by Gwenda Bond
“Won’t, because there isn’t one,” Bronson says. “You’re guilty.”
“Which god was I colluding with, do you think? Was it Set? But then why would he attack my daughter…? Enki did harbor me, but he also gave me up easily, and has no interest in Egyptian relics, even such valuable ones as a key to the Afterlife.” Dad pauses, stagily pretending to think. “Let me think who else might be willing to engage in such a scheme and I’ll point a finger.” He rattles his chains. “If I can. Undo these?”
Loud conversation breaks out again among them as they debate the request, and Bronson wheels to exchange words with Rose.
Thanks, Dad. You bought me exactly the distraction I need.
I start across the thick carpet. With purpose, I resist the urge to check and make sure no one has spotted me, that the gods’ superior senses haven’t given me up despite the bubble. I don’t look anywhere but at my father, at the wounds on his cheek, until I’m nearly to him. Then I head toward the table with the Solstice Was on it.
The snarling face at the top of the scepter might be staring back at me. I hesitate with my hand over the metal of the staff. The moment I lay a finger on it, bam, it’ll disappear. But the doors out of the Reading Room are heavy and closed. I’ll need time to get over there and out, and suddenly everyone has gone quiet again.
“Were you working with anyone, Henry?” Rose asks, calmly.
But before Dad can answer, Set lets out another growl. He speaks in a way I can understand, and which I can hardly bear to hear. “I would never risk my house for such a specimen. He could not even protect his own kin, let alone wield the scepter.”
I want to tell him how wrong he is, to defend Dad. Against being called a specimen, at least. He’s doing this for us, for this whole stupid world, and he shouldn’t be.
But Dad shakes his head, and says, “Prove that I can’t protect her.”
“I can,” Bronson says, tone hushed. “If I choose. I can ensure her safety.”
Dad drops his head. The first time he’s given any sign that he didn’t walk in here and sign up for this trial.
Enki cranes his head skyward, toward the dome, and the motion catches my eye. I’m afraid I’ll see Oz moving around on the second floor. But he’s not.
Who knows why a god lifts his head? Or why he lowers it? Enki’s gaze swings from the second floor back down to Set. Enki thunders, “Is the human offering the Set animal a challenge?”
Legba chimes in. “If he is, I want to start the betting at two cities razed. Including this one.”
Loki’s responding laugh makes the floor tremble under my feet. They are off again, all talking, Set and Enki stalking closer to one another. Dad shaking his head again.
This is it. The best chance I’ll get.
I wait until Bronson is talking to Rose again, both of them paying more attention to each other than the chaos in front of them. And I grab the staff.
Whirling, I dart across the space, hefting the surprisingly heavy metal scepter. I make it to the double doors, and pray they aren’t as weighty as they look. I don’t dare risk going back up to the way we came in.
I need to get out of the building before Oz can raise the alarm. But when I hit the doors where they join, nothing happens. Nothing. Happens. They don’t even begin to budge. The sound of the impact is swallowed by the bubble around me. I try again, but the doors are as unmoving as stone, like I’m pushing against a fortress wall. To show myself is certain failure. Maybe even certain death. If not mine, then Dad’s.
Think.
But I have. I thought my way right to this moment, and I have no good way to get out.
That’s when they notice the Solstice Was is gone.
“WHERE IS IT?” booms Enki. He levels an accusatory glare that would cow a lesser being at Set.
Set, whose head tilts at an odd angle, and who whines. It’s the angry whine of a hurt dog that’s had enough and is about to fight back and take a bite out of someone.
Bronson stalks out from behind the podium, bashes the table with an open palm. “It was right here. You all saw it. No one has come or gone.”
Rose steps out from behind her lectern. “We have to lock down the building.” She strides across the floor toward me, no-nonsense in her business suit, as if the gods are nothing more than furniture. I step aside before she collides with me.
She knocks three times, rap rap rap, on the heavy wood. The doors lever open. They admit one operative, two. As she gives the order to seal the exits and post guards, Bronson tries to calm the arguing tricksters. But the shout is loud enough to stop everyone. “Shut the doors!”
It’s Oz.
He’s poised on a low wall within an arch on the other side of the staircase. He hurls himself into the air and lands on the main floor in a ridiculously graceful crouch, flanked by suspicious gods.
“Shut the doors!” he calls again.
Bronson starts toward him, and I hope he gets there in time to keep Oz from being the target of divine fury. But I can’t stay and find out. I slip out before Oz can shout again at the gaping operatives to close the doors. Before he can tell them anything. Here’s hoping he’s too late to catch me or to get me caught by others.
The oracle’s advice comes back to me, and it seems better this time. I bolt through the hallways, my only thought to keep on running. I hit the Great Hall at top speed. Navigating through the guards rushing toward the meeting, I can tell they don’t know what’s going on yet. The sound of angry gods spills out of the Reading Room behind me, urging me on.
I have to beat Rose’s orders. Make it out of here before I’m locked inside. Even invisible, it would only be a matter of time before they find me. I’m not foolish enough to believe any different, not with a nearly endless supply of relics at their disposal. Speaking of which, the staff in my hand feels wrong, and I wish I didn’t have to carry it. I’d love nothing more than to throw it into the ocean or leave it behind in a dark closet. But I can’t let go.
Behind me, it’s not just the riot of gods anymore. I hear Oz again. “You can’t see her!” he shouts. “Bar the doors! She could still be here!”
“Crap,” I mutter, desperate to speed up, but not able to without the risk of slamming into an operative hard enough to knock the Was from my grasp.
There are too many people here. Far too many. The only hope I have is to get to the main doors. An entrance is always left open when tricksters are visiting the Jefferson.
But as I approach, I hear the unmistakable sound of it being shut. I despair. I consider falling to my knees. I search my memory for hiding places in the Jefferson that might last long enough, but if I’m stuck here it’s a lost cause.
“We have to find her!” Oz shouts. “She’s using Vidarr’s relic.”
But Oz’s shouts are followed by the most blissful sound possible. “Sorry about this!” Bree calls, and I turn to see her fling herself at Oz. She puts enough effort into it to almost take him down. She throws her arms around him, hanging on, as he struggles to get loose without injuring her. “Let. Me. Go,” he orders her.
“No way,” Bree says. “Where is Kyra? What’s she doing?”
“I wish I knew,” Oz says.
Tam rushes up to them. Bree’s mom isn’t far behind him, a cameraman trailing her. Tam stands uncertainly beside Oz and Bree. When Nalini reaches them, she says, “Bree, he’s cute, but I don’t understand…”
“Tam, I could use some help here,” Bree says, and to her mother, “He’s trying to do something to Kyra.”
“I am not,” Oz says. “I’m trying to keep her from getting herself in any deeper.”
Bree smiles at him. It’s a brittle smile. “No one’s ever been able to do that.”
Tam decides to jump in after all, grabbing Oz’s arm where he’s pushing against Bree. The three of them grapple, and other operatives move in to separate them.
But my friends have bought me one last shot. “Thank you, Bree Norville, goddess among humans,” I say an
d dash around the group of them – still unseen, still gripping the effing Was scepter – and trip down one more flight of stairs to the lower level.
The old tourist exit down here is not used much. But the doors are still right where they always were. The red Emergency Exit sign above them is like a beacon. I slam into the first door I reach, and the alarm blares to life, but that doesn’t matter because it flies open and I’m outside. I suck in a breath of air, and take off.
This time, I stop for nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I barely make it to the commuter hub before the final coach of the day leaves the city. Designed to hold ten people, it’s pulled by four strong workhorses. Now that I’m here, I realize getting on board may be tricky. But I breathe easier when I spot one last paying passenger hurrying our way.
When the coachman unlatches the door, I’m right behind her. Once I’m in, I hang onto a roof strap, and only when the coach springs into motion, do I wonder – and worry – about what Bree and Tam were doing at the Jefferson.
Please let them stay out of this from here on out. Maybe I can find a pay phone and make a call to Bree later, tell her to keep her head down, that I’ll be back before long. It’s not as if I can embark on establishing an alternate identity with a backpack full of clothes and a hundred bucks. It’s not as if I intend to, anyway.
The other passengers are academics and lawyers, not people tapped into Society intrigue. I feel almost safe. Though I still can’t believe I managed to get the Was scepter. Even with my other hand wrapped around that wrong-feeling metal, the buzz I lost in the heat of the action comes roaring back.
I heisted a relic from the middle of a Tricksters’ Council meeting. Me. I wish someone was here to give me a high-five.
Well, Bree will later. And she deserves one of her own.
I wonder if the people around me knew what I was doing, whether they’d turn me in. That’s how Bronson will trick Oz into believing I am not on the side of the angels. It’s easy to make people doubt their own judgment, especially when they’ve already been burned. Ducking my head, I look out the window and scan the twilight sky, half-expecting Anzu to be up there. Circling.
He isn’t.
I really might get away. But when I rotate the Was so that the jackal head faces me, snarling, it’s hard for me to believe the worst is over.
At Alexandria, I barely make it off before the coachman slams the door shut on the cabin. He’s already unhooking the line of tired horses, and the other occupants of the coach scatter, off toward Old Town and safer neighborhoods.
I have some time to kill before I can get another coach to take me further, and I want to change clothes and remove the shoe. While the invisibility is nice, I don’t think I can hack a long distance journey that way. Not when my eyes are increasingly heavy, and every muscle aches. My lack of sleep nips at my heels.
I’ll have to come back and buy a ticket for one of the long distance coaches parked nearby, but I have to decide where to go in the meantime. Up the street, the front window of a one-story office building is painted over, identifying it as the Hell & Co Insurance Tavern. Opposite it is a church that gives every appearance of being well funded, a fancy blue-and-white sign deeming it the Church of Two Worlds.
The thing about religion in a world full of gods is that it gets even more complicated. All of the religions are true and none of them are. Two worlds, without a doubt.
I make my way behind the church, where I shrug off my backpack and remove Vidarr’s shoe. As soon as it leaves my foot I stagger and have to press a hand against the brick church to steady myself. With the relic gone, I can barely stand. I put both hands against the wall and fight to stay up, breathing deep.
Not yet. I haven’t gotten away yet.
I root through the pack and find the Ramones T-shirt. It’s not exactly clean, but I want to put it on anyway. For strength, for a reminder of why I’m doing this, to feel connected to Dad. I put on my jacket, and stash the shoe.
What to do with the Was is a bigger problem, now that anyone can see it. I take one of the plain black T-shirts Ann bought me and wrap it carefully around the headpiece, knotting it at the bottom. Then I slide it through a split in my backpack strap. It should come off as a walking stick, like I’m any average traveler. I strap on the pack.
Food, then ticket, then getaway and sleep. I can do this.
In the dark inside of Hell & Co, people are playing pool and dancing too close together for the metal pouring out of the speakers. I choose a corner table, and the waitress who comes over wears a short denim skirt and a T-shirt knotted at her waist. She has a tattoo of a cross at her throat.
“Tourist, I take it,” she says. “We have one fish sandwich left. From not far away, so it shouldn’t kill you.”
“Sold.”
She hesitates. “You have money to pay for it?”
I give her the twenty. “Keep the difference.”
Every time the front door opens, I tense, ready to run.
The table I’m at used to be a desk. There are a few cubicle walls scattered around the room, too, and more desk-tables. A couple of people are wheeling around in ex-office chairs. It’s a grim scene. When the sandwich comes, I wolf it down and then leave.
The dark street is deserted now, except for the coaching stand up the street. There’s a waiting carriage, the one I need, with a handful of people gathered around it, luggage being loaded onto the top. Time to go.
The ticket stand has a couple of rows of bare bulbs around its edges to make it visible, one side white and the other red. I make my way up the sidewalk to the dead traffic light, staying alert for anything out of the ordinary. At the intersection, I stop to check the street. Nothing is coming, and I step out into the crosswalk.
When I reach the middle of the street, a familiar shape wings down through the dark and lands in front of me. Anzu, and he’s angry.
He growls up a storm, and his long claws scrape the asphalt as he advances on me. I should let him drive me back. The people outside the coach are calling out in alarm. They’ll take off without me, or refuse to sell a ticket to me, if they decide I come standard with a monster.
“Go,” I tell him, planting my feet where they are, dead center in the faded white paint.
He roars and the air from it ruffles my hair. His breath heats my face and if I had the energy, I’d be terrified. OK, I am still terrified.
“I don’t need a guard. I’m leaving. Thanks for the effort,” I try to calm him.
Anzu scrapes forward and lowers his shoulder to nudge me with it – firmly. I push back against him with everything I have left. It’s not much, but I won’t give up now. I won’t. Not when Dad’s life hangs in the balance.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
I’m beginning to lose ground to him. He’s screwing up everything.
But when he snarls again, louder, it’s not at me anymore. He takes a step back, his lion’s head shaking side to side with the mightiest roar I’ve heard from him yet. It’s a warning that puts an instant chill in me. That is the sound of a predator warning away another predator. I look around and understand. “Oh no, oh no. No, no, no.”
I’m standing in the middle of an intersection. It’s where the street that runs to the ticket booth hits the main highway, the one we came in here on. A crossroads.
I’d bet anything that Anzu was trying to drive me out of it. The oracles told me to avoid them, and what did I do? Stumbled blindly into one, convinced what lay on the other side was salvation.
“Is he already here?” I ask Anzu, voice shaky. “Is it too late?”
But it’s a stupid question, pointless if I have to ask.
Legba’s laughter is the answer, the sound of him preceding the reality of his presence. He pops into view. Not in the poorly lit intersection one moment, right in front of me the next. I can still be surprised, though.
Bronson is with him.
I am so screwed. Instinct kicks in, the need to g
et out of here. But Legba reaches out an impossibly fast hand and catches the back of my jacket as I bolt. He hauls me back and tosses me at Bronson. Who grabs me and holds on tight.
“Deal with her,” Legba says, and turns to Anzu. He holds his hands palm up like you do with a cop or a dog, to make nice. “Old one, it doesn’t have to be this way. I have no quarrel with you.”
Anzu issues an ear-splitting roar, and hurls himself toward Legba. The god easily steps aside. “Oh, I see it does.”
Legba blocks Anzu’s next attempt with his twined walking stick. When Anzu grabs it, Legba shrugs and lets Anzu’s wings carry them both off the ground.
With Legba occupied, I might be able to get away after all. I struggle against Bronson’s grip and kick at him with my boots. His training kicks in, though he must not have much call for it these days. He moves his legs out of the way before I can connect.
I try pulling his hair, but he just grabs my wrists, holds me still. He stands on my boots. I can’t do anything but twist my torso and rage at him.
The sounds of Legba and Anzu above us aren’t comforting. Legba is still laughing. Anzu is no longer roaring.
I try to think of fights I’ve seen, of how people win them. But I’m a runner. I’d use whatever dirty tricks it takes, but I don’t know them. Legba played Mom. He played me, too. He was in on this with Bronson the whole time. Bastard.
Just like the man holding me. I consider trying to use my stripes again, flatten my palm against his hand, but the moment I say “Ka” he spins me around so my back is to his chest, and slaps his hand over my mouth.
He speaks near my ear. “Stop fighting and I won’t have to do what you did to Oz, something I would never let you do to me. The boy is not nearly as understanding as I am, I’m afraid. But then, he’s not your family.”
That Oz isn’t going to forgive me isn’t news.
The people across the street – the few dumb enough to stay outside – are gazing into the sky at whatever Legba and Anzu are doing. No one tries to help me. No one even seems to notice Bronson.