Sovereign

by April Daniels

  “Charlie, this is Karen. Karen, this is Charlie. Karen is Valkyrja’s daughter.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows jump up. “I wasn’t aware she had kids.”

  “Yes. It turns out I’m half-Korean, half-Scandinavian death goddess. Honestly, I’m as surprised as you,” says Karen with an edge in her voice. And then a moment later, with sinking shoulders, “I’m sorry, I’m being a bitch right now.”

  Charlie stands and holds out his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m pleased to meet you.” After a moment, Karen shakes it. “I’m sorry that your mom died,” says Charlie.

  Karen snorts. “I’m not. Fuck that bitch. I just wish she’d leave me out of it.”

  Charlie glances at me like, who is this crazy chick and why did you drag me out to meet her?

  “That’s sort of the problem we’re hoping you can help us with. When Valkyrja died, all her powers and memories got passed on to her daughter.” I explain what’s happening so Karen won’t have to go over it all again.

  “That sucks,” says Charlie when I’m done.

  Karen smiles thinly. “Yes. Yes it does.”

  “So like…all of her memories? There are some questions I’d have loved to ask her, but she wasn’t in a really great mood the last time we spoke.” Apparently Charlie once almost accidentally summoned a demon into Victory Park downtown. Valkyrja and Graywytch stopped things before they got out of hand, and he doesn’t like to talk about the incident much.

  “I’d really rather not, if it’s all the same to you,” says Karen.

  “Ah. Right. Sorry.” Charlie goes back over to his seat and closes the book he was reading. “Well, I am not super versed in mind-altering magic. That stuff is hard to find texts about since most of it gets into really forbidden territory. The Council of Avalon—that’s the international body governing magic and—”

  “I know what the Council of Avalon is,” says Karen. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and her fingers tighten where they are squeezing her biceps. “My birth mother was—never mind. Can you help me or not?”

  Charlie nods. “I think so. I mean, I can give it a shot, at least. The charms against intrusion, those at least are easy to come by.” He goes over to a shelf in the corner of the room. It has a glass door with a lock, and I’m not surprised when he pulls out a key and unlocks it. Charlie spends so much money here, they’d probably give him a key to the building if he asked them to. “If a basic charm doesn’t help, we could probably explode it into a full thaumaturgical grid and recompile the spell into something more customized for you.” He pulls a few leather books off the shelf. “Do you have anything precious with you?”

  Karen nods and reaches into her shirt to pull out a round locket. “This is a thumb drive. It’s got a video on it of the first time I led my jazz band in concert.” Karen blushes deeply. “I, uh, I keep it around for when I’m scared I can’t do anything right.”

  Charlie smiles. “That’s perfect. We can start with the basic charm right away. Dreadnought, do you want to stick around? This might take some time.”

  I shrug. The convention was important to me. It sits hot and sour in my gut that I can’t go back, but that choice was taken out of my hands the moment Graywytch refused to pick up the phone. It helps to remind myself that we had only planned on attending the first two days before we returned home for some family business. At least, I tell myself it helps. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”

  So we dig in and research. After about an hour, Charlie says he’s ready to try the charm on Karen, but it doesn’t seem to do anything one way or the other. If anything, this only makes Charlie more excited about the project, because it means he gets to put in a request to the Secret Archive, which I gather is something of an invite-only library he’s got a membership with. At one point he mentions offhand that there’s a copy of a book he could use in the occult section of Powell’s in Bridgeton, so I pop down to Oregon at Mach 1 and buy it for him. (It’s nice being able to drop a thousand dollars on a book without blinking. Being a superhero with a municipal contract is great work if you can get it.) As the sun goes down, the manager at Raven’s tells us they’re closing, so we gather up our things and move over to Charlie’s house. He makes some awkward introductions to his parents and we set up camp in his attic bedroom.

  Charlie is as happy as a pig in shit to be tackling a new problem. Karen is less enthusiastic. I want to help, but there’s not really much I can do. As much as Karen hates to access Valkyrja’s memories, she knows more about magic than I ever will. She probably knows more about it than Charlie, to be honest, and that’s half the reason he’s so excited. He seems to think that if he can figure out a way to keep Karen’s mind intact, she’ll be able to access her birth mother’s memories on demand and be his personal encyclopedia of the occult.

  Wizards tend to be hopeless optimists. It’s the only reason they do such a dangerous job.

  Charlie’s mom comes up to ask if we’ll be staying the night, and I guess we are since we all say yes, and I offer to pay for the pizza. About six liters of soda later, the sky starts turning pale, and I sit up with a jolt from the pillow nest I’ve constructed against the side of Charlie’s bed.

  “What time is it?”

  “Like six in the morning, why?”

  “Shit!” I haul myself to my feet and go to open Charlie’s window. “I’ve got a court date in less than an hour. Sorry, guys, I gotta bail.”

  “What are you going to court for?” asks Karen. She looks a little dim around the edges, but seems to be weathering the all-nighter better than Charlie, whose eyes are open out of pure stubbornness.

  I open the window and get ready to take off. “Nothing important, I’m just finalizing my divorce with my parents.”

  Chapter Ten

  So there’s this thing called an emancipated minor, and I really want to be one. It’s not technically a divorce, but it’s basically a divorce. My parents go one way. I go the other (at Mach 3). You see, my father is a world-class shithead. He thinks that because he never laid a hand on me, what he was doing wasn’t abuse. Like it’s normal for a kid to invent reasons to stay away from home. Or to be scared to speak up for herself and to think she’s a failure before she’s even really started life. Like it’s okay to be surprised to learn that other families don’t treat lies and denial like currency. Like it’s not a problem that his daughter used to have daydreams about him dying suddenly, peacefully in his sleep.

  He was a looming ogre who never found a topic he wasn’t willing to scream at me about, and until this past year I didn’t even know how bad it was because I didn’t know what it was like to live in a house without shouting, without the fear that at any moment he could explode into the room, red-faced and flinging spittle.

  And Mom just let it happen. For fifteen years, she betrayed me to him over and over again. I’ve never bought that bullshit about a mother’s love being stronger than anything, not for an instant. It’s not a delusion I could afford.

  When you get right down to it, this family needs a divorce. We’ve needed one for years, and if she won’t do it, then I will. They want to stay together, they’re welcome to try, but I’m done being an accessory for her martyrdom act, both the justification for and the instrument of her poisonous denial about the man that she married.

  New Port Superior Courthouse is a deco-brutalist monstrosity squatting like a calcified turd downtown. You’ve got City Hall—soaring Greek columns in white limestone—on one side of the block. On the other side, you’ve got the stern gothic lines of the police station, Atlas straining with the globe on his shoulders above the main entrance. Then between them, you’ve got the courthouse, which looks like a Soviet machine gun bunker tried to dress up for company. Naked brown cement with holes in it every two yards and parallel seams of overflow from where the molds were set up. Every window is tall and narrow, with iron shutters like they’re expecting a riot at any moment.

  • • •

  I take a cab to my court appo
intment. The case is being handled as Jane Doe v. Jane and John Doe so it doesn’t get in all the papers, and it would kind of give things away if I showed up in my cape and bodyglove. Instead, I’m wearing a baggy sweatshirt with my hood up and a brunette wig. I’ve got sunglasses too, but honestly at that point I might as well get Kinetiq to follow me around projecting a neon sign above my head that says DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THIS OSTENTATIOUSLY ANONYMOUS YOUNG WOMAN, so they stay folded up in my pocket.

  There’s a bit of a media scrum on the front steps when I get there, but I don’t think anything of it at first. Every time a metahuman gets arraigned, the media is there to cover it. Not because people with superpowers getting arrested is super rare or anything, but more because there’s always the chance he’ll turn out to be a really nasty supervillain later, and none of the news stations want to be left out on having B-roll footage of his First! Public! Appearance! when it’s time to interrupt The Simpsons with breaking news or whatever.

  I’m about halfway up the stairs when someone shouts out a sentence that turns my blood to icy slush. “There she is!” and here comes the stampede. Between one flight of stairs and the next, I am mobbed by pretty much every news outfit in town. Shit. My hearing starts in like ten minutes; I really do not have time to play twenty questions with the field correspondents. And there is no fucking way I want any of them to figure out that I’m here for family court, not a criminal hearing. Maybe the sunglasses would have been worth a shot after all.

  Okay, okay, I’ve trained for this. I can handle this. I reach into my memory and pull out the basic brushoff line: “I’m not going to comment on any ongoing case.” Let them jump to the obvious conclusion—that I’m here to testify against Crenshaw. I’m in and out of this place like once a week due to my work with the cops, so they’ll figure—

  “Dreadnought, do you have anything to say about your father’s allegations that Doctor Impossible is manipulating you to gain access to your municipal hero funding?”

  The gears in my head seize up. My mouth sort of flaps up and down while I try to deal with the world crumbling beneath my feet.

  “What?”

  Diane from Action News Team Five shoves her mic in front of my mouth and says, “Your father is alleging that you are not psychologically competent to be living without your family and that Doctor Impossible is taking advantage of you to further fund her own operations. How do you respond to these allegations?”

  Hairs up and down my spine stand up. “I—I don’t—no comment! Okay? No comment!”

  I try to push my way up the steps, but I’m capped in by a tight phalanx of cameras and boom mics. “Get out of my way,” I tell them, but the reporters keep shouting questions at me, pressing in, mics in my face, squeezing me tight, pushing me down. Why is your family broken, Danny? My chest is tight. “Let me through.” I can’t breathe. What’s wrong with you, Danny? “I need to get through here.” Are you still a freak, Danny? I can’t breathe; there’s something wrong with my chest. Need to leave. Need to get out of there. Is he right about you, Danny? “Move.” Are you saying you’re not crazy? Aren’t you a freak, though? They’re shouting, they’re shouting and they’re close and I need to leave—

  “I SAID GET OUT OF MY WAY!” As the echo off the front of the courthouse slaps the air, the press scrum seems to remember that I can pulp them anytime I please. The ones in front of me take a shaken step back, and that’s all the opening I need to power up the steps. I’m ten steps up and twenty feet inside the building before the first camera hits the ground.

  My heart is slamming in my temples as I skid to a stop. Instant regret stabs me. You can fly, idiot! My cheeks are scalding as I watch the two or three news crews who didn’t go tumbling immediately start narrating back to the station what’s happened. Shit, I hope none of them are hurt. Cecilia is going to kill—

  Wait, why am I learning this from them and not her? I fumble my phone out of my pocket and dial Cecilia. It goes straight to voicemail. Fine. Whatever. Turning away from the doors, I wave at the bailiffs with a tight-lipped smile to reassure them that the brief display of superpowers in the front lobby is no reason to break out the assault rifles quite yet. There are a few other people here on court business waiting at the security line, and they stare at me with wide eyes. I step into the back of the line. The inside of the courthouse is just as dreary and depressing as the outside, stopping just shy of dripping pipes and flickering bulbs territory.

  After a moment, the bailiffs start processing people through the checkpoint again. When it’s my turn, the bailiff working the metal detector smirks and says, “Reporters, huh?”

  It’s not funny, but I’m so grateful to him that I laugh way harder than is cool. Danielle Tozer, Queen of Social Catastrophes, that’s me. Once they’re sure I’m not carrying anything as harmless as a handgun or a pipe bomb, they let me through, and I jog to get to my assigned courtroom in time.

  Where, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, I find more reporters gathered outside. It looks as if every newspaper and every stringer in the country has someone waiting for me, and when I show up, it’s like I went diving in a shark tank while wearing a meat bikini.

  “No comment!” I bellow at them as I march on the doors to the courtroom. Print reporters, at least, have some semblance of manners and don’t mob me quite so badly. I mean, they still shoot lots of questions at me even though I just said no comment, but there isn’t the jostling, the shoving, the sense that they’re going to pin me down and pull answers out with heated tongs. I get into the courtroom, and shut the door firmly. This is one of those dingy basement cubbies with a low ceiling and not much audience seating. The audience’s chairs sit empty and silent. Family court is closed to the public, which is a blessing I am thankful for every day.

  Cecilia is already at the plaintiff’s table, and she rises when she sees me. The long flight up from Antarctica last night would probably require a day of rest for anyone else, but like so many other people who keep it quiet, Cecilia is metahuman. She doesn’t get tired. Ever.

  “Sorry I’m late, but what the hell is going on?” I whisper when I get close. “Why are there reporters everywhere?”

  “I don’t know,” says Cecilia. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour, but my phone is dead.”

  “You couldn’t borrow someone else’s?” I ask, more waspish than I really mean to be.

  “Your number kept kicking back as disconnected,” says Cecilia. “When I tried texting you my phone bricked, so I thought it was a software issue, but the payphone kept dropping the call. I take it Doctor Impossible wasn’t able to get through to you?” Doc hadn’t been there when I went home to change into my civvies. I shake my head. “Well, that’s unfortunate. She said she’d be looking into what was causing the problem. I’m sorry you walked into this blind. Are you okay?”

  My cheeks go warm again. “I guess I’m all right.”

  “Good.”

  “We, uh, we might have a media problem to deal with after this is over,” I mumble.

  Cecilia pinches the bridge of her nose. “Can you at least promise me there are no broken bones in play?”

  “Uh, well there might not be,” I say, trying to sound like that’s totally within acceptable parameters.

  “All right. One crisis at a time.” She gestures for me to sit, and we put our heads together. “If what I’m hearing from the reporters is right,” says Cecilia, “your parents are about-facing and contesting the petition after all. We’re in for a fight now, and this is going to get messy. My guess is they want to put your paychecks into a trust that they can access. It’s asset stripping, as naked as can be, but the law may support their claim.”

  “Shit.” I glance over at the respondents’ table. Nobody is there yet.

  “Quite,” says Cecilia softly. “Now, I need you to be ready to hear some fairly awful stuff. These things can be brutal, far worse than any criminal trial you’ve been to. And the galling part is that the things they’ll s
ay will all be prefaced with the excuse that it’s in your best interest. Remember what I taught you: no reactions, none. If you need to leave, just step out and head directly to the bathroom. Stay there as long as you need to, but don’t speak to anyone. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes, I think I can.”

  “You think you can, or you can?” asks Cecilia.

  “I can.”

  “Good. Remember that you’re Dreadnought. They can never take that from you, but you can give it away if you’re careless.”

  I nod. That’s what we’ve said from day one. It helps to hear. “I’ll remember.”

  “Now, tell me about what happened out there.”

  My shoulders sink. “The cameras mobbed me. I wasn’t ready. They knew more about the case than I did, and…I panicked. I’m sorry.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I…I ran. Some people got knocked down. I mean, it’s not like I punched any—”

  “Okay, good. That would be very bad. If people fell over, we can work that. Don’t worry.”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dreadnought,” I say again, and even start to feel it.

  “We’re ready.”

  I nod. We’re ready. We can do this.

  Shit. I’m not ready. I can’t do this.

  I’ve fought the worst of the worst. Heavyweights like Utopia, Acid Andy, and Mr. Armageddon. I’ve fought metahumans, hypertech, wizards, and kaiju. I’ve been shot with cannons and stabbed with vibroblades. I’ve been scalded, crushed, torched, and frozen. I’ve had broken bones and chemical burns, and I’ve spit out so many shattered teeth I know exactly how long it takes each one to grow back.

  I’m not saying this to puff myself up, but let’s be clear: I don’t back down from fights. Ever. I don’t care who you are or what you can do. I don’t care how much I’m outnumbered or how badly I’m hurt. You bring the fight to me, and I’ll bring it right back to you twice as hard, and I will make you regret the day you thought you were hard enough to take on Dreadnought. I’m not just undefeated in personal combat; I am undefeatable. Nobody wins against me. Nobody.