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Grigory Filin and his friends would play on the tracks as children.
They used to think that, if they walked far enough along their length, they’d step clean off the edge of the world. Most of them outgrew such superstition, but he finds the idea stuck in his head as the years threaten to pass him by. Perhaps that’s why it seems, to him, that there is no possibility he might die and be buried in any soil other than the town’s. It’s not a comforting thought- he doesn’t know if he’d have it any other way, but he’d certainly like to have a choice.
Staninslav- before he shortened his name, the memory of who he was in those days preserved in his memory like an insect in amber- Lara, and Artemy would place bullets on the tracks and wait for the trains to run them over. More often than not, they’d get sick of waiting and branch off into another game- train-summoning.
All you need is a name- not for yourself, of course, for the train- and the power to pull that name to you, like pulling a thread through fabric… or skin. Grigory was the best at train-summoning among their group. It didn’t matter that they were all doing it at the same time, so they didn’t technically have any way to differentiate who’d called the train to their town- when the ground started to shake and the whistle cried loud enough to set his ears to ringing for minutes after, he knew it was coming for him.
Grief sits and stares at the spot where the rails and the sky converge on the horizon, disappearing into infinity, or void, or both- who can tell the difference? Simon probably could, when he was alive. Maybe the girl who turned him inside-out. Artemy…
He glances to his side, where Artemy sits in the tall grass and stares into the fire, just like he said he would. He sees the Lines everywhere, so he feels no need to dwell on them, not like Grief. He probably could tell the difference, but wouldn’t care one way or another. Grief would call him a lucky bastard if he didn’t see firsthand the way the past five days ground him down to nearly nothing.
“I can’t believe you truly want this,” Artemy says, cutting through the silence with all the subtlety he used when he cut out Piecework’s guts.
“I didn’t believe it myself, ‘til I realized: it’s not a want. It’s a need. This is what needs to happen… there’s no fightin’ it.” Grief draws in a deep breath. The twyre-heavy air makes his chest throb when he holds it in for more than a moment, but he’s always liked that feeling, like trapping yourself within yourself. It’s even more intense now than when he was a child, and for a second he tricks himself into believing that it’s because of the absurd amount of herbs the steppe yielded this season rather than the steady decline of his health. When he exhales, it burns worse than any cigarette he’s ever sucked on.
“Inevitable,” Artemy whispers- quiet, deliberate. Grief wonders if he’s joined in on the game after all.
“Death,” Grief says- just as quiet, just as deliberate. Artemy looks up at him, pleading with his expression- he couldn’t say what for. Comfort, reassurance? Grief could use some himself, but he has none to dole out. It’s only going to get worse, and worse, and worse. And then perhaps it will get better, but only because all of the inhabitants of their town will have died out, and there will be some small comfort in the fact that the whole world didn’t burn with them.
If the world doesn’t burn with them. And if the tracks really don’t run off the edge of the world.
“Just… try to avoid facing them, if you can. When they arrive,” Artemy says. Grief’s eyes fall shut. He can’t bear to keep looking at Artemy’s helpless expression. “And don’t do anything stupid.”
“Ha… stupid like tryin’ to cut the umbilical cord that keeps this place livin’ and breathin’?” The only reply he receives from Artemy is a long-suffering sigh.
He gets what Artemy is trying to tell him: don’t put your head in a noose. Except it’s already in one, and every day it gets a little harder to bear, waiting for the floor to drop from beneath his feet. Maybe this Inquisitor will have the guts to actually do the deed instead of looking him in the eye and pretending they don’t want him dead like the Shrike does.
“You know they import coffins here?”
“Yes… I know,” Artemy says, much to his surprise. “There was one in my car. Except maybe there wasn’t…”
Grief isn’t sure what response to give that, but Artemy doesn’t seem to expect one, so he continues.
“I’m tryin’ to say… it’s a fitting name for any train coming to town. But especially this one,” he says, then lowers his voice to repeat the name he gave the Inquisitor’s sootbox with all the gravity it deserves. “Death.”
Grief feels it rumbling in the ground and opens his eyes to watch the train emerge from the horizon line, the nothing (or everything) which gives birth to every important idea in their town.
Putting new pieces on the board halfway through the game, really. That’s got to be breaking the rules.
A pause. A stutter, like someone put the world on pause for a moment. Then Artemy picks himself up off the ground with little difficulty and Grief pushes himself out of his chair with a spasm in his knee that makes him think he might fall face-first into the fire for a second, and they go their separate ways.
~
Grief doesn’t go to the Cathedral on the day of her arrival.
He sits on his throne, the crux of his crumbling kingdom, waiting for someone to come calling. The whole day trickles through his fingers before someone finally does. It happens in the small hours of the morning, and it’s a far cry from the servant of the Inquisition he expected.
Barley comes home to roost.
Were he and Barley ever friends? He’s not sure they were, though Grief used to treat him as a replacement for the ones who turned their backs on them. It worked well enough, at first. Nevermind that he was like a vampire, sucking him dry- using him for sex and drugs and money- he’d recently come to believe that everyone has ulterior motives within their ‘friendships’, and appreciated how upfront he was about his.
That is, until a woman found out about the black twyrine operation and threatened to rat them out. Grief had talked with her at length to convince her to keep mum. It was only when she finally agreed that Barley grabbed her from behind, clamped a hand over her mouth, and slit her throat. It all happened in a few short seconds, so fast that Grief didn’t register what he was doing until it was far too late.
(He caught a glimpse of the inside of her throat- her severed larynx, the vocal cords beneath, spasming in a futile attempt to scream. Then too much blood flooded forth for any single part to be visible, and Grief turned his head away and covered his mouth just as Barley covered that [dying, dying, dead] girl’s.
“Come on, look. I know you’re interested,” Barley had said. He was right. Grief wanted- no, definitely not- needed to take a closer look at that girl’s gushing throat, because he knew what he saw was wrong. He was suddenly certain that if he looked a bit closer, dug a bit deeper, he’d find… something else. Truth?
But what truth mattered then aside from one of his final few ‘friends’ becoming a murderer? That is, if he wasn’t already- the ease with which his knife sliced open her flesh made Grief certain he’d done something like this before.
“I thought you wanted freedom. What, can’t you stomach it?” Grief heard the body thump against the ground as Barley released it. He wanted to say something then- of course I can’t, you animal. If this is what it takes to break my manacles…- but his throat was filled with bile and he was sure the words would only clear the way for its escape.
He may have privately denied the accusation, but when Barley left him alone to clean up his mess, he almost did take a look inside. He reached out for the wound, still sluggishly leaking onto the concrete, feeling like his hand was acting of its own accord. Then he glanced up and saw her face- she was fairly young, around Lara’s age, and though this woman’s hair was brown it looked black in the faint moonlight.
He jerked his hand away from her throat and used it instead to brace himself against the nearest warehouse as he vomited up the last meal he ever shared with his ‘friend’.)
Now Barley comes knocking on his door and his men let him in like an esteemed guest, all but rolling out the red carpet as he approaches. He’s deathly pale- and while death always clung to him, now Grief wonders whether that’s been made literal, if sometime in the past few days the pest crawled down his throat and made a home in his belly.
(Some small part of him hopes it didn’t- the same part of him that buried that girl discreetly, and refrained from informing the authorities afterward. It’s half self-preservation- he didn’t want Saburov to twist it around on him, nor does he want to contract the pest from this wretch- but the other half is because he feels responsible. Who gave him the blade with which he slit her throat? Who threw him out only for him to take to prowling the town rife with infection? They both know.)
“I think,” Barley says, tilting his chin up in a way that makes his usual sneer look particularly ugly, “you should get off that throne if you know what’s best for you, old pal.”
Grief hums, as if seriously considering the offer. He already knows he’s leaving this place behind- the only thing that held him here after the bloodshed began was wanting to keep an eye on Rubin, but now that he’s finished his work, this place is nothing more than a den of vipers. He feels ashamed on behalf of his younger self, for scooping out the guts of him and his friends’ hideout and setting up shop in its rotting corpse. After a week of circling overhead, the crows are finally descending upon the carrion; it’s time to go.
He slides off of the throne, hoisting the shotgun he’s kept practically glued to his hip over the last few days. The men tense like they’re preparing for a fight- all of them, and if that isn’t a sign he’s outstayed his welcome then nothing is. He holds up a placating hand, lip curling in disgust at how quickly they’re prepared to turn on him, everyone in this damned town is the same. “Now, now, don’t be hasty. I’m willin’ to do this clean, give you free reign of this old scene.”
“And why would I want to do it clean? You treat me like dirt, try to cut me out of your whole operation, and now you wanna go nice and quiet?” Barley scoffs, shaking his head like the very idea is absurd. Grief hoists the shotgun at his side- just a bit, just enough to make some of the younger men flinch. They may be willing to fight for Barley, but he’s sure none of them would take a bullet for him. (Is it better or worse that the same couldn’t be said for him when his ‘career’ was in its prime? He’s sure it’s worse, but he still misses the unquestioning loyalty his perceived power gave him.)
“Every bullet won’t hit its billet… but I bet they’ll hit a few of your ‘brothers’ before I drop.” Grief takes a step to the side, then another, then starts to circle around the cluster of men, watching Barley all the while.
“You don’t have the guts. I know,” Barley hisses.
“You think?” Grief asks, lifting the shotgun and thrusting it into the closest man’s chest. He stumbles back in a panic, knocking several others off-balance as he scrambles away. “She didn’t deserve to die, but you? Just try.”
He stares at Barley for a long moment. There’s a hint of doubt in his expression- not much, but just enough that when he turns on his heels and flees through the doors, nobody stops him.
He carries on like that the whole way through the warehouses, only stopping to catch his breath once he reaches the station. He slumps on one of the benches like he’s waiting for a train that’ll never arrive, crossing his aching legs and wishing he didn’t lug the shotgun all the way out here with him. He considers stashing it around here when he leaves for the Bridge Square, but thinks better of it when he realizes one of the kids that hang around this place in the evenings would probably find the thing.
Well, he dug his grave, time to lie in it. Maybe Artemy will have enough of his inheritance left over to buy him a nice coffin for the funeral he’ll attend alone.
~
Stepping into the Cathedral feels like passing over to the other side.
What other side that is… Grief can’t be sure. He feels a change, one a religious man might attribute to the consecrated ground, but anyone who lives here knows the Cathedral isn’t dedicated to any one religion. Or, if it is, it’s a religion of ideas- the altar upon which the Kains worship, among others. It’s unsettling to feel the idea’s influence upon the building without knowing what idea it is.
Perhaps it’s time. People say the Cathedral produces it, and as his eyes stray from the steadily swinging key up to the grand hourglass haphazardly held above their heads, he’s sure there’s some truth to that.
The Inquisitor stands directly below that hourglass, hands folded behind her back. She’s dressed in black from head to toe, a visage of death in one of its forms, one of the few that doesn’t kill indiscriminately. Every life the Inquisition takes is calculated, weighed on the scales of ‘justice’.
Grief walked under the gallows on his way here, wondering to himself whether it would give him bad luck, like a ladder. Or maybe it would be the opposite, since ladders help you climb and gallows send you six feet under. He’d probably have thought about it in more depth if his eyes weren’t glued to the lifeless body sprawled out beneath it, a girl he doesn’t recognize. She somehow gives the impression that she’s from the capital, even though no trains have been allowed in or out of the town save for the one carrying their personal Angel of Death.
Said Angel turns to look at him- he expects her to say something about his silent staring, perhaps to scold him for wasting her time, but she does no such thing. She walks up to him, heels clicking against the stone floor, and stops about two feet away. She’s taller than him- he thinks she would be even without her heels, and he finds a strangely familiar fear instilled in him by her presence. He’s tugging at the thread in his head, trying to understand why he feels like he’s met her before, when she extends a gloved hand to him in greeting.
“Aglaya Lilich,” she says, as if she’s meeting with a fellow servant of the Law, and not its self-described enemy. He reaches out to take her hand without correcting her, though he feels strangely compelled to. She gives his hand a single firm shake, but doesn’t release it after. He realizes she’s prompting a response from him.
“Grigory Filin,” he says, then cringes- how long has it been since he introduced himself by his full name? She releases his hand, satisfied, but he feels the need to tack on to the end; “Bad Grief to my friends and my enemies.”
“I see you’ve come prepared,” Aglaya says, eyes flickering to his side, with the manner of someone considering an academic theory rather than noticing a gun. He curses himself for being distracted by the Cathedral’s mechanisms- he’d meant to hide it from her until the verdict was passed. She turns around and strides up to the desk just below one of the crimson windows, calm and composed as she shows her back to an armed criminal. “Well, you won’t fire it, so I don’t mind.”
“And how d’you figure that?” Grief asks… for no good reason, really. Why should he want her to think he might shoot her? She’s not a cutthroat or a thug; she’s the natural opposite, even. He supposes he asks for the same reason he came here- because he wants to understand something, though he can’t pinpoint what that something is yet.
“It wouldn’t matter if you did, but you won’t. Are you going to debate the point or are you ready to start our discussion?” She pulls out the desk chair, scraping the floor as she turns it to face the opposite direction. He expects her to sit down, but instead she steps to the side, staring at him with such intensity she looks like a vulture waiting for its prey to collapse from exhaustion.
He is exhausted, but he’d thought he was doing a pretty good job hiding it. When he glances down at his side, he finds his gun just as well-hidden as he thought it was. The corner of his mouth twitches- what else should he expect from an Inquisitor?
“Is that what you people call your interrogations these days? People talk, and when they talk to you they leave in a daze.” He meets her eyes from across the Cathedral, wishing she’d just get it over with already. She must know who he is, from Saburov if no one else, why is she stalling for time? “No need to dress it up with pretty words.”
“I certainly don’t, but it seems you do.” She raises a hand to her chin, gloved finger rubbing at her lip consideringly. “That’s good. You’ll make for an interesting conversation partner. Now, come sit before your legs give out.”
Grief’s face burns at the direct acknowledgement- he’d hoped to go out with some of his dignity intact. Then again, the way she’s looking at him… she actually seems intrigued. He just can’t pinpoint whether it’s the intrigue of an entomologist or a child who likes to tear the wings off of insects. Either way, he’s not fully human to her, but better to be pinned and preserved than quickly forgotten and crushed underfoot, right?
He shuffles across the Cathedral, feeling almost hypnotized by the swinging of the key-shaped pendulum he draws ever nearer to with every step. He realizes why he felt the idea of this place weighing on his soul the second he stepped inside- he was walking into the guts of a giant clock. It was like vertigo, his mind teetering on the edge, risking falling into the memory of his old life. The life he’d had before- but before what?
Aglaya’s cold gaze snaps him back to reality and he finds himself sitting before her. She towers over him like this, but it doesn’t make her any more or less intimidating- he understands that the words they exchange are the only things that will give her power over him.
“You may lie, though I don’t believe you will. Am I correct in that assumption?” she asks.
“I don’t have any reason to lie to you,” Grief answers plainly. Her eyes probe him for a moment, probably trying to discern whether that statement was, in and of itself, a lie.
“Not a single reason?” She pulls back slightly, a single hand resting on the desk- he wonders whether it’s for support or to box him in. “Not even to save your life, then? I have the power.” To have you hanged, she doesn’t say, and that gap makes him more nervous than if she had.
“My life isn’t my life, as of late. Why shouldn’t I be fine losin’ somethin’ that was never mine?” He clenches his teeth. Words fall freely from his mouth before her, like she’s pulling them out with tweezers. It’s not like what that Changeling did to him, though; he could stop if he really wanted to. But she’s watching him intently, drinking down his words without flinching at their bitter taste.
Why would he come to a church if not to confess?
“I understand. Forces go to work while we are sleeping. I arrive yesterday; I wake today to find my death sentence all but signed.” He’s about to scoff, to tell her she misunderstood him, but she continues before he gets the chance. “It may seem to you that we’re talking about different things, but I assure you: we are not. Do you know that the law of man and the law of nature are the same Law?”
“I’m not sure what nature has to do with it,” Grief mutters, but he knows: he’s looking away again, just as he looked away from that fresh corpse. Though he seeks understanding, he instinctually shuts his eyes whenever he catches a glimpse- it’s like trying to look into the sun. Possible, but if you look too long, you’ll end up damaged. (As if he isn’t damaged beyond repair already.)
“I think nature has everything to do with it. Would you say it’s against a criminal’s nature to approach an Inquisitor of their own volition?”
“I would say it depends on the criminal. But isn’t that obvious?”
“Individuality is not a factor in this question. You could just as easily say ‘it depends on the Inquisitor’, but that is not a real answer. Try again.”
“Fine,” he says, unable to hide his frustration with the limits she’s imposing on him. “If we’re thinking in black-and-white, yes, it would be. Should’ve supposed your sort would see it as simply as that.”
“‘My sort’?” she asks. The words carry no hint of offense taken- it’s a simple observation (or accusation) of the hypocrisy of his statement. He looks away shamefully, staring at the spokes of the massive wheel fixed to the wall, wondering whether one of them impaling him would hurt any worse than this conversation. He thinks… not.
“I suppose puttin’ people in boxes is against my nature,” he says, as apologetic as he can bring himself to be. The corner of her mouth twitches- irritation or amusement? He can’t be certain of the intent behind any action she takes, buttoned up as tight as the long jacket she wears.
“I would expect a criminal ‘kingpin’-” He winces a bit at how flippantly she says it, like she’s seen through the facade in fewer minutes than the number of years it took to craft it. “- would be very familiar with putting people in boxes.”
As soon as Grief puts two and two together, he feels the cold, creeping dread he should’ve felt the second she offered her hand. She leans closer in the same second that he tries to lean away, but at some point her other hand had reached over his shoulder to grip the back of the chair. “Not an interrogation? Right…”
“It isn’t,” she says calmly, and he can feel her breath on his face. It’s warm and alive and he’s surprised by it, as if he’d forgotten that she was a living, breathing human. As if she shouldn’t be.
“I don’t make a habit of puttin’ people in coffins. I’ve smuggled stuff in them, sure… but I’m not that kind of criminal.” He pauses, worrying his lip with a canine. “I’m not a killer,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself. He got someone killed- one could argue he’s gotten many people killed, through careless words and inaction, but what else could he have done? His hands were tied- they still are, gripping his knees instead of pushing Aglaya away.
“Yes,” she says, and her hand slowly slides from the back of the chair as she steps away. “I can see that. But it doesn’t fit, does it? You don’t fit yourself.”
“You’re trying to talk me into a trap,” Grief murmurs, glancing at the window which stretches far above him. It paints the two of them in red hues, transforming the light outside into something similar to itself. “Trickin‘ me into tying my own noose.”
“I’m not talking you into a trap,” she retorts. “I’m talking, and you’re already in a trap; we both are. Don’t you know?”
He goes quiet, looking down at his hands, at jagged fingernails chewed to their beds. He’s certainly felt trapped- this past week, these past months, these past years. Yet he held within his head the knowledge that everything which happened was a consequence of his own actions, of that first domino he pushed over in a naive act of defiance. Finally, he thought, laws are claws that keep us pleading and bleeding instead of claiming true freedom. But where is his freedom now?
“If the law of nature and the law of men are the same,” he says slowly, eyes tracing the length of the shotgun he doesn’t remember discarding on the floor, “What’s the difference between an animal and a man?”
“There is no difference,” Aglaya answers without hesitation. “But that’s not the point.”
“The point, right, the point…. it’s teasin’ trepannin’ but I still can’t seem to get it through my head.” Grief tastes the bile building in his throat, nausea threatening to overwhelm him just the same as it had on that last night with Barley. He’s on the brink of understanding, and as he hesitates to step over the edge, he pleads with his eyes for her to hold him back from it. She could execute him with no questions asked- be it a noose or a bullet or a swan dive off the balustrade, he’d take it in stride. But no, she sits and stares with quiet interest, worse than pitiless- encouraging.
“Your nature differs from the nature of your self. The self which doesn’t belong to you. It’s similar to the predicament of this town- a two-sided, three-headed beast, each trying to overwhelm the others, unable to live with the contradiction. What does it mean?” She slides a stack of papers to the side and sits on the desk, eyes falling shut as she imagines some bigger picture he’s not privy to.
“It means people and their processes don’t always match up. How ‘surprising’…”
“Processes?”
“It’s a Kain thing,” he mumbles dismissively. At this, she stiffens, and for a moment she looks almost startled before her expression shutters shut. “Wait, you’re…” He looks up at her- not too far above him now that she’s sat on the desk, but still cutting an imposing figure, expression dark and guarded. She casts a long shadow across the Cathedral’s floor, and somehow it seems darker than any other in the room. He makes another connection he should’ve made from the start- the reason for the familiarity of the fear she instills. “Nina Kaina,” he chokes out, “You’re just like that wicked witch of a woman.”
Aglaya stares at him for a long, silent moment, and for its entire duration he thinks she must be about to bring their discussion to a premature end by calling for his execution then and there. “A witch…” She tilts her head forward in admission, nose scrunching up in an open expression of disgust- one surprisingly not directed at him. “Yes, my sister was a witch. A weaver of webs… I’ll tell you now that I endeavor not to resemble her in my methods, though I can only do so much to combat my nature.”
“And when does nature become an excuse?” he asks, emboldened by her lack of retaliation. She looks up, watching the hourglass turn.
“The moment you use it as one. I am merely laying out the facts, if you mean to imply I was doing so.” Her eyes return to him, their brief departure making them all the more piercing. “I agree with you on the matter of processes, by the way. A Kain would say that people are processes, but perhaps your way works as well. Yes… we each have an intended process. We either complete it, regress at some point before or after it is completed, or strive to undergo an entirely different process. Perhaps…”
Grief watches her work through something in her head, stomach twisting anxiously in the meantime. He doesn’t know how long she sits there, silently considering something he said for reasons he can’t discern. At some point, when he can’t bear it any longer, he curls into himself and rests his head in his hands, listening to the ticking of the immense clock which holds them within itself.
“Do you need a break?”
“I need to know why every word you say worms its way into me.” He threads his fingers through his hair, gathering up strands and pulling until his outside head throbs just the same as his inside head. “How can a process like that be intended? An Inquisitor hides behind the guise of God, but you aren’t just an Inquisitor. You give me your name, your sister’s name… are you religious, Aglaya?”
“It depends on how you define the word. I do not worship any higher power, although…” Aglaya hesitates. He releases his hair, lifting his head to try and catch a glimpse of whatever unguarded expression she wears in that moment, but by the time his eyes are on her again, said moment has passed.
“You believe in one?”
“I believe in fate.”
“Fate.” Grief does scoff this time, hardly able to believe what he’s hearing. “So that’s it. We all have red threads of fate, and we let them tug us this way and that or we don’t.”
“Tell me,” Aglaya says, quietly- almost intimately, in the sort of voice you’d only share with a lover or a mirror, “Why you decided to come here.”
The kneejerk dismissal drains from his body as the blood drains from his face. He swallows, then tugs at the strip of fabric tied around his neck, which he sometimes feels is the only thing keeping his head attached to his body. “An old enemy jogged my memory.”
“I don’t care what events led up to your arrival; I want you to tell me the reason,” she presses him, inclining her head in his direction, casting a shadow across most of her face. The stained glass window frames her head with its crimson glow, like a bloody halo. She looks absolutely inhuman. He imagines her as a hollow puppet, guided by a divine will. He’s certain he’s going to be sick.
“I was bound to come here sooner or later. I was Bound,” he repeats, though the last word feels different in his mouth, and he has no idea why. “I needed to know why.” And then, because her gaze teases truth from his lips indiscriminately: “I’m gonna throw up again.”
“Again?” the Inquisitor asks.
“He tore her throat out. I couldn’t stop thinking, without thinking- it should be tatters and thread. Why?”
“Why?” it echoes.
“I slashed my arm the night I watched her die. It bled and bled and bled. No tatters, no thread.” He swallows the bitter vomit that threatens to gush from his mouth. It’s not even real, he thinks.
“I’m not even real,” he says.
The Inquisitor smiles, an expression that seems at odds with the rest of its features. Or, in other words: it wasn’t an intended process. “You surprised me. Very few figure it out without outside intervention, divine or otherwise,” it praises him. His whole body is shaking and sweating and the knowledge that it shouldn’t be only makes it worse.
“What’re we supposed to be? Dolls? Puppets?”
“We aren’t supposed to be; we are,” the Inquisitor- Aglaya Lilich corrects him in an uncharacteristically gentle voice.
“You said… there was the intended process, but we could… could undergo another. Cut our strings-” Grief finds himself reaching out, grasping at straws, grasping at her, desperate for something to hold onto and keep him in the world lest he start seeing things how they are instead of how they seem. She allows him to take hold of her hand for a second time, and it’s even more surprising than the first time.
“I said we could strive for another, not that another exists.” She looks away and huffs out a breath. If didn’t know better, he’d think she was embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to mislead you. I want to defy my fate as much as you want to defy yours.”
“Yet you… you set up shop in a church. Play hangman with half the town. You’re paintin’ the perfect picture of an Inquisitor.”
“Think about it. We are dolls- naturally, this is a game. And it is a game I intend to win.” She sits back, as if she’s explained everything. He withdraws the hand he was clutching onto hers with, instead clawing uselessly at his chest. He looks at her and his eyes blur, like her processes are overlapping- she’s trapped in a web, thrashing in a vain attempt to escape; she’s the spider who wove that web, spinning him into a cocoon at its crux.
“To win.” Grief drags a hand down the length of his face, stopping at the curve of his throat. He digs his nails in, just deep enough to feel the ridges of his larynx against his fingertips. It feels so real. If he cut it open, he’s sure it would look just as real as when Barley did the same to that woman. (That doll. Had she been part of the game? Had she even had a name?) “Why play at all? That’s what they want!”
“They?” Aglaya prompts him. Grief wants to say what does it matter? but this is what he came for, and this is what he gets.
“I don’t know, fuck. Kids? If we’re dolls, then… kids. Makes as much sense as the next guess…”
“Right again. You’ve impressed me, you know.”
He could laugh, or cry. Or give in to one of the neverending waves of nausea and throw up on the consecrated ground. Why should he care about blasphemy against children? “You didn’t answer my question,” he manages to say after a few stops and starts. “What’d you even mean, win? Who’d be losin’? The kids? Fate?”
“It’s not an interrogation, remember?”
“Right. A discussion. Sure, there’s plenty of disgust…” He sits there, taking shallow breaths and wondering whether he’ll wind up hyperventilating bad enough to black out or puking his guts out first. Except he’s not really breathing, and there’s nothing in his guts save for stuffing.
He’s aware of the Inquisitor’s eyes on him, but he can’t bring himself to think about anything other than keeping himself upright, and even that seems like a losing battle.
“I think that’s enough for a first talk,” she remarks as impartially as if she were commenting on the weather. She stands up, brushes off the front of her jacket, and strides back to the center of the Cathedral. “I’m going to think,” she says over her shoulder. “You can throw up now.”
~
Grief lingers in the corner of the Cathedral, staying so quiet that most people called to stand before Aglaya don’t notice his presence at all. He sees her many faces and listens to her many voices. Each person gets a different Inquisitor. And none of them acknowledge his presence.
He’s like a ghost- no, in this setting, calling him a spirit would be more appropriate. When he brings the thought up to Aglaya- which might as well be any other moment spent in the Cathedral, but the when doesn’t matter as much as the mentioning- she disagrees with the assessment.
“I think it’s the opposite. You may not be able to see a spirit, but you can feel its presence. These people can see you, but they don’t feel your presence. You’re like a stagehand dressed in black, moving props around. The audience sees you, but their mind bends to avoid acknowledging that you’re there, so as to not break their suspension of disbelief.”
“I’ve always hated theater,” he says bitterly, thinking of the few performances he attended before the building became a hospital. They were more like waking nightmares than plays. Come to think of it, one of the main costumes the actors would repeatedly use was nearly entirely black. Was he meant to be ignoring their body, then, only mentally accepting their haunting white masks as ‘real’ within the world of the play? His first thought is that it seems wrong, ignoring the bigger picture like that. But when it came down to it, he’d needed someone to pry his eyes open with her fingers in order for him to accept what he already knew about their world, didn’t he?
“Why is that?” Aglaya asks, because this is the nature of their conversation- he establishes an idea and she pries it open so they might look inside. (Like Barley tried to do that night, he thinks despite himself. As disrespectful as it is, reducing her to the level of a cutthroat, their motivations may have differed but their actions have similar effects upon him. How long before she starts dissecting him?
Typically, he’s asking himself a trick question. Her tools- her words- have already become well acquainted with his insides.)
“Have you met Mark?” he asks in response; the incision is nowhere near as precise as hers, but she obliges him anyway.
“I have. I had a brief conversation with him, which was as unpleasant as it was enlightening. We spoke about layers.”
“Artemy talks about Layers, connectin’ different parts… are these the same as his?”
“Even if a word has two separate meanings, it is ultimately a single word. I could say ‘yes’, but you don’t like when I put things in boxes. I’ll say: it depends on your point of view.” She sits next to him, close enough that their shoulders brush against each other, and crosses her legs. He wonders: if an actor acknowledges a stagehand, do they remain a stagehand alone, or do they become an actor as well? “There are layers to the wills exerted upon us and their realities. There is the reality which we see and feel. There are the Powers That Be, to whom we are dolls. There is the Theater, putting on a performance; not our performance, but a performance which we are a crucial part of. There are a few major actors, but we are…”
“Puppets.”
“… yes. There is an issue with assuming these are the only layers, however. I’m sure you’ve noticed it.”
“There are three Layers,” Grief says, recalling an explanation Isidor gave a young Grigory while coaxing bitter medicine down his throat. He’d tried to get out of it, but his friends made a united front upon finding out he was sick. “I remember askin’ my friends riddles with traps built into ‘em. How many sides does a coin have? The front side, the back side, and the outside. Only Cub got it right.”
“There are always three, here. Not even a box, a triangle. Two-dimensional.” Aglaya presses her lips into a thin line, staring down at the hands folded in her lap. “There must be a third reality- I had mistakenly thought our perception of the world was that third. But it is not reality, so it does not count.”
She falls silent. Grief doesn’t urge her to continue with anything other than his eyes, waiting for her to collect herself. He almost wants to reach out, to steady her somehow, but he quickly dismisses the idea as absurd.
“It is beyond our reach. I can see it, but my mind refuses to acknowledge it.”
“Is that right?” he murmurs, looking down at the hands resting in his lap, which seem, at the moment neither like his nor like hands. “That’s right.”
“Not right, but True,” she corrects him again. They sit in silence for what might be an hour or three minutes, depending on the Layer. Both feel equally real to him.
They are similar, he thinks, but not the same.
He’s felt the presence of the Truth within him since it became True, he only averted his eyes in fear of what he’d see if he looked too closely. She understood the Truth far before he did, but he is fairly certain that she cannot tangibly feel the stitches in her skin, nor the strings binding her, nor the jagged edges of something beyond human understanding.
It doesn’t make a difference, though- even the knowing doesn’t make a difference. They’re just passing time until something deigns to decide their Fates.
~
Could Grief have run further?
He stopped the second his strings started to stretch. Artemy asks- rhetorically, of course- if they should run away and hope they tear. The thing is, Grief never even considered it. Just like he never even considered staying a clocksmith, when crime became his calling.
Barley dies- not because Grief wanted him dead, but because Artemy chose to kill him. Perhaps Grief had wanted him dead- he’d certainly wanted him gone, at least- but Artemy was the only one who could cut that tumor out of the warehouses' body. He kills him just as he killed Piecework, and Grief feels nearly as envious as he does guilty.
Should Artemy have to carry the Town’s burdens as well as his own? It’s not like Grief can do anything about it- he could barely carry himself here- but he feels a bit like he’s taken advantage of him. So he gives him the gun he’s never fired and hopes it keeps him breathing a bit longer.
Aglaya and him may come to their conclusions differently, but they end up with the same one regarding Artemy: he is freer than either of them could ever hope to be. They can whisper in his ears trying to convince him to act a certain way, but only he can use those golden hands he was given. Only he can change the world with his touch.
The pest gets to Grief- not through the doors, or the windows, or from the people Aglaya takes apart. It comes from inside of him, crawling up out of his stomach and past the lining of his throat, turning him inside out. If he left this town, if he could leave this town, he’d be happy and healthy. But he’s always known that would never happen, so it never will, so he sits on a pew choking on blood and bile.
“I’m going to die by the end of these twelve days. Possibly before,” Aglaya tells him. He doesn’t have to ask what twelve days she means- he felt it when this all began, and he’ll feel it when it ends. “You might survive, but I’m not sure. It’s up in the air.”
“Dependin’ on Cub, right? Too free to flee, he’d even save me,” he says, every word like needles in his throat.
“Yes,” she says; bitterly, achingly. She’d wanted to run away with Artemy, even if the outcome would have been the same.
“Were you askin’ him to save you, then?” Grief watched from the other side of the stage while she pleaded with Artemy to forget them, their town, their world. He watched as Artemy refused to shirk his responsibility for their fictitious fates.
(He averted his eyes as Artemy knelt before him and told him he’d be back before midnight.)
“No. My death is set in stone.” Aglaya lets out a long exhale, settling on the bench next to him once more. He doesn’t know if he believes her, or even if she believes herself. “They hate me- they wouldn’t make me play such a role otherwise. They want to be rid of me.”
Grief stares up at the hourglass overhead, distorting the world behind it, a different chunk of their reality bent into its shape depending on where one stands. Or sits, in his case. “I don’t think they want anythin’ from me.” He curls into himself, fighting a feverish chill and a pain in his gut that feels like his stomach is splitting open, like something is attempting to force its way out of his womb. He wonders- is the Sand Plague more alive than him? Is it more free? Does that mean it has more of a right to live?
“Didn’t you intend to win, or did you say that on a whim?” he asks, though only after a brief interlude in which he nearly blacks out from pain and dehydration.
“I still do,” Aglaya says without hesitation. “But it depends on Artemy. If he succeeds, I will have my victory. Or at least, they will have their loss.”
Grief hums vaguely, eyes going blurry as he struggles to keep himself upright. He doesn’t know if he believes her, but he wants to see that supposed victory with his own two eyes. But midnight creeps ever closer, and he’s not sure he will.
“Do you wish I had simply killed you when you came to me?” she asks, catching him more off guard than on that first day, when she disassembled him piece by piece.
“Why’re you asking me somethin’ like that?”
“Consider this your interrogation, if you like,” she says cagily. He doesn’t like it, not at all, but he knows he’s not getting another answer out of her, and he’s barely managing to stay awake and aware as it is.
“I don’t know.” He hesitates, reconsidering his answer. “No, I know. I wish you set me to swingin’ as much as I want that cure Cub’s bringin’. I want them both, life and death… feels like I’ve been denied either one.”
(For once, he knows what she really means. ‘Do you wish I hadn’t forced you to look? Do you wish I hadn’t pried your eyes wide and turned your face toward the sun, wanting to make you into something like me?’ For once, he’s not willing to answer her. He’s not willing to admit that she ruined him.)
“I see,” she says, eyes falling shut. He knows she’s unsatisfied with his answer, but he won’t say any more of it, and she won’t ask any more of him. “Yes, it makes sense. I wish I could say the same.”
“I wish I could say any different,” he mutters. This is how it’s going to be: they’ll envy one another until they die, and probably even after. They can’t change it, even if they wanted to. He knows he wouldn’t have it any other way, even if he wishes they had a choice.
“When I go,” she says slowly, choosing her words almost as carefully as the Changeling, “don’t follow me.”
“Like I would,” Grief mumbles. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. It was never a possibility for him, just like it was never a possibility for his friends to stay his friends, just like it was never a possibility for his body not to break down while he was still living inside of it. “Like I could.”
Be it by plague or execution, both their bodies hold Death within- the meanings differ, but the word is the same.
When the doors open and Grief’s savior steps through, he’s as relieved as he is disappointed. Aglaya stands and steps to the side without a word, watching Artemy’s hands on his knee, steadying his shoulder, holding his mouth shut as he chokes down the poisonous panacea made from pills and prayer. She is seen, but not felt.
“I’d hug you if I could,” Artemy says after it’s over. Grief stares at his hand, still gripping his shoulder, and wonders if he’s truly free, or if he’s simply so much closer to freedom than them that it looks indistinguishable to their button eyes.
He doesn’t get to ask- at least, not then and there, not while she watches. He’s run out of dialogue.
~
In Artemy’s eyes, Grief isn’t filled with stitches and stuffing, he’s full of clockwork. He still doesn’t feel alive, not quite, but maybe if he keeps looking at him that way it’ll rub off on reality.
(Artemy didn’t see when she was shot. He didn’t hear the gun go off. He didn’t know when it happened or where she was when it did. Maybe that means she wasn’t shot at all. Maybe she stepped off the edge of the world.
It’s not a comforting thought. Grief holds it in his head like it is.)