I. R. Fox

Chapter 1

The first thing she felt was her hair sticking to the nape of her neck and her bare collarbone. The sleeves of her dress were slick against her armpits. She could feel beads of sweat trickling down her back, sliding beneath the cinching at her waist. She knew without touching her face that her cheeks and nose had a wet sheen, and the kohl around her eyes was smudged. Sweating was the last phase of it. The only part of her that felt dry was her mouth – the air stung with each breath. An arm gripped her just beneath her shoulders, hooked under her, leaving her head dangling. Another arm was around her knees, crushing the skirts of her dress.

Her other senses began to return to her. Her carrier was hurrying somewhere, the soles of their boots casting echoes as they hit the tiled street. They were breathing heavily. She could smell something slightly smoky, with light top notes of citrus.

She opened her eyes, her vision upturned, the rooftops and gutters of the buildings they passed framing a clear, star-filled sky. She tried to lift her head, engaging the muscles in her neck and back. Her spine tingled, a sharp residual pain slashing up her body as she moved. She grimaced but it was too quiet for her carrier to hear. She needed them to stop, to put her down, so she could straighten her spine. But her brain was too scrambled to form words - when she tried none came to her. She resorted to using the point of her elbow trapped between their bodies, jabbing it into their chest. They halted abruptly and adjusted her in their arms, looking down at her. As they shifted their hold on her, pain again traversed the sinews of her muscles. She inhaled sharply.

“Orellia?” A man’s voice.

She said nothing, only nodded.

“Are you alright?” He was panting.

She nodded again, taking him in. Bright blue eyes, strong jawline and a dimple in his chin. She knew this man.

“Are you sure? I found you in a heap behind the Starbright, you were out cold, and I -”

“Put me down, Lorn.”

He looked at her worriedly and didn’t move.

“Please put me down.”

Slowly he began to lower her legs to the floor, all the while keeping a tight hold around her shoulders. Her feet met the street and she flexed her toes within her shoes. Lorn gradually released his grip, and she balanced more of her own weight.

“I’m alright, really,” she said steadily, taking a step. Her lower back contracted, but she hid her wince by shaking her head slightly so her hair fell over her face.

“You don’t look it.”

“I fainted, that’s all. It was hot and cramped in there. I had to get out.”

~~~

Orellia danced until her feet throbbed, and she didn’t dare to look at the sorry state of her shoes. They swum in the throng singing along at the tops of their voices with the rest of the crowd. She twirled and clapped her hands high above her head, Monty and Rye dancing circles around her. As more and more people heaved into the Starbright, they were crushed together in the hall with barely room to tap their feet. Orellia found herself pressed up against Lorn, the others lost in the masses. She glanced around for Penny but couldn’t see her.

Orellia looked up at Lorn as she felt his arms wind around her waist, his hands rest on her lower back. They’d been heading here all evening - Orellia felt certain of that, even if she couldn’t quite remember how she got there, exactly. Lorn captured her gaze, his eyes startlingly bright in the dimness of the tavern. She placed one hand on his chest, the other arm she draped over his shoulder, her palm resting on the back of his neck. Dropping her head onto his shoulder, they swayed with the music and against the rest of the crowd. Orellia tried to steady her breathing, hoping that Lorn couldn’t feel how fast her heart was beating. The rest of the hall faded into blur as she tried to focus, Lorn’s breath hot on her cheek.

“Lia.” His voice was barely audible in the noise around them. Orellia lifted her face to his, so close the point of her nose touched his. A small smile crept over his lips. A tingling ran up her spine.

She shoved hard against him, putting space between them, but the air was still suffocating and close. Orellia angled her elbows and pushed into the people around her, carving a path through them towards the doors that opened onto the street. The tingling gave way to a sharp pain that bloomed across her upper back and over her shoulders, the familiar grip overpowering her. Somewhere behind her Lorn shouted her name, fighting his way through the crowd to reach her, but Orellia barely registered his voice. She threw her body against the door, crashing through it with her forearms. And then she ran, desperate to feel something other than the pain. The night air was cool against her skin, but she only made it round the next corner before she collapsed, her bones shaking. She closed her eyes, a blinding white light engulfed her, and Orellia lost all sense of the ground beneath her as she fell.

~~~

“Do you usually sweat this much when you faint?” he asked, reaching out and wiping his finger over her cheek. She batted his hand away. He chuckled lightly.

“You’re looking somewhat bedraggled yourself,” she said, looking him up and down.

“Excuse me? I’ve just carried you from the docks to the Citadel!”

“Where were you taking me?”

“To the infirmary. Or to your house. Or my house… I don’t know where I was going, to be honest.” He hugged her again, his arms tight over hers. “Where do you want to go?”

Orellia sighed and shook off his embrace.

“Home.”

~~~

Aneurin removed his glasses and placed them on the pile of papers in front of him, massaging his temples slowly. His gaze drifted over the countless tomes open on his desk amongst crumpled plans of the city. Somewhere amongst it was his seal, marked with the Chief Architect’s crest. He’d just had it in his hands to stamp his approval for the next section of expansion along the banks of the river Multa, west of the city walls. He searched the desk, shifting books and shuffling paperwork, until he heard a cough. Aneurin glanced up to find his assistant, Milas, in the doorway with an armful of scrolls.

“More applications and designs for the new developments, sir.”

“Be more specific, please?”

Milas glanced down at the scrolls he was precariously balancing, trying to read the labels strung around them.

“Uhr… one for the… the port. And a template design for a warehouse. And uhm… sorry, can I put these down please sir?”

Aneurin only nodded and pointed to the table in front of him. Setting them down, Milas then handed him a leather binder.

“Your brief for the meeting with the Engineer’s Order tomorrow.”

He watched Milas consider the paperwork between them, a frown furrowing his lineless brow.

“Would you like some assistance reviewing the applications, sir? I could -”

“It’s late, Milas. We can consider them tomorrow. It’s the new moon of Callen - I’m sure you have better things to do.”

Milas nodded sheepishly, and bid him goodnight. Aneurin stood up from his desk, leaning heavily on his cane, and walked to the window. From his office on one of the upper floors of the Citadel he had an unparallelled view of Vitorria. The city sprawled beneath him, draped in looming shadows cast by the setting sun. He sighed - he had a sharp headache and his legs groaned with pain, but he needed to prepare for the Engineer’s Order tomorrow. If he did not study the brief this evening, he would struggle to follow their latest construction designs for the river embankment. Aneurin returned to his seat, opened the binder and began to read.

~~~

The clack of Aneurin’s cane echoed as he walked home later that night, his thoughts filled with strange diagrams - a mass of cogs and levers. He paused to catch his breath. As a child he had wandered these streets in awe; as a young man he had swaggered, the city his springboard. Now he was old; he ambled slowly and stopped often to admire a carved stone he’d never noticed before set into the walls of a house, or to take a rest on the lip of a fountain as he passed through a square. It was only a short walk home, but each night it felt longer. He rounded a corner and his house came into view - he’d make it up those five steps to the front door and then he could collapse in the drawing room and nurse a whiskey. As he hauled himself up the steps, his hand gripping the rail for support, he noticed that Rhita was not waiting at the door as she usually did. He fumbled for his key in the pockets of his summer cloak, opened the door and stepped into the hallway. He turned to find Orellia sitting in the drawing room, drenched in sweat and tears.

Aneurin dropped his cane and rushed to her, his legs protesting pain with every step. He reached for a stool and sat in front of the armchair Orellia was curled upon. Aneurin opened his arms to hold his daughter and she titled forward and sobbed harder.

“What is it?” he asked as her stroked her long matted hair. Orellia took breaths in huge gulps, trying to steady herself. She pulled away from him and pressed her fingertips hard against her eyes.

“It happened again,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap. Aneurin reached and clasped them in his own. “It happened again, but the pain was worse. I didn’t think it could get any worse, but it was.”

Rhita appeared in the doorway with a steaming cup of herbal tea in hand. Orellia took it, her hands shaking slightly as she raised it to her lips and sipped.

“Rhita, hand me that book there on the shelf - the brown one with the torn binding.” Aneurin stood and walked over to the desk set in the large bay window of the room, and Rhita placed the book in front of him as he sat down. Orellia shrank further into the armchair.

“Tell me everything.”

“Why? We never find any patterns or triggers,” she said. He’d never seen her so crestfallen.

“Just tell me what happened.”

He made careful notes as Orellia recounted her evening and how the tremor took hold. Ever since the tremors began, he had recorded them. When they happened, the symptoms and the aftermath. He’d done the same with Benedetta, although he hadn’t been able to bring himself to review the notes since her death. Despite his careful chronicling, they didn’t know how to control the tremors, or why they happened - all Benedetta had told him for certain was that one of her aunts had also suffered from them and her great-grandmother before her. She’d not met anyone else who had them. Benedetta had called them ‘seizures’ because she said they felt like someone else was seizing her, gripping her and shaking. He preferred ‘tremors’.

He had used his position at the Citadel to raid the archives, searching for answers, but found none. He was intent on doing anything he could do to help. He had assured Benedetta that if their daughter did suffer the same affliction, they would be prepared. He hadn’t anticipated doing it alone.

His notes on Orellia’s tremors started when she was thirteen. Some elements were constant: there was the initial tingling, the pain across her upper back and shoulders, and the white light that blinded her before she passed out. But the tremors were becoming more frequent, and the pain was worsening.

“How did you get here? Do you know how long you were unconscious for?”

Orellia had her head in her hands.

“Lorn found me. I don’t know how long I was out. When I woke up Lorn was carrying me - he brought me home.”

“Could you walk?”

“Yes. Lorn kept his arm around me but I could walk.”

Orellia looked up at him and then quickly down again as her eyes welled with tears.

“He wanted to come inside, and wait with me until you got home, but I sent him away.”

“He didn’t see the tremor?”

“No.”

“And when you were dancing - when the tingling started - had you danced that closely with him before?”

A blush reddened Orellia’s cheeks.

“No… I don’t see why that’s important.”

“Of course it’s important,” he snapped, but instantly regretted it. Anger flared across Orellia’s face. She slammed her fist against the arm of the chair.

“I’m not a project of yours over at the Citadel, to be studied and deciphered. Every time we go through this ridiculous process - for over twelve years we’ve been doing this. You’ve got twelve years worth of notes in that book, and we’re no closer to understanding this. And now the tremors are happening more and more and I… I…” She bit her lip, hugging her knees into her chest. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

Aneurin left the desk and crossed the room, sitting in front of her again. He placed a hand on her shoulder and willed her to look at him.

“Orellia, you must try to be strong. I promise you we will find a way to manage this.”

“But what if managing isn’t enough?”

Her squeezed her shoulder tightly and lifted her chin with his other hand. There was fear in her eyes, but he summoned a smile.

“We will find a way,” he said softly. Orellia’s eyes were steeled and she didn’t smile back at him. She looked weary and pained. Every time it happened, he asked Orellia to put her faith in him, promised her he would find something that would help, and yet he was failing her. She was only a few years younger than Benedetta had been when she died; he’d watched fear destroy her spirit in the last year of her life. He could not, would not allow it to happen again.

~~~

Aneurin asked Orellia to go over the evening’s events one more time, to ensure he had captured everything accurately. Orellia had gone upstairs to bed, but he remained at the desk thumbing through the pages of their records. He had never told Orellia about her mother’s decline, and how the tremors had impacted her pregnancy with Ryckard. He did not want Orellia to fear her future any more than she already did. He had tried to raise her as if the tremors were not a hindrance and give her a normalised adolescence that paved the way for a normalised adulthood. But Aneurin knew his daughter did not feel normal. He knew Orellia had not told anyone other than Ryckard about the tremors. She had hidden them from her friends. He understood why she was so devastated it had happened that evening - when her guard was down and she dared to enjoy herself - and why she was mortified that Officer Callahan had found her and helped. He worried over how long it would take her to trust someone enough to share her secret.

Aneurin scanned some of the more recent entries in the book, but the common aspects told him nothing he didn’t already know. He had initially thought the tremors reacted to emotions, but he’d seen one come and go when Orellia was calm and still, just sitting reading in her bedroom. He rubbed his hands over his face and closed the book, noticing the throbbing pain in his temples again. He grunted as he stood and made his way into the hallway, where he saw his wife’s old cloak, still on the same hook beneath his. He ran his fingertips along the indigo fabric - it was light enough to wear during the summer, but would still protect against a chill in the winter. He turned it over in his hands to reveal the goldweave lining, gleaming in the fading candlelight. It was the finest piece of clothing Benedetta had ever owned.

Aneurin carefully unhooked it and folded the cloak over his arm and made his way up the stairs. He paused on the landing to catch his breath and glanced at Orellia’s closed bedroom door. It was quiet. He crossed the landing to his own room, and shut the door behind him.