Ruthless

I was proud to have made it across the desert, so proud that it didn’t occur to me that that was only the beginning. Having managed the journey with nothing more than the ragged remnants of the clothes on my back, surviving on what food and water I could manage to forage, I began life in my new country in poverty. But I had not come all this way to beg in the streets. And though I’d steal if I had to, I’d prefer not to start off as criminal.

It was strange, being back in a city of people after months alone in the desert; and it was even stranger being on the same level as them. I could look anyone here in the eye with no worry of being killed for it.

It took me longer than I like to admit to work up my nerve enough to approach anyone. I would find a sympathetic looking passerby who might give me advice, look at them, open my mouth to speak, and close it, lower my face, and hurry on. I would have spoken, eventually, but before I had quite gotten the courage, someone approached me. A cheerful looking woman stopped me and asked, “Would you be interested in some information about the evils of slavery?” She handed me a folded sheet of paper.

I thanked her, looked at the pamphlet, which called for complete abolition of slavery in Swariath, the country I’d just arrived in. I knew little about the country, or its laws or politics—information does not flow easily across the desert—so I read the pamphlet with interest.

Encouraged by my interest, the woman told me, “If you’re interested in getting involved, come to one of our meetings, every Wednesday evening right in there,” she gestured to the building we were standing in front of. “I’m Eshibelle, by the way.”

“Maybe I will,” I said. “My name’s Aerika. Do you know of… I just got here, is there any kind of… place that helps immigrants? Refugees?”

“Oh, wow, where are you from?”

“Jimzel.”

“Really? I’ve never met anyone from there. That’s across the desert, right? You came all that way? Sorry, to answer your question, there’s actually an office in the Council building—that’s the government? If you’re here for political reasons, they might give you a hand, and I think anyone from Jimzel would probably qualify. You apply for citizenship there, too, which you should do right away because there’s always a wait. It’s up that street maybe a mile, then you turn left and there’s a huge building that’s obviously government. You just go in there, and go down the hall, and the door’s labeled. If you want to wait a few hours I could take you, I work as a messenger in the Council building, but my shift doesn’t start until four.”

“Thanks, but I’ll try to find it on my own.” I didn’t want to get too dependent on some stranger, or anyone, and I preferred to take care of whatever needed to be done as soon as possible. “But I will try to make your meeting.” I hadn’t meant to say that. I’d only just got to Swariath, I had no call to be trying to fix its problems. And yet, now that I was in a place where people could change things… well, why shouldn’t I be part of it? And I’d only said I’d try to go.

She grinned. “Great! And good luck.”

The office was not hard to find, and the people in it were surprisingly efficient. They were shocked to hear I was from Jimzel, and agreed that being from there, I would automatically qualify as a refugee. After all, the punishment for leaving is death, if you’re caught, and if you aren’t killed by the desert first. They gave me some forms to fill out to apply for citizenship, a sum of money to live on for a week or two, until I got a job, and a list of available housing and possible job opportunities.

Renting a small hovel was easy. Finding a job was not. I had no references and was not good with people. I spent a week desperately trying to even get an interview, and another two weeks desperately trying to convince people to hire me. I ran through the entire list of possibilities I’d been given with no success.

I did go to the meeting of abolitionists. Most of the people there were as friendly as Eshibelle, which made me feel a bit out of place, but was nice. It seemed that their efforts mainly consisted of handing out flyers, and occasionally fundraising in an effort to free slaves individually. Even so, they were considered a radical group, as most of Swariath was still debating over whether slavery was great for everyone involved or just a necessary evil.

“Well, they haven’t even got that far in Jimzel.”

“Do they have slavery there?” someone asked. “We were trying to put together a list of countries that don’t a few weeks ago, and we couldn’t remember.”

“It’s… different. The law doesn’t provide for slavery, but it also doesn’t protect about a third of the population. Have you tried talking to members of the Council?”

As I’d hoped, they took off on my subject change, complaining about various politicians. When I got the chance, I asked if any of them knew of job openings. I got a few suggestions that didn’t seem promising, and then one of them said to another, “Isn’t your old boss getting desperate?”

The woman who’d been addressed said to me, “Yeah, but you wouldn’t want to work for him!”

“Yes I would. Really, I’ll take any job I can get.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” But she wrote down the information for me.

I went the next day to drop off a letter offering my services. The office was in a large building located a few blocks from the Council building. I had to explain my mission to a doorman to get into the building. “Good luck,” he told me. “You’ll need it. Oh, you might get the job easy enough, but no one lasts more than a few days. Fiorest must’ve gone through a dozen assistants in just the last month.”

The office was on the second floor, very small, and occupied solely by a man concentrating furiously on a stack of papers and scribbling feverishly. “You look like you need help,” I suggested.

He didn’t look up. “These idiots…” scribble “Are incapable…” scribble scribble “Of hard work!”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’d like to apply for a job.”

At that, he did look up. “Do you have time to be interviewed now?”

I agreed, of course, and he gestured for me to take a seat on the only other chair in the room. I had to move some papers before sitting down. He asked me the basics—my name, background, any previous experience. Like everyone else I’d met in Swariath, he was surprised that I was from Jimzel. “Why did you leave?” he asked.

“Personal reasons,” I answered, too brusquely.

“And why come here?”

“I walked in a straight line until the desert ended, and this is where I ended up.” Not the greatest answer, but it was the truth.

“I work for the government, albeit indirectly, and deal with sensitive information. How can I know you won’t pass it along to your former country?”

“Because you can’t throw a message in a bottle over sand and expect it to go anywhere.”

A corner of Fiorest’s mouth quirked upwards. “No, but you could hand it to a messenger.”

“You’d have more luck putting it in a bottle. No one crosses the desert.”

“You did.”

“Not an experience I’d chose to repeat.”

“Do you regret coming here, then?”

“Never.”

He changed his line of questioning. “I often have to deal with urgent projects that require working late into the night and sometimes through it. Many of my former assistants have been unable to deal with the workload. Do you think that would cause any problems for you?”

“No.”

He asked me to demonstrate how fast I could take dictation, then asked what other skills I had.

I tried to think which of my skills were applicable; I didn’t want to talk about how well I picked locks, or ran from assassins, or.... “I’m very organized, hardworking, and I learn quickly.” That sounded rather pathetic, I thought.

Fiorest regarded me carefully. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

I was surprised at the question, and not sure how to answer it. “Do you always ask that when you interview people?”

“No. Usually I already know the answer.”

“And you don’t with me?”

“I think I do, now. It’s just a different answer than most people I interview would give.” I thought that I’d blown the whole thing for sure, but he continued with the interview. “What one word would you say describes you?”

I thought for a moment, though not long enough, because I answered honestly, “Ruthless.”

Fiorest raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“I do whatever I have to.”

“Such as?”

I shrugged.

“Well, thank you very much for your time, Aerika,” Fiorest reached to shake my hand, and suddenly he was holding a knife at my throat.

I was shocked, and terrified. I hadn’t been expecting it, now, here. Still, I jerked away, ducked under his arm, grabbed the knife, and had it as his throat before he could even register what was happening. “Who hired you?” I demanded frantically. “How did you… the whole thing was a trap? How did you set it up?”

He was as shocked as I had been an instant before, but stayed cool under pressure. “No one hired me. I wasn’t trying to kill you, it was part of the interview, to see how you’d react.”

I stared at him, my mind torn between disbelief and knowledge that I had irrevocably failed the interview. I thought it over. Everyone who wanted me dead, or had any reason to want me dead, or thought it would be good sport to have me killed, was on the other side of the desert. And it was inconceivable that he’d been hired by someone in Jimzel, that the whole thing, starting from the suggestion by one of the abolitionists, was a trap. So he had to be telling the truth, I tried to assure myself.

I lowered the knife, then, hesitantly, handed it back to Fiorest. He put it in a drawer, and I got up to leave.

“Do you still want the job?”

“You mean you’ll hire me?”

“You’re perfect for it, if you can handle the work. Can you start right away?”

“Yes.”

He showed me the papers he’d been working on earlier. “We need to cross-reference these, and find….”

Execution

I’ve been here for a few months now, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. Here—I’m not sure what to call it. Someone called it a menagerie of mages, a Magiary, and the name seems to have stuck somewhat, but since it was meant as an insult, those of us who stay here are torn between rejecting the name and trying to reclaim it.

The Magiary is a large house with lots of towers, and is intimidating from the outside but a friendly, cozy place inside, for the most part. The house is not inside the city, but the main doorway is set into the city wall, which is only a few feet high there.

It’s a school, sort-of, and probably several other things as well. People come here to learn magic, and Malexandra and whatever other magic-users happen to be around teach it. There’s nothing official about the Magiary. It’s in Majardea, but everyone knows the king has no control over it. There aren’t many rules here--most of the normal things such as don’t kill or steal are assumed to be obvious. Besides for that, it pretty much amounts to everyone here being expected to not do anything cruel or utterly idiotic. The king’s laws don’t apply here, and so problems are dealt with by Malexandra—you can imagine how relieved I was very when I heard that, considering there’s a warrant out for my execution. But official laws are highly frowned on, and I don’t worry about anyone here turning me in. On the same note, we’re not allowed to go watch executions or other public punishments.

You wouldn’t think that last one would be a big deal. I’ve never had any urge to go watch someone being killed, and the fact that it could easily happen to me has made the idea even less enticing. And it’s not like my friends would want to, either. Devrin’s a bit squeamish, and while Quaos is the last person in the world I’d call squeamish, seeing people die isn’t entertainment for her either.

But we were walking around the city, just for the fun of it. It had been raining for a week, and now that it was bright and sunny we wanted to get out. At first we thought the crowds were just other people who felt the same. But they were all headed in the same direction, and a cheerful woman with a small child on her shoulders told us that we should hurry, because all the best places to see the execution from would be taken.

“Oh no, we won’t be able to get a good view of someone being killed! Whatever shall we do?” Devrin was being even more sarcastic than usual, which is saying a lot.

“We should go,” I said.

“Back home, you mean? This does rather ruin the beauty of the day.”

“No, to the execution.”

Quaos and Devrin both stared at me. “Because your idea of fun is watching people die?” Devrin asked.

“No, because it could have been me.”

“And it could still be you, Aniya, if anyone recognizes you,” Quaos said sharply. “I’ve had friends in line for execution before, I’d prefer not to repeat the experience.”

“I’m not just going to go home and pretending nothing’s going on,” I said stubbornly. “You can, if you want.”

They didn’t, of course.

Executions took place on a stage in a large, beautified square. The square was packed, and we stood far from the stage and right next to the path leading to it which the accused was marched down. The path was empty; everyone knew it was bad luck to stand on it, and most people tried to stay as far away from it as possible.

The path stretched all the way to the prison, and was relatively straight, so we could see the guards marching the prisoner towards us from a long way off, and they marched very slowly. As they drew closer, we saw a scowling woman in chains, held on each side by a uniformed guard.

That could be me. The thought repeated in my mind over and over. I could feel myself in her place, barefoot, wearing only a thin prison shift and thick chains, marching to my death. It could be me.

“We should stop it.” The words popped out of my mouth before I could think them through, but I had no desire to take them back.

“It’s not that easy,” Quaos objected.

“We could do it, though. Just, grab her when she comes by, and we know enough magic by now we could probably get away.”

“What if she’s a murderer?” protested Devrin.

“Well, then, that would make two of us,” Quaos reminded him.

“Same goes for treason,” I added. “So you’re in?” I asked Quaos.

“I’m always up for stopping executions!” Quaos said with a crazy grin. “At least I won’t have to kill a king this time. Hey, the worst that can happen is that we end up on the block next to her.”

“So it’s not like anything really bad could happen to us.” Sarcasm, of course, but Devrin had said ‘us.’

“So, our plan is really just to grab her and run?” Quaos asked rather incredulously.

“Um… we improvise after that,” I said. I was very nervous, even terrified, and maybe beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing, but I had just to glance at the woman to see myself in her shoes, and my second thoughts disappeared.

And then, they were next to us. The guards had swords; I, stupidly, hadn’t thought about that. Still, they didn’t have them out, and were holding the woman’s chains. So I let myself kind of stumble into the guard closest to me, and when she was off her guard, so to speak, grabbed the chain from her hands. She hadn’t been expecting it, but she reacted quickly and grabbed it back, and we were playing tug-o-war. Devrin, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, had grabbed her sword from its sheath, though he wasn’t doing anything with it. I took a deep breath and used a bit of magic to heat the chain. It hurt the prisoner as well as the guard, but it only lasted long enough for me to jerk the chain from the guard. Quaos, I saw, had the other guard on his knees, holding his head in his hands.

We ran.

It wasn’t just the guards behind us; the crowd wanted their entertainment. The prisoner, still chained and now burned under the chains on her waist and left ankle, was not fast. This was the part we hadn’t planned for, and the dangerous part—if they got us now, we were all dead.

Devrin, who had been at the Magiary the longest and was the most studious, did something magical that seemed to slow down everyone else, as though they were moving through thick syrup. We got a bit of a head start, but he only managed to keep it up for a few seconds, and the use of so much energy tired him. We began to slow, and the crowd was upon us, the people at the front just reaching out to grab us—

And suddenly, I felt a large jolt and the four of us were in Malexandra’s tower. I felt rather nauseous.

“That was quite impressive,” Malexandra said. “I haven’t seen a rescue like that since I was- well, in a long time.

The woman who was to have been executed finally spoke. “Who are you? I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but who are you and what the hell is going on?”

We introduced ourselves. Somehow, our names didn’t seem to lessen her confusion.

“Okay, it’s nice to meet you and all, but where are we, how the hell did we get here, and why?”

“You’re in my tower. I was alerted to the unusual occurrence by a friend and brought you here in order to keep you from the bloodthirsty mob and bloodthirstier, if rather inept, guards. Now who are you, and why were you about to be executed?”

“Smuggling. I’m a smuggler. I was a smuggler, I guess, I don’t think I’ll be going back to it. My name is Wrayli.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m worn out from transporting all four of you, but if you give me a few minutes I’ll do something about those chains, and your burns.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.

Wrayli shrugged. “Better than being dead.”

We all stood around awkwardly for a minute. Suddenly, Devrin laughed loudly. We all looked at him.

“Um, you know how we’re not supposed to go to executions? Well, we rescued the condemned prisoner, so we weren’t actually at an execution, since nobody was killed.”

“Well, I’m so glad you’re not in trouble,” Wrayli said, but she laughed.

The Amnesiac

Working at the mall’s information booth is the most miserable job I’ve ever had. Besides for the unremitting noise and demophobic environment, it involves dealing with people. Stupid people. Okay, I completely understand how you could get lost in that hellhole and have to ask for directions to a particular store, especially considering that whoever designed the mall maps was an idiot. But having to give directions a hundred times a day is not fun. And then there’re the stupid people, the ones who scream that a certain store is in the mall, when it isn’t, or threaten to call the police when I won’t let them return items.

I’d just finished dealing with (by calling security on) a woman who’d been trying to make me ring up her necklace. I’d tried to explain to her that the mall contains more than one store; I am not the giant cash register for the whole thing, and by taking the necklace out of whatever store she’d found it in, she was shoplifting. She refused to believe me. As security took her away, she was still shrieking, “But it’s the mall! It’s the mall!”

I hadn’t gotten over my irritation when the next person in line, a young woman who looked about to have a panic attack, came up to the counter. “Excuse me. I don’t know who I am. Can you help me?”

I should have been nicer to her, I know. But I happen to have a rather sarcastic personality that becomes even more so when I’m as aggravated as I was. And I didn’t really think she’d lost her entire memory, or that she’d take me so literally when I said in my most official, machine-like voice, “Of course. Identities can be bought from the kiosk between Build-a-Bear Workshop and Mall Entrance 2.”

“Oh, thank you so much!!!” she beamed at me. She disappeared into the crowd before I could tell her I was kidding.

I shrugged her off as just another weirdo and forgot about her, until maybe half an hour later, a sinister looking man-well, he was normal looking enough but for the moustache, anyway, he came up and asked if anyone had come by with a weird question. “I get almost nothing but weird question,” I told him.

“This would be a girl about your age, lost her memory and doesn’t know who she is.”

“Oh! She did come here.”

“Do you know where she went?”

Even if it was just the moustache, he seemed suspicious to me, and anyway, I was embarrassed about having misdirected her so rudely, so I shrugged and told him, “She just left when I said I couldn’t help her.”

He handed me a business card and told me to call him if she came back, and left. I felt my suspicions were justified—if he’d been a friend of hers, he’d have asked me to have her call him, not just report her movements. I glanced at the card—John Smith? Seriously? But I didn’t really think she’d be back, and since my shift ended in half an hour, if she did return she’d be someone else’s problem.

But not five minutes after “John Smith” had left, a man and a woman, both in suits, came up to the booth. “CIA,” they told me, flipping their badges in my face. And—you guessed it—they asked me about the amnesiac.

I told them the same thing I’d told “John Smith”, and told them about him. They asked me for the business card, and I gave it to them, and the female agent gave me her business card and told me that if the amnesiac came back, to call her, not “John Smith” (not that I could’ve now that they had his business card).

I was still hoping that that would be the end of it, but about ten minutes before my shift ended, she came back. “There’s no kiosk that sells identities anywhere near Mall Entrance 2!” she accused.

“Of course there’s not; I was kidding.”

She glared at me. “Do you really think this is funny??? I have no idea who I am, and that man is chasing me, and the government wants me to help them, and I just want to go home, but I can’t because I don’t know where my home is because I don’t freaking know who I am!” She was halfway between screaming and sobbing, and I felt very guilty.

“I’m sorry. It’s not funny. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

She shook her head slowly. “Probably not,” she said mournfully. “I guess I’ll just have to find those agents and take them up on their offer. I guess there’s nothing else I can do.”

“They came by here earlier and left their business card,” I told her. “And so did someone else looking for you, a man with a fancy moustache?”

At hearing that, she blanched, then turned and ran. Without, I might add, taking the business card. I really should have just let her go. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the whole thing, and now I didn’t. But, I am an idiot. So I ran off after her, holding out the agent’s business card and shouting, “Wait! Wait! You forgot this!” She either didn’t hear me or ignored me. So, because I have no sense whatsoever, I followed her all the way out of the mall.

I might have mentioned that I hate the mall because it’s so demophobic. Well, I hate parking garages for the opposite reason. They always seem to be deserted, even when there are people in them; even when they’re crowded they’re full of monster-like cars, not human beings. They’re dark, deserted places, and every time I go in one I expect I’m going to run into a serial killer. And yet, I’m such a fool that I follow the nameless girl right into the parking garage.

Where the man with the moustache was waiting. Nearly as soon as she’d run into the deserted, cavern-like place, he grabbed her and shoved her into the trunk of a car.

I am proud to be able to say that I am not actually so brainless such an idiot as to run up to him, or shout, or do anything any stupider than anything I’ve ever done. Instead, I take out my cell phone and try to call the CIA agents. Of course, being an underground parking garage, there’s no reception.

So I tried to sneak out of the place so I could make the call. Unfortunately, the man saw me, cursed, grabbed something from his trunk and ran after me. Before I could find my way out of the labyrinth that was the parking garage, he was holding an object that looked like a gun from a really, really bad science fiction movie to my head. “Don’t move, or I’ll erase you’re memory!” he threatened.

I had to laugh. Seriously, a man with a sinister moustache holding a gun pretty much made out of plastic spheres (garishly colored, I might add), threatening to erase my memory. This kind of thing does not happen. Then I remembered the look of despair in the nameless girl’s face, and, despite everything, it wasn’t funny anymore. So I stood stock still, waiting.

He didn’t do anything, so after standing there without moving for a few minutes, I asked, “What do you want from me?”

He looked confused. “I don’t want anything from you. I just can’t have any interference with the testing of my invention.”

“I’m not trying to interfere with anything,” I assured him. “My shift is over and I just want to get the hell out of here and go home.”

To my complete disbelief, he let me go. And, as final proof that I am an unredeemable idiot, I called the CIA agents and told them what had happened. And really, really hoped that that was the end of it; that everything would turn out okay without any further involvement on my part. And shockingly enough, it did. Well, a couple of hours later the two agents showed up at my house to take my statement, so I had to fill out some paperwork, but everything had actually turned out okay. They’d pulled over the car, rescued the amnesiac, arrested the man with the moustache, and confiscated the memory loss gun and the plans for it. I am enough of a conspiracy theorist to not be thrilled that the government can now erase people’s memories, but better them than him, I guess.

I asked if there was a way to restore the girl’s memory. They said there wasn’t, but it would make it easier for her to assimilate into witness protection anyway. I asked if I was safe, if she needed to be protected. They assured me that she would be able to testify to the affects of the machine, so she qualified for witness protection. That is not an assurance. Then they told me that the reason he erased her entire memory was that he was testing on her, but if he did get out of jail and come after me, all he’d need to erase was the events of today. I was skeptical, but they assured me that it was far easier to erase just a few memories, and took months to erase a whole lifetime.

So, I’m writing this, just in case. Because even though I never wanted to get involved and the whole thing was pretty much an annoyance to me, I took certain risks and I deserve to get something out of it, even if it is just a story no one would believe anyway. So if I don’t remember what happened, I’ll have this, and maybe I’ll think that I’m a really good creative writer and must have written this without remembering. And maybe that will inspire me to get a better job.

Or maybe I’m actually crazy enough that, even without remembering what happened, I'll believe it.