Chapter 2: Reihan
The man’s eyes were glassy as a bauble. Reihan remembered playing with baubles when she was new, blue like the clouds that seeped into her bedroom through spider-thin cracks in the wall and through windows that had been left open. And play was good for cognitive development, according to the founders. All the newest research supported it. So, baubles it was.
“Respond”, Reihan demanded. The man stared at her.
“It is your duty to respond if you are able to. You are now part of St. Leopold’s Asylum for the Mentally Incapacitated, funded by the taxpayer”, Reihan continued, taking a lecturing tone. The speech was easy to remember, even though nobody still called the Asylum by its full name. It was the only one of its kind that was left.
“It is your duty to respond if you are able to, lest you waste valuable researcher time and the resources of the facility.”
She concluded, aware that she was essentially repeating herself. But it was fine. None of the other seaver on guard duty were paying attention to her patient, having deemed him a minimal risk to himself and those around him. Their focus lay across the admissions hall where five other inquiries were taking place. Someone else might need their help. Admissions were one of the riskiest times in the entire process.
Sunlight was awash as the day was barely beginning but already drawing colour from the place. Sometimes she forgot how long it had been between one day and another.
She focused on her charge once more and couldn’t suppress a sigh. Completely unresponsive. They’d put him in a cell so they could have something to show to his family when guilt drove them to the Asylum on birthdays and the week after public holidays. It didn’t matter how often she told them there was no cure for the Submergence. She even had a file that ran through all variants of those conversations. But people didn’t seem to listen.
“Under the Thirteenth Government of the Travelling City, you are hereby committed to St. Leopold’s Asylum for the Mentally Incapacitated”, Reihan concluded, then pricked the man’s fingers with a sterilised needle.
No pain found its way into the bauble-like blue of his eyes. It was strange how strong memories stirred within her this morning. She wondered if she had manifested the blue into her patient’s eyes. How inappropriate if that were the case. She hoped nobody would notice, that no old pictures would show the man with brown or green eyes, some time in his prime, doing this or that impressive thing. Reihan sometimes forgot what humans did for fun. Her few reference points were less than reliable.
A soft knock towards the other side of the hall made her look up. A young seaver called Ember hurried over to Reihan and asked if she could do the rounds in the lowest level of the Asylum. Ember had only come to them two weeks ago, and she was still uncomfortable with the place. Most seaver hoped that after their time in the Upside-Down Palace, they would be called to a position in Government or at the Manifestation Mineshafts, where they never had to do anything. Some hoped to be called into a private individual’s household, which could be as fun and exciting as it could be torturous. Nobody ever chose the Asylum, so a lottery decided who would be stationed there. Ember still held out the futile hope that she might be transferred one day.
“Is there no one on duty for level five?”, Reihan asked. Ember shifted uncomfortably. The young seaver looked so unfinished, Reihan thought. No modifications to her skin, no alterations to her hair. But, then again, she would have looked exactly the same a century ago.
“Well, there is”, Ember admitted. Reihan narrowed her eyes. They held one another’s gaze for a moment, then Reihan sighed.
“I’ll go with you, but I won’t cover your shift. You need to get comfortable with them.”
“I don’t think that’s possible”, Ember complained, but she looked a little happier when Reihan got up. They left the admissions hall and found a small spiral staircase that led into the bowels of the asylum. As Reihan held on to its black iron railing, she felt the crumbling rust beneath her fingers. They had so few visitors that the seaver had not bothered expanding or updating the architecture. And it wasn’t as though anyone had shown them how to.
Ember’s footsteps trailed slowly, and Reihan threw a disparaging glance towards the girl.
“You know, they don’t require any more than our other patients. All you need to do is change the occasional bandage.”
“I just don’t want to do anything wrong”, Ember murmured, but Reihan did not believe her. She might not be particularly good at reading humans, but she could predict every thought a young seaver had when they started working at the Asylum. Ember hated the patients. She was angry at their digressions, bored by the work, and frustrated that the rest of her life would be spent cleaning up after their mess.
“It’s not like it matters if you fill out a form incorrectly”, Reihan replied, “Who do you think will care? What matters is that you show up.”
Ember responded only with pregnant silence. Their steps echoed against the white walls of the Asylum until they reached the lowest floor. Reihan opened the door to a long corridor of small cells, each with glass windows through which the inhabitants could be observed and with small clipboards that sat in a folder by the doors.
“Okay, let’s start”, Reihan said, steering towards the closest door on the left. Inside sat Eugene, who had once been a promising city official, working on developing youth initiatives in the lower parts of the city. He had been their patient for fifteen years after he had been exposed to a flood of cloud sea that had seeped in through his open window. He had been warned not to live so far down the rock face but insisted on staying close to the people he was trying to help.
“Dead gods”, Ember whispered, “I can never get used to him.”
“You will”, Reihan promised.
The left side of Eugene’s body had melted when he was exposed to the clouds. Just by a few centimetres, but it was enough to serve as a reminder of the grotesque impermanence of skin. The other half of his body was mercifully hidden beneath a heap of claws, scales and feathers that had grown into a twisted tower atop his shoulder.
A talented Enforcer could have reversed all this damage in an instant. But too much of the cloud sea still clung to Eugene from when he had first been Submerged, even after all these years. They couldn’t do anything about it except clean up the stray manifestations Eugene’s dreams sometimes conjured into reality, into his little cell at the end of the world.
Reihan checked the clipboard.
“He was given depressants for the pain five hours ago. He’ll only need them again in the evening.”
“How do we even know that he’s in pain?”, Ember asked, looking at Eugene’s bauble-like eyes. They were empty like the moon, shining brightly in the dark.
“We don’t. It’s a precaution. We would not want him to suffer. Especially not while we collect skin and blood samples for the researchers.”
“Why not – ?”
Ember paused, falling silent once more. Reihan turned around to see the young seaver restlessly moving about as if to escape her thoughts.
“Why not what?”, Reihan asked, remembering every step of this conversation. Seamus had talked her around the same corners a lifetime ago.
“Why not just let them die? These people are never going to get better, are they?”
Reihan shook her head.
“These won’t. With enough time, perhaps one of the humans will find a cure. But honestly, I doubt it.”
She sighed.
“And if they did, it’d be dangerous to use. It would encourage even more people to douse themselves in the clouds to gain godlike powers. And this rock is already overflowing with recklessness as it is.”
“So, what are we doing this for?”
Ember’s eyes were bright, and Reihan forced herself to remember that she was still very new.
“Because what we do gives hope to the families. Even if their loved ones might never recover, they will be taken care of.”
“But what for?”, Ember repeated, louder this time.
“Because hope is the most powerful weapon we wield. Drive the humans into despair, and they’ll kill us all. Give them too much power, and they’ll do likewise. But give them just a little hope, however fleeting, and most continue as normal. Content with the fantasy of things changing, even if they never do.”
Seamus’s words echoed through Reihan’s mouth as if he was there to speak them with her. Ember gazed at her for a few moments longer, defiant of her lot in life, but then she finished the rest of the corridor alone.
Reihan liked to take her lunch at the same time in the same spot. She had discovered it on her seventeenth birthday, and roughly one hundred years later, it still held a similar appeal. A quiet, abandoned courtyard at the back end of the Asylum, whose quiet corners were full of nesting birds. The lush overhang of trees peaked just over the top of the high stone walls, and during afternoons the little square was flooded with pale sunlight.
No one really thought about this spot much, so it didn’t change. Reihan liked that. She took her lunch to the only table left after all this time and placed her chair in the same spot, scraping the black steel against the stone underneath her feet. She leaned her head into the sun and filled her stomach with the same burning soup that she ate every day, kept hot by a speck of concentration.
It was fine. Seaver weren’t supposed to use their manifestation abilities – people weren’t supposed to know they had them – but she was just heating some soup.
The Asylum could be loud. Sometimes the Submerged screamed their hearts and lungs out, trying to escape the nightmares that were conjured up by the remnants of the mind fog. It never truly left you once you had bathed in the manifest subconscious that surrounded the lower overhangs and cliffsides of the Travelling City. Reihan thought she deserved the odd treat for spending every day of her life in this place.
It was fine. Taking care of humans was what the seaver had been created for, after all. At great expense to the Travelling City. It was only fair that she paid back her dues.
“Mind some company?”
Reihan sighed. Showing this spot to Phillippe had been a mistake. Or, well, she hadn’t exactly shown him. On his twenty-third visit to the Asylum, Phillippe had demanded to observe everything she did, step by step. Whether it had been a futile attempt to help or to criticise, she wasn’t sure. He had been in one of his most insufferable moods, jumping from tangent to tangent as he chattered away incessantly. She had considered skipping lunch that day, but seaver were made to require specific food intakes. If she hadn’t eaten, she might not have made it back to her rooms on the top floor of the Asylum.
Although she should have just eaten in the canteen. Then Phillippe wouldn’t know this place existed. Her little refuge from people like him.
“I do”, she said slowly, taking a deliberately slow spoonful of her soup. Phillippe rolled his eyes and manifested another chair opposite her.
Or – no. Reihan paid closer attention to the human body facing her. Small but noticeable breasts, encased in a corseted dress. A heap of red curls floating down to the bodice. Skilfully applied make-up, but then again, Reihan didn’t think she’d seen Phillippe without glittering lids on more than a handful of occasions. Only the eyes and some facial features had remained the same. Yellow irises, set in deep eye sockets, surrounded by rolling cheekbones and a long nose. There was a stigma against changing one’s eye colour in the Travelling City.
“Well, that’s just too bad”, Phillippe replied, sat down, and sipped Reihan’s coffee. She scrunched up her flawless face.
“Ugh. Do you have to put that much sugar in that?”
“Seaver require several nutritional additives to their diet.”
Phillippe gave her an incredulous look, and Reihan had to resist the urge to smirk. Seaver could eat anything they wanted. That wasn’t to say that it wasn’t fun to confuse the humans every now and again.
“Are you okay?”, Reihan asked after Phillippe stared into space for a few seconds too long. It wasn’t as if Phillippe interrupted her lunch every day. Like everything about her, her routine was infuriatingly unpredictable.
“Feeling female?”, she asked after Phillippe remained silent, “or was that a client request?”
She tried to phrase the question as carefully as she could. Phillippe did not tend to speak of her work at the Brothel of Transformative Curiosities. Or maybe she just didn’t speak about it to Reihan. Like most humans, she probably assumed that the seaver did not get curious.
“Hm?”, Phillippe said, her eyes slowly focusing back into the present. Reihan repeated herself, and Phillippe barked out a laugh.
“Can’t it be both?”
She winked.
“Being female I’ve enjoyed for a few days now. The get-up? That’s my client.”
She groaned and tugged on her bodice.
“Do you have any idea how uncomfortable corsets are? They really dig into every single rib known to the human body.”
She made it disappear with a thought and replaced it with a flowing silk blouse.
“I wouldn’t know”, Reihan replied drily, looking down at the scratchy white uniform all seaver wore at the Asylum.
“Really? They don’t make you dress you up all pretty every now and again? For a nice little dance or – ah, for some horrifying blood ritual?”
Phillippe’s eyes sparkled with mad imagination.
“To keep up morale or to recharge your secret seaver powers?”
“Excuse me?”
Reihan’s eyes narrowed.
“Contrary to what you might believe, we’re not dolls that you humans get to dress up for your gratification.”
“Dressing up for others hardly turns you into a doll”, Phillippe scoffed, “We all play the roles we’re given. Fulfilling other people’s fantasies is an art form, and there’s nothing wrong with being thorough.”
Reihan felt irritated after her conversation with Ember and irritated at having her lunch interrupted. She knew she should be polite, but she just didn’t have it in her. If Phillippe wanted to talk about herself, Reihan would oblige.
“Yes, and with the right justification, people will do just about anything for a bit of praise and a whole lot of privilege”, she snapped.
Phillippe shrugged, but she could tell the comment had hit its target.
“Everyone wants to get ahead, Reihan.”
“Not if it means hurting others.”
“I didn’t – I mean, I….”
Her eyes glazed over for a second, then she snarled.
“That’s bloody rich coming from a seaver. Our very own glorified execution commando.”
“I follow orders, Phillippe.”
“And if you were willing to break a rule or two rather than mindlessly sticking to your precious orders, maybe you wouldn’t be stuck down here.”
“I was created to work at the Asylum. I don’t have the luxury of choice.”
Phillippe snorted.
“I’ve seen seaver in the Undercity. They don’t keep you on as short a leash as you’d like to believe.”
“Why would I like to believe anything?”, Reihan snapped, her voice louder than she had intended.
Phillippe shrugged.
“Well, maybe you’re just scared of the outside world. Maybe that’s why you’re trying to convince yourself that you have to stay here.”
Reihan scoffed.
“Oh yes, I am positively terrified of the people out there. Especially the chatty ones, who think themselves so very wise after stumbling into fame and good fortune.”
A twinkle of humour stole its way into Phillippe’s eyes, and her tone became more reconciliatory.
“All I’m saying is that you could do other things in the city if you were unhappy here. Don’t pretend that you have no choice.”
Reihan felt another flash of anger rise in her throat.
“Sure, Phillippe. I could sew some little crafts and sell them to people in the Undercity. Or I could give you some competition at the Brothel and sell my body to some seaver fetishists. Or I could steal an airship and hope there really is a continent beneath the sea of clouds.”
She shook her head.
“Or maybe you and I just see things differently. Maybe I think there’s dignity in fulfilling your duty.”
“Well, you could –”
Reihan cut her off.
“Now stop pretending like you’ve come here to talk about me. What do you want? If you’re so desperate to start an argument, you probably already think I’m going to say no.”
Phillippe’s eyes darkened, a golden hue against her skin. It was good that she kept them, Reihan thought; she would be impossible to recognise otherwise. Phillippe loved shifting between one face and the next, growing bored of each exquisitely crafted body as quickly as the sun raced across the sky.
“I want to take Alex home.”
Reihan sighed.
“Out of the question.”
“See! I knew you’d say that.”
Phillippe blew a strand of red hair out of her face. It looked like a streak of blood.
“I just… I just feel like things might be different if I –”
“They won’t be. I monitor your brother every day. There has been no change. I would tell you if there was.”
“Would you?”
The question came too quickly.
“I am legally obligated to. And I would even if I wasn’t.”
Phillippe closed her eyes for a moment, and the sun disappeared. Just for a flicker. Reihan shook her head, and the clouds dispersed again, and she suddenly felt rather foolish.
“I had a dream about him tonight. We were kids again in the Undercity. It was a game inside a story we were making up. You needed to collect all the marbles, and there was a rule to do with sticks. Alex let me win; I remember that. I wish he hadn’t. Maybe I’d be better at the game if he hadn’t.”
“Phillippe, the last time I let you see your brother, you almost broke his head in two when you imagined the corruption shooting out of him like steam. I can’t let you take him home. It would be unsafe.”
Phillippe stayed quiet. The strand of red returned, hot and angry against her skin. She sucked on the tips of her fingers.
“One day, you’ll have to say yes”, she whispered.
Reihan’s eyes turned cold.
“You could make me say yes right now. You’re powerful enough that the rules don’t truly apply to you, do they? Go on if you so wish. Make me march down to the cellars with you, and make me hand over your brother.”
Phillippe’s eyes flashed.
“Really?”, she whispered, “Could I really do that?”
She said nothing else. She glanced down at the table, fixated on the nothing in front of her. Maybe Phillippe didn’t believe her. The seaver were supposed to be immune to manifestations after all. Nonetheless, Reihan felt release expanding in her chest with each second that passed.
She waited out a few more minutes of silence, then pulled a cool drink of apple juice from underneath the table.
Phillippe blinked.
“Th-thank you?”
She took a sip.
“Thank you”, she repeated, then sighed.
“Sorry. Today is a really bad day.”
“I figured.”
Phillippe finished the rest of her drink in one long sip, then cocked her head to the side as she glanced under the table.
“Where did you keep that?”
“What?”
“The juice – it….”
“I had it here the whole time. Where else would it have come from?”, Reihan asked, her voice perfectly innocent. Phillippe stared at her for a few moments, then shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was threatening you.”
Reihan felt her composure, fine-tuned and trained over a hundred years, crack a little more. Phillippe was truly testing her today.
“You didn’t. If I thought you truly posed a threat to the Travelling City, I could kill you on the spot. No human outranks a seaver, no matter what you’d all like to believe.”
Her voice was quieter than before, impossibly soft.
“Reihan…”, Phillippe replied, shifting in and out of her skin.
“What, it’s uncomfortable for you when I say it out loud rather than just leave it implied?”
“I don’t think I’m above you. I don’t think I’m above anyone.”
Reihan drummed her fingers on the table. She was beeing too soft on him, too relieved that the situation hadn’t escalated.
“You say that. And as soon as I stop obeying you, you think you can threaten me. Just like all the other humans.”
Phillippe’s eyes narrowed.
“Listen, Reihan; I’m trying to apologise here –”
“No, you’re not. You’re the type of person who only apologises to make themselves feel better.”
“You don’t get to tell me who I am!”
Reihan rolled her eyes.
“Oh, will you get over yourself? Go, fuck your client, and stop wasting my time.”
“Screw you, Reihan.”
Phillippe got up, eyes blazing with tears. She stared at Reihan’s white uniform, proudly displaying the symbol for seaver. She took a deep breath as if to spit out the words she was holding in, one more cutting than the next. But she didn’t teleport away. She took another breath, then another. Reihan’s heart slowed down again.
“I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time”, Phillippe said quietly, “I like talking to you. Weirdly, even though I have all this new power to manifest, I feel completely powerless. I thought you might get what that’s like.”
“I do”, Reihan said softly, although her gut twisted as she admitted to the feeling.
“I haven’t told anyone else about what happened to Alex. So, that means you’re the only person I can really talk to without pretence.”
“Oh wow”, Reihan laughed, “True friendship, born out of sparse options and convenience. Well, I suppose I should take what I can get.”
“No, I didn’t mean … Sorry”, Phillippe said with a long sigh, “Again. None of this is coming out right.”
“Very well”, Reihan replied, “I’ll forgive you twice today. But I don’t have the patience for a third time, so I think it’s best you leave.”
“Now you’re mad at me”, Phillippe whined, “That’s not what I wanted.”
“Yes, and I imagine living with yourself is so very hard, but you’ll just have to manage for today.”
Reihan waved her hand. Phillippe gave her a pleading look.
“I don’t want to go back yet. Can’t we have another argument?”
“No. My lunch is almost over.”
“But I haven’t even insulted your strange white face yet.”
“Well, there’s always next time.”
“But, I –”
“Goodbye, Phillippe.” The Travelling City is available for pre-order now.
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