An Interview With Michael Reider

  “Good afternoon, Michael. Thank you for sitting down with me.”

  “Yeah, sure, Finlay—but why are you talking weird?”

  “How am I talking weird?”

  “I don’t know—all formal.”

  “Mate, this is a formal interview.”

  “Okay. So, what do you want to know?”

  “Now that I've revealed the truth, some people might find your decision to withhold Helena’s affliction from the group reckless. How would you respond?”

  “Do I wish I had been honest? Yeah. Do I still think I did the right thing? I don’t know, given how it all ended. I—she—we all paid the consequences. All I can say is my reasons felt justified at the time.”

  “Would you mind sharing your reasons with the people?”

  “Well, Rhian would have wanted her dead, but she wasn’t equipped to fight Anima at the time. So, who would have had to do it? Me. And how much tension would that have caused? Strauss would have been conflicted. Both of them would have stopped trusting me unless I cut ties with Helena completely, or killed her. And I couldn’t cut ties—someone had to keep an eye on her. And I couldn’t kill her because… she wasn’t all bad, Finlay. She just didn’t know how to be anything other than what they made her to be.”

  “Well said, Michael Reider. I’m sure the people appreciate your candor, but—it looks like you have more to add?”

  “Yeah, I do. There’s another side, too. By protecting Helena’s secret, I was able to keep a quiet handle on things which allowed us to focus on Lidia without also trying to manage internal conflict. For example, I made sure she was occupied and absent for any of our important conversations.”

  “So in many ways, it was a strategic decision.”

  “Yeah. These were the early days. We hadn’t had the big talks about how we were going to operate as a whole yet. Rhian was my best friend, and Strauss was steadily growing on me. But I was deployed to Amalia as Commander Reider, not Michael, and I didn’t earn my rank by failing to make—and to live with—difficult decisions.”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  The church had a window along the side which was optimal for spying because it didn’t back on to any high traffic areas, and it was a fairly skinny opening. As long as I angled myself just so, I had a relatively clear view of the main hall. That morning, I watched Varis and Michael’s sad-looking binding ceremony. Afterward, they went into Strauss’s office, and then about an hour later, Varis left the church alone, paperwork in hand.

  It wasn’t long after, RAM congregated around Strauss’s lectern. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked like Michael was questioning something, and then Strauss patiently explained something else in response. They all seemed to agree, and Michael retrieved a sledgehammer they’d had stashed under a pew. It didn’t take much for the wall to come down.

  From where I was standing, I couldn’t immediately tell what they’d revealed, but it wasn’t long before they all disappeared through the hole. When they were long gone, I sneaked into the church, listening at the top of the stairs.

  “Say, Strauss, are you aware there’s a breed of flower that doesn’t die?” Rhian asked. “You ought to plant some.”

  There was a pause, and then the familiar creaking sound of Zacharias’s casket opening.

  “Also, this one doesn’t look dead,” Rhian added.

  Did I know her or what?

  So there we have it, folks, RAM found the staircase leading straight to Zacharias’s crypt room, and now they’d found Zacharias, too. Let’s see if he was a man of his word…

  …and I really hoped they didn’t kill him.

  I was itching to catch what happened next, but quiet, slow moving footsteps coming from down the corridor interrupted my spying. Most likely Father Belaia, and before he turned the corner, I scurried out the back door.

  I stopped in for a chat and a cookie with V.

  If Zacharias held up his end of the bargain and woke up, her life was about to change, and for the better from what I understood. Ivana liked Zack, but she didn’t want to be responsible for waking him up. Of course, all this was assuming I could get him to leave the cabin next. One thing at a time, though. I tried to warn V, but with my food-related problem, she made me lunch instead.

  By the time I finished up at the Widow’s Peak and returned to the church, Michael and Rhian were busy boarding up the doors. That made sense—they couldn’t very well leave the church open to the public with a hole to hell in the wall.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  I scoured the area and waited, but there was no sign of Zacharias.

  It was dusk when I returned to the cabin. Things were moving along, though I was soon going to have to take a step back, recalibrate, and decide in which direction. I slipped my key into the lock, turned, opened the door, and stepped inside. It was good to be home.

  Zacharias, sitting on the edge of the bed, turned his head toward me. “She found me.”

  I chuckled and locked us in. “Admit it—the idea of me leaving you alone forever was too much to bear, wasn’t it?”

  “That must be it.”

  “So, how’d it go? Were they excited to meet you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To begin with, it had been such a long time since I’d had a captive audience, I seem to have slipped immediately back into my role. I gave them the performance expected of a Vonsinfonie.”

  “Well, I’m sure they loved that.”

  “I may have panicked and put them in a trance.”

  “Mate.” I paused for a moment’s thought, struck by a twinge of recognition. “I actually get that, though.”

  Zacharias considered me for a moment. “You tricked me, Feargus Finlay.”

  I locked the door sat beside him on the bed.

  “Let’s face it, Strawberry Rhubarb Pie, you would have ended up here anyhow. I only—”

  “—facilitated the inevitable.”

  “Aye.”

  Zacharias sighed.

  “I have something for you,” I said. “Well, not for you, exactly, because it’s borrowed…” I reached under the bed, fumbling around for the handle. “Close your eyes.”

  Zack closed his eyes, begrudgingly, and I set Everleigh’s violin case across his lap.

  “You can look now.”

  His breath hitched. One, two, five seconds in disbelief before he unlatched the case and opened it, running his fingers along the cutout. “Sebastian’s motif—is it really…?”

  I nodded. “Sort of.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Never mind,” he said, deftly interrupting what he had to have known would be a string of food-related problems. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I—thank you, Feargus Finlay.”

  “You’re welcome, Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Will you play me a song?”

  “I’d love to.”

  I didn’t get much sleep. My new roommate was restless, because now that he was awake, he didn’t know what to do with himself. It hadn’t even been a day yet, but I told him he could still nap if he was bored. He argued that he didn’t give up his comfortable coffin for a rustic cabin in the woods only to go back to sleep, but that he also wasn’t ready to go out into the world yet. Focusing on the music relaxed him, so I asked for plenty of encores and drifted in and out sleep while he played. The next morning, I stocked him with some ink, paper, and a quill, and left for Oskari with him sitting at the table, vaguely satisfied, and working on a new song.

  Obligatory RAM Check-In:

  ? Learned Father Belaia was found dead the day Zacharias was released.

  ? Asked Zack about it later. He said it wasn’t him.

  ? Strauss and Michael were missing from the village.

  ? Varis was still at the Drop.

  ? Rhian guarded the church doors for most of the morning, fielded villager questions, and then did absolutely nothing at The House for the rest of the day.

  ? Good for her, getting some rest. She looked tired, and she mentioned she'd been feeling sick.

  Obligatory Ivana Check-In:

  ? Learned Emerich Bach had checked out, which I hoped explained Strauss’s absence.

  ? Learned Michael had gone to the Drop to deliver Father Belaia’s remains.

  The next morning was more of the same, though I’d at least had a better sleep now that Zacharias was busy obsessing over his song. He let me read the first draft lyrics, and I reckoned the ‘we’ he’d written about referred to us. I pretended not to notice.

  Back in Oskari, Rhian guarded the church again, and the others were still gone, so I popped in at the Peak for some breakfast, and then I checked in with Alexander. I let him know I was concerned that with everyone away, Rhian was vulnerable. He reassured me that she should be safe for the time being because Lidia was off course, distracted by some political drama in the Anima community.

  As always, we shared a pipe and a Piglet or three. We talked about the Tragers, who he told me would be hosting their first party at the Jaskar the following week. He mentioned they were thinking of adopting, which I knew, but that they were running into some trouble with their paperwork. He said Derek seemed to be handling it well, but that Della was uncharacteristically discouraged.

  By the time dusk rolled around, I was sobering up after a homemade meal, and I thought I should probably try to learn more about the Anima community drama. That meant a trip to see Everleigh. But after leaving Alexander’s, I reckoned I’d do one last check-in on the village.

  I scaled my favourite tree and peered out over Oskari. Almost everybody was inside, and the chimneys were billowing. There was a young couple, and another cluster of people walking down the hill from the Widow’s Peak, and then Rhian. She was with…

  Wait, who was she with?

  I bounded from one tree to the next to get a better view. It was a woman by the shape of things. An incredibly wobbly woman trying to manage a massive trunk and a pair of high-heel boots on the cracked cobbles. I couldn’t help smile because she didn’t even seem bothered or at all embarrassed. She just laughed, and she seemed happy engaging with my sister.

  The stranger had on a warm coat and an odd winter hat. Everything she wore looked expensive, but I didn’t get the sense she was trying to impress anyone. Definitely not a local—but then she turned, and I saw it, “Hair like a goddess-be-damned forest fire.” Not Councilwoman Blanchett, though, this one was—

  —my heart skipped a beat when she smiled. Councilwoman Blanchett never smiled unless she was being sarcastic. But this one was—

  A lot of Partisans were attracted to Councilwoman Blanchett, and honestly, mates, I wasn’t one of them. Her daughter looked just like her, but this one was—

  I’d seen her once or twice around Palisade, but she was a couple years younger than me and Rhian, and the Councilwoman kept her kids pretty sheltered. They had fifth floor rooms and private classes, and they often ate separately. What’s important is: I’d seen her before, but I’d never really seen her.

  Adeline tripped again, and her laugh was squeaky and unrestrained.

  Aye, our engineer was here, and she was—

  Uh oh.