Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

No, they had not, and the realization came back to her like an echo.

*

The cultists had taken care to provide her with forged documents to allow her back into Villjamur, as a woman, and without any attention being drawn to her history.

As she rode up to the main gates of Villjamur, guided only so far by the cultist associate on horseback, she had been mortified to witness the tent-city outside, where refugees had massed. A humanitarian disaster spread for half a mile along the main road into Villjamur, a settlement of tin shacks and canvas houses and small pit fires that leaked paltry trails of smoke. Grubby and layered in rags, people bore expressionless faces, yet eyed her closely as she rode through their mass. Now and then she spotted people clothed in fine Jorsalir robes, handing out flatbreads. It was a haunting trek up to the gates.

After passing through the high levels of security at the gates of the city, a task made effortless due to the fine faked documents produced by Cayce, there was a small administrative matter to attend to, where she had to collect her key from one of the sub-Council posts annexed to the Villjamur Inquisition, which merely required a number to be recited and money would be handed over.

Is it really that easy to be reborn in Villjamur?

She eventually strode back to her family’s old home, a large two-up, two-down on the fourth level of the city.

Nostalgia washed over her as the lanes and crumpled granite facades ignited her memories. When she stood inside for the first time, smelling the musk of her dead parents, she immediately began the process of shredding all traces of her former existence — letters and deeds and heirlooms. The Caine family name was assiduously eradicated from Villjamur. Despite the fact that she had been left the property, despite clear evidence that her parents must still have possessed some love for her, for her own sanity she needed to purge the past. Like herself, she would have the house transformed. She had suspected that many of the rooms would hold bad memories for her, but she was relieved to discover that she had blocked much of her childhood from her mind. Memories were unreliable at the best of time, but over the years she had accepted what her parents felt towards her, accepted their hatred of who and what she was. As she let them go for the last time, she felt relief. Lan repeated to herself that people only ever feared and loathed anything that was different. Her transformation was nearing completion.

*

Lan had been in Villjamur for twenty days since her operation on Ysla, and her body still hadn’t fully recovered from the procedures. Bruises had formed in surprising places, and she discovered internal aches in previously unknown regions. Just underneath her ribs, a small, knife-thin wound was noticeable, but aside from that there was very little in the way of actual scarring. She felt moments of acute weakness and dizzy spells and occasional nausea but, over time, they too diminished. By the twentieth day of her return, she was feeling well again.

Ever so slowly, she was learning what it was like to be a woman in Villjamur. It was years since she had lived in the city, and there was a lot to get used to.

Lan was now fully — anatomically — a woman. She possessed the same rights as a woman, and she would be treated by others like a woman. But the city, it seemed, was not constructed for the benefit of womankind. Doors were opened, quite literally, and that was rather lovely at first, but she became ultra-sensitive to further gestures from men. She did not feel especially pretty, but could feel their gazes. Looks from others were penetrating and loaded with new psychology, and other women seemed to judge her out-of-touch fashions. Whenever she spoke up in the iren, the traders would patronize her. She sought employment — she had enough money for the short term, but wanted to be out doing something, engaging with the world, and with enough wealth to live well. She wandered from street to street, up and down the levels for several days, exploring what work was available.

The few job offers available were positions such as waitressing or making clothing. Guilds seemed to bar many female members, and she could hardly pursue a ‘career’ as housewife. If she really wanted she could have joined the military, who accepted women, but a life enduring extreme conditions at the fringes of the Empire wasn’t quite what she had in mind. Still, she had time on her hands, which meant she possessed something greater than most women in the city: the luxury of choice.

During her routine search for employment a bizarre sense of paranoia followed her. Whether it was acclimatizing to her new body, or something sinister, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t help feel that she was being actively monitored. Were the cultists observing her in some perverse reality experiment? Cayce did suggest he might try to locate her at some point to check on her adaptation to the magic — no, technology, that was what he called it, and he corrected her every time she used the ‘m’ word.

Maybe they were watching her. Maybe they were keeping her safe.

*

One morning, with sleet in the air and a distant tang of frying food, Lan was browsing stalls, searching for spices to cook her evening meal. The iren was packed with soldiers, their swords unsheathed and exposed to the crowds.

Lan wondered why such an innocent location required so many soldiers from a Regiment of Foot, in their intimidating mud-brown uniforms and cheap armour. The iren was busy nonetheless, with row upon intricate row of commercial activity. Fish traders had all sorts of specimens lined up under coloured awnings, whilst smiths were out hawking their wares — new blades or shields crafted from stronger metal. Cheap gemstones were being promenaded in handcarts that clattered across the cobbles, whilst trails of young women fawned over them. Everywhere were shouts of orders and prices as vendors grilled spiced seafood over hot coals.

‘Lan!’

Was that someone calling her name?

‘Lan!’

No one in the city could have known her, especially not as she was now. Foolishly, she turned around to see who it was Slam. Screams rippled across the plaza.

One of the last images she remembered was of a group of soldiers rushing forward — then retreating under newer orders.

Two punches to her stomach and a strike around her head and she blacked out.

*

Later, when her groggy head cleared, figures garbed in long grey coats with scarves around their mouths came into her cell and bombarded her with questions. Lan was hunched sideways on a mattress, rope around her chest, handcuffs binding her wrists, digging into her skin. Beneath her restraints, she was wearing a thick grey tunic over black breeches, but inexplicably she felt it somehow wasn’t enough.

Lan could soon see that the cell was actually more like a bedroom, which was not what she imagined a prison unit to be, and it suggested that she wasn’t in immediate trouble. People came into the room. The figures jutted lanterns towards her face with severe motions. Relentlessly they asked her questions, demanding her to confirm details they seemed to already know.

She was forced to confirm she had been taken to Ysla to visit the cultists.

She felt their interrogation to be deeply abusive. Soon she wanted to cry but she wouldn’t let herself, not in front of them. It was carefully explained to her that her body had already proven extremely adaptive to ancient technologies. If they knew that, why did they ask questions?

What was it Cayce had said? Not everyone is as pliable as you. And the words were repeated back to her at least twice.

At first she told them little — paranoid and deeply afraid that she would lose a sense of her new self, as much as anything else.