Author: Benedict Jacka
Category: Science
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“More like passive,” Variam said. “It’s like you always have to give the other guy the first shot, you know? Until they do, you just talk at them and try to make friends.” Variam hesitated. “Then again, if you hadn’t been like that, you probably wouldn’t have taken us in. I mean, now that I think about it, I know we must have looked sketchy as hell. Anne had bad news written all over her, and I was kind of a dick. So . . . I dunno. I guess being the way you are has its good sides too.”
I nodded.
“So are you going to tell me what’s up?” Variam asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“I’ve been trying to hold on to a lot of different things,” I said. “I’m not sure I can do that anymore.”
Variam frowned. “Well . . . okay.” He glanced at his phone and rose. “I’d better go. They’re going to put me on hunting duty. Probably after you.”
I nodded.
Variam paused in the doorway. “Sorry about how things worked out.” Then he was gone.
* * *
The Hollow felt lonely. I took a walk around the woods, listening to the birds sing in the trees. I figured I had maybe a day or two until the Council tracked me here.
Along the way, I worked out what I was going to do. Once I’d made the decision, the plan more or less formed itself. I knew which item I needed, and I knew where I could find it. To get inside, I’d need help, and to find the person who could give me that help, I’d need someone else. Once I’d figured out how to contact her, I gated out of the Hollow to one of our staging points and dialled a number into a burner phone.
The phone rang twice and was answered. A woman’s voice spoke. “Hello?”
“Hello, Chalice,” I said. “You recognise my voice?”
Chalice is a Dark chance mage who for a while had been Luna’s teacher. She’s not affiliated with the Council, but she lives in their neighbourhood, and by calling her like this I was running a risk. By answering, so was she. When Chalice spoke again, it was with a note of caution. “Yes.”
“I’m guessing you’ve heard the news.”
“I have.”
“A few years ago, you spoke to me about an alliance,” I said. “Do you still feel that way?”
“That is . . . a dangerous question. You are not a safe person to be speaking to right now.”
“I know. So?”
There was a moment’s silence. “What do you want?”
“Information,” I said. “Specifically, the location of two people. You shouldn’t be at risk.”
“If the wrong people find out, I will very definitely be at risk.”
“Back in that café, you told me that you wanted to limit a certain person’s power,” I said. “Right now, I’m the best positioned to stop him. If you still feel the same, now’s the time to show it. If not, it’s best we go our separate ways.”
There was a long silence. I felt the futures dance, shifting. “How can I contact you?” Chalice asked at last.
“This phone is active for another thirty minutes.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
I hung up and waited. Chalice got back to me with seven minutes to spare.
“Your first person of interest is still active as of recently,” Chalice said without preamble. “I can give you a contact number. Possibly more, but that will take time. Be aware that he, like you, is currently not in the best of positions. Apparently he’s had a falling-out with his partner and with her master. The second person has left the country and is in hiding. I should have a more precise location in a day or two.”
“Understood.”
Chalice paused. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth about what you’ll be able to do. But if you are . . . please do your best. I’m hearing of movements from our mutual adversary that suggest he’s gearing up for something. I don’t think you have much time.”
* * *
I made some more calls, set things up as best as I could, then returned to the Hollow. The sky was turning from violet to purple with the coming evening, the first stars starting to twinkle far above. I sat outside and listened to the wind in the branches.
Movement in the futures made me look up. A medium-to-large fox came trotting out of the woods and slowed to a walk as it approached me.
“Hi, Hermes,” I said. Hermes had taken to hanging out in the Hollow lately, catching the occasional ride in or out of the shadow realm with Luna.
The blink fox walked up to me and stood with his front paws together, head up. He sniffed at my bandaged right hand.
“Yeah, it’s hurt,” I said. “Not getting better either.”
Hermes sat back on his hind legs, curling his bushy tail around him.
“I could do it, you know,” I said. “Just leave. I’d have to abandon everyone. But I could probably make it work.” I paused. “Actually, I kind of want to.”
Hermes tilted his head.
“It’s because I’ve screwed things up so badly,” I told the blink fox. “When things go a little bit wrong, you want to fix it. When they’ve gone this wrong, you just want to quit. I don’t want to go back and pick up the pieces. I mean, I already tried once. Why would it be any different?”
Hermes looked at me.
“Okay, it might be different. Or it could be even worse.” I was silent for a moment. “I don’t feel like I’m much help. Maybe it’d be better for everyone if I did just leave.”
Hermes moved forward and nudged my hand with his nose. “You want me to stick around?” I asked with a faint smile.
Hermes blinked at me.
“You think I can do something useful? Make a difference?”
Hermes seemed to pause as if considering, then blinked twice.
“You think I’m just going to fail.”
Blink blink.
“So what are you saying?”
Hermes looked at me expectantly.
“You think I should stop feeling sorry for myself and go do something?”
Blink.
I gave a wan smile. “Direct and to the point.” I got to my feet. “I’ll get you some food.”
* * *
A few hours later, I got the response I was waiting for. I set up a meeting, left messages for Luna and Variam in safe channels that they’d see in the morning, and returned to the Hollow to sleep.
And went to Elsewhere.
I hadn’t been planning to. I knew the smart thing was to rest. I was still recovering from the past night, and time in Elsewhere isn’t as restful as normal sleep. But I couldn’t stay away.
I knew almost as soon as I entered the dream realm that someone was looking for me. A part of me perked up at the news, hoping against all reason that it was Anne. Maybe she’d found some way to reach out to me, she’d found out what had really happened and was coming to tell me that she didn’t blame me and it wasn’t my fault and . . .
It wasn’t Anne.
I sighed and let Elsewhere take the form of a vast empty city, walkways and colonnades stretching between spire-topped palaces. There was a bench waiting for me, but I didn’t sit. I stood out in the open and folded my arms.
A figure stepped out from between two columns. She was maybe nineteen, compact with short red hair, and her name was Shireen. “Hey.”
I didn’t answer. Shireen approached and sat on the bench. “I’m guessing you’re not that happy at the moment.”
“No.”
“You got out alive,” Shireen said. “Better than I did.”
Shireen had been one of Richard’s other apprentices, the third of four. Rachel had killed her, and when she had, an imprint of Shireen had lived on inside Rachel’s mind. Somehow, Shireen didn’t seem to carry a grudge. Instead, she’d been pressuring me for years to help Rachel and redeem her.
<
br /> “It’s not like I didn’t give you plenty of warning,” Shireen said.
“Don’t start.”
“Well, you have kind of been asking for it. How long have I been telling you to do something about Rachel?”
“Do not even try to make this my fault.”
Shireen shrugged. “Just saying.”
“Just saying what?” I glared at Shireen, anger at the unfairness of it all boiling up. “That this happened because I didn’t work hard enough on your crazy plan of saving Rachel’s soul? Although I don’t know if I should even be calling it a ‘plan,’ since you’ve never given me the slightest clue how I’m supposed to do it. You just said ‘redeem her,’ then left me to figure out how. Not that it would have mattered if I had, since I’d still be getting screwed by the Council and Richard and everyone else. Pretty much all Rachel did was kick me while I was down. So even if I’d managed to do this completely impossible task you’ve tried to hang on me, it wouldn’t have made any difference!”
“You’d have had one extra person on your side,” Shireen said. “Couldn’t have hurt.”
I stared down at Shireen. She looked back at me with no trace of guilt, and it suddenly struck me just how young she seemed. When we met, Rachel and Shireen and I had all been teenagers. Shireen—or this version of Shireen—was a teenager still, quick and full of energy, action without hesitation. But I wasn’t.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Luna last year. She’d told me that I was making a mistake by thinking of Rachel as Rachel; in her view, that person was gone and Deleo was all that was left. Maybe she’d been right.
“You’ve been setting me up from the beginning,” I said. “Trying to get me to turn Rachel into some sort of good person. It was always impossible, wasn’t it?”
“No. Alex, I promise, it was never that. There’s still something left in her that’s worth saving. I think that’s true. It has to be true.”
“And I’m the one who pays the price if you’re wrong.”
“Hey,” Shireen said. “You’ve had the chance for a life for yourself. I haven’t. All this time that you’ve been running around giving orders on the Council and dating your new girlfriend, I’ve been stuck in here.”
“So I’m supposed to get myself killed to make up for that?”
“You’ll get killed if you don’t,” Shireen said. “Remember the prophecy I told you all those years back? Someday, Rachel will have to make a choice. Either she stands with Richard, or she turns against him. If she turns, he loses. If she doesn’t, you die.”
“What are she and Richard doing?”
“I don’t know exactly. She can hide things from me better than she could before. I get emotions, mostly.” Shireen paused. “She’s been thinking about Anne a lot, especially the last couple of days. Resentment, envy. She’s getting to really hate her.”
“Because Anne’s yet another person who’s getting promoted over her,” I said. “Right? First it was Morden, then it was Vihaela, now Richard’s got a new girl, one who’s younger and more powerful than she is.”
Shireen nodded. “She’s been feeling like that awhile. I mean, she was the only one who stayed loyal to Richard while he was gone. Now he doesn’t seem to need her anymore.”
“Of course he doesn’t. Back then she was his Chosen. Now she’s just another follower.” I looked at Shireen. “And that isn’t enough to make her walk away?”
“No,” Shireen admitted.
“Luna gave me some advice last year,” I said. “That maybe it was time to start admitting that my redemption of Rachel just isn’t going to happen. I mean, by this point, Rachel’s done so many awful things that she probably can’t even remember most of them. Does she ever feel bad about any of it? About all the ghosts she’s left behind?”
“She buries it as deep as she can,” Shireen said. “It’s why she wears that mask. As long as she doesn’t let it catch up with her, she can keep going.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?”
Shireen shrugged. “I’ve told you the truth.”
“I get that,” I said. “But there’s something that’s been bothering me about this whole thing. You keep asking me to redeem Rachel. To split her away from Richard. But you’re framing it as something I’m supposed to do.”
“So?”
“I don’t think that’s how redemption works,” I said. “For it to happen, you have to want to be a different person. I don’t think it’s something that someone else can do to you.”
“Well . . . you’ll just have to figure something out,” Shireen said. “I mean, I’ve told you enough times. You don’t really have a choice here.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Like I said. I’m telling you the truth.”
I stared down at Shireen. She looked back up at me. Time passed and I realised that Shireen wasn’t going to volunteer anything more. This was what she had to offer.
“I think we’re done,” I said.
“All right,” Shireen said. She rose to her feet. “Good luck. I know it’s hard, but . . . I think you can do it. Or you have to. Because there isn’t anyone else.”
Shireen walked away and I watched her go. Something had been nagging at me for the second half of the conversation, something important, and as she disappeared between the columns, I realised what it was.
Shireen hadn’t lied to me. Luna had hinted at it, but I’d always been sure she’d been telling the truth. But you can tell the truth and still have it coloured by your point of view. Shireen saw this in terms of redemption because that was what she cared about. Rachel was her whole world, and she wanted to make things right.
But the dragon’s prophecy hadn’t actually said anything about redemption. It just said that Rachel had to turn.
I filed that thought away. I couldn’t see how to use it, not yet, but I had the feeling it was important. I let Elsewhere fade from around me, and fell into sleep.
chapter 9
The summer morning had a hushed, expectant feel. It was near to dawn, and instead of being a steady stream, the traffic on the nearby motorway came in fits and starts, each car announcing its presence with a rumbling crescendo before passing with a whoosh of displaced air. The sky was clear, the deep blue of the night brightening in the east into the yellow of early morning.
I arrived five minutes early, letting the restaurant door swing closed behind me. The place was empty but for a couple of workmen eating breakfast. I bought a bottle of water and sat at the far end with my back to the wall.
Kyle arrived right on time, pausing in the doorway to scan the room. His eyes passed over me without stopping. Only when he’d covered the room twice did he go to the machine to order and then come to sit at my table. “Well?” he asked as he sat down.
Kyle is American, square-jawed and competent-looking, obviously fit. He’s a space magic adept and has a complicated relationship with Cinder where he might be Cinder’s property, partner, friend, or all of the above. He has good reason to dislike me, since back when we’d first met I’d personally killed one of his friends and had been complicit in the deaths of several more. Then again, exactly the same could be said of Cinder, so maybe Kyle wasn’t the type to hold grudges. At least, I hoped not. If he was, this had the potential to go really badly.
“No Cinder?” I asked.
“He’s busy.”
I studied Kyle. He looked leaner than he had been, and there was a scar at his temple that I didn’t remember seeing before. “And you’re not?”
“Busy enough that I don’t have time to sit around. What do you want?”
“I need your and Cinder’s help with a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“The dangerous kind.”
“So send in your Keepers and your lackeys,” Kyle said. “Why do yo
u need us?”
“Guessing you haven’t been keeping up with the news.”
“Like I said, we’re busy,” Kyle said. “What happened, you and the Council fall out?”
“Let’s just say I’m short on people I can count on.”
Kyle snorted. “If you’re coming to us, you must really be desperate.”
“This is something you’re qualified for.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“I need to break into Onyx’s mansion,” I said. “He’s got a gateway item that gives access to a bubble realm. I’m going to break into that too, get hold of the relic it’s protecting, then get out.”
Kyle raised his eyebrows and looked at me. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Kyle looked back at me for a moment. There was a chime from the counter. Kyle got up, went to get his food, came back, put his tray on the table, sat back down. He took a drink from his bottle of water and tapped it on the tray. “How many others?”
“Me and about two more.”
“That’s it?”
“There aren’t many people I trust with something like this.”
Kyle frowned. “Didn’t you go to Onyx’s place last year?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know who you’re dealing with,” Kyle said. “It’s not just Onyx, it’s his whole faction. I mean, calling it a faction is pretty fucking generous, they’re more like a gang. But gangbangers can kill you as dead as anyone else, and I hung out there long enough to know that they’re nasty. Mixture of thugs and full-on psychopaths. And then there’s Onyx and Pyre. I know you guys on the Council don’t take Dark mages seriously, but you don’t want to fuck with them unless you outnumber them by a lot. And it sounds like you won’t.”
“We won’t.”
“What’s the timeframe?”
“Probably tonight.”
“Bad idea.”
“Yeah, I know. You think it’d be a better idea to plan things properly. Stake things out, get a feeling for the area, watch them and learn their patterns. I agree. Unfortunately I can’t.”