Two Sisters, Chapter 11 ~ Pershian Dolls

Elly and River enjoyed their excursions out into the city with Sien.

After the first day, they often went out walking, Elly in her veil to shield from the hot midsummer sun and the prejudices of the Junnen residents.  So far nothing had happened besides a few sidelong glances from those who suspected a Lsian girl among them.  No one raised a hand against her.  Even if Sien thought he was an undesirable, Elly could see respect in the eyes of the Airidanis who recognized him as a solider.  Whatever the Elders thought of the half bred Keys in their midst, the people she saw on the streets either did not care or felt the blood red hair of the soldier outweighed the scar of the so-called unpure.  She suspected that since most regular folk were not Auriels, they could not judge him as harshly as all that.  After all, the Elders considered them undesirable as well.

Whatever their reasoning or feelings about Sien’s kind, even those who looked at her with suspicion did nothing while he was at her side.  She was not so concerned about coming to harm that she would worry about being attacked, but it did trouble her that the people who were supposed to embrace her as their queen could not be trusted to remain peaceful if they caught sight of her on the street.  Sien assured her that when it was clear she was not Lsian, her looks would not matter.  Still, it troubled her.  Such anger, such intolerance.  When she was Queen, Lsi would still be there, with all its Lsians, only the narrow distance of the Sea River between them.  If being Queen meant killing scores of Lsians, is that what she must do?

Sien was obligated to check in with the local army station once a week while on leave.  It was in part to assure that he had not fled the world, and in part to be at the ready should an emergency result in his leave being cut short.  The first time he went to his weekly check-in, Elly had slipped into invisibility and visited the Temple of the Seven.  She wanted to see first hand what sort of people these Elders were, in public and in private.  She went back sometimes at night, when she was supposed to be sleeping.  The city was different at night.  On the surface it slept, but underneath it was alive as midday, only populated by a different sort of people.  It was like any big city in this way.  It was not the night life of Junnen that concerned her, as she slipped unseen through the streets, yet she could not help but stop, at times, and quietly rule her kingdom-to-be from the shadows.

She had come upon a girl, once–dirty and slatternly, yet very young—being beaten by a man for reasons Elly did not know, nor care.  She had stood there for a moment, transfixed by the shocking violence, something she had not seen in her sheltered life at home.  It was like a movie come to life, only so much more real and frightening.  The girl cried and begged for mercy—Elly didn’t need to be fluent in Airidani to understand that—but the man (her pimp? A john?  A brother?  A father?  A jilted lover?  Elly had no idea) seemed intent upon beating the life out of her.

He screamed in terror when the bones of his fists left him.  He lifted his arms to stare at the gelatinous flesh dangling limply from his wrists.  Something inside her laughed at the sight.  But she was quiet and unseen, not even a shadow in the darkness of the night.  The girl began to scream and skittered backwards, away from her attacker, seemingly more frightened of him now than when he was beating her with the knuckles he no longer had.

His fear turned to rage and he advanced towards her, meaning to kick her, but the laughter inside Elly grew and his legs gave way beneath him.  He toppled to the ground, a writhing torso with two long hunks of useless meat and flesh where once bones had held legs together.  The girl staggered to her feet and ran, ignoring his screams.

Alone with him, Elly became visible in the moonlight.  She felt more River than Elly, truth be told, and it was as if she sat back in her mind and observed River standing over him, content to see what River would do.  She would do what she thought best.  The man stopped his wailing when he saw her, and unleashed a torrent of Airidani language so foul it contained words Sien had never taught her.

“Is that any way to address your Queen?” she asked him, in her best Airidani.

He spat at her, but the stench of his soiled pants betrayed him.  They were a rich burgundy color and made of fine cloth.  They were dirty, however, even before the soiling, and old, marking him as little more than a pretentious streetwalker.  A pimp or drug dealer, for even in an otherworld city this was the kind of man who thrived in the nighttime underworld.  She surveyed him without pity, though she could not deny a sense of exhilarated fear herself.  The man was a horror, slithering away from her, belly to the ground like a snake, dragging himself along with his arms.  His hands made an absurd slapping noise as his wrists, the ends of the bones she’d left him, touched the pavement.  His legs swished behind him, a stain darkening the burgundy.

Should we take pity on him? she wondered.  We can hardly give him back the bones we have taken.  What will happen if we take the rest?

River had already made up her mind, it seemed.  She cocked her head to the side, curious, as the rest of his body deflated into spasming muscles and flesh.  The man lay like a puddle, unmoving, unable to crawl or turn to look at her.  Elly was revolted by the lumpy form, and wished not to look at it anymore.  The rest of him disappeared, but she left the clothes where they lay.  Someone might come looking for him, and she wanted them to see the empty clothes, laid out in the form of a man stained with shit and piss, reeking of terror.

How much of Elly and how much of River stood there in the night, she could not say.  Maybe it was Elly who shook a little, feeling the blood race through her, wondering at how easy it was to kill a man.  Thrilling at its simplicity and afraid of her own power at the same time.  Maybe it was River who surveyed the clothes with satisfaction.  Maybe it was both of them.  Elly didn’t know.

She did not make it a habit to skulk through the alleys at night looking for evildoers to punish, and so she did not often find herself in such a position.  That way, she felt, lay madness.  Night after sleepless night of fruitless vigilantism.  Death.  It was the Elders she was really concerned about, the Auriels she left her bed to find.

They did not sleep like regular people.  Perhaps living upwards of six hundred years naturally depleted the need for sleep, or perhaps a lifetime of evil prevented the conscience from rest, but whatever the reason, she often found the members of the Elder Council awake and moving ghostlike through the temple while the rest of the Auriels slept.  There were both men and women among them.  Three women and four men, making seven Elders.  They reminded Elly of Ren; the way he had looked ancient and withered, stooped by the years.  But then, Ren had been only three hundred years and should have still been hale and healthy, according to his son.  Three hundred was merely middle-aged; the time a man might start to go a little gray and feel the paunch around his stomach thicken.  Six hundred was old.

They read old books and carried on hushed conversations with each other in the night.  In fact, as far as she could tell, the Elders got a lot more done at night than they did during the day.  In the daytime, they received supplicants from among the Auriels.  If a member outside the family wanted to speak with them, they had to first find an Auriel to be their agent.  Only in the company of their spokesperson could they approach the Elders.  Elly supposed Tem was her go-between, or would be, when he was allowed to go before the Elders again.

Despite their daytime audiences, it was at night when they truly flourished.  It was when Elly heard them discussing the ongoing struggle against Lsi and determining the fate of matters which they knew were to come before them on the morrow.  Indeed, no matter brought before the Auriels ever seemed to be a surprise.  They were made fully aware of every detail in advance, through written requests submitted though official venues.  When the supplicant came before them and recited their request, the Elders knew every word and had already decided on their answer amongst themselves.  Elly supposed there was nothing inherently evil about such a system, though it smacked of unnecessary ceremony to her—and it made the in-person appearance a farce.  She looked forward to the night before her own appointment.  She would know their minds before she officially stepped foot in the temple for the first time.

She did not go to the temple every night.  She would never get any sleep and be perpetually exhausted, if she did.  River wished to go, to learn the minds of the Elders and know every inch of the city possible, but then, Elly had learned that she barely understood the concept of sleep.  When you are sleeping, I am awake.  I have no mortal body of my own; you may need rest, but I am eternally restless.  Yet River could not venture far from Elly’s slumbering form, and had to content herself by haunting Tem Auriel’s home on nights she was not haunting the Elders within Elly.  It was a strange sort of thing for Elly to be told what went on at night while she slept, but useful, for it was like she as well as River never slept.  She could remember what River had seen as if she’d seen it herself.

Sien did not sleep well.  Some nights he paced, and read books, and stared out the window, restless as an Elder of the Auriels well before his time.  He never went into Elly’s bedroom, which was good for the nights when she was not there, but Elly still felt a little disappointed that in all his restlessness, he never called on her.  She told herself, reminded herself, that Sien was far too honorable for midnight calls to a girl’s bedroom, especially not to his Queen of Seven, whatever he might think of her now.  It was a childish romantic fantasy . . . and yet, he seemed so lonely on those sleepless nights that he would not come wake her.  River could only watch him while Elly slept, and wonder what he was thinking about.  It was even worse when Sien slept, for then there was no one to keep a sort of company with.  Tem and Hayti were sound sleepers, in their separate bedchambers, a sad situation for a married couple.  But then, it was not clear to her if they had ever truly been a couple.  They had no children, and their marriage seemed impersonal and distant.  Tem must have only married her out of loyalty to his banished brother.  It was such a lonely house to have to haunt.

Their favorite time was with Sien, learning the history and language of Airidan, learning the customs and how to behave.  And going out into the city, so different in daylight, to see anything that Sien thought she might be interested in.

They visited a Pershian Doll shop one afternoon, and it was the most amazing thing Elly had seen in Airidan yet.  The shop window featured a trio of unsettling life-sized dolls with great large oversized eyes in their delicately featured faces.  The eyes were beautifully painted, with an almost lifelike shine under voluminous lashes, but were unmoving and dead for all that.  They had no mouths, not even painted lips.  Instead designs were painted where their mouths would have been . . . one had a flower, the other a butterfly, and the third a golden sunsphere.  They moved in an eerily lifelike manner, mulling about in their window display with languid steps.

“What are they?” she asked Sien, standing transfixed before the glass.

“Pershian Dolls,” he said.  “Robots, essentially, though we don’t have a word for that in Airidani.  We use the same word for a regular doll and for these.  It kind of sums up their usefulness.”

“Are they sex-bots?” she asked with a little wrinkle of her nose.

“Some models.  Others are just supposed to be used as pets or to do housework.  Fancy automated maids.  Only the extremely wealthy can afford them; they’re more expensive than a car.”

“Why don’t they have mouths?”

“The Elders allow them to be built and sold so long as they cannot be mistaken for human.  It’s why the faces are so stylized and they don’t even bother with a mouth.  The dolls have to be mute, no voice boxes allowed.”

“It’s so advanced.  I’m surprised the Elders allow it at all.”

“You’d be surprised.  They’re not very consistent in what they consider ‘too advanced.’  Mostly they frown on stuff that makes travel quick and easy, as well as the sharing of information.  These dolls are just pretty playthings with the restrictions the Elders put on their creation.”

“I want to go inside.”

It was then that he dithered a little, worrying that they wouldn’t be welcome inside such a posh shop, but eventually he agreed to it.  He told her, “They’d probably throw me out if I was alone.  I’m a soldier and we’re notoriously poor, not the sort of person who could spend any money at a shop like this.  But if you play the part of a rich lady under that veil, they might let us stay.”

Elly was already intrigued, and determined that they should not be ushered from the shop.

As soon as they were inside, an officious little man sidled up to them and cast a pointed glare upon Sien.  “Can I help you?” he asked, his words dripping with disdain, as if by “help” he meant “get rid of.”

“Yes,” Elly responded in the most haughty and indifferent tone she could summon.  “I am here to inspect your supply.  I have been to several shops today and find this city’s supply totally underwhelming, I must say.”  She spoke in careful Airidani, proud of herself for all the work she’d done over the weeks to learn.

“Ah.  Madam, I can assure you, we carry the finest selection in all of Junnen,” said the man, straining to make out who he was speaking to beneath the veil.  “Might I, ehm, inquire as to whom I have the pleasure . . . ?”

“The Lady Eliasha is here to shop, you had best get on with it,” Sien said gruffly.

The man’s eyes skittered between the two of them.  Sien, in his civilian clothes, could possibly be hiring himself out as a bodyguard to this fine lady, it was clear, but there was still suspicion underneath his eagerness to make a sale.  “Very well,” he said, addressing Elly, as if Sien had not been the one to speak.  “What are you interested in, my lady?  A maid?  A companion, perhaps?”

“Do you have dancing dolls?” Elly asked, purely on the fly.  She didn’t know to what extent the dolls could move, but figured that if she said it with enough assurance, he would assume she knew what she was talking about better than him.

“All of our dolls can dance, madam,” he said with a sneer, as if that was the most basic feat any cheap doll could accomplish.

“I want to see.  You cannot imagine the horrid clodhopping I have witnessed today.  If that is what you lot consider ‘dancing’ I shudder to think . . . .”  She was enjoying this.  Her Airidani was getting better, and the exotic tinge her accent gave to it was obviously working in her favor.  The man looked intrigued by it and seemed to be struggling to place her.  He might not know what the English word “clodhopping” meant exactly, but its context was clear.

She made him parade several dolls before her, with and without their clothing.  The strange mix of elegant human movement and mechanical doll was fascinating.  They walked, and bowed, and danced, and picked things up and put things down, all for her watchful eye.  The more unimpressed she pretended to be the harder the man sought to please her.  When she casually dropped the name of Tem Auriel his eyes bugged out of his sockets.  No doubt the House of Auriel was the richest as well as the most powerful family in Airidan.  Sien’s scar marked him as a part of that family, even if he was at the bottom of it, and the man’s eyes had returned to the scar several times.  No doubt he was wondering whether it was coincidence or not that his mysterious lady customer had a half-Auriellan bodyguard.  Tem’s name made him nearly shit himself with excitement.

If you are intending to buy a doll and bill it to Tem, you had better not.  River had been silent and distant the entire time they were in the shop, and it was only as the shopkeeper was pressing for her to make a purchase that she reasserted herself.

I am sure he could afford it, Elly thought.  Why?  Are you disgusted with the practice?  They’re just machines, it’s not like buying a slave.  There’s no soul in them.

I know what you are thinking, though.  That a soul could be put inside one of them.

Perhaps.  It would be worth trying, wouldn’t it?  You have wished for a body of your own . . . .

I want a real body.  A body with a mouth that speaks and eyes that move.  A body whose joints are held together by bones, not ceramic.  This is not the sort of body I want.

I do not know how to make you a real human body.  This is the closest thing I have ever seen.  Don’t you even want to try it?  To see what it’s like?

No, I do not.  You cannot buy a body for me, sister.  It is not that easy.

It wouldn’t have to be permanent.  It could just be something for you to inhabit until we can figure out how to build a better house for you . . . .

I do not want to go in there!  River’s thoughts were unnaturally sharp.  It’s not real, it’s cold and lifeless and that is how it will be even if I am inside it.  You may as well ask me to inhabit a teapot and scoot it around on the table as expect me to haunt one of these ridiculous dolls.

Elly laughed out loud, despite herself, at the image of River the teapot.  This made the shopkeeper break out into a sweat, as he assumed she was laughing at the doll he was showing her, modeling how it could grip his hand with its fingers in an almost human handshake.  She took that opportunity to say with an aloof yawn, “No, no I do not think these will do.  Thank you for you time, but there is one more shop I must visit before the day is out.  Come, Sien.”

She turned with a flounce of the veil, tossing it over her shoulder and letting it trail after her as she ushered Sien from the shop.  Behind them the shopkeeper sputtered, trying to disentangle himself from his doll, but he was not fast enough to prevent them from leaving.  The doll gripped his hands and looked blankly on as he stumbled and lurched back, trying to shake his fingers free.

She allowed herself more laughter as they walked away down the sidewalk.  Sien laughed with her; in a rare moment he looked so much like the boy she had met last September.  “That was cruel,” he said, half admonishing, though he smiled as he shook his head.

“Did you see his face?  I thought he was going to have an orgasm anticipating all the money he was about to make.  And then . . . ha!”  It was hardly a ladylike thing to say, but then, the elegant veiled lady was an act she was glad to shed.

“You had me fooled.  I thought you really wanted one of those dolls for a while,” Sien admitted.  “I was wondering how I was going to explain it to Tem when he got the bill . . . .”

“No, I was just playing,” she said, and looked away, though he could not see her face through the veil anyway.  “He looked at you like you were scum so I thought I would teach him a lesson.”

“It’s alright, Eleanor.  I’m used to it.”  His smile faded, belying his words.  “Anyway, I’d have had to stop you from buying one anyway.  Hayti would have a fit if one of those things was let into the house.”

“Why?”

“Well,” his expression darkened further, “there’s a line of dolls that are made to look like children.  Tem told me that once he thought having one of them would cheer her up because . . . because well she lost her first child and never had another.  He meant well, but it upset her.”

A doll is no substitute for the real thing, River said, and Elly imagined her tone to be accusatory.

“I’m sure he meant well,” she said pointedly.  “Tem seems like a good man, from what little I’ve seen of him.”

“He is.  He really looked up to my father, his older brother.  It really tore him up when Ren was banished.  But he’s ambitious, too, which is a good thing for us.  I’d have had a really hard time convincing him that you were a good idea, otherwise.”

“I suppose being the representative of the Queen of Seven can only be good for the Auriel who finds her,” Elly observed.  “But your are my true discoverer.”

“Well, we’d both get some credit.  And it’s not just credit or congratulations that Tem wants,” said Sien.  “He wants to have more say in what goes on.”

“More power,” she interpreted.  “He expects that I will rely on him when I am Queen.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.  I did tell Tem that you are a very independent person, that you wouldn’t stand for being a puppet ruler, not for an instant.  He did not object.”

“But he’s right, I will rely on him, just as I will rely on you.  You and Tem are the only people I know and trust in this entire world,” said Elly.  “I trust Tem because you trust him, but still, I will be far more likely to pay heed to what he has to say than the Elders are currently.  But you will, of course, be my right hand man.”

Sien looked slightly pained.  “That will be difficult.  I’m still a half-breed, and sworn to be a soldier for the rest of my life.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  Do you think I will become Queen and let those stupid laws stand?  When I am Queen you will be my second in command and there will be no laws against inter-breeding or inter-marriage or whatever else the Elders have great big sticks up their butts about.”  Elly declared this loudly, but in English, so the only looks the passersby gave them came from the unrecognizable language she spoke.

“You will have to fight the Elders every step of the way,” Sien cautioned, though his smile returned a little.  He had not brought her here for lack of spirit, that was for certain.

“We will see,” she responded enigmatically.

Their walk lead them ultimately to the army station near the Temple of the Seven, and Sien said with a sigh, “I will have to leave you to wait outside, Elly.  Perhaps you should go to the Ruined Gates and wait in the park.  If I were to be seen with you they’d have all sorts of questions about you.  The whole thing about me not being allowed to marry, and all . . . .”

“Alright,” she agreed, hoping he wasn’t suspicious by how readily she accepted banishment.  “How long will you be?”

“Not long.  Though if I have to wait in line it could take pretty long.  I waited for an hour last time.”

She nodded.  It was hard to believe a whole week had passed since the last time Sien went to perform his weekly check-in.  He’d left her behind at home, though she had gone to the temple without him knowing.  She had considered being honest with him, but decided ultimately that he would tell her it was far too dangerous to trespass in the temple, even protected by invisibility, and then she would have to do it in secret anyway.

“Don’t speak to anyone if you can help it,” he said before they parted ways.  “If anyone asks you where you are from, it is best that you don’t say you are an otherworlder.  It’s better to say you are from Darnnath.  Don’t say Axellen, because they have a shipping alliance with Lsi.  And you don’t look like someone from Zayn or the Antepengo Islands, so that would raise suspicions.  You could saw Darnnath Low but I’d tell them you’re from High Darnnath . . . from Coldstone, even.  It’s the northernmost city and almost no one from Junnen will have gone there to say otherwise.”

She smiled at his nervous torrent of instructions.  His concern was endearing, even though she intended to turn invisible as soon as possible, which ruled out any interaction with the locals.  She merely nodded and told him to hurry on and meet her by Airidania’s old Gate after he was done.

She watched him join a group of red-headed soldiers in civilians clothes who were heading toward the army center.  He was the only one with a scar among the lot of them, but she supposed that desertion was a concern among all of Airidan’s finest, if the war was as demoralizing as Sien painted it.  And she did not doubt that it was.  Fighting for generations with no real outcome could not be good for morale.

She was disappointed by the result of her visit to the Temple that day.  Watching the Elders accept supplications from people proved to be less interesting than following their nightly machinations, and in the time she had to spend there, the matters were mostly bureaucratic and trivial.  Certainly, there were no life or death proclamations handed down.  She wished she had more time and opportunity to watch the goings-on of the Temple during the day, but she could only give herself an hour before she had to go to the park and wait for Sien.  She did not actually mind having Sien around so much that she could not sneak off to spy on the Elders during the day.  The night was when things were truly interesting, whether they were speaking to each other behind closed doors while everyone else slept, or watching them each in private moments when they thought they were utterly alone.  Those were the moments worth spying on.  Truly, she was glad to have the days to spend with Sien.  If only she could be open and honest with him, tell him what she was doing . . . perhaps she could make him invisible so that he could accompany her . . . spy along with her.  But no.  No.  She scrubbed that thought from her mind.  She did not trust herself to turn Sien invisible.  What if she made a mistake?  It was so easy to will things away, be they objects or people.  Ever since her grandfather she could not trust herself to touch other human beings with her powers unless she meant to hurt them.  The man in the alley was doomed from the moment she took his hands, for no matter how easily she took them, she did not know how to bring them back, even if she had wanted to.

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