The Brightest Fell

by Seanan McGuire

  “What did you do?” asked October.

  “I contacted the night-haunts, and bargained with them for the construction of a new body.” It sounded so simple, put in those terms. It sounded almost reasonable.

  “Why?”

  “Because Gordan lied to you, or rather, Gordan did not tell the full truth.” I looked past her to Li Qin, who was shaking and silent, tears rising in her dark, beloved eyes. “Gordan said my mother could not be resurrected, because she had not been uploaded to the server. This was correct. But the data upload device possesses local storage. It had never been purged. As long as the battery remained functional, the data was retained.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “In my room.” I offered October a smile. She did not return it. “I have it connected to a charging port, to restore and extend battery life. If a resurrection is to be performed, it will include my mother. I could not permit anything less.”

  “Wait,” said Quentin. “Why not let the others be brought back and then deal with the night-haunts?”

  “I required something I could bargain with,” I said simply. “I bargained with their lives, or rather, with their deaths.”

  “Everything that lives can potentially die,” said October. “If you didn’t let me bring them back, the night-haunts would never have them.”

  “Exactly.”

  “April.” Li Qin finally lowered her hands. “April, are we going to have to kill someone?” She would do it, if I told her “yes”: I could hear in in her voice.

  I have never been so glad to assert the negative. “No,” I said. “Time will do that. Please. I am here, and my mother is here, and I have sent a message to Elliot, instructing him to collect the device. He did not wish to be here. I find I do not care. Please, can you begin the ritual?”

  October nodded, and the world was different.

  TEN

  Li Qin showed them where to connect the wires and where to draw the ritual signs, and Elliot and Quentin followed her lead, assistant coders in a project too grand to be written in anything less than flesh and bone. October followed behind them, painting her own blood on the lips and hearts of the deceased, constantly reopening the cuts in her fingers as she raced against her own rapidly-healing flesh. She grimaced every time, as if the pain was never lessened, only reconfigured. It must be a terrible thing, in its way, to be so close to indestructible.

  The server where most of the dead were stored was large enough to seem imposing, like it belonged here, in this mortuary turned mad scientist’s laboratory. The device where my mother and Terrie waited for their own resurrections was much smaller, much more easily overlooked. I did not dare transfer them between the servers, even though it would have simplified the wiring immensely. The chance of corruption of the files if I moved them more than once was too great. We could deal with a little inconvenience, for the chance of bringing my mother home.

  When the bodies were marked and wired, Elliot and Quentin helped to move the cots, positioning them like the spokes of a wheel. Li Qin stepped up next to October, looking nervous for the first time since this had all started.

  “The accountings we have are all for solo resurrections, but those seem to be draining enough that I’m not sure it would be a good idea to take them one at a time,” she said. “If we do it all at once—”

  “It’s unlikely to kill me, but you’re worried about putting me to sleep for a couple of years,” said October dryly. She snorted at Li Qin’s startled expression. “What, you think ‘hero’ means ‘sucker’? I called the Luidaeg as soon as you told me what you’ve been dancing around since I met you. I’m happy to help fix this. I’m ecstatic that we might get Jan back. But I did my homework.”

  “You came anyway,” I said.

  October nodded. “I did. I’m stronger than the people in those stories. I’ve got more experience with bleeding than anybody has any business having. I may need to drink a gallon of blood and Tylenol after this—”

  “And people wonder why I hate blood magic,” muttered Quentin.

  “—but I’ll be fine. So let’s go. What do you want me to do?”

  Li Qin picked up the braided ropes of thorny vines and electrical cable that had been inserted just under the skin above their hearts. It was a shallow incision, the rope anchored no more than an inch or so beneath it; with the proper treatment, it might not even scar. It would, hopefully, be enough.

  “Hold these,” she said. “Bleed along them, and call the magic according to the guidelines I’ve given you. We’ll turn on the equipment that houses their . . . vitality.”

  “I’m not sure whether this is more or less creepy because you keep avoiding the word ‘soul,’” said October.

  “Three minutes to midnight,” said Elliot.

  “Good luck,” whispered Li Qin. There was a flex in the air, and I knew she hadn’t been able to help herself: not faced with the chance that, after everything, she might not be a widow after all. She had bent the luck. We would all have to live with the repercussions, whenever and however they chose to strike.

  That was for later. Quentin walked over to the lights, as October picked up the ropes, hesitated, and began to chant.

  “If we shadows have offended,” she said, “think but this, and all is mended; that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear, and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream.”

  Magic rose around her, a faint scent of green, green grass, like a freshly-mowed lawn, underscored by copper—or perhaps blood. It was difficult to tell. She was clenching the ropes so firmly that the vines had pierced her flesh, and blood was leaking from between her fingers. It did not drip to the floor. Instead, it ran along the body of the rope, from the single strand she held and into the branching strands that connected to each of the bodies in turn.

  Elliot turned on the server where the bulk of the dead were stored, adding its hum to the air. I did the same with the upload device where January and Terrie’s memories were kept, before reaching through the network and triggering both devices to begin transmitting their data.

  Home, I commanded the slow, sluggish stream of information. It was easy enough to identify the individual minds, the unique memories that defined each data feed. I nudged them toward the correct channels, guiding them until the current took over. Go home. You know where you belong. Go home.

  The data feeds accelerated and disappeared. Small disks, attached to the foreheads of the lost, sparked with sudden power, and everything was still.

  October continued talking. “Gentles, do not reprehend; if you pardon, we will mend, and as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck now to escape the serpent’s tongue, we will make amends ere long!” The magic spiked. The electricity spiked as well, popping and arcing. Quentin made a short, sharp sound, and was silent.

  Everything was silent. The machines had stopped buzzing. Alarmed, I reached for them, and found them still and dead, knocked off the network by the surge. October sagged, hands still clenched tight around the ropes.

  “Else the Puck a liar call, so good night unto you all,” she whispered. “Give me your hands if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.”

  Then she collapsed facedown on the concrete.

  “Toby!” Quentin cried, rushing to her.

  I let him. My own attention was for my mother, for the shape of her, the stillness of her, the impossibility of her. Please, I thought. Please. I was a child. Let me be redeemed. Let me be forgiven. Please. Let me have just one reset to the original specifications.

  Across the room, Elliot made a choked noise, half sorrow, half joy. I glanced over. Yui was sitting up, her arms around his shoulders, her face buried in his neck. Peter was rubbing his forehead, wings fanning slowly. Colin was groaning. Barbara was gone . . . but there, beneath her cot, I could see the reflective eyes of a cat.

  Terrie had
rolled onto her side and was weeping uncontrollably, all without making a sound. That much, at least, had come cleanly out of the upload device.

  When Li Qin gasped, I nearly missed it in the chaos. Then, slowly, I turned.

  My mother’s eyes were open.

  She was looking at the ceiling, frowning, obviously confused.

  “I don’t have my glasses, and nothing’s fuzzy,” she said. “What the hell did I miss?”

  Li Qin laughed, and the two of us flung ourselves on top of her—my mother, her wife, our miracle—together, and held her like we’d never let her go.

  We were never, never letting go

  ELEVEN

  “This is going to take some getting used to,” said October, still pale and shaky, her hands wrapped around a large mug half full of blood and half of tea that Yui insisted had medicinal properties. If nothing else, it was warm.

  “Says you,” said my mother wryly. She was wearing a robe Li Qin had found in the employee showers. It was much too big for her, and it engulfed her like a wooly white snowfall. “Last night we had a killer in our midst, and I needed glasses to find my own ass. Now . . .”

  “Everything is different.”

  “Not everything.” Mother looked to where I was sitting with Li Qin. My outline kept shifting between adult and child, settling on the latter for longer and longer stretches. With my mother returned, I did not have to be an adult any longer. I could be a child again, long enough to learn what I still needed to know. Long enough to understand.

  Li Qin had not stopped crying since January’s return. Her tears were slow, ecstatic things, and she barely seemed to realize they were there. All her focus was for her wife . . . but her arm remained around my shoulders, and I knew that if any part of her had blamed me for her loss, I was forgiven. I was finally, fully forgiven.

  “Queen Windermere is going to need to come and talk to you about what you want to do about the County, and Li Qin’s stewardship of Dreamer’s Glass, and everything,” said October.

  January grimaced. “Okay, that’s different. But we’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.”

  “Yeah.” October paused before saying, “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Yeah.” January glanced at us again, eyes focusing first on Li Qin, and then on me. Her smile was the perfect coda to a perfect program: logical, inevitable, and so often unachievable.

  “It’s good to be home,” she said, and we all were. Finally, we all were.

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