Author's Note: Why yes, this is the most pretentious chapter title I've come up with yet. Maybe I should just stick to cribbing song lyrics. The quarantine must be making me go loopy. But then it's gotten me back to the story, too, so there's that.
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"Ptolomea, Judecca, and the Bird on the Ice"
Trenton – 1984
It was the cold that first got her stirring.
Felt something like a frozen slab pressed up against her body. It was at once everything like that cool concrete patio behind the Red Sunrise Grill, but also nothing like it, all the same.
Whip's eyelids fluttered; her thoughts came in blurry fragments, like glass shards wheeling about in the dark, cutting up the grey goo of her brain.
Explained the headache, at least.
And no: her thoughts really weren't all that fractured, were they? This feeling was everything like, and not like, that concrete patio. That patio she'd used to push out all the excess heat from her body— all that energy from her madcap dancing. It felt cool. Refreshing. But this thing? This didn't feel like it was pulling heat from her body.
It felt like it was leeching the very life from her bones.
She could barely move her limbs, let alone contemplate something like dancing. That cool patio felt a million miles away—a million years, to boot. Wasn't it only a few hours ago that she was on the top of the world? A few hours ago there was a plan, and there was confidence. She'd never really had the former in her life and as for the latter, well, confidence she could fake well-enough. And she did. All the time.
Again her eyelids fluttered; she shook her head, grinding her cheek against that leeching slab of cold. Once a faker without a plan, always a faker without a plan. A few hours ago there was nothing. Nothing but delusions. Nothing but faking. All that time she hadn't really been on the top of the world; she'd been on its edge. And now she'd fallen.
But she hadn't fallen alone, had she?
She remembered something about a kiss. A kiss to a child's forehead. A kiss for what?
For luck.
For confidence.
For—
The girl's eyes flipped open like switchblades. Her pupils widened inside their dark cinnamon irises.
"Penance!"
The slab of concrete she lay on was never fated to be kissed by sunlight. The large room around her bore an oppressively low ceiling and a certain stale, musty stench that spoke of 'depth'. Somehow— without knowing how, exactly— Whip felt that she must be underground. Maybe she just felt she belonged there. And maybe she did.
But she knew that she was.
"Not a mine shaft," she mumbled incoherently. Penance managed better than her on that score.
No, this was a basement, she guessed. But that was about the only thing she could guess from her surroundings. A dim red light permeated the gloom, coming from a large bulb set into the far wall of the room, where it cast shadows across the cinderblock walls and their uneven mortar work. A man sat in a chair not five feet from her. He oversaw a bank of fuzzy TV monitors at a long workstation. In the wan light of the room those monitors glowed with a vulgar ferocity, their light beaming off the man's smart black utility suit. He wore a tight matching cap on his head; it held whatever hair he might have tucked tight inside.
At Whip's outburst he gently swiveled around in his chair and looked down at the girl with indifferent eyes. He picked up a large walkie-talkie and spoke into it.
"Tha an nighean beò."
He waited for a response, which came in due time from a scratchy voice on the other end.
"Innis dhi gu bheil feum aice air bràmair ùr."
The man scoffed, giving Whip a brief glance and a smirk before returning his attention to the monitors.
As her senses returned Whip tried to take the opportunity to put some distance between herself and this man, digging her feet against the ground and worming herself away, but her wrists abruptly came to a stop and tugged the rest of her body back. All this was accompanied by a metallic clang and this noise— along with a sudden pain in her wrists— worked wonders to clear the fog in her head. She was handcuffed, and her wrists spanned a sturdy pipe rising out of the floor. She got to her knees and rested her forehead against the rusty thing; she stared down at her cuffed wrists and jingled the connecting chain against the metal pipe.
A door at the other end of the room swung open on squealing hinges and then screamed shut. The man at his desk took one look at a shadowy figure outlined by the red floodlight and let out another scoff.
"I just reported her condition to Measan, upstairs, so there's little need for you here. It's bad enough holding prisoners down here; do we really let strays in here, too?" He said.
"Only ones that are good at fetching." Diùlt stepped forward, his face outlined in the sickly pale glow of the monitors. He was again wearing one of those immaculate black suits, fitted to perfection around his slim frame. And he still looked horribly out of place in it. He looked down at Whip and then back to the man wearing the maintenance suit. "Give us a minute, eh?"
The seated man bared a set of perfect white teeth; he cocked his head over at Whip and shrugged.
"You wanna talk to her, you talk to her; I'm not going anywhere, cur."
Diùlt drew a slow breath at the insult, but he never let a polite smile disappear from his face. He gave the man a sarcastic nod of appreciation and then moved to Whip's side, kneeling before the girl.
"Where am I?" Whip demanded. "Where's Pen?"
"The less you know the better," Diùlt answered. "Call it 'purgatory', if you like. It's temporary, and you've got a chance to get out of it, so it's not such a bad deal, all things considered. Might be a better deal than you even deserve. Who knows?"
Whip's defiant stare broke as she repeated her second question, or at least tried to. Her eyes trembled as she spoke.
"Wh— where's—"
"Penance is alive," Diùlt said.
"For now." The man at the monitors looked back at the girl with a sadistic smirk.
"He won't be, by tonight," Diùlt never broke his eye contact with the girl, and his face bore no sign of triumph or sadism. "Now that's simply a fact. His life will be taken, and he'll go painlessly from this world. And for a Shroudless One— whose lives so often are dominated by pain— I would call a death like that quite the blessing."
Whip grit her teeth and stared down at Diùlt's shoes. Something about the man's lack of ribbing or gloating rubbed her the wrong way. She wanted a fire to fight fire with; she needed her blood hot. Might help flush her system of whatever drugs they'd put into it, at least.
Diùlt saw the beginnings of her rage trying to light. He smiled sadly and shook his head.
"The game's over, little thing," he said. "Penance was fated to end up in her hands. And you were never going to help him avoid that fate. He's a strong boy— no one's doubting that— and he is, and always will be, worthy prey. Respectfully: did you ever really think that you were at all worthy of this contest? Did you really think you deserved a spot in his story?"
"As long as some fucker like you is trying to end it, then yeah—"
Diùlt pointed at the girl.
"And when you tried turning him over to Agent Noirbarret, after the child trusted you to give him protection? After you took him under your roof, as it were, as a guest? After you looked him in the eyes..."
The fire in Whip's eyes died and she gripped the pipe with her cuffed hands, tightening her fingers over the metal.
"I would say— again with respect— that there's a certain circle of hell for a sin like that. And that's on top of the rest of your young life's misdeeds." Diùlt smirked as he looked around the red-tinted room. "After all that I'd think purgatory would be a fine deal, indeed."
Whip looked away from the man.
"So tell me again," Diùlt said, "whether you think you deserve any spot in his story?"
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "Penance is worth a hundred of me," she met Diùlt's eyes with a venomous glare, "an' a thousand of you. Ten thousand of your fool 'queen', too."
At this the man eyeing the monitors turned in his chair and pointed at Whip.
"Do not discuss her!" He barked.
The sudden yell made Whip start and fall from her haunches, catching the pipe with the silver chain of her cuffs. She got up to her knees and glared at the man, who merely returned to his seat after meeting her dark look.
Diùlt motioned to the other man with an embarrassed smile on his face; he spoke as if he were trying to make tactful excuses for a drunk friend at a party.
"Some of us can get a little 'protective' concerning the Banrigh and her image. Oh, she doesn't care about such things overmuch; she's not so conceited. But then some of us put on great airs of offense, and we find the conceit for her..."
The man at the monitors turned his head; red floodlight washed over the sliver of his visible face, exposing the silhouette of a dangerously hateful eye. He said nothing, however, and returned his attention to the monitors in short order.
The girl rose higher on her knees, leaning closer to Diùlt, her brow creased and her voice desperate.
"Pen would be just one of a hundred she's killed, right? One of a thousand? None of 'em did it for her, did they? None of those kills made her young again, right?"
At this Diùlt slowly looked away; the man at the monitors again swiveled in his chair and looked at the girl. Whip leaned even closer to Diùlt.
"It ain't gonna work!" She said. "She'll lop off Pen's head and get nothin' for her trouble but another dead kid's blood on her hands!"
The man at the monitors stood up; he balled a fist hard enough to pop a joint. The girl looked at him but quickly returned her attention to Diùlt, voice warbling with her plea.
"Nicnevin is insane!" She went as far as to grab one of Diùlt's shoulders with her cuffed hands. "She could kill every kid on the fuckin' planet and it wouldn't take a day off her age! Hell, if someone doesn't stop her she might!"
The man in the maintenance suit took three swift steps in Whip's direction and let fly with a firm hand. Lucky for her he chose an open palm rather than a tight fist, but Whip didn't really see any 'luck' in it at the time. The girl's head went careening off to the side and she fell from her knees; her handcuffs again caught on the pipe and she hit the ground, bouncing her chin off the concrete floor and— by a miracle— not coughing up any teeth in the aftermath.
The man pointed down at her, his finger trembling with rage.
"You will not speak of her again!" The man shouted. "And I will not hear the words of a traitorous little whore who walks hand-in-hand with another traitor! Our orders are to keep you alive, girl, not 'unbroken'. If you want to be able to walk out of here without a limp for the rest of your life you'll keep that in mind!"
The man reared his foot back for a kick but Diùlt, still kneeling beside him, rested one hand on his other leg and looked up at him, shaking his head. The man seemed nearly as offended by Diùlt touching him as he was by Whip's words, but he grudgingly replanted his other foot and instead walked off to one of the room's far walls. He took down a white box hanging from a rack on the wall and opened it up on a metal table off to one side.
Whip, meanwhile, slowly got back to her haunches. The taste of copper and salt filled her mouth and she spat a wad of blood on the floor beside the pipe. Diùlt produced a white kerchief from his breast pocket as the girl began wiping the blood off her lips; at first she looked at the offered linen with angry disdain, but eventually she relented and took it, mopping her face as Diùlt spoke. She noticed he spoke low enough to avoid the other man overhearing him.
"She is a woman of will," he explained. "Will and drive. She's seen what she's wanted in the ripples of lake water and the smudges of old mirrors for longer than any half-dozen civilizations ever existed, consecutively. And it's that will I admire more than anything: that certitude. That..."
"Obsession," Whip grumbled as she pulled the kerchief from her mouth.
Diùlt tilted his head and gave the girl a small nod, conceding the point.
"Oh, she's not without her doubts," he said. "To be without doubt in such a matter— when dealing with the majesties of the Source— that would be 'insane'. Doubt, after all, is necessary for faith, don't you think?"
"An' how's your faith doin', Diùlt?" Whip asked.
The man smiled at the question; now it was his turn to stare down at his shoes for a moment. When he looked up his face was no less confident than before.
"I wouldn't call what I have 'faith'," he explained. "Everything I am I owe to her, and so I suppose I owe it to her to trust in her faith."
Whip considered his words for a moment before shaking her head and hocking another wad from her mouth, this one an even mix of saliva and blood.
"That is a coward's answer," she said. She looked at the man at the table, who was fidgeting with some object she couldn't see. "At least the rest of this cuckoo's nest owns their craziness..."
Diùlt shook his head.
"You can argue I'm a coward, but under the circumstances you can hardly argue I'm insane. Maybe you'll understand that much after we release you and you go running off to tell your side of this story to someone."
"I don't have a story here, remember?" The girl made one last wipe at her mouth and motioned to the other man with her head. "And what did Mister Slappy over there mean about both me and Pen bein' 'traitors', anyway?"
Diùlt's brow rose and he chuckled.
"'Mister Slappy'?"
Whip blinked, then rolled her eyes. Penance was rubbing off on her more than she'd want to admit. Diùlt was polite enough to avoid ribbing her on the juvenile nickname.
"He's talking about what Penance did to his teacher. You know that story, do you?"
"Uallas, you mean?"
Diùlt nodded.
"The Banrigh called him—"
"Ferrant," Whip said. "Name he was born with."
Diùlt pursed his lips, again nodding.
"You do know the whole sad story, then?" He said.
"I do," Whip said. She got up to her knees, looking the man eye-to-eye. "An' if you think what Pen did to Uallas was bein' a 'traitor' then you and your kin are just as insane as advertised!"
Diùlt looked up as the other man finished fiddling with whatever he was playing around with.
"Maybe just a little touch of insanity is necessary for faith, too," Diùlt mumbled.
Mister Slappy stalked back across the room; in one hand he carried a glass syringe, its contents sparkling a pale, menacing red against the hellish light of the room. The girl's eyes widened at this and she shook her head, rotating around to the other side of the pipe and thrashing her cuffs against it in a vain attempt to get free. When she tried kicking at the man he dodged and reciprocated with a kick of his own, hammering her shoulder.
Diùlt gripped Whip's other shoulder with a firm hand. He didn't try to stop her wild thrashing about, but instead spoke clearly and calmly.
"I know you don't care what happens to you," he said, "but you do care about what happens to Penance—"
"I care about stoppin' you crazies from killin' him, motherfu—"
"That's not gonna happen," Diùlt said. "What will happen, if you make things difficult for us, is that Penance will be made to suffer. We have him upstairs, you see, and near as I can tell it turns out that you do have two parts to play in the rest of his story, kid. For one: you get to decide how 'painless' the rest of his life will actually be. Understand?"
At this Whip slowed her struggles. She drew a long breath and, with grit teeth, looked up at the man with a dangerous scowl. Mister Slappy took the opportunity to kneel down and grab her other arm.
Diùlt looked over at the other man.
"Na cuir às dhi," he said.
Mister Slappy narrowed his eyes.
"Dùin do chab, fuadain," he growled back.
The man with the syringe gave Whip's inner elbow a cursory wipe down with an alcohol-drenched cloth. The stinging cold forced a few fleeting memories to her mind: sitting on a high table in a pediatrician's office, chubby little legs dangling from the perch, kiddie eyes staring up at the cold silver glow of a needle's tip, parents holding her still, but cooing, reassuring... stroking the black mop of ratty tangles that passed for 'hair' on her head... kissing her fore—
Whip shook her head, willing those fragments of some other place, some other time— some other life— out of her mind.
The memory was far more painful than the stick she felt from the needle. Cold liquid exploded into her vein; she could feel it training up her arm, shuttling back to her heart, and then from there it would rocket straight to her head.
Mister Slappy did what he did best and slapped her again, only this time with a bandage to her arm instead of a belt to the face. As he did Diùlt got up and wandered over to the workstation; he grabbed an object from the far side of it, bringing it to Whip's side. It was Penance's tartan backpack, now considerably lighter than before. When the girl saw it her eyes started brimming with tears, but she held them back as much as she could.
Which wasn't much.
"What's the other one," the girl managed.
"The other 'part' for you to play, you mean?"
Whip nodded.
Diùlt tossed her the empty backpack; she caught it ungracefully with her cuffed hands.
"Remember him," Diùlt whispered. "He deserves that much. They don't talk much of themselves, usually. The Shroudless Ones, I mean. Especially not one as old as Penance. Seems like he must've jawed your ears off, though. Maybe you should think he did that for a reason, and maybe you should think that's the reason you're here, now."
When the girl didn't respond to this the man shrugged and moved back for the basement door. Whip called out to him.
"What if I figure there's another reason I'm here?" She growled.
Diùlt paused, hand on the doorknob.
"I doubt you're that insane," he replied.
Mister Slappy returned to his monitors as Diùlt left the room, the door closing behind him with a loud, scraping thud. Whip still glared at the closed door with a defiant look in her eyes, but by now she saw black ribbons curling around the edges of her vision; somewhere someone was pumping her brainstem full of helium, and her head felt ready to float away.
The girl gave a final rattle of her handcuffs against the pipe, drawing a disapproving glare from the man at the monitors. Before she passed out Whip balled up Penance's tartan backpack into a makeshift pillow and slid her head down the side of the pipe, resting her cheek on the ratty pack. She pressed her nose to the side of it and drew a breath, thinking she could somehow catch the boy's scent, and this might motivate her against the drugs coursing through her body— like a determined bloodhound put on its quarry's trail— but all she smelled was the moldy stink of old fabric and the claustrophobic must of the basement. She had to turn her head a bit to get even close to comfortable— some small thing seemed to be digging against her skin in a most uncomfortable fashion— but within a moment she didn't have the wherewithal to pay an offending lump like that any mind.
She chuckled.
'Offending lump'...
Was that all she was here, in the grand scheme of things? Was she ever of any use to Penance at all— even when she wasn't betraying him— and was she ever going to be of any use? Was she just as useful as an offending little lump? She wasn't really certain, one way or the other.
She was certain of one thing, however.
"You're gonna wake up before he dies," she hissed at herself through numb lips, her mind drifting off a million miles away. "You will. You will..."
That kind of certainly, she figured, must be truly insane.
And of that she had no doubt.
