The Song of the Betrayed - 13

I turned to the mage and asked whether he would make the contract.

He did not answer. Instead, he said this.

"Put the blindfold on her."

Oh? It was going back on? The woman who had taken it off came over and fitted it in place again. I had thought it was cloth, but what settled over my eyes was leather, strange patterns drawn across it so densely there was hardly a gap. Then the dark closed over everything in front of me.

From the look of the thing, they meant it to have some special effect, but I felt nothing. If it came to that, I could always use the women around me. I searched for lights whose contracts had already ended, and there were a great many.

It was then that the mage addressed me, florid as a man in a play.

"How do you find the prison of flesh I made for you?"

No. To be exact, he wasn't speaking to me at all. He was boasting, and he was mocking me. My faded memories have a word for this.

Teabagging.

"I packed into that body every pain and every pleasure a human being could not possibly feel and live."

At once a savage pain rampaged through me along the spine, and my body flopped and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠jerked like a carp thrown onto dry ground. A finger snapped, a clean hard sound, and this time a strange fluid seeped out through the long tube buried in my brain, and pleasure flooded it full.

I turned over memory after memory, and no living thing in any of them had ever come by pleasure like this. Somewhere in the faded ones, the phrase a thousandfold sensitivity glinted and went out. Now that I thought of it, I was in very much the same state as the work that phrase comes from.

"Well? How is it? You can't resist. That vessel can hold a god, but it was built so that once something is put inside, it cannot leave until the vessel is ruined completely. And I engraved a curse besides. The more you surrender to it, the more even your soul submits to me."

No. It really was that. Not even so strange a thing, if I was honest. Carrot and stick is a method of husbandry that holds anywhere. Delivering both by driving metal straight into the nervous system was, I will admit, new to me.

"O god. How does it feel, having fallen into human hands?"

Mm. A good desire. The nerve it took to catch a god and mean to use her exactly as he wished — I liked that. Other things came through the voice as well. The pleasure of having dragged down someone set above him. An inferiority turned toward someone special. All sorts of feelings, soaked into the sound.

You really will make a splendid harvester. And so I say it.

Silence spread.

"Still in your right mind. Good. No fun in a god who falls apart that easily. Though I wonder how long you'll last."

The mage let out a thin, ugly chuckle. Then came footsteps, closer and closer, stopping near me.

"You don't seem to have noticed yet, but a baby is growing in your belly, feeding on your power. Leave it too long and that baby will take all of your power for itself. You ought to submit quickly."

It said so as if the delight were simply too much to hold in. A time limit, then.

A few memories brightened, telling me this was a voice with no thought of keeping any promise. Tell the noble-minded the hour of their death, and they endure until that hour and die. A poor way to torture them.

I am not one of the noble-minded. Even without a threat, I already meant to do everything I could. And everything I can do is only to give myself over!

He did not seem to see it that way. The footsteps drew off.

"Educate her."

I heard it from far away, and a signal came down again along the metal set into my spine and my brain. Not a simple electrical signal, I thought. Magic, perhaps? Whatever it was, pleasure and pain took turns with no rhythm to them. Even so, set against the cold, it was nothing.

Until the mage returned, I put the memories I had just taken in order.

The man I had called a prisoner, earlier. His name was Kenan.

He was, surprisingly, a knight — an occupation that permitted him to carry weapons and to kill, and that held the right to investigate crimes. Even so, he was no knight of the noble sort. He was closer to a civil servant. A policeman, or a soldier.

What was interesting was that tools of magic were not absent. Most of them, though, were what people called artifacts, and only very particular persons ever used them. The civilization, astonishingly, ran on fossil fuels. Internal combustion engines existed, and even a basic form of radio, and yet progress had stopped somewhere along the way. Well over three hundred years had passed since they began to burn petroleum in those engines, and still the cities he knew looked like a world only just modernized. Perhaps the world in my faded memories had simply advanced too fast.

In any case, in that half-made world, Kenan — a knight whose work was not unlike a policeman's — realized one day that people were vanishing from the city. He contacted the knight order ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠above him. No support came down, and the missing only grew. So he went alone to search the places where people disappeared most often, and was taken. Not long after, he was dragged before me. He became a harvester, and then he died with his head severed from his neck.

For reference, the society was closer to a constitutional monarchy than an absolute one. The king's authority, however, had fallen badly, and the parliament was nobles alone. Did that make it an aristocracy? Or an oligarchy? Kenan was sorely lacking on the subject, so I couldn't tell. Music and painting had developed well enough, though, and he had memories of often taking his girlfriend to performances and calling the outings dates, so in culture and in society the world seemed quite stable.

The man they called the mage had kidnapped chiefly from the poor. Whether from need or not, he had also taken people from considerably high families and made use of them. High families or not, those had stood low within their houses, and among the memories was a grumble that the knight order had never quite been sent in earnest. At any rate, the mage had a great deal of money, and there was a suspicion that he had been tied to someone among the local powers — someone placed where he could bend the city to his will.

That was all.

By the time I finished the sorting, the torture had not stopped. Bell, however, had reached the city.

A city of a strange make. The wall stood only on the eastern side, joining the mountain slopes to left and right, and where it met the range it became a vast breakwater sealing the east. Dangerous monsters, I supposed, came from that direction alone. And yet the mountains ran long across the east, and beyond them the sea began at once. I couldn't see why anyone would wall off the road that led that way.

I went into the city with that thought. Fortunately — perhaps because I had come up from the south — no one asked me to show anything before letting me in.

Within, it was a crowded, bustling place. People in great numbers, buildings standing thick. At the center lay an enormously wide market. A large market, for a city with no railroad, which meant the spending to sustain it had to be here...

Perhaps the wall was why. An army eats through a great quantity of supplies. And the person I had to meet was a soldier. Taking that for a sign I had come to the right place, I made straight for the wall.

The closer I came, the more the people multiplied.

Oh?

I had expected the air to be drawn tight, as in a war, but the broad road that ran through the huge gate in the wall was lively instead. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If some desperate battle were being fought, the ground around the wall ought to have been thick with soldiers, the mood heavy. The gate, though, stood open, and people with loads on their backs passed in and out. If there was a port to the east, a railroad out to it would have done. I didn't know why they went about it like this.

Before the gate I soon found a group of soldiers with weapons in their hands. One sat alone, and he seemed to hold some rank of his own, so I walked over and spoke.

"Hello."

"Well? What's the matter?"

He answered gently. An unknown girl could question him and he didn't tense at all, so this truly didn't seem so dangerous a place. I held out the card I had on me.

"Could you put me in contact with this person?"

He took it with a drowsy face, and then he was on his feet all at once. Frozen, he returned the card to me with the greatest care.

"Forgive me. What is your relationship with this person?"

"He drove me to my destination yesterday. He said that when I was ready to go back, I should contact him here."

"Ah — yes. Might I ask your name?"

"It's Bell."

For a brief moment he looked as if something were wrong. Then he asked me to wait, and ran off somewhere in a hurry.

I was left alone at what seemed a guard post. A little way from it, several soldiers stood properly at their places. They glanced over now and then, plainly wondering what was going on, but however they looked at me, I knew nothing.

A good while after that, a vehicle stopped — something like a truck, and quite large beside the car I had ridden before. A middle-aged man got out, dressed differently from the rest. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He came up to me at a heavy tread.

"Excuse me. Would you be the Miracle Girl? Bell?"

Hm?

Now that he said it, I thought that name might have been in the papers. An interview I had never given, printed anyway. That sort of thing.

"That's my name."

At that, he glanced toward the vehicle he had come in.

"Please, get in first."

I nodded, obedient, and climbed inside.

The interior was not tidy. A map hung along one wall, and papers lay in heaps beyond counting. There was a map on the table as well, crowded with markers laying out the front. It did not look like a vehicle meant to carry a person from place to place. It looked like a vehicle meant for command.

The door shut, and he introduced himself as the commander here. Then he made his request.

"I am told you can heal people. That power — would you use it for my soldiers?"

Oh dear.

I held the corners of my mouth firm, so that I would not smile, and answered.

Of course. A battlefield is a place where the wounded happen. I had set out on this journey for Victoria's aftercare, and something good had come of it for me as well.