============================================================
Author's Note:
Trigger Warning: Rape.
============================================================


The problem at Stormcaller Tower 23 seemed obvious long before we arrived. The wind-ribbons dangled limply from the underside of the zeppelin, and no flashes sparked in the blanket of clouds underneath us. Those clouds were drifting in languid spirals, and through them I caught occasional shrouded glimpses of the windmills and lightning-spheres dotting the surrounding hills. In other words, yet another broken binding circle.

Nothing about this, though, felt routine. The weather was at least 24 hours stormless, and there hadn't been so much as a single telegraph from the tower's caller — one "Val Wilkins," the records said — since then. Val didn't come outside to greet our ship when we hailed the tower, nor was there any motion through the windowed walls of the observation deck. And while it wasn't unheard of, out in the towers, for a loose storm to go berserk and murder their caller, this wasn't rampage weather. Nor was there any sign of external damage on the four-story living space at the top of the tower, nor the several-hundred-foot pyramid of scaffolding that jutted up from the mountain to bring the tower above cloud level.

Before dropping a ladder to the tower's balcony, I thumbed the dial on my shock-wand to start the capacitors filling from the batteries, and I kept one hand on the wand's grip as I tested the pressure door. Its handle easily spun, and it swung open on well-oiled hinges. The kitchen and the telegraph room were both empty. I glanced up the stairwell toward the observation deck, then drew my wand and crept down the stairs toward the binding room.

I was ready for an ambush.

I was ready for a scene of carnage.

I wasn't ready for a naked woman lying in the center of the circle.

As I stood there, jaw hanging agape, she stirred and looked back over her shoulder at me — perfect blue eyes gripping mine from behind a curtain of golden-white hair. She stood on alabaster legs and turned to face me. I scrambled backward, hit my heel on the stairs, and sat down hard on the third step. She lifted thin, delicately muscled arms, pressed palms to the invisible boundary of the circle, and leaned forward. My eyes flicked down to the unbroken arc of runes in front of the sculpted curves of her toes, and then my mind raced through possibilities as I stood back up, finally settling on the only one which made any fragment of sense.

I swallowed through a dry throat, trying to keep my eyes fixed on hers. "Val?" we both said at once.

Awkward silence reclaimed the room. I cleared my throat and forced myself to look away. Posters unfolded from the centerfolds of travel magazines plastered the walls — jagged mountain ridges, talcum tropical beaches, sun-blasted deserts, sun-dappled forests. Paperwork littered the desk by the wall, along with novels and periodicals set into tall stacks — one of which had slid messily off the front of the desk next to a toppled chair.

She slapped her hand against the empty air at the border of the circle. "Val," she repeated.

I gazed around the edge of the circle, as if there were some chance I was going to see anything other than a perfectly stable set of binding runes. "No, ma'am. My name's Remington." I started to lower my wand — and then a creeping realization caught up to me: that there was a very real source of danger here, and it wasn't in the circle. I quickly stepped forward out of the stairwell, flattening my back against the binding chamber wall. "Val. Where is … where are they?"

"Val!" she repeated, chest heaving in agitation, pounding both hands against the boundary.

"Stay calm, ma'am. I'll set you free as soon as I know we're safe." My blood ran cold. Had Val set his storm free … or was this woman sealed in there with it? If a rogue caller would do something so insane, there was no telling what they might do to me. I lifted my wand, checking its power reading and hovering my thumb over the trigger. "I need you to stay calm while I secure the tower. We might be dealing with a dangerous individual indeed."

"Val val val val val!" she screamed — flailing palms, then fists, against the edge of the circle. The glow of the runes began to shade from green to orange.

"Whoah!" I said, lunging forward, instinctively slapping my own free hand against the ward to meet hers, opening myself to the ontological bindings, pouring in willpower to stabilize them. The woman blinked and jerked her hand back, gasping in short breaths through her open mouth, her stare penetrating my eyes. Then she slapped her hand back to mine, fingers splayed, arm visibly trembling.

"You help?" she said.

I held her stare. I needed the woman calm. "I help."

"You promise?"

I glanced back at the stairwell, the hackles on the back of my neck rising. This sort of noisy distraction was just asking for an ambush. "I promise. Now, I need you to be calm. Can you do that?"

Her Adam's apple bobbed up and down as she swallowed. "Yes. Calm."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Wonderful," I said, whirling around and stalking toward the stairs, leveling my wand. "I'll be right back."

I had already cleared the upper floors on my way here. Unless the good Wilkins had found a way to climb down the tower without deploying the emergency ladder, that left only one place left for them to be — the lowest floor. The stairwell and toilet were both empty, and the door to the living quarters was closed.

I kicked in the door near its knob, and it flew open with a bang, wood splintering from the frame. The room inside was pitch black, but I heard a yelp and a thump from the far end. The room reeked of urine. I stood in the doorway, wand pointed at the scrambling noises across the room, and fumbled for the light switch, heart pounding in my throat.

Click — a tableau of ordered bookshelves, strewn bedsheets, and one huddled form.

Val Wilkins turned out to be a rounded man in a rumpled caller's suit, with gaunt eyes, uncontrolled hair and two day's worth of stubble. He was sprawled against the wall on the floor by his bed, staring blankly toward me with a look of undirected terror. His eyes gradually shifted into focus as he blinked against the sudden light, and then widened in recognition as his eyes wandered around my uniform.

"Help me," he whispered.

"You, sir," I said coldly, "aren't the one that needs help. Where's your storm?"

His eyes rolled side to side, and sweat began to bead on his forehead. "No! No. Not mine. Oh, gods, don't let her see me."

"Your storm," I said, pronouncing each word slowly and heavily. "Is it in the circle."

"By the Storm-Father's beard, I hope so."

I frowned. "Who's the woman? Why did you bind her?"

He began to laugh, high and strangled, in great heaves shaking his body. "Don't you get it? Oh, Eurymachus, who taunted the storm to gather its howls of rage as lift for his wings! And then when he flew too high, he lost control and fell into its embrace!"

"Stop speaking in riddles!" I snapped, stepping forward and prodding his leg with the tip of my shock-wand, thumb hovering over the trigger. "What's going on?"

Val's laughter wracked his form, shifting into sobs, and he crumpled into a ball on his side, arms hugging his knees. Tears streamed down his face as he rocked back and forth, deflating like a ripped zeppelin.

"It's her," he whispered. "She's the storm."

---

I climbed back to the zeppelin long enough to inform Captain Fairmont that there was a situation in the tower requiring the utmost delicacy and discretion, and that none of his crew were to descend the ladder. If I did not check in at 24-hour intervals, or if anyone attempted to escape, they were to bring all weapons to bear and raze the structure to the ground.

While Val refused to go upstairs, he did calm significantly when I told him that the woman was still in the circle. I handed him the flask of Scotch from my belt, watched him drain it, and prompted him: "She's the storm."

"Don't ask me," he said. "Ask your eyes. Far better for all of us that it's not true."

"If you trapped some poor lass in your binding circle, this is your one chance to come clean, or I'll prosecute your tribunal myself."

He barked a short, husky laugh. "And how would she get here? Brave six leagues of storm-ripped canyons and scale the tower?"

"Delivered on a zeppelin, no doubt. I've heard how lonely the towers get. Easy enough to grease the palm of a captain for some companionship."

"Check the manifests," he said. "The last ship here was a cargo runner three weeks ago. Last week's delivery never showed up, gods know why. I'd have cleaned out the pantry eating for two."

"And how exactly," I said, "do you propose that one day you're provoking a bound aetherial spirit of wind to stir up the hurricane around the tower, and the next day it has somehow begun pounding hands against the ward and calling your name?"

He looked away.

"Assuming your wild story holds," I said, "what am I supposed to do with it?"

"Her."

"Her?" I asked caustically. "Has she got a name?"

His face twitched. He stared down at his hands, and said nothing more.

---

It was time to get her side of the story.

She scrambled to her feet as I entered the binding room. "Val?"

"He's downstairs," I said, picking up the fallen chair and setting it down with its back toward the circle, "and I am desperately attempting to figure out what in the Storm-Father's name is going on here." I sat down straddling the chair, leaning my crossed arms over its back. "May I ask your name, ma'am?"

"Name?" She blinked slowly.

Then she opened her mouth, and what followed I can only describe as the fluttering of leaves in a breeze and the negative pressure of an approaching storm, punctuated by the low echoing rumble of distant thunder.

I jolted, windmilled, and fell backwards off the chair, all thoughts of a hoax fleeing. She blinked and pressed her hands to the wards again as I picked myself up. "S-sorry. Remeenton? I am sorry, Remeenton." She looked down with a very human sigh. "That scare Val too. He call me —" she pursed her lips around the unfamiliar syllable — "Kyohn. Better for you?"

I dusted down my traveling coat with a weak chuckle, trying not to stall the conversation. "Chione? Oh, my. A man of the classics, our Master Wilkins."

She stared blankly at me.

"… ah, never mind. Well. I suppose that renders my next several dozen questions moot, and brings us to the big one: what now?"

She blinked several times, then gave me an uncertain echo of a smile. "… Val?"

Er. I had meant that as a rhetorical question. "I'm … not sure that would be a good idea right now."

Her face darkened, and my ears popped as the pressure in the room dropped a few millibars. I thought I heard the distant roll of thunder somewhere outside, and a bit of yellow shaded into the green glow of the ward-runes. "You make promise."

Oh, hell.

I had, hadn't I.

Every alarm klaxon in my head began screaming. I took a deliberate step forward, drew in a breath to steady myself, and pressed a hand to the wards. "Chione." I looked into her eyes, pulse hammering, and lunged for a way to buy time that wasn't entirely a lie. "Val is … not well right now. I am helping him. Let me work."

She stared into my eyes. The negative pressure slowly receded, and the wards returned to green. "You are … doctor?" She tilted her head. "He … sick?"

"… Sort of?" Sick in the head, at least.

She narrowed her eyes, then backed away to the center of the circle and curled herself up into a ball on the floor. "You bring him better." A spark flickered in her eyes as she glared past her knees at me. "You make promise."

---

Val stood as I walked back into his living quarters, and gave me an imprecise chest salute. He hadn't shaved, but his hair had been hurriedly brushed and he'd changed into a fresh suit. "Mister Rand, sir. I don't think that I got to thank you for —"

I closed the door behind me, then interrupted him with a stinging slap to the cheek. "You son of a street-whore," I hissed, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him in. "You tell me what you did to your shapeshifting spirit upstairs. You tell me right now. Because thanks to your cowardice, before I understood what was happening here I made a binding to help it in exchange for its good behavior, and what it wants is you, and fellow Caller or not, I am not about to start a rampage just to save your sorry ass."

His face blanched. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh hell."

"My thoughts exactly. Now start talking before I drop you with my shock-wand and drag you upstairs."

"No no no. You can't do that. I promised her —"

My fingers tightened around his clavicles. "It."

He blinked rapidly and pressed on. "I, I, promised her —"

"Wilkins. In that circle upstairs is the ectropic manifestation of the surrounding countryside's atmospheric conditions. Subtle perturbations of entropy given volition, and bound to our volitions, by applied thaumic pataphysics. It can bring gentle rains to a thousand farms or generate electricity for a million citizens or turn this tower into a smoking crater, and whatever the hell it is, it most certainly is not a 'she', so you are going to finish that sentence in a way which does not dig us even deeper into this insane dilemma you created."

He swallowed. "I promised it that … uh. That." He tugged at my forearms. "Please let go."

I shoved him roughly onto his bed. "Talk."

He cowered back. "That if she … it … forgave me for everything I did, one day we could retire together to a little house in the hinterlands."

I opened and closed my mouth several times.

"It's not like she ever actually would have, though! We were role-playing! I bound her into saying it!"

I shook my head numbly, hoping that I could unhear his confession, but that worked no better than unseeing the woman in the binding circle.

"You sick little pervert," I finally managed.

"I know! It was a mistake. But you said it yourself, it gets so lonely out here!"

"I don't even know where to start. Maybe with what possessed you to make that sort of promise. I can't imagine you discussing mutual retirement with a gauzy cloud of ectoplasm, so … how long have you been making it look like some sort of nymph for you?"

His shoulders sagged. "Six months."

"How did you even do that? And what possessed you to interact in any non-essential way with something that wants to murder you in your sleep?"

Val suddenly sat up straight. "Because I felt sorry for her, okay?"

I sagged back against the door. "It."

"No. Listen." He pointed an accusing finger at me. "There's no Tower ribbon on your shirt. You think you understand Stormcalling, keeping the capitol sunny or bringing rains to the farms? You don't know what it's like to … to torture your storm, because that's what we do day in and day out." His lips curled into a grimace. "We don't get your simple bargains. To spin the turbines and charge the lightning-orbs, we've got to get them angry. Humiliate them. Hurt them. Make bargains that we twist in the worst possible way, bargains that they regret but can't refuse. And they seethe, and they glare, and the storm whirls around the tower, and we go to sleep knowing that if the wards fail we'll be ripped apart piece by piece, because we're monsters, we're demons, and it's all deserved a hundred times over. So to hell with your condemnation of me finding a way to pretend I'm not terrible, for a few moments of escapism that nobody except Chione is here to judge me for."

He glared at me in the sudden silence.

"Uh," I said. "So. How did you do it?"

He crossed his arms and turned away. "At first, it was just me reading to her," he said sullenly. "Though she was definitely an 'it' at the time. At first I thought that maybe it would get more upset if I taunted it with the things it couldn't have — that I'd have an easier time making quotas that way. I started with some novels … some magazine articles … an Albion travelogue. Then I hung up the poster that went with the Albion article. I started hanging up all the posters.

"But then one night I read her a feature on agricultural Stormcallers, right? And I went to hang up the picture, and she howled and slammed into the wards, and I came within four degrees of rampage, and I freaked out, and I apologized, alright?" Val's voice went soft. "I apologized to her. I said … I'm sorry. I'm sorry that couldn't be us. And I ran crying out of the room." He closed his eyes, and his lower jaw trembled. "Don't you judge me. You don't know what it's like."

I swallowed through a dry throat, not certain what to say.

"I missed quotas for two weeks straight," he continued softly. "The only reason the turbines didn't go dead is that I avoided the room entirely. I think she got frustrated that I was avoiding her."

"Right," I said. "Even a city storm will rampage if it stays bound for long enough without seeing its caller. You were playing with lightning there."

"But I couldn't work up the heart to hurt her when I was doing the bindings. That's when I got desperate. Perverted. Quotas to meet, after all." He looked away. "I've got girlie magazines here. Who doesn't, alone in a tower for so long? So I'd …"

I held up a hand. "I don't want to know."

He swallowed. "Right. You know. Up there."

"Wilkins, I just said …"

"Right, right. But you need the context. Another way to torment her with nice things she couldn't have. And then one day I walked in and she just … looked like that. Don't ask me how. I have no idea."

"So, for six months, you've bound her to …" My voice trailed off. My stomach twisted into a tight knot.

He sat down on his bed, smiling sadly. "What, like that's worse than the two years before it?"

I fumbled for the doorknob, yanked it open, and dashed into the hall. I almost made it to the toilet before my lunch came up.

A few moments later, I heard Val's footsteps behind me. He crouched over me.

"It's the ectropic manifestation of the surrounding countryside's atmospheric conditions. Subtle perturbations of entropy bound to our volitions by applied thaumic pataphysics. Whatever the hell it is, it most certainly is not a 'she'," he said quietly. "Right?"

"Go the fuck back to your room," I snarled, and huddled in the corner for some time after he retreated.

---

Finally, I staggered back up the stairs — closing Val's door along the way, with a glare warning him to stay put — and into the binding room. "Chione," I said. "Chione. We need to talk."

She shot upright again. "Val?"

"I promised I'd help," I said, "and I'm going to help you in the best way I can. Val is sick … very sick. And you need to leave him. I can unwork your thaumic casts. Dematerialize you. Return you to the worldstream."

The pressure in the room dropped again, and the wards shifted hue. Her eyes narrowed. "You promised," she hissed.

I slapped my hand to the ward, fighting off another round of rising bile, and tried to smooth the bindings. My own thoughts were no less turbulent, though, and the warning tinge of orange didn't recede. "Wait. Listen," I forced out, hoping I could placate her with words instead. "Do you know what Val did to you?"

"Of course," Chione said evenly. "He made quota."

I balled my hand into a fist and pounded on the ward as hard as I could. "Don't say that!" I shouted. "You can't just … just … say that, as if it excuses things!"

The silence took on an ominous weight. Her eyes bored into me. I stared back helplessly.

"Can't I?" she said, and the ice in her tone burned inside my nose and throat and chest, and I stared into the yawning chasm of the black holes in the blue of her eyes, and for a moment — a long, awful moment — I felt the weight of the rage that had curled around Val and gnawed at his soul every night as he left the room.

"He did awful, awful things to you," I said helplessly. "Don't reward him for that."

Her glare softened into a stare of appraisal. Then she stepped forward and deliberately reached out one alabaster hand, placing her palm against the base of my fist.

"Do you think … he was first?" she said softly.

I held back a dry-heave. I felt some tears spill down my cheeks.

"The first to do that, yes," I said.

"Do what?"

That stopped me in my tracks. What had they done, in these last six months? Realization hit: What meaning would sex have, consensual or otherwise, to an entity to whom it was a completely foreign construct? Was there anything he could have even done to twist that? Suddenly Val's earlier argument made a chilling sense: What could he have done that would have been any worse?

"He is … the only Storm-color … want better," Chione said, interrupting my thoughts. "He is the one … show me why. Sorry, Remeenton. Cannot talk good. But … I know. I know why Val hurt me. Now he stop. We happy. Happy bindings."

"But …" I said, and I couldn't voice a but.

She was right. Wasn't she? There was no way the Stormcallers would build him a binding circle, after all. Not for this. And once she got released from this circle, if he did do anything she didn't like, there was really only one way that could end up.

And yet … all of this was so very wrong.

She was silent for some moments, then shifted her hand to in front of my face. "You help?"

I stepped over to the safeguards that controlled the feedback loop of the runic circle, defeated. "Yes, Chione. I help."

---

She was off to the stairs like a bullet from a railsling the instant the wards went down. I walked up to the balcony level, ignoring the noises from downstairs. If I was lucky, I'd gauged this wrong and I'd go down to find a crime scene. If not, I didn't want to know.

I had the zeppelin lower down my boxes of supplies, then waved Captain Fairmont away, watching the engines bite the air and drive the balloon through the faded sky. Then I went into the telegraph room — composing two messages and sending one. Then I opened up the fuse panel, worked the main breaker out, and slipped it into my pocket.

I went back down to the binding room, sat in the chair, and stared at the empty circle until I heard two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs.

I didn't look back.

"Mister Rand, sir?" Val's voice said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me, Wilkins," I said. "Not for being too much of a coward to unload my wand into your gut and then throw you off the tower. I wish I could say with any confidence what the retribution for your crimes will ultimately be. I do, unfortunately, know mine."

There was silence for a moment. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I was sent here to be your replacement if there was any issue which temporarily or permanently were to keep you from your sworn duties in this tower. Chione seems to be rather a permanent problem in that department. You are relieved of duty, effective immediately."

"… There's one small problem —"

"Furthermore," I interrupted, "I have commissioned, at considerable expense I might add, a nighttime pickup from the fastest runabout whose pilot I could trust to be discreet. For Chione. However, as I fear for the consequences were I to suggest she occupy it alone, I paid for two seats. Destination, the eastern border. And don't you dare thank me, I still haven't decided what to tell the Callers about you."

There were some whispers back and forth behind me.

"Thank you," Chione said. I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

"I know you said not to thank you," Val said, "but it means a lot to her, so it means a lot to me."

"Just. Go."

"Right," he said, and one pair of footsteps receded down the stairs.

The other approached me, and then Chione walked into my peripheral vision and crouched down alongside me. She was wearing a caller's suit several sizes too large for her.

"What you feel?" she said.

I deliberated for a moment. "Anger."

"At who?"

I didn't answer.

"Get the right angry," she said. "Then make better."

Then she stood up and walked away.