Hypatia is the first to see it. She sits at the edge of the cot, gently shaking his shoulder to wake him up. And when he moves his hand to shield his eyes from the low light, she sees those black lines. She recoils not in recognition, but the belief that it's part of a cruel prank played on him while asleep. She guides him, still half-asleep, over to the basin and begins scrubbing the area. The skin reddens, but the mark doesn't disappear. She scrubs more strongly now, until Jindosh gasps in pain.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I must have been carried away. It's just that this won't come off. It might have been too soon to go out. I never should've asked that of you."
He can't remember how that mark came to pass. Something about a man with black eyes and a cold smile.
"The whales are singing under the floorboards," he quotes, but he can't remember whom he's quoting. Something that came to pass, but also did not. It's true somehow: the whales are singing under the floorboards.
"The whales?" Hypatia asks, vaguely concerned as she scrubs around his mark more gently now, her eyes fixed on her task.
"The whales," he insists. "I saw them in a... dark place. Someone... someone showed them to me."
You will be hunted without mercy across the continent, the Outsider had told him, as his mark seared into Jindosh's left hand, forming a strange union with his porcelain prosthetic, and you will know no respite with my mark. Strangers will despise you, and good men will want you dead. But once you have felt the pull of the Void, you will want nothing less.
And Hypatia stops her methodical scrubbing, staring at the mark. She rubs her finger over it slowly, tracing the way it merges with the tendons of his hand, as a horrible realization tugs at her. Her heart breaks in that moment, breaks in the way that someone who has had far too much to bear breaks. Her hold on his hand loosens, and for a moment, his hand slips from her grasp. She closes her eyes to hold back her terror. Then she wraps the washcloth over his marked hand, tying it in a knot across the back of his hand. "Don't let anyone see this," she says at last, gathering her remaining strength. "Not even the maids."
When Lucia stops by to collect them and return to the cottage, she gives Hypatia a questioning glance at his hand, but Hypatia gives her a small shake of her head in response. The walk back is largely in silence, with Hypatia carefully holding, and thus hiding, his marked hand. On the way back, he thinks of beetles, dark and green; the dangerous brightness of whale oil; the luminescence of fireflies, steady like a chant; the groans of whales, those undead things that sob and sing.
Over the next few days, Hypatia is careful to tend to him in the more intimate aspects of caregiving. She bathes and dresses him each morning, against the protests of the older maid, who is certain that something is being planned without her. Hypatia wearily changes him into his white nightshirt every evening and tucks him into bed, asking him to tell her if he sees the whales again that night. He doesn't really like the change, but she's kind and gentle enough.
But she can only do so much, and one morning, she oversleeps, overcome by exhaustion. The older maid tends to him instead, relieved to be back in a familiar routine. She prepares him for his bath, and when he draws his covered hand away from her touch, she exhales sharply in frustration.
"What are you hiding from me?" she snaps, as she pulls off the cloth. Her eyes widen at the mark. "Is this a joke?"
"The whales," he says, by means of an explanation. "The whales sing under the floorboards. I would like to pin them."
"I don't think they fit into your collection," she replies nastily as she scrubs the back of his hand. "What have you gotten up to this time?"
Jindosh tries to pull away from her. "That hurts," he says distantly.
"Then don't go making my life harder," she snaps. "Every day, it's something new with you. If you don't shape up, they'll put you in an empty room so you can't get up to anything."
His skin breaks under her movement, and he gasps in pain. He wants the pain to end, to be as far away from this as possible. There's a humming under his skin, and the mark glows under her touch.
She drops his hand in horror.
He swallows in relief, and rubs the back of his hand repeatedly to soothe himself.
She only stares back at him, helpless and overwhelmed.
When the bath is finished, she cares for him in the same way an undertaker might care for a corpse. She tenderly combs his hair, gently shaves his face. He is still throughout all of this, obediently sitting on the stool, as she fusses over him. He thinks of broken floorboards, mine shafts, a backlight piano, and the smell of rotting meat.
And in turn, she dresses him with a strange finality, as if they must part ways now.
"Are you going?" he asks unsteadily, unsure why, and reaches for the only thing he feels certain about. "What about the walk?"
She looks at him in a strange way, as if she almost regrets her choice, but not enough to change it. There's a certain familiarity between them now that is easy to mistake for closeness, and so much of her pain is bound up in his existence that she's not sure who she's be without him. Happier, no doubt.
"How could I forget our walk?" she says at last.
As they leave the cottage, she stops abruptly. "Here," she says, as she digs in the pocket of her apron for a hard candy. Maybe she does it so she won't have to listen to him on their walk, maybe she does it for her own conscience. Maybe it doesn't matter why.
"Don't let go," she says firmly but gently, taking his hand in hers. "You'll be lost out there if you let go."
He treats it as an order, a protection against the strange world. Their walk is longer than usual, and she doesn't let him stop for any beetles. They're in an unfamiliar part of town now, more unfamiliar than the rest of the area, and he wonders what kind of beetles live there.
And as his mind dreams, she leads him to the outpost of the Overseers.
In the lobby, she talks to the Overseer at the desk, and Jindosh looks around at the filing cabinets and the untidy desk behind the counter, anything really when she talks. When she shows them the back of his hand, he's not sure why there's a strangled hush. The maid saw the mark, and she wasn't mad, he reasons, so perhaps Hypatia was wrong about people seeing it. And it's true that the Overseers aren't angry with him, but what they are is harder for him to tell. There's music playing suddenly. He's never heard that tune before: it's harsh and strained. One of the Overseers grabs him roughly and leads him upstairs. As he glances back at the maid, she leaves, pointedly ignoring his gaze, and he doesn't understand what's been done.
A music box plays in the bloody room where they interrogate him. Jindosh sits, docilely and unrestrained in the chair, as one Overseer keeps prompting him about Breanna and shrines and where did the witches contact the Outsider, and he can't really remember anything about her. Just an outline of where she used to be in his mind. Ah, and plants. That must be it.
He tells them about the tansy plants and the ferns that curl in the dark.
One of the Overseers throws a glass at the wall. He startles at this, looking at them carefully.
"Tell us where Breanna kept the shrine. We have to dig up the rat nest. Tell us, and we'll make it painless."
Jindosh hasn't the slightest idea what's supposed to be painless and he's frightened now. He looks around the room for a prompt of what to do to placate them, but finds nothing. There are bloody knives and cruel, curved things, but none of that tells him anything meaningful. These are all dimly familiar things.
"I'm afraid," he says distantly, looking at the shattered remains of the glass.
"Good," one of the Overseers says. "Tell us what we want to know, and you don't have to be afraid anymore."
He tells them about finding beetles in the remains of a bird's nest.
The Overseer rises sharply to his feet. "You want to play games with us, Grand Inventor. But the Abbey will not stand for it. We will not let the city fall."
Jindosh looks sharply to the window, expecting to see the city collapsing. "It's falling?"
The Overseer takes it as a taunt and moves to hit him, but the other one grabs his arm.
"No," he says. "This isn't right."
"Brother," the first Overseer begins in a low deadly voice. "Nothing will keep me from the path of righteousness. Not even you."
"Something's not right about any of this," the second one says, glancing at Jindosh. "Does a heretic willingly go to his own interrogation? He willingly walked into the building with his servant and made no sign of fear. Even went up to the chair. You didn't have to restrain him."
The first Overseer pauses, as doubt creeps in. "He's toying with us."
"I want another opinion," the second Overseer insists. "We must be certain about heretics." A pause. "The music is playing, and he can't do anything, if he even could to begin with."
The first Overseer gives him a hard look, weighing his words, and then nods. "Overseer Holger will know."
They leave the room.
Jindosh waits obediently in the stained chair, glancing at the instruments of torture from time to time. He looks at them with great, familiar interest, at how the blades curve and stop. He wonders how they are used, if he might take one and look at it later. They are much more advanced than the pins he uses for the dead beetles.
Outside the room, the two Overseers argue.
"It's not right," the first one says. "Didn't you hear him? There's nothing in his head about the Outsider."
A long pause. "The Outsider is known to play tricks on humanity, my brother," a second, different voice—Overseer Holger—replies. "We must stamp out evil as it arises, in whatever form it arises."
"He's like a child. Didn't you hear him go on about the damned beetles? He's not capable of practicing heresy." Another pause. "What if we just sever the hand? We can just burn it afterwards. That way, he lives and we can send him back."
Jindosh can't really follow their conversation. Perhaps they're not mad at him anymore. It's difficult connecting the voices with thoughts, let alone strings of thoughts, but at beetles, he wonders if there are any around. Surely, there must be new ones to find. He looks around the room in vague interest.
The conversation continues. "My brother, the Outsider has made a connection with him, unlucky or not. We must stand firm. To let him live is to let the Outsider into Karnaca! You must steady your nerves and harden your heart. We can make the severing swift, just as we soothe a chicken before slaughter."
"Why would the Outsider mark him, though? You know what I think? I bet his servant hated the reversal of her fortunes and just wanted to get rid of him. She probably sold everything. And now with a bit of paint, she's free to go anywhere and start over with no questions."
On the window glass, there is the most beautiful beetle Jindosh has ever seen. It's a pale yellow, like an unnourished plant, but its movement is exquisite and delicate. It twitches an antennae and he touches the glass under it almost reverently.
"The mark doesn't wash off, brother."
"We have no confession," the first Overseer counters.
There's a half-opened window nearby. Jindosh opens it fully to slide through.
"The mark is confession enough. He was known to be in the company of witches, and this is the sort of heresy they love."
"If we kills an innocent man—"
"Kirin Jindosh is not an innocent man by any measure," Overseer Holger replies. "It is only because of his laboratory accident that he's not in prison right now. And if we kill him by mistake, who's to say that what he wouldn't have wanted in the first place? Do you think he'd have wanted to spend his last decades brain-dead and babbling to strangers?"
There is a long silence.
"Think of it as a mercy either way. And we give mercy to all."
Outside, the air is clearer and the music is softer. The strange humming under his skin returns, and he balances on the window ledge, edging slowly towards the beetle. It ruffles its translucent wings, before hiding them under its hard shell. Jindosh wonders if he's already got this one in his collection, but he won't know until it's dead. He reaches for it, and a bullet tears through the muscle of his right arm, firmly embedding itself in spreading lines of pain.
He pulls back in shock. The beetle, startled, flies off.
One of the Overseers is aiming a pistol at him and yelling about the Outsider and Karnaca, and the only thing he understands is that he doesn't want to be there anymore. The second bullet barely misses his throat.
I may die here, he thinks distantly, another echo he cannot explain.
And then the humming under his skin gets louder.
The Overseer adjusts his aim, and at that moment, Jindosh pulls at the energy that's humming under his skin.
The next moment, Jindosh slams into the nearby balcony, hard pain bursting from where his knees made contact with the balcony floor. There's shouts and swearing and another bullet.
He pulls at the energy again in a sharp burst and is on a different balcony. Through the black woven steel of the balcony deck and a different angle, he sees the Overseers pour out of the building, their masks grey and grimacing. They mean to find him and kill him, he realizes with a start. He must put as much distance between them as possible.
He pulls at the energy, feeling sicker and more drained each time as his view changes. By the fourth pull, he crumples and tries not to retch. He clambers down a vent shaft instead, into a back alley way, filled with the stench of waste, sour bodies, and old alcohol.
There is nothing left to do but run.
And he runs.
And he runs despite the pain.
And he runs, until panting from exertion and pain, he slips behind a building. And as he looks up, and unable to recognize the pale red building, graffitied and cracked with age and neglect, he realizes that he's hopelessly lost.
