Chapter 53.3: Jinkke’s Grief

That was neither their first nor last visit to the mess tent. In general the food quality was substandard, not even equalling that of the Synergetics cafeterias, which was saying something. Still, Jinkke was grateful they had some manner of a routine. It was more interesting than watching soldiers sharpen their weapons and much more beneficial than replaying her brother’s death for the hundredth time each hour.

Jinkke and Penny spent another day and a half that way: doing nothing but sleeping, eating, and ruminating. After the fiasco with the sleeping potion, the woman had been taken off her doses, and sleep seemed once again difficult for her to find. She complained of ongoing nightmares. Jinkke kept it to herself, but she wasn’t much better off. While she could sleep through the night, that final vision of Minkus hanging limp in her arms wasn’t one she’d ever forget. It haunted her, and why shouldn’t it?

Two days after Jindel’s departure, Penny finally grew so desperate for a distraction that she returned to the abandoned workstation at the edge of the Metamagicals research station. It was the small enclave they’d used to finish work on the field projector before infiltrating Thaumacore. They hadn’t been back to it since, even though they’d left every unnecessary component, design, and tool behind. Jinkke honestly hadn’t known if they’d ever return to that little grotto, and since they’d been back in the camp, she hadn’t intended to—she hadn’t even considered it actually. Between the traumatizing experience at Thaumacore, Jinkke’s current grief, and her attention to Penny, a shoddy excuse for an under-equiped lab buried in a backwater hollow was the furthest thing from her mind. Hands and mind itching for work, though, Penny did consider it, and before midday, she was off to do some engineering.

Jinkke didn’t say anything, but she fought the insensate urge to follow suit. it was highly unlikely Penny would have any luck formulating a worthwhile project from the irregular scraps they’d left behind. There would only have been a carbon puck, some sawed-off steel framework bits, short stretches of hose, a smattering of pulled intelligence-core components, Penny’s remaining tools and hardware, and their torch. Maybe there were other bits Jinkke had forgotten, but either way, Penny’s approach was nothing more than distraction, and Jinkke didn’t need that. Hollowly flexing her fingers around disjointed tools and parts wouldn’t change anything.

So Jinkke let Penny go, striding off in another huff as Jinkke retreated instead to their tent for— a nap. That was it. She told herself she would take a nap.

Slipping through the flap, she glanced about the space for Yissa, who was conspicuous in her absence. Jinkke hadn’t seen the other asura all the previous day; she hadn’t even been in the tent when Jinkke had woken just a few hours prior. There was no telling what the scholar was doing, but at the moment, it was just as well. Jinkke had no desire to compete with Yissa’s ever-running mouth right then.

Jinkke climbed up onto her cot. It was clearly elevated for a human, not an asura, so it took a little effort. Still, she peaked it, rolled onto her back, and closed her eyes. Lacing fingers together, she stopped running from the thoughts she’d known were right on her heels everywhere she went. That was the only way sleep would come.

Jinkke knew her grief was reasonable. She could feel it rising inside like the mercury in the Vigil camp’s thermometer, but she didn’t want to succumb to it, not again. She didn’t need to. Inside, she stared down the feeling and told it coolly that it was not foreign, it was not new, and she was not submissive to it.

She had lost Minkus before. When he’d gone off on his travels three years past, it had been the first time in literally Jinkke’s entire life that they were apart, and though she’d never told him, she had spent all too many nights grieving the sudden distance between them. It had taken time, but her reason and increasing load of intellectual pursuits had eventually pulled her out of her emotional bog and driven her on into her own, independent life. That gave her a precedent for what she faced now: a sort of practice that softened the impact. That was logical, reasonable—and time and again, lying on her cot in a Vigil tent, Jinkke lectured herself to that effect.

Of course, there were counterarguments that streamed into her thoughts. Growing up with Minkus, she’d done her fair share of research into various emotional theories. Most students of the topic agreed that intellectual reason had no real power to quell emotions, doing little more than suppressing a person’s feelings until they were compressed down into a compound even more volatile than their initial configuration—it was supposedly one of the great weaknesses of modern asuran culture. That too was reasonable, and clinical evidence actually lent more credence to that principle than to Jinkke’s current efforts to argue her way out of grief.

At the moment, though, she didn’t give two beats of a mosquito’s wing. This was all she had, and may the Alchemy repurpose her, she was hanging on to it. If she didn’t— if she couldn’t reason her way through it— well, she didn’t know what she’d do. She’d lost her Big Brother before, damn it. Now she’d lost him again, permanently, and it wasn’t fair that she should have to go on losing him again and again, every time she had a moment’s free thought. She wouldn’t do that. She just couldn’t.

For the next few hours, Jinkke fought with herself, casting thin veils of intellectual debate over mental images she was certain would break her. How could they not? She’d sat in lab rubble with his corpse in her arms. His corpse. He was her brother, her tutee, and her best and often only support. All she could see when she closed her eyes now was him laid out, flashing back and forth between the instants just before and just after his murder. In one, he lay, knowingly without his magical defenses, at the feet of some mad female’s magitechnical perversion, waiting for his own end. In the next, he was dead, beaten and broken, draped over her arms.

Though those memories held more of her imagination than she would ever want, there were others that flashed through on their heels, one after the next. After all, they’d spent their whole young lives together. Most brought a smile to her lips, but it was short-lived, as all roads led back to the worst loss of her life.

She remembered Minkus beside her cradle when she was an infant. All asura had memories spanning back that far, but the bulk of hers included her brother. She had no clear recollections of the illness she’d suffered most in that first year, but the sight of his big eyes peering happily over the rim of her bassinet brought her a peace she could feel even now, as though she could breathe because of him.

It hadn’t been a year or two before Jinkke had surpassed her brother’s cognitive skills in every measurable way, but his thrill at her accomplishments never changed. From her first puzzle to her college commencement, she had more memories of that goofy, congratulatory grin than she could count.

Because of his handicap, they’d passed through most of their educational stages at the same time, though hardly as equals. It had started all the way back at their apprenticeship, when her performance had first truly eclipsed his; she was accepted as a true intern, while he was graced with the title of intern and the role of lab janitor. She could still recall the conversation with their parents on the front stoop of their home. Her appa had bent low, taking a knee and holding her hands. Jinkke had gotten her dark brown skin from their father, but Minkus had gotten his gentle smile. “Little Spark,” he said, “your brother will require your assistance at the lab. He perpetually keeps watch over you, and now we need you to do similarly for him.” She was four, and while they’d never actually placed Minkus’ academic success on her shoulders, she saw it that way. In time he did too.

And yet, he’d never begrudged her help. He never envied her success or showed anything but excitement as she shined in all the ways he never would. Even the day she’d gotten them both accepted to the College of Dynamics—a memory now so very tainted—Minkus’ eyes had glowed brighter for the realization of her dream than for his own unexpected honor.

Thank the Alchemy, he’d forgiven her for that. Of course he had, though. He was him. And how grateful she was now that he had, before— well, before she stood where she did now, without him. She couldn’t have lived with herself if he hadn’t, not after seeing the grief in his eyes when he’d learned what she’d done to get him in.

It was that graceful way of his that had made her promise him what she had before they’d left Rata Sum.

Jinkke rolled onto her back and stared up at the round glow of the sun illuminating the thick, canvas tent. She tried to sigh but broke into a cough instead. She shot up to a seated position, taking the moment to regain control of a wheezing hack that shook her. The next memory was already playing in her mind: that promise.

Though she seemed to be playing her whole life on repeat now, this memory, far more recent than the others, had been in the forefront more often than the others; it was simply too relevant. Only the visage of Minkus’ dead body in her arms held Jinkke’s attention more often, so she actively pushed that one away in favor of the veranda.

Jinkke stood on the veranda just outside her lab in the Synergetics wing of Rata Sum. Inside, Professor Vaff and Wepp had continued assessment and reconfiguration of the power system in Penny’s smartpack, and Jinkke had just come out of the lab to collect Penny, who’d done something ridiculous to another aspect of her golem intelligence core—the woman had downright butchered that unit. What Jinkke had found was Penny and Minkus in conversation against the backdrop of a clear, blue sky, so far above the treetops of the Tarnished Coast that Jinkke couldn’t have seen ground from anywhere but the very edge of the veranda.

Whatever the two had been talking about, she’d arrived just at the tail end, body language suggesting that the human had abjectly disengaged herself from their previous subject. After a mild tête-à-tête with Jinkke, Penny had returned to the lab. Before Jinkke could do the same, Minkus had approached her, a shifting swirl of emotions on his face. All of them had precedent: love, joy, and concern all swimming there. Jinkke realized only in hindsight that there had been shame there too, and though she wished she could smack her previous self into recognition of it, there were some things the mechanics of the Alchemy would never permit.

“Big Brother?” she’d asked, her attention shifting from Penny to Minkus. “Is everything copacetic?”

“Jinkke,” he said, bounding forward to take her hand, “this— well it might sound strange. I— I need you to do something for me.”

Even before he’d finished the question, Jinkke had consigned herself to agreement. He’d only just learned how severely she’d betrayed him at the College of Dynamics. She would have done nearly anything for him before that, but after? How could she not have taken that and any other opportunity to atone?

“Anything,” she’d said to him. “Literally anything.”

He smiled then, speaking simply. Neither hesitation nor unease entered his voice. “Please be Penny’s friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“She needs friends,” he’d said, as though it were an answer.

His terse simplicity in the conversation had disarmed Jinkke some, but she still argued, “You’re superior to anything I could ever be to the human relationally. Why in the Alchemy would she require companionship from me?”

He’d let her sit with her questions awhile before finally responding with equal simplicity. She just had to be the human’s friend; that was it. He was neither coy nor complicated with it. It was the one point of the memory that still made Jinkke shiver, as though he’d known even then that something would happen to him.

He hadn’t, of course. How could he?

In truth, the two moments were a pair in her mind: her vow and Minkus’ death. In one, he’d made a ridiculous request on behalf of someone he cared about. In the other, he’d made a sacrifice on behalf of people he cared about. Both were examples of precisely who her brother had been, and why now she would do precisely as he’d asked.

There in the tent, alone, hot, and still recovering from the last coughing fit, it had taken Jinkke a while to come back to this point, but at last she’d gotten there. She had plenty to grieve, more than she probably ever could, but she also had a job. That somehow slowed the mind-rending speed of her thoughts. Maybe Penny wasn’t the only one who found respite in having a task after all.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Jinkke collected herself, slowing her breath, and dangled her legs off the side of the over-large cot. She slid herself off and dropped back to the floor of the tent.

Without looking, she fumbled and caught herself. She’d kicked something.

There was a gentle swish of leather before something heavier fell over, thudding against the earth beneath the tent’s canvas floor, and Jinkke looked down to find her brother’s pack. It had fallen over on her bare foot, and his steelwork electromagnet lay beside it.

On little more than instinct, she scooped them up, slinging the pack over her shoulder and gripping the magnet tight in both hands. She swept through the flap and headed for the grotto.