Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  I laughed a little, despite myself, and although the queen had no way of knowing what had amused me, her face brightened with what appeared to be a genuine smile.

  “You’re proud of him,” I said to her. “You should be. He had me fooled into thinking he was a real human! An officer of the law, in fact. It was brilliant. Your smile is devastatingly beautiful, by the way, and Claybriar, please don’t translate that if it’s rude.”

  The queen burst into a peal of delighted laughter, and behind her, Blesskin burst into the kind of uncultivated baby giggles that are irresistibly, empirically cute.

  “You totally translated all of that, didn’t you,” I accused Claybriar. “Including the part about me asking you not to translate.”

  Claybriar gave me an innocent look and a shrug; between his expression and the giggling three-year-old, I smiled a little myself. It seemed like the right sort of mood; the queen’s eyes had lighted on me with obvious interest.

  But then I relaxed a little too much and thoughtlessly touched a tree to steady myself. A tree which of course was actually the bedroom wall.

  The queen’s carefully crafted illusion melted like a torched cobweb, and suddenly we were standing in the Berenbaums’ master bedroom, minus the Berenbaums and most of their stuff. Just the essential furniture remained, including the bed, which was now noticeably absent of rose petals and climbing vines. Compared to the masterpiece that Dawnrowan had made of the place, it suddenly looked like a prison. The expression on the queen’s face made me feel a bit like Alice in the courtroom in Wonderland.

  “Oh, shit,” said Claybriar, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t translating.

  27

  Claybriar began to pace, addressing me in a panicked tone. “Why did you do that, she’s demanding to know. What have you done, you’ve ruined everything, she spent all night on it, et cetera.”

  “I’m so sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean to! It’s the iron . . . and I forgot that this all wasn’t real. . . .”

  Claybriar suddenly fell to his knees, pressing his palms and his forehead to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, baffled.

  “Trying to distract her by reaffirming my oath of loyalty,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem to be working. It’s not me she’s worried about.”

  “I’ve screwed us, haven’t I.”

  “I translated your apology, but she doesn’t trust humans because of the whole lying thing. She thinks you did it on purpose.”

  I felt as though a hand were squeezing my chest. The queen was going to tell Claybriar never to talk to me again. I looked behind me to Alvin and Belinda for guidance and wished I hadn’t. Belinda looked like an ice sculpture, and Alvin had dropped his face into his hand in despair.

  “If she doesn’t trust me not to lie, then how am I supposed to—” On an impulse, I painfully lowered myself to the floor, arranged my prosthetics into a kneeling pose, and pressed my brow to the smooth-finished hardwood, mimicking Claybriar’s pose. “Your Majesty,” I said, “I am your loyal servant.”

  I closed my eyes, breathing deeply and feeling the wood against my forehead, the twinges of protest in all my joints. There was a long silence, and then Claybriar’s voice, warm with relief.

  “She’s delighted,” he said. “This is the first time a human has ever sworn fealty to her. This is in no way arcanely binding, Millie, but you know she’s going to take you up on it, right?”

  “I’ll play along,” I said, a little shaky with relief. “I’ll do whatever makes her happy. Unless what makes her happy is for me to ever get up off this floor again, because I’m pretty sure we’re going to need a crane.”

  • • •

  Since only the one room was ruined, we moved downstairs for dinner, which consisted of berries and spoonfuls of honey; then we all parted ways amicably for the night. I managed to get away with no more arduous duties for my new pretend sovereign than a promise to return sometime and babysit Blesskin.

  Claybriar explained that Blesskin was actually a full-grown fey of some native Skyhollow variety whose temperament, intelligence level, and natural size were best represented by the facade of a human preschooler. And like many preschoolers, Blesskin was cramping her caretaker’s style and limiting her opportunities for tourism. I promised I would come back sometime and watch the runt for a little while, give Dawnrowan a chance to at least wander the neighborhood and gawk at its spectacular view of the city.

  • • •

  What was left of the weekend revolved largely around getting me moved out of my Manhattan Beach apartment. Zach was a big help getting the boxes into Tjuan’s car, but he seemed strangely depressed about the whole thing.

  “You’re not getting attached, are you?” I teased him when we were upstairs out of Tjuan’s earshot. “Should we swap numbers or something?”

  “I . . . wouldn’t mind that, actually,” he said, not meeting my eyes. Even as I gamely added him to my contacts, I found myself disconcerted by the idea. If I actually made arrangements to see him on purpose, wouldn’t that mean we were sort of dating? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, and it set off a whole cascade of other worries.

  As much as working at Valiant had frazzled my nerves, it was slowly beginning to dawn on me that quitting was going to be even worse. I was losing my personal space, my comfortable income, and my veneer of normality. Fear began to gnaw at me to the point that I felt it physically; my hands were clumsy and sluggish, my gait lopsided. And no one I cared enough about to go to for comfort could even touch me.

  All I could do was try to force my mind into other channels. There was certainly a lot to do; they were going to put me back in room 6, which meant not only moving in furniture for me, but moving office furniture out. I was going to have to put a real bed in there, not just an air mattress. Because this time I was staying.

  • • •

  Though I’d sooner have stuck a fork in my eye, I owed Inaya the courtesy of quitting my job in person on Monday morning, and so I forced myself to get dressed, comb my hair, put on makeup, and call a cab. I hadn’t calculated properly for rush-hour traffic from North University Park to Manhattan Beach and ended up walking into the office twenty minutes late. Araceli was already on a call, but the chilly look in her eyes spoke volumes. I walked right past her and through Inaya’s open door.

  “Oh thank God,” she said when she saw me. “I thought something had happened to you.”

  “Traffic,” I said vaguely.

  “I just talked to Naderi. How the hell does she know about the hole in soundstage 13? Never mind that, we’ve got to talk about next week, and I’m already running late for my ITV meeting.”

  “Yeah, about next week . . .”

  “Araceli’s going to be sitting in on a whole series of late-afternoon meetings dealing with international sales, and so I’m going to need you to cover the phones.”

  “Oh boy,” I exhaled, looking at the floor. “Here’s the thing.” I shifted my weight onto my AK. “You and I both know I’m not very good at this job, right?”

  “You mean the phones? You seem to do all right. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t just mean the phones. I mean—all of it.”

  “Honey, that’s not true. I know you’ve got some handicaps, but you’ve done a really good—” She stopped then, eyes narrowing. “Wait,” she said. “Oh no you don’t. I know what this is.”

  “I had to sign a contract with the Arcadia Project,” I said. “I broke some rules, and—I saw too much, I guess—so they gave me the option of working for them or having my brain wiped. Either way, I’m not going to be any use to you.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height. Even without the aid of magic, my boss was a stunning creature of legend when angry. I half expected an icy wind to come howling through the office to stir the twists of her hair. “No, ma’am.”

  “I don’t quit—I’m fired?” I said, almost hopefully.

  “No. Not a
chance. I don’t want to hear this Arcadia Project bullshit right now.”

  “It’s true. I wish it weren’t true, believe me. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t give me sorry. Don’t you dare. I picked you up out of the gutter. I mean for fuck’s sake literally picked you up out of an alley with piss all over you and gave you a job you are seriously underqualified for—”

  Now she admitted it? I felt like she’d yanked the floor out from under me. I’d come here out of respect for what I thought was our relationship and ended up trapping myself in a devastating psychological corner.

  “—and you tell me you’re leaving and that you’re sorry? Don’t give me sorry, give me two weeks’ fucking notice and a proper replacement.”

  “How am I supposed to—”

  “Figure. It. Out.” She turned away, took two deep breaths. Then she turned back to me, her voice suddenly smooth as silk. “I understand things are falling apart over there. A woman’s been killed, my Echo’s homeless, and there’s ghosts or something. I’ll give you as much leeway as I can to help Arcadia out. But you will be here when I ask you to be here, and you will not leave this lot until I clear you to go, until you have someone trained to replace you, because I do not have time for this shit right now.”

  I could almost physically feel a wall against my back; my eyes filled with tears of panic.

  “I got by—oh honey, don’t! Don’t you do that. This is on you—I got by without an Echo for thirty-seven years, and I will salt and burn the Arcadia Project if they fuck with Valiant, do you understand me?”

  “Loud and clear,” I said, digging my nails into my palms.

  Inaya gave me a long, hard look. “Good,” she said. “Now sit the fuck down at your desk and do your job.”

  I did. I did my job. I went into the ladies’ room first, though, and pounded my fists against my skull until the pain made me stop needing to scream and break everything in the building. It bordered on self-harm, and I knew Dr. Davis wouldn’t approve, but I didn’t have a convenient sink to fill with ice water and plunge my head into, and I was really not in the best state of mind to go down the whole list of other distress tolerance skills. So I punched myself in the head a few times, told myself I deserved every bit of this, cried violently for twenty seconds, and then went back to my desk. All things considered, my performance that day could have been much worse.

  I didn’t return to Residence Four until around a quarter to eight, and when I got there, Claybriar and King Winterglass were sitting in the living room listening to Phil play the piano. The first Goldberg Variation, precise and sprightly. As much as I hated for Phil to be a source of distress tolerance, his nuanced playing did a lot to loosen the knots the day had put in me. My father had only played piano when he was happy, and so my visceral reaction to the sound was a rush of relief: no one was angry; everything was going to be all right.

  Claybriar smiled when he saw me but didn’t get up. Winterglass looked transfixed, as though Phil were working an enchantment. The king didn’t seem to notice my entrance, even when I lowered myself onto the couch between him and Claybriar. Claybriar instinctively scooted farther away, but at the same time he reached into his pocket to put on his surgical gloves. The gesture made me a little bashful; I turned to look at Winterglass.

  “Don’t you boys have music where you come from?” I asked.

  Winterglass raised his hand sharply. I shut up.

  Phil’s eyes were closed, his head bobbing as he played, like a small hairy craft on a rough sea. He was almost smiling. I’d never noticed how elegant his hands were; it had never occurred to me to wonder what Gloria had seen in him. I glanced from his hands back to his face and realized that he’d lost some weight since summer. Quite a bit, actually, although the beard did a lot to disguise the sharper contours of his cheeks and jaw.

  When Phil had finished playing, Winterglass turned to face me in the ensuing silence.

  “We do have music in Arcadia,” His Majesty said haughtily, as though I had just spoken. “But what I just heard was not music; it was engineering.” I couldn’t tell if his tone indicated awe, contempt, or some mixture of the two.

  “Caryl likes Bach,” I said.

  Phil scowled. There, now I recognized him.

  “You should probably avoid playing Baroque music,” I said to Phil. “She might hear it down in the basement and have a moment’s enjoyment.”

  Phil swiveled fully around on the piano bench. “She fucking paralyzed me,” he said.

  All the anxiety his music had relieved came back with a jolt. “You’re fine,” I said. “She wouldn’t have done it if it would really damage you.”

  “Now I’m all right,” he said. “But she had no fucking right to do that to my body. So let’s not act like I’m holding a grudge for no fucking reason.” As he walked away, he added, “Bitch.”

  “Wow,” I said, staring after him with my heart racing. “I’m so glad I live here now.”

  I glanced at Claybriar, and sort of wished I hadn’t; the cold rage in his eyes as he watched Phil leave was decidedly Unseelie.

  “It’s all right, Clay,” I said quietly. “I heard worse every day at Valiant.”

  He reached out to touch my arm and said nothing.

  I turned to King Winterglass and tried to focus on taking slow, deep breaths. “Are you back from Arcadia already? Or have you not left yet?” I seriously hoped it was the former; our time frame was pretty tight.

  “I have been and returned.”

  “And you fixed Tjuan, I take it?” I asked him.

  “I banished the wraith to a locked storage closet and have specifically forbidden it to repossess him, or to possess any other human being so long as I reign.”

  “Is Tjuan okay? Where is he?”

  “He is resting now. But I also have news.” Winterglass rose from the couch and slipped his hands deep into the pockets of his long swishy jacket, which he’d apparently been wearing indoors for who knows how many hours.

  “Is it about the—” I hesitated, then lowered my voice. “Let’s go down into the basement.”

  The king nodded and turned briskly on his heel. Following us, Claybriar murmured the combination under his breath.

  Winterglass walked ahead of us down the stairs, and Caryl rose to her feet when she saw him. She looked equally prepared to kiss his hand or cower under his wrath; obviously she didn’t have Elliott out. This made me wary; I stood half behind Claybriar as though shielding myself.

  “The manticore’s facade is ready,” Winterglass said. “I worked with a human agent from Helsinki on this; she has sworn not to share the information with anyone else in her office. I have done my best not to alert your queen to our activities, but if—”

  “Wait, my queen?” I said. “You know that whole fealty thing is all just in Dawnrowan’s head, right? It’s not binding.”

  “He means Dame Belinda,” said Caryl. “We indicate the Project’s hierarchy to the fey by giving employees titles parallel to their own; it helps them understand who outranks whom and the deference due.”

  “I bet Belinda loves that.”

  “Can we keep to the topic at hand?” said Caryl irritably. It made me wonder how often Elliott masked her irritation with me. I probably didn’t want to know.

  “Sorry,” I said. “So the facade’s ready. How do we get it connected to Throebrand?”

  “I took the crafter through the portals to Duke Skyhollow’s estate,” said Winterglass, “explaining to the duke that we were conducting an investigation in his lands in an attempt to solve the manticore problem. I did not expand upon this. They had no authority to detain me, but it is safe to say their curiosity is aroused. The crafter is prepared to meet you in a protected wilderness shelter and cast the enchantment. The manticore cannot enter until you dispel the wards I cast.”

  “Tell me about this crafter. Does he or she speak English?”

  “Yes.” Winterglass hesitated, then answered quietly, “The crafter is my son.�
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  28

  “Prince Fettershock is young,” said the king, “but very skilled, and he speaks your language well. There was no one else I could trust with a matter at this level of delicacy.”

  “How old is, uh, Fettershock exactly?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “What? What is that in fey years, like, three?”

  “I do not understand the question,” said Winterglass.

  “You guys live forever—I assume you grow up more slowly than we do.”

  “A fey matures as rapidly as his experience permits. My son has been given a great deal of responsibility to groom him for his future role, and he has been in regular contact with his Echo since he was four years old. He is sufficient to this task.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “I will enable Claybriar to locate the wards I set around the cave, and once you find them you will disable them. I shall leave it to you to summon the manticore. If my son is so much as bruised, I shall withdraw my support for this venture and report your actions to your queen. I shall also demand that everyone involved be executed.”

  “Wow. Nice working with you.”

  “You doubt that you can control the creature?” Winterglass said with a raised brow. “If I am so blindly elitist, and your manticore is such a reasonable sentient creature, you should have no fear of this meeting.”

  “You’re using your own son as a bluff ?”

  “It is no bluff, if you are competent and trustworthy.”

  “Don’t worry your pretty head over it, Mr. Morozov,” I said with a tight smile. “The manticore and I are best buddies. His name is Throebrand, by the way.”

  “I could not possibly care less what it calls itself. Put the monster in contact with my son, and my son will bind it to its facade. After that, his role in this farce is finished, and so is mine.”

  “Are you returning to Arcadia, then?” asked Caryl with big soft eyes. Wait, wasn’t she turning those same eyes on me just last week?