Bureaucracy

The man steered Sassy through the door and pressed her into a metal folding chair. She submitted sullenly, several degrees of fear and shame seething in her guts.

"General, we caught this wandering about the Perimeter. Please assure me your men have not allowed an unauthorised civilian to walk freely about the camp!" Samael shrieked at the sour old man behind the only desk in the tiny room. The same jet black hair that clung limply to Sassy's ears coiled gracefully serpentine about Samael's neck and shoulder like a softly glowing sculpture. Her cheeks were radiant with rage against her pale china skin, setting off her hard, glinting, flint-coloured eyes. Beautiful and terrible, like an awesome painting.

The General listened to her, weary and disinterested. The ways and insistences of the Old Kingdom eluded him and sometimes, he suspects, the people of the Old Kingdom themselves. The Perimeter command was where the military shipped their cast-aways and out-of-favour Officers. Here, they took away their guns and toys and gave them broken swords and ill-fitting armour, then told them a nightmare story and said good-night.

Except, there were no monsters in the woodworks, no secrets in the dust, only obsolete rituals, traditions, and men like himself, fallen from the eyes of their peers and superiors, stuck out of sight and out of mind.

"Yes ma'am, I see your concern. The matter will be looked into, I assure you." He had long ago ran out of patience with these No Man Lands and tended to have less with the members of the Old Kingdom's Royal family. Like many in his position, he dealt with them mainly by agreeing to everything they said and proceeding to ignore them. Old stories refer to the dead rising from the dust to walk again. As a man of reason in an age of high technology he cannot give them credit, but if the Command had been then as it is today, it was little surprise to him that the men of the Perimeter would be mistaken for zombies as they lurched hopelessly about their daily duties.

"The state of your men is disgraceful, General! You will request new armour and weaponry immediately. These people look like a pack of mongrel scavengers!"

"While you're at it, ask him to request more men and triple the defences." Sassy smirked. Cyrial, who had continued to stand over Sassy as Samael barraged the General, pressed down on her head in the gesture for silence he had used on her since she was a child.

"No," Sassy continued, unfazed. "Ask him. He doesn't care, Samael. Central Command doesn't care. They don't understand. He thinks you're just a bunch of stark-raving bone-biters. They don't remember."

Now the Princess of the Old Kingdom advanced upon her.

"Speak only when spoken to, Azazel."

"You cannot think to protect her, Cyrial." Samael hissed at her cousin. How dare he?

"She is our kinsman, Samael. Thou shall not raise a hand against thy kinsman without love, nor stain thy hands with kin blood."

This pacified, if it did not satisfy, her. She dropped her dignity enough to spit at Sassy's feet.

"Perhaps we should send for our own troops and equipment, cousin." Cyrial added, keeping his grip tight on Sassy. "Her words, though distasteful, I fear may yet ring true."

Samael gnashed her teeth, clenching and releasing her fists several times, and finally, suddenly, snapped "Out!" Grabbing a pen, she began scribbling on the back of the General's supply list, barking orders. "General! Your pigeons and telephone! Then round up your men...!"

They could not catch the rest of her plans as Cyrial pivoted Sassy quickly out of the headquarters, away from the fury.

"Do you encourage hostility deliberately or does it just happen, cousin?" He ventured ruefully as they neared the wind flutes. She shrugged.

"Where's the Abhorsen?" She asked instead.

"Aunt Ruhiel has been out of contact since her last report four days ago. It will be another three until she reports again."

Sassy lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "The Abhorsen-in-Waiting?"

"Samael?"

"Ah. Never mind."

Cyrial hesitated over his next words. The family will certainly be livid over this, but Ruhiel did not seem to share their views. "Would you like me to send Aunt Ruhiel a message?"

Sassy seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, concentrating on taking deep puffs on the smothering joint. Then, to his surprise, held his eye and said flatly, "No. She's dead."

The unmoved certainty with which she said it sent shivers down his spine. His eyes widened, remembering the horror that had led his parents and other aunts and uncles to deny Azazel and send her away. "Did you... did you sense her passing?"

"No. I was wasted most of the week. Finals."

He wanted to ask more, about how she had known, but was afraid to. This she knew as well as he, and took an acquired pleasure in his fear and underlying repulsion.

"Where was she last?" She continued to walk, flicking the burnt butt into the dust.

"Ganel, on her way back to the House." Cyrial hastened to catch up. "Azazel, you cannot cross the border tonight."

She stopped. A flicker of dread scratched her heart. "Why not?"

"There are wild things afoot, cousin, and dangers in the dark..."

"The wild dogs and giant bats that you told these guys the flutes are for?" Anyone who knew anything this far North knew this as a lie. It worked, mostly because the weary soldiers came from the South and, at any rate, did not believe in the Dead. Cyrial had the grace to look embarrassed.

"I am Abhorsen now, Cyrial. You have no right."

Cyrial was thrown briefly, but remembered who he was talking to and found pity. "Abhorsen? That cannot be. Surely the Clayr would have seen it. We would have known. Azazel, please..."

"The Clayr cannot see me." She replied coldly. "That name is dead."

"Nonetheless..."

She turned to go on her way. Having spent all of her life in the disapproval of The Family, she learnt instead the emptiness of approval.

A lasso of Charter light settled around her and drew her back. It was Samael.

"The family is gathering to receive you. A Paper wing will come." She announced, and turned to Cyrial, now concerned. "There has been word. Ruhiel is missing."

Cyrial blinked slowly and found himself whispering "I know..." Tears brimmed in his eyes as he knew this to be the truth, like he had not known when Sassy told him. "She's dead."

Samael rocked on her heels at the news. "Then we shall discuss the Succession." Her voice trembled even as she forced a hold over herself and stoned her heart. Sassy wondered calmly what it would be like to care about a death like her cousins did as she watched Samael walk away. Cyrial went to her, holding her as the beautiful proud woman stumbled, fell, and remained sitting in the sand, crying.

Author's Death Count: 1