Duchess Julia of Yachy’s story, as told to B. Harper of the Nine Moons Court during her time in captivity. The Duchess would later give up her position of privilege after the revolution of 2318. All records of her have disappeared and her final resting place is not known.

In times of silence I can feel the edges of who I might be if things had been different.

I picture myself as older. Not physically older—but as someone who has been through storms and come out the other side. She’s not proud of her past, but she deals with the memories and the consequences. She’s been to the other side and back. Redemption isn’t a word like any other word; it’s the tool that carved away excess and revealed the image in the Sculptor’s mind.

When she’s awake, she’s sharp, preternaturally aware of surroundings and undercurrents and motivations. Words are used to incise meaning on others, never a stroke of the chisel wasted. They remember her after she’s stepped out the door; even if they don’t like her, they respect her mind.

When she’s sleeping, she dreams of muddy rivers and faded light. She saw an angel once but never knew if she was dreaming or awake. Sometimes she is afraid she will never wake from the dreaming.

When she lives, she lives fully; when she withdraws, nothing can touch her.

She is someone with presence, the authority that comes from painful experience. She is someone to wonder at and pursue. She never lets more than a handful get through to trust and be trusted, but even those on the outside know: this is a worthwhile person.

I am not her. I am built for adoring other people and wish that someone would adore me. All I want is to love and be loved. My struggles are small things; I am more often pitiful than noble. I have no grand story or vision. Eyes do not follow me when I enter a room; hearts do not often seek me out for counsel or companionship; ears do not listen for my reasoning or teaching or humor.

The edges intersect my true self and cut deeply. But which will be the victor? The one who is the weapon wielded by a lying heart? Or the one who desires above all to have the highest calling of love?

One last story, eh? Well then. Let me think.

In strength born, in weakness die.

That’s how the old saying goes among your people, doesn’t it? But I was created strong and kept getting stronger. My people—well, my makers—didn’t know what to do with me after a while. Not that they were fragile, not by any means, but they simply weren’t a match for me.

If you are wondering how a champion is made, don’t expect to learn it from my story. I am no champion. They raised me for one purpose: to kill heroes. I am the foil, the tireless hunter, the immovable wall that stands between them and their goals.

Yes, I know how champions are made. I studied their kind. I studied how to kill them, thwart their goals, cause them to doubt themselves. (In that order—for though it is surprisingly easy to kill them and even frustrate them, worming my way past their defenses with words alone can be a difficult task.) They are as human as I am not. Still, I don’t hate them, though I question their sanity. But champions have their job and I have mine. That’s life.

Or it was until one champion came and destroyed my makers.

I had been out cleaning up the latest batch of heroes. Takes some doing to clear out the land and let everyone rest easy … what? Oh, yes, they rove about the land, waving their swords, requiring gold and armor and honor. Such a nuisance. My job was certainly necessary to keep them from riding over the poor peasants’ crops. So I had gone out to do a bit of work, as I was saying. I had intended to kill her, you understand. I had her and two others right at the brink of death. I finished off the two and then turned to her, but she had escaped somehow while I was occupied. She was sneaky for a champion. So I left her for later and turned my attention to pursuing another hero in the next village.

I returned from that hunt to find her waiting beside a pile of bodies. I attacked as soon as I realized what she’d done. I was surprised, for she was my antithesis: soft, flowing, knew how to use my strength and size against me. Fighting her was maddening. Nothing I did seemed to touch her. At last I lowered my mace and stared at her.

“What is your secret?” I asked.

She smiled. “Rabbits,” she said. As I stood there in confusion, she turned into a rabbit and fled down a nearby hole, leaving me with no revenge or, in truth, understanding. Why did she seek out a life of conflict and questing if she was so good at sneaking around and hiding? Where did this spell come from? And if she could have hidden so easily from me—for rabbits have deep holes—why then did she come to my home and slaughter my makers? All they wanted was to be left in peace to work their dark magic without any heroes interfering.

But she killed them anyway and left me with no answers and no direction. And that is how I became a worker for hire, making my way in this world just like you. Except for the fact that you are quite a bit younger than I, and that I am made of stone and clay.

Oh, you don’t think that story made sense? You desire a story with more magic? Fewer rabbits? Ah, I see. You want a proper ending. Well, this is my life, and it will never have an ending.

Ah, there is the bell. We are closing for the night. Best you get home now. Yes, yes, I shall be here when you return. The book too. And consider yourself lucky, young fellow. Not every library has a golem curator.

Just don’t develop into a hero of some sort. My friendship has its limits.

Sue lay stretched out on the floor of the small lab. From her prone position she could see the battered calendar on the wall. August 13th, 2014. Three months to the day after the impact. There’d been a remembrance ceremony a few hours ago. The governor had shown up, along with a lot of crying people. Halting speeches had been made, fruity drinks had been drunk, and much over-frosted cake had been consumed. These sort of occasions always made people hungry.

Sue appreciated the free food, even the cake. But she was eager to get back to work. The company wanted mining projections soon, and Sue’s team needed to do more drilling. They would start again early Monday morning. For now the team was just waiting for the stragglers from the ceremony to clear out and leave them alone.

Vanny wandered in.

“Wh’up, Sue.”

“Nothing. You?”

“Nada. No results yet from G-36.”

Sue rolled onto her stomach, facing her colleague. She picked up the plast-organic fork and dabbed at the drying frosting on the plate. “Company will want a report by the end of the week. A good report.”

“I can’t guarantee that, but I’ll keep the teams working. We’ve still got some quadrants left.”

“Most are already played out. We get paid for results, not for coming up empty.”

“Yeah, boss.” Vacant look on the chiseled face. It was thinking, probably calculating the probability of finding valuable ore in six days. Vanny always looked vacant when it was thinking.

“Just hurry up the drilling if you can.”

“Yeah, boss,” Vanny repeated. He turned abruptly and walked off. Vanny wasn’t too bad for a synthclone. It did have a tendency to wear lace underwear and wasn’t too strong on conversational gambits, but it worked hard and didn’t complain. Couldn’t ask for more from a coworker.

Sue heard faint shouting outside and grimaced. One of the voices sounded like Burke. He’d probably had too much to drink again and was going off at somebody about his second cousin twice removed who’d died in the aftershocks from the collision. She should probably go out there and calm him down.

Pushing herself up and away from the floor with a sigh, Sue left the lab and walked out of the team’s complex. The impact crater stretched out before her, a huge red pockmark on the earth’s surface. It seemed to form a perfect circle with the summer-blue, deceptive sky above.

The shouting was clearer out here. Sue looked around for the source. Sure enough, there was Burke a few hundred feet below her, yelling at the petite Tian Yua. Sue caught a few snippets of the argument—Burke saying something about “the deaths” and “are you even human” and Yua snarking back “caveman” and “company profit,” and there was Patton, always the peacemaker, trying to separate them with “let’s just calm down and feel the energy of this place” and Burke coming back with “Ageist freak” and Yua countering with “intolerant bastard,” and now it was getting ugly, right next to the newly erected monument to those who had lost their lives in the impact.

They don’t pay me enough, Sue thought, and began to descend the side of the crater.

If she would have said something encouraging, he would have been vindicated. All of the countless hours spent bent over the computer, the calculator, and the microscope; all of the figuring and hypothesizing; all of his frustration—he would have been victorious, affirmed.

It didn’t have to be words, really. He would have been happy if she’d even given him a slight smile or nod.

“Your hypothesis is wrong.”

“What?”
“You obviously didn’t read the study I gave you last week. Your hypothesis is based on the old Geraut theory, which is faulty information; therefore, your results are not legitimate. You need to start over from scratch. Tomorrow I want to see a proposal—a detailed proposal—for this next experiment. We can’t afford to waste lab supplies.”

A gentle whoosh of air; emptiness where she’d been.

If only she would have at least acknowledged his efforts.

You will be sitting on the hard floor, concrete chilly against your jeans. You will be holding two cardboard-jacketed styrofoam cups of coffee. The half-empty one in your right hand will be yours, as you will have used the hot liquid to ward off the cold. The cup in your left hand will be hers. It will still be full because she will be playing her cello.

The rich dark sound of the cello will make you think of the coffee she ordered—black, no sugar, no cream, no flavor shots, no nothing. You will look at your five-dollar drink, more sugar than coffee, and grimace slightly.

Shelly’s voice will mix with the cello, bouncing off the concrete walls of her apartment’s basement. She will have taken you down here because Mrs. Tolliver in 7A hates loud music, especially classical. Mrs. Tolliver only listens to the Voice and to Keely Smith; she will have no others intrude upon her musical stasis.

You hate classical music too, but you will not say anything. You will be trying to impress Shelly, so you will fake a smile and nod brightly when she asks you if you want to hear her play.

Now you will be here, trying very hard to seem interested in the music rather than in Shelly’s too-tight T-shirt. Looking for another place to rest your eyes, you will watch her arm move back and forth, holding the bow deftly. She will close her eyes, let her head fall back a little, and sing along with her music. She will put her heart into it.

Gradually you will stop feeling the cold being leached from your body. You will begin to set aside thoughts of credit card bills, your job, even your plans to get Shelly into bed tonight. She will sound so different from your favorite sullen rappers. You will not know what she is playing—she told you, but you forgot already—but you will become fascinated by the emotion in her face, her voice, and her cello.

She will stop playing eventually. You will glance at your watch and realize fifteen minutes have passed without a trace, swallowed by Shelly’s throaty voice and smooth cello.

“Well?” she will ask shyly, showing the dimples that made you approach her in line at the Qwik Stop one week ago.

For the first time in a long time, you will give a sincere compliment to a woman without trying to get her into bed.

“Awesome,” you will say. “Keep going.”

Speaking into a cup is a defeatist purpose, Tom said. It is like scraping the last bit of milk out of a bowl after you have finished your cereal. Better just to pour it into your glass, even with the leftover pulp from the orange juice, and drink it that way.

That is where you’re wrong, Jack said. You just give up and throw it out.

That’s not a good idea, Tom said, unless you double-bag your garbage.

Who double-bags garbage, Jack asked.

You are both crazy, Heidi said. Everyone knows that you just drink the leftover milk from the bowl.

Like animals, Tom said. I suppose soon you won’t even set the table with spoons and forks, but have us bury our faces in our bowls. Well, even then there will be a little milk left over, because you are such a messy drinker that you won’t be able to get it all. And then what will you do.

I am not a messy drinker. She was adamant about that point. And you’re changing the subject.

Emerson had said nothing throughout dinner. Now he roused himself. The subject is not what you do with the leftover milk, he said. The point is that you were talking about speaking into a cup. Who on Earth would do such a thing.

They all stared.

Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you, Emerson, said Tom. You say the oddest things.

She has been waiting for a very long time.

“This won’t make it right,” he says, almost begging, his voice trying to hold her like a hand around her arm. He’s only known her for two days, she thinks. Where does he get off preaching at her?

“I know,” she says instead. “But no one else will do anything. So it’s up to me.”

“What about justice? What about innocent until proven guilty?” His eyes are large, blue, almost too pale. Too pretty. She’s never liked pretty men, much less idealistic men.

“Please.” That’s all he says. His body is interposed between her and the other man.

She shrugs and flicks the safety anyway, pulling the gun up with a steady hand. “There are only two sides these days,” she says evenly. “There’s no such thing as innocent.”

“If you kill him, you’ll have to kill me too.”

She considers that. She pulls the trigger.

Neither of them had truly mattered to her. Not even the man in the back. When all you have is a symbol, sometimes all you have is a symbol. But even killing a symbol is a catharsis of sorts. And killing someone who truly believes in such a thing—well, that is better yet.