Authors: Tim Pratt
I gazed around my domain. “Oh, this is going to be fun.” I glanced at the fridge, the door swung open, and a glass bottle of Cheerwine—the cherry soda beloved in the South and almost unknown elsewhere; I’d become mildly addicted—drifted across the room to settle on the counter. I squinted, and the cap popped off, spun through the air, and landed in the trash can. The bottle floated into my waiting hand and I took a deep sip. “I could get used to this.”
“How did you do that?” Trey said.
I shrugged. “Magic.”
The look he gave me would have curdled my soda—and I don’t think that was actually possible. “Thanks. That clears it up.”
“Do you mean, like, practically? I don’t know. How do you open the fridge and pick up a bottle with your hands? You will it, and your muscles comply. I think I’ve just got access to some new muscles all of the sudden.”
Trey slid onto a stool and looked at me. “I was a little bit afraid that light would start to shoot out of your eyeballs and you’d rise up in the air surrounded by a crackling net of lightning, screaming, ‘I am become a god.’”
“Ah. Well, it’s early yet. We’ll see how I feel later. I don’t know, I’ve got this new tool—this new set of tools—but as for what to
do
with them…I have no idea. Mostly I took on the power to protect myself, and you, and the other people I care about. But it’s a little like buying an interstellar spacecraft for your daily commute to the office. Seems like a whole lot more than you need to achieve such a simple goal, and there are so many
other
things you can do with power like that.” I shook my head. “I’ll figure it out. But for now, the Firstborn is the problem. I need to sit down with her and see if I can settle things between us.”
“That didn’t work too well last time. There was talk of putting you in a coffin, as I recall.”
“Last time we spoke, there was still a chance she could get what she wanted, but that’s off the table now—the vessel has been emptied, into me. I’m also in a rather stronger bargaining position now, since I’m pretty sure I could squish her if I wanted.”
“Okay, then. When are you planning to—”
I held out my hand, and
The Book of Grace
floated in from the other room, settling itself onto the counter in front of me. “I was thinking now, now, now.” I opened up the book at a random place in the middle, then whistled. “Trey. Does this look like the same old incomprehensible bullshit to you?”
He leaned forward to peer at the book, then nodded. “Why? Has it changed for you?”
“You could say that.” The cipher Grace had used on his book was broken for me, and the meaning was now clear. The page before me held a recipe, of sorts, explaining that if I snipped a few threads from my father’s velvet jacket and mashed them up into a paste in the enchanted mortar with some unpasteurized milk and a squeeze of lemon juice and the ashes of a red poppy, then I could take the jacket’s protective properties into my own body. Or I could mix that substance into a dye, and use it to color other fabric, and make myself a dress or a cloak or a scarf or whatever that had the same powers of defense.
I flipped through the pages, and there were more recipes—I suppose, to be technically correct, they were
spells
. How to bind mythological beasts to my service. How to call up winds, and calm storms. How to walk through fire and walls and dreams. How to become a whirlwind, and sow dragon’s teeth, and speak to the trees.
“He didn’t leave me his memories, Trey, but he left me this
book
. It’s got…wow. Instructions, I guess. Or maybe incantations. So I have access to his knowledge, at least some of it, but it’s not embedded in the snake’s nest of neuroses and delusions and ambition that made up the rest of his mind.”
“That’s something, then. It seems like you’ve got some homework ahead of you.”
I made a face. “I was always terrible at homework. I was a big believer in learning just enough to do whatever I needed to accomplish right at that moment.” I kept flipping through the book. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s a spell in here for ‘make my crazy half sister chill the fuck out,’ so I think I’m still going with my original plan.”
“You never said what that was, but I can guess. Beg, cajole, and threaten?”
“Maybe not in that order, but yeah.” I flipped to the index, looking for the Firstborn’s name, but there was no page number, of course. “She’s still in the mirror. I’ll be back.”
“Wait, Bekah, maybe you should think this—”
I turned to the page with the picture of the mirror and tapped the page before Trey could give me all his reasons to delay. He didn’t get it. I had my father’s magic now—I felt pretty badass. I was chock-full of raw power and I had a wizard’s cloak and a magical book. Sure, the magic wouldn’t work inside the sanctum, but I figured I could kick off the rocks we’d piled on the mirror and let the Firstborn out, then dazzle her with my newfound majesty. Once she realized she couldn’t win, maybe she’d back down, and if she didn’t, I’d
make
her.
Overconfidence, thy name is Bekah Grace.
It’s a good thing I didn’t take Trey with me, because he would have died fairly quickly, or at least had a very unpleasant few seconds before I transported him back home. I materialized right next to the mirror, which was conveniently located at the bottom of a subterranean lake. Our little trick of piling stones on top of the mirror hadn’t done much to slow her down, apparently. Maybe there were enchantments in place to keep the inhabitants from being trapped inside—that seemed like the sort of situation my paranoid father would have planned for. My sister had gotten free at least long enough ago to make this nasty preparation for my potential return.
Maybe her cavern home was underground-lake adjacent. Everybody likes waterfront property. I wasn’t at deep oceanic-crush depth, but it was cold—I could feel the cold, though it didn’t bother me with the coat on—and I was far below the surface, where it was lightless and disorienting. Despite the total darkness, I could see the mirror, glowing with a pale golden light. Wizard-vision wasn’t as useful as night vision would have been, but it got the job done.
The book in my hands didn’t instantly turn into a mass of soggy pulp—the advantage of paper soaked in magic, I guess. And I could breathe, thanks to the jacket’s limited life-support powers. I considered going back home, but I was
here
, and running away because I’d gotten a little soggy would just be postponing the inevitable. I was pigheaded enough to try to follow through with my plan.
I kicked and flailed toward the mirror, not able to swim properly because of the book clutched in my hands. I touched the glass, and the mirror pulled me in and dumped me out in the sanctum, sopping wet and freezing, as the jacket’s miraculous properties abruptly stopped working in the sanctum’s magic-deadening interior.
The room was full of yellowish-green gas, stinking of chlorine, and I gagged and then held my breath. The Firstborn sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, looking alien and creepy in the poisonous mist, wearing a World War I–era gas mask. As she lifted the shotgun in her lap, I flopped backward, still holding my breath, and touched the mirror. It sucked me through and dumped me back into the water. The shotgun loads passed through the mirror after me, bouncing off my body harmlessly now that my jacket’s magic worked again.
My wise and considered reaction to that turn of events was to think
oh fuck oh shit oh shit oh fuck
and flail around in the water like a drowning cat. I’m lucky I didn’t drop the book.
Clearly the Firstborn had learned her lesson about the need to arm herself inside the sanctum. She’d set a nice little trap for me, and if I hadn’t been wearing the jacket it would have worked just fine—I would have had my choice of drowning or being gassed and shot. I bobbed in the lightless depths and flipped open the book, which also had its own magical glow—just light enough to read by—and found the page that would take me home.
I landed on the carpet in the living room, damp and reeking of chlorine gas. Trey must have heard me groan, because he ran in and knelt to check on me.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I struggled upright, spitting out a few drops of foul water.
“I take it your talk went well.”
“She didn’t let me get a word in, just tried to murder me. Poison gas doesn’t leave a lot of room for fruitful conversation.” I shook my head. “I think I pissed her off when I rescued the Trips. She doesn’t just want to take my inheritance now—she wants to take me out.”
He could have gone with “I told you so,” and I couldn’t have blamed him, but instead, he simply asked, “So what do we do?”
I pondered my awesome, vast new powers for a moment, and then looked up at him.
“I have no goddamn idea.”
“When in doubt, eat,” Trey said, and went into the kitchen.
We sat on the porch eating turkey sandwiches and pondering our dolorous lot. “I think I can literally move mountains, but that doesn’t help me deal with the Firstborn. I don’t know what to do now.”
“Toss a hand grenade through the mirror.”
“She’s mentally ill, Trey. Raised by a crazy sorcerer, traumatized, abandoned, and with a soul stretched out and full of holes. You really think I should try to kill her? Did you drown kittens as a kid?”
“No, but kittens never posed an existential threat to me. Kittens never put me in a place where someone basically had to bring me back to life. I
like
kittens. As for the Firstborn…” He let the pause hang there, but I didn’t say anything, so he pressed his point. “Listen, you
could
make an argument that getting rid of the Eldest is just self-defense. She’s out for your blood. Also all your other bodily fluids, skin, and internal organs, too. I’m sure she wouldn’t say no to the powdered remnants of your bones, either.”
I shook my head. He was about to protest, but before he could say something, I said, “I’m sure there’s a legal argument to be made, that she poses an existential threat, and my brain agrees with you—but I don’t think that does anything to convince my soul. My father’s approach was to crush his enemies—I’d really rather not go that same route. Besides, the hand grenade idea wouldn’t work—because it wouldn’t do anything to
her
soul. Hurting her body is one thing, but her soul is another, and as far as I know it’s hidden away in a stone or an egg or something, and not even she remembers where. I could cause her pain, sure, but I couldn’t kill her.”
“So we track down her soul—there must be a way to do that, with all the power you have, some spell of divination or location in
The Book of Grace
—and smash it, and
then
do the hand grenade…”
“No. I’m not an assassin, Trey. Unless killing her is the only way to save myself, and there are absolutely no other options, I can’t see going that way. With this power I’ve got now…if I start thinking the easiest way to deal with my problems is just wiping those problems off the face of the earth, I can actually
do
it. My father was a monster, more often than not. With this kind of power, I can see how he got that way. That’s not my path. The easy way is often the
bad
way.”
He sighed. “I get that. I don’t like the idea of killing people, either. I had to help bury your brother, and I’m going to have nightmares about that for a long time. I don’t regret my part in that—I did it to save you—but it’s still ugly stuff. I just don’t want you to die, Bekah. I know you don’t need my protection…but I feel pretty protective anyway.”
It was good to know that protectiveness wasn’t just the magical compulsion talking. “The thing is, I don’t think the Firstborn can kill me, not now that I’ve taken on our father’s power—not easily, at least. As long as I don’t go blundering blindly into a place where magic doesn’t work and she’s got a shotgun. At the same time, she’s more than just a nuisance. I can’t have her dogging me for the rest of my life. I’d never be able to relax.”
“How about this, then. You teleport back to the mirror, while she’s still inside the sanctum. You grab the mirror, and then you teleport to, I don’t know. The moon. Or Pluto. Then you leave the mirror there, and the Firstborn never bothers you again. Didn’t Hannah say the Firstborn can only teleport in short little hops? She won’t be able to come back from the outer edge of the solar system, then.”
I stared at him. “That’s…”
“A prison sentence.” He shrugged. “Not a death sentence—she won’t age inside the sanctum, or get hungry, or anything, right? It’s a place outside of time. It’ll just keep her from doing any more damage.”
“Solitary confinement in a small room for eternity without even the sweet release of death to look forward to? I think it would be more merciful to kill her.”
He leaned back in his chair, and to his credit, he didn’t look a bit annoyed, just thoughtful. “So killing her is out, and imprisoning her is out, and she won’t listen to reason…” Suddenly, he leaned forward, intent. “All right, then how about Plan F, or whatever letter we’re on. You have your father’s power now. Presumably that includes the ability to compel people to obey you. I speak from experience when I say that kind of magic is pretty effective. Do you think you could learn how to entrance the Firstborn, and just order her to leave you alone? Cast a supernatural restraining order?”
“I’ve got a philosophical objection to mind control,” I said. “But it might be the least-bad option. She can still live her life, as long as she doesn’t try to screw with mine. The problem is figuring out how to do it, and getting close enough to her to work the magic without her trying to cut off my head with a machete or something.”
“The answer to part one is probably in
The Book of Grace
, and part two…we can work it out. Lure her, somehow.”
I snorted. “Sure. Plant a fake obituary for me in the newspaper, that’d bring her running to ransack the house.”
“Heh. If it comes to that, I know a guy at the paper.”
“I should start researching. A spell of compulsion probably requires wing of bat and a white hair from the muzzle of a virgin wolf and the noise a cat makes when it moves and frog hair and all that.”