“Which we will,” Dad says, confident.
Another group of people enter the Great Hall, and I am beyond glad that Tam and Bree are among them. Justin, Nalini and her cameraman are too – even Ben. He’s wearing a suit that doesn’t look like one he’d own.
I go to meet them, and Oz sticks with me. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“You’ll see,” Tam says.
“We live in bizarro world now,” Bree adds. “Everybody getting along, cooperating. It’s freakish.”
Rose calls, “Are we all set? You understand what we’ll be doing?”
Ben nods, the picture of solemnity. Bree’s mother says, “We would like to keep the footage for archive purposes–”
Dad interrupts. “National security. I’m sorry, Nalini.”
She lowers her chin in agreement. “You stand here then,” she says to Rose.
“Are you guys OK?” Bree asks Oz and me.
“We are,” I say.
I notice Tam and Bree are holding hands. Excellent. I give Tam a nod, and I can tell he’s walking on the air somewhere around cloud nine.
It’s time for Rose’s show. Dad makes his way over to watch with the rest of us. He’s never liked spotlights. Rose may as well have been born in one, though.
She positions herself so that the downed statue is visible behind her, torch hand thrusting up. The cameraman and Nalini stand opposite her. Nalini says, “I’m here with one of the two new acting directors of the Society, who have taken over after Director William Bronson was slain earlier this evening. The Tricksters’ Council is consumed by violent infighting, and the Society has put special security measures in place to formulate a response. Rose Greene, what can you tell the world this evening?”
Rose begins to talk, weaving a story about the secret precaution that could force the gods from D.C., about the massive response the Society would be mounting worldwide, urging calm in the face of what were sure to be anxious days ahead… At the end, Nalini turns the microphone to Ben and asks for comment. He says, “I know I have been the Society’s harshest critic, but I urge you all to trust them on this. I… I believe they are working to restore peace.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah,” Tam says. “Never thought you’d hear that, did you?”
“Never,” I agree.
The interview over, Dad turns to me. “You ready to see your mom?”
“Can we make a stop at our reliquary first?” I ask.
“Sure. It’s on the way,” he says.
I can tell he wants to find out why, just like I want to ask on the way to where, but neither of us says anything more. “See you guys a little later,” I tell the others, mouthing “Mom” to them, so they’ll understand.
I accompany Dad downstairs, and he raises his eyebrows when I make it clear I don’t need direction to the gaslight fixture that leads to the network of secret hallways. When we get to the House Locke reliquary, I take the blue eye from my pocket and insert it. The door zips open.
Dad coughs. “I’ll be needing that back. And my stripes.”
So it
is
his. “But–”
“You’ll get ones of your own. Kyra, if you’ve taken to this like it appears, we’ll get you more training. You could take your vows before you know it. Maybe in two years.”
I scoff, “It won’t take that long. Trust me.”
He laughs, and I try to remember the last time I heard him do that. “So… you like the Ramones?” I ask. “You know this means I have to embrace country and western, right?”
He winces. “What about classic country? Johnny Cash would be good.”
“Not even. I’m going to pick something you loathe.”
He laughs again as we go inside. I walk along the hunter’s map and then toward the case that’s my destination.
“Why are we here anyway?” he asks, trailing me.
“Oh no,” I say. “I completely forgot. I left Vidarr’s shoe upstairs.”
He shakes his head. “I noticed. Someone put it away for safekeeping. I figured I’d return it later.”
“Oh, good,” I say. I hope they found my backpack too, so his Ramones shirt isn’t lost either. Or my jacket. But I see no need to mention that right now. “Because losing a major relic seems like the kind of thing that would be a black mark on my record.”
“I think you’ll find the record you’re building speaks for itself.”
I’m still me, and so I work to keep my expression neutral, rather than basking in an actual compliment from my father. Reaching deep into my pocket, I remove the shard from Legba’s cane and unwrap the tissue I put around it. I open the glass door and place it beside the white and black cap of chaos.
“And that is?” he asks.
I close the case. “It’s a bone fragment from Legba’s cane that I had to remove from Anzu. It kept him from healing. Don’t know what it’ll do as a relic, though.”
“Make that your record will
more
than speak for itself.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. I turn to him. We aren’t yelling at each other yet. It’s a record. “Kyra, I’m sorry I handled the past few years the way I did. I just worried about you all the time, and that meant rules you couldn’t handle, and so much distance between us…”
“I know.” Still no yelling. “You were being an idiot.”
“Watch it. I
am
your father.”
“You don’t know how grateful I am for that.”
I know we will never go back to that terrible place where we can’t talk to each other. We may still shout at each other occasionally, because old habits and strong opinions don’t always mix. But anger won’t be our constant state of being.
“Mom?” I ask.
“Mom,” he says. “Let’s go see her.”
We start toward the door. “You didn’t let her go wandering around?” I ask.
“No, she’s with the Pythias, her sisters in spirit. They should be able to stabilize her some.”
He means those women from the hall. I don’t ask any more questions, curious to see if she will be better. Legba could bring clarity to Mom – maybe they can do it without tricking her afterward.
We stop at a door like a waterfall, made of a thousand mirror shards. Inside, Mom sits between the two women Oz and I saw. She wears her black dress, kohl smeared around her eyes, a spot of darkness between the pale white dresses of the others. But all of them are beaming as if they
emit
light.
Dad folds an arm around my shoulders, and Mom wears a broad smile as she rises. She floats toward us. “My daughter,” she says, “who changed her fate.”
Dad brings us both into a hug, and we stand there with our arms around each other for a long time. It’s still not quite long enough to recapture the years we lost.
Mom eventually pushes back. “I want to see it, the wall, the barrier, the light that keeps the dark out,” she says.
Dad’s disapproval threatens to return, but I say, “Me too. Let’s go look at the walls. Together.”
“Fine,” he agrees.
I think it was the together that got him.
Dad holds Mom’s hand as we navigate the halls back upstairs. I know the turns at this point, so I lead. When we reach the Great Hall, there’s no one left in it. We head over to the guard at the line of massive doors.
“We’re going out,” Dad says.
The guard grumbles a little as he moves aside from the open one. “You and every single person not on duty.”
The front porch and steps of the Jefferson are covered with operatives, a civilian crowd massed on the sidewalks below. I spot my friends near the top of the stairs. We make our way to them. Dad keeps one hand on Mom’s shoulder, and his other on mine.
Oz and I lock gazes, but I break away to look up, where everyone else is. The boundary is a slight sheen, arcing high above.
There are no gods visible outside it, not here. But somewhere nearby, at the edge of the city, there will be. The walls might have forced the gods from D.C., but they are out there, and the rest of the world will witness their anger.
I close my eyes, and see my grandfather’s face again. I have to find out what he knew about putting the gods to sleep. The woman who charmed Enki so long ago is also part of our family’s history. I feel the thread between the past and the present. The link may be fragile, but I am certain I can follow it. I can discover its secrets. I have to.
Radiant fire races along the outside edge of the translucent wall above, and the operatives around us gasp. But Dad doesn’t, and neither do I. It only confirms what I already assume.
The world is burning. We won’t have much time to smother the flames.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This has been a maddening trickster of a book to write, one that’s been rattling around my brain and word processors for several years and reincarnations. Which means there’s a small army of people who have offered insight and assistance on it. For comments on early versions of this story, I offer thanks to: Karen Joy Fowler (who kept asking about it), Karen Meisner, Justine Larbalestier, the insanely helpful workshoppers at the 2009 Rio Hondo and Blue Heaven workshops, and Stacy Whitman. I’m indebted beyond measure to the friends who listened to me whine, brainstormed worldbuilding, and kept me from jumping off a cliff in Mexico while I was writing this version. This book simply would not exist without my wonderful agent, Jennifer Laughran (without who I would be lost), and the patient belief of my editor, Amanda Rutter. To my husband, Christopher Rowe; once again I couldn’t do any of this without you, because I’d starve and fall into despair.
And, of course, my eternal gratitude to: the booksellers, librarians, bloggers, and friends who have been so supportive; my publisher, Angry Robot, and the sales team at Random House; each and every one of my readers.
Finally, I’m indebted to one of my favorite non-fiction works, Lewis Hyde’s
Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art
. I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – have written this book without it. My thanks to Neil Gaiman, who put it into my hands many years ago.
Any mistakes and shortcomings here are, as always, my own.
STRANGE CHEMISTRY
An Angry Robot imprintand a member of the Osprey Group
Lace Market House
54-56 High Pavement
Nottingham NG1 1HW
UK
4301 21st Street Suite 220B
Long Island City
New York
NY 11101,
USA
Strange Chemistry #16
A Strange Chemistry paperback original 2013
1
Copyright © Gwenda Bond 2013
Gwenda Bond asserts the moral right to beidentified as the author of this work.
Cover art by Amazing15
Distributed in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York.
All rights reserved.
Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon atrademark of Angry Robot Ltd. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are theproducts of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book iscoverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsoldand destroyed”and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
UK ISBN: 978 1 90884424 8
US ISBN: 978 1 90884 425 5
eBook ISBN: 978 1 90884 426 2
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