Choose the Fate Chapter 3 (Patreon)

​Back to Chapter 2

Andrinius began with Sethria, knowing that she was the least likely to abandon her lair. Indeed, he wasted a day trying to track her down to no avail. He abandoned the search, knowing that he had little time to dedicate to his endeavour.

     Instead, he turned to Mahya, whose studio was in an old warehouse district close to the docks. It had become gentrified over the past decade, with newly-manumitted families moving there to set up businesses and workshops downstairs while they lived in the old lofts. Mahya had moved there a few years ago, setting up a darkroom and a studio that she shared with other heliographers and some artists. He’d been there once before, though had found most of them to be somewhat iconoclastic for his tastes.

     He pulled his high-collared coat tight about him as he walked. It was early, and a film of mist still lay over the sea. Chains clinked in the and ropes strained as ships swayed gently to and fro with the undulation of the water. Workers were already busy, rushing around, some working on ships, others rushing about the quay. Some jockeyed tractors, their black fumes filling the air as they hauled trains of crates, barrels and food.

     Andrinius rubbed his hands together and noticed his breath streaming. Away from the water businesses were opening. Some made food, the smell of food and smoke mingling in the air. Others were moving wares to the sidewalk, where people could see them better - leather goods sourced from livestock most people would never see; everyday tools and more specialised nautical equipment; ropers and sailmakers; mechanics; and a plethora of other businesses.

     As he walked he could see the city slowly change. More and more empty storefronts and warehouses. More shuttered windows. Busy quayside giving way to narrower streets, gloomy, with people loitering in doorways. The work day in most manufactories and workshouses had started hours ago, but there were still those who, somehow, managed to evade factory and church press gangers, choosing instead to live in the grey area below what law and societal norms expected.

     He hurried his pace until the streets gave way to a more open plan in which stood a sparse market. Behind the stalls large arched doors had been painted bright greens, blues and yellows. He spied a few food merchants and vendors, a pigment merchant, canvas vendor, and a handful of tinkerers, cutlers and menders.

     Andrinius gravitated to the food stalls and bought some dukhukh - flatbread topped with boiled barley mixed with mince and spices. It was hot, but tasted nice and was just what he needed to wake him up.

     He finished the food and walked behind the stalls to one of the painted doors and raped on it. The sound of his knuckles on the sheet metal echoed.

     There were no marks on the door or anything to indicate that this was a home or store or business. Just the yellow paint on the door and the discoloured limestone walls and rusted metal reinforcements.

     He knocked again, thinking to himself maybe he’d come too early, but he heard shuffling from behind the door and someone mumbling. It was a man. He heard locks being slid aside, and a small door within the larger metal door opened inside, revealing gloom and a thin man standing there. Eyes half open regarded Andrinius. “What.”

     “I’m here to see Mahya,” said Andrinius.

     “She know you’re coming?”

     Andrinuis sighed. “No. She knows me. I’m an old friend, we used to work together.”

     “That so. Well I’m a new friend.” The man wasn’t just thin. He was looked malnourished. His face was twisted into a skull-like rictus, and his darkened eyes lay deep in their sockets, obscured beneath the shadow of their brow. Matted dark hair fell over his face in clumps that he was repeatedly flicking aside, only for them to fall back down moments later.

     “Could you tell her Andrinius is her?”

     The man turned without acknowledging the comment, leaving the small door open.

     Andrinius took it as an invitation to follow him.

     Inside, the old warehouse was separated into vague partitions with curtains and walls of corrugated iron and old wood. A second level had been added, forming a large meaning taking up the far half of the room, overlooking the larger space below. A woman was leaning on the railing, perhaps putting too much faith in its ramshackle construction to support her. A wry grin was painted on her ageing face and she gave a laconic wave, “Hello And.”

     Andrinius smiled, forgetting all about the man that had greeted him, and gave a curt wave.

     She beckoned him to climb a set of metal stairs that looked like they had been pilfered from an old ship.

     He met her at the top of the stairs and nodded. “It’s been a while.”

     “That it has, that it has,” she grinned. “Where’ve you been?”

     “Working.”

     “That what brings you here?” She began walking to one of the makeshift rooms on the mezzanine.

     Andrinius followed her. “So to speak. I have an assignment for you, if you want it.”

     She lifted a curtain and nodded towards the room, “colour me intrigued.”

     Andrinius looked inside. It was a rickety version of his quarters under the museum. A bed, desk, shelves. Strings crossed the room with heliographs hanging from them. A metal door stood on the far wall, with a large paper glued to it. On the paper were clear large words ‘OPEN ON PAIN OF DEATH’

     “A bit of darkroom humour,” said Mahya.

     Andrinius found himself walking towards the heliographs. He cocked his head to see the pictures.

     A photo of a child, skin marred by aepathy, sitting in a doorway. The look on its face spoke of hardship and pain with which Andrinius was all too familiar.

     A woman standing in shadow beneath a bridge, with a shaft of light crossing her face as her piercing pale eyes looking straight at him,

     An old man, half his teeth missing, his face a labyrinth of deep wrinkles, smiling as he sits in front of a small table, surrounded by tinkers’ tools.

     He couldn’t pretend to understand what made a good image. Composition. The candidness of the subjects. An eye that saw what other people simply did not. Whatever it was, he knew he’d neve rbe able to capture anything quite like them with a dozen years. Throne, even with a hundred years.

     “These are good.”

     Mahya nodded, “That’s kind of you.”

     He turned around to observe her once more. Long greying hair that defied societal mores framed a face with skin darker than most who called Korachan their home.

     She regarded him with dark eyes. “Well?”

     “The Encyclopaedia is looking for heliographers to accompany me on a trip south.”

     “South is a big place. South is three quarters of Elyden right now. South could be very dangerous.”

     “South is the Shadow March.”

     “You must be out of your fucking mind. Let the brainwashed desperate helots and workslaves do what they want, but I am not wasting my time and risking my life on a fools’ errand.”

     “There’ll be a lot of sad grizzled faces on that road.”

     She laughed. “There’s a lot of sad grizzled faces right here. Far more than I can document in one life. Why would I need to put my life on the line?”

     “It’s been decades since any notable scholarly documentation of the March and its pilgrims - ”

     “Don’t give me that crap. The Society might think that, but I know you don’t care about that. Why are you doing this?”

     “I don’t care about the Shadow March, but I know that many people find it deeply important. To the  point that they give their life savings to the church and abandon everything - their families, their jobs, their entire lives - so set out on the arduous road to the holy land. And making it there isn’t even a certainty. It’s just for the possibility of looking at the  Undying Machine. That single moment of ecstasy where their god looks into their soul. Don’t you want to see first hand what makes someone do that? What - ”

     “I know full well what makes people do that And. The hopelessness of a life in chains. The despair of being born indentured and having to spend decades just to buy yourself out. And for what? To find yourself alone in a wretched uncaring world without a clue of what to do with yourself. Did you know that more bodies who buy their freedom kill themselves than slaves or helots?”

     “And where did you get that nugget?”

     “Some underground rally somewhere. It’s probably false, but it means something. This world feeds on despair. The Undying Machine certainly does. We may have been born on the right side of luck, but most people were not. I don’t need to revel in their suffering. And they don’t need to be reminded of their misfortunes by seeing us running around.”

     “No, but you can document their suffering.”

     “Thanks And, but I’m not really interested.”

     “Fine, let’s put it another way. Do you think you are a good heliographer?”

     “I’m a modest woman but my modesty fails me when it comes to my work. I’m probably the best heliographer working in Deochan today, and I doubt there’s been anyone working for the Society within my lifetime whose knows their way around a camera the way I do.”

     “At least there’s something we agree on,” said Andrinius. “So, given that, what would you rather - do the pilgrims justice or let someone else ruin their story?”

     Mahya exhaled. “And, I’ve done fieldwork. I’ve been to Ahka, following soldiers in the trenches. I got my arse beaten up by blood cultists in Karakhas. I’ve been a prisoner in Hetepheropolis. I’ve been through worse,” she walked over to the pictures and picked one of them off the peg. “I’m not scared of putting myself on the line if I think I can capture  something worth saving, but I don’t need to put myself in this level of danger. I like my life. I like this shithole, how I turned it into a home. I like that I don’t have to spend twelve hours a day slaving on an assembly line or working a quarry. There’s nothing for me in Kharkharadontis. I don’t need to escape my life.”

     “I do.” The words came suddenly, almost unbidden and Andrinius was as shocked by them as he could tell Mahya was.

     She sat on the edge of her bed. “What is it?”

     Andrinius grimaced, tried to speak, but hesitated. Then after drawing a breath, “I need to do this. In her last days, Vela turned to the Undying Machine for solace. You knew her. She was always more spiritual than we ever were, but her sickness made her search further. She became like those pilgrims, looking for answers, though she couldn’t in her condition. I need to do this for her, but I cannot do it alone. I need to see her, and I know I will in your pictures.”

     “Throne.” Her face was a statue, her eyes trembling faintly. “I can’t believe you’d say that. Is it true?”

     A nod.

     “You know what I think about the Church.”

     Another nod. “I take it from the libertine nature of your present accommodation that little has changed. If anything,” said Andrinius, his eyes turning to another heliograph, this one showing a rusted idol of the Undying Machine beneath which sat a woman, her face obscured beneath a black shawl, “I daresay it’s more pronounced now than ever.”

     "Can you imagine what it will be like for me marching with priests and fanatics and exocrines and Throne knows what else?”

     “I’ll keep you on a tight leash.”

     “You’ll need to keep me muzzled.”

     “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

     She gave him a sardonic smile.

     “Please. I need to do this. I need to get down on paper what it is that compels people to do this.”

     “What do you think I’ve been talking about all this time?”

     “You know what I mean.”

     She nodded. “I do.”

     Andrinius’ eyes widened

     “I will.”

     He smiled.

     “You’re welcome.”

* * *

The Shadow March. Nothing can be said to embody the disparate peoples, nations and religions of the Inner Sea quite like this monumental pilgrimage.

     I am in Korachans’ Theatre District, seated in the shade of a 300-year old auditorium where works such as Ethanasius’ ‘Passion of St. Malichar’, Cae Vedti’s ‘Dirge of the Martys in D Minor’, and, perhaps fittingly, Satyrions’ ‘March of a million Pilgrims’ have been performed. It is that odd time where the district slumbers under the waxing sun, when helots and work slaves still work, keeping the empire’s industries turning.

     Despite the name, this area is one of religious importance to Korachan. For all its accolades in the sciences and arts, this city, like so many others in this sprawling empire we call home, is one inextricably tied to religion. Home to no less than three saints of the Three Churches of the Machine, it boasts amongst many other architectural marvels, seven churches (including a basilica and cathedral), sixteen chapels, and dozens of shrines. It is an important part of the Shadow March, where so many pilgrims and ardent followers of the Undying Machine begin their journey south, across the Inner Sea, into the bosom of the Reformed empire and, eventually, into the great inland desert of Kharkharodntis where the Sepulchral Palace of the Undying Machine lies awaiting them.

     I am facing the Basilica of St. Rachanael Restored, its great green dome and once brilliant white walls towering above all else. The cold caress of winter yet lingers, threatening to dull the warm embrace of my Harappan tea. I finish it and look at my timepiece. 11:58. The entire scene will change in a few minutes.

     I take what few moments of calm remain to look at the square, the people moving about their business in earnest.

     And then it strikes. A bell in the church opposite me. I see gutterbirds scatter as the sound echoes across the square. I take my cue to stand as the shops and cafes around me begin taking tables and chairs inside and shuttering their doors. In the distance, a multitude of other bells, belonging to the other churches and chapels in Korachan, begin striking noon.

     Within a few more chimes the scene around me has changed completely. The shops are all closed and what people I see are heading in just one direction - the basilica. By the final strike of noon the square is filled with people, some chatting, catching up, others moving single mindedly into the church.

     And then, just as soon as it began, it is over. I am alone, a straggler amid this exodus of bodies. A macrocosm of what awaits on the March. Only instead of the call-to-arms of church bells, the followers of that great pilgrimage are lured across the span of thousands of miles by the sirens’ call of the Sepulchral Palace and the God that dwells within.

     Andrinius put the pen down and closed his eyes. He stood and took a step towards the church. His first step of what would be thousands more over the coming months.