by Anna Holmes
Governor Frist, thank you for the invitation. I am Johann Brahem, and I was twenty-eight six years ago. I am twenty-eight still in my mind, and if you surprise me with the question, you will hear that I am twenty-eight. If it’s a good day and the scars crawling up my neck aren’t squeezing the thought from me, I might correct myself.
It’s not a small amount of time, six years, but trying to recall it all feels like grasping at grains in an hourglass. I don’t know if I need to remind you of the events about which I testified. Everyone recites them like a eulogy. My eulogy.
Johann hated rich people parties in the City-State. Rich people were in denial about much, but he never could handle the way they refused to believe that in warm rooms in proximity to one another, in heaps and heaps of clothing, twirling the night away, they smelled just as bad as any of the common crowd. Instead, they attempted to cover it up with clashing miasmas of perfume and, when all else failed, they covered their faces so they didn’t have to own to it.
“Oh, it’s bad out there tonight,” Millie said through a mock-gag as she bustled into the kitchen. “Someone should crack a window.”
Chef looked up and indicated the solid walls with his knife. “Someone should make a window to crack.”
Johann prodded at his forehead. “I think the headache is going to take me out before the end of the shift.”
Millie jabbed him in the ribs with her empty tray. “Says the man who begged for extra hours. What’s wrong, Professor? Blathering at the youths not paying the bills?”
“Oh, they don’t pay me for that yet. Still waiting on that piece of paper.”
“You should see if they’ll give it to you faster.” She fanned herself with the tray. “If I could do anything but this, I would.”
Raul swept through and batted Millie and Johann away from the prep station. “Here, now, if you have time to loaf about here, you have time to get some more loaves on those tables.”
Chef gave him a look. “They’re helping me prep.”
Johann held up his hands, covered in the red juice of the pomegranates the guests were too rich to bother opening for themselves. Raul’s patchy mustache twitched. “Fine. But it doesn’t take two of you to do that. Millie, get those glasses filled. I don’t want to see an empty cup on that floor.”
She peeled herself off the counter and gave Johann a can you believe this look as she slunk back toward the swinging doors. Raul was inches away from telling Johann something else when a clatter rose in the hallway. This was a kitchen; clattering wasn’t unusual at all. But the muffled screaming that followed stopped the whole room short. Two of the other servers peeked out of the doors and gasped.
Raul strode forward. “Back to work,” he yelled. “Management will handle this.”
For a while, the faint wails from different wings were the only way the staff knew what was happening. Chef’s pans still boiled, but other than that, the only movement was silent pacing, heads in hands, silent prayers mouthed in the direction of anything holy that might be listening. When the doors swung open again, Raul’s voice sounded like a thunderclap. “Right, then,” he said. “We are aware there’s a problem upstairs. It’s isolated. As long as everyone keeps away from the north wing, there is nothing to worry about.”
Johann frowned. “What is the problem?”
Another howl rent the space between them. Raul seemed to brace himself. “It is only impacting the infirm. We recognize that this is frightening, and aren’t minimizing it. You can all take an extra fifteen. Staggered.”
Chef looked at him. “Are you mad? People are dying—”
Raul cut him off. “It doesn’t concern us. Understood?”
Millie interjected, “So what, it’s only killing the guests?”
“Seems that way. Just the old and the sick. So clearly, nothing anyone in here needs to worry about.”
A fresh scream from the north.
You know, of course, what happened. One by one—slow at first, then faster, faster—the guests were dropping dead, horrible snarling scars choking the air and blood and life from them. Some went quick. Others lingered, moved worriedly from room to room while nursing the searing scars under their clothes.
It was true that it seemed to ravage the old, but the more I think on it—and I do think on it, every single time my breath hitches—the room was full of the old nobility. Of course it took them. There were more of them present to take! And before long, it stopped being so discerning.
Johann stood, slicing lemons into rounds with growing dread. It seemed the screaming hardly stopped now. “How many guests are there?” Chef wondered. Johann frowned at him. “I am only saying,” Chef continued, unabashed, “that when it runs out of old people—whatever it is—that’s that, right?”
Raul burst through the swinging partition. “They’ve moved everyone still standing to the west wing. I want every last server in there, making sure our guests are taken care of in this dire moment.”
Millie exchanged looks with Johann. “I mean—is that safe?” she said.
“These are our paying customers, Millie. You will treat them with care and concern, or you may find yourself somewhere else to be.”
Johann knew better than to argue. He slid his lemon slices onto a plate and brought them to the west wing hallway, where trays of iced water and tea waited for their garnish. Raul snatched the lemons and waved Johann in the direction of the great doors. “Let me do that. You go see to the guests. And not one word about this, do you hear me?”
Uncomfortable, Johann shifted his weight from his sore left knee to his right. “Raul, I think they know something is going on.”
“Of course they do! But we are not paid to do anything other than tend to refreshment, and by god, we will do that with all the professionalism the nobility have come to expect from our fine company, and make the best of this bad situation.”
Johann wanted to say that he was reasonably sure the catering was the last thing on everyone’s minds, but he’d worked enough of these by now. It would be a shock if they weren’t complaining about the catering.
So he shouldered up a tray and entered the ballroom.
This is where the story begins to diverge, as the Red Death found purchase in more and more people, guest, caterer, and household staff alike. I was told that the Physician General acquitted himself admirably, and in the course of his sacrifice, he made the discovery that should have changed it all.
Johann started, as a guest seized his arm in a swirl of deep blue velvet. “Johann. Oh, Johann, it’s you. What are you doing here?”
“Begging your pardon most humbly,” he stammered. “Have we met?”
The woman swiped her matching midnight blue mask from her face, revealing the smile-creased face, silver hair, and sharp eyes of Dr. Tabitha Abernathy. “I should hope so,” she laughed in her brisk way, so often a comfort as he anguished in her office about the direction of his research. “But gods, how I wish you weren’t here. You must go.”
“I can’t, Doctor. I have to make rent.”
“You can’t rent if you’re dead,” she said bluntly. “Listen to me. The Physician General has realized—had realized….that of the dead, precious few were wearing these.” She pressed her satin mask into his hand. “Put this on.”
Flabbergasted, he said, “Doctor—”
She folded his hand firmly around it. “You must. Of the hundred dead, only two were wearing a mask. That is no statistical anomaly, my boy. Put it on, and leave this place while you can.” Her hand shook, and she held his gaze with an intensity that frightened him. Her throat bobbed. “Do this. For me.”
“But you need it—”
“There aren’t enough to go around, and when it gets out, there is going to be a bloody melee, so just—go. I am old. The world needs what’s in that head of yours. What you haven’t yet dreamed.” Her eyes filled. “Please, Johann. Please.”
Slowly, he lowered his head, slipped the strap over the thatchy cloud of brown hair she always nagged him to get cut. The mask was warm on his face, nearly stifling with the perfume she must have added to help with the musty noble smell. She patted his face, and her hand was so warm, Johann’s breath felt knocked back into his chest. “Hurry, now,” she said. “When I collapse, you must be nowhere near.”
“Doctor. I—”
“Your narrative argument needs work,” she said dryly, as though this were simply another day and she were giving him just another critique, then stepped back into the crowd.
Johann swallowed hard and left the chamber for the cool and quiet of the hallway.
Raul was nowhere to be seen. Johann was alone, his heart hammering. He could go. Probably should go. But the others…they needed to know what he knew.
It was always that childish sense of fairness that got Johann in the end.
He ran down the hall just as a high, reedy scream came from the ballroom.
If it had been anyone else, Governor, I’m not sure I would have believed it. Dr. Tabitha Abernathy was a prophet who foresaw her own death, the desperate scramble for the masks. I think she must have known too, or at least suspected, that I would not do as she told me. I couldn’t. Because I knew that I could save people. Not just the rich ones. Everybody, at least some, with nothing more than arts and crafts.
The kitchen was closed off now. Johann debated fiercely with himself. He knew in his marrow Raul would not have sent everyone home even if the kitchen had proven a problem.
If he went to the east wing kitchen, it would be a longer trip back down the battlements. He didn’t want to waste the doctor’s gift, this borrowed time to escape, but the others….
“Damn it,” he muttered, and started the long run down the hall.
The east kitchen was abuzz. Every member of the serving staff was there, being talked at by Raul. “Yes, I know losing the west kitchen is hard,” he blared. “We just have to do more with less.”
Johann dashed in, out of breath. “Listen,” he cried over Raul. “The Physician General says everyone has a better chance of making it out if their face is covered. Grab—napkins, parchment, your aprons if you have to. Make masks.”
He ran to the kitchen island and started rummaging through the drawers. He’d make some for the guests without, too. It was the right thing to do.
Some of the servers milled around uncertainly. Many, however, started to move. Raul raised his voice. “You will not destroy the company or the client’s property, and what in the hells are you thinking, Brahem? Covering your face like a burglar in front of our guests? Get over here.”
Raul reached a hand out to snatch at the mask. From under his sleeve peeked a snarl of red. Johann’s eyes widened. “Raul,” he said.
Raul pulled back, stared at his forearm. Johann felt the oncoming charge before it even manifested, but still couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the stampede of shrieking servers. “It’s like Chef,” Millie wailed, grabbing onto Johann.
He felt as though he were being dragged under by a ruthless tide. “Chef is—?”
“We locked him in the kitchen,” she sobbed. “It’s coming for all of us now!”
The rest of the servers were rushing for the door. Johann swallowed hard. He didn’t want to, but if he didn’t uncurl her fingers, they would both be knocked down. He pushed back from her and skirted the edge of the kitchen to make for the servant’s entrance.
“Brahem,” Raul moaned. “Give it to me. The mask.”
Johann hesitated. From what he’d heard, once the scars showed up, it was too late. “I’m sorry,” he said, and bolted into the dining room.
It was glutted with guests. Some slumped over at the table. Some moaned on the floor, blood pooling on the expensive rug under their faces. Others stood crying, stricken, frozen. Johann gripped his mask in case anyone else tried to make a grab for it, and he ran for it.
The next room was warm, even warmer than these gatherings usually were, and there was something sour on the air. Johann looked for the lay of the room. Some sort of lounge, and here, people simply chatted. There were bodies on the floor behind the sofa, but they stood in front, nervous with their glasses of champagne, but not the right level of nervous. “I say,” a man said, pointing to Johann. “Who is that?”
He held out his hands to keep them back. “You have to find things to cover your face,” he yelled, then made a beeline for the next door, which should, if memory served, bring him to the grand foyer. From there he could go. The guests murmured in puzzlement and affront, but none followed him.
The large tiled room was chilled, quite the opposite of the lounge. A few people milled around here. “Cover your faces!” Johann cried, his voice breaking with overuse. “You have to cover your faces and get out.”
A young lady in the front covered her necklace, as though she expected him to rip it from her neck. He gritted his teeth. Fine, he thought. The rich twats wouldn’t or couldn’t hear him. He had tried, and it was time to go.
In sight of the doorway, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He should have just broken away, but he turned.
It wasn’t only the sick and elderly, Governor, and I maintain what I should have told Dr. Abernathy. Even if it were, why would their lives be worth any less than mine? What about her dreams left undreamt? What of what blooms in the heads of the infirm?—of which there are many, many more now that the Red Death has swept from the Chancellor’s manor and across all the continent. Those like me.
The figure stood what must have been eight feet. Spikes adorned its naked scarlet form, painful-looking crystals that creaked and cracked. Johann knew well what he faced. A Harbinger. A new one. It cocked its head curiously at him. “You do not balk at me,” it pronounced in a voice that seemed to throb, seep into Johann’s whole self. “Why is that?”
“I have studied things like you,” Johann said.
“And what have your studies told you?”
“A great deal. Mostly that I should not listen.”
The Harbinger laughed, a crackling, gurgling sound from its throat. “No indeed. And tell me—does the knowing help? All your books, all your research…do you know Death so well as to address her by name?”
“I know enough. There is nothing I can say to turn you back. No moral life I could have led to repel you. No protection. Save this.” He touched the mask with trembling, hot fingers. “Why is that? What does this scrap of cloth hold that foils you?”
The Harbinger’s mouth curled in an unpleasant smirk. “You ask the wrong question and linger overlong. Go now. To your rest unending.”
Johann felt it in his throat first. A burn as though he’d swallowed a match. Quickly, though, quickly, the scar tissue coiled around his ribs, crushed, cracked, compressing the air from him.
The tile floor was strangely, pleasantly cool, even as his whole body screamed as he hit it. The last he saw were the red spiked feet walking with purpose toward the lady with the necklace.
I have told you what I saw from my hospital bed, and then again in the special convocation. At the first, I was told I was a hero. I brought the masks, or the idea of them. People died, yes, in unthinkable numbers, but every alchemist, physician, and demonologist I have seen—and I have seen many—said that without that protection, more would be gone. Maybe the whole countryside.
I wish I could feel proud of that, Governor, but I can’t help it. The Harbinger is still here. Just because it was deprived of hosts for a time, forcing it into the dark—
We have not won, and yet…recently, you declared victory. What was once so crucial for everyone to know, you seem to wish to forget. But this is not how disease works. You cannot will it away. Even if we want to.
Johann had never considered how small one felt as a physician made their way around them like a monument to be studied, or an obstacle to be surmounted. As he sat staring directly forward, his vision blurring as it seemed to these days along with his thoughts, a clumsy realization struck him. In all his years of research, not once had he spoken to a patient. Not once had he asked what this was to them. And now that he was here—
“Well, Mr. Brahem,” the doctor declared, stepping back and fiddling with the strap of his own mask. “Typically, when I see cases of fatigue like yours, I like to order long walks. Good, vigorous trots.”
Johann wasn’t sure if it was the confusion that never seemed to fully lift these days or if he was genuinely just confused. “I—all due respect, Doctor, I told you that I am so tired that no matter how much I sleep, I never feel rested. The act of bathing is enough to reduce me to tremors. Are you certain?”
“Yes, yes. It will take some getting used to, of course. You have to buillllllld back up,” he said, making invisible terraces upward with his hand as he dragged the consonant along with it. “If you get the blood pumping, your energies will revive.”
“Will they? Simply reading has felt like a great hike.”
He patted Johann’s scarred shoulder heavily. The snarl of pain ran down it, and Johann gasped, lurching forward. The physician looked his way. “Ah. Sorry. I forgot myself. But that’s why a good long walk. You’ll be good and tired and ready to sleep.”
Johann stared helplessly into space. He was always ready to sleep, but it seemed that telling the doctor so was tantamount to talking to himself.
Four months after the Masque, I stumbled my way through a thesis defense. To be honest, I am unsure how that happened. The body of work I did before the Red Death took hold of my mind and sustained that vague dream, once so important to me. Six months is when the physicians shared a quiet look of alarm. Nine months is when I put in my leave request and left my students. I was determined that six months of sustained rest should restore me.
In those months, friends and family visited. Meals were brought, books, prayers. But slowly, as weeks turned to months…turned to years, and those prayers went unanswered, the visits stopped. Maybe a letter, every once in a while, if they happened to think of me.
They write of conferences, of parties, of meetings, of long walks, such things I would once have called banal but miss so much I remember the feeling of them in my marrow.
Johann stumbled toward the door. It wasn’t a particularly bad morning, not enough to send a message to Agnes and tell her not to come. His legs dragged, his skull leaden, the contents churning against the dam. He reached into his coat pocket for his mask—plain black cloth now. He hadn’t had the heart to throw Dr. Abernathy’s away, but neither had he worn it. Instead it sat in his desk drawer beneath the growing stack of books he wanted badly to read. His whole body had been turned against himself, as though he and it were two separate entities.
There would be time enough to stare at the ceiling and philosophize numbly later. For now, he pulled together enough energy to open the door and pretend to be a person for the classmate he’d liked most. Loved, maybe, if there had been time for such things.
Agnes turned, a whirl of red hair and green velvet, and her bare face lit up with a large smile that chilled him to his core. “Johann! It is so good to see you, so good to see you. I’ve brought you some things—”
She attempted to bustle into his flat, and he backed up. “Agnes, your mask,” he said. “Hold on, I have extra.”
She stopped, backed to the door, bit her rosy lip. “Johann,” she said, diplomatic. “I know you don’t get out often, so perhaps you haven’t heard the governor. There’s no need to wear one anymore.”
He felt his knees wobble, reached his hand out to the coat rack for support. Snow dusted the cobbles, her velvet cape, her red hair he’d loved so well. “You can’t—you were there! You studied it, watched children die! You know as well as anyone what this thing is.”
She dipped her chin down, looked at the worn welcome mat. “I do. And I know what you’re going to say—”
“Do you?” he asked, sagging.
“Of course you still wish to wear yours. You’re vulnerable, after all.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You have every reason to be nervous. But we lost, Johann.” She looked upward at the low-hanging gray sky. “There is no point to my wearing one if no one else does. And no one else does.”
He’d noticed. As if he could ignore the pointed stares when he was well enough to venture to the market, to pick up what sustenance he could afford on his “hero’s” pay. The pittance awarded for his bravery, enough to barely carry him for one year more.
“So you care more about what they think than about passing along the Red Death to some innocent person who believes the governor’s tripe.”
Agnes’ face creased. “People get sick, Johann! It is a sad fact, but it is inevitable. This is why we have a job at all. Hiding away, hiding my face, hiding all our faces—it was never sustainable. I need to live my life, not—”
“Mine,” he said darkly. “You cannot stomach mine. You have a job. You have a life. You can go out and about without care. That solitude you loathe so much—you damn me to it in perfect, willful obliviousness along with the rest. You, who know better. I hope it is worth it to you, Aggie.”
She stepped forward, eyes full of pleading, and he stepped back once more. She pressed her lips together, and from under her cloak, produced a stack of books. “I brought you these,” she said, her voice breaking.
He didn’t take them. Didn’t move. Felt lodged like a splinter while the whole of the city moved around him, inflamed. More books he couldn’t parse. More reminders of the quick wit he’d once commanded and now could only rarely find. Agnes at last reached out and set them on the shelf, stepping back, folding her hands for a moment. She stood, searched for words herself. At last, she reached out and grasped his hands.
Once this would have sent his heart soaring. Today he could only feel revulsion. He turned away, and she turned her back and left.
A few months past, sir, I traveled as far as I could to the Harmish Market. I had need of a new nightshirt. I wore so many threadbare in this time, tossing and turning as the scars pricked and burned as though I’d never left the company of that demon. Sometimes I do wonder if he stalks me still.
You had given your speech very recently. I think a matter of days prior. Victory, you said, over the Death, over fear. That is not what I saw.
Because when I set foot in that market, fear rose to greet me with stones and fruit and gods know what else.
“Get out and take your filth with you,” the farmer shouted as the peach splattered across Johann’s front.
A boy somewhere jeered, “Take off the mask.”
His friend chortled. “Can’t. He’s too ugly without it.”
“That is enough,” an imperious voice cut in. Not a shout; even more commanding in its temperance.
The square seemed to freeze. Johann lowered his arm to see who stood over him. A woman, golden curls tucked behind the strap of a subdued violet mask perfectly matched to her fitted brocade jacket and bustled skirt. She looked around at the assembled as though daring them to speak. At long last, the farmer removed his cap. “Begging your pardon, my Lady,” he said.
“Oh, it is not mine you need seek,” she said sharply, then looked down to Johann and extended her hands. “Allow me.”
A tension to the air as her pale hands made contact with his scarred one, pulling him up. She wasn’t terribly strong, but stronger than he was at the moment. He cleared his throat slightly, tugged his tweed jacket straight again. “It’s fine,” he said. “They won’t understand.”
“No,” she answered, her crystalline eyes seeking his past the masks. “They don’t.”
“So you see, Governor,” Johann said, hands clasped between his knobby knees. “Lady Davenport and I—we have made it our business these months to undertake all we can to bring you this.”
Ovelia extended the dossier, set it on the glass table in front of the Governor. He shifted his broad shoulders, reached for the folder and opened it. Softly, she said, “You know why I had to do this.”
He lifted a pointed white eyebrow. “Lady Davenport. I know the loss of your son was difficult.”
She swallowed, her high lace collar shifting over her faint scar. “Difficult?” she said with a tight smile. “No, Governor. It was agony. Far worse than my own illness. They told me I couldn’t pass it to him—but I did. I watched this little, perfect life, the one I swore to protect over all else, suffer. Burn. Twist. And he has left behind a flame in my heart your platitudes cannot douse. So. We have come to you as citizens, as a researcher of medicine and victim of the lingering Death, and as a lady and mother with empty arms, to ask you to think.”
Frist looked down at the abstract atop the dossier. He looked at Johann. “This can’t have been easy, given your condition.”
“No,” he said plainly. “It was torture. But they deserve to know. They deserve to know the truth, that the demon may have been cast into the shadows by our collective push, but it is not gone. It has not stopped killing and maiming. So. I have done what I must, and it is your turn.”
He looked between the two, his gray silk mask making his eyes seem crossed. “What would you have me do? Close everything again? For how long?”
“That is not what we are asking for,” Ovelia said coldly. He knew it, too, and she wouldn’t let him get away with it. Johann admired her resistance as he was given to these days, but gods, that it need not be so frequent. She might not bear the lingering Death as he did, but he knew. Temporarily healthy people tired too, especially with catapults of salt aimed at her wounds. “Tell them the truth. You know cases are rising. Deaths misattributed. False comfort and scapegoating spread. You must acknowledge this.”
He shook his head slowly. “They will never go back. You know this. The whole of the nation has been scarred.”
She tilted her head. “Have they? A few months’ discretion and some masks in public scarred them? What of the losses? Are they to be swept aside?”
“We gave a ceremony—”
“A ceremony. I’m certain that is a comfort to people like Dr. Brahem, trapped in varying intensities of fugue roiled with pain, shut away from the world he seeks to save. I know I think of my baby’s last moments more fondly knowing you held a ceremony. And history will certainly note the ceremony and not the thousands suffering you could have prevented but chose not to.” She stood. “Thank you for your time, Governor. I know it is in demand.”
He looked up at her warily. “What will you do?”
“I?” she said, head tilted forward. “No, Governor. What will you do?”
Uncomfortable silence. At long last, he stood, started walking them to the door. Johann hastily scooped up the dossier. Perhaps it would be a little too on the nose to let it be abandoned. The governor extended an arm toward a lit hallway, where murmuring and glass clinking came from unseen guests. “Some of the peerage are here to discuss economic recovery. Won’t you join us, Lady Davenport?”
Stiffly, she answered, “No, thank you, Governor. There is too much to be done.”
“You know, Ovelia,” the governor remarked, slipping his mask off and into his breast pocket, “it occurs to me that overwork will kill anyone just as surely. It’s a good thing, isn’t it? Now that we’ve all had it, it makes us stronger against future infections.”
Johann’s back stiffened. He wanted to argue back, tell him that he was holding reams of evidence to the contrary, but by now, he knew. The governor didn’t really believe that, or if he did, he forced himself to.
Ovelia didn’t even flinch. She stared at him, ice from behind that mask. “You cannot lie to everyone. It won’t stop you from trying.”
He was knocked a little off-balance, then flashed her a broad, open smile and moved in the direction of the lit hallway. A family approached, and the governor held his arms out wide to receive the children. Ovelia hadn’t been flapped until right now, but it was too much, the light laughter from unprotected faces. She turned to keep the tears from catching the light.
Johann never knew what to say. These moments of grief seemed so private—and yet he felt like one of the few people that even noticed them happening. They were all too wrapped up in this illusion of recovery. Ovelia’s pain—anyone’s pain, but hers in particular—shattered it. He finally gathered his energy and resolve to say something, but something out of the corner of his eye stopped him.
At first, he was sure it was a trick of the light, a silhouette of the people moving, but he saw it. As the Governor tousled the kids’ hair and stood again to shake their parents’ hands, Johann saw it again. Red, spiked, grinning from the open hallway. Ovelia looked over. Maybe Johann had made a sputtering noise; he couldn’t tell.
Her hand flew to her mouth. “No,” she breathed. “Not again.”
Johann watched the Harbinger set its clawed fingers to the Governor’s shoulder. If the Governor noticed, he made no sign, still laughing with his guests. Johann held the file to his chest. “No, not again,” he corrected. “Still. And more and more. God.”
She watched in horror one moment more, then grasped Johann by the wrist. “Come. Nothing good will happen here.”
“And do what, Ovelia?” He didn’t resist physically; he didn’t have that in him, but that was just it. He didn’t have anything in him. “Months we spent gathering this, and he spent two minutes looking at it before deciding to do nothing.”
“He isn’t the only one who can act,” she returned, pulling open the door. A blast of cold and snow blew into their faces, interrupting the horrible warmth that pervaded Johann’s limbs. “It never stopped, but it’s about to get much worse, and I will be damned if I let any more parents unwittingly bring it home.”
Johann looked at her, incandescent, perfect coif loosening in the wind. Her body was coiled, primed to act. And his was just…limp. “We have been screaming,” he said, voice breaking, “at the top of our lungs. This whole time. Nothing moves them.”
“That doesn’t absolve me of trying,” she said.
Johann pursed his lips. After a moment, he handed her the dossier. “I admire you so much, Ovelia,” he told her. “But my soul is ground down. There is not enough of me to keep screaming over the sounds of yet another ill-advised party.”
She took the folder in her gloved hand, looked up at him. “I understand,” she said. “You have earned rest.”
“No,” he sighed. “I have been sentenced to it. There is nothing I want less. I’d stand shoulder to shoulder with you all night…if I could stand.”
She favored him with a rare, real smile. She could fake one with the best of these nobles, but the real ones were rationed the way he rationed his wakefulness. “I know. Thank you, my friend. It’s not for nothing. I swear it.”
There wasn’t enough of him left to agree or disagree.
It wasn’t unusual for Johann to be totally disoriented after a day like yesterday. That damnable governor, he thought miserably, seizing his bedside clock. He hadn’t even managed to struggle out of his clothes last night. This was what the governor didn’t see. Not the doctors or any of his friends and family. Yes, he could push, but it poisoned him later. He’d arrived home at seven last night. Closed his eyes for a moment, and it was two in the morning, and he may as well have not slept the last two weeks. He let go of a strangled yell into his pillow.
Shortly, there was a knock at the door. He flinched. Maybe he’d scared one of the neighbor kids. “Just—just a minute,” he got out, taking unsteady lurches toward the door and pulling his mask on.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t Ovelia in a plain mauve dress and mask, clutching a small bag and a valise. She was blotchy through the face, and for a moment, he panicked. It didn’t look like fresh scarring. When she spoke, he understood—some, not everything. She’d been crying. “Johann—I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do—”
He took her by the shoulders and guided her inside. “What’s—what’s happened? Are you all right?”
“No,” she said with a wet laugh. “I’ve gone and done it.”
“It?”
She set her valise down, and out of the smaller bag, she retrieved a newspaper. Splashed in big letters across the top, GOVERNOR’S READ DEATH LIES. FIVE MORE DEAD FROM UNMASKED GATHERING. LADY DAVENPORT CONFIRMS COVERUP. Johann held the paper, reading, not really absorbing. Ovelia paced. “He’s absolutely furious. Had me stripped of title and name and basically everything I owned. Everything of Charlie’s….” She made herself breathe. “I didn’t know where else to go. No one else is wearing a mask….”
Johann set the paper aside. “No—no, of course you’ll stay here.”
She set her hand to her arm. “Thank you, you dear, dear man. I won’t make myself a burden to you—I will help every moment I’m here.”
“That—” He managed a small laugh. “Maybe it surprises you, but I have a little bit of a different perspective on the word burden lately.”
“Oh—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” She made herself breathe. “Well. I will throw myself into it once I’m back.”
“Back?”
She nodded, slid her small bag under the table and opened her valise. Inside were masks. Dozens on dozens of masks, mostly plain, some child-sized. “I am handing these out.”
Johann cast a glance out the window, half snowed-under, at the people walking past. “They took everything from you.”
“Not a single person at that masque got out by listening to the people in charge,” she said, shaking her head and stuffing masks into the pockets of her cloaks.
“There were people there who didn’t even get out by doing everything right!”
She paused, pushed a loose, limp golden curl from the eyeholes of her mask. “I know,” Ovelia said. “I know. But we were lucky, you and I. We made it out. You can tell me it wasn’t fate all you like. Completely random. But who assigns reason to happenings?” She straightened, prodded her chest. “Us. We make the meaning. And I will not let them take that from me, even if I have to go person by person in the street.”
He shifted his weight. “I suppose I’m not ready.”
She set her hand to his arm. “That is all right,” she told him with a smile. “You are right. Rest isn’t earned. It is necessary. And I know, when you can, however you can, you will join the fight. Thank you, Johann. I will see you soon.”
And with that, she was gone again, laden down with masks, off to try to bend someone, anyone’s ear. Johann hovered in space, restless, torn. He couldn’t follow after her. The idea of trying to talk people into giving a damn—so insurmountable, he couldn’t conceive of it.
He turned. Something light was tucked under the largely dark pile of masks. He reached in.
A stuffed bear. Loved, careworn, his tawny curling fur matted in places, little green ribbon about his neck coming untied. Johann held onto the bear for a moment, a lump in his throat.
No, going outside was not something he could do. Today, or perhaps for a while. He took stock of what he could do. His way to join the fight.
It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t win the war. But what he could do, for the moment, was strip the sheets and make up a fresh bed for his friend, with Charlie’s bear in pride of place.
Elyssia Books 
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