Page 24 of Fate of the Argosi

‘How can this feel so real?’ Arissa asked, rubbing the tips of her thumbs and forefingers together. ‘I can feel everything, taste the spit in my mouth, see, hear, smell—’

‘You remember a time when someone pinched the skin on the back of your hand real hard?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

I reached out and took her wrist, turned it over and pinched her.

Arissa swore and tried to pull away. ‘What the hells—’

I held on. ‘How’s that feel?’

‘Like one of us is due for a black eye.’

I pinched her again. She yelped and yanked her hand out of my grip. Knowing it was coming, I ducked beneath the straight jab that would’ve forcefully reminded me of a bloody nose I’d once gotten years ago.

‘What purpose does this childish game serve?’ Chedran demanded, interposing himself between us.

‘Aw,’ Arissa said, chuckling. ‘Seems the big bad wolf’s gone sweet on you, Rat Girl. Don’t suppose you’d mind me taking him to bed, what with your romantic inclinations leaning in other directions?’ She winked at me and cocked one hip. ‘Then again, this being in our heads and all, maybe I’ll finally let you have your way with me.’

I did my best to smile the lurid taunt away. Arissa had a bad habit of teasing me about my attraction to her. One minute she’d be flirting outrageously with me, the next she’d find some way to remind me that she preferred men. Many a sleepless hour over these past weeks I’d contemplated sitting Arissa down and explaining the profound discourtesy of stoking affections she couldn’t return just because she enjoyed the thrill of being desired. What held me back all those nights troubled me even more now.

Arissa had been imprisoned in Soul’s Grave for three hundred days. Three hundred days of beatings, near starvation, torture and being relentlessly, mercilessly demeaned. Strange word that,‘demean’– like you could literally erase themeaningfrom a person. Yet that’s what the warden vizier and his clerics had done to Arissa. That was why part of her needed me to fall for her, even if she could never fall for me the same way.

That’s why I was so scared for her now, because bad as Soul’s Grave must’ve been, inside the insidious silk magic of a mind cage there was nowhere to hide. Whoever had us locked up inside our heads could demean Arissa in ways only she could imagine.

‘Pinch the back of your hand again,’ I told her.

‘Why?’

‘Because you trust me.’

‘That’s dirty poker, Rat Girl.’ She turned her palm down and pinched the skin. ‘Damn it!’

‘How’d that feel?’

She scowled at me. ‘What were you expecting? Pretty much the same as all the other times.’

‘Wrong. Not “pretty much” the same,exactlythe same, right?’

Her eyes narrowed as she pinched herself again, gentler this time, and yet she winced same as before. ‘What the hells? How could it hurt this much when I barely squeezed at all?’

‘Mind cages are incredibly hard to maintain. The mage can only create them from sense memories, ours or theirs. The strongest ones, like the time someone pinched you so hard it made you wince, are easy to pick out. Subtler memories take more effort.’

Arissa turned, slowly taking in the entirety of the tower. ‘So none of this is real? Every stone, every sound, even the stench of decay are nothing more than bits and pieces of past experiences cobbled together like a badly made quilt?’

‘No,’ Chedran murmured, so quiet I knew something was wrong. ‘No, no, no.’

He was staring down at the trio of corpses on the floor that looked and even smelled like us: a faint whiff of cinnamon I always associated with Arissa back when we both ran with the Black Galleon gang mixed with Chedran’s earthier, salty musk. He kept shaking his head like a drunk trying to shake off too much whisky. All the while, he kept repeating that samenoover and over.

‘Hey, handsome,’ Arissa said, laying a hand on his arm, ‘probably isn’t healthy to obsess over your own body, especially after it’s dead.’ She made a show of leaning closer to hers. ‘Even if mine does look rather gorgeous in repose, I must say.’

Humour can be a fine tactic, and one the Argosi employ more than most to stave off despair. Arissa never trained in arta precis though, which was how she’d misjudged Chedran so badly.

Like an avalanche, he crashed down on the corpses at our feet. His long, curved knife, designed for slicing rather than thrusting, stabbed over and over into the flesh of the one that bore his face. ‘I’m not dead!’ he bellowed. ‘I’m not dead!’

I let him rant awhile. Doesn’t do much good to reason with someone oblivious to how gleefully they’re stabbing their own cadaver. Besides, I was waiting for what was sure to follow.

‘I’m not dead,’ he said, this time bringing the curved edge of his blade to his own throat. ‘I can prove it.’

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