Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

Marek’s attention moved to the center of his own Mark.

The black circle had been empty since midnight. It was the largest space he had. He had never once doubted there was room in it. That had been true from the moment the line finished drawing itself into his skin.

It would have solved this without spending anything.

He reached for it.

His body stopped him.

Not the interface. There was no warning. No text. Nothing that articulate.

His hand simply would not go there. The way a hand will not go into a fire. The way a throat closes around something still moving.

It was not a decision. It was made somewhere below where he kept his decisions. By the time it reached him, it was already finished.

He came out of the Quiet Room.

”What,” Clara said.

”Nothing.” Marek put his palm flat against the officer’s shoulder. ”This will hurt.”

”What will—”

Marek stopped resisting the empty space beneath his collarbone.

It came out of the man in one piece. Marek had not expected that.

Forty separate injuries. They moved as a single object. They were not forty injuries. They were one condition expressed in forty places.

The interface had been telling him that from the beginning. He had not read it carefully enough.

It went up his arm. It struck the black circle.

A second scale filled. Hard dull gold. Directly beside the dark red one.

Then it tried to finish what it had started.

Marek’s shoulders came apart from the inside. He heard something tear. He was on one knee before he understood that he had gone down. His right arm stopped being available.

Somewhere above him, Henry was shouting for the medic. His voice was much larger than the one he had used all night.

The black circle pulled.

The pain left his shoulders. It went back into the gold scale. It stayed there. Pressing outward. Still trying.

Two of thirteen.

The officer had both hands on Marek’s collar. He was holding him up. An hour ago, that grip would have crushed the fabric. It did not.

He was staring at his own hands.

”What did you do?”

”You would not have stopped using it.”

”That’s not an answer.”

”No.”

Clara arrived. Marek let her check his pupils. There was no version of the next thirty seconds in which she did not.

Her fingers were cold. So was the green scale at her shoulder.

”Say something with more than two words in it.”

”I removed the reason his shoulder was getting worse. The damage already done is still done. He needs imaging. He needs immobilization. He is not to lift anything.”

”That’s more than two words.”

”You asked.”

Behind Clara, the supervisor had finished with the transport driver.

Marek got up. His right arm came back somewhere on the way. It did so reluctantly. Limbs are like that once they have decided the emergency is over.

Henry had not moved. He was holding his own forearm. His thumb was pressed over the blue scale, the way a man holds a wound.

”Would you put something in the middle?”

”What?”

”The black part.”

Henry was not looking at him.

Then he added, ”You reached for it. I watched you reach for it and then not.”

Clara’s hand went to her own shoulder. She did not seem to notice.

”Would you?” Marek asked her.

”No.”

”Why not?”

”I don’t know.” She said it immediately. Then she looked irritated with herself. ”No. That isn’t true. I do know. I can’t put it in words that mean anything.”

”Try.”

Clara considered the empty circle at the center of her own Mark.

”The scales are storage,” she said. ”The black one isn’t storage.”

Marek stopped.

Something moved under the surface of his Mark. Between the gold scale and the black circle. A point of light. There and gone. Too fast to be certain of.

He did not see it. He was watching Clara.

”When I refused the transfer from the Taurus detainee,” he said, ”the cold came from the center. Not from an empty scale. The scales did nothing at all.”

”And the center?”

”The center refused it.”

”On what grounds?”

”That it was not mine.”

Nobody spoke.

Marek turned his hand over. He looked at the two filled scales. The dark red one belonged to Elia Voss. The dull gold one belonged to a man whose name he had still not asked for.

Neither had ever felt like part of him. Not for one second. He had carried Elia’s First Motion for eleven hours. It had never once stopped being hers.

”The scales hold what belongs to other people,” he said. ”I think the center is where something goes when it belongs to us.”

Henry took his thumb off the blue scale. ”Then what’s supposed to go in it?”

”I don’t know.”

”Guess.”

”No.”

The supervisor was walking toward them. Behind him the rear compartment of the transport stood open and unlit.

Marek took out his phone.

The screen had another crack in it. This one ran the other way. The spider under the glass had acquired a second set of legs.

No signal. There had been no signal since midnight.

The messages were still at the bottom of the thread.

In order. In grey.

Buying them now.

Are you home?

Stay inside. Do not leave the apartment. If you reach Mom, tell her where you are.

Nineteen hours. He had spent all of them moving further from an apartment on the east side of a city that might not have an east side.

He had taken a woman’s hemorrhage into his body. He had taken a stranger’s ruined shoulders after it. Both were still in there. Both were still working.

Two scales gone out of thirteen. No idea how to get either one back.

He had not bought the noodles.

”Marek.” The supervisor stopped in front of him. ”Transport’s ready. All four of you.”

Marek put the phone away.

”My sister is fourteen years old,” he said. ”She is in an apartment on Kestrel Street. I have not reached her since Day 367 began.”

The supervisor waited.

”Before I get into that vehicle, I want to know whether anyone has been to the eastern residential district.”