It was newly Traastr. In Unitas, the summer did not come, at first, with violence. It came in creeping heat, swaddled by gasps of littoral wind from the bay. One such fluttered the slats of the carriage, and the first of two travelers settled, uneasily, into one propped up hand, then unsettled just as soon. The air itself was sticky, as even as early as it was, a summer in Unitas can be likened to fruit on the vine, overripe in the humid air. Like the sweat around the back of his collar. In Doleri, under two suns, maddened like aggrieved wounds, sweat evaporated. This carriage belonged to Mr. Mircea Vedova, who owned Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice. It was drawn as though by mechanical horses, and set by one of his automata– which played the part of draft– upon a preordained path.
The matter which saw him away from the complex at Industry Park was an old matter, one that predated concerns of the Board and the Bahn. In Unitas, and for a matter of fact that was partly regrettable, a hard line had been drawn between the past of five years prior, or beyond, and the present. It was a line which choked off three whole blocks to a side, like a clot in the arteries of the city itself. The gold-plated rise of the part-factory, part-fortress building on Industry Park, which into deep summer would soon burn to the touch like an impending apocalypse beyond the solace of every sharp shadow.
Once upon a time, there had been those he would have liked to see within the confidance of that complex. The second of two travelers would be the first to come, and that was a disquieting thought indeed. No others had come. Perhaps, snared in the wire of pains, neuroses, histories he shared but not nearly closely enough to abjure, none would ever come. The great mystery of what all had been lost to him would persist. If that was what was to be, then his life would continue as it had.
When at last he lifted his hand from his face, set as it often was in a dour pinch, to befit the truth of Mircea Vedova far nearer and far more intimately than the likes of his simulacra, it came away with a tug. He padded the sweat from his cheek with part of his collar and took a darting look around the interior of the carriage, which was dark. In his eyes, it had the color of early twilight, except for searing lines where sunlight got through the cracks. The second would be here soon. On the return, within the interior of the carriage, under layers of abjura and armor panels alike, a proof against the counter of the maxim so proudly touted in Unitas, he would once again share company.
That is to say, 'Health is Wealth'. The dead can take nothing, and the living occasionally become dead. And for the latter part, it was not exceedingly rare that the young inventor spoke to another. Rather, the rarity in this case was a measure of respect that could, perhaps, be only afforded to a past five years since gone.
Even had he opened the slats somewhat and chanced the possibility that someone from beyond the thick shell of his carriage might see within, a thought that ought be foregone, from where the carriage was coming down the hills towards the wharves it would not have been possible to see the ship which was just now entering the bay. As the suns might have seen it, now passing one of the lower capes where they near the Great Elan, a barque of three masts plodded along overtop the breakers. The second of the two travelers ran his hand on the rail. If wood could be mussed into shape, it would have been, but not for any sort of disquietude. If you had been there, on the rail of the ship, you would have been able to perceive in him a kind of ecstatic mania. Whenever he'd glance up, helped by the tip of a wave under the barque, and sunlight hit his eye, you would have been able to see the glimmer of brassy metal and the dim luster of a mechanical aperture under each eyelid.
The second traveler did not always have sight, and before that, he had not always been blind; there were scars at the corners, linking temple to eye, eye to eye, eye to temple. His name was Valyron, but seven and change exisited who would know him, properly, as what he was: Kosmatyr, bearer of the Grail, and Mr. Vedova was one such. This narrow circle confidence was partly by design, but so close as you'd be, you'd see the curl of his lips gently tucked in the boyish cut of his face at the thought, at the restraint. The goal of the meeting was, of course, the conjunction. It needn't all be the conjunction. For those keen enough to pick out his double act, there lay a second idiosyncrasy. The pointed possibility that Valyron indeed did not know of his own deception.
As time advanced– the trundling of the carriage, the rolling of the barque– the distance between the two travelers grew shorter and at last came to collapse. It was in the air, even in the air of the carriage, with its little fan, which kept the interior from warming like that of an oven, hot, like the ground where the buildings shielded it on the leeside, away from the sea. A buzz collected, for which two explanations were known to the first traveler, to Mircea Vedova of Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice. First, the conjunction of two Kosmatyr bred a unique presence, which can be described only in the magnitudes of its potential to throw the world as it is into disarray. More had met before, and indeed, as one surmised and another hoped, more would meet again. It was an electricity that had not been evident to Mr. Vedova until late in the process, alongside Genesis, alongside Halcyon, and Tara. Alongside Valyron.
In spite of this fact, lying a hair's breadth beneath his ken, there was a second possibility which sought to explain the exact origin of the unease Mr. Vedova felt, as the carriage descended the final few runs of switchbacks. It was a thought which would not be admitted, nor, of course, willingly entertained past the stage of conception. It spoke of a tenor within him which lay outside of his command. A rogue thought. Perhaps, in the dim of his carriage, which possessed a golden blush from the brass of the interior, even given the lacquer, a shiver might be picked out in his expression, one that wavered. It said that perhaps there was a crux of anxiety there, too, and not for the metaphysical implications of such a meeting. That it sourced from another reason entirely. If that were true, it was too late to matter.
The mask– of course he'd brought the mask– threatened to spill forth a sea of foreboding into the root of his mind. He didn't need to touch it to feel the terrible, mounting presence it relayed to him. The nearness. The only conclusion was that Mircea Vedova was losing his edge, so far removed from his entrenched arguments with Halcyon and the only person who had ever really met Valyron on a level in terms of the Kosmatyr, a name he would not conscience to think on what ought to be a good day.
The prodigal chairman of Pandion Manufacturing and Artifice bid his mind to change course. Mircea Vedova threw a switch. Immediately, a small battery of mirrors sprung on their settings from a panel in the wall. His face, rendered small and sullen in the reflective brass, was not overly scruffy. His skin had ever been smooth, but he had shaved recently as well. He remained lean and far more apparitional than his duplicate, a problem he had briefly hoped to rectify by sending the image in his stead. It would not have worked; Valyron required a much more direct touch. Valyron required strategy, a strategy the duplicate could not be assured to have. And it would not have fooled him, of that Mr. Vedova was certain. No, the greater performance was his to present, and not altogether illusory. He would present a picture of prosperity, his picture. Valyron, he was determined, would be brought forward into his Unitas. That called for a greater degree of presentation, and, gently, he pat his cheeks with a faint amount of water and pigment. Mircea Vedova thereby restored what vigor had seemingly been lost in his brooding in the carriage prior to arrival.
Strictly, there was no need for the automaton to chirp its alarm as the ship carrying Valyron arrived. It was a clever system, one synchronized with a battery of sensors he had prepared and painstakingly linked over a short stint of time and distance to the centaur-like driver and draft of the carriage. Veil was alarm enough, the agony of the Kosmat spilled across the gap between the bagged mask and person. It was a dolorous upwelling at the root of his mind, or rather, something just removed from it, in that in between space. It was a clarion call and its hearer both, and that horrible combination existed solely within his being. Even still, Mr. Vedova reacted precisely as he had designed to the alarm. He scarcely started, rather, he threw another switch, and the whole of the carriage's right-hand face opened. Summer equalized, though on the water it was not stuffy.
Unitas beyond the carriage came into definition. The barque sat high on the water, and all of its passengers began streaming off in procession, or were picked up by other waiting vehicles. The carriage had opened– or perhaps more aptly, uncurled– behind him, like a vanity, and like a bird taking wing. He let it frame him. He faced the bay and a shoreward wind picked up the hem of his coat and his hair; he peered a detesting venom through the shade of his glasses. Time advanced, a fact he was unaccustomed to take note of unless the events included were of particular interest. Today, there would just be the one, and so he was content to let it pass.
There was something he was looking for, something he might have seen had he been just ahead of the ship short minutes prior, when the barque crossed the breakers and stopped its rolling within the calm of the bay. There, he would have seen Valyron retreat from the head of the ship to find a posting by the gangway, where he might take it down towards the end of the trickle of passengers. Most present among his thoughts was the simple fact that he could afford to wait– Mircea Vedova was here, waiting, by the dock. That awareness which gripped the inventor at the base of the mind was present for him, too, though Valyron would likely have opined that it was not nearly so dissonant nor sorrowful. No, the conjunction was a joyous thing, and therefore so was the sense which came out before it. In the end, Valyron was among the last to come walking up from the seaside, but that phrasing leaves out quite a bit.
It might be chalked up to the closure of the last percent of the space which had existed between both Kosmatyr when Mr. Vedova had first perceived the presence of the other, but the moment hung on. More accurately, he hung onto it. The few notable thoughts which surfaced in his mind, between the carriage and the sea, where the barque was, and boxed in to either side by the procession of people, were as follows: first, and strictly observational, he could see Valyron now. Within that moment, and the limitations of space and positionality, he could barely prise him out from behind the people which were splitting around his carriage. Secondly, and in contrast to any extenuating circumstances, Valyron was in fact there. The presentation would occur as he had conceived of it. Third, perhaps he ought to have sent the double.
There is a moment in a fall in which arrest ceases to be possible. So, he stepped out in front of the crowd, waited just long enough, and announced his presence. Whenever the moment were to end, his eyes would have the better part of the task in finding their mark. His eyes caught.
Mircea Vedova said, "Ah. Good, you're here. I should say, welcome to Unitas."
Valyron did not reply in kind. He made for the carriage before he made any kind of response, but for a moment he was near enough for Mircea to see the brass eyes he had devised, before they went to the carriage, zipping from angle to angle in a sort of apparent glee. When he did reply, he said, "This is another thing you've made, isn't it? Very intricate," and then he opened out and at last faced him, with a lopsided smile. "Yes, I feel terribly welcome. It's... warm."
Mircea's pause lingered perhaps longer than he had intended it to. He wasn't going to bring Veil in yet, though the thought of counsel had grown enticing. He would not, because Valyron would certainly note it. Therefore, a certain amount of subtlety remained necessary. That thought, arising from the way his prior conceptions of his own goals had seemed to tangle at this meeting and the collapse of a past five years now gone into the present, was exacerbated by Valyron's non-sequitur. He supposed it was impressive. Rather, internally, he puffed out his chest at the thought, but in truth it paled. Briefly, he thought to explain it. Upon revision, he did not.
Mircea replied, "It is. It will take us to Pandion– to the complex I have constructed for my artifice. I wrote to you about it, I expect that's part of why you came?"
Valyron took one last look at the carriage before offering a mere shrug as explanation. "Yes," he said, a lingering thought evident in his intonation. A good few moments came and went before he followed it up. "But were we not friends? I should like to ask you about your life, now. Would you... let me speak to Veil as well, perhaps?"
When both individuals folded into the carriage and the brass siding came back into place, it would have been briefly difficult for one to see the other, despite the swift adjustment to dimness of both men's eyes. Therefore, in that moment, it cannot be known whether Mr. Vedova winced at a thought which had entered unwelcome, from the part of his mind which fell under Veil’s influence. Nevertheless, his face was impassive again quickly afterwards. He tilted his nose up. It was a natural topic of interest for Valyron, his fellow Kosmatyr. It would not preclude the rest of the presentation, of showing the complex, of this he felt quite sure. Mircea bid the carriage move, and it began back up the hill.
“Well, of course. Of course. In my complex, I have specialized tools for dealing with entities of a Kosmyk nature,” said Mircea, after weighing his reply with all the care of a chemist. “So… why not.”
Gold under gold tones, Valyron’s face wavered. It became thin and an ounce sorrowful. “I think I forgot how little of my enthusiasm the rest of you shared for the rejoining of the shards,” he said, after a fair deal of hand-wringing. It had been severe; as though Mircea could watch the thoughts, bubbling up, and still they caused him to feel a sliver of guilt.
“Veil is…” Mircea began, and felt, in the space behind his mind, the weight of some great attention whirl upon him. He wondered if he’d regret the lie if later he acquiesced, and Valyron spoke to Veil. He wondered whether what he thought to say would even be a lie, if not merely some means to drive distance between Valyron and his thoughts, his intentions. Even when blind, his read of others had always been uncanny.
Veil was primarily concerned with mourning a world it knew was gone. A simple alteration can be made to that description: Veil was primarily consumed with mourning a world it knew was gone. At the root of its being was an all-encompassing fixation with death. Veil did not wish action, because it was far too obsessed with a moment which had already passed to see any value in the present. That was what Mircea Vedova knew.
What Mircea Vedova thought was a completely different matter. Suppose it were to be revised: Veil was primarily concerned with mourning a world it knew was gone. Being principally fixated on its own death, it required remarkably little of him, and yet, when he had taken up the mask back in Effelheim, and when he had finally acquiesced to Veil’s insistence and become a full ‘Herald’, it had placed him on level ground with the likes of Genesis, Halcyon, Tara. A power Adara had claimed she would have refused on principle. A power Nathra had not considered. It was power applied as a god ought to apply it. Pity it had come far too late. Pity he didn’t see fit to honor it with prayer.
Far from his mind, parceled in a depth he hoped he could sequester away and keep from bleeding into where he felt Veil’s influence stir as though it had ears to feel burning, came a brief wondering– that Veil might be getting something else. Something unsaid.
The weight did not dissipate. From where it crouched like a spider in a crack in his subconscious, it issued a rejoinder. Veil said, though he had not touched the mask, “How pithy. How true. Do you not think the moment of your death will eclipse you?”
Mircea Vedova refocused on the carriage around him. He finished, “...inert. Well, he doesn’t fucking shut up, but I don’t think letting the two of you speak would yield results. Not the results you’re looking for. Not to mention, you were sharp with him. What makes you think he would think to reward that? Like he rewarded Epheram?”
Something– likely the ‘pith’, as Veil put it– cut through Valyron’s dour whim. It dissipated, and he grinned, from across the carriage, with a level of reverie Mircea found briefly nostalgic. Valyron marveled, then said, “I think I’d needed a refresher on you, then. I haven’t had anybody, these years. Anybody but the work. Ah,” he said, and for the blink of an eye the corners of the Herald Valyron’s mouth fell. “...Forgive me, but I have not seen or felt sign of the Thorn.”
A thought surfaced– from himself, not from Veil, nor any other interceding thing– in the mind of Mircea Vedova, with a cruel kind of jealousy he failed to examine. Mr. Vedova’s cruel jealousies always went without examination. It remarked, ah, of course. It remarked, there had been another reason for your coming. Finally, it said, it will be difficult if you were to learn that we had become estranged.
“Yes,” began Mr. Vedova. Behind his darkened lenses, as the cart trundled over a particularly rough patch of cobblestones he knew marked the final approach to Industry Park, at least by this route, his eyes darted for something to focus on. The pause ended, and he gathered his hands. “...Well. We six have had to forge our own paths in the aftermath. In the time since.”
Valyron sustained his look with such an intensity, though belied by his cheery expression, that Mircea was pulled back to the immediacy of the conversation. Standing closer to the side of Valyron’s face than Mircea could, for the roomy span of the carriage, it would be possible to glean two things. First, a mite of doubt was passing through his features. It was followed by a shiver, something sad, something short-lived. As though Valyron did not want to doubt Mircea. By the time he spoke, it would be forgivable to imagine that Valyron had re-contextualized the way Mircea’s eyes had strayed as he spoke, the tenor of uncertainty in his voice.
Mircea was not so close as to glean that in its full presentation, especially as his lenses prioritized traces of magic over the nuances of distant phenomena. Now, though, noticing a hint of reticence in the expression of his companion, he reached across to speak to Veil.
There was, of course, no passage of time in the space that was like a drainpipe flowing out of his mind. When he spoke, he spoke out into a big, echoless space. Rather, he did not speak at all. Neither did he have the chance to make his thoughts resound there, because the space was already filled with Veil. It was ready, as if with characteristically weepy commentary.
Veil said, “What, ought I do aught to help that the little mender has noticed you’ve driven off all of your friends? Shall I cry out in the void and summon them back?”
Mircea Vedova thought better of something. Valyron replied, as if after a long, drawn out silence. It had only been a jumble of seconds. “Oh,” he said, with a mournful twinge to his voice. Crestfallen, perhaps. “Maybe it had been ambitious to think I’d have the fortune to see both of them.”
“Well, both of us shall have to suffice,” said Mircea. The callousness of his reply came as easily as it had come to wipe any residual concern from his expression. Callousness was a tool of the chairman. It was a facet of Unitas’s Mircea. Perhaps the blue-skinned man behind the smoky lenses knew of some alternate truth to the ease with which he plunged into it, embodied it. Perhaps, in the peculiarities of the chairman’s self-image, it had become unfortunately easy to wear it. He finished: “Both of us will suffice, will we not?”
The carriage lurched to a stop, to something close. A slow crawl. Both occupants swayed from the sudden change in speed. Mircea Vedova imagined his question suspended in the middle of the carriage, in pause. Valyron replied, almost cheery, “The reunion of the divine corpse can weather a few setbacks.”
Excellent.
The carriage resumed, and half an hour ensued, by the end of which the carriage was pulling up alongside the big brass gates to his complex. Gates which, set on clutches and flywheels, parted at the nearing of his carriage. Scarce little conversation had occurred in the intervening time, but Valyron’s moods had returned, and he grew cheerier and yet, seemingly, more melancholic by the second.
When the automatic draught finally ceased ambling forward, there was a great hiss as the bed of the carriage lowered to the ground on a set of long cylinders. Mr. Vedova unlatched the door and put out a hand to guide Valyron down from the carriage. Graciously accepted, he walked out to intercept the sole other resident of his compound. There had been a time– a recent time– when he had occupied all twelve of the spacious city blocks of Industry Park real estate which lay beneath his foundries, workshops, and warehouses. It was a far more modest establishment than that of his industrial zone properties, if one were to look out across the city, and fix both in one’s sight.
But there comes a point where the term ’looking out across’, as in the case of the late Valetriec Helkzen, becomes inexact. The more apt term becomes ‘fucking with ones eyes’, and this was something that Mircea did not stoop to, as laughably common as it was for the Unitas thoroughbred, the nepotist, and the favored of fortune. It had been under his single habitance before his associations with Tara Archilo had become too expensive to maintain. She had defended him. She had been fast, capable, and endowed with the requisite pieces of artifice to ensure that, though she lived apart, she could answer an emergency. So it had happened that his first brushes with the corporate ladder had gone exceedingly well.
In Archilo’s absence he had been forced to seek alternatives. It seemed altogether that trust had gone the way of his former Dorixatl friend; far too expensive to maintain in any endeavor that might otherwise be worth its price. Of course, one such endeavor was his life.
His answer came out to meet them: five feet tall, peering over the rims of polished glasses. Under the inspection of one who knew her, the Bahn’s expression practically simmered with rage, a constant tweak at her lip, a movement which, given hundreds of years, might eventually produce a snarl. The Bahn followed the arc of the hand with which Mircea was, caught in the passage of a moment, gesticulating. She reached Valyron just past its extent, stood by the carriage, perhaps– disgustingly– awed by the place. She scrutinized him and said nothing. The tie between Bahn and plutocrat was one mutually forged in convenience and benefit.
The look with which Mr. Vedova ever fixed her dared her to dissolve it, to– as would be, for her, as easy as simply choosing to fall while walking– wither under his gaze into an indistinct grey sludge person. The Bahn did neither such thing; she had her ego to contend with. Furthermore, the tie between Bahn and plutocrat was what rendered her above the scum and the commons of this city. If you were to peel the skin from her face, you might notice how she was, at this moment, devising new ligaments with which to fix her lips into a salesman’s rictus.
“Master Vedova,” she said.
“Please,” he replied, and when she put out her arm, he slung his outer coat over it, and beckoned Valyron to do the same. When he entered the foyer of his compound with Valyron, she did not follow. Mircea Vedova indulged in something of a daily mantra: he passed then to the coat closet, where he hung up the inner coat and removed his shoes. They would be polished by simulacrum prior to his next need. He traded into a pair of gold silk slippers and a long, monogrammed robe. When he was done, he rubbed his hands over the pockets of the robe, a little ruefully, and turned to where Valyron stood, agape.
“The luxuries are expected of me,” said Mircea. He gestured to a spare set, and Valyron spared little effort getting similarly dressed.
“I can see how someone would get used to it all, though,” Valyron replied.
“Well,” Mircea said, more intent on dispelling the thought itself, than any commentary from Valyron, “I haven’t.”
As he passed across the working floor he had here in his compound, he droned on, purely for Valyron’s benefit. It wasn’t that he found the floor to be an eyesore, or even markedly disinteresting, but he hadn’t reached the part of his compound which he felt he had a particular interest in sharing. As he had not when they exchanged coats for fine robes. Nor had he when they paused for refreshments and to discuss what, to Mircea, were the finer points of Valyron’s visit.
Valyron pulled a chair out and sat, affably, across from him. He seemed genuinely impressed by what he’d seen so far. That was a sweet thought, and Mircea determined it made him want to choke. A simulacrum came out with teas and small finger-food, a routine he’d instilled for office guests, but on a lark taught his household retainers. Valyron took the serving plate whole, picked up a hors d’oeuvre, and ate it. He said, “I was glad to hear it, when you wanted to meet.”
Mircea nodded along. His request would certainly become more material after this short break ended, in a few rooms. Valyron was pushing ahead. Or… had he lost his sociability? “Since Archilo and I diverged paths, you are the first of my old traveling companions I have brought here, to Unitas. I will not beat around the bush, there are some things I had hoped we might accomplish together, and this is not a social call,” Mircea said, then, after a few moments spent with the bitter note on which he had ended, chose to soften it. “Well, it isn’t… wholly, a social call.”
“And that does not diminish my joy,” Valyron said. A glint in his eye… no, even from where Mircea sat, he could see the minute shifts in Valyron’s face, almost muted by the fact that, perhaps, to Valyron, this kind of duplicity was still honest. He was more excited by the fact that there would be work. There was something else, there, too.
Mircea replied, “Good,” and rose to his feet. Part of Valyron’s strangeness, he imagined, might be due to the fact that he had ever been ill at ease on the road. Recently, though, he thought he felt a calm which verged on the manic, and though it was not a permanent state, Mircea imagined it might be disarming to one who had only known him before. “I require your expertise in harnessing a number of spirits. An expertise I have, admittedly, extrapolated from your skill with the Kosmats, but, indeed, one I believe worthy of commendation.”
Valyron beamed. “You think I’m skilled? Yes, I suppose I have been involved in quite a lot.”
There were points at which Valyron’s false cheer was acceptable. He was, as Mircea was, foremost skilled at getting what he wanted. Valyron’s false cheer was but another route to achieving his ends. Other times, though, it was aggravating. Mircea did not grace it with a direct response.
Valyron’s face remained in that brilliant, affable flight for another beat, then fell back to baseline. He said, “I would be happy to help carry this project of yours forward.” Then he frowned, and Mircea’s throat tightened. This was paid no mind.
Mircea let a long moment pass in silent thought, himself, standing, Valyron still seated, and picking at the finger food. The robe– which he didn’t like– made him feel like an overstuffed bird of paradise. Then he looked down, at Valyron, at a slant. Then he announced, “I have decided I will let you speak with Veil.” A sparkle hit Valyron’s eye, but Mircea steamrolled on, “I have brought you here– well, that’s obvious. I have brought you here because you have a foremost mind, where the Kosmats are to be concerned, but unlike all other such, their divinity has not staunched you. It is a remarkable quality,” he said, with derision, “that has escaped many of our fellows. The project… well, it is not so dissimilar, I think, from the end sought by Grail. It is unchanged from the work that has ever captivated me. But I am tired of raising the dead. I will create life from nothingness. Not from life, and neither from death.”
Mircea Vedova paused when he realized that Valyron was now staring directly at him, bemused but unbothered by the tirade. Mircea slowed, then finished, “The problem is the soul. The soul of a corpse will move on if the body is destroyed. The soul of a corpse will remain with it if it is not. That leaves the third category. Well, I’m getting ahead of things. Come.”
Valyron, however, was somewhat stuck on a prior note. A bit bleary-eyed, he said, “You’ll let me speak to Veil?”
Mircea felt– without his will– his lips pull back from over his teeth. He sighed, and a brow went up when he said, “Yes.”
Valyron’s smile stilled. “Oh,” he said. “But in that case, I ought to share with you why I came all this way.” He put out a hand, with a shrug. It was a gesture Mircea read as a request for Mircea to help him up. With another brief glance, he complied. Valyron stood stock-still for a moment, and toyed with the drape of the gold silk robe he’d put on. It ill fit him. Finally satisfied, he added, “Shall we?”
Mircea took the platter from the side of Valyron’s chair and set it on the table, then pulled a chain. A simulacrum would be by to port it off. He led into the next room, which was a corridor adjoining the various support rooms for his primary workshop. They finally passed into the workshop itself, which was made, surface to surface, of burnished brass and expensive wood. The cost of the design had, given recent successes, grown rather immaterial. A whim had seen it to its present state.
There were a hundred-odd counters and cabinets, many of which contained his latest homunculi. They were scores of bird-like embryos in various states of suspended development, fixing him in glassy and unseeing eyes. Valyron wandered about the space in barely-bated wonder. There were the objects he sought– 23 reliquaries containing his ’third category’ of souls. But he didn’t dare recall his cliffnotes on the project, not yet, not while Valyron was still getting around to actually asking to speak with Veil. Veil, who had been utterly silent, except for faint pangs of amusement.
Valyron broke the silence first. “I have attained more shards. I am, multiple times, a Herald, as Genesis was.”
The weight of presence. It clarified, in Mircea’s feeling, in Veil’s, which was conveyed to him from the back of his mind. He had, erroneously, chalked it up to the intensity created when two Kosmats meet, when their Kosmatyr are physically close, and their presences nearly overlap. It had taken a long time for him to learn to appreciate the lack of that feeling, as he had become a Herald for the first time in the presence of several others. But this intensity must be near in factor to that he had felt in the presence of Genesis, Halcyon, Tara… Valyron, atimes. He was, for the moment, taken aback. Recalling himself, he said, “It’s destructive to the soul to hold two at once, is it not? At least, so Genesis said.” The end of that sentence kicked up a bit of black humor, and a smile that did not reach his eyes.
“That’s close to being right, but not exactly,” said Valyron. “Grail says that ‘consonant’ shards will… willingly, live together. It still requires management of energy, to ensure your soul isn’t drowned, or torn apart, but it’s stable. The Wheel is stable,” he finished.
Mircea tensed. He prepared himself for the inevitable switchback. The but.
“The Stylus is not.”
There were four, three for which Valyron alone served as Herald. A sort of rueful foreboding came across him now, and Veil’s voice rose up to sing chorus.
It said, burnished with a glee Mircea could almost feel, like an ache at the hollow of his throat, “Grail means to merge the World, of course. Ah, but you should rather hear it from him. Unless you mean to find yourself wound up.”
For Mircea, time nearly stops when Veil speaks, and Valyron, the workshop, the presence of three other Kosmats, becomes impossibly distant. Mircea arches a brow, and replies, “He means to discuss this with you. That’s the point, that’s his ‘why he came all this way’, is it?”
A slow, rising sense comes from Veil. Though he makes no contact with the mask, this fact seems to make no difference when Veil so wishes. “Ye-e-es,” says the mask, slow. “Of course, you’re already reunifying the World. Lifting Erxya from the deep. What will spread across the world, will spread.”
When he says it, Mircea doesn’t believe him. This dissent, however, he keeps from Veil.
Mircea nearly pouted, at the dispelling of the thought that Valyron had, truly, come for him. It was a hope he hadn’t realized he had been holding onto. “So,” he said, “You want to see how Stylus and Veil would synergize, if they’d be consonant.” He marveled at the shape of the thing, now that it was fully lucid to him. Veil had, peaceably, operated at his whim, with little recompense beyond a strange, pooling satisfaction at what he imagined Veil perceived as his slow corruption. It was laughable, and Mircea almost laughed at it. If Valyron spoke to Veil, they would surely come to an agreement.
If he forbade it, Valyron may not assist him with the souls. Worse… oh, yes, somehow, as the thought rose in his mind, it was worse, he might leave in search of Archilo. He might leave Unitas. With a start, Mircea spoke again. “I will not allow it. Well, this goal, which is not my goal, I have no reservations with, but it would not serve me to contend with the double effort of bearing a second shard. I thought this would have been obvious to you.”
“I meant only to speak to Veil,” Valyron said, plaintively. He sounded sad, which shouldn’t have hurt.
“And to set him in alliance against me. Tell me I’m wrong, but I won’t fucking believe it.”
Valyron’s expression grew, briefly, dire and sad.
“Oh, come now. Obviously I was going to dissent, and you weren’t going to slip this past me.” He squinted, lingering before he spoke again. “But you knew I’d make a counter-proposition.” He laughed, and it was forced. Standing on-side, one perceive in Mr. Vedova a distinct instability. It was a sharp laugh. A black laugh, and it threw his expression into disarray. “Well, I will. I have, for a long time, been trying to unravel what magic went into the Needle Athame. It was difficult particularly because Genesis would not let me see the blade. The avarice of the pious is, as ever, fucking famous.”
Valyron, then, did Mircea the distinct service of ending the charade. Where before the pinch of his face had threatened tears and soft words of disappointment, the soft smile had returned. A look of wonder had returned to his eyes. He said, “Then yes, I think I may be able to help you with your soul problem. I am glad of it, though, and won’t work too quickly. I think I want to linger.”
Joylessly, though with a perplexing, despicable sensation in his chest, Mircea went to his schematics and withdrew the appropriate notes. He said, “I will have a room prepared,” but made no effort to expel Valyron from the workshop. It would be a gift. There was nothing compassionate in the gift; it was part of the ransom for a part of his life he wisely sought complete sovereignty over.