A Different Kind of Storm (2/?)
Title: A Different Kind of Storm
Chapter Title: Vampires are Real?
Rating: PG-13 for blood and death
Story summary: Even before Az took over, things in the O.Z. weren’t always peaceful. Why would that change now?
Chapter summary: The O.Z. is back in business. Not everybody’s too happy about that.
Word count: ~3400
( Chapter One)
Warnings: Things are getting a little AU here. As in, nobody’s normal, which I believe I mentioned before but I’m saying again anyway. Also warnings for SLASH, angst, Ambrose-bashing and some Queen-bashing, and death, blood and violence.
Disclaimer: How many times must I say that I don’t own Tin Man?
Characters, pairings: Cain/Glitch, Queen/Ahamo (a canon pairing… wow), future Jeb/Zero and Az/DG (please see the Author’s Note), all characters present (Zero’s not in this chapter, though…)
A/N: Okay, I left it up in the air, and it came down on the slash side. This is now a Jeb/Zero, Az/DG story in addition to Cain/Glitch. I realize, though, that the people who objected to these pairings were very passionate, and as I do like the other pairings, too, I’m leaving it up in the air again. Not what pairings this story will have, but whether I’ll just write one version, or I’ll go back after a little while and write a second version with the pairings Cain/Glitch, Az/Zero, DG/Jeb. (I’m rather fond of that option, actually; but it’s a lot more work-which I don’t like-so if no one would read it, I won’t write it.) So if you want me to do that, please tell me.
Feedback is appreciated!
---
Ambrose looked himself over in the mirror, straightening his jacket and the tunic shirt he wore underneath it. For the first time in many annuals, he had a body, and just that simple fact was enough to make him vain. The problem with being vain, however, was that it tended to go hand in hand with being critical. As Ambrose looked in the mirror, he only saw things he needed to fix.
He had finally started to get twelve annuals’ worth of oil and dirt out of his hair-it was incredibly frustrating to try to wash his hair without getting any soap in that cursed zipper, which was doubtless the reason the half-a-man had never bothered to attempt it-but the dratted dreadlocks appeared to be permanent (1). His skin was paler than he remembered; he had a few theories as to why, none of which he thought were feasible. The half hadn’t remembered to eat often enough, and Ambrose’s frame was now too thin for the clothes that he had recovered from his old vacation home. The coat hung oddly off his shoulders and the shirt was too baggy.
Then there was the cursed zipper itself. Ambrose ran his fingers over the metal irritably. There had to be a way to get rid of this; there was no point to keeping it, since his physical brain could never be put back. He wondered if there was a way to stop the decay the brain was undergoing; he didn’t really want to know what would happen to him if the brain itself were to die completely.
Really? I’d love to find out, a small voice in his head grumbled. Ambrose shoved the half to the back of his mind. ‘Glitch’ had been very vocal about his belief that he had a right to live; Ambrose, on the other hand, was confident in his belief that the half-a-man was an accident that had occurred as a result of simple survival instinct, and would fade away in time once it realized it was no longer needed.
Satisfied with his appearance at last, Ambrose headed for the door. He would be starting his job as engineer/inventor today, before he returned to being advisor in another week.
Only a few steps outside his door, Ambrose ran into Wyatt Cain.
“Guardsman Cain,” Ambrose said formally, an empty social smile on his face as he nodded in acknowledgement.
“You know, I didn’t actually say yes,” Cain replied coolly. He didn’t even bother with false smiles; he met Ambrose’s dark eyes with cold blue ones.
“Yet,” Ambrose corrected. “You didn’t say yes yet. No one refuses the Queen anything, especially not when she’s handing them such an opportunity.”
Cain ignored him. “Headed to your job?”
“Yes. Which reminds me, I should be going.” Ambrose began walking past the other man. “Good day.” The Queen would not have approved of Ambrose’s brush-off of Cain, but at this particular moment Ambrose couldn’t bring himself to care. Cain had an unnatural fixation with that half-a-man, and Ambrose intended to stop it (2).
Cain watched Ambrose walk away, anger simmering in his veins. That was Ambrose he’d been talking to, but he knew Glitch was still in there somewhere. Glitch had been the one to wake up, the one who had responded when Cain called him “sweetheart.” Ambrose was the invader, the one who was destroying Glitch, the one Cain would do anything to stop.
---
Ahamo left his room while his wife was getting ready for the day and headed down the hall to their youngest daughter’s room.
It felt strange to be dressed for the palace again. Functional clothes designed for easy, silent movement had been the norm for so long he had forgotten what crisp shirts and formal jackets and slacks felt like. He could only imagine what it must feel like to DG to be wearing princess gowns again.
He had arrived at DG’s room. He knocked sharply twice on the wood of the door.
“Enter,” DG called. Ahamo opened the door and stepped in.
DG was dressed in a long wine-red gown of fine, rich silk, embroidered with intricate gold designs and accented by a thin gold rope belt. At the moment, she was sifting through the jewelry box Lemuela had given her, expression awed.
“Hard decision?” Ahamo asked teasingly. DG nodded mutely.
Ahamo turned to look at the rest of the room. The bed was unmade; apparently DG had inherited Ahamo’s sense that if no one else needed to see it, it didn’t need to be neat. The closet was still open, but DG had taken great care to arrange the dresses so that they would not get wrinkled after she had chosen her current gown. And the wall over the bed…
Ahamo walked forward slowly. The journal entry he had read so recently was playing in his head again-The first will be like her, but the second will be like me… All these drawings… like me… There was Ahamo walking Az to her room that first night after the witch was destroyed; there were Raw and Kalm, busy at the lessons the older viewer had recently started giving the younger… there was Cain, running drills with the palace guard as he had already agreed to do, even without agreeing to the position with the Guard that Lemuela had offered him…
And there was the drawing that had featured in his latest seeing: a familiar boy hurling himself off the third-floor castle balcony at ten o’clock on the night of the half-full moon-tonight.
“DG, let me help you with that,” Ahamo said, turning away from the drawings. He looked in the jewelry box and found a necklace of a fine gold chain with gold half-moons framing a delicate woven gold heart and a ring that had gold chains trailing back to a matching bracelet. He helped DG fasten the clasp and arrange the ring’s chains.
“You’re a very good artist,” he remarked casually. “Where do you get your inspiration?”
“I used to draw my dreams,” DG said softly. “Now I draw what I see… but I don’t know where or when I see it.”
Ahamo smiled at his daughter in the mirror. “Well, Musa smiles on you, my dear (3),” he said. DG smiled back, turning to face him. “I don’t know how else you could have gotten it-I’m certainly no artist, and as wonderfully as your mother can invoke emotions with a few abstract brushstrokes, she’s no talent for drawing realistically.” He kissed her hand gently. “You look beautiful,” he told her. “Come; let’s go see your mother.”
---
Lemuela and Az joined them for breakfast in the smallest dining room. DG was still dazed at the idea of eating in a place where the cutlery was silver and the table had a lace tablecloth over a silver one, but the taste of the food never failed to bring her out of her shock and wake the bright and cheerful girl who had rejoined her family.
This particular day, the topic of conversation was the upcoming presentation of DG and Az to the O.Z. Lemuela was determined to tell DG everything she might need to know, and DG was an attentive listener.
Or at least, she was for about half an hour.
At that point, DG looked up from her meal and through the glass windows to the city beyond. Her fork froze on its path to her mouth. One hand rose slowly and traced a straight line down through the air.
Following her gaze, Ahamo almost choked on his omelet. The suns were approaching a line with the clock tower, a line that would be perpendicular to the horizon. It was a pattern that formed maybe once every fifty-two days.
And it had featured in another of DG’s drawings.
DG stood up slowly, as though in the same trance that had taken over when she had drawn the boy who would jump that night. Slowly and silently, she walked out to the doors. Pushing them open as though brushing aside a cobweb, she stepped out onto the balcony, walked up to the edge, then turned and bent back over the railing to look up.
“What are you doing?” she called. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried easily.
Ahamo ran out to the balcony and looked up where DG was looking. “Oh, Menystar (4),” he whispered.
Lemuela and Az came out onto the balcony as the man responded. “I’ve only got one chance,” he shouted, “and this is it!”
The man was tall and sturdy, with olive skin and close-cropped black hair. He had climbed to the top of the highest tower in the palace, and now stood ready to jump.
“Why don’t you take your chance and live?” DG suggested.
The man laughed harshly. “I can’t do that,” he called down. “All that would keep me alive is hope that I wouldn’t be caught, and hope never kept anyone alive for long. If I got caught…” He let the sentence trail off.
“Come down and let’s talk about this,” Lemuela said.
The man’s laugh became a cackle. “Talk?” he shrieked. “You think we can just talk? Lady, the time for talk is long past!”
And without another word, he threw himself off the tower, passing them on the balcony just as the suns and the tower formed that perfect line.
Az was breathing heavily. Not looking at her sister or her parents, she turned and ran from the balcony, DG only a few steps behind her.
Hurtling down the corridors and staircases, Az bit down on her hand to keep from screaming aloud. This man was only the first-there would be more soon, if she didn’t stop this insanity. She had to do it. Lemuela would agree, if only to prevent war.
Az grabbed a railing and threw herself around it. There were the doors to the city outside; she needed only a moment to shove the heavy wood open and slip through.
Hand already coming out of her mouth and reaching for her belt, Az approached the man who had jumped and knelt beside him, turning him over none too gently.
“What in Siete’s name were you thinking, idiot (5)?” she growled.
The man looked at her and laughed. “Siete’s people are out of luck, Az-sama,” he rasped through a broken throat and smashed jaw. There was no inch of his body that was not broken and covered in blood. “Your mother is on the throne again, and she… disapproves… of our ways.”
“My mother is a hypocrite,” Az hissed. “And you’re an idiot. It’ll still take you days to die this way.”
“’Course it will.” The man didn’t seem at all concerned by the idea. “But that’s not the point, is it? The point is that they’ll just let me die.” He stared at her with one glittering eye. “Better than starvation,” he said wickedly. “Which is what you’re in for, Sorceress. You brought this on all of us.”
Az closed her eyes and pulled out the knife she kept at her back. “I’m sorry,” she told him, opening her eyes and positioning the broad blade over his heart. “I’m so sorry.”
She lifted the knife. As DG, her closest pursuer, made it through the door, Az brought the knife down into the man’s heart and twisted it.
The man gasped once. Then his head turned loosely away, his jaw grew slack, and his body went limp.
“I’m sorry,” Az whispered again. She let go of the knife as though it had turned into a spider and then, as if not knowing what else to do with her hands, fisted them in her hair. Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Siete, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”
DG was the first to step forward. She knelt beside her sister and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Az… I’m here… It’ll be okay…”
Az turned into her little sister. Ahamo and Lemuela emerged from the palace in time to see Az grip DG tightly, making her hair and the skirt of her gown tremble with her sobs.
---
“He was a general.” Az’s voice was hollow. “He was one of the first generals to join my… the Sorceress’ army.”
The family had gathered in a sitting room on the second floor, accompanied by DG’s former companions and Raw’s young student. The sisters sat on a loveseat (6), DG’s arm still around Az’s shoulders. Az had stopped crying, but her eyes were red and her hands still shook.
“Why did he jump?” Lemuela asked. She and Ahamo sat on a couch across from the girls, and Lemuela clearly had many questions to ask.
“He preferred a potentially more painful death to a more drawn-out one,” Az said, eyes fixed on the carpet.
“The death penalty is rarely employed,” Ambrose protested from his position beside the queen, “and it is always as quick and painless as magically possible.”
“He would have died in prison,” Az said. Preempting any more questions, she lifted her eyes to Lemuela’s and explained, “He was Inanima.”
Cain jerked. “What?” he almost shouted. Ambrose’s distant, aristocratic mask broke and he stared in horror. Lemuela wore an expression somewhere between shock and disgust. Raw was speaking softly to Kalm, apparently trying to calm him down (7). DG just looked confused. Only Ahamo was unaffected.
“Umm…” DG asked hesitantly. “Maybe this is a stupid question, but… what’s an Inanima?”
Those who were natives of the O.Z. seemed to think it was ridiculous that DG didn’t know the answer to that question. Ahamo, on the other hand, answered immediately, “They’re vampires.”
DG stared at him. “Vampires? You’re serious?”
“Well, they don’t drink blood,” Az said. “They drink life force. They just… open the victim’s mouth and drain them dry.” Her eyes had fixed on Lemuela.
“Some Inanimae have learned to subsist on other food sources,” Lemuela interjected.
“And they slowly grow weaker,” Az added. “They lose their strength faster; they get hungry faster; they feel more pain from their hunger…”
“So as the Sorceress, you used Inanimae in your army,” Lemuela stated.
“Many,” Az answered. “How did you think we raised such a large army? There are not that many malcontents in the O.Z. Most of the army came from the Empire.”
“The what?” DG asked.
“The Empire on the Edge (8),” Az answered, turning to face her sister. “It’s the original home of the Inanimae.” Looking over at her mother again, she said, “When we took over, about a third of our generals and half the seconds-in-command were Inanimae, as well as a fair number of soldiers. The number of Inanimae generals rose over time. Eventually…” Az hesitated, glancing at Cain, before she returned her eyes to the floor and finished softly, “eventually we made the tin suits as a way to keep control of the Inanimae generals.”
“How does that give you control?” Cain sounded distant, genuinely curious.
“The suits provide everything the human body needs. The spellwork on them will prevent a human from dying. But they don’t provide anything an Inanima needs. Inanimae suffer a slow death by starvation in those suits.” Az’s voice had dropped to a whisper.
Lemuela drew a breath. “Well,” she said, “this will take some thought. Inanimae… I never wanted to have to deal with that diplomatic mess.” She looked up at Az again. “You killed him, though. A mercy killing?”
Az nodded. “Death by fatal injury is slow enough, and incredibly painful. The only ways to kill an Inanima instantly are by removing the head or destroying the heart.” She shuddered slightly, and DG embraced her tightly.
Lemuela seemed to have asked all her questions, so the meeting was dismissed to allow the family to return to their business and the others to return to their jobs.
---
Ambrose emerged from his lab at the end of the day wearing a satisfied smile. Even in the half-a-man’s “glitching” brain, Ambrose’s mind was as sharp as ever, and he’d had a very productive day.
Halfway down the hall, Ambrose ran into someone he wanted to see almost as much as he wanted to see Cain.
“Glitch,” Raw said in greeting.
Ambrose didn’t bother to correct him. Experience had taught him that if a viewer decided to call you something, there was no point in trying to correct them.
“Raw,” he replied with a smile that was a little less polite than the one he gave his coworkers.
“Glitch sad,” Raw said, staring unblinkingly into Ambrose’s eyes.
Ambrose’s heart pounded once as he wondered briefly what would happen if the viewer knew about the half, if he were to tell the Queen.
“I’m fine, actually,” Ambrose said, smile never wavering. He started to move past the viewer.
Raw blocked his path. “Glitch should talk to DG,” he said, eyes boring holes into Ambrose’s.
Ambrose rolled his eyes skyward. “Of course I will,” he assured the viewer. “Excuse me.”
Raw let him go this time. He could feel someone else present-Cain. The Tin Man radiated suspicion and, more interestingly, jealousy. Raw wondered if the man had figured out what that second emotion was and why he felt it now, when Raw pushed Glitch toward DG.
---
Cain returned to his room to find Jeb waiting for him.
“The Queen came to speak to me about the Royal Guard today,” Jeb said without preamble.
“Uh-huh,” Cain said, hanging up his coat by the door.
“Why didn’t you just say yes?” Jeb asked. “You were a Tin Man before. The Royal Guard is a step up-a step you’re more than qualified for.”
Cain turned back to face his son. “And?”
“Dad, I grew up with you.” Jeb’s expression was serious and a little confused. “I learned pretty much everything I know about fighting, strategy, tactics-everything that was ever useful to me in the Resistance was stuff I learned from you. You’re the best.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Cain asked.
“The O.Z. is in chaos,” Jeb said slowly. “The Queen can’t wait for you to say yes.”
“She asked you.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t want to lead again,” Jeb said. “I told her no. I’d be happy to join the Royal Guard, but I don’t want to command. I told her you should have the position. But… she can only wait two more days for an answer.”
Cain sighed. “Why do you think I’m going to change my mind?” he demanded.
“Because this has always been your life,” Jeb answered. “Weird as it might seem, you always liked that life. And I don’t think you really want to say no.”
He stood and headed for the door. “I’d talk to her tomorrow, if I were you,” he said. Pausing at the door, he said quickly, “Good night, Dad.”
By the time Cain processed that last sentence, Jeb had left.
---
Az’s steps were silent as she ghosted through the halls. She had sat shaking on her bed long enough. It was time to prove, one way or another, whether she had a chance of living in this new O.Z.
The flight of steps leading down to the prisons was still clear of dust from the Sorceress’ reign. Az opened the door, taking out the key in her sash as she headed down the stairs.
It was easy for her to see which of the prisoners she might choose from. The Inanimae already sat limp and trembling, their strength failing in a place where breathing gave them little extra life. The human soldiers of the Sorceress’ army came to the bars and called to Az for help, as though like everyone else in the O.Z. they still believed her wicked.
Az ignored them, walking along until she saw a human who looked suitable. Fitting her key into the lock, she reached out and grabbed his collar, dragging him out and locking his cell again.
“We’re going for a walk,” she told him. She slipped the key back into her sash, clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming, and began leading him out of the dungeon.
---
Ahamo lay wide awake next to his wife. Lemuela had fallen asleep almost instantly, leaving Ahamo to ponder what he had seen in DG’s room.
Common sense said to stay out of it. What DG drew, what he wrote… they represented what was supposed to happen. He had no business interfering.
But to leave that boy to fall… It didn’t feel right. He’d never obeyed the rules before; why should he start now?
Careful not to wake Lemuela, Ahamo slipped out of bed and silently got dressed before leaving the room. He would not let that drawing come true.
---
(1) Because I couldn’t bear to change Glitch’s awesome hair.
(2) To be clear, I don’t think the O.Z. is hetero-normative. I’m not sure what their stance is, but they aren’t as a society homophobic. Ambrose isn’t a homophobe; that’s not what he means. He means that Cain is a real person, and Glitch is an unnatural half-a-person, and Cain shouldn’t care about Glitch.
(3) Musa is Latin for Muse, as in the nine Muses of ancient Greek mythology. In ADKOS, she’s the O.Z. goddess of inspiration.
(4) Menystar is a being who exists outside of space and time. He is mine; I made him for a different story. In this story, he’s the god who controls the passageways between Earth and the O.Z. People who travel from one to the other often invoke him as their main god.
(5) Siete does not belong to me; he is the first vampire in Amelia Atwater-Rhodes’ books. In ADKOS, he’s the main Inanima god.
(6) I’m not hinting at anything; what are you talking about?
(7) No pun intended.
(8) The Edge (and the Empire, and the Inanimae) are my inventions. The Edge is a forested mountain range that encircles the O.Z. and the surrounding countries. It marks the edge of the known world because no one can get through on account of all the hungry Inanimae living there.