fic: The Indirect Life (4/?)
There was too much happening. Way too much happening.
Ambrose felt restless, kinetic, and a little panicky. He couldn’t keep still, and there was nowhere to go, so he was continually bouncing off the boundaries of his cell.
Noise. Noise everywhere - outside, inside. His head was half-empty, but his brain was far too full. There wasn’t enough room in the diminished organ for all that had happened… whatever it was. He couldn’t recall the events, only the noise and emotions: anger, fear, screaming, vomiting, bleeding. Terror, pain, torment.
He couldn’t stop pacing, couldn’t stop trying to remember, and couldn’t actually recall a single thing. It was an endless loop of fruitless, exhausting activity.
Control. He had to get control.
He willed himself to stop moving, an instruction that his feet resisted with some vigor, and looked rather wildly all around the cell for… something. He supposed he’d know what he was looking for when he saw… oh, wait. Those words on the wall. Someone had scratched…
Oh! My name is Ambrose. That rang a bell, rather loudly. Who had written that? As though it had a mind of its own, his right hand touched the cuff of his left coat sleeve. Looking down, he noted that a button was missing. This had some relationship to the writing, apparently, although he didn’t know what it was. But somehow, he felt calmer now, more grounded.
Okay. So. Time to figure out what was happening. Or what had happened. Or maybe what was about to happen again.
Concentrating very hard, he tried to remember something. Anything would do, really, as a starting point. At least, that’s what he thought until he was deluged by a rush of pictures, words, and sounds all jumbled together, chopped up into a sensory confetti and then mixed together like remnants of old jigsaw puzzles.
“You’ve no idea what you’re asking me to do.” Family. Grandchildren. “Say ‘ah’.” Someone vomiting. Serious men; paper burning in the fireplace. “Rory.” Rectangles and ovals. Laughter from a friend, but not the kind that made him want to join in. A vaporous snake. Archaeon. “I taught him to shoot.” Carpet of blood. “She’s done her bit. Leave her alone!” Charms. “There is no such thing as good anymore.”
It was overkill, like being tossed into a lake because you mentioned you were thirsty. He tried to make sense of the stuff, to find a way to organize it, but as fast as one item materialized, it was bumped away by the next.
He tried to focus on a single element of the mental parade, to grab onto it with both hands and will its context to reveal itself. But like a magnet chasing another of the same polarity, as soon as he concentrated on an image or sound, his very attention forced it from his grasp. On and on and on, the flood of meaningless remembrances raged through his brain. Whimpering, he slapped at his head until the flood dried up. He was panting and sweating, and his knees were locked. That was a good way to pass out, so he forced them to flex until the better idea of sitting down occurred to him.
Turning toward the bench again brought the words on the back wall into his sight. Abruptly, the name Charles entered his mind, and this for some reason compelled him to turn his head toward the cell across from his. There was a man sleeping over there. Somehow, he knew that was Charles. Perhaps he could help bring order to his (Ambrose. My name is Ambrose) confusion. He could wake him and…
No. No, he shouldn’t do that, because Charles hadn’t had much rest lately. And with that thought, he started to remember….
* * * * * *
It had taken him a while to understand what he was hearing, because he was soundly sleeping when the incident began. There was a loud voice and sudden light, and by the time Ambrose fully woke and was able to assess what was going on, the door to Charles’s cell had been opened and there were two long-coated men inside, hauling him off the bench. He had obviously been sleeping, too.
“I said, on your feet, Farsing!” bellowed one of the longcoats still standing outside the cell, aiming a lantern directly into Charles’s face, which was battered-looking, with a nasty cut along the cheekbone just beginning to scab. Charles blinked and squinted and tried to raise a hand to block the glare. The longcoats flanking him were holding his arms and kept them at his sides.
“Lonot?” Charles rasped, his vocal cords not yet fully roused. “What’s this about?”
“Why, it’s about time for another talk.”
“Delightful.” The dry tone Charles affected was undermined by the slight tremor in his voice. “I suppose it couldn’t wait until morning.”
“Oh, I’m sure it could have, but under the circumstances, I assumed you’d want to be informed as soon as possible.”
Charles frowned. “Informed of what?”
Lonot leaned forward. His back was to Ambrose’s cell, but his ugly grin was evident in his voice. “Charles, it’s my distinct pleasure to tell you that… we’ve finally found your family.”
The astonishment on Charles’s face melted into horror with shocking speed. “You’ve… no. No!”
“Bring him.”
The longcoats began to force Charles to move forward, which he resisted. At a nod from Lonot, both men released him as Lonot shoved one of the electrified rods through the door and gave the prisoner a good, pain-filled zap. The longcoats grabbed Charles before he’d quite hit the floor and proceeded to drag him out.
“Why, Charles,” Lonot said conversationally, “I’m surprised. I thought you’d be anxious to be reunited with your son.”
* * * * * *
The memory ended abruptly, like a projection device whose power source has been cut off. Ambrose sat up straighter. That wasn’t enough. He was very confused; he hadn’t known Charles had a family, much less that they were trying to hide. Or had he? There was something more hovering just at the edge of his grasp. Putting all his concentration into it, he tried to bring it into focus, but it kept skittering away.
He slumped in frustration. Why was everything so difficult today? Sure, remembering things was always hard for him, but it wasn’t usually this bad. Huffing an irritated sigh, he laid back, feet on the bench and knees bent. There it was again: My name is Ambrose, scratched into the wall. Again, he looked at the cuff with the missing button. That was when another memory came forth, an earlier one…
* * * * * *
“So how come it’s just us?”
Charles, resting his head against folded arms that leaned against a horizontal bar of his door, must have been lost in his own thoughts, because Ambrose had to repeat the question to gain his attention.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Ambrose said, beginning to pace slowly back and forth at the front of his cell, “I was wondering, since Azkadellia has overthrown the rightful government, why you and I seem to be the only members of that government being held prisoner.”
“What makes you think that we are?”
Ambrose blinked. “That we’re prisoners? Well, there’s the excellent food; the lavish accommodations; the courteous, efficient staff; oh yes, the security bars -”
Rubbing his forehead tiredly, Charles interrupted. “What makes you think we’re the only government members who are prisoners? Clearly, there are other sections of the prison being occupied.” As he spoke, faint noises drifted down the corridor that indicated the presence of other, unseen captives.
Ambrose had to admit that was true. For all they knew, the whole of the Queen’s cabinet could be housed here and they wouldn’t ever lay eyes on them. This actually brought up another question, indirectly. “What happened to your uniform?”
“What?” Charles sounded irritated.
“Well, I’m wearing my official uniform…” Noting the wrinkled, unclean state of said uniform, he added, “such as it is. But apparently, when they nabbed you, you were dressed like… like a civilian.”
“So? Do you think I own no other clothing? What does it matter what I was wearing when they found me?”
“It doesn’t, it just… I was just wondering what might have happened to the rest of us.”
Stepping back from the bars, Charles snapped, “And how does my lack of a uniform relate to that?”
Ambrose started to answer, stopped, and cocked his head. “I’m not sure.”
With a mild snort, Charles turned stiffly and limped to his bench. He’d had two additional interrogation sessions since that first one and each time he’d emerged with less mobility. Ambrose watched as he carefully lowered himself into a sitting position.
“Hey, why do they keep taking you for questioning? What exactly are they trying to find out?”
“I’ve repeatedly told you I won’t discuss that, Ambrose.”
“You have?”
But Charles was no longer talking. He lay on his back with his left arm flung over his eyes. Ambrose rolled his eyes and sighed. He still wanted to know what had happened to Charles’s uniform. Or maybe what had happened to the rest of the cabinet. Oh, now he was all confused.
Suddenly, his mind was replaying images from that memory he kept calling up, the one where he was addressing a small group of other government types over a diagram. Everyone there wore a uniform exactly like Ambrose’s… only clean, of course.
Somehow his brain drew a line between point A and point B without knowing where the points even were. He whirled toward the other cell. “They’re in hiding, aren’t they?”
Charles tensed but didn’t uncover his eyes. “What? Who?”
Ambrose pressed himself against the barred door and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The rest of the cabinet.”
Moving deliberately but sounding impatient, Charles sat up. “If you must know, many cabinet members defected when it looked as though Azkadellia’s coup might succeed. They traded their loyalty to the Queen for whatever reward the sorceress was willing to grant them for their treachery. And since you seem fixated on fashion, I suppose they are now wearing long leather coats, if she actually allowed them to live.”
“Many, but not all?”
“What?”
“You said many of them defected. But not all of them, right? I didn’t, you didn’t.”
“Well done. Excellent grasp of the obvious.”
“So if you and I resisted, it seems reasonable that at least a few others did, too. Right?”
“What is your point, please?”
“Um…” Ambrose had actually forgotten his point, so he thought up a new question. “Why didn’t you defect?”
The blue eyes in the other cell were suddenly alight with indignation. “How can you even ask me such a thing?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Now Ambrose was impatient. “I don’t know! Half a brain and no memories, remember? Guess not everyone has a grasp of the obvious.”
Unexpectedly, Charles laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but Ambrose felt better for hearing it and smiled tentatively. There was silence for a while, but it was companionable, comfortable.
“You didn’t defect,” Charles told him, and this time there was warmth in his voice, “because you are loyal to the bone. You were prepared to lay down your life for the Queen and everything she stood for, and you stayed at her side right to the end, even when you knew that defeat was certain. That’s why you’re still in uniform, Ambrose. You were captured while performing your official duties.”
Ambrose drank in the words like wine, allowing the implied praise of his character to intoxicate him a little. But still, there were questions.
“But you weren’t. Performing official duties when you were captured, I mean.”
“No.”
* * * * * *
Ambrose groaned. While it was nice to have the memories flowing a bit, was it too much to ask for them to answer more questions than they raised?
He looked over at Charles again. Still asleep. “Too bad,” Ambrose murmured. “I mean, good for him, of course. But too bad for me.”
Idly, he wondered if Charles had always been so infuriatingly circumspect, or if there had been a time when he had answered questions directly and without hesitation. Perhaps it was a function of his age; maybe people became more enigmatic with the passing of the annuals.
Or maybe Charles was just a natural hoarder of information. But no, Ambrose had a feeling that wasn’t it, either. In fact, his gut told him that Charles was keeping his cards close to the vest out of some sort of duty, and Ambrose could respect that. Still, couldn’t he just let go once in a while and share a little?
Had he…?
* * * * * *
For the first time, Charles was unable to return from an interrogation under his own power.
The two longcoats who brought him back had to carry him, each carelessly gripping one of his wrists over their shoulders, allowing his body to sag between them - and his legs to drag along the stone floor from the knees down.
They tossed him into the cell in a heap.
“Impressive,” Ambrose sneered. “I’ll bet that’s a great boost to your ego, tossing a beaten-up old man around like a bag of dirty laundry. Your masculinity must feel so enhanced right now.”
One of the longcoats reached through the bars and yanked front of Ambrose’s coat, slamming him face-first into the cold iron. He grabbed the tab of Ambrose’s zipper and ripped it open. Ambrose gasped as cold air entered his skull.
“You like that feeling, headcase?” snarled the man. His grip on the coat hadn’t loosened, and Ambrose was awkwardly smashed against the cell door, head turned to the side and immobilized.
“N-no, I don’t like it,” he stammered. What if the vicious ape reached inside? What if he were to touch his brain?
“Then you watch that mouth of yours,” the ape responded. “Because the only thing keepin’ your head closed is this zipper, and that -” And here he tugged roughly on the front part of the zipper that attached to the forehead. “- can be ripped right off, easy. We understand each other?”
“Y-yes!”
Ambrose staggered backward as the longcoat gave him a hard shove. He hit the floor, undamaged but shaken, and listened to the laughter as the long-coated thugs headed down the corridor. His hands flew up to inspect the zipper, certain that it had been damaged. But it turned out to be fine, if a little sore along the seams, and he quickly closed it up.
“I thought… told you… stay out of it.”
Ambrose scooted closer to the bars and watched as Charles’s body stirred weakly. “I thought you were unconscious.”
“No… such luck.” Charles turned onto his side, drew his knees up toward his chest, and began to cough. Blood dotted his lips and the floor near them. His face was bruised and one of his eyes was swelling shut.
Ambrose got to his knees, alarmed. “Can you get up? Maybe get onto the bench?”
Charles made a terrifying, wheezy sound. Ambrose panicked until he realized it was laughter. His heart sank. It was the first time Charles’s laughter had chilled rather than comforted him.
“Don’t think a… few feet of altitude will help.”
The coughing started up again. To Ambrose, it sounded like internal organs slapping against the rib cage and each other. At this rate, Charles wouldn’t survive half an hour of the next interrogation. Even so, he wouldn’t be granted an easy death. They would see to it that he went out screaming. The thought filled Ambrose with stark terror.
Clutching the bars with his hands, Ambrose took a deep breath. “Charles? Charles… please talk.”
Charles’s chest heaved in deep, labored gasps as the coughing subsided. “Not now… Ambrose. Busy… breathing.”
“No, that’s not what…” Ambrose cleared his throat. “Charles, listen. The next time they take you away… tell them. Tell them everything. Whatever they want to know, give it to them.”
“Stop.”
“No, you stop. You’ve done your part. Seriously, Charles, you need to give in now.”
“You’ve no idea… what you’re asking me to do.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”
“I’m asking you to stop protecting -”
“Stop it.”
“- all these other people. Do what you need to do for yourself now.”
“Already doing it.”
“No!” Ambrose kicked the door of his cell. “What you’re doing is letting them kill you an inch at a time out of a perceived obligation to some mysterious people out there! You’ve kept the faith, okay? Those, those nameless, faceless people don’t know what you’re going through in here. They don’t even know you exist!”
“Shut up!” Charles struggled to lift his upper body, propping himself precariously on an elbow. The tone of his voice was angry, but Ambrose was surprised that Charles’s eyes were wide and tinged with panic. “Shut up! You mustn’t do this to me, Ambrose! Tempt me. You don’t…” His brief surge of energy ended and Charles let himself sink back to the floor. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Ambrose had the feeling he was missing something. “But -”
“They’re not all… nameless and faceless,” Charles said weakly. Ambrose waited for more, but soon realized that his friend had passed out.
* * * * * *
Ambrose surged to his feet as the memory faded, again filled with that feeling of panic and restlessness. He had a bizarre, intense urge to flee, which was both perplexing and unfortunate, given that he was locked in a cell. His chest churned cold air into his lungs with harsh urgency. This was silly - there was no immediate threat, no justification for the anxiety he was feeling.
Was there?
He spun around, sure that disaster lurked just behind him. Nothing. He strained his ears for signs that longcoats were descending, but all he could hear was the normal background noise of distant cruelty and suffering. Even Charles still slept.
Putting his hands to his face, he scrubbed up and down, trying to quell this attack of nerves with physical stimulation. He had to put a stop to this, because there was something important he had to do.
Something important he needed to remember.
He plopped himself down on the bench again, scowling. Well, if the outcome of the game was dependent on his memory, it was probably time to forfeit, because he… Wait. Game. Something about a game…
* * * * * *
Staring at the floor just outside Charles’s cell, Ambrose analyzed the numbers and position of the circles, triangles, and diamonds contained in the crudely drawn grid.
“What did you say this game is called, again?”
“Charms,” Charles said briskly. “Do you like it?”
“It’s a little simplistic,” Ambrose said automatically, and then felt embarrassed by his lack of tact. “But I’m enjoying it.”
Charles chuckled. The swelling in his face was going down; the right eye was able to open a little now. “It’s actually a child’s game. But given our options, it’s the only choice.” He held up the button Ambrose had tossed into his cell a few days earlier.
“It’s fine.” Ambrose smiled brightly. It didn’t matter how easy the game was. The real fun was in seeing Charles so cheerful and relaxed. They’d left him alone for three straight days now, and while his movements were stiff and careful and he still had the occasional coughing fit, the older man was doing much better.
Looking back to the grid scratched into the floor, Ambrose said, “Diamond, fourth row, third square from the right.”
Charles dutifully scratched out a diamond shape in the specified square on the grid and looked thoughtful, considering his next move.
“So how many years has it been since you’ve played this game?” Ambrose asked.
“I last played about eight months ago.”
Ambrose frowned. “But if it’s a game for kids…”
Scratching a triangle into the leftmost square in the third row, Charles said, “I was teaching it to my grandson. He’s seven annuals old. Was at the time, that is.”
A kind of joy seemed to flow into Ambrose and travel through his veins all over his body. Although he owed nearly everything he knew about himself to this man, this was perhaps the first time Charles had shared anything substantive about his own life. “Grandson? Family! You have a family!”
Charles smiled. “Yes. Two grandchildren, one son.”
“Wife?”
“She passed several years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.” Feeling awkward about reminding Charles of his loss, he hurriedly chose a move. “Sixth row, seven from the left.” As Charles drew the diamond, Ambrose said, “So, your family. Tell me about them.”
“Well, let’s see. Logan, my son, was curator of the Magic History wing at the Museum of the Outer Zone in Central City.”
“Was?”
“When the coup looked to be succeeding, he left his position. Anyway, he’s married to a lovely woman, Melany, and they have two children: Anthea, who’s eleven, and the boy I already mentioned, Roderick.”
“Rory,” Ambrose supplied without thinking.
Charles stopped in the middle of drawing a triangle and looked sharply at him. “What? Do you… How did you know that?”
“Know what?” Had he done something wrong? Ambrose feared ruining this lovely afternoon terribly.
“That we call him Rory. Did you remember it?”
“Remember it? Have I met him?”
“You’ve met all of them.”
Ambrose allowed himself a second to feel gratified; it pleased him immensely to learn that he’d once been included, to at least some degree, in his friend’s private life.
“Ambrose, this is very important. Did that name come from your memory?”
He thought hard, feeling inexplicably ashamed. Charles seemed so… threatened.
Nothing was forthcoming. If the name had come from a memory, that memory had gone back into hiding. “Isn’t ‘Rory’ a traditional nickname for ‘Roderick’?”
Charles studied him for a moment before nodding absently. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He slowly resumed drawing the triangle.
Charles became preoccupied, and Ambrose felt a selfish sting of loss. They had been having such a good time. Ambrose watched his friend carefully while continuing to call out his moves. Charles appeared to be putting less thought into his.
“I… think I won,” Ambrose said eventually.
“Hmm?”
“Row six? I took the row.” As Charles stared down at the row with a puzzled frown, he added uncertainly, “You did say that the squares with circles go to the player whose symbols surround them, didn’t you?”
“Ah! Indeed I did. Well done.” Charles smiled at him and drew a careful line through the row in question. He looked down at the button in his hand.
“Boy, bet that thing’s flat on one side by now,” Ambrose said. Charles held it up for him to see. “Yep. Sharp, too, probably. Be careful you don’t cut your fingers.”
Charles raised his eyes to look at Ambrose, cocking his head and smiling. “Trying to protect me?”
“Well, sure.”
“You care about me, don’t you, Ambrose?”
Feeling suddenly awkward, Ambrose shifted uncomfortably. “Of course.”
“Am I the only person you care about, other than yourself?”
“Well… you’re really the only person I know. Since they took… you know.”
Charles nodded. “Exactly. I’m the only person you know. You care about me and want to protect me.” He leaned forward. “So extrapolate from that and imagine that you have several friends like me. How would you feel about them being in danger?”
“I… wouldn’t like that.” Ambrose was not at all sure where this was going.
“You’d want to protect them, too, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Charles nodded again, thoughtfully, and was quiet for a short time. “Do you remember what I told you about the circumstances of your capture?”
“You mean, that I stayed with the Queen?”
“Yes. You stayed at your post no matter what, even when it was clear that Azkadellia would soon take over.”
Ambrose leaned against the bars and considered things. “So you’re saying I stayed with the Queen because I cared about her.”
“Yes, but more than that, you cared about the kingdom, about keeping it safe. You cared about an ideal, and about masses of people you had never even met.”
“Oh, I get it now,” Ambrose said, rolling his eyes. “You’re trying to justify your self-destructive resistance by suggesting that I would do the same thing in your position.”
Charles seemed taken aback, as though Ambrose had skipped ahead in the lesson. “Well, yes. You would, you know. If you could remember the things that I know about you, you’d understand completely.”
Ambrose shrugged. It was no fair, Charles using things he couldn’t recall to bolster his argument. “Let me ask you something, Charles. Do you care about me?”
Again, Charles seemed to have been taken by surprise. “Yes, of course.”
“And you don’t like me trying to defend you from the longcoats because I just get hurt, right?”
“Right.”
Ambrose hopped to his feet. “Then maybe you can understand what it does to me to see you come back from each session a little more dead than when you left.” He walked to the bench and plopped onto it like a sulky teenager.
Charles was looking at him with something like sympathy. “I do understand it. I would feel the same if it were you they were torturing. But I would also understand what cause you were serving by refusing to cooperate with them. I’d understand the big-”
“The bigger picture, right, I remember.”
“All right, let me put it another way. Suppose they were torturing you for information that would get me into trouble. What if you knew something that, if you told them, would lead them to torture me, maybe even kill me?”
He was prepared to scoff at the transparent scenario, but he found himself envisioning it for a moment. He imagined all the horrible things that had been done to Charles happening to him, instead, and felt the weight of responsibility that would put him between this tremendous suffering and his friend. Ambrose wasn’t at all sure he would possess the necessary strength to keep quiet and spare Charles that horrible fate… but he knew he would want to try.
The realization must have shown on his face, because Charles was saying, “You see, there are ideals that are worth suffering for, Ambrose. People who are worth dying for. And sometimes, we have to make terrible decisions in order to protect them.”
And then the simple truth hit him like a palm to his forehead. Charles was right. He could feel in his heart, in his bones, in his very soul that he would be willing to die for Charles. He still wasn’t sure he had the fortitude to follow through - if he was tormented enough, he suspected he would cave - but yes, he would definitely resist until he reached that breaking point.
Breaking point. Why couldn’t Charles be weak like him? Why did his will have to be so tough? If he would only break…
“I understand,” he said, feeling faintly ill even as Charles smiled.
It was a feeling that persisted until he went to sleep that night, listening to the occasional coughing and quiet grunts as Charles struggled to find a comfortable position on the bench.
It was a feeling that was replaced by utter horror when the longcoats came for Charles not long after, only to discover the cell floor bathed in blood from Charles having sliced his wrists.
Chapter Five - Jigsaw (2)
Ambrose felt restless, kinetic, and a little panicky. He couldn’t keep still, and there was nowhere to go, so he was continually bouncing off the boundaries of his cell.
Noise. Noise everywhere - outside, inside. His head was half-empty, but his brain was far too full. There wasn’t enough room in the diminished organ for all that had happened… whatever it was. He couldn’t recall the events, only the noise and emotions: anger, fear, screaming, vomiting, bleeding. Terror, pain, torment.
He couldn’t stop pacing, couldn’t stop trying to remember, and couldn’t actually recall a single thing. It was an endless loop of fruitless, exhausting activity.
Control. He had to get control.
He willed himself to stop moving, an instruction that his feet resisted with some vigor, and looked rather wildly all around the cell for… something. He supposed he’d know what he was looking for when he saw… oh, wait. Those words on the wall. Someone had scratched…
Oh! My name is Ambrose. That rang a bell, rather loudly. Who had written that? As though it had a mind of its own, his right hand touched the cuff of his left coat sleeve. Looking down, he noted that a button was missing. This had some relationship to the writing, apparently, although he didn’t know what it was. But somehow, he felt calmer now, more grounded.
Okay. So. Time to figure out what was happening. Or what had happened. Or maybe what was about to happen again.
Concentrating very hard, he tried to remember something. Anything would do, really, as a starting point. At least, that’s what he thought until he was deluged by a rush of pictures, words, and sounds all jumbled together, chopped up into a sensory confetti and then mixed together like remnants of old jigsaw puzzles.
“You’ve no idea what you’re asking me to do.” Family. Grandchildren. “Say ‘ah’.” Someone vomiting. Serious men; paper burning in the fireplace. “Rory.” Rectangles and ovals. Laughter from a friend, but not the kind that made him want to join in. A vaporous snake. Archaeon. “I taught him to shoot.” Carpet of blood. “She’s done her bit. Leave her alone!” Charms. “There is no such thing as good anymore.”
It was overkill, like being tossed into a lake because you mentioned you were thirsty. He tried to make sense of the stuff, to find a way to organize it, but as fast as one item materialized, it was bumped away by the next.
He tried to focus on a single element of the mental parade, to grab onto it with both hands and will its context to reveal itself. But like a magnet chasing another of the same polarity, as soon as he concentrated on an image or sound, his very attention forced it from his grasp. On and on and on, the flood of meaningless remembrances raged through his brain. Whimpering, he slapped at his head until the flood dried up. He was panting and sweating, and his knees were locked. That was a good way to pass out, so he forced them to flex until the better idea of sitting down occurred to him.
Turning toward the bench again brought the words on the back wall into his sight. Abruptly, the name Charles entered his mind, and this for some reason compelled him to turn his head toward the cell across from his. There was a man sleeping over there. Somehow, he knew that was Charles. Perhaps he could help bring order to his (Ambrose. My name is Ambrose) confusion. He could wake him and…
No. No, he shouldn’t do that, because Charles hadn’t had much rest lately. And with that thought, he started to remember….
* * * * * *
It had taken him a while to understand what he was hearing, because he was soundly sleeping when the incident began. There was a loud voice and sudden light, and by the time Ambrose fully woke and was able to assess what was going on, the door to Charles’s cell had been opened and there were two long-coated men inside, hauling him off the bench. He had obviously been sleeping, too.
“I said, on your feet, Farsing!” bellowed one of the longcoats still standing outside the cell, aiming a lantern directly into Charles’s face, which was battered-looking, with a nasty cut along the cheekbone just beginning to scab. Charles blinked and squinted and tried to raise a hand to block the glare. The longcoats flanking him were holding his arms and kept them at his sides.
“Lonot?” Charles rasped, his vocal cords not yet fully roused. “What’s this about?”
“Why, it’s about time for another talk.”
“Delightful.” The dry tone Charles affected was undermined by the slight tremor in his voice. “I suppose it couldn’t wait until morning.”
“Oh, I’m sure it could have, but under the circumstances, I assumed you’d want to be informed as soon as possible.”
Charles frowned. “Informed of what?”
Lonot leaned forward. His back was to Ambrose’s cell, but his ugly grin was evident in his voice. “Charles, it’s my distinct pleasure to tell you that… we’ve finally found your family.”
The astonishment on Charles’s face melted into horror with shocking speed. “You’ve… no. No!”
“Bring him.”
The longcoats began to force Charles to move forward, which he resisted. At a nod from Lonot, both men released him as Lonot shoved one of the electrified rods through the door and gave the prisoner a good, pain-filled zap. The longcoats grabbed Charles before he’d quite hit the floor and proceeded to drag him out.
“Why, Charles,” Lonot said conversationally, “I’m surprised. I thought you’d be anxious to be reunited with your son.”
* * * * * *
The memory ended abruptly, like a projection device whose power source has been cut off. Ambrose sat up straighter. That wasn’t enough. He was very confused; he hadn’t known Charles had a family, much less that they were trying to hide. Or had he? There was something more hovering just at the edge of his grasp. Putting all his concentration into it, he tried to bring it into focus, but it kept skittering away.
He slumped in frustration. Why was everything so difficult today? Sure, remembering things was always hard for him, but it wasn’t usually this bad. Huffing an irritated sigh, he laid back, feet on the bench and knees bent. There it was again: My name is Ambrose, scratched into the wall. Again, he looked at the cuff with the missing button. That was when another memory came forth, an earlier one…
* * * * * *
“So how come it’s just us?”
Charles, resting his head against folded arms that leaned against a horizontal bar of his door, must have been lost in his own thoughts, because Ambrose had to repeat the question to gain his attention.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Ambrose said, beginning to pace slowly back and forth at the front of his cell, “I was wondering, since Azkadellia has overthrown the rightful government, why you and I seem to be the only members of that government being held prisoner.”
“What makes you think that we are?”
Ambrose blinked. “That we’re prisoners? Well, there’s the excellent food; the lavish accommodations; the courteous, efficient staff; oh yes, the security bars -”
Rubbing his forehead tiredly, Charles interrupted. “What makes you think we’re the only government members who are prisoners? Clearly, there are other sections of the prison being occupied.” As he spoke, faint noises drifted down the corridor that indicated the presence of other, unseen captives.
Ambrose had to admit that was true. For all they knew, the whole of the Queen’s cabinet could be housed here and they wouldn’t ever lay eyes on them. This actually brought up another question, indirectly. “What happened to your uniform?”
“What?” Charles sounded irritated.
“Well, I’m wearing my official uniform…” Noting the wrinkled, unclean state of said uniform, he added, “such as it is. But apparently, when they nabbed you, you were dressed like… like a civilian.”
“So? Do you think I own no other clothing? What does it matter what I was wearing when they found me?”
“It doesn’t, it just… I was just wondering what might have happened to the rest of us.”
Stepping back from the bars, Charles snapped, “And how does my lack of a uniform relate to that?”
Ambrose started to answer, stopped, and cocked his head. “I’m not sure.”
With a mild snort, Charles turned stiffly and limped to his bench. He’d had two additional interrogation sessions since that first one and each time he’d emerged with less mobility. Ambrose watched as he carefully lowered himself into a sitting position.
“Hey, why do they keep taking you for questioning? What exactly are they trying to find out?”
“I’ve repeatedly told you I won’t discuss that, Ambrose.”
“You have?”
But Charles was no longer talking. He lay on his back with his left arm flung over his eyes. Ambrose rolled his eyes and sighed. He still wanted to know what had happened to Charles’s uniform. Or maybe what had happened to the rest of the cabinet. Oh, now he was all confused.
Suddenly, his mind was replaying images from that memory he kept calling up, the one where he was addressing a small group of other government types over a diagram. Everyone there wore a uniform exactly like Ambrose’s… only clean, of course.
Somehow his brain drew a line between point A and point B without knowing where the points even were. He whirled toward the other cell. “They’re in hiding, aren’t they?”
Charles tensed but didn’t uncover his eyes. “What? Who?”
Ambrose pressed himself against the barred door and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The rest of the cabinet.”
Moving deliberately but sounding impatient, Charles sat up. “If you must know, many cabinet members defected when it looked as though Azkadellia’s coup might succeed. They traded their loyalty to the Queen for whatever reward the sorceress was willing to grant them for their treachery. And since you seem fixated on fashion, I suppose they are now wearing long leather coats, if she actually allowed them to live.”
“Many, but not all?”
“What?”
“You said many of them defected. But not all of them, right? I didn’t, you didn’t.”
“Well done. Excellent grasp of the obvious.”
“So if you and I resisted, it seems reasonable that at least a few others did, too. Right?”
“What is your point, please?”
“Um…” Ambrose had actually forgotten his point, so he thought up a new question. “Why didn’t you defect?”
The blue eyes in the other cell were suddenly alight with indignation. “How can you even ask me such a thing?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Now Ambrose was impatient. “I don’t know! Half a brain and no memories, remember? Guess not everyone has a grasp of the obvious.”
Unexpectedly, Charles laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but Ambrose felt better for hearing it and smiled tentatively. There was silence for a while, but it was companionable, comfortable.
“You didn’t defect,” Charles told him, and this time there was warmth in his voice, “because you are loyal to the bone. You were prepared to lay down your life for the Queen and everything she stood for, and you stayed at her side right to the end, even when you knew that defeat was certain. That’s why you’re still in uniform, Ambrose. You were captured while performing your official duties.”
Ambrose drank in the words like wine, allowing the implied praise of his character to intoxicate him a little. But still, there were questions.
“But you weren’t. Performing official duties when you were captured, I mean.”
“No.”
* * * * * *
Ambrose groaned. While it was nice to have the memories flowing a bit, was it too much to ask for them to answer more questions than they raised?
He looked over at Charles again. Still asleep. “Too bad,” Ambrose murmured. “I mean, good for him, of course. But too bad for me.”
Idly, he wondered if Charles had always been so infuriatingly circumspect, or if there had been a time when he had answered questions directly and without hesitation. Perhaps it was a function of his age; maybe people became more enigmatic with the passing of the annuals.
Or maybe Charles was just a natural hoarder of information. But no, Ambrose had a feeling that wasn’t it, either. In fact, his gut told him that Charles was keeping his cards close to the vest out of some sort of duty, and Ambrose could respect that. Still, couldn’t he just let go once in a while and share a little?
Had he…?
* * * * * *
For the first time, Charles was unable to return from an interrogation under his own power.
The two longcoats who brought him back had to carry him, each carelessly gripping one of his wrists over their shoulders, allowing his body to sag between them - and his legs to drag along the stone floor from the knees down.
They tossed him into the cell in a heap.
“Impressive,” Ambrose sneered. “I’ll bet that’s a great boost to your ego, tossing a beaten-up old man around like a bag of dirty laundry. Your masculinity must feel so enhanced right now.”
One of the longcoats reached through the bars and yanked front of Ambrose’s coat, slamming him face-first into the cold iron. He grabbed the tab of Ambrose’s zipper and ripped it open. Ambrose gasped as cold air entered his skull.
“You like that feeling, headcase?” snarled the man. His grip on the coat hadn’t loosened, and Ambrose was awkwardly smashed against the cell door, head turned to the side and immobilized.
“N-no, I don’t like it,” he stammered. What if the vicious ape reached inside? What if he were to touch his brain?
“Then you watch that mouth of yours,” the ape responded. “Because the only thing keepin’ your head closed is this zipper, and that -” And here he tugged roughly on the front part of the zipper that attached to the forehead. “- can be ripped right off, easy. We understand each other?”
“Y-yes!”
Ambrose staggered backward as the longcoat gave him a hard shove. He hit the floor, undamaged but shaken, and listened to the laughter as the long-coated thugs headed down the corridor. His hands flew up to inspect the zipper, certain that it had been damaged. But it turned out to be fine, if a little sore along the seams, and he quickly closed it up.
“I thought… told you… stay out of it.”
Ambrose scooted closer to the bars and watched as Charles’s body stirred weakly. “I thought you were unconscious.”
“No… such luck.” Charles turned onto his side, drew his knees up toward his chest, and began to cough. Blood dotted his lips and the floor near them. His face was bruised and one of his eyes was swelling shut.
Ambrose got to his knees, alarmed. “Can you get up? Maybe get onto the bench?”
Charles made a terrifying, wheezy sound. Ambrose panicked until he realized it was laughter. His heart sank. It was the first time Charles’s laughter had chilled rather than comforted him.
“Don’t think a… few feet of altitude will help.”
The coughing started up again. To Ambrose, it sounded like internal organs slapping against the rib cage and each other. At this rate, Charles wouldn’t survive half an hour of the next interrogation. Even so, he wouldn’t be granted an easy death. They would see to it that he went out screaming. The thought filled Ambrose with stark terror.
Clutching the bars with his hands, Ambrose took a deep breath. “Charles? Charles… please talk.”
Charles’s chest heaved in deep, labored gasps as the coughing subsided. “Not now… Ambrose. Busy… breathing.”
“No, that’s not what…” Ambrose cleared his throat. “Charles, listen. The next time they take you away… tell them. Tell them everything. Whatever they want to know, give it to them.”
“Stop.”
“No, you stop. You’ve done your part. Seriously, Charles, you need to give in now.”
“You’ve no idea… what you’re asking me to do.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”
“I’m asking you to stop protecting -”
“Stop it.”
“- all these other people. Do what you need to do for yourself now.”
“Already doing it.”
“No!” Ambrose kicked the door of his cell. “What you’re doing is letting them kill you an inch at a time out of a perceived obligation to some mysterious people out there! You’ve kept the faith, okay? Those, those nameless, faceless people don’t know what you’re going through in here. They don’t even know you exist!”
“Shut up!” Charles struggled to lift his upper body, propping himself precariously on an elbow. The tone of his voice was angry, but Ambrose was surprised that Charles’s eyes were wide and tinged with panic. “Shut up! You mustn’t do this to me, Ambrose! Tempt me. You don’t…” His brief surge of energy ended and Charles let himself sink back to the floor. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Ambrose had the feeling he was missing something. “But -”
“They’re not all… nameless and faceless,” Charles said weakly. Ambrose waited for more, but soon realized that his friend had passed out.
* * * * * *
Ambrose surged to his feet as the memory faded, again filled with that feeling of panic and restlessness. He had a bizarre, intense urge to flee, which was both perplexing and unfortunate, given that he was locked in a cell. His chest churned cold air into his lungs with harsh urgency. This was silly - there was no immediate threat, no justification for the anxiety he was feeling.
Was there?
He spun around, sure that disaster lurked just behind him. Nothing. He strained his ears for signs that longcoats were descending, but all he could hear was the normal background noise of distant cruelty and suffering. Even Charles still slept.
Putting his hands to his face, he scrubbed up and down, trying to quell this attack of nerves with physical stimulation. He had to put a stop to this, because there was something important he had to do.
Something important he needed to remember.
He plopped himself down on the bench again, scowling. Well, if the outcome of the game was dependent on his memory, it was probably time to forfeit, because he… Wait. Game. Something about a game…
* * * * * *
Staring at the floor just outside Charles’s cell, Ambrose analyzed the numbers and position of the circles, triangles, and diamonds contained in the crudely drawn grid.
“What did you say this game is called, again?”
“Charms,” Charles said briskly. “Do you like it?”
“It’s a little simplistic,” Ambrose said automatically, and then felt embarrassed by his lack of tact. “But I’m enjoying it.”
Charles chuckled. The swelling in his face was going down; the right eye was able to open a little now. “It’s actually a child’s game. But given our options, it’s the only choice.” He held up the button Ambrose had tossed into his cell a few days earlier.
“It’s fine.” Ambrose smiled brightly. It didn’t matter how easy the game was. The real fun was in seeing Charles so cheerful and relaxed. They’d left him alone for three straight days now, and while his movements were stiff and careful and he still had the occasional coughing fit, the older man was doing much better.
Looking back to the grid scratched into the floor, Ambrose said, “Diamond, fourth row, third square from the right.”
Charles dutifully scratched out a diamond shape in the specified square on the grid and looked thoughtful, considering his next move.
“So how many years has it been since you’ve played this game?” Ambrose asked.
“I last played about eight months ago.”
Ambrose frowned. “But if it’s a game for kids…”
Scratching a triangle into the leftmost square in the third row, Charles said, “I was teaching it to my grandson. He’s seven annuals old. Was at the time, that is.”
A kind of joy seemed to flow into Ambrose and travel through his veins all over his body. Although he owed nearly everything he knew about himself to this man, this was perhaps the first time Charles had shared anything substantive about his own life. “Grandson? Family! You have a family!”
Charles smiled. “Yes. Two grandchildren, one son.”
“Wife?”
“She passed several years ago.”
“I’m so sorry.” Feeling awkward about reminding Charles of his loss, he hurriedly chose a move. “Sixth row, seven from the left.” As Charles drew the diamond, Ambrose said, “So, your family. Tell me about them.”
“Well, let’s see. Logan, my son, was curator of the Magic History wing at the Museum of the Outer Zone in Central City.”
“Was?”
“When the coup looked to be succeeding, he left his position. Anyway, he’s married to a lovely woman, Melany, and they have two children: Anthea, who’s eleven, and the boy I already mentioned, Roderick.”
“Rory,” Ambrose supplied without thinking.
Charles stopped in the middle of drawing a triangle and looked sharply at him. “What? Do you… How did you know that?”
“Know what?” Had he done something wrong? Ambrose feared ruining this lovely afternoon terribly.
“That we call him Rory. Did you remember it?”
“Remember it? Have I met him?”
“You’ve met all of them.”
Ambrose allowed himself a second to feel gratified; it pleased him immensely to learn that he’d once been included, to at least some degree, in his friend’s private life.
“Ambrose, this is very important. Did that name come from your memory?”
He thought hard, feeling inexplicably ashamed. Charles seemed so… threatened.
Nothing was forthcoming. If the name had come from a memory, that memory had gone back into hiding. “Isn’t ‘Rory’ a traditional nickname for ‘Roderick’?”
Charles studied him for a moment before nodding absently. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He slowly resumed drawing the triangle.
Charles became preoccupied, and Ambrose felt a selfish sting of loss. They had been having such a good time. Ambrose watched his friend carefully while continuing to call out his moves. Charles appeared to be putting less thought into his.
“I… think I won,” Ambrose said eventually.
“Hmm?”
“Row six? I took the row.” As Charles stared down at the row with a puzzled frown, he added uncertainly, “You did say that the squares with circles go to the player whose symbols surround them, didn’t you?”
“Ah! Indeed I did. Well done.” Charles smiled at him and drew a careful line through the row in question. He looked down at the button in his hand.
“Boy, bet that thing’s flat on one side by now,” Ambrose said. Charles held it up for him to see. “Yep. Sharp, too, probably. Be careful you don’t cut your fingers.”
Charles raised his eyes to look at Ambrose, cocking his head and smiling. “Trying to protect me?”
“Well, sure.”
“You care about me, don’t you, Ambrose?”
Feeling suddenly awkward, Ambrose shifted uncomfortably. “Of course.”
“Am I the only person you care about, other than yourself?”
“Well… you’re really the only person I know. Since they took… you know.”
Charles nodded. “Exactly. I’m the only person you know. You care about me and want to protect me.” He leaned forward. “So extrapolate from that and imagine that you have several friends like me. How would you feel about them being in danger?”
“I… wouldn’t like that.” Ambrose was not at all sure where this was going.
“You’d want to protect them, too, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Charles nodded again, thoughtfully, and was quiet for a short time. “Do you remember what I told you about the circumstances of your capture?”
“You mean, that I stayed with the Queen?”
“Yes. You stayed at your post no matter what, even when it was clear that Azkadellia would soon take over.”
Ambrose leaned against the bars and considered things. “So you’re saying I stayed with the Queen because I cared about her.”
“Yes, but more than that, you cared about the kingdom, about keeping it safe. You cared about an ideal, and about masses of people you had never even met.”
“Oh, I get it now,” Ambrose said, rolling his eyes. “You’re trying to justify your self-destructive resistance by suggesting that I would do the same thing in your position.”
Charles seemed taken aback, as though Ambrose had skipped ahead in the lesson. “Well, yes. You would, you know. If you could remember the things that I know about you, you’d understand completely.”
Ambrose shrugged. It was no fair, Charles using things he couldn’t recall to bolster his argument. “Let me ask you something, Charles. Do you care about me?”
Again, Charles seemed to have been taken by surprise. “Yes, of course.”
“And you don’t like me trying to defend you from the longcoats because I just get hurt, right?”
“Right.”
Ambrose hopped to his feet. “Then maybe you can understand what it does to me to see you come back from each session a little more dead than when you left.” He walked to the bench and plopped onto it like a sulky teenager.
Charles was looking at him with something like sympathy. “I do understand it. I would feel the same if it were you they were torturing. But I would also understand what cause you were serving by refusing to cooperate with them. I’d understand the big-”
“The bigger picture, right, I remember.”
“All right, let me put it another way. Suppose they were torturing you for information that would get me into trouble. What if you knew something that, if you told them, would lead them to torture me, maybe even kill me?”
He was prepared to scoff at the transparent scenario, but he found himself envisioning it for a moment. He imagined all the horrible things that had been done to Charles happening to him, instead, and felt the weight of responsibility that would put him between this tremendous suffering and his friend. Ambrose wasn’t at all sure he would possess the necessary strength to keep quiet and spare Charles that horrible fate… but he knew he would want to try.
The realization must have shown on his face, because Charles was saying, “You see, there are ideals that are worth suffering for, Ambrose. People who are worth dying for. And sometimes, we have to make terrible decisions in order to protect them.”
And then the simple truth hit him like a palm to his forehead. Charles was right. He could feel in his heart, in his bones, in his very soul that he would be willing to die for Charles. He still wasn’t sure he had the fortitude to follow through - if he was tormented enough, he suspected he would cave - but yes, he would definitely resist until he reached that breaking point.
Breaking point. Why couldn’t Charles be weak like him? Why did his will have to be so tough? If he would only break…
“I understand,” he said, feeling faintly ill even as Charles smiled.
It was a feeling that persisted until he went to sleep that night, listening to the occasional coughing and quiet grunts as Charles struggled to find a comfortable position on the bench.
It was a feeling that was replaced by utter horror when the longcoats came for Charles not long after, only to discover the cell floor bathed in blood from Charles having sliced his wrists.
Chapter Five - Jigsaw (2)