do monsters have dreams?
I'm going down to the citadel to talk to dad and, well, I hear this noise behind me. I turn around to see that it's my younger brother, Jose, and the youngest of my sisters, Amira. They are carrying, well, they are carrying this big freaking swords. The ridiculous ones you use for execution. They are so close and I can see evil in their eyes, so I begin running towards the citadel.
Right away, someone trips me. It's my dad. he's got his foot on my neck and is wearing those ridiculous jangly earrings of his and his goggles--the type he uses when he's commanding battles in space. He starts kicking me while down. "Why weren't you prepared for this?" he asks. "Didn't you know they'd be jealous, because you can come into my citadel and talk to me? Why have you not planned for this?
I start wailing like a baby and tell him: dad, I thought I'd be safe here. I thought you were my friend. He just pulls out a knife and I realize he's laughing at me for believing in him. Why did I think I'd be safe?
So I start slashing at him with my own knife. I carve huge chunks out of his flesh and bite into his legs. I stab him in the eyes and he says: Yes, this is majestic. This is good.
My sister and brother is still coming after me with the execution swords and I don't know how to get out of here.
I am a Hazat
While Novarch Izan the Hazat assured his youngest daughter, Amira Marcado, that the courses that she was taking at the Palace of Glory were equivalent to courses taken by any other potential cadets to archons, that did not mean she believed him.
Novarch might have unbent enough to allow her to catch up with the best practices of social engineering and how to wrangle state of the art bath facilities, but he was never likely to allow her to extract confidential information from the private office of the Novarch.
Which of course, was precisely what she intended on accomplishing.
I am a Hazat
She hoped that this mantra of hers would magically grant her the memories and wisdom of previous Hazats before her. Useful memories and wisdoms. Like how do I access the private data terminal of the Hazat Novarch? How do I get into his private journals? Never mind that she had no idea if any other Hazat would ever have considered (or were even capable of) breaking into their own office.
At the moment, Amira was sitting in her suite at the Palace alone, listening to a poetry recital on the radio. The Novarch had invited her to said poetry recital, put on by archons pretending to be Io-Ian. Amira politely declined, saying crowds made her jittery. Nobody challenged her on this blatant lie.
In truth, it was solitude that made her jittery. The wallpaper in her suite was colored green. Furnitures were crafted from wood--real wood, a relatively rare thing in Herbert. Sometimes she rearranged the furniture around her room, just to prove she could. Also because she wondered if it annoyed her watchers. She had no delusion of privacy at the Palace of Glory. She watered her potted plants, the same ones the Hazat Izan gave her years ago. He asked her about them every time they met, although she didn’t know why he cared so much about container gardening. None of this did anything to soothe the emptiness in her heart, not the bubbling wrath in her stomach. The fact that she had no allies here, and never would.
The citadel of the Palace of Glory was wrong. It had gone through many renovations in her lifetime, and every time Amira felt more and more alien to the place. Instead of Hazat Black and Red, the Citadel was now dominated by Hazat Izan’s favorite color: soothing greenish-blue. Very few offices still were papered in red and black. “We have to uphold a few cliches for the benefit of the guests,” Hazat Izan told her when she asked about it.
Gone were the tapestries woven from the uniforms of the dead, decorated with beads smelted from ruined guns and spent ammunition that she remembered as a child. Her nanny used to tell war stories of the dead heroes that these were created from. Gone was the tea set she shared with Rumi when they grew up together in the Palace.
Rumi. Amira had a friend here, once, although memories of her old friend faded with every passing year. She vanished a few years ago on her fourteenth birthday. Rumi, whom she had an embarrassing crush on, and who, as far as Amira was aware, never showed any indication of interest in Amira. Not that way.
Sometimes Amira found herself daydreaming about finding Rumi and--and then what? She had become much more wrathful, vengeful, as anger deep inside herself boiled over to fill every vacancy. This did not dissuade her from wanting to find out more about her friend. She became irrationally convinced that if Rumi found a happy life outside the palace, that Amira wasn’t a toxic influence on everyone she came into contact with.
“She died young,” Hazat Izan told her when she asked about her recently. “An illness.” Amira knew this was a lie. The last memory that she had of Rumi was her proudly revealing her secret: she had been selected to be a cadet of the archons. Even Hazat Izan was not so foolish to lose his agents to some disease so young.
I am a Hazat,
Amira collected her breath, and drummed something on her radio. Morse code. Universal Lang. “S-A-F-E?”
Moments later, faintly from her earpiece: “S-A-F-E.” Amira rung a little bell to her side, and called upon a maid to fetch her a book from the library. A piece of erotic literature. A plausible reason for why a teenager would want some time alone, surely? The archon-poet declaimed some verse about peacocks. She had never seen a peacock before, but she assumed they were mocking the Li Halan. Or something. She was never one for nuances.
She crawled out through the window, climbing the walls of the palace. This would’ve been a lot harder, but thanks to months of planning and casing, she knew the location of the cameras and patrols, and had a detailed understanding of other security measures. Hard, as always, was a relative thing. For instance, just this moment, thanks to bribing and winning the affection of the servants around the palace, she knew with absolute certainty that the Hazat’s office would be empty. Besides, she had waited for years, polishing and hiding an advantage the best she could from the Hazat Izan.
What Hazat Izan knew about her: in a manner unbecoming of a lady as was expected in these times, Amira Marcado trained herself in ways of war and combat, and possessed an athletic and toned body.
What Hazat Izan possibly didn’t know about her: for years she studied the mechanisms of exo-armors in secret and won the respect and aid of the household armorers. With briberies and promises if necessary. With them, she had developed a special, lightweight, and relatively concealable exo-gear. It didn’t make her any stronger or able to deflect bullets, but power and ability of an exo-frame could take many forms, and in this case it took the form of hooks and stakes to enable her to climb stone walls.
This allowed her to reach into the Hazat’s office and climb through the window that the maid left open for her.
A sound from her right. Her head swiveled, her exo-gauntleted arm rising up to strike the unforeseen complication. It was a calico cat, named Nathuram Godse, stretching out in the sun. It was a pet of Zaid, Hazat Izan’s spymaster who liked naming his beasts after assassins. Amira started to sweat. The red and black uniform she wore clung damply to her back. She’d come this far, it would be a shame if she let the opportunity slip by this time. She immediately went up to her father’s private data terminal and began her first query.
What the hell happened to you, Rumi? Did she really want to know what happened to her friend? The one she had tea parties with as kids? One she pined after but never asked out (and why didn’t she, anyways?)
Rumi Terudo. Archon cadet, tracked as ‘archon infantry’. She wasn’t sure why even top secret documents like these insisted upon the euphemism for ‘assassin.’ When asked about it, Hazat Izan shrugged and said: “Habit.” Another one of his frustrating non-answers.
State: training terminated as of 4798. The end date hit her like a truck. That was the year Rumi disappeared, during her birthday. The record did not end there. Rumi had not been expelled or assigned off planet. No, Rumi had died. The record specified in dry, bloodless detail, that Rumi ran afoul of a visiting Avestite inquisitor while playing a heresy game. Rumi committed suicide rather than face humiliation of an eccelesiastical trial or reveal any of her secrets.
The game had been designed by one, Amira Marcado, the document noted.
That can’t be right, Amira thought. I never intended for--
Tears pricked at her eyes and she wiped them away with her gauntlets. Had she maneuvered her friend into suicide? Why did nobody tell Rumi about the visiting inquisitor’s presence? Why was the inquisitor here?
The records had no answer.
I loved her, Amira thought. And she’s gone. She’d look sideways at her during their games and tea parties admiring the fineness of her features. Longing to run her fingers through that mane of hair tied back in a ponytail. Wanting to feel her weight atop her’s.
“I believe she died young, of illness,” she remembered Hazat Izan telling her, sparing her the truth. There was no way he didn’t know. She didn’t feel spared. She was not sure for what reason this information was kept from her for years.
A smallest tapping noise through her radio. IS IT DONE. She taps back: ONE MORE THING.
She had to dig around a bit more for what she was looking for. Hazat Izan named all his files sensible things and organized them well, which only mildly surprised Amira. As much as Izan loved to play whimsical, cruel, maniacal warlord, he cared for his successors. He cared that what he built should outlast him.
“Not my problem,” Amira muttered to herself as she dug through more of the files. If she repeated it often enough, it might even become true. She opened the latest of the psychological evaluation profile that Novarch Izan ordered on all his relatives and successors. It was a long and dreary read that took effort not to skim.
She already knew that she was unfit for a social debut. Probably not fit for command role, she knew that too. Possibly not fit to appear in any public places due to her tendency to let her mouth fly. Possibly of deviant and heretical nature. Well, of course.
Possess no phobia of the dark. Why in seven hells did they even care enough to note this down?
At last, she came to Zaid’s recommendation. “Recommend marrying off on earliest convenience to assure powerful alliance.”
Her hand slipped and she almost ended up deleting the entire file. Stupid! She knew all activities would be logged and that Hazat Izan could recover any suspiciously deleted files. Stupid, because she shouldn’t care. Zaid was civil to him, but she knew there was no love lost between them.
WILL NEED MORE HELP THEN REALIZED, she tapped out through her radio transceiver. A moment of silence.
ASK AWAY, came the reply.
GET ME TO COACHMAN AGORA. Hazat Izan's personal terminal was not the only place where top secret information was stored. Perhaps the Death Court in Byzantium would have answers not found here.
A silence. Then: WE SEE A WAY.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
She had a few options, if she wanted to leave the Palace.
She could take Hazat Ronan’s favorite aeroplane. It was sleek, advanced, probably the fastest thing the Hazat had. She knew how to pilot the thing, somewhat. Okay, so she only had studied the schematics and basic pilot instruction manuals in detail, but how hard could it be?
But while she wasn’t really privy to her House’s security arrangements, if Ronan didn’t post the best of his jarheads around the plane at all times she would eat the Hazat Izan’s entire annual chocolate supply. (She hated chocolate, which Hazat Izan refused to believe. They had multiple arguments about it. Life at the Citadel was somewhat unpredictable).
The escape tunnel and the small shuttle at the end of it, on the other hand…
The hidden escape tunnel’s entrance was unguarded. This was not exactly strange--being guarded all the time would defeat the purpose of it being secret in the first place. Quick sprint through the tunnels later, and she was in the woods outside Shaddam.
By now quite a long time had passed. She moved fast as she could with the help of her exo-suit, but she suspected that Hazat Izan discovered she was gone by now.
And true enough, first of the personnel carriers were arriving as she darted from the tunnel into the treeline, barreling through the forest and following the poorly-managed dirt roads, and disgorging its payload of archon operatives. Some of them, Amira could tell, were using some light exo-suits like herself.
She didn’t particularly like these odds. All she had was a backup pistol and a survival knife, alongside her cobbled-together and jury rigged exo-suit. These were archon operatives. They might have been called into service in a hurry, but they were coming fully equipped. Whether “fully equipped” meant state-of-the-art gear, or hand-me-downs due to the budgetary constraints that Hazat Izan was constantly complaining about was not important. She was confident that they would outgun her even if they were using equipment all the way back from the Grand Republic.
Her best asset was her wits and, well, herself. Archons weren’t exactly expected to face heavy combat. None of them likely ever saw any actual combat against a foe with more weapons than farming equipment. She had trained with Raphael Evuardo and the Chromium Claw. Still, she tried her best not to underestimate them.
The operatives were quickly moving out into dispersed formation as they tracked into the woods after her. Likely cautious for any traps or explosives that Amira might have escaped with. Amira climbed up into the trees to avoid them, and things went almost immediately wrong when a thorny branch manages to get in between the gaps of her cobbled together exo-suit and tear a gash across her arm. She let out a hiss and made herself concentrate before the archons heard her scramble. Damned if she was going to let herself down by wimping out at such a trivial injury, at least, by her standard. She leapt from tree to tree, trying to keep her movement silent and undetected. She would be a sitting duck if she got discovered here, but really, who would expect her to have a mobility exo-suit? It also wasn’t as if she expected to encounter
Hazat Ronan or whatever atop a tree writing poetry or whatever. (According to Hazat Izan, Ronan’s poetry were all terrible, pornographic, or both anyways).
The personnel carrier, after disgorging its personnel, was scurrying to continue down the dirt road. This was a mistake in this terrain, but at this point, anything short of teleportation would’ve been a tactical error for the personnel carrier to make. When the winding road forced the carrier close to the tree that she had maneuvered atop of, she jumped. She had just enough time to think: why didn’t I design a more aerodynamic exo-suit for this? And also to contort herself sideways so that her neck wouldn’t snap from the impact.
She almost blacked out from the pain, but when she came to a second later, she found herself clinging to the top of the personnel carrier as the panicked drivers struggled to right the vehicle fishtailing on the rough dirt road. Then, the carrier rammed into a tree, and flung her forward into more trees. More bloody trees! By Pralaya, she never wanted to see another tree for the rest of her life. And a pox on Izan’s inexplicable obsession with green plants while at it. The branches of the forest flayed at her armor all the way as she was thrown into the forest. Inanely, she thought that this always looked more fun in all the pornographic literature that she read. Maybe she was doing this wrong.
As the shouts of archon operatives drew closer, she could tell she was now draped over a tree branch rather uncomfortably. God, if she survived the experience, she never wanted to see another tree in her life again. Or a plant. Well, maybe the container garden she was absolutely sure that Hazat Izan would take care for her during her absence, in between coaxing people to eat candies, ordering assassinations, and annoying Zaid. (Amira did not like Zaid, because Zaid thought the best place for her was off planet wedded to some fop, but she conceded that Zaid had a singularly thankless job).
Next time I run afoul of people, I wante it to be the Bureaucrats, Amira thought, aware that she was whining. She could have a nice action-filled month or two filling out paperwork and being yelled at for doing them wrong. It would be a nice vacation. The drivers to the personnel carriers were approaching, guns drawn, to her position. She could see the terror in their eyes through her helmet. Did we just kill a Marcado? They were probably thinking something along those lines.
She answered their question for them by exploding into action when they came into striking range, throwing one into a tree and delivering a punch into the other’s face. She hoped she didn’t kill either of them. That would make for some awkward conversation later. She limped into the vehicle and began driving like a maniac down the road as the first of the archons emerged from the treeline to begin firing upon the carrier.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Novarch Izan the Hazat’s day started nicely enough. It started with a nice meditation session, an unexpectedly optimistic meeting with Financial, and a delightful new type of confectionary. He’d carved out all the time he could to pat Marcus Brutus, the cat, who had matured from a particularly scatter-brained chinchilla tailed kitten to a lazy ball of fur whose only ambition in life was to be a pillow. Hazat Izan didn’t like cats very much but patting them made his steward, Zaid, happy and thus put Izan in his good graces.
He had gone to a poetry recital for the afternoon, inviting his children together for some rare family time. Amira had rejected, of course, as he expected. Puberty. Or something.
He’d gone to bed, marvelling at the possibility of a nap, when alarms blared in his office. Swearing, he ran to the terminal in his bedchamber.
“The bloody hell is it?”
The image of Zaid, his steward popped up. He had a black cat perched atop his shoulder. “Sir, your fishing expedition has borne fruit.”
By fishing expedition, Zaid meant the elaborate and overcomplicated scheme that he and Izan cooked up to test Amira’s abilities and secrets. For a while, it was clear that his daughter was hiding something and attempting to build a network of allies and some kind of tech-device behind Izan’s back. Izan found this behavior adorably precocious, so in a fine Marcado fashion elected to give her a rather long length of rope to see how she hanged herself with it.
The operation was hideously expensive. Involved quite a lot of supplies for his daughter to pursue her ‘hobby.’ He was glad, however, that she was finally growing into her own person. “Well where is she now?” Hazat Izan asked.
“We are having some difficulty tracking her,” Zaid reported. “But our analysts believe she’s headed towards the agora.”
The coachmen’s agora? Now why would she be headed there? “Very well,” Izan said. “Dispatch Lady Dulcinea to intercept her. End this little game.”
Izan terminated the link. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after that, Dulcinea would bring her his wayward daughter soon enough. No way a little girl could evade his best for long. For now he summoned a servant to get Amira’s plants brought into his room. No sense in letting good plants die.
He went back to his naps. Few hours later, he awoke to go to a meeting regarding Duke Dulcinea’s slight overexpenditure with regard to Absu’s wedding dress. Had a bit of a headache, and wrote to Jose about the activities of the Death Court on Byzantium in a somewhat foul and dour mood. He argued with Zaid about whether confectionaries counted as bread, and had clams for dinner.
Tomorrow morning, he began to wonder if it was possible for a little girl to evade his best after all.
