To Negotiate

Raum and Aquila return to the border of the mercantile and the industrial district. A makeshift field hospital has been assembled there, with many people whizzing about to transport the more severely injured to proper hospitals, the dead to morgues, and themselves to the sides of misplaced loved ones. Though significantly injured himself, Raum falls into that last group. Aquila first forwards Toreas’ sword to an attendant, then gives Raum a feather and instructs him to go to the hall the local officials are using to hold Reyl and order her release, with the feather being his pass to do so without too many questions. Aquila himself, meanwhile, has to convene with said local officials and begin organising the collection of missing bodies and souls. So for now, they’re splitting up, and Raum has free rein to move.

He goes to the hall, flashes the feather, and indeed reconvenes with Reyl without any trouble. Part of him is grateful for how easy it is. The rest is somewhat unsettled by Aquila’s confidence that he would behave exactly as instructed. And more unsettled by the fact that Aquila’s reading of him is totally correct, as he braces himself to argue against Reyl for the merits of hearing the proposal, and not ditching.

Reyl, injured from resisting capture but settled by exhaustion now, agrees with a grunt that she’ll hear it. As a businessperson, she is not unfamiliar with delicate negotiations, and as a reasonably cautious individual, she judges running in their weak position as unfeasibly reckless. Plus, listening gives them at least a hint of Aquila’s real intentions. It might not be a lot, and might not be enough to escape him without using violence later, but it’s something.

As Reyl brings Raum upstairs to retrieve her confiscated belongings, Raum fills Reyl in on his misadventure. After a pause, she grins and complements him for handling Toreas without her, but her silence and pained squint afterwards betrays more than a hint of discomfort. She dismisses it and pockets her belongings, which include the radio and the deadly recording. Though Raum has to wonder about her keeping the latter, a lightly challenging look from her blocks him from questioning it seriously. You get to rope me into a chat with Aquila, I get to have a good weapon in my pocket. Even’s even. Raum can’t argue with that.

With the situation settled into one of relative calm, and little to do but wait for Aquila to return, the pain of Raum’s burns, cuts, and blisters asserts itself intensely. Though it’s hard to look away from the panic and relief and misery unfolding all about the square, Reyl encourages him to get treatment. But just as Raum trawls around with the nurses, and finds someone to hook him up with painkillers, a messenger comes.

Aquila is ready to speak with them.

Raum and Reyl meet Aquila in the office of a nearby guildhouse. Its usual occupants have been vacated, replaced by city officials and their servants flitting around, all assembling damage reports and placating media criers. The upstairs, though, is much quieter, and it’s there that the three can privately talk, seated around a large table.

Aquila begins by confirming that Reyl has been filled in, then proceeds to reiterate some points they already know. Chiefly, the point that Raum and Reyl are, Ordish heritage aside, legally entitled to the covetably extensive peerages and holdings of the Whitewood family. Aquila is willing to formally transition Raum and Reyl into the Asphodelean aristocracy, with unfettered access to the comfort and riches of their inheritance, under the stipulation that they stay within the country under Aquila’s personal political guidance. Conversely, he is also willing to overlook their ties to the Whitewood massacre, and secure them safe, private transport back to Ordanz, with the understanding that they forfeit their inheritance and formally denounce themselves from the Whitewood bloodline by doing so. Their political sway in Asphodel would accordingly be nil. Further, they would be marked through their activities in the Black Thorns as known associates of the Ordish House Seacrest, and thus be barred from any kind of Asphodelean citizenship that would entitle them into the country under anything but spectacular circumstances.

Be Aquila’s puppets, or leave and never return. Those are the options.

Obviously this is an offer that is hard to take at face value. But Aquila assures them not to fear. His interest is not in killing them necessarily, but in defusing the political threat they represent. If he can achieve that by a means they all accept, then there’s no outcome more agreeable.

Reyl contests this claim by asking what the fuck the assassination attempt in Indris was, then.

A miscommunication, responds Aquila. He had tried several times to divert the twins from a course that would put them in danger — first by hiring Trivia Venn to, the night before the funeral, drug the alcohol in their villa with narcotics, then again to smuggle them to Ordanz. When she reported that she had not found them, he discerned this was a lie and that the twins had simply refused to leave. Then they appeared in Burmal in pursuit of the cult. Clearly they had invested themselves in untangling the Whitewood Massacre, and being that they were the event’s only remaining witnesses, Aquila saw it prudent to remove them before they started capitalising on their power.

But if you have no intention to do that, Aquila continues, then I have no reason to be so drastic.

Reyl frowns, dissatisfied. It’s true that if Aquila wanted them dead, he could have killed them at any time in the last hour. So contrariwise — he maybe wants them to take the deal. What would the consequence be if they refuse? And what would he even want them for?

Raum notes that if they did accept, Aquila would be giving them a platform from which they could challenge him. What does he gain that makes that gamble worth it?

Aquila smiles as if Raum just said something quite cute, but that look settles soon into puzzlement. He would hope the upgrade in lifestyle, from Ordish vault-dweller to Asphodelean nobility, would in itself buy some faith, as the offer fundamentally is one of goodwill. Moreover, he cannot see what the twins would gain by contesting him, and so does not think that possibility a serious concern. Are you moved to act on the honour of your departed kin?

Raum glances aside. What Aquila has done to the Whitewoods is certainly discomforting, and likely does deserve censure. The more that he thinks about it, the more fear rattles him like a drum. But he also remains utterly clueless as to why Aquila attacked them, and understands the subtext of this offer is that Aquila will exchange their disinvolvement in such affairs for peace. Scummy as it sounds, the idea of putting the whole issue to bed, or resolving it diplomatically after establishing some mutual trust, is far more enticing than opposing Aquila.

Reyl, of course, does not care about the Whitewoods at all.

Aquila nods, picking up the silence. He explains that he has achieved what he set out to do, and sees the option of resolving the tensions between them by establishing a cooperative relationship as an intriguing one. If he might confess, he is somewhat fond of the twins. But he understands if they would rather not invest in that, considering everything.

…It sounds like Aquila’s not really hungry. Which is to say, since he’s already won, it doesn’t really bother him if they go one way or another. He’s just offering to keep them because it works and it’s neat. Is it dumb to accept that?

…

Probably, but…

Raum glances to Reyl. The abrupt gulf of silence between the two stretches beyond awkward, into oppressive. Reyl requests to discuss with Raum in private, and Aquila grants this, gesturing them to a side room.

With the heavy shutting of the door, Reyl glances over the windows as if checking their feasibility as an escape route. Inexplicable exhaustion fills Raum as he watches this, but she too seems to realise that the windows are unsuitable exits, and that running is a bad idea anyway.

She rakes her fingers through her hair. As untrustworthy as she finds Aquila’s offer, running away means cementing their position towards Aquila as antagonistic. He then will have no reason not to respond to them with equal antagonism. If they want to get out of the corner they’re in, they do need to pick one of Aquila’s offers.

But which is right?, thinks Reyl.

Who cares?, thinks Raum.

Reyl rolls her shoulders and nods to herself, seeming to come to a solution. When she turns to Raum, and sees his guilty smile, she grimaces. Yeah, sorry sis. He’s here being an obstacle.

She jabs her finger at him. “Don’t let that piece of shit tempt you with any fancy ideas. Get out what you wanna say, then we’re leaving."

The first place his stupid mouth goes is, “He’s cute, Jay."

“Mhm. Set us up like turkeys in November, adorable. You’ll find a new one in a week."

And so the back-and-forth begins. As usual, it takes time before the frivolous pretences begin to fade. Because, does he think Aquila is cute? Yeah. Would he hinge his entire future on that fact? Of course not. It’s just that examining — arguing — the real reasons he wouldn’t want to go home is supremely uncomfortable.

Starting with, where would they go? Back to Welding? For all of Raum’s mixed feelings about their Mother, she was someone Raum’s conscience could gratefully blame for the horrific practises by which the place functioned. The money, the enterprise, and the high-class clientele had to keep flowing for the city not to collapse back into its original conception as yet another impoverished slave-vault. Raum would not allow that, and Reyl would not allow that. So what options were left? No business was more available or lucrative than the trade they already peddled. She would take the mantle, and the nauseatingly short distance between Raum and a few million sex slaves, broken women, beaten shopkeepers, routine murders, and eight-year-old crack addicts would close completely, until every atrocity would be Raum’s direct responsibility for failing to find an alternative.

Bitter as it was, he could only resign himself as weaker than Reyl and thus innocently powerless in her charge, or sacrifice that part of himself that yearned not to be totally corrupt.

As he considers this, a peculiar thought passes his mind: I’m not weaker than Reyl.

He rubs his temples, opens his eyes, and says, “If we went back, and I tried doing something different, would you support me?"

Reyl shifts curiously. “Like what?"

Like anything. Anything he could turn into an immortalised brand, anything he could sell to the topsies. Liquor, radios, steel, a patent for some genius new household device like a vacuum cleaner or washing machine. Anything legitimate that could obsolete and supplant their existing empire.

“I’d give you money," she says flatly.

It’s not really a ‘yes’. It’s a ‘you can try, but it’s pointless.’ Raum feels his heart thunk to the bottom of his chest.

He can admit his efforts probably would be fruitless. But Reyl’s cynicism hurts. Yeah, that’s my brother. Today he’ll be designing the revolution in dishrags that brings peace to every rat in a vault. Sweet, quirky little guy, ain’t he? Gotta make sure he’s got his food and a fresh thing of water…

Reyl pinches her brow, slides herself up to sit on the windowsill. Her prosthetic eye has gone missing somewhere, and she has grown too accustomed to its presence to naturally keep that missing eye closed. The exposed film of red flesh, coupled with the network of stitches and scars across her skin, abruptly strike Raum not as trophies of strength and survival, but as the markings of damage and failure they are.

She’s so fucking battered.

Grinning lightly, she withdraws the deadly recording from her pocket, twiddles it about in her hand. “Here’s a good thought."

“Jay…" Raum warns.

“Listen." She leans in, and divulges her plan. They don’t have to return to Welding. There are plenty of higher-ups in the Thorns savvy enough to keep the place going without Reyl. The city, and how it runs, doesn’t have to be their responsibility. Instead, they should sell this recording to Seacrest. They move out of vaults, buy a house in some quiet yuppie suburb, go native and retire into doing whatever the fuck low-tier topsies do. Fish. Go canoing. Work as librarians. Fucking whatever.

It strikes Raum as a weird kind of confession, and even weirder solution.

Count one: She’s as tired of her life in Welding as Raum is. She doesn’t want to keep fighting as some scary tough gangbanger; it’s all just a means to an end of them living comfortably. And despite regularly mocking dreams as suicidal delusions, she’s allowed herself this one little fantasy.

Count two: Seacrest obviously can’t have a weapon as exploitable as that recording. There’s no universe where Raum would allow it. …Unless, would he? Abruptly, fear lashes through him. Does Reyl, his twin, reckon him so submissive, and permissive, he wouldn’t dissuade her from utter heinousness? Is she right?

Looking back, he’s tempered her cruelty thousands of times. But he can find few moments where he ever prevented it, only ever compensated after the fact with reckless do-gooding ‘antics’. The observation urges the importance of nudging her off this track now.

“Forget the recording. It ain’t worth it."

When Reyl’s shoulders sag with resignation, but also acceptance, and she smoothly passes him the recording, the offer clicks. It was just an equalling of balances. She shot Raum’s hopes down, so she let him shoot hers down. She wasn’t really expecting him to go with it. Just daring the off-chance of: maybe… and giving it up, just as easily.

He can’t tell if that’s sad, or a marker of confidence, that she’ll get what she wants later anyway.

Raum counter-offers: “If we went with Aquila—"

“No," Reyl says. Not on the table.

Why’d he even try.

A vein throbs around her knuckles. Like an unloaded spring, beyond her control, her fist slams into the windowsill. She smooths the glare off her face and returns to a measured frown, as if she had not just done that.

He strains, “at least think about it…"

“I did," she says curtly.

Guilt lashes through him. Again, why’d he try.

She heaves herself off the sill, begins making for the door. “Suppose we’re going then."

Raum’s heart freezes. Wait, hold on. How was that exchange meant to convince him of anything? Hold up, Reyl. “Where’re you going? Sell me."

She laughs, but then jolts with fear. She rushes back to him and presses, the fuck does that mean? Sell him on what. On the fact that staying is suicide? That Aquila will use them then kill them? That Raum’s crushing and it’s clouding his judgement? That the very idea of there being more than one option for them is a lie? What. Sell him on what?

Raum’s voice cracks. “On... whatever we’ll be doing…"

“I’ll be there," she says reassuringly.

“What about this," he tries, “we forfeit the titles, but stay here—"

“—Fuck’s sakes, no. No! Fuck! What ideas did you get in your head that got you arguing this long?" What, you wanna be puffed-up flower prince? You want to prance around in silks while some nancy in high heels and a powdered wig plick-plucks La Vi En Rose? You want to think about what spoon to use when you cut into a goose-liver soup? You want to write poetry in cursive on cottonwood paper all scented with peach oil? You want the peasants running to kiss your knuckles and lick your feet? Really. You want that?

Well he wasn’t adverse to at least some of those ideas. But to say if he actively desired them, no.

No.

Evasions, evasions, evasions. A thousand walls of frivolous pretence between his soul and his mouth.

But the reality’s simple.

He hates Ordanz.

He could live comfortably to 99 in Ordanz, and dying there still wouldn’t be worth it.

The starvation. The poverty. The lack of history or tradition. The lack of art or wonder. The lack of common mysteries, symbols, and gods. The interchangeability of persons. The quantifiable worthlessness of life. The quickness with which friends betrayed, and the ease with which strangers became enemies. The knowledge that anything held special would be sold or eaten the instant it slipped from his grasp. That contemptuous manner toward everything that did not bring material status, wealth, or pleasure, questioning, “why on earth do you do that? Why do you care? You must be a little bit stupid."

Even the poorest in Asphodel, if given a chicken, would at least keep it for the eggs.

The poorest in Ordanz would just eat it.

Food food food! Who’s giving me food? Where’s nearest food? Do you have money so I can have food? Oh, you have food… grrr, gimme! If I am good and clever, I can have food. But if I am strong and mean, I can also take food! Hmm… I must be clever enough that so that the stronger, meaner ones love me, then maybe they won’t take my food… and if I am very good, maybe they will love me enough that they will give me theirs, even!

Even if they were learned and successful, the average Ordishman functioned on about the same strata as a locust. Even those from Welding who he loved, and even the ones who had tenderly raised him and Reyl, would think nothing of shearing his leg off and eating it if locked with him for a week in a room without food.

It wasn’t that he resented the people. As stated, many of them, he loved — as loci of familiarity, and warmth, and pity that shone in every good memory his life ever had. But constantly he rued, and wondered, what could you have been, if you hadn’t been so unfortunate as to be born in fucking Ordanz?

The place was a vacuum of virtue. A generous man would be picked dry in a minute. Dare give a coin to a beggar — a swarm of fifty more would materialise from the alleys around you, each reaching, shoving, and becoming emboldened to mug you if they sensed you would not, or could not, strike back. After spending the money they’d boast of their fortune, or if they’d gotten nothing, curse every vehicle that had not delivered that coin to their pocket, including the alms-giver. All this was fair and proper. Everyone living from the deepest gutter to the tallest skyscraper did it.

You had to keep secret the things that would let another become stronger than you. Such, nobody became very strong.

If ever you were in a position to take, that you would do so wasn’t even in question. You’d be foolish not to.

An exquisite sensitivity to power butchered every good inch of Ordanz. By any means, power! Else, you will die!

Half of him, he confesses, does have that sensitivity.

And the other half wishes that first half would shut up, so that he could enjoy bonds of genuine love and companionship without wondering, alright, who’s topping?

Reyl chuckles.

Hey dick-for-brains. That’s the entire damn world.

You think cause it’s dressed up in ceremony and etiquette, this place is any different? There’s a king sitting the room over who wants to shove his hand up your ass and work you like a puppet. Dude killed off his old retinue and conspired cross-ways of his own officials, even got one of them killed in the mixup. Know how he’s even able to offer such an outrageous deal as the one he is? It’s cause he’s in the right position to kill us with a click of the finger if we don’t play along. That speaks absolutely of a consciousness of power. But nobody looks hungry? You can’t see why they’d fuck you? That’s just the same thing as topsies; they got leeway enough to hide it. It all amounts to the difference between being strangled bare-handed and being smothered by a velveteen pillow. And the only purpose of the velveteen pillow is so that, as you die, your murderer can point to the other guy and say, “hey, at least I’m not hurting you!"

Raum contests: Even if that was the only difference, he’d rather not be hurt…

Reyl cackles. Oh, really! Know what the purpose of pain is? It’s the signal that you’re getting fucked. Now you know, now you feel it, and now you can do something about it. Denying that signal from firing is the most insidious trick in the book, and it gets employed because the guy with the knife trembles to think you really will do something. Say, know who the most unrepentant, successful killers are? It’s not the ones who know the ‘right’ people or the ones who clean up good. It’s the ones who go after the has-beens nobody would report missing in the first place.

Black as it is, Raum can follow the logic. The hope inside him feels to puncture and slowly deflate.

She continues. And all that’s beside the point of Aquila being the one officiating this shit. Sticking ‘round that sociopath’s gonna get them under the daisies by the end of the year. “Accepting" that lot ain’t noble, it just means Raum’s a quibbling bitch. Got too used to Ma jamming her fingers up your hole, now you think it’s a parking space for any old sceptre.

Queasiness swells through his chest. What she says stings, but it’s probably true. He strains through nausea, pleading her to stop: “Jay…"

Her tone softens. “You’ll be alright."

Why does that have to be so effective.

Everything he’s argued for suddenly feels so pointless. They go back home, go back to their routines, do what they can to find comfort with what they have. The daily grind. There’s nothing wrong with that.

She nods at his submission and relaxes. That fucker’s tone gonna flip second we say no. You’ll see it. Shitheap’s worse’n me.

…

But I don’t wanna see that.

I don’t think that’s even true. You cut up a kid every Monday. Why the fuck go back to that, Jay?

But even as that one thread of strength, and belief, tightens against a tide of confusion, nausea, and misery, Raum finds himself conceding, there is nothing he can say to bolster that belief further, and nothing he can offer that she will not attack. Why does it matter if she’s reprehensible if she’s going to look after him? She loves him. She’s worried.

Just keep your head down. You’ll be alright.

Can’t you be more indignant? Can’t you hold more conviction? Can’t you be stronger than this! His mind screams.

She’s smaller than you! She’s weaker than you! You could just tell her ‘no’, and what the fuck could she do!? You managed yourself through at least five near-death situations without her just in this day. So guess what, dick-for-brains, you’re not goddamn helpless. If you really want to get out of there, if you really like what you’ve seen of this country, if you really want this opportunity — just take it! But his body follows.

Reyl has won this argument.