princess, teacher, goal

  The door remained shut.

  "I'm bored," Aine Hunlun said.

  "Are you really?" Sophia Ethelsbury said.

  "Yes, I really am! We should get to know each other."

  "Should we?"

  "It wasn't like we had a choice, Sophie," Aine said. "We're stuck with each other."

  Nina agreed completely.

  "Let's play an icebreaker," Aine said.

  Nina did not agree.

  "Nina, think of something!"

  Nina definitely didn't agree with that last part. Why her? She had been standing in the aisle, uncomfortable. She didn't want to sit down, and she was only half-paying attention to anything.

  "Um..." Nina mumbled.

  "Yes, you. Absolutely you!" Aine said. She turned to the others. "Nina looks smart and unique. She should come up with something for us."

  What flattery. Nina was neither smart nor unique. She was rather basic!

  "Never have I ever..." she answered.

  "You've never played an icebreaker, Nina?" Aine responded.

  "No. The game."

  The three of them fell silent. Emi, who had found a seat, had no response either.

  Aine thought she was really funny, didn't she? At Nina's expense, too... Nina should spare everyone the obvious comparison.

  ...everyone remained silent.

  Aine did think she was being really funny, right?

  Sophia looked over at her.

  "What's that," Aine said.

  No, she totally did.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" Aine said. "There's not actually a game called 'never have I ever'...?"

  "Aine..." Sophia said.

  "It's Acacia-local, isn't it?"

  "Aine?" Sophia said.

  "You can end the joke, now..." Nina said.

  Something else crept onto Aine's face. She fell back to her baseline.

  "Nina should explain it for me. I've never heard of it."

  "Can't I explain?" said Sophia.

  "No. Nina. Now."

  Nina stared at her.

  "Please?"

  "It's a drinking game..." Nina said.

  "Is it?" Sophia said.

  Why would it be anything else? Shin Kumamoto didn't have a lot of anything, but it did have a lot of sake.

  "Yes," Nina said.

  "I'm too innocent. We never played the drinking variant where I lived in Joburg. We always counted, or just asked questions."

  "I still don't know how to play this game," Aine said.

  Nina didn't really know how to respond to this. It was like having not heard of tag or janken.

  "You say 'never have I ever' done something," Nina said.

  "Ah?" Aine said.

  "If you've done that thing, you drink. If you haven't done it, you don't drink." You also didn't get drunk, which tended to be Nina's aim.

  "Oh. Okay," Aine said. "Sounds fun."

  Had Aine been serious this entire time?

  "Have you played a drinking game before," Sophia asked.

  "...with who?" Aine said.

  With who? What a question.

  Nina tried to call her bottle to her without thinking, or being asked to start, or to do anything at all. It was a bottle full of water, not sake or anything. Empty associations.

  She failed.

  She repeated that question. 'With who?' Who did Nina want to play anything with? Anyone? Anything. Her school's classroom appeared in her mind's eye. April looked down on Nina or March Inoue. March was something absolutely wrong, right? Something that could endure any torment and poison. She'd poisoned the village. She'd ruined everyone's lives. If she didn't absolutely obey April, she did it again. Absolute sin. If March wanted to be redeemed, she should participate, shouldn't she? Listen and obey. Or was she doubly damned by double predestination?

  That memory became frostburn. Another one too. A certain other girl's 'we should play this.' 'We should play that.' 'Tell me about yourself.' 'Open up to me.' The faint glow of Nina's phone immersed in the dark. Messages from Reiko flashed in her head.

  The slightest bit of illness ran into Nina.

  Nina's plain metal water bottle was transposed into her hands, and received.

  Nobody else noticed anything wrong.

  "Holy shit," said Aria Beauregard, appearing over the back of Aine's seat. "What have you been doing with your life?"

  Aine didn't stop smiling. She did become frostier.

  "Oh, many things."

  "You've never been to a sleepover, Aine? Not even once?"

  "Uh, I have—"

  "What did you do there, Aine?"

  "Well—"

  The door! The door slid open! It caught the latch and clicked still.

  Finally! Continuous forward motion.

  The driver leapt to life. He had been motionless for so long. Bored. All of these girls were nothing to him. Niceties had gruffed out of his mouth. He did not wisecrack or have coach driver cheer.

  Now it was "oi! Oi!"

  Oi. Oi.

  There were two. There was a man in a suit. The sleeve of a pink chiffon nightgown clung to him! A princess was on his arm. It was like in that book Michiko was reading before Nina ditched her and Reiko to go on this mission, Frauenphantasien. Dolls, witches, maids, knights, dragons, princesses... and this princess was so... she was sleepy! So sleepy. Maybe she was drunk? Hungover. She staggered a little, swayed from side to side.

  This was—

  Nina had gotten this wrong when Lady Kiku had visited small town Shin Kumamoto, and in the presence of Lady Gifu, at the fireworks show. She needed to get this right for the princess, Lady Haze.

  She stood. She curtsied. She traced an octagram in her head. It needed no symbology, since it turned language to nothing.

  The magic spread about Nina's ill body, then EM anti-radiated, anti-propagated outwards.

  The man in the suit said something petty, inappropriate. His words disappeared. The princess stopped clinging to him and ascended to the top of the bus stairs.

  She ran up to Nina, went to poke her. Nina tried not to think about personal space. This woman belonged to the Nobility. What was Nina? That was right: less than zero, minus five.

  "You're doing too much," the princess said.

  Nina resisted the urge to bite her finger.

  "Like, we don't need all the formalities, right?"

  What? Whatever. Okay.

  Nina made a little motion with her finger. The silencing spell was dispelled.

  Inappropriate. Indecent. Girls who breathed as if they were alive. Air. Jittering. Tabitha chewing on gum. The sound of the sun and the stars. The half-idling engine. Cars that rushed by endlessly. Each sound in the mortal world, percolating ceaselessly, samsara, each was released and allowed to travel. The world was no longer austere, a pure land.

  Nina grew a little iller. They all looked at her, too, as if she had done something wrong! As if she hadn't done what she was supposed to do, something she'd be punished for not doing? Didn't any of them know how to carry themselves under the weight of the Nobility? Nobody?

  She waited for the princess to say something. Lady Haze sponsored this mission, right? Maybe she'd avail Nina of the embarrassment.

  She didn't. She fumbled about her body as if she had pockets.

  "Kaninchen," the driver said. "Did ya—"

  "I did. Um. I mean. I dunno what to say," Lady Haze stated. "I left the script on... what's the name of the Republic of London metro?"

  "The Tube," the man in the suit offered.

  "Yeah! That was it. The Tube. I left the script on the Tube."

  "I don't think you should have done that," Aine said.

  "I probably shouldn't have. Do you think a Coalition spy will pick it up?" Lady Haze said.

  "The Coalition doesn't exist anymore," Sophia said.

  "Coalition colloquial," Lady Haze said

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Yeah, what difference does it make? We're only raiding their bases," Tabitha said. "Who cares whether or not the Coalition still exists? East and Midwest is basically the same thing."

  "You know what I mean!" Lady Haze said.

  Nina sought to determine Lady Haze's age.

  It was probably a stupid act. Lady Haze, being a Noble, would have some anti-prying enchantment that would harm or even maim Nina for trying. Nina would withstand being maimed, due to her ill nature. It would put aside all of Lady Haze's claims to not believe in formality or decorum, this ridiculous idea that you could talk with her on an equal basis. Wasn't every Noble the same? The 2037 Treaty of Nowhere had declared each of the 108 Great Houses fundamentally equal.

  There was no anti-prying enchantment.

  Lady Haze was twenty-seven years of age.

  Haze House had provided each of the girls here with a dossier for the mission. It included basic personal information about each of their colleagues. That was how Aine knew Nina's legal name. Nina had honestly done the same thing ahead of time, as well, but she didn't want to advertise it. That was creepy. Nina was creepy. She'd creeped everyone out with the silencing spell, too.

  Anyway, the oldest girl here was Maxine Young (haha), who was twenty-three. Nina was the youngest, at seventeen.

  This trainwreck was older than all of them! Nina half expected her to be forty-one or something, so this wasn't the worst result?

  "You could just introduce yourself," the man in the suit offered.

  "Oh yeah. I could. Hi, I'm Audrey. Audrey Haze... but everyone just calls me Kaninchen. You have to call me Kaninchen."

  Oh. Okay. Sure. They had to call her Kaninchen. Let Nina do that. Kaninchen.

  "I'm here to bless the mission," Kaninchen said. "I say stuff. I tell you where you need to go first, and then your manager—that's Young-hoon over there, say hi everyone—leads you the rest of the way. I'm not super important, really."

  She 'says stuff.' Stuff. A filler word. Filler. She had offered her presence for the purpose of saying filler words to her. She pretended that she had no clue what was happening. Ah, but she wasn't the one being rewritten, right? Kaninchen was a Noble. By this world's accursed standards, she was already perfect. They were the ones who sought redemption and recreation! How could Kaninchen comprehend being so lost, so forlorn?

  The curses whispered into her, so helpful, though Nina had not formulated a question whose answer needed to be subject to a determination. Could she be trusted? She could not. She knew. More than she was letting on, she knew far more!

  Of course Lady Haze knew. The Nobility were the custodians of the knowledge the rabble could not bear. It was her task to know things.

  She couldn't be a bumbling disorganised idiot who left important documents on trains. That wouldn't be right.

  Young-hoon—their teacher! The roles within the microritual had designated him a teacher—clapped, ruffled Kaninchen's hair.

  "Good job," the teacher, Nina's teacher, their teacher said. "I'm proud of you."

  Kaninchen got her dog treat for doing the bare minimum. 'I'm proud of you.' Well done.

  Nina really hated the idea of a man's hand in her hair, but she was jealous. When did her efforts amount to anything? The things she had done for Shin Kumamoto, everything she had endured from the other five. Her Reiko in Albany gave out affection easily but she was never ever satisfied. Nothing was good enough for Reiko, not Nina nor Michiko nor herself. Praise her. Redeem her.

  Did anyone else feel that? There was weird static. The scattering of red threads. A slash and microfibres spilled into the air and fluttered away. His hands, their dear teacher's hands grabbed a red dress and tugged at it until it tore and pulled it away, their hearts in his hands: so it was ordained! This was what the scenario in the script said, Haze House's design.

  Was everything quelled? Did Nina's arrhythmic heart find rest?

  No. Their teacher didn't say anything to her, right? He had said it all to the adorable and adored Lady Haze. Imagine it. That whore Kaninchen in the red dress. Didn't Nina hate it? Shouldn't it be her, because she was so devoted?

  The curses everyone dispersed everywhere pointed as red arrows towards Nina.

  Her emotions were all screwy. They always were but they were being screwed with. Was this jealousy even hers?

  Young-hoon (their teacher) was this sort of pop idol figure that the other four would pursue. Not April who was so totally unreachably above love but the other four. They'd pursue men like that. Ogle them on their phones with whatever connection they could gather in their cut-away counter-clock world. They made stupid comments, stupidly invited her to join in. Remind Nina that she was so totally undesirable. Why? Was it necessary? Why was it necessary to fawn over the size of each idol's hands, to ask her to imagine him cupping her weak hands with his strength stroking her knuckles, surprising her, pinching her cheeks—

  No! That wasn't at all what Nina wanted.

  A web of connections spilled out of Nina—its singular pole star—silky red thread, black thread, red thread, black dye, gold dye, blood, nectar, another word, what was it—ichor!—poured like dark chocolate over Valentine's hearts. The outside's malice crept in.

  There were three threads connecting her to Aine Hunlun, Emiliya Senklerova, Judecca Victoria-Vanagloria. No, weren't there threads connecting her to all of the other eleven girls, not just those three? Then to their teacher, then to April Kauzaki and the rest of the other four, to Michiko, to Reiko—

  A vision. Reiko on the other side tugged on that thread. Nina stumbled, caught herself on Marzi's seat. Emi looked a little concerned, but did not comment.

  "You're proud of me," Kaninchen repeated. She smiled: at their teacher, or at Nina?

  Another jolt. More delirium.

  Opinion polling.

  Diligent April had forced Nina and the other four to stay up watching the East and Midwest election results. This was the 2064 elections, so maybe two years ago. Weren't they the future of the Acacia? They were obliged to pay attention to interurban news, even if it was really far away, even if it was on the surface of the Earth and not this weird colonial outpost in the abyss.

  April would call her so stupid but not leave Nina alone to just be stupid for even a second. April required Nina to be meticulous. She needed to understand the vicissitudes of history. She needed to constantly process and understand things, see what others could not, notice things that others couldn't, find secrets that didn't seem to be there. She led the six of them, so she required that of all of them, but she had the right to beat up Nina for failing, and she couldn't do that to the other four.

  So Nina didn't fail to notice that this was the same type of thing as that. An opinion poll ran in the background. The other eleven girls gawked at it. Some version of the other five gawked at it. The enmity in the background radiation gawked, commented, complained, asked: what do you think of your teacher? Do you approve of what he's doing? He's the main character.

  That was the type of story Haze House wanted!

  Nina's telepathy reached out despite herself.

  "Aw, she's having fun!"

  "That should be me instead. I want everyone to love me, so much it drives them crazy..."

  "I don't really think I want to see these two PDA?"

  "It must be really nice to be blessed with serenity and grace. To be a Noble."

  "I should play the teacher role. I'm totally smart enough to!"

  "I should be Kaninchen. I'm going to start talking to Young-hoon."

  "I wish I could do this to Martynka."

  Martynka? Who was Martynka? A Polish name. Nina glanced over at Marzi and Marzi tilted her head back as if Nina had cut up a bundle of sea thrifts from the school garden with stationery scissors and offered them to her.

  Was this the ritual? Was everyone else hearing this?

  She tried to find something in Kaninchen's eyes. A vague smirk?

  No. She just kept speaking.

  "I. Um. I need the script," Kaninchen said. "I don't really think any of you are in a hurry. So, do you have any questions about Haze House or life or the mission or—"

  "Are you two dating?" Maxine asked.

  "No," the teacher said.

  "Ah!" Maxine said. She seemed excitable, now. She was so straightforward about it, like July Yoshizawa.

  "We don't really have material for questions," Tabitha said. She sat there bored, super bored, casual and in casual clothes, hoodie, jeans, twirling lip balm in her fingers.

  "No, wait. Tabby, Tabby, I have a question," Judecca said. "The ritual, um, it hasn't done anything yet? I tried using the power of bonds—"

  "We, like, barely know you," Sarai said. A camo jacket hung above her shoulders. "How would our bonds with you become your strength if we don't know you."

  Judecca toyed with one of her bangles. "The dossier says that there's a reservoir of initial power that we can tap into," Judecca said. "But I haven't been able to tap into any of that, and I'm pretty good with magic..."

  "You sure are," Tabitha said.

  "I'm trying! I'm trying my best!" Judecca said. "It's just... has the ritual done anything?"

  Nina couldn't quite see Judecca. There was something quite expectant in her voice.

  "The ritual," Kaninchen said, and she put her hand on her mouth pensive or feigning a lack of thought, "well, I didn't design it! That isn't my skillset. It totally does do stuff, though. You'll find it when it's necessary. It'll protect you. It'll help you retrieve the..."

  She paused.

  "Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands," their teacher offered.

  "Yes! The Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands. Such a long name, but you got that so right! It'll help you retrieve that."

  A ploy to seem more likeable. She didn't actually forget.

  "Even if you don't feel anything at all right now, it'll come to you," she said. "It's something you figure out by intuition."

  "Hey, Kaninchen," the teacher said.

  "Yes, Young-hoon?"

  "Isn't there a backup of the script on your phone?"

  "Oh, yeah! You're so right..."

  Kaninchen retrieved her phone from nowhere. She didn't have any pockets, remember? Why couldn't she retrieve her script? Had she forgotten to tag it? But she was Nobility, so if she wanted to, she could cut reality open, retroactively have done so, and then summon it?

  Everything paused for half a minute. It became increasingly clear she had no clue where she had actually put the script on her phone. In this world of refurbished phones, custom modification, a world where the correct management of information meant life or death, everyone was still so lax about it, left everything in open view. Shouldn't the Nobility be better? That was their one task.

  Even Nina could—

  Shush! Nina wasn't a Noble. Nina never could be. Anyway, that was heresy number two, one of the fundamental sins. Do not transgress the estate you were born into.

  Nina committed heresy number one unremittingly, though, as a state of being. That was the worst and most fundamental one: do not make a pact with the enmity of the abyss. The enmity of the abyss was and is humanity's absolute enmity. Had it not stolen the land, seas and sky from humanity? Left them isolated in city-states and latifundia? Those who dealt with it were beneath everyone. They threatened to destroy everything.

  So heresy number two wasn't so bad, right? Nina could do a great job as a custodian of knowledge. She could definitely find a script faster than Kaninchen.

  Haio Elspeth's finger twitched. She was so quiet before, but now Nina could really feel her annoyance. She nearly stood, and Nina realised that Haio and Kaninchen had the same auburn hair, although Kaninchen's was resplendent, Haio was just wavy, but Kaninchen found it, she found the script in time.

  Her voice faltered.

  A holy manuscript spilled out.

  "SYSTEM DECLARATION. It is Saturday, 26th of February, 2067. In the name of the holy Haze House, you have been commissioned to seek the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands forlorn by the Second City, scattered throughout the citadels and cities of the North Atlantic: those still graced by the dominion of Man, those accursed by the afflictions of the Outside. To complete this task, to ensure your safety, and to vanquish the rare brigands and mercenaries who may wish to impede our will, the holy Haze House has bestowed upon you powerful technology from its archive.

  "We have bestowed upon you the knight Gumacheon Young-hoon, who shall serve our will as you do. As a knight, he guards our will. As a knight, he guards you. He is capable of more than violence: he is also a teacher, and should be referred to as such. This world, distorted, creates so much false knowledge. It is his task to teach you true knowledge; it is yours to receive it.

  "We have bestowed upon you the power of bonds. It is your strength, and your reward. It is the bonds between each of you students, each other, and your teacher that will allow you to receive the fragments of the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands, and to make them whole again.

  "We have bestowed upon you a vehicle to cross the cities of the North Atlantic with. It has been armoured. Bullets, missiles, ultrablue fire... it withstands each malady, and all of them. It shall protect you from the city and the myriad civitates; it shall protect you from the madnesses of the passageways, chora and countryside.

  "It is these technologies—teacher, bonds, vehicle—that will allow you to partake in their feast of the Red Eyes and Incarnadine Hands. Thereafter, four-fifths of their immense power will fall under the custodianship of Haze House. The remaining fifth will be distributed evenly amongst you students and your teacher upon the completion of this mission and the resolution of your contract, for use as you wish, and for the implementation of your wishes.

  "The direct path has been occluded. It remains your task to scour the surface of the Earth, though we shall furnish you with the requisite insight required to locate each fragment. This initial insight is bestowed upon you: the path to the first fragment is the trail from leviathan London to the city of Milton Keynes. The name of the city shifts: Bletchley, Wolverton, Newport Pagnell—which dominates? The fragment remains beneath the Earth, sparkling. I, Lady Audrey of the Duchy of Dolor, of Haze House, am your benefactor in this mission. I shall continue to dictate the blessing, near and far. F—I—N."

  Big stretch. Kaninchen nearly collapsed onto knight-teacher Gumacheon Young-hoon.

  Gumacheon? That sounded... it was post-Babylon, right? Nina guessed at the hanja.

  No, wait. First she bowed! It was a saikeirei bow, forty-five degrees, as ordained when addressed directly by a Noble.

  ...nobody bowed at all!

  Someone started clapping, so everyone else did. Couldn't they copy her bowing? No. Nina just looked—obsequious!

  "Yay. I'm done," Kaninchen said. "Can I go home?"

  What about question time? Hadn't that been promised to them?

  "Yeah, sure," said the driver, Ovidius Edelman. "Wouldn't want you to get hurt."

  He had been a knight of Haze too. The curses told her that without asking.

  "You did a good job," Young-hoon said.

  She really didn't? Didn't the standards—the Nobility was punished for failing those standards, too, all of the girls in Shin Kumamoto had that impressed upon them, when Nina and the other five were at that fireworks show in Xinshangdu Lady Tsumugi Gifu had let that slip, Reiko knew Nobles as the daughter of a four-star general of the Confederation of East and Midwestern States and since Nina knew what she knew she knew that they suffered—

  Not Kaninchen! Kaninchen didn't—

  "K doesn't suffer anything," a voice from nowhere said.

  It echoed. It rasped.

  They had shut the door, right? For the declaration. Or maybe it had been open all this time.

  Nina saw a knight's gauntlet first. Then the rest of the knight. It was a Landsknecht in zero colour. Doppels?ldner, Doppelh?nder. Its ink black enmity was thick. Her ESP told her it was sourced from the Doppelk?nigreich Wüst und Leer.

  That was a nation-state and not a city-state, wasn't it? It was in the abyss, then. It was quite far from Shin Kumamoto. She had some familiarity with it, though. Its curses had travelled to the Acacia; Nina had dispelled them with the other five back when she lived in Shin Kumamoto.

  Such awful things shouldn't be on the surface of the Earth! That was why people lived in the abyss, right, to conquer the abyss in the name of humanity and reality, and to prevent the illegal concepts that lurked there from landing upon the Earth.

  There it was, though. This knight.

  Clangorous it stalked up the stairs. It halted.

  A strange pull. Something wicked this way came. Its hand divided from its body inanely, reached about Lady Haze's neck. It choked her.