“It should have been,” Harry said. “It’s not like there weren’t intelligent ones in the world before this.”
“Well-hidden,” Harriet said, “and not taking an active role in attacks. Though I’m sure they directed their mindless cousins often enough.”
I remembered the creature that had dragged itself out of my friend Kevin’s lifeless body, remembered it wrapping its tentacles around me and biting my shoulder, and I closed my eyes tightly against those memories. When I opened them, the others were looking at me in concern.
Malcolm took my free hand in his. “Are you all right?”
“Just remembering. They’re utterly terrifying. Not because they’re strong and aggressive, but because they don’t think we’re worth any consideration. We’re just like bugs to them, something to stomp or crush and sweep out of their way.”
“We are bugs who have stopped them advancing for over seven hundred years,” Malcolm said. “That attitude of theirs is pure bluff. The invader you faced in the Gunther Node wanted you to feel despair.”
“It sort of worked. I only survived because they didn’t feel like killing me.” And because Jun had sacrificed her life to spare mine. More memories that tore at my heart.
“We destroyed three of them at Kalgoorlie,” Malcolm said, squeezing my hand gently. “They are as vulnerable as any invader.”
I was sure the fighting had been more difficult than he was letting on, but I didn’t want to challenge him in front of our hosts. So instead, I said, “I stabbed one of them in the eye. It knows we’re not helpless.”
“No, but we are dependent on wards,” Harry said, “and it sounds like, from Michelle Suzuhara’s report on Berryton, that’s become a weakness. If we can’t figure out how they’re warping the wards, any warded location is vulnerable.”
Nobody had a response to that. I didn’t know what Ms. Suzuhara’s report said, because I’d been busy and Lucia hadn’t called me, but it was that lack of a phone call that told me it must contain more or less what the custodians and I had guessed: warping the wards enough to take advantage of the gap, or whatever it was, and then killing the node’s custodian horribly and thereby destroying the node.
“What’s special about the node in Kalgoorlie?” I asked.
Everyone shifted as if coming out of a private reverie. “The Morgan Node is the biggest in Australia,” Malcolm said. “In fact, it’s one of only two Neutralities in all of Australia. The other nodes are all small and under Nicollien or Ambrosite control.”
“Only two that we know about,” Harry pointed out. “Much of Australia is hostile to human life. It’s like the Himalayas and the Alps—could be nodes the size of Neutralities all over the place, but nobody’s in a position to discover or use them.”
“I hope there aren’t any secret Neutralities in Australia,” Harriet said. “The invaders would certainly make use of them. Desert conditions don’t bother them.”
“You’re wondering why that node was attacked,” Malcolm said. “Lucia sent out an update this morning addressing that question. It seems there’s nothing all three nodes—four nodes, if you count the failed attack on Abernathy’s—had in common. Berryton, Morgan, and Abernathy’s are large, but the Cracchiolo Node is relatively small as Neutralities go. Berryton and Cracchiolo were isolated, small communities. Cracchiolo and Kalgoorlie were inland. The Fountain of Youth in Berryton and Abernathy’s are named Neutralities, and so forth. So there’s no common factor that would help us in identifying the next target.”
It irritated me that Lucia hadn’t told me this. I reminded myself that she was busy and said, “Unless there’s some similarity we just haven’t seen yet.”
“I’m certain some Warden or other is busy digging deeper into the mystery,” Harriet said. “There has to be some reason those targets were chosen. The ones that aren’t named Neutralities, I mean. It’s obvious the invaders would want to deny those to the Wardens.”
I recalled what the oracle had said about ‘guardians’ and wondered, not for the first time, if that had a literal meaning in addition to the metaphorical one. “Have either of you ever heard the named Neutralities referred to as guardians?” I asked.
Harriet’s brow furrowed. “What makes you say that?”
“It was something the oracle said. The other custodians said it was because the named Neutralities are like mascots for all of magery, but I wondered if it might mean something more. I guess it’s because the oracle is cryptic, but it never says anything unimportant.”
Harry rubbed his nose with one long, bony finger. “Interesting,” he said. “There are lots of theories about why the named Neutralities are even a thing—you’ve never heard those?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“Well, there’s really no reason for the named Neutralities to exist. There’s a whole chapter in A History of Magic about them, but it’s all nonsense as far as I’m concerned. Not all nonsense, I suppose—the book does point out that as far as any glass magic is concerned, they’re all just really big nodes. No magic has ever revealed how they work or why they even exist. And they resist being investigated.”
He chuckled. “When Harriet and I were kids, there was some Warden or other who attempted to discover what made the Labyrinth work. She and Iakkhos got into a huge fight about it, and Iakkhos finally said if she was so hot on the subject, she could take her chances with the Neutrality. She went into the Labyrinth and came out five months later, after everyone believed she was dead. She claimed it had only been three days and that’s all she would say on the matter.”
“I know Abernathy’s can’t be inventoried, or it would destroy the oracle,” I said. “But I don’t know if it’s ever taken direct action to stop that happening. There’s always been a custodian to prevent it. Even when Silas had to move the store—”
I stopped, struck by a thought. “Abernathy’s didn’t take its node with it, right? It moved from one node to another. Rebecca Greenough is custodian of that Neutrality in London.”
Harriet nodded. “You look like you’ve had a revelation, dear.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s more a thought. If the oracle is independent of its node—oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just had an image of the oracle as a lightbulb that could be screwed into any socket. And if that’s true for the oracle, it might be true for the other named Neutralities. So the attack on Abernathy’s and on Berryton wasn’t on the node, it was on the Neutrality.”
Harry and Harriet had politely confused looks on their faces, but Malcolm said, “You mean there must be something about Barga and Kalgoorlie that has nothing to do with their nodes.”
“Maybe it was who the custodian was, or what the Neutrality produces, or—”
“Lucia probably knows this already,” Malcolm said, “but you should call her anyway.”
“That sounds like you’re ready to go,” Harriet said with a laugh. “Let me get you some cheesecake to take with you. There’s always far more than Harry and I can eat.”
“Far more than you’ll let me eat, you mean,” Harry grumbled.
Cheesecake box in hand, we got in Malcolm’s Mustang, and I called Lucia as Malcolm navigated the driveway in reverse and headed for home. I left her a message I hoped was intelligible without being too wordy and hung up. “Now that I’ve said it twice, it doesn’t seem like much of a breakthrough,” I said.
“Possibly. I mentioned they’ve already eliminated the obvious qualities, like geography and population, but I don’t know that anyone’s examined the purely practical output of the node. Or the possibility that it might be the custodians the invaders intended to eliminate.”
“That hits a little too close to home, Malcolm.”
“Sorry.” He rested his hand briefly on mine. “You’re speaking with the other custodians tonight?”
“At midnight again. It’s going to be another late night. You’re sure the work on Abernathy’s won’t be finished tomorrow?”
<
br /> “The store is scheduled to reopen Monday morning. We can both sleep in tomorrow to our heart’s content.”
I smiled. “That sounds lovely. Then we could have a picnic and go to an afternoon movie, just like ordinary people who never have to work Saturdays from ten until six.”
“I like the sound of that. Though—” He laughed. “I admit ten years ago I would have hated the idea. Of course, ten years ago I was in the Navy and a thrill-seeker. A picnic was something we guys did to impress girls we wanted to sleep with.”
“That still works, you know. I never realized how sexy it is to watch a man doing dishes of his own free will.”
Malcolm roared with laughter. “Did you just tell me that so I’ll do the dishes all the time?”
“No. Maybe. Did it work?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow.” He winked, making me laugh.
When we got home, Malcolm disappeared into the office to do finances, something he enjoyed more than I did, and I got into my pajamas and curled up with Old Tin Sorrows for a few chapters. More than that was too much to take; the story had grown more intense, and I couldn’t guess who the villain was. Maybe that was what the oracle was trying to tell me—that the true villains were hiding in plain sight, and I lacked the understanding to identify them. The idea that more humans might be behind the attacks filled me with horror. The Wardens had eliminated the Mercy as a serious threat, but they’d never eradicated every single member, and while it was unlikely that any of those who remained were leaders, maybe that just meant some people had gotten major promotions.
I went downstairs and made hot chocolate, maybe a little weird on a warm night like this, and took a mug to Malcolm. He accepted it with a smile, and I sat near him and enjoyed my own drink in companionable silence. “I’m almost done,” he said. “We could watch a movie until midnight.”
“That would be nice. Something funny. Something without death in it.”
We settled on My Favorite Wife and cuddled together on the couch while Cary Grant made a fool of himself trying to avoid telling Gail Patrick his long-missing first wife had come back. Back in the days when we’d done this in the apartment over the store, movies had usually ended with the two of us taking each other’s clothes off and occasionally making it as far as the bedroom. Now, I felt so content, lying there in my husband’s arms, I didn’t need sex to bring us close together.
“Remember what I said about the man I was ten years ago?” Malcolm murmured. “He had no idea what waited in his future. And he wouldn’t have appreciated it if he knew.”
“I won’t tell you what I was doing ten years ago, because I was seriously underage,” I said.
He laughed and stroked my hair. “I like to think,” he said, “that it took me just long enough to grow up that I could fall in love with you when you were the perfect age.”
“Mmm. I like the sound of that.”
His arms tightened on me. “Ah, love, what would I do without you?”
“I believe the consensus is that you would be miserable and lonely.”
“Very true.” He kissed me, and for a few minutes I forgot about the movie. Then Cyrus leaped up to investigate what Malcolm was doing that wasn’t petting him, and we settled back in to watch.
It was about twenty ‘til midnight when the final credits rolled—or didn’t roll; those old movies just had static screens listing the cast. We disentangled ourselves, and I kissed Malcolm goodnight and got my laptop set up on the kitchen table. I felt more at peace than I had in weeks.
A flash of memory struck me, of my first sight of Malcolm, standing by the cash register in Abernathy’s with a look of surprise at seeing me, a stranger, instead of Mr. Briggs. I’d thought he was gorgeous, of course, but had no idea what the future held for us. Married. How far we’d come.
I settled in at the computer and gestured to Xerxes to sit on my lap. He ignored me, as was his habit. He liked to pretend lap-sitting was all his own idea. I propped my elbows on the table and waited. I wasn’t sure what news I had for my fellow custodians, given that they’d all probably heard the report on Berryton and what had come of the attack on Kalgoorlie, but the idea of sharing information with people whose concerns were mostly like mine made me feel even more at peace.
The computer chimed, and I hit the button. “Good day—and good evening,” Samudra said. “I trust everyone is well? Helena, you are unharmed? We all heard about the attempt to destroy Abernathy’s.”
“I’m fine, thanks. It was incredible good luck, though.”
“I’m surprised the oracle didn’t warn you itself,” Amarion said.
“I—yeah, it doesn’t seem to see threats the way we do. Probably it knew Victor would be there, and that was all the warning it took.”
“Or warned Victor itself,” Claude said. “We do not know the mechanism by which his magical talent operates. The Mercy’s oracle tapped into the same mystical space as Abernathy’s, so perhaps the other precognitives do the same.”
“I never thought of that.” It was an intriguing idea, though one I didn’t know how to investigate. A thought for another time.
“So our theory about the wards proved true,” Samudra said. “Though no one yet knows how they are doing it.”
“And the situation at Abernathy’s tells us how they were getting past the wards,” Amarion said. “That was daring, trying to smash through like that.”
“I wanted to ask whether all of you have similar alarms set up on your Neutralities,” I said. “Now that we know they’re willing to take such drastic action, those alarms aren’t enough.”
“We do not have the alarm on the Sanctuary itself, but on the walls surrounding it and the gates leading to the…you might call it an enclosure,” Samudra said. “A stretch of empty land between those gates and the Sanctuary’s buildings. Though the invaders would find it difficult to drive a car into the walls, shattering them. The Sanctuary lies atop a sheer cliff, accessible only by foot. But we will not be foolhardy. My people are even now assessing the possibilities and preparing for an assault, possibly by air.”
I immediately pictured invaders in parachutes dropping into the Sanctuary complex. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
Samudra smiled. “It would be extremely hazardous. The wind blows constantly around the precipice. But even that slim chance should not be overlooked.”
“The Wardens have been doing construction around the Labyrinth all day,” Amarion said. “They tell me they’ll have an improved alarm system in by tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to having them out of here, honestly. Not that I don’t appreciate their efforts, but the noise makes it hard for people to concentrate on their journey.”
“The Athenaeum’s heart is impregnable,” Claude said. “Because access to it is distributed around the world, it is those places that must be accessible, not the node itself. We weaken the wards once a year for me to enter and maintain my charge, but at all other times the wards are as strong as possible. And that time is another four months off. The invaders may try some other approach, but I believe even killing me will not gain them what they want.”
It made me uncomfortable, how he spoke so casually of being killed, so to cover my discomfort I said, “I haven’t been back to the store since the attack. I feel bad that I’m not more worried about it. It gets wearying, hearing over and over that we’re both going to die, or end, or whatever.”
“It makes sense,” Claude said. “Is there anything we can do?”
That cheered me. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s so nice of you to offer. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
“I would urge you to tell us anything the oracle says,” Samudra said. “Perhaps we will see something you have not.”
“Right. And there’s always the possibility that whatever’s going to happen to the oracle might affect us as well,” Amarion said. “We’ve already seen it’s possible for named Neutralities to be destroyed. It’s not such a stretch to imagine them ending for s
ome other reason.”
His words triggered a memory from earlier that evening. “I was thinking,” I said, “about how Abernathy’s was moved from one node to another, and how maybe that means the named Neutralities are independent of their nodes.”
“This is true,” Claude said. “The Athenaeum was moved from Germany to Switzerland during the First World War. It was not such a production as moving Abernathy’s,” he said to my surprised gasp, “and I understand it was a matter of one woman packing its core into a suitcase and taking it by train. But the principle was the same.”
“So maybe the other two Neutralities the invaders went after were attacked for qualities other than their nodes.”
Amarion was nodding. “That makes sense. More sense than trying to figure out what the nodes had in common, which is nothing.”
I was about to say something about what Ariadne had said about the size of the named Neutralities’ nodes when Samudra said, “Unless it means something entirely different.”
“What do you mean?” Claude asked.
“I am not certain,” Samudra said, “but I feel, deep within me, as if this puzzle is far from being solved.”
I nodded, and the other two did the same. Then my computer let out a low moan, like an animal in pain, and I jumped in surprise. “Did you hear that?”
“I did,” Claude said. He leaned forward and appeared to fiddle with something on his monitor, maybe the volume control. The sound came again, deeper and more painful. “It is not I.”
“Wait a moment,” Amarion said. He pushed back his chair and disappeared from view. I messed with my own volume control, but the sound didn’t happen again. No one spoke. I realized Xerxes had been on my lap for a while now, and I’d been petting him without being aware.
Then Amarion’s face came into view, his hands clutching both sides of his monitor. His eyes were wide and he was breathing heavily. “Get to safety,” he panted. “Get out—go now!”
As quickly as he’d appeared, he vanished again, this time jerked away by some unseen force. I sucked in a startled breath. Then Amarion screamed, a hoarse, horrible sound filled with such desperate agony I cried out myself. The screaming went on, incoherent and wordless, for what felt like forever—until it cut off as abruptly as if his tormentor had pressed a button.
The Book of Destiny Page 9