He drifts in and out of consciousness, as he's taken to one of Daud's hideaways in Karnaca. He's only vaguely aware of being given an analgesic before the wound on his arm is cleanly drained and sewn up. Then he's left in a quiet room with the curtains drawn shut to recover. The pillow is wonderfully cool against his cheek, and he holds the blankets close to him.
It's much later in the day that he opens his eyes. His fever's broken by now, leaving him weak and nauseous. He's in a plain, sparsely furnished room: pale green wallpaper, a plain wrought iron bed, a nightstand with a few papers, a book, and a pen, a chair, and a pair of heavy curtains hiding a window. With his good arm, he picks up the book, but reading the title makes his head ache and he can't remember anything. A quiet despair settles over him, not just from the residual pain of flesh healing. The whole ordeal has been less a rescue, and more of an ellipses.
Through the door, two voices float through, discussing the witches. And perhaps he would have found all of this interesting once, but now it's just another puzzle piece that doesn't fit. He doesn't know if there really is a difference between himself and the wax effigy. He's afraid to open the door.
But it opens for him. Daud walks through, surveying him with interest.
"You're awake," he says, sitting next to Jindosh on the bed.
Jindosh doesn't recognize him. There are no clues as to who he could be, and truthfully, he doesn't really care at this point. The world continues to be horrible and baffling, and no doubt, there are still more horrors to come.
"Are you feeling any better?" Daud continues.
Jindosh doesn't answer, opting for crossing his arms instead. There's a strong flash of pain, but he persists anyway. Whatever he says will only be dismissed as babbling anyway.
Daud switches tactics. "You must be angry with me."
Confusion shows on Jindosh's face. How can he be angry with someone he doesn't even know?
"Do you know who I am?" Daud asks on a hunch.
Jindosh shakes his head.
Daud pulls off his leather glove to reveal his mark. "I'm Daud. I'm like you in a way," he says. "The Outsider marked me decades ago. He must have marked you very recently."
Jindosh takes Daud's hand into his own, turning it over in fascination and an inchoate recognition. He traces the worn grooves, the tendons, and the veins. "You know," he says to himself. "You've seen the whales too. They don't believe me about any of it. But I hear them—I hear the whales."
"I think the Royal Curator believed you a little too well."
Jindosh pulls away from his study of Daud's mark, flushed with a shame he can't remember.
"People will exploit you if you're aimless," Daud says. "They'll see that lack and will fill it with their own desires. But you must know that by now."
"It doesn't really matter," he manages, and as he does, he regrets it. It's horrible and humiliating: his face burns. "Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing ever stays. I can't re-remember anything, and everyone knows it."
Daud watches him with reserved pity, and somehow that hurts worse than his fears of being laughed at.
"I know the words, but I can't find them anymore. I have to find sub-substit—other words. Why bother if I can't remember? Without remembering, everything is just fragments."
"Not remembering isn't the same as something never happening," Daud offers at last, but enough time has passed that Jindosh no longer remembers what he said before. It comes as a fragmented sentence to him, disjointed from the earlier context, and he shrugs miserably, not sure why his insides are torn-up.
They sit there in silence for a while.
"Did you ever learn sword fighting?" Daud asks thoughtfully.
Jindosh watches him, confused.
"Of course you did. Every noble in this damned city did. Come on, you can borrow Thomas's."
Daud leads him out of the room and into the plainly furnished living room. Thomas's sword in its sheath is tossed to Jindosh—he catches it reflexively with his good arm. Daud readies himself with a roll of his shoulders and then begins their duel. It's strange and unexpected for Jindosh to have his body move in patterns he can no longer consciously access. He deflects Daud's blade as it swings towards him, and he's not afraid in this moment. No, this is something else moving inside him.
The blade comes from a different side, and they meet again—steel on steel, a defensive swing—and other deflection, this time from Daud. Forward, deflect, back. He's panting from exhaustion now, but there's an aching wordlessness inside him—an unburying.
"Not bad," Daud says, resting his blade. "Remember learning any of that?"
And as Jindosh catches his breath, his hands on his knees, he wonders what else Daud knows.
Over the next few days, the pain in Jindosh's arm slowly recedes, and he stays out of bed for longer. He's still afraid, but also curious now. He pores over a globe in the corner, fascinated by the movement of the sphere under his fingertips—the faintly crinkled, age-darkened paper and its brass supports. He pauses over the names of the isles and their cities, trying to align them in his mind. Here he is—Karnaca. Karnaca—in Serkonos. Bordered by—Gristol. Gristol—capital, Dunwall.
Daud crouches next to Jindosh, startling him. "Hmm, Tyvia," Daud says. "Not a bad place to run away for a while."
Jindosh regards him with intrigue. "Run away?"
"It's a long story," Daud says, brushing aside the question. "Here," he says, handing Jindosh a small brown notebook from his coat. "This might help your memory: write down what you want to remember."
Jindosh turns over the notebook, running through the blank pages. Could it be? Could it be this easy? Would it last? Are the neural pathways between the words and his fingers still there?
Daud pauses. "Do you remember my name?"
The hope flees, replaced by shame. Jindosh watches him warily, his shoulders hunched. Of course, he doesn't remember.
Daud only turns to the first page, and with a deliberate hand, scrawls his name. "There you go. Now you can always remember my name." He presses the open notebook back into Jindosh's hands.
Jindosh reads over it carefully. "Oh," he says. He glances at the notebook and then back at Daud, slowly connecting the two. And he's waiting for Daud to tell him how stupid and slow he is now, and what a waste it all is, and it won't really matter anyway because he won't remember as if that is all there is to the world.
And a little hope begins to form in his chest that things might be different now, if he can almost remember things.
"What do you want?" Daud asks. "You have to want something. The black-eyed bastard might have marked you for fun, but he also must have responded to something."
There's only a blank spot where the memory should be, a cigarette burn on a photograph. "I don't remember," Jindosh manages.
Daud frowns. "Well, what do you want now?"
"I want to understand the Void," Jindosh says slowly. "It doesn't work the way other forms of matter or energy do. It seems as though it's entirely incompatible with this world—"
And for a moment, he can almost feel his own self again, the words are easier somehow and fast, but then thought leaves, subsided into the nothingness.
"You want to understand the Void," Daud repeats. "That's a monumental task."
"I can feel the Void under my skin," Jindosh says, losing his earlier self-consciousness. "It pulls me to it. It's unlike anything I've ever felt—"
This is why Breanna couldn't abandon it.
"The Void is a dangerous place," Daud says, who by now has figured out Jindosh's pattern of forgetfulness.
"So is this world," Jindosh replies. It's a struggle to keep up with Daud, instead of sinking back into his dream-world, but he can, he can, he can. And as they continue to talk, he slowly becomes conscious that he's been waiting for Daud to tell him that he's babbling, but it never comes. And to his surprise, he finds that he's kept so many words in his throat.
Near them, a plain jumping spider swings down from the ceiling; as it crawls under an amaryllis leaf, itself out of place in the eternal summer of Karnaca, the creature leaves behind a trail of thread. As the spider's thread sways and twists in the bright Karnaca sunlight, it shines golden, then faintly red in the sunlight.
Perhaps he has spent the past few months in a little box of other people's making. Maybe there was a smaller box inside his heart that he put himself into, walls that were constructed by others, some with good intentions and some with bad, but which he had unknowingly kept, just to have something to cling to in this new strange world.
"The Outsider came to me in a dream," Kirin continues, watching the little spider move around—stiff yet quick like an automation, but still, it must be alive. "In the mines. They must be special to him somehow."
"You didn't contact him at a shrine?" Daud frowns as he considers this.
"Never," Kirin replies, picking at part of the grey blanket in thought. "There was... a rune I kept... Yes, that must have been it. A rune in the laboratory. But it couldn't be incor—incorpor—put into a machine. It... resisted somehow... I want to see the Void again." And as he insists on his goal, something changes inside him: he becomes slowly more sure of himself. This is something he can cling to.
"Let's get you back home for starters," Daud compromises.
Kirin twists at his fingers, uncomfortable. "I don't know where it is."
"Should be on the tax registry," Thomas offers, speaking to Kirin for the first time. "I can sneak a look at it, and then we can take you back."
Kirin considers this. "First, you have to add your name to the book," he says earnestly, and places the notebook and a pen into Thomas's gloved hands. It's more than a little nerve-wracking to part with it now, even for a moment.
Thomas gives Daud a questioning glance, but he receives only an encouraging nod.
"Come on, Thomas," Daud says. "It's only fair."
When Thomas returns, Kirin is not sure not how they are supposed to make their journey back. The doors are blocked off; there's no way to the street.
"The rooftop," Thomas replies to Kirin's unasked question. "It's faster."
Apprehension twists at Kirin.
"You have to learn how to control the power from the Void," Daud says. "It's easy." He points to a nearby roof. "I'll be waiting for you there. I'll catch you if you end up too close to the edge." He climbs onto the windowsill, pauses for a moment, and then reappears at the spot.
Kirin stares at him and then glances nervously over to Thomas.
"You can go," Thomas says. "I'll wait."
"You'll be waiting a while," Kirin replies wryly. And for a moment, he feels almost like himself again.
"Not sure how to, hm? You're not the first one I've had to teach," Thomas says. He steps behind Kirin, and in a practiced voice, says, "You'll want to feel for the pull. You want it to pull you to that spot on the roof."
Kirin tries to sense the humming under his skin: it draws him to the spot. He pulls at it—and reappears far too close to the edge of the roof.
Daud grabs him to prevent him from falling off. "Not the worst try I've seen," he manages, holding tightly onto Kirin and pulling him closer to the center of the roof. "It takes a few tries to get the hang of it."
As Kirin regains his balance, he's keenly aware of how different it all is. White seagull droppings stain the terracotta roof tiles in abstract patterns. The sun is brighter on the roof, and as he looks down, the curves and twists of the houses below reminds him of a riverbank. A hot breeze sweeps past him, on its way back to the sea.
Thomas reappears behind them. "Should we try the next spot?" he says, pointing to another roof.
"Let's," Daud replies. "Come on," he says to Kirin, though not unkindly. "If you stop now, you'll be too afraid to try again. Come meet me over there, by that chimney."
Another moment, and Daud reappears there, waiting.
"Feel for the pull," Thomas says. "And try to have it take you more to the left this time."
It's starting to become more natural now to draw on this strange power. And Kirin reappears much closer to the roof's center this time.
"Much better," Daud says, helping him to his feet.
The chimney is stained black with kitchen soot. A few small, white feathers are cast about, carelessly, the end product of a bird preening itself. Kirin glances back, searching for where they began, but it eludes him now.
The pattern begins again: Daud waits for him, Thomas remains behind to instruct him, and he grasps at that humming under his skin to land on the next roof. It only takes three more rooftops before he understands how it works, the magnetic push and pull between him and the Void.
It's fun.
Soon, they're back again, standing in front of the cottage with its dark door, and it's as if he never left. In some of the shadier parts of the yard, ferns are now sprouting—curling away from the earth. Elsewhere, someone has planted pale poppies and spiky rosemary, a lemon tree, and grey lavender bushes. Kirin's terrified that he'll step inside and everything will slip away again: he'll only revert back to being constantly frightened and docile, that his words will be reduced to babbling.
But if he never steps inside, he'll never know if the house still retains its power over him, and he cannot bear this uncertainty. And perhaps this is the first time he's ever stepped inside under his own power, instead of being led. Thomas and Daud converse briefly, and Thomas leaves.
It's strangely quiet, like walking into his own mausoleum. Everything is as it's been left, nothing is out of place, nothing except him. The younger maid bustles past him with a basketful of blankets, halfway through putting them up. She sets the basket on a table, begins to fold the top blanket, and then pauses.
She glances in Kirin's direction. "You're back?" she says confused, yet brightly, leaving the blanket in a pile. She guides him to a nearby sofa, only half-cognizant of Daud's presence. She fusses over Kirin like a girl reunited with a beloved doll. "Are you hurt?" she continues. "Are you feeling sick?" Between questions, she peers over his shoulder at Daud, a thousand unasked questions on her lips.
Kirin panics. He doesn't want to be afraid again.
"Ask him one question at a time," Daud instructs her. "He's good at answering questions, but if you ask him more than one, he won't remember them."
She mulls over this new information, and her face brightens, as this piece of his behavior finally makes sense to her. "Oh, I had no idea." She tries again, this time one question at a time.
The process is easier on him this time. He answers her questions readily: no, he's not hurt; not in pain; not tired; not hungry; doesn't remember what happened. A momentary sadness crosses her face at the last one, but he likes to think he's used to it by now. He tries to remember anyway.
"There were beetles," he says carefully, "and a wax doll. Breanna. A beetle... picked me up and carried me away."
"Where did it take you?" she asks, somewhere between puzzlement and pity. Daud watches him closely, but Kirin misses his gaze.
"I don't remember," Kirin says, twisting at the fabric of his sleeve.
"And what about you?" the maid asks Daud. "How did you come to meet Kirin?" It's a considerably more causal reference than many good houses would allow, but Kirin doesn't mind. It's more familiar this way. He can't remember what they called him before anyway.
"Carrying out private business for the Lord Protector, I'm afraid," Daud answers smoothly. " And we thought it would be a good start if I took him back home."
"Would you like to stay for dinner?" she asks. "I haven't had anyone to cook for in weeks, and I'm so glad he's back."
Kirin glances at Daud, suddenly shy.
"It would be rude of me to refuse," Daud replies.
"Dr. Hypatia should be around once I let her know," the maid says cheerfully. "She'll be so thrilled. I've only had myself for company."
"There was another maid," Kirin begins carefully, a sickness rising in him. "Where is she?"
"She just disappeared," the maid confides. "The good doctor thought she'd—left Karnaca."
Lost in his own attempts to remember what happened again, Kirin doesn't notice the sharp, tactual pause. "She's gone?" he asks in confirmation, and as he does so, his body releases some of its tension, an unconscious anticipation of the violence.
Hypatia arrives long after dinner, weary and heartsore from another day patching up Karnaca's hopeless, but when she steps through the doorway, she draws on her reserves and puts on a gentle face for Kirin. "There, you are," she says softly, sitting beside him and stroking his hair. "I was so worried about you." And there's a faint tremor on her lips, a wild grief she almost lets herself feel.
She smiles wearily at him. "I'm so sorry," she says, stroking his hand. "I shouldn't have overslept. When I got there, there wasn't anyone. It was all wrong. I thought she might have drowned you nearby. It's... not uncommon around here for a caregiver to do so. Lucia thought... well, she was right. Paolo's quite fond of you now. He was so gleeful that the Vice Overseer lost face when you disappeared. Mindy says she found you fairly quickly, but you got too frightened. That makes sense. It must have been terrifying out there. I thought maybe you'd return. I've been waiting outside every nightfall." She squeezes his hand. "I'm glad you're back."
"I understand more now," he tells her earnestly. "If I write things down, I can look at them later. It's not the same as remembering, but it's close enough." He shows her the notebook. "I would like to see Aramis," he says carefully. "Would you take me there? To his house? There's a wound there in the Void. It's... very important somehow."
And the knowledge that he's become more different without trying still pains him. He won't regress now, but in doing so, something has been lost between them—perhaps it is a mutual dependency, perhaps it is Hypatia's hopes for how he might become. Everything keeps moving away from him, and that is only its nature.
She surveys him with her threadbare face, taking in all the details of him that she had missed. "Of course," she says bravely, her eyes sad. "Of course, I will."
It strikes him that she registers this loss between them as well, that she has secret thoughts and feelings of her own. That it pains her that he has entered this strange underworld where she cannot help him. He doesn't know how to tell her that he was dying there in the cottage before he was tricked. It was such a slow, eroding death that he wasn't even cognizant of it, but it was still happening.
A parcel in plain brown wrapping paper draws her attention, and she smiles gently at it. "It's here," she says. "I asked Anton to make you a book to read at night."
It's a handbound hardcover, with a scrawled note about Karnaca and all its beauty and all its pain.
Hypatia settles beside him on the bed, and begins to read aloud to him, showing him the pages and the illustrations. They're largely black-and-white landscape sketches done in pen: he almost recognizes the steep cliffs, the jagged mines, and the expansive sea, sharp and sparkling. Instead, they haunt his mind like a half-remembered song, just slightly out of key. The two linger on the pages about the natural wildlife—the beetles, the shy deer, the cackling birds. Barnacles that cling to the underbellies of ships, oysters concealing a pearl. Then, a selection of the plants: delicate, green sea grapes; watercolored pansies sprawling in a window box, made weary by the summer heat; hollyhocks sighing near the seashore.
And when they reach the end, he can't remember any of it at all, but he still falls asleep more easily afterwards.