Chapter Text
This is the nameless hour, just after dawn. The sky is a pure, thin blue, shading into gold. Rosy light stretches slowly across the sandstone courtyard, rises up the high walls. In the middle sits the octagonal pond, the water so still as to be invisible.
As he comes out of the temple he takes care not to make any noise. Barefoot, he knows how to move so his robes and sash don’t rustle together. The morning air is still crisp and pure, not yet warmed up. Everything around him is motionless. He crosses the whole length of the courtyard, and when he gets to the huge brass bell on its wooden stand, he kneels, closing his eyes. He can feel his own breathing, and something else, too—like a deep, huge heartbeat of light all around him.
The inside of his head feels like the sky, like the pond, like the flagstones: a swathe of immaculate color.
When the light touches the altar, he rises and grabs the leather-bound mallet. He is a third-year talmid, sixteen years of age; he has struck the bell a thousand times to celebrate a thousand Hours of the Sun.
Just as he brings it down onto the brass, a sharp noise cracks through the air, splintering his peaceful thoughts. The next moment the mallet makes contact and there’s a glorious burst of sound, but instead of listening with his eyes closed, he turns his head, tries to see beyond the high walls, to spot the origin of the noise. The long golden waves of the bell’s echo wash over him unheeded.
Later he will remember this. If he had been faster, he could have struck the bell before the gunshot intruded on the sanctity of the hour. Ultimately, it wouldn’t have changed anything, of course. But he will still regret.
*
“The way of the wise is to be modest, humble, alert, and intelligent; to endure injustice…”
He is a sixth-year talmid, nineteen years of age, and the civil war has been going on for three years. It is easy to forget about it from within the sandstone walls of the Ayha’ari temple. An Ishbalan can no longer leave the Ishbalan province—no matter; talmids must live at the temple. An Ishbalan can no longer serve in the Amestrisan army—no matter; talmids must not bear arms. An Ishbalan can no longer trade in exotic food and clothing—no matter; talmids must lead a simple life. Everything is very nearly normal.
“To make themselves beloved of all; to be gracious in their interactions even with subordinates; to avoid wrong-doing…”
Listening to the lesson, he works through katas until sweat runs through his robe, in perfect coordination with the others. He is the best student of his year, and his fellow talmids offer him every pretense of respect, but he knows they murmur about his brother. If he asked, they’d go thrash him so he’d learn his lesson. Knowing this makes him want to thrash them.
As the anger rises he tries to channel it into the exercise, as always, hands moving through the air, parrying an invisible enemy. He needs control. More control.
“To judge each one according to their deeds; to seek the truth at every turn, and thus continually refine their grasp of the world.”
He tries every day to clear away his rage, and every day it comes back. Why is he so vulnerable to it? Has his master ever struggled in this way when he was a student himself? He dares not ask. More control. More control. He tries to remember the pink blue-gold of the nameless hour; how his mind always felt pure and clear as he walked barefoot across the flagstones, as he prayed before the bell. But he is too old now for that chore. And anyway these days there are always gunshots in the distance.
The reading is over. They break their stance, breathless, and kneel to salute. “Thank you. Rise,” the master says, closing his book, and they rise, thanking him in turn. It is the Hour of Life; they must now clean the training room and then clean themselves. More tasks await after lunch.
Just as he’s about to leave for the showers, he hears his name. The master, still sitting cross-legged on the eastern side of the room, is calling him. He goes to him and kneels again.
“How is your brother?”
Shame tastes like copper. “He is well, master.”
“How are his studies?”
It’s no longer shame; it’s already anger. Anger at his master—when really, it’s his brother’s fault for putting him in such a position. Control. More control. Now it circles back to shame, thicker in the back of his throat. He says nothing. He tries to call up the long echo of the bell in his mind, but it won’t come.
“My talmid.” His master is patient. “I asked about your brother’s studies.”
“I told him to stop,” he blurts out. “He is teaching himself Xingese so he can learn more about alchemy. I told him—the shaping arts are an affront. He said something about… energy in the ground, flowing through the world…”
Isn’t that reminiscent of Ishbala? his brother dared to say. And he, the sixth-year talmid, was reminded despite his better judgment of what he felt in the mornings when he prayed before the bell. How he thought he could sense Her embrace, around him, through him, with him alone, in this nameless hour.
Then he remembered himself, with a spike of anger. Meanwhile his brother kept talking—about sending out good things into this flow of energy, so that the world could amplify and return them. A virtuous cycle. He is reading Xingese and Amestrisan literature, cracking his mind open to let in those foreign thoughts, as if he doesn’t fear what’s inside, as if he doesn’t feel the need to keep himself bound, corseted, tightly ruled at every moment.
Again that copper taste. He can never be as firm as he should with his elder twin; all he can do is nag and complain, receiving only infuriating, disarming smiles in return. In the end he always leaves in a huff without having achieved anything. On his way home that last time, he saw black-veiled grandmothers praying for their dead daughters and sons. He smelled smoke on the eastwards wind. He heard people boasting about killing off Amestrisan soldiers, burning their towns to weaken their army. A virtuous cycle?
More helpless anger, rising like nausea.
“Nonsense as always,” he says sharply to cut off his own thoughts. “I’m sorry, master. I will try harder to make him hear reason.”
His master is silent, as often. Eventually he releases him, having offered neither reprimand nor encouragement.
*
Ishbala spoke the universe into being. Pick up a rock and call it a rock, and marvel that it has a name and a place in this world, insignificant as it is. All is determined: all is where it should be. This is why alchemy spits in the face of the divine. If you reshape things, they will be nameless, beyond the reach of God, no longer part of Her domain.
Even time had to be called into existence. Years and days and hours all have names, except of course for the two nameless hours, when Ishbala cannot intervene in the world. There are rituals to observe during the unlucky hour of the evening, to ward off the evil eye. As shadows fall and darkness rises, children must not brush their hair, a man must not wash his face, a woman must not wear jewelry. Then the Hour of the Star comes and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
His mother wears clip-on earrings that she can snap off during the nameless hour, impatiently. When it’s over, she puts them back on quick, often one-handed. Sometimes he wishes she’d be slower about it, take the time to really consider what the ritual means. Sometimes he wonders whether she only observes it when he’s around. He is the only one in his family to walk the path of priesthood.
He asked her once, when he was a child, the name of his hour of birth; and she said she had no idea. A lot of kids at school knew all their Names of Birth and could rattle them off—Year of the Needful, Month of the Bird, Hour of the Master, a very lucky combination! For a long while, he was convinced that his mother’s refusal to tell him meant he was born during the Hour of Dirt, or maybe the Hour of Death, or possibly even during the unlucky hour. After he joined the temple he realized she wasn’t superstitious enough to lie to him and genuinely didn’t remember.
*
He is a ninth-year talmid, twenty-two years of age, in the last stretch of his novitiate. The civil war has been going on for six years.
Three months ago, the national army invaded. Up until then it had only been the eastern troops, small squads of military police trying to maintain the peace. What peace? And now the army wants them all to leave, saying the place is theirs, calling them invaders, parasites. His blood boils just thinking of it. Of course the Ishbalan people will not be pushed out of their holy land. But the steel-and-iron machine of Amestris will not stop coming.
Infuriatingly, his brother still hasn’t interrupted his studies. Worse, he has a study group now, ten people or so who share his blasphemous passion. How has he found so many in the whole of Ayha’ari? Laughter and animated conversation spill out the windows of the decrepit house in which they gather. They dream of friendship between nations even as their so-called ally—technically, their own country—crushes them slowly in its fist. But they’re so unobtrusive, so harmless, so foolish really, that no one cares to stop them.
There was a row, recently. Or rather, he the almost-priest had a one-sided row with his heathen brother who, despite having never even been at the temple, is infinitely more patient and in control than he’ll ever be. Why does his anger fall flat whenever they fight like this? Oh, it’s always there—he cannot remember the last time they had a normal conversation, without yelling on his part—but he can also never go any deeper than surface-level irritation. Despite himself, he gets snagged into a debate, and then all his arguments dry up until there’s nothing left to do but walk away, once more.
Only afterwards, away from his twin’s influence, does he start boiling with rage again. Reshape the world! Isn’t it scrambled enough already? He was thirteen when he joined the temple. Coming back out a decade later to take his place in the community, he recognizes nothing. Ruin and chaos and grief press in from all sides.
Walking through the animated market calms him. Amidst its busyness, everything still feels relatively normal. The bleating of goats, the rumble of the crowd, the tinkle of coins changing hands. Street mongrels weave between people’s legs, hunting for morsels of food. On the stalls, watermelons shine like huge dark green gemstones, beans and millet and oranges pile up in crates. Multicolored spices rise up in perfect cones…
Watermelons? This is the dry season. His fist clenches underneath his sash.
“Talmid! Talmid ha’Ishbal! Have a slice, take it freely, and say you’ll pray for me!”
His mouth waters but he doesn’t take the piece of fruit. The old woman holding out the brass plate beckons him closer, smiling a toothless smile. “Don’t you like watermelon? And look at these oranges!”
“Where did they come from?” he asks, glaring.
Her smile slants to the side. She lowers her voice. “I think you know, talmid. Would you like to see more? I have other crates in the back…”
He does know that Aerugo has been supplying guerilla fighters. This is not the first time he’s been approached to fight. Someone with his training can do a lot of damage on the field, and when he achieves priesthood, he’ll be duty-bound to protect the holy land, its people and its laws. But this will not make him a soldier. And servants of Ishbala have sworn to fight only with their bare hands.
He scowls and walks away, ignoring the fruit seller’s calls. Several talmids and novice priests have taken arms already, breaking their oath. Not him, though. Never. The older priests approve of his conduct; he knows people whisper that he’s the master’s favorite, his best student in over two decades.
For this he feels no pride. His family has always been lax about observance, but he can’t bring himself to assert his authority upon them. So he must be irreproachable in every other way to compensate. Through his hard work, their flaws are tolerated, indulged, forgotten. Through him, perhaps, they can all live a little longer. He has so much to protect, and so few ways to do it.
*
He is a tenth-year talmid, twenty-three years of age, on the brink of priesthood. The civil war is entering its seventh year.
The square, squat, flat-roofed buildings of his hometown shade from ochre to red in the setting sun. He walks fast—he has to, or the searing pavement will burn the soles of his feet. New clothes are hard to come by, but he would rather go barefoot than wrap his feet in rags.
He shouldn’t use that as his excuse to hurry. But the fact is that he can’t remember the last time he went a whole day without seeing a corpse, and it would be dishonorable to look away—acknowledging them is the least he can do since there are now too many to be buried, left under the sky, lined up under thick embroidered blankets. Ayha’ari is the last town before the desert, and they’ve been cut off from the world for almost a decade. Resources have dried up slowly. Caravans no longer come from the east; Aerugo has shut their borders. No more shiny watermelons, no more Xingese books. Hunger and disease are the harbingers of the Amestrisan army.
With the help of Ishbala, they can bear all hardships. Still, walking across town to get to his parents’ house has become an exercise in endurance. Part of him wishes he could just stay at the temple. But the Day of the Star, the last day of the week, is for fasting and resting; so he goes home, dutiful.
In the backyard, he cannot help going through katas again, again, again.
“Aren’t you hot?” his mother says from the kitchen. “I’ve drawn you a bath.”
He goes inside, divesting himself of his sash and robes, because a bath is not something you refuse: they haven’t had running water in a long time. She must have exhausted herself pulling the water from the well, and he wishes she’d asked for his help since he was uselessly exerting himself anyway. Neither of them have obeyed the command to rest.
Sitting in the cold water, he watches it turn brown with dirt.
“Oh! Sorry.” His brother just pushed the curtain aside. “I didn’t know you were home.”
“It’s Star Day.”
“Is it? Really, I’m losing track of time…”
His brother crouches next to the brass tub to rifle through a cabinet. Clearly he’s not resting either. Even in this room, he’s keeping papers and books everywhere. How different they are—one could wonder at so many differences between twins. Why does he need glasses, for instance? Probably because he’s read too much by candlelight.
“Are you still studying?”
His brother gives him a tired smile. “Must we do this again now? Under our parents’ roof?”
“I don’t mean to fight,” he says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Drops of water trickle down his wrist, catching the light before they fall off his elbow. “There’s nothing else you’ll talk about these days.”
His brother just laughs that off. “Well, since you’re asking—” and he launches into an animated speech about Xingese alchemy. It’s true, though, that he won’t talk about anything else. Is this like katas for him? Again, again, again. So he doesn’t have to think about the corpses on the streets.
It really is blasphemy. More importantly, it is blasphemy born of Amestrisan culture. By all rights someone should shut him up for good, make him understand what he refuses to see. But he always looks so brightly happy talking about this. Gathering with the few friends he has, poring over translations, he keeps believing in a better world. Even as Amestris slowly chokes them out—
All of a sudden the anger’s back, white-hot despite the cold bath. “Burn those books,” he says, rising out of the tub. “Or I’ll do it myself.”
*
“Rise, Hayal ha’Ishbal.”
He rises, a warrior priest. Inside him, only turmoil and worry; nothing like what he pictured as a young talmid, praying silently during the nameless hour of the morning. At the time his future felt self-contained, polished, like a marble in Ishbala’s cupped hands. He’s only ever felt less assured the more he matured into adulthood.
His master looks into his pinched face and smiles—never with his mouth, but with his eyes. “Trust in Ishbala. Even the dark things have a name.”
His brother loves that phrase, too. When he can’t translate a difficult paragraph in one of his damned books, he’ll sigh Oh well, even mysteries have a name. A way to say that everything has a place in the world. Maybe he’s more religious than he knows.
It is him, the priest, who sometimes feels his faith waver. Last week he travelled all the way to Mehe’ari with twelve of his fellows to bring them food and first aid after skirmishes with the advance eastern troops. On the way back, he saw three dead children trapped under their mother who was shot trying to shield them. Does that kind of thing have a name?
He stopped before them to recite the prayers for the dead, and wondered what good it did.
At times he feels like he’s going insane. What is happening? Why has it been happening for so long and getting so much worse? The more he discusses politics, the less he understands. Amestris allied themselves with Ishbal only so they could betray them next. It is what everyone says. It is factually what happened. But why would they? What was there for them to gain? His brother chooses to find hope in that absurdity: he believes it has to mean there’s something else, something more. Even the senseless things have a name. So really, his faithless brother trusts more in Ishbala than he does. He truly is going mad.
Usually the new priests would have celebrated their ascension together, but when the ceremony is over they each simply go their own way. He hurries down the streets, returning home. The bell strikes the nameless hour of the evening just as he was about to wipe some dirt and sweat off his jaw. A man must not wash his face. He drops his hand, impatient. Already he’s itching. An hour of this? Next to him a woman hurries, earrings dangling from under her shawl. He is now a full-blown warrior priest, a guardian of the faith: he should shout at her to take those off lest she brings bad luck upon them all. But he feels like a child more than anything else. And every hour is unlucky these days.
The wind rises, and firebrands fly through the air in swirling patterns.
*
“You must go home,” his master tells him when he presents himself at the temple the next morning.
“Master?”
“They’ve marched through Dar Rheos. The Kanda region is next.”
All of a sudden he can’t feel his fingertips. The firebrands from last night spiral through his memory. “What…”
Control. More control. He exhales, forces the blood back in his veins. He came here to honor his master and do his duty.
“What… will you do? Tell me how to help you, Master.”
“I will go south into Aerugo. I do not need your help.” His master lays a hand on his arm. “Go find your family.”
Eight years of civil war, the trip to Mehe’ari only the week before, fire on the eastwards wind—and yet it feels like he’s being blindsided. The dry, calloused palm on his forearm scares him more than everything else. A master usually refrains from touching his students outside of the training room.
He bows, deeply. “Master.”
And then he runs.
*
The half-collapsed house his brother and his friends use as a place of study is closest, so he forces himself to go there first, fully expecting to find it empty—the bells are tolling now, there are cries of alert and people fleeing down the streets, more and more, surely everyone knows. Walking quickly, he pushes back the curtain without announcing himself. Everyone’s gone indeed. Everyone but his brother. Who’s still studying.
“Brother! The Amestrisan army is near,” he pants. “We have to move out! Leave your research and—”
“Hang on. I’m almost done…”
Hang on? Even his fear cannot resist his anger, rising already in his chest. But before it can burst out of him he sees the circles and the swooping lines on his brother’s arms.
They crowd his perception like halos after staring at the sun, whiting out his sight, his brain. He shakes his head hard. “What—”
His brother looks up, worried. How can he stand these things in his peripheral vision? The lines seem raised, alive, digging into the fabric of the world.
“Are those tattoos?”
“Oh, those?” And his brother starts explaining the basis of alchemy like they have all the time in the world. Analysis, deconstruction, reconstruction—
“I don’t care about that!” he shouts, louder than he ever shouted at his brother before. “The Amestrisan military—”
“Please, stop,” says a voice behind him.
He whips round, then freezes: three of the older priests seem to have followed him from the temple. They pull him out of the house and he follows—obeying his elders is too deeply ingrained for him to resist. As soon as they’re out, though, the absurdity of what just happened hits him.
“Why do you hold me back? Don’t you know his research is sacrilege—”
“I’m begging you, calm down. Your brother’s work may be our salvation.”
The world must have inverted itself while he wasn’t looking. “What?”
“Have you heard of the State Alchemists?”
His blood starts icing down again, and he chases the fear with a burst of anger. “Of course I have! They’re on their way here right now! What does it have to do with my brother?”
The elders exchange guilty, hungry looks. Then they talk of power, of blood, of retaliation. His stomach heaves. These men have taught him for a decade and he believed them wise. But they’re just deluded and hungry for massacre. And his brother who insisted his research would contribute to the harmony of the world…
“You—”
The blast is so huge he doesn’t really hear it, just feels it in his teeth and his stomach.
Out of reflex he grabs the man closest to him and shields him from the shockwave, which still sends them flying down the street, rolling for several paces. Getting back up, he sees that a hole has been blown clear through the wall in front of which they were standing.
“They’re here!” He pulls up the elder by his robe and hurries to the others, helping them to their feet then shoving them down the street. “Go! Run!”
All around him people are running, crying, shouting, and he’s reminded horribly of rats fleeing a burning granary. His insides twist again. His holy land and its holy people. His sixteen-year-old self kneeling in prayer, dreaming of serving his community for the rest of his days. Ishbala’s embrace. The breath of light in the morning. What can he do? What can he do?
Another blast, further away, echoes into his guts. It snaps him out of his spiral. He runs back to his brother’s place of study, which is now empty, he must have gone to their parents—but has he found them? What if they’ve gone out to find their sons?
Dashing back out, he runs down the street, faster than he’s ever run before. Around him people are hurrying, some running too, others just walking, disoriented. In some strange stretches of space everything looks almost normal; here a man leaning against a stone wall, looking mildly stunned, trying to hold his spilling guts inside.
The mortar fire is almost constant now, huge explosions tearing through the sky. The air is filling with white dust, burning his lungs.
A military squad awaits in front of the wall surrounding the yard of his parents’ house. Ten years of training reach into his soul and possess him. A soldier aims at him, incredibly slowly, like minutes have turned to hours. Sacred Hour. Needful Hour. Empty Hour.
He slams his palm back into the soldier’s chin and hears his neck snap. The others are scrambling to react, obviously unprepared against a bare-handed civilian. He hits with his elbows, with the flat of his palm again, and then he steps on someone’s dislocated shoulder to vault over the wall.
“Mother! Father!”
Through a cloud of dust someone waves and calls his name. He slows down and almost staggers with relief when he sees not only his parents but his brother there—and at least a dozen fearful neighbors who’ve found refuge in their high-walled yard.
Everyone’s talking at once. Where to run? East, where everyone’s going? Only the desert awaits. South? They say Aerugo has closed its borders. West, where the army’s coming from? A State Alchemist is leading the attack. If they stay together, they might be mowed down all at once. Split up? Nobody wants to risk dying alone.
His mother’s talking about how, luckily, they’ve gathered some of their possessions ahead of time to flee. He’s dizzy again, his ears belatedly ringing from the blasts. What possessions? They’ll be lucky to escape with their lives.
But his brother seems to remember something and pulls him aside while the others talk over one another. “I want you to hold onto this for me.”
“What? What is it?”
“My research. It’s all I could save.” And he forcefully wedges a notebook under the striped sash proclaiming him as a warrior priest. “There’s something strange about Amestrisan alchemy, it’s been there from the start, and I think I finally cracked it. This has to be preserved, whatever else happens.”
“Why don’t you hold onto it yourself!”
His brother manages to smile at him. “You’re a trained warrior. I’m just a bookworm. Who do you think is most likely to make it out alive?” He even laughs, a thin sound. “Look at me. I can’t stop shaking.”
It’s true. He’s shaking. But he’s also so level-headed, as always. Which means he wasn’t deluding himself, drowning himself in study to forget what was coming. He knew, and he was trying to stay ahead, to win some sort of battle. He thought he really could save them all. With a weapon, as the elders surmised? No. Not his brother.
He, the priest, opens his mouth to ask a blasphemous question. Without anger, for the first time in over a decade, maybe. His brother looks like he knows what he’s about to say, like he was only waiting for him to ask for real—
But that’s when they all spot the man on the ledge.
*
This is his first encounter with alchemy:
Lightning crackles down the side of the building and into the ground. The yard bubbles grotesquely under their feet, eerie blue light shining through yawning cracks. For a moment sheer fascination overtakes even his fear as he watches the very earth come to life, moving as if of its own accord.
Of course, he doesn't know the tattoos in the alchemist’s palms. He doesn’t understand what they’ll mean when he claps his hands. But part of him feels the unbearable tension straining under his feet, like two powerful magnets brought together by force, raring to split apart—
“Get down!”
His brother doesn’t need ten years of rigorous training to throw himself in front of someone. He was always the better twin.
*
Afterwards—
“WHAT IS THAT?”
He hadn’t ever screamed like that before. He didn’t know he could.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”
Something tore in his throat. The tattooed arm is reaching for the sky, fingers crooked like claws.
His head is full of—insects—noise—light glinting off a blade—a furious buzzing—red and black water—
“Dr. Rockbell!”
He screams it, or hears it, or thinks it, or becomes it—
You
will
never
be
forgiven
*
*
He walks into the desert on bare feet, away from the crater of his city.
The notebook is tucked against his broken ribs. The tattoo throbs into his arm, into his brain, burning like fever.
Blood runs down his face like tears, thick and pasty, seeping from underneath the bandages. He doesn’t wipe it off. This is the nameless hour.