The Blunt Reaper

Rook knocked on Mara’s door the following morning with every expectation that he would need to do it several more times. He had raised his hand for the second knock when the door opened.

Mara stood on the other side, fully dressed, with her coat fastened and the dagger issued by the Forty-Second secured at her waist. A small pack rested upon the bed behind her, already closed and ready to carry.

"What?" she asked.

Rook lowered his hand. "It’s time."

"You thought I’d still be asleep."

"I expected resistance."

"You’re the one who slept through half my lessons."

"I wasn’t being tested."

Mara lifted her pack and stepped into the corridor. "If you’re disappointed that you didn’t get to wake me by kicking the door open, you can try again tomorrow."

"We won’t be here tomorrow. Let’s go."

Rook collected his coffin from the wall outside the housing area. He had spent part of the night returning its contents to their proper compartments after stripping the room of anything Mara might have used against herself or him. The familiar assortment of blades, rope, powder, thunder charges and less identifiable equipment had been packed tightly inside.

They left the residential levels and descended through Beacon Hall, where the Forty-Second had already awakened around them. Reapers crossed the lower chambers carrying supplies toward the eastern gate, instructors gathered students for another morning of accelerated training, and several repair crews worked upon damage left by the most recent tremor beneath the Bastion.

Mara looked toward the corridor leading to Classroom Seven as they passed it. "I’m missing the lesson on memory cores."

"You’ll learn where they are when something tries to kill you."

"That sounds less reliable than the instructor’s method."

"It’s faster."

Elara was waiting for them inside her office.

Rook looked around the room. "Where are the officers?"

"On their way."

"You told us to come at first bell."

"And you arrived at first bell."

"The people leading us to the Black Hollow Road didn’t."

Elara closed the report she had been reading. "I asked you here before them because I wanted to speak about the memory fragment without half the expedition listening. Did the Remembrancer recover anything useful?"

Mara glanced toward Rook before answering. "I entered the remaining fragment last night."

Elara’s expression sharpened. "And?"

"There wasn’t much left. The memories were damaged, and most of what I saw kept changing between different people. They all appeared to have worked in the same laboratory. There were machines, people wearing white coats and a young man restrained on a table while they drew his blood."

"What happened to him?"

"One of the doctors thought his heart had stopped. While he was trying to remove the restraints, the patient woke up, grabbed the syringe and injected some of the blood into the doctor’s arm. They carried the patient into another machine, and the doctor hid the injury."

Mara hesitated as the image of the bathroom mirror returned to her. Even after waking from the fragment, the sight of the doctor’s reflection had remained disturbingly clear.

"The final memory showed the doctor inside his home. He was sick. His skin had turned grey, his hair was falling out, and something appeared to be moving beneath his skin. The memory ended before I saw what happened to him."

Elara leaned back. "Any names?"

"None that survived clearly."

"Locations?"

"I wouldn’t recognize one even if I saw it. The place belonged to the world of the living."

Elara shifted her attention toward Rook. "What about the patient?"

Rook folded his arms. "What about him?"

"The Fourth Rank recognized you. Did anything Mara described return a memory?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"White rooms, machines and people in coats could mean thousands of things. If any of it belonged to me, I don’t remember it."

Elara studied him long enough to make the silence uncomfortable. "The Abomination was certain."

"It was built from people who had been dead, consumed and fused together until they could barely speak. Certainty doesn’t make it correct."

"It accused you of killing them."

"It probably mistook me for someone else."

Elara turned back to Mara. "Did you see the patient’s face?"

"Almost. The memory distorted whenever I looked directly at him. He had dark hair and looked young, probably somewhere in his early twenties. He was also much thinner."

She glanced at Rook’s shoulders and the heavy coffin rising behind him. The difference was significant enough that Mara felt the first description had failed to convey it.

"Much thinner."

Rook looked offended. "You said he was half dead from having his blood drained."

"He still didn’t look anything like you."

"That supports my argument."

"It supports nothing," Elara said. "Physical appearance is among the least reliable parts of a memory, especially when someone else is viewing it. Details change according to the person remembering them. Faces blur, voices merge, and the mind fills whatever is missing with something familiar."

Mara frowned. "His entire body was different."

"Rook’s entire body was different when he first arrived."

Mara looked at him again, but Rook’s expression suggested that the subject had already received more attention than he wanted. He settled farther into the chair and offered no explanation.

Elara continued, "A soul’s form in the Underworld is sustained by memory, identity and experience. It changes over time. Reapers who survive for centuries rarely look exactly as they did upon arrival. Their remembered bodies rebuild themselves around what they have endured and what they believe themselves capable of surviving."

Her gaze moved toward Rook’s arms, chest and the old scars visible above the collar of his coat. Three centuries of violence had shaped far more than the way he behaved.

"He has spent three hundred years fighting. Every death, recovery and memory added to him contributed to the body he possesses now. The man Mara saw could have looked completely different without proving or disproving anything."

"Wonderful," Rook said. "I might be every blurry person anyone sees in a memory."

"You’re unpleasant enough to be several of them," Elara replied.

Mara reached into her coat and removed the empty pouch. Fine white residue had gathered in its corners, all that remained of the marble after the memory released itself.

"We can’t check again. The fragment started breaking apart after I woke. By this morning, it had completely dissolved."

Elara held out one hand, and Mara passed her the pouch. She examined the pale dust gathered inside before returning it.

"Then that path ends here for now," Elara said. "The ledger should remain with you. If you encounter another fragment connected to the same laboratory, the Remembrancer’s notes may help determine whether they came from the same group."

Rook shifted in his chair. "We have a missing Manager and an expedition connected to Yama’s Gate. I’d rather pursue the lead that still exists."

"That is what you’re doing. The last patrol found signs of the Manager’s group near the beginning of the Black Hollow Road. They followed those signs for several miles before turning back."

"Why?"

"They lost two officers without seeing what took them."

Mara’s hand moved closer to the dagger at her waist. "Were the bodies recovered?"

"No bodies were found. The officers disappeared while walking between the others. No sound, blood or struggle. One moment they were present. The next, their group contained two fewer people."

Rook’s impatience faded. "How far apart were they?"

"Close enough to speak."

"And no one saw anything?"

"No."

Before Rook could ask another question, footsteps approached through the corridor. The door opened without a knock, allowing a broad-shouldered man to enter.

He wore a long dark leather coat over a reinforced vest, black trousers and heavy boots marked by dried grey mud. A strip of black cloth encircled his left arm, with the number Forty-Two embroidered across it in pale thread. A straight sword hung from one hip, while several smaller blades had been secured along the opposite side of his belt.

His hair had been cut close to the scalp, and an old break had left his nose slightly crooked. He entered with the posture of someone who had no intention of apologizing for being late.

Elara gestured toward him. "Officer Frederick. Good of you to arrive."

Frederick ignored the criticism and looked at Rook. His attention then moved to Mara, pausing upon the new dagger, the lightly packed bag and the absence of any experience she might have worn as visibly as the rest of them.

"These are the Reapers I’m supposed to work with?"

"You know Rook."

"I know he can’t Cull."

Rook rested one elbow against the chair. "Good morning to you too."

Frederick pointed toward Mara. "And she has spent what, ten days in the Underworld?"

"Nine," Mara said.

"That improves nothing."

"She possesses an effective Death Imprint and completed every part of the accelerated training that could be fitted into the week," Elara replied. "Rook is also the best tracker available for this search."

"He’s the best tracker who agreed."

"He didn’t agree," Mara said. "Elara told him he was coming."

Frederick looked between them. "That makes considerably more sense."

Rook rose from the chair. "You had fewer complaints the last time we worked together."

"The last time we worked together, I was inexperienced and you were already two hundred years old."

"You also spent most of the fight on your back."

A muscle moved along Frederick’s jaw. "My Death Imprint had barely awakened."

"Was your balance still waiting to awaken too?"

"I have complete mastery of it now. I doubt you would last a second against me."

Rook stepped around the chair. "If you want to test that, we have time while the rest of your people continue being late."