K - Karyon

Karyon lost her real name when she was so young that she never even knew it. As a girl at war with her own nature, she followed rules not because they are good ideas but because a rule is the rule. The biggest issue she had with obeying for its own sake was that as a thaumaturge, her very existence was illegal.

Fortunately, she was stolen away from her parents as a young child.

They had no ransom to pay. There were no threats or negotiations to get her back. After awhile she was simply assumed dead. Everyone aware of her birth at all just . . . went on with their lives.

Every young thaumaturge had the same story. Their family quietly pretended they had never been born, or if they were older that they had run off. Someone always turned them in. Occasionally it was the mothers, fearful of their association with a thaumatic baby. Mostly it was a nurse or a neighbor.

Karyon was born in the city of Oshen, the largest port city on the north-east coast, but everywhere was the same for practitioners. Anyone with the power to destroy what remained of the planet after the big blast conveniently disappeared. Karyon had. This was only one of the hard peas of living on Gioveda. Ambassadors would come and spirit the child away. Questions were irrelevant. It was required.

Inside the sweaty event hall in the SoCro neighborhood of Lerishon a fine mist made the room feel cramped and muggy. Karyon stood on the precipice of the entry on Alauna Boulevard where the people with money spent it. The main avenue running north and south through Lerishon was crossed every direction by every sort of person, but SoCro was where everyone went to impress, or oppress, according to their station and ability.

Hours past dark the dubzhiots were pouring. The beats were pounding. The skirts were flowing and the navels showing. The party was almost in full swing. Karyon stood almost touching the simple, blocky silk uniform of her sponsor, Nandec Ventarian. Her own clothes were equally, and predictably, inappropriately for a wedding, but they were carrying the only credentials they had ever needed to enter a building. Their chest bore the carved emblem of the ambassador corps. The symbol, bearing the head of a bird facing to the right with an awkward squared-off beak and a swirl where the eye should be brought fear and respect instantly. Unlike Nandec’s, Karyon’s badge was covered a white stripe on a diagonal from the upper right corner.

The room hushed as they entered. Nancec waved dismissively to let the entertainers know to carry on. They weren’t there to crash the party, but they were there on business. Two pieces of business.

Nandec made a hand gesture toward her. The driving music and screaming conversation. She had never filled out any application.

Nandec was just over thirty, and his face was fully hidden behind the white mask of his station. His gaze shone through the eye holes of the mask that hid his scars. Long, dark waves of hair hung enough in his face, enough that most observers didn't notice the mask behind the thick wavy hair. Nobody ever asked about the mask. Explaining it to someone would require him to separate them from their life.

She nodded at him so he knew she understood.

He pointed at himself, then waved in a small circle ending with a fist. She nodded her assent again. He would capture their quarry. He pointed at her and pointed toward the dais and then flipped his vertical, flattened hand back and forth. She nodded. She would cover the back door. A child's errand, she thought.

She buried her disappointment so he would not see it and asked him, “Are there any special laws or customs which I need to be careful of? This is, after all, a wedding.” Karyon flipped her hand idly about in front of her indicating the foppish revelers whirling and gyrating around the dance floor.

Nandec's hair was beginning to weigh down with the expensive indoor drizzle. He shook his head slowly, and she understood his disappointment at the question.

The ambassador shook his head just enough that she would notice. He tugged his watch from the little pouch where it rested on his cuff. He always used the oldest technology she had seen.

Karyon followed Nandec from a step behind as he strode to the bar along the wall to her left. A solid stone slab dominated the room with a bright pink-white surface. Slightly worn spots dipped where stools and elbows had supported a million drinkers for longer than any man could imagine. After all the years, the gray-pink-white stone still boldly asserted its dominance over the room. A dozen feet from the bar a series of columns supported the enormous arched ceiling constructed in a series of square domes. Each dome was covered in millions of tiny tiles, forming a series of mosaics with geometric borders and an odd mix of familiar constellations and mythological creatures.

The young applicant surveyed the room through dark-rimmed blue eyes, noting the half-dozen people sitting on stools at the bar and watching the spasmodic gyrations that passed as dancing in Lerishon. Everyone in the room was dressed in expensive clothes. The sort that cost a month worth of doses for a butcher or a tailor. Much of the fabric was imported. Probably the tailors, too, she thought. Every collar and hem was sewn in the asymmetrical pattern of the current fashion, except one old gown floating in the middle of the room. She looked young, probably younger than Karyon’s own seventeen years. The bride.

Nandec nodded at Karyon, who shouted at the barkeeper over the music.

“Keep!”

The middle-aged man sauntered over wearing a scowl that matched his bushy brow and thick, black mustache. His thick chest was barely contained within his blousey shirt with a laced up closure at the top, and a pair of high-waisted pants strained to contain his muscled thighs.

The bartender’s glance flitted to the pin that Karyon’s barely used fighting vest carried. He turned back to Nandec. “What you need, little white-bar girl?”

“I need to know which person is Sereah?”

“Which one? There’s three at this wedding.”

“Get out of here.” Karyon blurted out. She glared at him, trying to look menacing, but not pulling off more than a pouty-teen face. Nandec gave her a scalding and reproachful look though she just caught it with the corner of her vision.

“In two more hours and . . .” he checked the clock hanging on the wall behind him. “. . . thirty-six minutes I’ll do exactly that.” The small bald spot on the back of his head shone in the swirling party-lights.

And I thought Nandec was extravagant. This party must be costing thousands of doses.

The applicant continued, undaunted. “I need Sareah Congreaves. She’d be a bit older than me.” She jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at Kayron.

“So. Nine or ten years?” The bartender smiled at his own mirth. Karyon glowered even more severely and looked precisely the pouty teen that she was. The barkeeper looked back at Nandec, still grinning. Nandec wasn’t returning the mirth. The man finally pointed toward the far corner. “At that long table to the right of where the bride is sitting. See there? Third from the right. That’s Sareah Congreaves.”

Oh, step-mother with a crap sandwich. She’s a bridesmaid?

“Thanks.” Karyon said, then turned and saw Nandec give another quick survey of the room.

Probably looking for exits to block, she thought. The oldest buildings had very few ways in or out.

They stepped away from the bar, and Nandec grabbed her sleeve and pulled Karyon closer to give her a very subtle gesture that looked to an untrained like he was scratching his face, which was impossible with the mask on.

You purg. I am called an ‘Applicant’ when you and your cult kidnapped me.

She jutted her lower jaw out. Nandec stared at her without expression. “Front door. Two windows low enough on the far side to break through. One exit to the alley, likely behind the dais on our left.” She stared at him with no expression. “No guards. No fights needed tonight.”

He nodded very slightly and pointed toward the rear of the building.

“Sir,” she said, and though it was drowned by the music of a zealous wedding party she knew he could read her lips.

She walked away with more purpose than she felt. She knew the penalty for dismissal from the ambassador corps. An applicant who failed was never seen again. She slipped behind a curtain that obscured a few stairs that led up to a door with a hallway extending to the right behind the elevated area at the head of the room. She moved quickly down the corridor, ensuring there was only the one door, then turned to face toward the steps but waiting in the darkness of the corridor. There she waited behind the curtain.

An argument broke out and the music trailed off to nothing in moments. Nandec. Why? A man was yelling something about the wrong person. There wasn’t a thaumaturge in the entire family. There’s three of them here, Nandec will say. He did. The sounds of a scuffle and some foot stamping could be heard after the music had stopped., and then women screaming. A loud, wet thud, like a gourd bouncing on stone. Another scream that led into a wail. Well, this is going flawlessly, Nandec?

A figure burst through the curtain at the bottom of the stairs. Female by the shape. The shadow bounded to the top of the stairs in two leaps, but didn't slow down like she would have if she had seen Karyon waiting in the shadow by the door. The woman was on top of Karyon in a second, the applicant’s blade was already out, but held in reverse with the blade back and down.

The woman crashed into Karyon trying to release the door latch. They both fell roughly out through the door and into the dusty alley, rolling over once in a pile of wet, warm garbage. Please be garbage, she thought.

The woman tried to stand and run, but her dress slowed her. She lifted it high to scramble to her feet. Karyon could not allow her to escape. She would not. In one fluid motion, the applicant rolled over and swung her blade, catching the woman in the back of her exposed leg. A spurt of blood came out along with the scream. The woman fell. Karyon jumped up and closed the gap between them. The woman’s eyes pleaded.

No. I’m not here to kill you.

Karyon bent over the woman and pressed her hand hard on the wound. For a moment the woman scrambled to escape. Karyon quietly hummed a song she recalled from her childhood. The words were not well known. Perhaps they were ancient. No one knew. Words of power, clearly formed in her mind. Her hand heated up and a subtle, heated glow emanated.

The bleeding slowed. Then stopped. Karyon stood and helped the woman to her feet.

“How did you . . .?” The woman’s eyes showed white all around the orange-brown irises.

“Shh. Are you Sareah?"

The woman stared at Karyon nervously. She stood stone-still.

Karyon looked up and down the alley quickly.

"Well then. There are laws and they must be obeyed. Come with me. It’s time to go.”

* * *

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