All Will Rise According to Their Merit

“All Will Rise According to Their Merit”. The motto of Crejivan Sove was emblazoned on just about every door in the country, including that of the drab prison cell I was sitting in. For some reason. I could feel the life pulsing from the copper door, the locks on the window. My connection to the lesser metals was not quite strong enough for me to Manipulate them, but I still felt them calling to me. As the sole Ironblood of this generation, my powers were entirely unique to me. No one else in the country could do what I could with metal. The metal was me, so much that touching my skin caused burns to appear on Elves, as if they had touched actual metal. It was impossible for anyone to cut or burn my skin, and I could only succumb to sickness or old age. Maybe suffocation.

Or starvation, which seemed to be the governor’s chosen method for getting me to give up the person who had provided me the security clearance I needed to put my plan into action. She was also the reason I was here in this cell, the likes of which would give any interior designer a heart attack. So I had absolutely no qualms about telling him who it was, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. Why? Because it was funnier that way. Imagine the look on his face when he checks my cell and finds me gone, and a note telling him exactly what he wanted to know. When he found out who it was. I couldn't help the smirk that crossed my face. My only regret was that I would not be around to see it.

And, if the watch I’d been given told the truth, my exit plan should be coming around any minute. The copper hands sung against my wrist. The only way I can explain it is that it felt the way that lilacs smell. When I finally heard footsteps down the hallway, it was all I could do not to call out to him. I heard a click and the door swung open. Daniel was holding a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots that I could already tell were the wrong size.

“I know, I know. They’re all I could find!” he said pleadingly. I glared at him, but took

them from his hands anyway. “There’s a bathroom a couple cells down,” he said. “I’m sure you need to use it anyway.” That I did. I slipped into the bathroom, relieved myself, and changed, leaving the disgustingly orange clothes behind. When I’m in charge, no one will have to suffer this indignity, I thought. It was worse than starving, if I was being completely honest, which I always was.

No, really. I was a type of Elf, so I had to twist my words in such a way that they were technically honest in order to fool people. I was practiced in the art, but still quite jealous of humans and their filthy, lying mouths. They had no idea how easy they had it. Since Elves were perceived as more trustworthy, which was hardly a reality, they tended to be elected to the Senate and as governors more often. And since human interests and those of my fellow Elves so rarely aligned, all sorts of problems had sprung up. Which was part of why I had done what I’d done. Was it bloody? Yes, I was practically bathing in the stuff. But I didn’t regret it for a second. There were other issues, of course, like the fact that the Senate seats were apportioned by region and not by population, but that was secondary. My point was that systematic flaws existed that could not be undone internally. They required someone like me, with both the understanding of the bureaucracy and the nerve to do something drastic and a bit melodramatic about it. Being functionally immortal helped.

In another lifetime, a few centuries ago, my status as Ironblood would have made me the queen of Kilvan Sove, which merged into Crejin Sove after the war. The same war that eventually created the lovely democracy which we all enjoyed. However, it had quickly become corrupt, almost worse than the monarchy that preceded it. Almost. At least now we had some power over who wrote our laws and dictated our lives, but the inequality between Elves and humans in the Senate was staggering. I should know, having been a Senator and all. It wasn’t just that the Elves had a better reputation, they were also wealthier and more powerful, with all the resources that being the nobility class in the former Crejin Sove had won them.

I step out of the bathroom in the ill-fitting boots and army fatigues, greeted again by the familiar face of my lover and co-conspirator: Captain Daniel John Lewis of the 72nd company of the Crejivan Sove army. After glancing up and down the hallway, he took my hand in his. He was a human, so his only complaint was that my hand was too cold, which he voiced now. Like always.

“I can’t help that yours feels like a furnace,” I snapped back. But I smiled, a rarity for me. Unlike his, which came as often as the sun rising in the east. Mine were more like the full moon, rare yet radiant nonetheless. And only possible when I had him to reflect off of. The frequency of his smiles did nothing to diminish their beauty. I fell in love with him more every time I saw the white of his teeth against his tan skin, the skin around his eyes folding in that perfect way they had.

We stopped back at the cell, and he pulled out a pad of paper and wrote a name on it in his meticulous handwriting. Jessica Blake. A three-star general who would be going to the noose for me. The same fate she had tried to sentence me to when she had betrayed me, so I hardly felt guilty.

“Did you bring the orange?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I forgot. Be back in ten minutes.” Those ten minutes felt like years as I paced the cell and waited for him to return. An orange might seem like an odd choice for a starving person, but it was necessary. The only side effect of my abilities was that I struggled to absorb vitamins, so I had to watch my diet. It had only been a couple of days and I could already feel the effects. My mind had gone fuzzy, and spots were even starting to crowd my vision.

Daniel came back with the orange, and I peeled it open eagerly. I chewed on the peel too in order to extract as many nutrients as I could from it. I was used to the bitter taste after all these years, and it hardly bothered me at all. When I was done, Daniel stepped into my cell, placing his hands around my waist. He pulled me in for a deep kiss, the taste of black tea mingling with the citrus. It was a bit odd, but I didn’t hate it. His lips were soft, and I tried my best to memorize the feel of them against mine. It might be a while before I could see him again.

“How do I know where to find you?” I asked. In response, he slipped a note into my breast pocket.

“Trust me, you’ll know love,” he murmured against my ear. His breath against the exposed skin sent my heart racing. And just like that, he was gone, melted into the shadows. He had been a spy before climbing the ranks in the army, and it showed in his nearly silent footsteps, the way he seemed to disappear into nothing. I’d heard his footsteps earlier because he’d wanted me to, wanted me to know that he was on his way.

Finally, I let myself give in to the insisting murmur of the iron that was tight around my chest. I could feel its brethren all over the building, but I had to be touching iron to Manipulate it. I stripped off the shirt I’d just put on and pressd my hand to the metal underwire of my bra. The other one I’d had was made of copper, sadly. Governor Blake wasn’t that stupid. There was iron in my gun too, but I needed it to work, after all.

The iron ripped through the fabric and flicked into my other hand. If copper felt the way that lilacs smell, then iron carried the sharp, sickly sweet scent of blood. I got to work, fashioning the strips of metal into slim lockpicks. Not quite what I had practiced with, but good enough. For some reason, my father had insisted on teaching me lockpicking and a whole host of other seemingly random skills. Wilderness survival, mostly. It was as if he knew he was raising a revolutionary. It must have been the full moon, because I smiled again. I slid the picks into the copper lock of the window, working them into place for about twenty minutes before it popped open. I wasn’t great at lockpicking, but just fast enough. I didn’t have much time, though. Guards could come by at any minute.

My cell was on the first floor, not that it mattered much. Daniel could have easily nicked me a rope, too. But it certainly made my escape simpler. The prison was surrounded by dense pine trees, which would have to serve as my cover as I fled the complex. I pulled out the note and smiled again reading his handwriting. He never half-assed anything, did he? His handwriting was perfect. How different we truly were. If only I had been more careful, trusted a little less easily…

Meet me at our place, the note said. And I knew instantly where he was talking about. The place where we'd had our first kiss a few years ago. We had been friends since childhood, but I’d always had a crush on him. I was scared to say anything, but one night we were staring at the stars in a field and I’d had a little too much to drink… and it had just come out. He confessed that he’d felt the same, and that was when our friendship officially came to an end. I couldn’t have been happier about that, which I never imagined myself saying before. It blossomed into something new, the buds opening like the sakura blossoms and the tulips around us.

But I’m digressing, aren’t I? Here, in this filthy prison cell, there was only one thing I needed to achieve, and every second counted. There was simply no time for reminiscing or fantasizing about seeing him again. I opened the window carefully, wincing as the glass shrieked loud enough to wake up every guard within a mile radius. Cursing the shoes Daniel had found for me, I jump out and begin running. Once I’m past the tree line, I relax my pace. There was no wall or fence or guards. It was just an ordinary prison, not maximum security. The inmates here were mostly thieves or debtors.

It seemed that yet again, the governor had underestimated me. Idiot. As if I couldn’t accomplish anything without iron? Well, I had needed iron but only for one little part of my plan! Things would have been simpler if Daniel could have gotten his hands on a key, but the guards probably wouldn’t have given him one, and it would have been suspicious to ask. It was one thing for a captain to inspect their prison, but quite another for him to have access to the whole place. And he was mostly supposed to be checking that their bank statements were in order, anyway. Our other contact had gotten him assigned to the job. Hopefully he was still with us, at least he had been last I checked. It was hard to trust with Jessica’s betrayal still fresh in my mind.

It was going to be three days to that field, counting the time it would take to cover my tracks. I once again silently thanked my father for his bizarre parenting style that I was just now starting to understand, and trudged on. Every step was agony as I felt blisters blooming and bursting on my feet, but I did my best to continue, occasionally opting to walk barefoot. I couldn’t be killed, sure, but blisters were still on the table, it seemed. I had never bothered to test the limits of my power, and apparently they didn’t go quite as far as I thought. Still though, the iron in my blood staved off the worst of it. I’m sure it would have been much worse for a human, and they probably wouldn’t be able to manage three days of this. My feet wept silver tears as the blisters popped against my boots.

When I finally reached the field, I saw a tent and a figure illuminated by a campfire. Daniel. Hearing my heavy tread, he turns, one of his easy smiles crossing his features, crinkling his eyes. He was going to get wrinkles, doing that so often. Oh, well. We couldn’t be beautiful forever. I was sure he would be though, even at death’s door.

For the first time, he noticed the grimace on my face, and his smile vanished instantly, replaced by concern.

“This is my fault, isn’t it,” he groaned.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, which wasn’t technically a lie.

“Here, sit down,” Daniel said, pulling out a first aid kid. He gently pulled off my boots, trying not to push on the blisters, but I cried out anyway.

“Sorry, sorry!” he said. “Ok, I’ll need to clean these out or they’ll get infected. Should be like fifteen seconds tops, I’ll try to be quick. Are you going to be ok?”

“Shut up and do it already,” I gritted out. He does, and it’s the worst pain I’ve felt in my pampered life. So much for being immortal. It was ridiculous that I still had to deal with blisters of all things. But we still had a job to do. This was not the end of my plan, only a setback that had quickly been remedied. Our plan would be much more difficult without Blake, but it was hardly impossible. I don’t even know what that word means, I just hear lesser people than I use it as an excuse. It might as well be a synonym for weak, as far as I was concerned. And I was anything but weak.

“Daniel, my love?” I said. “How about some food?” There was only so long a person could survive on berries and roots, especially since I had already been starving when this week had begun. I wasn’t about to waste bullets on game, or give myself away by building a fire. Only now were we far enough from the prison to risk it.

“That, I can help with,” he said with a grin, gesturing towards the fire. I had been so focused on him that I hadn’t noticed the rabbit hovering over it on a spit. “But first,” he said, disappearing into the tent for a moment. “I got you something.” He was holding a pair of boots that I discovered were exactly my size when I tried them.

“God, I love you,” I said, pulling him into a kiss. He broke it far sooner than I would have liked, mumbling something about dinner. Asshole.

After eating, he unfolds a map and we get right back to strategizing. We had quite a few people with us, but only a couple were in high levels of government. It had been three, but you already know what happened there. Filthy traitor, I thought to myself. I won’t pretend that I didn’t take pleasure in the thought of her hanging for her crimes. The governor's own sister, nonetheless. How delicious. As long as I wasn’t destined to join her, that is.