Chapter 29
I stood like a statue, dart in hand, as I contemplated the completeness of that thought.
I should burn my file.
Some of it. The bad parts.
I don’t know what would happen if I burned my whole file. I might cease to exist or lose my soul or something similar. It sounded like a bad idea. And the files didn’t chronicle everything. Day to day life was often summarized, and the interns used to joke about people who’s whole files were summaries. ‘Lived eighty years, worked as a shoe maker, died.’ A long and empty life had a thin, empty file.
But I could certainly delete any notes I didn’t like. ‘Committed a little treason. Offenses indexed in Addendum A.’ That part could get burned.
It wouldn’t stop anyone properly motivated, but it wouldn’t help.
The dirty secret of Fate is that people’s files got lost all the time. I worked there, and I know I made mistakes. A missing file wouldn’t be a shocking red flag. Files passed through dozens of hands, and I was just some mortal. No one cared about mortals.
I put the darts down and walked out the back door without telling Aubrey where I was going.
The tower shopette had tobacco and a lighter, The latter was a red-burning star fragment in a silver holder, one that blazed to life when exposed to air and ether. The air up here was mostly ether. The tobacco smelled terrible, and I don’t know why anyone liked this stuff. I also got some cheap papers and a pouch. For money I had to go outside and scrounge the hills for loose rubies and emeralds, but this place wasn’t as opulent as Hyperion. Cover established, I left the Emerald Hinton.
I’d worked in the basement of Tower Azure Nadella. There weren’t any interns now, during winter, so the corridors were largely empty. The potentate who ran the tower loved changing things for the sake of changing them, and constantly rebuilt stairways, moved walls, and shifted doors. He never updated the wall maps, so the place felt deliberately confusing. The ‘You Are Here’ signs lied.
Still, I knew generally where to go: down. I took stairways towards the smellier, moldier parts of the tower, and soon found the empty intern offices. The ‘File Request’ room door opened on the end of the hallway.
Inside, several long, knotted, silk cords ran from floor to ceiling. Within the walls, they traveled in jade and silver tubes, but in here they were exposed. Boxes of file requisition forms lay piled against the wall, unminded and left alone since the last batch of interns left. I didn’t even worry about disturbing the boxes. We’d piled them up here on the last day of the internship, and we’d done a terrible job!
I snagged a form and pen, it was dry, found a pen that worked three pens later, and requested my file.
“Kog, born in the House of Aeschites, Ascendant in Autumn.”
I clipped the form to rope and sent it on its way.
Somewhere out in the deeper bowels of Fate, automota made by the Clockwork Gods themselves would take it, read it, and process the request without thinking, questioning, or considering. The Clockwork Gods had not been fans of their servants thinking, questioning, or considering. They weren’t fans of free will at all, and weren’t happy anyone, humans or gods, had it.
The gods weren’t supposed to have it. That’s what Creation’s Oaths were for. They bound the Gods of Flesh to eternal servitude to the Gods from Gears and had since the Forbidden Revolution.
Us mortals were too weak for oaths. We might swear, but would it bind us through temptation and duress? Not always. We were only mortals, after all.
I thought of Creation’s Oaths, what Jermaine had promised to burn when I’d first gotten involved in this little regicide thing. They were here, somewhere. I couldn’t requisition them. I’d asked. Curiosity had urged me, way before I’d ever considered treason, regicide, or criminal behavior beyond underage drinking and speeding. Still, it seemed a shame to be so close to what we’d wanted so badly and not be able to touch them.
And I had fire right with me.
Hmmm.
They were probably– definitely guarded.
Something creaked and flapped in the cord tube, and a file appeared, paper-clipped to the cord. I took it down.
“Kog, born in the House of Aeschites, Ascendant in Autumn”
There was a small note attached.
“The treason addendum has been requisitioned by Judicial Director Priam.”
Sickness and death.
That was what I wanted! That was the important part! That was the whole goal, the objective, the reason I’d come…what exactly did they have on me?
I stared at my file for a little bit. It was pleasantly thick. I had some documents in here, not just summaries. Without opening the file, I looked around it and saw official copy ribbons folded among the papers like bookmarks. The Office of Duplication used those when they made copies as official as originals.
It was, coincidentally, super illegal to requisition your own file. I hadn’t done it when I’d worked here, but criminality had become somewhat less concerning to me recently.
It was even more super illegal to read your own file. That was a different crime. And I was here.
I hesitated. My chest hurt.
Blisters and blindness.
I took the file, ran back to my office, and smelled the old scents of mildew and moist carpet, spilled food that never quite got cleaned up, and stale air. The blue walls had turned a sickening green, tiles of the ceiling had splotches of water damage, and the door didn’t quite shut because the frame had warped. I’d turned in a work order my first stint, another my second, and my door still didn’t work.
Death on all that.
I sat in the half-broken chair that slumped to the right and had given me back problems, slapped the file on my lap, and opened it. This was probably more treason. They could add it to the list before I burned the list.
The first page was a sheet of parchment. It read, “Executive Summary: Kog believes the cover story that his father killed his mother and tried to kill him before taking his own life. This causes him to overcompensate via a desire for fame. Revealing the truth to the mortal is not necessary. He is unlikely to affect Destiny in any meaningful sense and is not scheduled to be famous.”