Riven

by A. R. Knight

Chapter 51

  “Sorry, I didn’t see a sign,” I said to the spirit. “You should really warn people to keep out.”

  The spirit cocked her head at me.

  “Also,” I said, nodding back at Selena. “I wasn’t leaving her.”

  “Didn’t she leave you?” the spirit said. “That’s what she told me.”

  That cemented it. The banded spirit in front of me, batons showing on her back, was the spirit that had interrogated Selena, was my mother.

  “She had her reasons,” I said. “I’m here for mine.”

  The spirit moved closer. Shifted so that nothing stood between the two of us. Selena stepped back, towards a corner of the room. Getting out of the way.

  “I wondered for twenty-seven years if this day would ever come,” my mother said. “Some of those days I wanted nothing more than to see you. To tell you of this world and the one you live in. To share the same love my own mother shared with me. Other days, I wanted to destroy you and the threat you present to everything.”

  “People keep saying that,” I said. “Nobody tells me why.”

  “Because of who you are, Carver,” my mother said. “The product of love between a spirit and a living person.”

  Now I was confused. “I was born in a hospital, not in Riven?”

  My mother reached over her shoulders and drew out her batons. The motion was slow, deliberate. I saw her eyes close briefly as she readied herself.

  “Your father died before he should have,” my mother said. “I think you know that love does not end with death.”

  Her eyes slipped past me to Selena. Yes, I knew what she meant.

  “So what does that mean?” I said.

  My mother didn’t give me a clue, didn’t give me a hint, just rushed me. Both batons swinging up over her left shoulder in a twin strike towards my face. I sidestepped, flicking the lash around the leg of one of the tables and pulling. Sliding the table into my mother’s side and sending her rolling across the floor. Katherine Reed caught herself on the wall.

  “It means you’re a key, Carver,” my mother said. “That, with you, they can create a breach that goes both ways. From Riven to the real world and back.”

  Which is what Graham kept talking about. My eyes flicked to Selena, who didn’t look surprised. Graham had told her. That’s why she’d led me to him in the first place. A chance at getting back home. Barth was probably looking for the same thing, only without the precision. Kill enough guides and he might get lucky.

  My mother pressed off of the wall in a running start. Jumped onto the nearest table, scattering her own diaries, and sprung towards me. I tried the lash again, hooking another table and twisting it on its side like a wall. But Katherine was too fast. She skipped over the top of it and tackled me.

  I hit the floor and tried to roll. Tried to get my coat between the batons and me. Protect my face. She struck my left side first, the small hooks on the end of the batons tearing through the fabric. I dropped the knife and grabbed her right hand mid-swing. She raised the left, this time aiming right at my eyes.

  “You’re going to kill your son?” I said, and my mother hesitated. Then I threw her off of me. Rolled the opposite way and scrambled to my feet.

  “I don’t want to,” my mother said, straightening. “Graham doesn’t want that.”

  “Who cares what Graham wants?” I replied.

  “I must,” my mother said. She broke into another run, but this time whipped a baton towards my face. I brought up my left hand and blocked it, the impact numbing my left arm, but it freed up my right hand to strike with the lash.

  I caught her legs, wrapping around her knees and bringing my mother crashing to the floor. She hit hard, her arms not ready to catch herself, and groaned.

  “Sorry,” I said, and meant it. The point on the end of the lash was in my mother’s ankle. If I twisted the grip, I could send the wrangling fire into and over her. Cleanse her clean. But that might mean losing answers. “What does Graham have on you?”

  “I am bound to him,” my mother said.

  “I thought Bryce bound you?”

  “For a time,” my mother said. She struggled against the lash, but I placed my foot on her back, pressed her down. It didn’t feel good, but I figured it was a better option than letting the fight get back on. “Until Graham broke it.”

  “He broke it?”

  My mother, trapped against the floor, still managed to nod at the batons. If she used them on herself, the fire could cleanse, could break a bond. “It… frayed me. I shouldn’t have tried to take Graham alone.”

  “That was after we found you in Nicholas’s lab?”

  “I was following Graham and saw you,” my mother said. “I hadn’t seen you since you were in my arms. I thought you were another of Graham’s soldiers. Nothing has made me so happy as seeing you that day.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  My mother laughed. I kept my foot on her back. “I’m far from perfect, Carver.”

  “So you found Graham?”

  “Eventually,” my mother sighed. “We were equals before, Carver. A pair that hunted Riven’s spirits in tandem, bringing down ghouls and worse without a problem. Only Graham has changed. Another mind lends him strength. When we met, I tried and failed to break him free. He bound me.”

  “I’m going to release you. Now.”

  Before my mother could object, I twisted the the hilt of the lash and sent the fire streaking down the cord. The pale flames crawled over her, burning brighter, without heat, before dying out. I stepped off of the spirit and watched as she rose to her feet, stared at me without emotion or intelligence.

  “She’s gone?” Selena said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s more like she doesn’t know how to use herself.”

  For the first time in my life, I reached out and took my mother’s hands in mine. She looked at our grip as I felt for the pinprick, the point at which I could join my life to hers. And when I found it, I sent a part of me into her.

  “Mother?” I said. “Katherine?”

  She looked up at me and, instead of a blank nothing, her face had the hard edge of driving desire.

  “Carver,” my mother, bound to me, said. “We have to free your father.”

  Chapter 52

  Graham. As she said the words it all fell into place. My father was the one that had died early, fallen ill and passed before his time. A guide that had crossed over as he faded from life in the real world and so remained a spirit in Riven.

  “I have so many questions,” I said. “Only, we’re running out of time.”

  “Out of time?” my mother replied.

  “I’ve already been in Riven too long,” I said. “I have to cross back.”

  We made quick work of the jaunt back to the apartment. Dodged guides when we saw them, but Riven’s growing danger served to keep us hidden. Nobody searched for spirits anymore, not when breaches were right in front of you.

  I left my mother in Selena and Nicholas’s apartment, where they promised to stay until the next night. Exhausted and sore, I went back to the clock tower and crossed over.

  It was late morning in Chicago. I’d been in Riven for a long time, nearly twelve hours. My body back home felt refreshed, but sluggish. I ignored the stack of mail, went to the train, and downtown to Ezra’s.

  Chapter 53

  I caught Alec on the sidewalk outside of Ezra’s, on his way to somewhere else. He didn’t look thrilled, but brightened and when he saw me.

  “Ah, the brave one. Good to see you’re still alive,” Alec said.

  “Tried my best, but I’m still here,” I replied. “Bryce in there?”

  “Bryce is in shock, I think,” Alec said. “Piotr thanked us for Barth, then said the guides didn’t have the men or the time to investigate another crazy spirit. I waited for Bryce to explode, but our man is like a stone.”

  “Bryce is one-of-a-kind,” I said. “You have a minute?”

  Alec shrugged and, when I aske
d, followed me back into Ezra’s without complaint. Standing in the air purifier was a normal delay in any day. Now it made me anxious. Everything had me on edge. I wanted to sit down, have some coffee, and get some opinions.

  Bryce was standing up as we walked in and, after seeing our faces, the man sighed and sat back in his chair. Waved his hand at the bar for another pot of the black stuff.

  “Thanks,” I said, sitting down. “I need some of that.”

  “You look like it,” Bryce said. “Alec fill you in?”

  “There’s no way I can get any help?” I said.

  Bryce nodded. “The breach count is too high and the number of guides we’ve got too low. Piotr ordered us not to go after Graham.”

  I was shaking my head as soon as Bryce finished. “Not an option.”

  “Are you hearing this, Bryce?” Alec said. “Perhaps Carver spends too much time around me. My bad habits are starting to rub off.”

  I ignored him, looked right at Bryce. “I found my mother. I found Katherine.”

  Bryce took the information in and sat with it for a moment. I took a sip of the fresh coffee and Alec took turns looking at each of us; wondering who was going to talk next.

  “How is she?” Bryce finally asked.

  “You can ask her yourself,” I said. “Tonight. You two are going to help me, and Katherine. We’re going to go after Graham.”

  “We didn’t do so well with that last time,” Bryce said.

  “It wasn’t fair. An ambush,” Alec interjected. “Another try, with all of us together? Graham has no chance.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “This time we’ll have my mother helping us too.”

  “If Piotr finds out that we’re disobeying orders,” Bryce said. “He could blind us.”

  “You’re talking like an old man,” Alec said. “You, the one who is retiring? What concern could you have?”

  Bryce laughed. “How you’ve made it this long without getting blinded is a mystery to me.”

  “Piotr would never dare,” Alec said. “I’m far too charming.”

  “That’s definitely the reason,” I said. I launched into the details. Explained about Katherine’s house in the Shambles. About how Graham had bound her. How they thought I was a key to cross back from Riven into the real world.

  “He’s not wrong,” Bryce said to Alec. “They keep it quiet; that the right guide can serve as a gate.”

  “How do they do that?” Alec said. “How do they turn a living, breathing, guide into a hole between Riven and reality?”

  “It’s not easy,” Bryce said. “From what I understand, from what Katherine told me, is that it takes killing the guide in Riven and in the real world at the same time. The spirits meet in the middle and create the hole.”

  “I’ve got a solution,” Alec said. “Carver, I’m sorry, but if we kill you now then we are all saved, correct?”

  I glared at him. “Ha.”

  “So it’s tonight then,” Bryce said. “We go after him. One more time. Bring an end to it.”

  Chapter 54

  The frame was up and the crews climbed all over the metalwork at the construction site where, what seemed like an infinity ago, I’d followed the directions on Anna’s card. This time the foreman took a look at me and turned away, didn’t bother to wave. I hadn’t cleaned out his sneak problem. Too bad.

  The door was open when I walked down the hallway to the room full of Riven maps, I didn’t bother being quiet. Laurence gave me a scowl as he came out of one of the back rooms to greet me.

  “Didn’t think we’d see you again,” Laurence said. “Since you decided to do nothing for us.”

  “Is that what she told you?” I replied.

  “No help with the spirits, she said.”

  “Trust me, Anna is getting her own benefits from this relationship,” I said. “Speaking of, she around?”

  Laurence glanced behind them. “She’s back there. Wrapping up a consultation.”

  I took a seat at the table and let my eyes run across the maps. Laurence sat across from me.

  “So how far have you gone?” I asked, gesturing at the maps. “Beyond the wall?”

  Laurence laughed. “You guys really stick to your spots, don’t you? Of course I’ve been beyond the wall. We can’t just take the first spirit that walks into our path. We gotta work for it. Sometimes we get clients looking for someone that died a week ago. They’re not sitting in the center of town waiting to be found.”

  “What’s out there?” I asked.

  “Beyond the wall?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Depends on your perspective,” Laurence said. I could see the change in his stance; he leaned forward over the table and his eyes lost a bit of bite. His mouth moved away from the frown and into a thoughtful line. “I think it’s beautiful. Rolling forest. Not alive, of course, but the white trees with the dark leaves, the mountain in the distance, you should see it.

  “That’s just south and west of the city. Towards the Cycle. We haven’t gone much in the other ways, but I’ve come close. One direction it looks like plain white grain as far as you can see. In another, it’s rocks and hills. Like whomever put Riven together was trying to see how many different places they could cram into one little world.”

  Behind Laurence the door opened and a haunted-looking man came out and scurried by us. Didn’t even bother to look my way, or notice my mask. Behind him, Anna walked up to the table and took a seat next to Lawrence.

  “He was telling me about the adventures you have outside the walls,” I said.

  “Laurence likes to play a dangerous game. It’s not fun out there,” Anna said. “You think the spirits are mean inside Riven, try going beyond the walls. Things there will tear you apart in seconds. We go in groups, and we’re always ready to run.”

  “Clients have to pay big if we go outside,” Laurence interjected.

  “How about him?” I said nodding after the man who just left. “Is his case a big one?”

  “Another lost loved one,” Anna said. “Only a day old. We’ll find her, probably still in the Warrens.”

  “What I really like about the two of you is how you so obviously care for your clients,” I said.

  “Now you’re one to talk,” Laurence said. “All you do is burn people’s memories into oblivion. You don’t give a crap if they were someone’s father, son or anything. Wrangle him and let him go. You ever think maybe their families would want to know?”

  “Laurence,” Anna said. “Now’s not the time.”

  “Fine,” I said. “ You want to disagree on how we do things? Tell me how you can keep Riven from being overrun while still telling every family that their uncle went crazy and tried to take a chunk out of us.”

  Laurence opened his mouth but, at a look from Anna, shut it and leaned back in his chair.

  “Why are you here, Carver?” Anna said to me.

  “We’re going after Graham tonight,” I said. Told her all about my mother. The plan with Bryce and Alec. “I don’t want you in the fight.”

  “So why did you come at all?” Anna said.

  “Because I want you to cross over with us. Then follow us and keep your eyes open. If something looks strange, or there’s a trap, I’ll give you my sparker. You launch it and warn us if things look weird.”

  “I can do that,” Anna said after a minute’s silence. “But I need you to help me first.”

  “Help you with what?” I said. “If you need cash, I can get Bryce to pay what he owes you for the investigation. You did find my mother, after all.”

  “No, back in Riven,” Anna said, glancing at Laurence. “Do you have time now?”

  “Anna,” Laurence said. “I don’t think—”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to cross over,” Anna said.

  “You’re being evasive,” I replied.

  “Because I don’t think you’ll like it,” Anna said. “If you want my help tonight, though, you have to help
me now.”

  Laurence looked annoyed that I was being asked. Which made me want to say yes. Besides, I had hours yet before tonight, before our raid. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Anna led us to the back rooms, a pair of small chambers that only held beds. She went into one, shut the door. Gestured for me to use the other. As I went in, Laurence grabbed my arm.

  “If you hurt her...” Laurence said.

  “I won’t,” I said. “I need her for tonight. She’ll be safe.”

  “She’d better be,” Laurence met my eyes. “You’re not the only one that needs her.”

  Chapter 55

  I crossed over into a sturdy, windowless room. Stacks of random stuff littered the area. From makeshift weapons to sketches of Riven’s territories, to lists of active investigations hanging on the walls. Anna was already there, setting her mace into its sheath. I was unarmed; all of my gear besides my coat was back over at the clock tower.

  “Cozy,” I said.

  “It doesn’t attract attention,” Anna said. She seemed distracted, not looking my way or bothering with her usual snappy replies. Without anything further, she opened the door out and led us away.

  The room sat in the basement of a ruined apartment building, its upper levels leaning to the side and crumbling away that any guide would avoid the building for fear of its collapse. I pointed that out to Anna and she shrugged. Kept on moving through the Warrens. Every so often the two of us ducked into a storefront or slipped down an alley to avoid a passing pair of guides. I didn’t recognize any of them - other regions of the world were active at this point of the day.

  “Stop,” I said as we hunkered down behind a collapsed wall and waited for another group of guides to pass. “I’ve gone along with you this far, but I’m unarmed and have no idea what you’re leading me into.”

  “I need you to teach me,” Anna said. “To bind a spirit.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve heard about the disease on the other side? The one that’s spreading?”