Of the Republic. A Field Companion

The World

what is known and not denied

Gilead calls itself the answer to a fallen world. A theocratic Republic built on the promise of order, raised upon the lie that the silence of magic is the silence of God's favour. There are towers. Purity towers. They hum at a frequency below hearing. Where they stand, no spell holds. This is called grace. This is called the Lord's hand resting on His people.

Outside the borders, the world continues. Canada remains. Letters do not. Within the borders, every street is a stage, every window an audience, every neighbour a possible Eye. Faith is performance and performance is survival. Most have forgotten there was ever a difference.

The Blight is what they call the dying of the magic that used to live in everything. In stones, in wells, in the dark behind a child's closed eyes. It came, the priests say, because the world had earned it. It came, the handmaids do not say, because someone in a high cathedral wanted it so.

The Order

that which all citizens know and must address correctly

Commanders Absolute civil authority in their districts. They are addressed bowed. They are not addressed twice.
The Eyes Plainclothes informants and enforcers. They walk among. They are not feared because they are seen. They are feared because they are not.
Aunts Wardens of doctrine. Teachers of submission. They carry cattle prods and the kind of certainty no argument has ever reached.
Wives Blue-clad consorts to the Commanders. Some are cruel. Some are tired. Some are both, and which one you meet is a matter of the hour.
Marthas Household workers in green. They see everything and say almost nothing. Almost.
Guardians Uniformed enforcers. Young men with rifles and orders. The orders are usually enough.
Handmaids Bearers of the next generation. Property, by law. Persons, by every other measure that matters. Dressed in red so the regime can never lose sight of them. So no one can.

The Three

though none of these names appear on any registry

Ofcom

once Aramynta. Ara, to anyone left who is allowed to say so.

An engineer in a Republic that insists women cannot be engineers, and which quietly cannot do without her anyway. She builds. She has always built. Beside her walks a thing she made herself, a Steel Defender, loyal as a dog, sharp as a verdict. The regime has no language for what to call it, so they call it permitted, and look away.

She is quieter than her companions. This is sometimes mistaken for calm. Lately, she has begun to recognise the pattern in her own absences. The thing inside her has a name now. That is not the same as a cure.

Ofcolin

once Goldie, and Goldie still, in the room she is currently standing in.

A warlock with a pact she does not name and does not need to. Where the Republic teaches obedience to a god of order, she has kept her own faith. Older, stranger, deliberately impolite. She has stood in chapels with the words on her tongue and not said them. She has stood in chapels with worse words on her tongue and not said those either. Not yet.

She laughs in places designed to forbid it. This is a kind of resistance, and she knows it, and she does not stop. She is missing two fingers, lately. She does not say who took them. She has not stopped using her hands.

Ofrhys

once Gwendoline, and once again, lately, when the towers are far enough away.

A wizard of the Abjuring tradition. Wards, shields, the small and thankless magics of staying alive. For years the towers held her quiet. Then, recently, they did not. She cast her first unsuppressed spell since the Republic took its name, and the shape of the world rearranged itself slightly around her shoulders.

Those who knew her before will tell you she is fragile. Those who have watched her since are no longer sure that word is doing any work.

Where We Left Off

previously, in the Republic

The Cell. Three women woke without their names in a Gilead re-education chamber. A keypad. A guess. A door. The first taste of light in months.

Martha Elara. A Martha met in the alleys, who took one look at them and decided they were worth the risk of saying anything at all. She named the Blight. She named the regime. The world arranged itself for them in one conversation.

The Murder Pit. The feral dwellers. Silas. The first of Ofcom's Visions, before any of them had words for what they were watching.

The Safehouse. Aunt Chloe waiting at a table. Agnes, who had questions. Finch, who had memory potions and the watchfulness of someone raised by people who could not afford to look away. Three weeks of something resembling breath.

The Whispering Chair. The hidden library beneath the floorboards. The True Names spoken aloud, for the first time, by the people they belonged to. The Three became the Three.

The Undercroft. The Market. Madame Morwen's vision, layered like leaves over each other. Father Thomas defeated and left behind. They walked out of the dark with more questions than they walked in with.

Operation Broken Thread. Ofcom was taken. The safehouse was abandoned. They ran a gauntlet they should not have survived, helped by an ally they would never see again. They reached Commander Com's residence. They walked into a trap and walked out of it. The Prototype was put down. Commander Com confessed every architecture he had ever built, and every architecture he had ever hidden. And somewhere in that hour, magic returned to the world.

The Years Between. The Blight has been gone a long time now. The Republic is wounded but not yet dying. The Three are older, scarred, and known to each other in ways they did not used to be. Whatever happens next will happen mid-stride. Old habits will have to catch up fast.

We begin in medias res. We begin already moving.

People You Have Known

whose names you carry, whose fates are not all yours to know

Martha Elara A guide in the early days, who taught them the shape of the world they had woken into. The years since have not been kind to anyone. Her fate is uncertain.
Aunt Chloe Resistance matriarch. Wove maps into her knitting. The safehouse was hers, and so was the table, and so was the patience. Where she is now, the Three have not been told.
Agnes Of the safehouse. Asked the kind of questions the regime no longer permits. Status unknown.
Finch Scout, runner, keeper of memory potions, and Chloe's adopted child. Reserved by habit, fierce by necessity. Status unknown.
Madame Morwen Of the Undercroft. Not a living woman, exactly. A psychic imprint, a layered vision, a voice from one of the futures she sees. She remains where she has always been.
Father Thomas Defeated. The long shape of what was done to his memory is not the Three's concern, but the world's. He has not been seen since.
Commander Com Engineer of the Cerberus Programme. Confessed at the end. Gave them the keys before he could be stopped. Captured by the regime some weeks later. Has not been heard from since. The silence is its own answer.

Places You Have Walked

that you may remember the ground under your feet

The Re-education Cell Where it began. A keypad, a guess, a door. Presumably repurposed for the next.
The Safehouse Aunt Chloe's table. Abandoned in the chaos of Operation Broken Thread. What stands there now, who eats at that table now, is not known.
The Whispering Chair The hidden library beneath the safehouse floor. The True Names were spoken there. Whether the boards still hold, no one has gone back to check.
The Undercroft The market beneath the city. Madame Morwen's domain. A place the regime cannot quite see and has stopped trying to.
Commander Com's Residence Where the trap was sprung and the Prototype was put down. Sealed by the regime within the hour. Now: silent.

What Is Whispered

that which is not printed, but which travels anyway

That somewhere outside the Republic, the resistance keeps a list of Gilead's dead and a longer list of Gilead's living, and the second list is the one they spend their nights on.

That a library exists beneath a decommissioned church, where a woman called Marta will pour you tea and ask you nothing, and let you sit with a book you once owned, in another life, when books like that were yours to own.

That the towers do not stand by the grace of God. That their grace runs on a current, and currents can be cut.

That somewhere there is a frequency, and someone is listening.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Found scratched, in three places, in three different hands, in a wardrobe the Aunts had not yet thought to inspect.