Mae-Ying Allen ~ 3-19-2029, 7:23 PM GMT
A driver from the Manor takes Mae-Ying into town, to a large Victorian house perched on the corner of a residential street in what seems to be a normal neighborhood. Mae-Ying walks up a path on the front lawn and up a short flight of stairs, then knocks on the front door.
“Come in!” a female voice calls from inside.
Mae-Ying opens the door, revealing a large foyer with a fireplace and a couple of armchairs. A dowdy woman who looks to be in her sixties is sitting in one of the armchairs, knitting.
She looks up. "Ah! You'd be Miss Allen, is that right?"
"Yes, that's correct."
The woman sets aside her knitting and stands up. "Marshal's office said you'd be coming. Not to worry, we've had more'n enough rooms free for quite a while now. Fewer and fewer as want to stay with an old spinster and her sister in a drafty old house..." She pulls a large iron key ring out of her knitting bag and looks through the keys.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms…” Mae-Ying trails off, hoping the woman will give her name.
"It's Ms. Cockburn, m'dear, or just Regina’s fine."
Mae-Ying swallows the urge to laugh. "Very nice to meet you, Ms. Cockburn."
"M'sister's also Ms. Cockburn. The Cockburn twins, we are." She grabs hold of a particular key. "Ask around the village and you'll get an earful."
Ms. Cockburn cackles to herself. Mae-Ying follows her down a hallway and up a spiral staircase near the rear of the house. "Family's managed the house for the Knights since time immemorial--not that you ought to go talking about all that around the village, mind you. Too many new folk. Time was you could trust to the discretion of your neighbors but not these days..."
"I'll bear that in mind," Mae-Ying says.
"You sound like a westerner to me. California, is that right?"
Mae-Ying nods. “San Francisco."
"Lovely city. Never cared much for it after the sixties, though..."
"Yeah, it's a mess. I could never afford to move back home without living with my parents."
Ms. Cockburn shakes her head. "The cost of our liberal market economy, I'm afraid..."
"It only gets worse and worse up there,” Mae-Ying says, suddenly fired up. “All the tech companies pushing technolibertarianism!”
"Don't hold with libertarianism m'self, not that the thoughts of one old woman count for all that much outside the village." She leads Mae-Ying down another old corridor. "M’sister’s always harping, 'Land's a false commodity!', but I say you can't reduce that to an ad jingle so there's no help for it in any case."
“Sounds like your sister and I have something in common."
Ms. Cockburn smiles. "Ah, youth. To be a radical again." She unlocks a door near the end of the hall and opens it. Inside is a large, homey bedroom. "Bathroom's inside, adjoining with the next room, but that one's empty just now. Here's the key..."
Mae-Ying takes the key from her. “Thank you! I’d love to talk economics again, sometime when I’m not falling asleep on my feet…”
"I'm sure Daisy--m'sister, that is--will be delighted to hear it,” Ms. Cockburn says. “Not that you'll have much time to chat, I'd think, not being so wet behind the ears."
"Probably not." Mae-Ying sighs.
Ms. Cockburn pats Mae-Ying on the back. "Never you mind, there'll be time enough in years to come. Now I'll let you get about dealing with that exhaustion."
After Mae-Ying sets her purse down on the bedside table and begins undressing for the first time in days. She takes off her glasses and watch and places them next to her purse. She could just go ahead and call her parents now, she supposes. They could already be making funeral arrangements. Except there isn’t a body, unless ‘the Keepers’ manufactured one somehow. Who knows what these people can do?
She could call them, but she won’t. What Benny said about loose ends still rings in her head. It’s not worth it to her to put them in harm’s way, no matter how much pain they’re in right now.
She picks up her watch again, sets an alarm, and climbs into bed.
#
Mae-Ying’s alarm wakes her up at five AM. Working her parched mouth and rubbing her face, she drags herself to the bathroom. She never looks this bad. Her hair is greasy, her suit is wrinkled and she smells like stale sweat. She’s not sure how much longer she can stand it.
Carrying her heels, she walks towards the stairs. She can smell bacon cooking. She’ll beg for that if she has to.
A woman with an upper-crust English accent calls, "Regina, have you seen my hat?"
"It's on the dresser, dear, where it always is,” Ms. Cockburn calls back.
"No, not that one,” the woman says. “The one with the lace all around the brim!"
Mae-Ying heads down the stairs, crossing paths with a woman in a blue dress clicking down the hallway in pumps. She's pretty, with curly black hair that falls to her shoulders and pouting lips. Her alabaster face looks young, but Mae-Ying doesn’t count that for anything.
"Good morning," Mae-Ying says.
"Oh. Hello. Allen, is it?" The woman lifts a gloved hand. "Daisy Cockburn."
"Mae-Ying Allen.” Wheels turn in Mae-Ying’s head. “Are you related to the Ms. Cockburn I met last night?”
“Of course,” Daisy says. “I’m her twin sister.”
Mae-Ying’s jaw drops. “How…?”
“Oh dear. Hasn’t anyone explained to you that Lawyers don’t age?”
“Seriously?”
Daisy nods.
“God, that’s… wow. Don’t mind me, I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this stuff. So, uh... you're the Polanyi enthusiast?"
Daisy’s eyebrows rise. "You know his work?"
"I wrote my dissertation on the failure of market monetarism.”
"Really? What's your doctorate in?"
"Economics," Mae-Ying says. "Some people like television, or sports. I like economics."
Daisy's lips quirk. "My third husband was in the econ department at Cambridge. Are you staying for breakfast?"
“I’d love to,” Mae-Ying says. "I need to leave around six, though. That's when my tutor is coming to pick me up. Or maybe before that. She wasn't specific."
"Ah, training. Reed's such a cockup, I'm surprised he's bothered to assign you a mentor at all." Daisy glances at her watch. "Well, you've some time yet. Kitchen's off this way, come with me."
"Thanks!”
"After that Avraham dealt with the previous Marshal I thought our troubles were over, but no, in comes Reed, like a plague from the Black Sea..."
“She’s my tutor.”
Daisy laughs nastily. "Ah. That's the Reed I know. Well, when she's done inculcating you in mysticism and mutiny, we'll see about getting you some practical training."
They enter a spacious kitchen equipped with a mix of new and antique appliances. Regina smiles pleasantly at Mae-Ying. "Did you find your hat?" she asks her sister.
Daisy sighs. "No."
“Politicking with the new girl?" Regina asks.
"I've no one else to do it with at home anymore." Daisy gets a pitcher of orange juice from the refrigerator.
“I feel like I’m just an inconvenience to Reed,” Mae-Ying says.
"You've got a pair of developed breasts." Daisy pours two glasses of juice. "So yes, you're an inconvenience."
Mae-Ying looks down, smirking. “‘Developed’ is being kind."
Regina sets a plate full of bacon on the kitchen table. "Don't sell yourself short, dearie, they're lovely."
“Don’t chickenhawk,” Daisy says.
Mae-Ying props her chin on her hand. “I guess I was supposed to be instrumental in some mission, but halfway through it, Niva figured out I'm an Investigator, and they had to bring me here.”
"I know the mission,” Daisy says. “Synesis is involved with multiple factions. They're also engaged in research that's proscribed under a number of treaties, but we can't prove it. We were hoping to lure out an enemy agent."
"Well, apparently I screwed that up,” Mae-Ying says. “By not dying.”
Daisy shrugs. “Not entirely; there’s the man you saw outside Walsh’s home. We’re looking into him. And you're another Lawyer and a thorn in Reed's foot. I'd trade five enemy agents for one of you." She chews on a piece of bacon.
"How do you take your eggs, dearie?" Regina asks.
"Oh. Sunny side up,” Mae-Ying says. “Thank you, Regina."
Daisy gives Mae-Ying a considering look. "You're familiar with the District and you're sharp, clearly..."
"I do know the city pretty well at this point,” Mae-Ying says. “And most of the people that work on Capitol Hill.”
Daisy gets a slow smile.
"You're plotting." Regina looks over at Mae-Ying. "She's plotting. Don't you let her entangle you in this nonsense."
“My entire life is entangled in nonsense,” Mae-Ying says.
“I’m afraid that being a Knight isn’t apt to simplify things,” Daisy says. “Assuming you elect to stay on with the Knights after we're done training you, which I'll entirely understand if you don't."
"She will not understand,” Regina says. “She's just being passive aggressive."
"I wasn't aware there was an option," Mae-Ying says.
"Reed didn't explain...?” Daisy sighs. “No, obviously he didn't, he wouldn't be a useless lump if he--We have to train you. We found you, so it's up to us. It's the Law."
Mae-Ying nods. Her guess is that Daisy isn’t referring to British law, but some greater Law with a capital L--something like what Niva was talking about yesterday.
“Failure to train a foundling is an excellent way to lose your initiation,” Daisy continues. “Being demoted back to mortal isn’t something any of us want.”
"Law business is why I'm glad the God Machine plucked me up in me infancy,” Regina says.
"And yet I'm immortal and you're so very not," Daisy says.
Mae-Ying frowns. “So when you said we don’t age… we’re actually immortal? We can’t die?”
“Well no, not precisely,” Daisy says. “We could always die of stabbing or disease or something of that sort. It’s not entirely clear if we don’t age at all, only a handful of us have lived much past seven centuries in all of recorded history. So perhaps we simply age incredibly slowly."
“Still. That’s crazy,” Mae-Ying says.
"There's a very limited number of Lawyer souls in the deck,” Daisy says. “Two thousand at most. You can understand why I care more about getting you than some flunkie for Synesis."
"I didn't realize that," Mae-Ying says.
Daisy sighs. "Training is a lost art. I should volunteer for it more often."
"You're wretched at training," Regina says.
Daisy cocks her head and looks upward. "True..."
"Well, I feel like I made progress yesterday, so that's something," Mae-Ying says.
"Can you lower your resistance to Logos at will?" Daisy asks. Mae-Ying’s confusion must’ve shown on her face, because Daisy then clarifies, “Can you cause yourself to be able to see Auras, particularly your own?”
Mae-Ying nods. “It doesn’t exactly come naturally yet, but…”
Daisy's eyebrows rise. "Can you show me?"
"Sure, I'll give it a shot."
Mae-Ying closes her eyes and focuses on the letters from her training yesterday. They're waiting for her, burning green, ready to go. They no longer look precisely like English letters--they're warping and shifting, becoming more like the glyphs she saw in the Chamber of Kings.
She opens her eyes. Both Daisy and Regina are staring at her; the latter with a look of shock, the former with something approaching glee. Mae-Ying can see their auras: Regina's is blue-gray, like lead, but small, just swirling about her head. Daisy's is pink and iron-hard, a sort of highlighting that lines every inch of her body; it looks a lot like Niva’s did the previous day, in the way it’s compressed and controlled and held all around her.
Looking down at her own body, Mae-Ying sees the same jade green fire that she saw around each of her past lives in the Chamber of Kings. It's potent and searing, almost hard to look at. She blinks and shakes her head, a little disturbed.
Daisy picks up another piece of bacon. "Avraham's coming here to pick you up?"
“Uh-huh…”
"You'll both ride with me," Daisy says.
“Sounds good,” says Mae-Ying.
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