Mae-Ying Allen ~ 3-19-2029 9:48 AM GMT
Mae-Ying wakes up on a cot in a windowless room. A bottle of water and a few aspirin sit on a low table beside her, which is good; her head is pounding. She sits up, opens the bottle of water, and takes a sip.
Next to the bottle is a signet ring similar to the one Niva wears. The rose is made of delicate chips of ruby; the cross is made of a gray stone she can’t identify. The golden band glows with the dull sheen left by countless years of wear. Mae-Ying puts it on her ring finger. It fits perfectly. Shuddering, she takes it off and puts it in the pocket of her jacket.
She swallows the aspirin, then gets up to look for a bathroom. Outside is a short hallway with a few other doors leading off of it, all open, revealing empty rooms with cots. At the end of the hallway there's a small bathroom, its door likewise ajar. She uses the bathroom and cleans herself up as best she can, then continues down an adjoining hallway in search of something to eat.
At the end of the hall she finds an unoccupied gymnasium. Fitness machines from various eras line the walls; the center of the space is covered in thick mats. She peeks inside the locker room beyond the far wall. She can hear a shower running inside, but other than that it’s silent.
She leaves the gymnasium and heads back down the hall. Rounding a corner, she nearly collides with Benny Fowler.
“Sorry!” she says.
"Hey! You could barrel through walls, huh?"
"Once I get going!" She smiles. “Do you know where I could get some food? I’m pretty hungry…”
“The dining room’s in the new wing,” he says. “C’mon.”
“Thanks. How are you doing?”
"Tired,” he says. “Just got back from London. Figured nobody had time to show you around yet so I thought I’d come by, see if you wanted a tour."
"So… where are we, exactly?" Mae-Ying asks.
"Outside Speckleton,” he says. “It's a little town north of Manchester. You picked up your ring, right?"
“Yeah.” She takes it out of her pocket. “Is it just a symbolic thing, or...?"
"No. See, when you reincarnate, which Lawyers almost always do, there's no guarantee that you're gonna become a Knight again, right? You're a whole different person. You get a different upbringing, different education. Changes your worldview."
“Right.”
"First time you ever became a Knight, in any of your lives, they made that ring,” he says. “It's kind of a status thing to have one that's been over a few lives. Anyway, the Augusta holds onto them in between lives. They always show up back here, and they always know who they belonged to. That's what the Augusta says, anyhow."
“Who’s the Augusta?”
Benny frowns. “Niva said she introduced you.”
“You mean the older lady who looks like a librarian?”
He laughs. “Yeah, that’s her.”
Mae-Ying looks at her ring. "It’s so tiny. Makes me wonder what I'd do if I'd have turned out to be a man."
“Lotta people just keep them on cords or in their pocket or whatever,” Benny says.
“Niva was wearing hers when she was disguised as that reporter…”
“Yea, well, Niva’s an idiot,” he says. “She’s got this crazy prophet schtick going on, thinks she can talk to angels. Crazy shit.”
"She thinks she's a prophet?"
“She gets visions,” Benny says. “Some of the time they're true. She thinks she's got some kinda special connection to the Divine or whatever."
Mae-Ying frowns. “Okay…”
They pass a young woman clutching a stack of files. She smiles at Benny, who gives her a quick nod. He lowers his voice. "Between you and me, Niva's the one who figured out about you. You know, that you were one of us. She told Reed that an angel came to her in a dream with it."
“An angel?”
“You saw those statues guarding the doors, right?"
“Yeah,” Mae-Ying says. “Niva called them Watchers.”
“They’re basically angels. Niva spends a lot of time in the hall, just staring at them."
“I guess everyone needs a hobby...”
Benny pushes open a door leading into a large, well-kept garden, where spring flowers are just starting to show buds. Beyond the garden are rolling hills of grass, and in the distance is a forest full of bare trees.
"New wing's this way,” Benny says. “It's faster to go around the building."
“This place is kind of a ghost town,” Mae-Ying remarks.
“Things aren’t going so well for us right now. Haven’t been for a while.”
“Why not?”
"There's this thing we call the cycle of ages,” he says. “The exact structure of the cycle differs depending on who you talk to, but the gist is, there's a flaw in reality. Like, when whoever or whatever up there made everything, they didn't bake it right and there's a crack in the bottom. That crack lets in bad juju. People like Reed and Niva call it Pathos--sort of the opposite of the power we channel."
Mae-Ying nods.
"Theory is, the cycle happens because Pathos builds up. It gets into the system, starts gumming up the works. The level of bad in the system is a measure, roughly, of where we are in the cycle."
“You’re going to tell me we’re near the end, aren’t you.”
"That's what Reed thinks. What I think, too,” Benny says. “See, anyone, even mortals, can sense Pathos. You can feel when it’s being used, but if you train your senses, you start to realize it’s always around us. It’s everywhere in the world, we’re swimming in it."
As they walk through the garden, Benny continues, “Anyway, there’s a kind of Initiate called a Sorcerer. I won’t get into why they’re different from us, but some of them, really old, powerful people, they can have prophecies. Few decades ago they started talking about how the amount of Pathos was too much, how something bad was going to happen, or something horrible was waking up… and then a decade or so ago, they started disappearing. The Sorcerers, that is.”
"Disappearing? Why?"
"That's the million dollar question. I figure they were killed by someone who doesn't want us to know how bad things are getting."
Mae-Ying frowns. “Mass murder doesn't seem like a good way of keeping people calm.”
“But it’s a good way of making sure people don’t talk,” Benny says.
“True,” Mae-Ying says. “Did these old initiates pose a threat to any particular group of people?”
"It’s more complicated than that,” Benny says. “Sure, they all had enemies. But a lot of them had mutually exclusive enemies, see? They were on opposite sides of a fight."
Benny leads Mae-Ying around the side of the building, an old English manor house, with one wing decidedly newer than the one they came from. As they close in on the new wing, Mae-Ying’s watch starts beeping. She grabs her Avatar glasses from her jacket pocket and puts them on. The screen is completely covered in messages and alerts.
She groans. “Oh God. My real life is back.”
“You got one of them wireless things that hooks into your glasses?"
“Yeah…”
"Maybe don't go over all that right now. I shoulda mentioned something..."
Mae-Ying ignores him. Her email inbox is full of search alerts--links to blog articles containing her name. The headline of the first article reads Senator Kills Legislative Director, Self in Apparent Murder-Suicide.
“Oh my God!” Mae-Ying scrolls furiously. “Oh no, no...”
Benny rubs the back of his head. "That's what the Keepers do when this shit happens..."
“The-- what?”
“Sorry, there’s a group, another faction like us, called the Ancient Brotherhood of the Rarefied Light. They call themselves the ‘Brotherhood’ or the ‘Light Keepers’ for short, and most of us call them the Keepers because it’s even shorter and they hate it.” He laughs. “Anyway, they keep an eye on popular media narratives, scrub out any mention of Initiates, that kind of thing.”
“So… they’re the Illuminati?” she asks, baffled.
“No, I mean, the Illuminati were a real thing, back in the 1770s? You don’t wanna call them that, either; we’ve got a lot of Jewish folks in the ranks, and when you boil it down a lot of those conspiracy theories are just antisemitism…”
She pulls off her glasses and runs a hand through her hair. “I can’t believe this. What am I going to do?”
"We'll get you set up with new papers,” Benny says. “You might even be able to keep the name."
“It’s not me I’m worried about. My mom is going to lose it!”
Benny sighs. “Look… I'll maybe talk to some people, see what we can work out before Reed gets involved, so you can get in touch with her."
Mae-Ying takes a deep breath. "Okay. Thanks."
"Don't thank me,” he says. “Kids shouldn't make their parents worry."
Benny leads Mae-Ying into a large hall with a long oak table covered in linens. About a dozen people sit at the table, poking at food on china, reading newspapers or staring at smart glasses. Six men dressed in livery stand along the wall. There’s a menu penned in immaculate script and posted near the door.
Mae-Ying lingers by the door, uncomfortable. “So, um… how do we order?"
"The Knights are kinda big for formality and tradition," Benny mutters. "Just sit down and one of those stiffs over there will come ask you what you want."
She nods and takes a place at the table. Benny sits down next to her, holding up a finger to one of the liveried men.
"So where are you from?" she asks.
"Boston,” he says. "I was a cop. Twelve years on the force."
“So you probably get why I feel like I've been abducted to some kind of Hogwarts continuing education center."
Benny snorts. "For me, it was a little easier, I think. Just transitioning from one kind of police work to another."
"How long have you been here?"
"Nine years,” he says. “They beamed me up right after my thirty-third birthday."
"Do you have family?"
"I used to, long time ago. Before I got here."
Mae-Ying winces. “God, I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. "Shit's tough all over. Look, I gotta go see to some paperwork. I'll tell Reed you're in here so he can send along whoever's gonna show you the ropes." He looks over his shoulder and nods to the butlers.
"Great. Thanks, Benny."
A butler steps forward and looms over her side. "Madame?”
"Hi,” Mae-Ying says. “I would like... uh... some coffee? And yogurt with granola?"
"Very good, madame."
Before long he returns, bearing a coffee service on a silver tray. The service is also silver, chased with gold. He sets the tray down next to her and pours coffee from the pot into a delicate china cup.
“Does madame take sugar or cream?” he asks.
“No, thank you,” she says.
He nods and sets the coffee pot down on the tray before returning to his post. Soon another man brings out a bowl of yogurt and granola, also silver, sets it down, bows to her and leaves. Yogurt in a silver bowl? This place is absurd.
She takes a sip of her coffee and winces. Traditional British coffee is no better than the common variety.
Before Mae-Ying can finish her food, Niva enters the room. Mae-Ying doesn’t bother to hide her dread; she can feel her upper lip curl as Niva walks over to her and stands by her side.
"The Marshal has informed me that I am to be your first tutor,” Niva says.
A guy with close-cut sandy blond hair coughs into his tea from down the table. He has a broad, round face and the same youthful features Mae-Ying is coming to expect from other Lawyers -- assuming he is one. Maybe he’s just a college kid.
“Great,” Mae-Ying says to Niva.
“We will start your training immediately.”
“Yeah, uh, I’m going to finish my breakfast first.”
Niva purses her lips. "So be it. Meet me in the garden when you are finished."
“Kay,” Mae-Ying says.
Niva turns around and leaves. Mae-Ying continues eating, making no attempt to rush. The young man down the table leans toward her and says, "Hey.”
“Hello,” Mae-Ying says.
“What, uh, what caste are you?"
“I don’t know,” Mae-Ying says. “What’s a caste?”
The young man blinks rapidly. “You know… Prosecutor, Investigator, Judge or Executioner?”
“I just got here. I don’t know about any of that stuff. Although I guess Benny said something about me being an Investigator…”
The man exhales and leans back. "Oh."
"Why do you ask?"
"Marshal Reed doesn't use Avraham for training, normally. Thought you might be something unusual."
“Huh. Well, I guess not.”
"I'm Ed, by the way,” he says, extending a hand. “Ed Wallace. Prosecutor."
"Nice to meet you, Ed. I'm Mae-Ying Allen."
"American?"
“Yeah. I’m from San Francisco, originally.”
"I’ve only been to the States a few times. Expect I’ll be going back soon, though, I just finished training. I’m one of the only Prosecutors we have, and--"
"Give it a rest, Wallace, we’ve got fourteen Prosecutors based at the Manor, not even counting you..." a dark-skinned South Asian woman mutters without looking up from her paper.
“You’re not missing much,” Mae-Ying says. "America's kind of a hole. Anyway. I'd love to stay and chat, but I probably shouldn't keep Avraham waiting any longer than strictly necessary."
“Nice meeting you,” Ed says.
“You too.” Mae-Ying places her spoon next to her bowl and gets up to leave.
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