Amire

Do I regret my breach of ethics in handing over personal information to Zil-Antonin regarding more than one of my patients? I know that I should. It was, unquestionably, an unethical thing for me to do. Privileged information is privileged information, as a matter of principle. Yet didn’t I save lives by doing this? Surely he will use this information to help Kamila – to do what needs to be done for her, and to lessen the threat to everyone around her that she – unfortunately – poses by her presence alone.

Or perhaps I am wrong, and perhaps Zil-Antonin is not the man I believe him to be. Perhaps it does not matter what he does, and my violation is a violation in itself, and I will await my punishment for it – if fate, indeed, does punish me at all. Sometimes, it’s undeniable, the unworthy get rewarded.

-Record of Doctor Amrie

245 YT, Spring: Besieged Kivv.

Food runs short.

Supplies lie unused or spent.

People, desperately, flock to the northern part of the city. As many as can fit, as many as are allowed in, crowd under the monasteries, where the intensifying shelling cannot reach them. Bodies lay uncollected and unburied in the street, as the Invictan siege engines – now finally breaking through the defenses of Valer cannons and point defense beams – make it impossible to get to the bodies without risking life and limb.

Amire kept his hands in his pockets as he wandered, the back of his coat almost trailing on the ground. The prefabricated metal structures of the refugee camp were mostly still intact – although some lay collapsed from the shelling. The place was nearly depopulated – everyone had gone for higher ground, safer ground. This part of the city was the most clear – the easiest place to build a camp – but most assuredly not the safest.

He glanced up the hill, to where his office stood. Well, where he was spending his nights clearly was not the safest place either. Only the other day, a piece of shrapnel had cracked his window. But the nearby defense tower still kept away most shells.

It was a fine excuse for Amire to tell himself – as though “most shells will be stopped by the defenses” mattered. It is always the few that are not stopped which matter.

Yet he still found himself sleeping in his office every night, and – honestly – he was sure he couldn’t bear to have it any other way.

When Amire walked past still-intact parts buildings in the camp, he let his fingers trail along their walls – corrugated metal siding, stuff that was probably mass-manufactured in Corod or even in the Gaurl Provinces themselves. There was no heavy manufacturing here – not in massive quantities, at least, not anything more than what the Sowers could cook up in their workshops - and that fact might well doom the city. Still, there was something deeply amusing about the prospect that this whole war was really Gaurl technology pitted against Gaurl technology. The metal structures were surprisingly durable, at least the ones that hadn’t been struck directly. The ground might shake, but the buildings would simply shake with it.

Amire was no warrior himself but he knew that the malleability of metal was one of the things which made it so strong. That which cannot bend will break, no matter how strong it is. And that which allows itself to bend may resist breaking… at least until it is struck with such force that it cannot survive.

To be soft, Amire thought, is not to be weak.

But he soon thought himself a hypocrite, walking past a severed arm the lay near the remains of a bombed-out old house. He kicked the arm aside, lip curling in disgust. Disgust for the gross thing he’d just passed, like a pile of rotting garbage – not a person, or a part of a person, left here by the merciless assault of an army just beyond the south wall. When Amire looked at that wall, when he saw the people guarding it – behind their barricades of course – and when he heard the occasional pop of gunfire which never fully ceased throughout the night for more than a few minutes at a time, Amire thought that he wanted to be a softhearted man. That would, after all, make him better than the insensitive others, would it not?

He brushed past the inhuman thing left out on the ground and kept walking, keeping his eyes on the walls. One of the sentries, safe behind their barricade, turned to glance down at him. Though he couldn’t see the sentry’s face, he could imagine the expression underneath the salvaged Invictan helmet – a raised eyebrow, confusion – “are you sure you should be out here?” – before he turned back to his task with the equivalent of a shrug.

It was only after the sentry turned away and Amire glanced back at the trod grass in front of him that he began to hear the footsteps approaching him from behind.

He started to turn around on his heel – but as he turned the footsteps shuffled and a hand roughly grasped the back of his shirt. He was spun around, lost his balance, and before he got the chance to glimpse his attacker, he was already dragged several paces to the right, up against the nearby wall.

“Hey, Doctor,” Kamila hissed, pushing Amire up against the metal wall. The painful ring of impact went through his ribcage. “I hear you’ve been talking with Antonin.”

Amire would have laughed, but it hurt to breathe after the attack. Instead he just hissed quietly through clenched teeth: “Are you stupid? We’ll be seen.”

“What do I care?” Kamila asked. “No one can touch me. And it’s not like I have any secrets left anyway.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Amire scoffed, and his lungs burned. It was difficult to summon any defiance at all when one of the most dangerous people in the city had him up against the wall, but adrenaline could do strange things to people. “I only said what I had to say. For everyone’s good, including your own.”

“Amire, I will fucking kill you.” Kamila’s whisper was close to his ear, and sent a shiver down his spine. By instinct, he thrashed and tried to escape, trying to pull his hand free. With the painful raking of strong fingers around his wrist he managed to pull the hand out of Kamila’s grasp for a moment, and crashed against her other arm, trying to remember the long-forgotten days of his brief martial training. He pushed up and back, hoping to dislodge Kamila’s grip and break her stance.

He couldn’t force her arm at all – he was like the wind trying to knock a tree down – too weak to do it even if the tree were not so firmly rooted that it could survive a hurricane with enough luck. Kamila’s hand grabbed Amire by the back of the head and shoved him forward – again, a painful shock through his ribcage, and the momentary confusion followed by pain as his forehead hit the wall. His heart beat fast, with true fear – anticipating his own death in moments.

Kamila leaned forward and whispered to him: “You bastard. You know Mirshal has it out for me? The old geezer’s club, they think I’m dangerous. Well, they’re damn right.”

“Okay,” Amire said, nodding his head quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for them to do anything –“

“You just wanted Voloshko to get rid of me when this is all over, right? Use me as a weapon, use me to save your sorry hides, and then throw me aside when I’m not useful anymore? That’s exactly what you wanted to do, isn’t it? Admit it.” Kamila leaned in, and turned Amire’s face to the side, so that he could see her. Her face was flushed red, strands of hair pinned down by sweat. Eyes red. Amire could have been looking into the visage of an Aether-Touched.

“I wanted him to make sure you were okay,” Amire said. “I considered you to be at risk, and frankly, I don’t have the ability to resolve the problems you’ve been experiencing. But this can’t go unresolved – you’ll either hurt yourself or you’ll hurt someone else –“

“You think I’m out of control?” Kamila shouted into Amire’s face – hot spit landed on his cheeks. He wanted to thrash and shout back “Yes, obviously!” but kept his peace and stayed silent.

Kamila must have gotten the message regardless. She growled angrily and threw Amire to the ground. “You’d better stay out of my way, you piece of –“

A whistling from above. Amire was too sluggish to move, still struggling to process the attack on his person and to get ready to move, when he heard the telltale sound. He recognized what it was in a flash of fear, but his muscles weren’t responding to the call to move – adrenaline shot through his veins and –

Kamila grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him to the side, threw him back against the south wall, and with a hand resting on the hilt of that sword she always carried, Kamila raised a leg, twisted, and caught her boot on the interior bend of a corrugated metal wall. She shoved it to the side and raised her opposite forearm, drawing the sword from its scabbard in the same motion. Bright crackling energy issued out from the armguard she wore on her forearm, and so when the shell landed and metal shrapnel burst out toward Kamila and Amire, it deflected and landed all around them. Shouts of sentries up above. Kamila standing there, tall, like a shield herself. Amire looked around. The shrapnel was hot, so hot some of it was red and the rest was white. He hadn’t heard the impact of the shell, not properly. A sound that loud, you don’t hear it – you just feel it and then you don’t hear anything for a good half hour afterwards. But he did hear one thing, perhaps a shock-hallucination, perhaps just luck as his brain scrambled to shut out the excess stimulus: but he heard it clear as day.

Kamila muttered: “Thanks, Devani,” as she lowered her arm and the strange crackling shield disappeared into her guard again. She turned, glowering at Amire, who propped himself up with arms behind his back, staring up at his savior. She said something to him, something angry, but he couldn’t understand her words. And then she sheathed her sword and vanished, while the sentries scrambled above to return fire – pops of guns reaching through the haze of unhearing while Amire slowly scrambled back up to his feet.

He tried to follow Kamila’s exit with his eyes, but she was already gone by the time he’d stood up fully.

That night, Amire did not sleep in his office – he went to the basement of the old damaged gathering-hall with everyone else.