by Tim Pratt
She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Fine. I swear on our father’s grave that I will take no unprovoked action against the Trips.”
“That is one weaselly promise, sis. Trey, you’re the lawyer, can you give her a better line?”
“I promise I will not harm the Trips, or, through inaction, allow them to come to harm.”
“That’s good. Why does that sound familiar?”
“It’s one of Asimov’s three laws of robotics, pretty much,” he said.
“Nerdlier and nerdlier, Trey,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Okay, Firstborn, say that.” Maybe I was enjoying my power trip a little too much, but I thought I’d earned it.
She gritted her teeth, then exhaled. “I swear. On my father’s grave. That I will not harm the Trips. Or, through inaction. Allow them to be harmed.”
Making that promise sure seemed to cost her something emotionally, but I didn’t know if it would stick. Even if she meant it now, she was erratic, and she might change her mind. You just can’t train a rabid dog.
“Thank you, sister,” the Trips said to me. “But we can protect ourselves. Our previous relationship with the Firstborn was congenial, so we allowed her to approach us, and take us by surprise. But if she comes near our home again, we will scrape her mind as clean as an empty pot. May we go?”
Now they told me. I was still glad I’d had the opportunity to push the Firstborn a bit. She’d certainly pushed me enough. “Yeah, I’ll take you. But I’m not done talking to our sister yet. We need to settle a few things, because I am so done with this nonsense. Trey, you want to stay here and make her be good?”
“Of course. Am I allowed to kill her if she misbehaves?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Aim to wound.” I pointed at the Firstborn. “You. Play nice. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll see about getting some closure.”
“The only closure I will accept is the lid of a coffin closing over your face.” She certainly hadn’t lost any of her swagger.
“We’ll take that as a starting point in our negotiations.” I picked up the scabbard and sheathed my sword cane, then patted Trey as I walked past. “Be careful.” I stepped back through the mirror, the Trips following me, and took the book from my backpack. The index obligingly led me to “Trips’ House, the.” The picture on the page was a homey little A-frame cabin. We made a daisy chain of held hands and then jumped.
The air was bracingly cool, and distant mountains shimmered with snow on their peaks. We stood in a valley full of towering pines, tumbled boulders, and running water, with a rustic house built into the rock and trees almost like it had grown there. The Trips dropped their hands, then hugged me, all three, embracing me from every direction, all of them glowing, radiating serenity and love. I didn’t know them well, but I liked them, even if they’d never developed senses of humor. “Take care,” I said. “Visit me whenever you want.”
“If you wish to send us a message, just think about us, as hard as you can. We will hear.”
“Good to know.” They let me go simultaneously and floated off toward the house, bobbing in the air like a family of ducks on the surface of a pond.
I opened the book and went to the index. Just out of curiosity, I looked for “Firstborn’s House, the” but had no luck—maybe she moved around a lot, or her cave was somehow magicked-up so it didn’t count as a home as far as The Book of Grace was concerned. I flipped to the mirror’s page instead, and traveled back to the cave.
Being in that nasty cavern all alone was spooky, so I stowed the book and hustled through the mirror as fast as I could. I half expected to walk into a melee, or Trey unconscious against the wall, but when robbed of her magical speed and other powers, the Firstborn was a lot more docile. She should have brought a rocket launcher or something into the sanctum with her as insurance, but she was too used to relying on magic, I guess.
Trey was standing in the corner, gun pointed in the Firstborn’s general direction, and she hadn’t moved from her stool. I gathered up the weapons the Trips had dropped and tossed them through the mirror. The Firstborn didn’t look like she was about to snatch up a hurley and try to hit anybody, but it was better to remove the temptation.
I sat down on the cot, leaned against the wall, stuck out my feet, and crossed them at the ankles. Trey shifted position a bit to cover the Firstborn without putting me in the firing zone.
“So. Sister. Let’s work this stuff out. Why exactly do you hate me so much? I don’t remember doing anything all that horrible to you, but you sicced the Belly on me—and he died because of it—and you screwed up your perfectly good relationship with the Trips, all to get at me. Why?”
She started to sneer, then lost her enthusiasm for it, and slumped instead. “I don’t hate you.” Her voice was almost toneless. “Not specifically. I hate you the way I would hate a tree blocking the road on the way to paradise. The tree is not to blame, but you slice it up with a chainsaw anyway. You’re just an obstacle, Rebekah.”
Even without the bell I knew she was leaving something out. “I wish I could believe that; you seem to hate me a lot worse than I’ve ever hated any inanimate object.”
“I suppose there is an element of jealousy.” Her voice still sounded dead and washed out. “Regarding the fact that Father chose you over me. But, again. That isn’t your fault. I know that. I’m not insane.”
“Whew. That’s a relief. I was taking everything so personally, too. Like you trying to kill me, and Trey, and then me again…” I let that hang there, but she didn’t jump in with a rebuttal or even an insult. “So this is just about power, then? I’m standing in the way of you getting the vessel and becoming…whatever it is you want to become?”
She stared down at her hands. “Father…he told me I was his only child, and that I would be his heir. You never knew him, Rebekah. You don’t understand. To be in his presence, to have him pay attention to you—it was like standing in the only pool of sunlight in a dark wood. I was his, and he was mine. Until one day, he wasn’t, and I wasn’t, either. I wasn’t anything.”
My sister had serious daddy issues. I was not shocked. I probably had a few of my own, in different ways. But she was talking, instead of trying to murder me, so I was happy to let her go on.
She continued: “My mother was a forest spirit, a shifting thing of no particular form, who took on pleasing shapes and led men and women to their deaths—tumbling over cliffs, drowning in pools—for her own amusement. Somehow, when she tried that on Father, he seduced her, instead, and I was born. My mother barely had a personality. She was not capable of caring for me. So Father did. For the first fourteen years of my life, he was a constant presence. He taught me to use the powers I had inherited from my mother—to change my face and form, though I do not have her vast range. I inherited powers that must have come from our father’s line, too—the power to give the semblance of life to lifeless things, mainly. Before I was called the Firstborn, or the Eldest Daughter, when I was the only daughter, do you know what he called me?”
I shook my head.
“The Apprentice.” The bitterness in her voice could have curdled milk. “He said we would rule the world together. Crush our enemies—he had many enemies then, other old creatures from ancient days. He said, once his enemies were vanquished, that he would become a giant again, and I would rule beside him.” She shrugged. “When I was ten years old, we set out, and we laid waste to those who opposed him. We scoured the earth of his foes. I learned to love destruction. But then…after his enemies were all gone…he didn’t become a giant again. I don’t know what went wrong. He fell into a deep, black depression, and one day, he was simply…gone.” She raised her head. “I have waited all these years for him to call me back. I hid, and watched him. I saw him fall in love with women and men and monsters, and I wondered, why did I never feel love, for anyone but Father himself? I inherited my capacity for love from my mother, who had none, I think. Perhaps that was why Father left me. Because I was b
roken. Incomplete. I watched Father visit his other children, taking some pride in the fact that he never lived with any of them, as he did with me. I hoped he was testing me. That I had to wander in the wilderness to prove my worth. But when he sought death…he left everything to you.” She practically spat that last word, and I wondered for a moment if Trey was right, if her anger was so powerful her words would burn through the ground like acid. “To the least of us. He spared me not a thought at all.”
I leaned forward. “Eldest…I’m so sorry. Our dad was an asshole.”
She jerked like I’d jabbed her with a hot poker. “How dare you? Our father was the nearest thing I will ever know to a god. If he treated me badly it is because I failed him in some way, because I am a baser thing than he was—though I am still exalted compared to you.” She shook herself, like a dog coming in from the rain. “This bores me. It is pointless to explain anything to you—your ignorance is impossible to redeem. Have your mind-slave empty his gun into me, if you wish.”
“I don’t want to kill you—”
“As if someone like you could kill someone like me. I learned many things from Father, Rebekah. I learned how to put my soul aside in a stone. You can hurt me, oh yes, but I won’t die, not unless you crush the stone and kill my body, and you will never find the place where I’ve hidden my life.” A shadow crossed her face, some misgiving or doubt, and I let out a low whistle.
“You lost it, didn’t you?”
She shook her head, but not exactly as if she were saying no—more like a fly was buzzing around her. “I’m sure I could find it, if I tried, but…”
“Eldest. You need to get your soul back. Putting his soul aside…that’s what drove our father mad in the end. He lost himself, his humanity—or giant-ity, or whatever. Trey saw it.”
Trey, who’d been listening silently and intently this whole time, nodded. “I did. It was dementia, but worse. He turned into a monster.”
I wanted to reach out to my sister, but I didn’t dare. “When you remove your soul, you become something less. I think that might be why you’re so, ah…impulsive. You could have come to me, you know. Just talked to me, like family. I don’t especially want to be a sorcerer. I might have been willing to give you part of the inheritance, if you’d just treated me like a person, instead of a tree you had to cut up with a chainsaw. Let’s try to find your soul, and then we can figure out—”
“You lie.” She curled her fingers into claws.
If magic worked in the sanctum, I could have proved I was telling the truth, with the bell. But then, if magic worked, she’d have tried to kill us already.
My sister ranted on. “You just want to make me mortal, so you can kill me, get rid of me forever, but it won’t work. I will win, Rebekah. I will take the vessel, and my birthright. You are only mortal, and that means I can find the right leverage to move you. Father taught me, everyone has a lever. And once I have his power—”
“Yeah? I’ve been wondering about that. What do you want our father’s power for? What’s the goal?”
For a moment, her eyes were empty, like broken windows in a condemned warehouse, and I was reminded of my glimpses of Archibald Grace in extremis, when his sense of self departed him entirely. Then clarity snapped back, and she smiled horribly. “I will bring Father back to life, of course. I can fashion spit and blood and feathers into birds, lending a bit of my life to dead matter, making it move and flutter. Once I have the fullness of my father’s power, it will be trivial to bring him back to life. Then he will know I am the one who loves him most. The one who deserves to stand at his side.”
I leaned back. I felt like someone had hit me in the brain with a hammer. “Sister…I don’t think that’s a good idea. For one thing, he really wanted to die. He went to great trouble to get himself killed—you know it wasn’t easy, he had his soul hidden and everything. I’m not sure he’d thank you for bringing him back, if what you’re talking about is even possible—”
“I will cut out your eyes,” she said. She might have been promising to drop by for dinner, her manner was so casual and matter-of-fact. “I will cut off your fingers and toes. You will beg me to take the inheritance.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Listen. The vessel—you can’t even get it. Grace put it behind magical walls we can’t breach. He was crazy at the end. You don’t understand that because you’re going a little bit crazy yourself maybe—”
“Every magical barrier has a key,” she said. “Nothing can be sealed forever. Father taught me that. Change is the only constant. Imperfection is inevitable, and every spell has a crack and a flaw. You are too weak and stupid to find the key, that is all. It’s not your fault. You’re just too human.”
“Okay. I tried.” I stood up. “Stay the hell away from me, Firstborn, or I’ll let the Trips turn your brain into mush, okay?”
“I can defend myself from them. I am very old, Rebekah. I know things that would drive you mad if you even glimpsed them in a dream. Save yourself immeasurable grief, and renounce your inheritance now. I will spare your life and limbs if you do.”
You know, I was tempted. Just wash my hands of all this shit. But, one: I don’t like bullies. And, two: there was Trey to consider. If I gave up my inheritance, he’d be in thrall to the Firstborn as Grace’s new rightful heir. I wasn’t sure what we were to each other anymore, but whether we were friends or lovers-in-waiting or allies of circumstance, I needed to protect him from that fate.
“Stay. Away.” I tied her wrists and ankles with the longest bits of rope the Trips had left behind, and the whole time she stared at me like a snake about to eat a rodent. When she was secure enough that I thought she couldn’t jump through the mirror and murder us right away, I withdrew and beckoned Trey. We stepped through the portal, into the cave.
Trey immediately tipped the mirror over, face down, and started lugging heavy rocks and dropping them on top.
“You want to seal her in?” I said.
He shrugged. “I doubt it’ll work in the long term—she’ll push her way out eventually—but it might buy us a little time.” I stood there for a moment, then helped him heap more rocks on the mirror, because why not? Anything to delay her. Maybe she’d lose her mind and memory enough to forget she wanted to torment me. Faint hope, but better than nothing.
We put our weapons back in the duffel bag, held hands, and let The Book of Grace take us home.
#
“I’m just sorry I didn’t get to crack her in the kneecap with the family hurley,” Trey said.
I nodded. “I see where you’re coming from, but I just kind of feel sorry for her, now. Empathizing with someone who wants to kill you is probably a bad idea, but I can’t help myself.” I poured us a couple of big glasses of red wine and we leaned against the counter in the kitchen, sipping. The silence between us was seventy percent companionable and thirty percent fraught.
“I should get some sleep,” I said after a while. “It’ll be morning way too soon.”
He nodded and put his glass down, the wine hardly touched. “Me too.”
“Thanks for everything you did tonight.”
Trey shrugged. “We did some good. Having levitating triplets with psychic powers owe you a favor is probably a good thing.”
“Come by tomorrow? Continue our fruitless search for the key to the locked room, have a late lunch, resume fruitless search?”
“I should go into the office for a little while—you’re not my only client, just the only one I’m compelled to obey. But I can come help search in the afternoon. At least, from what the Firstborn said, there probably is a key.”
“I’m not sure she’s the world’s most reliable narrator.” I walked him to the door, and there was an awkward moment when we might have kissed good-bye that turned into a vastly more awkward one-armed half hug, and then he was gone. I closed the door and rested my head against the wood and said aloud, “I need a vacation.”
Which gave me a pretty good idea.
#
When Trey showed up on my doorstep the next day I ushered him into the kitchen. “Good, you’re wearing decent walking shoes. You have any cash?”
“Uh, some, why—”
“I don’t want to use credit cards because it’ll trigger the fraud-detection software or whatever at the bank, and our accounts will get frozen.” I looked through the backpack I had on the counter. “Let’s see, I’ve got sunscreen, a bottle of water, a book in case you have to go pee and I get bored waiting for you, a couple of granola bars, a flashlight, a scarf because you never know, a swimsuit because ditto—hmm, you don’t have a suit, but that’s okay, we can buy you one if we need to—is there anything else I need?”
“I feel like I walked in on a conversation already in progress,” Trey said. “Care to fill me in?”
“We worked hard last night. Threatening violence, rescuing a kidnap victim: that’ll wear anybody out. So today we’re going on vacation.”
“Huh. Where to?”
I slung the backpack over my shoulders and then picked up The Book of Grace from the counter. “Oh, you know. Anywhere we want to.”
#
Minutes later we were sitting on a low wall beside Crown Fountain in Chicago, an art installation in Millennium Park that doubles as a place for kids to play in the water, at least when the weather is warm. The sky was that early-autumn Chicago gray, and there were tourists and people on their lunch breaks ambling around. “I used to come here a lot when I was in school, watch kids play, eat my lunch.”
“I can see the appeal.” We watched the immense faces displayed on the columns change and shift and spit water for a while, then strolled around—holding hands, because look, I’m not made of stone. I took him to see the Bean. (Cloud Gate, if you want to get fancy—the big mirrored amorphous blob of a sculpture, thronged as always with tourists photographing their distorted reflections.) Then, because I was apocalyptically famished, we went over to one of my favorite pizza places for a few slices of deep-dish, which Trey appallingly did not appreciate: “This isn’t pizza. This is basically lasagna with no noodles.” We stopped holding hands for a bit after that. We walked again, and I hit a hot dog vendor so I could get a Chicago dog.