He sat in the theatre, a place of cold concrete dulled by copper accents, murals of the builder adorned each pillar. Geometric, precise, brutalist. They sat high, in a private box maybe thirty feet above those so called common people. He was beside the minister of finance, one Aleister Marlow, a stately man in his later years. He had heard the man enjoyed art and hoped to use that to his advantage, to give him a last chance. He didn't deserve it.
"I still don't understand why you brought us to see this Arron." The statesman said, gesturing at the play before them.
Arron had seen it several times. It was the tale of a mentally deficient man living his life. A simple thing, yet as impactful as those burning rocks that fall from the stars. Before the cultural reform there had been few pieces of art or literature allowed under the church. Cautionary tales and educational and above all else theology and holy literature.
"I'm trying to show you a perspective." He said tartly.
Aleister exhaled sharply. Unimpressed.
"Yes but what I mean is why bother. Your conclave, your secret order," He said, lacing his words with irony "You've already won. Why persist?" he dragged on.
You're the reason, Aleister. He wanted to roar, beat the man then and there, shatter the man's skull on the concrete enclosure and make a parody of him. He settled for clenching his jaw.
"About as secret as your affairs, Aleister. Besides, I fought a war of attrition. I didn't win, I took what I could get," Arron replied, "and now to clean the board." He said. Hushed, still wondering if this dog was worth offering a bone.
And a dog he was by what his wife had mentioned just that afternoon, a vengeful raven she seemed to him.
He ignores the disquiet in the minister's face, he had heard that last part. then the slight downturn of submission. His favourite part of the performance was up, a scene in which the man, Markus meets his mother after many years. She accepts him. He could not reciprocate.
"For posterity's sake, whether we live to see it or not, whether they accept it or not."
The other man only sighed as if he already understood Arrons point. After a small while Arron spoke again.
"Do you believe in the singularity?" He asked.
Aleister frowned, not expecting the conversation to lead as such.
"Naturally, you do remember one of our colleagues manages it." He said with feigned concern.
"What if I could tell you we may already be on the verge of transcendence?" He asked the older man, looking at the old bracelets of his god, gold inlays and quarts wrapped in those bands. Gilded shackles, now bound on one arm instead of both. "Would you see it as heaven?" He asked the old financer trying to keep the trembling building in his leg steady. "Or a prison."
That took Aleister longer to respond to.
"I suppose both. Instrumentality is a choice yet being forced into that afterlife. That's not singularity at all." Clever dog.
"From our flesh he'll be born again." Arron mumbled. Aleister's eyes glanced at Arron's looking for something. There was nothing, there hadn't been for years. Aleister. Arron's inferior, in all but name, truly looked uncertain then.
"Do you really think extradition of these people from our afterlife will affect anything?" Arron asked, gesturing at the performance. "We will be of no body, of one mind." He finally turned from the play to look at the man proper.
"No." Aleister said to Arron's surprise. "But there are still many pillars built on that idea, even now in your liberal age." he finished in a dry tone that Arron had expected from the start. To the tone of resignation.
"And you feel no want to change that?"
"Why fix a working motor, why kill a useful soldier?" The minister sighed, after a moment he spoke again. "Have you ever worked in a kitchen, Arron?" He asked, now his turn to pull Arron off track. "When working in such a place, it seems disorganised, unruly, out of time. Volatile" He continued after finding a word he liked, the droning tempo of a school teacher touching his voice. "Some things are dangerous, you have to skirt and redirect. Nothing is ever a simple straight line and because of this you have rules. Spoken or not. Government in very similar. Make a change you may get burned."
Burnt indeed. Arron humoured himself, subvocally.
"I see your point." Arron said after another minute. The play, The lonely pigeon was its name, was coming to an end. "But I think governance is far too cold for that metaphor, I see it more as a stream. redirectable chaos."
Marlow huffed, all interest in the conversation lost. He stood then. "I'm leaving. I've got meetings early tomorrow." Why would he think any differently if he worked for one of only three holy professions.
"Any thoughts on what I've said?" Arron tried once again. "Or are you afraid to be burnt?"
"You're wasting your time Arron. No one is concerned with the feelings of ghosts." That felt ironic to Arron coming from a man who so adamantly swore his faith in that demise, that singularity he would never join. Never deserved to join.
Then for the smallest instant Arron questioned whether he'd be allowed to go. He knew he wouldn't allow himself.
Arron thanked him for his time, even smiled, made a quip about the struggles of work and age. He saw through the lie before it was even spoken. He would be dead an hour or so after getting into his motor car. Aaron gave his wife the photographs this morning. She paid the driver to shoot him, such is the order of The Conclave. he didn't even think Aleister knew the lady Marlow worked for him.
It was a shame, he'd been a playable piece for a while, though now his tastes outweighed that usefulness. Arron doubted he'd even known about the handler he'd had tracking him.
Marlow was a clever man but not so subtle. Transactions of large sums of money to a brothel near an outer motor-park, one known for treating certain, 'appetites.' Arron grimaced at the very thought, sighed then continued watching the play.
****
The next day Arron was heading down to that very motor-park to set Torrin off. He passed temporary homes of off-white ceramic, painted sheet metal and concrete. The walled hostels of the outer city.
Arron remembered when The Northmen rekindled their raids, when those last sacrifices of the old order ran dry. Now the Kinan Steppe was little more than a field of mud and viscera, patrolled by beasts. The people in this area reflected that. They didn't have the lively eyes of the city folk, or even, the eyes of those from the country, dull but content. Their eyes were those who'd seen death, beauty and nature eviscerated and defiled, turned to parody. Eyes like Arron's.
The landscape that had raised them, eased their water from mountain to river, nourished turquoise grass that fed their cattle from which they were sustained. That land had brought them life, now it was dead. A fifty mile stretch of; bunkers, tunnels, trenches and camps, wire and bone, sheet metal and shattered ceramic.
He stood there unable to hide his concern for those people. Those ghosts, still visible. To his surprise he even felt slight pity for those of the prison army, fodder for the endless grinder of war.
After reaching the motor-park a half mile by half mile square which doubled as a market. Torrin, timely as ever, sat waiting at a cafe. He took up space when he sat, cross legged on his chair, a demeanour of self certainty that nearly no other in the park was able to display.
Though Arron supposed losing everything would take your confidence. He knew it did.
***
"Couldn't have done this sooner?" Torrin asked, sipping from a bright pastel mug who's colour scheme seemed to contradict everything Arron knew about the man.
"You're not exactly one to talk about good timing." Arron replied with a telling smile, taking a seat beside his subordinate he started.
"The cars parked in lot seventy, files inside will detail the job, other information will be telegraphed ahead of you if necessary." He said, any pretence of humour gone as fast as it appeared.
"Tell me where I'm going at least?" Torrin probed.
"The steppe." He replied to Torrin's shock.
"The steppe? Why are we there? MPs finally gave up trying to masquerade as us?"
"No Torrin because we don't exist." Arron said as if to an infant, "And you would do you good to remember tensions around that group right now."
Torrin sarcastically raised his hand in defence, sticking a pinky out as he took another sip. Arron did smile at that. "Torrin, the pinky means you have the syth." He lowered the digit promptly. "It's a translation job they've captured a Northman or two apparently. We need a translator, that's you."
"So you're sending me?" Torrin asked bemused. "To translate?" Torrin was maybe thirty, Arron struggled to remember ages but he'd originally met him as a teen. He still found it hard to see him as more than such. He'd met the boy after the chain of assassinations that started the 'liberal age.' As aleister had called it.
"You have other jobs more suited to you on the way." Arron told the younger man, tartly as to end the conversation. "I've left books about their language and culture in the car with you. Please at least try to create a good cover." He reminded his student, getting up and starting the long march back to the capitol building.
"I promise you won't even be able to tell it was me." He said to Arron's back, too loud. That earned him a glance of red hot fury from his mentor. go back ten years and he'd probably had Torrin put in a cell for a month for unorthodox thought. He didn't technically say anything to earn that offence but he would have done it. This is a different world now. He liked to think that at least.
He left Torrin to set off once Laurence arrived, not knowing it to be the last time they would speak face to face.
***
He'd given Laurence orders to manage Torrin, he was a good agent, efficient. He was also almost completely void of empathy and tended to let his anger get away from him. This is where Laurence was different, he'd hold his hand close, at least until he needed it.
The real reason he sent Torrin was because an agent like him, as useful as he was, is also incredibly dangerous. Difficult to manage or redirect, violent and impulsive. He doubted there'd be any tact in the work Torrin would do for him over the coming weeks. He knew though for certain that it would be efficient.
Another thing that reminded Arron of himself. his younger self at least. That terrified him.
It was a few hours later when Arron after making several errands, met with his ever observant agents and learned the day's goings.
Ostensibly, the captain of the inner guard had been seen in a brothel. This he knew to be a lie. as despicable as the man could be, he was ever a purist, a stoik of classic temperament. Not unlike Torrin as ironic as that was but with less humour and more frown lines. The news he heard after was even less to his interest though, he'd received it from a cleaner at the Marlow estate. Aleister was dead.
He did get news that the outer city had five more stabbings.
"All the same, all missing eyes and tongues, removed perfectly. All performing an old empire servant's bow." His agent had said.
Arron had to take a moment to think about that but decided to leave it to the guard for now. He told Rebekah another of his zealots to research philosophy. Cyyria, the capitol had never encountered such a killer but from what Arron had seen of previous killings, this one felt vengeful, imaginative. The killer was likely intelligent. He carried on out of the alley and met her in pocketing a photograph that Rebekah had passed him. She pressed her fingers to the builders mark before she left before leaving herself. Arron saw a lot of her in that corpse, blind to the world and unwilling to speak. Always prepared to serve.
— — —-
He'd walked more than two miles straight up the curb of the fourth highway. Pulling his way from that porcelain ghetto on legs as haggard as its residence he entered the city proper. The inner city to the builders mercy was smaller, two square miles and perfectly geometric.
off puttingly practical buildings of solid concrete lined every road and path, plaguing every horizon. Only recognised via number and to Arron's great appreciation, murals. not only of the builder and his nauseous geometry. Of rivers and hills, beautiful yet, morose sites. Shades of blue.
It disturbed Arron that if not for the Conclave these pieces would have been destroyed, some artists would have been executed if they had offended the church. Compromising art, they'd call it, dangerous to the people.
Dangerous to the church he though. he always made the distinction between church and god. They were never the same, he'd be sickened by that city, he was sickened by it.
Too little too late. Arron decided, moving on from the piece of art. An old man pushing a rock up a hill, the analogy was not wasted on him.
In that moment he too wondered when he'd become a ghost. An evergreen, a cancer even, leaves or tumours clouding the lonely self and bringing forth the vengeful spectre. When did the light leave his eyes. When did he become invisible.
He had a meeting with Marie next week. At least he could look forward to that. Till then he needed to move forward.