The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  He picked himself up and studied the clearing. The dolmen had vanished without a trace; only faint impressions in the earth marked its presence. Jessa knelt on the ground, and Sword was sprawled some distance behind her.

  “Fuck,” Sword said, rolling to his side.

  “It is done,” Jessa said, then quickly added, “Obviously. I don’t know why I felt the need to say that.”

  “I’m afraid it may have just started. The Harrowers aren’t going to take this lying down,” Sword said. “At least we know they have a weakness—fuckloads of magic.”

  “We’ll be ready.” Jessa brushed her dress and stood.

  “No, we won’t.” Heath struggled off the ground. “But we’ll be capable.”

  Jessa stared at him, jaw wide.

  Sword got off the ground and explained, “Achelon showed me another seal, and—” He stopped mid sentence, brow furrowed with confusion as he looked at Heath.

  “Do I have something on my face?” Heath asked, feeling a bit exposed.

  “Kind of,” Jessa said slowly.

  Sword walked over to Heath and drew his Sword. He shoved the mirrorlike blade in front of Heath’s face so he could see his own reflection.

  Heath’s hand went immediately to his cheek. He recognized his handsome features, but his eyes—the eyes he’d partially healed during Satryn’s attack—were whole. And silver.

  “Fuck,” Heath gasped.

  “Does that mean what I think it means?” Sword asked Jessa.

  “It can’t be,” she said. Heath saw his argent gaze reflected in Jessa’s own.

  “I’m not a Stormlord too, am I?” Sword asked, checking his reflection in his blade, only to shrug.

  “Kondole has chosen you,” Jessa said. “And I have no idea what that means. No one ever has acquired that power.”

  Heath flexed his hand as arcs of bluish light flickered between his fingers. He grinned with delight. “It’s a sign.”

  “Of what, though?” Sword asked.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK TWO

  CODA

  The Dawn of C8-N

  FROM: astephens@qport.gov (Astrid Stephens)

  TO: amaddox@qport.gov (Audra Maddox)

  SUBJECT: It’s raining frogs—another anomaly?

  Hey,

  This is weird. I’ve had three people bring me rocks that looked like frogs…because apparently I like frogs?

  Dinesh swears up and down he’s not punking me, and one of the rocks came from Tacker. Yeah, the director of Sentinel Security gave me a rock. He said he found it on a patrol and thought I might like it. What do you say to a nearly seven-foot-tall ex-Navy SEAL black-ops commando? I told him thanks.

  There’s just been a lot of coincidences lately, and I’m a little freaked out actually. A lot of things have been happening like that lately. Lily has lost and found her engagement ring on the beach three times now. It’s a like a low-level mass hysteria back at Base Camp Two. Maybe there’s something in the food supply. LOL. So far no witch trials.

  Anyway if you find any frog-shaped rocks, kick them my way. I think they make cool souvenirs.

  Love you always and stay safe,

  A

  SAGAR AND SKYE were snuggling by a campfire on the beach. Their plastic pup tent looked like a glowing jellyfish from the light of the laptop screens inside. Strewn across the beach were matte-black cases of scientific equipment that Astrid knew next to nothing about. The budget for this project had been exorbitant, and her role in approving things was more of a formality. Half of what the scientists had requested was probably unnecessary.

  She carried a plastic water bottle filled with Lily’s latest fermented concoction, something that tasted like an unholy cross between coconut water and moonshine. It was better than her last batch, however, and since the portal had closed, her mixtures were good for morale. She worried more about Tacker’s team than the scientists.

  “Astrid!” Sagar called happily. “How’s it going?”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Astrid explained, “but Dr. Valentine has offered us her latest creation—a fermented mixture of those edible fruits we discovered on C-17. It’s going fast, so I thought I’d bring you something before it’s gone. It’s almost drinkable.”

  Skye laughed. “That’s an improvement. Thank you, Astrid.”

  Astrid plopped down next to them and handed the bottle to Skye. She let her fingers sink into the sand as she gazed out across the ocean. It was full of bioluminescent plankton that outnumbered the stars reflected in the gentle water. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Sagar hastily added, “Except for my wife of course.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Skye teased, as she passed the bottle to her husband. “The only reason we got married is because neither of us can marry the sea.”

  The Janssens were two of the few people on the survey mission who knew each other from before and the only people who were family. An oceanographer and a marine biologist, they were the perfect couple. They even had matching tattoos on their calves; Sagar had a whale, and Skye had a squid.

  Astrid sighed. “You two doing all right?”

  “We’d be doing better if there were any edible fish to support a large population,” Sagar said. “The plankton should have some sort of natural predator. The light they emit is normally a biological response to predators, but C8-N is like looking at Earth’s history as it unfolds. The ecosystem isn’t developed yet.”

  “Something has to be here,” Skye said. “The water would exhibit much more acidity if the plankton population weren’t somehow being contained or mitigated.”

  “The oceans here are exceptionally deep,” Sagar countered. “There could be a much wider variety of life evolving down there. What if evolution happened at a lower depth on C8-N?”

  “We really need a better name for this planet,” Skye said.

  Astrid interjected, “We’ve polled the teams, and C-8N has a ninety-nine percent disapproval rating, which is the closest we’ve had to a consensus. At least it’s better than Nimrod.”

  “Nimrod was a hunter,” Sagar countered.

  Skye grabbed the bottle back. “The naming committee fucked that up, Sagar.”

  Astrid shrugged. “We didn’t think we’d find a viable planet this quickly. The names were a randomized list, like the names of hurricanes. We actually put the worst ones at the top. And the government gets to decide the name anyway. Honestly I’m a big fan of ditching the whole mythology-to-name-planets thing. We should name this place after something that matters, so if our children grow up here, they’ll know what it means. Like ‘Promise’ or ‘Hope.’”

  “Sorry. I forgot you were on that committee,” Skye said, passing her the bottle. “I think ‘Earth’ is a good name. It’s descriptive, historical, and…it actually is a planet. We don’t need a fancy name for it.”

  “You can’t call it Earth,” Sagar said. “That’s a dumb name for a planet covered with water.”

  Skye interrupted, “Which covers the—”

  “Rock,” Sagar stated. “And that rock contains more water than all the surface oceans.”

  “In microscopic amounts. The water below Earth’s surface is basically blue rock.”

  Astrid handed the bottle to Sagar. “Jesus, get a room, you two.”

  Skye smiled. “This is what you and Dr. Maddox have to look forward to.”

  “No,” Astrid said. “Her doctorate is in astrophysics. Mine is in business administration. We don’t have these arguments because neither of us knows what the fuck the other is saying half the time.”

  “Any word on the Q-Portal?” Sagar said tentatively. He’d been through a couple of outages before, but it was a little nerve-wracking for everyone.

  “Standard calibration,” Astrid said. “We’re rationing in case it drags out, but our last resupply left us enough to last at least three months. We’re fine.”

  “Listen, we have something to tell you…”
Skye started.

  Astrid waited.

  “We’re pregnant,” Sagar said, squeezing his wife.

  “The first alien baby.” Skye beamed as she rubbed her stomach. “We’re thinking of calling him Noah, after the ark. Kind of appropriate. We want to have him here if that’s possible.”

  Sagar added, “Or Heather if it’s a girl.”

  “It’s a boy,” Skye said.

  Astrid put a hand to her mouth. All the women on the team were given a birth-control implant, but the effectiveness rate wasn’t 100 percent. “Skye, that’s great news, but we don’t have the facilities or the experts. When we move to phase six, I can put you at the top of the list for family habitation. But I can’t advance the timeline on obstetric care—we haven’t even vetted those experts.”

  “A full eighth of this survey team has some kind of medical degree,” Skye protested. “Besides there are no pathogens here—it’s safer than a doctor’s office back home.”

  “What about day care?” Astrid countered. “And diapers. Do you seriously want to drop your kid off with Tacker’s crew?”

  “We were in the Peace Corps,” Sagar said. “You’d be surprised what women in third-world countries—”

  They heard a loud shriek from down the beach. “Woooo! What is up, bitches?” Dr. Lily Valentine ran through the sand, carrying a sloshing water bottle filled with cloudy liquid. “I brought reinforcements.” She shook her bottle.

  “Lily,” Astrid said. “I thought you were partying with the tech ops.”

  She tossed her hair back. “I had to get the fuck out of there. Dinesh was, like, literally all over me. That guy is such a perv.”

  Skye and Sagar looked at each other and shared a giggle.

  Astrid stiffened. The survey team had become a hotbed of sexual tension over the last few months. The fitness requirements for phase two meant there were a lot of brilliant—but young and by proxy impulsive—scientists and specialists.

  “What happened?” Astrid said slowly. “You know I have to take these complaints seriously.”

  “It’s fine.” Lily waved her hand dismissively. “I blew him. We’re good.”

  “Lily!” Astrid exclaimed. “Did he coerce you in any way? You know I’m required to report anything that potentially violates the code of conduct. Especially now, given what happened with Officer Harlowe.”

  Lily laughed. “You’re so fucking serious. With your rules all the time…Jesus.”

  “How much have you had to drink?” Astrid asked her.

  Lily shrugged. “A lot.”

  Astrid grabbed her shoulders and pulled her out of earshot from the campfire. “I need to know if you were forced or at any time withdrew consent.”

  “Shhhh. It’s all good.” Lily smiled happily. “I forced him if anything. But then he went into this whole speech about repopulating the planet. And I was all, like, ‘Ew, I am not having your baby.’ Even if we are stranded on this rock forever, this survey team is such a sausage fest—it could never support a viable birthrate. Like, duh.”

  “Lily,” Astrid said firmly, “I’m taking you back to your tent and having Tacker assign a security detail. I’ll speak to you and Dinesh tomorrow. If this is an issue, it could result in one or both of you being pulled off the mission. So you need to think long and hard about what you want to say.”

  Lily grinned. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re not going home. Ever. The portal’s closed and won’t reopen.”

  “So that’s what this is about. It’s just a routine calibration, Lily,” Astrid reassured her. “We’ve been through outages before, and they rarely last more than a few days. This is your first time experiencing one, so I understand it can be upsetting, but we’ll get through it. We can talk about your concerns tomorrow after you’ve had time to sleep it off.”

  “Whatever. He said we’re all going to die here, so I figured, why not make the most of it?” Lily took a swig of her alcoholic concoction and ran toward the sparkling water.

  “Dinesh said that?” Astrid said. “He’s in IT, not quantum.”

  “No.” Lily stripped her shirt off, baring her sports bra. She pointed. “The Harbinger.” Dr. Lily Valentine then turned and skipped into ocean, without a care in the world. Astrid was losing control of her team. There needed to be stricter psych evals, closer monitoring of fraternization. The board wouldn’t be happy.

  Astrid turned, and her face went pale. “Oh, shit.”

  Dr. Herschel Cohen, a gaunt elderly man with a slight limp and Coke-bottle glasses, walked up the beach. He was a mathematician who had predicted the collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, to the year, back in the 1970s, well before climate change was a part of the national narrative. It had earned him a sinister nickname among his fellow scientists, who mocked his tendency for fatalistic predictions.

  The Harbinger approached and he did not bring good tidings.

  The story continues in The Mirrored City...

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  THE FIRST CENTURY of the Mirrored City’s history is marked by an endless cycle of revolt and oppression. The Ohanites, a devout splinter religion of the Hierocracy, believed in moderation, purity, and social conformity. The anarchic Omnitheists, who were mixed believers of all other religions, believed in exactly the opposite and prized individual freedom.

  King Sulidan the Wise, whose parents were of differing faiths, was concerned only with which path would yield the greatest social good. To quell violence, he authored a social experiment, known as the Compromise. The city proper would be split into two halves, one for each side.

  Nearly four hundred years later, no conclusive answer has been reached. As part of the Protectorate, each government alternates sending representatives to the Grand Assembly. As the influential swing vote, the proposals put before the Grand Assembly often wait for a year that favors a particular policy.

  —DORIAN BRAND VIII, HISTORY OF SARN, VOLUME SEVEN: THE LONG NIGHT AND AFTER

  HEATH LOOKED OUT across the Mirrored City as the sunrise painted long intricate shadows from the railing of his balcony. Like all buildings in Dessim, the apartments were hewn from black marble. Across from his building, over the wall that divided the city from Baash, an identical five-story tower of white marble looked back at him. On a matching balcony, a man in a long white tunic and pants smoked something.

  Each side had been given the same buildings and infrastructure. And each side had been given a mission to prove, once and for all, which way of life was best. In Dessim, Heath’s building served as long-term housing for visiting dignitaries and merchants. Judging from the white laundry hanging from some of the balconies, it was family housing in Baash.

  Heath sipped his bitter herbal tea. He almost gagged every morning he drank it. Maddox had convinced Heath it would help with the cancer growing in his stomach. It had, in fact. But it left him feeling weak for several hours a day. He finished it and went inside.

  Maddox was dead, slumped in an overstuffed purple chair, staring vacantly into an empty fireplace. The mantel was littered with figurines of nearly every hearth deity in Creation.

  “You alive yet, buddy?”

  As if on cue, a golden light flickered over Maddox’s body. Color returned to his skin, and his dead eyes blinked. He made no effort to move.

  “Maddox,” Heath asked. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Like I want to be dead again,” Maddox stated dully. “Where’s my sword?”

  Heath stood in front of Maddox, kneeling to look into his sad green eyes. He’s responding. He’s coming back, but it sucks to see him like this. Maddox had been temperamental, belligerent, drunk for a good portion of the day, and very rarely, quite charming. The Inquisition had squeezed all of that out of him, turning him into a hollow s
hell because they were afraid of his immortality and knowledge of the Grand Design, the Seal of Seals.

  Heath said, “It’s going to be fine. You’re recovering, Maddox. You have to start feeling some of the bad stuff before the good stuff comes back.”

  “It’s all bad stuff. My whole fucking life. I don’t want any of it.” Maddox said.

  “You’re a well-regarded hero of Rivern and a personal friend of the empress. You have more gold than you could spend in a lifetime. It’s not all bad.”

  “Give me the Sword,” Maddox pleaded. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Heath stood. “No. I’m not giving you that sword ever again.”

  Maddox looked confused.

  Heath clarified. “You can start getting it yourself.”

  Maddox groaned and lolled his head to where the sword rested against the wall, a large red heartstone resting in the hilt and crossguard. Feebly, he reached out for it, but his hand fell to his side.

  Heath sat down at his desk and started reviewing paperwork. During his time in the Inquisition, he had learned to tune out the cries of the people he tortured, and Maddox’s plaintive moans sounded worse than they were. The papers contained every bit of information Heath could find on the seven ruling families of Baash. Normally, hereditary rule was forbidden by the charter of the Protectorate. The Ohanites, headed by those same seven families, had found a loophole: tell their faithful whom to vote for.

  Heath heard the clang and skitter of the sword as it dragged across the floor. He heard the chair topple over and dump his friend onto the ground where he could presumably reach the weapon.

  “Fuck,” Maddox, now possessed by the Sword, said. He climbed off the floor and whirled the blade in his hand. “You can’t keep doing this to us, man. You don’t know what it’s like for him every time you separate us. Hells, it sucks for me, too, because I remember it happening to him. He doesn’t want it—”