Neville didn’t see me again in those two days between his revelation and the final hour. Apparently, he’d been shuffling his schedule around to make time for me in a way that was starting to make the other parties in his meetings suspicious (or, at the very least, annoyed), and so he had to take the time to run through everything outstanding all at once.

Speech was hard enough for me in those days, though, so it was okay with me. Matthew and I, I think, didn’t talk at all in forty-eight hours. After he looked at me with the fresh knowledge in mind on the fifteenth, he’d evidently decided he now knew all there was to know about Erika Hanover and as such there was no longer any point in humoring her with conversation or attention.

Again—that was fine. I wasn’t about to talk to him, anyway. As little as I truly understood about Matthew, I was content to leave it that way. There was nothing there that interested me beyond passing curiosity about the Biiri family—and if that was truly important, someone would tell me eventually. The man himself, I’d decided, I could take or leave.

And thus ended our relationship. We still lived together for a little bit, but as far as both of us were concerned, we’d solved the other, and we viewed each other as having very little replay value.

Despite this, though, on the night of the seventeenth, he opened his mouth and found a few scraggly words for me.

We sat with the TV (watching without listening and listening without watching, respectively), the lights turned low, in our respective open caves. Matthew had left the apartment once or twice for phone calls, but otherwise was as much of a stone as me—sitting alone, contemplating. Or not, honestly—it wouldn’t have surprised me at all to know that for at least a little bit, he sat as totally thoughtless as me, staring blankly forward as if he was as blind as me, nothing in his head but flesh.

He was watching some nightly news program, declaring the evils of the world. Floods, wildfires, crimes upon crimes.

It’d been so long since I sat and listened to the news that I wondered if I was ever actually reported missing. It was reasonably unlikely that I would’ve known, especially given the window it would’ve happened in, but the fact that nobody had ever stopped me in the street for it in the three years I’d been away suggested to me that I hadn’t been. I wasn’t about to chalk it up to Hal celebrating my absence instead of mourning it—he could be dead instead—but the fact that not even the school had put something together made me pause.

Unless, of course, that stretch of time where I stayed inside in my first few days at the Radiant was long enough to open and shut the whole case.

And while not even this whole section of my life was enough to make me wish it all away I still found myself wondering what he was doing nowadays. If he still hurt like he used to, like he should, or if he was off to other things.

Somehow I found it hard to imagine Hal anywhere else, with anyone else, doing anything else. He would go to the ironworks and then go home and stare at a wall. That closed loop was his whole life; a little booze here, a little weed there, just enough to grease the wheels.

I was still too stun-locked in the moment to see the similarities between my image of him and the reality I lived, but I see it now.

Now, I know how it fits, and so on.

I was looking at nothing and waiting for nothing, so when Matthew found his words, they were all I had.

“If this is the last time I ever get to talk to you,” he opened, without even saying my name. “I want you to know—“

That I’m sorry? That I regret everything?

“…that whatever Prochazka did to you can never be undone.”

We left that alone in the air for a while. I didn’t need to ask for an explanation. I knew he would provide.

“What Prochazka did to you,” he continued, slow, “is exactly what the Biiri family did to me. I was born for this just like you were. And—I try every day not to blame myself for the way that I am, because I know, realistically, that there was nothing I could have done when I was your age to stop it. None of us back there could. I don’t know why I’m holding this against you when the same could be held against me.”

I blinked. He watched me blink. And despite no indication that I was even listening he went on. This was more for his benefit than mine. I’d seen this movie before.

It always went something like this:

“I’ve killed too, you know. When we were kids they made us draw straws —the straws were representative: the person who drew the shortest had the youngest target. I got the shortest. She was ten years old, just like I was.”

He paused. Sank a little deeper into his chair. “I’m not looking for your sympathy. I just want you to know that…that I’ve done this, too. I’ve lived your life already. And just like you there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had nowhere else to go. Nothing that could possibly save me, and…and from where I was I don’t know if I would have even known what a savior would look like. Things just happened to me. Just like they happen to you, I guess.”

Finally, he worked up the courage to glance over at me—and as soon as I felt his eyes swivel toward me, I met them as close as I could. Slightly off-center, now, since I could only meet eyes so well nowadays.

And he looked away. Flinched.

He flinched, and all I had to do was look.

“We’re the same, I guess,” he said. “Simultaneously damaged beyond repair and too useful to throw away.”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” I said, not realizing he’d said exactly the same a second ago. He took it in stride, though. Simply repeating: “Believe me, there’s none. Even if I was capable of mustering up something like that, I’d save it for something that deserves it.”

He sighed. “Erika, I understand you, but that doesn’t mean I like it. When I was your age…if I was in the field already, in your position…I wouldn’t have understood what was happening to me, either.”

“You’re not like me,” I said, blank. Monotoned. “You do not understand.”

“Maybe the nuts and bolts are different. But the core experience is the same.”

“Nobody forced me to do anything,” I said, feeling the edges of my fingernails with the meat of my thumb. “I joined the Radiant of my own free will. I chose this.”

“Did you? Really?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Or did you just take what you were given?”

That was about all I could take. I kept his eyes as close to mine as I could. This drivel had been thrown at me so many times. Every single time it was expected that a basic philosophical question would lock me up and maybe Matthew would get a little kick out of watching me squirm.

No more. I had no more left to give.

“I don’t care, Matthew,” I said, plainly. “Maybe I did or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I chose this or maybe it chose me. But you know what? It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s too late.”

“Are you going to kill him?” Matthew asked, suddenly.

“Prochazka?”

“Neville,” he said. “He wants your answer by tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So are you going to do it?”

Fingernails, hangnails, contours and all. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, Matthew. You’re asking me for answers that don’t exist. I don’t know because nobody knows.”

He frowned. This was it. This was the real reason he hated me. Not because I’d killed—he’d done the same. Not because the world seemed to revolve around me—he lived his whole life in the orbit of others.

“How?” he asked, plainly. Defeated before we even fought. “How can you be so sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“That you don’t know,” he said. “Every time. You say you don’t know. And every time I can tell you’re not lying because I’m in your head and—and I know. I know you’re telling the truth. You have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen.”

I remained expressionless. Nothing to give him the satisfaction.

I was alien. Unknowable. I had no desires, no knowledge, no plans. Before me was Matthew and he was going to squirm and I was going to watch.

With everything as it was.

“That’s correct,” I said, blank.

“You haven’t even attempted to sway yourself in one way or another.”

“Why bother? The decision is going to be made for me. I’m not in control, Matthew. I’m just here, and later I’ll be there, and nothing will change.”

Matthew closed his eyes. He waited. Somewhere deep in his skull the contradiction rattled and no matter which way he twisted or turned it he couldn’t make it into something logical.

Even as he attempted to come to turns with the slow slush reality I live in, I was thoughtless.

Maybe it was better this way. Easier, certainly.

This could be the design.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked, finally. Smaller than before. A question he already knew the answer to, in the tone of a sheepish child, spoken to a entity made purely of contempt for everything in the whole wide world.

There was nothing I desired because there was nothing in the world that was desirable. Neville’s love did not exist—it could not; there was nothing to love.

I existed in contempt of life, spreading my seething miasma across everything I touched. Children stolen from parents. Lives torn apart. Riches snatched and last-things taken. The tempest came and left carnage in its wake, content to be led around on a leash because the tempest wanted for nothing, because its contempt for everything was exactly the same.

All things in spite of each other—all things in spite of you.

The hateful entity needed no expressions to show its nature. It was, surely, abundantly clear to anyone paying any attention.

I hated Matthew in the same way that I hated insects, or cold baths, or nosy people, or hot dry summer days. Squash or math or luck-based game shows.

All things, everywhere, for all time. My thoughts and his thoughts and my body and his body and everything both in between and not.

There was a flood and this is all that was left. It was the only way any of this made any sense.

In my soul, there was hate, and the hate was alone.

“That depends,” I said, not moving, not changing. Exactly as it ever was. “Are you going to stop talking?”

000

I don’t want to trick anyone into thinking I was strong-arming him. I honestly did not know what I was going to do when Neville saw me again. He would take me down into his office and ask the question and my mouth would open and something would occur.

On some level, maybe my decision was fated. I certainly didn’t feel like I had any choice in the matter. By then I knew myself well enough to know that the little withered hateful heart I carried was going to take an action at random when presented with the ultimate choice.

I was not in control. Time would come and go, the event would march ever closer.

I could watch, and I could hate, but that was all.

000

In the center of my world of hate, for fourteen hours, I found peace.

My purpose was to hate. That was why things were the way they were. This was the grand design. Erika Hanover was a vehicle for hate.

Why else would I have been given all this power? What was it for?

For fourteen hours, I knew my place in the world. Matthew did not exist. My droplet rendition of him in my head dissipated. I didn’t care. I didn’t need him.

Both of tomorrow’s outcomes were hated. I hated the pity and I hated being alone. I hated what Prochazka did to me and I hated what I let Prochazka do to me.

I hated what it would mean if I killed him and I hated what it would mean if I didn’t.

What, then, was the point in worrying? What was the point in poking at the details? If it was hate all the way down, then every outcome was the same.

Spin the wheel, get a prize.

For fourteen hours, I understood. The act of yearning ruined the illusion. Planning poached the future. Time would pass and I would be well again.

And everything would be as it was, and still I would hate.

000

He came to me that morning as he always did: at the door by nine, suit and tie, waiting.

Matthew did not speak to me again. He had the opportunity to, but our last conversation covered all the bases. He knew everything there was to know about Erika Hanover, and therefore no further interaction was required.

Truth be told: I didn’t have plans to kill him. At the time the idea never seriously occurred to me. As worthless as it is to everyone else, I have always had a soft spot for people following orders. I could take or leave Matthew himself, but I understood his frustration, and I knew it wasn’t like he kept me in the dry room longer than he needed to. Neville, or someone below him, told him to do these things, and therefore he was duty-bound to see them to completion like the good little soldier he was.

It's war, Erika. Forget it.

When I saw Neville there, I remember moving droplets back towards the couches to check if Matthew was watching. Not that it mattered; he was watching internally, at least, in the same way that I didn’t need to be physically present with my eyes pointed to be “watching,” but it was the gesture I was looking for: I wanted to see him care. Surely he was going to see me off. Surely all of his posturing was for nothing.

But he wasn’t there. He’d gotten up to go to the bathroom or something when I wasn’t aware.

It did not occur to me in the moment because I wasn’t capable of conscious thought, but in hindsight I see that I left him the same way I left my father: quietly, under sunrise, in a time long foretold.

I remember, briefly, wondering if I’d ever meet him again—but not with words: only the contours of his face stretched over a placeholder mannequin, in some crowd of the same.

In my heart, though, I knew I would not.

Neville extended his hand. It was the only gesture he needed to make.

I went to him.

000

How does one describe the mechanism of impulse?

I wouldn’t know the result until the question left his lips, and even then I would only know when the response left mine. A bolt down my spine, surging through the feather-tips of my nerves. One action. One word.

I had no doubts. To do so would require thoughts, which I did not have. The hate cleared all else. For the first time in my life, my mind was clear. How, exactly, Neville planned to use this empty ball of hate to spin magic into something palatable for normal folk was beyond me. I didn’t need to know. It didn’t matter.

I understood. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to be pointed at the problem. I could wave at a crowd, I could sit quietly and smile, I could bring armies to ruin, I could look pretty for the cameras, I could be the good soldier forever.

It was easy. The hate would sustain me.

Say the word, take the hand—and the world was mine.

000

His hand closed around mine and the droplets drenched his face—every curvature monitored with a desperation I couldn’t admit to. Was this genuine? Was this real?

The conclusions I drew while sitting alone and the things I did in the moment did not match. I knew this would happen. I did not prepare for it because I knew there was nothing I could do.

I knew I could only watch.

He led me down the hall and to the elevator. Pressed the button and took me down. I stood with him in silence. He did not look at me. I did not look at him.

Together we walked out to street. I expected the whirlwind of noise and movements to crash through me like a hurricane like it normally did—but it did not. The noise was there but barely—it was a singular entity of static. I didn’t try to pick out sources. It didn’t matter.

It was only then that I realized I wasn’t holding any droplets. Neville’s hand was my only guide.

I was blind again.

Together we went to the other building, and then we went to the elevator and took it down.

000

It was then that I experienced my one cogent thought that whole morning. Even with everything, it still feels a little weird to describe it that way. I can’t think of anything better, though. My eyes had been glazed since I woke up. There was no life back there that day.

But when we left the elevator and came into the lobby before his office, I had it. I remembered the painting.

It was the center one on the left wall—without my permission my attention swiveled towards it. The painting of the hollow-headed woman and the pitcher of blood. I had no way of knowing if the image I held was anything related to what was on the canvas there but I always assumed that it was—as though Matthew had sent the image straight to my brain like an e-mail. I think I just assumed that was true.

And even though I couldn’t have cared less about the painting in the moment it was brought to me, that image rang clear in my head—one of the few things I could still render with my imagination in vaguely realistic shapes.

But what I didn’t know—and what I wished in that moment I could ask—was what expression the woman had.

It was a painting; it could’ve been anything. But Matthew was out there alone in the hotel room, somehow still alive after our last meeting, lost to me, and I was with Neville at the end of my history. I would never get to ask.

And as such, every time I recall this, the woman’s expression changes. And I wish I could say it always matches my mood, or it’s always showing the opposite of whatever I feel, but it’s not that simple. It chooses its emotions at random. I don’t understand it.

I guess that’s the most fitting outcome, anyway.

“Oh, that painting?” Neville said. I was facing that spot on the wall, eyes pointed somewhere in the vicinity of it. I’d forgotten to move. I was broken.

I wonder, now, if Neville noticed. It would’ve been possible, certainly, and I’d even argue in favor of it. He knew what he was doing. Even if he had his doubts about his mission in that moment, seeing that I was empty and that I would choose the remainder of my days at random, he knew he had to stay the course. He’d thrown away sure things for this. The war was his to win, multiple times, but he threw it away. For this.

Greedy! Prochazka would never have gotten so greedy as to want his wins this large. Take your war, take your days. Every time, the exchange rate gets worse. Cash it while you can.

But still—could Neville blame himself for seeing the writing on the wall?

Prochazka would never.

And so, even if he knew how dire the stakes were, he stayed the course. This was all he had.

“I bought that painting at an auction in Hinterland, actually,” Neville said, so blasé. “It’s Matthew’s favorite.”

I did not speak. I was broken.

“Matthew doesn’t know anything about it because I’ve never told him. Loybol brought me, some ten years ago, to a secret art auction in a deep part of the Red Quarter where the urchins didn’t dare to go. It was a very upscale affair. Powerful people came out to that; old money, old power magical families. Like Matthew’s folks. An international crowd, maybe…I don’t know, fifty people, gathered in what was essentially a poverty-quarantine city district basement. For an art auction.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I find that funny. Anyway, I haven’t told Matthew this because I don’t want him to know, but this painting was sold posthumously. This was my first in-person meeting with Loybol. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but there was a previous regime here that I took over. My operation was more efficient than theirs, and the person in charge of it was old and wanted to retire. It was a peaceful thing—but for some time I learned under him, and we’d met with Loybol once or twice during that time. I never had much of an opinion about what Loybol thought of me, but I found out that night at the art auction. When that painting went on the block, she turned to me and told me that she killed the artist who made that for overstepping boundaries despite warnings. And she knew that she could attend the auction—which had limited seats by reservation only, of course—and nothing would happen to her. She, at some point, called the organizer, who surely knew that she had killed the artist of that painting, and asked for a plus-one.

“The comment she made to me upon its sale was simply, and I quote, “I killed Quentin Weller. I just want to know which one of these people buys his last work.”

He chuckled. “She obviously did this to prove a point about ruling and power, and to date I’ve never seen her do anything like that since. I assumed at the time that she thought it would intimidate me. Now, I assume that she did it because she thought this would be the kind of thing I respected, which I’m sure sounds familiar to you.”

I’d almost forgotten he was talking to me. For a half-second I came up for air and then I was gone again.

“And, well, macho as I clearly am, I wasn’t about to let myself just be intimidated. This was my first day as the head honcho, you know? I had a reputation to protect. So I bought it, and I hung it right there, and every time Loybol came to town to meet with me she had to see it, and every time she turned bright cherry red.”

I blinked.

“It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to get that kind of reaction out of her. Everything is always business. I’m pretty sure she’s had fun surgically removed from her brain. Clearly she’s realized at some point that she was completely wrong about the kinds of things I pay attention to, and to date, it is the only thing I can actually tease her about that gets anywhere.”

He paused, breathed. Shrugged even though I didn’t say anything. “Why wouldn’t Matthew like that story? Because, deep down, he still thinks I’m the sort of person who would have sought a ticket to that art show just to bid on this. Because it’s Mr. Weller’s blood in the pitcher and the hand that made it is dead. And sure, maybe it seems petty to sit here and huff about, oh, I bought this ironically, I bought this for a laugh—and yet there it is on my wall. All five of these other paintings are just landscapes I like. Did Matthew ever tell you that?”

I did not respond.

“Of course not,” Neville said, with a little smile. He shook his head as though Matthew was some small misguided child. “The secret here is that I don’t have a conclusion to this for you. I don’t know why, given everything I just told you, I keep that painting there. It’s not like it’s the only one made by someone magical—they all are. Just artists that happen to have keys. But that one sticks out, and I still keep it on the wall because, I guess, deep down, I just like it. I just think it’s a cool painting. The story is as it is. I find it ironic that Matthew likes it so much, not knowing its history, and I find it ironic that I do like it so much, having been there every step of the way.”

He paused like he was done, and then found another thought. “I don’t have much to say about the painting itself. I’m not an art critic. The composition is clean and competent, I guess. The title of the work as it was sold to me was ‘Portrait of a Drowning’, but I don’t buy it. In the sense that—well, to me, it doesn’t look like the woman was ever alive. I think it’s an intentional painting of a mannequin. And, well, mannequins can’t drown.”

He stepped over to the door to his office, turned the handle, and held it open. I know because I heard it. I made no move to summon any droplets.

I wasn’t really sure if I remembered how.

I went inside and sat in the chair across from his desk. I bumped into it and let that happen. It didn’t matter. I simply patted around and sat.

We took our places. He shifted in his chair. I know because I heard it.

“It’s these things that I see,” Neville said. “The idle playthings of greater powers. Even the landscapes out there—I can’t help but see them as more, somehow, than I would otherwise. As though the mortal artist weren’t powerful enough—like these landscapes were made by some higher machine. Any one of those people could have, at any time, chosen to destroy the world. And the odds are fairly good that they would succeed. Most of our work, as you know, is preventative. Strike before because you can’t strike after. But this—those—those are good. We just have to hope that most of us are like the landscapes. By my sample size, it’s five to one. Those odds aren’t great, but…I’ll take them.

“Which, of course, brings me to my request.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk. We existed in total silence.

And for the life of me, I have no idea why he said this the way that he did. Maybe he thought he was being funny. It’s certainly the kind of thing I’d say, at least. With the wisdom of hindsight, I can say that it feels to me like his one action taken in panic. When I considered the possibility that he read his odds in my eyes when he saw me look toward that painting, this is the moment I cite as my best evidence.

It’s the one thing I can’t really square.

I just cannot imagine why any sane person would ever phrase this question in this way when speaking to me—but I have to recall that, at the end of the day, I did not know if Neville was sane or not. All along the way, I saw exactly what I needed to see. It wavered like the winds. He was deceitful, he was repentant, he was longing, he was desperate. It didn’t matter if he was sane. He was whatever I needed to heal the hole in my heart.

And even if I look at this as a simple nervous outburst, I have to see it for the absurdity it is, knowing I could do no better in his place.

In his place I would have drowned so long ago.

Neville said, “How do you plead?”

000

It left me before I could stop it—and even if I had had all the advanced notice in the world, I don’t know if I would have.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll do it.”