Sarah Zettel: Reclamation

Oh thank you, all the Nameless. Aria craned her neck to try to see her surroundings more clearly. Tan walls and a tan floor enclosed them. The place was furnished with big, rounded lumps of stuff, some white, some clear like glass.

“We’re hidden from those Bald Children then?” she asked, twisting her head so she could see him better.

Teacher Hand’s mouth twitched. “For the moment.”

“Where is this?” Aria rolled her eyes to gesture around the room.

“My ship.”

"Ship?” She tried to match his accent on the meaningless sound.

“The means by which I went over the World’s Wall,” he explained through clenched teeth. “What did the Rhudolant Vitae want with you?”

“Why should you care?”

Teacher Hand leaned over her. “It’s not a good idea to be snide with me, Notouch.” He clenched his fist so the knuckles pointed at her, the first gesture to call down the curse of the Nameless Powers.

Aria’s mouth puckered. “You’re too late. I’ve already been cursed. Twelve times, by the First Teacher himself.”

His eyebrows crept together as his face gathered up into a frown. “And what could you have possibly done to merit such attention from the First Teacher?”

“Nothing much.” Aria let her gaze travel to the ceiling. It was made up of tan squares broken by patches that glowed with a light clearer than any oil lamps. “This despised one was merely inside Narroways’s walls when the curse came down upon the whole of the city.”

That plainly puzzled him. “Sit up,” he ordered.

“As your Lordship commands, this despised one shall do.” She knotted her water-weak stomach muscles. Despite the protest of every inch of her, she rocked into a sitting position. The effort broke a fresh sweat on her brow. Her head spun, but she managed to hold herself upright.

Aria glanced around uneasily. She could see the room better now. The white lumps were obviously for sitting on. The clear lumps with legs that melted into the floor were tables, even if Teacher Hand sat on the long, low one in front of the couch she occupied. The wall to the left had three long niches and an open doorway in it. The wall to the right was smooth and unbroken. The wall behind Teacher Hand had been sectioned off into neat squares and decorated with elaborate mosaics. A fat chair stood in front of it.

But she had seen something else before she had passed out. Something formless and huge and…

She shook her head, trying to focus her thoughts on things she could understand.

“Where’s the other one?” she asked.

“The other what?” Teacher Hand’s frown deepened.

“Person. Your friend or bondsman, or whoever you called before… Before the blackness and the roar. Before I fainted.

His frown folded into a wryly amused expression. “Cam, you mean? I don’t think I’ll let you meet Cam just yet.

“Let’s start over.” Teacher Hand sounded almost as tired as she felt. “Why’d you attack me?”

Aria shrugged her aching shoulders. “This despised one assumed that as she was of no further use, her Teacher would abandon her.”

Against all expectation, his expression looked pained. Aria felt taken aback. Perhaps Teacher Hand was not so much the high-house fool she had taken him for.

Don’t relax too far yet, she warned herself. You still know nothing at all about what’s going on, and he still has your stones.

“How did you end up in the…that room?” asked Teacher Hand.

She measured him again. If only she had enough strength to fight. She could kick for his head. She could find the door to the outside. If only she knew something, anything about this place she was in, about this “Cam” who lurked out of sight. If only she wasn’t so dizzy and thirsty…

Stop whining and think of something you can tell him that he might believe.

“I was following you, Teacher,” Aria said.

“You were what?” His voice broke on the last word.

“When your Lordship vanished, a lot of rumors started ’round First City. You’d been caught thieving. Your older brother’d killed you to save the family later embarrassment. Teacher Fire in the Dark had finally caught you sleeping with his wife…”

“Where in the Realm of the Nameless did you hear that!” Teacher Hand roared.

“There’s very little the Notouch don’t hear.” Her mouth twitched. “The rumor that stuck was that you’d decided adultery and misusing your power gift were too small a set of heresies and that you’d gone with a gaggle of the Skymen over the World’s Wall.” That part, at least, was true. “This despised one chose to believe that rumor and wanted to find out how your Lordship had managed it. She succeeded.” Aria hoped he couldn’t tell how much that idea unsettled her.

He looked at his naked hands, then at her, then at his hands again. His face went sick and angry about something he didn’t voice.

“Would your Lordship be so merciful as to give this despised one a drink of water?” Aria bowed her head.

“You are free to stop that crap any time.” Teacher Hand stood up. “I do not know where you got the nerve, Notouch. It doesn’t go with your hand marks.” He paused. “You never did tell me your call name.”

“Aria,” she answered, hoping civility might speed up the process of getting her water.

He snorted. “It would be. Listen, Aria, Teacher Hand is dead and washed away. I am called Eric Born.”

“Eric Born” crossed the room with a careful sideways step that never completely turned his back to her. He drummed his fingers against some mosaic tiles on the far wall. A hole opened underneath his hand. Out of the hole, he pulled out a clear cup of water.

Despite her best intentions, Aria felt her jaw flap open.

Eric Born’s mouth spread in a sharp grin. He seated himself back on the table and held out the cup to her.

Waiting to see how I’ll react, she told herself. Keep it reined in, Aria.

As smoothly as possible, she swallowed the water. It swished uncomfortably in her empty stomach, but she drained the cup anyway. She needed it, badly.

“Thank you.” She added neither honorific or insult.

He set the cup down. “What did they, the Rhudolant Vitae, do after they put you in that room?”

“Kept me there, mainly. Every now and then one of them would come in with a box of some sort and wave it around in the air and babble at me. It sounded like they were trying to talk. I thought they were insane. Then I thought I’d been wrong and they were Aunorante Sangh. Then"—she shrugged—"I started to wonder if I would be stuck in a single room for the rest of my life. Then they brought you to me.

“Is there anything to eat?”

Teacher…Eric Born made a gurgling sound as if he was trying to keep down a laugh.

“You do not have any idea what you have gotten yourself into, do you know that?” He looked down into the empty cup. “No matter. I suppose I had better feed you.” He rubbed his chin. “But I had better show you something first.”

“What?” New fear squeezed against the water in her stomach as she watched Eric approach the room’s far wall.

“Where you really are.” He laid his long hand against the tan surface.

The wall vanished. Where it used to be hung a formless blackness streaked with minute rainbow lights. It stretched up, down, and on all sides. Her eyes strained to find an end, a boundary, anything to give it shape and sense, but there was nothing. Endless, it yawned at her. An open mouth waiting to engulf her mind and soul.

She screamed. She threw herself backward and curled up into a tight little ball, knees pressed tight against her forehead, her belly muffling her shrieks. A voice gibbered at her, said her name, and finally shouted at her, but she could not look up. The blackness waited to swallow her whole. There was no end. No end.