Queen of faces, p.7
Queen of Faces, page 7
When I woke, my name had slipped from my memory.
The rest shone clear like polished glass. I remembered my past, my Ousting, Samuel’s face, thank the Prophets. The lacerations on my mind felt clinical and precise. They couldn’t wipe everything from my old life. Not without inducing serious side-effects.
But still, my name eluded me. The more I reached for its syllables, the more it faded into the distance. Just like they had promised.
Pain swelled in my chest. Samuel. Since we were kids, I hadn’t spent more than a week without seeing his face. As an Ousted noble, I was now forbidden from practicing magic by Caimorian law, entering Paragon or seeing anyone from my old life. If we were caught together, I would be sent to prison.
Something hard pressed against my back, and my eyes snapped open. I was sitting in a dry bathtub, wearing ragged trousers and a shirt. Someone else’s bathtub.
I jumped to my feet, scanning my surroundings. A thin layer of grime covered the lavatory floor, and dust coated the mirror. The Eldritch Guard had warned me of blackouts, a temporary side-effect of the memory wipe. Numbness filled my body, and my head ached.
I staggered out of the bathtub and leaned against the mouldy wall. The lavatory sat in a tiny studio apartment, lit by faint moonlight through a window. Out in the main room, rubbish covered the carpeted floor – newspapers, food wrappers and soda cans. Grey blotches stained a mattress in the corner, and the stench of mildew hung in the air.
I gagged, and snapped my fingers, flipping the light switch with my magic. The bulb overhead stayed dark, which meant something had broken. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what, of course. At Paragon, we used candles and oil lamps, and if something acted up, we simply called the prefect.
A yellow envelope sat on a pile of dirty laundry, legible in the moonlight. The date of my Ousting was scrawled on it, with two more dates crossed off beneath.
I’d been in this rathole for two days.
I pulled a yellow letter from the envelope. It included a public utilities form that would charge up my electricity. This room was mine for a month, but after that, I was on my own.
I glanced around the piles of filth. In merely forty-eight hours, I’d turned this studio into a landfill.
I sidled back towards the loo, reading the end of the letter.
Legal Name: #516-R
This was my name now. If I wanted it changed, I’d have to dig through more red tape.
I glanced at the mirror. Dirt covered the surface, and it hung crooked. I extended my Pith into it, adjusting the glass and scrubbing it clean with magic. At the same time, I leaned down and splashed water on my face. I breathed in, closing my eyes, forcing a layer of calm over the writhing tempest in my mind.
Then I straightened myself and froze at the sight before me.
A tall boy stared at me through the mirror, his brown hair short and tousled. Tiny dots of light gleamed behind his green eyes. Stars. A long thin scab stretched from his forehead to his jaw. Across his beautiful, boyish face.
A boy.
I jerked back, tensing my Pith in the glass, clenching it like a fist.
The mirror exploded, and my hand moved in a blur. Glass shards shattered on the tile walls and embedded themselves in the ceiling.
My eyes flitted forward, directly in front of me.
My fingers were clutching a glass fragment, inches from my eye. Snatched a moment before death.
I gazed into the fragment, and the boy gazed back at me. I blinked, and he blinked.
‘How about that.’ My voice sounded deep and heavy, like distant thunder in a storm.
I flung the shard at the wall and went to take a bath.
Once it wasn’t coated in dirt, this chassis had some aspects I could appreciate. It boasted strong, lean muscles from head to toe. Its star-woven face looked sharp and elegant, its diagonal scab already fading into a thin scar. And with its height, I towered over men and women both, an oddly pleasant feeling.
I had never enjoyed the deepest connection with my old designer bodies. They were flawless, fine-tuned to the highest standard of Caimorian beauty. But I’d felt like a fake in them. An outline in the shape of a girl.
My new face would serve me well.
Samuel’s voice echoed in my head, guiding me towards the right path. Clean your room, pumpkin. Fill out that form. Your future self will thank you.
The oceans were rising, and I was sleeping in a bathtub. There was nothing good to be found in the future. Or the self, for that matter.
So instead, I combed my hair, washed an outfit and went out into the fetid streets of Lowtown.
Simple fool, my mother whispered in my mind. Could you get any lazier?
The stench of rubbish hung in the air like fog, permeating every corner. Drunkards filled the pavement, dressed in ill-fitting caps and moth-eaten trousers. Five minutes in, I glimpsed a man urinating in an alleyway.
After a spate of club-hopping, I found myself in a Lowtown gambling den. More than half the people there had black sphinx tattoos on the backs of their hands. Black Arrows. The common thugs of Commonplace. Paramilitary goons who’d graduated from street protests to armed violence. Their name came from the dark arrow in their insignia, piercing the heart of the Paragon sphinx. They’d earned a reputation for brutality. I even saw a wanted murderer sharpening a knife in the corner: Rutger Boote, charged with the death of a Paragon student. A sorry collection of bigoted Humdrums, plus a handful of mages too stupid to pass the entrance exam. Every one of them carried a gun at their hip, or a knife up their sleeve.
My mother had told me all about these people. These terrorists would probably welcome me, an Ousted mage, as a mercenary or a proper member of Commonplace. I could be a cog in their revolution, like I’d joked to my mother. An accomplice in their quest to tear down Paragon and empty their coffers.
But I was no terrorist. I was no thug.
So instead, I joined one of their card games. And I started cheating. Using basic paper magic, I could read every hand and stack every deck.
‘You’re awfully skilled at this game, boy,’ growled a bald Humdrum at the table.
I shrugged and avoided his gaze. I’d spent my life around Paragon, where everyone wore fabricated bodies. Next to them, these bigots looked like blubber fish. Pimples and blemishes, unbalanced features. It all looked so unnatural, like weeds springing up in a garden.
‘I just have more free time to practise,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you have your hands full, sharing pamphlets and everything.’
‘What’s your name, boy?’ he said, a hint of threat in his voice.
A dull ache swelled in my chest, and I shrugged. To be honest, I didn’t want a fresh name, even a fake. Any way I looked at it, picking a new one felt like killing something precious. It wasn’t that I’d loved my old name. In fact, a part of me had hated it.
But that name had meant I was a noble. A future headmistress, or minister or admiral of the Home Fleet. A girl who sparked magic at her fingertips, who dined with heroes and visionaries. A girl to be loved, feared and envied all at once.
To choose a new name was to admit defeat. To embrace the hollow, penniless life of a Humdrum.
I scooped up my poker chips. ‘Lovely game. Let’s do it again sometime.’ As I stood, a girl winked at me from the bar, smiling. I strode to the exit, ignoring her.
Back at the apartment, the electricity form seemed even longer, more impossible to start. This is absurd. I was the daughter of a great Caimorian house. I could best some of the deadliest young mages in the Eight Oceans, and here I was, losing to a utility form.
The stench of rubbish filled the apartment. The mattress pressed into me, hard and lumpy. Without Samuel, it felt so cold.
I curled up beneath the sheets. If I thought hard enough, I could pretend I was back in my dorm, snuggled under silk with my fiancé.
I rested my head on a pile of dirty laundry and didn’t fall asleep.
My gardens were quite the chore to infiltrate. With all the Commonplace hubbub lately, my mother had hired round-the-clock security, armed Humdrums guarding every inch of the hundred-acre perimeter.
She wasn’t just any noble lady, after all: she was an admiral. These gardens were my mother’s lair, where she hosted parties and toyed with Caimor’s upper crust. Sums of money exchanged hands, and cabinet positions were traded in between canapés. On paper, Caimor’s Humdrum Parliament had ruled the nation since the drowning of the Star Prophets, parties and MPs all shouting it out on behalf of their voters.
On paper, at least. They were the orchestra, but people like my mother wrote the music, in quiet places like this.
I gazed at a statue of Westyn Aethelyn, the last immortal king of the Star Prophets. His magical bloodline had broken millennia ago, his empire drowning beneath the weight of eight oceans. When my father was alive, he loved to claim he had a few drops of royal blood, that some sliver of Westyn’s kingliness had found its way into his heart. A rumour started by his great-grandfather. Unsubstantiated. And foolish. In the modern century, power didn’t come from a name, or even magical prowess. It came from money. Big factories and bigger contracts. A percentage on foreign oil futures. A handshake at a quiet garden party.
This would’ve been my life, without my Ousting. Hosting events with Samuel. Drawing eyeballs like moths to a flame, devouring their attention. Shaping the arc of history like a knife carving meat.
It would’ve been perfect.
The guards were watching the perimeter, but none of them were patrolling inside. I waited for a gap and floated myself over the tall iron fence, lifting my clothes with cloth magic. I dropped on to a bed of tulips, the corner of my family’s estate. Further in, the pale stone roof of the mansion rose over the trees. The style of a rustic manor, broad and shallow, plucked from the country and shoved into the dense streets of the capital.
This was perhaps the most foolish thing I had ever done. If I was caught here, my mother would send me to prison.
But I needed to see him. Even if he didn’t see me.
I darted past trees and flower beds, statues and fountains, approaching a tall, circular hedge. When we were kids, Samuel and I had sleepovers here on a picnic blanket, during the warm nights of late summer. We’d gazed at the empty sky, and wondered what stars might have looked like thousands of years ago. Before they’d vanished.
When I reached the enclosure, it was empty, save for a painting canvas, sitting next to a dry easel and a pile of brushes. Samuel had been here recently.
I inched closer to the painting, gazing at it. Two children stood on the surface of a lake, their tiny shoes rippling on the water. A girl and a boy, holding each other’s hands. One with golden hair, the other dark blond, moonlight shining on their faces.
It was us. Or rather, us as we had been, years ago. I’d been summering with his family in the forest west of Elmidde, a private resort for the nobles of Caimor. Both my parents had been oceans away, fighting the Shenti, risking their lives to defend this country. My father had always been distant, and my mother cruel and demanding. But still, I had never felt more alone.
Samuel knew what that was like. His family had fled here from Shenten when he was a child, bringing half a billion pounds but no noble title. They’d given him a Caimorian name, and a Caimorian body so he’d fit in, but the other kids still bullied him. Still called him names.
But through all the fire, his spirit had held firm. On our first night together, he had taken me out to the lake and taught me the Water Walk spell, showing me how to stride on liquids like they were solid ground. We’d skated over the lake together like it was ice, bathed in moonlight.
My melancholy hadn’t lasted long.
On the canvas, a smile had been painted on to my face. A bright, warm smile I hadn’t worn in years. Hadn’t worn since we were children.
I had forgotten that smile. But he hadn’t.
Something swelled in my chest. A burning resolve, ten times stronger than before. I turned from the painting and slipped through the gardens, keeping out of sight. In fifteen minutes, I reached a line of hedge sculptures by the northern wall of my mansion, woven into the shapes of rearing horses. I ducked behind the closest one and peered through the branches into a tall window.
My mother ate breakfast at a long iron table in our dining room, dressed in her spotless admiral’s uniform. She sipped her tea, a thin smile playing on her lips.
I saw the next diner, and my jaw tightened.
It was me. Or rather, the thief inhabiting my body, with a name I couldn’t even remember. A slender girl with golden hair, stuffing her dainty mouth. It was like looking into a warped mirror. The impostor dug into a strawberry shortcake, smearing whipped cream on her cheek. The girl still ate like a Humdrum. With my face. My mouth. My teeth.
But the worst came last.
Samuel sat at the far end of the table, his dark blond hair combed and pristine. His eggs sat untouched, his tea cold. He stared at his plate, his eyes hollow.
The impostor said something, and my mother laughed. Samuel didn’t react.
And then, he saw me.
Samuel glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and his grip tightened on his silverware. His whole body seemed to clench up, then sag, like a cut flower dying in a vase. A look of utter despair.
I wasn’t in his future any more. I couldn’t be, without risking prison. Without risking his Ousting as well. I’d been replaced, with a new girl who got pristine marks, who didn’t get into fights or talk back to teachers. A brilliant, responsible daughter, like my mother had always wanted. A mind that burned like a star, that strived to be an Exemplar.
I would never speak to Samuel again. And the next time he saw that smile from the lake, it wouldn’t belong to me. For all intents and purposes, he was just as dead as my father. And so was I.
Something crumpled in my mind, and I stalked away, turning my back on my family’s estate.
I needed a distraction.
when i was nine, we buried my body in the backyard.
People often sold their bodies when they swapped out, but mine had a terminal illness in its skull, which meant we had to get rid of it somehow, and my mother couldn’t afford a plot in the cemetery. I wore a strange new face, a rough, gangly Edgar I already hated.
Cold fog swept over the plains. A man from the village lowered the corpse as I knelt beside him. My mother covered my face, but I pushed her hand aside. I had to see.
Because it wasn’t just any lifeless girl he was cradling in his arms. It was me. The grey eyes I’d seen in the mirror every morning. The sleek black hair my mother would comb before school. The fraying blue overalls I wore all the time, now too small for my new chassis.
The doctor had told us we were lucky. My mother had found a replacement body in weeks, so I’d transferred before suffering permanent brain damage.
I didn’t feel lucky. I wanted to scream at him. But I’d just nodded.
The man shovelled dirt into the hole, covering my face. My mother rubbed my shoulders, murmuring that my new body would be just as good, that nothing else would have to change.
Even then, I knew she was lying.
This felt the exact same.
I pressed a hand against my old chassis, and reached into the darkness. My arm glowed blue. As my Pith rushed back into my Edgar, I gasped for breath in two bodies and gazed with two sets of eyes.
Then it was done. The star-woven girl with her hand on my forehead was empty. Dead. The stars in her black eyes faded. Blood poured from the hole in her stomach. The beautiful world of clarity had vanished, replaced by the usual numbness, the same bland taste in my mouth.
I stood, my black trousers stained with blood, my forehead covered with a crimson handprint. Carriwitch unlocked my Voidsteel cuffs, and I pulled the dark blue raincoat off the corpse that had been me. A tiny hole had been ripped in the back from the headmaster’s pencil.
‘Welcome to the team, Ana.’ He strode across the rusted railway bridge, away from the slums and back towards the cramped streets of Lowtown. As he walked, he waved his hand and the blood drained out of my clothes, off my skin, flowing into the water.
I followed him through the rain-drenched alleyways, a familiar weight on my shoulders. The lights of Paragon shone in the clouds, faint and distant.
‘I must admit, Ana,’ said Carriwitch, ‘you’ve got me rather curious. There are easier ways to get a new chassis. What caught your eye about Paragon?’
‘It’s private,’ I mumbled.
‘Of course,’ said Carriwitch, half-smiling. ‘That’s your business. But we’re about to enter a professional relationship. Your business, I’m afraid, is also my business. So, tell me, what drew you to our school?’
I took a slow, deep breath. ‘Do you remember Khaiovhe’s final crime? Her last public act, before she vanished.’
Carriwitch nodded. ‘The Stemford Dam attack, in the Agricultural Islands. She blew up a dam over a village. An unfortunate incident.’
‘I was playing near the edge of town,’ I said. ‘Imagine a wall of water crashing into you, swift as a hawk and heavy as a train. Throwing you about until you can’t tell up from down. Filling your lungs, choking you in the darkness.’ I smiled. ‘And then, light. White fire burning away the water, erasing it. You can see. You can breathe. Your saviour stands before you. And he’s just a boy.’
‘Adam Weaver.’ The air felt warmer as Carriwitch said those words. The dark corners of Lowtown looked a little brighter.
I nodded. ‘Adam Weaver.’
‘That was the day he discovered his Codex,’ said Carriwitch. The day he’d become a legend.
‘He was an orphan,’ I said. ‘A kid like me, with two shillings and a pencil to his name. He thought he was ordinary. But on that day, magic ignited in his mind, and he saved thousands.’ I gazed up at the clouds. ‘I’ve dreamed of Paragon ever since. What kid hasn’t?’
I didn’t tell him the rest of my story. That I’d stayed in the hospital for a night, after hitting my head. That a month after my discharge, I’d passed out during breaktime. That I’d gone to a doctor and learned my injury had given me an infection: bacteria, multiplying in my brain. The waters were gone, but I was still drowning. This Edgar had been the only solution. And as it turned out, a temporary one.
