“And now for the final part of your welcoming into the Leveonn Academy for Slayers and Swordsmiths of the Modern Age—the Choosing. Now, I would like to remind everyone present that you would not be here if you had not earned your place. This is the most prestigious school available and we see fit to only produce the best as a result. If you are here then it is assured that you will be our best. Therefore,” The Dean steps around his glass podium, away from the holo projector magnifying his face for the entirety of the crowds to see so that only the cadets sitting in the foremost seats can see his stern expression, “I advice that you are thoughtful in your considerations. Who you choose will be your sworn for the entire time you spend in this school and potentially the rest of your career.”
There are some quiet murmurings that spread first from the groupings of students then up into the rafters where the proud parents watch as hawks in their respective nests. Fig knows her foster siblings are watching from their dingy living room on the holo net because they could not afford the trip to attend.
“The Choosing shall begin. Can the top three qualifiers please join me on stage.”
Ran’zn, a broad-shouldered young man with a thick braid of black hair, stands alongside his twin sister, Ral’en who bears his liking except for the different shades of brown in their eyes. Both tote a duel set of horns that sprout from their foreheads and from the base of the skull to curl around the necks, adorned differently she suspects so they can be more distinct from one another on sight alone. The third that stands is a young woman wearing a dress styled in that of the moon that is sister to Fig’s home planet, all gossamer and glowing beneath the overhead lights. Long pleats of silver tipped blue hair roll like frost tipped waves across her shoulder guards. Fleetingly, her eyes like tide pools flick to Fig, quickly enough it is nearly unnoticed, to pass along a quick interest before she steps onto the stage. They bow to the assembled masses and to the many more eyes watching through the holo net beyond here then to the Dean who accepts them humbly.
“Ran’zn scion of G’henna, the Child and Prince of the Green Sun, you may preform these first.”
The lanky man sweeps the crowd and chooses someone from his noble house, to no ones surprise Fig is certain. Despite what the Dean proclaims, these things are and always have been terribly clannish. For each great School there is a sister system it resides in for a total of four throughout the galaxy and in each there are clusters of noble houses belonging to a planet in that system. The Schools boast their proclivity to accept only the greatest but if a child were asked on the street of her home world who would be a student in the Academy, that child would point to the moon and say—
“Saint Mirabelle Azul, Princess of the water moon Dulce and duch*ess of the sister planet Henor, inheritor to the Sixteen, you may preform yours third.”
Fig’s royalty steps forward on the stage to preform her grateful bow and scans the crowd in a far quicker succession than the twins did when they chose their partner. Naturally her eyes land on Fig and she lifts a palm out, “I choose the Nameless, Aeolfig from the planet Henor.”
There is an unpleasant quiet that settles over the room save for the sound of the noble son of the moon Dulce setting himself back down in his seat. The shock on his face is the reason she smiles when she strides past him to join her duch*ess on the platform. With practiced ease she folds a hand in front of her chest, the other tucked against the small of her back but hidden beneath the length of her capelet, and bows to the duch*ess Mirabelle. There is half a moment—the respectful amount—before the duch*ess returns the bow albeit a shallower one as befits her station. They do not speak because a stage in front of millions of eyes is not the place to discuss why a woman of her station would choose someone so lowborn they are given the title Nameless.
“Our Captains have been chosen. We will adjourn for now and the teams will be split after the feast. Thank you all for your attention,” The Dean sweeps his arm towards the three Captains and their chosen partners, “because attention is precisely what we need now. Keep your eyes on these six standing before you. These are the faces of the next generation’s greatest heroes.”
Fig nudges the heel of Mirabelle’s boot with her own, eyes cast forward and chin held regally aloft, though she catches the corner of her eye and gives her a wink.
“—could have been so stupid Mirabelle!? You were supposed to choose your cousin, Duke Wenloct!” The King’s angry voice booms through their newly appointed Captains room and through the walls into their bathroom Fig is hiding in. After the feast and celebrations were had, the Captains were given apartments that they had retired to for the evening to unpack and sleep off the champagne. Unsurprisingly the royal house of the Moon and Mountain—Dulce and Henor—had hurried to follow Mirabelle and by proxy Fig to their quarters so they could finally vent their frustrations without prying ears and eyes.
Through the walls she hears the Saint sigh, “It was my choice, Father.”
The Saint’s mother screeches, “Mirabelle, this is not just about you! We have a standing at this school and it is known that the Moon and the Mountain always partner and it is together that we show our strength!”
“And so the tradition continues,” To Fig’s ears, the Saint sounds bored, “Saint Mirabelle of the Moon and Aeolfig of the Mountain.”
“For Salts sake Mira, are you so spoiled that you treat this like some kind of game!? This is important!”
The Saint sounds mildly annoyed now but only the slightest bit, giving the airs that this could only be bothersome for a time, never something that could take her whole attention, “I’m spoiled, am I? Amusing. You’re right Mother, it is important. Unlike your other children I was knighted and given my laurels. I am the Saint of the Moon and the Mountain and all Sixteen planets within our empire. We do not just rule the salt in the sea but the salt in blood and in sweat. I was the one sent to this school to become a Swordsmith as is the tradition and as is tradition, it is my right to appoint who I choose to become my partner. I chose the salt.”
The King roils in rage, seething so loudly the window in the bathroom shakes in the pane, “You chose common dirt, Mirabelle.”
Again the Saint sinks into apathy, sounding horribly bored with the whole of her father’s fury, “Maybe so but she is my dirt. As are all the specks and grains and pebbles of Henor. You and Mother and my uncles and cousins and all the rot of our rule may not care for it but the people of the Mountain are us. It is our duty to protect them. What is a ruler without its people? I do not wish to protect with my cousin who only attended—as I know you only enrolled me to do—to gain political alliances here and use them to build our empire,” The Saint rises on her own breath, at once sounding vast and powerful as a ruler ought, filling the room with potent energy that lifts Fig on a wind she wishes to rise to the heavens upon, “You spit her name like filth and you speak ill of my chosen. Why?”
The Saint’s Mother speaks again, “You shame us, Mira. With your actions this night and with your hateful words just now.”
“I see. A shame I am because I chose dirt. I allowed the public audience of many worlds within our universe to see a monarch clap hands with its peasantry and it is a shame, Mother?” Here the Saint takes a pause to suck in a loud breath and push it out in a hiss of a sigh, “Listen all of you because I have waited my whole life to say this: f*ck you. f*ck all of you. f*ck you Mother for forcing me as a child to enlist into Knighthood and for forcing me to become a priest of the order because I told you in confidence my lack of interest in supplying an heir. f*ck you for treating me like a shadow in my own home and using my accomplishments in battle—battles I never wished to see!—to embolden the very family that shunted me. f*ck you for then shaming me and turning on me when I began to find confidence in my blade and my skill as a warrior, for treating me like an animal drunk on bloodlust and then utilizing that same thing to enlist me into this f*cking school. I was to be a Queen and instead you have made me into this.
“Father, f*ck you for turning on me, your eldest and your heir to the throne because I refused to marry the man you tried to tether me to. And then for encouraging the priests to make me their Saint because it would make it very hard for me to become the next inheritor. Because I—unlike all of you snakes and cowards—believe that a true union can be made between sea and land, that the Moon and the Mountain can be true sisters again. You denounce me because I actually care for our people and would see them brought out of the mines you keep them in, that I would see them brought from dust and rock and salt and be made whole again. Most specifically, f*ck you for forcing me to take on the righteous role of the Saint so that I would become the fist of justice that oppresses the people you know I want to help and take care of. But I suppose, thank you for giving me that power because it meant I could prevent a lot of our own people harming those same folk in the name of justice. f*ck all of you, advisors and cousins and priests and knights alike. You are a poison in the garden and some day I will see you ripped out root and stem so that what was once beautiful can flourish again.”
The King now growls and there is a sound of flesh striking flesh but the Saint is silent in rebuttal. At that, however, Aeolfig partner to Saint Mirabelle steps from the bathroom to truly observe. They hardly notice her though Mirabelle flicks a look of interest her way.
“You are speaking treason, Saint, and I wish for it to stop. There is love for you in my heart, child, and I would not see your head roll so please find a course better than the one you are threatening to walk.”
Mirabelle traces the red outline of the handprint left on her cheek by the King, “You know, striking the Saint could be a very bad for you. I would suggest remembering my position, Father.”
“I am your King!”
“You are, in fact, not my King. Not anymore. If you will recall,” Saint Mirabelle taps the schools crest that has been carved into the wooden frame of the bunk bed behind her and then filled with gold so it shimmers and bids the eye to look, “once a student applies and is accepted into the Academy, all titles and alliances are forthwith suspended until graduation. Additionally, they act under the protection of the school and are governed by the law of the school. A law that supersedes that of individual governments even empires on sister planets. The moment I was accepted, you lost all control of me and for the next six years I am no longer a citizen of the Moon and the Mountain but of the Collective Leveonn Colleges. If you move on me, you move on the Federation of which the Colleges are brother to, and I know that we cannot sustain a war with an entire galaxy. So, circling back, f*ck you both.”
Fig chooses that moment to amble to the Saint’s side and settle on the bed by her hip, dangling a set of dog tags from her fingers to toy with while they talk. The crystal screen on their face was cracked ages past, long enough ago that deep green algae has started to grow in them. The display flickers but she can still make out her young face on one tag and her work identification numbers on the other. A second set lays hidden beneath her collar tucked against her chest where they have sat since she was eleven years old. The second set depict a young Mirabelle’s likeness.
The King, a handsome older man with hair the same coloring as Mirabelle’s, narrows his silver eyes at her though he keeps his anger directed towards his daughter, “We will withdraw you. Clearly, you are not of sound mind.”
“You won’t be doing that,” Fig grins at her furious King while she rubs her thumb against the thin crystal face, “you can’t. Only people who can withdraw us now is each other. Yanno, checks and balances and all that.”
The Saint, Enlightened Knight of her people, Princess of the Moon and duch*ess of the Mountain, looks down upon her people in singular form sat on the bed and asks serenely, “Am I unfit to be your partner, Captain? Do you see reason to flag the staff of our school and have me suspended?”
“Nah, you seem alright with me.”
Mirabelle turns back to her estranged family, harder than salt-water steel and nods at them, “That will be all then.”
The King throws his arms up so hard his crown slips to the side of his head and clatters to the wood floor by his feet. In his furry he does not seem to notice so Fig stands to collect it for him, dusting off any stray bits of debris that dare cling to its many inlaid jewels, and extends it. The priceless artifact is ripped so quickly from her hand the sharp edges cut a jagged line into her palm.
“You,” He seethes, teeth gnashing and spit clinging to his beard hairs as he steps into her space, “will be hung for this if you do not expel yourself. Do not think that I do not remember who you are, Nameless, or what you have done. You are not worthy to serve with the Princess of the Moon and Mountain. Save yourself and go now and I will show you mercy by sentencing you with only a hundred years in the mines.”
Mirabelle sighs again and settles back onto the bed, plucking up a pillow to fluff up and place behind her lower back so she can comfortably lean against the wall, “Only a lifetime of servitude, huh? On her behalf, we do not accept.”
“This does not concern you, Mira! You’ll be lucky to keep your titles after this!”
“Please Cousin,” From behind the royal heads of the family Azul, Wenloct steps into the fray in his school armor though she can see he has dragged blue and white paint over the crest, “for the health and safety of our family and our people, keep the sacred ties and make me your partner. We can finish the school year if you desire, I’ve no intention of disrupting your studies here. If you choose this path…the one with this commoner…it could mean civil war. There can be a right way to do this.”
“Civil war is a little dramatic.” Fig mumbles around a chuckle.
The Saint’s eyes glean with mirth, “Isn’t it just? Do you suppose we’ll descend on the streets of the Mountain and burn their houses for this?”
“Oh and the miners will refuse to work?”
Mirabelle clutches her chest dramatically and clicks her tongue against her teeth, “Oh, do not even joke. We’ll kill you for less.”
Fig throws up her hands, “Sorry. I’ll never threaten the bottom line.”
Mirabelle winks, “Smart peasant.”
Wenloct looks torn, broken between his cousin’s infamous stubborn resolve and the King’s lesser known but often experienced anger, “The peasant can live a peaceful life in the mines. It is good work—“
Fig’s scoff makes the Duke fall silent but only for a moment.
“—whatever quest you are on, whatever it is you are trying to prove by choosing her over me, put it to bed. You’ve made your point.”
“No.”
“Mirabelle! Stop being stubborn!”
“I said no, Wenloct.”
The Queen balls up her fists and starts hitting them against her hips, eyes blazing, “You would see us destroyed over this!? Because of your
childish fits!? She does not belong here, Mira, least of all given the honor of serving at the Princess’s side! The entire world will be spectating your battles and your progress in this school and to have them see the eldest child of our dynasty fighting with a Nameless will be our undoing!”
Mirabelle sighs and tilts her head against the wall to catch Fig’s attention, “Are you swayed by these dramatics, friendly dirt?”
Fig’s lips tick up into a half smile, “It is not the friendly dirt’s place to question the policies and inner workings of the royal family, Saint.”
“Does it make sense to you, all that they are saying?”
The King scoffs, ever angry it would seem, like a lit torch that is always fed oil to keep it burning, “Of course she does not understand! She is the rabble!”
“It is a bit wordy.”
“Mm,” Saint Mirabelle flicks her finger towards her cousin, “we aren’t as embedded in this school as they would make it seem. This is only our second year enrolling and in the first we sent my uncle, the Duke’s father. It brought so much attention to our planets that in the resulting years we prospered in the thousands of percentile. This was aided by the fact that while the Duke and his brother—the King of Arcenell, the desert planet two clicks from ours—were here, they blackmailed many attendees, stole secrets, and killed many heirs to many noble houses across the Galaxy. I have been groomed my whole life to take that place and I have resented it for just as long. By denying my cousin a place at my side I have immediately cut off his ability to follow in his father’s footsteps and I have thusly declared that I will not be following my set path by choosing you. I intend to study for real here and acquire a genuine education. I expect much is the same for you?”
“I was only sent here by chance. The offer was reward enough, a genuine education is still a bit hard to swallow if I’m being honest.”
Mirabelle blinks at her but nods, “I understand. Either way, you chance is my fortune. I’m afraid, as you can see, I have selfishly put you into a precarious position, politically speaking. You have time to walk away I suppose and I’ll be forced to choose a new co-captain but I would prefer you stay.”
“If you do not withdraw,” The King reminds them of his dark presence, all consuming crackling hate and booming voice, “you will regret it dearly. You will suffer for a thousand lifetimes. Everything you know and loved will be taken from you. You will be a traitor to your people and you will never step foot on soil or salt again. I swear it as your King.”
It is easy for Fig to shrug and say, “I don’t have much for you to take, your majesty, and like I said, I’m pretty eager to be here. What a mighty surprise that I am a Captain at the Leveonn Academy serving with the Saint. I think I’d be a real fool to pass on that.”
There is more anger and vitriol spat upon the floor and into the air between Fig and the Saint but after it all, the Royal family members remember Mirabelle’s chilling words that they hold no power over them while they attend, and they leave. In the silence left behind, her ears ring from the departing words of the screeching queen promising to have her head.
“Well,” Fig sets herself on the edge of the bed near Mirabelle, elbows on her knees so she can set her chin in her palm, “they are not how the heralds described them.”
Mirabelle’s laughter is angelic, true music woven by Gods and gifted to mortal men but only if they are deserving, blessed enough to earn it, “I’ve always found the Heralds amusing. They used to bother me in the Knighthood. It felt so strange hearing poems being waxed about me while I stood no more than ten feet from them.”
“‘Oh her eyes the color of opalescent coral, just as they are flowers in the blue beneath, true salt of the sea and—“
A hand slaps her shoulder daintily, “Knock it off.”
“I feel strange.”
“Mm,” Mirabelle leans forward to sit within the edge of her vision, painted lips pulled into a half-amused smile, “it is not every day peasantry is nose to nose with their royalty. Least of all having them threaten their life and love and enduring existence.”
“They are vile, it’s true, but I meant,” Fig gestures to the room around them and to the limited space between them, “to be here, unbothered. We are not separated by water and an ozone and a militia of guards. There is no looming threat of death over our heads if we are caught in the same room. We are…safe. Our plan worked.”
A warm, calloused hand slides around her wrist to pull her fist from under her chin. The hands of a Saint slip around her face to bring it into orbit with Mirabelle’s and then given the grace to rest their foreheads together.
“It hasn’t worked yet, darling. We have only just begun.”
“But we are here, Mira. Together, unbothered. We can eat and sleep and breath in the same place and no one can bother us. There is no ranking here that can prevent us from being in the same room. No one will come looking if we shut our door and do not come out for some time. I know there is more to do but this is the biggest start. I didn’t think it’d work.”
“Have faith in your wife, Fig. I promised I would see us through this.”
“I have only faith in you but even still—Mira, we have gone from sneaking visits with each other two or three times a month to living in the same room together.”
Mirabelle makes a contented whirring noise deep in her chest, one that resembles a gentle purr, and nudges her nose against Fig’s, “I have long dreamed about what it will be like to fall asleep beside you and wake up to the sight of your face.”
“It is a good first start,” She lets her eyes fall shut knowing she is safe to do so in this place, that there will be no knights or wardens who can walk in on them here and rip them apart, “we can finally be a married couple.”
“Behind closed doors still. I know—wipe the look off your face my love, please. We still have to be mindful. We have immunity here but there are still things the school will defer to our royal house with and my cousin is still attending. We need to weather whatever storm is brewing because of what we did today before we reveal our romance to the world.”
Fig pulls away to flop onto her back, staring up at the wooden slats and the mattress peeking through in the bunk above them. More gently Mirabelle lays herself down beside Fig, reaching into the space between them to tether their hands.
“It is a good start though,” She reaffirms in a whisper almost like the words are a secret which is something they are good at sharing, “these poor idiots don’t know what is coming. We are going to rule this school.”
Mirabelle’s saintly smile turns positively wicked, “We are the best team there has and ever will be and soon every one will know it.”
“It is good to see your face again. It’s been a few months and I’ve missed you.”
“I know,” Mirabelle rolls onto her side so she can press her forehead against the side of Fig’s jaw, “things have been very hectic in the preparation to come here. I couldn’t sneak out to see you, much as I longed to. I’m glad to see you well. I had no doubt you’d pass your trial and join me here but I couldn’t stop myself from worrying up until the moment I saw your face in the crowd.”
“It was not as simple a task as the bloody brochure made it seem, that’s for certain. I about lost my head.”
“What did they make you fight?”
“A f*cking hydra from the Menothan quadrant.”
Mirabelle makes a highly displeased sound, “All their talk of inclusion and still they make the poor folk from lower social status fight twice as hard to prove themselves worthy of this school.”
“What did you fight?”
“One of the water creatures on the moon. Something they plucked out in front of me. It was insulting.”
Fig chuckles, “I would have gladly traded the hydra.”
“No matter now. We fight all our battles together from this point forward.”
Fig slides an arm between the mattress and Mirabelle’s ribs to loop around her waist and bring her closer, “That’s right. Together.”
There is a child in the mines and while that is not an odd sight considering she is also a child in the mines, this one is out of place. This one is healthy, boasting far more muscle than most children in the Sooted Streets can afford and practically glimmering she is so clean. And she is choking to death.
“Hey, you new here?” Fig’s voice is distorted through the ventilation mask covered the lower half of her face. The same ventilation mask is being clawed at by the strange healthy girl beginning to slump against the wall in front of her. Her huge gasps for breath echo down the mine shaft they are presently alone in, raspy and half full of a low keening noise but it tapers off as she begins to lack the air for that kind of vocalization.
The risk of abandoning work to help this idiot is great but the Warden is currently in shaft B so she summons what little kindness she has yet to give and helps this girl. She takes in a deep clean breath to hold before she removes both their ventilation masks and sets her good one on the girls face to let her breath.
Immediately the girl begins choking and coughing and tearing at her collar to foolishly expose her throat as if that will help her get more air into her starved lungs but will only get some of the raw salt-water steel dust on the skin and start eating holes in it. With a practiced quickness she jams a short bladed knife into the face plate of the faulty mask to pop it free and expose the inner workings that click and hiss in a way they ought not. She pushes her fingers through a braid of wires to expose the bone dry filter inside an empty cylinder meant to house water so the unit does not overheat. The second filter that cleanses the toxic fumes of the mine to turn into breathable air is also dry. She would waste time to glare at the gasping idiot, but the fact that she will not be able to see the impressive hatred in the coal darkness of her stare because her eyes were not behind large goggles stops her. Who trained this idiot that they did not teach her how to properly secure and operate the one thing she needs to live while in the heart of the mountain. Obviously this girl was not from Henor. Anyone raised in the brine of this hell hole planet would know better. Begrudgingly she fills both the filters with her limited supply of drinking water and quick starts the mask with small data chip kept inside her breast pocket, bypassing the usual programming that would need updated after a change to the system. It goes through a quick start up sequence then settles into a soft hum the way it should be operating.
After they swap masks and the girl drags herself to her feet, she attempts to extend a hand and says, “Thank you.”
Fig grips the thumb to give the hand a rough shake, “So are you from the Salty side of the Moon or the Royal side?”
“I,” The girl looks at her gloved hand in confusion, “No I am—I’m. I’m from the Sooted—“
“No you ain’t.”
“Excuse me?”
Fig stoops to pick up the data pad she had dropped when she gave aid to this liar and begins mapping out new sections of the wall for the adults to mine as she had been before the interruption. Technically, she is strong enough to lift the hammer but not yet strong enough to pull it back out of the rock so she is stuck with the labor that belongs to children. The kind that pays half of what adults earn.
“You talk like a moon brat. You didn’t lubricate your mask properly which you’d know how to do if you lived in the Square because people there have to wear them all the time after the Arch Duke passed that law that lets the whaling factories dump their runoff there. And you’re,” Fig wags a finger in the girl’s general direction over her shoulder, not bothering to lift her eyes from her work, “clean. Families down here can’t afford to waste water on baths. Especially if you’re a Nameless which is pretty much the only types the Forman hires for this job. My suggestion is you run home before someone finds out you’re not from around here or your guts are gonna be the only thing your parents find.”
The girl trips over her own feet the way someone who is not use to wearing chunky work boots would do. She does surprise Fig by giving her a rather hard shove to her bony shoulder.
“Don’t say that. I’m…I’m just like you.”
Fig squints at her before checking both ends of the shaft to make sure they are still alone then she asks, “How old are you?”
The girl makes an odd noise and her jaw wobbles a little, “Eleven.”
“You’re old enough to swing the hammer then and a lot bigger than me. Why are you doing this instead?”
“I—“
“Can you tell me what job we are doing?”
“Yes we’re…um…marking the quarries.”
“No,” She steps into the girls space who is not taller than her but considerably more healthy, boasting a plethora more muscle and fat than Fig cannot afford to gain so she keeps a safe distance in case the girl takes a swing that might knock out a tooth, “listen, I dunno why a stupid moon brat would want to sneak into the mines but this is not a safe, fun place. Leave before someone or something kills you.”
The girl makes another choked sound, “Why would someone kill me?”
“Don’t ask questions like that, Moonie. It is a big sign that says, ‘I’m a moon brat! Please gut me and steal my boots!’. ‘Cause that’s a bare minimum reason why someone would kill you. Want another? I dunno, they’re having a bad day.” It isn’t like anyone would care if a Nameless went missing, they don’t belong in the system anyway. Can’t trace what isn’t important enough to catalogue.
“Don’t call me that!” The girl’s voice rises with her temper, echoing down the the shaft for anything to hear. A moment passes where her stomach curls into a tight knot but there is no resounding bellow from the Warden or something worst.
“Hey, shut the f*ck up! Do you want someone to hear you? This isn’t a joke. If we get caught slacking off, the Warden will beat us both and our pay gets docked. Or worst, you’ll wake—“
The ground begins to shake. Deeper into the shaft where the tunnel starts to turn downward into a steep slope and the light is devoured by void, a wretched wail sounds. Pure dread turns to hot spikes of adrenaline that rushes through her veins.
“What—“
“Run!”
The brat does not listen neither does she budge when Fig grips her arm and tries to drag her out of the shaft. Her head tips back to watch the massive arachnid legs begin spearing through the roof and walls of the shaft, ripping through rock and compact earth and steal beams as if it is paper. Another wail pierces her ears through the dampening muffs clapped over her head.
“Dumb bastard, I said f*cking run!”
Their hands link, palms pressed tightly together, so Fig can pull with all her strength to start dragging the girl with her as she runs. When they pass by the panel built into the wall she stops them to open it with shaking hands and hit the button inside. Maroon lights poke out of a metal track on the wall and begin silently flashing in rapid intervals of five, meant to alert any other children working in shafts past the seal that the creatures have been woken and it is time to flee.
“Shouldn’t we be leading it away from the others?”
“No! We need to get to the seal so we can close the doors!”
“They’ll die!”
“Kids always die Moonie! Them or us, now f*cking move!”
The girl seems to pass her in one quick stride, now pulling Fig along by the death grip they have on each other’s hands. More children begin funneling out of splintered sections of shaft B that merge into a main throughway. A horror crashes through the wall. Ten feet tall and hunched over against the ceiling of the main tunnel, long spider legs stabbing into the dirt and rock to propel it forward. The upper half is humanoid though it is split like a lightning struck tree, straight down to its navel. At present it appears just as a seem in the flesh but she knows it will split open and reveal a hungry, deep maw wide enough to fit a whole body inside and thousands of teeth to gnash it to bits, bones and all. The younger children begin to fall behind, unable to move farther on their shorter legs and with their flagging, malnourished bodies. The girl turns to watch as the creature lifts one of it legs and spears through the chest cavity of an eight year boy named Eugene, lifting him twitching and screaming to impale his body onto the creature’s thousands of back spikes. Then another—a seven year old girl named Blu—is also added to the collection to be consumed later after it has completed its hunt.
The girl twitches like she intends to stop so Fig pulls so hard on the arm she hears the joint pop, “Don’t!”
“They need our help!”
“They are dead already Moonie, and if we don’t hurry we are gonna get hung on the coat rack right next to them!”
Up ahead of them she can see the first seal that they need to get past and then they can close the airlock and be safe. Behind them, she can hear the horrible clicking and hissing the creature’s false mouth makes at the top of the humanoid head, the sounds of it’s legs piercing earth and flesh and the endless screaming. She does not turn to see it and perhaps that is why she does not notice an older child rush past them and shove her out of the way, down into the dirt. Foolishly the moon brat does not let go her hand to abandon her for the safety promised beyond the seal and is dragged down into the dirt with her.
“Getup! Go!” She shouts, tugging on Fig’s hand, her head tilting up as a shadow falls over them. Fig knows better than to look.
Pain blossoms beneath the strike and then she is weightless, held by a lone leg poking through her ribs that swings her through space to hang her on the rack. Fair enough, she thinks while pain consumes her and blood begins to burble from the new holes poked into her weak body. They told her it was one of these creatures that made her an orphan so it seems righteous that the same creature take her short life. One of the barbs that pierces her arm through the elbow joint is wider than her arm so as it sinks deeper it splits sinews and breaks the bone and rips the forearm from the bicep. Distantly she hears the wet splat it makes when it hits the ground. Lucky for her the creatures barbs are coated in a venom that numbs the body and makes the blood coagulate because they like to eat their prey alive in their nests.
That is the only reason the foolish moon girl is able to save her life. That and the weapon she illegally smuggled into Henor and into the mine with her. A salt-water steel blade sheds blue light in the gloom, steady against the flashing red alarms and the yellow reflection in the creatures true eyes. It erupts from the hilt at the touch of a button, crawling through air to form the shape of a blade and then filling with molten salt-water steel.
“Put her down!” Even more shocking than the rare weapon, the girl sounds entirely without fear. The Tunnel Creature only screams in return—a horrid wail like a sickly babe and the cry of a dying animal.
Once the battle begins, she loses sight of the fearless girl from her current position skewed to the creature’s back spines. It bellows and screeches and when it bleeds, the ground hisses beneath the splatter, rocks that fall from the ceiling sink into it and melt away. The girl screams as her world turns and tumbles and she is thrown from the creature’s back when it begins flailing in its death throes.
Hands grip her ragged work shirt to drag her near the stupid girl laying in the dirt too. Some of the creature’s acidic blood is soaked into the dissolving stump of her left leg, chewing at the bone poking out and the clothing around it. It is nearly the most disgusting thing she has ever seen. They lay side by side. The moon girl’s hands stay fisted into her shirt, shaking from the adrenaline and the pain.
“Should have stayed in your fancy house, Moonie.”
The girl tilts her head to the side to give Fig a look of interest, one of the goggle lenses smashed out and the green glass has stuck into the skin around her eye. A sweet ocean colored eye.
“Mirabelle.” She feels Mirabelle’s hand reach for the only hand Fig owns now and links their pinkies.
“Like the Princess?”
“Exactly like that.”
Mirabelle’s foot has separated from the leg just below the knee, slumping over into the dirt to finish eating itself in hissing pops and fizzles that reek of burning meat. The salt-water steel blade is once more hidden or perhaps lost during the scuffle.
“I’d tell you to run before they find you but…”
The Princess is unbothered by the prospect of being found and instead asks, “Do you have a name?”
“I’m Nameless.”
“Oh. Have you chosen a name to be called then?”
“Aeolfig. My dad’s name, I guess, that’s what I was told anyway. Most people called me Fig.”
“Past tense?”
“We are dead, Princess. We didn’t make it to the seal and more are coming.”
“So our job…we’re bait? For these things?”
“We scout. They nest in the walls and the kids go ahead ‘cause we’re smaller, quieter. We check tunnel walls they make clusters in and bring the results to the hunters. They forge ahead, clear some out, and build a seal for the adults to mine behind. It shuts them out.”
The Princess makes a noise that is angry but withered as they both are fading, “That is barbaric. I knew they were lying.”
“Who?”
“The regents and the mine owners. My father, my mother. All of them. They said it was safe, that the people were happy here.”
Fig laughs weakly, “So what? You came down here because you care?”
Mirabelle’s answer is one full of pain but the sincerely still hardens the words into steel, “Yes. I care about you and everyone else on Henor. I’ll do whatever I have to for change to happen. Even…die, I suppose.”
“Well, won’t be much longer for that one. Welcome to the Salt, Princess.”
The Princess shifts her grip to slide her palm against Fig’s and squeezes her hand, “I’m glad to have been here with you, if this is it.”
“Welcome to your first trial! Will the teams please step onto their assigned platforms?”
Ral’en side eyes the professor unhappily, “Just the Captains?”
“As stated Miss, the first year of your education at the school will be dedicated to learning how to be a Captain. You will not preform any trials or tests or train with your team until year two.”
“But you said the first year is the most pivotal. If we fail more than a certain number of these trials, we flunk out.”
“This is correct.”
Ral’en looks across the platforms to her twin and frowns, “That seems unfair.”
“Well of course! That is the burden of leadership, no? Furthermore,” The professor pulls a pair of bifocals from his pocket to clean before placing them on the tip of his nose, “that is why the Choosing is so important!”
Fig folds her fingers around her cybernetic arm, tapping against the blue gears flexing and turning beneath a layer of clear salt-water steel and grins over at Mirabelle, “Someone didn’t read their contract.”
“Don’t tease me. I told you it was important and I was right. Leave it at that.”
“What’s the matter? Are you embarrassed by the quizzes you gave me and then graded?”
The faintest touch of purple gracing the round contours of the princess’s cheeks is all she shows in embarrassment.
“Darling, I cherish you above all else but if you do not shut up, I’m going to trip you with my spear once we get up there for the entire Galaxy to see,” Mirabelle tucks a few loose strands of her ocean colored hair behind her sharp ears and starts fiddling with the buckles on Fig’s armor, double then triple checking their tightness, “please focus up. This is our first public trial to be broadcasted on the holo-net so technically it is our debut as a team. I’m not asking for a good first impression love, I’m asking that we be so good that we are the only thing people remember after the first round of trials end.”
“My humble wife.”
Mirabelle sets a hand on Fig’s cybernetic arm, giving it a gentle squeeze to direct Fig’s focus to the seriousness in her gaze, “It’s not just about my pride, Fig. We have very powerful enemies that would do anything to see us fail. If we don’t survive our first year, all our dreams and plans are dashed on the rocks. It is not just about fighting to be the best, we are fighting against everything stacked against us behind the scenes now that I chose you instead who I was expected to choose. I didn’t just insult the Moon and the Mountain, I insulted our allies too and any conservative noble who watches a peasant stand where normally only nobility is allowed.”
Fig does not turn her head to give herself away but she does glance around to make sure the other teams aren’t eavesdropping while they prepare. Not that any of them would be able to understand what they are saying but just to be safe. She lowers her voice when she asks, “Do you think your father will sabotage us?”
“I know he will. My uncle is alumni here and my father has connections with people who have extremely deep pockets. We won’t be safe until we pass our first year.”
Fig heaves a put upon sigh and pokes the hard plane of her wife’s stomach that is made harder by the armor she has donned in preparation for the fight, “Is that why you have an upset tummy all the time?”
Mirabelle turns to a flower wilting, “I’m going to die from stress.”
“I’ll remember to be less ‘friendly’ with you once the cameras are on us. The last thing we need is to be found out.”
“Just talking about it,” Mirabelle sucks in a sharp breath and presses a palm to her stomach, “makes me feel like throwing up.”
“Hey,” Fig sets a friendly hand on the Saint’s well sculpted shoulder that is tastefully exposed by the sleeveless armor that matches Fig’s, “we’re going to win. We are going to come out on top at the end of the year and then we can do whatever and be whoever we want.”
Mirabelle’s thin wedding band makes a quiet ting when she bumps her fist against Fig’s metal hand (a fist bump where they would prefer a kiss to show comfort), “You’re right. Now that we are together there will no stopping us. Im sorry, I wasn’t saying anything you don’t already know. My mind just—sometimes I get—“
Fig winks at her playfully, “I know how you get, Mira. We’ve been married for a long time.”
“That’s true,” Mirabelle picks at the straps of her singular pauldron bearing the crest of her family that has been scratched through and nods to herself, “You’re a swell pall to have.”
“What language is that?” They both start from the sudden appearance of Ral’en’s co-Captain who had been, moments before, on her platform halfway across the room. Fig lifts a brow up as her only answer, happy to fall into her usual quiet when there are others paying any kind of intense attention to them. Mirabelle steps into the mask of an apathetic princess with ease, her face going slack as the contempt takes over.
“Is this your platform?”
The co-Captain—Narmani—is entirely unfazed by Mirabelle’s demeanor, “I have the latest scholars chip implant that translates any known language and yet I could not parse that one.”
“It is a language the miners use on Henor,” Mirabelle flicks her fingers towards Ral’en watching them from her platform, “you two are up first, you should head back.”
Narmani watches them intensely, her disbelief written across her face, but she gives a proper bow and returns to her captain. After she leaves Fig nudges Mirabelle’s boot with her own.
“Don’t Aeolfig.”
“I told you she could read lips.”
“And I told you that everyone would be spying on us.”
“So…who wins this argument?”
Mirabelle flips her spear around her fingers with her eyes set on Narmani whispering to her co-Captain and says flatly, “Me, dearest. Always me.”
Hidden beneath a hood, Princess Mirabelle cranes her neck to watch the whalers loudly enjoying their drinks in the corner booth. The crisp edges of the clipped language they speak to each other in seems to have enraptured the Princess which makes Fig roll her eyes.
“Stop staring. You’re gonna start a fight, idiot.”
“We need to discuss your proclivity to insult me at any given opportunity,” Mirabelle crowds against her back, hooking a finger through the loop in the back of her duster, “can we leave? If I’m caught here, after what happened in the mine, my father will shackle me to my bed.”
“Aren’t you a Knight now?”
Mirabelle tugs the hood further over her face when the waiter walks past and Fig gives them a sneer for being nosey.
“I’m still only fourteen, Figgy, and a,” The Knight—elevated at an early age so therein also titled ‘prodigy’ by her superiors—lowers her voice to a whisper, “princess. I’m not supposed to traipse around the way I do.”
“Then if you’re so scared, stop sneaking down here, Moonie. It’s not worth the risk just to visit me,” The reptilian chef kicks open the double doors to the kitchen so he can personally hand over the paper bags already soaked through with grease to a grinning Fig, “Thanks Buck. You’re the best.”
Behind her she feels Mirabelle curl tighter against her back so she can hide her face against Fig’s nape, shaded by the shag of Fig’s black hair. Buck the chef, a water lizard with glimmering blue scales and big void eyes, cracks the seem in his face to display his big toothy smile.
“You’re my favorite customer, Fig!”
One of the whalers pokes his head above his brothers to object which makes Buck hiss and shake a clawed fist at them, “Fig is loyal unlike you f*cks.”
“Who could want anyone’s food other than yours, Buck?”
“See? That’s why you’re my favorite,” Buck leans on the counter to try and peer around her but Mirabelle shrinks tighter, pulling herself flush to Fig’s scrawny back, “Your new friend seems awfully shy, Fig.”
“Hey! I don’t f*ck with your business so stay out of mine.”
“Alright, settle down. Salt, you teenagers get more touchy with every new batch that sprouts up,” Buck lifts his scaly palms up in peace all the while grinning at her, “better get off with your shy friend then. This is usually when some of those prissy moon Knights stop in.”
Mirabelle makes a garbled noise and tugs at Fig to drag her out of the restaurant. On their way out, they pass by a small squad of Knights in glimmering salt-water steel armor decorated with shimmering epaulettes and opalescent capes that brush their ankles when they stride by. One of them takes his helmet off to spit in her direction when she passes, cursing and hissing at her for the red flag tugged into her jacket. The same flag that minors wear to mark themselves as those fighting for better working conditions and improved pay.
She lifts her good arm to flip him off but Mirabelle cuffs her around the nape of her neck to push her head down and forces them onward. They cut through alleys across busy streets, dodging hover crafts and shouting curses when they are bumped, to the shoddy building made of moss covered stone where Fig and the other strays live together. Silently they pass many empty rooms, a handful of them glowing from the light within—there is always someone home because there are so many holed up in the Hovel—to climb the shoddy stairs leading to the room Fig has chosen for herself. Mirabelle moves around it with ease, kicking off her boots at the door and peeling off her cloak and duster to hang on the peg sticking out of the wall. She shakes the sand out of her shoulder length hair into the bucket by the door, plucking out stray leaves and applying some of the oil that fights the salt build up on the roots. Even the dust of the Mountain tries to eat its people. After she is done, she walks across the floor to settle on Fig’s bedroll.
Sometimes these secret moments with the Princess of Dulce and duch*ess of Henor still surprises her in a bad way. The survivors instinct in her wails like a siren to warn her off ever letting this girl into her home and it tries feverishly to knock sense into her head. If a Knight ever caught wind of this girl being anywhere near her home after what happened in the mines she would be publicly executed. Even still she only scraped by going to prison because Mirabelle vouched for her when she was taken to trial the moment both their injuries had healed enough for such a thing. All blame was laid on her, naturally, and all harm that befell the Princess was a black spot on Fig the Nameless. There had been no one else to blame and it would have been preposterous for the Princess to take blame because it would open questions as to why Mirabelle would go down there in the first place. Lucky for her, the stupid moon girl had a sense of loyalty and decency. Unfortunately for her, however, the stupid girl had developed an attachment to Fig that created their current predicament: Mirabelle sneaking from the castle to visit her, even for minutes at a time when possible. Because they are friends or something close to it. Perhaps they are something even more profound than that since they developed the bond of two people who faced death together, spilled blood and lost limbs together, yet survived. Together.
Maybe the idiot has ruined Fig too because she cannot seem to stop herself from welcoming the Princess in each time she comes around. Neither can she stop herself from missing the girl when she leaves.
“Figgy, the food is getting cold.”
“Sorry,” Aeolfig repeats the same process Mirabelle did when she entered before she joins the gangly teen on the bedroll, extending the grease stained bag so she can steal a salted vegetable wedge from inside, “I figured you’d have left after we saw those Knights.”
“We have a bit more time. I already mapped it all out,” She bites into a green wedge then taps her temple with the salt crusted fingertip, “up here.”
“How long then?”
“Three more hours.”
Fig’s heart twinges, “Hours?”
“I…may be skipping, technically. I’m suppose to be in the meditation chamber right now but you go in alone and come out alone which means they can’t really track me so I figured I could sneak off without anyone noticing. I know it’s a risk but, well, I just missed you. It’s been a few months since we have seen each other because of my stupid duties as a stupid Knight keeping me so busy and they monitor me so much closer now. I dunno,” Mirabelle sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and looks uncharacteristically shy, “should I go? Are you worried? I don’t want to—“
“Stay Moonie,” A bubble forms in her throat that makes her words sound squeezed in her own ears so she clears it before she adds, “I’ve missed you too.”
Mirabelle tilts her head back up to show off her cute smile, “Really?”
“Don’t—“ The trigger response to tease Mirabelle sits on her tongue but something sudden and profound wells inside her that makes her feel warm and fluttery enough that instead honesty comes forth, “I wish there was some way we could communicate without drawing attention. I would love to be able to talk to you when you go.”
“I…I wish for that same thing actually. Recently I start to miss you the moment I sneak back on the shuttle. And I’ve been trying to come up with an idea to no avail,” Fig’s stomach sinks from the disappointment until Mirabelle scoots close enough their knees bump and she says, “Until just a moment ago.”
“I don’t understand. What happened a moment ago?”
“The whalers.”
“The…whalers?”
“They were speaking a language I’ve never heard before. My translator—“
Fig ticks up the corner of her mouth, “You have a translator?”
“Most noble children are implanted with them when we turn six or seven. We have to go abroad and meet with allies and senators from other planets and learning that many languages is not possible. But mine didn’t understand that language. What was it?”
“It’s a local language developed by minors and whalers so we can avoid being noticed by Knights or Wardens. Sort of like a…thief’s language, I guess,” She pokes a finger into the middle of Mirabelle’s forehead, “I’ll bet your fancy translator is only is coded to translate languages that have been approved somewhere.”
Mirabelle closes her warm hand around the cold metal of Fig’s to pull it away from her forehead, fiddling with the thin skeletal fingers. The arm functions with basic amenities, only able to move in basic patterns from connected cables—made of scraps and scavenged trash— that Olmie had made when she couldn’t afford the payments on the expensive cybernetic arm they gave her. When Mirabelle had seen it, she had made a pained face and promised to get her a better one once she was able to sneak the expense past her father. The tips of each of them have been painted a pastel green by one of her younger foster siblings.
“If you teach it to me, it can be our secret language. We can open a private com channel and—you don’t seem enthused by this idea, Figgy.”
The slight frown that had been building flattens into a soft line. Part of her rages against the idea of sharing the Smugglers Tongue with the very type of person the language was invented to avoid. The knowledge of it is so closely guarded that not even all miners know it for risk that one of them might grow to become a Warden someday and know the words. That is often why certain Foreman who have been offered a promotion are found at the bottom of a mine shaft or simply never found at all.
Yet this is Mirabelle who is, against all odds and against all her better judgments, her best friend. Sweet hearted Mirabelle who stood against a Depth Mother when she was only eleven years old just for her after they had only met a few short hours before. Loyal, good Mirabelle who is the spark in Fig’s heart rekindling her passion for life and reminding her that trust is not always a bad thing. If Mirabelle cannot be trusted with this then there is no one Fig knows that can be.
“I’ll teach you on one condition.”
Mirabelle scoots impossibly closer, bracing her hands on the tops of Fig’s thighs and leaning in to share a grin with her, “Tell me.”
“You have to teach me how to fight.”
“That seems like a fair trade. Let’s seal the deal with a hug.”
Fig’s laughter is joyous and childish, two things she has not had the luxury to be for most of her youth. She crashes into Mirabelle’s open arms, letting herself be squeezed so she can bask in the warmth and comfort of a hug.
“There can be no doubt after the performance we saw here tonight: the Moon and the Mountain are the ones to beat!”
“I couldn’t agree more Reynard! Even after the unsettling mixup that had them facing a creature that only sixth years have been able to beat with their entire team behind them, they pulled through! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Truly, it’s hard to give the highlights for a fight like that! Their defense was—well, if you’ll allow me a moment of dramatics, their defense was like a mountain and they offense moved like an ocean! There was no getting past the Nameless Aeolfig’s guard and the Saint Mirabelle attacked around her quick and hard, rushing in and back out to hide behind her co-captain’s shield.”
“And the way they utilized the terrain to create a bottle neck!”
“They fought like two people who have spent their entire lives tied at the hip!”
“I think I speak for all of us when I say that we cannot wait to see what they do next!”
Fig rewinds the recording to watch it again not for the commentators but to watch Mirabelle slip past her shield to swipe at the behemoth with her spear four then six times, rapidly stabbing through its many eyes, before retreating back behind Fig. There is half a frame she has to keep rewinding to catch because it is a very small pixelated blur but she can see it just barely. Mirabelle bracing her hand between Fig’s shoulder blades just before something jostles the earth beneath her foot, knocking her off her balance, and sending her to the ground. What happens after she remembers without the aid of the footage. A tentacle whipping between her legs to ensnare her wife round the ankle, ripping her forward which knocks Fig off her feet, and throwing Mirabelle up into the air for the creature to catch between its teeth.
Sighing in frustration, she tosses the data pad onto the bed and gets up to check on her wife in the bath. The water has turned an unpleasant blue from the blood crust she is carefully wiping away, mindful not to disturb the stitching that Fig had done because she did not trust the school’s medics to do a proper job. Already, bruising has started to discolor her skin all along her ribs, back, and stomach turning it a dark purple-to-black color.
Mirabelle tilts her head back to offer a tired smile and holds up the cloth, “I could use some help.”
She settles on the granite lip of the tub, waiting for Mirabelle to get comfortable leaning against her thigh, then starts cleaning the places she could not reach.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I got swallowed by a behemoth.”
Fig swipes her thumb against the horribly bruised skin on Mirabelle’s jaw, “Lucky that you have a very capable wife who was able to cut you out.”
Mirabelle drapes an arm over the side of the tub and closes a wrinkled hand around her ankle just to have another anchoring touch against Fig’s skin, “You frightened me.”
“I frightened you? You were chewed up and swallowed, Mira.”
“Mm,” Mirabelle turns her head atop Fig’s thigh to look up at her, tired but sincere, “I’ve never seen you rattled like that. I didn’t think you were capable of feeling fear, if I’m being honest. I thought, for a moment because of the look on your face, that you’d want to give up on our plan.”
“No, well…maybe I did,” She drags her fingers across Mirabelle’s soft, bruised cheek , “I thought I was going to watch you die and it would have been my fault.”
“In no world was any of that your fault, what are you talking about?”
“I shouldn’t have been as careless about your warnings. I knew your father or whoever would try to—I knew there would be people attempting to make us fail but I assumed they would only be coming for me. I could have been more vigilant—I would have been if I were a little more focused on your concerns,” Fig slips her fingers through Mirabelle’s wet hair, pressing it down against the skin of her neck when she tucks it behind her pointed ear, feeling her stomach lift into her throat when she recalls all the blood that had been soaked into it an hour ago, “I realized in an instant how much you have been—everything you’ve been worried about that I’ve teased you over hit me all at once because up until something slipped behind us, I thought you were fine and that I was the only target. I was foolish.”
A contented noise comes from somewhere at the back of her wife’s throat, one that is equal parts adoring and frustrated. She adjusts herself in the tub so that she can move between Fig’s knees to press her face against Fig’s stomach and loosely wrap an arm around her hip.
“Our thing is that I worry about every little thing and you play it casual.”
“I know but that doesn’t excuse me.”
“I know you care and I know you listen, that’s all I ask of you. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
Fig sighs, “I was angry too. I—again, I should have taken your warnings more seriously. I do listen and I do care but sometimes I don’t listen as much as I should. You do worry about everything so sometimes it seems like…it’s not as big a deal as you made it seem.”
Mirabelle lifts her head to raise a brow at her and shake her head, “Say what you mean, darling.”
“I didn’t think they’d swing that hard on their first hit. You said it would be bad and that we’d be struggling to make it through our first year but I thought you were being you. I was wrong and it almost got you killed,” Fig cradles her wife’s mottled jaw in her palms, rubbing her thumbs along the blue tinted skin where blood has risen to surface around the cuts on her cheek, “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Blue eyes drift shut as she turns her head a bit to kiss the inside of Fig’s wrist, “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting that hard of a first punch either. It was more than I’d expect for a first move from—I’m not sure all of that was my father, not that I have a clear enough head to consider it. It was…showy. Sloppy. Very obvious. That behemoth….”
Her thoughts zip along a quick path: the twins fights, the ease with which Ral’en and Narmani defeated their creature, the lip reading and the constant focus the twins had been giving them during lessons and lunches. The super giant planet they come from is dessert on the upper crust and a tropical savannah down below which happens to be the perfect breading ground for lesser creatures to evolve into behemoths.
“The twins have it out for us,” She thinks of her beloved wife—risen to literal sainthood not by the royals who cannot do this but by the people of the Mountain who adore her—coated in the shinning blue of her royal blood and curls her hands into fists, “They’ll regret this.”
Mirabelle heaves an exhausted sigh, “Surrounded by enemies, it seems. We’ll have to put in more effort.”
“No holds barred from here on out?”
Mirabelle pulls away to tap her on the chin, a darkness in her eyes that is not for Aeolfig but for their enemies, for everyone on the other side of their two person shield wall, “Dazzle them.”
“I’d rather cut them off at the knees.”
“We can’t do that, it’s cheating.”
“Well I’m not stooping to their level.”
“Mm…we might not have to,” Mirabelle hooks her finger between two buttons in Fig’s shirt so she can tug it from her trousers, “Hop in this bath with me and wash my hair while you listen to my idea. I think we need to start with Narmani. She is their eyes.”
Fig hums while she unbuckles her trousers and kicks out of her boots, “The brother is a threat too. I’ll take him if you want the lady bird.”
“That is preferable to me as well. I despise seeing you with other women.” There is a twinkle in her eye that makes Fig laugh heartily.
She decides to test the snake’s reflexes a few weeks later, after watching the Twins skirt around them with unkind eyes and sharp teeth. Revenge must be had for a back handed attack like the one they delivered. Defeating the Behemoth was not enough.
“Hey there,” Silver wisps of smoke curl around her head, rising from the amber end of the cigarette hanging from her mouth, “I need a moment, Prince.”
Ran’zn pauses beside his co-Captain—Prince Sahsas Donerath—at the mouth of aisle he had been passing. A collection of old yellowing scrolls are wedged between a pile of data pads and older data chips that will require the outdated computer at the help desk to read sit tucked into the curve of his arm. His co-Captain holds even more.
“I’m busy, Nameless. Go bother another.”
“I owe you a bite.”
The younger Prince co*cks his head curiously, “A bite?”
“For the one you took out of my Princess,” She stands from the shelf she was leaned against, taking a long drag from her cigarette in one hand and lifts an old mining hammer onto her shoulder with the other, “That was nasty business with the Behemoth. Real nasty. Bet you thought ‘cause you’re a prince and we’re here at this school, you’d get away with it huh?”
Ran’zn takes a step back though he does not seem bothered. His face remains cool and smooth but the way barks orders his co-Captain without taking his snake eyes off Fig belays his concern, “Go get my sister.”
“Are you certain?”
“We’re in a library. She isn’t going to do anything.”
The young one takes off and Fig watches the top of his head move through the aisles, “You needed his help.”
“Nameless, I don’t know what you have in your head but myself nor my sister had anything to do with your rotten luck. I sent my best wishes to your Princess and she made clear she received them. Let us work in peace and leave whatever this is for practice.”
“I can’t do that your highness. Because this,” She gestures between the two of them with the haft of her well used work hammer, “between us? It’s personal. And look, I get it. We’re new, we’re making waves, you wanted to test our resolve. See if we have the guts to do all this. But you went too far the second you put her life in danger and I’m awful sorry, your highness, but I cannot abide that. I’m afraid actions have consequences.”
She takes a step forward and keenly notes the way scales appear around his eyes, the way his slit pupal becomes more pronounced and how he opens his mouth to show his tongue curled back and a pool of something dark has filled the space, sitting at the edge of his bottom teeth.
Her smile is feral and wicked and full of a hate that promises pain, “Hey, don’t start that with me. You’re the one who started this game and now I’m just taking my turn. Don’t worry, I can’t afford to ship in something nasty from home to sick on you. Not my style anyway, too impersonal for what you did. Instead, I’m gonna hit you with this big hammer until you go to sleep and then I’m gonna leave you here for everyone to see.”
His body jerks to lunge towards her but her hammer was already half way through its forward arc when he reacted and by the time he notices, it is too late to avoid. The hand he lifts to block it catches the edge of the hammer, knocking the swing a little off target—and surprising her because she is certain she hears the faint sound of metal hitting metal despite his two fleshy hands—so it grazes his clavicle instead of his cheekbone. For many of her years spent living, she has spent them swinging this hammer to break rock and expose the raw salt water steel ore that the Moon would sell. For that, her arm got strong, the swing got hard, and the aim became precise. This hammer breaks rock by second nature now, dictated by her years of toil. So she will be surprised if, even with the missed mark, it does not break the fragile bird wings of his breast bone. If not for the sound of metal she heard from the fist, she would not be surprised if the tiny bones in the hand did not break too. The force of the blow, off as it was, still sends him stumbling backwards into a shelf that teeters but does not topple.
“Are you crazy!? I can’t believe you just hit me with a hammer! What’s wrong with you!?”
“Look, you can pretend like we don’t know what you did and you didn’t do anything but we both know the truth. You have this coming. And, honestly, the fact that you didn’t know about my one rule—do not f*ck with the Saint—means I’m going to let you wake up. Count your lucky teeth or however that saying goes. ‘Cause you’re gonna be missing a couple in a second.”
The Prince snarls at her to give her a pretty view of his curved fangs and another look at the venom pooled beneath his tongue. Words seem to stir in his mouth too, ready to unfurl, but she stops them with another swing of her hammer and this time she is quicker, this time she hits him like his head is rock she wants to see split and this time it connects with the meat and bone of his cheek. He crumples without a sound, unconscious before he hits the ground and layered in a swath of his own blood that gushes from the fissure her hammer head made in his flesh. She looms above him in a cloud of smoke, mouth pursed to one side and leaned on her hammer to watch him and ensure he stays down. When he remains, she flicks the ashes from her cigarette atop his prone form, gives a curt nod, and spins on her heel to leave.
For the first time in her fifteen years of living Aeolfig can commiserate with her dearest friend in the world because for the first time in her young life she has a stomach ache. Not just as any stomach ache but one brought on by copious amounts of stress and concern for the situation and for the foreseeable future.
Fig’s girlfriend f*cked up.
If she had just told Fig before they snuck aboard the cargo vessel bound for Dulce, she would have warned them off it or at least come with them to ensure the success of their burglary. They—Fig’s girlfriend and her crew—had not told her and now four of them sat in the hovel bleeding and in various stages of grief. One of them didn’t make it and another one of them—Fig’s girlfriend—killed a Knight and seriously injured another in their escape from the moon. Stealing on Henor is not an uncommon thing and though it is still just as illegal, the knights tend to care less when it happens on the Mountain instead of the sapphire moon. The Moon is where nobility and merchants and royalty live, it is the vault for all the coin in their empire, and stealing from there is a death sentence. If they had just told her before it happened she could have prevented this from happening but they had been caught and the injured Knight was left having seen their faces. It would only be an hour before the Knights close in on them and drag them all into the street. There will be a public execution heralded by the Saint and the many loyal Knights and overseen by the offended family and the royal family with them. Now, although she had not be involved, it had been her home they fled to because the figurehead for the heist is dating Fig so she will die right along side them. Fig only regrets that it will be Mirabelle that has to kill her.
Part of her feels guilty that her first concern, when her girlfriend returned, was not her girlfriend’s obvious distress and wounds but that the dead knight could be Mirabelle. That Fig may never get to see her again or hear her silken voice whisper the Smugglers Tongue into her ear before bed.
They do not try to run, there would be no point. They simply sit (or pace or scream or weep) and await the squadron that will eventually arrive to take them away. Perhaps that is why it is a surprise to them all when a Knight in blood stained, horribly bent salt-water steel armor arrives alone, leaning over a makeshift crutch and standing in the shadow against the side of the house.
Fig’s girlfriend draws her pistol—to Fig’s ever growing horror—and points it at the injured Knight. Her voice is as wobbly as her gun hand when she weakly shouts, “If you move, I’ll shoot.”
In Smugglers Tongue, the Knight says, “Tell her to put that down.”
The stomach ache turns from an unpleasant throb to a painful knot that pushes bile up her throat. Quickly she flicks her eyes up and down the street and once she is certain no one is watching, she pulls Mirabelle inside to sit on the sofa. Thankfully the bent helm she has on covers most of her distinguishable features so the others do not recognize just how grievous their mistake truly was. They attacked the Saint.
“Fig what are you doing!? That’s the Knight that killed Darius!”
Fig rips the pistol from her girlfriend’s hand and throws it across the room, “Go upstairs G.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with—“
“G, this is serious. Let me talk to this Knight and see if I can fix what you f*cked up.”
Her girlfriend wilts visibly, her head and shoulders droop and her eyes grow horribly sad, “I didn’t mean for it to go like this. There weren’t suppose to be Knights in there,” The venomous look G directs at Mirabelle oddly sets her skin ablaze and makes her want to lash out at the girl (it is not missed upon her that she is more protective of Mirabelle than the person she is dating), “they attacked us when we were running away! They stabbed us in our backs like cowards!”
Mirabelle says in a flat voice that is strained by pain, “We don’t have time for her whinging.”
“G, please. We’ll talk about this if we survive the night—“
G flings herself at Fig in a sudden whirl of arms and hands reaching and grabbing and pulling so their lips can mesh sloppily. Behind them Mirabelle makes an unhappy growl that could be from pain but sounds too annoyed for it to be that.
“Salt forgive—there is a time and place for that and the time is not now.” This time she speaks common, voice barbed and cutting. G pulls away to glare at her.
“You’re lucky I don’t kill you.”
“You’re lucky that you’re not dead for stealing from the Countess of Dulce and killing her son during the heist.”
This time Fig has to physically clutch her stomach to keep from retching onto the carpet. She stumbles away from her girlfriend’s clingy hands to sit on the sofa beside Mirabelle. It is an odd thing, for that debilitating moment to be how she learns that the only thing that can truly give her peace of mind is her best friend.
“G, upstairs. Please.”
Flinty eyes watch her for any kind of betrayal of emotion and when they seem to find none, G relents and storms upstairs after saying in an almost pleading tone, “I love you Fig. I’m sorry for…all this.”
Mirabelle scoffs under her breath, probably without thinking to stop it. The moment they are alone Fig pulls her friend into as tight a hug as she dares, pressing her long fingers around the back of her neck to tuck her head against the side of Fig’s neck. She feels tears touch her skin the moment she is secured.
“Figgy, why didn’t you warn me?”
“I didn’t know Mira, I swear it. I had nothing to do with this. I never,” Her eyes flick to the crutch leaned against the table lathered in a thick crust of half dried blood, “I would never have let them hurt you. I would have stopped it. They didn’t say anything until it was too late.”
“I believe you but…they almost killed me and that’s…manageable, I suppose…but they killed my cousin, Fig. Things are…bad.”
Fig pulls away to address the wounds Mirabelle seems riddled with: blaster shots have left burnt craters in the torso of her armor that blood has started to trickle from, her cybernetic foot has been mangled enough that it sparks and pops occasionally, and there is some blue she can see behind the visor of her helmet. There is a tremble in her hands when she reaches to pry the helmet off and a quiver in her jaw when Mirabelle squints like the light hurts and she sees the gash parting her hair, soaking it through with ocean colored blood that runs over her forehead.
For a moment she feels crazed by the sight. Quite suddenly it hits her just how touchable her strong, capable friend is and has always been. Something as simple as a gangly group of teens from Henor could easily rip Mirabelle from her life when, before this moment, she had always pictured her friend to be beyond the stars. What a fool she had been to always assume that just because Mirabelle wears armor and is the strongest person she has met does not make her untouchable.
It is also a strange moment for her to realize that there is no one in the world that matters more to her or who she loves more than her best friend.
“Mira, we need to get you to a—“
“We don’t have time for that. We need to get you and,” The most intensely foul look slides across Mirabelle’s beautiful features, contorting them into something annoyed and contemptuous, “your girlfriend off planet. I can’t do much to save this situation but I swear Fig, I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you.”
Fig feels an unpleasant tightness form in her chest, “Leave? What are you talking about? I can’t leave.”
“You can’t stay. I—like I said, I can’t do much for this. Some of your friends will have to take the fall. I left before any other Knights could arrive on scene so it could look like I was taken once they inevitably find us. But if we do nothing they will find her and that will lead to you and,” An intensity turns Mirabelle hard right before her eyes, voice and face turning rigid as marble, “Aeolfig, I’d let the moon burn before I let them have you.”
“Then we’ll figure something else out!”
“There is no other way!”
“There has to be! I’m not f*cking leaving you, Mira!”
“Fig—“ The sentence cuts short because Fig barrels into the girl, throwing her arms around her and pulling her into the tightest hug. Her hand slides around the back of her neck up into the silken locks of her blood soaked hair, pressing their heads together ear to ear. Just as strong Mirabelle hugs her back, eliminating the slim amount of space between their bodies.
“I don’t care what happens Mira,” Fig whispers the word a half manic prayer against the ear of a Saint, “I’ll sit in prison, I’ll die in a public trial, l’ll let the King throw me into the sea. Anything is better than saying goodbye to you.”
Mirabelle tenderly caresses the back of her neck with the side of her thumb while she whispers back, “I don’t want you to leave, I don’t want you to go anywhere I can’t go too, but I don’t know any other way.”
“Your plan will still work. We let them find you with her gang and the cards can fall where they fall.”
Mirabelle tries to pull away but the manic rising in her chest makes her tighten her hold and press their upper bodies together tighter, always tighter, until it’s nearly uncomfortable to breath. The thumb starts rubbing soothing circles against her nape. It does not escape her that the tingles rippling down her spine are unlike any she has ever felt before even with the woman upstairs who loves her.
“Fig, they will give her up and if they find her, they find you.”
“So we send her away.”
“You…you shouldn’t have to leave the person you love because of our friendship. Just…go with her. I’ll find you again someday, I swear it. And you know, it won’t be…I mean just don’t—look, we’ll find a way, we always do.”
Fig feels irritation in her that spices the words, “I don’t want to go with her, Mirabelle, I told you that. I want to stay here with you.”
The Saint makes an odd noise, sucks in a breath that tickles Fig’s ear, and then whispers, “Don’t you love her?”
“No.”
“But she’s your—she said she loves you. I mean you two…she’s your first everything. I thought—“
“There is no one more important than you,” Oh, this is a very odd time for her to internally confront that she only started dating G because she never suspected she had a chance with the person she truly wanted, “I’d take five minutes with you over years with any one else.”
This time when Mirabelle moves in a way to indicate she wants to end the hug, Fig allows her, though she only pulls far enough away to hover near her face. Their noses brush.
“You have to be sure Fig. If we send her away, she can’t ever come back.”
There is a burning desire that erupts from her gut like a sprout of something molten that consumes her in the deep and profound desire to kiss Mirabelle. A longing that she realizes has never been too far from the surface of her wants but has only been hiding under the layers upon layers of devotion she has for her friend that she foolishly had assumed was entirely platonic. In fact, it is so intense that she begrudges her former self for ever wanting to be intimate with anyone in any capacity who was not Mirabelle.
“I’m sure.”
Gently Mirabelle cradles Fig’s hand between both her own—something she has done before but has only now clicked in Fig’s brain as something more than friendly—and brings it upward to kiss the knuckles.
“I’m sorry, Figgy. She seemed…nice.”
“You don’t have to pretend now, I know you hate her. You’ve said it many, many times.”
Mirabelle averts her eyes shyly, “She made you happy, I loved—“ Aeolfig gives her friend an unimpressed look, “tolerated that about her.”
“Hey,” Fig tries to give her friend a supportive smile when she looks up, “I’m going to be more okay than you are. Worry about you, Moonie. You just lost your cousin and you almost died.”
“I…I’m okay. As long as I have you, I’ll make it.”
“Then let’s do this.”
They set the stage in an abandoned warehouse near the whaling wharf. G is not happy about the whole of the plan only because it means she has to leave Fig but she agrees because she worries about herself more. Fig does not mind that small detail and is fact grateful because it will make their split easier. There is a small sting in realizing that neither of them cared that much about the other in the grand scheme, that perhaps they clung to other in a moment of need when they thought there was no one else around, but overall it will be for the best so she can ignore it. The gang members attempt to overpower them so they can flee with G—sensing a possible escape from the hole they dug for themselves—but after a few punches from Fig and a wallop from Mirabelle, they have no choice but to stay. After the escape shuttle slips into the stars forever taking Fig’s first girlfriend away from her, Mirabelle catches her by the arm to pull her into the shadows for a quick moment of privacy.
“Fig, just in case everything goes wrong, I just need you to know that I…I have always,” Mirabelle chews on her bottom lip, casts her eyes away, and deflates, “I’m glad I met you. You’re the most meaningful thing in my life and I’m glad I don’t have to lose you because of all this. I couldn’t bare it if I lost you and my cousin in the same day which…which I recognize is a selfish thing to say after everything that just happened but…it’s true.”
A welling of intense feelings rise to clog her throat. She steps into Mirabelle’s space so that she can boldly cradle her friend’s cheek in her palm. The little gasp Mirabelle makes sends butterflies fluttering through her chest.
“Is that all?”
The Saint of the Moon swallows roughly and offers with far more petulance than a woman of her station should ever portray, “I hated your girlfriend.”
It is perhaps inappropriate to do in their current situation and after everything they had done leading up the moment but Fig laughs. She steps closer and Mirabelle raises a hand to encircle around Fig’s wrist, rubbing her thumb against the thumping pulse.
“Why?”
“I…I was jealous. It made me feel awful, I have more than most and it’s unfair that I would want more still but I was jealous of what she got and what she got to be.”
“What did she get?”
Mirabelle’s shuddering breath disturbs the air between them, washing across Fig’s parted lips, “To be yours. To be loved and held by you. To touch you and…to love you.”
Jubilant tides wash over her, “Moonie…are you saying you like me?”
“I always have.”
“I am n—oh, I expected you to call me stupid. Okay…okay.”
The sapphires coloring Mirabelle’s expressive eyes glitter beneath the light of the rising sun, “What does that mean?”
“I guess it means I like you too.”
Her body is tired at sixteen, just three weeks after she sent her first girlfriend into the stars and out of her life forever. It is a strong body, a body built of lean muscle earned from working her entire childhood away in the deep, dark mines but it is weathered and broken and tired. For today at least. So she lays on her bed with her eyes closed and thinks that it is a fine birthday. A birthday she got off work early and the hammer didn’t feel too heavy and her lungs only ache the normal amount. She had a nice supper and finished her chores with only the minimal amount of body pains and now she can just lay in bed and let her bones sink through the mattress, let her hard muscles turn to spent wax and her quiet, knife sharp mind grow dull. What a blessed birthday.
There is a knock on her door that interrupts her perfect nothing and brings an unwanted frown to her face, working muscles that should be melting.
“Go away.”
The door knob gives its classic tormented squeak when it is turned and the backing of the rusty hinges accompany it when the door is thrown open. She suffers, oh how she suffers. The imbeciles of this world will take every pound of flesh she has left, they will leave her nothing, not even a moment alone to die in peace.
“I said go aw—“
Mirabelle stands in the doorway, dressed down in high waisted trousers girdled with a thick belt and a sweat stained work shirt that is buttoned up all the way to the underside of her chin. Her lovely wave colored hair, frosted white at the tips just like a crashing wave, is tucked under an ugly, ill fitting cap and there is a long sword duffle hanging off one shoulder. The sight of her brings butterflies to Fig’s belly, sends them all aflutter with no direction to go but straight into her throat.
“Mira? What are you doing here? How did—did anyone see you?”
The smile that tilts up her friend’s perfect mouth is art, is absolute perfection. She goes about the ritual of entry—shoes, coat, dust bucket—before she comes to join Aeolfig on the bed, setting the bag on the floor beside the thin mattress.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“Welcome home.”
“It’s your birthday,” Mirabelle pushes her down when she attempts to sit up then shifts to hug her in her prone position, “Happy Birthday.”
Her arms lift to wrap around Mirabelle, contouring to her firm waist and pull her close enough that she can press her nose into the soft blue hair. Her brows furrow when it bumps the canvas of the hat.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“It’s your birthday.”
“Still. Not worth the risk.”
Mirabelle squeezes her tight, as a parting it would seem, before she rises back onto her knees beside Fig’s hips. Her smile is sweet, it says My Fig, you are always worth the risk.
“I brought your presents.”
“What?” She lifts herself onto her elbows to peer over the side of the bed at the sword duffle, her brows furrowed.
“Custom dictates: Birthday? Presents.” Mirabelle reaches to touch her face then her cheeks grow a lovely purple blush and she pulls it away with a clearing of her throat. The phantom touch that could have been still burns the same as if she had been blessed by the hand of a saint.
“I don’t get birthday presents.”
“Well,” Stubby fingers hook into the loop of the duffle to tug it onto the bed between them, pushing it into Fig’s lap, “now you do. Go on and look.”
Her hands fall to the zipper anxiously, twiddling with the metal for long enough that Mirabelle reaches out to lay a hand over hers.
“Figgy, what?”
Her stomach twists up into unpleasant knots—the kind that make her feel like a little girl in the dark all over again—pushing up more errant butterflies and something a lot more bitter along with it. Her eyes cannot lift to meet Mirabelle’s so she shifts them to watch the hand set atop hers, the scars that dress them and the silver tattoo along the inside of her index finger marking her as the Saint.
“It feels weird,” Her finger lifts to hook around Mirabelle’s, warm and rough from years of hard labor not spent in the mines but holding weapons of all kinds, learning more and more ways to fight and fight then fight harder until her hands held the ability to protect the Moon, the Mountain and their Sixteen sister planets like no other can, “I don’t need presents. I’m an adult.”
“We’re kids Fig. You and me.”
“We haven’t ever been kids. No one let us.”
A sadness consumes Mirabelle’s face, one that she cannot betray by hiding and one she does not need to hide with Aeolfig. She gives a nod in agreement but still shifts Fig’s fingers back to the zipper, “Then you deserve these presents anyway.”
“Why?”
“People give presents to people they cherish,” Before Fig can ask do you cherish me? Mirabelle rolls her lovely eyes and shakes her hand, “Come on, look and see what I got you.”
She wants to wait out of politeness or perhaps out of a fear for something brand new to her because brand new things are always scary. But the hand in hers is warm and it is her Mirabelle, her very best friend and the person she loves (even though they haven’t managed much more than admitting it), Mirabelle would not do anything scary so she unzips the bag. Inside are three things: two long and one small, short and wobbly. One of the long things is—
“You got me an arm for my birthday?”
“Mhm,” Mirabelle scoots forward until their knees bump, leaning over to point at the blue gears under salt water steel and the sensory pads in the palm, lining the inside of the fingers and creating faint fingerprints on each thumb and finger, “It took too long to get it, I’m sorry. I had to be careful. I asked my cousin—“
“Wenlock!?”
“No, Wenny is in my dad’s favorite brother’s pocket. Too dangerous to make a pact with him. I’m talking about Lyvsia.”
The Fourth brother’s heir, the duch*ess of the planet Ty’Té, three years older than Mirabelle and not as accomplished in body but very strong of mind. Mirabelle’s favorite on the list of Cousin’s That Can Be Trusted amidst a veritable sea of cousins.
“I asked Lyvsia to make this for you. It’s the only way I could get you one that won’t poison you,” The way the fingers of a Saint graze over the network of dark veins originating from the arm made for her, one that has been corroding in the mines from the salt dust and the larvae of the Depth mothers and the worst things, so she can only wear it when she needs to and it makes her sick to, “without anyone noticing. These particular prosthetics are under lots of eyes. Salt water steel is too precious, as you know. But it’s the only thing that the mines can’t eat so—so, Lyvsia. Is it…do you like it?”
She says, “I don’t know.” Because she does not have the words to convey what it means to her. Not the arm itself though it is a massive gift to have an arm that she can use properly and won’t have to kill her to use although she will have to scuff its pretty exterior or paint it to hide its value. No, what guts her in the most sensational way is that Mirabelle made her a promise and she kept it against all odds, no matter how long it has taken to keep.
“I guess I didn’t really sell it very much. Um, these touch receptors are hooked into a central network that is right here—“ She taps the bicep of the metal arm, one that is soft because of the salt water steel smelted down and reforged into a gel coating that is meant to emulate the feeling of skin—“that has a connection hub, it looks like a cap of sorts, you’ll put over the stump on your arm. And when they connect it’ll feel like your own arm. It can read the neurotransmitters in your brain and connect to your nervous system so you can feel with it. Heat, cold, pain, all that.”
Fig’s face scrunches up as she digs through the third thing—the lumpy misshapen box—the cap is inside of, “Pain?”
“It keeps the arm protected. Just like pain does for your real limbs. Only—“
“Only?”
Mirabelle lights up, her eyes glittery as their precious moon, “Only it is coated in one of the strongest alloys in the galaxy so there is very little that can hurt it. You’ll have to be a little more gentle with it until you get to know its strength while you wear it.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
The flowery blush that spreads across the Saint’s cheeks makes Fig grin, “I wasn’t worried.”
Both precious gifts are set back onto the bed so she can fiddle with the tape on the second long box, holding it against her ribs with her elbow because the other arm is laying on her desk. While she works (because Mirabelle does not ask do you need help? Because she knows Fig does not) she lifts her chin towards Mirabelle’s leg, “Did Lyvsia makes yours too?”
“Not originally. I didn’t like the other, it chafed. Well, they all do but it didn’t fit right and I hated the—this one, yes, she made this one. She’s confidant you’ll like yours.”
“Is she a doctor?”
“No. Things have not been quite as grand since her grandmothers passed and they sold their planet into our empire. Did you know it is treasonous for me to say that? Uncle would never let her—this, her talents are her secret the way you’re mine and I’m yours.”
Fig scoffs but it is good natured, “Building medical cybernetics is her hobby?”
“She works on personal space crafts too. And builds androids for different things.”
“Being a Royal can’t be worth more than that.”
“Depends on who you ask.” This is said bitterly and Fig knows that bitterness, has tasted it in Mirabelle’s tears and anger throughout the years of their friendship.
“Mm.” Is her only answer. The tape comes away and inside of an unassuming short sword that looks remarkably similar to the collapsing salt water steel blade Mirabelle always keeps concealed on her person. This one is rigid though and dull, boasting a Damascus striation along the steal coating and the water inside (not real water, she has learned after the mine incident, it is salt water steel kept in a liquid state and cased inside a harder version of itself) is cool. The cross guard is simple and the hilt is simple wrapped leather except for the very fine finger prints she can see ingrained in the leather.
“Why does it—“
“The sword was made to activate only with the command of the hand. That’s why there are finger prints in your cybernetic. That way, even if you are unarmed, your sword cannot be used against you. The only thing is…”
Fig scoots a little closer, hanging off her every word, “What?”
“We had to use my fingerprints. I couldn’t get yours without flagging the system and coming down here when she needed them wasn’t going to work. So…sorry.”
Fig kisses her. It is not exactly what she meant to do or even what she planned to say. The thought of always having a fundamental part of Mirabelle with her, protecting her in some way, overwhelms her. In some way, Mirabelle’s hand will always be in hers. That wells up inside her so quickly she cannot stop herself and she does not particularly want to. All she wants is to kiss the girl she has the worlds biggest crush on. Mirabelle makes a startled sound that tickles Fig’s chapped lips.
“Oh—“
“No, wait, don’t stop. You just—I didn’t think you’d do that. I want to though. I want to so badly.”
“It’s probably a bad idea. We’re already pushing it—“
Mirabelle grips her by the jaw and drags her into a fierce kiss that makes her toes tingle. After she draws away, they are both panting and smiling.
“Happy birthday, Fig.”
Blood coats her tongue. The Prince of the Green Sun does not move with the ability of his sister but he strikes with twice the force. At first she had let him slip under her guard and strike at her wherever he may so she could test his strength and see for herself what a danger he could be. The moment his fist connected with her rib cage she felt something crack and knew that would be a mistake to let happen again. After the third hit she carefully adjusted mid-air to allow a hit to land on her chin so she can feel for possible surgical implants under the skin of his knuckles that she suspected were there but needed to feel it to be certain.
A buzzer sounds from the spectator droids hovering around the ring and the lights beneath the sand shut themselves off. Instantly Mirabelle is kneeling in the sand to help her onto her feet and hissing, “You didn’t need to let him hit you that many times, Fig. Salt, you’re covered in blood.”
“Plated fists.” She spits some of the blood into the sand, head wobbling side to side. Mirabelle gently presses a silk kerchief against the split in her broken nose.
“So you were right, he is a brawler who has been pretending to be a swordsmith,” Though Mirabelle’s sigh gives the impression she is not pleased with Fig’s means for gathering this information, “How big?”
“Knuckle to knuckle. I think titanium although it felt hard so it could be salt water steel, very thick.”
Mirabelle makes an annoyed sound, “That’s a problem to work out.”
“He hits like a brick wall,” The world spins around her though she is held anchored down to earth by Mirabelle’s touch, “Salt…I might have a concussion.”
Her wife’s face pinches in concern and her head lifts to look for the professor, “I’ll call it.”
“No. I can go another round and bring up our points.”
“The points don’t matter.”
Fig scoffs and swats her wife’s hand away, “We need to pass.”
“Fig, you—“ Mirabelle stops short and sighs, “Call it if you get too hurt, my love.”
“I’ll just force him to call it.” She rolls her shoulders and flexes her fingers, tilting her head side to side to stretch the muscles in her neck. She holds out a fist that Mirabelle taps with her own and they share a parting nod of heads—a silent encouragement—before Fig enters the fight once more.
“I will say this about you, peasant,” He jeers just quietly enough that professor cannot hear it, “you are very good at taking a punch. After you have flunked out, I am willing to hire you as my permanent sparring partner.”
The moment the Professor signals the start the final round, she takes two strides forward, dodges around his powerful upward strike, and kicks him so hard in the chest he slides out of the ring on his back.
“That is a knock out, ten points to the captains of the Blue team.”
The look on his face when he stands, dusting sand out of his silk training clothes, makes her laugh under her breath because it reminds her of the same angry face he made after she walloped him with her hammer. When he approaches her the second time, he does it too slow even with his heavy fist. She rushes around him, plants her foot in front of his while she fists the clothing by his hip and shoulder, and throws him out of the ring.
“A second knock out from Team Blue, another ten points!”
She knows from their previous round that Ran’zn is still ahead of her but not as badly now. If she can stay up and keep the fight fair she can at least get them to a tied position. This time when he rises there is an angry snarl on his face that display the sharp points of his fangs and starts making a clicking noise deep in chest. The sand seems to be a lighter thing beneath his feet or, more accurately, he becomes a lighter thing atop it.
This will be an important note to add to her file on him as well.
He comes in quicker than he has the entire day, striking in a rapid set of three punches all aimed at different parts of her. Thick blood the color of sea glass drips from the new split in her brow, coloring her vision in one eye enough that he becomes a slight blur. It is not enough to deter her, not a child who spent most of her youth in the black of a mining shaft with just the slightest light of her data pad to guide her. She dodges beneath another flurry of blows to deliver a concise upward blow to the underside of his chin, directly into the pocket that will rock his skull back on his spine and put him to sleep. To her surprise, he does stumble back into the sand but his eyes stay open.
“So you can fight fair,” Red spews from his lips and colors his teeth, turning to glittering pearls beading up where it hits sand, “good to know.”
“That isn’t a secret worth investing in,” She ducks beneath a powerful swing, notes that he only uses his fists, and twists around his guard to deliver a reactive punch to his ribs, “you should have already known that.”
“People fake their way into this school all the time. And you,” He staggers away from her, faints to the side then presses into her to drive his elbow into her collarbone, “don’t belong here. So clearly you—“
He stumbles back to the ground after she delivers a harsh kick to the side of his head. The sand kicks up—not light for or under him anymore—and his head hits the back of the Professors boot. Outside of the ring.
“A final ten points to Team Blue for a total of forty six. The Yellow team finished at forty five. Team Blue wins this challenge,” The Professor snaps his book shut decisively, “again. Well done everyone. Go and see the nurses before your midday meal.”
The assembled captains and co-captains bow respectfully until all the holo-panels have turned back to a muted grey, the sand has seeped back between the tiles that snap back together afterwards, and the door shuts behind the Professor. The moment it does, a hand pushes between her shoulder blades to knock her to the ground but instead of meeting the hard white paneling of the projector floor, Mirabelle catches her around her aching ribs and keeps her on her feet.
“Admit it,” The Princess of the Green Sun hisses, baring her fangs at the pair of them, “we all know already. Just admit it and things will be easier for you.”
The Saint trusts Fig to survey the small group of four completing a circle around them so that her eyes—a raging sea churning under the tempest of a grey sky—can remain on the twins. Instinctively they press their backs together. Mirabelle reaches for the hidden salt-water steel blade strapped into a holster under her armpit though she does not pull it free just yet.
“I suggest that you all, to put it in a way my friend here might convey—“ Mirabelle starts.
“—calm the f*ck down.” Fig finishes, hunkering low with her shoulders hitched to her ears and her fists held up. Another fight in her condition would not be advised and not something she would enjoy doing but she is confident that her wife can make up for her missteps and they can win if they must.
Ran’zn makes a furious sound and slashes his hand through the air, “Cut it! Just admit what you did!”
His sister adds sharply, “Do it now and we’ll see that you are just expelled but if you do not…the behemoth will be the least of your problems.”
“Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what it is you think we’ve done?” There is no edge in Mirabelle’s sickly sweet tone but Fig knows she is wondering if this is about the hammer in the library.
“She thinks we’re stupid sister.”
“We might as well play her game then. Since we already have them figured out.”
The Prince kicks at them as if he intended to throw sand their way but instead it is a phantom action and stabs a finger in their direction, “You cheated Saint Mirabelle! The first clue was in the Choosing. Why would the Saint who will inherit the dynasty ruling over 16 planets but most importantly Dulce and Henor choose a Nameless? Unless…you didn’t want to use her real name.”
Narmani steps forward then, eyes curious and far too unafraid to come near a rattled and irritated Mirabelle who, in that moment, is every bit a feral creature caged and threatened, “The language was the next clue. Minors on Henor do not have a specific dialect, I looked it up.”
“The third clue was how skilled your Nameless was in the first public test. Peasants cannot fight like that.”
“But mercenaries can.”
Mirabelle waits for them to go on then scoffs when they end their confrontation there, “So you think that I hired a merc to pretend to be a miner instead of choosing my cousin to…what?”
“It’s an advantage isn’t it? Most mercs are failed monster hunters who have already graduated from our school.”
The sigh that Mirabelle expels relaxes Fig enough that she turns her head to smirk at her fuming wife. In one motion she turns to shove Fig forward to the door, snapping her teeth at one of the twins when they reach to stop her and turns to leave with her.
“You’re morons. You are not just wrong, you are f*cking morons. The records of our enrollment is open to the public for anyone to see and if you had half a brain you’d know how to check it’s authenticity,” Mirabelle rolls her eyes in that cutting way a noble learns to perfect at a young age, “I’ll allow you a night to correct the mistake you just made by insulting the Saint of Dulce.”
Aeolfig gives the Prince a very pointed look over Mirabelle’s shoulder after that particular comment.
“Then you refuse to admit what we know?” There is now a soft wobble beneath the grit of the Prince’s voice, one that his twin noticed same as Fig does and frowns at.
“As I said,” Mirabelle stops before exiting through the door Fig holds open for her, “you are morons. To start, perhaps you could educate yourselves enough to know that someone who is nameless is not the same as being a Nameless and that it is something that occurs only on Henor and Dulce. If you knew what it meant you would know better than to assume that a merc would allow themselves to slip into that title. Secondly, this school is prestigious enough that it works under its own government and laws, partnered with the Vega Federation of course, but still independent. They are allowed to harbor one of the single most intense vetting processes in the entirety of the universe. I wouldn’t be able to sneak in a mercenary by just pretending she doesn’t have a name.”
“Oh, is that so? And we should just take your word for it?”
“Frankly, I don’t care. You’ll figure it out or you won’t.”
The Princess tilts her chin up haughtily, “We will look and if we find any discrepancy, even so much as a f*cking spelling error, it’s going to be your head one way or another.”
Fig backs her wife by giving the two captains and their partners a challenging grin while Mirabelle raises a single brow, face otherwise apathetic, and says simply, “Good luck.”
Aeolfig is seventeen and things have gone very, very poorly for her. The shift head had promised her a handful of extra hours in the mine if she wanted them—which she had, desperately—though she had not asked what she would be doing within those extra hours. She had assumed she would do what she always does. Showing up for her after hour shift wielding her hammer and her respirator had gotten her a thin lipped purse and a head shake from the shift head.
“You can set that in a locker, kid. You ain’t gonna need it.”
“I can’t break rock without a hammer.”
The shift head gave her a look that meant shut your mouth and that had brought her to a wharf for a ship loaded with cargo destined for Dulce. Illegal cargo that the royal houses and wealthy folk of the moon love to revel in without getting their hands dirty in any of the work required to get it into the moon and if things turned sideways (as things always inevitably do) then it would be the miners who pay the price for it. No connections held to the upper echelon who could turn their noses up and subsequently force the citizens of Henna to pay more in taxes for more protection from the criminal activists they wrought upon the Moon and the Mountain.
A rifle is pressed into her hands when they finally have a full crew and she is told sternly, “Protect the shipment at all costs.”
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
One of the other gunners—Rickon Ghnell, a sixteen year old who was only just given the luxury of mining with the adults because his growth was stunted—lifts his own rifle a little higher and narrows his eyes at her, “Too late to back out.”
“Alright, take it easy,” She tries to channel some of the cool Mirabelle is so talented at, that she has had years watching and trying to perfect in the shadows, “I can’t actively act like I’m ‘backing out’ of something I never agreed to. I’m doing it but I’m not happy to be doing it, for the record, and if we make it through this, you are never seeing me again.”
The man behind the wheel grunts, “Just get in the f*cking shuttle.”
Aeolfig thinks perhaps things that are bad could not get worst but they always, always do. The Knights of Dulce are waiting to ambush the smugglers the moment their shuttle pulls into the secluded docking bay on the outskirts of the gilded city on the moon. Accompanying them is the Saint of Dulce, the duch*ess of Henor, the Lady of the Salt-Steel Collective and the Princess for whom is the proud owner of Aeolfig’s every affection. She gleams at the forefront of the half circle they form around the shuttle, gripping the haft of her short spear and glaring through the slits in her helm.
“By law of the Collective and the power granted to me by all sixteen of our planets, I am placing you under arrest and all contraband found within will hereby become property of the state. Step out of the ship and present yourself with your hands atop your heads. Failure to comply will result in a forceful arrest.”
Immediately Fig sets the rifle on her seat and stands to comply, reaching for the button that will open the hydrologic door. A hand wraps around her wrist and bends it away with enough force that she is certain the bone would have broken if the man who did it had grabbed her flesh hand.
“Touch that and you’re dead.”
“If we don’t comply, we’re worst than dead.” She cannot let Mirabelle see her in this group, cannot let her know what mess she got herself into because her girlfriend will immediately lend aid to the situation and likely get herself into the mess too. Aeolfig cannot allow that to happen, not by any circ*mstance. The tension between her fear for getting Mirabelle hurt and the fear this man displays for being caught battle in an intense locking of the eyes.
Rickon is huffing in a corner, each breath coming quicker until his chest is rapidly rising in and out. He clutches his rifle against his heaving breast and breathes the words, “How did they know we’d be here?”
The man tries to jerk on Aeolfig’s arm but she is stronger than he is and only makes him look foolish for tugging against an immovable object. He still bares his teeth in a snarl, “This one ratted us out.”
“I didn’t even know what the f*ck I was signed up for—against my will!—so how the f*ck does that make sense?”
“You—“
The driver cuts his hand through the air with a snarl and growls, “Shut up, both of you! Fighting isn’t going to get us out of this.”
“There is no way out! That,” Fig points towards the glimmering figure of her girlfriend at the apex of the formation flanking their ship, “is the Saint! We don’t get away from her.”
The man taps his fingers against the control panels, nodding silently either to what Fig said or to an internal monologue. The dark shadows of his eyes follow the line of Knights to the short figure of the imposing Saint. He leans forward over the wheel, squinting at her girlfriend in a way that makes her stomach twist into knots.
“You know what kid, you’re right. We don’t get away from her, not like this.” He snaps his fingers near her nose then there is the touch of a gun barrel digging into her lower back and touching the back of her head.
“What the fu—“
“Don’t move.” The barrel digs into her spine, sending a prick of pain upward.
Rickon’s nasally voice sounds behind her, layered with an eagerness that comes from hope, “What’s the plan?”
“The Saint won’t be a threat as long as we have a hostage. She cares, evidence of that being when she usually apprehends our boys, they don’t just disappear and never reappear. The way they do if just the Knights get us.”
Oh no. Aeolfig jerks forward when he reaches for the communicator, hoping to get it away from him before he can make this mistake, but she is stopped by the butt of a gun being jabbed into the back of her knees.
“Saint, we hear you,” The driver says over the communicator that is hooked into speakers projecting his voice outside in a thunderous boom, “however, I think perhaps you may change your mind in just a moment about that threat for arrest.”
Mirabelle only co*cks her head in consideration and says flatly, “I do not parlay, sir.”
Hands grab her from the heap she fell into on the floor and drag her over to the door. One set ties hers behind her back then cuts away the rope—realizing she can just flex with her prosthetic and snap the ties, she surmises—and instead presses a knife point into the connecting seal of her arm and begins snapping the connecting wires until it pops free. The progress hurts up until the knife severs the thin cables that connect the arm with her nervous system, and it becomes just a cold piece of metal that is thrown onto the floor.
“f*cker, that hurt.”
“Shut up!”
“You’re making a huge mistake.”
“I said shut up!”
The door comes open with a hydrologic hiss and she is escorted out by two of the men who came with her, squinting against the sun that is far brighter on the moon than it is on Henor due to a clean sky. She squints against the bright spots of pain in her eyes. Air has never smelled so clean.
Shame she only gets to experience it as a hostage in a situation she does not want to be in.
Guns poke against her spine and temple and the angriest of the men shouts at Mirabelle, “Let us leave or she dies.”
The entire body of the Saint becomes stone cut before their very eyes. A shudder seems to run across the whole of the moon for the way her mood changes everything. Even the Knights that flank her take a step back. Her fingers tighten around her spear and she slams the end of it down into the cobblestone street. A puff of dust comes up from where the brick splits.
“I will give you three seconds to change your mind.” The tone is crueler and colder than Fig ever imagined Mirabelle could even be.
Rickon, who she is realizing must be high on something, lowers his rifle and shoots Fig in the leg. No one in their right mind would have pulled such a stunt. The bullet catches her calf, thankfully, and rips right through the muscle. It burns. Blood bubbles up quickly and the torn muscle screams at her. But it is not the worst she has suffered and it is a clean through-and-through. It could have hit the bone and broke the leg. Then she would have to worry about work too if she survives.
“We aren’t f*cking around! You let us go or we will f*cking kill her!”
Oh, if the moon shook when she was angry, now the entire Empire’s sixteen planets tremble from her rage. Fig wants to watch it, arrested by the magnificent visage of Mirabelle no matter the mood, but her leg cannot support her weight. She slumps down onto the cobblestone.
“So…you propose I just let you fly away after you just shot a woman in front of me? How do I know you won’t kill her once you’re out of my sight?”
Rickon’s breathing sounds labored. Perhaps he has realized just how bad the situation truly is. His eyes look around frantically at the Knights ringing them then back to the other man.
The Saint takes a single step forward and Fig swears she feels the brick under her knees tremble, “I will come with you.”
The man lifts his rifle with shaking hands, pointed straight at between the furrowed brows of his Saint, “Do you think we’re stupid!?”
Unflinchingly quick, Mirabelle flatly says, “Yes.”
“Look—“
“If that woman bleeds out on Dulce’s street, right here, because you stand there pissing yourself I will end your life so brutally I will not even let you die. You are not going to back down, I understand. Your pride is on the line. What you need to understand is mine is not. If you steal every f*cking gem on this moon, I will not care. What is precious to me beyond reason is the blue spilling on the cobblestone there, by your boots. That blue is why I am the Saint. That is what I defend and you are wasting it. If you want to flee, fine. But you cannot be trusted and if that woman is killed—no words can encompass my wrath. So, you get your wish. You can fly away from here. But I am going with you to ensure her safety.”
Rickon and the other man share a look that is wrought with tension. Fig tries to wipe away something in her eye and only realizes it is the spots that warn her she is about to fall unconscious.
From inside the van, the driver speaks through the speakers again, “Tell your Knights to leave first.”
The Saint does not even need to speak. She simply tosses her spear to a Knight behind her and they know. Each of them tap their gauntlets against their breastplates to salute and spin to stomp away. Mirabelle remains stalwart.
“Remove your weapons and armor and lay them on the street.”
Mirabelle does unclip her salt-water steel blade and a handful of knives as well as a pistol that she kicks away. Then she stands with her hands behind her back.
“I said armor too!”
“No. It is not a weapon and I will not strip myself for you.”
Rickon shakily points his pistol at Mirabelle, “You carry her. And if you f*ckin’ flinch, I’m putting one between your eyes.”
Fig turns her head up, teeth grit, to glare at Rickon, “I’m gonna break your f*ckin’ legs if we survive this. And then I’m pushing you into a quarry and leaving you there. I’m gonna wait until I hear a Deep Mother chewing on your bones.”
The whites of Rickon’s eyes seem to get a little bigger the more wild he becomes. He drives down the butt of his gun into her temple, snarling nasty threats that are a little too shaky to truly be scary. Mirabelle is there is in a flash, shouldering the boy aside so she can lift Aeolfig onto her feet.
“Are you alright?” Mirabelle still sounds furious but the edge is gentler near Fig’s temple.
The man presses his rifle nearer to the Saint. Not quite brave enough to hit her with it though.
“Shut up! Just move and no funny business.”
Oceans of fury reflect from the wave tops in Mirabelle’s eyes, “Put that thing away.”
The other man shows his bravery by pressing the barrel against the Saint’s cheek, “We make the rules here.”
Slowly she turns her head without pulling away so the barrel drags across her skin and comes to rest on her bottom lip. The glare she levies on him makes his hands start to visibly shake.
“Point that at yourself if you want to make yourself useful, rabbit.”
“You—“
“Can we f*cking go please!?”
Strong hands used to holding spears wield her like a weapon. Grip her strong and sure to drag her into the shuttle. Blood leaves a shinning trail behind them.
Inside the shuttle arguments rile their jumpy friend even further. Most of it floats past her consciousness thag drifts in and out while the blood spills. Sounds swim in and out of her ringing ears most of which are unfriendly and assaulting. Between the noise is Mirabelle’s violence that is the smooth side of a cool piece of steel.
Two of them argue in the front of the shuttle. One leans in the gate leading into the co*ckpit either pilot. His eyes keep turning back to behold the Saint in flesh. Beads of sweat collect at his hairline and roll down his face. Rickon sits across from them to keep a heavy plasma rifle aimed at the pair of them.
Every muscle in his body jumps when Mirabelle slips off the seat to kneel on the floor.
“What are you doing!?”
“She is going to bleed out.” Mirabelle says calmly. Only the barest hint of rage crisps the tone. Beneath the exterior, Aeolfig knows what must be rampaging through Mirabelle’s mind. How fury is a storm under her skin that these men do not realize they have awakened. One of her silk scarves is unwound from around her throat so she can make it a bandage.
“Stop it! Get up right now or I’ll—“
Ice cold in the look of a Saint cast over her shoulder upon this poor man.
“Shut up.”
Blood loss makes her world spin round and round. Everything is fuzzy in a haze that makes sound wobble where the ground and sky flip around. Twice she thinks there is a possibly she is thrown from her seat but being able to discern that becomes difficult. Voices fade then re-emerge louder than before to argue about destinations and survival.
Sirens blare suddenly. Alarms start sounding in intervals beneath a melodic woman’s voice warning them to remain calm and brace for impact.
“Back,” Mirabelle presses on her chest to flatten her against the wall, “Let the belts click in.”
“What’s happening?”
Belts snap around her chest in a five star point, clicking into the panel behind her back. Mirabelle curls her fingers around one of the straps and tugs to ensure it is tight.
Eyes full of love and worry meet hers. In them words are exchanged. Don’t be afraid. I’m here.
Then the world is fire and screams and explosions. Impact is brutal. First touch is an immense jarring that would have thrown her from the seat if not for the harness. The entire shuttle acts like a skipping stone, touching then flying then touching again. When the momentum carrying it runs out, they slide a long ways into something that makes the entire hull crack.
Rickon’s screams make her ears ring.
“Fig,” Mirabelle breathes through the dust in the air, somewhere near her, “Are you okay? Talk to me!”
“I’m—“ Dust clogs her throat and lungs. It makes her teeth feel sticky.
Hurriedly hands tap across her chest to rip away the harness. Curses stem from one point not coming out due to the metal being warped.
Momentarily dust clears enough for her to see around them. Part of the shuttle is broken off in a rock that hangs above a yawning space. From the air quality on Henor, it looks to be a giant green ball in the sky haloed by red rings. Where they have landed is in the wild parts of the Mountain, where they have yet to move logging and mining operations. Dense landscape and harsh wild life makes moving deeper impossible. Most metals in the empire are incapable of cutting through the bark of the trees. Plumes of purple and silver leaves create a canopy they are hung above. Just beneath them, silver water pours from the side of the vine covered rocks they are stuck above. It pools into a clear lake below thag flows from algae beneath the surface. The front half of the shuttle is sinking into that, tainting the clean water with oil and blood.
“sh*t,” The entire back half of the shuttle shudders and slides forward, being pulled down by gravity to join its other half, “f*ck.”
Rickon is stuck with them. He is screaming while his hands scrabble to climb higher toward the back end of the shuttle. Mirabelle glances over, reaches up to catch him by the ankle, and tugs hard. He is dislodged easily and flies past them, grabbing for anything that could save him. When his body hits the water below, screams finally cut away.
“Hold on to me. When we hit, your bones might break. Tuck them between us and let me take the brunt of the impact.”
The last latch gives away and she tumbles away from where she was being held up. Mirabelle does not let her hit the panels of grate flooring.
“I’m sorry Moonie. I didn’t know.”
Fingers press through her hair, securing a grip to pull Aeolfig’s head forward. Their forehead’s knock together.
“Let’s do this once I’m not terrified. Fall first, panic later.”
“Fair enough. Wait, your helmet?”
“Don’t worry. I have a spare.” From her pouch, she pulls out a folded piece of salt water steel. From a command typed into the thin screen on the side, it begins to expand into a full coverage helmet.
They cling to each other, walking slowly to the edge where sparks shoot from broken wires and gasoline pours from hoses.
“Count to three.”
“Can you swim in armor?”
“I can swim in anything.”
“One.”
“Can you swim with just one arm?”
“Two. I can probably swim better with one arm than you can in armor.”
“If this doesn’t work, I’d like you to know I love you.”
“Three.”
Fig tucks her hand into the front of Mirabelle’s belt, gripping the buckle for leverage. Both of them begin to fall. Wind shrieks in her ears from their cruel way of cutting through it. Gauging the distance to impact is difficult when she is curled into a ball against her chest. Whistling and breathlessness and dizziness for too long.
Then water. An impact that feels like being thrown against a wall before they both sink under to mingle with wreckage. Shards of metal float by her head. Swirls of dark move around their skin king bodies that sink, momentarily, then begin to fight for a climb.
She surfaces before Mirabelle, gasping for breath.
“Don’t stop!” Mirabelle starts going toward the shore. Above them, the second half of the shuttle starts to groan as it unmoors from the rock and starts to come down.
Water rains on them. Pooling under them on the shore and then more so when the wreckage meets the rippling surface.
Green light shines off Mirabelle’s wet hair and the salt water steel armor. Metal creaks and groans from sliding beneath water. They sit on the shore and watch it go down to meet the twin half of itself.
“So. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen you. How have you been?”
Mirabelle turns to look at her, sagging and scraped and sour. A clump of soggy netting soaked through with grime slips off her shoulder to hit the dirt with a wet splat.
“I was sort of hoping the next time we got the chance to sneak away we could have dinner and I could tell you how I feel and then I could tell you that I’d really like to have sex with you for the first time.”
“You know what’s better than losing your virginity? Crashing in a shuttle from some dickhe*ds in the middle of Henor that is super not populated at all. While you’re girlfriend bleeds out.”
“Come here.” Mirabelle heaves herself onto her feet and gestures for Fig to take her hand so she can be helped up too. She is drawn into a tight hug.
“I love you too.”
“Don’t even try it with me. You’re in so much trouble for this.”
“I didn’t know this was going to be the under the table job I signed up for.”
“Why did you sign up for more work? I know why but Figgy, you need a break.”
“I wanted to buy you a present. A real nice one. You’ve been gone for months and I know how hard it can be and I wanted to get you a good welcome home present.”
Mirabelle sighs against her shoulder. She turns her head to hide her face against the side of Fig’s neck.
“You’re still in trouble.”
“No fair.”
“We are going to die out here.”
“Or we survive and just live out here now. This is a nice little…pond?”
“No, come on. Let’s start walking.”
Fig slings an arm over her girlfriend’s shoulders to take some weight off her bad leg.
“Can’t you send an emergency call?”
“And get caught with you? We can’t risk that. We need to find our own way back. I remember there being some small towns out here. If we can find one, I can get us a ride back on a cargo shuttle.”
“So now we get quality time together for at least two or three days.”
“It won’t be that long.”
“Shame. I’d love to spend two or three days with you.”
“You are still in trouble. Don’t try to be cute right now.”
Air hisses from the lock that comes apart in front of them. Light shines through the new door that makes itself, bringing with it bird song and the smell of living things.
Each of the captains step out of the shuttle under this new light on this mega planet. The shuttle bay is on top of a massive tower that is hundreds of feet above the city below. In a ring around the city, ice has formed like teeth larger than mountains. All pointed inward toward the cradle where the city sits. Shinning under the light, many of the buildings are shaped like glass mushrooms of varying heights. Vines and ivy hang from the balconies on each, creating an effect that makes it look like each building has long green beards. Streets create a grid pattern that, from above, looks slanted and corkscrews in confusing patterns around buildings half sunken into the ground beneath the long beards.
Aeolfig kicks a pebble off the edge of the shuttle bay just to watch it fall. Half way down, a bird with golden wing tips swoops by to catch it and speeds off into the clouds.
“Alright students! Gather round.”
Mirabelle gives her shirt a hard tug that she smirks at. Following her glowering Saint to stand in the line forming in front of her professor.
“This is the site of our trial, Professor?” Ral’en asks without hiding her skepticism.
“Indeed.”
“I don’t understand. This is just an envoy planet. All that happens here is shipping.”
“Indeed, this is a planet that is only fifteen percent habitable. And here is where much of the galaxies third party fulfillment companies are owned and operated. Which is not at all related to the fact that your next trial is here. Anymore questions?”
Mirabelle raises her hand politely and waits to be recognized and called upon.
“Thank you,” She begins in her lulling, sweet voice belonging to royalty that rolls out like the velvet she walks upon, “You said there would be information packets. Do we get these now or must we find them ourselves?”
Their professor adjusts his glasses with a smile, “Your task here is to find and kill the beast that is threatening this town or, if it is not a beast, discover what is happening here. As a hunter, you may at times be called to action to discover it was a group of local teens playing an elaborate prank. Your information packets will come you into the resources we have allocated to you and where those can be acquired. Where these are is going to be part of your task to find. When landing on new planets, you may find yourself lost and gathering information can be difficult. This is a simulation of that situation, of course, but we want the threat to be just real enough to feel its presence. Now, as ever, you always have the option to opt out of this trial for safety concerns or for any other reason. Recognizing that this will negatively impact your grade, of course. Which transitions nicely into my next thing. This is going to be dangerous. We do not have allies on this planet or school attendants. We have set up resources you may use and once you complete your trial, you will signal for pick up. Other than that, you will be on your own.”
Two attendants flanking the Professor step forward holding cases that are set by their feet. Each are opened to show rows of metal orbs set in a cushioned lining.
“This trial is not going to be televised like some of your larger trials have been and will be. We will still be monitoring you however, to deduct or add points to your overall grade depending on your performance. These are drones that will be personally assigned to each of you. If they are tampered with or shut off at any point by you, it is an automatic fail. Let me be clear on that. These drones are not for your safety, they are for your test being preformed as a student. If it is removed from play by an outside force, you fall into a status that does not pass or fail you. We will simply give you a chance to retake this test. But if you try to turn it off or tamper with the microphone or the video feed or change things it has recorded, you fail and your attendance here will be held in frozen status. Until we decide whether you may continue attending or not.”
Bracelets are clamped over their wrists that whir for a second, beep, then weld themselves closed. Fig shakes hers a bit to see if it will slip off then nods when it does not. A small screen on the bracelet blinks to life showing her name, portrait from the neck up, and a long changing flow of text. Vitals, blood type and the levels of them, contaminant exposure which sit at zero at the moment. One of the orbs lifts from the padding to come over by her head, circling around it on a slow orbit and pulsing a yellow light every time it completes the circuit.
“Let me see yours.” Mirabelle makes an irritated noise for the way Fig snatches her wrist to look at her portrait.
“You look better in your picture. That’s not fair.”
“True to life,” A few knuckles from the hand of a Saint knock her between her eyebrows, “Don’t grab at me.”
“You think you’re prettier than me?”
“Duh.”
Fig swallows down her raspy laugh and instead elbows her wife in the ribs, “Snob.”
No words come but there is a distinctive twinkle in Mirabelle’s eyes that makes her heart flutter.
“Sir do these stay on while we sleep?” Asks the co-captain of the prince. His eyes flick over to Namari with a kind of look Fig is familiar with.
“They monitor your circadian rhythm and your breathing but the video feed and mics turn off during moments of private need. Anything else?”
“What if one team finds and kills the monster before the other?”
“That will depend.”
“Oh what, Professor?”
“We shall see. Now, I am going to leave. This should be done in a week,” He turns away then pauses to squint over his shoulder at them, “Try not to die.”
Each of them stands in their line, watching him walk toward the only shuttle on this platform. Realizing what is going to happen, the princess Ral’en shouts, “Professor! How do we get down?”
No answer is given. Left on the shuttle bay platform, air whistles past their ears and drones circle heads. For a moment they look around trying to find stairs or a chart for the next shuttle landing.
Fig sits on the edge with her legs kicking in the wind. Smoke is whipped away from the end of her lit cigarette. Behind her, someone approaches.
“No other way down.”
Fig tilts her head back to look at her wife standing there, hands folded behind her back.
“Are we leaving them?”
Mirabelle makes a deeply displeased face, “No.”
“We can.”
“I know. But I’ll be more annoyed. Just give me two, they can share.”
Fig stands from the ledge so she can slip her bag off her shoulders and dig out two cubes of salt water steel. Gears can be heard clicking inside and a heat comes off them that makes the air watery around it.
“Hey! You four, come here.”
Expecting a trap comes naturally after Fig broke four of the prince’s teeth and cracked his mandible. Glares come too, given to both of them.
“What?”
“These are repellers. We brought some for this just in case. Here, one for your team and one for yours.”
Prince Ran’zn holds up a hand, pushing the cube away, “No thank you.”
Mirabelle raises a brow, “You want to sit up here until another shuttle lands and ask for a ride then?”
“I do not want to work with you, ever. I don’t want to be associated with you. When you fail, that is the only time I will ever be caught engaging with you. To tell you—“
“Alright, shut up,” Fig takes a long drag from her cigerette, glaring at the Prince, “Suit your f*cking self and save the speech.”
Mirabelle tucks the box away and holds the other out to the princess. Ran’zn makes a disgruntled sound when his sister takes it.
“Ral, don’t. It could be a trap.”
“Namari can check it. I don’t want to be stuck up here for hours while they get a head start.”
“Done?” Fig stamps her cigarette beneath her boot heel and gestures for them to go.
“Attitude, peasant.” Mirabelle clicks her tongue at Fig and nudges her aside.
“You go first, I’ll set the commands.”
“No, let’s both go. Set them for auto and give them a five second timer.”
She pauses where she has kneeled with two cubes, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She says but really says I don’t trust them and I’m not leaving you alone up here with them.
The cubes weld themselves to the surface she sets them on after activating them. Consoles spring to life with a touch interface on top of the cube. She inputs commands for releasing the cables and hooks that both of them click into their belts. Another series of commands tell the cube to begin lowering them at a set rate until they reach the bottom. Then she locks the command center and powers down the interface.
“Alright, good to go.”
“Perfect,” Mirabelle looks over at the other captains and gives a wave, “Good luck.”
Then she breaks into a sprint and leaps off the edge of the platform. Aeolfig is only seconds behind her.
Air stings the cheeks that will burn from travel. They fall for a long time, tethered to the box from above by a long thin cable. Birds fly past them in soft blurs that drift just close enough for wing tips to brush skin.
When they finally touch boots to ice crusted grass beneath, both sway from the shift.
“Good?” She asks after recovering because Mirabelle is bent over gripping her thighs.
“Mm. Mhm. That still hasn’t gotten easier, the heights,” Mirabelle blinks to wet her dry eyes and licks her lips, “Let’s split up. I’ll take the owners and the local magistrate and anyone holding an air. You do your thing with the workers.”
“Sounds good but no more than three hours. Hear me on that, Moonie? Then we’ll meet.” Fig reaches out an arm to point at the tallest building she can see.
Mirabelle shades her eyes with her hand to look where she is pointing and gives a soldier’s nod. The kind that takes an order without question.
“Till then. Fig, close eye on your surroundings and don’t trust anyone. I want your blood to stay in your body for this one.”
“Hey, you too.”
They bump fists in the place of a kiss for a connection that says farewell for now.
Making connections is one of Fig’s things. Mirabelle is a resplendent warrior who can wield a spear with the wrath of an old god. She knows a lot about history, ancient battles, old and new faiths, and the political structures for most places she visits. She can speak in many langague and brute force her way into any door with a name drop and a flinty glare. But Fig, her thing is people and the roots they place in the ground they call home. Finding ways to bend and blend her person into the shapes folks recognize. Calling out, ‘She’s one of us!’
Say what can be said about money and fame but some things just aren’t as powerful as a friendly smile and a kindred spirit.
Fig makes her rounds up and down the poor district, the palaces of the working girls, and the docks that ice sleds slip and slide in and out of. Cards played with some ice breakers, cigars and drinks with the women who work at night. Coming into allies and shady places asking questions is never the way to make friends. Simple things are how the work is done. Touching bases and making one’s self an open door. And Fig is the very best at making friends.
If someone complains about not liking Aeolfig, it’s likely because she went out of her way to make sure of that fact. Ask the prince about that.
By the end of their agreed upon three hours, she walks away with their information packet, a bag of shiny apples, and a few invitations to meals, parties, birthings and funerals.
Mirabelle meets her under pale light by that tower of immense heights. With a bit of blood under the fingernails and a nasty look on her face.
“You better have information for me.”
She wags the packet with a gleaming grin.
Mirabelle’s shoulders sink and she crooks a beckoning finger, “Take me to lunch.”
On the small jaunt toward an open court for food, Fig snatches the Saint by her wrist for an inspection. A bit of blood flakes away from Mirabelle’s fingernail.
“What happened?”
“I was shoved off a balcony on an upper floor into a pool by the magistrate’s son who claimed I was impersonating the Saint. Then he put me to work with the cook. I butchered a bit of meat before the magistrate came hurdling into the room, pale and shaking and bursting with apologies.”
Steaming bowls of hearty soup with a green broth that smells like rich spices are brought to them. With huge bread rolls covered in a layer of seeds the color of dirt. Mirabelle wastes no time ripping one apart to dip in the soup for large bites.
“Think either of them is our problem?”
“No. The magistrate is the son of his predecessor, and he is, by and large, a harmless idiot. Only two of his cases seem to have angered some people but nothing came of it. His son is a problem but not thee problem,” A finger is pointed at her with the narrowing of eyes, “You smell like cheap perfume. Unfamiliar perfume.”
“That’s to cover the smell of the cigar.”
A flash of that spark of jealousy she knows her wife burns with. She takes a particularly vicious bite of her bread.
“You stink.”
She sets her chin on her fist, “So sorry.”
“Don’t be smug. I’m actually angry you smell like,” Instead of saying another woman where their drones can record that, she frowns and says instead, “that.”
“I know.”
“So anyway, you smell rotten but what else happened?”
“Everyone in this town is extremely superstitious.”
“Mm, this is Iyu. They worship three gods who are actually the same god. They just appear in different forms depending on the situation. Grim comes if you have been cruel to your neighbors. Tide comes if you have given sacrifice for…something, I won’t say it out loud due to aforementioned superstition. The third god is Rel who you can speak the name of but only should do so to inform of who they are. It makes for a very careful and superstitious society.”
“People watch everything though so I was able to get some stuff. Parents with children between the ages of newborn to five have been disappearing. Then coming back and…murdering a lot of people. But never their children.”
Mirabelle twirls a fork around her fingers with a hum, “That could be a number of things, damn it. I wanted to nail this day one.”
“Of course you did.”
“I can do it!”
Aeolfig takes some of the bread with a smile.
“I mean, we can do it. That’s what I meant.”
“Cravid said I could look at the bodies if I wanted.”
Mirabelle looks up with wide eyes, “When?”
“Whenever I want.”
“Your ability to make friends with literally anything that has a pulse is a miracle. Hurry up and eat. We are going to meet your new friend…Cravid?”
“He is very excited to welcome in his great grandson in a couple of days. This soup is incredible.”
Mirabelle tilts her head to watch her with her lip caught between her teeth. Long gone is the nasty look. Now Fig can see the barely restrained urge to tell her something sweet or seek a kiss. Her boot bumps Fig’s under the table.
“The soup is incredible.” She says softly. Fig hears what her wife means and taps her boot tip against Mirabelle’s ankle.
“So—“
“Oh, the packet! I almost forgot! Give that to me.”
Fig rolls her eyes and leans back in her chair with her soup, “I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”
“I read faster than that.”
Aeolfig is eighteen years old when she sneaks back onto the moon Dulce. This time she hides on a cargo freighter that has real, legal certifications and an itinerary. Before the workers can find her, she slips out of an air vent and runs off into the night.
Being on the moon is strange. Gravity feels just a little different so her body feels strange running toward the large crystal palace. Tonight there is a large event that Mirabelle had been complaining about for days. As her girlfriend, she had done her best to appease the girl but it was not until closer to the date that Mirabelle explained the entire situation.
The King has chosen a Prince for Mirabelle to marry. Someone who comes from a family on a tropical planet that will be absorbed into the empire after they marry. Mirabelle had broken down into tears and begged for help, begged Fig to be her hero, begged and cried for any way out. She had apologized over and over until her voice went hoarse.
In reality there is nothing she can do. There is no stopping a decision like this when she is a miner from the planet the moon likes to forget. Someone so lowly that she was not given a name. And without a name she does not exist in any data base and she cannot appeal to get a name. Therefore, none of her children if she ever had them will have a name either. She cannot own property, cannot leave Henor without a work slip and a badge from someone who sponsors her. Cannot do many things a person with a name would need. For this reason, nameless are undesirable but Mirabelle chose her anyway. As someone with the most improtant name.
There is nothing she can do to stop this but she will do what she can.
The palace is grander than Mirabelle ever explained it to be. Fountains made of marble and gold decorate the front lawn. Topiary is something that nobles, spun in gold and silver, walk around commenting on with chalices of wine suspended from fingertips. Lights dance on the whim of the night and the breeze. Not tethered to the castle but real blinking bugs made of the finest engineering. A few buzz past her then circle back to sit on her shoulder. Two dragonflies with buzzing wings swirl with orange and green light in the smallest nano particles that leave a dusting of light on her coat jacket.
“f*ck off.” She flicks her fingers at them to shoo them away.
Everything goes somewhere. Fig understands the point of halls is to take a person from one room to another but the sheer size of this castle is impossible. Even halls lead to halls lead to pantries that have hidden halls and more halls to go six other places. Staff is kind to her and mistake her as a worker sometimes so she follows some tall men to stack wood or deliver trays of food for the next course. Finding Mirabelle is going to be an impossible task on her own even if she asks for help.
By happy accident she sees the top of her head moving over a garden wall.
“Hey, Topper, I gotta jet my man,” She sets the serving tray down and pulls off the apron he gave her, “Thanks for your help.”
“Hey! You can’t just quit mid shift!” He hisses as quietly as possible.
“I don’t actually work here!” She wiggles her fingers in farewell before jumping out the open window. It is ground level so she does not worry about the fall. Her boots crunch some pretty flowers under them that she does feel a little bad about.
In two quick strides she runs up the side of the garden wall and vaults the top onto the other side. Hissing her surprise, she quickly ducks down and scurries to hide behind a bush.
Mirabelle swivels her head around with furrowed brows, having heard something. Beside her, the Queen taps her elbow and scolds her.
“Pay attention darling.”
“I heard something.”
“Mirabelle. Focus, for Saints sake. This is so important. There are hundreds of people here, you probably heard someone outside.”
A bit of tension in Mirabelle’s jaw when she clenches her teeth. Her sharp eyes still flit around while the Queen rambles.
“You’re eighteen now darling—“
“Mother.”
“—hush! You have responsibilities to the crown. I know you aren’t happy about this. I wasn’t happy when I was married to your father, but I learned how to be happy and you can too. I’ve heard he is—“
“A prat who drinks all the time and—“
The Queen comes to a sudden halt. She wields her fan, folded up and tethered with a string, to smack Mirabelle on the arm. It gets pointed at her like a knife.
“I’ve had enough of your bad attitude. You should be so lucky that your father spent the time he did selecting your husband.”
“Was he doing it out of love for me or to find the best planet to marry into our empire? Am I not a pretty bit of livestock he’s giving away to secure an alliance?”
“I don’t know what went wrong with you.”
“Sending me to the encampments to become a Knight before I had even officially become a woman probably started it.”
The Queen throws up her hands in exasperation, “You are the worst princess this moon has fostered in generations!”
Mirabelle just makes herself small, hugging herself around the ribs. Without the armor and the spear, she looks so much like a young woman instead of a statue of might and ruin. Wearing a blue gown with white lace gloves that run clear to her elbow. Her blue and white hair is braided aorund her salt water steel tiara that drips with sapphires and diamonds. Makeup is not something Mirabelle usually bothers with so tonight, seeing her lathered in it, she marvels at the way it changes her beauty. Does not alter it, just brings it to surface in a different light.
“Can you please go in there and try to say one nice thing your fiancé?”
“I’m not going to marry him.”
“Mirabelle, so help me—“ The Queen stops midway through her rant to take a sharp breath and calm herself. Quietly, she creeps closer following the line of the short topiary made of deep blue leaves that smell strongly like salt.
Blue eyes flick toward the bush, narrowing threateningly, but the attention is moved back to the angry Queen.
“Why must you be so stubborn? I married your father when I was fifteen! I understood my obligations as a duch*ess.”
“Mother, you were raised in a palace and groomed to be what you are now.”
“And you have not?”
“Do you even realize how little time I have spent here? How most of my childhood was spent in prayer and isolation and forward camps and training? That I went to stamp out a civil war on Killkor when I was fifteen years old. You were becoming a wife and I watched twenty men die because I told them to run forward instead of away. We have not had the same life. And whose fault is that? Wasn’t it you who said it would be good for community relations if some day the future Queen once served as a Saint? So now, all the f*cking sudden, you and father expect me to be a princess and a duch*ess again when it suits you? Now I’m too brutish, too cruel, too quiet and calculating. I stand wrong, talk brash and curse, I don’t curtesy, I don’t this and that. That I spend too much of my time reading strategy texts and speaking with the guards and hunting instead of having tea and gossiping? I don’t even know what my sisters do. I’m so far removed from this life. Just,” Mirabelle flings a hang toward the castle that looms behind them, “Marry one of my siblings off to him. That would work better.”
“Saints Belle, you are something else. The point of making you a Saint was—“
“Because I told you I fancied women instead of men and that you said ‘well now she can’t have heirs so we need a political way to explain why she won’t have heirs’. So you made the Saint. Who can still claim the throne but only after a certain number of years served and then I have to name an heir instead of physically providing one. Yes, I know why. You do realize technology has advanced enough for two of the same gender to have a child, yes?”
The Queen has mean eyes. Once the thin paper of geniality is burned away, there is a lot of hate and pain that makes for a mean woman beneath. Mirabelle seems very used to seeing this woman.
“You told me you had no interest in carrying a child. That the process scared you.”
“It does. But perhaps I will marry a woman with a different outlook.”
“You must provide the heir.”
Mirabelle rolls her wrist to encourage this to speed along, “And hence why I’m a Saint. Yes, I f*cking know. Mother, I’m not marrying that man.”
They have a long tense moment of glaring at each other under the light of a hundred different bugs and birds made out of metal. Water gurgles from a fountain shaped like the young Saint Otec who came before Mirabelle.
“I’m going to let you sit out here and think about your future. Once you realize the mistake you’re making, come inside and apologize to your father and to me.”
Glass heels strike the stone walk back into the palace. Mirabelle watches her mother storm away unbothered, appearing totally apathetic. Distantly they hear the music swell as a door is opened to welcome the monarch back inside then it fades away again.
Blindingly fast, a stone is whipped into the bush by the Saint. She clutches her forehead with a curse, falling back into the dirt to roll around.
“Come out! I know someone is back there!”
“Mira! You f*ck, Saints that hurt!”
Apathy and anger wash away from bright surprise and joy. Mirabelle gathers her skirts in her hands so she can run forward and peer over the bush.
“Fig!?”
She moves to a knee, holding her throbbing skull in her palm, “Hey.”
“You’re bleeding, Saints,” Mirabelle grips the black of her waistcoat to pull her onto her feet, staining her white gloves when she probes the wound, “I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay. That was wicked, actually. Dead on without even seeing me.”
“I could hear you breathing.”
“Terrifying,” Aeolfig swallows roughly and gestures to the length of her girlfriend, “You look stunning.”
“I hate wearing dresses,” She makes a sound and looks up through her lashes, rarely bashful but beautiful so in this moment, “Do I really look nice? I haven’t worn one in years. You know they tease you for wanting to be a pretty girl in a frilly dress in the military.”
“You really do.”
Mirabelle nods then freezes, “Wait. Fig, you’re here. How are you here?”
“I snuck in. I brought you some stuff, give me a second.”
“You…brought me some stuff?”
“I can’t really fix any of this for you, I’m sorry. But I had this idea that might make it a little less you know, sh*tty?”
Fig shrugs out of her jacket before she kneels in front of Mirabelle. First, from the inside pocket, she pulls out a long-stemmed sea violet. The kind that only grow on Henor or Dulce. With thorns that turn clear at the tips and petals that feel cool as a crisp wave. Nearly the same color as Mirabelle’s hair.
Mirabelle takes it, smiling in that way she does when she does not realize she is doing it. A little goofy and big enough it makes her face light up. It makes her look soft and young in the ways she has never really been afforded the chance to be.
“Thank you, Aeolfig. It’s very pretty.”
“Mhm. Oh, boy. My hands are sweaty?”
“Why?” Mirabelle twinkles like a star above her.
She fumbles with the ring in her pocket, swallowing down a host of nerves she did not expect to get.
“Marry me instead of the Marquis of wherever?”
Mirabelle looks at the ring shining between Fig’s shaking fingers. A thin band of green metal that has a very small ocean emerald in it. The kind that come out of the hgout fish processed on the docks of the Sooted Streets.
“You’re asking me to marry you?”
“I am.” Her voice sounds a little shaky.
“In a real way or a joking way?”
“Real way.”
Mirabelle gasps and starts to lower herself onto her knees with Fig. They scoot closer to each other until their knees touch.
“I’ll be your wife. Are you sure?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” She holds the ring up again.
“Yes. Yes, okay, yes. I want to marry you, yes!”
Mirabelle holds out her hand and they both watch the ring slip over her finger.
Tears collect on her lashes but she is smiling.
“I don’t know where we go from here though.”
“Well, first I’m going to kiss you until I absolutely cannot breath anymore.”
“Oka—“
Mirabelle holds her by both of her cheeks, swiping her thumb over her cheekbones to slick away her own tears transferring. The kiss is long and sweet and thrumming with an ache that comes from separation. There is, for each of them, exactly one person in all the known worlds who know them to their core. Keeps all their secrets, knows what they love and hate, knows how to annoy them and overjoy them. Loves them more than love can be explained to be. And for each of them, it is the other one present. They have grown up together in stolen moments and messages exchanged cryptically over the holo-net.
They have loved each other for so long and gotten so little time to be together.
“Okay,” Mirabelle holds her face and Fig grips her wrists, “I really, really love you so very much.”
“We have so much in common.”
Mirabelle sniffles, “We can sneak off Dulce.”
Fig raises her eyebrows, “You want to elope on Henor?”
“I don’t think we could get away with it here. Do you know anyone?”
“Not yet but I can find someone. I’ll need like twenty minutes, a bottle of unopened whiskey, and ten super credits? If you have it?”
Mirabelle bunches her skirt in one hand so she can keep a firm grasp on Fig’s. Fig steps closer to kiss the Saint on her brow.
“I do. Come on, we can steal the rest from the kitchens. Don’t get seen or this is going to end very differently.”
“No, come on. Heri lets me use the coal tunnels to get to the baker’s kitchen.”
Mirabelle stares at the side of her head, “How long have you been here?”
“A few hours. Your house is a nightmare spun out of glass and bullsh*t. How do you get around?”
“I still get lost. I’m only here four times out of the year at this point. Unless the King specifically asks that I be allowed leave from my duties for attendance to this kind of sh*t.”
“Don’t you like big parties with fancy booze?”
“We don’t usually get these in the camps.”
“Let’s swipe one of those bottles of bubble wine too.”
“It has a name,” Mirabelle kicks the back of her leg, chuckling sweetly, “Peasant.”
Transistor: Culpa Calfina
To: “Fig” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: “Moonie”
Subject: Shipment Delay
Status: Encrypted [Blue Platinum]
Dear Fig,
Been a week since we got married. I wear your ring on the finger just beside, so it can’t be questioned. I cannot stomach taking it off. I’m very proud to be your wife. I hope you know that.
I’m being deployed. Classic story, right? I’m overseeing a trial for some of the senior classes of that monster hunting academy. They have their own people but they asked our permission to use one of our silver moons in the Zexxez quadrant. So that means I have to talk to their people and do rounds with them to make sure nothing gets close to the town. I’ll be gone for a month. But, good thing about that, my beautiful perfect wife (I love saying that) is that I’ll be doing a lot of down time. So we can write more than we normally get the chance to do.
I miss you. I love you. I wish we got to be a proper married couple. We could buy a house together and do all that sort of thing. Paperwork. Legal documents. I’m sorry this has to be our lives.
Love,
Your wife
Transistor: Henor
To: “Moonie” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: Fig
Subject: Shipments Received
Status: Encrypted [Blue Platinum]
Dear Mira,
Please be careful. I wish I could go with you. I was thinking about future stuff and there isn’t much I can do being Nameless but I could try being a monster hunter. Then maybe we could travel together. I don’t think I can get into that fancy academy but they have smaller college I could apply towards. Or apply for an apprenticeship with graduates. Those Leveonn preps are given the rights to take apprentices so. Maybe I could try. Better money too. Body would still get f*cked but not like this. Maybe I won’t die young this way. Not as young anyway.
Send me pictures of Culpa Calfina, I love when you do that. It feels like traveling. I’ve always wanted to see other planets. It’s also feels magical when you bring me back presents. Some day I’m gonna ride through the stars with you. That’s a promise.
I’m glad you wear the ring. I’m sorry it’s cheap.
Love,
Your wife.
Transistor: Culpa Calfina
To: “Fig” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: “Moonie”
Subject: RE Shipment Delay
Status: Encrypted [Blue Platinum]
Dear Fig,
I don’t care that it’s cheap. It’s from you. Its my wedding ring. I’m married to you and this proves it and that is all that matters. I know you spent your money on it and that makes it meaningful too. Don’t worry about it, I mean that.
I’ll send pictures in a separate message. Just to be safe. Ill use the porcelain fire encryption for that, I bought it recently in case we needed a separate line to use.
Fig that’s actually a great idea. I know you think you can’t get into Leveonn but actually! I think that is an incredible idea. Because! If you talk to a hunter who graduated, you could possibly get a request to take an entry exam and if you do well, you could argue for participation rights! Which means you could take a captain’s trial. Fig, if we get accepted we become citizens of the college until the end of our graduation or expulsion!
Do you know what that could mean? If you become a hunter, you can have a name. And because I’m a Saint, once I complete thirty years of service I can assume the throne as the heir’s rights will be restored to me and I can marry whomever I choose. Provided they have a name. Because I have already committed service to country. This could work!
I need to do extensive research and we need to find a contact for you.
I’m excited,
Your love.
Transistor: Culpa Calfina
To: “Fig” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: “Moonie”
Subject: Product Inquires
Status: Encrypted [Porcelain Fire]
[picturesjustforyou.pdf]
Cant wait to see you. <3
Transistor: Culpa Calfina
To: “Fig” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: “Moonie”
Subject: Product Inquires
Status: Encrypted [Porcelain Fire]
Mira, these are not pictures of the planet nor the flora nor the fauna.
Transistor: Culpa Calfina
To: “Fig” [emailprotected]
CC: Whalers
From: “Moonie”
Subject: Product Inquires
Status: Encrypted [Porcelain Fire]
[planetphotos.pdf]
I’m aware. This was me being forward. And telling. I’m telling you what I want and have you mastered the art of knowing how to keep a happy wife yet, Aeolfig?
Aeolfig lays on the bed in their dorm with her arms and legs flung carelessly in any direction. Exhaustion overwhelms her. It settles over her in a suffocating blanket. Cuts and bruises all across her body sting and pulse with each beat of her heart.
The trial had taken a lot out of her. Nothing had been as simple as it seemed. Every question led to more questions led to more issues until they became embroiled in not one but many problems. In the end, they had not been the group to kill the Death Stalker that had been patrolling the town. They had instead tracked down and dealt with the pirates taxing citizens for ‘insurance’. They had dealt with the harbor pixies that had been loosening the screws on all the ice carts causing men to die outside the ice wall when it eventually fell apart and they had to walk back. They handled the foxes getting into stores, they helped catch a few tundra wolves for a granny, they delivered crates of wine. They had not gotten to the Death Stalker in time. Ral’en had found it first and dispatched it before they got the chance. After that, both of the other teams had retired to the local inn and waited out the rest of the week there. Mirabelle had not been convinced so they had worked until the last minute that the shuttle was bound to arrive.
It surprised everyone except Mirabelle that they received a better grade than the twins.
“But we slayed the mosnter!” Ral’en had cried on the shuttle bay dock.
Their professor had given her an intense look then and firmly stated, “Killing the Death Stalker was not this trial. You were tasked with finding the problems within the community and solving them to stabilize it. Sometimes that means helping a local granny get to her grandson’s house so they can have dinner. We were studying how you handled being on the ground, finding problems and strategizing solutions. You and your brother thought the biggest scariest red flag was the only one and settled back on your chairs once that work was done. You were wrong. Saint Mirabelle, how did the Death Stalker come to be?”
Mirabelle had kept a flat, disinterested face when she answered, “It was illegally obtained from the planet they are native to, in the Oholsa quadrant on Eestafar. Brought here by the Star Wailing Pirates. It was meant to invoke fear in the citizens so they would pay whatever they had to for protection. They had also brought in quite a few creatures that were disturbing the production lines, infecting water supplies, and worming their way into grain silos. It was very bad.”
Their professor had given Mirabelle a small clap and nodded at Fig standing solemnly behind her, “Exactly. So that is why your fellows received a finer grade for the finer work they did. Dismissed!”
Work day after day is fine. Fights one after the other do not bother her either. Exhaustion is the building block of her childhood. Time to melt into a bed and let her bones become sand, even for just an hour, is the thing she needs to get through it all.
Now she has a backlog of sleep to catch up on, so she just lays in their bed. Lights glare harshly from the ceiling, but she does not have the energy to find the data pad to turn them down.
“Where did—oh.” Mirabelle comes from the bathroom, dragging the crinkled lengths of her wet hair through a towel. She stops by the bed to look down at Fig sprawled across the bed.
“Leave me alone.”
“I’m just standing here!”
“You were going to tell me to get up to eat or something. I am melting. I need melt time.”
Water droplets strike her cheek like icy bullets. She wrinkles her face and turns over to press herself into the hillocks of their bedding pushed against the wall. Behind her, a winsome laugh crawls across her skin like warm fingertips.
“You’re still doing that?”
Fig hugs a blanket against her chest, feeling herself start to drift again near an almost sleep, “Why wouldn’t I?”
“We aren’t teenagers anymore. You’re a thirty year old woman.”
“I’m twenty nine. f*ck you.”
Some shuffling, the lights dim, then the bed dips from a body. Arms circle around her waist to drag her tight against Mirabelle’s chest.
“What are you doing?” She mumbles into the blanket groggily.
A very light kiss touches the nape of her neck, “Melting with you.”
“I’m gonna fall asleep.”
Another kiss followed by a husky laugh, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” Mirabelle shifts so her leg slips between Fig’s and her hand slips under the hem of her shirt, “Sleep.”
“Mkay. Wait, help me,” She lifts her arm and shakes it tiredly, “Off.”
“I wondered if you were gonna try to sleep with that on.” The bed shifts from Mirabelle moving onto her elbow so she can reach for the metallic hooks on the pressure seal latches keeping the arm secured. It whirs with a handful of beeps before it hisses and releases. She leans over to set it on the bedside table then snuggles back into the bed. Her arms wrap tightly around Fig’s waist, nose pressed against her neck.
“Thank you.”
“Mhm.”
When she wakes much later, she does so disoriented and with a mouth like sand. For a long blinking minute, she pats the bed looking for her wife and grows increasingly confused when she feels nothing. Then recalls that the arm she is feeling with is sitting on the table beside their bed. She rolls over licking her dry lips to squint through the gloom where a single light is on.
Mirabelle has tied her hair into a bun atop her head that a pen is speared through. Loose tendrils hang over her ears to tickle her neck. With the hair up, she can see the scars on the back of her neck made by a clawed beast from long ago. Wearing a sleeveless tunic displays where that same scar runs over the cap of her shoulder onto her bicep. Just beneath it a savage bite left by something she has forgotten but Fig has not. During her stay on Culpa Calfina, a salt water eel the size of a small canoe had latched on and dragged her beneath the water. A traumatic event for Fig but something of a Tuesday for the Saint.
One of her legs swings idly without the cybernetic prosthetic attached. It is on the desk in front of Mirabelle and she seems to have pieces of it disassembled.
Tiredly, she gets up to hover by the Saint’s shoulder and watch her work.
“What are you doing?”
“Hello Aeolfig.”
She jumps from the small voice coming from seemingly no where. Mirabelle chuckles and gestures to her data pad propped against the wall in front of her. On the screen is a soft young woman with noble features and a round face. Soft blue tint to her skin with a light silver bei-el inherited from her grandmother. Small horns curl out of her hair that is bone white at the roots but turns to a dashing auburn towards the bottom that resembles more of her other grandmother. Steel blue eyes crinkle at the edges form her perpetually to smiling. Lyvsia Taesika-Ez, current duch*ess of Ty’Té, gives a wiggle of her fingers on the screen to greet Fig. And one of the few of Mirabelle’s cousins considered a friend and a trusted ally.
“One of the absorbing shocks broke during our trial. It has not felt great walking around,” Mirabelle gestures toward the data pad, “Vsia is walking me through how to fix it.”
Lyvsia leans on her palm, partway glaring at the Saint but managing to look endeared while doing it.
“How many manuals must I write you, cousin?”
Mirabelle flushes from embarrassment, “They don’t make any sense.”
Lyvsia titters against her palm, “Does the Saint Mirabelle need pictures?”
“The next time Ty-Té needs their Saint, I am ignoring your distress signal.”
Lyvsia rolls her eyes and moves on with the conversation, knowing well the stubbornness of their Saint, “Is it exposed?”
“Yes,” Fig leans over her shoulder to watch a plate get wiggled free where beneath are four tubes with different colored liquid inside, “Now what?”
“Drain the hydrologic coolant.”
Fig catches her wife’s wrist with a shake of the head, “Not that one. The green one with the flecks in it.”
Lyvsia’a smile wipes away, replaces by concern, “Flecks? Drain it and tell me what the flecks are.”
“Hop,” She nudges her wife to get her off the chair she takes, “I’ll do it.”
“Fig, I can do it!”
“No, shoo. Just stand there and hang on my shoulder,” She tucks the prothetic against her ribs with the stub of her arm and begins carefully unscrewing tiny screws with her only hand, “Lyvsia, what’s new with you?”
“I am engaged.”
Mirabelle slaps a hand on the desk to lean down, nearer to the camera, so she can stare, “You what?”
“You met him, Mira. He has been courting me for some time now and I need to get married soon anyway. It works out.”
“Do you like him?”
Lyvsia rolls her wrist dismissively, “He is kind and he is funny. He’s a dullard and he has no aspiration. I’m fond of him but there are things that annoy me. I suspect this is normal.”
Mirabelle gets that intensity that comes from a place of protective love, “It is not.”
“You complain about things that your wife does all the time.”
Fig squints, “Do you?”
Mirabelle ignores her, “That’s different. Fig is a moron but she’s my moron and the one I chose and the one I love. You don’t know this boy.”
“What kind of mother are you?”
“If you weren’t being stubborn, I wouldn’t have to act like one, would I? What happened to that boy you fell for? The baker.”
Lyvsia’s lashes flutter and a dreamy expression overtakes her. It does not last but while it is there, she is a pool of rippling yearning without a means of hiding itself.
“I can’t marry him.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
Mirabelle gestures towards Aeolfig still dutifully working on the foot, “I married a peasant.”
Lyvsia gives her cousin a deeply unimpressed look, “Your situation is wildly different than mine. And I am not like you, Mirabelle. I’m not ashamed to admit that because it’s true and it’s okay that it’s true. I am not brave enough to break my mother’s heart and I am not stubborn enough to defy my father’s wishes. Has your family forgiven you for what you did to your fiancé?”
Mirabelle displays some of her stubbornness in the way she folds her arms over her chest and rolls her pretty eyes, “I couldn’t care less. My parents—“
“I know. But like I said, it’s different. My mother did not surprise me with a fiancé and tell me I was going to marry them the same day I met them. I got the chance to choose from a pool of prospects.”
“Okay, so, since your parents love and respect you maybe you should at least try talking to them about your bread boy. You were brave enough to start your romance with him, what could it hurt to do it one step more and talk to them?”
Lyvsia looks exasperated in the way she shakes her head and gestures at Fig, “Can you deal with her? She gets her teeth dogged in and refuses to let go.”
Fig gently places the empty hydronic coolant chamber by all the rings and bolts she removed. Little shreds of metal come tinkling out after she gives the whole thing a gentle shake. Beside the chamber, she sets down what is left of the metal coil soaked in the coolant in the spring chamber.
She lifts her eyes to meet Lyvsia’s and smiles, “What am I supposed to do? She doesn’t listen to anyone.”
“She listens to you.”
“Only sometimes.” Fig says.
“Only sometimes!” Mirabelle says at the same time. A gentle slap is delivered to her shoulder followed by a kiss to the side of her head.
“Stop bugging your cousin about her fiancé. She’s doing her best with what she’s got.”
Mirabelle heaves a sigh and hugs her around the neck from behind, setting her chin on top of Fig’s head, “Don’t tell me what to do. I hate when you do that.”
“Too bad. Hey,” She holds up a dripping piece of metal in front of the camera eye winking at her, “I read the manual when you did the rewrite a way back and it’s not supposed to be all swollen like this, right?”
Lyvsia’s leans in, squinting at the image on her screen, “That is metal from Urva. It swells when it gets cracks. Which it will do if it hasn’t been properly oiled which we do, Mirabelle, so it can take the stress of impact and you walking around on it all the time. Those are made to last a lifetime! If! If they are properly oiled.”
Mirabelle hums unhappily, “Why is that tone saying it’s my fault?”
“I told you to recharge the coolant that keeps the oil cold! The metal needs to stay cold for—Belle, you’re the worst. Thank god you have Aeolfig.”
“Why did you give me a f*cking foot I have to do sh*t with!? It’s bad enough with the updates and the program support but now I have to change coolant and change oil and blah blah. Fig doesn’t have to recharge coolant for hers!”
Fig pops open the small box of supplies that Lyvsia sent with them to fix smaller issues with their prosthetics, “I do, actually. I’ll start doing yours for you too.”
“Really?” Mirabelle sounds awed and grateful.
“The sacrifices we make for love. Hey, Lyvsia, that reminds me. My thumb has lost some range of movement, and I don’t know why. I read the manual twice, but I can’t figure it out?”
Lyvsia hums, chin on her palm, “Does it hurt when you hit the limit range for movement?”
“No.”
“Did you check the motherboard for the nerve connectors?”
“Completely clean.”
“Hm. Check the clips. They might need changed out. If it’s not that, try cleaning everything and replacing the cables. Call me if that doesn’t fix it.”
Mirabelle peeks around her shoulder at the mess on the desk, “Can you do all that?”
“If I follow the book she wrote for us. It’s very detailed.”
“It’s drier than the law text I had to read as a girl.”
“But you read that.”
Mirabelle points at the data pad sternly, “That actually made sense. Your manuals are like reading walls of analytics for whatever. Arms and feet, I guess. Boring. I can’t even focus long enough to understand a sentence.”
Fig snorts and waves a screwdriver at the camera without lifting her eyes, “You can go do duch*ess things now. I can handle it from here.”
“Fantastic. I have a garden party and I have to oversee a bank opening up. Belle, my love to you. Aeolfig, my love to you. Stay safe at that college. I’ll send you both gifts soon.”
There is a fair bit more pleasantries exchanged from the cousins. Despite the farewell being given, they do not hang up for a long time afterward. Mirabelle plucks the data pad from the desk and walks around their room with it, a crutch tucked against her rib to move along. Their chatter serves as a pleasant background noise for her to work to. From what she can hear, Lyvsia is going through the motions of preparing for her garden party while they talk. Most of it sounds like gossip that Fig cannot follow because she does not recognize any of the names.
The packs Lyvsia sends with their prosthetics are always very well organized. Every piece that would need a specific tool is set just beside it in a colored alcove. All the colors indicate a partnership, and it is easy to follow for repairs. Work is not quick because Aeolfig is used to working on her arm rather than this much more complicated foot. The computers, sensors, and moving parts are compact, placed different, and made to do different things. Still, by the time she hears a third goodbye being issued, she has it fixed. All the old coil is swept out and a new one, with oiled rings and fits, is placed back inside. The coolant is refilled, and the panel is screwed back in.
“Okay, let’s talk again.”
“Give Aeolfig my love. Be careful, Belle, really. I worry constantly.”
“I will, I will. Bye.”
Tapping from the crutch moves in rhythm with the soft pad of Mirabelle’s socked foot. Each tap comes a little closer until she feels those arms around her again and a mouth brushes her ear.
“Did you fix it?”
“You’re lucky you have me.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? You’re the one crashing in jungles and having girlfriends that kill my cousins and so on.”
Fig shakes her head fondly and pats the desk top, “Sit. I’ll put it back on for you.”
Around the chair a Saint moves slow with every step a precise thing. Her crutch is posted back in its station, within a box just beside her work desk. One leg braces itself by setting a socked foot on the armrest of Fig’s chair. Mirabelle watches, eyes like blue fire kisses by long lashes, elbow braces on her bent knee and head tilted against her fist. Rolling the pant leg up slowly drags her knuckles along the scar on Mirabelle’s shin, just below the knee before it is cut off. Still an angry red and will always be so from the burbling acid that chewed through meat and bone within seconds. She rolls the sock over the stump before sliding the cap for the prosthetic on. Magnetically sealed just the doors in the mines so the two will not separate unless given a command with a button. She pauses before slipping the foot on, looking up at the woman trying to distract her. Fingertips run over her eyebrow and move across the slope of her nose to trace around her eye.
“You’re so good with your hands.”
Fig snorts and shakes her head to knock away her wife’s touch, “Let me finish before you try to seduce me.”
“No, that was me just pointing out a fact. Sometimes when I slow for a second, I see it all over again.”
Fig circles the upper part of the magnet base on the prosthetic with nanite gel, smiling to herself while she does, “See what?”
“Why I fell in love with you and how nothing has changed. It’s still there. Just waiting for me to calm down a second and see it.”
Fig pauses, startled by this burst of affection from seemingly the depths of nowhere, “Mirabelle, did you hit your head?”
“No,” She plants her palms on the desktop by her hips and leans back, “I don’t tell you how beautiful you are often enough. Or tell you how much I love you. I don’t want to hurt our relationship so I’m working on it.”
“I didn’t realize we were wounded.” The little smile of hers that shines makes Mirabelle gleam and grin and hum approval. The click of the magnetic seals meeting is quiet then there is the thrum of sensors coming online and systems whirring to life. She wipes away some of the gel that seeped between the seals before encircling the limb with a tight wrap.
“We aren’t but I want to be better all the same.”
“I personally have never had an issue with how affectionate you are with me,” She pats the outside of the foot to make sure the nerves have hooked up right and watches it twitch from the response to touch, “Should I be working on myself too?”
“No, no. I like you this way. The way you are. Are you done?”
“Yep. Feel good?”
“Feels fine. Come kiss me now. Come, come,” Fingers curl around her jaw to lift her sweet, lift sure and slow, until their lips touch, “Perfect. That’s what I was wanting.”
A leg curls around her lower back to draw her between Mirabelle’s legs, close enough to be snatched into waiting arms that keep her close. Lips rain affection upon whatever blessed bit of skin they can find. Fields of flowers are planted by every breath, breathtaking in the dazzling array of color that bursts behind her eyes. Breathing is optional. It tears from her lungs in scorching fire that burns clean into muscle that aches, tenses and burns beneath the flutter of her wife’s curious exploitation.
“You know what I think?”
Lips drag over the throat that tickle from a deep hum, “What?”
“You should take your clothes off for me.” Mirabelle gives a lame tug at her shirt that untucks it partially from her trousers.
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“Don’t sound so old,” They both look down to watch Mirabelle deliberately undo Aeolfig’s belt and rip it from the belt loops of her trousers, “Think of it as making up for lost time. When we were seventeen, we would have killed to be in the position where we could make love in the middle of the day.”
“That’s true.”
“Very true.”
“Want to lend me a hand?” She smiles against Mirabelle’s lip. The husky laugh that tickles her lips razes her skin in waves of heat.
“How many times are you going to make that joke?”
“When it stops being funny, I guess.”
“Saints, it stopped being funny when you were stilled bruised and anemic.”
“Shh, shh. That’s not sexy foreplay.”
Another laugh, this time at the top of Mirabelle’s range so a whistling musical note that makes Fig’s scalp prickle. Fingers turn to raking claws that score lines of delicious pain along the slopes of her muscled back. With it comes away her shirt, thrown away to the place that does not matter between them. Mirabelle hums her delight for more skin exposed to her whims. The other leg slinks up her thigh to hook around a hip.
“I’ve got you.”
“Don’t you just,” Fig kisses along her jaw, feeling the swirl of love that sinks hot and drags her down into the endless depths of it, “Haven’t you always.”
“Don’t.”
Fig smiles, overrun by her joy that blends with devotion and yearning, “I didn’t do anything.”
“You were going to suggest we move to the bed. I’m impatient. This will work fine.” Mirabelle uncrosses her legs, runs fingertips across the line of Fig’s shoulders made large and strong from years in the mines, and gives a push to indicate she should sit. Fig goes as suggested, sprawling out in the chair with lidded eyes that watch her wife move on the desk. Lifting her hips just enough to work her cargo pants and underwear down her legs. Both are kicked away.
“There,” She leans forward to grab the arms of the chair and pulls it with Fig in it closer, “That’s perfect.”
She leans forward, hooking her arm around one of the toned thighs on either side of her ears. Mirabelle looks down at her pleased as a queen upon her throne staring down at her humbled worker.
“I’m getting this idea that you were itching to do this since we got back.”
“We were gone for a week. My sweet tooth does not like to wait a week. Or at least, once I have time to take my mind off work and I realize how…wound up, I am.”
“You could have said something.”
“Too risky. The drones and the thin walls and the no time for sleep toward the end. Another kiss?”
Fig leans onto her toes to stabilize herself, craning upward to meet the bowing of her wife’s head.
“When then?”
“During our third night there. When we were having dinner and you got rosy from drink. You leaned over and went on and on about how beautiful I am, how smart I am and how I inspire you. Then you told me all the things you’d do to me if we were alone. I had to have you then but was forced to be patient. Story of my life.”
Fig taps her fingers down a calf to circle and grip the ankle set on the arm of the chair, “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“Bothered me,” Mirabelle says on the breath of a scoff, staring down between her legs adoringly at Fig, “You may repay me now.”
“Of course, your majesty.”
A twinkle lights the depths of the ocean in the Saint’s eyes. She reaches down to thread her fingers through Fig’s thick hair.
Fig bows her head in prayer, guided by the lawful and just hand of her one and only Saint.
At twenty two years old, they find a hunter who is willing to help. A scruffy older man with a patchy beard that is burnt off in places and going grey in others. Connected to a mess of floppy hair hanging over his eyes that are always obscured by thick cybernetic goggles. Short and heavyset, with arms the size of tree trunks and a charming barrel belly that jumps from his deep guffaws.
He agrees to help her with an entry exam by, temporarily, inviting her to take his name and try as a child of his. Under the condition that she can prove she is worthy of the name and to do so she must be able to beat him in combat.
Fig trains until her feet and hand blisters. Until bruises color her like a night sky. They develop a new place to meet, at times on the asteroid belt strung between Dulce and Henor where Knights train. Other times on Henor where they can avoid being spotted. Any free time Mirabelle has, she spends it cloaked in a fake name to come train with Fig. Swords, spears, shields, guns. Not just the things that come naturally to her but the ones that are difficult too.
“Stop, stop, stop! Mira, you broke my fingers. sh*t,” She hisses through the blood on her teeth, running from her nose and the cuts inside her cheek, “Just a second.”
Mirabelle in training armor, black and blue, spins the training spear aorund her hand. She circles Fig quickly, walking backwards and keeping her eyes on her. With a helmet on, she cannot see her wife’s face but she knows the look. A stern visage known to many who sleep in graves.
“Mira—“ She rolls out of the way when thunder crashes in the spear brought down.
“He won’t wait for you, Aeolfig. Keep going.”
“My fingers broken! At least three!”
“Keep going!”
She barely brings her shield up to stop the next blow. Metal rings in her ears from the force and she falls backward, knocking her head against a rock. If not for her own helmet, she is sure her skull would have cracked like an egg.
“Mirabelle, damn it!”
“Up! Keep fighting, don’t stop!”
“Just let me catch my breath!”
“No! I’ve had a lifetime to prepare for this. You only have a few years. And if you can’t beat him, we have to find another and that’s more time. We don’t have more time. This is our one chance. I’m sorry love but no. I have to be tough.”
Snakes strike slower than the jabs made with the spear. Rapidly enough that she feels air move from the force, brushing against her cheeks. One jab sends sparks where the tip scrapes across her chest piece and skids over to catch the side of her neck. Hot blood burbles over, slick and steaming in the cool winter air.
Irritation comes too. The spear is too long. The reach advantage will always keep her at a place where she is useless. Mirabelle will beat her until she goes unconscious or becomes too broken to fight. The sword in her hand is useless.
She backs away. One then five then ten steps. Saint Mirabelle watches curiously, not attacking but following at a slower pace. Fig inches the shield off her arm with a hiss. Where the magnetic seal for the prosthetic meets with the arm is sore from absorbing so many blows. It will probably bruise. She flexes the metal fingers and rolls her neck. She cannot beat her wife at her own game. The woman has had years to practice and seen actual battles. Her skill is what made her a Saint.
She flips the sword around into a reverse grip, moves her feet into a wider stance, and waits.
Mirabelle watches and, in her eyes, she sees the decision made to test this. One quick jab at her unguarded chest just to see what the plan is. The spear tip taps metal and she reaches up with her metal hand to grab the haft just beneath the cross guard of the spear. With her offensive hand she hooks the sword over the haft and pulls backward, sawing the sword side to side to bite into the wood. Then she pulls with all her strength.
Mirabelle comes forward only half a step but that’s all she needs. The second the woman comes forward in motion, she reverses and uses her grip to push with all her strength. Mirabelle is thrown backward after forced off of her balance.
Fig rips the spear away and throws it behind her. Then she hits the hard training floor on her knees, panting. Blood spills from the split in her nose over her swollen lips. Air stings the cuts and the scrapes on her arms and legs.
Mirabelle starts to get up but she throws out an arm to sternly point at her, “No. I’m serious, I need a f*cking second.”
“Alright,” The helmet is pulled off revealing the grave face she expected to see, framed by frizzled blue and white hair, “I’ll get you some water.”
“Mm.” Peeling the glove off her hand is hard. Swelling has already set in and the muscles are locking up. Hisses of pain escape between her clenched teeth, splattering the back of her hand with flecks of blue. Her middle, wedding, and pinky finger are horribly swollen and misaligned.
Footsteps catch her ear but she ignores them to steady her breathing. Hoping that finding a sense of calm will help with the pain that is starting to get worst with the adrenaline wearing off.
A hand lightly drags up her back to alert her of Mirabelle’s presence. Then she is crouched down beside Fig and holding out a metal cup.
She reaches for it but they both see the fine tremble in her hand and the broken fingers. She lifts the other to take it and sips slowly.
“Are you this brutal with your cadets, Saint?”
“Sometimes. It depends on where I know they’re going.”
She sets the cup down to take the small tablet of dissolvable pain medication Mirabelle hands over. It sticks to her tongue and vanishes after a few seconds, leaving behind a faint citrus flavor.
“I’m not a fan.”
Mirabelle reaches between them to tenderly tuck away a lock of her hair behind her ear. Still grave though, light shines upon the crown of her head and, backlit by the sun, she looks marvelous. Like a painting of a celestial body.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Im afraid and it’s making me intense. I’m getting into a work mind and forgetting that you aren’t my soldier. You’re my wife. And I’m afraid of losing you so it’s making me turn you into a soldier. I want you to win, I need you to win. And then we will have to train more. And longer and harder. We will need to make drills and plans and battle moves. Memorize them. We need to invent different strategies that just we know. What we want, it won’t be easy to take. They will be the best of the best and we need to be better. That’s why he won’t let you go unless you can beat him.”
“Mira, I appreciate the pep talk but I know,” She sighs and squints at the sun that has moved across the sky by a great distance since they started, “I just don’t like getting the sh*t kicked out of me by my wife. And not because you’re my wife. But because you’re my wife and no one can kick the sh*t out of someone better than you. It’s like being punched by a building.”
Mirabelle tilts her head, “I was pulling my punches just for you, love.”
Fig groans and throws up her hand, “This is pulling your punches?”
“I could have broken your wrist. It would have immobilized you.”
“You’re scary, woman.”
Gently, Mirabelle takes her wrist and kisses the aching knuckles just beneath each broken finger, “I’m sorry. But—“
“But, she says.” Fig rolls her eyes.
“—you need to learn to push through the pain. Taking a break is a luxury. We won’t get that with him and not at the school.”
“I can take a hit. I know how to scrap. And I’ve been through some sh*t. But you are something else. You’re the Saint and you f*cking hit like it too, f*ck me.”
“Alright. Let’s stop for today then. We can try again tomorrow.”
“And what about my broken fingers?”
Mirabelle looks down at them then at the metal ones and gestures to those, “You’ve still got the other hand. Use that.”
“Can’t a girl get a little tenderness and care?”
“I shall ply you with sweet words once we are home if you need them.”
Fig clutches her aching ribs after peeling herself off the ground, “I saw you roll your eyes.”
“You’re a big baby. I barely tapped you.”
“Barely!?”
By twenty four, she can keep up with her wife in a sparring ring. She is not as good and she will never be as fast but she is strong and durable. Between their drills to ingrain different techniques in Fig, they train in tandem. Learning to move like dancers in a lock step then like soldiers who move shoulder to shoulder. Fig harbors a talent for guns that Mirabelle never showed so they practice that too. Practice and practice more for months and years until everything is as natural as breathing. Until they keep libraries of knowledge for how the other moves and how they can move together.
By twenty five, they meet with the jolly man who always has a tilt to his smile. When they fight, Aeolfig takes back all the grievances she had with the brutal way her wife trained her. This man—Jolly Tams—fights hard and he does not fall. With a massive hound at his side, she has to move herself away from teeth and rippling muscle and the crash of the hunter’s blades swinging for her lifelines. Moving through pain becomes paramount for basic survival, beyond even the mere idea of victory. The hound catches her by the calf and pulls her to a knee, clamping teeth down hard enough she feels the stress on the bone. Above her, Jolly Tams rushes in to swing at her neck that would surely decapitate her. If she had not gone prone, twisted onto her back, and kick the dog in the snout.
Mirabelle paces along the side, watching with the keen eyes of someone wanting to join the fight while also dissecting it move by move.
A voice in her head whispers harshly, lovingly, desperately, ‘keep going.’
Blood films her eyes but she swings hard and true at Jolly Tams. Pain is the flagging in the body’s system that calls for cease fire because something is wrong but she ignores it. She has to ignore it and now she has gotten incredible at that particular task. So the next blow from Jolly Tams that blows her backward, breaking something, should keep her down. Breathing is hard and fire is a living thing under her skin, but she stands back up. It does mean she moves slower, and she cannot strike with precision, but she is fearless and faithful in completing this.
Winning is hard. Winning looks like sitting on her knees breathing raggedly and bleeding enough that she is dizzy from the loss. Winning looks like Jolly Tams laying on the ground, shaking, while his hound laps at his face to wake him. When he comes back, it is with a jerk and a tapered laugh that sounds half way used. As if the first half had been in dreams and ripped into reality with him.
“What a row! You are a beast, child mine. I swallowed a teeth, I’ll be! Yes, yes. We are going to get you in that damn school. You need to put your fist to the bloody parts of these worlds and make iron from the mess. Oh yes. A good one,” Jolly Tams points at her but his attention is on Mirabelle, “A fine pup. You chose a sturdy partner, Saint.”
Mirabelle bows shallowly, just enough to be respectful, “Thank you. She is a gift to this world.”
“Not yet but she will be, mark my words. Aeolfig, was it? A name chosen?”
She looks up through a red haze, world spinning, “Yes. It was my father’s, I think.”
“Then until we get you into that school, you are named Jolly Aeolfig, Beast Scion of the Jolly Tams. We will begin training in a week.”
Startled and dumbfounded, she drops her mouth open and whines, “More training!?”
“Of course, Fig,” Mirabelle crosses her arms and co*cks a hip, giving the airs of someone deeply disappointed, “The training we did before was just to beat him. Now we need to make you a hunter trainee.”
Fig points at the bloody ground beneath her knees, “I’m going to melt here and hopefully die. Wake me up in a week.”
“None of that,” Mirabelle sweeps in to hook hands beneath her shoulders and lift her onto her feet, steadying her by the hips when she teeters, “We have work to do.”
“This is spousal abuse.”
Quick as a lightning strike, Mirabelle reaches around her shoulder to kiss her cheek, “I haven’t even started yet. Just you wait.”
“I decided life in the mines was easier.”
“Too bad. I have my hopes up for a future where we share a house and a name and we are going to cut a bloody path to get it, if we must. So, come on. Let’s go.”
Jolly Tams hobbles after them with a long, sleek pipe hanging from his busted lips, “Wait up! I want to sup with you both and pick your brains! Turn round children, come with me. Jolly Tams house is yonder this way. Follow now. Rodger, sweet prince of fleas, show them the way.”
The hound yips and bounds over to circle around them, brushing his massive haunches against their calves.
There is a crowd this time. All round the arena the six of them stand on. In a glittering loop that flashes bright from cameras. Giant screens above the crowds show the faces of each captain, their current ranking within the school, and small facts about them.
Mirabellle swats at the drone buzzing past her ear.
“You should have had coffee.”
“Shut up.”
“Welcome again, one and all! It is time for another holo-net special here at the Leveonn Academy for Slayers and Swordsmiths of the Modern Age! Today’s matches—“
A long annoyed hiss issues from the Saint. She crowds closer to Aeolfig just to stand under the shade of her hat brim. The lights from above irritates her sensitive eyes.
“It’s too hot in here.”
“You should have had coffee.”
“I said shut up.”
“—first matches today! We actually get to see something special! They have not done this in the last six rotations! It is a harsh thing for first year trials but our captains this year are exquisite, so we have risen to meet them at their level!”
“True, we have not had first years like these in all my years of working here. It makes sense the academy is testing them like this!”
Blue eyes flick over to the twins who are watching them both closely. She makes a crude gesture with her hand and flicks her fingers to make a motion of brushing something away.
“You are so mean when you don’t have coffee.”
“About that shutting up part.”
“You never are this mean to me unless you haven’t had your coffee.”
Mirabelle glares at the faces in the crowd she cannot see.
“So all of the captains are going to fight each other while simultaneously fighting a beast?”
“Correct. It sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”
“Fig, I don’t think we can win this one.”
“We didn’t win the last one or the first one. What ones have we won?”
“Our Mizz’rik trial. The trial of the Ice. I count the one where I broke my foot. A few mock trials. We do better on paper.”
Fig snorts and folds her arms over her chest, “We do not do better on paper.”
The dark storming look on her wife’s face makes her sigh and tap her fist against her pauldron. From inside the pouch on her belt, she pulls out a flask and gives it a healthy shake to redistribute the cream and sugar.
“I brought you coffee.”
If not for the cameras and the millions of eyes upon them through the holo-net and stadium, she is sure Mirabelle would have kissed her. The flask is taken with too much reverence. When the contents are swallowed, a sound comes from her that makes Fig chuckle.
“Salt preserve, you are the best. I needed that so badly.”
“I know.”
“I’m so tired. I was up all night preparing.”
“Oh, I know.”
Mirabelle tucks the flask into her belt, grips her hips, and looks around the stadium, “Maybe we can win.”
She holds out a fist that Mirabelle taps with her own. Their wedding bands clink together merrily.
“Today, you don’t need to pretend you’re a shield. Fight the way we trained.”
This surprises her. One of their bases for the first year was that Fig would fight with her weakest stance and her weakest ability. Mirabelle would not get the chance to hide because she is known already as the Saint and many of the battles she has been in have been recorded and broadcasted. Fig as an unknown could hide though and they had planned to use that.
“You sure?”
“This is a big one. We need to win. There are only three trials left before the end of the year which means—“ Mirabelle cuts herself off to give Fig an expectant look. She understands the meaning and frowns for it.
That means the ones who seek to watch them fall are going to work twice as hard now.
“You look pleased.” Their arms bump together jovially.
“I hate the shield. And I never get to use your present.”
A tiny smile warms the former disposition of a corpse dragged unwillingly from a grave.
“I have not been told what to expect which only makes this more thrilling! What do you speculate the beast can be?”
“Well, I can’t say much about that but I can say this is going to be a fight to remember. The Saint of the Azul Empire has been fairly tame in her bouts so far. What we know of her is that she quickly showed herself at a very young age to be one of the Saints of legend and so far, I’d argue we haven’t seen much of that. She has been hanging back, hiding behind the shield of her co-captain. Playing it safe. Where as the twins have been nothing but aggressive. It is a curious strategy and I would love to see more today.”
A spark of annoyance returns. They both step onto the platforms that lock their feet in for safety. A countdown starts from someone off to the side for when it will begin lifting them into the arena. Small drones buzz around their heads, communicating with the monitor bracelets and the chips inside their tactical vests. The vests hold extra cameras and microphones in case the drones are damaged. Overtop the light armor they wear without the sleeves, per usual, and thick padded trousers with ankle length boots. Normally she would shoulder a shield to take with her and an off-hand weapon. It feels good to shrug the shield off and kick it off the edge of the platform.
“Hey, can I have one of the vibration pistols? From the pod?”
A few attendants with microphones look side to side, tucking their clipboards against their ribs. A small burst of chaos erupts from a few of them running around looking for the weapon pods that captains can collect things to arm themselves with.
Mirabelle picks at her nails beside her, unbothered.
Finally one rushes forward with a small hand held pod and sets it on the platform.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank the help, Aeolfig.” Mirabelle shoos them away with a flick of her fingers.
She tucks a small, sleek pistol with a long barrel into her vest.
“Your pompous personality comes too naturally sometimes.” She says in the whalers speak. There is a belt of grenades at the bottom of the pod too. Since it is there, she takes that too and drapes it over her shoulder.
“I am a princess.”
From her pocket she pulls out the old salt water steel sword Mirabelle gave her just before their first kiss. Over the years, during training, she broke the original fixed blade so now it has been upgraded to be collapsible like Mirabelle’s.
“Are we playing this loud or quick?”
Mirabelle sniffs and looks around for the monitor displaying back stage happenings. She watches the other captains pace their platforms, shaking limbs to encourage blood flow and hopping from foot to foot. Ral’en and Narmani have a small book open between them to point at pages with serious looks and argue about whatever the contents are. Battle strategy, no doubt, and the different plays they intend to use. Ran’zn is preforming stretches in his thick armor, hands encased in thick gloves, beside Sahsas. His co-captain is chanting something to himself while he looks over at the monitors and goes pale.
“Let’s do the Blue-2.”
Fig chuckles under her breath, coming back to stand next to the Saint. Unlike the other captains in the windows, she is a pillar of calm. Her spear is tucked into the crook of her elbow, rested against her shoulder, and she is blank. Almost bored.
Fig props an elbow on Mirabelle’s shoulder with an easy smile, “I love that one. Gimmi the Prince.”
“Yours. I’ll take the others. And whatever the beast is between.”
“Feeling co*cky today, Saint?”
“We can share if you finish your first course quickly.”
They tap fists together with a smile each, the kind with secrets hidden behind them.
Each platform brings them under a dome of controlled environment. For this trial they are brought next to a pebbled shore beside a narrow creek. Rain falls upon them in heavy sheets that soak them through instantly. Just beyond the haze of the clouds at the top of the bubble, she can see the lights of the crowds gathered around. Lights blink from the battery pack on their tactical vests and from the drones buzzing around their heads.
“Students,” Through the air their professor’s voice cuts loud and clean, “Welcome to the Falcon trial. Personally, I have always found it a bit archaic to run tests like this but it is, I suppose, tradition. Only skill and precision and brute force will win this test. For this test, and this one alone, there will be no restrictions between you and the other students.”
Fig turns to Mirabelle with a confused face. Her wife grows somber, stepping closer and flicking her eyes around the glade they stand in.
“Mira?”
“That means they can kill us. Get low, Narmani had a rifle in the loading bay.”
They both fall to an immediate crouch, moving behind a rock just for the sake of hoping it provides cover.
“Forget Blue-2. Go harder.”
“Stay close,” Fig grips the strap on her wife’s vest when she tries to jump up and run off toward the tree line, “We are linked until this is over.”
Mirabelle looks torn by that, flicking her attention where she wanted to go, but concedes with a nod and crouches back down.
“Furthermore, unlike in the other trials, we will not provide aid. Not until a victor has been named or if you choose to fail. Understand that you will still be awarded marks if you do not complete this trial in first place. Choosing to fail puts you into a different status.”
“Why did they change it last second?” Mirabelle hisses, crouching low and moulding herself against Fig’s side.
“It makes sense. That way we can prepare for it. And—“
“My father. He probably did this somehow.”
“Do they usually do a death trap like this or did he give it a little bit of something?”
Mirabelle taps at her ribs to indicate they should move and gestures toward the creek. Together they jog alongside it, moving around the muddy bend to move up the incline.
“Not that I recall,” Mirabelle slaps her hand over Fig’s chest, curling her fingers into a strap and gives it a violent tug, “Down, down!”
Ahead of them, at the bottom of the hill they were cresting over, a group of stealth troopers are crawling out of trap doors made to look like bushes and rocks. Five of them with rifles strapped to their chest and heavy armor. Camouflaged to blend in with the surroundings. They pull up something large that unbends at the touch of a screen, swelling and growing until it builds itself into a large land vehicle.
“Are they the beast?”
“No. That’s for us.”
“Normally I would say a few things here but this trial is not mine so there is not much left to say except good luck. I hand it to your caretaker. I hope to see you all again after this.”
“Now, for everyone watching, the professor has just spoken to his students and given the green flag! That’s right! The trial has officially started.”
“Go around. We can get that armored hover craft.”
“Me drive, you drive?”
Mirabelle thumps her on the back, pointing toward the side of the hill she wants them to skirt, “You drive.”
“I drive, nice.”
Together they creep along sod that is, for the most part, code somewhere in a computer, compelling microscopic machines to fabricate something that feels like sod. At the base this small squad of killers is trying to quietly read over a sheet of plans encased in a hard waterproof material. While they are distracted, the pair of them sneak around to the passenger side of the hover craft. Aeolfig climbs through first with her body hunkered low to avoid being seen. Over the center console into the drivers seat. Mirabelle slides the door closed behind her without having made a single sound.
A few switches are flipped on her side to wake an engine, the fans and cooler system, the blades that propel them, and then she pushes the ignition button.
“Oh, I didn’t notice these,” Mirabelle leans over to rip one of the grenades off Fig’s belt.
“Those are mine!”
“Pitter patter, less chatter. Roll your window down.”
When Fig doesn’t, rolling her eyes, Mirabelle leans further over until she is practically in Fig’s lap to do it herself. They both shrink low to avoid the hail of gunfire bouncing harmlessly off the thick hide of the armor on the hover craft. The grenade is lobbed out the window that is rolled up immediately after.
“Brat,” Mirabelle opens a few compartments to snoop for things, clipping some items onto her belt and tossing the rest, “Go toward the tower.”
“What tower?”
“There isn’t one yet but there will be.”
Bullets plink against the armor even from the distance they have made. Little screens come to life in her dash, bringing up live camera feed of a few bloodied and butchered surviors aiming guns at them.
“And you’re sure because…?”
“It makes sense. King of the mountain. Look,” They take a sharp corner around a blossoming hill, revealing a large old fashioned radio tower with wooden stairs build along the inside and boards half built along the sides that create platforms of various lengths outside, “Told you.”
Glass shimmers around the outside, swirling over the platforms like waves upon rocks. In patterns that ripple from the false light of the fake sun looming above.
“That doesn’t seem…right.”
Mirabelle leans onto the dash, turning her head to get a better look through the thin slats over the front windshield, “No, it doesn’t.”
Pigment starts to tether itself to the very corners of the glass, spreading inward until it turns to a whole blue. As the blue spreads, it fills in more than just the glass shards which show themselves to be the pearlescent armor plates on the thick hide of a dragon. Something enormous that drips thick fluids down the side of the tower, covered in long ropes of seaweed. With a jaw like that of a deep-sea eel upon a massive triangular head and massive bulbous eyes. Not wings in the traditional sense because this thing is just called a dragon but is not really anything more than a violent urge the sea swallowed up eons ago to protect life. Instead long tendrils hang from its spine and ribs, floating through the air behind it, that makes the air thrum ever so gently. Like the long stinging legs of a jellyfish. Massive feet bend metal that groans under the weight as it climbs leisurely up the tower toward the platform at the very top.
“That looks familiar.”
Fig nods with a tight stomach, “They brought in a Thrasher. Do you know how hard those are to catch?”
“Yes. One of them nearly killed you. I’m still furious about that.”
“Working on a boat isn’t much better than the mines. But you said—“
“Not this again.”
“—you said no more working in the mines. You said!”
“How was I supposed to know you’d try to die on your first day? Why the hell did you hire onto a crew that catches Thrashers for a living!?”
Fig pokes a thumb into her own chest, grinning sardonically, “Nameless.”
Pain is a living. A constant state of being since she was a broken, abandoned child.
After their marriage and the intense work put into training for their hopeful future, Mirabelle had grown intensely protective. She had insisted Fig quit. Insisted she find a calmer job to bide her time until they could eventually get accepted into the academy. Working in the mines is setting a timer that ever floats above the head, ticking itself closer to a grave waiting for a young person to lay their head down inside. Mirabelle had insisted she wanted to lay beside her wife some day in a bed, not in a cold plot of salt crusted earth.
Such a lofty goal for someone so cursed. A grave is all that awaits some lowborn orphan without a name to call her own. Sinking low into the water, dragged down by the sinking of a ship. Found by a luck as one of the few survivors from the fishing boat that hunts Thrashers. Death is curled around the base of her throat, squeezing in to lick at the blood that always dribbles from the first cut her parents made in her by dying when she was an infant.
When she wakes up, no one is in the room. Panic flares because she is in a hospital and those are spaces she has never been allowed without intense concern. Hospitals are thinly disguised graves for the living, for the ones like her who know walking inside signs away a life spent owing a debt that can never be paid. Blankets are thrown off quickly so she can scramble out, tugging on what she must in her haze to break away. When she gets on her feet, she falls right back down because it seems her leg is badly injured. Swollen and purple around the knee a size too big and around the ankle, running up the calf like lightning streaks.
“Aeolfig, you shouldn’t be up.” A voice cuts through the pain surpringly, pairing with gentle hands that lift her and guide her back to the bed.
Her head swivels with the same choppy buoyancy of still being on water. Everything feels tilted to the side, wobbling from the inner place in her ear that convinces her she’s spinning.
Her wife looks so small when she is not in her armor. So young and so defeated. Grief hangs as a millstone around her neck. Darkness hangs beneath each azure eye, darkening the sunken cheeks and making the tear tracks stand out. The hands that clutch her tremble violently.
“Lay down. Please.”
“Mira,” Footsteps outside the door twists her stomach into knots at the reminder of their public setting, “Princess, you shouldn’t be here. Go before anyone sees you.”
“I said lay down,” The firm tone makes her eyes widen but just seems to be the last of Mirabelle’s energy because she deflates and begs in a broken tone, “Please, lay down. Please.”
Such sincere distress humbles her into simply obeying without a question. Bodies mill about in the halls outside. Sounds of a hospital fastidious in their mundane nature filter through the cracks just to remind her of where she is and who she is with. Stress gnaws on the places not being ravaged by pain. Yet she gets under the thin blue blanket and lays back down, watching her wife dote upon her in a way foreign to her.
They do not get this option. It is the very first time Mirabelle has drawn blankets to beneath her chin and held a cup of water to her lips. The first time she has balled her sleeve into the meat of her palm and used it to wipe water from her chin.
“Mira, what’s happening?”
“You—“ Her throat catches on a sudden sob.
Aeolfig cannot remember the last she has seen her wife cry. She only wept silently when her leg had been eaten by acid because of the pain and they had been children then.
“You’ve been in a coma.”
“Oh,” She flexes her fingers and feels the pins and needles, feels now how withered her body feels to her, how utterly exhausted she is, “Damn.”
Mirabelle folds into a shape of herself in the chair, a shape that is miserable and minuscule. Her face lands in her cupped hands, hiding it and the tears that make her breathing catch and make little sounds.
“How is my ankle still swollen then?”
Into her hands she speaks, muffled and strained, “You woke up once a week ago and caused a havoc trying to get out. You were barely conscious and fell down some stairs.”
“So—“
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Four months and I never knew. I’m your wife and I can’t know because we can’t have a f*cking life together,” She miserably wipes away the fluids coming out of her face on her shirt sleeves and looks up, red in the eyes, “I had to find out what happened secretly and that took too much time. I was working on and off planet. I was barely sleeping because you weren’t answering and I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t ask questions. I have all this f*cking power and it does nothing to protect you, to keep you near me. I am useless. I am nothing. I never f*cking knew. I thought you were dead. I spent days and months thinking you stopping responding to anything, global calls and e-mails, because you died. I…I realized I wouldn’t even be able to find you. They don’t record the death of Nameless. How can they? You don’t exist. I’d never know what they did with your body. Would they even take you out of the mines or just leave you there? I couldn’t even f*cking visit your grave.”
Her heart tears itself apart for Mirabelle but the anxiety is mounting, drowning out that particular pain. Her eyes flit to the door, “Mira, lower your voice. If someone hears you—“
Grief shifts into an anger hotter than white steel in the blink of an eye. Completely disregarding what Fig was warning about, her voice pitches higher into the climb of her fury.
“What were you thinking!? I asked you to get a safer job and you went Thrasher fishing!? Arguably even more dangerous than the mine! You idiot!”
Not often, but sometimes, they bump against Mirabelle’s entitlement. Often it comes from a natural place so Aeolfig brushes it aside because she does not understand why it is insulting. Her wife is brilliant and beautiful and wonderful down to her heart but she was still raised in the lap of luxury. Sometimes she forgets things or cannot know certain things. It used to make them fight so fiercely as children they would not speak to one another for months on end. Mirabelle is not heartless and is not proud so when she makes these mistakes, she is pliable and ready to rectify her mistake by learning what she did wrong and how to be different. Even still, they occasionally brush that sensitive gap between them.
Aeolfig grits her teeth, “It’s not like I have a lot of options, Mirabelle.”
“I know that! But—“
“There isn’t a but. I don’t have a lot of options. It’s either the mines, this, or being a poler in the salt fields.”
Mirabelle shivers and hugs herself, “No, not that either. Please.”
She shrugs, defeated as her wife is, “I’m sorry. This is how it is.”
“I know.”
It hurts to say it, but she feels the misery filling the air, feels the helplessness and sinks into it with her wife.
“You could leave me. This wouldn’t be such an issue if you married someone else. Don’t glare at me like that, you know it’s true.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I want you. Alive, preferably.”
She looks down at the gel tape around her wrist cycling information they have on her which is not much and vitals. It turns back into a white paper covered in nanite ink when she tears it off.
“Four months is too long.”
“I know that Aeolfig. That’s why I’m heartbroken. That’s why I’m a mess. But this isn’t an option for me. It’s this or nothing. I cannot live without you. Thinking about letting anyone else touch me or loving someone else makes my skin crawl. I’ve been in love with you since I was a fourteen-year-old girl. You are it—“
“Mira—“
“No! Shut up!”
Silence rings in their ears. She shifts under the blankets to reach for her cup, straining so hard it starts to tip over. Her beloved Saint is there in a blink to collect the cup and bring it to her lips. There is still a petulant, furious look on her face when she wipes away the droplets left behind.
“You sounded like a whiny baby.”
“I knew you would say that. f*ck you. I am allowed to sound however the f*ck I want to right now.”
“‘Shut up.’ Wow, how old are you?”
“If you want to drown so badly, let me do it. I’d be happy to hold your stupid head under water.”
“Grow up. You’re bullying someone who just got out of a coma apparently.”
“You grow up.” Mirabelle settles softly on the edge of the hospital bed. Her fingers push through Aeolfig’s closely cropped hair. She had most of it cut off before she got on the boat for ease. This way she could just keep it tucked under a hat and it would not be in danger of getting snagged on anything that might pull her off the boat.
“How did you find me on the same day I woke up?”
“I didn’t. I’ve been lying to the Fundament and telling them I’ve been doing paperwork three hours a day in my office so I can sneak down and visit you. And staying up at night to do my paperwork so I can cover for my own lie. For three weeks since I finally learned you were stung by a Thrasher and pulled under water while you started to go catatonic. Luckily finding the hospital was easier than finding you since there are only a few that treat Nameless. As I’m sure you know, there are a lot of Nameless.”
Her heart sinks, “I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
She shakes her head, tears falling silently as she does, “I’m sorry our government failed you. When I take the throne, we will make it right. Like we always planned.”
“Can’t live like this, can’t live without this either. Aren’t we f*cked?”
“It’s okay. Things are going to be different. You’re okay and we have a plan. It’s going to work. It has to,” She holds Aeolfig’s face gentler than she ever has before, “Are you okay?”
“Truthfully, I don’t feel okay but I’m sure that’s just because I slept more in fourth months than I have in my entire life. What did the professionals say?”
“That the stinger will leave a scar but otherwise you’ll be alright. They replaced your liver and had to spend four different surgeries repairing your lungs. You may have some nerve damage, but they put you into a coma because of your—your brain was bleeding. It swelled and pressed against your skull, and it was bad, they say. I wasn’t here for the worst of it,” Shame and hurt paints her face, voice cracking on an apology she cannot squeeze out, “But you healed nicely from that. You just didn’t wake up for a long time. They were confident you would when I finally found you. Don’t worry, you’ll be alright.”
She nods, feeling drowsy again already, “Is the scar gnarly?”
“It’s rugged,” Mirabelle sniffles pathetically and tries for a smile, “They shaved your head. You look ugly.”
She purses her lips, “It does feel a little too short. Damn it. Can you see that stupid scar on my head now?”
“That and the new one from your drain tube. Idiot. Idiot,” Mirabelle tastes like tears when she bends to kiss her suddenly, surely, “You’re my whole world. Please stop trying to—just stop it. I literally don’t know how I would live without you so just…just stop it.”
“Didn’t they have to sew on three of your fingers after they were blown off at your last off world mission?”
Mirabelle shrugs, “You figuring out how to live without me is your problem. I’m talking about me and my problems right now. Selfish beast.”
Laughing after spending so much time talking straight out of a coma feels like spitting up hot glass. Dutiful and insightful, her darling wife already has the water waiting for her to sip.
“Thank you for finding me. Waking up alone would have been…scary.”
That makes Mirabelle flinch and swallow hard enough that she hears it. Those same small sounds from a sob being swallowed bounce off the walls. Not having been here from the start eats at her wife, she knows it. Their vows hold as strong to her as the vows she took when she ascended to Sainthood. Honor and loyalty are foundations that Saint Mirabelle Azul has proudly built herself on. Agreeing to marriage had not been a silly flight of fancy that two young lovers fell into. She would never make her promises so lazily. When she took on the title of Aeolfig’s wife, that day, her chest had swelled with pride and something settled between them that Mirabelle took gravely serious. Anchoring her entire being to Aeolfig’s wretched existence and doing so with vigor. ‘I’m yours. You’re never alone again. I am your family, your friend, your foundation. When you wake up and when you go to sleep, every day and then for the last time, I will be beside you. I love you and here is how I show it for the rest of ever.’
Aeolfig knows it is a great shame that she was three months late to keep that promise.
“Feeling tired again or would you like to try food? I can collect a nurse.”
“No, I’m tired. When can I leave?”
“When they say you can. Don’t be stubborn,” Mirabelle preens her short hair again and the blankets around her, “Are you sore? Would it be painful if I laid my head on your chest?”
Hope lifts her upon wings. Whether her every bone was cracked would not matter for how long it has been since she has felt the weight of her beloved upon her chest.
“You’re good. Go ahead.”
With great care, her wife makes herself into a very small shape beside her. Arms are tucked between her chest and Fig’s ribs, barely brushing her just to be sure. Warmth spreads from beneath the lightness of blue hair spilling over her clavicle and her royal head debasing itself by resting upon the sturdy heartbeat of a peasant.
She falls asleep content, lulled by the sad sounds of Mirabelle’s stunted crying and a busy hospital.
Royalty sleeps heavily upon her tired body. Sprawled out with the space provided to them, boneless in the depths of her deep sleep, Mirabelle is a pool of princess on her chest. Arms and legs are spread in random directions, one hooked around the ankle of Fig’s bent leg. One arm flat and pushed between the bed and Fig’s lower back. Quiet, precious snores tickle her throat.
Aeolfig is awake. Propped against the pile of their pillows with a data pad held above her wife’s sleeping head. Footage of their last trial plays on, feeding sound into the singular earbud she has in. The lively spectators are practically shouting from their excitement as, on the screen, a vicious Aeolfig storms up the stairs of the radio tower. They are correctly speculating that up until this trial Aeolfig had been using a different fighting style as a ruse to make their fellow captains underestimate her. On screen, with the incredible capabilities of the drones cameras, there is multiple angles of her snarl when she plants a boot in one of the Royal twin’s chest and kicks them away from her. Barely half a second passes between that and her spinning around to block an attack with her sword. More of the camouflaged mercenaries had been waiting on the tower for them to arrive. Prince and Princess had realized they were only going after Saint Azule and Fig so they had used the chance to try and kill them both. Blood sprays from the throat of one mercenary being cut and from another when her sword, mercurial by nature, reforms into the shape of a hammer that snaps the leg above the knee.
“We are witnessing history.” Chirps one of the exuberant hosts that rankle her.
“The Prince and his co-captain fight comfortably together because they have trained together since childhood. Much like the Princess and her choice. They work together well as a team and it makes them a powerful unit on the battlefield. And yet.”
“And yet they do compare to the Moon and the Mountain. These two do not just fight well together, it feels like they are fighting for each other as well.”
“I totally get what you mean. Look here, when the Princess has knocked the Saint unconscious and is attempting to execute her by throwing her off the tower. You can see the physical change in her co-captain. She relaxes, let’s go of the natural urge to defend herself. Ignores a co-captain that runs past her to get up the steps, closer to the goal. Goes straight for the Saint.”
Aeolfig watches her shoulders drop on screen, watches her face smooth. Watches the eyes become hollow burial plots. The vibration pistol is drawn and aimed at the Prince whose fingers, bloodied from brawling, are buried in Mirabelle’s hair to drag her across the floor. Vibration pistols do not fire anything at all. The original purpose of the devices had been to herd animals from long distances on farms because they could sense the pressure change and hear the small sound it made that humans could not. With all things, however, someone finds a way of making a weapon out of anything.
In the video, Ran’zn screams from seemingly nothing. He clutches his belly where she had aimed, flopping down on the ground spasming. There is not wound. Nothing touched him. The vibration pistol condensed enough of the air in a specific area that he felt as if he had been shot. It does not pierce the skin but it will break bones or cause internal bleeding. There is nothing but blank hatred on her face. Head tilted down so the blood rolls off her lashes to drip on her cheeks instead of into her eyes. For that reason it looks as if she is a spirit of war crying blood. Audio picks up the sounds of her threats when Ral’en tries to stop her by shoving a knife in her arm. Metal glances off metal. In the video, Aeolfig of now is not pleased with the casual way she grips Ral’en by her head and throws her aside. She does not regret it because the woman had been between her and Mirabelle but she does not like turning herself off like that. It does not feel good.
“Let’s review footage from old trials and compare them to what we saw from the Moon and the Mountain today after that impressive victory.”
“The Nameless even walks differently! Look at this clip—“
“Shut that off. How many times are you going to watch it?” Mirabelle slurs tiredly against the side of her neck.
“I’m still angry.”
“I’m fine, love.”
“I’m still angry.”
Mirabelle barely moves but to lift a hand that smacks the tablet aside, “That’s enough. Put it away.”
“You actually can’t boss me like that.”
“As your wife, I’m the only one who can boss you like that,” Mirabelle lifts herself up with a tired hum, stretching with a yawn, then adjusts so she is straddling Fig, “Fig, darling, put it away. You’re only upsetting yourself more. Don’t bother with it. We won, that’s what matters.”
“It’s not what matters. He tried to kill you.”
“And you stopped him.”
“I should have been protecting you. I—“
“Aeolfig, he is not the first man that has tried to kill me and he is not even the man that got the closest. You did protect me.”
Aeolfig flings her arms up unhappily.
“And yet I’m still angry.”
Mirabelle stretches herself forward to drape herself over Aeolfig, yawning against her jaw. This is something they have been enjoying when there is off time. The other captains have been whispering about what exactly they have been planning since there must be a nefarious reason for them hiding inside their dorm for days. While the others are in the training rooms, in the library, running tracks in the cars provided for technical training. Mirabelle and Aeolfig have been hiding away indulging in the things they have never really gotten to do as a married couple. Laze around in bed, take baths together, nap without concern of time, sitting beside one another while they read or keep company for chores. Simple things that are perhaps overlooked by most couples theh know but meaningful to them because they have never gotten the chance. Married since they were eighteen years old and not until they came to the college had they gotten to bed down for the night in the same bed and wake up next to one another.
“Don’t be angry. You get a very unattractive pucker in your forehead when you’re angry.”
“That’s rude.”
Mirabelle adjusts so she can nestle her head under Aeolfig’s chin, “You have a huge forehead.”
The way she cannot even stop herself from snickering at her own joke charms Fig. She sets her metallic hand on Mirabelle’s lower back, pushing her fingertips under the shirt to feel the skin.
“If you don’t stop making fun of me, I’m going to leave you. Then you can find a small foreheaded woman who gets attractively angry.”
More laugh that makes her torso shake under Fig’s hand. Another new thing they get to indulge in. With time on their side and no concern about what might happen if Mirabelle is late or someone catches them together, they can relax. Relaxation makes room for merriment and Fig gets to listen to her wife laugh.
If nothing else works and their plan falls apart, she will always be grateful for the time to make her wife laugh.
“The problem is you’re my best friend and I would need your help to secure another woman. I’m very bad at talking to them and you’re so charming. Women love you.”
Fig pats her on the small of her back, fingertips caressing the curve of her spine, “I’ll help. It’ll be my charitable donation to my community for this year. Want a tip?”
“Mhm.”
“Don’t make fun of them for the size of their forehead.”
A little shimmy brings Mirabelle onto an elbow just long enough to kiss the offended forehead. Then she turns from a solid back into a liquid that pools on Fig’s chest.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Two or three hours. I intended to let you sleep a bit more, but I guess all my irritated sighs woke you up.”
“They did. I can sense your poor moods even in my sleep,” Mirabelle stretches her legs, brushing her toes down her shin, “We need to go soon. I scheduled some hours in the gym for training and exercise.”
Fig makes a disgruntled sound, “I’m so sore.”
“Too bad.”
“Moonie—“
“You haven’t called me that in a while,” Mirabelle slides her hands between the mattress and Fig’s back to feel across the muscles from her hips along the river of her spine, “That make me nastolgic.”
“I’m sore.”
“Too sore for sex?”
“How are you worst now than when we were teenagers?”
Kisses, lazily placed, touch down on her shoulder and neck, “We have time now. I can turn it off and off depending on how safe we are. No work here, no prayer meetings, no forward camps or speeches. No f*cking midnight marches in the rain. All the raging hormones of being a teenager with a girlfriend I couldn’t spend time with was put in a backlog. You are deeply in debt.”
“Fine, that I hear. But,” She tilts her head back into the pillow so the kisses can move underneath her chin, “You just said we have training. And I’m already sore. You get me for one of the two. Sex or exercise.”
“Sex then.” Without a moment to decide. Her hands have glided around her ribs to feel across the rippling obliques that flex under her touch and to glide over the scars on her stomach.
“I’m holding you to that.”
“After sex you won’t be sore for exercise.”
“After sex I’m going to watch the recording one more time and make notes. I am not exercising or running drills or going through form training. If you want anything, I’ll sit in a chair and shoot guns. That’s it.”
“You’re so old, Figgy.”
“We have been married too long for you to be acting like this is our honeymoon.”
“Fig, it is our honeymoon.” She adjusts so she can scoot down Aeolfig’s thighs and bend over to kiss the ridges of her stomach, in the valley made where the muscle naturally makes a parallel line beside her hip bone.
“Oh. Right. I didn’t think about it like that.”
“The most time we’ve ever had together before this was sixteen hours, thirteen minutes, and two seconds.”
“That—Mira, to the second?”
Lips drag lazily across her diaphragm upward, toward where the shirt is bunched up around her fingers, “Since I was fourteen Aeolfig. Of course to the damn second. Every second I was apart from you was torture. Especially after we got married. Isn’t that weird? Most couples feel that flame when they are fresh and new but it was so bubbly when we got started. We were young and my heart was just swollen from the constant abuse of having to be apart from you. But we were together and that made my silly little teenage head swell. After we got married, things solidified for me. You were mine and you always would be. You chose me forever. And I wanted you all the time. I wanted you to feel my love. You are my favorite person in the whole world. You say the smartest and funniest things. You are so interesting. I could sit with you for hours and do absolutely nothing the entire time and it would be the best day of my life. And now I can. Now we get the luxury of me being allowed to say things like that to you.”
Fig hooks a leg around her wife’s wide hips to secure a tight hold and flips her onto her back.
“You talked yourself into sex.”
“And training?”
“Whatever you want.”
Mirabelle makes a small sound that means she has secured a win before dragging Fig down into a kiss.
Escaping notice after the massive display they put on during the last trial is no longer possible. People watch them run drills in the training room closer than ever. Captains from other sectors of the school, working toward different specialties, come to their gym just to watch them. Some of the students who did not pass the captains exam but still attend. Fig suspects the twins would make an appearance if they were not currently in recovery. Fig had shut down mentally and emotionally when she had seen her wife’s unconscious body being dragged toward the ledge. Carelessly as if she were nothing more than a sack of sand being moved. Nothing but pure rage and hatred had driven her. The only reason she did not kill them was because Mirabelle had roused and reminded her they did not have those petty grievances. They only wanted to win, to succeed, and to graduate. Still, before that, Fig had hurt them badly. Very badly.
“Focus.”
Whispers follow them too. Where the eyes are half obscured, held low but still fixed on them, whispers cloud the air.
A sharp pain flares from her wrist that makes her hiss and start shaking her hand. Tingles run up the bone to stab at her shoulder.
“I said focus.”
“f*ck you, that hurt.”
Mirabelle is as intense and pragmatic about their sparring sessions as she has ever been. She gives her wife a flat look and leans on her training sword while she waits for Fig to stop shaking and hopping.
“You’d have blocked it if you had been focusing.”
“I’m focused.”
“No you’re not. You’re trying to hear what they are saying about us.”
“Well! They are talking about us. I want to know what they are saying.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that your footwork is sloppy and slow and I am not impressed. You want to impress me, Aeolfig.”
She rubs the bruise already starting to form on the outside of her wrist, right over the bump of the bone beneath, “And to think, about half an hour ago you were breathing in my ear about how good I am and begging me to never stop.”
Predictably, this does not impress her wife in the least. There is barely even a flinch of an eyebrow to betray her annoyance. Instead Mirabelle kicks her sword up and flings it Aeolfig. With only reflexes does she manage to hit it away with her own sword before it hits her face.
“Mirabelle! Rude—“
Someone is standing in the corner watching them. Not exercising, not running drills, not using any of the equipment for training. Just standing in the corner with their arms folded over their chest watching them.
The wind is knock from her when the shoulder of a Saint knocks into her diaphragm. From the lowered position, Mirabelle is able to lift her off her feet and slam her back into the floor. In a rapid flurry of movements that easily overpower the taller, more visibly defined Aeolfig and position her so her cheek is to the floor and Mirabelle has her arm bent back. A knee is pressed into her spine to keep her down.
“See? Unfocused.”
“I am tapping! Tap! f*cking tap! Off, off, off!”
Mirabelle ruffles her hair at the back of her head from that position, laughing low and soft, then releases the hold.
“Humiliating.” She mumbles against the cold floor.
“It should be. You never would have let that happen if you were paying attention. Come on, get up. Let’s go again.”
Rising, shaking out her arm prickling from the way Mirabelle had it behind her back, she prepares herself for another go.
The person in the corner is walking along the wall. Still just watching them. One gloved hand is curled around their waist, tapping against something under their coat.
“Fig—“
“There is someone watching us.”
“Yes, a lot of people are watching us. You,” Mirabelle stops when she registers the tone Fig used, changing her posture and tightening around the mouth, “Who?”
“They are armed.”
“Behind me? The one I can see walking along the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Go. I’ll stay here. Come back with answers or I’ll come over if it sounds like you need help.”
Aeolfig switches to the common tongue to shout at the Saint, waving a hand at her and rolling eyes. Mirabelle tells her to go get a drink and cool off in the same common tongue, making sure they are loud enough to be heard.
Fig trots over to the wall where there are racks of towels and cases of refrigerated drinks. She pulls out a thick seaweed water that she shakes up. Keeping the figure in the corner of her eye, she takes a long drink.
“Oh, hey,” She turns a gleaming smile upon the figure, “You want something?”
The figure has a cloth mask drawn over their mouth up to their nose. Cybernetic eyes with a lens over the glowing iris that shifts rapidly, blinking red then yellow then red again.
“Oh cool,” Fig taps a finger under her own eye, “I know a lot of guys with those. To keep the seals intact, some of the guys live down there and it wrecks their eyes. They can’t see much in the daylight when they do come back up, so they got those implants to help.”
The figure is dressed in different layers of black, some tight fitting and shinning with integrated machinery and others a long bundle of cloth that drapes and drags. Each of the small hexagonal shaped computer screen in the vest flash with barely perceptual lines of code and then images and then some sort of binary communication. They tick their head to the side twice and sigh.
Fig glances over her shoulder to see where her wife is. Her back is to them but she knows Mirabelle is watching with her periphery every time she moves through a form.
The figure tries to step around her, but she reaches out, with her eyes still on the flexing ridges and divots of Mirabelle’s back muscles beneath her skintight training top. Her metal hand clinches around the figure’s bicep. Beneath it, there is not the pliant give of flesh and muscle.
Slowly she looks back to meet those eyes, “You’re one of those fabrications. The VI’s who get uploaded into a shell with a program that only lets you preform a set series of tasks. Right?”
“Nameless, Aeolfig. Female, Henorian, age thirty presumably.” The voice is soft and childlike no doubt to be unnerving for when the hand tucked against the ribs draws out a knife that ticks and whirs and blurs slightly at the edges.
Just as she thought. She pushes it into a corner so the VI was forced to retreat to the base task. No doubt subtlety was expected, and it was supposed to kill them both in secret, but she put too much stress on it.
The knife cuts through metal like it is nothing. She jerks away before any major damage can be done but she feels the nasty chasm made in the forearm of her prosthetic. The pinky finger loses some mobility. Walking backwards, she dodges another slash made at her throat and abdomen.
Sound catches her ear that is familiar to her. Quickly she ducks down and pivots around the VI’s shins. Metal screams when it is forced to cave under immense pressure. Squealing and cracking, pressing inward until it bends over itself. Mirabelle pushes it back, following it as it staggers backward. Fig rises up to walk behind her, hunkered low so they are of a similar height.
“Princess Mirabelle Azul, Saint of Strength. Female, Dulcent, age thirty. Found. Accessing. Critical warning: surrender. Critical warning: surrender.” The area around the eyes and where the hairline meets forehead is a pale grey. Something like sweat is beaded along the skin that runs down then stops. It thins out and stretches, turning into a thin blue lining that settles over the skin. Where Mirabelle had hit the jaw with the blunt edge of her training blade and nearly pried the lower mandible off, it begins to repair itself from the nano-bots.
“Critical warning: violence will not be tolerated. Please calmly lay your weapons down.”
One of the behemoth men who tried out for the captain trials but did not pass throws off the rack of weights he was lifting. Fig makes eye contact with him and gives him a quick signal that he nods to and turns to begin escorting the other students out.
A second set of arms throw the VI’s jacket off that flaps against the side of Fig’s head. Before she can remove it, something hits her hard enough to knock her off her feet. Wind is knocked from her for the rack of weights her back meets. Mirabelle, who had been knocked back with her, curls over Fig’s head to protect it from the weights that rain down.
“Ouch?” Fig breathes out, laughing softly.
“Ouch.” Mirabelle grunts, shaking off the discs of weight. They both climb back to their feet, shaking off the pain.
“Critical warning—“
Fig bends down to grip one of the weights and hurls it at the VI. The force behind the weight is stopped dead by one of the arms that flash out to catch it.
“Hate these damn things.” Mirabelle bends to pick her own up weight.
“Did your dad seriously send a virtual intelligence to kill you?”
“Money buys the best f*ck you gifts for your kids. Get around to the back.”
They swing in opposite directions, Fig moving around the legs to kick at the back of the knees. Mirabelle swings the weight down on top of the head which meets the forearm of one arm that lifts to defend itself. Fighting a machine built to survive most onslaughts so that it can complete its programmed task is never easy. Not even for someone like Mirabelle who has been training nonstop since she was a child forced into the role of a Saint. The large man comes back in to help but is quickly knocked unconscious and becomes a bleeding mess on the training mats. The only reason they manage to power it down is because the school sends in staff to help. Brute force and skill alone cannot kill a VI. There has to be a series of power down sequences that take time to boot up and go into effect.
Their professor stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene once it is over. Two limbs are laying on the blood covered mat leaking out a dark fluid that turns rainbow when sparks issue from the broken electrical lines. The rest of the VI is carefully being dismantled by a team of the school’s specialists and placing the living parts in boxes filled with cooling gel.
Mirabelle is being seen by some on site medics, spraying a thin layer of nanite gel over the gashes on her arms and leg. Her eyes keep flicking up to check on Fig who is standing beside their professor.
“This seems to be a common occurrence for you two.” He says while he rubs his thumb through his chin hair.
“Why doesn’t the school, you know, stop it?”
The professor nudges the arm with his shoe, “My dear! Everyone tries to kill everyone all the time! What are we to do except teach you how to survive?”
Fig squints at the spindle-shanked old man in a tweed vest with a gold chain hanging from the pocket. His pince-nez sit perched upon the tip of his hooked nose. Dark ruby colored skin with a tail that turns to a void black at the end. Corse hair grows from the tip that brushes the floor when his tail flicks lazily.
“Professor, is the reason this school operates under its own law and order because so many students die under your care?”
“Oh, maybe.” This is said with a slight rise in tone at the end born of genuine curiosity.
“You don’t know?”
He waves her off, “This sort of thing is quite common in the first year. We do not finalize your paperwork in totality until we are certain of your place here. And due to the nebulous nature of how rules work, outside forces harboring grudges will often cause a ruckus or two. It’s all perfectly in order.”
“Rules sort of exist to combat nebulous natures of things though.”
The Professor grumbles a noncommittal response that does not agree nor give insight for the none agreement.
Fig looks back to her wife to ask with just a silent stare, what have you gotten us into? Mirabelle lifts her nose and narrows her eyes because Fig knows. Mirabelle told her over and again that the first year is incredibly important for them and their plans for the future.
“So you won’t do anything to stop these attempts on our lives until we reach our first year end?”
Professor turns his amber eyes with thin slitted pupils onto her and grins with needle-thin black teeth, “I am counting these foiled attempts as extra credit, Misses Jolly Aeolfig! You should be pleased!”
Mirabelle shakes off the medics swiftly, hurrying over with an excited gleam in her eye, “Are you, Professor? Does that mean we are actually doing quite well?”
“Quite well indeed Saint! You two are an abomination!”
Fig snorts out a laugh, “Thank you?”
“But of course. Alright, the training room is closed until we dispose of the,” He flicks a hand at the pieces of the VI, talons long and dark and sharp, “bits. Away with you.”
Mirabelle grabs her sleeve to drag her along, “Thank you Professor!”
They empty into the space walk outside of the training room. One long tube of domed glass with clear stairs so they can see space around them. Anchored to a massive chunk of space debris, the school hovers in orbit around a dead planet shaped like a skull with many eye sockets. Stars twinkle in the blanket of endless black outside. Novas and distant galaxies, moons far away and asteroids floating past. Mirabelle stops her on the top step to squeeze her arms.
“This is incredible! I didn’t know we were getting scored for the attempts being made on our lives!”
Fig lifts an eyebrow at her wife, “You get excited about things that scare me.”
“Fig! This is perfect! We might be the top of our class right now!”
“Again, I’m not sure you should be excited about that.”
“It makes the assassination attempts valuable.”
Fig tilts her head side to side, “Okay, that is true but.”
“And we only have the last big trial left before final grades are added to our first year report. We are almost there,” Mirabelle raps her knuckles against Fig’s forehead, smiling a bit too adoringly for a public place, “We are almost there,”
Fig holds up her fist, “Just once more.”
Mirabelle taps it with her own, “Just once more. Want to go get lunch and hit the library?”
“Yes and then let’s go back to our room. I need a bath.”
Mirabelle hums a note of interest, “A bath sounds nice.”
Deep beneath ground, a Saint walks among filthy miners that have been warped and broken by years spent toiling. One of the bridge boxes is open today because the former Overseer had been murdered. Both of his cybernetic implants that had cost a fortune to pay off are missing. Vacant, bloody craters have been left in the skull making trails that run down the haggard face.
In full regalia, Mirabelle is resplendent. Nearly an entirely different woman. Her spear is tucked into the crook of her elbow so the haft rests against her shoulder. Metal sins from the plates of her armor each time she takes a step around the small box shaped room suspended at the top of mine shaft.
“Does the Overseer have an apprentice?” She asks in a low voice without making eye contact. Her attention is on the desk that has been shoved across the floor so violently it had left ugly gouges in the swollen wood. One of the viewing windows has been cracked and it hangs halfway out. That is why each of them wear an oxygen mask because the generations cannot be run with the exposure to the stale air outside flooding in.
Beside Fig is the foreman, the site captain, and three other miners. The site captain takes his dirty cap off to hold against his chest and bows to his Saint and his duch*ess before speaking.
“Saint of Strength, we speak graciously t-to our—“
Mirabelle strikes the end of her spear against the floor and, without turning to face them, waves a dismissive hand, “Site Captain Kane, I am ill tempered as I’m sure you’ve heard. Formalities are for the elitists that rely on flattery to develop self worth. Expecting civilians to participate in the performance is absurd. Just speak.”
“O-oh. Right-o then. Ah, well you see mam, Overseer Kittle had an apprentice.”
Mirabelle pokes her spear through the broken window to knock a few broken pieces of glass off the metal wall beneath the window shroud. Observance boxes are built against the roof of the main shaft which is a massive burrowed out tunnel overlooking the massive labyrinthine network of work tunnels below. To form a seal, the entire area ahead must be canvased then hunters will be called in to kill Depth Mothers and then teams come in to mine. Once a grid is complete, a box is built to watch over old shafts in case of Depth Mothers returning to roost or for emergencies. An Overseer is usually one of the miners that have grown too gnarled and arthritic to work anymore for this reason. An apprenticeship comes once someone has been retired from hammering.
The glass keeps falling for a long ways before it hits the shredded corpse of one of the robbers below.
“And what of him?”
“He is on holiday, mam. With his children in Thorik, one of our sister moons. I have already sent a holo-message to have him return immediately—“
“Delay it a night,” Mirabelle spins the haft around her knuckles swift enough they hear the air whistle and spins around with it tucked back against her inner elbow, “He should have a night to tie up his holiday. Choose one of your employees to preform the duty for tonight.”
“That is most generous mam.”
“Not entirely. I will be staying too.”
The foreman’s eyes widen as does the site captain’s. They share a look.
“Why’s that mam?”
“The robbers are still in the tunnels, Site Captain. They will either flee deeper and get killed or they will be wise and try to flee tonight,” She gestures around the room, “I intend to be here. I only need someone familiar enough with the way the boxes work to monitor on the cameras and keep the trams and doors operating.”
“Ah,” Site Captain Kane wipes away the sweat rolling down into the place where his mask is suctioned to his face and looks at the small collection of miners.
A grizzled man that stands nearly to the height of the ceiling in stained work clothes lifts a massive hand, “I know how it works.”
Foreman Mistra rushes to interpose himself, “No. It would be inappropriate to have a man such as yourself spend the night with our Saint. Get back in line.”
All eyes turn on Aeolfig who is the only other woman in the room. She heaves an annoyed sigh.
“Yeah, I also know how to do it. Guess I’ll be spending the night with you, Saint Mirabelle.”
Foreman Mistra elbows her hard in the ribs and gives her a pointed look.
Rolling her eyes, she sweeps her leg out to preform a dramatic bow.
“If the Lady permits it and accepts this lowly Nameless.”
With the helmet of a Saint, all of her head is obscured. The frontal plate covers her eyes where a screen is slotted inside for her to see through. The oxygen mask covers her from nose to chin. Thin braids of blue and white hang over her shoulders but nothing else can be seen. She inclines her head in thought.
“Can you use the terminals to access the memory logs of the former Overseer, Nameless?”
“With the right authority code.”
“Then I accept. Site Captain, remain. I wish to speak to you about a few things regarding this murder before you leave us. Nameless, gather what you must for your temporary position tonight.”
Old man Kittle had always been kinder to Fig than most. Kind in his own way. When she had started in the mines at a very young age, he had been the one to tell her of her parents. To witness her smile when she had taken that name for herself and he had been the first one to speak it like it held merit. Sometimes after she had finished a shift, he would let her come up to get a few extra hours by auditing him on the job. Apprentice Leorik had always hated Aeolfig and anytime she was caught in the box, he would report her to the site captain or the foreman. Plenty of beatings had been dished out because of his wheedling to the site captain.
Fig returns after a short jog home to collect some things and get a fierce talking to by the site captain. Now the box has been cleaned enough to make space for two cots and for the small generation that has put a flex shield over the broken window. Dim green bulbs fill the room with a light that hides body heat signatures from Depth Mothers as long as they are not moving in it often. The Saint of Strength has doffed much of her armor to make the mundane task of sweeping up rubble easier. Mask off and helmet sitting on a desk, she is bared to Fig in this place where they are alone.
“Hello,” Mirabelle says it softly, arms flexing when she bends to sweep chunks of shrapnel and wood shavings into a dust pan, “I had the Overseer sent to a collection. They are going to look for what may have killed him.”
“I’d wager the eyes getting plucked out didn’t do him any favors.”
“Smart ass,” Blue eyes lift to meet hers and in doing so strike her down where she stands, “Grab a broom.”
Unable to argue because her tongue has seized, she does as commanded. More brooms are locked in the small storage cabinet in the kitchenette. Rapidly she comes back to her wife’s side to help in the cleanup. For a while they work in amicable silence under the green light. Outside of the box there is just the faintest sound of rocks sliding together and distant noises from a work crew on the other side of this charter’s seal. Fig sneaks looks at her wife and feels silly each time Mirabelle catches her and raises an eyebrow.
“You have a bruise on your jaw.”
Mirabelle leans on her broom to touch the massive splotch of black and purple on her jaw that spreads up onto her cheek.
“It looks worst than it is. Tail of a beast clipped me when I visited Ty’Té. One of those big Juggernauts that sail through the clouds in their city. It’s mating season and they needed to be steered back onto their migration path.”
She pushes her pile of detritus against Mirabelle’s on the floor and gives the broom a good shimmy. Her heart is racing wildly but she is trying to remain cool.
“A Juggernaut tail clipped you and you only got that little bruise?”
“Clipped me as in my ship and it went down. Got the bruise from the wreck.”
Heat prickles against her skin from the space between them that has been further than this for months. Mirabelle has been busy with the work of sainthood and training for the captain’s trial to get accepted into the academy. She has only been able to have very late-night encrypted calls with Mirabelle over the holo-net or share messages.
“Are you okay? Aside from the bruises?”
Mirabelle leans over to press their shoulders together, “I’m alright. Sore. Irritated that the work never ends but I suppose I’m lucky. I get to stay here tonight.”
Fig grips her broom handle tightly from nerves, “Are the cameras still active?”
“Only on the outside.”
“Then can I…?”
Mirabelle lets the broom go so that it falls to the floor with a clatter. She does not issue an affirmative because her body comes closer and she waits with an expression that looks eager and impatient. Fig looks over at the door habitually, just to be sure that no one will walk in to catch them. Fingertips glide over bruised skin, charting the expanse of which is creeping into the clear unblemished parts. Mirabelle is pliant in her hand, closing her eyes and letting her head get tipped backward and to the side. It is such a gift to kiss the skin of a Saint where the world has left an unkind mark.
“You have to stop coming home to me looking like this.”
Mirabelle lets out a thin, choppy breath and murmurs a word Fig cannot understand. Perhaps an apology that is so choked by love it cannot come out unscathed. Fig kisses the boarder line where the bruise ends. Then a reunion that never changes in her. Not since the very first time she tastes clouds and stardust upon the lips of her duch*ess all those years ago. To kiss the Saint of Strength is to cripple a great wonder for beneath her hand, beneath her soft lips, the strength wastes away. The body sinks down and would be gone from the space and time it resides in if not for Fig to hold it up.
Mirabelle snags her bottom lip between her teeth when she tries to pull away. A sharp sting that makes her laugh and kiss her wife more throughly. Fingers in her lovely hair with palms over her ears to keep her, to feel the lightness take over. A heavenly breath slips free and cools Fig’s wet lips.
“You have to say the thing.” Mirabelle whispers, eyes lit by green light and fixed upon her. The sweetest devotion has turned her sharper features to soft lines.
“Welcome home.”
A happy sound of triumph comes with a sigh, “There, now it’s official. I’m really home.”
Fig watches her wife tilt her head to kiss the finger with her wedding band on it, then the scar on her palm.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” A pained look turns the softness brittle, “We should still be careful tonight. No one should bother us unless the thieves do show their face and the interior cameras are offline currently but—“
Fig pulls herself away with tremendous effort, feeling a physical ache for the separation, “Good idea. You’re right. So we can’t…?”
Mirabelle looks back at the cots and sighs, “No.”
“Right. Okay, that’s—I wasn’t trying to be gross.”
“No, I know! I mean, we’re married.”
They both feel that age old ache that comes from endless separation. That comes from the fact that they still have not gotten the chance to spend a night together as a married couple. That they have known one another for over half their lifetime and still cannot spend much time together.
“That doesn’t mean I feel entitled to anything,” Her eyes flick to the cot, “Especially that.”
Mirabelle nods, wringing her hands by her waist, “I know that, love. You’re a good partner to me, don’t worry. I know what you meant is what I was saying.”
“You do?”
Her wife tilts her head, eyes brilliant under the light, looking coy and eager and besotted, “You wanted to sleep next to me.”
She licks her lips, feels the tension thickening the air, “I do. I wish we could.”
Mirabelle reaches between them to walk a few fingers over her filthy work shirt, pushing against her tensed belly, “I do too. Someday though.”
“The other thing though, we could probably do that really quickly. If you wanted.”
“I always want to. I’m barely home let alone able to visit my wife the way the other boys get to when we come back,” The fingers flatten so the palm is pressed against her stomach with just the flimsy, tacky shirt between their skin, “I swear you get a little more handsome every time I come back. It can be hard sometimes to pretend like I don’t know you if others are around.”
“Am I handsome?” She says with the tone that makes Mirabelle roll her eyes. The kind that says oh you’re saying what I know but I’m saying I want you to flatter me.
“I think you are. Do you want me to use a different word?”
She lays her hand over Mirabelle’s on her stomach, “Usually you call me ugly and stupid and my heart does that thing it does when we you pay any kind of attention to me.”
“You’re very low maintenance.”
They grin at each other in a way that makes Fig feel giddy because it reminds her of their childhood. Of being friends who would wait for each other in secret meeting places and get so excited to see each other there would be laughter and jitters and this big dopy kind of all-teeth grin. Each time they get a moment alone and this feeling surfaces she remember that her very best friend in the whole world is her wife. Regardless of what may come and how difficult things will be, the person who is her rock and who knows her best is her support system and her partner.
“It’s just really amazing being your wife. There are statues of you all over the place.”
“And you’re also handsome.”
She snickers because Mirabelle is still grinning, “Who would have guessed?”
“I’m sure you aren’t left entirely alone when I’m not around.”
Fig gives her a look that makes Mirabelle shrug.
“You had a girlfriend before me. I have only been with you. And everyone loves you.”
“But there are statues made of you.”
The Saint of Strength has the most beautiful laugh, “We should feel around and come back with the data on which of us is hotter.”
Fig nudges her away so they can stop getting lost in one another and work, “It’s you.”
“I disagree. I think it’s you.”
“Your experiment is biased already.”
“I don’t care. I’m happy with my delusions, thank you.”
“You do know I’m loyal when you’re gone though, right?”
Mirabelle grips her by the bicep and squeezes it gently, bumping them together purposefully when they walk toward the desk, “I know Figgy. Like how you know I am too.”
“It’s weird to think about you with someone else. I wonder what they’d have to do to get your attention.”
Mirabelle twists her nose up, “It would have to be a lot. You know, I’ve never thought about this. It’s really weird to think about you with someone else too.”
“I guess that’s why we’re married.”
“I guess so.”
They hang near one another high feeling the intense yearning to meet again, to touch and reaffirm love that has had space between them for too long.
“Alright, let’s get to work. Do you want to see what files we have on the data center storage? The old AI is tired and glitchy so it is usually turned off but I can kick it back awake to help us.”
Mirabelle shakes off the affection, the deep-set yearning that always makes her body curve toward Fig. Both of them convene around the desk that they have to turn back over and get working again. All the wires need to be rerouted because everything was ripped out when it was tipped over. Fig sits on the floor pushing everything back into the harness then threading it through the ports to plug into the computer built into the desk. While she does this labor, Mirabelle putters around the room checking for false doors or traps or anything that was left behind. Any evidence of how the thieves got into the room that she mutters about as she makes notes in a small palm sized digi-pad. From a small hip pouch, she plucks out what appear to be pebbles and throws them through the thin barrier of the field being generated. Each little pebble supports itself somehow and begins to orbit the box slowly. Monitoring drones that will start search the mouths of tunnels and send a live feed back to the watch on the Saint’s wrist.
After the reboot sequence, they survey what they can find. Between the video feed on the projection monitors and the wrist screen, Fig wonders how Mirabelle always does it. As a pair, Fig should always appear to be the larger threat. Bulky and tall, displaying clear muscle that was forged like iron in the mines. Mirabelle looks soft and sleek, face a gentle thing carved to be an exquisite beauty. Something to marvel at. That has always been something Mirabelle was pleased by because it was something they could use if, by some ungodly chance, someone did not recognize the Saint of Strength. Because small, soft Mirabelle is a terror and not just for the unnatural strength hidden in the slopes and curves. Her ability to pick apart fields of combat and monitor situations with just a fraction of the corner of her eye makes her deadly. If someone gets into the area where they are within combat range of Mirabelle, it is only because she has let them.
That had always been something that Fig marveled at. When she would compliment her wife, try to explain how remarkable she finds her, stiffly Mirabelle would brush it away. ‘Anyone can do it. I was trained, modified. All it costs is a childhood.’ Fig’s thing is people. It has always been people because people are what keeps her alive in the mire and in the dark. Knowing people means she knows that her wife is exceptional. That her fury about being made a Saint is a justified but also she knows that if someone else has been chosen, they could not have preformed as she has. Caring with strength makes it powerful. Body is a tool she is exceptional at wielding but mind and heart are stronger still.
All the masters in the world cannot teach her what her wife can. Jolly Tams can make her a beast unkillable but he cannot make her use it for good. Not like Mirabelle. The school can sharpen her broad sides to make her precise, but they cannot lead her. Not like Mirabelle.
Change will happen here in the palm of woman both small and mighty, both quiet and loud. And Aeolfig will be whatever she must be to see that it happens.
“There,” Mirabelle points at a blur of movement, “That is a door opening. I didn’t see that door when I walked around earlier. What is that? Fig?”
Sharply, she rips her head away to clear the lumps of her pulpy heart that have risen into her throat. A hand plants itself on the desk for Mirabelle to lean down, peering around when Fig keeps turning her head away.
“Aeolfig, are you blushing because I caught you staring at me? Saints, you are!”
Fig covers her face with the cool metal hand to tamper the heat filling it, “Leave me be. I haven’t seen you in months.”
“I’m working.” Said with a light airy noise stuck behind the words. Something like a singing laugh.
“And that stops you being wonderful to me? For even a moment?”
“Oh Fig,” Mirabelle leans down, drawn to her as Fig is, then catches movement in her watch face without even turning her eyes toward it, “Damn it.”
“Your little cameras?” Aeolfig smiles simply because if she does not she might cry from frustration.
“I’m sorry. They don’t have audio though, small as they are. Just little eyes.”
“Always little eyes.” They both sit in that, in the bitterness that slips out. A bitterness they both feel.
On the top of the desk, a pinky stretches over to brush the outside of her hand. Fig’s throat gets tight watching it and feeling it.
“Not always, love. Our day will come.”
She reaches over with her pinky too. Collectively they hold their breath when skin touches.
“You think so? You really think so?”
They are leaning too close to one another while there are cameras flying around their heads. Video plays from multiple screens casting shifting lights over the beautiful face that holds a look of fierce yearning. More fingers lay over her own, curling in to hook beneath her own.
“Someday soon, remember I promised you. All the eyes in the world won’t matter.”
Love makes her a fool. It has from the very moment she met Mirabelle in these mines all those years ago. Back then Fig had been a jaded beast that was going to follow in the footsteps of the older kids mentoring her. Closing herself off, relying only on herself, stabbing as many backs as she needed to stay alive. Then a sweet idiot starting choking to death in the mines and that changed her whole life.
“Every step brings us closer so,” Fig clears her throat again and goes back to the computer, scrolling backward to find the door Mirabelle saw, “Let’s start with the organ thrives?”
“Organ thieves one day, retired to our castle to be boneless, lazy wives the next.”
They do not sleep that night. With such a rare gift of time on their side, they do not want to waste it. They cannot share a bed or the soft touch of being in love again. Not when they are fishing for thieves that could return any moment or the possibility of being caught by an unexpected miner showing up. Regardless the time together is a treasured gift. Getting to cut wilting greens with a dull knife in the kitchenette while Mirabelle stirs things into the pot feels domestic. Feels wonderful. Eating from dented tin bowls and playing cards on the floor by the broken window. Talking softly about things they know will not be caught by the cameras. Fig tries her best to stifle her longing so it is not caught. Twice she slaps the cards down and Mirabelle slaps her, accusing her of cheating and Fig laughs her delight.
“I knew you’d notice,” She holds her wife’s eyes when she kisses the back of her own hand and her shoulder where Mirabelle’s hands had slapped her, “I just wanted you to touch me somewhere, somehow.”
Mirabelle chews into the corner of a card just with the canines, watching Fig hungrily. She drags it out between the teeth slow and lets out a long sigh.
“You pick the next game.”
Sixteen hours and some time later they emerge in the stinging afternoon sunlight with the thieves. Guards are waiting outside to speak with their Saint who issues orders in a crisp tone, just loud enough to be heard. Fig meets with the Site Captain to discuss what happened, what she did, and what he should expect to find when he goes down with the new Overseer.
A hush falls over the small group of miners crowded around her and Site Captain Kane who had been waiting to enter the mines and start work for the day. Saint Mirabelle approaches and keeps her grace when the collection bows their head to her.
“Site Captain, if I could? Nameless, you as well please.”
Site Captain licks his dry lips from nerves and gestures for Fig to follow him. Closer, they bow deeper to her to which she gives a polite nod of her head.
“I appreciate the patience in this matter. I understand how this has upset the productive line. I’ve already ensure that your workers are compensated for the hours they lost today.”
Fig’s eyebrows shoot up and she blurts, “Can you do that?”
Site Captain tenses and he whips his head over to curse at her and remind her of her place. She bows her head again.
“It’s alright Site Captain,” Mirabelle is smiling when they lift their heads, “To answer your question Nameless, I can yes. And on that matter, your Princess and your Saint thanks you for your tireless work this night. Without your stoutness and assistance in this matter, these men may have escaped justice. So thank you.”
“Bow!” Hisses the Site Captain.
She bends at the waist with a smile that to onlookers must seem co*cky. To Mirabelle, she knows that it is not misconstrued. A ripple of stillness shocks the crowd from the roaring quiet of a hundred men holding their breath. Something so silent it becomes a ringing in the ears. A reaction to their Saint, their Princess, touching a gloved palm to her stomach and bowing to Aeolfig.
“It was a great honor to serve under you, duch*ess,” Fig says with that same smile in place, “An honor I’m sure many would covet. Forgive my blunt tongue if I’ve not worded my thanks improperly.”
Wind catches her hair that rolls over her shoulders, white and blue like the ocean itself crashing upon the rocks. The Saint is smiling too though just in the eyes.
“The blunt tongue is clever enough and appreciated by your Saint.”
On the platform with blood running into her eyes, they have done it. A horrible trial to cap off the end of their year, the final that will set their grades in stone. With their extra credit from all the attempts made on their lives and doing decent enough in many of their former trials, they have done it.
They have passed their first year at the very top of their class. Whatever else happens after this will not matter. Officially they are untouchable until they graduate, and they cannot be failed out, cannot be removed. They are safe. They have done it.
There is time afterward for the official scores to be checked where they are posted. Time for them to change in their rooms because the official announcement will be done publicly on another hill-net broadcast.
Water ripples from Mirabelle stepping a foot into Fig’s bath and sinking down beneath. Steam rises off the surface in silver trails that is creating a fog in the room. Skin is slick from the water, sliding easily against her own. Her wife cozies herself by relaxing between her legs, leaning back against her chest with a sigh.
“Excuse you,” Fig pulls a clump of blue and white hair off her mouth and pokes her wife in the ribs, “This is my bath.”
Mirabelle stretches so that her toes poke out of the water, arms lifting behind her. A contended sigh is released when she relaxes after the stretch.
“Don’t complain.”
Fig chuckles low, near her wife’s ear, and curls an arm around her waist beneath the water, “Were you getting tired of waiting?”
“Yes. I hate the feeling of dried blood on my skin. It gets so flaky and itchy,” One of her arms lift from the water creating waterfalls of thin silver streams that fall back to the larger collection in a merry way, singing as it breaks the surface, “Scrub it off for me.”
Lovingly she takes the wrist into her palm, twisting the arm from that point to drag a rag over the inner forearm. Water rings where it trickles from the arm, spiraling down to fall from the point of the elbow.
“Are you feeling alright? You didn’t complain at all.” Mirabelle breathes the words into the steam where it is light enough to lift. The echo is a gentle thing. She lays her cheek on the top of her wife’s head.
“Just a little tired. Tomorrow is going to be a big thing. It’s probably good you came in, I was falling asleep.”
“I thought so. You have a bad habit of doing that,” Mirabelle watches with a fond smile when the rag is moved to scrub each of her knuckles and between her fingers, “Do you want to drown and make me a widow?”
“Might do. How soon would you remarry?”
The arm dips back beneath the water and she sits forward, just a bit, so Fig can rub the cloth around the nape of her neck and start going down the spine.
“Near instantly, probably. It would hardly phase me. And I don’t do well without a partner.”
“Or just without me.”
She kisses the wet shoulder once it is clean. Mirabelle shakes under her hands from a soft laugh.
“I can confirm,” She reaches backward to lay her fingers over Fig’s cheek, turning her head to lean back for a kiss, “I do like taking all my armor off and being treated like I’m something gentle and soft and being smothered with your love.”
“Then you are only a needy, demanding princess with me?”
“Yes. Well, you and my new wife once I get her. After you drown. Do my legs as well.”
Fig flicks the rag at her, “Do them your damn self.”
Mirabelle tugs the rag from between her fingers, pouting and huffing, “What do I even keep you for?”
“Nostalgia?”
She hooks her ankle on the tub to lean forward with the rag. A white lather covers the skin in glittering bubbles that spiral with that water running off. Fig smooths her hand through it, along the sleek curve of a muscular thigh to hook behind a knee.
Mirabelle clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth, “Let me finish this before you start anything.”
“I was just helping.”
“Mhm,” The rag is drawn around the knees and, subsequently, her arms are giving a scrub because they are near, “You did marvelous today. Thank you for all of the work you’ve put into this, Figgy. I’m very proud of you.”
Having the pride of this woman is a badge of honor. She does not want to show how pleased it makes her simply because her wife will tease her for it.
“When I get to laze about in your big castle eating cheese and fruit, all the years of you beating the boots off me will be worth it.”
Mirabelle hums to acknowledge that, moving the cloth up her legs to get her hips and torso, “Oh, how I will spoil you. You are going to be the most pampered pet that castle has ever known.”
“Here I expected you to strap a little lunch pale to me and send me off to make use of the degree we will be getting here.”
“No, no. You will be lucky that I don’t chain you to my bed.”
Fig laughs so hard it displaces Mirabelle nestled comfortably between her legs. She hugs her wife around the ribs to share in her joy, to secure a firm hold that makes it lasting.
“I’m only being honest.” She says primly, turning enough that Fig can see her self-satisfied smile.
“There won’t be any duties I’m expected to tend to?”
“No my love,” Mirabelle twists to hold her jaw, holding her eyes so the intensity of her honesty can be known, “You have worked too hard for too long. It is time to be nothing but the one I love and whatever else you decide. But so help me, you had better decide on a safe hobby that will not take or break any more of you.”
“Only after you finish your term as the Saint, of course. Until then I must do this monster hunting work.”
Mirabelle sighs unhappily, “Until then. But you can join me on Saint duty with your degree, from time to time. Working for our empire as a freelancer.”
“Will I have to salute and yes ma’am you?”
“Both as my employee and my wife, yes.”
Fig cups her hand to send a wave of water against her wife. Mirabelle jumps, hissing out a strangled laugh.
Upon the stage they met on the day of the choosing, Aeolfig stands in her school uniform. Starched with intentional creases to create a crisp look. Tucked into the belt is a sash that hangs around them like skirts reaching just above their knees. A cropped jacket with tight sleeves that have buttons running up to the elbows where small garters encircle the bicep there. Sun glances off the shiny dark visor of her cap. Beside her, the Saint is dressed in the same uniform but with more comfort. She is used to stiff militaristic uniforms.
Fig looks over at her hand curled comfortably around the decorative sword hilt hanging from her hip. She looks enchanting. Pride is a thing that makes every natural piece of her beauty exemplified. A small crowd is gathered to watch this awarding for the Captains. Students and professors along with a few family members that were invited to participate. On the four floating digital screens hovering above the audience, showing the live broadcast, Mirabelle looks regal simply by standing there. Firm and imposing in all the places that usually are soft for Fig behind closed doors. Perfectly pleased with herself because the twins look unhappy.
“And that has concluded the interview process for our captain candidates! Each have graduated the process and been traditionally accepted in the program!” Says the Professor who stands at the podium this time. There are two other professors beside him along with a veiled VI whose job is to change slides on the prompter.
“Bids for sponsorship will begin shortly but first, my favorite part! I will begin at the bottom of the list,” The Prince sneers when their Professor turns to gesture to him and his co-captain, “Prince Ran’zn, Captain now official.”
Professor lists accolades earned during the first year of trials that dictate the type of study they were embark on. Badges that come from the grading system that only mirrors a normal academic setting. Merits that will supply market value and cause the planets viewing to sponsor them. Securing jobs before they have even graduated, buyers who will pay for equipment and lodging costs on off planets for extra credit jobs. Some even will pay tuition fees if they believe the captain is of enough value to them upon graduation. Sponsors pay for the assignments that take them off world and students are in charge of marking experience and writing the papers on what they learned and strategies used.
The Prince glares at the vision of himself in the broadcast. Glares at his list of potential sponsors already showing on the side of the screen that he knows would have been longer if he had not placed beneath his sister and Mirabelle.
Neither is the Princess pleased with her ranking though she seems less burdened by it. More of an annoyance that she rolls her eyes at and disregards in the moment of its conception.
“And lastly, the Moon and the Mountain who have surpassed the expectations placed upon them. They have finished the year with impressive marks. On some of the technicals they fell low due to confusion on the assignment and a clear disapline from the Saint’s military training where it was not needed. However, I have rarely seen a team work as well together as these two. If ever the Moon and the Mountain have embodied the traditional spirit of connection, it has been done so through them. Saint Mirabelle, you have been placed in the fifteenth position out of two hundred present Captains. Though I cannot speak for them as I am just your four’s professor, I must say it has been a privlage to be in my position. You are exemplary. As for the Mountain, Aeolfig has placed in the thirteenth for the Co-Captains. Your versatility has awarded you fourteen badges and your support of your captain has earned three. This is something you should be quite proud of. Therefore, it is my pleasure to announce you the top of my class. Where you will fall next year, who knows! Your career here at the Academy is only just beginning! Con graduations to all of our fine Captains and Co-Captains that have made it past their first year.”
Mirabelle and Aeolfig both bow with the others when the cue is given off screen. Hands are shook when small boards with their awarded badges are handed out. After they are in hand, they are given a moment each to appear on screen. First Ran’zn who gives a stiff bow beside his Co-Captain. Ral’en gives her Co-Captain a fierce hug and a kiss upon her brow. They both look back to the camera smiling afterward.
When the camera shifts to them, Mirabelle looks over at Aeolfig.
“We did it.”
Fig shows her board with all the pins in it that she will be expected to keep on a sash to be worn with a formal uniform.
“We did.”
“Are you ready?”
Fig lifts one of her chunky black brows, “Ready for what?”
“For me to keep that promise I made.” Then, without preamble, Mirabelle stands on her toes to kiss Aeolfig. Under the hot lights that shine down on them, in front of the hovering cameras broadcasting this procession over the holo-net. Fig curls her hand around her wife’s jaw, the hand with her ring on it and smiles into the kiss.
There is much work ahead of them. Much still they must weather together and then more time after that before they can get their happily ever after. All of their life they have learned to love through the trials and the blood and separation but now they are close. They are free to love one another in a public space and that is the biggest step forward. Anything else that is left to do will be done together.
Mirabelle pulls away smiling and, while holding her eyes and not minding the camera, takes her wedding ring off the finger it usually sits on. In full view she moves it to the proper one and beams.
Fig holds up her fist, “Phase one down.”
Mirabelle bumps her fist against Fig’s, ring making a soft metallic sound where it hits her prosthetic, “Phase two go.”
“I love you.”
Mirabelle closes her eyes from relief, from shaking off years of hiding who she is, from joy and love and excitement. When she opens them again, there is nothing but determination.
“I love you too.”
