Revolving Door: Volume 2
Forged in Fire - II
Honourless’s eyelids part to reveal a yellow ceiling. The fog of her long sleep stubbornly lingers as her eyes scan the empty room.
The curtains are drawn, and the walls are a yellow matching the ceiling. She is lying in one of three beds, and the other two are ruffled, as if recently used. She rolls onto her side as her mind pieces the scene together.
A tumult of voices drifts over from nearby.
Gasping, Honourless springs out of the bed and stumbles in their direction. The floor is rough red carpet. There is an open door by the kitchen counter, and past the door, a room of flat white tiles. As she enters, she is hit headfirst by a fetid scent mingled with the mouldy musk of pipes. The source of the voices is Hong Yi and Vesper, mopping the floor with paper rags while they shout at each other. Marcia lies propped against the stone wall beside a white cistern, with a glass of water in hand and an expression that would appear blissful, if her skin weren't shiny with sweat.
At once Honourless shouts, “She should be seeing a healer!” But all three look up bewildered, and when they speak, not a word out of their mouths means a thing to her.
She lets out a wordless cry, throwing both arms up. What in the Light’s name is she meant to do here?
Turning on her heel, she thunders away—away from the inn room, leaving the front door ajar, away down the hall. She presses her ear to each door down, until she hears voices she knows.
“Hey!” She bangs on the wood with a fist. “Orobelle! Dorian! One of you, come with me right now—Marcia is going to die!”
“What now?” the duchess answers. “What do you mean ‘die’? Dorian, no—”
The door clicks open, revealing a cushy suite with a bed large enough for two. Orobelle is practically swimming in the covers, gaze lifted from the pages of her diary. Dorian’s bedroll lies unfurled on the carpet, and the man himself stands frozen with a hand on the doorknob.
Honourless is swallowed by rage, rage like she has only ever felt towards the baroness before. Has the child ever once thought that her protector might also want a bed?
Snarling, she lunges at the duchess. Honourless only has the satisfaction of seeing the girl’s eyes widen, before the wind is knocked from her lungs in a flash of long brown hair. Even as she protests, Dorian wrestles her backward through the doorway, gentleness briefly gone as he slams the door shut behind him.
“Hey! Hey, what are you doing?” she snaps and snarls. “Let me at her!”
“Honourless,” he says. “Please. Don't touch her. I will come with you.”
“Why do you put up with her?” she roars, wrenching her arm out of his grip. “How could you accept her treatment?”
He motions for her to lead, and they march back down the little carpeted hall. “That is not my choice to make,” he replies. “There is more to it than you can see. And I cannot speak of all of it.”
“Thanks for mentioning it, then,” she mutters.
“Please, Honourless.”
This time she understands something in his tone—a tiredness, and a fear.
She sighs. “Fine. But you can't stop me from coming to my own conclusions. Here.” She stops outside the door with a hook-shaped numeral, still standing ajar.
By now, Hong Yi and Vesper have Marcia on the couch, a glass of water clasped in her hands. Both lean together, faces lit by his luminescent device, and their charge is at least alive enough to be sipping, eyes gently shut.
Honourless waves a hand at the trio. “Tell them Marcia should be seeing a healer. And ask if she has had food.”
Kneeling on one knee, Dorian repeats the words, and three pairs of eyes rise to him. Hong Yi answers first, then Vesper does—he interprets without missing a beat. Yes, she has had lunch; she has asked to be taken to a healer if she is not recovered in four days. As words pass back and forth between them, Honourless finds that what little Marcia says is spoken in such different syllables that it must be a different language from the others’. But Hong Yi’s device must be able to translate between them.
Briefly, her heart surges with the hope that it would translate to the Queen's Tongue, too, but then she remembers what Orobelle has said of Wonderland: that its path through history has been so different from this world’s, that little is shared between them, beyond the enduring laws of the cosmos…
“I cannot keep doing this,” Honourless mutters. “We must have a way to speak to each other.”
At this, Dorian pauses from their talking, and turns to look her in the eye. The room is silent all at once, besides the drip of water from the sink. Quietly, he reaches into a pocket of his coat, and from it produces a brass-rimmed looking-glass, like the ones she has seen Orobelle hold up to signs and documents.
She blinks as he lifts it towards her, held in the middle of his palm. “This will translate any word viewed through it,” he says. “You may have this one. My Duchess has spares.”
Honourless reaches out, and gingerly wraps her fingers around the rim of the proffered device. “You sure she won't be mad about me taking one of her toys?” she says.
“Well, you are right—we must communicate. This is the best way I can think of. I shall entreat her to consider that. And however she responds…that is my consequence to bear.”
The sadness in his eyes would be enough to soften any heart other than hers. He is a servant of the Duchy, and of the Queendom. He is a person, like she.
Honourless looks away. “If you're choosing this, then I shan't stop you.”
*
Dorian explains, with saintly patience, the purpose and function of Honourless’ translation glass. Like his own comprehension of tongues, the glass translates intent: whatever the intended meaning of a written or printed word, the translation glass will reveal it to one peering through, in their most familiar script.
It is Hong Yi who first comes to her thereafter. He glances at the tool in her hand like a curious bird, saying something in inquiring tones. As she works to decode his mannerisms, he starts to rummage in his pockets. From one, he pulls out a small, dog-eared book the size of his palm. A bitten red graphite stick is threaded through its binding rings. He motions the utensils towards her with a nod.
“Oh!” She snatches the tools, a grin blossoming across her face, and races to the table to drag up a chair.
The first message Honourless puts to the ruled lines is simple: I guess Dorian does have a mind of his own. She spins the book to face Hong Yi as he lands in the other chair, sliding the translation glass over the table to him.
He scans the lines through the lens, and as he does, his mouth hangs open. Then he laughs. She makes a sound of reciprocal delight, and they swap notebook and glass.
Through the lens, she feverishly watches him write in his own script, the sigils full of angles and criss-crossing lines. Whenever a character passes into the centre of the glass, it shifts and changes, from his script to hers, condensed to match the compact size of his words: Who can blame him? The world's biggest spoilt brat owns him.
She glances over her shoulder. But Dorian is busy interpreting for Marcia and Vesper.
The widening of her grin is matched by his. They swap tools again.
I like you. You make the ghosting easier. We could keep doing it.
Never knew that was something I was capable of, but I'm happy to help!
Is there any lunch left for me?
He nods and points across the room at the counter by the basin. Beside the tap lies a wrapped paper packet.
Grinning, she returns the notebook and graphite to him. But he shakes his head and pushes it back. She raises an eyebrow. He lifts his rectangular device and points at it with a smile. “Ah,” she declares, with the decisive tone of some more eloquent response.
Before she begins across the room at the bidding of her hunger, she feels a tap on her shoulder. Hong Yi, still beaming, turns the glowing surface of his device to her, and points at the translation glass. She lifts it to read, brass rim gleaming in the light through the curtain.
You're pretty amazing, too. I am glad I have a way to tell you, finally.
Honourless smiles with a shake of her head, pats his shoulder twice, then goes to take her lunch.
*
“She says, ‘Let me know if you need a drink, or a blanket, or company,’” says Dorian.
Marcia’s vision is not quite steady, and a pain has settled behind her eyes. Perhaps she is showing it, for though Vesper makes an attempt at a smile, the worry is stark in the lines on her brow. “As much of your company as you are willing to spare, Evening Star,” she answers.
She hears her interpreted reply through a veil of fog. “‘I am happy to sit by your bed until you recover.’”
When Marcia tries to look at her, she still sees those eyes, fiery with sunlight, reflecting the sand of the colosseum. “With you watching me so, fever will not be the only heat I feel,” she murmurs.
When Dorian repeats the line, Marcia watches as Vesper abandons the smile for a puzzled frown as she answers—and their interlocutor translates— “‘We could open some windows if you need to cool down.’”
Marcia decides, then, that she is in no state to be saying such things. “N…no, no need,” she murmurs, pressing a hand to her forehead.
Hong Yi spares Marcia a set of clothing, and it is the closest thing to a good fit they can find, though she seems perplexed by the zippers. She denies help in the bathroom, though there are five minutes of silence before the shower turns on. She shuffles out, drenched hair wrapped in a towel, wearing Hong Yi’s grey buttonless shirt and shorts.
By now, Vesper has pulled a chair from the table to Marcia’s bedside. Sitting with one arm draped over the lacquered back, she watches as Marcia flops down on her mattress and closes her eyes. You jelly? declares the tagline on the grey shirt, above a cartoon of a purple jellyfish. Though the fear still sits heavy in Vesper's chest, she can't help a laugh.
Now, the room is filled again with motion. “I’m gonna getting dinner and supplies,” Hong Yi calls from the door. “Make sure she has water. Oh, and, I left some pills on the counter—give her two every six hours.”
With a nod and a wave from Vesper, Hong Yi disappears back into the dusty streets of Arkalyk. Honourless, busying herself at the counter till now, pays a visit soon after, slapping the translation glass and an open notebook into her hand.
“Oh! Right.” Jolting upright, Vesper shuffles the glass and notebook between her hands, peering at the scrawled script of circles and lines. As she passes the glass over the words, lines of English are revealed, written in a similar scratchy style: I must go outside. There is nothing in this damned room. Hong Yi took the key. Will you be here when I return?
Up to this point, Vesper has yet to see much beyond the street of their hotel. But all is quiet, and nothing is calling her away, after months on end of following one command or another. Perhaps some respite is deserved.
Sliding the pencil out of the notebook rings, she scribbles a reply. Yes, I promised Marcia I would stay. It’s a city of decent size, don’t get lost.
With a peek at the words and a chuckle, Honourless pockets the stationery. She walks off with a call of, “Athe Vesper u Marcia,” and all she hears then is the door creaking open and shut behind her.
So she finds herself alone with Marcia, who now lies wracked with shivers, legs tangled in the blankets. Between the language and the delirium, little she says makes sense. Minutes past Honourless’ departure, Vesper quietly brings a filled glass of water and pushes two pills out through the foil, motioning them towards her. Marcia peers up with fever-wet eyes.
There’s nothing Vesper can think to say, so she mimes putting the pills in her mouth, and then drinking. Marcia stares at the pills for a minute, then picks them up, puts them in her mouth, and gags. She snatches madly for the glass, and knocks it over. With only a gasp as water spills over the nightstand onto the carpet, Vesper rights the emptying receptacle and sprints to the sink, while Marcia moans at the bitterness.
By the time she returns, Marcia has already swallowed the pills, but takes the glass with a whispered gratias, gratias, and gulps it all down. Vesper draws the curtains and opens a grimy window. Light and cold air tide in.
The room begins to dim to blue as the latter is covering the spill with paper napkins. She only becomes aware of the distant hum of machinery when it begins to peter out, uncovering the eerie quiet beneath. The call of some unnameable bird rises, stark and piercing, from the melange.
The two clumsily piece together a conversation about the room’s contents: the scenery is beautiful. The furniture is old. Light. Marcia wants it.
Kicking back the chair, Vesper stands and wanders about the hotel room, finding each switch and flipping it on and off, gradually selecting a combination of lights that gently illuminates the beds.
Whatever Marcia mumbles when she returns, Vesper can decode enough to recognise as a quip about her eagerness to serve.
“Oh, you're teasing me?” she chuckles, starting to feel a little silly. If only Hong Yi were here, then she might have some hope of a worthy reply. Instead, she spends a minute constructing her next sentence. “Quomodo… Quomodo…sientes?” She concedes defeat.
Marcia’s eyes drift up to meet hers. “‘Sientes?’” she repeats, slowly. Her gaze is a little more lucid than before. “Est sicut…‘sentis’?”
“Quomodo sentis?”
As Vesper puzzles over the faint echo of the Latin word in its descendant, she does not notice Marcia reaching for her until the icy fingers wrap around her wrist. Marcia lifts her hand, presses the back of the palm to her forehead.
She jolts to attention. “Christ, you're hot as a stove,” she mutters. Marcia is no longer so hot she radiates, so the medication must be doing its work—but still her fingers are ice and her forehead is on fire, matted hair sticking to skin.
Marcia sags back, gesturing at the glass she drained empty. Vesper picks it up. She can feel that stare boring into her as she goes to fill it at the faucet, and brings it back to the dresser.
Rather than paying the water any attention, Marcia continues to watch her. Her eyes are dark as night beneath her long lashes. There’s a scar on her chin, and one on her temple, normally hidden by her fringe.
Vesper remembers many a time when she was beheld as a curiosity, a specimen of study. She has felt the stares of strangers who hungered to pick her apart. Marcia’s attention is similar, yet lands differently. She feels like work of art being appraised. The thought makes her face feel warm.
Marcia finally picks up her glass and glances at its rim. “Gratias,” she says, then scrunches up her face. “Th… Tha… Thank…”
“Thank you?” Vesper offers.
She sees Marcia rehearse the consonants with her tongue. Her eyes are teary from the heat. “Thank you,” she says, managing a tired smile. She sways.
Without thinking, Vesper descends to catch her by the shoulders. “Please, please…” she murmurs. “Don’t burn yourself like this…it will kill you before the illness does…”
Marcia nods, cracked lips parting. “Bene est…bene est…”
Returning with dinner and a roll of paper towels, Hong Yi detours to knock on the duchess’ door. At this hour, the light has yet to fully desert the sky, but the hall lights have flickered on, old incandescent fittings on the walls. It is time, he thinks, to take Marcia to the hospital. The vaccine course would take weeks, but if Orobelle values the life of her ally, if only to further her quest, then—
The door clicks open, and Dorian peers through. “Your timing is good,” he says, waving him inside.
Orobelle sits half under the covers. She does not have the same lax demeanour as before.
“Hey—”
“Hong Yi. Good that you are here. Take a message to the rest: we leave as soon as Marcia is well enough to move.”
The question he had prepared falls from his lips. “She won’t be ready yet. What's the big hurry?”
Wordlessly, Orobelle lifts up a round brass contraption with a glass face, but unlike the corefinder, this one has a gently domed face, and three hands. She turns it towards him, and points at it with her other hand.
“Uh, what is that?”
“We have thirty days left,” she answers. “Half our time is up, and we have only found half of us.” Dorian watches quietly from a corner. “I shall have Honourless scout ahead. She can tell us what to expect of the next world.”
“I—I’ll let the others know.” The hospital, she needs the hospital— “Can we still send Marcia to the hospital?”
“Is she not recovering?”
Orobelle is not here to parley. After all, Marcia’s health is only an obstacle, through the eyes of her multiversal destiny. “Frankly, I—I don’t know.”
“Well, will a hospital visit expedite her recovery?”
“Um…actually…it would be a three-week process, or…”
“Then no, she is not going to a hospital. Or else we can leave her at a hospital and come collect her when she is done.”
He sighs. “You've got to be kidding me.”
“I assure you, I am not.”
He hangs his head. “Alright. Alright, your Grace, I’ll let them know. By the way, Dorian,” he turns, “you want some dinner? I got you a pack.”
As he pulls one of the five packets of beef rice out of his bag, Dorian’s head lifts with wide eyes, then turns, inevitably, to Orobelle.
The duchess fixes Hong Yi with a stare, and at once he shrinks back. “He is already fed,” she answers. “He will be alright.”
“I…okay.” Hong Yi watches Dorian lower his head as he tucks the food away. “We’ll finish this between the four of us, then. Have…have a good rest of your evening.”
“Farewell.”
Silence hangs in the air as he shuts the door, and something continues to sit ill at ease in his chest as he walks back, engulfed in the perfume of the hall. A painting of the Steppes gazes down from the wall to his right, lit by its own bulb.
On the walk to the room, the carpet changes from dark grey to light, where the windows have faded it. Two serving staff cart towels past, one of whom nods a greeting as she passes. He smiles weakly back over his shoulder as his hand meets the door handle. Then he steps out of the hallway.
It is not terribly surprising, all considered, that he finds Vesper sitting on the edge of Marcia’s bed, both too engrossed to notice his return until he calls out their names.
“Oh! Good evening,” Vesper exclaims, head whipping back. “We were talking—erm—trying to talk about what's coming next…after this.”
“Well, perfect, I have word from Orobelle about that. Or rather, demands. She wants us to get moving soon.”
“Really? Does she understand how ill Marcia is?”
He drops the stack of food boxes on the table and plucks his jacket off his shoulders. “Nope. I mean, is that really surprising when she hasn’t visited once? She wants us to leave—and I quote—as soon as Marcia is well enough to move.”
Vesper kicks her chair back. “Christ almighty. That girl’s a piece of work. No, she’s the whole bloody workshop.” She sighs. “Well, good news on that front, then—the medication was a great idea. Marcie’s back to burning now, but for a minute there, she was lucid enough to think about how she was feeling, and I think she said the infection…is greatly reduced. Still there, but on its way out.”
He pauses. “Wait, really? I guess her scorched earth policy is working.” His brow furrows. “I’m still worried. She needs to stop having fevers that high.”
“I told her. Or I tried to. We should have taken her to the hospital when we had the chance.”
“Yeah, no luck with that. Orobelle specified that we will not be doing that.”
“To hell with that duchess! I hope she’s fucking happy, because at least one of us will be.”
It is Honourless’ first time sleeping in a bed in twenty years, and perhaps her body feels the dissonance of its comfort, after standing on a mountain outcrop for an hour. Perhaps it is simply how much she slept after that last jump, or perhaps it is the conditioning of a decade in the jungle.
Either way, her eyes fly open in the dead of the night, and for a minute, they see nothing.
In the shadows, she listens to the breathing of her companions. She sees Vesper curled on the couch, head tucked in the crook of her elbow, Hong Yi dozing in the farthest bed with his arms wrapped around a pillow, and Marcia, tossing now and then.
What a strange party. All they have in common is that they’ve all been pulled together by a quest they do not understand, and severed from their old lives.
In that way, Honourless has it easiest. She had no hopes, no people to be torn from. As much as she despises the duchess, this is an improvement upon fighting tooth and nail to keep her place in the world. This journey is her road back home.
By way of written notes, Hong Yi has apprised her of Marcia’s condition, and of Orobelle’s—as usual—unreasonable orders. In turn, she has confirmed to him that this world is his own.
Why? he asked then.
It was the one you wanted, she replied.
How did you know?
I did not. I only felt a tugging in its direction, and let it point us here. I assumed that was you. It has paid off.
I could not have researched Marcia’s situation without the inter-net. Why did you land us in Arkalyk? I am curious.
I only wanted us far away from those plots and machinations. This is where that thought took us.
In her bed, Marcia flips to face her, curling her knees towards her torso, but her eyes are still closed. In her waking, her eyes are always tear-clouded, as with a widow mourning a burning city. But the ever-loving Duchess is about to drag them to the next world over, the perpetual motion machine that she is, no matter who it hurts.
She feels the weight of the question, as she often does, of why she is still doing this when her bonds have been cut. Could she flee, never to be seen again? The Queendom must not have a way to follow her, or else Orobelle would not have resorted to petitioning for her help.
She could live again, in whichever world she chooses, just not Wonderland. She could be a wanderer without a duchess’ goad on her back.
But just as it was family that gave Orobelle the power to unlock the baroness’ shackles, it is family that tethers Honourless to the duchess’ cause. There is no leaving the Queendom behind while a piece of her still lives there.
The morning sun pricks into the room, touching hair and skin. Hong Yi wakes first—still recovering from jetlag a dozen different ways, he isn't sure if his sleep will settle until they come to rest somewhere.
But rest doesn't exist on this mission, he thinks, sitting down at the dining table with his laptop. Well, there are worse places we could be than here.
The air is still and faintly scented like tea. The two windows dimly light the space. On the couch dozes Vesper, a hand hanging off the edge.
He sneaks a glance at Skype, but doesn't say a word. His buddies are complaining about orientation week. They have no idea he's been checking. He doesn’t know what he would say, if they found out.
Marcia stirs from bed not ten minutes later, and spends another minute crawling out of the covers. She walks unsteadily to the fridge to pick out a carton of milk, but never once does he feel as if she needs the support.
He watches her tear it open, and drink ravenously, straight out of the carton. As she does, her eyes dart to him. Their gazes meet. Her hair is a mess.
He stares back, swallowing. “Salve!” he calls.
She lowers the carton and smiles back. “Et salve tibi,” she answers.
“Tu es bonus?” he asks, certain he has messed up the conjugation and diction somewhere or another.
“Am…good,” she answers.
His heart leaps. She and Vesper must have been talking more than he realised. Marcia has sunk onto the couch beside the sleeping soldier, and now prods at her upper arm. Vesper groans and flips over—then jolts awake.
“Oh, it's you…” she mumbles. “How are you?” By now she has propped herself up on an elbow, and, without a pause, reaches up to feel her forehead. “You’re still warm.”
“‘Warm?’”
“Oh, er,” she starts, “Caliente, cálido…”
“Ah, calidus.” Marcia grasps the forearm suspended before her face. “Sum calidum pro te.”
This time, there is no doubting the flirtation in her tone. Vesper, however, frowns at her. “What do you mean, am I the reason you're still unwell?”
Hong Yi rubs his temple. Is he allowed to say something?
For the first time since they landed in this world, Dorian is out of Orobelle’s sight. The duchess has grumbled, but made no indication of begrudging any of his transgressions.
She knows his translation glass is in the hands of the criminal she hired. She made no remark. She has not scolded him for letting the woman in.
All she did say was, “Perhaps you need some time to reflect.” And it is impossible to tell why she suggested it, but he is here, now.
In the hallway he gazes out a window at the lush hills beyond. The air carries a gentle chill, as of a highland, cool even in summer. He warms himself by reflex, the air in his vicinity soaking the heat.
“Dorian,” a voice pulls his gaze to his left, down the corridor. It is Marcia, closing the door of the family suite. There is an indistinctness to her gaze, so unlike the woman he saw on the arena sand, but her mind is present. “I thought I would get some fresh air…I hear it helps the infirm.”
“Oh, Marcia. Are you well?”
“Better than yesterday, thank you.” She rubs her head. “I have…never been this ill before. The entirety of yesterday is a blur. But it is only a matter of patience, now…”
He lifts a hand to touch her forehead, feeling the heat there, before gently easing it away, the way he alters the heat in his own body. She goes still, stands rooted to the floor.
“The fever is all through you,” he murmurs, “ but the infection is only in your leg…surely you do not need…”
“Dorian, this is amazing,” she breathes. As his hand drops away, she stares past him, up the corridor. “Whereabouts is the duchess? Isn't she anxious not to have her protector close at hand?”
“She sent me outside,” he answers. “I was asked to reflect.”
Marcia’s eyes widen. “What about?”
“Perhaps she thinks I have been disobedient.”
“Do you owe her obedience?” she asks. “What would happen if you weren't? She relies on you.”
He winces. “I may lose my place as her guard, and I might be sent home…with my sister.”
“Sent home? When she cannot carry her own luggage?”
“She could replace me with ease.”
“You must be under an oath of servitude. But she cannot dismiss you. You're a—how does she say it, a core. She's come this far, employed a woman she hates, all to find us…and you are one of us.”
He shakes his head. “No, I cannot think of that. My pledge binds me. I serve her house, and safeguard her life, and I am to put my life on the line to preserve hers, should it be necessary. That is the predicate of my existence, now.”
“What were you, before her?”
“A volcano watcher.”
“You watched volcanoes?”
“I did. Every clan needs a watcher, but none wanted to perform the task. But my chief learned that I can give and take heat at will, and it seemed inevitable, to all of us, that that duty would fall to me.”
“Ah…so you did do more than light campfires and cool water.” She smiles. “I need a better way to while my time away than rotting in bed. Say…would you tell me a tale about your life before?”
He concedes a blink of surprise, then ponders the question. “I say it could count as ‘reflection’.”