Happy Hump Day, everyone! :)
This was meant to be posted during the weekend, but I'm in the process of moving so my timing was a little off. Continuing with the Zoo saga, in all its doom-y and doldrum-y glory. Or... not? Tbh this is a pretty filler-ish chapter, focusing mainly on the side characters, and a gentle resolution of their personal little arcs, complete with, er, lacrimose levity? Harrowing humor?
Idk, guys. I'll leave it for you to decide.
Also finally delving into Tórir's full backstory with the Queens, and his vendetta against their descendants in particular. Hopefully it clears up some confusion, while also rounding him out as a character (without the risk of woobiefication).
Hope y'all enjoy! Review, pretty please!
Le Grande Maison
Route de Libourne D243,
33330 Bordeaux, France
By habit, Kai is an early riser.
In Okinawa, he's developed a daily routine. 5:00. Wide-awake. 5:30. Shower, shave, change of clothes, his movements not whistle-jump, toe-the-line speedy anymore, but with a fast efficiency leftover from the war. 6:00. Coffee percolating and congee steaming at the breakfast counter. 7:00. A Crossfit workout, jump-rope and a few rounds on the punching bag to get his blood zitzing. 8:00. A call or a text to check in with Sayumi and Sayuri. Another one, usually, to Dee. 8:30. Opening Omoro and getting started with the grill while the regulars trickle in.
Here at the Zoo, he flounders from sleep with a muzzy grunt. He stretches in the unaccustomed space of the King-sized bed, the sheets pleasantly cool on his skin. His room is in the east wing, with a tall bay window that offers a view of the vineyards stretching green beneath a mid-morning sky.
Shit.
I overslept again.
He blames the jet-lag. It was a nonissue in his twenties, an irritant in his thirties, but now it's a bona fide pain-in-the-ass. They've stayed at the Zoo, whoops, his bad, Le Grande Maison, for a week, and his inner-clock is still wonky.
He ought to take Julia up on the offer for a packet of Cindol. But Kai is against drugs on principle. It's just as well that he's seldom unwell. Good genes, exercise and a balanced diet have endowed him with the vigorous health of a rugby team. He's always made the best of his good fortune.
Un-fortunately, it works against him whenever he contemplates lazing in bed.
Grumbling, Kai hauls himself to his feet. They'd received the all-clear about Okinawa from David last night. The Chevalier is nowhere in the vicinity. But that doesn't rule out threats—here or there.
Kai prefers to play it safe. With Saya in enemy sightlines, they need to take every precaution. Especially since she's been so… off, lately. When she is chipper, it's too chipper: a manic-dizzy spell with something darker beneath. When she's sad, it's a strange incurable melancholy that nobody can rouse, except Yumi and Yuri. She spends most of her time with them anyway. Or with Haji, the two of them acting normal, or almost normal. Kai can't tell. There's been a low-key intensity to them lately, like they're about to start fighting. Only instead of fighting they spend hours locked up in the Soleil Suite.
Kai could be wrong, but he doubts they're in there playing chess.
Can't wait to go back to Okinawa.
At least stuff was normal there.
Ironic, that it's the same refrain he'd recited in the war.
Some things never change.
On his phone, a notif pings. Dee, on their encrypted line, everything coded down to the header image (an 'X' means Emergency; a '**' means Get to my location; a '#' means Mission is FUBAR and a '^^^' means I miss you).
Today, it's the latter.
Flying in from Paris in a few hours.
Kai texts back:Stay safe.
It's minimalist, but heartfelt. He's no good at expressing himself. Even less so through the medium of technology.
Thankfully, Dee is smart enough to make inferences. Her reply comes quick. Humorous, expectant, affectionate: a combination of all three.
Keep the schedule wide open. We'll have some R&R.
Kai's lips quirk. But it's a smile that's equal parts wry and rueful. He thumbs out: Before or after we tell ur parents?
There is a pause, then a reply, as rapidfire as the first:
Before is smart. After is safer. We do the smart thing. Always. Then, as an afterthought. Unless you wanna hightail it to Italy?
Exhaling a laugh, he shakes his head. Ordinary jokes. Text convos. Who would've figured them for it?
Italy sounds good. Zoo is better. He'll let her read between the lines. See you soon.
His excitement at the prospect feels like cheating, especially during this potential crisis. But it feels like cheating too, to prolong the secrecy of their affair. Better to have it out in the open, and deal with the fallout as it happens. That's how he's lived most of his life. And Dee deserves better than illicit meet-ups in hotels.
He just hopes David understands, without flying into a rage. He hopes Sayumi and Sayuri do. And he hopes Saya does. Hadn't she asked him to introduce her to whoever was in his life?
Coming out into the hall in his workout clothes, Kai hears Saya cry out. Adrenaline ignites. Reaching for the gun beneath his shirt, tucked into the band at his waist, he's ready to break into her room in case there's an attack—
A moment later, he understands what's going on.
Sachi and V are both standing outside the Soleil Suite. Their expressions are remarkably similar: boyish gawps of incredulity. Inside Saya and Haji's room, the soundtrack is audible—creaky mattress springs and muffled cries. Wild, energetic, unrestrained. Early birds boning each other's bones out.
Ew.
Discomfort scorches Kai's face to the tips of his ears. His eyes narrow at V and Sachi. "Guys. Beat it."
The Chevaliers jerk to attention. Sachi slinks out an apologetic wince; V makes funny little noises in his throat, choking grunts of laughter that seem to say, And you thought me and Yumi were bad.
When Kai glowers, they beat a hasty retreat.
Left alone in the hallway, Saya and Haji getting busy five feet away, Kai's awkwardness reaches defcon levels.
In another life, this would've been his worst nightmare. The kind of thing he'd swapped train cabins with Saya to avoid happening. The kind of thing that made him blaze with big-brotherly chagrin when he contemplated the year Saya and Haji had spent alone together after Riku's death, or the night Solomon had whisked her away to New York.
It was a long time before he'd brought himself to question her about any of it. All Saya had offered to his awkward interrogation was the repeated sigh of Nothing like you're thinking. She'd never defined Nothing and he couldn't gather the nerve to explain what he was Thinking. But he had buttonholed Julia to have Saya checked for pregnancy and every STI known to Man and Non-Man, which, big shocker, hadn't gone over well with Saya, although to Julia's credit she'd played along without once laughing.
After the results came up clean, they'd both pretended it never happened.
Thirty years later, what was fruitless has borne fruit. Solomon is dead, Haji is alive, he and Saya are Together in the official capacity, and Kai has adopted the policy of having blinders on—seeing only what is right in front of him.
Or not-seeing, in this case.
He cringes.
In the past, he'd only tolerated Saya's closeness to Haji for its (hah!) surface innocence. But it's stupid to think it would remain so. It's stupid, too, to pack Saya up in a cramped, little-sisterly box of childhood. As she frequently likes to remind him, she's not a child.
Anymore? In the first place?
Kai sighs. In his chest is a subspecies of sadness like when Yumi and Yuri graduated highschool, when they went on their first dates, when they started college, when they chose their Chevaliers… and when Yuri announced her pregnancy. They're all growing up, moving on, becoming different people. And Kai, left on the sidelines, can only marvel at how these creatures supposedly out of time can change in ways as human as anyone.
Pretty soon, they won't need me.
It's a bittersweet fact of life. Yet that makes it essential to cherish the time he still has with them.
Except this.
He could've gone a hundred lifetimes without overhearing this.
Grumbling, Kai exits the scene. On his phone, his horoscope notif advises:
Prepare for a difficult conversation today.
Huh.
Maybe David and Julia won't take the news well after all.
Downstairs, the kitchen is all sunlight and glossy tiles. Usually, the château keeps its own staff at hand. But since the place has been booked out to their party, they have free run of the space. Kai has already taken over breakfast duties, with Haji handling lunch and the gang eating out for dinner.
Stepping through the swinging doors, Kai is ready to get breakfast rolling for everyone. He is astonished to see Yumi and Yuri already there. Yumi is bent over a mixing bowl, whisking pre-pancakes into a goop. Yuri is at the stove, where sunny-side-up eggs—over-crisped—sizzle.
Kai squints. "What're you two doing?"
The girls are as domesticated as wild pumas. They bake gluten-free cookies, whip up fancy salads and drink kale juice from mason jars. That's all. Back at their flat, Yumi survives entirely on takeout and V's jugular vein; Sachi does light housekeeping and meal-preps for Yuri. Kai has never known either of them to willingly set foot in the kitchen.
Now, they greet him with identical, too-bright smiles.
"We're, um, making you breakfast," Yumi chirps.
"You want the usual two eggs, right?" Yuri asks.
Kai regards them warily. He'll bet his left kidney there are hairs in the pancake batter; the eggs already look like they contain enough char to traumatize a coal-miner.
He rolls a mouthful of unspoken words, all of them starting with What the hell are you up to?Backtracks, tries a different approach, then opens his mouth:
"What the hell are you up to?"
Welp.
He tried.
"Like we said—" Yumi is all didactic emphasis. "—breakfast."
"We've also decided you need more tomatoes in your diet," Yuri says, in the officious tone used by schoolmarms and late-night googlers of Top Ten Diets for Men Nearing Fifty. "They're full of, um, lycopene."
"Lyco—what? A werewolf?"
Kai isn't sure what's harder to take. The smoke spiraling from the oil-slathered frying pan—or the globs of pancake batter in Yumi's curls. Finally it becomes too much, and he shoos them to the table.
"—Christ. Siddown. Gimme that."
Commandeering the bowl, turning down the flame on the frying pan, he gets to work salvaging (his?) breakfast. Yumi and Yuri, perched on the kitchen stools, watch Not-Dad in his Not-Domain. Their eyes are misty and their smiles are mushy-daughterly in a way that creeps him out. Are they high? Sleepwalking? Zombified?
"What brought this on anyway?" he mutters. "You guys fishing for a loan? 'Cause you'd have better luck asking Haji."
"Psssh," they say, re: the loan (or Haji).
"What then? Better spit it out. I hate guessing games this early in the day."
The twins exchange glances. Yuri twiddles with a napkin while Yumi drums her chipped-red nails on the counter. The juvenile posturings don't detract from how terribly earnest their faces are.
At length—
"Kai..."
"Yeah?"
"Saya... told us some things. Last night."
"Like what?"
They sit in silence for a moment, while Kai slides the sizzling heap of eggs into a plate, then gets started on pancakes. As he works, he becomes cognizant of the mercurial shift in the atmosphere. Or maybe it is his own comprehension as he takes in the evidence of Yuri's tear-glossed eyes, and the faint downturn of Yumi's mouth. Pins and needles of premonition shoot up his spine.
Slowly, he turns. "What? What'd she say?"
Except their faces reflect the answer.
Fuck.
A sinking coldness goes through Kai. It's like swallowing a mouthful of ice cubes.
"She didn't," he breathes. "Tell me she didn't…"
They nod. Yuri slides out a reluctant smile. Yumi reaches out and takes hold of his hand. Equidistant between two rays of sunlight, they both look like Riku in that moment. The powerful innocence in the tilt of their heads. The unflinching resolve in their eyes. Eyes that—Christ—are composed of Riku's ingredients, and also Diva's.
He'll never get over that. How a monster like Diva could make two bundles of such goodness. A bratty, trash-talking, shopping-crazy, pancake-burning goodness that is the best kind. A goodness that is kissing-cousin to Saya's, because if she hadn't come into Kai's life first, he'd never have been left with Sayumi and Sayuri. There's a kind of inevitability in it, a rightness of being, the past wrapping itself into a big bow around the present.
Yumi's fingers are cold in Kai's hand. Her sister looks just as shivery, teardrops caught in the curls of her lashes.
"We wanted to thank you," she whispers. "For taking care of us all these years."
"Even when we were insufferable punks," Yumi adds. "Like our Emo phase."
"And the scene phase."
"And the hip-hop phase."
"And the coke for breakfast phase."
"That's not—" He blinks. "Wait. What?"
"Diet coke, Kai. Not nose-candy."
"…Oh."
Yumi squeezes his fingers in hers. "We know you can't stand sugary messes in the morning. Literal or metaphoric. But we just wanted to show you. How grateful we are. For taking us in."
"And for never—" Yuri swallows. "Never holding the past against us."
This stuns Kai. His ears go hot, and tears threaten to come to his eyes. That triple-time heartbeat-y thing that happens when he's overwrought is in a whole other league. He's afraid he'll smash the frying pan against the tiles and start bawling.
So he does the next best thing. He sweeps the girls in his arms with the inarticulate force of a bear scooping his cubs out of a dangerous current upriver. They're both so tiny. Like Saya, they've never matured past their late teens in appearance, for all that they can toss around head-spinning words like Dramaturgicaland Koyaanisqatsi.
But they're strong too. It's there in the way their arms encircle him. There in their smiles, and the tears gathering in their eyes.
"The past—" Kai grits out. "The past has nothing to do with who you are. And you've always, always, been the best things in my life."
Understatement to the thousandth power. But can any child truly comprehend the love of a parent? Like a raw nerve: terrifying, agonizing, unprotected. Rooted in the knowledge of life's ugliness, and the determination to protect them from its worst.
It's why he'd never told them about Diva. What if it tore them up inside? What if they'd grow up hating themselves?
He whispers it now. They shake their heads.
"We get it," Yumi sniffles. "We get why you didn't tell us. But I'm glad we know the truth. It's shitty, but—it makes me thankful."
"Thankful?"
"We got something better than our mother did," Yuri says. "Better than Saya did. It's just—"
"What?"
They exchange tearful looks. "If not for us, you'd have Riku," Yuri says. "Do you ever wish that—I dunno. We hadn't been born? You'd have him instead of us, and—"
He snatches them in, so tight they cry out, his face pressed into their hair.
"Don't! Don't even think it! Never ever ever—!"
Their sobs hold a breathless pitch of relief. Like they've been swung upside-down and flung disoriented to the ground, only to find home again. It's just as well. As long as Kai is alive, that's what he's determined to be for them.
Because that's what they've been for him, all these years.
Right from the start.
Casino Venetian
Estr. do Istmo,
4HW7+VC Cotai, Macau
Tórir sits at the balcony of his palatial hotel, staring out at the view of the harbor.
Curious, he inhales the sea-scented air. He finds it strange how the port cities everywhere smell the same. Salt. Decay. Dampness. The Macanese landscape at dusk yields a strange nostalgia: the glittering row of lights, the dark stretch of sea, the collection of buildings at once symmetrical and haphazard.
But the wind whipping off the waters is dense with humidity. Above is not the icy altar of the Faroese sky, but the smog-hazy sheen of tropical summer. The temperature is at least eighty and intensifying.
Behind Tórir. the patio door swings open.
"Fuck this heat." Carsten is seal-slippery beneath his suit. "How can you stand it?"
With effort, Tórir rouses himself. "It is not too bad."
"Want something to drink? Room service just restocked the mini-bar."
"No."
It is men like Carsten who need the ebullience of alcohol to lubricate business meetings. Tórir requires no such crutches. Tonight's negotiations, with the heads of IBM-UAWA, are no more than a stepping stone to his ultimate goal. A goal he has no intention of sharing the even bare rudiments of, because if anyone—enemy or ally—understands his objectives, the more they can compromise his ability to achieve it.
A useful lesson from the Red Queen. Learnt at little cost, except to those who opposed her.
At his shoulder, Carsten jitters like a mass of half-set Jello. "You think it'll go smoothly tonight?" he prompts. "The head honchos' will give their blessings for our operation?"
"Their correspondence with Argiano suggested so."
"Yeah. I mean—they seempretty interested. But who's to say they won't lose interest?"
"Do they seem uninterested?" Tórir lets off a musing sound. His eyes rove across their fancy accommodations. "They are going to much trouble for us, if that is so."
Carsten concedes with a nervous chuckle. At the outdoor bar, he pours himself a drink, swirling the beer in the cut-crystal glass. His hands, pink and pudgy, remind Tórir of an oversized baby's. And like a baby, he lacks the dexterity to use them except for popping beer cans or clattering away at keypads.
But that, like so much else, seems the same world over. A morass of young men, pungent with the smell of alcohol and impotence, their minds saturated with pixellated blurs of pornography, their dreams demarcated by paychecks and paywalls and parking spaces. This shining new world. This wired-web where everything is plotted and planned by rote.
A playground that is primed for catastrophe.
Soon, Tórir thinks. Anticipation is effervescent in his veins.Very soon.
He contents himself with idle sightseeing while Carsten chugs beer. Beyond the balcony, abutting the hotel, is a green square of park. Sanitized and small as a postage stamp—yet it fascinates Tórir.
The park is crowded with children. Boys and girls riding bikes. Climbing the pollutant-gritty railings of the jungle gym. Splashing in dirty puddles and pitching tantrums over spilled drinks.
Watching them, Tórir is struck by the whiff of pure life. He has a thrall for this quality, unique only to a child. Adult humans are in a state of irrevocable rot. Their bodies peak for barely an eyeblink, in the bloom of unabashedly beautiful adolescence. Then it is all downhill: decay and disrepair. Lungs blackened with carcinogens. Cataracts filming the eyes. Bones creaking and sinews stiffening to presage the inevitable full-body breakdown.
A fate Tórir has avoided as surely as the grave.
But at what cost?
For a moment he thinks of two warm wriggling morsels in his arms. The delicious milky scent wafting off two downy heads. The flecks of blood around two dimpled chins.
Faðir...
"You okay, Tórir?"
He blinks.
Carsten is watching him with a look of real, if wary, concern. Below, the children frolic cheerfully.
"Yes." It is a subdued hum. "I am fine."
Carsten's eyes ping past Tórir, to the playground. "Sure you don't, um, want blood?"
"I fed earlier today."
"Uh-huh. That's cool. So long as you don't, er, attack anyone you shouldn't."
A flare of irritation rises. Tórir's darkly hooded eyes hold Carsten's. "What do you mean?"
Carsten winces. "N-Nothing. Just—those kids."
"What of them?"
"You were looking at 'em pretty funny."
Was I?
Tórir's gaze returns to the children. Little flesh-pounds of sprightly spirit. Were Tórir watching them at the park, with such burning directness, he'd be labeled a sexual predator. But if he swapped his skin for a female's, the parents would exchange glances, tittering in sympathy. Poor thing. She wants a baby.
Or maybe she's remembering one.
His mismatched eyes dip away.
"So small," he murmurs. "But so full of joy."
"They are pretty cute," Carsten concedes, between a slurp of his drink.
"They remind me of my daughters."
Stifling a choke, Carsten sets the glass down. "What?"
Tórir glances his way. "'What' what?"
"D-d-daughters?"
"Of course." It is rhetorical exasperation. "I lived several decades with the Queens. Soldier of the Red, Groom of the Blue. Naturally I sired daughters."
"So—w-what happened to them?"
Tórir looks off with little expression. "War."
A war waged at the Red Queen's behest. The Queen who wielded swords as a natural part of her body, but for whom babies were misshapen meat-blobs. She always foisted her own off to wet nurses. Sent them to be fostered in fortresses beyond her demesne. A pragmatic precaution; the court was a cesspit of danger, crawling with pathogens and politics alike. Little princesses were sequestered by the countryside, until they came of age.
Upon their sixteenth year, they would return to court. Where, soon enough, their tender hearts would coagulate into the spike-shaped clusters of subterfuges and savagery that were a Queen's birthright.
Tórir's daughters never survived to their sixteenth year.
Born to the Blue Queen, under the aegis of the Red, they were sent as wards (diplomatic hostages) to a rival court in the west. Tórir remembers how young they were. Barely five, their sweet faces still padded with milk-fat.
The fortress to hold them was at the island's edge. He remembers the snow-crusted spires poking into the sky like broken ribs, the icicles caught along the rooftops like fangs. He remembers holding his daughters' hands in the dying sunset as the snow fell, flakes catching in their dark hair, melting across their rosebud mouths.
Faðir... I'm afraid.
Kneeling, Tórir had embraced them. He'd been miserable that day. Usually it took events of cataclysmic scale to penetrate the shellacking of ice around his core. As if, after his father's death, the dead meat in the old man's brain was somehow transposed into the beating organ behind Tórir's ribs.
A black spot he carried everywhere, beneath his sweetness and his scheming.
The arrival of his daughters had changed that. His first glimpse of them, a blood-scummed bundle steamrollering out from between the Blue Queen's thighs, was miraculous. Their crying was like music rising from bubbles of blood.
Staring at their faces, he'd thought for the first time:
Is my revenge worth losing them?
From the beginning, he was a doting father. The marvel of the court. Each morning, under the watery rays of sunlight, he would let blood flow in a hot trickle from his wrist and into their pursed mouths. Each night, circling their cradle like a sentry, he would sing lullabies in soft counterpoint to their mewlings, until the girls went perfectly still, absorbing the sound of his voice like a stone dropped into the water-well of their bodies.
And each moment, staring at their upturned little faces, he knew that nothing mattered. His parents, his brothers, their plans, their revenge, even the Queens themselves.
That was his old life; a carapace as thin as crepe paper. He'd shed it with the birth of his daughters, to be reborn alongside them.
Faðir.
That is what he was now.
A father.
Then five summers elapsed. At the zenith of winter, when the air was chill and bone-dry, the Red and Blue Queens decreed that the girls be sent away. So many nights Tórir spent in their chambers, pleading and raging. They were too young, he argued. They were unprepared for a solitary life with strangers.
But the Queens—heartless bitches—gave no quarter. His daughters were sent off, the sound of their weeping a dreadful dirge.
It was a sound Tórir could not bear.
That same night, under the cloak of secrecy, he'd whisked them away. Taken them to a cottage in the countryside, stowing them safely under the care of two bribed humans, their every gesture stiff with courtesy because their very lives depended on it. His plan was to wait a week, then return to the court to negotiate with the Red Queen. Convince her to let his little ones remain.
Midway into his journey, the Red Queen began a military campaign. War was declared on invading hordes in the south. Within days, the land was a mire of sword-strikes and blood-splatters. Usually, Tórir relished in the mayhem. A chance to whet his skills and slake his bloodlust, each kill a symbol of the power surging through his veins.
Yet now, all he could think of were his daughters. Alone in the cottage, at the mercy of marauders. Without Red Queen's consent, he took off to bring them home.
But home was lost forever.
When he'd arrived, the cottage was a burnt-up exoskeleton. The floors were scummed with blood and ash, tracked by hundreds of footprints. And down in the cellar: blackened cinderblocks, stumps of wood, the stairwell glittering with bloodstained frost.
Tórir remembers his footsteps echoing eerily as he descended. A flaming torch in one hand, a sword at the ready in the other. The fermented reek of death clung to the air.
For the first time in his life, Tórir prayed. He, who was lauded by mortals as a godling. He, who grew up in a godless house that disdained all matters devotional.
Yet, with each step, he prayed with gathering fervency.
Please let them be alive.
Please.
Bottom of the cellar. It reeked like a slaughterhouse: primal and foul. The floor beneath his boots was slippery. He lifted his torch, illuminating the interior in coppery-gold light.
Two shapes coalesced in the darkness. They hung suspended by hooks on the ceiling. Spinning slowly, the floor beneath them glistening with tar-thick fluids. Lit by the flickering glow, they were surreally small, the eyes glassy. Their skins were peeled back like wrapping paper to expose the soft dark meat adhering to the bones.
Tórir stared, his expression almost bemused. His understanding that it was two children—flayed little girls—came a split second before he understood who they were.
Horror detonated through his entire body. Howling, he scrambled back. The slick floor sent him skidding. The torch clattered away, extinguishing with an acrid hiss.
Leaving him alone in the dark. Alone with the skinned bodies of his daughters. The smell of their blood was so familiar to Tórir—a spicy sweetness shot through with acrid smoke—that he began to scream.
He didn't stop screaming until the villagers raced downstairs, and someone gave him milk of maypop to take the horror away.
The little princesses were entombed a week later. The entire court gathered at the grassy cliffside of Bøsdalafossur. The Red and Blue Queens. The blodprinsen.
The dappling of winter sunlight stabbed into Tórir's swollen eyes. The rest of him was numb. An irresistible numbness, like rebirth of the darkest shade, filling his extremities and encasing his mind with poison.
They will pay.
Not just the enemies who'd butchered his girls. Not just the lords who's given the command. Not just the villagers who'd failed to send him word.
He would kill them all in time. One by one. But he would not stop there.
He would not stop until he'd destroyed the Queens themselves.
They began this.
Once again, they stole the crux of my life.
Tórir inhales, shaking himself loose from the grip of memory.
At the Macau harbor, a trestle of red and white lights pulse dreamily. The sun is nearly gone; the purplish sky is salted with stars. Cinnabar moths caper in the glow of the balcony's lanterns.
Nothing about the scenery has changed. Yet Tórir feels himself once again inhabiting that old space, on the day of his daughters' death. In a zone with no color. No heat or heartbeat. Just the sluicing coldness in his chest that calcified, day by day, into hatred of the sharpest edge.
"Jesus," Carsten breathes, when Tórir finishes. "That's fucked up. I'm so sorr—"
"Their names were Sváva and Suffía." Tórir exhales. The memory thins away in the breeze, a mouthful of ash. "My first foray into fatherhood. My last."
"So afterward, you never...?"
"I never lay with the Blue Queen again to sire children. Never at her behest, anyway."
"What?"
He rises from his seat. His face is blank expect for the live-wire current in his eyes. "My brothers and I staged our coup a year after. Imprisoned the Blue Queen, and harnessed the blood-wrath of the Red. Soon, I had empires at my fingertips. Armies. Wealth. What need had I for mewling girl-children?"
What need indeed?
He used to sing his daughters to sleep. His swordplay, speed, strength: unmatched. His wit, wisdom, wordplay: exemplary. Yet he'd never sung for another. Only for his girls. Each night, beneath the gloss of moonlight, carding his fingers through their dark hair, he crooned lullabies of his own fashioning. For them, something always broke loose in his chest, a sunburst of devotion that not even his grand designs of vengeance could touch.
Until they were gone.
Now, that grand design is all the drives him. The insatiable desire for empires. Queens beneath his heel, and nations at his mercy. All the trappings of power.
But will you ever sing again?
Wind blows off the harbor, ruffling his hair. It hardens the dampness of salt in his eyes into stone.
Centre Hospitalier
30 Rue Kilford
92400 Courbevoie, France
On the outskirts of Paris, Red Shield has established an outpost in a clinical pathology lab.
Everything is modern and up-do-date. Toward one wall, there is a terrarium and a cage for lab-rats. Toward the other, an array of diagnostic and analytic machinery, set up beneath a poster of Stephen Hawking.
David has a habit of hanging up these posters at each of Julia's workplaces, stating that it is important to visualize the competition. Julia accepts it for the compliment it is, and lets each poster remain.
Usually, the sight of the well-photographed face is comforting. But not today. It has been one of those early mornings when the Powers That Be array a string of minutiae into uncooperative perversity. Test-tubes broken. Computer malfunctioning. Guinea pigs escaping. Printers wheezing emphysemically. Worst of all, the A/C is turned up so high that Julia can feel the chill seeping in all the way to the ventricles of her brain.
Rocking back in her seat, she sips her coffee, sighing at its tepid bitterness.
Taste seems to be conspiring with temperature to bring her down. Yet that makes it twice as imperative to maintain her equilibrium.
Especially when the lab-results on her table threaten to unsettle it completely.
"A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to one department of human knowledge alone."
A quote from Shelley's Frankenstein. Thirty years ago, when Julia broke from Red Shield, she'd read the book with intensifying degrees of fascination and foreboding. In the days when her disquiet with Cinq Flèches became too much, when Dr. Collins' monomania began verging on madness, she'd find a quiet corner, open the book to any page, and be transported.
Its premise felt familiar. The folly of scientific overreach. The Modern-Day Prometheus—Dr. Collins' favorite myth—distorting the natural order of life itself.
Is it distortion I'm witnessing?
Or evolution in action?
"Refill?"
Julia blinks at the steaming coffee carafe—and the person attached to it.
"You're back early."
David smiles. He looks frayed at the edges—which is to say his jacket is minutely creased and he has something resembling stubble. The scent of travel lingers heavily in the weave of his suit. But his eyes, flitting over her, are alert as always.
"Our stopover at Hong Kong got bumped from five hours to one," he says.
"Where's Dee?"
"She's left to make a status report to Saya in Bordeaux."
Julia accepts this with a nod, and the refill with a kiss. Sipping from her mug, she asks, "So it's All Clear? No sign of the Chevalier?"
"I've left provisional guards in place. We'll remain abroad a week more, to see if anything turns up at their end."
"Any word from Lewis? New movements from IBM-UAWA?"
"He's trying to narrow down leads. So far, nothing has turned up. But he and Lulu will keep searching." David leans against the table. "His network has confirmed, at least, that Okinawa is no longer their base of operations."
Reassuring news. But David's tone is the exact opposite.
Julia's brow furrows. "What are you thinking? The Chevalier could have followed Saya here?"
"Dee and I agreed that it's better not to rule out the possibility."
"That explains why you hurried back."
"Red Shield's continuance is also a concern. The board have yet to choose even a temporary replacement."
"I've noticed. Perhaps it's a sign…"
"A sign?"
Her gaze shades tactfully. "That Red Shield will soon cease to be."
David absorbs this without expression. But in his eyes, she sees the ambivalence. She can sympathize. They've both been Shields a majority of their lives. Like their parents. And grandparents. Their own children are tied to the organization, and its indomitable fighting spirit. They are proud of all they've accomplished, past and present.
Red Shield embodies more than their duty. It is home.
But the last few years, Julia and David have also been talking, in a roundabout way, about retiring. Ezra has proven up to the task of furthering Julia's research. And Dee, the new David, is a force worth reckoning on the frontline. As parents, they've done their best to offer guidance—but their continued presence as Red Shield operatives inhibits their very efforts to leave it.
For David, part of it boils down to behavioral cues—the hypervigilance, the tactical acumen, the travel and danger. Part of it is his intense protectiveness of Dee. While she is on the frontline, she is at risk, and a risk shared is a risk halved. David seldom fails to accompany her on missions. Other times, he sends Kai in his stead, trusting the younger man to guard her back and impart advice, although he and Kai both agree she's outgrown it.
Their daughter can handle herself—as she's proven on multiple occasions.
It makes Julia proud, but also sad. She and David are resigned to eventually becoming empty-nesters. But leaving the organization that is the exoskeleton of their short-and-long-term lives is another dilemma altogether.
David exhales. "Maybe it's time to hang up our hats."
"So soon?" Julia asks, with humor and honesty. "I see no encroaching signs of dementia yet."
That gets a smile. Her favorite kind, which fills his face with intriguing lines. "Maybe it's better that way. We could buy a home in the Maldives. Set up a clinic. We'd work there during the day, walk on the beach in the evening, retire at night to… rearrange the furniture."
She chuckles. "That does sound relaxing. Especially the rearranging furniture bit."
"That was my favorite part too."
She reaches out and squeezes his hand. "I don't know, David. Maybe it's time. But Saya has just awoken, and her mental state is still fragile. We have an unidentified Chevalier, and possibly a military firm, poised to cause trouble. Red Shield is in a state of uncertainty. I wouldn't feel right walking away from it to treat rich tourists for herpes."
David's hand shifts beneath hers, fingers meshing. His eyes hold a world of quiet gratitude. "That's what I thought you'd say."
"It's what you believe too. That's why you're here."
"And why I'll continue to be." His gaze passes from Julia to the papers on her desk. "What were you frowning about before?"
"Hm? Oh." Remembering, Julia gathers up the lab results, stacking them with care. "These are Saya's blood tests. I've taken to monitoring her hormone levels the past weeks."
David raises an eyebrow. "Her hormones? What for?"
"Saya and I had a discussion. Shortly after Joel's funeral. She wanted to know if it was possible to conceive children."
David is nonplussed. "With whom?"
"Haji."
David shakes his head, his posture taking on overtones of disquiet. "She must know that's impossible. The only way a Chiropteran Queen conceives is with…"
"Her sister's Chevalier." She gestures to the papers. "Which is why I find those reports puzzling."
David shuffles through the stack. "What am I looking at?"
"An assessment of Saya's ovarian reserves. FSH. LH. Estradiol hormones. AMH tests—as a rough continuum to determine successful IVF outcomes." She points. "But what's curious are her progesterone levels. These are used to regulate estrus cycles—in Chiropterans and other mammals alike. They maintain a pregnancy. And Saya's are unusually high."
David stares at Julia with renewed confusion—and alarm. "You're implying… what? She's pregnant?"
Julia swallows. "Too early to tell. But she's showing indications of superovulation. That's when the body releases more than one egg within the time-frame unique to their species. In Chiropterans, it takes place as a heat sign every year."
"What's causing it? Is she taking some type of medication?"
"Not from what I can determine. The levels seem to have spontaneously begun escalating over the past few weeks. They've peaked since Joel's funeral. And show no signs of decreasing. At first I thought the results were false. A technical malfunction. Or that I'd drawn her blood at a wrong day. But the levels have not fluctuated, even at different times on the same day."
"Surely that doesn't mean she might be pregnant." David's uncertain voice strings the statement out slowly. "There's Haji's own body chemistry to consider. Sperm motility. The D/S factor. To say nothing of that Kiss of Death thing. You always said the Queen's womb was inhospitable to her own Chevalier's seed."
"That's the issue. At the moment, it's not inhospitable at all. The opposite." Troubled, Julia takes off her glasses. "I've contemplated contacting Saya. For a retest, if nothing else."
"I'm sensing the unsaid 'but'," David says.
Julia nods. "The problem is, if these results are accurate…"
Comprehension dawns in David's gaze. "We might have not one pregnant Queen on our hands, but two."
"Correct." Julia's expression is a mix of trepidation and fascination. "If the latter occurs, it could be a complete paradigm shift."
"That's a big 'If."
In David's tone, Julia hears the request not for refutation, but confirmation. She wishes she could supply it.
Instead, she stares at the reports.
"I think," she says, "we've already passed that point."
Le Grande Maison
Route de Libourne D243,
33330 Bordeaux, France
Back again.
To where it all started.
Saya's sandals pad softly across the grass. A bouquet of white roses—a funerary wreath or peace laurel?—is clutched in her hands. The unearthly silence of the night is suffocating. The pale fishhook of moon gives no light.
Saya doesn't care. After a string of bad nights, she is determined to make this visit. To clutch at some shape of closure, when her waking hours offer none.
It is like the dream (?) she had before; she retraces childhood memories, revisiting the spots where she and Haji had played as children. The grove of apple trees. The highest peak of the hills. The old groundskeeper's shed. The old barn.
The tower.
It cuts like an old blade through the darkness of midnight: all rusted edges. It looks nothing like her dream. The blue roses are gone. In the pallid moonlight washing through the space, she sees the cruelties that the passage of time has wrought: the cracks carved across its walls, the smears of mildew, the silkings of old cobwebs.
Yet not one creature stirs the mise en scene.Not the twitter of a bird or the skitter of a beetle. It is unnerving. Saya feels as if she is the only living creature there. When Diva was alive, the tendrils of her presence had radiated everywhere. Arachnids spinning webs, mice scurrying behind walls, butterflies darting in dappled colors. Like a princess in a twisted fairytale, her sister had a coterie of friends: each as unusual as she.
Now the place is uninhabited.
Haunted.
Saya climbs the crumbling stone steps. She'd avoided the tower since arriving at the Zoo. Now she is determined to face it unflinchingly.
As what?
A penitent making a pilgrimage?
Or a criminal returning to the crime-scene?
Her fingers tighten on the bouquet of flowers, their petals quivering. In the shadow of the tower, she tips her head back. Diva's cell, with its tiny window, is gone. In its place are the skeletal remains of wooden undergirding. Swathes of cobwebs hang everywhere, flapping like albino batwings.
In Saya's dream, the cell was whole, and Diva was inside it.
Not Diva.
It was another.
Someone who had called her daughter. Someone who knew her, and whom she didn't know at all.
"I have much to tell you..."
Memory whites out Saya's surroundings. Days and nights of a life not hers, not Diva's either, a honeycomb of fast-motion carnage.
A blue patina of sea. The wintry sunlight washing over snow-topped mountains. A battlefield, a morass of bodies, a puddle of dead babies. Dark flecks of blood around a sharp white smile, glittering on pale skin like aphids.
And a snake, its whisper curling around her spine.
Saya...
Dark spots burst before her eyes. She stumbles, and drops the bouquet. Its pale petals scatter across the steps, whisked away by the wind.
The same way Saya is whisked away by terror. Whirling, she flees into the night. Tears surge hot and unstoppable, tasting not of closure but cowardice. She isn't ready. Not to say goodbye to Diva. Not yet. Her sister deserves a better send-off than this. Her blood demands a tribute of blood in turn. That seems the only way Saya can recompense for what she's taken.
Sssh, Diva soothes in her ear. We'll find a way.
With a pound of flesh.
And a drop of blood.
Nausea swoops. Saya's gut roils and she doubles over, bitter bile filling her mouth. She vomits into a tangle of brambles, then props herself dizzily against the bark of a tree, her breaths sawing in her lungs, her forehead slick with sweat. All the bones in her body feel like heat-shot jelly.
Spoiled oyster au gratin. That must be it.
The next morning, she says nothing about it to anyone.
ffs Saya. At least, like, get a pee test kit or something?
Anyway, hope the chapter wasn't too disjointed. As you've guessed, shit's gonna go down in the next two installments - and it ain't pretty. Even so, I hope it's an enjoyable and entertaining read!
Review, pretty please! :)
