There was humming. Mechanical. Little needles whirred with ink, through skin. I knew the sound. I’d been to several tattoo parlours for Conti jobs, had gotten one of my thighs and hip tattooed to cover a patchwork of scarring there. A wingless daeshu and Vallia, prime god of war. Day had come with me. The hum brought comfort and anxiety. Was Blood ousting another one of our jobs? One of the vonatian parlour jobs had ended in bloodshed. 

My skin was numb. Like every nerve in my body had been severed. I floated in a space I had yet to see. Panic set in swiftly. I tried to listen beyond. To more. To anything that would help me escape the unfeeling void. 

Beyond the hum, there was wildlife. The call of foreign birds and the buzz of insects unknown to me. I heard voices. Not a language that was very familiar, but recognisable as from the southern continent. My dad had hosted a scientist from the south once, their language somewhat similar to Vonatian, but different enough that I understood little to nothing. 

Vision came suddenly through eyes that were not my own. I’d grown so accustomed to my heightened sight, it was strange to emerge into a world that was made up of regular hues and saturation. I wanted to look around, but my body was fixed in place. Not my body, I realised, when the eyes turned down to look at finely tattooed hands. 

‘Theo, stop standing there.’ 

Panic shot through me again but it wasn’t my own. It was the body around me. Theo’s. Could he feel my presence? Just what mind meddling was Blood capable of? 

‘Theo.’ Sharper this time, and then there was someone standing in front of us. Theo looked up into his brother’s brown eyes. 

Dion Kestales didn’t wait for a reply. He nudged Theo into a small shed. Inside was lit by long tube lights along the square ceiling, and a ring light shone over a woman’s shoulder. She was hunched over her work. My mind registered Theo’s observations as though they were a disjointed version of my own. Bora. Her name was Bora. She was the inksmith of their godsforsaken (definitely a Theo word) forest compound. 

‘Back again so soon?’ she asked. Fondness spread through me. Theo’s. His connection to the language seeped through me as well. Lyvanian. 

Theo warmed to her but it eddied away when Dion pressed a hand to his shoulder and nudged him lightly forwards. He was guided to an empty chair beside Bora and her current client. The man lay face down on a worn leather bench. Alexander. Theo’s knowledge filtered through me, blending with my own. 

I wanted to make Theo look at his brother, so I could see who Corina Bain wanted me to kill, up close, but Theo’s attention fixated on the older man’s back. Scars and ink and red cloud-like marks mingled to make an unruly map of life. I’d seen Theo’s ink-addled body at shower time in Sommersgap, broken only by more recently healed surgery scars across his chest. There was little we didn’t know about one another after weeks of close-quarters, but suddenly I wanted to know what exactly the tattoos concealed. Their hue had faded to a light brown, same as the ones Dion Kestales paraded in Kagosae marketing campaigns, but Bora was inking with obsidian.

Bora stopped her work on the prostrate man. The machine noise cut short and we were enveloped in a sudden quiet that left Theo shuffling with discomfort. Bora looked between the Kestales brothers but her eye line lingered beyond Theo’s shoulder. ‘Not you, Dion?’

Theo looked up to see Dion shaking his head. He appeared disappointed and so did Bora, but at what? I wanted to ask Theo, but his emotions were in turmoil. Shame. So much shame. I wanted to flee from his body but I was trapped. 

‘What happened?’ Bora asked. 

Theo shook his head. Accusation joined the shame as Dion sat on the ground and rested against the wall. 

‘I got heavy handed with Petros,’ the older brother gave a pause. Then a satisfied smile. ‘He may have died.’

The man, whose session they had interrupted, gave a grumble of profanity.

Bora didn’t waver. Her voice was steady when she asked, ‘why aren’t you marked by it?’

‘He had it coming. But Theo feels guilty.’ This teenaged Dion in front of us couldn’t have been much older than sixteen. Lankier limbs and darker hair, but still those severely aged eyes. It must have been just before he was taken in by Tassuri. 

‘I didn’t ask you to protect me!’ Theo’s voice was a slight higher than the low rumble I was used to. Pitched with discomfort and youth. 

‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to finish you later.’ Bora cleaned and bound the man’s back and shooed him out despite his gnarled response. Gnarly but relatively harmless, was Theo’s fond side note as the man left. Bora then tidied her station and effectively ignored the brothers until she was ready. 

Theo’s attention flowed all about the shed, but it pointedly evaded Dion. I tried to urge him to turn, but even if I was able to reach Theo’s conscience somehow, I knew Blood’s memories didn’t work like that. I’d never been able to step outside of myself during the soulmaster’s invasions enough to steer past versions of me. The only thing that was clear to me was that Theo’s hatred for Dion was a festering, bottomless chasm. It was something I could use.

My daydream of ending the golden boy’s life ceased when Bora returned. 

‘What happened?’

Theo shook his head. Wafts of pinkish smoke entered his field of view and floated towards Bora. I smelled orchids. Anger surged and Theo shot a glare towards the ground where Dion had made himself comfortable with a joint. Jester. I soaked in as much of my possible future prey (good to know Dion dabbled in the most volatile of substances) as I could through the muddle of Theo’s negative feelings. 

‘How heavy handed were you?’ Bora asked.

‘He’s pulp,’ Theo muttered. Bile rose and he spat at Dion’s feet. 

Dion cocked his head to the side. 

 ‘What happened?’ Bora repeated. 

‘I caught Giorgos trying–’

‘Stop,’ Theo snapped. 

‘I warned him, if he misgendered you one more time, or tried to f–’

‘Stop! Just shut up, Dion! Shut up!’ 

I was intrigued to witness how Theo’s outburst seemed to surprise Bora more than the speak of violence. Her eyes shot wide and she tensed as though ready for a physical attack. Was Theo lethal too? Dion hadn’t budged. He was smiling into his joint like an idiot. It felt like staring at myself. I couldn’t wait to kill him. 

 ‘Show me,’ Bora said. 

Theo shot a final glare towards Dion but his brother’s eyes were closed. Deflated, Theo reluctantly held out his left arm, and let Bora inspect it.  

‘You’re a good soul, Theo.’

‘I took all the rot,’ Dion mused. 

‘Enough from you. Shut up or get out.’

‘I’ll shut up,’ he said with a smile.

The mark on Theo’s forearm was red like those on the previous man’s back. It sprouted down from elbow to wrist like a trampled flower.  

 ‘You’re allowed take up space, T,’ Dion muttered through the quiet. 

Theo snorted and opened his mouth to speak, but I was yanked from him, from Dion and Bora and the shed. 

I expected to sense Blood and Veil as soon as I returned to consciousness, but it was only Theo and I in the cell. Ibictors Janice and Ivan stood outside, muttering amongst themselves. Their topic must have been something particularly vile if they attempted to hide their words. As soon as I had heard them referring to clerics as stock, I began blocking most of their vulgarity for the preservation of my own sanity. There was nothing I could do about their insipid existences, yet.

My focus went to Theo, who was a rigid mass on the ground. I wanted to stay curled in a loose ball on the cot, exhausted from the encounter with Theo’s memory. Everything ached. Things were stretching and pressing and straining to fit this growing thing inside me. With the lack of substantial meals, I could feel the mitten cuffs had become looser, scuffing at skin more each day. There would be nothing of me left once this baby was out. I must have looked as much of a shell as I felt. Was a shell better than a monster? 

I didn’t want to think about myself anymore, so I sat up. ‘Are you back?’ I asked.

Theo shuddered. ‘So you were there.’

‘Yes.’ 

‘That’s uncomfortable.’ 

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t know the soulmaster could…conjoin memories like that.’

‘So I didn’t just randomly scry on one of your dreams. That’s a relief.’ It didn’t feel relieving at all. ‘I call her Blood. Far more apt. Maybe I’ll get to spill hers someday…if she has any, that is. Maybe she just eats it and that’s why she stinks.’

Theo gave a dry chuckle. ‘I’d love to have your energy for homicidal jokes.’

 ‘I’d probably be living a much nicer life if I didn’t have the energy for it.’ I debated continuing on a stream of absurdity, but I was too curious. ‘Are all your memories connected?’

Theo was quiet and he scarcely moved. I wondered if he was staring at my helmet, at my phantom eyes, or avoiding me altogether. ‘Are yours?’ he asked eventually. 

I was about to retort and demand he answer my question first, but then thought about how invaded he must have felt. It was no wonder he had fallen into a more reserved version of himself than I was used to. 

‘Mine all have Day in them.’

I heard the shuffle of slight movement. Theo got to his feet and came near. He stood in front of me for a few moments. I looked up though there was no point in it. The metal dug into my spine. I couldn’t hold the motion for long. I wanted him to see I was as uncomfortable under Blood’s scrutiny as I’d felt he was, as I could still feel. It saturated the air between us, so thick it might have been a visible fog. But I could see nothing so tangible. Blue-black. That was all. Theo’s dhaheri remained a steady pulse.

‘I think Blood wants to know things about Day, and probably Dion too. I think we’re just puppets caught in the middle.’

Theo sighed, heavy. ‘Can I sit beside you?’ 

‘Yes, of course.’

Theo sat and the bed sank beneath his weight. I noticed a tremble then. In his dhaheri. Slight. But it was enough. ‘We’re just being used,’ he said. ‘For them.’

I didn’t know what to say. My heart began to ache a little more sharply, as if to remind me it could feel my mind’s betrayal. (Keep going. We’ve come this far.) 

‘Do you remember Myrine Platos?’ Theo asked.

‘I…yes.’ I remembered she was very dead. 

‘Dion lays waste to anyone who gets close to him. Myrine was no different, even though she thought she would be. The place you came in my memory. That forest. She followed him from our home and–’ There was such venom in Theo’s voice. How close had he been to Myrine? Before I could ask, he continued, ‘It was brutality day and night. Whatever was left of her followed him to Tassuri. He didn’t turn her away, even though he knew he should have and then you saw what happened. They all end up dead. I suppose we’re no different.’

I couldn’t place Day in the same ravaged category as Dion. My conscience utterly rejected it. The puzzle didn’t fit. In fact, it fit myself far more easily. That, my mind also rejected. ‘How did you and Dion end up in the forest?’

‘I was taken. He followed.’

‘And the drugs?’ 

‘Started them because he said he couldn’t control his dhaheri. I think he just didn’t want to remember what he did when he used it.’

‘Like me.’ The words were out before I could quench them. ‘We’re missing something. They also mentioned wanting to make me black out, but I haven’t figured out why.’

We were quiet for a bit. Theo remained at my side but didn’t push for more from me. Maybe he could feel my lethargy the way I could sense his disquiet. He wanted to say more, far more. But I was afraid that the more he said, the more we would both realise I was just as rotten as Dion.

‘He wasn’t always like that. He used to be kind. I used to…to love him…but…something in him changed. He made us stay in that foul place and I can’t forgive him for it.’ 

‘Can I ask what the place was?’ 

‘I won’t talk about it here.’

I nodded. My neck ached. Here. As if there would ever be someplace else we could talk about it. Maybe there would be. I just couldn’t see it yet.

‘Any interesting forest stories to distract me from my aching bones?’

‘Many.’ 

‘By all means, distract me please. If they can help me on my killing-Dion mission, all the better.’

‘I could tell you about the time he ate a daemon heart.’

‘He what?’ 

Theo chuckled, but it was dry, bereft of any humour so I could be certain he wasn’t joking. ‘I’ll start somewhere else.’ He paused, deliberating, waiting to see if I would press for details, but I had no intention of prompting extended conversation about daemons with one possibly humming around my head. ‘On our days off, Dion, Myrine and I used to go out in the mornings, just before dawn. There was this lake clearing with lots of Bekah trees around it. Do you know the Bekah?’

I shook my head. 

‘Ah, they’re so beautiful. Pink-purple leaves and black bark, native to Lyviana. It only grows near the heat of the Central Rift.’

‘Lyviana.’ 

‘That’s…where we’re from.’ 

‘Tassuri says Dion is Vonatian.’

‘Only because it’s too complicated for Tassuri to publicly deal with someone from a Rift country. And someone as strong as Dion. Imagine? They’d have to fess up on all their lies about us being backwards and barbaric. Vonatian was just easy because the languages have similar roots, and they’ve a large dark-skinned population, I guess.’

I was quiet for a moment as I processed his words. Tassuri vilified Rift countries because they reportedly refused technocratic hierarchies. Dad had hosted scientists and thinkers from the Rift though, so I’d always wondered where the truth lay. Mom had said there were large swathes bordering the Rift that still practised magic alongside science. Her country, Scilla country, was the last place on the continent to report of magic use before Tassuri managed to snuff it out entirely. Now talk of magic was buried beneath thick foundations of logic and science, as if even a whisper of it had never existed.

‘He used to look more like us,’ Theo said.

‘How do you mean?’

Theo fell silent for a while. I didn’t press him. My own mind was adrift. The hums crept in, and along with them, my skin chilled.

‘You said more like us, like who?’ I needed to keep Theo talking, keep the humming at bay. 

‘It’s hard to explain. When we were younger we could have been full siblings, even if he was a little darker. Our faces were a lot more similar, our hair and eyes the same dark brown, but the longer we spent in the forest, the more he changed. As if the power there was slowly rubbing away a mask. Sometimes I would look at him and ask myself if we were really related at all. But I think that was more an empty hope. If he wasn’t my brother, it would be easier to hate him.’

‘Tell me about the lake.’