Chương 205: Chapter 226: Cleaning Up

Elica stared in abject horror as I appeared. She was not quite speechless though.

"You are absolutely saturated in blood."

"In retrospect my plan did have a flaw or two," I admitted, floating towards the bathroom. I did not want to walk because anywhere my feet came down would just be more to clean later. The bathroom door opened in front of me and closed behind, and I started stripping off all of my clothes. I ran a basin with water and then chilled it nearly to freezing, With a gesture I started the shower, and held my clothes in there for a minute to just get out the majority of the human remains that had soaked into them.

I squeezed, and the fabric ran pink. I carried it from the running-water shower to the chilled basin, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hair, once sunset-crimson, and then a cold pure white, was now a dark soggy lifeless red-brown. My face was a mask of red, the whites of my eyes stood out sharply. I was painted entirely in misted gore down to my sternum, and below that was just trickles of red that seeped through my clothes or dripped from above.

I turned to the side, and everything that was not facing that woman was still pristine white. I'm half-Carrie, half-Elsa. In the shower I doused with a little bit of vinegar before I shampooed; it's good for getting the blood out easily. Conditioner, straightener, a bit of oil for shine and texture. Soap, suds, and rinse. For all the downsides of living in a video game, there's positives. I never break out. I can take hot showers, using off-the-rack soap, scrub with my towel, and my skin stays perfect.

I can clean myself most days by just dousing myself in a pounding torrent of water that should abrade me something fierce, but instead I just get clean and freshened with no concern for how the human body actually responds to high-speed water jets. The clothes in the sink took some agitation and some vinegar, but they came clean too. I stripped the water out, and put on my nightgown. Elica was sitting up in bed with a book, and she watched me carefully as I chucked my clothes into the laundry cabinet.

"So, you had an exciting day?" I started fitting my hair into a silk scarf and then pinning it up.

"It was... fruitful. Some long-overdue debts." Her frown told me she had something to say, so I waited patiently. She figured it out, and said, "So, with that much blood, I know that whoever it was either suffered enormously, or-""Oh, no," I assured her.

"That cold-hearted bitch is in hell right now with no idea how she got there. She didn't feel anything." My roommate nodded.

"Good. It should not make a difference to me, but it does. I feel better knowing that. Is it strange that I can find more acceptance for that? If you tell me that it is necessary for you to kill someone I believe you. But if you told me that you needed to hurt someone and there was no other way, I would suspect your motives." I sat on the edge of my bed, and twitched the curtains shut.

"It does seem backwards, right? Murder should always be worse than injury. But I do think I understand what you mean. If someone told me that they have to hurt people, that sounds like a sadist with an excuse. But someone who has to kill people? Might be a killer with an excuse. But it might be some... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it might be someone with concrete proof that the victim would have killed many many more people." Elica picked up her book again, giving me an unsympathetic look.

"And could that possibly refer to anyone but you? You are definitely putting too fine a point on it." She sat with her back to the headboard, the blankets up to her lap. I got a glimpse of her novel: 'Captain Shield and the Soldier of the Winter'. I cannot fucking get through to the publishers about these titles.

"Not necessarily," I protested. It did not sound convincing even to me. I kept going.

"There's other people that have the future as well, not just me. I think the Duchess of Pinking House is one of them." I'm really not the only person with magical means of foretelling. I'm just the most openly outspoken about it. She did not seem impressed by that answer and ignored me, instead reading her book. Well, it's time for winding down anyway. I climbed into my own bed and snuggled down, getting comfortable.

This part's important, if I am laying in a bad position when I divest my soul, I'll lay in a bad position all night without noticing. I can give myself an amazing muscle cramp or pinched nerve overnight, if I'm careless. The vendetta that I began so long ago is progressing nicely. I've gotten the informant that sent plans of the house to the arsonists. I've gotten the blackmailers that ordered her to do it. I've gotten the arsonist himself three times now.

I've gotten the pirate crew that the big boss had a sentimental attachment to, and disbanded the Lesser House that supported the arsonist lich and relayed the informant's plans to him. I've gotten the leader of the big boss's magical bodyguards, the ones that almost killed me going after the pirate crew. Just two more sorcerers to go, now. I've got more of Kralcit's organization to dismantle, and the more I cost her the more it's going to pinch when she has to pay out for the revolt's weapons.

She'll be easy to kill after that. And then it's just the Freckentops, and Duke Meadwhite. Getting revenge on absolutely everyone who wronged me to burn down my house on my birthday is not actually an integral part of the plan to save the nation or the world. There were methods I could try that would not bring me anywhere near any of them. But, I have made room for that vendetta and dovetailed it in.

There are other ways to do what I need to do, but this is the path that elegantly allows me to chase down and kill my enemies while I'm doing it. And things like that really get me moving in the morning. Maybe it's not a healthy outlook, but I can afford therapy after I save the world. The bells began tolling, three long, two short. Seventeenth bell, last bell. Curfew, lights out. I nudged the sigil-light candle with a bit of contact, and it dimmed then darkened.

Press low on the taper to dampen the light, press high up to brighten. And around the city a million candles were being tapped low to bring them down. It was not illegal to be out during the candle hours, or even particularly frowned upon. But, it is illegal for most businesses to require, or even request, that an employee work during those hours, and there were certain sanctions for keep an employee working after the thirteenth bell or before the third.

Exceptions abounded: bakers need to get started early, tapsters need to stay up late. But despite Cliffside having the exact same lighting at midnight as noon, the city has a definite day-night cycle that is strictly observed. And if anyone was out walking the streets in the candle hours, a sigil would call the guards from the nearest barracks to come find out if the person was lost, or in trouble, or if they were about to be in trouble.

The books of law do not say explicitly why these restrictions were emplaced, but the timing makes me believe that it coincided with one of the big surges in worker protections and pro-union sentiment. I'm not certain of it and I don't understand all the connotations of that, but I've read a lot of history texts and I do kind of understand the shape of certain trends. These thoughts settled me in while I started putting myself to sleep, putting the body to rest and setting the mind free in dreams.

I eased those thoughts into something pleasant, something that encompassed the sentiment of a well-earned comeuppance but did not explicitly portray blood explosions. The breathing was steadied, slowed, soothed. Elica had her eyes opened in the dark, staring at me like she was going to catch me in my sleepwalker's trance. I was sorely tempted to give her a wave. She would not see it, her eyes did not see as well as the naked soul, but it was still mocking and snide in a way I don't like to see on myself.

According to the bookmark that was sticking out of her novel on the bedside, she was just about due for the big amnesia revelation. She picked up her sleep mask, tugged it into place, and rolled over to go to sleep. She seemed remarkably comfortable in the new bedroom, whatever creepy miasma hung in the air here was not affecting Elica. She had her end-of-the-hall room, top ranked, top billing. She was content in a dead girl's bed. Sometimes she creeps me out a little.

But sometimes I really do feel more akin to her than I should. And sometimes I just find a normal empathy for her. For one thing, the conversation we had only just ended. I can certainly understand why she would have a more positive view of killers than torturers, after spending half her life watching her parents flog the peasants for fun and profit. For her, sadistic punishments are a real thing that she has seen face-to-face too many times. But maybe she's never seen anyone killed. For her, it's abstract.

To me, the reverse. The number of people I have seen die is frankly alarming. And most of those killed by my hand. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone being deliberately hurt by someone who did not intend to finish the job, save for low-stakes street brawls I've witnessed. Since I was reincarnated I've never even seen a child spanked. In more ways than the obvious, Elica and I come from different worlds. As soon as she rolled over I started going about my business.

I pulled out my notebook from today's meetings and brought out some heavier, thicker texts I had picked up from the library. My teatime meeting with the dirty-tricks bureaucrats had given me a handful of new ideas that I need to put into practice. Making myself safe from those sort of machinations needs to be a priority for my focus. And weirdly, I'm even more worried about this than I am about taking out that sorceress.

Ultimately, she was just one more domino in the chain of events that led to my friends dying, led to me being hurt. Overall, that was of relatively little consequence. I'm not really feeling a moral compunction and I'm not concerned about fallout from that killing. No, I'm anxious because a room full of clerks showed me an entire weak spot I'd never known I had. My plans have reached the point that I was starting to see the architecture of the structure I'm going to be building. And that is exciting.

I've always come to this with the understanding that I would be collecting alliances and securing a power base and playing a role in the Rapier Revolt, making myself a national celebrity during the Upheaval and the War, and then a big finish as the hero of the civil war and the overthrow of the Freckentop monarchy. But each of those checkpoints needs a hundred buttresses and underpinnings for support. Going to galas and getting grand promises is a major component.

But I also need a cloud of charities, companies, consortiums and consultants. I need a network of ways that my less extroverted allies can support me materially, and I need assemblies and organizations that could have a diverse membership so that several of my deniable allies have a visible reason to know each other and associate. But every point of contact with those is a point of vulnerability.

This is the hidden dimension that Muranda Nhullit and Girhan Grennick navigated, not to mention my brother- if he's not there already he'll get there soon, it's entirely his sort of fight. It's control without commitment, it's the ability to reach into someone's life using someone else's authority. A resolution through the High Council and signed as edict by the king and queen will have a law passed. But all of the how and when and who of that law?

- that gets settled by the turning cogs, the innocuous pieces of paper. Ediscod had shown me how honorary-title officers and functionaries can manipulate the system. Freg and Herry showed me that it's not just the powerful and highly-placed; this sort of corruption is a background radiation that saturates the system, even file clerks and punch-clock functionaries had their own methods.

And this is why the workings of Muranda Nhullit and Girhan Grennick were so obscure to me: they were expertly navigating deep waters because they were writing the maps. My early studies into House intrigue had stressed to me that almost none of the real attacks are handled in the open. I had taken that at face value without really getting clarification what that means. But recent events have put that battlefield in front of me and now I've got my eyes on the battlefield that matters.

And I have no wish to fight there or to participate in those struggles. The more of it I saw, the more I just wanted it deleted. Reading these books I've pulled from the library does not help. Procedure manuals, statute texts. It's all rotten to the core. No wonder the Freckentops were so cavalier about sending necromantic blights out into the world- interact with government processes long enough and plagues of malediction just start to look normal. I fight the urge to throw the book away in disgust.

It's just a holdover reflex from being in a body, I know. I learned a while ago that venting frustrations in my sleep is futile, there is just no satisfaction in throwing a book away if you don't have arms. And somewhere in these pages is some trick that will protect me from whatever Nathan is going to do. Just once, I want to get out in front before he takes a swing. It feels like the corruption of this world is his weapon to wield. From where I stand right now, I can look back on my past assumptions.

It feels naive to me now that I used to think the Freckentops alone were my enemy. Or the power-hungry and malicious House leaders. But this? This goes way past Houses or thrones, way past paperwork and procedures. Seventhday can't come soon enough because right now everything outside of Skydown feels like an infection that needs to be cauterized. I still have so much work to do. But it's all starting to feel real.

Those plans, those goals, the intentions, now they have been transformed from a figment to a silhouette. I did not make a sound through the body, I let it sleep peacefully at the nucleus of my new works. Only in my soul itself did I chortle triumphantly.