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No Mercy to the Rest

by Bennett North

Sadie parked in the lee of Castle Inferno, where she would be spared from the wind, and sat while the engine ticked, trying to convince herself to let go of the steering wheel.

The castle stood stark against the sky, dark stone walls leaching the saturation from the blue. One tower was burned out and soot-streaked. No sign of repair. Was Dr. Inferno hard up for cash or did fresh tarmac interfere with the mad scientist aesthetic?

Sadie grabbed the swinging St. Christopher medal from the rearview mirror and squeezed it. “Keep an eye on me, Gemma,” she said. “This is for you.”

The stairs that hugged the foundation ended at a pair of wooden doors set into a stone arch that had to be thirty feet tall. Sadie ducked into the corner of the arch, out of the wind, and pressed the plastic doorbell button.

Something heavy thunked inside, then one of the doors opened enough for a woman to lean out. She was white, with frizzy, graying hair, a Red Sox T-shirt, and jeans.

“Sadie Jones?” the woman asked, looking her up and down.

“That’s me,” said Sadie. “I’m looking for an . . . Igor?”

“You found her.” The woman opened the door another few inches. “Come on. If the wind catches this door, it’s impossible to close.”

Sadie squeezed through the opening into a dark, echoing foyer. Igor forced the door closed while Sadie looked around.

The floor was smooth stone, worn down under a thousand years of footfalls. Arched doors led left and right, and a helical staircase rose up ahead. In one corner, a Wi-Fi range extender blinked green.

“So.” Igor clapped. “Right. Hello! I’m Igor, and this is Castle Inferno.” She led Sadie through the left archway to a staircase leading down. “I’m so glad you could make it. Would you like coffee before we start? Tea? Water?”

“No, thanks.” This wasn’t what Sadie had expected. She hadn’t really known what to expect. More of a background check, certainly. Perhaps armed guards or dogs. Barbed wire fences at least. So far, she’d only seen one killer robot and that was down at the entrance to the road up the mountain. She wasn’t even convinced that that one was anything but decorative.

The stairs descended farther down than the level of the parking lot. They debouched into a round tile-paved room with scorch-stained sconces on the walls. The room had been modernized with fluorescent lights, a floor drain, and metal countertops — not quite up to the standard Sadie was used to, but she could made do. Two crates on a counter held chickens, clucking softly. A gurney in the middle of the room held a corpse.

Sadie stopped at the foot of the stairs.

“We’re not interested in your recommendations,” Igor said. She indicated the corpse without looking at it. “We only care if you can raise the dead. I have to admit, I thought you’d be . . .” Igor trailed off.

“Whiter?” Sadie said before she could help herself.

Igor’s eyebrows flicked upward in surprise for a second. “Older.”

“I’m older than I look.” Sadie crossed to the corpse. She wasn’t squeamish around the dead, but she was wary of the situation. Even supervillains get nervous around necromancers, and she didn’t know what Igor expected. “So who’s this?”

Igor waved a hand. “A donation. He died of natural causes, if you’re wondering.”

She hadn’t been. “Is Dr. Inferno going to meet us?”

“No. He’s in the middle of some experiments. You’ll meet him if I decide I’m happy with your work,” Igor said. “The body hasn’t been embalmed, and he died two days ago. That’s recent enough, right?”

“Any time is recent enough, assuming you have what we need.” Sadie cast a clinical look over the tools available. “You don’t.”

“We have the standard reagents,” Igor said. “The blood of several different animals, including humans, in the fridge. A few live chickens.” She gestured at the crates.

“How many people have you interviewed for this position?” Sadie asked, ignoring the chickens.

Igor paused. “You’re the first.”

“I appreciate that you gave necromancy a thorough Googling,” Sadie said. “But I need more than this.”

“I’m willing to donate my own blood, to a point,” Igor said, offering a pale wrist.

“How well did you know the decedent?”

“I didn’t.”

“We’d need something important to him.” Sadie’s gaze settled on the corpse, whose features threatened to resolve into someone more familiar. “A parent, a child, a lover. Even an enemy. Someone who had an impact on him, who could call his soul back from wherever it went.” She caught herself and looked up, stripping the emotion from her voice. “And then we’d slaughter them and use their sacrifice to seal him back in this form. Raising the dead is not easy. I can’t do it with blood and chickens.”

“Why would it matter if it’s someone he knew?” Igor asked. “A life is a life.”

“That’s not how magic works.”

“That’s how reality works.”

“Do you want me to raise the dead? Or should we talk about how it’s not scientifically possible?” Sadie checked her tone. She wanted this job; it wouldn’t do to antagonize people. “Without the proper sacrifice, he’ll be brain-dead.”

A muscle twitched in Igor’s jaw. Her mouth settled into a line, not of anger — disappointment? Sadness? Sadie waited. The room was silent, but for the clucking of chickens.

“Raise him,” Igor said finally. “Without the appropriate sacrifice. I want to see how well you do with what I’ve provided.”

Sadie studied her. Not for the first time, she wondered why Dr. Inferno wanted a necromancer.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

---

The next morning, after receiving Igor’s official job offer, Sadie put her duffle bag in the trunk and slammed it shut. All of her life fit in this car.

She eyed a handful of drones whining overhead, then eased out into traffic. It would be humiliating to be bombed into smithereens by some two-bit villain looking to make his mark, but such was life. The city was lousy with supervillains. There were the Golden Twins, who lived in an old fort on the ocean, making explosives; Professor Nostredame, who crafted unholy abominations in an alchemy lab at the university; and of course, Dr. Inferno, brooding on his mountain and sending giant robots down to menace the populace. Their battles ground the city to a halt for days, though it had been six months since the last big one. Sadie could name a dozen people she’d known who had died in supervillain attacks.

She’d only ever tried to reanimate one.

Igor met her again at the door. “Time to meet the doctor,” she said grimly as she let Sadie in.

Sadie’s heart leapt into her throat. “Already?” She’d taken Igor’s cue and worn jeans today. Maybe she shouldn’t have. She knew nothing about Dr. Inferno personally; she’d only seen his face in newspaper photos or when he uploaded gloating videos to YouTube. Every other time had been from a distance, wearing goggles, perched in the cockpit of some death machine. He’d never seemed that laid back to Sadie, but maybe that was just his public face. Maybe he was better at separating work and home life than Sadie.

They took the elevator well below where the interview had been. Sadie’s ears popped. When the elevator finally stopped, it let them into a rocky hallway with electric lights strung overhead. Igor strode ahead, shoulders squared. She reached the doors at the end of the hall and hesitated for a breath before shoving them open.

The room beyond was massive, its ceiling receding into shadow. To the right, banks of beeping machinery ran in long rows. To the left, pipes led from pressurized tanks. Sadie stared up at it in awe.

Igor watched her, arms crossed. Her expression was brittle, like poorly made glass. “This is where the magic happens,” she said. Her voice was flat, empty.

“Where is he?”

Igor turned and started walking again. Sadie followed, taking in her surroundings, but she stayed alert, waiting for a trap.

At the end of the aisle, Igor stopped at a glass tank full of blue liquid. A body floated inside, nude, dark hair haloing his head. He was missing an arm and a leg and his chest had been horribly burned, although the wound was bloodlessly pink, like meat from a butcher. His eyes stared at nothing.

“This was how I found him after the last attack by Professor Nostredame,” said Igor. “I put him in the tank. He’s dead, but it’s keeping him in stasis until I can fix him.”

Sadie stared up at the floating man, her mouth open. “Dr. Inferno’s been dead for six months?”

“The tank keeps him from decomposing,” Igor said defensively. “It’s like he only died a few minutes ago. You said it didn’t matter how long.”

“That’s why he’s been so quiet since then,” Sadie said, touching the smooth, cold glass. “I never thought — ” She stopped and let her hand slide off the glass. “So you want me to raise him.”

Igor hugged herself, the planes of her face washed in light from the tank. “Just like he was.”

Sadie pressed her lips together tightly. Dr. Inferno was inches away, defenseless, as she had fantasized so many times. She could come back tonight when Igor was asleep and pull the plug. Drain the tank. Destroy the bastard in a way he couldn’t come back from.

But she hadn’t taken this job to waste it on a frivolous act of revenge. “I already told you what you’ll need for it,” Sadie said, turning away. “Someone who was important to him. A friend. A family member.” She paused. “An assistant.”

Igor’s brow pinched. “Or an enemy,” she said. “I’m working on that.”

---

It had been an unseasonably warm November day when Gemma died. The outdoor cafes were packed, the drones flew high under the cloudless sky, and the first detonations at Professor Nostredame’s lair could have been firecrackers except for the smoke that didn’t stop.

Dr. Inferno’s missiles pinpointed a few strategic places at the university. Professor Nostredame’s alchemy lab went up first. The second missile took out the library, obliterating the records of countless experiments. The final few missiles rained down on the bunker where the professor’s specimens were stored. Even the layers of poured concrete couldn’t save them.

Sadie had been in the dining commons and got back to the lab too late. The doors had shattered outward, singeing the papers right off the bulletin board.

Inside, the roof had half-buried Gemma’s body. Sadie shoved the debris off her — and maybe that was what killed her, blood loss, not blast damage. Sadie couldn’t have waited. There was no time.

Blood loss or blast damage — Sadie would lie awake every night for the next month wondering which it had been. But that first evening, when Gemma sprawled in a chalk circle on the floor, Sadie would repeat the ritual two times with increasing desperation. She’d never tried to reanimate a human that mattered before. All she had to sacrifice was an abomination that Gemma worked with and Gemma’s pet betta fish. Gemma had no living parents, no best friends. Gemma’s heart beat, pushing borrowed blood through her veins, but her brain refused to work her lungs, and Sadie couldn’t keep her on life support forever. Sadie had nothing left to sacrifice except herself, and to her shame, she wasn’t willing to go that far.

Professor Nostredame’s retaliation came an hour after Sadie’s last attempt with Gemma. Unlike Dr. Inferno’s high-tech missiles, this was old-fashioned alchemical fire. Whatever it touched burned for weeks. A pair of dark-winged abominations flew the package up the mountain. The next day, smoke streaked the morning sky.

---

Raising the dead takes herbs and unguents, expensive reagents. The university where Sadie had worked had an impressive endowment and liked funding quirky projects that played well in alumni newsletters and fundraising drives. She’d never have been able to afford necromancy on a postdoc’s salary.

Igor gave her a credit card and told her the sky was the limit. The Inferno family had been old money, and all that money went to Igor if Dr. Inferno was officially declared dead. If it was his, she imagined he’d want her to use it, and if it was hers, she would use it to bring him back.

“So if this doesn’t work, all his money is yours?” Sadie asked, pocketing the credit card.

Igor stared at her, her eyes hollow and blue. “If this doesn’t work, I don’t want it.”

It was late spring, just past commencement, and the university campus was deserted. Sadie was depending on that. The damage had been too extensive to continue Nostredame’s program, so they’d closed for repairs while the professor took time off to regroup.

But not all the reagents had been kept in the lab. Sadie let herself in by the side door. It was locked, of course, but she’d never turned in her key. That would have been too final. As long as she still had it, she could believe she might one day come back.

The hallway smelled like floor polish and paint. The lights clicked on as the motion sensor caught her, illuminating the new set of double doors leading into the lab.

Sadie stopped at the doors. Unlike the original set, these were rolled steel. If she inhaled, she could taste the faintest scent of ash. She pressed her hand gently against the door, then let it drop.

There was a storage room down the hall. Its door yielded under her key, and she stepped into the small, dark room. Plastic shelves sagged under crates of yew leaves and bottled pig fetuses. She tapped a tank of preserved eels, then opened her canvas bag and started browsing.

She was digging snake skeletons out of a box, frowning over a crack in one of the skulls, when a raspy voice came from the doorway.

“You’re back!”

The thing in the doorway was an abomination, sewn together from mismatched parts. Its eyes — both human, but different colors and shapes — held unabashed delight. It was only three feet tall, childlike in size if not appearance. Gemma had named all the abominations back when she’d started working. They loved her for it. Sadie couldn’t remember this one’s name and felt oddly guilty.

“No,” she said, putting the skull in her bag. “I just needed a few things.”

The abomination’s face, such as it was, fell. It shuffled closer. “But you’re coming back?”

Sadie closed the box. “I’m . . . not sure.”

“Where have you been? We’ve missed you.” It reached out a scarred hand to touch her arm.

Sadie pulled firmly out of its grip. “You have to move on,” she said. “There’s no one around to give you orders anymore. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

The abomination bobbed its head miserably. Sadie stalked past it into the hallway. There was no one else to hinder her. Slinging the bag onto her shoulder, she turned back.

“Don’t tell them I was here,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

“Of course,” the abomination whispered, eyes downcast. Sadie left.

The heavy steel doors to the alchemy lab were coming up again, and this time she could feel their pull. It couldn’t hurt to glance inside. She wanted to see what repairs had been made, just to soothe her curiosity.

The key probably wouldn’t work. It was a new door. If it didn’t work, she’d just head back to the castle and—

She cursed to herself at the sound of the lock opening. She couldn’t suppress the leap of dread in her chest. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Last time she’d been in here, everything had been on fire, and the ceiling had been so destroyed that if it weren’t for all the smoke, she would have seen the sky. Now it smelled of paint, and the ceiling was rebuilt. It was no longer the Gothic Revival room of before, with thirty foot ceilings and skylights. Instead, the ceilings hung lower, made up of square foam tiles and regular fluorescent lighting. It was probably closer to code now, even if it had lost its charm.

It’s okay, Sadie thought. I’m not coming back. It doesn’t matter.

A footstep scraped in the doorway behind her. Sadie glanced back and saw the abomination hovering there.

“I told you to leave me alone,” Sadie snapped.

“There’s a, um,” the abomination said. “Um.”

“Go on, get it out,” said a familiar voice. “There’s an intruder.”

Igor stepped inside. She held a gun, which she used to prod the abomination in the back, forcing it farther into the room.

“What are you doing here?” Sadie asked. “I’m not late getting back.”

“I was out to fetch our sacrifice,” Igor said, looking around “So where is he?”

Sadie glanced at the abomination, who stared back with wide eyes.

“The professor?” Sadie asked.

“Of course, I mean the professor. He was Dr. Inferno’s nemesis. He’ll work the best as a sacrifice.” Igor focused on Sadie again. “Yes, I did a thorough Googling. I knew you worked for him. I hoped, when I saw you coming here, that you’d be coming to meet him.”

Sadie crossed her arms. “I don’t work for the professor anymore.”

“Then you wouldn’t mind telling me where he went.” When Sadie hesitated, Igor prodded the abomination more forcefully. “Or I could torture the information out of this thing.”

“It can’t tell you anything,” Sadie said. “It was created to be loyal. It can’t be anything else.”

Igor shrugged. “Can it feel pain?”

Before Sadie had met Gemma, the abomination’s pain wouldn’t have mattered to her, but Gemma had cared for these things. Her shoulders slumped. “Come this way,” she said.

Igor and the abomination followed her across the lab that no long echoed majestically with Sadie’s footsteps. At the far end of the room, there was another locked door. The nameplate read “Professor Nostredame.” Below that were the words, “Spare those who surrender. Show no mercy to the rest.” Strong words for someone who’d never gotten the hang of the office Keurig.

Sadie used her key to open the door. Inside was a small office. This, at least, retained the grandeur of the original building. The windows, hung with ivy, looked out onto the grounds. The heavy wooden desk was neat, with all the papers filed away.

On the wall by the door was a coat hook, where a heavy black cloak hung. An empty plague doctor mask dangled from its strap, glassy eyes blank.

“The professor retired,” Sadie said, indicating the cloak.

Igor reached out and pulled the mask off the hook, then stared down at it. “To where?”

Sadie shrugged. “There was no forwarding address.”

“Do you think he’d come back if he heard his assistant was taken hostage by his enemy?”

“No.”

Igor smiled. “No? I have an inkling about the mentor-mentee relationship.”

“You think Dr. Inferno would put himself in danger for you?”

“He’d do everything he could to keep me safe.” Igor’s eyes focused inward. “How do you think he died?”

Sadie felt an acid heat in her stomach. “How?” she asked quietly.

“We were both in the tower,” Igor said slowly. “The one that was firebombed. The stairwell was destroyed so we couldn’t descend, and the flames were rising. He had one of his machines with him. He told me to hold onto its back while it climbed down the outside of the tower, then send it back for him.” She paused, her eyes scanning back and forth, like she was watching the scene again in her head. “There was another firebomb before we reached the ground. When the robot came back with Dr Inferno, he was—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “He sacrificed himself for me.”

The acid in Sadie’s stomach burned hotter. She looked down at the abomination, which still cowered between them, waiting for them to make a move.

“Professor Nostredame wouldn’t do that for anyone,” she said.

“What about you?” Igor nudged the gun into the abomination’s head. “How noble are you? Enough to give me information to keep this thing from getting hurt?” She shifted the barrel to its shoulder, then the middle of its back. “Are its organs similar to a human’s? I’m not used to working with organic matter.” Her finger tightened.

“Wait—” Sadie said.

Igor pulled the trigger. The abomination’s elbow exploded into blood and bone. It screamed, jerking away from Igor, clutching its destroyed limb. It plowed into Sadie in its frantic escape. She held it against her chest as it struggled, tightening one hand around its upper arm to keep it from spraying blood.

“Stop it,” Sadie shouted at Igor, who tracked the abomination with the barrel of the gun. Sadie pressed her other hand against the abomination’s back like her bare touch could heal it. “Not again.”

Igor lowered the gun. “So where’s Professor Nostredame?”

“I’ll fucking show you,” Sadie snarled. “Move out of my way.”

Igor hesitated, then stepped aside. Sadie pushed the abomination ahead of her, supporting its weight as it staggered. Blood splattered to the ground despite Sadie’s attempt at a tourniquet. The lab was empty — it would have been so much easier if she’d had the tools at hand — so she pushed on. Halfway across the room, the abomination’s legs gave out. Sadie hoisted it up onto her hip like a toddler.

“Where are we going?” Igor asked, right on her heels.

“Get the door for me,” Sadie replied.

Whether it was from years of being an assistant or just because she wanted to see where this was going, Igor moved ahead and got the door. Sadie strode into the hallway and headed for the storage closet again.

Inside, she let the abomination slide to the floor. She yanked open a drawer of dried herbs, then moved on to the pots of oils. It felt like the room was filling with water — angry magic currents frothing at her ankles and then her knees, the air pressure rising as the room got too small for what it contained.

Sadie heard Igor curse when Sadie pulled out the ceremonial knife, but it was distant, and Igor didn’t make a move to intervene. Sadie thumbed a smear of oil across the slick, bloody flesh of the abomination’s arm, then matted a fistful of herbs against it. She sliced the knife across her own forearm, just deep enough to draw blood, and wiped it up with her bare hand. She closed her hand around the abomination’s wound.

The pressure squeezed down on them, the magic tangibly angry. It was so powerful with rage that Sadie might choke on it if it wasn’t coming from her. The abomination yelped, but its whimpers subsided as Sadie withdrew her hand. The wound knitted itself, torn muscle fibers seeking their other halves, veins sealing together. The flesh went last, zipping together into a neat scar.

The atmosphere in the room popped like a bubble. Sadie’s ears popped with it. She started to wipe her bloody hand on the leg of her jeans, then thought better of it. She looked up.

Igor had the gun leveled two-handed at Sadie and stared at her with the look of someone who suddenly understood a terrible truth.

---

Sadie had never intended to tell Gemma her true identity. The Necromancy department had adopted Professor Nostredame as a mascot; not technically a tenured professor, but enough of a celebrity to qualify for a lab on campus. The fact that the professor was terrifyingly unapproachable and swept through the halls in long robes, an ancient plague doctor mask and a voice modulator gave campus administrators all the more reason to leave things be. Sadie Jones, by contrast, was a postdoc who served as the professor’s spokesperson, and if the two of them were never in the same room at the same time, no one commented on it.

There had been a handful of graduate assistants over the years working with Sadie, mostly working to fund their studies, with no real interest in the professor’s politics. Gemma was merely the most recent. Yet unlike many of the others, she wasn’t unnerved by the cloud of foul arcane magic surrounding Professor Nostredame.

One evening, a year or so into their friendship, Gemma invited Sadie out for drinks, and when the Golden Twins staged an attack on the university two hours into their bar crawl, it was hard to pretend that Professor Nostredame wasn’t a bit drunk. Gemma connected the dots.

The intimacy of another person knowing her secret identity was intense. As Professor Nostredame, she knowingly made decisions that led to innocent deaths, and she was okay with that. But when Gemma knew it was her behind the decisions — it didn’t make her a better person, but it made her want to be one, and that was a start.

---

Igor had come to the university with two killer robots, which were waiting outside in the parking lot. When Igor, Sadie, and the abomination emerged from the doorway, one strode up to them, its eyes glowing red.

“Take that thing back to the castle,” Igor told it, pointing at the abomination. “Don’t hurt it. Yet.”

The robot picked up the unresisting abomination and caged it inside its barrel chest, then locked it shut again. It strode off in the direction of the mountain.

“If you complete the ritual successfully, I’ll let it go,” Igor said. “If you don’t, I’ll mail a piece of it to every professor at the university, along with a note about your identity.” She gestured at the other robot. “Take her to the castle.”

“There are more reagents in the trunk of my car,” Sadie said. “I need them all if you expect me to do the ritual.”

Igor held out her hand to Sadie, who tossed her the keys. She popped the trunk open and, wrinkling her nose, hefted out a large, heavy duffle bag. Igor frowned and shut the trunk.

“Go,” she told the robot.

Trying to resist the robot was like trying to arm-wrestle a car. It folded Sadie into its chest cavity, which was roughly the size of a refrigerator. When the door slammed shut, Sadie was dropped into pitch-blackness.

It took an hour to get to the castle. Sadie heard Igor’s voice, then felt the sensation of descending in an elevator. When the robot stopped, Sadie knew where they were.

The robot opened its chest and light flooded into Sadie’s prison. She squinted, eyes watering.

Igor waited outside with the gun. “Out,” she said.

The abomination was there, held in a robot’s firm grip. They all stood in the massive underground chamber beside Dr. Inferno’s tank

The duffle bag and the bag of reagents were both on the floor, along with a number of Castle Inferno’s supplies. A slip of paper that Igor had filled out had names on it so Sadie could reference Dr. Inferno’s loved ones in the ritual, an important step to calling back his soul.

“Start setting up,” Igor said. “Don’t even think about sabotaging the spell. If it varies even a little from the resurrection you did for your interview, I’m going to take your abomination and start cutting.”

“Understood,” said Sadie. The abomination looked at her pleadingly. It wasn’t begging her to save it. It was begging her to let it die for her. She’d made sure to instill that loyalty in all her abominations, although right now the thought made her sick.

Sadie set about organizing her reagents, setting up a mise en place so she didn’t have to scramble during the ritual. The robot that had carried her up the mountain loomed over her, watching. Meanwhile, Igor wheeled a gurney to the tank and set the tank to drain. The fluid level began to drop.

“Why did you apply for the job, Professor?” Igor asked, her back to Sadie.

“I wanted to know why he disappeared.”

“You didn’t think you’d killed him?”

“My attacks had never killed him before.” Sadie shrugged even though Igor couldn’t see it.

“And once you found out? Did you ever intend to do the ritual?”

Sadie hesitated, measuring the crushed honeysuckle blossoms. “I did,” she said.

“Why?” Now Igor did turn to look at her.

“I didn’t think it was fair he died where I couldn’t see it.”

Igor smiled bitterly and turned back to the tank. The fluid had finished draining, and Dr. Inferno lay on the bottom of the tank, limp as a jellyfish out of water. Igor unsealed a door on the side and climbed inside to pull him out.

“Professor,” whispered the abomination. “Just leave me and run.”

“I don’t need your loyalty anymore,” Sadie said. “When you go back to the others, tell them they need to move on.”

“But Prof—”

“Shut up,” said Igor, hauling the doctor’s body onto the gurney. “That’s enough of that.” She carefully tucked a folded towel under his head.

“Strap him down,” Sadie said to Igor. “His resurrection could be violent. Sometimes they have seizures. You don’t want him falling off the gurney and cracking his head open.” Igor didn’t look happy, but she buckled the straps across Dr. Inferno’s chest and thighs.

Sadie chalked the circle on the floor, her mind racing. Once the ritual started, she’d have trouble ending it without a sacrifice. But she had no intention of sacrificing herself for this. Igor, of course, would make the best sacrifice, but how could Sadie get to her? She had no weapon other than the sacrificial dagger. Igor had a gun and two killer robots.

Igor wheeled the gurney into the middle of the circle. “Does this match the setup in the lab upstairs?” she asked the robot. Its eyes glowed green.

“Setup is complete,” the robot intoned.

“Then let’s get on with it,” Igor said, gesturing for Sadie to get up.

Sadie cursed to herself and got to her feet, brushing the chalk off her hands.

“Fine,” Sadie said. “Let’s begin.”

A flash of unease went across Igor’s face before she recovered her equilibrium and nodded. Sadie could understand that. She’d been mourning Dr. Inferno’s death as long as Sadie had been mourning Gemma’s.

“Remember, if this goes wrong—” Igor started again.

“I know,” Sadie interrupted. “For a supervillain’s apprentice, you don’t know the first thing about threats. Don’t overdo it.”

Igor glared at her and stepped out of the circle. “Go on, then.”

Sadie began.

She’d done this many times. The abominations, of course, all came from a similar process, though they had never been human to start with. She had raised the dead as part of her studies. And then, of course, there had been Gemma.

The feeling of rising water was slower but more powerful this time, less like filling a bathtub and more like the swelling of the ocean reaching high tide. She anointed Dr. Inferno’s body with the oils. Wisps of smoke began to rise from the runes. Sadie picked up the piece of paper.

Igor hugged herself, standing outside the circle. Her gun pointed at the floor. She would probably shoot Sadie as soon as the ritual reached the correct part. If only Sadie hadn’t shown her the ritual during her interview. Igor knew exactly when the sacrifice should happen.

“Dr. Obadiah C. Burns, known as Dr. Inferno,” Sadie said. “Son of Cornelius and Gertrude Burns. Husband of Katherine Edwards-Burns. I call to you.”

She lit the candle. It flared green as she painted the next symbols on the body with gritty paste.

Igor paced around the circle to get a better view. Sadie tried to keep Igor in her range of vision as she worked.

“Dr. Obadiah C. Burns,” Sadie said. “Mentor to Inga ‘Igor’ Rupertsson. Nemesis of Sadie Jones. Murderer of Gemma Browne. I call to you.”

She saw Igor’s eyes narrow at the last name, but Sadie ignored it as she painted on the next set of runes. The candle hissed and spat. More smoke rose from the circle and now from the runes on Dr. Inferno’s body. Sadie picked up the last bowl of powdered bone and dashed a handful onto his chest.

“Dr. Obadiah C. Burns. Master of this castle. Creator of these machines. I call to you with this sacrifice.”

Sadie flung the rest of the contents of the bowl in Igor’s face and dropped to the ground, not waiting to see if they connected. A shot exploded overhead and pinged off a wall. Igor, grabbing at her eyes, staggered back.

Sadie rolled to her knees and lunged, grabbing Igor’s gun hand and forcing it down before Igor could shoot again. She dragged Igor toward the circle, but even with her streaming eyes squeezed shut, Igor fought, digging her feet into the ground.

“Shoot her,” Igor shouted. “In the circle.”

Behind her, Sadie heard the robots moving. A laser powered up. She hauled Igor around, holding her between herself and the robots, and forced her over the chalk line.

“Tell them to stand down,” Sadie said.

“Fire,” said Igor.

Both robots fired. The first shot went through Igor’s collarbone and into Sadie’s chest, punching through her right breast and lung. The second went in Igor’s gut and out Sadie’s. They dropped to the floor in a wash of blood.

The chalk circle blazed and Dr. Inferno’s body spasmed. He dragged in a gasping breath. His flesh knit itself together, scarring over. An arm budded in the empty socket.

Sadie still held Igor’s body, although the woman had gone limp. The fact that the ritual had worked meant Igor was dead.

It was the worst pain Sadie had ever felt. She couldn’t get enough air, and when she coughed, blood sprayed out of her mouth. Her gut was on fire, and she smelled ruptured bowel.

She rolled onto her back. Perhaps this was a fitting end, to be killed in Dr. Inferno’s resurrection. At least he’d know the pain of losing his assistant, as she had.

The robots stood still, their commands completed. Sadie focused on breathing in and out.

The hand on her arm made her flinch, which set off a chain reaction of pain.

“Sorry,” the abomination whispered. It held a fistful of herbs. It peeled her clenched fist open and pressed the herbs into it. “Here. Do what you did for me. Heal yourself.”

Sadie let out a loud, angry sob. It hurt so much. “I can’t,” she said.

“You’re not done yet,” said the abomination. It took her hand again and began painting the runes on her itself, using her bloody finger as its tool. Sadie let it.

Despite the blood spilled everywhere on the floor, the abomination cut its own arm and used that to complete the ritual, pressing its hand on her bleeding chest.

The heat flared through her, worse than the wound. She cried out and started choking. She rolled over onto her stomach and coughed out the blood in her rapidly healing lung.

In a minute, it was over. Sadie was bathed in blood, her own and Igor’s, but she was whole again. The abomination patted her shoulder.

The gurney rattled. Dr. Inferno, still strapped in, craned his neck around, trying to see them.

“Igor? Igor, are you . . . ?”

Sadie rose. This time she didn’t hesitate when she wiped her bloody hands on her jeans. “Dr. Inferno,” she said, and spat a glob of blood on the floor.

“Who are you?” he said, squirming in the restraints. “What are you doing in my castle? Is that—” He spotted Igor’s body and choked off.

Sadie limped to her duffle bag. She carried it into the circle, then set it gently down. Glancing around, she checked the chalk circle and the state of her reagents: plenty left for a second attempt.

She unzipped the duffle bag. The corpse inside had mummified over six months of storage. Sadie picked up her jar of oils and began to anoint it.

“Gemma Browne,” Sadie said. “Mentee of Sadie Jones. Victim of Obadiah C. Burns. I call to you.”

---

Host Commentary

Cherae Clark Interview

 

 

Matt Dovey

Cherae Clark! Welcome back to Podcastle.

 

Cherae Clark

Good to be back in the castle.

 

Matt Dovey

Been a while. Now normally at this point I ask editors to introduce themselves for people who might not have been around for your editorial run but you just narrated the story so everybody’s already heard your bio. So, introduce yourself in a way that is non-bio. Is more interesting.

 

Cherae Clark

I don’t know if it’s more interesting, but I know some stuff that’s not in my bio. It’s stuff that I picked up since leaving Podcastle. I now do swords because I have a little extra time now that I’m away from the editing seat. So, I started doing sword training so I train with a long sword right now as well as the side sword. It’s pretty fun.

 

Matt Dovey

You are just living your Gideon the Ninth fantasy really aren’t you?

 

Cherae Clark

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Matt Dovey

Who can blame you?

 

Cherae Clark

Also we work on the biceps still so…

 

Matt Dovey

*Laughs* So why did you choose this story to re-run?

 

Cherae Clark

Man, so I actually I just… I read it when you invited me to pick a story again, and then I listened to it again just today, and I was still floored just like I had been when I first read it out of the slush pile. It’s just like, it’s a sapphic villain who is… who falls in love with someone who makes them want to be a better person. And whether or not they actually get there. They are making the attempt slowly but surely. Even if, in the process of loving that person, they become a worse person sometimes. It’s just kind of like that’s my thing. Like it’s love and sacrifice and a really fuzzy morality that you know, and then obviously I liked it so much that I narrated it so…

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, it’s a very flawed protagonist. It’s unveiled across the course of story isn’t it, quite how flawed they are.

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah

 

Matt Dovey

Which is, and it’s… there’s often a, I think, a tendency now to overcorrect with sort of Sapphic characters, you know gay, bisexual characters that, “Oh, we’ve had too many years of burying the gays. Now they will need to be flawless and beyond reproach.”

 

Cherae Clark

Oh Absolutely

 

Matt Dovey

And that’s just static and stultifying and putting them in a glass coffin. So, you need to show them flawed still, to show the humanity of it. And it’s…

 

Cherae Clark

Exactly

 

Matt Dovey

It’s very good at doing that. And that that struggle for redemption, isn’t it here?

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah, and I mean, I will leave it to the readers, to our listeners to feel that they actually did redeem themselves or what happens next, but that’s one of my favourite things about this story is that question is, ends justifying means and…

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, and… yeah, how you read… I mean, you know, it’s sacrificing her arch nemesis effectively at the end is that justified? Is that okay? He knows that. What’s the morality around killing someone evil to do something good? because you’re still killing that? Yeah, it’s tricky in it.

 

Cherae Clark

And are they evil because they have people they loved and they were nice to.

 

Matt Dovey

And they had a chance for redemption and how can you take that away from them and

 

Cherae Clark

Always the question,

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, It’s such a… such a on the surface, quite a light hearted sort of, you know, superhero-ey pastiche or supervillain pastiche and a surprising sort of depth to the character flaws and the character conflict and everything isn’t it?

 

Cherae Clark

Mmm Hmm.

Matt Dovey

So it’s a good meaty one. I did enjoy it. And it flows so nicely as well. Just, it doesn’t feel like it takes long to read as it does. Because it just,

 

Cherae Clark

yeah,

 

Matt Dovey

It barrels along. It pulls you with it. It’s good. No, an excellent choice. So how did you come to be involved with Podcastle first?

 

Cherae Clark

Oh. I think it was… so I published my first story with Podcastle, I think in the spring-ish of 2018, I think. And, so I was kind of like, in the gears, you know, like, like, folks knew about me. I think it was it was Jen and Khaalidah at the time who were editing then. And that autumn I sent in another story. And they were like, cool, but! Counterpoint. What if we didn’t take this story? And you became editor instead, because Khaalidah is leaving and we wanted, they wanted to make sure that we maintain some amount of diversity on the masthead and I had just been thinking to myself like, I knew I wanted to be working in fantasy like I knew that that was where I was happiest where I was strongest. And… I had done some editing. I had been slush reading at the time at Clarkesworld, which has some fantastic stories, but is predominantly science fiction. And while I enjoy science fiction, and while I enjoyed slush reading at Clarkesworld, I also knew that I wasn’t going to be on the masthead at Clarkesworld. So, I was ready, I was ready to like, you know, take the next step see where I could go and yeah, so that’s how I ended up at Podcastle started basically January 2019. I don’t even know how long I was there. Was it like 2021?

 

Matt Dovey

A year and a half? Yeah, I mean, we… I’ve been hosting since… oh god the start of last year? Jesus I’ve gone two years now.

 

Cherae Clark

Okay.

 

Matt Dovey

I know Eleanor and Shingai took over about six months before I took over from Summer as host so it was summer 21. I think you…

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah, maybe that Yeah.

 

Matt Dovey

So that’s when I think you and Jen both sort of stepped down, didn’t you? Just about a year and a half you did. That being said as rejection letters go that’s a pretty unique one, isn’t it?

 

Cherae Clark

*Laughs* yeah it was, yeah

 

Matt Dovey

So yeah, we’re gonna decline to take your story will just take you.

 

Cherae Clark

Not the worst one to get, not the worst one to get.

 

Matt Dovey

It’s a real bittersweet in a way, isn’t it? Oh, sorry. You’ve not got the sale. But yeah… What? What surprised you about editing a podcast? Spec going in? Especially sort of coming in completely from outside rather than having been sort of slusher first, I suppose.

 

Cherae Clark

I mean, first it was just it was a lot of work. And I was I thought that I was just going to be like redlining some stories. Like no, no, no, you will be helping to run the magazine. But that was actually I mean, it makes sense. That was not the biggest surprise or anything, but I had just come out of an MFA a few years before that, and like most MFA’s, it was very literary based. I was able to write my fantasy stories and even work on my novel, but… though I enjoyed some of the people I didn’t have, I didn’t… our styles didn’t mesh enough for the opportunities that were available there. Like there was a magazine that I could have worked on, but I didn’t really enjoy the kind of overall taste that was prevalent for that magazine. And so, it was, it wasn’t fun, I guess. It sounds bad to say but it just it just wasn’t fun. But when I got to Podcastle it was like just this giant nerdy family. And I had no idea how fun it would be to just have a bunch of like, frickin nerds about genre fiction, who believed in and short fiction as genre fiction as well. And it was just, yeah, that was awesome. It’s just this big, happy nerdy family and even though like our tastes diverge very widely, like me and slush readers, me and even me and Jen, we like we align very well, which is why we worked so well together as co-editors. But we had some like really strong differences as well. But we all we all have the same baseline of being really into fantasy and what it could be in all of its different forms and that was really pleasant yeah.

 

Matt Dovey

Coming from the MFA which was literary was a big change., I remember nerding out about it. It was at Harrow the Ninth was we were secretly exchanging emails of it behind the scenes. “OMG you need book 2!”

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah

 

Matt Dovey

I love those books. So how do you think working here changed you then?

 

Cherae Clark

I mean, well, for one, it gave me a lot of time to practice in a way that I didn’t quite get working on like, my MFAs magazine, but I think the stuff I learned the most actually was not the narrative aspect though. I mean, I got to practice and hone my tastes and stuff and but, mostly I just learned how to treat editors and agents. Because you, you get to feel what it’s actually like. And at the time, I was just like, well…these losers just don’t understand my brilliance. And so I just wrote them off and whatever.

 

Matt Dovey

*Laughs*. We all start there.

 

Cherae Clark

But now, I feel like there is a very strong… there can be a really strong backlash against agents and editors, these folks who come across as gatekeepers, rightly or wrongly. And um,yeah, I think that it taught me the thing that you need most in this industry, which is patience, because, you are inevitably, as an editor going to find something that you *absolutely* love, and for some reason or another, cannot take it. Whether it’s because your co-editor doesn’t jive with it enough. Or you literally accidentally just bought something that is just like it and you cannot take it because you don’t know when you can put it in the next like, six months that’s not going to feel like a repeat or something or another. It’s just not it’s not right. Maybe it’s just like too long and you don’t think you can edit or you don’t want to edit it shorter because you think it’s perfect as it is.

 

Matt Dovey

Just not perfect for where you are editing.

 

Cherae Clark

Exactly, exactly. I one of my favourite things. I think about it sometimes as an editor was was finding your cloud story. I found it a Clarkes World and I was like, Well, I like it. But you know, it’s not for Neil.

 

Matt Dovey

It was not, it was never going to be a Clarke World story. That was a real long shot there.

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah, but then I found it again and I was like this is it’s perfect for me. It’s perfect for me right now. And so sometimes you just have to let that kind of serendipity stuff happen. But you can only do that if you’re patient as an author.

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah.  I think it’s gotten even more so over sort of the last 10 years I’ve been writing and submitting, the odds are stacked against you and it does need the stars to align. Now you can be absolutely flawless. But if things just aren’t lined up right on that day, that moment, you know, I’ve had stories rejected because “Yes, sir. We really liked it. We just accepted something else just like it.” *sighs* What can you do? You can just pick yourself up dust yourself off. Right, the next thing.

Cherae Clark

Yeah,

 

Matt Dovey

And isn’t personal. Editors and agents, everything I think, like you said, they have this reputation as gatekeepers, but every one of them I’ve ever met. They’re trying to look for reasons to make it work. They want to be the person to find the new story, that new star that you know, they want to be able to champion you and celebrate you and it’s ultimately we’re all working to the same goal. Just…

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah. I mean, like one of my favourite things now is seeing authors that I found as short stories, like they’re publishing collections or publishing more stories or novels and stuff, and it’s just really awesome to see to follow careers like that. And

 

Matt Dovey

You know, I remember reading the Alex E Harrow Her road bagan in Podcastle. Reese’s Book club now for her, for Starling house.  Oh my God! I adore her stories, I always have.  What’s that one…Something and the world? I can’t remember now, sort of World War Two ish factory story.

 

Cherae Clark

Oh. I don’t know if I know that one.

 

Matt Dovey

The W and the W. And I’ve got a Podcastle window opened quickly. I’m sure I can find it. But yes, a Whisper in the World. That was it. We ran it back in 2017. It was shimmer originally

 

Cherae Clark

Nice!

 

Matt Dovey

I love that story. And yeah, now that her novels are just incredible and getting that recognition. She was the first person to win a Hugo under 30 since was it Ursula K. Le Guin? or something.

 

Cherae Clark

Oh, really?

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah

 

Cherae Clark

Wow

 

Matt Dovey

So yeah, it’s anyway the point is seeing people sort of when you pick up their first story and see it run and then see where they go is incredible to do isn’t it?

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah

 

Matt Dovey

So both your novels are fantasy and the majority of your short fiction and as you were sort of saying you’ve always kind of jived with fantasy a bit more than – not that you don’t enjoy science fiction – but just fantasy is more your wheelhouse. Why do you think it captures your imagination?

 

Cherae Clark

I think part of it is because when I when I was a kid, I tried being into sci fi and stuff but none of it was actually like Star Wars The TV show and at the time I didn’t really realise that Star Wars had books as well. But this, the science fiction that people were giving me was like Asimov and Ursula K Le Guin and I wasn’t ready to study anarchy when I was eight years old.

 

Matt Dovey

*Laughs*

 

Cherae Clark

Now it’s very different. But now there’s also space opera, which I know how to find it as an adult. I think the game kind of changed for me I think in like in college, or there abouts. The Anne Leckie books came out and that was my re-entry in the Sci Fi and I was like, oh, that’s what it can be like. And so then I like I’ve been doing a deep dive and I’ve been enjoying everything from, you know, Ancillary Justice to The Expanse to you know, the Ursula K Le Guin sci fi stories, The Dispossessed and stuff like that. But at the time, it was always like I wanted the swords. I wanted the magic. I wanted the swords.

 

Matt Dovey

*Laughs* And the sword lesbians

 

Cherae Clark

The creatures. Well, I you know, it took me a while to realise I wanted the sword lesbians as well. But I knew I wanted the ladies with swords.

 

Matt Dovey

Yep

 

Cherae Clark

Just didn’t know why yet.

 

Matt Dovey

Just the general aesthetics of fantasy then.

 

Cherae Clark

Matt Dovey

Yeah, though to be fair I’m asking you this question, I’m not sure I could necessariy answer it because I read and enjoy and watch both but fantasy is just where my heart is I dunno why, it’s just always clicked more.

 

Cherae Clark

I think it’s the aspect of the past. I think, you know, it’s silly to generalise but one maybe sometimes I wonder if people are like past oriented or future oriented I always enjoyed history a lot. Mediaeval history like kind of European way but also the broader framework of how we have dealt with things in the past like obviously in my bio, I talked about being interested in post colonial, post colonial history. I’m interested in how, you know, cultures have shifted because of migration because of trade, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, obviously it makes its way into my fiction but how it gets into like, how different authors show that in the fantastic is also, I don’t know it’s my jam gem throwing the sword and the like Magic Flying horse and whatever and I’m good

 

Matt Dovey

A dragon and a wizard with a robe and a sparkly orb, and yeah,

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah!

 

Matt Dovey

I just feel like…This is very broad stroke as well. I also feel like fantasy is more limitless, than sci fi as well, which is tough because they’re both just inventing things, but I feel like science fiction often feels like it has to constrain itself to a certain amount of plausibility, whereas fantasy doesn’t give two hoots for…well this is the way the magic works why? Cuz it does. Because I like it.

 

Cherae Clark

Yep. I want it. I need it. I got it. Boom.

 

Matt Dovey

It’s certainly a lot easier to write me not having said that. I can’t write sci-fi without getting caught up in my own logical read, but how would it work? I’m not going to bloody work out time travel or faster than light travel but my brain can’t let go. It’s like: No but you have to have a reason

 

Cherae Clark

yeah.

 

Matt Dovey

Where as Fantasy I can…

 

Cherae Clark

One of the main reasons I keep stopping myself every time like oh, you should write a sci fi book. It’s like okay, but how does your ship work? and I was like I don’t know.  I’m not going to do it! I can’t do it.

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, and I know it doesn’t really matter, you can just go well, it’s got the positronic drive. Why isn’t it you know, who cares? It’s hand wavey for the story. My brain just can’t. It has to know, has to understand. And it’s not like I’m bothered about that when I’m reading it necessarily. But for some reason when I’m responsible for it I hold myself to a much higher standard that I can’t move past… so yeah, fantasy till I die, I’m afraid.

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah.

 

Matt Dovey

So, The Unbroken and The Faithless your two very excellent novels are both about colonialism and post colonialism. But they’re also about culture. The power of the Khazali? comes from their faith and their ties to their native land. And Princess Luca for her part is seeking the power that Balladeer? lost when it left it’s cultural religion behind. So what got you thinking about those topics enough to turn all that symbolism into magic and start writing the whole damn trilogy on them?

 

Cherae Clark

So, I read a lot of fantasy like we said really uncritically as a kid. And by the time I got to college, I started you know, started taking English literature courses. And you know, learning how to analyse the things I read and, but in college, I could actually start applying that to books I wanted to read, not just the stuff that we had to read in high school. And so I was like, Well, I’m in this post colonial English literary theory class. I was in a francophone African literature class. So… all of that literature was about the, like various nations in Africa being colonised by the French.

 

It was all written by authors who are native to those lands, but obviously they were writing in French. And then I was also I was also in an independent study where I could actually focus on things I wanted. And so I was looking at fantasy novels where women were… fantasy media in general where women were able to be violent, so I got to kind of look at all of them. Again, through this lens of a bit more of a critical lens. And I was thinking ah well, basically all a fantasy is some kind of colonial fantasy, like, okay, the great king is going to go to war against that nation. Why? Well, they have this thing that he wants or the great explorers are going to go and steal this thing from so and so because it has a magical power that they need. And in the end of the day, it was always some sort of resource grab, which is what colonialism ultimately was.

 

And so I started thinking that I would like to look at it more with a with a I would like to write a book that was focused on that more deliberately not as a… as a incidental aspect like incidental trope of fantasy. And so part of that was figuring out what cultural capital each country was coming with and why… why the colonialism was happening. And so in this case, it was magic. And I was also inspired a bit by, I use this pitch in my like when I was doing pitch wars and things are like Twitter pitch wars, and it was like Django Wexler’s, The 1000 Names except the points of view were switched. And instead of the colonisers stealing the magic, the magic was fighting back – with the people – and that was what I really wanted to explore. And so, having the magic tied integrally to the cultures, and what kinds of things you lose as a coloniser and what kinds of things you might have to hide or protect while you’re being colonised if you want it to stay yours, as well as like how much so, how much of it is.. is memory that gets erased and so in that case, a lot of the Khazali they don’t know their magic well. They don’t have enough faith to practice it, because it is a religiously based magic system.

 

And similarly, because the Balladeerans have banned religion and want to be in it for other people, they have also lost this link to whatever cultural power they had. And I think that was definitely important for me to explore. There’s also like the aspects that are more mundane but very real aspects of colonisation, which are like language loss, story loss, generations of of dead.. I mean, we could see that right now playing out this week, so yeah.

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, um unfortunately, yeah

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah. What else… I was thinking. Oh, yeah. So it’s not just you made sure but also like, the replacement of what the coloniser wants you to think. There’s the aspect of brainwashing we’ve got Terrain and all the other conscripts who are forcibly re educated in Ballarare. So they come back, having none of this culture and so they’re estranged from from both sides. But then we also have the generation that’s right under Terrain, and the conscripts and though they were most of the rains in their native home, they were not raised with the potential for education because everyone was very silenced.

 

And so it’s a very interesting mix, I think. And I really wanted to just explore how colonisation impacts various generations on both sides, on both sides because we’ve got Luca and, and also we have General Cantik, who was of the colonising generation and Luca like she’s bad but she’s she, she was too young to be an active participant. She’s just enjoying the spoils, basically.

 

Um, Yeah, very long. answer for that question. And it can be longer, but…

 

Matt Dovey

No, no I could listen to it all day! We ran a story recently, very recently actually in the last couple of weeks that was about the Welsh language. And yeah, I mean, the Welsh were colonised by the English and we tried to drive their language out of them. You know, literally used to beat kids for speaking in their native language. You know, it’s all very real. You know, this is how empires work is they, they try and reframe your way of thinking and try and break your connection to your past because, you know, when you’ve got that connection to your past, you start to think, why are you here?  We were all right without you before. Why do we need you now?

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, it’s really that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this week as, like,

 

Matt Dovey

Israel & Palestine

 

Cherae Clark

Obviously I’m talking about the Israel and Palestine war. War? I don’t know why we’re calling it that. Genocide,

 

Matt Dovey

Yes

 

Cherae Clark

And I keep thinking about just like, the, the way nobody, nobody knows how things started, like how that kind of history gets erased continually by people in power and how Luca has to work so hard to find her own history even, and how things happened in Balladeer like, like the erasure of their religion, which was done by one of her ancestors and even though it’s her country, she’s still having a hard time which is like, like, I wonder how many Brits know that, like, the how many know about the Balfour treaty, like,

 

Matt Dovey

How many know about the famines in India in the 40s?

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah,

 

Matt Dovey

You know, Churchill gets held up as this paragon of virtue and he was a massive racist, you know, I mean, the British Empire, when they were leaving some of their former colonies, were literally throwing briefcases full of notes and documents overboard to erase the history of what they had done there.

 

Cherae Clark

So…I mean they still do that today?

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah, I mean Windrush? What?  And God knows what they’re going to do with the hostile environment they have now and trying to ship people out to Rwanda when they’re just trying to claim asylum and everything. Yeah. And yeah, you know, we, we deliberately tried to hide our own history and then I mean, I’m a product to the British education system. Did I get anything about the British Empire except “well but it gave the treat steam engine the trains to everybody.” Yeah, do we ever mention what we took from them in exchange? and people in this country have got a really very one sided view of the British Empire and think that it was just this grand, benevolent thing. Oh, well, you know, we ended slavery. Yeah, who was BIGGEST beneficiary?

 

Cherae Clark

Ah ha you started it!

 

Matt Dovey

You know? Who made the most out of it while they could, you know? just because you “oh I feel really bad for having to stab you repeatedly. 30 times. I’m gonna be the person who puts the knife down now,” that doesn’t get you merit!

 

Cherae Clark

And all those families are still in power

 

Matt Dovey

And still very rich format, and still very much benefiting from everything they stole from the world around them. And it’s, yeah, it’s just not known in this country. And people. And I think a lot of the problems we have politically as a country now: Brexit in the like, is that we’ve got such a one sided view of our own history, and we don’t actually understand our history and our place in the world now, because we haven’t got the context. You know, people voted for Brexit, thinking we’d still we’d be back to glorious Britain. Rule Britannia, you know, Victorian and everything but we’re in a very different world now. And at this point, we’re now just a small tired Island, as opposed to what we were relative to the rest of the world. 150 years ago you know, it’s different place but people don’t can’t recognise that and acknowledge that because we’re not taught it right. We’re given such a skewed view of the history. So

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah, I mean, the US is no different. You have to be interested. You have to be curious, which is actually I mean, that kind of brings us full circle. That’s why I am so adamant about You know, including these kinds of contexts, these nuanced explorations in fiction because everybody well, not everybody. Many people are reading fantasy. And some people are willing to think a little harder for it and so these stories are for those folks.

 

Matt Dovey

And like you say, you know, you were trying to deliberately and consciously think about the colonialism inherent, and I think in other fantasy, it’s not even it was just subconscious. It’s just automatic, because it’s the inherited culture and especially because so much of Fantasy was grounded in that mediaeval Europe milieu. It inherited that sort of colonialism from the time it’s just taken for granted, not even challenged, not even contemplated is it?

 

Cherae Clark

That’s also why I wanted to explore like, like, I wanted originally Terrain and Luca were just going to be like, Oh, they’re gonna be like a guard royal bodyguard royal trope and then I was like, oh, but we’re like, if she’s a conscript, that relationship dynamic is very different. So how do we get there and what can we do with it?

 

Matt Dovey

Yeah,

 

Cherae Clark

So that was really fun.

 

Matt Dovey

I think the story is best illuminated when it’s told from the perspective of the outsider. So I noticed I remember noticing with China Mieville and most of his stories, there’s always some on the fringes of society, with a protagonist in his stories, and it was very much like that here. With Terrain. She’s very on the edges of both. Like you say she’s an outsider in her own culture, and she’s was always in forever going to be an outsider in Balladeer no matter what she thought. And it’s an interesting, really illuminating the relationship between the two cultures. By doing it from the position of someone who is bridging the gap, but not really bridging suggested connections. Someone whose fallen in the cracks between them really isn’t it?

 

Cherae Clark

That’s a much better way of putting it. I’m stealing that from my next My next talk.

 

Matt Dovey

Be my guest! Um, You’ve spoken before: they both rattle along with twists and turns. It’s amazing how quickly The Unbroken gets going. But I think it’s like page three. There’s the hanging in the market square, and that’s the inciting incident and it all just unspools from there. So they rattle along at a hell of a pace. And you have spoken about how use the story engine decks to help draft. How much do you sort of rely on that? How… do you use that to kind of steer the whole thing almost and just brainstorm from scratch? Or is that just when you’re gonna get stuck? And you already know, broadly where you’re going?

 

Cherae Clark

So the story engine actually it came later in my process. I didn’t actually have that until I was in the middle of Book Two. And the story engine is kind of tricky because there are ways to incorporate it in the middle of a story. But what I find when I’m actually using it is that it can help me think of a new scene or something like that, to… If I’m if I’ve realised I have a gap, but what I actually find is that I’m pulling out motivations and stuff and I’m like, Oh, well, this doesn’t really work or something like that. And it helps me find what actual motivations are already on the page. Which I find is actually what helps the most when I have writer’s block anyway is seeing what’s actually on the page and then working from there to find the next cause and effects and so on.  But the way I do use it is it can also be helpful just to to…you know, just like fill in holes of something like I need I need a cooler place to set this thing that needs to happen. So and book Two in The Taithless, there is a scene that happens when Terrain and Luca and Terrain’s little protege go on a little adventure to a different county, I guess.

 

Matt Dovey

It’s when they go to a farm or a vineyard and all that?

 

Cherae Clark

Yes, yes. Yep. So there’s the big mountain tour thing like a big hill and there’s a story engine card that is the basically this tour. And I was like, oh, that sounds good. And then I started building things around it.

 

The next project, the next novel that I’m working on, it started as a story engine. Like from the very very beginning. And then later I got some, some cards from the deck of worlds and so I actually built out some of the areas. I might even use it use the next lore deck when, when the time comes and I’m not I’m not as active on it right now because of other stuff. But I came from story engine and I wrote a proposal based on it and sold it and so it’s coming for you guys. It’s coming.

 

Matt Dovey

Very cool.

 

Cherae Clark

But that’ll be my first full story engine novel.

 

Matt Dovey

Very cool. We’re getting close to the end now. So I’ll ask the most important question that everything’s been building up to. Did your arms inspire Terrains or did Terrains arms inspire yours?

 

Cherae Clark

*Laughs*

 

Matt Dovey

People who haven’t seen the book cover just like go and quickly Google The Unbroken book cover and see Terrains arms. On the cover that led to a great deal of thirsting on Twitter at the time.

 

Cherae Clark

So realistically, and most honestly, I will say that my arms came first.  However, at the time of writing or the time of publication, I think Terrains arms were probably better. But now I think mine are better again.

 

Matt Dovey

You got the two handed sword for conditioning

 

Cherae Clark

I got the two handed sword. I have been working on them again, very explicitly. But most importantly, like I want to.. I just wanted somebody who looked like me in a fantasy and I, so I put a butch black lesbian or like just like a, like a butch lesbian of colour at all was just something that I wanted and

 

Matt Dovey

Clearly it worked for the internet.

 

Cherae Clark

Yeah,

 

Matt Dovey

As did the cover of book two. In fact, for different reasons.

 

Cherae Clark

Oh! I’ve seen a sketch for the cover of Book Three. No one is ready. No one is ready.

 

Matt Dovey

Is this even thirstier? Book Three thirst like you’ve never known?

 

Cherae Clark

It depends on your definition

 

Matt Dovey

..and on the definition on the muscles and the cover?

 

Cherae Clark

Oh, the definition on the muscles is excellent.

 

Matt Dovey

What are you working on now that we can look forward to? That’s a clue to book three being imminent, I suppose. I mean, we always knew it was a trilogy.

 

Cherae Clark

Yes.

 

Matt Dovey

When did you?

 

Cherae Clark

I believe it is probably going to come out around the same time as the others March 2025.  Because I’ve got some other stuff in the pipelines that will be coming out… hard to say exactly when but I’ve got a secret novel. I’ve got a couple of novellas from tor.com, one of which I am actively finishing some revisions on, so late 2024, early 2025… But I’m very busy. Just probably you’re not going to see anything from me until the end of 2024 at the earliest

 

Matt Dovey

Publishing lag is very real and very frustrating. Fine event. I mean, I’d say what works would you recommend people read? I think the two novels are a very good starting place. Where can people find out more about you and about The Unbroken and The Faithless which everybody should read because they are bloody marvellous.

 

Cherae Clark

At the moment, obviously I am still on the dying site that is Twitter. And you can still find me at C underscore L underscore CL AR K but if you want something that is going to last a bit longer. You can find me…

 

Matt Dovey

It’s two weeks until this interview airs who knows!

 

Cherae Clark

Well exactly I really don’t.. I have no idea. So if you want to find me where I will definitely be because I just paid my website bill like last week. It is C L Clarke writes.com

 

Matt Dovey

Marvellous. we’ve got about 20 seconds left for this kicks off. So I’m very quickly gonna say Cherae thank you very much. It’s been a fascinating conversation.

 

Cherae Clark

It’s so good to be back.