Calculated Risks

by Seanan McGuire

  I couldn’t blame him.

  Annie snapped her fingers, drawing my attention back to her. “Mark told us about his sister right before we all left to do . . . something, I don’t remember what, so you must have been a major part of the situation.”

  “Probably rescuing me from my biological mother and her hive,” I said. I’d been unconscious after Ingrid triggered the next instar in the series destined to make me a Queen, but I’d also been in the custody of the cuckoos, and when I’d woken up, disoriented and unable to control my own actions, I’d been in my bedroom in the Portland compound. I had vague memories of speaking to Artie in that gap, meaning he must have entered my mind during the instar, but they were only shadows, light and color splashed across the nothingness. I looked at Annie, and said, “Ingrid took me. Mark helped her, actually, because she forced him.”

  “It’s a thing cuckoos can do,” he snarled. “I remember Ingrid. She threatened my family. She was going to hurt Cici. No one hurts Cici. That’s the only rule. Anything else, we can possibly discuss, but no one hurts Cici.”

  “So she used the same threats whether I was there or not.” I didn’t want to poke at this series of events too much. If it all came crashing down, Mark could wind up as shaken as Artie, and that wouldn’t do any of us any good. “That’s fun to know. So yeah. Ingrid took me, and at some point, you all came and took me back, and I woke up at home. And then I used a smaller equation to open a hole in the world and fold the space on the other side just enough to get us from Oregon to Iowa.”

  Annie’s thoughts brightened with sudden excitement. “You made a tesseract?” she squealed. “Are we going to go all A Wrinkle in Time?”

  “Not quite a tesseract, and I don’t think the math works across dimensions; it’s purely a local shortcut,” I said. “I’m not sure I could do it again without the equation driving me, and it’s not worth the risk. Can we get back to how Mark is a pretty average cuckoo who managed not to start murdering people for fun for some reason, and has a sister he wants to make it home to?”

  “I don’t want to discuss her with you,” said Mark, abruptly standing and moving away from the window where he’d been seated. “This feels too much like the part of the horror movie where one person talks about getting home to their wife and kids, and everyone else says ‘oh yeah, you’re going to make it, we’re going to make sure you make it home,’ and then the very next scene there’s a giant snake or something, and the person who told the personal story is dead. I don’t want to be your cliché.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I won’t make you.”

  “And we didn’t see any signs of giant snakes out there, which is pretty amazing in and of itself,” said Annie. Mark radiated blankness. She explained: “According to my grandmother, there are a disturbing number of dimensions out there where the only higher life is snakes.”

  “Snakes,” echoed Mark.

  “Yes, snakes. Big snakes, little snakes, fire snakes, ice snakes, snakes that think and snakes with hands—a snake for every day of the year. If the cuckoos were moving randomly, they’d have all been eaten by giant snakes by now. I don’t suppose that under normal circumstances, proximity to a cuckoo queen creates another one?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I’m not entirely sure how it works—and to be honest, I’m not sure the cuckoos themselves know how it works, because they’re working from incomplete information, they’re exiles who had to figure this all out from bits and pieces—but a Queen has to be nurtured through multiple instars, and at least one of them is always incapacitating. Trigger it when there aren’t people around to take care of her, and she’ll be completely helpless if something wants to come along and take her apart.”

  “So that means the equation has been, what, filtering through the adjacent dimensions to pick out the ones that aren’t wall-to-wall giant snakes?” Annie was starting to sound frustrated. “I wish you hadn’t taken that thing apart. I’d really like a look at it.”

  “You wouldn’t understand it, and it would melt your eyeballs,” I said coolly. “I took it apart because it shouldn’t exist. It was definitely filtering the available dimensions based on a variety of factors, including whether they had the potential to be healthy environments for cuckoos. I assume anything with too many snakes wouldn’t make it into the column for ‘healthy.’”

  “That makes sense,” said Annie. “I prefer my eyeballs unmelted, as it turns out.”

  The suns were now completely down, casting the sky into relative darkness. Without light pollution to block them, rivers of alien stars created enough brightness that it was still possible to see the shape of the buildings outside, and the long stretch of the grass. Something moved in the shadows, built to scale with the flying millipedes. There were no moons.

  “Um, Annie?” said James.

  “If we can’t tesseract home and we can’t reach Mary, I’m not sure how we’re getting back,” said Annie. “I know there are ways to use sorcery to open doors between dimensions—Grandpa’s journals have talked about sorcerers who do that more often than he considered healthy, and who got lost because they didn’t have an automatic snake-detection protocol to keep them from being eaten—but I don’t know what any of them are. I’m not far enough along in my studies. James is even farther back.”

  “Yes, speaking of James,” said James. “Annie.”

  “We’ll get you caught up soon enough, you’re a quick study,” said Annie. “I just don’t know how we’re going to get home from here.”

  “That millipede before was wearing a saddle,” I said. “Something humanoid has used it as a mount, often enough for it to be reasonable to keep the thing saddled up and ready to go. Maybe they know how to move between dimensions.”

  “I don’t know that we want to involve the locals if we can get out of here before that happens,” said Annie. “They might not be friendly. Or maybe we accidentally pulled a Dorothy and dropped a university campus on somebody’s sister.”

  “As long as we don’t steal anyone’s magic shoes, we’re fine,” said Mark.

  “Antimony!” snapped James.

  She whipped around. “What?”

  “Gosh I’m glad they told me he was adopted,” said Mark. “If I didn’t know, I’d swear they were blood relations.”

  “I think we’re about to meet the neighbors,” said James. He raised one arm, hand shaking as he pointed at the window.

  I followed the line of his finger, and swallowed a small, unproductive shriek when I saw what he was pointing at.

  What looked like nothing so much as a praying mantis the size of a firetruck was looking in the window. It cocked its head from side to side, getting a better sense of what was inside, but seemed to be most focused on the fire. As I watched, it raised one long, serrated arm—also looking just like part of a praying mantis, so at least it was consistent—and tapped the glass with incredible, surprising delicacy. The sound rang through the room, soft but undeniable.

  The glass cracked, but didn’t break.

  Yet.

  “Maybe this is no longer a good place for us to be,” said Mark.

  “Agreed,” said Annie. “I could probably set the giant bug on fire, but who wants to spend the time? Or burn down the entire school when it thrashes around and bumps into things?”

  I didn’t say anything at all, and neither did James. Both of us were too busy backing away, moving slowly but steadily toward the door.

  “Sarah?” said Antimony. “Is it intelligent?”

  “I don’t know!” I replied. “Maybe.” I reached out.

  The mind I encountered was much like the millipede’s in terms of complexity, although it was sharper, structured for a predator’s needs. The mantis had seen us, that much was sure, but it was far more interested in the impossible light than it was in the small moving things. “Annie,” I hissed. “Put out the fire.”

&n
bsp; “What—oh!” She snapped her fingers. The fireball went out.

  The mantis hit the window as fast as a bullet being fired, sending shards of glass flying through the room. Someone screamed. I think it was James. We all scattered for the door, moving as fast as we could.

  Mark got there first. “Great idea, Sarah,” he said snidely, as he wrenched it open. “Got any more awesome plans?”

  “Shut up and run!” I shouted, accompanying the command with enough of a mental push to get him moving through the door and out into the hall.

  More smashing sounds came from behind us as the mantis punched through the other windows. James spun around, and the air became suddenly very cold.

  “Nice ice wall!” yelled Annie. “Keep moving!”

  We kept moving, all four of us piling into the darkened hall. Then I froze, stumbling, and nearly collided with Artie, who had come out to see what all the noise was about.

  The mantis wasn’t alone. There was another mind with it, behind it, guiding it. A smaller, quicker, warmer mind, belonging to an intelligent creature. More—belonging to an intelligent creature that, when I brushed against the edges of it, knew I was there, recognized me as another being, and pulled the mantis back.

  We were not alone.

  “What are you doing out here?” asked Artie, automatically moving to steady me before he realized what he was doing and pulled his hands away as if he’d been burned by almost brushing against my skin.

  “Giant praying mantis broke the window,” said Annie breathlessly.

  “Uh, what?”

  “Giant praying mantis broke the window, so I put up an ice wall to stop it from reaching across the room with its giant murder arms and doing the same thing to our skulls, but I don’t know if it’s going to hold,” said James. He and Annie moved to either side of Artie, each taking an arm and hauling him along with them as they rushed down the hall. Mark and I followed.

  “No, seriously, what?”

  “Giant praying mantis broke the window, Jimmy did his ice thing, we ran,” said Mark, picking up the thread.

  Not wanting to be left out when I actually had information to share, I added, “And it had a rider.”

  Annie stopped, dragging James and hence Artie to a halt as she turned to look at me. “What?”

  “A rider. Remember, the millipede had a saddle? Well, one of the people who uses the giant insects as carousel horses was on the back of the mantis.” I paused. “Move faster, they’re in the building now.”

  The thoughts of the rider were getting closer. I couldn’t understand the language they were thinking in, but their feelings were reassuringly comprehensible, curiosity and caution and mild annoyance, probably directed at James’ wall of ice. They couldn’t get past it easily. We might be safe—

  Oh. Crap. “Move much faster.” I shoved Artie in the back, starting him walking again. James and Annie moved with him. I couldn’t shove Mark at the same time, but I could direct a needle of urgency at him, urging him to move faster without forcing him. If he wanted to linger and get caught, that was his choice, but I’d be happier if he didn’t. “Come on.”

  “What? Why?” asked James.

  “The person in the classroom we just left is calling fire to melt your ice.”

  Annie got the point first. “They’re a sorcerer.”

  “Yes, apparently. Keep going!”

  “But if we can talk to a sorcerer who knows how this reality’s magic works, maybe they can help us figure out how to use our magic to open a doorway back home!” She started to turn, intending to go back to the classroom.

  The needle of urgency I slammed into her was larger, sharper, and verged more closely on compulsion. “Not until we know more about these people. It isn’t safe right now,” I said. “Keep moving.”

  We made it to the door to the stairs and through to the safety of the stairwell just as the classroom door swung wide and a figure stepped into the hall. There was enough starlight coming in through the classroom behind them to give us the broadest of details: they were humanoid, bipedal with two arms and a head that clearly had something close to either feathers or hair crowning it and blurring their silhouette. They held a spear with a curving blade at the end in one hand, some sort of fancy polearm that Annie could probably identify by name—and actively desired to get a closer look at, given the new tenor of her surface thoughts—and which would pierce our flesh easily if thrown. No wings, no tail, nothing outside that basic human body plan.

  The light was too low and the distance too great for us to make out any details about clothing, features, or coloration, and as the figure moved cautiously farther into the hall, spear at the ready, I pulled deeper into the shadows.

  Not necessarily friendly, I thought to Annie. Not necessarily hostile, either. Confused. There’s a language barrier I can get over with a few hours, but right now, all I’m getting are feelings and impressions.

  Okay, she thought back. All I’m getting is the need for a closer look at that sweet fauchard.

  Presumably, that was the weird polearm. I patted her arm and pulled her with me as I inched deeper into the stairwell. Artie and James were still directly behind the door, keeping it from swinging shut. That was tactically a good thing, even if it kept them somewhat exposed; the sound of the door closing would attract attention if the figure in the shadows had ears, which wasn’t guaranteed—I was still trying to filter through their thoughts enough to figure out what senses they were using to navigate the hall. Sight was clearly involved. They, like the mantis, had seen the light from our fire, and had come to investigate, since this was a strange new place that shouldn’t have existed, much less been setting beacons.

  But could they hear us? Could they feel the tiny vibrations of my companions’ heartbeats traveling through the air? Did they have the ability to see us through the shadows, or to smell us? The possibilities weren’t endless, but in that long and frozen moment while I waited to see what they were going to do, they might as well have been.

  Finally, the figure turned and walked back into the classroom, but didn’t close the door. We stayed where we were, barely daring to breathe. There was a soft scuff and a clatter, as of broken glass hitting the floor, followed by the whirr of insectile wings. The feeling of the unfamiliar mind receded, growing steadily more distant, until I couldn’t pick it up anymore.

  “All right.” I straightened. “They’re gone.”

  “They were shaped like a person,” said Annie. “I know that’s humanocentric—a wadjet is a person whether they’re shaped like a human or a snake—but they had hands and legs, they understand how to use tools, we probably have some things in common.”

  “Everything you just said is true of cuckoos, too,” I said. “We’re shaped like people by even the most human-focused standard. That doesn’t make us friendly.”

  “That’s for sure,” muttered Artie.

  I pretended not to hear him. “So now we know we’re not alone, and we know there are still human survivors on campus.”

  “Which means we need to get out there and find the rest of them before something else does,” said Annie. “Everyone ready to move? And yes, boys, this time I mean everyone. We’re not splitting the party again.”

  Her hair—or rather, the mouse concealed in her hair—cheered. “And then it was said and Stated, as it always shall be, Never Split the Party!” shouted a tiny voice.

  Annie laughed. “That’s right. Never split the party. And you did very well keeping quiet before; I’m proud of you.”

  Out of all the cousins, Annie is the only one I know of who’s been able to successfully train her mice to the habit of silence. It’s a big accomplishment, and no one’s really sure how she managed it. Elsie even tried to bribe me once to uncover the exact method, so it could be emulated. She was deeply annoyed when I said ethics didn’t count if they could be abandoned the seco
nd someone needed me to go against them.

  The mouse made a happy sound and was quiet again, still concealed by the mass of Antimony’s hair. She looked over at me. “I know you can’t feel the husked-out cuckoos coming, but we can watch for them visually, and just not let you go first into any enclosed spaces.”

  “Why, because the rest of us are more worthy of being devoured by starving cuckoos?” asked Artie.

  She scoffed. “No. Because she doesn’t have any weapons, and neither does Mark, and I don’t think you want me to give them weapons, do you?” She managed to make the question sound almost sweet, and not as pointed as the feeling behind it. Being the youngest child has left her with a terrifying arsenal of manipulation tactics.

  Artie’s spike of confused fear was less pleasant. He wasn’t radiating hatred and mistrust in my direction anymore, and his emotions were a lot more complicated and confused when he thought of me, but he was still afraid of me. That was never going to be okay, and it was always going to be my own fault.

  “So we move,” said James, sensing another fight brewing and trying to get himself out in front of it. He took a step toward the mouth of the stairs, then paused, frowning. “Annie, I know it’s not safe to set up another bonfire, but could you—”

  “On it.” The silhouette of my cousin lifted one hand, and a ball of light appeared above it, perfectly spherical and glowing a soft, clear white that brought all of us into sudden relief. Annie blinked. “Huh. It’s never done that before.”

  “What spell did you cast?” demanded Mark.

  “I’m a sorcerer, not a witch. I don’t ‘cast spells,’ I influence the universe to give me what I—oh, never mind.” Annie sighed. “We don’t have time for a lesson in magical theory right now. I told the universe I wanted a ball of light. Normally that results in a fireball, because I’m fire-attuned. This is the first time I’ve gotten one of these.”

  She lowered her hand. The light remained floating serenely in midair, not moving even when she nudged it gently with a finger.