Chapter 24: Undermined

Alister was laying on the bed Tatiana had claimed for herself, the Enchiridion open in front of him.  Annoyed, Tatiana tried to pull her robes out from underneath him.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Alister rolled off her robes.

“Does that thing actually make it so you can?  Hear I mean?”

“No,” Alister pulled on his bottom eyelid, “I’m wearing a special contact that puts captions on everything the microphone,” he tapped the high neck of his shirt, “picks up.”

“Why not just bring Kadeem?”

“I sent him back to Browlee,” Alister’s face darkened, “He turned me over to the Order as an apostate, not realizing that I am following the conscious that the Ellipse saw fit to give me.”  Alister sniffed, rubbing his eyes.

“The dust in here sure is bothering everyone,” Tatiana thought.

“I thought I was more than a master to him.  I thought . . .”  Even though his words were conveyed by the flat robotic voice, his natural sounds conveyed his grief.  

Surprised, Tatiana sat down next to him on the bed.  She gently put a hand on his back, “Kadeem really loves you.  He was just trying to do what he thought was best for you.”

“Why does everybody think they know what's best for me, just because I'm deaf?  I’m not a child, I just can't hear,” Alister stared down at the Enchiridion, his tears blurring the type on the thin pages, “Even this book looks at deafness as a curse.”

Tatiana took her hand off his back and picked up the book, “Let’s burn it then.”

Alister laughed.  “You never change.”  He pulled his pouch out of his sash, “I think I need to commune and figure out our next steps.  You should too.”

“My relic got left in Egregia.”

Alister wiped his eyes with the corner of his robe, “I should strip you of your orange sash.”

Tatiana scooted away from him, “Not fair.  I’m already halfway to yellow.”

“That relic is the cord that connects you to the other world.  Without it, you have no ballast.”

Amber opened the door.  She crossed the room and lay on the other bed.

“If you did manage to somehow access the power of the Ellipse, it would kill you,” Alister stared at his comb.

“Quit telling her weird things, Bill,” Amber rolled on her side, propping her chin up on her hand.

“It’s not weird, it’s true.  She left her relic in Egregia.”

“No she didn't,” Amber sat up, “It’s been in Carl’s bag the whole time.”  Amber picked up a worn rice sack and tried to pull out the fiddle.  The tuning pegs caught on a stray thread of burlap and Amber struggled to remove it, the thread tangled in an impossible knot.  “Her Holiness is doing her best to live up to the true heart of the Ellipse,” she gave up tugging on the fiddle, “Unlike some people who run around starting fights, ditching their responsibilities, and doing things priests shouldn't do.”

Alister’s face scrunched in puzzlement, “Since when do you call Tatiana ‘Her Holiness?’”

“Since she started earning it,” Amber yanked on the fiddle again.  A peg flew across the room, bouncing off the wall and landing on the carpet.  Tatiana jumped off the bed and got down on all fours.  Spotting it, she palmed it, dizziness tickling the back of her mind.

When she sat up, Alister was watching her, a thoughtful look on his face.  

“Don't say it,” Tatiana admonished.

“What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking, just don't say it,” she took the fiddle from Amber, closing her eyes and sitting quietly.

“Psst, Bianca,” Amber poked her in the ribs.

She cracked an eye open, “Shhh.”

“Bill is in la-la land.  Let’s talk strategy.”

Alister was sitting on her bed, his legs tucked under him, his comb in the palm of his hand.  “I don’t really have a strategy,” Tatiana whispered.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Amber jumped from her bed, landing on the other bed with a thump.

“Are you trying to wake him up?” Tatiana hissed.

“He’s not going to wake up,” Amber punched him in the back, “See?  If you didn’t wrap your robe around your hands before taking Tate’s fiddle, you’d be zombified too.”  She punched him again for good measure.

“Quit that, you’re going to leave a bruise,” Tatiana sat on the edge of the bed.  “If the Mayor agrees to make Errant a city of refuge, we don’t need a strategy.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Amber crossed her arms.  “This whole idea doesn’t even sound like something Bill would come up with,” she smacked him on the back of the head, “Something like running through the wall with a train is much more his style.”

“But the train tracks don’t run anywhere near the wall,”  Tatiana nibbled on her lip, “A semi-truck might work, I guess.  A tank would be perfect, but how would we . . .” she trailed off seeing the look on Amber’s face.

“This is why you hang out with him, isn’t it?”

“I was assigned to him, I’m not ‘hanging out’ with him,” indignantly, Tatiana crossed her arms, “Anyway, do you have any better ideas?”

“Okay, Holiness, how about this,” Amber picked up the hotel stationery pad and drew two horizontal lines on it.  “This is the wall, okay?” she pointed at the space between the lines, “You want to go through the wall,” she drew an arrow in the space.  “What if we were to go,” she drew an arrow under the bottom line, “under the wall.”

“You know, this idea could work really well with the city of refuge.  We could squirrel people out of Egregia through the tunnel, put them up in a safe house, and help them get reestablished in Citadel,” Tatiana was getting excited.  She couldn’t wait to talk to the mayor the next day.