The Past
A few hours later, Oren fell into his bed beside Ava's.
"You find anything?" she asked, voice muzzy with sleep and drugs.
"Tell you later," he said. "I'm wrecked." He was hungover and confused. He lay there, his eyes closed, and tried to sort out the various parts of a story about a man named Ostry, a man with Galeas' face if the mnemosyte repository was to be believed. Between Decimus and him, they had managed to put together several pieces of the puzzle that made up Galeas'—Ostry's—past, but there were still gaps. There were records of a military tribunal.
Commander Ostry had, with a team, dropped through a blind spot behind enemy defenses. The metallic gleam of their wings in the moonlight was some of the last light Ostry would see for over a year. Oren tried to imagine it, remembering the borrowed memories trapped in dragonshards.
"They sure as miststorms did shaft you, Dad," he said, and Ava stirred in the next bed.
Ostry's team were just hovering there deploying some cutting-edge magic when they were hit by an abjinurium bomb—Oren hadn't known such things existed—and then lances of fire sheared them out of the air. Ostry and his team had been training for three years, and it was over just like that, falling and falling toward the frozen steppe.
There were gaps in the story here, where Oren witnessed historical testimonies about the flight of a commandeered armored carriage that managed to reach the border to be gutted by an antique cannon manned by green cadets on dawn alert. The story had ended for Ostry on the outskirts of a foreign capital, being sawed out of the twisted belly of the carriage to be rushed to the healers. The war ended nary a fortnight later, and Ostry was shipped to a military hospital, blind, legless, and missing most of his jaw. It took a bureaucrat eleven months to find him there. He listened to the buzz and hum of magical devices keeping alive, helping heal what was left of him.
Politics demanded that he testify. He would need eyes, legs, and quite a bit of work to make him look human again, the bureaucrat said, but necromancers could be arranged. He gave Ostry a squeeze to the shoulder through sweat-damp linens. Ostry said he preferred to testify as he was. But the bureaucrat said no; this wasn't just for the military, and civilians could be squeamish. That was not the sort of drama they wanted to unfold. And so, repaired and extensively rehearsed, Ostry's subsequent testimony was detailed, moving, lucid, and largely the invention of the bureaucrat's boss and people with vested interest in maintaining certain parts of the status quo. He gradually understood that the testimony was instrumental in saving the careers of two women and a man directly responsible for the suppression of reports on the building of abjinurium bombs.
Then, Ostry was unwanted. In a restaurant, the bureaucrat explained the terminal dangers inherent in talking to the wrong people. Ostry crushed his throat with his bare hand. Then, he stepped out into the cool air of Ash.
Each thing that seemed to make it impossible for Ostry to be Galeas was explained. Some of the memories were his. Some observers of trials, interrogations, and the like. Oren was suddenly aware of how complex the power structures were not only among the oligarchs of Cathena, but the nobles of Auris and the various other governments and cartels across Ailizane and Ecith. Oren watched Ostry work defectors, where he seemed to grow obsessed with the idea of betrayal, to loathe the magicians and artisans he bought out for his employers. Drunk in Hopsfel, he beat a Zaichaeri witch to death in an inn and set fire to his room.
Next, he surfaced in Tertium, as overseer of a drug factory. Then as an enforcer for a gambling cartel in Karnor. Then as an assassin in Gel'Grandal. He robbed a bank in Tehn'Rhorn. The records grew vague, shadowy, the gaps longer. One day, he had a memory that suggested drugged interrogation and everything went gray. Then there was a translation from Norvaegan that an unknown madman had been taken to a sanitarium in Grimholdt. He became catatonic and became the subject of an experimental program to cure madness through the application of magic and therapy. He was cured, the only success in the entire experiment, and that was the end of anything pertaining to a man named Ostry.
He still didn't know how Ostry had become Galeas, but at some point he slept.
There was a knock on the door and Ava cursed softly. Oren got up and padded over to answer it.
"Yeah?"
"We're leaving," said Galeas. "Tonight."
"What does the bastard want?" Ava asked.
"Says we're leaving tonight," he said over his shoulder, bruised hazel eyes not leaving the calm face of the father he barely knew. No, he didn't know him at all.
"That's just wonderful," Ava mumbled, rolling out of her bed and turning on a lamp.
Galeas was rattling off logistics to Oren, who halted him.
"What about my gear?" he asked.
"Phergus will handle it," said Galeas, and left.
Oren watched Ava pack. There were dark circles under her eyes, but even with the plaster cast on, it was like watching a dance. No wasted motion. His own clothes were a rumpled pile beside his bag.
"You hurting?" he asked.
"Life is pain," she told him, a call-and-response from his childhood. He knew how to finish it.
"You just get used to it."
Later, on a train, Ava stared out the window.
"It was like this when we were headed back to Cathena. We were in Silfanore. He came in and said to pack, we were going to Sangen. When we got there, I played hazard in an underground casino and he crossed into the Imperium. Next day I had orders to find you." She took a silk scarf from her sleeve and polished a pair of aura glass spectacles she had acquired. The motion and the landscape passing outside brought up confused memories of childhood for Oren. The train began to decelerate, and he watched the sun begin to rise.
*~*~*
The Present
Aurin came.
Under his desk, his secretary swallowed, tidied him up and reset his trousers before slithering out to stand beside him, running the back of his hand lovingly over the bristle of auburn beard. The younger man's hair was a bit unkempt now, his eyes dreaming, his smile drunk, the lower half of his face reddened from abrasion. He tidied himself, then, raking his fingers back through his hair. Aurin seemed unperturbed, taking all this as his due. The younger man topped off his tumbler of whiskey, and then thanked him sincerely for the pleasure.
Aurin grunted, and began to look over the requests that Yserloo and Elric had made and began to calculate how he could make them work without breaking the budget.
The door closed behind his secretary and the smallest smile appeared on his face. He was a good boy, and he looked up to Aurin. The man could work with that. And he could work with these requests. Compared to the wheelings and dealings he did with his keiretsu, this was just a game to pass the time.
The fox played the artistic director and the angel investor against each other when necessary, deflecting, proving to be both their best friend when it came to matters of the theater. Somehow, he always managed to fund Elric's visions, Yserloo's parties, pulling through against all odds. He had even persuaded Yserloo to personally fund things and make it seem like his own idea, lauding him for his generosity and assuring him that he could ensure the funds were deductable from his taxes.
There was a knock at the door, but when it opened, it was one of the young Whispers he had found a job for here at the theater. His secretary knew who to let in. Good lad.
When the door closed behind her, Aurin set his spreadsheets aside. He didn't stand. Sometimes they were still a bit leery of those who loomed tall over them.
"Something on your mind?" he asked. He didn't hide his aura from them—not much. They understood needing secrecy, and he kept parts of his aura inverted, but he let down more walls with them than he did with most.
"You're going to Zaichaer again." It wasn't a question.
He nodded, motioned for her to take a seat if she so desired. She didn't. Instead, she placed a silk rose on his desk. It was a new hobby for her, but he was encouraging of such things, finding tutors who were multitalented for the children.
"Lovely," he said, picking it up carefully and examining it.
The ghost of a smile flickered across her face.
"You said you buried Rick." Another statement that wasn't a question. He nodded again. "We have his soul still. I know it's not in his body anymore, but... would you please put that on his grave for me?"
She was learning to invert her aura as well, but he could sense the loss and grief all the same. He nodded solemnly.
"There are still Grymalka tending to their Necropolis. I will visit them first and lay your flower down for him."
"Thanks."
