Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

“How have they been treating you?”

“All right I s’pose. The food’s a bit shit.”

“They haven’t been beating you up or—”

“No. Nothing like that. These are giving me a headache though.” He waves at the bars in front of him.

I stand for a moment and reach out towards them with the backs of my hands. Even through the bandages I can feel the poisonous cold. “Iron,” I say. “Oh crap, I forgot about that.” I withdraw my hand.

“Yeah. Oh, also? It fucks up spellcasting. It’s probably not a coincidence.”

“Mistress Taniel, please keep away from the bars,” Deidas warns me.

I sit down again.

Kerilas and I are speaking in English. He should have no reason to lie in front of the guard and Deidas. Kerilas is sitting in his cell. I’m on the other side of the bars, in a simple wooden chair matching his own.

Kerilas looks at Deidas. “I see Queen Bee’s sent along a drone to watch us,” he observes dryly.

“Keri, don’t.”

“Have you accepted her offer yet?”

I shake my head.

“You should. She’ll look after you okay.”

“I don’t need looking after, I want to stay with you and Sam.”

He gives me a look. “How is Sam?”

“I don’t know. She’s gone, she… said she was going to find Lotan, get him to come in and give himself up. I haven’t seen her since day before yesterday.”

Silence.

“You know, I think these people are on the brink of an industrial revolution,” Kerilas says, conversationally. “Funny thing is, they’ve been on the brink of an industrial revolution for at least a thousand years. Now, isn’t that interesting?”

“They told me you confessed,” I say. I won’t let him divert me. He won’t meet my eyes. “Why?”

“Iron bars in a jail, steel sword blades, arrow heads, that sort of thing, it’s a bit of a pain, an occasional hazard, but it’s not a serious threat to a way of life. On the other hand, once you’re building railroads from one end of a continent to another, iron-hulled steamships, factories, what-have-you, and all the trees you have to cut down for the furnaces… You’re really going to start making it difficult for certain people to get around.”

“Stop fucking about, James. Lo— Dave killed Jalese. It was an accident, for fuck’s sake. Why did you confess to it? Who put you up to that?”

“No-one.” He meets my eyes now.

“Then why?” He’s being so calm, so analytical and cold it scares me.

“Has anyone told you yet what the Reki did?”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I’m not changing the subject.” He fixes my gaze. “I bet they didn’t tell you why.” He smiles, fey. “Can you imagine how intoxicating it is to have such complete power over someone that you can control her every emotional response as you would play a musical instrument. Gifting her with an intensity and purity and harmony of feeling she could never have known in a lifetime of farming and fucking and raising kids. Of course you must never quite break her. After all, a broken instrument doesn’t make good musi—”

I step off the chair and hurl it at the bars, almost heedless of my own scream of pain at using my hands like that. But I don’t have the strength of my rage, and the chair bounces harmlessly off the bars and clatters to the floor.

Deidas and the guard come fowards, wary and protective. “What did he say to you?” Deidas demands.

I’m standing, shaking and breathing heavily. I can’t account for that sudden rage. It just seemed to flood out of me, without volition.

“Nothing true,” I say, glaring at Kerilas’s eyes. “He’s trying to make this easier for me.”

“Who can teach the lamb to run as fast as it ever can, Taniel? The shepherd or the wolf?”

“You don’t have to become evil!” I protest, still shaking. “You have a brain. You have a choice! You can fight it!”

“Fight what? Kerilas?” His blue eyes fixate me. “Could you fight Taniel?”

I stare at him. It’s a nonsensical question. I suppose that’s the point. “I refuse to believe that an entire race of people can be inherently evil,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think of.

“Bzzt! Logic error! Lose five points. Back home race is just a social construct. There’s more genetic variation in a single troop of bonobos than the entire human race. Here?” He grins. It’s horrible. “Compare us to humans we’re practically immortal and eternally youthful. We’re faster, smarter, stronger, more determined, more passionate, harder to kill, inevitably more experienced, and dammit we’re just prettier. It really, really, isn’t fair, is it? All they’ve got is this astonishing fecundity. Like the bonobos. To quote the good doctor, they’re practically born pregnant. It shouldn’t be surprising the Neri see them as a resource to be managed.”

I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “The Neri?”

“Are the shepherds. At least here in Jeodin.” Still, all I can do is stare. “I want to think it’s a bad thing but honestly I’m not sure. We know what happens when humans are left in charge of a world.” He smiles again, wryly. “The Reki, however, are not interested in husbandry. We’re not afraid that humans might outshine us. We long to see how brightly they can shine.” I can’t help remembering Jalese, luminous in the night. I huddled around her flame. “We are promethean. Of course we must be punished; this is accepted.”

“Kerilas, shut up. You’re monologuing.”

He stares at me. I actually managed to surprise him. His expression breaks into a real smile, and then he’s chuckling.

“Did you know I’m a child?” I ask, once he falls silent.

He nods slowly.

“When did you know?”

“From the start. It’s obvious.”

I can’t look at him. I look down, blushing. “It wasn’t obvious to me.”

“Teya, I’m sorry.”

I look back up at him. “What for? You didn’t do anything.”

He just regards me calmly.

“All right,” I say, my voice shaking. “What did you do? How did you do it?” I set my jaw to speak clearly. “Describe it clearly. I have a right to know.”

And after a while it’s his turn to look down, unable to answer.

“You don’t know,” I say, feeling vindicated. “You have no idea.”

“I’m sure it will come back to me next time,” he says. His voice is low and flat. And he looks at me again; iron-cold.