The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Last time, on Headless Over Heels...

He kissed her, and she kissed him back, despite the gruesome effluvial stains they were both soaked in. “If I stay lying here,” he whispered, “I think I’m gonna fall asleep.”

She replied with an enervated “hmm.”

He hmmed back.

Annalise was too bleeding tired to say what she wanted to, which was either right-o, we oughta get a move on, or will you marry me and be my husband, she wasn’t sure which. Her eyes drooped shut.

The hammering of a fist on a door. “Mom.” It was Tiago. Bang bang bang.

Annalise groaned as her fox shifted in her arms. “Fecking what,” she called.

“Need you in the square,” Tiago called.

“Can’t you do whatever it is?”

“No.” Tiago had carefully pruned all emotion from himself before he’d come to her. “I’m sorry, mom. I can’t do it. It has to be you.”

Here was a worry worth the waking. With great effort, Annalise raised her head to the window. “What’s happening, sunshine?”

“The deep-wounded are starting to unlight.” All the victory cheer had left Tiago’s face. The dour, dark-eyed soldier was back in residence. “We have one animaxis. We can catch one soul. Someone has to decide whose.”

And now, the continuation.

The village square’s conversion to a field hospital was more-or-less complete by their arrival. Vast white mushrooms grown up from the cobbles after a strange and terrible storm. A black-haired, leathery woman sat on her haunches outside the largest of these new growths, smoking a cigarette and gazing with cold neutrality at her hand, which shook like an autumn leaf about to dislodge.

Ofelia stood next to her, with a bummed smoke in her mouth and a dog-eared book under her arm. “The poppy juice does an amazing job,” she said. “I’d expected more screaming.”

“The screaming shan’t be missed,” the woman said, half paying attention to the unlit girl.

Ofelia trapped her cigarette between her teeth and waved to her approaching family. “They’re using this amazing anodyne in there, Mother. Dolores says it’s made from poppies.”

“Verdugo al Kanap was rattling on about this stuff last winter,” Annalise said. “Glad to see it’s moving south. The wonders of technology. Beats the hell out of a slug of whiskey and a dowel in the mouth, I reckon.”

Dolores surveyed the gathered retinue with dispassion. “You’re here to pick, then.”

Tiago nodded. “Where’s the animaxis?”

“Ursula.” The woman stood and whistled. “Ho. Ursula. Bring the soul mirror.”

Yes, Madam Dolores.

A mousy girl in a saintspeaker’s tunic jumped to, with a clatter of carved hundred-charms. “Yes, Madam Dolores.”

“Four of ‘em,” Dolores said. “You want my advice, pick a Teremi.”

“Thanks for the council.” Annalise held her hand out to her daughter. “Let me see that cig.”

Ofelia pouted. “Mother.”

“Just a puff. Swear to the saints.”

Ofelia passed Annalise her cigarette. The Verdugo flicked it to the ground and crushed it under her boot heel. Ofelia exhaled her exasperation. “You are awful and evil.”

“Don’t pick the habit up. Love you, girleen.” Annalise ducked into the triage tent.

Seth followed, and the twins came after. “I don’t know what you see in her,” Ofelia said.

Inside the canvas was stained in shades of carnelian and rust. A low murmur surrounded them as healers sutured and stitched and wrapped gauze around broken skin, or set twisted limbs into splint. Ofelia was right about the screams, or lack thereof. It would take years of sorcerous study to take the pain away; the little silver ampules the healers carried did the trick in half a minute and a workmanlike poke.

The scarecrow ward was at the tent’s far end, tied off with hemp. Four of them, as Dolores had said. A woman Seth didn’t recognize who was lying very still in her cot, the gray already creeping along her throat. A heavy, hirsuite man sitting up with a notebook, tongue stuck out as he scratched into it with a fountain pen.

Riccana lay by a circular cut-out in the canvas, breathing shallow. Her face was pallid. Sweat beaded on her brow. Tiago’s attempted look of glowering detachment snagged on her like a hooked fish. Seth remembered the excuses he’d found to be near the little ginger-haired woman, who now sweated and twisted at the rim of consciousness, clinging to the ragged tail of her departing soul.

Simon sat near her, eased back in a woodframe and canvas chair. He gave the incoming retinue a woozy smile and a wave with the one arm he had left. The other was tied off now at the elbow. The blood on its dressing was already as dark as ink. The whole limb had gone from ruddy pink to a pallid gray. “Welcome to the ward,” Simon said. “Relaxing, no?”

The writing man snorted.

“I suppose you know why we’re here,” Annalise said. Ursula the junior saintspeaker tarried at the edge of the rope divider, the polished onyx animaxis under her arm. “All of you did heroes’ work today. And had the Saints their seat, we’d have animaxi for all of yous. But—”

Simon interrupted. “It has to be Riccy.”

Annalise bit the rest of her speech back. The unlit retinue’s collective gaze fell on the girl, who whimpered weakly as if halfway hearing her name.

“Moora there hasn’t woke up yet,” Simon said. “And probably won’t. But Alain agrees.”

“I said Simon,” Alain the writer grunted. His voice was weighed down on its corners by the anodyne. “Seems to me he has the better chance at walking again. But Simon said Riccy. So.”

“And not you?” Seth asked.

“Nah.” Alain indicated the lumpy sheets below. “It’s a horror down there. Nothing will work the way it’s supposed to anymore, they say. Not a thing you want to see the one time, let alone every day. Not a life you stick around for. Back to the wheel for me. While died a hero is still on the table. And before I find out how it is to take a shit without half the plumbing.” He smirked at some uncontrolled reaction on Seth’s face. “See what I mean?”

Annalise knelt by the il Teremis. “She’s further gone than you are. Alain’s not wrong.”

“She’s young,” Simon said. “She’ll come back. She’ll survive this and anything else she faces. I know she will. I wasn’t all that, not in the end. Didn’t get much done. Didn’t go anywhere, didn’t do much. Grew some tasty rhubarb. I always wondered whether there ought to be more. And then more came, and it was fucking awful.”

“I’m sorry, Simon,” Ofelia said, quietly.

“Ah, it’s fine. I’ll blame the seraphs, on balance.” With his one remaining hand, Simon stroked a sweaty lock of Riccana’s hair behind her ear. “Riccy’s the one who deserves the chances. Whatever’s left to her, she deserves. I’ve never been to the Necropolis, and I suppose now I never will, but surely they know how to fix a broken soldier.”

“Most of the way,” Annalise said. “Most of the time.”

“Bring Riccy’s soul with you, then. Bring her with you. Anyway.” He croaked a wraith of a laugh holding up his stump. “You’d save the most person by percentage.”

Annalise didn’t join in the laugh, but she managed a smile, at least. “We’ll take care of her Simon,” she said. “You have my word.”

Tiago let out a long exhale behind Seth, who did him the favor of pretending not to notice. Simon slumped into his seat, eyes heavy-lidded. “Good.” Something loosened in his face. They were all on threadbare hours of sleep, but he looked tiredest of all. “That’s good, then.”

“One last question,” Annalise said. “Or request, I suppose. From the Legion.” She tapped her palm against the pommel on her sword’s back. “It’d be fast, gents. The al Ydrises don’t swing twice.”

Alain shook his head. “They say I have an hour or so, and I have letters to write. Apparently if you take enough anodyne at once it gives you a sleep you don’t come out of. That sounds better than a sword. And I’ve given the Legion enough, I reckon. You get to the Necropolis, tell General il Nekropoli he’s welcome. Bunch’ve peasants did what his fancy deathspell couldn’t.”

Annalise chuckled at the casual treason. “I will, yeah.”

“I’ll donate my head.” Simon eased out of his seat. “Why not? Let’s get as much use as we can out of this shit sandwich.” He affected an unsteady bow. “Lead on, Madam Verdugo. Let’s not get this tent any stickier.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...8-animaxis
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2577689/