by Olivie Blake
“What is initiation?” Reina asked without preamble, and Atlas, who had been rifling through some of the books on his shelf, slowed his motions to a halt.
“A ritual. As everything is.” He looked tired, as he often looked when they caught glimpses of him lately. He was dressed in a bespoke suit as he always was, this one a slate grey that somehow reflected his state of academic mourning. “Binding oaths are not particularly complex. I imagine you must have studied them at one point.”
She had. “Will it work without a death?”
“Yes.”
Atlas took a seat at his desk and gestured for her to do the same, removing a pen from his pocket and setting it carefully just to the right of his hand. “There may be fractures. But after two millennia of oaths to reinforce the binding, I can assure you,” he said with something close to irony, “it will hold.”
She didn’t bother asking why they didn’t simply do away with the elimination process, then, if it would hold without it. It seemed fairly obvious there were no more reasons to support it than there were to support the divine right of kings. Tradition, ritual, the general fear of chaos.
It didn’t matter. She was alive, and that was the only factor of relevance.
“I doubt you came to ask me about the logistics of the ceremony,” Atlas remarked. He was regarding her with a certain wary interest; guarded.
“I wanted to ask you something else.”
“Then ask.”
“Will you answer?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
Comforting, Reina thought.
“You told me in the cafe that my invitation to join the Society had come down to me and someone else,” she reminded him.
“Yes, I did say that.” He didn’t look as if he planned to deny anything. “Has it bothered you much?”
“In a sense.”
“Because you doubt your place here?”
“No,” Reina said, and she didn’t. “I knew it was mine if I wanted it.”
Atlas leaned back in his chair, contemplating her with a glance. “Then what’s to think about?”
“The fact that there are others.” It wasn’t a threat so much as a curiosity. “People who nearly make the cut, but don’t.”
“There’s no reason to worry about them, if that’s what you mean,” Atlas said. “There are plenty of other pursuits, noble ones. Not everyone merits an invitation to the Society.”
“Do they work for the Forum?”
“The Forum is not the same, structurally,” Atlas said. “It is closer to a corporation.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Its members stand to profit.”
“From what?”
“Our loss,” Atlas said simply, waving a hand over an empty mug. Within moments there was tea inside it, the smell of lavender and bergamot wafting in the air between them. “But such is the nature of things. Balance,” he said, bringing the cup to his lips. “There cannot be success without failure. No luck without unluck.”
“No life without death?” asked Reina.
Atlas inclined his head in agreement. “So you see the purpose of the ritual,” he said.
She wondered if perhaps she wanted this too much. She was willing to make excuses for it, to believe its lies. A toxic love, born of starvation.
Too late now. “Do you know what happened to Libby Rhodes?”
“No.” It came without hesitation, but not too quickly. She could see the formulation of concern in his brow, which seemed real enough. “And I’m sorry to say I would have readily believed her dead if not for Mr. Caine.”
“Do you believe it was the Forum?”
“I think it’s a possibility.”
“What are the other possibilities?”
She could see his tongue catching, a mechanism sliding shut.
“Innumerable,” he said.
So he would not be sharing his theories with her.
“Should we trust you?” Reina asked him.
Atlas gave her a paternal half-smile.
“I will tell you this,” he said. “If I could retrieve Elizabeth Rhodes myself, I would do everything in my power to do so. There would be no reason for me to abandon her pursuit. I reap no benefit from her loss.”
Reina did believe that, grudgingly. She supposed there was no reason to doubt him. Anyone could see Libby’s value.
“But none of this is why you came here,” Atlas observed.
Reina glanced down at her hands, wondering for a moment what felt so strange about them here. She realized eventually it was the lack of tension within them, because unlike other rooms in the house, this one did not contain any life. There were no plants, only books and dead wood.
Interesting, she thought.
“You said there was a traveler,” she said. “I wanted to know if it was Nico’s friend.”
“Ah yes, Gideon Drake,” said Atlas. “He was a finalist, albeit not in the final ten.”
“Is it true that his friend can travel through dream realms?”
“Realms of the subconscious,” Atlas clarified with a nod. “A fascinating ability, without question, but the Society’s board was ultimately unconvinced of Mr. Drake’s control over his abilities. I believe even Miss Rhodes knew only of his incurable narcolepsy, which could not be successfully prevented,” he added with a small inward chuckle. “Very few of NYUMA’s professors knew what to do with him. He is quite close to untrained, in some senses. And his mother is highly dangerous and likely to interfere.”
“Who is she?”
“No one in particular,” Atlas said. “Something of a spy. No telling why or how she fell into it, but she appears to have a debt, or at least a fondness for earning new ones.”
Reina frowned. “So she does… what, exactly?”
“She’s a criminal, but a forgettable one. Not unlike Mr. Caine’s father.”
“Oh.” For some reason, that information made Reina deeply sad. Perhaps it was the way that, in calling Gideon Drake’s mother forgettable, Atlas was so quick to suggest that memory was a luxury not to be wasted on the unworthy. “And Gideon?”
“I suspect that if Mr. Drake had never met Nico de Varona, his life would look quite different,” Atlas said. “If indeed he were still living without Nico’s help.”
Reina shifted in her chair. “So that’s it?”
“What is?”
“The unremarkable are punished for their unremarkability,” she said.
Atlas set down his cup of tea, steeping the moment in silence.
“No,” he said at last, adjusting his tie. “It is the remarkable who suffer. The unremarkable are passed over, yes, but greatness is not without its pains.” He fixed her with a solemn glance, adding, “I know very few medeians who would not ultimately choose to be unremarkable and happy, were they able to do so.”
“But you do know some who wouldn’t choose that,” Reina pointed out.
Atlas’ mouth twisted upwards.
“Yes,” he said. “I do know some.”
He seemed ready to let her go, his episode of candor coming to a close, but Reina lingered a moment longer, contemplating her lack of satisfaction. She supposed she had thought the confirmation of Nico’s friend would solve her puzzle, but it hadn’t. The initial satisfaction of having questions answered was a cheap high, and now she was unfulfilled again.
“The traveler,” she said. “The one you rejected to choose me instead. Who was it?”
She knew without a doubt this would be the last question she was permitted to ask.
“He was not rejected,” said Atlas, before inclining his head in dismissal, rising to his feet and leading her conclusively to the door.
EZRA
Ezra Mikhail Fowler was born as the earth was dying. There had been an entire fuss of it on the news that year, about the carbon crisis and how little time the ozone had left, leaving an entire generation to turn to their therapists and proclaim a collective, widespread existential disengagement. The Uni
ted States had been awash in fires and floods for months, with only half the country believing they had any hand in its demolishment. Even the ones who still believed in a vengeful God had failed to see the signs.
Still, things would have to get much worse before they got better. Only when time and breathable air and potable water were running out did someone, somewhere, decide to change their stance. Magical technology that had once been bought and sold by governments in secret transitioned to private hands, allowing it to be bought and sold via trade secret instead. It healed some of the earth’s viruses, provided some renewable energy, repairing enough of the damage caused by industrialization and globalization and all the other -ations that the world could successfully go on a bit longer without any drastic change in attitude or behaviors. Politicians politicked as usual, which meant that for every incremental step forward there was still a looming end in sight. But it was delayed, and that was what was important. Any senator could tell you that.
Ezra, meanwhile, grew up in an unfortunate corner of Los Angeles. The sort that was too far east to have ever laid eyes on the ocean, and that also believed unquestionably that a river was nothing more than a slow trickle above cement. His was a generally fatherless nation, a community of misfortune for which mothers were primary caregivers and breadwinners as well, albeit for very little bread. Ezra had been a tribesman of his local multigenerational matriarchy until the age of twelve, when his mother died as the result of a shooting while at worship inside her temple. Ezra had been there, but also not there. He remembered the details of the event clearly for multiple reasons, her death notwithstanding: One, he and his mother had had an argument that morning about him running off somewhere the day before, which he assured her he hadn’t done. Two, it had been his first experience with a door.
Perhaps if he’d been braver or more aware of what he was doing he might have held his mother’s hand more tightly. As it was, the sound of the automatic rifle had sent him careening backwards in space, to the point where he wondered if he had actually been shot. He was familiar with the idea of a live shooter, having been made to run drills for it in school, but death itself remained a foreign concept. In Ezra’s mind, the idea of a bullet piercing any part of him was just like this had been: a collapse, his ears ringing, the entirety of the world tilting sideways for a moment. When the sensation cleared, though, Ezra realized he was either dead or very, very much alive.
When he opened his eyes the temple was quiet, eerily so. He walked around to the spot where his mother had been, feeling at the edges of the wood for evidence of bullets. There were none, and he thought perhaps he had made it happen by magic. Perhaps he had fixed everything, done it over, and now everything would be fine? He went home to find his mother asleep on the sofa, still in her nurse’s uniform. He went to bed. He woke up. The sun shone.
Then things began to happen oddly. The same burnt toast for breakfast as yesterday, the same terrible jokes on the daily morning news. His mother yelled at him for running off the day before, disappearing and coming home after she’d been asleep. She dragged him to the bathroom, shouting for him to wash his hair and get dressed for temple. No, no, he said instantly, no we can’t go there, Mom listen to me it’s important, but she was insistent. Put your good shoes on Ezra Mikhail, wash your hair and let’s go.
When the shooter appeared again, Ezra finally confirmed with certainty his suspicion that he had somehow gone into the past, which at first he took as a blessing. He tried several times to save his mother, thinking it his divinely appointed task. Each time things repeated as they had before, the situation altering like puzzle pieces to form the prophetic picture on the box. Exhausted, he eventually fell through the little vacancy in time for the thirteenth round and stayed there, and then, for the first time, he tried to open a new crevice for himself, something to lead him elsewhere. When he stepped out, he was three weeks beyond his mother’s funeral—the furthest he could take himself at the time.
Social services soon arrived to gather him into custody. Perhaps because he had already watched his mother die twelve times, Ezra numbly went.
It’s not a secret that the foster care system leaves much to be desired. Ezra had vowed never to run away again, never to tell a soul about what he’d seen and done, but life has a way of breaking its promises to children. Within a year, he was learning to use the doors with some regularity, securing control over their outcome. He did not age as time passed if he didn’t choose to, moving fluidly through it instead, and by his sixteenth birthday he was only fifteen and one day, having skipped through any instances of the time he couldn’t otherwise abide.
At seventeen (or so), Ezra was offered a scholarship to the New York University of Magical Arts, which was the first time he fully understood that he was not alone in what he could do. True, he was the only one who had access to the doors specifically, but for the first time, he understood that he was not the only magician in the world—no, medeian, they told him. It was a new word, unfamiliar on his tongue.
So what was he? Not a physicist, not exactly. He was definitely opening and closing tiny, Ezra-sized wormholes to navigate through time, that much seemed clear, but his magic was limited and self-concentrated. It was a unique power, dangerous.
Keep it quiet, his professors advised. You never know what sort of people will try to mess with time. Never the kind with good intentions.
Dutifully, Ezra kept his abilities a secret, or tried to. Eventually, though, the Alexandrian Society found him out.
It was a tempting offer. (It was always tempting; power always is.) What was particularly interesting to Ezra, though, were the others, his fellow initiates, or the four who would become his fellow initiates after one of them had been eliminated. Ezra was introverted by nature—a combination of poverty, inexplicable power, and his mother’s untimely death had combined to make him relatively standoffish—but there was one other initiate with whom he instantly shared a bond.
Atlas Blakely was a rakish vagrant with wild natural hair and an insuppressible grin. A “bi’ o’ London rough,” as he called himself, who laughed so loudly it regularly frightened pigeons. He was wolfish and lively and so sharp it sometimes made others uneasy, but Ezra warmed to him immediately, and Atlas to him. They shared something they gradually deduced was hunger, though for what was initially unclear. Ezra’s theory was that they were merely cut from the same indigent cloth, the easy cast-offs of a dying earth. The other four candidates were educated, well-born, and therefore bred with a comfortable cynicism, a posh sort of gloom. Ezra and Atlas, on the other hand were sunspots. They were stars who refused to die out.
It was Atlas who first sorted out the death clause of the Society’s initiation, reading it somewhere in someone’s thoughts or whatever he did that Atlas insisted was not actually mind reading. “It’s good and rightly fucked, innit?” he said to Ezra, his accent thickly unintelligible at times. “We’re supposed to kill someone? Thanks, mate, no thanks.” (No fanks, as it sounded to Ezra.)
“The books, though,” Ezra said, quietly buzzing. The two of them shared a fondness for intoxicants, mortal drugs when they could get it. It made the doors easier to access for Ezra, and Atlas got tired of hearing the sound of other people’s thoughts. Gave him a bleedin’ migraine, he said.
“The damn books. A whole library. All those books.”
“Books ain’t enough, bruv,” grunted Atlas sagely.
But fundamentally, Ezra disagreed. “This Society is something,” he said. “It’s not just the books, it’s the questions, the answers. It’s all something more than nothing.” (Drugs made this theory difficult to communicate.) “What we need is to get ourselves in, but then get on top somehow. Power begets power and all that.”
It was clear that Atlas did not understand him, so he went on.
“Most people don’t know how to starve,” said Ezra, going on to describe how few people were capable of actually understanding time and how much of it there was, and how much a person could
gain if they could just hold on a little longer. If they could starve long enough to get by on almost nothing, if they fed themselves only little by little, in the end they would be the ones to last. The patient shall inherit the earth, or something like that. Killing was bad, sure, but worse it was unnecessary, inefficient. What had Ezra’s existence ever been aside from a recurring loophole to the nature of life itself?
And besides, they still wanted the damn books, so from there they made a plan: it was Atlas who would do the waiting, Ezra who would disappear. They could fake his death, Ezra suggested, and thus with one person out of the running, there would be no need for either of them to kill anyone. The other initiates didn’t like Ezra, anyway. He was too secretive, they didn’t trust him. They also didn’t know what he could do, and in the end, that was clearly for the best.
So Ezra opened a door and went forward five years, meeting Atlas in the cafe they’d agreed on before he left. In what felt like a matter of hours to Ezra, Atlas had advanced to twenty-eight and lost the accent, but not the swagger. He slid into the chair opposite Ezra and grinned. “I’m in,” he said.
“They bought it?” The Society knew what Ezra could do, but still. Who were they to say he wasn’t dead?
“Yes.”
“So what’d they do with… you know. Me?”
“Same thing they do to every eliminated candidate. Erased you,” Atlas said. “Like you never existed.”
Perfect. “And even without the ritual…?”
Atlas raised a glass. “The Society is dead; long live the Society.”
Continuity into perpetuity. Time, as ever, went on.
“So what next?” asked Ezra, blazing with the prospects yet to come.
They kept their meetings up sparingly, a year at a time. Neither of them wanted Ezra to age unnecessarily; for him, time passed differently, but it was still passing. They were waiting for the six, Atlas said. The right six, the perfect collection, including Ezra. Atlas, meanwhile, would have to work his way up, to ensure he would be the next Caretaker of the archives (theirs had been quite old already, which aside from wealth beyond measure made an excellent qualification for impending retirement), and then once Atlas managed it, he would be able to start hand-selecting the candidates himself. He would choose the perfect team of five—one to die, of course, at the initiates’ choosing, though even that unlucky soul would be someone carefully and thoughtfully selected—and then Ezra, the sixth, would be at the helm of it.