodded, collected the papers, and stepped out in a swirl of dressing-gown and curtains. Rinali breathed deeply several times to encourage the cold fury knotting her belly to let go, and turned back to her charge. In his sleep, he looked far, far too young, too dear, too vulnerable; if anyone, he needed her help and her protection far more. She told herself that, and by the time the sun crept above the horizon, she had pushed any other thoughts, any other concerns, no matter how persistent and niggling, from her mind. After a time, she slept, with her head pillowed on her arms at the edge of Illes' sickbed, and dreamt dreams she hadn't in a very long time: dreams of a white haired boy with fierce and gentle silver eyes. When she woke, her face was wet with tears.

"Still no answer from the Bookman, General. Shall I try again?"

"…No. If he doesn't want to be bothered, we won't bother him. Leave a message with his wireless to call us when he has the opportunity."