“You were there,” Marie said.
The doctor stared at her clipboard. She’d stopped writing.
“My family was there,” she said.
“They brought you here. And put you to work patching up the same people who killed your…” Marie could barely get the words out. The room was tilting, growing smaller, squeezing the air out. “That’s…fucking sick.”
“Every time she came back from a mission, Lady Martika made a point of telling me how many rebels she’d executed that day. She made me look her in the eye when she said it, so she could hunt for any sign of disloyalty on my face. I learned to be very good at not feeling anything at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Marie said.
For the first time, just for a passing heartbeat, the doctor locked eyes with her.
“Why?” she said. “If you aren’t her, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
She gestured to a folded pile of fabric on the edge of the counter.
“They brought your clothes. We’re finished here. I’ll see you for a follow-up in four days.”
The blouse was midnight black, edged with delicate scarlet twist cord along the crease of the razor-sharp collar. Matching black breeches accompanied a belt, textured like snakeskin, with a slim silver buckle. Marie’s feet slid into high, polished leather boots. She wriggled her toes.
“They know all my sizes,” she said.
“They’re your clothes.”
The doctor opened the door and stood aside, staring at her clipboard. Tricia was waiting in the hall. Marie tried not to flinch as Tricia put a hand on her shoulder, gently guiding her along as they walked.
“Now there’s the Martie I remember,” she said. “Looking sharp and ready for duty.”
Marie bit down on her tongue before she could speak her mind. She knew that anything she wanted to say would probably just get the doctor in trouble. Instead, she dug for answers.
“Tell me if I’ve got this right. So, Ezra Talon—this world’s version of Ezra—invented the technology for jumping across worlds.”
“Bookmarks,” Tricia said. “Stable portals—well, eventually stable, we had some false starts.”
“So he founded Talon Armaments Group. At some point he realized our worlds were unusually synchronized and figured out another one of his incarnations was a teenager on my Earth. So he sent him that care package loaded with schematics and advanced technology. Our Ezra grew up, founded his own version of the company—Talon Worldwide—and followed in his footsteps.”
“Batting a double nine, so far.” Tricia paused. “Um, batting a thousand, I think you’d say? Your world’s version of baseball is weird. I didn’t really understand it. Anyway, yeah, ‘unusually’ synchronized is an understatement. You have to beat lottery-winner odds to find two worlds where multiple incarnations of the first-story characters are alive and overlapping each other. The whole space-time continuum has to pretty much bend in on itself and twist sideways. Ezra showed me a diagram, ages ago. Baked my noodle for a week.”
“So your Ezra got the idea to build his world-jumping tech into a prototype suit of armor. He didn’t realize that Carlo Sosa, this world’s incarnation of the Scribe, had infiltrated TAG as a technician. Carlo was communicating with Carolyn Saunders, our Scribe. And he wanted to come over for a personal visit, so he stole the suit.”
They walked down a flight of steel-clad steps. Men in flight uniforms snapped to attention as they passed, fists to their shoulders, beads of sweat on their motionless faces. Tricia’s eyes twinkled, full of mischief.
“Ah, there’s where the plot thickens.” Tricia hooked her fingers in the air. “Sure, Carlo ‘stole’ the suit after he ‘found’ the heavily guarded key code to get into the massively defended hangar. Honestly? He didn’t even pass the preemployment interview at TAG; we twigged to his game the second he applied.”
“You set him up,” Marie said.
“We set him up to succeed. We handed him the opportunity to steal that prototype, practically pushed him to do it, then we stood aside and whistled with our fingers in our ears until he got away with the goods. Dumbass thought he was some kind of super spy. But this is a fine example of the plan…not going right. He was supposed to take the suit to your planet, get together with Carolyn, and then we’d pull strings to steer them—and it—in your direction. We didn’t expect he’d go joyriding first and get himself killed on a plague world. Thankfully, we were able to stash the suit at a roadside attraction and draw your Ezra toward it. Lots of spinning plates, but things more or less worked out.”
“Sure,” Marie said. “Ezra’s motivated. Both versions are. He’s the Salesman.”
“And he knows it. Being doomed does drive a man’s ambitions. I’ll be honest, I don’t understand all this magic stuff past the surface, but that part’s simple enough. Tell somebody they’re fated to get their hands and their tongue cut off and die in a prison cell, he’s going to work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“Imprisoned by a tyrant,” she said, echoing Carolyn’s words.
She took in the sweep of the corridor, the men standing frozen at attention, the steady onyx eye of a security camera in every corner of the hall. A tall pair of double doors loomed ahead, unmarked and coated in glossy blood-red steel.
“And this is what he did,” Marie said. “Your world’s Ezra. This…‘New America,’ this fucking nightmare you people built. To escape the tyrant, he became the tyrant. What I don’t get is the endgame here. Why go to all this effort? He has to know I’m not your ‘Lady Martika.’ I’m not going to just jump on board and lead his happy little death squad. What is he, obsessed with me or something?”
“Ooh,” Tricia said. “So close. Swing and a miss. You were right on track, right up to the end there.”
She put her hand on the crimson door and flashed an excited grin.
“Use those detective skills of yours, Martie. You know what this is all about. You know exactly why you’re here.”
Marie had been piling lies upon lies like a house of cards, weaving a blindfold of pure desperation so she wouldn’t have to stare at the naked truth. But she’d added one card, one lie, one denial too many, and she watched them all flutter to the ground at her feet.
Tricia pushed the doors wide, but Marie already knew what she’d see on the other side. The throne room, scarlet and ebony, lined with Ionic pillars and dangling tapestry pennants. The honor guard, a dozen silent soldiers in black dress uniforms, flanking the long red carpet. The throne.
And Nessa, her lips painted plum and curling in a hungry smile as she extended a beckoning hand.
“At long last,” she said. “Welcome home, my love. Welcome home.”
Sixteen
For a moment Marie was back in the tunnels under Chicago as they made their escape from the Bast Club. They’d waded along a flooded tunnel, braved stagnant, freezing water and snakes. She had gone first and talked Nessa through the ordeal by telling her a story. Just a silly story. She remembered how Nessa landed in her arms, shivering, both of them soaked to the bone.
Let’s do it, Nessa had whispered in her ear, her voice trembling. Let’s conquer the entire world. And when I’m in charge, they’ll never be able to hurt us again.
“How?” Marie breathed.
This Nessa wore a tailored jacket of black raw silk, with delicate silver buttons and a calfskin holster on the hip of her riding breeches. Instead of a pistol, it cradled a gnarled wooden wand tipped in sapphire, swaying at her side as she rose from her throne. Her right hand was slender and pale, her left encased in a gauntlet of silvery metal, a sheath of mercury that bent and rippled with the curve of her fingers.
“The Owl recorded her warning in Mirenze, trying to stop the cycle of death and rebirth. You and Nessa assumed you were the first and only incarnations to receive it.” She shook her head. “I was twelve years old when I dug a crack into the Shadow and saw my fate. By the time I met you, eight years later, my plan was already
in motion.”
“The rebirth of a nation,” said Tricia, standing at Marie’s side.
“It wasn’t that hard. I simply worked my way into the government and placed my loyal followers—thank you, Tricia—where I needed them for the day the dominoes fell. The first one tumbled with the sound of a bullet. A beloved president, felled by a foreign sniper. An exercise of emergency powers, the ‘temporary’ suspension of elections, a few more carefully targeted assassinations, and we were off to the races. Meanwhile, I had Ezra Talon pumping out interdimensional technology and the best minds of the occult underground—the ones I allowed to live, after rounding up every witch and spell-slinger with a spark of talent—lending supernatural support. Science and sorcery, weaponized and united in my grasp. We couldn’t lose.”
She came down from the dais and strode toward them, slow, like a hunting cat. She stood before Marie.
“Once they called me Secretary Fields. Now they call me the Overlord.” She winked. “But you can call me Nadia.”
“It was you,” Marie said, putting the pieces together. “You wrote Nessa’s book of spells.”
“Bit strange, teaching another incarnation of myself how to be a witch—the Witch—but I did my best to give her the tools she’d need.”
“You poisoned her. She’s going to die.”
“Not yet, she isn’t. She has work to do first. All according to the plan. Besides, didn’t I make sure she was properly warned? Didn’t I give her the resources to keep herself alive a bit longer?”
“When did you—” Marie fell silent. Her next words came out in a whisper. “It was right in front of us. This entire time, it was right in front of us.”
Nadia opened her gauntleted hand, palm upward. A window blossomed in the air above it. A hologram, tinged in shimmering sapphire, rippling as it projected footage from a security camera. Marie watched her lover standing at the coat check of the Bast Club, handing over a crow-feathered coat.
She turned, looked directly into the camera, and flashed a wicked grin before walking away.
“It wasn’t someone disguised as Nessa, impersonating her,” Marie said. “It was you. You planted the coat there—with the tarot card and the note inside, warning Nessa to hang on to it. Then you talked to Freddie Vinter and made sure she’d remember you, so she’d draw us to the coat when we showed up.”
“A year later,” Nadia said. “All the while, we’d been manipulating the messages between Carlo and Carolyn, knowing Carolyn was writing everything down—writings that would eventually fall into your hands. She wasn’t even talking to Carlo half the time. That was me, posing as him.”
“And her writings would lead you to that mall in Iowa, and your world’s Ezra, with the technology we made certain he had access to,” Tricia added.
Marie watched the dominoes tumble. “Then we’d use his technology and that card to travel to Mirenze and find Hedy, who would know exactly what was wrong with Nessa and what caused it. And how to make the elixir to keep her alive.”
Nadia squeezed her fingers shut like she was snatching the world in her grasp. The hologram flickered and died.
“And everything old is new again!” she said with a gleeful laugh. “I hope it wasn’t lost on you that the Owl of Mirenze created that elixir in the first place. All of my incarnations, working together in perfect concert, just as it should be.”
“Why? What are you trying to do?”
“Same thing I always have,” Nadia told her. “Try and find a way to beat the system. To break the wheel. And with a little help from my other lives, I’m going to be the one who finally does it. And you’re going to be right at my side, beloved.”
Marie’s stomach twisted in knots. It was her lover’s face, her lover’s voice. It was Nessa, standing right in front of her. And it wasn’t. Half of her wanted to pull Ness—no, Nadia into her arms and hold her tight. Half of her wanted to start throwing punches. Or run. Run until she was anywhere but here.
“I’m not Martika,” was all she managed to say.
“Of course you are.” Nadia reached out. Her mercury fingertip tapped the side of Marie’s head. “They’re all you. The Knight, eternal. Just like I’m Nadia Fields, and I’m Nessa Fieri, and I’m the Owl of Mirenze. I’m the same woman you fell in love with, Marie. Different lifetime, same woman.”
“No,” Marie said. “I’m not. You’re not. From what I’ve seen so far? You’re a monster, and it sounds like ‘Lady Martika’ was a fucking bitch.”
Tricia’s eyes went cold. She curled her hands into fists. Nadia just shook her head and pursed her lips, amused.
“Oh, darling. I knew this was going to be difficult, but you’re really going to make me work today, aren’t you? First of all, of course I’m a monster. I’m always a monster, and you love that about me. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“That’s not—”
Nadia waved her hand. “But let’s focus on you first. You’re the Knight. You know this. Why do you chafe so hard against everything that name brings with it?”
“A knight protects the innocent. A knight doesn’t do…whatever the fuck it is I was doing on this planet.”
“Fascinating. So, humor me, let’s do a little thought experiment together. You’ve talked to Carolyn, you’ve heard of some other characters from the first story. Which ones do you remember?”
Marie caught the tease of a trap in Nadia’s question, but she thought back anyway, searching her memory as she ticked them off on her fingers.
“There’s the Scribe, the Salesman, the Thief, the Paladin—”
Nadia’s face lit up in mock surprise.
“Ooh, that’s an interesting word! What’s a paladin, Marie?” She tilted her head, leaning a little closer. “C’mon. You’ve been reading fantasy novels your entire life. You know the answer. Tell me. What’s a paladin?”
The trap snapped shut.
“A paladin is usually defined as…a crusader,” Marie said. “A warrior who fights for the forces of good.”
“Mm. So, sort of like a knight, but with an assumed ethical dimension. A good knight.”
“I guess,” Marie said.
“And in the vernacular of the first story, if the Paladin is cast as a crusader for the forces of good, Marie…what does that say about the Knight? What does that say about the Witch’s Knight? Come on. It’s not like you’ve ever been squeaky-clean outside of your ambitions and your daydreams. You have two constant companions: me, and that rage you’re always struggling to keep in check. The darkness bubbling just under the surface, aching for an opportunity to come out and play. But don’t take my word for it. You know how long I’ve had my eye on you?”
She opened her gauntlet once more, and a fresh hologram blossomed. Static flecked a surveillance recording, and tinny audio emerged from Nadia’s palm. Marie watched herself, maybe two years younger and murder in her eyes, half dragging a man in cuffs from his apartment.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” he protested. “She knew what she was doing. Little minx came on to me. She seduced me.”
“She’s twelve,” Marie’s image hissed through gritted teeth.
“Hey, grass on the field, play ball, right?”
She shoved him. The audio clattered as the man in cuffs pitched over, howling as he tumbled down the staircase and hit every step on the way to the bottom.
“Oh, here’s a more recent one. Remember this?” Nadia asked.
Her fingers twirled. The footage was blurry, jumpy, shot from a distance, but Marie recognized it at a glance. She’d just gotten done beating the hell out of Beau Kates, bouncing the pimp off every piece of furniture in his ‘modeling studio,’ and now she was straddling his chest and grabbing at his jaw while the bloody-faced man squirmed beneath her.
“You ever see a man die from an ink overdose, Kates? It’s a bad, bad way to go. Open your fucking mouth.”
As her partner burst in, Tony’s shout echoing just off camera, the image broke into fractal snow. Nadia snapped he
r fingers and banished it.
“I have an entire demo reel of Detective Reinhart’s greatest hits,” she said. “Pun intended.”
“I did…I did what I had to do. For justice.”
“For your liege,” Nadia replied. “You mistook the law as your liege, before you met me. And the Knight serves her liege in all things. Faithfully. Diligently. And with no remorse or hesitation. That’s who you are, Marie. It’s how you were written.”
“There are lines I don’t cross. I don’t kill innocent people.”
“Sounds,” Tricia murmured, “like a certain barber was running her mouth.”
Marie spun around, fixing her with a glare. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”
Tricia held up her hands in mock surrender, smirking. The men of Nadia’s black-uniformed honor guard still flanked the red carpet and surrounded the three women, staring in stony silence, living statues with guns on their hips.
“She must have told you about Austin,” Nadia said.
“She told me what—” Marie hesitated just long enough to keep the word I from falling off her tongue. “What you people did.”
“Curious. I assume she told you that you murdered her husband and her son.”
“Something like that,” Marie said.
“Something like that. Hmm. Did she tell you that her son had evaded a contraband checkpoint by mowing down three people with one of the automatic weapons he’d been hoarding?”
Marie blinked at her. “No.”
“Oh. So I imagine she also didn’t tell you that her husband, as part of the so-called ‘resistance,’ was directly involved in planting a bomb at a Liberation Day parade. A bomb designed to target civilians who supported my regime. To terrorize them. Twenty-seven innocent people died that day. I know this because you memorized their names. You recited each one, one after another, with tears in your eyes, to steel yourself before you went out to avenge their deaths.”
Nadia’s gauntlet drifted down to her side.
“Nothing is ever black-and-white, Marie. The world is a complicated place. You know that.”
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 13