by A. R. Knight
He presented it to her, and Anna raised the weapon gingerly. I could see the muscles tighten in her right arm. Heavier than she expected.
“Now,” Nicholas continued. “When you carry the weapon, you keep it like this. When you have a fight in tight quarters, you keep it like this. But when you have room? Then, you change it!”
Nicholas reached above Anna’s grip and twisted. The sphere fell off the top of the mace and dangled for a moment, until, with a click like a gear winding, a ring of inch-long spikes popped out. Pale fire made its way down the chain, starting from the rod, and eventually covered the sphere.
“Is that not a perfect weapon?” Nicholas said. Anna, staring into the fire with her mouth slightly open, nodded.
The best place to learn a new technique was the Warrens. Populated with spirits, but with plenty of other guides around if you got into trouble, the Warrens were as safe as danger got in Riven.
Anna and I made our way through the Ghoul’s Gateway, Anna cradling the mace in her hands.
“He gave you the holster for a reason,” I said, looking at Anna’s back. “It’s going to be more comfortable than carrying that thing.”
“I want to get used to holding it,” Anna said, and I didn’t bother arguing. Everyone has their quirks.
“Hold up,” I said some minutes later as we approached the middle of the Warrens. From my belt, I pulled off my resonator, set it on the ground, and let it do its thing.
“What’s that?” Anna asked, and I told her. “So, wait. You’re saying you have this tool that lets you find angry spirits and you never told me? That could be so useful!”
“It’s for guides only.”
“I thought these were too,” Anna waved the mace around. “Besides, you seem to be bending all kinds of rules.”
“I do what I have to.”
Anna rolled her eyes. “What’s with you today? You’re sad. Moping around. Does it have something to do with the other spirit? Selena?”
On the ground, the resonator glowed orange. North, but not quite back where we came. We’d be walking alleys to get to the target. And doing it quietly. I’d already popped sparks to indicate we were in the area and keep other hunts away, but a guide could always be chancing by.
“I have a lot of questions that need answering,” I said. “So after this, when you learn how to use that thing, you’re telling me about my mother.”
“That was the deal,” Anna said, her tone different. Distant. Good. I didn’t want a sneak thinking she was my best friend all of a sudden.
Anna kept quiet as we made our way north, following the resonator. The tool became brighter as we drew closer, bringing us into a ruin of what would have been a seven-story apartment building. A basic structure, with stairs running up the center.
“Ready?” I asked as we went in.
“Been waiting my whole life for this,” Anna said. “A chance to wrangle a spirit? I’m ready.”
I couldn’t stop a small smile. That’s what I’d said too, on my first time. Bryce had been there, watching my every move. Now, I’d do the same with Anna.
Except if we were caught together, I’d lose access to Riven forever.
Chapter 38
The spirit was in the next room, and we could hear it growling to itself.
We were on the fourth floor of the apartment building, and it was ugly. Cracks lined the floors and walls. Doors were nonexistent. What furniture there was looked like it had been torn apart with absolute fury. One chair had legs in multiple apartments. Fuzz from cushions meshed with the ash floating in the air.
“You’ll go in first,” I said to Anna, who stood in the hall next to me. “Say hello. When it turns, you’ll confirm that it’s the target, then you swing.”
“No special dance? No ritual?” Anna said, laughter in her eyes. I shook my head and waved her forward.
Anna rounded the corner into the room and I followed. The spirit was hunched over the ruins of a bed. It was really just a splintered wooden frame and a single pillowcase, but the spirit, a middle-aged man, caressed the frame with a slowness at odds with the noises coming from his mouth.
“Hello?” Anna said. Taking me literally then.
The spirit paused. Straightened. Then turned his head to look at Anna. Glowing bright in his eyes were the telltale signs of crazy. Pale blue fire.
“You’re not my wife,” the spirit said.
“Correct,” Anna replied, raising the mace.
“Then you don’t belong here,” the spirit replied. He bent down, snapped off a part of the bed frame. Anna smashed him in the face.
The spirit crumpled to the ground, groaning. Anna glanced back at me, grinning.
“He’s not gone yet,” I said, leaning against the door frame. Anna jerked back as the spirit made a grab for her leg. “You have to use the flail.”
“Oh. Right,” Anna twisted her weapon, the sphere popping off, spiking out, and growing the blue fire.
The spirit was back on his feet, one hand holding the bed frame and the other his head. It moaned, lurching towards Anna. She met the advance with a two-handed swing of her flail, the chain pulling the sphere hard and fast behind the rod. The spirit put up its bed frame piece to block.
Anna’s flail simply shattered the spirit’s poor defense, blowing apart the wood and continuing on to crumple into the spirit’s chest. The blue fire spread out and enveloped the spirit.
“Your first wrangling,” I said a moment later as the spirit walked by us on its dazed path to the Cycle. “Well done.”
“Thanks,” Anna said. She glanced down at her weapon, back in mace mode. “Have to remember the fire.”
That’s when we noticed the noise from the next room. A crying sound. A young one. I pulled out the resonator and confirmed. The signal guiding us to this building had been strong. Looks like the sound was coming from more than one spirit.
“You ready for round two?” I asked.
“Ready,” Anna replied.
“Then lead on.”
Anna went past the splintered bed frame, deeper into the apartment. An empty living room with a balcony, and then a second bedroom. Sitting in the middle of it, a girl. She looked up as we entered, her eyes a perfect burning blue.
“What happened to you?” Anna said to the child.
The girl tilted her head. She was wearing a flowery dress, one that I’d seen in Chicago kids going to parks. It lacked a certain charm when the kids wore their masks along with them, but here, on this spirit, the dress was perfect.
“You’re not my mommy,” the girl said to Anna. Then she looked at me. “You’re not my daddy.”
“That’s right,” Anna said, squatting to get eye-level with the girl.
“Anna,” I said. “That’s not a real girl anymore.”
“I’m not a real girl?” the spirit said, standing up. She barely came up to my waist.
“You are,” Anna said. “You were.”
I caught the slight change, the tense of the girl’s calves, but Anna didn’t. Wasn’t ready when the girl lunged at her. I pulled Anna back and the girl’s grabbing hands fell short. Anna scrambled away, back to her feet, as the girl hesitated. Unsure which of us to target.
“Don’t think of her as a girl,” I said. “You have to see them all as spirits; things that need to be cycled.”
Anna nodded, but she held the mace loosely. When the girl lunged again, Anna tried to counter, to bat the girl away with the weapon, but Anna didn’t put enough effort into the swing. The mace went high, the girl ducking under it and attacking Anna’s leg. Grabbing and crawling up Anna’s coat. Biting and clawing her.
“Stop it!” Anna yelled, but that wasn’t going to mean anything to a spirit. The girl reached Anna’s face, her mouth opening and going for Anna’s cheek, when my lash wrapped around the girl’s body, pulled her off Anna, and cloaked the spirit in blue fire.
We both watched the girl as the fire died away, as her eyes blanked and she stood up and walked from the apa
rtment. The only sound was Anna’s hard breathing.
“They’re not people,” I said. “They’re spirits.”
“I know. I know that,” Anna replied. “It’s just hard sometimes.”
“You can’t let it be. One mistake with nobody around to help you and that’s the end of it.”
“I get it.”
“I’d agree, but the only way we’ll know for sure is when you make it through the next few nights alive,” I said. Harsh, maybe, but Bryce had said much the same to me. Riven didn’t do charity. Didn’t give people an opportunity to learn.
“I think I’m done for tonight,” Anna said, staring at her mace. I didn’t argue.
When we reached the bottom floor of the apartment building, I paused.
“Now, about my side of the deal?” I said. “Tell me about my mother.”
Chapter 39
“I’ve been thinking about how to tell you,” Anna said. “I think it’ll make the most sense if I go back to the beginning.”
“I’ll walk slow,” I replied as we moved through the Warrens.
“Remember when I met you on the train? Came up to you with the card?”
“It’s not easy to forget. Most people don’t approach a guide.”
“Right. That wasn’t an accident. I knew you were going to be on that train,” Anna said. “I knew because I’d been following you.”
“Someone hired you?”
“Why else does a sneak do anything, right?” Anna said. “All about the money and that’s it, according to you.”
“Prove me wrong,” I said.
Anna laughed. “Prepare to be embarrassed. I wasn’t hired to follow you. I was hired to find your mother.”
“Find her? But she’s dead?”
“In Riven.”
“She would have died decades ago,” I said. “There’s no way her spirit would still be here.”
“That’s what I thought when the client told me. When I found the death certificate,” Anna said. “The client told me he was confident she was here somewhere, and I believed him.”
“Why?”
“Because the client was the lead guide for Chicago.”
“Liar,” I said without thinking. “Bryce would never hire a sneak.”
Anna took the opportunity to dish me another glare. Her annoyed face went well with the broken side-street we were going down. A smattering of lampposts leered over the cracked road, storefronts full of shattered glass stared out at us. Spirits wandered by on their winding paths to the Cycle.
“Apparently you’re not listening,” Anna said. “Because he did. Told me to look for a Katherine Reed. To search Riven, and, if I found her, to tell him immediately.”
I decided to drop the Bryce issue for the moment. I could bring it up with him later. “Did you? Find her?”
“Close,” Anna said. “It took a long time. A lot of asking random spirits, following rumors and riddles. Eventually, I found where she lives. Which is how I found out about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s keeping a diary,” Anna said. “Writing down bits and pieces. I think it’s so she doesn’t lose herself entirely.”
I thought about Selena, her talk about falling out of sync with herself. Losing what she was to Riven’s unchanging eternity. “Do you have the diary?”
Anna shook her head. “I read it for a while and then ran out of there. The later entries weren’t pretty. She’s getting angry, Carver, and I didn’t want her to find me there.”
We’d reached the busted-up building that served as Anna’s crossing point. The place looked like it’d been a cheap hotel. Floors full of crumbling identical rooms. A faded sign out front missing half the name, so that the place looked like it was called The Grand Reg.
“So you found the diary,” I said. “Why didn’t you go to Bryce with that?”
“I wanted to find you first,” Anna said. She looked away from me. “Because I thought I could use the information. Use you.”
“You did,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“I’m not proud of it, but I’m not sorry either,” Anna turned back to me, defiant.
“You can make it up to me,” I said. “I’m busy tonight, but tomorrow you’ll take me to my mother.”
“You sound like you’re giving me an order,” Anna said. “I don’t like it.”
“Says the person who just admitted to using me?” I replied.
“We made a fair exchange,” Anna replied. “But I’ll do it. Have to admit, I’m curious to see where this goes.”
“You’re not the only one.”
Anna crossed over a minute later, leaving me alone again on Riven’s streets. The walk back to the clock tower gave me plenty of time to think. My mother, still alive in Riven. As a spirit, anyway. Maybe not yet angry. She could tell me what happened to her.
Tell me who I was and where I came from.
Chapter 40
I pressed a small switch outside the front door to Bryce’s house. A three-story thin building in the middle of a quiet neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, Bryce and his family lived in comforts worthy of a guide who’d been patrolling Riven streets for decades.
The switch, when I pulled it, bounced back up. On the inside of the door small light would’ve come on. I heard the chime as it sounded. The usual way to say hello.
Running thumps came a second later, the patter of small feet and then a click as the center part of the door twisted to reveal a lens; a way for them to see who was on the outside. I waved at it. The children, a boy and a girl, stepped back from the door giving nervous glances at each other. My mask was a little scary, my large black coat didn’t help.
The door jerked open and Bryce stood on the other side.
“Carver. A little early for dinner,” Bryce said. “Not that we were expecting you?”
“Sorry, but I didn’t want to wait,” I said.
“What for? What’s this about?” Bryce asked, turning back to the kids for a second and waving them away.
“You have somewhere we can talk in private?” I said. As much as I wanted to ask Bryce about the sneaks in front of his family, I figured there was a chance things could get emotional. It wasn’t entirely out of the question that anger could come into play when you get to talking about how your mentor, your best friend in the city, decided to have your family investigated without telling you.
“In the back,” Bryce said. “Come in.”
I stepped in through the door and Bryce shut it behind me. As soon as the door clicked closed, I heard the purifiers kick in. Sucking the haze out and leaving the inside air refreshed. I pulled off the mask and hung up my coat.
The inside of Bryce’s house was like the perfect family home. Warm lights glowed along their wall strips while the smell of cooking food, food infinitely better than anything I made in my apartment, floated through the vents. The kids had ran away from the door and were back in the living room, off to my left, fiddling and fighting with the radio. On the walls were paintings and pictures, every professional one matched in size by a drawing from one of Bryce’s two kids. Even the earliest ones, the smatterings of paint or sketches with a marker that bore no resemblance to anything.
Seeing all of it told me why Bryce didn’t have people to his house. Why I’d never been inside before. This place was a sanctum, a castle apart from the deadly terrors of his daily life.
“This is something else,” I said.
Bryce laughed. “It’s something you only understand when you have them,” he said, nodding towards the kids.
“It looks like a lot of work.”
“Think of all the free art?” Bryce said. “And it’s refreshing to hear their laughs after a long night in Riven.”
Bryce led me back behind the stairs, past the kitchen to a room that had a series of windows and a booth around a table big enough for eight. I looked for a door to close but there wasn’t any. Then Bryce flipped the switch on the wall. All the noise from the kids, fr
om the house, and outside vanished.
“Dampener,” I said. “How much did that cost you?”
“It was a gift,” Bryce said. “From Piotr. When I had the kids. Did you know that they’re twins?”
“Didn’t catch that.”
“Piotr said I would need a place to get away. He was right,” Bryce said. “You wanted to talk? This is where to do it. No one can hear what you say.”
“I met a sneak,” I said and waited for Bryce’s reaction. The guide sat back in the booth, but otherwise didn’t let anything flicker across his face. “She told me about my mother. That you were looking for her.”
Now Bryce rubbed his chin. “I figured this was going to happen sooner or later. Especially when the sneak disappeared.”
“She didn’t. She went looking for me instead.”
“It was a risk that it would get back to you. One I don’t regret taking,” Bryce said.
“Going to have to give me more than that,” I replied.
“How much did she tell you about your mother?”
I relayed what Anna had mentioned. What I’d found. About her death after giving birth and the evidence that she still lived in Riven. The only time Bryce showed any expression was at the end, when I mentioned the diary.
“She was my mentor. Katherine taught me everything,” Bryce said. “Like I taught you. When she died, I didn’t understand. It was so sudden and the doctors had no explanation. Then I found her. In Riven. Katherine wouldn’t talk about what happened, but she helped me anyway. For years we continued working together over there. She would lead me to breaches, or find angry spirits for me to take care of. Until a few years ago. Until you arrived.”
“What do I have anything to do with it?” I said.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Bryce said. “At first I thought maybe she’d finally gone over to the Cycle. Guides can resist the call for a long time, like Graham. If they have enough reason they can stay. I thought that reason was you.”
“But she left. That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
Bryce stood up and went behind me to a cabinet in the wall. Opened it and took out a bottle of something dark and spicy. Poured a couple of glasses.