dormiveglia (n.) the space that stretches between sleeping and waking.
Gehörtnicht. That was the name that they had given her: she-who-does-not-belong, that-which-is-not-included, something that lay out-with the threshold of what was and what should be. She was of neither New Asia nor of Irij – Kur enough to be cursed, not Kur enough to find strength in that fact. But Kur enough for a curse. Kur enough to go to the slaughter. What was it that they had always called her? Scum-twice-over. Traitor-to-all. Gehörtnicht.
It was strange, after a childhood in Opona, to see so many people who looked like her. In childhood, she had Belle – but even then, there had been something stilted about it, something strained. Belle didn't use her Nawia name; her house had been burned down because of the way that she looked, the places her parents came from. Myghal, who had some distant relative from the same part of the world, always had a quiet cut to murmur under his breath, if he was trying to fluster her, through her off, make her bristle. But here – the captain of the western excubitor corps resembled her; the head of the palace guard looked like; the king and the queen looked like her. After so long in her childhood dodging abuse and preparing for war on the horizon, it had been jarring to come here, and work in a bakery, and tend to flowers, and relax – for the first time, to relax. She had her own bedroom here. People called her Azula Hämäläinen here: Azula-from-Tafæistaland, Azula-with-a-past-and-a-family, Azula-who-belongs. That had taken time to get used to; that still galled, just a little. It reminded her what she had been deprived of, for all these years.
But it had been nice. Even as each night was puntuated by nightmares where Mielikki was torn about by ape-shaped druj, where Pekka died over and over again while Ina's scream ripped endlessly around the sacellum, where Hyacinth gasped for air and drew in only water – even then, Kivi Bakery had become a refuge. A safe harbour. Salvation, Ilja might have called it, and a home, insulated, somehow, from the rest of the world and the war for which she had prepared for all her life.
And now the war had arrived on their doorstep – wearing Belle's face, speaking with Nez's voice, in the figure of a dead girl who had occupied Azula's nightmares for the last six months. Their uncomfortable future was here, dressed in the garb of their unwanted past.
When she stepped into Khalore's attic room, Hyacinth was still asleep. Asleep? Unconscious. Her eyes were only half-closed, but there was no movement behind the lids; it rather reminded Azula of the little porcelain dolls that had lined the window display of the fancy toy shops in Opona. Hyacinth's eyes could have been glass, for all the life that Azula could perceive within. Still, that tiny spot of silver within. Her hair was long and matted and singed along the edges, free for once from its usual tight Dutch braids; it clung to her forehead and skin, slick with sweat, her skin a flushed pink like half-cooked meat. There was a strange thickness to one side of her neck – a swelling. Blood oozed gently from the open wound on her forehead, where Ilja had knocked her out.
Sorcerers all, and that was the best that the Chariot could do?
After initiation, Hyacinth had sat by her bed and waited for her to wake. Azula had writhed under the cold gaze of her wraiths – half-human things leering out of the dark, blood pouring from their mouths – and woken in a cold sweat to see Hyacinth, hands folded, waiting patiently for Azula to return to herself. Had it been kindness? Loyalty? An unwillingness to face her new, cursed life alone? Or perhaps Hyacinth just hadn't known what to do next. Hollow. Was she dead, then, drowned in the sea of druj, replaced by this thing with her face? Or was this really Azula's childhood friend, hungry and hurt?
Could they trust her not to hurt them?
Could she forgive them for leaving her?
Azula's eye was drawn to the tiny hyacinth, delicately inked on the inside of Hyacinth's wrist; the contours of its stem followed the most prominent of the girl's veins. The Sun's nervous tic had always been to gently run a thumb along its silhouette, murmuring something under her breath that might have been a prayer; Azula remembered thinking after initiation how much it resembled a brand now, how deep and dark the lines. Mielikki had given it to her, as she had given similar little marks to all of the cadets – a strange kind of friendship bracelet, Azula thought, a way of distinguishing friends and family in a world that wanted you to have neither.
She was about to enter the palace, she thought, where friends could not be guaranteed to be close – and still, her heart rebelled against this thought. The other Warriors kept the worst of their thoughts, plans and instincts from her; she knew that. She couldn't blame them, not really – not when thequestions lingered on the edge of her tongue, liable to drip at any moment: why are we fighting this war, why are we killing people, why do we sacrifice thousands upon thousands, how do we know that what we're doing is right, how are we supposed to live knowing that we killed someone's mother or son or lover, aren't they people like us, don't we bleed the same blood?
And all this time, no one had ever given a reason for why they were in Illéa. A real reason. One that made all the bloodshed make sense. Why? Why were the Warriors a perennial fixture of Irij? Why was their nation always so mired in blood and suffering and death? Why was the radiance so important? Two hundred years had passed, and Illéa had not moved against them, penned in by druj, barely ekeing out survival on this blighted isle.
So why?
In Irij, even breathing such seditious sentiment might have had her expelled from the academy and condemned as a traitor-in-full, a traitor-in-act-as-well-as-blood. Here, though she could not imagine Ina or Zor would ever castigate her for such honesty – but Ilja would consider her too immature for what had to be done, Ghjuvan would consider her insufficiently dedicated to the cause, Khalore and Kinga would cease to treat her like a fellow Warrior and xrafstar.
She was as cursed as any of them. It hung over her, a silent scythe – Céluiz, mouth bleeding, still greeted her every morning as she rose slowly from sleep, though he ever remained silent. And Azula, constantly, could feel every part of herself – the tips of her nails, the muscles under her flesh, the roots of her own hair. She thought that if she tried, flexed, she could move each part like a puppeter manipulates a mannequin with a string. Could curl up her limbs in ways they shouldn't curl; could turn her head a way it could not turn; could make her hair writhe without wind. It felt like she was standing outside of her own body, directing each part with precision and purpose. Even breathing was something she performed consciously – breath in, breath out. The simplest of physical movements was a performance, puppetry, now. Sometimes she wasn't sure if she was even moving her own limbs, or if she was...
She hardened her heart, and took a seat beside the bed to wait for Hyacinth to wake up, folding her hands carefully. Trying to stop them shaking. Trying to still them. Her bones seemed to shriek at her from within – but no, she thought, no. She was a Warrior, but making war… it lay beyond her, somehow. The thought tasted sour and bitter on her tongue. That bitterness was spreading, slowly, through the rest of her mouth, down her throat, spreading out into her lungs. She felt off, and she couldn't quite say why. For a moment, she wondered what Hyacinth's curse truly was, and whether this might be something of her doing. But no, she thought, because Hyacinth was –
Hyacinth was awake.
Awake, and staring, through that little slitted eyelid. Not moving – in truth, that should have alerted Azula sooner, that total stillness. Still, and staring. Her expression was blank, and that – that, more than anything else, was unlike Hyacinth. No nervous smile, no shy warmth, no hesitant relief?
For a moment, Azula wondered whether she had made a terrible mistake coming up here on her own. Then Hyacinth said, softly, like she thought that perhaps she was still dreaming: "Zula?"
Azula's mouth felt dry, her tongue had some uncomfortable bitter film over it, her head swam with the sensation of being stuffed with cloth. There was the unmistakeable scent of sulphur hanging in the room; Azula could not determine its source, but it set her on edge. "Yes," she said. "It's me."
Hyacinth went to rise – limbs braced, hair swaying, face contorting in something that might have been rage – and Azula could not help but flinch back. She'd never been scared of Hyacinth before: her friend. Their beds had been opposite one another. They had eaten dinner together every day for nine years, while the older Warriors laughed and jostled at the table by the window. Hyacinth had told Azula I always seem to be scared of everything and Azula had whispered back I think I'm too weak for war and they had both known that they were in the Warrior's Programme because they were, in part, at some time, in their history, unwanted.
Azula couldn't draw a breath – the world was distorted around her, everything solid seeming to lose its hard edge and waver as though caught in a heat mirage. Something that might have been the curse roiled and revolted deep behind her ribs. It felt like every hair on her arm was attached by wire to some great invisible operating cross, and someone had just drawn across them in a grotesque parody of playing the harp. Every part of her wanted to shake, but she could not quite catch her breath to make that happen; for a split second, she felt once again that insects and spiders were crawling all across her skin, digging deep, gnawing at her strings… it felt like Hyacinth was trying to cut her loose, set her adrift back into reality.
No. No. No.
Azula dragged in a breath, and stilled her strings. Now she reached for Hyacinth's. She could not see them – not like Ina and her threads – but she could feel for them, clumsily, extending her sense of self (here was her arm, and she could move that; here were her fingers, and she could twitch them; here was Hyacinth's elbow, and she could bend that) until she had forgotten where her own edges were and could no longer number each strand individually, such that they were just a mass of filaments burning and standing, a hand of wires that she could twist this way and that (the corners of her mouth, that was an easy one; each eyelash had a thread of its own, meticulously sewn; even the vein beneath the tattoo, she could pull at that and watch it jump) and it felt as natural, as easy, as right as blinking, or putting one foot in front of the other, or raising her own hand (even the heart, the heart needed pumping, the heart needed to beat, or maybe she could just let it lie).
When had she last raised her hand for a question? In the academy, when they had been schoolgirls in a row, making a study of war like there would be exams on it later. Tofana had asked them how to kill more effectively, and Azula had shuddered to think of it, but when it had come her turn, she answered. Azula had said, the Wheel, he could induce a heart attack. Her chances of suffering a heart attack were…it wasn't zero.
Tofana had been pleased with that. Azula could still remember it – the flush of pride in her own intellect, swamping even her usual desire to remain in the background. It had buzzed in the back of her head, even once the attention had turned to Ilja Schovajsa after that, and then to Ragnar Kaasik, and then to Azula Gehörtnicht. She had barely paid heed, even as the class continued for another five hours and the rain began to fall outside. Finally, something she was good at. At last, something which did not terrify her.
There was a dull thud. Hyacinth's head had fallen back to the bed, her eyes wide, veins standing stark beneath and around that awful swelling on her neck. It was an awful sight; there was something primal and terrifying about your own body betraying you, for no reason that medicine or God would be able to discern. Her limbs had failed her; her heart was not beating; her self was no longer her own.
Azula wondered if Hyacinth could feel her own blood settling in her veins, whether it was heavy, whether it was unnerving to feel it so – and then, abruptly, realising what she was thinking, and what she was doing, and to whom, and why, she leapt from her chair and released every hold. It was a violent release; it felt like she was rendering something, tearing something, cutting the knot rather than trying to unravel it now.
Please, the Devil thought desperately, please.
It didn't seem to matter. Hyacinth was still, utterly still – a puppet with its strings cut.