Damn thing! I leap off my bed and snag it midair. I hurl it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. I’m tired of being a good little cadet.
I head into the hall, crouched low like a spy. Everyone should be in the throne room, but House Julii’s camglobes hover everywhere. I pad barefoot down the hallway toward the pneumovator. “Up,” I whisper. The ride is a matter of seconds but feels like an eternity with the fear that I’m being watched. When the doors open, I find myself in the maze of white halls where Phaestion brought me that day a year ago. I hear a noise, and I quickly turn a corner so as not to be discovered.
“This way.” The voice is Hanschen’s. I peer around the edge. “I think there’s an empty room over here,” he says.
He is coming from the throne room where the festivities of the fertility ritual are taking place. Shirtless, his pale skin shows the lithe musculature of a boy maturing into a teenager. I can’t see who is holding his hand, though, so I hold my breath, only releasing it when they’ve passed.
I haven’t gotten what I came for yet, but I can’t help myself. I have to take a look. I pad to the double doors that open to Phaestion’s personal throne room. I gently push back one panel and peer in. The chamber is full of naked bodies, undulating against one another. They moan and yell, but I don’t think they’re in pain, or at least it’s an unfamiliar kind of pain. Some are on tables, others pressed against walls. Some lie nude on the floor. I see Perdiccus and Sigurd among the throng. I even spy our teachers Michio and Croack and Commandant Vetruk, all naked and entangled with one another and the concubines of House Julii. A pair of bouncing breasts flashes across my vision. Hips grind against one another. Drums beat. This is not the gentle Eventide feasts of Bone, though. This is something different, something wild.
Phaestion sits lazily on the throne, taking in the scene with cool gray eyes, even as several naked girls fawn over him. Talousla Karr hovers behind him, his freakish blue cat eyes observing with alien detachment. Only Alberich stands fully clothed and apart. He scowls and shifts nervously through the whole endeavor. I silently close the door and take a few steps back.
At least they’re occupied, I think as I take off down the hall at a sprint. I turn one corner and then another, navigating my way through the maze of white halls. Finally, I arrive at the nondescript door that I remember from a year and a half ago.
In the unadorned room stands the weapons rack and the iron suit—the Arms of Agony. I step forward, somehow knowing what I am about to do will, in my friend’s mind, transgress beyond anything I’ve just witnessed. I enter the suit.
Instantly, I’m enveloped in a new world, a wasteland of gray sand and tumultuous clouds. Lightning sparks from the swirling nimbus above, seeming almost alive. There is some sort of structure on the distant horizon. I cannot make it out from here, but it looks like a white rose beneath the eye of the maelstrom. Lightning discharges from the storm, striking the distant rose.
This world is alien, yet it feels somehow strangely familiar . . .
“You’re not Phaestion.”
I whip around to identify the speaker. I find myself face-to-face with a boy. He has thick dark hair and green eyes. His skin is tanner than I’ve seen it lately. He stares at me kindly. I haven’t seen that expression in quite some time, either. “And you’re not Edmon,” I reply acidly.
The boy attempts to circle me. I match his movements. It is like staring into a perverse mirror.
“Are you here to fight me?” pseudo Edmon asks. Suddenly, a sword is in his hand. It is beautiful, silver, with a hollow pommel and a leviathan bisecting the empty space.
“No,” I reply.
“Are you here for other things?” the boy asks.
“What other things?” I remember the weapons rack. Through my peripheral vision, I spy it a few meters away in the wasteland. I sidle to it, and my hand grips a sword.
“Sometimes we war. Sometimes we touch,” the boy says and smiles. “Like Chilleus and Cuillan.”
I’m betraying Phaestion by being here, but is it any worse than the way he’s betrayed me? I haven’t seen him for months. Now, I come to find that all this time he’s been training, not alone, but with me—a corruption of me. If this thing’s words are to be believed, Phaestion has taken liberties with this pale shadow that he knows I would never allow.
“I’m here to fight,” I say, “but not you.”
The boy freezes. His head cocks to the side. “Recalculating parameters,” it says. “Recognize subject, Leontes, Edmon. Recalibration completed. Please specify opponent.”
“Phaestion of the Julii,” I say.
The boy’s face melds into the perfectly symmetrical features of the red-haired prince. He stands a few centimeters taller than me, his shoulders broadened by the beginning of his maturation. His single sword has become two—rapier and dagger. The resemblance is uncanny. “Note the representation of subject Julii, Phaestion is not complete.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Subject’s athletic creativity is beyond the scope of artificial pattern recognition,” the new boy says.
“Understood.”
No sooner do I say the word than the simulacrum leaps toward me with blinding speed. I barely have time to move from the attack. Phaestion stutter steps, and I misjudge his feint. His dagger plunges into my thigh. I feel every inch of the blade as it slides through my flesh, even though I know it is only virtual. Our swords clash. I’ve improved much in the months with Alberich’s tutelage and alongside the other Companions. This, however, is inhuman.
My arm is cut. I transfer my sword to my other hand to deflect his next strike. I shoulder into the boy to tackle him, only to find him easily sidestepping my blow. My face plows into the gray ash of the desert. The boy laughs. “Oh, Edmon, so silly to even think . . .”
I stand, readying myself again. The ersatz Phaestion smirks, excited for the challenge. Well, they got that part of the simulation correct, I think.
The way he moves, so quick, is always keeping me off-kilter. I can’t time him. My belly is sliced. Then my back. It’s not just that he’s too fast. He’s too unpredictable.
I remember something that Gorham told me once. The balance of music is defined not by the sound, but the negative space created in the absence of it. The friction between the beat and the silence is what beckons the listener. Phaestion’s fighting is beyond even the improvisational songs of the Eventide feast. He’s not using known patterns or even layers of patterns in his creations. It’s pure chaotic noise, but there is a musicality through the negative space. If I can time that, then . . .
There! My sword strikes toward the earth where he should not step. It impales his foot and pins him in place. I grin with satisfaction.