by Rachel Aaron
She sighed. “Which is?”
“Never tell a dragon you like them first,” he said sagely. “Even if it’s true, telling them you care gives them all the power, and you know how dragons get when you give them power.”
Marci sighed harder. That kind of thinking didn’t apply to Julius, but it was pointless to try and explain their unique relationship to something as old and, frankly, kind of alien as Raven. It was probably for the best anyway. If she was going to work up the courage to tell Julius she liked him, she wanted it to be face to face, where she could take advantage of whatever came next. That was something she definitely didn’t want an audience for, so Marci told herself to be happy they’d been forced into a rain check and turned back to Raven to ask what he wanted.
“Just a question,” he said, turning to look at her with each of his beady black eyes in turn. “You seemed very familiar with the Seer of the Heartstrikers back there. Do you know him well?”
“Only in passing,” she said, shaking her head. “He likes to burst into our lives on occasion and make cryptic pronouncements.”
“It’s a seer thing,” Raven said, nodding. “What about his…companion, shall we say? Have you seen her before?”
“You mean his pigeon?” When Raven nodded, she thought back. “He’s had her as long as I’ve known him. To be fair, that’s only been about six weeks, but no one else seems surprised to see her, so I’d say she’s been with him for a while.”
Either that or all the dragons were just so used to Bob’s weirdness that they didn’t even react to things like a pigeon on his shoulder anymore. But Julius had taken it in stride as well, which made Marci think the pigeon was a standard Bob accessory. But the real question here was, “Why do you want to know?”
“Because she’s not a pigeon,” Raven said. “I know Pigeon very well, and he’s as stupid as the birds who created him. Definitely not the caliber of intellect required for palling around with the Heartstriker’s genius fortune teller. Plus, the spirit of pigeons hasn’t left New York’s Central Park since he woke up there when the magic first came back sixty years ago, so I’m going to go with no.”
Marci frowned. It seemed silly in hindsight, but she hadn’t even considered the spirit angle before Raven brought it up. She’d always assumed Bob’s pigeon was just that: a bird. Not that she’d admit it anywhere he could hear, but Bob had always struck Marci as a lonely sort of dragon. Breeding a new kind of hyper-intelligent, magically awakened pigeon as a pet struck her as exactly the kind of thing he’d do to keep himself company. But Raven wouldn’t be here asking her questions if Bob’s pigeon were just a pigeon, so if she wasn’t an animal, and she wasn’t a spirit, what was she?
“You called her a Nameless End.”
“Did I?” the spirit squawked innocently. “I don’t recall—”
“I do,” she said. “And you did. You said she was a Nameless End and that it meant we needed to run. Why? I mean, obviously anything called a ‘Nameless End’ is going to be bad, but what kind of bad?”
“You are a very curious mortal,” Raven grumbled. “Normally, I like that, but curiosity kills more than cats, and considering the state of your own feline, I wouldn’t push it.”
“Leave Ghost out of this,” Marci said, hugging her poor faded spirit’s tiny connection close to her magic. “You’re the one who brought this up. I see Bob all the time. If he’s walking around with something dangerous, I want to know.”
“Like being around the greatest seer ever born to the dragons on this plane isn’t dangerous enough,” Raven grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you want to ask a different forbidden question? I can tell you tales of the Merlins of old.”
That was so tempting, Marci almost didn’t mind the blatant change of subject, but she refused to be put off. She didn’t have to be a dragon to know that Bob was the shadowy hand behind Julius’s rise. He was the force powering all of this, and if he was consorting with something sinister, that made it their problem, too.
“No, I don’t want to ask another question,” she said firmly. “I want to know what a Nameless End is, and I want to know why you were so afraid of it. The whole point of this trip is that I might be the Merlin, and the whole point of Merlins is that they’re mages strong enough to protect humanity from all the other big hitters out there. If that’s really the case, then something big enough to frighten you definitely seems like the sort of thing the first Merlin should know about.”
“You’re not a Merlin yet,” Raven reminded her. “But you do make a good point.”
He leaned over, peeking around the chair to glance up the aisle at General Jackson, who was sitting at the front of the plane, waving her hands through what looked like mountains of invisible AR screens. Across the aisle from her, Myron had taken over an entire table with his papers and was scribbling on them while simultaneously conducting a loud and angry phone call in German.
When it was clear neither official was paying any attention to the two of them, Raven flapped his wings and hopped across the gap between the facing seats to perch on Marci’s knee. “Very well, maybe-Merlin,” he whispered, looking up at her with wise black eyes. “You want to know about the Nameless Ends? Here’s what I can tell you.”
He fell silent, and Marci leaned forward eagerly, ears straining as she waited for him to speak.
And waited.
And waited some more.
“Um…” she said at last. “What can you tell me?”
“That was it,” Raven said. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Don’t ‘oh, come on’ me,” the spirit snapped, glaring at her. “Try to see this from my point of view. I love humans. The moment you started talking, you became the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to this planet. You have entertained me for thousands of years now, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are very, very young. The oldest of your kind barely constitutes the blink of an eye for most spirits. That’s not your fault. I’m sure you would much rather not die if given the choice. Unfortunately, though, you do, and that mortality produces a critical inability to survive long enough to acquire what my kind considers a mature and responsible nature.”
Marci pulled herself up, affronted. “So just because we don’t live for thousands of years, we can’t be mature?”
“Exactly,” Raven said. “You’ll never be anything but babies to us, and many spirits, including Algonquin, say this is why you can’t be trusted with anything important. Admittedly, looking at the mess you made of our planet while we were asleep, I can’t blame them for thinking that way, but I’ve always felt humanity had to be taken as individuals rather than a whole. Herds of humans invariably sink to their lowest common denominator, but I’ve met thousands, perhaps millions of individual humans who possessed amazing levels of sophistication, intelligence, and maturity considering how brief your lives are. All that said, there are things in this world humans are legitimately too young to understand. It’s not a matter of intelligence or morality or even magical knowledge. It’s an issue of experience and the ability to take the long view, and when it comes to the spirit level of long view, your kind simply doesn’t have the grasp of time necessary to wrap your heads around it.”
As much as she hated to, Marci had to give him that one. Humans worked in years and decades, maybe even centuries if they were really organized. But spirits lived for millions of years. They functioned on a geologic timescale, and it wasn’t an insult to say humans couldn’t grasp that. How could you even conceive of a million years when the humans with the most money and best health care still died at a hundred and twenty? But while Marci was willing to spot him that one, it still didn’t explain why Raven couldn’t tell her about the Nameless End.
“All right,” she said. “We can’t appreciate time on the same level you can. Fair enough. But if this thing is as dangerous as you seem too think, ignorance isn’t going to help us. Why don’t you just try explaining it to me? I might not understand e
verything, but I’ve seen that pigeon a lot more than you have. You might be amazed at what I can come up with despite my mortality handicap.”
“I’m sure you could,” Raven said, touching her arm condescendingly. “But I’m afraid this is bigger than you and me. The Nameless Ends are not something to be invoked casually. I don’t even think the dragon knows what he’s doing, and he’s a seer. He can literally see the future, and I still don’t trust him to be wise enough to make the right choice when the time comes.”
“The Nameless Ends,” Marci repeated, smiling. “So there’s more than one?”
Raven snapped his beak shut. “You see?” he said, glaring at her. “Too clever by half and never knows when to quit. No wonder most spirits would rather stay silent forever than tell a human anything.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Marci said quickly. “I’m just worried. Even if I’m fundamentally incapable of understanding the Nameless Ends fully, I still want to know enough that I won’t have to blindly trust you spirits to handle them alone. Not that I doubt your wisdom and experience, but most of you don’t seem to value human lives very highly, and frankly that’s not the kind of guardian I want protecting me from something so dangerous you won’t even tell me about it.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” Raven replied grudgingly. “But my answer is still the same. When it comes to something this big, any knowledge can be dangerous. If you were a Merlin, things would be different, but as I keep reminding you, you’re not there yet.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m trying, okay? But I don’t know how to get there, and neither does Ghost.” She looked pleadingly at Raven. “I don’t suppose that’s one of the forbidden questions you would answer?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Though it’s not from lack of wanting this time. I can’t tell you how to become a Merlin, because every Merlin I’ve ever met became one in a different way.” He shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.”
“Great,” Marci groaned, flopping back in her chair. “And what happens if I don’t make it?”
“I suppose you’ll go on as you are now,” Raven said. “At least until your Mortal Spirit eats you.”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Not to add to the pressure, but as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, your Mortal Spirit is getting bigger. Eventually, he’ll get too big for you to control, and unless you become a Merlin first and use that to keep the upper hand, you’ll end up serving him.”
Marci paled. “Really?”
The raven nodded. “I’ve seen it happen many times, and it’s never pretty. Mortal Spirits are the embodiments of base human nature, and humans aren’t known for being kind.”
That was a grim thought. Even worse, it matched what she already knew of Ghost, which meant it was probably true. Unfortunately, it was a problem Marci had no idea how to solve. She didn’t even know where to start looking. She was about to ask Raven if he had any general tips he could offer when the whole plane bucked.
Marci grabbed her seat, stomach lurching. Even Raven was scrambling, flapping wildly to stay upright as the plane turned and tossed. Outside the windows, what had been a clear autumn evening was now pitch black, which made no sense. Even flying east through the time zones, it was still too early for this kind of night. A second later, a flash of light proved she was right. The darkness wasn’t night at all. It was thunderheads. A massive, terrifyingly black wall of them surrounding the plane on all sides, and at the center of it all was the shadow of something enormous.
Marci could only see it when the lightning flashed, so she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a giant bird of prey. A hawk, maybe, or a falcon. Size-wise, though, it looked more like a blue whale had gotten lost in the sky, and it was coming right for them.
“Never rains but it pours,” Sir Myron said with a sigh, glaring out the window at the rapidly approaching shadow. “Emily?”
“Already on it,” the general said, standing up and taking off her coat. She took off her crisp white shirt next, leaving only her undershirt tank top, but that wasn’t what made Marci stare. She was gawking at the fact that the general’s entire torso—arms, shoulders, chest, everything she could see—was made out of the same spell-etched metal as her deadly hand. The only parts of her that actually looked human were her head and neck, which were still covered in normal, brown skin, though that might have been clever plastic work. It was impossible for Marci to tell for sure with the lightning flashing every few seconds, but the general didn’t seem in a hurry as she folded her clothes neatly, set them down in her chair, and walked to the back of the plane.
“Raven,” she said when she reached Marci’s seat. “Stay out of sight.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he croaked. “But do give the Thunderbird my regards.”
She nodded and walked through the door at the back. The one Marci had presumed went to the lavatories. “Um, where is she going?”
“Out the back,” Raven said, hopping over to the window. “This is Emily’s personal jet. It’s got a depressurized compartment in the back for just this sort of occasion. Without it, you’d all be sucked out when she opened the door.”
Marci’s eyes went wide. “Sucked out? You mean she’s going outside the plane? Into that?”
She pointed at the near-constant lightning, and Raven nodded. “Of course,” he said. “How else do you talk to the Thunderbird? I certainly can’t do it. We’ve just entered Algonquin’s airspace. I’m even more forbidden here than the dragons.”
There was so much crammed into that statement, Marci didn’t know where to begin, so she went for the biggest. “That’s the Thunderbird?” she said, staring through the plane’s round window at the huge, predatory mass of clouds and lightning that was now moving toward the back of their jet.
“Surely you didn’t think this storm was natural,” Raven said with a chuckle. “Yes, that’s him. He’s the spirit of the thunderstorms that form over the Great Planes. Or at least he used to be. These days he’s more like Algonquin’s doorman. Since she shot down the Three Sisters, she’s had him patrolling her skies for unauthorized entrants.”
Marci swallowed nervously. “Like us?”
“No, actually. Myron called ahead and got us clearance before we’d even left New Mexico. Algonquin just enjoys harassing Emily because Emily is mine.”
She stared at him, confused. “General Jackson is your human? I thought she said she wasn’t a mage.”
“She isn’t,” Raven said. “And I didn’t say she was my human. What do I look like, a dragon?” He shuddered. “I said she was mine because I’m the one who built her.”
Marci nearly choked. “Built?”
Raven chuckled. “Come on, you’re supposed to be clever. You didn’t think she was born made of metal, did you?”
“No,” Marci said. “But—”
“She’s a construct,” Raven went on proudly. “Though I suppose the proper term these days would be cyborg. She’s a charming mix of enchanted metals and modern machinery I wrapped around a human soul.”
“You wrapped?” she repeated, stunned. When she’d first touched the general’s hand, Marci had noticed she’d felt like Julius’s enchanted sword, but she’d never imagined that could actually be true. “How did you do that?”
“Ravens have always been clever with tools,” he said proudly. “But I can’t take all the credit. The structure and ideas were mine, but I’m a spirit. I can’t move magic, so I had to rely on human helpers. My Emily is the product of many hands, including Myron’s in recent years. He’s the one who figured out how to fit that lovely cannon in her palm.”
“But how does it work?” Marci asked, fascinated. “If she’s not a mage, where does she get the energy to fire? Or to move?”
“From me,” Raven said, puffing out his chest. “I keep telling you, she’s mine. Every part of her is tied to me, which is why Algonquin can’t stand her. But what
the Lady of the Lakes doesn’t realize is that her connection to me is the least part of why she should fear Emily. She assumes I’m the puppet master, but the old water sprite never could grasp that I’m not interested in control. I didn’t choose Emily because I wanted a weapon. I picked her because she asked me, and I was curious to see just how far she would go.”
“You made a human into a construct because you were curious?” Marci said, disbelieving.
“It’s why I do most things,” Raven said with a shrug. “I know forever is a hard concept for humans to grasp, but it’s my reality. If I ever run out of things to be curious about, my life will become too dull to bear, and then I’ll be in real trouble.”
That seemed like a strange reason to make the world’s first magic-integrated cyborg, but given everything else Marci knew about Raven, she didn’t think he was lying. Before she could ask another question, though, the door to the back of the plane opened again, and a sopping-wet General Jackson stepped back into the pressurized cabin.
“We’re clear,” she said calmly, brushing the water off her face like she’d just come back from a walk in the rain rather than standing on the rear deck of an aircraft flying at cruising altitude. “The Thunderbird knew we had prior clearance, but he still made me recite the entire code four times.”
“I’m just glad none of his lightning struck the plane this time,” Sir Myron said grumpily as he restacked the papers the earlier turbulence had scattered. “The last time he did this, we had to replace the entire autopilot.”
“He was being careful this time,” the general said, grabbing a towel from the compartment beside the door to wipe down her metal arms and shoulders, which Marci could now see were covered in an intricate, interlocking web of engraved spellwork from multiple schools of magic. “Probably because we’re surrounded by commercial flight lanes. Algonquin might be on high alert, but she isn’t going to throw the DFZ tourism baby out with the dragon bathwater. The city is still open for business if you’re not a dragon, which means if we’re careful, we shouldn’t have any further trouble.”